 Thanks Dave, can y'all hear me okay? All right, well good afternoon everybody, ladies and gentlemen, welcome on board and thank you for joining us for this historic occasion. I'm Rear Admiral Greg Huffman, the commander of Carrier Strike Group 12, the Gerald R. Ford Strike Group. I'm joined today by Captain Rick Burgess, the commanding officer of the Gerald R. Ford, Captain Dan Catlin, the commander of Carrier Air Wing 8 and Captain Mack Harkin, the Commodore of Destroyer Squadron 2. Today is an incredibly exciting day for all of us as the USS Gerald R. Ford and the ships of the Gerald R. Ford Strike Group pull in all lines and get underway for this historic deployment. Given the current state of the world, it's critical that the Ford class joins the ranks of deployed forces. The strike group recently achieved its Worldwide Combat Deployment Certification and this deployment is an exciting opportunity for the US Navy to demonstrate Ford's capabilities to the world. There are few military components that are as flexible and as powerful as a battle-ready carrier strike group with a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and its embarked air wing at its heart. The Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group is scheduled to operate in the US Naval Forces Europe, Africa, US Sixth Fleet Area of Operations to demonstrate the commitment and power projection capability of our Navy's globally deployed forces. Along with allies and partners, the Gerald R. Ford Strike Group will remain vigilant to deter and defend against aggression and when necessary, fight to protect a strong, free and prosperous United States and Europe. Our operations will include maritime security, freedom of navigation, and reinforcing our strategic relationships as we continue to enhance capacity, interoperability, and interchangeability with our NATO allies. Now more than ever, it is increasingly important for the United States Navy to strengthen our relationships with our allies and partners as we continue to promote a peaceful, stable, and conflict-free Atlantic region. I also want to take this opportunity to offer my most sincere thanks to the families and friends and all the people in Norfolk who have supported our war fighters for their unwavering support of their loved ones that allows our sailors to operate the most capable and professional naval force in the world. We recognize their sacrifices and are grateful for their contributions. I'm immensely proud of the Gerald R. Ford strike group team. The dedication they have shown in preparing for this monumental deployment has been truly inspiring. I look forward to watching what this team will accomplish in the coming months with our allies and partners. Again, thank you for joining us today on this historic occasion. I'd like to turn it over now to Captain Rick Burgess, the commanding officer of the Gerald R. Ford. Thanks Admiral and ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here with us today on what is again a really exciting day for us. The Gerald R. Ford is the first class of aircraft carrier in the last 40 years to be produced and operated and we are excited today to go forth and support our overseas combatant commanders for the first time. Our sailors on board are the world's finest sailors. They have been training and are prepared now, ready and excited to serve in this great capacity. I wanna thank the tens of thousands of folks here locally as the Admiral alluded to that helped get Ford operational and that includes contractors, vendors, the shipyards and the folks here at Norfolk Naval Station and all over. At the end of the day though, it is our sailors the finest in the world that breathed life into this incredible technological marvel and they are today the most, the foremost experts on operating the new technologies that really sets Ford apart from its predecessors. The Gerald R. Ford is our nation's capital warship and is again crewed by the finest sailors in the world and our hope is to establish what hopes to become a long and lasting legacy of victory at sea and I'm incredibly honored to be able to join this team on this ship in that service. All right, lastly, I also wanna echo the Admiral's comments and that we are deepest and sincerest thanks goes out to our families and friends for their unwavering support. We're gonna continue to rely on that through this deployment but they are the ones that allow us to go forward and operate forward and is incredibly grateful for us to have that in our lives. All right, thank you for your time today. We are willing to answer a few questions. You bet, Mike. To your point, I think it shows the incredible resiliency and really the sprit of core of our young sailors. I don't have an exact number but a good portion of our sailors, this is their first deployment and they were held in place because they are the experts on the new systems that Ford brings to the bear. So this is a very prideful moment for them to be able to take all their hard work and then go exercise it in an operational environment such as a first combat deployment. So again, these are their incredible sailors. I had a long and comprehensive turnover where I got to kind of sit back and watch and it was absolutely blown away at their professionalism and their excitement to actually go and do this for real on the Gerald R. Ford. And I think this will truly be the foundational deployment for Ford class carriers to come in the future too. The ship and the crew are ready, prepared and excited to go get it done. We are ready to go. So as with all new classes, we introduced new technologies. We have some two dozen. It's hard to probably put a number exactly on how many we have but we have some new technologies which we hope will advance maritime capabilities decades into the future. And it allows us in a larger sense to assure US maritime supremacy through this century. And so as the first in class, our young sailors who are the experts right now are going to go out operationally exercise all these systems and then we'll pass those lessons on to a follow on ships in class like the Kennedy and the Enterprise and the Dory Miller. So again, that's part of the excitement on our sailors end too is that they get to be the ones to go and show and help the Navy advance rapidly into the future. So we can talk specific systems offline but that's really, there's a bunch of new stuff and we're excited and ready to show it off. Anything else? Okay folks, is that all? Any more questions? What heat here is the good one? The actual, you said the six fleet during operation, is that what you said? Yes, sir. Absolutely. Also in the Atlantic, say something about Africa? So the actual region is Naval Forces Europe and Africa but it is the six fleet area of operations, area of responsibility. That's where we're primarily going to be operating but we are worldwide deployable. Excuse me. How long does that make six months expected? I really wouldn't want to comment on how long we'd be out there but we are ready to go. As the captain mentioned, the crew is incredibly excited. The entire strike group is excited. The achievements we were able to accomplish during the the workup phase of things that have been really inspiring for me personally to see and I know the crew has taken a lot of pride in their achievements and they are ready to go and do whatever the bidding is. What message would you send for the families to see these stories tonight? Knowing that we've got it? You know again, I really want to thank the families and the friends that have done such an incredible job supporting their sailors. Getting to a place where we are able to go out and deploy and I understand the hardships that go along with that. I've done this for quite a long time but I would say that they should take comfort in the knowledge that their sailors are resilient, that we are well-trained, that we are ready to accomplish our mission and we are doing what we signed up to do. First one is what is the morale like on board and the second one is what are the difficulties with the panel system, how much are you guys doing? Okay, those are actually great questions. I'm going to turn that over to the captain to talk directly on the morale of the sailors. I would say from my perspective, it's sky-high. Everyone is very excited to go but I'll turn it back over to the captain to talk about the specific equipment. Thanks. So as Admiral pointed out, the crew is actually really excited. Again, a lot of it is a lot of first-time cruisers and really excited to show off this ship and its capabilities. And I'm sorry, I missed your second question. It's really high and like all new technologies and new systems, we've come a long way from the early stages but a lot of the tension has been paid to it and our sailors, as soon as we turn to these systems over to our sailors, they do what sailors always do which is figure out a way to persevere and succeed and at the end of the day, we are firing on all cylinders and our big fans of our catapult system. It really enables the ship and the future ships in class to do some extraordinary stuff that we haven't seen yet. So they're of course very, very prideful of their systems but there's a lot of ownership there and they're very good and they're very excited to show off basically those systems. Yes, sir. Haven't thought about that in particular. Want to get out of here safely and I just, I want to have a nice professional deployment where we really get the opportunity to show what the Gerald R. Ford class can do and how it's different from the others but no particular milestone in particular. Sorry, two particulars. So we've got time for one more. Last one. It's awful.