No doubt you expect me to use the occasion of my retirement as Commander of the Northern Fleet to convey my reflections after 30 years in the Navy and 10 years at the Northern Fleet. I will try to do so by highlighting the dramatic changes the Navy has undergone and by acknowledging how decisions—25 years ago—made those changes possible.
We have witnessed remarkable events in the past three decades. I never look at photos of the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) without recalling my first tour as an F-14 pilot. Today, her air wing consists almost entirely of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Instead of 50 manned planes, she puts ten times that many UAVs over the Indian Ocean, her permanent station.
Reflect with me on all the challenges we have faced since the terrorists were "bottled and corked" in 2003; think of the new technologies, strategies, and tactics developed since then. In 2002, the Navy had five fleets. Now it has the Northern Fleet, which operates in Atlantic and Pacific Ocean areas north of the Tropic of Cancer, and the Southern Fleet, which operates everywhere else. In sports parlance, we could say the Southern Fleet plays offense and the Northern Fleet plays defense.
Because arms races and major tensions have dissipated, serious rivalries in the northern oceans take the form of economic competition. Our primary mission is to protect collective economic stakes in the northern waters from terrorism and other asymmetric threats—and together with our Canadian and Mexican partners in the North American Maritime Security Organization, we have been incredibly successful in doing so.
In our role as director of research and development of maritime systems and tactics, our contributions to the Navy's warfighting capabilities have been outstanding. For example, we developed "fast crabs"—undersea crawler and swimmer robots—to protect deep-sea mining operations off Newfoundland and open-water fish farms in the Gulf of Mexico. Since we started using them in 2022, terrorist attacks on the 3,000 economic sites in the Northern Fleet area have fallen to two per month. The Southern Fleet uses them to solve mine-related problems, and the Army and Marine Corps have developed spin-offs for exploring caves and deactivating booby traps.
Another fine example is the cargo-scanning technology developed to inspect commercial ships. We needed to inspect them as far from shore as possible to minimize the risk of weapons of mass destruction strikes near the coast. However, such procedures could have delayed and harassed our trading partners. So, cargo scanning allows us to determine the contents of most containers without boarding ships. When we must inspect physically, we use "sea snakes"—extremely narrow probes that are drilled through the container wall or inserted through the special valves on modern containers. They read the chemical signature of the air inside and enable us to characterize the cargo.
There also were many doctrinal and operational innovations. The Northern Fleet tested and helped refine every interface system fielded since the master interface program began in 2015. By continuously upgrading the lattice-work interface system, we were able to integrate ships and aircraft from less advanced navies into combined joint task groups. And we can integrate multilateral naval operations with multilateral land and air operations. We pioneered the use of quarantine platforms, such as the USS Ellis Island, to check at sea for threats that might be posed by tourists, immigrants, and crewmembers of foreign ships.
It is noteworthy that, through all the innovations and organizational adaptations, some things have remained constant: the Navy still commands the seas and it—indeed all the services—remains a leader in equal opportunity. Where else but in the U.S. military could a woman become commander of the world's largest warfighting command, the Southern Fleet?
Several key factors got us to 2030. One was the Navy's decision 20 years ago to dramatically scale back forward presence, especially in northern waters where interstate conflict was judged to be unlikely. It was a clear signal that Navy leaders were willing to change and were not wed to the status quo. It created breathing room—financially and intellectually—for experimentation. Under the old regime of long deployments, the commitments were so huge we hardly had time for anything else.
The drawdown was made easier because our allies assumed responsibility for ensuring stability in the Mediterranean, Black, and Baltic Seas in 2010. No doubt, they saw the benefits of offshore economic enterprises. The Navy did what successful corporations have done for decades—it shed a noncore competency. Forward presence had ceased to be a high-return enterprise.
And so, I leave you with a work in progress. We have accomplished much, yet much still needs to be accomplished. I am certain the Navy's proud heritage and tradition of innovation will continue to serve the nation well. Thank you and God Bless America.
Professors Miskel and Norton and Navy Captains Ratcliff and Williams are on the faculty of the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.