Undersecretary of the Navy Thomas Modly Visited Naval Support Activity Souda Bay, Greece, July 19-20.
Transcript
[Interviewer] First of all, I wanted to ask you, what is the reason for your visit to NSA Souda Bay?
Well, thanks for the question and thanks for welcoming me here. We are here with a group of folks from my office in the Pentagon, just to get around and visit the operations here, visit with the team here. It’s a very critical area of the world for us and it provides tremendous support for the Navy and I try to get out as often as I can to as many of these locations as possible.
[Interviewer] Great, thank you, sir. Now, I’ve been here for a while and I’ve learned quite a bit about the history of Crete, and historically Crete has been an important military location first for the Venetians who used it to control maritime trade and waterways throughout eastern Europe. Now today, how is NSA Souda Bay strategically important to the US military and its allies?
Well it’s, all you have to do is look at a map of the eastern Mediterranean and you can see where Crete is relative to some of the areas where we have security challenges. And so it’s strategically located to assist both all the Mediterranean operations for the Navy as well as assisting in some of the work we’re doing in other parts of the world to include the Middle East and the other side of the Suez Canal.
[Interviewer] Great, thank you, sir. Now for the sailors assigned to NSA Souda Bay, how does our daily work here help the assets and operating in the Sixth Fleet area of operations?
Well I think there is a clear logistics advantage of being in this area and being able to supply our ships and our sailors who are out there, not just with weapons and things like that but letters from home as well as food and foodstuffs that are required to maintain long standing hours out in the Med. So that’s critical, but I also think that they contribute to the overall mission of helping us do better working with our partners and allies around the world. So it’s not just the operational side, but it’s the relationships that are built over time that are really critical for us.
[Interviewer] Great, sir. Now how does our partnership with the Hellenic Air Force and Navy help the US Navy accomplish its mission?
Well they provide a whole degree of services, a wide degree of services here. First and foremost, giving us access to this base here, in this as I mentioned a very critically, strategically important area in the world. And then of course we interoperate with them in a variety of different areas, from the Navy as well as in the Air Force, and that just helps build trust and helps build operational excellence over time.
[Interviewer] Okay, great. Now, after touring our facilities and seeing our operations here, what message do you have for the active duty, civilians, sailors, and local nationals that make up Team Souda?
Well, first and foremost I want to thank them for serving the country and for being away from home. A lot of the folks that are here are on unaccompanied tours, and I know that can be hard, but we are here in July and it is beautiful here, so I don’t feel that badly for a lot of them. But I do understand how difficult it is to be away from home, and it’s great to be in a beautiful place like this. So I just want to thank them for what they do, I hope they find that their experience here helps them become better sailors and that they take this experience with them. Particularly how it helps them work with foreign navies, because in the future we’re gonna be working a lot more with partners and allies around the world and it’s a great experience and a great training ground for that.
[Interviewer] Okay, great, sir. That’s all the questions I had for you. Is there anything we didn’t cover that you wanted to mention?
No, just again, thanks to the team here. I’m sorry I can only be here for about 24 hours, but really fortunate that we had the chance to visit, and hopefully we’ll have a chance to come back and visit again. Thanks.
Thank you, sir.