impacting the cost of the budget i get similar to the acquisitions question, but some of the same challenges exist with other entitlement programs. and if you like it will be very difficult to get to the military piece politically without the appearance of balancing the budget on the back of the veteran without at the same time addressing medicare, medicaid rising entitlements, and how do we look at that going forward? thank you. ..

>> let me just add one clarifying d before we take the first volunteer on these questions. and, again, framing the discussion today, as you're aware, we've got an active secretary, assistant secretary. we've got a former comptroller, and we have other people who are brainstorming. and so you're hearing different ideas in different veins, and i just want to underscore that point. i think that was something that alice was driving at earlier, and i'll make start with her if you wish to begin with either of those questions. >> well, let me -- certainly, one of the problems is there's political opposition to anything that looks like a benefit reduction to anyone, and that applies to military, to military retirees, to medicare beneficiaries, and it's one of the reasons i think for looking at these changes across the

whole system at the same time. and it's certainly possible that medicare, which is at the moment having some success in holding down costs as is the military health system can survive over the longer term if it takes advantage of the payment reforms that will enable them to use -- medicare beneficiaries to have better choices and the providers to have the incentive to use their resources more efficiently, ask that seems to be starting -- and that seems to be starting to happen. but the more we think of this as a national how do we solve the problem together question, i

think the more we can pull the specific groups that are really worried about what happens to us in together into the conversation. on the sparsely-populated areas, i wasn't saying close down the military health system and throw them into inadequate civilian facilities. but if you have areas which both the civilians and the military are concerned about where there aren't enough facilities of either kind, then this is a problem which may be soluble together easily than it's soluble separately. and it might involve using military facilities to fulfill civilian needs, or it might involve putting the military or veterans or whoever we're talking about into the system to

create a larger pool of more beneficiaries and more ability to support a system where there aren't that many people. >> other comments? or answers for these questions? okay. we'll take the next two. >> well, let me add one thing. >> please. >> and that is i think as a citizen i understand we need to get at other entitlement programs, we also need to think about the revenue side of government. i believe that the joint chiefs and the secretary and the department of defense have decide they need to look at compensation programs to look at health care because the law now limits total military spending, and therefore, if they don't slow the growth in military compensation, they'll be less available for training and modernization. and i think they are very concerned that there isn't adequate training right now especially coming off 2013 and sequestration. so that would be their answer, and it seems a logical one to me that they need to look at the

military because we've limited the total spending, and so we need to find dollars for training and modernization. >> i'm going to quote my good friend, mckenzie, who's a scholar at the american enterprise institute, and she likes to say that we have two sacred contracts with our men and women in uniform. one is to take care of them and their families in the way that abraham lincoln spoke of, as they are in uniform if in service, but the other is to make sure they are the best prepared for the fight so when there's a fight, they live and the enemy dies. it's a powerful way to put it. sounds better coming from her than from me, but it is a good way to underscore there is a trade-off based on current law and budget deficits. yes, ma'am. and then we'll come up here. i think you had a question as well? was i right? okay. >> [inaudible]

are you factoring -- there it is. are you factoring in the fact that the military health care system can be much more efficient and lower cost than the civilian system just by using medicare hospital rates and by negotiating prices for drugs? the military system is less expensive than civilian health care, and it can be made much more efficient still. >> that question in a second. and one more up here, please. >> thank you. the military -- as a military spouse, the question of moving military families onto the national health care system, is it being taken into consideration when the families go overseas? what is the ramification of moving them back to the dod? is what is the expense with that and what is the time constraint to that as well?

>> i'm going to say one more clarifying thing again. that kind of idea is one we're framing at a more theoretical level. i don't think it's an active proposal at the moment just to be clear. bob, do you want to say more about that in. >> well, on the use of rates, as i said in my opening remarks, there has been progress on that score. five years ago dod was not using medicare rates in small hospital, and for ute patient they were allowed -- outpatient they were allowed to do that by the congress, and i think that has yielded some savings. similarly, the use of the v.a. drug pricing schedules which the drug company sued and lost was helpful to the department. so there may be more there. but i think it's important we acknowledge there has been progress. and i think i'll defer to alice or henry on the exchanges. >> okay. jack, i wondered if i could draw you out, if you like, on this issue of how efficient we should think of the dod health care system writ large. you spoke to that earlier

already with some very, i thought, informative illustrations. i wondered if you wanted to comment more generally on i how you see this set of institutions. one thing i was struck at just trying to prepare for this event is i think there are 140,000 dod full-time employees in the dod health care system. 80,000 plus who are civilian, 60,000 plus who are military. it's a big organization. on the other hand, by some metrics, it doesn't look expensive. i just wonderedded if you wanted to add -- wondered if you wanted to add a word on that. >> so by nature, government is never going to be efficient, all right? it isn't designed to be that way. because there are things that have happened, all right? so it has to take care of the active duty military. but one of the problems that we always have when we want to do change in any big organization is that organizations tied to the way they've done things in the past and tradition. and it becomes very, very difficult to be able to do

change, and what always drives people to be able to come up with that change is when they need to have money to do other things that have a higher priority. i think bob alluded to that when he said there's only so much money that the dod is allowed to spend now under law. and so if they're going to spend more money modernizing, they've got to find other ways to be able to reduce it. i'm very sensitive to the idea that the military goes to remote places and is deployed overseas and that there are challenges in terms of being able to get medical care in some of those places. but holding on to places like i learned yesterday in the air force where they may be getting only ten people through a facility a day is probably not in anybody's best interest. there's got to be better ways to be able to provide medical care,

was the overhead cost of maintaining that facility is absurd in comparison to what you would want to be able to do. so it's, when i talk about innovation and how to you want to think about this, i'm not trying to get to the most efficient way. if i wanted to get to the most efficient way, that becomes a very mechanical approach, all right? but i think that if you're thinking about innovation, you have to start thinking about ways that you can do things better for the future and be willing to let the past go. >> thank you. henry. and then carla. >> i want to go back to the issue of inefficiency or efficient city in cost. efficiency in cost. and invoke the reference that was made to the impact of the price of care on the quantity of care that's used. expenditure equals price times quantity. simple equation. the, it's now about a quarter of a century since the best and largest social experiment ever

carried out was completed. that was on the impact of cost sharing, premium differences on the use of health care done by the rand corporation. free care cost resulted in about 30% more use of health care services than did a normal health insurance plan back then. we just heard the statistic that the use of health care under tricare, the quantity of services is that for comparable populations an even larger percentage. now, if there were evidence that the difference in the quantity of care had a big impact on health care, then you're into the business of -- >> health. >> -- and health. thanks. you're into the business of doing trade-offs. is it worth it to spend more in

order to get the additional benefit? the evidence is that the impact on health is negligible. there are some differences that were detected back a quarter of a century ago, and i suspect you would find some if you did a comparable study today. but they're teeny tiny. and so i think it's fair to ask whether this is a good expenditure of funds by a cash-strapped, perhaps not sufficiently trained and ready military at the present time. i'd like to make one other comment, and it's triggered by the reference to the supposed inconsistency between the federal government and efficiency, or government and efficiency. about ten years ago, a very, very careful study was done of the likelihood that people would

receive the care indicated for the condition they have when they go into a hospital or see a physician. tens of thousands of records were examined, and the results were really quite startling. it didn't make any difference the likelihood that you would get the care that was recommended. didn't make any difference really in those percentages if you were rich or poor, old or young, male or female, black or white. they were almost identical percentages. there was one place that stood out for having a higher probability of people receiving the care that was recommended. that was the veterans administration. now, that was the one part of the health care system that was

managed and run by the government. it used to be something of a sinkhole. it had a terrible reputation. but then during the '90s a real revolution occurred in that delivery system. it was a pioneer in electronic health records, and it vaulted way over its previous standing. and in at least this one study, this wholly government-managed health care delivery system did a better job in delivering recommended care than the rest of the health care system did. on the average. now, there are no doubt within the private sector particular places that did absolutely sterling jobs, but it was this one group. so i think it's the case that if innovative managers whether they're within government or outside of it are given their heads and are supported and

given the flexibility to effectuate reforms, we can see efficient city in both places. efficiency in both places. >> thank you. carla. >> well, i guess following -- i was making a similar, or thinking a similar thing along those lines, that it's price times quantity and that as an analyst i've found it very challenging to -- and i have not really seen one answer about whether in-house care is cheaper than private sector care. i've seen, depending how you measure it, practice patterns, how long does it take before you replace the knee in the military system versus how long civilian patients wait before, how much physical therapy they have to take before they go ahead and put in the knee, that sort of thing. hotel amenities in hospitals, if you will, wards versus private rooms and so on and so forth. so it's a very challenging, you

know, the rates are fantastic when you can get them. of bob talked about. but i do think it's that make or by decision is not really an easy one. >> alice, did you want to -- >> well, i think that's right. but it reinforces the point that on the average there are a lot of improvements that can be made across these systems, and we need to be thinking about them in the same ways and changing the incentives both for the providers and for the beneficiaries so that we get better health care for hess money. for less money. >> a couple more questions. let's just go right here to these two women in the fourth row. please. then we'll do a final round. >> first of all, thank you very much for your time today. my name is karen golden, i'm with the military officers association of america. i just had a comment about i

very much appreciated the two quotes you had about our military needing to be the best prepared, and we need to take care of the people that wear the uniform today and those in the service. my husband is an active duty marine, and i most certainly acutely understand the need for our military to be best prepared. but i noticed absent in that statement is the 10%, someone mentioned the 10 president who have given -- 10% who have given their life, a lifetime of service and sacrifice to our nation, and i wonder if the panelists could reiterate how they feel the nation has an obligation to them in terms of health care and to our retirees. and also absent in that statement is our military families, of which i am a military family member. what is the obligation to our military families in terms of providing health care? i'd be interested in what each panelist thought about those obligations to retirees and to military families. >> good morning. my name is eileen he can, i'm

with the national military family association, and i'm also an active duty can family member. part of the rationale for including family members and retirees in the military health care system is to insure that military health care providers have a sizable, diverse pop laughs on whom to -- population on whom to practice. so if we remove family members and retirees from the military health system either by one of these innovative ideas requiring them to participate in the aca or by removing the financial incentives for them to be part of the military health system, what impact would that have on our military providers? would they, would their training and preparation suffer by not having this adverse population on which to practice? >> thank you. jack, you want to start? >> so i'll talk about the one about the people who retire. i think that there is an obligation on the part of the federal government that when someone comes into the military and they want them to continue

to a retirement age whether that's 20 years or 30 years, that there is a contractual obligation to adhere to that. i would argue that so those people who are currently in the military and are going to stay til retirement, that you meet that obligation. i don't think that that needs to be something that is perpetuated far into the future. i think i that there are, obviously, if it's cost considerations to whether you can afford to do that or not, then you can change what the contract is from new people coming in. and so you end up with a situation where you grandfather the ones that are already in the military, but you're providing a different benefit system for those future people who are going to be coming in. now, this is not inconsistent at all with what you find in almost every other place in life. i mean, indeed, we saw the great turmoil in wisconsin when the

governor changed the contract agreement with public sector employees that had been in place for some period of time. i'm not proposing doing something like that. i am proposing looking at what that benefit is in the future. you need to be able to balance the benefits as part of the total package of what you need in order to be able to continue to attract the quantities and the quality and the skill set of people in order to be able to defend this country. because we have a volunteer military, okay? and it's not a conscript anymore. it is purely one of economics, of how do you attract the people that you want to have, and how do you keep the numbers that you need to have in the future in order to be there? it's a combination of things that you're able to do, and it doesn't have to be the same things that we've done in the past.

>> thank you. alice? >> i think we should distinguish what is the obligation from what kind of health care do we want people to have. and the obligation to the active duty military, to former active duty military is something that i think has to be decided politically. but whatever obligation you have you want people to be in the system that is effective and not washingtonful, duplicative -- wasteful, duplicative and subject to problems of hands off between one facility and another. and one of the ways that people think we could get a more effective system is to have

plans whether military or civilian competing against each other. and for that you need a fairly large pool of beneficiaries. and so one might -- if you're thinking about the system as a whole, you might want to put in place a system which maximized the ability to deliver good care especially in these sparsely-populated areas to everybody and think about how you use the facilities that are both civilian and military to do that. that was all i was suggesting. i think it's quite independent of what the subsidies are for various categories of beneficiaries. >> thank you. carla? >> i guess in responding to this that, well, first, the details

of the options that we explored are available on the web site and probably for those people who want to know the puts intake, i would encourage you to go look at that, cbo.gov. i'll say that for the options that we looked at, for example, the one option, one of the options was to take the say what would the enrollment fee and co-payments be if you took what they were in 1995 when tricare was stood up, and if they had kept pace with the increase in per capita medical inflation, what would they be today? >> so, in essence, taking the financial burden that was -- if you want to call it a burden -- established for retirees and for service members when tricare was stood up and keep that burden essentially the same as adjusting for inflation. and that results in, you know,

you'll approximately double the enrollment fee. so it goes from maybe 550 a year for family coverage to approximately $1100 a year. and what you see is, we estimate, people do leave, but not everybody leaves. and people do consume fewer services, but not everybody consumes fewer services. and so you have these behavioral effects. i don't want to give the impression that somehow people are forced out of the system when you change the financial arrangement. tricare will still look financially if these options took place, tricare would still look financially attractive to many, many people. >> bob -- >> i don't disagree with that. i think the department of defense realizes they've got an obligation to retired and active duty members, and nothing they've proposed would fundamentally change that. it would take, say, tricare prime from being, largely having no co-pays to having i would

describe as fairly modest ones, zero for the most junior enlisted, $10 in military treatment facilities, if i remember the numbers right, $20 for in network if you go outside the military treatment facilities. that and many other proposals they made last february save about $2 billion a year. roughly half of that comes through reductions in overutilization that have been discussed here already. so only about half of it actually comes from the fees themselves, the rest from reductions in utilization. but i don't think there's any question at least when i was there, and i'm sure it hasn't changed, that there remains a feeling, there's a commitment to both the retirees and active duty -- >> what we'll do more is take one last round of questions, two more, and then i'm going to invite the panelist, starting with bob, to respond if they wish but also to add any final, concluding comment if there's something they want to make sure we hear today that we haven't yet. ma'am here in the third row and

towards the back in uniform. >> hi. this is -- my name's kathy beasley, and i'm with the military officers association, and i'm a retired navy nurse, and so i have been in the system for 30-plus years, so i'm well acquainted with military medicine. this is my question, i think for secretary hale. sir, i know we've discussed in the past the cost of readiness. i mean, there is a cost to readiness, and it's wide -- of various forms. can you comment on that? >> good afternoon. thank you very much for everything you've said up there today. my name's captain william marsh. i'm an army trauma nurse, ten-year veteran. two points that i'm, i was concerned about, one is we talk about separating military health system and readiness. the military health system goes to war every day for the civilians in the area, in trauma

centers, in taking care of the soldiers on the home front even when there is no war. so i think we need to be cautious as we proceed down that road, because we have to maintain our medical readiness to treat with or without a war. as dr. woodson stated, we deployed for ebola. the second question i would -- or the second point i would like to ask is we talked about overutilization on the tricare benefits. has there been research into frivolous health care as in an appointment kept that is seen as actually frivolous e.r. usage primarily is where i'm thinking. and potentially once a visit is deemed as frivolous, that person would then pay a co-pay. has there been consideration in that to recoup some of those benefits? >> thank you.

bob, would you like to start? >> well, let me start on the readiness. i mean, readiness is one of the hardest things to define. you could make a plausible case that the entire defense budget contributes to readiness. that's why at least the base portion of the budget and we pay separately for actually using those forces in conflict. you could take it to a much more limited thing, it's just flying hours, etc., that put you in the $50 billion range. but i think we should back off from the specific numbers and recognize there is a strong commitment to readiness in this department of defense, and there should be especially in a world where we face as many threats, and they come up with as little warning as they do. and health care is most assuredly part of it. and so i think these discussions, i can tell you from personal experience when discussions are made about benefits, about what we're going to do in the health care system, military readiness is always something that gets raised. and it should be, and it will

continue to be. >> and could i, since you are now concluding and i want to invite you to add anything you might wish, but i'm going to pose one final question to you. given the responsibilities you've had, given how much you've contribute inside this domain, realizing that you're now out of service in the department of defense having been undersecretary, but i think i'm hearing you to do say that the military health care system is in reasonably good shape, but it needs a lot of work, the compensation system is reasonably fair, but there are certain specific -- significant, but not yet revolutionary changes we can and should consider, and we don't need an overhaul, but we do need a lot of work in specific areas. is that a fair summary? >> if you started with a clean sheet on military compensation, i wouldn't design it the way it was. i think it was brookings published a book called the military pay model, and it moist assuredly -- most assuredly describes the current system which is very complicated. remarkably so. politics is the art of the possible. i don't see starting over in

this kind of environment and, therefore, i would say, yes, it is doing its fundamental goal of attracting and retaining people. and so i think it's most realistic to change it on the margin. but i would like to give some of the other panelists a chance to comment on the overutilization, and i'm come back and talk about the emergency room care which you probably know better than i do, it's a real problem in the military. >> we'll finish with you, but we'll go down the row first. okay, carla. any comments? >> i think -- well, i don't want to speak for dod. >> nor do i anymore. [laughter] >> i think dod has tried to wrestle with that, those sorts of things. i hesitate to call them frivolous, but certainly you'll see in the civilian sector the sort of plans that you outlined that, you know, if you go to the e.r. and then it's deemed it wasn't an emergency, the deductible is higher, there's a fee. i don't think that those sorts of things have been proposed

officially by dod, but -- >> alice. >> let me stick with "frivolous," because i think that's an unfortunate word usually, and in this instance. there's certainly good studies that will tell you that care coordination particularly for chronic disease help avoid running to the emergency room when you're really sick. it avoids getting really sick and getting into the condition where you have to go to the emergency room. and some of these studies have to do with things that you don't ordinarily think of as health care. we were looking at pediatric asthma recently.

and if you can get children into a cleaner environment and one with less mold and hazard in the household, they are much less likely to have emergency room visits for asthma. that's not a health care thing, but it is a disease management thing. that can save money. >> thank you. henry? >> yes. continuing again on alice's theme. virtually any contact that you have with the medical system has some probability of helping you. it may be a high probability if you walked in with a broken arm and you get it set. pretty sure you're fete -- getting a benefit. it may be a pretty low

probability, and there are some cases in which actual harm is likely to occur. there is no clear distinction anywhere on that probability distribution that a contact with the medical system is in one case clearly indicated or clearly not indicated. so inevitably we're putting making a discussion about a policy change that has the effect of reducing the degree to which somebody uses health care, there is some probability of benefit. now, the point that i think carla made and i made citing the rand health insurance study from many, many years ago is that within the u.s. health care system there's an awful hot of contact -- awful hot of contact

with the health care system where the probability of health care is really modest. and so it isn't -- this isn't an on/off signal where you know it when you see it. it's a, inevitably are, an ambiguous and difficult discussion. so when we speak about changing cost sharing in ways that will have some effect on people's, our willingness to demand care, that usually goes incidentally with the fact that prepreventive care is free and vaccinations are free and baby costs are free. we know those pay off bigtime. but there is cost sharing for other things. sure, there's some sort of trade-off, but the evidence is that the medical benefits that are sacrificed from imposing some charges there are really very small.

>> thank you. chuck? >> i don't think there's any doubt that medical services in this country are going under transformation, starting with the ack, and it's not done -- aca, and it's not done yet. because we all know the aca has things that need to be fixed. military service delivery and system will be part of that. my experience in this town and in business is that the best solutions are ones where all of the stakeholders can come together and recognize that there's going to be change and be handgun to work together in order -- and be willing to work together in order to get that change possible. not exactly what each stakeholder wants, but what's possible. and many members in this room today, i strongly encourage you to get in the fight not to justify or protect what you have, but to establish what's

right for the future for the country and for your constituents. >> thank you. bob, last word to you if you have anything more you'd like to add at in the point. >> well, first, i don't know that we answered our captain's question, emergency room use is about four times higher per capita in the department of defense than it is in the private sector. there is worried about medical effects of that. i'm not a doctor, but i think there's concern about follow hum care. follow-up care. i would worry about trying to adjudicate what's frivolous use, but i i think some kind of fees, co-pays for emergency room use are clearly appropriate, and i think they'd agree. the broader issue which is we've got a military under a lot of stress doing a lot of good things for the country. we owe a lot to the people in uniform, and the people who sport them, i might add. and that includes reasonable health care. i think all of us would agree to that. the discussion is can we do it

more effectively, whether to use broader, tap into the broader resources of the national system, whether it's some changes of incentives, whether it's budgeting differentty. i think that's -- differently. i think that's the debate that needs to happen. we are committed, i think the department is clearly committed to a strong military health care system. >> and before we thank the panel, i'm sure we'll all want to join me, as well as the panelists, in making sure we're also applauding for the men and women in uniform, their families, are tire's, veterans and everyone -- retirees, veterans as well. thank you all for being here and happy holidays. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> tonight on c-span, national institutes of health director nan sis collins talks about the challenges facing cancer research. speaking on a panel at the aspen institute, dr. collins describes an environment of unprecedented innovation paired with shrinking federal resources. >> it is amazing to see the insightings. and they're coming out of all sorts of technologies that we didn't have before. imaging you mentioned, things we can do with imaging now are phenomenal and getting better. the whole genomics revolution giving us insight into how cells working and how things go wrong sometimes. the efforts to understand sort of the details of clinical teen types and the advent of electronic health records. all of these things sort of coming together in a way that i would not have imagined would happen in my lifetime. and yet we are not nurturing that engine of discovery the way

that we could be. and a statistic that i think is particularly troubling and oftentimes really discouraging to young scientists who are thinking about getting into this field is the following: what's your chance if you have a great idea about cancer research and it's preclinical, it's not something you're working in a company, you're working in an academic institution but you have that next idea, where are you going to go to get funded from the nih and what's your chance your grant is going to get funded? it's about one in six. traditionally over the last 50 years it's been about one in three. in the cancer institute i think it's one in ten, actually, it's even lower. >> national institutes of health director francis collins on the hope and challenges of cancer research. tonight at eight eastern on c-span. >> now, u.s. army aviation director colonel john lindsay and army aviation chief offer an update on the army's aviation

restructure initiative at the center for strategic and international studies in washington d.c. under the plan the national guard would transfer its fleet of apache attack helicopters to the active force in exchange for blackhawk utility helicopters. the ph chi helicopters -- apache hell helicopters would take over reconnaissance missions. the initiative is expected to save the army $12 billion. this is an hour. [inaudible conversations]

>> good afternoon, everybody. thanks for coming. we are here today to have a follow-on conversation to one that we started a while ago when the army announced its aviation restructure initiative, and it was one of the more contentious elements of the army's portion of that fy-15 budget debate. that debate is now over as of a few days ago, and so we wanted to have a follow-on conversation about where that initiative stands in the future of army aviation writ large given the guidance that was recently given by the congress. and to do that, i think we have a really terrific panel lined up. so to my right, immediate right is brigadier general frank muth, director of the quad remember yell defense -- quadrennial

defense review office. he had the opportunity to command a troop in iraq and then go backing with a brigade many years later which, while heft -- he was there, became the first enhanced combat aviation brigade, so was in charge of all air operations in iraq. he's gone a few -- he's done a few other things along the way. he first came to the army staff in 2011, i believe, and was able to escape for a year and go back to the real army at fort reilly where he was involved, intimately involved with the implementation of regionally-aligned forces and how that applied to aviation. and then was dragged back to the pentagon to be the director of the french review office. good job coming right after it was done. [laughter] so he's -- >> all about timing. >> claiming the next one maybe? i don't know. but manages to keep busy, and he's going to offer some perspectives on the overall army budget, the fiscal landscape in

which the aviation conversation is taking place. to his right is colonel john lindsay who is the director of aviation in army g357. colonel lindsay was one of the architects of the reinvasion structure, so he's going to talk about how that stands looking forward, and then finally we have, it's always great to have back wally rugen. in 2012 he was noting that was in the old building, and the digs have gotten a little nicer since he was here last. also a career aviator who commanded both in the general purpose forces and in the special operations airborne -- aviation regiment at fort camp campbell. he just came from brigade command in korea, so has now the opportunity to implement or try

to synthesize all the lessons that he's taken away from his various assignments into being the director of aviation force development in g8 for general muth. so, again, i think great expertise. i was -- you guys are sort of cumulatively touching many of the same places along the way, but have also sort of embodied the broadening kinds of -- >> yeah, no. like a lot of the aspects of the enterprise piece is what we like to talk about, but we were talking about before we got here, and between us about 8,000 flight hours and over a thousand combat flight hours. as an apache guy, as a special operations blackhawk aviator. so, i mean, you know -- >> not bad. >> got that. >> so, sir, over to you. >> good afternoon, everybody. this is our version of a christmas apparently, so, please -- [laughter] you know, keep the jocularity going.

>> it's not spiked. >> this is not grey goose. so my name's frank muth, as i i was introduced, and what i'd like to do as my position before when i was the director of material and also with the fdd division chief for 2012-2013, i think i got a pretty good kind of experience as where the budget was going. specifically related to the equipping peg. or associated with the modernization. and so what i'd like to do is having that perspective and then turning around in 2013 and going back and being the deputy commanding general for support for the big red one -- by the way, the oldest, most historic division of the united states army -- i got my perspective of what is the impact of budget, i got a vision -- another vision, a window of what impacts are the budget constraints and also the potential for sequestration have on our readiness within the division. and i know we're here to talk about ari, but i think it's important to frame it around the

discussion of the budgetary cuts and also the impacts of sequestration. so let's talk strategically. because of the budgetary constraints and also sequestration, well over 270 programs have been impacted. and whether that has been programs have been basically taken off the books, whether they've been descoped or whether they've been delayed in some way, shape or form, 270. that is a significant amount. if you look at the overall equipping peg, on the average historically it ranges anywhere in a balanced force -- not a hollow force -- it ranges anywhere from 22-24 percent of the overall budget within the ee peg. or the ee peg is about 22%, 24% of the budget. right now we're sitting at about 17%. that is a significant cut in the our modernization programs and a significant impact kind of to the overall strategic place where the army is right now as

it pertains to the budget. so if we go to full sequestration, what then occurs to those programs that i talked about, because identify talked about impacting -- i've talked about impact over 270, and some of them more than once. when you have more budget cuts the next year, we you have to continue descoping. an additional 137 programs whether they'll be killed, descoped or moved to the right some way, shape or form. that is a strategic impact to the modernization of our army. so that's kind of the strategic side of it. and let me explain to you real quick what happened last year when i went back to the big red one. so it was the september time frame, and i was the deputy commanding general for support. we went into the goth shutdown -- government shutdown, and we also occurred that we were told even though we requested based on our previous year's budget which was about 147 million to run the division, we asked about 135 million. and now, understand that that's two armor brigade combat teams,

two infantry combat teams, an air vegas brigade -- aviation brigade and sustainment brigade. so what happened was we were told you're going to get 77 million. and this was before the bba kicked in and the bipartisan budget agreement. so we had to readjust how we were going to train the division for that year. so everyone always asked, hey, how do you portray the impacts of readiness? well, this is what happened in the division. immediately we had to implement anything over $50,000, any type of purchase for the discussion. i had to personally -- division. i had to personally approve. an armored brigade combat team for a year on an average, this is very rough order of magnitude, about $14 million to train. that's at home station. that doesn't include a ctc rotation, okay? 14 million. you can imagine what that -- our average brigade combat team was sitting, we think for the year

based on what we were projecting, at about 4-5 million. you go, okay, what does that mean? one tank engine is about $742,000. so you could go through almost two and a half months of budget for a brigade if one tank engine went down. so everything we did, every -- we stopped driving our vehicles, we stopped shooting, we stopped training. and at the operational side, so i talked strategic here with the big army, and with the operational side at the division, we stopped training. we stopped driving our vehicles. and i said to myself, you know, that could be just the big red one. i talked to another deputy commanding journal for the 25th, he said they did the same thing with their strikers. they drove them back and forth three or four feet just so the tires wouldn't get indepartmented on one side or -- indented on one side or another, just to keep the chassises moving because you didn't have the gas, you didn't have any money or any type of bullets. so that's operationally, and that's the division. and that's trying to get ready

to do some of the missions we were tasked to do whether it's realigning forces or potentially other requirement ares. so what was occurring tactically at the company level? nothing. i mean, they're doing as basic training as they possibly can to, you know, for soldiers, for some leadership development. but when it comes to trying to do collective training at the platoon or the company which requires you to get into your bradleys or m-1s and maneuver on the battlefield or in the training area back at fort reilly or shooting your weapon systems, at this point 11s for platoons, they could not do it. they could not train. and then what happened? in november when we finally found out that we got the budget that we asked for and we could start to get that training back up, and we were able to get back onto a path. everybody always asks what happens? what is the impact, what's the vision of sequestration? from my interspective at least last -- perspective at least last year, i think we saw a pretty good idea of what would occur at a division if

sequestration occurred and your budget was cut essentially in half. and that's what happened to us. to me, that was very telling. and then coming back in here to the building and having some dialogues with folks and trying to explain to them, hey, this is what occurs at a division. oh, by the way, your aviation brigade went down toless -- to less than $11 per pilot, but are you propisht on day/night operations platoon or company decisive actions? absolutely not. so the readiness impacted the division significantly. and that's what if we move forward with sequestration, at least what i saw last year, i could certainly see that, we could see that occur within the division when it comes to the readiness and impact of training overall. i look forward to having a dialogue about aviation restructure initiatives, 40 i the ec -- how the impacts and the savings of a little over $12 billion has on that strategyingic aspect, but what

are the impacts potentially for the operational and the tactical. thank you very much. john? >> sir, thank you very much, i appreciate it. i see a lot of familiar faces in here today. we've talked to many of you in the past year and a half. it's been a long road. it feels like in many respects we're sort of building ari as it goes, but that's, in fact, not the case. we conceived of this a long time ago with some very solid analytical underpinnings, and it feels like it's a long road because of the process, right? the process is we submit something into the 1519 palm, and that happened in the fall of 2013. it gets sent forward in february of this year as part of the secretary of defense and the president's budget. and then it gets discussed on the hill, marked up in committees, and we just got the ndaa. so it has been a long process to get where we are today which

essentially keeps elements of the aviation restructure initiative intact. but because of the group that we have here and the folks that are listening in, i thought it would be important to kind of refresh some of the major parts and pieces of that aviation restructure just to reset. we were facing very significant cuts in the program due to sequestration, and this is, you know, that kind of set the stage for the way we thought about our structure going ahead. and eventually bba kicked in, and that was helpful. but nevertheless, our toe, our top line for equipping alone was going to be significantly reduced, and colonel rugen is going to talk about that in a little bit. the army came up with a plan to reduce its aviation force, and the approach was very characteristic of the way things are often done, and that is a salami -- that's a cut of whole

units. we didn't look into the units and rearrange things in them, we cut whole units out of the force. and that was five aviation brigades. we had 25 aviation brigades, and the plan was to reduce it by three in the active duty and two in the reserve component. what we did not like about that plan was it reduced, it cut all of the modernized systems associated with those aviation brigades. it cut apaches, ch-47s, uh-60s. and when we looked at that in the summer of 2013, we thought there's got to be a better way. because this plan, this original plan included keeping many of the legacy systems that have been in our fleet, have been in our army inventory for 40 years and that included our kiowa warriors and our aging training fleet. so what the army's plan did was

solve for a short-term fiscal bogey, but it didn't solve for many of the longstanding issues we had in our branch. it didn't solve for training aircraft, it didn't solve for a scout helicopters. it was, the approach was to put billions of dollars into the aging kiowa warrior when was only going the give you a marginal upgrade in capability down the road. it didn't do anything to our aviation structures. they all remained the same, and we had seven different variants across the force. so we took a different look, and we said let's see if there's another way to go about solving many of aviation problems. and one of the things we put together was idea that we wanted to keep, preserve our best stuff. let's not take our aircraft, our best stuff and swiept off the side of the -- sweep it off the side of the aircraft carrier into the ocean. let's not do that. let's save our apache, let's

save our ch-47s, let's save our uh-60s. and that became an organizing principle for army aviation. there was no idea that we were going to be able to go back to the leadership of the army and ask for more money, more top line authority. that wasn't going to happen. the money was gone in the program in the outyears. so we had to make some difficult choices. if you agree that your organizing principle is to keep your best stuff, then you have to throw into play, throw into the mix the idea that you divest your older stuff. and included in that mix, of course, is your oh-58d aircraft. we had about 368 aircraft in the fleet, we've got ten squadrons, nine in the active, one in the reserve component, and we imagined what the army would be if we divested the oh-58d.

and, of course, the question came up, what do we do next? what happens with the scout mission? who assumes that, what assumes that? and, of course, we have the a-64d which studies have shown and be has over the past many years performed the scout role very, very effectively in the army. so that is one of the organizing principles in the army. we had to pay close attention to the mix within the ac and the rc because, again, divesting those oh-58ds out of the fleet because we didn't want to invest billions of dollars into those platforms was going to reduce the number of battalions, shooting battalions in the army from 37 down to 20 battalions. and when you go down to that few number of battalions based on the op tempo we have sustained over the last 13 years at least,

then you have to think very carefully about where you put those assets. and we made the recommendation to the leadership, leadership agreed that we needed to put based on op tempo and training requirements that asset, the a-6 4, into the active component. that was the decision. we knew, of course, we could not move one thing from one component into another without having a corresponding balance back to the reserve component, and for that reason we made the recommendation based on shedding structure, active component aviation brigades. we would be able to move some uh-60 structure into the national guard and the army reserves. so that is, essentially, what we're doing in aviation restructure. the other thing we were able to do and recommend to leadership was take our luh-72s that we had here in the active component and the reserve component and repurpose those aircraft as the training aircraft. we currently have a

single- engine, nonglass cockpit trainer down at fort rucker, and the idea with moving the luh-72 to fort rucker was to put a dual-engine aircraft in place with a glass cockpit. that does a couple things for us. that eases the transition from training aircraft to advanced aircraft, and it also reduces the amount of time that you've got to invest and spend on doing emergency procedures, training and touchdown crash embankments we call them down at fort rucker. so we think those savings are going to be significant down the road. we'll go into some more detail, if you like, about how that's being implemented in the future. but the point is as far as aviation restructure goes, we are moving out with implementation. aviation restructure is happening, and if you haven't heard too much about it, it's because most of all of the

change is occurring in the active component. we held a warrant officer transition panel in the past couple of months. that identified over 350 warrant officers for advanced aircraft transitions, and so those folks are currently being programmed for the next several years to pursue training in other aircraft. that's happening. we have canceled oh-58d training down at fort rucker and at fort uses. ..

transition the army to what we think is going to be a far more capable force. so with that i have plenty of other information we can share once we get to questions, but i will pass it off to my wing man, colonel rubin, who can talk a little bit about the strikes were making and equipment modernization. >> good afternoon, everybody. i'm in the g8. my team and i manage the 22 army aviation programs that comprise aviation portfolio. so not only the airframes that

we're all familiar with but quite a number of enablers. certainly the theme has been, as the army gets smaller, army aviation is getting smaller. as i came on the team just managing the limitation has been a full-time job that goes along with managing also the portfolio. certainly an exciting time. you know even without sequestration we see significant pressure on the aviation portfolio. we are over 20% of the army procurement dollars go to the army aviation and that's a significant investment by the army and certainly we take our job very seriously. so getting the best bang for a buck to be the stewards of taxpayer dollars is certainly what we put in front of us as we go forward. this year we have reallocated the kiowa are warrior fund, -- that's been about 1.4 billion.

we put that into our ari stalwart programs so the remanufacture of the ah-64, some modifications of the ah-64 have also benefited from those funds. the shadow as well. we been able to put it encrypted shuttling in the shadow and we will continue to debt. and also we have invested some of those funds into great eagle. and so certainly the theme she sees as we have to stick on this modernization path come with to stay focused on keeping the most modern platforms and equipment that support that, those platforms in army aviation. that is sorted what ari has certainly been able to accomplish. and lastly we are neutral in costs. so a significant of these

dollars, the sensor upgrade dollars have gone to the training that john lindsay brought up. so the extra, there's no extra cost in training and reformatting our force to get into the right platform. so quite a few of those dollars, over six and million, when into those transitions. and lastly, thanks to csis for bringing me back. the place looks great, and i wish i could've been there for the ribbon-cutting. >> thanks to much to all of you. i'm going to start a couple of question and then opened up to all of you. i forgot to mention, i remembered to turn my phone off so people can bypass any future phone calls that we agree. when we bring the mic around if you could wait and then quickly identify yourself and ask a question. it would be much appreciated. i have two questions, the first

is about we've had a series of events around the future vertical lift initiative and sort of longer-term aviation prospects, and the army is a major player and probably the principal player in that initiatives such as wanted to know, what the impact of the fiscal environment that you talked about on the step after the restructure, what does all of this mean going forward and how important in the developing of those capabilities to the future army aviation? my second question has to do with how you view the impact of the commission on the active the national guard. active and reserve components of the army which is, which will,

whose activities over the next year and have will inform how ari goes forward? >> let me take the commission first and then i will let my esteemed colleague at the end of the table because they just finished up with analysis, they can talk about the path forward. so the commission, you know, i think pretty common knowledge that the army did not think we needed the commission just because of the studies have been done, whether it's been with her hand and, of course, keep just did someone else's and, of course, we did our own internal analysis. we thought it was very good to a lot of analytical rigor put to it to determine the cost benefit analysis with ari. and how that impacts both, just like john talked about, the modernization and impact to aviation as an entire branch and its ability to kind of move

forward as we continue to kind of develop and have to restructure based on a lot of the budgetary constraints. but all indications are is going to be a commission. and so of course if there is, as transparent and has whatever the commission needs in terms of information, the army is going to move forward and provide that information to ensure that they have everything they need at the end of the day to make the best recommendations to go forward. and then we will go from there. but as john already talked about there are several things, and i'll let him explain more about that later. i'm sure there would be questions. ari is more than just apache moose tickets of other things that already taking place. those things will continue to occur. whether -- would always stop the training of the kiowa warrior pilots. we are returning the path to all those things we talked about that stuff will continue to occur and it appears the language is going to indicate

that the first of the go 2016 we will be complete and have the report done. all that will continue to occur between now and then. >> the timing i think is important on the commission. the commission is scheduled to report out as general muth said in february of 16. we were aware that was a proposed date in the language from early in the process and so when we are putting together our implementation plan, we were very selective when it came to the timing associated with the transfer and activation of certain units. so our template called for the and activation of some units in the national guard in particular in fy '16. they have not yet been named but that's when we talk about 40 aircraft in the ndaa, the language as written, that's what the plan calls for spent in

addition to -- you can move up to 48. >> we can move up to 48, right? between the first of october, 2016, and the 31st of march 2016. that's what the language called for. we were mindful of that and that is in a plan and that's what the force structure files over the j3 all the reflector so no way are we getting ahead of or contradicting anything poorly written in the ndaa. >> okay. we have just been through our long range investment strategy brief outs in staffing look at her 20 year plan and certainly fbl is part, is one of our priorities in that 20 year plan. we are looking very closely at the joint multi-tech demonstrator. that has been awarded this past

september. so as those two efforts go forward we are going to watch the tech for exactly what kind of technologies come out of that, and certainly that will inform fbl. we're excited to be partnering with our joint partners, you know, the navy and certainly signed on, along with the army, and we've been in touch with the joint staff, with many of our aviation leaders on fbl. but the budget is the budget and go back to my previous statements. the army is getting smaller and army aviation is not immune to the. so we are forced to keep additional structure is not part of the program or procure additional aircraft that are not part of the program, that's impactful to our modernization. the aviation portfolio is not,

it's a very finite portfolio. even though it's large, it's finite. it's a math problem. currently it's supportable, fdl but it assumes ari. ari allows us to modernize. >> here's the pressure that's on the entire budgetary process right now, especially as relates to the equipment. fy11 we first develop acquisition had 30 million. right now it has 20 million. out of that, 20 billion how it has 13 billion. you can see the downward pressure on every program out of every portfolio within your pay. there are seven division. the largest consumers of the dollars that go into the procurement of the ee pay,

ground combat troops and its communications. those consume most of that. a huge chunk. so when there's pressure to conclude a deal and everything within the programs, decisions have to be made. those of the programs i was talking already about the 270 in the future. those are those programs i get impacted. that's a huge bill that you have to try to assume and absorb within your portfolio. did you want to add anything else? >> no, sir. that's a great follow-up. it is a priority. >> questions from the audience? >> hi. i'm with political. i'm wondering if you talk a little bit about the spending bill that passed congress, and there is language in there to study the impact of the key 67th retirement? what are you doing to take a

look at those impacts and have you made any headway in discussing things with the helicopter? >> do you want to take that one? do you want to start it off? >> while i mean we are studying the language. obviously, this is not necessary a large surprise to us. th-67 aircraft as we divest of those dumb they are an old aircraft that have really been used very, very hardly been training pace because you know as john talked about, a lot of auto rotations to the ground. cities are crap are probably older than their 20s would show on them. but we are studying that. we owe that in daschle base impact study to congress. we plan on cooperating with that, and again the whole

aviation enterprise from the folks are mindful that we need to have a light hand on our industry, partners, because there provided these great capabilities. we will continue to look at the. >> the one point i would make is aviation restructure calls for the divestment of about 780 legacy systems. that includes out for charlie, delta and then, of course, you're th-67. for the outflows and adults is, out for charlie and the delta is, which is the balance of the 780 aircraft, those aircraft will be divested and demilitarized and essential that no commercial application. what we're talking that with the th-67 is the remaining 181 aircraft and actually what happens with those aircraft.

as many of you know there's a long process that the department of defense has to go through per guidance from both statute and dod policy for the divestment process for the th-67, the last step of which is to put in the hands of the entity within the department of defense and gsa and make it available for commercial sale. >> if it gets that far. >> hi. sidney friedberg, breaking defense but although going to channel just for a minute here because he doesn't have a gut at your site talk to him a little before i came over. i mean, the folks in the guard community seem to have three big concerns about ari come and particularly apaches, of course which very emotional. one is but a policy issue of if

the rc should mirror the combat portions of the army, not just cs and css. the second issue that they bring up is come in using the ari pays for itself, the transition so forth, are you accounting for in the guard potential need for milcon, for guards retraining and for possible personnel churn across states as missions change in units of? because they can just order people to pack up and go to fort hood, or wherever. they actually have a long and painful process of persuasion to restructure in many cases. and, finally, the argument, going back to what general muth said, if the ac is hit so hard on readiness, it even the

official plan without sequestered is tiered readiness, is there such a huge advantage in readiness for an ac the time versus one remains in the guard? >> okay. i will take a crack at that. unless you want to jump in. so what we would say to the point about units mirroring one another and the active component and the reserve component, we say that our units should be, and capability should be, complementary. not every unit that we have any active component is reflected in the reserve component. we don't have the ranger regiments or ranger battalions in the reserve component. we don't have thad in the reserve component. we do have maintenance support groups in the national guard, which we don't have any active

component. and we have sns battalions in the national guard, which we do not have in the active component. sns, security and support battalion. those rer battalions of which we have six in the national guard. we don't have that capability because we have a different mission that principle serves the homeland defense unction in the homeland. -- function. i'm not sure we're in agreement that we have to look exactly. and the other piece of your question that we have to point out time and again is that it is absolutely incorrect to say that a ua to 60 helicopter and the uh 70 helicopter are not combat aircraft. they are combat aircraft. they are called upon to go into some of the most difficult and

challenging and heroin places in the world every day. and the bravest people, some of the bravest people we know are uh 60 drivers. wall they can certainly attest to that fact having spent some time special operations aviation. i think that is to the first point. on the second point about the movement of people, personnel and milcon, absolutely. we have accounted for the transition and training of people in the reserve component who will assume and fall in on the new structure. now, that is not say everybody in the national guard who flies aircraft, like apache today, it's going to get a transition. that's not going to happen. because we don't have a one for one exchange of aircraft going between apaches and uh 60s in

the national guard, okay? we are going to transition people that we require for the new structure. we've said we had 750 or so active component ward offices who fly that everyone of those individuals is going to be transitioned into another aircraft, an advanced aircraft. only put 350 have been so designated. so we are getting smaller in the active component, the army reserve, and the national guard. i will point out a success story that we have in the reserve component, and that has to do with the two tonight. it stationed at fort knox. it's a u.s. army reserve a patch of italian who has moved out well in advance of the effective date of that units transition to an assault capability, and to date they have already trained

50% of their uh-60 crew chiefs. so they have broken the code in the reserve component and they have many of the same concerns about folks coming from other places in order to fall in on that structure for training and readiness, et cetera. as far as the readiness question goes, whether on our going to have tiered readiness, we hope whatever low levels we have to disown in terms of preparedness and readiness flying our opticals, et cetera, we hope that's a temporary condition. because we cannot afford to maintain 20 battalions of a age 64th at a low level of readiness. we have to maintain a collective capability which is, after all, why we made the argument to put those aircraft in the active component in the first place. there's a couple things that

ah-64's do that no other aircraft. we shoot weapons systems. we team with unmanned platforms. and we fly this thing called for night vision system which is unique to the ah-64 platform. and requires a high degree of optempo entry. i hope that answers most of your questions. >> that was spot on. i would only add -- [inaudible] >> my name is andrea peterson. i'm of the national guard association. thank you for taking the time to be here today. i have a follow-up to the question. ari creates a situation where there two types of aviation brigade. those with guns, those without. given the likelihood of non-vineyard battlefields in the

future, it's hard to imagine a situation where attack aviation would not be involved in the equation. if army guard brigades are capable of deploying with augmenting apache units, how do you see that you train together? would ac arb is deployed to army guard training activities? >> i've had the opportunity as a commander in the 82nd airborne division, i want to say, i got this is right, since korean war. it was the 42nd entry division and i was the commander and work for the brigade commander was mark burke. we did the entire training together. of the medevac were brought in the reserve apache battalion and then we had another national guard assault battalion out of new jersey. that made the aviation brigade. the entire division was made of abate all tight composition of

active duty and national guard. i have to do some, no, i know for fact it would be done the same way, which as we all spent about 90 days training together up at fort drum, new york, multiple exercises before we deployed. then we did some training together in kuwait and then we fought together side-by-side for 11 months. fast forward into 2010, i didn't have the opportunity to train with all of the italian commands that it worked with, but i had a need to commit three national guard battalions, one out of california, a battalion in the national guard, phenomenal out of wisconsin, minnesotminnesot a, and then -- and i say that right? and then out of arizona. again we didn't get the opportunity to train together. we met midstride. i hope to say i hope the you wod agree with me. we worked well together.

i flew personal missions with at least the 147th. to answer your question, i don't think it would change the mode done the last 12 years which is an together, fight together side-by-side, and continue the brotherhood, sisterhood into the future. >> i would make the point that our aviation brigade that we currently have in kuwait today is a national guard aviation brigade, and working for the national guard aviation brigade commander in iraq is an active component, ah-64 battalion. so exactly like it's working so well today, downrange is how we expect it would work in the future. >> i would like to ask for a little bit of clarification on the changes to the training fleet in the schedule come to associate with those changes. when does it start for the new

pilots? one of the -- what of the lawsuit, and why not compete in this way? >> out give you a rundown of the status of where we are with the training fleet. we have about 12 aircraft scheduled to be at fort rucker at the end of the quarter. we've already undertaken a training up our instructor pilots down at fort rucker who are currently pilots but now our proofing the evaluation program of the structure. so that's under way. we expect that we'll get to the point where we are capable of going through a program of construction from start to finish in the summer of 2015. and then our first class is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of fy '16. that's when things began, and it's not something that you can

do very quickly. you can't turn over the entire fleet and a 12 month period but it's going to take several years to do that. so that by fy '18 will have our full component of about 187 on hand and everybody on the instructor pilot side trained and ready to carry the students through from start to finish, about 1000 students a year. so that's where we are on the training fleet. the want to talk about the compete these? >> we have to remember how this generated. the initial plan was that we were not going to increase our fleet at all. as part of a large compromise, the secretary of defense agreed, because army national guard came in and said these aircraft are in almost every state territory and are critical to our mission. so the secretary of defense agreed to discover mice to add some additional aircraft to our

requirement. so initially as we went into this plan, test the plan always was a to cascade additional, or existing airframes into fort rucker. we've gotten of the topline and and i think that's why there was no compete. we felt again as we went from seven fleets of aircraft to for, and the luh been the forcefully, we like the efficiencies and savings that bring us. of another aircraft in was just not economical, feasible or affordable. so in the tradition that army aviation have routinely done with uh won earthcorps and alpha charlie, we took existing on hand aircraft that we owned and maintained already our transition back into the training fleet. so that's kind of the history

there. and again ongoing litigation, we are not sure exactly was going to be so don't know that i can comment on it. certainly above my level. >> i'm with defense one. several months ago frank kendall asked for business case on the ari. has that business case been delivered? and can you share some specifics from it? >> are we talking about a case study? spectate analysis spent a bunch of reporters in august to he said he is this a good for business case on the ari. >> keep getting comparison analysis of both the ari plan and what the national guard has proposed to counter. >> when was that done? >> it was done throughout the summer and into the fall. >> is it going to be released

publicly? >> not very many cake analyses are. >> is a controversial issue and air force one had to see 27 issue, again released a lot of documents after the fact to aid their argument. so -- >> i don't have the authority, not in a position to answer if it's going to be released or n not. >> i hope we're not talking two different things. can i take your name and let's follow up with you on your specific question? i have been to always be several times. i've never briefed personally mr. kendall, but i have definitely bridge several members of his staff you guys want to be sure i'm entering a question when uptight about two different things, one which is the key to announce a on when hs analysis of the national guard counterproposal by the cable assessment program evaluation. i think that might be two different things but we will clarify for you. >> personally i that worked on anything other than what i just

described, which was the comparison of both ari and the national guard proposal. >> other questions out here? yes, go ahead. >> to be quick for a change, the additional 100 luh 70 dues, that's money that is above bca caps, and i believe that goes over some years. how is the money at stake is a quest returned to imagine a lot of imagine a lot of money from those aircraft are not yet in the bank as it were. >> well, it was always the topline ad that you referenced -- osd top line. we procured a number and will procure a number in 14, 15 and 16 is the program.

and again, many of them are already procured. >> one hundred or -- >> of the os the topline, of the 100, yes. >> can i say quick question about a slightly off-topic, sort of off-topic, about mostly for you, john, about the innovation initiative and how it impacts the aviation team specifically. again, here in the middle of something now, but as you also are required to think about the future with your other elements of the aviation enterprise, what types of aviation innovation are you thinking about, would you like to be thinking about looking longer-term? >> so, i would like to spend more time thinking about

innovation, but i and my friend here, we spend most of our time in a knife fight every day looking -- >> looking for my? >> looking for money, looking relatively short-term. by relatively short-term, of course we me within the program. that's short-term. we are talking about innovation. so we definitely are tied in with the aviation enterprise. the smart guys who run the show, and that includes general and the, of course done at the aviation center, and mr. shipley that fort eustis, and i know that general lundy is probably the best person to add. >> dve is a big win. one. talk to any aviator does been deployed to combat, you just

know that dve, what it provides -- i'm sorry, degraded visual environment. so basically it provides dve the build to see whether there was whether also dust. dust, it was traditionally what was brought forth to dialogue about in terms of the dust landings as a threat to cruise as you're going into with a to a combat situation landing to the x. is a combat aircraft. and so a lot of times with aircraft that was running into sniffing issue because of the dust. dve helps get to that but also it can add another tier of capability which goes into working into a very complex environment where there is smoke, fog or some type of weather or whether it is dust but it is all that it is not just the landing. its potential about operating a fully operational in that in private, whether it's self generated, your own smoke, or operate in a vibe that has again, megacities in the future, things like that. so to me i think dve, if you're

trying to innovative, something that is out there. >> how do you secure an advantage that is not equalize across the board? is to be nightvision system, came aboard many years ago. that gave the u.s. military in particular a decided advantage. we hope someday that our ability to overcome the degraded visual environment will give us that asymmetric advantage down the road. the other thing of course i think is unmanned systems and what man, unmanned team is going to bring. we are on the very edge of proving out what some of that capability is and can be in combat environments. and, of course, woman look forward to what happens beyond our capability, beyond our shadow capability, you know, that's certainly an area for growth and improvement. >> and we can capitalize on the great lessons learned.

first at 229-16th cap came back from deployment and we look forward to sitting down with them and a great team of lawyers to figure those lessons learned, what they learned and what we can do better across the board to improve that capability. but i mean that's the cutting edge and the flying tigers. we have some people with history of that in the audience, and they did phenomenal so we look for to sitting down and kind of what's the path forward and what a waste we can improve that collective team working together with the new capability that we have within the model a 64. >> ipad all those comments. we spent a lot of time on airline survivability for the. i think that's a very high growth area. we have to keep up. i think the threat out there is much cheaper to develop, and so we are constantly gathering that but i think the i tap is excited and we're pleased with the pace

of the i tap and how it's looking. we've done obviously training innovation, too. you know, we are transitioning for drucker into a duel engine glass cockpit trainer -- fort rucker. i think this is a really good things from that, too. everything from cost savings to better simulation to just begin producing a better system operator leader, aviation leader. and i guess the last thing i'd say is we are working on sustainment as well. we continue to try to chip away at what can we do to lower the cost of our per hour, because we are quite expensive, and so we are constantly crying on that as well. so we do, we spent a lot of time on this because, you know, one,

we've got to maintain our asymmetric advantage that has been army aviation these past 13 years, but we're not going to rest on our laurels. i think we see there's a lot of threats out there and a lot of capabilities that we want to leverage to maintain it. >> as we move forward with these as we talk but we also to take, how do we best all of this with army operating concept? as the army operating concept, we as the army will either be part of or lead a joint in organizational multinational team kind of scalable, tailorable to be expeditionary. so how do we innovate with our capabilities with army a the mutation to ensure its both nested with his capability and will want the agency concept is going to take us into 2025? we've got to make sure as we come out with these great ideas it's also we are nested within that capability. these are great technical capabilities, but unless we can apply on the battlefield of what we're doing in the future,

whether it's natural disasters support or whether we're out there tried to combat ebola or whether it's dealing with issues in europe are also in afghanistan. we want to make sure it's all nested in moving forward to 2025. >> let me ask the final -- sorry, we will have a final question on one of our old by national partners. >> i'm from the british embassy. just following on from the point you made that come and with the recent events in europe and the repositioning of some of your armored combat teams back to europe, are you confident that under the restructuring initiative that you've got the right assets, or in of assets within europe speak with john, do you want to take the first part? >> i think we spend a lot of time talking to our ase sees around the world. >> army service --

>> right. army service component command. acronym soup. so we stay closely tied and, of course, the aviation restructure initiative is about adding capability and increasing capability even though we are going to have a less structured because it is the best stuff. and were going to tie that to the idea that we need to become more expeditionary, and we need to rotate forces on a regular basis. we did an exercise in hawaii this past summer, and we put a company out of colorado in hawaii for three months. and that was a great example of how rotational forces can work. we haven't made any decisions. the army has made any decisions

about stationing beyond what's already been announced, that includes the 155 aviation at fort campbell. beyond that it would be a little premature for me to talk about what it looks like anywhere else around the army. but yes, we think we have it right, and we accounted for the requirements of our combatant commanders and our ascc. >> i want to go back to my former job as aviation brigade command in korea. when you talk about rotational forces and what happened to the second gap over in korea, we had an ars or squadron rotate in, and it was a game changer. they came trained ready. you know, it wasn't doing the constant training as i got typically one year tours out of my aircrew. these guys came for their nine month rotation, and they were trained and ready. it took just a small amount of time to get them environmentally current in the area, but after

that it was a tremendous capability. and so i think our partners to receive rotational forces will see that because were able to train them here at kono's and rotate them in, they're going to see a better product. that was my spirit anyway spent its emerge what we did with the last 12 years. i've talked about the three national guard battalions that we had under the command during that 12 months in iraq. it wasn't all at once. the arizona guys were the first ones in for about three months and then came in, the minnesota wisconsin and about was the california. but they arrived fully trained ready to the ground running. if you look at our forcing a rotation refocused force, but the surge ready, so rotationally focused but search ready. if you're going to get that unit who goes into rotation requirement hits the ground and you got there focus for nine months, whatever, i will put a month time on it, but it's for a

duration, and then they rip out with somebody else. these guys were ready to go, and we proved it the last 12 years. >> okay. thank you all very much for taking the time to come out, and we look forward to seeing you in the new year, if not before. i hope you all have happy holidays. thanks to all of you. >> how to holidays, everybody. [applause] -- happy holidays, everybody. [inaudible conversations] >> q. and a 15 years old, and to mark a decade of compelling conversation we are featuring one interview from each year of the series over the holiday season.

>> it is amazing to think the insights in the coming out of all sorts of technology that we didn't have before, imaging you mentioned. the images are getting better. the holder number revolution giving us insight into how cells work and how things go wrong sometimes. the efforts to understand the details of what clinical types, the advent of electronic health records. all of these things sort of come together in a way that i would not have imagined would happen in my lifetime. and yet we are not nurturing that engine of discovery in the way that we could be. a statistic that if it is deeply

troubling and oftentimes really discouraging to young scientist or think about getting into this field is the following, what's your chance to get a great idea by cancer research, and its preclinical, something working in a company, you working in an academic institution budget next idea, where you going to go to get funding? the nih. what is your chance you are going to get funded? it's about one in six. traditionally over most of the last 50 years it's been one in three. the cancer institute i think it's one in 10 actually. it's even lower. >> that was part of the conversation with nih director francis collins on cancer research. you can see his anti-remarks tonight at eight eastern on c-span. and you're on c-span2 its booktv in prime time with authors and books by former obama administered officials. leon panetta on his book, worthy fights.

>> here's a look at some of the programs you'll find christmas day on the c-span networks.

that's this christmas day on the c-span networks. for our police schedule go to c-span.org. >> the white house recently hosted its annual tribal nations conference. they even provide leaders from the 566 federally recognized tribes and opportunity to meet with the president and members of the white house council on native american affairs. we heard remarks might present biden and secretary sylvia burwell and sally jewell. this is about one hour.

>> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome jody gillett president for the native american affairs. [applause] >> good morning, everyone. welcome to the white house tribal nation conference. today is a very special day for all of us as we reflect on the sixth conference. it is just as important as it was in 2009 in building the administration's policy agenda and setting the directions for the next year. year after year we've come together to renew and as president obama says, to polish the cabinet change. our friendship has become brighter and stronger during this administration for each of these gatherings. i want to make note of one

valuable change this year in the program decides that they need at the capitol hill. we're excited to have the white house generation indigenous youth ambassadors join us from 36 different native nations. where are the native youth ambassadors? [applause] >> they bring brightness and an important voice come and we couldn't be more blessed by their resolve and very presence here today. before coming to the white house i worked on native child and family issues. from that experience i agree with a lot of what tribal leaders have said, that is, that historical trauma israel and it is at critical levels among our people. we have to address this in big ways and in detailed ways. and that is one of the values of these kinds of gatherings, that

people come with there's specific recommendations, and also big picture vision. we have incredible discussions with yesterday and are looking forward to the agenda today, with 10 cabinet members, the chair of the native american affairs council, the vice president, and the president. and, of course, the whole reason we're here today is for all of you. as leaders, you're confronted with so many issues that are key coming to carry the responsibility of your people on your shoulders. we are always thankful for what you do as leaders of your nation. without further delay, let's get started with the program. [applause] is rise for the presentation of the colors by the native american women warriors, inducing a flag song.

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>> please remain standing for the invocation. >> let us stand. [speaking in native tongue]

[speaking in native tongue] >> our heavenly father, we thank you for today and the privilege to honor your name for our president obama and our nation. we ask you for your continued love for our nation. ..

[applause] has been mac thank you. what a beautiful room and don't you just love having the flags of all of the