Good afternoon, everyone and welcome.
It is absolutely an honor to be back in the halls of our Navy’s “home of thought” a prestigious institution charged with educating, training, and inculcating the future leaders of our naval forces.
Rear Admiral Walker, thank you for that warm introduction and thanks to you and your team for opening the War College’s doors as I unveil our Fleet’s newest strategic guidance the United States Navy Fighting Instructions.
As the intellectual minds who will one day lead our naval, joint, allied, and interagency organizations it was important for me to make this my first stop.
To all our students in the audience and here at the War College congratulations on your selection to attend this incredible school – the very same institution over which the world’s most influential naval strategist, Alfred Thayer Mahan presided.
In the same vein, let me continue by acknowledging your exceptional network of professors and staff.
Your time at Newport – the long hours, late nights, and big thinking to sharpen our cognitive advantage – would not be possible without those who so selflessly pour themselves into your education.
On behalf of our entire United States Navy team, and our allied navies around the world, I am deeply grateful for what you do.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to acknowledge my predecessors, the ones who bore the weight of this office and the tremendous responsibility to define, develop, and deliver a Navy capable of fighting and winning our Nation’s wars.
From Greenert’s Sailing Directions to Richardson’s Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority and our previous two CNOs’ Navigation Plans each of those leaders deeply understood the challenges of their time.
In their own moments of consequential leadership, these CNOs laid out their own strategic guidance to the Fleet meaningfully moving the needle on our Navy’s readiness to get after our most pressing challenges.
Each offered the right plans, at the right time, to sustain our combat readiness, while directing the future force design and service concepts of our all-domain Fleet.
But, today we find ourselves operating in an era with other Great Powers, an era in which the speed of decision ruthlessly punishes delay.
Therefore, it’s in these complex times that we must evolve our strategy once more rapidly responding to new leadership direction, technological advances, asymmetric attack vectors, and systemic industrial base challenges.
Despite these many obstacles, an undeniable truth continues to persist that the requirement for a strong, resilient, and globally present Navy has never been more important to our Nation’s defense.
A lethal, resilient, and agile Navy that can swiftly respond to emerging crises, diffuse asymmetric threats, and engage across a wide variety of missions, contingent to sustained operations at sea.
We must organize, train, and equip our forces to deliver peace through strength and preserve our national security interests while standing ready to deter those who would challenge our way of life.
As such, we are calibrating our sights, refining our course, and transforming our approach to get after our Navy’s most consequential challenges with an enduring set of scalable concepts.
Just as our Navy once navigated transformational periods of change from the Age of Sail to the Age of Steam and the Age of Nuclear Propulsion and Power Projection we must once again navigate an unprecedented period of convergence the Age of Competitive Innovation.
This past year alone we’ve stood witness to the tides of global disruption the decades long global security environment continuing to erode, our list of pacing threats continuing to grow and our adversaries evolving in technological sophistication and brazen ambition.
Whether it’s by way of grey-zone tactics, the militarization of foreign industrial bases, or the unlikely integration of state and non-state actors the United States Navy must similarly adapt our theory of victory to combat each of these regional and existential threats.
And, while all these factors continue to shape the strategic laydown of the Fleet around the globe, our Nation continues to navigate our own decisive rip currents at home.
The once formidable arsenal of democracy that enabled our forces to sweep seamlessly across European and Pacific theaters of war continues to lag well below contracted demand and by my assessment, lacks sufficient creativity, adaptability, and vision.
Years of deferred maintenance and investments have reduced our shipyards, munition factories, and naval installations to hollow shells of their once great capacity and scale.
But all is not lost.
For the first time in my career, from the Oval Office and Capitol Hill to the halls of the Pentagon, to and perhaps most important, the American people our Nation’s leadership is aligned on the enduring importance of delivering a resilient and responsive defense industrial base.
The indicators are clear President Trump and Secretary Phelan’s Golden Fleet Initiative signal that a dominant United States Navy is the world’s surest guarantee of peace.
Secretary Phelan means it when he says, and I fully agree that there is no future fight the Navy isn’t in – as an integral part of the main effort.
To this point, Secretary Phelan often conveys the well-regarded saying by Alfred Thayer Mahan, “ to be a superpower, one must be a seapower.”
There should be no doubt that the strength of our nation depends on the strength of our Navy.
Like my predecessors, I take that statement seriously – with my priorities and my actions.
With every ounce of resolve in my being, I am moving at warp speed to follow through on that promise for you and our Nation.
Because, as long as I’m CNO I will do anything and everything necessary to ensure we never enter a fair fight and that our country will never lose.
Which is why I am with you today.

Since joining the Navy in 1985, I have been on a journey of continuous learning. It hasn’t always been linear, but the ups and downs between then and now have sharpened my perspective and honed my understanding.
Consider any problem of consequence.
To achieve a solutions-oriented approach, we can only drive progress by first rigorously assessing the current state of affairs.
In that assessment, comes the discovery of a problem that can only be addressed by some form of innovation – a new way of thinking about the problem set drivers.
Only by approaching the problem with honesty and rigor, can we action the necessary framework to bring that solution to bear.
This process is contingent on a willingness to be intellectually honest with ourselves – and in our assessments – tensioning the system to gain traction along the right trajectory, and hit our target on the mark.
The same school of thought has been applied to the U.S. Navy Fighting Instructions, which in their simplest form are designed to provide a conceptual framework for modern warfare - delivering homeland defense, sustaining our global network of deterrence, and preserving our national prosperity.
It forms my overarching guidance that outlines which investments matter most, the asymmetric capabilities we need to forge, how those capabilities should be packaged and certified, to what extent can those ensembles operate autonomously, and finally, the requisite levels of technical mastery that will enable our Sailors to fight and win across all time horizons.
As such, the U.S. Navy Fighting Instructions is our Navy’s answer to the daunting question that will define modern naval warfare for decades to come:
“How do we ensure we can fight and win across the spectrum of conflict, under conditions we cannot entirely predict against adversaries who are increasingly capable, innovative, and aggressive at near parity levels simultaneously in key areas of vital national interest around the world?”

To get after this problem statement, it was important for me to take a step back and to understand what services and capabilities our Navy uniquely provides, and to which stakeholders?
As CNO, I have a lot of jobs, but from my perspective in the E-ring, perhaps at the top of the list is the need to communicate the value proposition of why our Navy matters – to the Joint Force and to the Nation. A need to develop a deep understanding across all Navy stakeholders.
I believe that idea shapes the core of any organizational strategy, which comes down to defining, highlighting, and conveying our differentiated value.
In short, our differentiated value provides the overarching framework for the Fighting Instructions to launch from.
So, what is our differentiated value?
From the perspective of the American people:
Our Navy assures homeland defense from seabed to space ensuring our lawful sovereignty over natural resources and protection of our shores against foreign and domestic threats all of which spans across a whopping 4.5 million square miles of exclusive economic zones.
We deliver global stability and deterrence whether it’s our carrier strike groups or ballistic missile submarines or our grey hulls on the horizon that symbolize hard military power we keep sea lines of communication open to stimulate our economy, preserve our national prosperity, and bolster our wealth.
With nearly 70% of trade moving by sea the daily presence of our Navy around the globe ensures that Americans can live, work, buy, sell, and trade with confidence and stability.
From the Joint Force’s perspective, we provide seven indispensably unique missions. We deliver:
Sea control and sea denial
Maritime security
Tailored and combat-credible deterrence
Global replenishment across contested environments
Freedom of maneuver,
And, power projection over the horizon with precision and mass.
The bottom line is this, no other Navy no other Joint or Combined Force in the world can do what we do.
The outsized contributions we deliver across the spectrum of conflict is what separates us from our allies and partners and that same value is what will ensure our place as the world’s preeminent fighting force for decades to come.
Once you understand why our Navy matters, only then can you define what our Navy must deliver. Further, it ensures that our resources are prioritized and executed to never lose the “special sauce” that our differentiated value provides.
Which, in turn, is the answer to our problem and by way of the Fighting Instructions takes the form of the core implementation concept - a full-spectrum Hedge Strategy.
As my thinking has evolved over the last several years, it has become pointedly clear to me that our Navy’s approach to our theory of combat could no longer be based on capability overmatch, setting theater conditions with impunity, and winning by mass dominance alone.
Under the constraints of an ever-lowering cost of entry and the proliferation of asymmetric capabilities coupled with simultaneous peer conflicts the Nation needs a Navy that can hedge tailored solutions aggressively, innovate continuously, fight distributively, and command with clarity across the global network of complex battlespaces and domains.
This Hedge Strategy will be implemented through a set of initiatives, some new and some familiar, that combine to enable a fleet that can learn, adapt, and counter our adversaries by optimizing and force multiplying our differentiated value.
These include:
Blunting adversary advantages with our own innovations or what we’re calling Tailored Offsets, which are organized into Tailored Forces.
Ensuring we make the best use of our units in off-cycle force generation through Combat Surge Ready certifications as part of the Global Maritime Response Plan.
An Enhanced Mission Command Framework defining how we command forward.
Delivering and making good on the recently released Navy Warfighting Concept – which is tied inextricably to the Joint Warfighting Concept.
And, designing and implementing a new Navy Deterrence Concept that works hand in glove with the Warfighting Concept to improve our global posture, enhance our campaign objectives, and strengthen our ability to shape competitor behaviors – decision calculus and the respective battlespace.

In its most rudimentary form, the Hedge Strategy accepts fiscal, industrial, and operational realities – and still demands a Navy that is lethal, agile, responsive, and flexible.
It balances cost-effective, scalable, risk-worthy mass with the most advanced multi-mission platforms we can build and sustain while taking stock in the likelihood of pacing scenarios and the severity of risk that’s attached.
When you consider the unique capabilities, our Navy already provides, you’ll notice hedges are prevalent in almost everything we do:
Navy Special Forces and Special Operators, less than two percent of our forces, are our Nation’s hedge against low intensity and irregular warfare threats.
Our Ballistic Missile Submarines and E-6B Mercuries, less than six percent of the Navy, the pinnacle of our Nation’s nuclear triad, is our hedge against nuclear conflict and strategic attack.
Our global network of Allies and partners are our enduring hedge when our resources and presence are constrained.
And when crisis erupts or conflict breaks out, the Navy is the Joint Force’s ultimate hedge – able to move fast, stay forward, and deliver sovereign options from the sea.
We flow forces on a moment’s notice off the coast of foreign shores, to the waters of the Middle East, to the frigid icecaps below the North Pole, and across the expansive waters of the Pacific.
No matter the scenario, our differentiated value allows us to be anywhere in the world, full-up round and ready to go, in a matter of two weeks.
So, Hedge Strategy is a means of thoughtfully bringing the full weight of our maritime forces to bear providing relevant capabilities for every situation, while ensuring the credibility and efficacy of our differentiated value persists.
However, building a Fleet to cover every pressing scenario is not only cost and risk prohibitive but a disservice to the taxpayer and less effective operationally.
In our rich 250-year history, seldom have we built, designed, and generated a force that was employed exactly as we intended.
If history has taught us anything, it’s that forces designed for high-end warfare are most likely to be employed for low-end scenarios and contingencies.
Whether you build a Navy for high consequence, low probability or low consequence, high probability scenarios in either case you’re left with an over or undersubscribed force that’s sub-optimized to address specific use cases, which may never come to bear.
What Hedge Strategy avoids is a brittle, single-purpose force that is either over-built for the high-end fight and under-used day-to-day or optimized for low end crisis and overmatched when it counts.
This isn’t a one size fits all approach.
By design, the Hedge Strategy is intended to be a force multiplier to our general-purpose forces working in concert with the Sailors and platforms of our traditionally manned fleet.
And I fully acknowledge the need for a bigger Fleet.
The President and the Secretary of the Navy share that same sentiment – as evidenced by the recent announcement of the Golden Fleet initiatives.
But, the challenge becomes determining where to snap the chalk line how much of each force element is truly enough?
That is what Hedge Strategy aims to do. It buys down risk in some areas, shifts risk to others but in the end it unabashedly embraces risk to tip the scales in our advantage.

To achieve this end, we must buy, field, and posture, ready capabilities Tailored Forces and Tailored Offsets to address specific situations that are too consequential to ignore but too unlikely to drive our overall fleet design.
As a whole, Tailored Forces and Tailored Offsets are scalable formations that manage risk, expand mass, force multiply, improve response options, and preserve our combat advantage.
Tailored Forces are the composite packaging of Tailored Offsets certified to address specific missions, in particular regions.
They include general purpose units from the main battle force - surface combatants, patrol aircraft, and submarines – for deployment and command and control.
Whether it’s conducting anti-submarine warfare in the North Atlantic clandestine mine warfare across critical chokepoints like the Straits of Hormuz or supporting fires in a Taiwan Strait scenario tailored forces with tailored certifications will allow our Navy to hedge against the likelihood of any threat, in any theater, without constraining our force design around a single pressing scenario.
Tailored Offsets are systems and platforms that are the easiest to adapt and combine in ways that address these high-consequence, low-probability situations, while improving lethality at better levels of acceptable risk.
They are capabilities like:
Attritable and easily replenishable USVs
MUSVs designed for scouting, screening, and striking
UUVs for water space denial, survey, and mine warfare
And, low-cost, high-volume interceptors for counter-drone defense
Together, these tailored capabilities will amplify and complement the main battle force through lethal outputs that are scalable, deployable, adaptable, and cost-effective.

While Hedge Strategy focuses on a small set of high-consequence, low-probability scenarios we must also be able to field a fleet that can be a first responder to emerging crises, wherever they occur.
It’s in this respect that every part of our Navy plays an essential role – large surface combatants and main battle forces aren’t going away.
Working together in concert, every tailored capability and every Navy platform will be enabled by and enablers to each other.
That’s where Global Maritime Response Plan and Combat Surge Ready comes into play.
On any given day, the Navy has nearly 100 ships deployed around the world, 100 ships in long-term maintenance, and 100 ships throughout the various cycles of our force generation model.
Through a well-defined and deliberate approach, the Global Maritime Response Plan aims to do more with those 100 ships in the workup and sustainment phases of our force generation model so they can readily flow into conflict.
GMRP provides a scalable plan, empowered by decision support matrices and authority transfer processes to certify and deploy those units when called into action.
As defined through a series of Response Conditions, GMRP ties force generation to indications and warnings of adversary behavior ultimately hedging our bets against deterrence shortfalls while denying adversary opportunism.
GMRP is what, for the first time, defines how to flow the TPFDD in conflict through formal orders and condition-based assessments.
Actively engaged with GMRP is our structure to provide emergent response options for the President through our Combat Surge Ready forces.
CSR is a level of readiness and formal designation for Tailored Forces where each respective Type Commander has certified that a crew and their platform are ready to fight – proving that they can shoot, maneuver, communicate, and defend as the tactical environment and acceptable levels of risk demand.
CSR is what actually optimizes the OFRP.

Now let me shift to the question that ties all of this together: how do we command and control the fight?
My priorities of Foundry, Fleet, and Fight are not abstract ideas — they are a warfighting system. And in the next conflict, that system will be tested under pressure, at speed, and under fire.
The environment we are sailing into will be contested from the opening minute.
Communications will be disrupted. Space and cyber will be under attack. And, the enemy will try to fracture our kill chains, slow our decisions, and isolate our forces.
In that kind of fight, we cannot afford a Navy that waits for permission. We will operate with forces ranging from unmanned systems at the edge to submarines forward to Carrier Strike Groups maneuvering at scale.
The only way to fight effectively across that span is to ensure that every force element — at every level — can sense, synthesize, decide, and act fast enough with confidence to achieve Commander’s Intent.
That’s why, to fight at the timing, tempo, and synchronization demanded by the Hedge Strategy, the Navy will implement an Enhanced Mission Command Framework.
Mission command cannot be something we fall back on when networks fail. Mission command must be how we prepare, practice, and fight – all the time.
The EMCF begins with the assumption that communications will be degraded, contested, or denied — and that our forces must still execute.
So instead of rigid hierarchies and constant reach-back, we will build a Fleet that operates through empowered, self-organizing teams — commanders who understand the mission, own the intent, and act with disciplined initiative.
This is not decentralization for its own sake. This is a modern warfighting imperative.
Enhanced Mission Command gives us a clear way to delegate decision authority across the force — matching autonomy to capability, and authority to the demands of the tactical situation.
Through Delegated Autonomy Levels, we will define what a unit manned or unmanned can do independently — based on its ability to sense the battlespace, synthesize what matters, and deliver effects without waiting for higher headquarters.
Because in the Fight, the unit that can act first wins. And at the end of the day, autonomy is not unlimited. It is designed. It is governed.
It is a function of two things: the tactical conditions a unit faces and the level of risk we are prepared to accept to seize the initiative.
This is how we will command forward. This is how we will fight through disruption. This is how the Fleet will stay aligned, lethal, and fast — even when the enemy is trying to break the system.
The Foundry builds it. The Fleet trains it. And, the Fight demands it.
The Enhanced Mission Command Framework will ensure we are ready not for the last war, but for the one that is coming.

Which brings me to the final input of the Fighting Instructions.
In order to hedge appropriately, this strategy must indeed be guided by authoritative naval concepts.
Last month, I formally signed into action a Navy Warfighting Concept – the Navy’s overarching warfighting approach.
It tells commanders how we intend to fight, where we will accept risk, and where we will not.
And, it conveys a proactive approach that uses the global maritime maneuver space to gain and exploit sea control while imposing sea denial.
The Navy Warfighting Concept is by no means meant to collect dust on a shelf; it is meant to be executed by Fleets, squadrons, and ships at sea and should be alive and well in the minds, planning, exercises, and operations of Commanders at every level.
But if you look at the global disposition of our forces, although warfighting is what we are designed to do, it accounts for only a fraction of our daily operations.
In every domain around the world, our naval forces are actively campaigning in order to deter our adversaries.
I argue that the act of deterrence accounts for nearly 90% of our day-to-day activities.
We have the Navy Warfighting Concept, which defines what and how we fight but importantly, we need a Navy Deterrence Concept that defines who and how we deter.
Because deterrence activities dominate the preponderance of what our forces do day-to-day around the world. The question is: what’s the ROI of our campaigning efforts? Is it working? How do we know? What are the metrics for success?
Of all the white binders in your workspaces, I would wager that there’s not one that gives you a clear, formalized approach to what deterrence at sea really means – it’s an ill-defined practice where the players come and go, yet it defines our operations in nearly everything we do day-to-day.
As the world’s premiere maritime force, we must be eyes wide open and acknowledge that deterrence is an infinite game it’s a concept that to work, must live continuously in the minds of our adversaries and in turn, allow us to shape their behavior to cause a desired effect.
Deterrence is the last and final trip wire to conflict, and the Navy Deterrence Concept takes that responsibility head on.
It will explicitly define who we’re deterring and from what we’re specifically preventing them from doing. It will help us decide where to posture forces, what they should do to shape behavior, and how we need to tune the intelligence community for the feedback necessary to assess our activities.
Bottom Line - the Navy Deterrence Concept is my way of formalizing a deterrence kill chain, defining escalation dominance, and codifying it into doctrine.

Ladies and gentlemen, on my first day in office, I released three priorities: the Foundry, the Fleet, and the way we Fight.
These priorities were a simple but effective way for me to convey my vision to our forces around the world with clarity and focus.
They expound upon Secretary Phelan’s priorities and emphasize the need to view everything we do through an operational lens.
Underpinned by the Foundry, the Fleet, and the way we Fight the United States Navy Fighting Instructions is a transformational framework that will guide us to a more enduring end-state taking us from the “as-is” where capability drives strategy to our final destination, where our strategy drives our force design, our tailored force packages, and an investment trajectory to make every dollar count.
At the center of this vision will always be the United States Navy Sailor. They are our most enduring strategic advantage, our primary weapon system, and the heartbeat of our world-class Navy.
Within each priority, you’ll notice that People our Sailors are the underlying center of gravity.
Every policy we produce, every change we implement, and every strategy we employ revolves around these priorities.
They are the ultimate link within every kill-chain, which guides everything we do and serve as the bedrock of my guidance.

As I begin to close, let me leave you with this.
Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the Father of the Nuclear Navy once said and I quote: “The great end of life is not knowledge, but action.”
He believed that our duty was to act as if the fate of the world depended on us – to live for the future, not for our own comfort or success.
In every ocean around the world our Navy remains at the tip of the operational spear sailing, flying, and steaming at the decisive edge of lethality.
With our Battle-Ready Sailors leading the way, there is no challenge too great or goal out of reach that our Navy won’t meet.
And that’s exactly what these Fighting Instructions aim to do provide our Sailors with a new way to think about our challenges, a new way to leverage the asymmetric advantages, capabilities, and structures to fight and win today, tomorrow, and into an uncertain future.
As Admiral Rickover reminded us, the future belongs to those who act.
Through disciplined execution and a clear-eyed approach, we will honor that charge defending our country, deterring our adversaries, and preserving our place as the most formidable fighting force the world has ever known.
Our Navy requires it. Our Nation demands it. And for the American people, we will follow through — with urgency, discipline, and results.
Thank you.