 Okay, I can see nobody's awake out there yet. Good morning. This reminds me of when I did a tour on the joint staff, we had a director of the joint staff and he used to come in every morning and he would say good morning and we all had to reply good morning, beloved director. So now that we've gotten everybody up, you've got your coffee in front of you. I'm Vice Admiral Terry Blake. I was a former N8 and that means I have no friends. And I'm going to be supporting today's panel which is equipping and sustaining the sea services. As I mentioned, I'll be your moderator and I'd like to introduce to you the members of the panel who are joining me today on the dais. To my immediate right is Rear Admiral Tom Carney with the Naval Sea Systems Command. And then there's Brigadier General Joe Schrader, Marine Corps Systems Command, Rear Admiral Select Frank Morley, Naval Air Systems Command, Rear Admiral Joseph Vavaditch, Chief Acquisition Officer United States Coast Guard, Rear Admiral John Ewen, Naval Supply Systems Command, Rear Admiral Paula Brown, Naval Facilities Engineering Command and Rear Admiral Dave Lewis, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. In discussing the format with the panel this morning, we decided that I would forego reading to you each and every one of their bios and get to the heart of the topic at hand. Of the many responsibilities of a service chief, the requirement to man train and equip the force is always front and center. You often hear that any organization can have the greatest equipment in the world, but without the skilled people to operate these technological marvels, you are not setting oneself up for success. Conversely, you can have the most qualified, most highly trained fighting force, but without the proper equipment, we are not setting those dedicated men and women up for success. Our panel today is composed of the people who have among their many responsibilities the critical task of ensuring that the equipping portion of the man train and equip formula for our sea services is filled. In the best of times, fulfilling such a responsibility is seldom easy. In today's environment, combined with the fiscal limitations we have, the task is particularly challenging. Each of our panel members today will address from their perspective the challenges they face as they equip our Navy Marine Corps and Coast Guard for the 21st century. We'll begin our discussion this morning with Rear Admiral Carney, followed by each of the panel members as they introduce them. Tom. Thank you, Terry. Good morning, folks. I am Tom Carney. I'm the NAVC 06 Directorate at Naval Sea Systems Command. It's a new organization that stood up about almost two years ago that was under the direction to go solve the variance problem or the commonality problem that we have out there from the input from the fleet saying all of our variants that is out here where we have so many different types of systems for the same function, we need to kind of go fix that. So that's one of the things that CO6 does and since I took over CO6, Admiral already has decided that CO6 has been pretty successful in a variety of ways and he continued to add a bunch of things to it. So I'll go through my list kind of quickly here but CO6 is really a very broad organization in NAVC and it has really, I think the direction it's going is to kind of become the business director of NAVC separate from the budget side of CO1, separate from the contracting side of CO2 but more of how do we do the acquisition business and so I think that's gonna fit right in but some of the things I manage here is the commonality aspect for the Navy and we're writing a variety of commonality instructions and handbooks and things like that so we're moving that along but I also own all the Navy maritime spares is about a billion dollars worth of spares every year in OPN-8, WPN-6 and SCN type of things and then I also own the supplier product quality aspect so the fraud, the counterfeit and those types of things. I also own a couple of program offices, PMS 408 which is the expeditionary warfare program and PMS 340 which is the naval special warfare program. So essentially I own all Navy small arms, 50 calum below as part of the naval special warfare stuff and through the expeditionary things like J-Crew, the counter-ID electronic warfare, bulletproof vests and those types of things and then I also own the National Shipbuilding Research Program, NSRP if you're familiar with that and I'll go into that in a little bit on the specifics there and then I also have NOSA, the Navy Ordnance Safety and Security Activity and the West Serb and the SISTRIP and those organizations come under my hat at NAVCO-6 and finally I'm the Executive Manager of the Joint DOD Explosive Ordnance Disposal Program Board where we have all the services report up to the Navy and I'm the Executive Manager of that board so it's really a fascinating broad job that I have and I detail or I talk about it oftentimes that we cover or influence the Navy from small arms to carriers and we really do touch just about every single program at NAVSEE but this morning there's two things I want to talk about. The first one is the commonality and I just want to hit that real quickly. I think we need to view commonality as a money-saving effort. We should not incorporate commonality for commonality's sake but as a proven means to save total ownership cost and it's not all about commonality but it is all about total ownership cost and along these lines, one of the most significant things I think we can do to improve the acquisition process is to better incorporate lifecycle costs or total ownership costs into our decision-making process in the acquisition realm for reducing total ownership cost or into our decision-making process with commonality as a proven means of reducing total ownership cost but our program managers are routinely forced to make decisions and trade-offs what they know will reduce total ownership cost but it comes with an increase in acquisition cost and then it's relegated to the junk pile and that's a mistake. There's definitely tremendous pressure on our PMs to reduce acquisition cost, the cost caps, unit cost, KPPs, Nunn-McCurdy, the whole nine yards there. However, I have seen several opportunities that the program managers have had where we could reduce total ownership cost significantly but it came at a slightly increased acquisition cost and they said, nope, can't do it. And I think that as an acquisition community in fielding our ships to our Navy, we need to figure out how to do that. And one of the things I'll throw out there is the total ownership cost process is kind of smoke and mirrors in some ways when you look at the whole discussion on the economics of it, net present costs, the factors of inflation, all those types of things. So we're not really good at deciding or making believable total ownership cost numbers that our program managers can then actually take into decision-making process. We're real good at the acquisition cost itself but not the total ownership cost. So I throw that out there as one of the areas that we do need to be better at and that's making believable total ownership cost numbers to factor in there. Next I wanna mention the NSRP is just quickly, it's the technical consortium of 11 different shipyards, 200 businesses, 17 different universities, and basically it's $15 million comes from the government side, $15 million comes from industry and all the shipyards put that money together and then we go off and work R&D projects to make our shipbuilding better, faster, cheaper and more efficient. And they offer that that the companies that are out there, yes we have the 11 shipyards as the drivers here but they are totally engaged on the small business side to bring those ideas to the table. So if you haven't been engaged with the NSRP, it's an opportunity for you to work with one of the panel, they have 11 different panels on all different aspects of shipbuilding and I think small businesses can certainly play into that and I encourage you to take a look at that on that solicitation. And finally, after being in the acquisition business for many years, I just wanna throw out there that in my 10 years that I've been working acquisition, I have never not allowed or taken a phone call or a brief from an industry partner that said, hey, I have something to show you, I wanna come in and talk to you about your program. I have always taken those calls and I say that to encourage the companies that are out there, I do a lot of small business work at NAVSEE and if you are frustrated because you can't get in there, lean forward, call those PMs, call the DPMs because those names are now listed under Secretary Stackley's initiative on DPM effort for small business, but make the call, people will take your brief and you can get to the next level. That's all I have, thanks. Thank you, Tom. I'll turn it over now to General Schrader. All right, sir. Good morning. So, sir, Vice Admiral Blake and the Navy League, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to participate in this panel. So our topic, equipping and sustaining the Navy forces. You know, the Marine Corps, our cornerstone operating concept, Expeditionary Force 21, it provides us the framework we need to think about what the Marine Corps needs in terms of equipping and sustaining for our Marines to successfully operate on the future battlefield. You have 21 provides us, it builds on our naval foundation and it drives toward the institutional changes we need to give our Marines the edge in battle in 2025 and beyond. For us at Marine Corps Systems Command, it provides guidance for the integration and experimentation, combat development and acquisition processes so we can deliver the right capabilities to the Marines at the right time. You know, in terms of the right capabilities and the challenges we face in equipping Marines for fighting on that 2025 battlefield, I've got four areas that I'd like to highlight to you and the real challenges that we are, you know, they're a constant drumbeat for us and they're not necessarily platform or product specific, but it's just four areas that we're constantly after. The first one is becoming lighter, specifically and especially in personal protective equipment and our platforms. I think if you've ever been to any of these panels you've heard myself and other Marines, I think General Dana, Lieutenant General Dana, our Deputy Commandant for Installation and Logistics who spoke here Monday, he talked about sappy plates, which is the armor that the Marines wear. Trying to reduce that weight, I think he put out there a 30% reduction. I will just tell you that we're constantly trying to get lighter, 30%, 40%, 50%. We're just trying to get lighter. You know, it's, we protect our Marines with body armor, but what they sacrifice in terms of the body armor we have now because it's heavy and it's rigid is we sacrifice mobility and mobility has a quality of protection all to its own. So the less mobile you become, the more vulnerable you are. So lighter body armor that's pliable if you will to help increase the Marines mobility. On platforms becoming lighter, you know, over the years we keep adding armor to platforms, which is passive protection. We're trying to get into active protection like you see on aircraft. So addressing the threat before it hits the vehicle. So we call them active protection systems. So we're looking at a multitude of technologies that are out there that can sense an incoming threat and take that threat down before it hits the vehicle. So active protection systems instead of adding armor to the vehicle in a passive mode, getting at making it more active and not adding extra weight to it. The second area is becoming more lethal, specifically more lethal at the squad and company levels. You know, the environment that we're facing out into the future 2025 is an anti-annual, anti-access environment. And when you talk expeditionary maneuver warfare and exploiting the capabilities that had been brought to the Marine Corps through the V-22 and other platforms that we're working on, we're extending that reach. But by doing that, we're gonna have to operate in a more disaggregated, more dispersed fashion. Which means our squads and company level elements are gonna have to be able to be self-contained, if you will, and be able to bring their own complimentary firepower and those types of assets to bring onto the fight. So precision and fires, indirect fires, extended range munitions. We're working on a system called the precision extended range mortar system. It's a 120 millimeter mortar that extends that range out to 16 kilometers and also has GPS guided capability on it. And also company and platoon mortars, company 81 millimeter mortars and 60 millimeter mortars. I think O&R is working on a precision guided 81 millimeter mortar system. So giving the platoon and the squad level increased lethality and extended range to operate in a disaggregated and a dispersed environment. The third area is becoming more expeditionary. We are the expeditionary force of choice and I have what I call the big three in those terms and it's really from a logistic standpoint, the big three are power, water and fuel. Power, water and fuel. You know, in order to operate in that environment we have to have the power to do that. Batteries and that's, you know, constantly we're looking at smaller batteries with longer life and able to recharge them. Water, we're getting ready to release a request for information where we're looking for a expeditionary water purification system that's man portable and I think specifically we're trying to get at something that can produce up to around 12 gallons per day to purify to where the squad can carry it in and they can purify their own water. You know, in the days of old when I was a young lad we had the tablets that you carried in your first aid kit. We're trying to get to where you can purify a water source up to 12 gallons a day and sustain the fire team and the squad and even the company level. Fuel, I think, you know, we've been constantly beating that drum on becoming more fuel efficient not only in our vehicles and our platform systems but also our generators and how we generate power. So power, water and fuel, those are the big three and also our delivery systems. Unmanned, specifically unmanned type systems. Not only air unmanned type systems like what you see on the commercial side, you know, where the things that Amazons explore them with and stuff like that but also on the ground side. If you get an opportunity and you go out on the floor and you go down to where I think it's called the Marine Zone down there, the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab has a couple of robotic systems down there that they're experimenting with. One of them looks like a mule. You know, they're kinda going back to the days of old but it's a system, it's a robotic system toward the Marines, it's almost like it's got a brain of its own. You can give it an order and tell it where it needs to go and how fast it needs to be there to deliver something and it'll go do that and it'll follow the squad. So delivery systems that are unmanned and can operate in that environment. The last area I would offer that we're really trying to get at is better training devices. Live virtual constructive training devices. Not just weapons systems but also devices that give our leaders the ability to exercise their decision making process. Leaders at the battalion level and higher. You know, we're pretty good at working through squad leaders and giving them devices but things that challenge our battalion commanders and regimental commanders, mu commanders that put them in that environment, that put them through their paces in a digital environment before they go out and operate with troops and then hopefully before they have to go out and face that on the battlefield. We're also getting ready to release a request for information in that area as well and we're looking for, I think the specific RFI is gonna talk about decision making. It's a decision making tool for higher level echelon leaders in the Marine Corps. So those four areas, becoming lighter, becoming more lethal, becoming more expeditionary and better training devices that's specifically those top level key leadership positions. So I think I'll stop there and I look forward to your questions. Thank you, General. I'll now turn it over to Admiral Selec Morley. All right, thank you, Admiral. Good morning, everyone. I'm the current vice commander at NAVAR. Vice Admiral Groskal-Aggs is attending the three and four star discussions today so unfortunately, y'all are stuck with me. I'll attempt to do the panel justice but I will say that Admiral Groskal-Aggs said he'd accept full responsibility for anything I might say here today. So NAVAR, in support of naval aviation, focused on two primary areas. One is readiness. Two is increasing the speed of capability to the fleet. Said another way, ready to fight tonight, capabilities and capacity to win the future. So we know that the large margins of technological superiority and capacity with the downsizing force are gone. That's our challenge today, is provide the readiness today and the capability tomorrow. We all know that and that's essential in naval aviation's contribution to maintaining maritime superiority. So let's talk readiness for a quick second. As with most things, it's never one thing. Readiness efforts span the continuum from the prioritizing and addressing the known issues of today to improving our predictability methods to better lead turn future readiness issues before they become impactful. Today's priorities are focused chiefly on reducing the RBA ready basic aircraft gaps. Specifically, we know F-18, H-53, V-22, H-1 are certainly those in the focus items today. And these efforts entail naval aviation enterprise consensus on what the main drivers are, shifting of resources, whether that's dollars, engineering, manpower, et cetera, to address these drivers, measure the effects, compare with the expected outcomes and adjust. So the hunting analogy, aim small, miss small is where the focus is here to address the current issues of today. In addition, all the type model series across the spectrum have developed holistic playbooks, if you will, to address specific readiness improvements in priority order with expected effects, with the readiness of resourcing needs required to take advantage of the current year and future year resource availabilities. So that's kind of today's priorities, just a feel for that. Longer term, readiness efforts focus on becoming more predictive across the naval aviation enterprise in concert with our industry partners, addressing readiness divergence before significant impact is realized. And we are outside lead time for a meaningful recovery mechanisms, okay? So one more time on that, that's getting ahead of the game, right? To see where you diverge and then be able to do something about it before you see an impact on the flight line. Examples of this integrated logistics, you'll hear that term in many forms, but basically the tools, the data analytics, the processes to measure and address critical chain disruptions across the continuum, right? From design issues to training of our maintainers to preventative maintenance to corrosion prevention, fleet side alignment and processes there and gaining parts, the comms with NAV SUP, DLA, contracts, in-service repair efforts, the depot, the workforce, everything there. Ultimately, when you look at aircraft readiness, setting aside a life extension, it really comes down to the factor of four items. Usage rate, reliability, repairability, and our sparing, okay? The equation is simple. The execution of that equation is incredibly complex. Responsibility spread across myriad organizations with predictions that each are dependent upon each other. So the focus there going into the future is how better, this is the challenge since the dawn of a supply line, but is to understand what those predictions are, ID when we're starting to diverge from those early and then be able to make an impact before it's an impact to the fleet. Another example, long-term sustainment harmonization, you'll hear that term, working across the enterprise and with the resource sponsors to ensure the synchronization of all the required readiness accounts. You know, readiness is often the byproduct of what's the weakest link. And what we've learned is in times of budget pressures, the effects of one of those unfunded readiness accounts can have a downrange effect on readiness. It often lags and it's not evident in the budget year or even the next year. So maintaining those an eye on that is extremely important as well. Moving on to speed of capability to the fleet. Navy aviation is really completing a recapitalization period and it's moving into a modernization period. So of note, many of those recapitalization programs have been very successful. Super Hornet of the past decade, Growler of a few years ago, more recently, E2D and P8, all successful programs, all new aircraft out in the fleet today, all in a different stage of full rate production. In addition, we know F-35 is nearing IOC for the Navy and will begin to recapitalize our aging legacy Hornet fleet. The Marine Corps is slightly earlier in their recapitalization efforts as we know that their attack air force is more dependent on F-35. Of course, that's already IOC with the Marine Corps, you know, 53K is in development now and the like. So they're moving along, but they're in a different phase, but also strongly recapitalizing to that. So collectively, as you look at naval aviation as a whole, we are moving into a very much a modernization era of capability. As such, increasing speed is really the point of emphasis today. Why is that? Well, themes that are very common or that have been talked about here and you all, this audience is very much familiar with is the world, the pace of technology and the growing near peer competitors that we have out there. So we've got to go faster. As well, simply by the need to change the direction of the vector of our own development and fielding timelines. So that's what's on everybody's mind for speed. So within NAV air, reducing complexity and lesser value activity, along with the increased agility are points of emphasis and executing this within the limits of our authority. So examples, smaller and power teams, pruning of the internal processes, accepting of the right risk to accelerate fielding, more agile workforce, workload reduction, open architecture design and airworks for us, which is a rapid response, prototyping and fielding and select efforts there. Those are all mechanisms that NAV air is employing to increase the speed of getting capability out to the fleet. Big picture, some programs folks are familiar with that are utilizing these as a whole as models, LRASM, NextGen Jammer and MQ25 are all taking a skunk, they're all in different phases of development today and all taking a skunkworks approach which is supported all the way up to AT&L and Mr. Kendall and evident in structure all the way down to the integrated product teams and the CISCOM support of that. Lighter, more empowered, faster review processes more in sync, less of the staff burden that goes on. So that's the direction we're moving. So I think I'll stop there. Thank you for the opportunity for this panel and I look forward to questions for NAVC. Thank you Frank. I'd now like to introduce the career of Admiral Bobaditch for the Coast Guard. Admiral Blake, thank you. Good morning everyone. I wanna thank the Navy League for the opportunity to present the Coast Guard viewpoint this morning. I also wanna thank Admiral Blake. This is the first time I've been on a combined sea service panel where I actually didn't sit at the end of the table so I really appreciate that. I'm used to there. Right there with you, right? Admiral Blake, when you introduced the panel discussion to me, to me the operative word that I read last week was challenges, as in challenges that we are facing. And right now I have the privilege of overseeing the entire portfolio of acquisition efforts, includes cutters, boats, aviation assets, supporting shore side facilities. And while the recapitalization efforts of the Coast Guard have resulted in success stories, many of them, we clearly have challenges. Equipping and delivering assets that enable service members to meet the needs of the nation is absolutely an organizational imperative. But we all know major systems acquisition is a contact sport. And as by the very nature of that work, we have challenges. So we continue to progress on our most pressing needs. Our common admiral, ZoomConf, has been very clear the past two years. The offshore patrol cutter is without question the service's top priority. We continue to press the necessity for this asset of class and we are making great strides towards a contract award this fiscal year for detailed design and construction. More recently, the Polar Icebreaker has become a focus of attention. We are pleased to be gaining traction on this effort. I think the need for Polar Icebreakers, Polar Icebreakers is well articulated. The FY17 President's budget request is a strong signal of its urgency and the need to recapitalize this capability. An industry is clearly interested in this program. I know this, given the responses and the turnout for our industry day engagement just a couple of months ago. We had close to 100 different companies and entities organizations with around 250 people in attendance. United States hasn't built a vessel like this in over 40 years and as such, the proven methodologies for system engineering, acquisition governance, and milestones put the program on what feels like a lengthy timeline. So maintaining a strong, long-term pace require persistence. We're working hard to complete the programs that record in our other two major surface fleet acquisition programs, namely the National Security Cutter and the Fast Response Cutter. Both are being inducted into the fleet and performing fantastically. It will be challenging, but as I see it necessary to complete the resourcing of both of these programs before the OPC kicks into full rate production and before our current fleet of aging medium endurance cutters experienced with degradation that either fails in mission or becomes cost-perhibitive to repair. The average age of the 210 foot medium endurance cutter is nearing 50 years and the 270 foot medium endurance cutter fleet is at 30. I think we do a great job of sustaining our fleets, but at some point, there is a need to recapitalize. At home, I have three automobiles. I also have three teenagers with that. We in the Vovada Chalcult have made it a point to make timely oil changes and take other prescribed preventive maintenance steps to sustain that fleet of cars, but at 208,000 miles, 160,000 miles and 123,000 miles, I have to be thinking about recapitalization. I owe it to my family and we owe it to our Coast Guard men and women who are performing the mission day in and day out. One of our front and center challenges is cybersecurity. I rarely go a day without hearing about cybersecurity challenges. I'm told on most days about breaches and vulnerabilities in networks and systems and platforms and infrastructure. We are asked to build cyberhardened assets and our overseers want us to amp up for cybersecurity testing. During yesterday's information warfare panel discussion, common standards partnering with industry and building cyber into the new system in our new systems were cited as essential for meeting our ever-evolving cyber threats and requirements. I definitely feel the challenge is common understanding, a common understanding of cyber security standards. In all parts of the acquisition line of work, our standards and requirements, operation requirements that are measurable and testable and non-functional requirements or quality attributes are often referred as the ILDI, such as reliability, usability, maintainability and others. All pretty much are understood as a standard or a policy. So I'm used to the ILDI as cybersecurity as a risk assessment. It was DITS-CAP, then there was DICAP, now it's RMF, Risk Management Framework. Challenge in my mind is that cybersecurity standard is a risk-focused approach, which makes it more than a technology standards problem. It requires integration of business processes and policies across the entire organization so that funding, programmatic, technical and operational decisions are balanced with that cyber risk. And the best way I can describe it, it is challenging and we need industry's continued proactive engagement to make cybersecurity less of a challenge. Another topic in that challenge locker is maintainability. We are all about driving some level of certainty and predictability in performance and schedule and cost. We know the triad. We're expected no years in advance the achievability of that first operational test, the date of that first delivery and the exact cost of that first production contract. These are very real challenges in the acquisition phase but even harder to predict what it will take in terms of costs and spare parts and training and performance once the asset goes into service. This is another challenging aspect that we are welcome, that we welcome industry's engagement and ingenuity and we are finding ways to deliver more sustainable assets in an affordable manner, in a predictable cost at a predictable performance. For example, automated shift control and equipment management systems support maintenance based on actual wear and tear versus a strict timeline. And even seemingly small things like LED lighting can make a significant difference in the overall lifecycle hours and costs. So I thank you for your attention. I really appreciate the opportunity and again, look forward to your questions. Thanks Joe. I'd like to introduce Rear Rental Ewan with the Naval Supply Systems Command. Good morning everyone. Thank you Admiral Blake for moderating this Augusta panel and just like you, I usually as a Y I'm at the end so this is exciting not to be at the end. Thanks Dave for doing that. Thank you very much Navy League for hosting this event. So I'm the commander of NAVSUP and so what is NAVSUP? We've been in existence for 50 years now. This year we celebrated our 50th anniversary of providing supplies, services and quality of life support to the Navy and our joint war fighter. We manage supply chains and those supply chains provide material for Navy aircraft, surface ships, submarines and their associated weapons systems. We provide centralized inventory management for the Navy's non-nuclear ordnance stockpiles and we provide a wide range of base operating and waterfront logistics support services throughout the world. That means that we deliver materials, contracting for supplies and services, providing material management and warehousing services. Basically, when you think about that picture we're the factory, the foxhole after a major weapon system has been delivered. Our long-term vision at NAVSUP is really to align with the CNO's line of effort of enhancing naval power, ready to operate and fight decisively. And we've got to give those tools to the war fighter. I was, I think I'm the only one that decided to provide a slide but I wanted to give you a slide of what NAVSUP is looking at in our perspective of supporting the war fighter. What we believe is in the supply chain that comes after a war, a weapon system has been delivered before we take over that system, we think that a lot of discussion needs to happen up front. And we need to be very involved in whatever NAV air, NAV sea and spay war are doing in developing the weapon system to develop that life cycle support in the future. So early involvement is important and working with the operators to understand how they're going to operate the equipment in the future. So collectively then we need to identify and implement methods and strategies, quite honestly, to better influence and control life cycle costs in the future. These include the acquisition strategies and the logistic support strategy of the future. So when you look at the sustainment costs and what's up front in our picture here, the greatest weapon sustainment costs come after a weapon system delivers. So after we procure the weapon system and changes do happen though after we buy the weapon system. Technological changes, obsolescence occurs, the threat environment changes. I think an example for this and NAV air had mentioned it, the recapitalization of our FAA teams. When you look at the FAA team A through D, as we recapitalize these for the Marine Corps and for our basic fleet for the aviation community, these A through Ds have, because of the way they've been operated, have gone beyond what was their planned flighting hours. And so quite honestly, the FAA team program is cold with regard to production lines. And so now when we recapitalize, these production lines are cold and we have to now retool what we have and start from scratch almost on how we're going to support the FAA team A through D. They've gone well beyond their self-life or their extended life program and we have to then have a plan to get parts and repairs for them. And so the load goes to the rhinos, the E through Gs. And as we await for the joint strike fighter to come, we're gonna fly those even more. And we need to have a plan on how we're going to support the FAA team's rhinos. And we're seeing that today is that we're gonna see that's gonna be flying through at least 2034. Another example of this type of change in our environment would be the AV-8 Harrier. We thought we were going to sundown the AV-8 Harrier in 2018 and we now look like we're gonna use it from 2026 and maybe even beyond. So we need to have our partner industry. We need to have our FRCs go out there and relook at how we're going to support these aircraft beyond what we thought was planned. An example of how we do that, the P-8. We are sundowning the P-3 and you can see how things are going down in the picture here, but the P-8 is coming up and we're now realizing that the sustainment cost might be a little different than we wanted to have in the future. And so what we had was a plan for full commercial logistics. And now we look at the aircraft and we think that we might find a hybrid model might work better. But now we have to go get the technical data. And we didn't buy that technical data up front. And so that's something we have to work with in our acquisition process and put into our plan is to get that technical data up front so we can get our repair depots running and we can share that data with others so we can get a future capability. I guess what we also need was our partners when we look at our sundowning to help us with our plans to stay with or help us with an off-ramp or a retirement schedule. As we adjust our schedules to meet our needs for the fleet. So again, early program decisions here and how we procure our technical data will drive the cost in the future 30 years down the road. So whether we're talking aircraft or surface ships as you're talking about your cars, these are the things that we have to plan out well in advance. So Tom mentioned a little bit about commonality and so 70% of our new weapons systems already have components with existing stock numbers so we do have some commonality out there. So we have parts out there, we have to figure out what we're gonna use for our maintenance and our logistics in the future. What will be the capabilities of our sailors and what they can use out there when they're operating. And that then helps us with our decisions of where we're gonna forward position our stocks to sustain our forces. And so we look at what's capable and what we can do. But then there's also back in the home front, we have PBLs, performance based logistics and not every PBL should be the same. Sometimes you want it to tip the tail, sometimes you want it to be tailored to a certain part. It's not a one size fits all. And then how we establish our relationships to repair certain things. We need to have a partnership with our commercial industry, we have partnerships with our organic capabilities and there are relationships that need to be established. And in the future, how will we get our parts? Will it be additive manufacturing? And where will that change in our game in the future? Having that technical data will help eliminate some of these perturbations in our supply chain and help us adapt to evolving technologies. So sometimes when we look at some of these older models of our weapon systems, we can learn some things and get that after the fact consideration. That leads to some of the challenges that we are facing and we're gonna try to adapt to today when we look at the LCS, P8, Joint Strike Fighter and new programs as things to come earlier or later. We need to have that conversation between the SISCOMs to understand how we're going to use and buy the equipment and then we have to work with the operators, the TICOMs, the fleets, figure out what are their plans and how they're going to operate these systems. So we've been working with other enterprises to understand this stuff and we're gonna have this sustainment and we're gonna have to work with our partner nations and some of these weapon systems you see on the list are with our partner nations. So with that, I'll pause and turn it over. Thank you, John. Now I'd like to introduce Rear Admiral Paula Brown with Naval Facilities Engineering Command. Hey, good morning everyone and my thanks also to Admiral Blake for facilitating and to the Navy League for hosting this opportunity to speak to you today. So Naval Facilities Engineering Command NAVFAC exists as the Naval Shore and Expeditionary Systems Command. We plan, build and maintain sustainable facilities. We deliver environmental services, utilities and other base services throughout the world. We also acquire and manage those expeditionary combat force systems and the equipment for our people. With new leadership at NAVFAC, we have just recently released our 2016 strategic design. Not a surprise with the new CNO's strategic design but this is not really a change of focus for us but it sharpens our focus and allows us to align with SECNAV and the CNO's priorities. We've organized this around two lines of effort, external to enhance the Naval Shore readiness and internal strengthening our NAVFAC team. Both are crucial to successful mission attainment. Within those two lines of efforts, there are six inter reliant focus areas designed to strengthen our mission accomplishment. I'll briefly touch on four of those today. The four that I'll talk about are infrastructure readiness, energy security, our people and financial trust. Infrastructure readiness is our fundamental business. That's a critical element to this topic of equipping and sustaining C services. We will continue to be fiscally stressed. Persistent underfunding, especially in the utilities, sustainment, restoration and modernization funds increases risk to the Navy's mission. Only 59% of what is termed considerably risk within the restoration and modernization investment is actually funded. Sustainment is funded at just 75% which is actually up from the 70% the last few years. However, this will not arrest degradation of infrastructure. Those key investment elements include the electric backbone of our system, fleet operations, shipyard environmental help, overseas drinking water and areas with high energy loss. In addition to traditional facilities and utilities business, NAFAC is also the new cybersecurity role. We are the systems technical authority for facilities infrastructure technology. A lot of big words, but really what we're talking about is all those industrial control systems and that inventory is extensive. There is no such thing as a standalone or isolated system and we're in the midst of detection, mitigation and recovery. Within our existing systems, there are too many direct internet connections for those industrial control systems and things we call SCADA or supervisory control and data acquisition systems. Those translate to potential threat intrusion nodes for our entire fleet. We mustn't identify all computer systems that monitor and operate those critical infrastructure systems and things that you don't even think about could be the HVAC control on the wall, fuel delivery systems, runway lighting, security systems, water supply plants, wastewater treatment plants, aircraft carrier, catapult systems and a host of many others. Our focus is on protecting control systems associated with those critical assets and their supporting infrastructure. Our future goal is to have all known shore control systems cyber secure by FY20. The challenge is what's known and what's unknown. We wanna make sure that we are not the shore's back door for intrusion into the fleet. We need to look at less wireless options and more hardwired base fiber connections to increase that cyber security. Moving on to energy security and I won't spend a lot of time because I know the last couple of days we've talked a lot about energy. But the Navy's energy security posture relies on three pillars. Reliability, resiliency and efficiency. Reliability of course is the foundation for all of our utility systems. Resiliency enables that recovery if there is a problem. Efficiency reduces energy consumption and those overall requirements. The good news is through successful energy reduction efforts and we're meeting the goal of the one gigawatt renewable. We're also forecasting lower total Navy energy consumption. However, that doesn't immediately translate to rate reductions. Finance to energy projects through third party financing have been key to meeting energy reduction goals. And this includes many of you are involved in energy savings performance contracts, the ESPCs and renewable energy production. We've completed various types of energy projects like improved lighting. Talked a little bit about LEDs and things like that. HVAC systems combined heat and power plants that actually co-generate steam and electricity and modern building automotive systems. These utility scale renewable projects will ensure we meet those goals and will continue to do that beyond just meeting today's goals. We're also looking at the facility scale of wind, geothermal, solar and fuel cells to help meet other energy innovations. I'm sure there are more out there and those are areas where innovation counts and where all of you can be a part. Internally, our most critical focus is on financial trust. We run a $15 billion business. I know you think 1.9 is good and it is. Our $15 billion business is actually down a little from what we've done in the past. We are a uniquely reimbursable service provider compared to some of our other SISCOMs. We operate within two financial systems, the Navy's Operation and Maintenance General Fund which is about 75% of what we do and the Navy's Working Capital Fund. 95% of our funding comes from our supporting commanders. So we must ensure that partnership is strong. We must make sure that our finances are totally open and transparent. We must also meet audit requirements. And to me, that is a good thing. A lot of people are scared of that but that allows us to make sure that we can be totally open and totally transparent. We must align our expenditures with resourcing. The other piece of that is we must understand all of our systems and be able to explain the shortcomings and what is critical. We've also not provided significant, sufficient, rather, project oversight for funding all of our projects. With construction projects, without oversight, we tend to meet some of those deadlines. And our deadlines are like everybody else's cost and schedule. That runs into a risk of meeting mission requirements for the fleet and for our other supported commanders. The Navy Working Capital Fund demands full-cost accountability for products and services, including recapitalization. We don't do as good a job with identifying the recapitalization. And the Navy Working Capital Fund allows us to do that. We need to fully recognize and explain and build trust across our supported commanders to ensure that we're talking the same language. Rate development has only become recently transparent to our supported commanders. We need to continue to develop and appreciate those rates and understand it well enough to explain it to our supported commanders so that we all are talking the same thing when it comes to rate increases. We don't very often decrease those rates. And increasing the rates is a real hard pill to swallow if we do it as a huge lump sum. Finally, our people. We have 21,000, 21,600 people in total. Most of those are civilian, 93%. We have just 1,600 military. 15% is undermanned. That's a huge challenge for us. Our staffing model is almost totally dependent upon our supported commander's demand signal and that has been changing. We need to do a better job of understanding and anticipating that change so that we can meet our staffing models and we don't take risks. There is fierce competition and we've talked about this in other sessions here, but fierce competition for some of our career fields, especially IT, cyber, high voltage electricians, as well as engineers and contract specialists, especially at our overseas commands. We have a hard time filling those jobs and there are certain places in the United States as well. Our total force includes our reserve component and many of those in industry that you employ. These reserve members provide that national capacity to meet our nation's response in crisis. They also help us surge when we need it the most. If we don't have people in the right places, we are putting our people and our business at risk. A little about contracting. We have a large volume of decentralized contracting actions and it requires that clear scope of work to ensure best value and timely delivery. We've got to talk that through in the beginning. We've got to understand what changes come up after the programming. Our audits have reflected that we've taken internal risks and we have some inadequate contract oversights and improper inspection techniques. We need to correct that. Yes, there are too few contracting engineers and contract specialists. So we have to hire more and again, fierce competition. Our conclusion with that is doing fewer projects well is better than doing more projects poorly. I won't get into details but you all know the DIPRI, the Guam Defense Policy Review Initiative huge program for us in the next decade. We're looking at $7.4 billion. It will be our single largest workload driver over the next 10 years. There are delays now. We're working through those. We've gone up and down with that for the last 10 years and we know that that's a challenge for all of you as well as a challenge for us. As it's been said many times, we are living in interesting times and as engineers without some of these known challenges, we'd have to make something else up to solve and with that I'll close. Thanks Paula. So last but not least is Rear Admiral Dave Lewis and Dave of all of members on the panel, Dave and I probably spent more time, I spent more time with Dave than doing with anybody else and it always seemed that whenever he came to me, I always had him at the end of the train. So I figured I would continue with that proud tradition even in civilian life and put him as the last speaker of the group. Save the best for last, thank you. I'd like to thank all of you for attending this panel today. I think you're here because you know that wars and battles are often won or lost before the first shot is fired based on how the force is equipped and how it's sustained. So I anoint you as the officially the smartest people at Sea Air Space today. So well done for attending. In my world, the big thing is that cyber is now a warfighting domain and by cyber I mean C4I, everything with a computer in it that's engaged in communications and passing data between our ships and forces. So that's driving the C4I community to be more technically rigorous, more operationally rigorous. And that's a significant change in behavior for us. So I'll talk about that a little bit. So there I am on the bridge of the USS Perence DD 963. Back when I had one less stripe on my sleeve than I do today. And there's an airplane orbiting overhead and the commanding officer is saying, Dave, I need to talk to that airplane. And I'm the communications officer. And I said, sir, we're transmitting a thousand kilowatts right now. And he goes, Dave, transmitting is not communicating. So what he was teaching me was systems engineering. At the bridge wing level at least. So 18 months ago, we in Spade Wars started doing system operational testing for the very first time in C4I systems. Not a Soviet, you may know what that is, is an operational verification test. That's a box level test. We're now doing a ship level system operational test. Ship says they finish up their CNO availability. They're getting any kind of upgrade, usually canes or NMT or one of the big installs. That's the first time we've done that in this community. When I look at the other war fighting domains, they've been doing that for 40 and 50 years. Oxots, ASW Scots, full power trials. Those are all system operational tests. And those communities wouldn't even think of sending a ship to sea without having done those system level test or stage seven tests, what I would call it, first. So we're just starting down that road. About 30% of the ships that finish up a CNO availability today get a system operational test. The thing I find amazing is we're still debating whether this is a good test or not. Another thing we're doing is configuration management. What's on the ship? What's the operating condition that the ship needs to be in for to execute a C4I mission? We have to know what we put in and we have to know what the current configuration of ship is at. Patching and scanning. A couple of folks here have talked about cyber. That's critical. Until two months ago, when we installed a new system on the ship, we, Spaywar or the PO, didn't actually bring that system up to the current level of patching and scanning for that system. We left that to ship force to do. That's wrong. So now we do that and we stay on the ship and we bring that system up to full current configuration across the board and turn it over to the ship, to the sailors, ready to go clean and it's up to them at that point to maintain the configuration of the system. Another area is procedures. I was not giving procedures to the ships and guess what? They weren't following procedures because they didn't have procedures to follow. So now we provide procedures to the ships and we're expecting them to follow those procedures. And that means when the procedure isn't right, the ship needs to tell us the procedure is not right. So the feedback process is being built now with the ships. And we're changing the culture now to follow the procedure. You don't opt out of the procedure at the first step that fails. You follow the procedure, you opt out only later on if you can't make it work. Lastly, our next is track and operational availability or ASABO. I do that personally now for every C4I system. To me, ASABO is Commander's business. And I expect my commanders, people who work for me to know what systems are not performing to their requirements and why they're not performing to their requirements and what they're doing to make them perform to their requirements. So there's a philosophy point in there. Maintenance is not fixing broken things. To me, maintenance is not fixing broken things. Maintenance is making things that don't break or fixing them before they break operationally. That's good maintenance to me. So we don't stand around waiting around for a CAS rep. We get involved. We know the ship schedule. We know the trends for ASABO. We know when that ship is gonna have a problem with a piece of equipment and we intervene ahead of time, early, while they're sitting in port, while they're getting ready for an exercise and we don't wait till after the exercise starts and the equipment actually breaks. So let me give you a couple of scenarios. System A, ship deploys for seven months, 100% availability the whole time. Is that a well-maintained system? Or system B, 10 CAS reps, 10 Texasus. Is that a well-maintained system? Which ship produces the BZ to Mary or Jane or Bob who comes out and fixes the CAS rep over and over again? So a lot of this is setting expectations in the force. The expectation isn't that I'll fix you when you're broken. The expectation is your equipment's gonna work for the entire deployment and you should demand that performance of me. And I want that. I want that demand signal and I wanna be able to respond to that. So that really gets into training and expectations. My expectation is we give a ship's procedures at work. They're correct. We validate them. We verify them in a SOC. We know the procedures are right. My expectation of the fleet is that they use those procedures and if they don't work, they tell me. My expectation of my own people is that we know the configuration of the ships. That's hard in my world. Routers, servers, thousands of computers hooked up. That's a significant challenge. A non-trivial challenge, if you will. But that's my expectation. And for the sailors, I expect them to keep the ship in configuration. The sailors should know the configuration of the ship. If they have to make a change, it's documented. And then next is knowing the ASOBO. And that's on my side. How, what is the operational availability of your system? Speaking to an in-service engineering agent. What are the trends? What ships have problems? Why do they have problems? Is it a training issue? Is it a material issue? And be able to articulate that coherently to me as assistant commander so that we can take action, I can take action if needed, with the fleet in order to improve that ASOBO and bring it up to 1.0 for deployment. And those to me are all part of being a warfighting domain. That's new to us. Regular business out in the rest of the Navy. But we need to behave with a rigor. We have to have engineering discipline. We have to have designs. We have to have an architecture. We need to follow configuration management principles. We need to provide procedures to the fleet. We need to have procedural compliance. We need to train to those procedures. And then I think we need a proactive maintenance strategy. And we're doing all of those things across the board at SpayWar and at POC4I and POEIS. So it's a very exciting time in my line of work. And I'm hoping that there aren't a lot of incidents out there running around, learning about the difference in transmitting and communicating. So thank you very much. Thanks, Dave. So we've got about 25 minutes for questions. There is a mic in the middle of the room right back here. And I'd ask you if you have a question to proceed to there. I'd ask you a couple of ground rules. Ask you to identify yourself and your organization. I'd ask you that you put your query in the form of a question. If you wanna make a statement, go ahead. Then some of us will sit up here and wonder what was the question and all that. If you're directing it to a particular member of the panel, I'd ask you to identify that person. If you're just putting it up there as a jump ball, then we'll try and figure it out. And I'll begin the process by asking them if there is, as they sit at their desks at night or probably at night, if there is any one thing which keeps you up as you're sitting there, trying to figure out how to deal in these uncertain times and the current fiscal limitations that we have. Tom? Okay, I'll take that one as we move down the line here. I don't know if it keeps me up at night, but it does, it is something that I'm fairly passionate about that I'm trying to figure out. And that's the government industry relationship, how we can improve that. We look at the phenomenal equipment that's out there every day. When I was a submariner for 25 years, driving submarines around the world, I remember going through the Arctic in the Bering Strait, which is only 120 feet deep, and it's a 360 foot long submarine. You know, that's similar to you in your six foot body swimming in a two foot pool without touching the bottom and with a ice cap on top with your eyes closed. We're able to do that and we're able to do that because industry out there has built these phenomenal pieces of equipment for all of us and all of our sailors and soldiers and Marines out there. But we have this constant friction, which in some cases is good, but I think with the decreasing budget, so we have the R&D budgets 50% down over the past years, there's constant pressure on reducing the budget. We need to improve that government industry relationship similar to what we do with the NSRP. We work together to make sure that we're building and designing the things we need. So if we can build a better government industry relationship, maybe it's the NDIA type of things we do and these types of panels, those are all good, but at the end of the day, we all sing Kumbayaan and we leave and say, see you next year. I think we need to establish some organization that industry and government that's empowered at the secretary of defense level that's empowered to go fix those things that are frustrating industry that precludes them or prevents them from reducing those total ownership costs and those sustainment costs so that we can all work within the budget that we as American citizens have to work with. That keeps me up. So what keeps me up at night is meeting the expectations of 182,000, give or take a few Marines in regards to having modernized equipment and they expect it and I think that they deserve it. Absolutely deserve it. The example I'll give you is our light armored vehicle was fielded I think in 1984 and right now our current strategy says that we're gonna try to keep that thing going until the year 2035. So there's stuff that we're operating on that are big platform systems out there that were in existence before I was a lieutenant and we got kids coming in today that are lieutenants and privates that are using that same gear. That's what keeps me up at night is that they expect they see stuff out there and they expect and deservedly so should have it and they expect us to provide it to them. So that's what keeps me up at night is answering that call day in and day out giving our Marines the gear that they need to make sure that they don't get into a fair fight. They should never have to face an enemy on equal terms from a technology perspective. We should always have the technological advantage. We can never see that so that's what keeps me up at night. Frank? For me what delays my falling asleep is current readiness as we talked about. You know we're getting the deployers out there with what they need and keeping them where we're going. The challenge is our ability to get squadrons outfitted as they prepare for deployment in certain TMSs. So resetting those TMSs have been used hard over the past decade and extending those that we're relying on as we complete the recapitalization is really the challenge. Now I'll just add that what allows me to fall asleep are the thousands of professionals, artisans, engineers, maintainers out there doing Herculean efforts every day to keep these airplanes going. So that can't be forgotten, they're good work. Thanks Frank. That's a great question. In fact I challenge my program manager. I tell him in any given week, one night a week they ought to be falling asleep worrying about all the risks within their programs. Right and so the next to the rest of the week we're just trying to buy down that risk. So what's keeping me up at night is very similar themes right here in terms of recapitalization of the Coast Guard especially in our surface fleet. With the scary thing is some of those ships out there are just old and we have young sailors out there trying to do mission. I just hate to see one of those things self-decommission in a very precarious situation. So the rush to recapitalize, that urgency keeping up that pace and the other thing that we're really trying to understand and do a better job at is very similar to what Admiral Carney was saying is in terms of how do we articulate our need. We do a pretty good job at wrapping up RFPs at the last minute it seems like and then industry scrambles to address it but forecasting that need in a longer timeline so we can again forecast what's going to be around the corner so we can get the right people or the right investments if you will. I think that's very important. So those are the things that we're working on. So I used to ask myself and ask my supply core community which is about 25,000 strong, can you fight? And what do I mean by that? Understanding the plans from the three fives and making sure that the warfighter has the freedom of movement being logistics free. I've kind of changed that now to can we fight and it's really about the power of Sigma and so whether it be in the very beginning when we understand the programs and development of the weapons system to all the way to the sun downing do we understand how it's going to be employed and I think that brings in the aspect of the commercial sector, our partner nations and making sure it works in harmony and I think that's, it's really about that's whole supply chain and that's what keeps me up. Thanks, Admiral Brown. So I think we have an incredible team also of people that can solve problems and that's that engineering mindset that can do that we've always had and will continue to have. What keeps me up and what I continually think about is what's the one thing that we're missing? What are we not seeing? Because usually it's that one little thing that can throw a program or a project way off and so it's that one thing that we're missing and how do you continue to look for that not nuking it to death and driving everybody crazy but how do you project and find that one thing? Admiral Lewis. In my world we are not driving the train on technology that's the commercial business so it's a matter of picking the appropriate commercial technologies and putting them in our systems and where I worry about that is in the acquisition process because that is oriented around us inventing everything so we have CDRs and PDRs and milestone A's and B's like we're inventing a six generation fighter for everything we do and then most of my stuff we're not doing that it's already invented, it already had its PDR and CDR it's already had its milestone A, B and C I just want to use it and that's a real frustration for me that's a real frustration for our fleet customers because they know that stuff's out there and they want it and we're struggling to accelerate it into the fleet. Okay thank you, I'll open up to the floor the gentleman there. Good morning, my name is Russell Bryant I work in the program executive office for integrated warfare systems I'd like to thank the panel for the comments and say hello to Admiral Lewis it's been a few years, yes sir. My question is related to another factor of supporting the fleet with the complex systems and it is when will we start seeing or potentially start seeing complex adaptive systems where the systems are starting to sense the environment and respond much like an organization does when it knows that it needs to change and the leadership reorganizes the organization. Thank you very much. So Dave you want to take a crack at that? I forget that you were on the end you know. I think that's an aspirational goal it's a good thing to do. I know individual particularly in the unmanned vehicle arena UXV, UUVs, UAVs that's that type of work is going on I'm not aware of it going beyond that area I don't know if anybody else wants to address that but I think that's an important area for a vehicle without an onboard person. I'll just take a stab. So if you look at the Marine Corps strategy for our amphibious combat vehicle you know we're chasing right now a 1.1 and you know that 1.1 speaks to there's the next generation or the next upgrading capabilities so that acquisition strategy is to go after that base vehicle and then build upon that and the strategy itself makes room for platform growth because we're anticipating that as we go forward so complex adaptive systems is what we're talking about and I also talked about it with active protection systems instead of doing passive protection adding on steel and armor and stuff we're adapting and trying to get active in terms of protection so that's what I would offer. I'll add one thing on that is one of the programs I manage is PMS 408 Expeditionary Warfare and they own the Joint Counter IED Electronic Warfare Equipment and that is I think probably the closest thing we have to an autonomic or adaptive system that's constantly sensing the electronic environment around the EOD warriors and then it's constantly injecting signals exactly where it needs to be at these millisecond or microsecond time frames into whether it's a 4G signal, a 3G signal of CDMA or whatever the signal is the system is sensing that and knowing exactly where it needs to get in there and jam. I think at least as far as in my area that's one of the unique areas where we'll have that rapid action in the automatic actions, thanks. Okay, and I just had one quick thing I think this area would be right from a facility standpoint to really look at environmental systems, HVAC, those are totally automatable but we don't do it yet so I think I'd throw some of this back to some of our industry partners and look at where's the innovation from an environmental systems and look at how that can be the complex adaptable system. Very good, ma'am. Hi, good morning, Megan Eckstein with US Naval Institute News. My question's first for General Schrader and then for anyone else who'd like to comment. Admiral Kearney spoke about the need to consider total ownership costs early on in a program and I was wondering when you're looking at something doing drastically different like active protection systems, how do you go about crunching those numbers to really make your case for support for that program? For the total ownership cost of it? So you wanna make sure that the system that you design is adaptable to many different platforms that it's not, it has to be integrated into the system but integrated in such a manner that where you can take it off of one system like the LAV and also use it onto JLTV or any of the other vehicle platforms that we have coming along. That's the biggest thing I would say as far as total ownership cost and making sure that you look at what's gonna become obsolete. You know, we're really thinking about being able to upgrade as we move off into the future so probably the biggest thing is adapting it to different platforms. Okay, how's that? Anybody else in the panel? I'll take a shot at it. We're as part of the next generation for NGEN, we're looking at extensive use of cloud services so we did a cost estimate. Right now an NGEN seat costs several thousand dollars per person, a cloud offering for the same capability is like six dollars. So we did a cost estimate. Is that cheaper? Seems like an obvious answer. The answer was no, it's not cheaper. And we struggled with that for a while and it turned out the cost of having the word processing and the internet access and all that, it was the same but what wasn't included in the lifecycle cost estimate was the cost of the actual computer and all of the support for the computer which you just need what's called a thin client or just a fairly dumb terminal to access the cloud doesn't need to have much capability. So we had left out of the equation all of the big cost drivers so it looked like it was no savings. We changed that, included those things in the cost so now it was, as Emma Carney said, it was a more holistic cost estimate and now it turns out it is cheaper to spend $9 a seat instead of several thousand dollars a seat but that took us quite a while to figure out the second and third order effects of a new technology that we had to think about it in a very different way in order to realize that there was savings there. Okay, there's no one else, I'll go to the next question. Good morning, Lieutenant Commander Ellis, I'm at NAVSEE in contracting. Two questions, the first one is directed toward NAV AIR. I'm curious if you could provide any updates on the flight critical components that are using 3D printing or additive manufacturing and then two for the panel, what is your view, any of you would like to contribute on how 3D printing additive manufacturing is going to fall into the future of sustainment? Thank you. Yeah, thanks for the question. Boy, I tell you, and this audience knows it, if you're not excited about additive manufacturing, you need to do some more reading, right? Cause this could really be, we talked about evolutionary development but this could really be revolutionary, particularly for the flight critical. So, you know, we're exploiting it pretty well for tooling, for modeling, for stuff like that. For NAV AIR, we've got the first couple of flight critical components for V-22 that expected to fly here in the next couple of months. So that's really cool, right? I mean, that's where the Rosetta Stone's gonna be. If we can start manufacturing flight critical components, now you're talking your sustainment costs and speed and time have some really great opportunities to accelerate. So, I haven't seen the, right now, we know so much about material properties on the way we normally create flight critical components or what have you through generations of experimentation, right? That's kind of how we nub through the knowledge of how you heat and cool and produce a piece of metal to know which way it's going to take stress and strain and all that. That's the process we're going through with additive manufacturing. From everybody I've talked to, I haven't seen the breakthrough like, oh, we're gonna finally carry the one and figure all that out just like that where it's gonna fall out. But of course we have the advantage of incredible computing power now where we can do these reps a lot quicker. So, we expect to fly in the next couple of months on V-22 with the first components and then I think everybody is trying to accelerate the opportunity to learn more about the material components of that so we can take full advantage. I'll go with the opposite end of the spectrum. If you've ever been down to supply support in a DDU-51 class, you're looking at hundreds of Vidbar cabinets and you open one of those drawers and you're looking at hundreds of washers, spacers, back shells, fasteners, lots and lots and lots of low-tech things, not even critical components, most of them, but if you don't have a quarter inch washer, your engine's down. And so we stock quarter inch, half inch, one inch, two inch, every conceivable size for every conceivable piece of equipment and then we put them on 286 ships and then we haul them around for 50 years. And it would be kind of nice if we could replace all of that with a couple of printers. And all of that real estate that is in an important area of the world, in other words it's with the ship, could be used for something else, like distributed lethality or quality of life or something like that. So I think on the opposite spectrum of additive manufacturing, there's some real untapped potential over there. And I would agree with Admiral Lewis. I think from a public works, you look at what we have in spare parts. There are some that we could absolutely use 3D printing to make our jobs easier. You dial it in, you have your part, and you're done. Okay. I would just offer one thought that I would offer, the Marine Corps in our Marine Corps community services, we have the ability for Marines on the weekend and stuff to go down and go to a garage and work on their car and stuff like that. I would say we're also looking at the monster garage concept where you have through Marine Corps community services that the young Marines have access to these things. And we pitch out a problem to them that we're thinking about and they have access to this stuff where they can go and tinker with this stuff and see what they can come up to. It's a way that we take that capability, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, if you will, from a prototyping perspective and tap into the young minds that we recruit and bring on board those PFCs, Lance Corporals and Corporals that have a completely different way of looking at the problem and we just give them the tools to come up with some prototype things and see what they come up with. So that's another, I would offer way to think about it as well. Okay. Well, we have time for one more question. I see there's one more person in the queue. Gentlemen, ma'am, basal gray with gray areas, LLC. I'm gonna ask the question first and then I'll give a little background information so you guys have time to think about the answer. Specifically, I'm interested in knowing what's being done to more rapidly communicate, implement and institutionalize existing processes and procedures, especially proven best in class processes to actually improve readiness and reduce the, I call it the remaining ownership costs rather than the total ownership cost on weapon systems. At his background, I'll give an example. In 2009, Ash Carter signed out the Weapon System Acquisition Reform Product Support Assessment Team report which was designed to align the requirements, the acquisition and the sustainment communities to provide affordable warfighter outcomes. This is looking at the total ownership costs and improving readiness. There were specific recommendations in there to actually improve this. And to include an end-to-end joint supply chain architecture which allows organizations to look at the end-to-end supply chain and how it impacts the readiness. There were test cases where it actually proved a dramatic decrease in weapon system costs and improvement and reliability, but none of this has been implemented. As I mentioned, the report was signed in 2009 by Ash Carter when he was AT&L and just last year, the Army wrote policy to implement this. So as a refresher to the question after my background, what is being done to communicate, more rapidly communicate, implement and institutionalize these best practices? Okay, Basil, since you gave us a jump ball, I'll ask the panel, does anybody wanna jump on the ball? All right, that's perfect answer. Well, I'll start since I talked readiness and I don't know if I'll satisfy your answer, but certainly as it's recognized that we've gotta get our arms around this and level off and reduce the cost of the total ownership costs and sustainment, right? Because generally speaking, it keeps going up. And I think the challenge we find is we can produce, industry can produce more reliable systems. The trade-off is it costs more when you replace them. There's other stuff, as the Admiral said, to support it. And also, as was also mentioned earlier, industry is driving the markets on a lot of this stuff now, too. So our leverage and bargaining power is not there, so something goes obsolete and that's added cost and stuff. So it's a difficult problem, obviously, to do that. That's the challenges, but the every platform, type model series, et cetera, is being measured and held accountable for their ownership costs, et cetera. I think the discussion's getting more and more to your point, sir, on the front end, realizing these challenges, I just mentioned, that we have to put some of that investment up front or else we're not gonna make it. Hey, Basil, so what's really going on? So we have the NAVS-UP and NAV-AIR, NAV-C, say we do have the PEO summits and that's where we get together before a product delivers. And even after, so we're looking at LCS, what's the vision in the future of where we're going? So that upfront conversation is happening at our level, I think, at the PEO levels, looking at the sustainment costs and the future. Really, more importantly, I think, is working with the fleets and understanding how are they gonna operate that equipment in the future? What is their vision, their plan, on how they're gonna sustain the thing and operate it in the future, whether it be LCS or an aircraft? What is our vision for the modules? What is our vision for that? And so then we can then tailor around how we're gonna operate these aircraft and these ships, how we're gonna support them and sustain them. Where do we put the parts? What parts will be replaceable? It's one thing to have washers if you don't have the capability to replace them or the time to replace them, and we're not manned to replace them, that changes the play. And then what happens if we're gonna bring in a maintenance crew to bring it in? What happens if we forward position the parts and we actually have the planning in advance to develop what kits would be available as we know we're going to pull something and then replace it? So those conversations I think are happening and I think that, and so maybe we are not being as transparent to see the benefits, but I think with the way the PEX comms are working the provider forums that we have amongst the CISCOMs to have these discussions, then at the next level down on the acquisition side and the planning side, the logistics sides to have those understandings to see how we can marry that up. Thanks. I would just think if I understand the question, right? I would say one of the best practices, if you will, would be when you buy the solution up front, build into the contract the ability to, if first of all, avoid, if you can, boutique solutions that tie you to a manufacturer long term in a sole source environment, if you will. That's the first thing. But if you have to go down that path, maybe build into up front the ability to buy, cost out and perhaps buy the tech data package. So then you're not tied to that. So I think it's all about owning the technical data package possibly if you can, if you can afford it so that you can later on, perhaps compete it later on if you have to replace it. So that technical package, I think I thumped that quite a bit. Basically, we think that that's important in the NAVSUB arena. When we go down towards the end of a life cycle of a weapon system, if we had that technical data package, we can readjust, we can work with the industry, we can work with partners and it gives us options. We may not have to be the ones that have to build everything, but we can at least have the option to look at smaller businesses as the bigger primes move on to other things. They've used subcontractors and we need to have that access and we need to understand that way up front so we can have those plans in the future. So that off ramp. If you can afford the TDP. Okay, so I think I'm about to get the hook because they got it set up for lunch and you never want to get between anybody and lunch. But the folks we have up here today do the critical blocking and tackling for their respective services. And I think it's very, and they perform a very essential but not very glamorous job. And I think we're very fortunate to have them in these assignments. So I'd like to ask you to join me in a round of applause for our panel.