even if the army had a robust budget for army modernization the army has very limited options as of today because the technology effort has been more focused on the early stages and given the level of funding available that's probably appropriate but there hasn't been a lot of platform development or system development in the army budget in recent years which we could then seek to modernize the army in a rapid basis. the army was through the draw-down period thought to minimize harm and i think they did a pretty good job on that. again our study is not a critique of the tough decisions made under sequestration to try to salvage some sort of form of army modernization but we believe it's clear that they don't leave the army in a position with a ready and obvious path forward and so work needs to be done to develop that and we've taken a crack at that. and then lastly one of our findings is that we think there is not a consensus on priorities for army modernization and will talk about why we think that's the case. let me just talk about this idea of the triple whammy, which we coined a litt

army, between 1950 and 1975. th archives and we're airing it today to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the womens army corps in 1942. ♪ >>> today, the latest weapons coupled with the fighting skill of the american soldier stand ready, on the alert all over the world to defend this country, you, the american people, against aggression. this is "the big picture," an official television report to the nation from the united states army. now to show you part of "the big picture," here is sergeant stewart queen. >> all of us are well aware of the great and heroic achievements of our united states army nurses. in world war ii and during the korean war we heard, read and many of us saw how the army nurse went through great hardship in performance of her duty. the same dangers endured by the troops which she accompanied into combat. but relatively little has been reported of the army nurse in peacetime. yet she still serves not only in the states but all over the world. today, on "the big picture," we would li

he starts marching his army up the peninsula. how large is his army? i guess i should point that out. the army eventually will be about 110,000 soldiers. he'll have nearly 300 artillery pieces with him. he'll have about 4,000 wagons with his army. and to pull those wagons and carry artillery pieces and the cavalry about 40,000 horses. this is a huge metropolis that descended on the eastern part of virginia. this is a huge army. 110,000 men, 40,000 horses in this tiny little neck of land. in the spring 1862. what happens if it rains? things get messy. guess what it does? it rains. and it rains a lot. far more than mcclellan ever anticipated. let's look at what happened. first thing he does is he lands. immediately he starts putting his army in motion. by april 4, he disembarked about 60,000 soldiers from the transport ships bringing them down to fort monroe and starts marching up the peninsula heading toward richmond. he anticipates the confederates will have defenses at yorktown, virginia, the same yorktown george washington forced the british to surre

the union army discovers that the army hates these vegetables. and when scurvy starts appearing, union doctors are sort of stunned. they start checking the head of the, the head medical director starts checking and asking why aren't you feeding them the dried vegetables? the commissary says, we have cartons of them but the guys hate them. the officers cannot make the soldiers eat the dry vegetables and as a result, if all you are eating is salted meat and biscuits, you are not getting nutrients you need to fight off scurvy. the medical director of the union army actually starts putting in place a drastic measure, ordering fresh fruit, telling officers to force the men to eat it. but by the time he orders the measures, it is right before the and inlaunched from lee the union army does not tend to put them into practice. typhoid fever, diarrhea, malaria, scurvy -- it is all going to lead to in a can malaysian that builds for the armies in the region, particularly for the union army. retreatsme mcclellan on july 1, 40,000 of the 100,000 union soldie

don't develop army capabilities for the army. we do them to provide the joint the coalition commander and then thinking a imaginatively alluded to in earlier comments. enabled allied and partner capabilities. how can they close the gap in areas were legally or financially we can't do it. can do that. but industry gets little ham strung process. maybe through fms in some capacity. we deliberately quote that gap. it's a little bit of ways and means that come out of reading reports. >> doug? >> i don't have a lot to add with heidi and dan said on the modernization. i would offer two notes of political context. putting a it restraining hand on the army in terms of big push in modernization. army is in a war now. the war in greater middle east has a lot of soldiers in it. something that army leadership can't take their eye escalationential of there. that's why the chief is focused on readiness. the facetaring in potential war on short notice in korea. again, that's kind of thing chief has to balance out. aboutfair to the army their re

even if the army had a robust budget for army modernization, the army has limited option. because the technology effort has been more focused on the early stages and given the level of funding that was available, that is probably appropriate. there hasn't been a lot of platform development or system development in the army budget in recent years which we could seek to modernize the army. the army was -- through the drawdown. drawdown, no -- the army sought to minimize harm. they did a pretty good job on that. our study is not a cry technique decision on the tough decisions made on sequestration. it's clear they don't leave the we do believeit's clear they don't leave the army in a position with a ready obvious path forward. and so, work needs to be done to develop that. we have taken a crack at that. lastly, we think there's not a consensus on priorities for army modernization. and we'll talk about why we think that's the case. let me just talk about this idea of the triple whammy. which we coined a little bit i think last year and has been picked up in some circles. what

he had him drummed out of the army. they put a placard on him, mounted him backwards on a horse and the packard said "libeler of the press," jumped him out of the army. the result was the correspondence got together and out of anything positive. anything disastrous connected to namermy, they put meade's on it. that helped damage his reputation for the rest of time, up to today. be a biggerrgue may lens of this question. almost every book that spans the civil war, as you note, will have, say, 500 pages on the war in gettysburg and 150 on everything else. we have, as a society, and historians had a tremendous opportunity over the years to remedy the bad reps that meade received during the war, the unjust press he received, but we have such a fixation as a public, as historians, too, on the possibility of existential -- when we read about to read aboutke those moments. we believe the war could turn on an instant. they believed the next big battle they were going to participate in would be that moment. after gettysburg, it

army is teaching it more than three thousand public schools students who opt for the army are exempt from physical education. the biggest thing a look at as just make sure your hair does not touch your ears you're. facing a four year program created unfunded by the pentagon parts of fingernails right here what is authorized colors. let me see your nails all right now hold them up right now tomorrow. if she doubt her nails like this right here she's going to lose points let me see goals come from back so we come from structured environment and we know what it takes to create a structured environment regolith each as they graduate she just gets if it and then they they start teaching but i don't think they really understand classroom management or demand engine large groups of people and different. different ways of doing it like we do this and maybe that's why we can get the key is to do push ups but a regular teacher could you know as i want. you know become more of a better citizen in a country just want to become stronger physically and mentally. i was interested. this is interest.

that's about 20% of the army as a whole. the total army. the active army is less than 500,000 right now. based on the tasks required, i believe we need a larger army and i think my teammates on the joint staff think the same of the navy, air force and marine because of the tasks required. it's not an arbitrary number. we've done the analysis and we think we need to be bigger, stronger and more capable. you will never know about what the future brings. it's my belief we are in a fundamental change in the character of war. the nature of war is political. war is applicable act. it's an act in which you impose your political will on your opponent through the use of violence and that's what war is. and, war is always dealing in the realm of the uncertainty and friction and chance in human will. it's dealing in a lot of areas that are not particularly well measured, and that's the nature of war, but the character of wa war, the way you fight a war, the weapons you fight with does change and it changes frequently. there are a lot of different driv

you heard mauro talk about the army, we don't have a small army. but the question on size and forces, army, navy, affairs marines, it's relative question not a revolutionary question. the question is what do you want it to do. the united states military is a global military and we have been for sure since the first world war, and with absolute certainty since the break enwood agreements which is world war ii, which is established the order of the regime but which the world is run today. certain decades the world has rule sets like organizing free trade, international commerce, things like democracy, quote/unquote libertying order. then you got institutions that rest upon organizations and nations and all these thing that were developed many years ago. and that is essentially what people very quickly refer to as the world order. one of the significant roles of the united states military for seven decades has been to enforce that world order, to maintain it, to maintain its stability. and that's in our interest because in the first half of last centu

that's about 20% or so of the army as a whole, the total army. active army is less than 500,000 right now. so based on the tasks that are required i believe that we need a larger army and i know others and my teammates on the joint staff also think the same of the navy, air force and marines because of the tasks that are required. it's not some arbitrary number, we've done the analysis and we think we need to be bigger and we need to be stronger and more capability which brings me to the fewer tour. first of all, you will never know what the future i think so br. it's my belief that we are in a fundamental change in the nature of the character of war, not the nature of war but the character of war. the nature of war is political. war is a political act, it is an act in which you impose your political will on your opponent through the use of violence. that's what war is. and war is always dealing in the realm of uncertainty, it's always dealing in friction and chance, it's dealing in human will, it's dealing in a lot of areas that are not particul

so we went from a volunteer army to a conscripted service and back to a volunteer army again.he selective service act has deeply affect the american military and our role on the global stage. enjoy our conversation. mark. >> thank you, lora. thank you to the museum for putting the panel on tonight. i have from england originally but have been living in kansas city about 20 years. one of my former colleagues in the kansas museum of history is here too. i worked in topeka for six years at the state museum. i am also a former high school state history teacher. we can get past the accent. we have great questions lined up for the panelists. i am glad they're answering them and i get the easy job of answering the questions. we're historians so we'll start by looking at the history of the draft and how it came about. my first question. looking at the united states and the colonies that preceded it. they repeatedly faced the question of how to best assemble the necessary military force in time of war or armed conflict. why, i put to the panelists, did the wilson administration choose

army used a small army of volunteers to head into mexico. no one actually expected they would had out to europe. 100 years ago, the u.s. congress passed the selective service act, giving the u.s. president power to draft soldiers. by the end of world war i, november of 1918, some 24 million men had registered under the selective service act. some of those arguably not enjoying the full extent of american citizenship. most 4.8 million americans who eventually served in the war, including many women , some 2.8 million men had been drafted. we went from a volunteer army to a conscripted service and back to a volunteer army again. deeplyected service act effected the american military and our role on a global stage. enjoy our conversation. mark. lora, and thank you, thank you to the museum for putting this on tonight. one of my former colleagues from the kansas museum is here, too. also, i'm a former high school history teacher. if we can get past the accent, we've got some great questions lined up for our panelists. we are going to start lookin

let me shifted gears to army readiness, you heard us talk about the army, we do not have a small army but the question of five, army, navy, air force, marines, it is a question of what do you want it to do? how big do you want? the united states is a global military and we happens in the first world war and with absolute certainty since the agreements at the end of world war ii which established the international order, the rules and regime by which the world runs today. for seven decades the world have had a certain rules in the following things like free trade, international commerce, democracy, the quote unquote liberal world order. you have institutions that it rests upon, the united nations, the world bank, the wto, many things developed years ago. that is looking for virtue as the world order. -- that is what people refer to as the world order. the united states has been enforcing the world order, maintain its stability. in the first half of the last century there was a bloodletting unlike any that had ever occurred in the history of mankind. between 1914 and 1945, 100 billion p

states army. active duty, reserve, national the worldoyed around to help stabilize the system. that is a significant amount of u.s. forces. not all of them are in combat. most of them in combat are in iraq, syria, and elsewhere. at that is not a small number. the active army is less than 500,000. so based on the tasks required, i believe we need a larger army and i know others, my teammates on the joints chief of staff, army,elieve that of the navy, air force, marines. because of what is required. it is not just some arbitrary analysis. with done the math and we think we need to be bigger, stronger, and more capable. which brings me to the future. you never know what the future brings. it is my belief we are in a fundamental change in the nature and character of war. not the nature of war but the character of war. the major force political. war is a political act in which you implosion of political will on your opponent through the use of violence. that is what war is. and, war is always dealing i

here is a army on one side of the other, but even the confederate army provides an opportunity. but they are gone. this and thell of turnover is so great. it was greatly increasing your odds. time, the main place to go was washington, d.c. the population increased by tens of thousands. this happened -- >> this happen earlier in the valley, when the confederates, when stonewall jackson capture the garrison at harpers ferry. he also captured several hundred like refugees who made their way to the union lines. a number of women's diaries comment on this, that these men had been recaptured by confederates. they made their way to harpers ferry, which was controlled by united states military forces and they were returned to slavery when harpers ferry fell to stonewall jackson in mid-september. >> the bigger impact came the year before, during the invasion of pennsylvania by lee's armie. one of the first things they did was roundup african-american people and ship them back to richmond. of spending a lot of their time and energy as they first come into pennsylvania, to kidnap people in

the army. cohn launched a frantic campaign from the army that would keep shyne in mccarthy's subcommittee and within. cohn constantly harassed to the army and made available but was used euphemistically labeled committee this minute on nights and weekends and nearby hotels. thwarted at every turn, angrily threatened to wreck the army. in august 1953, at his behest, joe mccarthy launched hearings by communists in the united states army. he outlasted a sense of the five star army general in the white house. mccarthy's first hearing on the army took place in august 1st come in 1863 with quite a bit of the transcript bear that i can only share a tiny bit with you. imagine that you are doris walker's innocent frightened african-american worker on maternity leave, just sworn in and joe mccarthy's first words to you our let me say this. we have information of communist party membership on your part. i still get a cold chill when i read the transcript. however, eisenhower was active high and the scenes

cotton: first off, i understand the point of the army chief of staff makes about army modernization. the point about readiness having to come before modernization. however, modernization is tomorrow's readiness. i can look at a mother or father in arkansas in the eye and tell them the army would not put their son and daughter into combat without being fully prepared, trained, equipped. if a parent of an eight-year-old asked me that, i cannot be sure i could say the same thing. while readiness is urgent, modernization cannot be minimized. second, the army has a somewhat tougher case on modernization than the air force or the navy. that's not unique to this administration or this army leadership. it's relatively simple to explain why you need to modernize ships or aircraft or weapons or missiles. they are big. they exist in a comprehensible sense, you talk about the 350 -- 355 ship navy or the b 21 bombers. laymen can get their head around the need for stealth systems. army systems are harder to get your head around. the nature of a brigade combat is harder for the laymen to get their

we need an army of mediocrity. and the point there is the conventional power of the american military is it is the hammer that gives us our deterrent capability. we can't lose that conventional hammer and the fear that it engenders in an opponent. at the same time as one of my students observed as the war college this past semester, we have an army and a military that's design to win the nation's battle, not to win the nation's wars. to win the nation's wars, you've got to be able to do all this other stuff. so the question is, do we want to design a military that wins the nation's wars which means these other capabilities which get beyond the conventional into governance and economic development, some of the other things. it obviously needs a robust, more robust interagency, it also needs an army that's more willing to go into these things. so, you know, when i talk about army mediocrity, it means we've got to have swiss army knives soldiers, they've got to be prepared to do a lot of different things. general petr

army up in a more agile way to more near threats. yet, our air and missile defenses are in many ways retarded by a lack of modernization for many years. do you want to speak to that about what we need to get to moving from the patriots of today to something capable of handling these things? >> it's an important challenge. the army often goes through these cycles where it thinks we're going to get to fight a war the way we like to fight it or we're going to be able to dictate the way in which the war is fought. so for many years in the cold war and then after the persian gulf war we were focused on heavy mechanized warfare against competitors. didn't do much on counter insurgency, something the army had learned to do in the vietnam era. obviously we had to rapidly shift to the middle part of the last decade to learn how to do counter insurgency more effective and we did it during the surge of both of those wars. however, we've been 16 years in which we don't have an adversary with air power. it's understanding that army commanders fig

as the end of lee's army. but a significant portion of the army did not surrender at mathematics. -- at appomattox. what we make of the 20,000 men who failed to show up for whatever reason between april 9-april 12? what would happen to them? would grant's terms apply to them? nobody was sure. all of this, and it is important to keep in mind this is an evolving policy. changes are made as circumstances necessitated htem -- them. history is a series of action and reaction, and that is what is going on in the days after appomattox. on april 10, the day after the surrender, edwin stanton writes to grant, he is concerned about the troops, the confederates still in the valley in northern virginia. he said, what about those men? do the terms apply to them? he said, are we only considering "those under lee's mmediate command?" grant rights -- writes, the terms only apply to those men who were with lee on april 9, but in fact i want the war to end, so i will generously extend those terms to anyone in the army. grant wa

now that same winter, the american army, george washington's army, was encamped about 20 miles west of philadelphia. british army had taken the rebel capital of philadelphia and was, you know, hoping to split off philadelphia and the northern colonies from the southern colonies and the rebellion. washington's army marches into valley forge. like i said, about 20 miles west. this is actually a pointing. will be very recognizable to people. it's probably one of the most iconic images of the american revolution. it was painted after the civil war. so that's about a century later as a commemorative work. very evocative of the date, december 19th, 1777. as washington's army marches along the golf road into its winter quarters at valley forge. and a couple of the objects i have here would have been witnesses to that winter encampment. the first is a pair of silver camp cups here. if you can see them. and these pass down through the washington -- through relatives of general washington. who had this "w" engraved on them later. and the legend camp cup owned and used by general washington durin

>> when the army comes in, that helps. because there is a level of respect for the army. number one, they are about 30% african-american. they're much better trained. they are not shooting every innocent person. so the army helped the calm -- to calmo -- helped things down somewhat. then of course, the community, some of the community leaders had been working for a while to get things calmed down. so you had kind of a convergence of the army and the respect for the army and their ability to be well-trained, and tanks coming down the street also helps to get people off the street when you see tanks coming down. and do some community leaders began to help focus the community in a different direction. people should know that none of these things happened in a vacuum. these uprisings, these rebellions -- some people call them riots -- they don't happen in a vacuum. there are decades of history. so knowing about those five days is important, but knowing about the five decades that preceded those five days is even more important. knowing about the legacy of racism and mistreatm

nonetheless, the army comes through. most of the army gets through, they fire at the motion gathered here. the militia fighters back. you have what is commonly referred to as a running battle. from this location all the way back to charlestown, you have this title that will take place. at the end of the day, as the 700 soldiers make their way back to lexington, really soldiers will gather with panicky soldiers at this location. in the meantime, local forces continue to build in size and strength. by the end of the day, approximately 4000 colonial soldiers are starting to descend upon the soldiers of the king who are now retreating back to boston. the battle that will take place from this point all the way back to boston will claim the lives of at least 300 british soldiers. that is killed, wounded, and missing. whereas the colonial forces only had about 93 killed, wounded, or missing. this is the beginning of the siege of boston, the beginning of the american revolution. because of the bloodshed that took place on both s

army systems are harder to get your hands around. the nature of a brigade combat team is harder for the army, for a layman to get his or her hands around as well. but the point we've made to our colleagues, i know there are some wargames after the some of you probably seen, is that absent much greater and quicker investments in the readiness on front in, modernization in the medium-term, that will no longer have overmatch against countries like russia in the european theater. and any effort or any kind of major mechanized war on land which in and what he says will never be fighting on, we do fighting on land everywhere, we fighting about land everywhere, would pose serious risks to our soldiers and to our national security. it's a harder case to make on a layman storms and is for the air force and the navy but it's an urgent case to make. >> why don't we get a few more? we will start with sydney and keep your hands up and i will get a few more. >> hi, sidney freberg from breaking defense. to address both the large and odorous elephan

army marine corps. got ahead of everybody an we develop the doctrine, which drove everybody else to develop it -- and many ways became a -- substitute nor gnarl security strategy and fill a national security vacuum and never designed to do that but a operational manual. pulling it a way that not a strategy. and it got oversold that respect john criticism of accurate coin was oversold is not an end coin is a way to achieve an engtd and somebody else has to set up where ends are. as i say on here most important decision is made by politicians and voters not generals. they set them. military had no say in iraq or afghanistan and form of government or who was going to lead it. clear hold and build takes a lot of time, resources with need to provide lower resource ways to successfully execute coin and we did not. the other big maybe the biggest mistake made was assumption that goal of the host of the nation of leaders supporting the same as ours. and we found them both in iraq and afghanistan that is not tru