U.S. DEPUTY DFENSE SECRETARY CARTER VISITS FRANCE

FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Paris Visit Honors Important Relationship, Carter Says
By Cheryl Pellerin
American Forces Press Service

ABOARD A MILITARY AIRCRAFT, Feb. 1, 2013 - Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter spent a rainy day in Paris today, meeting face-to-face with that nation's top military leaders and their advisers.

Carter deliberately chose France as his first stop on a six-day trip to countries in Europe and the Middle East, he said, "to emphasize the importance of our relationship."

As part of that bond, the United States has joined other countries and institutions in Europe and Africa in supporting France's effort to chase Islamic extremists from Mali and bolster the capability of Mali's own military forces to keep them out.

Mali and the path forward there was a large part of discussions today between Carter and French defense officials.

"I want to compliment the extraordinary performance of French units in Mali," Carter said, adding that more work remains but he wanted to recognize the courage and professionalism of French forces working with Malian and other partners.

This morning Carter and his staff met with the U.S. Embassy country team in Paris before heading to the Secretariat for Defense and National Security. There he met with Francis Delon, general secretary for defense and national security in the office of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.

Carter also met with Minister of Defense Jean-Yves Le Drian, Presidential Military Adviser Gen. Benoit Puga, Ministry of Defense Senior Political Adviser Jean-Claude Mallet, and Chief of Defense Adm. Edouard Guillaud.

The U.S. government is committed to supporting French efforts, the deputy defense secretary said, including with airlift capabilities, with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, and the help of military planners.

Carter also said the Defense Department plans to support contributing institutions like the United Nations, the European Union and the Economic Community of West African States as they equip and train regional forces and provide airlift capabilities.

Carter left Paris today bound for Germany, where he will participate tomorrow, along with Vice President Joe Biden and many other U.S. and international officials, in the 49th Annual Munich Security Conference that began today.

The major, intensive security policy conference draws security experts, foreign ministers and defense ministers from around the world.

DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY CARTER HONORS DEFENSE THREAT REDUCTION AGENCY WITH AWARD

FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Carter Honors Defense Threat Reduction Agency
By Cheryl Pellerin
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26, 2013 - In an auditorium filled with nearly 400 Defense Threat Reduction Agency employees and other defense officials, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter presented the Joint Meritorious Unit Award to agency representatives yesterday.

It was the fourth time DTRA received the award, and Carter called it a great testament to those who have served the organization, past and present.

"In all your work you have aggressively pursued the president's vision for countering [weapons of mass destruction] around the world," the deputy secretary told the audience.

"You've kept WMD out of the hands of terrorists by locking down dangerous nuclear and biological materials, destroying legacy weapons and developing technologies to prevent, defend against and counter a WMD attack," he added.

Joining Carter at the ceremony were Frank Kendall III, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics; Andrew C. Weber, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs; and Kenneth A. Myers, director of DTRA and the U.S. Strategic Command Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction.

DTRA's mission is to safeguard the nation and its allies from chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosive weapons of mass destruction by providing the capabilities needed to reduce, eliminate and counter the threat such weapons pose and to mitigate its effect.

The Joint Meritorious Unit Award, established in 1981, is the only ribbon award granted by the Defense Department and is the organizational equivalent of the Defense Superior Service Medal.

It's presented in the name of the defense secretary, and Leon E. Panetta signed a congratulatory statement that appeared on the award certificates.

"DTRA distinguished itself by exceptionally meritorious service from October 2009 thru September 2011," he wrote, "by their exemplary performance of duty, the members of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency have brought great credit upon themselves and the Department of Defense."

During the ceremony, Carter described the work performed around the world by DTRA scientists and specialists, and the kind of work the nation will need from the agency in the years ahead.

In March 2011 DTRA directly supported the crisis response in Libya through Operations Odyssey Dawn and Unified Protector, he said.

DTRA staff worked with U.S. Africa Command and the Joint Staff to generate more than 100 targeting support products to assess the effects of striking WMD targets in Libya.

The products were used to determine how WMD sites would be addressed during the crisis, the deputy secretary added, and now the United States is working with the Libyan authorities to secure and destroy chemical weapons.

In the same month, nearly 7,000 miles away in Japan, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake generated a 70-foot tsunami, devastating communities along Japan's coast and causing one of the world's worst nuclear disasters.

"You responded immediately from both the United States and Japan in Operation Tomodachi," Carter said.

"The United States has had a permanent presence at Yokota Air Base for arms control purposes, and that provided on-scene capability with all the backup consequence management capability of this great agency," he added, noting that a DTRA consequence management advisory team arrived in Japan within two days of the disaster.

There, DTRA experts provided technical assistance, modeling and simulation 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with rotational liaison, planning and technical personnel on scene until the crisis was under control. They advised on radiation, monitoring and safety issues, and with Navy experts modified a software model to visualize the extent and trajectory of contaminated water around the damaged nuclear power plants in Japan.

"Your effective response was facilitated by the close relationships you had built with U.S. Forces Japan, with Japan's own Self Defense Forces, with our State Department colleagues prior to the disaster," Carter said.

Several DTRA personnel provided direct assistance at the U.S. Embassy and the Japanese Ministry of Defense, he said, and the work continues today, strengthening the U.S.-Japan alliance and improving crisis response capability with U.S. partners and allies.

Describing other ways DTRA has fulfilled its core counter-WMD mission, Carter said the agency has become a premier government entity for research and a key partner for the Department of Homeland Security.

Specifically, he said, DTRA has continued to develop new capabilities to counter biological threats, including producing new candidate vaccines for deadly viral diseases like Ebola and Marburg.

DTRA personnel have played a technical role in New START Treaty negotiations, Carter added, and since the treaty entered into force DTRA teams have conducted 35 inspection missions at Russian strategic sites to verify weapon limits and locations.

"Going back all the way to the Manhattan Project, DTRA and its predecessors have performed a strong supporting role in preserving, protecting, understanding and advising the department on our overall nuclear stockpile and on the continuing need for a safe, secure and reliable nuclear deterrent for the United States," the deputy secretary said.

Today DTRA performs critical functions, among them helping the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Air Force and the Navy conduct nuclear safety and security inspections; providing people, procedures and tools to perform U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile accounting and tracking; and serving as the DOD executive agent for sustaining emphasis on nuclear weapons training expertise, and response protocols, procedures and practices for potential nuclear weapons accidents and incidents.

DTRA is also part of the 20-year-old Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, Carter said, and its contributions to preventing the spread of loose nukes in the former Soviet Union.

"And in the past two decades ... DTRA personnel –- scientists, weapons specialists, inspectors, program managers, action officers, interpreters -- have assisted former Soviet states in deactivating and properly disposing of over 13,000 warheads," the deputy secretary said.

"Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus [are] all denuclearized," he added. "And DTRA assisted the Albanian government in becoming the first nation to completely eliminate a chemical weapons stockpile."

DTRA is an important protection against the increasing sophistication of terrorist organizations and leaps in technology that reduce barriers to WMD acquisition, Carter said. The agency also increasingly works with other government agencies and international partners to build capacity for among other things countering the threat of biological and chemical weapons.

"So we find ourselves today at an inflection point in our thinking and our strategy and wherever you look in that strategy you find a role for and a need for the work of DTRA," the deputy secretary said.

And as DOD resources and global security interests shift, Carter added, "the department will continue to depend on you for the core intellectual, technical and operational support to counter the threat of weapons of mass destruction."

DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY CARTER THANKS SERVICE MEMBERS FROM ONBARD THE USS MISSOURI

120718-N-WX059-066 PEARL HARBOR (July 18, 2012) Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter delivers remarks to service members aboard the USS Missouri Memorial. Carter wanted to personally thank service members for their Participation in the military. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Sean Furey/Released

FROM: U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT
Presenter: Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter July 18, 2012 remarks by Deputy Secretary of Defense Carter Aboard the Battleship Missouri
Thank you, Admiral Watters. Good morning, everybody. (inaudible). Thanks for being here this morning, and what a spectacular vessel this is. This is -- as you all know -- here, right here in Pearl Harbor, is where World War II started and right here on the deck of this ship is where World War II ended. And the folks who fought that war were about your age, or some for you, who are younger, and they were -- they were the greatest generation of that time.

And I guess the main thing I want to say for myself and for Secretary Panetta is, you all are the greatest generation of this time. And so, the first thing that we all have in our minds in Washington when we think about you and what you're doing out here, is to thank you. And I want each and every one of you to go home tonight, to your family or your close friends, or call your parents or whomever is close to you, and say that today, you were thanked by the leadership of the Department of Defense, and your country, for what you do. We don't take it for granted, and it's incredibly important to us.

And I think for you, if you're like me and most of us who work in national defense, it's a great feeling to wake up in the morning and to go to work doing something that's bigger than yourself. What we do is bigger than us; it's even bigger than the great country that we all serve, because the United States still provides security to much of the world.

Especially to the Asia-Pacific region, and you know what you do out here to build military capability that serves as a deterrent to violence in this part of the world; to build the partnerships, alliances and friendships upon which our security and the security of everyone else in this region depends; to build the capacities of partner militaries -- that's being done right now, here, at the RIMPAC fleet exercises, right off the coast here of Hawaii, at this moment.

So it's a good feeling to do what we do, and I hope you share and feel that good feeling.

And you all, right here, right now, in PACOM, are at the heart of the great transition that our country's defense is undergoing in these coming years. We have been, as you all know, understandably and justifiably preoccupied with two wars -- in Iraq and Afghanistan -- two wars of a certain kind. Counterinsurgency war. And with fighting a battle against the terrorism that we first saw evidence of on September 11th of 2011 [sic 2001]. Those are important things to do, and they're important things to bring to an end. And we have, and we will.

Iraq we have brought to an end, and in Afghanistan, we have a plan that is shared with all our coalition partners, to bring that down -- our activity in Afghanistan -- to an enduring presence starting in 2015. What the President and Secretary of Defense have told us is that they understand that as this era -- the era of Iraq and Afghanistan -- ends, we need to lift our heads up out of the foxhole we've been in, look up, look around, and see what the problems are, and the security opportunities there are, that will define our future -- your future. And those issues, those challenges and those opportunities are, very importantly, in the Asia-Pacific region, which you now serve. So this is where our future lies, and you, right here, right now, are a very important part of that transition, that great transition that this great military is embarked upon.

Secretary Panetta was out here not long ago, the President was out here, the Secretary of State was out here. And I'm out here in their wake, to show that when they talked about rebalancing our security effort to the Asia-Pacific theater, that we aren't just talking the talk, we're walking the walk. And so in all of the allies and partnerships where we have forces deployed or forces rotating and acting in partnership, I want to check on their status -- our own people. I want to check on the health of our alliances and relationships; make sure that we're doing all the things that we can do, all the things that we said we would do, all the things that we're planning to do, to rebalance our effort to this region.

We do this at a time of great strategic transition, as I've already said. We also do it at a time when the country is trying to rebalance its own fiscal situation. And the other thing I'd tell you is that we understand that, and we can do what we need to do here within the constraints of the amount of money that the country is able to give us -- in important measure because much of the capacity that we have been using in Iraq and Afghanistan we can now apply to this region. So we're going to do it, we can do it even within the budgetary circumstances that we find ourselves. And so, as I go on from here to Guam, and then to Japan, and then to Thailand, and then to India and finally to Korea, I'll be looking at our relationships with those countries and implicitly with all of the other countries in this area, and saying, "What is it that I need to go back to Washington and make sure we're doing on our end to hold up our bargain with you, out here, who are at the point of the spear on this effort?"

There are a number of different aspects to the rebalancing here. I'll just say that it really starts with the principles that we stand up for, that we uphold, and that we have stood for in this part of the world for 70 years now, since World War II ended aboard this vessel. I always try to summarize it in the following way: I say that this region of the world has enjoyed peace and prosperity for 70 years now. It's a remarkable achievement. In that environment of peace and security, first Japan was able to rise; then Korea was able to rise; and now, yes, China, able to rise to develop their own people, to develop economically. And that's only possible in an environment of peace and security.

And that doesn't come automatically out here. It was the United States and our presence -- constant and strong -- in this region over a period of 70 years, that created that environment of peace and security. We think that's been a good thing. It's been good for us, and it's been good for every other country in this region. We aim to keep that going. We aim to continue to be the pivotal factor for peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region.

That's what you're about. It's about the whole region. It's not about us; it's not about any one country, or any one group of countries. It's about the entire region.

So that's why we're here; that's why you're here. It's a period, it's a moment in history, that you should always, as you go forward in your lives and your careers, keep in your mind. This was an important moment to be here, to be doing what you're doing.

So once again, thank you from us in Washington. Go home tonight, call a parent, say this to a spouse, to kids, to a good friend, whatever -- say that you were thanked today for what you do for our country, and that you were summoned to a new purpose in a new moment in our nation's national security history.

I look forward to getting a chance to chat with some of you, standing out here in this lovely weather -- a lot better than Washington. So please come on up. We have some photographers, we can take pictures, we can chat a little bit, I've got coins. And once again, well done, thank you. I have high hopes for you and high expectations of you. Thanks in advance.