. . . 162,000 people that come to work every day, and every day that work, location, some places is

under the sea, under the ground, operating in the air, operating in space. defending our nation, defending 300 million from the middle of alaska. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines that do the job every day. i want to tell you if you go out now and visit those places, you will find the greatest people in the world doing that job. and you'll find that morale is unbelievably high. unbelievably high. you'll find the best and brightest our nation has to offer and they still love to serve in this mission. you'll see them at minot in north dakota, at barksdale, at whiteman, operating the bomber missions. you'll see them at kings bay and bangor and georgia and the state of washington, operating our nuclear submarines. you'll see them at warren, malmstrom, minot, peterson, buckley, vandenberg, patrick, schriever. we're all over the world. north, south, east, west, up and down. 162,000 people.

but you got to realize when it comes right down to it, it's really about the one and it could be the one sailor who has spent 17 years of his life under the water. doing a strategic deterrent mission. that reminds me to respect those people at all times and also realize i made the right decision when it came to the service. it's about the soldiers sitting in the middle of alaska in all weather sitting on top of the ground-based intercepters making sure they can combat. it's also about the maintainers at minot, the pilots, that operate the bombers. it's about the missileers, defenders, maintainers that work in the missile fields. i was at malmstrom about six months ago. great falls, montana. they're spread all over montana. each day when a missileer comes to work, they come to work, go

through a morning brief and head out, sometimes it's a three-hour drive over back roads to get to their missile alert facility. they go under the ground. they spend 24 hours under the ground. they come back out, drive three hours up and they are ready to respond to the most horrible threat our nation can imagine every day. and as i sat there talking to them before they went out that morning, telling them how important they were and the nation understood, there was a second lieutenant who stood up and asked me a question. and the question she asked me was, so, sir, i'm from the generation they call the millennials. i read all the time that millennials are lazy, always looking to move jobs, always looking to change, difficult to motivate. so when you get a question about the millennials, how do you answer it? i said, it's real easy. get on my airplane and come with me. come with me to malmstrom, to warren, to minot. come with me anywhere and you

will see that the current generation of americans is as great as any other generation our country has had and they're spectacular. they want to do it. they love that mission. whether they're in that mission, i talk to them all. i call them on christmas. i call them on thanksgiving. every one i talk to, how long are you going to be in the air force? i'm going to be in the air force four years and get out. i'm going to be here my whole life. how do you like the business? sir, i love it. we're doing the most important job in the country. doesn't matter whether it's a submariner, a missileer, a bomber pilot, maintainer. they know how important it is. they love what they're doing. they know it's essential to the security of our nation.

if you want to see the strength of america, just go watch our airmen, our soldiers, our sailors, our marine. chief? >> thank you, sir. good afternoon. i would like to start off with a thank you. you know, it was actually something the chief said, general goldfein talked about yesterday, he talked about this event, the afa event being the premier professional development opportunity for us at airmen, for us as service members, united states air force. i think it's important to sit there and take the opportunity to reflect on that. we probably don't do these kinds of things often enough. clearly there's opportunity when you have opportunity to see a service secretary, secretary of defense, chief master in the air force, our chief speak to us, that's important. but these dialogues on the side are nearly as important. one of the meaningful conversations i had yesterday was at an event after the day talking to staff sergeant amo from air force special operations command. what just an amazing squared away noncommissioned officer. so i just want to start off with a thank you. secondly, happy birthday. >> there you go. >> 71 years and a day. i'm going to offer it up. you all are great. it is important. it's important to sit there and reflect on our history. as i'm listing to the combatant commanders, general hyten talking about our global war fighting command. it is clearly global. there's just talent from every location from the arctic circle, out to kuang and everywhere else

and it's really important. you know, i tend to fall back on commander's intent. i think it's important for us all, as a noncommissioned officer, it's extremely important. sometimes the question gets asked, you know, what does a senior enlisted leader do? i can offer up joint pub 3tac 33 or i could put you in the directions of the j7 focus paper on a command senior enlisted leader. i truly believe on falling back on a commander's intent. i know my commander's intent, what the boss provided me and made it really clear, he goes, chief, i expect you to have the pulse of our command, all of our command. so 162,000 professionals. 30,000 civilian teammates. almost 25,000 commissioned officers. almost 98,000 enlisted professionals across our force. i tell you what, i can sit there and go story after story after story on the value this talent brings us. it's actually eye-watering. you know, general hyten talked about being in malmstrom. we were there in february. we got full credit. it was a winner. it was a special visit, i'll be honest. it really was.

we had an opportunity to go visit the missile alert facility and spend the night. and it's obviously any time you get an opportunity to battle space circulation and spend time with our service members, it's really, really important. but in that context where you actually get to come in and the boss is going down a line, talking to all these airmen, security forces, the facility manager, service professionals, and then we get to actually eat dinner with them and it was actually a briefing that the combatant commander received by airman first class carrington and airman first class fulwiley. at the time a combined 11 months in the united states air force. it's not just the fact it was a short duration. it was actually how they codified and articulated what they did and the

responsibilities they had in the missile alert facility. what they did, they showed the boss a powerpoint and said this is why we're here, sir. we're here to ensure the quality of life of our folks supporting this mission. we're here to boost the morale of these individuals, these war fighters defending our nation. two e3s with a grand total of 11 months in the united states air force as a member of the armed forces. that is the kind of talents we have across our services. you know, it was interesting, madam secretary was here yesterday and she talked about recruiting. and the path going forward and what we had to do. i would offer up this, if i can pull it off, i would go talk to the chief and go, sir, would you mind calling general miller and see if she can get a fleet of c-17s parked on andrews? every one of us in this auditorium could jump on it in time to run with the airmen tomorrow morning, watch them earn their coin and watch them walk a bomb run. if you really want to know where the best airmen in the united states air force are, they've graduating this week on friday. but if somehow we can't get air lift because a real-world op is going on, make a trip next thursday and friday. that's the next iteration of our

greatest airmen. sir? >> so let's talk about the topic. i could sit around and talk about airmen all day. those are my best days. days with soldier, airmen, sailors, marine, those are the top days. the topic is talk about multidomain operations. it's actually a very significant discussion going on at the very senior levels of the joint staff amongst all the cocoms now about how do we do that? so stratcom is right in the middle of it. why are we right in the middle of it? we talked first about the third priority. combat-ready force. so let's go back to the first priority. the first priority is actually stated in the unified command plan for stratcom. stratcom is listed as a functional combatant command. i hate that. i hate that with a passion. stratcom is a global war fighting command that delivers global capabilities to the world, what we are and what we do. when you look at the pictures on that chart, i see war fighter on the chart. that's who we are, what we do. if you think about the first mission i have in the unified

command plan, it is strategic deterrence. what's the second mission? nuclear operations. note that they're different. strategic deterrence in the 21st century is a whole lot more than nuclear operations. somehow we got to the point where we think that just because we have 1,550 deployed nuclear weapons, the fact we're the most lethal ready command in the world, that somehow those weapons deter everybody from everything and all you have to do is read the newspaper and know that it doesn't. here's the question for you. 2002, the current version of stratcom was formed. by the way, we just celebrated our 16th birthday, slightly younger than the air force. when that was formed, over the next few years here's what happened. space came in. cyber came in. countering weapons of mass destruction came in. isr came in. missile defense came in. electronic warfare came in. analysis and targeting came in. we formed all these functional component commands for all these things. when i got there, we were down to 18 different components under

stratcom. so how were we providing strategic deterrence? our job was to figure out how to integrate those. now, what has happened over the last few years? isr's now back in the joint staff. counter weapons of mass destruction at socom. cyber command is its own command. certainly heard the secretary just talk about space command is going to be its own command. all those pieces are coming back out. so the question is, how do we provide integrated deterrence? integrated strategic deterrence in all domains? the chairman, when he talks about what is our most important priority, it's to prevent the use of nuclear weapons on country or allies. prevent the catastrophic cyber space actions that damage our nation. that's how he look at the number one priority. if you think about that, that requires the integration of all capabilities. nukes, global strikes, space,

cyber, conventional. all to deliver our deterrent effect. so the big challenge we have on the table is how do we do that in the structure we have today? so what about the second priority? deliver decisive response if deterrence fails. so what we have created now in the process of creating, we're going to have five global combatant commanders and six geographic combatant commanders. those five global combatant commanders all to one aspect or another can deliver global fires. space demand will be able to deliver global fires. stratcom will be able to deliver global fires, conventional and nuclear. transcom enables everybody to deliver global fires. so the question is, how do we integrate global fires? if you think about how we do it in theater today, we do it around singular events, one event at a time. that's an environment where we're not threatened in all

those global domains. now we're threatened on the global domains. so there's going to be a fight in the future that is going on in space. and cyber space. globally. involving cyber space. all at the same time. and i ask you, what is our doctrine for integrating the global fires of this nation and providing that in support of a geographic combatant commander somewhere? there's a whole series of options. everything from every geographic combatant commander has to have expertise in every one of those areas in order to do that. all the way to there's got to be a combatant commander that integrates that for all the other commanders to a mix of capabilities. we're actually just trying to figure out how to do that right now. that's multidomain operations at its core. that's what it's all about. to try to figure out how do we integrate that to deter our adversaries, integrate that so

we can integrate the global fires to deliver the capability on the battlefield in the future? global fires, theater fires all have to be integrated. timing and tempo. that is unbelievably difficult. we're going to get after that this year. question and answers, we can do deeper if you want. chief, comments before we jump into q&a? >> yes, sir. one of the things i'll offer, when general goldfein was talking to us yesterday, the chief put up a slide, he talked about setting conditions. and i just fundamentally believe that preparation sets our conditions. and so when the general, you know, went on and started talking about giving, offering up his insight and perspective of why he has a photo of a master sergeant john chapman in his office, for all of us it should be a moment of reflection for many reasons, quite frankly. you know, one of them is we probably should sit there and take the time to recognize the fact that we are honored and we are blessed to serve with and serve for that type of talent in our institution. but along with that, when you sit there and know the story of

master sergeant john chapman, it actually really talks about a story of preparation. and so think about it. we often sometimes say that, hey, on any given evening, in any given moment, we will just rise to the occasion. and i just don't believe that is ever true. i would offer up what master sergeant john chapman did was fall back on his level of preparation. every extra rep he took, every piece of cognitive thinking he did, every extra lap, all went into his preparation to be there for his teammates in their time of need. i think that is an important lesson for all of us to focus on. you know, we sit there and i go back to when you look at a professional like master sergeant chapman, it really is once again something the chief talked to us about. it's about the ability for us to

master our craft. it is about being those leaders of competence. it's about being those leaders of character and it's about being those leaders of consequence. are we making a difference in the lives of our airmen? are we making a difference in the lives of our service members? and once again, you could think about the interactions you have and it's just evident, you know, once again, it goes back to the talent, and we have so much forward-thinking talent across our force at the e5, 02, 03 level, it's almost literally breathtaking. about three weeks ago, had the opportunity to travel with a combatant commander to bangor to deliver the omaha trophy. which is an operational excellence award on behalf of community leaders around omaha to the crew of the "u.s.s. alabama." >> roll tide. >> thank you, sir. >> yep. >> i know it was a special day for the commander for many

reasons, right? for one, you're out there recognizing 160 exceptional sailors who once again are mastering their craft, plus you put #rolltide in there, i know it's going to be a great day for the boss. but along with that day, something else special happened. we had an opportunity to go sit down and have lunch with members of the security battalion out there. the united states marine corps marines and our united states sailors out there. united states navy sailors. it's very interesting, we're very early on. i joke about this. it was taco tuesday. win for the team. >> awesome. >> there's goodness there. in reality, one of the first questions as we just started

eating, a marine sergeant e5 looks across, looks over at the combatant commander, says, sir, in your house of armed services committee testimony, and then verbatim, read off a bunch of testimony. >> he didn't read off, he had memorized. >> yeah. >> he quoted my testimony back to me. a marine e5. and then he asked why did you say that? [ laughter ] >> so that in itself is just unbelievably just impressive. and i would like to say it's an isolated incident. it's just simply not. but in addition to that, what that member brought up is he actually shared a really, really relevant and important message and he shared on a deployment into the eucom aor.

it was a tactical echelon example of deterrence, but having this sergeant e5 of the united states marine corps really understand that at a high level was so incredibly impressive. and so once again, it goes to the talent in our force. you know, we sometimes, i think we equate leadership with a rank or position. leadership, in fact, is just behavior. and you can just sit there and look at all the behaviors that we need as service members and just execute. you know, we had the deputy secretary talking about the nds. i find it vitally important. i think for all of us as practitioners of the professional arms, it's important to sit there and align our activities, actions and behavior toward the national defense strategy, but i'll be honest, if you haven't had an opportunity to read it, just go to the cover page. once again, commander's intent. i think the secretary of defense

gave us clear marching orders. it's an unclassified summary. it says that 2018, you know, national defense strategy for united states of america, it is overlaid on the u.s. constitution and talks about sharpening america's military competitive edge. in reality, didn't have to read anything further. sharpening our nation's military competitive edge. and so when you look at the national defense strategy and what it means to us, whether it's globally integrated operations, whether it's joint fighters -- fires, excuse me. there are two things that resonate out of that. two things that come away. our ability as professionals to advance our competitive advantage. and the ability to create dilemmas for our adversaries. you know what creates dilemmas

for our adversaries? our ability to cultivate the talent that we have within our formations. you know, once again, i quite frankly if you'd asked me, hey, what keeps you up at night? nothing. i sleep like a baby. and it's because of the 162,000 professionals within our war-fighting combatant command. but the reality when you look at this talent, the reason you could sleep good is just the fact that their high level of execution and what they're able to deliver us on any given moment is just in a word, spectacular. sir? >> well done. all right, peter. questions? however you want to go. >> number of questions have come in. most of them, sir, trying to get you into trouble. which i'm going to avoid -- >> that's a surprise. >> couple on nuclear issues which i'd like to kind of put in a package. one is, how are things going with respect to improving the infrastructure and the sustainment of our tactical nuclear weapons in europe? number two was, how is it going in terms of sustainment of our nuclear forces because our modernization and replacement doesn't happen until, perhaps, 2027, '28. and in particular, minuteman was one of the questions was asked, and the third part of it was, do we have the technical capability to break out or do we have a sufficient edge in case the new s.t.a.r.t. treaty goes away? >> that's about 22 nuclear questions in one. so let's start with europe. general scott berardi is not here. that's really a question for general scott berardi and nato. the one thing i'll say about that, when the f-35 comes into europe, wow, there's a game changer. so we really don't talk a lot about nuclear capabilities with inside the european theater. i'm not going to talk about a lot today. just think about the difference the f-35 will make in our overall deterrent capability when that comes in to europe. you talk about our nuclear force

readiness. our strategic force readiness. our force is unbelievably ready right now. amazingly ready. we had a problem ten years ago and came out of that problem. we're in good shape today. the one thing i tell all my commanders, all my chiefs, is that we have to realize that that morale is a little bit fragile. the reason it's a little bit fragile is that everybody now understands how important it is. it is the number-one mission of our country. we have do all those things and new stuff is coming. so the new stuff had better show up and better show up on time because that's the promise we made to everybody in this business. and if it shows up on time, the morale will stay high and the force will stay ready and we'll be good. if it doesn't show up on time, then we have sustainment

problems and morale problems and other problems. so the folks of you that are building the new minuteman, the new bomber, the new nuclear command and control, the new weapons, we've got to deliver those capabilities on time, we've got to make sure the folks that operate any element of this enterprise always have the best equipment available. chief? >> i will offer this. it's a question that comes up a lot. they ask when you go out, what do the folks especially in the nuclear enterprise, what do they feel about serving in that capacity? and, you know, i use some examples but i will offer you

this. whether it's airman carrington or fulwiley or lieutenant that's working up in the missile on console, our nuclear force right now finds meaning, purpose and value in what they do. they want to be doing this mission. actually as you look at that slide and look at everything this combatant commander has been assigned by the president of the united states in his commander in chief hat, everybody you touch on wants to be serving in those. so how do we continue to harness that. we continue to harness it by investing. there's a modernization piece to that. there's a talent piece to that and there's a leadership piece to that.

>> i actually had that question happen to a young person that went to my high school, grisholm high school, huntsville, alabama. apollo i astronaut who died in the apollo i accident. there was a student who was interning with my brother. his name was james braun. james -- i'll give you a quick summary. 2400 on his sat as a sophomore in high school. perfect grades in everything he ever did. he formed a cyberpatriot team in that high school in alabama, won the national cyberpatriot championship. was on "cbs this morning" with his group, and he got into

m.i.t., early admission as a junior. so he was working for my brother as an intern, and my brother said, you should talk to my brother. so when i was home one summer, we sat down and talked. and i said, so, james, you can write your own ticket wherever you want to go. what do you want to do with your life? and he said, sir, i want to do hard-core cyber. and i said, you know, most places that's illegal. and he said, that's true. i said, i know a place where we can make it legal, but you have to sign up. and if you sign up, that means you have to be all in. and james is a brilliant guy, but he was a little concerned about, you know, can i actually do all that? and i said, james, you can do anything you put your mind to. what do you want to do? you can go out and make your millions of dollars, or you could come in the air force. james today is a junior at the

air force academy. and let's say his grades are pretty spectacular. and he's doing remarkably well. he still sends me notes every once in a while, and he's happy. but for all the folks in this room, let me ask you a question. is this air force ready to access people like james braun in two years? and the answer is not quite. we've got some work to do to make sure the air force is ready for a talent like that, but isn't that a great problem to have? that's how i answer the question. >> there's relevant examples

everywhere we go. it's interesting, we were down in colorado springs earlier in the year. we took a visit to the first space brigade, and there was a young e-4 army specialist who would come in the united states army with a degree in i.t. and her whole reason for coming in is because she wanted to serve in the war-fighting aerospace. so we have young talent making those kinds of decisions and they have a choice in life. it's looking at the talent they have, and they actually have choices and they're choosing to serve. we saw that in this very room two years ago. one of our members, staff sergeant e-5, day job? medical doctor. this is the kind of talent we pull in.

i stole this story from one of my previous commanders i worked for, so please don't tell him. this commander was serving as an air force spaceman at the time, paid a visit to washington state. he was pulling up with his aide, pulled into a parking lot and as he pulled in with a fusion, a seaman, an e-4, shows up in a $100,000 tesla. there was a story there. he was the vice president of security for microsoft because he wants to be doing this kind of profession, the profession of arms, because there are things you can do in the capacity of an armed forces member that you just can't do in life. so i think there's value. once again, how do we cultivate that talent, how do we assess that talent and how do we retain that talent? i think it's imperative that each one of us focus on that. >> if i look at all the talent in the room, every one of you, if you join the air force to get rich, man, the recruiter saw you coming. you joined it because you wanted to do something bigger than yourself. that's what it's all about. that's what it's all about. >> thank you. i'm going to put a group of questions together in multi-demand operations. one is, are multi-demand operations unique? number two, does it require organization of strat-comm? third, when will you know you achieved the necessary

benchmarks to fully utilize your capability in multi-domain operations and how do you prepare for a multi-domain fight. >> unique only because the threats are different. it's actually the same problems we've always had. the force i just described to you is just a different joint force. we had to figure out a long time ago how to integrate air, land and sea, and we put a joint force together that does that pretty darn well, actually better than anybody on the planet has done it before. now we have to do air, land, sea, space, cyber. we have to do all that together. it's the same problem, we just haven't done it, so we have to step forward and figure out how to walk into that problem. it's not different. how does it impact strat-comm? does it require a strat-comm reorganization? we're going to explore that as we stand up with the u.s. space command. we're going to stand up with the u.s. space command as an opportunity to experiment with different contrasts. we'll walk through how do we actually do that? we'll explore. i think it's an issue of command

relation authorities and responsibilities. as you go look at the other questions, it's also interesting to watch what some of our competitors have done. china. three or four years ago, they formed a strategic support force where they integrated space, cyber, counterspace, countercyber, intelligence surveillance reconnaisance, all under the same command. how we do things best is not because we have a single organization that has all the things underneath it, we do it best because we create normal command relationships and we figure out how to fight in a joint environment. that joint environment is just becoming complicated in two new ways. two domains that have to integrate with the other two, just like the other problems, and it's a multiple problem because everything we do impacts another adversary, so we have to figure that out. but it's just applying all the

things we've done in the past to what we do today. everything today should be about the threat. we took our eye off that about 20 years ago when we went to capability-based effort and capability-based planning. where at the same time we had a potential adversary, vladimir putin was elected in 2000 where he announced the doctrine of russia will be to use nuclear weapons on a battlefield if we're threatened. he said that 18 years ago, and he pledged then to increase the spending of nuclear weapons by 50%. and ten years later we said that russia and china were no longer threats, while during that entire period, he continued to increase the spending on nuclear weapons and space and cyberspace

capabilities. why? because he wanted to challenge the united states. it's really that simple. so in many ways, it's the same problem, it's just a different threat, a different world with different capabilities and new domains. we just have to walk into it. same problem. >> thank you, sir. three questions came in having to do with the change in national security strategy looking at great power competition. one question was how has that impacted your strat-comm command and your work? and how do you think russia and china have responded to the, i guess, over fairly upfront description of them as a key problem we're facing? >> i would offer this. when you sit there and you look through the national defense

strategy and it talks about our return to great power competition, from my perspective at the combat command, frankly i think it's helpful. what that forces us to do as professionals is to focus back on the threat. that, frankly, has always been there. i stole a line from a movie and it talked about the cold war never ended, it just shattered in a thousand dangerous pieces. when i heard that, i actually thought about that, and i think that's true and valid, and the reason i think that's true and valid is all i actually have to do is look at the actions and behavior of our adversaries. you go back and look at the 1990s, coming out of desert storm, so early 1991. the takeaway from the chinese was how we fought so successfully as a joint force and how we leveraged space capabilities. and so when you actually compare and contrast the space capabilities we actually had in 1991 to today, there's just a significant delta with -- that was a tipping point for the chinese. you look at the russians and the combatant commander talked about this. they never stopped viewing the world as a threat. so time for the atrophy is over. so when we talk about the number one priority of the commander

being 21st century strategic deterrence thinking, i would just simply offer we should probably start by stop doing anything 20th century. but we allow that to jam up our processes, our procedures, the way we do business. the world is different in a very meaningful way, so once again, how you get after these bad actors and adversaries is actually through our intellectual capacity as professionals. so that's what i would offer. >> the national defense strategy is helpful to me because it just describes the world the way it is. it's not the way of the world that we wish existed, it's the way the world is. so we have to do something about it. by describing the way the world is, it validates u.s. strategic command. and it tells everybody who works in this command how important their job is, and their job is the most important work in the

department. go ahead, peter. >> thank you. one last question, and that is space, cyberspace and maritime has become more common, but is being used by our adversaries to impact the united states. how specifically do you view those threats in terms of not only priority or what specifically are the kinds of threats you think are deadly enough to dominate your thinking? >> there's a couple interesting things in that question. one, the fact that the term global commons is used about space and cyber. when was the first time global commons really became a useful term? it was the navy. it was the sea. it was mohan. that's when we started talking about the global commons of the sea, and how did we get after dealing with that? we built an unbelievably powerful navy that could make sure that the united states could preserve sea lines of communication around the world and preserve our commerce and preserve all those pieces. then we worked with the international community to develop laws of the sea, international waters, all those kinds of pieces.

then aero came to be about 100 years ago. what did we do? we built the most powerful air force in the world to make sure we could combat wherever we wanted to and never have a soldier submarine ever come to hostile action in the air. now we have space, now we have cyberspace. what should we do? let's think about it for a second. how about we build the most powerful space capability in the world so we can always transit through space freely and then work with the international community to find what the norms of behavior are so we know what they are and understand. and cyberspace, how about we build the most powerful cyber capability in the world and then work with the international community to develop? it's not that hard, ladies and gentlemen, but oh, my gosh, because it's space and cyber, somehow we label it. it's a global common. we have to do something special because it's special. no, it's not. they're just places. they're places where we go. they're places where we do

things. they're places where we operate. one of them happens to be manmade, but it's still a place we go, and we go there every day. we just have to treat it correctly. if we treat it correctly, then we'll know exactly what to do and we'll understand how to do that, and the united states will be in a good place. it's really that simple, and i'm going to leave it that simple. >> with that, ladies and gentlemen, would you thank general hyten and chief master sergeant mcmahon. [ applause ]