screeria -- nigeria. -

then the u.n. secretary-general talks about priorityies for the u.n. in the new year. the u.s. naval academy recently hosted a debate on the role of air contractors carriers in u.s. national security environments. two retired navy officers looked at whether the vessels were the

most effective and efficient maritime defense strategy for the u.s. military. this is just over an hour. >> food >> good evening. i'm c.c.felker. on behalf of superintendent vice admiral ted carr, i want to welcome those flag officers and navy senior civilian leaders escaped the beltway to join us our distinguish faculty in the indianapolis economy, and most of all our midshipmen, who are the real reason we're here tonight. i'd like to recognize lieutenant commander claude bareby for respond forring this event. he's continued the transformation of the naval academy museum to a more active educational medium for the

midshipmen. tonight's debate is representative of his energy and imagination. i'd also like to thank the u.s. naval institute for live streaming this event on twitter. this debate is being followed on #carrierdebate. i'd also like to thank c-span for being here. the importance of an informed public, especially when their security interests are concerned, cannot be overstated. george behr argued in his book "100 years of sea power" that "the navy, as with any other agency of government, is the instrument of national policy. its junior partner in every regard. and to dissociate itself from the broad national position is to dissociate itself from the source of its purpose and strength." behr's thesis is particularly relevant to tonight's debate. for the last 70 some odd years the aircraft carrier has been the centerpiece of the fleet. fast carrier task forces were instrumental in the navy and marine corps central pacific

campaign of world war ii. a carrier-centric navy adapted well when hot war turned cold, expanding beyond sea control to project power ashore in conflicts from korea to iraq and providing responsiveness and sustained forward presence in ways that our sister services could not. but implied in pehr's thesis is a cautionary note. a navy that does not constantly evaluate how well it supports national policy and what tools it ought to have to do so can distance the service from the country it serves with severe consequences to the nation's security needs. now, just to allay the fears of our midshipmen particularly our firsties who just received their first flight suits no one's losing a fleet seat tonight as a result of this debate. in fact, the opinions expressed tonight do not represent those of the naval academy, the navy, or the department of defense. but what we are doing tonight is

what blue suitors, regardless of your shoe color and civilian policy experts ought to be doing. thinking about and objectively and dispassionately evaluating our mission and the ships best suited to accomplishing it. within the context of history, contemporary challenges and threats, and future national security concerns. the resolution tonight is at the big deck nuclear aircraft carrier with its air wing is the most cost effective and efficient platform to protect power in the maritime and littoral realms and support u.s. national security interests in current and future security environments. addressing this resolution are two gentlemen who in both their active duty and post-navy careers have been directly involved in navy and national security policy issues. dr. jerry hendricks is a retired captain who deployed at a tactical officer and coordinator. he holds master's debrises from

harvard and hpd from king's college in london. jerry served on the cno executive panel, the avs advisory panel, and ofd's office of assessment. following his retirement dr. hendricks joined the center for new american security as a senior fellow and director of the defense strategies and assessments program. debating dr. hendricks is commander brian mcgrath. a career service warfare officer who commanded "uss balkly," commander mcgrath was the primary author of the 2007 maritime strategy. he is currently the managing director of the ferry bridge group defense consultancy and also serves as the assistant director of hudson institutes center for american sea power. please join me in welcoming captain hendricks and commander mcgrath. >> the rules of engagement of

are as follows. eight-minute opening arguments falled by two four-minute rebuttals. each will then get an additional two-minute quick hit. then we'll wrap up the debate portion with a final two minutes for second nickels and closing remarks. we'll then use the remaining time for question and answer session. my desire is to provide this opportunity exclusively to the midshipmen who can approach the mikes in their aisles to ask succinct questions. gentlemen, the floor is yours. >> thank you. good evening. let's get right to it. the modern u.s. aircraft carrier is large because it is flexible. it is nuclear powered because it is large. and it must be those things, because of what the nation asks this navy to do. a u.s. navy aircraft carrier or cvn must be large because much is asked of it. though known more for its pow are projection royals the carrier is central to the navy's

ability to seize and hold sea control in contested areas. these twin missions in turn drive the design of the carrier's principal weapon system, the air wing. four squadrons of strike fighters and airborne early warning squadron, electronic warfare squadron, and a host of helicopters require a considerable amount of real estate ample fuel and ordnance storage, a launching and recovery system and repair and maintenance facilities able to support multiple types of aircraft for months at a time in maritime environment. this weapons system enables strike ashore and at sea, organic situational awareness and command and control electronic warfare, anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, surveillance, and search and rescue among other things. the cvn must be nuclear powered because of our nation's great distance from overseas regions which demand a ship with the endurance to operate independently for long periods of time with only limited

logistic support. nuclear power allows a large deck carrier to dedicate virtually every drop of 3 million gallons of fuel to its weapons system, the air wing. without the need for large intake and exhaust trunks for combustion, huge ordnance handling and storage facilities are accommodated. lastly, nuclear power allows the cvn to operate at high speed for great distances without refueling, which means it can be strategically repositioned without being restricted to the speed of advance of an escort ship. next, the cvn is effective because it is mobile, flexible and lethal. i've already mentioned the cvn's speed and mobility. its flexibility as a combat system is unmatched in our military arsenal. consider the "uss enterprise." cvn 65. a ship that entered service in 1962 and made her first deployment that year.

her air wing then consisted of prop-diven a-1 sky raiders a-4 sky hawks, f-8 crusaders, f-4 phantoms, a-5 vigilantes and the e1b tracer. on the way home from its first mediterranean deployment the ship was vectored to join the armada gathering off of cuba. in a demonstration of the flexibility of this weapon system, fleet ordered the deep strike vigilantes to be flown off and an additional 20 marine corps a-4s to be flown on for close air support. no additional cost. no yard period. no complex intergrace. but a major change to the weapons system made overnight. 50 years later "enterprise" deployment featuring over 2,000 combat sorties in afghanistan. on that deployment, her air wing consisted of four squadrons of f-18s and ea 6 b squadron hawkeye squadron, and numerous

helicopters. in 50 years, including 27 deployments, i counted 43 different type model series of aircraft that flew off that aircraft carrier's decks. with missions as diverse as air warfare, strike anti-submarine warfare, surface warfare, logistics, surveillance, and search and-4 one ship 57 years, 27 deployments, 43 different types of aircraft. the effectiveness of this ship revolved around its unique ability to adapt its primary weapons system the air wing, to the threats it would face. it does not do this on an ad hoc basis, it does this by design. i cannot put this any more simply. nothing we manufacture to defend our country has a better return on investment. with the ford class aircraft carrier the navy will purchase one ship every five years for 50 years. using constant dollars, the

entire ten-ship class comprises less than .05% of every dollar spent on defense this those 20 years. for this we get the world's most lethal and flexionable war machine. a sovereign air base that can move fast. its weapons system can be modified and upgraded. it is an exceptionally combat credible conventional deterrent. its presence can be as intrusive or subtle as we wish it to be. it is the most effective method of sustained power projection ever known for man. and for this we get for .05% of the defense spending. which brings me to the matter of the cvn's relevance in current and future security environments. i'll get to the current environment a little later in the debate. i'll talk about the future. the future which ordinarily people will talk about as the

anti-air access and area denial period. which bring many defense analysts to a weak-kneed condition and which is the subject of much of the current debate about the relevance of the aircraft carrier. carrier critics would have us believe that only recently has the capability of all target and engage aircraft carriers. this new found ability is at the heart of their criticism. yet such a view ignores eight decades of experience in which risks to the carrier arise only to be mitigated by the inherent flexibility of naval power in general and the aircraft carrier specifically. soviet long-range bombers and nuclear powered submarines are in super sonic maneuverable anti-ship missiles were among the last generation's carrier killing threats. the journals of the day were replete with the same arguments we see today. nevertheless, the navy became quite skilled at confounding

soviet oceanic surveillance and reconnaissance. now as then the attacker must find, fix, classify, engage, and assess the target. which includes making the hardly cost-free decision to actually execute the attack. this difficult process is ripe with opportunities for disruption or exploitation by an imaginative and resourceful defender. >> two minutes. >> the mobility of the carrier further complicates the attacker's problem. recent improvements in technology have not fundamentally changed these conditions. why carrier critics have lost faith in their nation's ability to keep solving such problems is beyond me. campaign design and operating concepts matter greatly. u.s. navy battle force should not be thought of as some kind of a charge of the light brigade deep into a contested zone at the beginning of a war. followed by the establishment of long-duration frontline sanctuaries. rather they should be conceived

of as hit-and-run operations that gradually degrade an adversary's capability to fight effectively in the contested zone's out of the regions before moving into the conflict's middle zone and finally closer to their shores. no platform is more capable of these operations and no set of capabilities would be more crucial to a combatant commander in such a conflict. thank you. >> good evening. thanks to the united states naval academy for hosting this debate. navy museum, captain felker for moderating dat bate, admirals, secretary roach. and to my good friend ryan mcgrath for debating and participating this evening. this is a debate that he and i have wanted to have for about three years now. and i'm so pleased that we have this opportunity now. first of all let me start by saying that i take second place to no one in my respect and

appreciation for the aircraft carrier and its role in the success of the united states navy over the past 70 years. it has been critical. it has been the critical fulcrum upon which the success of the navy has pivoted since pearl harbor. and it was my great privilege to serve on board one super carrier and one amphibious carrier in my active duty career. they were both awesome and overpowering in their immense immenseness and impact. however in both terms of efficiency and efficacy their day is coming to an end. we consider this evening a question as to the efficiency and efficacy of the aircraft carrier to project power in the maritime and littoral realms. this gets to the basic question that my old boss andy marshall taught me. to do what? the answer is to project power. for what purpose do we build these magnificent platforms?

to project power. from this vantage point they are a great testament to our national wealth and industrial capacity. foronuñ surely no nation can build ships such as these. for steaming around, showing the flag, impressing the heck out of the locals or launching aircraft in a permissive environment. but they are not suited for winning a war wherein someone is seriously shooting back at you. for this, they are too old in their design, too expensive in their cost, too vulnerable and we as a people are far too cautious to use them as they were intended. let me address the age of the design first. the aircraft carrier concept has been around since 1912. and the design and launching of the ford class implies that we trust that these platforms shall

remain effective for another 50 years, until at least 2065 or so. so we are to believe that this concept, greatly evolved to be sure, will remain effective for 150 years. when has that happened? the spear lasted for a millennium. the chariot lasted for 600 years. the longbow for 200. the musket for 100 years. with the battleship, the lasting rate was only less than 50 = years. in each case the enemy figured out a new method of warfare that negated the advantages of the status quo allowing the enemy to bypass the strategic advantage of the prepont rant power. it is natural for the preponder preponderant power to invest in the status quo. after all, if it ain't broke why fix it? but history demonstrates time and time again that preponderant

powers that stand still suffer eventual defeat. the up and coming power always finds a way to negate advantage. secondly, let me point out the obvious issue that all of these platforms are becoming increasingly expensive. the nimitz class carrier that dominated my lifetime and service were produced at an average cost of $5 billion a year -- or $5 billion. making them the most expensive ships the u.s. navy had ever produced up until that time. taking up to four years to build. the last of these ships, the "george h.w. bush," cost $7.6 billion to build due to its serving as a transition platform in which many new ideas associated with what was then called cvnx were tested.(b-jp r(t&háhp &hc% this platform now referred to as the ford class has come in, according to a late gao report, at $14.3 billion.

representing about 85% of an annual shipbuilding budget of $16.3 billion. now, i understand that those ships are built over a five-year period. but the annual budget remains the same. in addition, the carrier strike group costs well over $6.5 million a day to operate. not an inconsiderable sum given our current fiscal environment. thirdly, the system is increasingly ineffective. as more and more resources are dedicated to defending the platform from harm. cruisers destroyers submarines that used to have offensive missions have been subsumed into an anti-culture. anti-air. anti-service. anti-submarine. with less and less room in their magazines being left for offensive missions, offensive mission loads like the tomahawk missile. more and more, the offensive mission is focused in the

carrier air wing, which over time has lost the ability to strike effectively at distance especially in high-threat, anti-access, area-denial zones. which threaten to push the carrier back to an operating area of 1500 nautical miles from land. to come inside this distance is a risk targeting. fourthly, the ships are increasingly vulnerable to targeting and attack at a distance. we all have read about how the dispatch of two aircraft carriers through the taiwan straits in 1996 have launched the chinese into a massive investment into anti-access, area-denial technologies. to include the development of the df-21d anti-carrier ballistic missile which can range out over 1,000 miles and is equipped with a maneuvering re-entry vehicle warhead that will greatly complicate targeting and defending the carrier. this new technology comes behind previously existing technologies

like mines, submarines and the smm anti-ship cruise missile, which were nearing perfection. assertions that both the carrier will still be difficult to find are both questionable and irrelevant. our nation and its political leaders have become increasingly sensitized to combat casualties and fatalities. beginning with vietnam and all the way through our recent experience in iraq and afghanistan, these experiences demonstrate that the focus has been keeping casualties and risk low. very early in my career, while i was serving on a nuclear carrier, this fact was driven home to me when a 40-year-old unlocated weapons system resulted in a decision to pull my ship off station. i remain unconvinced regardless of what our leaders might say or believe, that our nation's civilian leadership, regardless of party affiliation, will commit $14.3 billion assets and

over 5,000 american lives into a threat environment where they do not have a high confidence of survivability. in that scenario we'll be depending upon the boomers anyway. in short, we as a nation have simply become too cautious to risk something so large so expensive, and so populated as an aircraft carrier. we have created something that we cannot afford to lose. and this is something that a military should never do. it is time to move beyond the carrier to a new generation of technologies and platforms that leverage our advantages and are more in line with our strategic culture. >> commander mac dprath you have four minutes. >> thank you. i knew i would have to come armed and jerry's obviously made it even more difficult. i'd like to talk a little bit about value versus cost forrf3eñ a

second. i will start by saying aircraft carriers are expensive. i get it. they're probably more expensive than they should be. i get that too. the navy the shipyard the congress, are aware of this problem and they are working it as hard as they possibly can to get costs down. the question ultimately is, what should it cost to have the capability that i described in my opening statement? again, though value. less than .05% of all military spending throughout the course of this program to this platform. dr. hendricks mentioned that the $6.5 million a day expense associated in operating a battle group, i saw that in one of his writings, and i think that's a good -- that's the carrier the air wing the surface craft, the submarine. one carrier battle group.

per day. that expense is 1.4% of the amount of money the department of defense spends every day. if you rolled that up into 12 carrier battle groups, if you had every single one of them under way, doing what they do, 12 of them, which we don't even have right now, you're still under 15% of the total daily budget of the department of defense. value. what should it cost? what does this most effective symbol and machine bring us? let's talk about cost in context. i'll use your number. i've never heard that number before but i'll use that number, $14.8 billion to compare to other things americans buy. for instance, we spend $7.4

billion a year on halloween. $270 million of which we spend on costumes for our pets. we spent $21 billion on video games. $101 billion on significant rit $65 billion on soft drinks. $4 billion on pet grooming. $10 billion on romance novels. and $11 billion on bottled water, which you can get from your tap. the risk. not long ago, certainly within the memory of most of the people in this room, the president of the united states sent 140,000 americans into the desert of iraq where he believed and virtually every intelligence agency of every major ally believed was an opponent who had and would use chemical and

biological weapons. don't tell me we won't risk big things. we will risk big things. if the payoff is big enough. this discussion of -- he's right, we have become a bit of an anti-navy. but that i think is a legitimate and logical outgrowth of the fall of the soviet union. we didn't have anybody to be pro for. so i know in the surface force it became particularly about defense. there's a lot of talk within the navy in general that we need to get more offensive. but for the carrier to get more offensive is an air wing issue. the carrier doesn't care what it launches and recovers. we need more range out of our air wing. like the vigilantes that we had in the 1962 air wing that i discussed earlier. perhaps a little more stealthy, though. at the end of the day, fixing

the air wing and buying back range is an air wing issue. the aircraft carrier will continue to have the dominant role in power projection and sea control, which is something dr. hendricks didn't fixate on. sea control. our carriers at one point when there were threats to sea control, were centers of sea control, anti-surface warfare anti-submarine warfare. when that threat went away they devalued it. the air wing won't be able to devalue it anymore and it will have to develop those skills again. >> very nice. i enjoyed particularly the comments about halloween costumes for pets. but i think that perhaps we diminish the fiscal challenge a bit too much. looking at our defense spending

vis-a-vis our gdp is not quite the right way to look at it unless we look at it in the long-term. we as a nation have $18 trillion in accumulated debt. $92 trillion in unfunded liabilities. this works out to about $800,000 per taxpayer. our national credit rating has been lowered twice due to our inability to address our budgetary shortfalls. and so there is no automatic response that we must simply spend more to be able to buy the fleet or the military that we might all wish and desire for. no less authority than former chairman of the joint chiefs admiral michael mullen has stated that the largest threat the united states national security is our own debt. and so we have to look very seriously at costs and make sure that there is a true return on value for the american citizen. and what is that value? i get it that the carrier is the

most impressive symbol of our nation. and i've heard the discussions about the president asking where are the carriers? i still try to find those quotes in the the presidential papers. but i hear that the president is always asking about the carriers. so what is the value of symbology? what is the value we attach to the carrier? is it, as i've stated in my writings, if we assign a value to the carrier of 1.0 in presence and symbology power then what is the value of other ships in-3z can we state that it's .2? because i can buy six berks for one aircraft carrier. can i make that up and grow my fleet? because surely this is one of the biggest challenges facing us. we're looking at a fleet today that we're trying to get above 300. but our numbers keep going down. we decided to increase the retirements of the ff gs from seven this year to 10.

we gave up three numbers there we need to provide naval presence. so we have to come to grips with what value do we assign to symbology and is it worth it? i get also what you're saying about, we will risk these things if it's important enough. well, i would submit to you that it better be an existential threat to the survival of the united states before i take $14.3 billion and 5,200 american lives and sail it in there. because i think the president and the sit room's going to say, how sure are you about that, admiral? if we can't tell him that we're very sure i think you're going to be surprised by the answer. the air wing argument. the argument that what needs to be fixed on the carrier is the air wing is not new. in fact, it's been around since the mid 1990s when the demise of the a-12 replacement program for the a-6 happened. radically altering the very essence of naval aviation. with the a-6 and a-12 on the deck, the navy had a capability

to go deep. 1,000 nautical miles unrefueled with a heavy bomb load. the cancelation of the a-12 and retirement of the a-6 reduced the air wing to the capabilities of the hornet which was purchased to replace the f-4 and a-7 light attack aircraft reducing the carrier's range from 900 nautical miles to around 400 newt call miles, again refueled. i know we can get into enf arguments and tanking but the fact is we've lost a lot of organic tanking as well. the navy has had numerous opportunities to explore long range strike, to remain relevant today in the anti-access area the navy would have to field a flat worm that could take off, tank, fly up to 1,700 naught ral miles, evade, hit the target come back out, tank, and then recover. that's about a 10 to 12-hour flight profile. and taking place within an enclosed cockpit ejection seat cockpit, which is outside of the ten-hour human endurance

parameters that we normally deal with. we've flown up to 14 hours, we found out it's not a real safe environment. such a mission would be pest completed by an unmanned combat aerial vehicle capable of carrying a significant bomb load, tanking autonomously penetrating a dense surface to air threat envelope. but we have -- naval aviation has consistently avoided this solution, and in fact with the conversation between u-class and u-cav we wanted to go isr as opposed to a deep penetrating strike asset. hopefully that conversation is still open. it seems the priority now to go after faxx which appears to be a manned aircraft which we're still limiting the strike potential of the carrier going into the future. so absent a significant modification of air wing again, i come back to my argument that the carrier's relevance is shrinking. and that we need to invest in the types of platforms that can have volume strike from perhaps a submerged environment where we

still own the advantage. >> commander mcgrath, you have two minutes. >> great, thank you. i think my opponent just agreed with me on the air wing being the problem. we need to buy back range. and i know the navy is working on that. and both manned aircraft and unmanned aircraft are under review. this whole problem of stealth plus payload plus range is a difficult one. but again, i'm the guy that says we solve difficult problems and i think we can still companyñú

audience in norfolk from the middle of june until 7 august, 54 days, the george h.w. bush was the only available strike platform we had that could do anything relevant in iraq and syria. 54 days. that's not a symbol.< 2. that's effectiveness. that's a fact. i think that the unmannedú6hñ aviation, especially unmanned

strike, will give the aircraft carrierz/úg÷ decades more relevance than the five, 9wp it has now. i can't even imagine the power of an aircraft carrier built from the keel up to launch unmanned strike vehicles. it will be like that big spaceship in "independence day." just disgorging strike ,c vehicles that come back, land, getú on an assembly line, grease, fuel bomb, mission, shoot them back it the other end.uwm i can't even imagine the power that can be generated from an aircraft carrier with unmanned aviation. thank you. >> there's a lot that he coveredcq there in just a very few minutes, my i want tom1/ talk first about our ability to confound targeting. we talk about andagb into certain things but the idea of being able to hide thesem)ñ

things in the vast reaches of the ocean. the fact of the matter is as technology continues to evolve, one of the stories i was#&6 9 on today desperately trying to get ready for my able foe, a story about a navy astronaut in the space station who looked down from 150 miles up and spotted a carrier sailingsú"=z across the pacific. small. but he saw it. and he checked to find out which one it was.qzyjñ and it was one of his carriers that he had sailed on. who do we think has satellites parked in geosynchronous in orbit over the pacific? how confidentl2f>ç are we that we catm remain hidden? i know that we test going back into mission controls to hide our electronic signature. but the fact of the matter is, it's still four and a half acres of sovereign territory, as we like to say. we talk about moving fast. and carriers can go fast. i've been on them, and boy it

feels great when you're2f÷y really thudding = long. but missiles go faster.]úvnb we live in a missile age. and if you're targeted, they know where you're at and it's going to be very difficult to defend yourself. we can empty our magazines on all of the y surface blass tick missile, defense missiles that accompany a carrier in under three and a half minutes in a dense attack formation. talk about this,s(& being out there. the last major combatant operation that the navy participated in i believe was libya. and there was no carriers 5 "hthere. there was a light amphibious character, then there was an ohio-class ssgn that disgorged about 122= now, i'm not saying that the carrier wouldn't have been useful in that. but what i amy ÷ saying is there's new range ofby technology that acts in a submerged and stealthy way that can deliver precision strike with volume.6

i don't think that we exist in a time when again the carrier has the opportunity to dash in launch an attack, and run away. i think it's time that we comebíyt present but with the future. because trend analysis definitely suggests that we're heading intok)k!led waters. >> gentlemen you havew4lrtq@ two minutes for secondm3rd nickels ando closing remarks. commander mcgrath. >> i would be remiss if i didn't thank claude bareby and everyone else associated with this event in this magnificent room tonight to include captain felker and of course my friend jerry. as i stand here i am struck by how only one of two things can be true. either for decades naval architects, engineers, cost analysts and operational analysts have rigorously analyzed the requirements derived from,2b national tasking and the capabilities

by an evolving threat and reached the same consistent conclusions in study after study, studies that jerry may not agree with, but%óg$ that bigger is better and nuclear is better than conventional. or that there has been a decades-long conspiracy of4:6y da vinci code-grade at the highest levels of the nefarious military industrial complex to silence the truth of the goodness of the small carrier. iñ>j(ñ tend to believe the former. i5úv tend to believe that the super carrier remains what we should # be building our navy around. and the greatest threat to those who would do us ill. i leave you with this. world leadership is a choice. sea power is a choice. and decline is a choice. the day may come when we asc v a

nation collectively decide to pull back from the world and from our widely dispersed interests. when we look upon the one capability that sets this nation'súhñ navy apart as a+e xuu% rather than a necessity. when we lose faith in our collective abilityjctq to overcome the next generation of technological threats to our maritime dominance. but i hope that this is not that day. thank you. >> thank you brian. thank you, claude. thank you, c.c. i'd like to end by talking about how we should assess our strategic position. assessment is@odlváñ about cost comparisons or trying to find methods of

the carrier with only about 30 of them going over the beach with ordnance you have seven ships and 6,000 sailors behind them. th#p #"2ráñ million a day in operating costs.o[[g when you factor in the life cycle costs associated with building that hornet and servicing it across its life to include fuel and training the pilots who will fly it, it comes ouóyzw to about $13.5 million per piece of ordnance that comes off from it. that's baladupon analysis of ordnance expended over the last 14 years. that's real money. especially when compared to a tomahawk cruise missile which costs about $1.4 million apiece. then there are opportunity costs. when president and general of the army dwight eisenhower] described the cost of a new bomber in the 1950s he poi6jp8ñ out that the nation could build 200 schools with that money.nyñ now, i won't get into that type of exchange. but i will say that forlúbe the price of one ford class aircraft carrier,dpç we could build two ohio class 2e

strategic deterrence of our nation, or=ef six garally berk class destroyers to provide ballistic missile defense, 24 littoral combat ships to providem÷ global presence and freedom of navigation and free trade patrols. we make a real choice to shrink the size of our navy every time we choose to spend d!ke billion on one carrier. especially with the full knowledge that our annual shipbuilding budget is only $16.3 billion. there is also a strategic cost in remaining wedded to the past. we say that the carrier can evolve. but its evolution is shore% @r(t&háhp &hc% slower than thate/%dof our enemies. when we decide not to invest in/o the armed unmanned autonomousw siuáems that would revitalize and modernize our carrier air future security environment, we give both our range and'%fíç our bearing to our competitors. based upon these arguments and more i regretfully say, as

admirer of the carrier and all that it has done for our navy and nation, that1d is no longer either effective nor efficient in its primary task of fighting in a high-threat environment. we should cease construction ride the inventory down over time, and begin investing in a submerged arsenal that can operate inyf8 an anti-access, area-denial environment, and take back the strategic initiative.e.&ra8o >> we have about 30 minutes for questions. the mikes are open for the /cj%shipmen. please, we'll start with you. if there's any time left then i'll open it up to the audience. mr. meyers. >> first class eric meyers. gentlemen, you both seem to be at loggerheads as to whether the

carriers are defensible. can you elaborate why orb2f why not you think the carriers are capable of defending themselves against area of denial missiles? >> want me to start? >> yeah. >> i think the carrier is capable if it fights as a combat system with the rest of the battle group and with the rest of the joint architecture that we fight as today. again, we're not sending the aircraft carriers in there all by itself to take the hit. the aircraft carrier has an air wing that has the ability to 1"pcf1 o survey the area around it, to kill ships and submarines that could threaten it. it has escorts that have the ability to do similar things and that in a systemic mannere the same ends. you have an isr complex in space and in the -- in a terrestrial isr thatn situational awareness necessary for the aircraft carrier to know

those threats are coming and to act against them. 6rp:4>s the concept i will grant you thatv3nrthe technology is advancing to the point where you can -- a determined $kr adversary from land might be able to findvz)ñh an aircraft carrier at range.gúa the problem is, there's lots of other ships using the same air waes. osp determining that is difficult if we go back to the sameéskim admissions control which is something we only recently have started to do again. but there was -- there is an element of risk. i can't stand here and say to you ts# impervious. of course not. what i can say to you that i am confident in the systems are there to protect it, the

systems thatb & has those to kill those who would hazard it and to provide it with even better counters.lk+ >> so i would reply that this is -- this is a math equation. ÷6áj! át fact of the matter is that the enemy can buildu-cé a weapons piece.0kñs! a carrier deploys with 96 cells on the destroyers. a low[3,d down with 36 missiles and pretty soon we find out ifkl;ñ even a light c upon initial dedex e text, that we will go win which he sayser on our defensive capableties in the first 3 1/2 minutes of the exchange.

question. whether or not we have our airway in range to have an question. and then the other question is are you going to get the61> leadership's endorsement to try this mission to be able to go in there. mm c 4x6v&@vv,p zv >> it's not difficult to spot if it's being undisciplined in the way that it operates. and, for that matter, even the manner in which it steams and how it steams in formation also is a give away. most commercial ships steam at about 14 1/2 knots. the carrier doesn't. @drkvu÷

mostjm p> and i have some serious doubts about whether or not to push that in that environment.u >> can i have a comment about >> i'm a history may juror. put this figure 13 $1/2 million that jerry talksknñ about which are dropped over the last 14 years.#r4r(t&háhp &hc% he wraps the live cycle into each bomb.y and then he=. hawk at $1.4 plilmillion but doesn't siet the life cycle itrh6zá$ @r(t&háhp &hc% figure.0di3o cf1 o the": 5+d/>[ 6ílñe$(ms+p sometimes bites is that this discussion of how many -- how many missiles that

determined opponentx2py÷]0 ñ could build for the cost one of our carriers. it's ankny statistic, but those missiles are kind of useless without satellite constellations. without isr ground isr stations, without an extensive ?bá] networking system connecting these nodes. without operation centers. so there's a certain amount of cost that goes into the del÷b8 ng of that weapon that gets forgotten about when we do that math.áby >> the question, dr. herks, ndrix. you spoke previously about the ohio class, about the submerged arsenal. but if the carriers were to be mixed, what do you u] preplace them and how would their mission be fulfilled in their absence. >> so we're getting ready toc%q try to field the ohio class replacement. it's coming in with an estimated of about 6.6$6.6 billion a copy

with somest estimates around sç the original are actually the first four of the original ohio class that do the treaty limitations.3fqv&#bámf™h >> what i would suggest that if they made the decision to ceasee construction of the ford class after the four that we would convert our build in. >>

>> the point if the united states wished to replicate its 1996 actions of sailing in between taiwan and china, what's your confidence that the united states would have the)$ same effectiveness in doing so within the next decade? >> i hate -- there's two parts. do we have the capability of doing it? heck, yeah. we could do that. the question, though, would it be a smart geopolitical mooif to make? one of the reasons in my view that the pla,navy, has built itself into the force that it is was that 1996 taiwan strait issue. i think it was a wake up call to the wf1ñpla andh that we could operate with impunity in their front yard. could we do it? yes. would it be wise? probably not.h5 >> there's also another point

it's more likely that we would do it now than in ten years. two reasons.+(kw one, we're going to be in a different placo@4ñgeostrategically at that point in time. they'll also be in adifferent place at that point in time. so much analysts believe that probably the point ofa4huá i won't use the word max numb danger, but china's coming up is right before they get old. they have some challenges that are coming. andgtç7+b@y sort of that critical juncture point with them is around the 2025 time frame. so if they haven't established themselves as a great power in control of t(+2"z sphere of influence at that time, they're not going to. and it also calls into question the stability of the communist barty as the ruling party in china. and so we get closer to that point, there's going to be a greaty 3ñ elseer sensitivity to operating with impunity in their backyard. y#o there's a scale an exponential

scale. dq÷ right now, we're in a stronger position.hqíu by that point in time, they'll be desperate to demonstrate that thinker the strongest nation in that region and that particular geographic spot. so that would have higher consequences as we get closer to that time frame. >> thank you, gentlemen. >> yeah, they don't have to -- the chinese don't have to build a navy that's bigger and better than ours. it's just got to be bigger and/j better than what we can put in their front yard. >> second class for the alternative that you propose with the submarines how does that work with the other missions that the carriers and the carriers strike manages such as the humanitarian effort. certainly, our navy is not only an offensive force. would you, from my understanding of your proposition, that's the primary thing of the subs. so how do you propose that would work rk sir? >> its's funny you use the disaster response also pekts of this. the carrier is actually not the

ideal plat forms to do hddr migszs.ñ6a generally, thei-f platform that's most-desired is the amphibs to have a deck that they can off load and float them into harbors as well as they have a large helicopter fleet that's got heavy lift capability that can mooif things./0y one of the things we saw in haiti, we did respond to an aircraft carrier in haiti.pccuñv

o efficient use of assets than a supercarrier to provide humanitarian assistance. >> thank you, sir. >> can i talk about economy? >> sur!y.b >> one of our commonf510 heroes is --9n yes.> and general/presidentize hour. awe f34áuhr think weg]ñ have a sliegtsly different view. and i'll speak for jerry for just a second because i'm allowed to right now. i think jerry really respectedsi4kw president eisenhower because of this view that he economized.u?hçk as he looked at the -- what we were spending inp &% military and he achiefed economies, more bang for the buck and i think he'd like to see us do that. and we'd all like to see thamhx what i saw from eisenhower was prioritization.q@ñ the u.s. air force got 49% of the defense budget in 1958, 47%.

he prioritized. all right.c i'd like to see some of that prioritization go on today. and that's an argument i'd love to have. jerry talksh going to talk about it. eisenhower's contribution was they can move the media in the direction that the country needed for its security requirements.#z ñ i'd like to see that happen now8,[iìáhp &hc% as the debate happens in a heads up atmosphere of integrity. >> i'd like to open

for questions from the audience.vuckyñx÷"kdi >> jerry bryant. great conversation there. jerry, you made somàgy good arguments about cost. i can get this many ohio replacements for this many 1-4 class, this many dmgs. it's great from a cost perspective. but what do you really think of, okay how many ohio replacement ssgns are really going to need to fly the same capableties, right.zh&épáw 0 have you really looked at capableties? >> take two points here.

one is about the delivery of ordinance.v?qxítfn[ p the number actually dropped. it was based on repurchase rates on how much we were spending to rebuy back ordinance into the inventory. when wesbár talked about buying back, and that took into account everything, from missiles to bombs et cetera. b

so far is what you buy back is a skrilt kal question. the cno went up and testified beíp we 9)i÷ going to=1z fulfill all the demands, wejwñ needed a navy that was 450 ships.oivan(;,xlsiñu we haven't seen 400 since '92. so if we have t?t,,4 get going and we have to live withyc)lñ our coste%cñ constraints, then we haveuo2á to find trade-offs that allow us to get plat forms. why do wexqt need 4507

lcs,yeah, i know everyone likes to kick around lcs, but it's a red, white and blue flag and it's got a gun on it: and in some missions, that's what i need. so how do i fly the assets to do that? i think, quiet frankly, in my own -x-analysis i come up with a$q force of about 350 ships we need..e5 if we did trade-offs quiet frankly, we build two a year./éy]w if we built one2 took(yzvt remainder of the ma]dy2.2 billion for berth, we could buy additional ships at the lower end. and tlen what we also have to find is a way of getting us to those higher numbers in the fleet to uphold american interests.@ñ1qç

there's not a whether or not he will lot to bomb in afghanistan. i read the papers. great power dynamics, great power conflicts. it's back iç$#q ews.> i agree.dyfx we've entered a time of year where one bomb, one target, that's great. 3=j stillw;va matters. i'm concerned about our industrial basis to produce that mass. we're going to have to use precision weapons, but there are a lot of targets. we need a lot more weapons. we -- on the ships we're going to have to have places to store them. this is one of the greatvkg/=h trade-offs between an t9fv÷amphib

-- a big deck aircraft carrier. an aircraft carrier has 23 times the amount of magazine space. it's something we were atempting to do when we launch air kraft. you go up and have to be on the station and come back. so we made a decision in the midst of this that we were going to invest in a capability that was going to increase our sorting capacity within the fleet by 33%. going from about 120 to 160 a day.

we paid almost twice as much for the aircraft carrier to get the 33% increase in capability. = hat did we see when we had the launch of range? southerlity rates of around 40 missionings per day.;f if we look at what we would need in anti-access by the time that trat, come back, the air wing is not going to fly that many missions. so why did we pay the premium for that 2úñ ity e think that there's some math you have to look at going forward. >> eric sanders congressman randy forbes. i assume we're talkin;!=d in peacetime to ensure as lye walks at. i'm curiousíhb/y putting aside the[

september of ssgn. what rule does that have in a crisis. when it's inherently supposed to not bei.7f seen by allies or not to c&z assure or be seen by ozyttr(t&háhp &hc% competitors. it's stealthy. it's underwater. we don't know it's there. what role could it play as a replacement to a strike asse> that was for me? so, again, it comes back to this value that we assign to presence. we didn't spend the amount of money that we spent to buy peacetime asset. we bought a wartime asset. we take that and we set that aside. but in taegs e peacetime, iúd &háhp &hc% these things. and, in fact, i use them a lot.7k&7çmh62d2a

you know, i was watching my daughters are watching nav gee owe or this all of the time. no one watches the higs ri channel at my house. so they -- tlfgs a thing on about the grizzly bear. and the moderator made the point that the most dangerous avoided animal in the woods is the baby grizzly bear. everybody other animal in the woods will avoid the baby grizzly bear because they don't know where the mother is.

we have lots of other combat tantds in the navy. the ssgn and the threat that it brings can be the mother bear. right now, the mother bear is served by the carrier. but we can transition that/mz deterrent flet, conventional or nuclear, two other platforms and make sure that everyone understands that if you harass or molest that platform you have 20 deal with somebody else behind it.ti)) there are other capableties that can be braugts to bear. >> whatever the wait, no other platform has as much weight across the spectrum of presence or deterrence. some have great war value. ssn,specifically. great war value.,mñ& the aircraft carrier, a lot.

>> in your remarks you mention ds -- or believe that the problem is the carrier. but i actually have that back wards. if the air wing isk8 the weapons system of the carrier then we were are about to see what we can hypothesize in nature of the air wing and a potential to create new -- a new kind of area. my question is, given a new kind of airway, whabt from q all the way up from the power plant to the placement of the bridge to everything that makes the supercarrier a supercarrier. can you justify this?

and might we not radically rethink the aircraft carrier. >> that's a great question. as to the deep technical aspects, again, history major. but i can tell you that the demonstrated ability of that platform to evolve, to accept the evolution of the airway, the design that went into ford specifically to give it0%r the ability to bring on new generations of aircraft, unmanned aircraft, heavier aircraft. it's electromagnetic launching system is all about generating variable loads to be able to shoot a lot of difp'kár-e aircraft, but especially heavier aircraft.

the demonstrated history of the platform, i can give you the evidence that we have before us. the evidence that we have before us is that the platform has accepted aircraft designed to fly off of it. if you want to design an aircraft that needs a 5,o e 0 0 foot runway to take off and is too brit m for a cat tn9 aircraft carrier is not the right platform. as for the$zp class platform to accept new generation of unmanned carrier-launched airborne strike and surveillance vehicles i recall respectedive of how they come out, i think the easy answer is if you design -- if you come into the comp e competition with an option that can't bevz[lí shot off the floor, you won't win.

you're dead on arrival. >> we've got time for two more su singt questions and two more succinct ablss. >> i'm honored to count both debaters of my friends and colleagues of mine. and i congratulate both of them. i guess my questions go to jerry. it strikes me thatu7s+x you discount what can be done by exception. and i don't want to go there. what i do want to probe at just a bit is the cost issue that you raise. and it seems that rather than the carrier you would default to a submerged strike capability.

it's probably why the u.s. navy has decided not to go forward with the replacements for the ohio ssgn. because of coast, probably. so why would you want to do that in a submerged plat form rather than a surface platform. and i'm not talking now about necessarily a supercarrier. but there are other -- there are other surface assets in which one could place strike assets. can driblt those across a wide range.

and probably get vulnerability. if you're not going to put strike assets, if you're not going to emphasize a carrier for your strike platform why would e would you want to submerge it? >> i'll try to give you a su sint answer. i use the ssgn because it's the most prominent kparm of strike platforms that we currently see. there's actually a range of capenties. there are unmanned capableties that we look at that operate in the near sur sas e false region that could be purchased at a lower cost. and then there are the submerge capableties. the reason why i look in that environment is because we have a clear, strategic, technological advantage in that, both in capability to build as well as capability to be quiet and stealth. and 245's what we need to make our investments survivable.

>> i'm a held kopter pie lot, so i actually have very little skin in this fight.i:zb but i think a very good point has been made. you've placed a lot of em fa sisz on the ssgn and surface assets using data missiles whether they're tomahawks or whatever we have in the future.:< >> could you suggest some limb tagszs? >> hitting a moving target. any air kraft to assess to be directed by someone on the ground. the basis of tactical support. >> so we began to do target recognition capableties back in the 1980s that looked at both mobile and unmobile platforms.

there's also off-board capableties. i know there's concerns about whether the communications link can be rwpinteryou wanted and they're also looking at line ofsighted capableties and back and forth. so the fact of the matter is that the united states has demonstrated in an era of innovation that it can come off with the technological solution to solve these types of problems. and they're already hard at work in that indis ri. >> i want to once again thank captain henderson and to our audience, for participating in what i hope to be the first of many future debates. i'd like to end with a final thought. i think it would be prudent for me as a historian to predict the future in the past. what we do is use the past to explain the present. but history can be a meaningful way to understand where we are

today. any one in the audience who's convinced that the aircraft carrier is either here to stay or is trending towards obama sles e sles sense may be right. like you say, we're stories, not fortune tellers. but history complicates the issue. 200 years ago, the center piece of the united states navy was a u.s. s. constitution. built to fight a war at sea. one hundred years later, the $ brooklyn navy yard in the u.s.s. new mexico.t3$rz yet, within three decades, essex and independent fast carriers have become the nucleus of the central pacific campaign.

their new collar powered descendents provide the president a wide array of operational capableties. the navy has understood the cost. consequently, proven pretty agile to a changing threat spectrum. and that's the key. it's not the lifeless plat form that determines its utility. but the navy's ability to adapt it to changing circumstances. or to move in a new direction. the point is the more we think about what we do and what tools we need there's no time like the present to start thinking. thank you and have a good evening. [ applause ]ç2'f

>> we have drugs right now that when given to hiv-infected people, i can show you the die kotmy, in the early '80s, if someone came into my clinic with aids the median survival would be 6-8 months. that means half of them would be dead in eight months. now, if tomorrow, when i go back to rounds on friday. and someone comes into the clinic who's on the combination of three drugs the cocktail of highly active retroviral antitherapy. i can actively predict and say we can do mathematical modelling to say if you take your medicine regularly, you could live an additional 50, 5-0 years.

so to go from knowing 50% of the people are going to die to knowing that if you take your medicines, you could live essentially, a normal life span. just a little bit a few years less, that's a huge advance. >> the national stut of allergy and infectious diseases, sunday night at 8:00 eastern and pacific. on cspan's q&a. >> u.n. secretary general recently laid out the u.n.'s priorities in the new year. he also took questions from reporters and a news conference that followed his remarks. this is 40 minutes. >> acting president of the assembly, it's a great pleasure to see you today.

i will give you my best wishes for happy new year. i wish you your family your country,g%ow continued peace and prosperity this year and beyond. i want to talk to you about the year of opportunity on hand. with vision and solidarity we can make this year a turning point with ensuring dig thatty for all. 2015 can and must be the time for the nation. let me start with a brief look back at the difficult year that just passed. the year 20 14e pushed our response capacityies to the limb it. more than 100ó

needed assistance.wruí >> tested the wars in the face of disease. joining a visit to west africa last month, i saw the heroic work being done by ebola responders.

i thanked all 2 governments, ngos and others that have provided support to people in need. let us recognize two important advances. first, the member state produced the foundations of an inspired development agenda including a proposal of sustainable development goals. a road to dignity by 2030. and i'm offering my support for this world and some for the road ahead.

>> and the recent pronouncement by the european union aimed at reducing the risks of climate change. as you look ahead 2015 it's a chance for major advances across a three inter-connected development, peace and human rights. let me take down each in turn. the first sustainable development. first would be deduction of due framework for development. the a agenda we are working towards

is universal. reaching the marginalized and investing in children and people. it is to be supported by a global partnership, descendents technology and caps allfe)xr sources of financing, public private, domestic and international.i tooé&xq( reinforce this agenda, six essential elements which can help r?")rure that the vision expressed by member states is communicated to the global public and is achieved at the country level.

remains in parliament including section and reproductive health and with productive rights are central to all hopes. it remains unimperative. this year the 20th anniversary of the beijing platform for action. and we must continue to push for full implementation. we can also make important progress for the produce of situated councils landmark resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. i welcome the decision to kmem rate the 20th anniversary of the world program of action for