the council on foreign relations hold a discussion on u.s. defense priorities around the world and the role of military forces including the army, space force, marine corps and air force. they focused on u.s. preparedness and nuclear strategy. the panel discussion runs one hour and 15 minutes. >> good evening, everybody and welcome. i'm president of the council on foreign relations and it's a great honor and privilege to be here for the robert mccue in and out of serious on military strategy and leadership with the u.s. service chiefs. we have in addition to this room over 350 members and this series features prominent individuals

from the military intelligence communities and generous gifts from robert mcewen, founder and president starting in 2008 and the series continues every year. other friends and family are joining us on zoom so thank you very much to the family. we are really honored tonight to have general randy george chief of staff of the army commandant of the marine corps of the u.s.. navy and general david chief of staff at the u.s. air force, the chief of space operations of the u.s. space force and admiral of the u.s. coast guard. i'd like to thank them for maintaining this tradition and for their support of the council of military fellowship program. every year we have had five fellows plus the different

service branches plus our intelligence fellow here at the council for the year of study and professional development. let me just ask our fellows on the front row here to stand including our intelligence fellow. [applause] this fellowship has established some 50 years ago about 150 fellows good through the program and among them about half have gone on to become generals or admirals including general george. we are also pleased to have the cfr members, so welcome back to the council, all of you. thank you for being part of this family. let merhs, start perhaps with general smith if i can. the global situation, the global

map is changing a great deal. we have the return of power politics and china, changing relationships among countries with access between russia, iran, north korea. this is a time when the fundamental elements must be under a fair amount of stress. how have these changes affected the ongoing strategy and how many wars do we need to be prepared to fight simultaneously? >> i would jokingly but not jokingly say one more because russia is an opportunistic aggressor so if the war breaks out with china you can be sure that russia will follow and you can be sure chinah will follow. so they are both opportunistic feeders and aggressors and they will look for the seams in our

honor. not to be flippant, but one more than we think. >> how does it affect the planning of where you've been involved, how do you plan for that? >> for us it is designed against the peer competitor of china. they are the pacing threat by the national defense strategy so it is aimed at deterring china and we still believe that that will include all the lesser includedd offenses such as russa and the dpr k. with its ability to make sense ofen what's happening is usefuln either theater. >> end of the nuclear strategy we see this buildup of the nuclear capability at the same time the demise of the traditional arms-control if we have any that are about to

expire, from the air force perspective what is the future of the nuclear strategy and do we have to have more in both china and russia combined? >> it's interesting we are in an agreement and i think it's interesting because we are definitely in some uncharted territory because the air force doesn't necessarily have a nuclear strategy all unto itself. we have two of the three legs but the counterparts have another. i thinknt it is interesting because now we have officially some of the shackles being taken off even though russia was violating them for a long time anyway. we have to look at nuclear deterrence into strategic i think a little bit differently because while we've been trying to go back and forth and

integrate china into some sort of strategic stability talks, the position is we have to catch up to you first. fundamentally we have to maintain the capability of a safe and effective, reliable nuclear triad so between my navy part and myself, that is costing a good coin but it's one of the most foundational things we have to do. i think what is going to be interesting for the nation, the national security apparatus is to get a grip on what it means to have strategic deterrence in a tri- polar type world as china starts to approach a parody does the thinking still work.

we have to make sure our capabilities are suited to the task and there's quite a bit of that. >> i would love to have arms-control play a role. with respect to recapitalization and meeting the threats around the globe the capabilities are required until wel get some strategic. >> while we stay focused for a moment there's been a lot of evolution in the architecture round of the pacific and the

trilateral relationship between korea, japan, the united states and the philippines. how are these alliances evolving in the indo pacific to further allow us to extend security over the region and what does that mean for the navy? when we first pivoted to the pacific the navy began to focus in that area. it's our prayer ready theater and i think the thing that really distinguishes us from any of our potential adversaries as we do have allies and partners all over the world and nowhere is that more important than in the i indo pacific. what i've seen from going to visit my partners that they are excited about the u.s.

leadership. they want to partner with us and i think all of our services are investing heavily in developing interoperability and i think the other exciting piece is you are starting to see some of the european navies also focusing now on the indo pacific so a meeting of all of the carrier navies in france, and we all talked about the importance of the aircraft carrier strike group and the navies of italy, france and the uk all planned to n do the indo pacific deploymens in the coming years. so as we leverage our relationships that we already have and we continue to build new ones in the indo pacific we will continueco to develop the capabilities to detour any other adversary inro the indo pacificr around the world. >> then we have the problem of the shift building capacity and it far outweighs something all of our shipbuilding capacities have done by one site in china.

how confident are you that we can build the ships necessary to exercise that kind of influence in the region in the context of china building out this very significant presence? >> it's important to look at this in two ways. every study has said that we do need a larger navy. but i would offer two things first of all we have a navy and a lot of other navies that are going to partner with us to do whater it is we need to do to determine the line of behavior and respond to aggression if necessary. it's not just about a number of shifts. this is about the ecosystem and we are going to be able to put together the shifts, aircraft, submarines and the joint force partners whetherd it's the army, the marine force we've got the space for us and the air force and our coastt guard partners operate extensively.

we think about it has a joint were fighting ecosystem and we workingexperienced with with each other and working with allies and partners and i think that gives us the winning edge every time. >> you served on our only icebreaker four-star a much younger version of me served on that ship in the 80s and getting it done for the nation primarily focused around the breakout and the support of the southd pole station.

operating in thedu arctic nothig up through the northwest passage and circumnavigated the continent and plans to do that again. they are definitely paying attention when we are up there with our service assets and operating those ships. the nation needs more icebreakingac capacity. we are in arctic nation. this is our national sovereignty as it pertains to our exclusive economic zones also off the coast of alaska and we have a critical need to build the polar security. for that size and complexity there's still some challenges in front of us with regards to the

budget indicating that ship fielded. i want to go to allies and partners. f i was recently in norway and all the members of the forum are now nato members, to see how quickly things have changed geopolitically with regards to the commitment from our allies and partners and of those are important partnerships in the arctic. they are equally as critical in the indo pacific. we talked about navy work in the indo pacific. let me give you a scene set on the coast guard. my budget is 12.3 billion a year. 1.4% of the dod for the defense budget. if you look at the navy and nato it is the third largest in the nato about 55,000 people yet we take the ships and everything from the national security to smaller patrol boats and go to

nations to meet them where they are partnering and helping them create their own capacity to build their own sovereignty and this is our nation's competitive advantage. we took them to help and force them on fisheries, their own fisheries. we helped them get out and a 40 some chinese fishing vessels in their exclusive economic zone. it's about for some alignment and targeted ships and people we can have some significant impact whether it's in the arctic or the indo pacific.

>> nato is stronger than ever and we have two new members meeting their commitment but there's rumblings within nato aboutt european strategic economy. do you think they can develop its own foreign defense identity and its own defense industrial base? >> i will tell you i think all of us haveds to work towards improving that. you look at one of the things we talking about his magazine depth and i think nato has incredible weapons systems. we are seeing that play out certainly with the systems but if you don't have magazine depth oror bullets for all those thin, that is a problem. i think there is a clear recognition that there's things we need to doe to make sure tht we are improving the capability.

that's when i think across nato and the other the battlefield is changing very rapidly. it's changing more in the last couple of years than i've ever seen it and i think that we are all also going to have to transform our formations, and that is a big thing that we are focused on inside of the army and there's no place you can hide anymore on the battlefield with space-based assets. phones, the internet of things and i think we have to change that. i think that we all need to be working towards that. everybody here has talked a lot about how important our partnerships are and we are exercising a whole bunch with our partners that are over there. i do think that the u.s. is a key contributor to that and being a partt of that, but i

think that there is a clear recognition that there's areas we need to improve. >> do you have a sense that if they were not making that contribution the europeans would be able to step up on their own? >> there's a lot of countries that are stepping up and doing that and have recognized that and have given lots of examples. i will be in europe next month and you look at what poland has purchased with tanks and a lot of countries i was over in the uk and it's the same thing so i think again there's a recognition of what we need to do. the challenge is can we make the changes as quickly as we need to, can we get out in front of -- i go out and tell everybody the real problem isn't necessarily product innovation but it's process innovation.

you can't talk about being able to -- we often talk about 20, 30 and beyond. a lot ofca that is because the process and i think we need to moveer much quicker. >> it seems like one of the challenges that many of you face are being attacked by relatively chief weapons. it's muchem more expensive to shoot them down then to build new ones and a fire them. it's kind of asymmetric warfare. how do you think about that in the context of what's going on right now and elsewhere and how we possibly keep up with that. >> there's two parts of that. we are sending everything that we have with hundreds r&d we are sending it to the middle east

and i am'r a believer that if yu put users with developers and testers altogether that's not how we normally do things. we have sent over for example directed energy or high-powered microwavero all of the kinetic d non-kinetic so there is a process of innovation i think we have to be a little bit different. we can have a 10,000-dollar munition that might be an extensive one but the shooting it down with 150,000 one million-dollar missiles, so we have to get on the right side of that and move at a different

pace. what constitutes a victory in ukraine military victory what would you hope to see with of this new package finally approved? what do you think the endgame is militarily? >> the consumption of ukraine which is a nonstarter with a reestablishment of the national borders with ukraine and russia. our will has been ironclad that wewe have to get re- stabilized. we can't have russia consuming ukraine. that's a nonstarter so i think by continuing to support ukraine

with munitions we are hoping that mr. putin will think about how much to invest in retaking ukraine and i hope he will you l decide correctly for his own sake. >> are you surprised it's turned out to look a lot like a world war i trench warfare battle? >> i wouldn't say i'm surprised. i'm not pleased that that is. in the end it is inevitable and that's why we have to produce and provide technology to ukraine. i think we are doing that and we have proven successful this far in doing that. >> it's a 50 year anniversary of space bar's.

everyone is quite intrigued. we are in the process of launching a task force on space policy on low earth orbit and rules of the road for the activity. what wouldld you see the accomplishments of the space for spaceports are so far? >> in a word i'm sitting here among these teammates. elevating space to a service level is a huge step forward. you are here in a tank session you b should be proud of it. theseha are exactly the discussions that go on for the first design, prioritization, posture around the globe, friction points those are the discussions that play out among the service chiefs across the board every friday. second i will wrap it together because i feel like the elevation of the space force

service has given us an opportunity to think about first a continuation under contested circumstances if the capabilities that we've provided to the joint forcece for years, decades even. missile warning, position navigation and timing, satellite communications. these are enablers that we can't take out of the joint force.fo the joint force has been boiled around those capabilities and the reason you have a space force is because there are competitors who realize those advantages and want to take them away and/or investing heavily encounters satellite capabilities designed to deny the advantage but probably even more concerning the prc has built a long-range kill chain that is a space enabled the

targeting a system. it is robust and accurate and deadly and if we can somehow disrupt and deny and degraded that in all of the domains to be the military objectives and so i think what you're hearing is a commitment to partnership because we know that is the only way to succeed. each are inadequate to global tasks that we've been presented and if we can't work together both technically, operationally i think that is what we are committed to and that includes commercial partners and allies and it's all part of the formula that will make us successful. >> let me go back to something you raised about procurement and being agile. the pentagon gets often criticized for having these long

leader cycles focusing on hardware systems and technology continues to leap ahead. what can the services do to more quickly adopt the technology and deploy it at a scale or the bureaucratic end of the congressional obstacles so great that despite these efforts nothing is going to get done, and you are welcome to comment on this. >> there was a long study on it but if you look at what is happening and there are several examples around the world what is happening for example in ukraine is things are changing between three weeks and three months and five months and they are adapting that quick so some of this is how we build things

to make sure we have modular open system architecture and we can update very quickly. it's a lot of small companies out there doing things so one of theot things we've been talkinga lot about is we would have the ability and the flexibility to buy what is the best on the market and move quickly from research and development to actually buying systems. that's also very important to us because we had for six, seven months we had a continuing resolution. we couldn't do new starts or by

anything else. that was a time that we were going through counter eumaeus so i do think we need some process change along that. there's probably other examples that we do but i think that that would help us get started. >> to piggyback on that, making sure we are reaching out into the innovation base and helping them understand what our problems are and how they can help solve them we stood up a couple of years ago on the unmanned task force in the middle east able to bring a lot of differentnt commercial companies and test them out in that environment working side-by-side with our operators to get after what it is we needed to do and that kept looking at the maritime domain awareness and building the network that can bring in everything they were seeing and there was more in common

operational picture. we were able to take that spirit and put it into a disruptive capabilities office we sawic lat fall which is going after these capabilities we can deliver to the hands of the war fighters in the next two years by taking that kind of spiral development approachhe and then get them contracted and out so we are excited about that and it's a path maker for other types of procurement like that in the future. >> we talk about the famous valley of death you've got these great ideas and then stuck in the valley of death to get them across but sometimes you need someone on the other side of the valley yelling for it. no one is asking for it on the other side then perhaps it is not relevant or perhaps we are

not talking about what we need or the problem we want to solve. we have been used to the past couple of decades telling the industry what we want. i want this and i want that. when we don't have a full appreciation of that innovation ego space of the sort of market of what's out there with everything going on so we still have a habit pattern in the bureaucracy and then we get that precise thing and it's out of date because the technology has moved on rather than this is my first design, this is what i think i'm going to need to do in the future what do you have and then let the industry tell us how they can solve the problem, but precision as much as we can and describing the challenge, not describing the product. i think there's a bit of communication that goes back and forth that we can improve on our

part as well. >> i will echo what my counterpart said about predictable funding. you can't go half a year without a confirmed budget and then spend it all on the second half of the year that creates waste, inefficiencies and it's not a way to run a railroad and i'm sure i will hear about this comment but you can't be a superpower when you can't follow your own rules. >> let's get some of that together because like he was saying, you come up with an idea and say i think this would be valuable but if you cannot see the path to scaling it then is it worth investing the first few dollars to get started on the

program but let's say there is a way to do that then you have to test it and put a payload on orbit and define the requirements, you have to convince the people giving you money that this is where the end of then everybody says this is a great idea and then you are two years away from money. now the technology has changed into the security environment has changed and you go back and say maybe we can just modify yothese requirements and then yu get in this requirements live and that starts to erode the advocacy for the resources and you're in the valley of death. so there's a pieces of this that has processed. in the end it's hard to bring these good ideas to the field and we have to work at it over andhe over again. >> there's a defense industrial base piece to this without timely budget they need to

invest. i'm thinking about some of the big shipbuilding programs the coast guard has got. theyy need to make capital investments and then hire the workforce and the need to know that the money is going to flow so they can continue those investments. when thater aspect of the indusy makes it take longer come cost more money and there is a significant inefficiency. i would say workforce in the base workforce and talent and access to talent is one of the major challenges. in this race for talent money matters because you need to hire that talent.

creating service in these uniforms or to serve in the industrial base for the government is a challenge to merit some more direct thinking and encouragement because it is honorable to serve. covid definitely impacted some of it but people have feelings about work and it doesn't includeve work always. [laughter] >> that is the question i want to go to next because there's been a lot written about the recruitment challenges. if i'm not wrong, the marines are the only ones that hit their goal this year. i stand corrected i wouldn't

offer advice the way we make our recruitingno we are not selling anything. we are challenging you to become the united states marine and if you can meet that challenge, then you are in the title.a if you can't, you go home. that's it. we didn't promise you the rose garden. we are offering an opportunity to become the united states marine and earnr that title and we invest heavily in the recruiting environment and reward the recruiters when they complete their mission and when they don't, we hold them accountable people talk about how the armed services are kind

of a family business and about a third of those in the armed services were a child of somebodya in the services or close family member. how do we expand the pool with issues of obesity, physical fitness. >> one of the things we get started here about a year and a half ago was the future soldier prep course down at fort jackson. it's great there are people that want to serve. they need to lose a little weight or something like that and they come and we have had about 18,000 that have gone through and we have a different recruiting for us 60,000 people a year so significantly higher but we have found two things.

i'm listed right out of high school talk about how important the services and that we are advertising and i think we can do better with that because we are very close since 9/11 and there's a lot of people that don't know and we are working to get the word out and they are helping us bring people to our standard. we haven't adjusted our standard. in every zip code in america how are we getting out to every zip code in america? because over time since i've been enabled of the productions that have occurred a lot of folks don't have contact with the military anymore so it's sort of all of our responsibility to find how do we get out and talk to folks that don't know anything about us

often times we talk within our own sphere. that's not going to reach someone in north dakota so what is the processlp that we can he. it's not just reaching the sailors it's also reaching the people to influence them and their decisions. parents,m, coaches, church leaders, how do we talk to them about the value of service to increase? there's an on hands on deck effort and call to national service as a commandant talked about to work in the defense industry or the military one thing he didn't say maybe because he's humble but that the

marine corps does better than others is they value recruiting. i think per capita the number that have been recruiters that continues and that is part of it. last year we did not make our goal into this year we will. we see it in front of kennedy's. it did cause us to do some introspection on the policies that we had that were not elevating standards they were just policies we had because we sort of could. they didn't have a problem in recruiting so we took a closer look at those and i think what we are getting at here is longer-term things it's not just about letting people know the incentives here and there.

my own theory, and it's worth every penny, i do believe that right now there is an untapped potential and it is about getting out there and communicating with the young americans because let's face it we are in places where there's domestic issues and you can talk about that. there are still americans raising their hand and you have to ask yourself why. we need to make sure we recruit to them in a way that says how would you h like to be on a winning team. it's not so much that we are

going to call you but we will give something purpose filled where you can find there's something just beyond you that goes from generation to generation and i think we need to tap into that and when they come into the formation if we don't give them that i think if you are looking for somewhere else or something else a little bit different value proposition andtl you come into the service and it's all coddling and helpingil to build strong relationships and horizontal accountability and that sort of step if we don't do that and maybe this is all there is so we have a great opportunity it's just getting out there and having beyond these are the payments and benefits. >> one last question before i open up to the audience and that's around climate change. it's opened up a whole new field of operations what is the risk

posed to the bases and then for those that are more landlubbers or space dwellers how do you think about the impact of climate change in terms of creating conflicts in migration and political instability and parts of the world. >> climate change is here now and the maritime services the ships are there at the end which puts you on the basis where you're likely to be impacted by the sea level rise. as we rebuild we are doing that in a way that is claimant informed and much more resilient so that they can sustain those kinds of wind and water's. the reality is there's changing patterns now and i will talk to the article a little bit the sea

temperature rise is different levels but the fish know they like a certain temperature of water and they don't really c ce where our boundaries are and establish order and follow the core temperatures. if any of you have watched the deadliest catch they are operating much further north now. the collapse in alaska disappeared and they think the food source basically died off and the crab. see people, cruise ships and other activities again in the arctic where the season starts earlier and goes leader in the year where you are

encountering less y ice and it allows people for tourism and exploration so those changing patterns are with us now and will create both challenge and opportunity with regards to ensuring we continue to protect the safety of life and see and that you've got the right environmental protections in place but that is very much with us now and i mentioned the illegal fishing that challenges some of that behavior truly a global challenge as well as claimant. they follow the water wherever they want with the temperatures. >> i would add two things very quickly. the infrastructure resilience he certainly all the bases are, the majority are coastal and we need to make sure that we are preparing investing and have a prioritized work plan to get after the biggest challenges first but make sure we are going to continue to invest in the infrastructure which is not

historically alwaysur our first priority, but we really do need to do it because we've got to be able to generate that force every day. i think the other party certainly you are seeing a lot of natural disasters. i know they have anna flow but the navy and marine corps team we do trained to be ready to respond to those always operating forward so whether it's a volcanic eruption last year or earthquakes in turkey or another tsunami, these are things that forces are already out there ready to respond should they be called, and i think that's an important mission we can do because you've got to get there the first 42 to 72 hours to render that immediate assistance. >> let me open it up, starting here just a reminder as many, this is on the record i probably should have told you that before. [laughter] >> oops. [laughter]

>> i teach at georgetown university and teach a course on the geopolitics of technology and in that context i'm seeing more and more about project program overmatched. a fair amount of money coming into it but certainly not a lot of money, so i'm curious as to the future of that program but also its reliance on satellites into the military exchange. the first things to go are probably the satellites that would enable that program, so i'm curious as to the role involved in that and your perspective on that and how you see the future going forward. >> if each are working on different processes for communication and resilient communications and that the navy

has project overmatched looking at designing different communications architectures that can be independent. that can be used organic to be able to do that. it basically created a pathway that can go through any of the different networks depending on which one is mostt available at the time so that is that resiliency that we really need to see and again working with all of the services because we know we need to be able to talk with each other to be able to put that in together, a couple of the different capabilities on two different carrier strike groups and we look forward to continuing that in the future. >> don't give up on the satellites just yet. we are investing heavily to create more resilient architectures. you see what starling was able to do over ukraine proved to be very resilient and second that commercial augmentation can support military objectives. we are taking those lessons to heart and we've also developed a proliferated constellation in the d process of putting in orbt

the next c few years that will create a layer that is more resilient to attack and so i think recognizing the dependencies and how critical it is we are investing heavily to make sure we are resilient enough to fend about off. >> great public servant and a former under secretary of state. >> i wonder if you could elaborate a little bit in terms of how [inaudible]

how much of those do you see coming how much of a threat [inaudible] i will start first. i've been helping to be part of our staffing defense strategies for a long time and when this came out this concept of integrated detergents it's interesting because you found somebody is always going to and then this is a quote that bugged me the most. integrated deterrence failed because russia invaded ukraine and to me that represents not a fully informed understanding of what deterrence is on a strategic scale. the idea that you think you can do to are all bad actors from

doing all bad acts is falling, but when you think about what the integrated deterrence means it is not only integrated across the joint force between the joint force and the interagency, which is what i was firstoc focusing on to make sure we are doing the same things and we are simpatico and collectively going after but one thing that was maybe underappreciated is the level of risk-taking having to do with sharing information that we perhaps it wouldn't have done. it might have gone somewhat differently so in the area there is a level to show that it can work and that is a bit underappreciated. militaries don't detour but the entire nations deter other actors from doing things, so i

think it was drawing attention to the fact it's not only across thefa interagency but also with the allies and partners and sort of bringing that to the floor is one of the things that accentuates the need for the deterrence for like-minded nationso against others who mit do harm in the interest of those nations. do you want to talk about anything else, the second part of the question that had to do with chinese expansions across the globe. >> they found an aggressive approach to the delta road initiative to get to be able to have commercial ports and i think one of the things you were talking about using all of the instruments of national power, a lot of the times that nation becomesth heavily indebted to china it's not what they bargained for and i think the more we can do with our state

departmentde colleagues and the department of commerce and the military engagement many of them it wasn't the right investment. we are monitoring where they are in all of those dual use installationss and to not be afraid to talk to our partners and allies about them. >> i hate to say that in the way that it came across i will let you repay me for a hundred years and so much of it needs to go to

the state department because if we are not there, china will be there so i would advocate for a larger state budget. >> thank you all for your service. i want to talk a bit about what's going on in the middle east. i would love your views about how israel is fighting the war in gaza and whether it's using appropriate measures and your views on how successful the u.s. has been on preventing an expansion ofr the war through deterring attacks and finally if you could talk about the pros and cons of a closer relationship with saudi arabia.

without getting ahead of the administrationly did they respod appropriately is a question for history, but when you are attacked you respond and they were attacked. we can second guess and quarterback all we want but they were attacked and it was their version of a 9/11. you look at our response to 9/11 it was fairly robust. israel's response was fairly robust. >> i will tackle the second one quickly. keeping it from the middle east from boiling over, i think that's been a success of good treatment of allies and partners in the region. each nation has its own decision to make, buthe the trust of beig a reliable partner that we've

built throughout the region i believe and i can speak on the air force lied to just really proud of the lieutenant general who was the commander at the time who spent a lot of his time reasserting and making sure those who might not necessarily talk to each other serve as an interlocutor and there's a lot of what turned outenen to be a fairly, how they had quite a successful response that aired on tried and had that succeeded it might have definitely blown thet top off of but it didn't. there's so much that went on behind the scenes that actually the orchestration of the event was remarkable and again feel free to tell us more about that. >> i will tell you at a higher classification there were some intricacies of those sort of things that t happened across te joint force and the partners but i will tell you it was mostly due to the work into the coordination ahead of time and d think that is something that the

history books may or may not record but this is a dog that didn't necessarily bark at least in the middle of april. >> and also you think back to october and our job is to provide options to the decision-makers. we had an aircraft carrier in the easternn mediterranean. we had a baton in the middle east. we also had another carrier deploying from norfolk about the same time, so we were able to provide that deterrent power in the middle east to deter any additional activity in the north, to deter an expansion of the conflict beyond gaza and the military provided thosery optios and made them available. i think now if you look in the red sea through the operation prosperity garden which is built up over 20 nations really standing firm for the rules-based international order which is what you see being

threatened right now they are a chokepoint, commerce, the need to stand up for that and using the nation's doing that through prosperity guiding under u.s. leadership and you also see that you used it up. another commerce mission in the red sea's so our job is to provide those options and i think it's been really important to have that connection and support for these operations to keep that rules-based international order firm so it doesn't get through someone else. >> anybody want to comment on saudi arabia? >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> next question. [laughter] in the back if i can. the gentleman with a finger up in the air. there you go. microphone coming to you.

the white house liked it so much when they published after the strategy, the national security strategy my question is is there at the national level a kind of rigorous plans and planning processes to implement integrated deterrence in a way that you understand planning and plans in the defense department as an interagency? >> thanks, good to see you again and it is an aspiration. the idea i would be a former myself. the idea that one would have integrated planning but even on the joint context we had enough in common that we have a good

starting point but when you look at all the different stakeholders across the government, it becomes that much more complex. ti will tell you though if we could do that we would be so far ahead. it's just a matter of in my personal opinion a class ofur cultures and backgrounds and stakeholders and contacts that don't come from the same direction it makes it challenging. >> if i could offer one example it's important to think about the information and the lead up to the invasion because honestly i think there was very good interagency cooperation as we look at how we leverage the different instruments of national power and use information sharing and declassification to tell our partners what's going on so we can have a unified response and if you look back to the response

there was an integrated response and it's important to remember there might not bet by name ajy five i think the respect was achieved. >> from the national security standpoint the council tries to play a role in putting the mechanism together so we do pull together to make sure we are considering the various factors even in the department of defense we have another plan that takes years before it is approved so the idea you could pull together multiple agencies for a coordinated plan is a pretty tall order but the security council is trying to take that into account. >> a question from the virtual audience. >> we will take the next question from nick wrona. >> i am a retired army officer

in brooklyn, colorado. three factors that undergo my question.ti first was the comment by general smith at the beginning that we need to be ready for one more conflict than we think which i would assume has a capacity opponent and capability component. the second is the recruitment discussion even though some of the services are going to be making their mission i think all would agree we don't have an ideal recruitment environment for any of the services and then the third factor is the advancement of the equality for women within the services and has demonstrated my question is from your perspective, readiness into sustained operations, should american women be required to register for selective service? and if not, if selected to serve us really a dead letter?

[laughter] >> that's not where i thought you were going. [laughter] who would i like to take that o? let me first and this gets back to the recruitment so i'm going to take you around to come back to it.t. we have women serving at every branch inside the army and every combat bridge and everything else, so it's 51% of the population. so for us, we are actively, actively trying to get more women into the formation and also like you are seeing appear, make sure that they areso coming to the ranks and we will put them in the position to do this and it's about the capability to do the job so i think that is what we aree focused on. i know that is what we are

focused on his try the army, making sure we are out there recruiting and pulling them and then to going to the right events andhe telling them how ty advance in our military. i think that as far as we do need to think if we have had to mobilizeze in the past, and it s a significant amount of people that you may have to mobilize if that would happen and i do think it is something we should at least consider, and i know that is definitely a political conversation, but we will take as many into the formation obviously that meet our standard and recommend to do the jobs. >> as a witness to the history, when we joined there's a lot of things we couldn't do and thanks to the changing law, policy and also culture, there isn't anything people can't do inis ay of the services, so the opportunities are endless.

it's great part of that history and watching that go along but it's a natural evolution. it takes 38 years to grow a service g chief, 37 years for se of you. [laughter] it's a long time and a lot of exgreat experiences. i'm excited about if you can see it you can be it. a lot of people can see it and they are going for it, so exciting for the military. >> we've been doing a lot of work around the transformative system and there are rules i think the general mentioned rules in place but we had the luxury of having the rules and placed some of them serve as a barrier for people. if you see yourself serving, no

matter who you are and where you are we should make it easy for you to join, easy for you to serve and to stay and one of the areas we've got work to do because we also need to make it easier for you to come back and forth between the services and in and out of industry. think fiber as a kind of emergingyb field. we've started all of us i think cyber elements. the innovation and the pressing edge is being done with industry. we've got the national technical means so a nice revolving door of people so that it's easy to serve for a couple of years and thens you can throw your ponytl back and go right back out. [inaudible] [laughter]

there's nothing about opportunities for those that see themselves serving since the last question i can't help but ask it's one thing to get women into the military both optionally or requiring them to but what is being done to retain them, i'm sorry i keep saying maybe. the military general, i'm so sorry what is being done to create an a environment in which they actually want to see a place for themselves and you talked about there's talent in every zip code. i wonder if you see women as

offering a unique perspective that might not already be in the military so if you see the inclusion of women more in a robust understanding. >> is there someone you want to direct that to in particular? >> anyone can. >> i will take a swing at the first part of it for example the marineit corps we have a significant number of dual servicese active duty. i can't tell you why but we do. they meet at the base at school and get married. it takes need to separate them. we were sending the female marine was a pilot going to flight school and the mail was an intelligence officer and

after their initial schooling which i don't control then they are both going to camp lejeune or pendleton. that has helped because we were separating them and then wondering why they were getting out. we couldn't figure it out. sometimes usc stands for uncle sam's unguided the children. we ceased to be confused and it takes me to separate so that's one of the things we've done and of the female retention numbers are going up as a result of that. >> although it isn't specific to women, they gave the personal management act that involves inside for us to manage both part-time and full-time positions inside the single

component. no one else has this authority and i think it will give a level of career flexibility where a member for whatever reason life gets in the way sometimes and they decide they can't commit to a full-time status they can shift into part-time and to seamlessly come back when the conditions change and we think this will be a game changer it's one of the things there's a period in their life they feel like they need to be part-time for a while but thenee they want to come back in and make that as easy c as possible into the new authority will allow us to get closer to that. >> they are very much looking for some career flexibility.

it's not just about women, it's about recruiting and then maintaining and understanding what do they need to achieve what they want to do in the military and their own personal life and how do they integrate the two. every initiative will be better for everyone men and women. >> lessons learned from the russia ukraine war as kind of a multi-domain question all of this without a navy of its own

and finally how can ukraine get better control and air sovereignty control over their own airspace? >> we talk about the lessons observed and how we train and fightme and we are organized and then how we equip. i could go down every one of the war fighting functions for example on the network you're going to have to be seen almost anywhere nowadays that's visually and with of electromagnetic signature at the very small notes to move around very quickly.

i could go down every one of the war fighting functions. we are adjusting them and calling it transformation contact and changing how they are going to be organized where do youra need the capabilities o it is telling us a lot. we fight differently and as was mentioned we will approach some of these much different than the ukrainians or anyone else but we are paying very close attention

to what we are seeing around the world. >> pushing back and destroying a good portion of that i think they've been a great example of innovating on the battlefield and being incredibly persistent and being successful about that. how do we innovate now to start getting them into the hands of the war fighters. thece other piece is the human dimension.

one is fighting for survival and the other expansion. right now they are holding their own. that's the other thing they've been able to have for the continued momentum they haven't been able to control and support. it is a harbinger about the way we need to think about the futurere to make the point that the traditional idea they've

rolled back and the airspace is ours for along period of time. if you have the ability then it's still effective but right now neither side is able to do that because they are not able to leverage that because it is alive and well but it requires a consistent capacity and coordination with of the other domain for full advantage. it still matters and we need to understand. we probably won't be able to do it the way we use to.

>> it is an honor for us to be able to host and i'm so grateful. [applause]