notion that we can control desk cannot control the skies are -- the other thing that a maritime force brings you is that we operate off of sovereign u.s. territory. we don't have to ask anyone for permission to get the job done in the best example of that is when the president made the decision to strike isis in august of 2014, we had a carrier on station in less than 30 hours launching strikes. we were the only strike option for 54 days. the country would not allow our points of take off first strike, we did not have to ask. have you pretty much given up

on the old notion that you might have to be ready to face two major regional conflicts? unless i am the only her said on this panel old enough to remember those days. [laughter] what is the new construct replacing that or is that where we are? there is north korea, there is russia, the middle east. >> as a joint force as a u.s. military we are preparing in the event that there should be a conflict with what is sometimes eer competitor. combination of all of these elements that we are trying to make sure we are prepared to do.

there but being reassuring our allies around the world. force.a globally engaged to the extent our people feel some strain it is because of the pace of this operation. north korea -- the reason i ask about this in terms of transition or what may come next -- a couple of recent weeks ago, the cia director was publicly talking about north korea and said he thought it was something that not only the current administration has to be prepared to deal with at any time but he thought a new administration needs to get ready now. that both candidates irrespective of who wins need to

be briefed up and ready and you could literally have a new president dealing with north korea from minute one. me as you look ahead for what you want to prioritize -- how much does north korea play into your thinking? i want to speak to your last question and say we have not given up on the idea of being able to give up on more than one thing in the world simultaneously. you hit it on the head when you say it is about balancing risk. we have this resource, we have an incredibly potent, lethal force. it's a matter of determining how you balance that risk.

not walked back from that concept at all the are in fact doing more than one thing. heavily in myays mind because the situation is still so unpredictable. we are sitting right there. making sure we are prepared for this increasing threat as it increases. korea.s not just north situation has to be ready for day one. that's part of our job to past our successors.

the readiness is there, the thought has gone into it. i come back to the word presence. our soldiers are there on the ground in south korea. korea. a carrier in japan we're adding destroyers to the effort. they are there, they are forwards. a crisis, you do not , whatever the next fight is or when there is the to take weeks or months to get forces there. you have to have them forwards and ready. they have to be ready in the marines terms to fight tonight.

just north korea but that has to be what we pass on to our successors. >> i certainly agree and believe that as soon as we know who the next president will be, and us and have a transition team at the pentagon, that very quickly there will need to be a strategic review i this team of the threats. perhaps a larger quadrennial defense review down the line but speed will be important to understand the threat profile and to conduct overtime nuclear posture review. that is something most administrations will do and where do we go from here. will haveministration to address upfront whether or not we stay the course on some important space investments, a

direction we have been going in space which is near and dear to my heart. ago we some years thought space was a peaceful domain, today i think we recognize it is both contested and congested by lots of satellites debris and all sorts of things. we will have to make some decisions going forward on that as well. there will be a lot to do. i will be stressing some important people issues going forward, some important training types of issues for our readiness and the importance of readiness across the board. curiousone is probably about what this person is

asking, which is how is your readiness prior to election day? can you give everyone some insight into how the pentagon is thinking and preparing for transition, the secretary. how are you getting ready for this? >> because debbie and i were both in the clinton administration the first a -- first day. i was in this administration early on. there are two phases to transition. we pull together governing documents, explanation papers, what we are thinking in terms of the budget we are getting ready to submit at the second phrase really kicks in and my experience and michelle would know this as well, the day after

the election. the teams are thinking about staffing and substantive issues. it kicks into high gear after the election when teams show up at the pentagon. then you really are focused on making sure the needs of those teams are met as we try to get a sense of the army. what issues they are concerned about, what the budget is, what the budget should be, how it should be organized differently. many of us really prepared for that to be available. we have a whole series of papers and information and information available for

the team when it shows up. but they're going to give us, whichever one it is, guidance on that day. sec. mabus: i don't think i can improve much on that answer. we're ready today to transition on big programs, on the budget, on the way forward. after the election, it'll be more the one-on-one. it'll be the sort of explanations. sec. mabus: and one thing the pentagon does very well in my experience is get you ready to go in in terms of briefings, in terms of where we are in any specific thing, in terms of making sure that nothing falls through the cracks as you move from one administration to the next because, as michele knows better than anyone here, there is no -- there can't be a scene . there's no luxury of having a couple of days after the inaugural to figure things out. you've got to be ready at 12:01 on january 20th to meet whatever

comes. sec. james: and i would just maybe add that for the department of defense, it's a centralized effort for us. so osd is running this effort, gathering up these papers and documents. each of us has thoughts about what the next team needs to know about. and so at the moment, all of that is being given over to the office of the secretary of defense for central management so that when the time comes, we'll be ready to go. ms. starr: if -- and if you want to copy the pentagon press corps on these documents... [laughter] ms. starr: we'd be happy to give you our e-mails.

ppa@pentagonpressassociation.net -- [laughter] sec. mabus: we'll keep you posted. ms. starr: thanks. [laughter] sec. fanning: if secretary carter's watching, we're not doing that. sec. fanning: [laughter] sec. fanning: sorry, barbara. ms. starr: we get our news where we can! ms. starr: someone is asking -- i think it's a really good question. the secretary himself has talked about this -- cyber. i mean, every time you turn around, somebody's hacking somebody else. and yet you are dealing with -- this is more of a personal issue -- obviously, you're dealing with competition from private industry. what can you really do to attract the best cyber talent without having them go off to industry right away? what are your thoughts on that? because it seems that's -- you know, that's the warrior of the future. sec. fanning: yes, cyber encompasses so many different

challenges, workforce just being one of them. but i think everybody agrees that we can't build and retain a cyber force like we have done traditionally with other aspects of the force. and so there are many opportunities here, i think, to experiment and think differently about the defense workforce. but one of the things we always have -- and we do have trouble competing with industry if you just look at it on dollars, a salaries, what we can pay. but we have something that no one else has, which is the mission and the challenge that attracts the best out there who want to be a part of defending the united states. sec. mabus: and eric is right. you can't win on salary, but what you can win on is people are making a difference. here inside the military, people are making a difference in terms of the future of this country, in terms of the future of all their fellow citizens. sec. mabus: and we've got a lot of very patriotic people who want to come in, and our job is to make service -- either civilian service or military service -- more flexible for them, to give them more avenues to get in and to move up and give them more responsibilities and reasons to stay because cyber is one of those areas that

we've got to have the expertise. we've got to have enough of that broad thinking and different sorts of thinking. we can't -- one of the things that all three of us, i think, have tried to do is open up the force. a military force that is predictable is a force that's defeatable. and we've got to bring in people that think differently from different backgrounds, from different experiences and not just become a monolithic culture in either civilians or the uniformed services. sec. james: there's no single approach on cyber. there's not one size fits all. but one that i'll add to the narrative here is to maximize -- and we're doing this in the air force -- maximize our use of the air national guard and the air force reserves. so of course, if you can attract some of these top-notch cyber professionals who are in the private sector to also serve

part-time in a reserve unit, the individual can have it both ways. they can keep their civilian job, but they also have this opportunity to participate in a fantastic, very, very important mission. so we're trying to maximize the use of the guard and reserve. i will also say that under secretary carter's force of the future, one of the key parameters there is to try to get people, perhaps, from different walks of life into service -- could be civilian service, could be uniformed service, but civilian service is probably easier. and it doesn't have to be for a lifetime. they can take a sabbatical, perhaps, and come be with us in the pentagon and be working on these important matters of national security for a year or two or three and bring us some of this expertise on sort of a rotational basis. i'll just give you one example that i think has been extremely successful today relates to the world of it. it's called the defense digital

service. these are software professionals who largely come out of the west coast. they have come to the pentagon for a year or two or three. they've given of their time. they will one day, of course, go back. but we have used them as troubleshooters on programs where, of course, software is king and we have run into difficulties, and they've been able to come in and help troubleshoot for us. so there's a variety of ways that if we just open up the aperture, think a little bit differently, that we can get people into our ranks if not for a full career, at least for a period of time. sec. mabus: and adding to that, going the other direction -- in navy, we've established secretary of the navy industry tours to send some of our young officers, some of our best people to great american companies particularly things inside her i.t. cyber and

to get best practices, learn from the best and then come back and bring that back in the service. ms. starr: i am seeing some of that reflected in these countries asking a lot about personnel, force of the future, where it's all going. can you really stick with it? can you make it all happen? so let me ask you -- as a reporter, you sort of hear that you're not quite yet getting the level of interest, participation from female service members seeking to immediately join combat units. so let's get a reality check on that. can you bring us up to date? what are you seeing about the pace of activity of women wanting to seek to join front-line combat units, including special operations forces units? are you getting the response you anticipated? sec. fanning: we are. we weren't expecting -- we were

expecting this to develop slowly. the army strategy was to try to build the leadership cadre before really trying to move out on training in the larger scale, and we knew that was going to take some time. all these things take a little time. people need to see that we can stick with it, that we are sticking with it. but we've seen a lot of interest. we have women leaving west point branching into combat arms. but we knew it was going to be slow at first. all the numbers, all the data that we had told us that it was going to start slow. but we think it's moving at the pace we had hoped it would, we anticipated it would. sec. mabus: we're also seeing a lot of interest, but very frankly, i think that may be the wrong question. the notion was to set standards, make sure the standards had something to do with the job, and then things like gender, who

you love, color of skin become irrelevant, that it's opening up, it's saying, if you meet the standards, you get the job, period. it's not forcing people out because of simply gender or color or sexual orientation or something like that. and from that point of view, i think that going forward, it's been a big success. and you're going to have those standards. nobody is suggesting lowering the standards. but once you get those, once you know what the job entails, then gender, sexual orientation, whatever, shouldn't matter. and the final thing i'll say is we simply have not done a good enough job of recruiting enough women.

we're moving up, but there -- and we lose too many women. we lose twice as many women from year 6 to year 12. ms. starr: why is that? why is that? sec. mabus: because too many people -- the main reason is too many people have to make the choice between service and family. and it's always the woman. if it's a dual military couple or if the woman is in, it's always the woman that decides to get out of the service. and we've got to do a better job. i mean, some of the things we're trying to do -- career intermission program, where you take up to three years off and then come back in without hurting your career. i tripled paid maternity leave from six weeks to 18 weeks to try to get people to not to have to make that choice.

we do co-location policies. we have got to make the military -- and i think we're down the road on doing this, but far more family-friendly, far more friendly to particularly women that -- to keep them from having to make that choice between service and family, to make it flexible enough that you can do both. ms. starr: are you seeing women yet try to apply to become part of your special operations forces, to become navy seals? sec. mabus: i think you will see that. ms. starr: but you're not yet. sec. mabus: the cycle is such that we haven't seen it yet, but that's not a surprise. it's a fairly long cycle. and i will say this about the seals. they've had the same standards for years. eighty percent of men don't make it. seals haven't been discombobulated at all about opening it up because the notion

is, you meet the standards, you go through the same things we go through, we don't care. ms. starr: you've all seen secretary carter's effort on developing this force of the future. how much of that can really, at this point, carry over, in your views, into a new pentagon administration? is it far enough along yet to sort of be institutionalized as part of the system, or does this need to have some more work done to make this -- you know what i'm trying -- an institutionalized part of the bureaucracy, to make sure that it stays put? i'm just looking for your assessment. sec. fanning: there are a number of aspects of his initiative that we are implementing. they're in place. but i think it's a larger question. we have to -- this is just the starting point, in my view. we've got to keep thinking about the force of the future, the

future, so that we are bringing into the department of defense, in or out of uniform, the best that we can from the largest pool of people possible. and that means accessing people and talent in different ways than we have in the past, not just in a career civilian way or in a uniformed military way. we've got to make changes in both of those workforces. but we have to think of other, more creative ways beyond what we're doing already to keep tapping into other resources, other assets that are out there. the problems we're facing are as complex as they've ever been, and that iterative cycle we were talking about, what the adversary is able to do and experiment and change and field is happening faster and faster, and so we need all hands on deck. sec. james: and whoever the next president is, barbara, whoever the next secretary of defense may be or the next service secretary, they are all going to be acutely focused, just like we have been acutely focused, on continuing to recruit and retain

and develop the best people in our armed forces that we can possibly get. and as time goes by, as the economy improves, we all foresee much more difficulties in this arena. so whether there is a series of initiatives that carry forward that is entitled force of the future or whether they call it something else, these issues that we've discussed here, issues about flexibility, about trying new types of approaches to get different sorts of people into the military, more women, more minorities, making the standards neutral to all of these other factors which have held some people back in the past. sec. james: i have to believe that all of this will continue because it makes very good sense for future recruitment and retention. and then of course, we also have to develop our people. sec. mabus: as eric said, a lot of these things are already in train. and i'm a big fan of force of

the future partly because the navy has already been doing most of these things for several years. and so we're way down the road on a lot of these initiatives. but whenever you change administrations, things like personnel, things like acquisition -- not the job of one administration. they can't be the job of one secretary or one four-year period because if they are, you're going to lose capability in every sense of the word. you have to -- as debbie said, whatever you call it, you've got to keep changing your personnel initiatives because the world keeps changing and our expectations keep changing. you have to keep changing on acquisition because as we talked about here before, the world gets a vote. and the change that's going on in terms of potential threats, in terms of types of threats and types of ideologies that arise, types of weapons that are out

there, types of things that can be used against us are types of things that we're going to have to respond to, including stuff like climate change, which -- storms are getting bigger, arctic is getting ice-free. our responsibilities are increasing all the time, and you can't simply say, ok, we're there. we're stopped. ms. starr: is it urban legend or is it true that you think -- the navy worries that some of its forward locations, the sea is going to rise so much that some of your bases -- sec. mabus: well, we're the navy. we tend to have bases on the sea. [laughter] ms. starr: really? sec. mabus: makes sense! [laughter] ms. starr: but yes, you --

sec. mabus: i know that's a unique concept. no, i mean, norfolk is at risk over the next few decades if we don't do something to slow down -- ms. starr: wow. sec. mabus: all our bases are in some way or other at risk. but even today, we're the first responders. we're the ones -- the navy and marine corps are the ones sent. we get a request for humanitarian assistance or disaster relief an average of once every two weeks. and as these storms get bigger, as sea levels rise, as instability follows, a lot of times, our responsibilities increase. as the arctic begins to be ice-free, russia's already said the waters to its north are an internal waterway. they're not. part of our responsibilities is keeping the sea lanes open, making sure that international law is followed, making sure that peaceful trade at sea can go where international law says it can. and so climate change and things like that are -- it's a risk in the future for things like norfolk and our bases, but it's

here today in terms of increasing our responsibility in terms of what we've got to respond to, in terms of how we have to position ourselves and how we have to think about our roles. ms. starr: i want to go back, as we begin to think about wrapping up here shortly, to the question of diversity in the force because it does strike me this is something that has a lot to do with civil- military relations that you oversee and a lot to do with the next generation of leaders coming into the pentagon and also in the force. so let's chat for a minute about the importance that you see of diversity in the force because you've all mentioned this, whether it is gender, faith, who you love -- senator mabus, i want to go back and ask you -- i suspect you were probably talking about the past, but i don't know, so let me ask you.

you mentioned in your words "color of skin." where are you seeing that worries you, concerns you, want to deal with, lack of opportunity, lack of diversity in the force, potential discrimination in the force that you want to, you know, put a lid on? we know of the cases in the marine corps recruiting situation. so washington has all these great words about all this diversity, but out there in the ranks, what are you seeing? what concerns you? sec. mabus: well, it's not diversity for diversity's sake. what it is diversity of is experience, thought, background -- sec. mabus: i was talking about

when we opened ground combat units to women, every single time, we have become a stronger force. every single time that you get a more diverse force, you get divers city of experience and background, you become a stronger, more resilient force. one of the things that worried me is the divide between the american people who are being thatcted and the military does the protecting. in a democracy, you cannot let that divide get very large. a force should be reflective of an representative of the people it defends. a couple of examples -- i brought naval rotc back to harvard, yell, and columbia, princeton, after 40 years,