Source: United States Navy
Brian Finlay, Stimson Center President and CEO: Good afternoon. It’s nice to see many new faces, as well as many familiar faces, and I know we have many, many more joining us online for what will be – you’ve chosen well, we’re going to have a lot of fun over the next hour or so with this special event which punctuates, I should also note, our 35th year as an organization. We’re ending with a true flourish – not only because we’re getting close to the end of the year, but we bring to you two of the Navy’s most prominent leaders, with a combined – they may object to me saying this – a combined seven decades of Naval experience between them.
I’m going to give short shrift to both of their bios because I could spend the next hour going through their remarkable service to our country, but suffice to say, Admiral Franchetti is the 33rd Chief of Naval Operations. And in that capacity, the Admiral serves, of course, as the principal naval officer and naval executive, as well as serving on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She has a remarkable – a truly remarkable – military career. She has commanded at every level and deployed in every fleet with nearly 20 years of operational and at-sea experience. We’re so grateful for your service, Admiral.
Her previous flag assignments include Vice Chief of Naval Operations; director for Strategy, Plans and Policy at the J5. She was deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfighting Development at the N7. She was commander, US 6th Fleet, commander, Naval Striking and Support Forces with NATO; deputy commander, US Naval Forces Europe and US Naval Forces Africa during, of course, the 2018 strikes against Syrian chemical weapons. The Admiral also holds, I should mention – again, I could go on for quite some time – but I also want to note that she holds a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from Northwestern University, she completed the Harvard Kennedy School’s National and International Security program, and was an MIT Fellow, as well as receiving the Naval War College Distinguished Graduate award in 2024.
She will be joined – and is joined, as you can see on the stage – by another recognizable face to everyone here at Stimson and I know all of you here in this room as well. Admiral Michelle Howard served over 35 years in the US Navy. She led sailors and Marines multiple times in multiple capacities throughout her career. She’s been a commander of a ship, an expeditionary strike group, a task force, and a Naval theater. Her command was from 2016 to 2017 as US Naval Forces Europe and US Naval Forces Africa – similar storylines here. She simultaneously led NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command Naples with oversight of missions from the Western Balkans to Iraq. I would also note that Admiral Howard is a Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran as well.
I would also note that in 1999, Admiral Howard became the first African American woman to command a ship in the US Navy. In 2014, she was the first woman to become a four-star Admiral in the US Navy and the first woman to be appointed to the position of Vice Chief of Naval Operations. In spite, of course, of that remarkable military career, her most proud accomplishment is serving on the Board, I’m sure, of the Stimson Center, which she has done for many years now. And we are very, very proud of our association with Admiral Howard.
So, here is the order of battle here over the next hour, ladies and gentlemen. With her NAVPLAN, Admiral Franchetti has put the US Navy on deadline. By 2027, the CNO calls for readiness across the force to meet crisis or conflict – including the possibility of war with the People’s Republic of China. Managed by Admiral Howard over the course of the next hour, Admiral Franchetti will unpack some of the most critical components of the NAVPLAN for success of that plan.
So, some final housekeeping items before I turn the dais over to you, Admiral – Admiral Howard. This event is being recorded as well as livestreamed. It will be available afterwards on the Stimson website at stimson.org/events. We are reserving some time at the end of the discussion between these two Admirals, so I would encourage you to submit your questions. For those of you online, you can go to stimson.org/questions. For those of you in the room, before you sat on the chair – and you may be sitting on it right now – there’s a small card that contains a QR code that you can scan to submit your question online and we hope to get through as many of those as possible.
Admiral Howard has been trained on the technology and is confident that she can do it.
Admiral (ret.) Michelle J. Howard: I prefer paper and pencil, because the batteries don’t die.
Brian Finlay: With that, it is my great pleasure to hand things off and welcome the 33rd Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti. Admiral Howard – the con is yours.
Admiral Howard: Thank you, Brian. CNO, it’s always a pleasure to see you. And it’s been too long, shipmate. So thank you for giving us some of your valuable time today. So I want to jump right into it, if that’s okay with you, ma’am.
Admiral Lisa Franchetti, 33rd Chief of Naval Operations: That sounds good, and thank you so much for the opportunity.
Admiral Howard: So, Brian talked about the Chief of Naval Operations Navigation Plan, and a Navigation Plan is what gets you from point A to point B. But this one’s for the entire US Navy. Any good strategy, you got to know where the starting point is. Can you tell us about this fix of where the Navy is, and a little bit about where you’re going to?
Admiral Franchetti: Sure, you know, I’d love to. And I love being able to talk about a Navigation Plan because it really is part and parcel to everything that we’ve done throughout all of our careers. And I think, when I came into the office as the CNO, I knew that I needed to do a couple of things – One, is I needed to basically create a set of priorities and a unifying vision for our Navy – who we are, what we do, where we’re going. And so I put out in January America’s Warfighting Navy. And it was really to do a couple of things – set that vision forth, so everybody could sort of see themselves in the Navy, that we’re focused on war fighting, that that’s my priority, and that we’re focused on our warfighters, who do that warfighting. And then we’re focused on the foundation that supports them.
And I think that was really the genesis of how we created this vision along with our fleets of how we were going to connect the fleets with the Pentagon to really understand where we needed to go as a Navy. So that was really step one. Then step two is the visiting. I had a great opportunity to go out and visit with all of our fleets, I met with lots of different heads of Navy, chiefs of defense. I visited with industry, I talked with Members of Congress, to be able to really understand where is our Navy, again, to be able to get all these different lines of position so I could see that fix.
And what I came away with was a couple of things – first, that we are facing a very changing and challenging strategic environment. We’re facing a changing character of war. If you look at all the different technology being integrated into that. And we’re also facing a lot of different headwinds that, I would like to say, make it challenging sometimes to grow and create the kind of Navy that you know that our nation needs to have. But we have industrial base challenges, we have munitions production challenges. So there are a lot of challenges out there. I call those challenges a little bit of the ‘known knowns.’ Complicating that is Continuing Resolutions, not having the resources that we need – because we really need about 3-5% above inflation to grow the Navy, to have that fleet – that larger, more lethal fleet.
So what I decided to do is to sort of park those challenges in a box, because those are the known knowns. We know we need to work on them, we’re all rolling up our sleeves to fix them. But I want to focus in my Navigation Plan on the things that I can influence. So how can I make the biggest strategic gains in the shortest time possible. And that’s how I came up with my Navigation Plan. So it really does a couple of things – we know where we are, we know where we need to go. We know that Chairman Xi has told his forces to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. So we also know that we need to be more ready than they will be. So that set my first priority in my Navigation Plan, which is to raise our fleet’s baseline level of readiness across the board by 2027. The second thing is that the CNO is the steward of the future. So I know that we also have to invest in and think hard about, what does that Navy need to look like, five, ten, fifteen years from now? And what are the capabilities that we need for that? So that’s our investment in the long-term enduring warfighting advantage that we need to get after.
So we’re doing that in two ways – the first one is getting after that 2027 piece. That’s my Project 33 targets. You know, Admiral Gilday had two NAVPLANs. They got the Navy moving in the right direction. That was another part of my fix. We were largely moving in the right direction, but I saw that there were about seven areas where I could put my thumb on the scale and we could accelerate our efforts, and that they would really make a difference in the short period of time that I’m focused on.
Those are things like raising our ability to have 80% of our forces combat surge ready. So getting them in and out of maintenance time, making them on time, making them ready to go so that when we need them, we can call on them.
Another one is integrating robotic and autonomous systems. We have a lot of different experimentation going on, but how do we bring that capability and that mindset into our regular formations? There are other ones in there – the other one that I always like to talk about is investing in our people and high end quality training, investing in our maritime operation centers so we can command that broader fleet fight that I know we’re going to need to do in the future. So, getting after those Project 33 target set is one way that we’re going to do that.
The second way is to get after those long-term advantages. So we have a thing called the Navigation Plan implementation framework, and there is five capabilities that we need and four enabling capabilities. So I asked the team to really focus on those capabilities things like long range fires, protection logistics again, live virtual to constructive training, to be able to get after those enduring capabilities. Because when I took a look around the fleet and watched the changing character of war, you can see that we are going to fight in a system of system way. It’s really a joint warfighting ecosystem that we are going to have capabilities that we deliver through the Navy that enable other services to use their capabilities. And it’s this ecosystem of interdependent capabilities that we need to be able to contribute to. So that’s what I charge the team to do. I think the most important thing – and people ask about, you know – is the NAVPLAN going to stick? How is this going to be different? I think the one thing is, it has a date.
So we are all focused on getting after these capabilities by 2027. In the long term, enduring advantage piece, 2027 is not a cliff. It’s a waypoint on the way to being more ready every single day. So 2027, 2032, 2045, we are moving out with these key capabilities we know that we’re going to need.
The other thing is that in each one of these areas there’s a single accountable individual that I’m going to hold myself accountable to, but they’re going to be held accountable to getting after their targets as well. And we’re using metrics and data to understand where are we in getting after them. On plan? Off plan? Need to put more resources into it? What do we need to do? So that’s a little bit about the Navigation Plan. I’m very excited about it. The other piece that I think will make it stick and lasting is that it really was a collaboration with the fleets, with all of the 4-star fleet commanders. We are all in it. We’ve all got our sleeves rolled up, and we’re ready to get after it and get stuff done, I’d like to say.
Admiral Howard: Well, getting stuff done is definitely the Navy’s way. So I want to talk just a little bit about that. And this part of the NAVPLAN where you talked about the Navy as an enabler to other combat forces. And I I think it’s not been lost on me in retirement, that the average US citizen of the maritime domain, or thinking of the maritime domain as a warfighting domain. It’s just not there we are very comfortable with thinking of soldiers and marines and camouflage. Can you talk a little bit about the maritime domain? Why, it’s important to the average American citizen. What the Navy’s role traditional role has been, and then, I think, talk a little bit about the Red Sea Ops that are going on, and how that impacts everybody in the room.
Admiral Franchetti: Sure. Well, you know the United States, as you well know, but I think people know we’re a maritime nation. We always have been, we always will be our prosperity. Our security really depends on the sea. When you look at the globe, about 70% of the globe is covered by water. About 80% of people live within about 200 kilometers of a coastline. About 90% of global trade goes by the sea.
And you know, something people don’t often think about. But you know about 95% of our telecommunications go through underwater cables, and about 11 – 10, or 11 trillion – dollars a day of financial transactions also goes through those cables. So the maritime is really important in ways that people may not always think about and take it a little bit for granted. And so the Navy’s traditional role is to basically guarantee the freedom of the seas.
We want to ensure that we can buy sail, operate wherever international law allows. But more importantly, that we allow those sea lines of communication that are so vital to our own economy. 5.4 trillion dollars. I think it’s 54 trillion jobs. I mean, there are so many things that rely on the sea. It’s really important for us.
I think if you want to talk about what does the Navy do at sea, it can be hard to describe that when I talk about this joint warfighting ecosystem it can be a little bit challenging. So let me try an example on that. So just say that you have a Destroyer that’s operating in the ocean somewhere, and it has to launch a missile after a target that’s on land somewhere. But it doesn’t have its own sensors to know where that is, but it can get that information from an overhead, a Space Force asset, and that can be refined by a Marine Corps or Army or special forces, or Allied sensor. That’s a little bit closer. And then that’s how it can get the targeting information. Well, maybe it needs to have a little bit of inception in there, so it could get it from another service. It could get it from an ally and partner. It could get it from cyber, and then it gets the order to launch the missile. It launches the missile. So it’s this big ecosystem that creates these integrated layered effects that we need to be able to do. So, it’s not like in World War II, where you see the two ships, and they’re lined up next against each other. It’s really this broader ecosystem, which is all part of a great big information environment where we can have that assured communications across all these different forces, and then we have our maritime operations centers that can synchronize the effects in time and space.
I think when you think about all the interruptions that we’ve had in the global commerce space, you know recently – do you remember when the Ever Given got stuck in the Suez Canal and really slowed down all the traffic there. Whoever thought that that would have an impact on global commerce? And it did. Now, if you look at everything going on in the Red Sea where we have been working alongside allies and partners to stand up for that international order, to get the commerce going through the Strait of the Bab-el-Mandeb through the Suez Canal and on its journey. We’ve been there doing that. And I think you see that like-minded nations with shared values are there trying to support those efforts to make sure that commerce continues to flow. So that’s a little bit about what the Navy is doing every single day.
I would also say, if you look in other theaters, you know where we operate. You know the Navy that you can’t see, our ballistic missile submarine force, they are certainly always operating all around the world as our most survivable strategic deterrent. And again, we don’t always think about them, but they are underwriting our nation’s security every single day. So those are some of the things that our Navy’s out there doing, and the importance of the maritime domain.
Admiral Howard: Thank you for that. And along this war fighting theme, you talk about China in 2027. Can you talk about what you believe China’s capabilities will be in 2027? How are they shaping their Navy and their land forces, and what’s their intent?
Admiral Franchetti: Well, I think when you step back and my navigation plan is nested really under the last two national defense strategies, when you think about it, where they both talk about China as our pacing challenge. You know, China has clearly been able to mobilize their industrial base, to really build capabilities that are directly designed to get after us joint force capabilities. And again, this is a very important time for us to be making sure that we continue to grow our capabilities so we can deter China from any action in 2027, or any action even beyond that. So that’s critically important.
I think the other thing that you see from China is a lot of gray zone activities, a lot of coercion. The Chinese maritime militia, they are bullying different nations across the South China Sea. You can look at their activities recently in the Philippine Sea. So it’s really important, again, that our forces are out there operating alongside allies and partners, building that interoperability that we need to have to be able to work together again, to stand up for this rules-based international order that is guaranteed security and prosperity for so many years, for so many nations.
Admiral Howard: No, I’m with you. I think partnerships, particularly in the maritime domain, are critically important. And that is definitely one where you have to be there. You know, you can’t build that trust from a remote station. Also in your NAV plan, you refer to autonomy and I’m sure that’s underpinned by artificial intelligence. Can you talk a little bit about autonomy and then some of the work that’s going on in the US Navy, some of the experimental work? And it sounds like that is going to help build one of the future advantages we want to get to.
Admiral Franchetti: Yeah, well, I’m really excited about robotic autonomous systems. I think when you look to the fleet of the future, we are going to see a mix a hybrid fleet with many conventionally manned platforms. But we’re also going to have these unmanned or robotic autonomous systems that can extend the lethality, the reach of our conventionally manned platforms. I like to think about robotic autonomous systems as doing things that are dirty. Think about getting a Roomba that can clean the bilge of your ship. I would really love someone to invent one of those. I keep talking about it. So I know someone eventually is going to come up with one. So dirty, dangerous. Think about like diffusing a mine, or we want a robotic, autonomous system to do that. We don’t want to send an actual person to go do that. And I think robotic autonomous systems can do things that are largely dull.
So I know that you and I have certainly driven around a lot of oceans, making holes in the ocean, looking for differences in patterns of life. But if we can get autonomous platforms to do that, they can really detect those changes in a pattern of life, and then we can send a manned platform there to go and look at it. So, you know what I’ve been seeing in our Navy, and this is probably why I’m so excited about this aspect of it is, we’ve been doing a lot of great experimentation all across the Navy. We stood up task Force 59 in 5th Fleet. That was really where we brought together lots of different competitors and companies to be able to look at what are all these different technologies are out there, how can allies and partners also use them, and how do we knit them together in a mesh network to help create a common operational picture, so we can have great maritime domain awareness across a large expanse of the ocean without having a lot of man platforms to do it.
So I think that was really the first foray into that field. But what we’ve seen since then is all the other fleets jumping in and taking on that same mindset of experimentation and learning. So 4th Fleet, they have experimentation series. They also have unmanned surface vessels that are doing a patrol right now. You had 3rd and 7th Fleet doing unmanned surface vessels going from San Diego to Guam to Australia, and all the way back. And we’re learning so much when we do that, you have everything in pack fleet, really looking at hard at, how would we integrate these robotic and autonomous systems to get after our biggest challenges.
So what I want to do is we need to shape that experimentation to really drive outcomes, you know, how do we get the platforms that we want to invest in? How do we get our concepts of employment? And, most importantly, as a man, train equipper of the Navy, how are we going to sustain these platforms over time? Who is going to own them? I think if you look in the past, we would get a platform like this, and it could become a little bit of an orphan. But now we have assigned these platforms to our type commanders, domain commanders, the submarine force, the surface force, the aviation force, they own the platform that flies in their domain or swims in their domain.
And so it’s really important, because then they can come up with the doctrine, the sustainment, the maintenance, the manning, and we11 be able to use these capabilities for years to come, and when we get a new one, then we just shift the model, but we keep it within the same community. So these are some of the things that are going on that are really exciting about it.
Just a couple of success stories, I mean, one is Triton, and Triton is a replacement for the EP3. So it’s an unmanned ISR platform. We have stood up now 3 orbits. So there’s one in the Inda-pacific, there’s one in Europe, and there’s one in the Middle East. And again, this is a great success story where you have a forward, deployed, unmanned vehicle-air vehicle in this case-operated by people on watch in a building somewhere on one of our bases, you know, and maintained in another location. So again, this is a great first step in being able to really integrate these platforms, so that those are some. We also had those two US. fleets I talked about. I think the last thing I would say is, we are working hard to get flexible authorities and use different authorities to be able to procure these, to be able to get them at the speed and scale that we need a lot of great work going on through the replicator initiative through DIU to be able to leverage those opportunities, and the Navy is doing a great job with that.
And then finally, we stood up a disruptive capabilities office. Their job is to go out and talk with the innovation base out there and say, these are some of the challenges we’re having, what do you have that could solve that problem? Let’s get it in there and start experimenting with it. Because what we found is, once you get these things into the hands of the warfighters, we can really accelerate our learning and get this technology out there much more quickly.
Admiral Howard: I think we all need a disruptive organization in our lives. That sounds awesome. So key to all of this is you talked about there’s still at the end, you know, the remote operator, the person, or even if the autonomy work takes over the scout work and the location identification. It’s still going to be human beings that go in. We all have heard that the services are having, you know, last few years challenges recruiting. Are you seeing a sort of with the Gen. Zers and below generational shift, in terms of wanting to serve? What are the recruiting challenges for the Navy right now? And how are you tackling those?
Admiral Franchetti: Well, I have to say that recruiting was a great news story for the Navy in 2024, so I do want to celebrate that a little bit. In 2023 we missed our recruiting goal by about 7,400 people. And this year we actually exceeded our recruiting goal, and we had actually raised our recruiting goal. So we recruited over 40,600 brand new sailors this year. So you know, we did that by really taking a step back and looking at the recruiting enterprise and making some changes to that, to be able to get rid of the sea blindness that you talked a little bit about, and make sure that we really had fully manned all our recruiting stations, that we’re fully leveraging Fleet Weeks to be able to introduce the American people to their Navy who may not really know a lot about their Navy. But we also looked at recruiting as an enterprise, and this is taking something that we learned from the aviation community when they worked hard to get their strike fighter readiness from 50% to So% over the last couple of years. And they’ve been able to maintain that for about 6 years now. But that was an enterprise approach, and it was a problem solving approach. So we put a 2-star in charge of recruiting. They took a step back and they looked at. We have 26 individual recruiting enterprises. Let’s break that down, put it into one enterprise, have a recruiting operations center, and be able to look at the root causes and the drivers of what are the challenges in recruiting, and once they identified it. The key one was throughput per recruiter. So if you could speed up the recruiter and you could get the recruiter could get more production, you would get more recruits. It seems like a no brainer, but giving the recruiter the tools to be able to do that instead of having a monthly goal, having an annual goal, so they don’t hold recruits to wait for the next month. Those are some of the things that we change in our processes to be able to do that.
I think some of the other things that we worked on, you know hard was to be able to make sure that we had lots of opportunity for people to have new ratings. We created a robotics rating that made people very excited. A lot of attraction to the Navy for that, at least getting them in the door. They could learn about the 150 other specialties you know that we have. So that’s been a big benefit for us, and we also took a page from the Army. So they started a Future Soldier. We have a Future Sailor Prep course for physical fitness and for academics. And the academic one where everyone qualifies for a rate who enlists in the Navy, but by giving them this course, they could qualify for more ratings, more opportunities for them in the future. And then physical fitness is to help them get over that bar and make sure that they can maintain their physical fitness as we need them to do, to be out here in the fleet. So again, really good opportunities in recruiting, and I have to say, also, retention.
That’s over 100% in all 3 enlisted pay bands. So I know that when you talk about generation Z, and you talk about if they have different motivations. I think right now they’re motivated to stay in the Navy, and you know we’re recruiting a lot. We’re getting them to stay in the Navy. I think they’re really excited about our mission. They want to serve something greater than themselves. They want to join companies. I have a Freshman in college, so I get to see this every day in kind of what this generation is interested in, and I think they really want to be part of a team. They want to understand the why behind what they’re doing.
And I was just down in Corey Station, where we have all of our information warfare professionals. There were like 900 of them there, and it was really exciting to talk with them and see their enthusiasm for being in the Navy. So I think we’re going to continue to meet folks and understanding you know what are their interests? What does it look like to be a world class employer of choice? And how do we get there? We stood up a cross-functional team in 2023 tolook hard at some of our quality-of-service initiatives-so quality oflife, quality of work. What are the expectations of our people? And how do we get after them? Even things like 24/7 gyms, access to parking, being able to cook your own food, having access to food 24/7 in a micro mart where you can, just, you know, walk in and scan your card. I think some of those things may seem like small things, but they’re actually big things in the life of a sailor.
The other thing we focused on pretty hard is unaccompanied housing and making sure that people have an opportunity to separate their work life from their home life, and especially in shipyards. We want to make sure that they don’t live on the birthing barge, that they’re living in unaccompanied housing.
We’ve made a lot of progress starting in Newport News shipyard. And we’re going to scale those things out to other fleet concentration areas in the future. But those are big investments for me. Gyms, food, unaccompanied housing, making sure that our sailors can have that life. We also did a Wi-fi pilot. As you know, you can’t do your life anymore without Internet and a Wi-fi. So we did a pilot in Hampton Roads to be able to give people free Wi-fi, just like it’s electricity, because you really need it to be able to do your job. You need to be able to do your training and your courses. So again, it’s all about being that world class employer of choice.
Admiral Howard: No, those all sound like great initiatives. And clearly, if you exceeded your recruiting goals the right way to go, and I fully understand. I think anybody who’s ever run a business having happy employees, and the little things can make all the difference in the world. And even some, I think some of the things you talked about creating a robotics specialty and allowing someone to grow up in the Navy and achieve deep expertise in that. I think the challenge then, will be that they don’t get poached.
Admiral Franchetti: Definitely. That’s why we need to keep working on that quality-of-service again, because you know we are. It’s, you know, the Navy has an amazing mission. We’ve been talking about it, you know, you can think about the work in the Red Sea, you know, three different carriers strike groups, two different ARG news have been there. A lot of folks are getting exposed to our warfighting mentality and the work that we’re doing for our nation every day, and I think they want to be part of it. So I’m going to appeal to that and continue to help those people stay on the Navy team
Admiral Howard: Alright. I think I’m going to shift to some questions from the audience. So here’s one from Ken Moriyasu. I apologize, Ken, if I mispronounced your name. From Nikkei Asia, sounds like a journalist. There are three aircraft carriers in the Inda-Pacific region. Does the Navy consider the PRC and the Korean Peninsula the biggest threat to stability during a US Presidential transition? How are we working with allies and partners in the Inda-pacific region now?
Admiral Franchetti: Well, you know, first of all, our Navy is a globally deployed force. We maintain a regular rotation of all our forces all around the world. I think that’s actually what makes the Navy the most unique and the most, the service that can provide the most options to our nation’s decision makers every day. So our forces are on their regularly scheduled deployments. They are always operating in between all the different theaters. So they’re not there for any specific reason. They’re just on their normal deployment rotation. I think when you think about sort of the neat flexibility of our forces. Earlier this year, we moved aircraft carriers that were working in the Inda-Pacific into the Middle East, back into the in the Indo-Pacific. We’ve moved things from Europe into the Middle East and back to Europe. This is again the great flexibility and agility that the Navy provides, because through our training process we train our forces to be able to operate anywhere, anytime that they’re needed. And so they’re all out there on deployment doing their jobs right now, I think when you talk about, how do we work with allies and partners really all around the world, but specifically into the Inda-Pacific. You know we have, 111 just draw attention back to RIMPAC exercise earlier this year, you know that is one of the largest exercises in the entire world, with many Indo-Pacific nations, but also European nations coming in there, and this year it was an entire month long. So we had 3 weeks of regular training and building interoperability with lots of different task forces performing real missions that folks might have to do. And then we did one week of free play. Because that’s when people don’t have a scripted activity. And again, that’s where you really learn to work together. So that’s just one example. But we do 7th Fleet and 3rd Fleet do lots of training, lots of exercises with our fleets all around the world. You see, we have Malabar, Balikatan. I could go on with the many exercises that we have, and I think even recently you can talk a little bit about the AUKUS partnership and the work we’re doing there with Australia and the Uk, both in the submarine aspect of it, but also in the integrating, expanding warfighting capabilities through Pillar Two. Things like hypersonics, undersea lethality, quantum computing, there is a lot of good work, electronic warfare going in that. So I, like you said earlier, spent a lot of my career working with allies and partners. I firmly believe that we’re stronger together, and every opportunity that we have to work with each other, build that interoperability, and really build that trust that you need is critically important. So we’re doing that in the Pacific and really all around the world.
Admiral Howard: But I think also, you just remind, I mean, it’s not just the US Navy that’s mobile. All navies are mobile. I think I just read. The Australians just took over the task force for the Red Sea, and they took it over from the Italians, right. So that our ability not just to operate together within a region, but be able to translate that into operations and other theaters makes us unique and strong.
Admiral Franchetti: I think it’s true, because, you know there’s no, no adversaries know any lines on a map. You know, and that everything’s connected by the global maritime commons. And so, being able to operate with partners all over the world. When I talk with my European partners, you know the Italian carrier just left the Inda-pacific. The French carrier, Charles de Gaulle, is on its way, and the British carrier is going later next year. You know, again, everyone wants to be able to operate with partners all over the world, because you never know when you’re going to have the opportunity to work together or need to work together. And I think your point about the maritime forces. Because we’re all operating in the same environment. We all share the same basic procedures. You can really just have a little bit of a pickup game. Whenever you happen to meet someone on the open ocean, do a little bit of training and move on your separate ways.
Admiral Howard: This next question is from Mary Boies, Stimson Board, Stimson Board Member. Yes! In early May, 1942, the USS Carrier Yorktown was severely damaged by the Japanese at the battle of Coral Sea closer to Australia than the US. Then, defying all estimates of time to repair, the carrier Yorktown was operational enough to fight at Midway, near Hawaii at the end of May. Could we perform that timely repair today? And how does this relate to your 80% combat readiness P33 target? way to go. Mary, you got the P33 right? I don’t think I would have gotten that right.
Admiral Franchetti: Well, thank you. Thank you for that question. You know, I think I would say two things about there. The P33 target is really about generating forces that can be ready if you think back to 9/n, and we didn’t know if our nation was under attack, and I was at Fleet Forces command at the time, and the admiral said, get everything underway, anything that get underway get underway, because we don’t know what’s happening, and we don’t know what we’re going to need to be able to do. And so what I want to do is have a better understanding of what is the readiness of all our forces? And then, if something like that were to happen. And we needed to surge forces again, whether they’re submarine surface aviation platforms. What is their readiness? How do we get it to 80%. And if we need to do some tailored training to get them out the door, then we can quickly do that and get them out the door. So that’s what I’m focused on there. As far as the repair capabilities – and this is something that we focus on a lot in our wargaming – when we think about what are some of the things that we might need to do in a battle? Where would we repair, revive? Where would we go? What is our posture to be able to do that in the future? And where are those capabilities? Who’s generating those capabilities?
Admiral Howard: And then how do we partners and allies?
Admiral Franchetti: And where our partners and allies yep. And how do we build that capability out? Because again, we want to have that agility and flexibility that maritime forces bring to be able to do things forward. You don’t have to come all the way back to the States
Admiral Howard: I don’t know if you remember Admiral Courtney, but he used to he used to say this. If you want to know about the US Navy, the one thing you need to know is that we’re the away team. That’s why we wear white. And we are definitely the away team.
Admiral Franchetti: Also in the Marine Corps. Yes, without a doubt.
Admiral Howard: So that is a perfect segue to the next question. This is from Abby Shepherd from Inside Defense. Department of the Navy is comprised of the Navy and the Marine Corps, in which both entities support each other. My husband, the marine, would agree with you, Abby. My question is what progress is being made in ensuring that maintenance delays for the amphibious feet are kept to a minimum? Can you talk to us about the relationship with the Marine Corps and our view operations?
Admiral Franchetti: Sure, you know, this has actually been one of my big focus areas since I was even the Vice Chief when General Smith was the Vice Chief, and I was the Vice Chief. Now he’s the Commandant, and I’m the CNO, and we have a really strong commitment to each other. He calls it Locked Shields. I call it Locked Shields. Because it is a Navy-Marine Corps team, and together we are the strongest team in the entire world. We can do anything. He always says “Swiss army knife”. I think it’s a Swiss army knife. There are so many different capabilities that we have as a collective team. So it is really important that we work together, and that we really can get our mission done whenever and wherever it needs to be done.
As far as the specific question on working on the maintenance. This has been a big focus area for us, really, over the last year. And there’s been a few initiatives in that area to basically do two things. One is really understand. Where are we in the maintenance of all the ships? And then also, what are all the Marine Corps training requirements? How can we work together through any maintenance challenges to make sure that we can still meet those Marine Corps training and certification requirements along with the Blue Green team that has to train and certify together? And we’re very focused on that.
I think if you just take the example of the Boxer. So Boxer had a rudder casualty, a rudder maintenance issue, and it needed to be fixed. It took a lot longer than we planned, and that was going to impact the Marines’ ability to deploy. But together we work through it. We work through how could the marines still get their training and certification that they needed to do. As the Boxer was still delayed in her deployment, we got the other 2 ships out there. They were on deployment, a part of her ARG new. And then we were able, once the Boxer got underway, to get her trained, certified quickly get her over there and have the deployment even extended beyond the original plan, so we could continue to provide more options to our nation’s leaders. In fact, she was able to render humanitarian and disaster relief after a typhoon in the Philippines. So she was there when she needed to be. So we’re committed Locked Shields in everything we do. You know, we just, you know, made a contract for, or we just said, and we just put funding in to buy more amphibious ships, new ones. So the Marine Corps is very excited about that. I’m very excited about that, too. Again, because this is capability that we need all around the world every single day.
Admiral Howard: So USS Boxer – when you talk about, you know the ability to roll to different missions – I fought pirates from USS Boxer. The Boxer was for the Maersk Alabama rescue. Boxer was our flagship.
Admiral Franchetti: Well, when you talk about, you know ships that are not just in the Inda-Pacific there, but you know the Wasp is also on her way home from deployment. Again, another amazing deployment got out there, did Baltic operations up there with lots of different allies and partners up in the high North, a critical area again for us to be able to operate. And then she zipped over into the Eastern Mediterranean to be able to deescalate any type of conflict over in that area, and also be prepared to respond to anything that could potentially happen from a noncombatant evacuation operation perspective, but also participate in another Neptune strike exercise there. So again, a lot of flexibility for our nation in the Navy and the Navy-Marine Corps team.
Admiral Howard: The next question. So I have Bob Vince, Captain US Navy, retired. Thank you, Bob, for picking the right service. So, and this is interesting. You just talked about the high North and having done Baltic Ops. Comms are a challenge. That’s a great environment to practice in because of Comms challenges. His question is, China had a battle plan, battle space dominance plan for electromagnetic spectrum warfare, for example, jamming and more. And for those of you who want to know more, the Center for Naval Analysis in 2018 had some great testimony to Congress in this specific area space and China. The question is, is our Navy on a path to be ready to operate in China’s near abroad in a highly jammed environment? How does this maritime operations center fit into this?
Admiral Franchetti: Yeah, well, definitely. And I think if you think about the changing character of war and what this war fighting system of systems looks like, you know, part of being able to operate in a widely distributed manner is that you need to have different communications paths, to be able to command and control your forces, pass information back and forth. And that’s a big focus. If you look at our 5 plus 4 and all of the things that we’re trying to achieve for the long-term warfighting advantage. This is definitely one of our key focus areas. So yes, I think the question is, are we going to be prepared? Yes, we’re going to be prepared. And I think this is also something that’s very well integrated into all of our training and certification exercises. We know that we’ll need to operate in a communications denied environment. And that’s something that we train to regularly, as does the rest of our joint force, and we work on that with our allies and partners as well.
Admiral Howard: And actually, I think this last question, you already spoke a little bit to it. It’s from Commander Benjamin Massengale from the Stimson Center. He also, I think, would like us to go a little bit more deeper in the realm of allies and partners. Can you speak to how the Quad and AUKUS are advancing your NAV plan goals? And then you gave this great example upfront about the US ecosystem. You know the missile and the feed and the refinement of the targeting on the ground. But his question is, how do allies and joint partners fill in fit into this joint warfighting ecosystem?
Admiral Franchetti: Well, they’re part and parcel of that joint warfighting ecosystem, and I think if you look at the NAV plan, I don’t use the word allies and partners as much as I use the “combined forces”, because that really is how I think about it. I do see that worth fighting ecosystem very seamlessly. And as our French counterparts talk about, we need to be able to plug and play, no matter where we go. And our British counterparts talk about being interchangeable, not just interoperable. And I think that extends to all of our partnerships, whether it’s in the Inda-Pacific, whether it’s in the Middle East, whether it’s in the Atlantic or the high North, because, as you see, these Navies, they’re all operating together all around the world. And it’s a seamless global commons. And so, whether the sensor is operated by an ally and partner, whether it’s operated by a marine ashore, that information gets back into this big, common operating picture that we will share with our allies and partners, which is a key part of being able to operate together, sharing information, being able to have our systems connected. This is part of fighting in a joint and combined warfighting ecosystem, and it is here today when you think about the work being done in the Red Sea. That’s not just the Navy there. All the amazing work that O’Kane and Stockdale did you know over this past weekend, you know, with the ships that they escorted our US flagged merchant ship. This is all part of a joint ecosystem. That’s enabled by all of our services, enabled by allies and partners. And again, that’s today. But it’s going to be more important in the future.
Admiral Howard: I have a question from Andrew Hyde, from the Stimson Center. What are the most serious challenges that our adversaries have developed or are developing? And how does your NAVPLAN address those challenges? So this might be maybe a little bit more of a deep dive into your enablers that you mentioned at the beginning.
Admiral Franchetti: Yeah, I think that’s you know, when you think about all the different capabilities that are really in the 5 plus 4. Those are the things that we know we’re going to need to be able to do. We know we’re going to be able to have long range fires. Right? That’s how we shoot. We know we’re going to need to have counter C5ISR&T. That’s going to be how we maneuver. We know we’re going to need to have terminal defense against adversaries. That’s how we protect the force. We know we’re going to need to be able to sustain the force potentially over long distances. That’s our contested logistics battle plan. So those are the areas that we’re really focused on, because I think we’re pretty eyes wide open about the capabilities that our adversaries are delivering. But we’re also eyes wide open about the capabilities we need to have to not only defeat those capabilities, but actually prevail. Because, again, that’s our job. Our job is to win decisively in combat, and that’s what I’m focused on everyday.
Admiral Howard: I think that is a good way to end the conversation. So one last question from your former shipmate. So every everyone has a slogan. And so if I’ve got this one wrong, correct me. We have a way of motivating our people I’ve been reading about Get Real Get Better. So CNO, if I’m an average sailor, what does Get Real Get Better mean to me. And what does it mean, I think, to all of our, you know, military partners?
Admiral Franchetti: Yeah, thank you for that question, and, you know, Get Real Get Better. It might sound like a slogan. But there’s a lot under that, and what I would say, Get Real Get Better is a change in our mindset in the Navy. If l was explaining it to a sailor, that’s what I would say. So it’s all about embracing the red. So self-assessing kind of really understanding what’s going on and being okay. If something isn’t perfect, you may remember from days when you’re a strike group commander, you would have a ship that report. Everything is green, everything is working, and you would be like, Hmm! You knew that something wasn’t working. We want to have a climate where people are okay with reporting that this isn’t working. I need help here I have this shared challenge. Is anyone else having this challenge? Can we work on it together? So self-assessing.
Then we want to self-correct. So this is a problem solving mindset where we have tools that we can use to really get after the root cause. What are the drivers of the problem? How do we actually solve something and not just put a Band-Aid on it? Then it’s the self so self-assess, self-correct.
And then always learning, we’ve got to go back and check. Did that solve the problem? If it didn’t solve the problem, we’ve got to go back and check again. So it really is more than a slogan. It really is a deep cultural change for the Navy, and what I’ve tasked our leaders to do all across the Navy is to create an environment where younger sailors and their subordinates can come up with them, to them, with challenges and help get solutions, and then share those solutions across. Because a lot of times one ship might solve one thing, but they don’t want to share that with anybody else, because it might make them look bad. So we want that shared knowledge all across our Navy, because that way we’re going to learn faster. And in the end, what’s that all about? It’s about delivering warfighting advantage. It’s about lethality. If you think about why we started Get Real Get Better. We had a series of mishaps. We had several collisions. We had the bottom of shard fire. We had Red Hill. We realized that there was different performance. We were not all performing at the same level, and we wanted there was a lot of variance, so we needed to raise everybody up to the same standard, not subtract ourselves from the equation, and make sure that our forces are ready to go. And we know they’re ready to go, and we work together to make them ready to go at the same standard. We can have that expectation. So that’s what Get Real Get Better, a little bit of the underpinning of that.
Couple of quick success stories – If you think about the aviation model, just the strike fighters where you know, in 2018, Secretary Mattis challenged them to go from 50% readiness to 80% readiness. They didn’t do that. Our normal way, which is throwing more money and people at the problem. They did it by unpacking the challenge. They really got down to the root cause and started working on that. And then they’ve been able to maintain that at 60%, or 80% ever since. So 6 years.
I think when you look at recruiting, I already talked about that a little bit, that recruiting operations Center. But another one when I came in as a Vice Chief, we were having a lot of challenges paying our people on time. And it was one of the only things I heard about when I would go out on all hands calls. So using the same process, or performed a plan process, they were able to identify the root causes of those problems. And they set the standard. And now we’re at 99.8% pay accuracy on time, and any pay challenge gets resolved in 3 days. I haven’t heard about a pay problem in over a year, because we solve the problem. So that’s all about Get Real Get Better. So it’s a cultural change. It’s probably going to take 5 to 10 years to really inculcate this culture into our DNA. But I know in the end it’s going to make us more lethal and more ready. So I’m excited about it. So if you wanted to call it a slogan or a bumper sticker, 111 create one for you. I’ll send one out to you.
Admiral Howard: Well, I think you’ve convinced me. We all need to Get Real Get Better, and we all have better organizations for it. Well, thank you for your time, CNO.
Admiral Franchetti: Thank you.
Admiral Howard: Everyone. We’re going to depart now, if you just give us a few minutes and allow the CNO an opportunity. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much.