Richardson to discuss the nation the navy needs. Almost 100 ships deployed around the globe. Reassure allis and ensure the freedom of the maritime. There are those that the greatest challenge has come from our own congress over a decade of continuing resolutions and fiscal restraints had an effect on the capacity, capabilities and readiness of the u. S. Navy. In light of this and the recent releeszed National Defense strategy. The discussion today could not be more timely. As retired submariner myself im hon in order be able to host today. Im a physics major and we share another common piece in our history that the admiral will talk b. Admiral john richardson, the bachelor of science in physics and holds masters degrees from mit and National Security from the national war college. He served on numerous sun marines and awarded an award for his time in command. Welcome everybody. Thank you so much. Thank you for that generous introduction. We do go way back. Back to the Naval Academy and i copied his papers a lot. We had a lot of time of staring at the back of each others heads in the boat. I want to thank you for putting this event together. In terms of events, there are sort of they go in three categories. You get a lot of invitations and there are some e you dont want to do and youll say no. There are some that you would rather not do but you probably have to do so you say yes reluctantly. And then there are some you are shopping around for that you really want to do and this was one of those events. Im eager to be here and looking around in the crowd, theres people who know as much or more about the strategy in the crowd and i want to get through my remarks quickly and get to the question and answer period which i think will be fun. Its a privilege to be here at heritage, the foundation itself has just a Firm Reputation for supporting National Security and the navy in particular. To start, before i get into my remarks about just a quick Operational Update as i speak now. My brief this morning shows that we have 92 ships for deployed in the United States navy today. About 60,000 sailors deployed. And that includes under way carry strike groups and the Ronald Raegon strike group for deployed in japan. Two groups with their expedition ordinary unit. Of course the strike groups come with the embarked air wing, the fighting arm of the carrier. A 14 submarines deployed todd which is a high point than our normal forced offering there between 10 and 12 normally. Ssbn on patrol as they have been 100 of the time since 1960 and that is an important part. Maintaining that alert status is an important part of the Program Going forward and we have six cruisers and destroyers on bmd station. As tom said, our discussion comes at a critical time for our navy as we face a dynamic changing maritime. It comes on annual events as well as we get read draw release the budget of 19. We wont discuss the details here until it is released, but it will be talking about some of the strategic underpinning that informs that budget. And as were talking strategy, another reality is that the National Security strategy has been released as the National Defense strategy just a couple of weeks ago. Secretary in that strategy provides a much needed framework. If you think about the navy the nation needs, an ellipsis at the end, dot dot, the nation needs to full full the maritime responsibility in the defense strategy. So we have one strategy for the department, the mds and this can be seen as part of the Maritime Component of that strategy. So were using the tagline the nation the navy needs. So as i said, well get through a quick discussion of the security environment and then well get to questions. So i thought i would throw up a couple of charts. I dont want to get too heavy in the charts. The room looked bigger in the pictures. If you look at the map of the world. This isnt an uncommon format for that depiction. So you see, you know, a lot of geography. Most of the political maps that you see are maps that focus on the land part of the globe. And so youve got both the political and geographic things represented here. Cities, towns, roads, those sorts of features. Not as uncommon as i said. And this blue stuff connects it. This is kind of how i see t. I start with the blue. In fact thats not that, thats just the template i see it. I see it more like that. Okay . Which is a depiction of just how busy things are in the maritime and getting busier all the time. So well well talk in a context of the return to great power of competition this morning and by very chirtue, we go back, and make comparisons. I would say it is just not a rerun of that last time. And i would say the last time we were in a Great Power Competition was on the order of 25 years ago, right . The cold war. Since that time in the last 25 years or so. Maritime traffic just ships on the ocean has increased 400 . And if you consider the fact that people have been going to sea for tens of thousands of years, 10,000 years is in the a bad estimate to see a fourfold increase in the last quarter century. Think about what that means in terms of managing that kind of traffic. And it is fuelled roughly doubling of the gpd of the globe, right . So a lot of that prosperity has been manifested and enabled by maritime traffic. Mega cities continue to grow. Expected to grow in 31 to 41 by 2030, the vast majority of the mega cities on the coastline. Our food and s increased 13 fold and expected to continue that way in the future. Does this have a laser . On this chart, depicted a number of things. In white, the sea lanes. And the diamond shapes are another feature of the diamondism in the maritime domain and the purple shaded, technology gave us access to resources on the sea floor that we never had before. Now weve got access to oil, natural gas, and other Natural Resources and minerals. The lines that run roughly parallel to the sea lanes but they are color in gold or orange signify the undersea cable network. This infrastructure under sea on which rides 99 of International Internet traffic. So when we talk about a cloud, were really looking in the wrong direction from my standpoint, right . A cloud, you look up and most of that information is in the sea. We should be talking about a lake. Okay . So help me there. Im trying to change this whole not Cloud Computing but lake computing. Another thing depicted here is the polar icecaps at the top of the chart. And those are the smallest theyve been in that period of time, 25 years since the last time we have been in Great Power Competition giving rise to access to more resources, sea lanes of communication that simply just werent there before. And so given these dynamics and the maritime and others, a balance strategy of a balance strategic approach is more important than ever. The priorities have been defied by the National Security strategy. Protect and promote america prosperity, preserve peace through strength and advance american influence throughout the world and the National Defense strategy picks up and describes the imperative to confront the challenges to challenges head on. Were going to compete, get deterred and win. Centered on three major lines of effort which are to build a more looet l force and continue to strengthen alliances and attract new parters. So expand and deepen those alliances and to look to reform the department in terms of the way we do our business and acquire the material with which we do our business. And so this is also the handing off point. The navy the nation needs picks up that agenda and that call to action. I want to talk in terms quickly, in terms of how i see defining naval power. Theres been a good consensus including the consensus by the Heritage Foundation and many other studies over the last roughly two years that have all converged on the conclusion that the navy needs, we need more navals power to meet our responsibilities to the nation. So i want to talk about the concept of naval pow wither and break it down into a few dimensions. Dimensions that hang together. It is difficult to talk about koe skmeernt naval power if you start stripping them out and disconnect them. You have to keep them in balance to provide this sense of integrity or wholeness. One way to increase naval power is to build a bigger fleet. And a number of studies that i talk about talk about capacity. In the neighborhood of 300 to 350 ships is. There were a number of other study that is went there and the congress picked up on that and the National Defense authorization act has a statement in there that we will do whatever we can to achieve a 355 ship navy. Subject to appropriation and authorization and all those things. So this idea of the numbers of platforms, not a great leap of intuition that a bigger navy is a more powerful navy. A second component, a second dimension of naval power is to build a better fleet. So if you modernize them in other ways with better systems and make each one of those things more capable, then that means, each one being more capable, they sum up also to more naval power, a more capable fleet. We are on the cusp of intriguing technologies that would not only increase our capability very much but also could do so and get us on the correct side of the cost curve. So im looking hard at things like directed energy, high powered microwaive, lasers and other innovative ways. Also in this group, this better fleet and capability dimension, we may want to consider things like unmanned. Some of the unmanned platforms may be in the platform dimension, many of them here in the capability dimension. So were looking hard at building out our family of unmanned water system, surface systems and air systems. Third dimension of power as we label power as we think about it is to take those platforms with their inherent capability which we can increase and network them together. So this third component is a network fleet. So we have sort of a bigger fleet, a more capable fleet and now a network fleet. And there are plenty of examples in history where the power of networking things together, creatively adaptively brings more power to that force. So we can talk about some of those historical examples and but it makes intuitive sense as well. It checks with the chart that if youre able to share data across the force, youre able to respond to that awareness with more agility and you can be a more powerful fleet. Not talked about enough is what ill call the fourth dimension, a more talented fleet. And if you think about, you know, growing these other dimensions and nav a l power. Were going to have to man that fleet with sailors. The skill sets with which the sailors are going to need, different than what we have right now, right . Particularly when you think about lets go back to the network fleet. Were talking about sharing and trying, assimilating sifting through you know, vast amounts of data that come from growing sets or networks and the such. And so as we get you know, a bigger fleet, okay were going to need more sailors, as we get a better fleet were going to need sailors trained differently than trained now, theyre going to need different skills and as we consider a network fleet, were going to need some help. This is a realm of Artificial Intelligence, learningal go richls and figuring out a optimum way to Team Together our people, the sailors and machine assistance to be able to sort through that amount of data and get to those decision relevant bits of information as quickly as possible. Competing in that orient and decide part of the loop. So we can beat the competition and nknot part of that loop. Fifth dimension is the agile fleet. The c 2 structures which we command and control the fleet. Once we built the fleet, weve modernized it and networked it and manned it with the appropriate trained sal lors with the assistance they need. We have to figure out how were going to operate it and theres always a dynamic tension between the technology thats available to the fleet and the con ops which we operate that fleet. I dont know if is attention, maybe it an interplay is a better way to describe it. More possibilities become evident through technology and then adapt the con ops and then it feeds back to the technology, if i had i can do more. So theres a reinforcing diamondism. Distributing maritime operations, we are looking for a fleet that much more leverages the global maneuver power that is inherit in a navy. So as you think about this type of an environment, its the only thing that structures that environment are natural choke points. Okay . So some of those have been around since the United States navy started, 242 years ago. You can see them up there. All of these choke points define our structures. What it is not responsive to are artificial lines. We have to make sure we preserve the inherent agility of the navy as it maneuvers. We dont think of where a particular naval capability is, not only where it is but a few days away from where it might need to be. Theres this cd of tethers rather than a one or zero presence. All right . And then final dimension. This is getting complicated so the only thing i could have done worst is to have every one of these things on a slide. So that the final dimension, everything that ive talked about right now is a fleet in being. Potential energy if you will. Until you get that force out and you train it. And this is the ready fleet. Okay . And so turning all of that potential power and energy into Kinetic Energy requires readiness. Youve got to go out, steam and fly. You have to have your magazines full, logistics elements in place. Youve got to have your parts and do the maintenance. All of those things bring that fleet to light, if you will and turn it into actual energy. Actual fleet capability. So i hope i painted a picture then of naval power composed of elements. It is that wholeness, right . Its unless you have all those elements present, youre not talking the full dimensionalty of naval power. If you think about just naval power in its entirety. It moves us away from some of these false choices that we often get tangled up in in our conversations. If we think about capacity versus capability. Okay . Well, certainly there may be trade offs there but they both contribute to naval power. Both needed to be truly powerful in the maritime domain. Stand alone technologies versus network. Mission command versus network command. Its both and you have to navigate your way in the space dynamically. So theres these tradeoffs, when you think in terms of naval power, we can elevate our thinking above the false choices and concentrate on what is important. Im going to go nuke on you. If you got the pure element, all the parts of that nucleus are there and if you think about the six dimensions. A bigger fleet, a better fleet, a network fleet, a more talented fleet, an agile fleet with concepts of operations, agile control. If you tear one out you have an e ice sew taupe of naval power. These iscotypes are sometimes unstable. Not the true thing. As we talk about strategy here sort of a strategic overview and components of naval power. My aim is to give awe view through telescope. Not the mike crow scope. We try to get down into the microskop i can details and you can miss the strategic imperative. As long as were doing that, we need to take a step back and appreciate another dimension that we have to contend with. We can sort of summarize it by appreciating the last 18 months of fiscal year 17 and 18. And during that time we have the longest cr and fourth longest cr. Two continuing resolutions in that period of time both in the top five in terms of length and the one the longest of all time. During the 18 months we operated five months with an enacted budget. We currently have no top line and a government shut down. Just went through that. This type also impacts Strategic Planning and degrades the Industrial Base and has a strategic effect not only the navy the nation needs but the National Security that we need. And most importantly, perhaps, i will tell you that working through this squanders the most Precious Resource which is time. We are spending time managing through this churn rather than getting on with the Strategic Direction we need to maintain. Okay. Before i come to a close, i talk about command and control, as we move into this great power of competition. As we build a more lethal navy. As we build more ships, advance technology and tall ended sailors. None is sufficient without Commanding Officers of ships that are focused on competition, focused on building teams that can go out there and compete and win. And so just as we have done throughout our history. Were going to continue to focus on developing Commanding Officers who are almost literally obsessed with building winning teams. Team that is can compete and win again and again on a sustainable business. That is our business. As i said at the navy association. I envy our sister service, our Ground Services because they can go to places like gettiesburg and walk the ground. And so many features of the battle are res nant there and you can see the terrain, pick the charge, a little round top, et cetera. Our business, the winners sink and the losers sail away and in our business we want to be the navy that sails away. So let there be no doubt in times of triumph, turbulence, rough seas, calm seas, our navys operating around the world to skrur our interest, protect america from attack and protect our prosperity influence around the world and ensure our way of life. Always linked to the sea in the United States, we are a maritime nation. And we hope by virtue of this c construct well build the navy the nation needs. Safety, reassuring navy for our partners and a lethal navy for our enemy. Im eager to take your questions. Thank you very much. [ applause ] thank you