it doesn't matter. that's all i have to say. host: that concludes our show this morning. we will be talking with jennifer duffy, a senior at cook political report here to give her view of the midterm elections as we head into the final weeks before election day. we will also speak with a former u.s. surgeon general, who will be discussing the ebola outbreak by the obama administration and whether having a surgeon general in place would have -- would help the u.s. efforts. thank you so much for joining. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014]

>> coming up on c-span, a discussion on army operations and training procedures. that is followed by our campaign 2014 debate coverage with the candidates running for u.s. senate in kansas and colorado. >> be part of c-span's campaign 2014 coverage, follow us on twitter and like us on facebook to get to beat schedules, video clips of key moments, debate previews from our politics team. c-span is bringing you over 100 senate, house, and governor debates. the battle for control of congress did stay in touch and engage. follow us on twitter and like us on facebook. the association of the u.s. army

held its annual meeting this week in washington dc. direct -- commanding commanding generals and the director of the national guard discuss plans that would direct the armynal guard and guard and 214 so they may operate under the same procedures. this is two and -- two hours. >> i have the chief of the army reserve and the commander of the u.s. army reserve command. directed to the secretary of the army and chief of staff of the army. to a three-star commander. another one of my

three-star commanders within the force of command. firsts the commander of army. first army is the executive agent for executing the army total force policy. him we have mr. paul patrick down to the right -- we have mr. paul patrick down to the right, he is the assistant to the secretary of defense. a retired major general. expertise atot of the civilian senior leadership level. is the actingt director of the army national guard. lots of experience with him as well. a couple of opening remarks from me. i don't know how many of you are at breakfast this morning.

that is my message to you, what i said at the total force policy breakfast. the world is an interesting place. united states is a global power. there are a variety of hotspots out there. you don't have to have access to intelligence to figure out who it is or where it is. all you have to do is watch the evening news. all of thediers from components serving in active combat in afghanistan. aviation, intelligent -- intelligence, and a wide variety of others. we anticipate additional advisers or other capabilities as we continue to support the iraqi can security forces.

we do not know how syria will unfold in the future. willnnot predict what happen in jordan, egypt, or libya. we do not know necessarily what will happen in yet met. -- in yemen. there is an area of the world right now that certainly has a lot of people. nobody can predict the direction in which events will unfold. the united states made a strategic decision to pivot to asia in the national strategy. there are issues there. you have the rise of china. the increasing economic and apparently military power of china.

that is not that -- not at all what we are saying. there is a rise of capability in china. a possibility is of conflicts on the korean peninsula. it is unknown where the leader of north korea is. lots of special -- lots of speculation. issues andbeen tension over many years on the korean peninsula. issues in northeast asia, issues in southeast asia, issues throughout the african cough -- african continent. there are hotspots throughout the globe.

you see what of those playing out in west africa with the .bola crisis that is unfolding right now on the lower end. we have certain capabilities and logistics and intelligence. engineering fields that allow us to assist in that effort. the range of military operations all the way to operations against isis or the taliban or

other potential aggressors, all the way to potentially operations to prevent conflict on the korean peninsula than to fight and prevent and that particular conflict. our skill set in the united , the capabilities we have is a wide range. it is global in nature. when chief of staff of the army a globally responsive and regionally engaged army, that is what he is talking about. you can see it manifest itself where we developed regionally aligned forces over the last couple of years.

it would allow the combatant commanders to execute phase zero with othernt militaries to build worldwide lan power amongst allies and for me nations in the united states. you see it manifest itself like that or you see it manifest itself in a contingency operation where we have american soldiers go do something that is a bit more dramatic. you is the world has a lot of hotspots. all over the place. united states is a global power. they are going to call on the united states army and the united states army must maintain capabilities that are across an

entire range of military operations. the first messages we do not know what the future holds. we have to prepare for a lot of different possibilities. we have to maintain ourselves in a high state of readiness. that gets to the total force. at the end of the vietnam war, great neighbors and others did a view of the its non-and they determined -- of vietnam and they determined the united thees military -- one of reasons we lost was the will of the american people was broken. politicsars in active -- is an act of politics. we are determining one person's will or a group of people's will over another group of people's will.

what can i do? what he said is i will redesign the force so the united states army can never again be committed to a ground combat situation. he decided to make sure the national guard and reserve is fully integrated in the components. if the active component were to go it would require the national guard to go with them. we are promulgating that concept

in the army total force policy. he wrote a memorandum to those of us in uniform, directing us we implementthat or execute the total force policy. follow that up with an up limitation document, which tells us you will implement the army total force policy by doing the following seven things. they follow that up with a set of training guidance or implementation guidance. that went into effect last year. what are we doing? thick -- couple

of key things it is remembering how we go after this. we are partnering the active components with the national guard units in the reserve component units on a hopefully day-to-day come over too weak, month-to-month basis. we try to group them by geographic locations throughout the country and we matched brigades of divisions and so on. we want to from a connective tissue between the active component and the national guard and reserve. the partnership i am talking about is the active component and the reserve component partnered together. a second big flagship initiative that was put into place is the combat training centers. not just the combat training

centers but also the major exercises. combate the exportable training centers. have a wide variety of other major exercises in the army. sure all ofake these major exercises are fully integrated. the objective that i have promulgated is roughly 50% of a combat training center rotation. louisiana oroes to , we will roughly speaking have a 50% active component and 50% reserve component. year are two rotations per

, and that is there to get certified. we want to validate at least a minimum of two national guard to gates per year. those are unique rotations. we want to make sure they are fully integrated. a third is leadership development. problem whereart you have -- make sure you have the right skills and right grades. to have a training issue make sure you are training on the right skills. argue leadership is the most critical of all four components. we want to up our game on leadership across the board. we want to up the game in our leadership development.

especially in tactical units at the brigade and below. when the rubber meets the road -- thatnment operations is also the area in which relatively speaking there is less experience. in equipping the standards of training, in both of those areas of readiness the army has directed we would have the same standards. it is critical all of our and the and divisions active component units and the reserve component units are all being evaluated and looked at

to the exact same standard, and there is no difference. that is my job. mike tucker performs an executive agent role in that. not only trainer but fellow data. we want to make sure we have similar -- it will never exactly be the same because every unit is designed a little differently. we want to have close to the mainstandards of equipped that we have through the active and reserve component. we will be fully integrated in the operations and want to be make sure we are completely inoperable within our own forces. are the main elements of the army total force policy.

the last thing is that the army, -- any army, all armies have fundamentally two functions. army's function is either to fight in combat or prepare to fight in combat. if they are not actually engaged in the act of fighting, then they are preparing to fight. -- because other ranges of military operations, , areas an earthquake typically lesser included cases, we have capabilities on both scale and skill within the military to deal with it wide for i.t. of operations. -- wide a variety of operations.

to successfully execute ground combat for the united states military, it requires the entire nation. that nation is represented not only in the active component. it requires the total commitment of the national guard. it is a nation that goes to war. it is not any of those individuals or organizations that win awards. they went into applied via national fax. our contribution to that was to bring it together at the unit level.

we will go to jeff first and mike. them i want to thank you for being here today. for more than 13 consecutive years, the army reserve has brought the unique skills and capabilities to the private contingencies and theaters. those twoing operations that the need for the total force policy, which equip, ithe policy to active reserve component --

the need to manage the component is part of the operational force and ensure the reserve capabilities are an operable with the active component have become very clear. if we return recordable and sustainable capabilities we ensure that the army not only remains an operational force or component, but the total force policy remains as part of the army strategy and planning for the needs of the nation going forward, to include future decisions on forks -- on force mix and total army training integration. thearmy reserve supports army total force policy and the -- through our readiness model. they seek to shape the global environments to prevent conflict.

reserve, the only component of the army that is still a single command, it is integrated into -- it maximizes our unit readiness through total force and integration. general miller will talk about that. it becomes necessary for the army to engage the enemy. leadersto provide those and units to meet the army's needs. another way we generate --diness outside of the plan the readiness model is to recognize the army reserve is the most closely linked service component.

we are the most closely linked industry in my opinion. almost all of your army reserve our neighbors. wet of the technical skills need day in and day out predominantly rest in service to the total army and force. do they maintain their skills and the technical community? they do it in the private sector. full spectrum engineering, civil affairs, whatever requires those hard-core technical skills. most of that capability resides in the army reserve. to recognize how do we leverage that relationship with the private sector. we do this through the plan prepared provide them through private public partnership initiative, where the army reserve built upon our fortune 100s from companies down to small companies.

they use their resources to help us train and generate better individuals, soldiers, and leaders in terms of readiness. petri i brings together the best of civilian and military communities. provides -- eserve business women and men needing to succeed in the marketplace. to work inose skills exhibiting real world missions that only advance the goals of our partner organizations but support the strategic operational roles and responsibilities of our army in support of combatant commands pin him help prevent and shape events around the world and they support those combatant commanders when a decision is made.

the collaboration with water the issuep addresses of access to water. leeuding those strategic important to the united states. other projects we have ongoing include issues like medical capability and the independent state of some oh up. civil affairs and humanitarian positions throughout all the countries of africa, providing long-term training opportunities of mission requirements and partnership with requirements in the state department. teamse biomedical repair that will expand the skills and experience of the army reserve soldier. they couple those with the military skills.

the plan together generates that readiness, so whether it is contingent or combat operations the army reserve can support the total force. when we think about being a soldier we have to remember that soldier for life is not about the regular army. it is about the national guard and the army reserve. we want you to stay a soldier for life. the army reserve and army national guard have to downsize it. it is important to recognize that we want to capture that ac to rc. withve great men and women tremendous combat experience. we need to recognize we have a place for them in our reserve components or they can continue to be a soldier for life.

i look forward to answering your questions and having a great discussion on the importance of total force. >> do you want to go next? , thank you. it is an honor to be included in today's panel. and especially to be able to share with you all the experience thus far in implementing our total force policy. first i would like to emphasize that developing the policy has been an open and collaborative process. other commands of made a real effort to engage with the generals to get state input. timeal alan spent a lot of for atf pg implementation.

one of his most tangible early unithas been the partnering between the components. have beenons partnered with active component force and our brigades, starting with the brigade combat teams -- we are extending that into our functional and multifunctional brigades. of that program was to ensure that all of our units were able to plan partner and providents development leader opportunities. our army national guard divisions aligned with active component cores do so with the duration of the cycle so that the divisions can alternate between homeland defense, such as our command and control, biological, radiological, otherwise known as -- set.n expeditionary

type, location, and existing relationships. functionaling of our and multifunctional unit is almost complete and we are starting to see some of those partnerships. one hundred first airborne division conducted a screaming partnered with the 101st brigade. a 10 is that included indiana, wisconsin, iowa, arkansas, ohio, and tennessee. the mountain division and the 42nd infantry division conducted a conference this past conference under each divisions command. -- to prepare a brigade under each divisions command.

they were paired with the first and second bct's. each partnership decayed team -- brigade team met to discuss the potential for collaborative opportunities. funding would enable more events. we all know funding is scarce, so it is encouraging to see what is being done. the final point i will make about implementation is how encouraging it has been to see all age exercises will be

multi-component is already starting to pay great dividends as we fight. 42 armyt fiscal year, national guard units supported 12 active component rotations for brigade combat teams. 14, we had seven guard rotations that integrated an active component battalion was an army national guard brigade. looking ahead to fy 15, approximately 80 army guard units, around 6000 soldiers, are supporting 13 active component rotations. we think that is a very good start. the army guard is glad to be part of the effort. we may want to talk next about the next logical step, perhaps in the employment of those forces. there is significant opportunity for partnering and mission sharing in our current operational environment. the army national guard stands ready.

thank you again for allowing me to take part in the panel. >> thank you, sir. in 1993, the conference passed the authorization act that required the secretary of the army to stand up and active component force with the intent of reducing the time it takes for post-mobilization. that is a title 11 force. that is the force the first army is today. with the last 12 years, first army has not had much time to spend in the business of pre-mobilization, mobilizing up to 90,000 here sustained we had little time only to push out units to get them ready for combat and post-mobilization. the intent was to shape pre-mobilization to us in the time it takes for post-mobilization. told first army last november to shift our focus from a primary effort in post-mobilization to begin efforts in pre-mobilization, which is more akin to the ndaa

of 1993, we did a total analysis at army headquarters. we determined our mission had tdaged and therefore our was no longer able to support the mission we had in pre-mobilization. forcescally, 74% of the in the total army resided in the reserve component. it little existed in first army. so we had to change first army. that is one of the major efforts in what is called operation bold shift. two lines of effort. a bold shift to pre-mobilization support and then get our tda correct so we can be dressed for the dance, so to speak, so we have observer, coach, and trainer population to predominant in

the reserve component. what first army is doing is reducing ourselves from 16 brigades were no two were alike down to nine. those nine will be organized into six combined arms training brigades and three multifunctional training brigades, all teamed with adequate arms groups much like at a training center. we are reducing our number of battalions from 102 to 49. smaller,rs are going the size of the organizations are becoming larger and more versatile. in the business of executing total force policy, that is where we are going bold shift to create these integrated training events. there are over 30 a year the army conducts.

these training events come in the form of combat training centers, rotations, war fighter rotations, brigade and division. there are five to six a year. there with the army reserves and with the army reserves. all those training events, first army is charged to ensure those are integrated. the army is organized, trained, and equipped to fight as a total force. we never go to war as one component. we go to war as a multicomponent force always. the secretary's intent with the 2012 hasce policy in been talked about quite a bit. one is that if we don't have this policy go into effect and don't continue to integrate our training together, we will go back to our stovepipes. we can't allow that. we have to train as we go to combat. we go to combat as a multicomponent force.

the way we organize is through two venues in the army each year. it happens after times a year. the first is training support civilization working group that first army hosts. we put up the trip lists for all these collected training events, about 30 a year. we are in the room with operators and planners in the army guard, reserve him and forces command. we begin to plug units into these exercises to ensure we have a total integrated exercise. call themes what we synchronization resource council which is hosted by forces command which follows two months later. we do that four times a year so these exercises stay synchronized and get integrated. that is the how of how we integrate total force policy. of course, we need a tda structure and first army that is

manned so it has the type of skill sets we need. we are standing up 12 brigade into near battalions and 15 brigade engineer battalions in first army that don't exist now. we are doing the entire transition in 18 months. it will be completed by the end of 15, correction, and of 16. and it is neutral. we have had to shuffle the deck chairs on uss first army to create a solution that will match the mission sets given to us in november, which has been hard government work. force manager, you are our friend because we have been spending a lot of time with you lately. the execution order will be published tomorrow. it has been a long road but we are excited about operation bold shift in our ability to help execute the total force policy. thanks. >> great. paul? to be here with

all of you representing the acting assistant secretary of andnse for reserve affairs our big boss, if you will, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, the honorable jessica wright. is was difficult to be the last person that speaks for two reasons -- it is always difficult to be the last person that speaks for two reasons. it is easy to remember what i said so i might get a lot of questions afterwards. when you hear what everyone else has said, you may hear something -- i have been trying to feverishly edit my remarks so i don't repeat what my fellow panelists have said. let me break into my comments. i want to give you a brief description of what osd reserve affairs does. then i'm going to give you examples of what we do to support total force integration.

this is a force, sponsored panel -- force com sponsored panel. what i will give it will be focused on training, integration, and the all-important readiness mission. osd reservesion of affairs is to develop policy and legislative initiatives that affect all the reserve components in the areas of manpower's and personnel -- manpower and personnel, readiness, training, and mobilization, and material and facilities. in many cases, these initiatives set the conditions that will enable routine use of the reserve component as part of the operational force. caviate, we cover all of the reserve components, not just the army.

two recent examples i want to give you of policy initiatives related to training the dress the burden for active and reserve component presented by common military training, which you may know by its old title, ancillary and military training. separate and related to this initiative, a policy that addresses the use of electronic-based distributed of the drillide weekend to a copper some aspects of individual training as well as professional education. thesey ask, what do individual training enhancement initiatives due to affect the collective training mandates of the total force implementation guidance general milley mentioned earlier? they do that because their goal is to enable reserve component unit commanders to achieve a more productive weekend drill and be able to devote more we

can training time to collective training on tasks. this increases unit readiness within the budgeted 24 drill fostering a greater focus on collective training goals at annual training. it goes without saying it is critical in an increasingly constrained budgetary environment to drive mission operations readiness, efficiencies, and cost-effectiveness from 39 statutory training days available to the reserve component. being a ready and trained forces a basic criteria for the army to consider the plan, and program for use of its army national guard and army reserve formations as part of the operational force. i hope you would agree reserve affairs is doing its part to ensure an optimally ready total force with these policy initiatives. not only for the army but for all services.

let me conclude my remarks with a strong endorsement of first army's bold shift initiative. the advantages of first army's partnering and engagement with the army national guard and the army reserve in pre-mobilization assessment, training, plan development, and post-mobilization training in preparing units identified for mobilization for combat over the past 12 plus years in afghanistan and iraq are well documented and brought the level of total force integration to unprecedented heights. bold shift maintains this critical first army role but expands it in two very important ways. first army training support shifts to include pre-mobilization as general tucker mentioned. not of all units above battalion and higher formations. not just those deploying. you could look at bold shift as a continuation of the patch

chart concept we are familiar with for scheduling deployment inour formations in support iraq and afghanistan. but now the training and support encompasses the entire readiness generation cycle. instead of deployment to theater, the deployment is a orminating training event home station equipment event. first army plays a critical role in supporting all training by bringing to bear all assets of force com as the training and for the army to ensure optimal training in an efficient and cost-effective manner and to standard. this encompasses not only training support personnel, facilities, equipment, but also bringing together combat support and service support formations as mentioned earlier from all components to train as you fight. the partnering initiative

institutionalizes year-round training and direction of army active and reserve component combat formations adding another layer of depth to integration. all of this results in an optimally trained and ready total force with important second and third order effects. partnering and integration and mutual support occurs throughout the training and readiness generation process. a more ready force whose progressive unit collective training and staff mission battle command readiness is it knowledged and recognized while readiness is generated during the pre-mobilization training. thus decision-makers are more likely to consider the army guard and reserve unit formations as a viable sourcing solution to meet mission requirements for combat and commanders in peacetime. and in turn plan a program for

their routine use as part of the operational force via bravo authorities. this holds equally and especially true for the use of army reserve components as part of the operational force to provide responsive surge capacity to the active component, for emergency contingencies, disaster response, and humanitarian assistance operations, and to benefit the reduced post-mobilization training requirements that bold shift yields will make the reserve component more responsible under these contingency scenarios. that the conviction 2014 bold shift goes much farther than the bold shift initiative and should earlier -- mentioned earlier from 1994. it is the right thing to do for training readiness and total force integration now and into the distant feature. -- distant future. thank you. >> thank you, paul.

we can open it up to questions. onave asked them to call folks in the audience. come to the microphone if you could because this is being broadcast. yournt to make sure question is important and captured for the audience on the internet and on t.v. questions from anyone about anything? we can talk about everything from the red sox to the new york national guard to the second airborne division. >> please state your name and organization. >> lieutenant, army reserve. my day job is totally separate. i'm the cochair of the guard reserve committee of the military coalition, a powerful lobby on the hill that represents members, veterans, and families. we are tracking big issues like the commission and also looking at the army structure. my question is a little different about the use of the

reserve components in coordination with the guard units to respond to domestic emergencies. what is the real timeline for when that policy is going to come together to be able to activate reserve components with all the capabilities we have? >> what is the timeline? paul. yield to jeff an dd >> that is a good question. we have the national reserve act of 2012. forrovided the authority federal reserve, not just army reserve, but the federal reserve to help support the homeland because secretary stockton who came from california stanford

specifically to be an appointed undersecretary for homeland got tired ind california of seeing complex catastrophes or challenges happen in california. and the federal reserve force not being able to utilize to help the guard address those issues. the national defense act of 2012 provided that authority. those authorities were utilized in superstorm sandy. the army reserve, as a command and component, had the authority. i have delegated that authority down to the command team level, company level, for immediate authority to save life and limb. as we speak, anything happens anywhere in the homeland, a company commander in the army reserve has the authority given to him by me under the immediate authority for up to 72 hours to launch personnel and equipment to save life and limb. beyond, we need a different authority. sandy,ack to superstorm

the general requested forces, the army reserve responded within 24 hours and had forces moving to the east coast. i provided watering units and aviation assets to help national guard, and it worked just fine. fema, emergency preparedness liaison officers. 100% of the uploads are provided by the army reserves embedded in the fema region. over 50% of all the dod uploads are provided by the army reserves. the army reserve is utilized routinely to help defend the homeland in terms of catastrophes and to support our guard brothers and sisters. but all happens in the national defense act of 2012. >> can you talk about that from the national guard angle? generalion to what the mentioned about authorities being in place, a unique aspect

of the guard is our ability to operate under state active duty underneath the funding and control of governors. immediate response capability exists. we see that time and time again across the 54. the additional authority general talley mentioned. i might also add in terms of command-and-control construct, as we envision and have in the past utilized title x and title 32 forces as the dual status commander. whereby in consultation with the and the department of defense, a dual status commander will be the usual and customary method of employment of those forces together underneath one commander with authority to issue orders to both chains of responding forces. state active duty authority mentioned by general talley in 2012 under the usual and customary command and control of a dual status commander windows

title 1032 forces are operational -- windows title -- 32n those title 10 and forces are operational. >> part of the question was also in terms of response times, if i heard that correctly. also wetalley mentioned have something called the stafford act which allows an immediate response of not only the federal reserve but all reserve organizations to respond to save life,kly limb, property, and so forth. that is only for a limited time. at some point, they would have to be put on orders. we have policies for accessing the reserve component. they are based on a deliberate mobilization timeline with notice of sourcing, mobilization alerts, and so forth. these are policies, not laws.

if if needed, they can be mobilized quickly for emergent contingencies and a miniature in assistance overseas and in congress. we would be looking to rely on volunteers because getting them .n board is easier involuntary mobilizations are also possible. this is where the alpha authority general talley mentioned would come into play. >> go ahead. >> example of what paul said, not just out for but bravo. was aat long ago there weather event that significantly impacted the philippines. we get a call from pacific that we need the logistic vessels in the water that i have in

honolulu. i have about 5000 troops positioned. a to start on the ground to support brooks. for cg.e authority they left the same day. that is how fast we can respond. >> we have a question on the left. >> i am with the national guard association. one of the concerns we have is the future of funding for training. fy 16stion is will your budget request include funding for the division and in the partnering initiative you mentioned? a couple of comments. the partnering piece is not in the budget as i understand it.

i will review that in a little over six weeks, so i will go back and specifically see that. it is my understanding the active component partnership with the reserve component is not specifically funded. however, because they are geographically located near each other, and we have done this in decades gone by as well, it should not be difficult nor expensive to partner on a variety of expertise. if i am running a professional development class and i have to be located in state x and also guardte x is a national division or brigade and they happen to be 15 miles away from me, i should extend an invitation to that national guard brigade to say i am having

officer or noncommissioned officer opd. the location is such and such and the topic is such and such. any or all of your people are welcome to attend. it will not be everybody. but those who schedule permits can make it. were i am running -- ore i am running an fta. i have the ammunition, time, and space to run some of your squads or individuals to augment the live fires that will occur throughout the next six weeks. i call it my local national guard guy and say this is an opportunity if you want to take advantage of it. we try to do it ahead of time. is there specific money to do that? no. but there does not need to be a lot of money associated with something like that. that is just a couple of examples of how it can be enhanced low-cost. i will flip it over to judd

lyons if he wants to discuss any other issues with the funding specifically related to training of the guard. you may want to talk reserve as well. >> both are great. >> we will go to judd and then jeff. >> as we look ahead, i think the question was about 16. 1620 pom is submitted. fy 15 is a tough year for the army national guard in terms of allowance and onm. it is about $1 billion less than in 14. as we look to 16, we hope to see that increase throughout the cycle. we are getting ready to get into 1721. we want to talk about those issues. as general milley said, i think the root of the question is when you go beyond the statutory

annual training period of 15 days. rotation, a typical there are extra days in the rotation and for travel. there are costs associated with that. we have to capture those in our do war fighter exercises so we can allow a division commander and staff to execute training in conjunction with war fighter exercises and maximize opportunities. where that increases above and beyond the statutory annual part of theiod is issue and how we capture that process so we can maximize each and every one of those engagements. is a function of articulating of the environment and capturing it in the process. >> having said that, we have

scheduled right now for the national guard specifically two rotations this year, two division war fighter exercises, and six xctc exercises. that is 21 that will involve brigade or above formation. since january, our combat training center rotations, the echelons above brigade logistics are being provided by cssb's. over half of the rotations are guard and reserve. that is a entirely -- huge formation and a game changer in terms of getting us off of logistic support to the rotational unit. now they are flexing their muscles in an effort that is so realistic it is almost better than combat.

it is a huge learning curve for us. a tremendous exercise. >> the short answer is in the case of the army reserve, it has training dollars above the 39 training days a year divided by two. do we have plus up training money for the entire army reserve in 2015? the answer is no. the reason is the cousin of sequestration. the budget control act has taken effect. it will affect our ability to generate revenues. do not confuse that with us not being able to meet readiness challenges. the readiness model generates readiness regardless of component. not every unit needs to be ready at the same time at the same level. we have to generate the right level of readiness at the right time to meet response. the way we do that in the

reserve, and it is painful, decided to take money dedicated for other units and push that forward to make sure i am focused on getting the unit out the door available for a combat mission. we make it happen and get it done. it would be easier if we did not have sequestration. >> we have a question on the left side of the room. >> i'm with the massachusetts army national guard. >> are you a red sox fan? >> no, yankees, sir. [laughter] >> shut his microphone off. >> you have got to be kidding me, right? [laughter] >> the door is right back there, ranger. [laughter] >> my question relates to leader development. you mentioned that is one of the most important components. >> i did not hear the question. [laughter] i completely shut you out.

leader development? no leader development for you. [laughter] >> in line with the leader we looking atre the military education that occurs through the war college and academy? currently having gone through this, i know active officers have resident courses absent orders. .

as we continue to partner with [indiscernible] on what is the content -- the ifation of those courses -- i'm currents, right now, it is coupled by a., two-week residence status coupled by another 80 our phase and another two week resident phase. the net effect there is to complete that critical training in their professional development.

you are taking a captain out for and trying to provide leadership for their unit. for the armye national guard that we continue to remain engaged. hisdo we best organize professional military education forces to recognize the customer base. >> as chief of the army reserve, a had this discussion with general cohen and general perkins. i have had a discussion with the chief. is -- two-and-a-half years ago i'm having a discussion with the general and he asks me, jeff, why did multi- units fail?

i said one is the culture of our army. towas just too hard integrate. we have addressed a lot of those on integrated processes. think about executive education. the best way to learn and change the culture of a large organization like the army is education. you need to have a one-school system with a faculty or active guard reserve. that is the only way. my opinion to the chief is we mondays and winds tuesdays in operational commands, but the better place to put the energy is on -- and have the same active guard and reserve, whatever it is. you go to the one school, there's only one school called the army and everyone gets cross

pollinated. tradoc is looking at that really hard. >> i will talk to you outside afterwards. >> we have a question on the right side. just kidding. i like the yankees. they're my second favorite team. >> congratulations. i was thinking about the yankees, sorry. giants. sorry. >> that's two in a row. >> yes, sir. the 47thommander of combat support hospital. there are nine active duty the playable -- deployable schools. there are 13 on the reserve side

. until mid to thousands, it was standard for the hospital to do a rotation once every other year. the means of specifically ensuring the combat support hospital could do its protect and defend metal in conjunction with the and addressing civilians of the battlefield, etc.. we relied on those rotations to ensure that all of the combat support hospitals were on the active and reserve side and had standardized means of being certified essentially to do their jobs. those rotations went away. having now been in command at the 47th for six months, i can ensure you on the active-duty side the protect and defend medal has been largely ignored due to combat support hospitals falling in on thick swathes.

i personally deployed with a cash to haiti in 1995 where we executed our own force protection. likewise in bosnia. request asave a opposed to a question, and that is that the jrtc rotation or at a minimum some kind of ctc rotation be established as a standard for combat support hospitals. we have been trying to get an ntc rotation. unfortunately, we need to be requested. lots of equipment that needs to be moved. i wonder if at a minimum you would take this issue back. >> i noted it down. let me take a look at it.

how bad do you want this rotation? >> go red sox. >> i will take it on. that, ofke a look at course. i will let jeff talk to you a little bit about the hospitals and reserves. it hast answer is nothing to do with medical service corps combat hospitals. he has an issue of how do we get our neighbors into the box. this is been a problem historically for a long time. question of not having enough bandwidth to get all of our neighbors into the box at ac/dc rotation. to do that we would have to expand and increase the number of ctc's.

sequestration is going to hurt the total readiness of the army. reserve and first army general miller mentioned that -- these are not large enabling exercises. they are often connected to ctc rotations. in a war exercise and first army is supporting that, and you may be in the dirt in california but participating with a live virtual constructive program where you are part of the ctc even though you are not in the physical location of the ctc box. that is what we're doing now to give you that better experience. we are trying to get you into the box itself as a ctc.

that won't happen likely for most of our neighbors regardless of the regiment until we see relief from sequestration. warren.e turn to --you could help address specifically works and trains with hospitals. it doesn't matter if you're active guard or reserve. if you are a cache, we have an exercise for you. battlefieldte the from the boundary all the way back to the communications. we have a number of exercises where we can get you to the oc's, i and with the have my own medical training task force specifically designed to have in combination with the and the reserves to help

evaluate the caches and give you all the opportunities you want to protect your cache. is opportunities out there. that is what total force policy is all about, looking across the stovepipes and looking for components and leveraging the capabilities. >> i need to apologize. i have been through three first army cg's. in my opinion, the best, mike tucker. >> we had two caches deployed simultaneously. battalion against them. they gave them a company of engineers to dig in this cash. that.l sustain

>> we have enough time for ten 20 minute questions. >> my name is derek smith. thank you, general miller, and everybody on the panel today for your discussion. for aad he jumped up here minute. i want to piggyback what he said >. of medical readiness >> part of what my company offers, i was wondering if you could expand how that fits into the force policy you guys have been discussing today. >> medical readiness of the individual soldier? for thehe soldiers, weekend events, for the battalion.

>> judd, do you want to take that on? >> i can give you an army perspective on that. is 86%y national guard medically ready today, highest in our history. the highest of all three components. >> yakneankees fan. [laughter] if i understood your question, what is the linkage between that and total force policy, the things you have been talking about trade there is a direct linkage between the medical status of our men and women that serve an operational employment and engagement. if you don't have one, is difficult to have the other.

we have gotten after this issue over 13 years to that historic high that i just talked about. sitting here today, if general alley needed to reach out to national guard unit, he could have assurance that the soldiers in the unit are medically ready to deploy. that is operational readiness, part of being in operational reserve. it is critically important in my opinion that we continue to sustain the medical readiness in the army national guard. the cost to rebuild that willness when it is needed be so much more. i think the investment to sustain it is worth in terms of operational employment in the army national guard. medical readiness is the highest it has ever been. it is going to go down.

i have got to cut the support for individual medical readiness , support to individual soldiers, which means i will rely more than ever on general tucker's first army. cross level more because i can't take that individual soldier if they're not medically ready or if it is a named operation. i will rely on general tucker to help me get to that level of medical readiness. it won't be as responsive. we touch these type of subjects very carefully. this is a chain of command responsibility. first army is not the unit chain of command. we conduct unit assessments. we would get involved with begin areadiness as we notice of mobilization in which we begin to do what we call joint assessment with an organization as they prepare for

mobilization. the unit commanders at these ja's, we do two of those a year. 38,000 this year. we will do 21.5 next year, about 15 the following year. some things may change. point is that we get after individual medical readiness and what is called a joint assessment as the unit is and we track that with the unit commander, and through the mobilization. on as fare as thep individual medical readiness is concerned. one,on that, prior to a -- as far as the individual medical readiness is concerned, the

legend reserve component member would then be eligible for tri-care. prior to that at any time during their membership, the reserve component can enroll in tri-care reserve select and for $50 a month, you can also adjust your medical readiness that way. that alsomething needs to be considered when we are talking about individual medical readiness, the ability of -- availability of tri-care reserves. >> doctor. >> wicked red sox fan. [indiscernible] my question has to do with medical readiness functionally of the u.s. themselves. i too was a combat sports hospital commander. the inner workings that i saw work well were in the medical

units are the boots hit the ground, as far as surgeons doing trauma surgery, assistance learning how to assist. number ofwe had a initiatives with kings county, new york, with miami-dade trauma center. i personally served as the ambassador for the united states army reserves. very well acquainted with a lot of the teaching institutions who have expressed interest in having a reserve component physician and fst members drilled in her trauma centers. it seems to have fallen into disarray. is there going to be first army guidance on this type of a training, not just force

protection but doing the surgery ? >> is there a possibility for potential now for reserve component positions to train alongside their active component counterparts and trauma centers, etc. -- i will let jeff take that on. i'm not familiar with it as i probably should be. >> you are new, sir. >> oscar, short answer is yes. aaron is the director of the partnership initiative. we have selected army reserve throughat had developed relationships with public hospitals, private hospitals. they do the exchange and the trading by coordinating battles and rotating various folks where they train on the hospital, the public-private hospital, and also in units.

>> boston has a plethora of trauma centers who are always looking for help. >> you are talking about individual training. >> or sending the fst's as an example. in new england are in the deployment roster. it could benefit everybody if they could drill as a functional entity rather than wait until we cross -- >> we are doing that through the p3i initiative. is myntleman to your left 357. we can take those units and we can look at how can we plug into existence of capabilities in the boston area as a prep for their mission. is another question in the

center. does [indiscernible] anticipate there will be a commission on the army structure is -- >> [indiscernible] >> [indiscernible] >> i have no idea. i do not know if congress will have a commission. maybe there are others out there again. do you know if congressman do a commission on the structure of the army? i have heard talk of it. i can't speak for congress. paul, any guys in there from osd, have you seen anything? >> there's a bill in the house and senate and whether the bill becomes law, which would

establish an army commission, it's up to the elected leadership. i don't know whether those bills will become law or not. >> [inaudible] >> i don't know if that is going to happen or not. people talk about it, but i don't know. >> we have another question from the right side. yes, sir? >> british army exchange officer. 2015,tly projecting for although the proportions of the active component, the national guard component and the army reserve component almost identical, around 46, 34, and 20.

[indiscernible] if any of them have an opinion as to whether there is a tipping point in their own respect to component below which they would tend to disagree. there is no one up here that if nostradamus. we can't predict -- is nostradamus. we can't predict whether sequestration will happen or not. for the army has done total army is established the optionsy depending on conditions that occur. we know if sequestration continues, the numbers are not going to be good. it won't just be a numbers game. it will be a lot of other things, readiness and so forth. all of that collectively will suffer. is it a tipping point?

i don't know. i hear that term all the time. got a lot of time for concepts like that, but i don't know. the whole point of the books tipping point is you cannot predict the tipping point ahead of time. you can look at it from a history perspective and realize you just went through a tipping point. you can't figure it out. that is part of the book. i can't predict if that would be a tipping point. in my estimate of the situation, as senior leader, the sequestration would be ungood for the united states military and the united states army in specific. that is all components of the united states army. with respect to the options going forward, the numbers going forward, there is a number x, then there is a number y, then there is a number z, then there

are numbers after that. would almost say at this point you're almost rolling the dice as to which one of those numbers will become the real number. there's a lot of room between those numbers that people are talking about. we are also working the national guard and reserve component thesis as well. we are figuring the base case is 490, then there's a possibility of going to 450 active components. if sequestration continues, you can see it go lower than that. the proportions between guard component --ctive it's a great question.

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

take a swing at that one as well. general talley first. >> they are in the avoid contact mode. >> i think the short answer is if we stick with the president's budget, the army reserve would go from 205 to 195. that is manageable risk. that is risk that we can accept and still meet mission requirements. stays the lawrol of the land, i will be trimming down to a strength of 185 over the next three, four, five years. that presents significant risk in terms of my ability. force, as ie total already said up front.

general milley properly said, we don't know. we are 90 days before we will have some clear visions as to what the congress and leadership will do on that issue. t's about the readiness of what you've got. when i have people talk to me about the sky is falling, you're going to reduce your strength in the army reserve if sequestration stays in place, that is not the real issue. it is what have i got an is a ready to go do something to help our army and the nation. you can get my strength at 205, which is what it is right now. 205 until 2015. then it will drop to 202. ready, 205 is not strength becomes a moot discussion. you cannot separate the end

strength from the readiness and readiness to do what. >> the key thing is what jeff just mentioned, ready to do what. readiness for what? isking specific numbers almost an exercise in futility unless you related to some strategic purpose for which the united states is trying to achieve. those numbers might be perfectly fine for the low end of the range of military operations. other start looking at potential things the united states could be involved in, you have to start asking yourself some serious questions. i don't know if you have ever read a book called "this kind of war, a lesson in unpreparednes." it is written about the korean war, 1950. it talks about the 21st infantry. there was a guy named lieutenant was in theth who

army of occupation in japan at the end of the war. he was a member of the 24th infantry division. he was a battalion commander. we all know the story, north korea attacks the border of south korea with about 80,000 north korean soldiers who are extremely committed to their communist cause. they come across -- the south korean military was rudimentary light infantry forces. a significant amount of combat power to resist the north korean attack. the united states on very short notice -- president truman decides within days to commit u.s. forces under the u.n. mende to this peninsula south korea. he crosses the strait there and

gets into the south korean peninsula and the south korean -- or the 24th division starts working its way up the road. the 21st infantry regiment is the lead unit of the 24th division and they start setting in this u-shape defensive perimeter to form an engagement area to stop the north koreans. the tenant colonel smith has his op's looking out. they start shooting rounds at them. round start pinging off. the 21st entry, colonel smith gets overrun. the 24th division got hammered pretty hard. the division commander ends up being a premise or -- prisoner of war. macarthur does his left hook and one thing leads to another and the war settles out after about andmonths into hill battles

stalemates that ends three years later after 38,000 americans killed. there are a lot of kills. killed weree 38,000 killed in that war of movement at the beginning of the war. united states army in 1945 was unparalleled in the world. military wasates unparalleled. , the navy, air force, marines.. in 1945 it was unparalleled in power. you could say that the soviet military was pretty significant, but the united states military was something to behold in the fall of 1945 after the signing of the missouri. later, only five years, that military of 10

million strong, 300 aircraft carriers, 50,000 b-24's, 89, divisions -- that military is fiveshort years -- in short years went from the most powerful organization to an hatcher feed organization that was in the army of occupation in hied organization that was in the army of occupation in japan. commanders and sets of captains were captains instead of majors, where they weren't doing regular pt, where they were doing ancillary guard and they weren't aggressively training, where mortar ammunition wasn't up to date and they weren't firing mortars and tank weapons and so forth. the readiness level you just aboutjohn talley talk

dropped precipitously. the blame of all of that is equally shared at the national level, civilian leadership and military leadership. we had policy failures and so on and so forth. also at the tactical level. so, it was all shared. what did it end up being? what is the cost of all this? my message is, warning, will robinson. it doesn't take long to ribbon army apart. -- rip an army apart. when you reduce the readiness of your force, the size and or the readiness, you pay the butcher's bill. you pay it in the blood of american soldiers and sailors and airen anmen and marines. the cost is paid in dead bodies, and they are our dead bodies. it is paid in time, where it

takes a long time to recover. you might have to take months to retrain and regenerate a force that can counterattack. we have to be careful as we go forward. we have to be very cut -- very careful. the secretaries of defense and all the service, that isabel they are ringing right now. if people -- that is the bell they are ringing right now. if people are listening, they are saying, be careful. having a defense budget, having a department of defense is an expensive proposition. if you want to be a global power, you have to pay for it. that is moreg expensive than fighting and winning a war is fighting and losing a war. that you don't want to do. you don't want to be fighting a losing a war.

be exact size is going to open to lots of takes over the next amount of months and maybe a year or two. readiness is fundamental. we have to maintain the readiness of a level to achieve the national security objectives at the united states, whatever those happen to be. it is a tough situation we are going into. there was a saying when i was a captain, there was a saying, no more task force smiths. that was drilled into our head by then chief of staff of the united states army solomon, who now happens to be ausa. readingk was required for all of us in the basic and advanced courses back in the day. i encourage you to read it. it's all about unpreparedness. it's a good warning today as it was then. judd, did you have a comment on

the money piece for the guard? >> not on the money. these numbers have been around for a while. fy 15, the army national guard will come down and strengthen. 2017 under the current budget submission, 335,000. should budget control remain the 19 of the land, which is, in . characterizations of risk. csa has characterized for all three components there, particularly at the bca level. this is about puts and takes over the next period, and it is

an uncertain world. >> the chief speaks for himself, but probably -- and his testimony if i recall, he has characterized risk. i think he stated and the secretary stated as well that the national security objectives are aligned in the current would bestrategy placed at risk. difficult choices would have to be made by senior civilian leadership as it -- as to what you are going to do and what you are not going to do if sequestration did the news. thank you for that question. yes, ma'am. we havelle the sousa, about 200 employees. when sequestration hit last year, what i did was before i could give my employees their paycheck i made each one of the write a letter to local senators

and congressmen asking them to stop sequestration does it was close to our hearts. our employees could get laid off. what else can we do a small businesses to talk to sequestration? >> i don't want to give a copout. we are members of the executive branch. i can't give advice as to what political action to take or whom to lobby to do what should -- to do what. all of us are not in the business of saying stop or start sequestration. we are saying if sequestration continues, the following other things happen in terms of risk or readiness. i don't know if you remember the movie "dragnet." there was a guy named joe friday.

we should not render opinions, so to speak. it would be inappropriate for any of us here to say we think you should do the following actions, a, b, and c to generate political momentum in congress to start or stop political action. that is not our charter. i do appreciate the comments and the question. the second question -- thank you for your service. .> i tried to dodge that >> you do look very serious, but you have a great sense of humor. >> thanks. it takes more muscles to frown than it takes to smile. >> of course. and small business, there is a lot of technical manuals for the soldier in theater or

locally. he had been trying to present new technologies or ipads or google glasses or anything that makes it easier for the soldier to repair either the tanks or to do other services. we seem to still be living in the old ages where they want to see line art drawings. i want to know what you thought. i looked into this within the last few weeks. tm's,the idea of paper for example, manuals -- >> not this young man, though. >> no. he's moving up. the requirements on any piece of stillry equipment conducts before, during, and after operator checks. if i'm jiving if vehicle or operating a generator -- driving

a vehicle or operating a generator. we no longer print those manuals as an example. force,see throughout the and combat training centers etc. , maintenance has degraded as a result of not having the manual that gives you the technical checklist to go down and conduct your before, during, and after operator checks. the idea that we have to get electronic devices -- some soldiers are out there with their iphone and downloading stuff. that's not right. they shouldn't have to be doing that. we are taking a look at some things in order to army soldiers or at least the leaders with the capabilities to do exactly what the brigadiers are doing down here in order to have electronic and electronic

checklists out there for something as simple as technical manuals and something as simple as doing operator checks. we are also looking at printing -- instant printing the entire manual, maybe we just print the checklist. there are a couple of workarounds as we transition from industrial age paper-based military to a much more complete information-based, paperless oteri -- military. we are somewhere in between. the effect is real. you have got to have a guide or checklist to go by when you are doing these things. working on it. mike i don't know if you have any comments on that,. is a huge problem for the total force. areyoung soldiers today

challenged because not only do they need a checklist, they need thatture that points to linkage or whatever it is that needs to be adjusted. they probably have not spent a lot of time around mechanical things as other generations perhaps have. they need to have a picture that shows them what to check. in the armygers over the last 10 plus years, we have relied a lot on contract maintenance when we are deployed. have not been deployed necessarily on our war fighting equipment. now that they are back home and regenerate [indiscernible] and we prove that our combat training centers, we are challenged to maintain readiness. army is really, really challenged with how to maintain our equipment so are fully [indiscernible]

it's a real challenge. >> go red sox. >> go red sox. we have time for two or three more questions, then i will have to shut it down. do we have another question out there? over there to the right. man in civilian clothes who is exiting. you are just leaving. other questions? i was rooting for the red sox last year. >> excellent. >> what lessons do you have for our friends and allies -- >> you said you are a senator? >> i worked with senator dan coats. what lesson learned do you have for our friends and allies who are struggling with the same issues of the total force? we at forces command are

looking at the army force generation process. process, probably about seven or eight years ago, to answer very specific needs in order to be able to provide forces. it was the latest arrival date is what l.a.d. stands for. it was a very predictable model. it became that we knew where we were going, iraq or afghanistan, and we were put on a conveyor belt.

we as leaders of our units and we got trained, instead of training our units. treadmillt onto this and then we were deployed. we were very well-trained. we knew where we were going. we knew the timeline. we knew well ahead of time. when we returned, we had a big readiness clip where we would shop our readiness levels and and cycle back through that system, bring your readiness back up. that was kind of what we did for the last eight plus years or so. we are looking at how to do this differently as we go forward across all the components. is not an easy problem. one of the things we did at forces command is we look at

other armies. we asked ourselves how does the british army do force generation. how do the french do it? how does the israeli army to it? we have looked at all these different models. we looked at the u.s. army, the u.s. navy and air force, marines, and our special operation forces. we are still in the process of analyzing it. we have not come to a final, magic solution. thatare some basic things we know that we are going to have to have, some in this revised model or force generation process going forward. , theow that the product unit -- we know we are going to have to produce a product that is global. you hear the chief of staff of the army say, globally responsive.

you hear that throughout, regionally engaged. we know we have to have a force that is global. we have to have a force that is regionally capable of being regionally engaged. we know the force has to have andability to move quickly respond to different situations, has to be agile. has to be able to respond left, right. the future is unknown. there's a couple of other seminars going on about the army operating concept. one of the key fundamentals in the army operating concept is we have to plan for the unknown. when you have to plan for the unknown, have to look at the situation around the world and or bank on any given l.a.d.

any particular area of operation. it could be mountains, desert, jungle. we have to be very agile. we have to be very flexible. we have to be very adaptive in our capabilities, and then we have to tailor those capabilities at the last minute to whatever the situation is. the other thing we have to have is because we are the united states of america and we have global responsibilities, one of oe key tenants that general wants us to implement with this model is we are to not only partner with the reserve component and the national guard with the active components, but to facilitate the connective tissues of what we call the land power, global land power network. we see officers in this room here from other countries'

armies. these armies are generally speaking friendly to us trade we want to build relationships to thee armies so one of tenants of this model is that we are generating forces that are capable and have an understanding of other countries' armies, and that we are working very closely together in order to build that global manpower network. the short answer is we know if it is a no-kidding war on the or if it is something like responding to enable a crisis or a haiti earthquake, we are fully certain that we the army are going to go multicomponent, national guard reserve. we know full well we are going to go joint, army navy air force. we also know we are not going it alone in the stars & stripes are

not going to do stuff that doesn't make any sense. we are going to go with allied partners and/or friendly nations that want to participate in whatever it is we are doing. my last command was in afghanistan, the international security assistance force joint command. j.c. is a ground force in afghanistan. my deputy commander was german. my chief of staff was british. planners from all countries in the operations and intel and planning and so forth on that staff, and then we commanded and controlled alsocan units, but battalion -- italian, german, french, british, and so forth with all the units operating in afghanistan. 54 might not be the number for west africa or iraq.

it might be 10 nations or five nations or 154 nations. i don't know. we do know that working with other countries will be fundamental and the product we produce has got to be adaptable and flexible enough to work with other nation's militaries. they bring all kinds of expertise to a battlefield that we may or may not have. it's important that we work with [indiscernible] i have time for two more three-minute questions or three two-minute questions. >> thanks for being here. i am a retired army person. i met polyglot. -- i'm a polyglot. this will piggyback for a nicely on what you were just saying. go bruins. >> yes, sir. >> when i was in service, we never had enough linguists. we never had enough foreign area officers, to the point where i

got pulled out of d.i.a. one day to go to you, -- u-com for the partnership for peace. it's a marvelous program. my comment is, how are we doing on beefing up people with the foreknowledge and the foreign experience? i'm not going to go into embedded people. i don't think it has to reach that point, but people who can really work and understand our allies. several times i had to call my boss out of the meeting and say, sir, you really can't say that to these people because of their history. we responses were, dammit, are paying for it. i said, that is totally immaterial to their culture. unfortunately i don't have very lit shared -- [indiscernible]

in here. i concur the week, the united states in general as a society and as a military in particular do not leverage our cultural and specifically linguistic skills to the level that we should. as mandateduire amongst our officers [indiscernible] you will find in the european armies that they will speak multiple languages. you will find many of the asian countries will a least speaking lish as a second language. speakountries' officers at least two and in many cases multiple languages. tois important for us improve our abilities,

specifically amongst the officers. on the flipside, we are a nation of immigrants. nation of people from every country. within the boundaries of the united states, we have people who speak every language. within the army, we have that capability as well. one of the other things we have to do is we have to make sure we have an accurate inventory of who amongst us in uniform speaks a variety of languages as a native speaker. if they have to go to haiti, you can just query the database and get all the creole speakers and boom, tap them for immediate six-week deployment. inventory of the soldiers and across the entire military of who speaks four

languages -- it is remarkable how many people we have in uniform who are native speakers and only need one ounce of language training. we cover every single language on earth. the program itself has been strengthened recently not only through its training programs and professionalization, but we have also strengthened the program through its select promotion, which is not insignificant at you -- if you look at the general officer promotions. we have plenty of room to improve as a military and army specifically, in specifically language training. i think we are not too bad at cultural understanding. i think we've gotten a lot better at it over 13 years.

we have got some good institutional muscle memory built up. language training is different. that is very specific. it's a hard skill. it is not something that we as a society have really developed at the levels you will see on the societies. we certainly can do better on that. does anyone else want to comment on that? >> i do think we have an incredible capability and capacity in the army in linguist capability in our 300th military intelligence brigade. and what that offices the army is what we're already doing is total force policy in action those soldiers, it takes an incredible amount of time to develop and mature and bring that capacity to bear both in a title 10 status but also in a title 32 status on our normal

idt weekend or annual training periods with capability into the 300th to the ascc's. and i think that highlights just a great news story for the army about tapping into that capability and capacity both in a full-time status for title 10 requirement but also for a title 32 in support of a title 10 requirement. and i think that's a good news tory for our army. >> if i could be respectful of the time and the panelists time as well. i thank paul and you and jeff and mike. we have a great army. we have got a great total army. and the forcecome as you m