Defense Writers Group - Air Force Magazine

TRANSCRIPT

Defense Writers Group

A Project of the Center for Media & Security

New York and Washington, D.C.

The Honorable Ray Mabus

Secretary of the Navy

September 30, 2014

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT AND MAY CONTAIN ERRORS. USERS ARE ADVISED TO

CONSULT THEIR OWN TAPES OR NOTES OF THE SESSION IF ABSOLUTE

VERIFICATION OF WORDING IS NEEDED.

Secretary Mabus: -- Navy¡¯s role in, against ISIL, ISIS, IL, whatever, or IS, whatever

it¡¯s called today, is because we were already there. We could move almost instantly

when the President gave the order. We can stay for as long as we need to stay based on

the normal rotation of our ships. We have a carrier strike group in the region. We have

an amphibious ready group in the region which we, both of which we always have in that

region of the world. And it is sustainable for as long as we need to be there. That¡¯s what

forward presence gives. We don¡¯t take up anybody else¡¯s land. We can come from the

sea and we can stay for a very very long time.

DWG: Current operations. What can you tell us about your role in that?

Secretary Mabus: We¡¯re flying obviously strikes off the Bush. We¡¯re flying some ISR

missions against ISIL. And I think that¡¯s about all I can comfortably say. We¡¯ve,

obviously it¡¯s been announced before that we¡¯ve got, we¡¯ve got the embassy in security in

Iraq with Marines, things like that. And we continue to -- the relief of the Bush, the

carrier that¡¯s relieving the Bush, the Vinson, is on its way.

DWG: Sir, did you launch any Tomahawks after day one?

Secretary Mabus: No.

DWG: Just a couple of questions on ops. There¡¯s been a fixation on cost of the

operation from among the press and the public. What are the incremental costs,

roughly, that the Bush has accumulated since August 8th, over and above what it would

have accumulated had it just been in the AOR supporting Afghanistan?

Secretary Mabus: A very fair question and I¡¯ll answer it not just the Bush but also the

Tomahawk shooters. It¡¯s less than $100 million. Less than $100 million for Navy now.

DWG: Cumulative since August -Secretary Mabus: Cumulative. Those are the incremental costs, and it¡¯s mostly

weapons. Some gasoline to fly the extra missions that, we¡¯re flying more missions than

we would have been flying, but it¡¯s mainly the weapons. It¡¯s mainly the Tomahawks and

the ordnance that our planes are dropping.

DWG: So 47 Tomahawks at a million apiece, so that¡¯s like half of it.

Secretary Mabus: A little bit more than a million apiece.

DWG: $1.1, yeah.

Secretary Mabus: The weapons are the vast majority of it.

DWG: Okay. One follow-up, does the Navy see the need for a second carrier. To retain

a second carrier presence there to support Afghan operations? We haven¡¯t had a second

carrier there in about two years I think now, or a year and a half.

Secretary Mabus: Right now we can do whatever we need to do with one carrier.

DWG: You¡¯ve told that to Hagel and the National Command Authority?

Secretary Mabus: I¡¯m absolutely certain that they know what we can do if we need

more or if there are more missions. We¡¯ll take a look at that then.

DWG: But at this point there¡¯s no plan to surge a second carrier to support

Afghanistan?

Secretary Mabus: At this point, no.

DWG: Thank.

DWG: Last week Secretary Hagel said he was doing a long term budget analysis for the

ISIL campaign. What is the Navy¡¯s piece of this? What is going to be the next to do for

this?

Secretary Mabus: Again, it¡¯s, for Navy and for the Marines it would be the

incremental cost of extra sorties, weapons, things like that. We¡¯ve already, we were

going to have a carrier in the region, or in the Arabian Gulf or in Central Command no

matter what. We were going to have a strike group there. We were going to have an

amphibious ready group there. We rotate those out on a pretty routine basis and so it

would be the incremental costs that Tony asked about.

DWG: When do you have to submit that [inaudible]?

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Secretary Mabus: I don¡¯t have a date for you on that. Our costs are pretty

straightforward though about that.

DWG: I¡¯m actually not going to ask about Iraq. Navy Special Warfare was -Secretary Mabus: Bummer.

DWG: Too bad. [Laughter].

DWG: Naval Special Warfare is supposed to finish the study about integrating women

this summer and I was wondering if it¡¯s been finished, if you¡¯ve been briefed, what the

time line is now.

Secretary Mabus: I have not been briefed. I think the time line, the overall time line

remains start of ¡¯16 in terms of making decisions on this.

What I would point out is that Navy Special Warfare is the only part of Navy now closed

to women. That we¡¯ve opened everything else up including submarines and riverine to

women. And so it¡¯s that one particular unit.

What Secretary Panetta said when he signed the thing out, the presumption is that

everything will open unless there¡¯s a specific reason for it to be closed and that¡¯s the way

we¡¯re proceeding on the look at it.

DWG: So the study today sometime. I¡¯ve been asking them and they haven¡¯t been able

to give me a straight answer about whether they¡¯ve -Secretary Mabus: I don¡¯t know. I¡¯ll give you that answer. I know I have not been

briefed on it.

DWG: Mr. Secretary, thanks again for spending the time.

On the Pacific rebalance, just kind of looking for your perspective on how you think it¡¯s

going so far, what¡¯s the big milestone coming up next year, and what do you really need

out there besides money, of course, but what¡¯s your number one, two, or three priorities

going in the next two or three years? What do you see the need after doing this for a

couple of years now?

Secretary Mabus: I¡¯ll give you some milestones that are either coming up or have

already passed.

We did the Freedom deployment to Singapore which was very successful. That was an

eight month deployment and we validated the concept of changing crews, leaving the

ship where it is. We sent LCS-2, Independence, to RIMPAC and validated there. We

gave them very short notice to change out weapons packages in San Diego and head to

RIMPAC and they got there with a third of their fuel left and they got there faster than

anticipated.

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We will have the first LCS forward deployed in Singapore before the end of this year. It

will be followed by three more that will be there by about the close of ¡¯16 will be all four.

We¡¯re going to be putting some additional ships into Japan, into Yokosuka. There will

be an additional amphibious ready group in the Pacific. The homeport of that has not

been decided yet.

The rotation presence of the Marines in Darwin, Australia started out at a company

level, about 200. The one just finished, we had about 1200 Marines there. That¡¯s

moving on to -DWG: Was that March that the rest [inaudible] -- Has that been incremental or do

they kind of all go down in March? The 1200 that are there now.

Secretary Mabus: No, they went as a unit. And then that will be increasing over the

next couple of years to around 2400 Marines, depending on exactly what units and

exactly what equipment is sent in.

The Guam Master Plan has been sent to the Hill and the planning work for the

rotational presence some form of presence of Marines on Guam are being finalized. The

Mayor of, the Governor of Okinawa has signed the Environmental Impact Statement to

do the Futenma replacement facility. So that work in connection with Guam, in

connection with the other Marine moves in the Pacific is beginning to move ahead,

although that¡¯s a year-long process.

We are a little over 55 percent of the fleet in the Pacific today. By 2020 we should be

right at 60 percent in the Pacific. And we¡¯re sending a lot of our new platforms there,

our newest platforms. Things like Littoral Combat Ships, rebuilds. The USS America is

going to be commissioned a week from Saturday in San Francisco and it will be

homeported in San Diego. The P-8s are beginning to arrive in theater, in the Pacific

first.

The priorities are sort of, to answer the first question, so that we can have presence

everywhere that we need to, so that those big gray hulls will be on the horizon, so that

we will be virtually everywhere in the Pacific all the time. And so that if there is an

incident, a crisis, we can respond and we don¡¯t escalate because we¡¯ve already got ships

there.

DWG: Good morning. I was interested in the Tomahawk strikes. Can you speak to

why the need for Tomahawks in those particular instances as opposed to just more

airstrikes?

Secretary Mabus: I don¡¯t know why those were chose as opposed to air, but

Tomahawk¡¯s a great weapon and very precise. And as I think John Kirby said, we hit

exactly what we were aiming to hit with those strikes. It gives you an amazing capability

in that precision.

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DWG: A quick follow-up, if you could speak to the cross-country flight that you had

that landed in Maryland within the last week or so. I know the Navy announced that. It

seemed to get a lot of interest. Any after-action on that?

Secretary Mabus: No, except it made it fine all the way across the country, and we¡¯re

going to continue -- It came to Pax River for extensive testing which is what we do at Pax

River, but there were no UFO sightings or anything like that. [Laughter].

DWG: Thank you.

DWG: Good morning, sir. Can you please talk about, do you have a sense of precisely

or even sort of roughly what the component of the Navy and Marine Corps flights have

been in the airstrikes in Syria?

Secretary Mabus: You mean -DWG: Of the total airstrikes, what percentage have been Navy and Marine Corps

flights?

Secretary Mabus: I think we¡¯ve been about a total, about a quarter of the airstrikes.

We were, most of them at the beginning of the campaign because, as I said, we were

there. But as the campaign has gone on, I think the Air Force announced yesterday

they¡¯d done about 75 percent so the rest would be Navy and Marine.

DWG: Of the quarter, is there any particular sway between Navy and Marine Corps

aircraft? Or -Secretary Mabus: I¡¯m not sure I can give you a breakdown. I think most of them

have come off the carrier. The Bush does not have a Marine squadron. So it would be

more Navy than Marines, but I can¡¯t give you a percentage.

DWG: To follow-up, have your aircraft had any interaction with Syrian government

military? By radar or interactions in the air?

Secretary Mabus: Not to my knowledge.

DWG: Thank you, sir.

DWG: Mr. Secretary, I want to ask you about something we¡¯ve talked a lot about over

the past year plus in town, which is the number of aircraft carriers the Navy needs or

should have, and I wonder if you think the operations in Iraq and Syria will change the

discussion that you and the department had with Congress in the size of that fleet and

the amount of resources that it gets, or whether you think it should change the

discussion because clearly, as you have described this morning, CVN-77 is out there

making the case for aircraft carriers. Or was it ever a case of actually convincing people

in Congress? It was just a pure money issue?

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