fleet; shape and educate the workforce needed to operate tomorrow's fleet; and harvest the efficiencies needed to invest in the Navy of the future. The capabilities needed to fulfill this broadened strategy are grouped into three core operational concepts: Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing, which are enabled by FORCEnet. The triad of transformed organizational processes that supports these concepts is: Sea Warrior, Sea Trial, and Sea Enterprise. Together, these concepts will provide increased power, protection, and freedom for America. Sea Strike is the projection of precise and persistent offensive power. Sea Strike operations are how the 21st century Navy will exert direct, decisive and sustained influence in joint campaigns. Sea Strike capabilities will provide the Joint Force Commander with a potent mix of weapons, ranging from longrange precision strike, to clandestine land-attack in antiaccess environments, to the swift insertion of ground forces. Sea Shield is the projection of layered, global defensive assurance. It is about extending our defenses beyond naval forces, to the joint force and allies and providing a defensive umbrella deep inland. Sea Shield takes us beyond unit, fleet and task force defense to provide the nation with sea-based theater and strategic defense. Sea Basing is the projection of operational independence. Sea Basing will use the fleet's extended reach of modern, networked weapons and sensors to maximize the vast maneuver space of the world's oceans. It is about extending traditional naval advantages to the joint force with more security, connectivity, and mobility from netted forces at sea. FORCEnet is the enabler of our knowledge supremacy and hence, Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing. It is the total systems approach and architectural framework that will integrate warriors, sensors, networks, command and control, weapons, and platforms into a networked, distributed force and provide greater situational awareness, accelerated speed of decision, and greatly distributed combat power. Our transformed organizational processes are: • Sea Warrior is our commitment to the growth and development of our Sailors. It serves as the foundation of warfighting effectiveness by ensuring the right skills are in the right place at the right time. Sea Trial is a continual process of rapid concept and technology development that will deliver enhanced capabilities to our Sailors as swiftly as possible. The Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command is leading this effort and developing new concepts and technologies, such as the Joint Fires Network and High Speed Vessels. • Sea Enterprise is our process to improve organizational alignment, refine requirements, and reinvest the savings to buy the platforms and systems needed to transform our Navy. It is the means by which we will capture efficiencies and prioritize investments. Sea Power 21 is dedicated to a process of continual innovation and is committed to total jointness. It extends American naval superiority from the high seas, throughout the littorals, and beyond the sea. It both enhances and leverages persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities and precision weaponry to amplify the nation's striking power, elevate our capability to project both defense and offense, and open the door to the afloat positioning of additional joint capabilities, assets and forces. speed to Sea Power 21 will extend the advantages of naval forces of response, agility, immediate employability, and security the unified, joint warfighting team. It will increase our deterrence, crisis control and warfighting power. It will ensure our naval forces are fully integrated into global joint operations to bring more power, more protection, and more freedom to America. We will put our Sea Power 21 vision into practice through a new Global Concept of Operations (CONOPs) to distribute our combat striking power to a dispersed, networked fleet. This will optimize our flexible force structure and create additional, scaleable, independent operating groups capable of responding simultaneously around the world. This distribution of assets will take us from 19 strike capable groups to 37 strike capable groups with the full implementation of the Global CONOPS. · Carrier Strike Groups will remain the core of our Navy's warfighting strength. No other force package matches their sustained power projection ability, extended situational awareness, and survivability. Expeditionary Strike Groups will augment our traditional Amphibious Ready Group/Marine Expeditionary Unit team with strike-capable surface combatants and submarines to prosecute Sea Strike missions in lesser-threat environments. When combined with a Carrier Strike Group, the resulting Expeditionary Strike Force will possess the full range of our netted, offensive and defensive power. We will deploy at least one pilot ESG this year. • Missile-Defense Surface Action Groups will increase international stability by providing security to allies and joint forces ashore from short and medium range ballistic missile threats. • Our future SSGN forces specially modified Trident submarines - will provide large volume clandestine strike with cruise missiles and the capability to support and insert Special Operations Forces. · An enhanced-capability Combat Logistics Force and Maritime Prepositioned Force will sustain a more widely dispersed and capable Navy/Marine Corps team. It is our intention to continue to nurture this culture of readiness and invest in this vision in the years ahead. III. Our FY04 Budget Request This past year the Navy improved its current readiness by properly funding our current readiness accounts, deepening the growth and development of our people, and developing innovative operational concepts and capabilities. This year, we intend to: · Sustain our current readiness gains to support the war on terror; Deepen the growth and development of our people into the 21st Century, high-technology personnel force that is our future; and - Invest in our bold new Navy vision Sea Power 21 to At the same time, we will continue to actively harvest the efficiencies needed to fund and support these priorities in both FY04 and beyond. Our Navy budget request for FY04 supports this intent and includes: 7 new construction ships, two more SSBN-to-SSGN conversions, one cruiser conversion and 100 new aircraft; Investment in accelerated transformational capabilities, A 4.1% average pay increase in targeted and basic pay raises, and a reduction in average out-of-pocket housing costs from 7.5% to 3.5%; Investment in housing and Public Private Venture that · Continued investment in key operational readiness accounts that includes an increase in aviation depot maintenance funding, improvement in our annual deferred maintenance backlog for our ships, submarines and aircraft carriers, and sustained funding for our ordnance, ship operations and flying hours accounts; Navy Marine Corps Tactical Aviation Integration, a process that will maximize our forward-deployed combat power, optimize the core capability of naval aviation forces, introduce 200 modern aircraft across the FY04 FY09 program and save billions of dollars; Divestiture of aging, legacy ships, systems and aircraft, producing nearly $1.9B in FY04 for reinvestment in recapitalization; Improvements in the quality of our operational training through a Training Resource Strategy; and Investment in transformational unmanned underwater A. Sustaining our Current Readiness Your investment last year produced the most ready force in our history. Training, maintenance, spare parts, ordnance, and fuel accounts enabled our Fleet to be ready earlier, deploy at a higher state of readiness, and as we are witnessing today, build |