 All right, good morning First before we go any farther. I want to say thank you to the surface Navy Association all you do This forum especially to bring together industry academia the press the media the leadership and our swows Warfighters to talk about today and to talk about the future and what they do It's really a really incredible Important forum to us and I appreciate all the time and effort that goes into it So thanks for all the leadership that does that and all the folks that make it happen Thank you I also want to say thanks and I want y'all to give a hand to animals rodent animals Grady animals Kilby and animals Vanta if you heard them speak in last four days or interact with them you ought to be energized about the direction and thrust and positive morale of the surface force and It has never been better, and I am incredibly pleased about it. So thanks to you, Tommy All the three and four star leadership got together right before the holiday and mcpon was talking to us and he Wrapped at the end and he said hey, I want to tell you a few things. I'm not hearing from the fleet I'm not hearing about money needs. I'm not hearing about manning needs, and I'm not hearing about deployment links Boy, how wonderful is that? I've been in this Navy for 34 years That is a nice theme to hear particularly over the last 15 We're starting to turn the tide in that regard. I think that's really important A lot of the credit goes to Tom and Chris and their predecessors and those before him. So thank you okay lots to talk about Tom talked to you about the platforms and the distributed lethality concept. I'm going to talk about that a little bit Certainly, CNO came in talked about his strategic vision for the organization what the strategic environment was You heard the particular Operational manifestation of that environment for Admiral Ferguson in Europe in the Eastern Mediterranean. Absolutely Jim Kilby talking about tactical training what we're doing for our young war fighters all that very very important I'm going to try to thread the needle here at the operational end Kind of roll up a little bit of what Admiral Swift is worried about because he didn't get a chance to come back here and talk to Give you a site picture on where we are Based on what I told you all last year and some of the things that I told you were priorities to me And how important I think those things are as we think about the strategic The CNO's maritime to design as we go forward And some other things that are on my mind that I think all of us should be thinking about warfighters industry, etc okay Last year my priorities. I was newly reported to fleet forces command when I arrived I told you I had three things on my mind for the headquarters number one was to see through short knees initiatives That manifested it itself in OFRP Implementation of the warfighting development centers and continued pursuit at the operational level readiness of our numbered fleet commanders and their mocks and All it takes to make that entity go and I'm going to spend some time kicking the podium about that today Importantly I said I thought it was important to follow through on this because it set the conditions For our number two priority, which was to ready the fleet to be able to fight and win Operate in contested and denied environments of all kinds And I think as the CNO has come forward with his first LOE or the blue LOE as we call it You know, he's kind of reinforced that going forward And then thirdly and I told you there's a little bit of inside fleet forces command headquarters geeky speak I had to make force generation processes work better with force development processes I'll talk about that in just a little bit. Okay So OFRP We've got three carrier strike groups just stepping off the line getting started in these things now starting with like here a few months ago There's four things that OFRP has to do It has to be able to rotate the force It has to be able to surge the force for a big fight if needed It has to maintain and modernize the force and get it to its end of service life And has to do all those things and reset and stride Not only that it has to match the resources that are put into it those resources are significant They are the capacity in the fleet the number of fleet units we have and the types of capabilities that they possess It is time. It is money You cannot forget those factors going forward It is a process and an amalgamation of subordinate processes to make sure a lot of commanders That aren't under my purview necessarily synchronize our efforts to produce the ends that we require in Short-speak one of the things we used to do was man training equip at the last moment after the training Slaved it to the deployment and got guys whole just in time for the deployment out the door they went If you're gonna ready a force to operate and contested and denied environments of all kinds You have to back that up and get all those people out there earlier Those systems have to be inculcated earlier the maintenance has to be completed on time and you have to get them out the door in that manner This is the seventh iteration of how we generate forces Since we instantiated FRP in 2004 this one has a name Okay, we've optimized this iteration to make clear that to rotate Surge maintain and modernize and reset and stride you really had to make all these other elements come together In that regard so but make no mistake about it the fleet goes Where the Joint Chiefs recommend and the Secretary of the Defense and the President United States decide it is as simple as that Anyway, we're stepping off the line here It's going to take us a few years to instantiate of our Pete. There is no doubt my mind We are going to learn stuff along the way We have already learned things the subordinate processes in maintenance in training and people in command and control We've had to change some of our assumptions as we go forward I'm pretty pleased with the outcome overall and it's going to do a good job producing the force for us Okay on my second priority wanted to go after some of the advanced training immediately To be ready the force to operate and contested and denied environments of all kinds We have made substantial adjustments in our advanced and integrated training in the last 18 months We've done more in the last 18 months than we did in the last 18 years to adjust our integrated training The work carrier strike group for third fleet carrier strike group 15 and WDC all the WDCs as they have come online have done an extraordinary job Stepping our up our game on comp 2x We did ten times the amount of operating in a contested and denied emw communications Navigation environment here just a few months ago right before we sent Truman out the door Then we did just TR at the beginning of the year and TR had made a substantial Improvement over forces that went out the door in 12 and 13. That's really important And that's just one example. I could go on forever about that, but I have other things to talk about All right Making force generation and force development work together. I kind of described the force generation process to you and I described OFRP that's what we do down at the fleet level a lot of the activity up here is budget formation and of course Acquisition that's what happens up in Washington But there is a large pot of money that moves to the fleet and all the other CIS comms That is responsible for generating the readiness of the force Synchronizing all of that effort not all of which works for me Is important to achieve our ends at the same time the good acquisition community and industry is bringing us capabilities we have to Time in training to bring on board to make sure we're getting the full advantage of those capabilities when they're delivered to the fleet We've got a better process now to improve that dialogue. I won't get into all the little, you know meetings Approval authorities governance structures that make that happen, but it's been Absolutely important to us And I want to tell you kind of the juxtaposition on this We sent the theater Roosevelt strike group out with NIFCA the Navy integrator fire control networks counter air Okay, that was more thankful that that all came together than it was thoughtful on the way And we cannot have that going forward Those guys did a phenomenal job and they're about to give Cno and myself a deeper dive into just the NIFCA Experience they had on deployment and some of the training iterations But we've got to be able to bridge together a little better the near term and the far term To make these things work and I have committed to Cno and empowered by Cno to make that echelon to level Better synchronized to go after ruthless execution when it comes to the execution of our budgets and the readiness of forces Okay, that's the running fix kind of at the end of the year and I'll come back on this to take questions at the end of the Session here a little bit Here we are Wake up first of January turns out there's a new son in the solar system, right? His name is John Richardson. So and he talked to you all yesterday So, you know, I have to kind of adjust these priorities. I owe him a conversation before I have it with all of you About how we're gonna do that going forward But I do want to talk a little bit about what he's had to say and what I think the relative alignment of those things are You know the design for maintaining maritime superiority, you know, there'll be a little Adjustment in some of my each is on my priorities, but we will remain aligned on these things is important And just to be clear, you know, if you roll up his first LOE if he didn't get a chance to articulate it yesterday Talked about maintaining a fleet that's trained and ready to operate throughout the maritime domain from the ocean floor To outer space and in cyber and to be ready to fight and win in those environments and then to ensure this condition by aligning our organizations Some of that I just talked about to generate a culture of operational excellence make that happen He talked to you I think at length about the strategic environment yesterday. I Mentioned that a little bit. I'm gonna I'm gonna just kind of Capture it just for a second You hear this manifestation in joint parlance all the time people talk about any access area denial You know the thing that I keep having to pull it down to for the fleet Is you know maritime and fleet terms to make this rate going forward? I don't anybody make a mistake about it our adversaries are offloading Capabilities in order to generate capabilities to deny us our sea control Now we have the advantage right now, but as C&O talked to you about That advantage may be eroding a little bit They're trying to deny us our sea control to prevent our power projection and Deny us our objectives our strength around the world that kind of thing It is too callous and too casual to roll all this kind of stuff up as any access area denial It doesn't relate itself directly to everything that we do and we're capable of doing and what we need to be focused on He took you through Russia China North Korea Iran I'm certain If you didn't should have talked a little bit about Dias and the current fight that's going on out there But this operational approach is kind of universal right they're trying to bring about some ambiguity in phase zero Use some high technology to reinforce that deterrence principle that they're using Okay, little green men cabbage fleets in the Western Pacific and C&O is going after that when he says we've got to be able to train the force to operate in environments that are below that level of warfare and he's talking about that level specifically These methods the little green man and the cabbage and the marrying with the the precision guide of munitions is important They're trying to create areas or bubbles in which they can hold us out And for Russia and China as they step up to a more conventional conflict Escalate to deescalate They're able to challenge us a little bit. We need to maintain our edge. That's the point of what he's talking about But make no mistake about it. They are responding to our advantage Responding to our advantage They have their own strengths and they have their own vulnerabilities in their networks and their sensors in their con ops in their tactical Execution in the quality of their people, you know all important factors I could list another dozen and that's going to be part of the fabric of what we're doing as we go forward and as I said the operational approach of these potential adversaries is pretty similar but the tactical manifestation is different if you think about the Ground and the geography in the eastern Mediterranean you think about it in the Gulf think about it straighter Hormuz Think about it in the Western Pacific It's all a little different and the approach of each of those adversaries is a little different in those areas, right? So China much more depth width Ocean floor outer space deep into the country You know rands arrayed very much coastal coastal defense small boats swarms all that stuff That's what I mean. I'm still trying to challenge our sea control in there and prevent our prevent our fires Our obligation Tom is going after this with distributed lethality But our obligation here fleet forces command and helped synchronize this global Navy to go after this Okay, a Navy of this size And if there is a big fight anywhere on the planet those assets are going to be coming from all over So a fight in the Western Pacific includes Assets and forces that are here on the east coast of the United States The same is true in the Middle East things like that Two-thirds to three-quarters of this Navy depending on how you dice it by platform by airplane whatever is going to be here 10 years from now We're going to be fighting with two-thirds to three-quarters of the Navy. We have today Okay, this is why the instantiation of war fighting development centers Stepping up, you know back into this important portfolio of contested and denied environments. This is important to us All right, I have the Advantage of kicking around op-nap for a really long time And if you don't remember about 10 years ago, they produced a Navy operating concept That talked about aggregating and disaggregating the force. I'll spend a little bit of time talking about that This term distributed is incredibly important to us. And as I read in industry I read in the blogs Academia elsewhere The etymology of these words are really important to me And we have to start saying the same thing or we have to start citing why you know our positions are a little different on this thing Websters always comes in handy My team down at Norfolk knows this pretty well aggregate formed by the collection of Units or particles into a body a Mass or an amount it is a collective right aggregate Disaggregate separated into component parts And if you think about our operations in fifth fleet especially over the last 15 years It has been a disaggregated approach. You look at the tasks missions, you know for many of you to relate to but tasks counter piracy ballistic missile defense Strikes to shore in Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria, you know those kind of manifestations allowed you to disaggregate the force Each one of those disaggregated forces had their own small tactical networks To create a control that stovepipe of activity that was going on down there I'll give you that as just example Dispersed to cause to break up to cause to become spread widely to cause to evaporate or vanish To spread or distribute from a fixed or constant source is the fourth thing so distribute characterized by a Statistical distribution of a particular kind or related to or being of a computer network This is the advantage we have in distributed lethality. I know Tom took some questions about well What is this about? Is this just about a stick? Is this just about a sensor? What's more than that? You know, it's about our ability to deliver the situational awareness. It's required to distribute the force statistically So that it is able to project the fires that are necessary to achieve the fleet commander's objectives and provide the defense of its own units and the other units that they're required to assist Okay, there's a limb fact in one of the domains and all that and I'll talk about that in just a second Electromagnetic maneuver warfare counter ISR NIFCA all this Certainly our partnership between the submarine force and the surface forces when it comes to distributed lethality and that is a partnership Speaks to our ability to distribute RC control fires and Distributed lethality speaks to our overall fleet design and evolution. It is not a platform need It is a fleet need and this is why we've been focused hard on the operational level What the numbered fleets are capable to plan to what the systems are that they have their ability to take advantage of strategic systems push them to the tactical unit have those tactical units exploit those systems and Achieve the long-range fires that I'm a rodent is talking about. This is incredibly important to us a fleet that leverages and benefits from distributed sensors and this kind of battle space coverage But aggregates in battle space awareness aggregates in the command and control of command and control and has the ability to mass its kinetic and Non-kinetic fires can operate in a distributed manner. That's a lot of work. That's a lot more work than a stick and a sensor Okay I'm not a Pollyanna about this. There are some vulnerabilities in a structure like this But we cannot devolve force to everything is going to go back to mono a mono five inch gun and five inch gun or less If your adversary is able to protect their networks Because he will outstick you So you have to have that. There's some security that's required. Okay, I Keep coming back to three focus areas. Some of these are advantages. Some of these are Concerns some of these are things to build on when we think about the fleet And I said to you two-thirds to three-quarters of the fleet is what we're going to take going forward First the undersea domain. We have the advantage in there a significant advantage right now It is not a permanent advantage again. I'm not a Pollyanna about this, but it is a limiting factor in our distribution Multifunction towed arrays on our surface ships Widely distributed to all platforms is really really critical to us As I said, we have some advantages here. You should see these p8s They are an extraordinary capability I have a generation of aviators that have been taught to fly maritime patrol aircraft over the dirt and use ASW as a second priority and we are trying to flop that and working hard with the joint ISR gods to bring Those assets back as much as we can. I Track by the unit what our ASW readiness is in our p8 force our SSNs are doing phenomenal work Across the globe across the globe If you are an old cold warrior Submariner you should be extraordinarily proud of the professionalism and the operations that these folks are doing Where do we need to go? off-board vehicles Netted off-board vehicles This will contribute to this theater understanding this operational level this numbered fleet understanding of the total undersea picture and that threat picture And it it's not going to be fundamentally leapt in revolutionary technology until we get the off-board vehicles there and The netted sensors that would come with that. That's a huge opportunity for the surface force by the way I'll come back to that. Okay. Our next advantage and focus area our networks Integrated fire control network is phenomenal Every time somebody brings a new platform whether it is strike group inherent carrier strike group inherent on the wing or in a cruiser destroyer escort as It they're starting to bring sensors forward from space PA submarines all that stuff. How do we get it into the fire control network? Because it was not contributing there We are shortening our sticks in every sense in the air below the sea on the sea There's a lot to be done there EO IR all these other sensors that we can bring in space on the surface again off-board vehicles Are going to make a difference to these networks going forward We've got to be able to distribute that tactical essay We've got to be able to defend the networks to distribute that And we have to be able to preserve them in a flight. It's incredibly important to us All right Lastly or excuse me not lastly third our modularity You've seen this in our history, you know the VLS, you know, thank God for those folks that thought of VLS Back in the 1970s, you know, we see it on the wing two of our strike aircraft, right? And we see it in our air wing that kind of modularity. We're also seeing it now in mission base This is going to be an incredibly important capability for us going forward There's work to be done here and I'm truncating my talk here a little bit to get sick nab in here in here on time We cannot go backwards With an asset that does not have a mission bay now We will not get to the kind of off-board networks that we are required to have to change our sensing systems Unless we have that LCS Okay, the frigate instantiation is fine with me as well We can't go backward to some other whole form to do that I said last year when we talk about distributed lethality, we have to distribute the fires We got to distribute the sensors and we have to distribute the costs Okay, not everything can be a golden BB on the way here. We've got to be able to take advantage of that The thing that we need to work on space weight cooling and power Some of this is about margin. We have to build into these assets Some of this is about what the off-board vehicle or the strap-on box or whatever the case might be You know what it has to draw on as well Okay, we can't quite get there unless we're taking the basic physics into account. All right lastly our sailors All the tech in the world is not going to win a single flight on its own. It takes people and More than anything that is our asymmetric advantage. I was talking to somebody last night Was lamenting something he was watching on TV over and over again about America's youth And he said I spent a few hours on a destroyer and I slept well that night. Trust me. I sleep well at night Thinking of that as well. Our undersea our networks our modularity advantages can't be realized without the imagination innovation and leadership of our sailors they provide the ultimate asymmetric advantage and it's the effort of our sailors evaluating Concepts refining doctrine and practicing during exercises This is the process that harnesses the creativity ingenuity of youth and provides a tackle edge to our fleet This is why we have the witty program. This is a paradigm shift for the surface warfare force Okay, you know it our focus has been all about command for about three decades now to value lieutenants and lieutenant commanders with supreme tactical extra expertise and a portfolio have the courage To listen to their critiques Take it on board at the leadership level and be better the next day is a change in surface warfare culture You all know it and we need to work on this hard from 010, you know, certainly down to 050403 the whole way We've come a long way this year tapping into the creativity and innovation of these sailors And if one assumes constant resources time funding manpower, you need to look at different ways to cultivate tactical excellence Improving our calm 2x complexity Establishing the WDCs refreshing the doctrine the lessons learned repositories Putting them in formats and delivery mechanisms that make them usable and useful and attractive to our young people These are all needed improvements But to truly change the pace of the learning the fleet needs to increase tactical training surface area Just like any chemical reaction you have the reactive elements then the reaction area That's what we need to kind of expand on and some of this is going to be about the delivery of this stuff going forward Moving ahead we have to find a way to increase that exposure beyond the traditional military practice of large force and command post or Headquarter exercises and war games and single digits each year We need to drive them down to the ward room the chief's mess the tactical element level In our units but leveraging our biggest advantage our sailors and harnessing their ingenuity While they hone their technical and their tactical professionally on a significantly increased basis This is expanding our training surface area will provide enduring superiority. All right I gave much of my closing at the beginning my gratefulness for Tom rodin and his team and what they've done going forward Talked a little bit about where we are on things that we instantiated here last year things that are being continued Focus as we go forward next year and some of the concerns Advantages that we need to be able to leverage if we truly are thinking about a distributed fleet Not force as we go forward because the power is going to be in that distributed fleet