DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE KATHLEEN HICKS: Yes. So I thought Patrick, I'd just kind of run through the overall trip and the purpose. This is one in a number of engagements where we're really trying to make sure that I can see first-hand what the implications are down range of the warfighter, and of our national construction implementation. So on this trip, that ranges really from how we're looking at this for innovation primarily, but also for the industrial base in terms of shipyards, not unrelated, are people issues and our facilities.
So just really taking it from the innovation side, I think on this trip you'll get to see a lot of the things that we've been trying to focus on in terms of breaking down those stovepipes across the innovation ecosystem, to try to bring together the warfighter with the policy-maker, with the technologists. And so, you'll have CDAO out there. You'll have not only Craig, but quite a number of his team.
You'll get to see, I think first-hand, some of those experimentations and I think we've arranged for the ability for you guys to see some of that at the UNCLASS level. We've done this in a couple other places— CENTCOM- where they're doing a lot of great work. Project Convergence, connected Northern Edge in Alaska, so this is another Northern Edge.
So this is a great opportunity to start to see where we really moving the needle, particularly as it relates to the Joint All-Domain Command and Control. Some folks like to talk about JADC2 as though it’s a “thing” and it's far off and it's not. It's something we're advancing every day. These experiments, the GIDE experiments, are a huge piece of how we're doing that, so we're going to be focused on that.
We'll see our RDER experimentation, which is really focused on the INDOPACOM problem set and the NDS problem set, focused on some of the different capabilities that are important to the joint warfighting concept and then want to see what successes they're seeing there. We're really focused right now on trying to get some of those success cataloged and then transitioned. So being able to see how the warfighters are interacting with that, what was successful, helps me think through… what do we need to help them transition to scale production?
The Shipyard- Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard- largest of our shipyard improvement programs- been through multiple iterations of improvements since the early 1900s of Pearl Harbor- really want to see the workforce challenges, the supply chain challenges, the construction challenges. If we are going to scale up shipbuilding and repair and maintenance, we have to have the facilities and the people to do it.
The people of Hawaii have been incredible partners for us, and we want to make sure with the congressional delegation, who will likely be present for that portion of the trip to make sure we understand how those pieces are all coming together for the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. Those are the big elements of the visit- we’ll do some Red Hill. But let me stop there and turn to you.
REPORTER:(Inaudible)
On this innovation thing, can you map for me how basically years of efforts in DOD to reform how you outreach to nontraditional players, to Silicon Valley, what is the main thing you're looking for out of this week that lets you understand where that entire endeavor is, and how does that specifically relate to the INDOPACOM problem set? To the untrained eye, it looks like, well, there's just ships in planes, because China and Taiwan. So how does working with new innovative concepts at the very basic seed level help with that?
DEPUTY SECRETARY HICKS: Yes. There's a couple of different answers to that. First of all, no one trip, no one initiative is going to solve, "the innovation challenge that we face." It's very all-hands-on-deck. So what you'll see on this trip and what this trip does for me, I'll just take software, as I said, JADC2- it's a huge piece of how we see decisive U.S. advantage, and it’s because we can operate in a joint way. We have the best command and control.
We need to be able to do that. Continue that advantage at the advent of, with the advantage of AI, and we're going to see a lot of how that data enterprise works. A lot of that is software. Those are commercial companies, often nontraditional, but not all nontraditional, that bring solutions that we can use for the department. That's a great major-scale advantage you may know we have a middle-tier acquisition authority called the Software Acquisition pathway.
We're putting billions of dollars into that software acquisition pathway in any given year. This is a good check on how's that going? How are we operating with them? It's a whole different model in terms of the integration and speed. So that's one major area.
More like on the hardware side… there's a lot that's software, but on the hardware side, with RDER, what we're doing is we’re doing applications of specific challenge sets that we know we face in the Pacific theater. And so we'll walk through, I think we'll get to see some examples.
I can't tell you right now which examples they're going to show us of things that have done particularly well, but that's where often times it's small companies who are coming forward who have worked with (inaudible), maybe they've worked with one of the services, or DIU, and they've got this prototype, and we're bringing that into the theater context to challenge a specific scenario, running it through that scenario. And it's supposed to be trying to solve one of the problems that’s critical to the joint warfighting concept.
That's the sort of the narrow lane that (inaudible). It's what are the most important problems and what solutions can we bring to them? So, that's what we'll see there, and hopefully, we'll see some of the solutions that will make clear how we can take something through the system that maybe wouldn't survived in a service-only context or a preferred-scenario context.
REPORTER: Okay. So CDAO, I guess it's been about a year or so. What now is your… not necessarily your biggest takeaway, but your biggest area of concern or energy? I don't know. Like when you look like, okay, it's been doing this. Here's what we must do now with CDAO.
DEPUTY SECRETARY HICKS: Yes. So a major merger is what I would say. So a year ago, we merged together at least three organizations, all of which were doing very important work. All of that work is still needed, but they were less than the sum of their parts. So pulling them all together, getting them kind of operating as one- that's been the project all along. And I think that consists- there's really good innovation still happening in there, but what they've been able to do is put it all together. And these GIDE experiments, I think are one of the most important manifestations of how the data layer, the digital solutions, and the AI potential kind of all come together for them.
So what I'm looking for really from CDAO is to continue to get some synergy out of that, grow as an organization, and be able to deliver this application layer, in particular, what we call the data application layer, to the challenge that we face downrange.
REPORTER: Okay. I don't know what time we're at.
STAFF: We have a few minutes.
REPORTER: Okay. Great. The NDAA- the House just came out with their thing. I know there's a bunch of things or some things we don't want to talk about at this moment, but they are just like weird amendments and some good things and some bad things. It's going to go to the Senate now. What are kind of like the key things that are in it for you that are probably going to pass that are really important?
DEPUTY SECRETARY HICKS: Yes. Right. First of all, thank you for asking.
So by far, our most important priority is to make sure that we have on-time appropriations and very worried about enough poison pills to create a shutdown scenario. And as bad as it could be to have a CR, which we always want to avoid, it would be even worse for the defense of the nation to have a shutdown.
So getting the bills through the system is very, very important to us. That's kind of at the top. Some of the major investments in there, we have a lot of investment in AI, $1.8 billion in there. We have a great deal of shipbuilding investment, other long-range fires, and these (inaudible) that we think can really help to stabilize that feast-or-famine cycle on munitions. We're going to need long-range fires for ourselves, of course. We know we've seen it with Ukraine, for Taiwan, for presidential drawdown authorities. These are also capabilities we know others may want to pull from the United States from time to time.
So we want to really make sure we have those investments in place. Our people investments are incredibly important. We have a pay raise in there between last year in ‘23 and this ‘24 pay raise, about 10% increase for our service members. That's huge. We really want to make sure we can secure that for them. And we've been running a tech debt and an infrastructure debt for a long time. A lot of that is from the long tail of sequestration. We still suffer from that long tail of sequestration and we're digging ourselves back out of that. So anything we can do to continue to get after those investments would be really helpful.
REPORTER: Yes. So on Taiwan, they need asymmetric, these long-range fires, they probably need some other things. Is it fair to say that if you go to a CR or something like that it would hurt the ability of the United States to help Taiwan develop asymmetric deterrence capabilities?
DEPUTY SECRETARY HICKS: I want to say it a little more cleanly than that. Right now, we are hoping to get replenishment authority. We have authority for presidential drawdown. We do not have replenishment to provide it. We are very hopeful that we can get such replenishment. That will be important for us to be able to continue to provide to Taiwan capabilities we think that they can use. I think that's the more accurate way to say that.
REPORTER: All right. Yes. Well, we'll catch up at various points.
DEPUTY SECRETARY HICKS: Thanks for coming along.