>> some of that i'm not going to share in public but i would characterize ukrainians as desiring a continued military support by the united states, continued political support economic support. they are a proud people. they have been sovereign for 25 years and they are determined to remain a free and independent country. >> with me ask you about the 50 special operators were being sent to syria. what is their mission exactly? >> as i understand it, they are there to train,

advise-and-assist indigenous forces in a common fight against isis. >> do you feel that this is enough right now in terms of the syrian fight? >> we will have to wait and see. i'm not going to be predictive of outcomes. we have been engaged now for over a year in the fight against isis. we laid out a strategy. it is clear to us that strategy can achieve the results to date that we want and if you look at the strategies the way i look at it in the way most professional military look at it, ways & means construct. degrade, destroy isis. now the ways & means that we have been doing that over the last year or so have proven insufficient to achieve the ends to destroy isis. we are adjusting the ways & means and the strategies

fundamentally, the lines of africa strategic objectives so those fundamentally remained the same. the ways & means we are going about achieving the end you are seeing some of that in the news. >> how are you going to protect them on the ground since many of them may be army forces? harry going to protect them on the ground from russian airstrikes? >> i'm confident that our soldiers will be protected. >> let's talk about asia. what are your concerns in asia and the chinese army versus the russian army how would you determine the difference is first threat to united states? >> there are set it up challenges for the europe and the middle east. for the united states it's a myriad of challenges but the two big ones i think are the situation on the korean peninsula and then the rise of china, so both different by the

way so in korea you have got a state of armistice since 1953 and we have helped the korean military korean people maintain their independence. korea is artificially divided by the 38th parallel and yet they're one of knowing linguistic group and at some point in the future, i don't know when and i don't know how but at some point in the future is highly probable that korea will be one country again. whether that happens peacefully or violently that is the question. it's in our interest that happens peacefully and it happens over time with diplomatic and political means. having said that though in north korea we have a leader that has also been very aggressive. he is the third in a family.

he has conducted a right if provocative actions in it which could lead to violence. you saw the incidents that occurred last august. those were very serious and the korean peninsula and the korean dmz and still to this day the most armed border in the world. we are speaking about 1 million soldiers on either side of the border and that border is extraordinarily well-armed. my concern there would be that a provocative incident initiated by north korea could lead to something more violent and that would be really tragic for the people of korea. >> do you feel like the chinese government and the chinese military can control north korea or do you think that north korea has gone out of their. >> i think there's an element of influence. i don't know that i'd use the word control. i don't know that china has quote unquote control of

pyongyang. influence, sure. they have an element of influence but control is too strong a word. >> you say is america we have no luxury of a single opponent. how many opponents as united states have right now that you are concerned about? >> at the beginning that's just some so that the lower and i guess of the spectrum military conflict would be terrorist organizations, al qaeda, isis, taliban so you have a myriad of those and that's just the top three. there are many others out there that we have to guard against. danticat the scale a little bit iran is clearly still conducting maligned activities throughout the middle east. they still support a variety of terrorist organizations.

the agreement that was reached over nuclear weapons has lowered the temperature somewhat and we will see how all that turns out over the course the coming years up to a decade or so. but that remains to be seen so i ran the something we have to continue to watch and we in the army will be prepared to respond to any contingency. i already mentioned russia. we mention north korea. china going back to the previous question, china, think it's important for people to understand, china is a rising power. china has been a rising power since deng xiaoping and 79 and they have been clicking up to 10% growth for almost 30 years and drop downs 7% last year will probably drop coming into the range of normalcy but that's still significant economic growth. there has been a really large historic change from a north

atlantic-based global economy to now proceeding to be in north pacific raise global economy. so with respect to china what normally happens is darkly, it it's not in all cases but in most cases where you have economic growth of that magnitude typically follows military power and that is what we are seeing. we are seeing a significant increase in chinese military capabilities over the last 10 to 20 years, and they are going to develop themselves and are developing themselves into a great power. that is not to say however that they are in enemy and it is not to imply that conflict with china is inevitable. i don't believe its inevitability. >> history tells us one nation-states cut their armies that it often invites it aggression. you think u.s. army has been cut too much at this point? >> well almost any commissioned

officer, and the service would want more. more of anything and want it now and want it yesterday so by putting that aside right now at our current levels of strength in our current levels of readiness we can execute the national strategy but there's an element of risk associated with that. as my predecessor testified to and agreed to there's an element of risk. if you cut too low and i'm not going to use any kind of magic number but if you cut too low then you are getting to the level of capacity that does a couple of things. one, it doesn't allow you to have sufficient numbers to cover all of the tasks the mission profiles that you have to do around the world. also send signals to opponents in enticing adventurism or actually gives them cause for some sort of regression.

there is some number under a defined below what you don't want to go few want to maintain stability and you want to maintain adequate numbers of security. >> you have a number in your mind? >> i do but i'm not going to share it. [laughter] >> all right. >> i will share with the secretary of defense. >> there are five myths of war. what are those five myths? >> there are probably 10 or 20 but the ones i rattled off the other day and an asa speech, so one of them is the idea that wars can be one or stand off weapons and they can be one from afar. the second one is that armies are easy to regenerate and the third one is special forces sort of can do it all. the last one is wars are short, so i can take each one briefly.

the idea that wars can be one from afar. i love decision musicians -- munitions and i think they're great and you can impose costs on opponents. he can punish. you can stiffen diplomacy and so on but war is different. war is a political act. war is an act by which you try to impose your political will on an opponent through the use of violence. and because politics by definition involves people, people live on the ground so you are going to have to use manpower of some kind. it doesn't necessarily have to be american but you have to use land power in order to ambush are well on your opponent. you would have to cease training, control trains so to win, to win in the sense of

imposing your will on your opponent. that has to be done on the ground and i have said their weapons are naval weapons are often the first shots but the final shots usually come from marines or soldiers. so war at the end of the day in my view is one on the ground. >> do you think that we rely too much on special operations forces now? >> special forces is very seductive. i'm a proud green beret myself and we have very elite highly trained troops and they are excellent. there is none better in the world but having said that, you can't ask special forces, i can't ask special forces to win the war so they are designed to do certain things. they are trained, manned and equipped to do certain functions but winning a war by themselves is asking too much.

the way you win wars is to commit the nation, and you have to get the effects of space, cyber, airpower, sea power, land power, special operations forces and you bring all of those attacks today are on your opponent from multiple directions and you destroy or defeat his forces, his government, his will to fight. so it takes all of it. it's not one or the other. it's a myth that sf can do it all and they would be the first to tell you they can't do it all. >> before you run out of time i want to ask you about another hot topic. women in combat. do you think we are having enough enough discussion about the pros and cons of opening up all of the mos's two women in combat? >> in the public you are talking about? >> snd have concerns?

>> i've given my recommendations to the secretary of army and the secretary of defense and secretary carter right now is in a decision-making cycle and i suspect he will make a decision here before the first of the year. he will make a determination whether or not we open up all of the military update -- operational specialties to women and obviously the comer -- controversial ones concerning the army and marine corps. should women be in the infantry, should they be an armored tanks, should they be in special forces, should they be in the rangers? and there are lots of data and studies we did very rigorously over the last year. the army did them in the brains of them and special operations command to dump in someone. we have analyzed all the data in the senate rigorously and made our recommendations. i want to let secretary carter have the decision space if you will and not have me anyway

debating it in public and we will go with whatever he says at the end of the day. >> the secretary agree that women should have 18 week maternity leave. what kind of impact would that have on you and would you plan on doing the same? >> secretary carter initiated a study called force of the future and it's an important study. it's looking at all of the personnel policies in the department of defense. what he wants to do and will agree with them is take the system and bring it into the 21st century. so there's a wide variety of initiatives that are being looked at. everything from permeability of jobs for examples of there's a lot of talent in the i.t. business, silicon valley and of the beltway up in the boston area etc. that we may want to use for cyber for examples and a

person might be 30 or 35 years old and that person may have a desire to serve for two, three or four years. we bring the men tend to rank on them and they don't have to start at square one. 18 week maternity leave is another one. with respect to the army a round figure more or less of the army, soldiers and their spouses, the numbers i have seen are between 30 and 40,000 babies a year. so 18 weeks of maternity leave could have a significant readiness impact and we have to really work on the details of exactly what all that means. my initial instinct as i look at all these initiatives is what is the impact on readiness and how much does it cost the taxpayer?

none of this stuff is free so there's about 77 or 80 initiatives in their. all of the services are looking at these things thoroughly. it's not just for soldiers. and we are going to make a recommendations to secretary carter and they will make the appropriate decisions. >> i think we have got 10 minutes left. is there anything you want to leave us with? is your main concern --. >> readiness is my main concern and i've said it in testimony my predecessor set it. the readiness of the army. there's a wide variety of contingencies out there that could happen. none of us can see the future, nobody can and we don't know with certainty what tomorrow or next month or next year brings so the readiness for the military is a fundamental concern and the greatest sin that i or any other general can commit is to send the committee of soldiers sailors airmen and

marines to send combat that is not equipped ready and trained. we are not where we should be so is full speed ahead to get us where we need to be to confront the challenges that lie ahead. >> is not a hollow army. >> i would not categorize a nice a term is a hollow army. >> thank you very much general millay. thank you general millay for being with us today. [applause]

>> this is the flyer produced by charles shank in 1917. 15,000 copies of this was used in the point was to encourage men who were liable for the draft not to register. the language is particularly fiery. it equates conscription with slavery and calls on every citizen of the united states to resist the conscription laws. >> he was was arrested tried and found guilty under the recently enacted espionage act. shank then appealed and the case went directly to the supreme court. find out how the court ruled weighing the issues of clear and present danger and freedom of speech. our guests include attorney thomas goldstein, co-founder of scotusblog and beverly gage professor of history at yale university. that's coming up on the next grand -- landmark cases tonight

at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, c-span3 and c-span radio. for background on each case while you watch order your copy of the landmark cases companion book available for $8.95 plus shipping at c-span.org/landmark cases. >> and about 10 minutes the house veterans affairs committee will hear testimony on the alleged misuse of funds over the va's program to relocate workers. that hearing starts live at 7:30 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. until then it's back to defense one annual summit on defense and national security issues focusing on the future of u.s. navy operations around the world ♪ >> good afternoon and welcome back. keith eating, don't stop. welcome back to the afternoon

session. hope you enjoy the breakouts. everyone was informative and that's what weight like to see. we had a great morning and i hope we will have as an informative and interesting and entertaining afternoon. we have three sessions and termite everyone or four sessions how will the military prepare we have vice admiral john pulling that they deputies ceo of the navy so he will talk about what's going on in the china sea and we have brigadier golden who is a socom africa commander. i think you will have a lot to say about operations there. we have heard a lot about special route operations forces recently and the deputy director of the cia andrew hallman who is running their digital innovation

directed, the first in 30 years now. we had a really good exclusive interview with him on our site and we will get that talk and finally to close out the day the deputy secretary himself bob work we all know in love. let's get a start of a device admiral and deputy editor brad peniston and enjoy than rest of your afternoon. thank you. [applause] >> thanks for joining us as well. appreciate you coming to talk to us. this really has been an age of everything and the maritimes. pay this year we have seen brushes pushing out into the arctic more active around europe over the pacific we have seen china being more active around the south china sea.

the navy has an around the world flotilla and insurgents on yemen. everything is going on. what is changing the fastest and how is the navy meeting those challenges? >> brad thanks for the question and thanks for inviting me. on behalf of admiral richardson i'm honored to be here with members of the national security and look forward to telling you howard navy, what we are doing today and how we are facing the challenges that you mentioned. if you would have asked me to prioritize i'm not sure i could. what i could tell you though is from a navy perspective we took a good hard look at the security challenge that exists across the globe. in the development our cooperative strategy for the 21st century we just released to the march, we took a real hard look at all of the things you mentioned. the strategy outlines three key

points that i think focus where our efforts are. number one we are deployed forward so the navy is your crisis response force and we are forward each and every day. today about 40,000 of our young men and women are deployed on the tip of the spear. they are ready to do a large number of things from humanitarian assistance we need to deter and conflict, to responding to crisis and ultimately to be able to fight and win the nation's wars. so being forward is a key part of something that we do everyday. second, we are engaged all across the world so our friends, allies and partners are critical to what we do. we know we are better when they operate together so you pick a area that we have mentioned. we worked with those friends and

allies and partners all the time the last is we are ready. so while we can't have all of our forces deployed each and every day, we have search capability that is trained, ready and primed to be able to search if called upon for a crisis. so without giving that prioritization i guess what i would tell you is we are forward, we are engaged and we are ready. >> so the fleet is growing for the first time in a while from 270 something ships to a goal of 308 i believe. the cbo recently came out with a report that said it's not going to get the 308 quite as fast as the navy plans but beyond that the 308 member was that i think before the recent resurgence of russia and someone said we are really entering or reentering it period of power competition at sea. is that 308 size fleet still

going to do the job? >> i think it is. again as we develop the strategy , the threats and things that we would have to respond to are clearly a part of the calculus. our recent, our most recent force structure analysis identifies the fact that we need greater than 300 ships, we need 11 aircraft carriers, we need 33 amphibious ships and we need 14 ssbn's in order to execute the missions. those are the big moving pieces that the strategy determined were about right. that keeps us present around the globe in order to do the missions we talked about. currently we have five terror strike groups that are either deployed or are trained in preparing to deploy today. so the uss theodore roosevelt is returning from a greater than eight month deployment.

they currently just executed a mission with the indians and the japanese and an exercise called malabar. we have one east coast and one west coast counterstrike getting ready to deploy. we have the uss ronald lang just departed korea and its doing its western pacific operations, and the shape and size of the structure as i outlined we believe will meet the commitments required by the global geographic combatant commander as the missions have been identified. >> and that takes into account russia's resurgence? >> it takes into account all the threats we have to respond to. you can pick any day of the week and you might find one of those threads being higher prioritized and the other. in response and what we are doing together with nato, which

would go directly to your russia question, last week we executed some ballistic missile defense exercise events with our nato partners and allies. we have for ballistic missile defense ships that we have forward station in spain in order to meet the threats you describe. >> let's talk about that forward basing those were in the world. there are a couple of ways to get more forward-deployed out of the forward should. you can rotate crews, you can forward base in the world is supposed back home. you can make sure that it's ready to go and i know the navy has initiatives in all three of these areas. is it time to consider making sure ships go as far as they can? >> i think our current view of how we operate forward is based on two different models some of it being forward racing. the example they are our forward

naval forces. we have a group of ships that operate out of japan. we have submarines in guam. we also have rotational deployments. those lead from whatever base they are currently at and i think the comment i would make to you is in viewing it with her car to our need, desire and intent to be forward-deployed it's really not about bases but it's about being where it matters and when it matters. >> understood that there are different ways that you can get word matters when it matters and you wonder what kinds of things the navy is thinking about doing differently in that sphere. >> what we have done differently as we have executed the president's task to kind of rebalance to the pacific. one of the initiatives we have taken on. we currently have almost 60% of

our naval forces deployed to the pacific, stationed at the pacific air war. 58 i think is the latest number. we will get to 60% by 2020 and that's not just things. it's our most capable things so her most advanced f-18s are out there. our most advanced bmd ships are out there and again it's not just about things. the rebalance is more than just things. it's about partnerships. it's about how we think about operating and critical is the fact that we are aligned with each and every one of the nations out there in order to again build a network of navies that can respond and support those in favor of the security of the global commons within

international rules, laws and norms. >> i realize the imbalance in the pacific is a national decision to make and yet you and the navy are responsible to make sure you can respond to whatever cause. a lot more stuff is happening in europe and a lot more is still going on. >> we go live now to the house veterans affairs committee, a hearing on the alleged misuse of under 50 is programmed to relocate workers. this is live coverage on c-span2 >> we are holding the second hearing tonight because the witnesses that we have requested to appear before this committee the hearing on the 21st of october chose not to attend or were blocked by the department of veterans affairs from attending. the failure to appear lettuce to unanimously vote on and issue subpoenas