bourque o work on. >> i know there was a tornado or hurricane and they were right there and they could not respond, and it made no sense. >> we fixed that one, senator. thank you. >> and talking about the dual status commanders, you are satisfied that we are on track so it's viable for the future? >> senator, with the april class, we will have trained at least two dual status commandsers for every stated. and that is huge. so, there's one in the queue and we will keep the training course going. >> how long is the course? >> it's a two-week course and it dove tailed with another course, so it builds on previous programs, it gives you not just a certified dual status commandser, it gives you a team of guardsmen and north-com folks that have worked together and studied the problem.

>> it may be not a bad idea to start it in the lower levels and lower ranks as something to keep their eye on as we are going along, as integrated earlier in the training cycle. and general fraser, foreign influence in your aor and how it effects your operation, i noted comments on russia, what about the role of china, can you comment on that based on your experience? >> senator, china is a engaged in the region as well. they are primarily from a diplomatic and commercial and economic standpoint is where they are very much engaged. they are now the leading trading partner with some countries and they are expanding from military to military relations, they have had over 20 high level visits to various countries within the region. they are selling some military equipment from light attack aircraft to medium transports to

radar capacity. and they provide he heducation training in china for officers and their families. >> similar to what we do with the war college and the like? >> yes. very similar. >> it was interesting, i had personal experience with countries, when i was in pair gay, they would say, if you do not do it, china will. and i think we are seeing that. if you do not provide it, then well get it from china. we are seeing it more and more in the last three or four or five years. that an accurate statement? >> we have seen increasing interest in china, it's not china or the united states though, i see us both engaged in the region and i see that there's an opportunity for both of us as we engage with our partner par partners in the region to ensure the security of the region. >> i believe that is the reason for the state partnerships so they can get the value for the dollar and so they can hang out

with our soldiers and learn and grow and develop that relationship which is critically important, is that a fair statement? >> the relationships we build through training and education programs are critical to the future. we see it all the time around the world. we do not know when a crisis is coming. to have a shared experience with one of our partners is critical to our success. >> i think we saw that in egypt when we were able to get on the phone and say, stand down and let's see how this plays out a bit do you agree? i do. >> i think the army has done cuts well, and trying to be strategic with the cuts. i amount deeply concerned, about the a letter mission, that we have in -- alert mission that he was with in barnes, do you share the concerns, i'm hearing from the folks back home that they heard nothing about the cuts

coming. there was no communication whatsoever and it was out of left field and here we go and i'm looking at strategically massachusetts and eastern see board, the ability to respond all over our part of the world and it makes no sense. >> we had tough decisions to make. we turned over every rock to find the money that was cut. i believe the homeland was treated fairly and treated as job one. however, we really need to be vigilant and ensure that we continue to programs necessary to defend the country and that includes the air control alert mission and in terms of defense support to civil authorities, the guard is the -- the air gua guard specifically is good at that mission.

i'll count on the air force to support our requirement, and we all hated to see the us cans happen. -- to see the cut cans happen. >> they are not there yet, and we are hoping that we will have a discussion on it. if you are talking best guard for your dollar, the reserves and guard forces, the reserve component, it does not make sense when you are talking about protecting the homeland. we are not just talking about protecting the homeland. there's a one army and military concept, when back filling remember army and air force units. the army got it right. they are being thoughtful and with the air force, it's not over, with all due respect. i've not seen evidence that these cuts are making sense. so i just wanted to bring that to your attention, appreciate your input on that, thank you. >> thank you, very much, senator brown. senator udall. >> thank you both for being here

today. senator, if i can follow-up on brown's comment, the reduction to the army and air guard will not effect your mission, you believe you can deliver on your mission? >> senator, that is correct. >> let me turn to specific element in the change that is under way in this area. there's been a decision in the 24-hour alert requirement in due luth and langualy and did you he a say in that situation? >> it was a tough decision, it was part of the process across every receiv every service and by every commander to find the savings in the budget act. i think we did adequately

address the requirements of the home lands. there was a decision to reduce by two. the command took responsibility for identifying those two bases we did two independent studies, both commands that did the research came up with the two, deluth and langly. neither are closed yet. but i specifically felt in the case of those two bases that i had the authorities and theauor notices the loss of the two bases, i can change on my own authority the alert conditions that could, in case of a threat, stand that back up. >> okay. if that changes i'm going to ask you to take the time to notify the committee and notify me if

you would. >> i'm passionate about the air control alert. i'll make sure my views are known. >> thank you. let's turn to critical infrastructure, if we might. in the vulnerability that our infrastructure that is to either cyber or attack. what do you see, and this is a series of questions as vulnerable pieces of our infrastructure, what steps need to be taken to protect the components and what role does north-com have in facilitating those present i haeasures? >> thank says, there's a number of requirements, principally those lie within other sectors of the government, and so north-coms principal responsibility is to provide defense support to civil authorities and the consequence

management of disasters within certain consecutisectors, partis a cyber attack, as i mentioned earlier. we would role in and if requested provide defense support in recovering from that. we are more concerned now about systems than places. the transportation system and energy grid, those are being looked at hard and we are in support of our partners in dhs in determining ways we can help. >> of course, we have a lot of work left to do, and i am optimistic that we will work on the floor of the senate to put in place the cybersecurity policy and you know that you'll play a key role in advising us, given us perspective and responsibilities in the area. >> yes, sir. >> general fraser, i would like to turn to the reports, if i could, that islamist groups are

recruiting in your aor. what are the conditions that are facilitating islamist routecruig and fund raising and what can we do as well as our partners to address the conditions? >> there are groups, violent extremist groups that are recruiting in largely muslim communities within latin america. the muslim community is small in the region, makes up about 4% of the region, they are deliberately advocating though. in the situations and the conditions that enable that are ones that you see in many of the countries in the region and that is poverty rates, it's income inequality, it's the corruption that is there and it's in the -- in some of those cases, it's an anti-u.s. perspective. >> it bears watching and

hopefully the lessons we have learned in other part s of the world we can apply, south america has had its violent pieces in its history but it has little terrorism of any kind so this shows that it's a worldwide issue that we have to respond to wherever it paying great attenn to this, we do not see great success in their efforts along these lines. >> general jacoby, if i can turn back to you, our good friend general renwar, when he stepped down, he talked about concerns about the aging air defense systems. we know that he talked about temporary fixes to take us forward, what is your opinion about the modernization in this

area? >> we eager to have the f-35 come on line and we are eager to continue to extension programs for the f-16s, senator the most important thing we do as combat commander though is we conduct frequent periodic inspections of our air control alert squadrons. they continue to do well in these and we will maintain alertness, but we are a stakeholder in capable aircraft stretching out into the future. >> you had more resources in this area, you could put them to work? >> any co-com that you had before you would know what to do with additional resources. >> before my time expires talk about iran's outreach efforts in south america. we know that chavez and

ahmadinejad has been making progress. >> ahmadinejad has made six visits to the region in the last six or seven years. this last trip he took he went to a few country cans, it was largely seen as a diplomatic efforts. and the opinion is that he did not really get the reception or the support that he was looking for. >> we need to be vigilant there. it feels like it's a throw back to the cold war when the soviet union was traveling the the world, looking for alleys, but this is serious and thank you for your leadership in this area. my t i wanted to do two final thing s i want to thk

you for your service. god speed and thank you for your service. general jacoby, i want to put on the record the flow of drugs into our country is significant and substantial and worrysome but it is a symptom of the demands of the drugs and we have to deal with dampening the demands down. and i understand that is a challenge that you face. thank you for your service. >> thank you, senator haggan. >> thank you mr. chairman and general fraser and general jacoby, thanks very much for your service, i could not agree more with what senator udall said about trying to ramp down the desire in our country for narcotics. i wanted to ask a question about equador, the closing of the security cooperation location

and the ejection of the u.s. ambassador in april of last year has really stressed the u.s. equador ties, how would you characterize the current status of the counter narcotics cooperation between the u.s. and the government of equador and then what needs to be done to strengthen our cooperation yard to both counter terrorism and counter narcotics? >> we continue to engage with the military with equador of course we have good military to military relations to them. they are working well with their neighbors, and we have seen an impact especially from the maritime traffic now is able and uses equador to depart. so, we have seen an increase in that activity. we continue to have discussions with them and work with them to adjust and address this problem.

>> okay. d.o.d.'s support to the u.s. law enforcement agencies and the mexican military supports the broader countser transnational countser terrorism fight, d.o.d. provides support to u.s. and foreign law enforcement agencies against this common enemy. what type of mutually beneficial d.o.d. support is provided towards this this end and are we doing enough to foster the important relationships with law enforcement agencies, state and national guard counter drug task forces? >> thank you, senator, in north-com, partnerships are a center of dpmpt ravity, in the home land we do things in support of our partners and acro justice, and so, along the border, that is where you finds

our efforts. what we do is we provide operational support, analytic support, technical support, all of it with the check mark of mutualally beneficial and that means it's a good training opportunity for the military forces that are partnered up primarily with c bp, customs and border patrol. it's has been a great relationship, grown stronger and stronger over time. just this month, we have conducted a nimbus two in the tucson sector where first armored division soldiers feel they got better training than than they have gotten prior to a deployment at any time in the past ten years. it's a complex environment and it's a great training experience and it provides some good support to cbp which they are happy with. i think we have a good relationship and it's critical

to expand and strengthen our partnerships. we have 32 agencies represented and eight agencies. we have never had better sharing across the inter agency, i appreciate that question. i'm proud of it. >> thank you. that is a lot of agencies to coordinator together. thank you. i think it's important for us to counter this transnational criminal organizations and their elicit trafficking i have the y theitheity trafficking activities. central to that is preventing them from operating in these environments. and i do chair a sub committee of in committee on emerging threats and capabilitities. and i'm concerned that central america has become the preferred transit zone for the

transnational organizations. which seemed to have included not only drugs but commercial weapons, from the u.s. and then obviously the trafficking of people. the limitsed capabilities of the central american states have allowed the mexican transnational, the tcos to establish points of drugs and the mexican area is vulnerable. i understand that south-com is working with north-com to develop a operations capability among the magzs. what type of resources does this regional capability require and what are the objectives? >> senator, it's a broad whole

of government effort. from a d.o.d. standpoint, we are a supporting organization, because this is criminal activity, it's not military activity. we have a role to support the active theities who have been asked by their governments to support this and we are continuing to train and equipping with our partner militaries, working with them to help them work better with their law enforcement partners, but the solutions are in the rest of our foreign affairs support. it is really in the u.s. aid programs, it's all of us working together, with those governments to solve this problem. >> general jacoby. >> yes, srnlts, i concur with general fraser, he with understand this as a whole of government requirement. but the police, guatemala and

mexico is very good and improving and there's efforts and a considersness on the mexican side of the importance of that southern border and i see them taking action. >> together, columbia, peru and bolivia, produce most of the world's supply of cocaine and in recent years, progress in controlling cocaine production in columbia, seems to have resulted in an increase in contain production in peru and boliv am boliva, i don't know if you agree with that but i would hike to know, and what would be your plan to decrease the production of cocaine in those countries without seeing it go back up in other countries? >> we have seen a decline in

cocaine in columbicolumbia but other countries have been producing. we are working with the column beans to support their efforts and again, this is in our governmental effort. the reduction of cocaine is other parts of our government, department of state who supports this efforts. we are working with the government of pursue, and in peru, to help reduce the impact in that country. and we are just seeing as you watch brazil, the united states and bolivia just signed a tri-part agreement to address transnational organized crime in bolivia and that is an on going effort. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> before i recognize senator bloom enthal, i had one question

of general jacoby. that has to do with the anti-terrorism joint exercise that we have with russia that we conduct annually called vigilant eagle. you indicated, general, that the benefits that we realize from this sort of exercise are invaluable. this is what your prepared statement tells us and you hope it will lead to great levels of openness and understanding, us and russia. are you hoping that we can enhance the cooperation as part of the effort? >> yes, i do. militarily, for instance, do you plan to have direct interaction vigilant eagle last year was with your russian counter part very successful exercise between russians and the united states and canada. and we exercised a counter terrorist exercise, where we

shared a picture that we had to deal with a threat adequately. it was important to create trust on both sides. and what our military activities are particularly in alaska region. so, i -- we are going to do vigilant eagle again this year, i'm hoping to meet with my russian counter part to discuss the techniques and procedures that will help us do it better. we have areas of cooperation with the russians that are important and should be sustained. and i think as we discussed earlier in the testimony, we have to keep our eyes wide open, but i think there's a good potential for cooperation here. >> thank you both, thank you for your great service, leadership, and general fraser, again, all of us wish you all the best as you take on other chapters and responsibili

responsibilities, in your life, we wish you and your family all the best. >> thank you, mr. chairman, it's ban great honor. >> thank you for taking over here. >> i'm honored to take over from chairman levin for the final questioning, i think that is the good news. and very honored to be with you and thank you as others have for your extraordinary service, both general fraser and general jacoby, i'll try to avoid some of the questions. i think i know about most of them. but i do have a number that may elicit some of the same testimony. i wa i want to come back to the aircraft that are being drawn down from the air national guard, a decision that effects connecticut because we will lose the lift capacity of the c-20-j and 136 aircraft will be lost to

the air national guard which i regard a as important, because connecticut is one of the 27 states effected by it. i wonder if you have done an analysis of what the effects will be of that draw down? >> senator, thank you for the question. the international guard is an important partner to u.s. north-com and norad, so both hats they are important to us. and the guard did invaluable service to protecting the homeland and civil authorities. air force had tough decisions to make, tough choices that all the combat and commandsers had and all of the services had in order to meet the significant budget reduction, what i dos as a commander is put requirements on the able. and there's a requirement to support civil authorities and a requirement to support the

homeland, the loss of guard aircraft will be felt, and they are a tremendous asset and it's a part of the pain that the combat commanders will feel as a result of this important round of budget decisions. >> can you be more precise about how it will be felt? what the effects will be? >> i can only speak to the air control alert mission. we will be able to mitigate the loss, i felt the loss was of the two standing alert on the two bases, was a loss that within my authorities and within the capability of norad commandser, i have the loss of the would bases it was not a loss of aircraft, and a loss of bases sit is -- sit ting alert on thoe two bases. >> any other effects that you have seen or analyzed?

>> no, sir. >> let me go to cyber if i may. you answered one of the questions earlier about the task of defining criteria that would constitute an act of war in case of a cyber attack. mindsing is that those attacks are on going as we speak. not only against the defense industrial base, certain private sector elements but also our actually defense capabilities, and i wonder if you could be somewhat more precise about where you think we are in defining those criteria, you said that there was, and i'm using i don't really wourd, momentum toward that definition. >> yes, senator. ask recently as yesterday, i had a conversation with the general alexander, he is walking point with general taylor and strategic command in terms of developing criteria, we will address that in a collaborative

fashion i believe in the near future, part of the momentum is not just in the department of defense, it's within the broader community of agencies and organizations that are concerned about cybersecurity both commercial and specifically in the lead element for us defending our nation's networks. i would concur as a professional, the question is how do we define these as attacks on our country. these are serious discussions that need to be had and it's really a policy question of where are the red lines. that is what we are talking about, where is the red line where it is now an attack to homeland and what else can it be