VICE ADMIRAL JOSEPH TOFALO, USN COMMANDER, SUBMARINE FORCES
Admiral, thank you for that kind introduction, and thanks to the NSL for hosting this fantastic event. It’s a pleasure to be here today to speak to the symposium’s theme, “Getting Faster,” so crucial given the extremely competitive world we now live in, and also provide an update on what the Submarine Force has been up to.
Let’s start with the theme—“Getting Faster,” For me this means, end-to-end as an organization, getting faster in our learning, processes, operations, innovation, and acquisitions. I’m not talking about rushing things, we’re bold not reckless, but I am talking about ensuring we as a Submarine Force can quickly learn and adapt at every level; from the Engineroom Lower Level deckplate to the 5th floor of the Pentagon, in government and industry, from the tactical to the strategic. It means acknowledging our long tradition of excellence, but also recognizing that if you’re not getting better, you’re probably getting worse, because someone is trying to pass you. It means realizing that we are engaged in a competition requiring innovation to win, but that innovation may in- volve some failure. It means challenging institutional inertia by remov- ing administrative distractions and cumbersome procedures that don’t add value and slow us down.
So if that’s what “Getting Faster” encompasses, why now? The bot- tom line is that we find ourselves in a great power competition at sea for which a sense of urgency is absolutely required, and for which second place is not acceptable. Russia and China are working hard and fast to strengthen their position, influence their neighbors, and shift the world order in their favor. Iran challenges security and commerce in their re- gion, including providing lethal assistance to those who would do us harm. North Korea’s reckless and provocative missile tests inform its advance toward the goal of a nuclear weapon that can threaten the Unit-ed States. In competition, time matters—the best Navy in the world can still lose if it shows up late. And by “late” I don’t only mean physically, but also in acquisitions, readiness, and tactics. “Lateness” can be man- ifest in: maintenance delays on existing ships that limit current opera- tional availability; being late-to-need in our ability to counter threats to enablers like satellite communications; or force structure shortfalls that don’t get solved until a decade from now. Given all this, I think the case for “Getting Faster,” and its associated sense of urgency is clear.
To more completely understand this sense of urgency, we need to look at our mission and the situation we face. Per U.S. Code, the mission of the Navy is to be prepared to conduct “prompt and sustained combat operations at sea,” and the Submarine Force does its part of that mission in and from the undersea domain. Given that approximately 70% of the world is covered in water and 80% of the population lives within a few hundred miles of an ocean coast, we have quite a lot to cover. It gets even more interesting when you realize that 90% of global commerce travels on the water and that near 98% of intercontinental communications, in- cluding financial transactions, travel not by satellite, but via underwater cable. You hear a lot of talk about “the cloud” in our information age, but the CNO has pointed out that it might be better to call it “the sea” because that’s where most of the data actually travels. Our prosperity and security as a maritime nation depend on this domain and the asso- ciated flows of goods and information. As a Force, we are charged with exploiting the unique advantages afforded by undersea concealment to secure these accesses for ourselves and our allies, and threaten those of potential adversaries, putting them on the defensive in their own back yards if necessary.
The character of this environment has always been in constant flux but the current rate of change is increasing exponentially as global mar- itime and information systems expand and technological advancement accelerates. Now add in the fact that it’s a competition. Thinking adver- saries are out there studying us and innovating. For the last 15 years, our Navy primarily supported a land war in the Middle East, with emphasis on power projection ashore and fighting from uncontested sanctuary in the littorals. In contrast, over the next 15 years our emphasis must in- stead be on high-end combat in deep blue water. We’re seeing a return
