The US Navy Memorial Hosts Episode 24 of SITREP Speaker Series

Well, I'd like to welcome all here in the theater and also all online for our Navy Memorial Speaker Series. We're here live in the Burke Theater. For the first time, we have a live audience. And I think as most of you know, our mission here is to honor the past, form the present, and inspire the future. So we're proud to host events like this where dialogue that matters happens. So, you know, we so appreciate you carving time out of what we know is an incredibly busy schedule to do exactly that. Before we continue, I'd like to say thanks to our series sponsor, Navy Mutual Aid Association, to our presenting sponsor, Chevron, and also to our bronze level sponsor, Blue Water Autonomy and Ocean Infinity America. Their support makes programs like this SITREP possible, and we're equally grateful to all of you for your support in joining us in person and online at many of our events. It's my pleasure to introduce someone that most of you know well, our 34th CNO, a fellow North Carolinian from Winston-Salem. He has two master's degrees or PhD, uh he has multiple sea tours on SSPN, on NSSPN and SSNs uh to include command tours flag assignments included fleet forces command uh u.s and allied submarine force command tours he was the vice director of the J5 Com SubPac uh and the Det Commander at Sixth Fleet and dual-hatted as Commander Submarine Group a and i could continue but i will not uh but his top strategic priorities have focused on sailor readiness and quality of life fleet modernization and improving how the navy fight you've heard him talk about boundary fleet uh and the fight and everything that's going on in the world today i think we'd all agree you know that there's no better leader to help us understand uh we're all that sir it's a pleasure to have you with us today thank you my pleasure to be here so we'll uh we'll uh get right uh get right started and there's a lot to talk about and we'll start with current operations so with since high tempo deployments uh that are going on right now in the Middle East while we are also globally uh deployed uh we continue to test our Navy uh around the clock what do you think sir are the most critical operational takeaways and the stress tests that the fleet is learning from in these high stakes environments well you know the first thing i would say is um we are in combat and uh just you don't know when you come into a job like being the chief of naval operations You know, the types of operations activity and things that will go on on your watch. But for most of my time, it's been in combat. And the Navy has played a prominent role in each of the operations we've seen really since my time coming in last August. You know, these sailors that are doing this, I cannot be more proud of. You know, they are warriors. They go in the harm's way. And the training that we have done has really paid off. and uh and we're trying to actually make sure that we are sustaining them and learning from them you know i get the question a lot of times uh from different venues about what's it doing to my retention and uh one of the things i'm very proud of it the three highest ship retention in the navy is the Abraham Lincoln the George Washington and the Gerald R. Ford that's the three highest in the navy and so um these young sailors and warriors are staying in above 100 retention and and we brought in 46,000 sailors this year alone. So, you know, they joined to be in a combat service role, and that's what they're getting the opportunity to do. Learning is part of what we have a responsibility, so that the next strike group that pulls in is advantaged by what we learn from the ones that have left. And certainly, probably the biggest two things, and there's been a lot of learning going on, tactical, operational, strategic-level learning. But I would say just, you know, from a Navy perspective is, sailors will do long deployments but they need a port call, they need to take a knee and if you're going to hold them at sea for you know seven eight nine ten eleven months then you know they got to be able to take a knee and the port call doesn't have to be that glamorous but it needs to be able to pull in let them call home let them you know get on dry land and just do a little refresh revive and get back in the fight again, that's kind of been point one and we just recently did that with the George Herbert Walker Bush strike group, we got to pull into Thailand some of its DDG force in Singapore and we actually got to let them pull them off station, the second thing is uncertainty you know again I think sailors are willing to do extended deployments past the seventh month scheduled period but they like to know what that extension is going to be, I've worked very hard with the chairman and with the Secretary of War staff to try to if we're going to extend let's extend the natural outcome of what the schedule will support so if you want two carrier strike groups in the Arabian Gulf, we know what those schedules look like and if you need to extend so that there's a make before break let's do that extension kind of all at once so families can plan so those two things have been probably the key learning and then I would just say tactically you know what we're learning from the feedback we're getting in real time from how to tune spy radar to shot doctrine to making sure the combat system supports to our logistics train on how we do combat logistics force treadmill as we call it, getting parts and food and fuel and everything else that we replenish at sea into the Arabian Gulf has been immense learning and then setting up an expeditionary maintenance package in Diego Garcia so we can do some no kidding maintenance on the DDGs to keep them sustained. Yes, sir. And I did notice that as we looked at that next strike group going out, and I think you and Mick Kahn at one point had kind of talked about expectation control and better to under-promise and over-deliver with when you'll be home than the converse I believe that I saw that you kind of set families' expectations with this is what this could be and then hopefully you'll bring them back sooner. Is that what you see in the future you know you can kind of expect at least a 10-month deployment and uh and so that's just the nature of what the capacity of the navy can do i need a bigger navy john and if you want to you know shorten the length of time of deployments then obviously the math would say i need you know more more capacity there we're working on that everyone's behind that i think it's been a time in my career that i've never seen more alignment and the need for a bigger navy And that goes from shipbuilding and maintenance and repair to our defense industrial base across the country, getting involved with that. You know, what's modularity look like going forward? So we can roll off, you know, our combat ships at a higher pace and higher clip. We're getting more people involved in this, including partners and allies. But I need a bigger Navy. And so we want to reduce that on station time. That's the key to it. Absolutely. So one of the things that you've often talked about is that tech-driven warfare still comes down to the human element, still comes down to the sailor. So, as you're looking at how we rapidly integrate these complex systems and autonomous platforms and AI in the day-to-day operations, how is this total sailor concept preparing this generation of warfighters cognitively to outthink, outmaneuver, and outfight the enemy? Well, thanks for bringing that up. It is near and dear to my heart. You know, if you claim you're kind of a sailors first chief of naval operations, that's got to come with good policy, good resourcing and good accountability across the Navy to realize that. And this total sailor fit to fight, you know, and as we came out of this culture of excellence 2.0 product, you know, it just didn't scratch the itch to me on how it gets implemented effectively. And so I took some time, having a lot of people help me, including my spouse and others, to read this document and try to define what the total sailor is. How do I bring that to bear that starts in boot camp and goes all the way through their career so we're actually giving them the resources they need to be successful? That's across, you know, mind, body, spirit. And all those are very, very important. You know, relating it to the question of what we're doing, you know, under combat operations, it's directly tied to that. we're MCPOND and I hope this comes up when he's here for the sitreps, so ask him about this is really what we're doing and trying to build more mastery because competence is the key and so that you really have subject matter experts across the fabric of our navy because with that competence comes confidence and so the ability to bring these these systems to bear in an effective way in a combat zone is tied to that inextricably so you know that boils down to how do we actually train our sailors and so I'm trying to depart the pattern a bit on where we have trained historically on kind of patting ourselves on the back that a sailor sees exactly what they're going to see when they get to the fleet you know so think of that as an electronic system, a radar system you know, a, a, an HM&E system whatever that might look like and back off a little on that because I can never keep that in pace to how quickly we're modernizing and move to a little bit more theoretical understanding understanding how to diagnose how to troubleshoot how to do you know read, you know, diagnostic equipment more effectively, how to scale what they're learning in the school in a way that can be applied more generally when they get to the fleet that's requiring a little bit of a course change on that, then what has to kind of bridge the gap of that competency is a continuing training program that we've walked away from across large parts of our Navy, uh, for a long time, less our nuclear powered ships, everybody in this room that's a professional deals with some type of professional development hour system some type of continuing education unit process some type of continuing training program so I can't expect a sailor to go to a school and retain all that through their until their next school until without having some type of continuing training program we're trying to bridge that I won't go on on that but you can imagine similar programs for kind of you know body with nutrition and monitoring sleep and fitness and in spirit, you know, faith-based, belief-based support to actually help them in that as well yeah I remember when we were first, um, again this you and I, when I was in uniform, a little bit of this journey, uh, as we work through you know culture of excellence, again the idea of let's get from a culture of compliance to a culture of excellence but i do remember uh seeing some of those young recruits saying recalibrate uh up on the platform before they jumped into the water um and i i think um a lot stolen from the SEAL community right that embrace mind body spirit uh long before big navy but you know the second half has made you know suicide a really a key point of his agenda and rightly so we don't want to lose anyone to suicide and that starts in boot camp and starts in ROTC or the Naval Academy or whatever your accession source is and i kind of view that kind of in three bands you know band one is make this the warrior toughness is what you're talking about so we want very resilient human beings they come from all walks of life their stress management skills vary greatly and so when you go through the gonculator of boot camp what we want popping out the other side is the most resilient sailor we can make and they they basically handle problems on their own we know to a large extent that works but there's a big percentage it can't so when they get into the fleet we need a spectrum of care this is embedded health technicians at the foreman level this is deployment resiliency coordinators chaplains you know psychologists medical doctors all the way up through the spectrum if they can go to to get that support to handle everything from stress to actual no kidding mental disease so they need that and then last and this is where i think i come in strongest is kind of this strategic level is just get some rocks out of their rucksack make their life more frictionless and that's everything that I can do improve their quality of life and quality of work and so that's you know more daycare you know spouse employment better medical options better food better you know easier to get on to the base you know better tools when you get to the base but the technology is supporting their actual work so by making i'll do my part to help you by making your life a little bit better in the workplace so so just pulling that thread a little bit more on on how we balance that uh that quality of life with the war fighting demands earlier this morning you talked a little bit about barracks and and you know your uh your view of sailors living on ship and uh and you quoted some statistics of uh when you started where we are now can you walk us through that just yeah the uh you know if you're going to take all the sailors off ships and by the way that was only a thing with surface ships okay you know we have submariners living on ships in their home port we don't have aviators living in hangars in their home port marines aren't living in pup tents in their home port you know this was a very niched thing of about 7,000 junior sailors that were living on board ship i mean if you think about that you know that maybe that worked when there was a massive navy post-world war ii but you got sailors coming back from you know these extended deployments you know they get back to port that night and they're not on the duty section that's what their bedroom is going to be is that same bunk room unacceptable and so i want people to have good relationships how do you have a girlfriend if you live on a ship so what's really happening in practice is people are couch surfing with friends they weren't living on there anyway and so so the The Navy had to be committed to get BAH pushed down low enough so I could bring sailors off, bump sailors that are currently consuming unaccompanied barracks rooms into, you know, apartments in town, work with them to get roommates and transportation, you know, for this group of people, and get that flow to get sailors off. So that's been a big part. We've come from about 7,000 to around 1,000, you know, left. And that's mostly in some concentration areas where I just don't have enough unaccompanied barracks, like Norfolk. So we put in about, you know, about $375 million in barracks improvements last year. And we just announced that we're doing $1.7 billion in unaccompanied barracks improvements to actually get, you know, a shot in the arm on going forward. Eric Smith has the same problem in the Marine Corps. We've all got a barracks problem. So this is something that's near and dear to our heart. And then think about a barracks room. you go into if you got children in college and you're visiting a college and you go into the dorm you would expect some things to be there that it looks modern smells good there's a wi-fi signal okay and so why would i expect anything less than our barracks so we've put wi-fi in all the barracks we're about 90 done with that we got about 10 left and it's some austere places like Diego Garcia in some places like that where they're contractually i'm still working through kind of the legality of this but most now sailors have the ability to not just have kind of low speed this is actually quite capable high speed wi-fi that's kind of changed them how we feed sailors giving them more options and feeding them more like our universities are doing with more options when you come into the galley so it's not just a hotline or a salad bar but they're stations so they in really emphasizing high quality food got about three or four pilots going on with that then i'm going to scale it yeah i remember seeing that with uh special warfare development group who uh kind of leaned into that many years ago the army is using Chef Robert Irvin, that's right uh to do some of that he's helping me yeah yeah he's uh he's a what a great guy um but uh but i think that'll make a big difference we did have i'm i'm going to be a little bit careful because i do want to wait uh and at the end then we'll make some audience questions and uh some uh some questions from the virtual audience but but one that did come in that's just very pertinent to this particular question uh i was asking about uh with the long deployments what you're doing for sailors i think we've talked a pretty good bit about that but also ask about the families uh donna your spouse as well as uh angie perriman mcconn spouse the ombudsman for the navy i know are out there a lot. Are there things that we're looking at for the families to try and make it a little bit easier? Well, you know, it's the, you know, one of the shock factors of, you know, trying to have your spouse leave, go on extended deployment is that that length has got some mustard on it, John. There's no question. I've never done anything like this myself. So, you know, trying to have the right empathy level to understand what these families are going through to make sure we can try to help them through this. So a series of town halls at the highest level of our Navy, Secretary Cael, our fleet commanders, and me and Mick Pond, in fact, Secretary Cael, going down soon down to Mayport, talked to those families from the Bush strike group. My daughter's in that group. Her husband's on the Mason. So I've got skin in the game here. That's probably pretty good feedback that you get from that level. I get it directly right on my phone. and I was like, he's doing what and for how long? And so we do understand that. But I think, you know, to that though, Donna and Angie both are part of the President's Military Spouse Commission. And this is every Joint Chief's spouse, every Senior Enlisted Advisor's spouse, and there's some others, that are targeting exactly what families are going through in a prioritized way. No kidding, dissect that into a way that we can put, no kidding, some resources to it. and get out of this problem admiration mode this is spouse employment this is daycare okay this is medical right this is the things that they're doing cost at commissary you know things they're dealing with day-to-day parking and that we're really trying to quantify and actually put resources toward to make sure we're not just kind of shotgunning this you know much of our navy depends so much about where you are depending on how you view these problems i can be in a place and you think the medical is great. And then I can be stationed in a place where you can't get an appointment for months. So there's high variability. We're trying to tighten that shock group up and make that standard higher. So there's just a spattering of things we're doing with our families. I think that's great. And I think we both know many of the folks in the audience and many of the folks in the audience like us have kids and their spouses in the military. I will share with you that with two grandkids in CDCs, both up at Bethesda and then now down at Portsmouth Naval, the difference I think that we're seeing now with the CDCs now versus when you and I were more junior is just amazing. One of the things my daughter uses, and this is what we've scaled, Because one of the things we do is we build CDCs. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're near where the spouse works. It could actually be, you know, there's a drive to get there from the base. That'd be okay if that's the only transit they were making. They drive to the CDC, then they've got to drive to where they work. So that solution doesn't work for every spouse. So subsidizing CDCs through a subsidy, you know, kind of fee-based support system has really been strong. And we put a lot more money into that. What that's supposed to do is, if you can't get to a CDC because of a waiting list, or there's just nothing within a certain geographic location of where you work, then you can apply for this. We've put a lot more money toward that. It makes the cost of the privatized daycare the same as the government-provided daycare, so that you're paying a lot more out of pocket on that. I'm very proud of that program. I think it should be, we recruit the sailor, but we retain the family. But so let me move to my last question, because I know the audience is eager and we've got folks coming in on the on the live chat as well. But I'd like to turn it a little bit to what you see in the future, thinking future fleet 2050 as you look into your crystal ball 20 to 30 years from now. What's your ultimate strategic vision for maritime dominance in 2045 or 2050? What are the, you know, couple of critical changes, critical capabilities that we need to try and lock in today to ensure that US Navy is an unbeatable force? When I came into the job, one of the things I really looked at hard is the National Defense Strategy, kind of where it was going, homeland defense, you know, Western Pacific operations, and then kind of, you know, making sure that we are sharing in an effective way with allies and partners were the big three themes of that. But as a person who owns the Navy, it wasn't lost on me that the Navy has to be perhaps among all the joint force, a global player. You know, so you're talking about, you know, choke point defense, protecting our sea lanes of communication, right? Strategic deterrence, sea-based, sea control, okay? Seabed warfare. All these things that I call the differentiated value of the Navy. what is it that the Navy uniquely does that I won't take any kind of chinks in the armor going forward? It's not so tied to any particular region of the world, because I expect these things have to be done simultaneously and globally. So what popped out of that was this idea of what's our differentiated value, and then what is the hedge? How do I hedge? And because I knew I did not have a Navy big enough to go do that. So what's the way to kind of go smart hedge? And so what popped out of that is a recalibration of how we generate naval forces and so for decades our normal force generation model has been centered around strike groups and so because that's tied to carriers and carrier air wings and support crews then the nature of that is very structured to a combatant commander either has one or they don't so you lived in a a have and have not, a poor man, rich man problem, a one or zero. And could the Navy do more than a one or a zero? And of course it can. So this idea of packaging our Navy in a way to solve combatant commander key operational problems in a unique way by listening to what they really need, it may not be tied to the strike group. And so, you know, a perfect use case of this is supporting General Donovan in Southern Command. He does a lot of maritime interdiction. He wants great maritime domain awareness so what does that force package look like that can certainly be unmanned and give him the MDA he needs he needs some type of ship because he's got to launch some type of interdiction package off of that certainly LCS could be that he'd like a float forward staging base he'd want some containerized kit on that probably needs a coast guard to have the right authorities that's his that's his strike group if you will now i've got to build that and repeat that and actually you know uh generate and certify that at pace so i'm working with all the combatant commanders to get those requirements built the center of the venn diagram from all of that is some fundamental things like containerization it is robotic and autonomous system it is modularity it has been able to upgrade operating systems that we have through our combat systems more on the fly versus going through a year-long modernization so kind of you know reimagining what modernization in the future kind of looks like is all got to be tied to that. Purposely did not use the word hybrid. Some of my other heads of Navy are using that. The reason I didn't do that is I thought this and I pulsed it. When you say that word, I think the mental bubble for most people is this kind of 50-50 split between man and unmanned. That's not the Navy of the United States Navy today. It's not going to be the Navy that I see in any foreseeable future from a a a resourcing requirement level we're still going to be very heavily tied to man platform there's a reason for that that's by its design you notice what's going on with russia ukraine in any place where there's heavy unmanned going on it never culminates done there's not enough combat mass so what happens with unmanned only is you end up in this tit for tat world it seems kind of you know very compelling because it can seem attritable you know mass producible kind of cheap but at the end of the day i'm supposed to build a navy that wins decisively so that balance of decisive combat mass i've got to kind of make sure i am marching the navy in a journey along it actually can deliver enough combat mass at the timing and tempo necessary to culminate a conflict and right now the concept of deployment of robotic and autonomous system is so fragile i don't have the mothership structure to go do that you got to have extraordinary access basing and overflight to go do that and and the sustainment of that from sea is still in a nascent stage so we're working all that through things we're doing through what's recently been set up as the robotic and autonomous system warfighting development center you're about to see auto warcom set up the navy will play prominently in that so all these things are moving at pace but there's still some just no kidding key operational problems that need to be saw before, manned vessels don't have the prominent role in our Navy. Yes, sir. And it's come up online, but as well at breakfast this morning, you really gave a great synopsis of how you see that RAS warfighting development and the WDC playing and how you see it playing across the other entities like SMITIC and others. Can you talk to this audience a little bit more about that? Yeah, I mean, well, you know, again, I jokingly say this, but if you pull the string on it, it's fairly true. As the Navy typically organizationally kind of structures itself around what I call preventive maintenance. And so if you think of, you know, your work center designators, EM01, EEO1, you know, my son-in-law is in, you know, FCA01, you know. You know, so that's how we build ourself. We build ourself to sustain our kit. That's done ashore that way. It's done afloat. And then what happens is we stand watch. And when we stand watch, we're mission. or across the mission. So, you know, I've seen many ships try this. Some Marine Force try it, Service Navy try it. You know, I'll go organize myself in mission, you know, kind of watch sections, watch team. And then what happens is, is then when something breaks, then the person, you know, that actually goes and fixes is not part of that watch team. And it's just that whole thing kind of falls apart. So you've got to go balance the need to sustain our Navy and have great preventive and corrective maintenance structure with the ability to go put ensembles together they can fight in an integrated way and so what does that best in my opinion is to structurally have subject matter expertise in their domains because that's the physics of the kit the physics of something in the undersea is best understood by submariners the physics of something flying is best understood by aviators so in the you know in the PMS kind of follows that as well but we we want to package this in an integrated way who was doing that no one so that's what the warfighting development center for RAZ is doing then the kind of the gravy that's been put on that if you will it's made that even better is working with Mitch Bradley at special operations command he and i made a decision to kind of go put a union set there and give him an additional hat called Joint Task Force 8 and by doing that that's predominantly a C undersea seabed warfare But it gives him the SOCOM authorities to actually acquire kit, test it, demo, experiment with it at pace, call winners and losers with Rapid Capabilities Office, okay, and working with the acquisition community and scale this combat power very quickly. but just like i said this morning none of that matters if i can't introduce it into the fleet effectively it's got to clutch in how i train how i do strategic lay down how i actually set up to actually acquire that and put it somewhere what's the PMs requirements for that because even these you know little motorboats are running around eventually the outboard motors have got to be replaced okay there's PMs with everything and then so that's got to have a sustainment model to it as well so all that's kind of being worked and then the last thing i would tell you is i think i've i've fallen short and in integrating the warfighting development centers horizontally over time they do they do great within their domain so if you think of air wing Falun does great with NAWMC you mean we are world class at that generating a certified air wing you think undersea warfare development center world class at you know creating the approach and attack manual for a submarine skipper but we're not that great across this way and so what should have always been doing that was was NWDC the Navy Warfighting Development Center and we kind of pigeonholed that to being kind of you know the person who was basically owning the mock standard in the mock cert in some of the you know live virtual constructive integration i'm raising that I'm probably going to give that NWDC an OPNAV N7 hat to be the no kidding echelon one integrator of our warfighting development centers to make them talk horizontally a little bit better than they do today. Mike Durkin, you know, I'm working with him to flush out what that's going to look like so that we get better warfighting development center integration going forward. I think for those of us who live through things, getting to our ships or squadrons or boats, and we said, wow, this is great, but how do I use it? How do I sustain it? How do I integrate it? That's going to make a big difference. Yeah, it does. You know, one of the things we did was Project Overmatch, and that's got a lot of components. I mean, even the room may be part of that, but at its essence, it's kind of two big movements. It was communications as a service, and I'll come back to that and give a quick description of that, and battle management aids so the communication as a service an operator that's sitting at a panel in a combat center shouldn't care what pipe that's coming through like you could be up on cell bluetooth wi-fi you just want the text message you know so the independence of the pipe was the the the uh the what we were trying to do there is in a contested C3 environment we you know we would have more resilient networks than others and we were getting the information pushed that required some hardware so you put this you know this project overmatch kit on board well you know you could go like okay that thing's perfect you know you got it but who was training the sailors to go if that breaks you know who gives me the drawing when we're at sea to be self-sufficient when it goes down who's teaching me that giving me the logins necessary to be at the ip level in the firmware layer you know as a sailor without having to reach back when i'm in a contested environment so everything john's about self-sufficiency at sea the SIMMs are about that that we've stood up the parts support for advanced manufacturing and the fleet introductions all about making our sailors more self-sufficient less reach back less onboard tech assist more organic capability i think that's going to make a huge difference um sir let me uh i so i've managed to weave in a couple of the uh virtual questions let me just uh turn to the audience, see Kevin and here's a, and Kevin, here's a microphone for you. We've got several of our allies here, I was going to ask you know with the global nature of our navy, what role the allies play and what are we doing to integrate them better? Yeah, I mean it's a it's a crucial question if we want to optimize the globe with navies that are, you know, are like-minded then we have to have a true accounting of what we do best and where we need to be to do that balanced with our own national interests So, you know, if you plot out kind of where the center of the Venn diagram of where our vital national interests lie, I was talking to our team this morning here of our host at Chevron, is, you know, I think that is very strong in sealing protection, choke point defense We're seeing that right now in the Strait of Hormuz. We all have a responsibility, in my opinion, to keep the commerce in the seas flowing, which is greater than 80 percent of all commerce and of course you know all the telecommunication cables is carrying the lion's share of all of our information that ought to be a thing we can all get behind, you know, we generally can all get behind humanitarian assistance disaster relief, we all ought to get behind actual commerce protection and to me, I don't think we've done a great job doing that, and because there's, there can be politics associated with that, but I can assure you all my counterparts believe that and they think that's a vital role and we just need to go get the globe laid down that way to where we're all doing the same thing and marching to that same tune. Other questions from the audience, morning, so you know, uh, Nick Gurgan still the most recently confirmed as an RDA, um, I, I wonder though if you want to talk a little bit about the notion of consuming readiness and keeping these ships out longer there's going to be a stack up of availabilities and extra effort we're going to need to get them back out to sea, next time it's going to be a multi-year problem, how are you attacking that? Yeah, great question, it's, you know, it's one of the things when you see me in the news sometimes if I, you know, it'd be like Admiral Caldwell pushing back on extended deployments, well of course I'm a service chief, you know, you know so you know that's the tension we need to do to make a decision on, you know, to meet the combat needs that the president, the secretary require but somebody's got to be carrying, you know the message about to what cost and to what recovery period, and when is it that I will be reset so it's those are very vital questions, you can imagine that Epic Fury when was was kicked off without the planning that was done for the 26 budget so that all had to come out of Navy budget lines and reconfiguring how I go pay for real world operations like you know ship hours flight hours re-enlistments in combat zones milpers accounts When you've got record retention, you know, that comes with a bill And so I've got to go factor in PCS moves You know, now we do billet-based advancement. So, you know, one of the things I was going to tell you is, you know unlike the Marine Corps, who during the deployment really locks down their Marines on that deployment we continue, you know, allowing, you know, PCS orders to happen. You know, that's one of the silver linings, perhaps Sometimes we get op-holds, but we do a lot of rotation Today, you don't get advanced unless you go to a billet that requires that rank. So PCS is inextricably tied now to promotion. So that's a big part of sailor quality And then, so just maintenance avails alone You can imagine all these, when I'm extending everyone, these things that were previously scheduled, you know, are stacking up They're talking hundreds of availabilities and millions of dollars. hundreds of millions of dollars have to be applied to that problem as we start retrograding these destroyers back into their maintenance period, they obviously were looking very carefully at how to prioritize that balance that you know shorten the length of the avail take some risk there to get more through and then try to defer bigger things for a longer avail and optimize that to the extent i can but this is a year's long recovery there is no workaround on that so it's going to be a journey for us we're working very closely to try to identify what that looks like and to make sure we're ready for it uh part of that supply chain as well workforce you know when you know this i'm working with congress about you know like you know when you give me one year money the idea of one year money was under the idea that i got it on october 1st when i get it on like may 1st and it expires september 30th that's not one year money that's like a six month money so you know wouldn't it be common sense to whenever you know you you do what you're supposed to do and give me a budget that the one-year money starts on that day just make it one year money from the day of the appropriation i mean there's just common sense things that we ought to be doing to help because what ends up happening is i get clocked out nick on this stuff on the because of fiscal year constraint and so that's a problem you know it's not as bad in our public yards where we do submarine and carrier maintenance because i own that workforce and i own that planning but in surface maintenance in which we try to compete in some weird way that makes no sense to me i think it's ridiculous it's not like i don't have a fixed set of people who do my surface maintenance why don't i have a five-year plan with them then when i have a five-year plan and you know you're getting a certain number of destroyers and you know and then your ability to go buy down your workforce risk is greatly enhanced the planning for the avail is a lot better and the actual loading of the yard is more uniformly distributed so you know we're going to go to a question from St. Harris You mentioned one thing, though. I think a lot of folks in here are probably not tracking advanced position, billet-based detailing, detailing marketplace. And obviously, and I'm sure we've learned a lot, but I was excited as we got that started when I was CNO. But how do you think that's going? And then also, you mentioned the statistics from a retention standpoint with Abraham Lincoln strike group i think for this audience given next question on uh readiness and the effect and the effect as well on on sailors um i think that would be well you know abraham lincoln made the news you know um for us our sustained operations there and i told you a couple lessons that we got out of that and so you know congressional inquiries and media inquiries typically ask me you know certainly the retention on those ships has got to be you know really terrible the three highest ships in the navy today on retention is number one abraham lincoln number two the george washington and by the way she's the FDNF carrier strike group she has usually has record retention already and then to gerald r ford so it has been the three carriers are the top of the list on retention sailors like combat it turns out i mean who knew you know they joined actually you know professional arms and they like it now the challenge is what i want to do is make sure when they get back home i don't lose them because you know their spouse is completely pissed off at the fact that the deployment was extended and that ties all the things we just talked about the transparency and helping some of the certainty with that so that's been part of that on the billet base part just real quick is a historic navy problem has been just tying promotion for enlisted ranks to how they perform on a test and a compilation and score across some other methods. When you do that, you can come down one pier, let's say. This ship on this pier, and I'll pick a rate, let's say sonarman. On this ship, they just had five E-5s all make first class on this cycle. Ship right across the pier had none. Just because of the way it turned out. So now I've got this thing where this ship's got one E-6 sonarman. This ship's got seven. And that's the way it was going to stay until their PCS rotated them off under the normal you know normal time that was point one point two we did a big investigation in the cluster suicide event post GW and one of the things we found in our shipyards which we I won't go into it, it's too many things and be a whole nother sitrep series but we found our chiefs was manning and our shipyards was not good and so one of the places that was deficient on board the GW was DC master chief so i said well how many DC master chiefs are in the navy or how many you know are we supposed to have or we're supposed to have like 18 and i go well how many do we have we don't have one on GW must have we have like 19 i like well okay well i got 19 and i'm supposed to have 18 what's the problem well the problem is distribution right right not in the right place sometimes it's a spouse a dual family sometimes there's an EFM so there's friction out there in these friction accounts that keep me from distributing people correctly so these two problems led us to start tying promotion to the billet now that you know if you're in a you know like most things if you're center of mass of the Navy and in decently sized work centers and rates works perfectly and some of the tails the fringes were struggling with and we're working the policy to fix that and from feedback from our all hands yes sir you surely have the right C&P working it Good morning, CNO. I just want to thank you on behalf of the 40,000-plus members of the Navy League, which I'm a member of. Your C-notes have been great, and they've been informative. They've been helpful in pushing the Navy story forward, so thank you for that. My question is this. We've got three missions in the Navy League, support, educate, and advocate for the sea services as a whole. what you just described this morning all that costs a lot of money are you getting the support and can the Navy League and others uh do more to help support you and the other sea services in getting what you need in order to build a bigger fleet maintain the fleet we have and the sailors well saying thank you and thank you for the Navy League i mean it's such a great partner um you know i can't say enough good things about the things the Navy League does and you know i support it very fully uh Mary Ellen Baldwin would you know smash my head flat if i didn't uh she uh she's a force to be reckoned with but the uh you know is there more i mean it's a tough question phrase like that could there always be more better targeted uh you know could we synergize a little bit better perhaps i don't see that being a big challenge i think you're doing a lot there and certainly getting the word out and helping me with things like commissioning and ombudsman recognition and Navy birthday balls and see, you know, air and space. I mean, all these things that, you know, are so tied to what the Navy League mission does, I think has been wonderful. So just keep doing that and helping me get the word out through social media, which you do a great job at doing as well. And your presence and coming to things is, you know, I think the biggest help there. So I don't think there's anything, you know, directly tied um if there could be anything would be to you know pressure congress to do what they need to do to get me my money okay um you know i'll give you a perspective you know the president's budget was one nearly 1.5 trillion dollars everybody's like sticker shock with that but if you go plot that out that's about four and a half percent of gdp you know we're you know we advocate pretty strong that our nato partners be between three and a half and five percent last i checked we're in nato so we're you know that number shouldn't shock anyone that is our contribution we need to get you know an idea of this plot that some you know when i go talk to our representatives will show me anytime we drop kind of below the two you know around the two to two and a half percent there's conflict that comes right after that you know there is no such thing as a peace dividend we pay for national security that's the thing that gives us the freedom for our machine our capitalism to work that's just the cost of doing business in the U.S. model and we shouldn't short shrift that we should be proud to pay that it's actually dollars well spent you get these things that come off the things you never expected from the technological gains I enjoy and the actual you know the good paying jobs and actual return on investment from how those monies are taxed is like a 20 percent ROI right out of the gate I think it's pretty good money but on a percentage basis I want to give you this from the Navy I think it's important 1.5 trillion the Navy So that's over about close to $1 trillion we normally do. So this extra ask through the reconciliation part is about a third of the total. Well, from the Navy budget, to put that in perspective, my budget was $300 billion. $270 was base, and only $30 billion was actually in reconciliation. Only 10%, 10 point whatever, 11% was actually in reconciliation, not 30. So, you know, when I get pushback on the reconciliation, you know, go move my reconciliation to base and pass a bill. I'm good with that. I don't care what it looks like. You know, I just need the money. And because the foundry's fragile, right? The fleet needs its operating costs. And to run world-class navies at the way we ought to be running it requires resources. So if you want to advocate for me, talk to your representatives and senators you have relationships with. Thanks, Sen. And I'll just add that we're pretty proud here, partnering with the Navy League, partnering with the Naval Institute, that includes folks like Strategy and Discussion, where how we have the right discussions that matter, but then get them to the leaders that can do something about it, whether it's on the Hill, whether it's folks like the CNO or in the industry, really important. Admiral Sam Perez. Thanks for being here, sir. uh is the pace of your foundry concept on track uh to build the fleet and the capacity you need to go fight a war, an away game, a very far away game against a very capable enemy are you comfortable with the pace that that's that that you're on no no it's not um um you know i don't i don't want to say the sky's falling you know we're we're you know we've got a lot of successes going on We keep clicking off a bunch of those, but there's some critical areas there that we know that we're struggling with. You know, on-time maintenance availabilities has been a long systemic problem of the Navy. On-time new construction delivery has been a long-time systemic problem of the Navy. Ordnance production has been a long-time systemic problem. Spare part fragility from second, third order vendors who have long since gone out of business. where I've got to take the time to reverse engineer and go, you know, create those parts again. Not to mention how we bow wave and use that as a bill payer has been a long problem for the Navy. So, you know, if I look across kind of pesto, if you will, you know, I'm strong in the P. I just gave you some of that. We brought in forty six thousand sailors. I was telling the folks at breakfast today that's more than most navies that I, you know, across the globe have in some total. I'm pretty proud of that number. So we crushed recruiting. We're greater than 100% across all zones, all three zones of retention. That's a good place to be in. That tells me, you know, that's something that we should be rightly proud of. But everything scales with that. So, you know, so as you build, you know, from an in-stream perspective, I've got to have, you know, the ships, you know, and the capabilities that go with all that. And so that's across the other PESTO parts, the equipment, the supply. I think I'm pretty sound with the training and the ordnance. All has to be part of that structure. And so that comes from a two-way street that I think, you know, we've all recognized that we have to partner better together. These are longer-term, multi-year contracts. They actually let you see, as a defense industrial-base partner, a horizon in which you can have more confidence in refacilitating, putting on that second and third shift, building out your own supply part base better, you know, recapitalizing some things where you need to turn out more production. so when i give you that longer contractual horizon that helps you especially in places where we're near monopolistic you know i just don't have a lot of people doing certain things for me it's not just a free competitive environment i operate in so the contractual strategies have to be done in a way that we get some win-win out of this and can still have some accountability and i think part of that is contractual horizon where we can partner better you know the navy's got some things that we don't do well we set requirements for testing you know some of our testing and number of test stands number of you know of process steps to actually deliver it sometimes are ridiculous you know for those who trying to get through my CNO reading list read Skunk Works it's back to the future you know when i want to revamp acquisition what i don't do is put another hundred people in your facilities with clipboards doing nothing okay so that's terrible so we need to you know make sure that you know these people are adding value and not holding you back but that there are the right you know hooks if you will where i get the actual situational awareness when there is a quality problem or a production problem so we're actually understanding the risk a little bit more distributively and fairly so that's that's part of that but all these things lead to just more capacity across the board to your root question that's why we're pretty bullish on bringing in partners this thing we call the finland model you'll hear where we'll have some you know i think some allies help us with shipbuilding with the goal of bringing that shipbuilding to the u.s modular design where we get more people into the actual building of the ship and make the big primes the assembly yards and not have to do it all that's part of that so we have got to reconfigure that it's happening is it happening at the pace that i think it should i think it's it's not far off it's just got to be thoughtful and you got people are putting real money toward this and they're not going to do it without their due diligence in making sure they see the business case. Our goal is to prove the business case and make sure that they're willing to partner with us more effectively. Sam, thanks for that question. And, you know, we promised our virtual audience that we would keep this to an hour. So we're going to wrap up now. But, again, great discussion. And thanks again for your time, sir. And as we continue with Fleet and Foundry Week here at the Navy Memorial, I hope many of you will join us for MCCON SITREP that will be at 2 o'clock on Wednesday. That one will be live and virtual only. But then here on 30 November, we'll have Vice Admiral Mike Bernaza, the Commander of Naval Information Forces, for this same kind of a live and virtual SITREP. So most of you are not remiss in telling me what you like and what you don't like. Get me the feedback on how we can make that better. But, again, we want to have the dialogue that matters to Admiral Harris' point. I like it better than talking to a bunch of empty seats, that's for sure. And if you like it, I like it, sir. But then the other thing that I'll mention is on Veterans Day, we'll have a wreath-laying ceremony as well as a film premiere for a film called Flag Day with a panel discussion and reception. If you just want to feel good about being an American, then come and join us. On Veterans Day on the 7th of December, of course, we'll have our Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day wreath laying. So thanks again to all that were online for joining us. We look forward to seeing you all again here soon. For everyone here in the Burt Theater, thanks. As we've been working through a little bit different format, but we're really excited to have all of you. And as always, your Navy Memorial Gates.