Enterprise is underway in the Atlantic Ocean in preparation for the ship's 22nd and final deployment following 50 years of naval service.

"Carriers play a major role in our military, not only today, but they will play a role in our future," Panetta said. "You are part of what keeps our force agile, flexible, quickly deployable and capable of taking on any enemy anywhere in the world."

Following his arrival on the carrier's flight deck via helicopter, he was greeted by Navy Rear Adm. Walter E. Carter, commander of Carrier Strike Group 12, and Navy Capt. William C. Hamilton Jr., Enterprise commanding officer.

Following a brief meeting, Panetta ate lunch with enlisted sailors on the mess decks and held an all-hands call for the more than 1,700 sailors and Marines aboard the ship.

"Even after 50 years of service, because of your tireless work on ‘the Big E,’ there is no other nation that can match this ship," Panetta told the crew. "This is a great ship, and all of you are a great crew."

The secretary administered the re-enlistment oath to 21 sailors and presented awards to 10 more in the ship’s hangar bay.

"It's an amazing feeling, and it's something I never thought would happen," said Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Ramous K. Fleming, one of the sailors who re-enlisted. "It fills me with pride to get to stand in front of someone as high-ranking as the secretary of defense and renew my commitment to my country."

Following the all-hands call, Panetta presented 200 sailors with his personal coin.

"It was one of the coolest things I've done in my military career," said Petty Officer 1st Class James Holman, the reactor labs leading petty officer. "It'll be cool to show my parents the SECDEF coin I received and the picture I took with Mr. Panetta, because how many people can say they've met the secretary of defense?"

In the evening, Panetta ate dinner in the Enterprise wardroom with junior officers before heading to the flag bridge to watch evening flight operations.

"I've had a really good tour," Panetta said. "I enjoyed every aspect of the ship, but the greatest thrill was watching the aircraft takeoffs and landings -- a thrill I will never forget."

While water primarily cools a flame, carbon dioxide suffocates it by diluting the surrounding oxygen. Chemical suppressants such as halons work to disrupt the combustion process. These technologies suffer from limitations such as collateral damage to valuable property, environmental toxicity and limited effectiveness in different types of fire. All existing suppressants are composed of matter and must be physically delivered and dispersed throughout the fire. This limits the rate at which fires can be extinguished and the ability to combat fires in confined spaces or behind obstacles.

According to Matthew Goodman, DARPA program manager, “we successfully suppressed small flames and limited re-ignition of those flames, as well as exhibited the ability to bend flames. These effects, to date are very local—scaling is a challenge that remains to be overcome.”

DARPA's Instant Fire Suppression (IFS) program, which ended recently, sought to establish the feasibility of a novel flame-suppression system based on destabilization of flame plasma with electromagnetic fields and acoustics techniques. The DARPA research team at Harvard University has demonstrated suppression of small methane and related fuel fires by using a hand-held electrode, or wand.

“We’ve made scientific breakthroughs in our understanding and quantification of the interaction between electromagnetic and acoustic waves with flame plasma,” said Goodman. “Our goal was to advance understanding of this interaction and its applicability to flame plasma for suppressing flames.”

Pentagon Press Secretary George Little yesterday issued a statement saying DOD “supports the concept” of an international code of conduct for outer space activities.

“An international code of conduct can enhance U.S. national security by encouraging responsible space behavior by reducing the risk of mishaps, misperceptions and mistrust,” he said.

Little added that a European Union draft plan “is a promising basis for an international code.”

Little’s statement followed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s announcement yesterday that the United States has decided to join with the European Union and other nations to develop a code of conduct, which she said “will help maintain the long-term sustainability, safety, stability, and security of space by establishing guidelines for the responsible use of space.”

Clinton’s announcement came two days after a Russian spacecraft crashed into the Pacific Ocean about 700 miles west of Chile. The European Union issued its proposal about the same time as another space mishap – the February 2009 collision between a commercial satellite and that of a Russian military satellite, according to reports.

“The long-term sustainability of our space environment is at serious risk from space debris and irresponsible actors,” Clinton said. “Ensuring the stability, safety and security of our space systems is of vital interest to the United States and the global community. These systems allow the free flow of information across platforms that open up our global markets, enhance weather forecasting and environmental monitoring, and enable global navigation and transportation.

“Unless the international community addresses these challenges,” Clinton continued, “the environment around our planet will become increasingly hazardous to human space flight and satellite systems, which would create damaging consequences for all of us.”
Opponents of the European Union plan have said it would restrict U.S. military options. But Clinton said yesterday that the U.S. government “has made clear to our partners that we will not enter into a code of conduct that in any way constrains our national security-related activities in space, or our ability to protect the United States and our allies.”

In early 2011, then-Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper approved a National Security Space Strategy designed to govern congestion and competition in space, as well as contested areas of space.

Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Joint Operational Access Concept is based on the defense strategic guidance President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta released this month.

“No matter how formidable our forces, if we are unable to bring our capabilities to bear in any of these domains, we may not be able to complete the mission or meet our nation’s needs,” the chairman wrote. “Our adversaries know this as well.”

For the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps of the future, Dempsey wrote, gaining access to the right place at the right time presents an ever more pressing challenge.

“The [concept] outlines how we will confront emerging anti-access/area denial [referred to by military members as A2/AD] threats by state and non-state enemies across the globe,” the chairman noted in his blog. “A2/AD is not new, but it is a defining characteristic of today’s operational environment.”

In a foreword to the concept document, Dempsey noted that each service helped to develop the approach and each has a vital role to play, separately and together, in carrying it out.

“Embracing cross-domain synergy at increasingly lower levels will be essential to generating the tempo that is often critical to exploiting fleeting local opportunities for disrupting the enemy system,” Dempsey wrote in the foreword. “The [concept] also envisions a greater degree and more flexible integration of space and cyberspace operations into the traditional air-sea-land battlespace than ever before.”

The 64-page document setting forth the concept outlines both A2/AD threats and effective means to countering them. Anti-access threats usually are long-range, employed most often against air and sea approaches, and designed to prevent an opposing force from entering an operational area. Area denial refers to shorter-range actions and capabilities, designed to limit an opposing force’s freedom of action within all domains of the operational area.

The document lists key anti-access capabilities U.S. forces may face as ballistic and cruise missiles, long-range reconnaissance and surveillance systems, anti-satellite weapons, submarines, cyber and terrorist attacks and special operations forces.

Area denial capabilities, according to the concept, include air forces and air defense systems; short-range missiles and submarine-based torpedoes; precision-guided rockets, artillery, missiles and mortars; chemical and biological weapons; computer and electronic attacks; land- and sea-based mines; unmanned surveillance or weapons systems; land forces; and special operations forces.

According to the concept document, countering these capabilities requires preparing the operational area in advance, seizing the initiative with multiple deployments and operations, exploiting advantages in one domain to disrupt or destroy enemy capabilities in others, and protecting space and cyber assets while attacking the enemy’s.

“The concept identifies 30 operational capabilities the future joint force will need to gain operational access in an opposed environment,” the document reads, in part. “The implications of creating and maintaining these capabilities in the necessary capacity are potentially profound.”

The concept’s authors acknowledge risks with the approach. It could lead to operations that are logistically or economically unsupportable or of “debilitating complexity,” the document states.

Even in successful operations, the authors note, “gaining and maintaining operational access in the face of armed resistance is inherently fraught with risk.”

The chairman’s blog post emphasized the nation’s military faces a clear strategic challenge: it must maintain the freedom of action to accomplish any assigned mission.

“The Joint Operational Access Concept is a critical first step in ensuring the joint force has the requisite capabilities to do so,” he concluded.

Operational access is the ability to project military force into an operational area with sufficient freedom of action to accomplish the mission. Operational access does not exist for its own sake, but rather serves our broader strategic goals, whether to ensure access to commerce, demonstrate U.S. resolve by positioning forces overseas to manage crisis and prevent war, or defeat an enemy in war.

Operational access is the joint force contribution to assured access, the unhindered national use of the global commons and select sovereign territory, waters, airspace and cyberspace.

Enduring requirement for force projection
As a global power with global interests, the United States must maintain the credible capability to project military force into any region of the world in support of those interests.

While the requirement for operational access applies to any mission, the most difficult access challenge—and therefore the subject of this concept—is operational access contested by armed opposition.

Distinction between antiaccess and area-denial
As used in this paper, antiaccess refers to those actions and capabilities, usually long-range, designed to prevent an opposing force from entering an operational area. Area denial refers to those actions and capabilities, usually of shorter range, designed not to keep an opposing force out, but to limit its freedom of action within the operational area.

Importance of preconditions
The challenge of operational access is determined largely by conditions existing prior to the onset of combat operations. Consequently, success in combat often will depend on efforts to shape favorable access conditions in advance, which in turn requires a coordinated interagency approach. The joint force will attempt to shape the operational area in advance of conflict through a variety of security and engagement activities (as described in the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations), such as multinational exercises, access and support agreements, establishment and improvement of overseas bases, prepositioning of supplies, and forward deployment of forces.

Emerging trends
Three trends in the operating environment promise to complicate the challenge of opposed access for U.S. joint forces:

1. The dramatic improvement and proliferation of weapons and other technologies capable of denying access to or freedom of action within an operational area.
2. The changing U.S. overseas defense posture.
3. The emergence of space and cyberspace as increasingly important and contested domains.

Enemy adoption of antiaccess/area-denial strategies
Events of recent decades have demonstrated the decisive results U.S. joint forces can achieve when allowed to flow combat power into an operational area unimpeded. Yet, few if any enemies perceived that they possessed the ability to deny U.S. access by armed opposition, and U.S. operational access during that period was essentially unopposed. The combination of the three major trends described above has altered that calculus dramatically. Increasingly capable future enemies will see the adoption of an antiaccess/area-denial strategy against the United States as a favorable course of action for them. The ability to ensure operational access in the future is being challenged—and may well be the most difficult operational challenge U.S. forces will face over the coming decades.

Almost 7,000 U.S. service members, most of them Marines from the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force, will participate in Cobra Gold 2012, which kicks off Jan. 15 and continues through Feb. 17, Marine Corps Maj. Christian Devine, a U.S. Pacific Command spokesman, reported.

This year’s exercise is the 31st iteration of the annual exercise hosted by Thailand and the United States since 1980.

In addition to about 3,400 Thai service members, members of the Indonesian, Japanese, Malaysian, Singaporean and South Korean militaries will participate, Devine said. Other regional states have been invited to send observers as well.

This year’s Cobra Gold will include a computer-simulated command-post exercise, training scenarios depicting multinational simulated U.N. peace enforcement operations, humanitarian and civic assistance projects and a field training exercise, Devine said.

The command post exercise will combine members of each participating country’s militaries working together in a multinational force headquarters, he reported.

Meanwhile, forces from Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia and the United States will conduct field training exercises that include combined arms and multinational events.

In addition, Thailand, the United States, Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia and Japan will participate in humanitarian and civic assistance projects designed to improve the quality of life and local infrastructure for the Thai people, Devine said.

Some of the projects, he said, will contribute to ongoing flood recovery efforts the United States has been supporting in Thailand since October.

Experience gained during the exercise helps ensure participants are able to work together to respond to crises across the range of military operations, Devine said.

On a broader level, Cobra Gold and other exercises promote cooperative security frameworks that are vital to maintaining regional peace and security, he said, and to successfully addressing shared threats and challenges.

U.S. participation in Cobra Gold 12 also supports the United States’ and Pacom’s commitment to Thailand, its oldest ally in the region, and to regional partnership, prosperity and security in the Asia-Pacific region, he said.

President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reinforced this commitment in the new defense strategic guidance issued last week. The guidance underscores the growing strategic importance of Asia and the Pacific.

Navy Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert told a Center for New American Security forum that tensions over the Strait of Hormuz top his list of concerns.

“If you ask me what keeps me awake at night, it’s the Strait of Hormuz and the business going on in the Arabian Gulf,” he said during a question-and-answer session following his keynote address.

Greenert, who discussed the importance of cooperation and partnerships, particularly in light of the new defense strategic guidance, told a reporter he sees no major movement of naval assets from the Middle East.

“There won’t be a taking of my eye off the ball,” he said.
He cited tensions over the Strait of Hormuz, the only sea passage to the open ocean for petroleum-producing nations in the Persian Gulf region. An estimated 20 percent of the world’s oil supply passes through the strait.

Iran has flexed its muscles, threatening to cut off access to the strait if the United States continues to maintain an aircraft carrier presence there.

Defense officials have emphasized that closure of the strait will not be tolerated. They called carrier strike group deployments vital to maintaining continuity and operational support to ongoing missions in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility.

"Our interest is in safe and secure maritime passage for ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz," Pentagon Press Secretary George Little told reporters last month when the issue first arose.

Greenert told reporters yesterday he rode the Strait of Hormuz during his recent visit to Bahrain. “I … took a look around and view that as an important aspect,” he said. “So the Navy won’t be taking their eye off the ball.”

He promised to work to ensure naval forces that operate in these waters “have the right equipment to do the right thing.”
“It’s something I mull over … again and again,” Greenert said.

“Our folks that transit in and around that area, I want to make sure that they’re able to deal with the things that they need to deal with,” he added.

That, Greenert explained, includes self-protection and antisubmarine warfare assets. It also includes “anti-swarm” assets to protect against “swarm attacks” by small high-speed boats that have been called the Navy’s equivalent of the improvised explosive device issue.

“If we had to do over a trillion dollars in cuts in this department, I have to tell you that the strategy that we developed, we'd probably have to … start over,” Panetta said during an interview with Rachel Martin that aired today on the NPR program “Weekend Edition.”

President Barack Obama unveiled the strategy in a rare Pentagon appearance Jan. 5 alongside Panetta and other DOD leaders, saying he called for the strategy review to inform the budget process. The strategy is based on $487 billion in budget cuts over ten years.

The Budget Control Act, which Congress passed and Obama signed in August, includes automatic spending cuts across government, including about $500,000 to the Defense Department, to go into effect in 2013. The sequestration cuts, as they are known, were triggered by a congressional committee’s inability to agree on specific cuts last fall. Those across-the-board cuts will be in addition to the $487 billion the administration has proposed in DOD savings, unless Congress takes additional action.

Officials would not discuss specific cost-cutting proposals before the budget is due out early next month. But Panetta said last week he knows many proposals in the fiscal 2012 budget request will be politically sensitive.

“There is no doubt that the fiscal situation this country faces is difficult, and in many ways we are at a crisis point. But I believe that in every crisis there is opportunity,” he said on Jan. 5. “Out of this crisis, we have the opportunity to end the old ways of doing business and to build a modern force for the 21st century that can win today's wars and successfully confront any enemy, and respond to any threat and any challenge of the future.”

The strategy calls for reducing the number of men and women in uniform. The secretary told NPR “the human side” of defense spending cuts makes difficult choices even harder.

"What's going to happen to those people that come back to this country from the battle zones? How are we going to deal with them? What kind of jobs are we going to be able to provide them? How are we going to care for them?" he said.

During the strategy’s rollout at the Pentagon, Panetta repeated his often-stated pledge that DOD will “not break faith” with service members.

“I commit to you that I will fight for you and for your families,” he said.

Troop cuts also will affect the military’s ability to bring troops to bear quickly, Panetta told NPR.

“Part of our approach here is to make sure that we maintain a strong National Guard and a strong reserve,” he said. “They have been fully operational — we have brought them into battle zones. They have gained as much experience as the active force. But … if we are dealing with a leaner and meaner force, if we have to mobilize, there's only one place to go — and that's to the National Guard and to our reserve units.”

The new, leaner military will retain the ability to fight on multiple fronts, Panetta emphasized.

“That's the most important message the American people have to know,” he said. “This force is going to be able to fight any enemy, any aggressor that tries to take us on.”

The secretary said despite the strategy’s emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region as a defense focus, he does not view China’s military buildup as a direct threat to the United States.

“The fact is, as a major power, they have that capability,” he added. “What we have to ensure is that it's used for the right reasons.”

China and the United States face common threats in the region, the secretary said: “The whole issue of Korea and the stability of Korea, the whole issue of nuclear proliferation, the whole issue of providing free access to our ships that are operating in that area.”

Panetta said he intends for the military to work with China and other Pacific nations “to make sure that we secure that area for the future.”

Obama, joined by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed reporters at the Pentagon today on the guidance’s aims.

Obama said the guidance reflects a national turning point following a decade of war, with operations in Iraq now ended, forces gradually drawing down in Afghanistan, and budget pressures a foremost concern at home.

“We’ll continue to get rid of outdated Cold War-era systems so that we can invest in the capabilities that we need for the future, including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; counterterrorism; countering weapons of mass destruction; and the ability to operate in environments where adversaries try to deny us access,” the president said.

The defense budget “grew at an extraordinary pace” after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the president noted. That growth will slow over the next 10 years, he said, but will continue because of the nation’s global responsibilities.

“I firmly believe, and I think the American people understand, that we can keep our military strong -- and our nation secure -- with a defense budget that continues to be larger than roughly the next 10 countries combined,” he said.

In a letter released today along with the strategic guidance, Panetta wrote the future force will be smaller and leaner, but “agile, flexible, ready and technologically advanced … [with] cutting-edge capabilities exploiting our technological, joint and networked advantage.”

In today’s briefing, Panetta said “politically sensitive” budget areas must be part of the $487 billion-plus spending reduction DOD faces over the next decade. He emphasized final budget decisions still are in progress, and details will be released in coming weeks.

“We’ve got to look at the whole area of procurement … [and] the tremendous costs associated,” the secretary said. “We want to make sure that the weapons we select meet the needs of the force that we’re building.”

The department will reduce capabilities that are no longer a top priority -- including protracted, large-scale stability operations -- and will invest in new capabilities to maintain a decisive military edge against a growing array of threats, Panetta added.

“There is no question that we have to make some tradeoffs, and that we will be taking … some level of additional, but acceptable, risk in the budget plan we release next month. These are not easy choices,” the secretary said.

Dempsey told reporters that strategy is “a waypoint in a continuous and deliberate process to develop the joint force we will need in 2020.”

There are four budget cycles between now and then, he noted. “Each of these cycles presents an opportunity to adjust how and what we do to achieve this strategy in the face of new threats … and in the context of a changing security environment,” he added.

The strategy, which informs the budget request to be unveiled in coming weeks, “emerges from a deeply collaborative process,” Dempsey said.

“We weighed facts and assessments. We challenged every assumption. We considered a wide range of recommendations and counter-arguments,” the chairman said. “I can assure you that the steps we have taken to arrive at this strategy involved all of this and much more.”

During a second briefing for reporters on the strategy, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter responded to a question on the F-35 joint strike fighter, possibly the largest military acquisition program in history and subject of intense controversy for issues in cost, development schedule and testing.

He did not elaborate on the Pentagon’s plans for the F-35 program, but indicated it’s still in the mix. “We want it -- we want it to succeed,” he said.

Major changes in every category of the budget and reduced modernization are necessary as a result of slowed defense spending growth, Carter said.

“Where we invest, and how intensively we invest, will be shaped by [the strategy],” he added.

This merited an assessment of the U.S. defense strategy in light of the changing geopolitical environment and our changing fiscal circumstances.

This assessment reflects the President's strategic direction to the Department and was deeply informed by the Department's civilian and military leadership, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretaries of the Military Departments, and the Combatant Commanders. Out of the assessment we developed a defense strategy that transitions our Defense enterprise from an emphasis on today's wars to preparing for future challenges, protects the broad range of U.S. national security interests, advances the Department's efforts to rebalance and reform, and supports the national security imperative of deficit reduction through a lower level of defense spending.

This strategic guidance document describes the projected security environment and the key military missions for which the Department of Defense (DoD) will prepare. It is intended as a blueprint for the Joint Force in 2020, providing a set of precepts that will help guide decisions regarding the size and shape of the force over subsequent program and budget cycles, and highlighting some of the strategic risks that may be associated with the proposed strategy."

Over the long term, China's emergence as a regional power will have the potential to affect the U.S. economy and our security in a variety of ways. Our two countries have a strong stake in peace and stability in East Asia and an interest in building a cooperative bilateral relationship.

In the Middle East, the Arab Awakening presents both strategic opportunities and challenges. Regime changes, as well as tensions within and among states under pressure to reform, introduce uncertainty for the future.

Europe is home to some of America’s most stalwart allies and partners, many of whom have sacrificed alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Europe is our principal partner in seeking global and economic security, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

The United States will continue to make the necessary investments to ensure that we maintain regional access and the ability to operate freely in keeping with our treaty obligations and with international law.

Primary Missions of the U.S. Armed Forces

To protect U.S. national interests and achieve the objectives of the 2010 National Security Strategy in this environment, the Joint Force will need to recalibrate its capabilities and make selective additional investments to succeed in the following missions:

• Counter Terrorism and Irregular Warfare
• Deter and Defeat Aggression;
• Project Power Despite Anti-Access/Area Denial Challenge;
• Counter Weapons of Mass Destruction;
• Operate Effectively in Cyberspace and Space;
• Maintain a Safe, Secure, and Effective Nuclear Deterrent;
• Defend the Homeland and Provide Support to Civil Authorities;
• Provide a Stabilizing Presence;
• Conduct Stability and Counterinsurgency Operations;
• Conduct Humanitarian, Disaster Relief, and Other Operations.