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host of this event. >> the career marine infantry officer commanded every level. regimental combat in colusa, iraq. marine corps combat development command. his assignments include serving as an assistant commander.

he was a chief staff in kosovo. he was the director of headquarters at marine corps. this former education includes u.s. army infantry officer advanced course, u.s. paris for commanding staff college, u.s. marine corps school of more fighting. he holds multiple degrees, public policy from johns hopkins university school of advanced international studies. dr. sen. jones: will moderate a discussion that will include an audience q and a. dr. jones is the senior vice president, director of international security programs and director of projects. before we go over, i want to say

how proud we are of the marines and what they did in kabul as we mourn the tragic loss of 13 murder -- 13 service members, 11 of whom were marines. they are america at its best. over two. -- over to you. >> thank you for the great introduction, and i want to echo the comments about how proud we are of marines and other service members and how much we mourned their losses. thank you very much. >> i know you have questions, listening to you, sergeant major

and i went and visited walter reed. the marines and sailors at walter reed are exactly like they have been for a couple of hundred years. all they want to do is go back to their units. how fast can you get me out of this hospital? walking around in gowns, wounded, dragging around the iv to check on his marines. even though the nurses do not want him -- he not supposed to be outside his bed. he is going up and down the board to check on his marines. some things don't change. >> how proud we are of them for that.

that is the kind of people we want serving the country. thanks for the values you instill. i want to begin with course design. we will get to a number of other subject, one of the most important priorities when you begin, don't --, not --indicated a fundamental redesign of the service that. to fight a cure -- p competitor,. with china as one of the key competitors. the question is, what if you learned in the past year, how is that impacted where you are focusing on.

>> we started a couple of years ago but some assumptions. my predecessor concluded the marine corps was not equipped for the future. general miller said that a couple of years earlier. i agree with that assessment. if that is the case, you can make minor adjustments to the force you have, try to move that along as fast as you can, or i think like some other organizations outside the military, step back and take a look where you need to be down the road. one of the things we learned is we have a lot to learn. this is an environment where two forces are moving at the same time.

we are both trying to gain an advantage, this is a dynamic that is going to go on as long as the competition goes on. if all that is true, back to where i started from, we have to learn fast, experiment, we have to be able to weave that back into the changes that are in the force. our cycle, our mechanics, our bureaucracy is not built for that kind of speed or velocity stuff so far, the flat budgets, china is the pacing challenge in the indo pacific is the primary

theater but not the only one. to me, they seem to be holding true. >> one of the issues that you have discussed as well, you stated in the past that the fiscal realities today and in the future dictate that we must first divest of some legacy programs in order to generate the resources needed to invest in future capabilities. as you have recognized, this may create some near-term risk that has to be managed in order to a chain the force in 2030 we require. can you talk about what some of these risks are and how you are managing them and how to ensure that the marine corps is prepared to contribute both to join force and crises in 10 years but also deal with the issues that are potentially more near-term?

>> perhaps it's helpful to break it into two basic categories. one is capabilities and one is capacity. i think the challenge for service chiefs, me included is managing how much capacity, how much stuff, people do we have today and need in the capabilities that are associated with that to generate whatever the secretary of defense needs us to do. but also posture ourselves so we are not caught eight years down the road with a force that is not a match for the operating environment. we have divested, we have gotten rid of some things that we know, we love, they are proven in the past but in our estimation are not the right fit for the future. those are decisions that are hard to make because it would be great to hold onto everything and all of your structure and keep it all and protected all.

-- protect it all. in my estimation, that force was not going to be a good match for what we need to do in the future. the size of the marine corps is an example. we are 20,000 smaller than we were 15 years ago. we are not contracting the marine corps in order to save money. we are contracting the marine corps to size it for what we need to do in the future. sometimes smaller but better is what you need. from the individual marine and the training we are given now to the capabilities they will have that they don't have today, it's not shrinking the size of the marine corps to save money and for that money into the new force.

it sizes the force for what you need, what you think you will be asked to do in the future. >> one follow-up -- out of curiosity, you mentioned some of the capabilities available today, you will not need 10 years from now, what are some examples of that you might highlight? >> thus far, we have gotten rid of all heavy armor in the marine core. -- corp. we got rid of some portion of our toad artillery. moving toward the direction of much more unmanned, in other words vehicles plus aerial and surface as well because we are going in the direction of long range unmanned surface. most of these will be platforms with unmanned platforms on them. in other words, unmanned

autonomous vehicles that can launch unmanned uav's -- same with a long race surface vessel. ken they recover them or are they disposable? the systems we are moving to or not completely unmanned. the magic of it is marrying platforms that are not manned but there are people in the background, the teeming part is where we will generate the velocity, the speed and momentum we will need in the future. the size of the marine corps is one thing, the armor and artillery are things that we are shrinking or completely getting rid of, moving into unmanned paired with artificial intelligence and autonomy. that's married with human being , people with skill sets to

employ that capability. that's where we are headed. >> to pick up on this point, the department has spent a lot of time thinking through issues related to the future of warfare including the joint war fighter concept, the whole construct, we talk to folks in the navy in this program previously about how to link sensors and information. from your standpoint and the marine standpoint, how are you applying and thinking through these developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence and advanced technologies? how does that concept in the technology fit into how you are

thinking through the next decade or so of warfare? >> i think it's essential. where it takes us, we don't know perfectly where it might end up that we know we must go in that direction. for our role as the stand-in force which is where the marine corp's natural fit is forward, inside their weapons range, that type force which is where the sweet spot is for the marine corps, and i would argue naval expeditionary forces, this is where we belong. how does that fit into that? what we are learning in experimentation and wargaming so far is one of the key roles is the ability to collect and paint a picture of what's in front of the joint force and strip away their collection capability as

well. reconnaissance, counter reconnaissance. wayne hughes would call it scouting and counter scouting that is originally where i got the idea from. i think this is a key role for us going forward. jazc2 allows us to tie in the sensors to try to collect against what's in front of us and strip the threat ability to collect against air force. without that, we cannot pass that information. jazc2 is an extrapolation in terms of kyl change. i'm assuming that a good adversary will try to break down our command and control so we now need to be resilient enough

and we need an architecture that stitches that together so whatever platform or human being is detecting something in front of them, it's woven and through this web system so that it's shared from that forward and back where we can act on it. your cycle has to be inside there's otherwise it's too much of a symmetrical fight. you want to be inside that. >> i wanted to take this in a slightly different direction, focusing on the indo pacific theater. for any of us that have been in the military and dealt with our nato allies, nato's got an architecture for sharing information.

there is all of this sharing, when we talk about jazc2 on the u.s. side in the services. the indo pacific doesn't have that kind of architecture right now. i'm wondering what your thoughts are on whether they are policy issues to think through or information sharing architecture between the u.s. that includes the marine corps and regional partners. australians, japanese, singapore and others. even looking recently at information coming off 35, we have challenges sharing information weekly with allies and partners, particularly in the indo pacific without any kind of architecture right now. i'm wondering if you can go through some of the challenges as you see it and some possible solutions, particularly for the indo pacific region? >> more than half of my career has been in the indo pacific.

i would agree, when people compare and contrast nato europe with indo pacific, in our brain, we want it to look like that but it doesn't. it one. we should accept that and embrace it. the indo pacific, there is no nato equivalent. because of the nature of the countries that are there, things are bilateral. they are multilateral to a degree but it's one by one sort of arrangements. we just want the one-size-fits-all. can we not just create a nato in the pacific? if you have an operating there, you realize that's an impractical approach, it's not gonna work. my experience, the last 10 years at least, much effort done in

bilateral us and japan, us in singapore us in the philippines, australia and japan, australia and the u.s., and gradually, i have watched over the past 24 months, especially the past year, more of a move toward things like the quad. i think the nascent art of that provides perhaps part of the answer to that question for that dilemma of moving information especially classified between friends? i think watching the quad slowly and quietly get off the ground is a great thing. below the surface, their already existing frameworks for how we share information with australia, japan, self area, the -- south korea, the republic of korea but they are one to one arrangements. on the bright side, i would

watch carefully things like the deployment of the queen elizabeth ii right now and i think it's next month or november, we will not go on deployment but we will fly u.s. marine corps f-35's off a japanese ship. these are the beginnings of what you're talking about. we have been on deployment for five months with f-35's and british f-35 on the same ship. i've been on that ship multiple times. there are two skips across the passageway from each other, u.k. and u.s. skiff. we are working our way through that in a good way. i think in the coming years, pressed by what we see from what we see from china, they are leaning into how we plug into this network and share the information.

they bought the f-35 so how do we communicate? how would we move the targetable information back-and-forth? i watch things like the class and things we will do this fall, the queen elizabeth to deployment from the u.k. to the pacific and back again. these are great step to moving the ball forward. >> the reason some of these issues,, in any of the exercises and wargames in the indo pacific area, there are number of different allies and partners that come together. thinking through these issues

isn't before ever getting to a conflict situation. i wanted to move briefly -- we talked about afghanistan and i want to come back to afghanistan for a moment. this is something you have written about recently but i think it would be helpful for folks other than marines to hear this. you posed a question in a letter you wrote recently on was it all worth it? you asked about the deployment in afghanistan, and it was an inspiring letter that you and sergeant major black wrote, but i think it's important to ask you that question again, was it all worth it? what are your thoughts here? >> a couple of us were talking this morning so it's timely. first of all, why was relatively -- while it's relatively fresh in our minds, we need the honest, open critique or a commission or whatever it is that cracks open what were the options that were available, who made what decisions at what time, not so we can penalize or hang someone by the yard so we

can learn. on the marine corps aside, yesterday and today, we are going back through the holloway commission, the long commission. there are others as well to figure out a framework for how we can study what went right, what went wrong, what can we learn going forward. the events of the past 10 days have not at all altered my view of was it worth it, here's how i know. to a person, if you were to go to walter reed right now to visit a marine or sailor or soldier who was wounded and you asked them that question, they would respond with i know it is because i can tell you how many people we processed through our evacuation control center and put on a plane. this is their yardstick they are not political, they don't really care about

international relationships. what they do know is exactly to the person how many people they pulled over the wall out of the canal and put in a safe place and put on the plane. >> to them, that is worth it. there is a baby who is going to go up here in the united states. never going to meet them ring or soldier who pulled him over the canal. they will live a free life here. yes, is it worth it? yes. or their decisions that were made -- were there decisions that we should go back and scrub? yes. how did this surprise us in the span of 11 days? those are things critically as well as militarily we had to unpack. that does not change anything in

that letter. my verification, my confirmation is the service members were there. who would do it again because they feel like they saved lives. if those people on the others the canal or put at, who knows what could've happened? >> and inspiring letter that you and the sergeant major wrote on that an -- an inspiring letter that you and the sergeant major wrote on that. i want to look forward. u.s. intelligence assessments, not just in afghanistan and other places highlights concerns about terrorism are amazing a persistent problem. in afghanistan itself, there are moves underway to put together a prime minister. a minister of defense.

one of the key individuals being looked at for a senior taliban position is siraj mikani. he is very close, the most important conduit to al qaeda. we have groups like that. we have the islamic state conducting an attack against marines and others in kabul. as the president recently noted, there are concerns about west africa, the horn, the middle east, syria, iraq. the question is, there is a shift to the inter-pacific. -- indo pacific. how do you balance some of these big competitive threats with what are clearly some nonstate threats that will likely continue? how are you prepared for all of the above?

>> i will try three approaches. our place in the marine corps is we understand who the threat is. what the pacing challenge is. we must build a force that can match up to that fours. if we do not -- force. if we do not, we cannot even operate on the -- in the neighborhood. that is the pacing challenge. that is the bar for their military capability that we must measure up against. our premise is, if we can design that force a marine commander will train with a well led force. we will adapted for other missions around the globe.

-- adapt it for other missions around the globe. i believe that it is true. we have a perfect record of getting wrong or the next crisis will happen. -- where the next crisis will happen. on a spectrum of likelihood, where he neared the bottom -- way near the bottom. we need to match up and deter the plan. in terms of balancing this, the global force posture helps answer that question. aware, you have x amount of military force? where do you put it? the peso where you drive that fours -- pace at which you drive that force brings down your

approaches. you know better than i do about all of government approach. we talk about it in an academic kind of matter -- manner. when you are up against an adversary that is a whole government approach. i do not think we have an option. it is not an academic discussion. we either get there or we will be overmatched. there is no military solution to deter china. there is no military solution to deter terrorism. i am beyond that. in both cases, on the low end and high end, it is going to require much more of an integrated approach and we have right now. or neither will work. antiterrorism part and not the deter china park -- part. all parts at must fit together.

integrated deterrence. >> i hope we have learned that. that is clearly a lesson that stands out to me. the importance of other instruments of power. you can see it with the way that china has attempted to project power in the belt and wrote initiative -- road initiative. our editors are using other instruments of power -- our competitors are using other instruments of power. russia as well. >> not that i would not argue with anything you said. it has to go beyond using the other instruments. they have to be stitched together. this is what we are not doing. it is not good enough to do economic stuff and then a and

within military. we need a coherent, stitched together effort. yes, the elements of national power all have to be brought to bear. the more difficult part will be tying and stitching it together in a coherent manner. >> that is the challenge. otherwise, you have potentially multiple instruments operating efficiently or in some cases against each other. i wanted to turn briefly to a case which i think it gets to an issue of readiness and highlights the evolution of warfare. it is when they have talked about. the armenian case. it is interesting one. during the recent conflict, armenian ground forces that some might have labeled as ready to fight or targeted by other

forces by using precision strikes. lethal, unmanned systems. the question here is what two examples like this imply about readiness -- what two examples like this imply about readiness and the readiness -- what do examples like this imply about readiness and the readiness paradigm? >> you brought up one example, israel, hamas, there are a bunch of them you can look at and say they had forces. it did not work very well. there are a couple of lenses to look at. one, the temporal lens. there is a writing about ready for what, when. we had to think our way through that aspect of it. you can spend all of your resources this afternoon thrown

against the problems around the world. expend all of the energy and effort. what you are not thinking through is you actually spent what you anoint -- spent what you are going to need three years from now. you can have another aspect, not kinetic. the maritime militia, coast guard from china. their actions right now, an aircraft carrier, ready, does not deter. we have two learn how to match up the capabilities. especially below the threshold in that gray zone. we are learning that the things with we built and bought as conventional deterrence do not deter other actions. you can drive three aircraft

carriers into china's see. -- sea. it is not going to deter the maritime militia. net to become mature and wants and match if we are -- we have to become nuanced if we want to match. what you brought up is another great one. head tanks, not so good against loading ammunition's that have a top-down attack capability. what you thought was enough capacity is not a match for another type of lethal latino that were -- legal ability that we were not -- lethan capability you were not prepared for.

>> supporting partner forces and proxies to do most of the fighting in syria. russia did not put many ground forces, they worked with hezbollah. to your china point, china built in the south china sea. when did not -- they did not see the territory the way you conventionally would. they told bases -- built bases with dredegers. how do we operate in that gray zone? >> i think we have a lot of learning to do on deterrence. there is some expertise in the

50's -- 1950's american thinking about deterrence. our bench of thought in terms of deterrents in 2040, we have to focus their -- there. we need different forms of deterrents. the threat of punishment, conventional theory, that does not work. it has not worked the last 10 years. that will not work in all cases. we have to come up with other measures. is there such a thing as deterrence by detection? if the adversary is doing all of these nasty things below the radar, you wake up, how did that island come from -- where did

that island come from? how do we shine the maglite on that? how do we deter by presenting an adversary with the procession. there is nothing that they can do that we are not going to see. we are going to shine a big light on it and shine a big deal on it. a nuanced form of deterrence. our conclusion is more of the same of what we are doing right now, buying more of they are saying, there is no evidence that is a deterrent. we have to change. >> has been interesting to -- it has been interesting to watch the expansion of the russians

using mostly private military companies. that needs to be watched and monitored. i wanted to touch base on you've mentioned the navy a few times. the design you have discussed at length enables the marine corps to provide power see word -- seaward. you see the marine corps contributing to antisubmarine warfare in the future. you have argued and we have heard this from the navy side but integration with the navy as a strategic imperative. how do you assess and operability with the -- and inoperability and navy

integration? >> naval integration begins up here. it is not a platform. it is not a tactic. it is intellectual, it is conceptual. that is where the root of integration is. the best evidence of naval integration is the force design effort that we are doing. we are building a force that is built up with maritime capabilities that is joining forces with commanders it is going to need. i am there. it begins with the conceptual, intellectual naval integration. i am extremely happy at the

speed at which numbered fleets and nets are moving to find a way from command and control to power projection. ways that work in their neighborhood. what works in six fleet is going to be a little bit different than what seven fleet is going to do. we should be fine with that. it should not be this is the one-size-fits-all for naval integration. you all do this because we have talked and this is what -- this is the template. we had three star commanders at the numbered fleet and numbered levels. they know their operating environment better than i do. why would we not allow them to come up with naval integration that works best in japan? or in the mediterranean?

we should be moving our forces to support that. what works good in one place may look different than the other place. i am supportive of the speed at which they are moving. we need to move faster at the headquarters to support what they are doing. they're coming up with, we figured out how to fight, it looks like this. i need you to send the marine corps there now. we should work hard to get there fast. it is good being pushed. >> one example of this, i am curious what you will learn from this. the large-scale exercise in 2051 which wrapped up. the cno argued it did the largest maritime exercise in a generation. if you could highlight what the marine corps played. what did you take away from it?

>> we had three marine expeditionary forces around the world. all three were involved. that has never happened before. not that size is everything, it is not. global is not everything. i think it is fair to assert that it is possible that in a future crisis, if there is one with a peer competitor is going to be more than a regional thing. we are going to coordinate across boundaries in a way that we have not been challenged to do in the past. i view exercises as a place to try things. it is not a rehearsal for a plan. i like the way that this large-scale exercise was crafted in a way that allowed subordinate units to try things. to try capabilities, try things.

if it did not work, we learned. we should use these exercises as much as we can to learn from. we should not drive a commander and do you have to use this exercise as rehearsal. this large-scale exercise allowed a lot of flex ability -- flexibility for commanders to try things. the ones that did not work, that is at least as valuable as the things that did work. it was a very helpful exercise. is 22 while to absorb what we learned -- it is going to take a wild to absorb what we learned. -- while to absorb what we learned. >> logistics is challenging in a

way that we have not seen in the middle east when we see base operations in a contested environment. we have been able to set the theater in the middle east. that is not likely to be the case in some areas of the into pacific. a future adversary will almost certainly take it different -- make it difficult for the marine corps to be self-sustaining. you look at these exercises and others, what do you see the marine corps or how do you see the marine corps addressing the sustained logistics challenges? >> there are those who postulate that our logistics will be contested. i am there already. we have to train that way. we have to assume that our supply lines will be contested. we have never -- we have not

needed to do that in 70 years. all of that, we are a little bit out of practice. we have to protect our supply lines. the operational to strategic. level logistics. we have assumed security. we cannot do that anymore. they're going to challenge it. they're going to challenge it all the way to bill's garage in idaho that makes a part of a pump that goes onto a jet worship. they're going to go after that supply chain all the way back to his garage. they know that his garage is the only place that makes that bearing. this is going to be an attack and a defense like we have not witnessed in my lifetime. back to the real pieces we need to work on. i'm talking about cyber,

shutting him down in other ways. that is when you took us off. -- that is going to choke us off. there is no more theater, there is no more -- this is how we are going to float the force over the next 90 days. they're not going allow us to follow. those things are helpful for planning. they not going to be executed in the way they are laid out on paper. we need more agility than we have. logistics, as they were fighting function is pacing function. not one of, it is the. we can have the best force, postured perfectly with a magnificent -- on top of

it. if they are able to choke us off logistically, they will take us to our knees. we need the organic mobility to move the force. we need distribution means to move supply laterally inside of the weapons engagement zone. assume they're going to contested. we need to train our units to forage. if you're going in there with 100 marines, i cannot afford to fly you in bottled water. you have got to find water, food, aspartame and, -- transportation, all on your own. the only thing i want to fly you in its court in its -- coordinates. it is just fuel and bullets. the rest you have to forage. we have to train, we are going

to go back to it. >> went area to think through these challenges -- mono area to think through in these challenges -- one area to think through in these challenges, or gaming has helped shape your thinking on -- war gaming has helped shape your thinking on design. how do you inform the future of force design and think through these issues like logistics? >> the war gaming center is going to give us into the highest level of classification. the ability to test drive concepts. to see how well they work. you can also bring in your headquarters staff and practice

your work plan, o-plan too. it is a way to run through concepts. it is not the brick building, as much as it is the software and classification of abilities inside of the brick and mortar s. it has to tie into other war gaming centers. so we can or game point capabilities -- war game joint capabilities. it is good to enable not just the marines but the point force to have a place to test drive. let us go see if it actually works. i'm back in two weeks, we made changes, we need to try again. we do not have the capability right now. >> great develop meant.

i was down -- it is a great development. i was down to look at it. you have been so unselfish with your time. a tough question. how do you think about addressing some of the screening and evaluating recruit challenges? 20% of marines do not complete their first enlistment. what are your thoughts on screening, evaluating, how do you start to decrease that number? >> when i came in, the same as last year. we took the as fab -- asvab and the physical strength test. we have got to know a lot more about a high school graduate than we know.

we can. for the last three years we have politic programs to go way beyond the asvab and think along the same path if i was to apply for the special operations community, that sort of approach. the whole of me, clooney diffley, physically, resilience wise, all of that. it cannot be just the asvab and the strength test. that is not going to get the talent we need. >> as part of the talent management as were looking down the road, -- as we are looking down the road, and industrial era model of man management.

to a model that tracks flexible, critical thinkers. competes with the civilian market for this talent. how are you thinking about doing that? what initiatives are you considering to achieve that? this is just as relevant across other services as well. >> have again by the premise, -- i begin by the premise, we cannot design a perfect marine corps of the future. even if we could design that, it will not work with the manpower and training structures we have today. i am convinced that the manpower framework that we have today that construct, we have made a lot of tweaks to it. it is beyond a little more adjustment and it will catch up. we have to make fundamental changes. if we want to retain the person who just came in the front door,

we had to do things different. the air force, army, air force especially has used a marketplace for assignments. instead of it is time for you to rotate, you call your assignment person and he says you have three jobs to pick from. what if you can see all of the possibilities opening up next may? that is a whole another world. let us say me, i graduated from college. i went to work. boeing. i went to work for wherever, amazon. i worked there for 6-7 years. i want to go into the military. i'm in pretty good shape, i would like to go to the military. we are going to make you a private. that is our structure.

or second lieutenant. >> why can't we bring that person in laterally? why start them at the bottom? if i am averring -- a marine now and want to work at amazon and then come back, we have no way to do that. it is a one-way door. so, i think we have very hard-working people. but, they are working in a structure that will not

and your marines in afghanistan who put their lives on the line. thank you for what you are doing. thank you for all of your marines for doing it. they make us proud. >> thank you for allowing me time today. i think people on the net will help the marine corps learn.

we do not have all the answers. the people wearing the uniform today are the very best america has. they literally are. they know that what they are doing makes a difference and they are very proud. we are proud of them too. we have to keep america behind them, and we will be fine. especially the last couple of weeks, extraordinary. it is hard to describe in words. >> the policy center posted this

one hour event. jason: well good afternoon. i'm jason gourmet, the president