CNO Press Briefing: Atlantic Council

GENERAL JAMES L. JONES: Good morning, everybody. And welcome to today's event with Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti-chief of naval operations of the world's finest Navy, I might add-to discuss her 2024 Navigation Plan for America's Warfighting [Navy].

My name is Jim Jones, and I serve as executive chairman emeritus here at the Atlantic Council and as chairman of the Scowcroft Center. So, on behalf of the Scowcroft Center and the Atlantic Council, as well as its Forward Defense Program, I would like to welcome you to this exciting fourth installment of our 2024 Commander Series.

As we all know, since its origin the United States has relied on her Navy to maintain global maritime dominance, ensuring freedom of navigation, the ability to project US power across the globe and played a critical role in the nation's strategic deterrent capabilities. As we continue into this era of strategic competition with peer or near-peer adversaries, potential adversaries, namely China and Russia, and the threat landscape evolves, the Navy faces many challenges, and its capabilities are stretched across the world.

The Navy, and I might add the Marine Corps-you're not going to get away with a commandant introducing you without mentioning the Marine Corps-but the Navy and her Marines must be ready for the possibility of war in the near future. But beyond that, it will need to continue to enhance its long-term advantage to deter future aggression and ensure a major contribution to global stability. A critical component in the effectiveness of this strategy will be leveraging technological innovation to maintain a ready and modern force. The Navy will need to invest in newer platforms, newer weapon systems, and embrace robotic and autonomous systems as well.

The key advantage that the United States holds over its adversaries is the strong alliance network the US maintains. The Navy must continue to strengthen these relationships, to enhance collective security, deter adversarial aggression by improving interoperability with joint and allied forces. With so many threats looming on the not-so-distant horizon, it is also imperative that the Navy has a forward-thinking strategic vision that leverages all the advantages the United States holds, and enables the readiness to respond in competition, crisis, and conflict if necessary.

And so today, we're extremely fortunate to be joined by the 33rd Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti, who will discuss her recently published Navigation Plan for America's Warfighting Navy. This is her strategic guidance for the US fleet during her tenure. A native of Pittsford, New York, Admiral Franchetti is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism and was commissioned through Northwestern University NROTC program in 1985. She earned her Surface Warfare qualification on the USS Shenandoah, went on to command at all levels, including Naval Reserve, Central Point, Oregon, USS Ross, Destroyer Squadron 21, US Naval Forces Korea, Carrier Strike Group 9 and 15, the US Sixth Fleet in Italy, and Striking and Support Forces NATO in Portugal.

In addition to command, she has worked across the Navy and the joint force with emphasis on strategy, international engagement, and interagency collaboration, serving as the director Strategy, Plans, and Policy, J-5, and most recently as the vice chief of naval operations. As chief of naval operations, Admiral Franchetti is responsible for the command, use of resources, and operational efficiency of the naval operating forces and the Navy's shore activities assigned by the secretary of the navy.

Admiral Franchetti, we look forward to hearing from you today, and we're very grateful for your presence here. After the admiral's keynote remarks, she will be joined by Dan Lamothe for a moderated discussion. Dan has held a long career as a journalist and has written extensively about the armed forces for more than fifteen years. Since 2014, he has been covering the United States military and the Pentagon for The Washington Post. Dan, thank you very much for joining us today.

I would also like to thank everyone attending this conversation with the admiral, whether in person or virtually. [Convenings] such [as] these are integral to the Atlantic Council's [Scowcroft] Center for Strategy and Security, which works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and her allies and partners. Consistent with that mission, Forward Defense generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, her allies, and partners. Its work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources of the United States needed to deter and, if necessary, prevail in any future conflict.

I would like to extend a special thanks to Saab Corporation and Michael Anderson, who, unfortunately, couldn't be here today but is usually in attendance. Saab and the Atlantic Council launched the Commander Series back in 2009. The vision was to establish a flagship speakers forum for senior military and defense leaders to discuss the most important security challenges, both now and in the future. Over the years, the program has become one of the Council's main institutions. And we're thankful to Saab for their continued support and collaborations. Before I turn it over to Admiral Franchetti for her keynote remarks, I'd like to remind everybody that this event is public and on the record. Thank you all for joining the Atlantic Council for what I know will be a captivating conversation.

Admiral Franchetti, without any further ado, the floor is yours. Welcome.

LISA FRANCHETTI: Well, thank you, General Jones, for your kind introduction and warm welcome. And I also want to thank the Atlantic Council for letting me be part of the Commander Series. It's an incredible opportunity. And I'm very excited to have the opportunity to speak with all of you today.

So, as General Jones just mentioned, I recently released my Navigation Plan for America's Warfighting Navy, which is my overarching strategic guidance to the Navy to make our nation's fleet more ready for potential conflict with the PRC by 2027, while also enhancing our Navy's long-term warfighting advantage. But before I talk a little bit more about that, I want to talk about the why-the why behind the NAVPLAN, and what your navy is doing all around the world to protect our nation's security and prosperity, to deter any would-be adversary, and to always be ready to fight and win decisively, if called to do so.

As you all know, our Navy-our nation is and always has been a maritime nation. Seventy percent of our planet is made up of water. Eighty percent of the world's population lives within two hundred kilometers of the coastline. Ninety percent of the global economy moves by sea. And 95 percent of international communications and about ten trillion dollars of financial transactions transit via undersea fiber optic cables every single day. In the United States alone, seaborn trade carries more tonnage in value than any other mode of transportation each year, generating about $5.4 trillion annually and supporting thirty-one million American jobs. And when our access to the sea is impacted, so too is our economy, our national security, and really our way of life.

And I could think about a lot of different examples over the past years that demonstrate that intimate connection. Just think back to the impacts of COVID-19, the grounding of the Ever Given in the Suez Canal, and now Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, and even the port strikes on the east and west coast-gulf coast just a few weeks ago. It's really clear that the seas are the lifeblood of our nation. And since the days of the Revolutionary War, as General Jones pointed out, our Navy and our Marine Corps team has protected and guaranteed our access to that sea. And on Sunday, we just celebrated our 249th birthday.

I think the events of this year and the actions taken by your Navy-Marine Corps team in the Indo-Pacific, in the Mediterranean, in the Red Sea, and beyond really underscore the enduring importance of American naval power throughout our nation's history. With an average of about 110 ships and seventy thousand sailors and Marines deployed on any given day, the Navy-Marine Corps team is operating forward, defending our homeland, and keeping open the sea lines of communication that fuel our economy. In the Indo-Pacific right now, the USS George Washington Carrier Strike Group and the America Amphibious Readiness Group, with the 31st MEU embarked, are working alongside allies and partners to sustain a free and open regional order and enhance our collective interoperability.

In the Baltic, the Atlantic, the high north, and the Mediterranean, our navies continue to work alongside NATO and other partner navies to defend NATO and to support Ukraine as they defend their country and their democracy, to further deter Russian aggression, and to ensure that Russia's continued unjustified and horrific invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine is a strategic failure. And in the eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the western Indian Ocean, our naval forces-including aircraft carrier strike groups, amphibious readiness groups, submarines and multiple destroyers-working alongside allies and partners, are containing the Israel-Hamas conflict, deterring others, especially Iran and its proxies, from escalating hostilities into regional war, and continuing to support Israel's defense.

Over the last few weeks, more American destroyers-the Bulkeley, the Frank E. Petersen, Michael Murphy, and the Cole-have joined about a dozen other naval assets over the last year in knocking down Iranian and Houthi-launched ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones in defense of the rules-based international order, in defense of innocent civilian mariners, and in defense of Israel. The ability of our forces to seamlessly operate in any theater speaks to the value our Navy has provided to our nation for the last 249 years.

We operate in a unique domain. It's a domain that knows no boundaries. It's a domain that transcends lines that are drawn on a map, and one in which the Navy provides agile, flexible options and decision space to our nation's leaders every single day. I could not be more proud of that Navy team. It's the active and reserve sailors. It's our civilians. And it's our families. There's no other Navy in the world that can operate at this scale. No other Navy in the world can train, deploy, and sustain such a lethal, globally deployed, combat credible force at the pace, the scale, and the tempo that we do.

And while all that we have achieved these past 249 years has filled me with confidence, I know that we cannot take our foot off the gas, because there's no doubt that our nation is at an inflection point in history. We are facing a changing and challenging security environment, a changing character of war, and real challenges in ship, submarine, aircraft, construction and maintenance, munitions production, recruiting, and infrastructure maintenance. All while acknowledging the industrial and budgetary constraints complicating our efforts to address these challenges.

I've already talked a little bit about the security environment, but I want to expand on how that's changed a little bit more. As we are seeing, the rules-based international order that we have upheld, protected, and defended for over three-quarters of a century is under threat, in every ocean. The People's Republic of China is our pacing challenge and presents a complex, multi-domain and multi-axis threat. I am eyes wide open that the challenge posed by the PRC to our Navy goes well beyond just the size of the PLAN fleet.

It includes gray zone and economic campaigns, expansion of dual-use infrastructure like airfields and ports, and dual-use forces like the Chinese maritime militia, and a growing nuclear arsenal. It's backed by a massive defense industrial base, which is on a wartime footing and includes the world's largest shipbuilding capacity. The growing capabilities, capacity, and reach of the PRC military, along with its increasingly aggressive behavior in the East and South China Seas, underscore what Chairman Xi has told his forces, that they should be ready for war by 2027.

The PRC is not our only competitor. Russia continues to be an acute threat. Iran, a stabling actor in the Middle East. And we are seeing increasing alignment of these competitors, the PRC, Russia, Iran, North Korea, violent extremist organizations, and globally sponsored terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, ISIS-K, and more. In addition to this dynamic security environment, we're also facing a changing character of war, with advancements in battlefield innovation and cheaper, more accessible technology available to state and nonstate actors alike. We're all learning a great deal from Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the continued Houthi ballistic missile, cruise missile, and drone attacks in the Red Sea.

To get after all these challenges, I would love to have the resources and the industrial base capacity to just expand the size of our force overnight. And I acknowledge the need for a larger, more lethal force. But it's no secret to any of you that we are facing financial and industrial headwinds at getting, what I like to call, more players on the field. Our budget falls short of the 3 to 5 percent increase above inflation needed to support the Navy's growth. And we've had continuing resolutions for fourteen of the past fifteen years, which stifle our momentum and slow any progress in delivering the warfighting capability and capacity needed to meet the needs of today and tomorrow.

And while we're investing significant resources to address our industrial base challenges, change will not happen overnight. We cannot manifest a bigger Navy-a bigger traditional Navy in just a few short years. So as I came into this position, I took all of this in-the changing security environment, the changing character of war, and our own challenges-and that is what provided the context that framed my Navigation Plan. It's a plan that lays out where we need to go to make our Navy more ready for potential conflict anytime and anywhere. As the CNO who will be at the helm into 2027, I am compelled to do more, and do more faster, to ensure that our Navy is more ready. I can't stand still as we work to secure long-term investments for our force.

And so my Navigation Plan essentially parks these known challenges in a box. I'm still going to work on them, but they're not the only thing I'm going to think about. And it helps me set a course to make strategic gains in the fastest time possible with the resources I can influence. It builds on America's Warfighting Navy, a document that I released in January that lays out my priorities of warfighting, warfighters, and the foundation that supports them. And the NAVPLAN continues where my predecessor's 2022 NAVPLAN left off. It lays out my plan to raise our fleet's baseline level of readiness and put more players on the field-platforms that are ready with the requisite capabilities, weapons, and sustainment, and people that are ready with the right mindset, skills, tools, and training.

And it does that really in two ways. First, by implementing what I call Project 33, seven key areas in which we need to accelerate, areas where I will invest my personal time and resources and put my thumb on the scale to urgently move the needle, with 2027 as our North Star. And second, by expanding the Navy's contribution to the joint warfighting ecosystem. This is all about building enduring warfighting advantage by investing in key capabilities and creating the layered effects that the Navy can contribute across all domains, to those of the joint force and those of our allies and partners. This is fundamental to my vision of how we will deter and, if necessary, fight and win our future wars.

So, going back to the first I'd like to briefly just touch on these seven equally important Project 33 targets, as they align to my priorities of warfighting, warfighters, and the foundation that supports them.

Under warfighting, my first target is readying our platforms.

The second target is operationalizing robotic and autonomous systems.

My third target is fighting from the Maritime Operations Center. That's our command and control nerve center and it will help synchronize how we deliver effects as a Navy and as a broader joint and combined force.

Under the warfighters' bucket, my fourth target is recruiting and retaining talented people.

My fifth target is delivering the quality of service that our sailors and their families deserve.

My sixth target is investing in warfighter competency, making our live virtual constructive training as reliable, realistic, and as relevant as possible.

And finally in the foundation bucket, my seventh target is restoring the critical infrastructure that generates, sustains, and postures our force to fight, prioritizing the Pacific theater.

Together, these seven targets-really, stretch goals-they represent my plan to make strategic gains in the fastest time possible with the resources I can influence. I know that moving out with purpose and urgency on these targets will deter the PRC and any other potential adversary, and make us even more ready to fight and win decisively should that deterrence fail.

I'd like to end with just a few comments about the joint warfighting ecosystem I mentioned before because my Navigation Plan is critical to expanding our Navy's contribution to it. I know that our Navy will never fight alone, so we are laser-focused on developing and integrating key Navy capabilities with those of our joint teammates and of our allies and partners, because it's the aggregate effects that we deliver collectively that will matter.

The joint warfighting ecosystem is all about pooling and creating those aggregate effects. It's a system in which a capability enables and then is enabled by each of its participants. It's on display in the Middle East right now, and I know it's one that Admiral Paparo will leverage in the Indo-Pacific.

Achieving these objectives in my Navigation Plan is an all-hands-on-deck effort where everyone has a role to play-industry, Congress, academia, our joint teammates, our allies and partners, and of course our sailors and our civilians. So I would like to thank all of you here for your interest in our Navy, and I would like to thank you for all that you have done to support our Navy team and will continue to do in the future to support America's warfighting Navy.

I have a clock in my office that tells me that there are 807 days left until 1 January 2027. There is no time to waste, and your Navy is ready to get after it. Thank you very much, and I look forward to discussion today. Thank you.

Dan.

DAN LAMOTHE: All right. Good morning, everyone.

LISA FRANCHETTI: Good morning.

DAN LAMOTHE: Thank you for your time today, ma'am.

You just spent several minutes articulating your plan. I know you must have spent a lot of time planning that. This town often sees plans that run into headwinds, run into real-life events. Can you walk us through a bit what you think you can do to make this plan durable, make this happen, kind of clear-eyed, noting the headwinds, the budgetary constraints, and other things like that?

LISA FRANCHETTI: Yeah. Well, thank you. And again, thanks for the chance to talk a little bit about the plan today.

You know, I think this plan is a little bit different from some of the plans that we have had in the past, and I worked to make sure that it would be durable and it would stick. And I really spent about the last year working on this plan alongside all of our four-star commanders, our fleet commanders, our type commanders to really get after what are the things that we need to do and what we do we need to do to think, act, and operate differently to stay ahead of the challenges that we have with the resources that we can influence right now.

And so when you look at the plan, it's very focused-I would say it's different in a few ways from previous plans.

First, it's focused on 2027. It's focused on the PRC. So I've set my priorities, my sight. It's narrowly focused on getting after those challenges.

The other thing is that it really builds on Navigation Plan 2022, in which we had about eighteen different areas which we were really focused on and a lot of structure was put in place with single accountable individuals to drive progress in each one of those areas. I took a look, I took a fix, and I said, all right, here's where we are based on NAVPLAN 2022, and here are seven areas where I think we can really put our foot on the gas and accelerate our progress in those to be real gamechangers in what we need to be able to do in the future.

I think the last thing I would say what's different about it is that it does have this single accountable individual responsible for each one of the targets that we're trying to get after. And what we've found through our perform-to-plan and naval sustainment systems, processes have been put in place, if you have a stretch goal, a single accountable individual, and a cadence of accountability, that drives success.

And the Navigation Plan will change my focus. It changes where I go, what I visit, what reports I get, what meetings I go to. And so my personal attention will be on these Project 33 goals as well as building the capabilities I talk about as the key capabilities for warfighting advantage that will get us where we need to be in the future.

DAN LAMOTHE: OK. One of your stated goals is boosting surge readiness to 80 percent. I know talking to a lot of analysts in this town, they raise concerns whether real-life events, physics, other things would really challenge this. And I know you've raised previously the aircraft as a kind of parallel. Do you see 80 percent as aspirational, achievable, both? And I guess, how do you put your foot on the gas with that?

LISA FRANCHETTI: Thanks. This is one of the most important-all seven are equally important, but you know, I've long said that we need to get more players on the field. There's a lot of ways to do that. You know, one is to buy new ones. One is to get them in and out of maintenance on time, which is-that's why I put this goal in here. One is to use what you have differently.

I am focused on this, because the aviation example is really illustrative of what we know we can achieve. So in 2018, Secretary Mattis challenged our aviation community to get F/A-18 readiness up from 50 percent readiness/availability to 80 percent. And over the process of these-the last couple of years, and now six years on, we've been able to sustain 80 percent readiness in the F/A-18s because of the processes that we put in place, data-driven, daily drumbeats of accountability to make sure that we understood what the readiness was, what the barriers were to achieving that readiness, and moving forward.

They've been able to scale that now through other type model series, and we've expanded it to the submarine force and also the surface force. So it's a stretch goal, but I am committed and the team is committed to going after that stretch goal. So we are putting all those-we have, actually, all those processes in place now, and I'm really looking forward to that.

I will just give another example, a metric in surface that might be useful. So, you know, on-time completion of maintenance availabilities is really important. So if you think back in 2022 we had about 27 percent completion on time, 2023 we moved it up into the 30 percents, and this year we'll be up to 67 percent. So we put in a lot of procedures to be able to plan maintenance availabilities early in a surface, a submarine, and aviation, making sure we understand what parts we need, having available pool of parts, investing in those parts so they can be there on time; planning our stuff-maintenance availabilities at least six months ahead of time and locking them in to let industry know what's coming and also get those parts on order. Those are some of the things we're doing.

So these are stretch goals, but I am confident that we're going to work hard to get after them. And if we don't make exactly 80 percent, we're going to be farther along the road than we would be if I hadn't set such an ambitious goal.

DAN LAMOTHE: OK.

LISA FRANCHETTI: And I will say all the communities are locked hands on these goals, so we are all committed to working together to get after them.

DAN LAMOTHE: A lot of discussions about the future of the Navy tend to focus on ship numbers. I heard in your comments there you kind of addressed that head on. To what do you-what degree do you consider that construct limiting, and to what degree do you consider that construct necessary? You know, I-there's a pragmatic aspect to this, but numbers are numbers, and I'm sure that's something that you get an earful on a lot as well.

LISA FRANCHETTI: Certainly. Well, I fully acknowledge that we need a larger, more lethal Navy. You know, we have multiple assessments that say that we need to have a larger Navy, and I really want to work closely, you know, with Congress, with industry to be able to deliver that Navy that we need. And that's a really important thing.

But the size of the Navy is not the only thing that matters. I think if you look at that future warfighting ecosystem, it's really about the effects you can deliver with that Navy from a widely dispersed, disaggregated force integrated with all of the other forces of our joint force, whether it's cyber, space, Air Force, Army, Marines. You can definitely envision a different type of warfighting environment where all of those effects are layered together, and that is really how we're going to beat any adversary.

So, to me, it's both. We need to focus on getting the fleet that we need with the capabilities we need, but we also need to understand how we're going to better integrate them with the joint force and alongside our allies and partners. And really, how do we build that interoperability from the ground up with allies and partners through both weapons systems but also exercises, and make sure that we can really plug and play, plug and fight any time that we need to be able to do that?

DAN LAMOTHE: OK. Thank you.

Let's talk some current ops and maybe tie it back to the plan a bit. The Navy's been extremely busy in the Red Sea and other parts of the Middle East over the last year. You know, I think a lot of us are tracking ship movements and things like that on a level that, you know, is not always common. What is the service learning as a result as seemingly almost daily sailors are knocking, you know, munitions out of the sky? And how long do you think the service can keep this up? It seems to me that there would be concern as this stretches on on magazine depth and also on just, you know, as you're trying to pivot elsewhere this seemingly doesn't go away.

LISA FRANCHETTI: Well, first, I couldn't be more proud of our Navy and Marine Corps team that's out there. As I said earlier, you know, from day one we've been there to deter further escalation. And you know, I'm very proud of all of our ships-working alongside allies and partners, I would add-there in the Red Sea and in the-in the Indian Ocean to really uphold that rules-based international order.

I think we're learning a lot by being in the Red Sea. First, the value of allies and partners. And again, all of these exercises and training that we do all around the world, that's enabled us to work together to get after this challenge.

I would say a few other things. First, that our sailors are confident in their weapons system. And that's really a testament to the development of these weapons systems over the last many years, but also to the training, the certification, all of the work we do to get our sailors, our ships, our aircraft, everything ready to go before they head into harm's way. And our systems have performed as designed. So, again, it's a real testament to the designers, the engineers, and now our people who are able to employ them effectively.

I think the other thing that we're learning is that we've been able to observe all of the different engagements, everything that the Houthis have used, all of their Iranian-supplied weapons systems, and we've been able to look at their tactics that they're using. We've been able to use data and extract that information from our weapons systems, bring that back here to the US in a matter of hours. And getting that to our engineers; to our warfighting development centers where they develop tactics, techniques, and procedures; this has been really a gamechangers because then all the experts can work together, understand what's going on. As tactics evolve, then we can introduce different tactics, adjustments to radars, whatever it is we need to do to be able to get after that.

I'll just give a small example. When I was out visiting one of our ships, I got to promote a fire controlman second class to first class. And he was a technician who worked with a gun weapons system, and he had an idea about how he could make the gun more effective against Houthi threats. And he wrote up his idea, he sent it back to the technical authorities, they validated it, and they put it out the rest of the fleet because it was a better way to use the gun and more effective. And so we got to put technology into the hands of a warfighter; we got him to think about how to think, act, and operate differently; and he was really a pioneer in innovating there on the battlefield.

I always like to say in Ukraine they innovate on the battlefield every single day. They take what they have and they use it differently. We need to be able to do the same. So I think that's another lesson that we've learned there.

DAN LAMOTHE: OK.

LISA FRANCHETTI: And to your last point about, you know, are we concerned about our sustainability to be there, of course, our job is to be there, and that is what we train our people to do. So I'm very proud to be able to do that mission. And we're continuing to work, again, to invest in the munitions as I talk about the foundation-munitions, bases, infrastructure-all those things we need to generate and sustain the force, committed to getting after that.

DAN LAMOTHE: All right.

And I think we have just time for one more question. We've seen the Abraham Lincoln Strike Group extended. We've seen the Marine Expeditionary Unit extended along with the ARG. As we see this extend, you know, it occurs to me we don't necessarily have a follow-on ARG new behind it. To what degree are you concerned about being able to sustain the tempo out there?

LISA FRANCHETTI: Well, as you know, we train, deploy, and certify all of our forces to be able to meet the requirements that are set forth, you know, by the secretary. We're a globally deployed force, and I think that's one of the greatest things about the flexibility of our Navy. We can generate the forces, we can send them where they need to go, and allow the secretary to be able to move them between the different theaters to get after the missions that we have. So I'm confident in our ability to do that.

I am very focused on readiness for all of our ships. You know, when you think about in the big picture what are my priorities, first, Columbia, our number-one acquisition priority. But after that, readiness, capability, and then capacity. I'm really focused on readiness and getting after all of these maintenance challenges that have caused some of the delays in the past, whether it's in our amphibious force or in any one of our platforms. So, again, that's how we're going to get after this. And that's why that's a key part of our Navigation Plan.

DAN LAMOTHE: OK. Thank you all for your time today. I'd ask you to remain seated so that the admiral can depart for another meeting.

LISA FRANCHETTI: Thank you very much.

DAN LAMOTHE: All right.

LISA FRANCHETTI: Thank you.

DAN LAMOTHE: Thank you.

LISA FRANCHETTI: Oh, thanks. That was fun.

DAN LAMOTHE: Thank you.

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