ified front opposing what they want to do. A unified invoice and action and everything else that isolates them is the individual actor. So I think it's very important if we want our allies and partners to get on board we've got to do things that they will support. They may not go as far as we do but we certainly don't want them to see us as the bully. See us as just doing things that they think are not appropriate at that time that might the harm, the risk analysis that goes into that very important. And what we do when there's a lot of policy considerations here and those can sometimes be frustrating or for an operator who wants to achieve a certain effect that may not be looking at things holistically. So I think it's very important as a lawyer you want to push your authorities to the limit. I think if we don't exercise our authorities we will lose them. But at the same time we have to be prudent in how we do that so that they are taken from us or abridged because it looks like we're being reckless to answer your question. I'll turn it over to any other questions out there. I don't see any in the bottom no open questions right now but I'll hold for a moment in case there are over. Okay, seeing none. Thank you very much to our two panelists very thoughtful insightful comments. I greatly appreciate your help and your work on this today which you've had to offer to the group. Thank you very much for that. At this point I'll turn it back over to the Cushing host to take us into the break and then we'll move on from there. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Colonel McCann. We will take a 13 minute break and we will see you back here at 1420. The Undersea Cushing International Law Conference we are now going to begin our third panel and final panel of the day. This one is from the Air Force and Space Force perspective. Colonel McCann over to you. Hey, thanks very much. Right now we're going to hear from Colonel Suzette Sewell from US Pacific Air Forces and then Colonel Todd Pennington the SGA for Space Operations Command. I'll turn it over to Colonel Sewell for her remarks. Good morning Colonel McCann. Chairman at Stockton Professor of International Mayor Tim Land Mr. Kraska, United States Naval War College professors, staff, distinguished panelists and viewers from around the world. Thank you for that opportunity with you today. And first I got to start out with a little bit of an apology. Actually it was my boss, Colonel Ira Perkins who was supposed to speak with you today. He called me about 6.30 this morning and then started texting me because he has lost his voices and is sitting over in the emergency room right now probably has bronchitis. So he asked me if I could fill in for him this morning so obviously I'm not in the right uniform. And I have just looked over the material that he was gonna provide. So hopefully I don't do him a disservice and am able to provide some interesting background from Air Force perspective on some of our maritime and air plot issues that we're dealing with here out in the Indo-Pacific. So one of the things I wanna start off with I listened to some of the earlier speakers really talking about what we're seeing with a revisionist and aggressive China out here in this area of the world. And so I'm really not gonna cover that new ground. What I'm really gonna say is yes, they are forced to see in some of those same challenges as well. And we're adapting with some of our new concepts out here to meet that challenge like joint all-demain command and control, dynamic force employment missions, agile combat employment, among others. All of those particular new concepts of operations require robust legal support and that can come from the form of fiscal law, authorities contracting that we see out there, of course, international law, rule of law, a lot of particular issues out there. But the issue that I'm gonna talk about, it's kind of unique and one that we don't really think about all the time as being a huge player in our operations in this particular area of the world. But which in fact is one of our most challenging areas of environmental law and area that can really slow us down. And that's environmental law, right? Surprise, surprise. It's not something we really think about upfront when we're thinking about operations. But I kind of wanna point out three areas where environmental law is a huge impact to us or where this issue plays out. The first, as you can imagine, environmental law is pretty important to a lot of host nations that we operate in this particular area of the world, whether that's Oceania nations really concerned with climate change, rising sea levels, protecting their fishing industries or the very small land territories that those have out here. It plays out in Japan, it plays out in Rio, right? All these nations that we operate. So host nations, places that we wanna go. The second, Indo-Pacific is one of the few, well, the only combatant command out there that incorporates both US territories, states and other countries out there. And so environmental law obviously is a huge part of US law. It's a factor that we have to consider whether we're operating in Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, or any one of those other US territories, for example, Wake Island, which is particularly important to us out there as well. And then the third area that we really see environmental law is not so much what we're doing, but what do we see China or other countries doing vis-a-vis the environment out there. So really I got kind of three examples in each of those areas. I'm gonna start with China. In 2016, the permanent court of arbitration basically heard claims brought by the Philippines against China, concerning their island building activities in the South China Sea. They ruled in favor of the Philippines, China and rejecting China's historic nine-dash line, giving them sovereignty over that particular airspace, basically concluding that under the United Nations Convention on the law of the sea, the allocation of maritime rights for the exclusive economic zone, basically that under unclothes that those previous rights that they may have had under the nine-dash line were no longer valid and without international legal basis. Of course, China's continued to ignore that and went ahead and as we know, continues to conduct activities from those islands. What you may not know is in that ruling, several pages, large part of it was dedicated to talking about China's environmental violations in those particular areas, talking about the severe harm they've caused to the marine environment by their land reclamation and some of the artificial island building projects. We see that play out pretty much anywhere where we see China conducting operations in around the world whether they're building something, dredging a port, is they're not particularly concerned about the environmental concerns in those particular countries and that can be very off-putting for those partners or potential countries that are working with China. So in that sense that when we flip it around on the United States side and we're out there doing the same activities but we're being better environmental stewards, we could peak better and we make ourselves a more favorable partner of choice. So how do we do that? On the US side out there, very little international law usually required when it deals with operations in a foreign country at least from the military's perspective. We've negotiated agreements, these HOFAs and different underlying environmental agreements whether that's with Australia, Japan, Korea, that basically sets some baseline for an environmental requirements out there. I will say they're pretty minimal for the most part. And so what it really comes down to is how good of a stewards do we wanna be when we're operating from those particular countries out there? I could say environmentalist type ideas, being good stewards of the environment are being very key to many of our allies out there. And for example, PFAS, which is the firefighting phone that we're using in many countries out there, pretty routinely when I was the stock judge advocate in Missawa we would have spills. And at the time we weren't too concerned about PFAS and now we're particularly concerned and we get a lot of pushback from those local communities on how we're taking care of what is the particular threat for those issues. And of course that affects their ability to trust. In fact, I was listening to Colonel McCann saying something earlier when it came to other countries out there being the country of preference, and that is other nations don't want us to see us being bullies or reckless that we in fact are conforming to state practice, being good stewards of the environment when we take action that it's legitimate, valid, incredible. And so environmental law, obviously when we're being good stewards of these countries see us as legitimate, valid, and credible out there. So how do we do that? Basically on the legal side, it takes a pretty long time when you're talking about baking in environmental considerations. In the US territories and states we'll use NEPA. Basically as a baseline, but that can take anywhere from 18 to 24 months to kind of put that together. Believe it or not, in a lot of our host nations out there, particularly some of these small oceanic countries, one of the first things they wanna know is how we're protecting the environment. So it also may take that same 18 to 24 months to negotiate some sort of agreement with them and demonstrate how we're gonna protect that environment out there. So I don't wanna run long and I also wanna give Todd a chance to talk about space, which is always maybe one of the more interesting aspects of what we used to do in the Air Force, but of course, which is now the space force. So I'm gonna stop there on the environmental side and just give an opportunity for Todd to talk and then answer any questions folks may have after. Thank you. Good afternoon, I'm Colonel Todd Pennington and Professor Kraska Naval War College staff and team. It's my pleasure to speak to you today as the space force staff judge advocate representative. I'm the staff judge advocate for space operations command. That's one of the US space forces field commands and your conference focus on the rule of law and great power competition in the Indo-Pacific and Arctic regions really speaks to some of the principal issues we wrestle with daily in the space force. The re-establishment of US space command and the establishment of the US space force both in 2019 were really driven by the realities of great power competition. Many of the capabilities that US and allied forces rely on are provided from or through the space domain, things like missile warning, GPS, satellite communication and of course all disciplines of intelligence derived from unorbit sensors. Until recently the space domain that these assets and habit had essentially been an uncontested sanctuary that is not the case today. There's every possibility that the next major conflict will extend to space or frankly could begin in space. And so I wanna talk today about some of the legal issues that we encounter as the legal advisors to the space force. I'll start with the very first time that the US had to address a novel legal issue arising from outer space, October 4th, 1957 when the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite into orbit Sputnik. At that time, there was no controlling position on the vertical limits of a nation sovereign airspace that was recognized as customary international law. There was real deliberations about what to do about Sputnik. Within the air force, there was an argument advanced that there was no limit, there was no upper limit to a nation's sovereign airspace. There was a proposal for a formal protest or to march to the Soviets for an unlawful overflight of US territory. Others however felt this position was unwise or unsustainable. Kind of a Machiavellian explanation for that position is that some could see the potential advantages of the legal regime that would permit our own access to the ultimate high ground of outer space over the territory of our adversaries. In my own way of thinking, a little more pragmatic explanation of that view is that the physics of orbital mechanics mean that the ground track of an object in orbit necessarily traverses many nations sovereign territory. That's true in every orbital regime except geostationary orbit and it gotta do a lot of flyover to get to that orbital position. Insisting on no vertical limit to national airspace would effectively have precluded our access to orbital regimes and to the use of outer space. And ultimately, of course, no protest was filed. And this really was the earliest example of a development of state practice in the law of operations in outer space. It quickly became the customary international law principle of free access to the domain. Of course, that principle was later codified as treaty law with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Incidentally, the question that I've started this whole kind of bunny trail of Sputnik with, what is the vertical limit of state sovereignty? Where does outer space begin remains unsettled. There's no controlling answer to that. The US opposes a binding rule of international law that would define the limits of outer space. Our position that was expressed before the UN committee on the peaceful uses of outer space is that such a definition would be, in the words of the paper, arbitrary at best and constrained, excuse me, arbitrary at worst or at best constrained by the current state of technology. Now there are of course administrative policies that have definitions that are sometimes pointed to for purposes of defining where space begins. For example, NASA and the Air Force for their internal purposes of accrediting an individual as an astronaut, define the limit of outer space as 12 miles below the Carmen line. Similarly, the US space command geographic area of responsibility is defined to begin at 100 kilometers above mean sea level, which is the altitude commonly referred to as the Carmen line. The Carmen line is the altitude at which conventional aircraft can't stay aloft through normal principles of flight with Bernoulli's principle and the like. They've either got an inter orbit or descend. Neither of these administrative policies that I gave you as an example that were controlling as international law and frankly, even the exact demarcation of the Carmen line is disputed. It's a theoretical question of physics and frankly, it somewhat depends on the state of current technology. So now that I've established, I can't even tell you exactly where outer space begins. Where can I take these remarks today? Well, I'll start with a few sort of, I'll phrase them provocatively and then discuss what they mean questions. What provision of international law did China violate with their 2007 anti-satellite test? They left a constellation of debris in orbit. Thousands of pieces of that test debris remain in orbit polluting the low or the low earth orbit regime still a decade later or consider this. What provision of law did Russia violate when their Cosmos 2542 satellite discharged another satellite like a little Russian nesting doll? Cosmos, we numbered it Cosmos 2543. What about when Cosmos 2543 aligned its orbit regime to closely approach one of our sensitive US satellites? Or what about when Cosmos 2543 discharged a high velocity projectile that had the characteristics of a weapon out into space? Well, all these activities raise concerns, obviously, and interesting questions about things like the conventional registration of space objects. Things like the principle of due regard in the context of the outer space treaty. That is the requirement to operate with due regard for the corresponding interests of other state parties to the outer space treaty. Ultimately, the US has never denounced any of these actions as unlawful, only irresponsible or concerning. And we tend to talk about our interest in space in terms of responsibility and norms rather than strictly framing everything as a legal issue. General Raymond, the chief of space operations has spoken of the shared interest and responsibility of all space-faring nations to create safe, stable and operationally sustainable conditions for space activities, including commercial, civil and national security activities. However, the reality is these activities by China and Russia demonstrate the capability to hold US assets at risk, physical risk. But that's in addition to the capabilities that are non-kinetic in nature. How do we compete with these actors to ensure that our nation and our armed forces retain the advantages of space-based capabilities? Well, one, we do it with our own presence in the domain, much like we do with protecting our access to the high seas with different freedom of navigation activities. We do it by hardening our assets. Many of our legacy systems were built at a time when we assumed unrestricted and uncontested access to the domain. We don't build systems with that assumption today because it's no longer factually valid. And we do it by improving our access to the domain with assured and responsive launch capability and the cost of getting into orbit just decreases all the time for millions of dollars per ounce to thousands of dollars per pound. Another way we compete is by attributing irresponsible behavior. The chief space operations remarks about Russia's nesting doll satellites, that reflected a significant departure from past practice. In the not too distant past, the fact that we could detect and attribute activities like that would have been highly classified. Our national leaders have recognized that a lot of information about space operations and space capabilities is simply over classified. And breaking through those self-imposed barriers is a key thing to do if we're gonna deliver messages like this in support of developing responsible norms of behavior in space. Or even just downgrading the classification to where we can talk about it and talk about these capabilities and this information at a more accessible level. For lawyers, for example, who may not have SAP access but may have collateral clearances. For lawyers, the ability of US and allied systems to detect and attribute adversary activities in the space domain is critical to a legal analysis that we think a lot about in exercises and war games. It's an analysis this audience will be very familiar with. Just thinking about hostile act and hostile intent. These concepts from terrestrial conflict apply equally in space. They define, they're really the backbone of the US thinking about when it's lawful to act in self-defense and to some extent inform how we think about use of force for mission accomplishment. But how do you know if a particular adversary satellites orbital profile indicates hostile intent? How do we think about hostile intent with respect to unmanned satellites? Does it matter if the satellite that's at risk is a missile warning sensor? Or what if it's part of the nuclear command and control system of protected communications? What if it's part of the GPS constellation, providing navigation data for precision targeting? Or it's part of the GPS constellation providing precise timing data that's the backbone for a lot of US electronic financial transactions. What if the US desired in the context of a hypothetical future international armed conflict? What if we wanted to deliver an electronic warfare effect to an adversary space system? Does it matter if that adversary system is a dual use capability with perhaps military and civilian payloads on board? Does it matter if we're targeting the spacecraft itself or the link between the spacecraft and a ground station? Does it matter if the effect is temporary or reversible? Like does it matter if it's permanent or destructive? The answer is yes, all these things matter. They matter in space just like they would on earth. And frankly, most of the law that applies to terrestrial conflict applies equally in space. The challenge for legal advisors in this business isn't really learning a whole new body of law. Rather it's just understanding how the law of war and how international law applies in a completely different domain. The space domain is characterized by objects continually in motion. Every object in orbit is continually in motion at enormous speeds faster than bullets travel in terrestrial warfare. And of course it's a domain where a handful of humans may be temporarily present but a multitude of human interests reside. Space is a domain in which our adversaries are very open about their intent to compete. As I watched China's space program and particularly their lunar exploration activities, I think back to the time that I spent serving in the Pacific and the times that we all spent focused on China's activities in the South China Sea. I think about China's unsafe and unprofessional intercepts of US aircraft that were operating in international airspace. I think about the dangerous and harassing activities of China's maritime militias. All this kind of thing is the competition below the threshold of armed conflict that our adversaries are extending into space. It presents the same legal issues in orbit around the lunar surface for that matter or further beyond that it presents in the South China Sea or the Black Sea for that matter. It is an exciting time to be serving with the nation's newest military service. It really is. I'm very thankful and feel very blessed to be able to work at SPOC right now. In addition to protecting our on orbit assets and delivering space effects for combatant commanders in the nation today, we're working to develop the systems and concepts and people that will protect our access to and our benefits from the domain both today and for the future. So thank you for your time. I look forward to answering your questions. Todd, Sue, thank you very much for your comments. Very helpful, very insightful. And Todd, as the newest force as part of the military, introducing us to some of those concepts, not new concepts, but how we think about them. I think very fascinating, very interesting perspective on things. And I think I'd like to start off with a question for you. You kind of dovetails off something you said. I guess the CSO Chief of Space Operations, General Raymond, recently stated that space needs new rules because it's the Wild West up there. My question to you is, you talked about how we, it's just a different domain. We're the same rules in the law of war apply, but in your mind, do we need new rules and in what areas and where do you think that'd be helpful if we had those rules and addressing things? Over to you. Thanks, Tom, that's a great question. Before I answer that for the admins, it looks like my camera's disabled. So if y'all can enable it, I'll turn that on from my end so everybody can, here we go. Thank you very much. Yeah, thanks, Tom. Great, that's a great question. You know, when I heard the CSO say that, I thought back to what the Wild West was like and thought, you know, the Wild West wasn't really crazy and wild because of a lack of law. It was crazy and wild because of a lack of enforcement. They had laws, you know, the laws, the common law of crimes was not that different in that day than it is today. What's different is the body of law enforcement, the resourcing we've done for law enforcement and the courts to enforce that. There is law in space. There's the Outer Space Treaty. There's some more conventions that implement more particular bits of guidance, such as liability for space activities and rescue and return of astronauts and the like. And apart from that, many of the principles of international law, you know, concepts of sovereignty and activities in area where there can be no claim of national sovereignty all pertain. When I look at space, I honestly see a lot of parallels to the South China Sea. That's why I mentioned it in my remarks. When I got to the space community a couple of years ago, I came directly from my time serving in Curl Sewell's position out at the PAC AF.  Have you looked at the South China Sea and thought about the parallels with what China is doing there and how they're behaving in space? And they hadn't because this way of thinking, much like, you know, many other parts of the service are thinking about space in a new way. The space community is thinking about military operations in a new way. And I guess the bottom line is there's obviously room to develop the law in outer space, but I think I would maybe disagree with my boss a bit that it's the wild, wild West because of a lack of rules. Now, in terms of there is a lot of irresponsible behavior that goes on orbit, can't be denied. And the question my teenage daughter used to ask me when she would see the news about things in the, in South China Sea and I was serving in the Pacific, she asks me now, what are we gonna do about that? And that's a good question that, of course, that's why we're here and it's what we think about every day at work. Over. Hey, thanks, Todd. Great comment. I think about enforcement. And I think what you said about the comparison between space in the South China Sea, very relevant here when you think about it because there is a body of law that can be applied in the space domain. And we have an opportunity right now. And as I said, state practice, a lot of times defines what's going on. And if you don't push back against it, that becomes the norm. Or if you don't exercise those rights that you have an international law and make those norms, exercise those norms the way they were intended to be, I think they can be supplanted. And I think space is one of those areas where much like the South China Sea, we're not looking at it as hard as we need to because it's more subtle. I guess, you know, we think about the Chinese incremental salami slicing and the subtlety of it and acting against it. Very similar situation I think in space that we've got to use those rules and enforce them by the international rules and norms the way they were intended to be. Otherwise they could be supplanted. They could be become state practice of how we do business. And I think that can be very unhelpful in space just like it is in the South China Sea, you know, in the maritime domain the way certain countries look at it, especially the PRC. So yeah, I think that's extraordinarily helpful. And it goes back to exactly what I said. I don't think we need a new body of law. I think we need to utilize the rules we have vigorously and robustly guard them and enforce them. Colonel Sewell, I'd like to come back to you for a minute on a question I have and to talk about just briefly the ideas and the idea of the ideas and the importance of that of what it is and what it isn't and what its significance out here and how you see that playing in especially the way other state actors are interpreting that. If you could spend a moment on that for us, please. I can, again, start my video. Thank you. All right, so ADIZ, our Air Defense Identification Zones also there called ADIZ's. Pretty much every country out there that borders international airspace will have an ADIZ. And ADIZ is simply designed for that if an aircraft is flying into your national airspace at a certain point when they enter an ADIZ that's basically a boundary as they're coming into your airspace, if they're flying into your airspace, they're gonna identify their intentions, they're gonna identify what aircraft where they're from. Most countries out there when they're flying into an ADIZ that's going into a nation's territorial airspace you're gonna file a flight plan out there. What an ADIZ is is not until you get to 12 nautical miles out from a nation's border, it is not sovereign airspace, it's international airspace, anything beyond that 12 nautical mile out there. And as international airspace, the rules for international airspace apply. Basically you're free to fly in that international airspace and if you're a state aircraft under the rules under IKO, you're allowed to fly with due regard. That means I'm basically safe operation of your particular aircraft out there. What often happens, and I'll just give an example of the United States. For example, off of Alaska, we have ADIZs that operate out there and we may have Russian aircraft that fly into those ADIZs and just as a matter of state practice watching those aircraft, we may go out and intercept those aircraft but those Russian aircraft are not required to file a flight plan. They're free to be out there and as long as both nations operate with due regard with one another, we can be in proximity to each other and we just need to do safe intercepts. I think what you're referring to is about 10 years ago, China extended their ADIZ outside of China pretty extensively off of their coast to cover in particular some islands, the Sonakas that have historically been claimed by Japan and just a lot of other additional territory into the international airspace into the South China Sea. What they were requiring was that aircraft injuring those that ADIZ, which is not required by international law, they file a flight plan if they're gonna fly into the ADIZ regardless of whether that particular aircraft was gonna fly into the territorial airspace of China. They were requiring that they contact the Chinese airspace authorities. They would maintain contact with those authorities and basically follow any directions out there, none of which are required by international law in particular for aircraft that are never entering into that state's territory. And as a matter of speaking, it's a same sort of area that we're seeing with the Chinese whether it's in the South China Sea and the Maritime Domain with the Coast Guard, whether we're seeing with space a grace of action. It's a gray zone in international law where they're exerting some level of control and by pushing it out there, they're essentially trying to claim more territory, more rights, more legal responsibilities, authorities than they actually have. Of course, the United States declined to follow that. Many other countries did as well, but sometimes you have nations out there that are flying commercial aircraft that are going ADIZ. And if those commercial aircraft, whether they're US, they're Canadian, they're Philippine, whether the country they are out there, to the extent that they start complying with those requirements in the ADIZ, China has an incremental victory. And again, it's just an aggressive and it's abuse of an area international law. And really the only way to challenge it is to push back and you need allies and partners to push back too, because to the extent that other countries comply, even if the United States doesn't comply, that's one of those gray zone victories for China. Yeah, thanks, Sue. I totally agree with that. I think very, very relevant, especially those gray zone activities and just another example of how we see the rule of law being eroded by the state practice, the PRC and how they do things. And I think our response to that across the spectrum of information, operational, diplomatic realms, is very important to push back in that area of things. Todd, I wanna shift back to you just for one second. We had a question, let me see in the chat, or excuse me, question and answer. It says, when will Space Force get its own JAG capability? And I guess I would define that as, hey, we have the Space Force and Space Command. And could you give us just a brief insight to how they plan to structure their legal support? Would it be like the Air Force did theirs? What were familiar with the other services and how the tiers will work, et cetera, et cetera, and how you see that supporting the mission of Space Command and Space Force? Sure, that's a great question. Well, Space Command is the easier situation to explain. It's a combatant command like all others. It's jointly manned. They've got JAGs there from Army, Navy, and Air Force today. And I think they're gonna look very much like that for the foreseeable future. On the service side, the Space Force only has three career fields, Space Operations, Intelligence, and Cyber. That's it. That's the only jobs there are in the Space Force. Every other capability that the Space Force has assigned to it is provided by the Air Force, including Judge Advocate. Now, it is actually assigned to the Space Force. So like me and my team, I am assigned to Space Operations Command. My Raider is Lieutenant General Whiting, who's the spot commander. And so it feels like day to day, the Space Force does have a JAG capability because they've got embedded and assigned Judge Advocates who are in that chain of command and working for that commander. It's just that my next assignment might be back in the Air Force. I think that's gonna be the situation we have for the foreseeable future, both for some practical realities of keeping the service very lean, which is part of its organizing design and for some legal reasons. By law, the Judge Advocate General is the legal advisor to the secretary and to all officers and agencies of the Department of the Air Force. And so if we were resourced and inclined to change that, we need to go back and revisit the law as well. And I don't see some appetite that for quite a while. Now, in 20 years, people coming into the Air Force JAG Corps today, they may well live to see a time when there's Space Force officers who are Judge Advocates doing this same duty. But I think that might be the horizon that the service may evolve. Hey, thanks very much, Todd. That's very helpful. And honestly, I didn't really realize that to the extent you were telling me about the MOSes. You know, within the command, I think that's very, yeah, a lot to think about about how a structure, kind of a Marine Corps idea of, you know, underneath how things are done. Let me take a look. I don't see any other questions in the question and answer box, but I will hold for a moment in case anyone wants to type one in, you know, or make a trigger if you know of any out there that we could want to depose before I go into my final comments. Okay, well, I first like to thank our last two panelists to Todd and to Sue and Todd. It's great to see you again. Great to see you out there. Thank you very much for both of your comments. I think very insightful into what we're doing here. I think, you know, to everyone out there, I think when you listen to the SJs and what they had to say, a lot of common themes out there, a lot of common problems we're getting our head around and how we deal with things in this region. And it's very different. Like I said, the way the United States has been posed for war has been looking a different direction, cardinal direction, as well as thought direction and how we do business. And what we've had to do over the last 20 years and the way we look at warfare, where we are on the spectrum of conflict and what constitutes a conflict, you know, and even though we're not in a use of force type conflict right now, we call it a competition, that doesn't mean the absence of conflict. You know, phase zero, as I've said, is not the absence. And so how we think about these things, extraordinarily important. I once heard someone say, you know, that the law is that which can be plausibly asserted and boldly maintained. And I often think about that in terms of how we look at things out here and what we need to do before, you know, below the threshold of war, how we win without fighting. And as I've said earlier on the legal narrative, I think we're in a battle for that. We're in a struggle over the legal narrative. And you know, in international laws, I've said before, state practice drives so much of what goes on. And I think it's incumbent on the United States and our allies and partners as we can empower them and support them to not create a new body of law. It may require a new way of thinking, but not, I don't think we have to go that far away from what we have, we have that. The long established international norms and rules that countries have come up with and forms they've come up with them in that we need to embrace because the idea that China may be trying to supplant that or erode that or go against that doesn't just play into the South China Sea of disputed features. I think it plays into the international order and how businesses conduct it and the impact that can have on the international framework of laws and what that could lead to the precedent of attacking those things in favor of states that have certain powers or abilities or authorities over others, very important. If you think about the way the international community works everyone gets a voice, not just those with missiles and tanks but the way things may go in the precedent could be said here, could definitely erode that. Like I said, not just in the Indo-Pacific but I think that's the way we've got to look at it is this has implications not just in our region but around the world and how the world may look at things and is the world changing and where does this fit into it? And I believe we have to take a pause and realize we've got to use those things we have those tools, those laws and I believe as the United States it's McCann's opinion we've got to push, we've got to push we've got to do those things we can do that fit within our law and our policy what can we do and what should we do and do those things robustly so that our allies and partners will look at us. I think we're also in a competition for their favor. Oh, when you think about it a lot of allies it's not just us or them with a lot of our allies and partners it may be us and them to some extent. So how do we affect that? How do we understand that? And how do we create an environment that makes them want to lean into what we're doing to embrace how we look at the world as opposed to just succumbing to what they may have to deal with you know, with China and the devil they know it's a complex problem but I think some of the basic fundamental blocking and tackling still applies here. We've got to do those things we know to uphold the law because if we don't if this country doesn't, if our nation doesn't no one will. And it's more that's never it's not as clear anywhere else I think that in this region or other countries do look at what we're doing. And so that it barts on us I think that responsibility to do it right do it well so that we can push back on this and build a wall if you will around you know of allies and partners that quell this idea not necessarily this country because it is not versus them but this idea that the rule of law can be supplanted and replaced by the desires of one country seeking to increase their own influence with their own good and only their own good. So I will leave it at that. If there are any other questions or comments I'll give it a moment, the question and answer box and if not I'll just move into my final comments. Okay, seeing none. Thank you all very much. And I'd like to thank our hosts at the Naval War College I greatly appreciate the opportunity to participate today. Thank you so much for asking me and for asking all of us the SJA's out here to give you our opinion it's great that we had this opportunity and I welcome the opportunity to share these type of experiences in a dialogue that comes from this here and in the future. I think it's critically important to what we're doing and I greatly appreciate it. And I made you trade, thank you for setting this up. I apologize in the beginning for the administrative trying to get technical problems ironed out here. I hope it didn't impact things too much but I greatly appreciate the opportunity to speak to everyone today. And I think this is a wonderful idea and I hope you will continue to press on this topic in this forum and other forums because I think people out here are listening to what you're doing on that end. I think it informs what we do. We work hand in hand on these things. And I think it's critical that the big minds and the big thinkers on this are putting out those ideas and feeding this because we're reading it, we're using it, we're embracing it and we need you on that end doing what you're doing. So thank you for everything you do. And again, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. And I'll turn it back over to you, Major Trigl at this point. Thanks again. Thank you, Kurtle LeCann. Thank you to the outstanding practitioners who presented today on the staff judge advocate perspectives, the rich viewpoints from across the fleet and department of fifth defense enterprise fostered great dialogue on international law and military operations. Thank you as well to those in the audience for joining us today. We hope to see you tomorrow for day two of the conference beginning promptly at 1100 Eastern daylight savings time. This ends day one. Have a great rest of your day and thank you.


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