 If you'll indulge me, I took the PFT yesterday for the 41st time, and I'm a little sore. So I want to move because Admiral Howe made me sit down to eat lunch, which really wasn't a good thing for my legs. So thanks for not ratting me out to General Petraeus. I appreciate that. I used to call a lot of people, and I used to call them myself because it's actually hard to deny the phone call when you say, yeah, this really is the J3 on the phone. Like, yeah, I want to talk to General Benatz now. And as a staff guy, you can do that because you're not a commander, and you call other staff guys. So I appreciate you not telling your hire and trusting me. And hopefully I didn't divulge anything. So it's really great to be here after lunch. Thanks for the after lunch slot. I really appreciate that. And I appreciate being here two days before graduation. So it's just, is Mr. McTaggart in here? Is Lee McTaggart in here? Is Lee in here? Are you going to graduate this man? Is he really going to get a diploma? So I didn't ask you to say anything, Mr. McTaggart. It's good to see you. Congratulations. Hope you had a good year. The conops is I'm supposed to talk for about 20, 25 minutes, and then there's supposed to be some questions. So let me give you some context. I've been doing this a little while. When General Paxson retires here this summer, I'll be the oldest Marine in the Marine Corps. I'm 63 years old. So my view goes, yeah, that really, you're supposed to say, General, you really don't look that old. Because most people suck up to me, and they say nice stuff. They're like, no, he really is old. But I have a different context, because I came in right after the end of Vietnam. I remember going to Okinawa, and I arrived in 1976, and they had just a year ago, a year prior, had done the evacuation of Saigon. And Jimmy Carter was President of the United States, and Lou Wilson was a commandant. And we had just started the all-volunteer force. The first platoon I showed up in had 50% high school grads, 50%. And my three squad leaders, Sergeant Bacon, Sergeant Douglas, and Corporal Thomas, had an average GT of 68. They were good men. They were good men. Sergeant Bacon could land nav with a compass and a map better than any man I've ever met in my life. I was never lost. I'd go, Sergeant Bacon, where are we? He'd climb up some tree, shoot a reed. He'd say, we're right here. I'd go, I knew, that's exactly where I thought we were, Sergeant Bacon. And I was smart enough to know that he knew what he was doing. But I also realized very quickly, trying to teach them to write with a five-paragraph order in a mission statement was not going to go very far. So fast forward the tape today, 99.9% high school grads. The average GT of an infantry combat arms marine in the Marine Corps is 105. I really like this Marine Corps. I love this Marine Corps. Are they perfect? Are we perfect? No, we are not perfect. Are there things we can do to improve? Absolutely. So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about your Marine Corps. Everybody says, the only time it's my Marine Corps is when they screw up. When they do well, they're ours, yours, the nation. So I'll talk a little bit about your Marines, our Marines, talk a little bit about what they're doing, and then we'll talk a little bit about strategy, and then we'll take your questions. Next slide, please. So that's some data on our Marines, average age. It's good to be young. I realize that more this morning when I woke up, but there also is certain things about being young that cause the rest of us that are old a certain level of angst because they are what they are. But we are a very young force. We turn over about 34,000 Marines every year. They do four years, and then every year we go out and get 34,000 more, and we're starting that now. Right now our manpower readiness is probably going to be at its lowest because Marines are going to be starting to get out of the Marine Corps and EASing, and then those that are in boot camp are just starting their journey to become Marines, and they're going to start to show up. So it'll peek out. So if you really want to do something against the United States Marine Corps that caused the whole force, the best time to do it is this summer. The worst time to do it is in January because we're like, we're full up and we're ready to go break some stuff. You guys are making me work way too hard. Our officer to enlisted ratio is there, eight to one, and I also tell you, because it's sent something in the Senate's version of the National Defense Authorization Act about the number of generals and flag officers, we have one general for every 3,000 Marines, which is the lowest or highest ratio, depending on the count of all the other services. So we're a young force and they are a center of gravity. That is the thing that we have to protect. We equip Marines. We train and make Marines, men and women, across the country. From the Midwest to, I'm at a kid in the gym. I go PT at the barracks, usually between 5, 5.30 in the morning. I was there last Saturday and there was a young black man in there and I watched him work out and I go, what are you training for? He goes, he had a bit of an accident and I said, are you a track guy? Because he wasn't throwing weights around like some of the other typical Marines in there and he goes, no, I'm a soccer player. I said, where are you from? He goes up from Central African Republic. I said, really? He said, so are you any good at soccer? He goes, oh, I played at University of North Carolina. I said, North Carolina Chapel Hill? So what are you? He said, I'm a Lance Corporal. I got this, I started, I couldn't stop laughing. This is so cool, I got this 23-year-old incredibly talented college athlete and he's a Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps. I just laughed the rest of the day, which is really unusual for me. And then later on, I saw this kid from Alabama who was going fishing with a bunch of his other friends and he's in the woodworking and he sounds exactly like he's from Alabama and he's a white kid. And I mean that, and I started saying, I mean, what a great country. What a great country. So that's the thing that we have to protect. We gotta continue to recruit and retain the very best Marines, men and women that we can. I can talk about the integration of the ground combat element later if you want. We're on track right now. I hope, I've told the recruiters that we want to increase the number of women in the Marine Corps up to 10%. They tell me they can do that and we're gonna strive to do that as an initial step. So we're making mission. People still wanna be Marines. I've got at least three, if not four, young men or women for every spot to be an officer. And most of the Marines in here that are curls and above to include myself, we probably wouldn't make the cut today. I mean, I don't even know if we get to OCS. The NRLTC class showed up at the average PFT score was 283 out of 300. And then the regular rest of them was just 275. And they're SAT, whenever other metric you put on. So like I said, I really like this Marine Corps and this is the most important thing. And as I go around and talk to Marines, I continue to be impressed by the fact that they have their views and they're not afraid to ask hard questions. They're concerned about the mission. They wanna do something important. They didn't join the Marine Corps to sit on their seabag back at Camp Pendleton, Camp Lejeune. They wanna go somewhere and do something. And we gotta make sure we provide them that opportunity. Next slide. So where are we? Our major bases, as you may know, are on the east and the west coast, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and Camp Pendleton, California and around them. There are other places. We have aviation at Viewfort and Cherry Point and New River and on the west coast at Yuma and Miramar. But those were, that's where the first and second Marine Expeditionary Forces are. And then we have third Marine Expeditionary Force that's over in Okinawa. We've got units and we've got a Marine Regiment and some aviation on Hawaii. And we deploy as MAGTAS. We deploy as Marine Airground Task Forces, ideally a board ship. The 13th Mu is deployed right now. The 22nd Mu is getting ready to go. And there's another Mu that's starting their work up. We also have two special purpose MAGTAS that are deployed, one based out of Morón, Spain. That's the result of the new normal direction to provide a response force to American embassies and another one that's in Kuwait. Also has forces in Bahrain that is support of General Votel and Central Command. And they're involved now with the Operation Inherent Resolve and providing certain capabilities to include reinforcement of the embassy in Baghdad. And there's about 100 Marines up there that do that. So this is an unclassified venue. I'm not gonna get into numbers, but that's where the force is. It's about 183,000 active duty. We've got it 38,000 plus or minus in the reserve component. And we actually have a reserve unit deployed in deploying, as we speak, to Honduras, Soda County Air Base to provide Ammeltid, a special purpose MAGTAS, for the course of this summer. To work with our partner nations down there and also provide, because we're in the hurricane season, a potential disaster relief capability if he needs it. And they've got some helicopters to go do that. The rest of Marine Corps has either just got back or they're getting ready to go. Before 9-11, we were 172,500 and we were three to one force. That meant you were home for 18 months and you deployed for six. And that's kind of the naval way to do it. Now, because even though we're a little bit bigger than that and we were up to 202,000 as we were found ourselves in Iraq and Afghanistan. We've become a two to one force or less. And that's partially because we source out of the end strength, a marine special operations component to SOCOM, which didn't exist until 2005. And some other things that we're doing, increasing capabilities that I'll talk about as we talk about the future force to include cyber and different things like that. So we're gonna go down 182,000, that's the plan. If we can squeeze a little bit more money out of the budget. We might be able to a little bit on the high side of that. But we can talk about end strength if you want. But whatever money we get from the Congress and the Congress for the uniform personnel area has been very generous with us for the past 15 years. The nation will get the very best Marine Corps that we can afford. And then our job is to go out there and train and get these Marines ready to go and maintain our equipment so that we provide that capability for the nation. But that's where we are. Obviously, there's some force deployment things going on in the western Pacific as we shift or we turn our heads to the Pacific. For us, it's really, it's business as usual. We've always been a Pacific force. My first duty station was in Okinawa. Marines have always been out there. And for us, we're just back to where we were, because we didn't source those requirements with unit rotational forces during Iraq and Afghanistan, and now we're back. And that's part of the depth tempo. Our depth tempo is as high, if not higher, than it was at the peak of Iraq or Afghanistan. So we're busy. The Marines like to be busy, and we gotta make sure that they're properly trained. And more importantly, that the equipment they have is ready to meet not just the current requirements of the combatant commander, which it is. And the folks that are out there are well trained and prepared. But also that the people that are back getting ready to go or on the bench, if you will, have the capacity and the training and the level ready to go. If something major happens, or there's some requirement that comes up out of the blue. Next slide. So what's our role? That's what we do. That's how we're organized. We are a naval force. And we really haven't talked about that. I've talked to the C&O a lot about this. And if you read General Dunford's commonized planning guidance that came out a year ago, January. If you read the FRAGO that I published this January, we talk about being a naval force. You read Exhibitionary Force 21, which is kind of our primary doctrinal document. It talks a lot about us being part of a naval force. And we haven't really talked about that, even though we've continued to deploy on ship. But we've been tied up in a land-based campaign for the past 15 years. And I think we've done well and added another chapter to our history. Not perfect, but we did, I think, what we needed to do. And we've developed a very strong cadre of trained combat leaders. But now we need to get back to doing what we really are designed to do, which is be part of that naval force, fight that naval campaign with the fleet. As part of the fleet, not just the fleet does their thing, the Marines do their thing, that we do this together as part of the naval force. And those are the discussions we're having with the C&O and his staff. And I think everybody's on side. We realized several years ago that we had kind of lost our way and had not focused on large amphibious operations, which are incredibly complicated and difficult if you don't do it all the time. And so now we have a series of exercises we do with the fleet, called Bold Alligator on the East Coast, Don Blitz on the West Coast, Song Yang, usually in the Western Pacific, where we composite units. And then actually right now you got RIMPAC going on in the Pacific area, where a whole bunch of coalition partners, many of whom are in this room, are going to come together and we're going to train and exercise and experiment. So what's our goal? Well, as I said, we've been at war for 15 years, and we've been focused on counterinsurgency and stability ops. Was there combat in there? Oh, absolutely. And then you talk to the Marines that were in Fallujah, one of them in Mamadi, Marja, Sangin, Upper Helmand Valley. It goes on and on and on. But is that an anomaly or not? Is that what the next fight is going to be? We know there's going to be another fight, we just don't know where. So we created and trained a force and equipped a force to go do that. We created MRAPs and counter-ID rollers and all sorts of things, because that's what the enemy had. But the enemy had no air force, the enemy had no air defense. The enemy didn't have a lot of indirect fire. The enemy didn't have any armored vehicles or a lot of maneuver capability. And we fought them, and they fought bravely, and we beat them. We beat them. So is that what the next fight's going to be? I'm not so sure. But that's the way the force was organized, and that's what we adjusted to, because that's what we had to do. So now what we're trying to do is figure out, how should this force that we're going to grow and develop and train and equip, what's it going to look like in the future? So we think the enemy has the capability or will have the capability to challenge us in every domain. Interesting article in the news highlights that NATO has recognized cyber as a domain today. OK, progress. I mean, I'm not making fun of NATO. I'm a NATO staff officer in my history. I believe in the alliance, and I think most Americans don't really appreciate or respect or understand the value of that alliance. That said, military organizations tend to be a little bit slow on the uptake. I think we need to go a little bit faster, because even now I think there's discussion within the US is information the sixth domain. Land, air, sea, cyberspace, is information a domain? How do we do that? So that's a discussion you may want to have. But clearly those capabilities are something that the future force is going to have to deal with. So the discussion we're having right now is, OK, we have 183,000-person Marine Corps men and women. It looks, you know, our organization is actually legislated by the Congress. We have three divisions, three wings, and a commensurate logistics capability. So what's in those three divisions, three wings, and that logistics capability? Other than the normal infantry armor engineers, artillery, indirect fire, logistics, fixed-wing, rotary, and aviation, do we have enough electronic warfare? Do we have enough cyber? Do we have enough information? Do we have enough intelligence? Do we have enough communications? Do we have enough people to set up the nets? Do we have enough people to protect the nets? If I were to ask you right now, what is the US military's friendly center of gravity, that thing that we have to protect for us to conduct our operations in any future environment, what do you think it is? Okay, GPS, but GPS is relying on what? The network. I think that's both our critical vulnerability and our center of gravity. We lose that network? If the network goes down, what do we got? We got no GPS, we got no JDAM, we can do lasers, we got no navigation, what are we gonna do? We're back to map and compass and yellow stickies on the map, people talking voice on the radio, maybe sending text. I mean, think about it, you all have been in this fight. If you had walked in in a talk or a COC or in combat on the ship the last 15 years and everything was in 100 over 100 and the displays were up and all the merch chat was working, you would have gone, what the heck are you doing? Why isn't this working? This has gotta work, this is how we fight. I'm telling you right now it ain't gonna be there. It's not gonna be there. Or if you think it's gonna be there and you're not prepared for when it's not, then you're putting yourself and your unit on necessarily a risk. So how are we gonna do that? So if the Marine Corps is gonna be 182,000 and we need these other capabilities in some number and we're not gonna get any more people, the dilemma we have is from a forced strategy for the organization, what do you wanna give up? What do you wanna give up? What do you wanna give up? Tanks, artillery, fixed wing aviation, logistics, command and control, headquarters. Everybody wants to give up staff officers as long as they're not theirs. Yeah, give up his staff officers, he doesn't use them well. Or she does, she doesn't need that. Because we've never, I mean has anybody ever had a unit where we, hey Admiral, General, Colonel, Captain, we just got way too many people here. I just gotta get rid of all these people that work for me. No, unless it's somebody else. So we're in that process now. We've convened a group of 200 Marine officers and enlisted, we got them together, gave them some guidance, here's the capabilities we think we need, here's what the risk we might be willing to take, here's the cap on the end strength, come up with two COAs. So we had a group of colonels called the Old People Group and we had a bunch of Lieutenant colonels and majors and others and they had their COA. Now, to no surprise to people in this room, they were very different, they were very different and they briefed it out. So now we're wargaming it. So one MAF wargame one COA and two MAF is wargaming the other COA this week and then we're gonna bring a bunch of one stars together because they kind of bridge the gap between, you know, old people like me, all the baby boomers and then the next and they're gonna, they're supposed to come together and kind of go to conference and come up with, okay, give us a COA. Give me a COA. What do you want this thing to look like? And where are you willing to take the risk and how do you mitigate the risk? Do you mitigate the risk by putting forces in the reserves? Do you mitigate the risk by having the joint force do this because we're not gonna fight by ourselves. Can the Navy do this? Can the Air Force do this? Can the Army do this? And then how are we gonna pay for it? And then how long is it gonna take to train these people? So that's where we are and that's kind of the position we find it because I think the one thing we can't do and I've said this public, I'll say it, we just can't stay the same. We cannot stay the same. Just like business. You don't change, you don't evolve, you get defeated, you're consumed because somebody's got a better idea and you're too slow. So I don't think we need to change a whole lot but there are certainly capabilities out there based on what most people look at the future operational environment. I mean, the Russians in the Ukraine is a good template near term for what force structure, electronic warfare, indirect fire, information operations. Anybody seen Russia Today TV? Anybody watched that? Can you go overseas? Nobody? Yeah, it's brilliant. It's brilliant. For all the guys in here, the first they start you off with the Russian bikini skiing team to get your attention and then they tell you about what all of our countries are doing around the world that's bad and evil and how the Russian government is gonna fix this. It's brilliant. And if you watch it long enough, like any news channel, if you watch it long enough, pretty soon it becomes the truth because there's no counter narrative. So what are we gonna do about that? Is that an operational thing? Is that a military thing? I mean, we've all struggled, Admiral Howell's talking about fighting in Afghanistan. We've all struggled with getting our message across into the environments and the cultures that we were in. Right? Because people aren't gonna listen to us because you're Americans. Well, we're the good guys. Well, yeah, don't you like, oh, I love your country. My goal is to go to your country. Well, I want you to listen to us because I'm not going to. Because I read something on the internet that said that you did this. Okay. So how do we fight in that information domain? I mean, electronic warfare, you can jam or you can protect, you can find it, you can kill it. I was talking, I talk about technology and modernization here and I got to move along, but I was talking to Admiral Davis and the Fleet Forces Command and the Navy is working about, for some of the more senior Navy officers in here. Remember, you know, silent, run silent, flags, using blinker lights, semaphore to communicate. And now we haven't done that. So they try to go back to that, try to run silent, MCON, no signature, master signature. Well, they found out that, Abel Seaman Neller goes on the weather deck at night with his iPhone to check his Facebook page. So what's on that phone? What's on that phone? GPS. Okay. So much for that. So we're gonna have to search everybody and take their phones away before they go on board or before we go to the field. Take the battery out, lock it up. So value gain, risk loss. Next slide. So we just published a service strategy, worked on it for a while. I would, you know, most strategies are long tomes that most people don't read unless you're a policy wonk or something. This is six pages. Try to get to the point. Unfortunately we publish it the same week as the tattoo policy so it kinda got lost in the weeds. You gotta have priorities, right? And I'm perfectly happy to take your questions about tattoos anytime. Although I'd prefer not to. We're moving on. So some of the things I've already talked about were in the strategy. You know, what are enhanced and integrated naval capabilities? How do we work with the fleet as we do a naval campaign? Are we part of, is our Marines part of sea control? Absolutely. Have we been in the past? Well I kinda depend on personalities. Should we be? Absolutely. I'll give you an example of enhanced naval capabilities. You know, we're gonna have F-35Bs deployed on amphibious ships here in the next few years. That's a very capable airplane. Fifth generation stealth fighter. Before people were mildly interested in the Harriers, subsonic aircraft, big heavy metal flying off a big deck amphib. Is anybody gonna be interested in the fact that we not only have Ospreys now that have a global reach and range, and we have F-35Bs that can hold at risk? Certain targets? Is that gonna interest the fleet commander? Is that gonna interest the COCOM? Is it gonna interest any of the component commanders? Is it gonna interest our adversaries? I would say yes. So the game is gonna change. And we need to figure out how we're gonna leverage that. Not as Marines, but as a naval force. Or as a joint force. Cause it's gonna get a capability out there. As a naval force, obviously we have a relationship with the Navy. And the people, we're the four deployed force. We're the people that are out there. We're the ones that are assuring, deterring, and training and doing partner capacity and theater security cooperation. The other people out there, I mean the armies out there and the air forces out there, but the people that are other people, like those special operators. So those are, we're part of the joint force and we'll continue to work with all parts of the joint force. But I think our normal, most engaging partners, the partners that we are most likely to see in the battle space on a day to day basis when we're forward postured throughout the world, obviously we're gonna be with our Navy and our shipmates. They are gonna be special operators. What does that 21st Marine look like? Mentally, physically, spiritually? Are they gonna be smarter than they are now? Are they gonna be better educated? Are they gonna have certain capabilities with communications? How far down are you gonna push communications? How far down are you gonna push information operations? How far down does it go? Who has unmanned systems? You know, we're gonna do an experiment with an infantry battalion and a RIMPAC, we're gonna give platoons to their own UAVs. I mean, a little quad cam, you can go to the PX and buy them. Made by a Chinese company called DJI. They are, 400 bucks at the AFIS, at Walling Air Force Base. You can get arrested flying them in D.C., so I didn't buy one. But you can buy them, they're 400 bucks. You can get them on Groupon for 100 bucks. And when I saw us at U.S. Army, I just couldn't bring myself to buy it. I was gonna get it from Mr. McTaggart, but anyway. So I mean, so who has UAVs? We did a training exercise. We got Marines, we're changing the way we trained. The Marines have not the thought about this. We got an urban facility out of 29 Palms and we had the Op-4 flying quadcopters and the Marines were on patrol and there's this thing in the sky and they're like, what's that? Oh, that's the enemy UAV taking your picture, knucklehead. What do I do about it? I don't know, what do you do about it? Hide, shoot it, report it? Nobody's ever, I mean. And this has happened now in the current fight. Our adversaries have already adapted and they're using it. So what are we gonna do? What level does it go? Who controls it? How do you report it? How do you manage it with your fire support and your command and control? What's that, Marine? There's all sorts of ectoskeletal stuff, body armor, applique, things that are lighter that are gonna make you be able to carry heavy load or make the load we have lighter because we carry too much stuff as it is. The MAGTF, we talked about the capabilities. At the same time, you have to maintain an armor maneuver capability. You gotta be able to protect yourself. You gotta have indirect fire. You gotta have precision fires. You gotta be able to do counter mobility and mobility. You've gotta do, there are always gonna be count IEDs as part of the naval force. How are we gonna clear mines in the surf zone, the shallow water zone and the beach, craft landing zone? We just kinda weigh that one away and we have for the last few years. And because it's very difficult. I mean, look how much work and effort and time and money we spent into finding IEDs. A jug of fertilizer buried in the deck with a graphite fuse and a blasting cap and a piece of dead core. That's what killed our guy. Something you go out here to Southern States or some farm co-op and you could buy it like right now and make it in your garage. So how do we exploit technology? Whether it's stealth, whether it's communications, whether it's 3D printing or additive manufacturing. I was at dinner the other night with a representative of a fairly well-known aviation organization. I said, hey, are you guys using 3D printing? He goes, oh yeah, we just built a whole new engine. Really, with a 3D printer, you built a whole new engine for your jet, oh yeah. I said, well, I don't want parts from you, I want your printer. I don't wanna buy parts from you anymore. I want your printer and I'll pay you for the intellectual property. But I'll print my own stuff. Now think about your expeditionary force, your forward deployed, completely untether yourself from the supply chain. And you just print your own stuff on ship. I mean, normally when the Navy drops us off and goes to Marseille for liberty, they don't leave us next to the DLH hub. Okay, so we need that 3D printing. I couldn't resist. So what does technology have for us? Whether it's miniaturization, whether it's making things lighter, making, be able to make your own stuff, whether it's communications, body armor, aviation, stealth, maybe there's a cloaking device out there or a warp drive. I mean, I know it's there. We just, that's gonna maybe take a little bit longer. But we've got to work through and exploit technology. And then the last thing is recognize and prepare for threats that we believe in the urban latorals. Fighting in an urban terrain is the most demanding operation. I mean, once you're ashore for a ground force, it's really much simpler if you're fighting on a desert or a place with devoid of terrain. Cause you're in town, everything's hard. You can't see, it's congested, it's multi-dimensional. You've got vertical in the buildings. You still got air land and sea. You got subterranean. How do you see down there? How do you get in the room? Secretary Work said in, on 10 years, if the first person in the room, in a room clearing is a human being and not a robot in the next 10 years, shame on us. So how do we do that? Throw, I mean, I've seen a little robot ball as you throw it in. Bring the camera on a smartphone. How do we do that? And then we gotta make sure there's no trip wires. And then how many rooms are there in that town? Of 10,000, 50,000 people. And every one of those rooms gotta be cleared. And there's people living in those rooms. How do we know who's in the room? So the urban littoral, coming from the sea, is maybe, it is the hardest operational environment, but if we work toward that, and it's something somewhat less than that, I would hypothesize that we can do the other ones maybe a little bit better. Cause we'll already be prepared for the most demanding environment. Okay, I'm over time. I apologize. I'm not sure what's my time hack. I got another 10 minutes. Okay, so with that, I appreciate your attention. Again, congratulations for graduates. Have a great time. Please be safe driving where you're going. I give you your safety brief now. All right, do not drive after midnight. Nothing good happens after midnight. Pull off. You know, the dogs gotta do their business anyway. So don't drink and drive. I know you won't. Be careful going. When you get there, you're maybe in a hurry to get to your unit, but they don't know you're in a hurry because when you get there and they got you, then they own you. So make sure you get there and safe and get your family taken care of. And remember what it's like to move till next time you have a junior soldier, sailor, airman, marine checking in. Here you are, senior officers. And you can imagine all the drama and tension and pressure are moving. And you've been doing this your entire adult lives. Now remember that one. It's a Lance Corporal E3 specialist for what they're going through trying to move their family for maybe their first or second time. But again, congratulations, please be safe. I'll take your questions, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks, sir. Jeff Pugmeyer from Marine Corps Intelligence Activity. I just wanna say thank you for your service to our country and the Marine Corps especially. We focused a lot, and I'm also graduating this Friday. We focused a lot at the Navy War College on the Pivot, we have Marine forces that are operating throughout the world. We may not be able to do it as much as we would like to do. We have all sent this nasty thing we call sentin' comma keeps popping up. How does the Marine Corps, and specifically for you sir, what challenges do you foresee? As we move to 2025, so the Marine Corps is vision for 2025 is pretty important. And some of them may not be familiar with that. How does the Marine Corps meet those challenges and what do you foresee, sir, as the biggest challenge as the Marine Corps prize to change the force? We're morphing, and there's no question that we're morphing, and all of the services are morphing, but what are the major challenges do you foresee, sir, as for the Marine Corps over the next 10 years? Well, if you're talking about the Pacific, question is what's the biggest challenge? Well, we've got a lot of challenges. We've got a readiness challenge. We've got modernization challenges. We've got in our aviation enterprises in the middle of recapitalizing every model type series airplane. So at the same time, until that happens, we have to maintain a legacy fleet. And so we're in a rough place right now. We're digging out of it, and it'll get fixed over time by fixing legacy airplanes and buying the new ones. In the Pacific, we have a proposed lay down, the DPRI Defense Policy Review Initiative, approve implementation plan. Says we're gonna move a number of Marines off of Okinawa to go on back to Hawaii. We've got the Marine Force down in Darwin, Australia, right now. It's about 1300, but they're only there for six months out of the year, because the rest of the time is rainy season there, and you can't do anything. And then we've got what's going on in Okinawa with the politics between the governor of Okinawa and the Japanese Prime Minister Abe's government. So I don't know where we're gonna go. So I mean, I can't control some of that, but all I can control or try to control is the capabilities that we have and the training and the equipment that we provide the Marines so that they have the flexibility and the wherewithal to adjust to whatever situation they find themselves in. The lay down is something that's, there's a plan, and right now we're executing the plan, and we'll see how that all plays out. But I think there's some interesting things. I mean, we, you know, it's kind of, you know, you get into this, the Europeans want us back, the Sencom, GCC nations think we're leaving, and the people in the Far East don't think we're coming. So okay. So they want us to leave, now they want us back. They don't want us to leave, but you know, we're back in the Sencom, because whether you're interested in that part of the world, that part of the world is fascinated with us. And yet, we realize just because of the demographic and the economics and the politics that the Far East is, you know, we are a trading nation, and that's where our interests have to be. You know, the largest population is large economy, India, China, Japan, Indonesia. I mean, that's where our future is, I believe. But we can't not ignore ourselves. So that's kind of the dilemma we face. And you add on top of that, the four potential adversaries that SecDev has talked about, and along with the global war on terrorism, I mean, we're spread pretty thin, and we can't be everywhere and do all things to all people, so we do the best we can. So it's a great time to be a Marine. It's not gonna be boring. Now, capability-wise, in the Pacific, the biggest thing in the Pacific is the tyranny of distance. We need more strat-lift. We need more ships. We gotta be able to move around in the Pacific. But I'll give you an example. So we deploy a Mew on Marine Expeditioning from the West Coast, goes all the way to Centcom. They spend half their time on their deployment, steam and to and from. It's much more efficient to go from the East Coast to go to Centcom if that's where you go. But we don't have enough capacity or enough ships on the East Coast to do that. But yet, we're swinging amphibeships to the Pacific. So the situation's changed, and it's different than it was in 2004, 2005. Clearly, the North Koreans and the Chinese have developed capacities and capabilities they didn't have then when those decisions were made. So I think we need to be witty into that, and we need to pay attention to that. And as we develop the plan, as these things formalize, we're gonna have to be flexible enough and willing enough to recognize that, hey, maybe it's changed and we need to look at something different. But in the meantime, we're agnostic to where we go. We're agnostic. Tell me where you want me to go. Tell me what you want me to do. Give me a clear mission statement, and I'll tell you what our capability is to accomplish that. And then my responsibility is to commonize, make sure those Marines that go there and the sailors that are deployed with them have the wherewithal to do that and be effective and accomplish that mission. Anybody else? Yes, in the back, way in the back. Sir Lieutenant Commander Pat Drain, U.S. Navy. General Crulek talked about preparing for a three-block war, strategic corporal. Talked about populations moving towards urban centers, near coastlines, as we look towards, and his article, he was talking 2020. And not only does the Marine of the Future, based on this article, need to be a great warfighter, but also needs cultural competence. In this forum, we've talked a lot about near-peer competitors, high-end warfare. Do you think the ideas of the three-block war and strategic corporal still apply? I do. I mean, I would even call it a four-block war. I'd add information in there. You know, the three-block war idea is that you could be in one part of a city, you could be fighting somebody, it could be another part of the city, doing training in a foreign military, it could be another part of the city, doing a humanitarian assistance disaster relief for support in an NGO, all in the same battle space. So I do think that's valid, I think it's been proven. I think it's been proven in the last 15 years that all the land service, I've put special operations in the Army, and I think we relied a lot on our junior NCOs. I mean, you think about what a sergeant, sergeants were doing, what captains were doing, captains were doing, what colonels were doing, colonels were doing, what generals were doing. 20, 25, 30 years ago, and generals were doing what, they're doing stuff that's probably different than they had as far as engagement, and things that are more in the political part of the diplomatic, economic, and informational thing rather than the military. So now we're back, so how do we maintain that capacity? My personal view is education, and I think it's great that you're here, and I think education is the way you sustain that. I also think that, I can only speak for the Marine Corps, I think we have undervalued and underinvested in our enlisted Marines. If you're a colonel in Marine Corps, and you attend this school, it's probably your third full year of professional military education if you're at the top at the senior corps. If you're a sergeant major, you go to your unit, and your sergeant major shows up. If they went to every single PME as an enlisted Marine, they may have had six minutes of education. So what's the expectation? So to get to your point, yes, I think it's still a valid concept, and I think we're working on some things to try to invest more in our enlisted, our junior leaders, and part of that is you gotta get that human capital talent at the beginning of this thing, and then we gotta figure out how to get them to stick around. It's not gonna be easy because there's a lot of options out there, and sometimes the people that have the most options are the hardest ones to stick around, to get to stick around. So that's our job, that's the officer's job, that's your job, you're also a career planner out there other than being a commander. Every one of us is a career planner and a talent scout. So you run across some young man or woman out there, and they got some game, you need to chat them up about coming in the military, staying in the military, whether enlisted side or going to become an officer, because we need them, we need them. Fair enough? Yes, sir? We got one more, I guess. Coming up, I'm Robbie Harris, a former naval person. Thank you for being here. Thank you for all that the Corps does. My question concerns Secretary Works' third offset. What does the third offset mean for the Marine Corps? What does the Marine Corps bring to the table in the third offset? My read of the Secretary's third offset strategy is to look at things, capabilities against our potential adversaries, where we might be able to gain an operational advantage, whether it's extended range, more autonomous information or autonomous intelligence, taking advantage of the technology that's out there, taking systems that maybe were used for one thing and adapt them so that they can be used for something else. I'll give you an example. So our historical mission is to seize and secure advanced naval bases for the operation of the fleet. In our next publication of Exhibition Force 21, we're gonna talk about extended amphibious bases. So if we were to go seize some place, an island, pick an island, there's a number of new islands growing every day in the world. So pick an island and we were to defend that. What does the Marine Corps have to defend that other than aviation? Do we have anti-ship, coastal defense cruise missiles? Can we use something else? Is there a missile or a rocket or something that could be adapted to do that? Is there that could be fired from land? Do we have an organization that's set up to do that? So I think the third offset is looking at all these things and gaming it and using a wargaming environment to try to figure out if these things, if the investments are worth making, if they're gonna have a significant payoff and they're actually gonna give us a capability against what we see out there as the capabilities of other potential adversaries around the world. It's an investment strategy. Another one, there was an article in the media that highlighted today about air defense. I didn't mention that. I mean, so we, the Army used to be the one we kind of, they have Patriot and they've got, you know, the short-range ballistic missile defense capability, maybe a greater capability with the THAAD system. But most of the stuff that we've had and that came out of the Cold War and in the fall of the Soviet Union, we had a lot of air defense. The Army had a lot of air defense. Where is that stuff? It's gone. When was the last time the US ground formation was attacked by enemy aircraft? World War II, I think. Maybe Korea. So what's our air defense capability? You know, so I think those types of things, posing those types of questions and then looking at an investment strategy that can get us at least looking at some capabilities that we might be able to develop. I mean, the problem with it is it takes money. It takes money and everybody's, everybody's, you know, two problems in Washington. Everything's about money. Everything's about money. Those are the two problems. So it's gonna be tough, but at the same time, it's like I said, I don't think anybody can stand Pat and hold what they got and think that they're gonna enter into the future and have a higher probability of being successful. I don't think you can. So how do you change, given the environment you have, and you're gonna have to do these different things? So we're all tied into that and we make sure that we get the capabilities we think we need with the third offset that we get stuff to look at. A lot of it's more strategic stuff. I mean, there's all sorts of things that I'm not gonna go into here. Mostly in the open press, you know, hypersonic glide stuff. I mean, I mean, you know, for the Marine Corps, you know, we're not necessarily, that's not our long suit, but at the same time, there's a lot of technological things going on that are gonna enhance the MAGTF and enhance the capability of the individual Marine. Did I answer your question, sir? All right, again, I think I'm getting the hook here and I don't wanna make you late. You're gonna graduate on time anyway, so I'm gonna worry about that. But again, I appreciate the opportunity. I'll stick around. I know if you're gonna take a break or we're gonna stay in here. I guess I'm leaving. All right, well, thanks again.