 Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. I want to welcome not only the students from the U.S. Naval War College, but the multitude of tenant commands here on the base here in Newport, from the base itself, Naval Academy Prep School, Officer Candidate School, Naval Supply Officer School, as well as the other commands. Today, it's my distinct pleasure to introduce to you our Secretary of the Navy. Secretary Mabus is a native of Mississippi. He went to the University of Mississippi. He got his graduate degree from Johns Hopkins, and then he did this small thing at Harvard and got his law degree. He has had a lifetime of service to our United States here and abroad. In 1988, he was elected the governor of Mississippi. He was the youngest in 150 years to be elected to that office. And from 1988 to 1992, he stood on a record of improving education in that great state and was awarded and recognized many times. So he is no stranger to the academics of which we profess here and how important that is in our country. Two years later, President Clinton asked him to go overseas and be our ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Now, what you may not know is the Secretary has also served as a naval officer. In fact, he was home ported right here in Newport, Rhode Island on board the USS Little Rock, a cruiser, and he's very proud of his time on a bridge as an officer of the deck in his service in the United States Navy. On May 19, it became our 75th Secretary of the Navy. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to our Secretary of the Navy, the Honorable Ray Mabus. Thank you. I'm glad to be back in Newport. He and I were talking on the drive over. I set where you did, where you're sitting now. I went to communication school here, although we didn't have quite this nice a building. I hope they've torn that one down. It's been a few years. I counted up and I'm going to remotely tell you how many years it's been since I last sailed under what we call the $2 bridge. Going to putting out to sea, the reason we called it the $2 bridge was then in the early 70s the toll was $2. It was astounding that it was that much. We would take bearings and call it the $2 bridge. I say all those things because I want to start this talk by telling you a naval story of mine. I did ROTC at Ole Miss and I went through Ole Miss in three years and I took the last two years of naval ROTC as one year so I had to take my midshipman cruise after I graduate. That was the summer of 1969. I went to the med, did my cruise and when it came time for me to leave I had orders to I was flying back into New York from Naples and I was told to go to Columbia University and be commissioned at the ROTC unit there. So I did and I got to New York the night before and the next morning called the captain who was commanding the Columbia ROTC unit about arranging to come out and be commissioned and one of the things he said he said now you don't have to wear a uniform if you don't want to which is a strange thing to tell somebody about to be commissioned into the armed forces of the United States and I asked him why not. He said well there have been riots about ROTC the year before at Columbia and he was a little bit concerned about safety and he said that nobody wore their uniforms out around campus. My notion was that if I was going to be commissioned I was pretty clearly going to do it in uniform so I put on my uniform, got on the subway, went up to Columbia nothing happened but the notion that you shouldn't wear a military uniform even on the day you were getting commissioned was not a strange notion in 1969 you're in a very different Navy you're in a very different military from the one I was in. The relationship that the Navy today and the military today has to the American people is a fundamentally different one than when I was during and immediately after Vietnam the military frankly was not very trusted it was not something that a lot of people looked at as something to be trusted or emulated or to identify with. Now in that period of time from 69 until now the American military has gone from that relationship to being the most trusted institution in America. Americans have separated the warrior from the war regardless of what Americans think about any conflicts we're in. The trust, the confidence, the level of respect for the military is higher than for any other institution in this country and that just didn't happen that wasn't an accident a lot of people who wore the uniform worked very hard a lot of people sacrificed a lot they lived up to a very high standard they held themselves and others accountable and because of that the level of trust, level of respect, level of confidence in the military is as high as it is but that's a fragile thing and it can be undone. Now the people I'm talking to here today you're the current and the future leaders not just our Navy but our our military and Admiral Carter talked about the various commands here starting with the war college but also the department has school for surface warfare the command leadership school supply school so many other so many other commands you're all on your way back to the fleet for command are very high levels of responsibility jobs and that's the reason the war college was founded to prepare people for that responsibility to prepare people to command to prepare people to lead and to do so with ethics with integrity to measure up to the exceptionally high standards that we do and should hold people to every time a commanding officer gets relieved for bad behavior every time there's an ethical lapse and I'm talking now about whether uniformed or severe every time it erodes that trust that the American people have in us and the misdeeds of the very few and I want to emphasize I am talking about the very few now both in terms of numbers and in terms of percentages but the misdeeds of the very few have the potential to undermine the great work of the many every bad headline about unethical behavior about unprofessional behavior has the potential to do great damage now having said that I will repeat what I said at a press conference in December at the Pentagon I would rather get a bad headline than let bad people get away with something and I think those things the way to keep the trust in the face of some bad acts in the face of unethical behavior is by that long neighbor tradition of being absolutely transparent when we find misconduct pretty unique not only in the military but also in America we announce it we are completely transparent particularly for those in high in places of high responsibility we do it for a couple of reasons partly to actors of deterrent but mainly because it's just the right thing to do now some of the cases that we've been dealing with all the ethics classes all the speeches all the instruction all the guidelines all the rules aren't gonna help one bit if you don't know it's wrong to cheat if you don't know it's wrong to steal if you don't know it's wrong to take a bribe ethics training probably gonna help you you miss something that your mother told you a long long time ago and so the only way we're gonna reach those people is to set up a system of oversight of accountability to find these acts when they happen and to hold people accountable for it I've spent a lot of my public life trying to do that my first elective office before I was governor I was state auditor of Mississippi charged with looking at every dollar of money taxpayer money that was spent in that state where the local federal or state money there have been two cases that have gotten a lot of a lot of ink a lot of attention and we'll talk about them very briefly one is Glen Defense Marine Asia husband and contract that the the allegations are that the head of Glen Defense Marine bribed people including NCIS agent bribe officers to tell him what our classified ship movements were so he could bid on he'd know what ports to get ready to bid on bribe people to give him the the contracts gave gifts lavish completely inappropriate gifts to higher level people but the thing that has not come out as much as it should have is that the reason you're reading these headlines the reason you're hearing about Glen Defense Marine is that we did it activities that that company engaged in moved across some tripwires and caused NCIS to begin an investigation that investigation went on for three years and it never leaked and one of the things that investigation found was that there was an NCIS agent who was taking money and providing information on where the investigation was going so NCIS I put it this way gave him information that wasn't completely accurate we did it we found this and that's what I meant about I would rather have a bad headline than allow somebody that's doing this to get away now right now that case is with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California but whatever action criminal action that the U.S. Attorney takes if there are people involved for whom the statute of limitations is passed or that didn't do anything criminal but violated Navy ethics or may have violated Navy ethics I've set up a consolidated disposition authority and we will hold those people accountable and it's a higher standard than just criminal acts the other thing that's gotten some attention lately is the cheating at the nuclear power school and once again the reason that came to light was a sailor was approached about participating in the cheating and he said no and he not only said no he reported it and in both cases we were the ones that made it public both cases we didn't try to hide it didn't try to sweep anything under the rug and in fact in the nuclear power school we announced it two days after we found out about it as I said if you don't know it's wrong to cheat if you don't know it's wrong to take bribes you're not going to respond much to ethics or rules but we can set up a system to make sure that whatever those bad acts are that they don't go unaccounted for and that when we find them that people are held accountable and held publicly accountable but when you get past that obvious stuff when you get down to the day to day some of the hard choices that we we all have to make we hold people and we should do a much higher standard than any other organization any other part of society and that's the reason that's the bedrock reason that that trust is there from the american people they know we hold people to a higher standard they expect us to and we expect us to and that's what a big part of leadership is all about it's about upholding those higher standards not just for other people but for yourself it's about being a model it's about not cutting corners it's about not giving excuses and there's a lot of levels and types of leadership i mean one is speaking up if you see something that's going wrong another is listening to what other people are trying to tell you something's going off the rails and it's about loyalty to an institution making decisions that's good for navy or marine corps making decisions that are good for the nation and it pops up in some interesting places one of the things that i get to do it is not my favorite task by any means but i get packages of promotion cases where somebody has done something that's just not acceptable a dui things like that and the question is whether to promote or not and on the package that comes to me there is a chain of command does the commanding officer recommend promotion does the next in the chain recommend promotion all the way up to the cnf and i have to say it is very rare very rare for the immediate superior to recommend not not to promote and in the times when i've just asked out of curiosity it's usually well i didn't want to hurt somebody's career he's a good guy she's a good person rock the boat that's not making decisions based on institutional integrity now you ought to do it on a case by case basis not saying that there ought to be a lot of non-promote things here but it ought to be done with the notion would you like to be commanded by that person would you like to have your son or daughter commanded by that person supervised by that person and it comes out in fitness reports too nobody wants to be the bad person nobody wants to upset a career and it's a little bit like school when teachers just say all i gotta do is make it to me and then that kid's gonna be somebody else's problem it's just passing along the problem that's what you've got to think about that's what you've got to that's a test of leadership and i'm also not saying be be bad to people be nasty to people try to ruin careers but do hold people accountable do hold yourself accountable now the one thing i'm definitely not talking about the goal is not sort of a defect free force a mistake free force when amiruf had was cno he kept a copy of chester nimitz's fitness report as a young officer after he had run a ship of ground he was court martial for it he was exonerated at court martial he was a destroyer captain and he said his defense at court martial was i have been trained to be aggressive and i was being aggressive using my ship getting close to shore in order to support troops on on the ground i don't know what would have happened in world war two if we had been this mistake free force then and chester nimitz hadn't continued his navy career that's not the goal but there's a big difference there's a big difference between taking measured risk which we want to encourage we don't want to encourage just conformity don't want to encourage just doing exactly what you have to do without taking any sort of risk or taking any sort of initiative there's a big difference between that and ethical lapses now it is not easy today it's not easy today to be a leader it's not easy today in the navy or the marine corps in the military our deployments are long and they're getting longer marine corps drawing down if you what's in use as i suspect most of you do you know that there are financial issues about the military in washington and what we're going to be able to do but hard times make leadership even more crucial it's pretty easy to manage in good times hard times is not a reason not to make some of the hard decisions hard times is not an excuse to become lax to say well one little thing won't hurt and i'll tell you one more political story when i was running for state auditor a guy was trying to get his support said well i got a question for you he said do you think stealing five dollars is as bad as stealing five million dollars and i said yes just a matter of degree it's not a matter of kind and he said that was the answer he was looking for he said i'll support you a lot of cities have driven down crime because they started enforcing all the laws small ones as well as big ones misdemeanors as well as felonies it's really hard to tell people they ought to pay attention to the big things when you're not willing to pay attention to the small things because people notice and they learn and they act accordingly finally you have earned the positions that you have and the positions you're going to you've earned the right to be here the military is the most merit-based organization i have ever been privileged to be a part of you are absolutely the right people to be assuming these positions of leadership but as you do remember the long journey remember the journey from the middle of vietnam until today remember those that came before you that had to repair the relationship between the american people and the american military remember those who had to do that work to make sure that the trust was there with the people that you defend with your lives and with your careers so i'll go back to that day in 1969 a day when i was commissioned i was given a piece of paper that was my commission same piece of paper every one of you who are wearing uniform got reposing special trust and confidence is on that commission and you uphold that every single day by leadership by integrity by your willingness to serve america so from the navy semper fortice forever courageous from the marine corps semper fidelity forever faithful thank y'all who's got a question come here a minute if y'all if any of y'all have been on all hands calls with me as some of you have first question gets a coin but only the first sir first of all thanks for coming to talk to us today mr. secretary is truly a pleasure my name is lieutenant commander rob crossby and i'm from hot coffee mississippi you and stella stevens an actress that none of you remember because you're not old enough but uh i i high coffee mississippi to me is sort of like the guy who was asked if he believed in baptism he said believe in it well i've seen it done um i don't even know about hot coffee i've been to hot coffee mississippi you're the first person to tell me they they know of hot coffee when i was 18 years old i cast my first vote for then candidate ray mavens when he was running for governor of mississippi so i feel a connection uh with yourself you get another coin for that i joined the navy as a cook and if it had not been for servant leaders in the navy helping me think beyond my socio economics i would not have made it to be a nuclear submarine officer today how has servant leadership impacted your career and do you believe this type of leadership will help the president and his agenda and reach it now to some of the underserved youth of today well all i can say is that when i came into the navy i was 20 20 years old when i was commissioned and i didn't serve for very long and sure one very distinguished but it was the most consequential time of my life suddenly i was a division officer i was responsible for a whole group of folks i was there priest rabbi psychiatrist banker sometimes i became an officer of the deck it was nobody to blame i was responsible i grew up and whatever success i've had in my life i do not think would have happened absent my service in the united states navy you know i went to law school after i was in the navy people were complaining about how hard it was didn't seem that hard to me it was always at exactly the same place you could wear whatever you wanted to nobody's going to put you in jail if you didn't show up and you could quit none of those things is true about about the military but i mean and i've said this publicly on on a lot of occasions um it's it's not only great for the country but it's equally great for the people who serve at least it was in my my experience and you know i do a lot of college graduations now um and i say you don't have to join the marine corps although we need good people but do something join the peace corps do something bigger than yourself beep a part of something bigger than yourself so that uh nothing wrong with making a lot of money nothing wrong with providing for your family a lot right for about that but i've never seen a hearse with a you all you just don't i think the things that matter in your life or what you've done to touch people what you've done to serve other people and i'll tell one more story and i know i'm talking too much here but my father um owned a hardware store town of a thousand people i'm from ackerman not much bigger than hot coffee and he was really the only true hero i think i've ever had he grew timber when he sold the hardware store he died uh 1986 when he was 85 years old after a long and very good life the year before he died he planted trees now he knew for a fact that not a one of those trees would do him any good he knew for a fact that he would never see any benefit from him he knew for a fact that he would be long gone by the time they were grown but he did it he didn't cut a single tree that year and he did it as a matter of faith he did it as a matter of hope he did it for me he did it for his granddaughters that he never met he did it for the future and that's the same reason i think a lot of us serve so sir captain carl tiscomb on the faculty here mr secretary the q dr was released this week and i believe two days ago the chairman of the house armed services committee put out a short letter that said that the q dr did not meet congressman's intent and if i remember the wording right he said it was actually in violation of the legislation that congress passed and we expect to see a redo on the q dr and sir if not how do we how do we square that with the organizational integrity that you spoke of earlier well i think that the the q dr is supposed to be and is just a overall overarching strategy that we're going to pursue for the next four years and beyond but it's to give a sense of what the military structure ought to look like and this is the second q dr i've been in the pentagon for and i think it's fair to say that every time there are complaints about concerns about the q dr and criticisms of the q dr um and one of the things that that i have pointed out is that no matter how smart you are and there are a lot of smart people working on the q dr four years ago and this time no matter how foresighted you are you're not gonna know what's coming at you if we'd have done a q dr right before the wall came down in 89 we would have been a hundred percent wrong as to what challenges we're going to face the military if we'd done a q dr on september 10th 2001 we'd have been a lot more wrong than right over what challenges so i think if you view the q dr as here is with the best knowledge that we have today what we're gonna face but i also think it underscores the fact that we because we don't know what we're gonna face we have to give ourselves we have to make sure that we are agile that we're adaptable that we are flexible and that we don't get sort of stuck in well this is what's going to happen i take a brief from every carrier strike group that comes back and also from every amphibious ready group and the one constant is that they had to deal with something that was not foreseen when they left port so you know i am testifying in front of that committee next wednesday and i'm sure there will be some questions on it and i have enormous respect for the chairman of that committee i think that um not only looking at this q dr but looking at q drs in the past and the concerns the criticisms about those q drs is helpful and i think it also regardless of what concerns there are regardless should not keep us from focusing on making sure that we have that adaptive capability to and i think that maritime services are particularly suited for that to do whatever do whatever the nation calls on us to do that we're not sure what the future is going to hold all we can be sure about is we have to be ready and that goes back to the thing i was talking about we've got to have the trust of the american people that we are that we are this ethical this professional this force that can be counted on to protect them to defend them and to do so in a way that that that honors who we are as americans who else mr secretary thank you so much for speaking with us today lieutenant jamie talbot from the navy supply core school mr secretary my question is regarding cases of ethical issues are there any concerns with swift prosecution and are there any plans in place to improve investigative efficiency um i've always got a concern about swift prosecution or swift resolution i'll put it that way we need to the resolution needs to be quick so not only for the person involved but also for the command or the institution so that either way it goes exoneration or accountability that people know things have happened sometimes that's out of our hands but to the extent i can we make those determinations as as quickly as we can without sacrificing making sure we got all the facts making sure we're there's not a there's not a rush to judgment in terms of investigations in one area we've hired 54 new ncis agents to investigate sexual assaults in particular because the time that it was taking to investigate those assaults was just far too long and it was it was damaging to the institution it was damaging to the investigation and so we have brought those times down pretty significantly um if we can do investigations quicker if we can reach a resolution quicker we will um but it does have to be balanced against making sure that we do know all the facts making sure that the investigation was done correctly and making sure that the whatever accountability is assessed is appropriate we got we got two right in a row so we'll do the first one and then morning mr secretary thank you so much for giving us your time this morning senior chief armetta currently attending the sca station and strike fighter squadron 25 or more my question is about tuition assistance obviously that's a huge topic that's been brought up with possibly going away not only in the united states navy but in other armed forces what are you and the other secretaries doing to ensure that that stays within our grasp to continue education because of how important it is for all of the armed forces there was um you're correct that last year there was a movement um different services were looking at it in different ways in terms of tuition assistance it was a purely budgetary driven thing um congress passed a law that uh said that tuition assistance had to continue basically in its current form so it's sort of like gravity it's not just a good idea it's a law um i do think that as we go forward there's there's some things we should look at we would have to get congresses okay do it but things like making sure that the education you're getting with tuition assistance is leading somewhere is leading toward a degree or toward a skill that you can use either in the navy or outside the navy um things like that but it's tweaking it's not uh it's not ending good morning mr secretary senior for adrian walkins i'm also sca student coming from navy personnel command my question is the current status of the ohi replacement program is that still progressing and how is the common mystical department development coming along the ohi class replacement is the top priority we're doing engineering work right now we're doing r&d work right now we'll start doing acquisitions buying stuff to begin building the first ohi class replacement in 19 uh she'll go to c in 29 the and that's on track we've protected that in in the budget the common mystical compartment um call that because the british are also buying the same missile compartment is also on track they will need it before we do they will get the first of these um they will do the initial testing of the common mystical compartment and we are also on track for that now it's also true and i think that a discussion has to be had or needs to be had if the ohi class replacement is paid for completely out of navy ship building it will take up about half of all navy ship building funds for more than a decade it will devastate every other type of ship in the navy including other submarines the attack submarines but surface subs the ohi class replacement is part of our strategic deterrence and as that is a national program and i think that that discussion needs to be had about what's the appropriate way to pay for it and are we willing to to so completely um um cut into the navy's other ship building uh accounts other ship building lines other other responsibilities to do that how should we approach that to keep the other missions of navy that are so vital to this country whole all right we got one more if anybody wants to do it morning mr secretary me as a clinic manager kurtis a student here at the war college thank you for coming this morning my question is about uh cuts to personnel costs secretary hegel spoke last week and admitted it's a tough sell to tell us that it's for our safety and for our readiness of personnel costs are being cut and my question is to you sir when i look at an acquisition world that is very much still stuck in the preparation for another cold war fraught with overrun costs fraught with behind programs how do you help the secretary sell that that pitched us that cutting personnel costs pay and benefits is what really needs to be done when we can look across the way at an acquisition program that many could argue is broken okay um well the first way is that we have fixed virtually every major acquisition program in navy um if you if you look at shipbuilding virginia class submarines coming in under budget ahead of schedule ddg 51's we've gotten competition put into that and we're saving over a hundred million dollars a ship um and ships and ddg 51's are cheaper today than they were a couple years ago um amphibs the cost also is being uh cost and schedule are under control the lateral combat ship um costs are down more than half from the from the lead ship in that class the last of the 10 ships in a block by they're coming out of the lcs the first ones that were built 10 10 years ago or so cost over 750 million dollars the last one coming off the line will cost 350 million dollars we're doing we're attacking that acquisition program in a lot of ways firm fixed price contracts instead of cost plus the navy acquisition professionals had just been gutted we're hiring those back private companies were being asked over to the other private companies so protecting taxpayer money was not one of the really high priorities um we're doing multi years we're doing block buys and we're not just looking at programs like that we're also taking a very hard look at service contracts we spend more in service contracts than we do in acquisition contracts um and very frankly it was really hard to follow a dollar from appropriation to expenditure what were we getting for that dollar so we've set up a lot of things including something that sort of informally it's called contract courts contracting officers got to bring in all the contracts every year make a decision do we need those or not and so we're stripping out big ins of dollars in service contracts going forward and we have gotten some of those savings already and i'm confident that the rest of those savings will be had and that's not easy um people sort of don't like you to know what contracts they got one of the things that the government shutdown did was i did not delegate the authority to contract out of my office every contract the navy had during the shutdown came up to me and it was interesting the number of contracts went way down because there's just a bunch of folks didn't want me to know what was what was going on so so i think there's there's one program that is still running over budget and that's the carrier um some decisions were made 10 years ago in terms of trying to put a lot of new technology onto one onto the first ship of the class we've reigned in a lot of those cost overruns but we're not we're not going to be able to to keep that from happening in that program but what we can do is on the next one on cvn 79 we're taking those lessons and learning it learning them and pushing costs down now we have done things like claw back some of the profit for the shipbuilder on cvn 78 so i say all that say that um i think it's a fair criticism about acquisition but i also think we've done a whole lot to to attack some of the waste some of the unnecessary expenditures and and i'll go to the second part of your question personnel costs are now more than about 50 percent of the defense budget and they're rising and the request that went in with the budget isn't a cut it's just slowing the rate of growth a little bit personnel costs in the military have gone up 40 percent more than in the private sector and more than inflation over the last 10 years so if you mean cno talks about not only quality of life that salary and benefits but also quality of work do you have the tools that you need do you have the equipment that you need there are only a couple of places if personnel costs keep rising to go to replace that money and it's not just rising for people on active duty it's rising also for working age retirees so are we going to take platforms are we going to take weapons systems are we going to take the tools that you need to do the job that you do or the other way to to do it is take personnel so would you rather be in a much smaller military that really doesn't have all the tools or all the people it needs to to get the work done and we are there this is not something for the future we are there the final thing that i'll say is i've done i don't know i've lost count hundreds of all hands cost and it is at least my sense that while money pay benefits are important that's not the only reason people join the military and to make it all about the money i think also risk that trust with the american people because the people in this room and the people that i know that have joined the military have joined it i don't want to undercut the patriotism the service the sacrifice by making it just about money but we're going to have to control personnel costs personnel costs or the decisions that we're going to have to make are not going to be good for the individuals and they're certainly not going to be good for the for the navy and marine corps or any of our services so i want to thank y'all again thank you for thank you for your questions thank you for being here today and more than that thank you for what you do every single day i really meant what i said it's a very small number it's a very small percentage of people who don't live up to the standards that we do they get outsized attention but the huge huge majority of people in the military are professional their skill their patriotic and it is not easy and it is a sacrifice in so many ways to wear the uniform of this country and for that the country and i am profoundly grateful thank you