concept of liberty, exploring how the ideas of freedom, law and liberty have changed throughout history. wednesday on oral histories, our women in congress series continues with former congresswoman lynn woolsey and nancy johnson. thursday, historians look at the role of espionage and u.s. conflicts over the past century and a half. and on friday, on real america, the world war ii film series "why we fight," about the outbreak of world war ii to pearl harbor and the rise of a authori -- authoritarianism. up next, retired naval officers discuss challenges and threats to the u.s. pacific fleet. this was part of a judicial conference this summer hosted by the ninth circuit court of appeals. it's about 90 minutes. good morning, everyone. i'm michelle pettitte.

i'm one of the members of the congress committee and i have the honor to present a very esteemed panel of the navy and we're going to talk about the laws in the pacific fleet. many of you may say, why do we care? we're here in anaheim in this beautiful conference center in the ac. why does it matter what's going on out there in the pacific ocean? it's important to realize that the pacific fleet covers three oceans, six couldnntinents and than half the earth's surface. the navy and the u.s. military has a huge presence in that area. this is an area of a hotbed of issues, and it is really ground zero for a lot of rule of law issues. now, most people think of the military in terms of the law of armed conflict, but the day-to-day operations of the navy is really the preservation of the rule of law.

and an entire history of the pacific fleet, it started with protection of commercial trade, and even to this day, that's exactly what we're doing. so i think it's really important for us to understand that perspective. particularly with the ninth circuit. if you look across the ninth circuit, every one of our states and territories has a huge military presence. you have a lot of military that is driving your economies and your local areas. you have a lot of military members that are appearing before you in court. and so it actually has a really direct effect on us. i don't know if you've ever wondered, for those folks who don't have military experience, if you've ever wondered where are our military members going when they are deployed? that's what we're going to discuss today especially in terms of the rule of law. i want to get to this so you can get a perception of how large the military is. we're going to talk specifically about the navy given the fact

the pacific fleet is very instrumental in the rule of law in that area of the world. navy personnel -- and this is statistics as of last week. we've got over 300,000 strong with active duty members. our ready reserve is over 97,000 with 57,000 are the active reservists that drill our weekend warriors that get called up very quickly. in terms of the marine corps, i was not able to find the statistics for the marine corps in 2018, but in 2017, they were 184,000 strong. and i will say this now, the marines, yes, you were part of the department of the navy for all those marines out there. and the marines are an incredible partner with the navy. we truly are one big naval force and they deploy right alongside the naval vessels. as of last week, we are 284 ships that are active across the united states and worldwide, and we have three current aircraft carriers that are deployed with

their battle groups with them. we have three amphibious airships that are underway and we have 300 aircraft. you are fine to hear this information. i'm not giving you anything you could not find on line, and i purposely went on line to find this information to make sure i didn't give you anything that was not privileged information, or was privileged, excuse me. everything we say today, i have to make this caveat, is our own personal opinion. we're just here to give you an overview of things based on our experience. so in terms of what you might see in your own districts, when ships deploy, they deploy in certain fleets. they're an organized and operational structure. from your perspective, when you're seeing the military members in your districts,

they're based in certain bases. the bases are organized by regions. we have the region northwest, southwest, hawaii and guam and the northern marriott islands. what i've done here is i just want to give you guys a representation of these different regions so you can see exactly where they are in your district. i have done just a full-on copy from each of the regions. i asked each region to give me what they had as their representation of their maps and their statistics, so this is what they publicized. here in the northwest region, washington has got a huge amount of military presence up in everett, and you can see that they've got four bases with a would-be island and a very large presence of aircraft carriers and ships. when you move to the southwest region, all those in california, we have a huge military presence in san diego with the largest

concentration on the west coast. but it's not just san diego. you also have camp pendleton, kind of the midway point between here and san diego, and we also have multiple inland bases where we do a lot of research, training, as well as our aircraft. we have several air bases internal in california and nevada. hawaii. so hawaii is small geographically but very large in terms of military presence. we have a joint operation base, pearl harbor and hickam air force base are now a joint base in hawaii with the presence of military. many marines. and kauai has got a huge presence in terms of research and training. so hawaii is a very critical area for the military and pacific fleet. that's where a lot of the training occurs. it's kind of the stopover point as ships head out to the pacific

fleet. now, i'm sure everybody knows where guam is, but i want to give you a representation. there is a joint region as opposed to a navy region in the marianas. that little circle of islands there, that's the northern marianas islands which is represented here at this conference, and guam. you can see a little dot of hawaii and then you see the bigger land mass there, china. that is a very strategically important area of the world. and that's in the ninth circuit. that's us. and so this is -- they are very important. so the naval base in guam doesn't have a very large concentration of ships. they do have a subpoena he will -- a couple submarines. i know in my experience when i was going out to the persian gulf, we had engineering issues

and we spent two weeks in guam -- i know that's hard to think about, two weeks in guam. but they had the full capacity to do whatever they needed to do to repair our ship. and so guam is a very critical base. and in guam itself, that small island of guam, has both an air force base as well as the naval base. i want to throw in here real quick also the naval region of japan. obviously japan is not part of the ninth circuit. but when we talk about the pacific fleet, japan is really critical. we have a huge presence, obviously in japan. this slide is directly from the navy region japan's website, their powerpoint, where it shows you that most of their bases are joint bases with the japanese and their forces. that is a critical area for the united states to be a part of. so what i want to do real quickly is i want to give you the quickest rendition of history of the pacific fleet that you probably have ever

heard. in our materials that we provided you, we have the full recitation of all the history which is quite interesting. but i'm going to give you a snippet in a couple of minutes. to start the history, you have to realize the birthday to the navy is october 13th, 1775, before the declaration of independence. the pacific fleet didn't actually come into existence until 1907. but in 1821 was the first pacific squadron that was established. and it's important to note that it was established for the purpose of protecting commercial shipping. which really is establishing customs and norms to protect the rule of law for trade. in 1854 was the first diplomatic and trade relations with japan. and then post civil war, the pacific fleet, at the time pacific squadron, was conducting anti-piracy operations in the gulf of california, very much rule of law operations. a spanish-american war in 1985.

we saw an expansion of the pacific squadron to engage in that conflict, and then the pacific squadron merged with another squadron to become the official pacific fleet in 1907 on april 15th. on february 1st, 1941, the pacific fleet established its headquarters in pearl harbor and that's where it is today, the official headquarters. only 10 months later, on december 7, 1942, was the attack on pearl harbor. [ inaudible ] >> you're right, because that's not ten months, is it? september 2nd in 1945 is when the japanese surrendered, and at that point in time there were 678 naval vessels in service, m most of them in the pacific. and that's interesting looking at our 284 ships today.

on june 25th of 1950, the north korean troops invaded south korea, and the very next day, june 26th, the pacific fleet was involved in airstrikes and amphibious conflict. in the mid-1960s, we were 200 strong in terms of ships from the conflict in vietnam. the post-war era really had an effort to have training with our allied forces. that's what you will see a lot of today. as we sit here today, there is an operation going on, a training in hawaii, what we call rempac that have asian forces and allied forces that gather together just for those exercis exercises. on august 4th, 1990, operation desert shield began and our ships were in the arabian sea. and we had iraqi freedom and operation freedom that our forces were involved with as

well. one that isn't up there that i think is really important that no one thinks about, in the early '90s, the navy really got involved in humanitarian efforts. so there are many deployments even today that when a navy vessel goes out, they aren't doing anything about navy fighting, they're out there for humanitarian relief. so anything that's happened in the pacific fleet since the 1990s or any type of disaster, the navy is there giving aid, helping medical personnel. in some cases it's been the united states navy that's been the first on scene in areas like bangladesh, philippines, vietnam, the states of micorn s micronesia, japan. that's kind of the introduction of the program, and i'm going to

introduce our speakers and let them each talk about their areas of the rule of law in the pacific fleet. we're first going to talk about the challenges and response to real world threats and we're going to be hearing from admiral jonathan greenert. admiral, not jonathan, he's admiral to me -- he retired as chief of naval operations. what that means is he's the grand poobah of the navy. he was in charge when his retirement of every ship, every sailor, everything in the navy that was under his command. he reported directly to the secretary of the navy and to the president of the united states as the commander in chief. so we are very honored to have him talk to us about how you train and equip the fleet. rear admiral bob gerier, he had just retired like a year and a half ago, but prior to his retirement, he spent some time dealing with unmanned drone operations, but before that he

was the deputy commander of the pacific fleet. and he was dealing with all of these issues then that are still present today and has a very unique perspective. he is now the president of the pacific forum out in hawaii and he's dealing with these policy issues today. and then we're also very honored to have vice admiral na nat dorenzi. she's going to talk about the legal challenges facing the fleet. she is honored to be the first female judge advocate general of the navy. i mean the head grand poobah attorney of the navy. and she has a vast amount of experience in operational law, environmental law, and then as the judge advocate general of the navy, she is the one that was dealing with all of the changes to the uniform related to the mandate on sexual assaults. some major changes that happened

in the military justice world. she shepherded the jag corps into this era of how we now prosecute cases. she has a vast amount of experience from operational law to the courts. with that i'm going to turn this over to admiral growneener. >> thank you very much, michelle, and thank you for the rundown of the navy, the rundown of the bases and what's been going on in the pacific fleet, the history. good morning, ladies and gentlemen. it's my pleasure to be here, and for my friends from guam, i say have a day. by the way, the individual up here that found that error that we inserted this morning, we were gathered together and said, we got to see if these people are paying attention. so these are people that that's what they do. so hats off to you and give that person a prize. i'm not sure what it will be, but you did well.

so as michelle indicated, i'm going to give you the how, how do we deploy the fleet, and adam guerrier will talk about more. this is the largest fleet in the world and the largest the world has ever seen. the majority of -- when i use the temprm forces, think ships, aircraft, people, submarines, under water drones, airborne drones, all of that in a collective term forces. half the ships that we deploy is in the western pacific. it is that important. the notional numbers, we have about 300 ships, and at any given time, 100 are deployed, about one hif thi-third, and 50e

are in the western pacific. it's been that way for decades. it is that important as we look out there. four out of six of our treaties, our obligations for protection of partnerships, are in the pacific. as you know, the largest economies and the largest emerging economies are in the pacific. the predominant challenges for us today, other than maybe russia, although it's in the pacific, those are all in the pacific. and the great potential for this nation, and really for the global economy, is in the pacific. so, really briefly, what is the mission of a pacific fleet? the mission of the fleet is a reflection of the mission department of defense and the mission of the military in general which is, number one, defending the united states and its citizens. number two, it is about the economy, stupid. it's about the global economy and keeping that flow of products of goods in and around the world to keep the global

economy going, if you will. most of our treaty obligations are out there, as i said, and meeting those treaty obligations is number two. number three, we need to reassure our allies, to work with them. at the same time we need to dissuade or deter any potential adversaries and see to it that that would be a bad mistake to upset what we just talked about, the importance there. responding to crises is the last one. michelle mentioned humanitarian assistance disaster relief. that is the predominant crises that occurs in the pacific from volcanos, you know the ring of fire resides out there. volcanos, tsunamis, typhoons in africa have been in the pacific. so why deploy people? let's have ready forces, keep them in the continental united

states and we'll go forward if we need to. well, that sounds like a good concept. number one, you'll be late for almost anything happening in the world today, and number two and perhaps the real reason is, hey, at the end of world war ii, we emerged as the guarantor of peace throughout the world. we had requirements in europe, nato, and we had hundreds of thousands of our folks over there for many decades before we brought that down. we have 40s in the mideast and had for 70 years. we have been in bahrain, which many people don't realize, for over 70 years in that partnership. and of course in the pacific as michelle laid down, in japan and korea, and in singapore we have obligations and that's why we deployed. it's really to keep the threat of this nation away from the continental united states. and that's a part of why 9/11 was so devastating for so many reasons, but we had not been

attacked on soil, as michelle mentioned, since pearl harbor. so providing that presence forward to deploy, there are two real means to think about. one is the forward deploy concept. what i mean by that is in those locations that michelle mentioned, we actually send forces -- remember, all those things that are involved -- to two places forward in japan, in korea, guam and singapore for sometimes three years, three, four, five years at a time, in cooperation with the host government. but most of all in deployment it involves rotational deployment. some forces go forward for six or seven months at a time, and there is a process to get this concept working so that they're on time, they have the right skill sets, and i'll talk to that in just a minute. that process that lays down the forces, if you will, the united states forces around the world,

is called the global force management scheme. it is run by the secretary of defense who is delegated that authority of responsibility by the president of the united states. that department breaks down the world into global regions, and one of them, of course, is pacific command. another, african command, central command in the middle east. northern command is the continental united states. southern command, latin america. u european command. it all kind of makes sense if you think about it, but that's how the department of defense thinks about areas of the world that they have to provide forces, be prepared to provide forces, and those people who are in charge, the grand imperial poobahs of those areas, using your term, are called the geographic combat commanders. in the pentagon and in washington, the services, army, navy, air force, marines, and their recquisite service chiefs

where i served at one time, they provide the services to go out to these locations and those forces are commanded and are responsible for their well-being, if you will, and their actions by these global combat a combatant commanders. i'll call them gccs now. in the mid-1980s, there was a pretty important law to the department of defense, the goldwater nichols act. part of what that did, it distinguished between what the gccs do and what the services do. simply put, the services organize rgs tra organize, train, equip and provide services to the gccs. it separates that so that you don't have folks making bad decisions, because, well, i don't have enough money, we're not going to do that, or i have more so we're going to go do that, and get away from a sort of oversight and a breakdown between each and every service doing something a little bit dirc different. so you would have individuals responsible for specific areas

around the world. it provided a nice, creative tension where the services were told how many 40s forces do i n what readiness level, how long do i need them over there and for what reason? the budget is formed together and that goes over to the legislative branch. so each of these services have service components. so, for example, in the navy, and in the pacific, compact fleet, the pacific fleet is the component of the navy which serves pacific command. there is an army command in the pacific, an air force command in the pacific, a marine corps command in the pacific, and if you march around the world to the different geographic areas i told you about, each of those has a component. and that componency is an important part of this. it's a little bit of a moderator of what the commander needs and what the services say they can

provide, and also that service component, pacific fleet, organizes, trains and also equips the forces to help prepare them to deploy. so this process in the navy to prepare forces to deploy, it's called the fleet response plan. the name is irrelevant. there is a similar name that the army has, the air force has, and the concept works very much the same between all of them. it produces forces. that's the end state of the fleet response plan. people and platforms, as i said before, forces that are ready to be tasked for a whole spectrum of operations. that spectrum of operations is defined by the department of defense, like i said, based upon the input of the geographic commanders. now, the readiness of those things that we send forward on deployment, that is the highest readiness that we can put together in our plan. those folks are ready. they're at the highest level of their skills for that seven

months because they have to be ready to deal with just about anything out there. but the process prepares what i'll call a tiered readiness. in other words, folks are worked up, if you will, for higher level of readiness and then after they deploy they are sustained for a period of time and i will talk in a minute about what that means at a little bit reduced readiness so they could ramp up if need be, if you have to go to war, if you have an operation, you know, iraqi freedom or anything like that, or if you have to respond locally in and around the continental united states, those forces that are back here in san diego and up in the pacific northwest would react to any kind of crises here in the continental united states. so the fleet response plan, it has a cycle, it's 36 months long. in simple terms it's kind of set around what we call the carrier strike group and michelle alluded to it. simply put a carrier strike group is the aircraft carrier, about 5,000 people, an air wing,

about 90 aircraft with 3,500 people and they join together, they form that carrier strike force, if you will, there on the carrier. in concert with it and operating with it are five surface combatants, they run in the order of 400 feet, 300 people, a lot of sensors, a lot of weapons, i won't bog you down with what that is, two nuclear submarines, they have about 150 people on each and then you have to have an oiler to provide aviation fuel, the carriers are nuclear powered but you need aviation fuel, need to support the destroyers, you need food, supplies, extra ammunition. those all form and work together to deploy and go through this cycle i called the fleet response plan. the process if i were to put it in simplified terms, it's about that time of year the nfl training camps have opened. all right. so what happens when the national football league, and you have two right up the road here, right -- get together and

get their teams ready to do the season. well, they have an off-season where they get their surgeries done, they modernize, they change, they make trades and in the fleet response plan that's called the maintenance phase. our airplanes go into a deep maintenance, our ships go into dry dock many of them and they are all getting maintained. it's about six months' long. then you have a training phase, in the nfl you come to in the springtime you have spring drills and then you show up for training camp and the tight ends go over there, the linemen did over there, the quarterbacks go over there and review and hone their basic skills. in the navy the ships go through the basic seamanship area, the pilots are flying, simplistic things, getting more and more complex going through a basic phase to an advanced phrase, to an integrated phase to really a capstone event where you bring that whole carrier strike group together and you are evaluated, just like in the nfl you will go through pre-season, get that last pre-season done, do your

final cuts and you're ready for the season. in the navy, in the fleet response plan, that season is the deployment. so, again, about a seven-month piece. and that is the essence of what makes this work and pulls it all together to organize, train, equip the forces to send them forward. the product, again, are forces ready to do the job, the job that they're told. they have to be able to integrate with other navy groups of ships, if you will. you could take two carrier strike groups, form them into one. they have to have the command and control, the hierarchy to do that. you have to integrate with joint forces. you have to work with the air force, with the army, depends on what the tasking is and they have to be ready to do that so you have to certify them to do that. the mission can evolve, it's not unusual and recently the aircraft carrier nimitz left the east coast, went to the pacific, was masked to go over the arabian gulf and before they

were ready to go home they were in the red sea providing strikes over in syria to combat isis. so it's an evolving mission. as you might imagine in simplistic term what are the challenges of getting this done. number one, a budget. you have to have the right budget, it has to be well-defined and it has to be on time. and the reason it has to be on time is because when those ships go in maintenance to start that cycle they have to enter on time and exit on time. you have to have an industrial base and a companionship, if you will, a partnership and you have to be reliable enough to be able to put things under contract on time and get it done. you need a predictable schedule. you need to know when do we need to be -- when do we need to have these forces, how long and, again, what skill set, but without a predictable schedule for when they're going to be over there, it's hard to pull it together the way you need to. lastly you have to have the right trained people with the right skill set falling in and coming into those units when they're ready to go.

so you pull all that together and that is how you prepare the forces to go forward. here are the forces, they are out on deployment, it's got a regimen, it's got a scheme and i will now ask bob to come up and say, okay, that's all fine but what do they do over there and what are the challenges. so thank you very much for listening. [ applause ] >> well, thanks, michelle, and admiral for setting the stage as we continue this discussion and walk you through what pacific fleet's life is about. before i begin i just wanted to say it's a pleasure to be here to address this very distinguished group and hopefully share with you what the challenges are that the pacific fleet faces and the way i'm going to do that, continuing on what's already been built by

michelle and the admiral is to kind of show the layers, the context and we will start stacking them up, so to speak, so you get this whole picture and it builds towards this notion that rule of law is intentioned, that there are forces out there that are tugging at this and all the things that we hold dear. so first to begin i want to talk about the physical environment. and this overlaps a little bit, but it's good to reinforce. then we will get down into some more specifics. so this first slide that you see here is some of the elements that we've already talked about. it's a really big area this pacific, this end dough asia-pacific which we increasingly talk about it in those terms because that more accurately captures the whole region. many of the things that i talk about here, you know, they apply globally. you may say, geez, that happens everywhere. i will make the assertion,

though, that in the pacific it's particularly acute because so many things come together here. it becomes this incredible pallet, quite frankly, of competition, of tension and you can see it play out. so the physical dimensions. we talk about the tyranny of distance, you hear that term a lot. what does that mean? well, it means, quite frankly, it takes a long time to get to places, days, weeks, and once you get there it takes a lot to sustain your forward presence. the admiral talked about fuel. there's food, there's communication links. there's all the things that we take for granted that you have here in the continental united states, but then you're bringing it forward to a strange place, sometimes a threatening and a hostile place, quite frankly. you know, if you were to take the continental united states, just imagine the 50 contiguous

states, that is, and you were to stack up that picture, that visual, you could almost put about eight of them in that expanse from the west coast over towards the west coast of india. 70% of the earth as we know covered with water, 90% of our global commerce is conducted by sea. in this indo asia-pacific region 52% of the world's population at least -- more, actually. one-third of all trade, half of all of our oil trade. 12 of the 20 busiest ports, airports. seven of the ten largest cities in the world. ten of the 10 largest gdp economies. so so much happens here. you talk about the rebalance to the pacific that was -- that had been declared several years ago. it was an acknowledgment of how much of what happens in the world really emerges in this

area. i'd like to make the point that it can be a really tough neighborhood when you talk about the folks that reside here. you've got quite a mix. you know, you've got the largest democracy in terms of population, india, you have one of the largest democracies in terms of area, indonesia, now, again, becoming more and more -- increasingly democratic. you have autocratic states that are ruled by one party, essentially one-party systems, china and russia being the largest. nuclear weapon states, china, russia, whether they're declared or undeclared, north korea, india, pakistan on the border, again, which is actually outside this region but it borders on it. you have modern militaries that are growing rapidly in some cases. with forces that are increasingly lethal.

there is a proliferation of missile technology. you know, missiles with longer ranges, faster speeds, stealth yer platforms, whether they're ships or aircraft that launch them. and there is a capability to increasingly hold at risk larger and larger areas of territory, whether it be air, space or sea. and these are all the trend lines and they are continuing to go in the positive direction in terms of more and more capability. there's new types of warfare and i want to get into that a little bit more when we talk about -- about how you wage war and the ability to really conduct conflict at thresholds even below what we would normally consider military conflict. and, again, i will get into that in a little bit more detail later. as mentioned earlier you've got five of our allies. you have alliances with japan, the republic of korea, the philippines, thailand, by the way, which is the oldest

alliance we have in that region, australia as well. so there's commitments that we have there. there's also the thai relations act, not an alliance but essentially an act and memorandums of understanding that -- communiqués that also add texture to that particular act and what we believe we're committed to. so on top of all those relationships you've got -- or i should say the absence of a completely multi-lateral security architecture. there is no nato that exists in this part of the world. instead you have a web of relationships, bilateral, tri-lateral and sometimes multi-lateral and there is a desire to try to grow towards that more multilateral approach. on the next slide you see that's the world in this part anyway that's connected by trade

routes. so those lines right there actually that's a view from space of automatic -- automated information system, ais tracks, transponders from ships that are over 300 tons and it creates a picture. so, again, that's not just a graph of where the routes are, those are actual contacts over time that creates a picture. that's the power of this particular shot. and i will leave it up there as i speak because it really starts to talk about -- about how connected we are and how the world is shrinking. we already talked about the facts and figures about that part of the world with so many powers and technology that's increasing and the aspirations that go with it. imagine if you will -- i don't have the overlay, but imagine air routes on top of that. you see them when you're flying around and you pull out hemisphere magazine and united flight or whatever and see all those lines. imagine that on top of that and then you start to see the density where the pacific fleet operates its ships, it's

aircraft, submarines. this gives you the context for the playing field, if you will, where tension and this tug of war, if you will, goes and takes place. so with those routes comes an expectation of throughput for trade. time is money. and with that comes a system of rights and the freedom of movement and access. you know, there is a reason for this. it supports our entire global supply chain. whether it's our trade or someone else's it's entirely connected. so that's the so what factor of those trade routes you will often hear about. it's what gets everything to us and not just us, but the world. and so you have that in tension with the adjacent nations that are in this region and it's their territorial claims, whether it's about 12 mile territorial limits and some are

disputed out to the economic exclusive zones. you will have ambiguous claims in this area. one in particular by china, the nine-dash line. we will talk more about that later. but there is a lot of conflict in this area and dispute. even the names of the seas in this area, i will start from north to south, you know, there's -- there's the yellow sea. well, depends who you talk to. i mean, there's broadly recognized names, but there's always under dispute, but the koreans will call that the west sea. there is a sea of japan, we have all heard of that, from a korea perspective that's the east sea, again, relative to the peninsula. as you move into the south china sea if you talk to the philippines they will say, no, that's the west philippines sea. or indonesia will refer to the south china sea as the north notuna sea because it recognizes the eezs of some of the islands indonesia cares about and doesn't wish to just write off and say, no, that's all chinese. so that's the neighborhood where everything is in tension and

it's pretty important. air defense identification zones, adiz is the shorthand. i won't get into too much jargon, i promise, but those are areas used for control of air space. u.s. has had them for many, many years. we had them back in world war ii. korea and japan established them later. china established one several years ago, but it was uncoordinated and became very disruptive and still is because it overlaps other adiz from japan, from korea, taiwan as well. so why do we care about that? what's the so what again about these territorial claims? it isn't just the resources but it's sovereignty and then jurisdiction that extends from that sovereignty and then influence, and different nations view those things in different ways and wish to exert them in varying -- various degrees. sometimes compliant with international norms and customs,

sometimes not so much. meanwhile, you have this reality, this throughput, this need that has to happen all the time. so now i'm beginning to hopefully paint this picture of why we have a fleet that's out there that's forward to defend these things pause because it becomes very complex very, very rapidly. one more slide i'll show. again, think of these as additive overlays. the one on the upper left corner, those are under sea cables. so, again, you will see the density, it's hard to see because of the scale of that particular chart, but, again, these really come into play, they overlap, you know, they are on the sea bed, they provide communication lines, the connectivity that keeps the global economy moving. just one more piece of intersecting, overlapping, connecting linkages that needs to be able to exist in a free and unrestricted environment.

and that's the so what factor. and then you think about the bottom slide there where those green shaded area and those depict -- you can't read the legend of course, but those are areas of resources. you know, millions of barrels of oil or gas, and you see the green shaded areas, the darker the shade, the more there is there. so there's resources there. and of course that entire region is bordered by some seven different nations or states that have overlapping claims. and they see that as their wealth, as their future and so that's in tension. so that's the physical environment that i've attempted to describe to outline. it is also a strategic and an operational environment. and we talk about it, there are source documents that i like to use as the national security strategy written in december of '17, the national defense

strategy came out in -- early in 2018. and those documents they talk about overt challenges to the free and open international order. again, the so what behind these pictures and the reemergence of long-term strategic competition. and the rapid dispersion of technologies. new concepts of warfare and competition that spans the entire spectrum of conflict. those last two points i told you i wanted to come back to, new concepts of warfare. and because technology has enabled us to do many things that we couldn't do before how you think about warfare and how you think about conflict now has much more subtlety to it. in the past we had traditional domain centric warfare, air, surface, subsurface, pretty much those three areas. now you're talking about cross domain because technology enables you to do things from one domain to the other.

this is now a blurring of the lines. why? because you can. because technology has enabled it. but there are also new domains. we talk about the sea bed nowadays, that's why the picture of the under' cables is so important. you talk about space. so really the domains we talk about now go from sea bed to space and everything in between, and then of course the man made, the domain of cyber, which has been a focus of discussion this entire week and certainly in the headlines. how you think about information warfare, no longer just the domain of militaries, again, that's in the headlines continuously. so those are all the things now, domains, that the playing field has enlarged, but even the variety of actors, you've got state actors, non-state actors, military units, paramilitary units, non-military units often called gray forces, so they are in play. then you have the things that

all these -- whether it's the domains and the actors then can achieve. you know, we use the term kinetic and nonkinetic. does it blow up or not? that's the simple parlance of things. but there's lethal, non-lethal, reversible and irreversible effects that you can create. there's attributable and nonattributable. now you can see the degradations of how you choose to get into conflict are unknown. weapons of mass destruction we've talked about for many years. there's treaties in place. i would offer weapons of mass effect that we now see as well and how you deal with all these things. so there's another layer of conflict, just the means and the domains of which it can play out has increased in order of magnitude. so some more -- some more aspects to think about. the history in this area, the memories from world war ii,

they're still there. there is a need to build trust. there's unresolved conflicts that still reside, the korean peninsula of course is probably the largest one. so what's our operational enduring mission of the pacific fleet out here? i can severally tell you it's all about maintaining stability and security and for what purpose? for the interest and in the interest of prosperity. that's an imminently reasonable thing and many of our allies and partners we all stack hands on that because that's what it's about. stability and security in the interest of prosperity. a free and open indo asia-pacific, those are words that you hear and that's the case, that's the so what and why. our national defense strategy talks about it. so then you may say, okay, well, stability and security, what's challenging that other than those circumstances you talked about? so there's some hot spots in areas where the friction is continually grinding. i will run through a bunch of them real fast here.

there's a north korean peninsula and we're seeing the efforts that are in play today that hopefully will be successful, but everyone walks into those negotiations with their eyes wide open. there is the taiwan unresolved taiwan situation and our commitments there and about cross-state relations and how that's peacefully resolved. there is a south china sea and the nine dash line and how that gets resolved and what that large ambiguous claim really means. is it defensible? i won't say any more.about that, i will say that for the next speaker. there's the east sea that the japanese are disputing. there's the uncoordinated air defense declaration zone declarations that overlap with existing ones, that's a source. why is that a source of friction? it's not just a declaration, it's what you do inside that air space, the interception of aircraft, civilian and military and what the expectations are in

that air defense. again, the purpose of those is to, you know, alert yourself, the country to ingressing aircraft, it's their right to understand who is coming in and identify them, but what about aircraft that are traversing, you know, don't they have a right to unimpeded access? goes back to that throughput and the expectations for free movement. there's your grinding point again. freedom of navigation, that's an element at air but also at sea. it includes the right to conduct surveillance. again, another area of friction beyond the territorial seas of any nation, the u.s. and customary law allows our aircraft and ships to conduct surveillance. the chinese navy was disinvited from rimpac as you all know late spring, the exercises currently taking place, but they sent one of their surveillance ships out there. and it's their right to do that as long as they don't interfere with the exercise and observe

international law. that's how it works. we assert that same right in the western pacific. there's territorial disputes throughout the entire area all the way in the north between russia and japan, in the sea of japan itself, cart rocks are disputed, the sovereignty is disputed, it's called ducto island or takashima depending on the different names depending on who you are. there's terrorist activities in the philippines and malaysia in particular. there is the threat of wmd proliferation. there are the natural disasters that the admiral talked about earlier that are increasing in frequency and severity each year, which that fleet, the pacific fleet, is often and many times sometimes the first on scene outside support. that's flooding, that's earthquakes, it's tsunamis, it's typhoons. there is maritime security of nations understanding what's

happening in those spaces beyond their territorial seas and their contiguous zones. do they even have awareness of what's happening out there? can they maintain stewardship of those resources, their futures? there's a threat of major nuclear armed powers, again, some are growing at fast rates and lack of transparency in what their intentions are. and then there is this notion of anti-axis or contesting spaces and, again, as those capabilities of increasing distance and more lethal systems, what is the intent behind that? is the intent to keep people out, is the intend to challenge those life lines that the global economy, the supply chains rely on. so the approach of all this, to all these is to deter, that's both conventional and nuclear

deterrents. there is the homeland defense which we believe in defending, but we often do that forward, the best way to defend at home is just to take that and make it the away game. we assure our allies and partners as part of the missions that the pac fleet is involved in, pacific fleet. we need to be prepared to defend against aggressive overt acts from those major powers. be ready to respond to crises that may pop up that are more about flash points, whether by accident or otherwise, we still need to respond to that and do it quickly. you want to build capability in your own forces using that process that the admiral laid out but also your allies and partners. think of it as a quality of what you can do. then there's building capacity, how much of it can you do and for how long, both your own ability and those of your allies and partners. there's building partnership and engagement, we do that with our exercises. and all these elements and all those lines of effort that i just ticked through, no he is are tools to help manage this

tension, to be out and about, to assert those global views, those customary norms in the face of what's being challenged. we talked about in the national security strategy, in the national defense strategy. we want to prevent conflict, we want to shape that environment to keep it friendly to a world order, a post world war ii order that we fought and tens of millions of lives were lost that upheld the rule of law, that upheld democratic self--determinations and that takes all of the navy, that's takes all of our joint forces. if you really want to do it right it takes all of government, all of nation and i would add all of allies and partners. so the lines now have become blurred, how you think about conflict, what you need to help push back and the expansive nature of this really never ending competition. so i'm going tolo