Transcripts For CSPAN3 Global Security The Navy Part Two 20171206

Next, a forum on global security, this Panel Focused on a recent reviews by the navy. We heard testimony from the vice chief of Naval Operations. Its two hours. Im going to ask everyone to come back in and take your seats. Weve had two excellent keynote briefs this morning. Both our speakers spoke to the comprehensive review the u. S. Navy issued the comprehensive review of the issues at sea, that occurred within the last year. One cruiser that grounded another that was involved in a collision with a chinese ship. And two destroyers that collides with large merchant ships that resulted in a loss of life that comprehensive review was conducted over the past well, it took about 60 days and was reported out about 30 days ago, and presented and we thought wed invite a few folks in here today to talk about the extent of it the adequacy of it, and perhaps the meaning of it we have three experienced warfare officers, three individuals who have stayed close to the profession, either through their government, the activities or through their commercial activities, but theyve stads close to the profession finally, each of our three panelists today, have published for proceedings all in the last year at least. Some of them longer, our first panelist, ill introduce is captain john cordal, he had command of oscar austin and the cruiser sanya sin toe. He brings a special perspective from that. Kevin ire is one of the only people i can think of thats commanded three cruisers, shiloh, chancellorsville and thomas s. Gates. Hes been a regular contributor to proceedings as a regular contributor almost every month. Finally, we have a retired captain, who commanded the destroyer the sullivans, and destroyer squadron 26. Instead of giving minispeeches, we thought wed just get right into a discussion. After which well open it up to the audience, have q a and get right at it. To kick it off, ill ask this first question. Youve all read the review. Based on your experience and maybe even based on some of the earlier comments today. In your view, has it been very hencive enough, and are there any important things that were left out, what would you highlight as an important thing that you would take away from it . Ill start with john. I looked at the gao reports that came out slightly before it, and some other articles and readings. The first thing i did was look at the back and see who was on the panel. And look at the list of places they went. That list, you know, the names i recogni recognize, every place they went, is everything i could think of. I think it was comprehensive. It was a good thing. Also saw some people from other services. And a wide range of pay grades, everything from a retired admiral to a qmc on the panel. As far as surprises or omissions, i think when i read the gao reports and the comprehensive review, i was very happy to see and kind of treatment of fatigue and crew endurance. Something ive been focused on since my navy times and since. And so i was very happy to see that, its a little unfortunate that it took this event to push that through, to become policy, it is, and i think thats very encouraging. Then i sort of looked at the gao reports, everything you talk about, fatigue, goes back to the workweek and manning and things like that, i did a pf control function search for manning and manpower. If i saw an action item in there, i would like to see Something Like, lets go back and look at the go reports. Primarily, the number of watch teams per ship from three to four. Thats sort of what struck me as to what i would have liked to have seen. I know the Surface Force did recently come out and say, were going to Institute Watch builds and ship routines that are based on a sir okayedian rhythm, so i thought that was an immediate action that was in line with what your kmeenlts are. It was out on the due date certainly that is something youve been leading the charge on. So evan, ill go over to you, in this report it covered a lot of ground as john said. But did you feel there was a glaring omission or omission thats worth mentioning . And is there something you think is important that may not come through on the first read . I think it was a frank and unvarnished report. And it was deep. I was appreciative of that. I think the concern that i have with regard to an omission is that it is very focused on seamanship and navigation. And the question which should come to mind is, if our Surface Forces are unable to successfully execute these fundamental blocking and tackling tasks, how can it possibly be expected that they are also able to do the much more complex war fighting tasks, which are coming to the fore after this extended period of profound peace, which million work was talking about, and id like to give you a specific example of this. The egis Weapon System is remarkable. Its been designed to degrade gracefully, i can tell you from my own experience. Even if you take away fire control men, and the training they receive i have full confidence every egis ship can go out there and engage airborne targets. However, if an egis weapons system is at 508 of its full capacity, in order to use Ballistic Missile capability, it has to be up to 80 . Im making these numbers up, but theyre representative. Every time a ship gets prepared to do a shot, quite literally, a team of rocket scientists come on board and groom the system to make sure it gets up to the 50, 60, 70, up to the requisite 80 . Its a worthwhile question to ask oneself, if we took all of the ships in the fleet out and we line them up and north korea launched something, how many of them could successfully engage . Im right back to navigation, seamanship, these are the fundamental capabilities which every Service Officer in warfare should have. Totally agree. I mean, it goes back to something that bob work said about the previous surge capability that we maintained, you could ring the bell and empty the barn and everybody could contribute without the special groom or the cross decking of parts, i think theres a lot of us who also remember that it wasnt all rosie, even back then, i mean, going back to the 70s and early 80s. There were cross gaps and decks in holes to fill. The numbers made up for it, that was another key critical point made by bob work. Do you need to be that much better and not exhaust yourself on the day to day forward forces and accept a slightly lower capacity, or do you want to spend all your money on capacity and numbers of hulls and platforms. Its an excellent question, but all of that is at play here, because i think what i tooken from both was that were not doing either one well enough right now, this is an example. Jerry, ill turn back to you with the same question. Is there something you thought should have been in there that wasnt in there that came through your read of the comprehensive report . Thanks, pete. First of all id like to comment kevin for his socks. Theyre pretty classy, im trying not to dont look right at them. The comprehensive review was, i think, a credible, sophisticated approach to really try to figure out whats been going on, why are we at this juncture . Is it comprehensive enough . No, it cant be. The secretary is doing his Strategic Review that gets at some of the more fundamental issues how do we get our officers to see more. So they get the experience they need, so that the kinds of stuff that report sites is not anticipating the problems, and being able to act in time becomes more of a Second Nature because youve spent so much time at sea . Some people might argue the navy, the military as a whole has become overly bureaucratic. I resemble that remark, i spent a lot of time in the pentagon. Its interesting to note that in 1941, president roosevelt told admiral king, i dont want any repeaters in d. C. , what he meant by that was, i dont want my captains and flag officers doing more than one tour in d. C. , obviously a lot has changed since then, it gets to the point that in that interwar period that mr. Work was talking about, we spent a lot of time at sea, so that the kinds of stuff were looking at with collisions and not being able to navigate safely in a sea way, were not just not as big of a problem, and we didnt have yeah, we had 6,000 ships in 1945, but in 1941 we didnt have a an over match of capacity and capability. The other thing in my discussions with sailors and cos, i found a lot of challenges with manning and training. The minimum manning just is not a good idea. Its it hardly works for maintaining a ship. It cant work for fighting a ship in an environment where you have to undertake significant damage control actions. It doesnt work, the other thing ive seen a lot of frustration with is what were call gadget overload. That comes out in the report when they talk about the integrated development of sophisticated Navigation Systems on the bridge. What im hearing from everybody from e 5s to 06s, we keep getting this stuff, its not supported, we cant get it fixed, we cant get training on it, its too much, its all happening too fast. In the report, i think gets to the point of, we need to we the navy need to look at how to get that rationalized and fixed. And then i guess maybe my biggest concern not concern, but as i reflected on the report, the Biggest Issue i see is, it talks a lot about essentially saying, if we just follow our own certification process, wed be okay. And i just dont think thats true. I think the certification process gets you to a level of training that weve become to look at as a training ceiling, but its really a training floor. And we need to get above that floor, into the mastery level, if were going to do the kind of stuff that kevin talks about, quite effectively from the get go, in a multithreat environment. A couple people, some of whom are very senior, some of whom are relatively junior, called me right after this report came out and said, the report said that these incidents were avoidable. And they go a lot way toward pointing toward the Commanding Officer. My next question is, are these the fault of flaw ed command leadership, or are they the result of a flawed system that produce them . I think its a little of both. You look back, i did the porter investigation. Many of the same things i read in that report are what i saw in these maybe the way to do this is 20 look at a ship that didnt have the collision. Do the same stuff. I think theyre having trouble hearing you. Youre on. Is that better . Yes. Okay. I wont repeat the whole thing, you had four points in the same time and space and certainly looks like a trend there. It could have been the Commanding Officers, unfortunately, you know, since were going down it looks like the road of discipline, we may not get what was inside their heads, what struck me was why . Why did the officer on the deck of the fitzgerald not call the captain, those types of questions, why did the captain of the john s. Mccain decide not to station the detail for anev lucien, rather than delay the evolution, right . We may not know the answers to in a. As i mentioned i did the uss porter investigation. Reading the comprehensive review, many of the exact same down to the line item were what were in that investigation. Maybe its not all 7th fleet. I know theres time, but its not that much time. Really, the other piece that kind of struck me, theres a part later on in the comprehensive review where it talks about sustainment, and how do we figure out a way to learn the lessons and not repeat. It talks about picking around the edges. I think back to the porter, you know the only reason i think that in were no casualties in the porter was they hit a bigger ship. They hit a ship that was 300,000 tons instead of 50,000. The bow went under the keel rather than in the birthing compartment. I was part of that, i was on the stap at the time. What did we not do then, and how did our system not capture that. It did a lot. Theres a lot of good stuff, but i would probably have too say not enough, given the evidence. Youd come down on the side of, its more than just the co, its the system . Its more than just the seventh fleet . I agree. Yes, i would. Thats come up, and i think that i spend my time only in mainly in the atlantic side. I go to bahrain. I see some of the same challenges, the things that a co can do in norfolk, go down across the peer. They cant do in a in bahrain. One big surprise that caught me was buried in the back of the report, page 143, talks about the number of gaps at sea, from march of 16 to march of 17, that number feign went from 1500 to 5,600. They went in five per ship to 20 per ship. What are the secondary. There was a comment. The narrative out there is that the large piece of the mccain collision was due to mechanical either a steering loss or a misunderstanding of the way the steering worked. They talk about the crew members who were fatigued and exhausted. And again, not to come back to the same theme again, thats a systematic issue. I dont think its restricted to the seventh fleet. Kevin, i think yours is working. Well see. One of the things that i found a little bit disturbing about the report was, it is couched as if this is 7th fleet, but anyone who understands anything about ships can read that, and these exact same things can be applied to a lesser or greater extent to every ship in every fleet in the world. I think that is important that people grasp that. Now, ive given this some thought, one of the great things about us is that this absolute responsibility for what goes on. And the buck stops here, i cannot think of any other profession, doctors, lawyers, priests where the same kind of thing holds true. And its quite remarkable. The cno and admiral davidson both specified that these accidents were avoidable. They both indicted the cos of both ships, and they both said there were failures in judgment on the barts of both cos. Those two last month where we lost lives . Yes. And i do not dispute this. Having said that, admiral davidson goes on for the vast majority of the report indicting the system. Everything from manpower, personnel, facilities. Every area, he indicts specifically. He then offers 13 causative, contributor factors, some of these i view to be fluff, thats my opinion. Some of them are called fundamentals. Every one of these is the responsibility of someone else to provide to that co. So whos fault is it . I think that im amazed that Commanding Officers still talk commands of ships. Because there are 360 wild cards on your ship that could do something crazy every day. You can be dragged out behind the chemical sheds and have a bullet put in your head, every day. Guys still do itp p but they play the hand theyre dealt. If they are not being dealt a fair hand. Thats someone elses fault. And not just theirs. Well come back to that, theres some cultural aspects here about how far do you play the hand youre dealt, and when do you tell the dealer hes dealing from the bottom. But to finish this line here jerry, how about you . Do you think its a flawed Commanding Officer . Or a system that didnt give them what they needed to succeed . Well, the tip of the iceberg is the Commanding Officer, its clear that there were some problems with the cos on all four ships, essentially. Given that the cos responsible for a ship. But i really think its a longer term systemic problem in a we very that started at least 15 years ago, when we shut down swas basic. When i was a commander in 12002, 2003, 60 of my engineers did not have elcalls. The Division Officers had not been through swas basic. The only thing we had going for us that was a real strong suit were the chiefs, and those have now been replaced by the blue shirts who were the product of reduced training in the schoolhouse. Case in point, just talking to an oil king gsm one a couple weeks ago. His school was five days long. Right. So there are systemic issues here, i know weve taken a lot of issues to increase manning, to restore training, it took us 15 years at least to get to this point. Its not going to happen overnight, this is what admiral davidson put into the report, someone has to sheppard this through a long longer than a prd process. So i think i think theres the other problem is, weve seen this happening, even in the golden years, when you and i were younger, where every class of ship that ive been on. The Acquisition Community purchases and builds a blatt form. Gives it to the operators who say, we cant operate this, we need more people. That suggests a much deeper broader systemic problem than just the training and perform answer of cos in the sixth fleet destroyers. Well, you know, you talked about when we were younger. Everybody up here, myself included lived in an era where we had more resources, you just take the training the egis training, the egis Training Command that was separate and focused on the egis ships. There was a recognition outright that they were more complex and difficult to operate. I didnt mean that the systems were integrated and werent well designed, but the complexity required you to get the most out of it. Hire level of twrang, so theres people up here who fired 25 standard missiles or tomahawks and weve done things in the fleet like eliminate the proficiency missile firings, we shortened the schoolhouses, five days for gsma school. We eliminated the Surface Warfare basic training. We eliminated the people who tracked the maintenance checks. So we grew up in in a different era, and so i just want to make sure from the viewpoint of our audience, that people know that we are coming at this from our experience and were commenting on what weve seen happen in the last 15, 16 years, which includes all those things, lets talk for a minute. Bill moran is coming in here, hes responsible for the effort to make the change for the comprehensive review. So my next question is really about prioritization. Given that all those things have happened. And the point that was made by all of you that it takes some time to deal with it, do you think the prioritization and the urgency in the report is right . Each one of those action items, theres a whole an exthere that lists i listed them, theres like 58 action items, is the urgency right to get at that . Are we doing the right things first to make sure we get a grip on this . So that you can build our we can build our way back out of it . I ask john to ponder that one. Is this on now . Yeah, youre on. I always get to go first. Mix it up after that. Yeah. Right. Wow so theres a lot of actions on there, i mean, my first thought was back to that discussion about sustainability, i would add an action to reconvene the group once a year for the next five years and go down that list of action items and see how we did, dont reconvene the action officers who have to come back and say i did the task, reconvene the people, because theres a lot of stuff that didnt make this report behind im sure. Im sure theres everyone who left here who got one action item on the table has a notebook of what that should be and what it should look like. The other thing is, theres a lot of talk about resource management, and resources in here. The brm training that we do, swas has a great program, i know Everybody Knows this, a lot of those things that went away have been coming back. I mean swas is back. A lot of asias Training Pipeline is robust. Those things are coming back, but again, its generational, right . Those gaps that are out there, they didnt happen today thats why i harp on the manning thing, what if we took a couple billets on ships. The 3 mc, the top snipe and we made them e9. Okay, lets send the master chiefs who are now at shore for the last 5 to 6 years of their career. Back to the ship, back to the fatigue issue. Ive seen the brief on surf management, its not about let your people sleep more and theyll do more work. I would mandate that for every 06 and above in the navy to watch that brief. Its only an hour long and its life changing. Our br 2n training is also robu, its not timed i dont think to the ofrp. Maybe somebody can correct me on that. Lets tie it into the generation process, where the captain has too ride a match bill today and not thursday night before mondays underway. A locked in watch bill allows you to do that. So you build a team effort. On the nuclear side, the watch team is a co hair an the unit. Its not that way with the od and the tro. But it could be. Once again before they deploy, do a refresher. That would go to the heat of the problem theyre not manned for that they dont have a full time presence for that overseas. Okay, heres my twoweek window. Let me cram everyone in there. In the context of immediate and controlling actions. Youve listed a couple. The report itself says were going to have teams go aboard the ships that are forward and do a readiness assessment. On those ships. Right. Secondly, it says well immediately stop and void out these Risk Assessment management plans that theyve been using particularly in the 7th fleet, because they had just become in the eyes of the report as mentioned, that thats just a way to say, we didnt do a certification. And they also talked about the immediate need to have pac fleet and pay come. We have this Global Force Management plan, and you have to do the rff process, but in pay com its one stop shop. The people in hawaii could control the gozinzas, because they own everything from the west coast to the indian ocean. Now theyre just basically telling them to feel free to do your job. So thats there, those are the immediate ones that leapt out for me but what else is there . What are the priority things we have to get to on the premise that another one of these could take out the navy completely . I thought it was interesting how you talked a little bit of the history of this, i think its important that we keep that in mind because in my view, were crossing the rubicon again. After the report and much improvement has been made since then. But in the report it talks before how this process was slowly, insidious and over time people may have been confused by the good results that they were getting. I found that to be too much of an excusing of people, and unfortunately, when the curtain was yanked aside by admiral davidson, there are few people standing around, and the music stopped and they went for a chair and they didnt get it, so, admiral aucoin, who i dont know. I sincerely doubt he was was he doing the nap check rides on these ships . No, i think this goes back and all these people have gone to their villas on the amalif i coast. Having said that. It appears this is all about resources and the problem is, is that its difficult to get them, so the immediate actions appear to have been turn on ais and use ais. Get more sleep, and you will not write your own standing orders. Now, the rescrew, i think is very complete, because it ties things together over the course of ones career. Individual, team training. But there are other things this will take a while to implement as it points out. In the immediate term, i think we should not be shy about stealing a page from the submarine community. And that is several things. One, my observe is that we have a history of assigning our very best officers to our very best ships. The submarine community assigns its best officers to its very worst boats. This has an effect for both of us. We need to you can have us do be generalists and do everything in the world or you can have your ships work, and we do not keep our people close to ships throughout their career. And to stay close to ships is not a positive contribution to your career. Why are you not in washington . Theres value in this im not debating that. We take our best talent and immediately get them away from ships. The third thing i would steal from the submariners is their submarine squadrons are run differently from ours. If youre a submarine kwau dron commander your Training Officer and engineer come from directly the command of the boats and theyre some of your best guys. These submarine squadrons dont deploy. If something goes wrong, they are on the hook to go there. And they stay there until it is fixed. Now, we obviously do things differently. I think that that that we would benefit from a little more concentrated expert leadership at the waterfront. In our community. Right, and just for the audience. The surface navy had readiness squadrons and tactical squadrons, and you would grow up with squadrons to operate you forward. At some point in the late 90s, we said, were going to single up. The experience in manning those was not increased and thats one of the things that came up in the report, another immediate action i failed to mention was that the navy has already taken action to set up Surface Group in japan that would provide this Community Readiness guidance that was lacking. Jerry, what do you think, do we need to bring back readiness squadrons . And is there Something Else we should be doing so people can sleep at night, as we tackle this list . I cant begin to comment on a prioritization of so many action items off the top of my head. Well put that on the tabling here. The as i looked at these incidents and listened to the grumpy old gray beards and the guys that are currently serving on ships. Even High School Classmates saying, jerry, whats going on with your navy. It struck me, and we talked about this at dinner last night. Its like, okay, the solutions are obvious, why are they so hard . Because in our day, it was all good, right . Thats how we remembered it we didnt run into things, we had command. Thats why you still had command. No clearly that initial reaction of mine is not appropriate. Because something has changed, something is different, its not a simple issue. Why cant we get the experienced g guys like flight officers to go out on these ships . We grew up, you walk on a ship, and in about 10 minutes you know the condition of the ship. You get a quick sense of where that ships at. Apparently we dont have that ability any more, or is it something of a deeper cultural thing that says, you know, we really need to be in a kind letter gentler world than we used to be . Is it a millennial thing, i hear that a lot, which i think is a. He was in the marines for four years. He doesnt have that supposed millennial problem. So theres Something Else there. And i think i think that the report gets at, to go with kind of what bobs approach, it gets at the readiness side of it, the metrics, the objective measurable things. But i think it misses a lot of the preparedness side, the mental game that has to happen. So a co on a bridge going into of all things, the strait of malacca traffic separation scheme, i mean, wheres the master helmsman. What are you thinking . Or a ship where the cic and the bridge arent talking to each other, those are just basic things back in our day, and so i hesitate to criticize it because i dont know where theyre at today. Even spending time with them, i dont understand the difference between what it was when, you know, when i was there and what it is now. So something has changed. So i dont know where the priorities lie. My gut reaction is, you know, let me go out and stand on the bridge with the ship under way and see how they do things. And talk to the c. O. Afterwards and say you might want to think about this. Right. Well, one thing that does kind of come through, and i agree with you totally, i think these generalizations, the young people cant do it, i think thats just totally false. I think its a matter of setting people up for success. And, you know, lest we recall too fondly the halcyon days of the past, the fact is we always had that tension between are you a ship that passes inspections or are you a ship that can go to war, and those might not have always been the same thing. It depends on what the inspection was. If the inspection was lets go out and shoot five standard missiles against a very robust profile and threat, maybe yes. But we remember that one of the reasons we did away with those readiness squadrons is because there was more emphasis on the Electrical Safety program, and you know, 3m sometimes than there was on war fighting. And that really gets to my next point, which is i think that the report kind of equates culture with cando. It kind of went there because cando, if youre going to criticize somebodys culture, criticize them for being cando, but i think it might be more than that. And are we creating or have we in fact been living off a culture where the results were dependent on the c. O. . And the c. O. S that were c. O. S out there in our day, and i think you could say the same today, that are getting it all done, theyre doing the training. Theyre doing the blocking and tackling. And theyre getting to the higher level war fighting piece. But there are c. O. S who dont. And what kind of leeches through in the report, now, ill start with you, kevin, because john doesnt want to be first anymore. Is that are we are we leaving too much to the individual c. O. S . And in fact, maybe we have always been doing that it that way, but now its really showing itself with all the other stress. Well, i do think were leaving too much to the c. O. , particularly, now this was not an issue necessarily in the long gone halcyon days as you refer to them. First of all, when my dad went to sea, he had a chief petty officer who had forgotten more than he would ever know about gunnery. We do not have that anymore. Just as we have generalests, we are generalists as Surface Warfare officers, we have somehow drank the koolaid and now we want our enlisted personnel to be generalists also. So the days of my gun system is not functional, ive got this crusty chief here who has forgotten more about guns. Those are gone. On the other hand, he is coaching his kid soccer team, and he does have an associates degree. So were taking away some of the tools that they had before, and at the same time, the complexity of everything is going up. Yes. So to presume that all of the things being held static, its becoming more difficult to keep up with the march of technology and an example of this is the john s. Mccain, if you boil this down to exactly what happened, its hard to understand unless youre a ship guy, but no one knew how the bridge console worked. That kind of came out. No one could figure it out. Under stress. And you read more. The training that was supposed to be applied to that console was cut. So no one ever received the training in this new system, which is acknowledged to be more complex and difficult to use and not inherently easy to use. So as always, theres more to the story. Mccain a good ship with a good reputation. They crossed people from the antietam onto the mccain who werent properly requaled or qualed, and werent familiar with the system anyway. Yeah. But its a very complex system. And these guys play the hand theyre dealt. So if they are not being dealt the right people in the right numbers, and you have to have this presumption that the submarine community is also doing this, this back to world war ii look, with the presumption that communications are going to be interrupted, so submarines will have to go out there and they will have to conduct their Wartime Missions without depending upon being micromanaged. And i cannot see why ships should be any different. But if youre going out there, used to being micromanaged from above or hoping that youll get your full crew capacity or that someone is going to fix something for you, that is a mistake. Right. I agree. So im going to stop there, even though i havent let john and gerry tackle that last one, and i see how the time is progressing here. I would like to open it up to questions. And encourage the audience to get to the mike if you have a question. Even if youre sydney freebird. Yes, admiral. For the whole panel, the thing that, you know, of the many disturbing things that disturb me the most is the idea that, well, maybe we cant operate our war fighting systems if we cant actually drive the ship straight. That maybe, you know, if we actually had a live no notice Missile Launch at the United States, we couldnt necessarily actually shoot it down. So, you know, we know, we have seen the problems with basic peace time seamanship. What are the implicit problems or probable problems with the much more complex war fighting skills that might be the next thing to look at . Anybody want to grab that one . Ill tacking that one. I wasnt going to talk about this based on our phone conversation, but i will now. And also, secretary werth made it clear where he thinks our priorities should be. I would answer that question with another question, which is anybody in this room, when was the last time we had an unconstrained asw exercise . Where not in the ocean, but you go out with an unalerted sub, unalerted surface ship. Youre giving a mission. You can fire as many torpedos that you want to fire. You have to win. Right. We dont do that. Same thing goes for air defense exercise that is unconstrained and unalerted. We dont do that. Okay, there are lots of reasons we dont do that. Not the least of which its expensive. People can get hurt. All that kind of stuff. So the question becomes, lets take that and hold that thought and step back to the inner war period. How did we do what bob werk said, how do we hit the deck plates running in 1942 after essentially with the exception of some convoy duty in world war i, essentially not fighting for 40some years, a couple generations of officers. You left out world war i, but i think you meant major fleet on fleet action. Yeah, so whats that . Right, well, they were on ships, but they didnt go to sea a lot. So the question is, how did we do this in the inner war period, and the answer by my reading is the fleet didnt have a lot of operational requirements. When we did fleet problems every year, the 21 fleet problems, the fleet did the problems. The whole fleet basically except for the asiatic squadron and a couple ships here and there. The fleet played red, fleet played blue. Everybody went to the debrief, and you learned from it. Everybody went to the war college, 99 of our flag officers had gone to the war college. You had this common reference. You trained and exercised together. You had very frank, honest, and open deeper use. The lieutenant was contributing to the debrief as a lieutenant. You had the fourstar fleet commander there as well. You had this kind of luxury of being able to do experimentation, trial and error, that we cant do today because of our operational commitments. But we could do it if we built the right kind of Network Capabilities and all this, we have all these trainers out there, myriad different types. But if we and the report touches on this a little bit. I just lost my mike. Give him the mike. We have a backup. I guess that means i talked too long. They cut you off, gerry. Im done. But if you had lets just hypothesize for a second, you had a capability of taking a trainer system that not only does Tactical Training but ties you to your own ships plant status so that you cant just wave away that generator has been out of question for three months because youre waiting for parts. Thats real stuff. The force commander cant wave away the fact that his magazines just got emptied or this ship just got damaged and hes got to figure out how to get that ship back out of the danger area without significantly degrading his combat capability. And back to get repaired. So you could do everything from what we do now, like bridge trainers and combat systems trainer. You integrate that in a way that allows you to do the fleet problem process again, despite the fact that ships are overseas and committed. Gerry, let me jump in on that fleet battle problem, fleet process thing. I think thats a great spot to end on just this one question, because we want to get to others. But we know we need to do this, and i think both our first two speakers spoke to are we so busy being forward and doing forward presence ops that were not taking the time to do this and do it right . And to answer your question, again, sidny, i think there are plenty of c. O. S who can do the blocking and tackling and the tactical part, but the question is is the system serving on average the average person enough to get it right enough of the time, and recent events have revealed some of the weaknesses. Question over here. Good morning, gentlemen. James olson at the George Washington university. Morning. Im curious as to all of your thoughts on the current Training Pipeline. Is there a need or a necessity to move towards an aviation Training Pipeline with a standard across the fleet, or is there some other path forward to address some of these issues that were currently seeing . I think i know what i would say, but i want to hear what the panel has to say. I open it up to kevin and john. Lets see if this works. This is a painful subject to the Surface Warfare community because were in love with being generalists. And being able to do everything a mile wide, an inch deep perhaps. There are no other professional navies in the world which do not deploy without which dont use professional engineers. Or in ships, professional combat systems engineers. People dont like this. However, the evidence would suggest that if these shipped had it or any ships had expert engineers, expert combat systems engineers, that things might have gone better. That things that a line could be held more effectively, so im a product of the old time swath stuff. And it worked for me. And i liked it. But on the other hand, im not sure that we should not be going to you, would you like to be a professional engineer and spend your career really being an expert at something . Right. Im going to let i think admiral dunn, i can tell by the look on his face, he has a similar question. Then well keep the discussion going. I did not put my predecessor up to that question. However, for those of you who dont know, im a naval aviator. I started out life as a Surface Warfare officer, but then i graduated. Some years ago, like in the 1950s, Naval Aviation had a mishap rate which was atrocious. 250, 300, 350 aircraft a year were demolished in accidents. The idea of going to a replacement squadron concept came up and was instituted. Thats where you take people right out of the Training Command, those who are coming from shore duty, put them through a period of intensive training in a type of aircraft theyre going to fly, learn all of the systems. Learn how to employ those systems. And after having instituted that, the mishap rate is down to where its less than 30 a year, maybe even less than that sometimes. Because everybody who goes to a fleet squadron goes through the rag, a colloquial expression, but through the replacement training first. Why doesnt the Surface Community do Something Like that . Why dont you send you have swaths. And some, a couple of you have lamented the demise of swaths, and that was good, but it goes beyond swaths. It goes to everything who comes from washington duty or duty at pg school or somewhere like that in order to learn the systems of the ship theyre going to. I think that would do wonders towards reducing events like occurred in the seventh fleet recently. Thank you, sir. Somebody want to take that on . John . Thank you. No, i think certainly theres some logistical challenges with that with the squadrons and the way we train the officers. One point that a friend of mine made is the ship is a great classroom as well. We spend a lot of time building simulators when we have a ship at the pier we could probably learn on. Maybe there is a way, you know, maybe they come in the maintenance phase. Would they be better off given to another ship, perhaps, for the Training Like you talked about, admiral, to get to a certain standard before they go back to their parent ship to go back to sea when that ship is ready . But again, that adds a huge logistical challenge. And if im a c. O. , i might want to cherry pick the one that did a good job and keep him, and you shot the whole system down. One observation on that, though, is that i have never seen a surface navy so tightened up on tight model series as we are right now. I mean, we used to have all these different classes of ships, and now, you know, if you just look at its singled up on the tykeoes that remain. And we are really down to about three classes on the amphibious side. We sent the Surface Force, the Service Force off to, you know, msc. So i dont know. I think theres an opportunity there. Kevin, did you have something on that . This speaks to something you alluded to before. Part of the problem with our community is this cursive can do attitude where we refuse to say no to anything. Including this, you take my point. Yeah. And it seems that we would rather suffer the consequences than say no to anything. To our own peril. Yeah. Can i jump into that for a second . Sure. I was asked not long ago whats the difference between your 05 command and your 06 command . I answered him, i said i learned how to say no. And the difference was, youre an 05, thats your first time out there. Theres a degree of competitiveness. Were all typea personalities. And it can lead you to make some bad decisions. As oscar, i still recall one of the times i hurt sailors pretty bad is i was in the middle of a boarding, during an exercise that went into the evening, started to rain, it got dark. Somebody said if this is your last event today, and if you dont finish, you dont certify. So i kept the boarding team aboard the ship. I sent food over there. Got into the evening, then got activated as the assistant air defense cruiser, because the crews went down, which i went to ten years later as the c. O. But i had to activate, and so i was asked, can you do both . I said, well, yeah. And when i did, i lost a bubble. I started to maneuver the ship for the air picture. I flipped a rib in the water, i flipped six sailors in the water, and i think that was driven thats that cando attitude. Thats personal. I take over san jacinto. I get a call saying on monday, your ship hasnt towed anyone. That certificate expired long ago. Youre going to get under way. Youre going to meet and youre going to do a tow exercise. I have never set foot on a cruiser until friday. I didnt know the crew. I had been on a Nuclear Plant for two years. And so i said no. And he goes, what do you mean . I said im not going to do it. He said, well then call the chief of staff. I dont have the authority to do that. And i did. And to his credit, the chief of staff said, okay, when do you think youll be ready . I said i need to get on there once. But i would not have done that as a 05. Thats been an important learning point. Thats why youre an 06, not an 05. We have only got a minute left, and im not going to have any more questions, im sorry. But 30 seconds, kevin. Last observation. If theres one. Yes. We need to insure that Risk Management does not turn into risk avoidance. Because everyone is scared right now, understandably so. Everyone is concerned. Were in the business of fighting our nations battles at sea. And were not in the business of avoiding every possible risk just so i dont get in trouble. Totally agree. Gerry, last 30second observation . Yeah, ill play off what kevin just said. When you read the report, it comes out almost with the emphasis on safety and Risk Management, its almost a risk avoidance kind of message. I know and i applaud the efforts up at swaths to get at pco pxo course to get the folks going out, xo in command to think tactically and think about, get their head in the game, the prepare part about what is it going to mean to go into combat. What does that mean . How do i get my crew prepared for that . Thats going great. At the same time, i hear c. O. S tell me they get chided for coming in after midnight because of the way their schedules are driven because that stresses the crew and et cetera, et cetera. And so to me, theres a bit of a mismatch in messages here. I agree with kevin. My recommendation to the active community, be very, very careful about the safety and Risk Management side of things. And at the same time, we have to be able to go to war in a way thats effective, whether its safe or not is part of the equation but not the equation. Thank you. John, do you have a final thought . Were going to flip the stage. I guess both of those secretaries talked about innovation and change. And i guess, again, i use the circadian thing as an example. Heres an idea that was grounded in science, was researched extensively, and yet it took seven to ten years to go from a good idea to fruition. And why . Because of maybe we have always done it this way, dont understand the Science Behind it, but whats the next thing . Is it in cyber . Is it in Weapons Technology or ship building . And is seven years fast enough . Looking at the title on the screen, and so what can we do . Innovation has always been our strong suit, but weve got to find a way, you know, i have written a lot of proceedings articles and it seems like every one i write i get a note from somebody on active duty saying wow, thanks for saying that. I wish i could say that. You know, say it. I guess is what i would say. Dont say it. I say say it. I knew we were going to disagree at some point. I thank each of our panelists for this great discussion. Thanks very much. [ applause ] very much. [ applause ] very much. [ applause ]y very much. [ applause ]o very much. [ applause ]u very much. [ applause ] given our discussion so far today, i think its appropriate to have admiral bill moran, who is in charge of the followup to the comprehensive review and also has a view on our conference theme. Are we ready . Hes been very outspoken on the topic of readiness, predating the incidents at sea. And also now is charged with the correction loop. Hes a career navy pilot whos commanded at all levels in the patrols reconnaissance community. Hes served in positions of responsibility such as commander patrol and reconnaissance group, Commander Air warfare, and as chief of naval personnel. Another area that will come into play in all aspects of these questions about readiness, ready to fight at the high end, and the comprehensive review. Since 31 may 2016, he served as the 39th vice chief of Naval Operations, and in this position, as i mentioned, he testified very forthrightly on readiness. Hes a member of the Naval Institute and served previously as a navy adviser to our board. Lets give a warm welcome to vice chief Naval Operations bill moran. [ applause ] good morning. I wish i had been here all morning because i understand the conversation has been terrific. And just listening to the wrapup of the panel, im a little concerned im just going to cover old ground, but ill do my best. You know, the theme here is about what it takes to win, and the comments at the very end of that panel were incredibly important. And ill foot stomp. We have got to bring in, train, deliver experience for our sailors and in particular our Commanding Officers, to wake up every morning, assess the risk, and decide how to move forward. At the end of the day, though, we gotta win. And when you think about a frieth in the South China Sea or anywhere else around the globe, thats going to require an awful lot of risk taking. Question for all of us as we work our way through this discussion is, how do we train people to assess risk and take the appropriate action given the circumstances that they face day in and day out . So this is a perfect venue for me to come talk about a lot of different things. And i hope no one asks me what my prediction is for whether were going to have a budget on friday or not. I really have no idea. But we all need to pray that we do have one. So look. As the vice chief, im focused practically every single day i get up on what it takes to win. But a good deal of my time is spent on strategy, risk, and resources to help answer the important question thats on the board this morning. And that all the panelists appear to have addressed in one form or another. But my answer to your question is quite simply, we need more money. But we need money that we can count on more than anything else. Money has got to be in the right accounts. Its got to be at the right time, its got to be predictable. So that we can make efficient use of taxpayer dollars. I think the secretary spoke to it a little earlier today, that when he addressed continuing resolutions. They are painful. When youre trying to operate a business as big as the United States navy. And they cost us significant amount of resources and waste an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to move faster in a world thats moving faster every single year. The secretary talked about the navy estimate that since 20112012, we have lost because of continuing resolutions, on the order of 4 billion that we could have spent. We could have done a lot with, could have addressed a lot of problems. More often than not, in the process of losing that money, we continue to ask our people to do an awful lot. And they are, i think you would agree, pretty incredible. And they have been incredible for the last 16 years at responding to important demands by our Combatant Commanders and in National Security staff. But we have an obligation to resource our people properly for what we ask them to do on a day in and day out basis. More delays in budgets, more delays in continuing resolutions, are not what we need. Staying ahead of peer or near peer competitors in russia and china, and continuing the fight against violent extremist organizations takes money we can count on. For the navy, this is money to pay for more ships, aircraft, and munitions. More capable aircraft, ships, and munitions. And professionally trained and disciplined sailors to operate in a far more contested environment. The truth is, the truth is we have the Smallest Navy weve had in a century. I can remember as a junior officer coming into this wonderful organization in the early 80s, when we had one existential threat. We knew a lot about that threat. We knew how we were going to fight that threat. And we had 600 ships or thereabouts. And a whole lot more airplanes than we have today. And on any given day as a junior officer with that sized navy, we had 90 to 100 ships deployed around the globe. So our bench back in the early 80 against one threat was really deep. When you think about the numbers alone. Today, a much different story. Except on any given day, weve got 90 to 100 ships deployed around the globe. We have four, potentially five adversaries instead of one. We have half the number of ships and airplanes that we did in the 80s. So without growth, we cant do what were being asked to do at the level were being asked to do it. And we cant make the deficit up simply by capacity simply by capability alone. That is important, but its not everything. The absence of money that we can count on means we risk lives. Our effectiveness as a naval force, and perhaps even the survival of our Maritime Standing in the world. To repeat a favorite quote that we use, our nation can afford survival. It must. Last year at sna and last year testifying in front of congress, i overstated the obvious by saying that the fastest way to grow both capacity and capability is to make whole what we already have. That story has not changed. For the past several years, too many ships, submarines and aircraft have been parked, not ready to operate due to maintenance delays and capacity. Were without resource to make whole what we already owned. We were not given to our war fighters the time and the tools to build capability through their own experiences. We were making tough choices, often bad choices between Operations Readiness and growing the force. As the comprehensive review of the recent Surface Force mishaps in seventh fleet and elsewhere, these issues and others contributed to the collisions because we took our eye off the ball. And to continue the analogy, we were executing a fullcourt press when we didnt have a sufficient bench to play the entire game. A slow erosion of readiness emerged in parts of our navy. Losing ground on operational safety, teamwork, radical candor, and professionalism. We got sloppy. Complacency set in in places. And we got complacent with our own standards of how we operate at sea. And i think it was just briefly talked about before i walked in, that cando culture, which we all love to be part of in our business, which is a great strength, could and at times does become a weakness in some respects. Much of this is why size of the fleet and the quality of the force matter as we try to move forward into the future. Any time an organization has fatalities like we experienced this summer, it is a shock to the system. A wakeup call for action. And we are fully committed to make this right. Just this past tuesday, we brought together for the first time an Oversight Board in the pentagon at s1, chaired by me, supported by admiral davidson and admiral swift and a host of other important players. And because the corrective actions go beyond the surface navy to siscoms, to how we man, organize, and operate, they have asked me tooversea the board and the implementation of over 50 recommendations from admiral davidsons very good work in that report. As well as other recommendations from the gao and our own ig. And the good ideas that are going to come from our fleet c. O. S around the globe. The oversights board, just to be clear, is simply to remove barriers to anyone with a responsibility to implement actions. Were going to help prioritize those actions and remain focused on addressing root causes with necessary resources to make them whole. To get after this will take a lot of time, and it will take money. And its on Senior Leadership to set the tone and get it right. The fleet, the public, the media, and congress have the right to shed a bright light on what were doing. But make no mistake about it, folks. We are in this to win. So back to the question of the day here. What will it take to win . Step one was taken, frankly, in fiscal year 17. With the much needed injection of readiness dollars, its helped us buy down some of the maintenance backloads were experiencing, and begin to invest more in spare parts. Step two is working to fill in the holes in fiscal year 18. And the tragic incidents over the summer accelerated our focus on wholeness of the fleet. Step three will be a daybyday effort to create a whole navy by fundamentally getting after the basics. The blocking and tackling, because if we fall short of todays training and experience, we will fall short in the same areas in the future. You cannot buy that back. Several years ago, i ran into one in need of repair, but it took a back seat to procurement accounts. And we sought to grow the force and improve capabilities. There was simply not enough money to maintain the balance between them, especially as the demands to operate the force were high and increasingly growing year after year. As they reminded us earlier, every year for the past ten years we didnt even start the year with a budget. So we didnt have the money that we needed, the amount of money we needed to count on. With any luck, and i mean we might need some luck here, and a budget emerges for 18, well be ready to sustain our readiness objectives we started in 17. Well be able to implement fully the recommendations of the comprehensive review and other issues identified in the process. To lay the foundation to create an even better fleet for tomorrow. With readiness and wholeness stabilized in our budget, and a comprehensive review fully addressed, we will be able to fund and build towards a larger, more capable force in fiscal year 19 and beyond. Much closer, i believe, to the navy the nation needs, and certainly not the Smallest Navy we have had in a century. We also have to take a look at our game plans in the fleet. What is the right model for our forces overseas . How do we fight with those forces that are Forward Deployed . We all know the game plans shift as adversaries change. In some places, mantoman basketball defense is necessary, and in others, a zone works just fine. But the trend over the past decade is were spending a lot more times in zones than we are in man to man. When you become a one dimensional team, youre at risk of losing. The navy has always been equipped, trained, and manned to fight at the high end of warfare. A plug and play force in the joint environment. A lethal war fighting team that moves seamlessly between cocompounds around the globe. The new Defense Strategy and supporting military strategy would likely still value very highly a maneuverable, flexible, and resilient force. And i believe it will also still value forces that are in the neighborhood when tensions arise. Forces that we can employ that have a wicked jab to thwart an adversarys intentions. To do this around the globe again we need money, and money that we can count on so we can buy more ships and more capacity into the future. And maintain the readiness and wholeness investments we have made over the last two years. Todays 278 ships or even the 305 already planned wont get this done. Theres a number of studies out there that speak to a navy in the mid300s. Pick your number, doesnt matter. All we know right now is we need to Start Building towards a larger number. And while were looking hard at ships, were also looking very hard at capability. To raise the bar on naval power by making our existing ships more lethal well into the future. Winning in the future will take developing technologies that will continue to set us apart from adversaries and in some of these areas, just catching up. Directed energy, artificial intelligence, survivable cons, digital, cyber, advanced payloads, all will require Stable Funding and a commitment across the government, and a commitment from our industry partners. Our approach is less about driving to a specific number of ships and more about what we can achieve by combining lethality, networks, and advanced technologies. A fleet where everything, platforms, isr, data, war fighters, can talk to each other at machine speed. Where information is passed seamlessly to every asset and every operator, and when the environment degrades, we recover faster than our adversaries. Counting ships tells us less about how to win than measuring the right capabilities enabled by the right advanced technologies. But i like our odds in this contest. And make no mistake, it will be a contest. Because the technology around the globe today knows no boundaries. But to win here, we need money we can count on to get ahead of our adversaries. Let me close by talking about our folks. If you have heard me speak before, you wont be surprised to hear this. The most important factor in this entire discussion is the Human Element of our people. Another hard lesson out of the comprehensive review was a reminder that more ships, better ships, smarter ships, are merely dangerous objects in an otherwise unforgiving sea unless we have sailors who with the right confidence, composure and character to deploy and execute safely every day. We will win. We will win at the end of the day because of our people. We owe them the training that moves at the pace of technology, that acknowledges that Young Americans today learn differently than we did. Training that is timely, local, and available at point of need must be our future path. This, too, is going to cost money. But it cannot be traded in the ocean of tough choices or we risk losing. To win, we need money we can count on. We need the support of congress, and i think we have seen that. Now it needs to show up in a signed budget. So i appreciate pete and the organization here, the opportunity to come and speak to this group. I have a feeling i have covered a lot of the same ground. I also have a feeling im going to get different kinds of questions. So im going to ask pete to come up and join me. I look forward to your questions. Thank you very much. [ applause ] have a seat. All right. Well, just to recap, because you spoke at another event this morning, to the Information Warfare conference thats going on in another part of town, secretary came on strong for the issue of increased resources and the disruption element that you brought up on the continuing resolutions. He also talked about the need to be tough and lethal. Secretary werk really said, if you can come if it comes down to a choice, capability, he would take capability over capacity, making what we have whole and useful. He basically said was a nobrainer. He also made some comments about the congress that you cant say. But he basically said if they have a job to do and they dont do it, then theyre not cutting it. And then in our comprehensive review panel, we really just went back and forth on the what are the important elements of the review, how can we get at it, and the prioritization of it, something youre very close to as the leader of the co comprehensive review followup. Just to start off, i mean, the dilemma appears to be that we see the need for correction and we dont ever seem to quite get there. Example, you mentioned, so did secretary spencer, 2017, 2018, were going to fix readiness. In 2019, the plane is going to come off the ground on capacity. But here we are, you know, ive just got on friday they had gunston hall was used as an example, using gunston hall as an example, this is a testimony in front of the hask. He said the dock landing ship had its last maintenance vulnerable three years. Each year the navy had to make decisions about how to flow spending. When gunston hall had to miss its planned start date, it kept losing its place in line, ultimately, the availability took place, increased cost from 44 million to 111 million, and the time of maintenance went from 207 days to 696 days. Thats a ship example. An aircraft example, we recently had the air boss say up to two thirds of his aircraft, the ones that are outside the maintenance loop, arent ready. Arent operationally available like they should be. So are we stuck in this pit . Are we going to get what give said us confidence, vice chief, because this has been tough . What gives us confidence to break this cr business and get beyond the hole were in. Sorry for the long question, but i was trying to summarize from the morning that you werent able to attend. Like i said, im sorry i missed it. Probably would have been useful for me to ask some of those folks a question or two. Yeah, i mean, theres no question that when you look at the backlog for maintenance, just on the surface side, and frankly on the ssm side, our nuclear yards, we got a big hole to dig out of. Injection of cash in 17 helped a lot. Right. It helped avoid deferring more maintenance periods into the fiscal year 18, which carries a bigger price tag to it down the road. So we got started on that in 17. We took no reductions in readiness in 18, purposefully decided at the corporate level that we were going to maintain and sustain that readiness so we could continue to buy down the backlog and get onto a predictable turnaround cycle for our ships. Aircraft, same scenario. We have issues there with through put capacity on our depots, issues there with parts support supply. All of those accounts came under enormous pressure over the last five to eight years. It started really even before sequestration, but it was magnified by it. And i was director of warfare during the very beginnings of sequestration, and to sit around the table and look at the choices of continuing to fly and operate in places where the nation said we need our air wings against how much do i continue to fund at what levels to enable our accounts to put engineers on the flight line, parts in the lockers and all those things. Those are, you know, false choices. You dont want to make them, but you have to make them. So we have made those decisions. And now theyre coming home to roost. In just the amount of time it takes to turn around a ship in maintenance or get airplanes through maintenance. So the vectors are in the right direction. Our job now is to make sure that we stay committed to that. And the hard choices, again, will be made if we dont see the higher top lines that were talking about here in 18 and 19. Well come down to a choice of between operating the force, maintaining the readiness of the force, and buying a bigger force. And when i mean bigger, im not just taking about physical platforms. Im talking about the capabilities that make those platforms more advanced and more lethal. So those choices will come before us again, but at the end of the day, right now, our focus is on making sure what we have is ready to fight. And that includes the operating of the force for experience, and it includes the wholeness of the force to make sure when it does go to sea, it has what it needs. So in the interest of getting to audience questions, ill just ask one more question and ill open it up. But for the comprehensive review, you know, we have all seen large efforts like this get under way. Usually at the beginning, people remember why theyre there. And then you go in for the really hard things. Because the fact is that if it were easy, it would have been solved. So give us give our audience today the impression of urgency and commitment. You mentioned commitment in your remarks. When you got that group around the table, do you think they are ready to seize the day, and are they in it for the long haul . Because it seems like when you really get down to the second or third level of detail in the report, its across the whole spectrum. Are we really did you see that right look, the right energy, and do you feel you have the top cover to get her done. I dont need a whole lot of top cover as a four star. Im going to apply top cover from my level because i think as the vice chief, i spend, like i said, a lot of time on resourcing decisions. I think some of the resource monsters in the room know if were not following the objective of getting the force back to an acceptable level of wholeness and readiness, that im going to make sure that we are resourcing the changes we think are necessary. But i think we also have to be really careful here. I often think back to those that were in my shoes or in our shoes years ago in Naval Aviation when we were crashing airplanes right and left, and we had a horrible Safety Record in the 70s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, early 80. Admiral dunn mentioned that earlier. So we learned a lot from that. I wonder what those people thought about how committed they were to reducing the mishap rate. And you know, i was the benefactor of a young kid or a lot of the programs that were put in place, and a lot of this, by the way, didnt cost a lot of money. Its policy, its standards. Its behaviors that can often change it. And Naval Aviation took a while. It took arguably a decade, a decade and a half to set new standards of how you operate to drive the safety and the mishap rates down. I think about the submarine community in the mid2000s. Went through a similar point in time. They looked internally at their own community, made some changes that were important. Procedural changes, funding challenges, all of the things that argue it took a decade for them to pull that out, and today operate the most effective, safest submarine force in the world. So now, is it the Service Communitys turn . I guess so, but were all going to learn. Every community is going to learn from the comprehensive review. A lot of those things that are brought up are behavioral in nature, are about setting and maintaining standards. Not a floor, but raising the floor. Right. And continuing to do that. So is there a commitment, is there a sense of urgency . Absolutely. Was there a commitment and a sense of urgency, postbilall report . Absolutely. None of this is worth the paper its written on unless we follow through. So the Oversight Board is going to be there for as long as it takes. Im committed to it. And i would hope anybody that comes in behind me down the road would say the same thing because its too important to our navy, too important to our people at the end of the day. Thank you. And with that, im going to open it up, and i think i see robby harris out there at the mike. Congratulations to you. Good morning, sir. How are you . Congratulations to you and to the Naval Institute. Its been a superb morning of speakers who have been spot on and honest. I appreciate that and i thank you for that. As i think back over the three sets of speakers, including the vice chief, all have touched on fundamentals, if you will. If you go back to the secretarys introductory comments, and he got the question about the fat leonard situation. And he agreed that its not just a southern fleet problem, and bob agreed that the fat leonard thing is not just a seventh fleet problem. It actually called into question, i think, and unfortunately, the moral fiber, the ethical fiber of the u. S. Navy. Particularly the navy officer corps. And i wonder what the Naval Academy and rotc and ocs for that matter are doing about that. Thats the first fundamental, the moral fiber, ethical fiber of the u. S. Navy has been called into question. And then go on to bob werk this morning, and bobs discussion about how we have bias in favor of presence rather than capability. The fundmal question, why did we do that . And then, the most recent panel this morning, Gerry Roncolato and others, apparently some of our sailors dont know how to operate ship control console. Their officers at the deck dont understand the rules of the road. There are c. O. S who dont enforce their night orders. Its pretty fundamental. I think it calls into question how did we get into this situation in which the very fundamentals of our navy are called into question. I would love to hear an answer. Well, robby, i tried to address that in my remarks. So ill submit those for the record. If you will. So its a combination. There are systemic issues that are at play here. I think we would all agree, i would call those contributing factors. The causal factors for the mishap mishaps, are much mor local. Theyre leadership issues. And Naval Aviation, when we go look at a classa mishap where we lose an airplane or loss of life, causal factors are usually the result of several steps at any point of the way, any single action, single decision, single question, somebody mentioned that earlier, just the courage to ask the question, would have put off the mishap. Not necessarily changed the systemic pressure on the environment. So we have to look at both of these things. The root cause of each one and then the root causes that undergird the environment and the pressure that were asking our sailors to operate in. It goes to training. It goes to leadership. It goes to manning. Theres so many aspects of this that are out there. I dont you know, theres so many times when i just want to stand up. I am so proud of our navy. The men and women we have at sea are no different than the men and women you served with. They want to do a great job. Nobody wakes up in the morning and tries to do a bad job, right . They try to make the right decisions. We are constantly faced with different pressures out there that are frankly no different than others who have gone before them. So the moral fiber, the ethical fiber, the backbone of our people and our navy is strong. But our people arent perfect. And people expect perfection. The world we live in expects perfection. Any time you fall short of perfection, you get criticized and go under the microscope, more so today than at any other time i think is maybe the major difference. So ill stand up very strongly for our men and women out there that are doing on and there are many examples of excellence in our navy over this last year at the same time weve had had these other tragedies occ occur. For all of you that are retired or active duty, reserves, we got to talk bute the good things, the great things that our navy is doing. And recognizing that it is our responsibility to learn from the things we got wrong and be willing to admit when we got them wrong and go after them. Thats the only way you grow as an individual, a professional and a force. So thats why im going to stay focussed on this. The Oversight Board we all agree, at the center of the universe in how the lens in which we view all of the recman dagdss, the challenges that have been posed to is us by congress in other organize eggs. The center of the universe is the ceo on the bridge of that ship. The submarine. Everything we do need be to making that job or that person easier to manage. Less strenuous in terms of having to fight resourcing challenges, manning challenges, all of those things and not adding in to the ruk sack that is already pretty had heavy right now. So my concern as we inter into this oversight responsibility is we dont just pile on a bunch of response to action simultaneously and overwhelm the fleet with all of the things were try doing but that we prioritize in terms of the safe and effective operation of our fleet first and foremost and then we start looking at other systemic issues that need to be doctorsed. Instead of just going oo like were all prone to do as naval officers is just go solve the problem and the sooner the better. There has to be a pace that the fleet can tolerate. And i think thats an important aspect of how we go forward. We had a question earlier about including younger voices and getting their feedback and i was just going to ask you. May be premature because you just started this process. But do you envision this having a feedback loop . What you just said reminded me. Where you get at maybet the department head, up to naval officers in the fleet, feedback on either what youre changing or contemplating changing to kind of get at what you just said when you dont want to crush them while saving them . Something the Service Community started a couple years ago that is starting to bare fruit is similar to what others have done in what i call their weapons tactics instructors. They pros, the wtis and i think we go to them early and often in this process and get their direct feedback. They were out in much closer contact with the fleet. They care a lot because they were chosen to reach that patchwearing status aabove their peers for a reason. But i also think and we talked about this last week is we have to constantly pulse our ceos to make sure what were addressing meets their most urgent needs now and then get insights from them about the pace and direction that we want to take the other fixes. Thats great thats contemplated in your process. Sidney, are you at the microphone or Wishful Thinking on your part, admiral. I was taking notes of what you were saying. A admiral, you mention the 4 billion figure. I did a little quick math and thats actually in terms of the whole budged, thats less than half a percent over the years. But what where is that 4 billion coming from and what is the litany of other impacts were looking at from this cr . If theres another two weeks, will they delay availability . Meaning we cant overall aircraft or other things that will be forbidden or not allowed because they required a budget increase. If you want to stroke a check for 4 billion, i have a lot i can do with that, even though its half a percent. If you look that final 12 budget, were 100 billion short of where we thought we needed in terms of money, reliable money we could count on to build the navy we needed to fulfill the national Defense Strategy in 2012. If anything the worlds gotten more complex, harder to fight in and crs are painful. Sequestration and the immediate cut to our tow in 20 fwevl was really significant. All that said when, for the last 10 years, and arguably 2 3 of the last four decades weve started every year under a cr, weve gotten pretty good at only playing 3 4s of a game. The fleet commanders have their lisch and everything from aircraft mantens are all well nood in terms of the level of budgeting we get. We had had to do that last year and then the new administration added a significant amount of cash in our readiness accounts that allowed tuse catch up to deferred maintenance that had had already been done. Jim, were you at the microphone or hanging there . At the microphone. Please. Captain, you used the term radical feedback or radical in your comments. Radical candor and so i wanted to pull the string a little bit on that. The performance aspect has been woven throughout the morning. So i was curious to get a little bit more for the crowd to find out how navys going to get it back. Because i would contend weve done a fairly poor job of actually being honest with ourselves and knowing our strengths and weaknesses and our system we have now doesnt do a very good job of that. Nor do we do a good job. Over at the Naval Academy we see this a lot with young trying to get feedback ophow theyre doing. And both those in leadership position and subordinates. And much can be said the same kind of behavior occurs in the fleet. And if you look at the collisions, especially mccain and fitzgerald, the lack of a questioning attitude really hurt us. And that can be driven by how young jr. Officers are raised. But i think its largely the atmosphere in a tried a. So weve got to learn the lessons that they dont want to be that Commanding Officer. And the way you dont be that Commanding Officer is by having forcible back ups. They come from Junior Officers and crew members who when they dont feel right, doesnt look right, its not standard procedure commands arent exactly standard that they question it. And just that question aloan can often avert a disaster. So thats what i mean by radical candor. Its a strong term that i use just to get people to think about how candid are you going to be . Nothing more than that. Thanks, chief. You have a lot on your plate. Any day for the vice chief you have lot on your plate and today particularly so. We want to support you. If theres anything we can do in this effort, let us know. Whether its a survey, some time of pulsing to get information from our constituents, our members. But we want to thank you for taking the time here today out of your busy day to come and talk to us and its good to hear that you feel like the comprehensive review has seized the team for action and commitment. So we thank you and we appreciate lets give hem