 So, for those of you that might have missed my panel presentation this morning, I asked how many of you have seen the Brad Pitt movie Fight Club? And so, you know, the first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club, right? But in Korea we talk about being able to fight tonight and the readiness to fight tonight. And so I say, don't talk about fight tonight unless you're ready, unless you're ready to win. And so it's important that our day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month preparations make sure that we're ready. And so why do we need to be ready? I recently, I use, it's the only chart that I normally ever use when I talk about, and it says Northeast Asia, and I just recently changed it and included Taiwan. I'm, Taiwan's not in Northeast Asia, but I just look at the overlapping competition in Northeast Asia, whether it's China, North Korea, or Russia. They're all named adversaries within our U.S. National Defense Strategy. Yet we've got great allies there. We've got the Republic of Korea, we've got Japan, and all kinds of other countries throughout Southeast Asia. But when you look at the world, and this portion of the world, there's a lot going on right now. And it only takes just a quick look at the news to understand the day-to-day competition which is going on. We saw yesterday Kim Jong-un took his daughter to work day. And it was, I think, what they think will be a satellite launch. Well, I think we all know that the missile technology for launching a satellite into high Earth orbit is the same technology that it takes to put an intermediate range, or intercontinental ballistic missile. His testing this year has been unprecedented. Although it's been quiet the last three weeks, it's without precedent. When we look at the actions of the Chinese Communist Party as well as it relates to the region and the rest of the world, it's concerning. And of course Russia's actions in Ukraine have put the world on edge as Ukraine fights for its freedom. So 73 years ago, the Republic of Korea was in a fight for its freedom when North Korea invaded unexpectedly. And the United States and 22 other countries, United Nations sending states, came. And you look at it now, people call it the miracle on the Han soul. It's not a miracle. It's hard work, not just from the Koreans, but also with help from others. And so I think when you see at what happened in Korea 73 years ago, the importance that this area is to the region, and then you think about what's happening in Ukraine, we want peace. We want peace throughout the region, and we want stability. And we do this through training and our operations with our allies and partners. The video that you just saw, for those of you that just saw it, with the exception of the black and white footage from years ago, all the color footage was within the last year. That's real, live, combined training that's going on between the Republic of Korea and the United States forces. And it's inherently joint as well. You saw Army helicopters landing on Navy ships. You saw Korean indirect fire as part of a US combined arms live fire. You saw an American striker brigade offloading off of a ship. These are all things that are happening right now, because if you look at, not just look at the region, but it goes back to, we had the USS Ronald Reagan visit the port of Busan six, eight months ago. And the Ronald Reagan came in there, and their motto as an aircraft carrier stems from one of Ronald Reagan's speeches that I think he gave in probably around May of 1981. And he used the words peace through strength. And so the Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier sort of carries that as their motto. When you look at the Rock US Alliance and what we are doing within Northeast Asia, it is about maintaining the peace through strength, through our combined readiness. And as you look at the other allies and partners that are on there, specifically Japan, you've seen in the last few weeks an increased desire both politically, diplomatically, and militarily for additional strength between the Republic of Korea, the United States, and Japan as we continue to build strength in Northeast Asia. And so as I wrap up here, I'm going to turn it over to Command Star Major Cobb, who will talk a little bit more about his perspective and those things that are in the Republic of Korea and our combined defense, and then we'll take questions. So over to Star Major Cobb. Again, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for taking your time to come listen to us a little bit and learn a little bit more about the Korea Peninsula and what we have going on in the Republic of Korea with our partners. So you see the map behind us there has all of our adversaries that are working in the area every day, working in the gray area to build capacity, build their arsenals, and build their capabilities against us. But we know we work stronger, and we're stronger together when we work with our partners. The way we do that in the 8th Army is, you know, two ideas combined division, the only really truly combined division in the Army. And our non-commissioned officer and junior leaders really build that capacity doing such things as rotations out at the Korean Combat Training Center. We started that off with just at the platoon level and we have continued to grow that out there at the training center to company and now battalion level task force that are rock and coalition part Army forces are working together in those training centers, learning these sort of TTPs and how we conduct missions. We then expand that out to live fire exercises. You've seen some of that on the screen there. One of those that you saw was up at the JSA. There was a joint live fire between Rock Infantry Platoon and our JSA elements up there. We just completed a combined live fire exercise out at Rodriguez. That was K-1 tanks, Korean tanks, their engineer forces out there hitting the breach with us and then our striker infantry going on and assaulting the objective. So that's kind of how we build the capacity with our coalition partners. We also do instructor exchanges. So we'll send American instructors over to their academies to instruct there and then we'll also receive some of their instructors at our BLCs and then our Catoosa Training Academies. All of our Catoosa's that are assigned down to the squad, platoon and company level all across the Army go through this training academy to kind of align them with some of the same training that American forces do before they reach their unit of assignment. So it's very helpful just to bind our cultures together, help us understand each other a little bit more and make that bond even stronger with our rock partners. We're continuing to expand this out with our rock non-commissioned officers and especially our Command Sergeant Majors and the Rock Army. Command Sergeant Major Love at USFK gets us together around four times a year to do events like Mungadai. Those are absolutely leadership challenges that are all master sergeants and command sergeant majors and we go out and we run through troop leading procedures together to show them how we execute those and then we come together during our freedom shield exercises to go out and actually visit those nodes that we'll be operating and to do a needle evacuation exercise or to do combined operations and we actually get on the ground that we would be fighting and operating on and walk through those techniques and procedures so we make sure we have a clear understanding from both sides of how we would operate in those environments. So when we say that we're training to fight the night, it's not just a bumper sticker and we do everything we can to continue to expand that capacity every day. We just recently started alerts that are assisted by our staff at the 8th Army level with our G3, G3 Sergeant Major. They go out and do a no-notice alert with a company, they pick a company within 8th Army, they alert that company and then they basically go out and give them a grade on their report card, on alert procedures, assembly, draw, dispatch, and prepare to move to make sure we can laser focus on those elements that we need to make sure we can alert quickly and then move out to our assembly areas to get ready to assist in the mission that we may be doing. So we're very proud of the efforts that we're doing but we're not going to sit back on our laurels and think where we need to be at. We have to constantly continue to improve every day and myself and General Burleson are very proud of the steps that 8th Army and 2IDF have taken in the last few years and they're continuing to build upon that capacity. So thank you for your time and we look forward to any questions that you may have. I mean I honestly think as we look at how we develop new capabilities whether it's direct indirect fires, directed energy, whether it's cyber, EW, any of the other multiple domain things. We've got to look at it from a doctor and organization training, leader development, material personnel. So great opportunities here to look at technological advances but if we don't have the other pieces that go with it, you know it's just like I'm giving you a new hammer, right? You're going to use it the same way. Some things when you look at high energy lasers and I think about like a capability like that. What I'm thinking as an infantryman is what's the range fan, right? What's the range fan? How do I protect myself? How do I protect others? And how do I eliminate the threat that I'm trying to neutralize? And so I think we can answer those questions pretty quickly. That's science, right? But then what does it mean for how we fight? How does it fundamentally change how we fight or employ fires? I think we've got to look at it in total. Good capabilities, we've just got to understand what it means total for us and everything. So what's interesting, we went to IPAMS here last year, right? And we had forces from all across the Pacific come together and all the start majors got together and we thought we were going to be very unique in our problem sets that we had. Well, believe it or not, we have the exact same problem sets across all the armies, right? And when it comes to non-commissioned officers, making sure we get the right training resources for one, two, their training, three, instilling standards and discipline within our young soldiers, right? Because when I was growing up, I didn't ask why I just, okay, you want me to dig the fox hole? I'm going to dig it. How deep you want it? How wide do you want it? I got it. And now it's, hey, we need to go dig some fox hole, special sandbags. This is how deep and wide, but why? Why does it have to be this deep? Why does it have to be this wide? So it's bridging that communication, I'm not going to say gap, it's that communication difference now between the generations. How do we communicate with the younger generations and be effective in doing it? It's those same problems, right? Even in the Rock Army. And you know, we look at our, you know, we'd say the Rock Army is a conscript army and they only have them for about two years. Well, if you look at us in the American army in Korea, we really only have them for about a year because they are for a one-year rotation, right? So how do we optimize that training cycle to get the most training and the most value-added training in that period of time to make it as competent as we can be? So we just have to have a very focused, laser-focused training plans and make sure we're giving our non-commissioned officers the time to execute those training plans. But believe it or not, you know, language difference, cultural difference, you put two NCOs together, very, very similar problems and very similar successes. They're great non-commissioned officers. They just have to have the tools they need to execute the training we're asking them to do, right? So very good non-commissioned officers on the rock side. So General Eiffler's question, how do we maintain our interoperability between the U.S. and the Republic of Korea? So I look at interoperability, really three things, human procedural and technical. They will continue to chase the Chihuahua round of technical interoperability, right, as we try and get our networks to talk. We do have Centrix K, which is our combined network. Tactical voice bridging allows us to potentially be able to speak to each other. But remember, we've got to understand each other, right? I mean, I've seen it where Americans and British can't understand each other. And we speak a common language supposedly, right? So I'm always a little bit suspect when I just hear the technical solutions. I'm actually a much strong believer in human procedural. And what I believe we're able to do better than anybody else is we have developed over 70 years a series of crisis action standard operating procedures. So if one of them is how to tie your shoe, right? There's a quick reference sheet that's one sheet that says how to tie your shoe. Behind that, there's a phone book of all the things you've got to do. Now, we don't have one for tying our shoes. But whether it's calling for fire, elevating our security threats. So the work has been done ahead of time procedurally. It's been agreed upon. We've retranslated it, translated it back to eliminate ambiguity. So all we've got to say is execute this crisis action SOP at this time. Everybody pulls it out. There's no ambiguity. Human interoperability, well, I think there's a lot of things that are important on this, is first of all, we're fortunate that we had the Korean augmentation of the United States Army program. And as the Korean Army changes its size and structure, so do our cantooses. But they're embedded within our formation. Some of these are kids working on college degrees at Oxford. I mean, their English is better than mine. And they provide that language interoperability. I think we're also fortunate that the Republic of Korea has one of the highest, maybe perhaps the highest per capita number of young adults that go to the United States for education. So English as a language in Korea has become much more prolific. So the average Korean can speak some Korean. But more importantly, to underscore it all, is our day-to-day combined training. I mean, this can't be one of these things where you show up for a training exercise and go, let's figure out how to be interoperable. I mean, 2ID is doing bridge crossing. That's one of the most complex operations that we have, doing a bridge crossing in a combined unit. We have the Korean Combat Training Center, which is a Korean Combat Training Center, much like our Joint Readiness Training Center, National Training Center, the one we got in Hohenfels. Now that we have a striker brigade, we've embedded a striker battalion with a Korean regiment in KCTC. So you got a battalion, U.S. battalion commander, a thinking staff that now is part of that Korean staff that just, it improves our interoperability every single day. So I'd say it's not episodic, it's day-to-day, and it's continuous. It's like being an alignment on a football team, contact all the time. And that's what builds our interoperability. And, sir, if I could add to that, you know, we've got to keep talent on the team, right? You hear General Flynn talking about bringing folks back to the Pacific, right? You know, I go out to the SART Major's Academy. We go out to Leavenworth every year, and we talk to our folks coming in. And we hope that they come accompanied, right? Because, you know, it's a little selfish, right? Because we want to keep it for two years. But every single time the families get over there, they love it, and they don't want to leave. And we have to tell that story so we can continue to get our talent back to Korea. Korea is not the Korea of old. You're not hurting for anything. Camp Humphreys is one of the newest installations in the United States Army, right? Everything's new. The subway systems, you hop on the subway or the train system, and you're up in Seoul in two hours. You're going to have a nice day coming back down to Humphreys. So the country is a very developed country. We're not hurting for anything. Families absolutely love it. And when they get over there, you'll find most of the time they won't leave. But we get that talent on the team, and then we keep getting the repeat offenders, right? They get back, and they hadn't forgot all that knowledge they had the last time they were there. They're just bringing it back to the team. They're re-blowing it and see how they can plug right back into the team and keep fighting again. It's my third time there, right? And every single time I've come back, I've seen how much progress we've made, how much we've improved, our combined fighting force together. And it's pretty impressive. So we invite everybody that's out there on the Ask Cycle to put your name in the hat and come on to Korea and join a winning team where you're actually going to do your job. Our intel folks, our air traffic controllers, all those folks, they're doing their real job every single day. They got a real target, a real enemy. They're not fighting the atropians down in JRTC, right? So come do your real job and join the team over in Korea and learn how to fight night and night, right? Thank you for coming to USA and coming here for our little Commander's Corner, and I wish you a great lunch. Thank you very much. I'm Brian Martin. I'm the Commander of the 196 Infantry, which forms the ops group for the Joint Pacific Multinational Radiness Center, JPMRC. And thanks for being here this afternoon to hear about the Center and the great work that the team from JPMRC does to put on training events. So the Army's got three CTCs that they've had for the last 40-ish years or so, and we are just now kind of putting the final touches on the fourth combat training center that the Army's built. And we've built it out here in the Indo-Pacific, and we do three rotations a year. We do one here in Alaska, or one in Alaska, one here in Hawaii, and one west of the international dateline. And the whole goal is to keep forces in theater. So for a data point, we save about 110 days of readiness where we're not sending forces back to the continental United States. We're able to save about $80 million per rotation by keeping them out here and not having to ship everything back to CONUS. But more importantly, we're able to work with our allies and partners here in theater in the environment in which the USARPAC forces will go ahead and deter, and if necessary, fight. And so we do that with a fairly small footprint right now. And when we're fully built out, we'll be about 441 folks. We're nowhere even close to that right now. We still rely on a lot of support for our first core and from other elements back in CONUS to execute each one of these rotations. But it's good work. And some of the team you see around here are the folks who carry the really, really heavy load of making these rotations happen. So they're doing what a team of about 800 folks do. They're doing it with about 100 folks to make each one of these occur. And we are very log heavy since we ship this system all over the Indo-Pacific. And so when we build readiness for forces here in theater, we're able to display combat credible force in the environment in which they're going to fight. So the 25th Infantry Division, my main job is to help that division commander train his brigade in jungle warfare and in an island fight, which something our military has not really done since the 40s. When we go to Alaska, I work with the 11th Airborne. And we train that brigade and how to fight in the Arctic, how to fight in extreme cold weather and how to fight in the mountains. So when you kind of think we never want to have a repeat of the chosen reservoir, the 11th Airborne is at the forefront in figuring out how to keep that from happening, right? How to actually thrive and survive, not just survive, but thrive and fight in the Arctic environment. And then when we go west of the international dateline, those rotations are really focused on displaying a combat credible force alongside our ally and partner in showing that application of that readiness forward. To date, we've had 16 observer nations come and embed in the exercises. And we just finished our fifth exercise. So that's 16 different nations, five exercises coming out and seeing kind of behind the curtain how we put on the exercise, the training value to forces that would fight here and then to Pacific. Eight of those nations have joined us as either part of the rotational unit, part of the opt for or part of the exercise control. And specifically, we have very, very close relationships with the Australian CTC, the Indonesian CTC, where we executed a rotation two years ago. This year, we'll be in the Philippines, so we're working with the Armed Forces of the Philippines CTC. And for all things Arctic, we have a very, very close relationship with the Canadian CTC. When you hear about JPMRC rotations, anything with a dash zero one is a Hawaii based rotation working on the inter-island fight. And anything with a dash zero two is the Alaska rotation, the Alaska fight. We also have very close relationships and growing relationships with the CTC in Japan, the CTC in Korea, and CTC in Singapore. That's just kind of beginning to develop. Importantly, these are all rehearsals for deterring conflict and for the readiness that's built here in Hawaii, the readiness that's built in Alaska. When they deploy that forward west of the international dateline, if something were to develop and there's a crisis underway, they've rehearsed how they would respond to that through JPMRC. So it is the 25th entry division commander and 11th airborne commander's way to validate their forces before they deploy forward. Let's go to the next slide. So as I said before, up in Alaska, we're figuring out how to fight in the Arctic, right? How we've got an Arctic strategy. We don't really have any documentation on how to actually fight in the Arctic. And the 11th airborne's working on that. Their commander uses JPMRC as a way to do that at scale with anywhere between 5,000 to 8,000 people in the field. We had about 8,000 people this last rotation. Here in Hawaii, we are living chapter seven of FN3-O, which is the Army operations in a maritime environment. So if you were to take that doctrine and you were to overlay it on our rotations, you can see it play out, right? And again, we are experimenting with what does it take to sustain a force on an inter-island fight? How do army forces in a maritime environment exercise sea control, execute maritime domain awareness, and execute targets at sea? And we're working all of that out right now. Last rotation, we had a sensor to shooter exercise in our live virtual and constructive wrap, where we had a joint element, the third Marine Latorral Regiment, which is executing their expeditionary advance basing operations, sent an enemy DDG, passed that targeting data off to 25th Ministry of Division, who passed it a 15th wing, who then passed it to a naval strike group, three DDG at sea that executed the target. And these are all kind of emerging concepts and how we're going to do joint all-domain operations. We're exercising that here now in the Indo-Pacific with our joint partners that we're surrounded by, right? So we don't have to go and ask other joint partners to play. They're showing up. They want to be part of this. For Army forces, especially the Army forces early in crisis, it's only going to be joint partners around us, right? Until tip-fid and forces flow into theater, they're going to have a brigade that's forward is going to have to figure out, how do they play with 15th wing? How do they interoperate with packed fleet? And how do they work with the Marines that are part of the stand-in force? To kind of round all of this out, we're currently executing high-range operations where you put long-range precision fires on Air Force aircraft, move them in from an off-access to allow them to execute long-range targets, both in support of the JFAC and in support of Army operations. We've executed GPS denial, RF jamming, a whole suite of small UASs, kind of stuff you see in the media from Eastern Ukraine. And importantly, we're teaching forces here how to use extended sensing overhead SAR, overhead EOIR as part of their operations process. And this works both ways. Because we are replicating a near-peer adversary, the OP4 gets that as well. So that's something new our forces have to contend with, especially the guys of my generation where we don't really have to worry about that adversary having SAR overhead of what our footprint might look like at any given point on the battlefield. We work closely with 3rd MDTF as they're beginning to build their forces. They're embedded in our exercises. And as you can see up here, this is an upcoming exercise that will execute on the Hawaiian Islands, out in Guam, Midway, Johnson and Toll, Wake Island, this upcoming fall. 3rd MDTF will move out with a package from 25th ID to execute some of their extended range sensing, some of their electronic attack, electronic warfare capability, and long-range precision fires out of Guam. At the same time, marine elements led by the Marine Air Group out of Kanahoe Bay will move to Midway and execute some of their EABO. And 15th Wing will execute their agile combat employment out of Wake Island as a C2 element for a replicated reinforcement of a first island chain, if you will. While that's occurring back on the Hawaiian main archipelago, we're going to be conducting decisive land operations in a maritime environment as a 25th ID secures islands that are replicating a US treaty ally that's asked for help in restoring their national sovereignty. And we're really going to experiment with how do we do sustainment of a fight between islands and how do we move army forces on an in our other than fight. We're not allowed to prepo anything on the big island. They're going to have to figure out from the northern part of Oahu all the way to the big island and kind of culminate there. I don't want to give too much away from a scenario development perspective. So we're still growing the CTC. It's up and running. It's been up since 2022. As we said, we just executed our fifth rotation. We'll execute a rotation in Australia this upcoming summer. And as we build this thing out, there's kind of five pillars that we're building the training center out around. The first one, the operational environment. In the OP4, the operational environment kind of sets itself it's the endopacom operational environment. From an OP4 perspective, we use the decisive action training environment, Pacific, which is built around the Alvanian threat. The name of the, for those of us who are Crasnovians back in the day, Alvana is a threat that has us with a larger population. They have us with longer range fires, more fires than we're used to, and they have us with tech that's as good, if not better than ours. And we are all Alvana all the time. That's the only thing we focus on here, unlike some legacy CTCs that have to kind of mix in other threat templates. And under this model, we don't have a permanent OP4. We have kind of a permanent cadre of OP4 teachers that embed with a unit starting about three or four months out before the rotation. And using ATP7-100.3, which is the unclassified version of the PLA threat tactics, we go ahead and turn them into an opposing force. So this kind of creates an understanding of the significant adversary challenge in this area in the operating force. And as everyone knows, when you get to play OP4, they play it with a degree of gusto that when you put a helmet on somebody in Miles Gear and their morale just kind of plummets, they just don't have. You put a boony cap in Miles Gear on somebody and they really kind of get after it. And we've had very, very professional OP4 out here create dilemmas for our training forces for the rotational units. For the operations group, again, it's centered around the 196th Infantry Brigade. When we're fully manned, which will be about 441 folks, we're still only going to be 1⁄2 to 1⁄3 the size of the other CTCs. And this is because we only execute three rotations a year. And we don't need 800, 1200 people to execute back to back to back to back rotations. So importantly, we are very integrated with our multinational partners. As I said before, the Australians have been inside our Xcon. They've been OP4 for us. We've had Canadians that have been part of our OCT packages, Indonesians who have been OCTs with us. And this summer, we'll be fully integrated with all Australian CTC. And then more importantly, we're truly a joint operations group. We've got Marine OCs that show up for these exercises. We've got the Air Force that's using something similar to an OC capability for their exercise. And more importantly, the most important thing, you could do away with the rest of this stuff. And as long as you have a good OC who can sit down and observe, coach, teach, and mentor a peer as they work through a difficult problem set, we're still going to get a lot of good training, a lot of good learning out of that training repetition. And I would submit with what the OCC out here in the Indo-Pacific with the problems folks have to work through out here. They're not problems that we've had to grapple with over the last 20 years. How do you sustain? How do you move through mountainous jungle and still just keep track of your frontline trace? How do you survive in the Arctic? These are all things that our OCs are experts on and really help their partnered force, if you will, the force that they're seeing make it through a rotation. And then most importantly, the after-action review where the real learning occurs. My folks that are out here in white, their experts are doing it. And we deliver a really, really good product for the training brigades. For the rotational training units, again, the brigade is kind of the center. It's the focus point for us, right? They're the ones that have to get out of here, leave our training events with a heightened state of readiness. But most importantly, starting with our very first rotation, we use the division as the higher command. And so there's no 21st Infantry or 52nd Infantry where it's a guy like me who's dual-hadding as the ops group commander who's dialing the re-estate of training and as the higher commander of the rotational unit. Here it is the 25th Infantry Division Commander. It's the 11th Airborne Commander who is executing those mission command functions for the training unit. And it's incredibly powerful to watch the division commander and the division staff work with the RTU commander, the brigade commander going through training, the brigade staff, and then the battalions and all the down-trace units that are going through the training. And they're working through complex military problems. And they're doing it in the crucible that's a CTC rotation. It's an incredibly powerful thing to watch. And my peers who are going through the training have all come out of it and said, that's how you form tight teams. You make people do hard things and give them an opportunity to learn. And it's been an incredibly successful training opportunity from that perspective. So division high con, the brigade going through the training. And then we leverage the full suite of the echelons above brigade that come out of first port to execute these, so engineers, MP support, medical support, 3rd MDTF, and then General Flynn has kind of given direction to all of his major commands and all of his direct report units that they'll support this, right? So we've got support from 8th TSC, from Compo 2 and Compo 3 units coming out of 9th MSC, the Hawaii National Guard, the Guam National Guard, that all support these rotations. Huge support from 5th SBAD because of our multinational flavor that come out to enable this training and medical support from 18th MedCon. And so he's able to exercise various elements of the theater army when these rotations go ahead and get executed. Everybody comes to the table with their own training objectives. Again, we put the primacy of the training objective on the brigade that's going through the training, but everyone's able to walk away. And I check them every single day while we're going through rotation. How many training objectives are being achieved? What still has to be hit before the end of the rotation? And we're batting like 99% on training objectives being met by all echelons of units that show up for these. As I said earlier, we are surrounded by joint assets here in Hawaii, here in the U.S. Indo Pecom AOR. They show up with their own training objectives. And here's where the beauty of JPMRC really gets on fold. We're not paying $6 million to get the Air Force to show up to Fort Johnson in Louisiana to execute training alongside an army element at JRTC. They show up with their own training objectives here because we're in the environment they need to train in. We're the partner they need to train in. And we're executing the sort of operations they need help or that they have synergy with when we train together. And so they show up and they're paying their own flight hours, which if you've ever worked with the Air Force, right? Flight hours are massively expensive. They're accomplishing their own training objectives. The Navy's accomplishing their own training objectives as part of this, but it's not coming on the army's dime, if you will, from a training perspective. It's huge. And at kind of a tactical level of the joint interoperability that we developed over the last 20 years of working together in various AORs, that's being sustained by the touches that the brigade's getting with the different airwings that show up with the different naval strike groups that participate in this, and especially with our Marine Corps elements here on Island. And kind of the outer layer of all that is the allies and partners and our friends in the theater that show up for training, again, with their own training events, training objectives that they need to hit. But they all walk out of this with a higher proficiency from when they went in. And we all get to learn from each other on how we operate and developing relationships that are gonna last careers as these things progress. From an instrumentation perspective, if you're familiar with the CTC, so we do the live virtual constructive. We're able to replicate things that really aren't there because they're appearing on mission command systems. They're being injected through our instrumentation, and then the same instrumentation takes feedback so that we're able to provide good after action reviews on here's what really happened. I'm able to take this anywhere in theater. We pack it up. It's about 26 sea land containers and we can move it. It's currently being moved from Alaska to Australia. We are not fixed to a particular piece of terrain, which gives, from a training perspective, gives you tons of options, right? And again, guys at my level who've been at JRC 15 times, like they know the terrain, they know the fight, they know where the decisive terrain that they have to hold here is. Here we can switch it up on folks. And then last, as I said, facilities were completely exportable. It's the beauty of the system. It's the beauty of the way this thing's been set up. It's, you know, you Sarpak works out an agreement with a multinational partner and they want us in a country in a year from now. We start the planning 270 days out, we pack this thing up, we move it, we go ahead and execute training. So with that, I'd like to open it up for any questions. Fifth SBAP said they were gonna have some hard ones. Thanks. Very helpful and insightful. You mentioned the work that you're able to do with the multinational training that we get at. Are there limitations for how many partners that we can bring into these different exercises? Yeah. So the question was, are there limitations to how many multinational partners we can bring into the training? So there's two limiting factors on that. The first one is terrain. So in Alaska, the skies you limit, the training area is up there, the size of state of Indiana. So there's a lot that you can do in Alaska. On an island, there's limited training opportunities. And so right now it's about one partner for each American maneuver element. So three light infantry company size elements. But there's room for everything that's not maneuver, right? So the other war fighting functions. The New Zealand contingent is bringing, they're bringing a field artillery element up this year. So we're at about capacity right now this year with about six partners that are gonna show up for this next training event here in the fall. And it's about, we're at about 830 multinational soldiers that'll show up. That's kind of about right for the Hawaiian Island training scenario. Sir. Do you have a language or a cultural training component to this? So the question is if we have a language or a cultural training component to this. When I mentioned earlier that we rely on other used to pack elements to help us with putting on these training events. One of the key partners for our multinational allies and partners friends who show up is the 5th SFAB. And they kind of have that cultural experience to a degree they may have a language capability within the operations group we don't. I'll be in Australia this summer. Next summer we'll be in the Philippines. I don't know where we're gonna be the year after that. Two years ago we were in Indonesia. So we're more focused on just delivering a quality training event. And then there are capabilities in theater that can make up for the language and cultural. Zero we are pretty soon. The commander of a dynamic growing organization. Can you identify maybe where some of our gaps are that maybe some of our vendors can fill? Like if there's a need that we have that maybe someone could fill. Is there anything that you see that we need? Yeah, I mean like it's the Rocky quote. Like I got gaps, you got gaps. Together we got no gaps. It's, no. So for right now we are working our growth through Army programs or record to try to get after building the CTC out. We're not the first CTC that our Army's ever built. And so we've got three models to look at. But then I also look at the Australian CTC. Completely different model from ours on how we do business, right? And so the British CTC, they do things slightly different too. So we don't necessarily, we're not trying to create NTC here. They have capabilities that are very unique and are very well suited for a mechanized fight. We are still working through kind of niche capabilities we'll need at JPMRC. Right now I'm just focused on making sure OCs are experts at observing coach teaching, mentoring up in the Arctic, which is hard enough in the jungle and in a maritime environment. So for those of you that might have missed my panel presentation this morning, I asked how many of you have seen the Brad Pitt movie Fight Club? And so the first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club, right? But in Korea we talk about being able to fight tonight and the readiness to fight tonight. And so I say don't talk about fight tonight unless you're ready, unless you're ready to win. And so it's important that our day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month preparations make sure that we're ready. And so why do we need to be ready? It's the only chart that I normally ever use when I talk about. And it says Northeast Asia, and I just recently changed it and included Taiwan, but Taiwan's not in Northeast Asia. But I just look at the overlapping competition in Northeast Asia, whether it's China, North Korea, or Russia. They're all named adversaries within our US National Defense Strategy. Yet we've got great allies there. We've got the Republic of Korea, we've got Japan, and all kinds of other countries throughout Southeast Asia. But when you look at the world and this portion of the world, there's a lot going on right now. And it only takes just a quick look at the news to understand the day-to-day competition which is going on. We saw yesterday Kim Jong-un took his daughter to work day. And it was, I think, what they think will be a satellite launch. Well, I think we all know that the missile technology for launching a satellite into high-Earth orbit is the same technology that it takes to put an intermediate range or not an intercontinental ballistic missile. His testing this year has been unprecedented. Although it's been quiet the last three weeks, it's without precedent. When we look at the actions of the Chinese Communist Party as well as it relates to the region and the rest of the world, it's concerning. And of course, Russia's actions in Ukraine have put the world on edge as Ukraine fights for its freedom. So 73 years ago, the Republic of Korea was in a fight for its freedom when North Korea invaded unexpectedly. And the United States and 22 other countries, United Nations' sending states came. And you look at it now, people call it the miracle on the Han soul. It's not a miracle. It's hard work, not just from the Koreans but also with help from others. And so I think when you see at what happened in Korea 73 years ago, the importance that this area is to the region and then you think about what's happening in Ukraine, we want peace. We want peace throughout the region and we want stability. And we do this through training and our operations with our allies and partners. The video that you just saw, for those of you that just saw it, with the exception of the black and white footage from years ago, all the color footage was within the last year. That's real, live, combined training that's going on between the Republic of Korea and the United States forces. And it's inherently joint as well. You saw army helicopters landing on Navy ships. You saw Korean indirect fire as part of a US combined arms live fire. You saw an American striker brigade offloading off of a ship. These are all things that are happening right now because if you look at, not just look at the region, but it goes back to, we had the USS Ronald Reagan visit the port of Busan I don't know, six, eight months ago. And the Ronald Reagan came in there and their motto as an aircraft carrier stems from one of Ronald Reagan's speeches that I think he gave in probably around May of 1981. And he used the words peace through strength. And so the Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier sort of carries that as their motto. When you look at the Rock US Alliance and what we are doing within Northeast Asia, it is about maintaining the peace through strength, through our combined readiness. And as you look at the other allies and partners that are on there, specifically Japan, I think you've seen in the last few weeks an increased desire both politically, diplomatically, and militarily for additional strength between the Republic of Korea, the United States, and Japan as we continue to build strength in Northeast Asia. And so as I wrap up here, I'm gonna turn it over to Command Sergeant Major Cobb who will talk a little bit more about his perspective and those things that are in the Republic of Korea and our combined defense, and then we'll take questions. So over to Sergeant Major Cobb. Again, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for taking your time to come listen to us a little bit and learn a little bit more about the Korea Peninsula and what we have going on in the Republic of Korea with our partners. So you see the map behind us there has all of our adversaries that are working in the area every day, working in the gray area to build capacity, build their arsenals, and build their capabilities against us. But we know we work stronger and we're stronger together when we work with our partners. The way we do that in the 8th Army is, you know, two ideas combined division. The only really truly combined division in the Army. And our non-commissioned officer and junior leaders really build that capacity doing such things as rotations out at the Korean Combat Training Center. We started that off with this at the platoon level and we have continued to grow that out there at the training center to company and now battalion level task force that are rock and coalition army forces are working together in those training centers, learning each other's TTPs and how we conduct missions. We then expand that out to live fire exercise and you've seen some of that on the screen there. One of those that you saw was up at the JSA. That was a joint live fire between rock infantry platoon and our JSA elements up there. We just completed a combined live fire exercise out at Rodriguez. That was K-1 tanks, Korean tanks, their engineer forces out there hitting the breach with us and then our striker infantry going on and assaulting the objective. So that's kind of how we build the capacity with our coalition partners. We also do instructor exchanges. So we'll send American instructors over to their academies to instruct there and then we'll also receive some of their instructors at our BLCs and then our Catoosa training academies. All of our Catooses that are assigned down to the squad, platoon and company level all across the Army go through this training academy. They kind of align them with some of the same training that American forces do before they reach their union of assignment. So it's very helpful just to bind our cultures together, help us understand each other a little bit more and make that bond even stronger with our rock partners. We'll continue to expand this out with our rock non-commissioned officers and especially our command start majors and the rock army. Command start major love at USFK gets us together around four times a year to do events like Mungadai. Those are absolutely leadership challenges that are all master sergeants and command start majors and we go out and we run through troop leading procedures together to show them how we execute those and then we come together during our freedom shield exercises to go out and actually visit those nodes that we'll be operating and to do a new evacuation exercise or to do combined operations. And we actually get on the ground that we would be fighting and operating on and walk through those techniques and procedures so we make sure we have a clear understanding from both sides of how we would operate in those environments. So when we say that we're training to fight the night, it's not just a bumper sticker and we do everything we can to continue to expand that capacity every day. We just recently started alerts that are assisted by our staff at the eighth army level with our G3, G3 start major. They go out and do a no notice alert with a company. They pick a company within eighth army. They alert that company and then they basically go out and give them a grade on their report card, on alert procedures, assembly, draw, dispatch and prepare to move to make sure we can laser focus on those elements that we need to make sure we can alert quickly and then move out to our assembly areas to get ready to assist in the mission that we may be doing. So we're very proud of the efforts that we're doing but we're not gonna be sit back on our laurels and think where we need to be at. We have to constantly continue to improve every day and myself and General Burleson are very proud of the steps that eighth army and two IDF taken in the last few years and they're continue to build upon that capacity. So thank you for your time and we look forward to any questions that you may have. I mean, I honestly think as we look at how we develop new capabilities, whether it's direct indirect fires, directed energy, whether it's cyber, EW, any of the other multiple domain things, we gotta look at it from a doctor, neurization training, leader development, material personnel. So great opportunities here for, to look at technological advances but if we don't have the other pieces that go with it, it's just like I'm giving you a new hammer, right? You're gonna use it the same way. Some things, when you look at high energy lasers and I think about like a capability like that, what I'm thinking as an infantryman is what's the range fan, right? What's the range fan? How do I protect myself? How do I protect others? And how do I eliminate the threat that I'm trying to neutralize? And so I think we can answer those questions pretty quickly, that's science, right? But then what does it mean for how we fight? How does it fundamentally change how we fight or employ fires? I think we gotta look at it in total. Good capabilities, we just gotta understand what it means total for us and everything. No, so what's interesting though, we went to IPAMS here last year, right? And we had forces from all across the Pacific come together and all the start majors got together. And we thought we were gonna be very unique in our problem sets that we had. Well, believe it or not, we have the exact same problem sets across all the armies, right? And when it comes to non-commissioned officers that's making sure we get the right training resources for one, two, their training, three, instilling standards and discipline within our young soldiers, right? Cause when I was growing up, I didn't ask why I just, okay, you want me to dig the fox hole, I'm gonna dig it. How deep you want it? How wide do you want it? I got it. And now it's, hey, we need to go dig some fox holes, fill some sandbags. This is how deep and wide, but why? Why does it have to be this deep? Why does it have to be this wide? So it's bridging that communication, I'm not gonna say gap, it's that communication difference now between the generations. How do we communicate with the younger generations and be effective in doing it? It's those same problems, right? Even in the rock army. And we look at our, we'd say the rock army is a conscript army and they only have them for about two years. Well, if you look at us in the American army in Korea, we really only have them for about a year because they are for a one year rotation, right? So how do we optimize that training cycle to get the most training and the most value added training in that period of time to make it as competent as we can be? So we just have to have a very focused, laser focused training plans and make sure we're giving our non-commissioned officers the time to execute those training plans. But believe it or not, language difference, cultural difference, you put two NCOs together, very, very similar problems and very similar successes. They're great non-commissioned officers. They just have to have the tools they need to execute the training we're asking them to do, right? So very good non-commissioned officers on the rock side. So generally, first question, how do we maintain our interoperability between the U.S. and the Republic of Korea? So I look at interoperability really three things, human procedural and technical. They will continue, we'll continue to chase the Chihuahua round of technical interoperability, right? As we try and get our networks to talk, we do have Centrix K, which is our combined network, tactical voice bridging allows us to potentially be able to speak to each other. But remember, we got to understand each other, right? I mean, I've seen it where Americans and British can't understand each other. And we speak a common language supposedly, right? So I'm always a little bit suspect when I just hear the technical solutions. I'm actually a much strong believer in human procedural. And what I believe we're able to do better than anybody else is we have developed over 50, 70 years, a series of crisis action standard operating procedures. So if one of them is how to tie your shoe, right? There's a quick reference sheet that's one sheet that says how to tie your shoe. Behind that, there's a phone book of all the things you got to do. Now, we don't have one for tying our shoes, but whether it's calling for fire, elevating our security threats. So the work has been done ahead of time procedurally. It's been agreed upon. We've translated it, retranslated it, translated it back to eliminate ambiguity. So all's we got to say is, execute this crisis action SOP at this time. Everybody pulls it out. There's no ambiguity. Human interoperability. Well, I think there's a lot of things that are important on this is, first of all, we're fortunate that we had the Korean augmentation of the United States Army program. And as the Korean Army changes its size and structure, so do our cantooses, but they're embedded within our formation. Some of these are kids working on college degrees at Oxford. I mean, their English is better than mine. And they provide that language interoperability. I think we're also fortunate that the Republic of Korea has one of the highest, maybe perhaps the highest per capita number of young adults that go to the United States for education. So English as a language in Korea has become much more prolific. So the average Korean can speak some Korean. But more importantly to underscore it all is our day-to-day combined training. I mean, this can't be one of these things where you show up for a training exercise and go, let's figure out how to be interoperable. I mean, two ID is doing bridge crossing. That's one of the most complex operations that we have. Doing a bridge crossing in a combined unit. We have the Korean Combat Training Center, which is a Korean Combat Training Center, much like our joint readiness training center, national training center, the one we got in Hohenfels. Now that we have a striker brigade, we've embedded a striker battalion with a Korean regiment in KCTC. So you got a battalion, US battalion commander, a thinking staff that now is part of that Korean staff that just, it improves our interoperability every single day. So I'd say it's not episodic, it's day-to-day, and it's continuous. It's like being alignment on a football team, contact all the time, and that's what builds our interoperability. And sir, if I could add to that, we gotta keep talent on the team, right? You hear General Flynn talking about bringing folks back to the Pacific, right? I go out to the SART Major's Academy, we go out to Leavenworth every year and we talk to our folks coming in, and we hope that they come accompanied, right? Because it's a little selfish, right? Because we want to keep it for two years. But every single time the families get over there, they love it and they don't want to leave. And we have to tell that story so we continue to get our talent back to Korea. Korea is not the Korea of old. You're not hurting for anything. Camp Hohenfels is one of the newest installations in the United States Army, right? Everything's new. The subway systems, you hop on the subway, or the train system, and you're up in Seoul in two hours. You'll have a nice day, come on back down to Humphrey. So the country is a very developed country. We're not hurting for anything. Families absolutely love it. And when they get over there, you'll find most of the time they won't leave. But we get that talent on the team and then we keep getting the repeat offenders, right? They get back and they hadn't forgot all that knowledge they had the last time they were there. They're just bringing it back to the team, they're rebluing it and see how you can plug right back into the team and keep fighting again. It's my third time there, right? And every single time I've come back, I've seen how much progress we've made, how much we've improved, our combined fighting force together. And it's pretty impressive. So we invite everybody that's out there on the Ask Cycle to put your name in the hat and come on to Korea and join a winning team where you're actually gonna do your job. Our intel folks, our air traffic controllers, all those folks, they're doing their real job every single day. They got a real target, a real enemy. They're not fighting the atropians down in JRTC, right? So come do your real job and join the team over in Korea and learn how to fight tonight, right? Thank you for coming to USA and coming here for our little Commander's Corner. And I wish you a great lunch. Thank you very much. I'm Brian Martin. I'm the commander of the 196 Infantry which forms the ops group for the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center, JPMRC. And thanks for being here this afternoon to hear about the center and the great work that the team from JPMRC does to put on training events. So the Army's got three CTCs that they've had for the last 40-ish years or so. And we are just now kind of putting the final touches on the fourth combat training center that the Army's built. And we built it out here in the Indo-Pacific and we do three rotations a year. We do one here in Alaska, or one in Alaska, one here in Hawaii, and one west of the international date line. And the whole goal is to keep forces in theater. So for a data point, we save about 110 days of readiness where we're not sending forces back to the continental United States. We're able to save about $80 million per rotation by keeping them out here and not having to ship everything back to Conus. But more importantly, we're able to work with our allies and partners here in theater in the environment in which the USARPAC forces will go ahead and deter and if necessary fight. And so we do that with a fairly small footprint right now. And when we're fully built out, we'll be about 441 folks. We're nowhere even close to that right now. We still rely on a lot of support for our first core and from other elements back in Conus to execute each one of these rotations. But it's good work. And some of the team you see around here are the folks who carry the really, really heavy load of making these rotations happen. So they're doing what a team of about 800 folks do. They're doing it with about 100 folks to make each one of these occur. And we are very log heavy since we shipped this system all over the Indo-Pacific. And so when we build readiness for forces here in theater we're able to display a combat credible force in the environment in which they're gonna fight. So the 25th Infantry Division, my main job is to help that division commander train his brigade in jungle warfare and in an island fight, which something our military is not really done since the 40s. When we go to Alaska, I work with the 11th Airborne and we train that brigade and how to fight in the Arctic, how to fight in extreme cold weather and how to fight in the mountains. So when you kind of think we never wanna have a repeat of the chosen reservoir, the 11th Airborne is at the forefront in figuring out how to keep that from happening, right? How to actually thrive and survive, not just survive, but thrive and fight in the Arctic environment. And then when we go west of the international dateline those rotations are really focused on displaying a combat credible force alongside our ally and partner and showing that application of that readiness forward. To date we've had 16 observer nations come in embed in the exercises and we just finished our fifth exercise. So that's 16 different nations, five exercises coming out and seeing kind of behind the curtain how we put on the exercise, the training value to forces that would fight here in the Indo-Pacific. Eight of those nations have joined us as either part of the rotational unit, part of the OP4 or part of the exercise control. And specifically we have very, very close relationships with the Australian CTC, the Indonesian CTC where we executed a rotation two years ago. Next year we'll be in the Philippines so we're working with the armed forces of the Philippine CTC and for all things Arctic we have a very, very close relationship with the Canadian CTC. When you hear about JPMRC rotations anything with a dash zero one is a Hawaii based rotation working on the inter-island fight and anything with a dash zero two is the Alaska rotation, the Alaska fight. We also have very close relationships and growing relationships with the CTC in Japan, the CTC in Korea and CTC in Singapore that's just kind of beginning to develop. Importantly, these are all rehearsals for deterring conflict and for the readiness that's built here in Hawaii, the readiness that's built in Alaska when they deploy that forward west of the international dateline. If something were to develop and there's a crisis underway they've rehearsed how they would respond to that through JPMRC so it is the 25th entry division commander and 11th airborne commander's way to validate their forces before they deploy forward. Let's go to the next slide. So as I said before, up in Alaska we're figuring out how to fight in the Arctic, right? How we've got an Arctic strategy we don't really have any documentation on how to actually fight in the Arctic and the 11th airborne is working on that. Their commander uses JPMRC as a way to do that at scale with anywhere between 5,000 to 8,000 people in the field. We had about 8,000 people this last rotation. Here in Hawaii, we are living chapter seven of FN3-O which is the army operations in a maritime environment. So if you were to take that doctrine and you were to overlay it on our rotations you can see it play out, right? And again, we are experimenting with what does it take to sustain a force on an inter-island fight? How do army forces in a maritime environment exercise sea control, execute maritime domain awareness and execute targets at sea? And we're working all of that out right now. Last rotation, we had a sensor to shooter exercise in our live virtual and constructive wrap where we had a joint element, the third marine matorial regiment which is executing their expeditionary advanced basing operations since a enemy DDG passed that targeting data off to 25th entry division who passed it to 15th wing who then passed it to a naval strike group three DDG at sea that executed the target. And these are all kind of emerging concepts and how we're gonna do joint all-domain operations. We're exercising that here now in the Indo-Pacific with our joint partners that we're surrounded by, right? So we don't have to go and ask other joint partners to play. They're showing up. They wanna be part of this. For army forces, especially the army forces early in crisis, it's only gonna be joint partners around us, right? Until tip-fid and forces flow into theater, they're gonna have a brigade that's forward is gonna have to figure out how did they play with 15th wing? How do they inter-operate with packed fleet? And how do they work with the marines that are part of the stand-in force? To kind of round all of this out, we're currently executing high-range operations where you put long-range precision fires on Air Force aircraft, move them in from an off-access to allow them to execute long-range targets both in support of the JFAC and in support of army operations. We've executed GPS denial, RF jamming, a whole suite of small UASs, kind of stuff you see in the media from Eastern Ukraine. And importantly, we're teaching forces here how to use extended sensing overhead SAR, overhead EOIR as part of their operations process. And this works both ways. Because we are replicating a near-peer adversary, the OP4 gets that as well. So that's something new our forces have to contend with, especially guys in my generation where we don't really have to worry about that adversary having SAR overhead of what our footprint might look like at any given point on the battlefield. We work closely with 3rd MDTF as they're beginning to build their forces, they're embedded in our exercises. And as you can see up here, this is an upcoming exercise that will execute on the Hawaiian Islands, out in Guam, Midway, Johnson and Toll, Wake Island, this upcoming fall. 3rd MDTF will move out with the package from 25th ID to execute some of their extended-range sensing, some of their electronic attack, electronic warfare capability, and long-range precision fires out of Guam. At the same time, marine elements led by the Marine Air Group out of Kanahoe Bay, will move to Midway and execute some of their EABO. And 15th Wing will execute their agile combat employment out of Wake Island as a C2 element for kind of a replicated reinforcement of a first island chain, if you will. While that's occurring back on the Hawaiian main archipelago, we're gonna be conducting decisive land operations in a maritime environment as a 25th ID secures islands that are replicating a U.S. treaty ally that's asked for help in restoring their national sovereignty. And we're really gonna experiment with how do we do sustainment of a fight between islands and how do we move army forces on an in-arrow than fight. We're not allowing them to pre-pull anything on the big island. They're gonna have to figure out how they're gonna get from the northern part of Oahu all the way to the big island and kind of culminate there. I don't wanna give too much of it away from a scenario development perspective. So we're still growing the CTC. It's up and running. It's been up since 2022. As we just said, we just executed our fifth rotation. We'll execute a rotation in Australia this upcoming summer. And as we build this thing out, there's kind of five pillars that we're building the training center out around. The first one, the operational environment in the OP4, the operational environment kind of sets itself into a PECOM operational environment. From an OP4 perspective, we use the decisive action training environment, Pacific, which is built around the Alvanian threat. That's the name of the, for those of us who are Prasanovians back in the day, Alvana is a threat that has us with a larger population. They have us with longer range fires, more fires than we're used to, and they have us with tech that's as good, if not better than ours. And we are all of Alvana all the time. That's the only thing we focus on here on some legacy CTCs that have to kind of mix in other threat templates. And under this model, we don't have a permanent OP4. We have kind of a permanent cadre of OP4 teachers that embed with a unit, starting about three or four months out before the rotation, and using ATP7-100.3, which is the unclassified version of the PLA threat tactics. We go ahead and turn them into an opposing force. So this kind of creates an understanding of the significant adversary challenge in this area, in the operating force. And as everyone knows, when you get to play OP4, they play it with a degree of gusto that when you put a helmet on somebody in Miles Gear and their morale just kind of plummets, they just don't have, you put a boony cap in Miles Gear on somebody and they really kind of get after it. And we've had very, very professional OP4 out here create dilemmas for our training forces for the rotational units. For the operations group, again, it's centered around the 196th Tree Brigade. When we're fully manned, which will be about 441 folks, we're still only gonna be half to one-third the size of the other CTCs. And this is because we only execute three rotations a year. And we don't need 800, 1200 people to execute back to back to back to back rotations. So, importantly, we are very integrated with our multinational partners. As I said before, we've had, the Australians have been inside our Xcon, they've been OP4 for us. We've had Canadians that have been part of our OCT packages, Indonesians who have been OCTs with us and this summer will be fully integrated with the Australian CTC. And then, more importantly, we're truly a joint operations group. We've got Marine OCs that show up for these exercises. We've got the Air Force that's using something similar to an OC capability for their exercise. And more importantly, kind of the most important thing, you could do away with the rest of this stuff. And as long as you have a good OC who can sit down and observe, coach, teach, and mentor a peer as they work through a difficult problem set, we're still gonna get a lot of good training, a lot of good learning out of that training repetition. And I would submit with what the OCC out here in the Indo-Pacific, with the problems folks have to work through out here. They're not problems that we've had to grapple with over the last 20 years. How do you sustain? How do you move through mountainous jungle, right? And still just keep track of your frontline trace. How do you survive in the Arctic? These are all things that our OCs are kind of experts on and really help their partnered force, if you will, the force that they're seeing make it through rotation. And then most importantly, the after-action review where the real learning occurs. My folks that are out here in white, they're experts at doing it. And we deliver a really, really good product for the training brigades. For the rotational training units, again, the brigade is kind of the center. It's the focus point for us, right? They're the ones that have to get out of here, leave our training events with a heightened state of readiness. But most importantly, starting with our very first rotation, we use the division as the higher command. And so there's no 21st Infantry or 52nd Infantry where it's a guy like me, who's dual-hadding as the the Obstrude Commander who's dialing the real state of training and as the commander, the higher commander of the rotational unit. Here it is the 25th Infantry Division Commander. It's the 11th Airborne Commander who is executing those mission command functions for the training unit. And it's incredibly powerful to watch the division commander and the division staff work with the RTU Commander, the brigade commander going through training and the brigade staff and then the battalions and all the down trace units that are going through the training and they're working through complex military problems. And they're doing it in the crucible that's a CTC rotation. It's an incredibly powerful thing to watch. And my peers who are going through the training have all come out of it and said, that's how you form tight teams. You make people do hard things and give them an opportunity to learn and it's been an incredibly successful training opportunity from that perspective. So division high con, the brigade going through the training and then we leverage the full suite of the echelons above brigade that come out of first port to execute these. So engineers, MP support, medical support, third MDTF, and then General Flynn is kind of given direction to all of his major commands and all of his direct report units that they'll support this, right? So we've got support from eighth TSC from a compo two and compo three units coming out of ninth MSC, the Hawaii National Guard, the Guam National Guard that all support these rotations. Huge support from fifth SBAD because of our multinational flavor that come out to enable this training and medical support from 18th MedCon. And so he's able to exercise various elements of the feeder army when these rotations go ahead and get executed. Everybody comes to the table with their own training objectives. Again, we put the primacy of the training objective on the brigade that's going through the training but everyone's able to walk away and I check them every single day while we're going through rotation. How many training objectives are being achieved? What still has to be hit before then to the rotation? And we're batting like 99% on training objectives being met by all echelons of units that show up for these. As I said earlier, we are surrounded by joint assets here in Hawaii, here in the US Indo-Pakam AOR. They show up with their own training objectives and here's where the beauty of JPMRC really gets on fold. We're not paying $6 million to get the Air Force to show up to Fort Johnson in Louisiana to execute training alongside an army element at JRTC. They show up with their own training objectives here because we're in the environment they need to train in, we're the partner they need to train in, and we're executing the sort of operations they need help or that they have synergy with when we train together. And so they show up and they're paying their own flight hours, which if you've ever worked with the Air Force, flight hours are massively expensive. They're accomplishing their own training objectives. The Navy's accomplishing their own training objectives as part of this, but it's not coming on the army's dime, if you will, from a training perspective. It's huge. And at the kind of the tactical level of the joint interoperability that we developed over the last 20 years of working together in various AORs, that's being sustained by the touches that the brigade's getting with the different airwings that show up with the different naval strike groups that participate in this, and especially with our Marine Corps elements here on Island. And kind of the outer layer of all that is the allies and partners and our friends in the theater that show up for training, again, with their own training events, training objectives that they need to hit. But they all walk out of this with a higher proficiency from when they went in, and we all get to learn from each other on how we operate and developing relationships that are gonna last careers as these things progress. From an instrumentation perspective, if you're familiar with the CTC, so we do the live virtual constructive, we're able to replicate things that really aren't there because they're appearing on mission command systems, they're being injected through our instrumentation, and then the same instrumentation takes feedback so that we're able to provide good after action reviews on here's what really happened. I'm able to take this anywhere in theater. We pack it up, it's about 26 C-Land containers, and we can move it, it's currently being moved from Alaska to Australia. We are not fixed to a particular piece of terrain, which gives, from a training perspective, it gives you tons of options, right? And again, guys at my level who've been at JRTC 15 times, like, they know the terrain, they know the fight, they know where the decisive terrain that they have to hold here is, here we can switch it up on folks. And then last, as I said, facilities were completely exportable. It's the beauty of the system, it's the beauty of the way this thing's been set up. It's, you know, you Sarpak works out in agreement with a multinational partner and they want us in a country in a year from now. We start the planning 270 days out, we pack this thing up, we move it, and we go ahead and execute training. So with that, I'd like to open it up for any questions. Fifth SBAP said they were gonna have some hard ones. Thanks, very helpful and insightful. You mentioned the work that you're able to do with the multinational training that we get at. Are there limitations for how many partners that we can bring into these different exercises? So the question was, are there limitations to how many multinational partners we can bring into the training? So there's two limiting factors on that. The first one is terrain. So in Alaska, the skies you limit, the training areas up there, the size of the state of Indiana. So there's a lot that you can do in Alaska. On an island, there's limited training opportunities and so right now it's about one partner for each American maneuver element. So three light infantry company size elements. But there's room for everything that's not maneuver, right? So the other war fighting functions, the New Zealand contingent is bringing, they're bringing a field artillery element up this year. So we're at about capacity right now, this year with about six partners that are gonna show up for this next training event here in the fall. And it's about, we're at about 830 multinational soldiers that'll show up. That's kind of about right for the Hawaiian Island training scenario. Sir. Do you have a language or a cultural training component to this? So the question is if we have a language or cultural training component to this. When I mentioned earlier that we rely on other used to pack elements to help us with put on these training events. One of the key partners for our multinational allies and partners, friends who show up is the fifth SFAB. And they kind of have that cultural experience to a degree, they may have a language capability within the operations group we don't. I'll be in Australia this summer, next summer we'll be in the Philippines. I don't know where we're gonna be the year after that. Two years ago, we were in Indonesia. So we're more focused on just delivering a quality training event. And then there are capabilities in theater that can make up for the language and cultural. Zero, we are pretty soon. A matter of a dynamic growing organization. Can you identify maybe where some of our gaps are that maybe some of our vendors can fill? Like if there's a need that we have that maybe someone could fill, is there anything that you see that we need? Yeah, I mean, like it's the Rocky quote. Like I got gaps, you got gaps. Together we got no gaps. It's, no. So for right now, we are working our growth through Army programs or record to try to get after building the CTC out. We're not the first CTC that America's ever built, that our Army's ever built. And so we've got three models to look at. But then I also look at the Australian CTC. Completely different model from ours on how we do business, right? And so the British CTC, they do things slightly different too. So we don't necessarily, we're not trying to create NTC here. They have capabilities that are very unique and are very well suited for a mechanized fight. We are still working through kind of niche capabilities we'll need at JPMRC. And right now I'm just focused on making sure OCs are experts at observing coach teaching, mentoring up in the Arctic, which is hard enough in the jungle and in an American environment. That's with Army Futures Command, with ASALT. It's with our industry partners and it's really with the greater Army team. That is one thing that I have realized just each and every day is that this would never happen if we were not operating as one team together. Really the purpose of what I'd like to go over today is twofold. First, I'd really like to give you an overview of the MDTF and how it serves as a joint force enabler. Why we were specifically designed to enable the joint force. The second thing I'd like to go over is really talk about how the MDTF operates. You know really how we improve joint readiness, how we advance interoperability and also how we help create interior lines, which I think is so important, particularly as you listen to General Flynn and the other guest speakers today about the importance of land power in the Indo-Pacific. So if we go next slide please. So the first slide here really shows kind of our problem set and our task organization and how we operate. The multi-domain task force was developed really to begin to tackle the challenge and the dilemma that the A2AD network, the anti-access area denial network in the region posed to the US, the joint, the coalition forces in the region. Back in about the 2015, 2016 timeframe, then Chief of Staff of the Army General Milley realized that we have a lot of really exquisite capabilities that we're developing non-kinetically as well as exquisite capabilities that were in development for kinetic operations. But when you look at the A2AD network and you look at the joint force in theater back at that time, they were generally fundamentally out of position in order to apply those capabilities to counter the dilemma of the anti-access area denial network. At that time, Admiral Harry Harris who was commanding Indo-Pakom, PAKOM at the time, looked at the Army and said, I really need you to be able to do four things to enable Indo-Pakom. I need you to be able to sink ships. I need you to be able to shoot down aircraft and missiles. I need you to be able to neutralize satellites and I need you to be able to hack and jam the adversary C2. Those four things, I really need you to be able to do to make sure that Indo-Pakom is successful, particularly looking at the A2AD problem set. So it's really important is as General Milley, and then followed on by General McComble, started looking at this problem set, he realized if we were able to take our emerging non-kinetic capabilities and our emerging kinetic capabilities and be able to synchronize those under one headquarters, we could then enable the joint force. And this is why it's really important to understand the MDTF as a joint force enabler. Although on our uniforms, we will wear US Army, we do not exist specifically to support an Army unit. We exist to support that joint force commander as he or she looks at that problem set to neutralize portions of the A2AD network to enable that joint freedom of action. So again, we are specifically tied to that joint task force commander to help neutralize portions of that A2AD network to enable that joint task force freedom of maneuver within portions of that A2AD umbrella. So very, very important for us to see how we operate as part of that joint task force. The next thing that we notice is that if we were able to put our non-kinetic and kinetic capabilities under one task force, well then that joint task force commander would be able to go to one formation in order to synchronize what previously were disparate capabilities with non-kinetics and kinetics. The next thing that we recognized was when the adversary built the A2AD network, that A2AD network was really designed based off of lessons that were learned back in the desert storm, desert shield days of when you thought of the shock and awe campaign. You know, the ability for the U.S. and a coalition to present mass at a target in order to achieve an effect. So when that A2AD network was designed, it was designed specifically against high-flying aircraft as well as capital craft that would be operating in the area. So as we looked at a task force design, what a task force allowed us to do were to establish multi-domain cells that you can see up there into smaller, tolerable, maneuverable, survivable elements that could operate forward that weren't the same signature as a high-flying aircraft or a capital craft that a lot of the A2AD network was designed to combat. The next thing we realized was our ability to understand elements of the A2AD network. And as we looked at, for example, this DD that's in the middle of the slide, we looked at what were the vulnerabilities of these potential assets. And what you see highlighted there is that each of these assets have multiple what we would call access vectors. How do they operate as part of the A2AD network? And as you can see, there are several capabilities, whether it be line-of-sight radio, navigation, radar, in order to protect their own assets or to utilize as part of their weapon solutions and then weapon systems themselves that utilize the electromagnetic spectrum. So as the multi-domain task force was formed, I'll draw your attention to the top right. And it was very specifically designed to synchronize non-kinetic effects with kinetic effects in order to achieve that neutralization of elements of the A2AD network. So on that top line, you'll see non-kinetic effects. Three examples of those effects are first, a space company. So think of small space teams. You heard General Dickinson talk about it earlier with the ability to be in the environment sense the environment, understand how certain assets of the A2AD network utilize the space environment and then be able to provide an effect against that system. The second box, you'll see if there is our extended range sensing and effects company. So think about as we start operating at longer ranges our ability to do deep sensing, to sense and make sense of the environment and then be able to tie that with electromagnetic sensing and again be able to make sense of that environment and also be able to deliver effects to potentially neutralize elements within the electromagnetic spectrum to help isolate. And then the third you'll see up there is cyber. Primarily a defensive cyber capability to protect our networks, to protect coalition networks but then also the ability to plan and synchronize with our cyber, cyber command in order to look at offensive cyber operations again to help neutralize and isolate elements of the A2AD network that operates as part of the internet of things. So if you look on the bottom right and I'll just step away from the mic for a second. You will see this area right here. And what we call that is our electromagnetic isolation. So if we look at applying our space, our cyber, our EW and our information operations, we are looking to electromagnetically isolate a portion of that A2AD network. That in and of itself could potentially neutralize that target from being able to provide the effect that it does within that A2AD network. If that in and of itself does not provide that neutralization effect, what it does do is set the conditions for what you see on the bottom right of kinetic strike options to improve its capability to be successful against a particular target. So if you look at the top right again, you'll see that row that says kinetic effects. So the MBTF was fielded with three kinetic batteries. The first is our traditional high-mars battery, that most are tracking, of course, particularly from the success of high-mars in Ukraine. So we have a battery of nine total high-mars with the capability to shoot traditional high-mars munitions but also with the future fielding of the precision strike munition or prism that is going to be fielded beginning this year. The second battery is our mid-range capability battery. So think of our mid-range being standard missile six, tomahawk capabilities. So if high-mars can get you out to the multiple hundreds of kilometers, mid-range capability with those two type weapon systems now gets you well past that 1,000 kilometer range into the battle space. The third battery that was formed was the long-range hypersonics battery. So that battery is currently fielded and currently going through the testing that many are tracking with the rapid capabilities and critical technologies office as they go through the missile testing and being able to deliver that long-range hypersonics weapon well outside of that 2,000 kilometer range. So if you look at the problem set of the A280 network, we're able to synchronize the timing and tempo of those non-kinetic options to be able to electromagneticly isolate a potential threat. And if that doesn't achieve neutralization, that increases the probability that a high-mars mid-range capability, long-range hypersonics has the ability to kinetically strike that target. Now as we synchronize that long-range fires as well as those long-range precision effects, we also have two additional battalions, our protection battalion and sustainment battalion. Protection battalion is our air defense artillery battalion. That will be the indirect fire protection capability that we are currently geared towards right now. So currently fielded bridging solution to get us there, but that will allow us the ability to protect multiple cells that are operating forward in the region and then our sustainment capability. Multiple small groups today and keynote speakers talking about the challenges of sustainment within the theater. So oftentimes we become very, our partnership is very important with ATSC as we operate within theater, our ability to operate side by side with our host nation partners, and then our ability to have interior lines in order to minimize our supply lines to those small multi-domain cells that are operating. So if we take those multiple elements, again, those cumulative effects are to electromagnetically isolate with the potential to kinetically strike a target. General Flynn oftentimes talks about the adversary has three advantages over our forces we operate in the region. The first is mass and it's very hard to match the adversary's mass in the region. The second is magazine depth. When you look at the magazine depth of an adversary and you look at our magazine depth, there is a significant mismatch there. That is where our ability to leverage non-kinetic effects and sync the timing and tempo to either have those non-kinetic effects achieve neutralization or improve the probability of hit of our kinetic effects helps to bridge that gap between the mismatch and magazine depth. And then the third is interior lines. Our ability to establish within the first island chain helps develop those interior lines that are so critical to competing and preventing war in the region. So if you look on the bottom, you'll see that right now MDTFs between first and third MDTF are deployed across more than 6,000 miles in 10 time zones really building those interior lines with combat credible forces that are forward. And if you go next slide, please. So this is a graphical representation of where the MDTFs sit today or where they will be during Pathways 23 in order to achieve those interior lines. So what you'll see from, starting from the left of the West is Tiger Bomb. Last year we executed Tiger Bomb in Singapore. This year is happening right here in Hawaii as we build that interoperability with our partners. We also have in the center there the Philippines. You've heard a lot of talk about Balikatan and Salakani. So first MDTF has been a part of Salakani since it was tack one at the beginning of March and I've had a continuous presence with our Philippine and our joint partners throughout Salakani, tack one, Balikatan and now Salakani, tack two and we'll talk a little bit about that here coming up. Currently we also have, if you look to the top right in Alaska, I mentioned third MDTF. They're currently conducting their first large scale exercise tied as part of an Indo-Paycom constructed exercise Northern Edge 23, tack one to test their non-kinetic and their kinetic capabilities as part of that task force. Coming up later in the year on further south, Talisman Sabre, third MDTF will also lead efforts as they continue to increase their partnership and their relationship with our Australian partners. And then to the north in Japan, you'll see in the fall series of operations that we will be partnered with both the Western Army and the Northern Army as we execute Orient Shield, Resolute Dragon alongside our Marine partners as well as Yamasakura and when we execute Resolute Dragon again an FTX style operation where we'll be pushing live assets forward in order to test them in a live environment, in real conditions against live assets as well. And then finally I'll circle back around to the Philippines which I think is so important is as we have continued to build these relationships not only with the joint force but with our partners is again deploying live capabilities with our HIMARS, live capabilities with collection assets to include experimental UAS assets and then live assets with collection platforms that we are using in the live environment. And it'll come up later as a lesson learned but one of the most significant lessons particularly for our industry partners here is the importance of testing these live systems in the live environment where we would expect them to compete if we transition from competition to crisis to conflict to understand exactly how that piece of equipment is gonna operate in the demands of the environment that will be presented. And in the center you'll see just in Balakantan alone we did over 50 constructive engagements with our Philippine partners with the US Navy with the US Marine Corps and the US Air Force and really the first ever time that we were able to do a complete constructive engagement from sensing the environment building a collection plan building a targeting plan all the way through constructive delivery of effects both non-kinetic and kinetic alongside our Filipino partners. Next slide please. So really what's part of Interior Lines and again I'll highlight the Philippines. You heard General Flynn several times discuss today about the Combined Information and Effects Fusion Cell or the CIFSI that we stood up alongside our Filipino partners as well as alongside our Marine Corps third map or third Mardib who is conducting JTF activities. And what we recognized was as we were conducting this joint operation we needed connective tissue both between the joint force elements of our US joint force as well as elements of the Filipino joint force and the US task force. To fill that gap we stood up the Combined Information and Effects Fusion Cell and really what we looked at is the three levels of interoperability. That first level is that human interoperability. It is getting everybody under the same tent operating side by side and working off of that same battle of them. Understanding skills, capabilities, terms, references, just day to day activities and building what I think is that really the core of any relationship which is trust through that human interoperability. Then we came the technical interoperability and we'll pause just for one second for an announcement to make an announcement for the main hall. Ladies and gentlemen, for our whole conference attendees you want to start making your way back to the general session room for our afternoon session that begins at 1400. We will start making your way back to the general session. We're in the interruption and have a great rest of your afternoon. You got away for the third set of chimes. All right, so the next thing we looked at really was technical interoperability. And General Flynn talked about this and Yusasak talked about this as well. Sometimes with security classification guidance it's tough, right? Like what can you share and at what level can you share it? Well, we recognize quickly and why we really the kind of the joint force but us being the catalyst with the CIFC was what can we do if we drive this down to the lowest level? If we build an impact level two network, a unclassified network to be able to establish that network, leave it on and then have both US joint and then Noelcom joint partners be able to plug into that network. And that's what our comms team did. The next thing was well, what can we use that is unclassified to help us understand the environment. And you'll see around the green lettering that says CIFC unclassified network with just multiple kind of open source or experimental or industry level systems. Where that BC vision to look at transponders you know in the loose on straight whether it be wide ISR discovery in order to look at how can I use an unclassified system to build a collection plan? Commercial satellite using basically multiple sources for commercial satellite using Royce Geo as well pulling in FMV that is unclassified or pulling in the ability to pull in RF as well. How do I pull all that in and be able to start making sense of that at the unclassified level? And really what we found out was really quite fascinating. So when you had unclass data shared in an unclass common operating picture and really more importantly an unclassified common intelligence picture you just understood your environment and then what you would see would be anomalies. So a good example is you would see areas where you'd see a lot of commercial vessels and then you'd see these blank spots where there are no vessels at all. Well why are there no vessels? Well if I was an adversary vessel would I have my transponder on no? If I was a commercial vessel would I bypass that area? I probably would. So you're able to find some of these anomalies in the environment. So that allowed for a collection plan to be developed. Well let's send out assets whether they be U.S. or Filipino that we can release in order to understand that environment and really doing that combined analysis that's in that second square. And just starting to look based off of FMV commercial imagery whether it be sending a maritime patrol from the Filipino Navy out to look and then being able to increase our awareness. And those are some real photos that we were able to pull just based off of that process. So then what that allows is of course a shared network at the lowest level building human interoperability as you develop that, building technical interoperability as we just are looking at how these systems work and how our computers are plugging in the Filipino computers are plugging in and then ultimately changing that into procedural interoperability. How do we sense, make sense and be able to make decisions? So something that was really critical. And so to this day, so we started that at the end of March and that currently exists today and will throughout Salakini, TAC2 and we're hopeful that we will be able to continue because part of interior lines that is so important is the network. Oftentimes we think interior lines we think supplies, we think of depots but oftentimes we think about the network. How do you establish a network? Leave the network on. Therefore, oftentimes the hardest part of an operation is initial occupation trying to build the network and then when we're done with that operation we break that network down. How do we use ideas such as these in order to try to enable an always on network? And then Captain Matisuba who's over here wrote a phenomenal article about this SIFSI. So for those in our media or those that are interested, please feel free to scan that QR code and take a look at it. It describes what I just talked about. Okay, with that let's go next slide please. All right, and then finally I'd like to put up just some key observations, some that we already talked about. The first one is we really do provide a unique capability to the joint force and really the fact that we are specifically tied to that joint force, we are one headquarters that synchronizes both non-kinetics, kinetics, protection and sustainment in order for that joint force commander to achieve a very specific effect. Second is that pathways and experimentation cannot be binary and we already discussed that. How important it is that every pathways operation should have an experiment as a part of it and every experiment should be pushed forward to a pathways operation to learn about the environment. Multi-domain operations require interoperability. You know, it's also a great conversation today in the big room about that needs to be integration over time, but certainly interoperability. How do we talk amongst each other with the common data fabric as a joint force and then how do we do that as a combined force? MDTFs are critical to establishing interior lines as we discussed and then forward exercises, my experience, have been a really good opportunity to gauge a feedback loop into integrated deterrence and we had this conversation, I think it was at AUSA last October of integrated deterrence is really hard to measure. Like is it having the effect that you want? Right now we see kind of being pushed forward, the relationships that we're building, iterative operations turning into extended operations, there are some good positive indicators that we're seeing towards integrated deterrence and then building trust. Again, the bedrock of everything that we do and we see that the relationships that we are building and by we I really mean Indo-Paycom, USERPAC, the MDTFs both first and third just building those relationships and building trust within the joint force, with our partnered force and being able to do that with frequency, with repetition and do it over longer durations. And again, on behalf of third MDTF and our entire first MDTF team, I just really wanna say thank you. I mean, it's been a very accelerated journey and I think General Flynn also said it very well. This was a model where we built the formation, we put the formation forward, thinking we knew what may go in the formation but as we technology evolves, as our modernization evolves, we now have a formation that these technologies can go into that we're not forming around the technology. We are forming around the people, which is so important. And I think you'll really see that with third MDTF. Again, just stood up this past summer and on an accelerated glide path way faster than first or second and they are out there right now in Alaska performing operations as part of Northern Edge 23, TAC-1 and just very, very impressive of where they are from where they were just a few short months ago. So again, thank you so much for your time. I think we only have a couple of minutes that we could do some questions but I have some of my teammates here. We do have third MDTF represented as well and I'd love to open it up if anyone has a question. The perfect brief, no questions. Okay, again, I really wanna say thank you and I mean it when I say it is a team effort and it's not just the army, it's not just the joint force but it's also our industry, it's our allies and partners, it's our modernization enterprise that has made this successful. There are a lot of things that I'm supposed to remember in standing here. The first she told me, which is probably most important is that I'm not supposed to leave the podium and anybody who knows me knows that I've got nervous feet so this is me gripping the podium to make sure that I stay in place. I appreciate you all being here, your time that you're giving us here in this space as well as your attention to the things I'm gonna talk about. I am the commander of the only corps that is co-com assigned. I'm assigned part of the assigned forces for Indo-Pacific Command. Further, op-con down to United States Army Pacific because we're army folks. What we do though is act as the only operational command in the theater of my size. There's nothing more scalable than an army corps. The corps at present is made up of the 7th Infantry Division, the 11th Airborne Division and the 25th Infantry Division. We span from the Arctic all the way to the sub-tropics in the jungle. That's the footprint of our corps. And sometimes I find myself and we start talking about maybe the army stopped somewhere around Texas and really petered out around Kansas that there is army in Washington state. And that's where we sit right now. But I also have to remind people that it's quicker to our pacing change. From Alaska than it is anyplace else on the globe. And we have to remind people of that. So what is it that we do as an operational command? What I'm tasked with is not really the whole of integrated deterrence. But I like to think of the things that this corps does is provide integrated assurance. And we consider that assurance of our friends, partners and allies to be the component that our corps can actually put our fingers in in terms of assuring our friends, partners and allies developing that network of friends, partners and allies that leads to a deterrent effect. When we think about classic deterrence, we think about the entirety of the dime being employed in an effort. What I like to tell folks in our corps is we've got to do our part. Part of that is our posture. How are we postured when we're forward? The vehicle that we use as part of our campaign is pathways. What pathways allows is for my corps to be engaged in the region for eight to 10 months out of the year in places from India to Thailand to the Philippines. We're able to be there and ensure not only our treaty allies, but our friends and partners in the region that we're going to be present. You know, we talk about interoperability a lot. And I think my job for use of deterrence and I think my job for USERPAC and by extension INDO PAYCOM is to work as hard as I can whenever we're in the region to focus on human and procedural interoperability. The technological interoperability will happen as a matter of course. People have the things that they have. There are some cases where our partners like in Thailand, they have strikers. That's easy because we've got strikers at Joint Base Lewis McCord. We've got striker experts that can partner forces assistance brigade to ensure that our posture is correct and that we're assuring our partners that we're going to be there to work alongside them. And it's not always solving tactical problems that we do when we're in the region. Sometimes we're solving problems that might be as simple as maintenance to be able to be there with a partner and say, hey, don't spend any more money. We've already gotten this wrong before. Here's a new way to approach this problem. And it's those relationships that we build in the pathways that in time of crisis or in time, God forbid, of conflict that we can assure them that we're going to be present. Our theater army has theater enabling commands and likewise within the core we have enabling capabilities. So I have an expeditionary MI brigade. I've got an ESC that's part of the core. There's a theater aviation element, a theater cab that sits on my base. There are fire formations like the 17th Field Artillery Brigade that sit in my space. What we receive by partnering in the region is an opportunity to experiment with things that we have and things that we might need to develop for the future that we might be better engaged in the region. You know, I was asked a question earlier about what's the biggest thing that you've gotten out of pathways? And I think that the person that asked me the question expected me to say, well, we learned how we would maneuver in space and how we get from point A to point B. But what I told them was the cultural sensitivity that's developed for our soldiers is they rotate the places they've never been before. I mean, think about it. You're a young specialist in the army and somebody tells you you're going on UW-Yas and you're going to India. Show a hand. Who's been to India before? You raised your hand too fast. I was hoping to make the point by having you not raise your hand and say, well, our soldiers have been there. But I'll still say our soldiers have been there. Our soldiers have been to Thailand. Our soldiers have been into Korea. Our soldiers have been down into the Philippines. And they might not even understand how to spell EDCA. But they've been there and they've been part of the effort which ensures our friends, partners, and allies that our presence is sound and will be there. I think too that when we look at human in our operability it comes with a bit of understanding of what's important in the nations where we go to. The core is able to provide that level of granularity that at higher levels like an endopacom and at USERPAC they might not be able to see because we're at the tactical edge in operational-sized formations which give us a feel of the region. I think that we're also dealing with and what we're able to find out over the course of our pathways is that significantly we're going to be challenged by distance. We're based largely at Joint Base Lewis McCord but for us to get into the region it's got to be productive which is why we can only focus truthfully on human and procedural interoperability. But there's this tyranny of circles that we have to deal with. You can only get so far, so fast to get to the places we need to be at and that's why posture becomes increasingly important. What capabilities are we bringing forward when we're on pathways? How do we posture ourselves along with our partners to ensure that the things that we're doing have great effect? You'll see pictures up here of our soldiers and you'll see a multitude of patches but I want you to pay particular attention to the pictures that might flash with us alongside our partners. But our partners help us to defeat the tyranny of the circles that we deal with every day in the region. The way that we approach that in first course through distributed command and control we establish nodes which have a few things about them that number one they allow us to be agile. Our nodes allow us to be resilient in the region and our nodes also take advantage of what our partners have that we might be able to leverage. We recognize that we won't be able to get enough of us forward in the proper time to deal with conflict or crisis. So it's very important that we tailor our packages that go forward that we might be able to best engage with what our partners have that we can take advantage of. We don't have any permanent basing that the core can avail itself of in the region. So it's always important that we look to partner at the lowest level possible whether that be functionally aligning ourselves or with the size of our forces or the type forces that are forward. Colonel Wozinski is a member of the 7th Infantry Division. They are striker equipped. The 112th Striker Regiment in Thailand takes great advantage when we can get the 7th ID on pathways forward to partner with them at the lowest level where the partners can take best advantage of our knowledge of maintenance and training and we can learn from them the region. We've got to have those kind of linkages that allow us to best understand the environment that we're going to be employed in and whether that be pathways during competition whether that be in conflict or whether it be in crisis. I think another thing that the core has been able to do over our time of experimenting with distributed command and control is to understand that the network and its importance to our ability to prosecute competition which requires our presence in the future. We understand that we're going to have to be able to communicate. We understand that data which is going to be the coin of the realm in the future because that's going to help us to make decisions quality decisions quicker it's going to be omnipresent and in order for us to have this omnipresent data environment we've got to start to shape the networks that are available. We won't ever be concerned with the transport what we want to do is state a requirement for access to data. Our problems are largely from fort to port to the AOR and we've got to have data that's available to us all the way throughout that pathway. Think about having a partner in the region that can tell you about what's going on the region before you get there being able to take best advantage again of what our partners do so that we don't have to do it ourselves and then our partners being able to do the same with us we don't want our relationship in the region to ever be transactional it can't be that for us to be successful. We've got to give back into the region as well and that thing that we're giving is the assurance that we're going to be there when we need it. Competition requires presence and if our partners don't want us there then we can't be present and we can't compete but the best way that we can compete is by assuring our partners and our friends in the region that we're going to be there. Assurance is powerful and again if we take it down to its base level it's those human relationships that we build over time through our campaigning effort that is Pathways it's understanding how our partners fight and by fight I don't mean actually martial things how do they... how does their army run? What's important to them? What paths are they pursuing in their forces? I had a great opportunity to sit and talk with General Bronner the last time I was in the Republic of the Philippines and to understand from him the path that his army is on enables us to be better the next time we go into the region and to understand what they can actually bear of this large 2400 man force that I lead what can they actually bear in their nation and what's productive for them when we're there? We can't afford anymore by virtue of the circles that we exist in to just do the things that are important to us we've got to look to the region and see what's important there I'm not sure where we're at on time I'm good, okay but what I'm most excited about is as our core continues to figure out ways to be engaged in the region or the things that we're doing back home we recognize the fact that everybody doesn't have to be forward that's a markedly different idea from what's existed over the past 21 years or so in our army everybody went when we were going to Afghanistan and Iraq everybody went I think sometimes it was because we don't want to have to call you in later on so we're just going to take everybody right after the bat what we're looking at as we engage in the region is what actually needs to be there what do we need to accomplish over the course of a pathways again it's 8 to 10 months and probably as many locations across the region so how are we productively engaging in that place and I think that's a different approach to the way that we fought over the past 20 years because the partners are the preeminent relationship that we've got to develop there that integrated assurance that's offered at the operational level which is what I'm responsible for is absolutely imperative that we grasp onto that again I don't do integrated deterrents never will as a core commander but what I can do is I can do integrated assurance to make sure that I'm tying the elements of the dime together from my position to ensure that our friends partners and allies in the region are wanting to be part of a network that produces a deterrent effect that's what I've come to realize we're not just going out to hang out in the region we've got to accomplish things we have to prove our value every time we step out the door and this is from the sergeants all the way up to the 3 star general we've got to accomplish things when we're there regardless of the challenges that we have in our own force we've got to accomplish those human and procedural goals every time we step out and that I might be a good steward of your time and we might prevent this log jam that's developing I think I'm going to go ahead and transition to your questions at this time First of all, thank you for being here today my question is on the force with the longer basic AIT OSIT training how is that working out for the force I will tell you sir one of the things that we see is we're also extending that line when we get folks to our installation because what we want to do is we want to try to develop like do you speak any foreign languages here's some things that we need you to understand about going into the region here's the countries that you're going to go to based on the unit you're going to here's where we see you being employed I think that what we're finding is the soldiers that we're getting out of the base now are far more prepared than soldiers were when I first came in the army in 1990 for example our soldiers who are spending a lot more time in the base training in the institutional army they're coming and driving change in the force for example if you look at our integrated weapons training strategy we had soldiers that were showing up to infantry brigades and Leo could tell you about this who had been firing the new tables and we hadn't even really made the full transition in the active force yet so there are things that they're getting in the base now that are sort of hardening those targets if you will before they come to the active force so I have not seen in my experience any any problems or any implications of them staying longer I think they're coming to us better prepared to soldier that's what I was hearing just curious as to whether or not you were seen at that yeah no soldiers are soldiers are always going to be phenomenal and their superpower is their willingness to volunteer to support and defend the constitution of the United States yeah again if you ask a question you're not going to hear yourself on the speakers but you will be immortalized on d-bids because they're recording this so make sure you ask smart questions sir for everyone's benefit Leo Wazinski the seventh ID deputy commander for ops sir as you look to further distribute it command and control over the next year command what are the most critical capability gaps that you see that you need to build in order to enable as you talk about the ability to fight free for subordinate commands but provide the requisite centralized control and visualization thank you for that question Leo and I'll start with the last thing you said visualization in order for us to fight distributed you have to be able to see what I'm doing truthfully and by that I mean I've got to have the tools that are going to allow me to portray for you my thoughts so that we can work in a collaborative fashion as I'm trying to honor the contract between us of what I've got to do as a core to enable you to fight free and so that's going to require some definition what I believe is that as an operational commander my job is to set conditions across the war fighting functions for my subordinate divisions so that they can fight free there's a contract that says that you need sustainment in this place at this time I'm going to get it there there's a contract that says these are the targets you're asking me to destroy so that you can maneuver well I've got to do that so across the war fighting functions I believe that there's this need in the future to quickly set conditions that we might be able to act whoever can see first sense first understand first and act decisively in conflict is going to win I would respectfully submit to you that those same things are true in competition and in crisis the ability to see sense understand and act is paramount so I've got to be able to do those things the tools that I require again my job is the state requirements not to talk about a thing if there's anything that's got a registered trademark on it I shouldn't be talking about it I should tell you I require a terrestrial based capability that allows me to speak or transmit across leo geo and even space that's what I require if I say thing X registered trademark that's not the right way to go with this because the army does things at scale so what I have to do is take best advantage of the things that I have right now to produce an effect that effect that I've got to produce is setting the conditions for your division and the other to that you might be able to fight free the biggest challenge we're going to have right now is an experimentation I believe we've got to bring more things to this region because in this region there are frictions that don't exist elsewhere in this region the pacing challenge is here and one of the biggest pacing challenges is not a single nation but it's the ability to sew together this network of friends, partners and allies to great effect that's going to be a challenge too there's a host of relationships that exist some of them are bilats but to develop in the land domain a competent organization of nations that are pointed toward a free and open and no pacific is also going to be a challenge in the future leo can I answer your question? thank you leo and just for everybody's justification I'm basically wearing a parka right now we're going to count to like 3,000 in a minute here and if nobody asks a question we're going to move on keep that in the dbids because that was hecca funny good afternoon sir Dave Sink from L3 Hares I appreciate the information obviously at the operational level you do have different challenges from the other course whether it's physical challenges, distance, cultural you talked about that or the thousands of people that you deal with but as you see we've got a lot of industry partners here you're incorporated into 30 plus exercises over the year oh by the way you're still doing real-world operations at the end of the day it's all about the soldier under a backpack with that poncho what do you want from industry to help you get to that next fight? so for our core what we called 2021 to 2022 we called it discovery we wanted to try to take an opportunity to understand better how we engage in the region and again it's not with all 2400 members of my staff going forward to country X and being engaged what we decided we needed to do was we needed to distribute ourselves across functions across capabilities to be able to be in a smaller footprint exist under the noise of a place what I require from industry is to help us to understand how we might be able to keep people in the relative sanctuary of home go forward with a smaller element and still remain engaged in both places you see that's a challenge because you're trying to look at what what can be born by the networks that we have now is cloud the way of the future I don't know but we got to work on that and can we do that at scale across the entirety of the army there's four cores and some solutions are so exquisite and so boutique that they're not going to meet with the army needs to do in time industry needs to remain flexible to the needs and the requirements that will be stated by virtue of experiences the great thing about this region is I would invite you to piggyback on things that we're doing you said it yourself 30 plus exercises a year that we're involved in and another challenge is sort of piggyback on what Leo asked and what you're talking about is I've got to find creative ways through the tools given me to manage my purse tempo my purse tempo is off the charts right now and I can't sustain that and purse tempo is the number of nights that I keep somebody from putting their head on the pillow in the place they call home but the requirements will remain the same but I've got to find a way to do that and I think technology is a way to be able to do that there are advice and assist tools that are out there right now but I think if you could take those advice and assist tools and take them up one notch then we could partner at distance by maintaining contact that in that contact layer being forward our presence is powerful it's palpable when you get to a place and you see a leader and they go I remember you from last time you were here good to see you again here's what's changed since you were last here and that industry's got to help us out with too it's heavy load but I'm thinking about it I spend a lot of time noodling on how noodling means thinking I spend a lot of time noodling on how I get the experience that my people need while caring for them to keep them where they ought to be and keep them connected to the region there's a thing that does that I know it's out there thanks Dave one more yes sir I Ted Cummings with Mealsoft was curious if you benchmark off of any commercial entities that are doing global operations in the Pacific not necessarily to buy their solution but to model your operations off of the things they're doing in the region I would tell you if you look at um I'll just quick story here within the time allotted and remaining to me so I moved from Fort Bragg North Carolina vicinity my parents house after about 15 years at Fort Bragg so at 53 I left my parents house for good um much to my wife's chagrin I can't eat two dinners anymore um but I got to Washington state and I had to set up EOS routers I don't think there's anything wrong with me saying that they're EOS routers okay I set up a mesh network that would be the best way based on something I said previously I established a mesh network in my home and because I was in the house by myself I went to the four floors to see how strong the signal was on my cell phone and when I went to the basement I still had a good signal and then when I went to the fourth floor of the house still had a signal and then I said what happens again in the house by myself no cable yet I go what if I take one of these out can I still communicate and I could and I said why can I do that in the core because it's already there's an application that does that it creates a mesh network well imagine a world where I'm deploying forward but I'm existing in a mesh network a powerful mesh network I don't care I'm transport agnostic I don't care if it's on 5G I don't care if it's in the cloud I don't care if it's HF I don't care what I care about is that requirement that I operate zero trust environment that I operate in transport agnostic fashion and I can get to where I need to and I can move data freely within that quality data not all the data quality data and you ask the question of how have other people done this if you look at a company that sounds like Tamazon but not they're able to move things around the world you can order something today and it's going to be there tomorrow you can order something tonight and it'll tell you how soon it can be there our distribution has to be flexible but that's why we had to get smaller because you can move smaller things faster that's why we have to recognize what exist in the region now what can our partners do so we can shape the capabilities that move forward quickly and then we can have a means of sustaining that over time we can have clear presence that's forward so yes sir there are numerous examples there are legion examples within industry that here before we've come to industry and said hey here's a problem fix this well now we can say you've already solved that how do we take best advantage of what you've already done that makes sense okay I think my time's up right now everybody smile because people are taking pictures alright hey thank you all for your time and attention I appreciate it truly and thanks for being here at LAMPAC and thank you for what you all do to support us in your army thank you for the attendance that are not part of the organization I'm joined by members of our battalion command teams that are here to also assist me in answering in any questions based on the level of detail that you like to get into during these next 30 minutes I'm grateful for the opportunity to introduce you to or to refresh you on the mission and activities of the 5th security forces assistance brigade and the outstanding soldiers that make up the body of advisors that are doing the work of contributing to integrated deterrence on a daily basis west of the international day line I think it's appropriate for this discussion to open with a quote from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley who was the I guess you could call him the grandfather of the SFAB, the one that started the concept of the SFAB and that he said during a press engagement he said you cannot measure a human heart with a machine you have to be there this simple statement was the impetus for the SFAB concept and continues to define and is our hallmark on the partnership building capability that SFABs provide to geographic combatant commanders I'd like to spend the next couple of minutes sharing with you how we as a unit contribute to the concept of integrated deterrence, how we facilitate achieving General Flynn's campaign goals for the Pacific and what we have done up to this point as a young unit if we are new to you allow me to quickly review our story we are one of the Army's newest units built in 2019 activated and regionally aligned in 2020 employed in 2021 and since then have been operating persistently in the Pacific with a host of allies and partners our unit is relatively small with no more than 800 soldiers in which a third is training individually a third is building team proficiency and a third is in theater conducting our portion of security cooperation that being security forces assistance defined as the unified action to generate employee and sustained local host nation or regional security forces in support of a legitimate authority we are a purpose built formation congressionally authorized to provide advice support liais capability and provide assessments to the militaries of authorized countries while our conventional forces are constrained and working with partners relative to mission and time the ESFAB's purpose and mission is defined by our ability to work with others training with partners builds my readiness and in doing so my team gets better by being persistently immersed in the region it is work done by very special soldiers who volunteer to do the work that builds security architecture that general Flynn has spoken about before between the diplomatic and military instruments of power that enable conflict to be deterred war to be prevented and a state of peace to be the goal we seek to maintain so in turn how does such a small unit make contribution to usurpax efforts of integrated deterrence of making the cost of coercion and conflict prohibitive on our competitors well this gets back to general milley's statement let's discuss the idea of building trust with our partners in a very short time of working in the region nothing has become more apparent to us than the value of being with our partners at all time again persistently we are able to exchange ideas on training share the hardships of training together and continue to build an enduring advantage for both of us in the proficiency we achieve to meet our shared challenges our greatest achievements to date have been with our partners in Mongolia shepherding them through an enhanced training path in preparation for off-continent training in Thailand with our work with their newly activated striker formations and within the Philippines expanding our presence in support of Balakatan and Saliknib in Indonesia last year one of our maneuver advisor teams helped prepare numerous battalion-sized elements of the TNIAD to integrate into supergaruda shield a transformed army to army bilateral exercise into a massive joint and multinational exercise involving over 14 countries in FY23 and 24 going forward we will continue to receive authorizations to train in over 18 locations some precedented and others as a first-time opportunity to develop relationships as we grow our contacts in Oceania and in Southeast Asia again our persistent presence again that word persistent being the key theme to what we do enables us to be user-packed forward edge of campaigning we provide feedback on the progress of our partners better informed needs and desires for security cooperation cases and are able to inform our brigades and battalions on the best way to prepare for a major training event being that nexus to ensure the training event is a valuable rehearsal of interoperability for training audiences there are two things I want you to take away from our contributions to integrated deterrence again it's persistent presence and training it is our foundation of how we contribute to General Flynn's three initiatives to bolster the network of partners and allies in the region to ensure land power is ready to undergird the security architecture we need to de-escalate tensions and return crisis to competition those initiatives being the generation of readiness through JPMRC the application of readiness through campaigning in theater through operation pathways and the third, the sustainment of readiness in theater through the development of joint and interior lines 5th SBAB supports our partners and facilitates their success in intending JPMRC by using our advisors in theater for operation pathways we provide that support in advance of the arrival of conventional forces to countries to conduct operational rehearsals in support of contingencies our value is our ability to liaise with US country teams at the embassy with the inbound leadership and being the key nexus for US and partner forces throughout the rehearsal but let me quickly return to the JPMRC topic that I just discussed the readiness and training proficiency we achieved at JPMRC is intended to be harvested and applied in pathways during the conduct of those same rehearsals in a terrain where crisis or conflict could emerge establishing and having a presence in this terrain helps us deny that advantage from competitors and maligned actors with the departure of forces from pathways we carry on the hard work with partners in developing the concept and training objectives for the next iteration of US forces that arrive and to build joint interior lines is to work the sustainment and logistics needed personnel and equipment to key locations observing US and partner entry law and policy so to arrive training partner units at JPMRC with their equipment facilitating the delivery of pathways units knowing key locations for the storage of equipment and the movement of our forces back and forth over the IDL requires continuous management by sustainment experts to leverage every piece of military and civilian assets and the security of our equipment this effort ensures that there is institutional knowledge and habits being built into our formations to overcome the unusual tyranny of distance unique to the Pacific so that we can deliver on our commitments to support our friends in times of crisis and conflict this is a lot of work for all of us and the land power Pacific family to work on but our perseverance and commitment to our allies and partners ensures they know we have a willingness to prepare and to share the burden if we face our worst day in the region I leave you with this that today there are over 135th SFAB advisors in the Pacific at this time and many more from our sister brigades are currently doing that hard work I mentioned synergizing the training for JPMRC applying readiness during pathways and building joint interior lines all to put us in positions of advantage to be a partner of choice and to build trust with nations so that our competitors are denied that same space and disincentivize from employing coercive methods there is nothing more important than our ability to partner and live side by side with our friends and constantly train doing those daily rehearsals for crisis and conflict to maintain the stability of a free and open Indo-Pacific thank you for your time Mahalo Nino Loa we have time to take a couple of questions I am a member of industry I work for a small business we do language translation let me ask a softball question how do you see industry helping the SFAB mission moving forward I think that speaks to the question of what general Flynn talks about the three components of interoperability human technical and procedural and so us being on the ground with our partners and allies and understanding the various numbers of equipment numbers of ways that we need to be interoperable with them and our US equipment I think that is the window in which we could explore understanding where we could develop and pursue industry solutions to close that gap between ourselves and that partner that we need to as we bring them over to JPMRC as we train with them as we understand that there is some technological gap that we need to close that we could solve with a commercial solution so us knowing that is vital but we can only know that going back to the same talking points I delivered in my narrative here and that only comes about from us being with them day by day week by week, month by month and persistently training with them to understand that if we are only there episodically if we only touch them once a year twice a year, three times a year we may begin to know that in terms of what industry solutions we need to pursue but I would be skeptical if we could develop a solution that could actually stick over time because we would just not have that awareness and understanding about what they needed, what we needed to make that connection and how fast we needed to make that to facilitate additional training and rehearsals Jesse Stone with industry, I'm wondering what kind of steps are being taken to encourage interoperability from a communications perspective with partner forces Right now, again I would say that it's in the conduct of certain training exercises that we're conducting stateside with partner and allies that we know in which they can't bring their communications equipment that they're limited in bringing that for a variety of reasons so again it's our recommendation to them and it's our recommendation to our allies and partners to take on concepts and ideas about how they can potentially close that gap to attend those same training events in the future I appreciate you all attending and I hope to see you all again in the future So, thank you This is the non-commissioned officer and shoulder programs director It is pleased to welcome you to the senior enlisted leader form at the Association of United States Armies Lampak Symposium and Exhibition The theme for our forum today is the role of the non-commissioned officer core in land power across the Indo-Pacific I'd like to remind our audience to please silence your cell phones and also start thinking about what questions you have for our guests today We'll have an incredible panel and we'll start with a fireside chat prior to that panel I'd also like to express a warm welcome to our international peers and to name a few of our senior non-commissioned officers from our fellow militaries across the Pacific we have Warn Officer Flemingham from Australia Thieves Sar Major Lee from Taiwan Warn Officer Fatihah from Tonga Warn Officer Tedrai from Fiji and Chief Warn Officer Carney from the United States United Kingdom I almost messed that one up Well, he's here enough He's here enough Thank you for being here We appreciate and as you heard the boss say in his opening remarks that we will never do this alone and we fight with our coalition partners across the Pacific to bring unity and peace and defend our honor of our countries I'd like to open this up by having our senior listed forum begin with a fireside chat followed by a panel consisting of a very diverse group of senior non-commissioned officers and let me begin by welcoming our distinguished guests for the first person that's formed today Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinsen SMA If you know me I'm always off script I do want to recognize, I don't think we missed the Singapore Sergeant Major of the Army so thank you for being here too Well Sergeant Major, welcome It's always good to have you here at the Association United States Army and you've blessed our presence on many occasions We joke all the time so ever since the first time I came here and SMA took over, we couldn't have a forum with ACFT We are not going to talk about ACFT today Well I'm sure maybe the question won't come up and you'll have to but we're going to talk about the role of the non-commissioned officer and SMA I'd like to turn the floor over to you for a few open comments and to address a group before we get into a fireside chat and just a reminder, your questions both the microphone and we have Miss Christine in the back, she has question cards if you'd like a question card just please raise your hand she'll get those filled out and we'll go on and approach those to ask you SMA questions at the conclusion of our chat SMA I'm really excited to be here you know, especially as I got just a few more months left in the seat and before I even start I have to tell this story because you already introduced him as the Sergeant Major of the Army Paul and this may come out later Paul is a good friend and has been to my house but unfortunately for Paul he's like I'm like, sure but Sergeant Simmons is coming with us and she's a really good runner to run 10 miles and I think General Potter was outside the house and she walks up and Paul walks up and shakes her hand and he goes, hi I'm the Sergeant Major of the Army and she's like, I don't think that's you but with those opening comments and how you build trust and just having wonderful group of individuals that I've worked with throughout my career and I've got many fond memories of different NCOs and different countries and building those relationships where we have these wonderful stories I think that's what it really means to be in the military and that's what's great about having this forum you can invite those people to your house and you'll build some relationships over time and it does take time and when I look about around the room you have just this great wealth of knowledge and so that panel after this is going to be phenomenal so I'm really excited to be here and I can't wait to talk about this topic and I'm really proud to be with you today. Well thank you Esaman, we appreciate you having with us so Sergeant Major you have experience in the Pacific previously Sergeant Major here we'll talk about that the role of the non-commissioned officer in land power in the Indo-Pacific how can senior enlisted leaders enable mission command across Pacific when it's geographically spread how do we do that? That's a very interesting question when you talk about mission command number one I do want to caution everybody you're not the commander and I really put that I usually tell all U.S. Sergeant majors to start with that you enable mission command you're not the commander you don't have those roles and authorities and when I look at my time as First Corps how do I enable mission command well you can be an enabler you just gotta be out there where is the commander do you always have to sit right there with the commander you're probably not enabling mission command if you're sitting right next to your boss especially in the Pacific it's so large so diverse so many other places you enable that in my personal opinion is sometimes you gotta be where your boss isn't what are those things that you can see that he or she can't see and the higher you go the harder this gets be honest with you the chief he just spent all over the Pacific he'll see things he'll talk to certain people I'm gonna talk to different groups enable the command it's not by talking to the same people it's by talking to different groups well he's gonna talk to the chief of defense or who's running the Philippine army or whatever it is in that country and I'm gonna talk to the soldiers and when he talks about if you've heard the chief talk about he'll talk about capabilities and then at the end he talks about will and when I go out and I'm looking at soldiers from whatever country I'll probably be looking for do they have the will to fight and that's how I would enable my boss it's not because I'm gonna sit there and go everywhere they go I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna check on our soldiers do they have the will to do exactly what we've asked them to do that's on one side and on the other side same thing with any country do they have the capabilities at the junior level but also do we think they have the will to fight because that's come up a lot in Ukraine do they have the will so that's how you enable it you take the commander's intent and see what they're trying to do in that operation and then go to a different level and say hey is that really what's happening at the lower echelons because what's happening up here and what's being said is going to be what's happening at the ground troops and that's what's great about sort of majors you can go see that and that's just my opinion about that's one way to enable it you've got a lot of other people to help you do that and then having a network of within the U.S. Army you've got 8th Army I think Rob Cobb, I've seen him Sean Carnes and how do you talk to them if you can't be there and you get that feedback and you trust they're actually telling you they've seen the ground troops in those areas so there's two ways you personally by being out there in a different level but it's also by enabling the sort of majors in those locations and what are they seeing absolutely this morning General Flamon in the open forum talked about trust and how important those relationships are especially a very diverse geographic area so how do we what does trust mean for a senior anti-op population and how do we operationalize yeah well that's a really good question I actually had it in a leader forum just a few minutes ago and the actual question was how do you do trust in a bilateral agreement and then how do you do trust in a multilateral agreement and what I said is leader or not the larger that group gets the harder it is I think with trust it's time so that's to really answer your question to operationalize it and I just use our group once a month we're on a team's call the five eyes and I'm not trying to say that's all important but if I say that's a hundred do we have the same conversations so the larger that group the harder the trust is to build that deep relationship that comes with trust because Paul and I have known each other the longest and if Moo was here same thing if Moo called me from New Zealand right now and said I need you to do this if I had to buy my own play ticket I would go do it I mean a wonderful person that's the kind of trust you want and I think the larger that group gets the harder it is you want to kind of keep it a small tight group and say hey no matter what when they call I'm going to be there and that's how you kind of start to operationalize it and we kind of figured it out I think it was COVID I think GAV started it by the way and he said hey let's get on this phone call we can't travel anymore how do we build keep those relationships up and we saw that we couldn't fly and see each other so we started the team's call and that's kind of how we operationalized how do we keep that open communication and so when you need some help and what we found is that we all have the same problems Jim's a little bit more unique up again sometimes he's like we did this and we're learning a lot from them hopefully we don't do that but what I'm saying is you find ways to connect when you're talking about trust it takes time and that's the biggest thing how I would say to operationalize trust across a group of bodies of water and countries it takes time and then how do you find ways to connect routinely not once a year at Yama Secura not once a year at Lampak it's those routine test points and I think when you get those test points with those in your area you'll start to build trust it's unique that as you mentioned you talk about bringing all the team together you all have the same challenges and soldiers are really universally across the land are the same but being able to share some of the solutions to those challenges in those forums I think helps build the trust and understanding that your your partners are both sharing the same experiences and the same successes and know that they have each other's back that's what you talked about at your level now as a Sergeant Major of the Army but I want to capitalize on your experiences the I Corps or the first Corps Sergeant Major as the I Corps Sergeant Major or first Corps Sergeant Major corrective meetings I don't say bad things about 4th ID but can you explain what it looked like from your position as the first Corps Sergeant Major and then has it changed from then till now yeah we were really good back then I don't know what's going on now they're probably doing much better now well I tell you yeah it has changed dramatically you know I'll kind of tie this together but you know at the time you know at the time when I was in the first Corps we still had the other two Corps rotating in and out of Iraq so my time as first Corps you know we kept doing these exercises we tried to figure out this thing called pathways at the time you know I think it was General Brooks I think came in and said hey let's call all these little exercises one big thing and tie them together so we were trying to figure out what pathways was you know and how that was we had to revise all of the exercises and we called it a series of pathways so that was you know it's an infancy at the time but again we still have this other Army thing going on called Iraq and these Corpses rotating in and out still had Afghanistan and then we had these exercises so even though we said hey this is you know this is the number one challenge this is the pacing challenge in China and how do we put our resources in we kept as an Army we kept being pulled away to these other things so at the time I had a deep connection and hopefully he still does with the forces command that's usually the supplier for all those things outside of the end of the Pacific but all the missions were still there and you know you're still doing Balakutan, Talisman saver all those exercises but it was kind of overshadowed by what the oh kidding we're fighting and people are dying kind of moment and now fast forward like how does it change well it changed a lot well let's just see and believe it or not it was your when Russia invaded Ukraine in my opinion that was like hey wait a minute these things actually could this could or could this actually happen in our theater I mean would China actually do the same thing in Taiwan and that's my opinion is that Talisman has changed it's like well wait a minute you know believe it or not that European theater in my personal opinion shaped more emphasis over here or do we have the ammunition ready to go if this happens here do we have this or do the Taiwanese have the will that we've seen in the Ukrainian Army so we really started to look in this Indo-Pacific and you know 1st Corps was like hey what's 1st Corps doing not that they forgot about me when I was 1st Corps but it really has all our attention because that's the Pacific and then are we putting the resources there and you've seen what we've already done I mean just look we've renamed the Levitt Airborne the division and we give them people to actually have a division you know and most people don't realize that I think they had 50 people in the Air Quarters it's like I'm not sure how that's a division but now they have more people we assigned it we're giving them the right equipment to fight in the Pacific and that's how it's changed it's not just us saying it's the Prairie Theater we are putting a lot of resources from the Department Army there and more so than I think we have when I was the 1st Corps Sergeant Major I just want to remind our audience to start thinking about your questions I'm only going to ask a few more I'm not going to totally take over the conversation here because I want to involve your questions to the SMA we have them for a limited amount of time today but before we get to the audience SMA a couple more you talked greatly about trust at echelon but for all the non-commissioned officers who are not here today that are from being televised in or on the internet and seeing this later on is how important is it for our junior non-commissioned officers and our soldiers who work on these pathway missions throughout the theater to build trust at echelon for them yes normally it's extremely important I mean it's I would say it's the secret sauce in our Army this thing called trust and there's two types of trust and normally we miss one so normally when you hear this word called trust it's usually from I would say higher to lower it's like oh you got to trust me you know you're a patoon sergeant tell the first sergeant why are you down here go away just trust and then the other part though is the one most people forget about is the trust from subordinate to higher so you have to trust that my battalion my battalion commander when given all the right information are going to make the appropriate decision and sometimes we don't think like oh you know in the example I gave the forum was I had a brigade sergeant major and I said I needed a staff sergeant for tasking and he said I don't have any staff sergeants it's like you don't have any staff sergeants in your old attack I knew that's not true right so I saw I see your man but what I talked about was that he didn't trust me if he laid out all the reasons why I shouldn't pick his unit to take that staff sergeant he didn't have the trust in me to make the right decision and it was up to me as the brigade to fix that not him I had to say here's how do we do this but going back to what I said is about the secret sauce in our army and now I just speak to the US NGOs in the room we have great authority because our officers trust us never lose that trust it is fleeting and could go in a second and we are great only because our officers say you have all this authority and then go do that you know in the United States Army I run the nominate program I think the vice might actually sign the paperwork at some point I know he does but but I run it that is trust and that goes from the surveys the army all the way down to the sergeant if we don't trust our NCOs to be good squad leaders they are not going to be squad leaders if we don't trust that the first sergeant could be a good first sergeant and he can't do what they are being asked to do our officers aren't going to trust us so every being of our culture in the United States Army that is foundational to our NCO corps starts at the base of trust you take that away you do not have a strong NCO corps because they don't trust that you're going to do the mission no matter what so I think that's the it is you know vitally important to who we are as a United States Army especially with our NCOs and we were talking about this in the other room also about this trust and I said well a lot of times NCOs in the United States Army in my opinion talk to the wrong people we love to talk to each other same thing in the room we're all in the same room we're all NCOs and I said if you really want to start a program in a different country we should start by talking to the leaders the officers of that country and said do you trust your mission without you being there and if you don't want that then you can go out and talk to the NCOs to your boo in the face but if they don't want that in my personal opinion been around the world if the officers from that country don't trust their NCOs you're just going to be banging your head against the wall I don't know what to say that's been my personal experience but the good news is there are a lot of countries that do ask us you know I just remind us in the United States Army that this trust isn't forever you got to earn that every day you can't screw that up but then in the greater picture of the countries make sure that their officers that's what they want for their army if they don't then you work within the means of what you got but in my opinion it all starts with trust very powerful message I know you focused a lot on our army but that's a universal message for our coalition partners because it's uniquely the same in every army I mean trust has to exist at echelon in order for an organization to work I think the most powerful thing you mentioned is that it's not achieved it's sustained you got to work on it all the time I'm going to go off the subject of our Indo-Pacific focus here for a minute just because we always have the opportunity to have the SMA on the stage and I know that there's a lot of questions out there that may not apply to our theme today but you mentioned SMA and unfortunately we only have you for a few more months as our Sergeant of the Army unfortunate or fortunate I don't know I think unfortunately we were blessed as he's like get rid of that we were blessed to have your leadership but what's your focus as you continue to drive towards the end of this mission everything there's a long list and I want to be clear I don't have a running tally and a list that ends when I'm the Sergeant of the Army I've said this multiple times I'll keep saying it to the end if the Army stops or there's something that I was doing that ends with me I should never have been doing it in the first place if it's not good for the Army I should not have been doing it so that's who I 100% believe that and the second thing is if Mike Weimer isn't better than I am I have failed to do my job if there is any dip in our Army because I leave I have failed as a leader in the United States Army so I have a lot of things I'd like to achieve what's great about Army if I'm doing what's right then those things are going to get accomplished whether I'm there or not we set it on a path to get those things done and yeah there's a lot of stuff I'd like to get that done but for everything that we've worked on if it just ends it goes away and stops because I'm there then I honestly I believe that I should never have been doing it but there's some simple things I want to really complete the Army Body Composition Program and get that finished we got the 540 Army Directive so I doubt we're trying to get some other things we're trying to bring back Land Nav in our basic leader course I'm waiting to rephrase that we're bringing back Land Nav in our basic leader course it's going to happen it's already started so it's coming I don't know why we took it out you took it out it's your fault so somebody has to be claimed in this group well you gave me great comfort with your statement my success was better than me so there you go there you go so there's a lot of things bringing some training back in our basic leader course some not training taking them back to the field we're going to bring little things like sleeping back in the field some of those a little bit more lethality back into the basic leader course but I've got a laundry list of stuff that we talk about all the time there's just a couple I just keep going like even on the modernization I know we've got Brian Hester here we just shot the 6.8 rifle the next generation squad rifle it is really good you know I usually wear glasses when I'm shooting long range when I can shoot the 300 meter target every time and it's really simple you've got the right rifle it's really good so what's coming out just not from a perspective of what we're doing in the NCO Corps but some of the lethality from an AFC perspective on soldier lethality is really looking good so I'm really excited about all that excellent all right let's go out to our audience SMA and again Christine she has comment cards if you don't want to walk up to microphone you can grab one of those from her she will bring them up to me or please grab the microphone and I'll tell you it always stands true the first person asked to question these forms is usually the best looking smartest person in the room and I know we're not going to be failed today on that aspect so who has the first question for the Sarmator of the Army today I think every room needs like a day pass the best look in yeah there you go can you take like two steps forward because you're like behind a column or whatever I prefer not to use them for the audience but SMA one of my questions is we talked about resourcing for the Indo-Pacific and the role of the NCO a challenge I found here over the last two years is getting that senior NCO leadership I have spoke to HRC as well as our senior leaders but it's not the number of senior NCOs it's more of the EFMP process and my recommendation was if we could do the screening prior to the selection so what's been happening is for example I have a unit in Japan that is one of six master's arms and about to be zero of six with that though we've had some people come on the gains for inbound but they fall off because they don't meet the EFMP criteria some of the challenges are because we go through other services unlike Army then they don't meet the criteria so when we talk about the Pacific being a priority theater and bringing resources here and the things we can do to improve the manning and being able for the selection process especially with ASCII M and EFMP okay I think there are like eight parts to that question I think just give me a thumbs up if I answer them all I guess because you did talk about the exceptional family member program and talent this actually came up at the pre-command course is we could do that screening but some people don't want us to and I'll be very clear is that maybe you are selected to be a battalion command team in the Indo-Pacific and your family doesn't pass the screen you may want that assignment and that's actually what came up it's like well if I screen you all out that might be your dream job I always wanted to do that my family will stay because I always wanted to be in this I want to be in Hawaii in that unit as a battalion commander, first sergeant whatever it is so this actually came up do we just screen everybody out nope you can't go your family can't attend there so that's a caution we have is that's why we put people on assignment and then we do kind of do the screening what we have to do as an Army is do better and faster at the screening so we have the enterprise exceptional family member program what we're trying to do is that people haven't put their families into the program it's on the internet it's a web based you can go ahead and apply and they will wait until they're on assignment and that slows it down so on the EFMP side I would say it's a caution that we don't screen out it's more of a screen that you can go to the assignment because some people may I always wanted to go to that assignment and then on the other side all the resources in the Indo-Pacific to do everything that's hard is that most people think the Army has unlimited phones we don't right so we have to put things in certain places and sometimes we can't give everything to everyone everywhere and that's probably normally what happens on depends on where you go and a priority assignment is I can't build a hospital everywhere you go so we're going to have to make that a restricted assignment now as for talent you're our major well if it's in Korea both of our majors are right there we have to make sure that we incentivize those priority assignments so you do have talent in folks there we've talked about this in some of our solution summits and our Manning especially when we look at Indo-Pacific or Korea actually specifically when we're looking at first-artens we said we're going to have more first-artens come out of the Sarmajus Academy so maybe didn't make all the master sergeants in the Sarmajus Academy excited but we wanted to train them to be Sarmajus but we didn't have a requirement to fill those Sarmajus positions so we reprioritize that if they're going to we want to have a higher number of Sarmajus Academy they may not be selected for Sarmajus one of them to go be first-artens and we put them over in Korea so giving them a really talented seasoned master sergeant for some of those jobs that are in the Indo-Pacific and that's how we're looking at talent but it's usually working with either the UCERPAC, ATHARMY Jackie Loves in the back so it depends on who you're looking for and that's how we look at talent so just the last part we have personnel that want to come to, for example, Japan but because they don't meet the screening so kind of like what you were saying about command teams so there are seniors that are selecting it and getting on assignment but then other services are doing the screening and they're not meeting the criteria even if they're willing to leave their family back so that's what we're trying to figure out a piece and my battalion serge major there is working with the Navy facility there to ask those questions to see if we as the Army can screen them so they are able to fulfill that assignment and we have the senior population we need. Okay, well that's fair I think what you're talking about is it's not really screening it I think it's called that weird thing called leadership that's kind of how I see this is that there's a senior serge major he's around here somewhere I might even talk about him he was told that he couldn't go on that assignment for exceptional family member and that was inside I think he might have been at Joint Base I said okay it took a little leadership to make a phone call so when you're looking at talent and if you feel like this is the right person and we even found in this case they have the facilities and we needed to apply leadership and I'll caution you all is that on a grander scale sometimes we have this thing called policy and we don't apply leadership with it and I call that nothing so you can write all the policies you want and if you don't have a leader that's willing to take an action on the policy you'd actually do nothing so when I found that you want to make up for if you got a person that really good person is the right fit going to the right location apply some leadership and we'll get them to the right spot SMA we do have one written question from the audience that I didn't stage this and I proponed with a joke saying that we've never had a forum without talking about ACFT are you kidding me we're talking about it so I got asked this question I thought this is trust into a pacific I should give credit to the author of the question you got to ask a question right after this that's right, Lieutenant Colonel Mackenzie says is there any chance we can do the two mile run up front, the first event so you can get his legs warmed up before he has to do all the drags and things like that no you want more than that? no I think we have for all the right reasons is the reason we extended the time was because you do five events before you get to the sixth event being the run so it's designed to test endurance and if you reverse that and believe it or not that was the same thing with the old APFC you're not allowed to do the run and push up sit ups because your hip flexors on the sit up were actually stressed and that's why you had to do sit ups the first and then do the run so the science is a little bit behind it not just the Sarmadian Army told you no or you can go with that you have two choices, A there was some science about it or B I just told you no final question Sarmadian Army so within the structure of the army we really kind of put a focus on what you talked about with leadership and trust and making soldiers into leaders but the simple fact is not every soldier is a leader and with the technical structure of how we're going forward with a lot of our forces we've experienced a lot of loss of soldiers to the contracting side for the technical side of what we need for cyberspace, EW things like that and as the lead for information advantage that's really impacting how we conduct business running on the contracting force has the army at your level or have you thought about looking at a more specialized function of NCOs that maybe aren't leaders just like some lieutenant colonels will never be battalion commanders and they're great staff officers there are some NCOs that are not great leaders but are fantastic at the more technical side of what we need in the army and how we progress for land power here in the Pacific that's actually a really good question and yes I've thought about it a lot like that and we used to have a spec I think it went to seven, I maybe even went eight I'm not sure so we had that model, we got rid of it and we're not going to go back to that but the way I answer it is yes kind of but it really tied to pay we had some highly technical folks and what I'd like to see in the future is that you come in and you do get this highly specialized skill and you may have steps in there so you could say hey you're a 17 Charlie a cyber warrior you may not need to be the server age of the army but you may want to be really good in your field and can we incentivize that through some pay and I just want to remind everybody in the room that nobody in the army or DOD controls your pay scale so that is what matters and I'm not influencing I'm just informing is that if there were a recommendation is how we would look at how we incentivize those through pay so that you get somebody who's highly technical but wants to stay but we can still somehow incentivize them through some pay scale so we just took away the rank and just made them a specialist and let them stay longer but they're really good they're really sought after so that's how we really have to resolve this problem and it's not just by changing the NCOs I think if you make a sergeant I don't see a need to make it spec 5 just make him a sergeant give him a little bit of leadership the lieutenant colonel doesn't have a different rank still look like a lieutenant colonel but they may not be in charge of that but there needs to be a pay incentive that goes along with that with the technical skills and that's what all services have been looking at and that's when Sergeant Major Marine Corps Chief Mass Sergeant Bass you know the McPon we've all kind of read and the way to go after that it's called the quadrennial defense review military compensation and hopefully it comes out of that is a recommendation to fix the skill okay well ladies and gentlemen we were blessed to have you here for just a few moments ladies here on the island because we've got a large organization out here that's working with our coalition partners to defend the freedoms and protect the liberties of both us and our coalition partners so SMA thanks for blessed us for your time let's give the 16th SMA a big round of applause now don't go away we're going to take a short break as SMA departs and we're going to set up for our panel which is next so please take a couple minute break in place as we get set for our second part of the senior NCO form our knocker's officer panel