Transcripts For CSPAN3 Global Security The Navy Part Two 20180103

Id like to ask everybody to come back in and take your seats. Okay. Well, weve had two excellent key note briefs this morning. Both our speakers spoke to the comp reense haddive review. The u. S. Navy issued the comprehensive review of the recent incidents at sea that occurred within the last year. Almost all obviously forward in the western pacific. One cruiser that grounded and another involved in the collision with a chinese ship and two destroyers that collided with large merchant ships that resulted in a loss of life. 17 total sailors. That comp are reense haddive review was conducted over the past well, it took about 60 days and reported out approximately 30 days ago and presented. And we thought wed invite a few folks in here today to talk about the extent of it, theed a ksy of it and perhaps the meaning of it. We had two experienced Surface Warfare officers who had command at sea. Three individual whose have stayed close to the profession, either through their government activities or through their commercial activities. But theyve stayed close to profession and finally each of our three panelists today have pubing alled for proceedings all in the last year at least. And some of them longer. So our first panelist ill introduce is captain john cordal, u. S. 2345i6by retired. He had command of oscar austin and it destroyer and the cruiser. Hes also a Nuclear Propulsion qualified officer and brings a special event from that. Next to that is kevin ire. Hes only a couple other people i can think of that rr commanded three cruzzers. And kevins also been a regular contributor to proceedings as a regular contributor almost every month. And finally weve got retired captain who commanded the burke destroyer, the sullivans and destroyer squadn are 26. So instead of giving mini speeches we thought wed get right if to a discussion after which well open it up to the audience, have q and a and well get right at it. So to kick it off, ill ask this first question. So youve all read the comprehensive review of the recent surface war events that was released by the navy and based on your experience and maybe even based on some of the earlier comments today, do you see that in your view has it been comhehencive enough and is there any important things you left out and what would you highlight as an important thing you take away from it as a top level investigation. I did i also looked at the gao reports that came out slightly before it. The first thing i did was look at it back and see who was on the panel and look at the places they went. So the names not recognized as experts are on there. So given the scope and the scale, i think it definitely was comprehensive. Its a little slow centric because thats where the expertise is. And mike conor were on there to represent the other forces. So submarines and aviation. Also saw some people from other Services Like carter ham. Absolutely. And a wide range of pay grades. Everything from a retired admiral to a qnc. As far as surprises or omissions, i think when i read the gao reports and the comp reense haddive review, i was happy to see and pleasantly surprised to see the treatment of fatigue, something ive been focussed on since my navy times and since. So i was very happy to see that. Its a little unfofrp if the had it took that event to become policy. But it is. And i think its very ifcouraging. But then i looked at the gao reports and everything you talk about goes back to had work week and manning and things like that. So i did what you call a pao control function search and it came up 66 times in the report. I flipped to the back and found action items and it was to do a study. I would like the see Something Like lets look at it gao reports and look at some of the governing documents primarily the Standard Navy work week and changing the number of watch teams per ship from three to four to sort of bake in those gains from crew endurance part. Thats what struck me as where i would have liked to have seen. I do note the Surface Force did recently come out and say were going to Institute Watch bills and ship routines that there based on a surkadian rhythm. So i thought that was an immediate action in the line of what your comments were on. On time. And certainly thats something youve been leading the charge on. So ill go over to you. In this report it covered a lot of ground. As john said. But did you feel for was a glaring omission worth mentioning and is there something you think is important that may not come through on the first read . I do think it was frank and unvarnished report and it was deep and i was very much appreciative of that. I didnt expect that. So i was very happy about that. I think the concern i had had with are eguard to an omission is that it is very focussed 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 taskz, 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 for after this extended period of profound peace, which mr. Work was talking about and id like to give you a specific example of tis. The Weapon System is remarkable. It has been designed to degrade gracefully. I can tell you from my own experience even if you take away fire controlman and the training they receive, i have full confidence that every ship can go out there and successfully engage airborne targets. However had, Ballistic Missile defense if a aegis weapons system is at full capacity, in order to use Ballistic Missile capability, its to the be up to 80 . Im making these numbers up but theyre representative. So every time a ship gets prepared to do an sm 3 shot, quite literally a team of rocket scientists come on board and they groom the system to make sure it gets up to the requisite 80 . This happens for demonstration shots. Its a worth while question to ask ones self if we took all of the capable ships in the fleet out and we line them up and north korea launches something, how many of them could successfully engage. And so im right back to navigation seamanship, these are fundamental capabilities every warfare officer should have but i suspect will be required to do a lot more than safely navigate the singapore straight. Totally agree. It goes back to what bob work said about the preechbious surge capability we maintained. That you could ring the bell and empty the barn and everybody could contribute without the cross decking apart. Although i think theres lot of us that remember it wasnt all rosy, even back then. Going back to the 70s and early 80s. There were cross decks and holes to fill. But i think the numbers made up for it and that was another key crit cycle 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 so its an excellent question. I think what i took from both is were not doing either one well enough right now and this is an example. These incidents are an example. Ill turn back to you with the same question. Is there something you thoughticide have been in there that wasnt in there sore a big take away that you want to foot stomp that came to read in the comprehensive report . First of all id like the commend kevin for his socks. Theyre pretty classy and im trying not to dont look roith at them. Im not. Im looking back over here. The comprehensive review was, i think, was a credible sophisticated approach to really trying to figure out whats been going on. Why are we at this juncture . Is it comprehensive enough . No. It just cant be and the secretary pchs doing this Strategic Review that gets at some of the more fundamental issues that the comp rehence haddive review wasnt tasked to do which is how do we get our officers to see more so they get the experience they need so that kinds of stuff that the report sites as not anticipating the problems and being able to act in time to nip them in the bud becomes more of a Second Nature because youve spent so much time at sea. Some people might argue that the navy and military as a whole has become overly bureaucratic. I certainly resemble that remark. I spent a lot of time in the pentagon but its interesting to note that in 1941 president roosevelt told aed mrl king i dont want any repeaters in d. C. And what he meant was i dont want my captains and flag officers doing more than one tour in d. C. Obviously a lot has chachgd since then but it gets to a point where in the innerwar period we spent, as a profession, 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 had 6,000 ships in 1945. But in 1941 we didnt id say we did not have an over match of capacity and capability. The other thing in my discussions with sailers and cos in the last couple years i found a lot of challenges with manning and training. The minimum manning is not good idea. It hardly works for maintaining the ship. It cant work for fighting a ship in which you have to undertake significant damage control options. It doesnt work. The other thing ive seen frustration with is data over load. When they talk about sophisticated Navigation Systems on the bridge. What im hearing from everybody to e 5 to o06 is we cant get it fixed, we cant get training on it. Its all happening too fast and the report i think gets to the point of we need, we the navy need to get to how 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 lat about essentially say figure we followed our own certification process wed be okay and i dont think thats true. I think the certification process gets you to a level of training that we come to look at as a training ceiling. But its really a training floor and we need get above that floor into the mastery level if were going to do the kind of stuff kevin talks about. From the get go and a multithreat inenvironment. A couple people, some of whom are senior, some are junior, called me and said aha, the report said these incidents were avoidable and they go a long way towards pointing towards the Commanding Officer. So my next question is. Are these the fault of flawed command leadership and maybe Senior Leadership team on the ships or are these incidents the result of a flawed system that protused them . John . I think its a little bit of both. You look at the numbers and they do cluster in one area. But i look back. I was the jag man and you look back there and many of the same things i read in that report are what i saw in these. So maybe a way to do this is look at a ship that did have a collision and do the same stint of investigations and see if you find the same stuff. I think theyre having trouble hearing you. That better . Yes. I woebt repeat the whole thing but basically you had had four points in a time and space and looks like a trend there. It could have been the Commanding Officers. Unfortunately sijs were going down what looks like the road of discipline, it struck me as why did the office on the deck not call the fitzgerald . Why did the captain of the john s. Mccain decide not to station the detail for evolution, rather than delay the evolution . We might not know the answers of that which might get to the why. As i mention i do the uss porter investigation and im reading the comprehensive review. I mean down the line item are soopening the apperture a bit. So maybe its not all seven fleets. I know theres time but not that much time and really the other piece that struck me is trz rr a part later on in the comprehensive review where it talks about sustainment and how do we learn about the lessons and not repeat. The only reason i think that there were no casualties in the porter was they hit a bigger ship. They hit a ship that was 300,000 tons and the bow went underneath keel rather than to the birthing department and i was part of that. I was on the staff that time. So how did the system not capture that and build in some things . It did lot. Theres a lot of good stuff. But i would probably say enough given the evidence. Youd come down on the side of its more than the ce. Its the system and its more than just the seventh fleet. Thats come up and i think its just i spend my time mainly in the atlanticing side. I see some of the same challenges. They have to get hazmat. In the back, page 143, it talks about the number of gaps at sea. 6,005en had. Thats a 400 if crease. Divide thats a big difference. The narrative is the key collision was due to mechanic mechanical eeth arsteering loss or a misunderstanding. They talk about the crew members that are fatigued or exhausted. I dont think its restricted to the seventh fleet. So kevin, i think yours are is working. I just wanted to comment on if its r just seventh fleet. It is couched as if this is seventh fleet but anyone who understands anything about ships can read that and these exact same thing kz be applied to a lesser or greater extent to every ship in every fleet in the world and i think that is important that people grasp that. Now, ive given this some thought and one of the great things about us is that this absolute responsibility for what goes on and it buck stops here and 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 specify these accidents were avoidable. They both indicted the cos of both ships and both said there were failures in judgment and on the parts of both cos. But those two last months where be lost lives . Yes. And i do not dispute this. Admiral davidson goes on for the vast majority of the report indicting the system and everything from doctor and operations, training, manpower, personnel, facilities, every element of the dot milk spectrum he indicts specifically. He offers 13 causative factors seven of them are called fundamentals. Everyone of those is the responsibility of someone else to provide to that co. So whos fault rer is it . I im amazed thatd Commanding Officers still take commands of ships because theyre 360 wild cards on your ship that could do something crazy every day and you could be dragged out by the chemical shed and have a bulled put in your head every day and yet guys still do it and theyre responsible but they play the hand that theyre dealt and if they are not being dealt a fair hand, thats someone elses fault and not just theirs. Right. Well come back to that because theres cultural aspects about how far do you play it 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 . 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 for were some problems with the cos on all four ship essentially. But i really think its a longer term systemic problem we have, started at least 15 years ago when we sut down swaus basic, we got rid of saws mart for all intense and purposes. They did not have out calls. So the department is were a eed about getting qualified. The Division Officers had not been through swas basic. The only thing going for us were the chiefs and those have been replaced by the blue shirts who were the product of reduced training in the schoolhouse. Case and point just talking to oil king gsm one a couple of weeks ago. His gsma school was five days long. Stloe are systemic issues here. I know weve taken a lut of measures to restore training, but it took us 15 years at least to get to this point. Its not going to happen overnight and this is what admiral davidson put in the report which is somebodys got to shepherd this through longer than prd process. So i think 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, tyco, aurally burke and now working with zumwalt and watching lcs, the Acquisition Community purchases and builds the platform, gives it to the operators and they say we kant operate this thing. We need more people. Every ship in psa at least is getting more people on board since dd 963. That suggest as much deeper systemic problem than just the training and performances of the seven fleet destroyers. You talked about when were younger. Everybody up here, myself included livabled in an era where we had more resources. You just take the training, there was an aegis training that was separated and focussed on the ships. They were more complex and difficult to operate and i didnt mean the systems werent integrated and well designed but the complexity required you to get the most out of it. A higher level of training. So theres people up here who fired 20 25 standard missiles or tomahawks and weve done things in the fleet like eliminate the profishancy missile firings. We shortenned the schoolhouses. Five days for gsma school. As jerry just mentioned we eliminated the Surface Warfare basic training, the senior readiness course. We trunicated and eliminated a lot of the maintenance checks a lot of the people who tracked it maintenance checks. So we grew up in a different era. 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. So lets talk for a minute. Bill murans coming in at the end here and hes responsible for leading effort to actually make the change for the comprehensive review. So my next question is really about prioritizization, given all those things have happened and the point that was made by all of you that it takes time to deal with it, do you think the urgency in the report is right . Because each one of those action items theres a whole annex that lists i listed them as 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 to build our way back out of it and i asked john to ponder that one. Is this on now . Yeah, youre on. I always get to go first. Wow, so theres a lot of actions on there. I mean my first thought was back to the discussion about is stainability is 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 oofrss that have to come back and say i did the task. Because theres a lot of stuff that did make the report. Im sure everybody who left here as has a notebook of what that thingicide be and what it should look like so set a sustainment plan in place. It other thing is and theres a lot of talk about resource management. The brm training that we do ashore and just to go back to one not for a second. A lot of those things that went away after the vulie report have been coming back. Im a nuke. Nuke power was kind of up here but ageas was right behind it. So those things are coming back, but again its generational. So those gaps that there out there, they didnt happen today. They happened five years ago when the sessions were changed. So thats why i harp on the manning thing of heres an idea. What if we took a couple of billets on ships, the 3 mc, the combat systems Maintenance Manager and made them e 9 and said lets send the masters who have all that experience at sea and are now ashore for the last five or six years of their career back on the ship and have that wisdom perkilate down to the troops, back to the fatigue issue. Ive seen the report on fatigue management and its not let your people sleep more. Its about a fundamental scientific piece. So i would mandate that for every 06 and above to watch that brief. Its only an hour long and its life changing. And then finally backing to the brm piece is our b ruks m training is also robust but once for tour for the captain. And then and its not really timed to the ofrp. But in other words lets tie it to the whole generation process where the captains to watch a bill today six months from now and not four mondays underway. A locked in watch bill allows you to do that so you build a team effort. They talk about small team leadership. The watch team is a coherent unit. Its not that way on sufferish ships with the od and the tao but it could be. And take that team over to the brm once in the maintenance phase and again. But theyre not manned for that. They dont have a full time presence overseas. They have to fly over there and jam in for the four deployed ships. Heres my two week training window. Let me cram everybody in there. So in the context of immediate j controlling actions youve listed a couple. The report itself says were going to have teams go aboard the ships that there forward and do a Readiness Assessment on those ships. Secondly it says that well pdly stop and void out these Risk Assessment management plans that theyve been using particularly in the seventh fleet because they had just become in the eyes of report thats just a way to say we didnt do a certification. And it also talked about the immediate need have packed fleet and pay com. Its very interesting to me that all over the world we have this Global Force Management plan and you have to do it rff process but in pay comits one stop shop. The people in hawaii could control the guzauds because they own everything from the west coast to the indian ocean. So theyre basically telling them to feel free to do your job. So thats for had. Those are the immediate ones that lept out for me. But kevin, what else is there . What are the priority things we have to get to . On the premise another one of these could take out the navaly completery. I thought it was interesting you talked about the histor yawn graef of this. But in the report it talks about how this prosesh was, insidious and over time and that people may have been confused by the good results they were getting. I found that to be too much of an excusing of people and unfofrp if thely when the curtain was yanked aside by admiral davidson, there are a few people standing around and the music stopped and they went for a chair and didnt get it. So admiral who i dont know, i sincerely doubt was he doing the math check rides on these ships . No. I think are of those people have left and gone to their villas on the amauf mallfy coast. It it appears tis is all about resources and the problem is its difficult to get them. So theal actions seem to have been turn on ais, get more sleep and you will not write your own standing ords. Now, the review i think is very complete because it ties things together thoervg course of ones career individual, team, training. This will take a while to implement as it points out. In the pd term i think weicide not be shy about the submarine community. My observation is we have a history of assigning our very best officers to our very best ships. This has an effect for both of us. Two, you can have us do be generalests and do everything in the world or have your ships work and we do not keep our people kroes to ships throughout their career sgh deed to stay close to ships is not a positive contribution to your career. Why are you not in washington. Theres value in this. Were not debating that. And the third thing that i would steal from the submariners is their submarine skaudn ares are run very differently from ours. So if youre a submarine squadn are command, they come from directly from command of the boats and theyre some of your best guys and these submarine squadrons dont dedeploy but if something goes wrong overseas, they are on the hook and they stay there until its fixed. We obviously do things differently. But i think we would benefit from a little bit more concentrated expert leadership at the water front of our community. And for the audience the surface navy for many years readiness squadn ares and tactical squadn ares as a separate entity and you would grow up with the kind of nurturing and inspection that may associate more from your low number dezrons and destroyers would elevate you have forward and somewhere in the late 90s we said were going to single up. And the tactical dez ron will do everything. The experience in manning of those was not increased. And thats one of the things that came up with the vulow report and another immediate action i failed to mention was that they the navy as already taken action to set up Surface Group in japan that would provide this kpunt readiness guidance that was lacking. So, jerry, what do you think . Should we bring back readiness squadrons . And to help people sleep at night as we tackle this 58list . I cant begin to comment on a prioritization of so many action items. So well just put that one on the table here. But i look that grumpy beards and the guys serving on ships Even High School class mates saying jerry, whats going on with your navy . It struck me and we talked about this rast night. Its like the solutions are obvious. Why are they so hard . Because in our day it was all good, right . Thats how we remember it we didnt run into things. Thats why we had command. Thats why you still have command and kept it to the end. And so 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 experienced guys like dez ron commander or flag officer go out on these ships . We walk on a ship and in about 10 minutes you know the condition of the ship just by what you see when you get on the quarter deck, how youre greeted, who you talk to. You get a very quick sense of where that ships at. Apparently we dont have that ability anymore or is it something of a deeper cultural thing that says we really need to be in a kindler, gentler world than we used to be. Is it a millennial thing . I hear that lot, dh i think is the excuse. My son is a millennial. He was in the marines for four years. He doesnt have that supposed millennial problem. So theres Something Else there and i think it report gets at to go with what bob works approach, it gets at the readiness side of it, the objective, measurable things but i think it misses a lot of the preparedness side, the mental game that as to happen. So a co on it a bridge going if had to the separation scheme. I mean wheres the master helmsman . What are you thinking . Or a ship where the cic arent talking to each other . Troez basicing 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 i was an enson and what it is now. So something has changed. I dont know where the priorities lie. My gut reaction is let me go out and stand on the bridge with the ship underway and see how they do things and talk to the co afterwards and say you might want to think about this. Well, one thing that does kind of come through and i agree with you totally. I think these generalizations of the young people cant do it. I think thats totally false. I think its a matter of setting people up for success. Lest we recall too fondly the days of the past the fact is that 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 depended on what the inspection was. If it was lets go out and shoot five standard missiles against a very probust 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 emphasize on the Safety Program and 3m than war fighting. And that really gets to my next point which is i think that the report kind of ekwats culture with can do. It went there because if youre going to criticize somebodys culture, criticize them for being can do. But i think it might be more than that and are we creatinginging or living off a culture where the results were dependentant on the cos and there were cos in our day and i think you could say the same today getting it all done. Doing the training, the blocking and tackling and to the higher level war fighting piece but there are cos who dont. And what leeches through with the report and ill start with you kevin because john doesnt want to be first anymore. Are we believing too much to the individual cos and in fact maybe weve always been doing it that way but now its really showing itself with all it other stress . Well, i do think were leaving too much to the co, particularly now this was not an issue necessarily in those long gone houseion days as you refer to them. My dad had a chief petty officer who had forgotten more than he would ever know about gunnery. Just as we have generalests, we have somehow drank the koolaide and now we want the enlisted personnels to be generalests also. The days of my gun system is nonfunctional. I have this crusty chief who has forgotten more about guns. Those are gone. On it other hand he is coaching his kid pfsz soccer team and has an associates degree. Were taking away some of the tools and at the same him to complexity of a everything is going up. So to presume all the things being held static, its becoming more difficult to keep up with the march of technology and an examplel 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 consul worked. That kind of came out. Under stress. And you read more the training was cut. So no one ever received new training in the system. And as always theres more to the story. Mccain, good ship with a good reputation they crossed him on the mccain who werent properly qualed and werent familiar with it system anyway. Yeah. But its a very complex system and these guys play the hand theyre dealt. So if they have not being dealt the right people in the right numbers and you have to have this presumption the submarine committee is also doing the back to world war ii look with the prezumption communications will be interrupted and theyll have to conduct Wartime Missions without depending on being micromanaged and i cannot see why ships should be any different. But if youre going out there, yushed 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 jerry tackle that last one. And i like to open it up to questions. And encourage the audience to get to the mics. If you have a question, even if youre sidney bird. Sidney. Yes. Seen the problems with basic peace time seamanship. What are the implicit problems or probable problems with the much more complex war fighting 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 work 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, sydney, 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 complex 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. Admiral dunn. 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 tykos 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 cursed cando 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. Hadnt been fed. But i had to check this block. 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 commander, because the crews went down, which i went to ten years later, which is another story. Which i went to 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. Weve arranged for another cruiser 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. Learn the crew, learn the ship, and then ill go do it. But i would not have done that as a 05. Thats been an important learning point. The difference. Thats why youre an 06, not an 05. The difference. Gray beard. 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 ensure 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 as at swas to get the 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. To admiral moran. 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. [ laughter ] i say say it. I knew we were going to disagree at some point. I thank each of our panelists for this great discussion. Thank you very much. [ applause ] news given our discussion so 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 fight 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 to oversee 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, and networks. 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 competence, 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 work 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 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 availability deferred three years due to continuing resolutions. 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 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 sponsors 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 benefit factor as a young jo for 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, postbilal 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 seventh 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 work this morning, and bobs discussion about how we have bias in favor of presence rather than capability. The fundamental 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 more 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 guess ill do it right here. 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 any given day incredible work. There are many, many examples of excellence in our navy over the last year at the same time we have had these other tragedies occur. For all of you that are retired or active duty, reserves, we got to Start Talking about 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, if you will, the lens in which we view all of the recommendations in the cr, the challenges that have been posed to us by congress, and other organizations. The center of the universe is the co on the bridge of that ship. The c. O. Of the squatter, the submarine. Everything we do we need to be making the job of that person easier to manage, less strenuous in terms of having to fight resourcing challenges, manning challenges, all of those things. And not adding into the ruck sack that already is pretty heavy right now. My concern is we dont pile on a response to actions simultaneously and overwhelm the fleet with all of these things were trying to do, but prioritize them in terms of the safety safe and effective operation of our fleet, first and foremost, and then we start looking at other systemic issues that need to be addressed. But do it in a measured way, instead of just going like we are all prone to do, naval officers, is to just go solve the problem. And the sooner we solve it, the better. There has to be a pace here that the fleet can tolerate. And i think thats an important aspect of how we go forward. Thank you very much. Thanks. Bill, we had a question earlier about including younger voices, and getting their feedback. And i was just going to ask you and it may be premature, because youve just started this process. But do you envision this having a feedback loop . What you just said kind of reminded me, where you would get at maybe a Department Head up to Commanding Officers in the fleet, feedback either on what youre changing or what youre contemplating changing, as to kind of get at what you just said. We dont want to crush them while saving them. Yeah, something that the Service Community started a couple years ago that is starting to really bear fruit is similar to what other communities have done with their what i call their weapons tactics and instructions. Theyre experts, theyre pros from dover. The wtis. And i think we go to them early and often in this process and get their direct feedback. What have they seen . Because they were out in much closer contact with the fleet. They care a lot, because they were chosen to reach that patchwearing status above their peers for a reason. But i also think, and we talked about this at the first Oversight Board last week, is we have to constantly pulse our c. O. S to make sure what were addressing meets their most urgent needs now. And then get insights from them about the pace and direction we want to take the other fixes. Thats great that thats contemplated in your process. Sydney, are you at the microphone . Yes. Launch away. Wishful thinking on your part, admiral. You looked busy there. Yes. Admiral well, i was taking notes of what you were saying. Admiral, the you mentioned the 4 billion figure. I did a little quick math in terms of what the crs have cost us. Thats actually in terms of the whole of your budget, less than half a percent over the years. But what where does that come from, and what is the litany of other impacts we were looking at from this cr . Do you have figures on if there is another two weeks, will that delay an availability, will that, you know maybe we cant overhaul certain aircraft or other things that will be forbidden as new starts or not allowed to go because they require an increase. Yeah, sydney, so if you want to stroke a check for 4 billion right now, ive got a lot i can do with that, even though its half a percent. But if you look at where we were at the end of in the final 12 budget that was proposed and where we are today, were 100 billion short of where we thought we needed in terms of money, reliable money we could couldnt on to build the navy we needed to fulfill the national Defense Strategy in 2012. If anything, the world has gotten more complex. Harder to fight in. And were 100 billion short of the trajectory 12 put us on. So crs are painful. Sequestration and the immediate cut to 2012 was really significant. All that said, you know, when for the last ten years, and arguably, twothirds of the last four decades, we started every year under a cr, weve gotten pretty good at only playing three quarters of the game. Weve given points up to the opposing Team Every Time we have done that. So the fleet commanders have their list, and its based on when that money in terms of a budget shows up. So everything from maintenance to Aircraft Maintenance operations, those sorts of things, are all well understood in terms of the level of budgeting that we get. So lets pray we dont have to go there again. We had to do that last year, right until around the may time frame, when the budget came in. And then the new administration added a significant amount of cash into our readiness accounts that allowed us to catch up to the deferred maintenance that had already begun. So we understand very, very well whats going to happen if we dont get a budget at the end of this quarter. Okay. Jim, were you at the microphone, or were you just kind of hanging there . Im at the microphone with just a quick followup. Go ahead, please. Captain jim romondo, you use the term radical feedback in your candor. So i want to pull the string a bit on that. Or have you obviously give some more on that. The performance aspect of co and Leadership Teams have been woven throughout the morning. So i was curious to get a little bit more for the crowd to find out how the navy will get it back. I would contend we have done a fairly poor job over the years of being honest with ourselves and knowing our strengths and weaknesses. And our system that we have now doesnt do a very good job of that. Nor do we. So i was wondering your thoughts. Over at the Naval Academy we see this a lot with young mids who are dying to get feed back on how theyre doing. And both those in leadership position but also sob ordinate. And i think much can be said of the same kipd of behavior occurs in a fleet. If you look at the collisions especially mccain and fits gerald. The lack of a questioning attitude really hurt us. And that that can be driven by how young jr. Officers are raised. But i think its largely the atmosphere that is established by the triad. In particular the Commanding Officer. So we have to do more focus more on our Commanding Officers to get them to understand and learn the lessons from the two tragedies. That they dont want to be that Commanding Officer. In the way you dont be that is by having forceful back up. Forceful back up come from jr. Officers and crew members across the spectrum. Who when they dont feel right or doesnt look right, its not standard procedure the commands arent standard, they question it. And just that question alone can often avert a disaster. Thats what i mean by the radical candor. Its a strong term that i use just to get people to think about how candid are you going to be. Thats all. Nothing more. Thanks, chief. You have a lot on your plate. Any day for the vice chief you have a lot on your plate. Today particularly so. And we want to support you if theres anything we can do in this effort let us know. Whether its a survey or whether its some type of pulsing. To get information from our citizens and members. We want to thank you for taking the time here today out of your busy day to talk to us. And its good to hear you feel like the comprehensive review has seized the team for action and commitment. So we thank you and appreciate. Lets give the thank you. A former seen your add visor to Holly Clinton will discuss the campaign. Live coverage begins at 11 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan 2. In the afternoon, new york governor delivers his state of the state address. At the Empire State Plaza Convention Center in albany. Thats live at 1 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Some day on cspan q and a. I propose action for the sake of a better world. But i say again and again, that i propose it for our own american selfinterest. With his book arthur vanden burg. The man in the middle. He finds himself in opposition when fdr is elected and the democrats in the 1930s take majority in the senate. Hes in opposition for the next dozen years. And that means that to get anything done which often meant resisting some of franklin roosevelt. There needed to be a coalition. He had to reach across the aisle. Sunday night on after wards. Federal appellate judge looks back at his 38 year career in his book benched. Hes interviewed by connecticut democratic senator. As a judge of 45 years, having gone from that active life of making decisions and going to court and advocating a case. To judging. Was that a difficult transition for you . And did you ever miss the life of advocacy . It wasnt difficult. It has been for some who i have known. I have known people who became judges and so disliked the Decision Making process they left the bench. I was an advocate. I found the Decision Making process while it was different, challenging, and satisfying. What i like being was attorney. I love being a judge. The opportunity to resolve disputes large and small, they all matter to somebody