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Admiral Vern Clark Remarks
Marine Corps Command and Staff College
Quantico, VA 
November 21, 2001

	Thank you.  Good morning.  Thank you for the kind 
introduction. I appreciate you pointing out that I did get to 
command along the way. I brought a couple of slides to help me 
walk through three or four things that I want to talk to you 
about.  If it's alright, I'd like you to turn on the lights in 
the front end of the auditorium here because the slides are not 
going to be that exciting to look at anyway.

Thank you. Maybe I should go back and get that speech that 
I gave at the War College because it speaks to the heart of what 
I think the big challenges are about. Its speaks to the heart of 
the way I think we all who are wearing the cloth of the nation, 
the uniforms that we put on every morning and I have a few 
people from the interagency here, and that applies to you and 
the way you folks go at it every day also.

We're living in times that try us.  I want to talk about 
that a little bit.  I will tell you that I did not come down 
here to give you the Navy pitch.  If you haven't gotten that 
before today, you're in trouble because you're not going to get 
that here.  I do want to talk about what our nation is facing 
right now and I want to talk about this time in our life.

I think that it's important for us to just focus on the 
investment that the nation is making in you as individuals and 
why you're here.  I will tell you I would give almost anything 
right now for a one year sabbatical.  I was just thinking about 
the book Churchill.  Where's the UK rep?  Somebody here, yeah?  
I was thinking about Churchill and how many important things he 
said and I'm wondering how in the world he had time.  He either 
had an incredible speechwriter or he didn't do anything but give 
speeches and sit and think about giving speeches.

You are being given an opportunity right now to invest in 
your own development and this is something that is enabling you 
to better equip yourself so that you can give your gift to the 
nation.  I just want to camp out on this thought.  This is a 
very important time for you personally.  We know it's an 
incredible time for our nation, but when you get to be my age, 
you sure wish you had nine months or a year to sit down and 
think through a bunch of things again.

So make the most of this opportunity that you're being 
given.  And, of course, one of the great things is you've got 
what is a predominantly Marine Corps audience and the core of 
the group here from the Corps.  You have enough diversity in the 
group that allows you to have people that periodically poke at 
those assumptions.  It's back to the point that you were making. 
So challenging the assumptions is a critical part of being 
a leader in the institution that we serve, that we serve in 
collectively. 

The day I took over as CNO I told the Navy that we were going to 
challenge our assumptions.  If you listen carefully to my 
biography that he laid out, I grew up in the Midwest.  I was 
born in Iowa and grew up in Missouri and Illinois.  I came in 
through OCS, went to school in a place called Evangel College.  
Who in the world expected somebody with that background to rise 
to the office that I'm serving?

Nobody I know of.  When I go back there, I'm a unique visitor.  
There aren't other people from the institution where I went that 
ended up in a place like I have. And who knows what your future 
holds?  The challenge is to be courageous enough to challenge 
the basic things that cause us to align ourselves the way we do, 
and I want to talk about that a little bit. Let's go to the 
first slide.

Ok, the war on terrorism.  I'm going to speak to you more 
as a member of the Joint Chiefs today than I am as the Chief of 
the Navy, although I am going to talk about this with a maritime 
plan.  That's my intent today.

September 11th, where were you?  Where were you when that 
happened?  How long did you stay?  An hour?  I was in my office.  
I had a meeting going on, and you know what we were talking 
about?  The most unexciting topic in the world – the budget.  I 
had a couple of 3-stars in the office and we were going over the 
strategy and laying it out, and the EA came in and said an 
airplane hit the tower in New York.  I had a television in the 
office and sometimes it's on.  I just didn't happen to have it 
on.  He came in a few minutes later.  When the first report came 
in I thought what I think a lot of people thought that day.  How 
in the world did the guy have an accident like that?  I figured 
something happened in the cockpit.  They really didn't know what 
size airplane it was initially.

Then the second one occurred.  The question is: what 
things have changed since September the 11th, and what things 
have endured?  Well certainly one of the things that has changed 
is that our nation truly understands that we are at war.  Think 
back to a little over a year ago, but not quite a year ago when 
it happened to those of us in the United States Navy.  We have 
experienced USS COLE.  We understood that we were in a new 
regime.

Think back a little bit farther.  If you look at the 
assumptions that the terrorists are making, go back to the 
attacks on the embassies in East Africa.  Go back to that point.  
Now what changed with the attacks on the two embassies in East 
Africa?  Somebody tell me, what rules have changed?

When I came into the Navy and we were doing the War 
College thing, our strategy was built around the fact that we 
are an island nation.  We depended on being an island nation for 
our own defense.  We felt a sense of isolation and protection 
because we were a long way away from everybody.

In East Africa, something else happened with regard to how 
terrorists decided they were going to take on their enemy.  
Anybody got a thought on what that might have been?  Were there 
any casualties? What about that?  Let's zero down.  Prior to 
that point in time, we did not see terrorists being willing to 
conduct an attack that took out a lot of innocents.

In fact in East Africa, we saw that change.  Well, what 
happened on September the 11th is that the general population of 
the United States got to see this in a real and different way.  
We have collectively come to understand that we really are at 
war.

The second point, we have realized a kind of unity that we 
haven't seen in years.  This is not just a United States unity.  
We have sensed a global unity of purpose that is unprecedented 
in the time that I've been serving.  We have, as I understand, 
24 nations that are part of your curriculum here.

We have seen a realization globally that we are dealing 
with a new and different kind of a threat and that the rules are 
going to have to change some for us if we're going to defeat the 
kind of enemy that we're facing today.  

I said I'm not going to give you a Navy pitch, but I do 
want to talk about the issue of operating from the maritime 
domain.  What are the principles that we just assume and take 
for granted when we talk about enduring naval roles?  As a 
member of the service that operates from the maritime domain, I 
need to think anew about what I believe about the naval mission.
When I was a lieutenant, I worked for a guy named Harry 
Train.  Some of you may remember that name.  He was a unified 
CINC with SACLANT and CINCLANT and LANTFLT.  Harry Train told to 
me that all of us experience life and we become functions of the 
perspective that we get, that we have in life.  Our experience 
really controls what we believe about things.

That's why sometimes when we are dealing with operational 
challenges members of different services see things through a 
different set of filters.  So Marines see things differently 
than guys that ride around on ships.  Why would that be?  Well, 
I think it's pretty clear, a Marine that has to put his or her 
boots on the ground sees life differently than somebody who is 
on a ship and is facing the challenge in a different way.

 One of my perspectives that I wanted to mention comes 
from spending seven years in the 90s in joint jobs.  I'm a joint 
guy.  When the invitation comes to come down here to Quantico, I 
don't pass this one by because I'm a true believer in joint 
service.  As you mentioned, I was in the Crisis Action Center 
during Desert Shield/Desert Strom and I was actually the 
nighttime director, which is a 30-minute speech though I'd love 
to tell you about some time because you never know if you're 
going to get a chance to do something like that or not.
But I took this experience away from the second major job 
I had on that staff, that was the J3, that the world we live in 
today, the most challenging thing that we face when we try to go 
into the far corners of the earth is the ability to get a 
foothold and influence events.  

My conviction is that the seapower part of this is all 
about operating from the maritime domain.  It is about being 
able to project power and to get a foothold in somebody's nation 
so that you can influence events.  What I believe is that one of 
the reasons that September the 11th is going to reinforce the 
requirement for forces in the maritime domain is because of 
their mobility, speed and agility.  It is about the ability to 
take the sovereignty of our nation.  I don't want to pass over 
those of you who are from other nations, but I'm speaking as an 
American citizen.  It is about our ability to take the 
sovereignty of the United States of America to the far corners 
of this earth.

It is about whether another nation will allow us to 
operate in their domain as opposed to the international domain.  
One of the biggest challenges that we have faced in putting our 
operations together in Afghanistan has been our ability to get a 
foothold in places where we can operate.

I believe that September the 11th is going to reinforce to 
the nation and to those of us wearing the uniform that our 
investment in forces that can operate in the maritime domain is 
very important.  

The Secretary of Defense challenged the military.  By the 
way, he's been challenging the military since he took over.  
You've read about that evolution through QDR and the development 
of the defense planning guidance.  You've read probably about 
the long meetings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and you've even 
probably read that there was periodically some disagreement 
about the way we ought to proceed or maybe you've read that the 
group is just one big happy family.  I'm not sure exactly what 
you've picked up out of the media. 

But General Jones and I were talking about the issue of 
how we will deal with the terrorist threat.  What did the 
President say to us? The President said we're going to find 
them, we're going to root them out, we're going to keep them on 
the run, and we're going to destroy this enemy that has every 
intention of destroying us.  Now the question is, how are you 
going to do that?

Here at the Marine Corps University, you are now going to 
the staff college at a remarkable time.  This is a great 
opportunity to do head stretching exercises.  How are we going 
to do what the President said we need to be able to do?
That's the challenge to us, how are we going to do it? 
 
Donald Rumsfeld said we are going to challenge all of the 
assumptions. Well since six months or so before he was here, I 
was saying the same kind of things about the United States Navy.  
It was real hard for me to be anything but in total agreement 
with his challenge to us that we had to make sure that we were 
building this house on the right foundation.

When General Jones and I sat down and started talking 
about how are we as a United States military going to keep this 
enemy on the run, it became clear to us that the maritime forces 
are going to be called on more than in the past because you 
can't keep an enemy on the run.  We all know what his 
intelligence apparatus is all about right?  We're talking about 
a network that does not have a DIA,  a network that does not 
have a CIA.  So, what's their intelligence apparatus built upon?  
Human intelligence, what else?  News media, what else?  
Internet, ok.  So the disclosures that are out in the 
international domain are the pieces that they are using to 
provide their own intelligence.

As General Jones and I were talking about this, the key 
issue is how you keep them on the run.  It's hard to keep an 
enemy on the run if you're disclosing every move that you're 
going to make, isn't it? So the tactical question here is how do 
you posture yourself so that you can deal with this enemy 
without giving away every move that you need to make to 
accomplish a mission.

We thought immediately of our ability to initially 
respond.  On the Navy side of the house, we had consistency.  We 
were operating off of both coasts.  We happen to have carrier 
quals going on off the east coast and we also had the same thing 
going off of San Diego. 

Boom, immediately put some fighters on there, within five 
hours the carrier was headed towards New York and then planes 
were flying on, and cruisers were out there.  

Within one day New York asked us for the hospital ship 
COMFORT and we were off and running.  So that was the initial 
response. The question for us will be how we posture in the 
future.  How will we sustain these kinds of operations?  What is 
it going to take for the United States Marine Corps and the 
United States Navy to keep the enemy on the run?   

When we went to Newport we talked to the audience about 
the requirements for us to challenge how we were going to 
execute our mission, the heart of what I wanted to talk to you 
about this morning.  I don't think that our fundamental mission 
in the United States Navy has changed.  Sea control is still 
going to be required.  It's all about power projection and our 
ability to reach.

My view is about speed, it's about agility, it's about 
reach, and it is about being able to take our sovereignty any 
place we want to take it, the sovereignty of the United States 
of America.  It is about being able to dominate an enemy.  The 
question for us is how do we package our forces in the future so 
that we can meet the missions that the President has laid out 
for us.  Keeping an enemy on the run, destroying an enemy who 
fully intends to destroy us. 

How do we package the force and do we have it packaged 
today? What will we need?  What can we do better so that we can 
be better postured to deal with it?  How long is it going to 
take?  Is it something we ought to plan on for six months, is it 
a two-year thing or is it a five year plan?  What is it?

These are the questions for the applied brain power of 
people like you who are going to be commanding in the future.  
You wouldn't be here if you weren't going to be commanding in 
the future.

These are the questions that we need to be able to answer 
in the United States military.  Do we build this idea of global 
terrorism and what about the conventional threats that we have 
grown up thinking about and dealing with?  How do we divide our 
focus between this, the new threat that we started really 
looking at on September the 11th and what you've been dealing 
with your whole life as a member of the United States military.
Again, it seems to me that we must at least recognize the 
potential limitations that we have on us as the United States 
military. If we are always limited by our ability to reach and 
touch a potential target or deal with a geographical area that 
we're relying upon another nation to be able to execute the 
tasking of the National Command Authority, it seems to me that's 
having a limitation that our leadership in this administration 
is not going to want to be constrained by.

Therefore, it seems to me that we must be thinking about 
how we apply forces in the international domain.  I've talked 
about the maritime part of this and what might be the other part 
of it?  What is another domain that will be open to us if we can 
utilize it?  Space.   

Well, here's the challenge for you and the challenge for 
us on the Joint Chiefs.  When you sit down and you do your 
strategic analysis and tactical analysis and your instructors 
are already asking about these kinds of points, aren't they?  
These are the questions that they want you to answer and then 
you put forth your proposed plan of action. I'm certainly not 
going to spend time delving into this.  I'm not going to answer 
these questions for you.  But part of the head stretching 
exercises that you're in down here in Quantico, part of this 
whole exercise, is for you to think and spend some real quality 
time thinking about this as a challenge of this enemy.
Knowing what they're about and then knowing what we can do 
to deal with that enemy.  Think about the whole issue of 
synergy.  It's interesting how pop words come and go.  The 
asymmetric term now is on everybody's list, isn't it?  It 
strikes me though that the principles of asymmetric warfare are 
really not new.  

Let's first start with every commander who has ever 
committed his or her forces to action should have been thinking 
about the asymmetry. I would suggest that everyone who has ever 
been successful has been doing this for years because what this 
is really all about is simply knowing their strengths, knowing 
their limitations, knowing our strengths, knowing our 
limitations.  Because wherever we are as a force, we always have 
those, don't we?  We always have strengths and regardless of how 
good we are we also have weaknesses. 

So every commander who is worth their salt has always been 
trying to piece those together and seek out the asymmetry to 
figure out how to maximize their own advantage while maximizing 
the disadvantage of a potential enemy.  That's what knowing the 
enemy as well as yourself is still all about.  It is still about 
knowing that enemy well enough to be able to exploit the things 
that are available for us to exploit.

Now, we read the papers.  I'm not going to make any 
disclosures about things that are going to go on in the future.  
That's not my job down here today.  But I read the paper just 
like you.  So I'm reading the paper and it sure looks to me like 
the Marines are getting ready to roll into action.  Now again, 
I'm not confirming it or denying it.  We can read between the 
lines.  Are we just drilling holes in the ocean? I don't think 
so.

So that means that if any of this reporting is true that 
we're reading about in the media, if their sources are anywhere 
close to being accurate, it means that there are some people up 
there working those first two points very hard.  Trying to 
figure out and make sure that they understand who that enemy is, 
to understand what their strengths are, what the weaknesses are, 
what strengths we're going to bring to bear, what limitations 
we're going to have in the process. 

And trying to find the asymmetry so that we can make sure 
that we can be successful.  We define success as winning on the 
battlefield. Knowing the battle space, what does this mean for 
us in the future?    I talked about what the enemy's intel 
apparatus is about.  You know it seems to me that one of the 
biggest challenges for us in the future is sorting out how to 
know the battle space.  If we think about the war on terrorism, 
then we've got to think about the conventional path that we are 
going to get in the future. 

One of the biggest challenges that we face is how do we 
assimilate all the tasks that are coming to us today?  This 
particular leadership team in Washington is convinced that one 
of the things that we have not exploited effectively is getting 
all of the information to the war fighter on the point. 
I will tell you that it is exciting to hear the things 
that are developing, new tactical approaches, the rapid turning 
of information in the battle space.  What's going on out there.  
I can't talk about it in an unclassified event, but I'll tell 
you it is moving so fast that it is incredible.

The challenge for you, the challenge for me, is to figure 
out how to sort out data and how to pull out the real key 
elements out of the incredible rush of data that's going to be 
coming at you as a commander – and figuring out how you are 
going to turn data into knowledge so that you can then do one 
and two and then exploit the things that are available to you.  
Knowing the battle space is a bigger challenge to us.  For those 
of us in the naval service, this is a challenge for us because 
if we believe in jointness and I spent seven of those ten years 
of the 90s in joint assignments so I believe in jointness.  This 
is an area where I believe that the Navy Marine Corps team has 
got to do better as a team in building the apparatus for the 
future so that we are not only going in principle and in theory, 
but that in the command and control side of the house.  First of 
all, we're using resources smartly and effectively, and second 
we're giving commanders on the point not just data, but we're 
giving them the knowledge to win.

That leads me into the command and control question.  I 
want to really want to focus on the interagency questions.  We 
are all functions of our perspectives.  What you are going to 
get a good dose of is the force of the interagency coordination 
and development.  But let me just point the one thought out here 
as we talk about this general area.

I think it's becoming common knowledge that we are going 
to have to become more effective in this area called information 
operation, if we're going to win the battle of the future.  Now, 
let's talk about how we make that a reality.  This experience 
doesn't work well if you don't have members from the interagency 
in it.  So that's one of the reasons that they are all here.  I 
look now to the left and I see some of you in civilian suits and 
your role here is vital to the development of the whole group.  
When we are seeking kinetic solutions, we don't see the need for 
the development of the interagency thing.

I will tell you, as a former J3 and then as the director 
of the joint staff, having been through a few situations in the 
last few years, including the deals with Iraq and Kosovo and 
Desert Shield and Desert Storm back to the early 90s, I can tell 
you that we yet did not know how to put together in this town an 
information operation plan that is effective and gets the job 
done.  We don't know how to do that yet and it would be my hope 
that a good part of your development here would be the exposure 
to people in the interagency that would help us move down the 
road in this area because we're not there.  We're still 
struggling with this and making it work today.

What kinds of things am I talking about?  I'm not just 
talking about data streams.  What I am talking about are things 
like this: a head of state deciding that they're going to make 
an announcement about their participation in the war on 
terrorism and our current activity in Afghanistan.  How do we as 
a nation, as a community of nations working together in the 
global war on terrorism, how do we put together the apparatus 
that allows us to exploit the full utility of that kind of 
commitment from the nation so that it has the impact that it 
needs to have against the terrorists?

I will tell you we do not have an apparatus that allows us 
to share, coordinate and combine that information between 
nations and between the agencies so we optimize or maximize the 
effects of a lot of the actions that are going on out there on 
the warfront. Ok, at the end of the day is the last bullet, and 
this is a challenge for us wearing a uniform.  In the maritime 
service, our product is credible combat power forward.  That's 
what the Navy Marine Corps team is all about.  It's not about 
combat power forward.  You know that's an entirely different 
thing than credible combat power.  And it's not about combat 
power in Quantico, Virginia or at Fort X, Y or Z.  For us in the 
naval service, we are about credible combat power forward. 
If those newspaper articles are correct about what the 
United States Marine Corps might be doing in the coming days, it 
will be about their ability there, not their ability back here 
in CONUS.  It will be about their ability to project power and 
sustain power, combat power, there on the point.  

The issue for us is how are we going to posture that force 
in the future?  And now I'm talking to you about our business.  
How do we deploy?  How do we package this force?  How do we put 
it together?  Do we have the ratings right between service X and 
service Y and the Air Force and the Army?  Where are the 
shortfalls?  What's the priority list that people with a good 
head on their shoulders are going to think through so this 
nation can represent itself in this war on terrorism. 
What is it going to take for us wearing the uniform to 
respond to the tasking of the National Command Authority and get 
the job done in the far corners of the earth?  

I'll never forget the day after the attacks when President 
Bush came over to the Pentagon and he called the Chiefs together 
and the Service Secretaries together.  The event took place on 
Tuesday.  On Monday, I was with the President in the Navy Yard 
when the head of State from Australia was there and my 
counterpart.  We did a presentation and the Australian CNO and I 
filed a joint MOU on a submarine operation.  One of those things 
you think about, the four of you standing in the living room, 
kibitzing about what you're going to do that morning, and this 
is a big thing for our two nations coming together.

Then the next morning the attacks occurred and the next 
afternoon the President comes to the Pentagon.  He said to me, 
"Vern, can you believe that 36 hours ago we were standing in the 
Navy Yard and everything was fine?  Isn't it something?"  And 
then he sat down and went around the room and he said the words 
that changed our national policy.  He said, "We are not going to 
tolerate terrorists or nations that harbor them."  And that's 
the first time that he had said that. 

I wrote it down on my pad, that was the change in policy. 
He went around the room and he pointed at us and he said, "Don't 
ever forget, don't ever forget what this feels like.  Don't ever 
forget it.  Don't let this feeling pass from you.  Don't let 
this be just an event.  It comes and then over the months goes.  
Don't let it happen.  He said,  "I promise you this: I won't let 
it happen.  I will not forget."

In the immediate aftermath of 9-11, this was so shocking. 
Terrorists standing up and taking credit for this.  In the days 
that have followed, it has become abundantly clear what the real 
intent of this campaign is about.  They wouldn't be engaging if 
they didn't think that they had a chance to win.  There is no 
enemy like an enemy who is willing to die for things that they 
believe in.

You and I, wearing a uniform and not wearing a uniform, we 
are people who have committed themselves to a lifestyle of 
service.  This is a choice that we make.  I want you to know 
that for an old guy like me – I'm 57-years-old now and I've 
passed the 30-year point now – that the motivation for all of 
this has everything to do with the chance to serve the nation, 
the chance to commit my life and work with people who have made 
the choice that they are willing to commit their lives to 
principles and values that we believe in, that are worth giving 
ourselves.  Our enemy thinks he has a chance to win.  It's up to 
us, the community of nations, of nations who believe that what 
they are about is wrong.  It is up to us to see to it that they 
don't succeed. Thanks for the chance to be with you here this 
morning.  I'm ready to take on your questions and I do it with 
this caveat, I learned this from General Kelly when he was the 
J3 – you get a chance to ask any question you want, I get a 
chance to decide whether I'll answer or not.


Q - With us on a war footing, is there any advantage to 
Congress not actually declaring a war?

ADM CLARK - Could you all hear the question?  I don't 
think it matters.  I think that's about political policy as 
opposed to national intent.  There are some Geneva Convention 
questions about declaring war and war criminals and war crimes.  
Those are issues that politicians decide and we in uniform do 
not.  So from where I'm sitting today, it doesn't make a bit of 
difference to me.  I understand how to read what the President 
intends to do and we're marching on down that road doing it.  I 
think what we have to have is that we have to have the backing 
of the leadership and I'm talking about the President and the 
Congress, and then the support of the people.  If you have that, 
then that other is a formality that history has already proven 
is not necessary.

Q - About two weeks ago, I attended a symposium up at NDU, 
a lot of smart folks, and one of the speakers had mentioned, 
made a statement that there's going to be extra funds obviously 
more money to fight this war on terror, unfettered, 
unprioritized spending of those funds. If you had your druthers, 
what are a couple of priority things that you would buy for the 
naval service if you chose to do that?

ADM CLARK - The thing that I'm most concerned about is the 
tempo of operations that we're going to have to sustain to keep 
the enemy on the run.  Now I kind of planned it, but I didn't 
have time to develop the whole stream of thought.  But for us to 
keep the enemy on the run, remember what the President said?  
Sometimes you're going to know, we're going to tell you, 
sometimes we're not.  Well, think about that. Does that say who 
we are or not?  My take on this is look at their intel 
apparatus.  They don't have a satellite system.  We have the 
ability.  If we look at al Qaeda and we look at the network we 
want to deal with a cell in point X on the globe, we have the 
ability to steam up over the horizon one night and the next 
morning people go, "Golly, somebody has been here, I wonder who 
it was?"  Now this has to do with footprints.  This has to do 
with the international domain.  This has to do with how you 
effect and deal with this kind of threat globally.
 	
We're going to have to be able to sustain a global 
presence that is probably greater than it is today, or at least 
be able to surge troops. Now what that means to me then is that 
this stuff is going to be wearing out.  The biggest problem we 
have in the naval services in our account is aviation, but all 
the guys that drive the stuff around under the surface of the 
sea, they really probably hiccup when they hear this.  But the 
fact of the matter is we need these investments in naval 
aviation. 

When I look 20 years down the road it is about unmanned 
vehicles. It is about extraordinary stealth platforms and it is 
about reach.

  Yesterday I took a briefing from the USS ENTERPRISE 
battle group. They've only been home a few days, but Admiral 
Morgan came up and gave me a briefing.  The average mission over 
there for our combat flights was 750 miles one way.  Those guys 
are going to the tanker four and five times a sortie.  
Now, there are other things.  Ordnance is a major issue.  
The sustainability pieces of this are vital.  So my number one 
pick item right now is ordnance.  I mean we have become a 
prestigious military. Up until two years ago, we had this 
mindset that when we really get serious about fighting, we're 
going to drop smart bombs.  We're going to stay a prestigious 
outfit for the first few days of the thing and then we're going 
to drop dumb bombs.  Is anybody buying that?  We've been saying 
that to ourselves for a decade.  A little less than two years 
ago, I was the Atlantic Fleet commander and the CNO and I were 
talking.  I said, "You know, we just can't be here anymore."  He 
said, "That's exactly the way I see this and we're changing it."  

We don't have the inventory that we need, and this morning, I 
read in the paper that 60 percent of the ordnance we're dropping 
is precision.  Well, you know why our goal is 60 percent?  
Because every once in a while a B-52 comes over the horizon and 
rattles off 80 of them. It really changes the precision like 
that.  But for the individual unit going out there, this is 
about precision.  So that's at the head of my list. 
Intel pieces and ISR - We need the ability to project 
surveillance assets because this is a difficult target and 
sorting this stuff out is difficult.  We're in an unclassified 
setting and this is an area where I'd love to tell you some sea 
stories.  But I'll tell you they're doing some awesome stuff.  
They're turning tactical approaches like this.  Ok, here's a 
capability, how do you pull it together?  And it's truly 
impressive.  Of course, it's getting the information, it's 
knowing the enemy, not just knowing the likelihood but now 
knowing where he is, what he's doing, being able to sort out 
intent, all of those things.

Q - Will the war on terrorism lead to longer deployments?

ADM CLARK - Yes and yes.  I came out with my policy 
publicly not too long ago because somebody started talking about 
13-month deployments and I said, "Come on."  So I pulled the 
Navy Times in and I said you know, I said, "The policy is 6 
months."  I've got ENTERPRISE on 6 months and 2 weeks, which was 
quite a feat, actually.

The ENTERPRISE, did you hear the story?  The ENTERPRISE 
was headed south, she had been relieved.  Now, they've got TV on 
ships, I mean this is pretty awesome.  I can remember when I was 
an Ensign on 9-month Westpac deployments in Vietnam.  I was able 
to call home once in 9 months, and a 10-minute phone call cost 
me 60 bucks, and I only got paid 300.  Now they're watching TV 
on the ENTERPRISE and nobody saw the first one go in, but then 
they saw it.  The TV was on and they saw the second one go in.  
Do you know what they did?  They didn't even get an order, they 
put the rudder over, 180 degree course change and headed right 
back up.  They knew the call was coming.  That's who we are. 
That's who we are. 

I read a letter from the CO of one of the squadrons on 
there that just made me so proud I couldn't hardly stand it.  
Talking in a letter back to family, talking about who we are. 
The letter said, "We're trained for this.  We're good at what we 
do."  They'd been on Southern Watch up there for several months, 
and he said there's no better team trained to do this.  We're Ok 
here, the email is going to be shut off, but we are trained and 
ready, and our nation called and we're here. 

And that's what credible combat power forward is all 
about.  It is about the two carriers over there initially.  One 
of them had Marine squadrons.  It is about reach. Of course, we 
had the three carriers, then four carriers, one third of the 
entire carrier structure of the Navy.  Obviously, you can't 
sustain that without changing the rules. There was an article in 
the paper about the CNO's War Fighting Council. You know, 
challenge the assumptions. Should we change the manning concepts 
for our ships?  Should we put ships forward and rotate crews? 
How would we do that?  We can do it if there is a support 
apparatus to make that work.  So how do you make it work for 
something that doesn't have that support apparatus?  We're 
looking at every one of them. I'm looking at the incentivization 
programs and everything that we can. This is all a work in 
progress.  I'm convinced that it's going to change.

Q. What are the priorities in your view for DD-21 and LPD-
17?

ADM CLARK - I'm not allowed to call it DD-21 anymore, it's 
DD(X).  DD(X) is the class leader of a family of ships that the 
Secretary of Defense has approved.  This has been an issue in 
this the new administration. 

If you remember me for a bumper sticker, I would like the 
bumper sticker that goes with Vern Clark to be, "What does it 
take to win?" One of my favorite words is persistence.  You 
can't win on the battlefield without persistent fire.  To me, 
that is what DD-21 was about and what DD(X) will be about.  We 
had to do some things to get some systems to support the 
approach.  The approach now will be the class leader with 
millions of dollars that we spent in R&D on this ship to the 
point that some day we're going to have 100-mile guns.  This is 
about persistent firepower where a United States Marine can pick 
up the phone and say I need a round at point X.  He won't have 
to say, "Would you please launch an airplane, oh, and it would 
be nice if he could get here in 40 minutes.  Oh, and the flight 
time is an hour and forty minutes."  That doesn't get it. 
You win at the point with persistent firepower.  The 
problem with LPD-17 is that the construction program wasn't 
healthy enough to buy it as fast as we had money to buy it.  So 
the Congress kept taking it away. We desperately need that 
replacement because the ships that are out there that Marines 
have to climb on don't meet the standards of where we need to be 
in the 21st century.  Is that clear enough?  That's the way I 
feel about it. 

We need to be spending $12 billion a year in new 
construction on ships, and $10 to $12 billion every year on 
buying new airplanes.  We haven't done that for the last 15 
years and our nation has got to commit to it again.   
Thank you for your service.  I never talk to a crowd 
without talking about service, because that is who we are.  We 
are a people who believe in it.  We chose this lifestyle and it 
is such a thrill and an honor for me to serve with people who 
have that as a frame of reference.  We have big tasks ahead of 
you, but you know what? The President turned to us, in the joint 
session of Congress, how many of you saw the speech?  This is 
one of those things that I will never forget.  We were sitting 
on the front row, he turned to us, the Joint Chiefs, and said, 
"I have a message for the military, be ready."  Then, he 
reflected back, and you could see he was turning from us and he 
was talking back to the nation.  He said words to the effect of, 
"In the future, we will call on them, and they will make us 
proud."  I'll tell you what – our military is making us proud 
today, and I'm really proud to be serving with people like you.  

Thank you very much.
 
                             -USN-