. i yield back. >> thank you very much, gentlemen. we now provide to ranking member joe courtney. >> i want to thank all the witnesses for your outstanding testimony here today. you know, i was thinking having -- you know, listened to the whole hearing about admiral moran's first visit to this congress back in january where again there was a lot of excitement over the structure assessment and increasing the size of the fleet and again i think our committee has gotten us off to a good start in terms of the ndaa, but your testimony was let's remember first things first. we've got to, you know, focus on the existing fleet to make sure that, you know, during that time that it takes with the shipbuilding being such a long game to get to these higher numbers that we're still able to perform the missions of the navy. and i think, again, those words really reverberate today in terms of just, you know, the discussion and the incidents we're talking about, focusing on what you told us to focus on is really critical to all of the goals that we're trying to achieve, which is to, you know, do what

, congressman joe courtney for his remarks. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you for your testimony today. and i would also like to recognize ms. echols today, and thank you for representing the other families. that's an important contribution being made today. thank you. the circumstances that bring us to today's hearing are painful and tragic. as our lead witness, admiral moran, pointed out, in the span of 65 days, 17 sailors were lost in ship collisions. these were not limited occurrences, but part of a disturbing trend of mishaps in the asia pacific region. to put that in perspective, these heartbreaking casualties are more than the number of service members lost in the afghan war zone in 2017. and electronics technician dustin -- from connecticut, was lost onboard the uss mccain. we're mourning the loss of these patriots, and are watching the response of congress and the navy to fix this disturbing trend. i applaud the efforts to fix this, and we expect the navy to be fully transparent as the efforts move forward. and we will convene again as many times as needed to fix this pr

. we proceed to ranking mem joe courtney. >> thank you, mr. chairman. one thing that might be helpful is walk through the investigative and reporting process, what it will look like over the next, you know, 60 to 90 to 120 days. >> yes, sir. >> in terms of the various efforts that are under way. >> so immediately after both collisions, any mishap, we stand up an investigative team. in the case of these two collisions in japan we put a dual purpose investigation together that includes the normal safety investigation and the jag man investigation. those are privileged investigations. we do not share that information publicly so we can protect folks from being very open with us and giving us as much information as possible to determine the root cause. so those investigations are stood up immediately upon -- by the convening authority. the convening authority for fitzgerald was the commander of the seventh fleet. the convening authority for mccain was admiral swift because of the other investigation going on and because we relieved the seventh fleet commander in the interim. so those inve