SECRETARY OF DEFENSE ASH CARTER: Thanks very much, Admiral Stahl. I really appreciate it.
Let me first of all commend the leadership here. I really appreciate it. This has been a terrific visit. You're right. I've been doing this for a long time, but you always learn something. And the one thing I don't need any refresher on is this, and let me start on this note with you.
You make me so proud, and through me, the entire country -- so proud I just can't tell you how magnificent your performance is. I hear it everywhere around the country. I sort of appreciate it, obviously, from your operations which I follow very closely.
I hear it around the world, where people like working with you because -- not only of your capability, but the way you conduct yourselves. So you make the country proud. And you should be proud of yourselves, both for that, and because of the essence of what you do. And that is you protect our country and in many ways protect much of the rest of the world as well.
That's a duty that falls on us because we have a lot of challenges out there in the world. We have a lot of opportunities, too, but we have a lot of challenges out in the world. But there isn't anything in my judgment nobler than you -- that you could be doing with your lives than protecting our people and our world.
Because if you think about it, without that, there's nothing else. And so people who want to wake up in the morning and hug their kids and take them to school and go to work, and live their lives, dream their dreams, they only get to do that if you provide for them security. Without that, none of the rest of life is available to people.
So all -- everywhere you look around you, and this is something that's always in my mind, every time I -- I travel around the country, I just look around and say, "Look at this magnificent place that we protect," and that you protect.
So, your mission is one that you should be, and I'm sure you are, very proud of. And I just think there's nothing better to wake up to every morning and to go to bed to every night than that sense of mission.
We've got our hands full. We have as -- certainly as competitors, we hope never aggressors, countries like Russia and China, which operate relatively high-end capabilities for which we -- and which we're ahead of, but we need to stay ahead. And that's one of the things you do. And I'm very confident in our undersea superiority. It's one of the greatnesses of our military strength.
I'm also confident that we'll retain it in the future, but it's not a birthright. We have to work at it. We have to spend money on it, which we're doing and will do. We have to be innovative in technology. And we have to have really good people. I'm going to get to that part in a minute.
We have old friends like Iran and North Korea who are around kind of year after year in different situations, but also require strength and vigilance on our part. And then, believe it or not, and I can't go into it here, but you even contribute, as probably many people wouldn't have thought of, to another thing we're doing, which is defeating ISIL, which we will do, but you play a role in that as well.
And so those are all the things that are going on right now. Then, of course, it's an uncertain world and we have an almost perfect record of not anticipating what comes next. And so you're an insurance policy against that uncertain future, because you'll be ready and you'll be an awesome capability whatever comes down the road.
I said that's not a birthright. And that leads to two additional things I wanted to say. The first is that continuing to be the best requires us to have a competitive mentality and always to be thinking, always to be innovating, always to be absorbing the newest technology, always to be looking around us outside of our walls, be willing to take ideas, be willing to take technology.
I'm constantly urging people to think outside of our five-sided box. It's not that we don't have wonderful things inside, but we need to recognize that there are wonderful things outside as well. And every once in a while, we're going to learn everything. We're not a company so we can't operate like everybody else in society, but we can learn things from them. And we have to absorb technology because a lot of the technology in the modern world originates outside of our walls. Not all of it, not submarines, but a lot of the electronics that goes in the submarines, for example.
And then the final thing is this. We are and have the finest fighting force the world has even known, principally because of the quality of our people. And attracting good people to follow you, retaining good people like you in the future, is an important responsibility I and the rest of the leadership have.
You are superb. I need to be thinking about 10, 20, 30 years from now, what's going to bring the kid who is just right now a kid or even unborn into the Navy, doing what you're doing with the abilities you have? What's going to keep them in? What, for that matter, is going to keep you in? And that's why I'm always trying to think about making sure that we're reaching into the entire population that some parts of our geography we don't quite get around to because there aren't enough people there and so there aren't enough people who think about military service, and so the kids aren't really tuned in.
We've got to work at that kind of thing. That's why it was important to me, and you have done an excellent job with it here, to have -- welcome women who are qualified into the service. It doesn't make any sense, they're half the population. I've got an all-volunteer force. I need to have access to the entire talent base of the country, so it obviously makes sense.
But there are lots of other things as well, giving you all training opportunities, dealing where we can with issues of family life and its compatibility with military life and all those things that you wrestle with and where you make sacrifices. And we understand that and I don't have any choice in many cases, but I'll minimize them wherever I can and whenever your commanders feel that they can. It only makes sense.
But I don't take it for granted that you're here. I very much appreciated it. You're talented people, otherwise you wouldn't be on these things. And so you have in principle other alternatives, but you stick with it. You stick with it because you love it, I'm sure you love the mission, you love your shipmates, you love your country and there's no better thing to wake up to than that.
But those of us with responsibility for this institution long into the future have to ensure that we leave our successors and our successors' successors as fine a thing as I see in front of me here and behind me back here, and that takes work in a competitive world.
So with that, let me -- I'm happy to take any questions. I gather some folks have some questions here. I'll try to give you good answers for it, but once again, thank you. Make sure your families know how much we appreciate you and the -- the -- the meaning that the country attaches to what you do and the excellence with which you do it.
So question or it can be a comment, also. Comments are fair too, something you think I ought to know that I don't know.
Q: (off-mic.)
SEC. CARTER: With what? I'm sorry. Yes. With -- with career advancement.
Q: (off-mic.)
SEC. CARTER: Yes, absolutely. Well, we are looking at things, and I'll give you a kind of flavor. I can't tell you where we're going yet because we don't fully know and I want to announce things in an appropriate way. But this is part of the force of the future effort that we have had a number of things, family programs, various professional military education programs, things that are intended -- they're aimed really at this recruiting and retaining the very best of American in our military.
And in that connection, I need to look at the way careers advance. Now, we have a system for doing that that works pretty well and has worked pretty well for a long time. And people understand it and it's predictable. At the same time, there are ways in which it is inflexible that may not be best for the force.
And we have now the ability. We have the technology to manage people in a more discriminating way than we have in the past.
So I think we are looking at the way we do things with an eye to improving it. Now, to be quite honest with you, I have the Navy and the Department of Defense in mind. I want to make changes that help us in terms of readiness and in the long term, the quality of the force.
Now, in the short term, I think that may give some individuals, or at least some commanders additional flexibility as well. And that's a good thing. But the honest truth is, it's not that I'm trying to give you flexibility. I'd like to tell you that, but I'd be lying. It's really I want to take advantage of what flexibility offers the force. That's why we're doing it.
And -- but I think there's no -- if we're killing ourselves in some way or limiting ourselves in some way with a one-size-fits-all system, it doesn't make sense. So we're going to look at things like the clock and so forth, and -- and look to make some changes to a system which I need to add, and you're proof of it, overall works incredibly well.
Yes?
Q: (inaudible) -- not enough submarines in the Navy -- (inaudible). How big of a problem is this? And what -- (inaudible)?
SEC. CARTER: Well, the question was we don't have enough submarines to do everything we want to do. And there are going to be fewer of them in the future. So, let me take each of those in turn.
We always wish we had more. That's reality. And we can do what we need to do, those big five challenges that we need to do, with the resources we have. You know, we all wish we had more. Every single combatant commander, every single service chief wishes we had more.
In terms of the -- and I'll get to the future in a minute, in particular for submarines. But just on that general point, the thing that concerns me most is that we're going to have a return to sequester through the collapse of the bipartisan budget agreement. Remember, we get the money. I ask for it, but it's the Congress, if you've read the Constitution, that gives out the money.
And therefore, last year we got something which I was pleading for, and of course there's nothing I can do about it as secretary of defense. I'm not in the Congress and they have lots of factors that go into their decisions that have nothing to do with defense spending. They have to do with overall spending and taxes and how the economy is going and lots of other -- other things.
I do believe that it's a fallacy to think that you can solve the nation's budget problems by cutting the discretionary budget. It just -- the math does not work out, but there's still people who think that, or act as though they think that.
So, we've been hoping, and this did happen last year, that we'd get both parties, everybody in Washington get rid of the gridlock, come together, and give us a multi-year budget that we can plan against.
And they did -- which -- a two-year horizon, which is better than no horizon. And then six months into, it's being questioned. So, you know, I -- I just think that's completely unsatisfactory. And you can't -- we can't do what we need to do without some stability.
Now, the worst part is if we go back -- if this whole thing collapses and next year we go back to sequester. Then I'm really seriously concerned about us being able to do what we need to do.
And with respect to the submarine number specifically, what begins to affect the -- the -- our overall fleet size, as I'm sure you know, and this is a general problem for the Navy in terms of dollars that the country is doing to have to fix, is the commencement of ORP, which takes up a lot of shipyard capacity and a lot of dollars.
Now, the ORP, don't get me wrong, is absolutely essential because it's the nuclear deterrent. It's the critical survivable and enduring peace of the nuclear deterrent. Gotta, gotta, gotta have it. At the same time, we can't short everything else. And I think we all recognize that and understand that.
We've got to keep the size of the submarine fleet, which is represented here, which does other, but also critical missions. So we're watching -- we're watching that very closely. And I -- I -- that's something that we're -- we're favoring this year in the budget and I'm going to predict for you that it's going to be favored in the future.
And the reason isn't that somebody just want to do my opinion or your opinion a favor. It's because I think there's widespread recognition that this is a source of American superiority and we need to keep it. And there's a -- there's a numbers part of that as well as a quality part of that.
STAFF: We've go time for one more question.
Q: Mr. Secretary -- (inaudible). Why are there -- (inaudible)?
SEC. CARTER: Why are there pay differences between single sailors and married sailors? Good question. I mean, in the first case, I'm sure you know this, there isn't a difference in basic pay, but there is a difference in additional pay. Why is that? And I'm going to be honest with you. It's because if I've got a married sailor, I want to retain him or her. And if I've got a single sailor, I've got to retain him or her. And it takes different things.
And we have retention programs aimed at the single as well as the married. But the reality is, I'm competing for talent, and I don't want people to leave. And so I've got to -- I'm trying to do everything I can within limits to make it possible for people to keep doing what they're doing for us, and live the life they're living.
So it's not a matter of somebody gets this and everybody else is entitled to that. People are in different circumstances. And it's a matter of managing quality people. And two people in different circumstances, I manage in a little bit different way. It's the way it is.
All right. Listen, thanks all very much. Once again, so, so proud of you.
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