 So, good morning. Thank you for venturing out into this awful weather and even worse traffic. My name is Stephanie Sanicostro. I'm the Acting Director of the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Program here at CSIS. And again, I'd like to welcome you here. Before I go into my introductory remarks, I would like to ask you all to silence or set your blackberries and iPhones to stun, if you don't mind. It will affect the microphones up here, so I do ask you to do that. So over the past year or so, our Homeland Security program has been looking in depth at National Guard issues, courtesy of the Army National Guard's sponsorship, and we have made several findings and recommendations that you will hear about later with the second panel. But before we get to that point, I would like to provide some outlining remarks just on the topic and then introduce our keynote speaker. As major combat operations that have defined the last 12 years draw to an end, a wide variety of new and evolving challenges are emerging and confronting our nation's military. In addition, the budget environment is increasingly unpredictable, creating uncertainty within DOD as roles and missions that services have filled for the last 12 years shift and as cuts to personnel, equipment, and other resources loom. The Army National Guard faces a unique set of circumstances when thinking about its potential role in domestic and overseas operations. Last year, the Army National Guard asked us at CSIS to provide an independent analysis of the strategic level issues facing the Guard as well as its evolving roles and missions, so you won't find me up here talking necessarily about numbers, but we will be talking about the strategic level issues facing the Guard and the active Army. Today's event marks the completion of our CSIS series on the future of the Army National Guard and is intended as a forum not only to release our final report, which you should have a copy of, but also to examine the future of the Guard from multiple points of view. To deliver the keynote remarks today, we have the honor of welcoming U.S. Congressman Tim Walts, who is currently serving his fourth term representing Minnesota's first congressional district. Congressman Walts is also co-chair of the National Guard and the Reserve Components Caucus along with Congressman Duncan Hunter of California. Congressman Walts is no stranger to the National Guard. He enlisted in the Army National Guard at the age of 17 and retired 24 years later as Command Sergeant Major. Before retiring, he served overseas in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, and as such, we believe he is the highest-ranking enlisted soldier ever to serve in Congress. Since coming to Congress, Representative Walts has made improving the care of our nation's veterans a top priority. He has been recognized for his work in Congress with awards from AmVets, the National Association of County Veteran Service Officers, and a variety of other organizations. Please join me in welcoming Congressman Walts. Well, thank you, Stephanie, and good morning to each of you. It is an honor to be here with you, and I am certainly looking forward to it. The timeliness of this report could not be better. It is, of course, with the appropriation season in NDAA last week and the discussions on what the force looks like moving forward as reposition out of a war stance and into what will be a new posture. And I think it is of the lessons learned. Certainly you would hope so that the lessons learned will help dictate the direction that that goes. So I am grateful for that, and thank you for the kind introduction. I am always reminded when I ask the question to people if you know the difference between a eulogy and a political introduction, the answer is that the political introduction, one person believes it. So thank you very much for that. But in full disclosure, as you heard, I think approaching this issue and understanding this force structure, I certainly come from, and I think it is important to understand where decision makers and where folks are coming from with the experience that they have. I am a product of that post-Vietnam National Guard. And quite honestly, I spent most of my career trying to prove that I was worthy of the active force. And the fact of the matter was that was at times very, very challenging because of the structure and the nature of this. There were times in my artillery battalion where, because of the lack of equipment and training funds, that I was taping a howitzer cab on the floor and using toilet paper rolls as the charges to try and train that. That is certainly not the way a great nation trains for its defense. It certainly wasn't the best use of the patriotism and the willingness of those young folks to serve. And I watched and had the honor and privilege of watching how decisions were made to integrate into that total force, to understand that the strategic depth of the National Guard wasn't just a whole bunch of guys we already had signed up in case the Russians rolled through East Germany and we would bring them in and get them going, that there was much more capacity there in terms of knowledge. We certainly have seen it in these conflicts when we saw National Guard folks with experience in public planning, with experience in corrections, with experience in other areas, civil engineering, that were taking and expanding upon what their MOS or their military mission was to enhance that greater mission. And I think the investments that we made, and we certainly know the numbers, at one point in time we had over 30 percent of the forces in Afghanistan and Iraq were National Guard and reserve forces who, by all objective measures, performed admirably. And I think what we have to come to this conclusion and I think it is a reality of what does these post-conflicts look like and what does the, as you look at the Quadrennial Defense Review, if you look at where this nation repostures to the Pacific and all those decisions that are being made on the big strategic level, how are we going to get this right? Because to be very honest with you, this is one area we can't mistake. We can't get wrong. And so the struggle we are having and the unfortunate, and I want to be very clear, you can't have this discussion in the vacuum away from financial issues, away from the budgetary issues. And while it is not the simple answers that we always want to have, because in politics the black and white makes it easier to contrast, and that is the discussion that everyone wants to have. So it is not as simple as tanks versus teachers, but there is truth in that. We have priorities. We have decisions to make. So trying to get first and foremost that this discussion must be driven by what is in this nation's best strategic interest, what is in this nation's best interest defense-wise, and expanding on where the President was, there is certainly the reality that the United States is going to have to be an actor in global affairs. Now, the interesting part of it is, in Congress right now, a new dynamic has emerged where the left, with the assumption, and I am certainly agreeing that there are certainly major tools that we have outside of the military in the projection of U.S. soft power, economic power, diplomatic power, and all those things, but a left that is simply in willing to pit tanks against teachers as if it is the simplest choice of that. And now we have the new dynamic of an isolationist right. And the two have met on the international dateline of let's just hope everything works out okay, kind of where I would say. We certainly hope and pray that we would never have to deploy forces either in defense of this nation or of allied nations, but it behooves us to be prepared. With that being said, it doesn't mean that there is an endless amount of money that should be done. And that brings us back to the discussion we are having right now, how to best and effectively deploy our resources, economic resources, to the defense structure that we have. And I would make the case that for us to revert back, and it feels that way to me that the little chip on my shoulder grew, and I certainly respect and understand the position that military and Pentagon leaders were put in, like General Odin-Yerno, but the reason on the restructuring certainly isn't because Guard and Reserve trained 39 days a month or a year and don't get the job done. If your argument is that it doesn't make strategic sense or economic sense to do this, then present those numbers. And I think that is why the importance of this report that you are doing, very similar to what my colleague and friend Joe Wilson has asked for in the House, the brilliance of CSIS is that you are not going to have to wait for us to hash it out and get the Senate to get it done. We have got that report. And I think it is very important to help drive this discussion of what that N4 structure looks like. And so I, for one, very much look forward to this. I, for one, know that we have to be driven by data. We have to be driven by that proper NStraight. The problem that I have is, prior to this report and others that I hope we get is, we don't have the imperial data to make that distinction. And one of the problems in this city that you find is people will know the price of everything and the value of nothing. And trying to quantify what the strategic depth and role of the National Guard is has to be made so that we can make the argument and have the discussion through civilian leadership to get that correct. So I can't stress enough, my goal is, is not to protect armories in every small town in America. If that is not what is good for this nation, if that is not what is good for the defense, if that is not good for the economic strength, then we need to make those hard decisions. And people who were elected to do that need to stand up and say we might have to close an armory in small town wherever it was. But I don't want to make that discussion based on a turf battle that reverted to the United States. Let's get back to the 1980s and let's be very clear. General O'Neill, Secretary Hagel, the tags that were put in the very uncomfortable position of having to write letters that got onto that close red line of the politics that they should never be asked to cross were put into that position because people do not have the courage or the willingness because it is very easy in this town to know against everything and go home and say I saved money. You didn't save money by voting not to invest in something and you You don't get to say investments is just another code word for spending. You have to have the courage. The question would be, are you spending it wisely and are we getting a return on our dollars? And so my position that I am advocating for is I think with the data that this report and the others that we are looking for will help inform us of that. I am not looking to be backed up on this that the National Guard is a better buy. I personally may think that, but that can't be the judge of the decision making that needs to go there. And the Army cannot make that decision making that, well, you only train 39 months of year. It is virtually impossible for you to be at that same level. Provide the data. Let's be driven by the data. Let's be driven what is in the best interest of this country. So the discussion you are going to have today needs to help inform us of that. And my colleagues are going to be looking for that. And there are still, and I don't want to make this case. They are well-meaning people both from the position of looking for peaceful solutions, which we all are, to those who have the position that isolationism is a little smarter. I am not advocating that we be involved in this, but we have allies in this room. We have got national interest around the world, and certainly leaving a problem for the next generation is not leadership. And so with that being said, the investments that we made need to be protected. This reserve force, this strategic and deep force that you have out there in the National Guard that does have a dual mission also, though, is a force that the American taxpayers invested a lot in. It is a force that is trained and hardened in battle, and we need to decide how to best use them, and it must be predicated on the data. And I want to be very clear that I am always conscious of that chip on my shoulder about this. I am always conscious about proving that we are worthy on being there, but I have to tell you, I was somewhat shocked. I was talking with Stephanie and our staff. Every day people come in, and in this job there is no possible way you can learn everything about every subject. So when people come in, that pejorative of lobbying, it is not. They are coming in and advocating for childhood diabetes, if it will, and providing data. It is incumbent upon me to use that data and get it right. And if you are allowing someone to influence you in a way that is inappropriate, that is your fault about the person putting out the information. And the reason I bring this up is that I have to say, when the Pentagon came to talk to us about what their structuring was going to be, the way it was presented was as poorly presented as any group that has ever come into my office. And that shocked me because I was an open door. I was already in a preparatory set as a military member and someone who has advocated in my party for spending that makes sense, and it reverted right back to kind of the old stereotypes. I think this understanding of the intersection between national security and civilian leadership, budgeting and strategic planning has got to be done predicated on data. And I was somewhat taken aback that that would be presented in a manner that was more emotional, that was more anecdotal, that was more I don't think you can come into a congressional office in Washington, D.C. representing the Pentagon and say, I am not a Washington man. I am a field commander. I know that, and I respect that, but you are damn sure a Washington man now because this has to be done, and it has to be done by civilian leadership. And that is the tone that we are dealing with. So I say that to you only because I want to make it clear when we pass it on. I understand that the Pentagon has been placed in this position by people in civilian leadership who don't want to have the courage to make the tough decisions and discuss correctly what needs to be that budgeting level. But if we start at that point, all of the important decisions that transpire after that will be gotten wrong. And so today's discussion and the questions that you are going to ask and discuss amongst the folks who get it, the strategic planners in this room, the thoughtfulness that is going to happen, it is very welcome. It is welcome to me because I want the data to drive our decision making. I want the data to get this right because to be very honest with you of all, it is very clear. The Constitution is very clear, and I think the moral responsibility of this is my first and foremost responsibility as a member of Congress is the protection of the American citizens. That has to be done. And that is both from a military perspective. It is from a health perspective. All those things you can see. So there is nothing more important that we do. So thank you to the folks here at CSIS, all the researchers who worked on this. Thank you to you now that this is the starting point for this study, that now it is going to get out there. Now we are going to discuss what the implications of that are, of that study are. And then we have to determine how we are going to implement that and not allow emotions, not allow historic turf battles, not allow anecdotal evidence to drive this because it is too important and we have to get it right. So, Stephanie, thank you with that. And I think I would be glad to let Stephanie answer any questions that you have. So please. Oh, I see how this works. I am actually going to forego the moderator's prerogative. I would love to ask you questions about the Commission and what you have in mind in terms of focus areas for the Commission. But the Congressman has about 10 to 12 minutes left before he has got to head back to the Hill. So I want to open the floor. A couple of things. First, please wait for a microphone to reach you and speak into it. Second, please introduce yourself and your affiliation if you have one. And third, please ask a fairly quick question so that we can get to as many people as possible. So I open the floor to questions. All right. I am going to call on myself. I used to teach high school geography. I see this look. See how this works. I see this look in the back. So I will ask the Military Commission on the Future of the Army, which was an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, and ask you a little bit about, you were a co-sponsor of this, and I understand you are supportive, looking back at what the Air Force went through a couple of years ago and their Commission report that came out earlier this year. Can I ask you, what is the intent underpinning this Commission? What do you want it to look at? What do you want it to keep in mind and aim towards? Yeah, my hope in the perfect world is that it, as we were discussing earlier, that it drives the data that comes forward. And I can tell you, in watching how the Air Force did this, and it may not look exactly the same. I understand that. But I can tell you, in working and watching how the Air Force did their Commission on their restructuring, it was apparent to me early on, both in the Reserve National Guard Forces and the active Air Force, that the ultimate goal was to find the correct strategic balance to protect this nation. And so all players in this were looking at this and wanted that report to drive their decision making, not just worried about where the aviation assets were, where they were going to set, which States had over this. And so my support of this, of Joe's Commission report and what we think is, I think we need this, because I, to be very honest with you, it is the elephant in the room. There is tension between the Guard and Reserves. When the 54 tags have to sign a letter, knowing, I mean, this is unprecedented for me to watch this happen, that they have had to come out and go forward on that, they feel so strongly about this, and I think we need to take a step back, have the Commission look at this, it's too important to get it wrong, and so my goal is, is that it provides the data and drives. I'm not looking for a preconceived outcome on this. If it says yes, the rotary aircraft aviation brigades need to be pulled out of the National Guard for this reason, this reason, this reason with empirical data to prove that, then I'll be the first one to say that's what we're going to have to do, and I'll go back to Minnesota and tell that commander that I stood with, by the way, three weeks ago, as he deployed in charge of active forces into the Middle East, that that's not the way it goes. So you can't simultaneously make the argument that we need to pull those assets out of the National Guard while you're deploying them to be in charge of active forces right now. That to me seems like a disconnect, but there may be a reason. So that's my goal, that that Commission drive the decision-making. And I just think that the tension is a little too high right now. I think we got into these camps, and I understand General O'Neill was put in that position because of the lack of courage of people on Capitol Hill to get a budget that worked to go through sequestration and the idiots, I always say that that's Latin for dumb as hell. And that's exactly what happened during that time, and no one wanted to take the courage to deal with that. But I also understand when General O'Neill made those statements, that is reverberating still amongst that. When I'm at a deployment ceremony and people are mentioning that as they're going downrange in defense of this nation, that's a problem. And we need to reset that relationship. My hope is the Commission can do that. Yes, ma'am. Hi, Tal Copen from Politico Pro Cyber Security. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about the suggestion that the National Guard take a more active role in cybersecurity and speak a little bit about the attitude on the hill and perhaps any headwinds that might be there and moving in that direction. Yeah, I think it's right, and I was glad to see this in there, and we'll dig a little deeper into the granular details on this. I think that's absolutely the assets that we should be using, and I think that's out there again. I would make the case on this, is I think this last decade of war showed us how deep those skill sets are out there. I remember when I was in Iraq, and of course we all know the problems of Abu Ghraib and the things that happened was, and being there at the attainment facility, and the one star who was in charge of that was a civilian fourth grade teacher, and I would make the argument that's a hell of a good person to have in charge because I've taught fourth grade, and you know where it's coming from. That person had an organizational skill set, both military and civilian, that would be there, and I would argue on the cybersecurity there's the ability to do that, and we're going to have to become, again, much more on that granular level on this other than and get it out of the strategic level, and I think that that's where that asset could be, and I would say the mood on the hill, that the Pentagon, and I have to be very careful of this is, because if this is the Pentagon versus the tags, if this is Fort Sill versus Fairmont, Worthington, Mankato, Armories, the Pentagon will lose based on sheer numbers, and I don't want that because I want what's best for national security, and I think, though, the mood they have to be careful of is when the tags pushed back, when the governors pushed back, they're going to get an immediate response that's much harder for the Pentagon to get, so the irony of this is, I think the report, I think what you're doing here certainly strengthens the Pentagon's hand on the hill in that it brings a fairness to the argument that takes some of the emotional politics and the provincialism of protecting our own assets in our own States away, so that's where I think it stands right now, but there's a frustration, and you saw it, and you saw, I think, the overwhelming support of these amendments proves that. Yes, sir? You could just speak, but I'm an artilleryman, so you know it's not going to go. Ray Dubois, CSIS, congressman, you mentioned both the tags and the governors in the same breath. My recollection is, having worked in this area for some time, is that more often, maybe perhaps not more often than not, but sometimes, the tags and the governors come at this issue slightly differently, and your experience, whether it's Minnesota or being as a member of the caucus, how do you view that issue? I think you're absolutely right. I would argue that the differences probably collapsed over the last decade, where the tags, responsibility with large numbers of actively deployed troops that the governors relied upon them more than they had in the past, where the governors in the past were looking at floods and tornadoes and things like that, that dual mission purpose on this. On this one, I think you're bringing up a very interesting point. I think that's where the sense of urgency comes on, this is because the tags and the governors are in closer concert than I've ever seen them at any time in my career, and that has political implications that strengthen that, and that's why I tried to convey to the Pentagon that this is not your typical situation that's happened in the past, and of course, again, I can't get away from stressing this, that they were put into this position by this budget. And it may be that that end strength number is correct. It may be that the budgeting that we have, that is all there is, and we need to figure out how to make that happen. I'm not advocating that it's more money would necessarily fix it, but they're going to have to recognize that the States are very actively engaged at a point where I've never seen them. And I think there's a sense amongst governors of listening to their tags that this is the time. If you lose this aviation brigade, if you lose this or whatever, it's not coming back, and here are the implications. And I can't speak for the governors. I certainly hope they would not, but I think it would be naive to not think that there's an economic factor in those States that is driving some of this. So that's my take as I see it now. It sort of feels that way. And I think that's okay, they're working concert, but I kind of always liked the tension, between the civilian leadership and between the governor and the tag, because I think that was healthy to make sure that we didn't go down a road that was being predicated on, we've got ours, let's keep ours, let's work together to do this. If that's not the right thing, I want the independent thought to say, actually, sir, actually, governor, this is the right decision for the national security. And I know our tags would do that if they believe that their frustration is they don't believe that now, and they don't believe their voice is being heard. We have time for one more question. Yes, sir. Please. Thank you for speaking today, Congressman, and thank you for supporting the National Guard. My name is Terry Quist. I'm with USDI right now, but I am a Pennsylvania Guardsman. And I wanted to ask, don't you find the argument that Army leadership has been making insidious about the Blackhawks being more useful to the governors? Because I think that misses the whole point of the Guard being the primary combat reserve. You could, it could be the nose of the camel under the tent for strikers and Abrams. You could say the same thing about all our combat. Well, that's certainly the belief that's out there. And again, if we don't have things like this study, if we don't have this discussion today, if we don't have Joe's amendment or whatever, the well is poisoned enough now that that is the conclusion that our Guard, reserve, and governors are going to. And I have to be very careful that I have personal opinions when I think about that part of it. I think making that preconceived judgment before I see the data is dangerous. And I think as the co-chairman with Duncan on the Garden Reserve Caucus, many of my colleagues are listening and looking at that. Because that is, believe it or not, incredibly bipartisan, incredibly driven and incredibly, I think, powerful tool. So, yes, I agree with you on this. I certainly have my own assumption. But I think you're absolutely right that everything now is a belief that this is how it starts. And I be honest with you, am I going back to taping the how it's around the floor and toilet paper rolls? Is that where this is headed? And I think for many of us, that's kind of the assumption that we think might be there. And I want to make sure the data shows no, that's not where we're going, but it makes this in the nation's best interest. This is the most economically viable option that we have. But no one has done that before. I mean, this is a really groundbreaking piece of work that you've done here, because nobody has done it, because it's difficult. It's difficult to quantify those skills of that fourth grade teacher deploying as a military police officer and those civilian skills that were going to be implemented. What did that save? What did that do, both in terms of security and cost, by having that guardsman in that position? And I want to be very clear on this is, there are a skill set and a unique skill set in the active force that is not in the reserve force. And I'm not advocating that we move it all over and switch it on that, that we need to have an open, honest discussion based on the date of where it's at, or otherwise we're going to get this wrong. And we're going to spend more money than we should. We're not going to have the national defense that we should. And it is a very unhealthy situation that took many of us felt like we worked decades to feel part of a total force that is a very unique combination. And I would argue has proven itself time and time again over the last decade of being able to sustain that long-term combat role. Okay. Well, I would like to thank the congressman for sharing his thoughts. Clearly, you're very impassioned about this and as well as informed because I think what's important is for the general public to understand that not only are policymakers within the executive branch, but also the decision makers in the legislative branch fully engaged on this issue. That's right. Eager for information. And of course, it's music to a think tanker's ears to hear, oh, we want more data. We can do that. Oh, good. So I appreciate your remarks and your candor. And so please join me in thanking the congressman. Thank you all. Sir. Thanks, Governor. Thank you all very much. If I could ask the panelists and our esteemed moderator to come up to the desk. So for the next hour or so, we're going to focus more on the report. Before we begin, I would like to introduce our moderator. Today, we're joined by Mr. Kim Winkup. And I have to say it. I didn't realize, actually, that when we put together a panel on the future of the Guard and Army issues, that it would be women. And I did get the comment, and I'm sure Kim gets this a lot, that, oh, look, your moderator is a woman too. As you can see, he is not. But he's much more than than a senior advisor here at CSI. As he's an attorney with a broad career in both legislative and executive branches of the federal government in the private sector and as chair and member of a variety of boards and organizations in defense policy, education, and technology, including as chairman of the Reserve Forces Policy Board from 2008 until 2010. He retired in May 2011 as Senior Vice President at SAIC where he had worked since 1995. Prior to joining CSIS, Mr. Winkup held several positions in the U.S. Congress with the House Armed Services Committee. And he also served as an assistant secretary both in the Army and in the Air Force. So please join me in welcoming Mr. Winkup. Well, thanks, Stephanie. I always regard it as a promotion when people consider me a woman, so all good with the group. This is going to be a fascinating discussion with some really good people to talk about an issue that is haunting this town right now in my view. And I view it as a sort of, I've been watching it for way too long. I view it as sort of a Greek tragedy where people within the family are fighting with one another and the net is bad. I mean, there are dire consequences that are occurring as a result of this fight that's going on between the National Guard and the Army principally because programs get changed and money gets wasted in the Pentagon every time programs are changed. And so we've got to get this right to say nothing of the fact that trust is being worsened between those elements at an important time. It always sort of amazes me when I think about this, and I've frankly been watching this up close since 1974, that the people that are fighting are the same people that figured out a way to broker a peace between the Sunnis and the Shias in Iraq. Absolutely the same individuals and yet they have not found a way to reach a negotiated settlement on a budget problem inside the Washington Sea Belt which is really unfortunate. Both sides have offered compromises that they thought were fair, neither accepted the others compromise and the fight continues. To me this fight on the Apaches this year is sort of a big skirmish but a skirmish before the big battle which is next year over end strength which is really I think ultimately going to be the heart of the matter. So this problem goes on. It needs to be solved and I think the study this morning is going to provide a constructive effort to start that process. Doesn't attempt to answer all the questions that are out there but it does provide a strategic framework to begin to think about these problems when this issue is ultimately brokered which I think is going to be very important. So let me do what I'm really here for which is to introduce the people that have most to say about it. First is Stephanie who you've already met. Stephanie is the acting director of the Center for Homeland Defense and Counterterrorism here at CSIS as well as being a senior fellow in the International Security Program. She has enormous experience both on the Hill with the House Armed Services Committee. She served in our embassy in Baghdad for a while and she's been in the Secretary of Defense's office so she has enormous breadth in her experience as do the other people on the group. Dr. Nora Benson Hill is from the Center for New American Security where she's the co-director of the project on responsible defense. They've been looking at these issues and so she's going to share some of that with us. She has a great background at Rand and throughout the national security arena. Finally Mackenzie Eglin. Everyone knows Mackenzie Eglin. She's well-known. She's got an amazing background actually. She is now at the where national security or security studies center at American Enterprise Institute but she's served in both the House and the Senate which is my way thinking quite unusual. She's served in the Secretary of Defense's office and the joint staff and she was with the QDR. So she's seen this problem in a lot of different ways and she's written a lot about it and has some great views. So we're going to start now with Stephanie outlining a bit about the report providing the framework and the information and backing this report and then we'll move to Nora and then to Mackenzie. Stephanie. Thanks, Kim. I will try not to go into way too much detail. Whenever you put together a 60-some odd page report you get vested in it and so I'm going to try to just quickly outline the rationale for the report, the methodology and then quickly go through findings and recommendations. You can find a chart containing the findings and recommendations in the executive summary and so you can see how we've aligned the 18 different findings with six recommendations and that's sort of my cheat sheet not suggesting that you follow along but just telling you that it's there for reference if you want to. Now as I mentioned in my introduction of Congressman Walts the U.S. Armed Forces facing a rapidly shifting environment not only our major combat operations coming to an end and new and evolving challenges emerging we've got budget issues more than that the Armed Forces have gotten the clear signal that they must continue to prepare for the possibility they'll be called on to rapidly provide significant combat capabilities in the future. So these dynamics have created as I mentioned earlier a great deal of uncertainty within the Department of Defense. Services are seeking to clearly and articulately define their value to the nation. In addition as part of the reserve component the Army National Guard faces a unique set of circumstances and dynamics in terms of their dual role and missions. We were asked to examine as I mentioned before strategic level issues facing the Guard. And so our hope was that this report will provide policymakers and practitioners with unbiased insights and recommendations to assist in outlining potential future responsibilities of the Guard. To do so we conducted extensive open source research and interviews it was one point of pride that we wanted to keep everything unclassified so that we could share it with the public and encourage public discourse we've supplemented that literature review with some 30 40 interviews with key personnel active duty Guard out at different commands tags assistant tags as well as staffers and others both within the executive branch and the legislative branch and we had we ended up having four roundtable discussions that were not for attribution the first discussed principles and levers or as we can also call roles and missions we also talked about cybersecurity building partnership capacity overseas missions and then the domestic and homeland security missions here in the United States reflecting thoughts from the roundtables and interviews as well as literature review want to quickly go through the findings and their corresponding recommendations so the first four findings were put together the first one is that tensions between active duty and national Guard officials perhaps heightened at times by advocacy efforts of outside groups have increased I don't think this is anything new you know newsworthy and it's not going to be a headline but it's certainly certainly something that we wanted to point out first and foremost is that these tensions are unhealthy because they're increasing as the congressman has talked about you know you are potentially hurting what the army wants to do total force army wants to do and you are in fact hurting national security of the United States that's not I don't want to put too fine a point on it but at the end of the day you know infighting or as Kim referred to sort of the the Greek tragedy fratricide or just short of fratricide is not healthy for national security and so how do you move past that is one question that we try to address in in the report the second finding was that dialogue has focused primarily on budget considerations and their impact on force structure and size not on defining the future total force army purpose mission priorities and requirements so that's one way as you've heard from the congressman so he's apparently a very good advocate for this report but talking about how do you get out of the tensions if you take it out of the budget context just to talk about roles and missions first and then let budget and requirements and priorities fall from that third there is no agreement regarding the appropriate level of integration between the active duty army and the guard that is do you integrate at the individual level do you do something along the lines of what the air force does at the unit level and so we talk through that in the report and the fourth finding is a significant disagreement regarding how to compare readiness levels and training days for the active component in the national guard this is a bone of contention where the numbers don't match up they're using different sources they're using different ways of counting perhaps we should get a fourth grade teacher in here to help them figure out how to compare apples to apples and the like but those four findings led to our first recommendation which was before the NDA the national defense authorization act for fiscal 15 was passed was to actually endorse the idea of having a commission and going one further and patterning a little bit off of what the air force has done is to create a total force task force or what they call TF2 which was a group of three two star general officers one from active one from reserve one from guard now granted all of them had had been active duty at one point in the the air force construct but they were there to represent their components interest and came up with some recommendations for general Welch that I think have been taken very seriously and they've also continued that construct total force I think they call a continuity at this point to continue to look at these issues very seriously and so I think through a commission if it's properly focused and properly staffed with both with staff and commissioners and I think the total force task force route might also be helpful the fifth finding has its own recommendation because of the attention has gotten there is no common cost model when you consider the active duty army and the army national guard and you see that in a lot of reports I mean even the office of cost assessment and program evaluation at the at the Pentagon has talked about it's very difficult you are comparing apples to oranges when you talk to active duty and guard folks about what it actually costs to train to an appropriate readiness level and then deploy mobilize and deploy troops and so what we have come to recommend is let's take it out of army channels let's take it out of the Pentagon and ask the congressional budget office to take a look at numbers just because I worked for Congress for a while doesn't mean I'm always pro legislative bodies but I think the CBO has a unique position where they can actually take a look at impartially an unbiased way to look at costs regarding both active and reserve components of course they should undertake this task in coordination with DoD to make sure that numbers you know that there is broad agreement on movement going forward the sixth finding there are tensions not only regarding active and and reserve but there are tensions regarding the use of Title 32 and which is for State missions funded by the funded by the federal government and when it's appropriate to to mobilize the guard under Title 32 the seventh finding was there is flexibility regarding balance between the guards foreign and domestic missions and we can talk a little bit about that if you'd like the eighth and ninth are that Congress has proved amenable to adding national guard authorities so the nascent dual status commander it's been around for a little while and exercised for example during Hurricane Sandy they've improved integration of state and federal operations so Congress as the congressman has put pushing on an open door and so if if we come up with ideas for how to use the guard going forward it looks like it might actually be able to go through Congress and the ninth the army national guard has the capacity to increase partnerships for domestic missions and to serve as supplemental force for other departments and agencies particularly department of homeland security these four six seven eight nine these findings really talk about and we recommend reviewing the reimbursement processes and funding amounts related to the use of the national guard what is the appropriate use of the national guard and homeland security we suggest that the guard could leave lead a group involving interagency and state level partners to develop and maintain critical interagency partnerships in advance of crisis not as a reaction to them and to talk about the responsibilities of each of the players and and not only what their actual responsibilities are but what their funding responsibilities are because there is broad disagreement on that I'm almost done I promise the next four recommendations deal a lot with building partnership capacity and overseas missions the 10th finding is that the state uh the state partnership program under the national guard is likely to remain a valuable tool the 11th is that the national guard is taking steps to incorporate new partners in the asia pacific arena and in and in africa but there are challenges there could be challenges of expanding the state partnership program significantly the 12th is the guard brings unique capabilities that cannot be easily replaced by other services and the 13th is the state partnership program can complement building partner capacity efforts of other federal agencies such as state department but as such efforts are expanded into asia pacific in africa there will be an increased need for close coordination this is another one of those we got it we know we need to coordinate if we're expanding um the the corresponding recommendation for this one is to continue the state partnership program with the guard closely coordinating with the geographic combatant commanders and interagency partners and because most of the guard's bilateral relationships are in europe the guard should carefully consider how in an era of limited resources it can shift to the age pacific region and to africa will they have to give up any of their partnerships or at least decrease the activity associated with particular partnerships in order to afford this rebalanced asia and also africa the 14th finding so we have only three left or four left a long-term relatively stable assignments might be a solution for using guard forces overseas in peacetime allowing them to gain valuable operational experience and 15 guard forces may offer specialized capabilities useful in overseas scenarios such as weapons of mass destruction detection and management on the korean peninsula these two really talk about you know the guards role in the sinai in kosovo bosnia other places that had been longer term relatively stable assignments had shifted back to the active duty army not too long ago and so you know they weren't training exercises for the guard but they certainly kept their skills fresh and so using the guard in that capacity when you know you're going to be somewhere for a while whether it's stabilization operations reconstruction operations or the like you may find real value in the guard and finally the last recommendation really just hinges on cyber which goes back to the young ladies question earlier from politico so this is a growth area it's seen as a growth area for all of the services and all of the components of all of the services the question that we had and the findings that we had is that you know the guard and in particular the national guard association has really stressed the the role of the guard going forward in cyber however the evidence they offer is anecdotal it hasn't been tracked there's not a lot of data to support you know if they say we have not lots of national guard members who are involved in companies like Microsoft Intel Google Amazon but you find out that those guys are maintenance employees or other kinds of employees they're not actually the technical experts what we need to do is track green sheets on people and say all right so what cyber capabilities could you bring to the table it's not enough that you work at google for example what are your skills and be able to measure that and actually keep track of that as a skill set moreover us cyber command and us army cyber are quickly laying the foundation for and staffing the cyber structure now and we there is actually an amendment to the national defense authorization act in the house that talked about creating cyber protection roles for guards guard members so our recommendation following from these findings is to integrate guard cyber capabilities but we have to figure out what they are first and then integrate them in a very smart way and we need to do this quickly because this is a fast moving area and with that we've laid out now the the 18 findings and the six recommendations I'll be open for questions after my colleagues speak if you have any if not please feel free to peruse the the 60 some odd page report in front of you you know committed it to memory by now so no question is too small thanks Kim thanks Stephanie Nora please I know the center for new america security has been doing some work in this regard please help us all think about it great thanks very much for that that kind introduction I want to start by congratulating Stephanie and her team for what I think is really a terrific report I think that you know the level of detail and thought that went into this and thinking through all of these issues is a very important contribution to what we all know we've heard this morning but we all know is a very contentious and fractious debate and I would echo the congressman's call for more data and analysis of that data because that's I think as analysts and thinkers in this area we all want the decisions that are made going forward to be in the best national interest that's a point to you know you've heard a lot today but I think it bears repeating as much as possible on this particular issue I think the report is terrific there are three particular issues I'd like to highlight it was hard to figure out what I had to construct my remarks today because as you can tell there are so many interesting findings and issues that the report has brought up but I want to focus on three ones in particular the first is about building a more productive relationship between the active component and the reserve component in the Army and I think as I said this is where everybody is starting because you know the various terms have been used the congressman was the most polite about it as you might expect from an elected official it's you know Fretcher side and open warfare is probably a better and more accurate description of what's going on today and it's going on in public which is a particularly bad side you know you might expect this to be going on behind closed doors when budgets are tight that of course that happens but it's become very public and I think the report does rightly note that there's a blame game going on and that both sides are to blame and there's a lot of finger pointing but both sides of this have exacerbated tensions and has contributed the quote in the report that I like is each side has contributed to this to the distrust that underlies the tension going on today and I think that's really important to recognize for better or worse an Army commission is going to happen in my view I don't see how that gets avoided at this point because it has escalated into this open warfare I think the key question then is not so much about what the commission will say on the report itself obviously those are very important things the composition of the commission will be extraordinarily important but I think you know if you you know accept my my assumption that this is going to happen and the in some ways the issue that is just as important or perhaps even more important than what the piece of paper that the commission reports out says is how the Army then tries to heal from this Fretcher side that has been going on how that the commission report can be used to sort of diffuse tensions and how the Army can move on to have a more productive ACRC relationship in its aftermath and I think here there's a very important parallel to be drawn with the Air Force commission as Stephanie notes the one of the I think the very very important things that happened there again was not just that the commission issued its report there are a lot of things in the report that haven't been implemented that have been ignored you know that the Air Force hasn't implemented that Congress hasn't followed up on but I was I had some notes on this but Stephanie saved me the air time by talking about the total force task force that the Air Force formed as part of the commission experience and particularly in its aftermath to bring together initially three two stars I think now in the continuity face they're down to one stars that but still continue to be speaking with a common voice working out these issues internally certainly I have no illusion that there's peace and harmony at all times among the people that are involved in that but it's helping them come together resolve their differences internally and provide a more unified and less fractious public view and I think that's where the Army will need to go in the aftermath of the what I think is an inevitable commission again regardless of whatever the piece of paper that you know the big you know doorstop report that the commission eventually publishes I also think that this is something that the next chief of staff of the army is going to have to play a very active leadership role on for better or worse and I am not imputing any of the individuals involved in either the active component or reserve component leadership right now the current leaders are vested in that debate and and not seen by as part as impartial or credible by the other side in the debate for better or worse and so I think when the new chief of staff of the army comes in next summer or fall just you know healing this rift is going to have to be one of the very highest leadership priorities that that person faces that leads into the second point that I wanted to highlight about this report and and I think here maybe there's you know this is an area where the report doesn't go quite far enough which means that it's ripe for for future research rather than a criticism of your you know a failure to do it the report points out all sorts of tensions that are going on now and I as I said I think it's correct as far as it goes you know questions about what the structure of the army should look like and here you know one of the big ones that comes out in the report and then the debate is you know should you know should the guard be a strategic or operational reserve you know a huge scoping question that's important I'm actually starting to find that that's for me at least not that productive a way to start thinking about moving forward those concepts you know made a lot of sense in the past as we were thinking about fighting a Cold War enemy and as we were talking about you know rotational demands for the wars of the past decade but for me the the key question right now is a much broader one that's outside the scope of this report which is how should the army as a whole the entire army as a service organize itself to maximize its capabilities at a time when its force structure and its end strength are declining significantly and to me that's going to require some very creative organizational thinking that goes and this goes beyond the active reserve component debate on how you structure the army the army has been focused rightly for the past 13 years on fulfilling the rotational demands of the two wars and that's exactly how it should have been but the strategic guidance that came out in 2012 that's been affirmed by the QDR is basically saying again whether you like it or not whether you think this is the right strategic choice or not the army isn't going to have rotational depth right we're not going to be sizing ourselves for two you know for for large-scale stability operations we're going to be responding to events at a time when we should not expect to be going in with a rotational base and so I think that changes a whole lot of ways that the army needs to think about itself in ways that affect the active reserve relationship so in a paper I recently published through CNAS that looked at some of the key issues that I think the QDR didn't address one of the things that I argued is that we should be thinking about all army units regardless of component in terms of the time they take to deploy rather than in terms of strategic or operational reserve the forces that you want to deploy in the first four to six months almost certainly have to be on active duty you know because there are readiness issues with getting reserve component forces into the fight that quickly to me that you know there's going to be sprinkling of reserve and guard you know enablers here in there but primarily that's what you're going to want to put in the active component forces that are going to deploy after 12 months say make much more sense to me to be in the reserve component because you have the time then from either when an operation starts or when you get strategic warning that you need to start preparing then you do have time and frankly since you're talking about responding to a crisis presumably an influx of some cash to do readiness and training to get those units that are able to handle an unexpectedly large contingency that'll be going on and possibly even growing new units I think this is something that the army is not thinking seriously enough about although I understand the bureaucratic bureaucratic reasons why they don't want to touch it to me the interesting case is in the middle right what do you do with the forces that you want to deploy into a fight somewhere between the four to six month part point and the 12 month point and here's where I think I argued in this paper that I think we need to start looking at some type of hybrid or blended units of what are now active and reserve component forces I want to say upfront I know how controversial this is I don't think you can do that by taking the current organizational structures the current training structures and so on and just saying come together and it'll work it won't we've tried that in the past so a lot of things would have to be changed in order to make this work including deployment policies and schedules including training resources and so on so you can't just take what you have today and make this work but I think we need to start thinking very creatively about how we might need to change things organizational creative thinking has been sorely lacking in the army frankly in all of the military services going forward and I think that this is also something that needs to be high on the agenda for the new chief of staff of the army finally my my third point is to talk about cyber as a national guard issue which I think is very important here and I in some ways I want to use cyber as a broader example the report notes that that the DOD cyber force is under staffed and that public private partnerships are critical for a robust cyber defense and I think that's exactly right and I do agree that data on how this is working right now is lacking and is anecdotal and that's absolutely right but one of the things that I think often gets lost in these debates is that one of the real advantages that the guard and the reserve bring to the table is their ability to tap into civilian skill sets that the military might not be able to access otherwise and in my mind cyber is a perfect example of where you want to do that that there are people who exist in a civilian sector who would not have a propensity to serve on active duty who have critical skills that they can contribute to the cyber environment into protecting US national interests more broadly I have to admit I laughed out loud at a particular line in the report it's not what you wrote you quoted a round table unnamed round table participant so I hope I'm not offending anyone who's in the audience who might have said this in a round table but you noted that a participant expressed concern that quote the guard will not be able to keep cyber capabilities current over time when serving as part-time citizen soldiers and I just laughed out loud at that because to me it's the we have the exact opposite problem right it's the folks who are in the military on active duty who are not necessarily keeping their skills in the cyber realm as fresh as those in the civilian sector now you need people full time to be working on military networks and you know to specialize in that so I'm certainly not arguing against that but if you look at the threats facing the United States as a general not just in general not just DOD networks we have a very very big challenge and I think that drawing on those civilian skills that's making sure that the people who are at Microsoft are doing cyber tasks not you know working in other specialties is extremely important and here again I think you know we need to think creatively moving forward I was out visiting some members of the California National Guard in Silicon Valley in December and was incredibly impressed with what a unit that's based at Moffitfield is doing to forge connections in Silicon Valley to try to bring in skills and expertise not just from individuals who are serving in the National Guard there but being proactive and reaching out to companies and connecting them with other folks in the military and I think we need to think creatively about creating Guard units in particular areas of the country where civilian skill sets are congregated and focusing those units on attracting those skills it makes sense to me you'd want a lot of Guard units in Silicon Valley drawing on people who are and probably New York in the Boston High Tech Corridor too drawing on those civilian skill sets focusing on that as a national mission and being able to contribute so I think you're right in terms of where we are today but moving forward I think we need to be much more creative about how we tap into civilian expertise particularly in the technology sector because technology is now you know not it's not like the Cold War when it was being driven by defense it's now being driven by the private sector a technological innovation and development to make sure we can bring that into the National Security apparatus and I'll stop there and turn it over to Mackenzie Thanks Nora you fascinating comments as always Mackenzie your breadth of your experience always leads to valuable comments so please help us thank you thanks again for CSIS for hosting this event to Kudos I echo Nora to Stephanie for leading an outstanding report I thoroughly enjoy looking through it I think you nailed it on virtually every level in terms of the scope of the problem and the relevant and realistic solutions because if you're proposing anything that's not realistic it's just really words on paper as as we all know and so spending a lot of time in the budget world I like Nora thought I could go in a hundred different directions this morning so I'll try to I'll try to just just take a hard line look at the numbers and I spent a lot of time with the Air Force and Nora and I sat in a couple of total force task force meetings exhaustive briefings in the past and I've spent a lot of time in the last five years talking to senior Air Force officials active duty reserve component civilian about what they've gone through and what they've learned and their problems didn't just start with you know A-10 divestitures and some of the other issues that came up in the FY-13 budget this actually really kicked off before 2005 with the base closure and realignment round of that year and all the way leading up to nondisclosures under Secretary Gates in the pivotal budget year 2010 etc so there this was a long time in the making and it would behoove the Army to like any good family sort of sit down and have the intervention with each other and say when did this really start what's really the problem because it's not just the Army aviation restructure we know that that's not just the only issue here it's just sort of symbolizes what are some other challenges and the budget is forcing these questions to the Budget Control Act and its subsequent changes mean that we live in a world of sequestration light it's here to stay unfortunately and it's not going away and while Congress keeps amending sequestration is each year that it's implemented as it continues they're amending it less and less and providing less relief each year which is really sad which means eventually which means they're conditioned over time to one live with sequester and to there's fewer relief valves available to to lessen or blunt the impact of sequestration so I call it sequestration light because really only 43 billion of the Budget Control Act has been taken off the table since its passage including full sequestration that's a drop in the bucket and in this world that we all live in here this morning and we know and so so what does that really mean so that means that as Kim said this is really about end strength and it's about people who have jobs who do what who who support in this case for example if we're talking aviation who support aircraft and as my my favorite colleague here in the audience General Schwartz as you used to say iron on the ramp okay so if there's fewer dollars to support fewer tales then you have to have fewer people and it's going to come from everywhere so this is really about winners in this budget environment are people who lose less than everyone else but you're still everyone's still a loser and I hate to be this going to get the garden party but it's time for sort of tough love and some real talk I don't agree with this outcome but that's where we are and so what do they say about compromise compromise means that everybody who's a negotiating party to the compromise has to leave it the the compromise a little unhappy or it's not a real compromise and that's not what I'm seeing coming from the parties of this discussion I'm going to be honest it's particularly in the reserve component they're not unhappy not worries me about compromise and so I'm we're at a point where boilerplate solutions won't cut it anymore which is why this report and Nora's ideas and others are helpful we're also at a point where laundry lists of what have you done for me lately aren't going to cut it either because that's just not the environment that we live in and I was pleasantly surprised at the congressman's remarks where he said he would accept the commission's reports whatever it's finding I hope that holds true for all of his colleagues I I don't prejudge it either but let's talk for a moment about the two sets of solutions that both of my colleagues have talked about this morning and the congressman so I want to make I think what's missing on Capitol Hill's an understanding of what the difference are when I watched the hearing with the army leadership on on the aviation restructure proposed I think it was in the senate recently I was parsing every word like a think tanker and live tweeting of course and there's a big the the members of the gentleman testifying understood but I don't think congress fully understands and so I want to extend this brief 101 to everyone the commission is outsiders the total force task course is insiders okay and so there's a big difference in sort of what they what they can and should do for the United States army and what role they can play so my former boss my gosh in the 90s general Sullivan over at a USA you know he said we don't need a bunch of outsiders telling the army what to do and in some ways he's right in other ways there's it's helpful to have outsiders come in and look at things but as long as we're clear on on what the purpose is behind each so as the congressman alluded to the commission is to help represent the interests of governors of tags of jobs and employment and states and districts and sort of it is more national perspective politicians frankly but that's really politicians speak to politicians governors or politicians members of congress politicians they should be able to talk to each other albeit in with different stakeholders but it's an outsider's look at the army a lot of what we're talking about this morning and the challenges here sort of the infighting is is an insider problem and it's and it's always painful to watch the dirty laundry come out into the public and like I said we've seen this with the Air Force but they've they've come a long way since since they've learned some lessons and the total force task force kind of solution is an insider fix if it becomes one or at least an insider methodology to address some of the problems as Stephanie described as integration for the active and reserve component dialogue on missions requirements purpose etc all the kinds of of big questions for the U.S. Army and so how does the army the whole army get to yes I don't care what the guard solutions in isolation are and I don't care what the reserve component solutions are in isolation and I don't even care what the active component solutions are in isolation I want everyone to get to yes as a whole because I'm really tired of the same old behavior it doesn't work anymore because everybody's losing and so it can't be well we cost less if in this scenario so therefore we should be you know we should grow more we should be cut less etc it's just not the world that we live in so I want to know how the Army National Guard is going to stay a unique contributor to the total force and remain what it's always been which is a force multiplier punches above its weight scrappy it's kind of startup like right it's it's doing things that its counterparts couldn't dream of in the active component and that's its beauty and its value and it needs to continue in that in that same spirit if if Mackenzie is asking so I will briefly make one comment on the aviation restructuring love it or hate it you have to respect it okay I'm not saying do it and I'm not saying don't do it but you have to respect the the proposal because it was innovative something Nora talked about provocative it's bold and it's cost neutral and that's really important here and it tried to minimize the disruption and the loss to all parties which what did I say is key in a compromise everybody has to lose a little bit but in theory everybody's going to gain something else maybe they didn't even know that they expected so I want to talk about what what is the sum being greater than the parts I have a couple other thoughts but like any smart panelists I'm just going to wrap it up and open it to Q&A thank you well I want to thank all our panels for doing exactly what was expected which is a fascinating setup of a difficult problem it's interesting that the problem that each side sees in the other the enormous professionalism on the active side the public policy public general support on the reserve side if they they see those as problems in each but if they were put together it would make the army an unbelievably effective organization in our government but it isn't the case today so we've we've got a great dialogue started I suspect I'm confident actually that most of people in this room are here because they have a strong interest in it so help us with this dialogue ask the panelists questions please wait till the microphone comes to you if you have a question and then we will look forward to seeing this dialogue develop as it needs to for the country questions sir thank you Andrew Smith I'm an independent researcher from Australia in the spirit of something that Mackenzie offered to that they can be value in the views of an outsider looking in I'd like to offer one perhaps naive observation as an outsider and follow that with a question internationally and I've done a certain amount of comparative work on this every country experiences tensions between its active and reserved components it's a reality of everything particularly in the west it seems to me that the US has made the problem much worse for itself because of the way in which it's chosen to organize itself the order of magnitude of difficulty coming from the fact that instead of having a regular army an army reserve alone it has has added the complicating factor of a national guard and the national guard has federal affiliations with with the states of origin so your problem is much worse than anyone else's it means that the likelihood of getting to an optimal decision about how to apply the nation's resources to solve the various problems that those things do is much harder now the naivety is that perhaps is there any realistic political alternative to it could you start with a clean sheet of paper and come up with a better solution to this now I suspect the answer to that is no what I would offer is that there are other countries in the world that are approaching essentially the same problems in other words how to cost effectively maintain ground force readiness at an adequate level for the countries international security needs and to have resources available for domestic missions as well they're doing it a little bit more easily and probably I suspect in acknowledging what Stephanie said about the inadequacy of the metrics we have at the moment they're probably doing it more cheaply than the United States is doing it at the moment so is there any room politically for benchmarking US practice against practices anywhere else in the world and trying to see if that can add the creativity that appears to be absent or that the country seems to be struggling to find at the moment in resolving this problem so the way I would address this is not that the problem is worse is that it's more challenging because of the different moving parts because I can I'm only familiar with the UK example and in terms of dealing with different aspects of the military structure and my quick answer is I don't think it's possible to start from a clean sheet of paper there's way too much history I mean you're talking hundreds of years and you know it's funny in our interviews when we talk to different kinds of professionals we got some very different answers about all right so where where do you think the National Guard should have its priority and some said well clearly they are a state militia that is how they were formed and their allegiance is to the state and then you talk to the guard members and they said no no no we are a national security force we're you know federal first and then state second the answer is both both are right you know they have a dual mission and there is no way that will ever be clean and I think what the congressman said earlier is that you know in the last 12 13 years you've really seen the guard change in terms of focus areas and capabilities and that's something that some governors have seen real value in and other governors are more of the of the mindset of well that was all well and good but now it's time for them to come home and focus on what we want them to focus on in terms of state missions so long long-winded answer to your what should have required a short answer which is no I don't think it's possible to start from a clean slate I think there are lessons to be learned and I'm now that you mentioned I will pursue some just comparative structures and comparative cultures in terms of looking at how active and reserve components are treated in other countries but yeah that wasn't part of our study unfortunately and I and it'll be interesting to see what we can find in that realm this goes back to the fundamental you know blessing and curse of American politics which is our federalist system right I mean this this is the states versus federal tension playing out in the military security arena that we've seen play out in in all sorts of other you know political spaces in this country Mackenzie and I were actually both at a dinner talking to some folks from the UK who had been involved in these reforms and it was amazing you know I don't draw on my academic political science training all that often but it it was amazing how quickly you know you know the lessons learned were very interesting and you know I thought that they had a very innovative approach of the they had like a sort of an all-star commission and then they brought in someone from the outside to lead it it was amazing how much this you know devolved into American politics 101 and just saying you know our our system you can't get done in our system what you can do in a parliamentary system to make those kinds of changes it's just fundamental to the U.S. Constitution and so you know that's why it is the you know the challenge of managing these issues in a federal system so I'll just briefly add to your question so what it rate what my answer would be is Stephanie's probably Stephanie is right but what we can do is the politics better okay I was just going to go down the same road as in our challenge of having three women we all have very similar thoughts on this subject the politics of this could be handled much better and so I don't mean learn from the Air Force and the Army should have done X, Y, Z different I mean when I was listening to the congressman talk for example and he talked about general ODI's plan on the aviation restructure well I when we're thinking of the total army and we're thinking of a major major reorganization of this magnitude John McHugh the secretary of the Army and politician former member representing upstate New York Fort Drum I think and other areas Chuck Hable politician former senator from Nebraska secretary of defense Barack Obama president those three men should have been out there talking to the governor saying hey politician to politician this is what we got to do guys I know you need jobs I know you want aircraft I know you want to see things flying I get that it's money it's it's you need it for disaster relief et cetera but you know politician politician and all this is the deal and I'm very dismayed when it's you know Odierno's plan okay so there's there's something to be learned here in the the politics of these decisions on Capitol Hill it should have been the secretaries of the army and defense testifying not general Odierno and the reserve there's a space for that that's a second panel and that's important to to talk about but we all know what did we what did I say about the commission it's for outsiders most of these outsiders are politicians who have a problem with the plan so politicians need to deal with each other and and then the the the the acrc mix and the integration and the dialogue and the intrafamily issues within the army need to be dealt with internally and so I would be I would I would say it's a great lesson learned I'll add it into Stephanie's report I'll write it in the back and sign it for anyone who needs but the politics can be handled much better and differently in the future are the questions sir hi I'm Mike wait from National Guard Association one thing that that seems to be missing in the report is something called the Abrams doctrine dating back to the mid-seventies when I was a brand new lieutenant over in Germany and I saw what what the devastation of the Vietnam War had on on morale on how the country felt about the services and for the last 40 years now we have built on the concept of the total force where General Abrams said I won't go to war without the Guard and Reserve anymore because that involves hometown America whenever you activate the attack battalion in Warnsburg, Missouri you activate all the little communities around there when you activate an aid 64 battalion of Fort Hood 70% of the people live on Fort Hood they shop there they go to the hospital they send their kids there that affects Fort Hood or James or Joan out in Missoula, Montana is going their units being activated at Fort Hood but when you involve the communities of America you get the support of America behind you and this may be a little dark aspect of the ARI whenever you take all the equipment you get all the missions and you get all the money therefore you don't involve America in that mission and we don't need just National Guardsmen to be truck drivers or or paving of roads we need National Guardsmen to be in the mix in the combat in the fight because America wants their sons and daughters to protect them and it's just not an active force it should be the local communities and that's how you're going to get the support of America not by having everybody on an active duty post go to war in a combat mission I take the criticism that we didn't include the Abrams doctrine what we were you know trying to do is to look at how things have evolved since 2001 and so I I take that criticism to heart you'll also note in the report we don't have a call-out box or specifically mentioned the aviation restructuring we don't for a couple of reasons one is it was a moving target while the report was being written and then sent off to publishing but also too I'm not sure it's a great example right of of either goodness or badness I'm still not sure of how something was handled of how the aviation restructuring topic is being handled Mackenzie is absolutely right the politicians sort of dropped the ball consciously or unconsciously they should have been out there I'm not so sure you know it was this a test case was it is it something that you know one and done we're going to do aviation right now and then you know maybe something in a couple of years and so I absolutely agree the communities need to be involved we reference that a little bit in the report but probably not enough and I take that critique to heart so thank you it's an it's an excellent point and it raises a question sort of more broadly not just for the army but for the Air Force in particular the Army and the Air Force is it time to revisit the Abrams Doctrine I I tend to agree you know that there's great value in in its wisdom and and the the rationale and thinking behind it I have two two thoughts that came to mind to that excellent point one is then the problem is with the war plans okay because the war plans have been revised downward they've been scaled downward you know no long term you know a short regime changed an eye punished until we can get over here etc they're now down into hours and days and minutes there's nothing long term there's nothing over six months in the war plans anymore and that's because primarily because of budgets but the president will tell you yesterday and other times that's also because that's what he wants he's he's desiring to reduce US military activity around the world so the issues the war plans and when the war plans say that you know our Air Force has to be there and a patchy fighting helicopters have to be there within the first X days hours etc that's the problem that's the issue not you know how and to to Norse point and so therefore how who can get there and how fast can they get there but it also is a political you know it's not just a war plan it was these were revised downward because of political decisions and reason reasons I I would tell you in several meetings with various army officials and perhaps they've told you this same thing but it will benefit the audience to hear this all army aviation pilots are combat aviators there's no doubt about it not just a patchy pilots not their granted they're pretty kick ass helicopters but in fact you know Black Hawk Chinook the Kiowa's you name it they're all fighting in combat they're all in harm's way I distinctly remember the the Chinook that we lost flying all those special forces over Afghanistan three years ago four I I was you know sort of a record-breaking loss in the war in Afghanistan up to up until that time and so there's no doubt about it that that everybody who flies a helicopter in the US army the combat aviator so I I would question you know I would say it's not necessarily a perfect analogy in that case I'd like to I like saying controversial things to get people thinking it's not clear to me that the Abrams doctrine has been working the way that it was intended to in the past 13 years of war I understand the philosophy behind it and agree that community support for our conflict is absolutely vital so you'll get no argument from me there part of the issue of shifting to an all volunteer force and the way we've constituted the all volunteer forces that even with bringing in folks from the garden reserve who are more tied to communities throughout America than the active component is I still don't think that mechanism is working in quite the way that general Abrams intended particularly given the low levels of public support for both of the wars we're coming out of now you don't know the counterfactual right if it had just been active component forces would the public support have been even lower and it's entirely possible that that's true but I think I think we're entering a time where so many things are changing at once the budget environment is fundamentally changing that's going to affect the department of defense for at least a decade and not beyond I mean at some point defense spending will grow again but in the absence of some huge external event I don't see that happening for the foreseeable future we're coming out of two wars which means we have huge decisions to make about resetting the force and the future direction and where the force is going and we're also at a time I think of a very abrupt strategic change I think you don't get these inflection points very often and so the confluence of those things makes me very wary of automatically taking any models from the past and saying we need to recreate them now I think we need to examine them look at the assumptions within them see if they're working the same way that they did in the past and in that spirit I'm not sure the Abrams Doctrine is doing what it was intended to do that then means if I'm right or if we at least should have a discussion about that to figure out whether I'm right or whether I'm wrong that may take us in all sorts of different kinds of directions about what we want all of our forces but particularly reserve and guard forces to look like in the future to try to strengthen that connection maybe in different ways than we've done it in the past in order to tap into the community support that I think we all view as so vital Let me just segue if I may as the moderator part of this question the discussion is talking about the deployment times and I haven't heard anything about lift capability and it confuses me because lift was such a huge factor before and it seems to have evaporated from the discussions I'd be interested in the panel's thoughts on that as we think about this construct or what kind of forces we need So the report has a couple of lines on lift and it is basically that lift is a problem not for the guard not for active duty army it's a problem for everybody we you know meet with folks from special operations command they have a lift problem I mean literally lift is I would put it in the top five issues facing the department and that they're going to have to address in the next few years So from a lift perspective I think once we figure out what appropriate missions priorities requirements are and whether how we're going to use the guard going forward how we're going to use active duty forces going forward and regardless of deployment you know lift is going to be a problem for everybody and if you know if a national guard unit gets tapped to go somewhere they're going to have a lift problem just as regular army's going to I don't know if my colleagues have a different perspective I would spending time with the Air Force I think that that it's just right it's a function of even if we wanted the war plans to be slightly more adaptable or to to handle contingencies where the enemy gets a vote or we're going to do something longer et cetera we're we're literally handcuffed by by lift challenges and and this is where you know this is where the the when I think back to the 2010 you know when the when the budget the defense budget peaked and things started to come back down and I remember a plus one in the tank to the chief telling me a story about you know this blood oath that took place at the time where the chiefs all agreed that they wouldn't pull out the knives and and go after each other's TOA and and and how that was true at the time and and today you know we're now in your budget year four of of a significant build down and and revised downward war plans and this is where it's it's time to see that packed resurrected so to speak because this is where the army and the navy need to become advocates for the U.S. Air Force and the capabilities that they provide because if if the Air Force can't get you there the army will shrink even smaller and isn't that a really scary outcome yeah I think Kim you've identified something that is hugely important and you know I'm not even sure it's top five that may be top one or two on the the key issues of the future to tie it back to how it particularly affects guard and reserve units as I said at the beginning I see blame on both sides of this debate on active and you know the reserve component disagreements but I'm going to pick on the active army for a moment you can get me to pick on the reserve component in a minute I've heard arguments from lots of folks in the active army about how you know the reason why you can't contemplate blended units or the reason why we need to turn the the guard and reserve back into a strategic reserve that we plan on only you know to use and the worst contingencies is because they're not ready and we can't get them ready and they won't be able to deploy to the fight okay but you can't get most army active army units there either right you can't get you're you know even at lower levels of force structure you can't get your combat units all to a fight within the first month or two anyway even if they're readiness levels or at the absolute highest levels even if you've invested those dollars because you don't have the lift right so you have to go to some sort of tier deployments anyway even just of your active forces now that's probably not a good thing I agree that we should be the army and the navy should be huge advocates for the air force on lift on this but given that that's a constraint and that lift is probably never going to be sufficient to meet the demand the army is a total army is always going to have to figure out how to sequence its force flow which is where I come back to I think lift being one of the reasons why it makes much more sense to me to start thinking about all of army units in the total force based on time to deploy right because if I'm going to be waiting eight to nine months to flow in army forces does it make sense to have them all be active component can I take advantage of as I said new types of organization to create units that can't be ready on D-Day got it can't be ready in the first month or two got it but you know I could be ready to flow in it month seven or nine or 12 or something like that that's where you know I think the lift constraint even gives more impetus to the need to think in new and creative ways about how we get for army total army forces into the fight most effectively overall if I could put a shout out for craft this um civil reserve air fleet I think is is uh we just call it craft right um and reactivating sort of of those those agreements and thinking about hard about how to use craft going forward I mean having been in the Pentagon in in the lead up to OEF and OIF and talking about leasing Antonovs and um you know what what do we do with you creating aircraft and who do we put on them who wants to be put on them at some point I think having a hard discussion and this is outside obviously of the scope of of our discussion today but I just wanted to put out that I think part of the lift discussion really needs to take a hard look at craft going forward other questions one and then two I and nor I wanted to say that you I think you put your finger on on on the the crux of the argument and the significance of lift because I I I saw it as almost the other shoe dropping when the active components started denigrating in public the ability of the guard to do mission the combat mission and I think it was driven by that because if you can't get all of your active brigade somewhere before the guard unit units begin to come online and ready then the argument has to be made well great Americans they can drive trucks but you know they're just not up to that that challenge now my own brigade went to Iraq four months of post deployment training and got a meritorious unit citation for a combat mission not fought protection or convoy protection which is something you hear these days which means it can be done but I as a guardsman would not say every brigade would necessarily be able to do that so I think and again you've put your finger on the question how do you sequence one answer could be and you seem to be exploring mixes and the other could be simply which units do you put out the gate first and how do you how do you sequence the flow both on the active side in the garden I'd like to note that I like to say that the guard is a box box of chocolates but so is the active component there are some units and leadership you know brigade leaderships division leaderships that are not as good as others and so that may be one thing to take a look at how you sequence the flow in but the end thing Mackenzie I have a problem with rhetoric the way that you were not right that doesn't sound right the logic you had about everybody having to give up something because I think you were importing a strangely political language into what should be a professional discussion that is it almost treats the active component the reserve component as the two stakeholders with the public sitting you know in the stands watching the game going on I think if you take an extreme example of horse cavalry you know you wouldn't say well tank community horse cavalry everybody gives up something because the mission has gone away for the horse cavalry so I think it actually should be a professional discussion and if the guard is able to do the mission fine if they can't they shouldn't be doing it they should have it taken away and so a slight discomfort in the way you were approaching that issue the lady here in the second room Hello I'm Margaret Cope I have a background in the Air Force I'm not going to talk about Lyft with General Schwartz here but anyway I'm a national security consultant now but my concern is a common lexicon and I notice in the report you use active component reserve component mix but you don't include the army reserve and that's huge and their title 10 and I would like your thoughts with regard to that relative to this report I know this report is on the guard but you have the reserve component that is title 10 already and secondly since cyber is not necessarily going to use Lyft would it make sense to use the army reserve for cyber missions because they could immediately address any federal issue whereas the guard is still state thank you that's a great that you notice that truth in advertising my husband is an army reservist and he asked me the same question when I asked him to take a look at the paper so the army reserve is in an interesting spot in this discussion and it's something that the congressman and I talked about before he entered this room you know when you talk about missions and you talk about you know combat and combat service support and combat support you know the reservists are funded through active duty army completely at all times and so it's an interesting spot that they're placed in and when in the report we were I think I have maybe one line on on why we don't really talk about the reserves um one one rationale is the focus of the report was the guard the future of the guard the second was is that any time I try to talk to reservists about this issue and and couch it in terms of active and reserve component they asked me to stop and that I think the rationale behind that and this is conjecture on my part was you know one they're not seeing the same scale of reductions as the other as their as their other folks the active component and the guard are seeing from a percentage perspective and strength numbers and also you know what made it interesting is I was a staffer in congress when the chief of the national guard bureau got a fourth star and was placed on the joint staff there are people out there advocating that we that America did the same for the reserves making the joint staff probably completely unwieldy to be honest so I come back this is a long rambling answer to your question which is we didn't talk about it because one the reserve folks didn't really want to talk about it to the extent that the others did and two they are in a very unique position I hate saying very unique it's a unique position that that being funded by active duty folks it's just it's very very hard to to tease them out on these topics and it's not an excuse necessarily it's just what we encountered in our report if I might I think we have time for one more excuse me hi I'm Walter Coulom with the DHS to domestic nuclear detection office and I just wanted to look at get your thoughts on finding number nine you say the army national guard has the capacity to increase partnerships for domestic missions and serve as a supplemental force for other departments and agencies I I hardly agree with that finding and I wanted to see what your thoughts are of potentially using the national guard in the prevent protect role more than the response and consequence management and you say in the at the end that we don't want to think of the guard as an easy alternative to finding long term solutions if you don't think that they could potentially be a long term solutions what what might be other long term solutions you think would be appropriate so some of our discussions really did focus on what the guard can bring to the interagency and not just to the army or a DOD and so you know talking about what support they can provide to entities like DNDO or entities other entities within the Department of Homeland Security Department of Energy particularly on this kind of detection prevention end of the spectrum um of course this also falls into all right so is it a federal mission if so under what authority and with what reimbursement processes that are acceptable to all which is a big thing to bite off right the other is you know at what point does it become a state mission under what authority on all of that and so it's an interesting uh question and we came to the resolution the the well the resolution we came to was that it needed further exploration to see who in the interagency was interested in having a guard component and a lot of that depended on the authorities and the funding but also moving forward would the guard be a a rational long-term solution and in some cases it is because it builds on existing skill sets doesn't make them more expensive to train that kind of thing and I think what your office does sir is is one of the one of the few that we talked about they said absolutely I think they could probably help on the prevent and the deter just because they're in every state and and the training that you guys you all get is something that I think they would benefit from others are less clear right I mean you've got Customs of Border Protection Border Patrol in particular Office of Air and Marine if you're looking at the Air National Guard and others that it may not be a long-term solution you may have to find a more systemic within DHS solution to address longer-term issues and so we sort of didn't want to have a blanket statement that it would be useful equally for all other federal agencies in states but we wanted to put it out there that upon review there are some that are that could benefit from the guard more than others I think it's a great question and good analysis by Stephanie as long as it's on a case by case basis and it's a complementary capability that the guard provides to other federal agencies not supplanting and here I go back to Border Patrol in the southwestern United States Customs and Border Patrol needs more agents period and it's there are benefits for the Army National Guard in particular for helping helping offset the lack of agents to perform that mission training in particular but as far as a long-term solution goes they're not customs agents okay so and Congress and DHS too often this is from prior years this is not today this is something that was really peaking five years ago it was just wow they've got more money more manpower let's just use them and I know that's easy to think of because DoD is the elephant in the room and I get that so I would just caution if I may I'm gonna try and put the panels on the spot here for the last question if you don't mind I doubt I can do it but I'd like to try to open this question up of resolution of this problem the report endorses the idea of the commission nor you say it's inevitable I agree with you I think it's a good idea and it's also inevitable I'm not certain it's enough to solve the problem nor you talked about new personalities Kenzie you talked about a political solution what more do we need here I mean if we really if we're gonna go through this fight and it is an ugly one right now how do we solve this or prevent this from recurrent recurring immediately and is a place like the council of governors I mean what's the mechanism but is the does the council of governors provide an avenue that could be helpful I'll go first I think you need three things one and and I talked about it and Mackenzie talked about it and actually Nora talked about it too which is this total force task force to handle internal army issues and hopefully separate from personalities I mean I hope that people who they choose to staff would be as unbiased and fair as possible but of course they each bring their own each member would bring their own background and experience and that will help prevent having to go to the public discourse with blatantly obvious tensions and having a fight in public get your house in order and figure out what the real issues are and I think the total force task force can help with that commonality or a common understanding of what the cost of of an army what cost of a soldier I mean and that is where we go back to in our report congressional budget office take it out of the Pentagon get somebody to look at and get to figure out what exactly is the cost of a soldier what's the cost activity you know across the across the components and the third thing of course I forgot and so oh this was getting politicians to to step up and I know this is hard and Mackenzie is absolutely right I mean when people refer to General Odierno's plan he obviously had to get permission from his civilian oversight right or permission or at least acknowledgement and an agreement to go forward and so having you know Secretary McHugh relatively silent having Secretary Hagle who I understand is active in the background but not in a public space not owning this issue is is detrimental because it hurts career professionals and I don't care if if your military or civilian you know civil servant career professional but when you don't have the people who are tasked with conducting oversight and taking responsibility for the tough decisions abrogating their authority to do so it's really really harmful and again having politicians talk to politicians so so those would be my three total force task course common budget common cost numbers and then actually asking the politicians to step up and own some of the decisions that are being made I completely endorse all of those three things I want to highlight two additional things well actually I think the first plays on the the first you need senior level leadership on this this needs to be I think one of the highest priorities of the new chief of staff of the army coming in is to set a tone that we are gonna you know we are family we are gonna solve this internally and we are gonna do what's right for the army as a whole but more importantly the nation as a whole rather than being seen as you know more aligned with the active component or reserve component or whatever it is that has I think that has you know of all the challenges and there are a lot that the new set chief of staff of the army is going to face that to me is the single most important thing that he can do to help the help of the army going forward the second thing you know I said before that I was I see blame on both sides I picked on you know one problem of the active component before now I'm gonna pick on part of the the not the reserve component itself I think that there's been a lot of politics going on on what shouldn't be quite as much of a political issue as it is and so my answer to you know is the council of governors a good place to explore this my answer is absolutely not you want to take the the politicians out of this you want to create a situation where you don't have 54 tags signing a letter to Congress in an over political play to do this I'm not impugning motives but it has to be taken out of that context frankly I find some of the lobbying efforts that have been made by some of the guard of in particular organizations but the organizations that favor the reserve component to be actively unhelpful in this and I think that needs to be reined in so now I've given you equal time to you know something to pick on on both sides which hopefully means that I'm coming down you know somewhere objectively in the middle but I think that you know you need leadership inside the service and you need to take these decisions as far out of the political debate overt political debate as possible it is never going to be possible to solve this on technocratic issues right I mean there's always politics in it but we need to get it out of the overt political arena and back to a discussion about what military capabilities the United States needs and what's best for the nation it's a great concluding question Kim and I want to to do what Nora says of course of course but I I guess I've spent too many time too much time on policymakers over the years and there's just many traits about them they're pretty much all the same whether they're in the executive branch and their political appointees or whether they're in on Capitol Hill and I unfortunately I don't think you can divorce the politics of this or take it out they you know we already talked about things like jobs and income and you know what impact on states that have nothing to do with you know can you support XYZ mission flood relief wildfires etc so I actually think all the stakeholders have to be engaged it's a little impractical but at this point what is there to lose I guess you could say so that would include you know a venue for the appropriate people reaching out to the governors it includes the the outside groups and organizations you know I sort of we broadly sort of we know them as sort of VSOs but obviously that's not a good analogy here and sort of the the guard bureau and others and Nogis etc all of the service associations AFA Navy League etc you know them all very well there's a lot of them and people like us we're all outsiders you know trying to impact the in the the debate in the outcomes and I think there has to be this notion of change it's a coming it's barreling down the track so either come into the conversation all of you and be productive contributors to ideas and solutions or have it imposed on you and nobody ever really wants that right so anybody who's rational is going to say well we want to be part of the conversation and and think tanks like CSIS we're going to be there to support you and and provide you the analytics behind those innovative solutions and so I really believe these sort of broad big group hugs are important to get to the answer in the future and I know it's a lot of work I know it's a lot of you know shoe leather and pounding the pavement but it's actually it's a way to get results enterprise wide and that's really what's missing here is because own each solution only helps certain stakeholders and it's hard to get at this sort of larger solution where the sum is greater than the parts and it actually is good for national security something that everybody again truly wants or at least should so and there are other sets of stakeholders but those were just to that came to mind just by thanking Stephanie for turning on my microphone first but secondly thanking you all for coming we appreciate your being here to participate in this dialogue and I'd like to ask you to thank the panel members first Stephanie for the report and her team for putting this great great report which has started the ball rolling and for our panel members who've done a terrific job on a tough issue and I think laid some ground for some useful steps forward so please help me thank the panel