 Good morning. My name is Commander Andrea Cameron and welcome to this virtual conference about the National Security Significance of Climate Change. This is our third conference with a new theme of Naval Climate Engagement. I welcome you all to this event. First, let me direct you to the events page. You can download the conference program for this event on the events page and the link is in the chat. The conference program has the full agenda and the biographies for all of our participants. As I mentioned, this is our third conference for the National Security Significance of a Changing Climate. Our first conference, Risk and Resilience in the 21st Century, was a call to action exploring solutions about a changing climate and what it means for your country, your service, your career field, and for each of you personally. Our second conference was operationalizing climate security, and it asked how each of the geographic combatant commands were integrating climate into their mission strategy planning and operations. I'm excited to host this next installment, looking deeper at foreign partner engagement with navies. So I'll set the stage today with a little background of how we got here. With Executive Order 14-008 tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad, we launched the US government's action into climate change on January 27, 2021, almost two years ago. The progress in the last two years has been driven by our national and defense strategies. For example, our national security strategy mentions climate more than 60 times. The national defense strategy states that climate change and other transboundary threats will increasingly place pressure on the joint force and the systems that support it. Recurring climate themes like agility, resilience, adaptability and sustainability are meant to keep our forces at peak performance. Within the Department of Defense, building on the national climate guidance are the DOD climate risk analysis and the DOD climate adaptation plan. And since those were published in 2021, each service has now released their own approach to climate. The Department of the Navy's Climate Action 2030 seeks to build on a climate ready force through climate resilience and reducing the climate threat. Our climate vision aligns with the one Navy Marine Corps team strategic guidance by Secretary Del Toro, as well as the Chief of Naval Operations Navigation Plan, and the Command on to the Marine Corps planning guidance. All of those are intended to enhance readiness and capabilities of the Department of the Navy as a global maritime power. And Climate Action 2030 is an important step in how we think about operating the naval force in a climate altered environment. I've put the links to those documents in the chat. Now climate action 2030 pursues climate change efforts that strengthen maritime dominance and power our people and strengthen strategic partnerships. Now to accomplish these goals we are working internally across the Department of the Navy, as well as with naval allies and partners around the world. So why is this year's conference about naval climate engagement. First, being part of the Navy Climate Working Group, and at the US Naval War College. I thought this was an excellent moment in time to share our progress over the last two years. Second, we have a persistent recognition that our progress must be in sync with our allies and partners, all moving in a similar direction, while our we adopt our own climate strategies. For this reason, not only do we highlight our developments today, but we also talk about the essential foreign partner engagement that is occurring in these respective areas. Now I'll mention a final thought that comes from my own climate security research. Countries around the world are planning climate action to meet their Paris agreement goals. Each country has their own unique perspective on how to include their ministries of defense into these national goals. These ministries of defense are executing policies, and they're just starting to permeate down into the services like the Army Air Force or Navy and Marines. Now like all my conferences, this event is designed to share where we're at and propel the conversation forward about how navies can start thinking about climate change. I'm truly honored to bring together the service specific event to our broad audience. To start us off today, the Naval War College Provost will welcome all of us and introduce our keynote speaker Vice Admiral Rick Williamson. Joining the keynote speaker is our high level discussion speakers, Raul Mulbeady from the Royal Navy, and Miss Deborah Loomis, the Senior Advisor to our Secretary of the Navy for Climate Change. After they all speak, we'll have the opportunity to take questions for them. After a short break, we will look at key areas of interest like science and technology, contingency engineering, and public health and vector born diseases. These are areas where we're making significant progress and have an international engagement. The event will conclude by 1130. Before we proceed, I have to thank my conference sponsor, Professor Peter Dombrovsky, the William B. Ruger chair of National Security Economics, as well as the Naval War College Foundation for sponsoring this conference today. It is through their generosity that today's event is made possible that it's free and open to the public. A reminder, the full conference program with the agenda and bios is on the events page and the link to that is in the chat. This event is being recorded and will be available on the Naval War College YouTube page after it has concluded. So to kick us off today, I'd like to introduce our own Naval War College Provost, Stephen Mariano to welcome us. This is a distinguished military and academic career, most recently served as the Deputy Commodant and Dean of the NATO Defense College in Rome, Italy. He served on the faculties of the School of International Service at American University, National Defense University, the Royal Military College of Canada, and the US Military Academy. He holds a PhD in war studies from the Royal Military College of Canada. He is a Provost at the US Naval War College, and we welcome you today, Provost Mariano, and we look forward to hearing your opening remarks. Thank you very much, Andrea, and welcome everyone to the National Security Significance of Changing Climate Conference this year's themes and Andrea mentioned will focus on naval climate engagement. I'm excited to be invited to do this kickoff and excited about the session. But first, I'd like to make a few welcomes. First, as you've already heard, I want to welcome Vice Admiral Williamson, so excited to see you online again. Although it's a long way from your office in the Pentagon, but I'm glad we could bring you here this way. Williamson is the Deputy Chief of Staff of Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Fleet Readiness and Logistics and as I'm sure you're going to hear he's got his hands full with programs in the Navy, having to do with climate change and the impact on primary and a large part on our facilities. We're also going to hear from Rear Admiral Paul Beatty, the director of the Naval Staff of the British Royal Navy, and from Miss Deborah Loomis, a senior advisor to the US Secretary of the Navy for climate change. I'd like to welcome our active and retired flag officers, our Naval War College Foundation, participants again and thank you for your support foundation. To all our alumni, they're connecting online out there to our academic partners, our very own faculty members and students from across the college enterprise. Thanks Professor Dombrowski and the foundation for their contributions to make this this all work. And as Andrew mentioned, as well these things don't happen by themselves to our events team audio visual team public affairs and graphics team always make these events a success whether they're online or in physical presence. I should also thank Andrea. She's obviously done a lot of work to put the series together, particularly this conference. And it's also worth noting that Andrea is a winner of a Fulbright scholarship and will be on her way to Brussels, and I'll see you again very soon. So congratulations, Andrea and thank you. So welcome welcome to this naval climate engagement conference. It highlights some of the major progress into how navies can modernize the future operating environment altered by climate change, and the importance of working with our allies and partners along the way So what I'm going to do add to Andrea's in the chat box is NATO document that Secretary General put out NATO put out last year and their assessment of the impact climate change on NATO. So I'm here to kick off the conference today not only because the importance of the topic but also because of the work, the dedication and work of the faculty members at the naval war college and the climate and human studies group, and the students from that elective, they've been doing a great job and better understanding climate and human security concerns and the impact on our national security. So our role at the naval war colleges to inform today's decision makers and educate tomorrow's leaders. In fact, that's something Admiral Williamson and I talked about in his office last year when I was being introduced to my work, and trying to understand how we could build relationships across the Navy staff. In today's dynamic security environment numerical and technological superiority are no longer enough. We need to outthink our adversaries at the naval war college we expand the intellectual capacity of naval joint interagency and international leaders to achieve that cognitive advantage. Our objective here in new Portland around the globe is to deliver excellence in education, research and outreach and build enduring relationships with our alumni allies and partners. The naval war colleges committed not only to conducting research simulations and academic coursework in the field of a changing climate, but when appropriate we also want to be a leading voice within the Department of Defense, and among other international leaders in working to improve our abilities to better understand these changes. We do produce graduates who can think critically and creatively and apply military power to these problems. We develop graduates who have education and foundation to discern military dimension anticipate and lead rapid adaptation. We're trained to conduct joint operations and have a foundation and strategic operations. We're training leaders who can use the same knowledge and skills to help discern changes in any campaign that they're assigned, including changes in the climate. The naval war college climate and human security studies a small slice of what we do here, but an important study that educates and deeply researches and conducts outreach all over the world. And it's evidenced by over 100 of you online today. Military education prioritizes ethics in our study and therefore the war college sees value in our climate and human security study group and electives it to be in great demand, and the naval climate engagement conference this conference invites you top scholars to be involved. I want to install of you today is to open your minds and think outside of your own area of expertise to listen and think critically about these important topics and provide feedback in the discussions to one another, to make our discussions as meaningful as possible as we drive towards a better understanding of how navies can operate in a climate altered environment. Thank you very much again to everybody for participating, particularly those that are organizing the event. Now I'd like to introduce Vice Admiral Rick Williamson, Admiral Williamson has a long career as a surface warfare officer and started early at the Naval Academy I recently understood is a, which included some quarterbacking of the Naval Academy football team. His early sea assignments include tours on board the USS Dewey USS Briscoe the USS Enterprise, the executive officer of the USS Rodney and Davis. He commanded the USS Simpson during NATO's standing naval forces Atlantic 2004 deployment to the United States which was the first visit by a NATO ship to the United States after 911 and operational function under his command the Simpson one to battle he awards. Assure his assignments include tours in Washington DC and the District of Columbia as an executive assistant to the commander of naval installations command as deputy director of plans and policy. From 2008 to 2011 he served as commanding officer at the Naval Base San Diego, one of the small ones, I think the Navy has. And during his tour at Naval Base San Diego was selected as the 2010 Prince presidential installation excellent award winner and the 2011 presidential green government award winner. From 2016 to 2019 he served as commander Navy region Europe Africa, Southwest Asia maritime air forces in Naples. Admiral Williamson assumed duties as deputy chief of naval operations for fleet readiness and logistics in June of 2019 and when we met he reminded me about a misnomer of the title of fleet readiness and logistic. Maybe we'll talk a little bit about that sir it's good to see you again. Everyone please join me in welcoming by several Williams and sir the floor is yours. Thank you very much sir I appreciate that very kind and making me feel very old introduction. But I also want to thank you and Professor Cameron for inviting me here to speak on a very important topic. Miss lumis and I have spent hours. In my office in her office talking about climate resilience, the environment and how it affects our, our Navy. And so little did I know my passion for this really began at Naval Base San Diego. I am a warfare officer and so therefore, you know our focus and my focus has always been on mission and our people. But if you're the commanding officer of a base in Southern California isn't taking long to understand the significance of water and power and to your operations and how to do things. So, our world is changing. We see that every day with more frequent storm events, weather events, melting ice caps, rising sea level. And these things are threats to our ability to operate both to the mission and to our people. And so I think it's imperative that we not make this a program that's a standalone or or something that is focused on separately from the mission and our ability to perform that mission and called it. So, my team and I, working with lots of other people incorporated this not only in how we look at problems. But how do we innovate how do we share how do we collect information to ensure that we are always protecting the mission and our people. And then those partnerships and stuff and I know Miss Loomis is going to talk about and later I had the opportunity and the warm up to see some of the brief so hopefully it those up nicely. It also includes our allies and partners, we can't do anything without our allies and partners and so I think, hopefully what I say will kind of resonate. The climate doesn't matter it matters when we're building our Navy when we're training our Navy when we're operating our Navy. You know, as these things increase the frequencies of extreme weather, flooding, drought wildfires, what impacts does it have on our mission can we codify that can we respond to that. Can we plan not just in the, you know, against the immediate threat but also project to the future and look at how we do, how we do there. Can we look into the future and understand the impacts these things will have on our ships our submarines our airplanes our bases our allies our partners. And then we develop plans which allow us to do our nation's bidding. And, you know, just some examples, I'll throw out, you know, we had Hurricane Sally get Pensacola Florida very slow moving storm, but the cause of how slow it moved. We had a five foot surge. We also had two feet of water and, you know, sustained winds for a long period of time. If you put that on an infrastructure, which, you know, started as far back as the early 1900s. When these things didn't persist, what they do, it causes potential. Now why is that significant, it's significant because Pensacola Florida is a birthplace of naval aviation. It's a brand new incident that wants to fly an airplane comes to Pensacola Florida. They start their journey. They then moved through the southeast region, which I had the great opportunity to be the commander up. And so the relationship, not only to Pensacola but the other bases meridian Kingsville Kings Bay are. I'm sorry that may point. And so when you look at that, you know, you know, we also have to understand that. Not one size fits all right that these things have an impact to our ability to generate not only the pilots, but Pensacola is also the home for our maintenance training for our young enlisted books. And so how do we learn from that and how do we move forward. You know, another great example on the West Coast, you know, is NAS Point Magoo. We had a wildfire. Severe drought, where we lost 1200 acres of prime training and maintenance capability not only in AS Point Magoo but also Camp Pendleton. You know, sea level rise in my region before I went to Europe was at Naval Station Norfolk. It's really occurring flooding there. You know, the systems that are built to support the base steam systems and every time the water gets over it generates water hammers and causes critical impacts that again impacts our surface for you and their ability to do maintenance and things. So, you know, understanding those things and staying ahead and planning for them are vitally important to the Navy. And we had to look at this thing kind of holistically it's not just a region by region event it's actually a world event. And we look at the melting ice caps, you know, that's open up sea lanes of communication those sea lanes communication, obviously get attention in Moscow Beijing and it opens up, you know, potential for new territory for great power competition. And we need to be focused on these things. The other thing, my portfolio, obviously installations, but also in my logistics hat, look at the platforms are submarines are airplanes are surferships. And so, a little bit later on, I think you're going to your brief on how climate is beginning to affect the way we look at these platforms and how we develop them, and isn't that the, the environments in which they're going to operate. Additionally, those platforms, we don't want them to contribute to the problem. My role as the, you know, being the person that answers our chief enable operations favorite can I do logistics in a contested environment. I think we saw during coven. Any kind of friction to our supply chain our distribution network. It also impacts our ability to operate it also impacts our. Our people, our ships, as they operate near the equator and the temperatures go up our ships designed to be able to withstand, you know, those temperatures be able to be electronic to make them lethal. And then the other part of my job, the infrastructure, the base infrastructure. You know, the sea is a on a good day is a challenging environment. The nature of being a Navy means we have to be close to the coastline. Can our base withstand drought can they withstand flooding can they withstand these things and are we building back better. And so all of that to lead in, which I think is a very fair question so what is the, what is the Navy doing. And like I said, I mean, anybody can throw money at a problem anybody can come in with the raw raw attitude and change climate of toward a situation. This has to be a culture change the culture change means that this climate resilience this this ability to be able to respond to what the planet is doing us, doing to us or for us has to be embedded in everything we do. And what earlier I said, at least I challenged my people say hey this is not a standalone program so when we're looking at the we get the opportunity to build pencil color back. Are we doing that in the right way have we put it into the process as to where it's repeatable. And as we move forward we're taking in consideration not only building it back better. Unified facility criteria, you know that in the A language it says hey you're building, you know, you're in the process of building back more than the shipyard and I have to build it back to 100 years isn't it possible to build it back to the 300 year threat. Can we do that and we actually have done that. And that requires a lot of things that requires data requires modeling it requires dedicated people that requires understanding their surrounding environment and what I mean by that is, you know you learn this if you're the CEO of Naval based Norfolk, every single day 188,000 people among to Naval Station Norfolk. And then Naval Station Norfolk is I can make it a citadel but if the surrounding communities if I'm not cooperating with them and learning from them and sharing with them, then it doesn't do much good to be Naval Station Norfolk, right, you've got to be able to communicate and have those things because I'm depending on this 188,000 people to make this lethal. So how do we lay that into our plans. Every one of our bases, every one of our regions have a region master plan. It isn't informed by the dfd climate assessment tool. It's informed by studies of our naval facilities command. It's informed by local governments informed by universities. It's informed by a lot of things but it's incorporated into that plan, and then it drills down into the individual base plans. And we encourage our commanders to, you know, find more information to bring into this as we look to gain resources to go forward. In addition to that, you know, the partnerships we find, you know, it's always good to use others people's money, but if we can combine our money, particularly toward problem. Then I think it gives us more buying power it also opens up that kind of concept of innovation and one of the thing, you know, share a couple examples there. Again, direct, you know, always finish the sentence with the impact to operation. And so you look at the Civil Station Yorktown munitions handling our ability to search and get munitions on to into the fleet fast happens at Yorktown erosion, you know, sea level rise kind of taking from us so being able to partner with the Virginia Tech University, University of Virginia, the Chesapeake Bay Society, and our base environmental people. Is there a way other than building a burn that we can, you know, obviously you can build a burn you can be a Citadel, but that's good. But greatest can accomplish the same thing with a natural oyster bed, a natural oyster reef grasses that stimulate not only regeneration but also helps build back if you will, using nature to put back the soil that was moved away. And that's been very successful for us. We look at, you know, mentioned Norfolk Naval shipyard that shipyard not only do we look at it from sea level rise but can I look at it from energy consumption can I look at data and digital to be able to reduce the amount of energy that I'm using or carbon footprint that I'm producing all those things are embedded into our plans. As a matter of fact it's part of our standard checklist now we're very closely with Admiral Vanderlay and even facilities command and we call it cradle to grade project management, and before those projects are brought up for approval. Those questions are being asked, have you considered the environment have you considered energy consumption have you looked at innovative innovative ways to solve those problems. And so we're making some tremendous progress there. In addition, one of the other things that we just talked about yesterday and well Vandal and I is how do we pull in, you know, this communication to the outside, you know, to universities to our industrial base. How have we looked at everything that's out there to be able to mitigate any impacts these things may have on us and so we're pretty excited about that. And then the other part of my portfolio logistics and this really climate logistics in this concept of endurance kind of go all hand in hand. I'm not a smart guy but I have some really smart people and I pay attention to him. And so, when our fleet goes to see we go to see we know how much food we have and we know how much will we have and we know how long those things will last. And so I talked about earlier, the impacts of friction caused during code. Now that could be the impact of heavy weather, it could be the impact of drought, it could be the impact to a lot of things to our mission. So this concept of endurance is how do I look at the problem and figure out how what methods can I use to get a cleaner burning fuel that lasts longer that ships captains does not have to be dependent upon the log chain. And it gives him the freedom of maneuver to accomplish that mission. So these things can live in harmony those two things should live in harmony, because it gives us an operational advantage. And if we look at our distribution and our supply chains and we have the ability to map them and we have the ability to articulate the problem to our industrial base our partners to universities to other government agencies and say hey, this is the problem I'm trying to solve. This is why I'm trying to solve it. And here are the things I want you to consider. Now anybody can, you know, we can figure out we can solve problems but we have to be smarter but what we don't want to be is we don't want to be a contributor to these to any of these things through greenhouse gases and these other things. So, we work very hard to do that. And then the last thing I would tell you, and it gets kind of gets back to these two things that are me and what I have observed by being able to communicate with my fellow DC and as a senior misalumniates the secretary is that, you know, we see the opportunity to increase our operations and protect our people, because, you know, whether it be anything, but in particular in this case we're talking climate stuff. You know where we had to fight in the past for resources or opportunity. Now that's just becoming natural. We can prove it through data we can prove it through our, our, our studies we can prove it with our plans we can show them where we're going to be 10 years 20 years from now and why we're taking those actions that we are. And the thing that is, I am very happy with the person answering the question. Are we building our bases back are we considering the environment are we considering the impacts we have to the environment, or all those things in that plan the answers yes. Have I looked at logistics, not only in a contested environment but have I considered my supply chain my industrial base and I asking all the same questions of those. And I expand that and I talked to my allies and partners and share with them. You know, and we have great relationships there because they're suffering and feeling the same impacts we are I think there's a tremendous opportunity to grow. And so I look very forward to the questions. I'm very happy and thank you very much for asking me to be a part of this. Hopefully set you up okay. I want to express my deep thanks to Vice Admiral Williamson for sharing his thoughts today and leading us into the key things of the conference. He described the need to look at the future and understand our impacts to ships submarines aircraft installations allies and partners. He said that on a good day, the sea was a challenging environment and planning for climate change is vitally important to the Navy and it will take a culture change. And in doing, it must be embedded in everything we do and I particularly liked his thoughts that when he talked about climate change, we always want to finish a sentence with the impact to operations. We added to this that solving this would create operational advantages. Vice Admiral Williamson thank you so much for sharing your leadership and experiences with us. As you heard from our keynote speaker, let's go straight to our high level discussion with the United Kingdom and the United States. After this will take a break for followed by an in depth panel highlighting different areas of focus for the US Navy. To get straight to the discussions I'll moderate the panel myself and include introduce our speakers only by their current titles. And our first three speakers, the vice admiral and grandma beady coming up and miss Loomis we will take questions in the Q&A box so please enter those at any time. Next, I would like to introduce Ramel Paul beady, the director of naval staff from the Royal Navy. I had the pleasure of meeting him and presenting at the Royal Navy's first sea Lord symposium last May, and I'm honored and looking forward to hearing what has progressed within the Royal Navy since then. We look forward to your presentation today. Thanks Andrea and thanks for inviting me and thanks Miss Loomis and Admiral Williamson for your leadership in this area is great to see and it's great great to be talking about this and it's great to be back in the war college fold I mean it's a new port behind me if you can see it in the picture there. So what I thought I'd do is I'll take us down down a level a little bit because I think when Andrew and I discuss preparing for this I thought what would be helpful is to see how one of your sort of key partners is approaching this and I, and I think from the Admiral's introduction there's a lot of a lot of similarities unsurprisingly and a lot of areas where we are driving towards together I think I'll just, I'll perhaps skip over those and focus on on areas there. I can see that perhaps we do need to focus on the future. So I think the first thing that I'll sort of open with and I guess I'm always surprised that probably not in this audience because because of the attendees, but I'm often asked why does the Royal Navy care about climate change and sustainability why are you taking this so seriously. And, and I think the answer, you know, you'll see my boss's words the first sea Lord's words there in front of you. But, but, but as Admiral Williams said it's it's all about operational advantage. And I sort of break that down for us into four distinct areas. The first one is, we're clearly much smaller than the US Navy but we were still a global navy. We still want the ability to operate anywhere in the world. And we still retain and drive to sustain a permanent presence in not only Atlantic but also the Mediterranean Indian Ocean and the Pacific. And to be able to operate from the Arctic to the Antarctic and then all those areas we need to clearly understand the impact the climate what's going on and be ready for the future. I think the second one, and the first sea Lord captures it and that statement there is the climate change will increase demand for Navy so I don't think there's any question about that given what we see already and what we're going to see in the future. What I'm very keen to understand is the how, where and when, and to make sure that we have the right capabilities going forward to make those changes. The third one is to adapt to ensure that we are operating can operate effectively in that change world, and to embrace the new technologies to make sure that we retain that operational advantage. And again, the Admiral touched on alternative fuels cleaner fuels different fuels. I think to me it's a real area of opportunity, rather than threat, and final one and the one that's probably least talked about is about our people. I strongly believe that if we are to be attracting and retaining the very best that UK society has to offer in terms of talent. We have to not only be playing an active role in naturally dealing with the impact of climate change, but we must not be contributing to. I think if we are then then we've got a real risk of difficulty in terms of our people and what they understand going forward. Can I go to the next slide please. So we've come up with with a plan. It's a sort of three phase plan you won't be surprised, and it is consciously left to right now you know many programmers out there will want to know you know what is your end state are you going to be absolutely net zero by 2050. What's your path to that and how you're going to drive it forward. We've consciously taken a sort of three phase approach that is a build phase out to 2025, but from now until 2035 basically embeds those changes, and then allows us to accelerate. And the reason we've gone for that left to right is that we're very few exceptions. Do we truly know what the answer is. Our view is that we basically have two years to get herself in a position where we are ready to embrace the changes we understand we're going to drive forward, and then we will have to do that. We don't know what the legislation is going to be in the space in five or 10 years time. We don't know what the technology is going to be, and therefore being agile enough to be able to incorporate and embed and drive those forward is is not only our aspiration, but actually is the fundamental part of our plan. Next slide please. I won't, I won't dwell on this, I guess it's just to show you, you know, almost as a sort of summarized in that last piece or you know where I think we are today which is so you know in the bottom left hand corner, and we kicked off this piece. We have got pockets of excellence. We have got people driving quite significant change and taking things forward. But what we haven't got is the coherence and the drive to sort of look right across the entirety of all those areas to make sure it's coherent and drive forward. And the top right hand corner is our vision, our aspiration and the end state that we will be with in 2025. That's where we aim to get to. That's where we're trying to drive to and that's what we'll do over the next two years. Now I'm not going to go through all all sort of nine levels, lines of development because I think in a I'd rather spend more time on the questions and the discussion. So let's touch on some because I'm going to touch on some and I think it's important. So if I just go to the next slide, I'll pick out a couple perhaps. So the first one is on data. And I think we we now have very clear emission target target reductions or reduction targets from UK defense. We obviously have an understanding of pretty good understanding of for emissions across our state. But in the operational space, I don't think we are quite there yet in terms of a really detailed understanding of the true impact of our platforms and how we would reduce that. And that's one area that we're really trying to drive forward, not only ourselves, but but actually leaning into commercial maritime who have much greater experience and expertise in this area in order to try and to learn from them. So the Admiral talked about culture. The phrase I use here in the UK is that the climate change sustainability change program is UK defences biggest change program. It just hasn't realized it yet. And my view is that that statement is true, not because of the amount of money that we're going to spend on it, not not because, you know, it's, it's the difference of sort of, you know, sale to steam or steam to diesel. But because it touches absolutely everything we do. And I think the the piece that I'm probably most optimistic about is the culture and behaviors. I mean, there hasn't been a sailor a marine that I've talked to and driving this program there isn't all not only supportive of the change, but is really keen to do what they can to make a difference. And the networks that we have across the service and across the fence in this space, just bring out loads and loads of really exciting ideas on what to take forward and what to change. This is an area where we're definitely not making change to our people. It is our people to drive and the change in the organization. And I have even used the brave phrase of, I think in climate change sustainability, it's not an area where there is a frozen middle. I haven't used phrase about change program. It's an area perhaps that we were super critical. There is perhaps a frozen leadership. Next slide, please. I'll focus, I think on the operational capability and force development one because it is, it is the hardest and the most significant and I think you know a couple of things I would just wish everyone to have a think about and perhaps to consider the first one is, is on the force development and the planning piece is, I mean the Admiral talked there about, you know, planning for 300 years. I think when it comes to across the force, you know, when we're planning for that, that next generation submarine or that next generation aircraft carrier. What we need to be really clear is, is what environment are we planning for? Are we planning for an environment that is two degrees warmer, three degrees warmer, four degrees warmer. We're going to have to make that decision here in the UK quite soon because I think otherwise there is a danger that we do end up investing in platforms that actually are not, as I said at the beginning, not designed for the environment that we wished to operate in. But it's also important that we don't get that wrong. That will come with costs, that will come with quite significant design changes and therefore making sure that we have gone for the right number in that space and driving that forward I think is really important. And that's the sort of place where ideally we'd all be doing the same thing. You know, this wouldn't be the UK on two degrees, the Dutch on four degrees, the Italians on six degrees. We'd all have a common standard in terms of our future programming as we drive forward to design. And next slide please. And then I think, you know, it will be inappropriate me not to focus on allies and partners. I mean, that's what the conference about and it's great that you've invited me and thank you for the opportunity to speak and to offer my view. We are very clear here in the UK that we cannot do this alone. I mean, we, I think we have a pretty good baseline. I think we have a pretty good approach to this and driving this forward. But this is an area where we are going to have to work bilaterally, multilaterally, we're going to have to work regionally in order to try and drive forward the right solution. And as the provost said at the beginning, I think this is an area where NATO is going to have to stand up. You know, those those groups that, you know, perhaps have not been recognized or seen as, you know, that important when it comes to the NATO future capability group or the NATO fuels group. They are going to have to offer direction guidance, even orders in order to make sure that we retain the coherence. We talk with great pride in the UK about the carrier strike group 21, the support provided both by the US in terms of the US Marine Corps and the US Navy and embedded platforms, ships from from the Dutch. You know, a task group that went all the way out to the Indo pack and back to the UK, you know, delivered significant effect and actually brought in, I think it's more than 20 nations at a time to basically contribute and make part of that group. The thing, the thing that we are all used to us sailors, we're used to interoperability challenges. And that task group had interoperability challenges had interoperability challenges in terms of training weapons, communications crypto all those things that you know over over the last 30 years I've become very comfortable about what it didn't have was ever any interoperability challenge about energy or fuel. And if we're to get this right, if things will stay like that. You know, we won't find ourselves in 10 or 15 or 20 years at a time where we cannot actually work as closely together as we can today, because we've chosen different solutions, or we've chosen different approaches. So that's me Andrea, I think that's a sort of short one sharp pitch but hopefully lays out where we are, where we're trying to go forward, and some of the opportunities and challenges as I see them. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you so much for this introduction to the Royal Navy's climate work. The UK's climate change and sustainability program is a global leader and we're thrilled that you shared your important naval initiatives. I'm totally impressed by the nine lines of operation over two years for those of us working in the Department of Defense. We understand how hard it is to work on so many different lines of effort at once. Next, for a US high level perspective, I'd like to introduce Miss Deborah Loomis, who is the senior advisor to the US Navy, Secretary of the Navy, with her focus area of climate change. Miss Loomis leads the Navy climate working group and has spearheaded the Department of the Navy's climate action 2030. You can find the link for that again in the chat. Miss Loomis. Thank you so much for bringing your expertise to this discussion today. Thank you Andrea. What a thrill to be talking with Vice Admiral Williamson and Admiral Beattie. Both are legends and I admire them both tremendously. Today, Admiral Williamson, I have a new quote from you. This is good. Can we do great? And that is a clarion call and it really focuses kind of the heart and the mind on who we need to be to solve this challenge and we're going to need to be great and do great. So thank you for that. I've written it down and I'll post it above my desk to keep me keep me focused on eyes on the prize. As as Andrea said this past spring, we published Climate Action 2030. It was the Department of the Navy's first comprehensive strategy on climate change. And in that strategy, we reiterated as DOD has stated several times before that climate change is an existential threat. And those are not empty words. It is not a Sunday threat. It is here today happening now. In the American Southwest, despite the rains that we are getting in California these days, the American Southwest is in the worst prolonged drought recorded in 1200 years. Europe this summer experienced its worst heatwave recorded in 500 years. Yesterday it was reported that the Greenland ice shelf is seeing temperatures not seen in 1000 years. We saw epic flooding in Pakistan this summer. Our own Mississippi River kind of the crucial artery of commerce in this country. The flow was so constrained that it actually limited the number of ships that could navigate that river slowing down and adding to supply chain woes. The military services as Admiral Williamson and Admiral Beatty already relayed are not immune to these threats to these impacts. We are spending billions recovering from stronger storms and our bases in the West are facing increasing water challenges just like the rest of the region. And I could list many more. In our strategy, we built a big tent kind of like what Admiral both admirals were saying that this has to be a culture change. We showed how climate climate change is impacting so many of the things that we do across the department. And likewise, how people in every corner of the department can help make us stronger and help solve this problem. From public health to education, wargaming experts to data analytics, base master planners to logisticians to those who design and acquire new weapons systems. Everyone has a role to play and everyone can make a difference in Navy speak. This is an all hands on deck evolution. And to the point of culture change, you know, there, there is no silver bullet on climate change. There is no, you know, people ask me, what's your big goal? What's your North Star? And there is no, I can't just say, you know, let's create one gigawatt of renewable energy and that'll take care of this problem. It really is everyone looking and trained and kind of cognizant in their corner of the world looking to see what they can do. We are building on a strong foundation. The Navy and Marine Corps have been leaders in areas for several years, so we're accelerating those actions today. Areas like generation of renewable energy, micro grids, advanced batteries, and natural infrastructure. In Climate Action 2030, we were very clear. Strength in warfighting and preparing for climate change go hand in hand. Everything we do to prepare for climate change must make us a stronger force and make us more secure. We are a stronger force when our fighter jets can be refueled in the air by unmanned aircraft that stay in the air longer and refuel more planes than manned refueling aircraft. We are a stronger force when our tactical vehicles are hybridized and can operate off backup batteries rather than burning fuel when they're idling. That means those vehicles can go further on a tank of gas and require fuel convoys and resupply missions to stay in the fight. We are a stronger fighting force when we can generate renewable, quiet power on the battlefield, power that can move with us rather than being shipped from home, and power that does not make noise or generate a thermal signature like diesel generators that enemies can use to pinpoint our location. We are a stronger fighting force when we use software that helps us optimize where and when we refuel and that optimizes our ship routing to make our transits more efficient. All of these examples and many, many more make us less reliant on fossil fuels and the logistical vulnerabilities they present. They make us better warfighters while reducing our carbon footprint. Climate investments also make us more secure. By that I mean more resilient, more able to take a punch and to get up quickly when we are knocked down by any disruption. Whether it be extreme weather, a cyber incident or just an act of vandalism or physical attack, just last month outside of Fort Bragg, a giant, a big army base in North Carolina, vandals just shot up an electrical substation and thousands were left powerless in that area of powerless without power for several days. So the threat can come from climate, it can come from many different things, but when we make ourselves more resilient, we are stronger and more resilient to all of them. We are stronger when we have micro grids that allow us to use independent sources of power and continue our mission even when that civilian grid goes down. We are stronger when we have things like healthy coral reefs, healthy dunes, marshes and seagrasses to lessen the impacts of waves and prevent debilitating erosion. We are stronger when we build buildings that take advantage of design features that maximize passive heating and cooling and proper insulation and building envelopes so we can invest in smaller H-back systems and enjoy lower utility bills. We are stronger when we assess how extreme heat is impacting our forces ability to train and conduct maintenance as we face an increasing, not just increasing temperatures, but increasing numbers of days at sustained high temperatures that impede our ability to do maintenance outside or to do very intensive training outside. At the end of the day, all of the investments that we're talking about come down to force modernization and risk management. A wise mentor of mine once framed for me three lenses through which DOD and the Department of Defense, the Department of the Navy can move the needle on climate. I think there are others, but the three are useful. The first two we've already talked about. One, we can reduce our own carbon footprint, reducing our emissions and drawing down carbon. This is an important part of our strategy. It's also part of the UK strategy, which Admiral Beattie did not touch on today. But we know that we cannot, as a globe, as humanity, just rely on reducing our emissions. We must draw down carbon at scale and both in the Department of the Navy and in the Royal Navy. We are blessed to manage lands that we can harvest, that we can harness to do that. The second lens through which we can move the needle is the resilience of our bases and the surrounding defense communities. As Admiral Williams and touched on, you know, these problems do not stop at the fence line and we most must and do work closely with our surrounding defense communities. The third lens through which this mentor of mine said, and he argued was the most impactful lens, was actually working with allies and partners to increase the resilience and reduce the potential geopolitical instability that climate change presents. Because that's where the rubber meets the road. This is a fundamentally destabilizing threat for humanity. When we are thinking about the and experiencing the water insecurity, food insecurity, mass migrations that we are already seeing, this is going to end up on our doorstep as the nation's 911 force, one way or the other. So I think this third lens is tremendously important. I devote a lot of my time and energy to talking about it, highlighting it. And more importantly, the Secretary of the Navy really understands this lens, and he has sort of taken action on this lens. He has been talking about the impacts of climate when he travels all over, especially in the Indo Pacific. He understands that for small island nations in the Indo Pacific, nations that are incredibly important partners for us in terms of access to their facilities and their partnership in general, that for these nations, climate change is truly right now existential. Secnav gave a speech at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji a few months ago, and he centered that speech squarely on climate change. And some of the Pentagon, this was not conventionally a smart thing to do. Some in the Pentagon, very senior advisors said, what are you talking about climate change? You need to talk about lethality. And what Secnav understood was that for these vital partners, climate change is their existential threat right now. And what they wanted to hear from us was how we were going to partner with them, how we were taking it seriously. How we who have caused a lot of this problem, we in the developed world have caused a lot of this problem are taking responsibility for our actions. And that is exactly what Secnav did, highlighting our climate strategy, highlighting what we've already done and what we're committed to do. And the person who at the University of the South Pacific who thanked him for speaking there was actually in tears as she thanked Secnav and said, and she said, the United States is finally listening to the Pacific. So this topic resonates across the world. And today I'm happy to focus the lens on those allies and partners and those geopolitical impacts. I will just highlight briefly the three areas that we'll be touching on today. One, science and technology partners. We have someone from the Office of Naval Research. We have partnerships across the world. One is the Asia Pacific Technology and Education Partnership Program and we partner with universities across the Indo-Pacific region. Second, public health. And this is another one that I really like to focus a greater lens on because it doesn't get as much discussion in the climate context. But about a year ago, 200 medical journals came together in an unprecedented move and identified climate change as the biggest threat to public health across the world. And in the Navy and Marine Corps, we run a big public health and medical system and we are leaders in this space. So I always like to highlight what we're doing there and raise awareness of this. And finally, our CVs are contingency engineering. We do billions of construction all over the world. And increasingly, you know, as as Admiral Williams and as everyone said, we can do this construction with an eye towards building resilience of those critical partners. So I will stop there and really look forward to the discussion. Excellent. Thank you so much to Ms. Loomis. I'd like to invite Vice Admiral Williamson, Admiral Beatty and Ms. Loomis to keep camera on. We will spotlight all of us as we take a few questions for the next few minutes. So Vice Admiral Williamson, would you like to take our first opportunity? Yes, ma'am. We have a question in the chat about supporting allies and partners with a kind of a tangible example. So either something you've you've done or something you think we could do more of in the future. Yes, ma'am, I can give you one. I can give you, I can give you several from my last job with Europe, Africa and Southwest Asia. Twofold, one Djibouti, you know, a little bit underdeveloped outside the fence line. Trash burning was the approved way of doing things. We very quickly identified that, you know, not only the environmental aspect of that, you know, when I'm talking burning, I'm talking about burning everything. And winds don't always blow in the right direction so therefore there's an operational significance to that safety of our people at Djibouti and also our mission at Djibouti. And so we were able to partner with the Djiboutian government and recycle through our system, a lot of things that they were burning, be able to dispose of properly, a lot of the things that they were burning. And then work very closely with them again in Djibouti. A lot of people don't realize this. I did not realize this that the Red Sea actually has hurricanes. And, you know, when you lose your Kayla, there's significant operational impact there. And so we started working with the Djiboutians, you know, you know, we had to stop the erosion quickly. So obviously we took the approach of barriers and things like that. But in addition to that we introduced them, fishing is obviously very big. And so I mentioned the thing we did at Yorktown. The other thing that with the marshland you also get the extra benefit of the wildlife coming back, which is very important to them, particularly, you know, the population, to make money a way to feed themselves. So there's a couple of examples there from a logistics perspective. I can give you one more if it's okay. You know, Paul talked about fuel. There is a tremendous opportunity, I think, working with our allies and partners, right, being able to come together and introduce, you know, I'm just a conduit to introduction to some of the things that we're doing. But being able to connect those things, I think, to Paul's point, we don't want to get to the end of this and I can't work with the Brits, I can't work with the Australians, I can't work with the Japanese, I can't work with them. So, you know, probably more so than anything else that I do, that collaboration, not only is it good for us as a planet, but it's also good for operation. And so I hope that answers the question. Excellent example, sir. Thank you so much, especially the point about interoperability during the energy transition. Eddie, this question was specifically asked for you to get a UK perspective on this. I think, specifically to US audience, I mean, we're used to the US leading, you know, in most areas. And I think we've always been really quite comfortable with that. And we're the UK, probably some of my European partners, perhaps some of them are less so, but I think what we've always been very used to that. And I, and I think, I guess that's really what we would, we would hope for in this space. I mean, I think, you know, I can remember the exact stats, but I think it's something like the Royal Navy uses 1000 of the one, not 0.01% of the total maritime fuel consumption, I think the US Navy is about 1%. So, so the partnerships in this space are not just military to military, which is really important and a bit that we can drive forward. But I think is also that commercial maritime. You know, we're doing a little bit of work ourselves with the Marisks of this world, and other companies to sort of understand the direction of travel they're going on to. So they were not surprised. But I think, you know, I think the Navy is working together collaboratively to do that to make sure that we have a single picture, an idea. And that when we go to take the decision because it is a big decision, I think it's going to be multiple fuels run single fuel. But we go to make that decision. We make that decision together because I think otherwise, I say, we talked about the risks we see. Excellent. Thank you, sir. Miss Loomis, would you like to add? Interoperability is the is the big point. So I won't, I won't dwell on that as both admins touched on it. Interoperability also comes down to facility sharing and ability, you know, forward basing. So I know in the Indo Pacific, we're doing a very, we but the kind of combatant commanders are looking very carefully at those facilities and the impacts that they are going to suffer from climate change. So that's where our contingency engineering dollars come in. Looking at airfields, ports in our, in our, then you can add on a layer of innovation. One of the initiatives that we're carrying on is like, how do you use more materials in situ? You know, without lugging cement across the ocean, how do you do kind of like use local materials? Maybe it's 3d printing like other things, innovation. Again, it's not for climate change, but if you are, you are greatly reducing your logistics burden and your carbon footprint rather than lugging cement across the ocean to try to repair airfields, etc. And there's, there's very many lenses. So you've got your four allies and partners, you've got innovation, you've got reduced carbon footprint. So a lot of these things kind of intersect, but that's another example. There are many more from a humanitarian perspective, you know, HADR, there's just, there's just an endless ways that we, we work with allies and partners. And I think one thing I want to highlight for the Office of Naval Research, our scientific partners are also very important. You know, we've worked with like Vietnam and the Mekong Delta looking at sea level rise. We look at that for our own operational purposes. And it's very helpful to them. And these are true scientific exchanges, whereas I think some of our adversaries might kind of have a more one-way approach. But we are mutually respecting and learning from one another. So I think that's a fundamental difference in the way we work with our allies and partners. Thank you, Ms. Loomis. I've got to combine a couple of questions because the intent of the questions is what's next in the policy environment? For example, are those lines of operations out of the UK going to be in a UK Navy climate strategy? And Ms. Loomis, I know that you're working on the Navy implementation plan. So I'd just like each of you to offer if you have kind of upcoming work that you will be announcing soon. Yep. So to implement the climate strategy, we are, we have developed a campaign plan, which will be coming out and sort of really taking it down to the what are we doing by when. And I was interested to see Admiral Beatty's approach in the UK approach of like that first phase till 2025. It really is just like we're thinking along the very same lines. Those quick wins, assessments, taking stock of where we are, building foundations for where we are, because, you know, sometimes we want to electrify everything. That's great. But we have very old electric infrastructure. So you sort of need to build that backbone before you can like put all the bells and whistles and everyone can come charge their electric vehicles on the base. You need to make sure that you have the architecture, the, you know, the backbone to support that. The analytics, we've built out a lot of dashboards to really to see ourselves to say, so like, you know, buy hull number. Okay, we've got, we've got this energy efficiency measure on this ship. How's it looking compared? And so we're building out those foundations as we speak. We're also doing that, not through a glossy or a campaign plan, but to Admiral Williamson's point, we have to embed these in processes. So we've reestablished kind of a shore policy board where we bring together things that are kind of laid dormant where it and it also typically focused on energy and we're now broadening it because we recognize the intersection and the really water as I, as I often say climate change comes down to water. It's the management of water. It's too much. It's about the water cycle. And so really water is super critical and we're bringing that into policies. And so there's many other ways, but yeah, lots of action on the policy front. Thank you, Ms. Loomis. I'll go to Ramo Beatty and then I'll let Vice Admiral Williamson have the final word Ramo. Okay, so to UK defense, I think the next big piece we'll see is a strategy on operational energy. So that that work is ongoing at the moment we expect that to report by the summer at the latest which will look across the joint force and the likely operational needs and potentially lead us towards some of those choices, you know, including small nuclear. and synthetic fuels and drive that forward. I think that'll be very helpful guidance to us as a as a department, you know, with the Navy to understand exactly where the department goes on that space. For us, it's, it's the phase two plan. You know, the phase one plan was about getting us ready. The phase two plan is about that sort of funded deliverable changes. And that's the piece of work that we're doing. If I give you a deadline, I won't make it. We're aiming for the end of the calendar year. That's our drive, but it's clearly dependent on a lot of other bits of information or to be able to deliver that, but that's our aspiration. Thank you, sir. Vice Admiral Williamson, you get the final word. Yeah, I talk, obviously, by the way, that was great. With Devin, I talked quite a bit. And so the policy, being able, I think a couple of things she said one, you know, having the right policy, and the policy also has to be agile enough to respond to the foundation. She talked about electrification and talked about the status, you know, we've got to bring our utilities and up. So having the policy, now I see it as my job to embed that in process. So one of the things we're doing right now is going through and looking at the guidance that my office provides down. None of this is going to happen unless that culture change happens at the deck play. And the people at the deck play, we've got to educate. Right. And we need to make sure that they understand that the policies and processes and how they work and intertwine with each other. What about base design. If I want to electric, you know, go to electrification, then what information am I giving the commanding officer of a particular inflation that would allow him to drive to the changes and move the needle if you will, on, you know, the dashboards of misaluminescence is making. And so there's a great partnership there right. So bringing all this together at the flag level within the Navy, but then also trying to get them to understand that hey, you know, we got a lot of flag officers that's great we set the field up. This has to be done at the deck play. Well, how are we helping the deck play how are they finding themselves in this problem. How are they helping to solve this problem. And hey, everybody wants to be a part of a team I want to see the needle at my base. And so, yeah, I think that, you know, we tie those things together I think you will start seeing some significant change. Fantastic. I'd like to express my thanks to Vice Admiral Williamson, Admiral B and Miss Loomis. Fantastic keynote presentation and high level discussion today. Thank you all for your time and energy dedicated to this subject. We will take a short break we'll be back at 1020 Eastern time. We do have some questions in the chat I invite the speakers who just presented if you'd like you can go in and look at those and answer them in written word. Thank you all for joining us again we will go on break until 1020. Oh, welcome back to our conference today. As a reminder, the full agenda and bios of all of our speakers are downloadable from the Naval War College events page, and I put that page in the chat. The event is being recorded and will be available on the Naval War College YouTube site afterwards will also have a conference program which will have the slides from this panel. Our second panel today looks at three different areas with Naval focus. Our first speaker is talking about science and technology. So I'd like to welcome Mark Specter from the Office of Naval Research Advanced Naval platforms division. Welcome Mark, we look forward to your presentation today. Thank you very much, Commander Cameron and for the Navy War College team for putting this event together. I'm really honored to represent the naval research enterprise, talk a little bit about the role of science and technology. And the role science technology can play in addressing the significant challenges we face as a nation and as a Navy in response to the climate change. Next slide please. I'm sit at the Office of Naval Research. Just a quick overview for anyone not familiar on our is the scientific wing of the US Navy established in 1946 and just celebrating our 75th anniversary. And as you see, we conduct research for a number of reasons are a number of levels. We look at we have applied research that addresses science and technology needs of our current fleet, providing advanced capabilities to win the current wars. We spend a lot of our time looking at fundamental research to address the future needs of the Navy, and things like our large innovative naval prototypes to really provide game changing technologies in the way we fight and operate. Next slide please. The way we prioritize our programs is to look at guidance from from all sorts of sources from the defense strategy. All the way down to the cocom S&T priority gaps in the area climate change. There's been a lot of recent guidance that's come out in the last year, and my large part of my responsibilities have been trying to understand where the science and technology can play a role in addressing the challenges outlined and the goals outlined in these various strategic guidance. Next slide. So, the way I look at the problem is in two areas that where we can make an impact in the area mitigation, looking at the ways we can reduce our impact on the environment in the in our operational use of, of fuels, etc. that emit greenhouse gases. And then as both admirals emphasize the importance of resilience to be able to develop future platforms that are more adaptable. I can withstand climate extremes and and the release of the unknowns out there understanding the unknowns. So in the area mitigation next slide, my prime, which is my primary area. I work in the advanced naval platforms division within the sea. See warfare and weapons department where we have a very platform centric view of what's of the Navy and then looking at future technologies that can impact our platforms. We work on on on mitigation we work around on energy efficiency technologies, and I'll give a few highlights. We look we look at new emerging opportunities for low carbon technologies. And we look at things like refrigerants that were mentioned in some of the earlier talks. I said next slide please. So I said on the power and energy focus area team. And I'm not going to go through all the programs that reside within this, this science area. But our goal is the goal of this program is really to increase the the efficiency and the power generation distribution and and control in order to enable future capabilities on our naval platforms from high power sensors, radars and and directed energy weapons. We're trying to really push the power limits of our ships. And while the primary goal is not energy efficiency that's often a byproduct of these areas. For anyone interested in any of these technology areas I refer you to our website which I'll show on the last slide and it provides context and more details about all these programs. Next slide. Now, in the in the area of greenhouse gas emission, we recognize that over 95% of our operational greenhouse emissions comes from exhaust from burning fuel. A large majority of that fuel comes from gas turbine engines which tend to be pretty low efficiency about 25% of the fuel energy going in result comes out as usable work. I don't like to use the word waste that we're wasting the rest of that energy be, but because it's that that power is dictated by thermodynamics, the power output, but there are pathways to improve energy efficiency. And a lot of those go on in the commercial world. And we look to leverage a lot of the industrial work going on. We have programs looking at ways to improve the thermal efficiency of our engines through higher temperature operations. We're looking at combined cycles to try and recover some of that heat and do useful work with it. But all these efforts come usually typically come with serious size and weight penalties and are difficult to integrate on to the tight constraints of a surface combatant. The reason we go with gas turbine engines is because of their high power density and extreme reliability. But of course that comes with the detriment of efficiency so that's some of the science and technology programs we ever looking at that. Next slide. And we are starting to look at alternative fuels. As has been mentioned by some of the previous speakers. We think that there is potential for using hydrogen. Maybe not as the primary fuel to power our ships, but that's under certain platforms to be able, the ability to generate hydrogen in theater, etc. It makes makes an attractive fuel. So part of the emphasis of today's workshop is on partnerships. We recognize that we're not lead in developing hydrogen technology within the US Department of energies is is investing quite a bit in this and we hope to leverage those investments, particularly in the area of being able to produce green hydrogen. And they have a goal of getting it down to a dollar a kilogram, which a kilogram of hydrogens about same energy contact as a gallon of diesel. So we're going to make it very tractable. I'll just highlight one of the areas we're investing is is looking at a hybrid hydrogen powered vessel scripts Institute in California is designing right now. Research vessel and when we're helping out to support some of the design efforts there to understand, you know, logistic safety distribution, etc. All the challenges that people recognize with using hydrogen as a fuel. We're also investing a lot in in blue carbon effort to not just capture carbon, but be able to capture it and convert it into something of use converting it into a variety of synthetic fuels. We're looking at doing some some some large scale demonstrations in the next few years. In order to produce that fuel of course that is based on the availability of green energy to power this. And so that's tied with some of our renewable energy efforts to generate that fuel. Next slide. Although less of a overall greenhouse gas emission impact we do have we do use a lot of refrigerants on shipboard, which have high very high very high GWPs and are also sourced becoming more difficult to source. And so we are investigating alternatives to those refrigerants, both lower GWB refrigerants and alternative cooling technologies. Next slide. So in the area climate resilience. We obviously have had over the number of years large programs in in climate science that goes on in our in our oceanography and battle space environment department. But we're starting to look at some of the challenges associated with platform resilience to climate change to address some of the issues that animal media brought up on if we have to operate in higher temperatures, higher sea states. How's that going to affect the way we design and build our platforms in the future. So moving into the next slide. Again, I'm not I'm not in the climate science area but that air we have a large programs headed by Tom Drake's department covering the entire spectrum of climate from, you know, the high altitude environments to subsea surface. A lot of work on understanding. What goes on at the interface the sea water interface and also the sea land sea interface. I think there's there's renewed interest or increased interest in trying to understand extreme weather forecasting forecasting extreme weather events, both in the near and long term, and how climate change is going to be impacting that and that thus how that impacts the way we operate. A lot of work also on the in the Arctic region, understanding how climate change is impacting the, the sea ice. And you know how that's going to affect the way we operate in the Arctic Ocean as as the sea ice continues to diminish due to climate change. Next slide. So moving into the area of international partnerships for my last couple minutes here in the area of climate science. There's a huge number of partnerships going on with within code 32. And this is just a few examples of that. Deb talked about working Vietnam to understand the impact of climate change on the coastal regions there. And that's just one example of the many programs going on in climate science. I'd be glad to provide contacts for anybody interested in more detail from these programs. The one next slide please. And then the way we are one of the ways we interact with our NATO partners is through the applied vehicle technology panel within the NATO science and technology organization. I sit on the power and propulsion technical committee to represent the US Navy. We have a number of activities looking at, at, at fuels. One new activity go ahead to the next slide. I think this is my last slide is a new exploratory team that I stood up in in collaboration with my Canadian partners. And we're assessing some of the issues I've already mentioned on waste. What what is going to be the impact of climate change on our on our military platforms, and also ways that we can mitigate that. With that, I think I'll wrap up the last letter points you to our website. And I'll be glad to field any further questions in the discussion. Thank you so much to Mark Specter for this introduction to the Office of Naval Research's work in science and technology. I'm really impressed with the many categories, particularly when it comes to power and energy innovation. Now I'd like to introduce Ms Robin O'Connell director of the climate change program office at the Naval facilities engineering systems command headquarters nav fac headquarters. Naval contingency engineering. I look forward to hearing what she has to say and I also want to mention that her colleague Vince so Bosch, the nav fac chief contingency engineer will also be joining us for the Q, Q&A session. But first we'll start with Robin and her presentation. Thank you for joining us today. You're welcome. Well, good morning. Well, as was mentioned in the introduction, I do work for the Naval facilities engineering systems command. We call it naff act for short. And what I want to do this morning is try to pull that that thread that that engineering thread down a little closer to the ground level and talk a bit about our mechanics of how it is that naff act engages our allies and our partners. The next slide. So, as a facility systems command our primary purposes is quite straightforward. We, we, we design and we deliver the infrastructure for the US Navy and the Marine Corps. We can do this for others upon request, but that's our primary focus. And what enables us and what what that entails is that we provide engineering and construction services under three, three main authorities authorizes to do this. And the first is, is the regulatory ability that charges naff act as a DOD design and construction agent for military construction milk on is what we're referred to. And then we have a whole host of acquisition authority as a systems command and that allows us to purchase or enter into contracts to procure a whole, a wide, wide range of goods and services from real estate needs to equipment to materials and labor and the such. And we're able to do this at here in the United States, but also abroad. So, when we work abroad in specifically in foreign locations, we generally do this under our third third significant authority and that's our expeditionary and logistics authorities. And these generally include support for humanitarian assistance, disaster response, or even through support exercise related engagements through exercise related construction. And these services are by large, mostly or typically provided by our contingency engineers and our naval construction forces, better known as the city. Next slide please. And while these authorities, authorize us to work around the globe. Our focus at naff act is in the Indus Pacific region. And, and this is in part due to that naff act is one of two primary DOD construction agents. The other being the army Corps of Engineers, but now back is a designated lead agent for this Indo pay com area of the world. And what we're seeing is a rise in demand specifically for DOD humanitarian assistance and disaster response support. And this includes the associated engineering and construction. This is probably not surprising in that there are a significant number of some of the most vulnerable countries in the world are located in this region. And what we're seeing is in the in recent years, record breaking number of catastrophic disasters. This is also an area where you have huge dense populations, located in Delta or low line coastal cities, or on apples and even small islands and isolated islands and throughout the Pacific. And many of these are in developing countries with limited resources and capability. Next slide please. How does that actually get involved? What are some of what's the process for that? So in the case of emergency or these disasters, when a declaration of disaster is made, the Secretary of State or US ID will send a request, a formal request to the Department of Defense for, for what they call unique capabilities or unique DOD capabilities. And that call for support goes to the Secretary of Defense's office. And if the Secretary of Defense determines that the DOD is able and more importantly that it's appropriate for us to provide those services, they will issue an executive order to our geographic, respective geographic combatant command. In our case, again, it's the Indo-Pacific or Indo-Pacom. And this executive order will authorize the type of support, as well as typically the duration of the kind of support that DOD has agreed to provide. And it is from these geographic combatant commanders that NAPAC receives a request for support for contingency engineering and construction. And this typically entails the deployment of teams, both military and civilian, so that would be our engineers, as well as our CVs that conduct damage assessment reports, assessments, they make clear debris in the wake of a recent disaster. They'll make temporary repairs to very critical infrastructure and bring those essential services back online, you know, water, electricity, communication to aid in more robust relief efforts. However, in some cases, especially in very significant emergencies or disasters, NAPAC teams will continue to provide engineering, construction management, even logistics, ship to shore services throughout the recovery period. And in fact, this was the case in response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, where our teams were actually deployed for a full three months there. Next slide, please. But, NAPAC, I want to make sure it's clear that our engagement is simply not just in emergency situations. It's not limited to that. We use our engineering and construction support and we support more enduring activities, things like the Pacific Partnership, which is probably one of the longest running, certainly the largest multinational humanitarian assistance disaster relief preparedness missions. And the goal of that mission is to increase the local technical capabilities and response capabilities, usually through either humanitarian assistance and disaster response training, as well as security cooperation exercises. And unlike the quick turn emergency situations, the projects that we provide in support of the Pacific Partnership are actually programmed and planned. They're planned ahead of time. Again, these efforts generally focus on repairing or constructing the specific logistical infrastructure that needs to support that training exercise. Again, that's referred to what I mentioned before, exercise-related construction. These projects tend to be on a smaller scale. They include things like warehouses and staging areas. Maybe it's a repair to a port or a new pier, airfields, sometimes an extension is required, hospitals, roadways, and any logistic infrastructure that's going to support the successful exercise. And generally, the division of labor here is NASFAC will do the engineering design and maybe contract management if we are procuring. While most of the labor, a lot of the supplies, which I think Ms. Loomis mentioned earlier, we're working to have more of those in situ, those are provided locally through local vendors. And so that kind of on-the-ground cooperation, like the exercise itself, helps build our partners' technical capabilities. It provides opportunity at the project level. There's the ability to transfer knowledge and new techniques. Are there innovative materials? Are there best practices? And this could be on the job or through subject matter expert exchanges. And in those exchanges, very often, we're talking about and covering the latest technologies and strategies for addressing those as existential threats of climate change. What's the best practice for protecting that coastal? How do you deal with the saltwater intrusion that's really chronic across the Pacific, particularly those low-lying atolls? And all this together, it really is the full picture. The technical assistance, as well as that actual delivery of improved infrastructure or capital assistance, that together, those help build a greater adaptive capacity of our partners and allies. It enables the civil and military authorities, as well as even the communities themselves, to be more effective first responders. And ultimately, this is increasing the resiliency of a very, very vulnerable location and region of the world. Next slide, please. And with that, I'd like to thank you. Thank you so much to Ms. Robin O'Connell for her discussion on contingency engineering. I'd like to really identify, not only did I like her kind of immediate response perspective as well as resilience building. Next, we would like to talk to Commander Ian Sutherland, who is the officer in charge of Navy entomology. He'll be sharing a discussion on how the Navy looks at vector-borne diseases. Commander Sutherland, thank you so much for joining us today. Good morning, and thank you very much for that introduction. I'm grateful to speak with you. For those who aren't familiar with BC, we're the DOD's only center devoted exclusively to vector-borne diseases, and that's largely due to our close association and on-the-ground support to the Marine Corps, where we're not a hospital-based asset. That being said, I'd like to talk with you with a few things that you might have heard before, a few things that you haven't heard of, and with any luck, one or two things you'd like to know more about. Next slide, please. If that pesky DOD disclaimer out of the way, I'm not set in policy here. Next slide, please. Vector-borne disease. There's no surprises on this one, but I'd like to highlight a few things. Vector-borne diseases are extremely well-known mission-stopping operational threats. Given that, of the roughly four billion people who are at risk of infection, or sometimes even death, they overwhelmingly live in exactly the kinds of places we tend to deploy our forces. Finally, I'd also like to emphasize that while malaria is a very important mosquito-borne parasite, it is only one of many that continue to plague our personnel. There's viruses, there's bacteria, there's the full gamut of vectors and vector-borne pathogens that we and our allies across the world must face. Next slide, please. When we look at the changing climate and vector-borne disease, it is a true polycrisis. Yes, even the environment is impacted. It brings more water flooding and opening up habitat to spread vectors. That's intuitive. However, as ectothermic creatures are cold-blooded, this also changes their biology. This change in temperature enhances their reproduction. It shortens the time required for them to become infectious, enhancing both their biting behavior, growth of pathogens, and many other facets. So, as these climatically enhanced insurgents spread to new zones, they're also exposing new host populations, humans and animals, to pathogens that previously they haven't encountered, and they have developed little to no immunity. The bottom line here is mosquitoes and other vectors love the way climate change is going. Next slide, please. As previously mentioned, not only are we seeing faster, hungrier, more infectious vectors spreading into new areas, we're encountering their pathogens. These include newly described pathogens previously unknown to science. We're seeing vectors and their pathogens following new trade routes, belting in and out of key countries all along the road to economic development. After much study, I have one based at the bottom of this slide here, after much study of the implication of climate change here, especially in very interesting places such as Hanan Island, China has already woken up to this fact, prioritized their efforts, and after much work, the WHO declared it malaria-free in June of 2021. These are all very curious developments. Next slide, please. So we know climate change is pushing the spread of vectors and vector-borne diseases, but unfortunately that's not the end of the story. As these vectors and disease spread, so will local efforts to attempt to control them. This means an increase to the most affordable control measure for these nations, an increase in the use of pesticides. Barring a major vaccine breakthrough, which always seems to be just five or 10 years away, we have always used pesticides. And our profile of pesticides has changed very little since the turn of the last century, and this has always resulted in some pesticide resistance. However, we now face an ever-increasing bottleneck, both on the handful of techniques. I have a few of them listed there, as well as the classes of pesticides that we can effectively use. Again, the handfuls we're talking about. Next slide, please. Our toolkit, which also means the world's toolkit, is limited and remains limited. The chart we have here, this time series chart from a 2021 survey of 164 countries, shows that when it comes to pesticide usage, we overwhelmingly use two main techniques against vectors. Tried bed nets in the blue section, and indoor residual spray in the yellow section. Unfortunately, both rely heavily on one and only one main class of pesticides. Next slide, please. This visual from that same study shows how stove-piped we are with our interventions. Not many choices here, and the more expensive newer insecticides, like the Neonix, are very poorly adopted simply because of cost. On the left chart, it shows Africa's overwhelming reliance on pyrethroids. On the right, the chart shows combined the rest of the world's reliance on pyrethroids, and curiously enough in the dark blue band down there, the organochlorines, which is also known as DDT. These are the two front-line interventions of choice, despite restrictions and other treaties based on this. And this is swiftly enhancing the spread of insecticide resistance. Next slide, please. Now, if we map this resistance over time, even for one species in one region, we can dramatically see how quickly confirmed pesticide resistance takes hold, going from green to red. Take a quick second to look at that. This pattern is shamefully obvious. Unfortunately, anyone who has deployed might be a little disappointed to learn that our uniforms are treated with pyrethroid derivatives, the same ones that are being classified resistance there in this map. However, this isn't all climate change doom and gloom. The takeaway here is resistance is not inevitable. Next slide, please. We know what the outlook is for destabilization of illness and nations in crisis, but we are able to correct this. However, it requires deliberate effort. This will require changing our training, modernizing surveillance, and no longer paying lip service to carefully monitoring and rotating our insecticide usage. It now needs to be at the forefront of how we train and how we operate. Additionally, our partner nations and foreign allies need to be on the same page. We're in this together. And to that end, NISI is engaged in 24 projects and over 15 countries across all COCOMs. We collaborate with nearly 60 domestic and foreign military, academic, and industry partners. Our full portfolio isn't on the slide there, but we are actively assessing and bringing new technologies out of the laboratory and into the field to both identify and respond to insecticide resistance and vector threats. The insecticide resistance and response system, or IRIS, and Gator Dawn are field training exercises are key facets of this work, especially to cross-train with allied nations. And I'm very happy to say we're currently engaging with the US CDC in the Marshall Islands for some control strategies. We're developing plan of actions with Australia, Vietnam, and Laos for additional work, as well as future engagements in Diego Garcia. We will continue to build additional activity with our international partners, sharing these measures and techniques we're developing, and hope that you'll support and join us. Next slide please. As a final thought, I'd like to leave you with two quotes on the screen there concerning our last great power competition that went kinetic. If we indeed find ourselves again on an island hopping near peer conflict with sailors, CVs, Marines, and other war fighters slogging across contested battle space, we cannot afford to have our force help protection arsenal firing blanks against humanity's oldest foe. And with that, I thank you for your time. Thank you so much, Commander Sutherland. We would like to invite Dr. Mark Spector from the Office of Naval Research to go camera on, Ms. Robin O'Connell, and Mr. Vince Sobosh from the Naval Engineering side. And, Commander Sutherland, thank you for remaining on the line. We will start to field questions if you have questions, please put them in the Q&A. The earlier you do, the more likely I might be to get to them. There was another question about the possibility of creating fuel at sea from seawater or atmospheric carbon. Do you know if there's any work in that category? Yeah, I mentioned that. Maybe I didn't emphasize that enough. Certainly, that's part of our blue carbon program is looking at scaling up the electrolysis approaches to generating hydrogen from our carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and also out of the seawater and then converting that into fuel. So we are looking at that technology and looking at how much that technology can be scaled. We have a robust program in that area. Excellent. Mark, if those technologies come online, are they something that can plug into existing kind of ship infrastructure or will we have to kind of take out part of the current engineering in a ship and replace it with something else? Well, this would be looking at generating, not generating, on the ship, but generating an off-board platform, either a barge or a separate ship. And then in the end, hopefully you end up with a drop in replacement fuel that could then be used directly by our combatants. Excellent. Drop in replacement fuel. I've heard that both for ships and for aircraft. Thank you so much, Mark. Now I'd like to go to Robin and Vince. We have a question here about what the DOD and NAVFAC can do in advance of a disaster to assist allies and partners to be better able to withstand and respond to future disasters and also participate in contingency operations. So I'll let Robin answer first and then I'll go to Vince. Thank you for the question. I think as I was talking a little bit about our engagement and the more enduring efforts like Pacific Partnerships and many, many more, whether it's an exchange of talent and expertise, we work ahead of that curve with some of the preparedness work. So it's not just that we're coming in to just patch things up, but we work with our allies and our partners and even U.S. territories and other folks abroad to build infrastructure that will not only help with our interoperability, but also with security cooperation. They serve. That's a, that's that more robust infrastructure that we put in place ahead of time is what really helps move the needle and helps us deal with the contingency that will be a disaster someday. That, that, that by itself is inherently capability building. And if for a ground sort of truth and example, I mean, Vince, Vince can, he's been there right there on the ground and he can tell you lots of stories there. Excellent. So as a reminder joining us for the NAFAC perspectives as the NAFAC's chief contingency engineer, Mr. Vince Sobosh. So I'd like to go ahead and get your answer to that question, Vince. Yeah, thank you for the introduction and Robin thanks for the kind words as well. Yeah, we, we do a variety of both subject matter expert exchanges, and also actual projects so they range from things like helping island nations develop micro grid strategies to to working with. We recently had a climate related symposium in Vietnam, where we actually reviewed PhD student dissertations together with their faculty to see how they related to issues that we've also identified in some of our work. We also are working with some innovation with materials, and I like to say this, next to water, the second most used material in the world is concrete, and concrete affects climate change on both sides of the equation. So one of the areas where we're doing some work is with carbonate cements, carbonate cements help on one side of the equation in that they're much lower energy kiln temperatures. So we can generate the cement with much less carbon emission. And on the other side of the equation, that material constantly sequesters CO2 from the atmosphere, as long as it's exposed to the atmosphere so it has particular benefits in terms of disaster response but also military applications so for airfield damage repair and for port damage repair, carbonate cements produce very high strength concretes that are very resilient to a saltwater effects things like that so we're trying to work across a fairly broad spectrum and I and I could talk way longer than we have time for so I'll stop there. Thank you. I want to give a final answer events of fascinating about the concrete. Thank you. I'd like to go next to commander even Ian Sutherland. You were talking a lot of course about vector born diseases, and you focus on the pesticides. It's a question that this might run counter to some of how we're addressing the biodiversity crisis or water security issues, or health, human health and implications. So I just wanted to give you a chance to you've seen the question in the chat to give your perspective on how these programs relate. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's exciting because it actually parallel each other and dovetail precisely well with one another. The whole point is that we do not want to succumb to a spray and pray technique that many people resort to in the face of insecticide resistance OK, I'll spray a little bit. A little bit is good more is better. The science doesn't support that at all. And as a matter of fact, we want to make sure that we're close to monitoring what is used, how it is used and making sure it's the most appropriate one at that time. That is part of the double whammy of climate change and diversity here in that if improperly use these materials and agents can damage the environment. So we are doubly required to keep our efforts within all environmental and health considerations. So this is actually exactly what we're talking about. We don't want this. Thank you so much, Ian. I'd like to ask each of you a question. It was similar to when I asked the leaders earlier, which is a tangible example of what you could be doing more that you haven't mentioned with allies and partners or perhaps something you're excited about doing in the future. So I think we'll go around again, perhaps start with Mark, maybe talk about your NATO engagement or another piece of your portfolio, and then we'll go to construction and then Ian, finally, Mark, would you like to start? Sure. Well, I think these questions about how we design our future platforms, particularly our surface combatants, to be more resilient to changing climate, to be able to operate in higher seasate, to be able to replenish, refuel, rearm in higher seasate, be able to be operated potentially higher air and seawater temperatures, and we already have overburdened air conditioning facilities on our ships. So these questions as to what the future environment we have to operate on and standardizing with our allies, sort of the design goals, and the potential where we think we're going to be operating, I think is an area that's important for us to work again work with our allies and partners in this area. And that's sort of, as I mentioned I have this one year which is activity within the NATO context which is just sort of the scoping what our partners are doing and how they're thinking about these problems and then trying to come up with some commonality and recommendations for future activities or other forms for for standardizing these kinds of things. Thanks Mark, I'm always impressed with how much travel you're doing because of so much engagement with allies and partners. Robin and then Vince. And yet, well there's always room to do a lot more engagement with our allies and our partners. And there's never, there's never an end to the backlog of projects to repair this that are the other piece of infrastructure. One of the areas that I think we could make a big difference is maybe taking a step back from the project and going back to the planning process that helps set up sort of that longer programmatic view to, again, to anticipate help our allies and partners with that planning capability so they're anticipating what they're going to need. And they can roll that out and seek funding and seek assistance in a more, I guess, programmatic and orally orally fashion, where it's not just a project by project or reactive situation, because they're on a shoestring. If they had a plan in hand, they could then seek perhaps more assistance more effectively, and some of the, the interest intersections and more holistic approach might might serve, serve us all well. Thank you Robin, Vince. Yeah, as Robin said, there's certainly a great amount of opportunity for building partner capacity and, you know, we, we are seeing a much larger. The current NDA has expansion of the 10 USC 333 authority for building partner capacity so we are looking to do a lot more work related to security cooperation with everybody around the world essentially, and certainly many of us that risk high at risk countries in the, in the South Pacific. So that's an area where we're, we're, we're looking to do a lot more work right away essentially. And, and I'll kind of also use this to answer one of the questions in the Q&A section. Military construction is more than just construction associated with a large scale exercise. So, we are also expanding the types of things we're doing with CBs and other military construction forces to improve their ability to work in some of these regions, and also to work with innovative materials such as the carbonate cements where we can take better advantage of indigenously available materials. So, so that benefits us in wartime as well as what we're doing to prepare. And again, one of the things I didn't mention is carbonate cement can actually be produced by using rubble from existing concrete damage. So, again, many opportunities there and I'll share a quick anecdote with you, kind of to Robin's point about working with planning After the Super Typhoon Haiyan, we did a workshop in the Philippines in Pukleban and one of the main cities that was severely affected by that. And we had a bunch of people who were actually protesting what we were doing. And those protesters, some of them came into our sessions later on. And so I had a chance to ask him, I said, Well, what's the deal here? You're, you're protesting now you're sitting in. He said, Well, we were actually paid by the Chinese to protest the American, you know, presence here. But we greatly value the fact that you're willing to work with us and teach us rather than just trying to bring in your own projects or do things that are, you know, just clearly for your own self interest. So, again, I'll kind of stop with that little anecdote. So thank you. Thanks for the anecdote, Vince. I'd like to go to Commander Sutherland again. Can you speak about the potential for leveraging integrated pest management strategies, biological controls and ecological management strategies to address the range shifting and burgeoning populations of vectors. It's particularly in the context of forward looking technology advancement over the historical arsenal of chemicals. I'd like you to go ahead and hear your answer to that question. Yes, absolutely. As it's abbreviated integrated pest management, that's, that's exactly what's required here. As I mentioned in the presentation, we can no longer play lip service to how things has been done in the past. We talk about rotating things. We talked about integrated vector management as a counterpoint to IPM there. They're needed now more than ever. And based on the data that was shown, we're at an inflection point where we can no longer afford to ignore this, both environmentally and from a public health standpoint. So, yes, it's absolutely needed. Thanks, Ian. Now I'd like to go to Mark. Mark, you talked a lot about science and technology. I'd like to hear more about the pathways for industry, both small and large, and for academics to engage and enable research opportunities. Oh yeah, well that's a great question. I would say the first thing you can do is go to our website. We just revamped it last year and I think there's a lot of useful information. It's much more user friendly. I put a link in the box to a list of all the science and technology programs that are on our and if you click on any of them. We'll provide you the contact information at our and, you know, my colleagues we have a great group of program officers at our, and they're really tuned in to what's going on across, not just the US but across across internationally. And, you know, they can help point you in the right direction. And one of the things we're looking into is developing a consortium of of academics and small businesses to address these tough challenges related to operational decarbonization and to take a survey of, you know, what where the commercial technologies out there and which are could be integrated into Navy platforms. What are some of the emerging ideas coming from our university system, and again to try and pick the, the promising ones and help develop those and potentially demonstrate those in some, you know, integrated kind of, so I've been working with Kristen flexure who leads the climate working team at the naval postgraduate school on putting together this idea of some of a consortium. So anybody that's interested in more information on that feel free to reach out to me or to Kristen. You can Google her and I'm sure her email will pop up. Certainly, I think large businesses know how to reach out to us at sometimes a small and non traditional players that don't, but I'm happy to discuss offline with any of them potential funding mechanisms to support their work. Thank you more. Now I'm going to go backwards through our speakers with our final question for today I think Vince's anecdote earlier, kind of highlighted potential competition with China in particular. But do you see anywhere in your respective areas where traditional competitors might actually have an opportunity to cooperate in some of these in your respective fields of expertise. Can you get to take that one first. Now we've, we have a very broad global footprint and portfolio. We're always open scientific field to exchange and share lessons learned with everyone and, as I mentioned, we're all in this together, and especially in our field. We have these wing born weapons of mass destructions they were they respect no borders, and we need all the help we can get to combat them. Thanks, Ian. Robin, would you like to answer the question about potential cooperation with competitors. Well, I think in any emergency response, what particularly if it involves human lives at risk, whether it's a search and rescue, trying to help with critical supplies that there's always room for putting aside the traditional competition and working under the same umbrella to help specifically when there's lives at stake. And we can do that in. There's a lot there with that that emergency situation, but there may be opportunities and scientific endeavors that help with early warning systems again when when it's under the umbrella of human lives and I think we can find room to cooperate with each other. Thank you Robin. Yeah, that's exactly right and and while it's not specifically climate related. The recent I think it was 2014 2015 earthquake in Nepal. We had some work to try to come up with more effective retrofit options for the type of stone construction they do in that country. And we were working to do some testing at UCSD and University of Nevada Reno, but we were having trouble getting the funding streams worked out. We could collaborate the Chinese did the testing for the Nepalese and we, we collaborated very effectively on that. And there are areas where climate related specifically. We are able to work together and, and as you say that this is for the whole world, and we need to do more of that. So real quick, there was a question about the USC 333 only being mill to mill nav fact because we're a DoD construction agent. Our authorities actually allow us to do work that's funded by like for island nations. There are two projects for civilian population that are funded by the Office of Insular Affairs associated with the compact states funding and that so there there are authorities and capabilities that we're able to do that so just real quick response to that as well. Thank you. Thank you so much Vince and I invite all my speakers we will wrap up but they can have any questions we might not have gotten to they can type and answer in soon. We need to take the question and wrap us up. The potential for perhaps somehow cooperating with competitors in some of your areas. Oh, less likely in science and technology but I'd love to hear if there's any room. We certainly a number of our performers and collaborate with academics in nations where we may may not have great relationships with but but at an academic level that's very open community and collaborating. We generally do not fund research in these nations but one of the reasons I like that question in particular is, you know, it's very good to focus on our allies and partners but in a lot of aspects of the climate space where it's affecting the global system. We all have to be working in the same direction, even with our competitors in certain areas and we saw some areas, perhaps in science technology a little less likely with construction and engineering maybe a little more likely. And with vector born disease how important it is because you know they those weapons of mass destruction as Ian mentioned, don't respect any of our borders. So we've seen in the last couple years. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Mark Spector Robin O'Connell, Vince so Bosch and Commander Ian Sutherland for joining our panel today. Thank you for bringing your respective areas of expertise, and really diving deep down both into your fields of study, as well as the international engagements that you've done. I invite you at this time you can go camera off and I will wrap up. Thank you all for the to the panelists. I'd like to thank them as well as our other speakers today starting off the event with Vice Admiral Williamson, rear Admiral BD and Miss Loomis. One of the reasons I organized this event was to showcase naval action and climate change. We started today with leadership vision and big picture policy, and we concluded with these very specific programs. Our first takeaways are twofold. First Vice Admiral Williamson shared that when we talk about climate change, we always have to finish the sentence with the impact to operations. The operational impact, therefore carried through all of our presentations today. This was not an event. This wasn't meant to be kind of a unilateral US leadership showcase. We wanted to have the discussion in the context of foreign partner engagement with our allies and partners. And thanks to all of the speakers who brought that home in your own respective ways. I'd like to once again thank the sponsor of our event, Professor Peter Dabrowski, who is the William B. Ruger Chair of National Security Economics, and the Naval War College Foundation for making today's conference happen. By being virtual, we are able to bring together experts from across the force and the world, and record this for people to access. So this event will be posted on the Naval War College YouTube site. It's important as much as I really thank everyone who has joined us live today, we get almost four times more views by posting a recording. And the whole intent of my work is to give some of this information to the broadest audience possible. So thank you for everyone for joining us virtually and for those who are watching it at a later time. I'd like to thank my speakers and moderators for today, and the special events team Karen Mashawn and especially Carolyn, the technical support from Dean Mark and Jason, the public affairs office media services alumni programs. My team with the climate and human security group and Dr. Bush, and also Lieutenant Commander Dave Nostro who is taking notes for us today. As a note, we will have a conference report that will be published and in it will include the slides from all of our presentations. While I was on camera today, it took a large event team to make this event happen. And I couldn't have done it without any one of them. Thank you so much for joining us today. Everyone stay safe. This will conclude our third virtual conference on the national security significance of climate change with a specific theme of naval climate engagement. Thank you all for joining us.