CNO Defense Writers Group Press Briefing

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.

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