 If you've been an Arctic watcher the last few weeks, you've been pretty busy. We've had a lot of interesting Arctic developments from the release of the National Strategy for the Arctic Region, which was released on May the 10th, to the quite exciting Arctic Council Ministerial in Karuna last Thursday, where a decision was made to welcome six new permanent observers to the organization to today and the release of the Coast Guard Arctic Strategy. That's an Arctic trifecta in my book, and it's a wonderful opportunity for us to focus on the Arctic Region. We are indeed delighted and honored to have the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, Admiral Pap, with us to release and unveil this new Arctic Strategy. It has been, I know, a process for the Arctic Council, the Coast Guard, working together with the various members of colleagues from the U.S. government within the Department of Homeland Security to produce this. So we are indeed very privileged to be a part of this conversation. Admiral Pap, before I welcome you to the front, I just would like to say a note of personal thanks. CSIS has been working on an Arctic research project for the past four years, and we have been very privileged to have access to you, to senior leaders like Admiral Nethinger and the Coast Guard to help enrich our research. And we've certainly benefited from several Coast Guard fellows that are part of CSIS. Aaron Roth, Sean Murtaugh, Doug Fears, Brian Pinoyer, they have helped me understand the Coast Guard perspective in the Arctic, and we are very, very privileged to have that. So, without further ado, Admiral, we are very interested in discovering the insights of the Coast Guard's Arctic strategy, and your leadership and your senior leadership in the Coast Guard have really allowed this strategy to come forward. So with gratitude, welcome, and thank you. We look forward to your remarks. Thank you, Heather. Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I understand that the president is on right now making his comments on the tragedy out in Oklahoma, so I'm sure that's gonna draw a few viewers away, and rightly so. It is indeed a rather significant tragedy and our hearts and prayers go out to all the people of Oklahoma today as they recover from yesterday's tragic events. Once again, another display of the power of nature, the fierceness of the weather, and the unpredictability of it. And it strikes me that there are some lessons from that that are applicable to the subject matter today, because as sailors, and I can see that there are other sailors in the room, one of the first things we learn as sailors is that we don't control the weather, we don't control nature. As sailors, we simply react to it and we adapt to it, and hopefully we do that successfully. I was fortunate to learn that lesson very early in my career. In 1975, I reported to my first assignment, the Coast Guard Cutter Ironwood in Adak, Alaska, and with our work in the Bering Sea, I experienced some of the most severe and sustained weather that I've ever experienced even since then, and I've been through some severe weather in my many years at sea, including hurricanes in the Atlantic, but in terms of ferocity and sustained ferocity, I don't think I've ever seen anything like the Bering Sea. In 1976, we took the ironwood up towards the North Slope, and as we approached the Bering Strait, we ran into the ice pack. Now this was in July of 1976, and we couldn't make our way through it. We had to turn around, come back to Gnome and anchor off Gnome, and fortunately, the icebreaker, Burton Island, which was a Coast Guard icebreaker, was anchored there as well. My commanding officer asked if they would take their helicopter and me to go out and look for ice leads so that we could get through the Bering Strait and up to do our work on the North Slope. We flew along the coastline, and we eventually landed in Kotzebue, and when we landed in Kotzebue, I was amazed that first of all, we didn't find any leads in the ice going through the Bering Strait, and as we landed in Kotzebue, as I looked out across the water, all I could see was ice, ice as far as I could see. So fast forward that 34 years, and in my first summer as commandant of the Coast Guard, I decided to go back to Alaska. I had not been there in 34 years since I had left, and I chose Kotzebue as one of the first places we went into, and we flew in there at altitude in the Gulf Stream, landed in Kotzebue, and as we were landing, I looked out as far as I could see, and I saw no ice. Same time of the year, 34 years later, there's no ice. So just like those uncertain and stormy seas that we face as sailors, the changes are dynamic up there, and just like sailors, we need to react and we need to adapt, and that's why I'm very proud to be here today to announce the release of the Coast Guard Arctic Strategy. And I'd like to start by thanking the Center for Strategic and International Studies for hosting this today as a part of the Strategy Forum. And in particular, I wanna thank our good friend, Heather Conley, for her strong advocacy for Arctic Strategy and thoughtful public policy solutions in the Arctic, and I look forward to the discussion and your questions a little bit later this morning. I'd like to thank also Secretary Napolitano for her leadership, and to Alice Hill. I hope Alice had a chance to make it here today. Alice is the senior counsel to the Secretary, and she's been a champion for the completion and implementation of the Coast Guard Arctic Strategy within the broader missions of the Department of Homeland Security. And I would add she's been a great travel companion up to the Arctic during our summer visits to Alaska. I welcome fellow members of the executive branch who are here today and the various agencies and congressional staffs. I'd also like to welcome Dr. Kelly Faulkner from the National Science Foundation. From Alaska, I understand Mayor Charlotte Brower and the delegation for the North Slope is on their way. I hope they get a chance to get in here. The traffic is a little bit different in Washington, DC than it is in the streets of Barrow, Alaska, I can assure you. Also, I understand Senator Lynn Hoffman from the Alaska legislature is also here as well. And I also welcome delegates from the international community, Canada, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and the European Union. Thank you for being here today. I believe that the greatness of a nation can be measured by its commitment to providing mariners safe and secure approaches to its shores. And that a nation's prosperity is proportionate to how well it ensures the safe and secure and efficient movement of trade and commerce to and from its shores. And that a great nation will also ensure the environmental protection of the sea. So wherever human activity thrives, government has the responsibility to uphold the rule of law, to ensure the safety and security of its people, and to ensure environmentally responsible maritime activity. We call this maritime governance, and it's essential component of Homeland Security and the national security of the United States. For over 200 years, our Coast Guard has provided maritime governance, ensuring maritime safety, security, and stewardship for the nation. We protect those on the sea. We protect America from threats delivered by the sea, and we protect the sea itself, safety, security, and stewardship. As a maritime nation, the United States relies upon the sea for our prosperity, trade, transportation, and security. But we're also an Arctic nation, and the Arctic region is the emerging maritime frontier, vital to our national interests, economy, and security. The Arctic Ocean is rapidly changing from a solid expanse of inaccessible ice fields to a growing navigable sea, attracting increased human activity, and unlocking access to vast economic potential and energy resources. The economic promise of oil and gas production in the Arctic is increasingly attractive as the supply of energy from traditional sources continues to dwindle and will struggle to meet demand. In the past four years, we've seen well over 100% increase in traffic through the Bering Strait, and 1 million tons of cargo was shipped through the region last year. In addition, more than 50% of America's fish stock comes from the exclusive economic zone off the coast of Alaska. This change from what I describe as from hard water to soft water, growing economic interests and energy demands, and the increasing use of the seas for maritime activities for commercial, native, and recreational users, demands of persistent, capable US Coast Guard presence in the Arctic region. Our mandate to assure maritime safety, security, and stewardship applies in the Arctic, just as well as it applies in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, or the Caribbean Sea. Coast Guard operations in the Arctic are not new. Nearly 150 years ago, we were the federal presence in the District of Alaska, administering justice, settling disputes, providing medical care, enforcing sovereignty and rescuing people in distress. Our recorded history is filled with passages of Coast Guardsmen who braved the sea and ice in sailing ships and early steam vessels to rescue mariners, prevent illegal poaching, and to explore the Great North. World War II ushered in the service's first icebreakers. And in 1957, three Coast Guard cutters made headlines around the world by becoming the first American vessels to circumnavigate the North American continent and passing through the Northwest Passage. Although we've lived and served in Southern Alaska for most of the Coast Guard's existence, our access to and operations in the Northern part of Alaska and on the North Slope have been only temporary and occasional with no permanent infrastructure or operating forces along the Beaufort or Chuck G. Seas. There are no deep water ports there. However, the acceleration of human activity in the Arctic region, the opening of the seas, and the inevitable increase in maritime activity mean increased risk of maritime accidents, including those involving cruise ships, oil spills, illegal fishing, and harvesting of other natural resources from U.S. waters and a host of other threats to our safety, security, or sovereignty. These growing risks, inevitable with the growth of human activity, demand the Coast Guard's attention and commitment to meet our responsibilities to the nation. Earlier this month, the President issued a national strategy for the Arctic, setting the vision and the direction for the nation and committing to integrate the work of federal departments and agencies with activities already underway at the state, local, and tribal levels. And I'm proud that the United States Coast Guard, under the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security, is the first to roll out a strategy that furthers the lines of effort and guiding principles contained in the national Arctic strategy. The President stated that the goal of the national strategy is to position the United States to meet the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in the Arctic. The Coast Guard Arctic strategy focuses on our service efforts to achieve that goal. This document contains three strategic objectives that will guide the Coast Guard efforts in the Arctic over the next 10 years. The first is improving awareness. The second, modernizing governance. And the third, broadening partnerships. Our first strategic objective is simply to better understand the Arctic operating environment and the increased activity there and the risks that it presents. This understanding will inform and enable effective Coast Guard presence to identify and address risks as early as possible. In much of Alaska, we simply just don't know what's occurring. We need improved collection, analysis, and sharing of maritime information. And we can't do this alone. It requires a collaborative network of domestic and international partners drawing upon their cumulative authorities, capabilities, and experience. And awareness requires presence, persistent presence of the Coast Guard to be able to rapidly detect, prevent, and respond to maritime threats and hazards. Persistent presence is a challenge given the distances involved and the often hostile environment. There's a lack of shore infrastructure in the remote reaches of the Arctic and the expense of building permanent infrastructure and the uncertainty of dynamic and evolving requirements have demanded the Coast Guard rely on mobile offshore infrastructure to meet its demands. And we've tested and proven that approach over the last several years and that will be our approach for the coming decade. Last summer, we completed Arctic Shield 2012, a nine month interagency operation consisting of outreach, operations, and assessment of capabilities, including the deployment of a national security cutter and two of our ocean-going ice-capable buoy tenders. We also surged two helicopters to Barrow, 800 miles from their base in Kodiak and 300 miles above the Arctic Circle. The national security cutter, Burtoff, provided us with effective presence and that offshore infrastructure that I've talked about in the Beaufort and Chuck G.C.'s during the industry exploratory drilling. These national security cutters provide floating maritime governance in the tradition of cutters that have been sailing in those waters for well over a century and a half. They carry the supplies needed to provide a sustained presence in the ice-free waters. They carry and launch small boats and helicopters to conduct a full range of Coast Guard missions and they provide a robust suite of communications and intelligence capabilities for effective command and control of our operations. The national security cutter, Washi, will be patrolling the Arctic this summer providing effective Coast Guard presence during the seasonal period of heightened maritime activity in the ice-free waters. Also, the nation now has two operational icebreakers to ensure the U.S. access to icebound waters. Healy, our medium icebreaker, and Polar Star, the world's most powerful, non-nuclear heavy icebreaker which just returned to active service a couple months ago and is preparing for operations later this year. And with the support of the Secretary and the administration, we've begun the process of developing and analyzing the requirements to design and build the next generation of heavy icebreakers for the United States. For the foreseeable future, the Coast Guard's priority is to employ mobile infrastructure and seasonal presence of cutters, boats, and aircraft supplemented by the existing shore-side infrastructure to provide the flexible and adaptable capability that the Arctic needs for Coast Guard operations. Our second strategic objective is to modernize governance in the Arctic and we'll do this first by leading within the interagency to strengthen international legal regimes. Next, safeguarding the marine environment, then preserving living marine resources, and then finally, protecting U.S. sovereignty and sovereign rights. A legally certain and predictable set of rights and obligations to address activity in the Arctic is paramount. And the United States must be a part of such legal regime to protect and advance our security, economic, and environmental interests. Unlike Antarctica, the Arctic is governed by multiple legal regimes and forums. Some are evolving and dynamic and others, such as the Law of the Sea Convention, the United States is not a party to. And as you well know, we're the only Arctic nation that has yet to accede to the Law of the Sea Treaty. In order to exercise leadership, improve our ability to influence outcomes, and effectively interact with other Arctic nations, we urgently need the Senate to approve U.S. accession to this treaty. For the past several years, there's been a race by countries other than the United States to file internationally recognized claims on the maritime regions and the sea beds of the Arctic. Alaska has more than 1,000 miles of coastline above the Arctic Circle on the Beaufort and Chuck G.C.'s. Our territorial waters extend 12 miles from the coast, and the exclusive economic zone extends 200 nautical miles from the shore, just as along the rest of the United States coastline. So along the North Slope, that's more than 200,000 square miles of Arctic water over which the Coast Guard has jurisdiction. Below the surface, the United States may also assert sovereign rights over natural resources on its continental shelf out to 200 nautical miles. However, with the accession to the Law of the Sea Convention, the United States has the potential to exercise additional sovereign rights over resources on an extended outer continental shelf, which may reach as far as 600 nautical miles into the Arctic from the Alaska coast. While the United States stands by, other nations are moving ahead and perfecting rights over resources on an extended continental shelf. Russia, Canada, Denmark, and Norway, also Arctic nations, have filed extended continental shelf claims to the exclusive rights to oil and gas resources on this shelf, and they're making their case publicly in the media, as well as in construction of vessels to patrol this area. Even China, which has no land mass connectivity to the Arctic Ocean, has raised interest by conducting research in the region. The United States should accede to the Law of the Sea Convention without delay to protect our national security interests of sovereignty, environment, economy, and energy. Other international legal regimes governing the Arctic are remarkably dynamic and evolving. Just last week in Sweden, the Arctic Council agreed to extend its membership beyond the eight original Arctic nations to include six new observer states, China, India, Italy, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. The admission and participation of these non-artic nations in the Council demonstrates clear recognition of the importance of the Arctic to global security and prosperity, and the importance of broader inclusion to develop binding international regimes and standards there. The Arctic Council adopted a resolution to prepare and coordinate a response to potential spills that could result from increased oil and gas production. This joins an earlier agreement by the Council members to coordinate search and rescue operations. Both agreements focus on common risks and interests of member states and provide a foundation for future coordination in other areas. Canada just assumed the chairmanship of the Arctic Council and the United States will succeed them in 2015. And we're building on the strength of existing relationships with Canada, Russia, and others within the North Pacific and North Atlantic Coast Guard forums. The Coast Guard leads the U.S. delegation to the International Maritime Organization, the recognized body for administering international standards and rules governing safety at life at sea, maritime environmental production, maritime security, and standards for competency of mariners. The IMO continues to develop a polar code to govern vessel operations, and the Coast Guard is working with the Department of State and other federal agencies to ensure that effort. Together, these evolving and diverse mosaics of international legal regimes demand the United States remain an active leader and participant to ensure our national interests. Further, the Coast Guard will safeguard the marine environment and preserve living marine resources in the U.S. exclusive economic zone through persistent Coast Guard operational presence. We will seek to prevent dangerous or illicit maritime activities through regulation, inspections, and enforcement of standards. If undesirable or unlawful maritime events do occur, whether deliberate or accidental, we will rapidly and effectively respond. Protecting U.S. sovereignty requires maritime governance. We cannot exercise maritime governance without effective operational presence. Then our third strategic objective is to broaden partnerships. We'll do this by developing and promoting the Coast Guard as an expert and experienced resource for our partners. We'll also leverage domestic and international partnerships as force multipliers, and finally we'll support a national approach for Arctic planning. While the Coast Guard's Arctic strategy is focused on our role in the region, the Arctic is not just a Coast Guard issue. It's a national issue requiring a whole of government approach, federal, state, local, and tribal governments, and a whole of nation approach to include non-governmental organizations, industry, and academia. Today there are centers of experience and pockets of expertise among these groups that we must use to build a network of partners. That is essential to achieving the unity of effort necessary to carry out U.S. national strategy in the Arctic. Within the Department of Homeland Security, we're taking a one DHS approach for operations in the region among our components to secure the border, prevent terrorism, and to lead adaptation to climate change. We're also working with the Department of Interior, the Department of Defense, and other federal agencies. But while we must rely in particular on leadership outside the federal government, we need to also turn to our native Alaskans, the tribal governments and peoples, and the state of Alaska. And we must work closely with the private sector, including the maritime industry, that we are responsible for governing and regulating. Again, this requires a whole of nation approach in planning and in activities. So as I mentioned before, in 1957, three Coast Guard cutters were the first U.S. ships to traverse the Northwest Passage. You might ask why? Well, because they were supporting the creation of the distant early warning system, or DULINE. There was a national imperative for our presence in the Arctic then. The United States recognized that imperative and responded with action to ensure our national interests. That national imperative in the Arctic is upon us again. But now it's different, driven by an emerging maritime frontier and the promise of opportunity and prosperity, but it all comes with a risk. And we're all called to action to meet that imperative. The Coast Guard is working to do our part. For almost 223 years, we've overseen the safety, security and stewardship of our nation's waters. Our challenge today is to ensure that we're prepared with a Coast Guard capable and ready to meet our responsibilities in the Arctic. We need to react and we need to adapt. The time is now. So thanks once again to CSIS and to all of you for attending today. And I look forward to your questions. Thank you. Admiral Papp, thank you very much. That was a great overview of the strategy. Let me give you a couple of housekeeping rules. We're going to have a little bit of a moderated Q&A session up here. And this is to give you some time to think of your own questions. We have some cards we'd like and we'll pass those around if you need a card. If you could please fill out a question on that card and pass it down the lane, we'll collect those. And Nate Fryer, our senior fellow with the International Security Program is going to collect them. And then while we do our Q&A, we'll read a couple of those questions and we have 30 minutes of your time. I want to use that time wisely and ask you lots of tough questions. So we hope you'll go ahead and start thinking through those questions. I had the benefit of getting a copy of the strategy a few days before to prepare for our conversation. And let me again congratulate you. I thought it was a very comprehensive strategy. And I think you very clearly said in the document that this is a theater strategy, not an implementation strategy. But I'm going to beg your forgiveness and I'm going to push a little bit on thinking through some of the implementation of the strategy itself. And I want to begin with the first strategic area that you focus a great deal of time on and that is improving maritime domain awareness. And there certainly is a thread that runs through so many strategies. Certainly the national strategy before that NSPD 66 referred to that. Even the report to the president on integrated Arctic management really focused on that. So help us understand how do we move towards getting that greater maritime intelligence that information sharing. The Coast Guard has a huge piece of that but so does NOAA. So does other important federal departments and agencies. As you're starting to think through concept of operations, how do we start thinking through the implementation of improving maritime awareness? Well, the first thing is drawing attention to it which I hope this strategy does. Almost everything that we do. And I'd like to use it as an example, not to throw my good friend, Admiral Jonathan Greenert under the bus, the chief of naval operations, but he gives a presentation that shows all the hotspots, all the forward deployments and in particular the thing I found interesting were all the strategic choke points around the world. And on his graphic, he does not show the Bering Strait. And I think probably rightly so because in terms of pure national defense interests, the Bering Strait perhaps is not all that important to us right now but I've teased him about it. So I understand he now shows that as one of the strategic choke points. But the other thing I found remarkable about it was he used a chart projection which makes it look like there's 1,000 miles between Russia and Alaska. So it doesn't even look like a choke point. And it's just based upon the projection of the chart. And I thought that's illustrative of the way we're sort of focused within our country. We have this lower 48 focus and we have a focus in terms of our national strategic goals on sort of the middle latitudes where we've operated for many years. And you almost have to change your mindset first of all. You have to look at a different projection. It helps to look at a projection of the globe or on a chart that looks down at the North Pole to get a better feel for the enormous area, the choke points and some of the challenges that we're facing up there. Even in terms of awareness, we have a lot of national assets that are out there that are focused more on the middle latitudes. It's hard to get good intelligence on our northern and southern regions. The constellations of our navigation satellites and our communication satellites are not optimally tuned for the high latitudes on the south either. So it's an entire national focus, I think, that has to be turned around. Almost like when I go to Russia and I look at their projection of the world, the United States is off to one side and the Pacific over here and it's just a different concept of looking at the world. We tend to focus at the United States as the center of any projection and we give sort of secondary consideration to that other state that's up there and the waters that surround it. So first and foremost, it's a mindset. It's getting people talking. It's reading this and understanding the challenges up there. And I would say also learning more about what a challenge it is just because of the environment, the time, distance equation, et cetera. Absolutely, I want to pull, you talked about the persistent Coast Guard presence. And in the document, you touch upon this and one sentence popped out at me and it talked about that presence being seasonal, obviously when in the summer months, when the activity is greatest. It also mentioned potentially of leased assets, looking at a variety of opportunities potentially to enhance that presence. And my challenge has been in looking at all the strategic documents that have been produced. It's figuring out and understanding what is our national economic plan for our American Arctic. I think there's one vision that the state of Alaska is thinking about which is robust economic development. I think at the federal level, there's a different approach or question marks about how to do that. How can you develop an operational plan for a persistent presence when it's unclear to me at least what we're looking at in a 10-year horizon? Will there be significant economic development and lots of activity or will be more in a preserve, protect, a different posture? As a comment on how do you balance because you have to start thinking and we're already late to need in some ways of procurements. How do you anticipate a strategy and a plan and that persistence that you need to have when we're not sure what it will look like? You know, one of the things we tease ourselves about in the Coast Guard and I'm just as guilty of this as anybody else is when you look at the various levels of plans, thought processes, et cetera, you go strategic, operational, then tactical right down there at the operational level. And all of us are former operators and we love immediately going down to the tactical level. And I would say in the budgetary world, that's getting down to the tactical level. A strategic document is rightly something that guides thought processes, talks about how we will conduct ourselves where we intend to devote our resources and then resourcing follows that as we evaluate, we'll set priorities for various things we need to do. I think the national security cutter is a perfect example of that. This is something that I've placed high value on that I've campaigned for and the secretary and the president have supported and the Congress has supported very well. We need to replace those aging cutters that are out there because the national security cutter gives us a valuable, versatile, adaptable tool that we can use during those times when there's human activity up in the Arctic and our thought process, our strategy for budget development has always been to buy versatile, adaptable, multi-mission resources that have to operate independently and we give them the best capabilities possible to do that. So that sort of strategic thought process as we evaluate resource proposals as we go forward, that is my guidance to the budget people and other people to use that in terms of setting priorities and making sure that we buy equipment that is suitable and appropriate for our operations up there. As for the rest of the government, I think a lot of people look for budgetary guidance, they're looking for where's the beef, how are we gonna spend the money and that's not the purpose of a strategic document and then we're trying to keep that at a high level. I know, I had to ask you your forgiveness. I was gonna drag you into that operational tactical environment, kicking and screaming. Well, let's talk about, speaking of the national security cutter, what were the main lessons learned from Arctic Shield 2012? What did you think were the real successes and clearly it was a good test run for the national security cutter, although not ice hardened in the Arctic. But what were some of the, oh boy, we need to think through how we're going to work on that particular area in the future. First major lesson for me and I intuitively understood this to begin with is that the emerging operations in the Arctic require us to make decisions on mission priorities across the rest of the Coast Guard. We have finite resources. So therefore, yes, we sent the national security cutter to the Arctic last year, but it comes at the expense of, there's other opportunities that are lost, whether it's drug interdiction, whether it's high seas drift net patrols, fisheries patrols or military exercises with some of our partners throughout the Pacific. So one thing that everybody needs to understand is that resources are finite. If we move into another mission space and we start doing other things, it comes at the expense of other things that the Coast Guard is doing. And in some cases, we have other partners who can fill in. In the case of the Arctic, we're at, there's no other partners right now, at least they carry out these maritime operations. The second thing that I think for a lot of our sailors and let me give this as a requirement for us as well, maybe it's not quite as clear in there, but we need to build up competencies operating in the Arctic. Just like I learned as a young sailor, I cut my teeth on operations in the Bering Sea because our ice breakers have been laid up because we have not operated regularly up in the Arctic. We have diminished our level of competency and proficiency within the Coast Guard. And it's a whole nother operating area with many challenging demands up there. From the cold, from the ice, from the remoteness, it's the end of the logistics trail. And we're relearning all those lessons up there. The good thing is that I also have the knowledge we've done it before. One of the things I found interesting on my first trip up to Barrow was the residents up there referred to the Navy Station, which is out at the end. So I got up in the morning and I jogged all the way out to the Navy Station. And it was fascinating. There is a runway there. It's not a runway that's used anymore, but it's a corrugated steel runway. There are two huge hangars out there and they're all adjacent to the due line facility that's there. They were built by the Navy back in the late 50s to support a national imperative in the Arctic. So our country's been there before. We've found that imperative and we've redirected resources to take care of higher priorities. And so if we've done it before, we can do it again. Well, and I think pulling on that sort of that diminished level of competency, I thought some of the very positive specifics that came out of the strategy was the creation of this center of expertise at the Coast Guard Academy to help develop the next generation of Coast Guard leaders that are going to be spending much more time and focus in the Arctic. I thought there was some very interesting highlighting really engaging the Department of Homeland Security and focusing its level of competency, whether that's an Arctic Policy Board or an Arctic Fusion Center. I thought those were very important ideas. Obviously, they have to be funded. It has to work through the system if it's appropriate. But I think you're getting at an important idea of building competencies and training the next generation of policymakers, experts, leaders that focus on this changing environment. Not only relearning what we know, but adapting to this transforming environment. Absolutely, and some of those things you mentioned, yes, they'll require funding. On the other hand, they're not very expensive. We already have a Coast Guard Academy. We have a very talented faculty and staff. It's an institution that attracts academia from all over the country. It attracts lecturers that come in there. We held an Arctic Symposium there last year and brought in some wonderful speakers, exposed our cadets to that and get them thinking. And once again, it's sort of a back-to-the-future type thing. When our Revenue Cutter School of Instruction, many of the people that they prepared years ago were bound for the Bering Sea Patrol. As I said, about 150 years we've been patrolling those waters up there. And it's been cut back over the years, but with the increase in human activity, we'll find more and more of our young officers and a list of people going up there and serving and developing their competencies and proficiency and knowledge of the Arctic. One last question before I unleash the audience on you. Let's talk a little bit about international cooperation. And this is a story I think that isn't told as often as it should. And I think you could spend a little time telling our audience where the Coast Guard serves internationally. It's a very robust presence. But the Coast Guard has really been the leader for the oil spill response agreement that was negotiated using the framework of the Arctic Council, the emergency response and preparedness agreement for oil spills. Your own traveling next week to Norway. You're a frequent visitor to these countries. And particularly the Russian relationship with the FSB. Just in your own thoughts and words, sort of where you see the future of the Coast Guard's international engagement in the Arctic and globally. I think it's a fascinating story. We are oversubscribed internationally. I'll tell you that. We get requests from all over the world to provide Coast Guard training and expertise. We do have a small international training detachment, but with the way the laws are written, the Coast Guard, the United States Coast Guard cannot spend any of our appropriate money to go overseas and conduct training. So therefore we rely upon the State Department or the combatant commanders to provide funding for us to go over. The challenge is, particularly as it relates to the combatant commanders, they are U.S. Defense Department. And most of the time, and rightly so, we want the best defense in the world, but they are focused in the countries they deal with with the Defense Ministry or their counterpart ministry or department within that particular country. So the Coast Guard works in many various ways. Generally, our counterparts are the Ministry of Interior or other similar agencies in those countries which opens up a broader portfolio of people and activities, whether it's, for instance, China right now. We have, the Coast Guard has many entrees into China. In fact, as you've probably seen, there are a series of articles. They are taking the, they call them the Five Dragons, which are their five maritime agencies and they have, in the literature, they've modeled themselves after the United States Coast Guard and combined them into a department of the oceans now so that they get greater synergies. And that is our entree to China. We have many more concurrent training opportunities, exercises and interchange with China than almost any other agency in the government. The same is true with Russia. We, as someone said, you can see Russia from our back door. No comment? But we are there and we interact with the Russians all the times because of our close proximity in Alaska. And they were one of the founding members along with us in the North Pacific and North Atlantic Coast Guard forums which give us the opportunity to talk about these challenges in a non-confrontational way and come up with solutions. So we have wonderful relationships with the border guard in Russia. Fantastic. All right, promise your turn. Nate, I'm sure we have some really tough questions, so fire away. Great, Admiral, thank you very much for being here. I'm gonna combine a couple of questions because I think they're collectively, that they have a common theme. First, the first part would be the president calls in his strategy, the Arctic region, stable, free of conflict, et cetera, but inevitably there's gonna be competing interests in the Arctic, especially over time as nations gain more access. The first thing I'd like to ask is how do you see the Coast Guard's role in really moderating or mitigating the effects of inevitable tensions that will arise over fisheries and resources, things like that. And second, I think I would like to ask you to comment a little more in detail on how you see potentially DOD being a thickening asset for the Coast Guard in certain respects in the Arctic with respect to the Navy, especially in the Air Force. Sure. I'd begin by responding to that by saying that the topic that I spoke of in the remarks, maritime governance, I was at a meeting probably about a year or more ago up in Canada and it was focused on the Arctic and we had representatives from various departments within the US government that were meeting with our Canadian counterparts. Lieutenant General Semyonov, the head of the Canadian Armed Forces was seated directly across from me and I was asked to come up and speak about Coast Guard activities in the Arctic. There was a Department of Defense representative that got up and the basic thrust was there's no conflict there, we see no reason for activities, there are no threats and therefore the Defense Department has no plans for the next 10 or 20 years. Lieutenant General Semyonov turned very red and immediately got up to make his comments and he said that national security is much more than national defense. There's, yes there's defense but there's also economic security, there's environmental security, there's energy security and this broader concept of national security is what the Coast Guard focuses on in terms of maritime governance. The safe and secure and environmentally safe approaches to and from our shores. How do we govern the maritime? How do we use regimes that are in place? How do we cooperate with other countries to assure that their ships and our ships can safely and securely transit around the world? We've been doing this for well over 200 years. This service has evolved because just as the Chinese are doing now, various leaders within our government over the years have decided that components come together so that we have the synergy of all things maritime working with the Coast Guard, whether it's security, safety or environmental protection. So for me the mission is no different. It's just that we have expanding operations space that we're responsible for. The challenge of course as Heather wants to go in that direction is that the resources are finite and we find ourselves in a time because of the economy, because of the budget situation which I describe like a sailor as uncertain and stormy seas. All I can do is react and adapt to it and do the best we can. So as I said, we're gonna use our authorities, our capabilities and our competencies to expand our operations up there, but it comes at an expense for other Coast Guard operations. And there was a final part to that and I... Oh, the Department of Defense sort of at US Navy potentially, where do you see sort of the DOD playing a larger role in the army? Well, you know, other than the comment that the DOD official that we have no business there. I get the opportunity to sit with those guys quite a bit. I mean, General Dempsey has taken a very significant interest in the Coast Guard because as forces for the United States are diminished and reduced, his job is to provide national security options to the President of the United States. And he has found us to be fascinating. He has spoken to our Coast Guard Foundation dinner. He flew out with me to a national security cutter. He's gone to our Coast Guard Academy to speak to them and every place he goes he visits the Coast Guard because he wants to know... He visited an icebreaker in Seattle. So I would say that if you were to ask him the same question, he'd say, geez, as the chairman, I'm oversubscribed already. So the Arctic, we're very happy to have the Coast Guard up there taking part in their activities. Now reality is that we have great partners at Elmendorf with the Air Force and Fort Richardson... Richardson? Well, it's a joint base now in any case, Army and Air Force, but we've got great partners there. We've relocated our Sector Command Center to the Alaska National Guard on the joint base up there. And from time to time we operate with Air Force para-rescue jumpers who help us out with search and rescue. So one of the things the Coast Guard is very adept at is leveraging other people and other agencies wherever we can because we know we don't have enough resources to do everything we're responsible for. So we're constantly reaching out to those partners to see where we can help and assist each other. Emma Papp, if I can jump in just as a second question as you were talking, it reminded me, you know, your engagement, the Coast Guard's engagement, and search and rescue, again, Arctic Council, the oil spill response. Do you think that Arctic Council members, because security cannot be discussed within the Arctic Council, it's not allowed in the declaration, do you think countries are searching for a forum, a venue, an opportunity to discuss Arctic safety, Arctic capabilities, things like that? Or do you think what we have now is sufficient for the task at hand? I think what we have is sufficient. I think that the International Maritime Organization, which includes all those countries, has a focus on maritime safety and maritime security. The IMO has been very good at addressing the challenge of piracy in terms of putting out guidance and best practices for people. And if you look at, out in the Gulf of Aden right now, piracy is all but eliminated out there right now because the IMO has taken best practices from all the participating countries and given guidance out there. Pollution regulations, the Maritime Transportation Security Act, the U.S. enacted portion of the International Ship and Port Facility Code, all actions taken by the IMO. So I would better utilize the bodies that we already have there. Now, having said that, I will say the challenge for the United States is that I, when I went to London two years ago for IMO as the head of delegation, every bilateral meeting that I had began by being lectured on why the United States hasn't demonstrated leadership and acceding to the Law of the Sea Convention. I got the eight art nations together for lunch and as each person run around the table, I got a lecture on why hasn't the United States acceded to the Law of the Sea Convention because it gives you standing and just puts all those things out of the way so we can have a more productive discussion. So I'd be happy to have a session to the treaty because it would give me a little bit more time to talk to the people rather than getting lectured. There we go. Nate, I think we can squeeze in maybe two more questions before we go. Thank you. I have a quick question on capabilities here and I think again, I'll merge a few because there's a common theme. I think the first question I'd ask is as you sort of, as we enter a period of diminishing resources, obviously choices have to be made and so there's gonna be trade-offs between one area and the other within every department of government. Where's one of the areas you think that you need to most mitigate risk with respect to the Arctic and where can you accept some risk with respect to the Arctic? And then second is the expanding responsibilities of the Coast Guard consistent with your current acquisition programs and the challenges you have in acquiring new equipment and new capabilities. Well, I'll answer that in reverse. First of all, I'm happy with the priority set within our acquisition programs because they're long established. We need them and one of the things that drives shipbuilders in particular crazy is you're constantly changing requirements if you don't come up with a steady funding stream because it ends up costing us more in the long run if we don't stick with the project and get it completed. And as I said, I think the National Security Cutter is probably one of the best examples because we can use it in the Arctic when activity is occurring up there and then for other missions throughout the rest of the year. And we'll be building the offshore patrol cutter, the replacement for our medium endurance cutters soon. And one of the requirements for that is that those ships need to be capable of operating in the Bering Sea and the Arctic as well. Whereas our current class of medium endurance cutters, we don't even send them to Alaska because they can't operate up there. Probably the best example of mitigation of risk, I think, is in ice breakers. Three years ago when I came into this position, we had just Healy. And I set out a couple of goals for my tenure as Commandant. The first being to make sure Healy keeps running and to get the funding for operating ice breakers back into the Coast Guard budget. That's been accomplished. We have those funds. The second goal was to get one of our heavy ice breakers back into service and the Congress has provided the money and Polar Star is back in service and ready for operations now. And then the third was, and I thought this was a stretch goal and that I'd be very lucky to get it, was to convince the administration to make the case to begin construction of a new Polar Icebreaker. Wala, we are there. So I probably should have said a couple more things. Maybe I'm just an underachiever here, but I'm pretty happy with where we're at. We need to have the ability for assured access to the Arctic. Now I've talked about a persistent presence and seasonal activities. That does not, those seasonal activities do not mitigate the need to have assured access in times of emergency. And that was demonstrated glaringly two years ago. In fact, there was a request to send Healy down to the Antarctic. I almost bit on that, but then I said, you know, I've got one ice breaker. I need to keep it close so that if we need it, it's there. And then boom, the oil, the fuel delivery was not made to Nome, Alaska. And fortunately, Healy was still within striking distance and we're able to break the way into Nome. Another historic event for us amongst a history of major rescues and events up there. So I think that I was very uncomfortable when we only had Healy. We've got Polar Star now. In fact, we are working up Polar Star. She'll be up in the Arctic this summer getting their proficiency built back up of operating in the ice. And our intention is to send her to Antarctica in February of 2014. The first time a U.S. ice breaker will break into McMurdo, I think, in probably about a dozen years or so. Admiral Pepe, if I could just follow up very quickly. It seems to me, some estimates, and you can break this myth apart. This could take up to 10 years. If today decisions move quickly to construct an ice breaker, we have not constructed an ice breaker in the country for 30 years. It could be upwards of $1 billion for one ice breaker. That's some of the estimates. I don't know if that's correct or not. If we could think creatively and appreciating the Jones Act is not going to allow this, but is there some thinking being given to working in joint procurements with Canada, with other countries, Finland? Is there an idea of, again, leasing, maybe from the private sector, oil companies are constructing these that some sort of a joint sharing when we need it? It just is, to me, extraordinary to think of one ice breaker is one billion with a B dollars. Well, when you start looking at aircraft carriers that are $7 billion, which we have 11, and I'm not saying we shouldn't build aircraft carriers, and I'm not saying we need more or less aircraft carriers. What I'm saying is shipbuilding is expensive. And the unpredictability, the lack of consistent commitment in funding increases prices. Now, we have built an ice breaker within the last 13 years. Healy was built 13 years ago, although a medium ice breaker. And I'm confident that we have the technological ability to build ice breakers in this country. We need to get the right steel for it. We haven't built a heavy ice breaker in 50 years, or I'm sorry, in about 40 years. And I throw that out there because there are people that say, well, the oil companies are building this. They're not, they're not building heavy ice breakers. They're building ice-capable vessels that can break some ice, that can move anchors around for their drill rigs and things like that. But they are not heavy ice breakers that are built to military standards that are built to last 40 or 50 years as an asset, as a resource that's dependable for the United States of America. Leasing ultimately ends up costing us more money. And I haven't seen anybody within the United States has demonstrated that they can build one quickly or for less money or whatever else. So what I have to go with is we need equipment that we specify because in the Coast Guard we're going to have to set up logistics, training, et cetera. And we want to be involved in that all along because this is just like anything else I look at as commandant. Yes, I get mired down in the annual budget cycle, but I've got to be looking at 10, 20, 30 and 40 years from now on what sort of assets will the United States need from its Coast Guard? And I believe we will need a heavy polar ice breaker that people are competent in using. That'll be reliable for us. So that's where I'm focused right now. We are, we're coordinating with the Canadians. They're probably about a year or two ahead of us in terms of looking at their design and we have people embedded there that are studying what they're doing. We may very well, while we may not be able to come up with an original design, what we'll do is we'll come up with requirements and Finland, Sweden, they build ice breakers. In fact, the last ice breaker that was built, the Mackinaw up in the Great Lakes was built on a finished design. So there's probably parent craft designs that we can adapt and that will maybe cost us less and I remain optimistic that we'll get there. But yes, by the time we design our requirements and everything else, it'll probably be 10 years and the high end is a billion dollars but I think that's a good investment for something that you can use for 40 years and Polar Star will fill that gap for the next 10 years until we get it built. Well, Admiral Pat, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. Congratulations on your strategy and we look forward to having you back so I can keep pressing you on that implementation. Absolutely. Colleagues, please join me in thanking Admiral Pat. Thank you very much. And again, thank you all for joining us. Look forward to future military strategy forms and have a great day. Thank you.