noting, of course, the fine line between fame and infamy, and i'm glad that at least for today i've avoided achieving the latter. i would quickly add, however, that i owe this honor to the men and women in uniform with whom i was privileged to serve along with the cia officers and diplomats who serve shoulder to shoulder with our troopers all in helping to safeguard our nation and particularly, of course, over the course of the last decade. thanks to the exceptional skill and selfless valor of those who answer our country's call, active duet and reserve come -- duty and reserve components, uniform and civilian, we achieved hard-fought progress in iraq. we arrested and reversed the taliban's momentum in many areas of afghanistan, and we achieved successes in other fronts in the war against al-qaeda and it affiliates. none of this was easy.

we often used to say, in fact, that it is all hard all the time. but it was done. and it is again on behalf of those with whom i've been privileged to serve since 9/11 that i accept this award today. as i thought about my remarks today, i thought i might share some of the especially memorable moments in my career over the past decade in particular in which i had the honor of soldiering alongside reserve officers and those they have led. for our reserve components have played an absolutely essential role, of course, in iraq and continue to do so in afghanistan and, in fact, in many other locations in my old areas of responsibility and elsewhere around the world. indeed, in those countries without our citizen soldiers, our armed forces simply could

not fully carry out america's global commitments to keep our nation secure. four years ago almost to the day, it was on 18, january, i had the great privilege on the 100th anniversary of the u.s. army reserves to reenlist 100 reservists. i was the commander in iraq at the time, and it was a true honor to use that occasion to thank all of our great citizen soldiers for their considerable contributions. particularly as we were still engaged in the so-called surge there in iraq. i was joined for the occasion by the commander of the army reserve, the great lieutenant general jack stolts, a minuteman hall of famer himself, who observed that those fine men and women were part of the most professional, most we tent, best trained, most dedicated reserve force we've ever had, closed quote. i certainly agreed with his assessment then, and i still to

very much today. -- i still do very much today. indeed, the success of the surge in iraq was due in no small part to the impressive skill and character of our reserve components whose personnel played a critical role at a critical moment in the campaign. many in this room today and thousands and thousands more in your organization were part of that critical endeavor. indeed, not just part of it, but leaders in it. as was noted during the introduction, during my final years in uniform, i had the privilege of holding six straight general officer commands, five of which were in combat. and i repeatedly saw reservists in all branches of the military bring warrior and civilian skills to the fight. that combination has, of course, been particularly effective and particularly important in the complex environments we've been facing in the past decade.

as all here know, in addition to the traditional demands of the battlefield, iraq and afghanistan often required our troopers to be more than just warriors. to be diplomats, builders, trainers, advisers, service providers, economic developers and mediators to name just a few of their roles. citizen soldiers have performed these diverse tasks in particularly impressive fashion, and in so doing they have demonstrated the unique edge, the unique quality that reservists bring to every military endeavor. indeed, far from playing a supporting role to active component elements, our reserve components have been integral in the execution of each of our missions. one especially notable case with which i'm very familiar is from 2004 when it was clear that we needed to form and train a new iraqi army and iraqi police

forces and to do so quickly. no small task in light of the challenges in iraq at that time or the fact that those elements had been disestablished less than a year earlier. now, some of you may recall i'd only been home a brief period of time after commanding the 101st airborne division in the first year in iraq when i was asked to return to lead the effort to train and equip the iraqi security forces. this was a particularly daunting task, one that we occasionally tribed as attempting -- described as attempting to build the world's largest aircraft while in flight, while it's being designed and while it's being shot at. and we also had to develop our own organization which we named the multi-national security transition command iraq or mnstci for short -- [laughter] to perform this enormous

mission. there was no existing unit or headquarters identified to serve as the townation for this effort -- foundation for this effort. so we turned to the 98th division institutional training and its more than 3,000 reservists based in the northeastern united states. and as we worked to establish mnstci in the fall of 2004, we were augmented by somewhere close to a thousand members of the 98th to staff various headquarters and to advise and mentor the units of three iraqi combat divisions and a number of other elements. one of the advantages of having the 98th do the work was that previously our effort had been staffed by individual personnel from various u.s. services and units with different rotation policies. we didn't have continuity, to put it mildly. building an army from scratch required gaining the trust of the iraqis and then mentoring

and coaching them on how to conduct actual operations. the reservists' skill in training others combine with the the uninterrupted opportunity to form personal connections made a considerable difference. now, for many of our reservists it was the first time they'd been act saided. for most -- activated, for most their first overseas assignmentment but they quickly drew on their experience training american soldiers and rose to the challenge of working with soldiers from different cultures, different religious sects and varying degrees of literacy. the members of the 98th adapted quickly to the job and steadily improved the training and equipping programs on which subsequent reserve divisions and active component units would build. they can be justly proud of their accomplishments as can those who followed them. and can just out of curiosity, are there any from the 98th or the follow-on units who helped

with the train and equip mission in iraq? thanks to you for what you did in a very nonstandard, challenging environment and mission and for what was accomplished. in another case early last year in afghanistan, corporal eric dehart, a reservist from wisconsin and an engineer by trade, came up with a truly life-saving solution to reduce the ability of the taliban to place explosives in the drainage culverts under road beds. dehart developed a cone made of steel bars that would fit a variety of openings allowing water and debris to pass but not the implacement of ieds. he spent more than 50 hours of his own time cutting cutting ang to perfect his prototype, and he even wrote a field manual on how to install it. it was an immediate success. in fact, units of the great 101st airborne division quickly

adopted the device placing more than 30 through kandahar province alone as soon as it was available. the dehart device has since spread to other units throughout afghanistan, and they are to this day building similar devices in a variety of shapes. corporal dehart has returned home to his wife and daughter, but he can be very proud that he made a lasting difference and prevented untold numbers of deaths and injuries through his initiative and expertisement in truth, the selfless heroism or our nation's citizen soldiers inspires all of us. each reservist makes a difference. collectively, they are doing the hard work our country requires as your video made clear, and we owe them and their families and their communities at home our deepest gratitude. another reservist i remember particularly well is master

sergeant juanita milligan whose courage and selfless service i had the privilege of recognizing by awarding her a medal at the truman foundation in 2006. a mother of three in the u.s. army reserve, she'd served our nation for nearly 20 years in a variety of roles in transportation and personnel units. she was gravely wounded in her second deployment to iraq in early 2004 when an improvised explosive device blasted into her humvee. seeing the bomb a split second before it went off, she jumped across the vehicle to try to pull her gunner down and inside. he was okay. however, she sustained severe injuries including shrapnel throughout her body, the loss of part of her right arm and a femur broken in three places. master sergeant milligan's subsequent recovery was truly

inspirational as she endured countless surgeries, four hours of therapy each day and the pain that accompanied her efforts to regain the use of her right hand. she was finally able to stand for the first time just before thanksgiving the year after being wounded. and despite all of her challenges, despite the injuries and pain she was described by one who knew her at walter reed as the most upbeat person i know. master sergeant milligan defines the selfless dedication of our citizen soldiers. a mother twice answered the call to military duty leaving behind family, friends and community. in truth, she is not just a member of what tom brokaw has termed the new greatest generation, she exemplifies it, and she is a leader in it.

her service, especially the character of her service, has been truly inspirational. our reserve components have, in short, clearly distinguished themselves in a variety of combat and support roles in the decades since 9/11. some 385,000 members of our reserve components, in fact, served in iraq or afghanistan during that time, and over 30,000 continue to serve on deployment in those theaters contributing their valuable skills, experience and expertise. indeed, since 1990 reserve component members from various branches of the military have mobilized and deployed in support of every american military operation. including not just combat operations, but peace-keeping and humanitarian missions as well.

in fact, reserve component elements continue to serve in more than 70 countries demonstrating that our citizen soldiers are not only a strategic reserve, but a key component of our operational forces. in fact, some military roles central to our nation's defense are conducted solely by reserve units. tasks such as weather reconnaissance, aerial spraying, biological detection companies, railway units are among them, and there are many others. now, we've all heard about the military realignments underway, and i'm confident that our reserve components will be dually recognized for the high -- duly recognized for the high value they bring for the overall force structure. indeed, there has never been a greater need for the skills they uniquely provide. as the u.s. marine corps

commandant recently stated, for example n some ways a reserve battalion is even more effective at counterinsurgency than a regular battalion, noting that reservists bring a breadth and depth of skill sets beyond war fighting that can be leved in the -- leveraged in the endeavors in which we are currently engaged. these include firsthand experience in law enforcement, various trades, agriculture, community leadership and business skills, all of which can at times be more effective than traditional weaponry. security cooperations tasks another mission that's imperative in the years ahead are often also ideally suited for reserve units, and we should note those increasingly important tasks are of a broad scope and high skill level that allow much of the training to be conducted prior to mobilization, shortening the total activation time and lengthening the time a

unit can be deployed. i'm sure that such factors were carefully considered during the recent formulation of the new department of defense strategy and budget as they clearly reflect hugely important roles for our reserve components in the years ahead. well, before i conclude i want to thank you again for honoring me with this award and to note again that a i accept it only inasmuch as i'm able to do so on behalf of the soldiers and civilians i was privileged to lead over the past decade and whose hard work and selfless dedication have served our nation so well. this award testifies to their sacrifice, to your sacrifices and to those of their families and loved ones. it is, in truth, their award far more than it is mine.

i would add further that in receiving this honor i feel very privileged to join the company of those who have received it before including, for example, admiral may, general stultz and general pace. beyond that, though, and of the most importance i salute all the members of your organization and all those that you and your fellow members lead in serving causes larger than self, individuals who have taken their place in a long line of patriots that extends back to those who founded our great republic. president george washington, the epitome of a citizen soldier, once captured eloquently the feeling of those who serve our nation. i was, he reflected, summoned by my country whose voice i could never hear but with veneration and love. and so it has been my great

privilege this morning to accept the honor of being inducted into the minuteman hall of fame on behalf of all those who likewise have been summoned by our country whose voice we can never hear but with veneration and love as well. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. [applause] measure o -- >> i just want to say to general petraeus with, director petraeus, that that sounds like a cliche, sir, but it's honestly not. we are so honored that you would take the time to be here today, and thank you so much for your remarks. we wish you the best, sir. >> thank you all very much. [applause]

[background sounds] >> wow. and there's more to come. we have fantastic speakers to come yet. so before we get down to business, i would like to take a moment to recognize a few people in the audience. and in the interest of time, i'm going to not ask you to stand, but we do want to recognize you. seated up front here is roa's past national presidents in the red coats, most of them. in addition to our -- [applause] okay. in addition to our past presidents, i would like to thank the executive committee for their hard work and

dedication in support of our association. we thank all of our department presidents and national council members who are here in attendance. we also have mrs. kathy luke, the president of the roa league and the rao past presidents and current leadership. we especially appreciate our reserve chiefs serving today, and some of them, i think, are with us. i would like to thank our industry stars, partners and exhibitors and other distinguished guests who are here this morning. finally, i would like to ask all of our future leaders participating in our junior officer professional development seminar and our rotc program to, please, stand and be recognized. would you all stand, please? [applause] thank you so much for being here today.

almost three months ago roa had the foresight to hire an innovator, businessman and marine as our executive director. major general drew davis has a long history with the united states marine corps serving for 38 years in positions ranging from infantry lieutenant to major general. general davis was a director of marine corps public affairs at the pentagon from 2001 to 2003. there he led the development of the embedding program for front line journalists in the afghanistan and iraq conflicts. i know you remember when that started. afterwards, davis commanded u.s. marine corps forces europe and africa from 2005 to 2007, and then the marine corps mobilization command until his retirement in 2008. general davis also has eight years previous experience as executive director and president of the american press institute,

also a membership-based institute. please join me in welcoming our exciting new executive director, major general drew davis. [applause] >> thank you for the introduction. first, all of these sessions from this point forward we would like to have as an interaction with all of you. and on your seats you see cards that we invite you to fill out with your questions for each of the speakers. we will have our staff collect those cards, and as the speaker is done with prepared remarks, we'll deliver your questions on your behalf to each speaker. the first of whom is the administrator of nasa, the honorable charles bolden, who told me to be very brief, but

i'm not going to be. he said all he wanted in his introduction was that he was married to jackie and had three grandchildren. [laughter] he's a graduate of the united states naval academy, was commissioned second lieutenant in the marine corps, completed his flight train anything 1970 and became a naval aviator. he flew more than 100 combat missions in north and south vietnam, laos and cambodia and received the distinguished flying cross. he then transitioned to become a test pilot where he tested a variety of ground attack aircraft until his selection as an astronaut candidate in 1980. becoming an astronaut, he traveled to orbit four times aboard the space shuttle between 1986 and 1994 commanding two of the missions. his flights included deployment of the hubbel space telescope

and the first joint russian space mission. he came back down to earth -- [laughter] and returned to the marine corps in 1997 and served as commanding general of the third marine aircraft wing from 2000 to 2002, retiring from the marine corps in 2003. he was inducted into the u.s. astronaut hall of fame in 2006. just by way of giving a measure of this great american patriot, marine, astronaut and now nasa administrator, then-u.s. representative, now florida senator bill nelson was aboard the 1986 shuttle flight. nelson is now the chairman of the senate subcommittee on space, and he said i trusted charlie with my life and would

do so again. miles o'brien, a former cnn space correspondent wrote: bolden happens to be a great guy who doesn't just have the right stuff, he knows his stuff. so it's my pleasure to introduce our next speaker, the honorable charles, charlie "panther" bolden. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you so much. it's an honor for me to be here, and i can't thank you enough for the -- i'll join general petraeus in saying, you know, introductions like that, you know, my mother and father are also looking down on us today, and i can tell you, they're gloating. especially my mother who does believe that and probably helped you write it somehow. that's always great.

i would like to recognize an old schoolmate, george bowman, who's over here, a member of the organization. george is another south carolinian who has done incredibly well. i want to thank admiral -- [inaudible] who's been my host this morning, and i want to acknowledge the presence of mrs. davis, margaret davis because of all the special work that she does with the marine corps scholarship foundation and other programs that take care of our military kids and families. so, margaret, thanks so much for coming out. [applause] i do have to say it's an honor for me to share the podium this morning with such distinguished company as general petraeus and mr. o o'hanlon, and i feel somewhat out of place, but i hopefully by the time i finish making my remarks you'll understand why i think it is appropriate that i be here because people don't think of national security when you hear the term nasa.

but, hopefully, in my brief remarks i'll have an opportunity to help you understand the critical role that we do play. when i embarked on my military career -- and i hate to say it, but nearly 50 years ago, that sounds like a long time -- [laughter] but it's not, you know, it really isn't. not in today's life. that is just a brief period of time. but, um, as a young kid, a snotty-nosed kid fresh out of high school, c.a. johnson high school in columbia, south carolina, i had no idea where my path would lead me. in fact, if i were to grade myself on achievement of goals established by myself for me when i graduated from high school, i tell kids all the time i'd get an f because i have done nothing that i planned to do when i graduated from high school other than go to the united states naval academy. that was something that i dedicated myself to from seventh grade on, and i struggled to get there, but i finally got there. and then as i left high school,

as i left south carolina i said, okay, there are two things i know, and they were both negatives. they were two things i knew i would not do. i would not fly airplanes because that was inherently dangerous -- [laughter] and under no circumstances because the marine corps' purpose is to produce career officers for the navy and the marine corps, under no circumstances would i become a marine because every marine i knew was stupid -- [laughter] and that was what i thought at the time. so i was going to go through the naval academy, serve my mandatory five years in the navy, probably sail on a ship or something, get out, go back to graduate school, earn a master's degree and make money. never got there. so i would have to give myself an f in, you know, in getting to the goals that i set for myself. i did go to the naval academy, though, because i wanted to follow in the footsteps of my father and my uncles, men who had served with distinction in world war ii when they had to fight for the right to defend this nation.

i'm proud to say that my son shea also followed me into the marine corps. he's now an f-18 backseater and a foreign area, spanish foreign area officer and doing all kinds of great things. my military career opened vistas that i never could have dreamed possible when i was a student in segregated south carolina trying to live up to the high ideals of my parents to get a good education and pursue my dreams. like me, many of our astronauts have come from the military precisely for the skills and values that the military helps us develop. while we are civil space agency, nasa, dod and the national security apparatus share many of the same technologies. we share many of the same enabling systems, we share a common industrial base, we have similar facility needs, and we have similar work force needs. we have many differences, too, but the key to cooperation is to work together to overcome challenges and focus on

activities that benefit both organizations. and i will say if you go through the ranks of our nasa employees, many of them are your fellow reservists, and many of them have had to leave the work force for periods of time up to a year to go serve in iraq, afghanistan and other places around the country, and i'm always proud to talk about one of my favorite crew members twice, dr. kathy sullivan, u.s. naval reserve retired who was a naval oceanographer, meteorologist, first american woman to walk in space, on and on and on and on. so the reserve organization in our military is truly the backbone of everything that we do. nasa has also utilized air force unique launch support for missions for which commercial capability was not available. such as the ca siny mission that required the performance of the titan iv.

the current evolved expendable launch vehicle fleet is helping to sustain the industrial base necessary to insure that dod has access to space that it needs. at the same time, we're encouraging and facilitating the development of domestic commercial launch providers. nasa and dod have a longstanding practice of sharing facilities. as some of you know, a number of nasa centers are co-located with dod bases. the relationships between langley research center and langley air force base, dryden flight research center, the kennedy space center and cape canaveral air force station are all very strong with nasa and dod organizations sharing facilities, operation support contracts and flight operations mission support. goddard space flight center just east of d.c., not very far from here, has a global network of satellite communications and down link facilities. it shares resources with dod

in far-reaching places like ascension island, antarctica and guam. goddard also operates the joint center for development and validation of space weather in cooperation with the air force and others. we recognize that space weather information is vital to the military commanders and space scientists who are planning an anomaly resolution. ..

>> the first was sts four in june 1982. the last was sts 53 in the summer, 1992. nasa is also proud to have provided space access to about 270 secondary dod payloads, most on the shuttle middeck or in the cargo bay. the shuttle also launch communications satellites that helped make the whole world more secure and helped establish a deep space communications network. satisfying the increased reliance on today's high bandwidth systems, with space stage communications continues to be a dod priority, and the same systems fulfill the critical need of communications role in the international space station program. future investment in communications is a priority for both dod and nasa. the tech knock or logical advances promised by optical and laser communication systems show great potential.

nasa and dod are collaborating to field new capabilities as quickly as possible to meet the needs of both agencies. with respect to the shuttle, it was time for us to get out of the business of owning the infrastructure to reach low-earth orbit. when industry was rapidly developing the capabilities to do just that. as we have access to leo off the industry, nasa can now focus on the bigger picture horizon and do those things that no one else can do right now. we are turning to development of the transportation systems and spacecraft necessary for crew to explore beyond low-earth orbit such as arriving and the space launch system. we are also pursuing the developing of techno you such as in space propulsion, space-based assembly, deep space habitats, closed loop life support, and many others that would be critical to getting humans to an asteroid and mars as president

obama has challenged us to do. right now, it is true that we're dependent on the russians to get our crew to the international space station, but our industry partners are meeting milestones and making steady progress towards getting crews and cargo to space so that we only have to rely on this foreign outsourcing or as short a period of time as possible. win the decision was made to retire the shuttle back in 2004, we always knew it would be a gap in our spaceflight capability. in a few months, however, spacex and orbital sciences will launch their dragon and cygnus capsules respectfully, to a earth with the international space station. something that is being done on a commercial basis for the very first time. this follows the successful launch, orbit, and in tact recovery of a spacex dragon capsule at the end of 2010. i've also seen see you at

nevada's dream chaser vehicle in boulder, colorado. i've seen blue origin in washington. their lunch and the new shepard vehicle that will flag experiment into suborbital space. i visited the new horizontal integration facility at our flight facility in virginia that will support medium class mission capabilities with orbital as its first customer, as part of the mid-atlantic regional spaceport. bowling will be process is lower transport system in what was formally our orbiter processing facility at kennedy. i have visited lockheed martin in denver and seen firsthand their work on low-eart orion. it all feels very real to me, and more commercial companies developing viable options to low-earth orbit makes us more secure as a nation. even as we facilitate industries creation of this brand-new job

creating sector of the economy, we are focusing on the capabilities for those big missions. american launched capability is going to be better than ever. we are upgrading our kennedy space center in florida, and making it more flexible so that it can accommodate a wider range of users. and we can win back some of the lost distance we have lost overseas. kennedy is going to launch the space launch system, our new heavy-lift rocket, to carry humans to deep space. at the space in in mississippi, we are testfiring components on the rocket now. repurchasing shuttle engines to give us a leg up on testing, and making the most of the workforce and infrastructure we already possess to bring this massive project to reality in the coming decade. we envision a rocket cable of multiple types of missions in varying sizes of payloads so that other users he cites nasa will benefit and the cost would be far less for all.

president obama has given us a nation with a capital m., to focus again on the big picture of exploration and the crucial research and development that will be required for us to move beyond low-earth orbit. he has charged us with carrying out the aspiring missions that only nasa can do, which will take us farther than we've ever been. alternately, a human mission to mars. ever since we got our roadmap forward in the form of a nasa authorization act of 2010, we have been moving towards the nations of tomorrow and the capabilities we will need to visit new places, launch cutting edge science mission and help develop the next-generation of aviation systems from which we will all benefit. the president has asking us to harness that american spirit of innovation, that drives us and creates capabilities, is so embedded in our story and has led us to the moon, to great observatories, and humans living and working in space, probably

indefinitely. we strive to feed innovation, to facilitate the kind of environment where space robots, like the nasa general motors developed humanoid robot called robe not tonight, or are to come will provide new technology for robot systems that create human life presence in space to control systems. are too, believe it or not, is currently a board the iss as its first robotic crew member. it is doing normal task then used to be done by astronauts. meaningless tasks like running the vacuum cleaner and doing other kinds of things. it's easy to forget that all the dollars we spend to get to space are spent right here on earth. that may seem obvious, but when you're talking about spacecraft hurtling millions of miles away in the solar system, or even 400 miles above us like the hubble space telescope, we must remember that its people, people who design and operate them.

people are currently orbiting on the iss, 24/7, and they have done so for more than 11 years now. without interruption. and for those 11 plus years there has always been, always been at least one an american crew member on the iss crew. many of the technologies we developed to explore have big impact the quality of life across the globe. one of the most tangible ways we impact people's lives on a daily basis is in aeronautics, the first eight, the big eight in nasa. nasa continues to lay the foundation for the future of flight by exploring new ways to manage air traffic, build more fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly airliners. and ensure aviation's outstanding safety record. u.s. companies are well positioned to build on discoveries and knowledge resulting from nasa research. turning them into commercial products. improving the quality of life

for everyone. providing new, high quality engineering and manufacturing job opportunities, and enabling the united states to remain competitive in the global economy. we are interested in the aircraft of the future, too. through our green flight challenge, for instance, we recently awarded a prize for its electric plane demonstration. nasa has supported the velvet of the next generation air transportation system, or nextgen, in partnership with dod, homeland security, and the federal aviation administration, or faa, through the joint planning and deployment office. secure network center operations are a key emphasis of nextgen. which will be much more scalable and flexible than today's system. this means improved and increased network communications among the various people and machines, aircraft and computers, involved in the air

transportation system. autonomy will also play a much greater role in nextgen. especially the use of unmanned aircraft systems, or uas. there's an increasing need to fly uas international airspace system, to perform missions of vital importance, to national security and defense, emergency management and science, and to enable commercial applications. nasa is working with these same partners, dod, dhs, and faa, to iron out operational issues for easier access today of uas to the airspace for public use patients. for the longer-term, we are evaluating teachers and and concepts needed to integrate uas and civil airspace. and generating data or regulators to supportive element of stringent uas airworthiness certification standards. we just completed department with other members of a national

uas research development demonstration roadmap for uas access to our national airspace. this roadmap highlighted the joint partnerships ongoing activities and coordination and is hoping to set the course for needed future investments across the community. the longer-term research will further enable the dod and dhs to operate uas and national airspace for national security missions. and enhance the technology available in the marketplace. another significant way that nasa contributes to national security is through its partnership with defense department and other space agencies around the world to track orbital debris and monitor space weather such as solar flares. knowing what's in space and what's going on is critical to dod, as it migrates in more high-value capability to space. the ability to monitor systems and understand potential threats to these systems is a growing

area of concern to the national security community. nasa's experience with both ground and space-based systems has the potential to assist dod in this growing mission area. nasa investments in improved sensors, higher spatial resolution, broader area coverage and find earth coverage are some of the activities that have potential benefits. our orbital debris program office at the johnson space center in houston has been working for 30 years to ensure that we are safe in space, and on the ground. nasa is playing a leading role in this effort for the entire government. the u.s. strategic command tracks about 22000 major pieces of space debris, and updates their status every eight hours in relation to the international space station. but nasa is aware of more than a million smaller pieces of debris. some of these articles, only we

can see with our telescopes and other monitoring equipment, and and only we can characterize their environment and potential impacts. the collision several years ago shows that space is not as big as we once thought. the number of objects in space is growing, and we need to improve our catalog and tracking ability. so far, we have been doing a pretty good job with the enormous quantity of data, but it's not just risk to the iss. we've also had to do a avoidance maneuvers with some of our earth observation satellites, and last year one of the teacher satellites as well. given that these contribute to our health and well being in many ways, from continuity updated to rapid information about natural disasters, that's most definitely qualifies as national security. when i first launched into space, the cold war was in its waning years, but most of the first generation of the space

program was defined by that paradigm. i'm proud to say that i commanded our first joint shuttle mission with the russian cosmonaut, sergei constantine, as a mission specialist crewmember. that mission stands among many milestones in space diplomacy, and was a precursor to perhaps the crowning achievement of international cooperation of all time. the construction and operation of the international space station by 16 nations demonstrating the potential for space to unite us as a world. something more important today than ever. if everyone could see the world from space, see how it is one planet without political borders, serene in its unity, perhaps it would be less conflict. while we're working on greater access to space, we are pursuing a path of the big missions and big projects that demand

cooperation, across our own government agencies here at home and among nations. because any missions to mars or similar venture is going to take the expertise, the passion, and the resources of more than one nation. i'm the eternal optimist but i'm also a realist. we need to remain the leader in space exploration, and the capabilities we are developing for those bigger missions, the commercial access to space, all of this will only strengthen our position as the world space exploration leader. any security without growth and jobs is continuous. as president obama said in the state of the union address, we are going to have to create an america built to last. there's no doubt that nasa creates good jobs, helps inspire the next generation of science and technology leaders, and gives students hands on access to missions, spacecraft, and robotic design and many other

experiences they can't get anywhere else. we've also placed a high protein on hiring veterans when they return from service. nasa is a natural fit for them. they have been flying vehicles, controlling uavs, managing and repairing satellites, and analyzing data already. they know a lot about our nation's security needs, and we will need their skills to help us reach new heights in the decades to come. we want them to translate what they have already done on the front lines of combat and military service to the front lines of creating a bright future for our nation's space program. the technological benefits from an expansive 21st century exploration program will be considerable, but that exploration program also has a human face. it's all of you here today, as well as the brave men and women who have sacrificed their lives

to expand human potential. it's those who currently dedicate their lives and their passion to keeping us safe and make life better in space. they are the new astronaut class. we just graduated this past november who will be the first to climb aboard those commercial rockets, and perhaps the first to set foot on mars. they are my granddaughters, and the students, to whom i spoke last week at morgan state university who are passionate, passionate about science, technology, space and aviation. they want to make the world a better place. it's up to us to pave the way for them and keep their dreams alive. i am optimistic about their future, and i hope you share my passion and my enthusiasm. thanks so much for allowing me to be with you, and that hopefully will have time to answer some of your questions. thank you. [applause]

>> we already have a few questions. if you have others, would you please pass into the aisle, the sergeant of arms will collect them. first, i used to be a reporter. i wonder if you could comment on the possible politicization of space? we had a candidate for president this week who views of space as part of his campaign platform and said that we would even colonize the moon. what you say to that? >> i think it's interesting, to be quite honest, i'm very glad to see any political candidates mentioned space in their

campaign speeches, because it puts this important area in front of the american public. now, what our responsibility is, is to talk about what is realistic, what's on the horizon and the like. and i think the road or the present and the cogs and the 2010 authorization act has set its own is pretty much in keeping with what you have heard all the candidates talk about, with some limitation. >> okay. bob? if you have other questions, just bring them on up. there's been voiced some concern about the state of u.s. education. you touched on your training as an electrical engineer, but somehow we are getting behind in science, technology, engineering and math. which could have implications on our national security and space programs. how would you respond to that? >> nasa shares that concern. in fact, i always tell people we

are not, repeat, not the department of education, but we have more content that is available than any other federal agency. we can put a student in front of a tv and let them talk to astronauts on the international space station orbiting the earth 250 miles away any day of the week. we can bring -- there's only things we can do to try to inspire kids to get interested in science, math, technology. that's a which energy. with a program called summer of innovation that we introduced two years ago, a pilot, and we will go into our third year this summer. it's focused on middle school students and their teachers because nasa recognizes that we've got to start somewhere earlier than high school. high school is too late. we would love to go to elementary school but we just can't so we focus on middle school kids and their teachers. what we want to do is have middle school teachers become familiar enough with science and math and engineering that i'm alone, they can tell the

students that an engine is not the first guy in a train. that engineering is a field of endeavor, that designs, builds, dreams and makes the future better for all of us. and that will not be afraid to stand in front of a group of students and talk about science, math and engineering. >> you mentioned in your remarks the reliance of nasa and our space program, innovation and development in the private industrial sector. and yet we are going through now a prolonged recession that industry has been as much affect it as individual american citizen in the world. is that retarded our development of the innovations that are necessary to continue space exploration? >> i would say not. we've been slowed but if you look at our budget for this year, for 2012, we were somewhat

disappointed in the amount of money that we got for the commercial crude development program. we got a less than half of what the president had asked for, and what he asked for was a little bit less than what he knew we really needed. my job right has tried to to acquaint all of you with what we hope to do with commercial crude capability, to get us off dependence on the russians and make no mistake about this. they are an incredible partner. they are a very, very reliable partner, but right now we have no redundancy and getting our crews to and from the international space station. that's not good. so in need of an american capability to do that. we will invest in that capability. we will provide the seed money. and as i mentioned, several mice who are doing very well. so i would encourage all of you to kind of follow them. some are companies you know, boeing, lockheed, but there are some that you may have never

heard of it when i talk about sierra nevada a great military contractor for decades, but not very well-known for their work in space, not on a broad basis. blue origin in washington state, jeff, the founder of amazon who wants to build, who is building his capsule and he says the first people to go or him and his son pics it is not on any particular timetable. but there are very innovative commercial entities that are coming on, and we, this year, will fly for the first time as i mentioned two capitals, dragon from spacex and sickness right out of dulles virginia two the international space station to carry cargo and hopefully have crew in the next three to five years. >> our space program was really born out of a perceived international threat when you look back and remember back in the '50s with sputnik and launching the space race and the race to the moon.

now, potential our only other superpower adversary, china, is embarking on a space program and your counterpart is actually general officer in the chinese army. is that a threat? what are the defense implications of a potential space race? >> this may be controversial, in my director of communicate should, would probably be sweating right now. but i don't view the chinese as a threat in terms of space. they are very competent and capable. they have a module that is called daschle to on orbit right now that i think they intend to use as a human, the first part of the human tended space station. they have a capsule used to carry crews to orbit. hopefully everyone in here knows that they've had three successful human missions. they've actually done a space

walk. they have walked through essentially the gemini program but if you look at america's space program, merger, gemini, apollo, they've made it through the gemini program now and they have rendezvoused and talked -- docked. they will fly an unmanned demonstration and then i think by the end of the year or early next year they will fly human missions that will dock and go inside and utilize its. i don't look at them as a competitor as much as i do a potential partner for further development of space for humankind. we right now can't work with them by letter because are prohibited by law, but all of my international partners do. so as i said, i'm the eternal optimist but i'm also a realist. and right now we're the only ones that are not working with the chinese in terms of space develop an and the like. they are years behind us technologically. one of these days we will probably partner with them and we will advance the cause of

human exploration, but we have to be careful as we work with the soviets who are now the russians. >> last question. of the uniformed services, the lead has been, united states air force in support of space programs. with the looming reductions in the defense budget and to each of the services and air force, what are the implications on our space program and nasa? >> i think the biggest application for us right now, and we really try to coordinate among the dod and the security, the security community and nasa. the biggest challenge for all of us right now is the launch environment. it is the effective and affordable presence of launch vehicles. you know, all of us are about to be priced out of the market, so one of the benefits that we hope to bring from the introduction of commercial access to space is

a lowering of the launch costs. it will benefit the national security apparatus, dod and particularly us and nasa for many of our science missions. we are working together. we're all facing the same problems come so as i say, it is a national security issue. we've got to modernize our infrastructure because we worked cooperatively all the time at the ago and i were talking with work done at the kennedy space center. there's no place better than vandenberg air force base and the kennedy space center/cape canaveral where deal with the and nasa work and and and each other's spacecraft and that is national to get a. so i encourage but we do have to work on our launch infrastructure. >> thank you very much. we have to present those for you. the first is our 90th anniversary commemorative coin. >> thank you. >> and a gift from us, good things come in small packages. thank you very much.

[applause] >> one of the robust programs of reserve officers association is our ongoing defense education, which are capably led by robert fiedler. we are presenting upwards of 70 of these defense education forums per year, mostly in a national cap the region, and most in our minuteman building. we are bringing together the great minds, researchers, and

policymakers in the think tanks of washington, d.c. and the nation, in our legislative branch, the executive branch, and the defense establishment. one of our frequent faculty presenters and one of the most respected, most quoted analysts of national defense is michael o'hanlon, senior fellow of the brookings institute. he shares with director general petraeus a ph.d from princeton in international affairs, senior fellow in foreign policy of the brookings institution. he specializes in defense strategy, use of military force, homeland security, and american foreign policy. he is a visiting lecturer at princeton, an adjunct professor

at johns hopkins, and a member of the international institute for strategic studies. i present to you michael lohan. [applause] -- michael o'hanlon. >> good morning, everyone. it's great to be with you. it's a little humbling to be following general petraeus and administrator boulder deployed to plays like afghanistan and iraq and space but are usually deployed to the library. but i appreciate your witness to put up with them, and i will try to be brief and try to get a little conversation going because we've got a number of big subject and i'm also are to be speaking just before my good friend, a shill for nor do i know we'll get a very important speech today, as it ministration unveils, very important new defense strategy and budget and that's where i want to go in my remarks, straight to the topic. with the generally supportive

word about where the administration is going but with a few catchers -- concerned that an interest the conversation i'm going to focus on. first lady also to say how much of an honor it is to be with you. and i know would have leaders from yesterday, today and tomorrow in this group who are so interested in our national security, who do so much for us, who sacrificed so much for it. as a civilian i can only begin humbly say how much i appreciate and admire what you do for our nation, so thank you for the great privilege. let me now talk a little bit about where we stand with the defense budget, and the -- the administrators jen on the right track and looking for defense savings in the range of 400 billion, $500 billion over a decade. just for those who are not following this debate in quite as much as excruciating detail at some of us who live inside the beltway, let me remind you that those reductions are in

addition to the major savings expected as we are drawn down our forces from the wars. of course, we're essentially out of iraq, and we're beginning a downsizing in afghanistan. that would be a slow process, and i think there's a good chance we will keep 10,000, 20,000 forces in afghanistan even after 2014, but in any event the drawdown has begun. we're down to about 90,000 u.s. troops after being at 100,000 last year, and we are down to virtually zero in iraq after being as high as 170,000 pixel we're getting savings from all that. in addition we are living close to a half a trillion dollars in savings as a result of the administration's new budget which actually is really a result of law that congress drove because last august budget control acts required as a down payment on deficit reduction that we had. now as you know and we may get to this in discussion, the

possibility of sequestration could double those cuts, could add another 500 billion to the existing plan for reduction. and, in fact, current law requires it. sequestration, meaning sort of an automatic cut in the defense spending levels, is already the law of the land. it sort of happen accidentally, or i should say inadvertently, not in a desired fashion but it is illegal of the land and, therefore, we have to worry that it may still happen. the administration's budget and strategies has been unveiled right now does not seek sequestration. there is an oxymoron in a sense the administration and the president signed a law which now -- administration is not planning on that sequestration as a matter foreign policy. rising out of its current budget

submission to the congress becomes before next month. is confusing for those of you are not following it in detail is what point we are living in an ambiguous world. we don't know where things are headed. what i wanted to briefly today is explain what i think the initial cuts, 400, 500 million in cuts the administration is coming and is supporting or a good idea. why sequestration would help her but be a bad idea, but the big thing i want to emphasize is the administration i think has not gone quite far enough in finding those savings. this is the main critical point i want to make today in the spirit of provoking conversation, maybe it can evolve some of your discussion with undersecretary flournoy. but any that i think to be on the minds of lawmakers and presidential candidates for the next few months. because what the administration has done, i believe, is to essentially understate, the way all administrations do, the real

cost of its current defense program. so when it calculates savings it's doing so from sort of an unrealistically optimistic vantage point. and, therefore, we are not making deep enough guts to accomplish the budget targets that are in law. what this means if i'm right, and the demo own independent calculations and i don't claim to have it done perfectly accurate, but i tried to use the best of them in the graduate school days within major petraeus when we're taking courses together, and then where i went on next with the congressional budget office and i try to show these calculations in my new book called the wounded giant, and what i found is you actually have to go a little deeper and make somewhat more significant cutbacks to achieve the budget goals and now in the budget control act. even without sequestration. you might say why bother making such a fuss about an accounting difference or an arithmetic difference. the reason is right now the

nation is willing to rethink this question of defense strategy. we got a lot of people focus on the. we should make good use of this moment. and the problem is if you make cuts piecemeal after the fact year after year after year, you wind up doing it in a somewhat less strategically. so while i think the administration has generally been a very good job with its new thinking and added a couple of areas i think it might need to go further. i just want to lay out a couple of those. i want to have most of the conversation with you in the remaining 20, 25 minutes we have in this session so let me just lay out a couple of the ideas that i think should be more central in administration strategy. and i'm going to finish with one that is near and dear to your heart which is the role of the reserve component, especially in planning for future possible groundwork. and just to tee up i'm going to go with that, as many of you know, the administration has proposed that we no longer need to be ready for two simultaneous ground wars. that would be a change that has

not previously been seen in 60 years of american defense policy but ever since korea we've been planning for at least two. ground wars at a time to end the cold war it was typically big war in europe against the soviet bloc and then another war somewhere in asia. albeit korea, china, vietnam, maybe something else. since the cold war ended we typically focused on north korea and iraq. north korea remains a problem here iraq is still a problem in other ways but i would submit that things have changed enough in iraq, and in the broader middle east, that the administration is correct to change your basic force sizing construct from two simultaneous land wars to one, plus the ability to ramp up quickly into a holding action and a second place, if need be. but i'm not sure they have gone quite far enough in how they've changed the force structure for the army for the marine corps as a result. so result.

so let me do a couple other things first. i want to talk about the navy to begin. you can consider this equal opportunity for sort of equal unkindness on my part towards each service to come going to try to be ecumenical and broad-based, but the navy, an amazing service like all four of her military service is doing amazing things around the world. however, sort of unscathed in this budget process frankly. the aircraft carrier fleet is supposed to stay at 11 but the only changes the navy shipbuilding programs are pretty much just some delays in things like submarine building. nothing major in terms of any program being fundamentally rethought. and i'm a little worried that this is not really being provocative enough. i think the navy actually has one big idea, at least, that it should consider. and in a a lot of you have thought about this and could give me may be many reasons why it's hard. and i've been tardy a lot to navy people. i understand why it's hard but i still think that time has come for something called sea swap. what sees what means is that to

cruise this year a given ship on forward deployed. in other words, up until now as you all know, and many of you have been involved one way or another in this, the navy has always kept one crew with one ship. that crew is essentially formed at the beginning of a to work, two or three year tour of the there is says. it trades up in american waters, starts doing longer training missions may be to south america for drug-related thing or summer off the coast of north america. and then finally it sets off on a six-month deployment in typically to the persian gulf or the western pacific or the oldies, more of the mediterranean. and then it comes back so that sailors are never away from their home port more than six months at a time. that's the way the navy asked operator unfortunately i think this wastes a lot of time in transit. i know sometimes the ocean transits are used for good purposes. we do exercises with allies, et cetera, but for the most part it's a lot of steaming time that

is very unproductive. when you do the math, this is not my princeton math, this is the navy math. the navy needs via for six ships in the fleet to keep one on station. that's not a ratio that we should be tolerating. it's not a ratio that is good enough in the fiscal times in which we live. we are deploying billion dollars were shipped all over the world with this fairly inefficient way of using them. and i think it's time to stop wasting that month in transit each way, and at least for the surface combatant, i'm not proposing this for the aircraft carrier fleet with 5000 people auditioned. that would be pretty daunting. but for the surface combatants the typically have three other people on a ship i think it's time we actually start flying the crew, which is trained on one ship in u.s. waters, to meet up with the ship over in japan or somewhere else to the other side of the world, and the crews swap. you may have a small residual crew that stays on to help with the transition, but if you look at the analyses of the navy's

own think tanks like the center for naval analysis, this gives you about 35% more mission deployability per share. that's the kind of idea we need to consider in these kind of fiscal times. because like the title of my book says, we are a wounded giant right now. eight. for all the talk of china and its oppressive qualities, we cannot lead a multinational coalition or alliance system. we have 60, 65 allies in the world that like to work with us. the chinese have basically north korea. there's a reason for this. for all of our work and all of our failings with an open political system and we have decades of experience working with our allies. even when they disagree with us, as they often do, they feel they can disagree in an open transparent way. they understand our motives and they basically trust our intentions. i hope the chinese will get there. i'm a big believer and hopeful person about the chinese trajectory as well, just like administrator bolden, but

they're not there yet. nobody else can help sustained international stability that we all depend on for prosperity, pro-nuclear nonproliferation and other tasks, except attorney. so we are a wounded giant. we have to get better. we have to reduce our deficit. defense needs to play a role. we've got to seize this moment to think of clever, creative ways for the pentagon to contribute. other ideas, unconscious of the time so i will go quickly with apologies if i'm going to quickly for some of these ideas, you can come after me in discussion. and i will just give you one more thought and then the national guard, reserve component issue in the two were capability questions that he mentioned before. let me talk about nuclear forces. nuclear forces are still very important to american security. i think we have to be careful about keeping our arsenal reliable. safe, dependable, and also on parity with russia. because while i don't think the united states and russia are going to be adversaries and i don't think we really need to worry too much about the details

of our single integrated operational plan, our big war plan for fighting the russians, sort of legacy of the cold war, i don't think the details matter very much. i do think that we want to avoid giving mr. putin, and any other russian nationalist who might look to nuclear forces to revitalize their sense of a greater russia, we want to avoid giving them any hints or any suggestion that we are somehow conceding to them is trapping of superpowered him. i'm not suggesting we get into russian space and expanded again and that kind of thing but i do believe that our nuclear forces we have to be careful about not drunken unilateral and we also need the arsenal to be safe and reliable. however, even if you mandate or premise those basic qualities in the nuclear arsenal, you can save a lot of money, i believe, by doing some things differently. because i don't think it matters that much each and every detail of our war fighting plan, of our integrated operational plan, we can be more relaxed about these things and we used to be.

.. >> the obama strategy and budget document t are a little bit careful op this issue, however. i understand why they're careful. they're embarking on a presidential campaign where the republicans are already criticizing them even for these more limited cutbacks that are being proposed, but nonetheless, it's a moment when i think we

need to shake thing up a little because if we don't get our deficit in shape, we're not going to be the global, dominant power we want to be. now we come back to the issue of the two-war versus one-war capability. and, again, i'm talking about land wars. i do think we need capability for both the persian gulf and the western pacific in terms of mary time and western -- maritime threats. with china and the western pacific on the other. they are not primarily scenarios that would involve large scale ground combat operations. so our threats have shifted in their nature a little bit from what they used to be which is part of why i'm in favor of shifting ourselves from a two land war capability to a one land war capability. however, if you're going to do that one land war, i admit that you've got to be pretty darn careful to make sure you have more than enough capability to

do it right because you can no longer rely on the second package for the second hypothetical war to beef up our first mission if things go wrong, so you better give yourself an added margin of insurance. you'd also better assume you're going to be involved in the smaller operations around the world in places where even if we're tired of counterinsurgency, tired of stabilization missions, we may need to do them whether we like it or not. typically, it's part of coalitions. but till in a difficult, demanding -- still in a difficult, demanding, prolonged way. i can imagine scenarios where we stay in afghanistan until 2020. i can imagine scenarios where we wind up, like it or not, in syria with a nato/arab league coalition trying to represent the innocent civilians. i can imagine a mission in yemen for a somewhat similar purpose. so the basic notion that we can somehow dismiss the possibility

of difficult counter insurgency operations because we're tired of it right now and it's no longer the flavor of the month in national security events is a trend we have to be nervous and careful about. so i'm not suggesting we just jump on the bandwagon and declare the era of land warfare over. i'm talking about a more marginal shift. so even if we go from two land wars to one land war at a time, we need to do several additional things, and i'm ticking them off to quickly finish and then look forward to your questions. one, we have to have the simultaneous capability for these smaller missions that i just mentioned that would typically be part of coalitions, typically be more in the spirit of stabilization operations, not major ground wars per se, but we better assume that they could occur and, in fact, i favor what i call a one-plus-two framework for sizing the ground forces, one all-out war, two prolonged,

multi-national stabilization missions. i admit it's somewhat arbitrary to say two as opposed to one or three, but nonetheless, based on recent history it seems a prudent basis for force planning, and i think that each one of these stabilization missions could involve several american brigades over a very expended period of time. and can we've all -- extended period of time. and many of you have learned the hard way or had to maybe deal with the fact the rest of us didn't anticipate well enough that these missions in places like iraq and afghanistan take a long time to finish once they get going. and we need a total force capability to handle several brigades of deployment for a long time while we're also capable of handling that one big war, for example, on the korean peninsula. so caf yacht number one -- caveat number one, be ready for other migs. condition number two, you better be able to ramp up fast. if one war begins, an all-out war, you've got to start to ramp

up the rest of your force right away. you don't wait and hope for the best. you start to ramp up your capability so that no other would-be aggressor around the world sees an opportunity at that moment. and what that means is you mobilize part of the national guard's combat brigade capability. oh aspect -- other aspects might be quickly mobilized really on a preventive, prophylactic basis not because there's any other acute concern at moment, but because you want to send a message. and then you also start increasing the size of the active army and marine corpses at that moment. but if you do those things, and here's where i'll finish, i actually think we can go to a somewhat smaller active army and marine corps than the obama administration is currently intending. as you know, they're saying we can go to 480,000 soldiers, 182,000 marines. i think these numbers are, at one level, reasonable, but they're a little bit too high for what i thought necessary to

meet the budget targets, and they're higher than i think they really need to be if we make proper use of the reserve component while recognize the la to haval areas of the persian gulf and the western pacifics, not quite as much to the sands of the mesopotamia. however iraq develops in the future, they're unlikely to drag us into large ground wars. so i think by making greater use, frankly, of the institutions that you represent and have served within and embody and can tell us so much about, i think we can actually make a little greater use of this asset in the way that director petraeus was discussing that we've learned how we can do in the last decade and really shape a total force package with a little greater reliance on the reserve component than we have so far. i think the army, the active army could widen to 450,000, the active marine corps could wind up at 150,000 as long as we

recognize the great asset we have in all of you. i don't want to push the argument too far. we should not be pulling you out of your communities, the existing reserve component should not be pulling people out of their communities and lives frequently. we need to do this in a careful way, but i think looking at the full range of threats to the country including the threat of the debt that it make sense to try to use the portfolio of active reserve in a way that favors the reserve component a little more than we have so far. with that, i'll look forward to your comments and questions. thank you. [applause] >> typeically pro-- typically provocative. >> thank you. >> again, please, if you have questions, pass them in to the center of the aisle. ourer sergeant of arms will collect them and hand them up to me. i see a stack already building. i'll kick things off.

this may be down in the weeds a little bit. you already picked on the navy a little bit. why do we need big deck carriers with 5,000 people and catapults and arresting gear when we're currently embarked on the most expensive defense acquisition program with the f-35 and the short takeoff and vertical landing capability of the f-35b is pretty close to the carrier and the air force variant, and those sit on small deck ships? why do we need big carriers and carrier task groups? >> that's a great question. i do think that over the long term, and i'm delighted to see so many young people here, and i think during your lifetime we will have fundamental debates about whether the large deck aircraft carrier is really the right thing to invest in, but i think it continues to be dominant vis-a-vis the kind of capabilities of adversaries that we see in the persian gulf and

the western pacific. by the way, if we wind up in operations in east of those two -- either of those two places as you know, allied land access is sometimes limit inside terms of where we can operate f-35as or other land-based aircraft. in terms of the f-35b which i admire as an aircraft and i think we should purchase, i think the problem is that it's not so clear that you really have a greater cost efficiency operating off of an amphibious ship. an amphibious ship costs you a couple of billion dollars, and you can put a couple dozen aircraft on it. a flat deck, a big flat deck has cost you in the past $6 billion. now, that number's growing with the next generation, and i'm not sure i'm persuaded the extra money is worth the cost. but in any event, it's roughly three times the cost. so i'm not sure you really change the cost calculus that much by talking about f-35bs on amphibious ships versus

carrier, on traditional big carriers. where i do think there are ways to save more, very briefly, is using the amphibious ships in the mediterranean. i don't think we need to have our larger deck ships doing much in the mediterranean anymore. the threats there are not great enough to warrant the capability brought by a big flat deck. they should focus on the persian gulf and the western pacific which is why i'm in favor of going down from 11 to 10 in the number of flat decks of the traditional big variety we have. >> you mentioned the ramp up of capabilities and the use of the reserve force for that ramp up and as a holding capability. what are the implications for the size, the training and the equipping and the laws that enable mobilization on the reserve force? >> well, i think there are a number of things we would have

to do to make sure by way of force planning. but i think in terms of the legal and policy framework, we've learned a lot in the last ten years. most of what we need to figure out how to do, we've figured it out. you've figured it out, frankly. and you've actually dealt with the difficulty. the real cost is the human cost, the human transition of figuring out how do you make life in the civilian sector compatible with being part of the reserve component. and i know there have been titanic shifts, huge shifts in how the reserve component thinks about service. and how you recruit, how you have to talk to would-be recruits. i think the hard part's done. i mean, i think you guys have done it. and, yes, there are some ongoing legal issues that have to be addressed but, frankly, if you have a big war that begins, you're going to have some kind of congressional resolution ideally to authorize that war, and that resolution simply needs to repeat some of the legal language that we've now developed over the last decade to deal with the legal issues. the hard part, again, is the

human side, and that's up to you. you've shown us how to do it, we've tried to learn those lessons, i think we're capable of doing that again if we need to. >> to pile on that a bit, in the coming budget cuts should our cuts to incentive programs and benefits like health care and retirement for reserve force on the table? >> i think the answer has to be, yes. but, and, in fact, i've been gratified to see many people in the military acknowledging the answer has to be yes. i think you need to have an important voice in this. i think we need to find a balance between asking how do we maintain our sacred vow as a nation with an all-volunteer military and even in cases where some of you were not necessarily volunteers when you joined, you still risked your lives on behalf of the nation, and we owe you a huge debt of gratitude and a huge obligation. but i would begin with some of the same premises that seem to

guide secretary panetta, we have to make changes gradually, we have to make sure we don't cut across the board in all benefits, we have to think hard about people who have within affected by the wars the most, the wounded warriors, their families, their survivors, make sure we're fair to them. but i also think it's time for a reallocation of more of the benefits towards the younger military personnel who do one or two tours and are out and for whom most of these benefits have not been accruing. and, frankly, i think we can save some money, do better by the younger generation and the shorter termers and still do it in a gradual enough way that it does not disproportionately and adversely effect people who have been counting on these benefits. one last word on this. even though i'm in favor of rethinking military pensions, tricare for life, etc., it is a little troubling to me that we're getting this whole locomotive going full steam while we haven't yet found a way to talk about broader social security reform and medicare and

medicaid reform in the nation writ large. in other words, if we're still -- [applause] we need to ask everyone for collective sacrifice, and it doesn't really make sense to focus on the entitlement benefits and the retiree benefits of those who have served at a time when it's politically untouchable to focus on the the other 90% who haven't serbed. -- served. [applause] >> south america, central america have not been center on the defense establishment's radar scope over time, but we have it as the nexus of narcoterrorrism, we have a continent-wide populism movement that is changing the governments. hugo chavez is rumored to be on the last years of his life. when do you see -- what do you see are the implications of this

hemisphere in our national defense? >> boy, that's a great -- >> and homeland security and national security. >> it all comes together. yeah, i think an answer needs to touch on all that. i'm going to have to be brief, but think i would begin by saying there's a lot of stuff going on in latin america that we need to be grateful for at the same moment we're troubled by the violence and drug wars. and we've seen an incredibleaway of democratization in latin america. in many ways, you could say it was the main precursor along with what happened in eastern europe to the arab awakenings that we're seeing unfold right now. the number of latin american countries that went democrat in the '90s and '90s is astounding. this is, i think, on balance extremely good news. we've also seen a couple of the democracies like colombia really get on the ball and figure out how to use their democratic process to find leaders who can make a meaningful difference in

their violence and a violence that effects us too. we've also seen, i think president obama's one of his more significant accomplishments has been to ignore chavez. you'll recall he tried in those first few months he try today say hello to him at that one oas meeting, and it was a little uncomfortable, and some people thought he smiled too much, but he shook the guy's hand, and he hasn't really spoken about him since. and i think that's the perfect way to handle chavez who, as you say, in one way or another is on the way out. i don't see him gaining popularity in the region. he has a message that's broken. his country, tragically, is not doing well, it has one of the highest violence rates in the entire hemisphere. he's a failed leader, he's going the fade away. i'm not as worried about him, but we still have big problems in mexico, and mexico has a political system that's functioning okay in some ways. they're having vigorous democratic debates, and they did some things with their overall approach towards the drug war

under current leadership that in many ways mimic what general petraeus did in iraq and afghanistan. but unfortunately, they haven't mangled to turn the corn -- managed to turn the corner. the mexicans are going to make the decision, but one thing we have to think about in this country is what can we do to help the mexicans by way of reasonable gun control measures. and i'm not talking about taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding americans. i'm talking about tracking the sales of semiautomatic weapons much more effectively than we do today because those weapons account for about 80% of the violence in mexico. and we owe our southern neighbor a little bit of a debt of obligation to think hard about what next steps may aid, at least modestly, in their problems. >> the one country that has not yet been mention inside the first two hours of this symposium is, perhaps, our most apparent threat and adversary

and potential nuclear power, and that's iran. how does iran figure in to your calculus of our national security? >> well, it figures in initially in the sense that i don't believe we can talk too much about a pivoting or rebalancing to east asia, and the administration, of course, i think, has done a good job reminding east asian allies that we are there, we're there, and we're committed. we're not going to cut. actually, i have some doubts about the current okinawa plan, but we can talk that some other day, but in broad terms it's certainly correct that we should not be cutting our overall capabilities in the western pacific. but at the same time, you can't push that argument too far. because whether you want to get out of the middle east or not, it drags you back. it always does. and there are times when we get involved in wars of choice, but for the most part the world still has a dependence i on the middle east in terms of oil and gas, in terms of stopping nuclear non-proliferation. and that's why in my argument in

the wounded giant book and what i tried to underscore today, i think we have to view the persian gulf as well as the broader middle east and the western pacific as equally important theaters of future military focus. there are a lot of ways we could talk about the specifics of where the crisis with iran may go in the next few months. i'll leave that to other speakers and other sessions of the symposium realizing we don't have much time right now, but i think as a matter of defense planning we cannot and must not understate the centrality of the persian gulf. so the rebalancing to asia has been good up to a point because it reminded countries in that region, including china, that we are still very much a pacific power, that this region is as important as any other to our future national security, and that this region has a lot positive going on for it right now that makes it important to stay involved. but the middle east while it has some positive things, too, has problems like iran that make it impossible to ignore, and it has

to be an equally important locus of future american defense planning as the western pacific in the coming decade. >> dr. o'hanlon, thank you very much for these provocative looks at the defense establishment. [applause] we have a couple of gifts for you. one is our coin. >> thank you very much. >> and a thank you gift that we hope you use as you go forward through the great thinking of the brookings institution and continue to be our conscious in the defensive establishment. >> thank you. thanks to you all. [applause] >> well, first, i would like to invite all of you to take a moment in the next three days

and pay a visit to our new memory book. it's a very large leather-bound volume of fine quality that we have just instituted to memorialize the members of roa and roa family who have passed in the previous year or prior. we are losing hundreds of members of roa every year, and we think that having a lasting tribute to them will be an important feature of the roa chapel and the minuteman building. so, please, pay a visit to -- there's a table that is right outside the registration area, a big brown, leather-bound book with a fine pen on it, and compose your thoughts to either individuals who -- your

shipmates, your fellow roa members who you've shared fighting holes with in the past or the cockpits of airplanes or just the camaraderie of these events. remember them in this book east collectively -- either collectively or individually. at the end of the conference, the book, as i said, will be put on permanent display in our chapel, we'll bring it back at each convention and symposium for additional comments. next, the red tickets you received at registration are drink tickets for tonight's grand opening of the exhibit hall. we invite you to spend lots of time in the exhibit hall, see what the services and products that are on display and show your interest in them. if you did not receive tickets for the president's reception when you checked in, you can pick them up at the will-call booth outside of salon one on wednesday night prior to the

reception. we also don't know much about you or the other 59,500 members of roa. our database is seriously lacking in information about professional background, expertise and interest. we invite you to go to our roa pavilion where you'll see a couple of computers, excuse me, computers where you can update as much information as you're comfortable doing. this is not facebook or twitter, we're not going to share it, but we will use it to use it for networking within the organization, for development of our roa career center and for helping us reach out to new members in roa. we have an incentive for you to do this. i'm wearing a very heavy, very fine marine corps eagle ring.

we will have as raffle prizes an eagle ring for each of the services, and your, excuse me, your admission to the raffle is simply updating your profile which will enter you into eligibility to receive one of these great rings. finally, our next event begins in 22 minutes here in the thurgood marshall building ballroom at 10:30. please, join us then for a lecture titled "crafting a defense policy for an operational reserve." thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> so a break of about 30 minutes or so in the reserve officers association symposium this morning. we will resume our live coverage when they return here on c sparks 2. a quick remind or to join us tomorrow when the senate select committee on intelligence hears about global threats to the u.s. witnesses include david petraeus, who you just heard from, robert mueller, director of the fbi, among other intelligence chiefs, and we'll have live coverage starting for you at 10 a.m. ian on our -- eastern on our companion network, c-span. again, about a half hour break, here's a recent event looking at cybersecurity challenges and ways to prevent voter fraud in elections. these remarks were part of a

daylong summit exploring new technologies and innovative ways of approaching problems in overseas and military voting. pew charitable trusts and the overseas vote foundation hosted this 30-minute event. [applause] >> sorry about the dark video. especially at this time in the morning. but the fact of the matter is we are under attack right now, and cyber crime is a seven by 4 crime. most of us don't know our businesses, corporations, even our personal information is under attack. so i'd like to share some thoughts about how we got here, what's happening in cyber threat right now globally and then maybe some things we can do going forward if that's all right. so it was just a little over 30 years ago when the first famous cyber criminal, john draper nicknamed captain crunch, became a famous cyber criminal. and this was a time we were

transitioning from rotary dial phones to tone-based phones, and he found that with a whistle l he got out of a captain crunch box he could blow that into the phone, and with the right tone and pitch, he got access to the phone's administrative systems. from there about 100 individuals around the world became what are called phone freak, and they learned how to use these tones and basically do things like free long distance calls, they played jokes on 411 operators. nothing really serious. two of them were very famous guys, steve wozniak and steve jobs of apple computers were two of the original phone freaks. i find it interesting that steve jobs who learned how to hack into phones made one of our latest great phones that we all use. but that was really the start of it. if you actually fast forward, and we started putting computers on our home desktops and at work and what have you, it goes more sophisticated because we were connected over modems, and

people learned how to get into those machines, but nothing actually too serious at that time. it wasn't until a little over ten years ago when corporations and businesses started taking advantage of the internet and this global connectivity. what we're doing here at the ovf, right? providing access to these portals and information, that cyber crime became very serious. the first targets, actually, around the year 2000 were the most profitable businesses online. pornography sites and online gambling sites. and online gambling sites came under significant attack from eastern european cyber criminals, organized crime syndicates who realized that they could extort money from people who are used to extorting themselves. and most of these online gambling sites were offsite, i mean, offshore in places where they're allowed to operate and not be reached by the arm of the law.

and what these gangs did is they took over ten of thousands of computers on the internet, and they would barrage these sites in the week before a super bowl or the week before a big boxing match, and they'd bring those sites to a halt. and they'd send an e-mail to the ceo of that business and say if you want us to stop this before the super bowl, wire a $50,000 check to this account. these guys were getting paid because the owners of these businesses were used to extorting themselves and felt it was part of doing business until one organization called bet crs in costa' saw was -- costa rica was writing a $50,000 check nearly weekly because they supported a lot of business until they fought back. let's now turn and look at what's on those machines, and that led to the advent of identity theft. fast forward to 2005, nation states learned about these

capabilities in these organizations and started using the same techniques for nation-state-sponsored attacks. and that is the world we have today. and it's a very sophisticated, sophisticated world. if you remember back in the '80s, there was a movie called "war games." that movie was well ahead of its times then, today we far surpass the capabilities of that movie if some of you remember those kids hacking into government computer systems and what not. so today there are actually four types of cyber crime, and i thought i'd step through some of these stories so you can understand how this all works. the first and most prevalent that we read a lot about is cyber theft of identity and information. it's done in bulk amount. and the reason is our identities are worth anywhere from 30 cents to $100 on the black market. and so there is organizations

who just specialize in stealing large amounts of data. an example recently was zappos.com owned by amazon. if you have bought shoes online, you probably got an e-mail in the last two weeks that your account was compromised. we don't know how many records they lost, but i can share with you it's probably in the millions. what do you do with millions of records? you sell them in groups of 10,000, and you make 30 cents each, sometimes up to $2 depending on the quality of that record. the most famous was in florida be, he started hacking at the age of 9. he was caught by the fbi after having stolen 1.5 million credit cards and selling them online, and so he was caught. the fbi was fascinated with him and actually started to work with him to learn about this industry. so while he was being paid by the fbi, he actually continued his practices, and he was sitting in this a marshall's parking lot, and marshall's had just gone to wireless

transactions in their store. and from his laptop he actually was able to listen to these unsecure credit card transactions, and over the course of 18 months from the parent company tjx he stole 40 million credit cards. he threw himself a $75,000 birthday party, he complained about having to count by hand because his bill counter broke. he lived a very lavish lifestyle. cyber identity theft leads to cyber fraud, and you can use these identities to commit fraud. rbs bank, royal bank of scotland, fell victim to eight cyber criminals out of eastern europe who actually took atm cards, they had the numbers, they produced what are called white cards, fake cards. they recruited an army across 280 cities, and within a 24-hour period -- and, actually, it was a two-hour period -- they attacked 2100 atms in those cities and took out $10 million.

you saw that stat. the way they did it, at 11:30 at night, you went and you withdrew the max amount you could out of a card, and these guys went, and they hit each one, about ten atms between 11:30 and midnight. at midnight it rolled over to a new day, and they could take out the maximum again. so $10 million gone. cyber espionage, the third type of crime. and cyber espionage is really accessing classified information, intellectual property, and it goes across both the public sector and the private sector. you might think of private first class manning who, actually, in the army downloaded all those files that wikileaks exposed, right? well, he was showing up to work with a madonna cd and sitting there with a headset listening to music when in reality that was a blank cd downloading tens of thousands of documents. insider threat or version of cyber espionage. and then finally, the

granddaddy, the fourth one is cyber warfare, and that's nation state-sponsored attacks on critical infrastructure. think of critical infrastructure as our power grid, telecommunications systems, transportation, water supply, flow of oil and gas. and so those are the four threats of today. and so, again, i'm sorry about that movie, but it's my job to educate everyone about how ugly and how sophisticated things are getting. and it is getting very ugly out there. and today it's no longer the steve jobs and the steve wozniaks, it's well-funded nation states that are sponsoring a lot of these activities. i also typically show a screen so shot of an organization called anonymous that we're all reading about, but that's a loose hi hily -- loosely-affiliated group of cyber hackers who will attack based on a press release or news or some political agenda that they just don't like, right? and it's those organizations in

concert with enemy nation states that are working together because enemy nation states can contract these organizations and have an arms-length relationship from a lot of the cyber criminal activity that's happening. the most sophisticated attack last year, the most sophisticated attack last year involved a thing called tokens. and many of you probably use them. i carry one in my pocket. but when you want access to a network, a private network and you're remote, you use one of these devices. and what it does is you have a password in your head, and then you push that button, and it generates a random six-digit number. and you enter it into your computer at that time. that six-digit number plus a number in your head, never shall these two meet until that very moment, and this number's randomly generated, and that gives you access. very, very secure. there's a very sophisticated breach that compromises this, and i'll go into it in just a

moment. the fact of the matter is to breach a system is actually quite easy, and it's almost, it's almost scary how ease is i it is. -- easy it is. so there's three steps to the modern cyber hack, three simple steps to the modern cyber hack. the first is to breach the perimeter. and the way you breach a perimeter is two, there's two primary ways; human vulnerabilities, so you're trying to look at humans who are at, actually, the perimeter and trying to trick them into doing something and compromising your operation, and the other is application vulnerabilities. we have wonderful developers here who have great intentions of writing an application, but they can't anticipate how bad guys might mess with their logic to get in. much like that very first hack that john draper did or captain crunch of using a whistle to get administrative access.

who would have thought of that? and so these applications laws are also being, um, used. and so you get into the enterprise you want to target, and then there's meths of jumping -- methods of jumping off and covering your tracks. the next thing you do is you're now inside the organization, and you're trying to get access to sensitive data or sensitive systems, and you do that through what's called privileged access. when you become an internal user on that system and you're no longer an external user, you've compromised someone's internal accounts. and over time you exfiltrate that information, you can coffer your tracks, and you want to go uncovered for the longest period of time. one, two, three. get in, get access, exfiltrate. that's the modern steps. sounds simple. let's take a look at that most sophisticated attack that happened last year. the most sophisticated attack. now, mind you, this attack went against a company that has the,

that produces the algorithms and has the back end system that generates that random number, right? if you can get access to that generator of random numbers and you can figure out customers of this company's, some of their key members' four-digit additional password, you could actually marry those, okay? that's the sophistication of this attack. so the target was a human vulnerability, this organization out of asia targeted this company, a security company and was targeting a finance department. they sent in an e-mail to the mid-level finance manager. microsoft outlook handled that e-mail appropriately. it actually put it in the junk mailbox. it recognized it as potential spam. the problem was this business user's curiosity got the best of him, what's in my junk e-mail folder, opened that up. mistake number one. what he found was this e-mail, redacted a bit.

he found this e-mail, and this is actually what was in there. and if your look at this, look what the message says. i forward this file to you for review. please open and view it. and there's an attachment that says 2011 recruitment plan. now, security professionals would look at that and say, hmm, mysterious. it comes from a webmaster at a jobs board. the grammar of the sentence is a little direct, but curiosity got the best of him, and he opened that attachment. and he was very disappointed that this is what he found, okay? this is an excel spread sheet with no content in it. he goes, darn, nothing there. he shut it off and went on to do his job as a finance manager. the company's been breached. if you look in cell a1, there's a little x box right there, and that's how excel represents an embedded object in a cell. and that was malicious code that took advantage of vulnerability

in adobe flash. a vulnerability much like that phone system 30 years ago. this presentation is using adobe flash. almost every computer has adobe flash on it. that vulnerability allowed these guys to start what's called a remote administrative tool, put software on that person's machine that gave them remote access to control that machine as if they were sitting at the keyboard. and this software went undetected. from there it communicated back to a web site which is a known command and control site called good man sir.com, cleverly named good, but that was the command and control of that software. and this was a known bad site, unfortunately, for about ten months, but they didn't catch it. then i won't go into too technical, but from there you could scan the network, they're on the computer, you could scan the network, they found two networks that had open ports, mistakes that were made, and

they jumped on to those two servers using a tool called end map which is a l tool that corporations use all the time to look at their networks. so they're using, now, the company's own tools. they got on that server, they found their targeted files, these algorithms, and many of you guys use zip files, right? everyone use zip files? they found what's called a roar file where they could package up the sensitive data, but they could encrypt it and send it out to good.mincesur.com over time. unbeknownst to them, "wall street journal." shortly after that attack several defense contractors were hacked because of this breach at that security company. and those defense contractors lost quite a bit of sensitive data. so one, two, three, that's how it happens. it's not that complex when you think of it. so security intelligence, what do we do in this new world where

our traditional tools don't work when these attacks are so sophisticated? i'm going to skip to a couple slides so we -- step forward just a bit. are we frozen? >> [inaudible] >> yeah. i've been hacked. [laughter] we'll see if that comes up. um, but let me just draw kind of an analogy in our world here of voting, right? so when voting's going on the, to prevent -- let's step back just a bit. okay. so, um, to prevent voter fraud what do we do? we actually monitor elections, right? we have monitors onboard, and we look at the controls and policies, and, you know, we're tracking and making sure. we go overseas and monitor elections to make sure they're fair and following the rule, and

that's one of the things we need to do in on line world. we need to look for fraud and look for crime and look for when our controls are being breached. so i'm going to show you how it worked to stop that sophisticated crime of last year, and it wouldn't have been too hard. you have to have context of what's happening online, understand where users are coming from, where what are they doing, and what are they trying to do and surface nefarious activity. so the first thing that if you were monitoring no corporation should ever connect to a known command and control server on the internet. and that was a clear connection that should have been caught in this situation. simple monitoring. very, very basic. the next thing is -- and that would have caught it. the next scenario is end map is a traditional tool used by i.t. organizations all the time. i have never met a finance manager that knows how to use an end map tool.

there was a finance manager's machine that launched this. secondly, once they jumped off that machine, they got on to two servers, they actually listened and got the pass words of i.t. administrators and started to use those to get access to the sensitive data. but they were doing this at hours when these administrators weren't logged on the the network. could have been caught. and then finally, sending out a multi-part file that's encrypted to an ftp site should set you of large alarms. that's how monitoring could have helped address this type of environment. and now when it comes to slowing systems, and zucchini -- voting systems, and susan talked about we want everyone to have an online voter's account, and you start thinking about these sophisticated attacks, you go, wow, the integrity of voting can be very compromised.

i'm a big believer that technology can bring great benefits to the overall voter registration process, and i'm so impressed with what the ovf has already done around reaching out and educating overseas voters, giving them, you know, registered databases, access to ballots and be able to print those off. and the question becomes, when are we safe enough to actually do the voting online? i don't think we're there yet because the integ -- integrity of voting can't be compromised. and what's happening in the industry is we're moving to, as susan said, mobile devices and shared services or cloud computing. we are opening up a whole new set of surfaces of cyber attack. and what's exciting about what's happening in the industry today in companies like hp, rather than coming after the fact and saying how are we going to get -- how are we being hacked and let's put defenses and controls in place, we're sending

a lot of -- spending a lot of time designing security into these mobile applications, into these shared services. and start with security in the design and not after the fact. and it's actually a very different approach than how we've been going about this. and i do think this is a crawl before we run, um, and we need to focus on building the infrastructure and the services around voting and the processes that we can help automate. but when you think of actually place ago vote online, the challenge as you look across our country and all the municipalities and the different infrastructures and the different tools and in many cases the immaturity of these infrastructures, we need to elevate and build that up before i believe we can go that final mile. but a lot of work can be in the design of the infrastructure and the security that goes with it to eventually get us to the point where i think we have wonderful online capabilities. so that completes my remarks. we have time for some questions

or comments, or i probably have another dark video or two -- >> you can find the rest of this conversation online in its entirety at the c-span video library. going to take you live now back to the reserve officers association meeting. undersecretary of defense michelle flournoy will be the introductory speaker during the session that focuses on a look back and a look ahead in national security. ms. flournoy will be leaving office, and this is one of her last major addresses as undersecretary. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> the reserve officers association symposium, we heard an earlier session morning. this is the second session for the morning and, of course, the topic, national security. michele flournoy, the undersecretary of defense will be taking the stage shortly. she's stepping down friday after three years on the job. she's the first woman to hold the post, and her chief deputy, jim l miller, has been chosen to succeed her. >> welcome back, everyone. we'll continue with our program, continuing with excitement.

today's presentation titled "dod policy, a look back and a look ahead" will be in just a minute. but before we begin the key speech, we would like to present the roa chaplain, lieutenant father vincent robert capadano chaplain of the year award. father capadano was the only chaplain to receive the medal of honor. he was killed in action in vietnam in 1967, and we named the award for him about 10 or 15 years ago. presenting this award is major vince cumming, the reserve officers association national chaplain. accompanied by chaplain colonel christina no -- molar, command chaplain and the reverend ron brevold, the endorser of the chaplain of the year with the bear national ministerial --

with the international ministerial fellowship. this award is given annually for extraordinary contribution to the welfare, morale and effectiveness of the military reserve services. chaplain karen hallett served the 4 11th engineer brigade as the brigade chaplain. originally enlisted in the army in 1983, enlisted in the army, went on to graduate from the united states military academy in 1988, chaplain hallett is an ordained and licensed nondenominational minister of the gospel with credentials and endorsements from international ministerial fellowship, minneapolis, minnesota. she has more than 20 years ministerial and missionary experience which in addition to military service as a chaplain includes organizing and

directing missionary efforts in the united states and ghana, west africa. the recipient of this year's chaplain of the year award goes to chaplain captain karen a. hallett, united states army reserve. chaplain? [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> now, let's get everybody in the picture.

[background sounds] >> you may be seated. [inaudible conversations] no, no, no, don't run away. members of the association, it's with great honor that i'm about to announce to you that our outreach, our congressional outreach this year has borne much fruit as it relates to our strategic partnership with the united states house of representatives. for the first year, all of our

schedules have aligned to where when our members are on the hill visiting with their legislators, chaplain hallett who has been chosen to be the guest chaplain for the house of representatives by her congressman, the honorable scott garrett from new jersey. [applause] and with that note, i would like to encourage all members and anyone who will be in the vicinity of the house of representatives on wednesday to, please, ask your members if they could -- or their aides if they could escort you to the gallery to show support for chaplain hallett as she becomes part of history, inducted into the congressional record with her beautiful prayer and a one-minute speech by her congressman praising roa and the contribution that my esteemed peer and colleague has made on behalf of the republic.

chaplain hallett, we congratulate you and thank you for representing us in such an esteemed accomplishment before our legislators. thank you. [applause] >> chaplain hallett, do you have a few words, please? >> people have asked me what this award means. first of all, all glory and honor goes to the lord who called me to this position and has allowed me to serve our soldiers and, of course, in our joint coalition forces, our airmen and our sailors and our marines as well. secondly, this is an absolute credit to my command, to the 411 brigade, to the commander and to the commanders and staff that allow me to do whatever it is that i need to do in order to serve our soldiers. so credit to those two folks, i've really just done my job.

[applause] >> i now turn the time over to major general davis who will introduce our keynote speaker. >> well, first, i want to make it absolutely clear that we have five eagle rings, army, air force, navy, marines and coast guard. i had a question on that in the hall. and if you look add the numbers, if you're in the marines or the coast guard, you have a much better chance of winning a ring. [laughter] so update your profile. about a month ago, "the washington post," the newspaper of record for washington, d.c.

and the political trade journal for the united states of america, had a full-page story on the most powerful woman in the defense establishment. and she is our next speaker and guest today. like to introduce the honorable michelle michele flournoy, undersecretary of defense for policy. she has a bachelor's degree from harvard and a master's in international relations from oxford. great schools, but our last two speakers were ph.d.s from princeton. [laughter] what's next? her previous positions have included president of the center for new american security, one of the most important of the nonpartisan think tanks in washington, principle deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat reduction and deputy assistant

secretary of defense for strategy. we were just chatting, and secretary flournoy's tenure of service in this undersecretary position will end on friday. we hope that that doesn't diminish your ability to speak forthrightly, boldly and with some controversy and invite all the questions that we can off the floor. again, if you have questions, start writing them as soon as it pops into your mind, pass it to the center, and we will continue the q&a after the secretary's prepared remarks. secretary flournoy. [applause] >> good morning. >> good morning. >> thank you for the kind introduction. the only, the most important

qualification, though, for me to speak to this crowd that was forgotten, and that is i'm the wife of a navy reservist. [applause] [laughter] but it's really an honor to be here with all of you today, um, and what makes this particularly meaningful for me, as was noted, this is my last public speech in office as the undersecretary of defense for policy. and i really can't think of an audience that i would rather sign off with than this one. the roa is a really remarkable organization not only a professional organization of some 60,000 members from all of the uniform services and an advocate for the 1.5 million americans who are now serving in the reserve components, but also an educational body that seeks to foster better public understanding of national security issues. as many of you no doubt know,

the roa's corporate charter was signed into law in 1950 by president harry truman. there's something very fitting about the fact that an organization dedicated to promoting public awareness of national security issues would be so recognized at that particular moment in time by that particular president. after all, it was a moment of profound transition in the world and in our own defense establishment. the second world war had ended only five years before, and a new cold war with the soviet union was just beginning in earnest. moscow had just carried out its first successful atom bomb test in august of 1949. another wartime ally, china, had just seen the end of a civil war, and mao's forces were leading the population. on the korean peninsula, the

year 1950 would see an invasion of the south by the north, an event that quickly drew in forces from the united states, our allies and partners around the world. in response to these and other changes in the security landscape, president truman in a truly -- and a truly extraordinary group of senior advisers responded by embarking on a series of programs, reviews, initiatives that brought about fundamental changes to our national security and be our foreign policy -- and our foreign policy systems. just think about it, the marshall plan, the establishment of the department of defense and an independent air force, the formation of the cia, the development of multi-national bodies like nato, the united nations, the development of nsc 68 and the containment policy towards the soviet union. this multidimensional response drawing upon a range of american diplomatic, economic, cultural and military resources proved to be quite successful in containing the soviet union and

setting the stage for ultimate victory in the cold war. with that victory some observers, hopefully, declared that history had come to an end and that we could look forward to an era, a lasting era of relative global harmony. that, obviously, did not come to pass. as the attacks on 9/11 and other events made all too clear. in the years since, we have passed one signpost after another making -- marking the arrival of an even more complex strategic era. the swift growth of china's economy and the broad-based though quite opaque modernization of its armed forces, the e emergence of asymmetric and hybrid forms of warfare which pose new challenges for states and militaries, the arrival of cyberspace as a domain of potential conflict, one that forces us to revisit

longstanding ideas of deterrence and culpability and the very definition of warfare itself. the potential proliferation of the most dangerous technologies in the world, particularly to irresponsible regimes. north korea has already tested nuclear weapons, and iran continues to seek its own nuclear weapons capability in violation of its treaty obligations and established international norms. the emergence of broad geopolitical trends whose national security consequences are potentially enormous but still somewhat unclear from the arab awakening to global climate change. and as if all this weren't enough, in 2008 we suffered the most acute financial crisis since the great depression, shaking the very foundation of america's national security, our economic strength. thisthis has required some painl adjustments, and as you know,

the budget control act passed by congress requires that $487 billion be found in savings from the department's budget over the next decade. several observers both at home and abroad have looked at all of these factors and which concludt we are embarking on an era of long-term u.s. decline. a steady erosion of american leadership in the world. i'm here to tell you that i strongly, strongly disagree with this thesis. while our challenges are undeniable, they are no greater, frankly, than those that previous generations of americans have faced. including ari truman and -- harry truman and his advisers early on in the cold war. that generation of statesmen and officers met the challenges of their time by thinking strategically and seriously and practically about how to sustain u.s. leadership in a time of

great change. and that's exactly what prompted this president, president obama and secretaries gates and panetta, to undertake a comprehensive review of our defense strategy and our force structure at this time. the department -- the title of the guidance that the department recently released, "sustaining u.s. global leadership: principles for 21st century," it was chosen very deliberately. the emphasis throughout the review from president obama to secretary panetta on down has been that the size, structure and capabilities of our military must be driven by strategy, not the other way around. to protect our country and maintain u.s. leadership, we need to set smart, sensible priorities for the future. at the outset of the review, secretary panetta laid out four main principles to guide us which in turn also guided our budget, the budget plan which

was just rolled out last week. first, he said, we must maintain the world's finest military, one that supports and sustains the unique global leadership role of the united states. second, we must avoid hollowing out the force, a smaller, ready and well-equipped military is preferable to a larger force without adequate investment and readiness or modernization. third, savings must be achieved in a balanced manner. everything has to be on the table. no sacred cows, including potentially sensitive areas that will likely provoke opposition in congress, industry and some advocacy groups. fourth, we have to preserve the quality of the all-volunteer force and not break faith with men and women who serve and with their families. i think the strategic guidance remains true to all four of

those principles. the force of the future that it outlines will remain capable across the spectrum of missions. while it will be smaller of necessity, it will also be flexible, agile and above all ready. this force will be called upon to help meet a very broad range of challenges and objectives. the new guidance laid out a series of strategic elements including the following: increasing our emphasis on the asia pacific and sustaining our forces in the middle east while keeping america's article v vicinities in europe, the protection of investments in vital areas such as special operations forces, isr, prevision strike, counter-wmd and cyberspace, insuring that the u.s. can still conduct combat operations and deal effectively with aggression in more than one theater at a time. let me be very clear. it's not a question of whether

we're able to confront more than one adversary at a time, it's a question of how. and our operational concepts are evolving and changing to meet the threats of the future. a shift away from ground forces sized for sustained large-scale stability operations and towards somewhat smaller and more modernized ground forces equipped to respond to a wider range of threats. the protection of our ability to surge, regenerate and mobilize, to counter any threat around the world. and that is a degree of what we call reverse about, to insure that our forces are not caught off guard by unforeseen or swiftly-developing threats. this is critical given that we have to have a certain humility about our ability to predict the future. in the weeks since the president and secretary of defense, the

chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the chief stood all together at the pentagon to introduce the new strategic guidance, this document has generated a fair on amount of speculation. this is washington, after all. are we adhering to the two-war force sizing construct, or are we abandoning it? as we commit to the asia pacific, will other parts of the world be neglected? by shifting away from our force -- for sizing our ground forces for long, large-scale counterinsurgency and stability operations are we turning our back on the hard-fought lessons of the last decade? and most important of all, by slowing the historic post-9/11 increases in military spending as congress required us to do, are we signaling somehow that we have, we're entering a period of american global retrend -- retrenchment and retreat from the world? as i mentioned earlier, the

decision to title the new strategic guidance "sustaining u.s. global leadership" was quite deliberate. we are retaining full capability to confront more than one aggressor anywhere in the world, even if we are engaged in large-scale operations, we will be able to quickly deny the objectives of an opportunistic adversary or impose unacceptable costs of the world. even as we rebalance our posture towards asia pacific and continue to place a premium on our presence in the middle east, we will uphold our nato commitments including through new rotational deployments of traditional ground and naval forces as announced by secretary panetta a few weeks ago. in other regions of the world such as latin america and africa, we will continue to develop small footprint, innovative approaches that

maintain our presence, invest in our relationships with partner nations at relatively low cost. the use of an austere base in jabuti for the recent soft rescue of two aid workers held in somalia is just an example of how effective such presence can be. and even if we no longer size our army and marine corps for large-scale, multiyear stability operations such as those in afghanistan and iraq, we are establishing ways to retain the key expertise and the lessons learned so that a subsequent generation of americans does not have to painfully relearn them as we did after vietnam. the underlying theme that runs through all of this is an emphasis on flexibility, agility, readiness, on retaining capability across the full spectrum of missions. this is the key to sustaining our leadership in an era of

complex challenges and hard fiscal choices. consider, for example, one of the most discussed words in the strategic guidance, and i mentioned it before, reverseability. some have seized on this word as a sign that somehow our principles are not firmly fixed or that our decisions on key programs are subject to rapid change. in fact, reverseability means something completely different. it refers to our ability to make course corrections in response to strategic, economic or technological change. for example, even as we reduce the overall size of our ground forces, we will keep a relatively high proportion of mid grade officers who would be at a particular premium if we needed to build up those forces quickly. in this context, the guard and the reserve will play an extremely important role. it is your expertise, your

dedication, your commitment and your readiness that will enable our military to have the built-in adaptability and resourcefulness i have just described. we expect the reserve components to continue to provide both an operational and a strategic reserve in the future. they will continue to be a source of innovative approaches to building the capacity of critical partners around the world. and here i want to take a moment to highlight the state partnership program which pairs national guard units of a given state with a particular partner country. one of the first such partnership relationships was established back in 1993 between the illinois national guard and the polish military. since then illinois guardsmen and polish forces have deployed together to both iraq and afghanistan, and the troops from the land of lincoln have helped the poles with such matters as developing a stronger nco core

along the american model. as for the reserves, we've already begun to see a further expansion of missions and responsibilities to help the nation meet urgent national security needs. in the national defense authorization act of fiscal year '12, for example, there are provisions allowing service secretaries to call up to 60,000 reservists into active duty for as long as a year outside of times of war and emergency. this allows greater access to reserve components for preplanned missions for the combatant commanders. in addition, the ndaa also allows the secretary of defense to activate reservists up to 120 days upon request from a state governor for disaster or emergency. situations. before this, as many of you know, this wasn't possible. this deprived us all of greater access to the great expertise that reservists can bring to

bear in emergency situations. these provisions reflect an awareness on the part of leaders in the administration on the hill of just how important the reserve can be to our security across the range of potential situations. while the guard and reserve will be essential components of our future force, there remain many questions about your future role. for example, how should reserve component units returning from combat be reset? how should we reset their equipment and training in light of the new strategy recognizing that we can't afford to place equal emphasis on all scenarios and mission sets? what types of skill sets and units should be considered as candidates for the operational reserve that we would expect to be activated and deployed more frequently than normally is the case? what types of units, if any, can be held at lower levels of

readiness and mobilized only in times of larger-scale, protracted conflict? and how can we as a d., as a community, as a nation do a better job of insuring that our guard and reserve members are not unfairly penalized by current or potential employers in what is already a very difficult economy. the obama administration is extremely serious about expanding career opportunities for veterans, and we've launched a series of initiatives to help out, but there's certainly much work to be done in this arena. i'd like to conclude my remarks on a note of optimism. ..

if anything, the secretary's commitment to open communication, to shared buy-in, only intensified the process, only intensified as the process went forward. this is a remarkable thing to witness and i've seen many reviews in the pentagon before. it gives me a lot of faith frankly in our civilian and military leadership to make sound decisions as these very difficult choices have to be made in the months and years ahead. no doubt those choices will involve some sacrifice.

for example, as part of the total force the reserve components will experience some in-strength reductions commensurate with their active duty counterparts. in addition the department has to seek greater efficiencies in our basing infrastructure, rationalizing it to meet the needs of a smaller and more flexible force and to insure that we have the resources to invest in readiness and modernization. critical initiatives like this will require us to look beyond our narrow interests, the narrow interests of any particular office or department, state, region, party, or branch the armed forces. there are those who would believe that we've lost the ability to do this. the process that generated the strategic guidance though gives me hope to think otherwise. i think we're better than our skeptics would argue. the truth is, we must transcend the partisan and the parochial.

our national security depends on it in a time of austerity. so as i stepped down from my current position i feel a freight -- great sense of honor to have worked with some outstanding men and women, military and civilian. many of them i see in this room today and again i thank you for your service to this country. god bless and i look forward to your questions. thank you. [applause] >> we'll do it there. is that all right? >> yes. >> in retrospect as you leave office this week what looking back on, when you took office was your greatest surprise? >> you know i think -- >> pleasant or otherwise. >> [laughter]. there are many surprises but i think, you know, right

before i came into this office i had actually written a report, called the inheritance which was really documenting how daunting the set of challenges at the new president, at the time we didn't know who it was going to be, how daunting the inheritance of challenges this was going to be for this american president. i think what surprised me how much more challenging things got. i mean at the time we wrote that report we documented the physical crisis, the rise of new powers, proliferation of wmd, new domains like cyberspace and space and so forth but we didn't anticipate the arab spring. we didn't anticipate some of the other developments that have happened. and so i think what's been the biggest surprise is that just when we thought we had it bad it got even worse. but truly what's remarkable has been how this current

civil military team has really pulled together to grapple with these changes and try to do it in a very integrated way more often than not takes a whole government approach. >> could you comment for those of us who really don't have the experience in it how is policy developed in the department of defense? and then beyond the department of defense. >> well it's a great question. first of all i would say policy is developed, policy initiatives may come from within the department of defense but if they're significant for our national security they almost always get brought into a broader inneragency discussion and process and so i think it work as couple ways. there may be a bright idea that comes from the bottom up, perhaps from the field, perhaps from somewhere in the department. typically in my role i will bring that into the deputy's process to that you have the deputy national security advisor, you have members of

the intelligence community, state department, usaid, the whole, sometimes homeland defense and homeland security if that's appropriate and we massage the initiative and develop options for the principle and ultimately for the president to consider. other times you will have a top down initiative where the president season opportunity wants to go in a particular direction and process will be harnessed from the top down. but the good news there is ample opportunity and i think there is always, to, sort of, to lead from wherever you sit by putting good intellectual capital, well thought-out ideas on the table. >> some have vug -- suggested it is not as nimble as might be and that when policy is formed at the department level, beyond the department and in the inneragency it becomes brown --

broken. can you comment on that? >> i spent a lot of times in between my stints of government how the inner agency process needs to be improved. when you think about challenges we face hard to think of one where only one instrument of national power gets you to a solution. it almost always involves the combined efforts of multiple different agencies and perspectives and resource streams. and so it's very important that we have a process that integrates. we all love to complain about this process but i will tell you that i think, because of these tremendous challenges we face, because we're in the country still at war where you have to be responsive i think we have developed a process that really tries to be responsive to need. it is not always successful but i think it is more successful now than i have ever seen it before. that means that i spend a

lot of my time over with my colleagues from other departments working together several hours per day trying to hammer out inneragency solutions to some of the challenges we face. >> you touched on changing roles for the reserve component and included in those would be variable readiness for mobilization for different missions. so we're, if i'm interpreting this correct, we are looking for expanded use of the reserve force. we've come out of a period where the reservists, director petraeus had folks raise their hand and we have people in the audience who have been mobilized three times in the last 10 years. unprecedented service. at the same time there is discussion, you said that

everything's on the table. what is the current policy thinking about the incentives for service, particularly reserve service, health care, retirement benefits, et cetera? >> well, first of all, let me clarify. i think if you, if you look at the height of the demand for reserve utilization which is when we were at the peak in both iraq and now afghanistan i think that if you take that as the peak the demand is going to come down gradually. we have completed the mission in iraq. we are still working very hard in afghanistan and we are making progress towards our 2014 transition goals but you can expect that gradually over time, over the coming years that commitment is going to come down. so overall i think demand is going to becoming down. the question is, we have, we

have organized the reserve components in the guard to be a fully operational reserve in the last several years to support that very high demand. as that demand comes down the question of whether we keep that uniform level of readiness across the entire force or whether we look at different possibilities within the guard and reserve where some who want on volunteer basis want to deploy more often, raise their hands and volunteer to do so and have a higher tempo if you will. others who really want to reset to more of a strategic reserve and so forth. the truth is we, that is, those are questions we need to work through with you in the coming years to figure out what is that model that is going to be responsive to the needs of the future, what does that look like? i think going forward in terms of pay and compensation we are taking a total force look at this.

let me be clear. no one is planning any pay cuts. i think the secretary, the chairman, were very clear on this. what we are looking at is a gradual slowing of the growth of increase in compensation. i think you've seen since 2011 something, 2001, i'm sorry, something like a 40% increase in military compensation. just getting my figures right even though the number of personnel only increased by 8%. we absolutely want to protect funding for wounded warriors, for family programs, for transitioning veterans. you will see us continuing to invest in those areas but we have to look at areas like compensation like health care where we still have some fairly perverse incentives in place. many of you may know that even if you're working age retiree and you have access to tricare as a reservist or

guardsman or what have you or even as retired active duty person you may still be able to, even if you have the ability to get health care with your employer, your private sector employer, you can still stay on tricare and not take the private sector coverage. that means that the department of defense is carrying a lot of health care care costs that would otherwise be borne by private sector employers. while in principle you could make an argument for that the truth is in reality what happens that is money not being spent on capabilities, on equipment, on training, on readiness, on other kinds of programs for our personnel. and so we really need to look at this as a in a holistic way. similarly on retirement. no one is going to change the contract on someone who is already serving but we have asked congress for an authority, for a commission to sit down and look at this holistically to ask the

question whether we can have a better system. the majority of our military members don't stay on 20 years. most of them spend, many, many years in the military and walk away with nothing. in terms of retirement? is that the right model for us going forward? so i think these are the kinds of questions. there are no easy answers. there are very, very politically charged, difficult issues but we owe it to ourselves and the country to sit down and wrestle with these to come up with a better approach. >> we in the reserves already enjoy the gray area between our retirement and 60 years old. is a similar period being contemplated for the active component? >> again, really we're looking forward to the establishment of this commission and i don't have any particular proposals that have been put on the table as of yet. >> i was chatting with the junior officers this morning remembering back on my reserve service in the 1970s coming back from southeast asia and there was a period where we were running

through the woods yelling bang, bang, because there was no training ammunition, the funds had been cut out of the carter year defense budgets. and it took 15 years to recover the capability of the research -- reserve force of desert storm that involved in the current operational use of the current reserve. what is being thought of as there is defense drawdown to guarantee we don't have as more missions go to the reserve and the guard, what's being contemplated to insure that we have the resources, training and equipment to do those missions? >> it's a great question and we do not want to go back to the days that you described. i think that was the reason the secretary in his guidance up front emphasized that second injunction that

we don't want to go to a hollow force. we don't want to keep more force structure than we can afford to modernize and make ready. and, i think when you look at, take a total force perspective, that certainly goes to the guard and reserve, particularly when we are relying on you all to be part of this notion of reverseability, being agile and being able to adapt to unforeseen contingencies or circumstances in the future. we are, one of the things we're doing managementwise, paying particular attention to how the services are resourcing readiness both active component and reserve and guard going forward and we will continue to do that. >> i heard a discussion yesterday in an army senior leaders seminar here that suggested that in some units that vehicles are not being taken out of the motor pool because of shrunken dollars for fuel. down on that grassroots level will these policies

shift to insure that doesn't happen? >> well, again i think that the monitoring that, tracking it, i think making sure that kind of example gets to senior leader attention i can tell you at the intention is at the top is to insure that we people accountable for keeping the force ready. i know that is certainly the secretary's intention and he and the chairman are working very hard toward that end. >> there has been a recent thrall using special operation forces typically a mission that has never gone to the reserve. i command ad reserve battalion in desert storm that became special operations capable. as soon as we got home, that was off the table. is there any thought in restructuring of the forces to migrate special operations capability to the reserve? >> there actually are in the army there are special operations reserve units, sf

in particular, that do maintain certain linguistic, regional focus, very much play in the partner capacity building mission and that sort of thing. so, you know, whether, what i don't know is whether socom plans to expand that over time. i think given when you think, given the cultural richness of this country and the linguistic richness of this country it is a particularly good way to tap into that in many ways. but again i can't, i'm not sure on the particular plans whether that element will expand. >> this new strategy guidance how will it influence the 2014 quadrennial defense review process? is this going to be a full up qdr or is this a chance to make course corrections with potentially a new

administration or a new shift in this administration's priorities? >> i think, you know, the what the next qdr, the quadrennial defense review will look like will depend on a couple of things. first, whether or not we're in a era of sequestration, god forbid, or whether congress does its job and makes the necessary hard choices to avoid us going down that path. if we are in a more, you know, sustainable budgetary trajectory then obviously the changes, the fiscal environment, the change in the fiscal environment will be less dramatic and frankly much better for our national kurt -- security. in terms of the other key factor is who wins the election. if president obama is reelected typically the qdrs of second-term presidents are obviously less dramatic than the first term because they are adjusting off their

own baseline. if someone new comes into office typically they do a more full qdr that goes back soup-to-nuts and reviews everything and makes more changes based on that. so it really depends on some circumstances we can't foresee at this point. what we, what our job is in osc but particularly in the military in the joint staff is to really prepare for either case and to insure that we've done the some of the intellectual work to tee up options for a future president, whoever that may be. >> you used the word, reverseability. how would that apply to the industrial support base for defense? which has been pinched in the reese year and foreseason even greater constriction of resources for supportive defense acquisition and r&d?

>> for the industrial base it means a couple things. one is a an effort to protect our investment in science and technology and research and development as much as we can, even under a tightening fiscal situation. because that is the seed corn of our future. it also means that in some particular areas where if you lost a particuarly part of the industrial base it would take you years and years and years to recapture if, if ever. that has been factored into some of our program and budget decisions. even though a particular program may have been weak or something we thought about doing away it, if in doing away with that we would completely lose capability or the ability to have that capability in the future on a timely or responsive basis, we, would influence the decision of what to do in that case.

so it's a complex calculus but we are quite serious about this notion of reverseability because of this experience we've had that i talked about at the beginning. that it's very hard to predict the future in this current environment and it's too important to keep this institution's ability to be responsive to the unforeseen. >> okay. the secretary has an appointment at a white house on 1600 -- >> deputy committee meeting on inneragency coherence on this topic. >> this last question will be a bit of an omnibus question. i have several cards that have inquired about what are our position policy ought to be toward central and south america and israel. can you comment on the globe? and i would throw in iran and korea as well. spanning the globe as they used to say in the wide world of sports --

>> see how many of those i can cover. >> where are we going? >> okay. just trying to get all the ones you mentioned. okay. central and south america, very interesting. this is a region where we have some very strong partners where we have common ideals and objectives for a number of the countries who in an earlier era emerged as democracies, sought to embrace free market economics and so forth. and so our military engagement is a very important part of a whole government engagement strategy. one of the things that we've seen, you know, is that we have a real focus on building partner capacity. take a case like colombia. where colombia, you know, several years ago, 10 years ago, was really under siege with a very virulent insurgency. we invested, again not just department of defense but whole of government in

colombia to help them fight off the insurgency and build their capacity to secure colombia, take care of themselves. what's happened through that experience is that colombia has become a net exporter of security in the region. they are now training our friend in mexico on flying helicopters. they are now training militaries in central america on how to deal with counter narcotics missions and so forth. and so, you know, this, they have really given a lot of reality and some great example to this notion of building partner capacity. and the value not only for us but for security and stability in key regions where we may not have the forces available to do it all by ourselves all the time, particularly in the last decade when we were so occupied in south asia and the middle east. with regard to israel we remain a staunch ally of the

state of israel. we have a vital national interest in insuring their security and their existence long term. we have an extremely close relationship and dialogue with them. that dialogue is very comprehensive. it is very candid. so we talk frankly about the peace process. we talk frankly about the dimensions, the security dim minute sense -- dimensions of region, the trends and so forth. we, there is a lot we agree on and where we disagree we have very frank dialogue with them. but the u.s. commitment to israel has been something that has been sustained across many administrations republican and democrat alike since the country's founding and that is no different today. so i'm running out of your,

north korea was the next one? >> korea, keep at it. iran. >> yeah. i mean obviously with regard to north korea our principle concern has been the potential for, has been the proliferation of nuclear weapons to that country and the potential that they could spread the technology to others whether they be rogue states or terrorist organizations. we have sought working with others, china, russia, south korea, and so forth to engage the north koreans in six-party talks to try to get them back into compliance with their treaty obligations. to denuclearize and so forth. in the absence of progress there we have, with u.n. sanction, imposed, along

with the international community some pretty severe sane shuns on many of their activities. we witness ad leadership transition or we are witnessing a transition underway with the passing of power from the father to the son and we will, it remains to be seen how things will move forward. we have sought to let north korea know that we want to see them come back to the negotiating table. that sanctions will remain in place until that happens. that we do not want to see any further provocations on the peninsula. our commitment to stability on the peninsula, to our south korean allies is rock solid and you know, it really, the ball is in their court to see the fact that it's in their interests to enter into negotiations with the international community to try to resolve this situation.

>> shall we conclude our world tour? >> yes. >> thank you very much, secretary. >> thank you. [applause] >> before you go, whoa. first of all, we are beyond pleased that you chose the reserve officers association to be the venue for probably will be your final public address and we thank you very much for the candid nature of your remarks and the insight you gained over the last three years. we have a couple tokens. first of all, something for your coffee table. our 90th anniversary coin. >> i do collect these. >> and a small but hopefully valued gift as you go forward. let's give the secretary arousing applause. thank you. [applause] >> thank you.

thank you very much. >> how about that for a morning start for this national security symposium? [applause] more to come. couple housekeeping remarks. there are a number of you in the audience who are serving general and flag officers in the selected reserve. woe invite you, if you haven't already registered, to register for what we think is the first of-ever reserve general officers symposium which will convene at 0800 wednesday morning in the harding room. we have about 24 general from each of the services signed up for this and we envision this as a iterative

exercise between breakout sessions on issues of reserve-specific policy and then coming in to hear the plenary sessions with congressman m ckeown, general dempsey, et cetera. if you haven't already registered please do so at the registration desk. and for those of you who are retired general officers in the association you're welcome to join the symposium as senior mentors on the back bench. an exciting new venture for roa will launch on august 18th. we have been in discussions with and negotiations, we're in the final stages of hammering out the details for a national security studies cruise that will

embark in boston, massachusetts, on 18 august. will then sail for halifax, nova scotia, to arrive on 19 august in the interim we'll have two defense forums a day featuring many of the type of speakers that you've heard this morning. we're going to have other lifestyle like opportunities to enjoy the cruise. things like a volunteer fitness boot camp. an mre lunch. battlefield virtual battlefield tours, and simulations similar to the ones that we're conducting for our junior officers the next two days. and in the evening a

military film festival. this is going to be aboard the mv explorer which is owned by the university of virginia's institute for ship board education. commonly known as the semesters at sea program. we're partnering on this we're the lead organization on all the programs. you will have priority if you get your registrations in right away for both spaces and hopefully cabin upgrades and we're partnering with our sister organizations in the military coalition which will open registration too in a couple weeks and also an organization called rhodes scholar, which is the former elder hostel organization which is very experienced in these sorts of endeavors. we anticipate that the 600 boat spaces will fill up very quickly. we don't have detail of the

prices. those are to come momentarily but if you would stop by there will be a booth in the exhibit. stop by that booth. express your interest and we'll follow up with you immediately after the prices and details are finalized. i was on the explorer last week. it is a fabulous ship. it is really, it is not the ship that went down in italy. we're going to be nowhere near the rocks and, we'll have a rich experience, military tours in boston and at the tail end experience the military history of halifax which goes back to the 1700's. they have a terrific citadel there that has reenactments

and lectures and videos. and then we'll also include the maritime museum that shows the history of halifax and that goes back to preworld war i days in the modern era. we have a brief video that we're going to show now, hopefully light up some excitement for this. play it. i think we need some vols. there's music in the background. play it in your mind. [laughter]

[background noise is. >>]

>> did you you get the acronym? rethinking our defense odyssey at sea. [applause] we're a little bit ahead of schedule because of the secretary's conflicting obligations. so we will reconvene at 1330 for our next sessions. securing afghanistan will be in the thurgood south room and arms control and metamorphosis from the cold war to the present will be in the thursday good east room. thanks for your attention, your involvement, your great questions and most of all for your attendance here at the national security symposium. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> the reserve officers association symposium.

they hosted two sessions this morning which you can find on line at the c-span library. last main speaker before we wrap things up, was undersecretary of defense michelle flournoy. she will be stepping down friday after three years in the job. she is the first woman to hold the post and her chief deputy, jim miller has been chosen to succeed her. we'll have more live events later today coming up in about two hours. a look at issues in the 2012 elections with secretaries of state from around the country. live from here in washington, d.c. which you can watch on our companion network c-span3. here on c-span2 the senate will gavel in 2:00 eastern time for general speeches. legislative work begins at 4:30 which is the stock act which bans insider trading among members of congress and their staff with a test vote on the measure at 5:30 eastern. we'll be back on the road to the white house at 2:00 eastern. over on c-span where we'll follow republican presidential candidate newt gingrich speaking at the

tampa international jet center and later tonight, candidate mitt romney at a retirement community in central florida. live on c-span starting at 6:10 eastern. >> you're watching "the communicators" on c-span. we are at the consumer electronics show in las vegas at the convention center. this week we caught up with two fcc commissioners who are taking tours of the exhibits here at the consumer electronics show. first up, mignon clyburn. >> we've got new product. we've got new promotion. we've got new mass cots.

we've got new everything. >> great. >> it is a dvr works for the entire house. >> okay. >> you put this in any one room and put these little guys in the other rooms. what you see is, we've taken it to the next level in terms of performance, in terms of features. you will see a fuel high definition user interface. very, very fast. most of the set-top boxes are very sluggish. high definition guide. >> right. >> general logos. goes back and forth really fast again. this is a dvr. you make the dvr to make it real easy to find what you're looking for. >> okay. >> one of the cool things we did we created this feature prime time anytime. what prime time anytime does when you look at statistics how people watch tv between the hours of 8:00 and 11, during the prime time hours, half of the people watching abc, cbs, nbc and fox. like how your hulu, once a

customer enable as feature, we automatically record all the four networks using only one satellite tuner. so there is a lot of technology behind it. and give them access to all the prime time shows for eight days. so anything that airs over the last eight days, like i can go ahead and watch last night's episode of "hawaii five-0". and we've had technology that enables us to watch tv on the phone, ipad or laptop, with the hopper you can do the same thing. all these tv shows and movies you can watch on any of your mobile devices. >> did you hear from consumers? what do you, in terms of why eight days? why this? >> a couple of things we hear from consumers. one is a number of high definition tvs in the homes are increasing. two years ago people used to have one tv, one high def and the rest used to be the

standard def. once you have high definition, you want to change every tv in your home. this is for high definition on every tv. consumers want prime time shows because that's what they're spending half the time watching so we made it easy for them to do it. we start looking at video consumption on tablets and mobile phones. we see that going up. still a small portion of total video consumption but definitely it is growing. and people want, they have already paid for this content and they want to watch it on their own devices. so --. >> [inaudible]. >> eight days is, you go back one week in time. if you want to save it longer than eight days you can do that. >> you do have that option? >> you can save it longer than eight days. eight days basically can get all the shows. i've been discovering new shows which i wouldn't want otherwise? >> what would that be? >> one pretty interesting one called my teenage daughter hates me or something. that was really funny. >> okay.

>> and person of interest. that is pretty interesting too. like in the morning i go do my exercises i always have something to watch. i never worry about did i record something? did something new come up? i always click my prime time folder and find it there. >> okay. >> we do a lot of work with broadband streaming, if you connect it to the internet you get access to thousands of movies. some are available for $10 a month. if i pay $10 a month you get access to 10,000 titles and movies and tv shows. some are new release titles you pay 6.99 to watch. >> okay. >> improvement in energy efficiency on this box? >> so, also what happens is because these are what we call thin lines. they don't have a satellite tuner in them. so when that television is off, this box is doing nothing. just sitting there and not consuming any energy. in a typical four tv home, in the past you had four

boxes like this. each of them always on, spinning hard drive, consuming a lot of energy. now you have only one of these boxes and three of these lightweight boxes. typically saving about 50% energy in a four-tv home. >> that is good to know. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> i appreciate it. >> we start with smart tv. >> all right. >> so the concept of smart tv is something that actually our company helped pioneer a number of years ago, three years ago. we were the first ones to put netflix into a blu-ray player that was the first connected device connected to the internet that wasn't a computer. now you see everybody has smart tvs. that means that you connect directly to the internet. we have wi-fi built into all of our new screens. but, you know, smart only works if it is simple enough to access. >> okay. >> there is so much content out there we want to make sure consumers are able to access it simply. let me show you how we do that.

we developed a special device we call the magic, the magic remote, sorry. thank you. a very, very intuitive. i'll let you run it though. sort of like a wii controller. >> right. >> it is very intuitive the way you move it around the screen. >> right. >> for the first time we have also integrated voice control so if you wanted, instead of having to type in a web page to go to find it, all you have to do is speak into the remote and it would find it automatically for you. >> okay. you said i could do that. >> can't do it here because -- >> too much noise, right. >> it actually works with american earning like, spanish, french, korean of course. so it is pretty amazing. >> fabulous. >> there is so much content out there now we want to help consumers find easy ways to access it and the magic remoat is a part of

that. >> great. >> from a policy standpoint we look how it will affect cable operators with over the top tv. so we're working closely with mptvs how they will improve the contact with their platform somewhere, i can't find it, first application with fios and friends from verizon. we have an app, instead of having the box for fios, could you get it through the smart tv. >> that is great for consumers, like you said in terms of number of devices. >> right. i heard you talk about energy. it will really help reduce the energy use in your home. all of these new sets, the new led sets are very energy efficient. lg was the first to support the new energy star, most efficient category. we have eight tvs currently in there, in that most efficient category. in 2012 we'll have even more. i want to show you probably the most energy efficient product in the world in its

screen size. you may have heard about organic light-emitting diodes? >> yes. >> this is the new 55 inch oled we've been showing oled couple years. 15 inch, 22 inch. it wasn't a real product. the technology is matured and really big and real product. >> it is really thin? >> really thin. it is four millimeters. less than 3/16 of an inch. if you look at another tv screen at this angle you would not be able to see the picture. >> right. >> but it has such high contrast, high resolution and color saturation you get really the ultimate high definition experience. >> and again, you talk about energy efficiencies. when i'm seeing this and seeing resolution i'm automatically thinking that we're going to consume more in terms of that as opposed to -- >> yeah, really the opposite. you think about those big old sets we replaced, first

tv sets were really energy hogs. these are so energy efficient. i don't have the energy rating on this yet but on a 55 inch led back lit lcd, about 8 cents a day to operate. >> wow. >> lg is revolutionizing the 3-d experience. conventional 3-d is using glasses. these are the ones you get in the movie theater. lightweight. inexpensive. >> compared to two years ago, these are extremely lightweight. >> very lightweight. we have designer glasses now. this is the new ultradefinition screen. this is four times the resolution of convention a ac-tvs. 1080-p times four. this is what you get. very large screen, 84-inch, phenomenal 3-d experience. >> my goodness. >> if you turn around and

look at, i don't have room for this one in my house i already picked out my new set in time for the super bowl right on top. >> right here? right. >> first thing you will notice is, that we call this cinema screen. the border is pretty much disappeared. so it is all picture now. >> right. >> all of these sets have smart tv capability, 3-d. we really enhanced the 3-d capability this year to allow you to adjust the 3 dee effect. if watching it you can dial it up. >> oh, wow. >> you might have a movie with little too much, you can dial it down. it is really more for your personal preferences. >> that is good to me know because my first year here i felt scared. >> almost too much, isn't isn't. >> it was too much. >> in fact i will give you ultimate 3-d experience as we walk out. >> okay. >> the other cool thing we've done with 3-d, we have a 3-d app now on the smart tvs so you get more 3-d

content. [inaudible] >> so i mentioned 2-d to 3-d conversion. i wasn't a believer, in this, a year ago, madam, commissioner. >> right. >> the new technology is fantastic. you can envision if you're into classic tv, you want to wash m mash in 3-d you can convert the television. >> wow!. >> i guess i'm showing my age. i don't think i dan do this for long though. >> you're watching it in your living room and able to actually adjust it, you are not going to watch everything in 3-d of course. >> right, right. >> but for that special movie or that special sporting event it is really a phenomenal experience. >> thank you so much. good to see you. >> great to see you. enjoy the rest of the show.

>> you might have to watch me next year when you get those prototypes on the floor. i might keep them. >> so glad you came by. >> take care. >> glad you enjoyed the show. >> take care. >> what is the importance of showing you as the ftc commissioner 3-d tv? >> we need to stay in touch with the consumer experience. we need to know where constantly this is the demand and consumption is. we need to make sure our policy, decisions we make, things we consider are in line with the consumer interest. that is important. we're always reinventing ourselves. just as you see all these incredible inessentials on the -- inventions on floor. >> thank you for letting us take part of your tour. we appreciate it. >> good to see you again. >> that was democratic federal communications commissioner mignon clyburn as she took a tour of some of the exhibits here at the consumer electronics show. on your screen is the grand lobby of the las vegas convention center which is where the show is held.

about 140,000 people attend this show every year. 3,000 plus exhibitors. we also caught up with republican fcc commissioner, robert mcdowell as he toured the samsung booth. >> commissioner mcdowell, what do you hope to learn here at cea or ces? >> consumer electronics show. this is my sixth straight year coming. i try to learn from the latest technology. from the fcc perspective what we find in the hall everything is going wireless. the tvs are communicating wirelessly to consumer broadband networks, cable, fiber, whatever. this underscores the need to bring more spectrum, more pieces of the airwaves for consumers to be able to use and probably more unlicensed airwaves. that is one of the takeaways from this year's show. >> how do you make that happen? >> we need congress's help for starters. the fcc can do a few things. we have some spectrum lying around we can tend to

auction but congress right now is working on what they call incentive auction legislation to try to get tv broadcasters to relinquish some of their spectrum and their channels to use for things like this. and that type of spectrum, that neighborhood on the dial, great for high bandwidth, high resolution videos such as what you're seeing here at ces. >> one of the these here is tv everywhere and how does that affect what you do at the fcc? >> certainly to have it. v everywhere at ces. sensory information overload. tv everywhere is going to present a lot of interesting public policy and legal eschews. but again, number one, is there enough spectrum to feed it as we all have are getting tablets and devices and my kids at christmas got a bunch of device themselves. they will watch a lot of video there. a lot of public policy issues. indecency being one of them. supreme court argument

yesterday on the decency issue. does it apply if the image is being fed through wi-fi versus over the air broadcast. the federal law says no at this point but what will the future of that? there is a lot of communication issues. >> what do we have going on here at samsung? >> at samsung this is latest technology. this is super oled-tv it allows -- >> what does that stand for. >> you stumped me there. >> okay. >> optical led, light-emitting die yesterday. >> i knew. >> made you nervous. >> what this allows you to do, turn each pixel on and off itself. each pixel has its own light source to provide better energy efficiency and brighter pictures. this is our 55-inch oled. >> 55 inch might have how many pixels? >> this half a million

pixels. over in the corner we look at next, the super high def or 4-k, four times the number of pixels in the same picture. >> looking forward to that, when you say each one gets turned on or off, if i see black, is it off? >> each pixel, over a million pixels. the oled has three colors. >> right. >> each color can be turned on individually. >> got it. >> so that allows you to have very deep black, and bright bright. look at picture it is vivid picture. >> the black is actually on? >> the black is all off. >> it is off. >> white would be all the pixels off. >> okay. [inaudible] >> let's see the 4-k. >> see the 4-k. >> how long do you spend at samsung putting a display like this together? >> this is a year-long effort. they spend the entire time developing the technology which we're going to see, new technology to planning and the space.

we're actually in the process of acquiring next year's space. [inaudible] >> we're looking for the 4-k. how many pictures does this have versus what we saw a few minutes ago? >> this is four times the pixels we saw. this is still a development set the as you see you start to see the 3-d effect because of higher resolution of the image and the vivid colors that come through. >> so as a matter of physics and engineering will you be able to achieve a full 3-d effect by packing in more pixels so five or 10 years from now you won't need the other 3-d technology? >> that is the potential application. this is very early in development. you start to see the 3-d effect. 3-d as you know dependent on the user. some users can't process the

3-d concept very well. depend if you have a dominant eye for example, you may not see the 3-d. >> right. >> some people get motion sickness depending on the technology of the glasses being used. better for some people or worse for others. >> right. >> you're saying some day might help get rid of that, more realistic 3-ds? >> i'll let you judge. see some of the content moving around on the screen. you see the vivid colors. you see the effects of 3-d without having multiple images being sent to your brain at separate times. >> so it is getting there, but maybe call it 2.25-d right now, right? not quite, image after football coming toward me i'm not going to dodge it? >> you're not going to dodge it. >> or catch it. >> or catch it. >> this certainly has promise but has a long way to go because of the technology in producing higher resolution screen, producing the content that is 4-k. >> how many years did it

take you to develop the 4-k technology? >> this has been developing quite a few years. i can't give you the exact number but at least four to five years. >> four to five years. how much might this retail for now? you're not there i know. >> this is a one-off. this is many years from coming to the market. >> not going to be in market anytime soon? >> not going to be in the market right away. >> okay. >> this is where we're innovating. and the next step for the tv will be this much higher definition television. >> how many people, how many engineers does it take to produce something like that over four or five years? >> we have thousands of engineers look working on this type of technology how you work on image of processing and increase the density of pixels within the screen itself. >> the screen is very thin, right? >> i can't confirm. looks thin from here. >> i don't know whether it is trickery. >> it is generating very thin film. >> okay. what's next? >> what's next?

we'll go over to the family share. the family share is way to share content with your family through pictures, through. >> through wireless technology. >> through wireless technology. >> you need spectrum. >> to streaming pictures and videos to your family. >> let's go see it. >> what we're seeing here we call family story. family story allows you to take a picture or take a video in the future and share it with your family. it will be shared through whatever device they're on. if you're on a tablet, for example, and you want to share it with grandma in new jersey, she is at her tv, you can send a ping to her, grandma, here is content i would like to share with you. that content would be then shared with her as you see right now. we're sharing a picture and, you see your im or texting back and forth about that picture where you're at. now what is great about that, this is also going to allow you to do things like, if