 Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to the C-Service Chiefs Update Panel. I am Skip Watanski, President of the Navy League of the United States. This year, the Navy League is excited to celebrate the 51st anniversary of Sea Air and Space. As you know, Congress plays an integral part in ensuring that our military has the tools they need to do their job and keep our country safe. As the Navy and the Marine Corps are being forced to do more with less, we must invest in them to ensure that they have the training and equipment needed to keep the seas open and secure, and when necessary, to dead or fight and win wars. This is why the Navy League's American Strength Campaign exists, to raise the Department of Navy's top line and to ensure that the Navy Marine Corps team has the resources they need now and in the future. I encourage you to look at the information that you all received in your registration package and ask that you consider joining this worthy cause. Now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your panel for today, Admiral John M. Richardson, United States Navy Chief of Naval Operations, General Robert Neller, United States Marine Corps, Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, Admiral Paul F. Zuckunft, U.S. Coast Guard, Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Honorable Paul N. Janikin, Administrator U.S. Maritime Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation. Now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the moderator for the service chief's update, Mr. Bradley Peniston, Deputy Editor, Defense One. Welcome and thank you for joining us today. Those of you who are in this room here at National Harbor and those who may be watching the live stream around the world on DefenseOne.com, we are living in interesting times, as the Chinese say, and I think it is particularly fitting that the Navy League is opening this conference with a discussion between the leaders of so many naval and maritime organizations. Preserving the freedom of seas has always been a team endeavor, but the complexity and the competitiveness of today's maritime environment, along with the challenge of less than unlimited resources, make partnerships more crucial than ever. Let me tell you how this event is going to go. I'll start off by asking each of our panelists a question, what's on their minds, what do they think should be on your minds, what do they want you to leave thinking about, and then we'll talk about it. And the Navy League has also asked me to make sure that there's plenty of time for your questions, half hour or more, so get those ready. But first, show of hands, is there anyone out there who would like to make a long statement rather than ask a question? No? Okay, good, good. All right. Makes it simple. Okay. You'll please ask your questions into one of the microphones here so that everyone can hear you. Tell us who you are, ask your question, our panelists will do their best to answer it, and we will get to as many of them as we can. So, gentlemen, thank you for joining us. What's on your mind? You want to start? Sure. Good morning. I have the unique privilege of being the Maritime Administrator, and I'm representing today the Secretary, Anthony Fox, the U.S. Department of Transportation. The Maritimes Administration's broad mandate begins and ends with ensuring that the nation has a sea lift capacity and capability to globally project and sustain our armed forces, and that means the ability to deploy equipment and logistic support for the Army, the Marine Corps, anywhere in the world on short notice, and then being able to provide sustainment of those forces while they are in theater, which enables us to protect power, influence of the United States, and be able to protect and defend our national interests. So the question that I would pose would be, what is the general health and preparedness of the maritime industry's capacity to support what is very essential military mission? I would say that the sea lift fleet is at a tripping point. The United States presence in the maritime domain is currently at the lowest level in our history. You'll see on the slide, there are only 79 U.S. flagships remaining in international trade, and that is a 25% drop over the last three years. We are moving less than 2% of our nearly 1.4 billion tons of U.S. imports and exports annually on U.S. flagships, and most of our commodities that are coming to the United States are carried on foreign vessels with allegiance to other foreign countries. As the United States fleet dwindles, so does the U.S. merchant marine, and along with that is the reductions that we see in our shipbuilding and our repair industrial capacity, and both of those are essential components of national security. Losing these vital assets will increase our vulnerability to international threats, and would take decades and tens of billions of dollars to replicate, recapitalize, or rebuild. Mariners, that's the next area that I'm concerned about. With the decline of the U.S. flag fleet, we have lost 2,300 jobs, and that doesn't sound like a lot, but we're talking about out of a total of about 12,000, and these are the folks that we need the most, with unlimited horsepower and unlimited tonnage credentials among American merchant mariners. The Maritime Administration currently estimates that we have barely enough, and I emphasize barely enough, qualified mariners to crew existing fleets of government sea lift and also U.S. flag commercial sea lift vessels provide both the surge and the sustainment of our armed forces if we go longer than four to six months. We will likely not have enough, and I emphasize not have enough mariners in the very near future if we do not take immediate actions to reverse the trend. This presents significant risks to our nation's ability to execute our operational contingency plans. That is because anything beyond the initial demand for mariners may leave us without the sufficient mariner base to crew the sea lift fleet for extended periods. What I'm saying is if the operation goes longer than four to six months, we don't have enough. The potential for the loss of the mariners job this drastically compromise our capacity both during a national emergency or in wartime operations. This is a top priority for the Maritime Administration and also for our Department of Defense partners, principally the U.S. Transportation Command. Likewise, the strategies of peer and near peer superpower nations to build up their maritime capacity while our commercial U.S. flag and other vital maritime capability is in decline also has our attention. We're talking about the high tech icebreakers to move through the Arctic and support future transits over the northern patches passage. We're talking about mega container fleets, strings of mega ports along vast and existing and merging trade routes that will magnify their global presence and their economic power. Our competitors label these as economic rather than maritime strategies in recognition that control of trade lanes means predominant influence in the world. We're living in a different world today with new challenges and threats. As everyone here knows, we have made a pivot to the Pacific and we did so necessarily, but only to find renewed challenges in Europe and the Middle East. We need to be prepared to support contingencies in any of those areas and be able to do that if we have multiple threats in multiple areas simultaneously. The reality is that American seapower provides freedom of access, presence and projects power and influence in the global commons. The visible extension of this power is the foundation to our global leadership. Commercial U.S. flag ships, applying international waters are a global handprint and foster freedom, the free forward goods, international stability, resilience and more important deterrence. In every conflict that we've had, nations come to us to put a U.S. flag on the back of the ship and the reason is a U.S. flag is a symbol of protection. That power allows the U.S. to influence the daily choices of our allies and trading partners and its presence best exemplified by a modern, a robust and international act of merchant marine. That's why after nearly 80 years of inattention and neglect, dating back to 1936, the maritime administration over the last two years has begun the development of a national maritime strategy. That strategy, which is still in draft and is in review by our interdepartmental and interagency partners, will help us modernize our ports, our waterways, incorporate our marine transportation system into the national freight network, ensure the visibility and growth, ensure the viability and growth for our international fleet to recruit, educate and retain our future maritime workforce and it will also allow us to embrace technological innovation to ensure the ongoing growth and the vitality of the U.S. merchant marine. Our nation has no choice but to rediscover the value and utility of moving freight on the water and the stakes couldn't be more urgent from my perspective and we need to work together to think creatively and invest the required resources to return this nation to its maritime roots. And I look forward to your questions. Listening to Chip, it reminds me of a track line the Coast Guard sailed not that long ago when I look at diminishing fleet sizes and the drawdown of mariners and a Coast Guard that prided itself on doing more with less. So where are we today is I am bullish on the United States Coast Guard now why would I say that in 2016 our acquisition budget doubled which I don't know if anyone else in the room can say that now a doubling isn't a big number when you double what we had it's not even a down payment on a Ford carrier but it doubled nonetheless. So we are building out our fleet of national security cutters. Four years ago we would have been optimistic to say maybe we can build five or maybe six and that would be the program of record. Eight was the program of record and now it's been extended out to nine. We just awarded phase two to build out our fleet of fast response cutters out to 58 but more importantly as we went back and forth with the contractor at the end of the day we wanted to make sure that the costs were fair and reasonable and in fact they are as well. Where we will award the largest shipbuilding contract the offshore patrol cutter in August of this year. So we're coming down the home stretch and this will define the Coast Guard as a maritime service and in the president's budget request for 2017 there is a hundred fifty million dollars in that to start moving out on recapitalizing our ice breaking fleet as well. So all of that is good news as you look at recapitalization opportunities modernizing the fleet of the Coast Guard. We're also doing the same thing and see for ISR and cyber and our fixed wing capability. But we heard from the first sea lord during our breakfast address today and it's a common thread among all the services right now is the health of the service the health of the people and the future force of the armed services and it's not just the uniform service. It's also our civilian workforce in the United States Coast Guard and the average civilian employee is 51 years of age. Where am I going to get that talent from and some of that talent comes from an 04 or an 05 decides to lead the service before 20 years and go to work as a civilian. We have the airlines are hiring like they did 20 25 years ago. That generation of pilots have now timed out and they're going to our pilots with three four thousand hours of cockpit experience and they'll never have to move again. And as they grow in seniority they won't have to work put in nearly a number of hours they do wearing a military uniform. We're seeing in the shipping industry we're seeing in the high tech industry and in fact we'll even see it in display floor here at the sea airspace convention this week. A lot of that talent is is hanging up a uniform and going to work elsewhere. So as we look at some of the challenges we might want to be looking at next year as we are making great strides and modernizing capitalizing how do we continue to stimulate stimulate and incentivize a workforce and especially a workforce that we call on to serve in harm's way across a world that is anything but tranquil today and nor will it be tranquil tomorrow. So challenges are there but at the end of the day I remain bullish on the United States Coast Guard. Thank you very much. Thank you as a service chief. I think my primary task to the nation is to provide training ready forces to meet global requirements. The recruit the train equip that responsibility the service chief has and I think today we're doing a pretty good job. I think we're meeting the requirements. I think the Marines and our whether embarked aboard ship or station ashore are meeting those requirements. The depth of the force the bench if you will to meet the next rotation the next rotation is been stressed. We've been at war for since 9 11. The war didn't stop and even if you aren't in combat and the majority of Marines are not in combat the amount of deployments and the depth tempo and the stress on the force is still there. I mean you're gone. You're gone. So we're able to make it. We're resetting our ground equipment and the discussion about aviation readiness has been a public discussion. We've got a plan and I think we're going to reset that but it's it's going to take some time. So you asked me what was on my mind. My mind is on the readiness overall of the force to do multiple things. We're the folks that are out there now the Marines and the sailors with us and all our joint partners. They're in a good place and they're doing a great job and they're ready to go to war. I think the other thing that I'm tasked to do is to get ready for the next fight wherever it is. We've all watched over the last 15 years. We've been in a sense of basically a counter insurgency stability operation. We haven't had to maneuver. We haven't had to deal with a contested aviation environment. We haven't had to deal with a contested Electronomagnetic spectrum environment. Everything that we did or sailor or soldier and airman will walk in their operations center and they would expect that everything worked 100% of the time. I don't think that's going to be that way. And now somebody decided to contest us. So as the first sea lord, Admiral Jones talked to us previously, I mean, it's a concern that we've all had in the Commandant of the Coast Guard mentioned it too. So how are we going to get ready for that? So what are we going to do while we still have this high depth tempo meeting the near term requirement? How do we get ready on the fly to do that? So partly it's a training thing. We have to adjust our training and we can do that. That's the easy part. We have to adjust the capabilities we have that will require modernization and tech refresh and reset of gear that we have, which is going to take some money and some time. It's an organizational thing. We're looking at how our forces are organized. I don't think it's a huge redo of the Marine Corps, but there are some capabilities out there amongst those things that I talked about. Cyber information, more intelligence, analysis, targeting public affairs, counter air, counter mobility, things that we think are going to be wherever we go for the next fight, those are going to be capabilities we have and some of those have equipment and training things tied to them. And the last thing we have to continue to recruit. We can buy all the gear we want, but if we don't get good people and we have great people. I came into Marine Corps 40 years ago and they were the quality of the force with all due respect to those Marines and our many great Marines. It was after Vietnam beginning to all volunteer force. Some of you were there and we'll just be very frank. We weren't very good. We weren't very good. We trained hard. But we could only do what we could do with the gear we had and the people we had. So we've got a very capable force. They expect a certain level of equipping and training. These are very smart young men and women. And so we have a certain expectation to meet their requirements or they're going to do, they have options. They have options. And I want their option just like I know the CNO does and the Commandos to stay in the Navy, stay in the Coast Guard, stay in the Marine Corps, stay in the Merchant Marine because we need them. And so at the end of the day, it's all about the people. So we can have great systems. We have great equipment. But if we don't have good people, we're not going to get the capacity, the capability that the nation needs and deserves. So that's what's on my mind. Near term, we're making it, it's good. You should be proud of that force that's out there. Whatever end of the range of military operations they're on. The depth of the force, we're working on that. We got a plan that's going to take us some time. But the real thing is, okay, how do we transition this force? How much of these new capabilities do we need? What are we going to give up to get it, assuming we don't get any more people? And I'm not assuming that we're going to get the funding to get any more people, even though there's, you know, actions in the legislation to do that. And so something's got to give. And that's the struggle, or not the struggle, that's the discussion we're having now. We're going to change. The only thing we can't do is not change. And change, whether it's the organization, the equipment, the technology, the training, that's all going to change, because it has to, because we've got to get ready for what we're anticipating. And I'm hoping we even guess 50 percent right. We've got to get ready because there are others out there who I believe would do us harm and have these capabilities. And we have to be able to contest them if they so choose. Thank you. Thank you, General. That's a wide open question. What's on my mind as I look at this morning, I tell you the thing that's on my mind is this growing crowd that's in this room. I mean, it's hundreds, if not pushing thousands. And the thing that's on my mind is the tremendous opportunity that this event presents us all to come together and put our heads together and work on solving the problems that we face together. And my compliments to the Navy League and all of the partners that work so hard to bring this together. I congratulate you on just a terrific event. And it is set up perfectly to address exactly the challenges that face us. You know, the thing that I see by every measure I think right now, we would say that the world is becoming increasingly globalized. And you just have to look around this room to see that this is a crowd as represent representative of that globalization. Most of the industrial partners now are multinational global corporations. You can see those of you that represent the research and development community. Well, that's a global enterprise as well. And then finally, it's a privilege to share the room with so many partners and allies from around the world. At the shades and even chiefs of Navy from global navies. And so here we are gathered together perfectly positioned to address the challenges that we share. I would say that during increased times of globalization, those systems that enhance and enable globalization become under stress and the maritime domain, the classic system of oceans and seas of transit lanes and choke points. That is a global system that's been there since we first put to sea thousands of years ago. And yet so much even in that classic system is changing under our in the last 25 years to the point that each of us has hinted at the activity on the seas, the traffic over the seas as more than quadrupled. And so you've got to think about the acceleration that that represents fueling the global economy, which is just about doubled in the same period of time. And so that maritime domain and other global systems like the information system, which has become ubiquitous and has accelerated things so much. The rate of the introduction of technology, which is again not only entering the market faster and faster, but being adopted by society at just as fast a rate. The rules of the game, the rules of competition are changing just as fast, if not faster than the competitors themselves. And so as we face this challenge, this increasingly used, this increasingly crowded, this increasingly contested, globalized competition, contested at sea, contested in the information domain, competed in the technological world, I think a key part of the solution will be meaningful partnerships. As I think about partnerships, I think about partnering with each of the teams that I mentioned before. Certainly the US Navy sees itself as just a node in many networks. One of those networks is our team of the joint force. And so we want to be operating as good partners with our sister services. And the commandant and I have committed that no two services will be closer together than the Navy Marine Corps team as we explore new architectures, new formations, new ways to get at this challenge to ensure that just as he said, we're using our current resources as creatively and effectively as possible and looking for new possibilities in the future. So there is this joint force that will take a lot of our energy to ensure that we're doing everything as smart as we can. Then there is the partnerships within the interagency. And so many of the challenges that face us in this global challenge are not military only. We're going to have to take a whole government approach when it comes to rebalancing to the Pacific, when it comes to addressing the challenges in Europe. And so we have to be viable and contributing partners in that network of the whole of government approach to these challenges. I mentioned research and academia. We want to be increasingly working with our partners both within our U.S. Navy and defense lab structure, but reducing the obstacles to communicating, enhancing the communication, I would say, with the private sector labs, with the system of universities. And so we look forward to doing that. With industry, we've got to partner more effectively. One thing that I think we would all agree on is that we have got to change the way we do business in a fundamental way to keep up with this rate of introduction of technology and opportunity, or we will just fundamentally, we will just fall behind. It won't make a difference how how well trained we are. We will just be in a different time dimension than the rest of the world. And we've got to do business better. There's a responsibility for us to be better customers. And I would hope that as we exercise and communicate over the next few days, our industry partners will point out ways that we can be more effective in that partnership. And then there is this international partnerships. And so it is heartening. It's encouraging to see so many international allies and partners because the solution to many of our problems is going to be a multinational solution. And so I'm so gratified to see so many of the adichies and and honored to be in the in the company of my fellow chiefs of Navy from around the world. And so again, thanks to the Navy League for teaming up such a great event. I think that there is a whole host of challenges that face us all. But this is the team of partners. This is the system of networks that if we come together effectively, we're going to overmatch any challenge that we have, the superior, the partner of choice, the system that allows everybody to compete on a level playing field and pursue their own prosperity. Thanks. Thank you, Admiral. Well, let's talk about one particular region where, as you say, partners are key and the situation is dynamic. The South China Sea. What what would success for the Navy look like in a year? I guess I can lead off. So you said what would it look like in a year? Right. So we get to the end of next year and you look back at how the Navy and the U.S. has dealt with the situation in the South China Sea. What would constitute a successful execution? I think to answer that question and I'll just tee it off and open it up to the rest of my fellow panelists. You got also admire the composition of the panel, which I think represents elements of the full dimensionality of maritime security and maritime prosperity here. And so there's really no question that my classmate Chip Janikin can't answer. And I encourage you to send a lot of questions his way. I think that I would actually move out to say 20 to 30 years and say what does success look like in that time frame and then how does next year represent a step towards that longer term success. And I would say that the system of rules and international norms of behaviors over the last 70 years has provided the template that has allowed so many of the nations in the region of the South China Sea to prosper. And so there is a rebalance to the Pacific and it's really a recognition of just the tremendous growth that has occurred in the Indo-Asia, Indo-Pacific region of the world. That system of rules and norms has allowed everybody to compete on a very level playing field. And that's why we as a nation and we as a navy are advocating so strongly for that system. And so I would think that looking 30 years ahead, we would see a Indo-Pacific, including the South China Sea, where everybody has the opportunity to continue to prosper and there'll be a competitive elements of that to be sure. But we would hope that that competition does not migrate into conflict, which is a form of competition that I think we all would want to avoid. And that if we advocate for this system, we can have competition and we can't avoid conflict. I think we have a real opportunity here. And so if you back that up. I'll take the one year piece. Another reason I'll take the one year challenge, if you will, is the UN tribunal, as you know, will render an opinion on Second Thomas Scholl and the sovereign rights of the Philippines. And the Philippines are not alone in this regard. And then there are others that have contested claims. And if you look at some of the more assertive ASEAN nations, the Philippines, Vietnam, we're seeing Indonesia become more assertive as well. And it really comes back to, and as the CNO had mentioned, norms, rules of behavior, you know, an opportunity for maritime governance. So if there is a UN model, what it's going to come down to at the end of the day, and you may have to go back to Mahan, Alfred Mahan in our, you know, what is our maritime strategy for the East and South China Sea. We use terms of fraught over miscalculation, but at the same time, you know, we've created a window of opportunity for what some may say is a manifest destiny of Xi Jinping and China to continue to assert sovereignty based on the Nine Dash line. So I think there is a window of opportunity, because what will also happen in the next year is there will be a change in administration. And it will be our responsibilities as service chiefs, military leaders to provide best military advice, to provide options, if you will. But there will be a few triggering mechanisms, and one of them will be with the rendering of the UN tribunal over second Thomas Shull at a point in time where our relationship with the Philippines is growing ever more closer. Our relationship with Vietnam is growing closer. That conflict is in our past. And then we look at some of the threats that have emerged and are going to be with us at some point in time. But what we will see is people turning to the United States because of our record of abiding by rules of behavior, providing that model for for maritime governance so that all may prosper. So I see some opportunities. But at the end of the day, it will be incumbent upon us to provide that best military advice as we look for a look to a transition change in government within the next year. Take a crack at that as well. I'm going to start with an example and then I'm going to talk about why we need to be thinking. There was an earthquake in Japan not too long ago. What that impacted was the ability that affect us here in the United States. We had several had to shut down because they did not have parts available. Now put that into perspective where you have 98 percent of everything that comes into this country coming on a foreign flagship. Suppose there was something that happened in the world where the world decided that the approach or the how the United States approached that wasn't the way they thought it should be approached. And they said instead of having the limitation on parts being due to a natural emergency, suppose they just slow down their ships coming to the United States where we're having just in time inventories to be able to keep our manufacturing and what kind of effect would that have on our economy. Less than 2 percent as I pointed out in my opening remarks of what comes into this country is coming by US flag. So we don't have control of our supply chain. And so a year from now where I would like to be is that there is an awareness of that and that we start putting ourselves on that 20 to 30 year trajectory to try to fix it. Recognizing that our population is currently today is about 320 million people. It's going to grow to about 400 million over the next 30 years, which is going to require us to move 45 percent more freight in and out of control because the economics and the national security piece. I think you make a great point and you mentioned my hand at the strategic level. That's exactly where my hand comes down is that there is certainly the national security point defense of the nation. That's sort of element of what we do. But there is this guard guard access to markets, guarding access to sea lanes. And so one thing that's not going to change in the next year or probably the next 30 years and has been part of our national identity since the beginning is that we are a maritime nation. 90 percent of our goods comes by the sea. And so you can see the urgency of what you're talking about in terms of being able to secure in the South China Sea, which is where the question started. You know, about 30 percent of the world's trade flows through that body of water. So absolutely critical that we are focused on that. What you're seeing in this part of the world you see in other parts of the world where certain nations kind of take advantage or do things that are kind of short of conflict and they're very subtle, very calculated. But they don't support the stability of the region. Up here is said, I think everybody wants the same thing. They want stability. They want prosperity. They want stability in their countries. They want access to markets. They want to be able to compete fairly. So we are national laws. We support our allies of trust amongst the different nations. What we can't not do is stop talking to each other, even if we disagree. And you can say that for everywhere. So there may be other actors that would do something that we would disagree with. We need to maintain communication with them and tell them that their their actions potentially are disrupting stability in the world. And the military dimension of that as a military has a kind of a different path to that and can talk to our counterparts. And I know the CNO is working hard to talk to his counterpart about things and clarify things. So there isn't a miscalculation. But at the same time, in the near term, meet our treaty obligations and exercise our sovereign rights under international law to transit the seas. And we'll see where that takes us. Hopefully it'll create stability, not instability, and everybody will realize that that's what we all need to not to be aggressive, but just to clarify what there are. And let me just close on that last piece. And just talk about, you know, laws and governance. The most important one being, you know, the law of the sea, the UN Convention for the law of the sea. And as, you know, the United States has yet to ratify the UN Convention for the law of the sea. So if I can advocate going forward with the next administration as well, it is to if we are going to play a role in maritime governance, we need to be a ratifier of the UN Convention for the law of the sea as well. OK. We've talked, I've heard a lot of talk about the important partnerships, international partnerships, of course, partnerships within our own government and defense structure. As you look across the web of partnerships that supports what we do and supports the international system, where are the gaps? What what do you want our international partners to do more of? What should we be helping them to do more of? What what do you need them to become stronger in? Sure, I'll take the lead. I want to talk about not but I do want to sort of throw some bait out there for the industrial partnerships as well. Certainly, we mentioned a couple of global systems or I mentioned one is the maritime domain and that's that's the the unifying theory that brings us all here for sea air space is effectiveness in the maritime domain. Another global system, though, that has come on strong has become you big defining everybody. I see about one out of three people here is checking their smartphone, even as I'm talking, right? So first and foremost, heads up and pay attention. But no, I'm only kidding. The this information domain has changed everything. I know there's many of you are you're closing mega deals on your smartphone right now. That is moving forward in an irreversible way. In fact, it's accelerating forward. I think that prevent presents a tremendous opportunity for us as an international community, international community of navies to stitch together more effectively. It's going to be just a foregone fact of life that navies are going and nations are going to come to these partnerships to these coalitions with different levels of capability, with different levels of policy, caveats, etc. Anybody who's worked in a multinational coalition realizes that that's going to be the case. Some will be able to contribute with across the full spectrum of operations and they will do so at a very high level of capability, technologically technologically advanced. Some will come with a lesser technical capability, but still there will be capability. There will be capacity there. And if we build this network properly, and if we allow all of those team partners and teammates to connect effectively, then what you see is is a tremendous if tremendously effective and efficient sharing of the total challenge, sharing of the total burden where everybody can contribute in the most effective way. And that's exactly what you're seeing happening in most of those international maritime coalitions, whether it's in Europe or in the Middle East or in the Pacific. And you see people falling in, sharing information more and more effectively, communicating more and more effectively, sort of finding their most effective and efficient place to address the challenge. And so I think that that is the great opportunity that the coalescence of this increasingly busy maritime domain and this increasingly networked information domain provides it. So I'll stop there and let the others. I'm going to take it from the perspective of how does our military move when it has to the core of the US flag fleet today is a program that we refer to as the maritime security program, which is 60 ships carry US flag for the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. They carry over 92 percent of everything that went into over 75 percent of that fleet, although under US flag and under a US company is actually has a foreign parent. So those those foreign companies, because of this increased globalization, as the CNO talked about, they are partners with us to make sure that we can project the power of our armed forces anywhere to continue to support our efforts to be able to support our national one of the tasks in the national strategy is to build partner capacity. One of us up here on the platform have forces that do that. And in the maritime domain, I mean, there are some landlocked countries out with the great, great number of nations have a coast. And that's where the economy, the economics come in. And that's where the jobs are. That's where the people are. So they have to be able to provide some level of security. So what do we want our partners to do want to be able to engage with them because that makes them able to secure their own economic zones or territorial waters or their coastlines. It allows us a partner if we have to work with them. And on occasion, it gives us access to to facilities or ports or locations that we may want to use. It gives opportunity to train. So it allows us to help them develop a more stable country. Because the military dimension is very different. You know, we show up with, you know, soldiers, sailors, coast guardsmen, Marines, airmen, and they represent the diversity of our nation. And they see that and they see the strength of that. It's a very powerful thing. That's not our intent. Our intent is to help them get better. I think also the what's I think it's fair. There's been a lot of discussion about NATO as a former NATO staff officer. I believe NATO is indispensable, has kept peace on the continent since 1945. That said, and I know our military NATO ally partners, which they're so they they they have to increase the amount of money that they invest. That's not my that's that's, you know, there's a goal of 2%. I know they're striving to do that. And it's great that they can because they have the capacity, I think to do a little bit more. That said, I don't think it's fair as the CNO said they all have capacity. They can do certain things. I think we need to be more open and flexible as to how we partner and work together to do things because everybody has something to contribute. And so, you know, bashing them over the head is not going to facilitate that it's not going to make for better partners. And on the military side, you know, we want as many partners as we can. Because that makes it improves trust. It makes us better able to communicate. And I think it makes the world to safer, more stable place. When I look at gaps opportunities, I look how far maritime domain awareness has come since I was doing Ocean Station as an ensign because we didn't have weather satellites back in 1977. Heck, we didn't even have NOAA buoys back then. So our domain awareness, but especially for nefarious threats that threaten the homeland, I would give the quality of domain awareness a B B plus grade today. And so we have intelligence driving operations in the United States Coast Guard, as I've never seen before. So it's great that we have this level of awareness, but on any given day, you know, we can act on maybe 25 percent at both at best of actionable intelligence in the maritime domain. Now, 25 percent in any school is not a passing grade. So it's great that we've got domain awareness, but we've got a significant capacity gap. And even if we look as we start crafting the next national military strategy, the four plus one, if you will. If you if you address any more than one of those threats, if you get into what we call simultaneity, we really run into some capacity as a service that prides itself on being semper-prottice. I always say, well, ready for what? We can't be ready for all things. And then just throw a natural disaster or a manmade disaster on top of that as well. And so our real gap right now is in our capacity. And you don't want to face imminent mission failure for that to be the catalyst to then build up your capacity. But it is a concern of mine. We're making progress, but not at the rate where we're closing this gap between domain awareness and how do we best allocate resources. But we also use that same domain awareness. We're all in the risk proposition business of where is it that we don't resource to resource those threats that are the most dangerous threats to the United States and our national security? So let's talk about technology, which is a part, I imagine, of bringing that BB plus up to an A. Sino also mentioned that he wants to bring technology on faster, find the ideas out there, adopt them more quickly. In recent years, in recent decades, I think it's fair to say the Defense Department in general has not been especially nimble at bringing technology aboard, but now it's time to do better at that. How are how are your organizations reshaping, rethinking, getting ready to do better at that? I'm doing a great job. This kind of brings me to my second point about partnerships and really sitting down with the leaders. I think we need to talk leader to leader in this business because we each need to learn from each other. My sense of the dynamic right now is that too often we hunker down inside the department, inside the Navy, we have a problem that we're pretty good at defining most of the time if we spend the time to define the problem. Maybe too often, we come to a solution to that problem, a set of requirements. We define those and we put those on a piece of paper. This solution has to go so fast. This solution has to go so high, has to carry so much. What have you? Then we start the conversation with industry. By then it seems to me that a lot of it has been determined, maybe over-determined. What I'm trying to enable is starting that conversation much earlier in the process where we can open up the dialogue at the problem-definition phase. What I found is that oftentimes private sector, the industrial base, which is super dynamic, right? There's major contributions being made by our traditional partners. There also is tremendous potential being made by new players in the private sector. And so there's been a full-court press all the way from the Secretary of Defense on down to make sure that we explore all of the above. There's great innovation happening within the traditional military industrial base, if you will. And so we need to continue to go there and tap that. And then there are new ideas coming in from Silicon Valley, from up in New York. You name it, the thinking centers around the country and indeed around the world. And so if we tap into that creativity earlier, so, hey, here's our problem. Oftentimes I've found that our partners will be able to provide a solution that we probably would not have foreseen. We're conditioned pretty heavily by our experience. It's not the case if you just branch out a little bit. And so I really want to remain open to those solutions that could be completely new to us, a new approach to solving the problem. There is also this dimension of speed, which you mentioned. My sense is that the industrial, our industrial partners are ready to move faster. Can I get a show of hands of all the industrial partners that think that they're ready to provide solutions and technologies faster if we would just sort of enable that speed to happen. OK, and now everybody who wants to move slower, raise your hand. Yeah, so I think that we've just got to streamline our processes, start the conversation earlier, be open to more creative solutions and then be open to a process that allows for more dynamic experimentation and prototyping earlier on. We can separate out the goods approaches from the bad much more quickly. Absolutely confident we can do that much more cheaply. We'll get a solution that more with more agility meets the challenge that we proposed and by virtue of that experimentation and prototyping process, we will have more confidence that the tool we eventually place in the hands of our sailors and Marines. Indeed, all of our warfighters will perform better and more reliably than we did before. So I'm sorry, I'm on a roll here. So so I want to challenge all of our industrial partners to challenge us. And in these conversations, we're getting to the point of honesty, but I've got to say that the traditional customer relationship sometimes breeds a level of politeness which can inhibit that frank discussion that we need to have in terms of how to enhance that partnership. Thanks. OK, I guess we're not going alphabetically. Well, I'm not going first next time. But when I look at yourself for that, when I look at acquisition modernization as a relatively small service, the first lesson is, you know, don't go it alone. But look for common architectures as I look at what we're doing with our aircraft using C4 ISR suite that that is a joint suite being a joint service. We're bringing this into our airframes, but we're also a service, one of twenty two components within the Department of Homeland Security. And we look at the other Air Force of DHS and that's Customs and Border Protection and through our D.O.D. relationship able to bring that technology into our CBP suite as well. So I think that's just one example in the two years now nearly I've been in this job. I've been to all of our centers of excellence up in the Northeast, starting with Lincoln Labs, MIT and working all the way all the way across to Stanford, where some of these great ideas are out there. But when you look at research and development, that's what they're in the business of doing. And maybe fifteen, twenty percent at best of these innovative approaches might actually see the light of day and become a program of record. When I look at how we innovate in the military, at least in my experience with the Coast Guard, if we had an 80 percent failure rate with research and development, we would probably shut that program down all together because we don't have an appetite for failure when it comes to research and development. You got to get it right the first time and every time. And so we need to be able to continue to award that spirit of innovation and recognizing, as I like to say, that the best ideas in the Coast Guard do not come from the person who sits behind my desk. But if that person does not have the wherewithal to champion those great ideas, then that person probably does not deserve to be the comment on the Coast Guard either. And so the great ideas are out there. And as a CNO alluded to, we need to be able to channel those and deliver these capabilities in a much more agile manner than we do today. I am encouraged, though, by especially in the world of cyber to the point where I am going to have to specialize the component within the Coast Guard that will stay laser focused just on cyber because gone are the days. If you can do this for three or four years, then you go off and maybe you want to be a boson mate for another five or six years. And you think you're going to come back into cyber after a four or five year hiatus. Well, then you're starting out all over again. So we really are seeing Moore's law at play, especially when it comes to modernization, C4ISR, and cyber. And I went to the Coast Guard Academy. I was issued a slide rule. We didn't even have pocket calculators back in those days. So to think that I am going to be on the bleeding edge of this technology, I'd be fooling myself, but I'd be a fool not to listen to those that are on the leading edge and encourage that spirit of innovation because we will not go it alone in the Coast Guard. Paul, just to summarize, you predate buoys, you predate calculators and you predate satellites. But I will say my name translates to future in German. Okay. All right. All right. There you go. Touche. If it's okay, I'm going to actually pose a question with regard to technology and innovation. If I were to ask you what is the greatest commercial maritime innovation in the last half century, what would you guys say it would be? The container. Exactly right. It was invented by, it was invented by a truck driver from North Carolina by the name of Malcolm McClain because you thought there would be a better way. Today we're carrying essentially the equivalent of what I call 20 foot equivalent containers or TEUs and some of the ships in the world are carrying 22 thousand TEUs on board their vessel. To put that into perspective, if I put an end to end, if I took them off the ship and I put them on a single unit train that could actually be this long, it would extend for 96 miles. So the technical and technological innovation I will talk about is, you know, everybody understands that we're trying to be environmentally conscious, but we have a company that partnered with General Dynamics in NASCO out in San Diego. They wanted to build the cleanest ship in the world and they did. The parent company is the company by the name of Saltchuk and they're Tote Maritime is the company that built them. NASCO partnered with the Korean Shipyard to get the design and they built and commissioned two liquefied natural gas or dual fuel burning vessels that are currently operating today in the east coast of Puerto Rico trade. They're the first container vessels in the world to be powered by LNG. That is the first innovation that the United States has led on the commercial sector in nearly four decades. That is a significant accomplishment in the rest of the world is now, is now keeping pace, but that was as a result of the partnership embracing technology. Again, these are early adopters to be able to actually do that. And I think that is a significant change in the maritime industry, but we need more of it and we need to embrace it at a faster pace as the rest of my service chiefs have noted. I think we're going to open it up to your questions in just a second. General, do you have anything to say on the subject of bringing technology more quickly into the Marine Corps? I think we all want to go faster, cheaper on the system, but we're not building cell phones, all right? We're building ships and planes and they're complicated. And part of that, I mean, we realize they can our requirements. I think we all, if somebody else has already got something similar, I think we need to be a little more flexible and saying, well, that's good enough. Is it me to 80% of the requirement? Because it's already there. There's already production line. I don't have to wait. And then we've got rules. There's like tests and evaluation rules, which we don't want to anything we buy if we're going to put that investment in that it doesn't work. But at the same time, if it works in 10 years, it may already become obsolete by the time we field it. So there's the tension. How do you go faster in this world when you've got rules that are designed to allow everybody here to compete? If you don't win the bid, you get to protest. Okay, I understand that as business you that's money and that's what you do. You got to make money and you got employees that you have an obligation to and shareholders. But we've got an obligation to those the men and women in our service to give them new gear as soon as we can, because the gear we have has been run really hard the last 15 years. So we've got to figure out how as Adam Richards said, we've got to figure out how to find that that spot and work together. We have to be more realistic about our requirements. The test and evaluation has to be it has to be realistic. It's got to be enough, but it can't be so onerous that it just drives the whole thing out. So I'm new to understanding this. I've been a consumer. I've been a customer. So as a customer, you know, it just seems to be too slow. And there may be good reasons for that, but we've got to go faster because we're behind this new stuff in the hands of those that we have an obligation to support and make sure that they're successful in whatever mission we give them. If I could, before you open up to questions, I just wanted to highlight something that Mr. Janneken said was that, you know, not all new, not everything new involves technology, high end technology, right? And so there's a lot of people out there, a lot of very respectable people that like to compare the time we're in now to sort of the time between World War One and World War Two, a lot of parallels. And what you saw there was the emergence of a lot of operating concepts and ideas that had nothing directly to do with technology, right? So not everything that we need to do going forward involves a new piece of gear or a new high end piece of kit. Much of what we do will just involve a new way of employing the tools that we have right now. And there are tremendous success stories. And in fact, many of the revolutions in military affairs involve not a new technology, but a new way of combining existing things more creatively to into something that was far more powerful and effective than it was alone. And so this idea of combining the simple idea of a standardized container with emerging, you know, natural gas technologies, etc. Nothing strikingly new there in terms of the raw technology, but the way it was combined is going to be very powerful. I think we all have to be open to the fact that there's going to be certainly increased technology as part of the solution. But also, how do we combine those technologies in creative ways? That's the intellectual work that we've got to remain open to as well. So thanks. Great. Thank you. Okay. Do we have microphones out there?