 We're in the main auditorium at Naval Air Station, Fallon, Nevada, getting ready for a strike into a high-end warfight in training. And the strike league says, hack, it's 0-900. Thanks for joining us today, and thank you to the Navy League, providing the forum to bring, probably, I will say, the Navy and Marine Corps' best warfighters, our resource sponsors, to talk to you about integration and our operability. My name is Mike Minnauzer. I'm the deputy CNO for warfare systems. And I'm happy to be your moderator today, which is a great place to be, because one, I'm behind a podium, and two, all the hard questions go over there. So a little bit of rules of engagement today before we get into some conceptual stuff, and then the panelists' introductions. We're going to have each of the panel members, after I introduce them, give a little bit of a primer on what they're thinking. We're going to talk about, after that, we're going to go to Q&A. We're not going to talk to you about our future capabilities. We have been doing a great job at communicating how we're going to put our weapons systems together, what weapons systems we're going to put together, even down to what waveform that we're going to use in the past. Our efforts to influence industry, to influence other government actors, to go the way we want to go, haven't been as successful as our efforts at influencing the enemy and their learning. And so we hope to get into depth on the challenges today of integration and interoperability, but I don't think what you hear from us is more specifics on how we're getting after the challenge of integration and interoperability of moving from a platform-based thinking to a capability-based thinking. We have to get more competitive. Our edge comes in getting our product to the market first. There are no points for second place in a war fight. We have to compete in this high-end competition against high-end competitors who are chasing technology just like us. We can't just build exquisite platforms. We have to figure out how to put them together in more and innovative ways using the limits of technology, AI, man-machine teaming, autonomy. How do we take what industry has learned and put it into our weapons systems? Thank you for being here if you are an industry partner. We need to engage early and often with industry earlier in the acquisition process than we normally do. And we throw an RFP across the fence to you after several years of study rather than getting with you inside the playroom and figuring out what those requirements in the RFP ought to be. Our imperatives in going forward, and the reason we have Reverend Nancy Norton sitting right here, is information is the coin of the realm. You have to be able to move information around the battle space faster than your opponent. You have to think faster than your opponent. You have to act faster than your opponent. We have to have agility in the electromagnetic environment. We've been talking about the EM spectrum now for decades. Decades against the Soviet Union back in the 80s. We were talking about how to operate the EM spectrum. We knew how to operate MCON. It's not good enough to just operate MCON anymore. You have to be agile inside of that spectrum. So next slide. Maybe I'm the one that. No, there we go. So a quick cartoon. Again, we're not showing you what we're trying to do, but just kind of an evolution for integration and interoperability. We started with a single platform with its weapon and its target, and it had to control a weapon to a target. And you can think of all kinds of examples. We show a ship and some kind of a service to air missile there. We move forward in this proprietary systems that we had with platforms. We connected platforms that were alike, and we figured out how to have cooperative targeting. And then we extended in the late 2000s and the multi-platforms did systems of systems engineering to figure out how to take a proprietary system from one company and connect it with a proprietary system from a different company. We still have challenges. When I take a strike group to sea, to connect with the Air Force and get data from the Air Force, so moving information around disparate platforms is key. And the thing we're looking for in the future is the kill web approach down in the lower right-hand quadrant. How to match any sensor to any shooter. How to create software-defined capabilities networks radios so that the system knows where to get its information from when it needs a weapons quality track or it needs to understand the state of the battle space. If you stitch horizontal kill chains together in between those nodes, you start to visualize a mesh or a web, hence the kill web discussion. Any sensor, any shooter. Given our proprietary systems, how do we connect those from the get go? So today's topic is getting after the challenges of integration or operability from when we build the system, not after you build it and connect it. Next slide. So I'm very pleased to be joined with a panel of experts. The great thing is that we work together in the Pentagon every single day getting after some of these challenges. For those of you who are denizens of the Pentagon or denizens of this system, you'll go, hey, one of those is different from the others. Nancy Norton. She served in information warfare billets at all levels of float and ashore. She's a career information professional. We typically, in the platform world, we kind of give the network stuff to the information professional. We go over and buy cool, shiny objects. We love cool, shiny objects in the Pentagon. But Nancy is critical at stitching together those platforms. She has served as executive assistant to the vice chief of naval operations, then the CNO, and most recently is the director of command control communications and cyber director at C4D, US Pacific Command. Currently, Nancy is serving as the director of warfare integration for information warfare and is a deputy director of Navy cyber security. As a director of integration for information warfare on our OPNAV staff, Nancy is responsible for funding the Navy programs across the information warfare portfolio, including comms, networks, sensors, cyberspace, operations, electronic warfare, and space systems. The N9 buys the platforms. Nancy and the N26 buy many of the payloads that allow them to operate as a netted force. In addition to her multiple tours at OPNAV, she has served Navy tours of float and ashore, SENTCOM, UCOM, PACOM, work C4ISR capability interoperability across the globe. As a one star, she was the PACOM J6 focused on joint and allied C4ISR and cyberspace operations. Next to Nancy, Major General Chris Owens, currently director for expeditionary warfare on the CNO's staff, OPNAV N95, a Cobra pilot who's commanded at the squadron, air group wing, and marine expeditionary brigade levels. He's also served as chief of staff, naval striking and support forces, NATO director of the Marine Corps School of Advanced Warfighting, and most recently as the director of plans, policy, and strategy, the J5 and U.S. Forces Korea. Very quiet theater right now. In his second MEV role, he led USMC forces during the first two bold alligator exercises in 2011 and 2012, the first MEV level amphibious exercises in more than a decade. These exercises helped the Navy and Marines to assess where we stood on our ability to rapidly integrate larger forces and conduct a variety of amphibious operations. Rebel Bill Meurs is our director of undersea warfare, therefore responsible for planning, programming, and budgeting for our submarine force and support. He was commanding officer of USS Memphis and NR-1. Prior to becoming N97, spent the previous two years in Yokosuka, Japan, as commander of submarine group seven and commander of task force 74. Rebel Ron Boxel came to OPNAV for command of carrier strike group three last July and assumed the position of director surface warfare of N96. He is commanding USS Lake Erie, USS Carney. He is N9's principal advisor to establish requirements, set priorities, and direct overall planning and programming for surface warfare capabilities and systems. And then far out to the right, Chip Miller hails from York, Pennsylvania. He is the director of air warfare. I've known him since 1977. We were both pleads at the Naval Academy. We graduated in 81 where he majored in baseball and then went on to earn his wings of gold in 83. After flying and instructing an A7s, light attack guy, and F-18s, bullet went newt, commanded USS George HW Bush, and eventually the Bush strike group at the start of Operation Iraqi Resolve. He balances the budget and sets requirements for all of naval aviation. In his few hours away from the Pentagon each week, he loves catching Nats games with his wife. And right after this panel, if we don't give him too many questions, he's headed to Pittsburgh for their home opener. So good on bullet. He's probably got that work-life balance pretty much figured out. So without further ado, I'd like to quit talking and turn the mic over to our panelists to give some opening comments. And then after bullet finishes his opening comments, hopefully there are lines at the microphones and we'll get into a dialogue with you. So Nancy, please. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for being here. It's really an honor to be part of this panel and I appreciate the introduction that Abel Manazer gave talking about integration and interoperability and how important it is. Clearly as I look out in the audience this morning, I can see that across the services, the industry representatives, and all of our international partners that are here today that you recognize the value and the importance of integration and interoperability for our armed services and the kinds of systems that we have to deal with in the future. We're clearly living in a highly informationalized operating environment which brings with it great advantages and potential vulnerabilities. As a society, we have grown accustomed to sharing information easily and rapidly from our computers, our phones, and even embedded devices in our homes and eventually in our bodies. These are pretty amazing advancements in the global information system and the proliferation of these sophisticated devices had the potential to allow individuals and non-state actors to potentially challenge our forces and our ideas around the globe in our private lives and in our national security matters. So it's really important that we focus on this. In C&O's design for maintaining maritime superiority, he has definitely done that. In his tasking his blue line of effort to strengthen naval power at and from the sea, he has tasked us with a fleet trained and ready to operate and fight decisively from the deep ocean to the littorals, from the sea floor to space and in the information domain. And he's further tasked us to further advance and ingrain information warfare in all that we do. So we have embraced that challenge and taking that tasking on to mean information in warfare and information as warfare. Additionally, in the design, the purple line of effort requires that we expand and strengthen our network of partners to enhance integration and international partnerships with information sharing and interoperability initiatives that we train and operate to. In information warfare, our mission imperative is to conduct distributed, multi-domain, cross-regional operations from peacetime through war in uncontested and highly contested environments. We must continue to innovate in order to provide our naval and joint and international forces with the freedom to maneuver in the physical and virtual domains as well as the cognitive domain. The information warfare strategy is designed around three pillars. The assured command and control pillar, battle space awareness and integrated fires. The assured command and control really means just that. It means command and control of our forces, our commander's ability to command and control all of our forces, joint and coalition. It doesn't mean necessarily assured command and control systems. Our job is to provide the best possible systems that we can with the most robust and resilient capability to continue to operate in a contested or degraded environment. But regardless, the commander has to be able to command and control forces and understand what that means. So the training required to do that even in a degraded environment is absolutely critical to all of our mission success. The second pillar is battle space awareness. That's shared and distributed battle space awareness. And you saw that in the previous slide as we started to distribute some of our sensor information. So from a thorough understanding of our physical environment that comes from our meteorological forces to a deep understanding of potential adversaries from our intelligence forces to networked sensors from sea floor to space that are very rapidly able to share information and pass that to all of our forces. So you can understand how important that interoperability across our forces, joint and coalition forces is for that kind of shared situational awareness or battle space awareness. The third pillar is integrated fires. And that was really the depiction that Admiral Menazer had on his slide of providing the tactical networks and integration to our combat systems that enable that multi-platform fire control and integrate both kinetic and non-kinetic fires across the battle force. That's across the electromagnetic spectrum and across cyberspace operations. And finally synchronized and coordinated multi-dimensional highly complex war fighting requires tactical operational and even strategic level battle management aids. And a lot of effort is going on in that area and we'll continue to because as Admiral Menazer said, the need for man machine teaming, artificial intelligence, learning algorithms that enable us to rapidly do that kind of integration for our sensor data, for our ability to use all of that information. We don't want to do that at the pace of an individual analyst or individual minds when a machine can do it much quicker. So some of the keys to success in moving forward in the areas that we need in information warfare and maintaining that kind of speed of pacing our adversaries requires integration and interoperability through developing adaptable architectures and standards across the board with open standards and very clear direction for all of our programs to be able to plug and play into systems, whether those are our Navy systems, joint systems or coalition forces that are able to do that. All of those systems have to be designed for agility and rapid upgrade from the beginning. We cannot force ourselves into a situation that requires major system hardware upgrades in order to be successfully pacing the adversary. We have to be able to do that with software reprogrammable payloads and radios that can be done oftentimes while a ship or an aircraft is on deployment or maybe even while they're on mission to be able to upgrade that. We have the ability to do that and our systems have to continue moving down that path as rapidly as possible. We have to look for innovative and affordable solutions to expand that system of systems that build out that kill web that Arnold Manazer showed. There are a lot of opportunities for doing that and we're continuing to look for systems that will stitch together those kill webs that in some cases are a little bit fragile and make them much more robust with resilient paths for an integrated kill web. And then finally, we have to have cybersecurity built in from the very beginning of our systems. It can't be something that's bolted on at the end because we recognize that cybersecurity is key to survivability of our platforms, of our weapon systems, of our sensors and our IT systems. And if we aren't thinking about that from the beginning we'll never be able to add it on successfully in the end. So as you can see, integration and interoperability of information across our forces really becomes a power advantage across all war fighting domains. I thank you very much and look forward to your questions. So the Navy and Marine Corps have been working on interoperability and integration since 1775 and you'd think we'd have it about down by now but the truth is the things that we will need the Navy and the Marine Corps to do together are far different than they were in the early years. So one of my jobs as a resource sponsor is like I've got two ropes. One is the fleet requirements and the other is the acquisition community. I'm trying to pull them together. But the other one and the reason why you have a green suit in amongst these blue suits is I'm also one of the people trying to pull the two ropes in the Navy and the Marine Corps together or keep them together. So we've compounded our challenges over the last 15 years with the Marines being primarily land-based and land-focused and interoperability of board ship, the systems that we developed and procured, sometimes shipboard compatibility was an afterthought. And so we're on the process of working back towards full compatibility and integration of board ship. Five years ago we did Bold Alligator 12 as Admiral Menazer said. It was the first brigade level amphibious exercise in over a decade. And frankly, in addition to relearning a lot of basic lessons about large-scale amphibious operations, we also recognize some new challenges that would be coming to us following the exercise. And we are continuing to work through those challenges, mainly because right after the exercise, Chief Naval Operations in the Commandant gave us a list of things to work on that we helped develop. But things like more integrated command and control, more interoperable networks and equipment, updated doctrine, more focused exercises and embedded experimentation. But the environment continues to evolve. We are now executing distributed operations of our expeditionary forces like never before. We are working at developing the agility that we facilitate by retaining landing force, command and control a float rather than always assuming we'll phase a shore. And of course, integration and new equipment, F-35B comes to mind as probably the biggest one here in the short term. All of this requires a more integrated capability, particularly a board ship. So we've made some progress. Since Bold Alligator 12, the Navy and Marine Corps have collaborated on a number of doctrinal publications, one of the more recent ones, Latoral Operations in the Contested Environment concept that really is going to drive the way we integrate and give us a framework for future exercises and capability development. Operationally, we are integrating our command and control more than we ever have before. In the fifth fleet AOR right now, we have a single combined Navy Marine Corps task force that is in charge of all amphibious exercises and operations and it's executing very well. Bold Alligator and the West Coast counterpart, Don Blitz and our counterpart in Western Pacific, Songyang and Korea are now routine exercises. They all involve robust allied participation and we are increasingly embedding experimentation in those exercises to give us a realistic environment in which to test new capabilities and concepts. We're making better use of war games than we used to in the past. Recently completed Naval Services War Game worked on command and control or command relationships in expeditionary operations and we gained some valuable insights out of that. We added our expeditionary forces to the surface warfare enterprise which what that does is it puts all our amphib ships on a par with the surface fleet as we go through maintenance, modernization, training and manpower issues and each year, each budget cycle we prioritize those across the enterprise. This is gonna make better use of our resources and make sure that we're not buying niche or boutique capabilities that make it that much harder to be interoperable. The adoption of the optimized fleet readiness plan is gonna help us to better schedule, plan and execute our availabilities which is gonna be key as the pace of our modernization requirements continues to accelerate while our fleet continues to age. Our big deck amphibs are getting major overhauls right now to integrate the F-35B, reinforcing the flight decks, upgrading spaces and in particular upgrading the networks and those same network upgrades are gonna allow a better accommodation of the large scale staff. So Marine Expeditionary Brigade, the expeditionary strike group staff on the Navy side to allow that afloat command and control allow us to integrate more systems, distribute the right information to the right spaces in time of board ship to give us that agility we need. During Bold Alligator 12, we set up a number of antennas on the flight decks, duct taping them to railings and so forth because we didn't have the bandwidth, we didn't have the connectivity, we didn't have the systems and the Navy side to accommodate the systems of Marines needed. Today we're investing in bandwidth, antennas, foundations, cables and power while the Marines bring the consoles, the laptops and the radios. It's not, we're not quite to a plug and play situation yet but we're getting there and it makes for an equitable sharing of resource responsibilities between the blue and the green force. So on the way ahead, we still have to speed up our upgrades. We have a lot of things that we still want to do. We need to continue to refine our processes if we're gonna be able to compete in the future. A lot of the technology that we need already exists but we continue to struggle for both the money and the time to get these upgrades to the ships. Now the size of the Navy and the amphib fleet in particular affects our ability to be able to take a ship offline long enough to provide the upgrades and the modernization it needs. The amphib fleet's gonna continue to grow but frankly we're coming off a nadir from a couple of years ago that's gonna take several years to restore even under optimistic fiscal predictions. Exercises build interoperability in a larger fleet allows us to do more exercising. We have to have the live exercises because there's just no way to replicate the kind of friction you have when you have ships, real ships and real airplanes and real landing craft and real fires going ashore in a virtual environment but by incorporating virtual and constructive environments into the live exercise, we allow ourselves to stretch the live forces, we allow units and some of our allies and partners to participate from their home bases and not have to expend resources just to travel to the exercise site and it allows us to exercise some concepts and some ideas that you can't fully do in a live environment. Our command relationships continue to evolve, finding the best way to exploit the strengths in the Navy and the Marine Corps and again getting at that agility that is focused on cutting our decision time so that we can basically out decide our adversaries in the future and then finally continue to work with allies and partners as with the Navy. When we acquire these systems and therefore what is our priority because there are other trends that we're getting behind. Technology is getting faster. It's fielding more quickly, it's getting smaller. It should be getting cheaper. I challenge all of you to keep us on that path but we need to make sure that these trends we can get ahead of them by knowing what we need first, prioritizing that and what raises all boats in aircraft and submarine. So I just want to kind of give you that perspective because to me that puts a premium on what the mission level analysis. Let's stop looking at how ships do business or how aircraft do business and how submarines and more importantly how we look across all those ships in the different domains in the cross-domain fight and how we're going to do it, therefore what we value and then we'll have some robust discussions about where's the right balance of trades, of risks and costs. And I believe we are on that path and I believe we are doing that pretty well now. It'll take a little time to continue to improve but that's a much better model than where we grew up. And I think that's the only way we're gonna get ahead and stay ahead is technology continues to increase in speed. So without further ado, I'll pass along to my compadre over here, Bill Merz. Thanks Ron, good morning everybody. So just the term interoperability and integration is, it's just not a good word for the submarine force. It's not in our DNA or it hasn't been in the past. And we're coming a long ways. Growing up first in the Cold War, we didn't even talk to each other in the submarine force. Matter of fact, if you weren't on a boat with me I probably didn't know who you were. And we've had to move away from that. And I will tell you, the move has probably been more natural than we thought. Especially when you fast forward all the way to today and you're talking words like distributed. We've been doing that for a while. We're finding that our unique access where we operate day in and day out adds a lot of value to the entire Navy if we get integrated into that picture. So although we still like to use the term lone wolf, kind of the nature of our legacy off, we're finding that there are times and places that we have to come out of that, come out of that quickly. And those are the areas Nancy and I in particular are working very hard to close those seams. You've heard many of the panels talk about, we have a collection of adversaries out there that are getting better, getting much bigger and we're getting smaller. Now I wouldn't equate smaller to less lethal, but we are getting smaller. And if you wanna talk capital ships, in my world there's not a whole lot I can do about that for the next decade. I'm small now, I'm less than half the size I was in a Cold War and I'm probably gonna get 20% smaller before we can actually turn the tide. It just takes time to build these kind of complex machines in any kind of numbers that are gonna matter. And I'm not unique. It's the same for all of us at this table here. And so we have naturally come together in a lot of ways and we are probably more naturally investing together. So we go after this effort together. So I'll reiterate here that we are still exceedingly lethal but beyond that we are experienced and we're tested. And those are just key elements of our Navy that you don't care how much we get hacked. You can't steal that stuff. You can't bottle it. There's only one way to get that kind of proficiency and it's through our all volunteer force and the people that operate these platforms all the time. So we're trying to rally around them and make sure that we can cover down together. And I will tell you this era we're coming through of exceedingly tight resources, not just tight shrinking. In my mind it's required us to become a lot more creative on how we cover down on each other's lack of capacity. But I'll also tell you we're at the end of our rope in a lot of these areas in capacity. And we'll get into an era where threats are essentially gonna have to go uncovered and as a country we're gonna have to make some tough choices on how we're gonna balance this. Frankly, it's just math. But through these efforts, some magic has happened. We've become very educated on each other's key capabilities and even more magical we've become naturally defensive of each other's capabilities. And we've learned that you can't invest in one aspect of the Navy and sacrifice another aspect of the Navy. It's just not that simple. Even when we start talking in our domains and that's the theme we've been using now because that just naturally leads to discussing the whole spectrum of tactics, evolution's investments with the other platforms that affect your domain. But there's also a temporal effect that what's important early may not be as important later. So you kinda have to watch this whole spectrum of warfare that has become a lot more obvious to us as we work together. We literally talk to each other every day now. And in my several tours in the Pentagon, I've never seen that. And now it just kind of happens as if nothing else, a self-preservation move to make sure we're covering down on the most critical elements. We've also learned somewhat bluntly that you cannot sacrifice near-term readiness for advanced and future capability. You have to ride that train together or as we're finding out, you're gonna be rapidly tying up ships, aircraft and submarines as fast as you build them. That, as we call it, the BMW and maintenance plan has to go with the platforms and the capabilities as we go forward. So we are much more integrated and operable, but it's also not particularly new. All of us have come from the fleet. I will tell you this has been driven by the fleet. The fleet voice has driven the, essentially the makeup of the N9, the warfighting division never had one of those. We've always been much more stove-piped. And that behavior has, I would tell you, been going on for a while. And it's revealed a lot of opportunities. I think we've all identified redundant systems that we can get rid of. We've all identified capabilities, particularly in sensors and weapons that we can use each other's technology, take the best of breed, instead of getting into our niche platform-based capabilities. And we've also spent a lot more effort with our allies and not all allies are created equal. But we have a collection of allies that are every bit as capable as we are. And we're starting to look at it more as a singular effort, not big Navy versus small Navy. It's more of our who can cover down on where, based on your access and your proximity. And I will tell you, that's a very refreshing look, especially for those of us who've operated overseas for years at a time. You really appreciate how aggressive they can be, how motivated they are to do this with us, and how integrated they become in our team. So I guess the big question is, how do we grow together and move them forward? If you look at the timelines involved, capabilities we can bring pretty quickly, platforms we can't. And if you look at the numbers we're talking about, be it 300, 350, these are all decades-long efforts. So if you want to just talk in the simple terms of a 30-year shipbuilding plan, before we hit our target, we'll probably have the potential of seven administration changes between now and then. There is a possibility something may change between now and then. But what we can certainly anchor on here is rooting out the inefficiencies and bringing in a lot more stability on how we go about building and fielding capabilities and platforms. There may be a more inefficient way to do it. I just can't think of one. And it's driven by a lot of external forces. Right now we're going through a juggling act with three different budgets and the wrestling match of whether we're gonna stay on a continuing resolution. That's death to us. We just cannot move the ball on the things we have to do when we have that kind of uncertainty. A lot of it was driven by past bad behavior, especially in the lethargic acquisition process. And a lot of it was done by lack of oversight, cover darkness type of stuff, some of it criminal. I will tell you, we're in a much different world now. We're, you know, just take social media. It's just very hard to get away with anything without somebody knowing about it and somebody advertising it. So pacing the environment with the acquisition process and getting on board with the CNO's relentless drive to get this more agile, I think is something we can achieve in your term and that will carry us over whatever administration changes there are. However, the adversaries drive our need for capability and platforms. I'm going into probably the most complex, and I'll just stick with the platform here, submarine build construction era since the 70s. So without the agility to adjust the capabilities we need in these coming platforms, it means we're gonna be shooting behind the duck all the time. And then you get an administration like we have now who wants to maybe build many more submarines per year than we have. You can't get off that train and move to a more capable platform because you're hampered by the existing processes. You may end up with a whole lot of hardware that you really don't want. So we're working through that and I would encourage everybody in industry to continue opening up the pipes of communication as we work through this because we feel like we're postured to grow this force properly now. So if there's any silver lining to the austere environment we're coming out of it has driven us together to be more efficient and more interoperable. And I think we're well postured to grow that force fully integrated. And with that, I'll pass it on to the aviation side. Sure. So Nassie started off by jabbing at me a little bit about baseball. So I'm gonna turn this into a little bit of a baseball analogy because a lot of what I'd have to say absolutely echoes my teammates here. So from a team, let's say one, two, three, four, five and a manager. Nassie, you're the manager. Sounds like a basketball team. Yep, it sounds like a basketball team but you know what, we're a baseball team. Supposed to be nine players on the team bully. I know, I'm getting there. So I know the game, Ron. See how this goes every day? So we are brothers, by the way, you know how that is. So our other teammates wear light blue uniforms in the Air Force and they wear Coast Guard uniforms and they wear other countries' uniforms and we all play the same game and it's not a game. It's a competition and it's one that we must win. So as I look at interoperability and I look at integration, this is the team we work with as you've heard and talk to and practice with every single day. It's the other services and the allies that we don't practice with every single day but when it comes game time, we have to be able to operate. If you're playing baseball and you show up with a football or you come in to be the catcher and you're wearing an outfielders' mitt, you're not playing the same game and you're not gonna be able to perform like we need you to perform. So that's kind of how I think, like a baseball player is how I think about interoperability and integration. Let me give you an example recently. So as strike group commander George H.W. Bush, we're doing operations off of Afghanistan. We're also doing a lot of detachments with countries like Bahrain, Jordan, United Arab Emirates because that's what we do when we're deployed because we're there. So by the way, when we're doing those detachments, we're getting to know the other aircrew, we're getting to know their equipment, how they operate. So it's as much the equipment being interoperable as our ability to be able to have the same tactics, techniques, procedures and know each other in the air and as we are playing the game, just like on the baseball field. And so all of a sudden ISIS rears its ugly head and we reposition the carrier strike group from South of Afghanistan into the Persian Gulf, showcasing the power of a movable carrier strike group in that fighting force. Fast forward a couple months later, now all of a sudden we've moved into where we're gonna do our first operation into Syria. And oh by the way, it's gonna be the full team, which included five coalition countries and joint partners from the Air Force and everything that we had from our strike group to include surface ships shooting tomahawks and airplanes from our air wing. So all of that put together. That's the World Series. That's the all-star game with the full team there. And it worked like a champ. So my question and my challenge is as I go to work with this team every single day is as we're introducing our new systems, F-35, P-8 in my world in the aviation side, Triton, how 10 years from now are we gonna be able to do what we just showcased here 2014 and what we're doing every single day right now overseas? And as those techniques, tactics and procedures, as our equipment becomes more sophisticated and more integrated the way we fight, how will we be able to and how interoperable will we be with our joint and our allied forces? So I just throw that kind of out as a challenge and I'll keep my remark short because we really are anxious to hear your questions. So with that, Nasty over to you, sir. Great job. Okay, a little round of applause for our panelists. You can see why the manager's job is so easy. So while everybody is lining up behind the microphones, I wanna give you a couple key insights and then maybe pose the first question. A key insight for the group here is Bill mentioned domains. And so as you look up at the slide and you list down N2N6FN95, 96, 97 and 98, if you're familiar with the OpNav organization, you know those as resource sponsors, program resource sponsors. What we've done in each of those is made those resource sponsors which Chip Miller would be the resource sponsor for anything that flies in the air domain. But we've made the individual resource sponsors also domain leads. And so Nancy is the information warfare domain lead. Ubiquitous information across all the physical domains, physical domains, land, surface, undersea and air. So our challenge is crossing those domains. So we're focused on outcomes. We want the ends in mind. We want the ends in mind. So across all those domains, how are we gonna fight? And you heard the comments go there. So again, this evolution of platforms. Let me turn to a quick sports analogy just to demonstrate how hard it is for humans to get after this thing. We're platform focused still. If I asked you that the team that Ronaldo plays on in soccer and what their strategy is, you'd go, they got Ronaldo. What's Belichick strategy with the Patriots? So it's Brady and Gronkowski. So you see we go to individual things when we just try to describe what it is that's a strategy. So similarly hard for us in the air domain. Well, you guys can be able to fight cause you got JSF. Now you have to be able to put those things together. So I will save my fastball question, which I was gonna throw. Sydney, you were first of the microphone. Stay on topic. Aw. And I still am the manager so I get to throw the red flag. But go ahead, sir. To pull actually on the domain and cross-domain theme, I mean, there's a lot of work across the services on this, ties into derupically as well. There's Army, multi-domain battle, Air Force, multi-domain command and control. I haven't seen, the Marine Corps operating concept is very much joined to allow this thinking. I haven't seen a Navy thing labeled multi-domain yet. But A, have I missed one? And B, are you folks, in fact, working with the other services on some of these multi-domain, distributed ops, command and control kind of concepts, even if you don't have a thing stamped with those buzzwords? So I'll tell you what, I'll give a quick layer and then we'll see if any of you wanna take this. Our domain approach is guided by the Navy's design for maritime superiority. And to be able to be superior in the maritime, you have to fight across all the domains. So the blue line of effort to enhance our power from that and from the sea would be what guides us underneath the national military strategy, cooperative strategy for sea power, CS21R, and then we have the design. So that's what guides us. And I think the colloquialisms and multi-domain would be key. Would any of the panelists like to cover how we approach what Sidney asked? I'll just say that, again, this goes back to what I said before about you're hitting or wherever you went, Sid, I lost you. Oh, there you are, okay. You know, we have to start with how you fight. I mean, you know, I've seen, I've been around, worked two tours in the joint staff, worked in the strategy side and the eight side during QDR and we talk about a lot of these integrated joint concepts and they're very good, but when you start with the concept at a joint side, it takes a while to get people to agree on what it is and then how you go out and execute it. And frankly, you know, we've had mixed success there, but we usually do peel some nuggets out of there. Inside the Navy, it's those war fighting development centers that are working those consolidated concepts of employment for us right now. I mean, you've heard the fleet commanders speak about how they intend to fight in their region. We've heard about the Admiral Davidson has spoke about his concept of maritime operations. What we are trying to do is kind of tie that kind of middle ground of the things you need to enable all those, you know, because we can't really plan for one single area. We have to be utility infielders, huh? I like it. I like it. We have to be prepared to go into a fight, whether it's, you know, in the laterals, in the Gulf or whether it be out in a wide open region like the South China Sea or off North Korea. I mean, we have a very wide portfolio of potential threats out there and therefore we have to build the best. So we have to kind of look at those regional areas informed by our concepts of employment to get that, hey, what are those key enablers that integrate us, that allow us to operate and succeed in each of those areas? And those are what we're going after. So to stamp and put a big stamp and name on it, I think you'll see that over time, but I think we already are doing that work internally to inform the exact same type of thing. And I would argue that we're probably doing that because we don't put a big stamp on it. We kind of, we've gone with the direction that the CNO has given us in the guidance. And then we go out and we work with the fleet commanders to bring out those capabilities that will, in different scenarios, show that we do well in all different areas. Thanks, Ron, that's a good answer. And the good news is that our panel, the remarks and the questions are staying in that conceptual challenge area, so we'll continue to do that as well. I'm just alternate here, yes, sir? Thanks, Patrick Tucker with Defense One. I appreciate the ambition to move beyond a post-platform discussion, but we're in a national discussion about platforms and the value of one platform over another. And so I wonder, when talking about achieving the kill web, or talking about achieving the objectives of network-centric warfare, which air platform do you see is more essential, the F-35 or the Super Hornet, thanks. Oh, easy question. Fastball. No, the answer is we need both. The air wing of the future is a mix of two squadrons of F-35s and two squadrons of F-18s, and they are totally integrated and interoperable with the entire carrier strike group. So for us to get to that vision, okay, we need to buy both. And it's not a competition of one or the other, it's how do we maximize the benefits, the capabilities, the capacities that each brings to that carrier strike group into that fighting force. I'd say that was a fastball right down the middle, easily caught, and whoever the batter was, maybe the other guy swung and missed. Good job, bullet. Yes, sir. Thank you. John Harper with National Defense Magazine. Adam Monazar, I wanted to ask you about some of the comments you made during your opening remarks about kind of restricting what you're saying in an open forum, because it's apparently helping the adversary more than industry. Are you seeing any direct evidence of this? I mean, are intelligence agencies telling you this, or is this more of just sort of a general fear? And also, is there a risk that that approach could backfire as, on one hand, you're trying to reach out to industry, but now you're kind of restricting what you're saying. Is there a concern that particularly when it comes to subcontractors or nontraditional vendors that that might actually have a sort of a deleterious effect on your outreach efforts, as opposed to some of these larger companies like Lockheed or Boeing kind of have a more natural pathway to these closed-door discussions? Thanks. As a moderator, I hate to answer the question, but given that your question was on my comments, I will tell you that we're shaping our comments in the right forum. Typically in a very public forum, we would be very clear about what we're trying to achieve, and probably it's not the best way to go if we have a learning adversary. We all have to realize we're in a new competitive environment, all of us. Maybe one we haven't seen since the mid-80s with polar competition with the Soviet Union. We're at a stronger competitive atmosphere right now. We're an athlete that has gotten a little bit slower and a little bit less agile, and I think we are faced with potential other athletes that could beat us at our game. And so we're being very careful to make sure that we compete in the right manner. Our challenge then is, how do we reach out? How do these domain leads resource sponsors reach out to the right elements of our industry, government industry team? How do we incite competition against outside competitors and not inside competitors? That's our challenge. Okay, and just sort of a quick clarification. Are you actually seeing evidence that adversaries are taking these remarks that are made in open forums and either adapting their technology or tactics, techniques, and procedures or whatever? Is this more of just sort of a general fear of, hey, maybe we're saying too much? I don't think we're afraid of too much. I have a quad up in my four TV channels in my office. I have all of the periodicals on the coffee table by the aid, and I can read in the open press what's happening in the world. And I think that if we don't understand what kind of competition that we're in, then we're probably not worth trying to win that competition. I'm gonna hop in here too, because I have this really cool poster I have at home. It says, loose lip sync ships. This is something we tend to go into a less open environment over time. And then we see whenever we go into a conflict, any conflict, we always get very... So if we start to believe that we are in a competition, as we all believe we are, then we need to make sure that we are properly securing information. And I think this is, to me, this is business 101. This is no change to what we have done now and in the past it's just a reminder to us that we have to be very careful. The speed of technology these days makes it more risky to say something that could be used against you. And I think, and I go back and I just got done reading. If you read any books from World War II and about letters to kids and their mothers, they wouldn't want to write anything to their kids because they're worried about putting their son or daughter in danger. And that's the way we feel now, is that this is a competition we're in and we're just reinforcing the rules that have always existed, which is, hey, we don't talk about things that can be used and just a reminder to ourselves. So I don't think it should not be a, this is no different than any other forum we've been to. We're just reminding ourselves to ensure that we do that. Yes, sir. Robbie here as a former naval person. First, thanks to the panel, very timely and very informative and thank you very much for that. As I think about the problem that you've tackled, the scope of it is just so broad. It's head scratching and it's head hurting, both in complexity and scope. So I guess the question is, how do you get started on this? I mean, for example, do you begin with CSG, ESG integration, which I guess could be one starting point. Another starting point could be undersea warfare above surface warfare integration. How do you get started on this problem? On solving this problem? Solving? Nancy? I'll start with saying, part of it is looking at where we have the least capability and the greatest need. So the things that we have not been able to do, have not been able to advance because we haven't had any capability. That's why Bill Merz down there said that he and I have been working closely together because the submarine force has extraordinary capabilities as a lone wolf silent service, but bringing them into the netted force will bring exponential capability to the entire Navy and the Defense Department. And so minor changes there can really have some asymmetrical impact on our capability at other places, other platforms that we're able to net together or other sensors that we're able to automate data fusion for very quickly where we haven't had that ability in the past. We see really big gains in doing that. So that's one of our focus areas is looking for those niches where we have the greatest potential return on investment. Oh, I'll follow up with that. You know, one of the big challenges is kind of trying to define how are we gonna fight? And I think just through the dialogue across us both here in the Pentagon and in the fleet, and I'll state the obvious here, the war's not a frictionless plane. It's not a frictionless plane in phase zero and all the way up to a fully developed conflict. But whether we fight as a task group, a task force, or a fleet, the more we talk about it, the more we realize there are common things that fall out of all those. And that's where we start. And that's how we pull it together. For instance, we're learning no matter what sport you're playing, a bat is pretty useful in all sports. The bigger the better. So, okay, that's good. Yeah, we're doing good. Trying to make this good to bullet understand everything. And as we focus on those, that becomes more revealing. But I will tell you, one of our challenges is getting people to understand that this is a spectrum. There's no either wars, and you've got the question either 18s or 35s. Rapid answer is both. At least for now, it's both. And that's the plan because there's utility in both. And there's utility in both as far as we can see. One of the reasons we focus so far on this, so closely on this acquisition agility is we really do want to get closer to the future before we have to make these major acquisition decisions so we can be as right as possible. And part of that is identifying these common areas, common capabilities that matriculate out of all these discussions we have. Ron and I spent a lot of time coordinating ASW efforts on sensors and weapons, and we're finding that we both want the same thing. And so we come together, and that's a much more efficient way to build this force. And it certainly creates a foundation for rapid changes if we can, because we don't have to change everybody's designer system at the same time. So I will tell you, it's an enormous challenge. We have already started, this dialogue is the first step, and it's starting to reveal a lot of fruit. And there's another piece of this which so, so I will say we have had a sea change in the building with regard to us looking across and kind of going arm in arm with, there's no question that we all value what we bring to the fight. And I think that's always been the case, probably in the past more towards parochiality than just pride. We all do know and understand what we do and bring to the fight. And there's certain attributes of submarines, there's certain attributes of ships, there's attributes of aircraft, the cyber and space domain. So finding those things, you said, you know, are we gonna fight as a strike group or are we gonna fight independently? The answer is gonna be yes. As Nancy said, we're gonna find those efficiencies that work and value us no matter how we fight in that uncertain, flexible way we have to do it in the future. The next level this, though, despite our common understanding here, is that we all own programs that go over to the acquisition side. And the air programs generally go to Nav Air, although I have some at Nav Air. Generally it's Nav Sea, Spay War, and so those folks that receive the funding lines and they wanna produce what is, I've been asked for at that funding line, tend to be rightfully parochial because they're doing what we've asked them to do. And so the key for us is to ensure that that next level down, as I see Mark Vandross getting up and one of our program managers, you know, he's- Emeritus, a recovering program manager. Emeritus, recovering, yes. But, you know, I will, I'm sure he would agree that, you know, here's what he hears here, but at the end of the day, he's got a program to produce at a cost on schedule and on performance, just like he has always had to do. And so sometimes, you know, they like what they hear, but the reality is they got up, they're the traction. So understanding how this domain environment or this, you know, what do we invest in that is across domain marries down to the actual program manager who may or may not be working across his or her components in the other, you know, Nav-C, Nav-Air, Spay War, that's our next level of challenge. And we're starting to have some great discussions where we see them forming their own cross-functional teams. When I did my surface domain review, Nav-Air provided most of the underpinning for analysis. So it was really strange for me to see what we have usually seen with airplanes to weapons as we look at the network and the kill webs to do the same thing for ships and submarines. It was like, whoa, hey, how'd that get on there? And, you know, Nav-Air putting these together, that kind of tells you the types of the next level that we have to get to to ensure that this view carries through to our enterprise. So. Chris, you got a point. Yeah, I was just gonna, if I could answer your question a little directly by, you know, how are we, where do we start? First question is what do we have to do? What does a nation require us to do? And the answer to that is probably no time in the modern age have we been required to be ready to do such a broad spectrum of operations. So that gets back to Ron's point about, yes, we have to be able to combine the forces we have in some traditional ways, but also in some new ways to make the most of the capabilities we have now. And as we do that, especially during exercises or war games, it also helps inform what we might need next that will interoperate better than what we have right now. But the bottom line is the capabilities we have out there, the platforms have to be multi-role. They have to be able to be doing one type of operation, humanitarian assistance, say, and then immediately shift to a wartime footing should it be required to do that. And to do that, we need help. No single platform, no single system is gonna be able to do this on its own. So we have to be able to network to get the most out of each. We could discuss this a long time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, Mark. Good morning. Mark Bandroff, Commanding Officer and Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock. And as the admiral pointed out, I am a recovering program manager. Admiral Merz, you mentioned, and correctly so, just looking at the numbers that we're starting to retire Los Angeles-class submarines at a faster rate than we're commissioning. Virginia-class submarines, so those numbers are gonna go down before they come back up. Admiral Boxall in about eight to 10 years you're gonna hit the same thing with DDGs. You're gonna start to retire faster than you build and then they'll dip and come back down. But for both, the one thing that is on an upward trend in numbers are unmanned platforms with the various UUVs that are starting to deploy USVs. And I'm curious, two things. There's a somewhat of an intellectual question of how big and how capable does an unmanned vehicle have to get before you call it a ship or a submarine? And without giving too much weight, so you don't want that conscience of what Admiral Menazer said, but how do we as a community think through what mission sets and what capabilities do we want to help our manned force by netting that some capability to an unmanned platform as we integrate that into this integration challenge? And what are we, how do we talk to ourselves about what is the right role for an unmanned, vice-man platform of any type, whether that's air, undersea, surface, or wherever we would put that platform? How does that conversation occur and what are the things that we talk about when we ask those questions? Let me, I know the question was directed at you guys, but let me just kind of start and go quickly through it because I think the theme is the same. It's funny, I don't know of unmanned warfare. So I think the real question, at least the way I think of it, is what does unmanned bring to the fight and where does it best fit based on the technology that we have now and then as it moves? And I said unmanned, Admiral, so I'm sorry, I did say unmanned, I would also think there's some things that are remotely manned and then there's autonomously operated, so yeah. Absolutely, and that technology will continue to evolve and so I think the answer to your question will evolve over time as well. So I'll tell you, at least within the air side, we're doing man-machine teaming as much as possible. We are bringing in and what the main thing that the unmanned provides us in the air is persistence. So when you have, you know, broad area maritime surveillance, BAM's D, that went out for a six month demonstration, i.e. the D, it's been out there for over six years and fifth fleet operating, we see the utility. So as its replacement program or record program start coming on, again, it's that persistence that it provides, same thing, and then integrating it into the communities, such that it isn't a thing by itself, but what it provides the communities and into the fight, it's not just for air, it's an air asset that provides information across all domains. So I don't want to anchor on it too much, other than it's funny, people think of unmanned and I read articles quite a bit of unmanned, unmanned, I go, okay, but for what purpose and where best do we use the benefits and the capabilities and the attributes that an unmanned system provides to help us do what we need to do, so, Bill, thoughts? Yeah, that's a great answer. And this is actually a fairly common question, it's a good question, because depending on what unclassified forum you read or participate in, you would think we're ready to conquer the world with unmanned vehicles or autonomous vehicles or remotely operated vehicles. The technology is hard, particularly in the undersea domain, it's hard. You know, they are typically unmanned and autonomous. We send them out, we hope they come back. We don't have a kid in New Mexico flying them, I mean, they are truly in a harsh environment doing the best they can. And these challenges aren't unique to unmanned vehicles, the same challenges we have in manned submarines, so they're well known and haven't gotten any easier. You know, as far as the roles and missions, I'm pretty emphatic in all my answers that this is not a competition between man and unmanned, it's a complementary role, particularly as they get smaller. And I don't have a conop, particularly for unmanned, as Bullitt said, this is not an unmanned war. I have a conop for the undersea and the entire domain, not just for the submarines. So my challenge has been to industry, pick something off of that conop so you think you can get after it with the technology today and we'll vector from there and see where it goes. Now to get that information, we have a vetting process and we have vendors and we rapidly go to classified levels and that's just hurdles we have to work through under today's environment. But the fact is, we are very interested in the technology, we put a lot of effort into it. It's probably not moving along as fast as we would like. It shouldn't be really surprised to anybody. But we see just tremendous potential and utility in having them work with the man platforms. And in simple terms, I'm looking for anything that unburdens an attack submarine. And I think that has been a good bumper sticker for how we've been supporting industry and how they've been supporting us. We're moving along pretty quickly. We have identified the family of vehicles we want, RFPs, a lot of them have gone out, we're getting a lot of great inputs, but we really are that early in the process on how this is gonna look like for us. Yeah, and surface side, I mean, we look at unmanned air, unmanned surface and unmanned undersea. We've got them already in our portfolio in a lot of places and for us, it's again, another piece of the pie. We're all trying to do the same job, just have different tools. I mean, anyone who has a little quadcopter in the garage is fascinated with unmanned. And we find that there's a lot written about it. It's kind of fun in popular science magazine. And so everyone kind of likes unmanned. I only like it when I see it replacing something that's much more expensive or much less effective. And so to me, that's what we're looking for. Where do we find that efficiency? It's just like any new system. We've had it unmanned for a long time. We've called them missiles. But there's people behind the curtain that fly these things. So we've been operating with weapons payload on man for a long time. Now, what else can we do? And what domain does it work best in? Again, when you go to that same conop that we're finding, not just with making the lightning bolts all work, but what is it that gives us value when you look at the lifecycle cost? I mean, are they breaking all the time? Are they, if you got to buy 50 of these things to do what, I'd rather have something else. Or so you look again at how many people does it really take to fly, sail, or float this thing? And does that make sense from a cost-benefit standpoint? There's an operational access piece that says, maybe we can do things here that we haven't in the past, then I'm interested. To the extent it replaces another capability that has much less capability, I'm very interested. If it does that at a cost, I'm very excited about that. So that's the way we think about it. We have a lot of initiatives going on right now, and I think we're gonna continue to evolve this just as another arm of what is just improved technology. And I think we should get away from what we're calling unmanned or remotely pilot or whatever and just call them what they are, which is advanced war-fighting systems that are integrated with other platforms. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Good morning. Tim Gaugin and I is from Gartner. Admiral Norton, you mentioned at the tail end of your remarks that one of the priorities is to build cybersecurity in from the ground up, from the design phase, and not just look at it as an afterthought. My question to you and to the panel is, what are we as C-Services doing to leverage the experience and some of the lessons learned, not just between Navy and Marine Corps from a cybersecurity perspective, but also some of the great work that our brethren in the Air Force, for example, are doing and how they're able to integrate cybersecurity as an overall concept through design. Because when I think about kill webs, right, as a concept of operations, a risk to one is a risk to many. So just curious as to what the outreach is between C-Services and the rest of our purple partners. Yeah, I would say that that is increasing over time. For those of you aware of the task force that we stood up a few years ago, task force cyber awakenings that was explicitly looking at the kinds of cyber vulnerabilities that we have across our non-traditional, non-IT enterprise network kind of stuff, but beyond that to our platforms, our weapon systems, our HM&E systems, our shore infrastructure systems and looking at those vulnerabilities. And with each one of those, there's the potential for either another service that has a lot of similar equities or in some cases industry that has, and other government agencies that have a lot of similar equities and similar approaches. And so we work with all of those where there's a like-minded effort. So in looking at aircraft, we're very much looking with Air Force and in some cases, certainly Marine Corps, in some cases Army where we have similar platforms and potentially similar vulnerabilities. There are forum in the Pentagon where we talk about that and we are collaborating across the services and with the joint staff and OSD to do that. We work with industry obviously on those as well. One of the big challenges that we have is sharing vulnerabilities. And that will continue to be a challenge, I think, across the board. It's a challenge in traditional IT systems. Very difficult for many of you in industry, for example, would not want to necessarily share the vulnerabilities that you've found in your own networks with your industry competition. And so we have similar kinds of issues across different platforms, different systems, depending on who the developers are, all that. So the sharing of the vulnerabilities is probably the barrier that's most important to break down right now. But we have some forcing functions coming from Congress that are working on that. NDAA 1647 direction to look at the vulnerabilities of our weapons systems, for example, forcing all of the services to look through what the critical weapons systems are that we need to review and then sharing that across the services. And we are doing that very deliberately across the services. Thank you, yes, sir. Matthew Cole, Naval Surface Warfare Center Port Waimimi Division. As a systems engineer, I obviously love interoperability. It's one of my favorite topics. But I understand well, as I'm sure you do, that on some level you can't have interoperability without creating more dependencies, right? If my gun and radar are talking, that's fantastic, but now my gun's ability to fire effectively is tied to my radar's ability to radiate effectively. And that opens up the possibility for increased failure modes, failure cascades and that sort of thing. On a conceptual level, how ought we go about striking the right balance between interoperability and increased dependencies? I love seeing Port Waimimi guys come in here because they always make my, from ballistic missile defense problems to problems with integrating our systems. You've been dealing with this for a long time. So we appreciate, we have smart guys like you working on the problem, but we got a ways to go. So again, this goes to, kind of like the discussion with Unmanned, as we look across when you create these interdependencies, I mean, really you get to that question of when you go from interoperable to interdependent, you bring, you increase your risk, right? And so when you have risk, you have to have a redundancy to mitigate that risk. So to me, that is one of the discussions we also have is when we think about where the right lightning bolt is or which Unmanned, there comes with everything. Is there more risk to cyber? Is there more risk due to a missile that makes it more vulnerable? Is it at risk because its maintenance record is not good enough? I mean, we have different things that cause us risk. And where we have risk, we look for mitigators. And so in the integration and our operability world, that's a very key part of this thing. Where's the right trade? We wanna have as little risk as possible, we don't wanna go broke getting it. So finding that balance of where we get the most value in whatever we're buying, whether it be a Port 1 EME gun system working or whether it's the kill webs at the highest levels. So we have that discussion of where we value, what does it cost me first? What do I get from it? How much risk is there? If there is risk, do I make more of them to decrease the risk or do I create other levels or things that I can do in place of it if it goes down? That's part of the how we fight calculus. And so from how we fight to getting to what does it cost me to fight and where do I get my best efficiencies? That's the constantly generating circle that we all live in here every day. But we need that feedback again, and why you're collecting all that data out there is to make us be able to look at those things and be able to say, hey, look, over time, this is what we've seen. Do I need an improvement in that gun system or do I just say, hey, let's go to a new system? And we have those discussions, which is where we bring in new technology to solve those problems. If that gun can't do it, maybe we go to something else in the future. Maybe we go to a smaller caliber that's more effective, those types of decisions. Answer your question. Thank you. Thanks for the question. The second key insight for the audience is just exactly that. So when we showed that cartoon, how you move from the single weapon system all the way down to a kill web, you need to be able to go back to the single weapon system. You need to have an independent kill chain. You need to have a platform that can shoot on a target. We're not implying here in the interoperable integration piece that we're striving to be interdependent because people in here can connect with that question. So you have to be able to move back and forth between independent interoperable, interdependent, interconnected, federated, integrated. And so we have to be kind of clear about what we're trying to achieve. You create effects by the comments that were made here by looking at the outcomes you're trying to achieve. But if you come up with one solution, even if that one solution is gigantic and you pull a chink out of that armor, then it's not gonna work. So I think that key insight I want you to understand in the audience of this group is we're not talking about interdependent, we're talking about interoperable and integrated, and how do you do that, being able to move back and forth in that continuum? So that was an awesome question to bring out that concept, yes sir? Yes sir, I'm Tom Reynolds, retired naval officer now with the company that makes unmanned systems that we think are actually cross domain or domain agnostic. How does industry now engage you that you're more domain focused? How are you different in validating requirements? For instance, if there is a ship that has an anti-submarine warfare sonar, is that now a undersea domain issue, or is that a surface warfare domain issue? And how do we engage you now different than now than we would have a year ago? Yeah, that's a great question. So we actually get this question a lot inside the building. What is the right resource sponsorship for a thing? So your specific example, anything Ron has to find submarines I'm interested in, and I get some level of vote on the level of effort that goes with that. At the end of the day, he builds a ship, so there's integration issues that I don't wanna own. He doesn't want me to own. I'd like you to own them. Yeah. And it kind of gets back to Nasty's point earlier. At the end of the day, we actually have to build something, and we have to get it on the street. I will tell you as a nine, as long as it's in the nine, we work it out between ourselves, and that seems to have been another revelation in working together under this war-fighting directorate. As opposed to pitching things over the fence and hoping it works out, we just kinda get together, and we're just going through this iteration the first time, but the concept is we will flow the resources to the right areas, depending on the more critical gaps in that particular domain as it affects the entire domain. So what it's not is saying, oh, we're putting all the money in anything that's sort of right, and now he's running it. That's not what we're doing, because we do have to still, at the end of the day, produce a program. So there's a little bit of a secret decoder ring, but how it does work itself is kinda, if I'm producing an ASW system and the best ASW warfighter I know doesn't understand its value, then I'm just building it just to keep my system going, and that's the wrong reason. That's bad for the taxpayer, it's bad for the Navy, and I'm not interested. So I wanna rather use that money to where it's making more value in my portfolio, and so that's the way we're trying to get to these decisions. So I do get this question, I think there's a lot of confusion out there that everyone's like, oh, you know, oh, you own everything in the surface, whether it's aviation, surface, or subsurface, that could, against the surface targets out there. Not true, but the way we value them is very true. If I don't understand the surface domain, what value it provides, then I question the resource sponsor who goes further down into a hole to buy me things that don't give me a lot of value if they're supposedly trying to support that domain. And I think that's a very healthy and productive and positive thing that I haven't had that luxury in the past. We just kinda say, well, I'm making a ship, I need to have a sonar, I need to drag this through the water, I need to do, and that's the wrong way. Why are we building it and does it provide value in the integrated warfight? That's what we all are trying to get to. So getting those warfare development centers thinking that way and what do you need? I don't care whether you're wearing wings, water wings, or submarine wings, or wings, right? And it doesn't matter. To us, it helped me prioritize my portfolio and when I'm looking to add money to do something else, let's put it here. But your challenge to us is very clear and that is, okay, so now I gotta talk to all four of you guys to get this. So creating the venues where we can communicate with industry and understand what's out there, having annual naval technical exercise or exchanges at our warfare centers, bringing the best of industry in. What we've gotten a lot better at is, hey, I saw this thing, you ought to go see this thing or take this brief and so we hope to not make it harder for you to reach in because we do need, as I alluded to in my opening remarks, that government industry team in the United States and our key allies that understands where the technology is and that says, hey, I have a good idea. We're all challenged. This forum is one of the great challenges. Being able to walk the floor downstairs, being able to go to West, to see a West and be able to see what's out there. So it's just getting it to the market. It's the same challenge that you all have in the commercial world is getting it to the market, getting somebody to grab it, see what the value is. The great thing is it isn't stovepite. That we are looking at domains and the resource sponsors are talking, not only in the nines, but across the two six. This is unprecedented in the Pentagon and the Op-Nav staff to have this much collaboration. And so actually getting at the issues you alluded to, understanding the products that are out there, is still our same challenge, but I think the reception part, the catcher's mitt part, has gotten a little easier. Yeah, the other thing, just to add to that, Ron used the term seed change. The seed change before, if you were coming to me for, you know, I'll use P-8 as an example. Hey, Admiral Miller, we just wanna give you an update on where we are in the P-A program. In the past, you would just have N98, your warfare guys sitting there in that meeting. Now you will have N98 and N97 folks in that meeting. So that's on us. We know what your topic is. We know what domain it is. We'll make sure that we have the right people there. So it's either a quick one, last question fast, or it's being able to staccato play and catch with three people at the microphone, so we'll see how it goes. So Jim Donnelly, I support both Giamdo and PUIWS. I think the gentleman just asked the question I was gonna ask. However, I wanna take it one level further. Who does the analysis for all the domains now? Because it's so, we understand how you're building stuff, but I'm an analyst. So do I have to go to 98 if I'm dealing with SM6? Do I go to 96 or any other department? And it goes, who's actually doing the analysis? So the same houses are doing analysis. The thing we're doing different is connecting the analysis. So NSIP, the NALIS, the NALIS is doing the work now. Inside the system, it's either work or center. Still keep doing the same work. Now what we're doing is a better job of understanding where those are connecting. Nancy alluded to program managers connecting across. So it's sharing the results of that analysis that has gotten better. So your job as analyst hasn't changed. So when does it stop? Am I expecting that Nav Air's gonna take or be involved in all spy radar development and do you want to develop it because it looks in the air? Now are we just taking weapons? Where does it stop? We just take the analysis and help them. Great question, Jim. We've actually talked about this before. I mean, the things you have, we got the virtual warfare center that does a lot of great stuff for us. So we have this challenge of what we do at the high level and what we do very well at the technical level. The very technical level does the stuff work as we look at pairing. But we have been a little bit, you know, we're starting to realize that what was really nice, if I bring a warfare domain brief as a surface domain lead and I come in there and say, okay, everyone who's got stuff, let's go get our warfare centers together. Nadek, you're the air defense folks. You tell us what's going on. Get the undersea development, warfare development command and the surface. And you come together, you tell us how we're gonna fight and let's take that to Nav Air, Nav Sea, spy war and come together and give us a mission level analysis. This is the first time we're trying the domain view. The follow on of this, it becomes a circle that starts. And as we go, the next thing that is gonna come out and is gonna come out is this mission level that we probably need to need more stuff into that area to kind of test out our hypotheses to get ahead of that war fighting mandate that we have to kind of fulfill from a programmatic side. So you guys are kind of ahead out at, when you do the virtual warfare center stuff and J7 has been incredible about looking at it for all the services and what the Navy's elements, generally in the air side work, getting into surface. But we have to do our own homework inside of those systems before we procure them. So great question. Yes ma'am. Good morning, my name's Michelle McGowan. I'm with IWS4 International. You talked earlier about the international team playing well together in Syria and that's wonderful. It seems that working with our international partners is becoming increasingly important. Can you talk about what your priorities and future plans are for getting more interoperable with our allies? Thanks. I'll pick up with the bold alligator theme. Bold alligator 17 will be another live exercise this fall. We, the Joint Force Maritime Component Commander for that exercise is going to be a NATO organization, Strike Force NATO. And through our exercising is one way that we draw in our allies or they draw us in to participate so that we find those seams, gaps where we don't have interoperability that we need. And once we have interoperability, how do we integrate forces to a greater degree so we can come together quickly as we know that the current and future environment is not gonna allow us time to build up a coalition force and prepare together before we go do something, we're gonna have to be able to do it quickly. So exercises, joint combined exercises are one way that we're increasing the pace of that. Okay, last question. Thanks very much and thanks for the panel. Hey, you talked about the competitive environment. Each of you represent the very best teams for all our fighting forces. I would submit that in this room, there's some of the very best teams in the industry, but sometimes when we get on the court, it's kind of like that national championship game on Monday where 40 plus fouls in 40 minutes and we try to respond to capability development and it's a foul, it's a TV timeout. Can you talk about what's being done within the Navy and the services? Try to unshackle both sides, the service side and the industry side so there's a flow in the game. There's a flow and we're not being stopped by this very burdensome 5,000 series, et cetera, rules of the game. Well, that's a whole nother panel called Accelerated Accuracy. Yeah, it's like that. So to put it short, I would tell you there's an awful lot of effort in that area. Definitely what you just brought up is recognized by all of us up here and we're working it hard. Okay. We do and I will make a comment and it's a paid political announcement for our Accelerated Acquisition Program, Maritime Advanced Capabilities Office and Rapid Prototyping. We have three activities right now. The idea is to get things faster and at less cost. The idea is to involve industry earlier. The RPED process which right now revolves around directed energy is being able to get industry in closer with us against an outcome that we don't have a material solution for, prototype learn our way and then figure out something to go fast with in the Warfare Center spaces, the Warfare Development Center spaces that gives us an opportunity to work with consortiums with other transactional agreements to work outside of the Federal Acquisition Regulations. Our two MAKO projects are MQ-25, Unmanned Tanker of a Carrier and Largest Placement Unmanned Underwater Vehicles, and the UUV under the two resource sponsors at the end. So we're attempting to get around that. Congressional Authorities in NDA 16 and 17 are all focused on that and our boss, the Chief of Naval Operations, is pushing on the back of our necks to go faster. So the intent is there. Thanks, brother. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the panel. Thanks for your attention. Also, another unpaid political announcement. Thank you for support of RC Services and thank you for support of the Navy League through your attendance. Have a great day.