bonds and partnerships that last a lifetime in some cases. the same thing could be true through perhaps cost savings and opportunities through dl. you also said something, though, that is something that i wanted to drill into, and that is dl itself, distance education. using captain's career course, this is a reserve component, i think a perspective on this. as we continue to partner with tradoc on what is the content -- excuse me, not the content, but the duration of those courses, captain's career course, if i'm current, right now is an 80-hour dl, distance learning phase, coupled by a two-week resident phase, followed by another 80-hour dl phase. so the net effect there is to complete that critical training in the professional development,

you're taking a captain out for two years, particularly if they're a company commander or in another leadership position in trying to provide c-2 and leadership for their unit. so it's an issue. from the army national guard, that we remain engaged on what tradoc is, how do we recognize the customer base that is participating in those courses. >> all kidding aside, great question. it's really a question for tradoc. but as chief of the army reserve, i've had this question with both the current command for tradoc and past. i've had discussion with the chief. so my opinion is, and this actually is two and a half years ago, i'm having breakfast with the general and he asked me, jeff, what did multicomponents fail? this will get to you.

i said, a couple ropes. one i said the culture is the army. and the second is, it was just too hard to integrate. we've addressed a lot of those unintegrated processes over the last 13 years of fighting. but think about executive education. the best way to learn, and to change the culture of a large organization like the army, to make it a total force culture versus an ac centered culture is education. you need to have a one-school system where the faculty, active guard and reserve, in the student body are active guard and reserve. my opinion to the chief is, yes, we can get some operational functional commands, but the better place to put the energy is on multi-composts to tradoc. you may need to make it more distance learning friendly, which will actually save you money. so had the same active guard and reserve, whatever it is, mos, leadership, whatever it is, go to one school, one school called

the army, and everybody gets cross-pollinated. tradoc is looking at that really hard. that's one thing that they're considering in order to help change our culture, promote force policy and get to the issues that you raised. >> thank you. i appreciate it. i'll talk to you outside afterwards. >> we have a question on the right side of the room. >> another question? just kidding. i love the yankees. they're my second favorite team. >> congratulations -- or congratulations. i was thinking about the yankees. sorry. >> how about patriots? >> giants. sorry. >> that's two in a row. >> yes, sir. i'm colonel jennifer. there are nine active duty hospitals that are part of force com. as far as i know, there are 13 on the reserve side.

until about the mid-2000, it was standard for combat support hospitals to do a rotation once every other year. this was the means of specifically ensuring that the combat support hospital could in fact do its protect-and-defend medal in conjunction with the medical requirements, and addressing civilians on the battlefield, et cetera. we relied on those rotations to ensure that all the combat support hospitals both on the active and reserve side were certified to do those jobs. but those went away. now having been in command of the 47th for six months, i can assure you that on the active duty side, the protect-and-defend medal has been ignored due to the hospitals falling in on fixed bobs in iraq. and eventually in afghanistan.

i personally deployed with a cache to tahiti in 1995 where we executed our own force protection. somalia was the first one to use containers to establish its perimeter. and likewise, in bosnia. so i actually, i guess i have a request, as opposed to a question, and that is that the jrtc rotation, or at a minimum some kind of ctc rotation be reestablished as a standard for combat support hospitals. we have been trying to get an ntc rotation. unfortunately we need to be requested. and the brigades going don't want to request us, because we're a space hog, and we have lots of equipment that has to be moved. so i wonder, gentlemen, if at a minimum, you would take this issue back and -- >> let me toss it over to jeff for his immediate answer. but i noted it down. let me take a look at it. but you're going to have to

swear allegiance to the patriots before -- >> sure. i will do that. >> patriots take over. say it three times real fast. how bad do you want this rotation? >> red sox, red sox, red sox. >> i'll take it on -- [ applause ] >> i will honestly take a look at that. i'll let jeff talk to you a little bit about the combat support hospitals and the reserves. go ahead. >> that's a great question. short answer is, it has nothing to do with medical service corps combat hospitals. it's an issue how do we get our enablers into the box with the ctss. this is a problem for a long time. it doesn't matter if you're in 1, 2, or 3. it's a question of not having enough bandwidth of getting all of our neighbors in the box of ctc rotations. in order to do that, we would have to expand, and increase the number of rotations, or ctcs that were conducted.

we cannot currently fund that in the army based on sequestration. sequestration is going to hurt the readiness of the total army. so what we're doing is the army reserve, and general -- first army general milley mentioned that cstc and war axis, and in those, these are not large enabling exercises, where we have combat support hospitals. and they are often connected to the ctc rotations. just work with me. you've got live virtual constructives. first army is supporting that. and you may be in the dirt in california, but plugged and played and participating with a live virtual constructive program where you're part of the ctc, even though you're not in the physical location of the ctc box. that's what we're doing now to give you that better experience. but we're trying to eventually get you into the box itself at the ctc.

that won't happen likely for most of our enablers, regardless of the regiment, until we see some relief from sequestration. not the answer you want, but that's -- >> let me also, jeff, turn to warren in the audience. if you could address that. warren phipps. go ahead, warren. can you talk into the microphone? they're recording this. >> okay. it doesn't matter if you're active or reserve. we have an exercise for you. and just as general talley described, they replicate the battlefield from the bct boundary all the way back to the communication zone. we have a number of exercises where we can get you to those exercises, and with the ocs we provide, i have my own medical training task force that is specifically designed specifically to help in

combination with the medical readiness command in the reserves, to help evaluate the caches, and give you all the opportunity if you want to protect your cache. and evaluate the medical skills. there is opportunities out there. that's what the policy is all about. looking across the stove pipes and looking across the components, and leveraging the capabilities of all three and giving quality training to our soldiers. >> i need to apologize. i've been through three first army cgs. sorry, mike. we've got the best, in my opinion. so sorry. >> this past summer we had two caches deployed out there simultaneously. one ac, one rc. and they had a battalion of ac op 4 against them. they gave them a company of engineers to dig into cache. it was also training for them. we will sustain that.

>> got about 20, 25 minutes left. enough for ten few-minute questions or 21 few-minute questions. >> my company is admin services. i want to pick up what he said with regards to medical readiness. >> i think of him as mr. phipps as well. [ laughter ] >> part of the services that my company offers, and provides for the national guard medical readiness, i was wondering if you could expand a little bit how that fits into force protection. >> can you say that again? >> medical readiness. how that fits into the policy you've been discussing. >> the medical readiness of the individual soldier? or units medical readiness like with the hospitals? >> for the soldiers. >> for the individual soldiers? >> the weekend event. for the battalion.

>> okay. >> i can give you an army guard perspective on that. first and foremost, the army national guard is about 68% medical ready today. highest in our history. highest of all three components, just so i can get that in there. [ laughter ] yankees fan. you know, i -- >> so is lyons as well. he can join mr. phipps. >> i would offer that if i understood your question, what is the linkage between that and total force policy, the things we've been talking about. i think there's a direct linkage between the medical status of our men and women that serve, and operational employment and engagement. if you don't have one, it's difficult to have the other. so we have gotten after this

issue over 13 years. to that historic high that i just talked about. so sitting here today, if general milley needed to reach out to an army national guard unit, he can have some assurance that the soldiers in that unit are medically ready to deploy. that's operational readiness, that's part of being an operational reserve that the army national guard is for our army. it's critically important in my opinion that we continue to sustain the medical readiness in the army national guard. because the cost to rebuild that readiness when it's needed would be so much more. so i think the investment to sustain it is worth it. in terms of operational employment in the army national guard. >> jeff? >> our medical readiness is the highest it's ever been for individual soldiers in the army reserve. it's going to go down. i've got less to do less.

i've got to cut the support for individual medical readiness support to our individual soldiers. which means i'll rely more than ever on general tucker and the first army. if it's a contingent mission, i cannot take the soldier if they're not medically ready. i'll rely on general tucker to help me get them to the medical readiness. mike, i don't know if you want to add anything. >> sure. you know, we touch these types of subjects very carefully. this is a chain of command responsibility. first army is not the unit in the chain of command. we assess the -- we would get involved with medical readiness as we begin a notice of mobilization, and we begin to do what we call a joint assessment

with an organization as they prepare for mobe. we would do a joint assessment and begin analyzing their personal readiness. the unit commanders at the jas, we do two of those a year, we did 38,000 mobes this year, we'll do 21.5 next year, about 15 the following year. of course, some things may change. but specific to the point is that, we get individual medical readiness in what is called a joint assessment as a unit is mobilized. we track that with the unit commander, and his chain of command present all the way prior to mobe, and through the mobilization. >> okay. paul? >> just one point on that, as far as the individual medical readiness is concerned. and prior to, let's say a mobe alert, at which time the

alert -- the alerted reserve component member would then be eligible for tri-care. prior to that, and anytime during their membership, the reserve component can enroll in tri-care reserve select. and for $50 a month, the -- you know, you can also address your medical readiness that way. and so that's something that also needs to be considered when we're talking about individual medical readiness, is the availability to tri-care reserve select. >> the question in the front? >> doctor? >> general milley, wicked red sox fan. >> finally found one. >> my question has to do with medical readiness functionally of the u.s. themselves. i, too, was a hospital commander and brigade commander. the one intra-service workings that i saw work well were in the

medical units where the boots hit the ground, as far as surgeons doing trauma surgery, assistants learning how to assist, how to pass instruments. and years ago, not that many years ago, we had a number of initiatives with kings county in new york, with miami-dade trauma center. i presently serve as the ambassador for the joint army reserves in cumberland, massachusetts. and i'm very well aquaptd with a lot of the teaching institutions who have expressed interest in having our reserve component physicians, and fsp members drill, for lack of a better word, under their auspices in their trauma centers. but it seemed to have fallen into some sort of disarray. as an ambassador, i wonder if this is the type of thing that i should entertain, or is there going to be first army guidance on this type of training. not just for protection, but

actually doing the surgery. >> let me make sure i've got the question right. so there possibilities or potential now for reserve component physicians to train alongside their active component counterparts, et cetera? i'll let jeff take that on. i'm not as familiar with it as i probably should be. >> you're new, sir. >> yes, thank you. thank you, general oscar. >> oscar's answer is yes. contact aaron feedy, the director of the partnership initiative. we are actually doing this already. we have select army reserve units that have developed relationships with public hospitals, private hospitals, and they already do the exchange and the training by coordinating their battle assemblies and rotating various folks where they train on the hospital, the private/public hospital and in

the units. we're expanding it. >> there's a plethora of trauma centers who are always looking for help, for lack of a better term. >> but you're talking about individual training? >> i'm talking about individual training, or sending the fsts, as an example, all three fsts in new england are on the deployment roster. it would benefit everybody if they could drill as a functional entity rather than wait until we cross levels. >> we're doing it for the initiative, but from an operational perspective, the gentleman to your left, he's my 357. so he's got -- we can take those units, and we can look at how can we plug-and-play into the existing capabilities in the boston area as a prep for their mission. >> thank you. >> thank you for volunteering your service. that's good.

i like to see that. >> we have another question in the center. >> backup from asking another question about the guard reserve. does force com anticipate there will be a commission on the army structure? and do you think it would be -- >> force com -- does force com anticipate what? >> that congress will add for commission on the structure of the army overall? >> i have no idea. force com -- well, i am force com. so therefore, i do not know if congress will have a commission. >> thank you. >> but maybe there's others out there, again, i don't know. do you guys know the structure of the army? i've heard talk of it. i can't speak for congress. maybe one of you guys -- paul, anything on that from osc? have they said anything? >> boy, that would be a good idea. >> there's a bill in the house and senate. whether the bill becomes a law,

it's up to the elected leadership. i don't know whether those bills will become law or not. >> i don't know. i don't know if that's going to happen or not. people are talking about it, but i don't know. >> we have another question from the right side of the room. >> that's probably not a satisfactory answer for you, but i can't give you a better than one that. yes, sir? >> british army exchange officer. >> british army. >> currently the projections for the 2015 strength, and 2017 end strength, and god forbid sequestration, have the active component, the national guard component and army reserve component, almost identical, around 36, and 20. could i ask the panelists if

they broadly agree and endorse those percentages split between the three components? and if any of them have an opinion that there is a tipping point below which they would tend to disagree that they should stick with that percentage split? >> yeah, i mean, first of all, there's no one up here that's a nostradamus. so we can't predict if a sequestration will happen or not. what the army has done, for the total army, is establish fundamentally our options. depending on the conditions that occur. we do know that a sequestration continues. the numbers are going to not be good. but it won't just be a numbers game. so it will be numbers, then strength, then structure. it will be a lot of other things. readiness, health of the force and so on and so forth.

all of that collectively will suffer. is it a tipping point? i don't know. i hear that term all the time. i read the book. got a lot of time for concepts like that. but i don't know. the whole point of the book tipping point is you can't predict the tipping point ahead of time, you can only look at it from the history perspective. you can't figure it out ahead of time, that's part of the book. so i don't know. i can't predict if that would be a tipping point. i do know, though, in my estimate, my estimate of the situation, as senior leader, commander of force com, that sequestration would be ungood for the readiness of the united states military at large, and the readiness of the united states army in specific, and that's all components of the united states army. with respect to going forward, the numbers going forward, number x, then there's a number y, and then there's a number z,

and there's numbers after that. i would almost say at this point, you're almost rolling the dice as to which one of those numbers will become the real number. and there's a lot of room between those numbers that people are talking about. right now, at forces command, for active component, i'll use that as the example, but we're also working the national guard and the reserve component pieces as well. but we're figuring that the base case is 490. on the active component side. and then there's a possibility, significant possibility of going to 450 active component. and if sequestration continues, you could see it go lower than that. i've seen a wide variety of numbers tossed out. the proportions between guard reserve and national -- the guard reserve and active component, that's a great question.

right now, the options we're looking at keep them roughly speaking around the same. but depending on the situation, depending on conditions, depending on what's required in the world, depending on what we perceive in terms of resourcing down the road, those proportions could change, depending on what the senior leaders want to do. and there are lots of options out there. i would say that right now, it's a -- it's too early to tell, in terms of specific numbers, for those particular years, if you were to ask that same question in february, next february, i'd give you a better answer as to what direction it's going to go in. we're probably about 90 days too early in terms of giving you a specific answer to that. at least from where i sit. and i'll let judd and jeff

talley take a swing at that as well. unless you want to make a comment on it as well. judd, any comments? on the numbers for the guard? no? >> i would refer to general talley first. [ laughter ] >> they're in avoid contact mode. go ahead. >> i think the short answer is, and i've testified about this before congress a number of times. if we stick with the president's budget, the army reserve would go from 205 to 195. and that's risk that we can accept, and still meet mission requirements. if the sequestration stays the law of the land, doesn't change, i'll be driven down to an end strength of 185. that's over the next three, four, five years. at 185, that represents significant risk in terms of my ability to support the army, because the army reserve not only supports the army, i support the total force, as i already said in all the

combatant commands. general milley properly said, we don't know. we're about 90 days before we'll have some clearer visions as to what the congress and elected civilian leadership is going to do on that issue. what i would say is, it's not so much about the end strength from the army reserve, i'll stay in my lane, the army reserve, it's about the readiness of what you've got. when i have people talk to me about, well, the sky is falling, you're going to reduce your end strength in the army reserve if sequestration stays in place, that's not the real issue. it's what have i got, and is it ready to go do something to help our army and the nation. so you could keep my end strength at 205, which is what it is as of right now. end strength objective is 205 until 2015 gets approved, then it will drop to 202. even with 205, if that's not ready, the end strength becomes a moot discussion.

you can't separate the end strength discussion apart from the readiness, and ready to do what. >> i think the key thing is what jeff mentioned, ready to do what. i mentioned that in my comments this morning. readiness for what? talking specific numbers is almost an exercise in futility. unless you relate it to some sort of strategic purpose, strategic objective for which the united states is trying to achieve. those numbers might be fine for the low end of the military operation. but if you start looking at other potential things that the united states could be involved in, then you have to start asking yourself some serious questions. and i don't know if you've ever read a book by t.r. farnbach, called "this kind of war" and the subtitle is less unpreparedness. it's written about the korean war in 1950. and it talks about the 21st infantry, and there's a guy

named lieutenant colonel smith, in the army of occupation in japan at the end of the war. a member of the 24th infantry division. and he was the battalion commander. so you all know the story, north korea attacks across the border of south korea, with about 80,000 north korean soldiers, who are extremely committed to their communist cause. they come across, and the south korean military was fundamentally a little bit better, rudimentary light infantry forces. there were american advisers there, but there wasn't a significant amount of combat power there to resist the north korean attack. so the united states, very short notice, within days, president truman decides to go ahead and commit the u.s. forces under u.n. mandate for the peninsula of south korea. so the 24th division, then under general keene, dean or keene, he

goes across the straits there, and the south korean -- or the 24th division starts working its way up the road to seoul. and they get up around oson, and the 21st infantry division gets up and starts this defensive perimeter to form an engagement area to stop the north koreans coming down the western corridor. and lieutenant colonel smith is looking up, and he sees north korean tanks coming down the road. they start shooting rounds at them. the rounds start pinging off. and to make a long story short, the 21st infantry, colonel smith gets overrun. the 24th division got hammered pretty hard, where the commander ended up being a prisoner of war. and the onslaught continues, and macarthur does his left hook and one thing leads to another, and the war settles out after about

six months into this hill battle, and stalemate. it ends three years later, after 38,000 americans are killed. but there are a lot of the 38,000 killed, were killed in that war of movement at the beginning of the war. and the united states army, in 1945, was unparalleled in the world. the united states military was unparalleled. the navy, the air force, marines, of course, the army air corps. but in 1945, it was unparalleled in power. you could say the soviet military was pretty significant, and it had a lot of numbers, and they did an awful lot of damage to nazi germany. but the united states military was something to behold in the fall of 1945. after the signing of the missouri. the japanese signing on the missouri. five years later, only five years, that military of 10

million strong, 300 aircraft carriers, 50,000 b-17s, 89 combat divisions, that military in five short years went from the most powerful organization on the face of the earth to an atrophy organization that was in the army of occupation of japan. where platoons had three squads, supposed to have three squads, ended up having two. where a company commander or lieutenant instead of captains, captains instead of majors, there wasn't enough ammunition to shoot on the rifle range. they weren't doing regular pt. they were doing insillary guard. mortar ammunition wasn't up to date. and they weren't firing anti-tech weapons and so on and so forth. and the readiness level that you just heard jeffrey talley talk

about, it dropped precipitously. the blame is at all levels. we had policy failures and so on and so forth. but at the tactical level, the commanders weren't enforcing standard readiness at the time. what did it end up being? what's the cost of all this stuff? what's the real message of sequestration? my message is, warning will robinson, be careful, it doesn't take long to rip an army apart. be careful what we ask for. because what happens when you reduce the readiness of your force, either the size and/or readiness, is you pay the butcher's bill. you pay it in blood. you pay it in the blood of american soldiers and sailors and amen and marines. the cost of unpreparedness is paid in dead bodies. and they're our dead bodies. and it's paid in time, where it

takes a long time to recover, where you might have to take months to retrain, or regenerate a force that can counterattack. so we have to be careful as we go forward. we have to be very, very careful. that's what the general and the other service -- not just him, and the secretaries of defense and secretaries of the services, that's the bell they're ringing right now. if people are paying close attention to what the secretaries are all saying, they're saying, be careful, united states. united states people. united states congress. be careful. as we go forward. because having a defense budget is an expensive proposition. if you want to get global power, you have to pay for it. and the only thing that is more expensive than fighting and winning a war, is fighting and losing a war. that you don't want to do. you don't want to be fighting

and losing a war. readiness matters. the exact size is going to be open to lots of puts and takes over the next amount of months and maybe a year or two. but readiness is fundamental. we have to maintain the readiness at a level to achieve the national security objectives of the united states. whatever those happen to be, as directed by the national authorities. it's a tough situation we're going into. there was a saying when i was a captain, and these guys up front may not remember it, but there was a saying called no more task force smiths. that was drilled into our heads by then chief of staff of the united states army general gordon sullivan, who now happens to be head of ausa. that stuck with me over the years. that's where that story of task force smith comes from. from that particular book. that book was required reading of all of us in the basic and advanced courses back in the day. i would encourage you to read it. it's all about unpreparedness. it's a good warning even today.

do you have a money piece on the guard there? >> not on the money, sir. i was just -- >> on the side, rather? >> again, these are -- these numbers have been around for a while here. fy-15, the army national guard will come down and end strength to 315,200. and by the end of '17, under the current budget submission, it will be 335,000. and then should budget control act remain the law of the land, which it is, in '19 would be 315,000 for the army national guard. and so characterizations of risk against defense strategic guidance, csa has characterized for all three components there, particularly at the bca level. but to general milley's point, this is about puts and takes

over the next period. and it's an uncertain world. >> i think the chief -- you know, the chief can obviously speak for himself, but i think probably in the testimony, if i recall, he has characterized the risk. if sequestration, i think he has stated, and i think the secretary stated it as well, that the national security objectives as outlined in the current national security strategy would be placed at risk. and some choices, some very difficult choices would have to get made by senior civilian leadership as to what it is you're going to do, and what it is you're not going to do. if sequestration continues. okay. next question? thank you for that question. degree, ma'am? >> michelle desusa, we're a small business. we have about 200 employees. and when sequestration hit last year, what i did was before i could give my employees their paycheck, i made each one of

them write a letter to our local senators and congressmen asking them to stop sequestration, because it was close to our heart, our employees could get laid off because all of them worked at the bases. what else can we do as small businesses to kind of, you know, talk to -- >> i don't want to give a cop-out. but i'm going to give you a cop-out to the front table. we're members of the executive branch. i can't give advice as to what political action to take, or whom to lobby to do what. i am neither -- awful us are not in the business of saying stop or start sequestration. we're saying, if sequestration continues, then the following other things happen in terms of risk and readiness to the force. we have -- i don't know if you ever remember the movie "dragnet" -- you might be too young for that.

there's a guy friday. we're the fact only kind of guys. we should not render opinions, so to speak, and it would be inappropriate for any of us here to say, we think you should do the following, a, b, and c, to create political momentum in congress to stop or start a political action. that's not our charter. but i do appreciate the comment and the question. >> so the second question. thank you again for your service. >> i tried to dodge that. you're going to come at me again. excellent. most excellent. >> i must say, you look very serious, but you have a great sense of humor. thank you. >> yes. when in pain, it is always good to have humor. >> it does take more muscles to frown than it takes to smile. >> yes. of course. >> my next question, our small business does a lot of technical manuals for the soldier, in

theater or locally. we've been trying to present new technologies, or ipads, or google glasses, or anything that makes it easier for the soldier to repair either the tank technically or to do other services. but we seem to be, you know, still living in the old ages where they want to see line art drawings. >> yes. >> and i just wanted to know what your thoughts were -- >> it's interesting you mention that. because i actually looked into this within the last few weeks. with the force com commander. paper tms, for example, or -- excuse me, pmcs manuals -- >> not this manual. >> no, he's avant-garde. he's moving up. but the requirement on any piece of military equipment is still to conduct before, during and after operations checks. if i'm driving a vehicle, or operating a generator, or

whatever, the problem, though, we have is we've shifted to electronic stuff, and we no longer print those manuals as an example. so now, we see throughout the force of the combat training centers, in aur home states, et cetera, we -- our maintenance has degraded because of not having the manual that gives you the technical checklist to go down and check your before, during and after checks. so the idea that we have to get electronic devices in the hands -- now, some soldiers are out there with their iphones and downloading this stuff. but that's not right. that's their own personal stuff. they shouldn't have to be doing that. we're taking a look at some things in order to arm the soldie soldiers, at least the leaders, with the capability to do exactly what the brigadier is doing down here, in order to

have electronic manuals and electronic checklists out there, for something as simple as doing operator checks. we're also looking at printing smaller, you know, instead of the printing the entire manual, maybe just print the checklist or something like that. the work-arounds, we transition from an industrial azed paper-based military, to a more complete information based paperless military, at some time in the distant future. we are somewhere in between. but the effect is real. in that the equipment, you've got to have kind of a guide or checklist to go by when you're doing those things. and i appreciate your comment. we are working on it at force com. i don't know, mike, if you have any comments on that, and how you come to grips with that as you take a look at the national guard and rc. >> sir, you know, this is a huge problem for the total force.

the young soldiers today are challenged, because not only do they need a checklist, but they need a picture that points to that grease fitting, or linkage that needs to be adjusted or checked. because if they don't, they need to have a picture that shows them what to check. at the same time, the mid-managers in the army, you know, over the past ten-plus years, we relied a lot on the contract maintenance when we're deployed. we haven't been deployed necessarily on our war fighting equipment. so now that they're back home and we're generating as a home station, can we improve that at our training stations and other exercises. we want to maintain readiness at the level we're used to. the entire army is really, really challenged with how to maintain our equipment. so that our fully mission

capability rates are commensurate with our total army readiness. it's a real challenge. >> thank you. >> go red sox. not that i'm trying to suck up to you. >> okay. we've got time for two or three more questions. and then i'll have to kind of shut it down. do we have another question out there? over here to the right. man in the civilian clothes. who's exiting. he's leaving. going back to new york. very good. other questions? sir? >> i was rooting for the red sox last year. senator coates. what lessons -- >> you said you were a senator? is that what you said? >> i work for senator dan coates. >> oh, work for senator coates. i wanted to make sure i wasn't talking to a senator. >> no problem. what lessons learned do you have for our friends and allies, you know, who are struggling with

the same issues of the total force? >> it's interesting you say that, because we've looked -- we as force commanders are looking at the four gen process. the r 4 gen process was, whatever it was, seven, eight years ago, 2005, somewhere in that range, to answer a very specific need for the nation, to generate brigade combat teams, and generate more of them in order to be able to provide forces in both afghanistan and iraq. it was very lad based. it was the latest arrival date is what l.a.d. stands for. it was a very predictable model. and it became that we knew where we were going. either iraq or afghanistan. and we were put on a conveyor belt. and we as leaders took our units

and we got trained. instead of training our units, we got trained. by the bigger army. we got put on this treadmill, and then we were deployed over to afghanistan -- we were very well trained, we went to afghanistan and iraq. so -- but we knew where we were going. and we knew the time line. we knew well ahead of time. and then when we returned, we had a big readiness clip where we would drop our readiness levels and status and cycle back through that system, and off you would go again. that is kind of what we did for, i guess, the last eight-plus years or so. so we're looking at how to do this differently as we go forward, across all the components. and it's not an easy problem. one of the things we did in

force command is we looked at other armies. we asked ourselves, how does the british army do fourth generation. how did the french army do it. how does the german army do it. how does the israeli army do it. we looked at all these different models. we looked at the u.s. army, the u.s. navy, air force, marines, and our special operation forces. we looked at all these models. we're still in the process of analyzing it. we haven't come to a final magic solution. here's some basic things that we know that we are going to have to have. some characteristics in this revised model, or fourth generation process as we go forward. we know that the output, the product, the force generated, you know, the unit, we know that we're going to have to produce a product that is global. so you hear the chief of staff of the army say, you know,

globally response, a global force. you hear that throughout the -- regionally engaged. so we know that we have to have a force that's global, and we have to have a force that is regionally capable of being regionally engaged in combatant commander phase zero operations. so we know that. we know that the force has to be -- we know that the product we produce has to have the ability to move quickly and respond to different situations. has to be agile. it has to be able to respond to the left, to the right. because the future is unknown. i think there's a couple of other seminars going on here about the army operating concept. one of the key fundamentals is we have to plan for the unknown. and when you have to plan for the unknown, we have to look at

the situation around the world and not bank on any given l.a.d., or any given particular area of operation. it could be mountains, it could be desert, it could be jungle, this, that, or the other thing, a lot of places. we have to be very agile. we have to be very flexible. and we have to be very adaptive in our capabilities. and then we have to tailor those capabilities at the last minute to whatever the situation is. and the other thing we have to have is, because we are the united states of america, and we have global responsibilities, one of the key tenets that general o. wants us to implement with this model, is we are to not only partner with the reserve component of the national guard, with the active component, but to facilitate the connective tissues of what we call the land powered, the global land powered network. so we see officers in this room

here, noncommissioned officers in this room, from other countries' armies. those countries are generally speaking friendly to us, otherwise they wouldn't be in this room. so we want to build that relationship to those armies, so one of the tenets of this model is that we are generating forces that are capable and have an understanding of other countries' armies, and that we are working very, very closely together in order to build that global manpower network. the short answer is, we know that if it's a no-kidding war, on the one hand, on the one hand the range of military operations, or if it's something like responding to an ebola crisis or haiti earthquake, we know fully certain that we, the army, are going to go multi-component, we're going to go national guard reserve and active. we know full well we're going to go joint. and we also know we're not going it alone.

and the stars and stripes are not going to do stuff -- because it doesn't make any sense. we'll go with all idied partnern whatever it is we're doing. it is participate in whatever we're doing, it's fundamental, it's key, our last command in afghanistan, is the ijc as it's called, it's the ground force in afghanistan. we have 54 nations in that. my deputy commander was german. my chief of staff was british, i had planners from all kinds of different countries in the operations and the intel and planning and so on and so forth on that staff and we command and controlled american units. also italian, french, british, all the -- 54 might not be the

number for west africa, it might not be the number for iraq, it might be ten nations or five nations or it might be 154 nations. the problems in force com has also has to be adaptable. because they bring all kinds of expertise to a battlefield that we may or may not have. >> i've got time for two more three minute questions or three more two-minute questions. >> this is going to pick you back, very nicely on what you were just saying, and bill bruins, v to the point where i

got pulled out of zi -- how are we doing on beefing up people with the foreign knowledge and the foreign experience? i'm not going to go into embedded people, people who can really work and understand our allies. several times at ucom i had to pull my boss out of the meetings and say to my boss you really can't say that to these people. he said damn it, we're paying for it and he said that ee's totally immaterial to the culture.

>> we as a united states and a society do not leverage our culture and ling wish it is kill s. it's a soldier in the german army, you'll find in the european armies that they'll speak multiple languages, you'll find many of the asian people will speak english as a second language.

on the flip side, within the arm, we have the capability as well. so one of the other things that we have to do is we have to make sure that we have an accurate inventory, of who amongst us in uniform speaks a variety of languages as a native speaker.

so -- it's remarkable how many people we have in uniform that are native speakers, that don't need one ounce of language training, they are native speakers, we have got them and have covered every single language on earth. we will tell you the failed program has been strengthened recently i believe not only through its training programs and it's professionalization, but we have also strengthened the failed program through it's selection rates and promotions, which is not insignificant, if you look at general offices selections in recent years, it's

very specific, it's a hard skill, it not something that we as a society have really developed to the levels that you see on these societies and we certainly can do better than that. anybody else have a comment on that? >> i would also add that i do think we have an incredible capability and capacity in the army, but i'll speak to the army national guard inlinguist capability. what that offers the army is what we're already doing, which is total force policy in action where those two soldiers with the skill sets, it takes an incredible amount of time to develop and mature, the ability to take that capability and capacity to develop in a title ten status, also in a title 32

status in our normal ibt training periods, with reach back capability into the 300, to the afccs. i think that highlights just a great news story for the army, about tapping into that capability and capacity, both in a full-time status, for a title 10 requirement, but also for a title 32 in support of a title 10 requirement. and i think that's a good news story for our army. >> i'm going to go ahead at 17 hung, i'm going to go ahead and cut us off there, i'm respectful of your time, and i'm respectful of the panelists' time as well. i would like to think you and paul and jeff and mike you for being here today, i would like to thank all of you for expressing an interest in this. we have a great army, we have a

great total army, and my guards for force com, is that there's nothing we will do that we must always consider in everything we do. i would be happy to answer that when you get home, i don't want to keep -- thank you very much. appreciate it.

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