might have. first, great to see you. thank you for coming out on this friday morning. over the past 236 years, history of united states army is marked by the decisive action and wide range of missions including regular warfare, humanitarian assistance operations and engaging with allies to build capacity and support civil authorities. our army is fully committed to combat operations in iraq and afghanistan. second mccue and i are incredibly proud of the work our soldiers and civilians have accomplished in these two countries and elsewhere. we do remain a nation at war, committed to the mission in afghanistan. we also remain an army that is globally engaged. we have 96,000 soldiers stationed overseas. our nation's army has soldiers located in nearly 150 countries around the world. moving forward, our army remains

mindful of our primary purpose, to fight and win our nation's wars. this role is nonnegotiable. we're fighting alone, however, is not all that our nation requires of its army. in today's complex and uncertain strategic environment, it is imperative that our army remains responsive to the geographic combat and commanders and is a decisive arm of the joint force. the army provides depth and versatility to the joint force through the capabilities imbedded in our active guard and reserve components. meeting the challenges of an uncertain complex and interconnected strategic environment requires an army that is adaptive and innovative, flexible and agile, integrated and synchronized, lethal and discriminant. with that in mind, our army must retain the right capacity and diversity to perform a wide range of missions and provide a variety of military options to our national security leaders. the president and secretary of

defense recently provided new defense strategic guidance to focus our efforts. the creation of the strategy was inclusive and comprehensive. the secretary mccue and i were deeply involved in this unprecedented and collaborative process. the defense strategic guidance was clear. we will strengthen our presence in the asia pacific region, we will remain globally vigilant in the middle east. we'll continue to build and strengthen critical partnerships and alliances around the globe. over the last five years, we grew the army to meet the requirements associated with large-scale combat and stability operations in iraq and afghanistan. with the successful completion of our mission in iraq, the continued transition of operations to afghan security forces and the reduction of u . presence if afghanistan, our strategy calls us to no longer plan for large scale stability operations. accordingly, the time is strategically right to reduce

the army's force structure. even given a fiscally constrained environment, our army will 5:00 prish ouaccompli reductions in a controlled manner. secretary mccue and i are committed to insuring we walk down this hill at the ready. rather than running on our nation's army off a cliff. we will reduce our active force and strength from 570,000 to 490,000 which will include a reduction of at least eight brigade combat teams. it is important to note, however, that an army of 490,000 and 2017 already fundamentally different and more capable than the army of 482,000 that we had in 2001. we have an army seasoned by combat. we will continue to increase our investment and special operations forces and the cyber domain. we've drastically improved our command and control capabilities. significantly enhancing mission command. we've modulized our brigade

combat teams making them more capable and lethal. we increased our aviation assets, our national guard and resevens are truly an operational reserve giving us increased depth and capacity. finally, we will leverage the lessons learned from ten years of combat as we look into developing what our future force might look at. going forward, the army has three principle and interconnected roles. prevent, shape, and win. we prevent conflict. we do this by maintaining credibility based on the army capacity, its readiness, and modernization to prevent miscalculation by potential adversaries. more over, the army has a critical role in shaping the environment by supporting combat and commanders and sustaining strong military relations with allies, building capacity of partners to maintain internal and regional stability and operating along side our joint forces to facilitate access around the world. and we stand ready to win our

nation's wars when needed. if all else fails, we can apply the combined arms capabilities to dominate any environment and win decisively as part of the joint force. as we look ahead, the secretary and i have several priorities. foremost, we'll provide trained, equipped, and ready forces to win the current fight. second, we'll develop the army for the future as part of joint force 2020. a versatile mix of capabilities formations and equipment. we must sustain our high quality all volunteer army. we will continue to transform the ways we modernize equipment way better aligning requirements, resources and the acquisition process. we must invest in energy initiatives in order to reduce the cost of energy within our budget. we will adapt leader development to meet our future security challenges. finally, we'll foster continued

commitment to the profession after arms and, a noble calling founded on bedrock of trust which will be key as we move forward and develop our future army. we are an army in transition. while continuing our missions abroad over the next several budget cycles, we'll refine, adjust, and adapt as we move the army toward the future force needed. our approach to the current and future budget cycles will remain strategy based and fiscally prudent. adjustments will come through deliberately balancing three stats. the first piece consisting of an end strength, forestructure and personnel, second, modernization, and third, readiness. first we'll continue to meet our commitments in afghanistan and around the world. the army will continue to play a large role in the missions identified in the strategic guidance including counter-terrorism, irregular warfare, deter and defeat aggression, projecting power, defending the homeland,

providing support to civil authorities, and conducting stability and counter insurgency operations. we will increase engagement with allies if the asia pacific region, home of seven of the ten largest armies in the world to enhance our collective security and promote economic prosperity. we must utilize our depth to sustain relationships with our friends and allies to insure stability by building partner capacity in the middle east. we will decrease our european footprint by two heavy brigade combat teams with the first one coming out of europe in 2013. in order to continue our strong engagements with nato and other european partners, we will deploy rotational forces to conduct training and readiness exercises with our allies and new partners. in latin america, africa and elimination where, we'll use low cost and small foot proint approaches to conduct engagements, maintain stability

and build partner capacity. end strength reductions will occur over the next six years. we will follow a drawdown ramp that allows us to take care of soldiers and families while maintaining a ready and capable force to meet any requirements including our current operations in afghanistan. we will also continue to look at the optimum design of our combat teams and enable units, leveraging the lessons learned in combat. this analysis is on going and we do not expect any decisions for several months. but it could lead to a reduction of additional brigades if we decide to increase the capability of our current brigade combat team structure. >> the national defense authorization act and the dod budget request of 2013 reflects the army's modernization priorities. that includes the network, replacement of fighting vehicle, the joibt light tactical vehicle, and our soldier systems. as force requirements continue to decrease in afghanistan, we

reshape the army's force generation model. we will implement a progressive readiness model that meets combat and command requirements and takes advantage of our combat experience in both our active reserve components. this requires continual balancing between forestructure, manning, training, equipping and modernization. this will insure we maintain readiness across the entire force and avoid tier readiness. xt several nually revisit the n years of transition to insure sustained readiness. as we look to the future, there are efficiencies we need to reduce costs. secretary mccue's direction has been clear in this regard. energy security requires us to focus on reducing our energy requirements both in terms of operational fuel usage but also home station initiatives. we need to continue to find efficiencies and reduce the cost of doing business as part of a mitigating risk to our strategy. this includes eliminating redund

ancies and streamlining our headquarters. in term of paying benefits, the secretary and i agree with the secretary of defense's budget request. the all volunteer force is the foundation of our military. but the cost of military personnel has grown in a substantial -- unsustainable rate over the last decade. we will not reduce pay but reductions must occur in the rate of growth in military compensation and other personnel related costs and benefits. it is imparity they've during this transition and end strength reduction, we maintain a commitment to our soldiers and families that is kmiz rat with the service and sacrifice. today, the army insures mission accomplishment guarantees national security interests, compels adversaries, prosecutes military campaigns and forges a positive difference around the world. it is with the american people expect and what our own freedom demands. the secretary and i will continue to assess and make

adjustments as necessary to insure we have the right army that is agile, flexible, and prepared for a full range of operations and threats. thank you very much. that ends my prepared comments. i'd like to open it up for questions. >> general, can you expand a little bit on the european plans, particularly in light of, as you take two out, can you give us the date of the secretary one will be coming out? and can you just talk a little bit how you envision support for nato allies, how you envision support for the smaller allies that have been participated in, afghanistan, for example? and also, are the two heavily armored divisions the brigades coming out, do you see them going away or will they just get moved to a different location? >> first, the plan is to have one brigade come out and 13. and the second will come out in '14. that's the current plan. they will come out of the force. they will not be restationed

back in the united states. that's the plan right now as we look at this. as we look ahead, i really see this as a model of how i see us doing things in the futurement we'll have a rotational base out of united states as we do our force generation. we'll rotate units, for example, into our training complex we have that allows us to train with our nato partners and also with some of our other partners in europe. they'll do that at several levels across several different dough mains. in reality, i think in the long run this will benefit all of us. it will cause more units to get involved in working with our nato partners. it won't be limited to those stationed in europe. i think we'll be able to taylor our engagements based on their needs. so, for example, we want to do a higher headquarters exercise. if you want o have a light unit, we can have a light.

if you want a heavy unit. it will enable us to diversify with our nato partners. i actually see if we do this properly and are focused on this that we'll be able to make this an advantage to us as we move forward. >> tom? >> thank you. general, thank you for your time this morning. i want to talk about the balance between end strength and national strategy. at ausa last year, you led us through a thoughtful discussion about before 9/11, the arm qui was to implement a two war strategy. there wasn't enough there. you say you're comfortable dropping to 490. share us with, sir, if you woshgs what about the new strategy is different enough to give that you comfort level. >> the fundamental principal and the strategy says that we are going to do long term stability operations. and that is what drove the increase in our structure. the fact we were engaged in iraq and afghanistan for eight and ten years.

so we know we have a lot of uncertainty out there f we have to do a large scale stability operation, we'll depend on our ability to reverse an expand which will be dependent on the reserve component initially and in order for them to help us to meet our initial requirements which would then buy us time to potentially look at rexpakting the army again. and that is the thought process behind it. i feel comfortable with that strategy. >> i would like to follow up on tom's question about troop strength. you are are concerned about hollowing out the force. yet, we're going back to a figure that pre-9/11 number is a hollowed out number. you talk about the missions that we conduct ourselves in. why was that number considered a hollowed out force number ten

years ago and now as we talk about more missions, it's not? also, you could give us any more details about restarting brac and where that would be? >> first. i don't think -- i didn't believe the force was hollow. as i look at the 490,000 number, fwz how that matches up with force structure. what means is if you have structure in there that is not ready. in other words, can you have a lot of structure. if you don't have the money to sustain training, insure they're equipped properly or to insure we have it manned properly, then you have a force. i believe how we are right now that we will be able to do that at the 490,000 level. that is the thought process behind it n terms of brac, they'll ask for two more brac rounds. not sure when that will be. we have to work that with

congress. wire going to request we go through two more brac panels. we'll have to wait and see and work that with congress. we'll see what their thoughts are with that. i don't see the one thing, you know, the army went through a very significant brac here. and we did a fairly significant consolidation within the army. so for the army, i believe a fall on brac would be -- would not have as much impact on the army because we pretty much done what we want to. we'll have to do minor things, i think, as we go through brac. we have established our installations. what you'll see around the army, except for somebody overseas place that's will close, but in the couldnntinental united stat and alaska and hawaii, you might see a reduction in the installation but i don't think

you're going to see a big installation being asked to close. we think we have the right footpri footprint. we'll see. we'll work our way through those as we move forward. >> with regard to your aviation assets, there is mention in the white paper yesterday about delaying or sod earnization for helicopter helicopters. also, does that affect aas? and then i also like to ask you about the air force's decision to terminate c-27 j. that is a controversial issue between the two services. do you plan to sign the mou that is being drawn up to provide direct support without that c-27-j? >> first, with the aviation, we have all the modernization in the program that we need. we slowed it down a bit. we're comfortable with that. because of the reset that we're doing with all our aviation as it comes out of the war zones in iraq and afghanistan. so we're still doing reset. we still continue to modern dwriz our fleet. it will be a bit of a slower pace. and we're fairly comfortable

with that. in terms of the c-27, i signed the mou this morning before i came down here. we've been working this for a few months. it's important to us that we have direct support to our units out in afghanistan and wherever we might deploy. it's a concept actually we tested while commander in iraq. and i thought it was a very successful test. so i think it's uncomfortable with that. we'll mitigate the loss of the c-27. i'm not sure we'll be able to completely mitigate it, but that will help as we deploy. >> is that part of the delay? >> general, do you feel that the army is shouldering the bulk of the burden of this -- these defense budge cuts? when we look on paper, it sure looks like you're taking the biggest hit. and also, how did you come up with the number 490? is that budget based? what were the considerations? >> sure.

first, i really want to be very clear. i believe the army route more than anybody else as we got involved in iraq and afghanistan and that growth was very specific because we were worried about the tempo of our soldiers and units. we grew the army in order to meet our commitments in iraq and afghanistan. so i think it's -- i'm comfortable now that in fact our -- we're done with iraq. commit sment coming down in afghanistan that we can now do this. i don't see it as we're bearing the burden. we're making a correction as what we see out there in terms of threat. what i look at is what is 490,000 get me? so what we're doing is we're increasing our special operations force. we're going to go to 35,000 total special operations forces in the army. it is important to understand this it's important to understand.

this is significant growth. we've been doing this over the last three or four years. i want to emphasize the role they play in iraq, afghanistan, around the world. we want to continue that. we think that's the way of the future. also now the relationship built between a special operation and conventional forces. the integration we've gained in iraq and afghanistan we will carry forward as we continue to conduct missions around the world. i see that as a factor. then i look at the number of brigade combat teams and i feel comfortable. although as i mentioned right now we're planning on a reorganization, that could potentially make it reduce further. the capability we would have behind would allow us to execute the strategy we're talking about. so i feel comfortable with where we're heading. that's how we got to that number 490,000. >> seven of the top ten armies,

the largest armies are in asia. you mentioned a deterrent effect -- are you worried you're sending a signal you're reducing the size of the army just as they are pivoting towards these larger armies. >> the armies left behind, number brigade and combat teams, we've increased our aviation capacity and special operations forces capacity gives us enough to deter and protect, know we're capable of moving this army anywhere in the world, being more capable of moving quicker, being more responsive that the allow us to answer those issues. >> sir, can you explain the purpose and goals of these low-cost operations in africa? >> first of all, it's about continuing to stay and build relationships with the leerps -- leadership within all of these nations.

we can do that several ways, with special operations forces. we can do it with unique forces such as engineers, medical. we can do it with aviation. so more niche forces that would help them build capacity. those kinds of things in africa and south america, for example, i think we have the capacity and capability to do it. that's the depth we bring to the joint forces. we have the ability to bring other capabilities to these nations that not all the other services can that's our stremgt. although we're more focused on asia and middle east, we'll be able to do small scale events, whether training events or building partner capacity or bilateral events that will allow us to establish these relations. it's really the relations that

are most important. >> sir, 490, the future's defense plan, of the $259 billion, what's the army's contribution to that figure? >> tony, i keep wanting to give a number to this but it's so complex. the reason i say that, it's not only people reductions, benefit reductions but the reduction in equipment we have that goes out, the reduction of training dollars. we'll work our way through it. in the end it will be a fairly significant number. i don't want to put a number on the, because i don't think i'll be accurate. >> yesterday listed reductions, the gao cleared a protest recently. i thought the program was going forward. >> the rueduction is $1.7

billion. it's because of the challenge. we had to delay it because of the challenge. we couldn't spend $1.7 billion. we reduced that. what happens is the program has moved a year. so $1.7 taken out because of the protest. now the protest is done and we're moving forward with ground combat deal and comfortable with the program. >> general, historically when major security partners, coalition of partners, i'm saying partners have always relied on america to provide boots on the ground and they have latched on a few thousand here and a few thousand there. are you saying particularly to your european partners, sorry, we're not going to provide the biggest force now and you're going to have to provide a hell of a lot more. is that realistic, seeing the

europeans are cutting back -- >> i don't think that's what we're saying. i think we have plenty of capacity to lead with boots on the ground, depending on the operation. i think we have the capacity to do that. will continue to do that. we certainly are going to need our partners to move along with us as we continue to do this. i don't think there's any greater expectation they would provide more. i think what we would want to do is continue what we have been doing and build strong partnerships as we address challenges around the world. >> this will be the last one. >> a very short one so maybe another. which of the four brigades in europe, which are the two brigades you would from europe? >> we're still working our way through that. probably be a couple of weeks and we'll announce which two they are. >> with all due respect, there's only two heavy brigades in europe so we can do the montana ourselves. >> we'll announce in a couple of

weeks. >> this will be the last one. >> following michael's question, have any of your counter-parts in europe or germany expressed specific concern about not just with drawing the army but all the families and their economies are tough there, too. then specifically about the drawing down the 80,000. when will that start? is that going to begin before the war in afghanistan is going to end allegedly at the end? >> first we've been working very closely with admiral who is working with them. we've been talking about this several months, how we would mitigate this. i think they are somewhat pleased with the mitigation strategy in place. i think we'll be able to work through that. the thing i would tell you about the drawdown is there's two hinges i was concerned about when we started this discussion we get to the 490 was important to me. we'll start this year.

we had committed to going down to 520. we're starting to take some structure out. we've been able to move it across a six-year period from 12 to 17. by doing that, it's spread evenly. it allows us to downsize and take care of soldiers and families. we hope to do it mostly by attrition. there might be some other things we have to do. we're trying to do mostly by attrition, counts for commitments in afghanistan. we'll be able to sustain our commitments in afghanistan and get it to the right temp okay, uptempo we need in order to provide enough time for families. that was part of this. to me, as important as the 490 number, was the fact we're able to do this over a six-year period. >> evenly split? >> not exactly even. we do it based on -- it's based on what we call cohorts that come in. for example, three or four years ago bringing income horowitz. we might reduce those a little

more than we do, the ones we do in 15 or 16. but we have worked this carefully in our environments. this was very important to me as we worked through this process. >> thanks, everybody. >> thank you very much. appreciate it. >> join us next week when the senate collection committee on intelligence hears about global threats to the u.s. witnesses include head of cia david petraeus and robert mueller. beginning at 10:00 a.m. eastern on our companion network c-span. >> april 15th, 2010, i had arrived in paris. walked into the hotel lobby met

him for the first time. he looked at me and said, so you're the rolling stone guy. i don't care about the article, >> michael hastings wrotet ver. commander of the u.s. and nato forces in afghanistan in the 2010 june issue of "rolling stone." >> i said, sir, it's between you and lady gaga not knowing she was going to be on the cover. >> he replied just put me an lady gaga in a heart-shaped tub. i thought this is a different kind of general, a different kind of story. >> several months later as a result of the article, general mcchrystal had been fired. michael hastings continues the story sunday night on q&a. >> it would be intolerable if a handful of violent people, and that is what it is, just a handful, could harden us against needed change. i've seen an uglier and it