 As Debbie may have been told from the morning proceedings, nobody who is residing at any of the panels actually introduced people in detail because their bios are all written into the agenda in great detail, so it just went right straight to the presentations. I would like to say that I'm going to do that with Debbie at this time, but since we are being televised at this time, I think I'd like to say a few words about Debbie. I've known her for a long time. She's an old, old friend. I think we figured out that we first met as professional staff members on the House Armed Services Committee 27 years ago during that time. I was considerably older than her then. I still am considerably older than her at this time, but it was tremendous pride that I followed Debbie's career all of this time. Her Armed Services job, I think, was her first, not her first job in Washington, but the one that started her on the career that she's in now. I think the Armed Services Committee job was probably my fourth or fifth job. I've never been able to hold a permanent job in Washington, just rotated around. But Debbie's had a really, really successful career. She was at the Armed Services Committee, went over at the beginning of the Clinton Administration, became an Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, left government, went into private sector, had a couple of jobs, went to SAIC and had a truly meteor-like career at SAIC in terms of the accretion of responsibilities and success that she had there. During that time, I had several former colleagues that she became their boss. I knew it was only a matter of time before she became my boss. So I decided to retire first before that. But in any case, she's had a wonderful career. I'm so pleased when she was nominated to be the Secretary of the Air Force. She came in at a tough time for the Air Force and I think has done a fantastic job. I think you got some indication of that here today in the presentations that were made by many of the people here today. And I'd like you to join me in welcoming Debbie Lee James. This is a hugging night. I felt free to give my good friend, Clark Murdock, a hug. And thank you so much, Clark, for that very kind introduction. And when Clark and I met 27 years ago, unbelievable is that sounds on the House Armed Services Committee. Just for the record, in case there are any math majors in the audience, I was 12 and he was 15, OK? So just wanted to get that out there, just saying. I also want to thank the greater family within CSIS for hosting us tonight. And I hope you've had a great conference so far. I'm a sampler. So during the cocktail hour, during the dinner and so forth, I've been asking people, how was the conference? How was Pony? Is this your first time? Have you been here before and whatnot? And from everything I can tell you had a great agenda today. Good information, good participation. And it sounds like you've got another great day in store tomorrow. Last week, just last week, I had the opportunity to go up to New York City. And I had the opportunity to speak to the 2014 Global Industrials Conference, which was hosted by Macalese and Associates. So it was kind of an investment banker on Wall Street type of a group. And it was hosted by Credit Suisse. And I talked to them about a number of items, including my key takeaways from year number one. So I am just about to celebrate my first anniversary as the 23rd Secretary of the Air Force, which I should hasten to add has been a phenomenal year. And being the Secretary of the Air Force is absolutely, without question, the honor and the privilege of my professional lifetime. But I shared with them some of my key takeaways. I thought I would just begin tonight by sharing a few of those key takeaways with you as well, one year into my tenure now. So my first key takeaway is without question, and despite all of the challenges of which there are many challenges, let's face it. But despite all of them, we are, without question, the best air force on the planet. Second and none, no question about it. I have traveled far and wide. I have traveled across the United States in this one year time frame. And I've gone to a number of countries overseas as well. And let me tell you, overseas are, I'll say United States military, the joint team, but most especially our air force. Because of course, I'm mostly meeting with air force counterparts. We are the envy of the rest of the world. So everyone who contributes to our national defense, who is part of our joint team, and particularly part of our air force, you should feel very proud of yourselves. Because the rest of the world wants to be like you. That has certainly been my experience. So we're number one on the planet. So that's my first key takeaway. My second key takeaway is we're number one and we're feeling some strains. So not all is perfect here. Not all is paradise. We are feeling some strains. And why is that so? Well, what I have learned over the last year and from all of my briefings, and of course all of my direct interface with airmen and travel, is that right now today we are the smallest air force in terms of the numbers of people in our air force. Then we have ever been, since we became a separate air force, meaning since 1947 when we separated from the army and became a separate air force. And to me, someone who was in the private sector, but keeping an eye on defense and a fairly well up to speed person, or so I thought, that was an astonishing statistic to me to know that we are today smaller in numbers than we have ever been in our history. At the same time, we are an air force that is comprised of fewer aircraft than we have had in decades of our history. And granted, the aircraft that we have, of course, are much more capable than the aircraft we had 30 years ago, let's say. But at some point, capacity becomes an issue. So that is to say with fewer aircraft, you can't be everywhere at all times with the same aircraft. So numbers do count for something, and we are the smallest in terms of the numbers of our aircraft that we have been in recent memory. While all of this is going on, smaller numbers of people, fewer aircraft, of course, what's happened to our operations tempo, it's gone through the roof. So we have gone sky high in terms of our commitments around the world and everything that our air force is doing. And by the way, I'm speaking for the air force, but much of what I am saying really applies to other parts of our military and to the joint force at large. And if all that's not enough, oh, by the way, in the last several years, our budgets have become, I will say, extraordinarily constrained. Now, Clark and I were in the Pentagon in the 90s, and there were constrained budgets in those days, but my point of comparison, it ain't nothing like it is today. It's much more difficult today in terms of the budget and the difficult politics that we are facing in our country as compared to the 90s. And many people say to me, well, gosh, we've just had this change of control in the Senate. Do you think that'll help? And my answer always is, I hope so. I hope so. But I'm not counting on it. And I don't quite see the path that it is going to change, but I remain hopeful. So in light of all of these dynamics, if I go back a year ago when the FY15 budget was just being rolled out, we had to make some very tough choices in the air force about our budget choices. And in that FY15 budget, the five-year plan that accompanied it. And so just like any of you would do in your own families, if your income had suddenly dropped to the tune of about 20%, because, oh, by the way, that's about what our budget dropped in the air force, I think you would all do what we did. You would sit back. You would review what it is that you must do. What could you afford not to do? What could you afford to do less of? But on the other hand, maybe things you needed to do more of that you needed to double down and invest more in. I think that's what we would all do in our own families. And indeed, that's what we did in our air force. And as a result of all of that, we established priorities. Again, some things we needed to do more of, even though it was tough budgets. But other things, we said we have to give way. We have to do somewhat less. So on the more side, basically in our air force, we decided that we needed to double down on our readiness, our readiness spending. This has to do with training. It has to do with munitions. It has to do with all of the things that we need to do our job today. Our job in a full spectrum of types of conflicts that we might be asked to do. You see, in the last 20 or so years, our readiness has actually gone down in the air force. And that's bad enough. But then you add the year of sequestration on top of it, where we literally had to stand down many of our combat flying units. And that really set us off target. So we decided we need to get those readiness statistics up. And that meant we needed to double down and invest more. Another area where we decided we needed to invest more is in our modernization, to make sure that in future years we are the best 21st century that air force can buy and not simply continue to be the best 1980s or 1990s vintage air force that money can buy. So we've got to advance the ball when it comes to our modernization programs. And so we also decided that we needed to protect, or in some cases, double down in those areas. So those are some of the key investment areas that we chose. But of course, we can't do everything. So how did we decide to pay for it? Because remember, there's budget caps. There's very specific budget caps that we all have to live under. So basically we reviewed the bidding and we decided there's certain areas that were prepared reluctantly to do lessen. So number one, we decided that we were going to try to retire over time some of our aging aircraft. And there's been nothing more controversial in this past year than the A-10 aircraft and our proposal to retire that aircraft over five years. But there are others beyond the A-10 and that was one of the hard decisions that we made. Also another hard decision, we've been reducing our numbers in the air force and that's been going on for some time. In this previous fiscal year, we've reduced something like on the order of 16,000 to 17,000 mostly active duty. It's fallen mostly on the active duty side, less so on the National Guard and Reserve and civilian side. But we have traded off numbers of people in favor of making sure that the people that we have are fully ready. By the way, one of the things I've learned over the last year when it comes to that downsizing, I think enough is enough. I think we've gone far enough. And although we originally said that perhaps we need to go a bit farther, I'm one who thinks enough is enough. And we're already small enough and we need to stop. But numbers of personnel was another hard tradeoff. We also proposed slowing the growth in military compensation. So military compensation would still go up but not at as high of a rate as originally anticipated. And finally, base closures. We've got too many, we've got too much excess capacity and we need to stop throwing good money after bad against that excess capacity. So everything I just said was a really hard choice except the base closures. That's an absolutely dead bang winner of an idea and coming out of business as I did for the last 12, 13 years, you would never in business keep open facilities and whatnot that you didn't need for your future. Everything else was a hard choice but not the base closures. Also to this McElize conference, when I was making all of these points that I've just made to you, when it came to doubling down on the investment area, I made a big point to them and I want to make a big point to you that we need to invest more in our nuclear enterprise. So this is now bringing me to the crux of your conference. To me, the nuclear enterprise that goes directly to the readiness of today and our needs of today but it also talks to the readiness of tomorrow, which is that modernization story that I referenced earlier. Now I finished my talk to McElize and then much like we're gonna do here tonight, we opened it up to questions and would you believe the very first question I got was from a gentleman in the audience and he said, just why exactly do you think that investing in the nuclear enterprise in view of all these other things, why is that important? Why is that sort of at the top of your list? So that was the key question. I'm gonna come back to that in a minute. Now, flash forward, couple of days difference between McElize and the next story I'm about to tell you. I had the opportunity to do an interview with a reporter from the Associated Press, a reporter who has covered the nuclear enterprise very, very closely over time and he asked me a number of questions among those questions because by now, Secretary Hagel had made his announcement which was a surprise announcement to me at least, I think to many, that he would be stepping down as soon as a successor was named and newly confirmed and so the AP reporter asked me, well gosh, you seem to have a lot of momentum going here with the nuclear enterprise. Is that going to be lost in any way? Will any of that suffer with the change in leadership and with Secretary Hagel stepping down? So what I wanna do now is I wanna sort of shift into those two key questions. The first which came from that, McElize Conference, why nuclear? Why are we doing that in this time of tough budgets? And secondly, are we gonna lose any momentum with the change in leadership? So let me begin with some basics and this is a very sophisticated audience. I feel like I'm preaching to the choir but I'll just begin with what I believe to be a fact and that is that our nuclear triad and that is to say our bombers and our ICBMs and our submarines, of course, two of those three are our top responsibility in the Air Force that these three together have been the absolute bedrock. They have been the absolute bedrock of our national defense strategy for more than 60 years. So the triad, I think we can all agree has served us very, very well in the past. Now, how about the future? Well, your crystal ball is probably about as good as mine but my crystal ball tells me that this is the way it's going to remain. It's gonna remain this way probably for the next 60 years and probably beyond that as far as I can fathom in my mind and I say this because as long as there are other countries that pose the one and only existential threat to the United States of America and of course that is posed by nuclear threats, I have to say I as an American taxpayer wanna keep the nuclear triad strong, a nuclear enterprise strong and if that's not enough there's a whole set of other countries that may not pose an existential threat but they either have or they're trying to develop some degree of nuclear capability and that is worrisome as well. So I would submit to you that as long as we are a nuclear world the United States needs to be a nuclear power and we need to remain focused and perhaps double down and focus more and better on our nuclear triad. Now this is not just my opinion. In my one year of service in the Air Force I would submit to you that this is the, I'll call it the overwhelming view in our government today and so I'm talking about everybody from the president to the senior leaders in the Department of Defense to I'll say most of the leadership in Congress certainly the key ones that I have been with on the authorizing committees and the appropriations committees. We all agree that nuclear has got to be right up there it's got to be number one as our most important mission and I think we've all also come to the point of agreement that we need to get busy. We need to get busy in some important areas because over time for whatever series of circumstances have presented somehow the nuclear enterprise we have collectively let it atrophy to the point where not sufficiently healthy. We need to do better and we need to fix those areas that are not sufficiently healthy today. And this was certainly the conclusion I'll say the bottom line of the Air Force review that we did. It was I'll say the bottom line conclusion of the two reviews that Secretary Hagel ordered. As you know he ordered an internal review and an external review. Admiral Haney at STRATCOM, he did his own form of review. I think we're all in lockstep in this I'll say overall conclusion. So that's why nuclear is going to remain top of mind why it is here to stay and why we're prepared to invest more. And coming to that second question and let me give you the answer. Are we gonna skip a beat? Because Secretary Hagel who's been a great advocate will not be with us perhaps in a few months. There'll be a new Secretary of Defense and my answer to that is absolutely not. We're not going to skip a beat and that is precisely because as I told you we are in such lockstep agreement at the senior levels of policy making in both the executive branch and the legislative branch. So I'm gonna predict for you right now that we're gonna continue to invest in our nuclear enterprise. And by the way when you say investments everybody automatically thinks money. And you know what? Money is important. Money is important in Washington. Money talks and I do mean we're gonna invest more money but I mean more than money. I mean more than money. We also need to invest time and attention and leadership in the nuclear enterprise. This is equally important because what we have to do is partly money and investments of that sort but it's partly changing of a systemic culture I will say and so both are true and we're committed to doing both. When it comes to the traditional money money can help you invest more in people. It can help you with improved manning and spare parts and modernization and all of those things which we're working on but that's no substitute for the time and attention and the leadership. Now I'm gonna review with you at just a minute some of the things that we've already done give you a few predictions for the future but first if I could just take a few minutes and tell you a little bit about my personal journey over the last year specifically as it relates to the nuclear enterprise. For me it all started in January of last year and I was just literally two or three weeks old in the job just newly confirmed as the secretary of the Air Force when it came to my attention that there had been a significant cheating situation at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana among our Missileer community and it was cheating on a nuclear proficiency test. Now before any of this happened I certainly was aware of the importance of the nuclear mission. I had prepared for confirmation hearings and was prepared to answer certain questions on the nuclear mission. I was aware there had been some problems in the past. There had been I forget how many studies quite a few all kinds of changes instituted. This was my level of awareness before all of this happened and then Malmstrom happened. So this was a big deal for me. This was a big deal and I was very driven to find out how did this happen to us? How did this come to be? What did it mean for the safety and security of our nuclear enterprise? I mean that was uppermost in my mind and then even more importantly what are we going to do to address the problems and to fix whatever the situation at hand is? So by the way, General Welsh, our Chief of Staff of the Air Force had all the same thoughts in mind. He and I were completely on the same wavelength. We had to get to the bottom of it and we had to above all else fix it. So for me, particularly a new person I need to convince myself that the safety and security was real because that was first and foremost. So after quite a bit of crash course I'd had my nuclear 101 but now I had to get 201 and 301 all in a few days. But at the end of those days I was, I could see clear that yes, our nuclear enterprise was safe and secure. This was a bad failure of integrity on the part of some of our airmen. But you know, one test even though a bad failure of integrity doesn't make or break the system because there's a lot of checks and balances in the system. So that was the first thing. The second thing right after that was I decided I wanted to go out to the missile bases and I wanted to see some of the environment for myself. I wanted to talk to the leadership and get the briefings directly on scene. And I also wanted to talk to some of the airmen directly. And so that's what I did. By the way, General Welch did the same thing though we weren't on the same trip. He was on his program, I was on mine. And you can imagine me as a new person, I did a lot more touring than he did because of course he had seen launch control centers before, he had seen the silos before, he had seen the operations center before. I had not. So I did this kind of touring. Of course, talk to the leaders on scene, got briefings. But then very importantly, it turned out to be very important to me, I asked to meet with some of the personnel directly. So I met with Miss Lears, I met with defenders, I met with maintainers, I met with cooks, the whole panoply of career fields. I got a chance to talk to them. And I had people who said, well, gosh, I'll come with you and take notes for you and leaders wanted to come with me. And I said, no, thank you. I would like to meet just directly with the airmen. And I wanted to do this because I wanted to ask them directly kind of on a non attribution basis, what was going on here. So I did this at all three of the nuclear bases. And it was an enormous help to directly hear their point of view. Now at the end of the trip came back to Washington and I had what I call my seven observations. I would never tell you that I knew exactly what was wrong or more to the point what to do about it. But I did have my initial seven, what I call observations. So I'd like to just go over those with you. My first observation was that indeed that the nuclear force at large and particularly the ICBM force, which was my key focus at that time, there was something more than this individual cheating situation going on. There was something broader. I'll call it a systemic series of challenges, cultural challenges, if you will. It was more than cheating. And by the way, I didn't find any evidence of cheating anywhere beyond this Malmstrom situation. People ask me that all the time. We went wherever the evidence led us. It never led us beyond Malmstrom. But I heard themes throughout as I traveled about. So the first theme I heard was that in this community, this was a community where even the smallest of mistakes or infractions could cause large repercussions coming back on units and airmen. So that was one thing. Another thing, and of course one leads to the next, therefore it was a community that was feeling very micromanaged, that they had to go up, for even the smallest of considerations, they had to go to higher headquarters and ask. It was very much a zero defect mentality, okay, because it's nuclear weapons, so you shouldn't make mistakes. But I think this was partly an outgrowth of other problems. And when leaders back in the day came down hard to try to correct those problems, but zero defect is not human. It's not the way life is. And so there were repercussions from that zero defect mentality. The PRP program, which I think you all know what that is, good idea, but it seemed like it had gone way beyond common sense and some of the implementation of it. There was undermining across the board. I was startled to see the degree of undermining. And by the way, I have since seen that the entirety of our Air Force has undermining issues. So that is not unique to the nuclear, but it struck me at the time as an important issue. And then across the board, morale was rather spotty, I would say. So some people were pumped and motivated, but others were not. I had Academy graduates and I had ROTC graduates who were now in the nuclear field who literally told me that when they received the assignment of nuclear, that some of their colleagues literally laughed and said, oh, I was so sorry. It didn't seem to be a career field that people aspired to be in. And I was really struck by that and I thought something's gotta change here. So that was sort of my first observation. There was something systemic and cultural going on and we needed to do something. Second, that we needed better accountability at all levels and of course with accountability goes empowerment. And as I told you, this was not an area that struck me as being terribly empowered, at least not at that time. Number three, somehow along the way we had lost the distinction between training and testing. So everything in the nuclear community seemed to be a test or an evaluation. And if you weren't being tested or evaluated, you were preparing to get tested or evaluated. And indeed, getting 100% on these monthly test scores became the biggest thing going because those test scores were used as differentiators on who got promoted and who didn't. So it seemed to me that somewhere along the line we had gone wrong there and that we had lost a feeling of continuous improvement, which is what we want in our Air Force and we had instead gone to this constant testing, constant evaluation culture. Number four, because this was a failure of integrity, I felt like we needed to recommit to our core values in the Air Force. And by the way, I think that was true across the board that it was a whole thing to do is remind everyone integrity, service, and excellence. Those are our core values. Five, we needed to make this career field more attractive to young people who would be joining our Air Force. We needed to work on professional development so people could see a path forward, people issues. We needed to work much more on those people issues. And then number six and seven observations. I'll say this was the difference between what we said and then what we did. So we've said forever that the nuclear mission is number one, but did we back it up? So my number six observation is, it was number one, but did we have the right incentives in place to make sure that we're attracting the right people, that we're retaining the right people, that we're rewarding them, that we give accolades and so forth. And number seven, were we investing properly? We said it's number one, but were we investing? Were we putting our money where our mouth was? And it seemed like there was an awful lot of stuff that was going undone, a sustainment, modernization. There were a lot of needs out there that seemed to be unmet. So anyway, these were my initial seven observations. General Welsh might have put it differently in terms of the terminology, but he basically agreed when he came back from his visit. And then of course, General Wilson, the commander of our global strike, launched his commander directed investigation as well as the force improvement program and the FIP. So now let me start to come more to the present day. The FIP was concluded. It originally started with ICBMs. Eventually it was expanded to our bomber community. And if there's anybody in here that doesn't know about the FIP, this was kind of a, I'll call it power to the people. It's listen to the people and then see if we can't institute as many as possible of the ideas that the people who are actually on the front lines bring to us as to how to improve the nuclear enterprise. So now let me tell you some of the work of the past nine months and what has transpired. Since the FIP concluded, we've already said, and we're making good on this promise, that we're redirecting about $500 million over the next several years to nuclear priorities in the near term. So this will be everything from sustainment issues to bomber and ICBM operations support, launch control center refurbishment, nuclear defender equipment and uniforms, and there's other force improvement initiatives as well. So that's a half a billion dollars that wasn't there nine months ago, but it's there now. And my prediction is stay tuned because when the FY16 budget rolls out, you're gonna see, I predict that half a billion dollars grow to multi billions of dollars of additional investment. Of course the final details are still being worked, but we have got to get on with the ground base strategic deterrent, which of course is the future of the ICBM force. We need to recapitalize our weapons storage areas into weapons storage facilities. There's a helicopter fleet that needs to be modernized. We've got the long range standoff weapon that also needs attention and NC3 issues. So I would predict for you that when the dust settles and you see our next FY16 budget in the accompanying five year plan, you're gonna see even greater investment in our nuclear enterprise. So that's a little bit about the money. Now, as far as the training and testing environment, this business of using scores, and whether you get 100% or 95% and all that jazz, that is no longer being used as a differentiator to advance airmen or not. Obviously there's still a standard. The standard is the same as it has always been, but we expect our leaders now to know the total airmen and be able to write a performance review on the total person, not solely on a test scores. And inspections and evaluations are being re-wicked so that they become more of a commander's program so that commanders can see areas for improvement and where do we need to focus, as opposed to this gotcha mentality where even a minor violation can fail an entire unit. So the training and inspection regime is being redone. When it comes to accountability, I think everybody knows that there was accountability for what went on at Momstrom. This goes for the leaders, it goes for the lead. So there's appropriate accountability at all levels, and we need to make sure that that's the case across our Air Force, always making sure that people are appropriately accountable. Little bit more about the people programs. We have put more money into ROTC scholarships. We're going to be paying special duty assignment pay for certain of our enlisted career fields and also in assignment incentive pay for the officers who execute and support our nuclear mission out in the missile field. So that goes directly to some of the financial rewards. And by the way, we're also moving to 100% manning in eight critical fields within the nuclear enterprise. We're going to get to that as soon as we can and hopefully in the future do a better job of recognizing the sacrifices and with accolades of our nuclear airmen. So I had the pleasure of actually pinning on the first Nuclear Deterrence Operations Service Medal not long ago at the Global Force Strike Challenge to first Lieutenant Victoria Ford and about 25 other airmen. So that nuclear medal is now available. When it comes to the whole micromanagement, the commander of the 20th Air Force has issued a series of directives which are designed to empower more and micromanage less. So that is work in progress. I think everybody knows by now we want a four star, not a three star, but a four star in charge of global strike command going forward. That is also moving forward and retedication to our core values across the Air Force. We have launched a campaign in that area. So basically all the things that we uncovered, the various themes, these reports that Secretary Hagel ordered, they were all very consistent, which is again why I come back to we're all on the same sheet of music when it comes to what it needs to be done. We just need to provide that persistent focus and persistent leadership to make sure it happens. So all of that has been happening for the last nine months and so I'm asking, all right, what have we got to show for it? Are we showing progress yet? Yes or no? So the answer, my answer to that is I think so. I'm seeing progress and that is good. It's not enough, there's more to be done, but I am seeing progress. I say this because of the overall statistics I see and the big picture that I get briefed on at the Pentagon, but I also see it because I have gone back not two times, but three times in some cases to talk to the airmen in the nuclear bases and they tell me that they're beginning to see more empowerment, the money is flowing, the testing environment is changing. The additional manpower is beginning to arrive. So again, I'm very cautiously optimistic that we are beginning to see the tide turned. Now, as I said, we're not done and I do have a couple of new things that I wanted to share with you today. There's actually three new actions or nearly new actions I'll say that I wanted to share with you. So the first announcement is organizational in nature and this is that we will combine in the future the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center together with the Air Force Program Executive Office for Strategic Systems. So they currently are two separate offices. We're gonna put them together into one single-hatted two-star position and the idea here is to enhance support to the nuclear mission. So put another way, whereas now we have two separate belly buttons for two parts of the nuclear sustainment and modernization missions. In the future, we will have one. We will have one senior leader accountable for the entirety of the weapon system. So by that, I mean the missile, the launch facilities and the supporting equipment. And the idea here is to treat missiles and the supporting functions as one weapon system. Rather than two divorced elements that may or may not be in sync with one another because of different budgeting and different approaches that may be taken. That's one. The second announcement also relates to an organizational matter. We have the 377th Air Base Wing at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. We're gonna move the organizational lines from Air Force Materiel Command where it is today and we're gonna move that over to Air Force Global Strike Command. Now, the whole idea here is to allow the 377th to best focus on the installation support at Kirtland and we're gonna have Global Strike oversee that because their role is support of the airmen and the operations, but let AFMC instead focus on this new entity I told you about because their job is product support and the related functions and the modernization. So it's trying to line up our organization for the laser focus so that everybody can have that focus and not have too many focal points because we want this addressed and we want it fixed. My final announcement is not actually new. It's about a week old, but I think it's worthy of repeating the Office of Personnel Management about a week ago, did approve a special salary rate for seven specifically targeted, non-appropriated fund crafts and trade positions at Minot Air Force Base. So for those of you who've been to Minot, like I've been to Minot, if you go you will hear that they are in the midst, that whole community is in a midst of I'll say an energy boom. There is shale oil and there's all kinds of energy issues going on and people now are flocking to that area near Minot, North Dakota. And what has happened is it is drawing away a lot of our employees from the nuclear mission, particularly those who are in the NAF positions and civil service positions, they're leaving because they can get higher paying jobs associated with this energy boom. So we have to find a way to address that because we need to staff those positions back up. And so the first step that we now have gotten through the system is the NAF. So this means we'll be able to re-attract, I hope, childcare workers and people like this who are so important to the quality of life at Minot who have been otherwise attracted away. Now there's more to come here because of course, I also mentioned there's civil service employees who have left, that's sort of a separate system, it's a separate pay system. We're working that through the process as well. So more to follow, but I felt good about, at least in the last week, that we got that one piece through. All right, let me wrap this now and just come back to a point I made earlier on. I've been on the job for about a year. In that year, I've been to 57 bases because I am keeping count, 57 bases in 26 states and territories. I've been to the Middle East, I've been to Europe and I've been to the Pacific. So those have been my overseas destinations and I want you to know that our airmen across the board are doing a fantastic job. And although that sounds like a lot of bases I've been to, there's a lot that I haven't even been to once, let alone twice, let alone three times. But I have been to our nuclear bases, all of them twice and some of them three times. So I hope that gives you a feeling for just how important this issue is to me and how much attention that I am putting to it. And I'm making sure that others are also rallied around the cause, which is not hard. We're all in lockstep, we're all doing it. So the bottom line is our nuclear enterprise is safe and secure and it's very effective. It's very effective first and foremost because of our great airmen. So I hope it's coming through to you. I'm very optimistic about the future of our air force generally and I'm very optimistic, very particularly about our nuclear enterprise. We just have to keep on it, persistent leadership, persistent focus and we will get there. So I want to thank you again, Clark, thank you CSIS for having me here today. Thank you for your time that you have put to this important conference to the fact that you've dedicated yourselves to these important issues of the nuclear enterprise. And now I'd be very happy to do my best to take your questions. So thank you. All right, we have about how much time for questions? 10 minutes? All right, first question please, Bob Servant. And state your name and affiliation. Got it. Bob Servant, U.S. Strategic Command and off at Air Force Base. First of all, thank you for your leadership. It's been outstanding in your last year as a secretary. My question is something you probably can't answer but something to take back maybe to the Pentagon. The last time a chairman participated in a nuclear exercise was probably 1995. So when is the next time a chairman, secretary or for that matter the joint staff participates in a national nuclear exercise? Bob, I can't answer that question. So take that back. But I will take that back. Now, I see your point. Yeah, so there's an optic there that is transmitted to the force, the force including the combatant commands and the MAJCOMs, et cetera, so. And I'm not sure and maybe you can inform me how often do we have those exercises that they could participate should they do so? At least once a year. Once a year, okay. Stratcom conducts an exercise called Global Thunder which all the nuclear forces participate in. All right, I will take that back, I promise. Thank you. And again, thanks for your service. Henry Hedger, researcher at NARA, retired government. I wonder what your impressions are of this new light attack fighter which has been offered by Textron, the Scorpion. I've heard that Nigeria will order it and also UAE which would send it out to face ISIS. It's not a very impressive aircraft. In some ways it's maximum speed is only 500 miles per hour. However, it is somewhat formidable. It looks a little like an F-22 in a miniature version. It doesn't have the heavy weight of the other aircraft. It might have some beneficial aspects. The main thing is it's only $17 million apiece and in an era of budgetary constraints and worries about non-state actors committing colossal crimes on the ground. It might have great utility. I wonder what you thought of it. Are you aware of it and what are your impressions of it? I am aware of it. I've actually seen it at an air show. I've gotten briefings about it. First of all, I give Textron a lot of credit. They made a substantial investment to do this aircraft without having an immediate customer on the other side of the fence. And as you mentioned, from what I understand, they have been talking to a number of foreign governments. They certainly have been talking to the Air Force about the aircraft and they may well be on the verge of making some sales. Of course, don't know that for sure, but it's possible. And the key benefit, as you said, is it is quite inexpensive and for a variety of countries around the world, it could be just the ticket of what they need. Who knows? For us in the future, I'm thinking about our TX requirements. So I'm thinking about future competitions that may be forthcoming. It could meet our needs as well. Of course, as we go to the future, we're increasingly looking for fifth generation capabilities. This is what the Joint Strike Fighter is. But the TX, as an example, could be an area where we would look at the Scorpion, if they were to bid that, as an alternative in our TX competition. The TX, by the way, will be the next generation, the next iteration of our trainer aircraft. And that will be coming up over the next few years. So I give them a lot of credit. They saw a need on the world market. They made a big investment. And it could be, as I said, it could be just the ticket because it is inexpensive and it has a great deal of capability. Maybe not as much as everybody would want, but there's the cost capability trade-off. We talked about, as part of strengthening the nuclear enterprise, making Global Strike Command a four star, making the A-10 a three star. Do you see any problems getting that through Congress and the momentum building? And obviously, with drawdowns and stuff like that, that increases the overhead. What do you see as some of the obstacles in the way ahead with respect to that? We have only a finite number of general officers in our Air Force. And so whenever we think about creating a new four star position, just to take that as an example, we have two choices. We can either ask Congress to increase our authorization of four stars, or we can take it out of hide somewhere and figure out where can we afford to make an existing four star a three star so that we can move that billet. So we talked about it and we could not, in good conscience, go forward and ask for an additional four star, not at a time when we are reducing the number of our airmen in the Air Force, particularly in our enlisted force. Just didn't feel right. So instead, we're going to take that billet from another position. And whenever you take from one, in order to give to another, there's always the possibility that whichever losing location rises up and says we don't agree with this. So in our case, we have decided that AETC, which is our training command, that we will have henceforth, once this all goes through, we will have a three star over that command. And that billet, which is currently a four star, will move to global strike. Now AETC is in Texas. So of course, we did pre-brief the Texas delegation. And so far, it appears that they are supportive. And certainly there are many other members of Congress who are supportive. But as you know, of course, we recommend and then the president will actually make a nomination of the individual. And then it must go before the Senate for confirmation. So all of that is in process, but at least so far it appears that there is good support. I will say there's excellent support for making global strike a four star. It's just that whenever you talk about taking something away, there's where you at least have the possibility of disagreement. And I see a question over here. This gentleman has been trying very hard. Yeah. And I can go a little bit longer, because I know I, yeah. My name's Howard Mullins, private citizen. The purpose of a nuclear weapon is to destroy a target. And in order to justify a nuclear arsenal, we need a set of targets that require nuclear weapons. We have many weapons that can destroy targets, but to cross the nuclear threshold and enter the world of radioactive fallout, so where you need a target that justifies a nuclear weapon, what are the targets that justify our nuclear arsenal in the post Cold War world? Well, I agree with you that certainly there are targets, but I would also assert a huge part of it is deterrence. And when I talked to earlier about how it had been a bedrock of our national security strategy for the last 60 some years, and I was predicting it would be for the foreseeable future, deterrence is the, without question, the biggest part of that. So when you look at our triad, we always say our bombers are flexible. They can be sent off, but they can always come back. Our ICBMs, I think, are our best protection against a first strike, because who would ever dare to think that they could take them all out at once? And so that's a form of deterrence. And then the third leg, the submarines, are what we usually call the most survivable. So that is to say, God forbid there would be a strike, those submarines would live on, and they could still be there. So all of that is, I know it's unfathomable to all of us as Americans that such a thing could ever happen. And yet I come back to the principle that so long as other countries have these weapons, as long as the possibility at least exists that there is an existential threat to the United States, that's point one. And point two is there's this whole other group out there that's trying to develop them and could well, some are on the verge, I sleep better as an American knowing that we have deterrence as still an important pillar of our strategy. So to talk about the targets, I don't know that that would be a good thing to do, but I would like to more talk about the value of deterrence which I think has served us very, very well through the decades. Thank you. My name is Hermes from OWS. My question is about what is happening now and with Isle. If you think that our Air Force is the best one I know, do you think that is sufficient to make a significant victory over Isle? What's going on now with Isle? So that's a really important area of discussion. So we have been in this fight for several months now against these barbaric people who call themselves Isle or ISIS or IS. And our Air Force very much is in the lead. Now, with that said, it's a joint fight among the various components of the United States military and it's a joint fight on the world scene because of course we have coalition partners. But with all that said, allow me to at least brag a little bit. I am the secretary of the Air Force after all. Our Air Force is very much in the lead. So we have done upwards of 60% of all of the strike missions to date in Iraq and Syria. We have done upwards of 90%, well over 90% of the mobility missions, the humanitarian air drop missions, of the tanker missions, so important fighter aircraft don't stay in the sky forever. They've got to be gassed and we are the tanker force. The ISR, the intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, we are upwards of 90% in terms of that capability. So we have been huge in this fight and with all due respect for all of the important debate, and it is an important debate about the boots on the ground, I'm grateful that we have so many fine boots in the air and an awful lot of those boots are United States Air Force. Now, with all that said, the air campaign alone probably is not gonna do the trick. From the word go, the president has said a couple things and I think he's right. Number one, this is gonna take time. So all of us are anxious to win in 10 days or three months and this is not reality. Gotta have some patience, it's gonna take time. Number two, the boots on the ground are designed to be the Iraqi army, the Syrian elements that we are going to be helping to train along with some of our allies and so that is the plan to be sort of the boots on the ground, I will say. And the final point, very importantly, this is not just a military thing. This has gotta be a political solution and ultimately there needs to be various accommodations, particularly in Iraq and the fact that there's now a fairly new prime minister in Iraq seems to be making some good moves. That gives me hope that the political situation at least is moving in the right direction. So people say, well, is it working? Is the air campaign working? I say yes, the air campaign is designed to disrupt and ultimately, well, disrupt is degrade and destroy. So what you've seen so far is you've seen the disruption, right, ISIL used to be waving these flags all around. You don't see them doing that so much, not so much anymore. They've kind of gone a little bit more into hiding. They have changed their tactics and techniques and procedures. The disruption is we've been hitting hard those oil refineries. We've been attacking their sources of income, sources of training. So the disrupt and the degrading has been happening. The ultimately destroy part, there's where the patience is needed. That's where there's gonna be more time. But I say that it is working. It's just we've got to be, we've got to all get our heads around the fact that we're in this for the long ball game. This is not a short ball game. Why don't you join me in thanking David Ray. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.