>> thank you for that kind introduction, about to all the people at cnas. the cnas them is will be a unique one and it's great to be back here this morning to be part of this conference. this reminds me of a store that is told of a traveling preacher who wanders around in the pacific northwest and through idaho and montana visiting different towns and giving sermons. he walked into one small town in montana, and he found itself on the pulpit and it was just one person bear in the church. -- one person bear in the church. he said, my son, i am here and i'm prepared to give a full sermon and to attend your spiritual needs, but you are only one person and so what would you like me to do? he goes, well, patrick, i'm a cattle farmer and if i went up on the north 40, if i only found

one, i couldn't leave you hungry. so the preacher said, all right, he launches into a full of sermon, fire and brimstone. i nihcm he gave it his all. and he really was not until after it was over. but when he did the cowboy stood up and start to walk out and the priest goes gosh, i've got to find out what happened. eaters up to the kabul and says did i meet your spiritual needs? he goes well, potter, if i went up on the north 4 40 and i could for forget until the found one, i wouldn't dump the whole load on him. [laughter] >> what i'm going to try to do is dump the whole load onto. i look forward to your question. what it wanted to do something very, very important that is a pressing need for us to make corrections in our defense program of meetings involving threats in our national security

arbiter of want to talk you specifically why does so in the military leadership of the department is pursuing a significant and hopefully enduring effort to extend our military technological and operational edge well into the future. we begin this initiative because we are at a pivotal moment in the post-cold world. i firmly believe that historians will look back upon the last 25 years, and i actually snapped a 25 years between may 12, 1999 when president bush second thing that would no longer be the lengths to which the defense program was built, that was the end of the cold war for all intents and purposes for defense planning for even though it took a couple of years for the soviet union to finally implode. and i look in december 2012, that's when china started to do is land reclamation project in the south china sea, and the following, that was

december 2013, and february and march 2014 russia legally annexed crimea and started send its troop and support cyprus -- separatists in the ukraine or so that 25 year period i believe is remarkable and is unlike any other period in the post air. because doing to prevent united states reigns supreme as the only world great power, and the sole military superpower. it gave us enormous freedom of action. but this circumstance is now changing. the unipolar world is starting to fade and for a more multipolar world in which u.s. global leadership is likely to be increasingly challenged. so among the most significant challenges in his 25 years, and one in my view, promises to be the most pressing one, is the reemergence of great power

competition. for the purpose of this discussion and for the purposes of building a defense program which is focused on potential adversary capabilities, not necessarily intentions, i will borrow a definition of a great power. state having sufficient military assets to put up a serious fight and all that -- all out conventional war of the dominant power, that would be the united states, and possessing a nuclear deterrent that could survive a first strike against it. and by that narrow definition, getting away from whether there economic peers a what is the attractiveness of their soft power and their stickiness, from a defense program perspective if russia and china are not yet great powers that are well on their way to being one. and for its part, russia destabilizing actions by a resurgent great power, where they're trying to establish

influence in the near broad which is typical behavior of a great power. they come on the heels of a failed 25 after. we've been trying for 25 years to include russia within the european community, ever want to part with it on a wide variety of global issues. and we still seek both of those outcomes. however, after modernize its nuclear and conventional forces, sharpening its war fighting doctrine, specifically aimed towards nato, rattling its nuclear saber seeking to undermine nato and intimidate the baltic states and attempting to rewrite the international rulebook, we are adapting our operation posture, contingency plans, and programs to deal with russia and to deter, we hope, any further aggression. so we consider russia a resurgent great power that's long-term prospects we still

think are very challenging, which may or may not make them more aggressive in the next 25 years rather than less aggressive. china, a rising par with great technicalities probably embodies a more entering strategic challenge as its ambitions and objectives expand in asia to western pacific liberal, africa, latin america and elsewhere. china's words have been about peaceful rise and about defense. but its actions will be the true test of its commitment to peace and stability in the current international order. dod continues to pursue military to military cooperation with china as well as a wide range of confidence-building measures to make sure that we never come to blows. while we do so we can't overlook the competitive aspects of our relationship, especially in the realm of military capabilities. that's the bottom line.

dod focus on the capabilities and potential challenge and both russia and china present the united states, our health and our partners with unique and increasingly stressing military capabilities and operational challenges. so while we understand the boards of engaging with potential competitors, we also are cognizant of our central purpose, which is to reassure our allies and partners, and tell them that we will be there if necessary in a time of need. and to protect u.s. forces and our allies from direct attack, and should deterrence fail, make sure that we are able to rollback any aggression that occurs. we are in the competition business and we build more plants. that's what we do. our defense strategy and defense program will therefore reflect the realities in new ways. before i explain how we're going to do this i want to make it

clear that the department is not forgetting one bit about the threat of violent extremism, which is tearing apart the middle eastern border after threatening countries well beyond the region. how could we? we have thousands servicemen and women in uniform, out of uniform, contractors and civilians, who are battling the terrorist networks every day across the globe, and with a particular focus of course right on iraq and syria with the islamic state, a particular savage and dangerous opponent is operating. as secretary carter has said, we're expanding our offense against them come across iraq and syria and elsewhere, and ultimately we will defeat them. but as distressing as this fight is, that is not my intent to really talk about that this morning. because nothing can match the destructive potential of high in conventional wars between great powers.

nothing can upend or disrupt or possibly even destroyed the global world order or than a potential collision between great powers. so we have to continue to to feel capabilities to strengthen our convention deterrence. this is all about deterrence. to make sure that such a collision never happens. best way to prevent great power competition from becoming great power conflict is for the united states to maintain a safe, reliable and secure nuclear arsenal, as long as those weapons exist, coupled with strong conventional deterrent capabilities which will be the focus of my presentation here this morning. whenever you're trying to build a small deterrent posture, you strive to do three things. the first is to try to achieve a technological overmatched against potential adversaries. the robert m. gates fellow here at cnas, another good friend, calls technology the elixir of

military strength, and he couldn't be more correct. so what we want to do is develop successive generations of new capabilities, but technology is never, never the final answer. you have to be able to incorporate those technologies into new operational and organizational constructs. it might be a new unit that does something in a new way that employs a technology in ways we haven't seen in the past, or it might be a new doctrine such as air land battle which completely changes the focus of the entire army and really undermines our adversaries confidence that it blows, blows, it blows would come to pass that they did not prevail. so you need new technology capability for the overmatched. you need to have new organizational and operational constructs to make them rip and came operational advantage and

third you have to demonstrate these capabilities to suggest that any attempt to achieve operational success in a war fighting campaign is likely to fail. even if they were to achieve an initial advantage in time and space. this is the very essence of what deterrent theorists call deterrence by denial. it is perhaps the most effective type of conventional deterrent in our view, and as professor lawrence friedman says, as it just so happens, a force develop for deterrence by denial is also best posture for victory if deterrence fails. so of what you first start off that when this talk is all about conventional deterrence, we seek cooperative engagement and a cooperative relationship with both russia and china over the long term.

but in the department of defense we know that will be competitive aspects, and we want to make sure that we can usher our national leaders that we already in case someone makes a miscalculation. now let me talk about strategies. in terms of great power competition's, the united states generally pursues deterrence by denial, not by try to match every tank for tank, person for person, missile and missile. that's not our thing. we tried to do things smarter. it instead try to strengthen its conventional deterrence by offsetting our pursuing a combination of superior technological capabilities of innovative operational and organization constructs that offset the strengths of our potential adversaries. we've done this twice before. we know it works. in the 1950s the first offset strategy sought to blunt soviet

numerical and geographical advantage along the inter- german border by introducing, demonstrating, in developing the operational and organizational constructs to employ battlefield nuclear weapons. this proved very, very effective as a conventional deterrent using battlefield nuclear weapons to offset the conventional superiority of the soviets. seems a little counterintuitive but it worked. now up until the '70s what happened, however, is the soviets achieved strategic nuclear parity. so the threat of trying to go up the escalatory ladder that might end in a general nuclear exchange was simply too great a risk for our national interest to tolerate. and we didn't believe our deterrent was effective. it just wasn't believable. moreover, the soviets, because

they believed that we're going to avoid battlefield nuclear weapons, changed the entire operational art. they're going to attack in successive echelons of forces at one single penetration point on the forward line of troops. and they really didn't care if the first echelon was entirely annihilated. annihilated. they didn't get a second echelon was entirely annihilated. they just wanted to punch a hole like a jackhammer into nato's defense and get operational maneuver deep into nato's rear, and they thought, probably rightly, that if they did not that we would be deterred from trying to deploy battlefield nuclear weapons. so senior leaders said rep to do something different, and its 1973, that launched what was called at long range, lrddp, or whatever. and what he did his visit to become one of two choices.

you can make nuclear weapons or have my clinics, neutron bombs, high altitude explosions, emp, electromagnetic pulse explosio explosions. but her senior leaders said we still cannot risk going up the as go toward ladder. what else do you have? they said we think that you could go all in and go after conventional weapons with near zero ms. kemp what we know today as precision guided munitions. and that's where national leadership decided to do. and the soviets called these reconnaissance strike complex and we really got their attention. we did a big demonstration called a sullenberger in 1977. the soviets had a big, big exercise based on what they thought happened in the of salt breaker technology. and it really shook them up. within five years ahead of the soviet general staff concluded

that conventional guided munitions with near zero ms. would be as effective as tactical nuclear weapons in keeping the soviet union from achieving the operational aims. and for them a very deterministic doctoral opponent, game was over. unquestionably i would say that it led, it helped lead to the end of the cold war. as it turned out the soviet union imploded just as the united states was culminate in the second offset strategy. and that allowed us to dominate guided munitions worker for the next 25 years. and is used to great effect in conventional campaigns, and until unconventional campaign. people say but it didn't solve all of the problems. but it was continually refined. second offset strategy were continually refined and i would argue our global men hunting camping is completely consistent with the second offset

technologies. and as far better because of it. because we can now line, finished terrorist much were effectively than we ever have. but without doubt, this would've of your parade is coming to an end, and a sizable margin of conventional, technological superiority that we've enjoyed for the past 25 years and have become essentially used to come is eroding and get results by merely from two factors. one, there's two large states are putting a lot of money into becoming, to achieve rough guided munitions parity with the united states. they say they are doing it. they are programming to do it. they are budgeting to do it, and they are doing it. at corser of the first one is the second offset technologies that are proliferating throughout the world so iran can use of these technologies as can hezbollah, as ken isil, if they so choose to do so.

and for the last, for the last 14 usually been focused on this really hard problem in the middle east in fighting a war against islamist extremists. and as a result our program, a program has been slow to adapt. as these high-end threats have started to reemerge. i would argue although we been slow to adapt and the program, we are not surprised by what's happening. and 1983 andrew marshall said i project that they were our adversaries will have guided munitions, parity with us, and it will change the game. and that ultimately became expressed and the department of defense as the anti-access very of denial challenge. so it's not that we're totally surprised this is happening, but what is different is that now we say we can no longer wait to

respond in a program, and should have a third offset strategy because of these conditions, and if so, how best to go about it. the first thing i'd like is about offset strategies are agenda informed by the toughest operational problems that you face. we have several of them, all of them kind of related to the challenge i just had. our conventional deterrence posture, without question, is based on the assumption that we can project overwhelming power across transoceanic differences -- distances and exert our will on any opponent. so the first problem is breaking into a theater where the opponents enjoyed guided munitions parity and cutthroat long range missile strikes as dense as her own and as accurate as her own. and as long as we can. that's the anti-access, or a two-part of the threat.

they want you in the theater the second on this fight against an episode with conventional capabilities that are as fans dashed as advanced as her own and that is area denial part of the problem. and a third is doing both of those while under intense cyber and electronic warfare attack. we can get a rough a sense of the a2 problem just by reviewing russian demonstrations of long range conventional strikes that are occurring right now in syria. they are firing missiles from surface ships, from submarines, from strategic bombers into medium-range bombers. you can also get a sense of what's happening just by seeing what the chinese do into massive exercises, exercise by merely their second artillery in the way they are forming their forces to conduct what they call counter intervention operations. and as for the last two all we have to do is analyze what was going on in eastern ukraine

which is arguably and, unfortunately, for our partner in ukraine, a laboratory for future 21st century warfare. russian units employed advanced sensors and imaging enabled by other buddhist of small unmanned aerial systems backed up by very high capable collection platforms, and to introduce new levels of battlefield transparency in lethality which really started to catch the attention of senior u.s. army leadership. ukraine commanders reported to us that within minutes of coming up on the radio net they were targeted by concentrated artillery strikes that included cluster munitions, which we're getting rid of, thermal direct warheads which are absolutely nasty, and top attack submunitions. they jam gps signals causing ukrainian uavs to drop out of the sky and they jam proximity fuses and artillery shells turning them into duds.

the operation for ukraine highlighted the new speed of war driven by automated battle networks boosted by advances in computing power. network attacks work moving at cyber speed and intense electronic warfare battles to dominate the information terrain along the forward line of troops. this trend is only going to continue as advanced militaries experiment with these technologies as well as others like hypersonic's. in the not-too-distant future will see directed energy weapons on the battlefield which operate at the speed of light. the next thing i would say is sean grimsley also from cnas while talk about this competition. so whether it's the 1000 nautical mile and access challenge that he talks about, the intra- theater area of denial challenge or the challenge of closing the last tactical mile, all while operating under intense cyber

anti-dubya attacks. we're going up to technical solutions to these problems. and it is the identification and prioritization of those to technologies and capabilities, i give up my friend called the elixir of modern military strength. that is the first step you have to when going out for the third offset strategy. over the last 18 months, the department has been considering this operational problems come exploring the direction of technological trends and is trying to determine where we may be able to exploit technology and create new operational advantage. we commenced our own long range research and development planning program led by our acting assistant sec of defense for defense research and development. and i hope to have no longer acting this week, we'll see, fingers crossed. we as the defense science board to -- reviewed work on what they

were doing. we studied high-tech challenges to our space constellation and our ability to project power and conducted what is called the strategic portfolio review to look at our program and say where are we missing capabilities and where would be like new capabilities. when you consider the whole body of work and it kind of diagrams, it was remarkable consistency between them. that gives us confidence that we know the first step to take and test. this is not about certainty. it is about testing in moving forward. and the thing that came out over and over and over again is what we call human machine collaboration and combat teaming. now, the miniaturization of nuclear weapons components was the key driver of the first offset. all you have to do is take a look at that boy come and the

size of that thing and you say how do you get that down to a football sized munition called the davy crockett. davy crockett was a missile that we are going to give to our commanders and give them nuclear released the authority in 1956. that is a scary thought. but we were going to do it, and the technology allowed us to do if we were so disposed. they key drivers in the second offset with a digital microprocessor which first appeared in the f-14 in 1972 and changed the whole game in terms of sensors and combat capability onboard platforms as well as information technologies. so what is it that really is going to make human machine collaboration and combat teaming of reality? that is going to be advances in artificial intelligence and autonomy that we see around us every day. indeed, although they're unable to scientifically prove it,

members of the summer studies, summer study on autonomy believe are at an inflection point at artificial intelligence and autonomy. the commercial world has already made this leap. the department of defense is a follower. a recent study by the bank of america and merrill lynch, on robotics and artificial intelligence said that the rise of intelligence machine will define the next industrial revolution. and that the adoption of this disruptive technology and the private sector is now a foregone conclusion. conclusion. it estimates a smart machines and robotics will be performing 45% of all manufacturing tasks by 2025 versus the 10% today. for manufacturing the self-driving cars to 3-d printing to robel and illicit trade and advisors and the financial community, to voice recognition software, all you

have to do is look and see where this is going. and this is the advice to the business community. early adoption will be a key competitive advantage while those that live in investment will see their competitiveness slip. and we believe this conclusion applies directly to the military competition we find ourselves in, and our work suggests that ai and autonomy will allow new levels of what we refer to as man machine semi-osos. leading each do what they do best on the battlefield. our intelligence suggests that our adversaries are already contemplating this move. we know china is investing heavily in robotics and autonomy and the russian chief of general staff recently said that the russian military is preparing to fight on a roboticized battlefield come andy seth i quote in the near future it is possible a fully roboticized unit will be created, capable of

independently conducting military operations, unquote. i'll talk about that in just a second. so the summer study said it best if we're in this competition, whether we like it or not. we better get ready for it and better yet, we better be prepared to dominate it. so let me tell you a five building blocks that we have identified and these are broad technological building blocks that will contribute to the third offset strategy. the first are autonomous deep learning machines. systems. deep learning systems are already changing the way we analyze data in the financial community, in the intelligence community, but we are going to go after them to prove the indications and warning. the ai guys so what is happening in the grace of with a little green men is nothing more than a big data analytics problem. they are absolutely convinced that we can create a learning

machines that will give us indications of warning that something is happening in the gray zone. they are going to help intelligence systems come into a, the national geo spatial agency has a program called coherence out of chaos, taking all the data is coming down from the overhead constellation and making sense of it and queuing human -- human analyst to take a look at certain filter and dod to use situations that require faster than human reaction. we believe strongly that humans should be the only ones to decide when to use lethal force, but when you're under attack, special admission speeds, we want to have a machine that can protect us. so an example is air defense system for engagement windows are steadily shrinking. right now israel -- iron dome

essentially takes over -- couldn'couldi get a little bott? the iron dome takes a look at all of the shots of incoming missiles and says this is going to land on dirt, don't fire at it. the machine makes those decisions. that will continue. the same thing on cyber defense. you cannot have a human operator operating at human speed fighting back a determined cyber attack. you have to a learning machine that does at the same thing on electronic warfare. the ark darpa programs right now called art and laid come in the past would have is if you send out your gun and would find a new way. there was no way for us to a think about it. come back, talk about can replicate can emulate it, go into the -- and then have something and maybe sometime down the road you have a

response. right now we know that these machines are going to be able through learning, learning machines will be able to figure out how to take care of that in the nation while it's happening. so that's one component. and an important. second component is what we call human machine collaborator, decision-making. 1997 computer beats gary kasparov, world champ in chesser everyone goes wow. but in 2005, two amateurs working with three pcs defeated a field of chess champion, masters, champions, and machines themselves. it was the machines what gary kasparov using the strategic analysis combined by the human combined with tactical acuity of a computer. the f-35 helmet is very much a

human machine collaboration type system. 360 degrees is being crunched by the machine and portrayed in an advanced way on the head up display on the helmet. it is designed to reduce the friction. it will never reduce chance but they can simplify the speed of operations by allowing humans to make better machines, better decisions faster. the third component is what we call assisted human operations, assisted human operations, not enhanced human operations. we will have a much broader debate on whether to go after enhanced human operations, but for right now when we see assisted human operations think of your car. think of the lane departure warning, you're getting richer cross over the line, or when you're backing up. you are getting closer to something.

using wearable it comes, heads-up displays, perhaps exoskeletons to assist humans to be better in combat. our adversaries, quite frankly for our pursuing enhanced human operations. and it scares the crap out of is really. we will have to have a big, big decision on whether or not we are comfortable going that way. but we are very comfortable going after assisted human operations. right now there is a program in darpa, i think it's called alice but i'm not come on startup it's not alice. that's a logistics system but it is a system designed specifically to have enough automation to allow you to reduce the number of crew in the cockpit at any given time. so that is what assisted human operations were leaning. and it will not be long i

guarantee before combat infantryman in when the using wearable electronics with a loadable combat apps and heads-up displays of their own. the fourth integrated is what we refer to as advanced human machine combat teaming. human machine collaboration is using machines to decision makers make better decisions. human machine combat teaming is where a human working with unmanned systems are able to do cooperative operations. you already see a lot of this happening right now. the army's apache is designed to operate together to the navy's aircraft and the triton uav are designed to operate together. we are actively looking at a large number of very, very advanced things. right now look at a large capacity you use these the cascade medium sized uavs, the cascade out to smaller diameter

transfer info networks. we're looking all sort of different electronic warfare networks that were looking at small surface vessels operating in swarms. improving collaborative of time will help transform operations from a quarry multiple operators for uas, and man system, to just have a one mission commander simultaneously directing the swarm itself. by integrating micro uavs into fighters 11 the unmanned surface vehicles on the surface combatants, you're going to see a lot more motherships whose offspring is to execute the mission. and finally were developing new types of network enabled semiautonomous weapons that are hardened to operate in an cyber environment. just like in the cold war when ebrd electromagnetic pulse hardening was required, every weapon system is going to have to be hardened for cyber. we know our reliance on gps is a

vulnerability, and we are modified existing systems like a small diameter bomb to operate completely without gps if it is denied. were looking to all sorts of new horizons but over the horizon targeting, a standing airspace jamming. believe me, this is a wonderful time to be a scientist in the department of defense. those are the five components. learning machines, human machine collaboration, assisted human operations, human machine combat teaming, and autonomous weapons. those are the five components and they're going to ride on the back of the learning network that if we launched seven missiles at a surface action group and one missile goes high, and his look at all other different things that the battle group is doing to defend itself, and did see something new that's

not in its library it will immediately report back on the learning network which will go into a learning machine which will create here's something you should do, it will pass it over to human machine collaboration so the mission commander can make an adjustment on the next and then make a command change inside the software of the missile so the next seven missiles launched will be that much more effective. believe me there's a lot of skepticism right now within the department of defense that we'll be able to perfect and protect such a network. but if you do the smart design up front coupled with learning defenses, we believe it is not only possible but it is the requirement. everyone says this is another one of these things are all your talk about is technology. that is why human machine is explicitly in what we talk about. the way we will approach this is that this is designed to make the human more effective in

combat. remember what was said, and i will make a hypothesis that authoritarian regimes who believe people are weaknesses in the machine, that they are a weak link, that they cannot be trusted, that they will naturally gravitate towards totally automated solutions, why do i know that? because that's exactly the way the soviets conceived other reconnaissance strike complex but it was good to be completely automated. we believe the advantage we have as we start this competition is our people. that tech savvy people who have grown up in a democracy in the i world kick the crap out of people who grew up in the i world, in the authoritarian regime. and guess what? if this changes, the it the authoritarian regime to the way

other people to have more initiative, that in the long run will help us because that will inevitably lead to a more a meritocracy at a more democratic approach inside their armed forces that may over the long term actually help us. carnot norval atkin when we're going into the first gulf war ended once said wow, work another awful lot of casualties, holy crap, i've talked too long. somewhat supposed to stand up and tell me i went to 30 minutes. okay. let me get to this will quickly. look, the second thing about a third off sisters is it is a competitive strategy. we have to deal with two great powers, not one, luckily. a lot of things we would to have maritime characteristics in one theater and continental characteristics in the other, but that's okay. there's lots of overlap. we have to worry about nuclear arms regional powers, like north

korea. this completely covers think it went to worry about and iran with advanced capabilities, completely covers them. so we know we have more competitors than we did in the cold war. that makes it more stressing the window advances in ai economy are driven by the commercial world, and not government which means that we available to everybody. we know the second offset technologies are widely proliferated so this environment unlike 75 when we said do you know what, if we win after something based on the site and information technologies, we knew the soviets couldn't follow, and we were right. we can't make that assumption. this is more of a temporal competition. it is much more like the interwar period where everything was available and all you have to do was the competitors to put the components together into operational and organizational constructs that gave them the advantage. we are going to have a vibrant global s. and t. and scout in our i see community.

so we shouldn't count on the lasting advantage rejected able to do this from a very competitive aspect. it's going to require strong top down governance. is going to rely initially on working experimentation and demonstration. so don't expect a 17 budget to see $30 billion in this. what your body going to see us closer to the order of 13, 14, 15 billion on war game and extreme and demonstration to verify that our hypothesis on these five components is sound. under any circumstances we have to refocus on agility and cost. we have to reduce -- whic whichs why we are so focused on acquisition reform, and this is the last point before we go to questions. in this environment the we a lot of fast followers. i'm okay with that as long as we are a fast leader. if people are chasing our exhaust, that's okay with me.

the way we will do this is a through much more information management. we will reveal to deter and consume for war fighting advantage. i want our competitors to wonder what's behind the black curtain. and we will make specific decisions on when, how and where we reveal items so that we underlined conventional deterrence. that's what this is about. collaboration, cooperation with congress is key because a successful offset strategy will go from administration to administration. so for the next year we are focused on doing the intellectual underpinning, doing as much of the demonstration work as we possibly can so that congress will help us keep this going so that we can maintain a lasting advantage. i have spoken too long. i will into. i look forward to your questions, and thank you very much.

[applause] >> thank you, secretary work. i was a great speech. we would let you go as long as you can stand and talk so that's why no one was giving you the signal. spill i was looking for my signal. just couldn't find it. >> we have time for a few questions but what am i do is ask you one question i have come to take that opportunity. sydney, i see. i'm going to point to you for the second question if we have time for more, that is good. i've been surprised by some of the skepticism that i can sing about the defense committee, both in the pentagon and outside. that seems to argue that advocates i was a you are an advocate of investing in emerging technology somehow misunderstands the human nature of war. and forgets but other important strategic pillars like readiness, personal systems, global posture. how to respond to these arguments that you put in the technological cart before the

technological horse speak with a look back through history you will see cases where there was a technology poll by force and as a technology push from the technology side. you can't separate technology from the operational decision construct which all about the human. the whole purpose of the third offset is to make humans more effective in combat. because as a student, no one has to try to convince me that war is primarily a human endeavor. but if you take a look at the interwar period it wasn't like you look back there and say, wow, the germans were dumb because a collectible is happening, they looked at the radio and airplanes and they said if we put this together in about this construct called blitzkrieg, that he was would be more effective on the battlefield. and we have detained the humans in this, mission command.

that's all the virtual cycle. if you take look at the second offset it started to kick off when air force and army said let's use this in a way to air land battle, and then nato's use of apollo i forces attacked. so it frustrates me when i hear these concerns that we are somehow forgetting the people because people are central to the whole way we are going about second offset, i mean third offset. >> just briefly, it strikes me that the proliferation of guided munitions, because in my mind that's essentially what's happening. the essential question at the root of the offset strategy is out does the future joint force operate in a world in which guided munitions are fully proliferated with the international system. i look at the ground forces and thinking wow and that is a particularly horrifying battlefield when you have and we are experimenting with bullet rounds for instance. can you walk through how a

ground warfare changes, given the proliferation of guided munitions. it strikes the for the last 10 years advocates of the classic a2/ad scenario, this other equally essential question, outdoor lance corporal soldiers that are tasked with closing the last 100 yards, however good operate in a world which are facing that speak what i'll be the first to admit that we have not spent as much time on studying the last tactical as we have breaking into a theater and operating in a more general sense. we have been there before. 1950s, the army completely reorganized its structure going from its wartime triangular formation to a battle fight a battle group because they disperse on the battlefield to avoid atomic attack. they would read aggregate to achieve effects and then they

would disperse. they tried this for six years, five years, 1956-1961 and the technology was be on them. they concluded they could not execute without operational concept so they went back to their triangular division when we adopted a flexible response strategy. you have the same problem with guided munitions. you have to decide gave from keep from getting smashed and yet a decade not necessary now to achieve affect. so the next part of the lrddp is looking at this problem right now. will have a strategic portfolio review that reduce this specifically. my intent will be to have a program set up for the next administration that they will be able to pick and choose we are tightly linked to the army and the marines on this, and i spoke with general perkins, and as far as keeping humans completely central in our thinking, we are totally aligned.

so i will say that you will see advances in electronic warfare systems. we'll try to decide whether we want to read aggregate what we can this aggregator if the marines call is fighting to we aggregate. they're still a lot more for us to describe. let me say this. tenure so now you probably heard me say that the first thing going through the door of the bridge isn't an unmanned system, then shame on us. and get the are not more unmanned systems in the us army and marine corps ground units, shame on us. there is a lot of stuff we can do to help them with this last tactical mile. >> thank you for the. sydney, i'm opposed to you for the last question. [inaudible]

>> is better -- thank you. is there any source of enduring advantage or you always have this race in this environment, is there something that the u.s. military, you know, be it, long future joint operations or its ties to the investor base, whatever the case maybe come is there something that we have institutionally, culturally that a china or russia can't duplicate the way the duplicate tech speak with did anybody hear the question? there really is, look, i'm not willing to say that we will have an enduring advantage on human capital over the course of this competition. i believe we have a market advantage as we start. and everybody says this is a huge brain drain going out of the department of defense. i would argue that the historiography is pretty clear, but after worth all the people who join and really got, i have

this nation can't committed to the mission, i'm in the field every day. a lot of those people to i do want to stay around for a peacetime military. and there's as many people who are leaving because of that, as people who are saying i'm surrounded by a bunch of idiots and i'm the smartest guy in the room so i think i'm going to go to where they are smarter people. total reject that type of thinking because all you have to do is work with people in the field every day and you say holy crap. if you give them a problem, say let me get a solution, i guarantee they will come up with a solution. one of the stories i remember it is in the early days of the cold war when we started send out our boomers, our strategic ballistic launch missile subs, they go out 490 days. this was unheard of, the under the water can not see the sun. what would you do? so they took big bags of candy. they can get individual little things inside the candidate summit marshmallows, summit peanut butter. summit caramel. the peanut butter ones were the ones that everybody loved.

what did you do? what they did is they created a machine that checked the electronic resistance of the candy, and by -- they found which ones were the peanut butter ones. they found the ones which were crap and you sit there and go, man, why would even do that? is because they have a problem. i like these damn things. i want to get to them. and they fixed it. that's one little example. i can give you a million examples. i will put the innovation of this armed force against any frickin' other force on the planet. and we will ride bad for a good period of time. and if they start to really say we want to empower our leaders can we're willing to make them make mistakes. we're going to let them try innovation and fail. if they can do that better than us, well, that's going to be a problem. because right now we are absolutely confident in our

people. and heck, if i was going to put my money on the table i would bet on our folks before others. >> thank you. we have time for one more. wait for the mic at home. >> thank you. bloomberg government, former comptroller with omb. you've got some budget pressure, i know. the death star. you've got some budget pressures, so the question is, you have talked about the difficulty of the department with the technology refresh compared to the private sector. is there an escape valve for you to reach out and take advantage of stock in the commercial world that makes your job easier? >> absolutely your now, i will just point back that if you look at what happened in the interwar period, if you look at what happened in the first offset and you've looked what happened in

the second offset, all three of those things occurred when defense budgeting was at its low wind. it forced you to think differently. and what the experimentation and the demonstrations in the wargaming allowed you to do is when defense spending started to go up, you would be well prepared to butcher money in the things that you thought would provide you with an advantage. that's why so you're not going to see some big, giant ship in the 17 budget. but i will argue that when you look back between 16 and 17, there were a lot of technological bets that allow us to get down to strip it as far as bring in the commercial side, that's one of secretary carter's most important things. that's why we went after in detail and we can't vote -- copied or model that the intelligence committee where it is essentially a venture

capitalist firm that puts money in companies that are pursuing some technology that is really interesting to one of our problems. so we are following that. the defense innovation good experimental design to make matches between the commercial sector and the department of defense. the secretaries can see whether or not we ought to have more of those to expand it. so this is early days. you can still, it's not going as fast as i would've liked. believe me nothing ever goes as fast as we would like, and in the pentagon. but we are making progress. so we are trying to gain more approaches with the commercial sector. we are trying to make smart bets so that the next administrators going to have a wide variety of options to go forward. i know we are out of time. i would just like to say forums like this are absolutely critical.

the department of defense listens very carefully to what is happening in the think tank world, into the leading, two discussions among leadership of a wide variety of defense industrial base, and think tanks. i can tell you how important it is for you to prod us long to tell us where we are wrong, tell us where we are headed down a rat hole. thank you very much for everything you do, and god bless you. thanks for having me. [applause] ..

>> absolutely. [laughter] come on -- >> what do you want me to do, sit over here? >> yeah, thanks. so thanks for being with us here today. >> thank you. >> for coming. i thought we'd start, we've got some time to have a little dialogue about where the army is today, where it's going, and then we'll open up to some audience q and a. i thought we'd stop by talking about the operating environment and what you're looking at in terms of future challenges. we've come out of a decade plus of these large scale counterinsurgency war. we still have troops in afghanistan, we have them back in iraq but in smaller numbers. we see a range of different challenges from a resurgence of russia, china. when you look at these, what are the highest priority things for you in terms of readiness and in shaping the force for the

future, and how are you thinking about those challenges? >> well, a couple things. i've, speeches, forums over the last couple months i've talked about sort of the world according to, you know, to my view anyway. and i see several challenges. you can go region, you can go by country, you can go by function, etc., but i think russia, china, north korea, iran and isil are, obviously, kind of your top four or five in there. i was asked in testimony sort of to rank order of those. i said russia, and i still think russia remains the number one threat to the united states because they're the only country on earth, they're the only entity on earth that has the capability to destroy the united states. so it's an existential threat. they've had that capability for a long time. but when you add a but things that have changed since the

2000, since around the turn of the century or so, you've got significant military modernization, you've got doctrinal changes and not insignificantly, you've got a foreign policy that seems to have shifted -- at least in my view -- from the 1990s sort of time, it shifted into ap aggressive -- an aggressive stance. invasion of georgia, seizing of the crimea, invasion of ukraine and several other things in cyber and so on. so i think there's a very aggressive stance. now, president putin and the russian senior leaders have their own national security interests. they're, obviously, behaving in accordance with what they think is right for russia, but they have violated quite a few international norms that have been longstanding for centuries. and it's the first time in europe that we've seen sovereign boundaries violated since world war ii. you could argue that 1956 soviet

invasion of hungary or the '68 invasion of czechoslovakia you could say they violated as well, but they were part of the warsaw pact, and those soviet forces were already in place. this is a qualitatively different set of circumstances that have unfolded in europe. so i think that's -- you match the capability, the nuclear capability and then the reformed conventional capability, and then you add intent, and we can judge intent based off of recent behavior as aggressive, then i think that makes for a potentially very dangerous kind of mix there. so i think that's a very significant threat. isis is equally dangerous but in a different way. they don't have the capability, conventional or otherwise. but they clearly have intent, aspirations, and they've demonstrated a reach into europe and the united states. so you've got those two i'd put

right at the top. if you look at the middle east writ large, there's a broader challenge facing the united states, i think. and that's the challenge of radicals within the muslim dilemma all the way from morocco, to indonesia, from the caucasus and the blue nile, that sort of thing. so that entire area of the world which has got a billion plus muslims in it, the vast majority of which are hard working folk who just want to make a better living for their family. but there's been a movement out there for going on a hundred years now that posits a alternative way to organize your society. and that fundamentally is what we think of radical islam or militant islam, and it's got different names. the current manifestation of that, the most violent one, is

isis and al-qaeda. but there's a whole string of organizations out there, maybe 50-100 of these things. some are small, some are big, some have greater or lesser capability that are all part of this broader movement. isil, though, is a discreet organization. they've got chain of command, organizational structure, they're a de facto government in many ways, they control territory, and they have expanded significantly to other parts of the world. so we know they're operating in north africa, nigeria, east africa, in the af-pac region, the caucasus. so that's a threat that's very real, it's time now. they have inspired or directed attacks in europe, united states and elsewhere. and i would argue they are an existential threat not to the united states, but to some of our friends and neighbors in the region. and they do present a significant threat to u.s. vital

national interests. so the president has said in the strategy to destroy isis or isil, and we're working through that now. that's a worthy objective that i signed completely up to. that organization as an entity needs to be destroyed. but each when they're destroyed -- even when they're destroyed, the broader systemic threat of radicals within the muslim world, that has to be addressed really by the muslim people, has to be addressed through good governance, economic development and a wide range of other things. so those two i'd put at the top of my list. the middle east and east europe, in my view. you also have got an issue with iran. but i think that's sort of the heat kind of got turned off a little bit with the signing of the agreement. so we'll see. time will tell on whether iran breaks the nuclear agreement or not. if they do, i think appropriate things will kick into place. but i think the temperature's been lowered a bit there. having said that, iran is still

a malign actor in the region. they're a big supporter of terrorists throughout the region, and they're very much interested in destabilizing places. as you go over to asia, you've got a whole different geopolitical situation. you've got russia in europe, you've got sort of a revolutionary group with isis or an apocalyptic revolutionary group with isis. in asia i think you've got two serious, significant national security issues for the united states to work through. one is north korea. and in that situation, that's been with us since 1953 since the armistice was signed. but the armistice was not a peace treaty. the korean people are one ethnolinguistic group. the 38th parallel is very much an artificial boundary. and at some point in the future -- and no one in this room or really anywhere can tell us when it will happen -- but at some point in the future the

korean people are likely to be one people yet again. the question is, will that happen violently or will it happen peacefully? and we don't know that. we, obviously, want it to happen peacefully. but that situation has almost like a sign curve has ups and downs, and north korea is noted for a variety of provocations. it's a very dangerous situation. it's probably the most armed border in the world. you've got a million or so troops on either side of the dmz, and that at different periods of time gets quite dangerous. we saw that in august, for example, and we saw it with the island incidents back in 2010-'11. so that bears close watching. and that would be, for the army, that would be a different sort of set of challenges than you get in the middle east or russia. and then you've got the rise of china. the rise of china is interesting because china is not an enemy. a lot of people talk about the rise of china as if they're an

enemy. they're not an enemy. competitor? sure. and i would argue that china has a very assertive foreign policy. they're clearly building islands and islets in the south china sea, and they're trying to assert what they perceive to be their sovereignty over mineral rights, oil and that sort of thing. but aggressive in the sense of crossing international boundaries, invading other countries, we don't see that yet. so, now, the challenge with china is the, you know, the trap that people talk about. you've got a rising power, china, you've got a status quo power, the united states. and the rules of the international order were written back at the end of world war ii, bretton woods and all that. so china has benefited from those rules. their economy has grown immensely since, you know, 1979 and all that. so you've got a huge economic

growth in china that's occurred, and there's no doubt that the global economy has shifted from a north atlantic-based economy which it was for about five centuries to now a north pacific-based economy. and we're in the middle, i would argue, we're in the middle of that transition. it's not yet in the history books. so that's -- we're in the middle of that transition. and historically, when you see an economic power shift like that, you'll also see military power follow that. and we are seeing that. we're seeing the rice, significant rise in chinese military capabilities across the board. secretary work may have mentioned some of that. we're watching it closely. but i think that with china you're playing the long game here. you're looking at the china dream that they publicly talk about, you know, the two one hundreds, the birth of the chinese communist party and then the revolution in 1949. so they're looking at it really

out to about 2049, 2050 time frame. so i think you've got to play the long game with china, and we have to see which way it goes. there's nothing inevitable about china becoming an enemy. history is not optimistic about it, by the way. harvard did a great study. i think they come out with 15 out of 18 cases of a rising and status quo power ended up in military conflict, and the other three there was significant military tension. but it's still not inevitable. it fends how it's managed -- depends how it's managed over time. but that's a different security challenge. what bothers me about asia is a couple of things. you've got a series of unresolved territorial disputes that date back to world war ii. you've got -- which is really kind of a quiet arms race going on. if the data i saw was correct, you've got about 40 plus percent of worldwide military sales are occurring in northeast asia.

you've got a rise in nationalism which is barely perceptible, but it's there. and you've got some other factors at play. so there's a set of factors that should call our attention to continue to be very vigilant. and on the flip side, you don't have the collective security agreements and robust alliances that you have, say, in europe with nato. you do have alliances, back and forth bilateral alliances, but you don't have this collective security regime in asia that would help stabilize the situation. so northeast asia bears close watching, and i think it'll be a significant security challenge as time goes on. but the immediate is isis, and i would argue, the eastern european situation. >> yeah. so looking at these challenges, you know, i think there's a general wariness following the experiences in iraq and afghanistan in washington and the american public at large of

committing large numbers of ground troops. we obviously have people committed around the world in special operations, in training and advising. what's the rationale for the ability, right, for the nation to be able to deploy larger numbers of boots on the ground? we've seen army active duty end strength come down considerably, there are ongoing discussions about what the appropriate size is. how should we think about sort of this piece of the joint force as a tool in terms of, you know, furthering u.s. interests if we would have to do that? >> yeah, a couple things. you know, if the -- the united states is a global power. if the united states wants to remain a global power and affect outcomes internationally, then on the military side the president needs options. so we have to have capabilits that deal everywhere on the low end like humanitarian and disaster relief not only in the homeland, but overseas as well.

counterterrorism, counterinsurgency capabilities all the way to deal with potential state-on-state conflict. we don't have the luxury of focusing on one tie polling of conflict -- typology of conflict because of of who we are as a nation. so we also have to have capacity. numbers to matter. -- do matter. it is not true that smaller is necessarily better. it might be in some circumstances, but in others it might not be. so those are kind of general comments. but specifically to the army, i think there's a lot of myths out there about warfare. and an awful lot of people buy into them. one is, for example, wars are going to be short. they might be. you know, there's people who propose, oh, wars of the future will be short. they might be. but history tells us something different. there have been short wars in history, you know, the

franco-prussian war, there's a whole series of short wars. but typically speaking, wars tend to cost more? both lives and -- in both lives and treasure than the initiators thought when they began. so the short war myth is alive and well. another myth, i would call it a myth is you can win wars from a distance. it's a very american myth. we like it because we're very high-tech and very innovative, and there's a perception that you can win a war in a distance through standoff munitions, precision-guided munitions, aircraft, naval fire, etc. i think that if you're -- depends on what you're in. i mean, if what you want to do is punish, then you can do that from a distance. if you want to atritt, you can do that. if you want to shape, prepare environment, you can do all that. but be you're defining yourself

in -- if you're defining yourself in a war, that three-letter word that no one likes to use, if that's what you're self-defining yourself in, then war has a certain logic into itself. as we all know, it's an extension of politics, and that's very true. it's politics by violent means to impose your political will on an opponent. so if that's true, politics is all about people. it's about power, people and people living the land. and at the end of the day to actually impose your political will on an opponent, you have to do it on the ground. now, whether it's you or some of the force, that can be debated in the tactics and operations part of it. but strategically, if you're defining yourself at war, then at some point in time you have got to do that on the ground. you know, a little quip is, you know, wars are often started from the air or the sea, but they're ended with a rifle shot on the ground. i would say that it's very difficult -- and i don't know of

an historical example either -- where wars have been, quote, won from a distance. the other thing that another myth out there is that, and my own service prop gaits it as well -- is that a single service can win. you know, army, navy, air force, marines or sof, whatever. that's just nonsense. what wins wars is the sort of the synergistic effect of all these forces, army, navy, air force, marines, sof, cia, the interagency. it's a national effort. and it takes the effect of all of those capabilities in time and space to prevail. the current, you know, flavor of the day is sof can do it all. that's just not true. there's limited amount of sof to begin with. they can do a lot. i'm, you know, a proud member of that community. so sof can do a lot, but winning

wars takes a nation, and it takes the effects of the entire joint force for the u.s. but also combined with your allies. so wars are a unique thing. and then i think the last thing i'd say relative to the army is there's another myth out there that says armies are easy to regenerate. aircraft carriers take, you know, 50 years to build, they last for 50 years or whatever, and it takes a long time to train a pilot. and a lot of that's true. for the army a lot of people think all you have to do is go to basic training and advanced individual training and, presto, you have a unit. it's not quite that simple. to build a platoon sergeant, for example, will take 15 years. lots of experience. same thing with a battalion commander, brigade, to get them to a level of combat readiness. so there's a lot of myths out there about, you know, the size of a force, the training of the force and that you can bring an army down very, very small and

then in time of crisis -- which is, again, a very american thing -- in time of crisis add water, you know, circle the wagons there and stir it up, and you'll have an army. it's not quite that simple. >> so there are things you're thinking about on that front that can enable the army to more rapidly reconstitute or regrow in a time of need -- >> right. >> and i hate to suggest is what dod needs is to be more top heavy, right? but in term the -- terms of thickening the middle ranks or creatingive ways to use the reserve component, how are you thinking about that challenge, being prepared for that in the future? >> well, you know, i have what i would like, and then i have reality. [laughter] so to deal with the reality, i mean, again, it's very american. downsizing is a perception you're going to save a lot of money by, you know, reducing your cost of labor, reducing your largest force, the army. and that's a way of looking at it. i would prefer to keep as much

as i can for as long as i can. but as you noted up front, we're already reducing and we have been reducing. we've reduced 180,000 troops since the iraq conflict. so we've actually reduced a significant amount of the active force of the regular army. so the question is how do you regenerate. so some things i'm looking at, i'm going to lean heavily on the guard. and i've already talked to the guard leadership about some of this. so the guard is a capability, the u.s. army national guard is a capability in which we're the only service with over 50% of our capabilities in the reserve component. either u.s. army reserve or the national guard. and we are one army. so what i need to do is not only maintain the readiness of the regular army, you know, the the fight tonight army, but i've got to increase the readiness of the national guard. we've had this policy of 39 days as an example of training per year for the guard. that's been in place since 1915.

so it's 100 years. it's a century old. and i sit there, and i go what's so magic about 39 days? maybe we need to look at changing that. that, obviously, is going to cost money. but maybe i should take some of the guard and significantly increase the number of training days they train on a given year, maybe 60-100 days a year. so that it reduces the response time on the back end after they get alerted and mobilized. because the possibility or probability of conflict today given technology, given communications, i suspect that any future conflict would unfold more rapidly than it has in the past. may not, but i think it probably will. and we owe it to the president, we owe it to the american people to have forces sufficient in capacity and capability to respond quickly. if the act of force, if the regular army is a certain size,

that will pretty much get consumed pretty quickly in any of the larger contingencies that we have. so we have to lean on the guard. but that means that i have to get their readiness levels up to a level that is combat capable in the shortest amount of time postmobilization. so right now if i was to call in a guard unit, you're looking at 100, 120 days or so before i could, in good conscious, say ready to go to war. i don't want to send anybody into combat that's unready, and they're going to get -- they'd get slaughtered against some of these opponents. so i have an obligation, a moral obligation to insure their readiness. the only way i know to do that is to, in order to assure their readiness and reduce the response time is to increase the amount of training days for the national guard on the front end. some other things we're looking at, there used to be a roundout concept in the army. that worked pretty well in the

past. we sort of got away with it, or got away from it. so i want to go back to we're exploring roundout brigades. but not only roundout where the national guard rounds out the active component, but i'm also looking at active component rounding out the guard. i don't see a problem with an active unit, battalion or brigade being part of the 28th division pennsylvania guard. and they wear that patch. have it go pote ways. it used to only go one way. also we're looking at, we're already executing partnership programs with the guard in foreign countries. so they've been doing that for years. it's a very, very effective program. and i'm also lined up all the active duty units in partnership with the guard. and there's a wide variety of other initiatives that i'm working with the guard. the whole intent is to increase readiness, reduce response time. then the other piece you talked about which is really to

maintain a higher number of leaders on active duty so that if you have to expand rapidly, you have leaders that can take folks over. so i've got folks looking at a variety of concepts. one of them is to build, train and advise units for overseas deployments. and those units would look like the chains of command of regular army brigades or battalions. but they just wouldn't have the soldiers. and that de facto is what we do anyway right now. so we're sending train and advise teams to afghanistan and iraq. those -- and we've been doing this for years. those teams are, in fact, the leadership of brigades and battalions, and we're just ripping hem out, sending them over. the negative of that is we're destroying the force structure of those units and reducing their readiness levels by taking

the chain of command out. so i said a couple

>> please stand up, introduce yourf and then fire away. >> hi. sidney freedberg, breaking defense. >> that's what i feel sometimes. [laughter] >> yes. i have to explain that. it's implicit tally breaking news about, but we truncated it perhaps a little too far. having just come on the heels of secretary work's conversation as guidance over there, we hear about the offset, there's sort of lots of imma'ams of laser -- images of laser weapons and manned/unmanned teaming and complex things. and the army is struggling, of course, just to modernize its own major platforms incentally.

from the ground -- incrementally. from the ground standpoint, from the standpoint of facing the whole range from, you know, potentially very sophisticated irregulars to nation-states, what are the, you know, potential third offset technologies, unmanned, perhaps shore-based antiship missiles, perhaps surface-to-surface conventional missiles which is a major russian and chinese tool that look like they could be potential areas of interest for the army? >> okay. i break up -- the guidance i've given the army staff is my number one priority is readiness. second is the future force. and then i have as a constant priority is troops and their families. so on the future force piece, i break that into chunks of time.

so readiness for me is really my current operation, if you will, and that's today out to, say, four, five years from now. that's where the laser focus has got to be on readiness, because realistically the army structure, equipment, weapons, doctrine, etc., will change only at the margins in the next few years. just in part based on the government's budget cycle and so on. and then from about five years from now, 2020, to call it 2025-2030, that decade in there i sort of have an interim period of time, and then i have a deeper future, call it 2025 or 2030 out to about 2050, that 25-year period. much of the third offset strategy's focus is towards that third window, that deeper future than what we have today.

and there's a lot of potential technologies that have potential military application. many of which are not ready today. some of which are literally ideas in labs, and they physically don't exist. on the other hand, there are some things out there that do exist, and we could use them even in the near term. there's things that are being done today in robotics, for example, that have great promise to be used on battlefields, and we could accelerate some of that. there's some things being done today -- you already mentioned the manned/up manned teaming -- unmanned teaming, we're going to expand on that. but there's some things in protection, both ground and air, that we know exist in the real world today, the technologies are there, and we need to bring those forward and rapidly accelerate those. in order to increase the

survivability of rotary-winged aircraft and ground vehicles. there's some things in lethality that are being tested. we're probably a little bit early for ground use, but there's things the air force and navy are doing with lasers, rail guns and so on that have potential. i don't know if they're going to have application in the next couple of years, but that perhaps that second time period they could have some pretty good application there. there's a whole series of things being done in the medical world in soldier systems that can, we clearly can bring those forward. so there's, there are technologies that are being looked at as, quote-unquote, part of the third offset that clearly can be brought forward, accelerated, and we're doing that. it's not just the spiraling that you mentioned. although that is a major focus. the problem with the

modernization piece, though, is not so much the technologies or the ideas. the problem is money. so if your task is, if you have x amount of dollars and you're currently engaged in conflicts around the world, we've got 190,000 soldiers today. soldiers, not airmen, marines and navy. 190,000 soldiers deployed right now in 150 different countries doing all kinds of different things, everything from phase zero all the way up to advise and assist in ground combat operations. so there's a significant day-to-day commitment. so the ready -- i can't give on readiness because, in my view, that's fundamentally negligence. if i ever send a oldier who's not -- a soldier who's not well led, well equipped, etc., then shame on all of us. that's just not right. so readiness has got to consume most of your, most of your

dollars. the compensation takes 50% right off the bat. and then your other 50%, readiness is going to take most of it. so the modernization accounts, the s&t type of can accounts over the last many years for the army have been underfunded significantly. which led us to a strategy then of spiraling existing technologies to incrementally improve systems that exist. i don't see any sort of breakthrough technology for ground systems yet. i do anticipate some though perhaps in the next three to four or five years. there's some really, some promising leads out there in industry and technology that have some significant, game-changing potential for ground combat. they're just not realistic to field today. but there's some promising indicators of that. >> there things specifically then that you see as potentially

promising? >> well, sure. like, let's take robotics, for example. we know right now that, you know, pizza hut can deliver pizza or amazon can deliver a book or whatever through a robot, and you can have a little robot run around and do your rugs and all that kind of stuff. and we're using robots. we're using up manned aerial vehicles -- unmanned aerial vehicles. the navy eat experimenting with -- navy's experimenting with unmanned vessels. people have talked about a pilotless vehicles within 10-15 years. i they's a bit of a stretch, and no one's asked the pilots. autonomous systems, robots, have great promise in the air, in maritime domain. ground domain is much more challenging. it's a much dirtier environment, it is not an environment that lends itself easily to robots

just flying straight lines or zigging and zagging through the sky or the water. you've got a lot of intervening variables on the ground. but nevertheless, robotics and autonomous systems have really some tremendous promise. so, for example, i could see in the future -- and ld it would be that third increment of time i was talking about -- but there's potential, for example, to have all of your logistics convoys as autonomous convoys. so either someone's back in a rear area with a joy stick driving these things up, or it's literally autonomous, and they're just going on their own. and all your fuel and your water, your beans and your bullets and all your logistic support is being done by autonomous vehicles. there's real potential for that. there's a lot of things you've "to think through, not the least of which is just the train. but the potential is huge because a lot of people, tons of people are involved in

logistics. the tooth to tail ratio of, you know, 10:1 or 8:1, although slightly less than world war ii, is not significantly less than world war ii. butbut if you introduce that kid of capability, you could potentially reduce your logistics footprint really by a lot. and you'd also reduce things like casualties and ieds on roads and all in this kind of stuff. so there's great potential there. there's also great potential in information technology. right now for ground forces your command and control facilities tend to be fairly large. with a fair amount of people in them. as information technologies continue to accelerate, there's a potential to go forward with small command posts and have the same capability to have situational awareness and situational understanding of the battlefield through reachback. so you could have your larger command and control capabilities

back in the cone of space, and they could turn the information, do all the analysis and all that kind of stuff just as quickly as if they were there. and yet you'd have a relatively small forward footprint. so there's some potential there. and there's potential in a lot of other areas as well. but those are two big ones that i'm looking at pretty hard. >> okay, good. we have time for one more question. yes, all the way in the back. >> james drew from flight -- [inaudible] i've got to ask the air question. as you look at being a more agile force, is it a priority of yours to maybe go faster on things like future vertical lift? and what do you think about autonomous helicopters for logistics? >> yeah. i mean, same thing. it's a follow on to the previous comment. the short answer, i know you're short on time.

the short answer is, yes, we're looking hard at vertical lift. and there's no question that autonomous hell adopters -- helicopters, i'm going to wait to see the air force go with it first -- [laughter] >> that might take a while. >> aren't we building an f-35? >> okay, good. thank you so much for your time and thanks for being with us. >> thanks, paul. appreciate it. >> thank you. [applause] >> so i want to give a quick plug for our report on the future of ground warfare that's out in the lobby at the reports table along with orr beautiful, brilliant cns reports. up next, i'm going to introduce senior fellow ben fits t gerald who will be leading a possible of experts -- a panel of experts on defense innovation.

>> so we're going to keep moving straight away. my colleague and i, my colleague and i are going to talk to you about defense innovation. so defense innovation is a very fashionable term right now in general, and for defense i would say it's dangerously fashionable. if you look add the quadrennial defense review for last year, the word innovate or innovation was used 33 times. unfortunately, it was often used as a synonym for miracle. in this environment a word like innovate can become meaningless quite quickly. as you can tell from my wardrobe today, i'm innovating right now. [laughter] all that's required is a basic lack of respect for common dress standards. [laughter] >> so if all it takes to pursue innovation is good wardrobe, i think i'm probably doing okay.

i will never catch up to ben in terms of facial hair or accept, so clearly i've got a long way to go. all the talk of innovation makes me think that many of us have seen this movie before whether it be defense transformation or really before my time, revolutionary military affairs. innovation is another iteration on a similar theme we've seen before. and i don't raise this to say that innovation is just another buzz word that we're going to see have its moment in the sun and then die out; but, rather, to say that organizational change management atç the pentagon isç incredibly hard. let's face it. we've tried this before to some good effect, but it takes incredibly strong leadership, it take a lot of dedicated folks inside the building who want that change to happen and, frankly, it takes really good branding. so if innovation is going to live up to this branding of being in the qdr dozens of times or being in every senior leader's speech for the past two

years, it's going to have to do more than have this good branding and leadership support. it's got to change minds within the pentagon itself. >> that's right. and if we think about what's happening in the pentagon right now, we can see there's a significant amount of good work being undertaken using the rubric of innovation. we just saw the deputy secretary of defense speak around it -- articulately and bag nately about a number of things. in addition to that we have a number of initiatives that predate the innovation agenda, buying power being a great example of that which will help us have acquisition systems that can be innovative. in addition to that, we have standing organizations, organizations like darpa or the strategic capabilities office which are really at the forefront of making investments today on innovative systems and thinking about innovation. and then i think most notably we have the secretary of defense who's come in with a clear vision and a short timeline focused on innovation where he's

pushing hard, establishing organizations like the experimental unit in silicon valley. this is clearly a man who is pushing hard on this topic of innovation for good and sensible reasons. >> so from this laundry list that ben just went through, i think we can all agree there is a tremendous amount of energy and opportunity related to the innovation agenda these days. but a lot of us, probably folks in the room and some critics, have some fair questions and fair points about the agenda starting with are these huge range of initiatives, are any of them in conflict? ben and i tend to think that, nope, they actually align pretty well, but the fact that there's confusion is an issue unto itself. secondly, does a leadership team really have the bandwidth that it needs to fully manage this agenda and have it have the impacts that they want it to have? third, can someone from the outside -- like someone in silicon valley -- look at the list of initiatives and say i know where to go for what. who's on first, or who's going

to be able to move resources for me or carry water for me. so far from the feedback we're getting, not quite yet. and, frankly, folks in the pentagon and in industry are having the same questions. lastly, one of the prominent criticisms we see are on top of the bureaucratic process that already exists in the pentagon, the acquisition process, the procurement process, requirements, programming, personnel, can the innovation agenda really succeed when you're pairing it against these slow and cumbersome processes that we're all familiar with? so all that said, ben and i actually think that secretary carter and deputy secretary work have done a really great job creating space for the pentagon to get out of its comfort zone and to innovate outside these processes and outside the traditional defense industry. however, we also think that their success is ultimately going to be judged on the amount of agility they're able to insert inside these core dod

processes and how much impact -- or, rather, what's the longevity of these initiatives and the innovation agenda going to be after they leave. diux, i think most of us would, is a great step. but the pentagon is bureaucracy-friendly and risk averse even when it has leadership top cover and even when it has flexible authorities and programs that have been built up. so the question comes down to what needs to happen in the next year to make sure that this innovation agenda has staying power. >> that's exactly right. now, lauren touched briefly on the duix, the defense unit experimental, no conversation today would be complete without talking about the unrequited bromance between silicon valley and the department of defense. dod really likes silicon valley, but that love isn't quite coming back yet. we're going to get boo some of that discussion -- into some of that discussion in a minute. one of the things we have been focused on at cnas, we have

spent a fair amount of time in silicon valley over the last couple of years. lauren and i actually convened a working group out there a couple of months ago. our friend will goodman, who's in the audience today, helped us set that up. there were a number of key things that came out of that conversation. one of the things we subpoenaed the participants -- asked the participants who were all entrepreneurs in silicon valley many with dod or national security backgrounds, we asked them where did they think this kind of collaboration might go? the first thing that came out of this was sort of the pros and cons of high-level support for innovation and for collaboration with silicon valley. that's very good from the perspective of lending legitimacy to an organization like the diux or allowing mid-level people in the organization to know that it's okay to work with silicon valley. the downside could be in generating that momentum we

create unrealistic expectations that we just can't meet. the diux and silicon valley writ large can't hope to answer -- to supply all of the demand for innovation that the department of defense has. when that doesn't happen, how's everyone going to feel about it? and that was best exemplified in the second thing that came out of the predictive exercise which was the continued growth of a trend that's already occurring which the participants referred to as technology tourism. for those of you who are not familiar or with the term, this is when senior officers or defense officials travel out to silicon valley to get briefed. they take a number of meetings, they receive briefs. they don't actually have any funding of their own, they don't have the ability to execute on a contract, and they're not actually going to be able to come back to maintain that relationship over time. they go out, raise expectations, dash those expectations, burn bridges -- [laughter] and then when people within the

pentagon or the services go out to silicon valley and seek to do business, they're met with closed doors. so we can see that some of these things are going to continue to occur over the next couple of years. >> so the final thing that participants in this workshop are very focused on was what happens when tech tourism goes well? what happens when you have a challenging and maybe an urgent d work d problem that meets -- dod problem that meets up with an out of the box solution whether from silicon valley, industry or elsewhere? can the p pentagon follow up on a timetable that works for a start-up or, frankly, even these days a timetable that works for defense industry or even the pentagon itself. as ben has talked about, we have clearly general officers are lined up behind the innovation agenda. but our contracting officers, our program managers, are they willing to or able to take advantage of the flexible authorities and the new programs that secretary carter has initiated?

or are they really incentivized to actually avoid them in a lot of ways? participants were also asked does dod have good examples of prototyping or failing fast? do they have models of what this behavior looks like? or would they be much more inclined to go back to their traditional and slower ways of doing business when they have a chance? can dod take any of these successes that it may have and transition them and scale them to the larger enterprise? or are they just going to impact a couple hundred folks or last for a couple years and then die on the vine? bottom line, participants wanted to know can the back office functions of dod live up to the urgency you see in secretary carter's speeches? ben and i tend to think that technically, yes, it can. it's got the leadership, it dud have flexible authorities, it's got the resources. but culturally, this is still up in the air. >> so with that sort of big question out there, this sort of forces us to think what are we going to see over the coming 12 months of this administration

and into the new administration. lauren and i feel that we have not yet hit peak innovation. you should expect to hear more discussion about this over the coming 12 months. and ultimately, as we think about it, our general feeling is let's not get cynical too quickly. it's tempting, it's fun, there's a lot of great tweets we could all send, but while we know that this term innovation is going to become unfashionable at some point, we just neat to accept that -- need to accept that. as lauren said in the beginning, change is very hard in the pentagon, and part of that is we need buzz words and get people behind this thing. we should not allow the good work that's being done under the rubric of innovation to be stymied based on our own frustration by a perceived lack of coherence or just because we want to be cool, and it's easy in think tank land to complain about terms like innovation. so let's not let cynicism be the enemy of good work, and just as lauren -- and so we're about to bring on three other people to talk about that in more detail.

but i want you all to take a moment to congratulate lauren shulman on an excellent presentation. thank you, lauren. [applause] so what we're going to do now is take a slightly deeper dive into this conversation. we're going to bring some more chairs up on stage. we have an excellent short panel with three experts. michele flournoy, who i assume you're all familiar with, who has extensive leadership experience in the pentagon, in industry, obviously, in think tank land. mr. dale davis, who leads boeing's phantomwork organization, and someone who can provide a detailed understanding of how we program things in the pentagon. that's innovation right there, the ability to adapt. we're going to dig into a couple of these questions in a little more detail. michelle, i'd like to start with you. and really thinking about this from a leadership perspective, i think they there is a clear

impetus to innovate. my question to you is how does one from a leadership position structure and agenda and sort of move the building, as we would say in washington speak? >> well, i think the first step is to put a vision out there and create a sense of urgency. i mean, one of the real strengths in the department of defense, you have a very mission-oriented work force. >> yep. >> and i think what you've been hearing secretary carter and secretary work doing is trying to make the case for why there's an urgent need to change the way we're doing business, why there is a need for innovation. you heard secretary work talk about, you know, a coming era of great power competition, that there are real challenges become become -- being posed by russia, by china that put our future military superiority into question. so this is a very real issue. it touches our vital interests, and we need to do something about it. there is a window here, but that window won't stay open forever.

so i think the first thing is vision. but beyond that -- and i think they've done a good job of that. then you have to start creating the mechanisms that actually allow the innovation to occur. and here i think there's a work in progress. >> right. >> perhaps -- and i know we'll talk a little bit more about this, but one of the things i don't see yet is a sort of real effort to realign incentives for the people who are doing this work so that they start to change behavior to get to a new set of objectives. absent that change of incentives, the training, the support, you're going to have the sort of current culture which is risk averse, which is, you know, wedded to these very slow, deliberate systems. you're going to have that culture prevail. so i hope we can talk a little bit more about, you know, how we might attack that. >> i think that's important. so you're talking about incentives at the individual

level, essentially. >> yes. i mean, you have some very dedicated people who are mission focused, who want to do the right thing. but they're operating in a system that basically disincentivizes the majority of the behaviors that are necessary to get real innovation. >> yeah. >> is so you've got to get at that in consistency. >> that makes a lot of sense. so, daryl, you run an organization that i actually appreciate, it doesn't say innovation sort of in the job description. i think mark andreessen has a general investing philosophy that you should always sport any organization -- short any organization that has an innovation department. [laughter] it is highly innovate i, from the -- nonetheless. how do you believe dod needs to change in order to allow you to innovate more effectively? >> thanks, ben. that's a terrific question. one of the things we've tried to do is create culture of an agile learning organization. it's back to risk, the

willingness to take risk and what happens if you do fail. in fact, i think it was lauren that said fail fast. and, in fact, i don't think you fail, you learn when you actually some things don't work out the way you thought they would work out. and if you can continue to multiply those experiences of your people, then they are encouraged to take more risk and try more things. now, granted, this is a business. we do have to return value to our shareholders and to the department. so it is important to risk the right things. but if you're not willing to take that risk -- and that's ooh part of what's happened in our business over the years, is it's become very slow, more methodical, very process constrained. and even to the extent as we go after some things, what we will find from an industry perspective is that the requirements are reduced to the lowest possible point where it really innovation is not valued sometimes. in fact, breakthroughs are not valued because you reduce things to the lowest common denominator n. the interest of having a fair and open conversation.

but if you're not willing to take the risk, that's why one of our main customers is darpa, and we spend a lot of time trying to understand how do we take risks to change the game and how do we create a culture where our people can learn all the time and are constantly learning with agility? >> yeah, i think that's right. jamie, you've hared a number of us -- heard a number of us prognosticating about innovation. just be interesting or, your thoughts on the current set of innovation agenda within the building and from your vantage point at c.a.p.e. >> well, your dress code today actually is a good jumping-off point for that, because in the .gone, we are capable of wearing casual clothes, but we require written instruction if we're going to do it. [laughter] my only regret is you didn't provide written instruction. >> well, actually, no one told me this was okay or not okay, this is just how i dress. >> that's actual innovation. [laughter] look, it's a great question.

and i feel like we are starting down a path towards the buzz word of innovation, but it's a buzz word made up of a bunch of individual choices, a bunch of individual actions, a bunch of individual programs and a shift in how people engage with their job and how they approach the problems that we set in front of them. that's the cultural shift that i think secretary carter and deputy secretary work are trying to drive. it's not innovation, innovation, innovation, innovation. it's everybody coming at it with a different tone of voice, a different tempo and applying it to different problem sets. and that's, i think, key. in my line of work the programming and analytics, we've got to pull a bunch of bright ideas together. and the reputation that c.a.p.e. has as an organization amongst some folks in the defense community is we're the place you go to get no for an answer.

>> right. >> because we were set up as an organization to be institutional skeptics. right? secretary mcnamara set up the organization to question the bright ideas, to drive change, but also to test ideas that represented change. because we've got the national security at stake here. >> that's right. >> fast failure is something we have to do in the department of defense at a low level, at a small inches level. it's something we cannot afford to do at a grand institutional level. the country can't tolerate that. so we have to figure out much like many large companies in the technology sphere and in manufacturing, we have to figure out how to innovate at an appropriate level knowing that betting the company is probably not appropriate when you're a half trillion a year plus enterprise like we are with the nation relying on you. >> that's right. >> yet if you can't make those bets at a small level, you will

gradually, over time, lose your relevance and your efficacy. >> i often think about this, i was giving testimony to the senate armed services committee the oh day, and i thought imagine if i was representing a vc and describing how my financial portfolio had performs where, basically, i frittered 80% of my funds away on bubble gum and cds, because i thought maybe they were coming back, but i got a 3x return on the 20%. i don't think i would get a pat on the back from senator mccain. i think there'd be a lot of questions about what happened to that 80%. >> mathematically, if you got a 3x on 20% and lost 80, you'd probably get fired. >> yeah, whatever. [laughter] that's why you're at c.a.p.e.. but you raised some important points, again, coming back to culture and personnel. michelle, i'd like to return to this. from your experience just from a leadership perspective and implementing things, to what extent do you think we should focus innovation efforts on personnel and organizational

structures? is that the way to go after this? how do we make it real for the people who can then move the organization forward? >> again, i think, you know, too often we rush towards redrawing the organizational chart because it's so much fun and, you know? [laughter] but when the real issue may be incentives, authorities, retraining and rewarding people differently. and so when i think about, you know, what's at core of innovation, you have to have a pretty healthy space and tolerance for competition of ideas. one of the that challenges i san the pentagon, you know, overseeing, for example, working with c.a.p.e. but on the policy side for force planning, for example, there is this strive towards consensus -- drive towards consensus. sometimes it feels that getting everybody to agree is more important than the quality of the actual outcome you're producing. and so, but if you really want to deal with some of the challenges that bob work was

describing, we need to create a safe space that allows services, co-coms, industry, joint staff, osd, come one, come all, let's compete ideas about how we're going to solve a particular channel. and then let that competition of ideas get tested out in further concept development, in war gaming, in experimentation and so forth. and that's the stage where stuff can be tried and fail without too much, you know, real risk or cost. ..

i think if you lay out the sword of process and then think hard about have i trained people and incentivized the behavior i want, in each step of that chain can you may and may not have to do big organizational change. it ben -- it may be more about creating a different subculture. you can change, you'll never change the dominant culture but trying to create a healthy subculture that gets you across

that chain of activity to actually some new different ideas and programs. >> i also think of the grand canyon, simi valley doesn't seem significant enough. one of the things we often talk about come and a lot of my work focuses on the significance of commercial technology. so from their perspective, you're in an interesting organization, has significant commercial and sort of defense, just interesting, is that real? if it is real, in what ways are you able to innovate based on access to both of those markets? >> terrific question because living inside the boeing company in our small organization with a learning culture that we have, we have access to big brother called boeing commercial aircraft were innovation is happening all the time. it doesn't happen fast but is

happening constantly. way we can tap into that massive machine that is innovating and manufacturing in august, in autonomous manufacturing and those kinds of things. it's powerful for where we can be the agent to take that to the department in certain places. outside of that there's a number of places where we touch silicon valley, we touch cambridge innovation center. we touch universities. about one of the largest things that we have is our intellectual property portfolio. there are tons of things that we asked aerospace engineers or commercial airplane our military airplane providers will never see a commercial application for some of those things. we spend significant time understanding through venture capitalist, through entrepreneurs, there's a big difference between an entrepreneur and an innovator, and how can you actually tap into that. some of those big ideas that we've seen actually have a playback into the department of

defense or into other places. we spent a lot of time. it is a lot of money but the exciting part for us is a challenges our young engineers and our young entrepreneurs to start thinking about that this is different. you have to create a safe haven additional important for those people to think big and dream big. at the same kind willing to take bets. we spent a lot of time and, in fact, a little company called -- we are part over a decade ago was a commercial uas companies that became a fee for service application in the war in iraq that we actually acquired company. it wasn't because we're looking at you as a differently as we found a small company that had either innovative product and without a way with him to take it to the marketplace. innovation is not just the technology. its business models, people comment vibrant, safe havens, willing to take risk. we are doing it constantly and where we can leverage the power of our intellectual property across the department and out into the commercial environment

there are great opportunities. >> that's great. one of the challenges in hosting a conversation on topics i find this interesting with people of this code is we run out of time very quickly. coming up on a hard stop. i'm going to be time for one question so you all better come up with one genius question. i want to talk to you about come again, building perspective from two perspectives. one thing that we will often see is a lot of lofty language coming from the pentagon. for those of us who follow the pentagon close a window fall where the money goes. the other thing i'm interested in is the point raised, how will the core of the pentagon potentially be changed. as part of his innovation agenda. just the interest on thoughts from you about is funding be allocated associate with his? in separate institutions that are part of the core or are we seeing things that ours gone off outside the pentagon?

>> that's a great question. i think the key to understanding how to approach the problem you're getting at is thinking in terms of portfolio. so we have to start by thinking about innovation as a broad, overarching construct into which there's changes in staff. that's the most comfortable thing for many of us to talk about. i'll come back to the stuff but there's also changes in people, the cultural question. i would've argued, it would take decades but you make a conscious effort and you can actually change subcultures that become the locus of future changes. then there is the concepts for utilizing the tools you have, whether they are human, individual, the tools, international security, whether they are hard work tools, whether they are from a wide

range. that is key. and then just to think about the stuff. but the stuff portfolio is a huge piece of our department of defense expenditure, something congress and taxpayers have a right to think that come right away thinking about. and the critical piece is think about the portfolio as the portfolio. and if you of the financial manager, even for a company or an individual, you are looking to have a portfolio that has a variety of risks, a variety of instruments that protection against massive swings of one sort or another. and geoff gulevich things in different ways. as we look towards technological opportunities, i'm not looking at three to four giveaways of getting africa are looking at how can we take existing capital investment we have. they are already in the retort or are coming into the inventory, and use them

differently or augment them in some ways to make a more effective. that can be enormously important. i'm looking at how can i modify the next generation of something like that in a way that breaks out of the cost acceptance paradigm or drives us to do something infinitely different way for truly effective. then i'm looking at radical innovation, completely takes us out of our existing understanding. we want a mix of all of those because we've got to be ready for short-term, medium-term and long-term. and we know as we go across that spectrum of riskiness and degree of change and across the spectrum of time, that each of those has a success probability of coming to with exactly the way you laid it out. we've got to be capable of nailing at the individual levels, as individual levels. and we have to accept that as you're looking 30 years out, talking about the kind of things deputy secretary work talked

about this morning, human commission angle and autonomy and the like, some of it is more speculative, risky, but we got to get after in a way that leaves us open to success in a wide range of potential futures. portfolio think is key. that's what we've been doing a strategic portfolio review across the department looking at areas like our projection challenges, areas like deterrence, looking at areas like space and looking at them in a very deliberate work for the context. >> that's fantastic. so we have time for one question. so no pressure but so what better come up with a relic oppressive and insightful question be we have a gentleman here. i admire your strength of conviction. please ask your question. >> good morning. for the last 25 years acquisition has gotten slower. we have built less with more

money. we all know the basics. you have other transaction authorities. you have lots of ways you can do these things. why don't we come as we pursue the third offset, do something radical when we create effectively a third offset darpa, whether given a pot of money -- yes, we can talk to congress about oversight -- and let them do it? i mean, there's so many authorities already existing. it's a command organization. can't we stand up and create a safe space for them that way? >> everyone is looking at you. >> the crux of your question is can't with somebody and have them do it.

and the challenge there is what is it? to tell summit to go out and do it, you've got to define it. and, and it is something, warfare, which is thought that the interest. it is thought by many women in uniform operating in complex environments. at a point solution, a command solution to those problems that is set loose and run and produces something six months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months later, it's a part of the answer but it can't be the whole of the answer it can't be the whole of the entity as you're talking about tools, hardware, that operate in the context of complex human endeavor. and so i think we absolutely need to use some are specific acquisition tools and techniques to get a things faster. it was mentioned earlier i think

to the strategic capabilities office. they've been great working to get out particularly how to make exit -- existing stuff the novel things. there's huge room for innovation their that is i think delivering really potential improvements. but i'm not going to go out and as somebody to design the successor to the joint strike fighter alone in a small think tank and have them produce it and then sell it to us as a commercial item your it's not going to happen. it's not going to work because we can have an enduring competition year after year for those kinds of things. so it's an important piece of the bus and come an important piece of the portfolio but it is not the whole answer spirit that was such an impressive question that the time got to given us a little bit of extra time. i'm going to take the first prerogative of asking michele one question gather your

thoughts and as a similarly impressive question. michele, i would come back to the silicon valley conversation. you spent a lot of time up there with other interested people. i'm just interested in your thoughts on sort of a potential usually they are, and what's the quid pro quo? i think it's fairly clear to those of us in washington what we get out of it. what from your perspective can we provide to silicon valley, to that community that makes it worth their while in terms of collaborating with us? >> you know, could you think the potential for collaboration is a better. i think the are a couple of key challenges. when is it is a trust deficit posts snowden. even though that is something we won't spend a lot of time on here, but suffice it to say we have to climb back from that and i think there's some trust building that has to go one between a number of parts of the u.s. government and parts of the valley.

second is we have, it has to be a business case. particularly for small, for every company but particularly for some of the more innovative, earlier in their development companies. it has to be a business case to work with u.s. government. and a lot of times they take a look at this and say are you crazy? this makes no sense whatsoever, stay away from the government if you possibly can. we've got to deal with their concerns about intellectual property. we've got great pass with the obstacles do much more rapid and responsive procurement, you know, sort of being able to procure multiple generations of something over time. this is to click in the it areas and applications area. we just have to move at a different cycle rate to make the business case real for them. and then it gets back to people again. we have to have trained people in dod who know how to work with

this part of economy, which is different, does operate on different -- different times and process so forth. we also found some people out there who can really the liaisons and help them understand how to work with this sort of fearful, you know, fear inspiring gigantic beast of the u.s. government. i think it can be done and i think there are people who frankly out of patriotism and determination are bridging the gap and making it work. you can find lots of small examples but we need to get how to do this at scale, and by the way,, innovation is not owned by silicon valley. we need to also be going to major defense industries, to other parts of the country whether it's 128 quarter up in boston or what have you to find mom -- multiple paths to leverage what's going on out there. >> i think the drug i can't see

any heads up some going to take this opportunity to ask come you have books out there. one of the things that has struck me in conversation with you and some of your colleagues is the advantages that large organizations have. it's hard for started to get involved with building or undertaking manufactured disco. what advantages are there for your organization and collaborate with silicon valley and what the benefits are for them. >> trevithick, thanks to a lot of interesting things happen when you have the opportunity to engage with silicon valley. and by the way, it isn't limited to silicon valley because it is everywhere and it is on a global scale. some of our entities in boeing defense better overseas we have great research and development centers in madrid come in australia, india and other parts of the world. the challenge for us is to find the two ideas that click and innovation or an entrepreneurial environment where the sum of one plus one equals 11 and not two or three.

that comes out of people and it is the geometric effect when a big idea is augmented by some else with some of the big ideas. it's back to the collaborative environment that you mentioned, michele. when we see those things happen the question for us as leaders becomes instead a single i would you do that, why not what you do that? in fact enabling people to take that risk and see it's not that failed faster its take a step and see if it can mean something. and then if they can mean something then go farther. that's what becomes important for some of the modeling or experiment capabilities were you can test things, whether it's in a simulated private. then can you do in the way that you can mature it because you're protecting enterprise? you have to protect the enterprise. winterton harnisch -- harness commercial leverage that what it can scale rapidly. that's the long process we face some days in the department of defense.

when we can find ways to work around it but with it, to your question, which you can partner with the department, you can do things different. is innovation and business models with the department. congress has a big stake in how you do that as well. well. >> there is a signed being flushed missing last question. i'm going to follow that sign. is a hand up in the back of this site. there's a microphone coming to you. >> james from flight love. particularly to boeing phantom works, if you look at six generation fired at all these other things lingering out there in the future come what are some of the big technology or what's the main technology that you're going to pull out of your hat and offer to the world of? >> all of the satellite programs you guys are working on, we'll focus on that right now.

>> i think the deputy secretary said it best this morning. he said the third also strategy. autonomy, deep machine learning, i mean today i would tell you from where we sit, six jan air dominance or whatever you prefer to call it today, waiting for the department duty cycle is not about deploying a jet just yet. how will for me to indicate receipt of it how do i could counter the threat with multiple tools in your kickback from cyber all the way to electronic warfare. so there's a lot of innovative thinking. the challenge for us will be working with the department, understand how best to take on some of those challenges with a competitive environment, be it russia or china. so how would you do and how we do it as a nation with our allies? >> if i can at one point on that as we wrap, the department is really trying to think rigorously about reducing risk as we look toward the transition. there's a lot of unknowns as we

look towards the future transition. you're the deputy talk about some of the key once but we are looking at identifying where are the bureaucratic, cultural, ecological risks along the path that how can we make focused modest investment or focus modest changes that we do business that will better enable the transition, knowing that would be a matter of decades. >> thank you to this excellent panel for talking in practical terms about a somewhat -- topic to a but i'll just think these guys first for the time. [applause] with davenport head over to my friend and colleague for the next panel on the agenda for defense reform which is going to be hosted by the very well-dressed marcus. i would like you to pay particular attention to his opponent of his stuff as he enters on stage. thank you all very much.

[inaudible conversations] >> so devoid of an. unfortunate i will not be sitting down so no one will get to see those socks. typically adolescent conferences i've done i've been the moderated panels right before the end of the day. today i moved up a bit but it's the one right before lunch. we will get you through this and then get you guys some food. in addition to the seemingly voracious pace of military operations these days one of the biggest things being talked about at the pentagon is reform and basically three key areas. structural reform. so we have seen congress and the pentagon have taken a look at goldwater-nichols. we've seen personnel reform in secretary carter's force of the future and there's medical and pay and benefits type reforms as well come at last acquisition reform in which finally we saw some legislation that has just been put, written into law.

just to start off we have a great panel with us today. as mentioned phillip carter, director of the military veterans and society programs at cnas. mackenzie eaglen from american enterprise institute. stephen ondra, retired army field battle doctor and chief medical office officer of healte service corporation got a retired general craig mckinley, ceo and president of indie i a. thank you all for joining us today. going to throw some questions out to the panel. nothing really specific for any of you. and you can go after the social. what we try to accomplish with all of these different types of reforms? what are the major benefits that would come to the military from tax reforms in these three key areas of? >> i'll jump in. so basically there was a tide

that earned about seven or eight years ago when the republican party throughout its role as the white knight for defense hawks everywhere, and the defense talk like that republican presented are going to profit elaborate or official in more pics of the new saw what we see today. but it manifests a long before the tea party, long before even this president took office. they were challenges within the gop. about, concern about larger federal spend another problems like poverty they're taking top attention of policymakers. and so that sort of began the front of the national security consensus, the rise of the libertarian movement with the tea party and, of course, the left and right started combining. we saw not just the products like the budget control act to start the defense of drawdown in 2010, but we also saw them coming together the voting majority of congress with the barney frank and mick mulvaney commitment to cut defense.

that's been a state of this issue for almost a decade. so why isn't reform reform reform all the time given the it is probably the most dull topic you cover today. who would much rather talk about the third offset credit there is an additional dollar for defense anymore for the foreseeable future without a reform agenda spent i think the department of defense has flexibility. we talked about innovation and new strategies and lubricants a little bit today but the real lubricant is money. and without a certain level of reform in a variety of sectors there simply will not be the money. we will talk later unsure about health care has gone from 6% to 10% of the dod budget. you want to deliver on -- way to get any more efficiently. that will give us more flexible

in terms of budget dollars, the department of defense to do everything else we're talking about today. >> i agree with my colleagues that david melcher is in the crowd, and i who represent industry want to make sure that we understand the playing field, understand what's out there in terms of modernization, we capitalization. some of the acquisition reform that was enacted last you was a positive step. but like everything else we've got to continue to go further. 415 years we've been involved in counterinsurgency operations. your chief of staff milby say that may not be the next whether we need to plan for. so this is a wonderful time to have these discussions. and i commend cnas for putting this panel together. >> let's go back to medical interest minute and start with structure, talk about some of goldwater-nichols drills let's say that are being done by both the senate and in the pentagon figures since every two years or

so journalists like this over write a story about changing lines and merging northcom and southcom and european command in africa. people would debate this. so what are some of the major structural reforms that the pentagon can benefit from speakers i was joking. i think i will flip the question on its head by starting with a profit for sorting to solve, reforms are good ideas in search of a problem. when you start with reform we go backwards. we have certain problems that are a. after 15 years at war. speed is one. it took us three or four years depending on how you count to go from the invasion of iraq to a successful strategy in iraq. we can't afford a three or four your reaction time for our military to innovate operationally and tactically on the ground. on acquisition side speed is not a success or virtue. so that's the problem we can fix

the acquisition reform, probably to fix to command reform, better linkage of the schoolhouse at your combatant commands, flattening of combatant commands and so forth. but the problem to reform link it is were i would start. on the personal side, i think this is where the force of the future effort has told. has not been a successful case made yet for the problems we're trying to solve whether their cost, recruiting, quality or the need to develop intellectual capital. until we start with a problem statement and build, maybe not consensus but a lease agreement, we are going to be searching for good ideas without an anchor. >> if you read senator mccain and senator reid, chairman of the senate armed service committee and ranking member, their background and before this goldwater-nichols hearing effort i think is a nine or 10 part series, they swear they are not a solution in search of a problem, however. i don't know that they fully explained exactly what it is.

i can tell you knowing that chairman at this really goes back to a lot of the things that were identified in the 2010 qdr independent panel. and things already know that we saw in this year this year's ndh is there's a widespread belief that there's been a disproportionate growth and civilian, whether civilian defense manpower, that includes federal contractors who provide service to the defense department but also includes government civilians and it also includes uniform personal for a signed and basically never come back with a task force that is never stand down or something else. there's also a believe that the services over time partly because of goldwater-nichols have lost some of the court authorities and osd has become to centralize and powerful. and that the service they to regain some of the authority from, or new authority. so these are some of the challenges. i think the kind fix but have

not yet articulated. >> i agree defined the problem statement is critical to moving this forward. some of my fellow service chiefs i think that a little bit scared up front to see some of the initiatives that were not fully vetted, that were not fully disclosed. and it's going to be trouble as we go into the last year of this administration, how much new things, how many new things can we digest as we get ready for the next administration. >> general mckinley, that's a great point you brought up. about 13 months left in his administration. we're going into a presidential election year. and this is a really ambitious agenda that is out there. what is the reality any of us can even be get come in at this can get implemented? >> i think the discussions framed the problem fairly well. i think coming from a uniform background, the department of defense has unique problems right now. they are fighting a very vicious

enemy. we've been fighting a counterinsurgency 415 years. that doesn't look like it's going to end anytime soon. and get we have all these other issues that chief of staff of the army pointed out. that once over the world should give us all pause to have a lot of work to do. but the focus -- the folks in the pentagon will get the job done day by day. many ideas are going to be long-term. midterm to long-term. not necessarily overnight solutions. >> general, stick with you for one more on structural issues. one of the big things the pentagon has been trying to do since bob gates has been around was to kind of shrink the size. the back office. want for you when you're in the pentagon, what made that so challenging for you to actually implement? >> i think a lot of the panelists have talked about culture today and the culture of

the services, the culture of the civilian workforce, the culture of the leadership. very hard to change that culture of divesting of significant portions of the staff that have been built up over time. even a small organization like the national guard, our larger bureau grew from 450 people in the early 80s to almost 4000 people in washington. told by people that are been taken out of the states that governments don't have those people working day today for natural disasters emergency. so it just happens over time and it's going to take a very decisive leader who watches the show game of personnel, where you move people, to make sure they do because it's very important. >> the british just finished a big strategic defense security review any kind of i guess kind of a qdr that we do here, strategy review that led to the

strategic guidance. one of the things that struck me is that it actually pointed to specific platforms and equipment i wanted to buy which are strategy reviews can do less of your is the time the pentagon possibly looks at something like that, review of that kind of scale could maybe tackle some of these issues, to maybe get away from some of these fragmented efforts? >> i think so and i think no one has said it better than michele flournoy last week in testimony about how the process is generally the quadrennial defense review has become very watered down on a lower common denominator consensus, which of the product that is pretty weak but most of us rightly so including i think people who helped write it. there is a little piece of it for everyone in it, and it lacks a lot of clarity over prioritization.

i think it is really well done and if they partly because it's the shift was the last review when. partly because what it says. but i agree with you, the comprehensive nature of it -- they tackle issues like civilian arm power as one. i do think there's some value in starting to name names because in procurement in the future. party because anybody to even spend two minutes look at the defense budget can figure out what dod officials and pentagon which will not say but we all know. for example, i would put out there, the joint strike fighter is 100% unaffordable as a district those are the facts. but for political reasons and programs to build a projecting that allies, it is keeping per cost unit down. there are no alternatives to. for a lot of reasons this program is politically

protected. that's also a capability we hate. however, there some challenges in terms of what can be done particularly as the nuclear triad comes online and that really, that which is huge. it's eye-popping. its star, a wakeup call, and it starts next in the budget in 2017. it would get up to 8% of the defense topline. we have a flat defense budget or if something could come in that is zero roughly speaking, probably one, and consumed 8% in the next 15 years, then you have a flat budget, that's going to come from everything else. it is probably time, nobody time to do in alaska of administration would you that basically say what's on your mind. that's not going to happen with this admission nation but perhaps a new one. >> talking about the flat defense budget. one of the areas that continually grows every year and is one of the things acquisition

officials like to point out because it's crowding him taking money away from them is health care. and that defense growth. what is the health care budget growing so rapidly? >> the important thing to remember is this is a problem the whole nation is facing to the department of defense is facing at the faster pace than the private sector. why is that? why is the cost of health care rising faster than the private sector? some of this is the cost of war. you can't explain much of the. i don't want to start out a bunch of things that come to paper but let me start out one fact. may be too. i talked earlier that the budget has risen from 6% to 10%. when you look at that only about 15% of that health care is for active duty. when you look at retirees and beneficiaries of retirees, it's

gone from 60% of them choosing tricare to 85%. why that is important suggested that there's something happening in that benefit package that is becoming more attractive than what's comparable in the private sector. so we've made some choices in government and in the department that made our benefit structure all of it out of line with the private sector and that may be a rational choice but it is only rational if you increase the overall defense budget by the same amount otherwise you are eroding the national security advisor. so the problem that the private sector faces, health care costs the road march in for a business. the problems the department of defense is facing an health care costs is eroding national defense budget. so a more serious problem. so we need to take a look at what have we done that is caused that shift in benefits come what can we do to increase

efficiency, everything from optimizing the usage of our military treatment facilities. that's a facile option but it's part of it. so we get benefit design. you can look at how, leveraging from the work done in both the department of defense, public sector to cnas and the private sector. our company is committed to 75% of all of our contracts with some sort of fever value model by 2020. the reason we're doing that is it's a great way to improve value. notches lower cost but improve quality because we want to do both to keep pace with a fighting force. there's a whole long list of things that you can go through but you can take all of them to actually bring the cost of defense health care more in line with the general rise of inflation and more in line with the percentage originally get

when tricare, one more example, when track your first came up back in the mid '90s, about 27% of its cost was covered by some sort of premium or coping or something. that's down to 11%. we are actually, and that's just one more example of how we spread benefits but not increased the dod budget. were driving a behavior that is different. that's why utilization is higher among dod beneficiaries than in the private sector because you kind of get what you get. there's a whole number of things we can do. and begin the point of all this is to keep up pace with a fighting force can give them what they need in terms of health care, given that benefit but do it in a way that is sufficient enough to control the cost to maintain flexible a budget for the department of defense overall. >> how do you so-called this, especially the personnel and

these health care type reforms? it just appears, base closures in areas from every one of these things, includes third rail when it comes to congress. spent i wish i had a political strategy that could help us out but i don't want i can say is that cost is an important issue that is not the only issue. a per service there a cost has gone up about 170% since the first gulf war. a cost issues don't resonate and they don't trump the very effective and very powerful groups in congress, and in washington stand up for people. you have to make a total argument. so there are other issues that we see with a all-volunteer force. they need to develop intellectual capital in the inner worker is one and this resonates with service chiefs of the look at people like marshall and patton and bradley can say that, how do we create the next generation of those men and women who will fight our military 20 or 30 years from now

ask the waste of the current system, the extent to which it just casts off people because where the cyclical all want to force that every discharge is 250,000 people at a rapid rate. no private company in the world would survive. wasteful with manpower. the geographic and political representation of the force is another problems we have to solve and there are others. taking this holistic argument and doing it all at once a notches piecemeal. to borrow one of your lines from last week, we tried to do retirement reform but we took they cared out and we did that. we did the 401(k) benefit for our troops which is great, but in doing so the stake we never got past. we never got important health care reforms, the important personal reforms passed in a good luck getting through congress without terra-cotta because congress is all about carrots and not about sticks state at this point will turn to the obvious. we have about 15 minutes left or

so. please those of you have any questions. identify yourself. right in the middle in the back. >> benjamin, headquartered air force. with regard to defense reform and the services, could you describe what you think the services need to keep and what we need to get rid of or changed so that we can move forward on defense reform and third offset speak with who wants to start with that one? >> well, i would say that most service chiefs like general milley and others, general welsh, see you know the richardson, commandant mellor and chairman healthier after lunch our survey looking at what kind of things they need to divest. from the air force perspective there's a number of air force officers in here. i think our air force chief made the case we may want to get rid

of an old airplane so we can move into new. unfortunately, it ran into constituencies in congress that didn't allow that to happen. there's this give-and-take. i think the service chiefs know that the situation there in while they're fighting this counterinsurgency war that's very deadly and consuming a lot of resources, but it's difficult to get to him in state while you're in the midst of major conflict. this is after 15 years of this. i think we're going to have to do more of that. i think discussion of having a future bride is on the table. members of congress may not support that either -- brac are getting back to the early questions there's constituencies that represent each of our military services and industrial base. and so we have a wonderful check and balance system of arguing cases but i will give credit to secretary hagel, panetta and cardiff are trying to inform the

defense on the urgency of the change come on the urgency of adopting new principles. because before that we're all kind of left to our own inclinations to support our members, which we know at this time we got to get beyond our membership. that's just a quick and dirty answer. >> three things. awareness, unity and continuity. britain touch of each. awareness insofar as service achieves has been protected from so long into the strategic choices was undertaken by the previous secretary. they were protected from what? $60 billion going into health care annually for dod. it's not part of their budget. they didn't see the train wreck coming. they didn't see the trendline as urgent as franklin all of us on the outside and even some members of congress. there needs to be more awareness of what cost offered as a service. nudity, there's an increasing concern among policymakers they

sense weakness of things are coming out of the pentagon. you have ambitious proposals, set of proposals coming out in the final year of an administration we conversations are turning to the next one already. you need to have unity and there's a whiff of disunity, whether that's forces at the future a couple of other recently announced initiative. and then continuity. whoever comes in next, whoever is the next boss so to speak, next president, the chiefs are going to have to see through and carry through what they consider is most important, whenever they get behind. so if you want for example, forced the future if they want to succeed enough to make it succeed an in the next administration or it will die regardless of its good intentions. >> right now the services can't see with enough clarity where to cut. this has been a major initiative and a major problem for the

defense department for years, one that the marines thought they saw until they learn that they had not. the defense department needs to be auditable. it needs to be legible. you have to be able to see the fully burdened cost of a service member, the full cost of is the ability by weight to trade space. you need to know how much operations broadly construed are costing i.t. systems, set up and tell the said they cannot evaluate have to do this more efficiently let alone where to make those cuts. we run the risk of doing things that are penny-wise and pound-foolish for the long-term, the vested institutional base or generating base functions and contracting them out but losing the cultural value any of the valley of to those in us. to audit a. to audit of billy. to audit a bill it as if it thinks the service sectors out there pushing harder than they are. >> this applies to health and the ability to not only -- strategy put into accountability

and the tools to implement that strategy which you can always gets down to the budget. >> question? really? there we go. >> a hungry crowd. >> thank you. u.s. army veteran. mackenzie, you talked about the politics and how hard it is to be convinced congress to do things in a timely manner. and it is a republican administration, very heavy. do you think that maybe we'll have more progress after the upcoming election? >> if there's a republican, is that what you mean? [inaudible] >> i'm concerned about the consensus in the middle on both sides, and that it doesn't

resurrect itself is a republican wins the white house or if it does, if a democrat wins. frankly both parties have to really care if they care about defense, they should care about that. that critical middle that is now missing. it will take time to rebuild. we do lack a sense of a common threat which nobody wishes for a return to the cold war but it is partly what gave us consensus. now, i think pentagon leaks would say russian and isis is most passionate i tended to agree with that. i think amounts to these questions they always need to be lead. they need to be led by the person with a bully pulpit and that person is the commander-in-chief. it's the next president investing in making this a priority. they can rebuild the middle of the optimistic. because defense, even if everyone in this room is happy with the status quo, with reform, if you just want to buy

the status quo, the military we have today, keep it healthy, investing people, start to upgrade the triad can keep reform efforts going biggest the required our money then the budget is projected. all things equal. it's in both parties interest to want to rebuild this consensus. it's a fact of life. but i think the fringes have had to laugh at a megaphone for too long. there's work to be done and the firsthefirst step is that it's e number is in washington among the communities that care about this. it's our responsibility to help talk about and talk about the rebuilding. >> yeah, i do want to minimize the effect on industrial base. these are tough times that they're going through pashtun i don't want -- they're going to get where they're going to be three, five, 10 years down the line. consolidation has happen. maybe more that in the future but i think frank has done a great job in articulating the

need for a strong industrial base. all that did is go back to the end of world war i when we found that we were only using other people's equipment to fight that war. we don't need to go back to a point where our servicemen and women have to fight with even equipment that is even on parity with other countries. i think we're to keep that in the equation as we'l look at the political agenda going forward. >> there is something of a consensus but it may not be on the right thing. we have a consensus around the all-volunteer force. we've had it for 43 years. it's been a wonderful innovation and the military but it's also very costly. the cost of this force are things we generally have consensus of. in an effort to adjust compensation, retirement health care runs in the consensus even if it is supportable, even if it is putting pressure on the rest of the defense budget. the consensus is so strong that they can overcome it. but there's no consensus for reconciling that with other things we want to do in a

zero-sum budget environment where revenue means, call them tax rates or an anthem on the current congress. so something is got to give. the consensus walks in the status quo, and without some of billy to take that apart and possibly rebuilding new one, we are in a world of for as long as that locks us into the current status quo we can imagine constructed or negative change and that's a real problem. >> the combination of challenges we face and economic constraints means that this is a moment that whoever the next president is, whoever is in congress is going to be a moment of the need for real courage, exactly what we've been talking about all morning, to innovate and to also reform. because without those two things, we will not have the budget to do everything that we need to do. there's not the ability to increase the defense budget to the level to which it is and

increased debt. so if you're in that a zero-sum game it's going to take real courage to do the two things were talking about right now. if we don't do that we're going to erode the economic ability to do our national security infrastructure. >> question right here in the front. >> bloomberg government. so if there's this impasse, and there has been for some time, i'm making these type types of reforms, isn't it time to come up with some different approaches? brac come we can't do another crack the way we used to do. we probably are going up to do something that if a public-private partnerships enhanced authority some way to preserve jobs otherwise congress is going to say no. the personnel reforms. he made a good point and gave away the carrot and that we don't have the state. but maybe we need to reformulate the solutions because the traditional reform approaches

are stuck in the mud. >> i agree. let me take a brac as an example. i totally agree that you don't want to be the definition of insanity. brac is one of those that symbolizes that. so having gone, lived through that so painfully come ever so painfully in 2000 by working for a member of congress from new england, the entire defense department, this is a state that is highly depend upon the federal government, for better or for worse. and the navy want to close every installation. so it was painful and it was ugly and it became clear to the commission that the defense department, didn't have the most senate and house.

that goes by without brac, which remiss received when it was realigned and we all know, our long living to even from himself left like joe lieberman. and they are not going to go away. something i learned in the process, i should say something a politician or forward with are important to to every are fighting for the installation of the highest unemployed the highest bank employed in the entire state, good job, highly skilled professional, many blue-collar jobs and white-collar jobs. the next largest employer was a grocery store. is a jobs they want to keep industry. something that shocked was we got to the process, all these meetings, getting to the final in the deliberations and summary slides other across the table in one or private meetings before the announcement came out and said, the community of one of the local bases have said that actually won't come close that

thing. jobs and floors need. what? the argument is that action, the federal government owns them. the best will do in the world. take the baseball vote over the i should say. that's just one example will you could just survey communities and find out if what else is out there. another, as opposed to fighting the apple battle as well as. or of the waste of course, other potential ways to do it. there could be a focus that's onto your point of public-private partnerships but you can probably assume the old model will work. >> questions? >> kathy with blue star families. i appreciate you recent issue of the all-volunteer force i think because of the nature of today's military we don't have the luxury of sticking with the status quo force or the way

things have been done in the past. today's military is millennial. is increasingly female. millennials married people at educational achievement levels but what we're seeing at blue star families at her and william -- annual survey shows the number one factor was whether to continue to volunteer is the effect have been under families. including a spouse and children their children particularly their overall famine economic well being in a society where most families need two incomes to work and that's an increasingly difficult thing. secretary hagel told me on his last day in office he had breakfast with six west point captains, five of whom were leaving service because they felt containing two state would hurt their family. and i see a number of people in this room who also the service for that reason. said what degree will military reform consider personal reform that allows our millennial force who want to serve find ways to

continue to do so that they feel doesn't disadvantage their families to, compared to other americans who are similar situated? >> it's a great question. three quick points. one, the family dictation of a force is a major trend in the last 40 years. years. they just beat military one should have a spouse. they would issue you one. now 84% or so to have a spouse the majority actually. this is a significant part of the force. second, we can't plan for millennials. we have to begin planning for post-millennials and post-post-millennials. it take so long that by the time we plan for millennials -- we've got to think about something that is broader. third i think it is a system that matters not so much of the particular responses of the system to surveys. so we designed a system based on a particular family model that exists in the u.s. in the mid-20th century.

this system of constant churn of geographic dislocation, of other things that are integral to the war fighting mission of deployment, there's something we should look at and think about a system that takes into account perhaps a slower churn, let's geographic movement and the rest of society's direction with respect to geographic mobility when you think about the future force. >> health care is one of the most important benefits to anyone staying in any organization, including the defense of the world. when you look for al all the moy to account for about how much more money we're spending in a much it's going up faster than the private sector. for all that money for satisfaction is very little. in many ways. to tricare networks often have poor satisfaction. military treatments does have trouble with staffing and access. for all the money we're spending we're not delivering the satisfaction. so we need to take a look at what we can do to not only

improve, to improve the to value comes not just lower the cost. how we improve the courtly if this gets to the conversation about how to look at giveaways to purchase care than just discount fee-for-service but when you discount fee-for-service the only have about one instrument to control costs and that's to lower the reimbursement. uk 2000 or where it's hard to put a network together. so how you look at alternative payment models as a key part of his strategy. how we look at women have a military treatment facility, optimizing that fixed resource. now we have a fixed budget. if you don't optimize the variable budget a optimizing the utilization that fixed resource you are wasting money. it's a lot cheaper to give to their than to buy it downtown. so there's a whole, we need a strategic look at how we prove the value of defense health care and i choose the word value and

not know the cost. we have to lower the cost. we have to improve the quality and the satisfaction among our defense beneficiaries and make that a good buy in terms of money, to retain that fighting force. >> you are going to work more on force for the future. there are several good recommendations for force of the future for on ramps and off ramps, for continuum of service so that we can get right to your point of let's make this a very workable proposition for military members. it's got to happen or we're going to find ourselves in a huge intellectual deficit because our best and brightest will probably find another way to survive and get out. >> we have time for one more. who wants to get that last question? >> thank you. john with national defense magazine. senator mccain has indicated that mixture is going to make a

big push for tricare reform but as you know nexters also an election year. and try to reform is a very sensitive political topic. do you anticipate the lawmakers will be willing to make any major changes in the tricare system to dod save money on what a just kick the can down the road because that's just too difficult to do politically? thanks. ..

i think that is when you start the conversation and a ticket would be hard to pass that piece >> all right. it is lunch time. please join me in thanking our panel. [applause]. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> taking a break here at the center for new american security meeting in washington dc to discuss national security and when they return from break several more panels are planned before they wrap up with a speech by the chair of the joint chiefs of staff. also, when to let you know on the c-span network live shortly president obama will be at the pentagon where he is excited to make a brief statement after his meeting with the national security team and we will follow that with today's white house briefing with josh earnest scheduled for 1:00 p.m. eastern also on our companion network c-span. on capitol hill today, the houses out returning tomorrow in the senate ends at 3:00 p.m. live on c-span 2.

starting the day with general speeches and considering executive nominations at 5:00 p.m. followed by votes in both chambers working on government funding. the short-term measure passed last week expires wednesday. and appropriation eight says about the ominous bill: it is still possible something could be released today, but if so not until late and politicos jake sherman tweeting republicans will win lifting oil export ban. a short-term continuing resolution will likely be needed and you can watch the senate live on c-span 2 and the house on c-span. we will bring you back for the form on national security as soon as it resumes after it's a break at about 12:30 p.m. eastern and until then some of the discussion from earlier today with deputy defense secretary who open the program. >> thank you, john, for the kind introduction and back to the people. cns family is a unique one and

great to be back here this morning. this reminds me of a story that is told of a traveling preacher who wanders around in the pacific northwest and through idaho and montana visiting different towns and giving sermons. he walked into one small town in montana and he found himself on the pulpit and there was just one person there in the church. he said. my son, i'm here and prepared to give a full sermon and to attend to your spiritual needs, but you are only one person and so what would you like me to do. he said well, padre, i am a farmer and if i went on the north 40 with enough food to get to 40 head and i only found one i would not leave him hungry, so the preacher said, all rights and he launches into a full up

sermon. fire and brimstone, i mean, he gave it his all and he really was proud of himself after it was over. but, when he did the cowboy stood up and started to walk out and the priest goes, gosh, i have to find out what happens any curries to the cowboy and he said, my son, did i'd meet your spiritual needs and he said, well, padre if i went to the north 40 and had food for enough head and i only found one i would not dump the whole load on him. what i'm going to try to do in 30 minutes is dumped the whole load on you and i look forward to your questions. going to talk about something important, that is a pressing need for us to make corrections in our defense program to meet evolving threats international security environment. i went to talk to you specifically on why the civilian military leadership is pursuing a significant and hopefully enduring effort to extend our military technological and

operational edge well into the future. we begin this initiative because we are at it a little moments. i firmly believe that historians will look back upon the last 25 years and i actually snapped that 25 years between may 12, 1989, when president bush said containment would no longer be the lens through which the defense program was built. that was the end of the cold war for all intensive purposes for defensive planning even though it took a couple of years for the soviet union to finally implode and i look in december, 2012, when china started to do its land reclamation project in the south china sea and of the following month-- excuse me, do some are and in march february and march 2014, russia legally annexed crania and started to

send its troops and support in east ukraine. so, that 25 year period, i believe, is remarkable and unlike any other period in the post era because during that era the united states reigned supreme as the only great power and the sole military superpower. it's gave us enormous freedom of action. but, this circumstances changing the unipolar world is 32 state and we will have a more multipolar world in which us global leadership is likely to be increasingly challenged. among the most significant challenges in this 25 years and one in my view promises to you the most dressing want is the reemergence of great power competition. for the purpose of this discussion and for the purposes of building a defense program, which is focused on potential

adversary capabilities, not necessarily intentions i will borrow john mercia reimers definition of a great power p read the state having sufficient military assets, to put a based serious fight in a conventional war against the dominant power, that would be the united states and possessing a nuclear deterrent that could survive a first strike against it and by that narrow definition, getting away from whether their economic peers or what is the attractiveness of their soft power and their stickiness from a defense program perspective if russia and china are not yet great power they are well on their way to being one and for its part, russia destabilizing action by resurgent great power where they are trying to establish a sphere of influence in their fear of broad.

they come on the heels of a failed 25 after. we have been trying for 25 years to include russia within the european community. we want to partner with it on a wide variety of global issues. we still seek both of those outcomes. however, after modernizing its nuclear and conventional forces, sharpening its war fighting doctrine, specifically aimed toward the nato, rattling this nuclear saber seeking to undermine nato and intimidate baltic states and attentive to rewrite international rulebook, we are adapting our operational posture, contingency plans and programs to deal with russia and to deter, we hope, any further aggression. so, we consider russia resurgent great power, its long-term prospects, we still think, are very challenging. which may or may not make them more aggressive in the next 25

years rather than less aggressive. china, a rising power with depressive late and military technological capabilities probably embodies a more enduring strategic challenge as its ambitions and objectives expand in asia, the western pacific, africa, latin america and elsewhere. china's words have been about peaceful rise and about defense. but, its actions will be the true test of its commitment to peace and stability in the current and international order. dod, therefore, continues to preserve military to military cooperation with china as well as a wide range of confidence building measures to make sure that we never come to blows. but, while we do so we cannot overlook the competitive aspects of our relationship, especially in the realm of military capabilities. that is the bottom line. dod focuses on the capabilities of potential challengers in both russia and china present the united states, our allies and our partners with unique and

increasingly stressing military capabilities and operational challenges. so, while we understand the imports of engaging with potential in-- competitors we also do so, since it are central purpose, which is to be sure our allies and partners, and tell them we will be there if necessary in a time of need. and to protect us forces and our allies from direct attacks and should deterrence fail, make sure that we are able to roll back any aggression that occurs. we are in the competition business and we build more plans, that's what we do. our defense strategy and defense program will reflect reality of new great power accommodation in new ways. now, before i expand how we will do this, i want to make it sure the department is not forgetting one bit about the threat of violent extremism, which is

terrible part of middle eastern boarder at threatening countries will be on the region. how could we ask we have thousands of servicemen and women in uniform out of uniform, contractors and civilians who are battling the terrorist networks every day across the globe. with it the to clear focus, of course, right now on iraq and syria, where the islamic state particularly savage and dangerous opponent is operating. as secretary carter has said we are expanding our offense of against them, across iraq and syria and elsewhere and ultimately we will defeat them. but, as distressing as this fight is, that is not my intent to really talk about that, this morning. because nothing can match the destructive potential of height and conventional war between great powers. nothing can offend or disrupt or possibly even destroy the global world order more than a potential collision between great powers. so, we had to continue to have

capabilities that strengthen our conventional deterrence, this is all about deterrence to make sure you collision such as this never happens in the best way to prevent great power competition from becoming rate power conflict is for the united states to maintain a safe, reliable and secure nuclear arsenal so long as those weapons exist coupled with a strong conventional deterrent capabilities, which will be the focus of my presentation here this morning. now, whenever you try to build a strong deterrent posture is try to do three things. the first is to try to achieve a technological overmatch against potential adversaries. that robert m gates fellow here at sea and aes, another good friend, calls technology that elixir of military strength. he could not be more correct. so, what we want to do is

develop successive generations of new war fighting capabilities , technology is never, never the final answer. you have to be able to incorporate those technologies into new operational and organizational constructs. it might be a new units that to does something in a new way, that employs a technology in ways that we have not seen in the past or it might be a new doctrine such as air land battle, which completely changes the focus of the entire army and really undermines our adversaries confidence that it blows-- if a blows really did come to pass that they would not prevail. so, you need new technological capabilities to try to achieve a technological overmatch and need to have new organizational and operational constructs to make a real and gain operational manager and third, you have to demonstrate these capabilities to suggest that any attempts to achieve operational success in a war fighting campaign is likely to fail.

even if they were to achieve an initial advantage, in time and space. now, this is the very essence of what deterrent curious called deterrence by denial. it is perhaps the most effective type of conventional deterrent, in our view, and as professor lawrence friedman says as it just so happens, a force developed for deterrence by denial is also best postured for victory if deterrence fails. so, i want to first start off with win this talk is all about conventional deterrence. we seek cooperative, engagement and a cooperative relationship with both russia and china over the long-term. but, in the department of defense, we know there will be competitive aspects and we want to make sure that we can assure our national leaders that we are ready and in case someone makes

a miscalculation. now, let me talk about hostage strategies and you have heard that used a lot. in terms of great power, to shift the united states generally pursues deterrence by denial, not by trying to match every tank for a tank person foreperson, ship for ship, missile or missile. that is not our thing. we try to do things the smarter and instead tries to boot-- strengthen its conventional deterrence by offsetting or pursuing accommodation of superior technological capabilities and innovative operational organizational constructs that offset the strengths of our potential adversaries. we have done this twice before and we know it works. in the 1950s, the first offset strategy sought to blunt soviet, numerical and geographical advantage along that german border by introducing, demonstrating and developing the operational and organizational constructs to employee battlefield nuclear weapons.

this proved very effective as a conventional deterrence using battlefield nuclear weapons to offset the conventional superiority of the soviets. seems a little counterintuitive, but it worked. up until the 70s what happened, however, is the soviets achieved strategic nuclear parity of. so, the threat of try to go up to escalate tory ladder that my end in a general nuclear exchange was simply too great a risk for our national leaders to tolerate. we didn't believe our deterrent was effective. it just wasn't believable. moreover, the soviets, because they believed that we were going to employ battlefield nuclear weapons changed their entire operational art. they were going to attack in

successive a salon of forces at one single penetration point on the forward line of troops and they really didn't care if the first session lawn was entirely in the highlighted and didn't really care if the second was entirely annihilated. they just wanted to punch a hole , like a jackhammer into nato's defense and get operational maneuver groups deep into nato's rear and they thought, probably rightly, that if they did that that we would be deterred from trying to employ battlefield nuclear weapons. so, senior leaders of said we have to do something different and it's 1973, and they launched what was called a long-range research and developing planning program,. what they did is they said you have one or two choices. you can make nuclear weapons, more useful and have micro nukes, neutron bombs, you can have high altitude have explosions, emp electromagnetic

pulse explosions, but our senior leader said we suck at risk going up the ladder. what else do you got? and they said, well, we think you could go all in and go after conventional weapons with near zero this, what we know today as precision guided missiles. that's what our national leadership decided to do. and the soviets called these or, since strike complex and we really got their attention. we did a big demonstration called assault breaker in 1977, the soviets at a big big exercise based on what they thought happened in the assault breaker technology and it really shook them a. within five years, the head of the soviet general staff concluded that conventional guided munitions with near zero this would be as effective as tactical nuclear weapons in

keeping the soviet union from achieving their operational aims and for them, a deterministic doctrinal opponent. game was over and unquestionably i would say that it led, it helped lead to the end of the cold war. as it turned out the soviet union imploded just as the united states was culminating the second offset strategy and that allowed us to dominate guided munitions of warfare for the next 25 years. it was used to great effect in conventional campaigns and i underline conventional campaigns. people say, yeah, but it did not solve all of the problems, but it continually was refined, second offset strategy of technology were continually refined and i would argue that our global man hunting campaign is completely consistent with second offset technologies and is far better because of it. because we can now find terrorists of much more effectively than we ever have. but, without doubt, this 25 year

period is coming to an end and the sizable margin of conventional technological support-- superiority that we have enjoyed for the past 25 years and have become essentially used to is eroding and it resulted primarily from two factors. one, two large states are putting a lot of money into becoming to achieve rapid guided munitions parity with united states. they say they are doing it. they are programming to do it. they are budgeting to do it and they are doing it. a corollary of that first when is the second offset technology proliferating to route the world, so iran can use these technologies as has bulla as can isil, if they so choose to do so. and for the last-- the second is for the last 14 years we have been focused down on this really hard problem in the middle east

and fighting a war against islamic extremists and as result, our program has been slowed to adapt. as these high and threats have started to emerge. i would argue, although, we have been slow to adopt in the program we are not surprised by what is happening. in 1993, andrew marshall said i projected a day where our adversaries will have guided munitions herrity with us and it will change the game. and that ultimately became expressed in the department of defense as the anti- access area of denial challenge. so, it's not that we are totally surprised this is happening. but, what is different is that now, we say we can no longer wait to respond in our program and should we have a third offset strategy because of these conditions, and if so how best

to go about it. of the first thing i would like to say about offset strategies are they are generally informed by the toughest operational problem that you faced and we have several of them, all of them kind of related to the a to aid the challenge i just said. our conventional deterrent posture without question is based on the ascension that we can project overwhelming power across transoceanic distances and exert our will on any opponent. so, the first problem is breaking into a theater where the opponents enjoyed guided munitions parity and kendra long-range missile strikes as dense as our own and as accurate as our own and as long as we can. that is the anti- access part. then, once you are in the theater, the second problem is fighting against an adversary with conventional capabilities that are as danced as our own.

a third is doing both of those while under intense cyber and electronic warfare attacks. now, we can get a rough sense of the a to problem by reviewing russian demonstration of long-range conventional strikes occurring right now in syria. they are firing missiles from surface ships, submarines, prime strategic bombers and from medium range bombers. you can also get a sense on what is happening just by seeing what the chinese do in their massive exercises that exercise primarily their second alt-- artillery and the way they are forming their forces to conduct what they call counter intervention operations. as for the last two, all we have to do is analyze what was going on in eastern ukraine, which is arguably an unfortunately for our partner in ukraine emergence of laboratory for future 21st century warfare.

russian units employ advanced sensors and imagery enabled by a liberal use of small unmanned aerial systems backed up by very high capable collection platforms and they introduce new levels of battlefield transparency, which really started to catch the attention of senior us army leadership. ukrainian commanders reported to us that within minutes of coming up on the radio net they were targeted by his concentrated artillery strikes that included cluster munitions, which we are getting rid of, thermal baric warheads, which are absolutely nasty and top attack submunitions, they jamming gps signals causing ukrainian uavs to drop out of the sky and they jam proximity fuses on artillery shells turning them into duds. that operation in the ukraine highlighted the new speed up for driven by automated battle networks, boosted by advances in computing power. network attacks were moving at

cyber speed and intense electronic warfare battles to dominate the information terrain along the forward line of troops. this trend is only going to continue. as advanced military experiment with these technologies as well as with others like hypersonic's in the not too distant future we will see directed energy weapons on the battlefield, which operate at the speed of light. now, the next thing i would say is sean bromley, also from cns will publish a monograph today about this, edition, so whether it's the 1000 nautical model anti- access challenge that he talks about, the intra- theater area denial challenge or the challenge of closing the last tactical mile, all while operating under intense cyber attacks, we will have to have technical solutions to these problems. it is that the deification and prioritization of those new

technologies and capabilities, again, what my friend called the elixir of modern military strength, that is the first step that you have to do when going after a third offset strategy. so, over the last 18 months the department has been considering these operational programs, exploring the direction of technological trends and is trying to determine where we might be able to exploit technology and create new operational advantage. we commenced our own long-range research and development planning program led by steve welty, our acting assistant secretary of defense for defense research and of elements and i hope to have no longer acting this week. we will see, fingers crossed. we asked the defense science board to access new technology trends. we reviewed work by dartmouth on what they were doing and a studied high-tech challenges to our space consolation and our ability to project power.

and conducted what is called a strategic portfolio review to look at our program and say where are we missing capabilities and where would we like new capabilities. when you consider the whole body of work and you had kind of diagrams, there was remarkable consistency between them. that gives us confidence that we know that the first step to take and test. this is not about certainty. it is about testing and moving forward. the theme that came out over and over again is what we call human machine collaboration and combat training. now, the miniaturization of nuclear weapons component was the key driver of the first offset. all you have to do is take a look at fat boy and the size of that thing and you say, how do you get that down to a football size munition called the davy

crockett. the davy crockett was a missile that we were going to give to our battalion commanders and give them nuclear release authority in 1956. that is a scary thought. but, we were going to do it and at the technology allowed us to do it if we were so disposed. the key drivers in the second offset where the digital microprocessor, which first appeared in the f-14 in 1972-- 1972 and change the game and term of and combat capability platforms as well as information technologies. so, what is it that really will make human machine collaboration and combat team in a reality rocks that will be advances in artificial intelligence and tommy that we see around us every day. indeed, although they were unable to scientifically prove it, members of that summer studies on a tony believe we are at an inflection point at the

power of artificial intelligence and a tommy. the commercial world has already made the sleep. the department of defense is a follower. a recent study by the bank of america of robotics and artificial intelligence said that the rise of intelligence machine will define the next industrial revolution. ended up at adoption of this disruptive technology in the private sector is now a foregone conclusion. it estimates smart machines and robotics will be forming for a 5% of all manufacturing tasks by 2025 versus the 10% today. from manufacturing to self driving cars to 3d printing to robo analyst traders and advisors of the financial community to voice recognition software to all you have to do is look and see where this is going and this is the advice to the business community, early

adoption will be a key comparative advantage while those that lag in investment will see their competitiveness slip. we believe this conclusion applies directly to the military competition we find ourselves in and our work suggests that a tommy will allow entirely new levels of what we are effort to as man machine symbiosis. leading each do what they do best on the battlefield and our intelligence adjust that are adversaries are already contemplating this move. the russian chief and general's that recently said that the russian military is preparing to fight on our robust size battlefield and he said i quote in the near future it is possible a fully robotic sized units will be created, capable of independent conducting military operations, unquote and i will talk about that in the second. so, the summer study perhaps

said it best. we are already in this competition whether we like it or not and we better get ready for it and better yet we better be prepared spira kisses from earlier today at the center for a new american security and we join them now live. of their break is wrapping up in several more panels prepared for today and a speech to wrap up the end of the day by a chair of the joint chiefs of staff. >> outlining some of the new contours is. we are really starting to see in recent years reemergence of some of the great power politics that word to an extent of secured by the recent wars in iraq and afghanistan. as secretary work mentioned we are seeing a rise in china that is undertaking an aggressive program of military modernization and also being increasingly assertive in the south china sea. we are seeing an interventionist russia that has annexed territory in ukraine and has also deployed military assets in

syria. we think that now is a critical time to be discussing us military capabilities and the reemerging principles of deterrence. so, to discuss these issues i am joined by a group of very creative and provocative minds. to my far left we have elbridge colby, robert m gates senior fellow. prior to joining cns he was the principal analyst individual lead for global strategic affairs for cns and held a number of positions in the us government and is that expert on deterrence strategies, nuclear and space policy and how those relate to conventional capabilities. to his right we have doctor jerry hendricks, jerry is a senior fellow and director of the defense strategy and assessment program at cns and a retired captain in the u.s. navy

and the former director of naval history and heritage command and brings a historical insight to some of these issues. then, to my immediate left we have doctor michael horwitz. mike is an associate professor of political science at the university of pennsylvania as well as an adjunct senior fellow in our technology and national securing program and played in integral rule p read he has also served in government as a counselor on foreign relation international affairs fellow in the office of the under secretary of defense for policy. i would like to ask each of our panelists a couple of questions to kick us off and then we will turn to all of you and i'm sure you will have a lot of questions for them. so, mike, if i could start with you i would like to draw upon some of your work on unmanned systems and emergency-- emerging technologies to a kind of trend do you see with the polarization

of the systems and do you see them impacting, if at all escalation dynamics and strategic stability. >> thank you. i think the proliferation of unmanned and autonomous systems represents one of the most important trends in defense of the day large part because it is the tube of the iceberg of the broader spread of military robotics in the integration military robotics into military services around the world and as secretary work refer to this morning and you can see the trends moving faster i think that a lot of people anticipated. if user-- a few years ago we thought about predator strikes as something the united states could use and not many other countries. in this year nigeria and pakistan, they launch the girl

strikes for the first time, rack purchased groans from china. this is spreading and spread quickly in large part for reasons discussed by the previous panel, the underlying commercial bases of robotics technology meaning that the systems that countries that can acquire the systems faster and there's a lot of spillover from the commercial realm. i think the impacts on stability can be quite profound, but a bit different than many people have talked about. when people talk about the impact of drone strikes, they worry about proliferation of robotics systems lowering the barriers to using force. i actually think in some areas the proliferation of grounds could in the mean stabilizing. the reason is that with most drone missions it's about surveillance and surveillance gives you the ability to figure out whether your adversary is doing something or not, so say in disputed regions around the world i think drones could actually provide incentive to

de-escalate conflicts and for crises to avoid escalation because with modern capabilities you know say that your adversaries are to doing something, which could also depressor incentive to start in the first place to read with regards to ongoing kind of conflict i think that in setting up for escalation is potentially there and there is the concern that countries might the point unmanned systems or autonomous systems in situations where they were not put people and that could potentially lead to the kind of action, reaction dynamics that we see in crisis. autonomous systems i think are different. they are system that where there is not saved person 10 miles away or 2000 miles away or whatever piloting it, autonomous systems are different because of the element of speed that with a thomas systems especially with the potential proliferation of these systems that multiple

countries could be interested in them, what you have are the dynamics of the battle space speeding up and in crises around the world we generally see that they've don't lead to worse. countries squawk at each other more often than they fight and one of the reason is there's time for cooler heads to prevail and one of the concerns about autonomous is that as the cycle gets shorter and a person is out of the loop that could contain within it that seeds where either there is not time for cooler heads to prevail or those cooler heads aren't actually in the decision cycle anymore and that is one reason why i think militaries around the world will be extremely slow when it comes to development, when it comes to the further integration of astronomy into whether-- weapon systems to gillooly when it comes to force. no military once a weapon system but it cannot control and that is not sure what work of. i think those are limits on

those technologies, but i think there is a lot of concern that the element of speed and interaction between speed and tommy if some of the systems about the. >> for those countries who might feel less concern might is or anything the united states could do to defer their deployment? >> i don't know. countries acquire weapons generally because they believe those weapons are important for their own security and in some ways this is one of the issues with american conventional military superiority and something i very much hope continues and because the united states is the best in the world at what it does, the best in the world that carriers, fighters, the best soldiers in the world and that contains within it that incentive for other countries to

push hard in the disruptive technology, whether those disruptive technologies are robotics or something else. they cannot beat united states at its own game and we see this with insurgency conflicts around the world. i think one of the biggest challenges over the next few decades is we will see that emerging and great power competition between nations as well as countries try to figure out ways to counter american military superiority by investing in lots of these new technology areas. i am not sure there is a lot the united states could do to stop them from doing it because they have every interest in doing and that's why it will be critical to the us to stay ahead. >> mike mentioned proliferation of unmanned systems. we see in a number of other countries making investments in precision inviting weapons as well as keep abilities.

>> in terms of their ability to operate or their vulnerability to some of the systems that our competitors are developing. >> i went to start with some the points michael made because i think in pork-- informs the way we have to look at the current state of the us and its capabilities and that goes to that we begin with on assumption that a lot of other countries take a similar view on warfare in the competition. in a like cases i'm not sure that is true. recent russian maneuvers into crimea, ukraine and now the rapid movement into syria and what they brought with them when they did. crimea and ukraine were very much high with standoff capabilities and in line with what your same. it tells us these things can turn left or right or not following the same track we would expect them. when russia set troops into

syria we did not see they were dropping precision weapons or laserguided bombs. they were not trying to be discriminate on who was killed to everyone was combatant and some of these areas, specifically if they were anti- assad. i think that its delay divergence from sort of a line of development with unmanned systems and why i'm concerned about a because i think it does increase awareness and we think awareness, the school of art is that the awareness will bring about stability in line with what you said, but also when you have someone who is on aggressor and takes neoclassic approach, vladimir putin could say i just need to know where you are not and that's where i will be an rather than bringing stability

it enables instability. we have actually seen that and we were expecting everyone to develop missile system and laserguided bombs in line with what we have been in we were confused as to why precision strike was not proliferating in a way we expected it to. what we fail to take into account is different cultures have taken a different look. there are things like geography that takes a play. the indians for instance, crews-- cruise missiles and indians looked at more ballistic missiles and the russians for longtime precision did not matter. they did in place a great if this is on limiting collateral damage. so, as we look at where they are proliferating in what is proliferating, what we do know, for instance, with regard to the chinese and the russians we are seeing rapid development.

both in the high north and the russians of which is an area we are not spending a lot of time talking about an ability to establish and marmots over the baltics is something that should troublous as well as what we are looking with the chinese and follow-on missiles. so, the united states is doing with the idea of pushing back some of its traditional conventional forces being unable to operate within the zones and i think that we are behind in adapting to that. we sort of made a strategic that after the end of the cold war that shorter range, the ability to operate close would be in permissive environments would characterize that and like he said that ended. he gave us a good date as a historian and i am inclined to accept his date with regard to the chinese buildup, the artificial reefs and russia's moves that that post world war era is over, but we sort have lagged strategically in our

approach and i think the time has come to take the turn and make significant investments to give us an ability to operate. >> you spent a lot of time thinking about some of these emerging power dynamics as well as the relationship between conventional abilities. what do you see is it being different about this era of great power politics? what are some of the key challenges to the us and what are components of a successful strategy going forward? >> thanks very much, kelly. will come i think with the deputy secretary said was not only right on and refocusing that apartment in the nation's effort on major plow-- power conflict, but encouraging. it's really important and encouraging to see that there is great retention because there is a problem and i very much agree with the deputy secretary that this is the most significant potential contingency that our

nation could face especially when we bear in mind we are art extending nuclear and conventional over 230 countries, many which are close to our potential major power adversaries, so that apartment is already fixated beginning to focus on the issue of major power conflict. but, i think that was important to bear in mind and i sometimes fear is a bit neglected is that any such conflict certainly if it oxley happens, that even as preparation for what i like to think of as imagined wars that shape the political sort of force field between the major and among the major powers is that any such conflict will operate under the nuclear shadow or may actually involve nuclear use and i think that is vital to bear in mind. sometimes it's forgotten. the most obvious and in our face example these days is the russia-- russia strategy. the russian's have been thinking clearly and carefully about how to employ different weapons in a timid way to try to turn into

conflict. of are also less directly and less overtly, but also thinking about the role of nuclear weapons in a conflict and it seems their strategy is probably more to gain conventional superiority or dominance in the western pacific than de-escalation on us, but they are modernizing the size we can tell somewhat extending nuclear force will give them more options for limited nuclear use. any conflict that involve the united states and china or the united states and russia will involve a nuclear weapon. for us to have unaffected defensive strategy to deal with this and conserve our traditional strategy, which i think we should continue as a deterrent, we need to figure out how to deal with this problem rather than hope it goes away, which is not unreasonable and has sometimes been our inclination in the last century. i think this means having a defense strategy that clearly and practically has ways of

plausibly destroying an adversary amusing nuclear weapons or god for bid bid if clear weapons or god for bid bid if they have been used terminating their usage on terms that are sufficiently favorable to us. the qdro of last year made noise in this direction when is that we will not let an adversary -esque lay its way out of conventional defeat. this is one speech. there to be commended for mentioning this, but it's well-known that was probably more of an aspiration than a reality in terms of planning a picture of it. i think some initial steps in this direction are sort of d catalyzing the thought within the department of defense and having a conventional nuclear integration because this is how are our adversaries are thinking about it. i think more broadly and this is what i'm thinking a lot about these days, a lot of this will be thinking creatively, clearly and carefully about the problem of limited war. that is we are dealing with

potential adversaries whose conventional military is extremely preventable and may be able to contest our ability to prevail over a certain timeframe under certain conditions and also have survival. with a more modern nuclear force and current trends continue, but i think the point is that we need to think about how the united states and its allies can fight wars and set an operate within the terms of limitation a way that is favorable and we achieved our objective, but the adversary doesn't escalate in a way that put that back on us.

>> we should be strong but not in ways that are unduly provocative, but in ways that could manipulate both conventional forces and nuclear forces. let me give you a very clear example. in the baltics today, the russians we've heard about the little green men, these are are capabilities to deployed. would pose a very severe threat for nato forces in general. and then they have a nuclear strategy where they're thinking

about using limited nuclear threats or attacks to try to spook nato into backing down, and the russians have been conducting mock -- how can we make sure that we have cohesion, that our use of force is seen as legitimate. and i think this is important, just wanted to touch a little bit on what deppty secretary work said, because i think where he's going is absolutely right, but i do think we're going to need to think more about what is the right standard for deterrence under what conditions. deputy secretary work said, i think absolutely rightly, that the best form of deterrence is the ability to defeat the adversary. but what happens if it's either not plausible, which may be the case particularly be we don't get our act together, but leads them to's chait in ways that -- escalate many ways that seem.

alternative mixtures of forms of deterrence. in the baltics my proposal is we should have a conventional force that is enough to make any russian aggressioning in that area clearly brazen. it's a way of saying if the russians go in, they will clearly be the aggressor, and that will legitimize us more effectively and more reliably. and i think this is the kind of thinking that we need to get back into which is to see, to think about limited war, to think about the political element of conflict in a way that is going to be uncomfortable in a way for many in the defense establishment, but i think our adversaries are thinking that way, and we can't be put in a position where our lack of fore thought allows them to get away with murder. >> well, as promised, you paint a very provocative picture there. and i think in many ways it goes

against the thrust of some of the thinking we've seen lately in the obama administration. so i'd like to ask you a bit about investments, particularly if the united states has reduced its arsenal, its nuclear arsenal. as president obama has made statements like the prague speech in which he professed an interest in moving towards a world without nuclear weapons. how do you assess the current nuclear arsenal as a particular investment that you think we should be making, and how should we be integrating that into our broader capabilities? >> great. thanks, kelly. the first thing is, again, this kind of conceptual piece which is integrating them so that nuclear does not seem like, oh, they deal with it and they do whatever it is they do. rather, it's something people are thinking about in conceptualizing their plans, in thinking about the procurements that they want to pursue or seek that is involved in the development of policy documents, etc., etc.

i think structurally actually what i'm talking about does not involve radical shifts either in conventional forces or in nuclear forces. on the conventional side, i think it's when we think about particularly high-end conventional systems, i think it means putting some degree of a premium on capability to limit their employment in a way that's more favorable to us. that is, you don't want to run into the problem in some sense, that you don't want to -- ordering the use of a certain capability inevitably renders a war more total. and we can talk about the specifics there. on the nuclear side, i think it's having greater -- well, preserving what capabilities for discrimination and tailoring that exist, which is a problem especially in light of developing adversary air defense and other defenses, and expanding them where reasonable, you know, short of doing something, you know, crazy. but basically having the ability to have the president be able to order relatively precisely a certain kind of strike and have that strike go as, as ordered.

in a world where the b-2 and other kinds of systems are increasingly vulnerable to the s-400, that's not something we can necessarily bank on as a technology. i also think it means having a nuclear command and control system able to do the battle damage assessment, etc., to put us in a favorable position should conflict escalate. the russians should not be able to think they can manipulate the ladder of escalation better than we can. that's not to say we are enabling this conflict, it's to say, russia, china, you can't put us in a position where we don't have an appropriate response even though we're fighting in a territory that's 5,000 miles away from us. i don't think what i'm saying involves a radical change. i would also shift the way the country talks about nuclear weapons. i think, you know, the goal of abolition is a laudable one in many respects, but i think that, you know, we are entering a period of major power competition and potentially, god

forbid, conflict. so i think we should talk about stability, like the responsible management of the absolute weapon, of these perilous and dangerous and horrible weapons and speak frankly about them but not give the impression that we are trying to reduce their role necessarily. we may try to minimize their role, but recognize that there's a certain equilibrium that will exist based upon the strategic situation that exists. >> jerry, i'd like to ask you the same question with regard to conventional capabilities. you recently released a report retrieved from range that's looking at the decline of range in the carrier air wing, and i think you acolluded to some of thety -- alluded to some of the deficiencies as you see them. but what kind of preparations should the u.s. be making? >> well, there's three major themes that emerged out of the report as i did the historical research and the back of it, was that the characteristics, the defining characteristics of the air wing as they emerged in the

19 tos during the -- 1930s during the period of fleet experimentation were massed, meaning the size of the air wing, how much ordnance can they carry or payload capacity, and how far can those aircraft en masse carry the payload to be able to have an effect upon the opposing enemy fleet or, for that matter, enemy land forces? and that's governed the evolution of the carrier air wing million we essentially reached the -- until we essentially reached the post-cold war area. saw the decrease in range as the a-12 program was canceled and the a-6 naturally retired and also some decisions we made with regard to a flat budget, you know? when you have a procurement that's flat but you have a steadily increasing cost per unit, then we actually saw the size of the air wing coming down. so, for instance, when i deployed onboard nuclear aircraft carrier in the early 1990s, we had an air wing that

was about 84. at one point in time we had an air wig that was 94 -- wing that was 94 care craft. so we've seen the overall size come down. but we're facing an environment right now where numbers matter. i mean, it not only matters with carrier air wing, it matters with the size of the fleet, it matters with the size of the army as general millie spoke of this morning so far as number of units in contact is something we have to pay attention to because you cannot be virtually present when it comes to some of these operations. however, it doesn't necessarily mean everything has to be manned. i think there is a role for manned/unmanned, and we do have to find some way of breaking that cost curve to be able to grow the size of the military. i think there's a classic strategy, in fact, the strategy that emerged after -- during the end of vietnam. we were still in vietnam, recognized that we saw some budget decreases coming, and we went with a high/low mix. and, in fact, the f-18 hornet

and the f-16 came as matching aircraft in line with the f-15 and the f-14 that we knew that those were going to be very high priced units that we couldn't purchase in large numbers, so we had to purchase these other aircraft to sort of fill out the air wings of those days. that ability to vary your purchase in order to maintain the aviation fleet size in that case, and i think that we could do a similar thing with the surface fleet by making alternative investments that we could rapidly grow back above 30 ships. my estimates, actually, when i still worked in osd policy while i was on active duty was we had an actual requirement of about 350 ships. now we seem to be hoping we can get to 308. so i think we're going to have to use some alternate acquisition strategies to do a mixture of high-end, exquisite technologies and low-end capabilities to come in matching pairs. there's a lot to be said with, you know, hornets that are carrying a boatload of weapons that are operating in

conjunction with the joint strike fighter in some or sort a network environment or, for that matter, manned and unmanned teams that are able to carry things in greater distances. those are the types of innovative strategies, i think, that are begging us to pursue at this point in time. we just need to break out of sort of the calcified thinking that's dominated us for the last generation. >> mike, i'd like to ask you some about investments in emerging technologies. the offset strategy is something that's come up several times today. secretary work mentioned his approach to the offset strategy as did general millie. as you're thinking about these technologies as a whole, are there particular areas that you think are particularly promising in terms of strengthening deterrence and that we should be investing in more heavily so that we're better prepared for the long term? >> i think consistent with what bridge and jerry both said, they both emphasized in different sorts of ways a decline in

numbers that we have seen over time and a growth in quality. and this is consistent if you, again, go back to the end of the vietnam war and the shift to the all-volunteer army. what you see then, you see an increase in the investment in people, because you need to, essentially, pay for your people in a way that you didn't have to before and an increasing emphasis on a smaller number of higher quality platforms. and that has been the fundamental basis of american military superiority ever since then. but if you think that, a new generation of technologies not just robotics, but also you can think about cyber here, you can think about human performance in synthetic bio, if the underlying basis of these technologies is going to spread around the world much more quickly, then the underlying basis of u.s. military superiority also will have to change at least somewhat. and that investing in a small number of high quality, very expensive systems isn't necessarily going to do it.

and there's no better area where we see this in some ways in the debate about the u-class, the navy's next generation unmanned carrier air system. in some ways, it's in line with what michele flournoy was saying this morning about defense reform, and it gets to acquisition reform. and the debate that's been going on for several years now about whether the navy should buy, you know, the more advanced version of -- design more advanced version of the u class that can operate in a 280 environment or whether it should essentially develop a reaper on a boat. both of those are useful capabilities that the navy could -- and i'm being pejorative in the way i describe reaper on a boat -- but both of those are capabilities that the navy certainly can, you know, needs and should use. the problem is that the way that our procurement and acquisition system is built now we basically only get one shot at it. we'll build one of those. it'll take us, i mean, however long it takes to do that, and

then what happens after that? if the, if our decision cycles need to speed up because new technologies are spreading more quickly, that means that our acquisition system also needs to speed up. and so these one-size-fits-all sort of 30 years' military procurement systems can't necessarily be the way the u.s. does business in the world of emerging technologies. so rather than basically putting, thinking about it from a poker perspective. rather than pushing all of our chips to the middle on one version of the u class or another, just to stay on that analogy, what the u.s. needs to be doing more -- and it's why i was heartened to see secretary work talk about experimentation -- is making a larger number of small bets on future technologies that the united states is then able to take advantage of as the security environment evolves. since it's hard to tell what of the last 15 years taught us, if anything, then frankly, we're

not always the best at predicting what the future security environment's going to look like. you know, four or five years ago thinking about russia invading a sovereign country in russia seeming and what russia's doing in syria didn't necessarily seem like the highest issue on the u.s. foreign policy agenda. now things are very different as bridge was describing, and we have to rethink the way what the nuclear conventional mix potentially looks like in deterrence in a new era. precisely because of that uncertainty about the future security environment or combined with these shifts in the speed with which technology is evolving, you know, getting into things like machine learning and artificial intelligence and other areas, we need to be more agile. and agility in this case means not placing really large bets on a small number of systems, but instead retaining the ability to innovate faster and to build, essentially, smaller numbers of systems with shorter production

cycles in a way that does potentially shift the cost curve a bit when it comes to future military systems. and this will not be easy in large part because this runs against, you know, going back to what jerry mentioned about culture before, goes against the bureaucratic culture of a system that's been designed, essentially, to do the opposite over the last 40 years. to build a small number of the best military platforms in the world and pair those with the best people. we don't only need to make sure there's people in the world moving forward which, of course, is priority number one, we also need to insure that the way we're developing these platforms is in line with the way that technology is changing. >> so i'd like to open it up to the audience. but before i do, i have a quick question because all three of you mentioned some major impediments to some of the, some of the proposals that you made. and mike just gave us one of his ideas in terms of making small bets for overcoming some of

these impediments. are there other types of actions that we could undertake that might help us along? >> i mean, i think one of the things the secretary alluded to this morning is something we ought to look at which is reigniting that experimentation loop that goes on between the building, going on with universities like the naval war college or the air war college and then industry and our laboratories so that ideas are being tested. a lot of things, one of the reasons -- i mean, i always hearken backing to the f-100 series, but the century series of aircraft and how quickly it developed during the late 1950s and 1960s, but a lot of that's been overtaken by computer simulation and modeling. i understand that, and there's a place for that in the experimentation cycle now, but that should be taken up in places like the labs with darpa as well as, but it needs to be integrated at the war college and needs to be integrated back

out. right now the loop seems to be broken, and right now the loop right now seems to be back and forth between the hill and the pentagon with, in a ping-pong match rather than sort of an outreach. i think that reigniting that experimentation loop and reenergizing would be a good way ahead. >> i guess i'd jutte say for the kinds of -- i'd just say for the kind of broader issue is, i think the recognition that, you know, in the foreseeable future the united states could lose a potential conflict against a very serious adversary under the conditions that i'm kind of -- the types of conditions i'm kind of talking about. because i think once there's that recognition, i don't think it's yet the case in a broader defense policy conversation, then people will say, well, oh wait, we really do need to do these different kinds of things. because it's more important this really catastrophic thing could actually -- and i'm not talking about, you know, marching into washington, but i'm talking about limited conflicts where an adversary does have a strategy for, you know, cutting the thing

off before we are able to respond or want to respond sufficiently. and that's why i think what the deputy secretary, undersecretary kendall, secretary carter, secretary hagel and general breedlove and others, what they're saying is true. i sometimes hear it in europe, well, don't exaggerate the problem, don't exaggerate the threat. you don't want to give the russians, the chinese, others more of an appetite, but i think -- they see what we're doing. but i think it's more important in our own conversations being the political system that we are and our allies are that we understand how serious this problem is and that it's getting worse. you know, you look at the rand scorecard on china, and it's heading down. you look at under secretary kendall's charts in space, maritime, etc., etc. , and it's a really sobering picture. and i think that has implications across the force but also in the conventional nuclear piece. >> great. well, let's open it up for questions. if you could, please, wait for

the mic to come to you and please, also, introduce yourself. is there a mic, right? >> thank you. i'm mitzi worth, and i'm with the naval postgraduate school. i recognize this is primarily a can conference on what i'm going to call technology, but it seems to me the biggest problem we have is we don't understand the other. and it was easy when i came to the defense department 38 years ago, it was the soviet union. we understood how they spoke, how they thought, what they would do, and they did the same for us. i don't consider that a large part of the problems that we're facing today. how do we build that into our education and training and what i would hope would be a learning organization? maybe you're the wrong people to ask, but i think it's a subject that we have to address in a very broad way.

>> jerry, do you want to tackle that one? >> so i'll start. because i think, actually, all of us, you know, would look at this as what a learning organization is in a different perspective. so, you know, as a lifelong devotee of the humanities after my failure of calculus i at purdue in the aerospace engineering program when i became a political science major, you know, i've been in love with ideas of people and cultures and interactive groups and organizational behavior, and that really has characterized most of my study and research over years. and so, you know, one of the things that i've always enjoyed is the exploration of the other which goes into their cultures and their view points. and, again, i've always been skeptical of sort of the u.s. view that everyone wants to be like us. the fact is, they don't. most of the countries that i have traveled to, sometimes at their invitation, sometimes not at their invitation, most of the people that i've dealt with did

not necessarily want to be like me. they did not want to wear blue jeans, you know, and listen to john cougar mellencamp songs. so -- >> that might be you though. >> that could have been me. [laughter] so, and also, you know, like food. i mean, i don't understand a lot of foreign food. but that being said, you know, so i think that we have to be more respectful, actually, of the viewpoints and the challenge those viewpoints represent in that, you know, a lot of our ideas that comes out of our own particular cultural experience don't naturally translate, nor are they naturally adaptable. so i think that's important as we consider strategy. this comes back to what i was alluding to after mike's initial comments here. i'm not sure that the russians want to be me precise. i think there's an aspect to the way the russians wage war that says i'd like to be indiscriminate, and i like people to be a little bit more fearful. we want to garner people's respect and add admiration and affection. i'm not sure the russians move in with that type of

perspective, nor do i think that translates, quite frankly w the chinese. our views on the individual and the reports of the individual in our culture doesn't necessarily translate within their culture. how do we take that into account in war and strategy? and those things have to be brought up. you know, with regard to learning organizations, yes, as to how technology -- i'm the wrong guy to ask about that. you know, it was difficult enough for me to learn the technology i was presented with in any career. but i think bridge and mike, perhaps, could take that up. >> i think the learning the technology is easy -- [inaudible] is hard. >> yes, sir. right here. >> i don't really need a microphone, but i'll use it. >> it'll be helpful -- >> good afternoon, i'm stu bradenton. in recent years we've seen a massive growth in special operations worldwide. everybody seems to be doing it.

the u.k. just doubled their budget to their special operations. how do you account for that growth of special operations in the current and future operating environment? >> i think the growth in special operations is one of the most interesting trends in militaries around the world, including as you alluded to but certainly not limited to the united states military. in some ways from the perspective of some of the things we're talking about, the special operations forces embed a lot of the qualities we want to be in our broader military services in that they're more agile, for example, able to deploy new technologies a little bit faster and a little bit more organizationally nimble. since while a lot of this panel has been about technology, technology's only useful when it's used by highly trained people and with operational concepts that help you achieve your objectives. and it's those things in combination that have, say, made

the united states military and u.s. special operations, special forces the best in the world. and so i would expect in some ways the role of special operations from a -- going back to technology, from a technology perspective as an incubator to continue. and particularly, you know, for the sorts of technologies that are, you know, can be sized for special operations, special operations units. but at some point i think to the extent the growth of special operations will, you know, whether it continues or not, i think that has much more to do probably with the evolution and the future security environment as anything and that the more those sorts of forces are seen as the, you know, the optimal sort of instrument to deploy in a particular conflict, the more likely we are to see them grow. but i suspect the rest -- we might see some growth in the rest of the world. since jerry's right, say the russians not always using precision strike reflects their

interests, and when they use force, it might be slightly different than the united states in some cases. but mimicry certainly happens. and to the extent that militaries sometimes do wish to emulate the american model, i think you do see a little bit of that in the growth of special operations forces. >> i would jump on that, too, to point out that, essentially, with the advent of the nuclear weapon and as strategic deterrence that goes along with that, it's opened up -- the middle ground has been kind of vacated in that even though we like to size our large land forces for the big full-to-gap battle or the maneuvers in the desert and so on. the fact of the matter is both vietnam as well as our last 11 years, 14 years of experience have really been counterinsurgency, soft-like operations. and so that occupation that we have with the strategic is sense that, you know, going big in war, you know, really ends up in places we really don't like to talk about has driven us towards this. the difficulty i have is that

despite both of those long experiences in vietnam as well as in iraq and afghanistan, as soon as we can get ourselves out of that, we want to get our force back to sort of planning force structure and force size towards large maneuvering combat elements, and that is unwise. i would say that one of the things that santorum me was that naval -- have -- that struck me was naval forces tend to my nor in the sense that we're always out, we're always deployed, we're always in the neighborhood, we get to know people, the local actors, and we tend to interact on a more consistent basis which is more in line with soft doctrine than, perhaps, the large land battle doctrine. >> yes, ma'am. yes. >> okay. strategic deterrence in a new era. i wonder if the new era is possibly a little ahead of what we've been describing here, and

that's been reaction to iraq, the russians, the ukraine, that kind of thing. if you've been listening to ted koppel, if you've been hearing about the home grown now being called terrorist attacks on the home front, and that was not just the recent one, it was also boston, there seems to be a great possibility as i see it for just a tremendous upheaval over something that doesn't seem to be getting a lot of attention in terms of do deterrence. my confusion is, is there a line, is there a specialty between home front security to protect us from this versus the military? and how, how do we look at it? the if i look -- if i'm reading things correctly, the new era is in these little pockets that can

just cause havoc. if our grid, our electric grid, our transportation grid goes under, it can paralyze the entire country here. i'm curious to get some response on that, please. >> yeah. i mean, i think, look, we're dealing with a multifaceted security environment, threats coming from a number of vectors. i think -- and it's actually, apropos of the special operations force, my main sense and deputy secretary work has been writing along these lines for a number of years including before he went into government, but we're probably going to be dealing with several categories of challenges, one of which is radical islam and the kind of terrorist threat including, potentially, weapons of mass destruction or mass effect including potential cyber capabilities if they're able to be used at that scale, but also more traditional weapons of mass destruction. but at the same time, we're going to be dealing with great power dynamics in a more competitive geopolitical environment. i mean, i think the probability

of an attack by radical islamic terrorists or other kinds of record arists is, obviously, a lot -- terrorists is, obviously, a lot higher. but the scale, the potential cost of a major war between the united states and russia or united states and china dwarfs that, you know, that kind of median kind of threat from a radical islamic source. i think the bottom line is we're going to have to do both, and my sense is that we should focus our capabilities on maintaining our conventional and our strategic advantages where possible to continue to sustain what we used to call the free world from attack or coercion which is in high-end conventional forces, nuclear forces, you know, aerospace dominance, etc. and at the same time, invest in intelligence capabilities, law enforcement, partnership building, etc., etc., designed to, designed to both deter, negate, eliminate, etc., the threats from radical sources that are likely to persist for

the foreseeable future, unfortunately. so we're going to have to, we're going to have to degrade and destroy what we have, cocontain where we can't -- contain where we can't. but the bottom line, you know, what we're talking about here is a subject that in these kinds of quarters getting a hearing, but in the broader political conversation tends to get drowned out by these concerns about radical islam. and these are very, very serious and need and require very focused and serious attention. but on the other hand, when we're thinking about our national strategy, what doesn't quite make the news on a day-to-day basis may actually be more con consequential in certan ways in terms of our budgetary decisions n terms of our policy, in terms of the most risky and costly potential outcomings. >> yes, sir. right here in the front. you have the honor of being our last question. >> lucky me. cameron -- [inaudible] bloomberg government.

in the late '70s, early '80s as conventional forces -- our conventional forces -- improved in their capabilities, that was seen as contributing to a more stable deterrent capability. so my question for the panel is, if we are going to improve our conventional forces, is that stabilizing, or does it have a risk associated with it? >> very interesting question. you know, i think stability is something i've thought about a lot, and the notion behind strategic stability and stability of all kinds is that two powers that are in some degree of hostile relationship can find some basis for stability, for a tolerable equilibrium that is somewhat flexible and plastic enough to adapt to geopolitical conditions. of course, in practice usually one side or both sides are seeking advantage and so forth and so on.

i mean, in the 1970s and 1980s, you know, i think it's worth remembering that it was assumed well into the 1980s that the soviets could be at the english channel in the course of about three weeks. so a lot of what the conventional deterrent in practice was oriented towards was raising the threshold. in a sense, doing what i'm talking about with the baltics, which is to say maybe there was a vision that in the 1990s or 2000s the united states and nato would be able to actually defeat the warsaw pact in an out and out conflict assuming it didn't dissolve on contact. but i don't think anybody ever really thought -- that battle was still kind of a series of sharks in the middle '80s, but it was successful in the sense that it freaked the soviets out along with the deployment of -- [inaudible] in pershing. i think in that sense it was stabilizing in the way that today things will be stabilizing because it was intended to plug a hole. and the hole that deputy secretary work recognized or pointed to was the advent of

parity and, basically, you know, nato had been the one that would say if you cross the intergerman border, we're going to brown the world. first we'll fight conventionally until we lose, then we'll fight with tactical weapons until we lose, then we'll blow up the world. it's not a credible strategy when the adversary has a retaliatory capability. the improvements in the conventional capability stabilized from the western point of view the situation by making it much less attractive for the soviets too. i think today we face a situation which the russians are nowhere near the red army, but nato is nowhere near nato was. i think general scales put it in the journal that even u.s. forces in nato don't have basic air defense capabilities. i mean, they have, i think, or tmd kind of capabilities, but they lack shorter range air defense capabilities. american forces have not fought without air superiority since at least korea, maybe world war ii. this is the situation in which the russians have strike capabilities of their own.

meanwhile, the germans are practicing, doing military exercises with broomsticks. it's an unfair story, but there's also a lot of truth in it. what i worry, and i sometimes think am i talking about the baltics too much, but then i think, wait a minute, the russians could be there very quickly, and the americans would have to suppress enemy defenses, would have to blow a lot of things up, and it would take us a long -- quite a bit of time. and, you know, with the nato allies -- so i think the stealizing thing is to plug if not fully plug, make that hole a lot less attractive. i think it's stabilizing. of i'm sure the russians have a different view, but i'm sure i'm right. [laughter] >> i would also say it's kind of interesting, you know, because history being 20 sheriff 20, we look back at the '70s, early 1980s as this period of stabilizing. and as probably the only person on the stage that actually, you know, can remember that time frame, you know, it was a time of a lot of instability. and, in fact, we know from

looking at the soviet archives that, you know, andropov was convinced that reagan was going to come in 1983, and we were going to go into all-out nuclear war at that time. so the contemporary account of the era was that it was a very destabilizing era because of the rapid growth of our buildup. and i think it's interesting, you know, if we take the sec-def's snap of the chalkline from 2013, 2014 as this turning point to keep in account that, you know, the strategic deterrent era, the containment era, you know, was never as clear, you know, to those who were participating in its forgulation as what -- formulation as to what it appears to us now in hindsight. as we feel our way through not into a great power competition between us and soviet union but, actually, at least a three-legged stool right now between us, china and russia, if europe can step it up above 2% of gdp, you know, then maybe they can play in this too. then i think that, you know,

we're still trying to figure out what the new equilibrium point is going to be as we go through some sort of a buildup. that buildup may be in high-tech, that may be buildup in more broader generic forces. we don't know how to characterize that. i appreciate the leadership and vision that sec-def work is coming s and i do hope that whoever the next administration takes up this initiative and continues to move it forward. i think it's the only responsible thing to do from a bipartisan standpoint that we need to move forward with some of these initiatives. >> i would just say that i think the hole now is the risk of self-deterrence, because we risk that others are catching up in a way that, thus, makes the u.s. less comfortable with deploying certain assets with potential scenarios in the pacific doing with the carrier and china's developing antiship ballistic missile being an example of in this. so development of new conventional military technologies, i think, is

unlikely to be destabilizing, except insofar as adversaries would rather the u.s. didn't have great military -- i mean, of course. but we'll be stabilizing insofar as it fixes a genuine capabilities hole that seems to be developing that could make it a lot harder for the united states to execute its strategy and project power around the world. >> well, i know that there were a number of other questions, and i apologize that we weren't able to get to all of them, but i'm afraid that our time is up. thank you very much for joining us, and please do can stay with us for the preview of citizen soldier. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> hello, everyone. hope you enjoyed your lunch and you're right now in the postlunch phase, so we're going to try to do something different and power you through to chairman dunford who will be here in the next half anç hourr so. my name is sean brimley, i'm the executive vice president here at cnas. last year we were honored to arrange a private screening for a compelling documentary on the war in afghanistan called the hornet's nest. the movie followed a father/son documentary team as they embedded in a front line u.s. army unit and encountered some of the fiercest fighting of the war. the film won critical acclaim around the country and helped draw attention back to the wars in afghanistan and iraq which are still, unfortunately, with us today. on a recent trip to los angeles, michelle

michele flournoy and i were grateful to be exposed to some of the projects that theç production team at strong eagle media -- the team that put together the hornet's nest -- is putting together. one of which they've agreed to share some advance footage with us today. so so without further ado, let me introduce the clip and describe some of their projects, join me in welcoming david salzburg from strong eagle media. david. [applause] >> it's an honor to be here, and i want to thank michele and sean and everyone at cnas for inviting us. the way that we release these films is with the community, with the military, with the charities we work with, people that are behind the men and women that serve. and one of my partners, wendy anderson, she couldn't make it today, she's actually very ill, stuck in california. and that's actually nicer here weather wise. but she's stuck out there, and

she couldn't make it. at strong eagle media, we have a commitment to tell the stories of those who serve with no political agenda. and if you have seen the hornet's nest, thank you and please share it. if you haven't seen it, we will give you a copy, or we'll e-mail you a digital copy. so, please, see me directly, and we'll make that happen. and let's let the clip do the talking. can you cue up the citizen soldier clip? is it ready to go? so this -- we were embed with the the 45th oklahoma national guard. and the front lines in 2011. they lost 14. they've lost 19 since 2001. but most people in america don't know that the national guard's lost 780 since 9/11. so this was about big army and the marine corps, this is about our citizen soldiers. please roll the clip.

♪ ♪ >> more than 50 guard members are helping transport victims to hospitals after tornadoeses swept across the state leaving at least 16 people dead. ♪ ♪ >> right there! [gunfire] ♪ ♪ >> we are going to be walking into a firestorm. we've heard stories about it, we heard it was a hot area. >> basically, we are going into no man's land. >> this is where you can start expecting contact, all right? [gunfire] >> ied, ied, ied!

>> after that, all hell just brokes loose. [gunfire] ♪ ♪ >> what the [bleep] was that? >> ambush. [gunfire] >> hey, sir, we got wounded down there. >> go take off running. ..

citizen soldier with you until the day you die. when we run the other clip can you kill the spotlight as possible? its important to us -- i'm from boston if you can't tell if i ask that i usually need an interpreter. a lot of us and especially our team i have a group of people, might my business partner and wendy anderson on the team, we

have people from different backgrounds working together to tell stories of the men and women that served. the audience knows only 1% served, 2.8 million since the beginning but the rest doesn't know with this or they disassociate it from us because they don't want to have to worry about it. the citizen soldiers earned their citizenship like the men and women in audience have all served and we also have amazing people -- we are very fortunate it wasn't at the beginning that's when i called some of the families that were not thrilled to hear my boston accent when i said we were going to tell the story they actually hung up on me until they realized that our boots and feeds feed and bowels were all going the same way. that's why it's been an incredible tool. many of the families say that its digital medicine. we have raised more than $10 million for military charities and we are just getting started but we couldn't

do it without the members of the units and the families involved because without them helping us it would be their story and i'm honored i have a friend in the audience who is a gold star widow and an advocate on the hill. can you please stand? [applause] i'm wearing her husband's bracelet. christopher was a sniper in this unit and the 2,011th. we know that storytelling can be effective for good and bad three of your choosing to do it for good and we have friends in the audience like lockheed and boeing and charities like infinite hero of the soldiers and the greens compare men and sailors to get permission down.

i want to show you the opening film by the way citizen soldier will come out memorial day month because we are going to make it red, white, blue tie and our partners will put in 4,000 we will hopefully get the guard out and get car out and get the community to come together memorial day not to sell more cars or barbecue spots were barbecues but to honor the men and women that served so this will be out in may and then the next film is a female reporter she went with the teams for two years and this is all real. there is no actors, it's what you see is real. let me show you the opening of the next film if you can tell the kill the spotlight -- there you go.

thank you. >> [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] sergeant, they are getting ammunition from the house right

now. >> [inaudible] speech of whenever you are ready go-ahead.

>> [inaudible] >> we need you down here now. he's on the move, let's go. move, move, move. >> i'm going with you. [inaudible] they are preparing for another attack right now.

>> i need you to continue. [inaudible] save your ammo! let's go get them. we have to get his kit. where is his rifle.

they are going to shoot for more rockets. storytelling can be used for good or bad and in this case they all come in as individuals and when they leave the nest

hopefully citizen soldier at the same effect they leave as one. it's not about left or right come it's about being american and you know more than the rest of the countries that you're involved in. thank you very much for having me. [applause] that was incredibly powerful footage even having seen it a few times before. we have a few minutes you can have a little bit of a discussion maybe i can start off with you. you came back and said we are going to do an important event and we were skeptical that it would be all that much of an important thing.

can you talk about how this medium and why it's important now. >> most americans don't serve in the military. most don't even know someone serving in the military. and so, they feel grateful for what the u.s. military does in terms of protecting the nation but to their feel for it sectional and so forth. what struck me is how down to earth it was. it wasn't hollywood, it was a documentary following a marine unit through their experience in afghanistan, real people with their experiences and sacrifice

and impact both in terms of the mission but also in terms of the families and the broad community. and it just seemed seems like such an opportunity to bring the footage but also the possibility of having the reality-based conversation in washington so we saw the opportunity around the september 11 anniversary to hold a screening on capitol hill to invite the members of the media and others to come see the film and then we had a panel of the commanders plus the filmmakers and one of the journalists who was profiled in the movie to talk about the real world experience in afghanistan and the meaning of the kind of sacrifices that we asked the troops to make in recent years, so to me it seemed we were very

good about being intellectually in our heads in these conversations this is a conversation that involves not only the intellect but over hearts and souls and that was important on the anniversary of september and november so please stay tuned. >> it's not even about -- there were ten people working on this important film, but you also do a lot talking with the families. can you talk about the dialogue with the families of the fallen and also talked talk to us about how you approached this project

to work with them. >> sure. i've worked on some fairly significant films which was a fairly big company. but when you are working on a film it is usually difficult but it's even more difficult when you talk to someone about their lost loved ones and we are very sensitive to that and we work with the families throughout the whole process which is difficult in the beginning. we want the families to work with us and jane has been unbelievable and the officer couldn't get them to send the footage to us because there's a trust factor there is a trust factor that have some people's worst days and we are also getting footage that's very graphic for the families will

never see and we are very sensitive to that and we don't use graphic violence or blood in the film. it's not whether it is men and women we also don't show them if they people maybe and being aware it's about real people and families and sons and daughters as a difficult thing to families call us and i had a call yesterday with a bad screen the hornets nest and he said god bless you and thank god you did this and he says the film saved his life. so when you get that responsibility -- a filmmaker and i have partners that won oscars there's certain times in your life that you will have stories more important than the

movie be smart enough to recognize when that is and this is the time and we need as a group to come together because the people just aren't aware as if they are aware they will make a difference and get out in front of it but it's a very difficult thing. michael prince is the young sergeant killed in the scene and with jane and he with jamie and his widow who is 25, 26-years-old had never seen this footage, so we showed her first we went to her house and created the stone and watched the footage because if she didn't want us to use if we aren't going to say that is a long answer, i apologize. >> but it's important. please join me in thanking them for their work. [applause]

>> thank you for bringing the footage to us. i want to thank all of you for coming and for staying. it's hard to believe that they are approaching the tenure in the anniversary we've dedicated ourselves to try to shape and elevate to growing the next generation and hopefully you've seen evidence of both of those aspects of the mission today. on the action agenda is to

prepare the intellectual capital for the next administration and as you all know that's been a year from now and there's been the president elect into the commander-in-chief preparing to take the oath of office and to the resurgent russia to the intentions with china the next inheritance will be daunting and there will be little time for introspection as he or she faces a plethora of challenges but thankfully the next president will inherit also the best trained and best led in the and best equipped military force in the world they have today and the pace of operations and remain incredibly challenging.

we are incredibly lucky to have selfless professional military leaders who've devoted their lives to shaping and sustaining the armed forces. the general is one of those military leaders that spent decades leading u.s. marines at every level of command including in combat he spent 22 months of his life in iraq where he earned the moniker of fighting joe and then as you know he served as the nato commander of the forces in afghanistan. he was called back to washington, d.c. to become the commandant of the beloved marine corps and all too quickly and then to become the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. he has a reputation as a node fleet industry shooter with no

ego. if you were to look up the military professional best term in the dictionary, his picture is what you would see. so i take a lot of solace in the fact that joe will be the chairman and the coming transition and will act as a key point of stability, continuity, vision during the period. we are so thankful that you made it back from the pentagon meeting with the president this morning to share your thoughts on how the u.s. military is confronting today's challenges while comparing for a complex future. please join me in welcoming the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff general joe dempsey. [applause] >> thanks michelle and good michele and good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. you would expect me to say that i am honored and glad to be

here. i appreciate the flexibility on the scheduling. i think i was supposed to be on about an hour ago but we had an unexpected visitor at the white house this morning and i'm probably about ten minutes away from finishing that up into coming over here. i than the chairman for just about two months now and. this is the first time i'm going to share in a venue like this my thoughts about the current security and ireland but probably perhaps more importantly what the implications of the current security environment are for the joint force i will share that with you and spend a bit of time thinking through that. yesterday in advance of coming here i looked around and i think the process of trying to put my thoughts together to come over here probably was useful to me and when i look around the room

the question and answer period will be useful to me as well so regardless what you get out of my prepared remarks, i will get a lot out of being here today and it was very helpful. to be honest with you, i wish i could have been here for the sessions this morning. the issues that you've been talking about are the issues that we are spending a lot of time speaking out on the joint staff and i think i have some plans out here someplace or at least i hope i do so i will be able to get some feedback. i was asked to spend a few minutes addressing what was described as my agenda and priorities for my time as the chairman and i will try to do that in two parts. first i will talk about the current fight that does consume my time and the fight against

extremism and then shift to some other challenges to use russia, china, iran to say what are the implications for other challenges. and then at the end i have what are two or three as many, but two or three of the major implications when i look at the current fight and those future challenges i've laid out what are the major implications which reflects now. let me start with a quick comment in the fact that we have the most well trained force in the world.

i had a chance to go to the command in afrikaans -- it probably won't surprise you to hear the closer i got to the fight the more spirited they were. they are focused on what they are doing and proud of what they are doing that i bring that up front because i don't actually take that for granted. we have been running for a pretty long period of time and many of the young women and men i spoke to are still deploying so they are home and deployed about an equal amount of time and what i said to them is i actually can't see a time in their future where that dynamic is going to change, so in other words if the requirements continue to be what they think they will be in a structured state about what it is today and

that is a fair assumption we will be running pretty hard for some time to come some joint readiness is on my mind and i won't go through that with you today. i'm not going to spend a lot of time that i would tell you that i do view readiness slightly different than i did as he served as chief terry i still look at the traditional metrics of associated with the trained organizing equipped unit readiness to also do we have the right inventory to do what needs to be done. whether it is benchmarked against an old plan or crisis or contingencies and then the third element that i look at from the perspective that i have today is our posture of the force to actually respond in a timely manner, so those are kind of from my perspective the three things i'm paying attention to and we both spoke about the people peace of it but the other two parts of that are important to me in terms of readiness and we are in the process now of

reframing what we call the joint readiness one combatant commander as we have this discussion about a month ago described as comprehensiveness but whatever we call it after the first of the year we are reframing the readiness of little bit just to make sure the dialogue on a dalia basis captors with are available. again the readiness of the individual units and the parts and pieces and making sure we have the right inventory and also that we are fostered to be able to respond in a timely manner so all those things are there. with the transition to the current fight. the fight against violent extremism is the most prominent challenge and that includes the current fight against isis, al qaeda and all of the associated movements. while isis is the threat or current focus and operation is against iraq. and i suspect most of you in the room are familiar with the effort of the overall strategy

and i won't spend a lot of time thinking about those. there is a military dimension but there are two lines of efforts that are focused specifically on the department of defense and military capabilities in particular and that is what i will talk about. the first of those is the conduct strikes to kill the leadership took over leadership of the fighters and interdict the line of communication and united sources of revenue into the second critical element is to develop and support effective partners on the ground. ..

i've been on the job too much but every meeting we've had on this particular issue has concluded but okay, what more can we do? what other ideas do you have to do want to put on the table we can have a discussion? i can assure you i will be as aggressive as i can be in making those recommendations. that is what the president has led me to believe he expects as

well as secretary carter. let me shift a bit too syria. without a partner on the ground syria has presented the most difficult challenge. success in syria requires working with her turkish partners to secure the northern border of syria that has been a challenge that requires us supporting that its chilean opposition groups that will actually do what it mentioned earlier. they will take the fight to isil and sees a big round propelled by isil. and then conduct strikes battled against isil's command-and-control infrastructure but as well other sources of revenue. you might've seen over the past several weeks without a concerted effort. it has been ongoing for months but a concerted effort over the past several weeks because he did the intelligence we developed to go after the oil infrastructure but there are other elements we will continue to go after in the coming weeks. to be more effective quite honestly we need a human intelligence and we need to better enable those sued opposition groups are mentioned again, those groups don't take

the fight to the enemy on the ground. we are in the process by doing that. i will not only to detail on how we are doing that in this venue but in terms of further developing our human intelligence and setting ourselves up, posturing ourselves if you'll to provide better support to those groups are on the ground fighting against isil, the actor is our focus here in syria. the political transition a clearly in syria is one of the lot to do with our long-term success but in the meantime we will focus on getting after isil's military capabilities, reducing the control of the terrain that they have, and also disrupting their ability to conduct external operations. that's what we're trying to do. in iraq we have a partner on the ground but the relationship is complicated by several factors to include the political landscape, sectarianism and iranian influence. success will require us to develop the capable the iraqis

are the forces and kurdish forces and also enable their operations with intelligence, advisors can logistics and combined arms support. we are doing all of that to some degree right now. i expect we will do more of that in the coming weeks and i think you're probably seen some of that unfold in the secretary's recent testimony and the test when he and i did together in house armed services committee a couple weeks ago. very mindful of the complex challenges that we have right now and as i mentioned, not satisfied with where we are until we are defeated. we are encouraged by recent operations with the peshmerga come in sinjar. we encourage but it was happened in ramadi after months and months would seem to be very little progress there some significant progress right now. a number of things on the ground are developing opportunities. again why to highlight the positives? because the campaign is what we will do is will do a large number of things as we pressure

isil across syria and iraq. where we find we're having some success we will reinforce the success and i think we're sorry to see that again in these recent operations that have been conducted. to me those operations that it mentioned actually indicative of what is possible in the future, and will continue to try to reinforce those. moving forward we will be aggressive in other ways to do that, look for opportunities and more importantly increase the tempo and effectiveness of our partners. i know can look around the room at a look at the list of folks who are here, there's a lot of folks who have a lot of ideas abouabout the counter as the campaign. there's a lot of folks most everywhere that have ideas about account or isil campaign. in all sincerity, i will tell you i'm at the point where i'm not confident we have all the ideas and so to listen to that and i read and engage in the ongoing dialogue. but if you have other questions,

again i did want to come in and spend and give you campaign update. i want it to the applications but i do want a lease for an award hundred and iraq and syria and maybe that will help prompt some questions. while the fight against isil dominates the headlines we continue to face an enduring challenge of extremism in south asia as well. my perspective, the constant pressure that we put on al-qaeda since 9/11 operating from afghanistan is one of the most important reasons why we haven't had another 9/11. and i believe that the continued threat we have not limited the threat actually requires us to maintain an effective counterterrorism partner and a platform in afghanistan for some time to come. and while the focus has been on al-qaeda to date i think you all know it is further complicated by the growth of islamic state khorasan porsches clerk itself in afghanistan and pakistan regions. so it's even become more

complicated. it had been obvious to several extremist organizations operating in that area that enabled, provider and network for al-qaeda to network but more recently we have the islamic state. the president's decision to leave 9800 in afghanistan into next year i think does provide us an opportunity, provide an opportunity to continue to grow afghan security forces go afghan national security defense forces as well as demonstrate our continued commitment to the region. the gandhi administration is supportive of overdoing it includes a cover state unhappy with you in terms of what we try to give out how to develop an effective counter terrorism partnership with afghanistan which is what is our support above and then from that partnership have a platform from which we can invent our own interest in the region. i think we have common objectives with his of administration. that's a positive. is some highlight however that afghan security forces have a

ways to go and that's to go into areas of logistics, intelligence, aviation and special operations capability than what i've more broadly called minister capacity, the ability of the minister entry, defense to have the wherewithal to provide the support, training, sustainment of their security force. we still have work to do. and also a critical part of the campaign moving forward is to continued inability international community in terms of resources. right now we are reliant on commitments that were made in chicago and tokyo, and those all went out in 2017. so very important this summer though be a meeting in poland, and on the agenda will be to resource the afghan campaign both from development and security forces perspective through 2020. so watching that development this summer is going to be very important terms of how we move forward. ultimately, for my perspective the key variables that will affect the campaign of the

afghan-led reconciliation process, a strengthened relationship between afghanistan and pakistan, and also the resilience of the afghan governmengovernmen t. and again you all unsure have seen indie media president ghani process and challenges with the government he is going through the but the national unity government has been a place since last september, pretty difficult political and private. we are doing all we can to support the maturation of that government but that's the resilience of the government is going to be one of the indicators of success. the threat from violent extremist networks is begin the one that has done a much my time over the past two months and dominates the news on a daily basis but we have a number of challenges in addition a number of challenges from state threats as well, or state challenges i guess it's probably a way to say it. former secretary of state at the

golfer the expression, sectors did kissinger said this is the most dynamic and complex secure environment that he is seen since world war ii. and identity after 60, 70 days on the top of have a hard time arguing with either i think i probably agree with that assessment. what i would like to use maybe just describe the behaviors and the capability government of those four actors. i think it into a bit of discussion on as i look at that what really is the so what. despite its declining population and shrinking economy russia's made significant investment in its military capabilities. on saturday morning i picked the "washington post," i read the "washington post" and in the "washington post" with a summary of putin's announcement last week, new intercontinental ballistic missiles, you submarines come airplanes, conventional capabilities, all fielded over the past year. we are also closely watching russian development and space and in cyberspace as well.

i think you have to when you look at russian capability the budget to look at in the context of what they've done recently in crimea and in the ukraine and what's going on in syria. so that kind of frames russia for my perspective. moving on to china, while china can what we emphasize in our china policy opportunities to cooperate. i think that's a sincere position that our government has big we also come and we get paid to do that, closely watched the development of their military capabilities. and i their behavior in the souh china sea. while the chinese are typically fairly opaque about military capability development it's clear to us that there continue to invest in a large conventional capability, growing they become increasingly sophisticated air force and also see their advancements in space, and cyberspace in particular. and the south china sea we give you the activity as destabilizing right now. wyler exercise come with exercise freedom of navigation

routinely and that the shirt for my perspective our allies and partners, it certainly has not anything to turn back what admiral harris has called the great wall of sand that is being built by the chinese and the south china sea. in order to spend more time on the applications and question and answer i'm going to quickly skip through my perspective on iran and north korea. i think you all are fully with their behavior your averages note you would see similar transmissible -- cyber capability and north korea and aspirations for nuclear capability are all things that we kind of look at. so when i look at all that in aggregate, and that is why look at the current challenges of sosa with a violent extremism and i look at those of the challenges that i just referenced i think there's a number of implications. i will touch on a few. the first application is foundational. probably self-evident but we need a balance inventory come

join capability is going to allow us to deter and defeat potential adversaries across the full range of military operations. we don't have the luxury to have a choice between a force that can fight the current fight against violent extremism and one that can deal with the full range of challenges i spoke to earlier. second implication is of the need for us to consider how to most effectively use the military instrument of national power to address today's challenges in areas that have been characterized as the gray zone, perhaps even in cyberspace. i believe we need to develop more effective methods like russia's little green men or iranian malign influence. our traditional approach views things is what is at peace or at war. that may not necessarily be the case for our adversaries. they live somewhere in between. from my perspective we need to spend some time on that particular issue and again there's a full range of instruments available to our nation to deal with these

challenges. i am focus on a military incident but i do think we need to think more about how to wield the military instrument in these areas called the gray zone. and quite awesome when you look at cyber, clearly we have challenges in cyber not only to protect ourselves but also the developer of offensive cyber capabilities. and cyber deterrence is an area where republicans to spend sometime on. i know admiral mike mullen just to do that and i will do that over time. we also need to develop a framework within which cyber threats, the attribution issue, the managing escalation and harden ourselves rural areas that i would also region. let me get to what i think is probably one of the most significant implications of our current challenges. and that's a high likelihood any conflict we have will be trans regional, multi-domain and multifunctional. i will explain a little bit about what that means.

when i look at information operations, cyber capabilities, spacing counterspace capability of ballistic missile technology, they have all affected the character of the modern battlefield. we see such capabilities fielded by both state and nonstate actors and to look for ways to harness those that will avoid our strengths and exploit our vulnerabilities. the current fight against extremism is clearly an example of a trench regional fight. but let me give you another example that made highlights what are going to get at. if yo you would have thought abt the great potential some years ago you would've thought about a conflict that we would have hoped to isolate on the korean peninsula. as the north koreans develop ballistic missile capability obviously that started to put other regional actors such as japan. no longer could you hope to isolate a conflict on the peninsula. as you start to look at intercontinental ballistic missile technology, cyber capabilities, space, information and so forth, it's hard to see

how even a regional conflict on the peninsula would actually be anything other than transregional, multi-domain and multifunctional. from my perspective our current planning or organizational construct in our command and control is not really optimized for that fight. when i look at how we're going to fight, the character of the fight, the the fight, that who ever said you look at that we are typically approach things which is through a regional approach, and quite honestly it may surprise you or you just haven't thought about it this way, the lowest level of integration into department of defense wrote his the second of defense. we use collaboration and cooperation in supporting relationships between combatant commanders but in terms of true integration, in other words, decision-making authority. that integrates a fight across the region come across a domain or across a function actually the secretary of defense. that is an issue that actually in terms of what's on the top of my in box, that's an issue that in taking a look at our because

if you believe what i believe and you do look at the nature of the fight today even against violent extremism and then look at the nature what the fight might be against competitors in the future, i don't think we'll be able to be as responsive. i don't think we will generate the tempo. i don't think we can frame decisions and act in a timely manner as much as we should enlist we make som some fundamel changes again to our organizational construct, the way the plan, the way we develop strategy. and we had a good discussion with the combatant commanders about that a few weeks ago and we are doing somethin some thinw that i think this'll be an issue by the way that will come up in the senate armed services committee about goldwater-nichols i think we'll see more of this issue come up in the coming months but in the meantime we are within the authority we have today doing some things to mitigate that challenge because this isn't a future challenge. this is now so we need to do something today to mitigate the

challenge but make fundamental changes will better posture us for what i described as the character for in the 21st century. i don't suggest, argue to the contrary, the nature of or i wouldn't changed but the character war highlighted by those capabilities and functions that i spoke about earlier and what are. competitors as well as nonstate actors would have, the character work is pretty dynamic and i think our organizational construct command and control needs to be changed to respond to that. i'm not going to suggest a solution today but merely to frame the problem. i will stop there to allow for time to questions. i think i was on for about 15 minutes. again what i hope to do is just kind of seed the ground for the q&a session, the issue you want to speak about. again as i divide my time at a think about my priorities, i can't help but be immersed in

the close fight but at the same time one of the things we want to have a mind towards is capability development for the future. and balancing that, if you ask you what your number one challenge that you expect to confront in your time of job number one challenge is balancing the requirements of the current fight with what we need to do to make sure we're ready for tomorrow come in the context of a fiscally constrained environment trying to make sure we are doing that. in the meantime making sure we're not only adapting for today but actually innovating for tomorrow. i suspect, i don't know what secretary work spoke about but i suspect he talked a little bit about innovation this morning. and to get out of a distinction between those two words. the adaptation is the things we're doing right now with the wherewithal that we have. entity innovation is when you're looking really for a fundamentally different way to do things in the future, disrupted if you will so we've got to be able to do both of those things. so with that i will stop.

>> thank you, general. i'm going to ask you to join in the chairs. we will have a few q&a back and forth and then we'll open it up to the audience. thank you again for sharing your insights. i'm very glad you were able to escape from the pentagon and come over and join us after all. i wanted to pick up we left off, which is talk about how the nature of warfare is changing, how in the future we will have a transregional senator heitkamp multidimensional, multi-domain. and raising the question about our we organized, is the ct ride? i don't want to try to push you towards premature answered but can you give us a love everything about what kinds of alternatives and options are what kind of a question should we be asking ourselves? as we look at this issue come what kinds of avenues? >> before we get into execution i think the first thing is the

planet. so todaso to our planning constt would actually develop regional plans. when you decided to compute aggregated those weasel plans. we don't sal was necessarily for example, a strategy to take a look at prussia. ever involved in a conflict with russia, it's not going to unfold like the old plans that we developed at the old plans witnesses were developed to get into the physics of for progress of science but if you look at the challenge like a russia, it's not going to be isolated to whatever old friend you think about. so from the very beginning when you think about challenges i think old plans need to be born with a view that it will be a transregional. it will be a multi-domain, multifunctional again domain functional, ballistic missile defense an actual capability just to make sure we are clear and how i'm using the words. in terms of strategy development

advocates be informed by the sunshine just me. that is an assumption than willing to people chose but if my assumption today that it be very difficult for any conflict to the isolated to the region. we think about potential adversaries in the future i think we need to think about a strategy right up front that takes into account it isn't all likely going going to be fought in that way. than in execution if you think about any scenario where this ballistic missiles involved you've got the cocom, and you have the combatant commander of the kind in northern command who would be responsible for the consequences. i don't want for a second to leave thinking that today we can't make all that work. it absolutely works but that's one thing that's going on in issues of 100 things that are affecting multiple combatant commanders simultaneously. so from my perspective that is

probably an organization, it is so much authorities by the way. so people have suggested that this is not the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff think we need a general step and 94 authority. that's not what this is about. but i do believe there needs to be a staff that has the perspective of all the combatant commanders that can actually provide the secretary of defense with a common operational picture that can frame decision for the sector a defense that didn't involve multiple regions simultaneously and can do that in a timely manner. that's not as you well know that's not currently what the joint staff is designed to be. so i do think, in other words, this is all about the secretary defense of all about the national command authority, making decisions in the tony manner. if you look back into the commitment control, we did get it right with nuclear command and control. nuclear demanded that was a very effective way for the president to mak that decision and the toy

manner and i think that that the complexity nuclear nuclear command and control in the '60s was not replicated by traditional conventional fights. but now i think you see some of the same complexity that we saw in the nuclear command and control and other fights. we need a better way to get after it. >> very helpful. we spent a lot is going talking about the secretaries innovation agenda. and i think there's a lot of support for the intense and desire to move forward, they need. but we were really wrestling with some of how do you actually do this. want other things that really struck me when i was in the pentagon is what i've come to call the tyranny of consensus. sometimes the overarching object he becomes what can all agree on, as opposed to how do we come up with the best options or alternatives to solve a given problem. i'm wondering from your perspective, do we have enough space or have we created a space

to really have the competition of ideas that's going to be necessary to innovating our concepts are how we approach different were fighting challenge is? >> what you say resonates a lot with me, and the worst thing we can do for innovation is centralized innovation. that's the worst thing we can do. as i've been involved in the conversations at the think i've argued for is what you want to do is want to incentivize innovation. the one we incentivize in our department is resources. resources can help incentivize innovation. i do think there needs to be an overarching view of what we're going to need in the future in terms of, i'll talk now from joint capabilities perspective. you need an overarching vision that's laid out to inform innovation, does a limited but enforce it.

there are problems we can see and want to solve those problems. there may be other things you find out along the way that allow you to fill a disruptive technology, do things in a different way but there's a combination of testing things up on at once in the art of impossible in going after process that is specifically designed to solve certain problems. but i really do believe that one of the things we need be careful of, some people think the more we bring the sugars together to work on this the better off we would be. i'm exactly in the opposite places and i think about the services and particularly laboratories, their organizations and some of the other even non-department think tanks and so forth, mit, the universitieuniversity's web rels with. but if we could figure out a way to cash -- cast the net over it and then on the back and actually in a position to harvest it would be in good shape it is to persuade think we

need to centralize it. one family had a vision what is or try to do and on the back into the got away you can harvest all those good ideas. what happens in between ought to be the maximum extent possible, decentralized. >> the human capital to mention of this is important. we are two ideas about force of the future which i think again people are interested in hearing more about don't fully understand exactly what it is yet. not sure what problems trying to solve and yet i think there's a general sense that the all-volunteer force needs a new iteration if we're going to be able to recruit and develop and develop the leaders and have the retention that we need for the future. how are you thinking about that human capital to mention? >> i will answer that from a service perspective because that was on the ground with before to this job. first of all one point dominate is the code force for my perspective is not broken.

that was not a gratuitous remark i made in the beginning. i fundamentally believe we are recruiting and retaining an incredibly high quality force. when you think about young americans, some of between two and three young men and women in the united states are actually qualified for military service, amongst the demographics. we are getting a good cut of people. but when i looked at the organization of the marine corps, 67% of the united states marine corps is on the first relation and about 49% of the marine corps is lance corporal's envelope it is a very young force. and designed to be such. but then i looked at f-35 mechanics, cyber capabilities, some of the things that really do require years and years and i call it for those of you who read the outliers, i call it the 10,000 hours of repetition. you want to say what is it you

need to have to achieve excellence and occupational field like cyber or to be someone who can handle equipment that is as coveted as an f-35 are some of the other technologies we have today. some of that take the combination of training and education. so training, have to do something. education, how to think come and experience to 10,000 hours of repetition. that causes me to move the needle in the forest in some select areas to the right. and currently we have a pyramid structure across department. in my mind it isn't just a force of the futures leapt onto the entire department. what is a we need to have in each one of our occupational fields at each grade, both civilian and military force, and how he defined as i said let's look at the force of look at each individual requirement, let's define what 10,000 hours are for that particular position. let's go out and recruit and

develop a training and education and an experienced path that will allow you to get to the point in time when the person has the wherewithal to do the job. achieving excellence. so to me what force the future ought to be is set up to be a plan that optimizes the human capital for the challenges we are going to face in the future and it shouldn't start with an overall approach where we say there's all the roles. it ought to start with a clear picture of what it is we need individuals to look like if they are performing certain functions. and then go out starting with recruiting to get the right people. there's other things i think we can do in terms of come we always measured physical fitness, always measured mental aptitude. i think measuring psychological precise and so forth is another area that probably something well to have a discussion with we think about the force next. i guess that summarizes, force of the future is about being very specific about the requirements we need, identify

those requirements and start cradle-to-grave to grow the force that it needs to be. i do think there's a certain amount of maturation and i consider maturation a combination of those three things i spoke earlier about. training, education and expense because mid-thirties i think the force will be more mature simply because some of the things we're doing today. 10,000 hours -- >> he had the benefit of hearing a wide range of views as he made that decision including some distant that it wasn't without controversy. you stated look, that can make a decision, now it's time to implement. can you say something but how that application happens in a

way that is most productive and most constructive? >> absolutely. first of all what happened over the past couple of years was in areas where we didn't have standards we now have those. that wasn't, i want to make a quick comment. it wasn't because the organizations were so inept that they didn't have standards. it's because we made certain assumptions when it was an all-male occupational field. we traine trained people i woule trained people i would have to screen than before and% could do it. absconded how we did business. in terms of implementation, and i have provided some input to the secretary, i would frame it along these lines. number one we've got to have to look at combat effectiveness. i don't think anyone suggested think anything other than that we have to make sure we're clear in the standard and we have a

path to meet the standards the window seals. i think we need to take a look at the health and welfare of our people. i realize some people were dismissive of some of the issues brought up about injury, physical injury. in my mind there is a real issue with the physiology and so we need to figure out exactly how we can go about mitigating that. it would be irresponsible for me as a leader not to know that right now given what we do we have twice the likelihood of having an entry in one part of the population than in another and you say that's the price of doing business. i don't think we want to do that. the other thing is make sure back to the theme of the force of the future, this at the end of the date is about talent management. went to be a lot more precise about taking a universe of people that we have available to us and put them in occupational fields where their specific challenge, talent can best be

leveraged in that have a high probability not only a successfully completing their first enlistment but a high probability of being available for the pool from which will draw comparatively for the future. i think the secretary's guidance is pretty clear in implementation. he has tasked me with sitting with them as we do that. and i think doing that in a deliberate responsible way is way we can do what he wants to do which is make the force better. >> switching gears a little bit. one of the panels this morning spent a lot of time thinking about deterrent in this new context of greater competition between the u.s. and russia, and china and so forth, a period of great power competition. utah a little bit about posture. house you think about our posture in europe, our posture in the rebalanced in asia, are there things that you think we need to be looking at the navy

have not been on the table in the past 10 years in terms of deterrence i that particular and reassurance? >> i will oversimplifying the dialogue that's taken place maybe even a debate that has taken place in there is part of department and, frankly, probably in the journals as well. and that is some people think that the most effective way that you can deter an adversary is to have a capable force that episodically exercises and demonstrates its capability to largely builds up readiness back at home. and there are others who would argue that that would not be effective, in order to not only to deter potential adversaries but to assure partners and allies you need to have an effective presence that is forward. i think that's a theory of the case in terms of the pacific rebalanced to present in order to advance our national interest in the pacific in order to support our economic in or to provide disagree with them which are economic interest in the

advanced we want to be present in the pacific. i feel the same way about other regions and particularly in europe where i believe that not only can we have the capability to respond with whatever is required but on a day-to-day basis we need to be visible, we need to be seen, we need to be there where the enemy knows that our response time provides us with a competitive advantage. and so i fall probably closer to we need to be forward and to the pacific point that you asked is, that's what i do support increased rotational forces into europe's we have on a day-to-day basis more physical presence that is there. again i think it's two things. it's not only deterrence but it is assurance as well. and also clearly making sure that the reservoir of joint capabilities in the aggregate is sufficient battled to be out on a day-to-day basis deterring but you can provide the capability necessary to fight and win.

>> i'm going to ask one more question and then we'll turn to the audience, so please be thinking of your questions for general dunford. one of the issues that is, in the reform hearings on the hill has been this sort of growth of the staff, the headquarters staff. oscs now about 5000 people joined staff about 4000. cocom staff total about 38,000 are 38,000 to get agenda defense agencies educate to a total of about nearly 240,000. there's a lot of good and aboard and essential work going on at there's also a sense of the level of duplication and bureaucracy has grown. you are to humans in to give spent most of your career in the field. coming into back into the pentagon what is your sense of the headquarters, whether there's an opportunity for streamlined, adding additional a chilly back into the system? >> i was raised in whatever

problem you should start solving it, so i will probably maybe just talk about the joint staff initially. i do think that some of the discussion about the joint staff is probably fair. the 4000 by the way, that represents what used to be the joint forces command and is not an extension of the g7 and the joint staff. in all honesty there hasn't been a huge growth of the joint staff overtime. having said that, the joint staff overtime for a variety of reasons has begun to do things that i think we can probably walk away from. i will take my primary for the joint staff is to focus on the bush energy, is to focus on supporting the combatant commanders so it's forced to build and, capability public, those core areas. and some of the things that need to be done. i hesitate to say those right now because there's people that

are sitting in jobs and i want to do this right and probably would do this sometime after the first of the what i can look at people and say look, it isn't what you're doing. you're doing a great job but we will divest ourselves of these options because, i guess i can say this. to date i have not had a tank meeting with the joint chiefs of what i've discovered as a title x issue. and i don't intend on doing that except in very extraordinary cases. i will give you an example. pay raise. the pay raise came up and i provided my input as to what i thought the pay raise would be at a talk to the cheats talk to the cheats and i say look, if you all think we need a joint chiefs position on the pay raise, that's fine but you have a vehicle to provide input for your service chief, for your service sector that then goes to the secretary of defense. in less there's an extraordinary reason for what i call a title x issue we won't have joint chiefs position put him on my will spend our time establishing

position on the current fight against isil. what our strategy ought to be continuous some of those other challenges we spoke about but over time again i want to be critical but the demands of the joint chiefs have been driven by others so they said we want a joint chiefs position on this or that. that requires a staff to help the children to from a position of those are some of the things that have happened. despite the fact people will say the organization is incapable of making changes itself common terms of using the principle of alignment and investing ourselves of things we don't think we need to do that are then either duplicated up or down to server secretaries of all in favor of doing that. with regard to the cocom i think we need to be careful and the discussion that says cocom's are not warfighters. what i don't want us to do andalucia take a hard look at this, working in the critical in thinking about it but i don't

want to to think the last 14 years of what we've described as more and it has been work, the project that out for the next 15 or 20 years. we need to think about some of those challenges i spoke about in my remarks and make sure we talk of what the combatant commanders do or don't do we talk about what they will do or don't do across the range of military operations and not just narrowly in the fight against isil were we have concluded joint task forces of which i commanded one joint task forces solve all the problems for the combatant commander. i don't believe that's the case. if you got what i said a minute ago about trends regional multi-domain and multifunctional, i don't know how we will call somebody at the 4-star level that is responsible for geographic command anything other than a warfighter. that doesn't mean we can't make some changes in a unified in oud command plan. it doesn't mean all the combatant commanders have to exist in their current form. it doesn't mean the joint staff has to exist in its current

form. i just want to make sure we have the right framework within which to make recommendations and other debate and we don't just take the last 14 years and site a half, this is what we've been doing so automatically that's what we will be doing over the next 15 to 20 years. i have read what you've written michele, and i read some of your testimony get added to think the numbers are out of their own we need to take a hard look at it and persona personal experiencet biggerstaff isn't always necessary a better step it i am now going into the staff that have. i was much happier as a colonel when everybody on my staff honestly you have it first relationship and you move at the speed of heat. when you have a larger staff it's much more difficult to configure advanced and much more difficult to come up with a process within which you can make decisions, framed decisions and much harder of a big staff stack. i think most of us would want to have a smaller staff. it's got to be aligned to the

functions that has to be performed at a think that's the work we have to do with a pretty quickly because senator mccain is running pretty hard. and i think i have an obligation honestly, an obligatio obligatio provide best no device and a form that dialogue. it doesn't mean any case of goldwater-nichols, that the department's mission at the time wasn't accepted. i like to think right now that we are willing to be as innovative as anybody else is. it doesn't look all the good ideas but i will be receptive to those. i'm not fighting to hang onto what we have today. i just want to make sure that we spend 80% of our time trying to solve the problem for tomorrow and 20% overtime developing the wire diagram and on about how big we ought to be. that would be my only, my only appeal really in this debate is to do that. >> great. okay, right here. the lady with her hand up in the center. microphone is coming.

please introduce yourself and ask the question. no speeches, please. >> thank you. advisor for vietnamese-american. thank you for your service. may i ask you to share your vision about the south china sea situation? have we been successful our strategy deterrence against china action in that area? what options do you think we have with the militarized man-made islands that china has built up next thank you. >> i think that vision has been pretty clearly laid out by our leadership and that is the global commons should be accessible to all and that within the framework of international law that is kind of where we ought to be so that's the vision. south china sea ought to be accessible to all within the framework of international law. in terms of what you mentioned the word militarization. i think that's important because we are not seeking to militarized the south china sea. quite the contrary, try to make sure it is available.

we want to make sure the pacific as a whole in a south china sea per ticket is available for trade and economic prosperity we've enjoyed for the last 70 years because with that freedom of navigation, freedom of the seas, freedom of the skies. that's kind of warwick article in the future. it will require a combination, hate to use the phrase but it is a whole of government approach. it is a diplomatic issue, and economic issue and it is a military dimension to the challenge as well. putting all those things together will be necessary to make sure that we don't escalate the challenge that is there but i think if you see it's the militant mentioned i think a freedom of navigation is a piece. our military to nurture engagement is a piece. or exercise program is a piece of the. transparency is a piece of it and then from economic and diplomatic it has to be clear that's the right regime to have. it's in everybody's interest to do that.

>> good to see again. we had a nice chat at the reagan forum a year ago. i 21st of all say thank you for robust some of the -- aviators going deep into the rock and northern iraq so thank you. my one question is, i know your expert in iraq was a lot like mine. if i had a dollar for every iraq you thank me for what we did over we could both retire tomorrow. of course, they would always answer more water more electricity after that but the thing that is most bothersome was the performance of the iraqi army off -- as well as. i would get questioned after speeches by teaching up at night i would say what they do the right thing when no one is looking? and so i would implore you that

when the chain-link its assessment of the status of iraqi forces, which you recommended to the president to support in various forms, make sure that he gets terrific assessment, real combat capability because it really is a grave, yet have a certain amount of confidence before you deploy our own boots on the ground to support those people. and so thank you spent i will do that based on personal assessment as well. >> right here. over here. >> thank you very much. can you hear me all right speak was sure. >> okay. tell us that you are, please spent my name is paul johnson and i live in washington, d.c., dupont circle area. in the early '70s i attended the university of tehran. have an excellent persian program for foreigners who have

an advanced knowledge of the language, which i had by that time, having said with a british scholar for four years. and at the time i used to take a lot of tours come and stay in this funky little hotels that these pilgrims would stay in. and i know that time that there was a battalion, know, a contingent of u.s. army people arresting drug traffickers from the poppy fields in afghanistan. and i was told by a marine who just left the service after six years who had served in a marine battalion on the afghani side of the iran border, working with the iranian army to arrest drug traffickers. now -- iran and the kind of have a very personal problem with

drugs right here in washington, d.c. -- >> can we get to the question pleased that we have a limited time. >> all right. let's go i guess i don't really have a question. >> thank you. [laughter] >> but -- >> thank you very much. >> if you get i would be happy to see on the way out. >> sound like a very interesting expense background but we have agenda for limited time times wl focus on some questions. over here. >> shawn with federal computer week magazine. i'm wondering if you can tell us what your key take away was from the joint chiefs, hack of the joint chiefs unclassified network that occurred before he arrived but no doubt was on your mind and has been sent. wondering what you have done since then, i know it's only been two months but which of the

appointed you to make to make sure that will never happen again. and what that experience that taught you that you did not about cyberspace before? >> first of all, i didn't make him her remarks because i had to cut someplace just as if thinking about it but one of the areas i'm taking a hard look at is the whole idea of resiliency. we think about providing options to the president terms of the conflict and the good work my way back to the vulnerability address. it has to be informed by our resilience to whatever actions the indian they take. one of the things that just jumped out at you is when you have that kind of vulnerability whether it be in the southern sector ought to be from a military perspective, you really don't have that kind resilience you need to provide the president with options a bit of a contingency come to advance our interest. it clearly highlighted for me the resilience they should that's how it's connected to broader war fighting piece but

also clearly whatever investments we made in cyber defense to date have not gone as to what we need to be and that needs to be an area of continued investment as we move forward. i do know that anything profound. not good enough was the number one take away more broadly we think about, i think about the united states as the platform from which we deployed a joint force. so resilience of the united states has to be such that we do have options to or summit escalated in the event of a crisis and know what we're not doing this with exposing one of our vulnerabilities to the enemy, if that makes sense. >> you are a very exciting the. i am so thrilled. i've been with defense space i thought you were going to say you were my mother last night. >> but you're so young, young looking it's impossible.

>> no. i'm old enough to be your mother. i came to defense 37 or 38 years ago. my concern, and i express this order, understanding the other and this is related to the whole intelligence world. what are our expectations about all these people we are dealing with, and how to educate our troops to understand how these other people think? the assumption that they have the same views as we do it is wrong. one of the interesting stories coming ou out in the economist s had these countries now want democracy but not like ours. so how do we learn about them? it's not built into the general education of our military troops except for a very small number of people. >> i agree. many of you probably read one of the best articles i read was in the atlantic, maybe i don't throw for months ago. i wish i remember the author right now -- [inaudible] >> a great article.

it really framed honestly how they think, what they believe in what they're trying to do. i think unless the parts and pieces but those probably about as comprehensive and is coherent and outline of what we are dealing with as anything i have read. unfortunately, it has not resonated very much. it's not only just i troops because i think our troops have a sufficient understanding of what we did with to do what must be done. what baffles me more than the 15 or 16 year-old girls and boys who romanticize what isil is all about and decided to join the fight. what confuses me is my daughter went to west potomac high in alexandria. shia to of her classmates make the way over to pakistan and say hey, we'd like to join al-qaeda. they got arrested it was in the "washington post." these are two young guys went to west potomac high, grew up in alexandria, virginia, had a job. so was concerning to me is the narrative can we spend a lot of

time on this display. always do at the meeting. that the narrative the isil has is getting traction that we need to take that part of the series. we can look at the absurdity of the ideas and be dismissive. it's easy to do not those ideas actually are resonating, resonate with people who don't have access universe of information that would have. resident the people who have grievances in areas where they've been subjected to oppressive leadership. amazingly enough they resonate with young people in the united states who are either disaffected, dislocated or just a fully integrated in our society. i wish i had a good answer proud to solve it but i think you highlight one of the challenges we have right now. and to be successful come to do with the narrative, countries the narrative, countering the aura of invincibility legitimacy of isil is good to be critical to our success. and i think we probably to get a c- or a d. in terms of doing that right now.

is one of the areas that although it's not our lead we need to be a part of it. we being the department of defense. >> hi, john. >> hey, joe, general. my question that was on the last one, about radicalization. this may be more appropriate to you as your expense on the ground in that part of the world. how much do our actions, military actions, do you think they're on the question of radicalization? most recent in the news it's been a question about dropping leaflets for simple on the conflict before we blew it up. there's the question of, debate about our policies on immigration at the moment. how much does what we do or say they are on that point of radicalization? >> i legitimate own personal assessment. one, i think there's a lot on and i would say two things.

one, so that i said no publicly a couple of times, i don't think we have to apologize for our values when you go to work and we are to bring our values with us. ever look at this as a long fight you do look at as long fight. we can't let the immediacy of whatever challenge we have inform our actions. added to think over time when we have the necessary -- i mr. siplin casuistr casuistry ae people, and i don't suggest we have any white man or. in fact, let me make it clear because it's true, i'm incredibly proud of the discipline of our force since 9/11, incredibly proud. and the record speaks for itself in other been exceptions exceptions? there so they have. no one's -- no one grasses were quickly more than we do. but i actually believe with a thesis in your outline and that is, this is a war at the end of the day of value. a war of ideas. we have something to sell as americans.

experiment we have in the united states, american, something that can be and should be sold and we should sell it. i think what our forces go, and this is the argument i make two young men and women, we would go someplace we are a reflection of the united states of america to think our day-to-day behavior and our engagement with people whether in afghanistan, iraq or elsewhere may be the only part of america they ever see. and so do you think daily basis our actions in a positive way can help us win the war of ideas over time. >> last five minutes. one or two questions. the young lady back there. >> i just wanted to follow, i'm with the "christian science monitor." just to follow-up on michele's question about women in combat. throughout this process to get a number of women who got the message that as a marine corps we don't want you in these jobs. you're going to ruin everything, you're going to ruin the

camaraderie, the fun, the fighting. the effectiveness of the force. now that you're the top officer in the military, i'm just wondering do you feel like this is, how are you going to heal this rift? do you feel like it needs to be healed? and also i'm just curious as you're going through this data and these studies, was there ever a point at which you were pleasantly surprised and you kind of look at this and said, wow, here's a way in which women could make these forces more effective? >> okay. first of all, you know, i had hoped to move forward from implementation and get on with the budget as the question i will answer. let me just say what mike archie was in making the recommendation. for the last year what i focused on was my inability to stand in front of a room with 2000 marines and sailors in it and say marines, sailors, this is what i recommended and this is

one i recommended it. and then walk through the logic of my recommendation and then say okay, i agree record i disagree with it but i understand how he got to where he is. i don't actually believe that there's some huge amount. and be honest with you, it would break my heart if i thought that was true. even in the recommendation that they made we were going to open up all but a very few mos with the data indicated that there was some challenges we have overcome. the sector determined to overcome those in implementation and that's what i'm at right now. entrance of the top of women in the marine corps, i think the record speaks for itself over the past 10 or 12 years and we have trumpeted that. there may be in washington, d.c. some perception that women in the marine corps don't feel valued. i spent a hell of a lot of time with murray's i think i can step out bs when i see. i don't think that's true.

i think marines are proud to be marines and doing so that different opinions than me have been quite vocal in sharing this with me in a very professional way. what i do groups like we're doing right now. i don't think there's a rift to you. i think treating every marine with dignity and respect, value the contribution of every marine and put them someplace with a have a high probability of succeeding and contribute to the team is what we all about and we will do that. so that's where i'm heading. i will personally make sure that message is conveyed in every audience -- >> we have to leave the last few questions at the center for a new american security. you can watch anytime online c-span.org including the earlier panels from today. take you live now to the senate. the house out today returning to more. the senate a gap in military here on c-span2 starting today with the general speeches and then consider an executive nominations at five followed by vote. of chambers working off the

floor on government funding, short-term measure that was approved last week expires on wednesday. progress is reported that republican and democratic leaders grapple with policy and funding issues. we could see some kind of agreement late today or tomorrow on the $1.1 trillion measure. a democratic aide says the tax bill on on the this deal will be voted separated from the house but combined for the senate. te . the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. eternal god, who knows what is best for us, have your way in our nation and world. release the power of your providence on capitol hill,