 Thanks Hank, appreciate it. Aloha. It's a nice to be able to say that. I left Hawaii yesterday and it was about what temperature? 82? 82? 83? And sunny. And so it's great to be here and it's great to be back at S&A. It's a, I've had a long time affiliation with this great organization. I had to kind of work in the trenches on this when I was the Deputy Director of Surface Warfare with Mark Edwards and I think Harry Ulrich and I were all of us were at that time. I think it was in 76 in those days and now it's in 96. So I don't know what it'll be next century. I don't know if we can add any more numbers of that without making the doors bigger in the Pentagon. But it's this particular forum has for many many years proven to be a great opportunity for first of all for us all to get together and remember the good old days and to think about the future. It's an opportunity for us to look in our wake or the glimpse in our wake. Of course, you know, we don't ever want to steer by our wake, but we want to also spend time in during these precious days looking into the future and what that future holds. So I think what I was asked to come here to talk to you today was not about fleet readiness not about the difficulty of sequestration and how their money in the readiness, even though you can ask me those questions because I'm the ultimate consumer of the readiness of the fleet today as a as a cocom. But to kind of give you my general impressions of what's happening in the Pacific in what I now call the Indo Asia Pacific. Of course, the academics beat me up about that. They say, Well, what does that really mean? I said, I don't know. I'm a surface warfare officer. It doesn't matter. I'm not an academic. What it means for me, though, is that, as you know, the Pacific command has always been held by a Navy four star. It has the oldest cocom that we have and geographically, it's the largest cocom that covers about 52% of the world. My particular field of play each day is from Hollywood to Bollywood. There's a way I describe it. And kind of from the as far north as you want to go and far south as you need to go. So in that particular, I mean, frame for you a little bit about how you need to think about the Indo Asia Pacific and then start to reflect on the implications of that for the future of surface warfare. First, it is the most populated part of the world. How many people in the world today? About 7 billion people. That's projected to grow 9 or 10 billion in this century. And in that period of time, about seven out of every 10 people are projected to live in what I call Hollywood to Bollywood, Indo Asia Pacific, seven out of 10 people. In this area are the largest countries in the world, most populated countries, China, India. There are the largest economies in the world. Three of the four largest economies are in this part of the world. It is the economic engine that drives the world today. It is the economic engine. Over half of everything that moves on the surface of the earth generates out of the Indo Asia Pacific. And that number is growing. So, you know, we always talk about, well, 90% of everything in the world flows on the surface by something, right? Well, that's true. That has been true for a long time. But what is changing is that over the last couple of decades, the number, the amount of things in that 90% has quadrupled. So, every big screen TV, everything that you can go to Walmart, walk down any aisle that pumps into the global economy, flows in this part of the world. In the South China Sea alone, over half of all the energy supplies that float every day moves through the South China Sea. So, I know we, the surface warriors, we've all spent time in the Straits of Hormuz and pining over that problem. But the problem is equally or more acute in this part of the world as we go forward. It is the world's largest democracies are here. The world's largest Islamic democracy. The world's smallest republic are here. Five of our seven treaty allies are here. When I took this job, I got asked, who are our treaty allies? I won't give you a quiz. How many treaties do we have? You know the answer to that? There's about seven treaties. Five of the those treaties allies are predominantly in the Paycom AOR and many of them are historic. Our oldest ally, Thailand, 181 years this year is an ally. And many of them have been brought, bought through many years of working together and some of them were spawned by things like World War II that left us with a left us with a world that need to be reshaped through those alliances. And those alliances continue to be strong and important in the Asia Pacific we see it today. It also is the most militarized area in the world. The most militarized area in the world. I know that's hard sometimes watching the international news every night to grasp this because we're always have been focused for the last couple of decades on a Middle East centric look for a lot of good reasons. But seven of the 10 largest armies in the world are in my AOR. All of the largest most capable navies in the world are in my area of responsibility. Five of the world's declared nuclear powers are in the 36 countries that I look at. So it's a also a region that doesn't have the historic mechanisms in place to be able to help you control what happens in the security environment. So there is not a NATO. I mean, think about NATO. We spent a lot of time and I just came from NATO to this job. I love NATO. Had pretty good experience with NATO. But if you take the United States out of NATO all of Europe is 500 million people. I mean 500 million people not even a drop in a bucket in Southeast Asia. There's 170 million people or so in Bangladesh. 200 million in Indonesia. So starting to get the scale of complexity of what this part of the world means to us as a nation and the implications for what it means to our military and our Navy. So let me just talk about some of the challenges here. So think about this Hollywood Bollywood. Think about all these people. Think about the center of energy or the center of gravity for our global economy. Think about largest, world's largest Islamic democracy. Think about a general sense of terrorism, my sense in terrorism as part of the world is that it is a problem. I mean more IEDs go off of my AOR every day or every month than anywhere else in the world. But they're just in a large area so they get consumed by the depth of it. But my take on the terrorism is we have it. But it's different than the Middle East. Someone has enlightened me that radicalism, particularly that spawned by radical Islam, came to the Middle East via sword and it came to the Asia Pacific via merchants. And so it does play out differently in this part of the world. So I think from a terrorist perspective that we're probably in the front end of the problem rather than the tail end of the problem, which we are in other parts of the world, which means we have an opportunity, I think, to shape that environment if we stay engaged and we do it right. But what are some of the challenges? I have a Center for Excellence that works for me called HADR, Central Excellence. So I showed up as paycom. I said, well, why do I own this thing? I mean, it's one of those, you know, admin things. You can say, well, why do I have this command under me? Well, it was quick to point out to me that 80% of all natural disasters in the world happened in my AOR. 80%. And the impact on humanity because of the the numbers of people and where they live, which many of them live in the Latorals and a growing number live in Latorals, the impact of these on humanity is significant. So there's veterans here of the Tomodachi. There's veterans of Ache. There are veterans of just probably recently of the Philippine effort we did in Operation Damian in the central part of the Philippines. So the natural disaster piece is not going to go away. The implications of climate change. Now, there's a raging debate around the world by scientists and everybody else about is there climate change? I'm not going to step into that argument with you. What I can tell you that the implications for weather and implications for what's happening in the environment today, because of the the mass of humanity and where they live is becoming more and more important to the security environment, particularly the security environment in my particular AOR. And that has to be thought through. Transnational threats, terrorism, drugs, most of the precursors for methamphetamines, which is a drug of choice today, come out of my AOR. And then you can't interdict drugs in the Pacific Ocean. You can't do it. It's just too big. So you have to figure out what are the networks and how the networks being fed? Where's the money going? Where's the money being funneled? And where are the implications for that money on our own security interest and the security of the American people? So we have that. So we have human trafficking starting to get a lot more play today in the political environment. I think some of you heard me show a slide before another presentation I made a few months ago, a $30 billion a year industry in human trafficking globally, 30 billion. It's more than Google and Nike and Starbucks coffee all put together. And it's not just prostitutes, it's child labor, it's child prostitution, the whole nine yards. And the source of much of that comes out of the Paycom AOR. So we're increasingly aware of the impact this has on the security environment. Of course, there's competition for food and water and that's going to grow. How fast will it grow? I don't know. But we're starting to see signs over the last couple decades that this will be an impact on the security environment. There will be a historic territorial disputes. Now, you can almost read any newspaper any day and get a sense of what's happening in both the East China Sea, South China Sea, as we look at the historical nature of how countries decide what belongs to them and what doesn't belong to them as they go into the future. And we can talk more about that in during question and answer if you'd like. And of course, there's increasingly dangerous North Korea. People ask me what do you worry about the most day to day? And I worry about the unpredictability of a of a North Korea Kim Jong-un. And the capability he has to basically not only threaten our our homeland, but put a serious cataclysmic event in place on the Korean Peninsula, which would quite literally disrupt the entire world. The flash to bang for what can happen in Korea is very, very, very short. And so as you think about the implications for four naval forces and what you provide and what what you don't provide, you have to think about Korea. I think to some degree, we have put Korea on the back burner for the last couple of decades, because we were dealing with a more urgent issues. And I think that the fact that we put on the back burner has not put us in a good position where we are today. So we're going to have to think through what the future holds here and how we're going to manage the future with the North Korea that has a potential to threaten our homeland with weapons of mass destruction. And of course, there is a rising India. Now, many of you have operate like I have with the Indians for a long time and we're making good progress with the Indian, particularly the Indian Navy to US Navy relationship. We want to see that continue. So part of the rebalance to the Asia Pacific, the one of the things I was directed to do by the president was to improve that relationship with India. So we built a long term deeper strategic relationship with them that allows them to have a significant role of the security environment, particularly the maritime security environment in the Indian Ocean, which has, again, is one of those areas where we haven't paid a lot of attention to in the last last number of decades. And then there's the rise of China. So how will China show up? China is going to rise. We've all known this for a long time. In fact, we've all been over the last 20 or 30 years in our planning, we've been thinking about how will China show up? How will they show up as a as a world leader? How will they show up as a global economic power? And how will they contribute to the security environment? And that's yet to play out. But the goal, the paycom goal, my goal is for China to eventually be a net provider of security and not a net user of security. We'll see. We'll see. So how China and India rise has to be figured into it. And then finally, I would say that we're seeing today throughout the periphery of paycom, the struggling, the struggle of fragile democracies as the as those democratic processes and systems been put in place in some of the countries in my AOR, they are yet today, dealing with how to how to properly use democracy and to to align their governments and their security apparatus is in a way that allows them to live through democratic reforms that their countries are going through today. So we're watching that. And I guess then, most importantly, about the challenges we have in the in the Pacific, AOR is, what's the US role going to be this century? What How are we going to be involved here? I think the President, in fact, I know, because we made a recommendation to him when he signed out his, his strategy in 2012, which articulated the pivot, so to speak, right? Pivot to the Asia Pacific. And the underlying thing behind that whole the whole pivot is that after two decades of really difficult work in the Middle East, we have to look globally at where our long term national interest. So we're our children and our grandchildren's where our where their interest going to be most important. And the continuing vector, the consistent vector is in the long term is to make sure we get it right in the Asia Pacific. So this is what has led to the pivot and the initiatives about the pivot, and those initiatives inside the US Navy that have led to that. So I'm my lose or y'all trying to tell me something here by turn those lights off. Okay. So, so let's look a little bit in our wake in the in the PAKOM AOR. So the surface Navy has had FDNF for a long time here there, right? Marines, Navy Marine Corps team. I asked my staff the other day to tell me how much the presence in FDF had changed over time. You know, go back 30 years, tell me how much it changed. And the answer was I hadn't changed much. It's within a couple of percentage points. It's about the same over time. And that's fine. And we've done great work. We put our best ships forward, our best submarines, our best amphibes. I think that we have pushed readiness in the direction of FDNF in a way that has allowed them to realize a significant amount of success over those years. But it's not the same neighborhood as it was 20, 30 years ago. It's a different neighborhood and it's changing. And during that time, though, the surface Navy has been the backbone of maritime security in this AOR. It has been the backbone. Now, all the joint services come together but on a day to day basis. If you think about my AOR, just think about the Pacific Ocean alone. What's the largest object on the face of the earth? specific ocean. For if you hadn't looked at it, you can take all the continents, all the land masses in the world and jam them in together, just pack them together. And you can put them right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and still have room for two more continents, the North America and an Africa. That's how big just the Pacific Ocean is. Then you add Indian Ocean to it and you got he just starts to really start to be amazing. So the surface Navy has been, I think, a tremendous supporter leading the way in a number of areas. One is ballistic missile defense. In my previous jobs, I advocated pretty hard for the Navy to kind of get into the BMD in the right way. And I'm not a BMD expert. But I think that I had good counsel for many of you in the room that we needed to up our game and how we did it and we we and how we played in it. And we've done that. We've done that. And in fact, in every scenario, you see that the the centerpiece of the most reliable piece of our BMD architecture lies on board the ships that are manned and equipped by the United States Navy and by run by the young men and women that run our fabulous ships. So we've done well on there. We successfully adapted, I think those ships to an ever changing security environment there where we're seeing a proliferation of very quite diesel submarines throughout this a or we're we're seeing the proliferation of higher higher levels of technology and cruise missiles and ballistic missiles and you pick it. It's just it's just escalating in in almost every area. And thus far, we've been able to to match that and our early burks have been really the workhorse of that. It's a tremendous you think about a tremendous success in those early burks ships through how many years of construction and how many flights and their ability to to continually be adapted to the scenarios that we're seeing brought forward. So I think you have to give surface Navy pretty high remarks for that marks for that. Our mine forces that we put there, I think have remained relevant. And the introduction of littoral combat ship applauded the surface Navy for taking the chance to push that littoral combat ship early. Now early is relative. Okay. I'd like to tell this story a few years ago. Emerald Meyer, when he was here in Crystal City, he would routinely call some of us over for council. I think I was a one star at that time. And he would call you in your room and then you'd have this dialogue about the Navy how he felt about the Navy. And on one particular one of my comearounds, he he said, he said to me, he said, you know, he said, he said that I'm gonna tell you about the 17 year locust. So what's the 17 year locust? He says a 17 year locust. He says that's how long it takes the United States. From the time you think about a ship, until it becomes operationally relevant, 17 years. I said, I don't believe it. So I started going back and I started calculating it. And he's about right. So we, the Navy, we service Navy, we set off down the road of littoral combat ship. And we said, we're going to do this in bury him in year seven or eight four. And we said seven. Then we had said eight. And we said nine. And we did do better. But we didn't do a whole lot better by my calculation. As I as I think back on it, when I was with Zabrowski and and back in the when I was an aide to the vice chief back in the night about 1998, I happened to be in a room where where they were talking about this this ship and this ship was going to be Street Fighter. Remember that? And that quickly morphed to something beyond Street Fighter because that sounded really too angry, I think for for the for the trade trade magazines, but it went to Street Fighter. So that was 1998. So that that about was a time the genesis of the thinking of what littoral combat ship was going to be it was going to be fast. It was going to be in the torals. It was going to be multi mission. It was going to be reconfigurable. It's gonna have a small crew. It's going to do all these things. That's 1998. So here we are 15 years, 16 years. So you'll you'll have really the first LCS show about 17 years later, but it's showing up with a whole different concept and a lot of different aspects of things that are going to make it. I think a key player in the security environment in the world I deal with, which has got a lot of littorals and a lot of interesting things going on in that. So as you go, now let's take a look at four. So when you go forward, what's going to remain constant for surface warfare? Well, the world's not going to get any smaller. That's getting smaller in other domains, cyber domain. I guess you could say the air air domain is getting smaller. But in our domain, it's not going to get any smaller. So you have to be there to be relevant. You know, having forces that are forward, having forces that are rotationally forward, having forces that can sustain themselves forward and be there is important for surface warfare. So I encourage us to resist any risk or any urge we have at all to sequester ourselves in some some quiet home port somewhere, because our relevance will diminish because you can't get there fast enough. Because the world today, we're warfare in the world today is going to move too fast in the surface Navy of the future has got to be on station has got to be well trained has got to be ready to do what it takes. So what else is going to remain the same? distance will be a tyranny, logistics remain a tyranny. We already see a, you know, we're at the smallest Navy since what 1916 in numbers smallest Navy, capable Navy is a big enough. My testimony says it's not. Okay, some in this room may disagree. I say it's not big enough. It's not big enough for the world we're in and the way we deploy ships today in the merging security environment. But that said, it is going to be one of the things remain constant was we're going to struggle to maintain numbers because of the, the implications of our budget implications of our industrial base, and our our own proclivity to want to take it'll take 17 years to build ships. And that gets expensive and it takes time. So that's going to remain a constant, I think. But more important, I think what remain constant is the importance of competent, well trained and well led people, competent, well trained and well led people. Because in the end, you know, we can stack up all the great early Berks and all the great amphib ships and all the great LCS is put them on in the pier. And they'll be a stack of mile high, but they don't matter if you don't have young men and women that can make a work and make them work in an increasingly difficult environment, increasingly challenging environment, a long ways away from our homeland. So so what is changing? Well, our historic dominance that most of us in this room have enjoyed is diminishing. No question. So let me say that again, our historic dominance that for the most of us here in our careers have enjoyed is diminishing. Now, some of that's because of what we were able to do. We as a nation provided a security environment, particularly in the in the in the Asia Pacific area that allow the rise of nations, allow the rise of economies that allow these these economic miracles that are happening and some of our allies and partner countries. And this has generated wealth, it's generated democracies, it's generated perspectives on security. And it's caused those nations to want to go to pursue their on their own security mechanisms. When they do that, they take money and they buy and they invest in resources to buy defenses. And so it's it's not unusual for us to need to sit here on those can be a highlight that we're our dominance is diminishing, but it's something we have known was going to happen. And then we have to expect to continue to happen. So what does that mean? Well, it means that the future generation service warfare officers have got to think to pay more particular attention to the ability to show up on the scene and be lethal and be dominant, lethal and dominant, and to bring all the great aspects of information technology and warfare technology and all the things that our great country can produce for us and be able to show up and to be lethal and dominant. We have to come to grips with those areas that we know we have vulnerabilities in. We have to come grips with them. Okay. And we can't wish them away. We can't wish them into the next generation. And there are some of those areas where we have to think hard about where are we being challenged by technology? And what is our answer to that? Now, every great generation in this generation of naval officers sitting here is as great as anyone has ever been, has acknowledged those challenges and then stepped up to them. Wayne Myers of the world, Hank Mustins of the world. I could go on and just just name that who said, hey, we have we have an area here where we need to focus. We need to get after it. And the technology was found. The resources were put in place. So I just say we need to think about this. We need to think about it. But I'm proud of the readiness of the ships today. And I'm proud of the readiness that our surface warriors leadership has been able to provide and produce, particularly during this period of time, we've gone through the budget issues and the sequestration. So from where I sit as a pay com commander, we have about as ready a force with great ships as I've seen in a long time. Now, I hope that we continue that. But being being having good readiness is only one part of the equation. When you show up to the future fights that we envision the future warfare scenarios, secure security scenarios that we envision in the 21st century, many of them could emanate out of the pay com AOR. We have to also show up and be relevant. Be honest with you, our lack of urgency on development of the next generation of surface launched over the horizon cruise missiles is troubling. We were behind the need. And we need to think about that. We need to think about what is surface warfare role in other than defensive operations. As a pay com commander, I need you to be thinking in the offensive mode. I need you to be thinking, how are you going to show up? How are you going to be dominant? How are you going to be lethal? And that requires it to think about all scenarios, not just the ones that we've been that we've been dealing with in the last several years where we have enjoyed basic air superiority, basic sea superiority. There's places in the world where in this century, you won't have that. And whenever these magnificent $2 billion warships show up, they are going to have to be dominant. And they're going to have to have the tools to be dominant. You also have to look and embrace the value of asymmetric capabilities that we bring. We have to continue to pursue unmanned systems. They do bring a tremendous asymmetric advantage to me, to commanders like me, who have to deal with increasingly complex scenarios. Things like offensive mining need to be thought about. We haven't talked about a mining for a long time. In fact, it becomes sometimes it becomes a step sister to our dialogue in surface warfare. But surface warfare community, in my view, has to embrace the mine community, has to embrace this as an asymmetric, not only as a defensive capability, but as an asymmetric capability that allows us to be dominant in a battle space that may not we may not always be dominant in when we enter. High speed lift, important to me. How do you how do you get things around faster? This is a surface warfare equity. How do you use the systems you have, the existing systems you have in different ways? I think that there we've shown that to be true with our Aegis systems and our ability to convert those to ballistic missile defense platforms. But we have a wide array of great systems that need to be transitioned into the next next century and have to bring those capabilities that make them relevant in the battle space of that century. And then we have to, you know, unleash the incredible innovation of the force. You have to make sure that inside of our self-talk and the way we lead our own people that we're allowing the future generation to tell us how to best do these things. And they're the ones who are going to tell us. There's not guys on the front row here. It's the young lieutenants and the young lieutenant commanders and young chiefs and first-class petty officers who are going to say, hey, this is a way to do this. And we have to ensure that we continue to have a force as vital. I think we do today. I see it from the Paycom commander. I think you're pretty healthy. But I say we have to have to stay after that. And then for all of you at who's got the next big idea, that's what we're all waiting on. So what's next? What's next? So now we've got the Toro Combat Ship. That's going to roll in. It's got a place in the battle space. We're going to have a legacy force of DDGs. The cruisers are going to transition out. Our amphibious force is going to be modernized at whatever pace. But what's the next big idea for service warfare? What's the next big idea? And then finally, close by saying, I think that you all should think about as you think about both from an industry perspective and a service warfare leadership perspective. You need to start bringing the calculus of the Indo-Asia Pacific more into your thinking about what it means for the future of the Navy. What it means for the future of the service warfare Navy. I mean, this is your plum to pick. Okay? It's your plum to pick because there are so many opportunities for service warfare in the battle space that could be defined by the challenges that are in the Indo-Asia Pacific. And embracing those in your procurement and embracing them in your training and embracing them in your future outlook, I think is critical to the success, not only of the service Navy, but of our US Navy and our US policy and the interests of the US American people. So with that, let me stop and see if there's any questions.