‘We need a bigger Navy’ — Fleet Forces commander talks ‘Golden Fleet,’ shipbuilding

Thank you so much for doing this. We're sitting here with Admiral Carl Thomas of U.S. Fleet Forces Command

We'll just dive right in. How is Fleet Forces translating CETO Admiral Darrell Cottle's Golden Fleet vision into day-to-day force generation and certification

So certainly Fleet Forces is responsible for manning and training and equipping the fleet, getting them certified, sending them forward to our combatant commands

And the fleet is pretty employed today. And so all those ships that are operating out there at Operation Epic Fury or whether they're down in Fourth Fleet protecting our borders, that's Navy-generated forces that Fleet Forces has created and sent forward

And so that's our main mission is to generate forces. And then as far as the Golden Fleet initiatives that are being unveiled by Secretary of the Navy and CNO, that's about increasing our industrial capacity

That's about being able to build a bigger fleet. There's a lot of demands on the Navy today, and we need a bigger Navy

And that's an effort to try to generate the forces that will allow us to do the mission that we need to do up into the future

You've spoken publicly about the growing importance of cyber and space readiness as tactical priorities

How is that thinking shaping how the Navy trains and deploys forces today

So certainly, as the world changes and we proliferate in space, the amount of sensors that are out there

the ability to hide. There's a premium on maneuver and fortunately the Navy is a maneuvering

force but we also have to be a force that can maneuver in silence and so our training

and the things that we do to prepare ships is oriented that direction We doing a lot of training in a live virtual constructive environment to be able to train the things that maybe we don want to replicate visibly We training our sailors to operate without having to emit and to be lethal in that regard

The battle space is expanding, and so the long-range fires and the way that we target and understand the damage and be able to retarget

that's all the future fight that we do at Fleet Force is to prepare our ships

What are the biggest opportunities to keep the fleet ready and lethal in an increasingly complex security environment

So keeping the fleet ready. I mean, that all comes down to being able to generate the forces, keep them combat surge ready if necessary

And so what we're really trying to accomplish is pull our training further left and have more ships available to go if needed and if called

Not sacrificing the training. The important part of that combined aspect of getting them combat surge ready and being able to go and conduct major combat operations, it's really understanding the quality of the training, understanding how well the sailors can perform, being able to measure and see ourself and be honest with ourself, and then get them trained and certified so when needed they can go

So that's one aspect of it. But then when they come back, being able to turn the ships around and do maintenance in a more effective and efficient manner

And so a lot of effort is going into increasing not only capacity, but the way and the process that we do our maintenance

And when it all comes down to it it about the sailor and the shipyard worker and giving them the tools and the experience that they need to be able to if you a sailor fix your own equipment and if you a shipyard worker keep you on the ship turning wrenches and give them the planning and the detail needed to be really effective when you in that shipyard

Flip side of that same question, what would be some of the bigger challenges or the challenges that you're facing to keep the fleet ready

What might some of those challenges be? So certainly we had gotten very lean in our just-in-time part aspect

aspect. A lot of our suppliers had maybe gone down to single source suppliers. So one of the

challenges we have is having enough spare parts to be able to get all those parts ready when you

come in to do a shipyard availability, have them ready before you start. So there's a supply chain

piece to this. I think there's tremendous opportunity in the world of planning and using

some of the more advanced planning tools to rethink how we figure out critical path when

we're doing maintenance. You know, in the end, it's really about industrial fixing pumps, valves, you know, steel bending it

But more and more, our ships are, you know, IT rich and technically, you know, that's

what makes our Navy the best is, you know, we have the best radars, we have the best weapon systems and the best interfaces. So that IT aspect and that electromagnetic spectrum and

the way we need to win in that environment, the technology is just coming up. So having the

smartest sailors, the sharpest sailors that know how to operate that kind of gear, get the ring

the most out of it and then repair it. That's really where we've got to improve. The Navy's

always trying to outpace adversaries in developing future technologies unmanned surface vehicles autonomous technologies in general are the wave of the future How do you see that future playing out when it comes to fleet forces Yeah so I think we all recognize that

making an unmanned or an autonomous vessel is a great direction to go. I caution us to make sure

that we think about what applications are the most important for those, and those would be the

most dangerous places that you wouldn't want to put a human. Those would be taking advantage of

the extended duration that maybe an unmanned system can provide you, it's a big ocean

It's a big globe. And so sometimes we think about unmanned, and if they're large, you can still make them

unmanned, but unmanned usually isn't unmanned. There usually is a manning component behind it

And so in my mind, it's really about the cost factor. It's how do you make them affordable and scale them enough such that you can have a lot of systems to cover this very large battle space, whether they're sensors, whether they're shooters, and be able to have payloads that can be, you know, C&O talks a lot about containerized payloads

I think that's absolutely right. having containerized payloads you can put on an

Allied partnership that you can move around more quickly to get to the theater and get on the ship

That's the different type of, you know, Tino talks about it as a hedge strategy. That's the different

way we're thinking today than maybe we have in the past. Keep our carriers, our destroyers, our submarines for that

high-end warfighting and be able to use more flexible capability in other

to be able to get on the battlefield where you need those