 Alright, good morning everyone. Today we have the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson, and his Deputy for Operations, Plans and Strategy, Vice Admiral Chris Aquilino here to discuss the results of the investigation into the detention of 10 U.S. Navy sailors by Iranian military forces earlier this year. You all should have a handout that depicts the timeline of events and the intended and actual route taken by the boats. They will review what happened that day, the findings of the investigation, and any corrective actions taken. And then we'll open it up for questions on the investigation, and if time permits, we can cover some other topics. We'll have about 30 minutes. Admiral Richardson. Before we get started, is there a question about the handouts? Yeah, so the question is where are they? Alright, well good morning everybody and thank you for being here. And as Don announced today, we're releasing the results of the investigation into the seizure of two riverine command boats on 12 January this year by Iranian forces in the vicinity of Farsi Island and the subsequent detention of 10 sailors. And the goal of this investigation was to conduct a thorough review of what U.S. Navy actions may have contributed to this incident. Now we conduct these investigations to learn what we can in order to prevent similar events from occurring and where necessary to hold our people accountable where they failed to follow procedures and meet expectations. Now before I get into the additional details, I want to address the question of international law up front. And as I've said before, these two boats and their crew members had every right to be where they were on that day. And the investigation concluded that Iran violated international law by impeding the boat's innocent passage transit and they violated sovereign immunity by boarding, searching and seizing the boats and by photographing and videotaping the crew. Now having said that, the bulk of the investigation concentrated on our lessons learned and corrective actions to prevent this from recurring in the future. And with respect to the review of the boats actions, the investigation looked in depth at both chains of command. So just to set the scene here, there are two chains of command that are operative. One is the chain of command back here in the United States that is responsible for manning and training and equipping these units, preparing them and then certifying them for deployment. And then when they go over to the fifth fleet, they chop, they report to the fifth fleet commander and the task force commander in theater and they run their operations and the crews report to them while they're in theater. So we investigated both chains of command. We began the investigation with the operational chain of command. So as soon as the incident had hit the actual incident itself, it completed the commander of the U.S. fifth fleet in Bahrain, appointed an investigating officer to determine the facts and circumstances surrounding the incident. Then during the review of the investigation, the vice chief of naval operations appointed the deputy commander of Fleet Forces Command down in Norfolk to conduct a supplemental inquiry to focus on command and control at all levels, including the fifth fleet. And to incorporate a formal legal opinion from the judge advocate general on U.S. and Iranian compliance with international law. The vice chief also expanded the investigation scope to include our four star fleet commanders in the United States year. The Pacific Fleet Commander, Abel Swift, and Commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, Abel Davidson, to ensure that all aspects of the crews' pre-deployment preparation and training were addressed. The command investigation and the supplemental inquiries ensured that we had a complete and objective examination of the incident from the riverine boat crews up through the fleet commander as well as their operational chain of command as well as that chain of command that prepares them to deploy. The investigation reviewed seven areas, manning, training, material readiness, command and control, adherence to procedures while in theater, the rules of engagement and the code of conduct, and then international law. And Admiral Aquilino will provide additional details about the root causes in each area and actions that are underway to address them. Now as I mentioned during recent testimony and in my conversations with you, my intent, our intent today is to be as open and transparent as possible. And hopefully you've had the opportunity to review the documentation that we've already distributed and we can address any additional questions that you may have at the end of the brief. Today, though, we'll have to be careful about covering specific accountability actions. That process is conducted separately. I know you're all very familiar with that. And as you know, we can't bias the outcome of those actions in any way, and so we'll be not commenting on the specifics of those proceedings. So with that as an opening to walk you through the details of the investigation and the corrective actions, I'll turn the podium over to Vice Admiral Aquilino, my deputy for operations, plans and strategy. Thank you, sir. Good morning. I'd like to provide you an overview of the incident itself and then talk about the issues revealed by the investigation and the corrective actions implemented to ensure this event is not repeated. For reference today, all times identified will be in Bahrain local time. Coastal Riverine Squadron III deployed to the Fifth Fleet area of operations in August of 2015. The Riverine command boats operate from Bahrain. They conduct escort of high value assets in and out of Port as their primary mission. In October of 2015, three boats deployed from Bahrain to Kuwait to conduct operations in the North Arabian Gulf. On January 11th, 2016, two of the boats were directed to transit from Bahrain in support of the mission tasked to the Central Arabian Gulf. Normally the Riverine boats operate in a minimum of pairs for mutual support. They plan to follow a standard navigation route used routinely between Kuwait and Bahrain. Because of the distance, the boats plan to meet up with another ship for refueling about midway through the transit. On 12 January, two boats departed Kuwait on a 259 nautical mile transit to Bahrain the longest the crews had ever executed. The boats departed about four hours later than planned and immediately deviated from their planned route in an attempt to make up some time. The crews' deviation caused them to transit unknowingly through Saudi Arabian territorial seas and then through Iranian territorial seas off the coast of Farsi Island. Approximately a mile and a half south of Farsi Island, one of the two boats suffered an engine problem. That was at 4.11 pm. Both boats stopped, one to conduct engine repairs, the second boat to provide support. At 4.20 pm, two Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGCN, patrol craft, approached at high speed with weapons uncovered. The US crews attempted to communicate with the Iranians informing them they had an engine issue. Shortly thereafter, the engine was repaired and the crews attempted to evade. One of the boats was physically blocked preventing it from departing the area when two larger IRGCN vessels arrived. The US boats assessing that they were overmatched were then forced to reposition to Farsi Island where the crews were held overnight and interrogated. After learning the crews were detained, the fifth lead commander directed a robust military response and search and rescue effort. As a result of these efforts and diplomatic negotiations, the crews were released the next morning. As described earlier, the investigation reviewed seven focus areas and the CNO has already addressed international law. But I will now describe the conclusion reached by the investigators regarding the remaining six areas as well as the corrective actions taken or are currently in progress. Some of those corrective actions are in the operational chain of command under fifth fleet while others are in the administrative chain of command as CNO described under the direction of the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command or NECC. For manning, the report validated that the squadron was adequately manned when they deployed to the fifth fleet area of operations in August of 2015 and no corrective actions are anticipated with regard to manning. Under training, the report validated that pre-deployment training and certification was adequate and appropriate for the missions expected to be assigned. However, the investigation also found that once deployed, sustainment training including navigation, weapons, and rules of engagement training was not conducted. Operationally, the fifth fleet commander conducted reviews of the training readiness programs and provided additional training to personnel and theater since the incident. To address this, administrative chain has made a number of changes to the training program. This includes navigation training improvements, operational risk management, and increased simulator training in support of this effort. Additionally, there are some actions that are ongoing and not yet completed but are in work. Monthly training assessment of in theater forces is in development. The enhancement of pre-deployment training to more closely align with the missions assigned is in work and greater fleet training certification requirements are in place. Under material readiness, material readiness within the squadron declined during the deployment due to lack of command involvement and oversight, as stated in the report. Of note, the boats were inspected during the turnover in August when this unit arrived and the boats were found to be in good condition. The report found that the readiness degraded during their time when they were in Kuwait. In response to these findings, formalized requirements for material readiness programs have been implemented and no notice inspections for all deploy units have also been implemented. Under command and control, the investigation found a lack of leadership, a disregard for risk management processes, and proper mission planning standards. One important note that the investigation stated was that if the guidance provided by the fifth fleet commander had been followed, this event could have been prevented. A lack of leadership for geographically distributed forces resulted in degraded maintenance, poor morale, and declining standards. And the investigation also found poor coordination and communication between units and the operation centers that oversee these events. The fifth fleet has refocused their training and leadership for its maritime operations centers and the subordinate operations centers that support. And ongoing actions include the revision of the fifth fleet operations order which governs riverine command boat operations and includes overwatch procedures. Greater oversight and leadership involvement for geographically distributed forces is in place and those should address the deficiencies as outlined. For procedural adherence, the investigation states leadership did not enforce proper navigation practices. No preparation of a concept of operations briefing was developed, lacking communication plan, mission pre-briefs, and weapons postures have all been addressed. Specifically, once underway, the boat crews failed to report deviation from their planned route, unexpected land sightings, or the engine casualty that required them to stop. In order to prevent recurrence, fifth fleet has directed indoctrination and assessment period for all forces going into theater. Naval Expeditionary Combat Command has implemented formal requirements for commanders of units to continually and personally update their readiness of their forces and instituted formal reports back to headquarters. Under rules of engagement, the investigation determined that the rules of engagement in place are adequate but may not have been understood by the crews. The investigation also found that some crew members did not meet code of conduct standards while in custody. In addition to the changes to the training programs described, the command has increased the training required and they've added in-person survival evasion resistance and escape training for all coastal riverine forces that will deploy. In conclusion, the investigation looked at seven areas of concern and the Navy is taking actions at all levels of the chain of command to address those deficiencies to ensure this event will not happen again. And C&O, thanks for the time. Okay, thanks Admiral Aquilino. Before we get to questions, let me just conclude by saying that across the Navy and across the globe, hundreds of commanding officers and hundreds of thousands of U.S. sailors are making tough decisions and performing their duties in a way that should make every American proud and strike fear into anybody who would want to take us on. Those sailors clearly know our actions on that day in January and this incident did not live up to our expectations of our Navy. But we are a Navy that learns. In order to maintain the bonds of trust and confidence amongst ourselves and with the American people, we have an obligation to continually examine our personal and professional conduct to ensure that we always execute our mission and behave with integrity, with accountability, initiative, and toughness. And with that, I'll take your questions. Bob Burns with AP. Question, in your opening statement you mentioned that I think you said it was the commander of the Fifth Fleet had ordered a robust military response after this encounter happened. Was that executed in any way and what was that? And also, could you also elaborate on the point about the failures to adhere to the current conduct standards? Yes, sure. With regard to the search and rescue effort that was initiated, the commander of the Fifth Fleet pushed USS Anzio into the area of Farsi Island as well as there was a Coast Guard vessel that supported this event. There were alert launches from Harry S. Truman with F-18s to provide overwatch as well as non-traditional ISR in an attempt to build more information. And lastly, the Combined Air Operations Center supported it with a launch of F-15s. And the point about – so that's what the military response amounted to, okay. And then the code of conduct question. So for the code of conduct, the code of conduct is clearly utilized as a guideline for behavior in an instance where soldiers, sailors, airmen, or Marines might be in custody. The specific item that was of concern was the potential to make statements that would harm or be disloyal to the United States. So that is what the investigation found. What was the statement that was made? The statement's in the investigation, Bob, so we can get you that specific thing. And then beyond that, the details of that are part of the ongoing accountability review and the subject of further action on the part of Admiral Morneau of the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command. So we'll get you the exact quote right out of the investigation, but it's quoted there. Dan? Admiral, good morning. Daniel Moth, Washington Post. Navy so far has announced two reliefs for cause as a result of this incident. Are there any others that we don't know about yet that have been made? And I guess from a timeline perspective, where is the disciplinary process at this point? Right. So there was the Task Force Commander for Task Force 56. He has been relieved, as we've announced. The commanding officer of the squadron, the Riverine Squadron, has been relieved. Additionally, the officer in charge of the detachment in Kuwait, of those boats that were deployed up there, has been relieved. There are six other people that are being, they're in process right now, and that's being handled by Admiral Morneau. Is this an NJP process or a criminal process? What's that? So I believe it's proceeding down the NJP line is where they intend to go. Admiral, this is not the first high-profile incident with Riverine Squadrons over the last three or four years. If I read the investigation and your comments correctly, either Admiral, it seems like the investigation included they were properly man-trained and equipped before they left. But how is it that this is not the first incidence of the last three years, even the last three months, really, of subpar seamanship on behalf of the Riverine Squadron? And what are you doing to address that? Yeah, so as a result of that, David, NDC, the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command, as part of this and the other incidents was directed to review exactly those questions. How are the forces being trained and asked to evaluate whether that training is adequate to match their expected missions? So right now, I'm not prepared to say that there's a larger problem, but I am. I can confirm that we're looking very hard at that and we'll make adjustments as needed. Admiral Richardson, two unrelated questions. Firstly, on the code of conduct, the report sort of goes into details about one crew member giving his password to his personal laptop and giving information about the boat, the speed. I mean, is this sort of an isolated incident or are you looking at other incidents where crew members may give too much information when under interrogation? Well, we don't have a big sampling of that, right? So what we're doing is we're making sure that the training is as prototypical and relevant as possible, right? So, you know, there is the code of conduct as it exists. And then we are working to ensure that how that code of conduct can operate in foreseeable situations so that these sailors and all service members have as robust a training program that would be as realistic as possible to allow them to exercise these. So that's kind of the nature of the review that we're doing right now to make sure our training is as applicable as possible. Sorry, second, if I may just ask a second unrelated question on China, actually. The Chinese have said they're not going to abide by the ruling by the International Court of Arbitration on July 12th. Could you give some details on what the U.S. may be willing to do when they don't abide by that? We generally don't anticipate things like that, and so I don't want to get out in front of that type of thing. Yeah, well, Sam McGrone with USNI News. So when the Brits had their sailors snatched by the IRGCN in 2007 from the Cornwall, they sought, you know, diplomatic international redress in the United Nations looking for statements of sanction and stuff like that. And in your report, you say several times that the Iranians seem to have violated Article 3019 of the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention. Where is the diplomatic response from the United States? Where is that redress? Is that coming? Is that something that you're aware about? The State Department of the Administration is working? Or is this just, that's the end of it? Yeah, our investigation didn't investigate that, Sam. So I just want to confine our discussion today to what the investigation covered. But you're not aware of anything like that? I'll just stick to what we talked about here. I have a lot of questions. A little trouble on the code of conduct thing. You know, as an aviator, before we were deployed, we always had to go through SEER training, which included indoctrination in the code of conduct. Were these riverine guys, NECC people, not given that training? So there's different levels of SEER training, as you know, and the aviators receive always the highest level. Prior to this event, the NECC Corps received a lower level, and that is one of the refixes, is they will now receive the exact same training that you mentioned, sir. Did it include the code of conduct and how to resist? They did have code of conduct training, but not to the level prior to this event that we would have wanted, which is one of the results. Hi, Tara. Hi. It's Tara Papp, Sergeant Straps. From both of you, did it surprise you just how many different things went wrong and that nobody stopped this particular patrol from going out? And then I have a couple of just clear up questions on Tina's command. Okay, yeah. I will tell you that having, you know, you're around as long as we've been around, Tara, and these big incidents like this are always the result of the accumulation of a number of small problems. And so it's just the nature of these things. And what we have to take aboard as a Navy is that you never know how these things are going to combine, right? And so we've got to be absolutely diligent. And this is a command responsibility that we sort of identify and fix problems wherever we find them. We've got to be extremely aggressive. When you start living with problems, as this team in Kuwait in particular started to do, and you saw it in the training and the material, you never know how these things are going to combine at exactly the wrong moment and result in a bigger incident like this. Can I just do a follow-up on the chain of command? The task force commander who's been relieved, where is he in the chain of command? Is he directly above RC? He's right above the squadron commander for the riverine command boats, and just under the fifth fleet commander. Is that squadron commander directly beneath him? Has there been any sort of administrative penalty taken? That squadron commander was relieved of command. So the squadron commander was relieved of command, and his boss, the task force commander, was also relieved of command. Lucas Tomlinson, Fox News. Were you disappointed that one of your officers, the lieutenant, the commanding officer of the boats apologized to the Iranians and was filmed apologizing? You know, I think that those types of questions are really not helpful in terms of getting us back on track as a Navy to take action to prevent this from ever happening again. And so, you know, my personal feelings really don't pertain to this. Will this incident be used as a training material? Absolutely. This will be a case study going forward. It keeps the Naval Academy to sailors throughout the fleet. You can see that there are lessons that apply across our entire Navy, not just officers, but enlisted the whole Navy. So this will be something that we can mine for a lot of lessons. Hope Sack with Military.com. In the investigation, it talks about the moment that the Iranian boats approached, and of course many poor decisions have been made to get to that point. But it, you know, says that the crews were wrong to the coxswain to disobey the order to accelerate, get away. There was hostile intent, so there's the possibility of a military response. I'm curious, once you're in that position, what the correct actions to be taken were rather than the surrender that happened? Yeah, so clearly the main point of the investigation is that you never want to get yourself into that position where you really have very, very few good choices, right? There were no good choices at that. And that's exactly how we train our Navy to be. So that if you're in a situation, you are ready to manage that situation, overmatch anybody who would want to challenge us and execute our mission. So that would be the emphasis that I'd want to take away here. The particulars of what happened in the moment, as I said, are being considered as part of disciplinary procedures. And so I don't want to give you, you know, a sense of my feelings on there and unduly influence those proceedings. Two questions, sir. One is that when the RCBs were coming down and they deviated from the course right away, they were too far and short, did they communicate at any time in those three, four hours with the – it was a Coast Guard cutter, there was the refueling boat? Did they ever communicate with that vessel and talk about their location and course? So they did make the required reports during the transit every 30 minutes. But they didn't communicate their position during those? Their position was communicated. And the Coast Guard cutter did not respond with any – So the communication was back to the operation centers and the investigation found that the operation centers did not properly plant or plot the track and keep the required oversight of where the boats were. The op center did not communicate back to the RCBs that you were off course, you're in a dangerous position. Right, that's right. One of the findings was that the operation center, which is a squadron function, you know, the task force function, they were also found to be deficient in terms of their understanding of the intended track and their tracking of the actual track. And I would just add that the Coast Guard vessel did come up on the line and say, it looks like these riverines, they saw them. You know, they had contact on them, looked like the riverine boats were off track and were in Iranian waters as well. So Coast Guard was aware of their position and did report that in. And that's in the investigation. I've been on these small boats in the Persian Gulf and I know the Coast Guard prides itself on seamanship and navigation. Right. And that's sort of a point of contention. We do too, Chris. This is an exception. All right. Since this incident, have RCBs been operating around Farsi Island and in the northern Persian Gulf again? I don't know. Long deal. At this point, I don't think they pushed them forward to Bahrain or to Kuwait. They've operated out of Bahrain, but that's not a function of this event. There's just been no mission requirement. Thank you. Just to clarify, the only equipment failure was the engine. There were no communication failures in the communication equipment was working the entire time. There was an issue on one of the boats with the communication gear. One of the boats was unable to establish encrypted communications over the horizon with the headquarters. The other boat communications equipment was working fine. Can you say which one had the issue? Was it the one with the engine failure as well? And we can get back to you on that. Yeah. You know, I know you don't want to get too far in your own personal opinion, but what is the lasting damage of having images of sailors at gunpoint by Iranian forces broadcast all over the world? Well, you know, that's obviously to be determined, David, but we'll take that as the earlier question highlighted and make sure that we learn every possible lesson out of this and we'll make it vividly clear to the United States Navy what is the expected standard and how to achieve that standard. Okay, we got time for one more. Lucas. Admiral, have you spoken to your Iranian counterpart to voice your displeasure over the incident? No. Does anyone? I mean, I saw Secretary Kerry and sort of the State Department reaching out to them. We made our views clear in forums like this, but in terms of direct communication, I'm not aware of anything beyond what Secretary Kerry did. Just one more. The captains of both 802 and 805, are they both still awaiting their, whatever sort of punitive decision might be? Yes, they are. Okay, thank you very much.