of the heads of the arctic coast guards, all seven other countries and we had the lead. i was the chair of this, we had russia there, and this is no easy feat, but it is the one area where we have an open dialogue with their russian counterparts in terms of how to re-frame the strategic environment of the arctic. they too are concerned with the amount of human activity, shipping going through there, what if you have an oil spill and russia admits that even with the fleets of icebreakers the fleet of icebreakers that they have, they do not have the capacity to deal with the challenges in the arctic. the first thing that we need to do is set up a communication protocol. an information exchange where we can communicate with each other 24/7 and share the main awareness of what is happening in the high north latitudes. so we will meet one last time to finalize the operating guidelines for the arctic as well. you might say well will be

other crew shipping activities, i know what the price per passages if i want to book affair of the crystal serenity, for what? and if i'm in the crew shipping industry this is a business, so you might want to get in on this business and i fully anticipate that we will see more and more crew shipping into this a very pristine environment coming up in the future as well. so we are not done there. we also looked at what is happening in the cyber domain and i know all of you follow cyber. i look primarily through the maritime transportation lens, i was out at long beach earlier this year and it looks like something out of star wars, even though that is where george lucas got that design for those robots, but there are these autonomous vehicles moving containers across the yard and there on man's. in fact, they are not even, they're using natural gas so there's no carbon, very little carbon footprint. but they put they put transponders down

beneath the tarmac of this entire tainer terminal and they're using a gps signal but they realize that if there's a disruption in the gps signal they have resiliency. in fact, this robot this robot wanted sensors that is battery pack is down, they also run battery it will go to the charging station, the robot pulls it out puts another one in, they go back to work. i don't think it cost all that much per hour to move these things around. but it's a huge investment. but we have seen ships that had been disrupted by cyber. we've seen mobile offshore drilling units move off their drilling circle which means that blowout preventer had to kick in shut in that well because that main control council lost the ability to communicate with the thrusters and so now you have what could've been another deepwater horizon but in this case that blowout preventer worked and it hasn't happened in more than one occasion. it's a big big cost to the industry, literally millions. the cost roughly 1,000,000

dollars a day to rent, or lease of mobile offshore drilling unit but when you look at lost productivity type reestablishing control, obviously the cost goes up as well. so industry is keenly attuned to operating in the cyber domain. even something as fundamental as you have to replace the part, how do you know there is not malware in that part as well. so we have reached out to the international maritime organization, we've held a number of town halls and normally industry does not want to be regulated, yet they realize that if were going to change behavior it may require a regulatory regime, best practices of how does industry stay ahead of the cyber threats of today. our financial sector, about 95% plus is behind a bona fide firewall in protecting very sensitive information. maritime transportation system on the other hand is about 25%.

about 90% of our global trade moves by sea. so it is a very vulnerable segments of our economic prosperity, but more importantly our economic security and with that our national security. another area i'm looking at is within the energy sector. when we wrote this energy policy, oil at that time was going for $100 per barrel. every day a new tank barge was entering the mississippi river, this was, in fact we saw 50 fold increase in barge traffic carrying bock in crude, you saw what happened a week ago when a train derailed a very strong light ends, very volatile substance but there is also a heavy into this as well. it's about the about the same specific gravity is water as the wider and lead out and then it sinks in the water. now some lady mindful of earlier this year we had record flooding in the interior of the united states which means you have high river conditions and so there's a big difference pushing a barge

downriver versus upriver. when you're going down river it's like going down skyline parkway with a double semi with no breaks. it is very difficult to stop these things. we saw a number of bridge collisions. mud most of these were green barges because they were not moving crude at the time. but when that sinks and it gets into the water intakes we need to make sure that we are ready to respond to those scenarios as well. at the end of the day we need to keep that inland highway bars open and robust. at the the same time we inspect all these barges, we are just starting to push lng into the global market right now.

there's a lot of competition out there, i think we'll see a supply glut of lng in the near term but the united states sits on the highest volume of natural gas as any other country in the world. huge, huge economic potential there. and why that's important to me is that we regulate. so that we regulate. so he gets back to our regulatory roles in our inspection regime. if i'm not training that next generation to be in front of industry rather than liking it, then we will become an impediment and not a facilitator of this commerce as well. we are paying very close attention to that. the next piece. the next piece of that, we are investing in the coast guard like never before. we are building, we just build the second phase of our response cutters, hundred 54 feet in length, just doing yeomen duty in human duty in the straits of florida today. several occasions we've probably evaded a mass migration from cuba because we had enough shifts out there to stop them and interdicting most of those folks trying to find a better life here for the united states. as a master we be sending the

ships to the mediterranean or gnc, there's an opportunity cost if you do that. if you do that we have a migration problem and a challenge in in the united states as well. so we go to the aid of the e.u. and then we leave our maritime borders exposed and those are the decisions that we have to make so we look at that as well. we also are visualizing 14c27j fixed wing aircraft. these it we acquired at no cost from the u.s. air force, there are mission rising any of those to help in our isr capability. this year we were awarded materials for our ninth on national security cutter, program of record was a. but there was funding to go ahead and build a ninth one of these as well. is there work for nine national security cutters, absolutely. in fact, this absolutely. in fact, this last year two of our national security cutters, stratton came back a little less

than one year ago with 32 metric tons of cocaine on it. that is enough to literally kill this room to the city going with her cocaine. the other one did not do quite as well, they fill this room about three quarters the way to the ceiling, but they interdicted three self-propelled semisubmersible's which the only way you finally sister intelligence. that's where this government comes into play and it's the ability of these platforms to leverage intelligence of that we can position those for the greatest threats may exist as well. we are building those out as well, at the end of this fiscal year we will award final design for what will be the largest acquisition and coast guard history in that is our offshore patrol cutter. you can see the three bidders that we have out there, we have a shipyard, eastern shipbuilding and then we

also have klein works fine for that and will make that decision by the end of the fiscal year. 25 ships in that program of record, which as, which as i said will be the largest acquisition and in coast guard history. a great dynamic ship c keeping capabilities as we look at where we might be operating over the next 40 plus years with an emphasis on affordability. affordability becomes the operative word for this program of record. and finally on the upper left what you see is there is a posturing statement within this administration and within the senate appropriations bill going forward that would look at investing in heavy icebreakers. this has been a dialogue dialogue with had last 15 years, we've already put outs over formants ago what you need a heavy icebreaker to do.

so we consulted with navy, the national science foundation, the department of interior, the department of interior, the department of commerce, there were a lot of stakeholders, if you're going to build a heavy icebreaker doesn't meet the needs of the whole of government. so we have already begun that to diligence including the operational requirements i commit that has been submitted to omd as well. we've already hired acquisition staff personnel so we can get a jumpstart jumpstart if we have an appropriation to move forward on that we held an open house with industry. we held 12 years ago when there is $3 million in our heavy icebreaker budget a guess what, i have three, three people who expressed an interest in heavy icebreakers. they said if you are serious you would be showing real money. now it has to that there is a mark of $150 million at that point in time for 17 we had nearly 300 interested parties including international in terms of heavy icebreakers. so tremendous interest in that

recapitalization effort as well. it's great that we are recapitalizing the coast guard and modernizing it as never before. as many services will probably testify to budget hearing. you can usually do on the three things, you can modernize, you can build and restore readiness, or you can build for structure. but rarely do you get to do all three at the same time. we are modernizing. our readiness, we do not have a forcing garrison so the fact that the coast guard operates 24/7 i do not have to worry about forcing garrison get them ready to deploy because they are already deployed. so i readiness levels have been sustained at a pretty high level. we are gradually growing back some first structure as well. that takes me to the final strategy in the most part when i put out as the human capital

strategy. how do talent in the 21st century? before i did this i spent time on silicone valley, how does google, how to's test look, tesla, how does microsoft, how do they manage their talent? of course they said we love to hire veterans, and i said no you don't need to hire my workforce way for me, thank you but no thanks. but right now about 25% of americans, male, female between the ages of 17 - 24 meet the bare minimal requirements to serve in the united states military. we are service going for that top 10% not the bottom ten percent. i'm sure bottom 10%. i'm sure all of my service chief counterparts with say the exact same thing. that's who silicon silicon valley is going after as well. at a point time when were seen in the energy sector, the cyber domain, even in the airline industry, there is a hiring boom

taking place around us right now, so we are doing a great job recruiting people, were doing a great job recruiting diversity. the class of 2020 will arrive at our coast guard academy in two weeks. that class will be 40% women and one third on the under representative, they will mere the class of 19 and 18 and affect our coast guard academy today is the most diverse it is ever been across every spectrum of our demographic than it has ever been in our coast guard history. i'm very proud of that. build it, they will come, we need that critical mass and they were there. then i look out ten look out ten years and when i look out ten years we lose roughly 50% of our female officers out of a given year and why is that? were losing losing about 50% of our under representative minority representatives in a group and why's that? can he be married, have, have a family, have those challenging positions and do it all and still survive nation? we where nearly 50% of the women in our service are married to other

servicemembers, not just coast guard, so how do you manage that dual career track. so were very interested in what is happening across the river and at the pentagon and looking at future force of the 21st-century. so we are very engaged and that as well. but we are very specialized coast guard, we are no longer coast guard, we are no longer the jack of all trades, master of some, if you saw the movie the finest starter hours with bernie weber still going out even those compass has been washed up but we probably would have something besides that boat today but that is a skill set operating in those breaking bars and we have people who do it better than anybody else. so we need to start specializing within some of our specialties across the coast guard. cyber is a specialty. inspection regime is a specialty. diving, hazmat response, that's a specialty. so acquisition, legal profession, you need all of these to make this coast guard

machine tick and too many times that members of or more junior members of feel like they are in the less favored community within the coast guard. it does not matter if you drive a ship, fix the ship, or provide intelligence to a ship, or provide isr for shipper prosecute a case that was made by ship, you need by ship, you need all of that and you need it altogether. so it is a table with many legs and so we need to specialize across our domain, cross the many specialties that we quite honestly have been somewhat of a jack of all trades but certainly not a master of the critical few that we we need to master into the 21st century. again, cannot be more pleased with the talent but i see coming into the coast guard. eyes at a recruiting office at a recruiting office in boston and i gave to ocs folks and officers dreading the coast guard and i was at the graduation a week and half ago when instead of putting

stars on the shoulder boards i put it coast guard shield and i thanked the cnl and i said thank you for your service, welcome to the team. now this now this really threw me for a shock. i was at the space convention three weeks ago and we had a static display there and one of our e3's and one was dressed in the work uniform demonstrating one of our small boat, she was assigned to a station in washington here on the potomac river and i asked what did you do before you came in the coast guard, and what did you do, she said well i attended the air force academy, went to julie? well i left after i graduated five years and then i picked up my masters degree and i resigned my commission as a captain of the air force i could be an e3 in the united states coast guard because i want to be a rescue swimmer. so when we talk about talent in your service, don't judge anybody by how much stuff they have, how, how many ribbons, how many stripes, whatever, just

engage in a conversation and you will be amazed at the talent that is in our midst. so what am i doing to train, retain, that talent and that is really the essence of where we need to be focused on going forward. that is the scene center. i know we have open time for open mic your question and answer and there are some folks that are going to stump me out there. i can tell. i like it to open it up to any questions or comments that you might have. i like to thank csi s for allowing me to be here this morning. thank you so much. [applause]. thank you. for small we'll chat a little little bit and then open it up. i'm really pleased that you ended there on the human p's because i was really struck going through the charts before

handing a conversation about just the incredible amount about continuity and change that the coast guard is experiencing and then to end up on the people piece of it, the kind of workforce you need to deal with that, i wonder if you can speak for my mission perspective. you type everything from the arctic and will talk about several of these, trafficking, trafficking, fishery, general regulation law enforcement, security, and about the need to be operating with international partners, industry partners, interservice partners, that to me speaks to a wealth of agility that you require out of your workforce. can you talk about how you grow those leadership skills and whether it's the same as it has always been or is it something that is shifting and how you approach that? >> one, we have tremendous talent out there. they're much better informed and gone are the days where you on the information. i think back to when i was

captain of the ships and you get the message board and there's a select few people that sign off on that. i doubt we do that anymore because pre-much everyone on the ship knows what is happening around the world with them today. but i will give you an example. i was actually in memphis tennessee not that long ago and we have a inland is called the coast guard cutter kankakee. they maintain the navigation on the lower mississippi river and i asked the junior most person, she is a semen on the ship and she's been with the coast guard all but six months. now you don't know what they do on an inland river tender, we have fixed aid on the banks of the mississippi river, vegetation grows over them so if you're pushing a barge and you cannot see there's a possibility you

may run aground. so they push their barge in and they go out there with chainsaws and weed backers, they stir up fire interests, their snakes underneath the piling, and it's not what you think you joined the coast guard to do but she's been in the coast guard all of six months and i said well what you do in the coast guard and she says i facilitate the movement of over half 1,000,000,000,000 dollars of commerce so it can get down to the mississippi river. she doesn't talk about the bee sting, the fire ants, the snakes, she talks about what her mission is in a much grander scale. so i think if you talk to anyone scale. so i think if you talk to anyone of our folks out there, they connect themselves to something much bigger than themselves. if you look at the nasa model was back in the sixties, that seaman is no different than the janitor at nasa of what are you doing here. i'm putting a man on the moon. so they connect to a much bigger piece and you'll find that pretty much wherever you go in our service but i think as we have so much more information that's readily available for people as well. >> you also touched on

resources, the resource picture for the coast guard looks may be better than normal, i don't want to overstate it, sure you would like more, but you make comments in the past using the job line about you needed a bigger boat, saying we need a bigger coast guard, how do you feel about the resource picture now that the fy 17 budget request is in? you mention several of the new major investment strings underway. the growth of the structure and the readiness picture. what most challenges you at this point and executing all of that? >> i am immensely pleased with our acquisition budget. on the other side we have our operations in maine is, what our operations and maintenance, would cost to do operations and people from under that funding portfolio as well. were not keeping pace. in fact were fact were not even keeping pace with budget control funding levels. where funded below that level to sustainer operation so it's great that we're modernizing, the sustaining piece is still a bit of a challenge for me. that's work that i need to do in demonstrating how critical that is because let's face it, i've

been to enough commissioning ceremonies now more than i have decommissioning ceremonies, that's a good thing, more births than funerals. it's a great gal event. but that's where the real platform kicks in because now you the next 40 years, it's not on wanting so i need to operate and maintain it for the next 40 years to improve the crew, the fuel you burn in the main as that goes with all of that as well. so that's really good to be the next piece. so when you talk about jaws you can a needed bigger boat and a bigger coast guard. sedo back to 1988 and in almost every presidential election cycle since 1988 there has been a rather significant hurricane, we'll call it the perfect storms. in the height of a presidential presidential election cycle you now have a storm and let's face it it will invite scrutiny over how that response goes. no will have a hurricane and nothing else, i, i

know the coast guard is ready for that. we just finished up an exercise last week in the pacific northwest called the cascadia rising. the cascadia subduction zone and with that you don't get that notice that you're gonna have a traveler, you can have a synonymy and and you can have tens of thousands of fatalities that impact critical infrastructure, but a five to two events at the same time then as i would say i'm out, and that's the challenge that we are currently resource for relatively benign operating environment, but whether but whether you look at overseas threats and the natural disasters exasperating that as well, were gonna need a bigger coast guard going forward. >> you mentioned today in regard to the european migration crisis, i, i think the united states has pledged or said it would attempt to assist and provide a particular to provide

a vessel to assist, does that impact you directly, you talk about the trade-off, how does that really manifest in terms of what the trade-off looks like. >> i'm please we've had a dialogue in fact it was now a confirmed in wearing a four star, he's in over ten in the coast guard to be the coast guard with greece and turkey, looking at their challenges and where there might be u.s. coast guard equities. so we have those dialogues and there's no immediate request for us to disband our coast guard presence here and send those ships to the mediterranean, but we do bring a lot of subject matter expert in that its mass migration. so we've had those dialogues and we'll see will see if they actually manifest themselves into a request for u.s. coast guard augmentation because it's very vexing and quite honestly it's going to be a persistent problem as we now see sub sahara arguably migrants maybe not refugees that are now entering into this vesper that

is flooding the european continent. >> and just to be clear, if you had to rush right away of their work request from the president to support a migration crisis with for instance one of your cutters, what would be the operational impact for you in the immediate? >> unfortunately i don't have a ghostly that is tied up somewhere ready to be activated to support a contingency like this which would mean we would have to pull a resource away from doing frontline operations today and put that operation element at risk. we have a significant migration flow coming up from primarily from cuba but also from haiti as well. i was just two weeks ago we came across a rustic with 11 cuban migrants on it. right as we arrived all 11 of them drink a bottle of bleach. bleach. they passed it around among themselves. and suffering very ill effects

we were able to stabilize them but that's the act of desperation that these migrants were expected to be medevac to u.s. hospital and therefore be feet dry. so they realize that the coast guard is there to stop them and will take these acts of desperation just to gain access to the united states. but if the coast guard is not there in the numbers that we are today than it is a free pass. i think we need to be ready so we do reposition the coast guard that we need to be able to answer what are we doing to protect our maritime boundaries as well. sweat the end of the day, we can to both. >> let mass one more question and then open it to the audience. tell me a little bit about how you see the arctic environment evolving in terms of the actors and what their motivations might be and how the coast guard plays into that? >> my initial concern for the

arctic is really the indigenous inhabitants of the arctic. i was up there last summer and the week before i arrived they had what we call a category one hurricane. normally there would be a sea ice barrier that would prevent any buildup of season any coastal erosion while the nearest ice was nearly 400 miles away. see can. so you can imagine that you have 18, 20-foot comber's washing in on beryl alaska in the middle of a storm they're out there with earthmoving equipment moving equipment trying to establish a berm made out of soap so you don't have seawater inundating their only source of fresh water. they came and probably within twice the length of this room of losing their only source of fresh water. you're seeing that across the northern latitudes where we have these indigenous inhabitants and their seen their way of life change. these are nations onto

themselves. so how do we reestablish those nations? i always look at the arctic as the canary in the coal mine for rising ocean temperatures and its impact. just to demonstrate that further i will take a delegation to greenland in august, will will head out to the largest glacier on greenland, the glacier which is moving at the rate of about e atlantic ocean. now i cannot fathom why it's doing that, but i concertedly observe what is happening and if you are to look at a complete meltdown of the ice fields of greenland, you're talking about a 21-foot rise in sea level. it's likely to happen overnight, but if that does happen, what are we doing to prepare for a rise in sea level? we just rebuilt station sandy hook following hurricane sandy. we probably built it on shifting sand with the expectation that it will still be there and functioning 100 years from from now so i start looking long-term

of my coastal infrastructure and where i'm going to invest coast guard, i better be be keeping climate change, rising sea level, very much at the forefront as well. so the arctic is where a lot of this is taken place. but the first people to witness this are the indigenous inhabitants. >> let me open it up to the audience and see if we could take some questions. the microphone is coming, please identify yourself and your affiliation if you have one. >> i and megan myers, the coast guard reporter at anytime. i wanted to ask what are some of your egg's personnel wins over the last couple of years and what you have on the docket for the next couple? >> personnel? i'm very pleased with our leadership program that we have for all of our list of personnel and i give great credit to our chief petty officer of the coast guard so we have been the most junior level to most senior level in our listed workforce a leadership continuum going all the way up to e9 in the coast guard. we are still catching up in that

regard when it comes to our officer leadership development programs and there is just a question of capacity. the area i am immensely pleased with is that we have a diversity inclusion strategic plan as well. so we are finally catching up to reflect the demographics of this nation within our workforce in the coast guard. i've taken a personal effort, i've been out this last year to seven minority serving institutions, when i go there i there i don't go by myself. someone doesn't want to see some old guy like me, not why what i want to join the coast guard. so i bring in a very diverse delegation with me. we meet with the president of the universities with the faculty but then we also meet with the students. they get to see a diverse coast guard and the opportunities that are available to them so it has

been a great return recruiting tool for us as well. to the point where as i've said before, if i was trying to get into the night states united states coast guard today which is still a complete meritocracy i would be standing outside that wall watching the corps of cadets parade on that field, but i'd be okay with the coast guard. everyone of those folks in that parade field are going to do phenomenal in the coast guard. >> we have one more. >> hello my name is lindsay reiser and vice president of an ngo global peace service with usa. thank you for your report. my question is this, the state department has been explaining the complexity of its relations

with russia. i would like you to say a little bit about the experience of the people who are working with russia over arctic issues, what are some of their issues, what is their negotiating style and if you talk about any other kind of encounters you have with the russian naval fleet or their equivalent to the coast guard that would be helpful as well. >> i will say this, i've spent probably a better part of three of three hours just one on one interacting with my russian counterpart, because when canada hosted the arctic coast guard for, the parliament would not allow russia at the table and sense russia didn't show up, nor did did norway, finland, sweden, or denmark. so basically we never got off the launching head. but we talked to and they compartmentalize. they compartmentalize where you ukraine, crimea, and some of the military action and so this is the federal border service of the russian federation, their principle comes with me. so we can talk about the arctic and holistic terms, safety of safety of life at sea, all of us are

challenged, if we see an aggressive offshore drilling campaign in the arctic, what is the technology that we can bring to bear to mitigate the effect of an oil spill and a very pristine environment. we also recognize that a lot of our scientific research, some of that has been compartmentalized as well. it would not beach or collective advantage, even if it is something as germane as fisheries, do we see fish stock start to move further north and then do we see fishing fleets going north to attract those as well? what i would say say is it's measured comments but at the end of the day it's productive. we are now working on information exchange, obviously via the internet, we are all eight members of the arctic are at the principal level can interact with one another. so say you have an event up in the arctic, and maybe it is our

icebreaker and for whatever reason we get buzzed by a russian aircraft. i can reach out to my counterpart and say what is up with this? the other service chiefs do not have that luxury and then you have to fill that void in the absence of transparency and it remains very opaque. so i would categorize the arctic among all of the arctic nations as transparent. they really gravitate towards a coast guard let approach to the arctic versus a military lead, even though they recognize that we are an armed service we are unique as a coast guard but they recognize the coast guard aspect of diplomacy and working the arctic issue. >> the russians last week just floated a new icebreaker, you have in your budget to develop an icebreaker but it's want to take time, how should we in the audience think about this new icebreaker from the russians? >> we have to look at it ship counts. the russians russians have 41 and we have to.

we start looking at that is mutually assured destruction and missile count. so the purpose of the arctic coast guard is how do we leverage the collective resources of all of the arctic coast guard's in the event of a contingency? we're also looking at and putting together what i call a heat mat. a heat map is using ais information which everyone has access to comments one of the concentrations of the greatest human activity up in the arctic. in all likelihood it's probably where the greatest likelihood of where a mishap at sea as well. so we will do a tabletop exercise the sheer and we will do a full-scale exercise next year doing a math mass rescue at sea. work and i do one in august using gnome, we had norway and canada will participate in that as well. we will have have 250 role players as now displaced passengers.

what we can't replicate is how do you replicate the 24 hour cycle during an episode. you use who is in charge and recognizing that there's going to be a lot of scrutiny, you need to establish a relationship with survivors, all the nuances that go on tour response, two mini times we deal with it at tactical level and often lose sight of the fact that will only be dealing with national command authorities and on a global scale if you have a titanic like event in the modern era today. >> i'm going to group the final two questions because were running low on time. >> on the great lakes were very focused on the ice mission and so i have questions, with all the acquisitions going on in the

140 rehab program which were obviously a big fan of do you have the bench strength to continue to do that in the second question is to see the domestic isis developing your bench strength in your future icebreakers? . . . . >>

>> do we bring in another great lake icebreaker i cannot put it into my acquisition must -- budget today although immediately is the heavy icebreaker before we could address that. i will be in ottawa in july it has a memorandum of agreement for some reason real have that capacity to provide assistance to the united states if they are deficient but we need to look at this within the next five tenures we buy some service life with a 40-foot icebreaker is but so as the water warms instead of being

a straight line its meanders. it is the polar vortexes that screen across the great lakes and then have a severe winter with heavy icing slow all say everything that will warm up with no ice left with the great lakes but then finally i will be up there in a couple weeks but appreciation for your role think for the question their role as an observer but also they will soon launch a second medium icebreaker it is the same issue with transparency.

when i see where they're doing scientific research with the extended continental shelf long-term no tie nephew's us i am not disconcert so what is giant -- china's strategy? klay can answer that question so that does cause me great concern. >> admiral they give some much for your time and your leadership. you make the coast guard sell like the most fascinating place in the world. [applause]

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