we are responsible for everything involving training, equipping and demanding the force. over 59,000 reservists and a couple hundred civilians. this particular job has really changed my perspective but it has only made me cherish the people we have all the more. brian: what is the hardest part of the job? adm. howard: whew. i am responsible for the good order and discipline in the navy. you help regulate the well-being and the behavior of the entire crew. i am kind of like the executive officer for the entire navy. the number two person for the entire navy. our people are great but they are sometimes imperfect.

it is my job to help people get on the right track. brian: you have four stars and you are full admiral. it has never happened in history that a woman has been a four-star admiral. when did you know that you would go this far? adm. howard: i did not know that i knew i would go this far. i had only been a three-star for about 10 months when the chief of naval operations was traveling through norfolk and he asked to see me. i was supposed to go up and be his chief strategist and planner. that is when he talked to me about becoming a four-star and a couple of different opportunities where we think you would do well and benefit the navy.

it is a big transition. you probably want to talk to your family about it. come back to me and say whether you think you are the right person. brian: your mother is mentioned a lot of times. adm. howard: she is 82. brian: what did she say to you when you said they wanted to make you a four-star admiral? adm. howard: she was enthusiastic. she said you are a leader. in this case, you are also the right person because of where we are with women in the nation. "i think you should do it." brian: your father was in the air force? where did they meet? adm. howard: in england. my father was stationed in mendenhall england in the

, 1950's. my mother was a british citizen by birth. they met over there and fell in love and got married. then they came back to the united states. as a family, we traveled and moved every couple of years. the four children. -- we were representative of the mobility. my sister was born in colorado. brian: how many of them did service? adm. howard: just my brother and myself. brian: when you were 12 you want to go to the academy. adm. howard: i did. i saw this documentary on television. it just enthralled me. i went to talk to my older brother. 'i want to do this thing.

it looks great." he said the service academies are closed to women. i didn't believe him. i thought he was just messing with me. he was my older brother. my mom also said the service academies are closed to women. "it's the law." i just felt like the world was out of place. she said, you are only 12. if you still want to go you should apply, and if you are not accepted we can sew the government. she walked me through this great process. she said, you have to go after what you want to do in life. if you sue the government, it

could take years. you might be too old to go. by the time the supreme court agrees with you. but it is just as important if the supreme court changes the law and another woman gets to go, then you've done the right thing. so, it was a big moment of understanding of persistence and doing what you think is right despite naysayers, for me. brian: why did the president change it? adm. howard: you know, i honestly don't know why. i ended up speaking to someone who was a former secretary of the navy during this timeframe. he said he first heard about it service academies opening up -- under president nixon. nixon had called the political

leadership at the department of defense and said we need to start going down this path. so, the idea started before president ford came into office. brian: what class were you in? adm. howard: i started in 1978 and graduated in 1982. brian: some of the men pushed back on the idea of having women there. you were there early. adm. howard: the first class of women graduated in 1980. they started in 1976. and i think it was as much a reflection of where society was at the time. i think about the 1970's. we did we did not have a woman supreme court justice. that was around the time that sandra day o'connor was nominated. sally ride had not gone into space yet. women were just starting to become police officers

firefighters, and that change was hard. annapolis was a microcosm. brian: can you remember a moment when you were irritated? adm. howard: more than one. but the end of that first year my roommates and i, the other three women who were roommates for life because of that experience. we talked to each other and we said if we ever get to the point where one of us wants to quit we have to convince the other three that we want to quit for our own reasons and not because we are being pressured to leave. and i think it was that pact and the conversations that allowed all four of us to graduate. brian: i want to put on our screen a list of when you became

an admiral. and an admiral, and an admiral. for the average person, what does it mean that in 2007 you became a rear admiral lower half? adm. howard: i graduated from annapolis in 1982. literally, it is a quarter of a century later i am selected to one star. equivalent to a brigadier general in the marine corp or army. i was the first one in my class to be selected for that rank. even though there were women in two-year groups ahead of me, i was the first woman to be selected for the rank of rear admiral. brian: so it is one star rear admiral first step. what happens then? in august of 2010, three years later, you became a full rear admiral.

adm. howard: a two star. brian: what does that mean when you are in the navy? adm. howard: walking around as a brigadier general. between 2000 and 2010 i had some really great opportunities and really great missions. in 2009 i became head of the counter piracy task force. and a few days on the job, captain phillips was kidnapped. and so it was was our responsibility as a task force to get him back and get him back safely. and, that was obviously a surprise mission and a challenge. and, we got him back. brian: we have a clip of cap then phillips testifying. at the time, there was a lawsuit

happening and he could not say much. here's what he looks like. and here is what he sounds like. >> i believe it is the responsibility of the united states government to protect u.s. flag vessels. they are u.s. citizens crews. so, it follows that the most desirable an appropriate solution to piracy is for the u.s. government to provide protection through military escorts and military detachments aboard u.s. vessels. i am well aware that some will argue that there are limits to any government resources. in fact, given the vastness of the areas to be covered, our navy and the coalition of other navies may simply not have the resources to provide all the protection necessary to prevent and stop the attacks. brian: explain that whole situation.

adm. howard: we met after we rescued him. it was all about taking care of him and getting him a medical checkup. and offering him any kind of help he needed. very quickly everyone in the world wanted to talk to him, including the president of the united states. to me, the most important thing was letting him talk to his family. and letting them know he was ok. in then, literally, we did not meet again until the movie premiere in washington, d.c. but it was great closure for me to get to see him years later with his wife. and he just looked great. and i will tell you one story. when we got him on board, we were talking and i had some things i asked him.

" there is some things, do you want to read?" "i don't have my reading glasses." i gave him my reading glasses. he said, how old are you? i said, i'm your age, captain phillips. we eventually moved them over to another ship to get them back to shore. i think it was a few weeks later, somebody comes working their way back and it is the guy who was hopping around the ship and he has my glasses. and he said, captain phillips wanted to make sure you got your reading glasses back. i thought, my goodness with everything else he has going on in his life, getting through this traumatic ordeal, he was able to get back these reading glasses to someone who is at sea. brian: for those who don't remember the story, what was the story and what was your job?

adm. howard: in december of 2008, there was a united nations resolution where the transitional government of somalia said we agree that we don't have a functioning government and we invite the other militaries of the world to help us fight piracy. they authorized for other governments to be able to patrol the waters in the territorial waters of somalia. to fight pirates. that was a huge breakthrough. so our government said ok. we are going to stand up a counter piracy task force. a task force is a group of military assets, in this case ships and people to do the planning. we set up an international one so over time, dozens and dozens

of countries have participated. at the time i took over we had singaporean support. turkish support. united states ships in it. u.s. marines were in it. we were at that time, trying to understand how the pirates were going about kidnapping and trying to get ransom for people. and we were just patrolling the waters off the coast. we were trying to catch the pirates in the act. videotape them. because, in the end, you are doing a mission on behalf of another country. so we had to have a chain of evidence. we could not just grab people in the act of piracy. we had to collect the weapons and anything else that they

would use to kidnap people and then find another country that would be willing to prosecute them under piracy. so, our country has prosecuted people, many european countries have prosecuted people, kenya stepped up and did much of the prosecutions. once they go through the process, many of them ended up with jail time. brian: if i read it right, a group of seals with sharpshooters killed the people that were holding him hostage. adm. howard: we did not have special forces with us. they came by later. our big task was to stop that liferaft from getting ashore and that proved to be quite a challenge. to convince the pirates to stop movement without over pressurizing the situation and

having them do harm to captain phillips. then the special forces showed up. then we integrated as a team and worked our way through what our options for rescuing captains phillips. brian: then you became a vice admiral in 2012. and it was not much longer from that moment that you became an admiral. what is the difference? adm. howard: a vice admiral is the equivalent to a lieutenant colonel in the army. i would say a significant step up in the scope of what you are doing. in my first vice admiral job i was the deputy commander for fleet forces command. that is the part of the navy has -- that has oversight for about

a third of our fleet. 120,000 sailors. submarines, carriers, aircraft intelligence, expeditionary forces. and so it is the day-to-day running of the fleet. it is the integrated training of ships, or explosive ordnance detachment. at some point, they have to be able to cooperate and work together and fight together. you have to somehow create the conditions where you have a group of ships or different types of ships training together and being able to fight together. and that is a pretty complicated process. brian: you are married to a former marine. where did you meet? adm. howard: we met when he was

a security officer on the ship. i transferred and then we were penpals for quite a while after i transferred to a ship in florida. and then we dated for about four years. brian: we have some video of you and your husband. trying to pin on the shoulder boards. what was the problem with the shoulder board? adm. howard: i am the first woman to reach the rank of four stars in the united states navy. brian: and that is your husband on the right there? admiral howard: yes. literally, when i called up the uniform center, i expected the answer i got which is that we

don't have any. they had to put out a special contract. women's shoulder boards slide on the epaulets instead of clipping on. so these were brand-new and the pocket wasn't quite open. so it was definitely a historic event because of the first time those had ever been worn by a woman. my husband and secretary mabus were struggling with trying to get those things on. what was really neat is that a few weeks later, vanguard sent me photographs of the team that put the shoulder boards together. it turns out that on that side it was an all-woman team. the woman who cut the cloth and did the embroidery for the

stars. and so, they sent me pictures of the four woman who made these historic boards and i was able to send a thank-you out to each of them. brian: i heard you say that queen elizabeth i is important to you for some reason. why? adm. howard: it is this concept of -- when you think about her as a woman leader not just as the queen, and literally the fight against the spanish armada. when you talk about iconic leadership in charge of a flotilla, that is an early example of it. but the other thing is, when you look at history, she was among the first to recognize the necessity of the freedom of the

seas, which is now an international law. the high seas are global commons. and the way queen elizabeth phrased it, is that it is a public necessity that the seas free. the lifeblood of the world is trade, it is commerce. most of the commerce of the world moves on the ocean. if the oceans are not safe, if people like captain phillips can't get from one place to another without having their cargo seized, then trade will collapse. and that is the purpose of the navy. brian: back in the 1980's they had something called the goldwater nichols bill that passed and changed the structure of the military. out of that, the chief of naval operations no longer answers directly to the president.

or the combatant commanders -- adm. howard: the four service chiefs make up the joint chiefs of staff. brian: you are not on that, though. adm. howard: when the chief of naval operations is on travel, then i move in and represent naval matters on the joint chiefs of staff, in that forum. so, the four chiefs help formulate that advice for the chairman to give to the president. and it has become a process over decades as the law has changed. and it is significant now because the chairman by law when he provides advice to the president, if any of the chiefs has a dissenting opinion he is required to provide that dissenting opinion to the president of the united states and the secretary of defense.

so the chiefs provide context and in some cases that collection of operational experience and wisdom for the chairman to help develop that military advice. brian: you've been in the service now for 33 years. do you notice after all these years that as a woman you are treated any differently than the men? adm. howard: i can't speak to a comparison as i have never been a guy. brian: as you've watched it over the years and i think you said 18% of the navy now it is women. adm. howard: one the demographics of the navy has changed significantly since i came in. it is much more diverse force. much more reflective of the demographics of america.

and i think when i started as a midshipman it was about 5% women. now it is about 18% women, officer and enlisted. i don't just lead men. my teams are now men and women. but i would say, what is really different is this generation of junior leaders. they don't see the world in terms of gender. and they do not see the world so much in terms of diversity. they tend to see the world as individuals and more accepting of differences between people. and that speaks to a great nation in the future. brian: what was your major the academy? adm. howard: mathematics. brian: i want to go through this quickly, i won't bore you. adm. howard: hopefully it is not

an equation. brian: if i understand correctly, you went to the uss huntley. we are going to put these on the screen, and i want you to just give us a memory that you have. and a job that you had. what did you do on that ship? adm. howard: the ship was out of scotland. the first thing i remember is the weather. everyone had said the weather is miserable. i got there in november and it was overcast and cold and it started raining a week later and it didn't stop raining until may of the next year. [laughter] and i thought, oh my goodness, what have i got myself into? brian: what was your job? adm. howard: i had a grand bunch of mates. that is a great starter

experience for a leader. brian: what is a boatswain mate? adm. howard: they do the outdoors deck activities for ships, so they manage the lines in order to bring another ship alongside. it is manual labor. you pull in the line. they do the crane operations on the ship. they move the cargo around the ship. brian: what kind of a ship? adm. howard: it was a submarine tender. what really also maybe think about that time was that this was the early 1980's. we still have in our crew the last of the sailors who came into the navy so that they were not conscripted into the army. i had a seaman who was 55 years old. he had made it all the way up through the brigs and then busted down twice in his career.

a motley crew might be the better way to describe that first group of sailors. but they were hard-working and mission-oriented. but they had not come into the navy for the same reasons people come in today. it was a little bit of motivational difference as a leader. brian: then you went to the uss lexington. it was an avt. that was 1985 to 1987. what is your job there? had you gotten promoted from an ensign to lieutenant junior? adm. howard: i've been promoted from it and send a lieutenant junior grade. i had 110 machinists working for me. i was responsible for my section of the propulsion plant. basically making the ship go through the water. she was a world war ii-era ship. so it was hot work.

the plant was often 110 degrees. tough engineering work. you had to really know the systems and be able to operate the plant. the next thing that came to my mind. she is now a museum in corpus christi. she has been a wonderful point of connection, because earlier i would meet other veterans who served on her in world war ii. it is a privilege to be able to talk to veterans who served decades before you and you have a ship in common and can swap some sea stories. brian: along the way are you getting the natural promotion? the next ship was the uss mount hood. what kind of a ship was that? adm. howard: ammunition ship.

this is significant. when i started in the navy women serving on ships had just opened up. but we were prohibited from serving on combat ships by law. and then in the 1980's, the navy designated logistic ships as noncombatant, so up until then i was serving on ships that might be fully deployed, but they could not go into basically what would be considered a war zone. and then, getting assigned to the ammunition ships, i was chief engineer. i got there about a month before we deployed to desert storm. so this was going to be for many of us on the crew going into harms way.

our first time. the ship was integrated. there were not a lot of women in the war, i think about 15% of that crew was female. and i think myself and the chaplain were the two senior women officers on board as lieutenants. brian: did you ever serve on the ship were a woman was the uss flint other ammunition ship, what was your rank on this? michelle: i promoted between the two ships to attend commander. -- two lieutenant commander. in the army and marine corps. brian: what was your job? michelle: i was a first lieutenant, responsible for admissions movement, cargo movement. deserialization of the storage of ammunition. brian: fortinet ship go -- where

did not ship go? michelle: i had just come back from desert storm unknown hood. our first operation was completely centered in the western pacific during the timeframe when the philippines broke relationships with our government and said -- asked to the military to turn the bases back over to the sophie's. we were moving ammunition out of the philippines and disturbing that around. brian: are you still getting promoted on the regular schedule? nothing unusual? the next was uss tortuga? a landing ship? what did that should do? michelle: and amphibious ship. she carried marines and their gear, anything from a 80's to

tanks. -- aav's to tanks. this was another historic -- after desert storm, that is when the commission came to look at the role of women in combat. by the end of 1993 in the end of 1994, congress revealed the college exclusion -- combat exclusion law which prevented women from flying aircraft income that -- in combat and prevented women from serving on combat ships. it was the review by the presidential commission and i believe the congressional commission on what had happened with women during desert storm. i think they came to the conclusion that even though women were in support units like ammunition ships, they were in the middle of theater. in our case a mine was not going to discriminate.

if you are to fly an airplane in a combat zone you might as well be flying a combat aircraft. congress decided to repeal the law. that meant that amphibious ships opened up to women in the navy. i was the number two and command, i was the executive officer. i was a lieutenant commander the same as a major. brian: did you have other women friends in the navy? did you talk about your experiences? what were you saying during these times when it was changing so much? adm. howard: for a lot of us, it was exciting. there was a lot of uncertainty because at some point you have so much experience on certain types of ships we weren't sure if we were going to be a remake the transition to another class of ships.

so you look at, up until this point, my experience has been on support ships and training ships even though was aircraft carrier. and also logistics ships. and so to be able to move to move into amphibious ships, i need to make sure i am well trained in the operation of that ship, the driving of the ship is actually very similar. what is different is the movement of marines. the flight deck operations are very similar. the maneuvering of the ship, those were new skills at sign -- new skill sets i had to learn. what i found was that the time i spent on logistics ships served me very well because on those ships you spend so much time resupplying other ships, you do some of the most vulnerable, high risk maneuvering that you can do.

you spend a lot of time alongside another ship in pretty close quarters. driving into the wind and sees and maintaining this small distance over several hours. it is very similar sorts of skills for maneuvering an amphibious ship to be able to launch craft out of the well deck or launch helicopter or off of the deck. brian: commanding officer, uss rushmore. you were the top person on that ship. had to that ever happened before in the navy? adm. howard: there were a group of us who all went to the command of noncombatant at the same time. kathleen mcgrath made to the waterfront about eight or nine months before i did.

she had command of a frigate. that was interesting because the frigate was not modified for personal privacy so she was a woman co with an all-male crew. she took the ship on deployment and just did spectacular. and then i got to rushmore in march of 1999. i'll he had an integrated group. -- i already hide the and integrated group. -- i already had an integrated group. i was a commander that point same as a lieutenant colonel colonel in the army. took the ship to the gulf and came back. it was an awesome crew. brian: when did you become a captain? are you noticing along the way that you have been targeted to keep on moving? and you feel it? adm. howard: first of all, our service is built around command at sea.

with eu command a ship or an aviation squadron. i am not the only 05 commander on the water by any stretch of the imagination. what we want to have happen is that if you have demonstrated leadership capabilities and you have demonstrated great performance in earlier jobs, then we want to be of the screen those people to become our commanding officers. brian: i will show you some video of yourself. you made this speech back in 2014. it allows us to see a little bit of your personality. you are talking about somebody i will explain who he is after we watch this. adm. howard: in the book the black swan he talks about this. no matter how much work you put

in to thinking about change, and figuring out your seascape or landscape, we can never get the framework right all the time. he uses as an example the thanksgiving turkey. it lives his life in the barnyard. the farmer comes in and feeds and get some water. he gets fed again. the turkey has some pretty good metrics. every day for about a year and a half the turkey gets up in the farmer feeds him and water as they are. just before thanksgiving the farmer cuts his head off. whoa. what a surprise. the turkey didn't know what was going on in the farmer said. he had no way of knowing what was going on in the farmer's head.

but that is a hell of a supplies, is it not? the black swan is a fantastic book. he walks us through our cultural beliefs about the law of averages and the bell curve and puts it in more pure mathematical terms and understandings. he really gets into what our framework is and whether we really understand the risks. do we really understand the system? if you look at life through that lens, you realize you will never be able to predict the stock market. as you go down life's journey, you will not always get all the

context of the environment you are in. you have to be able to be ready for surprise because it is going to happen. it is not an if. it is a when. brian: you said you admired linus pauling. adm. howard: how you harness the talent of your people? how do you get power out of what your people bring to the table? we tend to talk about life as having this one great idea.peence

sets. that is what helps create this pool of lots of different ideas. brian: linus pauling was big on vitamin c but he was also a big antiwar activist starting with the vietnam war. he died in 1994, but here he is talking about something i want to get your opinion on. linus pauling: president reagan says we will stay ahead of the soviet union. but what is going to happen if these two great nations are going not going to get the sense to stop this increasing of the danger of a nuclear war breaking out?

as these weapons and the delivery vehicles become more and more complicated. the chance that there will be a technological or psychological accident that initiates a catastrophic interchange of these terribly destructive weapons becomes greater in greater, so that we get in more and more danger than a nuclear war will break out. when the world is destroyed, it will be by accident, not by design. brian: that was one year after you got off the naval academy that he said that. what is your reaction to that? adm. howard: that is probably a very accurate sort of snapshot of where we were. and, think of how much has changed in nuclear deterrence since that speech. you think about the start talks, the relationship with russia the formalization of processes. the formalization of processes of how we communicate at sea so that we can prevent these

so, when you look at a world of two superpowers who have nuclear weapons, and perhaps coming to an understanding of what dr. nations with nuclear weapons. and so we still have to continue to have these dialogues and to establish processes with other nations that have nuclear weapons.

bryan: at the height of world war ii, there were more than 6000 ships in the u.s. navy. today they are 272. enough? adm. howard: we are growing, we are on a path to more than 300 ships. hopefully, it in six to seven years. and so, i would say for the global footprint and the power projection that we have and the presence around the world, you want to be around 300 ships. that includes surface ships and submarines and 11 aircraft carriers included in that number. we have been able to generate our presence and be wary we need -- be where we needed to be when

it mattered with that number of ships. brian: here's a little politics for you. you may not want to touch this. this is a clip from the republican debate on september six, 2015. it is carly fiorina. i think this is the only time i've seen much discussion about the navy in any of these debates. it i is only 22 seconds, i want to see what i can get you to say about this. carly fiorina: i would begin rebuilding the sixth fleet. we need about 36 marine battalions. we need somewhere between 300 and 350 naval ships. we need to upgrade every leg of the nuclear triad. we need to form the department of defense. we need as well investments in our military. brian: explain how the sixth fleet works. adm. howard: we have three star operational commanders around the world, and they report to the combatant commanders we talked about.

and so each of these services has a military component that reports to combatant commander. our sixth fleet commander has the mediterranean and then we have a commander for central command and he has got the waters of bahrain and the gulf and the red sea all the way off the coast of somalia. the sixth fleet. we have a commander who is a two star who has the south american waters. then we have a four-star pacific fleet commander. the pacific waters are about 50% of the globe. he is just ftast leader. brian: how big is the sixth

fleet and why is she suggesting that it needs to be rebuilt? power: we operate on a different model today. so, we manage those ships we have, the 272 ships, growing over two 300. and we generate those ships and when we move them to the theaters where we need them. a sort of permanent presence. the sixth fleet has four destroyers that provide ballistic missile defense. and then as we need other ships or assets in that region, we move them to that region. it is the same with the other fleets. the pacific fleet is very large. we are moving to about 60% of our forces by 2020 will be home ported either on the west coast of america or out of japan out of guam.

but even then, all of the other forces, we move to that particular theater as needed. our nava where they are needed. brian: in world war ii we had 18 aircraft carriers. there are now 10. one of them is still not out there is he yet? adm. howard: we normally have one in a complex overhaul at a time. brian: i want to show you some video. admiral graham was the former chief of operations. was he responsible for your last promotion? adm. howard: it was up to the secretary of the secretary of defense and the commander-in-chief but i still have to be confirmed by the senate.

brian: but you were designated as a four-star general? adm howard: yes. [video clip] greener: the sequestration of 2013 degraded our readiness at our capabilities and we've not been recovered. budget reductions have forced reductions of a float and the shore operations and generated maintenance backlogs have forced us to delay deployments. many of our ships have been on deployment for eight to 10 months and that exacts the costs on the resilience of our people and the service life of our ships. we have been forced to slow it navy modernization. it has declined our relative war fighting advantages. notably anti-surface warfare and anti-submarine warfare. air-to-air warfare and what we call integrated air to missile

defense. brian: that was only about six months ago, in march. has anything changed? adm. howard: we are still in this area of, we don't have stable budgets. for my service is particularly egregious. because we look to try to build ships on a multiyear contract. so if you don't have a stable budget, it prevents you from doing things like making commitments to maintenance contracts and so we have to have a stable process in order to commit with all the industry that helps us repair our ships. we have to know we have the facilities there to train our people. when we have uncertainty, or where there is no budget, then there is repercussions in readiness that go on for several

months, sometimes years. brian: the first for class aircraft carrier is way over budget. adm. howard: is right where it should be right now. brian: congress doesn't think so. i mean, you have heard the talk about this ship will cost $13 billion before it's over. what about cost overruns? the navy is constantly being criticized with cost overruns with their weapons providers. adm. howard: we will probably be criticized for that but not recognized when we come in on et that's a submarine. as we work our way through this process, we will design and

build ships and work with our industry partners to get that right. but once again, this is where stable budgets could make a big big difference. in terms of us being able to obligate money and to do the contracting in a thoughtful and deliberate manner. brian: do you have any hope, do you see any evidence that stable budgets are on the horizon? adm. howard: i don't think so. sequestration is still the law. over the last years, congress has come to agreements in a bipartisan budget act but if we all of a sudden have a significant detriment of our top line, with an inability to make good decisions about how to

spend the money, is going to be challenging. what many people don't understand is that sequestration a decrement of the top line, it puts constraints on how you can spend your money. it is like having a household and someone says i will reduce your salary. if you owned a home, you would sit there and make concessions. maybe it will give up the cable. maybe i will not drive the car is much and save on insurance or something. but when you have a peanut butter slice across all of the lines of government, that is the same as telling a householder to take 10% off the mortgage, 10% off the phone bill, 10% of the car insurance, and at some point, you cannot negotiate with the utility company when you're paying $.90 on the dollar. ancel -- and so, it is not sustainable. we have contracts. sequestration is a pernicious thing in many ways.

for all the armed forces and all the federal government. brian: we're almost out of time. george will wrote recently that there is no more complicated job they and that of the chief of naval operations. beyond the management of moving pieces and every time zone, the cnl must attend to the maintenance of an industrial -- do you agree with that? it is one of the most complicated jobs? admiral howard: yes. i do not know when he wrote that. when you think about the physical domain that the navy operates in, and we have submarines underneath the water. surface ships and aircraft and the physics associated with the development of that technology.

the sophistication of our weapon systems. in the last 15 years it has become even more complicated with the cyber domain. this next this between the physical domain and the cyber domain and our requirement to train and equip people in that term main. the understanding of connections between our current weapon systems and the support that comes from networks in that domain. from satellites to fiber, it is even more complex than a chief of naval operations 20 years ago had to deal with. brian: last question, of all of the jobs you have had in the united states navy, which one did you enjoy the most? adm. howard: when i have been in command, that is when you get your greatest satisfaction. when you are in command, you are

with sailors and marines. they are people who make miracles happen. in every mission. you just can only be delighted as a leader to help work people through the missions success and to be an observer of that. and then to congratulate every single individual on the team to help you win the day someday. rescue somebody at sea, provide food to people after a tsunami and earthquake. there is nothing like it. brian: by the way, do you colony place your home? >> i do. a roar, colorado. that is where i went to high school. bryan: admiral michelle howard is the vice chief of naval operations and a four-star admiral. thank you for joining us. adm. howard: thank you for your time. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its

caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] ♪ >> for free transcripts, or to give us your comments about this program, visit us online. programs are also available as c-span podcasts. >> if you enjoyed this program here are some others you might like. navy secretary ray made this talking about his notary career. marsha anderson talking about her life and military career. former navy seal take couch rights his book the share of

ramadi. -- the sheriff of her money. you can watch these anytime at her video library at c-span order. the life, your calls and comments on washington journal. live at 2:30 p.m., the brookings institution hosts a discussion about what is next for france and europe wallowing in terrorist attacks in france. >> all her sons having business before the honorable supreme court of the united states are admonished to go on air and give their attention. >> coming up on c-span's landmark cases, we will talk about brown versus the board of education for topeka kansas their great at linda around, separate but equal meant a six walk -- six block walk to the bus that would drive her a mile

to the all-black school even know the white school was a block away. her father sued the school board. that case made it all the way to the supreme court. we will examine this case and the racial tensions at the time the personal stories of the individuals involved in the immediate and long-term impact of the decision. that is coming up on the next landmark cases like tonight at 9:00 eastern on c-span, c-span3, and c-span radio. for background on this, order your copy from companion books available for a dollars $.95 plus shipping at www.c-span.org/ landmarkcases. >> this money, patrick tucker discusses the use of encrypted location by isis and the so-called dark web. later, and track president and ceo joseph gordon talks about security and safety in the wake of the paris attack and the may amtrak throwing.

as always, we will take your calls. you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. washington journal is next. ♪ host: good morning, it is monday, november 23, 2015. president obama returned to the white house following a 12,000 mile week long trip that was originally intended to spotlight priorities in asia before the terrorist attack change that focus. since the attacks, president obama has used a series of news conferences to respond to those attacks and address the threat isis poses, discuss america's military response, and respond to the debate in the united states over refugee policy and homeland security. our question for our viewers in this first 45 minutes this morning, do you think the president has struck the r