partner with the organizations like meals on wheels. those are critical to doing transitions. the last thing i want to speak to is the concept of whether or not patients will stay in an aco and how we help them understand. the concept of marketing to patients about it. that's a misguided approach. we need to take a building awareness and education approach net. patients don't need to be sold if they are getting that patient centered care they need and want and if they are being partnered. >> thanks very much. >> my name is kelly taylor and i'm the director of quality and care management.

the clinics have traditionally for 12 years worked on the care transformation and focused on that level. in february of 2012, we became an aco and we will have over 200,000 patients in and 1800 providers. we had rapid growth and that's a challenge to sustaining this. we have been successful and as an aco and surprisingly so. in the interim report, we did not save money for medicare and we did by a lot. so with that it kind of was the accumulation of a good year in the commercial and governmental

setting and also with our own employers and employees. we have an initiative working direct low with them going on as part of this work. part of the reason kind of taking off about this is here and it's here to stay. one of the reasons we were successful is we have been saying that my leader who many of you probably know said that for ten years. we have been planning and i would add for those of you in the service world like we are in iowa, you don't have to wait. you can do it now and make it work in a service world as well. we did some fairly inexpensive things with the disease registries. a heck of a lot less expensive

and you can get an immediate return with them and embedded the health coaches. in a service world, that more than paid for itself. i didn't have to have a growth strategy. once the providers realized that this was good care and pay for performance. the same group of wonderful nurses are leading us into the value world. focusing on quality and working with them on the issues of medication adherence. and helping the rest of the care team has really been i think

what made us successful and i think is going to take us a long way into the future as well. >> thank you, kelly. >> a look at the background. i have been a practicing internist for about 30 years and also the director of population health for hacken tack health network. in that role, i initiated and was assisted in developing our aco. we were in the first group in 2012 for the program. we looked at it differently. our there is fee is we were jumping into the reimbursement

scheme. we decided to limit to primary care physicians to mandate patient centered medical homes for all of our primary care offices that we or the cost of all of the training for the patient's medical homes. we had the medical roerts and performed a relatively strong population and health and electronic health system. emrs fed data into. this was all up front monies that the hospital was willing to invest. we started with a little over

12,000 patients. with a little over 50 physicians. i'm happy to say we saved in excess of $10 million. now, i also agree that this model is not the model for everywhere and there were many models out there. the end result is what counts. we all want to get to the same point and clearly the paths will all be different. we considered to be innovative projects and demonstrations which help fuel our success. we embedded them in each of the practices. they were there to see the patients during their visits to develop a relationship that they may not have had time to

develop. to call the patients on a regular basis, especially the high risk and to intervene as the first line of defense when they were not sure what meditation to take, et cetera, etc. we were able to cut down the rate dramatically and the imagine room rate. the only thing that went up was primary care visits. not necessarily perfection, but as a clinical study, it was shown to be effective. once again the reimbursement and the savings bears out that case. we had the congestive heart failure patients who were having

problems with prekwent readmissions. they put scales in the house that automatically subject their weights to the medical records. they got a phone call to find out what changed and whether or not they were being noncompliant with either medication or diet or what changes had occurred. in patients who would have four or five hospital admissions in a year were able to keep them out of the hospital. by ver veening at that level. the doctor would say go to the hospital. we started a project with tablets for the elderly patients, preprogrammed with

their medications. it lds give a ring when the patient was required to press the button, directly connected to the medical proerd to monitor compliance of those taking multiple medications on a daily level. not waiting for claims data to come back from cms. we also initiated a program where any time any of our patients, the aco attested patients would arrive at any facility, in patient or out patient and urgent care, an automatic notification went to

the nurse navigator. they became aware that the patient was entering the system. if a patient shows up at midnight on sunday in the emergency room, that nurse and the doctor doesn't have access to the patient's medical history on the emr that doesn't connect to the hospital. they can contact the emergency room and hopefully know the patient or has access at home and navigate that patient through the system or contact the physician to intervene. once they were successful, let's roll this out entirely. one other thing we did which was hugely successful was that every patient upon discharge from the hospital received all of their

medications prior to discharge. the patient is given all the bottles of medication and instructions and told to go home and throw out everything they have and see the doctor in 48 hours. we believe this had a limiting effect and patients not knowing to take the new or the old medicine. we rolled that out to the hospital which was 750 beats after we have shown the benefit. it's a partnership that they has with the organization and trying small demonstration projects and rolling them out to the patient network in northern new jersey. >> sounds like that is continuing to move forward.

sounds like you had fairlys toative importances with that so far. i would like to connect that back to jennifer's opening parkts. it shows mixed results, specially when it am cans to what people might have true care transformation. you expressed concern about the acos being a financial model and not being the facilitator getting to the patient center and care. we have a couple of examples here this morning. just to push on your comments a bit more, how can we best support real changes in care delivery? real systematic changes in how patients are part of these potentially beneficial care

systems and operate that out from those who are not getting it yet. >> it goes back to partnering with patients at the levels. a couple more examples. we have seen where some had actually gone and done home visits with the higher cost patients to understand the barriers to fill medications or to get to appointments and i think that's key to get at the care that the patients need and want. i think going back to what we caulked about earlier, helping patients understand the benefits, there is a lot of documentation you can send. a welcome pact you can ask, but

the acos who are doing the best job assign them about what the aco is. what the benefits are for them. what care will look like for them. that is taking it that step further than sending home a piece of paper. we all have too much paper in our lives. we need more conversations in health care. also it's the things we know patients care about. it's starting discharge and planning and admission. it's connecting patients with the services they need to rely on. those are just some of the examples we are seeing that acos who are looking at doing a patient center job of this are

spearheading. >> the kinds of interventions that can be taken to get that kind of progress and your comments as well, this sounds like hard work. there a the love things that could be changed for the better. you have limited time and resources and more hackensack fronted the funds to tryout these reforms and expand what works. it suggests that this is going to take time. there going to be failures and bumps along the way. are there steps through better evidence sharing or other policy steps that could accelerate that and make the work you are doing or trying to do go more quickly? maybe happen at a faster pace? >> you hit the nail on the head.

that is we started with a snul group of a clinical laboratory. the question is where is the benefit to jump into the pool rather than just sticking your toe into the pool? the hospital organization, very large physician organizations are dependent on the service dollar right now to pay their bills right now. there needs to be enough of a carrot at the end of the road to make organizations willing to sort of hit that tipping point and say we are going to jump in on value based. there certain sticks that cms is using such as the decreasing

reimbursement or the penalty on the hospitals. the carrot is not there. i think we had discussions on the shared savings program, there is not enough benefit on the back end to make a concerted effort to drive everyone into a value-cased system. i'm not sure how we will get to that tipping point, but it will be something whether it's the bundled payment or medicare advantage. we talked about that. medicare advantage has a fixed benchmark that you are working against. if you are going to say i can put my patient in medicare advantage, where will i get more

bang for my buck? it is most likely today. we will waiting to see what they come out with with the new regulations. i think that that idea has to pervade a lot of decision making here in washington. they have to move in this direction and the devil is in the details. >> anything you would like to add about how to make more progress faster? >> no one that i have the answers, but that's the world we are living in. having two feet in both worlds is stressful. having had success in it helped us leverage at least getting in the room and getting to the meetings and talking with people more about it. it is very difficult and the

fact that it took until now when we started in july 2012 to get to this point, we had to cut staff and we have had to level set. we keep talking and we keep pushing forward and think it's kind of the culture and the not fee that we had in the quality department for the physician setting to always think that if i'm doing what is best for my patient, i'm doing what's best for the system. that is the consistent message for a decade and i think that really makes a big difference and it gives us reason to keep moving forward. again, i would say that this is not something that you have to wait for to do if you are in the world. you can start to learn how to do

these things and have a positive business case for doing that. i'm more focused on that than i am -- i will let others come up with the answers. >> you seem like a glass half full type of experience. >> one of the things i'm not saying is a collaboration between the organizations and the acos. they are doing a lot of work right now and that makes sense. consumer groups have expertise when it comes to communicating and my organization in particular has expertise around measurement and a redesign. one of the messages i would share is that we are open to working with them to figure out the problems and to lend a hand where we might be useful. >> you are starting to get experience in working with the acos?

>> we, wooed with them and we have done a lot around patients and the criteria and also we have a coalition where we comment on anything that comes out of cms. we worked with others to help them. they engaged in theed bs and ensure that they engage effectively, but we helped them build the advisory councils that they can design care to meet the needs of patients and families. any comments or questions for the panelists. >> the whole issue of health care and the affordable care act has been flit sized.

whether they are even interested. >> from a central iowa perspective, i have to admit that we have not done marketing of the aco to our patients. we try to provide them good high quality care. we haven't gotten into that perspective, but i think for us, we haven't seen push back at all. there always a few that doesn't want the information shared and that type of thing, but the patients i talk to, they are focused on getting good care and appreciate the efforts in our advisory groups. i would love if we could do

surveys only on those who are worked with by the health coaches. it's always just a great relationship and they feel -- they feel i would say like it's about time they were taken into the picture. most want to be part of what's going on in their life. that's a big reason why we had issues with low medication adherence or low quality outcomes. the patient is the missing piece in this. >> you are living in one of the definitive battle ground states. >> yes, yes. >> sounds like it hasn't had an impact on the controversy around affordable care act or on the

steps you are taking. >> initially the push back is from the physicians in our organization that didn't didn't think this was going to stick. not just me, but others. it is to the point where i think most of the leadership in our health care system really does believe that this is where things are going. the nice thing is being part of a catholic institution, this fits right with our mission and our values. finally we can talk the talk in terms of mission and values as well. >> you have a blue republican governor in a blue state. they have been taking steps

towards the program and the like. what is your experience? >> interestingly enough, i think it's working the other way around in that as the data came out showing the successes of certain acos, they tended to gravitate to sort of show their interest in the health care debate. it gave us an opportunity to eticate to the problems and to what we thought would be some potential solutions. i think that the publicity is a get thing. it puts it on the front page as opposed to deals being made and

those of us who are the providers having to deal with decisions made without anybody's input. other questions in the back here? >> this has been very interesting. i am with cmmi, cms. you mentioned interesting approaches with teen delivery of care. we heard about the nurse navigators and the coaches. bringing the patient in as part of the team. is there an effort to document where we use the workforce differently? how are you paying for it? >> i will start with that.

basically our hospital network is fronting the cost. as they would for any other new program, the question becomes how do you determine whether or not there is appropriate profit on the other side of the ledger. clearly there is benefit. can you show that it's worthwhile in the long-term? the problem is that there very few hospital organizations that run that accounting system. a physician organization can tell you where every dollar is spent. every dollar is valuable.

if you walk into any report in the united states and ask what it costs to perform a gal bladder surgery because you want to pay cash plus 20%, nobody can tell you. they can tell you the charge, but not the cost. my argument to the administrators, this program will be successful and you have to let us run with it. they said we involve that and created a management structure for the plealth plan and there was soft savings and the buntle program which was initiated by the hospital required an infrastructure for management. we are participating in more

bundles and therefore i said to them i will also do the clinical management of that as well. the short answer is this is being privately funded. i think in the long run there is a lot of benefit and even just the pr of saving money in the program is money well spend. >> any thoughts? >> our hospital made the investment in the oco. we will project to have losses and we were honest about that. we are having good success. one of the things we have done is partnered with other people and gone after grands.

we got a grand from cmm ito spread across iowa in the hospitals and the primary care networks. we try to find different things to help us build the case. that coupled with in our market knowing our competitor was jumping in was a big reason. then againingy going back to mission. this was our board of directors and how they directed us. they jumped in with two feet. it goes back to if you are doing the right thing for patients, you are doing the rate thing for yourself. whether at an individual level or statewide level. >> let me ask if the

quantitative business case is getting clearer and better for these reforms. we hear this a lot with organizations that are committed to the goal of more person-focused care and going ahead with the best opportunities that do that and funding it themselves or if they can get a cmmi grand or foundation grant. that is not really a sustainable long-term business model. you heard the doctor talking about the conceptual approach for the specific areas of care and what the implications for net revenues would be of different payment reform models. that is hard to calculate and not only that as you pointed out, hospitals and other organizations just are not set

up to calculate the cost versus versus new revenues. is it getting better and you are finding it easier to make the case? you have better data that you are able to bring now compared to several years ago or is it more in the realm of doing it for a few years or so? is it getting more systematic? >> i will tell you from our perspective, it's a melt level answer. we can't keep doing business the same way we are doing it. that's clear. number two, if we are successful and i'm not talking about us, i'm talking about the health care system is successful. more than likely less hospitals. they will think about the business and their business

models in a different way. they were looking and saying how are we going to be able to change our model? is this a direction that is going make us successful in the future and i can't speak for administration and they have been supportive of the efforts they made. in population and health as a whole. changing the way for appropriateness of documentation and radiology procedures. a significantly expensive diagnostic test. the result is that doctors at the hospital and do every test they can think of while they are

in the hospital regardless of diagnosis. we just performed a program which sits on the emr that basically blocks orders of anything that is not indicated based upon the college of radiology. this is not going to be an up front win for the hospital, but they see it as a long-term gain and i see it as a benefit because it changes practice patterns. it will bring doctors more in line with the population health thing. >> we have time for more question back here. >> we created a consumer health core. you work with the employer

populations. a lot of what i'm hearing in my orientation is employer population and what is happening in the sports care. i'm interested in the differences and i have already placed them out in my head. considering incentives for the populations and have you gotten to think that far? >> our hospital system was the first test case to prove this point. we have worked closely with them and they have been built in. they work with health coaches on lifestyle changes and to work on self management support and woe learned from it. you have the benefit.

that was an hr designed thing and we were able to say you know what, it's an ongoing relationship and they spread it out so that you get the incentive and you maintain that relationship. with your medical home. i think there lots of tunes that way. you are right. there is a lot of things that are working and i think adding care management kind of as an overlay led to this success that we had. we decreased hospitalizations and decreased ancillary usage and all those things with health care workers who traditionally are high utilizers. i think it's a combination and again another idea of partnering with people. what are other people doing? leveraging that and working and having the same consistent

message. it's led to lots of employer groups within central iowa coming to us and saying what can do you with us? what can we do with you? >> with employers concerned about the cost of health care and quality of the coverage their employees are getting as well as the health of their employees, i expect you have seen where employers can work to support the same models of more effective patient person family engagement and care. >> we do chair the national partnership and there was an initial relationship. it's great and it's a quick fix and will not be sustained

overtime. what these patients need and want and working collaboratively with them to design it. with the changes and how they worked with the health care providers in achieving the transformation is a good point in this panel on illustrating. this is hard work. but clearly some opportunities to make progress and improving care and lowering cost and especially by thinking outside of the traditional approaches to health care. as you continue to work through this, i give you a round of applause for the great presentations. >> c-span 2, u.s. attorneys and former senior justice officials and a number of others. discuss efforts by prosecutors

to reduce the prison population. here's a quick look. >> born and raised in new orleans. the second youngest attorney right now in the country. i also happen to have lot of a brother to street violence in new orleans. this issue of trying to intervene in the lives of young people is near and dear to my heart. right now what we are doing is using hand an initiative against gun violence where we go out to all 450 schools on one day. we are asking them to pledge not to bring a gun to school and not to use a weapon to resolve a dispute and use the influence with their family and friends to ensure they don't use a weapon to resolve a fight or dispute.

it has been around since about 1996. over 10 million young people across the country have used this and taken this pledge. much ultimately on that day we will send a message that we are collectively taking a stand against violence in our community and schools. >> see the full remarks from u.s. attorney kenneth pulley tonight at 8:30 eastern on c-span 2. >> i have to tell you that to see these people in person, to hear them have the panel discussion or congressional hearing, it is so important to understand and it's important to

listen to it in its entirety. >> i think most of these is the greatest programming on tv. i like it was a great job of stimulating the conversation. it's what i look forward to on the weekends. it's a pleasure. as much as i can. >> i watch c-span all the time when i'm home. it's all i have on most of the time. it's excellent. i watched all of the debates around the country. thank you for the book talks and for the history. i like all of it. i'm thankful it's there and i use it in my classroom and i teach in a community college in

connecticut. thank you very much. >> continue to let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. call us or e-mail us at comments@c-span.org or send us a tweet. join the c-span conversation. like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. david perk ups addresses the future of the u.s. army. he serves as the commander of the training and kokt rin command. hosted by the world affairs council. about an hour and 20 minutes. >> good evening and welcome. i'm from the world affairs council and on behalf of the board and the members, welcome

you all this evening. first of all i want to thank mckenna long aldridge, a law firm for hosting this in their spaces this evening. our focus is the changing u.s. army and preparing for america's future military actions. our guest is general david g perkins, commander and u.s. army training a training and command. the mission is to recruit and train and build the u.s. army. design the army of the future and develop the leadership required for successful application of american military power. the world affairs greatly appreciates the men and women of our forces who serve america across the world. the council has been fortunate over the last several years to become the most distinguished leaders from the nation's military to our neutral nonpartisan podium. the speakers include general

martin dempsey and chairman of the joints chief of staff. former chairman of the joint chiefs and former secretary of state. general james clapper from national intelligence & director from the national security agency. they seek to engage americans in a better understanding of these issues. we believe it is increasingly important to educate themselves about the relationships around the world. about the implications for america's actions or inactions. to better prepare ourselves and our children for the 21st century environment. general perkins graduated from

the u.s. military and was commissioned in 1980. he completed the ranger and airborne schools and served in the sirmts from platoon leader to staff positions. his distinguished career included command of the fourth infantry at ft. carson from 2011 into 2014. in 2003, general perkins commanded the invasion of iraq. his unit was the first across the border and first to enter the downtown government areas of baghdad. the general is featured in the book thunder run, the armored strike to capture baghdad. he received the silver star for his part in that invasion. on march 14th, 2014, general perkins assumed command of trade ok. in 1988, he received a masters

of science degree in me can tal engineering from the university of michigan and in 1999 he received a masters degree from the naval war college he is well positioned to take on tonight's topic, the future of the army in the complex world. his title taken from the u.s. army operating concept win in the complex world, that paper published weeks ago. our discussion is with jason campbell at the rand corporation where he focuses on international security force instrument in a post conflict reintroduction. he as a degree and is currently working on the ph.d. from my alma mater from kings college in london. we will take your questions after the presentation and the

discussion. just a reminder, please silence your electronic devices at this time as a courtesy. join me in becoming general david perkins. >> all the microphones turned on and turned off. that challenge here this evening. i ark appreciate the chance to come here and speak with you all. and have a discussion about how the united states army is viewing the future in our role in it. we will look forward to the discussion following this as well as the ability it get questions from the audience and it's helpful for me to get your insights about the aspects that may not be clear or things you think we may have overlooked or oversimplified. one of the things that they do for the army, we sort of have

one of the bumper stickers. we're the architect of the army. we design the army of the future. we describe what the future operating environment is like. we come to grips with what role the army has on that and determine what capabilities they have to fulfill the in the future that we described. at this time in our history, it's kpiding to do this into the army and saying we want to be informed by our recent multiple years of war and not captive to them. we want to be informed by them as to what they can give us as we look to the future and try to innovate and get out in front of our headlights so that we will always maintain that advantage that our nation has with the

united states army. the that we played, we write our operating concepts for the army. that's really our first attempt with regards to all of the products that we produced to say what is it that the army is going to have to do? we try to describe the future and i say not predict it, but describe the future. describe the role of the army in that and that leads us to what capabilities. it drives another series of documents, what we call the war fighting concept and the capabilities document. this is really the broad initial process of coming to an intellectual visualization of what it is the future is going to look like and what it is the army does about it. this is not the end you will and be all document. i have a number of talks about this. people say i read through the whole document and it doesn't discuss the color of the new

bayonet. eventually we will get to the color of the bayonet. this is not the role here. i need to contextualize that. shortly after i got into 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 leavenworth, 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 of a 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 processes, 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 of war. the operational and strategic. they say it is a conscious effort and we are coming out of vietnam and we had a 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 roped into 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. 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 have visual modifications. so that is the power of an operating concept. if you go through the deliberate intellectual rigger in 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 i describe 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 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 equals 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 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 to 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 deterrence 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 unknown world that is unknowable 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 present 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 and 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 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 here in washington 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 conflicts, world war ii, world war i, they each 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 had a 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 commander in 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 on the 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 to 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, i think there is an insinuation 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 saying is the 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 and you need to come to an understanding collectively. we are talking about understanding visualize describe then direct, 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 math wrong. 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 quantico. 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 blogisphere 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, this is 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 that we're 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 emulate them. we have robotic systems. 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 emulate us. when i grew up we had equipment nobody else had. we had night vision goggles. the enemy didn't. i had 12 more hours to fight the enemy. i had 12 more hours out of the day i can 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. now the issue is how do i develop that better. how do i train my soldiers and there is a huge differentiation in technology. the future what you need do sin

crease your rate of innovation. you can't count on differentiation. 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 tanks, 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 emulating 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. 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 to ask a question of general perkins. >> there must be something i left out. i'm here to 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 pivot to 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 competency of 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 pacific 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 nations 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 consistency of the nature of war while taking into account the changing characteristics of war. there are natures of war that stay constant while the characteristics, can change. consistency 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. 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 -- their actions are compelled 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 noncontiguous 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. 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 achille 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 emulated 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. so i would say it is highly informed by that. and it really is that complexity in a constant 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, shia, kurd, and i'm thinking for long-term sustainable goals and i want to win at the strategic level, i would go in as brigade commander thinking, not just how do i win this tactical fight, which quite honestly 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 transmission 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 guy 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 devolve, into a short term tactical win and the way you do it may be counter productive 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 jealous 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 like 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 getting less of the boom, shall we say. it really begins, as a great mentor most of us in the army said, the less leads the physical. what we do is we are working very hard to get interagency people mr. every stack group we have in the army majors. we have all the services, so there's a sea service person, air service person, generally an international officer. we're trying to get an interagency person in there. starting at that level, in the interagency folks, people are starting to have the dialogue and understand how all of national power works. what we're saying is, the army can no longer focus on synchronizing firepower. when i went to the command

general staff college, the only people in your staff group were army officers. okay? so they were army officers and you spent all your time synchronizing firepower. if you go to the staff college now, they have two officers, you try to have an interagency person in each one of them. and we have a joint -- all of the joint services representatives. we're saying, it's about our young majors learning how to synchronize the international power. you can't do it at the conflict. you can try hard at it and get some success, but you've really missed all the preliminary part of it, because a lot of the success that you need during those periods you're talking about, you really have to set the foundation early on. you really have to set it early on. the example that i use, again, using myself as hopefully a learning organization, when i went into baghdad, as a brigade commander, i said, you know what, we may be here a couple of months.

okay? we may be here a while. so maybe i ought to think twice before i bomb a bridge and take it down. maybe i ought to think twice before i bomb a power plant and take out the lights. because that gives me a momentary advantage that i've taken out the lights so the enemy can't see me, but now it could take years to rebuild it, and i may own the rebuilding of it. you've got to think through this before you cross the line of departure. because what you do tactically, if it's not informed by a strategic vision, you may do things that you later regret. and i did a lot of things that i later regretted, because all of a sudden, you get your just desserts. you know what general perkins did? your job is to fix it. >> thank you so much for your talk. that was really fantastic. i'm currently a master student at american university studying u.s. foreign policy. and this semester one of the things i'm looking at is role of nato in the u.s. national

security. and it's included coalitions, you mentioned nato. what do you see as the future of a plan like this, working with some of our coalition partners, specifically with nato? >> yeah. i think nato is crucial. it really is the best example of what a strong coalition can do. is it perfect? no. does it have some level of bureaucracy? yes, but sometimes that's good, because there is a process to get to a decision. in many ways, nato is an example of how you have to think about how you are a cog in a larger machine. a couple weeks ago we put out in the association of the united states army, a lot of international officers are there. what it has done now is started them thinking, you know what, maybe we ought to have a concept -- not all armies do -- they don't have a tradoc, some say that's a good thing. but they'll decide that.

but we need to have a concept. we need to thing long term about what it is we do. we're being asked, actually, to go over to europe, many of us, to sit down with them and run through this intellectual exercise we're going through. it's not only valuable for them, but for the u.s. we're never going to do anything alone. this is a joint and coalition world. the army's never going to do anything as an army, single service. we'll have a joint role. you see the word joint in everything. the word joint is probably more prevalent than the word army in our document here. and the idea of a coalition is prominent, because there are very few things the united states is going to do by itself. what we don't do is focus on what you have to do is avoid some of the pitfalls, again, sometimes army folks have, which is the way we're going to get along is you just act like the army. well, that's not how they do things. okay? they do things differently.

so we can't say, you know what, here's my army operation center, doctors without borders walks in the back. nato coalition partner walks back and says, look, if you didn't buy any radios, i'm not going to talk to you. or you didn't go to the army general staff college, you can't take part in our decision-making process. if we say we're going to be the foundation for the joint force and integrate all partners, we have to say, when we're sitting at our operations center, in west africa, and world health organization walks in, it should be, we've been expecting somebody like you. we have a way to integrate you into what we do. our staff is built that you can operate on our staff without having graduated from the general army staff college. we have communications that can work with you even if you don't have a top-secret clearance, et cetera, like that. it is a great force in function if you say, you have to operate with everybody. you build staffs differently, buy different kinds of radios,

you run your security clearances differently, you do everything differently, than if you just say, we're going to optimize this for the army. if you're not like the army, you can't play with us. it's endless verifications. >> general, we're running short on time here. we only have two questions left. >> let's hope they're easy ones. >> my name is leo cruz. i'm a defense fellow in osd. the question i have is looking at sequestration coming ahead, and obviously looking at the size of the army. >> yeah. >> with looking at what you suggested earlier in this talk about how looking at the strategic deterrents of a standing army, and whether or not we have the forces and the numbers to do a strategic deterrence, you know, is that a large army or is it a more capable army to do the great things you've suggested? >> double-barrel.

okay. >> retired foreign service. thank you so much for your thoughtful presentation. napoleon is the most important strategic adviser, when the enmy makes a mistake, don't disturb him. >> right. >> with that in mind, to what extent is the army taking advantage of the intelligence and counterintelligence of enemy mistakes, to perform -- to better perform and accomplish objectiv objectives? >> two great questions. the first one, sequestration comes up a lot. if you read through this document, this explicitly was not designed to are a force sizing construct. you'll not see the word palm or budget or sequestration like that. it is budget immaterial. in fact, and this question came up in a previous forum i was at, a lot of folks say there is very

ambitio ambitious, do you have enough money to do it. and if you don't have enough money to do it, why did you put out the document. i tell them, it's just the opposite. when you have a lot of money, sometimes vision and priorities aren't important. if you have so much money, you can waste it. but when you have less money, you definitely better have a vision of what you want to do with it. you definitely better have priorities. in some ways resource constraints are a forcing function to try to get your act together to say, do you know what you're for? do you know what your priorities are? do you have a way to go about it? now, what the budget does for us is allows us to build capacity to do this. can i do this in a smaller area or large area? can i do this tlees times at once or five times at once? how much time do i need? i can do it once and need ten months off another time. what budget and size do is it dictates capacity about how often and where you do it. but what we're saying is, regardless of the budget and the size, these are the capabilities

our army has. if we say, well, you're going to have sequestration, so i don't have of the money to build an army that operates joist jointl integrates the forces together. they are related, because the budget resources you the capacity to do it, but you still have to have priorities in a focus that that has. in regards to what you were talking about, sir, that really gets to the win part. you know, if you focus on winning, if you say, i have to fight to win, what happens is, you may disturb them when they are their own worst enemy. you're just focused on fighting them. if you say, i need to focus on winning at the strategic level, you're stepping back and saying, are they making a lot of mistakes, and if they are, maybe i'll facilitate their mistakes in a way that's not directly in contrary to them. that may force them to get their stuff together if i push hard on

them. what i will do is with all elements 69 coalition, indigenous folks, what i'll do is continue to reinforce their mistakes until they get to a part where it is to my strategic advantage. and that's a difference between focusing on winning versus focusing on fighting. >> sir, thank you for the insightful remarks and for taking all the questions. ms. shoup, would you -- >> i'll just say thank you very much, general. it's been a very informative and interesting evening. i think we all have learned a lot tonight. thank you very much. >> my pleasure. [ applause ] all this week on c-span, we'll show you interviews with retiring members of congress. tonight it's wisconsin republican tom petry and democrat carolyn mack car think. this is what congressman