 We will start in about a minute. Please find a seat. And if folks could squeeze in the middle, if there's an empty seat in the middle, move to it, please. Make sure all cell phones are in silence. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Happy Wednesday. How's everyone doing? Thank you for joining us today for Family Forum 4, the Army Senior Leaders Town Hall. And thank you also to the Washington Tattoo. They were amazing. I hope you got to hear them. So let's give them another round of applause. Today our sponsor for Family Forum 4 is the Wounded Warrior Project. They have been our sponsor for this town hall for several annual meetings, and we are so, so grateful to your enduring support. A special thank you to Lieutenant General retired Mike Linnington for his partnership with the USA and for being a great supporter to family readiness and all our soldiers and our families. So sir, would you and your team like to please stand? We would like to say thank you. At this time, we would like to recognize the AUSA Volunteer Family of the Year. The annual award recognizes an exceptional Army family whose dedicated volunteer service promotes the well-being of soldiers and their families and improves their local community. So I don't know if you know this, but to be considered as the AUSA family of the year, you can only be nominated through the local AUSA chapter. So if you want to nominate next year, make sure you do that through our chapters. The Volunteer Family of the Year program is sponsored by Veterans United Home Loans. And at this time, I would like to invite Sergeant Major retired Edison Rebuck of Veterans United Home Loans to join me on the stage to present this year's award to the family. So this year's award goes to the Shipley family, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Jody Shipley, his wife, Emily, and their three children, Grace, Gage, and Haley. They were nominated from our AUSA Central Texas chapter and are also the 2023 volunteer family of the year for Fort Kovosos, Texas. So would the Shipley family please join us on stage? The Shipley family embodies the phrase family readiness. In the past year, the Shipley family has logged more than 1,000 hours, supporting several events and organizations. This includes more than 560 hours supporting the troop battalion soldier and family readiness group. Thank you. In serving the unit that has more than 600 soldiers in a hospital that employs more than 2,000 Army civilians and their families. The Shipley's also spent more than 360 hours volunteering and supporting many events at the Memorial Christian Academy, at the Memorial Baptist Church, the Killeen Food Bank, and the Garden of Hope, which is a shelter for children entering the foster care system. They are known for making a difference every single day in the lives of everyone they meet through their selfless service and working together as a team, truly inspiring for all of us. So, Shipley family, it is with heartfelt gratitude that AUSA and the family readiness directorate, along with the Veterans United Home Loans, presents you with our token of appreciation to include a monetary gift. We also have another gift on the stage and also an internship opportunity for Ms. Shipley if she's interested in support of military spouse employment. So, at this time, it's our major rebuck and I would like to thank you Shipley family for your outstanding service, generosity, passion, and commitment to our military community. So, something new this year. We are introducing Mentimeter to encourage audience engagement and this adds real-time voting functionality to help guide the topics our Army senior leaders will discuss during the town hall. Attendees can vote for their favorite topics using the QR code from their smartphones and other devices, allowing the most popular areas of interest to rise to the top of the list. This technique not only engages the audience, but also provides valuable insight into the topics that matter the most to you. Now, at this time, I would like to introduce our moderator, Lieutenant General Kevin Burin. He's the deputy chief of staff of installations for installations G9. Lieutenant General Burin is the principal advisor to the Army senior leaders on installation policy, plans, and resources. And this includes housing, childcare, and other quality of life programs for all components. Installation, armories, and reserve centers serve as the Army's foundation and support for the readiness and well-being of soldiers, civilians, families, and soldiers for life. So, sir, thank you so much for agreeing to moderate this town hall and welcome to the stage, Lieutenant General Burin. Everybody's asleep, so, okay, good, it's a good way to start off. When you shoot the QR code, you will not get a menu, I hope. It won't, it won't reflect a menu. It'll, a food menu, that's what I'm talking about, so. All right, so good morning. Before I begin, I also, I want to thank AUSA and also want to recognize Holly for her work on these family forms. It's been a great week and the forms have been really, really wonderful. They provide a great opportunity to discuss important readiness issues facing our Army. Thank you for being a great partner, AUSA and Holly, and an advocate for our Army families. It is my honor to moderate this year's AUSA Army Senior Leader Town Hall. Army families make selfless contributions to strengthen our warfighters and the nation's defense. The Army is committed to providing the care, support, and services needed to ensure a ready and resilient Army. At this time, please give a warm Army welcome to our Army Senior Leaders. First, I would like to introduce the Honorable Christine E. Warment, the 25th Secretary of the Army. Honorable Warment is a senior official within the Department of Defense for all matters relating to the U.S. Army and has over 21 years of experience working in the field of national security and defense. Secretary Warment is here to provide an update on all the work the Army is doing to support soldiers and families. She is married to a retired Navy officer and they have two daughters. Ma'am, I've already cleared the road and there's no A.X. or anything, so they won't be throwing them. Skipper. Great. The 41st Chief of Staff of the Army, General Randy George, is also here to share his insights on his efforts to improve warfighting readiness and quality of life programs for our soldiers, families, Army civilians, and soldiers for life. I also want to recognize his wife, Patty, who's here and they have two children. All right. And the last but not least is the 17th Sergeant Major of the Army, Sergeant Major Michael Weimer. He brings his perspective. Wow, he's got some fans out there. Sorry, sir. Sorry. You can collect later. We'll see if that happens in 50 minutes. Yeah. He brings his perspective on soldier and family support and has a direct impact on Army readiness. He is married to Kimberly and they have two children. Army senior leaders, thank you for joining us today. Let's give him a round of applause. Okay, this is where it gets interesting, we'll see. Ladies and gentlemen, we will start the opening remarks from each of our leaders and then do something we've never done in this town hall before. So I will now turn it over to the Secretary of the Army. Great. Thank you, Kevin. Thanks for all of you for making the time. It is great to see all of you. This is, I think, the largest family forum we've had since I've been secretary. So that speaks to, I think, the level of interest in all of the things that we're doing to support our soldiers and our families, our civilians, our retirees, et cetera. I really try to make it a point when I go to visit installations to not just go see training, go see the motor pools, but also go see our CDCs, talk to our spouses, go and see a lot of our quality of life programs. It's one of the ways that I find is most effective for me to hear concerns about what kinds of things are on people's minds. And I've also spent a lot of time trying to look at housing and barracks. And I know that we have work to do. We are an enormous organization with an enormous inventory of housing and barracks. We have a lot of fantastic programs to help take care of families, to help families be resilient. And we know that there's always continuing work to do. But I think we've also done a lot in the last few years to make sure that we're supporting our soldiers and families. You know, we put a real emphasis on expanding the number of CDCs that we have. We've built, you know, I think six different new CDCs over the last couple of years, and we've got at least five more coming. One of the things we're really working on, and I'm sure this is something many of you have seen, is increasing the staffing at our CDCs. So we're doing that by, you know, raising what we pay our workers, giving folks 50% off for their kids if they come and work in the CDCs. We've tried to actually decrease the amount that families below $130,000 pay to have kids be in our CDCs. So we're really trying to get after that because I know childcare is a huge issue. And I know for me as a mom, that was one of the hardest things I had when my kids were young, was really trying to find childcare for them. We're also doing a lot to invest in barracks, to invest more in sustainment of our barracks. We continue to work with our privatized housing companies. And we're also really focused on spouse employment. And I think, you know, one win this year was finally getting the Italian government to agree that our spouses could work remotely, you know, taking jobs in the United States. So that's a win I'm really pleased about. So I just want to assure you that we are listening to your concerns. This will be a great event for us to hear more from you all. And just thank you again for being here. Okay. Good morning, everybody. Great to be here. First, I want to give a shout out to the Shipley family. And I think that kind of represents it's been my experience. We've got so many wonderful families in our army that are a great part of their communities. And I thank you guys for being such a great example. I've moved around several places, like many of you in the room, been to all different kinds of installations. I think you heard me talk about yesterday. I think that every installation is a little bit different. And one of my frustrations kind of growing up was that everything had looked the same all over the place. And again, if anybody in here has been to NTC, the National Training Center, they know that that's very different than Fort Wayne, right? So I do think that we have to take the mindset that we are looking at solutions that really serve our families locally and then have the ability to scale up where things are working. But it doesn't have to necessarily be the same everywhere we go. And I think we can do that more efficiently, provide better to do that. So I think that that's critically important. The other thing that's always been a frustration in the Secretary and I talked about this was we have a lot of really good programs that are out there. We're doing a lot. And oftentimes, it's hard when you show up at an installation, especially if you're brand new. And I'm looking around at all the people in uniform and you know what it's like to show up at a location and not necessarily know where to go. So how important that welcoming is when you show up someplace and being able to find the right resources. So hopefully, if you haven't done it, I know they're rolling out kind of what we're doing with the app. And we are going to build an app. I've had a couple of briefs on it. We gave them about 30 days, I think, to come up with something that would be really good. And we've got a couple of captains and some NCOs that are working on this from the software factory. And I think they're going to have a great solution. So I would invite you to look at it right now. It's just for we're doing it for Fort Cavassos. But it is going to be something that we that people are going to want to download. And I think that that's important. So you can have all the programs out there that are great. But if you don't know how to access them, you don't know how to find them, then that's very frustrating. The other thing that I think that we have to do and over the last two months that all of us have, I know the major army and I have been out visiting our troops. And whether they're in Europe or on an exercise in the Pacific, people are very happy to do their mission. What is frustrating oftentimes is predictability. People like to know what they're doing, when they're doing it, and have some level of predictability. So we may not talk about that in here specifically. But that is going to be one thing that we're, I think that we have to be laser focused on, is making sure that we have training schedules that are out. I know when I would show up at an installation, even if it was the summer, it wasn't 45 days and my wife was asking me, okay, can we make plans for the holidays? What's going on? And people want to know that. So I think that that's really important to quality of life. And the last thing I'll mention, and I know we're going to have a bunch of good questions, is every one of our installation has Army Family Action Plan. So I know I did this and I've been a senior installation commander at Carson and out at JBLM. And I'm encouraging everybody, and for all commanders out there, get your folks together. Get your soldiers and families together. Find out what's needed in your local community, what you're doing, and they need to do to help. We will take a lot of those. We take all those suggestions and we review this twice a year. General Piotz up here, he just did that this summer. And we're able to solve problems that are Army-wide. But a lot of those problems with those ones that can't be solved locally will come up here. And we want to help with that. Hey, everybody. Appreciate those claps out there. I'm not sure who that was, but thank you. Thank you. Now, this is an event that I know everybody looks forward to. And I'm going to be short and brief to get to the questions so we can start having some dialogue. But I have a very non-traditional 30 years of service myself. But I have a very traditional upbringing in the Army as an Army brat. Three tours overseas for a total of nine years. Lots of moving around. Three different high schools. I'm a product of Doty schools. And so I do feel confident to be able to speak in this space. But I also learned a long time ago to leverage the strengths that I have. And one of those is my wife. And I'm fortunate that she's really three quarters of team Weimer. She's been able to travel with Patty and the chief and I. And for those of you, that might be where the claps came from. For those of you that were maybe coming from Alaska or Kavassos from two of the most recent trips that you know, Ms. Patty and Kimberly are absolutely diving into a lot of what we're going to talk about today. And I think it's important for you to know that, you know, that is a priority for us. And that information goes directly to, you know, if Kimberly and I are on a trip separately to the chief and the secretary, if we're on a trip together, it goes straight back up to the secretary. I just think that's important for you to know. It's not just our perspective that's making it up this high. It's a spouse's perspective. And I know, having been in this uniform for a while, I have a different perspective than my spouse. And so I just wanted to share that and I look forward to the discussion. Great. Awesome. All right. So as Holly mentioned earlier, we will use an interactive presentation program called Minty for live polling to see what topics are out there and that are important for you today in this discussion. As we cover topics today, if you have a question in the audience, please write it down on one of the question cards and someone will come by and pick it up. We also have mic runners and they will run a mic to you if you want to ask a question in person. If you are attending virtually and you have a question, please use the live chat. We have incredible experience and expertise today and we look forward to the great discussions that we're going to have. So we're going to start with an icebreaker, a few icebreaker questions just to understand who we have here and get acquainted with this app, Minty. OK. All right. So are you attending virtually or in person? I hope you know where you are. OK. So I think we have a pretty good idea of where people are today. So hopefully the fire marshal doesn't. Yeah. I hope there's no fire cold. I think it's 500 though. We'll be good. OK. All right. So it looks like predominantly in person. So that's great. So it'll be some great live discussion here. And we do have folks virtually. I don't want to discount them as well. All right. The next question. Are you a soldier, family member, DOD civilian, contractor or other? OK. It will continue to populate. But I think right now it looks like we've got more uniform. We've got a lot of family too. Quite a bit of army civilians. It's great. So we kind of knows in the room. OK. All right. We'll let that continue to populate. The next question. Let's see the experience you have with AUSA. Let us know how many times you've been to our AUSA conference. Good. OK. It's still populating. All right. So we have predominantly soldiers here. We have the experience is pretty high. We've got quite a bit of family members as well. So all right. And we've got more people here in person. So all right. So I think we'll let that continue to populate. Now we're going to get to the first question, which is going to be, you know, again, input from you all in the audience. All right. What are your quality of life concerns that you would like our army senior leaders to discuss with you today? That barracks is. No shortage of topics. That's all on me and Omar. Awesome. That's a lot of topics. OK. All right. OK, so it looks like the. Yeah, OK, I have a good read, I think. I think we got the idea. I'm going to I'm going to be here for three hours. So I'm going to let the secretary start. I think we got a good feel of what was occurring there. It looks like, you know, so, Secretary, if you want to kind of talk about some of the things you saw in the middle, I think it was very spouse employment. Sure. Absolutely. So, you know, what I what I saw is sort of the big three were barracks, housing and spouse employment. So I'll start with barracks. You know, I think this is an area where we've really put a lot of time and money into and we will continue to do that. But as I said in my my keynote on Monday, you know, we're the service with the largest inventory of barracks. And we have a six and a half billion dollar backlog to really, you know, bring all of our barracks up to the kind of standards that we'd like them to meet and that's going to take some time. But we are making progress. We have been investing a billion dollars a year across all three compos in barracks, you know, mainly focusing on permanent party barracks, but not exclusively. The chief and the SMA and I are working as we as we put the finishing touches on the FY 25 budget that will send up to Congress and talk to them about in the spring. We're trying to, you know, increase the amount that we're spending on military construction for barracks. And we're really working and I think this is going to be important to be able to fully fund sustainment for our barracks. We have been sustaining our barracks at about 85 percent for the last few years. And I think if we're able to get that up to 100 percent, that will help us, you know, at least try to keep us from falling behind in some of those aging barracks. We're also really trying to work on improving our oversight, frankly, of barracks. You know, I'm sure many of you saw the various news articles about the recent GAO report, which was talking about the entire department, not just the army, but we're going to take all of those recommendations on board. We're having a barracks summit at the end of this month to really bring people together to make to talk about how we can improve our oversight. We did a survey of permanent party barracks, I think at five different barracks to try to hear from people what their concerns are. So we're doing a lot in that area to really try to make sure that our soldiers are living in the kind of accommodations that they deserve to live in and that we want them to live in. But I would also ask that you be patient with us because we do have a pretty flat budget and we want to make sure, obviously, all of our soldiers have the equipment they need, the training hours they need. You know, we obviously want to make sure that we're investing in salaries and all of the other things that we have to pay for. So, you know, we're not going to be able to solve everything overnight. One thing I will say as I shift to housing, something we are going to do, I think, is explore potentially a privatized barracks. The Navy has a privatized barracks. I don't know if that's what they call it out in San Diego. I think it's called Pacific Beacon. And we are talking about potentially doing something like that starting at Fort Irwin. There's a lot of issues potentially with privatized barracks. That would be a big shift. But it's something we're looking into because it may work in some places. It may make sense for us. On privatized housing, you know, again, we continue to work with our privatized housing companies to try to make sure that we're increasing our inventory and maintaining our inventory. One thing we've really been focused on when I've talked to CEOs of those companies is pay attention. You know, make sure that you are recruiting and retaining a workforce that has a customer service attitude because, you know, we want to see improvements in responsiveness to maintenance orders. And I think in the communities that I've visited, for example, I was at Fort Leonardwood not too long ago, I did generally hear that work order and responsiveness times are improving. So that's something that I think is a good thing. I'll just stop and kick it over to the Chief and the SMA. But spouse employment, this, I'll be honest, is one of the things, you know, in my tenure where I, you know, we still have work to do on spouse employment. Trying to help create more options for that. We're really looking at, you know, what can we do with direct hire authorities? We have the My Career Advancement account that gives up to $4,000 for spouses who want to get educational opportunities. I think we've got over 1,300 spouses who have taken advantage of that. But one of the things I'd like to see us make more progress on is getting states to actually implement the law that Congress passed saying basically that your professional licenses should be transportable to any state in the country. And we've seen, frankly, uneven implementation of that. So that's something I think we need to really continue working with governors all across the country to get that law implemented. Okay. I'm just going to add to what the Secretary talked about so the other thing that we need to do is to increase and this gets to oversight but also just helping us generally on our installations is our Department of Public Works have been cut, I think in some cases, too much our engineers. The people that do some of the oversight that start to do the future planning, we've gone through some of these budget drills in the past. So the other thing that we've asked everybody to look at and I see General Jones is right up here shaking his head up and down is what do we need to do to increase, get the right expertise at our installations to make sure that we are doing the right things by our housing, our barracks and all of that that they oversee. The other thing that and the Secretary and I were talking to some professional staff members last night, I think we have to take a look at the rules to be more efficient. There are a lot of rules that we are implementing in, you know, for our dollar doesn't go as far I think as it could because there's a lot of restrictions on how we have to, you know, we have to spend our money and what we have to do and so we are going to be part of that conference that we're doing here later and we're getting with the Corps of Engineers with the installation management command is to see what we can do to go back and ask for some relief on that with Congress. And I'll give you another example that from I was just out of JBLM and we have SHPO is another one which I love historic sites but the Army has a lot of historic stuff out there and some people call it historic and some people call it old. I might be in the latter category and so we spend a lot of money to try to upkeep stuff that, you know, to fit a certain requirement and I think that our money could go a lot further, we could do a lot more so I think we have to look at that. On spouse employment, the only other thing I would add is that and this gets to getting information out. I think since 2019 and we have spouse licensure reimbursement across the Army I think we've only given out to like 800 spouses in four years. So there is a process out there to do that and we just got to make sure I know that there's been a lot more than 800 spouses that have, you know, gone through the licensing process and we, you know, have something in place to reimburse them but they're not taking advantage of it. So we got to do better at getting the information out. If there's other problems with that, let us know what that is but I think that's a big benefit. And the secretary mentioned, you know, state to state, we don't control what each individual state does as far as licenses being good in each state but trust us we are talking here on the hill to, you know, the congressional members and then I also encourage all the installation commanders out there and Sergeant Majors to talk to their local because that's really what will make a difference. Really the only thing I'll add on there on the barracks is we're getting ready to do the barracks summit which is, it's a big event for us and we're going to be talking about quite a bit about this, one on the sustainment side but also on what is, what are new barracks, what should they look like in the future? You know, a barracks is a place where cohesive teams should be built. A barracks is a place where we should know our squad mates and so we're getting ready to get after that. I look forward to that, sir. I see MCOM G9 and AMC is all part of that and that's a piece to this also because every dollar that the secretary referenced that we're going to increase in sustainment and that we're going to put into future milcon for barracks, we got to make sure it's right. Okay, we got the mic in the audience. Good morning, Madam Secretary. My question is in recent years we've received much needed pay increase and BAH increase to counter the cost of living. However, as soon as those pay increases are announced, the surrounding community increases the cost of living and the rent and the last year my rent has gone up and matched every single BAH pay increase so it has made no difference to my yearly income. My question is, is there anything we're going to put in place to protect service members as they get these pay increase to counter the cost of living so that we can actually not live paycheck to paycheck anymore? Do you want me to? Sure. You can start. So I don't worry what installation are you at because I mean it sounds very similar. I was at JBLM, that was a big problem out there. It was when I was out there at the first core commander, it was the property out there was the number one property market in the country and I don't know if. Sir, I'm currently stationed in Fort Carson so the Colorado Springs surrounding area. And I was the installation commander there as well so I'm very familiar with that. So I think there's a couple of things. We talk about this all the time and one of the things that I did up at JBLM. So I think this is to your larger question, you know, some of this is capitalism and it's very frustrating to us when you go out there when they're facing inflation and so everybody's looking at the same thing. So one of the things that we've just discussed because it happens at different locations is, is there a way that we could give a tax break to people who rent to the military that it might be a way that we could do that that we could keep the cost down? I don't have anything specific to you right now because we don't control all the people out there that have housing and you're, you know, out there competing with everybody else for a house and I think that that is a challenge. The other big thing that I noticed when, like at JBLM, for example, when you're looking at rent was credit checks were a challenge, where you were going to live. So we stood, we actually hired some real estate experts out at JBLM, set up a specific office to help people when they were coming in and we tried to find military friendly renters and so what we would help them with is getting the right people. They knew that soldiers and their families coming in were going to be, you know, take care of their place and they could have, you know, consistent renters that were in there and then we were also able to reduce a lot of the credit checks because that, so credit checks is, was typically a problem out there and I don't know if that's still a problem out at Fort Carson but that was one of the problems is you go to different locations and weren't able to get the house and then whatever you had to put, we also had challenges with how much did you have to put down as a deposit. So I think that there's ways that we can do that. The only other thing that I'll mention is, and I did this out at Joint Base of Lewis-McCord, was you can do out of cycle BAH. You actually put it in and say, hey, we need to do something, the price is gone because we do this DOD wide and the last thing I'd mentioned just to everybody, I constantly encouraged when the housing survey came along was getting everybody to take the dang survey and make sure that they were inputting the data and talking about the real costs and what locally, what our DPW was doing was there were certain areas that we knew people didn't necessarily want to live because of the neighborhood taking those out of the survey area as far as what the cost was in the local area. So it's a pretty complex, there's more to that formula. I'm looking over at General Jones. I don't know if you wanna add anything to that as I think I got most of it. I'm sorry, I wanted to add to your point, the senior commanders, as they designate those neighborhoods where our families are actually living, making sure that's where we're getting the data so it really reflects that true cost and impacts the families. But those garrison teams will do that to support the senior commanders and make sure that it's reflecting as those BAH rates are calculated, Mr. So there may be a cheaper place where the rent's cheaper right outside but it may be not where military families want necessarily to live. And so we wanna take that off of the survey and make sure that the cost is calculated and I think that that helps as well. I think the other thing we can do, as General George says, this is a little bit, the dark side of capitalism, if you will, because landlords are doing what is in their own interests and it is sort of, I call it kind of the housing arms race where you just have this escalating set of increasing rents, for example. But so I think what we need to be doing is at our level here nationally, the chief and the SMA and I need to be talking to members of Congress, to the members who sit on our oversight committees and highlight this issue to them and our garrison commanders and our senior commanders out at installations need to be talking to the mayors, to their congressional delegations because one of the things we do when we decide where to increase our force structure, for example, we've got a lot of new capabilities coming into the United States Army in the next few years and we're deciding where to put them all around the country and we do something called military value analysis where we sort of look about where do we have enough space to do training but we also look at community value analysis, how supportive are the communities around our installations and that's a way for us to put a little pressure, frankly, on some of the property owners is to work with the business community and the local authorities to say, hey, if you all are constantly raising rates every time we raise BAH, that's not supporting us and frankly it's just making it harder for everyone in Colorado Springs to be an affordable place. So I think that's something we can be doing maybe a little more of is to kind of highlight this dynamic and show how it's in kind of all of our interests collectively to bring a little bit of a stop to that. Awesome. Okay, I think we have another mic. You can direct your question to one of the Army Seniors, if you like. Good morning. For families like mine enrolled in EFMP, we've seen a lot of changes in the program in recent years but when the quality of life initiatives came out for all Army families this year, we realized that we were left out of the topic in every single one of those. Our families experience all of those issues for different reasons and so the question we have is what's being done to address the specific needs of EFMP families within the quality of life initiatives. Yeah, what a nice start with that. We know that there are a lot of challenges for our families who are in the EFMP program and we are trying to better support that program. I'm sure you're familiar with the EFMP system that we put in place to try to sort of make it easier to be in the program. One of the things we're doing is creating an office at headquarters to really try to help oversee that and make it more customer friendly. I think we very much wanna support folks who are part of that program in the best way possible so if there are specific areas where you feel like we're not meeting your needs, we wanna hear about those. I will say that one of the challenges I think we're facing that touches us across the board on healthcare is the shortage of just healthcare professionals, whether it's behavioral health or other kinds of doctors, nurses, medical specialties and because of those shortages, I think it is creating cases in some places where families who are enrolled in the program may not be able to be assigned whereas they were five or six years ago but what's changed is the availability of providers sometimes has decreased in the last couple of years so I think that's a particular challenge that we've gotta work through but it's a national one. And that's one that's come up on a couple trips we've been on and we've gone straight back to our G9 teammates to feedback on the app and feedback from families but also the providers trying to figure all that out so it hasn't fallen off. I mean that's the main thing I want you to know. Matter of fact that was a month ago we were having this discussion. I would be interested just maybe not for now is what feedback you had on the app because one of the other things that we said was hey some people had some trouble working with it so to the secretary's point, you know specifics and then hopefully we could get that also on the app so that we can deal with those things when they come up. Okay we have another question from the audience state your question and directed one of the ASLs, thanks. Good afternoon, good morning, ma'am, sir, sir, major Lieutenant Colonel Bonner Army Reserve, AGR. So my question has to do with homeschooling families in the military. And so those of us that choose to do that in PCS a lot you find that every state has different rules on how you can homeschool your children and sometimes in some locations you can't at all. And so what I'm asking is for the Army or DOD to look at something that helps soldiers navigate that prior to either getting PCS orders or getting to that state and realizing that they can't educate their children consistent with their culture or in religious traditions over. Thanks for that question. I know that frankly the population of families that homeschool has really grown in the last few years and as a matter of fact my husband were a second marriage but my husband's kids were homeschooled and he was a Navy officer and I know they had some challenges. I think that's something we should take back. I don't know General Vareen whether you have more to say about how we can make sure that we're getting information out for our soldiers and families about states different approaches to homeschooling but I think it's something we should look into because again I know that the number of people in this country who are homeschooling for whatever reasons has grown significantly. Right, no ma'am, absolutely. We'll take that one on, we do know since COVID I mean schooling has significantly changed and so we do have a enormous amount of families I think that are doing that now and not gonna put them back into normal schooling and that's fine but that's one I think we can take and we can kind of work with you so if you can just make sure to connect with either me after the session I'll be interested to get your details so thanks. I'm just gonna, I wanna add this is one, again what you're asking about is information and so one of the things and this will be helpful feedback if you could provide that. Like I mentioned earlier on the app and there's the big schools is obviously one of the big buckets when you're moving that you wanna know about whether it's homeschooling or something else because in my experience raising our kids and they had three different high schools every time they moved it was this, you had to know you have to take this history before that and we went through that at every location so I think what we need to do is provide wherever you're moving and I've had the discussions already this needs to be the same for compo two and for compo three where you're at when you're moving to make sure we have that local information so we'll have to tailor that specifically not just to installations but across all three compos and we're talking about that already. All right, cards, mics in the room. Okay, oh okay I'm sorry back in the back. Right in the middle. Hi, thank you. Karen Routicelli with the Military Officers Association of America, I have a question about TriCare. TriCare was a key component of the compensation and benefits package that sustained the all volunteer force over 20 years of war. Over the last several years we've seen several cuts to TriCare including fee increases and decrements to access such as the recent pharmacy network cut and we are concerned at MOA about the potential impacts here not only on readiness, operational readiness, family readiness, but also on recruiting as military families and retirees who are being hit with one decrease to the next on the TriCare benefit become less likely to recommend military service to current and future generations. We know that the Defense Health Program budget has been under considerable pressure and so the question is what can we do to protect this benefit to make sure that commitments are fulfilled to those who've served and that the benefit is there for future generations. Thank you. Thanks for that question Karen and if we have someone from our Surgeon General's office they might be able to give you more details but I think healthcare benefits obviously are a huge issue and one of the things that I think we really need to work on with DHA is making sure that we have as many providers as possible around the country who accept TriCare. I think one of the biggest challenges we have is the number of providers who are accepting TriCare is going down in some areas. So that's something we need to work on. You know I will say we had a big meeting, Secretary Austin chaired a meeting a couple of months ago looking broadly at the military health system and General Crosland who I think some of you may have been able to talk to earlier this week at a smaller family forum, she was there and actually I think from a recruiting perspective the healthcare benefits that we offer through TriCare are still very, very competitive with private sector insurance if you will. We have a lot of data that shows how TriCare stacks up compared to civilian care and as someone who frankly has spent most of my life on the civilian side of health insurance, the grass is not greener I will say. There are a lot of challenges on the private sector side as well. So I think we do need to focus on making sure we are vigilant and shore up our healthcare system but I think it's quite competitive with a lot of the private health insurance companies. I think we have Secretary General. Go ahead. Secretary Warmer. I'm Brian Lyon I'm General Crosland's deputy who does a lot of the stuff and responsible for the TriCare health plan. So you're correct. We've had lots of changes to the TriCare health plan, the TriCare dental plan, the TriCare pharmacy plan that have all come out from congressionally directed requirements. And so we have to answer to Congress on that. I fully agree with Secretary. We have to get more people into our hospitals, doctors, nurses, physicians, and we're working aggressively on changing some of our title authorities so that we're competitive with the VA so that we're not just held to title 10 responsibilities but we're actually able to hire and compete with the VA because the VA can pay their doctors and their nurses and their technicians more. So getting that same authority to us to be able to hire people immediately out of school and to pay them more to have them work within our military treatment facilities. Since COVID happened, a lot of private insurance insurers no longer except TriCare. And so around many of our, even our large places like Fort Cavassos and Fort Liberty, the numbers of people that actually accept TriCare have gone down. And so what we're seeing is increased length of time to get appointments out in the civilian sector. How we're trying to answer that is obviously bring in more people within the military treatment facility but also using a lot more virtual appointments. So not everybody needs to be seen face to face. And so by expanding our virtual capability either real time or they put in a consult and they'll be seen asynchronously where we can answer the question or the doctor can actually talk to the primary care provider, the nurse practitioner, the PA that's taking care of them to answer the question so that they don't have to get referred out. And so we're establishing virtual care networks across the Department of Defense to be able to get after some of those things. And I hope that helps answers your question. Okay. Okay. We're gonna go back to the far back here in the corner. Well, panel, I really would like to have like a question like importance question in a form of comment. It's very seducing to take care of the material part of the quality of care because it's used or it requires a huge budget. But I recall the Honorable Christine last year saying about how a strong resilient trained army is essential. So what is the focus on the mental health and the aspects of I would say mind resilience. I have been volunteering for the last 15 years out of Kuwait, the Association of the US Army. And I can see appreciation of even volunteered resilience programs done in the installation. So in other industries like finance, there are 60% that don't admit that they are subject to one way or another from mental illness. It's a taboo and I think the army is the most significant in the world, especially the United States. So I would volunteer in resilience programs myself and I would like to know your take on that. Thanks so much. Sure. I'll say a couple of things and I know General George has strong feelings about resilience and the SMA does as well. One, our Health and Holistic Fitness Program puts a lot of emphasis on building resilience for our soldiers and I think we've seen some really powerful results from that program and we're actually trying to expand our investment in the health and holistic fitness sets that we've been bringing into the force. The second thing I would say is a lot of our installations have resilience programs. Like I was at Fort Riley earlier this summer and they have a program called Operation Victory Wellness that is really aimed at physical wellness, mental wellness, building resiliency and again, they've seen very positive results. They've seen an actual measurable decline in harmful behaviors at Fort Riley, whether it's prevention of suicides or fewer DUIs, fewer domestic violence incidents and I know we have other installations around the country that have programs like that so I think they are really important. Yeah, first we love volunteers so I heard you say you're gonna volunteer so we'll sign you up right after this but I think the other thing too, I always start with units that are out doing their unit mission and training together and doing tough realistic training. I think that that builds resilience and doing those kinds of things and we have statistics generally bear that out when they're out and they're communicating directly, they're not on their phones and they're doing the things that they're doing which I think is important and obviously critical to us as Army to make sure we maintain readiness. The other things that we look at and again this gets back to the programs. A lot of times when people have challenges their relationship challenges or their financial challenges and I like to tell everybody I'm thankful that when I was a private that I didn't have to buy a really expensive phone and have the ability to sign up for Hulu and YouTube and all those other things that I know are very tempting out there but financial things as well because I think that that presents challenges in people's lives so you kind of mentioned it in your question I think health and holistic fitness is a broad approach to things and it starts in the units and again we want to tailor that it's different at Fort Irwin on what they need and the gyms and the things that are there and the food that's available and all of that that we tailor it to each individual location and it's the same thing with being able to provide healthcare that all changes depending on what location that we're at so. Great. Yeah the only thing I'll add on that and I know the secretary and the chief are passionate about this and we were just down at Moore I mean it's unfair to assume that all the soldiers coming in right now are coming in with some of the same backgrounds that we had and so you know that onboarding that the chief was referencing a couple questions ago that really begins at first contact with a recruiter then the map station and then when you board the bus or the plane and you go to your basic and AIT and we're leaning into adding some life skills training in there and they're already doing this we're just gonna lean into it a little bit more because it's a bad assumption to think that every soldier to the chief's comment on managing your finances has the same level of knowledge came into the Army with that so we're leaning into that across the Army to build some resiliency before the life stressors that we know are inevitable because that's life so that's one thing we're also doing instead of just waiting because again resiliency starts left way left, right? You wanna be good at 12 mile road march you better start road marching way left it's very similar in this space. Right, so we're gonna just make one quick change I'd like to, there's some great topics and it looks like we talked about schooling, try care, spouse employment some of our medical challenges and holistic health and fitness so let's see what the next question here meant to you and we kinda get some audience participation if we can do that, maybe Drava. Okay, all right, so when you discuss as a family whether you continue to serve what impacts your decision most and we're looking at this, I gotta go to the big screen. Sure, brought my glasses. I did bring my glasses, I can't see it. Okay, looks like salary and operational tempo. Okay, Army Senior leaders, you wanna talk about one of those? Yeah, I'll start, so first, on the salary side maybe I'll, I know the Sergeant Major's Army has been involved with this with the Quadrennial Defense Review so that's in progress right now of taking a look at what we're gonna do and I know there's been costs of living increases based on inflation over the last couple of years but they're looking at that holistic, I wanted to, I'll talk a little bit about the operational tempo thing because I think that that's critically important and it does, and that's been my experience as well and it's one thing to be doing your mission. It's another thing, oftentimes operational tempo is not just deployments, it's how long are you in the field, when are you at home, what are the other things that you're doing and so we are focused on that. What are the, what are, and I said this yesterday at the Eisenhower lunch and been talking to leaders throughout the Army what are the things that we're doing that we shouldn't be doing that are taking time away from being home. There's several of those I can give that I mentioned yesterday with how much we're maintaining vehicles as an example or how much you have to look after your equipment. We have 100 captains, NCOs for sergeants and warrant officers that we are meeting with today. We pose this specific question to them on Monday. What specifically should we take a look at? What is causing, what is taking your time? We obviously have to train for our mission. We're going to continue to do that. The Army is in high demand and that's been the case for many years but what are the things that we can reduce and then we also have to look at, we do have to learn to say no on certain things and that's exercises. We are looking at how we can line up exercises better so that we can get after, let's say you're doing a CTC rotation and a war fighter and all those things that line up. So I think there are things that we can do to get after operational tempo. Besides what we're going to get back from the company commanders and first sergeants that we're talking to today, this is a topic that we're asking all of the leadership to come back to us when we have our professional forum here in about two months. The only thing I would add to that is predictability and the chief spoke to this I think in the press conference that we all did on Monday is if we're able to give our soldiers and families more predictability, I think that helps with the operational tempo piece and I know I was struck when I first became secretary a number of our four star generals and three star generals that talked to me said that training management was a skill that some of our more junior officers weren't as proficient in as when they were at that level earlier in their careers and I think over the long years of the global war on terror that wasn't something that we spent potentially quite as much time on so I think really making sure that we're emphasizing the importance of training management to try to give our soldiers and families as much predictability as we can give in what is unfortunately a pretty unpredictable world right now and some of that is inherent in the job of the United States Army to protect this country there's some unpredictability but we want to do everything we can to give as much as we can. I actually appreciate you saying that Madam Secretary because again the op tempo piece it's a tough one right again I'll be a little careful here there's no such thing as utopia in this space because of the unpredictability of the world right now and I think it's important that families need to understand that that's part of our journey here in the Army we also are charged with being able to fight and win anytime the nation calls upon us at night I spent a lot of time not deployed but on reverse cycle training at night so I was actually sleeping at home when my family was you know it is tough it is really tough I think the predictability that the chief was referencing is what my family wanted even with a tough training schedule prior to deploying prior to what we knew during the global war on terror as a traditional deployment that gave us certainty that gave my daughter some certainty we could plan around that and that's the training management thing I think that the Secretary is referencing we're crashing hard on that coming out of COVID we absolutely are we've picked up how much training we're doing because we came out of COVID we knew we needed to get after it and so you're going to hear a bunch of that you're actually going to hear some of that in the next in my forum this afternoon with force.com and TRADOC about training management and how we get after this but I really think the piece that's critical for the family and the soldier is the predictability but it will change and I think it's important for us to be honest about that okay we have a card okay up front go ahead good morning Melissa Kreitzer I am an Army veteran I am a Army civilian professional of 28 years and I'm a proud Army spouse we have a very strong forum at each installation called the Commander's Ready and Resilient Council this is a forum for change allows us to elevate our issues our concerns and amplify all of the great things that we're doing at each installation the problem I see is and this is different from each place we go there is not enlisted or spouse presentation at these forums and these are the voices of our enlisted soldiers these are the voices of our spouses to get after these things that affect our readiness things like spouse employment talking about maybe dedicating some of these huge vacancies at these installations to military spouses so that we can have smooth transitions so that we can eliminate the vacancies and then we can have our spouses investing in our community and our community investing in our military families things like EFMP where we have spouses that are ready to go out there and pound the pavement and go and see which one of these providers are interested in receiving tricare there's several SFRGs that already go out and do this in their communities and the soldiers they want to go to these warrior restaurants but they want to go there and be able to access Wi-Fi and a lot of these places don't have that so if we're wanting to bring them out not just to eat but to see each other and to look in the eyes of their battle buddies and see that they're doing okay we got to give them something that brings them there good food, Wi-Fi maybe a coffee bar, something like that bring it into the new age so that they can enjoy each other in a place to build those cohesive teams thank you I'll jump on that one first definitely going to jump on that one I think I just added R2C's Rating Resilience Centers to my list of things to go visit when I'm on trips I will take that one for action on the lack of enlisted what installation are you referencing? I actually don't say that that's unfair, I don't want to do that okay, thank you I'll take that one for action I'm pretty passionate about that one especially when I started off with my spouse's involvement and all that so I think that one's a space we could make some improvement in there because I do think they have a kit big time there I was going to ask you where you were coming from as well but decided not to but that was not my experience where I was at because we had all those people in the room and we're talking about that so my point is and I'm hoping that all the installation commanders and sergeant majors are listening to this as well that's exactly what you should be doing I don't really call it I've always had a problem specifically with programs because you don't need a program to tell you that you've got to bring your whole community together and start talking about how to make your community family stronger soldier stronger and all of those things and sometimes with programs that come up like you mentioned with CR2C we can start doing briefs that become more compliance based with hey what are you doing and they're from up here and you have something very specific that you need at your installation so that's what we are doing right now building cohesive teams is what we're chairing up at our level and what we would like to do is hear from communities what do you need specifically so that we can provide you the funding and let you prioritize the funding and it's not a program from up here we're giving resources to make sure that you can have the right program because it is a little different as you said at every one of your installations there's over 300 programs in the Army and on the people side and I don't even want to tell you how many there's a lot of zeros and in my experience when I would go out to different locations some of those are really working well and some of them not so much but if we're directing them from up here then you know they're operating but they may not be doing what you want at your local level so I think that's the kind of feedback that I was talking about with the Army Family Action Plan and getting together and we'll rev that up and make sure that we're getting that I did just want to add on dining options in particular that is something that we're trying to work on a couple of things you know one we're trying to bring in more sort of flexibility and more options for our soldiers using things like food trucks or kiosks and barracks so for example I was at Fort Wayne right quite a while ago and I saw some really great kiosks right there in the barracks which is particularly important when the weather gets as cold as it does in Alaska we're also trying to give meal prep options at DFAC so that soldiers can go in and actually get something to go that they can then microwave later in their barracks recognizing a lot of our soldiers have unusual hours and then we're also trying to do some pilots looking at making some of our warrior restaurants look more like what you would see on college campus college campuses you know where you can just go to take your card and sort of swipe it at different kind of you know different food choices for example so we're going to run a few pilots there and I think you know Wi-Fi and the DFAC that's the kind of thing we need to be thinking of because they are if done right an opportunity to bring soldiers together and contribute to building that cohesiveness and helping our soldiers form relationships and the key piece there you said it's different in each installation so AMC is working a bunch of different options to ensure that the installation commanders that IMCOM you know assists have what they need based off the footprint in the tenant units that they have there okay all right we've got a question here up front good morning I'm a gold star spouse as well as a spouse of a retired soldier first I would just wanted to say thank you the opening ceremonies when you mentioned casualty the way that it used to be I can you know firsthand say how far it's come being a member of the survivor advisory working group for the army so thank you for everything that you've done over the years one of the things that we've discussed is if a service member passes away and the family is okonis there is that one move first of all their visa essentially expires because their sponsor passes away and their visa expires within about 90 days that may not be able to be changed but the pcs portion of it where their bluebark move that last move they're coming back to the united states for example not all of them but most of them are coming back to the united states and they can store their household goods and then move but we've looked at what it would be like to give them two moves right so that they can go temporarily to a home and then make that last bluebark move have you looked into that I'm not sure if we've looked at that specifically so I would ask again maybe our G9 or MCOM or IE and E if we've looked into that so G4 is somebody from G4 in ok go yeah he's standing up hey this is Major General Smith from G4 so we have not looked at that specifically but we will absolutely bring that into our transportation policy section to look at it right now for the last move for other categories they have up to three years to move but I think what you're mentioning right there nest very well with inside of our current policy so we'll absolutely take that on and provide you feedback thank you ok alright one card up front ok go ahead good morning my name is Masson on Careg I'm active duty I have a question that kind of approaches three of the main subjects unemployment our spouse unemployment retention and EFMP currently with the tricare contracts and echo nursing spouses or the primary care providers have to stay at home with the nurse and not authorized to go to work or to go to school so my question is whether or not there will be no nurses to be approved to provide care in military CDC's to provide options for working military families with complex children I think that's something we can look into I mean that's a very sort of specific set of circumstances Brian can you talk about that can you talk about that please get I'll be here afterwards I'll stay as long as I need to answer all the questions for medical care for that suggestion and so be more than happy to take a look at that and bring that back to the tricare program our EFMP program on this so I'll be over here at the end of the conference thanks ok alright ok let's right here where the card is from my name is Kevin Allen from Missouri S&T my question is about deployment rotations as the army shifts their focus back to near-peer conflict for the past 20-30 years we've had rotational deployments if we get into another peer-to-peer conflict do you think the army will be able to maintain rotational deployments or will we be forced to go back to indefinite deployments like that of World War II ok I'll take a shout at that big question obviously it would depend on I think we got it we would obviously have to be prepared no one wants that what we're out doing right now with all of our deployments our deterrence and assurance missions building up our network of partners and allies to our exercises and all of those things that's what basically peace through strength and continue to do that and make sure that we're ready but of course I could envision really bad scenarios where it would take the whole army and we would have to mobilize Compo 2 and 3 that's why they need to you know we have readiness for all of our compos for our total army and then to make sure that we're prepared to actually mobilize if that was going to happen so I think that as an army that's our mission that's what we have to be prepared for first and foremost for our country and that's what we are training to do what ROTC program are you in? Missouri S&T sorry I didn't hear that yeah okay awesome okay we're going to take a final question I think from the audience and then we're going to come back to Minty for the last one go ahead thank you I'm Charles Stewart I'm a technologist and a reservist I get to support our HRC Innovation Command both the secretary and the chief you talked about the difficulty of our soldiers and our families finding the information and the services that they need in real time so I'm going to ask my wife she'd rather deal with Comcast than try to find information from the army oof that hurts that hurts wow that would hurt but I believe I agree with you let's talk about the digital experience for our family members and soldiers how quickly and easily they can find what they need when they need it we haven't seen a lot of changes in those experiences and what we're planning to do okay I want to jump in on that this is all you the chief's new app it's not the chief's app we have soldiers working on this right now and they have interviewed hundreds of spouses soldiers at all different levels so that you get the same kind of user experience so for example if you're a soldier single soldier you don't need you may not care that much about child care or schools or whatever else and it will be individually tailored to you because we know the technology exists out there to do that so there's a QR code I'm going to ask I'm going to get your name afterwards and make sure that I get your feedback specifically on it you sound like a digital native but we are looking for feedback on this and they started about two weeks ago that's it less than that ten days and Tavia and James I don't know if they're in here are they in here? come on up here I think this is important because again we have a lot of resources in the army and we want to provide them it's just hard and people say hey I couldn't find this or we don't have this and often times we have it and if we don't have it at the army come on up here explain what you're doing Tavia and James yeah and where you're at explain where you're at also alright good morning Captain Tavia Clark product designer at the army software factory we have our team here product engineers Ben Hunter Igor and as well Chris Pauley and within two weeks ago like the chief staff at army said we got this problem said to a lot of personnel soldiers on the ground family members a big population of soldiers junior soldiers NCOs who was able to get that feedback and understand what are the problems that people really experience a lot of it was the quality of life problems and essentially a lot of stuff what we're speaking to getting the information ease of use tailor it to a solution that you're able to get the information upfront in real time that you're finding useful is important to us important to family members and so we have my army post where you fill out a QR code get the feedback to us so we can improve and iterate on it as we continue to build and develop so we had the toughest audience we did get a bunch of spouses together to give to look at this and so as an example one of the things that was really impressive to me is you want to know what the gate hours are and it'll actually show you the gate it'll show you what how much traffic is at the gate is the traffic backed up maybe you need to go somewhere else all of those things little simple things life easier when you're on an installation and it can be very tailored to when you're well you're coming new to an installation it will tailor the experience to you so these are a bunch of these are nerds I mean that in the most complex compliment nowadays it wasn't when I was growing up now everybody wants to be a nerd so super impressive what they can all do and put this together we are going to put this out and they're defining this and we just briefed all of the four star leaders and General Jones was in we are going to make this happen and it's going to come out to the army and we want your feedback on what else you need so let's hear it for these great army software faculty thank you good job nerds alright great awesome hey so we're going to do one final question I think we'll go back to Minty because this really is going to give us like our long range vision of what we're going to do and think where we are and where we need to go based on your feedback so as you can see I think those are the different areas that are moving now that we are looking at that you have interest in and you think the army should prioritize moving forward okay it's like a horse race it is it's almost like the NFC East when the commanders are moving up to the top so I knew I would strike a nerve alright okay so it looks like healthcare housing and barracks PCS moves childcare spouse employment they're all important I think we have a good list of topics I think we need to focus on when it comes to quality of life so we have just a few minutes left but I want to allow the army senior leaders to have some closing comments so we're going to start with sergeant major of the army sergeant major really quickly I mean these topics are incredibly important like I started off with I want to know when I'm traveling I want to know what's going on at each one of the installations and my wife's a big part of that and the sergeant majors I think it's important for you to know that the sergeant majors know this has a direct impact on readiness that's why your comment down here in the front kind of got me got me a little bit going and so I think this is a space coming out of COVID and coming out of the global war on terror a little bit we can make some headway here now that doesn't necessarily help with budget stuff that the secretary started off with but engaged leadership is being slightly intrusive that is truly what if you're not slightly intrusive you're not really as engaged as you think you are in this non-commissioned officer business especially when you reference barracks and housing knowing how the status of your soldiers barracks knowing the status of your soldiers housing the health care piece we're struggling on the health care piece but the non-commissioned officer should probably be first to know when somebody's struggling something with health care being cohesive that's being a good teammate knowing that and so getting that up is incredibly important I think some of the most informed meetings I've had were over lunches when we were traveling with the command sergeant majors from across the entire installations and the first sergeants because there isn't anything going on on an installation that a first sergeant does not know and so I just want you to leave here today none of these surprised us today we absolutely know they're important we absolutely know these are priorities and we're taking a look at each and every one of them now they're all they're all difficult or wicked is a good friend of mine would say they're wicked hard problems but they're righteous and so I just want to make sure you know that we care about these things Chief? Yeah the secretary brought out the budget and I always remind people that we all have personal budgets too you all take a look at it and go hey there's a lot of things I want I always give the example of having owned a house there's a bunch of things I wanted to fix but when the roof was leaking that's what I generally did that's what I fixed so I think we're taking a look at that and like the sergeant major of the army said there's not one thing up there that we don't want to get after I think what I'd be interested in if everybody leave here and we could collect something through the G9 is in a lot of areas that I look in here and I know DHA is working the healthcare but we need to look at things that don't necessarily require money but will make us better that our policy changes I mentioned some of those on housing and how we were able to build things with Milcon that we could make our money go a lot further if you know changing some of the rules we are you know one of the things that we have talked about and I know it's been looked at a long time what do we do to reduce PCS moves same thing on childcare I think that there's a lot and I know the G9 shop is known that I've given some specific tasks that there are things that we could do in that that I think that could make us better that are more that our own policies that our own things that we could maybe get out of our way a little bit that I think would help some of those so besides the money thing we have to look at those inside each of those areas because I think there's ways we can make ourselves better better I would just wrap up I think by saying I spent a lot of time with the army before becoming secretary of the army but a lot of what I saw was the army you know down range whether it was in Iraq or Afghanistan or other parts of the Middle East or in Europe you know I saw generally the pointy end of the spear and a lot of what I focused on as a result of that was sort of how does the army fit into the strategy what kinds of force structure does the army need what kind of new weapons systems does the army need and that's you know that's where the army gets a lot of attention in the press for example but since becoming secretary of the army I've had much more of an opportunity to see you know what happens at home what happens in garrison and to really deepen my communication for everything that families do to support our soldiers and that all that our DA civilians do to support our soldiers and families you know back here in the United States and I just want you all to know that you know whether it's health care or housing or child care we understand how important that is you know of course you all all of us want to have and need to have healthy families you know we need to know that we've got health care when we need it we need to live in quality housing and while you know a lot of the news coverage may be about the army's long range hypersonic weapon system you know we as leaders and all of the leaders across the army understand how important it is to take care of our soldiers and families and we are trying very hard to do that we are looking at it from a money perspective but as the chief said there are a lot of things that are not about money that we can do to help ourselves and these kinds of forums are terrific for us to make sure that we are focused in the right places and to bring to our attention some new things or some new concerns that we can maybe address so thank you all so much for joining us this morning. Alright let's give a round of applause to our senior leaders. Awesome. So at this time I'm going to welcome Miss Haleck to close out this year's Family Forum. Thank you Lieutenant Jenna Vreen for mentoring today's town hall and also for your leadership sir. So this is the end of our 2023 AOSA Family Forum series and your opportunity to provide us with your feedback. So we have an AOSA QR code up on the screen in the back and online for those of you who are online so please take the time to complete this quick survey. This is real important for your feedback that we can share with our Army senior leaders and if you complete this survey it will take you to our first digital swag bag so you can get all the resources that you heard today and throughout all the forums. On behalf of AOSA I want to sincerely thank Secretary Wormuth. Thank you and sir General George and SMA Weimer thank you so much for today's town hall but sincerely thank you for your continuous dedication and support to all our service members and our families. Thank you also for providing all of us the opportunity to be all you can be. To the senior spouses and distinguished guests thank you for your continuous support to all our military families and service members and especially our soldiers thank you for being you. I know that we are here for you we care and we're listening. A special shout out to our AOSA chapters especially Fort Leonardwood and all those who are having the watch parties for the town hall thank you for doing that this year. To the AOSA and Army staff that supported these forums throughout the week Thea Green and Kevon Green Brittany Reigns, Kaylee Spillman, senior fellows our new senior spouse fellows and Amy Rodick, thank you so much you are truly appreciated in executing and planning these throughout the whole year. Thank you to our incredible and dedicated planning committee we have a work group led by Misty Geiss from ArmyG9 AMC, MCOM, TRADOC, FORCECOM, MEDCOM, the Army National Guard and Army Reserve and other members of the Army staff they get together all throughout the year to provide you with these so at this time would you please join me and rise with I'm sorry I just lost my train of thought would you please join and rise with me as we thank and applause our Army senior leaders as they exit the stage alright thank you everyone we will see you next year