>> we are live at the heritage foundation this morning, awaiting remark from army secretary mark esper on posture and readiness for the army. congress recently passed a budget that has significantly increased the defense budget. this event is at the heritage foundation, just about to get underway here, live on c-span. >> we will have to remind everyone, the cell phones must be turned off today. for the next hour, there will be

emergency alert tests, and we have no control over the noise windows will make on the cell phone. thank you. good morning and welcome to the heritage foundation. we welcome those who join us on our heritage.org website on all of these occasions, and those today joining us on c-span network. those in-house, we would ask that courtesy, that our cell phones are silent or turned off. those watching online, you're welcome to send comments or questions anytime. leading our discussion and welcoming our special guest is thomas, the director of our center for national defense. in 20, heoining us served for over 36 years in the u.s., attaining the rank of general and to save on time i will not list are many appointments. i would just introduce general

ford. [applause] >> thank you. > the to qualify the record that i retired as lieutenant general. thank you for making your way over to heritage this morning. recently the army has begun to land a new vision that includes a priority on modernization programs that deliver on time. a talent management system that incorporates more flexibility and a focus on improving readiness for high intensity can't. all this with a backdrop of the release of the national defense strategy calling for renewed emphasis on great power competition and turning away from a decade and a half of counterinsurgency operations. finally, last month, congress provided two years of increased and predictable funding which will allow the military to start rebuilding. the implications of these events, we are honored to welcome back to heritage dr. mark esper, the 23rd secretary of the army.

onretary esper was sworn in november 20, giving him just shy of four months on the job. secretary esper has an extraordinary biography, superbly qualified him for his current position. previously served as a vice president at the raytheon company, before that held leadership positions in the u.s. chamber of commerce in the aerospace industry association. secretary esper has had extensive experience working on capitol hill serving as a key advisor to senators bill frist and chuck hagel and in key staff positions on the house armed services committee, senate foreign relations, and government affairs committees. his previous pentagon experience includes service as a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the office of the secretary of defense. secretary esper is the heritage foundation alumni, having served as our chief of staff 20 years ago this year from 1996 to 1998.

when i mentioned the former president that he was coming back, he was delighted and pass along his best wishes. here in due to my heart, secretary esper is a former army officer, commissioned infantry. he served in the regular army for a decade including service in the 1991 gulf war with the screaming eagles 101st airborne division here following active duty come he continued to serve in the army national guard, before retiring in 2007. secretary esper holds a master of public administration from harvard's john f. kennedy school of administration and doctorate of public and ministration from george washington university. secretary as per will speak for about five minutes and then he will take questions from the audience. please join me in welcoming .ecretary esper

[applause] sec. esper: thank you for that kind and lengthy introduction. you make me feel very old but i appreciate you hosting this event today and for heritage to host as well. i do want to lay out the basis for my vision that was articulated last week, the army vision, if you will, give you an abridged version of the remarks i gave to set the stage and to facilitate the q&a session. let me step back and give you the historical perspective from which we began. thecan think, consider longest conflict in our nation's history is ongoing, tension between defense and domestic spending, social turbulence and political disharmony divides many, moscow is expanding its influence, and trying to take advantage of the u.s. while we are distracted. at the same time, the army is strained by an unrelenting

operation tempo, challenged by unpredictable budgets, our quitman is aging, maintenance costs are increasing and we have mortgage the future to pay today's readiness. recruiting is also becoming more difficult. does all this out earlier to you? if you are old enough, this is 1973. not 2018 that i'm talking about. this was an inflection point for the army, face a number of significant challenges. we also learned what happened that year, that the nature of conflict was changing. high intensity battle was back. the army sent teams to study that conflict, much like we have done in recent years with regard to ukraine. but the great leaders of that time, creighton abrams and others, set out a vision for the army. be prepared to fight and win in a high intensity conflict. we built an entire army beginning in 1973 along those same lines.

the result was basic organizational changes that brought to existence army material command, forces command, and trade-off. that is relevant because i'll be talking about army futures command. we also ended up with the major systems of our era,, general well.'s error as the concept of airline battle, a national training center, an all volunteer force, which at that time was considered dubious and uncertain. we didn't know what it would mean for our army and country. we still have that same army 43 years later. in many ways, it is feeling his age. there were some differences between 1973 and today. first of all we have a very supportive congress. a verynerally gave us good budget in terms of fy 18, 19, building upon a good increase in 17 as well.

we the army have regained public trust and respect, probably the most admired government institution in america these days. and we certainly have a professional all volunteer force that has served our nation very well-known for a few decades. at the same time, the future we face is increasingly uncertain. china and russia, who have been identified as our strategic competitors, they are erodinging, they are our overmatch, and improving their ability to threaten our interests. as we know, russia is in eastern ukraine, crimea ray, syria, and china is increasingly aggressive in the south china sea. we should expect to see the proliferation of their weapons and type x by others, like terri's and proxies around the world. we also face the character of war changing. these challenges reflect everything from speed, lethality, continued

surveillance, destruction of communications and networks, threats and every domain including cyberspace, including urban terrain. the army vision that we developed to win in this new environment outlines a few things you must be able to do differently and better. we had to be ready and able to deploy rapidly, not just the regular army but the guard reserve as well. we have to overcome our adversaries defenses, make sure we can gain a foothold, maintain access, and that exploit success. we have to remain mobile, and quickly deliver precisely in overwhelming effects. through and across every domain. we must do all this faster than the enemy. to achieve the vision i will , we have to moment pursue three major lines of effort in my mind. the evolution and propagation of multi-domain battle constant through guard to the high-end fight.

drive. that that will the second is we need a new talent management system that is focused, personnel system focused much more on talent management. third, we need to transform the acquisition system by standing on army futures command. those three things are critical to achieve this vision. the army of 2020 it will be ready to deploy, fight, and win decisively against any adversary come anytime, anywhere in a joint multi-domain high-intensity conflict while simultaneously deterring others and maintaining its ability to conduct regular work. that last part is different from what it was five years ago. the army will do this to the employment of modern, manned and vehicles, aircraft, systems and weapons, coupled with robust arms, formations, and tactics based on a modern war fighting doctrine. we can parse through that in the q&a. that is the basis of the vision going forward. i can outline in detail where we

are -- what we are doing now with regard to training and manning in organizing it but i know i am overrunning my time. i will pause right there with division by setting the stage for what brought us to that point and to tell you that the army is doing great things these days, we have great ambition with regard to where we are taking the service and i remain fully confident that if a conflict were to happen today, we would prevail in win in any theater of war. with that i will stop and turn it over to you, general, for q&a. [applause] >> that sounds great, thank you. you were going so fast, i did not get the whole vision written down, so i'm looking for to discussing the more in the coming minutes. one thing i wanted to ask you from, we have heard a lot, your cross functional teams -- in fact, it would not be too far

to say that they have been relatively chatty in military terms. i'm sure they are responding to guided you are providing. we hear the army is moving quickly. easily then, the speed is striking. i am struck by the number of .hings they have said first battery of maneuvers, air defense systems by 2020, two years from now, prototypes of robotic combat vehicles by next that 2019, artillery shell can go out 40 kilometers by 2020. .hese are really remarkable typically, when we talk about new things, it is in multiples offive years, so that type thing. i was interested in how you personally plan to keep these bold plans from becoming bogged down with unanticipated problems, test schedules, things like that, which particularly plagued acquisition programs. sec. esper: it's a great

question. the leadership has to be committed to these reforms. the chief of staff and i meet frequently and review the progress on -- with regard to particular projects. we are redoing the modernization major defense acquisition programs on a monthly basis. also we have delegated the importance -- the important task of standing on army futures command to great leaders, the vice chief of staff of the army and the undersecretary. they have driven us very hard, pushed an aggressive schedule that will allow us to stand of the army futures command this summer. it will be based on much of the work we have done so far with regard to cross functional teams , all the progress they are making across our six modernization priorities. much of that has been enabled by some legislative changes done by congress in the past couple ndaa's that allow us to use other transaction authorities

that allows us to prototype to the field items much more quickly. there is work to be done, we had that are the processes inherent in the current modernization process. we continue to work on the layering organizations. we have been successful with cross functional teams, reducing layers from 12 to three when it comes to those teams. much more needs to be done. at the end of the day, something i emphasize, as i talk to acquisition folks, other parts of the enterprise, is the importance of speed, the importance of managing risk, taking risk, and making smart choices that put products over process. lt. gen. spoehr: just a follow-up on that, we are six months into the fiscal year in the army and other services. lots of times we build a schedule, a robotic vehicle next

year, based on our optimistic view of the world. if we get into another situation in 2019 where the money does not flow until the third quarter, does that put any of this at risk? sec. esper: you always have to manage the risk. you are right, we are six months into the fiscal year and we will see our money soon. that is why we ask for additional flex ability to spend some of that money. i believe that will be coming. with regard to the modernization money, that is three-your money, so we had to spend it well. i'm assuming the budget agreement with regard to fy 19 will come through. what we have to do is continue to look beyond 19 because these are multi-your programs, and make sure we are doing everything we can internally to reform any number of things, processes, how we do service contracts, how we stop our headquarters, because my aim, one of the three focus priorities i had coming into this job, is to look everywhere

we can do free up time, money, and manpower. my view is -- you fix your roof when it is sunny out. right now it appears to be sunny for the next couple of years. the natural reaction is for folks to get back on their heels and relax a little bit but i'm pressing forward. the chief and i and others are pushing for others to be on , look for ways to find savings. the budget is unpredictable, much like it was in 1973. we have to do our best to find those dollars so that we can apply them back to our priorities. changing gears, at the end of the cold war, the u.s. army active component was 780,000 soldiers. only 17, the active army was 476,000. in 2018, the army was authorized to grow. then in the 2019 president's

budget, he requests an active-duty size of 487,500. growth of another 4000. steady growth, fairly modest. of 11,000. growth people in congress and elsewhere are saying the services are really going to have a hard time recruiting to these numbers and that maybe it does not even make sense to increase the size of the army if they cannot recruit to it. variety of factors playing into that. six months into 2018, i was wondering how recruiting is looking, whether you anticipate the army being able to recruit that they need to. lt. gen. spoehr: --sec. esper: first of all, we are on track. i'm confident we will meet our goals. our retention rates are higher than they have ever been. that also take some pressure off the recruiting end of this. i would see the bigger picture is this. when i outline the vision last

week, speaking to the details, what i said is we need to get to be over 500,000 soldiers with appropriate growth, associated growth with guard and reserve. forces is of troops, right now insufficient to meet the demands. and to meet the guidance, dod guidelines with regards to deployment versus home station time. we need to build and strengthen, we will continue to grow at a modest pace. it's important we can absorb the soldiers and make sure we get them through the training pipeline and also importantly, maintaining high standards. we have not lowered our standards. there is agreement among leadership that we will accept a smaller army if it means not compromising our standards. i have lived through. where we have dropped standards a little bit and you end up paying for it, so there is a unified commitment not to do that. we intend to maintain high standards: forward. lt. gen. spoehr: thank you.

changing gears again, especially when the budget is tight, the army has its modulus relationship with the national guard component. the 2019 presidents budget increases funding for full-time support personal or the guard and reserve, has got funding for four national training center, ctc rotations for the national guard, which, in my spirit is unheard of, more funding for reserve component soldiers to come on active duty and support combat and command missions. and nowmer guardsman secretary of the army, can you speak to the importance of the guard to the army mission, what you are doing to make sure that relationship, which has had ups and downs, remains healthy? sec. esper: you mentioned one of the things i would begin with, one of the benefits i bring to the office, i have served in all three components.

the guard and reserve it then an active-duty. i served in the virginia guard and a d.c. guard. i bring that perspective to the job as a guardsman. i know the challenges of being in the guard or reserve. when i entered the army, active-duty, 1996, the guard was a strategic reserve. over the years became an operational reserve, now an operational unit. the guard and reserve have proved themselves exceedingly well over the past 17 years. they are currently serving around the world in any number of named operations and other deployments. when i go around and visit the army, before christmas i had the privilege to go to afghanistan. i was being briefed by a brigade combat team. i did not -- would not have known it but they told me that sitting at the table was a mixture of regular guard and reserve soldiers. it was not until i looked around and saw their soldier pat -- shoulder pads, that was the case. everyone brings to the table

lots of skills and different experiences. i'm very impressed by what i've seen. traveled, i try to reacquaint myself with the army and reassess what's happening. seeingthe great joys is how well come integrated the guard, reserve, and regular army are right now. to bear therings full weight and effectiveness of the total army. i'm very encouraged by what i'm seeing. i do not see the role of the guard or reserve changing anytime soon. lt. gen. spoehr: following up on that, do you and other army leaders make a deliberate effort to visit the guard when you are out? sec. esper: absolutely. first of all, i have been on the months and i've been out to the national guard bureau twice. i feel like i'm going back every time i go there. i have been out there to meet with the tags, discussing issues. i was out there last week walking around with the head of the army national guard to chat

with soldiers, find out what's on their minds. when we go out, i try to find soldiers from the guard and reserve when i visit the troops in the field, i'm always surprised whether it's an aviation unit or soldiers from the reserve component. in fact, i'm traveling tomorrow to fort knox. i will see a reserve aviation unit. i try to make an effort everywhere i go to find those soldiers, find out what's on their mind. they bring to bear different experiences but they also have different challenges being a guardsman or reservist. different pay structures, arrangements that need to be sorted out. they just bring different challenges as a critical component of the source -- force. lt. gen. spoehr: you mentioned futures command. i know many are interested in it. they just bring different challenges as a critical component of thei was struck byt by you or the undersecretary, that eaters command will be located in an urban center close to industry and academia. can you explain why that's

important to you and whether you are getting any interest from american cities across the country to locate your command like the, just courtship with cities trying to land amazon headquarters? comparing futures command to amazon is quite the comparison. there is quite a interest of the makeover to the first part of the question. what we are looking for is cities -- what we need is we need to be located next to where the talent is. the talent being academia, industry, centers for innovation around the country where we can attract the best people, bring command, futures allowing ecosystem to develop. the purpose of futures commission will be twofold, not just about the modernization enterprise, but having a group of people that can look forward into thethe purpose of futures commission will be future and it the threat environment and look like, what the strategic

environment may look like, and then think through how do we adapt to that. what are the material solutions we need to bring to bear to deal with that. we need to draw top talent from around the country. when you get to the material piece of army future's command, you need to draw on that top engineers, folks working on lasers, directed energy, hypersonic, whatever the case can be come to tell you the availability of technology, horizons. too often, one of the shortcomings in terms of a major program is we have said we want these types of requirements and they were well beyond the reach of what technology was in any reasonable amount of time or money to be spent. that is why you saw major failures in the past. one of the things the cross nowtional team is doing i is bringing people in early. we make reasonable trade-offs at the front and rather than

dragging this out over a period of time. if we can get somewhere where we can draw some great talent on the civilian side, get them thinking about the future, get them informing us about technology availability, we think we can drive a better requirements process and as a result have a much more expedited acquisition progress -- process and then make reasonable trade-offs and incrementally grow as we produce items. lt. gen. spoehr: any mayors or states -- sec. esper: a lot of folks have expressed interest. we are winnowing down that list based on criteria. at some point in the coming months we will make an announcement. staying on the: topic of modernization, the relationship between the commander of the new futures command and your assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics, and technology. a lot of people are fascinated with that. to an outside observer, it looks like they will try to be chewing on the same piece of bread at

the same time. can you speak to how you see that relationship, how you can keep them in good graces? sec. esper: we are not changing any of the legal, statutory authorities currently involved with regard to the acquisition technology folks. all the lines of command will remain the same, authorities, whether milestone decision authority, etc., will remain the same with dr. bruce jodey, who is very capable. ist we have done, though, the acquisition team will be matrixed into army futures command. if you have spent time in industry, you know you matrix teams in but they still report back to senior engineers or senior lawyer or senior whatever. we matrix them in to provide day-to-day coordination, day-to-day operationalization of what we are trying to achieve

with regard to these technologies. of course, what we see is an role as the pm's and others have a robust presence through the whole stage of the process, whether from concept all the way to material development decision all the way through. dr. jenny will be playing the initial rome or he will have a good degree of oversight over the entire army futures command to help that enterprise along as well providing oversight civilian piece of it. getting offehr: acquisition and modernization, you have mentioned in several for a a desire to change the ,rmy's talent management system perhaps of in ideas from the private sector. often times, changing the personal system involves the very culture of the organization you are trying to deal with. often encounters resistance. one secretary mavis try to do i think they called

them ratings, titles in the navy, that ran into some troubles. can you describe the issues, challenges with the current system, ideas on where you're trying to take this? we have a good personal system now, we have a great officer, nco court. we do a great job recruiting folks. but i think we can do better. needsntra is always the of the army, is the army wanted you to have this or that, they would have issued you one. the fact is we have an all volunteer force, we have since 73. my view is you have tor day, and howery you treat them through their career determines whether they will stay with you. if they stay, how satisfied they will be, how well they were performed. i think we can do a better job of adopting some of the practices used in the private sector whereby you look at individuals not as square pegs to put into square holes, although we tend day, and how

to sometimes but square holes into round holes, vice versa, but how do you identify for each individual their knowledge, skills, behaviors, and try to match that of better, like a market operates, to meet the needs of the army. if you can start doing that, you will find you have better outcomes for the individual and the service. more productivity, etc.. that is what we want to do. to do that requires a number of structural changes, process changes. i have had some discussions with the hill already. they are more than willing to look at how things you to be reformed, how we stretch of the 20-year career, allow greater possibility for service members to move in and out of the different components with ease. how do you allow persons to take if a woman was to leave the service to raise her family, or a father wants to raise a family, can come back in and not be penalized.

if they want to do civil schooling on their own, they can do that. how do you create more flexibility? this is playing out real time we think about how to recruit cyber warriors. those are unique skill sets that are in quite demand. a much more possible, open system. at the end of the day, the needs of the army will come first. if we can optimize the system better, we will get better performance, it will help with retention, recruiting and a better job satisfaction as well. you mentionedr: this earlier, national defense strategy identifies russia as a revisionist power seeking to undermine the international order. used 2015, dod has overseas contingency operation funds, first call the european reassurance initiative, now the european deterrence initiative, edi, to increase posture in europe. the fund has grown

substantially, started at $985 million in 2015, now $6.5 billion requested in 19. the army is the largest recipient of these funds and will get 17% if congress passes as requested. can you speak to the importance of these funds, how the 2019 funds will be used? sec. esper: those funds are very important or the purpose that they reassure and the terror. use those to get to operations, we are using them to upgrade army pre-position set equipment and to build another, we are using it to make sure we have sufficient forces in theater. we use them quite extensively. when i was in europe in january i had a chance to travel from belgium to germany up to:, ukraine. certainly in poland we are using those funds. i met yesterday with the

lithuanian vice minister of defense. he and i had a conversation about this as well, how beneficial most funds are to perform those mission purposes, to reassure our allies, the pols, and those in the baltics, and to determine any type of that behavior, if you will. lt. gen. spoehr: final question from me and then we will turn to the audience. your firstwas congressional' report 2019, march 15, you and general millie testified before the house appropriations subcommittee on defense. at the hearing, general was asked about army readiness and general milley said it had improved substantially but rather than providing any specific details, he instead offered a classified briefing to the members interested. this is in contrast to the posture hearings in 2017 where there was a lot more detail offered, at least from what we can tell. last year, and general allen

testified 31 brigade combat teams, only five were ready. comes at the same time that there is, services appear to be much more guarded in their public remarks on readiness and shortcomings. for example, it was pretty well-publicized that the air force stopped all public outreach until their public affairs team had been retrained essentially. i was hoping you could speak to the need to strike a balance between providing too much information, may giving something away that we ought not need to keep american citizen informed about the readiness of their military. sec. esper: we do need to strike a balance. one might say that we had swung too far in one direction in terms of speaking about vulnerabilities, shortcomings. prudence tells us that we should communicate to the degree that we find that right now let's and certainly members of congress, it's important that we be fully transparent with them. but that we do so in the proper setting. what we don't want to do is say something or signal something

that may change the miscalculation of a potential adversary. that is a critical factor, making sure we are sending the right signals and not sending any wrong signal that could be misinterpreted. that is where congress as the people's representative, we can go closed session and talk in detail about the challenges we face, talk about authorities we may need, asked a budget. but that is the balance we are trying to strike. in the meantime, we will continue to engage with the media and outside groups to talk about what we face, to the degree that makes sense. that and myehr: questions, i would love to turn to the audience. there is a microphone, at least one, probably two. it, please wait for it, because we are broadcasting and state your name and organizational affiliation, if you have one. my name is robert barry. i am here just for myself. my question has to do with our

degreeogy, and to what our adversaries are trying to steal oureel -- leading technologies. that, are youith satisfied with our effort to mitigate that? ac. esper: i don't think it's secret we have adversaries out there trying to gain intelligence and understand better what we are doing, whether from an operational or technology side. it is incumbent upon us to make sure we are doing everything we can to preserve operational security, technological security , whether it is being careful with what we speak about publicly -- certainly with regard to how regard our networks. we are putting a lot of money into improving our network security. as we think about modernization of our technologies -- and i've

had this conversation with a cross functional team leads -- it's critical that everything we build these days is hard and for cyber and is resilient for cyber because that may be one of the ways in which potential adversaries may try to attack us asymmetrically. that is the world we live in. we have to be conscious of it. i think we are pursuing a number of things to do with that. i might add, give a shout out to our army cyber. the service has really let in this area. we built the army cyber com, we have mos for cyber, a cyber officer corps, 42 teams out there currently, building 21 more in the guard and reserves. cyber we take very seriously and will continue to do so come not just from issue juju level, but down to the tactical level. lt. gen. spoehr: yes, sir. the redneck guy, and then the lady in the back. >> john harper, national defense

magazine. congress finally passed integrations bill giving you extra money but you are already six months into the fiscal year. do you think you will have time to spend these extra funds that have been allotted for procurement or do you think you'll have to ask lawmakers for reprogramming authority to spend some of that money designated for fy 18 in fy 19? sec. esper: procurement money is three have in money, so i think we will be fine. the day challenges where you have less time to spend money. with some of the additional authorities, flexibility will be given. we aim to make it. if not, we will go back next year to have further discussions. a lot of support on the hill to make sure we have sufficient time to spend the money's appropriated to us, and not just end it spend it will, make sure we are good stewards of the taxpayer dollars. student.

my major is medical policy. the question i want to ask is recruiting think of the unemployed or even homeless as a part of the military force? sec. esper: including who as part of the military force? >> the unemployed or even homeless as part of the lee terry forces. the key is are you eligible to serve, do you meet the medical qualifications, physical qualifications, etc. it is challenging to join the military. we have high standards. one of the challenges that you referenced earlier is we seem to have a shrinking pool of persons eligible to serve. currently, 29% or so of america's youth between 17 and 24 is eligible to serve, meets the criteria. those that have the proclivity to do is less than 5%. the question is do those

demographics meet the requirements to serve, do they want to serve? ashley, sheppard media. last week there was a lot of talk about future vertical lift. as a result of the national defense strategy, re-looking at what lies aircraft. youthere other examples as move forward with the future command and modernization programs that you are reliving at this point? specifically to get after the national defense strategies. sec. esper: i believe the six modernization priorities the army has outlined beginning with long-range precision fires, next generation, vehicle, etc. all the way through soldier lethality nest very well with the national defense strategy. we are confident those six priorities will serve us well. the chief and and the other leadership have taken a blood oath not to change those because

we want to make sure there is picked ability in industry and to our own modernization enterprise that these are the priorities. this is what we are looking at for people, both in and out of government, to dedicate their time, brainpower, investments, along those priorities. we are not re-looking altogether . what we're doing is asking for folks to prototype. in the case of future vertical lift, we have one aircraft that has already flown, another one later the senior. this is where we don't want to get locked into a set of requirements we cannot change. this is a very iterative process where industry comes, prototype, we make trade-offs, and this is a particularly good news story because with regard to future vertical lift, industry is committing three dollars for every one dollar we put in. it is a great way ahead, the way we want to move forward. our challenge is to look at how we can move things to the left, in terms of accelerating the

prototyping, so we can get to the end state faster. we need to make this leap into the next generation. 1973, theront in foundations of the big five were in place when i enter the army in 1976. we have the bradley and abrams and the patriot. while those are upgraded, they are decades old and have reached the end point of incremental upgrades. we need to reach the next generation of technologies. that is why we need to move things left in terms of prototyping and production. hello, sir. jeff webber. u.s. navy. i have a question about the army's responsible procurement of information technology. the army spent millions of dollars last year on the machine or language translation system which is really nothing more than google translate, which i can download to an android device for free. to be fair, it secretary spencer were here i would be asking him

why we in the navy continue to purchase any greater cost things which do the same thing. , what can you do, as the secretary, to maybe work with the joint services so that we have maybe a more joint procurement system, that service is more stove piped into our own services for information technology, and may be the defense digital service may be a part of the solution, sir. sec. esper: you click couple of things in there. one of the challenges we face in the army, and i'm sir -- sure secretary spencer does as well, while we have identified six modernization items in our teens are missing after those, there is still a large pipeline of things that have been there before my tenure, before his tenure. one of the things we are doing is looking closely at these programs. the army has over 800 programs.

we are looking closely at all of those. we have realigned over a billion s&t dollars in our priorities. with regard to reforms, there are things that will be put on the deep burner, programs that will likely be ended. even the strategic environment has changed because we cannot afford them, or because we just think they are relatively of lower value than other things we need to pursue. with regard to the joyousness -- jointness, there are programs that undersecretary lord has held at her level. she has been fantastic in working with the congress. talking about future vertical lift, that is held by her right now. at some point, the program will be divided up. on items like the network, we do cross talk a good deal, i meet frequently with secretary wilson from their oars, secretary

spencer come to talk at how we can talk about technologies, that we have all the interface is correct, so we don't end up being stovepipe. it is a challenge but that is one of the cultural things we are trying to push as well. thank you for coming. heritage foundation. trump is speaking with north korea, they are having a summit coming. is are we prepared enough come in case the policy fails? . don't mean to be negative just some information on your part. careerper: i travel to after the christmas holidays to visit the troops on the ground, went up and down the peninsula, met with commanders. i am fully confident the army

will be ready should it come to that. >> sydni friedberg. breaking defense. you mentioned you are scouring 800 programs and some of those will be cut, some of those will be killed on right -- outright. sixou have all of these big spinoffs you are trying to accelerate, i know you moved around some smt money but you will need some procurement money, just as the procurement agreement expires, so where will you find all that money, will you have to ask for a higher top line, except perhaps cutting and strength, reversing the current growth, or can you actually get some or all of that from squeezing water from a stone and cutting out current programs. regard to: with request, we will take things one step at a time as the

environment involves. our due diligence, i need to be a good steward of the taxpayer dollars and make sure i can free up all the money i can. it will mean cutting programs, free money up on current programs, by slowing them are killing them, to free up money for the higher priority programs. we cannot continue to ramble along funding 800 programs. spreading the peanut butter, as we like to say. i think those days are over. are going to apply money to our top priorities first and continued to move down a priority list until we run out of cash. lauren fish. center for new american securities. similar question, do you have concerns about fiscal year 19 portion of his recent budget deal falling apart and what that would mean for prototypes in the field in fiscal year 19 or 20 from futures command? sec. esper: as you allude to,

there is a 19 budget deal. my experience is was a deal is reached, members abide by it. we will continue to message our needs to the hill. again, we have been very clear that the 18 and 19 appropriations bills are very generous, very appreciative, helps us get back to level readiness we need to be. begin,o helps us to making investments in modernization. i will assume for now that we will see the 19 come out the way it was planned and then will start working on 20 and 21. [inaudible] bloomberg. what example -- advantages do you see to this cloud initiative that dod is pushing, this multibillion-dollar contract? sec. esper: i am not totally flew in on that right now, so i will have to get back to you on that. you enter the army in 1986 after the major spare parts

scandal derailed the second regular wave of buildup. what does the army and the other services have to do by way of good stewardship, to avoid major procurement scandals that could publice pulpit -- the who are not involved in the military? sec. esper: i don't remember that. i was a young rifle platoon leader at the time. the broader question is, yes, we have to be good stewards of the parts process. absolutely. not just because we need to but i cannot afford to waste money single buyrts, on items. as we approach modernization, there are some principles that others and i have discussed, the importance of maintaining within our major industrial areas, if you will.

competition buys you both better quality and lower prices. i have seen that when i worked on a hill, certainly when i worked in industry. we need to bring that into the fold with regard to what we are doing and need to preserve competition as far as we can into the acquisition process. one of the things we're also doing differently is we are thinking through sustainment upfront as part of the acquisition process. when we talk about the cross functional teams, the sustainers, we are talking about sustainment there. as many of you know, you can buy something but it takes an incredible amount of dollars on the back and to sustain it. that could eat way your future modernization dollars. we are very conscious of that as well and try to think through lifecycle costs as we make buys. i hope that answers your question. >> the african diaspora association.

my question is regarding the u.s. troops in cameroon, central africa. can you tell us a little bit more about their status, the crisis over there? sec. esper: i'm not focused on either of those, so, no, i cannot. the daniel morgan graduate school of national security. my question has to do with procurement. you mentioned other transactional authorities. could you share with us your other ideas on making the acquisition process more efficient? sec. esper: some of the things i already mentioned, to us, we see great success in the cross functional teams. -- weree not bound by not necessarily enabled by law, but is kind of bar and best practices without have seen elsewhere. if you look at the past acquisition process, the current

acquisition process in some ways , as has been examined by whende groups, experts, you have is a series of requirements beginning of year -- up here. they go up the chain of command, anand down, and it is elongated, months long, sometimes years long process. everyone changes it everywhere it goes. so you get this ridiculous requirement where you are trying to build a nuclear powered tank that can shoot around 10,000 miles, can summers -- you know. all those different players, whether on the back end, sustainers, testers, certainly acquisition, the contracting, ,udget people, the war fighter brings them altogether upfront and they sit around and talk about -- the war fighter x present their need. then they talk about, how can we shame that, what do the

trade-offs look like that we need to make based on the availability of technology, based on the budget, based on -- how would we contract that? all of that is done up front so you get rid of this process. thate looking at reducing from what was currently five years or so, down to 12, 18 months. so that is one of the ways in which we buy efficiency. then that group stays together in the process and is able to address either issues that emerge, if new technology presents itself, they have to discuss the trade-off. the aim is really not to let the perfect be the enemy of the better. find a system, build a system that is better than what we anticipate the enemy, potential adversary might be able to build at the same time. if it is better, good. mobile,ve talked about the generals mentioned upfront, it is being built on a striker

chassis, will have likely traditional interceptors, if you will. but i have made clear, we should make sure as we think about this design, we build in sufficient power, for in sufficient power,r example, and space within the vehicle to put lasers on it. as that becomes relevant, we can put the vehicles back in, attach a laser, now you have increment 2. lot of shorthand, but that is what we are trying to build as we think about how can we build room for upgrade growth as we go forward? takethink that that will us to the end of our available time. i would ask you to give secretary esper a roundsecretara short session with members of the press and media. if you can identify yourself in the back, it will be in a conference room.

if you're interested in the session, colonel fox will be to 11:15. from 11:00 thank you, have a wonderful day.

oldersident trump roundtable discussion on tax reform in west virginia. at can see live coverage two: 25 eastern.

this afternoon, a discussion with the fcc commissioner on facebook's data and privacy following allegations that cambridge analytica gained access to thousands of profiles. live coverage begins on c-span. today, former mexican president and the former united kingdom independence party leader debate nationalism and globalism. it is taking place at the university of maryland. live coverage starts at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. facebook ceo mark socko bird will be on capitol hill next week for 2 hearings on the way that facebook handled user data. the company says that outsiders may have gotten information from 87 million users. mr. zuckerberg will first h be at a hearing on april 10.

on wednesday, mr. zuckerberg will testify before the house energy and commerce committee. live coverage begins at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span3. c-span, ond on saturday at eight: 30 p.m. eastern, the 50th anniversary of 60 minutes. sunday, hillary clinton and rutgers university institute of politics. one: 40tv, saturday at 5 p.m. eastern, the annual national black writers conference. and the author of the best selling book battle hymn of the tiger mother and the author of hillbilly elegy talk about a new book on tribalism in america. on american history tv saturday the 50th. eastern, anniversary of the assassination of dr. martin luther king jr. of sunday the author

lincoln's war secretary talks edwin stanton, lincoln's assassination, and the aftermath. putinn president vladimir recently won over 70% of the vote for another six-year term in office. next, a form on the implications of his elections, his popularity in russia, and potential talks between president trump and the russian leader. >> good afternoon. i i like tof fdr welcome you to an enlightening discussion. given the news, i'm confident that our panel will have no shortage of topics. we will be focusing on russia's march 18 election and what it means for domestic and foreign policy over putin