Prepared Remarks for the Honorable Richard V. Spencer Secretary of the Navy Defense Science Board Arlington, VA 01 November 2017 Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. It s a real pleasure to be here with such a distinguished crowd. Let me begin by saying that I appreciate your decades of selfless service. You all are part of a great tradition we have in this country - that legacy of the citizen-statesmen stepping up to provide insight and guidance to your country. You are patriots who give their time, expertise, advice, and experience to the Nation not just to move the ball forward but find new and innovative ways of doing things better sometimes in a different trajectory altogether. It would have been easy for you to have rested on your laurels and enjoyed the fruits of your labors, but instead you ve chosen a higher calling, volunteering your time and talents for the betterment of our Nation. As you may know, prior to this job I was on a sister board - the Defense Business Board - so I can in some ways fully appreciate what you all do. So once again, thank you. Technology and capabilities are constantly and exponentially growing all the time both ours and our competitors. The work you do is absolutely central to what we have to accomplish to ensure our Navy and Marine Corps team remains not only competitive but keeps the advantage. An advantage that is critical because winning wars is always going to be our bread and butter. 1
And in that vein, my job as Secretary of the Navy is to deliver combat ready Naval forces to the Secretary of Defense and the President. To give you a better sense of how you can help the Navy-Marine Corps team, I d like to share my priorities and what I see as the Department of the Navy s path going forward. We start by becoming smarter in the way we recruit, train, equip, organize ourselves. And I believe we can conduct these activities more effectively and efficiently if we set our efforts around the priorities that I laid out which are people, capabilities, and processes. My first priority, people, it s easy to say that s a cliché. Everyone cares about people. But we must focus, laser like focus on the fact that our military and civilian workforce is our greatest resource. As we stand now, the majority of our ships and planes are simply hunks of metal that can t do much without the human interface. And when I have the opportunity to go out on the deck plates and into the field and look around where our Sailors and Marines operate and see them in action, it truly is amazing. And when I think about their future contribution to the mission I am reminded that the work you do will affect the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of American soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines. The capabilities you help us develop may be the difference between victory or defeat in future conflicts. 2
My other two priorities are particularly intertwined with your work conducted here on the Science Board. Our capabilities and technological advantages are real, but they will not endure forever if current trends hold. The overall gap is closing and as your own research would tell you, would-be adversaries are developing or acquiring the capability to outclass our systems at an increasing rate. We need to innovate to defeat the threats. Now, my definition of innovation might be a bit different compared to others in the Beltway, I believe those who own the problem reach should outside their community for solutions. The message inside the Building is everyone needs to innovate, but we need to define the process. Your board does that every time you meet and the product of those meetings brings the Department of Defense innovative solutions to the challenges of today and tomorrow. If we look at where the Navy and Marines Corps were 30 or 40 years ago, when I was last on active duty, the technological leaps that put affordable new capabilities in the hands of non-state actors has changed the landscape tremendously. Couple that dramatically changing landscape with budgetary uncertainty and sustaining readiness becomes a very meaningful issue. I am determined to stop the gap from closing and reserve the trend. To do this we need industry to partner with us in order to bring the best ideas and solutions in order to deliver enhanced capabilities into service. We are committed to taking applicable lessons learned from industry and applying them across our enterprise to become a more efficient force. 3
I know many of you have worked in industry, so I think you ll agree with me when I say that many best practices and solutions already exist in the private sector, and they can be readily accessed if we reach out and ask. This is critical because just defining what capabilities we need isn t the end game. We need to get those capabilities into the hands of our people in an expeditious manner at an acceptable cost to the American taxpayers who have entrusted us with their treasure. To get the best value for the American people, we cannot go it alone. We need to modernize and refine our processes to deliver enhanced capabilities and find value for the taxpayers, and we will do that by partnering with industry to spur innovation and increase efficiencies. From my time in the private sector, I know that partnerships are critical to our business processes, they are the force multiplier. To be clear my definition of partnerships is one based on shared risk producing shared benefit. We need both the defense and industrial sector to work with us, come to us with proposals as partners. We also need to be a responsible buyer and communicate our needs. Government cannot and will not be the sole engine of innovation, we need to hear your insights, harness your ingenuity and engage your intelligence. We have to look at what commercial off the shelf options are available to the Navy. Is there something in private industry that can be adapted to meet the challenges of tomorrow for less? Is 4
there existing military hardware from friendly nations that we can adapt? Where can we use the capabilities of our allies around the world to create synergy so that 1+1=3? Another factor that we must acknowledge as we seek to modernize and refine our processes is that time is a consumable resource. We can t buy back time. I know you know this as you study the challenges of tomorrow and their impact on our options today. To confront tomorrow s issues, we need to expeditiously address them today. In many cases that will necessitate a return to the science of managing risk rather than the present frame of mind which appears to be the elimination of risk. We need to learn from our past experiences. We ve had a lot of recent challenges in our acquisition journey. Everything from the F-35, the Columbia SSBN replacement, the LPD-17 class amphib, the Littoral Combat Ship, and Ford Class aircraft carriers. As we go forward, we ll have to harness the lessons learned of those experiences to avoid cost overruns and to explore how to obtain the right economies of scale while balancing the preservation of our defense industry industrial base. Now as I understand it, you have been working on issues affecting our ability to fight and win in the European and Pacific theaters and I wanted to share my thoughts with you. We are blessed by geography in that the mainland is physically protected by the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. However, that buffer zone seems to be continually contracting every year as the pace of 5
technology increases and with the increased proliferation of missile and cyber threats. The risks are increasing at an alarming rate. Our deterrent and quick reaction capabilities have, so far, bought back some risk from intercontinental and intermediate range missile attacks from near peer competitors, but we must not be so naïve as to think that non-state actors or irresponsible states would never use such weapons. On the cyber front the risk is much greater due to the relatively low investment costs to get into the cyber game. We ve seen in the past how both state and non-state cyber actors have affected governments and private industry alike. So how do we manage that threat? In cyber, we are developing deterrence as we speak. Here is a threat where we must collaborate with the private sector. We manage kinetic threat with presence. The United States Navy and Marine Corps are forward deployed both in Europe and the Pacific, and around the world, because the threats mandate our presence. We must continually prove ourselves to be reliable partners for our allies. We have to provide a deterrent force to those who might wish us harm. Deterrence isn t just about protecting the homeland by keeping the fight overseas wherever possible, but it s also about keeping our allies safe. Our forward presence is persistent and rotational. As our focus increases in the Pacific, our charge our focus will be maritime. The tyranny of distance and time frames our efforts. Our undersea deployments add a factor of uncertainty to would-be adversaries. Makes them think 6
twice. Our surface deployments show the flag and remind both competitors and allies that we have a vote and will be involved. But of course, underlying our current capabilities is the need to modernize and refine our abilities to penetrate the defensive and offensive capabilities of peer and near peer militaries. You all know better than I what we are facing out there and I look forward to learning more about your thoughts and insights. I pledge that the Department of the Navy will do its part to fulfill the vision of the Secretary of Defense and the President that is informed and framed by your work. Thank you for your leadership, your dedication to our Nation, and for your recommendations and insights. I would ask you to continue to challenge yourselves to keep leaning forward always be thinking of how to defeat the upcoming challenges as you see them. The challenges of today and the future are very meaningful but not insurmountable. Thank you for your time and your scholarship, I look forward to discussing the results of your summer study and I look forward to continued cooperation with the Defense Science Board as the Navy and Marine Corps team does its part to see your vision brought to fruition. Thank you and I look forward to your comments and questions. 7