Defense Secretary James Mattis James Norman MattisBiden courts veterans amid fallout from Trump military controversies Trump says he wanted to take out Syria's Assad but Mattis opposed it Gary Cohn: 'I haven't made up my mind' on vote for president in November MORE offered some salty words of encouragement to submarine sailors during remarks at Naval Base Kitsap in Washington state, according to the Pentagon’s official transcript of the speech.

Mattis thanked the sailors of the USS Kentucky, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, for their service during the Aug. 9 speech.

“You will have some of the best days of your life and some of the worst days of your life in the U.S. Navy, you know what I mean? That says — that means you're living. That means you're living,” Mattis said at a troop event.

“That means you're not some p---- sitting on the sidelines, you know what I mean? Kind of sitting there saying, ‘Well, I should have done something with my life.’ Because of what you're doing now, you're not going to be laying on a shrink's couch when you're 45 years old, say, ‘What the hell did I do with my life?’ Why? Because you served others; you served something bigger than you.”

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The former Marine Corps general added that he wished he were “young enough to go back out to sea,” but joked, “there's a world of difference between a submariner and a Marine, you know what I mean?"

“I spent seven days underwater once on a submarine so small it'd fit in half of this thing, and I was never so happy as when I got back to the surface,” he added.

Mattis also took questions from the sailors, but he declined to answer whether the current U.S. nuclear deterrent capability is sufficient to stop North Korea from using nuclear weapons against the United States, South Korea or Japan.

“You're getting into something that's nonquantifiable,” Mattis replied to a sailor.

The Navy's ballistic missile submarines are one of three legs of the U.S. nuclear triad. The Air Force oversees and operates the country's other two legs: aerial bombers and land-based missiles.

The Pentagon is currently in the midst of a review of the U.S. nuclear posture, which will culminate in a final report to President Trump by the end of the year.

Trump ordered the review in a January executive action on military readiness.