Source: United States Navy
Moderator:
Good morning, everyone. I’m Thom Shanker, Director
of the Project for Media and National Security. We have a very
special guest today, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, Chief of Naval
Operations. I know you know her distinguished military bio.
What you might not know, she has an undergraduate degree in
journalism from Northwestern, one of the finest J schools in the
country. I know the Navy’s your home, so I’m not going to say
welcome home, Admiral — I’ll say welcome back.
Admiral Franchetti:
Thank you.
Moderator:
The ground rules are the same as always. This is on
the record. You can record for accuracy of quotes, but there’s
no rebroadcast of audio or video. I’ll ask the first question,
then we’ll go to the table. More than a dozen people emailed in
advance. We’ll get to as many as we possibly can in the time
allowed, and then we’ll save the last few minutes for the
Admiral’s closing comments.
Admiral, thank you for joining us.
Admiral Franchetti:
Thank you.
Moderator:
My opening question. You recently released your
Strategic Guidance to the Navy. Your Navigation Plan focuses
heavily on the PRC and the year 2027. I’m sure it’s not a
coincidence that’s also the year that Xi Jinping has said he
wants his military to be capable of retaking Taiwan.
So, can you talk about your concerns, analysis of Chinese
defenses and offenses that are so worrisome to you, and how will
you structure and restructure the Navy between now and 2027 to
deter China? And I use deter especially because of the military
axiom, it’s always better to deter war than fight one.
Admiral Franchetti:
Definitely. Thanks, Thom, and again, thank
you for organizing and thanks everybody for being here. And
thanks for the opportunity to talk a little bit about the
Navigation Plan and the thinking that went into that.
I would say to your specific question, first of all I don’t
believe that conflict with China is inevitable or imminent, but
it’s pretty clear that based on what Chairman Xi has said, that
his military forces need to be ready by 2027 for war. He wants
them to be a world class military, capable of global operations
by 2035. And we know that they are really doing their
investments through their industrial base, through their
production of military capabilities, through the integration of
their different forces, that they are taking action to get after
his charge to be ready.
So as the CNO who’s going to be the CNO in 2027, I’m compelled
to do more and do more faster.
So as I step back and I looked at everything that China is doing
both in their defense industrial base, in the capabilities
they’re doing, as well as their aggressive behavior that we’re
seeing all around the region, their Belt and Road Initiative,
they’re getting footholds in various countries all around the
world, I knew that as the NDS says, that China is the pacing
challenge and that’s what I really need to be focused on.
So I’m looking at what can I do to think, act and operate
differently to make our Navy even more ready? I think we’re
ready today for anything that comes our way, but we need to be
more ready by 2027.
So that’s what the Nav Plan is really all about. It looks at
sort of two different time horizons, and we can certainly talk
about this more during the course of the conversation.
The near term time horizon where I have put forth Project 33
which are seven areas that we’ve already been working on, but I
think they’re areas where I can really put my thumb on the scale
and where we can accelerate our advantage in those seven areas
to get after the capabilities we need and raise that baseline
level of readiness for our forces by 2027.
The second part is really getting after the capabilities we need
for a longer term advantage, and that’s all about the Navy’s
contribution to what I call the Joint Warfighting Ecosystem.
One of those capabilities that we need to be able to integrate
with the other services and with our allies and partners to have
that long term enduring advantage.
So that’s how I’m framing the Navigation Plan. I’m really
excited about it. It was a very good discussion with all of our
four-star leadership that these are the areas that we need to
get after and I have broad commitment across the Navy that this
is what we need to do to think, act and operate differently, to
be in a more ready place by 2027.
Moderator:
Thanks. I have some follow-ups but I want to be a
good host and get to the other questions.
Also, one small audio/visual. In your plan you talk about
setting some North Stars. That’s why I wore my constellation
neck tie, so you can always find the North Star.
Admiral Franchetti:
Excellent. It is a really important
concept and I’d be happy to talk about that a little bit, but
the North Star is to be more ready by 2027 and raise that base
line [inaudible] talks about in the Nav Plan. But having those
stretch goals, having the objectives that we really need to
reach for, that’s going to drive more effective performance and
our ability to measure ourselves along the way to make sure that
we’re either on plan, off plan, ahead of plan, and what do we
need to do to make sure we’re going to meet those targets?
Moderator:
Thanks so much.
Our first questioner is Lolita Baldor, AP. I didn’t see her.
Sam LaGrone, US Naval Institute News.
DWG:
I think that’s me here today. [Inaudible].
I wanted to ask you about the proposed [inaudible] shift
[inaudible] manning issues. Do you have an update on that
potential proposal and how the Navy will implement it and
mitigate any impacts of that across the fleet?
Admiral Franchetti:
Sure. First of all, our logistics force
capability is really important to everything we do. We’ve
talked a lot in the past few years really about the importance
of that force, the importance of logistics. Certainly there are
many examples throughout history that amateurs talk tactics and
professional talk logistics. This is a critical capability for
us.
So we have been working with our Secretary and Military Sealift
Command to really better understand what are the challenges that
our civilian mariners are facing in their ability to really get
after their rotational employment as they have their model of
operating on all of our different classes of ships.
So what we’re doing now is really taking a step back to look at
what is the health of the civilian mariner community, how do we
continue to provide incentives for that community to be able to
serve to the best of their ability, and really value their
performance every single day.
We had a lot of barriers in place, maybe some of them even
administrative, for them to be able to easily go from their home
to their work and back and forth. So we really want to improve
the processes we’re doing. We also have a legislative proposal
in to be able to raise their salaries. Again, some of these
things are really important as we’re competing with a very high
demand across the global maritime industry to be able to man
both our commercial ships, but for us in, in particular the
Military Sealift Command ships.
So what we’re looking at doing is how do we best man the ships
that we have, because we need to maintain the standards of
operational effectiveness and safety. We know we need to have
our ships out there to be able to resupply all of our carrier
strike groups and our amphibious readiness groups as they’re
out. So we’re working to do that right now. So that’s step one
of the process. While we continue to go out and meet with all
the input sources through our merchant marine academies to talk
with the sailors, the students there about the value of service
and how they can be part of our team.
DWG:
Do you have a timeline for when you’re looking to make any
decisions on that? Or [inaudible] sideline [inaudible]?
Admiral Franchetti:
I don’t know that that’s a good word. I
wouldn’t say that we’re sidelining them. I would say that we’re
reprioritizing our manning to make sure that we can have the
ships that we need out there right now to be able to support all
of the operations all around the world while we get more healthy
with the number of civilian mariners we have. Then look at
phasing the ships back into service, full service.
DWG:
It sounds like this is an FY25 manning issue that you have
to solve for this next fiscal year. Would you say that’s fair?
Admiral Franchetti:
I think we need to look at it over the long
term. I think this is a challenge that we really identified
that started really in the pandemic with some of the practices
that were in place that made it difficult for our civilian
mariners to get relieved on time. This is really the biggest
focus of our civilian mariners. They want to be, like everyone
else, have a predictable life, and they want to be able to do
that and we owe that to them, so that’s what we’re getting
after. I can’t give you a timeline on how long it’s going to
take to work our way through that, but again, it’s really
focused on putting the civilian mariner at the center of the
universe, and how can we best make it — just like we do with
our sailors. What’s their quality of service? What’s their
quality of life? And again, how can we continue to retain the
ones we have and increase the population of CivMars. Thank you.
Moderator:
Next is Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post.
DWG:
Thanks for your time this morning.
Sort of a two-part question. The first half, the Navy was
involved [inaudible] yesterday as we saw that attack on Israel.
Did you connect the ship COs that were involved? What did they
use to participate? How did they do with those 12 missiles they
launched?
And then taking a step back and looking at this more broadly,
we’re a year into heightened ops now in the Middle East as a
result of the war in Gaza. How are you looking at that? How
are you getting after that? Particularly given the plan that
you just released when you have so many scarce assets — the
MEUs, the carrier strike groups and other things that are
involved and seemingly very hard to pull away from that
conflict?
Admiral Franchetti:
Thank you. First let me say how proud I am
of our team that’s operating over there. As you said, we’ve had
forces there in the Middle East for just about a year, and I’m
really proud and happy that we’ve been able to provide all these
different options for our nations’ decisionmakers initially with
our forces that were available to make sure that the conflict
did not escalate out of the region. Again, we’ve been on
station being able to drive those options. And again, I’m super
proud of the team that’s out there. I had a chance to talk with
all of the Ike ships and their crews when they came back, and I
could not find a more motivated group of people and proud of
their mission to save lives and really get after the things that
they’ve been trained to do.
I can’t really provide a lot of details on the specific
operations of yesterday, but what I can say is it’s our
commitment to Israel to ensure that Israel is able to defend
itself for our ability to commit to their defense and support
the defense of both Israel as well as our forces and our troops
and our ships that are operating there in the region. And that
commitment is ironclad.
Our ships are arrayed in the manner that the CENTCOM commander
wants them to be, to be able to be postured, to be able to
respond to an attack like this. And again, as you saw in the
reporting yesterday, the Cole and the Bulkeley were able to
provide for that defense.
So again, we are ready for any action that comes our way there
in the Middle East, just like we are all over the rest of the
world.
DWG:
Can we drill down on the second half?
Admiral Franchetti:
Again, our force is a global force and we
have a force generation process that allows us to be able to
have carrier strike groups, ARG MEUs ready for tasking. And all
of our forces that are deployed and have been deployed in the
Middle East are operating on their regular schedule. These are
their planned deployments. Where they go during the deployment
from a CNO perspective, that is an agnostic about where they go,
because they’re operating wherever the nation needs them to
operate. My responsibility is to make sure that they’re
trained, manned, certified, ready to go, and that we manage
their schedule so when they come back they are able to get into
their maintenance cycle and be ready to start all over again,
So the good news is that again, because all of these deployments
have been on their schedule, we’ve been able to meet all of our
commitments in the Middle East, we’re meeting our commitments
all over the world with our forces, and the ships especially in
the Ike strike group, they’re all back right now. None of their
maintenance was either delayed or deferred. They’re actually
starting into their maintenance phases right now.
What we can anticipate out of that is because the ships were
extended several months on deployment, what we normally see is
there will be some additional work that will need to be done
during the yard period, so it will perhaps be extended a little
bit longer, but we don’t intend to delay any of the starts of
these maintenance periods, and we want to get them ready go to
as soon as they’re able to go.
DWG:
Is it fair to assume we may see the deferred maintenance
on the vessels that are there now that the Secretary mentioned I
believe Sunday would also likely be extended?
Admiral Franchetti:
All of the ships out there, we’re
continuing to monitor them on their extensions. But Ike strike
group and her units associated with her, they were extended to
almost nine months when they came home. And again, we’ve been
able to manage their schedules, getting them back and adjusting
their maintenance periods to make sure that we’re going to get
everything done that we need to get done.
And I think that ties right into the Nav Plan that you just
mentioned, how does that affect the Nav Plan. My goal, and it
has been my goal since day one is to get more players on the
field. That’s more platforms that are ready to be able to do
their job with all the capability and capacity that they need to
do their job, but also the people that go with that.
So this commitment to getting this maintenance done, getting
people back into their regular routine trading cycle. That is
how we’re going to get more players on the field.
Moderator:
Next is Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg.
DWG:
I might try the Middle East question again. The ecosystem
you talk about, you want to improve the ecosystem and the Navy’s
participation. What ecosystem did the Cole and the Bulkeley
fall in on yesterday? Did they work with the Israeli command
and control space-based assets from the Air Force? What
ecosystem did they participate in to allow their shots?
Admiral Franchetti:
I can’t speak to the actual operations that
happened yesterday so I don’t have any ability to provide more
information on the direct actions that happened yesterday. But
I think more broadly when I talk about the joint warfighting
ecosystem, just from a global perspective, I mean the idea is
that we have — it’s a system of systems conversation. So you
have a warfighting ecosystem which is the enabled by the
information warfare domain, space, cyber, the things that you’ve
mentioned. Then we have all of the services as well as our
allies and partners are bringing different capabilities into
that space.
So sometimes your capability is enabling the capabilities of
another service. Sometimes you are the one that is enabled by
other services. So I like to think about it as an orchestra.
All of the parts of an orchestra are going to play and you’re
going to get the music and you’re going to create that music
because everyone knows what their role is and they’re playing at
their right time. So if you think about an ecosystem with that
orchestra in a warfighting domain, maybe you have a DDG that’s
operating far forward. It knows it needs to do a land-based
strike but it doesn’t have any organic information about that.
It may get that initially from an overhead sensor, and then
maybe the targeting is refined by a forward operating sensor,
maybe from a Marine or Army or Special Forces or some other
sensor, an allied and partner sensor. And then it can refine
that. Maybe you need to have some type of deception that goes
with that launch. All that is not really being seen by the
individual CO, so that’s about fighting from our Maritime
Operation Center. But it also is that ecosystem.
I don’t have any specific examples for yesterday but I just
think more broadly if you look to future warfighting in 5, 10,
15 years from now, we need to be able to operate in that broader
environment.
DWG:
Getting more players on the field. Two of your big
players are submarines, the Virginia-class and Columbia. Both
are having major issues right now. You’re a journalism student.
Would you consider the submarine program’s in crisis right now
given the delays this welding issue — I’m not trying to
[inaudible] but delays and the cost overruns on both Virginia-
class and Columbia. Are they in a crisis right now from your
journalism background?
Admiral Franchetti:
As you rightly said, Columbia is our number
one acquisition priority. Virginia is really important to us.
These are advantages that we have that are really important in
this warfighting ecosystem that we know that our ballistic
missile submarines are critically important to underwriting our
strategic deterrence all around the world. And of course
Virginia’s continuing to provide us distinct advantage.
So I’m focused on the industrial base and all of our investments
that we’re making right now to really get after some of the
challenges in workforce, in workforce retention, in supply
chain, and that is what I’m focused on. And how do we
accelerate the building of those submarines, both Columbia and
the Virginias, to get them up to the cadence that we need them
to be at.
DWG:
You’ve got a $20 billion cost overrun projected on the
Virginia-class, ma’am, in the next five years. How are you
trying to deal with that?
Admiral Franchetti:
With our eyes wide open and working with
industry on all of the challenges that industrial base is facing
right now. And again, I’m really confident that through these
investments that we’re making right now and through some of the
things that we’re doing to make sure that we have a target
investment, we understand the return on investment, and that
they are moving the needle in the direction that we want to see,
that we are going to get where we need to be on that.
Moderator:
Just to use the prerogative of the chair, we had
Jane Harmon and Eric Edelman here a few weeks ago, the
Congressional National Defense Review, and they made the point
that our industrial base, the workers in the industrial base,
need to be a national security priority. There just aren’t
enough people to do that kind of work.
Admiral Franchetti:
And I would just offer, I talk about call
to service, and I’ve been talking about that really since I was
the Vice Chief. To me it’s not just about call to service in a
uniform, it’s call to service in the defense or weapons
industrial base too. AS I’ve gone around and you meet with
industry, that’s their number one concern. It’s not just
recruiting the workers, but it’s also retaining them. People
get a lot of options out there with the choices that they can
make in their lives and I really want to appeal to people to
serve whether it’s in the uniform or whether it’s in the defense
industrial base.
And I do think it starts back in high school. So it’s a
partnership that we need to have with local, state, governors,
education, to make sure that as we can create pipelines and
people want to be a welder, they can see that this is an amazing
way to live and have a great career for your family. A great
place for you to put down your roots. There’s a lot of good
work that can be done, and we have a lot of initiatives going in
that regard. I as at HII, and they have a ship fitter training
program with Blue Forge Alliance, the contract that was just
let, they have their BuildSubmarines.com which is heavily
recruiting in that, but they also have in place a welder school
in Danville, additive manufacturing. So these are some things
that we really need to get after. I think to really kind of put
that acceleration into the workforce, that’s going to help
everywhere. Not just in submarines, but in shipbuilding,
aircraft, everything we need to be able to do.
Moderator:
Next is Nick [Mosler] of Inside Defense.
DWG:
The Nav Plan of course sets its sights on 2027 but it also
speaks to the need to balance modernization and [inaudible]
readiness. So we’ve already seen the Navy’s 2025 budget, but
I’m curious in 2026 and 2027 can you give us an idea of the kind
of budget priorities, especially with 2027, really near term
[inaudible]?
Admiral Franchetti:
First, on the acquisition side, definitely
Columbia, number one priority and those investments are really
top of mind. But I’m focused broadly in readiness as my first
priority, then capability, then capacity in that order. If we
want to be more ready by 2027, that really needs to be my focus
so that’s what I’m going to be focused on through the budget
process and really through, more broadly, when you talk about
readiness and raising the combat surge readiness by 80 percent,
getting more players on the field, that means that we really
need to attack getting ships and submarines, aircraft in and out
of maintenance on time. So that’s a big priority for me in the
upcoming budget for sure.
The other part is capabilities. What are the capabilities that
we can get in the near term to be more ready for 2027. I think
that comes from an integrated view, again, holistically of how
we’re going to fight and that’s a little bit about the joint
warfighting ecosystem in the second part of the Nav Plan. We
talk about that enduring advantage, really looking at what
capabilities can deliver by 2027 and where can we accelerate
them, whether they’re with our conventionally manned platforms
or whether it’s things we can do in robotic and autonomous
systems to be able to expand the reach, the lethality and the
depth of our conventional platforms.
DWG:
On the subject of those capabilities, are there any
specific systems or capabilities in mind, like you said that you
could field that quickly?
Admiral Franchetti:
There’s a lot of good initiatives that are
going on in that. We stood up our Disruptive Capabilities
Office probably just a little bit over a year ago now, to really
take and find that technology that’s already out there, ripe and
ready to go and ready to be integrated, then working through the
[Raider] Fund, working with DIU and through our Fleet
Experimentations, which happens very extensively. Because what
we really want to do is understand what the fleets need and then
we can help get after those capabilities more effectively,
whether we’re using the prototypes that we’ve been using out at
Fifth Fleet in Task Force 59, whether we’re leveraging the work
done in the Flex series at Fourth Fleet where they have a lot of
unmanned ISR platforms going to get after that large space for
more effective maritime domain awareness. So those are some
things. And then even most recently with the unmanned surface
vessels that we’ve been able to operate going from San Diego to
Guam to Australia and back. We’re learning a lot in that space.
So as the service chief, once I know what the fleets need, I
need to get the concept operation and employment from the
fleets, then I can figure out how do we need to man, train,
sustain, organize ourselves to be able to have a home for them,
be able to effectively employ them, and make sure that we have
all the right tools in place that when we get the capability we
can actually use it and integrate it.
That’s what I’m focused on in my objective in the Nav Plan is
really to make sure that we have going forward, are fully able
to integrate the manned/unmanned teaming concepts through these
platforms. Whether it’s under the sea, on the sea, or above the
sea.
DWG:
You mentioned a lot of unmanned systems in that kind of
synopsis. Do you see unmanned as like a critical deterrence
difference-maker by 2027?
Admiral Franchetti:
I definitely do. Unmanned has the ability
both in the traditional types of things, the maritime domain
awareness, sea control, all the things you think about. I like
to think about unmanned platforms as things that can do things
that are dull, dirty or dangerous. You think about having
unmanned platforms to go after mines, things that you really
wouldn’t want to put a person in, but you can get unmanned
platforms for that. Dull, maritime domain awareness. I’ve
certainly done my share of driving around in the ocean looking
for stuff, but if you can get an unmanned platform to do that,
you can get a person to look at an anomaly. And of course
dirty. Where can we free up the sailors. You can get a Roomba
to clean your bilge. That’s what I’d rather do rather than
having a sailor down there.
So I’m excited about all of the things that we’re going to be
able to do.
Moderator:
I like that — dull, dirty and dangerous.
Next is Steve Trimble, Aviation Week.
In your aviation portfolio, the U.S. Air Force this year has
deferred their [inaudible] Next Generation Air Dominance, the
platform, the crewed platform. The U.S. Navy is planning to do
that in a year. The Air Force has said that they deferred it so
that they can review the requirements with a focus on
adaptability and affordability. How does the Navy look at that?
Has that changed how the Navy views it or the timeline for it?
And is it taking any of those Air Force changes no board?
Admiral Franchetti:
Certainly our aviation, as you talked about
submarines being a strategic advantage, and certainly our air
platforms are equally one of our strategic advantages we have.
With F/A-XX, you know, we’re focused on that being our
replacement for F/A-18 and the Growlers in the 2030s timeframe.
And again, we expect that sixth generation platform to be able
to have advanced sensor, advanced lethality, advanced range, and
being able to integrate with manned and unmanned capabilities
together. I think that’s one of the things we learned from the
Air Force and the work they’re doing to integrate that with what
we know that we need to be able to do. That’s what we’re
looking at.
We have three companies that have provided proposals for that
and we’re actually in source selection right now.
DWG:
Is there any concern that with the Air Force [inaudible],
there are some potentially common enabling technologies. Next
Generation Adaptive Propulsion is one of them. The Air Force is
taking the lead on that. If they continue to push out their
NGAD does that have an effect on your F/A-XX?
Admiral Franchetti:
I think it’s important, and this is I think
more broadly, that as all the services work together to make
sure that they have complementary capabilities, where can we
learn from each other, and again, where can we leverage that
learning so we can be more common in the future? I think that’s
actually really important.
Moderator:
Caitlyn Burchett of Stripes.
DWG:
Good morning. I wanted to talk about the Navy recently
awarded the multi-amphib deal to HII. I understand that these
ships are not going to join the fleet for years, but do they
play into Project 33 at all? What does this mean for the Navy?
Especially with a potential future conflict with China?
Admiral Franchetti:
I’m really excited about the award. Again,
the Navy/Marine Corps team, I keep talking about all these
strategic advantages that we have, but I really do — the Navy’s
doing an amazing job and I’m so proud of them, and the fact that
we can work with the Marine Corps everywhere, that really gives
us a lot of flexibility and it provides more options.
So the good news about this multi-ship award, a couple of
things. First of all, it just reaffirms our commitment to the
Marine Corps, their mission, force design, all the things that
the Marine Corps and Navy team need to be able to do in the
future. So there’s a requirement for 31 amphibs. This will
make sure that we stay at the 31 amphibs in the right
arrangements that we need them, and the Marine Corps is very
focused on that and so are we.
I think the other piece is, I’ve gone around to industry and
visited all of our shipbuilders. They really want
predictability. They want to know. They want to have
headlights, they want to know what’s coming because then they
can make the capital investments they need to make, they can
hire the workforce they need to make. And I think with this
predictability and then kind of the ability to learn quickly and
fold that learning into the construction of the next ship, we
see that when shipyards are working on similar classes of ship.
They can really accelerate their performance, just because they
get the routines down and they can really save time, and we’re
excited about that.
So this, again — Project 33 is really focused on the what can
we do by 2027 timeframe, but the long term enduring advantage,
we know that amphibious ships, ARG MEUS, they’re going to have a
role to play in the delivering future warfighting advantage. So
this is a great news story.
Some of our amphibs are older and again, so as new ships come on
line this will allow us to have the best technology and
capability for our Navy/Marine Corps team and really for the
Joint Force going forward.
DWG:
A quick follow-up, some of the amphibs just over the past
year have had some mechanical problems and [inaudible] it did
cause s delay for its deployment. Is that just an issue of just
not being able to prioritize maintenance? And is that something
that you would like to see prioritized more so in the future
going forward?
Admiral Franchetti:
I’m very focused on maintenance for all of
our ships, amphib ships, destroyers, submarines, every type of
platform we have because again, getting ships in and out of
maintenance on time is going to get more players on the field.
I think a lot of things that we’ve done, and we’re doing deep
dives on amphibious readiness in particular, but more broadly
when we took a step back and looked at some of the systemic
problems that we were seeing in maintenance, there are some
things that we needed to do on the Navy side, so a few things
that we’ve done.
Number one, we are backing up our planning to make sure that the
work packages are locked in ahead of time, at least 180 days
out. Believe it or not, sometimes those packages weren’t locked
in until a little bit closer to the availability. It makes it
really difficult for everyone to plan.
The other one is, we had had sort of a just-in-time approach to
being able to order some of the supplies, the government
furnished materials, the spare parts. We know there’s going to
be some consistent things that we need to do in maintenance
periods, so how do we get ahead of that? So instead of just-in-
time have just-in-case. So we’re buying [routable] pools, we’re
having more parts available. So when the shipyard needs them
they’re ready, so we don’t have a delay just because they don’t
have the parts that they can be able to use.
Those are just some of the things we’ve done.
This is really showing promise. We have a perform-to-plan
process where we are using data to understand what is our plan,
where are we on the plan, and if we’re off plan, why, and how do
we solve that. And I think we’ve seen already at Pearl Harbor
Naval Shipyard, the United States Hawaii almost came out on
time. She had a last minute mechanical challenge that needed
repaired that wasn’t related to the overhaul. Then the
Minnesota, she came out on time. And again, this is one of the
yards where we have the pool of parts and also they have
repetitive procedures because they’re doing maintenance on the
same class of submarine.
I think if you look at our ships, I want to make sure I get my
numbers right. In FY22 our on-time completion rate of
availabilities was 36 percent. In ’23 we moved up to 41
percent. And as of June of this year we’re on track for 67
percent on-time maintenance completion rate on that ship side of
the house.
And of course aviation led the way with all of this. As
Secretary Mattis challenged us back in 2018 to raise our fighter
readiness from 50 percent to 80 percent, and we were able to
achieve that and we’ve been able to maintain that. Now scaling
that to all the other type model series.
So maintenance — I’m sorry to go on so long, but maintenance is
a very big priority for me because in and out on time, that is
really the lynch-pin to all of our training, readiness and
certification, deploying on time, and having more forces ready
at any time that we might need them.
Moderator:
Jim Garamone is next on the list. I don’t see Jim
today.
Dmitry Kirsanov, TASS.
DWG:
Good morning, Admiral. Thank you for doing this.
I was hoping to get an update on the Incidents At Sea, the
agreement signed by Moscow in Washington in 1972. Is the
agreement still being implemented? Is it operational? We
haven’t heard about it for a while. And do the two sides still
hold annual meetings to discuss the implementation of the
[inaudible]. Is the U.S. committed to the INCSEA agreement or
thinking about pulling out of it?
Admiral Franchetti:
Thank you for that question. The INCSEA
agreement, as you said, it’s been in place since 1972. It is
something that we continue to train to. Again, prevention for
the International Agreement for Prevention of Incidents at Sea.
We do train to that.
As far as the annual talks, I think our last talks were held in
2021. There haven’t been any talks since Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine. But I don’t have any information on any further
developments on the treat itself or if there are any
conversations going on about it.
DWG:
What is the current thinking?
Admiral Franchetti:
I don’t have any other information on that.
DWG:
Thank you.
Moderator:
Diego Laje of Signal. Nope
Justin Katz of Breaking Defense.
DWG:
Hi, thank you for doing this.
I wanted to ask you about, in your Nav Plan you have this 80
percent surge readiness. All of your recent predecessors have
kind of focused on maintenance and readiness in some way, but
this goal that you’ve set with surge readiness seems a little
bit unique for how they characterized it. So I wanted to ask
you kind of your thinking on how you arrived at that statistic
and why did you characterize it in surge readiness rather than
how Maybe Admiral Gilday did it?
Secondly, what do you need to do to get there? And do those
actions differ from the normal actions we’ve heard of whenever
we’ve talked about how do you get ships out of maintenance on
time?
Admiral Franchetti:
It is a different term. Probably the most
important thing is to have a good discussion just about the term
in general. So combat surge readiness. Really the way I’m
thinking about it, it’s a crisis force generation term and it’s
really identifying units that can be made ready through tailored
training and certification to go out and be deployed to do a
mission outside of the OFRP. So normally we have a pretty lock-
step process — maintain, train, certify, deploy. This is
outside of that process. Think back to 9/11. We know that all
of a sudden we needed to get ships underway to do different
missions, to go somewhere and do something. We want to be able
to have a process through each one of our communities —
aviation, surface and submarines — that they can certify a ship
as combat surge ready and get it out the door on the timeline
that it’s needed.
So that’s what I’m thinking about in terms of combat surge
ready. So that’s how I got to that idea.
Then it’s a stretch goal. Like all of the goals in the Nav
Plan, every one of them is a stretch goal. Every one of them
has a single accountable individual that’s responsible to me.
I’m responsible but I’m holding them accountable also for
getting after the goal.
They’re measurable for a reason, which is why we picked the 80
percent, because we think that’s a stretch goal and it will push
people harder to get after that. So each community will be
looking at how do they get to that 80 percent right now like I
talked about with the F-18s being 80 percent ready right now.
How do we get that across every other type model series, how do
we get that out of our ships, and how do we get that out of our
submarines?
DWG:
So it sounds like you corrected my understanding a little
bit. If this is less about individual ships and this is more
about 80 percent across the Navy’s combat units, for lack of
another term?
Admiral Franchetti:
Across the combat units.
DWG:
I was thinking about it purely in terms of ships, but you
were just saying aviation included —
Admiral Franchetti:
It’s every platform. Aviation, submarine
and ships too.
DWG:
Thank you.
Admiral Franchetti:
I try to be more broadly about the Navy.
We tend to sometimes focus on just the ships, but it’s really
everything. Because, again, we need that whole ecosystem to be
available for the Secretary of Defense and for the president to
be able to use all the tools available.
Moderator:
Joshua Keating.
DWG:
Thanks so much, Admiral, for doing this.
You talked a bit about China as the pacing challenge and their
military buildup. But we’ve also seen China increasingly using
some gray zone tactics, using Coast Guard ships, [inaudible]
mission [inaudible], tools of power projection both [inaudible]
and Taiwan. Can you highlight [inaudible] and how you sort of
plan for contingencies [inaudible]?
Admiral Franchetti:
Thank you. As I mentioned earlier, we’ve
certainly seen China not just on the wartime footing on its
industrial base, but we’re seeing that use of all the different
types of forces to get after and create really a challenged
environment especially in the South China Sea for its neighbors.
I think the way I think about it is, it’s really important to
make sure that we are present in this space and that we are
operating alongside our allies and partners over there in the
South China Sea. We’re continuing to do, we just finished up
another big maritime activity, I think we like to call it, over
there with the U.S., Philippines, Australia, Japan. And I think
being present and continuing to operate and make sure that all
of our navies can work together to deter that type of behavior
and then respond to it if necessary. That’s how I’m thinking
about it.
I was just in the Philippines earlier this summer, had a great
chance to meet with their head of the Navy and get some ideas on
what he’s thinking about and how he’s training his forces to be
able to be ready to respond because, again, every Navy should be
able to operate freely in international waters and not be
intimidated and we really want to stand up for that. I know we
have like-minded navies over there that want to do that as well.
We really have to keep that rules-based international order in
place to make sure everybody has free use of the commons.
Moderator:
Chris Gordon, Air and Space Forces.
DWG:
Thank you, ma’am.
What [inaudible] carriers from the Pacific to the Middle East,
and what have you done to perhaps mitigate some of those gaps in
capability [inaudible] carriers to the Middle East?
Admiral Franchetti:
I think the great thing about the Navy is
that we are a globally deployable force and we provide that
flexibility, really. There’s no boundaries in the ocean.
Adversaries know no boundaries in the ability to flex ships back
and forth. I think it’s really a testament to the training
process that we have and the certification and the ability of
all our forces to be able to really meet whatever the challenge
is. Whether they originally plan to go to the Pacific or then
they plan to go into the Middle East, they’re ready to be able
to respond wherever they need to go.
So the combatant commanders, they work together with the
Secretary of Defense to mitigate and understand the risk that
they are having, if they have any risk due to that. But
certainly we have a robust complement of forces in the Indo-
Pacific right now.
As I just mentioned, we’re continuing to do all of our routine
exercises that we have there.
The other part that’s very interesting is that our European
partners, they’re deploying into the Indo-Pacific as well so the
Italian Ship Cavour, she was just over there, fully integrated
with all the different navies there. The French are planning on
doing a deployment of Charles de Gaulles in the coming year.
And then of course the British will be back with their Prince of
Wales, and then Queen Elizabeth as they go through their
deployments.
So that’s how I look at it. It’s really an integrated strategy
wherever we are around the world, having all the forces that we
need to be able to respond, deter our potential adversaries and
respond in a crisis. And I think we’re well positioned and
postured to be able to do that.
DWG:
[Inaudible] in the Pacific [inaudible] carriers deployed
to the Middle East to cover that?
Admiral Franchetti:
As the Chief of Naval Operations my job is
just to provide the forces, and it’s really the combatant
commander and the fleet commander’s job to operate them. So I
personally haven’t done anything other than make sure that all
of our forces are ready to go and able to meet their commitments
over there.
Moderator:
That was the last from the list. We have time for
some from the table.
DWG:
Admiral, thank you for coming here. Mike Lynn, with the
Washington Times.
I know from my own military background when — a more
philosophical question. When one military organization has an
action, combat action, everybody else tends to study it and see
lessons learned. In terms of Ukraine and Russia, despite the
fact of it not really having a Navy, Ukraine has managed to have
several significant naval victories against Russia, sinking a
number of their capital ships like the Moskva and the Tsezar
Kunikov. I was wondering what does the U.S. Navy — I assume
you’re looking at it and analyzing and seeing what lessons
learned you can pick up from what the Ukrainians have been doing
there in the Black Sea.
Admiral Franchetti:
Thank you. We are a learning organization,
and it’s really important that we continue to look. I talk a
lot in the Nav Plan about the changing character of war, and
this is one of the key areas that we’ve seen, whether you look
back to the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict where you saw the first
really largescale use of unmanned capabilities, and now you’re
seeing, what you see after Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine
and the work that Ukraine continues to do to retain its
sovereignty. We are learning a lot from that.
I think the key one, and it comes back to your question a little
bit, is about sea denial. So we talk a lot about sea control
and the ability to have free and open access in the sea. I
think the other piece is being able to deny your adversary’s use
of the sea. As you’ll see in the Nav Plan when I talk about
expanding the warfighting ecosystem, this is one thing I added
from Admiral Gilday’s Nav Plan 22 is the sea denial capability.
So we know that we need to be able to do sea denial. Critically
important. You can look at the success, again, that Ukraine has
had in pushing the Russian Black Sea fleet really past into the
east side of Crimea and again holding them at risk. So we know
that we need to be able to do that, and working to develop those
capabilities and the geographies that we might be able to use,
and it’s really important.
I will say also, just on the learning organization side, we’ve
learned a lot also in the Red Sea through our experiences there.
We’ve been there now through Operation Prosperity Guardian along
with 20 other nations, so you learn a couple of things from
that.
One is the power of allies and partners being able to work
together. Like-minded nations to stand up again for that rules
based international order.
The second thing we’ve learned is conventional platforms
defeating unmanned platforms. We see that again every day that
our ships are there and that our weapon systems and our training
process that we’ve invested in over the last 10 to 15 years has
really paid off. Our weapons are working as designed, our
people know how to use them as designed, and I think that
confidence is really important as they integrate our
capabilities along with the capabilities of the Air Force, with
allies and partners there.
I think the third thing we learned out of there, which is
germane to this is that we can analyze the engagements as we’re
seeing them in the Red Sea. We can take the data that our
weapon systems are seeing, we can take that back here to the
U.S. and we can let our engineers work with our people that
develop tactics and procedures and work with industry to look at
what is the adversary doing, how is the adversary in terms of
the Houthis well supplied by Iran, what are they doing with
their capabilities, and how can we get ahead of them to be able
to continue to defeat them. So this is learning that we have
made, and I think when you talk with the strike group commander,
Admiral Miguez from the Ike, everything that we’ve learned in
the Red Sea, also in the Black Sea if you talk to Admiral Munch,
we are directly, that’s directly transferrable to any other
theater that we’re going to operate in.
DWG:
Brad Peniston from Defense One. Thanks for doing this.
A question about the submarine industrial base. The Navy’s
doing something that appears a bit unusual. The Navy has made
special investments in various sub suppliers to kind of frame
that up, but in the past year the Navy has committed up to $2
billion I think it is in options and [others] for giving third
parties, Blue Force Alliance you mentioned, the Pentagon — I
know that’s not you, but the Pentagon has kicked in another $2
billion to [Deloitte]. What is the thinking behind bringing
these third parties in to help out?
Admiral Franchetti:
First of all, this is a huge priority for
me. This is the thing that I believe and I know our Secretary
believes the same thing, that we really need to invest in the
defense industrial base, especially our submarine industrial
base, but it also extends to our weapons industrial base. And
we really need to help generate the speed and acceleration of
production that we need to get out.
I think by doing things like I think specifically with the Blue
Force Alliance that you just talked about, that gives us a
direct relationship with them to help get after these challenges
that we’ve all been talking about, whether it’s work force
development, supply based development. I think the other things
are with Blue Force Alliance in particular, work through our
foreign military sales, so that will be able to allow us to work
with our office partnership.
Again, these things are giving us this direct relationship. And
as our Secretary continues to work really hard to make sure that
we’ve got the investments going in the right place, we’re
measuring our return on investment so we can vector the money to
where it needs to go to be the most effective, that’s what we’re
really getting after through these relationships.
DWG:
A GAO report that was just released publicly I think
yesterday, but actually came out in sensitive form over the
summer, said the Navy does not have a handle on return on
investment for these submarine investments, and the Navy
concurred with the four recommendations that GAO offered. You
just said you’re really confident in this, and it’s not the
summer anymore. Has something changed? Or did you not get it
right?
Admiral Franchetti:
This is an area that we know — we’re
making significant investment in there, and we’re the stewards
of the taxpayers’ money. We need to make sure that we can show
and prove that return on investment. I know our Secretary stood
up an organization to be able to make sure that we‘re able to do
that going forward. So we’re very focused on that, and it is a
substantial amount of our taxpayers’ money and we need to get
this right, and I’m committed to doing that, alongside our
Secretary.
Moderator:
We have time for one last question before closing
comments.
DWG:
Mark Pomerleau with Defense Scoop.
I wanted to pick up on some of your comments from the Red Sea.
Can you maybe drill down a little bit about what the Navy
learned from the latest deployment there and how it’s looking to
maybe win the cost curve battle against those threats? How are
you looking at maybe non-kinetics, either from a [DDG-4]
[inaudible] launch perspective on that?
Admiral Franchetti:
Thank you.
Beyond the things I talked about about learning, working with
allies and partners, working alongside [Inaudible] and our
efforts there are really led by our coalition maritime force
there. Again, it just reiterates the value of allies and
partners which our adversaries simply don’t have.
As far as the other learnings, and beyond the tactics,
techniques and procedures development, I think it’s clear that
unmanned platforms are part of that changing character of war.
You need to have them to be able to take advantage of all the
extended range, lethality, and the three Ds. But you also need
to be able to defeat them.
This is a strong area of focus for our Secretary of Defense.
He’s really put a lot of emphasis on counter-UAS and using
creative solutions to get after that. So we’re focused on that
too.
I think all five services are working on that so there will be
some integrated capabilities that we’re able to come up with.
For us, we’re certainly looking at continuing to work on the
HELIOS laser program that’s embarked in Preble right now and
continuing her testing as well as ODIN that is already on eight
of our ships.
So we know that this changing character of war is that we are
going to have to be able to defeat those types of technologies,
whether it’s kinetically or non-kinetically or, as you
mentioned, farther left of launch, and look forward to working
on that. But I say you can’t really put a price tag on the 300
sailors on those DDGs, so I’m very proud of them. Speaking with
them direction, they have been in a weapons engagement zone and
working at a level of intensity really we’ve never seen in my
lifetime and really since World War II. So I am very grateful
for the weapon systems we have and for their ability to employ
them.
DWG:
Are there any sort of quick lessons that you learned maybe
to improve force protection in the near term? [Inaudible]
longer term fixes, I guess.
Admiral Franchetti:
I don’t want to talk specifically about
operations because again, they’re still going on and I don’t
want to disadvantage our folks that are out there right now.
But we’re continuing to learn. And again, I’ll just go back to
the changing tactics, techniques and procedures based on
adversaries. Again, the Houthis are using the best Iranian
technology and we know that we need to be able to defeat that.
And again, our ships are doing an amazing job. And our
aircraft.
And I would say the other lesson learned which I didn’t mention
is really using what you have differently. Using Hellfire
against unmanned surface vehicles. Air-to-air. Aviation
platforms shooting down UAVs. These are things where we’re
really learning.
I think Ukraine has shown us that you can innovate on the
battlefield. I want to innovate before the battlefield so we
can stay ahead of any adversary any time.
Moderator:
Admiral, before I give you the final word, I want to
thank you and your staff for being here. This is your first
visit to the Defense Writers Group. I hope it’s not your last.
And I thank all the reporters for coming and for your smart
questions.
Admiral, final comments.
Admiral Franchetti:
I just want to say again thank you very
much. Thank you for the opportunity.
I’m really excited about the Navigation Plan. Again, I thought
very hard about the changing environment and the geostrategic
environment, the changing character of war, and I really tried
to focus on what are the things I can do in my tenure using the
2027 as my North Star, to raise that base line of readiness of
our Navy. We’re ready today, but we know we need to be more
ready in the future, and I think I can put my thumb on the scale
in these areas and get after it.
But again, as a unique steward of the Navy’s future as well, I
have to look at that long term advantage.
So the work, and we didn’t talk about it too much, but on
expanding the warfighting ecosystem. In Nav Plan 2022 there
were about 18 areas that Admiral Gilday wanted to get after. He
put a lot of work in place to develop a process and venues and
accountable individuals to get after those things. Those are
all well underway.
The five plus four that are on here, these are capabilities that
we know we need to have, and again, I really want to drill down
and focus on the five capabilities plus the four enablers
because for the future we know that’s where we need to go.
Again, I look forward to talking more about the Nav Plan with
you and getting you out to see our sailors in action, because
they tell our story way better than I do. So I look forward to
seeing you and getting Desiree to get you our there on our
platforms.
Moderator:
You’ve told it very well. Thank you for a very
thoughtful and thought-provoking discussion today.
Admiral Franchetti:
Thank you very much.