With almost 52% of the world’s surface and over 40 countries under his watchful eye, Admiral Timothy J. Keating is one busy guy. Yesterday, the Admiral took some time to speak with me and the DoD’s Bloggers Rountable.

As commander of the United States Pacific Command, Adm. Keating is in charge of over 250,000 military and civilian personnel in the Pacific region, west the United States to India and all the land in between.

PACOM is just one of 6 Commands that encompass the globe and their respective Commanders, such as Adm Keating, report directly to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President of the United States. So to be able to get some ‘face’ time (ok, voice time really because it was a conference call) with such a rock star of the military world was pretty big. Enough so, that I actually lost a bit of sleep the night before.   Give me the pressure of shooting air to air out of the back seat of a fighter jet any day!

So I was up mulling over what I wanted to ask the Admiral as I would get one opportunity. Knowing that PACOM is currently in the middle of exercise Cobra Gold, a multi-national combined joint training exercise and humanitarian effort held throughout the Kingdom of Thailand, I wondered if I should ask something about that. I also came up with “Can you please share with us some insight into the PACOM strategy regarding security in the Asia-Pacific region and whether major conflict in Asia-Pacific is inevitable.” And eventually I consulted with my closest adviser’s (the guys at work) and that thinktank came up with: “What is your favorite color?”  “Boxers or Briefs” and “What keeps you up at night?”  Ok, I really wanted to ask the first one, but ended up taking a liking to the latter.  More on that in a bit.

Partnership, readiness and presence. Three fundamentals in the newly revised Pacific Command strategy. And after hearing the Admiral speak on some of the issue of the day, I am confident the Pacific is in good hands. As the Admiral put it “We’re working hard to reduce everyone’s susceptibility to violent extremism.  That’s our overarching mission right now.  We want to deter military aggression, should anyone have notions to conduct those sort of operations.  We want to deter adversaries from using weapons of mass destruction.” And from the sounds of it, the countries in the AOR (Area of Responsibility) want to “be part of the coalition of the committed, not just part of the coalition of the willing.”

One of the concerns in this region is the build up of the Chinese military. And Adm. Keating is watching it with a close eye. “When I talk to Chinese military and diplomatic leaders about their — the growth of their military, they come back and say to me all they want to do is protect that which is theirs.  That’s fair enough; we certainly understand that as a strategic goal.  We share that as a strategic goal.
We are encouraging the Chinese to operate with us with increasing frequency and with increasing intensity, and we want them to understand that there is plenty of area for us to cooperate so as to develop better understanding between their military forces and ours.

And we would encourage them to help us achieve our goals of prosperity and stability throughout the Asia-Pacific region.  I think we’re making progress, albeit gradual.

We are, of course, watching closely the development of Chinese submarine technology.  We’re keeping very close — a very close eye on both their numbers — their quantity and their quality.  Their quantity is increasing gradually; their quality is not insignificant.  We enjoy a dramatic technological advantage over all of the countries who have submarines in our AOR.  And there are over 250 submarines on a given day in the area of responsibility.  Sixty-some of those are PLA Navy submarines.
We watch them carefully.  They are operating with increased frequency — they, the Chinese submarines.  They’re going a little bit further out than their coastal waters occasionally.  We’re aware of their movements, shall I say, and we’re encouraging responsible behavior by the Chinese military forces writ large, including their submarines.  ”

Speaking of the Chinese, some of you may have heard the internet rumors of a Chinese submarine surfacing near an American aircraft carrier unannounced. Well, the Admiral shed some light on this previously unheard of situation (submarines don’t ‘just’ pop up and say hi) and it was great to hear straight from the horses mouth what really happened.

“We know what submarine it was.  It (the aircraft carrier) was (the) USS Kitty Hawk.  They were — Kitty Hawk was in a very low defensive posture, if you will.  And as I mentioned earlier, I spent a lot of time out there in command of the Kitty Hawk Battle Group, so I’m — (chuckles) — fairly fluent in the tactics that the battle group commander was using, and I know the guy who was there at the time.

…anti-submarine technology is very demanding.  The Pacific is quite big.  There are parts of the Pacific that are relatively conducive to effective anti-submarine warfare; there are other parts that are noisy and crowded and shallow.  So it kind — you know, it’s one of those “it depends” answers.
If we were in a period of increased tension, the battle group commanders would deploy various assets, use various technology, and we would heighten our intelligence-gathering systems so as to present a much more formidable challenge to anybody who wanted to get inside, whether in the air, land, or on sea, or under the sea.  So the fact that a submarine got within about — well, inside 10 miles to the Kitty Hawk — yeah, we’d rather they didn’t.  The submarine popped up as if to say — we think they may have been as surprised as we were.  (Chuckles.)  Maybe not, but maybe.  Anyway, if it’s a situation where we are paying closer attention, we would be conducting ourselves in a much different manner than the Kitty Hawk was that day.  ”

And for those readers that wonder if that is a breakdown in our anti-submarine warfare tactics…” I have high confidence in our ASW capability.  I have high confidence in the men who man our submarines.  And I have high confidence in the intelligence-gathering apparatus that we use to collect all sorts of information on all of the militaries in — well, I better be careful about that.  We’re not — yeah — I have high confidence in our submarine technology.  Yes, sir, I do. ”

And back to what keeps the Admiral up at night.  “Jet lag.  I say that somewhat tongue in cheek.  We returned from Washington — from the East Coast Monday — what’s today?  Wednesday — Monday evening after three or four days there with meetings with members of President Obama’s administration, our first opportunity to meet with them, up to and including the secretary of State.  Then we’re flying back tonight back to the East Coast for meetings in the Pentagon to discuss generally budget concerns.
So we are — as I — you know, you can do the math as well as we. We’ve got a number of time zones in our AOR.  And for us to get out there and meet the folks with whom we are working, you just have to get in the airplane and go.  That’s a little bit of a kind of offhand answer.
A direct answer is there aren’t many things in our AOR that keep me awake at night.  I sleep pretty soundly because of the remarkable efforts of those 250,000 plus men and women in uniform and civilians who support us, the close relationships we enjoy with the other militaries in the region, the increasingly healthy dialogue we share with the governments — not just ministries of defense, but ministries of foreign affairs, ministries of treasury, commerce, energy — for the countries in our AOR and the very powerful support we enjoy from past and present administrations.  So nothing keeps me awake at night.  There are areas we watch a little more closely than others — the India-Pakistan border, North, South Korea.  We talk a little bit about what’s going on in the Philippines, so there are areas that we — and of course, the constant attention we pay to the China-Taiwan — the Taiwan Strait.
But all of those are relatively tranquil today.  And we’re doing our best to keep them that way.”

But while the sub stories were cool, the high light for me was hearing about the Admirals experience with Facebook.

“I would tell you that I’ve just celebrated my 60th birthday, and that may be as much an indicator as you need to show you how somewhat pterodactyl-like I might be in working with Jeff Breslau on these new media.  But they’re — our guys and girls are doing their level best to keep me abreast of the developments, such as the one in which we’re participating this morning.    We have — I have a Facebook page.  I don’t really know quite how it serves the purpose of strategic communications for the Pacific Command, but I’m (encouraged ?) that it’s a useful asset.”

LOL! I wonder if the Admiral would write on the wall of the Chinese leadership asking if they wanna meet up for lunch?

But on a serious note, it’s quite impressive how PACOM has embraced the use of “Social Media” to communicate with the average person. Everyday PACOM is doing something to contribute to the well being of the Pacific and it’s partners, so this is just another way for them to share it with the world; one Poke at a time.

PACOM on Facebook

PACOM on YouTube

PACOM on Flickr

PACOM on MySpace

and of course, they have their own PACOM Blog!!! How cool is that?!??!

It truly was an honor to speak with Admiral Keating yesterday. He’s a great guy and those wonderful men and women serving under him are really lucky to have him watching out for their well being.

(All images courtesy of PACOM’s website)

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 at 8:05 pm and is filed under Adventures, Bloggers Roundtable, Life, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.