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I look at tonight as a “Maritime Service Family Reunion.” And as with many family get-togethers, regardless of your Service — or whether you are or were active duty or civilian — tonight’s event gives us an opportunity to engage in our ‘family business.’
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Fleet Week New York is now in its 36th year – and we have another strong showing from across the Sea Services to include the nation’s finest warships filled with over 2,300 Sailors, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen ready to experience the enthusiasm and hospitality of this amazing city, but it also gives us the chance to show you that the nation’s interests and future is in great hands!
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Our maritime services are the greatest this world has ever known because of our people – our single greatest enduring, competitive advantage – the key to our unbridled overmatch over any potential adversaries or strategic competitor.
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We could not do this without organizations and caring advocates like you.
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We are backed by the unwavering support, ingenuity, determination, industrial innovation, and technological brilliance from great cities like New York, and certainly, by the proud, time-honored organizations like the New York Yacht Club.
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My Boss, and our 33rd Chief of Naval Operations, ADM Lisa Franchetti and I are working every day to get after her three tenets of Warfighting, Warfighters, and the Foundation that supports them.
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Tonight’s event rightly is focused on that second bucket … Warfighters. Our Sailors must be our “center of gravity, … our center of the universe.”
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The Sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen you will meet tonight and this week are called to serve. They represent the very best our country has to offer. They are the 1% who volunteered to preserve freedom for the other 99% - a commitment I consider represents the truest measure of what it means to be a citizen.
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They are the backbone of the Fleet – and because of them, we have indisputably the greatest maritime force the world has ever known – hands down, no exception.
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Tonight … right now … our ships and Sailors are standing watch in the Red Sea. The Houthis are making every effort to shutdown international maritime shipping, to attack vulnerable merchant ships, to influence the region’s flow of commerce.
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But since October, our team has been doing an extraordinary job of shooting down those missiles, launching aircraft to remove RADAR sites and U-A-V platforms off the chessboard while keeping the lifeblood of the global market flowing through those vital commercial commons. Our Sailors are able to do that because they know their families are being taken care of here at home.
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So, whether you knew it or not, organizations as revered as the New York Yacht Club is an exemplar of the Foundation that supports our Warfighters far from home, so that they can effectively focus on the Warfighting – and most of all - WINNING!
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In the harbors and rivers across New York City and the Tri-State area, ships of the mighty United States Navy and Coast Guard are moored, ready to engage with you. I hope that you will visit them, talk to the crews and Marines onboard, and see for yourselves what your sons and daughters, your labor and money, have forged – a hard-hitting instrument of national power and liberty.
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And just like the intrepid spirit and grit of the people of New York, there is nothing these young men and women can’t do, nothing that they can’t accomplish.
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You will see in the quickest conversation, or moment of admiration, why we are, and will remain, ready to fight and win our country’s battles on the land, air or sea.
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In closing, I think I can speak for everyone when I say once again – thank you for welcoming your Fleet back to New York, and thank you for all you do every day in support of our Sailors, Marines and Coast Guard across the globe. I look forward to continue working with you in our “family business” as we take care of our most valuable resource … our service members.
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Thank you again, Commodore, for hosting us tonight.