 Good afternoon, Team Kings Bay, eddies. What a great day it is to be here in the Navy and the Marine Corps team in Southeast Georgia as we are fortunate to have the Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, here to visit and witness firsthand the incredible amount of talent displayed by the collective Team Kings Bay. I'm proud to have the opportunity to show the Secretary the important contributions that each of y'all make every day to our nation and our military. Today has offered a wonderful opportunity for some of you to share your stories with Secretary Mabus and show them the extraordinary effort and pride you put forth in your profession. For those of you who did not have a chance to meet the Secretary during his tour, the Secretary has graciously offered the opportunity afterwards to say hello to him individually. But before we hear from Secretary Mabus, allow me to share a little bit about his background. Ray Mabus, 75th Secretary of the Navy and leads America's Navy and Marine Corps team. As a leader of the world's only global Navy, he has traveled more than 800,000 miles to over 100 countries to maintain and develop relationships with national and international officials and visit with sailors and Marines for deployed or stationed around the world. He has traveled to Afghanistan on 12 separate occasions in recognition of the sacrifice and service of Marines and sailors deployed in combat zones. Before his appointment, he held a variety of leadership positions. From 1988 to 1992, the Secretary served as the governor of Mississippi, the youngest elected to that office in more than 150 years. He was ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 1994 to 1996, and later was chairman and CEO of a manufacturing company. Shipmates, it's my pleasure to introduce the Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus. Sir. Appreciate you. Thanks. Admiral, thank you and thank all of y'all. I take these trips for a couple of reasons. One is to get out and see the amazing work that you do. Day in, day out, the level of skill, the level of expertise, the level of competence, level of training, the level of education that every one of you has, and the work that you do for the country. The second reason that I come is to try to underscore for the people of this great country that work, because so much of the work you do is not seen. So much of the work you do is away from the American people. The Navy and Marine Corps, when we were forward deployed, our America's away team. And a lot of times when the subs that leave here, when sailors and marines go around the world, we're a long way from home. We're a long way from home, a long way from family. And people just don't get to see what you do. People don't get to see and understand what you do. And the third reason is to thank you for what you do. Thank you for that skill level, that dedication level, that level of patriotism, that level of sacrifice, regardless of where you serve, regardless of what you're doing, it is hard and it is a sacrifice to wear the cloth of the United States. In my time as Secretary, I've tried to concentrate on four things. Four words that start with P that gives you the fifth P. The fifth P is the one thing that the Navy and Marine Corps uniquely give to this country and that's presence. The ability to not just be in the right place, at the right time, but the right place all the time. And those four P's, the first one is people because you are our, you're the edge that we have. We have the most advanced platforms, most advanced systems, most advanced weapons in the world, but without the sailors, marines, to operate them, to maintain them, to make sure that they are doing the job that America means for them to do. It takes this level of talent. And so we're trying to do things with you and for you, things like 21st Century Sailor and Marine to put all the programs that we've got for resilience of the force in one place. So things like family programs, things like alcohol, trying to make sure that you don't have a career ending or life ending or career altering or life altering event. Things that we can do as a Navy family to make sure that after more than a decade of incredibly high tempo operations that we maintain the best force the world has ever known which is what we have today. And unlike any other service, as we come down from two ground wars in the Middle East out of Iraq coming down in Afghanistan, there are no permanent homecomings for sailors and marines. We go back out, we deploy, we give that worldwide presence. And that puts an amazing strain on you and on your family. So we're trying to do things for sailors and marines like increasing sea pay. So if you've been at sea more than three years in your career, you're gonna get enhanced sea pay. If you've been at sea for more than 36 months in a row, you're gonna get the next level of enhanced sea pay. And if you're E5 to E9 and you've been at sea for eight years in your career, you stay at that high level when you're at sea. And our deployments we know are getting longer. They are getting more complex. And so we're also gonna be rolling out things that if you're at sea for longer than a certain number of days that the higher sea pay will kick in then. The second P is platforms on 9-11, 2001, US Navy at 316 ships. By 2008, after one of the great buildups in American history, we were down to 278 ships and sinking, that number was falling. The four years before I became secretary, the Navy put 19 ships under contract. And one of the things I'm proudest of is in the first four years that I was secretary, we put 60 ships under contract. We are growing the fleet again. We are gonna be at 300 ships by the end of this decade. And we're gonna stay at 300 ships because even though these ships are incredible platforms, even though they're the most advanced platforms the world has ever known, quantity has a quality all its own. You've gotta have enough ships and there's gotta be enough of the right kind of ships to make sure that we have that quality presence. The third is power and that's energy. Energy is a national security thing and we're moving the Navy onshore and at sea to using non-fossil fuels. Right here, these submarines, all nuclear powered, all our carriers nuclear powered. But the reason we're doing this is to make us better war fighters. In two years, 2011, 2012, the Navy got a $2 billion bill, $1 billion a year in unbudgeted fuel increases, just the cost because of price spikes. Because every time something happens in the world, price oil goes up. It's called a security premium. Now, there are not many places to go get a $1 billion that you have not budgeted for. And about the only places you can go, you can go to operations, so you steam less, you train less, you fly less. Or if the bill gets too big, you buy fewer platforms because you cannot afford the platform and you can't afford to fuel the fourth partnerships. And that's partnerships of a lot of different kinds. Partnerships between Navy and Marine Corps and private industry, like there are great examples here in Kings Bay, partnership with the American people whom the sailors and Marines defend on a day-to-day basis, stand the watch, and partnerships with our country, countries around the world, with our friends, our allies. Because no matter how big we are, no matter how good we are, we can't do this by ourselves. And we have to be interoperable with other people. We have to have that cooperation with other people. And that's the reason, besides seeing sailors and Marines where they are forward deployed that I travel so much to see these other countries. Because we do work, those 111 countries I've been to, we do something with every single one of those countries. I'll give you a quick minute about Washington. As you know, we got Congress passed the bipartisan budget agreement that gave the top line for fiscal year 14 that we're in now in fiscal year 15. We're right in the middle of budget hearings, C&O and the Commandant and I have had one, we've got three next week to talk about the budget. Now, it was good that Congress did this. It gave us a little stability, a little ability to plan. But one thing to remember is that at the end of 15, if something's not done, we go back to the sequester level, to these dumb cuts that we're gonna have to make. And coming out of two wars, the American people have a right to expect that we're gonna spend less on defense, but we ought to be smart as to how we do it. And we ought to, as we draw down, we ought to make sure that we do so in a smart way and a way that puts money against strategy. And if you look at our national strategy, the three big areas, focus on the Western Pacific, focus on the Arabian Gulf, and focus on partnership building, that's a maritime strategy. That's a definition of the United States Navy and Marine Corps. Nobody can do it better than we can. So 14 and 15, although there's some debate about individual things, we have a little stability. Past that, we need to get it fixed in order to keep the readiness in order to keep the force that we have today going forward. Now one of the things that every one of you is right about and sure interested in is what's gonna happen on things like benefits, compensation. What's been proposed is that we slow down, we slow down the growth of personnel cost. Nobody's gonna get cut, but slow down the growth because where we are is if we don't, we're gonna make a choice between giving you the tools that you need, giving you the platforms that you need, the weapons that you need, the training that you need, or keeping up with this high growth. The other choice that we will also have to make is there'll be a lot fewer opium because one way to deal with personnel cost is to reduce the number of people. I don't think either one of those is a good idea. C&O was down here, he talks about benefit, pay, things like that, is quality of life, but you've also got the quality of work and the quality of work for what you do as sailors and as Marines and the ability to get you what you need, the ability to get you while keeping faith with you but to get you what you need. And the changes aren't big, the changes are pretty modest, but if we don't do it, the choices get worse and worse. The longer time goes. When I finish, which is gonna be pretty soon here and I know y'all are happy about that, standing out there in the sun, I'll take some questions. I think we got mics here. And then anybody wants to take a picture, shake hands, let your mother know that you're actually at work, I'll be happy to stay as long as you want to and do that. The only thing I would ask is if you're gonna have somebody else take the picture, don't make it on the job training. Teach them how to use your camera or your phone before you get to me, okay? I'm gonna end the same way I started. Thank you for the work that you do. The level of skill, the level of expertise at Kings Bay, the level that I saw today, the level that I get briefed on all the time is extraordinary. Nobody, nobody else in the world can match what we do. Nobody can touch you in terms of skill level, in terms of education level, in terms of how well trained and how good you are. Thank you for doing that. America depends on you. Whether they know it or not, whether they appreciate it or not, this country is in your debt. So Kings Bay, thank you. From the Navy, Semper Fortis, forever courageous, from the Marines, Semper Fidelis, forever faithful. Thank you all very much. So who's got a question? Anybody? I convinced everybody. Way back there. You gotta come up here. First question, gotta come up here. It's okay, really, come on. There was a hand way back there. First question gets a coin, but only the first question. Thanks for the coin, sir. I'm E.M. One-Spiker, USS West Virginia. I was wondering if the developments in Ukraine and Russia are gonna impact the overall mission of the Navy and here in Kings Bay with the strategic missile deterrence? President, yesterday said that we are not gonna have a military response to things in the Ukraine. But one of the things that events like that or other events around the World Show is just the need for that presence. I mean, we were there. We were, we've got ordinarily and do today. Have a ship in the Black Sea. We've got Marines, Marine Black Sea Rotational Force. The presence that we have, no matter what happens, no matter where it happens, gives our leadership options. They get, the president makes that decision, but we give him options. In terms of the strategic deterrence, that, you know, it's a, y'all have an interesting job because success is when nothing happens. And I hope you're very successful. But it shows everything, shows and has history as shown, the need for that constant deterrence, that need for that constant presence. Of whatever, of whatever kind. The last thing I'll say is, you know, I went on with Virginia today. We are now designing and doing the engineering work to do the Ohio class replacement. So the subs that come behind to do the strategic thing. We're on schedule. We're on budget. And we're gonna start building the first of those ships to go on patrol in the late 2020s. But we gotta start building them in the early 2020s to do that. And Kings Bay is ready to deal with those replacements today, even though we're beginning that process to get there. The last thing I'll say is that because of the cost of the Ohio class replacement, we're gonna have to have a conversation in this country, particularly in Congress about how we pay for it. Because if Navy pays the entire bill, it'll take between a third and a half of all our shipbuilding budget. And so all our other programs will just be, it'll be catastrophic to the rest of the programs, including other submarines. So including our attack submarines. So this is a national asset. This is a national thing. We ought to have a debate about how the country pays for it. So thank you. Thank you, sir. Who's next? Well, the first line is always gonna be chaplains. It's gonna be the other professionals that you talked about. There may be some specialized instances on counselors that mainly for bases, there may be some instances that they'll go aboard ship, but our chaplains are stretched pretty thin right now. And particularly when we're at sea. And giving the great chaplain corps the other professionals that we have out there to talk about things like suicide prevention, like family readiness, sexual assault, the things that have the potential to undo so much good work that has been done. I don't think we can do too much of that, but I wanna thank you for you and the other chaplains out around there because your ranks are stretched very thin. And just as a very personal aside, I ran for governor in 1987. I was a guy that just graduated from college who drove me around for a year. He is now a Navy chaplain who deploys with the Marines. And so I've got a little bit of a personal life line into that community, so thank you. Sir, MT1 Starkey from TTF. With the budget cuts and stuff, why is the Navy still paying senior and listed to perform as a detailer when they're no longer the sailor's advocate when that job could be performed by an E3 or E4? Oh, I'll give you a very honest answer, I don't know. But, I mean, just thinking through it, you want some senior and listed to talk to people coming in? You also want some of those E3s, E4s, do it also. But you gotta have some senior folks there just to explain what life is like throughout a Navy experience to be the first mentor that people have. And as I said, I can't give you a technical answer to the question, but that off the top of my head is the best I can do. Anybody else? There you go. EM2 Briggs from the USS West Virginia. Requests to know what is the future of the Navy's retirement program and whether or not these are going to be retroactive? Well, there's a group looking at retirement that Congress set up and they're gonna report back pretty soon. One of the things that has been that everybody, whether in uniform or civilian leadership has said since the beginning of this process is that whatever system you join under ought to be the system you retire under. So if any changes are made, as I said, this group hadn't reported back, but the clear expectation is that if there were changes, it would apply to people who joined after those changes were made. Thank you, sir. All right. One more. Y'all don't wanna go home, do you? Late on a Friday afternoon, is that? Yeah. Good afternoon, sir. AB2 Brown, attached to Sub-Ace. My question is, is there a possibility that we are still looking at homesteading the service members in certain regions, such as Southwest, Southeast, or the other ones? Nope. No, I mean, sometimes because of your rating, sometimes because of some specialty that you have, you may end up in one fleet concentration area for a long period of time, but the notion of homesteading is probably, no, it's just not there right now. Thanks, sir. All right. Kings Bay, thank y'all again. Thank you for the things you do for America, and thank you for the skill, the way you do it. As I said, I'm gonna come right down here. Y'all, when your dismiss, break ranks, come on up, anybody wants to take a picture? Shake hands, I'm happy to do it. Just make sure you know how to use your shipmates' phone before you get there. All right, thanks, Kings Bay. Shipmates, let's give Secretary Maynus another round of applause for what we would like to do, sir, is to present you just a couple of small tokens in appreciation of your leadership and thanking you for coming to visit us today. It's a first here, a model of USS Georgia. And I'm very proud to present it to you, sir, from the entire team here in Kings Bay. Thank you so much. That is awesome, thank you. I've got one other thing for you, sir. Just a commemorative token here presented to the Honorable Ray Maynus, Secretary of the Navy, from Team Kings Bay. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. And at this time, Secretary Maynus will be available right up here in front, or at the torpedo display for anyone that would like to take photos or otherwise greet the Secretary. Dismiss.