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00:00The United States is stepping up its military presence in the Middle East.
00:03More than 20 warships have been deployed to the region.
00:06CENTCOM just released this video of some of those ships and aircraft in close formation in the Arabian Sea just
00:11last week.
00:11That's right. One of those ships, the USS Abraham Lincoln, is now setting a record for most consecutive days at
00:17sea,
00:17with its last reported stop in Guam in December.
00:20Look, the Navy is busy, to say the least, really busy, operating in several theaters, the Mideast, the Caribbean, Indo
00:25-Pacific, and more.
00:26And that's where we started our conversation with America's highest-ranking naval officer, Admiral Darrell Caldwell, Chief of Naval Operations.
00:34It is challenging. And one of the things I've worked on since coming in as the CNO is trying to
00:40actually, to the extent I can,
00:42tailor the forces that we provide our different combatant commanders globally to make sure I'm not stretched too thin.
00:49And so, of course, you know, there's a lot of ships, 20-plus warships and auxiliaries in the Middle East.
00:54We're down in Venezuela doing humanitarian assistance there. We're conducting the rim of the Pacific.
01:00Do you need more boats? Do you have the vessels that you need?
01:04How many of the ones that you have are updated or you think need updating in the next 5, 10
01:08years?
01:09Well, we have a congressional requirement for 355 warships.
01:12I teeter around 300 because my current decommissioning rate, it matches my build rate.
01:19So I never change the overall size of the Navy.
01:21So one of the big initiatives with the president's current budget is to really energize shipbuilding in our country,
01:28to try to get us up to that number we are required to have.
01:31I do need a bigger Navy. There is a lot going on, and Navy's got a lot of responsibility.
01:35I wanted to ask you that because on the civilian side, America doesn't really build ships anymore like it used
01:42to.
01:42I mean, commercial shipbuilding in the U.S.
01:43In 2022, the U.S. built just five ocean-going commercial ships.
01:48China built over 1,700, and South Korea built over 700.
01:52And the U.S. Navy currently estimates that China's shipbuilding capacity is 232 times our own.
01:58It costs twice as much to build a ship in the U.S. as it does elsewhere.
02:02Is that a national security concern?
02:04Absolutely. Like so many things that's happened in the U.S., as we've become a more service-oriented country, we
02:11outsource so much.
02:13And one of the things we made a decision on as a country at some point is to outsource commercial
02:17shipbuilding.
02:18And we're trying to reel that back a bit and get that back started again because it is a national
02:22security issue.
02:23Talk to me about the Trump battleship because there's a lot of questions and analysis in Congress about these Trump
02:30-class battleships.
02:32A lot of people are saying it's a vanity project.
02:34There's all these, I think, fairly untested things, this rail gun, this laser something.
02:39I don't know. Maybe you can explain it to me.
02:41How do you convince Congress and lawmakers that you do need a class of warships?
02:46And would it be helpful to change the name of it?
02:48Do you think that would make it a little bit easier to get through congressional appropriations?
02:51Well, I try not to get too wrapped around that part of it.
02:53He is the president.
02:54But the need for the large surface combatant has never been more pressing.
02:58When we move our carriers, which are nuclear-powered around the world, I say we can be anywhere in two
03:03weeks,
03:04I'm usually limited in that transit overall speed by my inability to move as a composite force.
03:12What do you mean by that?
03:14What I'm having to do is refuel the destroyers, which are gas-powered, gas-turbine-powered.
03:18A very capable ship, but not nuclear.
03:21And so I need a large surface combatant, number one, that's nuclear-powered.
03:24And we're really pressing to make this nuclear-powered battleship to be that.
03:28Number two is I need more payload volume.
03:32So the battleship will be four times the payload volume of a destroyer with about two times the crew size.
03:40So if you can imagine the firepower of four destroyers with only twice the crew of one destroyer,
03:45that's a fairly good economy of scale there.
03:47There is some new technology on it, but we have to push forward on some new tech.
03:50I mean, that's what we do.
03:52You know, I got my master's at the Naval Postgraduate School in the early 90s, and I did it all
03:57on directed energy and lasers.
03:59And we have not, you know, really evolved that to the point that we could.
04:03If I can get high-powered lasers on board my ships, then the defensive weapons I carry today can be
04:09shifted to that,
04:11and then I get more payload volume for offensive weapons.
04:14It's extremely important we press with directed energy.
04:17As you're talking about being able to have bigger ships with fewer crew, less crew, how's the Navy doing right
04:24now?
04:24I know you've got a lot of ships way past their original deployment dates.
04:27Are you worried about force depletion?
04:29Are your sailors and officers getting exhausted?
04:32I am worried about it.
04:33You know, I press very hard that we stick to our deployment timelines.
04:36You know, it's important for us to do our normal rotations because, overall, it's actually, in the aggregate, deliver more
04:43force like that.
04:44But sometimes the world gets a vote, and when I'm in conflict, I've got to keep them there.
04:48Our sailors rise to that occasion, but it does take a toll on the ships.
04:52They've got to come in for maintenance, too, right?
04:54They've got to come in for maintenance.
04:55It's hard on families.
04:56They're missing events.
04:57They were planning on, thought their sailor was going to be back for sure.
05:00It extends maintenance periods a bit.
05:02You know, when they come back, there's some thumb rules that we use on the extent that that happens.
05:06We go through more repair parts.
05:08But the Navy is responsible for doing what it does.
05:11And so, you know, what we see out of that, which is a little bit contrary to popular belief, is
05:16record reenlistments and retention.
05:19I was just going to ask if it impacted retention and recruitment.
05:22It does in a very positive way.
05:23And so, you know, these sailors joined to see the world, to be combatants, to live in the profession of
05:30arms, and it's very important that they get to do what they do.
05:33Part of why we have had record recruiting and brought in 45,000 sailors this year, three months ahead, making
05:39goal, is because of three things, I think.
05:42Number one is mission.
05:43They love our mission.
05:45Okay.
05:45Number two, they want to serve.
05:47Okay.
05:47And so, and we just, that's part of that mission package.
05:50We have really invested in our recruiters to make them the high end and train them properly.
05:56A little bit of a playbook from the Marine Corps, who's always, I think, done that perhaps better.
06:00They did have very good commercials when I was growing up.
06:02Yes, they do.
06:03And we're trying to follow suit on that.
06:05And then just the amount of attention the administration pays to recruiting and backing, you know, making it so important
06:11to have a strong military has played a positive role.
06:13But does the administration listen to you when you say we are too many places at once, we need to
06:18make some decisions here?
06:19Well, the way that's done, the way I voice that is through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and he
06:23carries my water on that very effectively.
06:26And so, those things that are concerning to me as a service chief, like readiness and families and extended deployments
06:35and the things that that does, all that's conveyed.
06:37And we make recommendations on that, and we, you know, we try to rotate our force, sustain our force, and
06:42do all those things.
06:43And at the end of the day, the greatest compliment we can get as a Navy is to be needed
06:47and to be utilized.
06:48And so, we rise to that occasion.
06:50The U.S. has used approximately half its pre-war inventory for key precision strike missiles and patriots in the
06:56conflict in Iran.
06:58Manufacturing a tomahawk or some of these bigger munitions takes about four years.
07:03U.S. intelligence analysts estimate an extremely high likelihood that China is going to try to take action against Taiwan
07:09by the year 2027.
07:11Is this impacting readiness, and is the current conflict in Iran making it harder for you to be ready for
07:15what could come, especially when it comes to security threats in the Indo-Pacific?
07:19I've never seen in my 41 years anything to be more singularly focused on shipbuilding and munitions production than we
07:26are right now.
07:26Well, the Deputy Secretary of War, Feinberg, is running a munitions acceleration council, and all the services are part of
07:34this.
07:35We're really investing in these companies.
07:37One of the things that's held us back from producing at the rates that we needed to is we were,
07:42we call it single vendor lock.
07:44Yeah.
07:44You know, we were really hailed up by solid rocket motor production by one company.
07:48We've opened that space up to three companies now, okay?
07:52We're trying to make longer contracts that, you know, Congress has not always been behind.
07:57They like shorter contracts.
07:59By extending that out, these companies are more likely to recapitalize and put more money into their own infrastructure, buy,
08:06you know, get the employees that they need, run multiple shifts,
08:09maybe borrow some money from the government and some of the strategic capital.
08:12But there's still going to be a lag.
08:13I mean, even if you cut that time in half, you're looking at a bare minimum of two or three
08:16years where you've got half the things to fire at the bad guy than you used to.
08:19That's right.
08:20Raytheon's a big, RTX is a big one for me.
08:23They own all my standard missiles, SM2, 3, 6, and they own the torpedo that we shoot and T-LAMs.
08:30And so they've gone to multiple shifts.
08:32They are now unconstrained by this, you know, solid rocket motor where they're heavily investing.
08:36And I think you're going to see a knee in the curve on this where your proportions are not going
08:42to be just linearly affected.
08:44It's going to go high order through these investments, and we're going to get up on the step.
08:48But in this part of the curve, what do you do operationally?
08:52How do you compensate for that?
08:54Well, fortunately for, you know, the Middle East with Epic Fury, Navy munitions, we're in a pretty good place.
09:00You know, for T-LAMs, what we're able to do is some that we're going back in for, their periodic
09:05recertification, we end up shooting those.
09:08And so not tampering with the ones that were still in their normal life cycle of periodicity.
09:13And then we haven't had to, because the threats haven't required it, for me to shoot a lot of my
09:17standard missiles.
09:19Navy's in pretty good shape.
09:20You know, and I think the Army, there's been a lot of, you know, Patriots shot.
09:24But all of us are moving toward a lower-sized munition.
09:27You hear a Coyote, which is essentially a Hellfire-sized missile.
09:31Roadrunner is another one like that, where we're actually matching better the threat of a one-way attack for $5
09:37,000 with a weapon that's more in line with that and, quite frankly, more capable to take that out.
09:43So this, you know, our learning curve is very high on matching the threat to the missile system.
09:49That's going to give us the breathing room to get our big missiles back in inventory.
09:53So you're not worried about it?
09:55I'm not worried about it, no.
09:56Is the government contracting system broken?
09:59I think historically one could assert with high confidence that, you know, I would call it broken in a pejorative
10:06kind of way.
10:07You know, it's not, it was never really good.
10:09And part of that is, you know, contracting strategies are hard when you're near monopolistic type environments where you have,
10:15you know, you don't have a lot of competition.
10:17So part of the administration's effort in the Secretary of the Navy is all over this and the Secretary of
10:22War as well is trying to figure out how to build more competition.
10:26That has to come through incentivizing more players to get into it in the U.S., of course, and that's
10:32the idea is to do that in the United States.
10:34But I think one of the catalysts to do that is working with foreign partners.
10:38Really?
10:38And so to open up the U.S.
10:39That doesn't concern you?
10:40We just talked about the lack of U.S. industrial base.
10:42Well, I actually sometimes have to have some Field of Dreams models in place to actually get this done.
10:47Okay.
10:48You know, you'll sometimes colloquially hear about the Finland model of how we're doing icebreakers for, you know, for the
10:52Coast Guard.
10:53So, you know, kind of the build a couple there, teach our workforce how to do it, get the supply
10:57chain healthy, and then move that production line to the U.S.
11:00That's pretty appealing to me, actually.
11:03And because I have a lot of shipbuilders, but they need the breathing room to get the industrial changes they're
11:08doing with technology, robotics, and artificial intelligence, you know, recapitalization, and all the things that they're putting into their workforce
11:16to develop them.
11:17And it gives me some breathing room to get those things working while I'm actually delivering the ships we talked
11:22about earlier.
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