color of the new bayonet. that is not the role of this document here. so we need to con tech touralize that. the chief of staff of the army met with me and said we need to start putting emphasis in the future and we need a new operating concept because it will drive really the rest of the army for a number of decades. so you sort of need to get after this. as i always tell folks, life is really all about metrics. you have to be able to measure what it is you're doing and know if you're going in the right direction and where you want to go. and in my previous assignment before i was here as the host kindly mentioned, i was at fort lefian worth, which is where we write doctrine. and they said we need to update our counter insurgence manual. the manual that a great warrior, general petraeus did when he had that job and was new york times best seller list and sort after

must-read document. so sort of a heady responsibility. saying take this manual that's been harold in some way revolutionary, at least evolutionary, and update it. he said in the process of doing that, you need to speak with the original authors to get their insight, what intellectual process did they go through and lessons learned in writing this. i said, all right, sir, i'll do it. so general petraeus at that time, cia, came down and spent the day. we had a conference. we talked about all of the processies, both intellectual and physical that they went through in writing the manual. went out to other authors. got their input. about six months later, i went back and said, hey, sir, we're looking at this. i have a new vision of how we want do the manual. we want to change bits and pieces of it. awning. did you talk to the original authors? yes, sir. he said, well, did you talk to all of them? i said, i think so. in fact so far, i've spoken with

100 of the five original authors of that document. and so that actually became the new metric and therefore the metric for success of the one that i'm writing is if i can get a hundred people to claim they wrote it, it will be as good as the one we have now. life is all about metrics. and so when i got passed to have the new armored operating concept, i said, let me talk to folks who have written one of these before and got feedback. so i talked to retired chiefs of staff of the army. former trade-off commanders and we talked to colonels and sergeant majors. and i said, what does right look like? when is the last time the army had an operating concept that you even remember. with the last one that you remember, that drove change, that was foundational, your way of thinking about it, and unanimous response i got was air

land battle. that is the last time the army had a clear vision of where it was going and could articulate it and it drove a series of significant changes in the army from the material to the way that we train to the kind of leaders we develop. so battle is the metric. david, if you can do something half as good as early in battle then it might be worth your effort. so i said, roger, i got that. so being trade-off, i said we probably have a copy of it around here. so okay, send me a copy. send me the digits. well, what they did first is they actually brought me a hard copy. they actually used paper. and in fact this is a xerox copy and a copy they brought me on my desk and this is one that we all knew and loved as we grew up sort of in the height of the cold war and if really revolutionized not only the way the army thought about war but

what kind of material we bought and how we trained our leaders an how we developed them. so i started reading through this. this is the 86 version and a couple of things jumped out at me. first one you can see the quote pulled out of there. is it really describes the army's approach of the tactical and operational level of war. now as most folks know, there is actually three levels sf war. the operational and strategic. they say it is a conscious effort and we are coming out of vietnam and we add number of things that weren't quite right in the army. they just wanted to bite off a certain amount and focus specifically to the operational level and did not discuss the strategic level of war. that was a conscious decision. because an army operating concept really does three big things for the army. i tell folks, soon after i got tray dock i found that people had ideas about the army, which

is good. so they are always trying to search me out and give me ideas, good ideas. and they would come up with answers and the army needs do this and do this, you know. and you know, see this laser pointer, the army needs lots of laser pointers. they are great, shiny. they fit in your pocket. press a button. they are really great. so the army had more of these to point the way for people to follow. and we would be fine. and somebody else would come and say, no, dave, you need one of these. you need the bottles. you fill it full of water. and comes to me with what i would call small answers. this is a solution, this solution, this solution. respectfully when i write an army concept, i'm not interested in small answers. my job is to ask big questions. so i tried to avoid getting rope need buying into small answers and asking big questions. so the first big question when you write an army operating concept is what level of war are you going to build an army for? that's a pretty significantly big question.

what level of war are you going to build an army for? because that determined the size of the army. it determines what it looks like. it determines its capability and material and how you develop people. so that's the first big question. it ended up being a great model because of the intellectual rigger that it went through the analytical process and asked big questions. first question again level of war. tactical operations level explicitly stated it in the manual so as not to have any ambiguity about what we are focussing the army at. the next thing an army operating concept has do is describe the future. describe the environment. not predict it, but describe it. if you look at the picture there on the map, this is right out of the manual, obviously this manual was written out of '82. it was written about the height of the cold war tp it was

written for a very specific enemy. it was written for the soviet union. very well known enemy. if you take a look at the picture in the book there, it looks eerily similar to the central plains of europe. if you were standing at pulpit looking east, it would look similar to that picture. it was written for a well known part of the world. this is not to fight jungle warfare. this is to fight the soviet union on the central plains of europe. so you have to ask, when you describe the environment as what is the enemy, very well known enemy. where are you going to fight that enemy? on the central plains of europe. you have a picture. what coalition are you going to fight that army with? nato. it was a very well known coalition. it had very well established packaged techniques and procedures. you had the nato blue hand book. you had a very well developed process for decision making in nato. it was very clear how decisions

were made and who made them and had authority do it. so when you talk about the battle and describe the future as the authors then saw it, it is described as one with a very well known enemy to fight in a very well known place with a very well known coalition with very well known packet of procedures. the way i encapsulate that is air land battle with the deal with the known. you know, in a broad sense, it was to deal with the known. so now we have answered two of the three big questions that operating concept does. again, we're not focussing on small answers, big questions. level of war that you're going to build an army for and describe the future. the question answered, level of war. in this one, tactical operational. future described is known. in other words, we know what we're building this army to do. then the third thing is, if you

do know the level of war that you're building an army for, and in this case, you describe the future of the operating environment, now define the problem. define the problem that you're trying to solve. again, when people bring me answers, i always tell them, this may be an answer but to what problem? define the problem before you try to sell me an answer. define the problem as, next slide, clearly articulated, in their manual. is fight out number and win. actually, this is very powerful problem statement for one, it is very clear. fight out number and win. by defining the problem now based on the echelon of war you're talking about and based on the description of the future, you now can start getting to answers. you can say, well if i have to fight out a number and win, i probably have to have a tank that can maneuver. can't just fire from a stationary position. i probably have to have a tank

that's accurate. have a tank that's heavily armored, because it will have enemy bullets shot and it can return et cetera. so then you start to look at and say, i need a very fast tank that can shoot on the move and very accurate and heavily armored. and we have an m-1 tank. the m-1 tank was no accident. it was designed to solve this problem. fight out number and win. you may say, another thing i have to do is i have to engage uncommitted echelon because we knew a lot about the enemy. we knew the soviet union arranged themselves in echelons. we knew their combat formations. we studied them at length. so i need to engage before they commit themselves to the central plains of europe so i can attribute them otherwise numbers are not in my favor. maybe if i can fly a helicopter, it can engage multiple targets at once. and launch rockets that can fire deep before it is within my range. so what you see by going through

this intellectual construct of defining the level of war that you build an army for, describe the place that in the future that you think it will operate in and then asking yourself what is the problem i'm trying to solve, it then determined now i know what kind of weapons system. i need to have weapons systems that fight outnumber and win. i can do that by maneuver. i need to have a doctrine that i can fight throughout the depth of my battle space. i can't wait until i'm just in the close fight. that means i need to have training centers that i can arrange large formations at so they can fight through the death of formation. so we build a training center at fort irwin. and we build an opposing force, that is built just to act just like the soviet union. in fact we we have visual modifications. so that is the power of an operating concept. if you go through the deliberate intellectual rigener it, it starts driving all kind of things in your organization.

so when people say, why did you build an actual training center, i have to replicate the soviet union. why? because that's what is defined as the problem. why did you have a tank? because that is what you need to win. why an apache? why combined arms? why are you training in combined arms? because helicopters have to fight with tanks, with artillery, et cetera like that. so the general calls and majors, have you combined arm. because we give them the vehicles that were built to design the problem that we're trying to solve. so you see how powerful an operating concept in. you read the manual, it doesn't say anything about an m-1 tank. it doesn't say anything about the national training center. what it does is it lays intellectual foundation that then drives you to build those things to solve the problem. so that's again that you read the operating concept that we just put out, it doesn't say anything about the next bayonet. it doesn't say anything about the next tank. what it does is it describes the level of war. it describes the future and a

problem that we have a to solve. those are the three things the operating concept does. so we've done that. so next slide, next bill, our concept is called unified land operations. unified land operations and the problem we are trying to solve is win in the complex world. i will talk you through that fairly quickly. now did you notice, if any of you are former armor officers out there if the crowd, you will notice a slide on the left is black and white own the one on the right is color. now, i tell folks that's not nearly a slick marketing ploy. it is a slick marketing ploy. but in some ways it denote he the difference between the world that we fought and that we thought about during the cold war and world we have to think now. what we're saying now is, let's describe the environment. i told you that the future that we built early in battle for and

the army that i grew up in and still have a big part of it, i road the battle formation into baghdad. so it has served us quite well over these decades. it was what? an environment adescribe as known. we are saying the few tour we have to operate in from now on is unknown. so the first question, because if you build an army to deal with the known, that's a very different army than you build with deal with the unknown. so what we're saying is, i don't know where we're going to fight next. i don't know who the enemy is. and i definitely don't know who the coalition is. so we look at the definition of that word complex, what we're saying complex is describing the future as unknown, unknowable, and constantly changing. so not only is it unknown but we're saying it is impossible to know. because the future is like the fact that measuring something in and of itself changes it. kind of like the future.

if you know something about it, you are probably doing something about it. which means it probably isn't going to happen. we knew a lot about the soviet union. so we did a lot about it. which meant what? we never fought on the plains of europe. so what we're saying now is we're getting out of the prediction mode in the army and getting into the description mode. we're going to describe the future and we have a long list of things. nonnation state, transactional, this and this, but if you boil it down, what we are saying is the future is unknown and unknowab unknowable. so you try to learn an exquisite amount of detail about what will happen because that gets into prediction. you are trying to understand the relationship of all of the variables in the world that are acting when you're there. then the complexity part of it also means constantly changing. the world on the left with the complicated world. the world on the right is a

complex world. the difference between a complicated system and complex system is a swiss watch is complicated. okay. but a complicated system, you can take the back off that swiss watch and eventually you can figure out how it works. you look at it and first it looks very complicated. springs and gears and all that but eventually you figure out what this gear does. what that spring does, et cetera. and you can eventually figure it out. and if it is a complicated system, once you figure it out, its outcome is generally predictable and it is repeatable. in other words, that swiss watch is very complicated, but every time you wined it up, it's predictable how it's going to operate. it is predictable in day after day after day, it generally replicates itself. and in a complex organization, you cannot figure it out. it is unknowable. you're not going to figure out

precisely how it works and it does not replicate itself. it is constantly changing. so the slide on the left, complicated world. slide on the right, complex world. very different problems that you're putting the army into. because on the left you're trying to get precise value of variables. there are a lot of variables. give me the exact location of the soviet union artillery. give me the exact location of their second echelon. give me the exact location of their special forces. you are looking for exact values of variables. the one on the right is that is not what you spend your energy on buzz that is not of much use to you because even in a moment in time you could find an exact value of a variable. what do we say complex meant? complex changing. it is going to change. what you want to do is determine the relationship of the variables. so in a complicated world, a

equals 1, b equalled 2. c equals 3. a goes up, b goes down. you just want know the relationship of the variables and is that relationship going to change. when i got into this, you know, conflict or whatever it is, whenever a went up, b went down. but something happened and now when a goes up, b is going up. the relationship of the variables change. when we say when, i tell folks, we are focussing on when. that's not for the army to decide. definitely not for the trade-off kma commander to decide. you don't get to decide who wins. that's my responsibility as commander. no, that's not the army's. in fact, that takes -- senior policy makers of the united states government, in fact it will probably even vote policy makers of coalition folks. it may involve inner agency

folks. all having a vision of what win means in the, you know, have to co-aless all that together. you win at the strategic level. that's the other question we answer. this concept is written to deal with the tactical operational and strategic level of war. so really these the throw big questions that this one has answered. berlin battle, operational and tactical level of war. this one is operational tactical and strategic level of war. battle, built to deal with the known. this is to deal with the unknown. unknowable and constantly changing. probably trying to solve the battle with a fight out number to win. and this one wins in a complex world. now, not only do each of those words have a very specific meaning, if you look at the battle, the implied task is to win, you had to fight.

if you look at when in the complex world, the focus here is winning. the focus is on winning. in fact you may not have to fight to win. but, a qualifying mark, but -- as soon as i say that, people say, i love that idea. winning without fighting. but the only way you could possibly win without fighting, is it must be absolutely clear to everybody involved that if you do fight, you will absolutely win. so it has to be clear to everybody that if there is a fight, there is no doubt who is going to win. once you cross that threshold, then you may have a chance to win without fighting. because a lot of people say, i like the idea of winning without fighting. i want it buy that kind of army. i want to win without fighting because it sound cheaper. it can be smarter. no, you've got it all wrong. if you want an army that can win without fighting, you have to buy an army that can absolutely win the and in fact it has to be absolutely clear to people. so to clear an army that can win

without fighting may mean you need a more capable army that if you only want an army that can fight to win. because you have to be able to have the detrance capability and the way you lead that army has to leave no doubt in anybody's mind that you can win any fight anywhere any time in the unnoknn world that is unknow oobl and constantly changing. once have you an army that can do that, you can deter people from fighting. that's a very capable army. so actually cheaper army may be -- well i maybe just bite one that can fight and win. so a lot of people don't understand the relationship between winning without fighting, means you absolutely have to have the capability to win the fight if it comes that way. that's how you build that deterrence capability and a lot of people don't understand deterrence capability and what it means for deterrence capability and full capability. which means intense, capability weapons systems. capability to sustain

yourselves, put yourselves strategically, that's a very large and encompassing capability to deter conflict. so what does that actually mean for the army? so if you blow up that slide, what we spend just a couple of things that the army has do to win in a complex world. that is, you see them on the left, one is the army is inherently the foundation for the join force. so we said to win in a complex world is a strategic level aspiration. that means the army has to bring together the strategic assets available to us as nation. when you look at early battles you are focussing on the tactical operational level, you are focussing on acquiring enemy targets and engaging them.

so it became a targeting exercise. it is math problem. so i focus on acquiring targets and engaging targets. it was about synchronizing firepower. how do you synchronize firepower? when in a complex world, what we are saying is synchronizing firepower in and of itself is inadequate. what we are saying the army has to do now, if you want to win at strategic level, we can't only synchronize and deliver firepower, we have to synchronize and deliver national power. national power is much larger than firepower. firepower is part of it. but national power means can you deliver economic capability. can you enable diplomatic capability. can you enable all of the instruments of the united states national power to be able to focus and win at the strategic level. so now you say, you know what, my staffs have to be different.

i have to have different kind of people on the division staff. they can't not only know about artillery but they have to know about diplomatic activity. they have to know about economic activity. they have to know about cultural activity. they have to know about how coalition partners operate. if i send a brigade to western africa and deal with ebola, they might have to know how to deal with the world health organization. work with united nations. when you look at this picture, not only is it colored but you can see it has the domain, maritime domain, cyber domain and land domain. special operating forces. unhcr. marine corps, navy, air force. mountainous terrain. plains. it is all of the domains intersecting each other. when you look at the battle all about the land domain, then when you talk about air, it was about what does air do to land? really with that, what we are

saying is because and most of the time that i grew up and in the complex i was in, the air and sea were uncontested really. and actually we had to keep it that way. in the army we want to make sure the united states air force has air supremacy at least wherever i am. i like that. we want to make sure the united states navy has absolute naval supremacy wherever they are. make sure the united states marine corps has absolute supremacy whatever they are responding to crisis. those are all given. so this is a very joint document and we want all those guys and gals to kind of really do their part as well. now what is happening now as we move to the future, those domains previously uncontested are becoming more and more contested. which means we no longer have the other domains being uncontested space and what we are saying those that operate on land, we may have to deliver effect needs other domains. we may have do something from

land to secure the for the united states navy. we may have to do something in the space domain for ballistic missile defense or for our air force brethren. it is not all about land. this is about what does land do to synchronize and deliver all elements of national power in all domains. other point i'll bring up there is the ability for us to present multiple dilemmas to the enemy. because that's what you have do in a strategic level endeavor. you are chess players. if you put somebody in check mate, it means they still may have moves available. but wherever you move, you have something for them. they can't move without you countering their move. you can't just have a single dilemma, you have to have multiple dilemmas. you generally prept single dilemmas. and that if you look on the previous slide, i have my main body of tanks and so i have one

dilemma for you. if you can somehow mitigate that, then you sort of have freedom of action. what we say at the strategic level, if you want to win at the strategic level, there could be nowhere that our enemy turns that they are not contested. that's why we have to deliver all elements of national power. that's why if all you can do is target somebody, that's all can you do is target somebody, eventually they will stop presenting themselves as target. so you may build the influence over the tactical level but you can't influence and compel their activity without their compliance, the strategic level unless you can stop every move they have aep present them with these multiple dilemmas. can you see down there,ant grate partners. this is part of us being a member of the joint force. and in the end consolidate games. when you operate in a tactical and operational level, you get effects there. but when you want to win at the strategic level, you have time and space and consolidate them to give you sustainable

political outcomes. because that is what war is about. that's how you win at the strategic level. and the nature that war is by politics of other means and in other words, really quite honestly, the reason the united states goes to war is to gain some type of sustainable political outcome in the favor of our national interest. well we are saying most of that occurs on land. so what we have do is not only provide a tactical operational effect, we have to consolidate all of those gains and all of those gains of national power, economic, political, coalition partner, into sustainable political gains for the united states or why do it in the first place. you may feel good about yourself, a momentary tactical effect. but if you can't translate into a political outcome that you are focused on in the long-term, what we are are saying is you are coming up with short with what we say an army is.

the future of the army is to win in complex world and win at the strategic level and all limit of national power in an unknown, unknowable and constantly changing world. and so i think that at this point we transition to i guess a discussion and in q & a? okay. and so -- >> good evening, everyone. >> as ms. shoup said, i'm from the rand corporation and the way we will proceed here is general perkins and i will engage in about a 15-minute conversation. and that should leave about 20 minutes for q & a from the

audience. so with that, sir, thank you for your remarks. and for the -- keeping the power point to a minimum. three slides is -- >> most of them were pictures. >> that's right. excellent, excellent correct use of power point slides there. in reading through the latest operating concept, i think you accurately sort of get at all of these unknowns we're dealing with going forward here. be it the environment, enemy, the coalitions we'll be working with. given all of these unknowns, how difficult is it to articulate a clear strategic vision going forward? particularly when you have to incorporate all these other entities that perhaps didn't have to be part of the deliberations in the past? >> yes. >> you know, it is very complex, right? >> one of the things, and you know, why we actually thought a while about this, the words in a

complex world, is that you, from the very beginning, you have to get into this discussion of winning. which is very difficult. because define that, draw a picture of it, what does it look like, et cetera. it involves multiple people. if you look back at previous conflic conflicts, world war ii, world war i, had a different view. and if you look at lincoln, his vision of winning in the civil war changed multiple times during fighting the civil war. but he always add long-term strategic look of an outcome that was sustainable for a long time. and so, what we're saying is that that is critical because what it does, first of all, it forces the very tough discussions. there is no exact answer and it is probably going to change because your coalition will change. maybe some of the outcomes that are within the realm of the possible change. people may switch sides.

people have a change of heart. but if you always stay at that level, what it does is it provides a basis of understanding of what you're try doing in the long-term. and therefore, when you have discussions about a short term problem, a lot of times, if you don't have that long-term view, and is it sustainable. a lot of times, we are very clear and we talk about sustainable gains. sustainable outcomes. that people have a view and they say, i don't think that is really sustainable, is it? it makes you grade your own homework. and you say, i probably have to do things differently. when i was division commandener iraq, we were the last division up north. and at that time, and there were a lot of issues and things like that and i would go around to brigade commanders and what are you doing and well sir we are doing this and there is this security mechanism and my unit is in the middle of it all.

and whenever there is an argument, they come see me and i figure it out. yeah, but that's not sustainable. because you're not going to be here forever. so how are you working yourself out of picture. you're the last commander here. so what i need you to do from now on when i come up here is you need brief me on how you are making yourself irrelevant. that's generally not the way we look at things. the army officers are type a people. so we generally, in the army, have a solution of which we are the center, if i'm irrelevant, why am i there? maybe you're there to build a sustainable process that as you stay out they can continue on. that's why winning at strategic level is imperative to keep it at the forefront otherwise you will sub optimize what you are doing for a temporary tactical operational gain. >> thank you for that. >> okay. thank you for that. >> just to follow obt concept of win, as you are going through

deliberation and draft of this document, was there ever any sort of push back on do we want it use this word? and sometimes i know the long involved process and a lot of people get a vote, but when i think of win be i this i there is an insination that there is some level of closure. that i think certainly a recent experience in the world have been not been able to produce. so i would be curious know as you are going through the drafts, was there any sort of push back or people who felt that maybe we should be careful about how we use this word. >> to this day. so i probably have received more -- i would say a lively discussion. on whether or not we ought to put that word there. and there is a -- there are a number of reasons for it, quite honestly. and that we chose to put it there. i would like to say first of all, it was a product of you know, six to eight years of intensive research, focus groups, looking extensively at

history and all that. the truth of the matter is, you know, we have a shorter time line than maybe historically we have on this concept because of the rate of human interaction. it much greater than 20, 30 years ago. and so we have to define the problem because i tell my staff, define the problem before we come and answer. so they came to me with a very sort of, what i call army ease overwritten description of the problem which is like two pages long. and it kind of tries to get, you know, at the very nuance world and you know, not capability and let's look for something generally favorable and all of the mentions that it went on and on and on to define the problem. i said, okay, look, here's the deal. i always tell my folks, never lose clarity in the search for accuracy. i'm sure there's a very accurate description of the world we are going into. it is not very clear. so always -- especially when you

are talking at a large level, a document like this, you need clarity. clarity versus pages and pages of excessive accuracy that really don't provide clarity. so we went through a couple turns and we go from two pages to a page and half and okay, here's the deal. there are large organizations and forcing functions. everyone tells me early in battle, that's the standard. it can be as good as that. let's look at the problem statement. you've got six syllables, really, that's all the guidance a four star general can tell me, just six syllables. so win in a complex world, i think that's six syllables. that is forced to bring clarity to what it is we are try doing. can you go on and on and on and on about accurate nuances but what we're say sgt first question we want you to discuss, i'm not telling you what the answer so win is, i'm just telling you, you need to focus on that aep you need to come to

an understanding collectively. we are talking about understanding visualize describe then direct rb lead and assess. there is more to it than the four power point slide. what we are saying is if you don't have a common understanding of visualization of what some form of win means or what it doesn't mean, the problem is, you automatically will revert to tactics. and what happens is if you don't have some vision of what win is, and you're not looking at strategic level of things, you start substituting tactics for strategy. tactics is not strategy. ways are the tactics. but what happen says a lot of times, we confuse it and instead of having end which is the vision of win then ways to get there, then means that you work with to get there, we focus all our ways on getting more means versus our ways to achieve an end. and then we get a lot of means but it never gets us to an end because we have the mannith wro.

we have means you apply via ways to get to the end. you need a strategy, an system of random tactics. so it is a forcing function. >> staying on the complex theory, the various entities involved now days, when compiling a document like this, how do you incorporate feedback from not just other services but also, in the boat on slide. and it has become players in some of these theaters that we find ourselves in. do you incorporate their feedback and their input as you go through a process like this. >> this is very important. we want this to be sort of not just a trade-off when we

document but an army document and then really a national document with regards to what the army does. so we did a number of things. the first thing that i did personally and my team did before we wrote our document is we read the navy air force and marine corps's operating concept. so we could read what they are saying about themselves and how they view themselves and how they view the future. and in many ways, the foundational element and how can we enable what they do. than we look inside the army and bring it all of the division commanders, all of the corps commanders, most of the one stars and out to groups of captains and we would have these sessions and we have gone through multiple versions and first of all, does this make sense? can you understand it? can you see it translating to capabilities? because that's the next thing that this does. so the division commanders, these not people without opinions, you know. and so that's why they are division court commanders.

they provide good insight us to. they have all of the four stars. that i went down to cuanico. and i briefed the chief of staff of the air force on this and about a month ago, army staff, briefing chief of naval operations and navy staff on it and extensively out to think tanks and put it on the bloggissphere and this is not only an invented document to make sure we are not oversimplifying the problem. a lot of people start explaining this and that's too complicated, you need simplify it. i said, no, the one problem we don't have is people oversimplify and we don't have a lack of people oversimplifying complex problem. that happens all the time.

what i need do is clarify the complexity. not simplify it. i need clarify it. so people understand it so that we can deal with it. when you simplify complexity, what happens is you assume away the hard stuff and the hard stuff is what you gets you in trouble because in the process of simplifying it, you assumed it away so our job here is to clarify it so we can deal with it. we try to throw a very wide net. that's one of the reasons i'm here. this is the first document we're going to have a series of war games after this. and a series of other documents. we are trying to get feed back from as many folks from as wide a genre as we can get. >>. >> the next steps for this, there sort of the big picture, you know, top document. >> right. >> given all of the complexity, do you see this feeding down into many different sort of branches here and is there any -- i don't want to say concern, but is there any feeling that this might get, you know, as with all these unknowns, there is going to be

any number of scenarios we can plan for or discuss or talk about a war game, and has that come up at all as far as at some point we have to try to do something. >> exactly. >> that's exactly what it is do. this lays out the principles. broad intellectual foundation about what the future could look like and what the army does about it and now what we are focussing on is specific capabilities that we think are useful in the kind of environment thatter with describing. so what we have in these universal things that we think we can be pretty well assure is going to happen, one of them is, with our capabilities and technology, the enemy generally try dose a number of things. one, they try to immolate them. we have robotic sift oms.

they have robot okay systems. we have submarines. they have submarines. one of the things that happens quite routinely because the united states generally is in the forefront when it comes to military capability is we can no longer assume that we are the only ones that are going to have it. that the enemy is going to immolate us. when i grew up we had equipment nobody else had. we had nice visight vision gogg. the enemy didn't. i had 12 more hours to fight the enemy. i had 12 more hours out of the day can i fight. what we are saying in the future as we describe it, that gap in technology will get less an less and less because they will emulate what we have. i have night vision goggles, they have night vision goggles. how do i develop that better. how do i train my soldiers and there is a huge dif rination in technology. the future what you need do sin

crease your rate of innovation. you can't count on differentation. what we are saying is what are the capabilities the enemy will do? they will emulate us. avoid our strengths. so if we are good at targeting people they will stop presenting themselves as targets. okay. if we are very good at conducting large maneuver in the middle of the desert with tafrpgs, they will avoid fighting us in the middle of the desert with tanks. though will avoid our strengths. they will stop becoming targets and meld into the population. they will go under ground. they are avoiding our strength. whatever strength we come up, they will tend to avoid it or emulate it. so we will now run war games and say, how do you deal with an enemy that is em lating your technology? they know that what we like do is come in with a lot of stuff and build up a big base of support and then launch on. so what are they going to try

do? deny us access. they will try to deny us access from port. deny us access from airfield. deny us access from air domain. deny access from cyber domain. so we know now in the future however i try to gain access, they are going to try to deny access while avoiding strengths and emulating our capabilities. now i have to run a war game and say, how do i get access while i'm actively trying to be denied access at the same time the enemy is a avoiding my strengths and emulating my capability. it is all based on the broad intellectual background. trying to describe the future. not this country at this grid square. it is broad capabilities. now i need have capabilities to operate in this environment so we have 20 -- what we call for this year, 20 first order things we are looking at. we will do five a quarter. one of it is how do we gain access when people are trying to deny it to us.

another one is, how do i optimize soldier and team performance. how do i take the most expensive and most capable weapons system the united states army inventory, the soldier. this is our smart weapons system. how do i take this system and make it more -- can i increase the way it operates as part after team? can i increase the interface between my soldier and their technology so that they can innovate quicker than the enemy soldier and their technology. so we are looking at defining very specific capabilities that we think are applicable. a lot of people say, you are just taking a bye. you say, the future is unknown so i can't think anything about it p. it is very critical so if you think you are dealing with an unknown world there are a lot of things can you do to deal with unknown situations. >> thank you, sir. with that, that pretty much will conclude my questions here.

we've got a microphone set up in the center of the room. if anybody in the audience would like it ask a question of general perkins. >> there must be something i left out. i'm they're get my homework done and add other aspects to it. and when you come up to the mic, please introduce yourself. keep your statements brief. and please ensure that they end in a question mark.

>> good evening, sir. i wanted to ask you, obviously, it is no secret that navy has a great operational focus on the eastern south china sea and proverbial piff to the asia. in your opinion, what role do you see the army having in asia and also how are you shaping the army that's vastly different from the mesopotamia and the full maritime environment? >> we have the pivot to the pacific. now, the one thing, just to clarify a lot, a lot of people when they think about the pacific, they don't think about the army. they think about the marines, the navy.

but even before the pivot occurred, we have well over 60,000 soldiers operating in the pacific. so there's a lot of activity already going on. one of the things we think the army is uniquely suited for in the pacific and general brooks is now the u.s. army pacific commanders which is previously a three star position is now a four-star position. so i tell my great west point classmate there that he kind of won the lottery. because not only is he is the first four-star army guy to have that but he goats work in hawaii. so he lives a good life. is it the army sets the theater -- we have core kpe ten sieve that the army does uniquely for the joint force. one of them is we set the theater generally from a logistical point of view. so for instance, army provides most of the network activity for the joint force in the pacific already. we provide a lot of these logistical background, medical background, things like that.

i know general brooks spend a lot of time with his counter parts in the mifk because the vast majority over 90% of their chiefs of defense in the pacific are army, that's the branch they are in of their nation. so that is the likely person to work with because they, you know, navys are very expensive to have. they continually remind us. navys are very expensive to have. air force are very expensive to have. so a lot of nationses don't have robust navy and & air force. but most nations have army. whether it is to protect from external threats. that is in many cases the first point of entry. so in a macro sense, we don't see our role any different. we were very clear when we wrote the army operating concept, we said we wanted to maintain clarity on the consist ensift

nature of war while taking into account the changing kark rift ikts of war. there are natures of war that stay constant while the kark rift ings, can change. consist ep ency is by war is a human endeavor. trying to compel activity of humans, generally on land and sustainable political goal, and a contest of wills p. war is a contest of wills. who can -- who has the most will and can stay at it the longest until somebody sort of, you know, is-db their actions are kpreled one way or the other. so we think that is no different in the pacific any anywhere else. the pacific is characterized by large distances. not necessarily contiguous land masses. so if you look at the central plains of europe, that is a contiguous land mass. so one of the things we have do now is we have to design and

build an army that can operate in nine contiguous environments. noncontiguous environments yet can provide some level of a fact as you would expect as if it was operating in a contiguous environment. in many ways the things we are looking at for unified land operations are very much in need in the pacific, that we are very much a joint force. because the large distance, air, maritime, and land. and then, our ability to apply that foundational capability, ability to operate in nop con tigus development, it is almost custom made for our view of what we have to have here. so great question. >> thank you, sir. >> thank you, very much, general. i'm mark wall. he had a chance to work together in baghdad. >> yeah, another part of the world. >> that's right. that's right. in 2009. it is good to see you again p. two related questions.

one is, how your various expenses in iraq shape or inform the work you're doing now. how has it affected your thinking about this work. and the second question is, with five or six years later, what is your assess many of how things have turned out? what could we have done differently. and what does that mean for what we are doing now. or try doing. >> i generally refer all sort of criticisms and what ifs to myself personally or my service so i can stay on lane and plus i know them very well. so to your first question, what have i learned like all of us have as many years of war. >> i got to tell you, like i said, this is not designed to fight iraq better next time. it is to be informed by it. one of it is quite honestly my experiences, the one word we put in there, the complexity of it. unknown and constantly changing. i have been back to iraq many times. and every time i go back, i tell

people, same country, different world. and what i saw, is we have a lot of folks that come back. it is a little bit of an akeeley heel. this is my fourth time here. what would happen is they would show up thinking they knew everything about it not understanding this is a complex world which means it is constantly changing. and they wouldn't do all their homework to reunderstand what had happened and in many ways we set ourselves back to say, well, you know, that worked two years ago. it doesn't work any more. because this is a complex world. constantly changing. what did i say our enemy tries do? emulate and avoid our strength. so that tactic that you used before does not work any more. in fact it gets people killed. our enemy is avoiding that or they oem u lated it and they do it better than we do. a lot of what we put if here is not just my experience but a collective experience. not focussing on ieds but to say

that's an example of the enemy adapting and avoiding our strengths which is tank on tank fight. and try to emulate a capability which is chemical shape charge weapon that we have and use it in a different manner p. so i would say it is highly informed by that. and it really is that complexity in a con stoont changing nature of it. what could we have done better? and what could i have done better? i would go back to the first word, when. and it also gets in the complexity, what we say in here is you have to understand visual, describe. so i went in as a young brigade commander. and i will tell you, we really did not understand the complexity of what we're going through, whether it was iraq or just the microcosm that is baghdad. and if you don't understand the complexity of it, the problem is, you will optimize activity as a tactical and operational level. if you say, i really understood the complexity of it better than a relationship between sunni,

sh shia, kerd, and i'm thinking for long-term sustainable goals and i want it win at the strategic level, i would go in as brigade commander thinking, not just how do i win this tactical fight, which quite hon lift is what i was focused on, but how can i set the conditions so that five years from now, we're in a sustainable process. so i went in in 2003 and okay, let's get of a it. and you know, electricity wasn't working and water wasn't working. and quite honestly learned a lot working with my good friends with the state department. and actually taking a longer term view which i was constantly reminded as sometimes brigade commanders do. and so trying to figure out thousand get power, get electricity. you know, we -- what we need do is go in and build the power plants and you got work the trabs mission lines and distribution lines and i'm sure

i was like everyone else. no, i want power now. just buy a bunch of honda generators and get things up and running like that. a four-year plan, i don't want a four-year plan. i reminded myself in 2008 as the i go in charge of electricity rebuild, that if in 2003 i signed up for a four-year plan, it would all be running a year ago. >> and so this is sort of the peril of going into these quick wins. i tell folks, i hate that term quick win. because quick win equals short-sidedness. that's why i put the word win in the operating concept. every soldier, whether you're colonel perkins, private perkins, general perkins, you have to think strategically. because your tactical actions have strategical outcome. if you're not thinking strategically, you will deinvolve, no a short term tactical win and the way you do it may be count pineiro ductive

to long-term outcome. in other words, giving everyone honda generators everyday and giving them the fuel is actually working against you in the long-term. i remember when i went back to 2008, i was supposed to be working getting the economy up and running. and working there and getting the banking system up and running and we had started probably at brigade level. this micro grant program. where we are trying to jump-start the economy and pass out free grant. so mom and pop operations, things like that. so we attract, who is brigade sector, is not utilizing the micro grant program. now trying to start up the banks and my boss is like hey, how come the banking system isn't working. well, okay, but the way banks work, is they give you a loan and charge interest. hats how it works. so if i'm running two programs in the same town, mr. iraqi you have two choices. you can either take this free money, micro grant program, or

take this money that you have to pay interest in. but it's your choice. which one do you want? we were surprised when the banking industry came up because we are giving away free money. he with aren't thinking about a long term sustainable goal. so those are the kind of things i would do differently. >> i'm definitely very gellous you are able to utilize the idea of systems, thinking of in concept paper and it is something we desperately need and don't have right now unfortunately. any question goes more toward the collaboration between international development and you know, post conflict. >> right. >> a vague term, but -- >> yeah, exactly. i differentiate what phase are we in and this and this, it just all meshes together. just one big nightmare. >> so my question is, where do you see the most gains had between collaboration between

agencies lining usa and the army and those relations for the future and what we do. like you said, sustainability. that's something we need to get better at. >> i'm a big fan of getting less of the boom, as we say. and so, it really begins as a great mentor most of us in the army, general sullivan says, the intellectual lead the physical.