 I am fortunate to be joined by the Co-Chairman of the Executive Steering Group of the Future of Elections Lift Initiative. Mr. Jose Gonzalez is the Deputy Director of the Land Warfare Munitions Directorate in the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition Technology and Logistics. He's an engineer by training, began as a software engineer and worked a number of different Navy programs, joined the Office of Secretary of Defense about 13 years ago I think and has worked on a whole bunch of different high priority initiatives in that capacity and as I mentioned is is co-leading the Executive Steering Group for FVL. His Co-Chair is Brigadier General Gary Thomas. He's the Deputy Director for Force Management Application and Support in the Joint Staff at the J-8. He is a career aviator and trainer with both command and instructor positions to include at the Air Weapons and Tactics Squadron. He was the commander of the Second Mon Afghanistan and student of the Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course and then again back there with MOTS. He's a graduate of the Air Command of Staff College and of the National War College so maybe so that and has had assignments previously in the Joint Staff on the J-5 and at Headquarters Marine Corps Aviation. So has a really broad joint perspective on both the operational and training and instructor elements of roadcraft issues writ large. So one of his able-bodied assistants in this effort is Colonel Kevin Christensen. He's the Chief in the Force Support Division in J-8. He is responsible for the joint requirements for joint future vertical lift. He also has commanded at multiple levels and to include the attack recon battalion and an attack recon battalion in Iraq and was the brigade commander down at Fort Rocker responsible for aviation training for the Army. So again a great team with lots of different experiences and perspectives and so I will turn it over to you Mr. Gonzalez to kick it off and go down the line. If I could just make a few admin remarks briefly if you could turn off the ringers on your cell phones we appreciate it and we will be opening this up for Q&A when we get through these remarks. If people would like to tweet questions they can do so to our security dialogues to at CSIS sec SEC dialogue or you can email them to me at mleed at CSIS.org. So with those announcements. All right Dr. Lee Maher thank you very much for this opportunity and to CSIS as well. I see a lot of familiar faces some new faces but also some very good friends of mine and the audience here so thank you very much for for coming out to this. This is very important and it's an honor to have this opportunity to come and share with you all what the building BOD is thinking about in this future vertical of an initiative. It's very important as Dr. Lee mentioned there's often some misconceptions about some of the terminology. What we're doing here is very different than and then how we've done a lot of historical and traditional programs so it's very important to communicate our strategy and what we've got going on to the entire community of which industry small business academia our friends on the hill and everyone to really understand what we're doing. I want to start by saying from within the office of Land Warfare munitions I oversee a variety of portfolios from the munitions ordinance side to ground robotics ground combat vehicles tactical vehicles and then there's aviation and aviation was the newest to me when I when I took on took on board this job and I'm not qualified at a lot of things but one of the things I feel like I'm qualified because of this brought portfolio I'm able to do a compare and contrast between what some communities have going for them that others don't and I apologize if I repeat myself because I often talk about this when I when I talk to this community but if you bear with me here I want to talk a little bit about what I see the rotary wing vertical lift community its industry partners its operators have going for them but some of these other communities don't have and it's a room some you know some room for optimism as we step forward the first one is there's a long history and vertical lift and aviation is a very mature community strong reputation for producing world-class aircraft so I can go down the list the v-22s to the 53 k's to the black cox the patches and apologies if I leave any of your aircraft up but but we do have the world-class best helicopters in the world best and most adaptable adaptable operators and warfighters I have Colonel Ali Thompson out there 53 echo and she tells me all the time how it is she had to operate that that aircraft helicopters are not easy I'm a motorcycle rider so I'm used to hands-on stuff that's the way helicopters are you got that yes you have to work them so we do have the most the best of most adaptable operators and war fighters they take whatever aircraft we give them and they make it work we will always have an enduring operational mission need for rotor wing and I'll certainly defer to the general on that because he's a real true warfighter but I believe in a lot of the missions that we see ourselves doing we will always need the capability that the vertical lift brings to us a record of steady and healthy funding and I can speak certainly the armies had had a large budget in this area a lot of production dollars through the years so we've benefited from that we've got leadership attention on a rotary wing to include our Congressional members we've got a vision a strategy and plan we have a depth-sec depth approved strategic plan there's there's not a lot of communities that can say that have that and we do have that and it's in black-and-white written down and I'm a that's I want to share a little bit more about what that strategy talks about we have government and industry working together some of you all are part of the vertical lift consortia that's an opportunity where we've been able to share our strategies and get insights from industry academia small business through the formal section a four five OTA agreement that we have with the vertical lift consortia that's a huge plus we've got the services working together supported by OSD and joint staff so dr. Lee mentioned this executive steering group that's it doesn't end there we've got council for colonels we've got IPTs we have a full structure of joint military services working together up front and in this future vertical lift initiative we have a very hungry industry very competitive industry active yourself investing and you're pushing innovation and we really do appreciate that we have an active S&T component that's feeding the future of future vertical lift which you all know is a joint multi or the Army's joint multi role S&T project so we've got a very vibrant ongoing initiative that's helping develop technology that will help feed future FBL programs and then we've got in the area of Rotary Wing we get commercial military markets which really helps our our DOD vendors because you can you can leverage the commercial markets that we have in Rotary Wing so that's probably more time than I know dr. Lee wanted to give me on that but let me just let me just talk a little bit about why and what FBL is it if I can a lot of the why's why we need to have a future vertical lift initiative we've got an accelerated and aging force due to the of helicopters due to the op tempo regrettably we've had a significant amount of vertical lift losses both in lives and aircraft we've got escalating operational sustainment cost we've got a set of documented capability gaps from a 2008 CVA we see as the aircraft that we're producing today we see a sunsetting of those aircraft we see that we have some some concern in the area of industrial basin and what comes next after we finish buying the helicopters that we're planning to buy we do know that we have a significant development lead time for for something as major as a helicopter and then obviously we've got the challenges that the budget environment provides it so that's all the all of the reasons and there's many many more for what for why we needed to have a future vertical lift initiative now colonel Thompson helped me here there was a there was an ADM acquisition decision memorandum signed out by Ash Carter back in 2009 which really started the future vertical lift initiative and that got the services that that allowed us to engage and start up the consortia but it also got us working together as a community driven towards how do we meet some of those challenges that I talked about so there's six elements as a bubble them up and and Dr. Lee I'm gonna actually give you a card so a lot of you all see that I've got this little fancy little card I don't have cards for everyone but when I first took on job there was this huge strategic plan that was about this big and I asked my folks look how do I communicate what this big document says what what are the big nuggets here what is our strategy and I'll go through them very quickly and as we as I address questions I'm gonna frame it and in fact we run the ESG what we do is we go through each of the six elements and we talk about what are we doing in each of these areas and how we're progressing the state of the art in each of those areas the first one is a decision point based plan of execution and that's simply a roadmap we understand all of our aircraft across all of the services we understand what aircraft we have today and we clearly understand that they have a finite life we do like to stretch that life but they do have a life and clearly understanding that if the life of the aircraft ends here and we have a development cycle to either modify or or start in the air we do know we have finite time to start something so it's very deliberate very focused effort to understand kind of where all of our helicopters are across all of the services the second one is early joint requirements development and the general and current first gen it's in lead that for us but we've upfront deliberately are ensuring that the multi-service requirements are being viewed from a joint perspective and we're spending a lot of time early on to get those requirements right and that's those are requirements that will feed future military programs in the area of Rotary Wing the second one is that I'm sorry the third is the S&T plan that aligns technology development with milestone decision options again in order for the decision makers to be able to have clear decisions to make we need to be maturing the tech not the critical technologies in the right area in the case of of JMR JMR is doing that joint multi role is is advancing technology and that technology is being matured to help feed future vertical lift the fourth one we knew early on we weren't going to this build one helicopter that would do everything for every mission that would satisfy all sizes and all missions so we're envisioning up front a multi role family of aircraft those could be by weight class we've talked about light medium heavy ultra heavy we've talked about mission type so we're still formulating how we will structure but we do know we will have multiple aircraft the fifth which is very important us is common systems in open architecture and I hear a lot from us in terms of common alley how important it is not just from a logistics standpoint about how important it is for us to build commonality between those multi role family of aircraft and the last definitely last but not least is is having industry engaged with the government and doD from the start and again that's afforded to us through the vertical lift consortia but having you all as partners with us up front is extremely key to our future vertical lift strategy so I'm going to stop there and then Dr. Lee to probably turn over general thank you Dr. Lee just to just a few thoughts from from the joint warfighter perspective the first thing that I would say that makes me enthusiastic about future vertical lift in terms of an approach is the whole notion of interoperability as you look across the joint force and I you got many former and current you know operators in the audience you know I think we're better than we've ever been however there are still some gaps there when we tend to think of solutions we tend to think of a platform but I would argue that in in the area of interoperability particularly for example digital interoperability I think that we still got a lot of room for growth I can think of several recent experiences where we've got tremendous capabilities from different services who are working together on the battlefield but because they can't share that information because you know one particular system doesn't talk to the other one because they weren't made by the same OEM there's a tremendous amount of knowledge that we are not able to push out to the force because of those stove pipes future vertical lift as an approach gives us an opportunity to move the ball further down the field across this family of aircraft or family of systems rather the other point that I would make and it's related but it's also got the programmatic piece and Mr. Gonzalez has already touched on it that is the ability to you know define requirements earlier in the process and this has been kind of a long-standing you know goal not just an FEO but in other programs and I think it's been we've had you know various levels of success doing that but when you're looking at a family of systems or a portfolio and you do get the requirements right you are going to create a capability that's much greater than the sum of its parts again I go back to the area of digital interoperability from a operational standpoint from a programmatic standpoint as many of you know and my experience has shown me is that you know the earlier that you get the requirements scoped you know it's going to give you a better six a chance of success in terms of executing that program one of my own experiences were you know initially we didn't get it right but subsequently did was presidential you know helicopter and you know requirements just kept you know moving everything to the right the cost went up schedule moved to the right and eventually the program as you all know became you know unaffordable again you know as an advocate for this particular approach across a family of systems I think you know it has the potential to provide a lot of value not just to the individual services the individual customers but to do as well thanks for having me here I I feel very passionately about future vertical lift and the effort today as the joint warrior fighting force we really do have the world's best fleet of aircraft but we shouldn't be content with that we really can do better if you look at what we have today we have a fleet that has proven its success from Desert Storm to present but that same fleet that consists of around 25 separate mission design series aircraft over 6,000 about 6,600 aircraft across the OSD and when we go to support that joint warfighter we haul 23 separate or so systems to a theater each with its own separate line of supply and we're not nearly as interoperable as we could be so as we look towards the future there are capability gaps we should be able to go faster we should be able to go further but some of the biggest areas where we can do the most good for the joint warfighter may not necessarily be in the air vehicle itself the gains that we can have in commonality and not just in a physical context but commonality in terms of system common architecture training maintenance a statement you know where we go in the future it's not that our current fleet of airplanes are going to fall out of the sky we we will continue to incrementally upgrade to make a very capable more capable platform reduce our O&M costs reduce our losses that we've experienced due to mishaps we lose too many aircraft mishaps the next fleet of aircraft should be able to operate in a degraded visual environment and bring that capability to the joint warfighter as an army aviator I'm very thankful for the leaders that came before me who in similar budget environment and tough trying times coming out of the Vietnam conflict they saw and had the vision that there was additional capability that could be achieved and they had the vision and the leadership fortitude to make the current fleet of aircraft that form the backbone of our fleet I think that same leadership is required in our time we have to look out towards the 2030 and beyond timeframe and see what that joint warfighter has to have and you know we are wrestling with the requirements we'd like to you know have lots of ands ands are go fast and go far and go high and hot but there are many cases where there's going to be oars and as we look towards making this aircraft it's going to be affordable and it's going to have a reduced operating cost or we certainly won't be able to afford it there's great opportunity for us to be able to do that and as mr. Gonzales and general Thomas have identified you know so much of our effort is pre-MDD analysis to figure out and really lock down what do we have to have the more stable we can do that the family of systems and programs that follow from it we're going to achieve that interoperability and those cost savings that I think will make FDL truly a great family of systems portfolio approach to vertical lift that we just have not done in the past thanks thanks very much all of you for that overview let me kick it off with a couple of questions and then we'll open up to everyone here and out in the web world so you mentioned that the strategic plan and that and the senior level commitment I think one of the ways that commitment is manifests always is in budgets some have pointed out that funding for FDL is both a little bit in future and relatively small in your collective judgment is it adequate what are the implications of the budget environment for FDL in particular and is the sort of scale and scope of the effort an advantage or a disadvantage in that context you like me to start I'm glad to jump in first so we obviously you all have watched how the start of at least the first program has moved a little bit to the right over the years we had we had hoped to had started more of a programmatic effort a little earlier but but as you mentioned dr. lead the budget environment is very difficult we find ourselves having to make trades the services find themselves having to make very difficult decisions in the creation of their budgets one thing we need to keep in mind a lot of the future vertical of work the analysis work that we're doing the technology work that we're doing is could feed alternatives other than a new start program they could inform a major upgrade or it could be a con ops change so I think what we're delivering with very few resources and the leadership commitment is a lot of leadership commitment from the services the IPT's that the kernel leads there's a fair amount of people that are engaged in the development of the be a con ops requirements I position strategies there's a fair amount of even though it's not programmatic dollars is a fair amount of commitment in terms of people resources work in this but a lot of the work that's coming out of that is helping to is helping to provide the decision makers which is not me by the way providing them with technological options analytical foundations good strategies but it is going to at the end of the day to start a new start program it's going to require the services having to come up with with dollars that are going to come at the expense of something else the large scope I think the large scope is an advantage because we're leveraging each other so no services going at this alone the Navy can leverage the Army's S&T the Army can leverage the Navy's understanding of open systems architecture so I think the broad scope us taking on a broad scope initiative I think is an advantage to us vice of disadvantage and then again the resources we'd like there to be more resources to this certainly but but we're not unique and again that is that is a service decision that they have to make those trades yeah I would I would just piggyback onto those comments I mean you alluded to a doctor lead I mean this is not about this particular approach per se I mean the the fiscal constraints that we face across the department are going to make things challenging over the next you know foreseeable future from my perspective though just looking back over decades is you know it's not a matter of you know if it's a matter of when that is a lot of the work that that will be done will inform a broad range of activities that Mr. Gonzalez has already highlighted and then if you look at our current you know force there are options that we've got to you know you can you know sustain life long the point that I would make is and I think everyone in the audience understands this eventually you get to a point of diminishing you know returns so you know sustaining the life of your current force becomes more expensive and so it's from my perspective are we getting the approach right you know the demand signal is going to be is is going to be out there we may argue about where exactly it's going to fall but we know it's coming and vertical lift is a large portion of the department's capability and it's something that's going to have to be addressed I think when we look at a family systems approach we realize that we're not going to take the entire family of systems to a material development decision all at the same time there'll be pieces of it it's prioritized based off of you know who's first to need what things we think we're ready to bring but also I think part of the cost is we look at you know there's the procurement cost of a new helicopter but the real value may be in looking at how we affect downstream the O&M cost so the total cost of ownership of this family of systems may be much more manageable because we're taking a family systems approach you know even if you had a modest 5% decrease in your total O&M cost when you look at that across the life cycle of all those systems that's that's measured at hundreds of billions of dollars worth of savings so I think it it never going to be inexpensive to design and procure a new system but I think the way we're doing it is the way that will give us the best return on investment let me open it up for questions I think we've got a couple in the front up here Jen you can go first this time Hi Jen Judson with Inside the Army bouncing off your question I think we're looking at potentially seeing full sequestration again in FY 16 and then beyond so I'm wondering what you're doing to protect things like the JMR developments in the future what that may look like if you're looking at a tighter budget if you'll have to scale back or maybe you look at more cost sharing options and then another quick question regarding training maintenance sustainment in the future will there be a phase where you hone in and really look at that like we're looking at an air vehicle we're looking at mission systems will there be a phase where you do that well take the second part first because yes I mean you can't just look at the aircraft and the mission systems as a separate entity and we look at JMR there's a phase one and a phase two to JMR phase one being focused on the air vehicle part but phase two is equally important and that's looking at the common mission architecture you know each service is going to have to make tough decisions about how much money they're able to put against this effort but by the time we are at the point where service money has to be put against FBL I think we'll be able most of the services will be in a position where they'll be less focused on the close-in and be able to look out a little bit further I should also note that we are also planning to have a specific JMR event on the 1st of July so put that on your calendars and and again we will have additional following sessions about about all of these things as well but that one's already on the calendar I would like to add if I could Jen to the first part of that and that's certainly a question you should ask the army during that part relative to the joint multi role program but the sense that I've got is that there's they're doing everything they can to protect those S&T dollars now certainly the you know when we get the service problems we'll see it or we won't see it but I have a sense that they're going to try to protect the extent that they can the technology piece of that which is JMR thank you Sydney Friedberg breaking defense calm you know looking at for well recent and less recent history we have in the army a succession of helicopter programs that went well they flew but they didn't actually go into production and then we hear you know conversely the model we have for a big joint multi service program is F-35 which has also been somewhat painful now I don't think when you say family you don't mean something that's you know like an F-35 ABC where they're visually similar even if they're massively different you know in engines but you know how do you avoid the pitfalls of both the army specific and the sort of over ambitious tri service programs of the past and when you say a family how much flexibility do you have in there before you lose the commonality that was the point in the first place I think it's a great question I mean though those are the kinds of conversations that you have throughout you know one thing I would you know say about the you talk about JSF for example and the the challenges associated with that you know I would argue of course I'll just say up front my background is this tacky air but I think that there there are gonna be bumps on the road and it is painful it's just kind of the nature of what we do and I think that there are a lot of lessons learned in terms of that program and mistakes that were made that we could capture in terms of an approach my opinion is is that the taxpayer is gonna feel in the end like we've made a good investment on that particular program on the the second part of your question what's the balance between having you know this this family of systems and where's the tipping point where you know you don't have the type of commonality we don't know where that is but one thing I would emphasize is you know we and this isn't just FDL I would just say this for any capability we tend to think in terms of platforms and that's an important part of it but we need to think about what I would argue is as we have this discussion we need to think about both the platform and the the mission systems and again I would also argue that it's it's a different perhaps view than what we've taken on vertical lift we're at large in the past and that is you know it's it's a helicopter you know this is what it does there's so much more across this family of systems I'm going from a mission system interoperability standpoint that I would argue is where your greatest return on investment you know might be in addition to the additional capabilities speed lift etc. To follow on to that all of the services to varying degrees are are pursuing manned on man teaming approaches that are changing how they're utilizing rotorcraft and many of those developments have come since the publication of the strategic plan have you have you re looked the strategic plan in that context does it need to be updated to reflect that evolution how do you keep those two things moving forward consistently given that they're not you only own a part of that so the strategic plan is a living document we we update it annually but when you think about how it stays relevant and how we answer you know the questions of manned on man teaming all those things and we're going to continue to have a lot of discussion on requirements to include things like should it be optionally manned the degree with which all the variants need to have manned and unman teaming requirements you know certainly we've we have seen the value in the warfight of unmanned systems and I think their integration with what we do in future vertical lift I see that as being more and certainly increasingly important if I could just tag on to that very briefly an opportunity that this approach allows you to do it allows you to capture I would argue the great work that the services are doing individually and to a degree act as an integrating function you know to get it across the whole joint force and not just within you know one service what they had like to just mention of back specifically to your question unlike JSF we're talking a program to do multiple variants of a of an airplane FVL may be several programs of record not you know we're not already having envisioned you know a particular one airplane that's going to do to do everything I don't think that's a reasonable so you may look at a family of things and from the outside there may be absolutely there should be you know laws of physics still apply so the bigger one's gonna have a bigger engine and the smaller one's gonna have a smaller engine but the power would be is that that service member who does the work on that knows how to pull the engine and it comes out in and out the same way on the big one as it does the small one and that when we do avionics work the avionics architecture ought to be plug-and-play so that if an army airplanes at a Marine Corps facility and the radio or nav system needs to be swapped out we can do that and we can get that interoperability today we certainly don't have that capability there's lots of things that you can do but you know at some point the the cost of the incremental upgrades it you can applique a lot of things on to your legacy system platforms but at some point the age-old problem of airplane gets too big it gets too heavy when everything that you continue to want to add in terms of capability is is an afterthought you know we want to have this capability we added on before along now you got to go back and redesign and buy back the power margin that you gave up so when you think about what capability you want to have if you know from the very beginning that interoperability and common architecture I'd be able to get into the attack variant and a submarine warfare variant or any other variant and I ought to be able to see a common system architecture doesn't have to have the exact same layout necessarily but certainly there's a lot more that can be done in that area and if you do that from the very beginning I think there's a huge payoff down the road back and then over here mr. Gomez this is a Tony capacity with Bloomberg news I had a specific systems question where does the combat red combat rescue helicopter fit in the overall flight plan that you're talking about the Air Force in March said that they were moving forward with a June award to Sikorsky of the plane from where your shop sits in Cape and AT&L is the plan is the award on track this month or is there reconsideration because of sequestration concerns yeah I cannot address that that's that's all pre-decision all at this point so I cannot address that at this point yeah so so as you mentioned as I mentioned the element one of the strategic strategic plan it does look at all of our helicopter assets Army Air Force Navy so clearly we recognize that there's a mission there that the Air Force has and we recognize the state of their current helicopters and we know we have to make some decisions it's either you know a new one retrofit the existing one so it fits within our overall portfolio look at vertical left but no I cannot answer the question relative to specific decisions on combat rescue helicopter got one back here and then over here that's a part way we need we can you use the mic for the record I won't talk to you about it I'm Thomas good to see you again Doug Morrison from DuPont and had somebody asked me you know what does DuPont provide the helicopters a lot of material but that's where the discussion has been I'd like to take it away from that so any of the panel members maybe non-material solutions roles and missions I saw one on my time on active duty looking at common airframes like the 60 which both special ops Air Force Navy Army had but is this a roles and missions potentially you know it would seem that the days of separate fleets and multiple 23 I think was the number that was mentioned 23 different platforms it almost seemed like that can't be afforded anymore so are there non-material solutions that we're looking at in terms of operational concepts in terms of roles and missions IE what services are responsible for and again General Thomas I pick you out does the Marine Corps need you know three rotary wing aircraft plus the v-22 kind of thing and I'm not picking a fight on that I'm just saying that's kind of that tone of the discussion I guess I would answer this way you know from from an affordability standpoint for all the reasons that Mr. Gonzales and Carl Christensen have already articulated I mean there's value and you know that that common approach but to get to your question I think that if you're successful in terms of achieving much greater commonality in the material solution then that informs the broader question about how we use our force because what you are doing by increasing that commonality you're increasing the flexibility of the joint force so that a mission that was previously only done by one particular service could be done perhaps by another service and then and that raises other questions in the end however I think it you know it's it's value because you've increased the overall capability and capacity you may not increase the total numbers but the factor you've increased your capacity because each of those individual platforms are more can do more missions auto Christ was he powered magazine this is kind of a mirrored question when we're talking about commonality there's different services during different missions the army wants to try to move into some of the Navy things operate from ships we've had problems in the past you need to build there's operating in the sea environment saltwater you'll damage your ship you know are you going to maintain the separate material condition between naval naval helicopters and arm helicopters another one you'll speed is obviously one of the speed range one of your big capabilities you know there's programs out there to do high speed helicopters with rotors and push propellers and you've got tilt rotor concept are the all those in the factory and then basically we lose helicopters all the time landing in brown out right out conditions is yet part of the program to try to avoid that well I think when we look at how the commonality is going to work all the discussions and you know being able to sit down at a table where we're working requirements and I have folks working hard army and the Navy together you know the army is looking to have their variant is being marinized desire to have DDG compatible airframes well at the same time you know we recognize that you know it we need to have those common discussions it's not like as if an army aircraft hasn't been on carrier or something like that before and instead of having those joint interoperability problems sorted out on the deck we can sort that out by working together a way upstream requirements you talked about the different you know kind of variants where we've got you know tilt rotor new technologies you provide additional speed again all that will you know inform you know the process going forward and the technical demonstration I think be very helpful but again what I would encourage us all to do as you know we begin to collect data from the technical demonstration and so forth is think about the capabilities don't go I want this kind of you know platform that does this think about the capability first and then we'll find the best combination of mission systems rotors drive drive trains etc that we need so the first question we always need to ask is not not what type of rotorcraft or tilt rotors what what are the capabilities and I would say it I don't want to be polyannish you talk about commonality you know there are areas where we won't you know be in entirely common but if you can you know to the maximum extent possible come up with a common baseline that you can add on you know that's scalable again these are all attributes that and in some cases will be achieved not in every case let me ask a question about I believe the report the the strategic plan uses the word stagnant when referring to the rotorcraft industrial base and there's been a lot of analysis showing the pace of innovation and relative to fixed wing and that it is and that and some people argue there are larger national implications for that and worry about the loss of capacity domestically relative to the Europeans for example or how much of does the Defense Department have a broad view of how important this industry is to us nationally and so and the practical implication of my question is is DoD industrial policy do they care about this program are they involved in it do they should they be I mean what's how does that interface work yes let me let me jump in so AT&L has chartered MIBP manufacturing and industrial base policy to look at specifically look at the rotorcraft industry so that's ongoing right now as we speak so that's clearly driven by the concern that you highlight we certainly recognize the aircraft that we have and again that concern for that sunset we have a strong concern for the industrial base and rotorcraft and depending on the results of that what the way options of what we can do to help mitigate because it's an important part of our defense military capability so we have to we have to do everything we can to preserve it two questions here we'll go away I think I saw that hand first in the back on the end and then we'll come up here slow you can't tell Frank black modus wrote a fan how soon do you think that the next 20 30 40 years I've been at this for 35 years since a minister mark over here run Jart at the Pentagon and it's still at the same place if we've cured all the ills of the Pentagon the answer is no I don't know how to say this I don't know we're gonna take some action and really resolve some of the things that we've talked about for all these years so I would say you know there are challenges and certainly failures along the way I would argue that if you look across the last 30 40 years as you know dysfunctional as some may say that that we are real large the government industry team but you look at what the government industry team has produced maybe not at the exact time that we had originally hoped but you look at the joint force today even after 12 years of war I'll tell you it's the best in the world it's best it's better than it's you know ever been so you know in terms of justifying my optimism I would say that I am optimistic I'm not always optimistic that we'll get it on the timelines that you know that everyone may have desired but we tend to be going I think ultimately in the and I would add I mean while it's not producing we're not starting new programs the work that we are doing right now in the technology area in the analysis work in the upfront requirements that are way far left of material development decision as the general mentioned earlier hopefully that will put us in a much better position that when this any of the services and the services collectively have resources to put to it we could hopefully have a more successful program I think it's very valuable work that we're doing right now we can't take counsel of our fears and everything that we do we have to understand that there's gonna be risk in new developments and sometimes those efforts won't pan out but in the end if you look at what we have produced that we we do produce the world's best systems and they've proven themselves in combat and that's the ultimate test when it's in the hands of the warfighter and so I think that whereas our system is always being tweaked in terms of how we manage requirements and how we manage acquisition and even more challenging how we manage money system has worked in the past and we do produce the world's best systems. Randy Roddy from the Boeing Company and good afternoon and I want thanks for investing your time to come out here and listen to us ask you questions and mine has to do with the potential are possibly conflicting messages and that impact on industry investment so we're very aware of Department of Defense and difficult choices that are facing in terms of especially budgetary which programs are the highest priority and get the funding which of those areas we can accept risk as you might expect the same thing happens on industry side when they're looking at which especially IR&D which areas do they invest in which other areas do they decide not to pursue so when it comes to a program like future vertical lift on the one hand you hear messages of how important it is in high priority your investment time here panels press like you talked about ESG OIPTs so you get the message that it's a very high priority and then on the other hand we hear or see things about MDD slipping to the right AOA slip into the right you know nothing in the budget documents that reflects FBL so if you were in that boardroom what would you say to those executives in terms of how do you rectify those potentially conflicting messages well you're not allowed to ask those kind of questions you've been part of this in the past you know you should tell us what they're saying I've never been on that side but clearly we are doing everything we can to be as transparent as we can with you guys my doors always open to my industry partners I really can't tell you what you know on your side I'd give them the facts and the truth as we're given them to you and this is a very difficult budget environment and there's a lot of competing requirements and it's not just on the material side there's competition for troops versus material you just got to give them the the facts as we're passing on passing them on to you we're trying to be as transparent as we can with an AT&L and other within joint staff we're trying our best not to hold back any any secrets from you all because we we understand that this is a community this is this is a team and it's DOD and industry and all the other players working together we can't do it without you you know I'm not sure I would presume to you know what that conversation would be like inside the board room but from my perspective I would say it might be a discussion of time you know and what what's the horizon and where can we play you know and how much wiggle room do we have how much margin you know can we invest you know but but I will point out you know we you do have real money in the the technical demonstration you do have senior leaders within OSD and the joint staff you know participating you know in this process again I'll just go back to my original points it's it's not a matter of if it's it's when and I realize that you know when you're dealing with the bottom line that's not a particularly helpful answer but but it is where we so we would you know presumably would turn to the industry team and go you know what what can you do you know given the constrained environment that we're in well I actually I got a question by email but but but it is now 130 so I feel obligated to let you off the hook unless you're willing to indulge one last question which is about how the commonality as it's a I think not as hard as the last one how how the commonality aspects of the program relate to the combined environment so how does joint or combined interoperability play into FEL the FEL effort can I ask you to just share the example that you shared with me earlier about your experience in Iraq working with the Marines well you know I as a battalion commander in Iraq I supported the Marines and MNF West sector but the patches you know and I as I would operate in their area our desire to be as joint as possible was limited by some of the capabilities of our of our systems both in the maintenance side and also in our C4 ISR side likewise when a Marine aircraft is was landed break at my area you know the best I could do is give them meals in a cot and that was that was the extent of the joint support that they were getting out of me and we can do a lot better one of our four IPT's in fact probably one of our most important IPT's is on commonality and looking at how does the commonality impact our how we're gonna fight and one of the things that we have done I think that's a very important effort is that we have staffed through a what we call developmental conops and really asking the question how does vertical lift fight in 2030 and beyond as a joint warfighting force and all the services have actively participated we've come to consensus now we have documents that help us understand better where how what areas of commonality are most important to the joint warfighter and as we develop those requirements and it also helps us identify more realistic threshold values and that is going to I think be a very important part of our requirements analysis that we'll do over the next year so how many missionaries did you look across oh how many 15 different mission areas so and across those different missionaries and we are identifying how each service knows everything from doing a non-combat in the vacuum of operations to anti-submarine warfare to assault operations everything and figure out what each element of the joint warfighting force would want to use and looking at you know what the environment is that we operate in the 2030 and beyond and that was that was highly informative work because there's not there was not a lot of effort looking at how it does the joint warfighting force with vertical lift fight in that 2030 and beyond as you'll see later when those become manifested as KPPs and KSAs that they're informed by that process but is there a combined element to that as well an allied fighting with partner nations component of that of your analysis effort as well most what we've looked at now is is interoperability in the joint warfighting force context thank you all very much for coming really appreciate the time as I mentioned this is we because of the complexity of the overall effort we've had some discussions with them about continuing to have conversations about more detailed aspects of FEL so there will be more in this regard 8 30 on 1 July we will have our JMR specific event and hope to see you then and again thanks for coming thanks to all of you very much thank you