 There was a time in my life when I was a fifth-grade teacher and it's I will tell you It's the only job I ever had where I had to kneel down and pray for the strength to make it through the day So anytime since then when I after I came to Washington that I had the potential for a difficult day I just remembered that and it makes it a lot easier Plus of course a teaching fifth grade is really very very good preparation For working in Washington because there is so much fifth-grade behavior that goes on here Attention span, focus on on real outcomes, etc Welcome to CSIS and welcome to our our event on defense logistics modernization and information systems in the 21st century I have a couple of housekeeping items that I would like to to lay out for you The first is please take your cell phones your pagers your other electronic devices that tend to Interrupt or make noise at inappropriate times and either turn them really loud So we'll know who to blame or turn them off all together I Actually should do that to my own as well while I'm saying that to you Secondly you'll see that we actually have quite a full agenda and I'm really Grateful to all of you for coming out here this morning and it's a you know good Friday is a difficult day it's a it's a Day where a lot of people have other plans and other opportunities And so we want to make sure that we recognize the the value of the sacrifice you make for being here today Our agenda has one break in it. It's between the two panels and I would encourage you to Recognize that and to conduct yourself accordingly if you need to take your own break in the pendant of that Please try to do so in as non disruptive a manner as possible. I think all of us will appreciate that The reason we're doing this at CSIS our charter actually Calls for us to foster public discussion and debate on critical national security issues and international issues and Certainly the question of logistics and logistics support to operations is in that category But as many of you know because most of you are in that business Logistics often gets shorted when it comes to real visibility and public discussion and even a recognition of the importance of the process You're all familiar with the the old saw that says amateurs do strategy professionals do logistics and And that in fact I think proves itself time and time again when we actually get into real operations So I think the criticality of the subject matter is is absolutely essential. I come from South, Louisiana I come from alligator country. That's where I grew up And and I think often about that when I hear people criticizing the tail and trying to emphasize the tooth as if somehow they're not connected If you if you watch an alligator kill you'll know the tail is as important as the teeth To do in that that killing and eating the survival of the alligator critically depends upon a robust powerful tail And I think that's the way I like to think about logistics And I think you'll see as we go through the course of the morning that that much of that comes into bear We also for both our speakers and our panels. We have Anticipated leaving time open for questions from the floor I would like to ask you to have those questions be guided by the subject matter of the day and Let's focus on logistics. There are plenty of other national security and defense topics that are always prominent And and easy to get at but this is this is the day for logistics And I would hope that we'll take advantage of the opportunity with the excellent panelists and speakers We have here today to focus on those questions With that I welcome you all I'm gonna turn the microphone over now To my boss dr. John. Hamry the president and CEO of the Center for Strategic International Studies dr. Hamry Good morning everybody. Gosh, it just shows what a free breakfast will do to bring out a crowd I mean I can't imagine on Good Friday having an audience like this, but ash. It's got to be you It's got it's the only reason no seriously. I'm delighted to have you all here. It's a It's a it's an important such an important topic I can you know I used to quite regularly go out to National Training Center out at Fort Irwin and you know, I'd see the you know the Brigade commander beginning, you know, and I'd see the after-action He was really whooped and almost invariably It was because of material conditions that he hadn't been keeping track of you know And it's such an important part of of the world We just don't pay the public policy attention that we should so I said a conversation with ash about this and we were I guess I was probably teasing him about the endless tanker acquisition process and He said I'll come over but I don't want to do anything about tankers I said well, let's do some logistics and he said I actually would like to do that I think he said that would be important because I spent far more of my productive time on things like that And I'd like to have a chance to talk about so ash. Thank you for agreeing to do that now Ash and I we go back a very long ways and and I will tell you my first Experience with ash was when he was at what used to call it PA&E. I don't we call it now cat or cape or something whatever it is and Ash was there and he was interviewing me and he decided I was not at all qualified to be working for him which was and he was right because he needed far more technical competence than I had and He has brought that technical expertise to every one of his positions and I think now is just doing a fabulous job So ash we're delighted you're here. This is a you know It is an unusual thing to be having a conference especially with this sort of a Turnout the quality of this audience is remarkable and I think it's a testament to you in the topic. Thank you Ash, why don't you come and join us and give us Thank You John and CSIS for having me My I've learned so much from John Hamery and every day I look around the Department of Defense and there's one of his managerial Accomplishments one of his managerial creations in front of me and one of the best Most skilled stewards and COO's the departments ever have I see Jack Gansler a predecessor of mine who added L to AT&L A And among many other things Jack did Jack I have to take my children are already dismayed at the length of the title They say it's to you know, they tell their father's undersecretary of defense Of course, no one knows what an undersecretary is and it sounds very beneath So underneath underwear Undersecretary and then it's acquisition technology and logistics way too long and obscure for an 18-year-old and a 21-year-old to explain they say why can't you be CIA director and Dave Scott some zip to it and Dave Bertot also a great leader in the acquisition technology and logistics field I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to come here. It is a pleasure and a Welcome relief to talk about something other than the tanker competition or the joint strike fighter or any of the other Acquisition programs and it's particularly Welcome to me because what I want to talk about today is something that's very dear to my heart Which is the role of acquisition technology and logistics and supporting the current wars The current fights that were in so when John gave me the opportunity to speak about that subject I leapt at the opportunity Last January 5th, it was that secretary Gates offered me this job and one of the things he said to me at that time He has said publicly many times which is ash the troops are at war and the Pentagon is not and especially AT&L and I took that on board and I've tried to make it a priority of AT&L to support the wars and I'd like to share with you the ways in which we are trying to do that First with rapid and responsive acquisitions support to the warfighter Secondly it with management of contractors on the battlefield contingency contracting third the special case of countering improvised explosive devices IEDs and Then fourth and for most of what I have to say the topic of this day's conference, which is logistics But let me say something about rapid acquisition and contingency contracting and counter IED First I'll start with a question that secretary Gates posed in his foreign affairs article about a year and a half ago that Jack Gansler had posed before that and had Very important defense science board study on the same subject and it was why is it necessary to bypass? Existing institutions and procedures to get the capabilities needed to protect us troops and fight ongoing wars Why is it necessary to bypass the existing institutions? I? Experience this every day and we are to get back to Dave and his alligators busy fighting the alligators, but also trying to drain the swamp At the same time and fix this problem in a more structural way But let me describe to you the catch-22s that one comes to as a department in trying to respond rapidly to Urgent needs from the theater the first is Catch-22 to get over is how do you know what the requirement is? How many UAV caps do we need how much persistent surveillance do we need? how Many m-wraps do we need? in many cases for an ongoing and evolving conflict and a a piece of Equipment that we're just beginning to learn how to use that's an unanswerable question When one embarks upon the acquisition, we don't know we know we need some we don't know exactly how many And yet we have a system that won't get started until it knows what the final answer is I'll give you an example in a moment of getting over that but it's if you that is if you don't know the requirement How can you begin to acquire? But in some case just unreasonable for us to know what the requirement is we just know we need to get started and Every day you spend trying to decide Ultimately how many you need is another day you're waiting to get started another day that piece of equipment isn't in the warfighters hands second catch-22 is Wouldn't it be worth waiting for something better and of course in time you can have something better But right now I'm focused on The next weeks and months in Afghanistan so something that's better that delivers next year of the year after not interested in right now So the 80% solution as Secretary Gates says is Something one has to learn to manage to in the case of Support to rapid acquisition The third is well, we could get this but is this something we want in the long run Is it something that fits into the long-range vision of the Army's table of equipment the long-range vision of the Marine Corps table of equipment? Maybe not. Maybe it's just for this fight Which if we win the fight, it'll be worth having something that doesn't quite fit in to the long-range Future and the last of course is how do we get money quickly? Congress provides the money Congress appropriately keeps a close eye doesn't give us open-ended ability Open funds and so forth and so there's a constant interaction with the Congress to explain what we're doing explain the urgency of What we're doing and when we're able to do that where we usually Get their support because nobody wants to hold up the delivery is something to the warfighter Example I'd give you of getting over these four catch-22s, which I get every day This is blocking and tackling. I say my job is nine is I guess Thomas Edison said Of his job ninety percent perspiration ten percent inspiration. That's what working these problems feels like I'll give you the example of the MRAP ATV Which is the all-terrain vehicle MRAP that we are fielding right now in Afghanistan And just to show you how fast the system can go When we really light a fire under it we Completed the source selection for the MRAP ATV in July last summer The first ATVs arrived in Afghanistan in September and we've already accepted more than five thousand MATVs and Almost a thousand of them have actually been fielded that is in the hands of soldiers by now That's very different from your 10 and 15 year program of record. That's less than a 10 month program of record Vehicles actually fielded and in the hands of the soldiers Initially when we set out to say how many are we going to buy and how many are we going to produce per month? the our logisticians and Commanders in the theater were saying Understandably they could only afford to they could only field 500 vehicles per month the reasons for that are Those you logisticians will understand it's the for want of a nail phenomenon You can't bring the vehicles in because you don't have a place to park them You know a place to park them because you know the concrete you know the concrete because they don't make concrete in Afghanistan You got to go to Pakistan and get your Concrete and truck it in so you have to have the trucks You have to have the parking lot for a truck and around around around you go Everything is like that in Afghanistan So it wasn't that we couldn't produce more vehicles. It's that at that time. We didn't think we could absorb more nevertheless I Decided that we were going to produce them at a rate of a thousand a month anyway If we had extra vehicles in Charleston or at Oshkosh or in Kandahar or at Bagram Okay Better an m-rap without a soldier than a soldier without an m-rap first of all second We could use the excess vehicles for training so that every soldier and this is now the case in Afghanistan the troops that are arriving have their driver's license on the m-rap. They don't have to be brought out from the field taught to drive the vehicle and then sent back out in the field with the vehicle they arrive ready to go they fall in On the vehicle. It's a familiar piece of equipment to them So I thought we ought to buy them for the training ranges so out at NTC at Fort Erwin I just was a couple of weeks ago there John mentioned earlier there are m-rap ATVs down at JRTC there m-rap ATVs out in 29 palms for the Marines there are m-rap ATVs They're there so this the the soldiers can learn how to to use them So I bought I wanted to buy more than we thought we could field and we did and I also had in the back of My mind, you know, I'll bet you we'll figure out a way to increase that number from 500 per month to a larger number Because I think when the troops get them, they'll like them when the commanders see them They'll like them and they'll figure out a way to get more and sure enough we have we we've looked at the whole Logistics pipe. I'll say more about this later that begins in Oshkosh and ends up on a fob in Afghanistan every piece of that and Tried to see if we could widen that artery and we have now So we're now up to being able to absorb a thousand a month. So it's a good thing. I'm making a thousand a month But there's an example of not waiting for the final answer But beginning to acquire and ramp up to the thousand a month level Figuring we'll we'll figure it out later. We'll figure it out in a few months We don't have to figure out everything in order to get started with anything So The the MATV is an example of something that we have and we I could give you many many more examples Where we have succeeded in supporting the warfighter, but it's always been by hot wiring the system rather than by driving down an open Lane and it's really true that we have an acquisition system which is Still has the Cold War vestige of it namely designed to prepare for a future war rather than or to conduct a current war and We're only still eight years into this learning how to have a system which can Conduct current wars learn from experience respond to stimuli from the battlefield Adapt and deliver what the current warfighter needs We're taking some steps to put that on a more enduring foundation Maybe another time I'll come back John and share our thoughts some of Jack Chancellor's had some of those thoughts already but I have told the entire acquisition community that Responding to operational needs. I've said is their highest priority If you're a service acquisition executive if you're a PEO your highest priorities responding to those odds and Juans and also given them a menu of ways that they can Work within the system, but work quickly So I think we're getting the MRAP lesson into the acquisition system writ large Say something about contingency contractors. I Don't need to tell this audience that the that our way of waging war Brings with every soldier to the battlefield approximately one contractor It's interesting to look back on the numbers in World War two. There was one contractor for every service member in Vietnam one for every five In Iraq One for every 1.2 service members in Afghanistan one for every point seven in other words more contractors than soldiers Because of the heavy reliance we have now on building new fobs and Construction required to do that most of the transportation is done by contractors So there are 107,000 contractors now in Afghanistan Of whom about three quarters are local nationals, which is not a matter insignificant for the economy of Afghanistan And I think it's fair to say that first in Iraq and now in Afghanistan with these ratios We have been on a learning curve about how to manage a contractor workforce that large and For sure everything has not been done perfectly over these years and Part of that is because it was such a new thing to have so many Part of it is because in the exigency of war you just have to act and part of it is that I suppose we've all kept Telling ourselves it's not going to go on much longer We don't have to get good at this. We don't have to get used to it We do have to get good at it We do have to get used to it and we do have to learn how to do this better and we are getting better I won't say perfect yet We have a number of very constructive Oversight bodies the Commission on wartime contracting And others has a distinguished membership. We're working down the same list. They are to improve the quality of the The controls and so forth that we apply to contingency contracting without Sacrificing effectiveness. I'll give you an example in Afghanistan today, which is the use of cash Cash we used a lot of it in Iraq and initially in Afghanistan Obviously that increases the vulnerability to fraud in the last year We've reduced our cash payments in Afghanistan from 39% to 9% Very dramatic. How are we doing that? We're doing that by Banking by phone believe it or not in Afghanistan many people bank by phone and are at our willing to bank by phone Now we're paying them on their cell phone rather with cat rather than with cash greatly reduces the possibility of Fraud and made very dramatic progress in that regard in just in the last year give you another example Many of you probably know what a contracting officer representative or core is the core isn't the person who writes the contract The core is the person who makes sure that the contract is being carried out in the required way Any of us could be trained as a core within a short time It would take us longer to be trained as a contracting officer That is to be able to contract on behalf of the United States Government and spend money core is sometime is easier and can can be in theater a part-time job We've been doing a great deal to improve Contracting officer Representative presence in Afghanistan. This is not a mundane thing at all I'll give you some examples in the last year Since I've been watching these figures in Afghanistan our contracting officer Representative force which at the beginning was only 38% of the requirement is now 84% so we've got 84% still not a hundred percent But 84% of the contracting officer representative posts filled that we should have filled We are now on all the Army and Marine Corps units before they deploy to Afghanistan Are training within the units contractor? Course so they deploy with that skill Because now it's recognized that that is part of the skill set required for a modern expeditionary force So they deploy with people who know how to carry out the contractor part of their mission We're giving them automated tools little things you put on your laptop Which automatically pull up the forms that they have that tell them what they should do for a certain contract with the Requirements are within that contract for core to help them ease their way The department has added ten general officer positions to contingency contracting in the last year very important move So that senior two and three-star positions that deal with contracting That senior positions are filled with two and three-star Officers so this is an example this cash and the contracting officer representatives are just two examples of the kinds of thing We're trying to do to get good at something. We recognize as an enduring part of the American way of waging war And I'm trying to maintain a balance here in the department I hope a balance here in Washington and a balance here in theater between Being Being able to be excellent stewards of the taxpayers money on the one hand and be agile and do what is required in Afghanistan now On the other hand, we need to maintain that balance Contracting officers and contracting officer representatives have the feeling that it's an environment Which is not conducive to them taking any risk at all on behalf of efficiency and responsiveness to the warfighter They'll seize up we owe them an environment in which they can make that they could strike that balance Appropriately and I'm trying to do that Counter IED I'm gonna say something about that the secretary Gates asked me and the director of operations on the joint staff Several months ago to would we focus for these months Intensively on making sure that the art we are doing everything we possibly can as a department in the coming months for this fighting season in Afghanistan To combat IEDs. I don't need to tell you in this audience that IEDs are a triple problem They're obviously a threat to life and limb But also to mission success if people can get outside the wire Military and non-military then they can do the mission assigned which is the coin mission They can't get out the wire outside the wire, then they can't so it's essential to mission success to defeat the IED and Finally, it's essential to the morale of People in Afghanistan are coalition partners and the American people themselves on all three of those ways the counter IED Fight is essential And the secretary said would you just I know no other way of doing this than to do it myself Would you just every day make sure that we're doing everything we possibly can and that's what I do every day And I'll give you some examples and this is just a matter of getting everybody here in Washington in the Defense Department in the Intelligence community in the services in the various task forces MRAP task force ISR task force biometrics task force Jiedo and so forth and in theater The various commands and echelons in Afghanistan sent com all focused on These next few weeks and doing everything we possibly can for this fighting season My discount rate is huge for this particular part of what I Do and we've had and just by focusing in that way We've been able to do some things that I think are going to be very important as the summer goes on First to accelerate the delivery of critical counter IED Enablers to the troops for this season give you an example And it's just this to the total of several billion dollars over the next weeks and months These are robots. They are handheld Metal detectors and ground penetrating radars. They are vehicles and there's something you'll begin to see over Afghanistan which are elevated line of sight in particular airship born sensors We are pushing all the ISR that is all the Predators reapers hunters warriors and so forth. We possibly can into Afghanistan But there's no matter what we do that it's never going to be enough so that every time a patrol goes out It has that eye in the sky over it looking around checking at its local situation There is an alternative though that for the area of a fob Or for a city or for a particular length of road is just as good It's kind of what you see every morning when you turn on the television and look at the traffic report and that is an elevated line of sight camera and We are going to be this summer Increasing many fold the number of aerostat born Cameras are terrific. I was just Kandahar a few weeks ago. There's one in Kandahar overtop the city Every patrol can have a camera looking around a few blocks around it as anybody sneaking up on them Every person of ill will in Kandahar thinks that camera is looking at them Every person of goodwill thinks that camera is protecting them So we're going to be introducing a lot more of them because it provides for those people under their own control the same functionality that a fancy UAV would have But it's something that we can afford to get in there this summer So I knew I couldn't double the number of UAVs in Afghanistan this summer, but I'm gonna she's 20-fold whatever up all that means the number of these elevated line-of-sight Aristates We're Focused also on training so that our troops who are go into Afghanistan this summer as part of the surge Are trained for the distinctive Character of the IED fight in Afghanistan one that depends on homemade explosives for example one that has much more Decentralized networks behind it then was the case in Iraq So we can apply some of the lessons of Iraq But not all the lessons of Iraq to the case of Afghanistan and so John if you go down to The National Training Center at Fort Irwin today You'll find soldiers that are going to rotating into Afghanistan being trained specifically in Afghan lanes that are mock Afghan villages with Afghan villagers and the particular kinds of ammonium nitrate and Fertilizer based explosives that are distinctive to that fight So they're going in prepared for what they're gonna find in the actual area where they're going to operate and third Because we're not alone fortunately in Afghanistan were part of a coalition Secretary Gates thought it was important he announced this in Istanbul some weeks ago to do whatever we could not at the Expense of our own effort, but in addition to our own effort to assist our coalition partners in their Counter IED capabilities, and so we're providing them with MRAPs We're providing them with some equipment. We're taking some of that training expertise We have to their training ranges So when they deploy from Europe's let us say to Afghanistan They're getting some of the same kind of training Distinctive to the Afghan fight that that our people are getting these are all things. We're doing in these weeks and these months to get us Better prepared to deal with the IED threat in Afghanistan And it's remarkable what can happen when you get everybody together Focused and say I don't want to hear about anything six months from now Tell me what you can do now. How many weeks and every day pushing away to get these things done That brings me to logistics And the huge logistics challenges that the department faces right now in the way that those logistics or challenges are being Met I'll start very briefly with the retrograde from Iraq The retrograde from Iraq a huge task all by itself Of course, we have Afghanistan on top of that which is even bigger Just to pause for a moment on the retrograde from Iraq It is not as large in terms of tonnage as was the retrograde from Iraq after Desert Storm however, it takes place in a On a particular timetable we need to get down to a certain level by August It takes place in an environment where there is still threat It goes on while we are continuing to operate And I don't and I don't think this is inconsequential it the retrograde from Iraq takes place after being there for many years So this wasn't like checking out of a hotel that you had been in a short for a short time as in Iraq After Desert Storm, this is like leaving a home. You've lived in for a while. We were more settled in more equipment and So we had a lot to do we start out with 350 fobs in Iraq about a year ago, and we're closing them getting those numbers down 147,000 contractors by the way now down at about a hundred thousand and going down to about 75,000 you know the troop levels will be going down to 50,000 3.4 million items of equipment About eight months ago We're now down to 2.2 million and we got to move another 1.2 million before August this is a variety of equipment. There's Traditional military equipment which will go back home with the units There is equipment that was never associated with units But was bought for Iraq and put in Iraq so-called theater provided equipment That's all the green equipment There's also white equipment which is non military standard equipment bought to support the fight over the years Some of it in the hands of contractors some of it in the hands of troops This is refrigerators air conditioners all desks all kinds of stuff white so-called white Equipment 41,000 vehicles Which is now at 29,000? So we've moved 12,000 vehicles in the last few months and we're gonna have to move many more so this is an enormous Migration of equipment one of the things that has Paced us is deciding where something goes. We know it doesn't belong or it isn't needed in Iraq anymore But where's it go? Does it go home to become part of the army or the Marine Corps of the future? Do they want it does it fit in? If not guard reserve active, I mean so guard reserve active duty if not Where does it go? Does it go to Kuwait for a future contingency? Does it swing to Afghanistan? Do we leave it behind for the Iraqi forces? Do we give it to somebody else? Who needs it all those decisions need to be made before a piece of equipment is moved So it's not just the physical moving of it. It's decisions about where it goes Me now Clothes with the most important logistics challenge of all which is Afghanistan Afghanistan If you I always say if you take a globe and spin a globe and say where is the last place You'd like to be fighting a war if you had your choice Other than Antarctica, you might well pick Afghanistan landlocked very austere logistics environment and We can't get Effective until we get in and we can't get in and get set until we have moved the people and equipment and the means to sustain them through the very slender arteries a couple of ground lines of communications the air bridge and So we are working every day to widen those arteries And I'll give you again an example of the MRAP ATV The ATV because it's a military piece of equipment We prefer to move by air and that means flying from Charleston Where the government furnished equipment the radios and so forth are installed in the vehicles as they are delivered from Oshkosh flown to Kandahar or Bagram There to be married up with a unit and put out in the field We are in the interests of fielding them more quickly And being able to use the air bridge for other free-up capacity on the air bridge for other urgent needs this spring and summer We're beginning to put MRAPs on ships now now that we've shipped a whole lot of them into Afghanistan While those are being absorbed and digested. We have a little time. We're putting MATV's on sea lift Taking them into theater on sea lift transferring them there to airlift because the legs are shorter than And you can pop them in more quickly And eventually To may be able to use ground communication the ground transportation the entire way for MRAPs so You have to in the case of logistics for Afghanistan look at every piece of the pipe all the way through up the in the case of ground transportation up the two ground lines of communication to Torquham and shaman From Karachi Over the northern distribution network and a couple branches of that up through Russia and the Baltics first and Russia and the stands over the caucuses and then in through the stands and then the Intra theater transport whether by intra theater air lift or the very challenging Job of getting on the roads in Afghanistan and moving things around from one place to Another so every day is an effort to widen those arteries every day is an effort to get equipment into Afghanistan and the people who do this work are truly remarkable and I my office is filled with messages about bottled water or fuel or Toiletries or whatever build a tents Container for troops to live in containers for the Contractors to live in so that they can support the troops Containers for the people who ship the containers to live in everything is like that And everything has to be p-stacked because you can't just show up in a fob with a sleeping bag We have to make sure that people are properly taken care of when they get there I Think it's fair to say that there's never been like in these months that we're witnessing right now as dramatic a Logistics effort as we see in Afghanistan It's truly remarkable from the airlift to the sea lift to the ground lines to the building of fobs The lane of runways ramp space tent cities Container cities going up there to support what the they the effort which This summer is going to be very critical for that effort and if we don't in just in these next weeks and months Get ourselves in there and get set. We can't have success So I wanted to tell you about that because I think it's one of the most important things I've ever seen in the defense World transpiring in very very few weeks and months and it's a tremendous Tribute to the logisticians in the Defense Department today that we're able to do that I Had one more thing I was going to talk about but I don't want to talk too too long Which is logistics in the acquisition system perhaps I can say something about in questions and answers and so forth That's that's the logistics subject that if there were no wars going on We'd probably be discussing what about logistics for the joint strike fighter. How can we stop spending so much? on Sustainment of weapons systems also a very important topic But in the interest of time I'll pass on that, but I appreciate it John if you're still here the opportunity to talk about Acquisition technology and logistics as it applies to the current Fight it's very different. I don't think many of my predecessors had that same Circumstance hasn't been traditional for AT&L to Focus on ongoing conflict as against the programs of record and the logistics system Of record but today's circumstance demanded Secretary-Defense is very insistent on him and it's a privilege to be part of such a remarkable Remarkably performing logistics system. Thank you Yeah Thank You dr. Carter many of you of course have been at at events here before and you know our normal procedure You raise your hand and if you have a question that you'd like to ask we have staff with with wireless microphones I'll identify you and you wait for the mic And then stand up and say who you are and where you're from and then proceed with your questions So do we have any? Folks out there who have a question they would like to raise. Let me start over here with the back one and then we'll come Hi Doug Brooks with IPOA the Association of Stability Contractors My question is on the NATO allies and coalition partners How much of your business is actually supporting them with contractors and logistics support? I know that you have Hungarian units there and others that certainly don't have their own logistics train So I'm kind of wondering how much of that is is weighing on you We they in general are There are three tiers of logistics. There's the US stuff for the US. There are Nation by nation they the way they sustain themselves now We'll let them come in our slipstream if it's convenient for them They're generally pain separately then there's a NATO effort per se Everybody tries to share I give you an example in the south all of our fuel we buy through the NATO system Because the NATO has been there in the south for quite a while. They've got a good System set up as you probably know we pay for it at the fob gate Because I don't know how you got here. I don't care how you got here. That's your problem I'm buying by the gallon at the fob gate. That's the way we do it and the truck show up From these independent Contractors and we test the fuel and then accept the fuel That system is run by ISAF in the south In the north we do it ourselves. It's a DLA defense logistics agency task Down at Bastion Leatherneck we and the Brits Work hand-in-hand try to share our logistics and do And we do it with all the other coalition partners as appropriate whenever we possibly can Mr.. Secretary Mike Mitchell with Lockheed Martin I'd like to explore a linkage between your third and your fourth topic so counter IED as well as logistics capability In the sense that a number of firms are developing unmanned helicopter capability that could fulfill Niche resupply missions it would take truck convoys off the road and in an area where as you've cited There's limited road infrastructure in the first place could get to areas where there are no So I'm interested in kind of where the department's thinking is this and there's any way to try to accelerate that capability for for all the reasons cited Great great question and absolutely right to the extent You can keep people off the road that's particularly cumbersome supply convoys in outlying areas you Reduce the IED threat We're doing a lot more airdrop this season a lot more airdrop than we were just a few months ago So to an outline cop The that instead of driving trucks up there with their food and their water and their supplies and so forth you fly over There are GPS controlled parachutes now that can fly it right in And you keep people off the road similarly We are looking at several different versions of unmanned rotary lift To do the same thing Put a pallet underneath pick it up flies over flies to a base drops it off comes over And comes back a wonderful way of resupplying people without having anybody take any risk at all Let's go to the front table here. You'll you'll bear with me. You have to raise your hand high There's a lot of nice light shining from behind you So I can see the light a lot better than I can see the people. Thank you Santra Erwin with National Defense. I wanted to ask you about your comments on Meeting the needs of the operational forces. You said that's a big priority right now a lot of people say that One way to do that is to have more joint acquisition that acquisition is is not joint enough And you need to have more efficiencies to make it faster Can you talk about maybe your thoughts on how that could be done and if anything is being done? Well, it is a a perennial Seem in our acquisition system that goes back now to Goldwater nickels 30 years or so as Everybody in this audience knows that in the main gold with Goldwater nickels Decreed was that we shall fight jointly But you are right that we still in the main still acquire severally and So joint acquisition has always been a challenge and it's an it's a challenge in the wars as well In all the ways you might Imagine if there are inherently joint capabilities that is things that everybody needs Like some of the counter IED enablers all the services that are present there that have installations there have personnel there need some of the EOD equipment and It makes sense for us to buy them in one lot That's why we have organizations like Jieda the joint IED defeat Organization that is as it's J suggests joint and it buys equipment for all the services We also have to have Different services take the lead for equipment that go to other services. So when a Juans comes in joint urgent operational needs statement What's the J and jet jet Juans mean it means that an army unit needs some Air Force support and The Air Force needs to resource that support and they do and so the to a really remarkable degree All four services are involved in Afghanistan. I my daughter What said she was going to an event and the secretary the Navy was going to be there Ray made us and she knows I know Ray so she said what should I ask the secretary of the Navy and I said ask him how many Navy people are in landlocked Afghanistan And it's amazing. It's amazing what the Navy is doing in Afghanistan. We've had to do that Because we have to take whatever capability we can and apply it to to Afghanistan So you're right the contingency acquisition Is even a more demanding case of getting the system to behave jointly than is the program of record Joint acquisition Dr. Carter we have we have a lot more questions But I'm also mindful of the fact that we are approaching the time that we were going to release you would you like to take one more? Yeah, all right We have a microphone on this side here. Yeah, let's take the guy on the front table here Collin Clark duty buzz mr. Secretary of Pratt and Whitney is talking about a pbl for the f-135 Exactly on line to logistics modernization one day off one day off ask a ask a logistics Close No, come on just one day Kevin Green from from IBM dr. Carter you mentioned a large infusion of additional ISR sensors and platforms Could you describe the department's intention to invest in the kinds of data management and analytics capabilities? It will allow that increased amount of data to be formed into actionable streams of information It's a it's a huge issue. It's one of those for one of a nail things There's no point in putting the airframe in there if you don't have the The ramp space as I said and then you have to go to get the cement for the ramp space You also have to get the analysts you have to have the bandwidth You have to have the processing capability You have to ask yourselves questions like the one you just asked who actually needs this information For one of those era stats that I described That that data doesn't have to go all over Afghanistan. It doesn't have to go back to Washington It's needed by the people down under the balloon And so that's a much simpler case. You have a van a few operators a tether the era stat When it comes to something like a Liberty ship, which is a complex multi Sensor kind of intelligence Platform there in order to make use of that information, you know You do need state side in that let's say in the SIG and area Support so there's no point in introducing that aircraft unless you have the bandwidth to go back to NSA and it's various facilities back here so that that data can rapidly be used although we are building more Pushing forward in d'Afghanistan more analytical capability so that everything doesn't have to go halfway Around the world. I'll say one other thing about analytical capability that is I think is very very important and I and that is the Demand for intelligence analysis at levels echelons below Brigade it's still the case that most of the analytical expertise is associated with the division and brigade level and In this fight, which is so local And so information intensive and with soldiers who are used to having information You're used to acting on information you got to remarkable you go in the army now has these company command posts And boy, it's not your company command post of 20 years ago. They're all at laptops They're expecting that kind of information they know how to be effective with that kind of of of information and they need intelligence analysts at Them who can tell them about this town who can tell them about good guys as well as bad guys because that's important in a coin But it's not only the threat. It's do you know your situation well enough to do the counterinsurgency? Mission and it's still the case that I Know this is noted frequently and we're fighting against it every day that it's important to get those people down out to the Outposts and down to the echelons where analysis can really be useful and not just writing reports At the higher echelons. So all of that's very important and is the back end of the ISR Sensor front end incredibly important Thank you all very much