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Teammates. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to all. I want thank very much everybody for the opportunity to speak with you today at AFCEA West.
Over the last two days, we've had a really close focus on the importance naval integration, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, and the absolute necessity for government, military industry and university research centers to work together to increase our capabilities to fight and to win a full spectrum naval warfare.
And before diving into the technical elements of it, I really want get us focused on the mission here in the Pacific.
As you know, I'm at Sam Paparo, I'm the newly installed commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and the Indo-Pacific is our mission here at U.S. Pacific fleet in INDOPACOM. And so just anchoring us in the mission itself.
First, the post-World War II, rules-based international order, led by like-minded allies and partners has been predicated on a set of norms and principles pertaining to economy, governance and global security. And it has in fact produced unprecedented levels of peace, prosperity and freedom in the world for humans worldwide.
Worldwide living standards have nearly tripled as measured by GDP per capita, gross domestic product per capita, and the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has dropped from 66% to less than 10% since the end of the Second World War.
All creditable to the international rules based order, the number of democratic nations worldwide today has grown from just 17 in 1945 to 90 today and growing.
In recent years, this system has come under new pressures by revisionist parties seeking to supplant the established rules-based international orders to dictate new norms and behaviors on the international community for their own advantage.
The Pacific is vitally and principally important to U.S. deterrence here. And this area of responsibility of INDOPACOM and U.S. Pacific Fleet stretches from the West Coast of the United States to the India-Pakistan order, and from the Arctic to Antarctica is the area of responsibility for U.S. Pacific fleet.
The Indo-Pacific regions home to 36 nations, over 50% of the world's population, four to five of the world's largest economies, seven of 10 of the world's largest military, and five of the world's a nuclear weapons nations. And the region itself accounts for 60% of the globe’s current GDP and contributes to more than two-thirds of global growth worldwide.
Trade and investment in this dynamic region are absolutely vital to the future security and the future prosperity and well-being of the citizens of the United States of America. And in fact, also of all the partners with whom we are joined.
As the U.S. Pacific Fleet commander, my responsibility is to provide a maritime maneuver force, capable of planning, directing and enabling the full spectrum of naval operations in concert and interdependently with the Joint Force and alongside our allies and partners here in the region. And we must, in order to execute this, understand the capability, the intent, and our adversaries’ cognition.
For deterrence, in order to be effective, it must be credible, and by that, I mean it must be underpinned by the absolute unquestioned capability to thwart that aggression. In summary deterrence equals our capability, our intent, and our adversaries’ cognition of both of the above.
And this area, as one of my predecessors, Admiral Harry Harris would say, the area is from Hollywood to Bollywood and from polar bears to penguins.
What a huge distance that is, that tyranny of distance really means that we've got to overcome that tyranny in time and space to execute maneuver warfare in all domains, at speed and at range, to project power and at the speed of light and at the speed of thought in many cases.
So here at specific, we're looking forward to translating the research and development of the entire scientific community, between government, between industry, between universities. From Project Overmatch as well as in JADC2 - joint all domain command and control - in network warfare against the adversaries of the United States.
Project Overmatch, which we discussed thus far fairly fully, generates decision advantage for our commanders, so that the United States Navy sees, thinks and operates faster than anybody else, and by United States, maybe I really should be saying United States Naval forces – the Navy, the Marine Corps and the U.S. Coast Guard.
So as the Navy's plans to modernize its network capabilities, creates a meta-network construct, providing granular level battle space detail and battle space awareness that is unmatched now and will remain unmatched and grow at faster rates as the technology matures, and importantly as the sailors, Marines and coast guardsmen themselves learn to employ this for decision advantage just now and in the years to come.
Both Project Over-Match and join all domain C2 are the path to dramatically minimizing the amount of time the Joint Force Commanders need to make decisions by distilling all the necessary operational environment details into easily consumable, easily digestible format, enabling us services to work jointly to deliver precision, valid payloads and effects at maximum efficiency.
JADC2 belongs to war fighters with a capability to seamlessly information share also with partners.
Artificial intelligence is the common thread in JADC2, and space, cyber, space, cyber, EW, information warfare must be baked in at every particular level.
Earlier, Admiral Gilda spoke about the recent integrated battle problem, which we conducted here in U.S. Pacific Fleet here in April with Third Fleet and Carrier Strike Group 3. We conducted a Fleet Unmanned Systems Integrated Problem off the coast of San Diego to demonstrate really how multi-domain unmanned systems will team with manned systems to enhance our warfighting capabilities throughout the fleet throughout the maritime services.
Here at Pacific Fleet, we're generating war-finding advantages by integrating multi-domain man and unmanned into the most challenging operational scenarios above the sea, on the below the sea, in fact, beyond the sea.
Unmanned systems alongside the naval force will give the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Coast Guard, the advantage we need to fight to win and to deter potential aggressors.
Later on this summer, we will participate profoundly in the large-scale exercise with the United States Fleet Forces Command and with U.S. Naval Forces, Europe Africa. This exercise will advance our war fighting capabilities by employing dynamic operations in a simulated contested environment through the integration of joint forces across across across combat commands.
To continue this momentum, we have to work with our allies and our partners. All of which in our AOR here in the Pacific to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific.
And to use our asymmetric advantage, and our asymmetric advantage are our partnerships. Working with a common commitment to upholding the international rules-based order and operating within.
In conclusion before opening up to questions, I want just continue to urge all of our partners on this net and beyond in universities or research in industry and in government, to prioritize research development and fielding of emerging and advanced technologies that not only advanced the science, but also advance the art of naval warfare for today and tomorrow's fight.
Warfare is at its essence a human enterprise. The character of warfare changes, but the nature never does. Human decision-making is the goal of warfare, and there is an art element of it. The zenith of our research is that which uses the science to advance the art of influencing human decision-making.
So calling on all FFRDCS, university affiliated research centers, government partners, to integrate our investments and our innovations to help build a force that's more effective in a daily competition, but underpinned by a lethal and effective and timely force that is ready to credibly fight and win future conflicts.
So these are just a few words to just start us out, to prime the pump for the questions, in my humble opinion, I think it's our discussions that ultimately will yield the most results out of this hour that we have together.
So I'd like to welcome Ward Carroll, old friend of mine from the U.S. Naval Institute; a fellow, Top Cat guy from back in the day, to facilitate the questions from the audience while you get us going, so teammates with that over Ward.
Adm. Samuel Paparo
30 June 2021
30 December 2021