Here's What's Happening at East Polk Rotary

 

At last week's meeting, our Rotarian of the Day Mike Hamilton introduced us to Michael Novak, Deputy Director for Warfare Integration on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations.  Essentially he is in charge of assessing the Navy's war fighting priorities and capabilities as far out as 30 years.  Mr. Novak, a civilian now, was an aircraft carrier-based pilot as an active duty officer.  He shared with us many facts and figures around today's navy.  For example, the cost to build one aircraft carrier is $11 billion and one nuclear missile-carrying submarine is $9 billion.  Today's navy has 300 ships, with 90 on deployment at any one time, and another 45 training off America's coast in preparation for a six month deployment.

 

There are about 300,000 active duty sailors in the Navy, and around 2,000 of them are from Iowa.  There are also around 200,000 civilians who work on the ships as contractors.  He identified one of the biggest threats as the cyber-theft that's occurring across the defense industry with nation-states sponsoring hackers who have been siphoning off our cutting edge technology and using it to play catch-up with the United States.  Overall, Mr. Novak's assessment of today's Navy was an effective fighting force with a global reach.  

 

In other Rotary news, the year end banquet will again be held in the Prairie Rose Room upstairs at Prairie Meadows on June 18th, a Thursday.  Our summer picnic will again be held at Pam Donahue's house in Grimes.  Tomorrow's Sergeant at Arms is Bruce Mason and our guest speaker will be Iowa Ag Deputy Secretary Mike Haig.  We hope to see everyone at 7 AM sharp!