 We've been holding these for over a decade now with the best leaders from the Defense Department coming to join us. I want to thank our underwriters for this series, Rolls Royce North America. They've been our financial support for this series for many years now and we're very grateful to them for part of that process. I'd like to remind those of you in the room to silence your electronic devices. I want to welcome also our visitors on the web, our viewers on the web. You can do whatever you want with your electronic devices. There, that's a little, I'm still coming in and out in terms of the microphone here, but I'm sure somebody's manipulating my volume quite nicely. I also want to remind you that we will, at the end of the process here, have questions. Hopefully you all picked up as many index cards as you think you're going to have questions. You don't need to wait till the end to write down your questions and hold them up for the staff to pick them up. You can do that as they occur to you. You can write your questions before they even start talking if you want and they may answer them and then we won't ask them. Those questions, we'll gather them here. I'll be joined by one of our senior scholars, Kim Windcup, and we'll ask the questions once our gentlemen on the stage here have finished. So with that, I think that's all the administrative details out of the way and I will turn the podium over to my boss and the CEO of the Center for Strategic International Studies, Dr. John Hammer. John. David, thank you. And I'm just going to sit here rather than go to the podium. The least important thing is to waste your time introducing people that you came to see because you already knew who they were. But it is really a privilege to have these two remarkable leaders and they are remarkable chiefs. I've had a chance to watch chiefs of services for quite a few years and it's not, there hasn't been finer leadership ever in the history than these two guys and we're very fortunate to have them because frankly these are perilous days. And we're going to talk about the peril, a lot of the peril is here in Washington because we can't get our poop in a group as a country about what we want to do as a nation and we're going to pay a price for that and I think we need to talk about that. But I'm getting ahead of myself, but I feel better. So I'll introduce them both now and then General Amos is going to begin. General Amos, I remember when he was appointed and there was a great controversy about an avid of being the commandant of the Marine Corps. You remember that? He's proven he's been, he's a complete Marine and he's proven that with his leadership that's been exceptional. He has commanded at every level. Ever since I think you were a Lieutenant Colonel you've had command responsibilities in the Marine Corps and he knows leading the Marine Corps and he's been doing that here in Washington in an exceptional way. We're very proud to have you here. Thank you very much. And let me just say we're John, Greenert John is native of Butler, Pennsylvania as I recall and that's, of course, that's Bill Perry. I don't know if the two of you, you didn't go to school at the same time, but it was. Yeah. But. You were one of my mother. Yeah. But. You were one of my mother. Can I say that? But. But two exceptional leaders and I don't know what it is about Butler but it's quite a concentration that brought him forth. Also commanded at every level. He's his track has been both as a resource manager as well as a as a Submariner which means that he's been prepared to fight. He's fought one battle all the time, which is budgets and he's been prepared to fight the other battle. Unfortunately we haven't had to do that. Both boomers and attack boats. And because of his leadership, I think it was the Honolulu leadership that got you the Stockdale award. And that was really, congratulations. That's really remarkable. And let's start with you. Let's get this thing rolling for real. Okay, sir. And look forward to hearing your thoughts. I'm mindful that I'm really here to answer questions. And so I've only just got a couple of outline comments here. I'm not going to read anything at all. But just to set from my perspective, and I think I think John would agree because we think an awful lot of like and we're in sync on just about everything. The strategic context of the world that we live in, the world that we face, the one that we have to resource. We're very mindful of our responsibilities as members of the Joint Chiefs. You know, you wear two hats here. You wear not only your service chief where you're representing the sailors of the United States Navy and the Marines of the United States Marine Corps, which is all by itself will occupy and consume all your time. And it's pretty important to the institution. But beyond that, and the greater good, and the greater good theory is our responsibility in the nation of the United States of America. What's expected of us as members of the Joint Chiefs? And I'll tell you that from my perspective, we always begin there. That's where the discussion begins as we start talking about what should we do, budgets, force structure, how much is enough, how much can we afford, how little can we get by with, or what is it we can't afford that we should afford. And it begins with the security of our nation. And so I'll just tell you that from my perspective, these are perilous times we're in right now. I'm not a hand wringer. Those of you that know me out here know that. I don't sit around and woe is me. But I just take a look at the current environment we're in and I'd ask you to think about that for just a second. The reality, not what we would like it to be, but the reality of the environment that we currently live in. Number one, our nation is weary of war. I understand that completely. I don't find fault in that. We've been at it now for 12, 13 years, depending on how you count. But our nation is weary of war. We're in the midst of a, probably the most significant fiscal crisis and challenges our nation has faced in certainly many years. And it's yet to be seen how that's gonna turn out. So we're weary of war. We're fiscally, more than fiscally sensitive right now. We've got issues fiscally that we absolutely have to resolve and the Department of Defense is part of that. We're part of the solution. I'm a taxpayer just like everybody else is and I always like to remind everybody that. I pay my taxes and pay for my share of the military. And then we are in the midst of coming out of our second theater of war and with a lot of equipment that has yet to be retrograded out that we have to reset the military. Regardless of how big our services get or how small they have to be reset. We've been at this too long. For the two ground forces, principally the Marine Corps and the Army we have our equipment on the ground there. And for the most part it has been there. The equipment that we took in Afghanistan 70% of it came out of Iraq. And that equipment that came out of Iraq had been in Iraq for over six years. So we were resetting it on the fly while we were in Iraq shifted it through Kuwait into Afghanistan and now we've got to get it back and we've got to reset that. Laced against or set against the backdrop of modernization. You can't just continue to use the same gear over and over and over again. There has to be a degree of modernization. So that's part of this landscape when I talked about weary of war, fiscal crisis coming out of Afghanistan resetting the force all while we're in the midst of sequestration and drawing the force down all at the same time. I mean this is greater than the triple crossover Dave in the old biarrhythm days of the 70s. I mean this is serious business. So that's the backdrop upon which we approach things. Now let's take this thing around and take a look at the world right now. Is there anybody in here think that the world is getting any nicer? I realize you can read that on the editorials every now and then on Sunday in Washington D.C. We talk about a peace dividend and we talk about coming out and we'll have this. I'll tell you, I don't think there's any peace dividend at all. I think there's zero peace dividend coming out coming out of Afghanistan and the world we face. I don't think the world is getting any nicer at all. I think what you see, all you gotta do is open up the newspapers, any of the major papers and turn on national news and you'll take a look at what's happening in Egypt for sure. There's the latest, there's the very latest thing that's consuming our attention. A week ago it was Syria, two weeks ago it was Syria and Syria by the way hasn't been resolved. It's not even close to being resolved. So you've got Syria. We just reinforced and changed the guard so to speak at the American Embassy in Libya and Tripoli. I was there four weeks ago. Sergeant Major and I were there. We had 87 Marines on the ground. They were reinforcing that embassy. That hasn't played out yet. Libya is not done yet. Libya is trying to adjust to their new government and their new way of life and that has not been resolved and yet we've got Marines on the ground. They're reinforcing that embassy in an area that's really dangerous that just south of there in the deserts are where Al Qaeda is massing over, is kind of running around the San Sahel area of North Africa. So there's just that part of the world. We haven't talked about Iran, which is always a spoiler. We haven't talked about the challenges inside of Pakistan, the neighbor to the country that we've got about 50, 60,000 US forces on the ground and another 60,000 coalition forces. We haven't sorted that out yet. And you swing around all the way through the Straits of Malacca and you end up in places where there are challenges in southern Mindanao down in the Philippines where the Abusayaf is. We're fighting in the Surgency down there. We're helping our friends down there. And then just go north just a little bit. Just bypass China, but go north to North Korea. And who in this room about two or three months ago weren't picking the paper up every day and going boy, just I hope to God we don't end up going to war against North Korea. Not that we couldn't, not that we wouldn't hold our own. That wasn't the issue. The issue was I just hope it doesn't happen. So you've got the 30 year old ruler up in North Korea right now, which we know through history will be episodic. The fact that there's nothing in the paper today as I looked in the Washington Post about North Korea was interesting, but it will be there again. And we know how this works. It will be, it's cyclical. And the whole world will focus his attention on there. Those are just the big areas. Those are the areas that we're dealing with. We haven't talked about any of the threats, the extremist threats across around the world that we have to deal with. So what do we do with it? So that's the question and I'm gonna, I'll throw this out here and then I'm gonna get off the stage and let John talk. But what do we do as a nation? What is our responsibility? We can retrench and we can come back and there are those that say that we can't afford to do anything other than that. And I would argue that we can't afford to do just that. There's some degree of forward presence that we responsibly owe our nation as a global leader. Whether we like it or not, whether you're from this country or not, the United States of America is a global power and a global leader. People count on us for stability. People depend on us for presence. They depend on us for relationships around the world. And we have a responsibility in that area. Lots have been made about the president's reorientation to the Pacific. I for one completely agree with that. I think it's absolutely the right thing to do. And why? We've got five major treaties in that part of the world with countries that we've had treaties with for 50 or 60 years. We have responsibilities in the Asia Pacific area. 60% of the world's oceans are in that part of the world. Just enormous populations. If we don't pay attention to what's going on there for any other reasons other than selfish, we have economic reasons to pay attention and to be engaged in the Asia Pacific area. So how do you do that? Do we do that by coming home? Do we do that by virtual presence? And I'll tell you, virtual presence is actual absence. We've said it's an old phrase, but it really is the truth. There is a degree of forward presence that is required by our nation. And now this is when I turn very parochial. The naval forces are meant for that. We've already bought them. We've paid for them. They're trained, the ships are built, and the forces understand that they live at sea. We can do this. This is what we do for a living. Forward presence, engagement, partnership building. If you don't like partnership capacity, then let's change the name. But it's relationship building and it's trust building because when things begin to unravel around the world, you truly cannot search trust. You have to be able to pick up the phone. I found it interesting today in the post where our secretary of defense, because of a relationship he built in May with Allah Sisi in Egypt, he has said he's talking today to him a couple of times a day. It's relationship building, it's trust. And that's what we do as a naval force. The last thing I'll tell you is that the world that we live in is quite honestly, people want to engage with us. They want to have the presence of the US forces. But they're very mindful of the fact that they don't want a large footprint on the ground. For a host of reasons. It's just not very popular today. It was at one time, it's not now. We don't need a large footprint. We pull offshore, naval vessels. We are America's insurance policy. That's why you have us. You have us because of the uncertainty of the world. You buy insurance because you don't know what the world is about to give you. You buy insurance in your home because you don't know what's gonna happen in your home. You buy car insurance. You buy the United States Navy Marine Corps team. It's an insurance policy. It's a hedge against uncertainty in the future. And that's where we are. That's what we do for the United States of America. I don't think for a minute that we can afford everything all the services want. But there certainly is a balance and there certainly is a sense of determination of what is it we must afford. And that's where I come down. Thank you very much. Anybody could have said it's up better than what you did. So let me pick it up from there. First, Dr. Handy, thank you for this opportunity. I love coming here. We need to get your mic. Test, test, test. There we go. There we go. It was off. But I want you to know that I'm in a supporting role today. And Jim and I grew up in this thing called CLIF, Commander Landing Force. Y'all remember that? Some of you were, look out there. Yeah, there's enough white hair out there. And there's CADF, Commander Amphibious Task Force. And we grew up in that mode and we learned how to do supported supporting in that kind of business. And we sort of got away from that. But the kind of thing that we need to do in the future as we move out into the future is precisely that. And I'm going to talk to you today as the supporting commander, the one providing support. Now, you probably saw as we got started, I poured Jim's water right off the bat. So that's just a little clip there. I brought my Marine aid today to this session. A little bit of symbology. So we're here for the long term in that regard. As Jim said, you know, we're the away team. We can get out and get it done as a combined force, if you will, as a joint force as well. A decade, we've been away from this and it's time to come back. And I've been asking myself, so what do I need to do? What do we need to do as a Navy to best support this? So a few words today I want to give you on. The need that exists to bring the capabilities forward. The payloads that we have, that we can bring in the short term. And some efforts that we have in place that will continue despite this budget environment we're in. The day-to-day presence is a mandate. Jim mentioned it. We've got to be where it matters and we've got to be there when it matters. An example, Jim mentioned it. If we were not there, if we did not have forces in the forward deployed naval force, we would not have been able to put in place the ballistic missile defense construct that we had in place in just about 72 hours for the North Korean Missile Crisis that Jim referred to. Today, with the issue in Egypt, we have in the North Red Sea the Kirsar Jamphibious Ready Group ready to respond. These folks were not there and about ready to do a trained, organized, equipped to do that. You can't do that. If we have a budget that has been sequestered, but the requirement hasn't been sequestered and it is out there and it is about and we've got to figure out how to do that. Now, an amphibious ready group, most of you know, it's three ships. Many of you have seen pictures of it. In these three ships, they can't be everywhere. We currently out today, we have one carrier strike group in each theater in the Western Pacific and in the Arabian Gulf and we also have an amphibious ready group in the Western Pacific and in the central command area of responsibility. But that limits our options. We, in order for the combat commander to get done what they need to do, if they have the three ships and even the carrier strike group, which you see the picture, you know, you have this nice cold war looking construct going, we don't operate like that. We do disaggregated operations so that the combat commander is necessary can pull these together to do tailored operations. If you don't do that, then again, you're limiting your options. So an alternative is distributed operations with tailored ships, with tailored capabilities. And that's what Jim and I've been talking about. And if you've read our article in Proceedings, which Jim has agreed to sign any copies if you happen to bring them here today, I don't have my sharpie or I'd be able to do the same. You'd see that we're looking to different ways to do that. Now, what kind of vessels are we talking about? These are vessels under construction today that we can tailor properly. So let me show you a little combat ship. Most of you know that. So that's what it looks like. But next, what I'm talking about is volume and speed and persistence with modular payloads. So we're talking about a tailored force of Marine Navy folks, a naval force. Next, that's the one model, the little combat ship. Next, the next model, go to the bay here. Same bay, if you will, door, door. Large Hilo deck you already saw. Those are represent connex boxes. Your imagination could, you can kind of see. These are the kind of tailored capabilities we can bring. I talk about the joint high speed vessel. We have high speed vessels out there today. We're building two have been delivered, 10 joint high speed vessels. Give me that one, please. Gets, looks like this. Gets around 35 knots consistently. Gate, big deck, command and control structure and a large volume here I'll show you. Next one, that's what it looks like inside. Put a lot of stuff in there. Next, 300 folks, imagine up to 300 Marines with gear, rifles if you will, different equipment, a mess, medical supplies, and it's wired. It's wired for command and control feature. Next, mobile landing platform, I'll speak to that. We have this now, it's been delivered. And this is the cartoon of it. So you can get the picture. Air cushion vessels coming on board, trucks which could come over from a ramp from a large medium speed, roll on, roll off, think pre-po that we could draw from or wherever brought on board. This is a former Alaskan tanker, you know, in the bow and in the stern, the engine room. And this thing ballasts up and down. Next, that's what it looks like, real picture. That's the one we got, the first one, Monford Point. Next, there it is out at sea. Ballasted down, ready to testing to bring things on. So you say, hey, that's pretty cool. What about the concept, if I wanna fly things on? Wonder if I have drones, if I have helos, if I have an F-35B that I need to do because it's not about joint forcible entry, it's about different operations for crisis. Can you, could we have on a float forward staging base with it, yep, next? Yeah, you can, cost you $100 million extra, but you can get these kind of things. This is about 60, 65% done, being built in San Diego. So two of the previous, two of these, are what we have for the future. And these are the kind of things that General Amoson are talking about, that our guys and gals are working the concepts to bring those together. So we got the platforms, we got the payloads. What's the challenge? Well, as we've done some exercises recently, command and control, that's the organizational command and control, and thus stuff, the command and control. Communications, words, everything, situation awareness. That's what we gotta work on. As Commandant mentioned, we've been on land wars for quite some time. We're coming back to sea, Marines come aboard and say, boy, you guys, you folks have really advanced and we look at sea and we say, we gotta move ahead in our amphibes. We have not. Kind of like you go to the hotel nowadays and you're looking for Wi-Fi and they go, hey, great, you can hook up your computer, just plug it right in and say, that's not what I'm looking for. You know, I'm here with an iPad and more advanced features. Similarly, we gotta get our ships going out. We found this in Bolt Alligator, which was our fleet exercise, big amphibious fleet exercise that we did in 12. It's an opportunity really to revitalize what I mentioned was kind of the stagnant piece of that. We got the Enterprise Carrier Strike Group. We got the WASP Expeditionary Strike Group and we brought them together for a big operation on the East Coast and we found we need a common way to plan and execute amphibious operations. Once again, we've been apart. We need a better way to understand the ship to shore, connectors, all these kinds of ships I showed you here, they're not all wired and hardwired for joint force of entry. We've gotta be able to fall in with that and move more quickly and be able to plan, to communicate, understand the situational awareness that we need. Got a lot of that, got a lot on that in Bolt Alligator last year. This year on the West Coast, we did an exercise called Don Blitz. Similar amphibious operations, but we went combined. We had Canada, we had Japan, we had Mexico, we had a number of, and in the case of Japan, we brought MV-22, landed on their amphibious ship. They brought an LST, they bought a, if you will, in their version of a big deck amphib. It's not quite as big as ours and we're now doing combined amphibious operations in that regard. But again, it's predominantly about command and control. So for us, it's bringing portable mission planning on board. We've invested in that and we'll have that here in due course and probably the next six, eight months delivering out there on board. It's about understanding situational awareness and we're bringing a program called the Amphibious Assault Direction Force. It's another version of the Blue Force Tracker most of you are familiar with and it's knowing where all of your equipment is out there operating. And it's simply iridium phones. Phones that we can use if we had to do a non-combatant evacuation operation, then we could call the embassy and we could command and control falling in on these kind of forces that I showed you here in the package. So there's lots of promise out there with smaller units in a kind of a company landing team operation size. Today or actually in the past, we've been doing this for quite some time. We've had 250 plus Marines in Darwin conducting operations down there and we're moving them around theater to do the things they're doing with connectors like what you saw there and that will expand itself till we have a mu size force operating out of Darwin, deployed out of Darwin where we'll have an ARV-MU size capability by the end of this decade. So we'll leverage the more frequent naval exercises. This is what the Commandant and I want to do. We're committed to do that because it's time. So your naval team's about providing that day-to-day presence to be where it matters so we can be ready to operate and to act when it matters and it's getting ready for future operations with the vision that Jim and I put together in an article and we continue to talk about and we're very passionate about. Thank you very much for listening and like the Commandant, we're ready to take your questions. Two really very fine presentations. Thank you both. Chiefs of services have to manage 70 years of technology, your operating ships in some cases, your operating vehicles that are, well, you're 40 years old and they were designed 10 years before that. You have to design things for the future. You're looking out for the next 30, 40 years. You've got this very broad span of vision that you have to sustain. You have to grow the people. It takes longer to build a Sergeant Major than it does to build an MPB. You've got training that you've got to sustain. So you've got this complex set of responsibilities as Chiefs and yet we're in an environment where we're being forced through a sequester process to suspend management and judgment. You've risen to the top of your services because of your superior skills but you're not being allowed to manage. So what is it that you would do? You're looking at an uncertain future. You need the country to give you the flexibility to do it. What would you say right now? You need to do looking at this very uncertain financial landscape. How are you going to get these two services safely through this time? John, start with you. Well, I think step one, to me, it's you've got to operate forward. I've referred to it here a little bit. Jim referred to it. We've got to be out and about. So with what we own today, we've got to make the most of it. And to me, it's innovative ways to be forward because if we're not where it matters then it's not gonna be effective. We can't garrison and respond because it will be too late. So we have that, that's in our DNA to do that. It's also in the Marine Corps DNA. We're revitalizing that. So we've got to prioritize this, like I said before, look for low cost. For me, it's not building a bunch of platforms that are so integrated and so complicated like we've done in the past that they're good for now, even as you mentioned, maybe the next decade but they gotta be good for 30 to 40 years. So it's being smart in the building, that's probably means a less costly platform and allow the payloads to evolve. So these are the thoughtful things we need to get forward. We still, I feel like I still manage the Navy if you will. Yes, there will be less money but it's most important, what are we gonna do with what we have, lay it out and prioritize it. Something is not gonna be there for us right now and is evolving, it's gonna be less ability to search. So it's being effective right away because there is less surge behind you. That's where the impact is today of sequestration in the Navy. It's the surge forces, less of them and less rain. Dr. Amber, I think any discussion on any of these matters on anything we talk about today needs to begin with what is our nation's needs it's military to do. In other words, it has to be placed in the strategic context of what's the requirement. That has to happen because if you start with the programmatic part of it and the fiscal part of it, then you'll never know whether you actually are achieving your national aims. So it has to begin there. So what is it to John's point on forward presence and the discussions we've had a bit ago. So it's gotta begin there. So then you go, how much is enough? How much is it, how much is enough for our national responsibilities? And then, okay, then how do we achieve that? And I think this is kind of coming back to you. I agree with John. I think we still manage our services. This isn't, somebody hasn't taken this away from us. Inside the Marine Corps, I'm actually, we're actually able to make decisions on do this, do that and balance this. But where we find ourselves today is some of the old thought about, well, we have to capitalize on new equipment. We have to build big expensive things. We have to do this. Probably is not gonna necessarily carry the day-to-day. In other words, it's, what is it we currently have or currently have in the pipeline? MLP, Latoral Combat Ship, Joint High Speed Vessel, LMSR. We haven't talked about the TAKE today, which is that the brand new cargo ships, selective offload cargo ships that are built in San Diego, they're beautiful ships. Is there room on that thing for some creative types of employment and deployment? And I would say, yes there is. Once you get on that ship, you're just wowed. So what is it we currently have that we ought to be able to do more things with? There's a great fear institutionally when you do that because down at the Laurel levels, the folks that have worked in these programs and stuff for years go, now wait just a minute. You start doing that now and you're gonna obviate the requirement for this. And then the folks below John and I start getting scared. And that's why quite honestly, discussion like today is good. So I think we figure out what it is we can do with more creatively and be more responsive to the combat commanders today. That's how we do it today. And that's the way we're gonna have to do it in the future. Mindful of we are going to have to have some new things and that the job for John Greenert and I and the other service chiefs is to balance that budget and figure out how much of that can we afford. If you've spoken about supporting the combatant commanders, our friend, Mitchell friend Sam Locklear's got a very important briefing that talks about the missing part of our planning. You know, we do peacetime engagement. You know, we're out engaging and talking with counterparts, et cetera. We've got war plans, but it's this center bubble. It's crisis management. It's crisis mitigation. It's adaptive deterrence. You've both spoken about that. And it seems to me that's what the pivot is really about more than anything else. John, you're thinking about this every day. Both of you are thinking about this every day. What is it that we would need to know here, the policy community about your role in the Pacific in this particular role, this function of crisis management, not just peacetime engagement, not just war fighting, but crisis management? I think what I would express to folks are we're here to give you some anecdotes of what can be, what is available out there. I just was showing a little bit of force structure, but as we prepare forces to go forward to the Western Pacific, for example, in the Arabian Gulf, of course, one of the key aspects from the naval perspective is what kind of workup do we do? What do we prepare these forces to do? Historically, it's been, let's see, war in Korea, war as a potential crisis, or war over Taiwan. So big old plans, five of seven treaties are in the Western Pacific. What I'm here to tell you is, no, there's more that we organize, train, equip toward, and you saw a piece of that. So these exercises, Bold Alligator, Don Blitz, are about how do we tailor forces, how do we quickly tailor and put together a command and control construct with the right equipment for the crisis? And we're doing that today, so we can package them and send them forward. I think Tomodachi is a great example. I used it, I think, last November when I was here, so I don't want to repeat myself, but Tomodachi is a great example of a crisis. When crisis happens, Egypt is a crisis right now. When that happens, what we owe the senior leadership of our nation are some options. In other words, I guess you could do nothing. That's an option, but the question I'd ask for the people in the audience is, is that what we want to do? Is there, certainly some things you probably say, you don't need to do anything, but somebody else worry about it, but there are some that elevate to a magnitude where we have a moral and international of treaty responsibility to help. And when those crisis happen, Tomodachi is a great one. The tsunami down in the Straits of Malacca area years ago we've forgotten about it, it was catastrophic. There's another example. Today we sit while we sit in here drinking coffee and having this period together. There's two amphibious ships off the coast of Egypt, they're there on purpose. That's the flexibility that they respond to a crisis we have to have. And I'd argue that the Asia-Pacific area, and I use these statistics, 75,000 people a year lose their lives in the Asia-Pacific area every year due to the natural disasters. Earthquake tsunamis, typhoons, $35 billion worth of damage infrastructure happens every year. So there actually are crisis that happen. And then it's up to us to determine, okay, as a nation, what is it we want to respond to? I'd argue the ones I've just thrown out there, Tomodachi, the Libya crisis, that's not always clear exactly what it is you're supposed to do. It took us a while to go, okay, we're gonna do a no-fly zone, we're gonna be a part of a coalition. But in the meantime, naval forces moved into position. Most people are completely unaware of that. You were unaware that two or three nights ago, the Kyrsarge and the San Antonio moved up into the Red Sea and parked off of Egypt. Why? Because we don't know what's gonna happen. And if these were your relatives, if these were your family members, you might wanna have some help to get them out if that was required. That's what we do for crisis. Yeah, absolutely. Can I add just a minute to that? I would say, Jim mentioned Tomodachi, and I happen to be the seventh fleet commander at the Great Tsunami of 2004. And both of those strike group commanders came back and we said, gee, Wiz, did you have what you needed? You were doing a very different mission from what you sort of worked up. And it was actually, Admiral Bob Gerrier said, listen, we spent a lot of time learning how to project power. We were projecting comfort. And the concepts of those are very much of the same. And in the case of the tsunami is Doug Crowder, and he said, yeah, we delivered water and food and basic needs. We learned how to, instead of doing a no fly zone, how to fly in and get into Banda Aceh in this case. And last piece I'd say, Jim mentioned how important trust and confidence and relationships are. It was Admiral Tom Fargo calling his counterpart, the chief of the Indonesian forces and saying, look, we need to get in. We were at logger. We couldn't get into Banda Aceh. Phone call, we get in. Everything starts moving. Yeah, that's really very true. I've had a chance actually to read your paper in the proceedings. So let me just ask, it's really quite interesting, but I'd like to just dig in on one thing. You didn't say it was any good. No, I didn't. You didn't ask for your autograph either. I'm not autographing your crap. But you're right here. So we must replace rigid command structures that are ad hoc, aren't scalable, don't support widely dispersed operations with more flexible structures. What does that mean? I think John talked a little bit about it. Cat of Cliff, kind of, if you go back to kind of old school, how you and I were brought up. I mean, they were very rigid, and they were rigid for a reason. We did the Pacific Campaign, and there was pieces of the water space and land space that were the dividing lines between authorities, between both Navy and Marine commanders. And as you look back on that, and you read the after-action, I mean, some of those went off very, very well. And history has kind of occluded that for us, and so we don't get anxious about it. But the truth of the matter is that when we wrote that, I'm thinking about stodgy, constipated command relationships where this is my turf. And we can't do that, both from the Marine Corps side of the house and the Navy. This is a, what is it you need? How can I help? Who's got the greatest threat to them right now? Or who's got the greatest degree of responsibility to execute whatever mission? And then the other partner is absolutely in support. And by the way, it's not, it can flow back and forth. It's flexible. One day it can be, OK, John, what do you need? And by the way, this is the way he and I do business in the Pentagon. And in some cases, it drives our staffs crazy, because John, what is it you need? And they know that if he says something, I'm going to give it to him. And it's vice versa. That's what we're talking about. Well, this is my territory, and you're not going to. And that's what I really meant by that piece of it. But let me take that and pull it up. When we passed Goldwater Nichols, we created pretty beefy structures in the regional combatant commands. They've got big subunified command structures. But we don't fight wars through those organizations. We create joint task forces and combine task forces to fight wars. Are these principles that you've explored for inside the maritime forces applicable for us to rethink about how we should do the big structure in the department? Well, if you're talking about buying equipment or detainment. No, I really more of the, you're talking about operations. Operations. Yeah, within our mine naval combat commands, for example, and the way Jim has his marine commands, we actually overlap. Mar-4PAC and Compact Fleet overlap, if you will, with a construct to do naval operations. So that if tasked by Ammo Locklear, as you mentioned before, they can fall together. Similarly, out in the Arabian Gulf, NAVSEN and MarsEN have a task force created. And within that task force, things like noncombatant evacuation operations, so the CureSarge operation, if called to do something, there are a set of plans being sort of put together. And we always do this. It's not specific to this. But can be, if you will, on order, can be stood up. Now, if it's commanded by a Marine general or it's commanded by a Navy admiral, that's irrelevant to the construct of the task force. What is it the head? And they train to these things as well. That is embedded in and within that structure of the unified commander and the Navy component commander and the Marine component commander. The, to get to your point on the combatant commander business, and does this, with this what we're talking about apply? It does. It gets a little bit of a herky-jerky start each time we try to do it. But usually when we're into it, it settles itself down. And all of a sudden now, it becomes the team sport attitude. I'll give you an example. When we were doing OIF-1, and we were all in Kuwait, several in the audience are out here that were there with us. And we're doing all the planning. So it was a joint combined. We had the UK with us. We had the Australians with us. But we had the Army, the Air Force, the Navy and Marines. And then it was a function, OK, here's the plan. This is how this is going to start. It's going to start in March. We're going to do this and do that. And of course, as you know, Tommy Franks changed that plan a number of times. And we continued to refine it till it was time to cross the border. When we started, this is just my personal opinion. It was a, this is my territory. And don't penetrate my airspace. And this is my territory. And you're not going to fly over this thing. And I own all this. And you own that. And by the time we got just outside of Baghdad, my personal opinion, all that went away. And it was, what do you need? And so then it became this supported supporting and this sense of team play. We probably don't exercise that as much, which I think is kind of where you were headed, Dr. Hammering. But we do that all the time now. But I do think there's room for more of that same thing in the Joint Combatant Commander, JTF environment. And I saw it, by the way, when we were doing the Serbian Air Campaign. I was the Chief of Staff of the Joint Task Force for that. And I saw that as it started out. Everybody was kind of territorial. And then as we got into it, it was, OK, we're all in this together. What is it that I can do with you? And that breaks down those barriers. That's a little bit hard to do to begin with, but I think it's absolutely where we need to go. Probably do take another look here at the structures that we bought ourselves 25 years ago. You're right. Let me see if you guys have got some questions from the audience. Let's start with you, David. We have about 50 great questions from the audience. Taking out the ones you've already asked. And what we're going to try to do is mesh a few of them together and ask them collectively and capture as much. There's a host of questions about what this means in the Pacific, what it means in central command. Because that's really the two commands where the visible presence and demand for the maritime forces is probably at its highest. I'm going to lump those into kind of one complex question. One is how does all this planning, as it's being developed today and turned into actual actions, interact with our allies from the Darwin base for the Marines, to interaction with Japan, and do we move Japan beyond their natural self-defense? So to what extent does your role extend into the reach of the allies and partners, if you will? Secondly, this really gets to exercises, because an awful lot of that depends. How do you protect exercise money and prioritize exercise money, under sequestration, et cetera? Kim's got the larger budget issues, so you don't need to answer all those. Now, third is you've talked a lot about distributed forces. If you need them, can you re-aggregate? Could you move simultaneously? You talked about moving the Cure Sergeant San Antonio up into the Red Sea. What if you need them also over in the other end? How do you deal with that complexity, both in terms of small distributed forces, and then can you consolidate them quickly if you need to, and in terms of how do you deal with both theaters at the same time? So that's a complex set of questions, but I think you can see the territory. Number one, just a couple of thoughts. Number one, exercise money is becoming very competitive right now. That's the reality in the combat commander arena. That's operations and maintenance money. For us, that's steaming days. That's aviation fuel. That's ammunition. So those are all the things that happen during an exercise. And so under sequester, the truth of the matter is, we get blamed sometimes for the skies falling. Well, it hasn't come to roost yet, but it will. And what we're seeing right now is we put money out to the combat commanders. They don't have any money, by the way. The money they have for these exercises, for the most part, comes from us. It comes from our component commanders that we have there. So we are actually sitting there with our components, or the Navy and the Marine Corps component commander, sitting with Sam Locklear, and he's saying, OK, what's my highest priority? And he says, this is it. So there's number one. What's number two? And then eventually you run out of money, and you draw the line, and you say, OK, all these children below this line go hungry. So that's the first thing. So that's the reality. We are having to make business decisions on what exercises. The engagement part of the Pacific, I think it's instructive to think about, just for instance, Australia. We've just had a change in government in Australia. The previous government, though, was very bullish on the relationship with the United States of America. There's every indication that the new government is exactly the same way. We've had the Darwin Marines that have been down there, the Marines that have been deployed to Darwin. We've been very mindful that this is sovereign territory of Australia, and this is a relationship, an agreement between two sovereign governments, ours and theirs. And we will proceed at whatever pace our two governments, and principally what Australia believes is the right pace. So it's been 250 Marines for the last two installments. The latest agreement about a month ago was that we could proceed to phase two, which is about 1,000 Marines by the end of 2014. I think that's reasonable, and so we'll do that. So we have a play in there. We have a responsibility, and I think that's progressing well. Conversely, for Japan, I don't think our relationships as two nations have ever been stronger. This exercise that just took the bomb blitz that John talked about is monumental. I mean, the Japanese brought their own ships over, their own personnel. We've been training with them now, now for Bokonawa, with platoons of Japanese soldiers on U.S. Navy amphibious ships with Marines doing operations down in the Asia Pacific area. So now they came to the United States to work this. So I think our relationships there are strong. Our relationships with South Korea are strong. We're building our relationships with Philippines. We're kind of reinstituting and reestablishing that right now, and it's only in our best interest to do that. And the last thing I'd say is in the Asia Pacific is you take a look at where Australia is and how, what a key partner they are in Malaysia, Indonesia, and that area down in that part of the world. If you take a look at Australia, the world from Australia's perspective, you've got Australia in the middle of the map and everybody else is just north of them, and east and west of them, different than ours. They are key allies to that. By the way, they are a net exporter to China as opposed to the United States of America, which is a net importer. So it's in our best interest to have that relationship with Australia and let them help us develop relationships in areas that perhaps we've never had relationships before. Just a few things, Dad. As we speak, a large exercise called talisman saber with Australia, a defense force, is underway. So we have the George Washington strike group and we have the Bon Amrishard amphibious ready group, Jim mentioned the Marines, and a very large contingent from Australia. It's ratcheting those exercises more toward what we believe would be appropriate and relevant scenarios for the now and in the future. That's kind of one. So you gotta make the most of the exercises you have. Two, we're preparing now for RIMPAC, RIM of the Pacific, 14. An important part of that is the Chinese Navy who said, yeah, I'll be in. And we all kind of wondered, well, are you gonna do some rudimentary stuff like we kind of get started? They're very in. They came to the initial planning conference, which tends to be sort of mid-grade officers sitting around. I don't wanna demean it, but it just doesn't, we don't get serious usually at those initial. Very serious discussion as to what is the command and control structure? What can I bring? So it's ratcheting up early on in the construct and making the most of the exercises. Malabar, a big exercise we have with India, the Indian Navy, how much of it, it was in question and we decided instead of deciding to do or not do it, because we're looking at it as it has always been, we've got to look into the exercise and make the most of it. Make it relevant for the potential scenarios of the future. Last thing I'd say, big deal in Japan today, you kind of touched on it, David, is collective self-defense. If that is passed, now you've got the kaijo-jei-tai able and authorized to join us in strike groups and in surface action groups. Jim mentioned combined operations, amphibious, it's a whole different kettle of fish in Northeast Asia. General there, a year ago we talked about our ability to execute a strategy of sequestration and the BCA caps began to occur. We're already there. The secretary sent a letter yesterday to the Hill talking about the impact of a further sequestration. At what point has the strategy changed as a result of reductions in our resources? At what point will it change? It hasn't changed yet, but the cold reality of sequestration is settled in the Pentagon. I don't want anybody in here to think for a second that there's denial. And we had spent the last several months working through these cheesy choices management review led by Deputy Secretary of Defense Carter and the vice chairman, or excuse me, the chairman. So we've gone through all of that and that was based on sequestration, a 10% cut, $500 billion on top of the $487 billion. So that's settled in. It's yet to be seen then how much of the Asia-Pacific strategy, which is really I think probably where the focus is, how much of that is gonna be affordable when all the dust settles. We're still working our way through that right now. But from my perspective, I said to begin with, I like the strategy. We were part of the development of that strategy as the Joint Chiefs. I think it's the right thing to do for our nation and the world. But what we're gonna have to do now is figure, okay, how much can we afford? I'll give you an example. We've got, we have historically, well, since Iraq and Afghanistan, we pulled a large percentage, the majority of our ground infantry forces off of Okinawa in the Asia-Pacific area. So we've been down to one battalion. And that's been the battalion that's rotated on the amphibious ready ships out there. We now have three. We haven't had three battalions on the ground in Okinawa in years. We're about to put the fourth battalion on the ground this fall. That's all part of the unit rotation program. And they'll train in the Pacific. They'll be, some of them will be in Darwin, the Philippines, with our partners, Thailand, and... That's part of the reorientation of the Pacific. That's operations and maintenance money. It cost me $18 million to deploy, to train up and deploy an infantry battalion to Okinawa and bring it back home. So then how much of that can I afford when it's operations and maintenance money? And I've got to balance that against the rest of my equipment. Those are the things we're not sure yet. So the dust hasn't settled. But I think the strategy is valid. How much of it can we afford? We haven't been able to figure it out yet. We will. We're coming very close. I don't think there's a set point where you click over and you run down the hall and say, we can't do the strategy anymore. It won't be that precise. However, the strategy does things like it defines the significance and the importance at a capability and then at some capacity level of counterterrorism, nuclear, strategic nuclear triad and defense, ballistic missile defense, the rebalance of the Asia Pacific, you get the point. What we're doing is as we look at the realities of the future that Jim said, and we're doing that, by service, coming together as a joint force, what is the capacity we can provide for that strategy? And then we'll get to an assessment that would define this strategy. Its essence is no longer there because the capacity is too small. We'll have to have that debate and we're starting that piece of it. With regard to sequestration and Navy forces, what you'll see out there is okay, you still have a carrier strike group here and an amphibious ready group here, so what's changed? We usually have three of each able to get underway within about a week and be in theater within about three weeks. We have one of each right now. And the same is true as you look into submarines as you look into P3s, et cetera. So it's that surge force. It's inside kind of, if you will, the melon, whatever you wanna look at, and it's holding H-O-L-E itself out. And so what we're doing today is ensuring that we can provide that presence in 14 and in 15. We have to do the training in 13 for the 14 deployers and in 14 for the 15 deployers, maintenance and training. And it's a prioritization of that. Again, that will reach a point, perhaps, where we say that's not enough surge. Let me talk, I have a number of questions about kind of the other side of the budget impact and that's on the investment accounts, on the procurement dollars and on the R&D dollars. Historically, when we have a drawdown, we take more money and you certainly see this in the sequestration scenario now, take a disproportionate share out of the procurement dollars and the R&D dollars. How do you manage that? How do you manage the cost of the system as you talked about all these new ships and there are expensive. We have a question from Maine, apparently somebody up at Bath, Ironworks is watching on the web and asked whether we would keep the DG1000s under control, et cetera. And what's the role that you all play in that and how do you make sure you still have the industrial base both on the production side and on the support side to maintain you with fewer dollars? So it's a complex set of questions. It's really how do you manage the investment accounts in the industrial base and the cost of those weapons systems in this sequester environment? Well, step one would be you gotta have control and sequestration by its very definition removes that control because you can't move money across accounts because it is an algorithm that goes into each and every budget line and project and removes that amount. If you have control in that, then you can, as I said, prioritize. And the ships that I showed here are under contract or delivered. We have 47 right now under contract or in some portion of construction. Sequestration won't affect almost all of those because you would lose money trying to get money by canceling the contract in that regard. So that may answer the question of the individual that wrote in. You have to prioritize and my concern becomes the industrial base. When you whittle down aircraft and ships and other things, at what point do you undo the industrial base? Somebody has to close. They are a unique builder. I worry about the nuclear industrial base particularly. And some say, well, heck, you got two pretty big ones with general dynamics and Huntington Industries and I say Engels Industries and I say, what about the sub? The people that make this discrete and very important components because the vast majority well over half, I think it's in the 80 percentage of our nuclear components are single source. That means one person makes them. And when we buy in bulk, if you will, multi-year, they're very busy for a period of time. They can plan, we get cheap, it's really good. We're in that environment right now, coming to perhaps, I don't want to use dramatic stop, halt. And that would be unfortunate because we are getting submarines, destroyers and the ships you saw on this screen delivered on time. The quality is good and in many cases, under budget and that means profit. The same goes for us. Probably a little bit easier in some regards because we have fewer programs, but you prioritize. It'd be nice to have controls and the ability to actually make some of these decisions which is very frustrating and I think it's irresponsible that it'd be in the other way. But within my service, we prioritize. And we said, okay, what are our top programs? And it's the Amphibious Combat Vehicle and we have 35B. And I've been very strident about that. Dr. Hammery mentioned to begin with some of your vehicles are, and I threw in the word 40 years for him to fill in the blank, but the Amphibious Combat Vehicles we have right now are over 40 years old. So developing a replacement that will get online and with the vehicles we have are 50 plus years old. Ladies and gentlemen, there's not one of you out there that's driving a car that's 50 years old. Not one of you. You wouldn't get on an airliner that was 50 years old. So it has to be replaced. So that's a sense of, you know, I don't have a choice. I do have a choice in some of the other vehicles and some of the other things and in which case I'm willing to make hard calls and say, okay, we're not gonna get that. We'll live with what we have. We're gonna refurbish this equipment coming out of Afghanistan. That's good enough. And then the F-35B quite honestly is something we absolutely have to have. So it's a prioritization. Okay, we'll go, one more. If I may, a couple, General Amos, these are sort of marine-oriented questions if you don't mind. One is, does the Marine Corps as a part of this new strategy plan to get lighter? And if so, how? And secondly, I'm sure this is a question from a marine, given your remarks about the unique characteristics of the shift and the importance of the Marine Corps, is it time to abandon the equal share approach to budgeting in the Pentagon? That couldn't have come from a marine because they wouldn't set the combat on up like that. I will say the answer to the last question first in general terms, I do think we are gonna reach a point where our nation is gonna have to prioritize in these declining budgets. And we're there, I mean, we haven't made the decisions yet, but I would offer that we're gonna have to say, what is our priorities? And then as a nation, and then okay, how do we resource those? And then who are the services that provides those capabilities? And that in and of itself would lend to reprioritization on the balance of the budget. And I'll just leave it at that. But I do think that that's something, now whether that'll ever happen or not is yet to be seen. But I would say declining budgets, tight budgets could force one of two kinds of behavior, either bad behavior, or maybe some more responsible behavior. And so I just throw that out. What was the first question? Oh, getting lighter. You know, I don't wanna say we are, when I took the job, I put the assistant commandant in charge of kind of the final five micron filter that every single piece of new gear we bought had to wash through him with an eye towards less cube and less weight. We've been successful in many areas. Energy, energy production. We haven't been as successful with vehicles. Vehicles are heavy, they're big, they're bulky, they're expensive. So there are some things that we've been, but so the answer is we need to get there, we understand that. We're driven in some cases by threat. The iron triangle of a vehicle is a good example. Payload, performance and protection. We could strip vehicles down and make them run around like desert rap patrols up and they'd be very, very light. You could haul several of them underneath the 53 Echo. But it wouldn't provide the protection that a mother and father or a wife or a husband expects when you run into an IED. So we're kind of stuck in some of these things. But the answer is we need to get there because we don't have the weight and cube capacity of board naval vessels to accommodate all this. MRAPs is a great example. There's some MRAPs that quite honestly, you're gonna have to reinforce the deck if you're gonna put them on a ship. Let me just ask one last question before we let you leave. And that is the Navy that we'll have in year 2040, Marine Corps will have in year 2040, you're designing now. It's gonna be in your area of responsibility. So what is your vision for that Navy and for that Marine Corps? More ships that are more truck-like is what I wrote about. It's about payload, not platforms. So we need to build ships that can adapt toward the future, modularize, if you will, both in the command and control piece and the effects and sensors that they deliver. More unmanned underwater and aerial vehicles. So the undersea domain, we must continue to own it. We own it today. We're not challenged in it by much. We have superiority in it. We have to sustain that. So that will be not just building a bunch of submarines, that won't get it done. It's a combination of fixed and unmanned vehicles networked under the sea. And the air wing of the future, we saw a piece of it yesterday with the demonstration of the UCAS. And that future air wing, in my view, is about electronic attack, managing and maneuvering in the electromagnetic spectrum, deliver and strike like we always do, but also having an unmanned feature of that, which will give you that payload I talked about and that persistence. So you're gonna have a lot more in the area of electronic attack, a lot more unmanned in that air wing and the future combined with the more, if you will, tradition. Because we've already built it. Well, we're building the jets that today have this air wing you just described in the future. It's a Marine Corps that's been amply modernized. I didn't say extravagantly, but amply reasonably modernized. Those, that modernization is underway right now. You get to be seeing how that's gonna stretch out over the future, but as a result of the budget. But a Marine Corps that's reasonably modernized, a Marine Corps that's absolutely tightly balanced. And by that, I mean, we don't have excess in any areas. Everything we have is built for us, is built around a Marine infantry battalion. And so as we build a force for the future, a 182 force or when sequestration just takes the wind out of some force that's less than that, but it's tightly balanced with capabilities and capacities for the Marine Air Ground Task Force. And that that Marine Air Ground Task Force is relevant to the combatant commander. In other words, it's what the combatant commander truly needs. That's what we're looking for. So as we start looking for efficiencies and we start thinking about programatics, by golly, we better make sure that what we end up with is a balanced force. A force that's modernized, not extravagantly, but good enough, and a force that's relevant to the combatant commander. So that when that combatant commander says, I've got this crisis brewing, or we need to aggregate these forces to be able to do this mission, that it's there and it's ready to do that. No, I mean, I think Jim would agree with this. Underwriting all of this are young men and women who are, in my view, and I know Jim believed this, diverse in ethnicity, in gender, in ideas, in concepts, in geography. We've got to adapt to that demographic in this country that underwrites it all. I saw it on the carrier, I said, we went out to the bush and saw this great event of the landing of the UCAS. And they brought this new fangled thing on the deck and the kids said, okay, bring it over here. And they went through the exact same process to launch a Hornet or an E2 that they did there and they adapted to that with their contractors there and fit right in there. And I said, that would be an example of that. All this other stuff we talked about doesn't matter unless we have those kids like we have today. It's a beautiful summary. I've been somewhat discouraged about our government recently, but this morning has been encouraging. It's this kind of leadership is needed and rare and very welcome. Would you all please thank these gentlemen with your applause? Thank you, John, we appreciate it very much. Thank you, John.