it is my conviction that the efficacy of the task force employment model is beyond dispute. the national counterterrorism joint task force demonstrates conclusively, in my mind, the enduring value of standing, mature, well-trained and equipped joint task force is. it may well be that high-performance parallels exist for national joint task force is in the surface, maritime, and air domains as well. what we should continue, however, are what i should say we should discontinue, is that the proliferation of joint task force is each combatant commands with the attendant service components and headquarters staff. task force 510 in the pacific

command might qualify, however, as an exception to the rule. in short, mr. chairman, we need to have within the armed forces a strategic leader who can exercise executive authority. we need to aggressively cater combatant command headquarters, composition to its core mission or missions, and refrain from creating subordinate task forces out of service headquarters, and finally we need to drive toward employment of long-term, highly proficient national joint task force is for combatant commands employment. thank you, chairman mccain, ranking member reed, and members of the committee for your attention and this morning i trust by presentation will assist in advancing the noble cause of goldwater-nichols reform. thank you, sir. >> admiral stavridis. >> chairman mccain, ranking member reed, other distinguished

members, pleasure to be back with you and to be here with general schwartz it was not only a service chief but they combatant commander as well as being director o of the joint staff that there is no one who can talk more generally to these issues than him. and as will my good friend, doctor christopher lamb who i think the best address the question of planning and strategy that senator reid raise a moment ago. i spent 37 years in uniform. i spent probably a decade of that in the pentagon. i wish i'd been at sea during those years but in that time i managed to survive a staff of the secretary of defense, the secretary of the navy, the chief of naval operations, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff joint chiefs of staff. so i have sort of seeing inside the building. as simply making mentioned i was twice the combatant commander, once in europe and once in southern command, latin america and the caribbean.

so i'm going to simply walk into four or five ideas that i think might be interesting for this committee to discuss and debate. not that these are fully formed ideas but i think they relate to the object of what the committee i think very correctly seeks to do as we sit here kind of three decades after goldwater-nichols. they all relate in one way or another throughout the department is organized. i'm going to start with one i think is controversial but ought to be considered. that is do we need a cyber force for the united states? i would invite you to think about where we were 100 years ago. we had an army, the navy, and the marine corps. did we have an air force? of course not. we barely flew airplanes 100 years ago. i would argue today it feels like that moment a few years after the beach at kitty hawk.

mi5 is clearly we need a cyber command, and i think we're moving in that direction. but i think it's time to think about whether we want to accelerate that process because our vulnerabilities in the cyber domain come in my view, are extraordinary and we are ill prepared for them. and, therefore, some part of our response will have to be done by the department of defense. and the sooner we have not only a cyber command, but in my view, a cyber force, small, capable, i think we would be well served. i think we should have that discussion. secondly, to the question of the interagency and the power of how to bring those parts of the government together, i think an interesting organizational change to consider would be at each of the regional combatant commands to have a deputy who is a u.s. ambassador, or perhaps

some other senior diplomat. i think you need to continue to have a military deputy in order to conduct military operations, but a great deal of what combatant commands do is automatic in nature. and i think having a senior representative from the interagency present would be salvatore. this has been tried at southcom, eucom and africom at one time or another. and i think it would be an effective an interesting idea to consider as you look at the combatant commands. thirdly, and the chairman mentioned this, in my view, geographically, we have too many combatant commands. we have six today. i think we should seriously consider merging northcom and southcom, and merging eucom and africom. i think there are obvious deficiencies -- deficiencies in

doing so. i think there are operational additional benefits that derive and i think finally it is a way to begin reducing what has correctly been identified as the bloat in the operational combatant command staffs. forth, i would associate myself with general schwartz and a number of others who have testified with the idea that we should consider independent general staff in strengthening the role of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. frankly, in practice, as the combatant commander i would very typically call the chairman, check signals with the chairman. i would not undertake a radical departure with out talking to the chairman. i think putting the chairman in the chain of command as general schwartz has outlined, and a number of other witnesses have

mentioned, is efficient, sensible and, frankly, codifies what is in effect today in many ways. in addition, i think that chairman would be well stored with what some have termed a general staff. this is the idea of taking midgrade military officers of extraordinary promise and pulling them from their services, and more are left permanently assigning them to this general staff. this model has been used in other points by other nations in history. i think it is a powerful way to create efficiencies and avoid duplication. because by doing so you can reduce a great deal of what happens in a combatant commands today. so in addition to strengthening the position of the chairman, i think would be worth considering whether a general staff model

would make sense. fifth and finally, i think that we talked a great deal of probably about joint operations. it's important to remember that joint education is extraordinarily important in both ultimately the conduct of operations, the creation of strategy, the intellectual content of our services. so i would advocate considering whether we should integrate our joint educational institutions. probably by taking that national defense university, putting it back to three-star rank, and giving that officer directive authority over the nation's war college's. this would also create a reservoir of intellectual capability which i think could match up well with the idea of a general staff. all five of those ideas are

controversial, but i think they should be part of the conversation that this committee is on packaging, which is one that is deeply important for the nation's security. thank you. >> thank you, admiral. dr. lamb. >> senator mccain, senator reid and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to share my views on improving the effectiveness of militant operations. your invitation to testify is a great honor and especially so considering the distinguished service other other witnesses today. general schwartz and admiral stavridis. it's the high point of my career to be sitting with him today and in front of you. i am really truly humbled by the opportunity. also want to acknowledge the presence of my wife who, in light of the unconventional things i'm about to say, decided i need moral support, and i agree with her. >> we will hold her in no way responsible. >> she will appreciate that, i

know. and my written statement hard or three sets of organizational changes to increase the effectiveness of u.s. military operations. first, to correct the persistent lack of preparedness for a regular threats. i argue we should give u.s. socom delete for small unit irregular conflict and the marine corps the lead for larger irregular conflicts. second to make the best possible investment in military capabilities and maintain our advantage and major combat operations i believe we should encourage the use of horizontal teams in the department of defense, and support the work with collaborative management our joint scenarios, operating concepts, methods of analysis, risk metrics and institutional knowledge. i completely agree with general schwartz that we need to reinvigorate our approach to joint headquarters so that we have standing task force is ready to experiment with and test new joint concepts.

and then finally to better integrate military operations with other instruments of national power. i believe we need legislation that allows the president to empower leaders to run into agency teams. none of these recommendations are unique to me and they'v thee all been made before by various groups and individuals i hope now is an opportune time for the senate and the leadership and the department of defense to reconsider their merits. in the brief time remaining i would like to address some likely questions about these recommendations, particularly with respect to horizontal or sometimes referred to as cross functional teams, because i know members of the committee have expressed some interest in that. i want to raise the number of questions that are unlikely to come up in this area. first of all its often as with all national security problems are not inherently complex and, therefore, require cross functional teams. my response to that would be no. it was argued of the most

important judgment of statesmen a command house to make is to too many quote of the kind of for a which they are embarking, not mistaking it for your trying to do into something that is alien to its nature. i think the same thing holds true for national security problems more generally. we need to determine the kind of problem being addressed. not all military tasks are intrinsically joint. not all national security missions are intrinsically interagency. if we say otherwise would greatly increase the risk by failing to bring the right type of expertise to bear on the problem at hand. another question that arises is whether all groups with the representatives of from functional organizations are in effect cross functional teams. no. there is a huge difference between the committee and the team and the executive branch. the members of a committee to use in shorthand, typically give priority to protecting their parent organizations equities

and the members of the cross functional team give priority to the team mission. so why do some critics work like teams and some groups work like committees? for example, why don't all the executive branch cross functional groups work as well as say an army battalion headquarters, which also us to integrate functional expertise from the artillery, infantry, armor, et cetera? i think the answer is that the difference is the degree of autonomy exercised by the functional organizations and the degree of oversight exercised by their common authority. and a battalion headquarters all the participants share a crosscutting culture, have the obligation to follow legal orders, and receiv received dird ongoing supervision from the battalion commander. most interagency groups consist of members from organizations with quite different cultures, different legal authorities and obligations, and no supervision from the only person in the system with the authority to direct their behavior, the

president. another question often raised is whether we don't already have in effect put into agency teams with empowered leaders, for example, the state department's country teams. ambassadors after all have been given chief of mission authority by the president. first of all there are notable exceptions to that authority to ambassador, particularly with respect to military and covert operations. but in any case the ambassadors authority is not sufficient. many ambassadors are perceived as representing states interests rather than national interest. the members feel justified in working around ambassador at the direct supervision of the president is so far removed that many of the people on the country teams feel that they can do that and actually he rewarded by their parent organizations. i will stop there but i want to close by anticipating one final reaction to the proposals for horizontal teams.

some will complain that this is already complicated and that at the end of the day we are better off just finding and appointing good leaders. this is an understandable but dangerous certification. first, as a gym locker likes to say, there is no need to choose between good leaders and organizations. we need both. horizontal teams cannot be employed to good effect without supportive and attentive senior leaders. but neither can senior leaders of functional organizations solve complex problems without organizations that are engineered to support crosscutting themes. second, in the current environment, leaders lack the time to supervise every or even the most crosscutting problems. neither is it sufficient to simply insist that their subordinates quote get along, the heads of functional or physicians have an obligation to represent their organization's

perspectives and expertise. this obligation reinforced by bureaucratic norms and human nature interest the group members with diverse expertise will clash. conflicting views are healthy but they must be productively resolve into when they give priority to mission success and not less noble factors. finally, i would dare to say that the intense focus on leadership, particularly in this town has always struck as rather un-american. our founding fathers realized. and people need a more than good leadership. they pay great attention to organize government so it would work well over work well enough, even if it's not always lead by saint stanislaus. we should do the same with respect to the department of defense and the national sturdy system. right now i don't believe the men and women who go in harm's way for our collective security are backed up by the best possible policy, strategy,

planning and decision-making system. that can and should change and and should change and i'm glad the committee is looking into this matter. thank you again for this opportunity to share some result of our research at national defense university. i look forward to answering any questions you might have. >> thank you very much, doctor. let's start out with a fairly easy one. is there a reason why we should have northcom and a southcom? and is there a reason for us to have an africom that is based in germany right next to your old command, admiral stavridis? let me start out with the fairly can add onto that question that question, isn't there now and need come as much of are trying to reduce and streamline, isn't there not a need for a cyber command given the nature of the threat? begin with you, general. >> the original thinking on northcom was concerned about having assigned forces to a senior officer with

responsibility for the u.s., domestic circumstances. that notion foreclosed at the time the possibility of having a joint command for both north and south america. it is time now with the passage of time to consolidate both of those organizations, as admiral stavridis suggested. the rationale for africom was somewhat different. as you will recall there was actually an effort to place africom on the african continent. that speech that didn't turn out too well. >> it did not, but you can appreciate how the thought process sort of preempted other considerations at the time. but again with the passage of time, that is a good way, that

is an act of consolidation that certainly makes sense to me. and with respect to cybercom, yes, once they have assigned forces, it is time to establish cybercom as an independent. >> admiral? >> i think we absolutely should verge of northcom and southcom. not only for the efficiencies but i think there's cultural connections that are important to get canada and mexico, two of the largest economy in the americas, into the flow with our work and our world to the south. predictably there will be some objections based on norad. i think i could easily handled with a subunit command in some way. africom was a good experiment but i think it's time to admit merging it back together, the forces as you said are all in europe i think those connections

between europe and africa actually would be very positive, and in some sense well received in the african world. and in cyber command i've already addressed that i think it's absolutely time to do it. the real question we should be considered we want to go one step further to a cyber force. >> that is really important. thank you. doctor? >> i wouldn't have strong feelings on the hispanic controlled decided to combatant commands i would make the following observation do i think that decision is probably best linked to other recommendations that been made to date including whether we increased and beef up our ability to field joint task forces, standing joint task force is, whether we have a general staff or we have a chairman in the chain of command do i think that would impact a lot effective span of control that combatant commanders could exercise. >> thank you. this will issued a joint task forces i think is one of the

most important aspects of it, obviously, since there's now a gap between the organizations in being and the appointment in every crisis of a joint task force, whether it comes from the command or from others. it's obvious that that's what operations are. finally, in a more philosophical plane here, one of the much criticized but yet pretty successful staff structure has been the german general staff. names like surely then and ludendorff and others as well as title and others, and every time we start talking about centralizing authority in the chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff, that issue is raised. the german general staff system is not something that we want to

emulate, and yet there are others who say that it wasn't because of the staff system that they lost, it was for other reasons. give me more of a fundamental view of, do you want to centralize this much power in the hands of one individual? or authority in the hands of one individual. general? >> mr. chairman, i would not create a general staff. i actually believe that there is risk of having the brilliant view become self-serving. however, it isn't necessary that a chairman in the chain of command connect to a general staff. by retaining a similar arrangement as we have now with the joint staff's is a creature of the joint chiefs, you

minimize concerned about a rogue individual. >> i would at least have a robust discussion about the pros and cons of a general staff, in addition to placing the chairmen atop it operation at the entrance of the concerns raised about the german general staff, you know, that rattles old ghost in our memories but at the end of the dat day it was political leadership and economic collapse of germany that led to the rise of fascism. the german general staff was perhaps a tool of that. i think you in the united states the culture in the military is so strongly one that is subservient to civilian leadership that i would not believe that to be a significant concern, when weighed against the efficiencies that could be derived from such a structure. >> i would just second what admiral stavridis said about

there not being a threat to civilian control of the military from a general staff, but i do think it is worthwhile for the committee to ask or take up an issue that michele flournoy raised earlier in the week about consented to even compare to always be the joint staff is well known for its extensive coordination to ensure a consensus on the positions that are forward to the chairmen of it would be interesting to hear from former chairman and the current chairman what they think of their staff performance in that regard. and for the committee to get to the heart of why consensus tends to rule in the way the joint staff operates and runs. i think it's not statistically welcome or the chairmen particularly well, today. >> i just would finally make a comment, and that is, being a student of world war ii, they didn't have any lawless step if it was just some very brilliant guys named marshall and leahy and king and others that one the

most civil war probably of modern times. maybe we can identify wit wouldk at that aspect of it but it certainly was a factor, the major factor in winning world war ii. senator reid. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, gentlemen for your very, very thoughtful testimony. two issues emerging among many. one is putting the chairmen in the chain of command, and number two, create a general staff. there are pros and cons as admiral stavridis pointed out. since you gentlemen are so the most intellectually honest people i know, it helps us that we -- what is the common? you know, what do you worry about, if we had a chairman in the chain of command, this is, if we did it we would have to create sort of a buffer against those downsides. so both you and admiral stavridis, please come and

dr. lamb. >> the traditional thinking of having the chairmen in the chain of command as potentials for abuse, for excessive exercise of one's authority. and undermining, as chris laman mentioned, the fundamental principles of civilian authority. that's the downside. and, but i believe that, given my experience, the chairman and the secretary operate so closely in today's environment that there is a level of supervision which mitigates that possibili possibility. but that's a legitimate consideration. >> follow-up question. even in your concept of putting the chairmen in the chain company would still be supportive of the secretar secrf defense? >> of course. that's exactly correct. >> so with the practical effect would be injecting between the service chiefs and the service

sector? what is the practical effect? >> the practical effect is that there is an authoritative referee in uniform. at the moment that authoritative referee is either the deputy secretary or the secretary. it seems to me that having someone in uniform with executive authority, properly supervised, contributes to effective activity. >> on both of these issues, the general staff, standalone general staff and a chairman in the chain. >> let me take that chairman position first. we have identified one of the cons. i will give you another one. having put that much power and authority into one person, what if you get an extremely mediocre chairman, some who is not smart, not effective? we have a very good up and out

system. we are probably going to get a very good chairman, but that level of power and authority, you need to worry not only about the abuse of power but lack of capability in it as well. in terms of the general staff, i think a common would be that a general staff, because the officers would have been plucked out of their services at the '04-'05 level our late '30s, they would have a robust level of operational picture is that we see on the joint staff today. again, my intuition is that in both cases the pros outweigh the cons but that would be part of the conversation looking at both sides. >> dr. lamb, your comments. >> first with respect to the chairmen in the chain of command. i think i would agree with general schwartz but in the past the relationship between the chairmen of the secretary has been extremely tight. i'm not sure what the value added in searching some as a

form it into the chain of command is. there are issues of their, as some chairman and secretary teams have worked very closely, and the secretaries interest and decisions have been passed to the chairmen, and in other cases you can think of secretaries have dealt drugs with the combatant commanders at length. so i think i would be kind of agnostic on that but generally inclined to believe there's not a lot of value added to the. the more important decisions that chairman needs to work on our future forced it on. this is where we really have to work hard to preserve the qualitative advantages that we currently enjoy in which i think most people agree are diminishing. and they are to get to the issue of the general staff, i think he needs really dedicated, deep expertise on his death. and currently we cannot have that. we bring people directly from operational commands have never

worked those brought issues before, so the added problem for a couple of years and rotate them out. my view would be that the more stability on the general, like a general step would be to the chairmen would probably be a good thing on the whole. >> thank you very much. thank you for your service and your testimony. >> thank you, gentlemen for joining us today. it's nice to have your, some interesting comments. admiral and dr. lamb, if you would please, in 2009 in relation to the dod former dod secretary bob gates, said this is a department that plans for war. ..

in the same way that we have grown the specialized operations national joint task force is the model for the future into the other operating domains. >> thank you. >> i agree with the general schwartz. we should make the point that apartment today operates very effectively in the number of menus but he could be better and more efficient if we had a model like the general is suggesting.

>> i am personally fascinated by the secretary's tenure as the secretary of defense i think he's a remarkable man and he's been candid in his memoirs about the experience leading the department in a time of war. i looked up what he had to say very carefully and it's interesting even though we had troops on the battlefield in contact with the enemy, the service chiefs were called to raise forces to the future and he could end to get enough capability in the field for the problem that we are currently trying to master. this is a great frustration and i think it underlines the undermines the comment you just quoted him on but for me the problem was in part the lack of preparedness for the warfare. the services whether we are

talking about preparing for the future conflicts or engaged in them currently have always given priority to what they consider to be the core responsibility of fighting the conflicts. we've never been very good caring for the war and that is true over the last 60 years, so i think we do need some changes but for me the solution is to put someone in charge of being prepared for a regular conflict. that's something we haven't done. we turn to the services and say you're all equally responsible and they consider a less included case so they don't go to those conflicts thinking about them planning and preparing for them and i think that's what frustrated the secretary and can and should be fixed. >> and there were a lot of provocative comments the secretary has made and that is

good because now we are spending the time talking about some of those thoughts that he had with regards to asymmetrical warfare i wasn't aware of it until about 15 years ago when we started taking a look at the force but how can we empower those commanders to take that risk and make those decisions on their own. do we empower them to do that or how can we empower them to do that? any thoughts or does it need to be a top-down approach and doesn't need to be a more bottom-up approach taking some of those risks? >> i think the thoughtful combatant commanders did exactly that. however, it is important to assign missions and distinguish what the priorities are. that is a function of the

pentagon in this town and we haven't been terribly good at that. >> we have not, thank you general. >> thank you mr. chairman and for your service, and i want to direct these two general schwartz and the admiral. i'm so appreciative of you all coming and being so candid to tell us what you have seen and what your experience is. the hard thing -- i'm having a hard time with why you cannot make the changes when you are on the frontline in charge. the system is bogged down to where you were throwing so much defense from here but also how do we keep the separation of civilian oversight as we do which is unbelievable and that is the concern we might have in the balance. but when you have the 2010

report in the left and 25% or one quarter of active-duty troops in combat roles with a majority of overhead activities if you look at it from the standpoint of all of the pay increases we are giving the same pay increases to those that don't see any action and are you all -- i think we need to know now from you and your role not being a constraint in your remarks how do we get to where you're able to make the decision when you are in charge and in the power they are saying that the military can't change. only under the action that we had way back when we can force it from here but but because so many regulations it makes it impossible to govern. who makes that decision and is

there a commission that should be in place and then for those who are concerned about giving total power to the joint chiefs, and the chairman and still having these civilians and control and the advisory capacity i don't know how to navigate this in the final question i know that we are talking about i would ask the same question about the national guard reserves. i was a governor over my guard and i would have gladly shared with the president is the only reason we have the reserves is because of separation of oversight it doesn't make any sense to me, we could save a tremendous amount and use the reserves in a much more effective role and much more cost-effective but i don't see that happening either so whoever wants to chime in, please do.

>> thank you. first, on the question i actually believe that given the chairman hopefully a capable individual they would change the dynamic in what you're saying. >> and right now they don't have that. >> he can encourage and persuade that he can't compel coming and that isn't a business approach to the problem. second, with regard to the guard and reserve, is it at least a part in function of the statutory authority as you are aware of the governors and others here the reserves is a title x entity that is responsible to the service leadership and the guard of

course is a little more complex arrangement and i think it's safe to say that the army and the air force have a preference for maintaining both of those entities because access to the reserve is cleaner and more expeditious in most cases than it is in some cases with the guard. >> a couple thoughts. you did touch on an important aspect reforming the pay benefits. i think those authorities the right from all of you on capitol hill based on the proposals that can come and i think that you are spot on to look at why do we pay the same amount for the new look you can drive it from here but i think in the building they

have the authority to build the proposals and move it forward and i hope that you spurred them to do it. in terms of the authorities to make changes, i think providing the authority to go to government and move civilians that have been there just a simple authorities over the system i think would be helpful and create efficiencies. in terms of the guard and reserve to the degree that kennedy wants to really like your finger in the breach and reach up and touch the third rail you can look at an alternative model in the maritime world. we have an air guard and land guard if you will but we have coast guard that resides as you know in the department of homeland security. it's a very different model if you want to look at efficiencies and structures that might be an

interesting model to look at whether it pertains on the land as it seems to work quite effectively. so these are huge questions in terms of do you need commission i would say that the committee is doing right now is the basis of driving these thoughts forward, and i hope that you will continue on this. >> senator fisher. >> thank you mr. chairman. gentlemen, they simply a friend and i have been having a discussion on a speech by caspar weinberger which of course became known as the doctrine and a third rule that he laid out would be that military forces should only be committed after the military and political objectives have been clearly defined. there's been criticism lately

because of recent campaigns the scene in afghanistan and criticisms that perhaps we haven't seen the end result is clearly defined future conflicts especially when we look at the cyber area it's going to be difficult and a challenge to be able to define what's ahead. i guess i would like to hear from all of you if you bb these trends -- belief that these trends are going to look at how we change those objectives in the future, and are we going to be able to look at a comprehensive strategy and a comprehensive plan for the future, or are we going to have to look at it more incrementally as we move forward and what are

the risks that would be involved in that if i could start with you, general. >> as i see it, it is to decide why and where. and the role of the uniforms is to offer advice on how. both are essential ingredients in success and desire for clarity in those that serve in uniforms without a doubt. i think the clear thing here is that there is a need for a

understanding that these are complex circumstances, but that it's important for there to be support for the commission and if i may offer an unsolicited piece of advice, the absence of the authorization for the use in the military force in the current setting is less than ideal. >> i agree the structure would be a clear direction from the political level, coherent strategy that's been explained as a reasonable level of support in the democracy, then the military conducts the detailed planning, which really is the precision piece of this going forward. how to make that link more

effective i think a lot of what we are discussing today would be helpful in that regard and the degree to which our military can be given that kind of strategic clarity will be the degree to which we are successful in our engagement overseas. >> what you both say that as a rule that we as members of the senate should continue to require to limit risk even into a future where the nature of warfare may change? >> yes. >> and if you have comments, please? >> one of the jobs i had in the pentagon is helping prepare the contingency guidance and overseeing the nation's war plans for the secretary defense

policy. and one of my observations was the observational plans went crystal clear when compared to the guidance we often are able to promulgate and i know that some of your previous witnesses have talked about his strategy from strategy from the point of view of the need for more great strategists and a better strategist. my view is a little bit different. there are political forces at work that tend to work against the strategy. why don't we have a clear in state and center of gravity and why don't we marshal our resources against the center of gravity etc. i think the answer is twofold. first in formulating the strategy with that kind of clarity right there are great political and appear aquatic disincentives for that clarity so if you say there are three ways to attack the problem on that and we would have taken

option a or c., so the safer thing to do is to say we are going to do all those things and in the war on terrorism we are going to emphasize the strategic medications and go after the terrorists themselves and displayed the state sponsors and we are going to on and on and so if you look at all of the public strategy documents they are just a long laundry list of objectives and so you don't have that clarity. it similarly have your credit forces at play. i am convinced a lot of popular opinion on what went wrong in iraq is in fact wrong because of the point we made about formulating strategy not just on paper but the key decision-makers because we can't promulgate a strategy for the reason i just mentioned so it's in their minds. if you are going to get a clear

cohesive implementation of the strategy everybody has to be working together and had in mind the left you will. that didn't happen in iraq and we could go into detail on why that didn't happen but the point is we had people on one part of the national to the system working very hard to go one direction and people on the ground in baghdad supported by other people were trying to go in a different direction and the results were not good. so we have a political and bureaucratic problem. there is one reason i favor a cross functional teams. i think they can put the strategy together and have a better chance of implementing it in a cohesive unified way. >> thank you. >> senator cain. >> i appreciate senator fisher bringing up the weinberger doctrine. there are many reasons why an authorization is important.

one is the legal requirements of article one of article two. the second is the kind of resolve that you show to the adversaries and the troops areas but the third is the one the doctrine that sandwich is it helps you clash out at the beginning but as the mission and goals of traditionally the president president would present an authorization but then usually the congress doesn't just accept it verbatim. they presented an authorization after 9/11 they rejected the version and batted around and came up with something different. the war is once we started and the president to protect the american consul. within a couple of weeks now it's okay we have to go on offense but we didn't have the discussion left or the administration's presentation of the rationale and then the cross examination that that deserves. i thought the president for not sending an authorization to

congress for essentially six months after the beginning of the war and now it's been ten months since the president sent an authorization. we still haven't had the discussion you want to have a different and if you're going to ask people to risk their lives so i think the doctrine is a good way to look at it. you offered interesting ideas. so, this labor force, just walk through if you are looking 15 years ahead how does that look, there's a force, commanded and is there a cyber academy is divisive just than the nominations. is there a cyber academy can't talk about what that would look like. >> i think it's small. it's probably numbered in the thousands of members, so quite small (-left-paren 10,000 probably. i think what you have today is each of the service academies is building inside of itself a small cyber academy. this is kind of the inefficiency i think that we need to overcome. so yes i think there would be an

educational pipeline and career path. i think that you would have to get away from some of the hd will traditional shave your head and crawl your way up. i'm not sure that's going to attract the kind of people that we need in this labor force, so we would have a somewhat different paid benefits back to the senator's question moment ago about rv paying the right people the right amount amount, so this may be a highly paid. i think the closest to what we have right now is special forces and that's roughly what if it looked like. because i think the vulnerabilities are significant in this area. >> i thought that it was intriguing to level the deputy was in and i gather the nature

of the military mission now that so much of it is diplomacy the nations that want us to spend to be presented to train the military's. so much of it is on the border between diplomacy and military or working out the situation. that is diplomatic as much as military. is that you are thinking behind your thinking behind the recommendation? >> is. about structure as it was in effect when i was in the southern command and when i was at the european command, i had a military deputy and i think you need to continue to have a military deputy for the operations. but we also had a political adviser in the state department and a senior ambassador who was our civilian deputy and he or she was capable of doing that kind of engagement diplomatic work working with host nations

to help resolve and memorable individual challenges if you will in and smart power side of the equation. it's low cost and also it is a strong signal to the agency about how we want to work together to address problems. >> it sounds like a fletcher school idea. and then one last question for you. the idea that you advocated in your testimony about having some primary response before your regular war if it is smaller or larger rather than everybody feeling like the irregular war is a sort of lesser responsibility which means we are not really preparing. talk a little about that and elaborate on that if you would. >> yes. i mean i think that we have a parallel with regards to the special operation forces in general. all the services before we combined and has special operation forces. they knew what they wanted to use them for that they were not a prerelease of the services.

i think that they create this world-class special operation forces particularly for the high-value target missions have direct action goes to the site to get what you need and come back. we have unparalleled capabilities. and as the only those of only improved over the last ten, 15 years. when it comes to working in the host nation forces we are not quite as sharp. there's a number of complex reasons for that which has been discussed by many individuals but i think the committee has to take the issue up. the leadership has repeatedly told congress that they think that the mission is intact more important and they intended to improve the interactive capabilities. but whether or not it is happening acting as a matter of great importance. with regards to the marine corps, not every problem unfortunately not every low end of the conflict can be handled with a small special operations

team. so the question is who in the department of defense among all of the forces is really responsible for being prepared for the mission. time and time again we go on these missions, whether it is panel, somalia, we go on on a missions not prepared the missions not prepared for them kind of learning on the job on the scene with the situation demands, not having the equipment as the secretary found, not having the equipment and not being able to generate it quickly in response to the urgent request from the forces in the field. i think we can do better than that and i think that from my point of view we would work well on that for a number of reasons. they have a history of greater involvement in this land capability that is well integrated so there's a lot of advantage they are i think the come to the can't afford all the duplication without a clear petition of role in the department said this is something that makes sense to

me. >> thank you mr. chairman. >> i want to thank all of you for being here today. admiral, i want to ask about your position as the prior commander and we had testimony this spring from general to leave the commander in south com about how the networks are working in the southern border, the sophisticated smuggling networks that i can assure you now are unfortunately being used to devastate my state with our heroine is coming into the state but also the issue that he raised was that he believed that the adherence called for infiltration to the southern border so i want to ask about your thoughts on that in terms of use of those networks not only on things like drugs but also as we look at this terrorism challenges it's something that we should be worried about?

>> it's absolutely something we should be worried about. and i've called this before convergence. it's the convergence of these drug routes which are extremely efficient the possibility of using them to move the dark dark ends of the end of the mass distraction along with the narcotics. when the drug routes and high levels of threats converge, i think we are at greater risk. what we should do about it is what we are talking about here, think holistic way about how we create a network to combat. this is a very sophisticated private, public if you will collaboration with international abilities ranging from moving submarines with 10 tons of cocaine to aircraft etc.. so you need to bring the inner agency and special operations to

bear and i think this also argues for a merging.com and south com and it creates one sphere through which they are coming at us and so so there is a great basket of ideas you >> i don't know if anyone else wants to comment on that. i also wanted to -- not just to pick on you today but given your prior position as the commander of the scene recently on october october 10, iran conduct a test on the medium-range missile and then also we learned they tested a missile on november 21 and 1st it is a violation of the resolutions and also from what we understand, the report suggests it's tested last month

and has a range of 1200 miles so that would give a capability of hitting eastern europe and places we are concerned about in the context. i've been asking why aren't we responding to this. it strikes me as an important issue because it's already in light of the violating existing un resolutions and it seems to me if there isn't some response to us that they will continue but also to continue to develop a capable at the end as you know that could go even further to hit the united states. >> as i've said often, senator, we should be concerned about the

nuclear program, but it is a much bigger problem than that. iran views itself as a power dating back to end a half millennia in control of the five capitals in the region. i think they are going to shower resources upon them so they are a highly dangerous opponent and we will be going forward so what should we do? we should hold iran to the commitments they have made it if that means that if the agreement is broken when he did use could use all of our clandestine intelligence capabilities to understand what's going on in iran and we need to stand with our allies in the region and israel was going to be the ballpark it