 Welcome. We're delighted to have you here on a Monday morning. You can tell how important the topic is that we can get so many people out first thing on a Monday morning. This is rare, Admiral, but I think it's really you that's wanting to bring people out. Thank you all for coming. We're going to have a very interesting conversation today with the CNO. Admiral Greenert has been on the forefront of thinking through this question about rebalance to Asia. When we were just chatting, I said, I've always felt rebalance didn't make much sense. We never left, you know. I mean, and indeed one of the anomalies of history is that the most powerful military force for 50 years in Asia was not an Asian country. It was the United States because we decided that the security environment required that we keep a continuing presence, and we did. So rebalance has a different meaning now. It isn't about so much the momentum of military forces as it is the nature of America's commitment, and I think that that's really at the core of what this is, and of course the foundation of it has to be real. It cannot just be words. It has to be real and the reality of it grounds itself very firmly with the United States Navy. We're very fortunate to have John Greenert as the CNO at this time. He's an exceptionally talented man who has gone from the very, he started off at the Naval Academy of course in 1975, and has risen through the ranks in the submarine force, and also as a finance guy, which always makes my heart Twitter just a little bit, you know, be in a Comptroller type myself, but everybody in the Navy knows that the Navy has historically, the CNO has run the Navy through controlling dollars, you know. It's kind of it's that good foot on the windpipe, you know, that makes the CNO able to control these very autonomous fleet actors, and he's been at every level, so he knows what it takes to make sure that the Navy is responsive and effective, and he's done just a splendid job. We're very, very lucky to have had him in this position during these important years. He heads to Asia again this next week, and I think it's becoming a more frequent presence. There are lots of interesting developments in Asia, lots of little scratchy moments. Whether he'll talk about that today or not, I'm sure that you will bring it out during your questions, so would you please, with your warm applause, welcome the CNO, John Greener. Thank you, Dr. Hammer, you've been a great mentor for service chiefs and many of the officials in the Department of Defense, and it's really an honor and a privilege to know you and to learn from you. I was taken by the, you know, the CNO money, windpipe, and all that, and that's a new thought to me. I actually hadn't given that. What I see is I make a decision, you know, okay, here's where we're going to go, and then let the debate begin, and I thought I made a decision, but it's a privilege also to be back here. What a beautiful room and what a beautiful site to be back at CSIS, and I value the input that we receive here, and I definitely look forward to your questions and answers. The discussion today will certainly be about the rebalance, and I have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I've sort of had a personal rebalance that's sort of in progress. A year ago, I went to, just about exactly a year ago, I went to Japan, Korea, and Singapore for about eight or nine days, and typically a service chief will go out there maybe once a year. That's about right, has, but things have changed. In December, I was in Indonesia for an international sea power symposium. February, I was in Malaysia, same reason. We were in China just in April, in Qingdao for the Western Pacific Naval Symposium, where we kind of brought together the, what's called as the QS, and we'll talk about that. We leave this Saturday to go to Japan and Korea. We were in Pakistan and in Norway last week, so we're kind of balancing that rebalance, if you will, in our own right, and it isn't lost on me that, you know, the old saying still applies. Every day you're out of Washington, you lose a million bucks. So I have to, I have to keep that in mind. But seriously, as Dr. Hamry said, it's about understanding a commitment, and it does take personal leadership commitment. I'll be going to China again in July for what's called a counterpart visit with Admiral Wu. We host the International Sea Power Symposium. That'll be all the chiefs of Navy, and we'll probably get about a hundred of them. We'll have that in Newport in September, and then we'll go to Australia and New Zealand in January. I'm not here to give you my travel log as much as to say, look, this does take a lot of commitment, and it takes people being there, and it is, you know, it is a lot of FaceTime and commitment by them as well as us. So today I'd like to talk a little bit about our presence mandate, the Navy presence mandate. Some of you familiar with it, but it is a deliberate process that has to continue if we want to be effective. I'll update you on the Asia-Pacific rebalance, and I think an emerging opportunity for what we can do, particularly with China. But look, for us, we have to operate forward and be what I call, we have to be where it matters, when it matters, so that we can influence events around the world. That's what your Navy is for. That's what you want us to do, and that's what the national security, our national security folks, want us to do. We provide forward presence to assure and build allies to deter and to respond, and I won't put you through the soliloquy of events that I bet it starts in Syria, is Libya, it's Sudan, it's the North Korea missile test only a year ago, where we had to be where it mattered, when it mattered, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief. So you've got these great graphics here, man. I would have brought even more slides if I'd known I was going to be this fancy. But I just have a few things to remind you of the 209 ships in your Navy today, 104 are deployed. By the way, that number 104 is about the same amount we had deployed 20 years ago, and we had over 400 ships. So we think we're being pretty efficient, and we think we are where it matters, so that we can be effective when it matters. For us and for me, it's access to what I call the crossroads, these bow tie or valve markers, depending on your proclivity for political science or engineering. But this is where we have to be for freedom of navigation, that's red economy. For the security, that's red continued access there. And if you look at where, if you will, the bow ties are, it's not necessarily the most clean area of the world. It's piracy in that area, a lot of, it's the ring of fire. It's nations not necessarily friendly either with us or with each other. So we have to be able to respond there. The Asia Pacific Rebalance, as we know, is a, it is a broad government effort. It's a U.S. government effort, and there's no real particular end state yet that I'm aware of or that we have been given that is declared. In other words, you say get here and the rebalance is over. This is a continuing initiative that takes a deliberate presence. But I would tell you, I agree with Dr. Hamry. Hamry, seapower is going to underwrite the Asia Pacific Rebalance. Now, we're a Pacific nation. We're tied to geography to the to the Pacific. We're tied to trade. We're tied to allies. Robert Kaplan's got a series of books recently, The Revenge of Geography and his most recent, Asia Cauldron, which clearly lays out those connections and why they're so important to the United States and why the United States is so important to the Pacific. We have been there, we, the Navy for seven decades, and we've had continuing presence not all that much different from those 51 ships you see there in the Asia Pacific over those seven decades. I would tell you, ladies and gentlemen, my observation having, you know, like I said, kind of rebalanced myself over there and talked with leadership, with my associates, if you will, my peers, that our leadership, they turned us for leadership. They turned us to say, okay, where are we headed? What do you guys want to do? It continues that way. We do get questions, but it's leadership that they would like from us. So the rebalance is underway, but as I said, it's a work in progress. So, I mean the next one up there. I just have a few graphics, but I want to work for this one. For us, the, the rebalance, we're going to have to build first on our treaty allies. We have to commit to and strengthen the alliances that you see up there today. These key and critical ones right here. We have a treaty with these folks. We have a deliberate and well spelled out alliance. And as I said, key advantage in almost every challenge that we face. There is clarity of purpose and clarity of response. Yeah, there's questions, well, what does this really mean? And we can get to that and that is maybe debatable and it may be situational, but it is unique in that it spells out very clearly what the commitment of the U.S. is. We will strengthen those ties and that's part of our rebalance. The recent agreement in the Philippines is an example, and the potential changes, security changes in Japan are examples of, again, strengthening and clarifying those ties. For us, it's step one, information sharing, integrating our operations, training together, foreign military sales that are relevant and useful for the alliance and it's international military education and training. We are doing innovative ship and air employment concepts as we work with these allies up there, some are kinetic and some are non-kinetic. And what I mean by non-kinetic, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, how to do it better, how to do it more effective, and how to do it faster because it's all about time when you come to those operations. Republic of Korea and Japan represent really, in my opinion, the most critical of those alliances. They are the more modern military. We have mature O-plans and campaign plans with them and we have an evolving, that's red building, military relations. President's trip recently, I think, made that very clear and underlined the significance of what I just said. Republic of Korea, Japan and U.S. trilateral operations, something we are pursuing aggressively. We've been able to get some done in the middle, excuse me, with our navies and that's been good, but we, I think that brings us a quantum capability and opportunities like ballistic missile defense or anti-submarine warfare where we can net and bring together our respective and individual capabilities there. But we'll be vigilant. We the Navy for future opportunities and these alliances. And I think you understand the security becomes the issue, excuse me, becomes the security of today and the history that involves and seems to interrupt our ability to bring things like trilateral operations together. Our stalwart ally is Japan and in my opinion pretty much the key to security in Northeast Asia. We welcome better integration with them. They are a treaty ally, as I said before, but it's not like we haven't exercised with them before. Give me a picture here. Just recently, you know, here we are with the our stockdale destroyer, our gridly destroyer with the Karama during what we call passing exercise. We do this all the time and we do much more comprehensive operations and maybe you say, well, I knew that but a lot of people don't know that. This goes on all the time with Japan. But we also integrate with the carrier strike group. Give me the next one. Although big, that's the George Washington and that's her strike group along with some Japanese maritime self-defense force operating together. So in the future we may have that opportunity with collective self-defense if that comes together to integrate like our NATO allies, to integrate with carrier strike group deployment like our NATO allies and I think it's an opportunity way to think about. So let's go back to the rebalance slide, if you will. Next, I just talked about our deliberate, if you will, our treaties but we've got partnerships in other areas that we need to continue to build. Some may be a little more ad hoc and some are more enduring. Singapore, Indonesia, it's evolving quickly ladies and gentlemen. We are being offered opportunities in Indonesia I never thought I would see and as much more than just port visits, it's operating together. It cites in Malaysia to operate our P3s and our P8s out of that are coming through. Brunei, obviously Australia, obviously New Zealand. I shouldn't say not as obviously New Zealand but it is emerging item and you'll see it here when we do RIMPAC. But this is an opportunity here that we need to continue to build on and understand how do we come together quickly and perhaps in ad hoc manner or for specific items as opposed to a treaty. Next, I think a strategic partnership and opportunity up there with India. That is emerging. New leadership in India, as I said I was in Pakistan last week. I had the opportunity to actually chat with the Prime Minister and I said, Mr. Prime Minister, he'd just come back from Iran. That was interesting. I said, so what's kind of on your mind here when you think security? And he said, the opportunity with India, the opportunity to build confidence building measures so that we can get a better understanding of our security situation there. He feels that that would then bring obviously the opportunity in the Indian Ocean writ large and obviously we're very interested in that. So stable mill to mill relations there, they've been there with India. We need to improve our communications and our interoperability. Currently we do exercise with the Indian Navy. It's a lot of humanitarian assistance, search and rescue, medical. But my goal would be to get back to where we were in the mid-2000s. We were doing very very comprehensive events in an exercise called Malabar, which is an annual exercise we have with the Indian Navy. We were doing carrier operations together, very very complex integrating airwings and I think it would be great if we could get back to that level. Next is building a constructive relationship with the People's Republic of China. I hosted my counterpart Amal Wu last September here in the United States, San Diego, Newport, the Naval Academy and of course here in Washington D.C. I mentioned that we met in Shingdao. We would be the western Pacific, in fact all the nations around the Pacific. Chile was there, Peru was there, it was a host of nations at Canada, etc. And we put together, as I mentioned, you're all familiar with the conduct for unexpected encounters at sea. And I also have a counterpart visit that I mentioned here in July. Secretary of Defense was just in China, so it's continuing the deliberate drumbeat of working together and building a constructive relationship. Military-military exercises are the best. Talking is good. Exercising is better and may be best. We have RIMPAC coming up, RIM of the Pacific, Comprehensive Exercise. And Amal Wu and I agreed on what we call the kind of eight initiatives, eight areas where we feel we can improve operations and understanding with our two navies. And it runs the gamut of midshipment exchanges, to mid-grade officer exchanges, to medical officer exchanges, to swapping officers from the PSAR to the Mercy to RIMPAC, and it goes on. A host of exercises that when a Chinese ship and a U.S. ship go to or in the same place at the same time, such as a Gulf of Aden, they can do an exercise, you know, imagine that a module exercise that they could do without having to run up each other's chain of command and get it at the minister of defense level. We'd like to get to that part. The exercises that we'll conduct, that China will conduct when they come to RIMPAC, are reasonably comprehensive. We are limited by the National Defense Authorization Acclimatations. I think it was in 2000. We've worked through those. We've briefed the Congress on that, and so feel pretty good about where we're heading with RIMPAC. So for us, the rebalance, I'll kind of characterize it, the rebalance of the Pacific, three areas. Forces, capabilities, and understanding. For forces, we send our most modern, and we have, and our most ready to the Asia Pacific. We will increase the average ship presence here from 58 next year in 15. You saw 51 this year, to 67 in 2020. That's our goal. There will be ramifications to budgetary issues. That's fine. We'll do our best. But the fact is, ladies and gentlemen, it'll go up. It'll go up over what it is today. It'll be things like another SSN to Guam. And next year, that'll be four SSNs in Guam. Two ballistic missile defense capable destroyers in Japan. And four little combat ships eventually in Singapore by fiscal year 17. We have a ship called a joint high-speed vessel. Rachel, if you have it, throw it up there. You know, if you can pick that out. So, which we'll deploy shortly here to the Western Pacific next year. And it will forward station. We will rotate crews here. We'll have a mobile landing platform, which is terrific for theater security cooperation to be used for that. And for humanitarian assistance, disaster relief. So, those are, in fact, we have two of them. This happens to be one coming into port. You can see that at the top. But right here, this, you can bring landing air cushions right in there. And these sort of little garages, like things, if you will. And then unload and load them from there. And this thing floods down. You can kind of see that and use that ship. Imagine if we had that in the Philippines. How much humanitarian assistance we could deliver. That's all a part of the future. The P-8 is on its first deployment. In fact, we're going to have a change of command soon with that ship. So, with that squadron, we are almost done with its first deployment. Made a huge contribution to the Malaysian airline search that took place years ago. With Taq Gware, we have the Growler, which is our latest and best electronic attack aircraft. Our F-35C, our Joint Strike Fighter, about the end of this decade will deploy to Western Pacific. And that will be its first deployment. And the Triton, which is a global hawk-looking thing, which is very good at maritime search, if you will. It will deploy in 17 to Okinawa. That's forces. Capabilities, look, we invest in the Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific missions are our benchmark for how we build our budget and where we're going with capabilities. We close what we call kill chain gaps, and that's getting the sensor to the weapon to the follow-up to make sure that things work properly. It's about disrupting adversary's command and control and C-4i in addition to having kinetic features. So, I'm talking about electromagnetic warfare. I'm talking about cyber. We have cyber mission teams, which are now complete. We have IOC, them, if you will. Their goal is to access, to exploit, and to provide effects in the cyber domain under the attributes and the authorities that we have. We have netted warfare, which are benchmarked to the Western Pacific. And that is about netting a ship, an aircraft, an undersea vehicle or a submarine together, to have a comment, to be able to deliver common effects, red missiles. Unmanned underwater vehicles, that will be our first deployment. I just showed you some of the ships that will be there, the mobile landing platform, the high-speed vessel. We will bring lasers eventually to the Western Pacific. We are going to demonstrate it this summer in the Arabian Gulf, but our first deployment on a ship will be to the Western Pacific. And of course, railgun. Rachel, if you have a picture of the railgun, some of you may know what it's going to look like. But in 16, we will demonstrate this here. We'll demonstrate it probably off the U.S. to see how this thing works so that by the end of the decade we'll have that. So capabilities. And then lastly, understanding. I talked to you about relations and travel and getting together and, you know, kind of cutting deals. But frankly, ladies and gentlemen, the rebalance will succeed through relationships, in my opinion, not just forces. Forces is great, but if you all aren't working together to do it, then it's not going to work. We have to work on the seed corn. We have to work on our junior officers today. Those are the commanding officers that you say, well, what's going to happen in 2020? 2021. Well, those are the ones that are going to be driving the ships and commanding the ships. So I have to give kudos to the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force. They have two programs, bringing the best and the brightest kids together for personnel exchanges. They have a thing called the Short-Term Exchange Program. We contribute to it. The Chinese Navy contributes to it. We send junior officers to ride Japanese ships and do lectures and seminars and understand, you know, what makes us tick in the various navies. To understand, get on the bridge of the ship. Get on the bridge of a Chinese ship if we can do that. But certainly a Japanese ship, Malaysia, is in. Indonesia is thinking about it. We're in and say, hey, look, when you encounter, here's what it's like. Here's the circuit we talk on. So there's no magic to this. This is us, you know, coming from a different country and a different culture. But we got to work together out here in the common domain. So they have a writer program which we like to continue to work on. It's about working together before the crisis, building the trust, the interoperability, and the relationship. So that when you have a huge typhoon like Yolanda that took place last year, we can bring that international cooperation together in days, not in a week or two, that we can get moving on that. And of course, we saw it in spades on the Malaysian airline search where that ability to operate together was key. For us, there are 700 training events, 170 exercises each year in the Asia-Pacific region. And again, I kind of allude to what Dr. Henry said at the very beginning. We've been working this, but we'll continue to work it hard. Lastly, a few words, and then we'll move over to a conversation. It's about opportunity here in the future, and I mentioned some of them, but working with China, we've got some pretty good opportunity coming together with this mill-to-mill operations. They are active, they are capable, and they are professional Blue Water Navy. They were there for the Malaysian airline search. Many of their people were on board, and they did a lot in that regard. They do counterterrorism patrols, they do counterpiracy patrols, and we will continue that engagement with them because it's about preventing misunderstanding and miscalculation. It's not about containment, it's about shaping a rising navy that can be great and will be great, but also has to be responsible and a leader in a very, very important area. To embrace the international norms and laws and to collaborate, that's the key, I think. We found in the Western Pacific Naval Symposium where we signed the code for unplanned encounters at sea. That was important, but it's just the beginning. It's not a binding document, but we all agreed that we would, it's not legally binding, but we agreed, we the chiefs, we all, you know, if you will, stacked hands on this, and Amowoo told me himself that he put the training plan together and they intend to comply. So when we get together in Newport in September, we the chiefs of navy will update. So how are we doing on this? Are you in? Are you in? Are you in? What have you done? And we'll continue to do that at each of these symposia. This is the agreement we had. We want to take it outside the Western Pacific and not make it just not a conduct for only the Western Pacific. It should be a conduct for the Indian Ocean. It would be great if it was a conduct in the Arabian Gulf and everywhere else. That's our endeavor as, if you will, as the League of Chiefs. I just made that up now, so by the way, the League of Navy Chiefs. So a little bit about RIMPAT. 23 nations. That's one more than the biggest before. So we got, we're up one. 46 ships, six submarines, 200 aircraft, 25,000 people all told, and of course China will participate, but Norway's participating. You know, there's a lot of different nations participating all the way out there to the Hawaii Op areas. We'll obviously build relationships. It's about trust and interoperability, and the exercises will run from humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, the peace arc will be there, the mercy will be there. We'll have a little combat ship in Hawaii and San Diego doing countermine in Hawaii and coming also out to, excuse me, in San Diego and then out to Hawaii. The P-8 will be there. We'll have our growler and we'll also have the F-22. So a lot of our modern platforms together doing integrated operations. So let me close with a few things. Asia Pacific region is home to our stalwart allies and U.S. interests. There are fiscal realities that are going to affect it, but and that's going to relate, that's going to result in us depending more on each other, but our focus is to strengthen the relationships and improve the interoperability. We're part of the Asia Pacific rebalance. I don't have a specific end state in mind, but we're on a good course and a good speed. I like it. I like where our forces are headed, the capabilities and the understanding. We've got to be able to adapt, seize the initiative, when it presents itself, we're going to have to lead. So I look forward to your questions. Thank you very much for listening to my remarks. Admiral, thank you. I'm Mike Green, the Senior Vice President for Asia here at CSIS. It's great to have you back in our new building. Thank you. Part of our rebalance. The first Navy ship went to the Pacific 200 years ago. USS Essex in the War of 1812 sank almost all the British shipping in the Pacific and Captain Porter came back and told the Secretary of the Navy, we got to pay more attention to the Pacific and the Secretary of the Navy blew him off, but later in the century Theodore Roosevelt and others turned to the Navy when they were looking for our strategy and as I understand the rebalance, the White House turned to you and the Navy when they got to the, how do we do this part? So all of us who work on Asia and the Pacific appreciate your leadership and especially your comment today. I'll ask a couple questions and then we'll turn it over to the audience. You know, this relationship with China is getting hard to follow. On the one hand, you had a really significant agreement, the QS, the unexpected encounters at sea, and China is in impact now for the first time. That's a big, big deal. On the other hand, you know, the reports out of Beijing where Chinese PLA Navy officials are saying, well, of course, QS doesn't apply to the East China Sea, the South China Sea, the part where it would really matter and then you have this continuing pressure all along the first silent chain now in Vietnam. So it's sort of on the one hand on the other. Do you feel like the inroads and progress you're making with confidence building is shaping or affecting in any way the operations we're seeing or is this going to be a long-term effort? It's going to be a long-term effort. We are seeing results, I can't say from QS. I mean, we just signed the document and we're breaking all that down and I'll get to those comments, but what we are seeing today are commanding officers of Chinese warships on an agreement that we made, Admiral Wu and myself back in September, they address each other in English. That wasn't the case before, wasn't required by their ships and they do that. They are polite and courteous. They have had situations where they have intervened on our behalf where one of our ships was being approached by a non-Navy Chinese ship and being kind of harassed and the commanding officer of the warship said, you know, I've spoken to this guy, he's on constant course and speed, whatever, you know, kind of get out of the way and actually positioned himself. So there are a few examples of this. So Mike, I'm not saying, oh man, we've got this suitcase. It's all working smooth. We are starting to shape events. We have got to manage our way through this, in my opinion, through this East China Sea and South China Sea. We're not leaving. They know that. They would be the leadership of the Chinese Navy. So we have figured out, we believe, I shouldn't say we've figured out, we believe that we have to manage our way through this. The statement that was attributed, and I see this over and over, I think he might have meant, this is not legally binding. We know that. And the question becomes, but are you going to comply? You did vote. And so therefore we have got to continue, I think, to re-engage and say, well, where are you on this? Where's the tangible results? And let's see your procedures for this. We're working on that. We have our procedures in place. They're on the bridges of our ships and we will share them with the requisite members of the Western Pacific Naval Symposium. They say they will do the same, but Mike, we got to work it through. Do you worry about a kind of two-tier system evolving where the PLA and the PLA Navy are becoming more courteous and careful with us, but not with Japan or the Philippines or allies or with Vietnam? Is there a way to, is that happening? In my sense, as it is to some extent, is there a way to sort of get our friends and allies into this, that they're also being treated courteously on the seas? Yeah, good point. But Japan was a signature. China is a signature. Korea is a signature. You get my point. Vietnam was a signature on QS. It was unanimous. There was one country abstain. I don't know who it was. We all did this ballot and put our vote in a basket. So my point would be, we'll just have to see. But everybody said they were compliant. I would say it is worth, I don't want to say it's worth worrying about per se, but it's worth being deliberate and vigilant that everybody is compliant and why can't we all address each other like that, especially in that area of the world? No, I think it's a good solid strategy because it makes this a regional issue, not a bilateral issue. Precisely. It starts staying norms. Perhaps a global issue. Yeah, that was intriguing. I think we need to export this, in my opinion. I'd love to see this in the straighter or moves. I mean, it would be a good thing for U.S.-China relations if you actually had our Chinese friends and ourselves with allies going out to the Middle East or other regions and saying, you know, we're doing this as a team. You were here in our old building with General Nordy Schwartz and Dave Broto and I hosted you and talked about Air Sea Battle. And our takeaway was this is not a strategy or even a doctrine. It's a technological and operational and you know, it's not grand strategy per se. It's some technological things we can and should do. But as you look at the vulnerability of our forward presence and our forward bases, which isn't getting easier, do you think we're at the cusp of needing a new strategy? I'm thinking in the 20s we faced this with the Japanese, we had War Plant Orange. In the 80s we had the Maritime Strategy with the Soviets. Right. Are we getting to the point where we need to really rethink how we do forward posture, forward presence strategy, or are you getting at it with a lot of these specific technological and alliance and cooperative endeavors you're describing? Well, strategy-wise, I have my guys working on a, I call it a refresh from what we named the cooperative strategy for the 21st century. So that would be naval strategy and that's worldwide and that's sea services. So the Coast Guard, Marine Corps Navy. But with regard to the Western Pacific, Admiral Locklear has redone that campaign out there. They are addressing things they used to describe, hardening of bases, what is required, where do I need presence, how is that evolving more in the South China Sea, what are the forces that I need, and it goes across the board. He's looking at a very, very comprehensive review. It's classified, but they are, they called it Operation Orange or what was that called? Warplanned Orange. Thank you, Warplanned Orange. And I looked at that and I saw that and then I'm reading in more detail about World War II and I said there's a good plan to start out with, but there was some diversion there. In a similar manner as we look at each area of the world, we have some reasonably mature plans but they need to be upgraded and your point is well taken. It's very difficult to write something that would cover the world when it's such a different situation than the Arabian Gulf Mediterranean and Western Pacific sometimes. Now, no, Warplanned Orange was a good plan for the Navy. It had one problem which has left the army. It's standard in the Philippines. You can't do that anymore. A lot of what you're running through squares with some of the recommendations we put forward at CSIS when we did our review for Congress on the pivot and these think tank recommendations are never original. We picked them up and they're being implemented as undersea warfare, augmentation, missile defense. The one area I didn't hear which Dave Briteau in our report emphasized was it's not happening as far as I know, but we said we need another amphibious ready group in the Pacific with the Marines moving out of Okinawa to Guam and Australia. You need lift, you need maneuver lift, and you need sort of transport lift. It seems to me the high-speed vessel takes care of one of those, but are you concerned about our amphibious readiness in terms of the Navy's role helping the Marine Corps? I am concerned and we're turning to on this. Working with the Marine Corps, one of four focus areas I have in 14 is Navy Marine Corps integration. Jim Amos and I were here about a year ago and talked about that and it remains the readiness of the amphibious force today, getting those ships under construction out and to the fleet and get them integrated quickly and then looking to the future to make sure we have a solid industrial base and an affordable shipbuilding plan that reconstitutes and recapitalizes the amphibious force. But, as Jim Amos and I have testified, the man for an expeditionary and amphibious ships is, it's huge. You'd say it's almost close to 50 ship requirement for a number of amphibs if you tried to solve it with all Greyhulls, if you will. So I put up a couple of ships there. You saw those two coming in and out of port, a mobile landing platform and a float forward staging base where we want to build three of them, two of them, one under construction, one under, one authorized. Those will augment our amphibious force which will enable us to, whereas today we're using an LSD or an LPD Greyhull ship, in the future we'll use a combination of maybe a joint high-speed vessel with one of those. Free up the Greyhulls so they can concentrate on joint forcible entry in the higher end warfare aspect. That will get us an amphibious radio group by the end of the decade to support that Darwin operation. We can get that lift. So that is in the plan. It is going to pace right now and I feel good about it now. But we've got to keep on it. Let me ask if I could a little bit about partnership capacity. And usually when people say partnership capacity, they're thinking frankly at the lower end, less high-tech militaries. But I want to start with our key allies, the big important ones, Japan, Korea, Australia in particular. The MSDF is a great force as you know very well. Where do you see them going and what kind of capability would you like them to have both in terms of what kind of ships and systems they have, but also with collective self-defense, the kind of interoperability. You mentioned it briefly, which is important. I wonder if you could say more. Where do you like to see them go with us? Well, their capability, what they choose is their business. So I'm good with that and I know that's good. But what I would like to see information sharing and interoperability. So we all have seen these nice slides. I put them up myself and they go, hey, check it out, Mike. The future. And you go, what are those lightning bolts? And I go, well, that's how we share all the information and we're able to network. Well, how does that work? Well, that's the key. I would like to see more of that and we need to work on that. So for us, the embracement, if you will, or the approval of collective self-defense will enable them to integrate into strike group, ballistic missile defense patrol, and where we can actually operate together as a unit in most aspects of the mission, including self-defense. So that would be a huge step ahead. I mean, imagine they have got at least four, I believe it is, ballistic missile defense, DDGs. You just added effectively four to the set that we have out there for the issue of North Korea and the Northeast Asia. That's what I'd like to see, getting that information sharing and that interoperability. And so if we can get the authorities aligned right, we can really take off, I think. I think most people who look at the U.S. Navy's relationship with the MSDF, including the region, think we can already do that because they see the pictures of our ships side-by-side and do so many exercises. And the announcement last week of the advisory group on class of self-defense was important and specifically mentioned that they want to get rid of this archaic concept that Japan cannot be, quote, integrated in the use of force, which means sharing information. And notionally, for the lawyers in Tokyo, that means we have to turn off everything until we're absolutely certain that this is purely defense of Japan. It's a very sort of legalistic construct. And I don't think most people realize that that actually is quite an obstacle. So as you said, it's a force multiplier for both sides and important. How about Korea and Korea, Japan, U.S.? What would you like to see the rock Navy, U.S. Navy, and perhaps the trilateral relationship go? Well, Nirvana, if you will, would be a trilateral relationship of probabilistic missile defense. Korea has the KDX-3, which is a destroyer that has an Aegis-like capability. They can detect and track and have proven it in our missile range in Hawaii, ballistic missiles. They're looking at a missile, a weapon, to be able to intercept ballistic missiles. So they're working to make that decision. Now, that closes a loop. I mean, they could contribute today because they have very, very A, their skill, and B, they have a great capability. But again, it's a matter of historical issues between Korea and Japan, and we're trying to encourage them to see if we can get past that because it's important for the security of it today, and both the President and Secretary Hagel will have been over encouraged in that. We look for the opportunities. We had an opportunity. It was earlier in the spring, and we did it again last fall where we had three ships, one of ours, Japan and Korea. And the more we can do that, the better off we'll be. Let me ask you about Southeast Asia and capacity building. The President signed this important agreement in Manila. It was queued up some time ago, but this was his opportunity while he was there to announce it. I assume we're not opening Subic Bay and sending thousands of sailors on shore leave in the Philippines for the first time in a couple of decades. But what would you like to see us do to build on that agreement with the Philippines? What will the Navy's presence or cooperative efforts look like? And also if you could say anything about Vietnam right now, what's happening. They're not an ally, but they're in that first island chain or they're in that South China Sea problem. Is there something we can do with non-allies in terms of capacity building given the pressure they're under? Well, we have pretty good Navy. I can speak to the Navy now, and I'm just not quite familiar with the other services on what they do with the Philippine Armed Forces. But obviously we refuel and restock in Subic Bay and some other ports there. And Clark Air Base, we do coordinated and flights and what I mean by that is RP3s will come in there. Philippine Armed Forces folks will come on board with us and we go out and fly. So we exercise and interoperate today and our access is reasonably good. How we would want to build up from there I think is a matter of discussion and I think we'd have to look at status of forces, like conversations, and so I'm sort of waiting to see what it is we could do more of. We have pretty good access today. If we could step it up at Clarkmore that would be good. I don't know what we'd want to do with Subic. Again, it would how big a footprint is authorized and understanding that I think would have to be a precursor for bringing in more capability. With regard to Vietnam and China, you know, we just need to move cool off, move in a deliberate manner and hopefully solve this diplomatically. They're both signatures for cues, but this isn't involving navies yet, as you've probably read. This is more coast guard stuff right now. I think you're going to get your wish on India. Modi and the BJP went up of the scenarios. This was the scenario that will make the most decisive government. I was in the NSC in 2005 working on India and we may get back to that. So if Malabar starts picking up, where would you like to see that go? At various points the Japanese have been in, Australia, Singapore, would you like to multilateralize it? Where would you like to see the U.S.-India naval relationship? Well, we came close to having an eastern Indian Ocean exercise, two carriers, and where we would do an operation involving islands and that way we could bring in the amphibious element of the whole thing. And so we had all that planning done. I'd like to move back in that direction and then maybe India would be willing to come over to the Western Pacific. Again, we came close to that element. So we'll just have to see where the political, what the ramifications are and where they're willing to go in that regard. They are very intelligent. They're very high end in their concept of operations. I think it's just a matter of being able to do the exercises we like to do. And then the other one we always, not you, but many forget about is Russia, which is a Pacific power. We've done a lot of good things with the Russians on coast guard operations and other things as has the Navy, but we're in a tough patch right now. We had a general Paul Carlisle here a couple weeks ago and he indicated to the audience that the Op Temples way up for the Russian Air Force in the Far East. It's not a threat, but it's a it's a complication, I guess. How do you see things on the sea service side with the Russians in the Far East right now in the context of what's happening? No dramatic changes at this point. Now, I would tell you that they actually increased operations a few years ago. You know, more of their destroyers and ships were out. They were willing to do and have done more exercises. I believe they're on track to do an exercise, an annual exercise with China, which they do again every year. They, before all this fuss, you know, with the Ukraine, I had a year ago, my counterpart, Admiral Cherkov, came over and we talked about endeavors we would like to do. I would be was going to go to Russia next month. The things have changed. So, but the bottom line is he said, look, it's about operating money. I would love to come to Rimpak. That's what we wanted him to do. But I'm kind of short on operating money and I got a I got three big exercises and that's the third. So, the point is, I think it's a matter of budget and what we call operational availability of their ships until they can recapitalize their surface weight. Let me, having sort of gone around the Pacific Rim, ask the last question about the US. So, the Navy is, for the Navy to rebalance to the Pacific is, in some ways, less of an effort or less of a new thing than it is for other services. But in the service academy, in Annapolis, Naval War College, in educational training opportunities, are you doing new things to sort of upgrade foreign area expertise and are you finding that, you know, people coming out of Annapolis or NROTC or enlisted are are coming to the Navy knowing this is increasingly now a Pacific force? I'm fine in my conversations, this has been in the back of their mind. Anybody that studies our legacy and our heritage, especially the last 100 years, you come to the Western Pacific and see that, you know, we're very much Pacific. If you study economy, if you, all of that, you say, wow, all the action is out there. So, I think there's a realization. There's more of an, China obviously has, attracts a lot of midshipmen. So, there are a lot more Mandarin speakers, a lot of exchanges. Kids, one of the study I received, they want to go to China and understand that. And there's a renewed interest in Southeast Asia, you know, the Indonesian growth, the Malaysian growth and what that means. And that interesting culture that is able to have a government, a predominantly Muslim population, you know, and how do they govern and how they do that so smoothly as we look to the mid-east and the issues that we have. Excellent. Thank you. Let's open it up to the audience. We have microphones, I see. And why don't we start up here in the very front, if you will. If you could briefly identify yourself, keep the question short, we'd appreciate it. Thank you for your important and very impressive talks. My name is Wang Han Ling, a professor and director of the Center for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. You talk much about Sino-US relations, especially naval relations. I have questions about Sino-US naval relations. You mentioned that the U.S. naval built constructive relations with China, and I'm very glad about that. But I hope that you can say something more about that, especially how to define the constructive relationships, because you mentioned about partnership and strategic partners. So I hope that you can qualify more about constructive relations. And since we all know that the Chinese Navy developed very fast, and what is impact on the U.S. naval strategy. And as we all know that there are maritime disputes between China and its neighboring countries, and on what condition and to what extent the U.S. will have military intervention and the disputes, since you have military treaties, defense treaties with your alliance in these regions. And the last question, it is said that the repellence has led to escalations of the maritime disputes in East China Sea and South China Sea, and works will take. Thank you. Constructive relationship. What I mean by that is we'll start with our two commanding officers. You know, these individuals are in their late 30s, and they have a ship that they're ultimately responsible for. And I find the similarities remarkably the same, talking to People's Liberation Army Navy commanding officers and our commanding officers and how they're brought up. So it is our responsibility to enable these two individuals to be able to cross, if you will, because they're both high-end navies, good radars and that. It's inevitable we will cross. There should be a common set of protocols to have a conversation and understand where each other is going and what their operations are to the degree they can do that. The conversation should not start, you don't belong here, get out of here, no, I'm going to be here, I'm under a treaty. That's just not how mariners in international waters through history have met. And there's an understanding among the Chinese Navy that they are now merging to be a great Navy. Great navies are responsible navies and they believe in the security of the high seas. So it's those protocols and that's the foundation of QAIS. Two, again, China has great capacity for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, the PSARC, and a whole host of other capability. So they too want to bring relief, if something strikes them, they want to be a responsible portion. How do we do that effectively as two of the bigger forces there? And how do we bring the rest of the navies together if there's a typhoon, a tsunami, a volcano, something like that? So what organizational construct, in what part of the world, who will command, who will be subordinate, in what area, who will bring the logistics, the medical, what circuits shall we talk on? If we all get on the international you know, phone lines, if we are circuit, then we'll just clobber it and nobody'll be able to talk. So by what means can our junior officers chat? What circuits? Does that make sense to you? This is the constructive approach that if we can agree on, we can start working together and stop arguing right away and then start building upon that. So that's what I mean by constructive. And the way to do that is first you sit down and get leaders to say we all agree, right? Then we go to our respective navies and build that up. But then we have to exercise, such as RIMPAC and others. And then we have to have our junior officers, like I was saying before, grow up and understanding that, hey, I'm a part of a navy that has to be responsible for this. And I have to learn myself how that does. We got to allow them to get together and describe how they're going to lead us in the future. I'm looking at 2020 now. It's great that we're having a chat in 2014, but I'll be gone then. I will not be in this position. And neither will I have a will. And so we've got to figure out how we get beyond that. Lastly, I'd say we've signed up to treaties and we're responsible. We have to be responsible, reliable members of that treaty. But we don't want to go to war and we don't want combat. Nobody does. How do we prevent that? So how do we manage our way through this with the treaties to prevent that sort of conflict? Definitely don't want it to be done by some misunderstanding or miscalculation. Yes ma'am, over on this side. Hi, my name is Laura Sellingman. I'm a reporter for Inside the Navy. You talked a little bit earlier about the fiscal constraints that the Navy is facing due to budget constraints. So how are the recent cuts in aviation cuts to LCS, the lack of amphibious ships, potential cuts to the carriers? How is that going to affect the pivot to the Asia Pacific? Okay, well the shipbuilding impacts won't affect us in the near term. It takes five years to build a ship. So if today we or next year we were going to build a ship and we don't build as many, that impact will be out there. That concerns me and we have to adjust for that. But what you what you saw up there in the plan for today and where we want to be in 2020, those ships exist today. So the key is to make sure that we continue a pace and put the priority in the Asia Pacific. That's my plan. We will prioritize deployment and presence in the Asia Pacific in balance with the rest of the world. Like I said earlier, you have to balance the rest of the world. I have to have a ready Navy. I can't send it forward, not ready. So I have to make sure that I have a proper balance of that readiness, the force structure that we have today, and the shipbuilding of the future. My biggest concern would be that we have an industrial base which is not capable of adjusting or adapting to the world of the future and can't build the number of ships that we need so that we can't, we would preclude ourselves for having the sea power that we need in the future. Do you think about industrial base in the future as being in effect a coalition of industrial bases that we should be thinking about shipbuilding and other systems in terms of what can we build that we, the Australians, the Japanese, NATO would use and plan for that from the beginning? Do we need to shift how we think about this? We do think about it today. So people say, okay shipbuilding and they're going right to halls. They see shipyards, ways and all that. There's some elements of shipbuilding. There are not many carrier builders, nuclear carrier builders, not many nuclear submarine builders, but we already share a great deal with the United Kingdom. We are building their missile compartment. We share that completely and we have a series of other agreements. But when you're talking about sensors and weapons, we do that today. More than I thought, Mike, and the more I dig into it, but I think we need to continue to broaden, we, me, that's me and my staff, broaden our vision and I've rambled on about payloads, not platforms. Look for the payloads that exist there today, a weapon system that I could easily integrate in a modular ship like an LCS and follow on ships that I could put that very lethal, very effective weapon, longer range tomorrow and maybe it isn't built here. But we have rules and regulations that we would work through. Good. Thank you. Let's go to the middle here, sir. Kurt Harris from Booz Allen Hamilton. Appreciate your remarks, Admiral. A couple of real quick questions. Where do you see the FMF and FMS programs going to support the rebalance and what can commercial contractors do to assist you in executing this rebalance? I see FMF and FMS, so for military sales and assistance, we need to coordinate. So we, the military, and Emma Locklear's working this pretty hard, get with the country teams and the respective navies. I'm going to Japan I mentioned before. I will sit down with Admiral Kowano and say, what capability are you building toward? He will ask me questions likely about, remember I was talking about netted sensors and we have a program called Navy Integrated Fire Control Counter Air. And it's about having our airplane up with a super duper radar, the E2D, the Hawkeye, and he says, well, what do I have that's like that? So what kind of common systems do we want to move toward? That has to get over to my international programs people because we can sit around and have tea and say, all right, we're there, but it's a coordinated effort. And then that has to get to the country team, to the embassy, as we work toward these common goals. We've collectively got to do much better at that. And I think that's a real key. Or we won't have, we'll have systems not quite compatible, and we just can't afford that anymore. There's not enough of all of us to do that. The ability to do what I just described is where contractors could help us. I was talking about other sensors, other weapons, and other systems that are out there. Where are they? I'd like to know. So come to our CR space exhibits. Come to these and show us what is available. What kind of payloads do we have? Training? Well, I'm fairly comfortable with the training that exists. It's now bringing it together. It's getting those kids, my war college and their war college. They, we have a common maritime component commander. It's called a combined, that means coalition, maritime component commander course. But there could be more of those. So studying those and giving us ideas, I'm open to that. Good morning, sir. Chris Daniel here at CSIS. Thank you for your leadership and for being here with us this morning in your comments. Question about Pacific Partnership and all the wonderful good that that's done over the last decade really. But I have two questions regarding that. One is that the hospital ships are nearing the end of their service life. And then the second question, sort of tying into your earlier comments. How far out do you see before the Peace Arc and the Mercy are working together? You mentioned during RIMPAC, but perhaps doing something like a Pacific partnership together. Thank you. Well, we'll see what happens in RIMPAC. We are going to exchange doctors on that. I don't see how that can be a problem. I mean, at least I would hope they stitch like we stitch. So seriously, we need to get by that kind of cultural thing. And all of a sudden we say, wow, what is their operating room? What is ours? Bring over, share, bring it together. Then the next step would be we send a detachment to deploy on the Peace Arc. And then we try vice versa. Okay. So those that actually have to execute that would say, yeah, that sounds great. Admiral, but well, listen, I think we got to work through that. But I think the hospital ship of the future, Rachel, would you put up the afloat forward staging base? If you have that out there somewhere. Is, you know, the Mercy is a super tantrum conversion, right? Mercy and comfort. You know, this thing costs about $500 million. If you put the flight deck on, it's about another $100 million. So, you know, $600-ish million. And then you see container boxes and all that. So I say a fleet hospital that, you know, needs to be put, can be put together and implemented on there. They, you know, they integrated operating rooms and all that of the Mercy are terrific for what they were built for. A Cold War series of casualties moved aboard a certain way. After a rock in Afghanistan, I tell you, the medical community, you know, can do so much on the move that we need to be more modulant. And so that's, I view something like that. We've got time, but, you know, when I look at those plans and what we can do with that, something like that. Sir. Thank you very much, Emeril. My name is Dong Hui Yu with China Review News Agency. I have two questions for you. The first one, it was reported by the Reuters last week that the United States Navy is negotiating with Vietnam to increase the port visit in Vietnam. How is the negotiation going on? Do you consider the rotational station in Vietnam? Second, the U.S. is negotiating with China about the course of conduct of the military operation in the international air and sea. What are the major differences between the two sides at this moment? Thank you very much. All right. I'm not familiar with the, I certainly hope, you never know what's going on at your headquarters, right? As we speak, it could be going on. I'm not familiar with a specific negotiations for port visits for Vietnam, increase or decrease with the Navy. The Pacific Command may be doing that. I'm just not familiar with that on my headquarters, so I'm sorry I can't speak to that. But I would like to see it increase in a deliberate manner and, of course, increase exercises accordingly. The chief of the Vietnamese Navy was at the Western Pacific Naval Symposium, signed up to QS, and has been, we sat down and had a talk and I looked forward to a visit. He invited me to his country. He's going to come to the United States. We'll get started on a common set of features together. The code of conduct, if you mentioned, the only one that I'm familiar with China and the Chinese Navy that I'm familiar with is this QS, this conduct for unexpected encounters at sea. There are no real hitches yet. We have to sit down and say, all right, where will this apply? What have you trained your people to do and where might it not apply, if that makes sense to you? That's really the focus of effort with us, with the US Navy and the Chinese Navy right now. Does QS cover Coast Cards? Because if you're going to have an accident in some of these places, the reality is it's more likely to involve Coast Cards or maritime services other than the Navy. No, and that's a key point. And we very much say, and we've talked to the Chinese Navy about that, we've said, hey, look, you've got your Coast Guard ships, man, you talk about aggressive. And they said, you call us. Seriously, they said, call us. One of my commanding officers will come over and help lead the conversation with our Coast Guard. But separate chain of command. And we're working on that. This is Emma Wu and his folks. We're working on that, but it is a separate chain of command right now. So that's an issue. Yeah, good. Thanks. Yes, sir. Hi, Xin Xiuji for NHK. You mentioned the Triton-Gurukinawa. But publicly, there's only been plans for the Persian Gulf and Guam. So can we elaborate the timeline between Guam and Okinawa for the Triton deployment? The Triton deployment, as it stands today, will be to Okinawa in 17. That is how I understand it right now. You said the Arabian Gulf. Did you mention it? The Arabian Gulf and Guam. Oh, Guam. I'll tell you what. Danny, why don't we, my public affairs officer will double back with you and we'll get that square between Guam and Okinawa. So you have that right, okay? I don't want to mislead you. Right here. Guru Holm, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. Question about RIMPAC and Russia. Will Russia participate in practice, do you think, as planned this summer? And what might the future for Russia in RIMPAC be if the situation in Ukraine is not solved in the way that is acceptable for you and NATO? Okay. Russia was invited two years ago at the conclusion of the last RIMPAC, tentatively said we would like to participate. And then we got a letter saying, I'm sorry, I can't, we can't come there because I don't have the operating money to send the ships down there. So Ebel Wuh and I got together in September and he said, do me a favor, ask Ebel Churkov again. So I did. And he said, I'm sorry, I still don't have the operating money. And now that last interaction was about November, December, where they said we will not be participating this year. I would hope if we can get by the situation and we can get back to some mill to mill relationship with Russia, I would hope we can get back to that point. But under the current circumstances, we can't. The Russians did find the operating budget for their largest or what's supposed to be their largest naval exercise of the Chinese ever, I guess. Are you worried about a little bit of a Cold War RIMPAC sort of Sino-Russian thing evolving or do you think we can get the Russians to try it? Not yet because it isn't as if we don't operate with the Russians. We have their larger fleet, the northern fleet. We have a lot of exercises that were going on between NATO countries with us. France, Britain, U.S., Russia, you know, I think it's kind of like frucus or something. It's some acronym. Everybody's got a letter in it. Regrettably, again, that's on hold now. But I'm satisfied with our interaction in general. Always good to get it going in the Pacific but as long as there's something going on. Good. Frucus not fracas. That's a good point. Thank you. Let's see. Yes, ma'am, right here. Good morning, everyone. I'm Jennifer Chen with the China Media Group. My question is, we know U.S. Navy has a contract with General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls to have 10 new Virginia class submarine over the next 10 years. And also have planned on buying 96 additional Hammerhawk cruise missiles. Would you please talk about the passable role of those submarine and missiles in Asia Pacific region in the near future? Thank you. Well, the undersea domain is uniquely the Navy's responsibility, all operations undersea. And my responsibility is to make sure that today and in the future, we have superiority in the undersea domain. We can go wherever we need to go under the sea. The Virginia class submarine is a key and critical element of that. It's not the only one, but it is very much the key to that. So that contract was important. That multi-year contract is very important. Admiral, thank you. You said earlier that being away from Washington costs you a million a day. We've probably cost you a couple hundred thousand this morning and really appreciate it. I want to thank your staff for terrific and my colleague, Kath Hicks, Vice President, Senior Vice President for International Security and my Asia team. You're doing great work and we appreciate it and especially you're taking the time today. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate it. It's good to be here. Thanks.