 Afternoon, everyone. Thanks so much for coming. I'm Maureen Lee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and I am very pleased to welcome Brigadier General Bill Mullen III, the director of the Capabilities Development Directorate down at Marine Corps Combat Development Command. He has a longer than he looks very distinguished career command at multiple levels. Most recently served as the president of Marine Corps University before taking his current assignment. He's been the marinade to the president. He's done numerous operational jobs to include a slew of counter-narcotics missions and all kinds of interesting things and is now trying to chart the path forward for Marine Corps capabilities on a number of fronts to include connectors. A key part of the Marine Corps capability as a whole. And so we asked him to come today to talk a little bit about where they're going with connectors. They've been getting a lot of attention on that subject for the last few years and have recently made a few decisions about the way ahead. So General Mullen, thanks very much for taking the time to come talk with us today. And I'll probably let you make a few minutes of remarks and then we can open it up for questions. And if people could check their phones and put them on silent, if you would. And then also to people who may be watching on the web, if you'd like to send questions by email, you can do so by sending them to me at mleed at CSIS.org. And I'll try to inject them into the conversation. And we'll try to get to a conversation with all of you shortly. Great. Well, it's good to be here today. Thanks for the time. And what do I know about capability development? That's the question I asked about a year ago when I was putting into it. And the answer was zip. But what I do know is operational requirements and the things that we need to be able to do out there. And that's why I was put into this job. And I tell you, it's been quite a learning experience. And especially learning the acquisition process and all the things that were required there. We're in a state of flux right now, as you probably can imagine. There's a lot of things going on, all in the face of a pretty significant physically constrained environment. So how are we going forward? How are we enabling ourselves to be able to do something like an amphibious operation, which can be anywhere from disaster relief all the way to the high end, which we believe we won't do, but we have to have the capability to do. One of the things we talked about at lunch there was there's a lot of people that point to something like what you saw in the Pacific series, the HBO series Pacific, as, well, the United States will never do that again. We have no intention. We don't want to do that again. That's not how we want to conduct operations. We want to go where somebody is not. The problem we have is we have to have the ability to do that if it's absolutely required. Because if you don't have a credible ability to do that, that starts limiting your options. And if your options start to get limited, then that gives people that don't like you very much room to maneuver and do things that they wouldn't normally do because they have in the back of their mind thinking, well, what's the United States going to do about this? And all I'm talking about here is capability. I'm not talking about will, I'm not talking about anything else, it's the capability to do these things. Again, I'm the capability development guy. I have to look at what the Marine Corps is able to do and not able to do, and figure out if we can't do something, what do we do to make sure that we get that ability? How do we fill that gap? And of course, it all starts with requirements. What is the requirement? And we had a pretty good discussion at lunch about concepts and requirements. The hard part is you nail down a concept, you lay something out and the rug can get pulled under you pretty quickly by some folks saying, no, you'll never do that. Don't use that as a concept. It's never going to happen. So those are some of the challenges we're facing right now. In this fissuring strain environment, as you well know, we've pursued for a long time the ability to have a high water speed vehicle. It's technically feasible to do that. It's pretty dog on expensive. That's not a good thing these days and not for years to come. But it's also very, very complex. And due to the weight restrictions, it can't be above a certain weight or else you're not getting a high water speed vehicle. It's a low water speed vehicle. You have to keep below a certain weight, which means less lethality and less armor on the thing. So the alternative we come up with is a program that we're already working on, the military Marine personnel carrier, which has some ability to swim. How much we don't know, it has to be proven, has to be tested. But the engineering specifications we're looking at indicated maybe as good as the AAV. Has to be proven though. So then what? So then what? Especially if you need, if the requirement is to come in from a much greater distance, which based on the A2 threat that we're seeing out there, we probably have to do something from a much greater distance. Not an entire amphibious operation. We have to have the ability to do something. Maybe it's nothing more than a company landing team that we put ashore. Either via V-22s or a combination of V-22s and connectors that can get us into the general vicinity. Because the connectors we have, the LCACs, the LCUs, the Joint High Speed Vessel, none of those things will go into an unprotected beach. Even if there's somebody just with, not the high end spectrum, but even if something as simple as an RPG or maybe a machine gun or something, they're not gonna put something in an unprotected beach. Which tells us we have to have the ability to have that thing bring us into just outside small arms range and then get off it and swim ashore. V-R on means. Now, whether the vehicle we're looking at right now can do that, we don't know. Has to be proven. The connectors, that's a challenge. The Navy's replacing the LCAC program. They're schlepping them and they're starting a program to replace them. They're just getting underway a program to replace the LCUs. Because we have some that are as old as 54 years old. LCUs carry a lot, but they're very slow. LCACs don't carry much, but they're very fast. So we're also looking at other options out there. We held a connector summit in March. What are some of the other potentials out there? Right now there's a half scale model of something called the ultra heavy amphibious connector, U-HAC. It's the screwiest looking thing I've ever seen. But one of the things it has the potential to do that half size model is proving out is it can carry about as much as an LCU and go about two thirds as fast as an LCAC. And it's the same size as an LCAC. That sounds fairly good. We're looking at other things out there. In the 1980s, the Marine Corps tested something called the HAVIC, the Havoc. It's an aluminum sled. Self-propelled aluminum sled. Vehicle drives on. There's a control console that the driver of that vehicle controls. The thing can get up to about 20 to 25 knots. Don't know what the range is on it. It gets ashore. You drive off it, leave it, beach group picks it up. That's an idea. That's something out there that has been tested in the past. The prototype that was developed was scrapped in the 1990s. What's the potential there? We don't know. But we're gonna explore it. There's other options out there also that have been presented to us. We put out a white paper asking for people's ideas. What do you think? What are some other things we might be able to do? Because we understand we have a challenge. We're also looking to work it with alternative platforms that was part of the discussion at lunch. The Navy in particular because of limitations on what they're able to do with gray-held ships from the standpoint of how many they're gonna have and some of the maintenance issues they're having. They're asking us to look at more alternative methods of using some of these ships. People in this crowd probably know some of those limitations better than I do. But I tell you, we are looking at it, but very cautiously. Because one of the things we have to make sure of is we still need those gray-held ships. They can't replace. Anything we do alternatively can't replace any of those gray-held ships. And part of that discussion is we need 38. We understand in a fiscally constrained environment we'll accept 33. Due to maintenance issues and other issues going on right now, we have less than that. And we work very closely with the Navy trying to improve that situation. So I probably talked enough and I would like to know what you wanna know. So here to have tomatoes thrown at me. Mar and promise I'd get tomatoes. Let me start with something a little bit more benign maybe an apple. Oh, an apple, nice. Not a softball, but. So one of the Marine Corps' critical challenges is one shared by the Army of protection and weight. And the Army is putting a lot of emphasis on material development and really trying to break that relationship, that relationship of physics. It seems like the Marine Corps is less focused on that objective. And clearly you have an interest in the capability but the Marine Corps doesn't talk as much about material development as a potential solution to that. Is the Marine Corps participating in any way supportive of what the Army's trying to do in that space or they just sort of trying to let the Army lead and focus on other things? Well, we're watching very closely what the Army does because in many ways we try and piggyback off some of their efforts. Perfect example being a joint light tactical vehicle. But because we're involved in it, that vehicle's lighter, that vehicle is able to lower itself because our requirements are it has to be able to fit on a ship. And in certain areas of the ship, you can't go above 76 inches. If we weren't involved in that program, those restrictions wouldn't be there because the Army really isn't concerned about those kind of things. We're nowhere near as much as we are. So that's part of the issue of what we're looking at. But a lot of the vehicles tend to be bigger, heavier and they rely on them much more heavily than we do. Our emphasis has been not so much fighting with those vehicles but fighting from those vehicles to be able to use this armored protective transport. And we don't necessarily, like our AAV, we've never used that as an armored fighting vehicle unlike the Army which has used the Bradley as an armored fighting vehicle. So those are some of the differences in our approach to things. But where we can work with the Army to be able to, they have obviously much deeper pockets than we do and their ability to investigate things, do the RDT&E to develop things. Where we can, we use that. But again, our interests are not all that closely aligned. So we were talking earlier also about the mobile landing platform which is a concept that has changed or evolved over time and now envisioned as two versions, MLP one and two and then three and four which are pretty different. Yeah, three and four are considered in a float forward staging base. And they have, it's the same general hull of the ship but what they put on is a very large flight deck that goes pretty much across the entire middle part of that ship. Whereas the MLPs, essentially they're an oil tanker that has had the middle cut out of them to be able to enable a ship to pull alongside, marry up, put a ramp down, have vehicles drive off that ship onto the MLP and then load on to LCACs that can come in and operate off of that MLP. They can't be transported by that MLP but they can operate from them. Load on, have the vehicles load on to those LCACs and they depart. And that's actually the first ones, they're proving that concept out in California right now because the first one's actually doing that. The float forward staging base, number three, the MLP three is actually being finished up right now. It's the puller. We were just out about two months ago and they were just getting ready to put the flight deck on. And that should be pretty versatile. And now our big question is, is it going to be able to work with V-22s? And I know that's one of the issues that are focused on to try and make sure that it can. I don't know if it can or not. I haven't heard yet. Let me open it up to audience questions. Anybody, I'll keep going, go ahead. Let's wait for the microphone if you would so we can capture it for everyone. Hi, good afternoon. I'm Megan Eckstein with Defense Daily. As you look at the future of connectors, I mean, right now with the ACV, you have sort of uncertain swim capabilities. The commandant has sort of said, the concept of operations are unknown and possibly MLP will play a role. So it's hard. I mean, I guess I'm wondering how you guys are able to determine what the LCU replacement or any other connectors might look like when there are so many variables right now and how these things will be operating. The LCU replacement and the LCAC replacement, the LCAC replacement, which is called the Surface SSC, acronym is escaping me, there's too many acronyms. The SSC, they're essentially gonna be a little bit more capable than what we have right now. But it's gonna be a very, very similar vehicle because the driving factor on those things is first of all speed, so you can't put too much weight on them, but the second part is being able to fit in the well decks of the ships we currently have and we're anticipated to have in the future. So that's what's driving those capabilities. One of the things we're asking if they can do is to be able to do an in-stream launch with these vehicles. And the old LCAC demonstrated that 1988, 87 or 88 demonstrated the ability with AAVs, very slow laborious process, but we want those ships to be able to, those vessels to have the same capability. My understanding is with the SSC, we probably won't be able to get that capability until about the 10th one because they've already started manufacturing the first, I believe, eight. So we don't wanna change any design. We don't wanna, you know, we're not trying to impact that program, but we ask them where possible can we make modifications, in-stream modifications that will enable us to be able to launch off of those things. Because as I said, we have to have the ability to do that because those things aren't gonna go into an undefended beach. And if we're coming from much further out, there is no vehicle that'll swim from that range. Even the high water speed EFV that we were anticipating, 25 nautical miles is about the extent of it. And then you start doing that thing called running out of gas, and that's bad. Other questions? I've just got Maas Yonim with Inside the Pentagon. I was just curious as to, you know, you talked about this a little bit before what you're doing in kind of in the short term, but what are you doing right now to improve connectors and getting to shore, you know, upgrade-wise, or are any modifications on the vehicles? Right now we're not, I mean, we're working with what we have because anytime you come up with a new idea, it takes years to actually implement. And so right now what we're doing is our AAVs are not very capable. Rather problem, you know, some of them were first entered service in 1972. So what we're trying to emphasize with those is a program where we're doing a limited force protection upgrade and assistance improvement to it, but it takes time. We're not actually gonna be able to start modifying, turning wrenches on those vehicles, until FY19. Just because of the way these programs work is they have to test things out. There's the engineering piece of it. There's just so many different things involved that you can't actually, you know, that's the kind of lead time we're talking about, just to modify vehicles that we have right now. So, you know, we're doing what we can. Those vehicles, we have issues with them launching, you know, outside of three miles. They're just old and we're facing parts obsolescence, but it's what we have and, you know, they get the job done one way or another for what we're doing right now. And our emphasis right now, in particular, especially with the currently fiscal and serene environment, our common odds priorities are crisis response at the expense of major combat operations. If we absolutely had to do it, we certainly would, but it'd be a stretch, but right now we're focusing on crisis response and that's, you know, the capabilities we need to do crisis response aren't as robust as what we need to do major combat operations. Okay. Just one back there and then we'll come up here. Good afternoon, sir. Yolanda Peterson Jones from CNA. And I wanted to know if you had any concerns or issues with the new system that could pose delays with the ACV meeting operational requirements, meaning delays such as weather related, sea wave height, that kind of thing. And are there any concerns with the distance that the assets would be launched from Shep to Shore? Well, right now what our intentions are is we're going to do a limited buy first. And we're calling that 1.1. And the idea behind that is to get it out, get it operating, we'll obviously test it, make sure it's safe to operate, but we're going to get it out to the operating forces, let the Marines use them while the still majority of our fleet are the AVs. And tell us what needs to change. What works, what doesn't work, what are the limitations on this thing? And then we make changes to 1.2 and then we buy to about half of our requirement with 1.2. And so what the considerations you just mentioned, first of all, we have to prove that it even swims in the first place. I mean, we don't know that for sure. Engineering specifications have indicated to us that it does, but we don't know that for sure. We can't actually say it does, definitely does until it's been tested and proven. So once we have tested and proven that, then we start looking at the limit, okay, what are the exact limitations as to how far it can go, what it can do. And then the idea behind it though is 1.1, we don't tend to change very much because we need to get it as quickly as possible and start operating with it because as I explained, our AVs are getting very, very old. So that's some of the, if it's not able to do much, then the engineering change proposals for the second group of vehicles that we're going to buy need to improve our ability to do some of those things. Hope that answers your question. Thank you. Hi, sir, Sidney Friedberg from rakingdefense.com. We mentioned the emphasis on the crisis response on the lower end of the spectrum or even the non-shooting operations where you also need amphibious capability rather than the World War III scenarios. But if you, one of the things that everyone's very concerned about is if you look at low end or hybrid or non-state threats, that things like RPGs, like roadside bombs, often with homemade explosives, even drones to some degree. Absolutely. Cyber, for everyone's sake. All sorts of things are proliferating down from the state actors to some very low level groups that may well pop up as spoilers in humanitarian relief operations, for example. So, without going into the full airsea battle dimension of things, how do you and these more modest operations create an amphibious force that is survivable and effective without breaking the bank, as of course, or bringing it back? Well, that's the thing, that's something we've been watching very, very closely. Because we are operating on an assumption that no matter where we go, no matter what we do, we have to always be looking over our shoulder, watching for people that don't like us very much, using that as an opportunity to cause casualties, to embarrass the United States. That could happen anywhere in the most mundane of operations. We call it force protection. We're always emphasizing force protection. One of the reasons the Commandant chose to go the path we're on right now is because this armoured, or this amphibious combat vehicle has much higher ground clearance. It has a V-shaped hull. It has the ability to have wheels blown off and keep going. It's designed to operate more like an M-Rap than a tracked vehicle is. Frankly, we had such problems with our AAVs in Iraq that we stopped using them outside the gate and we never even took them to Afghanistan. So that's some of the adjustments we made because of exactly the points you just brought up. I mean, the current operating environment and the anticipated operating environment, we think we're gonna have to face all of those things and technology's getting cheaper and more widely available and we're very concerned about it. And that's some of the reasons why we're going in the direction we're going. Yeah, we're being driven for good reason by the Department of Defense to go to things like network on the move, N-O-T-M, not them. That's a requirement in our vehicles. Something else that's becoming a requirement in our vehicles is energy efficiency. So all of these things combine and contribute towards the approach that we're taking. Let's go here and then here. I'm Terry Murphy with CSIS and once upon a time an amphibious officer. And got the Marines ashore. My question is a broader one. This is way above my technical pay grade. How is the Marine Corps dealing with the cultural shift if you like, if there is a cultural shift from many, many years of war? I'm no junior officers in Fallujah and I think I knew you're a former commanding officer of the sixth Marines. But in any event, 10 years of desert, et cetera, et cetera. How is the culture of the Marine Corps shifting to being in effect expeditionary? It's hard. We've never gotten away from the expeditionary aspect. We've not had anywhere near as much emphasis on it as we have in the past. Essentially, we did what was required of us in Iraq and Afghanistan. Really, I was actually on the joint staff and I heard a conversation going on with regards to Iraq. We had the march up, Marines went home and Secretary Rumsfeld asked, well, what do you mean you went home? This is the war of the zone. Why aren't you there? The reply was, well, we don't do the longer term stuff. That's what the Army's good at. That's what their focus is. And the response was, thanks for your international offense, get over there. So we did. And I think we did fairly well. We did what was required of us. Now there's a large generation of our younger Marines that that's the only experience they have is operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. And so the command has focused very heavily on that and from the standpoint of okay, what we need to do is go back to our amphibious routes, go back to our expeditionary routes, guess what, you're not gonna have a green beans coffee over where you go from now on. And you have to have the ability to respond to crisis, the full scale, all the way from passing out MREs to dealing with people that don't like us very much and are willing to try and hurt us or try and embarrass us or anything. So, and that's one of the things we're doing right now is in the 1940s, we had something called the Small Wars Manual. And we're putting out a supplement to that. We're calling the Small Wars Manual for the 21st century. Because what we don't wanna do is forget the lessons we've learned over the last 10 to 12 years. We need to make sure those are inculcated throughout our operating forces because as we've talked about, some of the things we face there, we're gonna face in a lot of other places. It's gonna be a lot of aspects are gonna be different. Some things aren't gonna be that different. We have to be ready to face those things. Frankly, people that don't like us very much, they found out that things like IEDs and now drones and some other things, they work pretty well. So we're gonna have to deal with those kind of things. And our Marines understand that. So that cultural shift from, okay, we're not doing that anymore. Now, we're going back out on ships. We're putting out special purpose mag tests for crisis response reasons. And we're gonna respond to whatever we're faced with. We need to be able to come up with an array of options for the decision makers. And that's what we're trying to do. Morning, sir. George Nicholson, a consultant for special operations and counterterrorism. I was at a session this morning with General Amos. And he started talking about his decision to cancel the EFV. And he said, like you alluded to, it was a matter of cost and survivability. And he said, the flat bottom, he said, I'm not about to explain to the mothers or fathers or sons or daughters why somebody was killed using that vehicle. And he indicated it, even if I had the fully field at EFV today, I would not have put it into Afghanistan or I wouldn't because like you alluded to, 90% of the use is not gonna be on the ground. He also talked about though, that they're off the shelf solutions that the Marine Corps are looking at right now. Certain vehicles that are off the shelf right now that have got almost 63% more protected capability than the NRAP. Can you talk to that? Yes, sir. That's essentially the amphibious combat vehicle capability that we're going after. I've been counseled that using the words off the shelf isn't necessarily accurate by our systems command folks. They're calling it non-developmental, which means in my mind is we have to keep control of the requirements for those vehicles, not let them go anywhere in order to get that first group of vehicle out there. That our emphasis on that that's gotta be good enough to operate vehicle, not 100% of our requirement. We're looking for good enough, 1.2 will be a much better vehicle. What happens beyond that, it may be a high water speed ACV. It may be a 1.3 version as we'd be able to, we don't know. What we do know is something has to change in the technology for a high water speed vehicle to enable us to do that at unacceptable cost. When you start trading things away like armor, lethality, that's a problem. And one of the things we found kind of inadvertently in our act was our seven ton trucks were much more survival against IEDs. Why, that's not what they were designed for. It was something as simple as ground clearance. You had higher ground clearance so you had a little bit of offset. M-Raps, offset, V-shaped hull to try and deflect the blast a little bit. Now there's some folks going back and second guessing whether the hull form actually does deflect the blast. I personally think it does, but I'm not an engineer. What do I know? So that's why we're emphasizing this ACV because it has, out in the Nevada Automotive Test Center they tested our technology demonstrator for the NPC and industry followed that, all the developments on that. And some of the things they developed in that thing is something like called inline drive. So that all four tires on each side pull about the same way it tracks pull to be able to climb over things, some maneuver and soft soil, mud sand, that kind of thing. But more importantly, you have higher level ground clearance. It can raise and lower itself. And then you have central tire inflation and then you have a V-shaped hull and then you have independent suspension so that when one of those tires gets blown off it can drive itself out of the kill zone. You track vehicle, you blow a track, you're not going anywhere unless somebody tows you out or something. So all those things combine and there are a lot of different things. There's the operational availability of those vehicles, the complexity, frankly the high water speed vehicle was very, very complex. There was a lot of hydraulics in it. So and the reliability was getting better by the time the program was canceled but it still wasn't very good. That's a challenge, fuel efficiency. I mean, it's a massive engine inside those to be able to drive it at that high speed and some people say you're sucking fuel about the same way you do with an M1 tank. That's not good. So I mean, all of those things combined are what contributed to the decision that kind of made and to take this different path and in some ways it's something we always intended to do because the MPC we started developing in 2008 is a complimentary capability. And our original intentions for that vehicle had nothing to do with us any more than swimming from shore to shore and calm water. So we didn't really discuss anything other than that because that's all we wanted the vehicle to be able to do. We'd get it ashore and then we'd use it ashore. Well, in talking with some of the industry representatives at modern day Marine and a couple other events, you ask them, well, why didn't you bring up the fact that your vehicle swims? That wasn't one of the requirements. So we didn't talk about it. Well, does it swim? And they show you a video. Okay, well that doesn't prove anything. I mean, you see the vehicle swimming in the water. Obviously it has to be tested. So you start looking at the engineering specification, reserve buoyancy, ability to ride itself, all those kinds of things, thrust through the water to be able to get through the surf zone, the ability to keep itself from sinking once it comes off the ship. Indications we have is it's pretty good, but it has to be proved. Sir Byron Callan, Capital Alpha Partners. I wonder if you can talk a little about the international aspects of some of these connector programs. There are a number of other countries that operate AAVs. They're probably as long as a tooth of some of ours. They're buying some of ours, so I guarantee they're as long as a tooth. Okay, but I'm curious. I mean, are they engaging in the requirements or what's kind of the state of dialogue with the requirements that you're setting and how maybe partners might fit in those in the future? One of the things about it is we haven't really started discussing outside international. We've looked around at who's doing what. And right now the only people that have built a high water speed amphibious vehicle are the Chinese. And guess what? It looks a lot like the EV. Now the specifications for it, we don't know all of them, but what it looked like they did was to get around the weight problem was put armor on the front, for the frontal facing, and then sides and back, much, much later armor. I think you can take that with a BB gun. I'm just kidding. We also don't know what they have in the back of it from the standpoint of how you fit the people in the back, because the other thing about the ACVs that we're looking at, they have mine resistant blast seats so they're suspended from the ceiling and so the troops sitting in there don't absorb the seat, the blasts coming up through their legs and through their spines. I don't know if they did anything like that in those vehicles. It goes very fast through the water. We don't know how far, and we don't know what happened when it gets to shore. We don't know what the reliability is. All of the challenges that we face. But like I said, it looks all like the EV. Had different paint scheme. What a lot of other countries are doing with their amphibious vehicles is using the international versions of the ones we're looking at right now as potential vendors. That's what they're using for amphibious vehicles. They swim off the ship, they come ashore. They use different options. There's also the option that the French just did in Mali. They wanted to operate in Mali so they pulled a ship into Port in Senegal, drove off onto the pier, drove across Senegal, went into Mali to operate. Can we do that? I don't know. Obviously there's a lot of permissions involved in that. But that's a potential also. Try to do a drive hundreds of miles with tracked vehicles, doesn't work too well. Especially with our old, you leave a bunch of them by the side of the road and that's not considered a good thing. One of the broader trade spaces that has been being navigated of late in the Marine Corps is between the air element and the ground element. And clearly the V-22 is, I, at least from where I sit, proving out to be a lot of what the Marine Corps promised and no one believed initially is now sort of coming to bear. I think it's going beyond our expectations. And the Marine Corps always said, just wait till we get it out there and it'll be even better. And again, it actually looks like perhaps the Marine Corps was right. But that promise, I think, has to some degree reinvigorated the debate about, okay, how much of the ground element do we really need? How much could you do relying more heavily on air? How relevant is the ground element coming ashore? So, how do you think about that balance? Well, that's just it. There has to be a balance. Because- But it can it be a 75-25 balance? No. One way or the other? Because the thing about it is whatever you bring in via air, right now we have an internally transportable vehicle, but you have to make some modification before you put it on a V-22 and then to get it off modified again before you can operate with it. And we have a limited number of those. Other than that, those people are restricted to walking. And if you have a fairly robust anti-air threat, you have to do a lot to be able to tamp that down before you bring the V-22 in. And or before you bring helicopters in with suspended vehicles underneath them, like our 53 can carry quite a bit. The JLTV that we're bringing online, the 53 can actually carry two of them. And so that's another way to sling load them in, bring those in. But you have to have a relatively benign environment to do that because you have to have the ability to move more than just at foot speed. And that's a challenge. And that's why I believe the ground element has to have the ability to get ashore with vehicles that are protected by armor and can fight. And so that's, and then our bigger things, there's the only way to get them ashore or the only way to get them somewhere is via ship. Because even the C-17, like we can only fly, you can only put one tank at a time on a C-17. So those are very limited options. Well, there are also the arguments about just exactly what the right balance is of the self deployment. You've talked a lot about that, but do you see the potential for some technological evolution that might shift that need and or could you see a financial scenario coming to pass that would essentially force the Marine Corps to conceive of that differently? I would not, I'd never say never because as soon as you do that, you get proven wrong. But I can't, I don't see it because we're a ground-centric organization. We have our air assets to support ground. Well, I don't mean in the ground, but I mean in terms of having a connector that just delivers as opposed to having a self-deployed capability, surface capability, can you see, it's a lot easier in some ways to put a vehicle onto a surface connector and drive it off than having the self-deployed and getting that balance of protection ashore versus speed in the water, obviously is where, it's a petard you've been hoisted on before, so. To us, we see the ability to have an independent deployer that swims ashore without any connector is a service to finding capability and that's why I've put so much emphasis on it. I mean, for the pursuit of high water speed, we've spent 26 years, $3 billion and as I think I said at lunch, it's not because we're stupid, it's because that's how important it is to us to be able to have that capability and that remains a requirement to have that capability as in why we're continuing to pursue other options and at the same time, continuing the pursuit of high water speed in technology, RDT&E, because the equation has to change somewhat so there's less trade-offs to be able to get that vehicle because that's ultimately what we would like because what we've envisioned is for the longest time and I think General Cruelac and maybe General Kirkman if I'm wrong and maybe since before him, three-legged stool, V-22, L-CAC, high water speed, it was called a AAAV then became EFE and then we referred to it as a high water speed ACV when the high water speed study office was stood up but that's what we're trying to get to because we believe that gives us the most capability. More questions out there? Somebody's gotta have some tomatoes, we haven't gotten the tomatoes yet. Here we go, Dakota, how about some tomatoes? He won't do it, he won't do it, he won't do it, he won't do it. Dakota Wood, Heritage Foundation, the conversation has really been about the ACV, whatever variant, the topic was connectors and oftentimes when I read about the topic or hear people talk about it, they conflate connectors, SIP to short connectors with the ACV program but really it's LCAC, LCAC replacement, LCU, LCU replacement, you gotta get JLTV ashore, you gotta get Humvee's ashore, you gotta get MTVR's ashore, so what can you tell us about the CORE's program or desires for actual surface connectors and Ryan's on Navy programs and the timeline for all that? Yeah, I think I've talked about it earlier or maybe I'm confusing what I talked about at lunch. We had a summit in March to talk about all the different ideas that are out there because one of the things we clearly understand is with the route we're taking, LCUs and LCACs probably aren't gonna be enough. What else is there out there? What else can be done? The joint high-speed vessel that's just coming online, we're gonna build eventually 10 of them and the first two, first three have already been commissioned and two of them are out there operating right now to find out, well, what all can we do with these vehicles? Excuse me, these vessels. High-speed catamaran kept to 35 knots, carry over 600 tons, pretty capable vehicle except that that's not a landing vessel. So one of the things we talked about is having a ramp. We're working with O&R right now, Office of Neighbor Research, to see if we can do a ramp that we can launch vehicles off. They drive off into the water instead of driving off onto an MLP or driving off onto a pier. So you load those up from much greater distance. They can carry about 20 to 21 of the ACVs, bring them into just outside small and range and let them drive off and swim ashore. Those are some potential options. Again, all of it has to be proven. We have to work these things out but one of the things that we clearly realize is as the fiscal environment gets more and more constrained we have to think harder. What are the alternatives? What else can we do to be able to make sure that we continue to have the capability to do amphibious operations? Because that's what makes us different, we believe. I saw another hand out there sitting. No way to move them like this. Expeditionary Force 21 recently came out and obviously the connectors and the ACV and the whole ground component are one of the prongs of that trident as it were. Talk to me if you would about how whatever replaces LCAC and LCU and some of these innovative brand new platforms fit into a context small world where people are firing off anti-ship cruise missiles possibly the non-state actors as we've seen Lebanon firing off anti-ship cruise missiles. You can buy pretty long range radars off the internet now. So how do those connectors, yes I understand the Navy doesn't want to bring it within small arms range but how about getting them through that cruise missile envelope which more and more adversaries are gonna be able to generate to some degree. Absolutely. That's the thing is what I don't want to give people ideas that we'd be doing this by ourselves. Obviously we'd be doing this with the Navy and the Navy and the Air Force. The Navy and the Air Force put a great deal of time and effort into the anti-access fight to be able to suppress that. One of the things that we believe though is we can't just stand by and wait until we get the green light, okay now it's safe to go ashore or safe to get within range to be able to go ashore. We believe that we have to be able to contribute to those shaping operations even if it's nothing more than launching from quite a ways out beyond 65 nautical miles out via a form of connector that can get ashore fairly quickly be able to come like with a joint high speed vessel. Be able to come just outside small arms range to be able to get these vehicles to swim off and then swim ashore be able to open up a bubble ashore because one of the concerns I have is much like the scud hunting in Iraq in the first Gulf War was aircraft can't see everything, radar can't sense everything. They can shut themselves down, they can camouflage themselves and they can pop up at the least convenient time. If you have people on the ground looking for those things to be able to open up a window opportunity then you can help with that effort of bringing things closer in but it's very much going to be a joint fight. We would not be, that's how we would see operating from much longer range. And that's, we think is something we have to be able to do. So that's my question. It's hard for you to see a JHSV type vessel for example, you know, riding bravely through a cruise, anti-ship cruise missile defense zone. Well, you wouldn't, we wouldn't just blithely go into that. But when the alternative is if there's something we absolutely have to do and if you think about that environment, you know, there'd have to be a great deal, you know, the stakes would have to be very, very high. The objective would have to be tremendously important. Vital national interest kind of thing. But I'd rather, I think, stick a smaller vessel in there than a bigger gray vessel have that come in closer. So if you can get the standoff range with a gray vessel and use something to get you most of the way in, that's much smaller, much more maneuverable. Is it still under threat? Absolutely. That's kind of what we get paid to do. But you try and limit your exposure so that you can get something ashore, open things up and it probably in conjunction with something like what we described earlier, V-22 landed force on foot to help clear an area and be able to tamp something down to at least maybe secure what we call a lateral penetration point to be able to get other things ashore and be able to start expanding that bridge head ashore. Okay. Are there other questions out there or have we connected everyone? Okay, we've got one here. Exhausted, the connection. Connecting. Hi, sir. Greg Kicinski from Raytheon. What type of avionics suite? Given that other question that was up front, do you envision on these connectors and also any self-defense weapons? No self-defense weapons. Avionics suite? I'm not sure. Absolutely, as a matter of fact, your company's actually providing some of those options. Hence the question. Or at least offering the opportunity. That's very much on our mind. In particular with the J-35, the capabilities that aircraft are just astronomical and but how do you get that information down to the operating forces? That is a very difficult problem. Something we're very heavily focused on right now. Be able to get that information out. All of the things that we do, we try and take the holistic picture of, well, how do you operate with your aircraft? How do you communicate with them? How do you maintain situational awareness? One of the things we're working on right now, for long-range raids in V-22s, if it's six, eight, 10 hours in the air, the change to the situation, the situation doesn't remain stable. It's gonna be very different from when you originally took off in the last update you got when you're short. So we're looking at ways to collaborate, looking at what 18th Airborne Corps is doing, looking at a lot of different options to see, okay, how do we do airborne command and control amongst the people in that force that are going on that long-range raid, for lack of a way of putting it, to be able to communicate, maintain situational awareness, understand the changes on the ground and be able to adjust and pass orders, okay, here's what we're gonna do now in those aircraft. So all of those things we're working on, do I have an action for them right now? Absolutely not. But technology is moving pretty quick, as you well know, and it's something we're focused on, we're looking at, and we have to make sure we stay at the forward edge of that technology. Okay, I think we want one more back here. Sir, on the subject of connectors, you were talking briefly about catamaran, you mentioned catamaran, and it brought to mind the Navy's INLS system, and I wondered if some of the capabilities that you were considering in terms of getting the assets from ship to shore, were they going to be organic, meaning were they going to be Marine Corps assets only, or were you considering partnering with the Navy, for example, and if so, had the INLS system been considered at all, possibly, I know how slow it moves, I actually attended, supported a training exercise, a Freedom Banner, a few years ago, in which the INLS was implemented, but with modifications, might that be an opportunity for consideration? Well, you'd have to ask the Navy that. If it's a vessel, they own it, and we're partnering with them very much, though. I mean, that's how they get us to shore. If it's a vehicle, we own it. Very simplistic way of looking at it, but no, none of these connector options we're looking at are things that we would actually own ourselves. We don't have the craft masters, we don't have the people that would be able to operate those kind of things. As far as the INLS, you'd have to ask the Navy on that one, because you just want it right past me, so. So that, I forget what the I stands for, but the Navy Lighterage System is what? Improved, okay. Yes, right, so it's a system of barges and other craft from which you take equipment off of a larger ship and get it ashore. That's, the Navy owns all of that. Right, exactly. I've seen it demonstrated, but that's very, I'm not sure if you're right. The INLS, I've seen it demonstrated, but it's very slow, obviously sea states have to be very, very calm, and that's in a permissive environment when they actually push those things ashore, so. Thank you. My question focuses on using it as a model and possibly making improvements to it. We certainly are having those kind of discussions that we'd like to have that done, but one of the things we talked about is the Navy has pretty significant issues facing right now, fiscally, and so I think their options are getting fairly limited to what they can do because ship construction, as a matter of fact, they can't build all the ships that they want to build, let alone the ships that we want them to build, and so that's, we're very constrained times right now, but anyways, we can find to improve things to find out better ways to do things, we're all about it, and so far in our discussions with the Navy, they are too, but within limits, within fiscal limits, because like I said, they have much bigger fiscal problems than we do, can't even imagine the ones they have. Sir, hi, George Nicholson again. You referred to the Joint High Speed Vessel, and also looking at using other platforms, I know that the original requirements for the Joint High Speed Vessel and the LCS had as a threshold, and that it would be able to support the 53 helicopter or the V-22, those were knocked over to objectives, I brought this up at the Surface Navy Association a couple of years ago and the PEO ship said, that's not a requirement, we don't structure. Are you all looking at now with the new innovative concepts, looking what it would take to modify, particularly the deck of a larger LCS, like the independence, particularly to be able to resupply it with a V-22, or to use it as an FOB or a lily pad? Yes, and I believe the Navy's looking very hard at those also, and of course it's more important that they look at it than we do, but one of the things that I have, my understanding is that Navy's looking to get V-22s as a potential replacement for the cod, whether they do that or not, I don't know. I've seen some reference to that in articles a couple of other places. So you brought up the idea that the V-22's shown itself to be a lot more capable than a lot of people thought it was. It's going beyond our expectations, well I just saw an article earlier that there's a lot of different countries looking to get the V-22 now, and the cap of the article, at the end of the article said now it's cool to have a V-22, so I don't know. What I do know that as this thing proves itself more and more capable, more and more people are going to want to use it, and that means it has to have platforms that can actually land on and operate off of it, and it's both weight and heat signature, as you probably well know, and so both of those are issues for the GHSV, and I believe the LCS haven't looked as much at the LCS. But I think there's also a fair amount of experimentation going on to see if there are military Seawolf command platforms that also might be able to be V-22 certified, and again expand the utility of some of those for additional operations. Absolutely. Okay, are there any other burning questions about amphibious connectors? Okay, well, thank you all very much for coming. Really appreciate you taking the time, and we look forward to seeing you again soon. Take care. Thank you.