This discussion. You can see the rest of it on cspan. Org. Going live as maritime administrator mark busby is talking about defense funding, live coverage on cspan2. Retired navy admiral mark busby. I would like to welcome the general officers and the many distinguished guests that are with us this morning. Welcome to our industry partners, leaders of industry and others for your continued support of this event in the navy league as a whole, General Dynamics is pleased to sponsor the special topic breakfast. These events and venues for the Defense Industry to interface with government requirements and acquisition professionals, something that we value. General dynamics thanks you for your participation and we thank General Dynamics for their support. Now back to our special guest. Are you ready, admiral . Admiral mark busby was sworn in as maritime administrator on august 8, 2017. Prior to his appointment he served as president of the National Defense transportation association. A position he has held since retiring from the navy in 2013 where he served our great navy for 34 years. While in the navy he served on staff of the sixth fleet, Us Fleet Forces command, the navy staff and the joint staff. Mark served as commander of the u. S. Navys Military Sealift Command from october 2009, to march 2013 which is where i had the opportunity to meet him for the first time and as former boss admiral john harper. We look forward to your remarks this morning. If you would please join me in welcoming our maritime administrator, admiral mark busby to the podium. [applause] thank you and good morning. A pleasure to be with you. When mike mentioned this opportunity was available and bacon was going to be served i said yes immediately. I kept the bar fairly low in that respect. Any day you start with bacon has got to be a good day but great to be here with you. Thank you for getting up early and spending part of the day here. Good to see you, thanks for being here. Admiral fox, admiral church, good to see you again, sammy and i were staying on a beach together in haiti after the earthquake in 2010. A pair of binoculars looked like macarthur standing on the beach. I was bringing a flashlight battery, no lights were on in haiti but great to be here. My old shipmate, jeff 9 or and steve good dell spend the day in the pentagon, wondering why we were there but bill stevens, congratulations on your ascension to the leadership role of navy league. Navy league will greatly prosper under your leadership and thrilled to have stevens leading as executive director. We could not have asked for a better leader for this organization but it is great to be with you this morning to update you on what is going on in the world of ma and Maritime Affairs. Im going to not drone on a long time to leave some time for questions. Im sure i wont cover everything, maybe touch a few things so i will talk about it, please tag me during question time but i got to say right up front how much we appreciate the hard work men and women and supporters of the membership has done to focus on maritime issues, not just navy and coast guard and marine corps which we have traditionally done but the merchant marine as well. So many aspects that need to be discussed that havent reached light of day for many years. Really stepped up in the last several years, specifically to bring a lot of these issues to the front. When i am testifying on the hill, always there in a previous role in the the league and fairly well supported there. So thank you very much for what you have done and what you continue to do. John task and is leading the charge, could not have asked for a more knowledgeable person. Sealift and Maritime Affairs, he continues to mentor all of us on those kinds of issues, as was mentioned in my biography, i was sworn in just a little over two years ago, eighth of august. Im over my second anniversary in the job. It has been an amazingly quick two years. There has been so much going on, cant believe we are two years down the road already. It is probably a Good Opportunity to reflect a little bit on the last few years so i thought i would touch on a few things here this morning. I was at the jumping off point. I was rummaging through one of the many piles i have on my desk around my office of that. I came across a questionnaire i filled out when going through the confirmation process. If youve ever gone through that process it is truly amazing and i tell people i wish i had paid more attention to a civics class on how Government Works to figure out all that is done but part of that questionnaire, i had to list the three top priorities. I was going to focus on as the administrator. The first of those priorities was to get kings point, the Merchant Marine Academy back on track, as a graduate of the academy 40 years ago this year, the academy had been on not a good course the last several years. The key to that was leadership. Im not going to go into all the details around that, but as most of us who wore the uniform now, leadership played a key role in the health and functioning of a command. Taking it to the top, a bandleader can take a hot performing organization about, part of the first thing we did was get a new superintendent at kings point, rear admiral jack bonow who was a graduate himself, recently retired as president and ceo of the river maritime to exxon mobil shipping. Someone with a rich maritime background, has the credibility with maritime history to function there and hired a new dean from the naval academy, graduate marine corps, fast experience, combat experience, vast experience at academia and that dynamic duo has turned kids point around, done a tremendous job. The alumni are aligned, parents are aligned, midshipmen are aligned, the fact staff are aligned with them. It is a thing of beauty to go up there and see people that are happy and see things getting done. It underscores how critical leadership is, having the right leader there to move things forward. We significantly improved the academys programs for sexual harassment, Sexual Assault. That was born out in the most latest set of surveys among all the Service Academies with the exception of kings point. In instances of Sexual Assault at kings point, went down substantially and significantly and i think culture has turned around. The key thing is midshipmen have taken ownership of the issue, one of the first things i told them when i took over as administrator, i said superintendent and everybody else up here, issue edicts and regulations telling him not to do it all day long, telling you all you are not going to do it to each other. The problem is going to go on. Then i asked my classmates that are in the room in the auditorium to stand up and i attended my classmates, they are on faculty and staff and said look around. I go up there all the time. I get a charge of energy, i want to feel good. When i had a particularly bad week i go up there and talk to the first or second midshipman and time charged up and feel good. Its just a good thing. If you have been up to visit, you are invited, please come up, walk around, talk to the midshipman. It will make your day. The second they wanted to go after was the Ready Reserve force and ensuring its letter to answer the call. Come into it i obviously for my time at nsc to the Ready Reserve force was getting to be an aging force. 44 years average age of the 46 vessels that are in the Ready Reserve force. These are the majority of our government assets that will answer the call immediately when we need a sealift, a a major sealift, Major Movement of forces for our country. They are spread out amongst all the coasts on typically a fiveday readiness, manned by nine people. Those nine people have to keep the ship ready to activate and be out the door for our ships in 96 hours in order to go on dock and provide sealift that our nation needs. That is becoming increasingly a challenge. Anybody knows anything about ships or been involved with maintaining ships knows that as ships age they get more and more challenging to maintain, and also to keep modern. Most of the gear on a 44yearold ship is not manufactured anymore. A lot of it, in many ways its cyber secure because it doesnt have any electronics. [laughing] so thats an upper part but a lot of the control systems, a lot of the communications, a lot of the bridge equipment, its generations old and all that requires updating. So thats the challenge. Thats a big challenge. Its something that we watch, theres been reports written on it recently on the challenges we are having, maintaining that force and how ready would it really be. We routinely test that. We have a thing called turbo activation that trends, runs that activates a certain number of those ships, no notice every years to ensure they can do it. They get graded. Those grades get reviewed at the highest levels and we have to report readiness of our assets day today all the time. Something that general lines at trans, the admiral track very, very closely as do i. I looked other port first thing this morning before i came in. Right now today as we stand right today, we are at 76 readiness. Some of those 46 ships, 76 are ready. The rest of them are in some form either corrective or preventive maintenance that would not allow them to answer the bell today, if called upon. We have two of those ships active doing missions today, getting ready to do a transfer or redeployment of forces for training. One of the ships we activated last week suffered a fire in the interim the day before supposed to get underway. Fire was extinguished. The crew did a great job. Got the fire out very quickly, no injuries. We then activated a sister ship within about 12 hour notice and get underway, and that the mission. Theres issues. That 5g shows these things happened on an older ship. It also shows her people are very cando and got that sister ship ready to go and met mission. So we are pushing forth on that. As i said lots of recent reports, lots of documentation of Readiness Challenges are coming. The rand report is a a recent. The center for strategic and budgetary assessments did one called sustaining the flight they came out earlier this, very good report. Commend it to you if you have not yet checked it out. The other thing is congress has gotten interest in this. I was testifying before congress five times this spring, all on sealift readiness. I was happy to be the tethered goat up there to take the incoming rounds, as long as the word was getting out there and folks like senator wicker, congressman joe courtney, congressman whitman, leaders and the congress are really starting to take hold of this issue. John garamendi of california, all very strongly focus in this area. I think its terrific. All very, very good. I mention transcom. We have general mike weir here is a new transcom happy to have him on board. Weve already had them down on a couple of our ships come drinking coup attempt making sure he gets i love it when army folks like general lines as a transcom command and now general were come i love it when army guys are involved with sealift because they understand probably better than anybody that the way they get to the fight is in a ship. Its not an back of a c17 cannot in the back of sc5. Its not walking across the water. Its in the belly of a ship. To have the army advocating that a stronger than any blue suit or ever had so thanks for being. Welcome aboard and think serving out advocate going forward. We have a strategy, the a strategy along with transcom for recapitalizing. Three problems to Service Life Extension on some of the ships to get them up out to 60 years. Some of the ships that can sustain it. My new or used ships off the market and modify them as necessary to increase their military usefulness and build new ships. I guess that would be an increasing level of expense as well. Thats the program we sort of signed up to you. Its going to take a while. Were working very closely with maybe to figure out how to budget this. There is first to ships are budgeted in 22 and 21, right . 30 and 31 million to buy two ships. Well see what kind of ships we can do. We are going to do the procurement of those ships for the navy so were well into the process right now. My head it sealift is here this morning, and thats kind of what he is doing most days now is figuring out how to do that. We dont like to do it as quickly as possible, but there are budget constraints. Again, the navy has to work through that. Transcom is very interested in making this happen sooner or later so well come to some conclusion here im sure. A third kind of thing priority i laid out was a vigorous defense of the jones act, and those of us that follow Maritime Affairs know that the jones act has been under some attack over the last year, year and a half from many, many different fronts. Lots of discussion about it. Lots of word thrown out there, much of it miss information and purposely misleading and misrepresenting the facts, not appreciating the vast impact of the jones act actually has on our nation and on shipping. For anybody who doesnt know what the jones act is, merchant marine act of 1920 specifies that any cabotage, that is trade occurring within the United States or its possessions, must be on an american built ship, american township, american cruiseship flying the u. S. Instant in order to keep our trade within our national lifelines. Also provides a source of mariners for our industry. There are about 40,000 jones act of vessels, and by the so, i mean, tug, barge, coastal vessel, ship, tanker, containr ship. Of that 40,000, about 99 our large oceangoing ships, ships that you could take anywhere in the world and use for sealift that are manned by unlimited tonnage, unlimited oceans, mariners. Those are ships im particularly focused on because they provide part of the mariner pool to man up the rest of the crew from my Ready Reserve ships, should the time company you have the 99 ships in the jones act. You also have 81 ships u. S. Flag ships that are trading internationally. These are ships like american president lines and other American Railroad carriers that are carrying on International Trade with large ships. Its those 180 ships, that forms the pool of mariners, the employment of mariners that i have to call upon to man up the remainder of our reserve the ships, should the time. And thats been the challenge. Its not enough. Quite frankly, its just not enough and thats where youve heard me testify before congress that i believe were about 1800 mariners short of the requirement necessary to operate those 180 ships, which are critical for our sealift effort, plus an ever Ready Reserve force, my 46 plus the 15 that msc operates in sealift sort of mode. To man all of them up in a time of crisis, a prolonged time of crisis pixel about four to six months after we activate everything, were going to be we believe writer in 18 hundred mariners short. So how do you make that up . A question i get asked every single time. We need more places for people to work during peacetime. We need a larger u. S. Flag fleet, by about 45 ships. People ask a big should use merchant marine be . How big does it need to be . Strictly from a security and National Security point of view, its about 45 more ships, of people, you can take that argument all different directions. If you look at the tanker requirements, should we get into a big go round, a big dustup indopacific, we probably need 86 tankers under most scenarios to do the left of the fuel back and forth to the western pacific. So those have to come from someplace. With a total of six under u. S. International trade right now. There are several more jones act tankers that obviously could be put in place if necessary but we are short there. All these areas are where we need to focus and why the jones act is such a critical part. If you took the jones act the way, those american jobs in all likelihood would go away. Youre talking about the majority of the ships that employ unlimited tonnage mariners. It would have tremendous impact on our National Security, let alone our economic security. So that was the jones act something i can focus on very much, and weve gotten a lot of good support from maritime ministry. People have come up online that at the back some of the rhetoric that has been out there, incomplete story, and thats going to continue. Next year 2020 is the 100th anniversary of the jones act, and the know there are those out there that would very much like to celebrate the demise of the jones act on its 100th anniversary. So i think its going to take work by all of us to continue to focus on defending the jones act here going forward. Some other things that we are kind of looking at, continuing to push forward to make sure that we have enough sealift is the Maritime Security program. Program thats been around quite a while that provides a stipend, small stipend to help offset the cost of operating under the u. S. Flag from a lot of our carriers. We have 60 ships that are part of the program. Right now the receiving a 5 million per your stipend pixel between that 5 million plus cargo preference cargo they get from the government, less any other cargo they can scrape up from around the world, thats how they stay in business and have a state under the u. S. Flag. These are ships that are going to require as part of the sealift surge, they will come after the Ready Reserve force ships a caring, and in sustaining our forces overseas. Its one thing to get them over there. Its quite another thing to sustain them in a contested environment, which we havent had to face really since world war ii. So when you think about how we are going to be sustaining flow of ships to distant shores, its not quite a bit n a be any benign environment probably next day. It will probably be in a contested environment, and that introduces a whole new set of challenges. Quite frankly hasnt been factored in before that we now have two, and it covers a very, very wide range of issues from motivation of the people to participate, to the number of ships av