 So look, the significance of today's event is quite plain in many ways. We hear about the changing strategic challenges in Australia's extended region, the Indo-Pacific, almost every day. I had the privilege of speaking here myself recently about this unfolding concept and what it means for our interests. But of course, one of the big themes when you're looking at the regional response to these security challenges in the Indo-Pacific is very much about partnerships. And of course, for Australia, beyond partnership, I guess, the alliance with the United States, such a fundamental element of our security interests and our response to regional challenges. And so it's not every day that we get the opportunity to hear from really one of the key voices in command but also in practice of security in the Indo-Pacific region, which is why the college could not pass up the opportunity to host our speaker today. So we'll hear in a moment from Lieutenant General David Berger, who of course is here in his capacity as the commanding general US Marine Corps Forces Pacific. I'm sure that will be Indo-Pacific for long, but we'll go with the title we were given for the moment. But look, I had an opportunity before we came in here to speak for a few moments with our visitor, with General Berger, and it was really impressed on me, I think, the scale of the mission, the scale of the challenge that he has. I'll just give you, I guess, one or two points of context before I invite our visitor to speak. So Lieutenant General David Berger is the senior US Marine Corps commander in the Indo-Pacific. In other words, he commands something like 90,000 US Marines right across the region, which is around about two-thirds, if you like, of all operational forces in the Marines. Now in his career, he's had, I think, quite a persistent and intense focus on the broader Indo-Pacific, including a lot of work in relation to Japan being stationed in Okinawa and so forth. But also, I think, at a practical level, he's had really the exceptional experience of leading in the US Marine Corps at every level from platoon commander right up to division command, and has seen and led in service in theatres right across the world. He's had a great set storm, enduring freedom, Iraqi freedom, and so forth. As with, I think, so many of the distinguished senior officers we meet from the Marine Corps in particular, he hasn't been, as we say, a slacker in the academic front either. And I note, and this is, I guess, putting on my university hat now, that somehow our visitor has managed to juggle that practitioner career with gaining a couple of master's degrees along the way, including from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. So as I say, a scholar-soldier, just the kind of practitioner we like to meet and cultivate here at the National Security College. General Berger, the floor is yours. We're on the public record, and I want to ask you all now to join me in welcoming our guest. Well, good afternoon, first of all. The introduction was way too long, and I would never clap before somebody starts talking because it's a big risk in doing that. But I do genuinely thank Roy for that. Not just the introduction, but the invitation, because the opportunity to speak at a place like this university is pretty rare, and I don't take it lightly. So I'm very happy to have the chance to spend time with you this afternoon. This is probably my sixth or seventh time visiting Australia in the past two years. First time on the ANU campus, as I mentioned to the doctor beforehand, so I'm very grateful for the chance to spend time with you this afternoon. Here's what I thought I'd do, probably for the first 30, 35 minutes. I think I owe you a couple things. I'll talk a little bit about the Marines in the Pacific and what we're doing, why we're doing it, and where we're doing it, so that you understand more about what my mission is. I'll talk a little bit about a national defense strategy, and I'll also wind in there some about partnerships and alliances and what that means to a commander like me and my job. I'm also going to talk a little bit about the Marines that are in Darwin and have been since 2012 on a rotational basis. I'll explain to you, hopefully, in terms you can understand why they're there and how they contribute to a sort of collective security of the region. But I got to say at the beginning here, and it may not be intuitive to you, there is tremendous value for any leader, me included, to listen. And this afternoon is a learning opportunity for me. And again, that may not seem apparent to you, but your questions, your thoughts, your opinions really inform us as leaders. And I would tell you, for a guy like me, they actually help you avoid blind spots. Because we typically will think and talk with other military people, and an audience like this helps me avoid a blind spot. So I'm very grateful for the chance this afternoon. Really, we'll be looking forward to your thoughts and your questions later on. You have a different lens than I do. Let me start with Marines in the now Indo-Pacific. We haven't changed our stationary yet or our coins or anything, but I'm sure you're right, that's coming. The first thing I think I would emphasize when it comes to the Marines in the Pacific is our history in this region is not recent. It is 200 years deep since the war of 1812. And I never pass up an opportunity to poke US Navy guy in the side, because in that war in 1812, there was a Marine Lieutenant who commanded a US Navy ship, which has never happened since 1812. We're waiting for the second one, but it hasn't come yet. A long way of saying that's almost the entire history of our country. And that's how long the Marine Corps has been in this region, about the same length. And especially, I would say for the last 70 years since the conclusion of World War II, on another level are focused on this region. And I would say also about six years after the conclusion of that war, the alliance that was formalized in 1951 really again codified the relationship that we have. And as Marines, we take that to heart. As Rory mentioned, the Marines in the Pacific are on the west coast of the United States, across the Pacific, through Hawaii, to Japan, and into the Indian Ocean. Altogether, that's give or take 90,000 on any given day. And then 90,000 really doesn't, not all that relevant to you, but I would say what is relevant is what Rory accurately portrayed. That's about two-thirds of our operational Marine Corps, two-thirds. And if Admiral Swift or now Admiral Aguelino was standing here, he'd tell you the same thing about the U.S. Navy. It's about two-thirds of the U.S. Navy. Why is that relevant? It's a big globe, right? It's a big world. A lot of problems around the world. The fact that the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Navy put two-thirds of their forces in this region should tell you something about the priority that we place on it. And over the years, because of different conflicts in different places, those numbers have fluctuated a little bit, but the ratio, the two-thirds, has been very, very static for about 70 years. I would add to that, it's the only place in the world where the U.S. Marine Corps has a large overseas basing arrangement, and that's in Japan. And that's 30-some-thousand Marines. And those are permanent overseas bases. I bring all that to the front because if this was a map behind me instead of a screen, the geographic context of that, I think, is important to know. And as a service, it actually shouldn't surprise many of you because we're, as Marines, we are maritime. We are naval in character. We view our contribution to national security through a naval lens. We're part of a naval service, first and foremost. And when you look, if this was a map behind me and you were to close your eyes and you were to look all the way from continental United States all the way across the Indian Ocean, you would, if you weren't familiar with this region, you'd see a lot of blue. There's a ton of saltwater that stitches this whole region together. And that's one of the reasons I think why the name changed from Pacific Command to Indo-Pacific Command. It didn't actually change our boundaries militarily where our boundaries are at all. They were the same the day before, the same the following day. But it's an acknowledgement that the continuum of the region doesn't stop at the Malacca Straits. It doesn't stop on a piece of land short of the Indian Ocean. There's a connecting tissue that runs from the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean, as do we. And it accurately really reflects the strategic reality, I think, of where we are. So both Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean power, I think for Australia, that's very easy to view, right? Because you straddle the two. It should be, I think, instinctive to anybody living here. Last week in Singapore, which is, I think, a very important set of meetings of an important dialogue, our Secretary of Defense, Matt, has talked at some length about the enduring commitment to the region. In his words, that commitment transcends America's political transitions, which I thought was a very concise way of saying, no matter what the government is at the time, our focus here has been very consistent. It transcends that. So our 200 years in the Marine Corps, a little bit more, a couple of decades more sort of mirror images are our nation's 200 year history in this region. And I think as a Marine Corps, it's absolutely in line with our national commitment and our national strategic priorities. Secretary Mattis also calls the Indo-Pacific region our priority theater. Two very powerful words. This is our priority theater. So I think as a service, as a Marine Corps, we're absolutely in step with how he views our national priorities. That's directly lined up. Where we've been here for a long time, we're here to stay. This is our natural operating area. Now a few years ago, or a few months ago, about four or five months ago, our country published a new national defense strategy. And I thought for a few moments I might share with you how I view our national defense strategy through my lens, which is, of course, a couple layers below the Pentagon as an operational commander, just viewing things through my eyes. And I would tell you there's some folks in here have been knocking around a while. Also, I've seen a number of strategies, national defense strategies in my 37 years. All of them well written, all of them appropriate for the time. This one, I would tell you in 2018, is a little bit different. This one, this national defense strategy, for a commander like me, with two-thirds of the Marine Corps operating forces, very clear guidance. It doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation. And I think that's by design. And for those of you like me who have worked around or for General Mattis, you won't be surprised by that. There's not a lot of room for interpretation. He's a very concise thinker and speaker and writer. It's very clear. You can work with that. It doesn't surprise me. It shouldn't surprise you. That national defense strategy does a couple of things for a commander like me. First of all, as I mentioned before, it clearly prioritizes the Indo-Pacific theater. This is the region of most consequence for the United States today and into the future. And it states that explicitly. And I think it's sort of easy to see why. You don't have to be an NDU student to really grasp why that is the case. This region, and many of you live here, is, I think, the most dynamic region by almost any measure. Economically, and I'm not an economics major by any means, but I understand that the economy in this region drives the global economy. And I think that's a fair statement. Minister Payne, I think four or five, six days ago in the same set of dialogues in Singapore, the way she characterized it is 44% of the global GDP is in this region. 2 thirds of the global growth over the last decade. And these are hermetrics. 2 thirds of the global growth over the last 10 years in this region. Demographically, this is clearly home to the world. This is the largest center of population in the world. And if you add up, like you all know, India and China alone, that's a third of the world's population diplomatically. And I'm not by any stretch. I think diplomatically, if you looked around the world, you would be hard pressed to find any other region that keeps you near as busy. There's apparently a big meeting in about five days or six days. And somewhere in this region, in Singapore, there's all the diplomatic activity that happened before that. Our former CIA director, now Secretary of State, back and forth to Pyongyang, Kim Jong-un, back and forth to Beijing. Russia's foreign minister, also traveling to the region, a whole burst of diplomatic activity. Lots of diplomats working their backsides off. It's diplomatically, it's pretty dynamic. Keeps all of them plenty busy. And finally, I think from back to the US, my lens that I look through, this region has been, always will be, of incredible strategic significance to the US and the rest of the world in a larger, more macro sense. Our national defense strategy lays out five principal threats to the United States. Of those five, four are in this region. The top of those two, like some of you who may have read that document, at the top is China and Russia, who, in our view, are strategic competitors for the United States. And they are attempting to rewrite the rules and norms and internationally accepted behavior, the international order in their favor. North Korea and Iran below them in the national defense strategy terminology rogue regimes. They threaten the neighborhood within their region, want to become more dominant over their neighbors, militarily. And number five, violent extremist organizations, which in this region, and Marawi in particular, as an example, are not Middle East only threats. And they're not going away anytime soon. So out of those five, four, and I guess Iran is a stretch, but at least four of those here central in this region. And all the militaries in the world, six of the largest ones, are here in this region. And some of the most, in my view, some of the most pressing, some of the most challenging scenarios, the biggest challenges for our countries are in this region. North, no surprise to anyone in this room. But the maturation of North Korea's ballistic missile capability, intercontinental ballistic missile capability, which they are pursuing, and their nuclear weapons capability, which they have been pursuing, continues. China's militarization of the South China Sea, terrorism, which again, I think Marawi in the Philippines, a wake-up call for a lot of people in this region and a great example of how problems cannot be contained to one area of the world, and it's going to continue for the foreseeable future. All those, including the last one, the terrorism part, I think brought home two weeks ago in Indonesia with the attacks there that it's not a problem that you can easily contain at all. And every country needs to focus on it. In addition to the Indo-Pacific, I think, as a region, the National Defense Strategy are for a commander like me, very specific guidance that it tells each of the military services, it provides us a clear focus, and it tells us how to address those priority threats. And it does so by starting with, and this is penned by General Mattis, and those of us who've worked around them before, you can recognize his thoughts. He begins that conversation with a description of lethality as a military force, and that that has to be our focus as war-fighting organizations. The second part of it that I drew from that National Defense Strategy is the importance of both alliances and partnerships around the world, internationally, in other words, multilaterally. So I'm going to talk just a moment about those two parts, the lethality part, and the international alliances and partnerships. I'm going to start with lethality because as a military commander, that's really where it begins and ends. It doesn't always end there, but it very definitely begins there. Here's the reason why. When you have a military force that you command as a tool to execute, to carry out your national priorities, I think it's as much about preparing for war, the potential for war, as it is about preventing and deterring war. There's clearly a direct relationship, but both drive what I do. And there's a linkage because having a lethal force, a credible, capable military force underwrites, underpins the other part, the deterrence part. Because you're not going to deter any behavior. You're not going to deter another country or a faction if you don't have a credible capability. So lethality, in our words, that's the credible military capability part. And you have to be prepared. You have to have a force that's capable of fighting and winning across the range of military operations because we don't know where or when or what type the next crisis might be. So if you're me and your challenge, your task is to increase your lethality, how do you do that? Well, I think as a Marine, I would break it down into four basic areas. First, as a Marine Corps. And I'm going to drop you down into my shoes for just a moment. As a Marine commander, it means understanding that first and foremost, you are part of a naval force, which means naval integration, operating as a naval force. Now, why do I highlight that? I highlight that because as a Marine Corps, for times during our 200 plus year history, we have been conducting operations extended ones ashore on land because that's what our nation needed us to do. And Afghanistan and Iraq are the most recent examples of that. That's what our nation needed to do. But that's not really our DNA. That's not our strongest suit. Our best contribution to national security is when we operate as part of a naval force. We are a maritime service, part of a naval service. And we're strongest when we're partnered with the Navy. Why do I bring that up? Because when we operate as a naval force, Navy plus Marine Corps, we operate from the sea. We can project power from the sea. And we operate as a Marine Corps, we operate it as an integrated air, aviation, land, logistics, ground, all that built into our team. It's baked into our composition of our force from the beginning. And when you have that, no one else in the world can do that. And when we're operating as part of a naval force, it's very powerful. It's very strong. So to that end, for the last couple of years, during my tour as commander of the Marines in the Pacific, I have focused a lot aggressively on naval integration. We're using a lot more ships and different kinds of vessels than we have in the past. When I grew up as a young officer, we operated off of amphibious ships, and that's what we did. Now we operate off of a whole variety of vessels. Important for us to know, because neither one of us is ever going to have enough pure amphibious ships. We're exploring ways to operate from sea platforms and land platforms and back and forth. And we're operating towards tasks, mission sets, that we didn't really have to do for decades, like sea control. And I'll talk about why that's relevant in just a moment. This year, as an example, this year, earlier this year, for the first time, we put F-35 Lightning B's on amphibious ships in this region. First time we've ever done that. It won't be the last. So sailing underway with three ships, a whole amphibious-ready group, and a marine expeditionary unit embarked on there with F-35s. And we did it here in the Indo-Pacific, sailing out of Japan. But why is that important? Why is that big news? Well, for a commander like me, it takes your capabilities level to a whole other plateau, a whole other platform. When you combine what a fifth-generation fighter or jet, like the F-35, brings to what already is a very capable, very powerful force with an infantry battalion of nearly 1,000. Everything from artillery to amphibious vehicles. And you add on the fifth-gen fighter portion of it that has the sensor systems and weapon systems that it has. You've just extended your range way out. And you link that into a naval force. Now you can do a whole lot of things you could not do before. A lot of learning happening. A lot of advances just in the past year. And that's all happening in this region. Second, I think in terms of lethality. And this is almost back to the future for us. How do you operate in a contested environment? And I'm talking now about a strategic competitor that has very capable systems. How do you relearn how to work in that environment, which we haven't done in a while? Now we do. Part of that, I think, is the exponential technological changes which have allowed countries to rapidly build their military and become a strategic competitor to the United States. That's clearly part of that. And that's closed the gap technologically between us and a couple of our strategic competitors. But it's not gone away. And it's not the only dimension I would offer to consider. The other factor, or one other factor that a guy like me or a gal like in my position needs to focus on is the adversary weapon systems, the radar systems that have greater reach, much more precision, higher payloads than they had before. So the distances that we're operating at, my operating environment is deeper, much deeper. The sensors, and I'm talking about in the air, on the ocean, and subsurface, the intelligence, the collection sensors are ubiquitous. Now that was a domain that I think Austria and the US and others could operate in pretty freely before without much threat. Now it's not the case. And those also have longer ranges. Basically, there's more eyes and ears on my battlefield times 10 than there were five years ago. And it's only on an upward trajectory. There were some domains that we operated in freely, either because we had a technological advantage or just another country wasn't their priority, now no longer the case. And I'm not talking about the conventional domains of air and land and sea. I'm talking about the domains of cyber, electronic warfare. And those weren't challenged sort of domains before. They certainly are competitive space for me now, for us now. And I think to use a microcosm of that or to lift up a microcosm of that I would use, and you can pick five or six or seven, I would just offer to you Syria. General Thomas is our commander of US Special Operations Pan. He has forces operating alongside a bunch of international partners in and around Syria. He characterizes Syria as the most aggressive electronic warfare environment on the planet. Now he has special operators around the globe. Syria is not a very big place. That's the density of electronic warfare in a place like Syria. And he goes on in his public statement to say that the adversary's electronic warfare systems that are being employed in Syria are trying to disable some of our aircraft, some of our ISR systems. Shouldn't surprise anybody in this room. They're trying to take down our command and control systems, our communication systems. Electronic warfare is competitive space right now. It's going to be that way. And unfortunately, I think from my view, from where I sit, what's happening in Syria is not going to stay in Syria. That's not an isolated case. That competitive space is here in this region this afternoon while we're sitting here. So we have to be prepared to be targeted. We have to be prepared to be seen. We have to be able to fight in all those domains, and they're going to be contested. Number three for lethality for me means realistic training and experimentation. And they're two different things but related for a commander. In simple terms, if you're going to be able to fight in that kind of contested environment, we've got to amp up. We've got to improve the sophistication of our training. We've got to practice against more realistic threats against a thinking adversary in a much more realistic environment. And we're headed in that direction, and so is the Australian Defense Force. And lastly, when it comes to lethality viewed through my lens, I would offer the last part, but not number four in priority is readiness. And I'm talking about combat readiness. That has to be the focus when you're talking about lethality. As a Marine Corps, we are a crisis response force. That's what we do for our country. We are first to fight, a poster from World War II. Our Congress mandated that the United States Marine Corps will be the force that is most ready when the nation is least ready. So it's more than a bumper sticker or poster. It's actually legislated to us. So for us, readiness, not just responsiveness, but responsiveness with a capability. Readiness, that's a key component of being a lethal force. Here, I think, in my experience over 37 years here, we have a lot of similarities to the Australian Defense Force, actually. This, the Australian Defense Force, like the US Marine Corps, in its DNA is an expeditionary force. This force here is trained, thinks that they're going to be the first to get called out, doesn't need a lot of fancy infrastructure, doesn't need a coffee bean place, doesn't need power, doesn't need water. They're going to go quickly. Well, the rest may come later on. On a golf course, when the Air Force gets there, but not right now, there's a culture, a culture of being expeditionary that I think the US Marine Corps and the Australian Defense Force share. And I know that, and I think it's demonstrated in the ADS response to cyclones just in the past couple of years. And we talk back and forth from our headquarters in Hawaii to the headquarters here. So when the Cyclone Winston and the Cyclone in Vanuatu happened, I think less than 48 hours, Australian Defense Forces were going, headed there. And that's the same way we are. We don't need a week, we don't need a month. Sorry, we're not ready. This Defense Force here is go quickly, same as us. Textbook examples of being ready. So for a commander enhancing readiness means all four of those things. And I'll finish up the lethality part with what's actually at the centerpiece of lethality for a commander. And that's the human part. You cannot have a lethal force if you don't emphasize the human being that's at the center of it. Marines, Marines, the people part are center of gravity in the Marine Corps. It's not equipment, it's not doctrine, it's not training, it's not techniques, it's none of those things. At the very center, the strength of our lethality is the human being. And I would say, if you flip the coin upside down I would, my way of explaining it is you can buy your way to technical capabilities. You cannot buy your way through the human part. That's what separates us. And I think there's a centrality of really tough training for the rigors of combat to prepare a human being for that kind of thing that's at the centerpiece. And all the equipment in the world can't get you past there. We have to recruit, retain, train the very best we have, the very best we can find if we're gonna be able to fight tonight. And we will. The second part, I'd like to switch gears to after lethality is the partnership and alliance part. I think first in just plain language terms, why would Secretary Mattis and why would our national defense strategy focus on that? I think it's reassuring our partners and allies that we will be right next to them. And we need to do that all the time. We should. And that can mean whether the crisis is natural or man-made either way. That means in plain military terms, you have a fight, we will be in the foxhole right next to you. You need a hand, let us know, we will respond quickly. It's a confidence factor. It's a trust thing. Second, the second part of that past the trust though is what we spend a ton of time on in the military, which is interoperability. With really the closest most capable allies. Now, my view interoperability is a buzzword, probably overused. Here's how I view it. What we cannot do. We should never do is show up to a crisis and figure out if our radios and our systems can work together. We cannot afford to do that. So interoperability for me means upfront, before the crisis, doing all things to make sure that when we arrive at that place, we can operate together if we're tasked to do it. And we will be. And I think that runs the gamut from training every single day to seminars all the way to our professional military education where our officers go to your schools, your officers go to ours. To me, all that is part of interoperability. It's the corollary to trust. We can't show up there and learn it. Third, I think a third aspect of that alliance partnership for me is actually helping those countries that ask for it, building their capabilities. Their military capabilities. Why is that important? Because the more the load they can carry, the less, even not the less necessarily we have to carry, but it allows us to use our capabilities in a better way. So if the Australian forces and the US forces are in some, respond to some crisis and other countries can contribute, that should be a good thing. We should work towards that. And some of, if they can provide the kind of net security at home, that's great. There's about a dozen Marine Corps in this region. Either they call themselves a Marine Corps or it's a naval infantry, either way's the same. We spent, I spend a ton of my time with those dozen Marine Corps. They can handle the problems at home and net contributor, it's a good thing. Last part of this alliance partnership thing for me is actually learning. Here in other words, for a guy like me, for a US leader, it's actually using your, using your mouth less in your ears more. This is humility. Yeah, but humility so that we can learn from our partners. Secretary Mattis a few months ago, I had a better way of characterizing than I could dream of, he was talking in some form and he said, you know, all the best answers in the world don't come from the country with the most aircraft carriers. We need to listen. Australia, as some of you all, some in here are involved in it, Australia is gonna be the world's first, all fifth generation air force. World's first, before the United States, before anybody else. Their entire air force will be fifth generation. So guy like me figures they're gonna learn about command and control. They're gonna learn about logistics, they're gonna learn about sustainment, they're gonna learn about how to network, sensor systems, how to move information. Why would I not wanna learn from that? We need to learn from our partners, learn, learn from our partners. Basically we need to learn from them, we need to understand their opinions, we need to appreciate it, and we are. Earlier this week, this is Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I was in Darwin. We were in Darwin in the Northern Territories. I think that is a microcosm of what I'm talking about, and I'll explain why in a moment. Because in Darwin, the Marines there are training alongside Australian Defense Forces, and this has been going on for, this is the seventh year of that. Very much in line with how do you work alongside partners and allies, and how do you mutually develop each other's capabilities. I came to Australia first time as a lieutenant in 1998. I was deployed to Japan for six months. Came down here with another captain, met by an Australian officer who put us in a land cruiser in Darwin, and we drove for, seems like 12 hours, is probably only two. But we were going like 150 kilometers per hour across God knows where. Nothing but a huge dust cloud, stop. That's the training area. We were like, this is perfect. You know, if you're a military guy, this is perfect. 150 kilometers per hour the other way. Go back, bring some Marines down here to train. It's Darwin and the Northern Territories has come a long way since 1998. In a good way is my point. If you were, if you were. Yeah, yeah. I'll probably go to clarify that a little bit. In 1998 I came here to train with a small group of Marines and it was a great place to train and it still is. But now today, 10 times more than that. When each time I come to Darwin to see how the Marines are training and this is a rotational force, some people ask, well, what's the big deal about Darwin? First thing I would tell them is that's where we land and start to train and we quickly spread out. This is Friday afternoon, right? Right now, while we're sitting in this auditorium, there are Marines from that rotational force that's kind of centered in Darwin. They're on three Australian ships this afternoon. Three different ships. With, they're operating in three other locations in Brisbane and Darwin and we're just, I don't know, third place. Townsville with three different of Australian Defense Force Brigades. So, operating with three, training alongside three brigades, they're also on three different ships. Later this summer, they'll be on one of those ships headed to Australia to train as part of the rim of the Pacific exercise for probably three or four weeks and on that ship will be Australian diggers, US Marines, Sri Lankan Marines and Tonga Marines. That should tell you something about the strength of partnerships and why we need to train alongside each other, why it's so important. That's, if that's not multinational, I don't know really what is. And it's great training and it builds the relationships that we need. So, we started in the Northern Territories, started in the Northern Territories have now spread out across Australia and throughout into the region alongside Australian forces, Defense Forces have come in a long way. Why would we train up there? It's for the same reason it was great in 1998. Plenty of room, we can fly and shoot anything that's in our inventory and we're training alongside a peer partner who has exactly the same howitzers that we do, the same tanks, the same systems. Why would we not want to train there? It's great. The only other place we can do that is in back in the United States. And if we did it back in the United States, which we do, we couldn't train alongside Australian forces. This place central to me. So, we train at a high end alongside a high end ally. Long way of saying that that rotational force Darwin for me that's a platform for learning. That is a platform for learning. Lastly, I'll just finish up with, we do a lot of exercises like the Australian forces do around the world, two or three weeks, four weeks and they're great, they're all great. We're in Darwin in Australia for six months. You can take a relationship and interoperability to levels you could never dream of in a couple weeks. So it's phenomenal. And not the personal relationships and everything else is great, but it's really about military capabilities. And if you look like you all do, if you picture where Darwin is in relation to the region, it's great to have Marines and Australian defenses forces at that point on the map, right, it's pretty powerful. Great place to engage regional partners from. We don't take that for granted. Oh, that's sort of the Marine rotational force and where we've come since 2012. And there's about 1,600 Marines up there right now and it'll grow to 2,500. All that progress in pretty short amount of time actually. Never would have been possible by ourselves, but we've had your Australian defense force and defense ministry leaders really putting their shoulder into it and that's what's allowed us to get in five years, six years where we are today. But I think you also have to view, if you view the Marine rotational force, I think it's great to put that in the context of a larger bilateral relationship. The strength, in other words, of the alliance, I think has made that learning possible over the last six, seven years. This is 100 years of mateship, right, this year. 100 years of mateship, a century. And there's a lot of talk about that and a lot of positives in that. Here's what it means to a guy like me. I know for 100 years that meant a lot of blood sweat and toil in some pretty tough fights alongside each other. It's not lost on me. A lot of sacrifice shared by our two countries over 100 years when we really depended on each other. And in my career and going back 100 years, there's never been a crisis where the US had to send military forces and there was not Australians right next to them. It's never happened. I don't see it happening in the near future. I don't see it happening. And why is that important to a guy like me? Because I think looking forward, looking forward is not gonna get any easier. The world's more complicated. We need to rely on that 100 years of shared toughness going forward. Because I'm concerned, we should be concerned that the future's not gonna be easy. There's big threats in front of us. But we have a partnership and alliance that we should lean on pretty heavily. Long way of saying 100 years of makeshift is great. We should celebrate it. We should have a great time talking about it. But the world does not stand still. Our partnership, that alliance cannot stand still because the world isn't gonna stand still.