 Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Kristen Lord, Acting President of the United States Institute of Peace. It's my pleasure to introduce you to today's discussion about the report of the 2014 QDR National Defense Panel with Michelle Flournoy, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, retired Lieutenant General Mike Maples, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Kevin Barron, our moderator today, who's editor-in-chief of Defense One. And he's agreed to moderate today's discussion, as I mentioned. The National Defense Panel was co-chaired by former Secretary of Defense Dr. Bill Perry and former St. Com Commander General John Abizade. Serving on the panel were a mix of former government officials and military leaders, all nominated by members of Congress. The panel included the following people. These are all listed in the report, but I'll just run through them very quickly. The panel included former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Jim Cartwright, former Undersecretary for Defense to Policy in the Bush Administration and current USIP board member, Ambassador Eric Adelman, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in the First Obama Administration, the Honorable Michelle Flournoy, Lieutenant General Frank Carney, Lieutenant General Mike Maples, whom I already introduced, former Congressman Jim Marshall, General Greg Martin, and former Senator Jim Talent. These are all very distinguished people. There are full bios of them listed in the back of your report, and you can reference them at your leisure. The US Institute of Peace had no role in developing the content of this report, but we were very proud that our partners in the US government turned to us once again to provide a forum for important, non-partisan discussions related to conflict and security. We are also proud to temporarily lend some of our staff to the NDP, USIP Senior Advisor Paul Hughes. Where's Paul? Right here. Served as the panel's Executive Director, I have to mention that this is the fourth time that Paul has served as the Executive Director of a Congressionally Mandated Nonpartisan Panel at something of a professional specialty for him now, but we're going to be really glad to have him back. I also want to mention the talented Hannah Birch who joined Paul in working on the study and just provided great support to the team throughout the entire year-long process of the NDP. For those of you who don't know the US Institute of Peace, we are a Congressionally Created Independent Nonpartisan Institution. Our mission is to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflicts around the world, and we do this by engaging directly in conflict zones, but also by providing analysis, education, and resources to all those who share our mission of working for peace. Some of you may be wondering how a peace institute came to host a discussion and a study on the future of the military. And there really are two answers to that question. The first one is the Fairly-Monday Nguyen, which is we're a quasi-governmental institution created by the Congress. We work very closely with our partners and government agencies. We're often called upon to be this sort of forum for nonpartisan discussions on important ideas. And this is just another example of that. The second answer, though, is more serious. USFP recognizes, well, that our role is to identify and employ nonviolent means to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict around the world. This is an approach we think is both effective and cost effective. But there's also a role for the threatened use of force. And we just have to face up to this. And for that, I believe the United States needs not only a strong military, but also a military that is appropriately sized and shaped to the challenges of both today and tomorrow. Reasonable and principled people can differ on exactly what the size and shape of the military should be. And I hope the NDP in today's discussion will help to spark that conversation. I thank you for coming to the US Institute of Peace today. Please come back often. And please remember the very valuable role that institutions like ours can play in America's security and defense. I turn to Cameron Barrow. Thank you very much. And thank you, everyone, for coming and for watching wherever you are online and elsewhere in the building, I think. This is going to be a nice talk today. I think we're going to go about 90 minutes for little housekeeping, so everyone knows. And we'll have our own discussion up here and turn it to audience questions. If you're in the audience, you can raise your hand and have microphones and outside. And as well, there'll be ways for you to get your questions in. And they promise they'll bring them to me. I don't promise I'll ask them, but they'll give them to me. So the QDR, I thought just to start things off, the QDR, I think, is a mythical document in a lot of ways. And it has a lot of, like everything, it's got some weight to it and some preconceived notions. And just one of them, we were talking backstage where Michelle said, really, the audience for the QDR is Congress. It's the members of Congress who mandate it and require it. I think in this town and among the Defense National Security community, there are lots of audiences that think they have their own stake in exactly what it lays out and lots of different opinions on the importance of it. How much does it really matter for what the Pentagon really ends up doing, what the government ends up paying for and authorizing and sending troops to different places around the world? How much does it really matter to what happens day to day in the coming years, the next four years until the next one of these comes around? But to go along with it and to check it is this National Defense Review, National Defense Panel review. And so to get started, Michelle, take us out from here and tell us, I think, maybe from your own experience, being in the Pentagon, what the QDR is and is not supposed to be and then the same thing for this document that you've all produced. Well, thank you all for being here and I'm pleased to see so many people actually showing up for this discussion because I think this is one of the most important issues that we need to be talking about as a nation, particularly in the security environment we're facing today. The QDR has always meant to be an opportunity for the Pentagon to marry strategy, plans and resources. It really is a strategic planning exercise. And I always like to quote Eisenhower or paraphrase Eisenhower used to say, it's not the plan, it's the planning and the truth is the QDR report, it's not as important as the process that goes into it to really lay out what are our objectives, what are our strategies in a resource constrained environment, how are we gonna make priorities, where are we gonna accept risk, how are we gonna manage that risk and how does that all connect to a budget. So I do think it's a valuable process in theory for the department. Over time I think it's become more and more bureaucratized and in some cases less useful than it that might otherwise be. I think the National Defense Panel was an added element by Congress to sort of check the work of the QDR and to get an independent perspective on whether the department's done a good job. I think in this year the panel really had started with a pretty deep discussion about what's our history, certainly in our post-war history in terms of what is going on in the world and the threats and challenges that we are gonna be facing as a nation now and over the next several decades. In that context, does it make sense to be living under sequestration? Does it make sense to be trying to solve the deficit problem on the back of discretionary spending of which defense spending is 50% and so what we tried to do is look at the current environment and note that already sequestration is creating readiness crisis in terms of army units not being ready, pilots not being able to fly, ships not being able to deploy forward to deter and shape the environment. We see the U.S. military as an indispensable instrument of national power that underwrites our economic prosperity, keeping trade routes open, freedom of navigation, it underwrites our diplomacy, making it more effectively. It is critical to deterring potential adversaries, reassuring allies and partners, making good on treaty commitments around the world and when we looked at the Budget Control Act and sequestration, we felt that the level of risk that would accumulate in the near to medium term was at an unacceptable level. So our main point was to sound alarm to say, look, rather than sort of check the details of the QDR's math, there's a fundamental discussion we need to have as a nation about what kind of risk we're willing to accept and how we're gonna pay for that. Michelle's last point I thought was particularly relevant of accumulating strategic risk and that's something that the panel really focused on is how the changes in our global environment affect our own national security strategy and our defense strategy and how we are going to use our armed forces as an instrument of our own national power in this world that we have to deal with. And so as Michelle commented, a part of this is looking back in time and saying what role does our defense play and why do we need to be engaged in the world? And part of what we came back to was this idea that much of the economic prosperity that we enjoy our ability to operate in this global environment all has to do with ensuring that we have relative stability in various regions of the world and that we have the freedom to operate and engage in commerce around the world. And while our defense capabilities are not the only enabling factor in all of that, in fact they're probably not the decisive factor but they are the foundational factor that enable us to meet our commitments to our friends and our allies and to guarantee access in a way that no other country can to those parts of the world that are so important to the nations of the world to engage in global commerce and to engage with one another. And so it came back to a foundational need to remain engaged throughout the world. So I thought that that's a very important piece of where we think we are as a nation. So on the one hand we see threats going up in a very complex, world complex environment more demands on the force throughout the world. And yet we obviously realize that we have an issue in terms of the resources that are available to the nation and how those resources are going to be spent. And it all set the stage for the kind of dialogue we then went into as we looked at what our responsibilities were as a national defense panel. Can I just jump in on one point not to have you lose control of your panel from the very start. But this report did argue that there are cuts that are smart and can be made. But this secretary of defense has not been given the appropriate authorities by Congress. When you look at previous secretaries who had to manage periods of drawdown or constraint they were given certain authorities by Congress to be able to make some of those choices in a smart way rather than sort of taking cuts across the board whether something's a high priority or a low priority. So for example, Secretary Hagel has not been given BRAC authority to actually deal with the estimated 20% extra infrastructure that the service chiefs believe they are carrying unnecessarily. He's not been given the full range of authorities he needs to receive. Okay so the journalist me takes over and says that's an interesting spin to put it all in Congress that the secretary of administration doesn't have authority when at the same time the criticism towards administration from a lot of members of Congress is that may be true but he also could not cut the A10s, not cut the C130s and increase spending on a whole list of hardware items and the force structure and healthcare all across the board to keep that more robust, bigger, well-funded, better armed military that they say, these critics say is needed for the future you were laying out, future with or present, a summer with more conflicts than we've seen in the last few years and greater, more parts of the world, all of which it seems are gonna have some sort of U.S. pan involvement in them. The reason why I'm a little tough on Congress is not just because they commissioned our panel but also because they basically said you have to plan to live within sequestration. But we're not going to accept any of your reform or very few of your reform or in efficiency proposals, we're not gonna give you those authorities. And then so when the secretary said, okay, if that's all off the table, then I really do have to start choosing between making hard choices on capabilities like cutting the A10 or accepting fewer, procuring fewer numbers of other platforms. That's partly because, and when the Congress says no to that, then where does the secretary turn? What happens is you start reducing readiness funding. You start cutting your seed corn for future capability development. I mean, you start making choices that really will have very detrimental effects. So there's gotta be some, I think, overall budget relief but also even within that relief a degree, a much greater degree of flexibility to be able to prioritize and make trade-offs consistent with the strategy. But before we get to the items and specifics, talk about both the panel's role and perhaps what you think the QDR should be doing or just depending on large. When it comes to the amount of risk, the amount of involvement, amount of intervention in the US military particularly and the United States national security at large should have in global conflicts around the world. We've talked about, we've got Russia, we've got Iraq, we've got China, we've got economic interests, cyber all across the board, right? We've had a year where we've had the possibility of, we were talking backstage of things as, well, we were talking backstage, I mentioned that a year ago that we were still in a place, I think, where we thought after the counter-insurgency years of the wars we were going to be heading toward the years of counter-terrorism and we would be seeing lots of, the fighting would still be going on with special forces, special operations forces in that type of realm. But instead, what have we had? We've had almost going to airstrikes with Syria last year using cruise missiles out of submarines. We've got airstrikes now with traditional fighters coming off of carriers. We've got destroyers off of China. Big war, traditional military operations across the spectrum with space, with cyber going on all at once. So when it comes to what the QDR said and what your criticisms were, what are you focusing on? Are you focusing on any of those boundaries and the greater circle that we're going to be addressing? Or is that just a given that we're gonna be doing all that? And therefore, let's just focus on the budget and how to get to those ends. Well, let's start with the ends because it goes back to what our defense strategy is, which was fundamental to both the work the QDR did and the work that the panel did. Because within our defense strategy, there are a number of missions, ends, that are listed. And the chairman talks in his letter, very clearly about those ends. And he talks about the fact that with the current resources provided, he can't accomplish those although they are prioritized and the risk is higher and it's going up if the department is not allowed to do everything that they laid out in the QDR. So there are a couple of big gifts that are associated with that. Is the world a complex, dangerous world? Yes, we're seeing that play out now and as we talked about it for the long term because we weren't focused just on the here and now, we're focused in the long term and we looked at documents from the National Intelligence Council that looked at alternative worlds for the future and what that might look like and what the probability of conflict was gonna be and what we might expect and then how do you prepare and start laying the groundwork for the kinds of capabilities today that are going to enable us in the future. So it's important that we'd be able to react today that we have the capability to do that with today's force but it's also important that we're investing and developing the capabilities that we need for the future force. And so it gets now to get to the heart of your question. We actually believe that the strategy, if you will, maybe doesn't have it quite right, that the world is probably more dangerous than we were accounting for in all the ways that you laid out and that we have to be engaged and have capability that can address threats in multiple theaters simultaneously. And that became a very important point to us as we worked our way through the process. And just to sort of give some reality to that, I mean, here we are, we're at the tail end of our conventional military involvement in Afghanistan. We've got this sort of this growing threat from ISIL in Iraq and Syria. Meanwhile, we have Russia invading Ukraine and NATO needing to bolster its posture. Meanwhile, you have just a month or two ago, increase in tension in the South China Sea into continued tensions in the East China Sea. You have continued to have terrorist events across Africa. I mean, it just speaks to the, doesn't mean that the US is going to deploy boots on the ground everywhere on the world simultaneously, but we need a military that even if we're engaged in one area, we can be deterring, shaping, influencing in multiple theaters at the same time and if necessary, thwarting aggression if there's opportunistic aggression elsewhere. So one of the criticisms then from, by the way, you mentioned before the Dempsey's letter, the Chairman's letter at the back of the QDR is the Chairman's, I guess, like response to what he sees. Chairman's assessment. Chairman's assessment, right. So I encourage everyone to take a look at that, especially because I think he, that's where he uses the word rebalance and the ends and ways and means that says that if the ends aren't changing from previous major strategy documents, the 2012 strategic guidance that this, I guess, maybe the scammer, but not going back to the 2010 QDR, if the ends aren't changing, but the means are declining, then the ways, did I get that right? The ways have to be rebalanced with that purpose of the military. So within that, though, come priorities and the QDR lays them out kind of thematically though, but what do you see as priorities that did the QDR get it right? What does the report recommend? Well, I think there are near term and longer term priorities. I think in the near term, one of the things that worries me the most is the readiness problem. I think I worry about something happening and actually having our response be less than what it should be in a way that is actually quite costly to us either in terms of lives or reputation because when you look inside the current force, there are some significant and disturbing readiness problems because of the budget cuts that have been taken already. Can you explain that? Both of you would explain this, this readiness. For example, right now you have only a handful of active duty army brigades that are actually ready to deploy. You have pilots that have been stood down from flying and they aren't combat capable right now and it will take them six months or more to get them back to that. And the irony is it will actually have to pay more to get them back to the readiness level that they would have been at than had we not go down this path. It means that they are not qualified to fly because they haven't had the training hours they need to do their missions. And on the Navy side, you've had deployments canceled, ships held back in port, so we don't have as much in the Gulf to deter Iran and to shape what's going on there. We don't have as much in Asia and so forth. So we don't have as much in the Med. So those kind of cancellations are occurring. Again, not most of them even unreported in terms of people even realizing that there's a change or an impact from what we've observed already. Yeah, do your job. The second part is longer term and that gets to what's happening to research and development funding. What's happening in terms of investment accounts that are really about ensuring we have the capabilities we need to deal with even more sophisticated threats 10 years down the road, 15 years down the road, 20 years down the road. And there, again, there's a lot that's being squeezed. And I think the report highlights a number of areas from long range strike to armed unmanned aviation, intelligence surveillance reconnaissance, undersea warfare, directed energy, cyber, and so forth. There's a whole list that we go through. These are critical capability areas where we have got to protect the seed corn if we're going to be positioned to be able to protect our interests in the future. I think so. Let me just throw in on the readiness piece because this is a very important point that we made in the report early on is that we believe Congress should task the department to report to them what it is necessary in the short term to fix the immediate readiness problems that we have in the force. And even in the 15 budget, the administration asked for 26 billion, I think it was. Extra. Extra, okay, to try to address that. But every one of the chiefs in their testimony talked about the readiness issues that they're part of this joint force is experiencing now. Not all of them can be fixed with money. Some of it takes time, and in particular some of the longer term training things take time, but there are things that additional resources would enable the services to do that they can't do now. Largely because the cuts caused them to take money out of their operations and maintenance accounts, which meant that they had to stop doing things. And so that's where it put us back. And so in the longer it takes us to make that up, then the further the readiness hole is and we gotta dig our way out, the more it's gonna cost us to get out of that. So we think that's a near term issue that needs to be addressed. The gap from what you're describing of what is needed versus what is possible now and under sequestration even after, how does, to me, even in the urgency of your voices seems much farther out than some of the recommendations of the report. And one of the criticisms and from when I was released on a month ago was that, what was the line? Well, if you pick a bunch of generals, this is what you're gonna get, that the report could have been so much farther or more aggressive than the QDR was. So like we were saying backstage, why not then recommend 11 carriers is not enough? We need 19, 300 ships, we need 600, we need more brigades, we need to make the big picture push for if we're really gonna do everything we say we're gonna do, this is really how much bigger we need. Even if you assume the department is successful in getting some relief from sequestration, some growth and resource levels, there are always choices. Find me a time in history when the Defense Department thought it had enough money. You're always gonna have choices between how large the force is, how ready the force is, how capable the force is now and how much you're investing in the future. And you can't escape those trade-offs. And I think those will always be there. But I do think if you read the report, you don't have to read it that carefully. I think there's a sense of urgency that comes across. My concern is that I think a lot of the debate has become too narrow in sort of just how do we live with sequestration? How do we make the trade-offs within that? And I understand that from a practical point of view. That is currently the law. But again, we felt that our opportunity was to shine a light on the very real dangers associated with just accepting that constraint as is. So something that gives me hard is that, in the last couple of years, the deficit hawks on Capitol Hill have definitely trumped the defense hawks. There really isn't the same kind of defense hawk as you've seen in the past. But you're starting to see some people rethink their positions, change their minds. I'll give you two examples of people who are sort of poster children of the deficit hawk position. Paul Ryan, Rand Paul. Both of them have recently changed their positions and called for increasing defense spending because they've had people sit down with them and go through what's happening and what are the risks we're incurring and what are the costs that we could incur if we fail to correct this. Explain how much thinking of that dynamic went into the panel, if any. How much of both of the politics of town, of sequestration in the last couple of years and the national conversation and the polling that we see of Americans who are done with the warriors and they want out, but they support airstrikes, they want a strong America. How much of that is either divorced or involved with the real national screenings discussions going on, saying this, knowing that we're at the USIP on a panel talking about something so in the weeds in the defense world right now. This is that, we know these details, but... Let me start with one thing and that is that the members of the panel, I never sensed we're influenced by politics, okay? We were all trying to sit down and as an independent panel really decide what was best for the nation, okay? In our collective judgment, what was best for the nation? And that's how we approached it and yet we looked at different views on things but ultimately in our dialogue, we were really driven by what we thought was important for the nation to have to provide for its national security. On the one hand, let me go to the QDR. Had a constraint and that was, they had a ceiling, budget ceiling in 15. And then they had sequestration in the out years. Their submission actually asked for money well above that, okay, that is in the out years in order to meet the needs of the strategy they thought and what the chairman referred to at a moderate level of risk going on. Our approach was much different because we weren't constrained, okay, by the ceiling. We weren't constrained as Michelle just said by an assumption that there is a budget reality out there, okay, we know the issues the country's facing. We talk about them in the report, okay, and how they do have to be addressed and how that is important to the nation that that happens. But we also were not constrained in looking at what we thought the nation needed to execute our defense strategy at a low to moderate level of risk, which is what Congress asked us to do, okay. And that's what we did. Well, Secretary Florent, are you bent on the position and the Pentagon? I mean, is that the right thinking? Is that should we, should you, aren't you letting yourselves off the hook to say, well, let's not worry about sequestries come up with our own version of what we really need to, or let's not consider or come up with a way to work through the current politics of today, which makes so much of what a lot of defense leaders think we need, just impossible. So, you know, I think the QDR and NDP actually have different guidance on this. When you're inside an administration and you've got, you have a budget law that you have to live within and given those resource constraints, you're trying to figure out what is the best strategy, the best way forward, the best plan. And so QDRs are both strategy driven and resource constrained, right? And there's always that tension. Oh, that drives John McCain crazy. Yeah, I know it does. But that's the truth. The NDP was asked a different question. It was, you know, A, do you think, what's the right strategy? And B, what kind of resources do you need to have the forces to fulfill that strategy at low to moderate risk? And so it is basically asking, do you think we have enough resources or not? And our firm answer was no. We are under resourcing defense and we're tying our hands in terms of better allocating the resources we do have, in terms of not being able to pursue some of the very necessary and smart reforms that are, that DOD is put on the table and that others are put on the table. Well, I'd like to remind everyone, so we're gonna get to questions soon. Are you thinking if you have some in your mind? I hope, keep us going in the conversation. I wanted to plan a seed to think about our allies and partners and how, in nearly every operation that is undergoing, or it's undergoing, it's undertaking, at some point we're looking for our best allies. Are they involved in this process enough? Or why aren't they, let's say? If this is the main strategy that the Pentagon has gone after for four years, but nearly everything we do overseas is going to go to a choir or we assume it's going to have the British and NATO or depending on where we are, where are they? Why are they not part of this somewhere? Actually, we did meet with some allies to get their perspectives and they were very interested in the course where the process was going as well. And so we took that as input. I think both the QDR and the panel report talk about the importance of our friends and allies around the world and how much we do need to operate and to rely on them. And even in the foresizing construct that we recommend, we talk about conducting operations at the high end with friends and allies to support that. So we think that's very important. On the other hand, in all cases we can't rely on them because you have to put together that coalition. You have to have those and ultimately nations operate in their own best interest. I think that there's one piece here that we were somewhat critical of in our report was whether or not Europe was a net provider of security. And we're not so sure that it can be counted on in that way in the environment that we're in now, particularly as we see what's going on today. And we talked about that in the report before the recent events, but that we needed to reassure our allies in Europe and around the world. And we also needed to demonstrate our resolve to them by our actions with our military. A very important part of how we're going to operate in the world, we're gonna operate with friends and allies. But we've got to be careful about how much we assume they are or can provide for any particular event. Well, part of the reason for working with allies is this building partnership capacity, right? And that's one of the new matches of the days. So we don't have to go do the fighting for everyone else. How does that fall into the QDR and the NDP's conclusions short-term and long-term, looking ahead to 20 years from now? Is the building partner capacity tracked something we can honestly rely on to be both a saver of money and of burdens to the US force now or 20 years from now? I actually think it's a really important theme in the QDR and in our strategy at large because it's hard to imagine any serious situation we're gonna get ourselves into and prosecute alone with the exception of certain tactical counterterrorism operations and even then we're usually working with partners. But if you imagine a crisis in Asia, you imagine even what's going on now at least, we work in coalition because so many other countries have shared interests and we, if we're playing our leadership role correctly, we pull together that coalition to operate effectively together. So we have a huge stake in ensuring those allies and partners are actually capable and they can contribute to the fight. And in many cases, if we can't get the Iraqi forces to be effective, if we can't get a cohesive, more effective Syrian opposition on the ground, if we can't have partners elsewhere who can hold their own and defend their own territory, very hard to ultimately protect our interests without those capable allies. So we may lament the decline of defense spending in certain NATO partners. We may lament that sometimes allies don't bring as much to the table as we would like. But I think keeping a focus on partner capacity building and really taking stocks of the lessons of what works and what doesn't when we try to build capacity and making the necessary changes in things like export control reform and security cooperation reform, those are things we need to do, you know, if we're gonna be effective in the future. And even in our own modernization efforts and we make a particular point that we've learned over time that we've got to have interoperability with those partners. And we have to allow for that and actually build it into our designs, okay, the capabilities that we're putting out there. Well, and that reminds me of industry. We've talked about politics and regions and events. If you're an executive in industry, whether you're involved in purchasing hardware or planning for the future, what should you take from the QDR, reading it through your lens from the panel's review? You know, I think that the preferred sort of plan is pretty well spelled out. I think the key challenge that industry still has to grapple with is the tremendous uncertainty on the budget front. They really, you know, and they just don't like the department. I mean, last year, someone mentioned, I don't know if this is true, but one of the services did seven different versions of their POM in one year. I mean, that's just an indicator. First of all, if you're doing that, you're doing very little else. How do you do strategic planning for the future if you're doing seven different versions of your POM? But industry is going through that same kind of churn. And I think one of the biggest costs of this whole situation is the tremendous uncertainty and the tax and the amount of bandwidth that it takes up when we should really be thinking about, you know, what we need now and in the future, much more strategically and from the point of view of innovation and future capability development. Well, you were head of policy. Is the QDR worth it? Is it worth the time and energy? You know, I personally believe that the QDR has become overly bureaucratized as a process. And if you actually counted up the man hours or the person hours, it would probably not be worth its weight in gold. I saw, it was interesting, we tried a very different approach to the development of the defense strategic guidance in 2012. And I thought it was actually a better product that got more buy-in and had more impact on the budget than any QDR strategy I've seen. So there's some process lessons learned there. So then we'll look forward to if there's a secretary, Florinoy, the Pentagon stewardship to come, we won't have to go through this again. The QDR is mandated by law. So that again is something that Congress will have to and I reject the speculative premise of your question. I appreciate that, thank you. I'm happy to go to the audience for questions if we can get some started and we'll start right here in the middle. We'll have microphones come around. Like all of our wonderful Washington events that we're all used to, please tell us your name, where you're from and please keep it to a question. Put a question mark at the end of whatever you're saying and ask more than education. Hi, George Nicholson, a policy consultant for special operations. You alluded to the BRAC issue and cuts on the unnecessary. I asked Congressman Thornberry. It was over Brookings about three months ago. And he says, you've got to remember we've got to be reelected. I go back to my district and they say, you have a round of BRAC, we're going to lose jobs. I go back to my district and say, we need to cut a national guard unit. This is, we're going to lose jobs. At what point do you get Congressmen to belly up to the bar and say, what's more important? What's good for the country? Or protecting jobs in the district? Great question. Is it dependent on a jobs machine or is it the defender of the country or both? I can tell you, just on the BRAC piece of it, I believe Michelle stated earlier that the department believes they've got about a 20% excess capacity right now. If you go back and you look at what force structure we ultimately end up with, and our view is that we need to right size the department and its resources. And that includes BRAC and our recommendation was that it is not something that Congress ought to stiff arm. It ought to be something that we deal with as we're restructuring our forces for the future. And that Congress is, that's one of those authorities that Congress needs to provide to the secretary so that he can get it right and quit wasting resources, it could be applied elsewhere. But the political dynamic you're describing is very, very real in every constituency across the nation. It's one of the reasons why we haven't had another round of realignment enclosures. It's also one of the reasons why we haven't had a sort of strategically driven kind of rethink of our total force posture in terms of guard, reserve, active duty, which is also overdue. But I think people are allowed to stay in that posture because there hasn't been this sort of clear-eyed open discussion of risk and the trade-offs of what the trade-offs of not getting that money out of unnecessary infrastructure, unnecessary force structure is. If people don't understand that there's a readiness problem, if they don't understand that we're eating our seed corn for the future, if they think everything's just fine, then why make the hard choices? I think that's the kind of trade-off discussion we've gotta have. This also comes up on the compensation and benefits issue. I mean, I think the Department of Defense has got a serious problem in the way it delivers healthcare in terms of it's among the federal government programs. It's got the highest cost growth rate. It's got sort of uneven quality. And yet there's this sense of we can't touch entitlements. Well, at some point, I'm in the position where on the one hand, I'm a Navy wife and I'm looking forward to those retirement and health benefits. On the other hand, I'm the mom of someone who's about to sign up to serve. And I really care about whether he's gonna be equipped, whether he's gonna be trained before he goes sent to get sent in the harm's way. You know, these are very real trade-offs. And, but again, that's the conversation we need to be having as difficult as it is politically. But right now we're really not having having a clear-eyed conversation. So it allows people to stay in that convenient posture. No, don't touch my parochial concerns. You're asking for a conversation. Is it the Pentagon's prerogative to then find another way if BRAC has been rejected two years in a row now and there is no total force posture if you include the guard, include these political third rails? Shouldn't we expect then that come the next budget drop in February or March? We're not gonna see another BRAC ask. We'll see something else to find another way to make the savings. I think they have to make a more compelling case for, and frankly, come up with some more creative thinking about particularly garden reserve issues. They have to make a more compelling case on BRAC, what the cost of not doing BRAC is. And I think, you talk to the various service chiefs, I think they're all ready to take a much more aggressive posture in really detail and trying to explain the risks being incurred and the risks we're taking and what they're worried about if we don't sort of do things differently. Hi, Michelle. I'm Mitzi Worth. I'm with the Naval Postgraduate School. I guess I have two issues. One is preparing the force to go into places where they need to have relationships. I mean, I talk to any of my senior-level folks who've been in the game. I keep talking about the importance of relationships. So that clearly has to be built into the experience and the training. On the other hand, I think one of the things I see as a civilian, as a citizen, I don't understand the details of the problems of your story. So it really is how you tell the story to the public, and they can say, this doesn't make any sense to me. We need, if you're just waiting for Congress to do it, unless they get a push from the public, I can't see how we're gonna get out of this, Marias. I do, I agree that there has to be a more of a public conversation. I also think that heading into a presidential cycle, it is sort of the 20 minutes when America kind of pays attention to these issues, not to be pejorative, but it is an era of time when we elevate the discussion to talk about the state of our national security, the state of our military, what are the risks that we're taking, how do we wanna be in the world, and so forth. And there is an opportunity. It's the detail we don't understand why this matters. Yeah, I think that is true. And I think it's coming on all of us who work in this field to try to write more, speak more in plain English, and try to unpack these issues in terms that are more accessible to non-experts. Can you put them on your website? Sure. That would be interesting to see what he said. It's a good point. This has been a summer of national security events. I'm a national security reporter. I was just in a Pentagon for the last briefing with Secretary Hagel and Chairman Dempsey, and every other reporter there is glassy eyes. This is not a restful summer in our field. It just seems like the world won't quit. The news won't quit. At the same time, it's still the era that we've heard of, you know, a few years ago we said a few and few members of Congress has even had passports, or we just came out, you could say the last few years we came through a period where all of the national security leaders could not convince the political leaders of Congress about why we should not have sequestration on defense, right? You had the Haskins House Chairman, not Democratic and Republican yelling at each other, but yelling up to the leadership, to McConnell, to Pelosi, to Lee, to Boehner, and it didn't make a difference. Even in the Pentagon put out sheets saying, we're gonna lose, we're gonna have to cut one of the nuclear triad, cut the ICBMs, something that drastic, doesn't make a difference. What could change that? You know, I think there are a couple of things that could change it. One would be very unfortunate, and that's a terrible, terrible crisis or loss of life. Another, a desert one sort of scenario, that sort of very visible failure, loss of life, and people kind of wake up and say, wait a minute, last time I checked, the US military was magic. We were killing bin Laden, and we were projecting force here and there and everywhere, and we did it perfectly and flawlessly, and they're perfect, but not really understanding that this is something that takes caring, feeding, and investment. So that's my worry, is that we'll wake up one morning to a really horrible headline, because of the failure to sustain and invest properly. The second possibility is we do actually do the hard work of engagement and education to really get people more smarter on these issues and understanding what it really means and what the implications are. We have an effort as CNAS along these lines to use the next two years to sort of hand tool the recreation of a critical mass of people who actually understand what's at stake on defense and national security and reform the basis of a new caucus, because the old caucus is gone. And you're gonna expand that at discussion beyond the national security community public? We have to. I think to go back to your summer of crisis here, I mean, I honestly think that that's having an effect across the nation. And I talked to a number of folks in different parts of the country who normally are not engaged in national security matters who all of a sudden, they're tuned in. And they realize that this world is much more dangerous than they anticipated. And so what are we doing about it? And they're asking that question now. And so those such as yourselves, probably those in the room, can keep that dialogue, that debate going to raise the critical issues in terms of our security. That's good for my business, that defense won at least a lot of the time. Sure. The sentiment here in the blue suit back. The blue shirt inside his hand up. Thank you very much. Khan with the Hong Kong Phoenix TV. So talking about prioritizing the US is really stressed on rebalance to the Asia Pacific. And however, lately with what's going on in Iraq and Ukraine, some Pentagon officials that I interviewed that indicates that it lost in some momentum. Also facing severe budgetary issues. So I wonder from a budgetary perspective, how do you view the strategy to rebalance to the Asia Pacific? And also is Congress is on the same page with the Pentagon and the administration on the strategy and be willing to make that investment to provide enough source to rebalance to the Asian Pacific. Thank you. I was very involved in the rebalance effort. And so I tracked it pretty, pretty closely. And I actually think that while it is under strain because of the budget constraints, it is there's a lot of effort being made to keep it on track. The rebalancing more towards Asia is, it's first of all, it's a relative term. It doesn't mean that we're turning our back on every other part of the world. We can't do that. But this is a long-term effort. It involves shifting more of our force structure. It involves reinvesting in partner relationships, alliances, basing in infrastructure. It is building certain capabilities for the future. And when I look at the defense budget and what's really actually being protected, they're fighting very hard to protect the key moving parts of that and keep that on track. I think if you got back to prolonged sequestrations, some of that would be more at risk than we'd want it to be. I think where you see, you know, I would say where you see competition is in the near-term sort of focus and bandwidth. You know, when you have a crisis like what's happening with ISIS in the Middle East, of course, a lot of senior level of attention and some resources are gonna be refocused there. But in my view, that doesn't derail in any way. The long-term shift towards Asia because economically, strategically, security-wise, it is the will in the long-term be the region that most affects American interests. So we can call within that subject, what were the separation points if any, between QDR and the NDP on pivot or on Asia focus? I think we recognize in both cases the long-term importance of the Pacific region to us. And so it gets back to long-term, short-term emphasis in how you allocate resources with a lot of things that you have to accomplish. As a panel, we clearly recognize the importance of the Pacific, both today, but the increasing importance for the future and accepted with the National Intelligence Council informed us and it's reflected in the report that the center of gravity in terms of economics, military spending in the future is going to be in that region and that we are a Pacific nation and we have got to be represented and engage with friends and allies in the Pacific region. So I think as a long-term interest, it's there. And I'd say probably the QDR and the panel we're very close to each other on that. Good follow-up, sure. So, yes, I understand it's a long-term strategy. Also, it doesn't mean to turn your back on Middle East or Ukraine, but the question is with the sequestrations and cuts, do you have enough resources to do that? I think under sequestration, you would see us, I mean, I think you would see some additional slowing down some undercutting of the plans for rebounds under sequestration. I think that's one of the arguments for why we need to address the budget constraints because that's not in our interest. And I also think it will come back to prioritization and I think that a part of the prioritization will be the kinds of resources that we would be using in the Pacific Theater that we would invest in for the future. And I think that that's a recommendation that both the QDR and the NDP supported. So even if you're in a prioritization effort, there's going to be additional, or a prioritization of resources in that direction. It's done in the center aisle at the center, also. Right, on the side. My colleague to the right has allowed me to take the question, Peter Michael Nielsen from the Danish Embassy. Two issues has figured very much in your report and also in this discussion, and that is the threat, what it means in terms of the foresizing construct and the budget constraints as we've just talked about. Could you maybe say a little bit more about the critical issue both in the QDR and in your parents' report on the foresizing construct. You say, well, the QDR is basically a two-wall type scenario or construct plus CT operations and you say it needs to be more. So is it a three-wall type scenario or what is it actually that you are advocating? That's one question. The other is in terms of budgets, actually I think you are pretty specific in the report saying, well, we need at least to go back to the Gates proposal. So raise spending and that's then the question, does it mean go back to the Gates proposal, meaning raising spending to 500, 50 million US dollars or billion US dollars per year or actually going to the 2015 projected level of that time, 600, meaning either a 10% increase or a 20% increase to the current level. Thank you. So on the foresizing construct, I think the construct is at one war, two wars through. I mean, I sort of feel like that has outlived its utility. What we tried to do is come up with a construct that more accurately describes what we need the force to do. And what we need the force to be able to do is that even when we are engaged fully in one area in a complex set of combat operations, we still need to be able to deter in multiple regions where we have interest. If we were fully engaged in the Middle East, we still have to have a robust enough force to deter aggression from North Korea or aggression in one of the South China Sea, to deter on NATO's borders in Europe. And also there are certain ongoing operations like global counterterrorism operations to disrupt threats to homeland security. So there's certain things that we need to be able to do simultaneously and that's what we tried to describe in the report. And that would require a more robust and agile force than what's currently being planned, certainly under sequestration, but arguably even under the QDR. Now, in terms of what budget does that require? I mean, I think we used the Gates budget as a marker for when the panel felt that the last time that the budget process was really strategy driven and not artificially constrained by the Budget Control Act and the sequestration, all that. The truth is what we really ask for is if we agree on this more realistic force sizing construct, we'd like to see the department be tasked to say, no kidding, what would it involve to support that? What would you need to support that and to derive based on that analysis what the appropriate budget levels would be? But we're pretty confident they'd be higher than, certainly higher than what's coming under sequestration and probably higher than what's currently been authorized. You're going to add a little push-touch at all? No, I think that's it exactly. And the Gates budget was a baseline to operate from, but we also recommended, as Michelle said, if you accept this force sizing construct, it takes us away from the twos. One of something and one of something else and then you change the wording. Okay, well that's not really what it is out there. So we've got to be able to do multiple things in multiple regions simultaneously. And that's what we tried to describe. And the irony here that I actually think most Americans appreciate this, I hope they do, the more robust and agile the force you have, the less likely you're going to have to use it. I mean, the focus has to be on deterrence and reassurance. And if you have to, yes, you've got to be able to forward or defeat that aggression. But it's when the force loses that robustness and agility and readiness that you get into trouble in terms of not being confident in being able to deter and not having your allies confident. You can't provide the range of options to decision makers. I could go into deterrence for a while. I'll go to a question we have from the audience because this is from the services and it plays what you're saying on a practical level. So I'll read, there's a fundamental supply-demand problem between combatant commander's demands for steady state requirements and the services ability to provide forces while maintaining readiness, let alone increasing it. The effect is decreased readiness and the inability to fight tonight. So is this risk acceptable? And what's the best way forward? Particularly for the services to feed into that. That's from Charlotte Long Air Force, who says she's in A9 studies and analysis assessments. Maybe you'll hire her one day, if you don't know her already. Well, thanks for the question. Again, this is just like the Pentagon has never seen a budget that's big enough. COCOMs never get forces allocated that are big enough to satiate their demand. And so that's why there's a very robust process inside the Pentagon to look at those competing demands and try to rack them stack and stack them according to strategic priorities. And having been a participant in that deployment orders process and the allocation of forces and all that, it actually, you know, those discussions really do go back to the strategy, go back to relative priorities and make choices about who's gonna get how much and who's gonna be left wanting. But I think that pressure that she's describing the trade-offs between satiating insatiable near-term demand and trying to continue to train and equip and keep ready the forces for larger demands, that is something that is made far worse when you have across-the-board cuts that dig deeply into your operations and maintenance accounts. Well, you just, you have even less to go around and those trade-offs become even more extreme. I think there's a very important operational piece to that question. Michelle has described a detailed process that goes into how we allocate resources. But operationally, the world has changed a great deal and that many of the crises that we're going to face and the responses that we have to provide are gonna come on shorter and shorter notes. And so the issue of readiness or fight tonight, as I think was mentioned in there, is very important. That we have forces that are trained, ready, and they're focused regionally to operate wherever they need to with the right kinds of knowledge and cultural understanding and background, kind of to your point earlier, that they have that. And that they've, we also have done the planning. We know how they're gonna operate and we don't put them in a harm's way without the right kinds of resources, capabilities, and readiness that will ensure their success. You were at DIA, is this less of a concern for intelligence when people think more conventional forces? I think it's more of a concern for intelligence because you've gotta be able to provide strategic warning. You gotta see things happening before they occur. And more importantly, you gotta get somebody to listen to you, that something's going on out there and that we need to do something now to prepare for it in case it happens. And so I think it puts a greater burden on the intelligence community to really see and understand so that decisions can be made in the right time frame and forces prepared in order to respond. I haven't heard. Wait for the microphone. Cheryl Garner, retired Lieutenant Colonel from the Air Force. Just to follow up on your force structure question, you also had from a colleague from the Air Force. While I was at joint forces command, I worked global force management. And so I have a little bit of insight on some of the things about demand from the COCOM. The question I have is that of all of the requirements that I saw coming in from the COCOM, most of them were for non-doctrinal units. So you had what we called joint sourcing solutions. They didn't exist doctrinally. And, excuse me, to go ahead and to source those, we typically had to pull from like VCTs and break them. So there seemed to be this disconnect between what the services could provide to a combatant commander currently engaged in operations. Has there been any discussion on how to get that sweet spot, if you will, between conventional forces for a conventional war and things that might be coined or a little bit more non-traditional? Yeah, I mean, I do think that if over time you're repeatedly having to break your doctrinal formations in order to source the actual real world need, that might be a indicator that you wanna have a conversation about how you're actually organizing yourself and how you're preparing what kind of units you're preparing to deploy and so forth. I think that that's something that, I think over the course of Afghanistan in particular, we got a lot better at. But here, just to hats off the Air Force. I mean, one of the things that the Air Force has probably done better than most is look at more integrated approaches where you're deploying integrated units of active guard and reserve together and figuring out what is actually being asked for. And let's try to organize and train that way in the first place so that it's easier when it comes time to activate and deploy people. I think this would be a really good thing to reflect on the last several years. What insights do we gain from that disconnect and does it suggest that we might wanna think about some different ways of organizing ourselves for the future? And I think the services are doing a lot of work internally from the lessons that they've learned over the course of the last decade of what kinds of capabilities for what purpose are needed and then how do you really focus them in advance and prepare them in advance so you aren't trying to put things together to meet a need that you didn't see coming before. And that also takes a lot of work between the combatant commanders and the service chiefs for the combatant commanders to see the kinds of things that they're gonna need in order to accomplish tasks within their theater and make that known in advance so the services have the ability to put those things together. But I know there's a lot of work that the services are already doing on that. Well, how far down the chain does the QDR go into what you're describing? Is it far enough or should there be more discussion in it to this kind of new flexibility that's required of the force structure? I think it's a byproduct of the preparation for the QDR. So the QDR, while you have a document that came out, deep in every one of the services were a lot of analytics and a lot of work that looked at what the future needs and requirements were gonna be. And therefore, and the very detailed analysis by the services of what they needed to provide to the joint force. And so it goes down pretty deep into the services, service structures in terms of how they're thinking about the futures. And I just give you an example because there was a piece in the paper this last week about the Army's recent studies in Unified Quest about mega cities, okay? And how do you operate in the kinds of mega cities that we're gonna see in the future, in the littoral? And what does that mean in terms of how you want to organize, train, and equip forces to operate in that kind of an environment? And what kind of joint support is required in order to be successful? What are the demands? So looking into the future and then trying to discern where we ought to be going on those things. And they're working hard at it. Yeah, I must say, this is where I think that the current DOD culture and sort of bureaucratic way of doing business is not particularly conducive to innovation of any kind particularly whether it's doctrinal innovation or operational concept innovation. I mean the QDR, I can't remember, it's like 47 times. 33. 33, you said, no, it's the same, sorry. They use the term innovation a lot. This is a watchword in the QDR. And yet when you actually look at is that happening? There's so many obstacles. And most of the places where it does happen, they tend to be removed from and protected from the culture. Parts of DARPA where you lock people in a room and you say, okay, you got today's stuff. You got this problem. You have to do something totally different to be successful. Go figure it out and be protected from. You're allowed to break doctrine. You're allowed to do all kinds of crazy stuff and come up with some new solutions. But when you try, if you go down to a place like, not to pick on the army, the trade-off, or the other comparable places in the services, is there real experimentation that's where people are allowed to fail fast and learn from the experience happening? Is there real competitive development of ideas and concepts happening? Is there real innovation happening? I mean, I think this is an area where the military can learn a lot from the commercial sector about how do you really set conditions to get innovation? And frankly, there's also plenty of lessons in military history about when does innovation happen and why. But this is an area where we are really not where we need to be, particularly in trying to do better in a more challenging future with some degree of resource constraint. What's the answer there? I mean, you say innovation, I think there's a spectrum from, you know, all the history of battlefield and innovation has happened. But then having to have a military, that's pretty state and pretty... For the priority challenges you think you face, I think it's actually setting aside and protecting some folks who don't have to worry about building the seventh palm, who can really be focused on how to deal with that future challenge and to improve the chances of that brilliant new insider idea traversing what we call the valley of death between that innovative idea and getting into a service palm and surviving there. You know, so I think there's a lot of work to be done to figure that out. And this is a really important point though and it's recognized. Secretary talked about it in his letter in the introduction to the QDR. It's mentioned 33 times in the QDR and we only know that because we went back to talk specifically, what is innovation, okay? And what does it mean and how is it being applied in the department? The chairman talked about innovation being a key to be able to execute what's in the QDR, okay? It's something that is really important and we've got to think differently about how we operate and it's a pretty broad expanse of capability that not only... Not just in terms of how we think about things but what our doctrine looks like, what our training looks like, how we do mission command, how people operate, what they're free to do and achieve, it's a very, very important thing, I think for the department right now but it's also hard to put your finger on, okay? And it's hard to say, well, how am I gonna resource innovation or who's in charge of innovation or how do I make sure that those good ideas survive, okay? And they get up and they have a life and they grow and they can actually come to fruition so that we're not learning when we're engaged, okay? We need to learn before we get to that point. With these documents I meant to... You got rewarded or... Incentivized and that's really important. In fact, there's a piece that was recently done in the acquisition arena. I think the Defense Business Board submitted and it all had to do with acquisition and innovation and how can we go to the commercials sector and one of their points that was really telling in there was does the department incentivize innovation and the answer was no, okay? It doesn't. And so their recommendation and the directions that I think the leadership and the department is trying to go and take that is to incentivize innovation, to change the culture, okay? To enable this to really contribute in a much more positive way. Quickly on this, so these documents are meant to inform Congress. So what does Congress, what can they do or what should they not be doing to get out of the way when it comes to creating this culture or letting duty need what it needs to do. What does it not really have for Congress? This is really an internal duty. It could be both as they do the analysis of it if it's internal policy, there's a lot that the department can do on its own. In a lot of case, the regulations are our own that do this to us. So unless it's legislated, it's something that the department can do on its own, I think in many cases. I'm Patrick Garvey, currently unaffiliated. You spoke a little bit about, lady over here spoke about the mood of the nation and the understanding of the general populace and of this problem. And Michelle, you talked about the Congress is taking responsibility past the BCA. What's your sense of the guy who signed the BCA in the law and whether he thinks there's a crisis and those closely around him advising the president whether they think there's a crisis in readiness or any of the other issues laid out in the QDR? I do think the president and the administration do not want to see us continue under sequestration. I think that every last couple of years they've proposed increases to the defense budget to try to offset some of the cuts that have been taken. But I think the real answer here is a comprehensive budget deal that puts tax reform, entitlement reform and critical investments for the future on the table. Everybody knows that, that is what's needed. The problem of what the approach we're trying to take is to solve that problem on the back of the budget of which the defense department is 50% of the discretionary budget. You cannot get there from here and you can do a lot of damage in the process of trying. So what we really need is that big budget deal. And if that's not possible in the near term what we argue in the reporters are a lot of small steps you can take to, you can go for mini deals, you can have a readiness supplemental, you can do some things to protect the critical seed corn investment for the future and so on. But that's really what is needed and it's not just an economic issue anymore, it is now becoming a national security issue. And it affects how we are viewed in the world. It affects the options that the president has at his disposal to exercise American leadership. So I actually think there's a strong appreciation for that in the White House. What I think what we need is a situation where the voters send the message to Congress we don't want to send you to Washington protest government anymore. We want to send you to Washington to actually make government work for the American people. Compromise is not a dirty word. Compromise is the tried and true thing that makes divided government that we've had since the beginning work. So let's get on with making government work and that's until the voters send that message I don't think we're gonna get a different answer. But the really important election right now is the congressional election. Putting people in office who aren't in DC to malign and protest government but who actually want to make government work for the people. And the end of speech, I'm sorry. No it's a good thing, let's take this for a second because this goes to the realities versus the wish, the climate that all of this has to happen or for any of these goals that you want to happen. So this is a midterm that's projected to be one of the least participated in U.S. history. This is not, no one of these things that November's gonna come and there's any message from the public other than we don't care. Well I think a lot of people are so disillusioned that they say why bother? So then isn't it coming on the administration to be the driver of it's not gonna come from the Congress because there's no just from the people behind them. I think it's a shared responsibility. I mean I think we've all, you know, rather than fall into a position of apathy to try to sort of get people to, you know, to participate and make a difference. I think a lot of the change that will eventually happen is gonna happen from the bottom up. You see a lot of interesting experimentation happening at the state level, changes to the primary system, changes to district, how we redistrict changes to, you know, how race is around. I think there's some of the greatest potential different ways of doing business that would improve things or being experimented with at the state level. So since we're talking about public involvement I love this question and I love when I get these what it says for either of you as a freshman at the School of International Service at American University, what's your advice for getting into a career involving U.S. foreign policy and national security? I think, you know, if you have the passion for public service, follow it. We need more Americans to serve. And there is no more satisfying career that you can choose to find some way to serve. And I think the advice I always give folks early in their careers is choose the boss, not the job. Find those wonderful mentors. Find those people you're gonna learn from who are gonna promote you and give you opportunities to grow and take on more responsibility. And that's gonna matter a lot more than any job description that's on piece of paper. Study hard, do well. And the other thing I think is really important because I've seen a lot of folks who really have a passion to serve the nation and to be involved. And if they truly have the passion they'll find the opportunity. And that opportunity may be in the summertime sometime doing an internship, talking, seeking people out talking to them, finding ways to become involved. And if they do that, they will find what really gives them the passion to serve and an ability to contribute. And I think it's wonderful. We have great young Americans who are willing to do that, who wanna serve and who wanna make a difference for our country. We've got maybe five, 10 minutes more questions just to let the audience know. I'm gonna read one more we got also here because it's from a service member, Bernie Kavanaugh from the US Air Force. I love, we always get Air Force people when it comes to these adoption events and every Marines, that's just a thing. The question is as we look at forces further out into the future, 20 plus years, it becomes increasingly difficult to understand the risk that we are taking on now. So how do we assure that we don't focus on the near term risk just because it's easier? And I think when you answer that question, think about this summer and what was going on as you were having your meetings on the NDP or a year ago when the QDR was being done and how quickly things changed. When you look at just in the last year, ISIS has emerged as a much more present and in front of us, substantial threat. Russia, Ukraine has occurred. Calling into question a lot of our assumptions about Russia and the European security environment. There's a lot that continues to unfold. As I look at those, the trends, where things are going, I actually think the security environment is going to get more challenging. Our potential future competitors, adversaries are going to become more sophisticated and more advanced and what it takes to maintain the military superiority to deter, to reassure, to keep stability, to keep the peace, to protect our interests and our allies is the barge going up, not down. And so to the question, it's absolutely right. The even more daunting challenges lie in the future and we've got to be, we can't short change the investment in the capabilities that are going to position us for that future and put everything into current crises, which again speaks to raising the budget threshold. We've got to be able to fund R&D, fund some of the critical future capabilities or else we're going to be in a world of hurt 10, 20 years from now. When it comes, I mean, the question kind of speaks to readiness and flexibility, right? What forces do we want to have right now versus what we might need in the mid or long term future? Which forces are the ones that are easier to plus up when you need to? Or the ones that you really can't, you've got to keep something going now, whether you want them or not, if you think you're ever going to need them, you've got to keep a higher level. Well, I think there's a little bit different approach and you know, first of all, back to the question is that, you know, looking at future trends and trying to predict the world 20 years out, we look into the crystal ball and we can do the best we can to take most informed advice of what the world's going to look like. But I'll tell you that there'll be something that's going to happen tomorrow that's going to change the course of events in the world or there'll be new technology that's going to come in that's going to change how we think about things or will enable somebody or us in a very, very different way. So it's going to be a constantly changing process. And so yeah, we've got to be looking out there to the future, but we also have to realize that there's a lot of change that's going on. And so with the current force, we can't be developing a force that has technology that's looking backwards. We need to be developing a force that has the best we can possibly give them. And that means looking at technology as it's developed, figuring out what is ready, what can be introduced and how can that be introduced incrementally into the force to make sure that they've got the best capabilities that we can possibly give them so they can be successful in their mission. So I think it's a continuous process that we have to engage in. We have to look, I think, at these trends, the global trends that we looked at, though, and I mentioned earlier, because it's where, how we see the world changing. But there are some wildcards out there, some things that could happen, that could, in a very large way, change the direction of the world or change the direction of how we think about our own security. You witnessed a little evidence of that this summer. But there are more of those that are gonna be playing along the way. So going back to the question before this, having security professionals that are constantly engaged is critically important to us. But preparing the force and continuing to update the capabilities and bring the latest knowledge, capabilities and technologies that are available that will enable them into the force, I think, is critically important to us. A little next question. As you were talking, I'm thinking, what was 20 years ago in 1994? Was it before the date and accord to you? I mean, that was a completely different place. So one more, who wants it? Just to see, I think you had to pay it for a while. Aleutian, you are. And I just left the Senate Armed Forces Committee staff where I was there for 11 years. So this question might be a little bit. Well, explain yourself. Yeah, it might be a little bit loaded. And matter of fact, that was the BRAC expert. So I can provide you a lot more detail on BRAC if you wanna know why we haven't taken the administration's request so far. My question has to do with the idea of, I'll use the term MCO, MRCs, but we've been concerned on our committee for a long time that once you come off a two MCO scenario, you create an unbelievable magnitude of risk. Because once a commander in chief commits to an MCO in one theater, you have all the adversaries from around the world saying, hey, there might be an opportunity to explore what does it mean by deterrence? What does it mean by hold? What does it mean by, we're gonna kind of try to neutralize. So it particularly manifests itself in how a commander goes about trying to do some planning. And as you know, there are major road plans and there's TCP theater cooperation plans. And but for the off plans, it's tough to write an off plan for a hold. It's tough to write an off plan for a deter. It's tough to write an off plan for anything other than a defeat. So we've been asking the command commanders now for two years, hey, how are you addressing the defense guy in 2012 is trying to defeat in one scenario. If you're the second command commander, how do you plan for having to not have the resources available to you? And we haven't been able to get a good answers. So I was kind of hoping when I read through the panel review, particularly led by former St. Com commander, and then you were all talking about how to address MCOs and taking a little bit of an approach the administration has, there might be a critical assessment of what actually the stress we're putting on a command commander by asking to try to do planning for less than a defeat. Without knowing he's gonna have the resources to defeat and more importantly, what kind of risks that are due to him be able to carry anything out less than a defeat plan. So I was wondering if you all had any discussions on that or deliberations on that and you're preparing the report. Yeah, I do think that in coming up with the foresizing construct, we came up with the idea is to be able to deter and thwart aggression or stop aggression in multiple theaters. The thing that I would say to you is when the original two-war construct was developed, the major theater wars or major regional conflicts, whatever we want to call them, they looked rather similar. It was an Iraq scenario, a North Korea, large complex land campaigns supported by air and naval elements, blah, blah. When you look around the world today, the scenarios, what is an MCO in the East China Sea or the South China Sea look like? Very different. What does a major situation in the Middle East look like that may not involve regime change but may involve very much rolling back aggression and ensuring that it can happen again? I mean, so I think we shouldn't let our, there's no one-size-fits-all and you really do have to look at the very specific kinds of scenarios that we're looking at in all of their variety and I think the planning guidance rightly does ask COCOMs to consider what if you're first versus what if you're second or third or fourth and it is obviously harder if you're not the first one to get fully resourced. But I think what our report was trying to say is we live in a world where we're gonna be dealing with multiple simultaneous crises, some of which may become conflicts and we better have a force that's robust enough and agile enough and ready enough to deal with that. And we're not on that path right now. Final thoughts? We do make the comment that in the four-sizing construct that we suggest that we don't believe this should be less strong than the two MCO approach, although it's different and it's different because we don't want a potential adversary to take advantage of our commitment in one theater to do something in another and it's not just in one other, it's in multiple others that that could happen. Our other recommendation of course is once again, joint wargaming and analysis that will look at this four-sizing construct and will give us the kind of the level of detail in terms of what kinds of capabilities and capacity we require in order to do that and that's one of our recommendations as well. Well, I think we'll call it there and thank the panelists for their good work and not just these two but the entire team and for the time today on the insights. You know, I think the takeaway is that there is a lot of unity in town between all the voices in the national security community of a need to do a lot more on matching, getting, solving the budget crisis for one, for the defense community as they see it, getting the priorities in order for this crazy world that we're living in now that just seems to be getting crazier by the weekend, at least for defense reporters like myself and finding a way forward with a lot of hope from at least your perspective that the American people are gonna start to pay attention to a lot more than they have whether they like it or not. So I guess we'll see and thanks to USIP for hosting us today as well and for all of you for coming. Thank you.