 My name is David Burto, I don't merit a name tag and so I have to introduce myself here but I don't quite know where you'd put a name tag anyway. On behalf of Dr. John Hamery, I want to welcome you all to this latest in our series of military strategy fora on QDR and QDR issues, obviously very timely series of events. Our objective at CSIS is to provide a forum for discussion of critical issues in a timely and unbiased and nonpartisan manner. Dr. Hamery is fond of saying that there's no such thing as nonpartisan because everything has politics in it but we do our best nonetheless. So I want to thank you all for coming, I want to introduce our distinguished speaker this morning, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gary Ruffhead. He's had a very distinguished Navy career and he actually brings what I think is a unique global view based on his background and experience to the challenges that we face today. He has commanded fleets in both the Pacific and the Atlantic which is highly unusual as you know. He also has had some unique experience in Washington and he has this habit of doing his Pentagon tours at a time of presidential transition. He was here in the transition from Reagan to Bush and those of you who survived that know that just because it's inside the same party doesn't mean that it's less bloody, the blood is just spread out over a longer period of time and so it doesn't seem that way at the front end. And he came back in time of the Rumsfeld transition in 2001 and was here as the Chief of Legislative Affairs on 9-11 which is of course another set of unique challenges. So please join me in welcoming the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gary Ruffhead. Well thanks, it's great to be here and to see so many familiar faces, colleagues and shipmates from over the years and it is true that I do pick my returns to Washington on 10-year centers to use a shipbuilding term but it has been great to be back. It's been about a year and a half since I lead Mike Mullen as Chief of Naval Operations and the time has flown by. In fact I'll get some feedback from you on what Washington is like because for the last month or so I've been out and about, made the first visit by US Chief of Naval Operations to South Africa which was a very worthwhile trip and opportunity to reconnect with my counterpart who I've had the pleasure of working with for the past year and a half. Posted the first sea lord, my UK counterpart here the weekend after that and then the weekend after that went to China for my fourth visit and my third time with my counterpart Admiral Wu Xiangli to participate in their 60th anniversary of the founding of the PLA Navy which was a very worthwhile trip and one that I believe is important as we move forward with our relationship with China. So it has been busy that spurt of travel came after a period of time of staying pretty close to the 10th here in DC as we worked our 2010 budget. My philosophy is when they're working on your budget you don't go far from home because others will work it for you if you're not there and so with that said I found the process and I know there's been some things written about it but I found the process to be very fair very open very high level of professional discussions that allowed us to address the very substantive things that one would expect the department and leaders of the services to be engaged in. I can't say enough about the leadership the involvement and support of Secretary Gates. The time that he spent in the budget discussions and the lead up to the budget discussions and availing himself to those of us who were involved in those discussions. To me as has been said from my touch and goes in Washington I found his involvement in this leadership to be extraordinary in that regard. We made some decisions based on capabilities that I think as a person who comes from the fleet were exactly the way that we needed to come out the problem and I would say that what we did reaffirms the direction that I had set for the Navy when I came in to this office but now we're at a time where I believe it is very important that we meet these important decisions and challenges head on. What we have been able to do in the Navy over the last year and a half I think is fundamentally set the course for our future. Shortly after coming in and with Secretary Don Winter made the decision to terminate two ships. The combat ships three and four because in my judgment the costs of those ships were out of control and if we did not get those costs under control I was concerned for the future of that class which I consider to be extraordinarily important to the future of the Navy and the nation and that I predict when it is all said and done they will be the workhorses of the fleet and the LCS will have a thousand fathers and so we did that and we now have a third LCS under contract. The first one is in commission and operating and I would encourage any of you who would like to see it to head down to Alexandria next week where freedom will be moored as part of our Sierra Space Symposium. Steve Petropoli here will gladly arrange for any free passes to anyone who wants to go. We then moved on and made the push to truncate the DDG-1000 a ship that has been in development since the early 90s. A program that I would add is extraordinarily well managed it contains some incredible technology that will be important to the fleet but as I looked at the DDG-1000 its combat capabilities were not what we need today and not what I envision us needing in the future and we made the move to restart the DDG-51 line because it is in the area of air and missile defense integrated air and missile defense and Blue Water ASW that I am most impressed with regard to providing those capabilities to our Navy component commanders into the combat. We've also canceled some programs because they were non-performing the multi-role underwater unmanned vehicle canceled that and then a weapons program harpoon free that was not performing and we canceled that. So my point in all of these is there has to be some tough decisions that are made and it is based on what combat capability we need and the performance of the program and that's where we're headed. But we've also done some other things to address the needs of the Navy of the future. We have stood up in a regular warfare office it had existed down at a lower echelon within the Navy that was working for me while I was the commander of Fleet Forces Command when I became CNO I brought that organization up into my staff and the Pentagon where we are better able to move money and capitalize on ideas that we believe are helpful to the warfighter and I would add that an example of this is those of you who watched the rescue of the captain of the Mayor's Calabama there was an unmanned vehicle flying off of one of our guided missile destroyers. That is not a program of record to be on that ship but through the work of the IW office we were able to have that unmanned vehicle on board providing the ISR that I believe was critical and what the IW office allows me to do is to see those capabilities and move them quickly out. Sometimes the introduction of them is what I call a photo finish and sometimes they don't deliver the full capability that we envision but if we always go for the perfect we throw a lot of good out in the process I don't think that's the way that we have to move forward with the Navy. I also had the opportunity to elevate the Director of Naval Intelligence to a three-star position and that has significantly changed and put the Navy's intel structure back into the game in a big way and the officer that's filling that position, Vice Admiral Jack Dorsett is best in the business in my book and he has really set us on a good vector as it applies to intelligence in the world that we live in today. Through his leadership we stood up the National Maritime Intelligence Center out of Suitman, Maryland. We've also created four other intelligence centers, the Nimitz Operational Intelligence Center which aligns our global network operation centers and provides intelligence to them, the Farragut Technical Analysis Center which is focused on scientific technological research development and proliferation of foreign technologies. The Kennedy Irregular Warfare Center which supports our special warfare in our Expedition to Combat Command and the Hopper Information Services Center which provides the mission-related information technology and all that has been done in about one year's time and Navy Intelligence is on the move once again. The other thing that I've been doing is spending a fair amount of time focused on our industrial base. There are some who would say that it's not the job of a CNO to worry about the industrial base. I worry about the industrial base. It drives decisions in its health and its viability is important to the United States Navy, particularly in the area of shipbuilding where the United States Navy is the source of work for the shipbuilding industry. And we've also worked very hard in this past year to take a look at our budget and move what had been a reliance on supplemental budgets and get that into our base budgets so that we have a good understanding of what it takes to run the Navy and as supplementals wax and wane to minimize the effects on that. For example, we took our Expeditionary Combat Command and now we have that in the base budget. It had been running purely on supplementals which was not a good place for that organization to be and particularly for the capabilities that we were pushing forward into the fight. I believe that the QDR is going to allow us to continue to examine the investments that we've made, the programs that we have and the structures that we use to keep all of that working the way that it needs to. I am a great proponent of QDR and I know Michelle Flournoy was here before yesterday to talk about her approach and the way that she sees it. I have my QDR rep, Brema Bill Burke, who has been given the task of orchestrating the Navy's QDR activities and he may agree with what Tony Cordesman said a few weeks ago that if God really hates you he'll assign you to the QDR. Bill, don't read anything into that at all. But I really do believe that QDR is a good way for us to get the issues on the table. I talked about some of the directions that we have started to move to the Navy, the 10 budget is the start of that and I'm pleased with how we as a Navy are standing at the end of that. But QDR is going to be extraordinarily important to us. As far as how I'm looking at the QDR, to me it's all about the type of capabilities that we want to put out in the world in which we live and in which our successors in the Navy will live and my belief is that we're going to continue to see a world that is extremely interconnected but that interconnectedness is very fragile and it is easily disrupted in our disorderly world that we are living in. I am not an alarmist but I do believe that the disorder that we see is going to continue for some time. I believe that the economic situation that the world finds itself in is going to exacerbate some of that disorder and it will take place in places that that Navy's operating. The case in point, one example, are the teenage pirates that pirated the Maristak Alabama. I think you're going to continue to see activities like that increases in transnational criminal activity, whether it's the trafficking and drugs and the people or weapons. We are also going to face threats that I think are going to span a whole spectrum of conflict and our ability as a Navy to operate in that spectrum will be one that will dominate the approach that we take to QDR. The word de jure, hybrid warfare, is something that a lot of folks talk about but I would submit that the United States Navy has been involved in hybrid warfare for a couple of centuries. It's kind of ironic that as we chase pirates off the coast of Africa, one has to be reminded that we began chasing pirates off the coast of Africa. So we've kind of gone full circle. The decisions that I've made are based also upon the proliferation of weapons that are taking place. Those are fairly sophisticated in the form of ballistic missiles. If you look at going back to the beginning of the 90s, about every third year, another country develops a ballistic missile capability. So we're seeing that grow. We're seeing the capabilities grow. We're seeing anti-ship cruise missiles for a liberator land. April of 2006 was an important month because that was when a terrorist group has fired a fairly sophisticated cruise missile that an Israeli ship and almost sank it. And that changes the calculus as you operate in and around the coral areas. And that proliferation in my mind is not going to stop. So I don't think that it's going to be easy to classify warfare as a low end or high end anymore. It's going to be a spectrum and the challenge that we have is how do we take what we buy as a Navy and how do we train our people, our sailors, to operate across the broadest band of that range of conflict. And that is what I look forward to doing in QDR. There are going to be some new areas where it will be required for us as a Navy and clearly as a military to spend a bit more time on the littoral areas, I believe are going to become increasingly important. We currently have about 70% of the world's population that lives within about 100, 200 mile band of the coast around the world. So you have this compression of population down into the littoral. And oftentimes when people talk about the Navy, the littoral seems to be from the shoreline out. I consider the littoral to be the shoreline out and the shoreline in anywhere where we can have the reach. And of course, our reach is becoming greater and greater. The world of cyber is going to dominate thinking and investment in a significant way over the next few years. Cyber, as many folks would look at it, if you look at it with its PowerPoint slides that have the lightning bolts going up to the satellites and running around on earth, that's not cyberspace. Cyberspace is on the bottom of the ocean because 95% of what moves in cyberspace moves on cables that rest on the bottom of the ocean. That's the maritime domain. That's the main in the United States Navy. And the entire undersea area for resources, I believe the resource competition in the future will also drive what we do and where we do it. I believe that our involvement globally has to continue. And the reason for that is our global interest will not wane. And if we have global interests, therefore, we must be a global native. And the nation must have the global reach that's required to influence events and provide for the commander in chief options from which he has a basis to move. The maritime strategy that we issued right about 20 months ago still guides what we do in the Navy. That strategy highlighted six capabilities that will remain in the four for me. And it's in those six capabilities that as I look at a program or policy or some approach that we're taking, if it doesn't support as many of those capabilities as it possibly can, then I begin to ask questions about are we on the right path? The capabilities are to remain a forward Navy, remain a deterrent force for the nation to be able to provide power projection that power projection can come off of our aircraft carriers off of our submarines and surface combatants. But it also can come out of our amphibious ships in the form of the United States Marines to be able to provide humanitarian assistance in disaster response and humanitarian assistance is a can be proactive as well as reactive and then provide for maritime security. Foundation for maritime security will be maritime domain where it's knowing what's moving on under and above the ocean. How do we as decision makers have a view of that? How are we better able to make decisions? The force that we have and the force that has those capabilities, I believe can assure our friends and partners and allies and it can also deter those who wish us harm. And the Navy will also be the force that can be present that can influence events that can provide options that does not infringe on anyone's sovereignty because we continue with our Marine partners to reside offshore because I believe in the future, sensitivities of sovereignty are going to become more acute as we move into that future and the smaller the footprint, the better it is. And as we talk about being able to influence events, I think it's important to think about what it is that you need. And there can be a tendency as we talk about security cooperation, the strategies of engagement, that the way to do it is to be small, cheap and benign. And I'm not sure that that is always the right path. There are some who say that in order to influence events, for example, in the Gulf of Guinea, if we had some small patrol boats, we could take some of the sailors from the coastal navies and teach them how to do fisheries patrol. I offer an alternative solution, which is what we're doing today off the coast of Africa with the USS Nashville, one of our oldest LPDs or landing ships that we have normally would be carrying Marines. In this instance, we have an international group of militaries on board. We have non governmental organizations on board. And what we are able to do is is to be able to show those small navies how to patrol fisheries areas or wherever it may be. We're able to bring their boats into the well deck of that ship and teach them how to maintain the boats, how to repair those boats. And because we're operating with an international staff of African naval officers and military officers, we are engaging at a level of leadership within those militaries that is pretty powerful when you get right down to it. It was my pleasure to visit Nashville right before she sailed from Norfolk. And this year, when we did after the partnership, we brought the staff over for the staff in the United States. When I said my farewells to ship as it was about ready to depart, I was looking out not on a group of US sailors and officers, but on an international group, primarily African babies who were on the ship would make the transit would do the planning for the mission and would also carry out that mission. And I think that's the way that we have to go forward. In order to maintain that presence, capacity is important. How much do you have to maintain the presence and capacity is what we must have. It has to have relative capabilities, relevant capabilities, but also sometimes you shape with power, and therefore, combat power is key to that. And as we all know, one ship can only be in one place. So capacity matters. Right now, we're the smallest Navy that we have been since 1916. You have to go back to that time to find the Navy as small as the one that we currently have. That is sitting at 283 ships right now. I believe that the little combat ship the joint high speed vessel are the real number of drivers as we move into the future. And in addition to their capabilities, that capacity is important to me. The centerpiece of the fleet, a lot of folks will look at us and see it as our aircraft carriers. They still are very relevant to the types of missions that we do. In the early days of operation and during freedom, 80% of the strike missions came off of US aircraft carriers. We are currently in the major combat phase of operation Iraqi freedom, providing about 65% of the fixed wing. And right now we're providing about half of all the fixed wing operations there. Our strike fighter capacity is something that I look at very carefully and monitor carefully. And what will be a topic of discussion during the QDR with the need for us to make a decision on how we avoid a shortfall that begins in 2012 and peaks in 2017 that we await the arrival of the joint strike fighter. Some of the options there are to extend the current hornet fleet. But also to consider whether or not super hornets figure into that solution as well. QDR will also cause us to take a look at amphibious shipping. And as I have mentioned, it's not only important for our power projection missions and for the role of the United States Marine Corps. But as I mentioned, the Nashville, the LPD is an amphibious ship performing a rather non traditional role for our Navy. Flexibility is going to be important. How do you get the that which you buy to span the most of the spectrum of operations? And I highlight the role of the guided missile destroyers that we currently have in service. Bainbridge was the ship from which the rescue of Captain Phillips was staged. I was in the fall that was the first ship DDG that sailed into Georgia after the Russian invasion. And it was the stetum, the Shiloh, the Curtis Wilbur, and Fitzgerald that tracked North Korean Tecodon missile when it was fired just a couple of weeks ago. People, all of the stuff that we have is really irrelevant. And it really gets down to people. And the manpower that we have in the Navy, our sailors today are absolutely extraordinary. They're performing missions that we never thought they would do over Christmas holidays, standing on a mountaintop rather cold mountaintop in Afghanistan, talking to a provincial reconstruction team leader, who was a nuclear submarine commander, leading a group of 80 people doing some incredible work. But we also are seeing recruiting and retention and numbers that we have not seen before. Thanks to the economy, that's the positive side of it. But it's also causing some pretty significant pressures on the budget is we have to make payroll as any company has to make payroll. But we have the best Navy today, in which I have ever served. And I couldn't be more proud of what our people are doing, and the way that our family support us in that work. So I think that we do have some great opportunities ahead in the QDR. It will give us a chance to address some of these fundamental issues about the type of military that the nation needs, the type of Navy that the nation needs. It gives us, I think, a unique opportunity to have discussions. And I look forward to that. And as I tell my leadership, now is the best time to lead in the United States Navy. It's always easy to lead with the man is falling from heaven. But now is when it matters. And now is when we have to make the best decisions for the Navy and for the nation. And contrary to what Tony court has said, I don't think God hates me. I'm really ready to dig into the QDR. So I'll take any questions you may have. Thank you, sir. Before we before we open for questions, I do want to take the opportunity to acknowledge the gratitude of CSIS for the underwriter of this military strategy for men, in fact, for all of the series of military strategy for that is Rolls Royce North America. I focus a little bit on our nonpartisan aspect early on. We are also, of course, nonprofit. And so we do rely upon the kindness of our friends in order to continue to function. So it's important for us to thank Steve Plummer and Rolls Royce North America for their support. Here's how we're going to do the questions. You will raise your hand if you have a question you want to ask, I will call on you you will wait for the microphone, you will actually use the microphone to speak your question into it. We're going to take two or three questions together. And then we'll throw them to the CNO for answering and then we'll look for some more folks to call on. The host will take the prerogative not of the first question, but instead for the last question. So that way I'll get to ask the one that nobody else asks as we go along. So raise your hand if you've got interest to wait for the mic. Let's start at the table over here and we'll take both of those together. And here comes the microphone. Go Court. Good plan. Yeah, I also should say identify yourself. Thanks. CSC. How do you see the future of it in the Navy? Eric McVaden, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. Admiral, you said it was your fourth time with Admiral Wusheng Li and Qingdao. I wonder how you would characterize the trend that we have with the PLA Navy. Are we trending more toward things like the Gulf of Aden and the Global Maritime Partnership and so forth? Are we concentrating on any access and how should we be going? Right. Thanks. Two very related questions and I'll take them in that way. With with regard to IT in the Navy, I believe that we in the Navy have held a say leadership or a significant role in information technology. We like the Air Force tend to be a service that relies extraordinarily heavy heavily on that. I also would say that that it is the Navy that has a significant part of the educational process for IT and I'm kind of lumping all of cyber into that. The challenges that I think we face are on the manpower side, the manning models that often are put up are more resemble more the way that we approach more traditional operations in joint task force type structures and we're going after a particular objective. And my concern with regard to the IT manning models, the cyber manning models of the future is that they're unsustainable. Manpower is something that is going to be very critical. The costs as I alluded to are significant. And the type of individual that's going to be involved in that type of work is going to be rare. And it's going to be a very competitive environment. Because in the case of IT and cyber, it's not a military thing. I have been struck by the fact that I can open up the Washington Post, and I don't see a lot of ads for Hornet pilots. But I see a lot of ads for system administrators and people who really understand that business. So I think it's going to become pretty competitive for us. But we've got to get the manning model right in that regard. With regard to the PLA Navy, I believe that the relationship that we have with the PLA and the PLA Navy is going to be one that doesn't quite fit in either mold, I would like the future to be one of the type of cooperative activities we have going on in Gulf of Aden. And those operations are going very well. And the exchange of information that takes place between our ships and theirs and the command structure, I think has gone extremely well. The challenges that we will face as we continue to operate in their EEZ, as I mentioned to Admiral Wu, he and I disagree on the interpretation of the law as it applies. But that we have to agree on is the way that the behavior goes. And there can be nothing that puts at risk our ships and especially our people. Admiral, I'm Mitzi Worth. I'm Mitzi Hardian. I'm from Sabrowski Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School. Among the key issues for the president are both energy and climate. How does that fit into the Navy's QDR? That's David. Sir Vagamoranian from Defense News. We've seen a series of accidents and there are a couple of in serve reports that have had some troubling trends highlighted in them in terms of even the surface forces ability by major space fire. How much of this do you think is some of the innovative ideas that have been put in play, whether it's ratings consolidation, whether it's training at the school house, too much time on simulators. And whether there's a wider fleet wide problem that's going to take a lot of money to be able to solve and a lot of time to yield the balance of my time. David's from Davidson Consulting Services. Michelle Flournay talked to us the other day and she talked, said that we can't do it alone. And what I wanted to see is what's the Navy doing in the QDR to talk about building a partnership capacity among our coalition partners. Okay, great. Thank you. On energy and climate. About nine months ago, we put together an energy task force. It's always easy to say I've got a task force so there I'm handling the problem. But I would submit to you that we're doing things a little bit differently, because not only are we looking at current energy demands, but future energy demands. When I look at the energy reserves that will be available, and even though the Navy and the Department of Defense is a flip on the national energy consumption, it's still important that we get our arms around that. So we're looking at current and future. And this gets into the idea of total ownership costs. So when someone comes in to talk to me about a particular program, they better be ready to talk about manpower. And they better be ready to talk about total ownership costs. Otherwise, it's gonna be a real short conversation. And the other aspect is we're looking at our shore side, which quite frankly, we've had a lot more activity with regard to innovative energy ideas, the shore, than we have had at sea. But I now have NAVSEE involved in this task force as well. And we're going after some opportunities that we believe are on the afloat side. And if you can get five or 10% per ship, that begins to start to add up. So we're doing that with regard to the ability of us to maintain and man and support our ships. I know that there's a current insert report is on its way up to me. The don't like to see any degradations. But what we are seeing is about a historical norm over time. As I move around, I see ships that are very capable of performing their missions. One of the things that we did a few years ago is we remove the engineering process from our surface ship life cycle management. We have a great process for submarine, we have a great process for aircraft carriers. But because of some other oversight things we were doing, we thought we could remove the engineering oversight from that. That was a mistake. We now have reinstituted a life cycle engineering process. We have taken people out of the NAVSEE structure to begin to get ourselves back into an engineered cycle for our surface ships, which we need to do because we have to make sure we're performing the right maintenance. But I also believe we have to make sure that we're not performing maintenance that period. This is that we don't have to apply those months elsewhere. So that's what we're doing there. With regard to the cooperative efforts that we had, the strategy that we issued is actually called a cooperative strategy for 21st century sea power. And from that, we have seen the growth in coalition activity, and in the way that we are working with regional navies around the world. If you would have told me that the countries that are represented in the Gulf of Aden would be assembled and working as effectively as they are. Four or five years ago, I would have said, I don't know what part of the world you're talking about. But we do have a very good cooperative effort working there. And fast, our counterparty task force is about ready to be taken over by a Turk, which I'm very comfortable with that. The Africa partnership station is in the other example. The comfort possible ship is now sailing down into Central and South America. Pacific partnership is going into the South Pacific and Oceania. The regional ties that we're making are significant. The last international sea power symposium in Newport two years ago had 98 countries represented. And we'll be hosting the next international sea power symposium this October 639. So the fact that I'm traveling around and visiting the places that I visit is great. But I will tell you it is for the main purpose of building those partnerships and trying to come together with a common view. And I think the Gulf of Aden is a great example of how that can work. Let's move to the rear of the room. We've got one question here, a second question here. And I'll let the third question be back against the wall there. Admiral JJ Gertler, AIA and senior associate CSIS. It's been good to see you again, sir. You spoke of the importance of hybrid warfare in the QDR and in defining the Navy's future. How is the Navy thinking about hybrid warfare in the blue water? Yeah, the I think that the the nature of warfare, I'm sorry, we're going to take a couple more. I'll keep going here. I like the clusters. John Donnelly with Congressional Quarterly, you expressed concern about the industrial base, besides wanting it to be healthy. Is there anything in particular that you are keeping an eye on or need to manage with particular care? Thomas Bees, Captain German Navy. What is the US Navy's reaction in regard to the melting Arctic and the new ways you can ship around there? Great. With regard to hybrid warfare in the blue water, I think that at the present time, there are not that many nations, navies that operate in the blue. Clearly, we are the dominant Navy in the blue water. There is no question China has an ambition to move out there. And Russia is a blue water Navy that is episodically venturing back out into that again. But I do believe that the things that I'm looking at with regard to the blue water and particularly some of the undersea resources and communication issues, I think that's a place that is absolutely right for unmanned systems. I will make an editorial about my view on unmanned systems. There's no such thing as an unmanned system. There may be a pilotless airplane, there may be an uncrewed submersible, but they all have manpower associated with them. And if we don't take that dimension into account, as we envision the future, we will generate an unsustainable bill. You can tell I've been in Washington for as long as I have, I talk about money a lot. And, and, but I think that's an area that we really need to play into. With regard to the industrial base, there's no question about my main focus there really is shipbuilding shipbuilding industrial base. airplanes, another one that's important, please to see that we flew our first P eight the replacement to the P three last week. And a significant milestone for us. But looking at the base that we have that manufactures are our airplanes is also key. I would also say that when it comes to our industrial base, in particularly as it applies to shipbuilding, there's a phrase often heard that shipbuilding is broken. I don't believe that at all. You don't have a broken shipbuilding industry and build Virginia class submarines, or Nimitz class aircraft carriers, or Arleigh Burke destroys. If it's broken, you can't build that. There's no question. There are some things that we have to do with the industrial base. And I believe given the fragility of the base and the fact that the Navy is really the game in town, it will be important that we work with that base early on with the leadership of those industries and have a common view of what it is that we need and where we're going, as opposed to waiting to the end game and then slogging it out. So I think we have to have a different approach with regard to the Arctic. We are looking at that. I would submit that there are some who envision transportation routes that are running up through there. I do not believe that that will take place in the near term. To be sure the ice pack does retreat. We're seeing a diminishment of the old ice. But as far as transportation goes, I think you will still have impediments to transport because of large pieces of ice that will still be floating up there. I think the first press into the Arctic is going to be in the area of resources. And the claims that countries will be staking out for that. And for that reason, that's why I believe it's important for the United States to see the UN Convention of Law to see. I believe that having a seat at the table is very important. That's still one question here. And a question here will do those two. And then I'll reserve the final question. I'm running out of a lot of pressure with the Congress and others. You mentioned some of the things, the decisions that Secretary Gates made on procurement, some of your ship programs. Some of them you agreed with the amphibious ships, the LHA and the mobile landing platform, or have impact on your future, your sea basin concept. Are you concerned at all that you're going to lose those in the QDR? Yes, I'm Steve Benson from Census Corporation and a fellow at CSIS. The Army just put out its first EW manual in decade. We intend to operate more often closer to the shore with higher capacity of vessels in the future. What are we doing about EW in these complex environments? If you could address that, please. With regard to amphibious shipping, and the fact that we're going to be bringing it up in the QDR, I'm not alarmed or I wouldn't begin to predict that we'll lose those ships. That said, I believe it will be important to have a good discussion about what the structure should be, and the role particularly of the MPFF or the Neurotime Pre-Position Force in the future. I look forward to that. The fact of the matter is that right now we have ships booked in our amphibious building yards. To have added another ship in that category, it would have been a book ship. I'm comfortable with where we are, and I look forward to the discussions. With regard to electronic warfare, I'm pleased that the Navy has been able to play the role that it has ashore in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have several hundred of our electronic warfare experts that are part of our 14,000 sailors on the ground in the Middle East. In fact, I have more sailors serving in Iraq and Afghanistan than I have on ships at sea, and I have 10,000 at sea right now in the Middle East. But our EW people have made a significant contribution. I see some other uniforms here, and if you ever want to talk to somebody who in my mind has made a huge contribution to that, you need to look no further than the gentleman in khakis right behind you. Dave Woods, who led our effort over there, and really brought some structure and capability and capacity to a mission that was absolutely key. EW is part of who we are. We operate in an electronic environment. We live in that environment, and therefore, we have a sense about it, and we have maintained that capability. We are very mindful that in future conflicts, controlling that spectrum is going to be important. Being able to ensure that we can operate in the spectrum where we want to be and denying adversaries and operate, the ability to operate in that spectrum is going to be key. That's what we've been doing for years. We're going to continue to do it. It becomes more complex as time goes on, but that's why we have the pros like Dave back there. Well, let me ask the final question and we'll let you get back to your other matters, but I'll make up for it by having to be a two-part question. Great. Secretary Gates talks about rebalancing, and he divides the budget into three categories. He says about 50% is dedicated to the conventional and strategic aspects of what some call the old way of doing war. 10% is on the new irregular warfare, and 40% is what he calls both. The two parts of my questions, number one is, how do you think Secretary Gates sees the Navy in terms of those three categories? And where do you see the Navy headed as a result of the budget in those three categories? I won't answer on behalf of Secretary Gates. I'll let him form his own opinion on that. I do believe that we as a Navy, because of the capabilities that we have, that are in our special operations force, our SEALs, Naval Expeditionary Combat Command, the growth that we have put into explosive ordnance disposal, I believe that we are moving the Navy, particularly with NECC, getting that into the base budget. I think we're making the appropriate moves there. We did our first force structure analysis on NECC since we stood it up about four years ago. And that has been a helpful exercise for us. We clearly have a niche at one end of the spectrum of conflict, which is with our strategic force. And our ballistic submarine force, to me, is the significant component of our deterrent. So I think that we have that part of the high end. I would also submit that the ability for us to flex our capability, you know, for example, a Hornet is a great fighter. It really is an extraordinary fighter. Yet it is, as I said, flying about half of the fixed wing missions in the Middle East today, we've been able to adapt that airplane into an electronic warfare version. And when you go into Iraq or Afghanistan, and you see the work that what someone would say is a very high end type of airplane that would be used in strike, whether it's at sea or shore. It's those young men and women flying those airplanes that are saving lives by defeating IEDs. And also the term I use hurting insurgents within the electromagnetic spectrum, but where we want them or don't want them. I think that's a pretty good mix of capability. I cited the role that our guided missile destroyers have played from counter piracy, delivering humanitarian assistance to tracking objects in space. That's a pretty good spread on the spectrum as well. Our submarine force, which is the most incredible weapon that we have in our arsenal is the Pacific Fleet Commander. As I said, it was the most important arrow in the quiver. I refer to it as if you're playing chess, the nuclear submarine is the invisible queen, tremendous power that you can put wherever you want it, wherever you need it to do whatever you need it to do. It also has functions beyond simply war fighting. And they're worth their weight in gold. So I believe that we're spreading ourselves. Nicely, we have to continue to take a harder look at some of the capabilities that can be put into play in the IW area. And, and so that's the reason why we're why I brought the IW piece up into my staff. And I refuse any attempts to make it part of the normal bureaucratic process because I'm afraid it will get buried in the inertia of the way we normally go about doing business. So, you know, we, we have a force that I believe is spread well. Is it optimized? That is something that I really look forward to QDR to be able to dig into. I have, in my opinion, a great leadership team on my staff. We spend a lot of time getting out of our portfolios and talking about things that matter to the Navy and the nation. And when we go into those sessions, I make everybody check their portfolio at the door. And we're there as senior leaders in the United States Navy, trying to come to the best decisions for the day and tomorrow that we possibly can. So thank you.