SWOBOSS Keynote Transcript from SNA National 2024

09 January 2024

ARLINGTON Va. (Jan. 09, 2024) Commander, Naval Surface Forces, U.S. Pacific Fleet Vice Adm. Brendan McLane delivers remarks at the Surface Navy Association’s (SNA) 36th National Symposium. The Symposium brings together joint experts and decision-makers in the military, industry, and Congress to discuss how the Surface Force is a critical element of national defense and security. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Kelby Sanders)

SNA National 2024

Thank you again to our awardees for being here and more importantly being leaders on the deck plates. Another round of applause for LCDR Alex Turner, LCDR Zane MacNaughton and LTJG Noah Spahr.

Welcome to the 36th National SNA Symposium. Thank you to VADM (ret) Rick Hunt, RADM (ret) Dave Hart, Julie Howard, Debbie Gary, and the entire Surface Navy Association team for all the effort, planning, time, and energy it takes to put on such an amazing event. And a special thank you to Bill Erickson. Bill, thank you for your leadership, your hard work for 23 years and that includes 23 SNAs, as well as your openness to new ideas like SNA East. We wouldn’t be here today without your dedication, care, and experience! Bill, you will be deeply missed!

My vision for the Surface Force is one of 75 warships ready to fight, operated by courageous, well-trained, and sufficiently manned crews to achieve the Navy’s mission in peace and war. It is an agile, lethal, distributed, and persistent force that gets ready quickly, and stays ready through continuous improvement. This year’s theme – The Fight, The Force, The Future – captures this vision.

Two years ago, Admiral Kitchener introduced the Competitive Edge strategy and, last year, he provided an update on our implementation, emphasizing the need to GET READY now. I’d like to take a moment and show you the culture, training, and lethality this effort’s born. The upcoming video shows what our warships can do when they’re READY.

Since October 19th, CARNEY has engaged 37 cruise missiles and drones launched by Houthi rebels. Almost immediately after navigating the Suez Canal, CARNEY got to work - shooting down 13 Unmanned Aerial Systems, and Land Attack Cruise missiles; executing the first-ever five-inch combat gun engagement against a 350-knot LACM! CARNEY is ready to fight!

So, let’s take a few minutes to watch some of that warfighting in action. I love watching that video, because it reminds me— as I know it reminds you—of what our courageous and professional Sailors are doing in the Red Sea today, and anywhere when the call for help comes in. CARNEY, MASON, THOMAS HUDNER, LABOON, CARTER HALL, GRAVELY, along with HMS DIAMOND and FS LANGUEDOC, are answering that call.

But what does it take to be ready like that? For those of us in the Force Generation business, we know just how much it takes to prepare a ship for deployment. As an example, let’s look at what it took for CARNEY to get ready.

CARNEY began preparations for her deployment on 27 June 2020 - leaving Rota, Spain, and executing a homeport shift back to Mayport, FL. Upon arrival, she conducted a 19-month dry-docking in BAE Jacksonville. With our industry partners and NAVSEA, we completed 32 ship alterations, 22 software updates, five engineering changes, seven ordnance alterations, four field changes, and four TYCOM alterations, including upgrades to radar and combat systems, as well as significant HM&E work. Thank you to the 18+ industry partners who were pivotal. Maintenance takes a full team, and we need our partners across government and industry onboard to produce warships ready to fight and win.

Following the completion of her maintenance phase in April of 2022, our training organizations descended on CARNEY. Sailors from ATG Mayport, Engineering Assessments Atlantic, IWTGLANT, and EWTGLANT trained CARNEY’s warfighters throughout the Basic Phase. Their expertise coupled with our Afloat Team Training Accelerated Certification (ATTAC) is fundamental to developing our Sailors. A best practice learned during a global pandemic, ATTAC provides our ships ten uninterrupted weeks of Basic Phase training – including five to seven weeks underway – vastly improving the effectiveness of our training.

Following Basic Phase training, CARNEY joined the ships of DESRON 22 in March of 2023 for Surface Warfare Advanced Tactical Training. Our community’s most challenging exercise, SWATT takes our warships and teaches them to integrate, work together, and fight as a team. This exercise led by our Warfare Tactics Instructors is exceptional and our ships are better trained today than they’ve ever been before. We are nine years into WTI production by the Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center and, I can say with confidence it is the best program we’ve ever had for our officers and warfighters! Our WTIs at SMWDC, in the program offices, and in the fleet are improving our tactics, techniques, and procedures every day – getting ready and staying ready through continuous improvement! Between SWATT and Group Sail, CARNEY completed INSURV...

While no one finds INSURVs enjoyable, they hold us accountable and help us grow our standard. These inspections are headed by Admiral Todd Whalen - Keep up the good work! INSURV is about self-assessing in our mission to be and stay ready. CARNEY excelled during her INSURV (0.74 IFOM score: 0.77 class-average), acing the engineering and aviation areas, as well as crushing her full power and quick reversal demos. A month later, CARNEY and the rest of IKE Strike Group executed COMPTUEX earning their combat operations certification. This enormous investment – 19 months of maintenance and 11 months of training paid off. It made CARNEY ready!

She deployed on 27 September 2023, in advance of the IKE CSG. 36 hours after transiting the Suez Canal, she engaged her first targets, putting all her training, practice, and readiness to lethal effect. And the best part of how effective warfighting influences Sailors’ decisions to remain part of our elite team: two days after CARNEY’s first engagements, CDR Jeremy Robertson had 15 re-enlistment contracts on his desk! Sailors join the Navy to execute our Nation’s calling, and nothing motivates them more than being warriors in the fight.

We take this decade seriously, and we know the Strait of Bab-El-Mandeb is not going to be like the South China Sea. The story I’ve shared about CARNEY – what it’s like to build readiness – is but one piece in a larger Force. Guided by our North Star of 75 warships ready to fight, we’re building that warfighting readiness on every coast, across every theater, and in every Sailor. Day in and day out, we work with our closest partner —the United States Marine Corps— supporting them as they implement Force Design 2030, Expand Littoral Operations in Contested Environments and enhance the amphibious force readiness needed for crisis response and conventional deterrence around the world. In conjunction with this imperative, for the first time, we sent six Littoral Combat Ships armed with Naval Strike Missiles west of the International Date Line. These ships are yielding considerable operational dividends. Dividends earned from the execution of our Competitive Edge strategy.

This strategy is a living framework requiring us to innovate, improve, and adapt to new technology and tactics. It demands that we act transparently, focus on what matters most, and build learning teams – welcoming the hard, uncomfortable conversations necessary to generate greater proficiency in our warfighting readiness. The Competitive Edge Strategy task-organizes all stakeholders through five clear lines of effort. They are:
1.) Develop the Leader, Warrior, Mariner, and Manager
2.) Produce More Ready Ships
3.) Achieve Excellence in Fleet Introduction
4.) Create Clear and Innovative Operational Concepts, and…
5.) Establish Infrastructure for the Future Force
These efforts point in one direction - towards our North Star of 75 warships ready to fight, and our Surface Warfare Enterprise has established specific and measurable goals across the Force to stay on course and surge ahead. We discussed the strong teamwork involved in producing more warships ready to fight, so now let’s look at excellence in fleet introduction.

Last year, at SNA, we celebrated our first Flight III Destroyer —USS JACK H. LUCAS (DDG 125)- who’d completed sea trials at Huntington Ingalls in Mississippi. Since then, JACK H. LUCAS was commissioned and her crew sailed her to San Diego, joining the Pacific Fleet.

We must think of USS JACK H. LUCAS as a “First in Class,” introducing new combat systems and HM&E technology to improve lethality and survivability against advanced threats, Including the entirely new SPY-6 Air Defense Radar and Aegis Baseline 10. These systems bring massively enhanced warfighting capability to the Pacific, and with them we’ll continue to hone our Competitive Edge.

Partnering PEO(SHIPS), PEO(IWS), OPNAV N96, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and our Fleet Commanders, we’re energized to test, learn, and mature JACK H. LUCAS – ensuring that once she deploys, she’s the most capable warship in the world. HII and BIW are building more FLT III’s. And we need them now! We must overcome production delays to get these highest-end warships out to sea and ready to fight. Let me say that again for emphasis…We need to accelerate their current efforts to speed up FLT III production.

Flight III’s are the most capable warships in the world, and while we introduce them to the Fleet, we have to plan for what comes next and stay ahead of the threat. After 40 years in production and 30 years of upgrades, the ARLEIGH BURKE hull cannot accommodate the power requirements for future sensors and high power directed energy (DE) weapons, nor the magazine capacity for hypersonic missiles. On the horizon we can already see the masts of our next generation of world-class warships – DDG(X) – which will usher us into the next chapter of Surface Warfighting.

Moreover, I am not content with the pace of Directed Energy weapons. We must deliver on the promise of this technology no matter the form- laser or high-powered microwave. This capability will reduce ordnance requirements and increase offensive weapons on current and future platforms. To think that when I was in Bahrain, as DESRON 50, USS PONCE (AFSB 15) had a prototype laser and decades later we still don’t have a POR. I – through my N9 organization – will put considerable effort toward advocating within the Navy to field this capability at a quickened pace – we must move faster! I look forward to standing here next year informing you on how that effort is coming along.

Another focus of the future will be the continued press on our unmanned programs. We will match our unmanned vessel programs to the maturation of both autonomy algorithms, and the basic propulsion and electrical systems that must operate for weeks on end without regular maintenance. Unmanned is an essential part of our future, a fact we prove everyday through experimentation and prototyping. This past fall, the Royal Australian Navy and we demonstrated this effort’s efficacy during Autonomous Warrior 23 studying and refining USV capabilities and interoperability.

In Fourth Fleet, ADM Aiken’s team continues to employ unmanned platforms to increase Maritime Domain Awareness. And just a month ago, TF 59 executed DIGITAL TALON 2.0, which paired manned and unmanned vessels, teaming USS INDIANAPOLIS and three USV’s in the Arabian Gulf to test unmanned lethality, and advance the unmanned detect-to-engage sequence. In program offices and at OPNAV N96, RDT&E investments are aligned to bring capabilities that will support all USV systems, including reliable HM&E systems, vessel autonomy, control software, and unmanned radios and C4I systems. These endeavors are paving the way to USVs full Surface Force integration and a hybrid fleet, granting us greater firepower and superior over-the-horizon capability.

By putting these technologies into the hands of our Sailors -who are the best at figuring out all the ways to maximize lethality - we are employing disruptive thinking to advance tactics, techniques, and procedures. More than just excellence in fleet introduction, this is getting ready and staying ready through continuous improvement!

Similarly, our newly established Surface Groups are front and center in producing more warships ready to fight. We know things work best in the Navy when there is a single process owner. Long-term success starts with one accountable officer across the OFRP and follows the ADCON chain of command – flowing down from the Four-Star Fleet Commander, to the TYCOM, to the ADCON ISIC, down to individual ships.

Surface Groups are now THE ISIC in every Fleet Concentration Area responsible for Maintenance and Basic Phase Training. These organizations swarm subject matter experts onto our warships to assist in availabilities, repairs, inspections, and certifications. In the process, they free up DESRON and PHIBRON staffs to focus on warfighting and leading warships on deployment.

One of the biggest outcomes we anticipate from SURFGRUs is reducing Days of Maintenance Delay - which as you all know - is the first step to getting more warships ready to fight. SURFGRU’s are the Surface Navy’s organizational commitment to changing the way we lead and manage our ships, and I call on all our industry partners to look hard at their own organizations. See if you’re producing the outcomes you want and if you’re not, ask yourselves what you’re going to do about it. We simply cannot continue with business as usual in the face of outdated maintenance practices and our adversaries’ growing maritime capability. They’re coming for us. I hear a lot of excuses about supply chains and labor shortages, but what are we going to do to get ready?

Finally, and most importantly, none of these new platforms and initiatives matter without our Sailors. We employ a lot of football metaphors in the military, but as we saw in the video, what’s happening at sea is not a game and our Sailors are warfighters, who’ve committed themselves to serve our great Nation and their shipmates. We need to strengthen our warfighters mental and physical health through our Warrior Toughness program. Warrior Toughness is a holistic human performance skill set focusing on the pursuit of peak performance. The system emphasizes the coequal development of toughness in the mind, body, and spirit. We’ve been teaching it to Recruits at Boot Camp since 2018, we’ve been teaching it in the Fleet since 2021, and now really need to lean into this and take full advantage of it.

The current experiences of our deployed forces, clearly demonstrate our theme this week: The Fight, The Force, The Future. Today, the fight is in the Red Sea. Tomorrow, we may be called for prompt and sustained combat operations in other parts of the world. It’s imperative our Force IS READY and STAYS READY. This requirement demands every member of our Surface Force team – uniformed, civilian, and in private industry – to work together, innovate, elevate the standard for overall mission success.

I’ve been asked a few times already, “well, what can we do?” with the ‘WE’ being folks in industry—shipbuilding, ship repair, and capability development. Here are my requests:

1. Deliver ships on time and budget - both new construction and in depot maintenance, with all work completed. We must get better—all of us. My organization must scope and resource work better, Industry needs to scope workforce and capital investment better. Every slippage in IOC, every extension in a CNO availability means fewer warships ready to fight. We need to work together on this.

2. Ask yourself the ‘What If’ – like Admiral Caudle described. What if you are asked to do more tomorrow? What are the first 5 things you’ll need to do if we, all of us, are asked to produce more, surge forces, and meet wartime production. Go back and sit down with your leadership teams to see what plans are on the shelf when our nation calls. We owe resource sponsors realistic estimates of need to increase capacity and responsiveness.

3. We ALL need to become recruiters. We are in a war for talent. In this great nation there are three million, in shape, 17 - 21 year olds with the right grades fit for military service. I need your help making the case to them for Naval Service. So many of the people in this room were shaped and molded by serving in the Navy. There is a wealth of experience and storytelling here, the kinds of things that help a young person decide that spending a few years in the Navy is a good decision. Please share your stories with America’s youth.

I’m going to bring this to a close by returning to CARNEY. When I talked to CARNEY’s captain, he told me, “We used everyday events to focus on warfighting, Whether it be a Detect-To-Engage sequence for INSURV or watch team coordination in the simulator, we pushed warfighting down to the lowest levels. We focused on the basics, getting the little things right. You can’t be a championship team if you don’t do the basic things right, really right, and really well.” I completely agree and apply that to all of us here - we’re all in this together - in the same ship of freedom with the opportunity to stay on the leading edge of world-class excellence. We’ll only succeed, however, if we listen to each other and work closely together – and do that over and over again until we’re perfect. This business of ours— preserving peace, responding to crisis, and winning decisively in war —Requires that we re-dedicate ourselves to our warfighters, warfighting, and our naval foundation – no matter whether our job is standing a watch, commanding an amphib, managing a program, or delivering capability. We don’t give up the ship in America, we forge ahead to be the very best.

I cannot imagine a better time to be part of and lead the Surface Warfare team. To paraphrase the Roman philosopher Seneca, “For a Navy to know itself, it must be tested; no one finds out what they can do except by trying. Great Navies rejoice in adversity.” Now, I want to hear from you in the Q&A

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Commander, Naval Surface Forces, U.S. Pacific Fleet, 2841 Rendova Rd. San Diego, CA 92155-5490

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This is an official U.S. Navy website	U.S. Pacific Fleet 2841 Rendova Rd San Diego, CA 92155-5490 Email: Public Affairs Officer Webmaster