 Over the last 12 months, have worked very closely with the PEO to ensure that we keep LCS Head of Fair in the channel, that we keep the Mission Models Head of Fair in the channel, and that we keep it rolling. And they do superb work for you, for us, every single day. Tate Westbrook back there, recently reported from Joe Malloy's front office, where he was working over at FMB, now he's the Assistant Programmer. And his FM chops are undeniable and gives us great support every single day. Let's see, where's Dave McFarland? Dave McFarland back there in the back, Dave McFarland took over as a deputy in Op-Nav N96 with some reductions in flag officers, Ron Boxl took off and departed, he's down on the J5 on the Joint Staff, Dave flitted up from the Assistant Programmer to the Deputy, Dave does absolutely superb work for us. And I couldn't get it done without him. Robert Tortor and Craig Fajardin, they do training and it gives me just a short to recognize them to the Pacific. And how does this all, and have we got our priorities in 96 in order to be able to take advantage of this time here? I think about the time that I spent when we would get Bunker Hill underway and we would steam out of Tokyo 1 and as we went by the sea buoy within two hours we were being flown on by the Soviets every single day. We'd go through Tsushima, we'd go through Tsugaro, we didn't make a darn bit of difference, but we were going to get flown on every day. We worked on the inter-screen, on the AFW inter-screen every single day. And we had to be good. We had to be good because it was right there. It was right there for us. We had to work on the inter-screen. We had to defend the carrier. It was midway. We had to defend the carrier. We had to intercept and escort at 125 and we were running cap stations at 125 and doing intercepts at 150. Those were the good old days. Reeves was out on picket. We were in close. We had four or five, six ships around midway getting it done. Air defense, the inter-screen and the war in sea. It was our bread and butter then and it is our bread and butter now. It is core to surface warfare. It is what we do. But 80 and 90 are around. The Berlin Wall comes down. The Soviet Union is dissolved. We get involved in different kinds of wars, in different types of conflicts. We are really into power projection. And the challenge on the sea, the challenge to sea control is not there. We have unfettered access to all of the oceans. The enemy is gone. The Soviet Union is tied up or the Soviet Navy is tied up and the Soviet Union is dissolved and we get into the first Gulf War and the first Gulf War is about. It is about power projection and I tell you what, we got absolutely phenomenal at strike. You want a tomahawk at this latitude and longitude, at this time, you are going to get that tomahawk. You want 100 of them, you are going to get 100 of them. We took SSBNs and we turned them into SSGNs. Strike. You want sorties off the aircraft carrier, you are going to get sorties off the aircraft carrier and you are going to get ordnance on target. And think about those sorties that were coming off that aircraft carrier. Where was the screen? Where was the challenge to the aircraft carrier? Where was the threat? What was the threat? We would operate routinely, sometimes with zero escorts with the aircraft carrier, most of the time with one, certainly some playing guard at night, unchallenged, unchallenged. I remember when I deployed on Milius in the 2000 timeframe, my sonar techs, my wonderful, beautiful, amazing sonar techs, banned the 50 cows. As we went through this raid of Hormuz, is the emphasis on the inner screen? Is the emphasis on defending our high value assets? Is the emphasis on ensuring that we control the sea? We control the sea in the United States Navy and core within surface warfare, we execute the war at sea, we execute the inner screen, we protect the aircraft carrier, we protect and we enable the ability to project power and we execute our defense. Not that those have taken a back seat and not that those have, that means that we have gone away from those, but we haven't had to concentrate them on them with a significant amount of our gray matter. Well, look at the quote from President Kennedy. Control of the seas means security. Control of the seas means peace. Control of the seas can mean victory. The United States must control the seas if it is to protect our security. So as we got together in 1996 and we looked at this at a course correction and we started to leverage the gains that we had been made, especially in our number one priority, which was to make stuff work, make the stuff we have today work, working on the maintenance side of the house. Captain Plath and Thomas Cicciolo, working with fleet maintenance officers, working with the type commanders, working with our naval sea systems command. We started driving down a path that gives us a well-defined requirement that we can defend and we can fund. And we're driving in a direction that's going to allow us to be able to ensure the maintenance of our ships, ensure that we can get them to their expected service side, ensure that we can drive them into their midlife availabilities or whenever the modernization availability occurs for them. Tremendous, tremendous work, not only on their part, but on the part of the Tycoms and the part of the fleets and on the part of the Naval Sea Systems Command. Admiral Dave Gale working over at C-21 and prior to him, Admiral Jim Shannon, superb work, superb working relationship. We were able to leverage the work we've done to get a well-defined requirement for training and to get the funding executed. That doesn't mean we need to put that away, but we needed to shift around our priorities slightly, provide a slight course correction. So this is where we're going. The third priority, which is still there, is to make the stuff we have today work. We've got to keep our eye on the ball with respect to maintenance, with respect to training, with respect to manpower, with respect to the support that we provide to achieve that current readiness. And I would also submit to you when you see that getting LCS to the fleet has not fallen off the page, it is right there. In making the stuff we have today work, we deployed LCS. We brought her home under a new manning concept, a new training concept, a new maintenance concept, a new employment concept. We flew a crew over there, and that crew turned over, and two days later, that crew was underway, the entire crew, the first time in the history of the United States Navy. And we were able to do that, and we proved that we can do that. We're going to do it again with Fort Worth, a lot of part of this year. That's where LCS fits into this, building to the future. I'm going to talk a little bit later about building to the future. We've done a lot of work this year in order to get to where it is we need to be to understand how we can build ships affordably, how we can upgrade them affordably, and how we can get them to their expected service life. And the number one priority really is, and it's about controlling the sea, about what President Kennedy talked about, about resourcing our ability to do sea control, because air and missile defense, integrated air and missile defense, the inner screen, and the Ward C, offensive ASUW, clearly, squarely in the wheelhouse of surface warfare. Go to the next slide. So this is the programmatic slide that I have for you today. In the past, I've gone through a lot of our programs. I'm just going to talk briefly about these, but I can tell you that between Charlie Williams, between Joe Kilby, between the maintenance of the house, between Dave Welch, we've got everybody clearly and squarely focused on making sure that the entire kill chain that Vice Admiral Coleman referred to, we've got that covered from soup to nuts in executing these capabilities and ensuring that as we continue to operate in those contests, as the waters of the future become more contested, whether it's the Western Pacific, whether it's the North Arabian Sea, or whether it's the Eastern Mediterranean. Then when they say, hey, you've got to defend the high-value unit and the inner screen and defining the inner screen, which is growing right now, given the range of weapons that we're seeing out there from some of the undersea defense, that people aren't saying, well, what are we talking about here? Nope. We are responsible for making sure that the QQ80 on AV-50 system, which is the premier sub-hunting system that we have, and it is performing phenomenally that we have the training in place, that we have the training for the manpower in place, and that we have the training for the operation of the system in place and incorporating it into the larger picture of ensuring that we can defend the aircraft carrier always, because that is our purview. On the ASUW side of the house, a lot of work is being done on here. On the ASUW side of the house and on Harpoon. People say Harpoon, 65-mile missile. Harpoon is a very, very, very capable weapon, and I am absolutely convinced that we have good years left on that weapon, but we have to move further. We have some unique partnerships that we've developed as a result of trying to drive this down the road. One of them is OSD's Strategic Capabilities Office. Doing a lot of work with them, getting a lot of assistance from OSD's Strategic Capabilities in order to be able to ensure that as we move forward into the future, we've got ASUW and we've got the war at SeaWire. I'll talk a little bit more about DDG-1000 a little bit. We've got Flight 3 DDG coming online, Second Ship and 16. It's going to be a Flight 3 DDG. It's going to have the air missile offensive radar. Prior to that, and as we roll out, the Advanced Capability Bill 12, which is on Tech Insertion 12, which is Baseline 9 for our Aegis Weapon System, which is going to allow us to execute Navy-integrated fire control counter-air, which is a phenomenal, phenomenal capability. We're testing it out and we're building the concept of operations. We've got the crew of Normandy, which is going to deploy with a Theodore Roosevelt battle group, locked and loaded in order to be able to ensure that when we deploy Navy-integrated fire control counter-air, we can use the Santa Missile 6, which is really one of the centerpieces of Navy-integrated fire control counter-air to the maximum extent of its capability. We are delivering phenomenal, phenomenal capability and we need to be ready for it. And so as we sat back, our team in N96 said, okay, have we got it right? Do we need to make some corrections when it becomes about controlling the sea? And I do find it interesting that you hear a term anti-access area denial talked about quite frequently now, but I don't think that the anti-access area denial that we're experiencing today is really any different than some of the anti-access area denial threats that we experienced back in the 70s and 80s. But this is clearly, clearly our wheelhouse. So we're gonna continue to ensure that we have the entire readiness kill chain squared away and properly resourced in order to get these capabilities to the fleet, get them in the hands of our sailors and make sure that they can operate them and operate them properly as we move towards having to ensure or as we ensure that we continue to be able to control the sea. Next slide. The outlet for surface warfare, DDG-1000 in the water up in Bath Iron Wars last year. The latter part of last year. Tremendous, tremendous capability. A lot of new technology going into the ship. Integrated power, electronic module enclosures on this ship, long range land attack projectile, Mark 57 PVLS, a lot of new technology we're gonna learn a lot. And if this ship right here is achieved 75% of what it's touted to have, and I fully expected to achieve 100%, it is going to be a force multiplier for our fleet commanders and for our command commanders as we get it out there. We've got some work to do to get it out. No doubt about that, but I am confident we've got the right team on the ship in order to be able to get it out there and get it operating. Flight 3 DDG, up gun to 4160, 4,160 volt buses in order to be able to support the installation of the air missile defense radar. And as I said, it'll be coming out in the second ship in 16, will be the first AMDR ship. You heard Vice Admiral Coleman talk about the littoral combat ships. And where are we on that? A superb deployment. We're gonna go to IFC on the SCW mission package this year. We're gonna go to IFC on the mine sweeping package in the 15 time frame and in the 16 time frame that ASW package that Vice Admiral Coleman referred to earlier will be IFC in that particular year. Where we're driving into the future if we go to the next slide, the future surface combatant. A lot of work, I talked last year about scalability, flexibility, modularity. And I formulated that into, in my tip of the hat to the USNI and proceedings for publishing the article that I, that we wrote in OPNEVN 96 about, about where we're going with respect to our future ships. I think it is about integrated power on the right side ship. I think it is about the right weapons systems. I think it's about affordability, affordability, affordability. I think it's about ensuring that as we lay the ship down and we get the ship out to the fleet that we have a good plan in mind to ensure that the weapons systems paste the threat throughout the life of the ship. I think we have to think about the capability that we build into those ships. We've been building multi-mission ships, our God of missile destroyers and our cruisers. Are we still headed down a path that's gonna drive us to a multi-mission ship or are we looking at preferencing one mission area over another on the ships that we build? And I'm thinking about, as I think about directed energy and these other technologies that we're gonna build into these ships. I'm talking about moving into the latter part of the 20s where we're gonna start contracting for these in order to be able to replace our cruisers that are gonna be retiring in the 30s timeframe. A lot of great work. We did a war room effort in the mid-part of last year and partnering with UPNAV N81, the Assessments Division on the UPNAV staff. We have driven to a study on how we're gonna get to these capabilities. So we're gonna be culling through that and ensuring that we have a roadmap to get to these future surface combatant in the 20s timeframe. Next slide. So I'll wrap it up now and turn it over to my battle buddy, General Walsh. But I'll leave you with a couple thoughts. I think our third priority, which is still tile my list, flows into the second, which flows into the first, supporting that rebalance to the Pacific, ensuring that we're resourcing properly, which really supports the CNO's number one tenant of war fighting first. When I was in command of the Nimitz Strike Group, I used to go on board the destroyers and the cruisers and into the ready rooms and the squadrons. And I used to talk to them about the choice that we are faced with as we step into a position of responsibility, whether it's in command of squadron, whether it's in a department head on a ship, whether it's a leading chief petty officer in a division, and that is a choice that we are faced with respect to, with respect to whether or not we are going to be good or whether we are gonna try to get lucky. Now, and I would say to them, we in the strike group have to do everything we can to be as good as we can possibly be because there is an element of luck associated with going to sea. And what we are focused on in OPNAV N96 is to ensure that in our resourcing, in our requirements, in our support to the type commander, in our support to the fleet, in our support to our fellow resource sponsors that we are as good as we can possibly be. So as we drive towards this war fighting first, as we drive towards the sea control, as we drive towards these things that lay clearly in the wheelhouse of surface warfare, we are as good as we can possibly be. If we do that, we're gonna continue to head on a great path to the future. I look forward to your questions at the end. We'll try to, I think I'm out on time. I'll turn it over to Waila Wash. I think I got one more. And I think that's attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but we're gonna continue to work pretty darn hard in OPNAV N96 so we can be as lucky as we possibly can be, okay? So thank you very much. I look forward to your questions. With that, I'll turn it over to my shipmate and friend, Waila Wash. All right, well thanks, Tom. And with all of thank you very much and to the surface naval association. Appreciate this opportunity to kind of tell you our story a little bit on the amphib and the mine warfare side. The other thing too is we've got a great team on N95 that works amphib ships. We work mine warfare. We also work the naval expeditionary combat enterprise. So those are the three pieces. We're very close with Tom's team over at N96. Try to align as best we can with the same processes in place. Working with Admiral Coltman and his team to try to keep these things tight and aligned to keep moving forward. From a resource sponsor standpoint, one of the things I think that we focus on is that balance between current readiness and future readiness. On Admiral Coltman's team the surface warfare enterprise, Admiral Gubitow-Tow, Pete Scott, the future readiness piece. Tom and I balance that future readiness. But we also have the money on the manpower, the training, the maintenance dollars that come into us and trying to balance that piece. So we have those resources up there and trying to always look at what the fleet needs up there to try to balance where Tom's projecting, where we're trying to project out into the future with what the current fleet needs and what they're trying to do on a day-to-day basis. It's a real challenge in this budget environment that we're in, but we're working hard to try to work that. Next slide. I think the Secretary hit on this pretty well. The world today isn't getting any nicer and I don't think there's any peace dividend. So if you look at it is what he's talking about, you can go right to the next slide and talk about Ford Presence. And he touched base on this. On the Navy, the Marine Corps team and what Ford Presence means to that team of being Ford deployed and being out there all the time. The strategic value that we bring for our national interest. And I don't think there's any question about that is we come out of Iraq, we come out of Afghanistan. Looking at that, we're not garrisoning. We're going to continue to stay as a strong Navy Marine Corps team for deployed meeting our interest. And being able to do that for Ford Presence but also being able to scale up. So if I talk about the amphib fleet here just for a second and what the amphibs really do forward. I think if you look at phase zero, phase one, those operations, we don't get a lot of credit a lot of times for what we do in that area. We talk a lot about major conventional operations, what the blue kill chain can do with the red kill chain and that. But if you take a look around the globe today, our partners that we've got out there working those phase zero, phase one operations that the surface fleet, the entire Navy Ford deployed and entire Marine Corps team. But your amphibs being out there with that blue-green team that can really reach out there and build relationships, build partnerships, those are the alliances that hopefully prevent conflict. And they're out there doing that every single day. And I think as you look at those at that amphib force, it's certainly that Swiss army knife to be able to get out there and do phase zero all the way on up to major conventional operations. And I think the times here are very right for that Navy and Marine Corps team to be for deployed doing all the things the Navy and Marines do forward. Next slide, please. I kind of wanted to show you this. This is kind of where we're trying to head. As Tom talked about, rebalancing to the Pacific. A key part of that rebalancing to the Pacific is we have always had our ARG-MU4 deployed in Japan. That's gonna continue to be a constant for us. We've also had an ARG that's always been in the CENTCOM AOR. That ARG we expect to be continuously deployed. That's kind of our requirement to be able to man those two deployments. But there's a lot of other demands and as I had on that first slide, kind of a nasty dangerous world we're in. Not only are we in this rebalance to the Pacific, but we also have this new normal that's going on across the globe and trying to stay actively engaged, trying to prevent conflict in those areas. The one that you see in the med there, the special purpose magtaf crisis response. That was really the Marine Corps answer to the joint requirement to be able to have a crisis response force in the Mediterranean. Many of you old salts that are in here today would remember the days of the ARG for deployed, the MU4 deployed in the Mediterranean. We don't have the luxury, we don't have enough ships to be able to do that today with that requirement. So that special purpose magtaf is forward and it's not on ships. We'd like it to be on ships. You also see down off the coast there of Africa, down further south there in the Gulf of Guinea down there. A presence down there that we'd like with the new normal that we've got today. So being able to try to get independent steamers, ships that could deploy on there we're working. Going back to the Pacific, we've got Marines that are shifting out of Japan as we rebalance the Pacific. We've got Marines down in Darwin, Australia right now today operating there, along with his re-rebalance and move forces out of Japan down the Guam as part of that rebalance, putting Marine magtaf there. So trying to get those Marines to see, those sailors to see to support that is going to be a critical goal in that area. So that's kind of one of the challenges we've got is trying to ensure that we keep that piece up. One of the things that we've done with our ARGs and muses, the group sail, those days, we now desegregate, we do split ARG ops. We are constantly taking our muses, our ARGs, splitting them along, sometimes into different COCOM AORs to try to gain as much presence as we can. Next slide. This is kind of the demand that we see in the, if you look at the amphib fleet. If you look at the core capabilities of the Navy, there's no surprise that demand on our amphib fleet is high. And you could see it's high across the Navy, but I just look at, you could kind of see some of the sourcing requirements we've had, COCOM demand to get amphibs forward has been very high. And we continue to try to struggle to meet that demand. Next slide. One of the things that we find, you know, I was down at Quantico working down there on the marine side, and now up at N95, is we deal a lot with a lot of foreign nations and a lot of foreign nations, navies, marine and army, a lot. We had a lot of discussions with a lot of armies across the world, because they quite a matter of factly, look a lot, try to think of themselves a lot more like a magtaf, trying that we're smaller, we integrate, we task organize, and sometimes I think they can relate to us and how we organize. And the same thing with the fleet, is what we're seeing here is a lot of countries around the globe expanding their amphib force, and growing the amphib force throughout the globe, and that gives us a lot of opportunity. I think if you go back to that piece I was talking about, of building relationships, building partnerships, that gives us that opportunity there to work together as Navy, as teammates there to build those relationships and partner in a lot of different areas. So I think that's a key piece here, is this area here, more and more opportunities to work with partner nations around the globe in many different areas, all the way from the lower end on humanitarian assistance disaster relief all the way up on some of our major fleet exercises that work with some of our large scale amphibious landings. Next slide. The amphib ship numbers here you'll see is the requirement we've had over the years is to have 38 ships as our requirement to do our 2.0 MEB assault echelon capability. But we also see that matches up pretty well with our amphib force requirements. But we've looked at that and said, hey, we're gonna acknowledge the fact that during the fiscal constraints that we've got the 33 is the number. And that's the number that we're kind of working to and striving for. And you can see here with the ships that we've got coming online, particularly the LXR, we'll be able to meet that requirement out there in 25. So what you'll see from that is we don't have enough ships. The United States Navy doesn't have enough ships. We heard the Secretary of Navy there. So the key part here is maintaining the ships we've got, the readiness we've got is we keep these procurement plans on path as we try to keep that force coming online. Next slide. No question that the ARG-MU is our centerpiece. This continues to be our centerpiece as we go forward. It comes with an enormous capability. You can kind of look at this. And I found it interesting when I first kind of got here and heard the surface community and the C&O talk about platforms and payloads. And I don't think that for the amphib fleet, for the ARG-MU commanders, that's exactly what they do on a day-to-day basis. Platforms and payloads I think is right in line with where the C&O is trying to take us. And it's right in line with what we're doing. All that gear, all that equipment, every time these ARG-MUs to sail and deploy, they take a look at what the mission is, how they should task organize their gear, their equipment, their troops, and they put it on those platforms in the right way. Are they going to steam independently or are they going to stay together as a group and they organize themselves that way? So I think where we're headed with the ARG is a centerpiece, but the ability to shift gears, to split ARG ops, maintain the C2 requirements that we need in there is going to be very critical as we go forward. Next slide. One of the things that we had was in Bold Alligator 12. If you think about where we've been over the last few years after 9-11, we had not really done a major amphibious operation, exercise, really, since prior to then. And in Bold Alligator 12, we brought the fleet together off the east coast. We did that on the east coast and we also do it on the west coast with Dawn Blitz. We brought those ships together, the Marines together in Bold Alligator for the first time in over a decade. And we did it, and I would tell you surprisingly, the lessons learned were good, but I think that the old salts again in here I think would be proud. A lot of this stuff came together, but now we're looking at new gear, new equipment. How do you use them? We start looking at capabilities like ospreys, being able to go way deep inland in maneuver warfare. Those were new things that we had, new capabilities, how do we use those? So I think as the C&O went out there to get the after action and the debrief on there, one of the things that I think he highlighted was things had changed. The C2 capabilities needed to be improved in the amphib ships. In fact, we've heard the C&O talk about one of the things he says is the Marines came aboard after Iraq and Afghanistan and they had their stick in their hand and said, where do I plug this in? And he said, we plug it into the three-plong plug over there on the wall. And that's kind of really where you're at with where we've gone. If you try to take a look at the Marine Corps, really kind of working hard in Iraq, Afghanistan, constantly upgrading our C2 capabilities over the year when a walker board wasp and a boat alligator and look in the alfak and you go, yeah, I feel comfortable in here. This is what I'm used to in a regimental COC or division COC or an ACOC. You kind of look at that, go, this is all the high tech stuff I expect. You walk over on the other side and to the Navy side of the command operations, you look in and you look around and go, boy, I feel like I'm back in the 70s. And that's what I think the COC saw in there that we got a lot of work to be done in the C2 to make sure that we're interoperable in that C2 capability, but also to make sure that we can talk to the rest of the joint force and the rest of the battle force. So he gave us that task to really start getting after C2 with us, the N2N6 as the resource sponsor along with us to really get after that. So what we've done is the Marine Corps had a pretty good process in place with a requirements letter that they would send forward from Quantico every year with the Marine Corps requirements. And we weren't getting that really on the Navy side. So Fleet Forces Command now is giving us those requirements and we're bringing those forward in what we call now the amphibious and advanced naval amphibious baseline to be able to get all the stakeholders together, to be able to integrate the requirements to the Marine Corps and the Navy to make sure they talk back and forth, to make sure we're integrating the new capabilities that are going on across the fleet along with configuration management and trying to make sure we prioritize that right across the two services and integrate so we've got the right priorities. Palm 16 is the first time we're doing that right now. And I think there's really a lot of opportunity here to use the right resources in the right way to get after that. Next slide. This is one I think is what Admiral Coppin was talking about, Tom touched on that also, is many of you have looked at the Bilal Report and where the surface force was to look at where we could get better. And I think there was a lot of tremendous good work in that report. I think there were 36 integrated recommendations that came out of that report. And since then, all of you, many of you in here over the last several years have been doing just tremendous work taking that report, trying to figure out where do we get better. We talked, Admiral Coppin talked about the Pesto, the different pillars that we've got to kind of line up as lines of operation with lines of effort below that. And that key part there is you kind of crosswalk those things that we've kind of identified that needed work into the processes that need to be put in place. You can kind of look at that across there and I will tell you, there's been some great work done in that area. And I think we are on the right path to really kind of drive home the best amount of readiness we can get in the fleet using the budgets that we've got. We have to do that. There's no question about that. We can't have efficiencies. As I talked to our guys, we need to have a culture of affordability but we have to question every requirement. Everything that comes up, we have to question, we have to watch to make sure we're spending it in the right way. And so this piece here, I know the processes are in place. The Surface Warfare Enterprise has this and I think the key thing now is it's gonna take some time for it to work but we really need to develop which we're in the process of doing across the Surface Warfare Enterprise of getting those metrics in place to really set those standards and define where those metrics are and now track the task. Break down those barriers, really find where, why are those yard availabilities? Why are we coming out late on the backside all the time, not getting the work done and spending too much money on our end? So trying to drill into that and really take this down to that readiness kill chain approach, I think is one of the things that, you know, in the next year, we're gonna be really teamed up really close with Admiral Copeman on this to make sure that we drive towards that with all the other stakeholders in here. Next slide. Next slide. Just kind of a quick look through our programs here as I look at this is the exciting time in the, I think in the Amphib Force, LHA 6 America. I don't know if Dave Lewis is in here, Admiral Lewis, but tremendous job these guys have been doing on this program. Finished its builder's trials, getting ready to do acceptance trials. We're gonna take this ship at the end of March and this is gonna be a quantum leap in capability. When you get a war, capital warship like this out there with the capabilities that the Marines are gonna be bringing out there with the MV-22s that we have today along with the Joint Strike Fighter, that's gonna be just a tremendous capability. When you think about the Joint Strike Fighter, and I know this is surface naval association, but that aircraft, the reason the Marines really want that aircraft is not for its ability to close their support over the battlefield. That's a given, but that thing is an air combat system, sensor, that can bring in information like no other aircraft out there today and in the future with the processing capability and growth capability that's just gonna be phenomenal. To be able to connect that into the battle force, not just to the Marines on that ship, but into the battle force, to be able to tie in with the carrier battle groups, to be able to tie in with Tom Shooters on the ships and be able to pass that information, be part of that NIFCA approach. I think that's gonna be the exciting part of, yep, there'll be times when that ship will be out there supporting Marines. There'll be other times where it's out there as part of the Naval Task Force supporting the Joint Force Commander and that Naval Task Force Commander with those great capabilities it's gonna bring to the fight. We can't afford to do it any other way with that capability that we're gonna be bringing to that ship. And in three years, we're gonna have the first F-35 squadron for deployed in the Pacific on a big decan fit. So it'll be the first ship, first Navy warship, force warship anywhere that's gonna have an F-35 fifth generation capability on a ship for deployed. And we need to use that right. Next slide. The San Antonio class. What I would say about this is, the sailors and the Marines love this ship. The Marines can't get enough of this ship. The C2 capabilities are the best capability that we've got out there in the amphib force right now. And I tell ya, just like any platform coming in, when it's new, you're gonna go through some growing pains. We've got 10 deployments under this ship right now. And it's gotten through those growing pains. And we're doing a phenomenal job. The summer set that just went through its acceptance trials, zero star cards on that ship. So you surface war for officers that understand, that's pretty damn good. That's pretty damn good. And not only that, is it doing well in that role, but it's doing just an absolutely phenomenal role out there supporting the joint force. And like I said, it's an independent capability to steam away from the big deck. Absolutely has a C2 capability and capabilities to go with it. So that's an exciting story. Next slide. The LXR. This is exciting too. How often do we have a time to take and mold and shape a new ship's capability? And we've got that right now with our LSD replacement, the LXR. So we wanna make sure we get this right. There's a real opportunity here to do that right. And as we're going through our AOA analysis of alternatives right now, we're really taking a real hard look on what are the range of capabilities, what are the options we need, and really try to drive in affordability into that ship. That is a key thing we've gotta do. And one of the things that we've done is we've brought the industry teams together to really work this with us. Trying to do some of that critical design work early up front, not later on, early on, to try to drive all the way down to the subsystem level, try to drive those costs down early on to get the most affordable ship with the most capability. And that's another one. We have to do that. If we don't do it right, we'll get less capability and we don't wanna do that because we certainly have done a good job with the America class coming on and certainly with the San Antonio class. We wanna do the same thing with this capability here. So clear direction from the CNO, clear direction from SecNAB and the Commandant, working together very close, trying to make sure we've got the requirements right. In fact, I think it's next week, we've got fleet coming together down in Norfolk, along with the Marines, to be able to look at what are the capabilities and try to look at those cost trades in the capabilities and there's many different capabilities we set and kind of take a look at that and go what do we really want on this ship in kind of a war game approach to see where are those cost trades if we try to bring costs down. Next slide. The LCACs and the LCUs. These are connectors. You've got a landing force. You've got the ships and you gotta get them to the beach. If not, you're gonna get entangled and you're never gonna get ashore and you don't wanna have to rely on piers to get the Marines ashore. So this is our way to do it. We looked at bringing the two together into one platform that got too hard, too expensive. We stopped, backed up and said, what do we really need here? The fleet got together, we looked at that real hard and said we need more LCACs and more LCUs. We need both those capabilities. They're not separate. They do separate capabilities and what we're doing is we're gonna really design the LCAC. We've got, I think, nine on contract right now. We're gonna start building them this year and we're going through the analysis of alternatives on the LCU. Not looking for anything fancy. We're replacing pretty much what we have right now, keeping costs down because they're effective and it's exactly what we need. Next slide. The mine countermeasures mission. Tying in very closely, working hand in hand with Tom. We worked the mission systems. Tom works the mission modules on the LCS. Key piece here on these ships is this is a very complicated piece. If you look at the legacy force and the demands out there in Fifth Fleet, we've done, I think, a fairly good job of getting upgrades to what's out there right now today to make sure Fifth Fleet has what it needs. We're also bringing out from industry legend capabilities that are improving the capability that they've got out there. But at the same time, we're migrating to the future force with LCS, with the mine countermeasures mission package. That's the future. That's where we're heading, payloads packages. That's where we need to go. I think I saw Brian Antonio, Admiral Antonio, in here earlier. He's got our full support to move this forward. CNO's got us pushing any piece of equipment capability in there forward because there's a lot of good things that are going on in these mission packages, but there's a lot of pieces coming together. Trying to take as much of that and push that forward as we can is what we're trying to do. Very challenging area. You can just look at the slide and see all the moving parts in there and the challenges that go with that in a period of austerity. So we're shifting gears and really focusing out there to that future piece and trying to get that right. Next slide. So the challenges we kind of see here is obviously the rebalance to the Pacific, very clear. The new normal. We're not getting out of that world in Africa, the Middle East, and that piece of there. So we're going to stay there. The readiness piece versus that wholeness piece is going to be a critical challenge that we do that. And so the third bullet, they're looking at operational global employment of our enhanced MIPSROMs. How do we take the capabilities, second half touched on a little bit, join high speed vessel, not part of the MIPSROM, but that type of capability? Our MLPs, MLP, AFSB, LMSR, TAKE, all those ships, how do we maximize their capabilities? Maximize their capabilities in support of the ARGMU, maximize their capabilities in support of fleet operations. Some of it may even be independent operations, looking at what the mission set is and where they need to go. A lot of tremendous capabilities here in these ships and we're looking at it, trying to get after that right now on how we maximize that capability. And then again, the aging fleet kind of keep the ships we've got right now going until we get the new ships coming online, along with the same time we've got the budget pressures that we've got. Next and last slide. So the piece I would end with is, it's certainly a challenging fiscal time, no question about that. But I think we're on a right path with a lot of this. The challenges we've got up here is looking at what we've got in 14, trying to see what's been appropriate, how that all falls out. We've got Palm 15 that's kind of gone up we're waiting to see what the decisions all are in that. At the same time, we're building up Palm 16. So very challenging, trying to make all those pieces knit and tie together. And therefore I think the execution piece, whether you're at the acquisition side, where you're at the maintenance side, the training side, or at the ONM, the ONS piece, trying to pull that all together into whole forces is the real challenge we have. And like Tom said, we've got some great, great sailors and some great Marines working this real hard for you up at OPNEV in 95. So thank you very much. And Mr. President says we have about five minutes for questions and we have a question. Hi, I'm Laura Seligman from Inside the Navy. So in the appropriations bill unveiled last night, appropriators added $2.2 billion to upgrade and maintain seven Ticonderoga class cruisers into amphibs instead of retiring them. So I was wondering, what is the Navy's reaction to that decision? Well, we're certainly gonna take the direction from Congress and we're going to execute. Okay, we've got it obviously, I mean that is for seven cruisers and two little foilers and a steel washer's LSDs. And so we've got to work our way through it and work through the direction that they provided us and how then we're gonna go execute that. But we're certainly gonna drive in the direction that Congress tells us to go do that. Thank you. I'm Paul Rowden, Lee Willett from James Navy International and I apologize for the foreign language. Okay, I'm gonna concentrate real hard here. A quick question on your interesting slide on the future surface combatant, please. You talked about a timeframe of the 2020s, I think if I heard you correctly. And I wondered if you could give me a little bit more detail on the timeframe, any further details on the studies that you mentioned and what you talked about about the affordability issue and how you're driving that down. Right, yeah. That's a great question. As we drive towards this ship, and nominally in my mind, I'm thinking working with the acquisition community and driving in the latter part of the 20s, the 28 timeframe, contracting for it, building in the 30s, although that's just kind of very rough. But the thing that's front and center in my brain as we drive towards whatever the future surface combatant is gonna be is understanding that you have to get the ship to its expected service life. And in order to do that, you've gotta take care of the whole mechanical electrical and the weapon system has to pace the threat, has to pace it or outpace the threat. And you have to be able to do that affordably. In the past, we have retired ships before their expected service life because we couldn't affordably upgrade the combat system. We have to avoid that. And driving in now at the very leading edge, I think that we can work with our acquisition brothers and sisters, I think we can work with industry to drive a ship or ships that is gonna deliver the capability that we need, is gonna deliver it affordably and much more importantly perhaps is getting it to its expected service life in an affordable fashion. That's how we're going to get to the fleet that we need. And that's very, very important. The modularity of the ships and not modularity necessarily in the sense that we have in the littoral combat ship, although that could be part of it. But certainly whether we're gonna put as energy weapons comes online and we have to drive towards integrated power, the scalability of the ships, I think are all going to be important as we drive towards this ship. So we had a work room effort and we had an analysis, a study executed from the August to the December timeframe, N96, N95 in close conjunction with the assessments organization in the hot nav in order to understand what the art of the possible is with what we know now in getting these ships fielded. So that's where we are. And I'm very encouraged by where we are. And I think we're out in front of this appropriately in order to be able to get to the ships that we're gonna need in the latter parts of 2020. One more from Mr. President. Just real quick, Admiral Copeland had mentioned in, sorry, Kurt Warden from Nova Power Solutions. Admiral Copeland had mentioned the interfaces for the modular systems being a key component there. And those interfaces really are the key component of future upgrades and modernization. Can you expand on what efforts you're taking to define what the interfaces are and how they will kind of shape the direction that future modernization will take? Well, what I can tell you is this. I can tell you that if we don't put the engineering rigor into ensuring that those interfaces are well defined and well understood from the engineering acquisition community into industry, we're not gonna get to where it is we need to be. No doubt in my mind. And I think as we go forward, what we owe industry is ensuring that we do have those well-defined interfaces if we're gonna get what we want. And so I can't speak specifically to how we're gonna go. I can't describe the road not necessarily along the way, but I think we have a clear and getting a clearer understanding of where it is we must go in order to be able to feel that capability. Great question. And I think we'll continue to move along on that. So. If I could just kind of adding into the interface piece that ties into the interface is we take a look at building new ships. As we're looking at the LXR, part of the part in this analysis of alternatives we're looking at is looking at early on designing in how you can change that ship out early on to be able to make it more open architecture, plug and play. So when changes are made later on in the life of the ship, it's easier to do that. Along with taking a look at the commonality across the force, are there radars that the cruisers have or destroyers have that we should be putting on amphibes? That configuration management, that commonality is a key piece of this along with how do you get them in and out of the ship to save money that way? Okay, I think we're getting the hook everybody. Once again, thank you very much. I look forward to this great week. I look forward to catching up with a lot of my old shipmates. I see many of you out there in the audience and I just like to close by saying that I am one damn proud surface warfare officer and I always will be. Thank you very much. All right, 10 minute break. Please be in your seats at 10 minutes after floor. Siena was expected at 16.15. Thank you.