 Okay, folks. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. Thank you. Thank you for coming today. I'll tell you in a minute why I'm so happy we have a chance to do this. But before we do, we always begin public events with a little safety announcement. I'm your responsible safety officer. I'm in charge today of making sure you're all going to be fine. If we have any problems, I'll ask you to follow my direction. If we have to leave this room, we're going to go out right through this door. The staircase goes right out down to the alley. If we've got a problem in the front, we're going to head to the back. We'll meet across the street in the courtyard of the National Geographic. If the problem is back there, we're going to go across the street. We'll meet out under those beautiful trees and I'll see if I can rustle up some ice cream or something. We'll take care of everybody and I want to do a head count. But please follow me if we do have to do anything. Delighted to have all of you here today and I'm very pleased that we can focus today on what I consider to be a badly neglected dimension of our military establishment and that's our reserve components. The Defense Department is unique in many ways but one of the most important ways in which it's unique is that it has a capacity fundamentally to be different tomorrow than today. It can mobilize. There's no other institution in the government. It really has that capacity. When we have the 4th of July and we've got huge crowds in Washington, the police department, everybody works overtime. We borrow some cops. We bring them in. We do what it takes to cover that day but we don't mobilize because we just buy enough policemen and firemen to do the job for the day, the daily average day. But the Defense Department is different. We have a capacity to fundamentally transform tomorrow to be fundamentally different and mobilize ourselves and of course the foundation for that is our reserve component. We don't really understand and appreciate how important dimension that is in our public policy. So we wanted to spend some time focusing on the role of reserves. I'd also say I think we've got some deep reflection that we ought to start now on how are we using reserves if we're going to spend all of our time hiring contractors to do things in the battlefield? Why do we have reserves? I mean we have a full discipline of capability and yet we go out and hire contractors to do it. Now I depend on contractors to support CSIS so I have to be a little careful here but we just have to have a balanced approach. We have a reserve establishment that we're not using very intelligently. So the purpose of this is to start a public debate about the role that the reserve components, especially the Army Reserve today, what they do for us, how they function, how do we understand their contributions, their unique contributions and roles. I think a debate we need to have as we're getting forward, we're looking downstream, we're going to have to be smarter on how we use the resources that were given by the taxpayer. I'm very, very fortunate, we're very fortunate I should say that Chairman Heck can be with us today. We were just talking briefly not so many members of Congress are willing to devote their time on public policy issues like this. Their days are so overwrought up on Capitol Hill and then they got to go home and so very little, very rarely do we have opportunities to hear them in the public space like this. So I'm very grateful, sir, that you'd take the time. I did, I would note he's a chronic underachiever in life. I mean being a doctor, a chairman of a committee, you know, successful businessman and a Brigadier General in the Army Reserve. I mean just think about that. That kind of embodies, doesn't it, the what we seek in leadership and what America has always been fortunate to have. That we've been able to have people that will willing to take that extra dimension and bring it to public service. And we've seen that consistently with Chairman Heck. So I, we're grateful, sir, that you would launch us today. We know it's going to be a very good day. We look forward to hearing you. Would you please with your warm applause welcome Chairman Heck for kicking off our show. Well good morning General Talley, distinguished General Officers, friends of CSIS. Thanks for the opportunity for me to come today and talk about the Army Reserve from a congressional perspective. So that's my initial disclaimer is that everything that I say today in no way reflects on the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, the Army Reserve or anything that has to do with anybody in uniform. Even though I serve in the Army Reserve, my perspective today is going to be one from a chairman of the military personnel subcommittee in my job in the halls of Congress. Also before I begin I want to ask is Captain Tackett here. Hi Captain Tackett, how are you? It's nice to meet you. So Captain Tackett is the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel retired Maria Tackett, who was my chief nurse when I was deployed to Iraq and ran the emergency services section of the combat support hospital there. So I heard you were going to be in the audience. Say hi to your mom for me. Thank you. So I'm going to talk a little bit about, you know, and hopefully won't be too repetitive or maybe it would be better if we were repetitive. If I start off talking about the Army Reserve and then when General Talley finishes up, reiterates the message that I'm trying to leave about the history of, you know, what is the Army Reserve? How did we get to where we are today? And what are some of the challenges that we face not just specifically as a reserve, but those challenges that flow down from the DOD-wide enterprise, specifically as they impact on the Army Reserve. So I think it's really interesting, gratifying for me as a physician that, you know, the Army Reserve really started in 1908 as a reserve medical corps. That was the predecessor to today's Army Reserve, where there was a need to have physicians ready to serve in the military. And so a reserve medical corps was put into place on April 23rd, 1908. After the First World War, Congress decided that they would reorganize the U.S. land forces into an active component called the Regular Army at the National Guard and the Organized Reserve Corps. And that included both an officer corps and an enlisted corps, which became the forerunner of today's Army Reserve. And the organization, as it was envisioned, was to be a strategic reserve, a manpower pool of ready-and-trained individuals to be mobilized at a moment's notice to go off and fight the nation's wars. And over the last century, that's how the Army Reserve had been utilized as a strategic reserve. From World War II all the way through the first Desert Storm, we were a strategic reserve, the one weekend a month, two weeks a year, doing our training and ready to go under a presidential call-up or a selective mobilization. But I think if we look at what's happened to the reserve since 9-11, we have certainly seen that transition to what we used to call a strategic reserve to what's now become an operational reserve. No longer is it one weekend a month and two weeks a year. No longer is it maybe one deployment during an entire career in the Army Reserve. But we've seen an increased reliance on the utilization of the reserve components across the board, but specifically in the Army Reserve. When you think about it since 9-11, 326,120 Army Reserve soldiers have been deployed. So really the utilization of the Army Reserve on multiple deployments, individuals going one, two, three, four times, is a significant part of how the total Army now goes to war. So regardless of the role, whether it's a strategic force or an operational force, sir, here's the first plug, the Army is a life-saving, life-sustaining force for the nation, right? So issue for Congress now, and what we're dealing with in part on the Military Personnel Subcommittee, is how does Congress make sure that the Army Reserve stays that operational force? How do we make sure that we maintain the experience, the expertise that's been gained over the last 14 years of conflict? How do we recapitalize the force, plan for the future, and do this all in an environment of decreasing financial resources? And that's the challenge that we face within Congress, and specifically on the Military Personnel Subcommittee. Think about it, pre-9-11, DOD's budget was about $300 billion, representing about 16.7 percent of the total budget. Fast forward to FY16, we're going to be a little bit north, hopefully if nobody vetoes the bills that we're about to pass, $600 billion, but interestingly still representing only about 16 percent of the total budget. And if you look at it in an inflation adjusted dollars, we really have just remained stagnant with the amount of spending on defense in light of the increased op tempo over the last 14 years. We peaked out in FY10 at $721 billion, representing 21 percent of the total budget, and we've been on the decline ever since. And again, those decreasing fiscal resources, I believe, are going to present the biggest challenge, not just to DOD as an enterprise, but specifically to the Army Reserve. So what are the challenges that we face in trying to maintain the force, recapitalize the force, and plan for the future force? The first thing I think we have an issue with is strategy. We have moved from the strategy that has served us well over a century of being prepared to fight and win two major theater wars to the win and one and delay, defeat, delay, impose unacceptable or unreasonable losses and risks on an opportunistic enemy in another. So it's kind of no longer are we going to win two. We're kind of going to try to win one and a half. So we've got this changing strategy. And the issue about that strategy, and I think one of the biggest issues that we've been debating specifically in the Armed Services Committee, is how did we come up with that strategy? In the common context, we're supposed to come up with a strategy and have that strategy drive the budget. I think we kind of reversed that this time and that we had a budget that drove the strategy. And that concerns me, because having budget driving strategy, I think, is going to leave us in a weaker position across DOD, but specifically in the Army Reserve. So why do I think that? And I'll ask you to connect the dots. If you look at what happened over the course of time. So sequestration was implemented by the Budget Control Act of 2011, went into effect in August of 2011. And if you recall, sequestration, in combination with the $478 billion worth of cuts that DOD was already going to take, would lead to $1 trillion in cuts to Department of Defense over 10 years. $1 trillion in cuts to the Department of Defense over 10 years. So that was known in August of 2011 when the BCA was enacted. Then we had the 2012 defense strategic guidance. And that's where we saw the change from two major theater wars to one in one delay in another. Then we had the Secretary's strategic choices and management review, the skimmer. Interesting that the skimmer came out right before the QDR began. And some are concerned that with the skimmer and the Secretary's priorities being put out in the skimmer, that the QDR was not really a document that was free-flowing without outside influence exerted upon the final product. And then we had the QDR that came out in March 2014, which many would argue, both within the halls of Congress, across academia, and in a lot of the think tanks, would argue that it did not set a long-term course for the Department of Defense as it assesses the threats and challenges that the nation faces and rebalance DOD's strategies, capabilities, and forces to address today's conflicts and tomorrow's threats at a load of moderate risk, which is what the QDR is supposed to do, assess it at a load of moderate risk to make sure that the military could successfully execute its missions within the forecasted budget plan. Again, I believe that in this case, budget drove strategy. So these new strategic guidelines coupled with the end of combat operations in Iraq to draw down in Afghanistan will theoretically permit the military to downsize. And we've already seen the numbers. Almost 100,000 service members will be cut over the next five years if sequestration stays in place. The bulk of those reductions, 72,000, come from the Army. Now, the administration asserts that the reduction in capacity can be offset with increased capability. They contend that by investing in technology and advanced weapon systems and increasing special operation forces that we can mitigate the risk of decreasing that capacity to the point where we will meet our challenges with acceptable risk, however that is defined, acceptable risk. Now, I have consistently taken a position of opposition to the idea that we can do more with less. In the military, you can't do more with less. You do less with less. It's that simple. And for those that are proponents of technology and advanced weapon systems and thinking that that's going to give us that qualitative military edge. Now, perhaps I'm biased, but I spent my entire career in the personnel side of the house. All the whiz-bang gadgets, the best weapon system in the world, means absolutely nothing if you don't have somebody to acquire a sight picture and pull a trigger. So I don't believe that we are going to be able to offset decreasing capacity simply by increasing our capability. In addition, I think recent history tells us a different story. If you look at what's happened over the last 14 years, when you look at the force that we had, which was much bigger than what is pretended to be over the next five years should sequestration stay into place, the military didn't have neither the capacity nor the capability to actually simultaneously defeat the insurgency in Iraq and denying the objectives of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. So with a force much larger than what we're projected to have, we still weren't able to really execute that one-and-a-half war strategy, in my opinion. Now, the national military strategy will proactively assert that the U.S. military will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale counterinsurgency and stability operations. We all know that no plan survives first contact. The best laid plans and strategies are often overcome by events as we have seen throughout our nation's history when it comes to going to war. We're very good at fighting the last war. We're not very good at thinking forward about what the next counterinsurgency operation, the next contingency operation, or what the next war is going to be. We must ensure that America is prepared to meet the challenges and threats facing our nation with both capability and capacity to include the potential that we may once again find ourselves engaged in counterinsurgency and stability operations. It is unmistakable that this strategy, the one-and-a-half strategy, like all strategies, presents certain risks. So what are those risks and how are we going to mitigate them? That's the issue. And this is where I now transition into a little bit more about the role of the Army Reserve, because before the military personnel subcommittee and before the actual full armed services committee, the Chief of Staff, General Odierno, publicly acknowledged the challenge and testimony before the committee stating that in order to mitigate and reduce risks associated with drawing down the size of the U.S. Army, that, quote, we will continue to rely on the reserve components to provide key enablers in operational depth, end quote, end quote, that an operational reserve comprised of a discrete set of capabilities with an enhanced level of readiness will be essential, end quote. Further in an Associated Press interview, he stated that if necessary, the U.S. will rely on National Guard and reserve forces while the active component rebuilds its end strength if they need more bodies to go to war. So the Chief of Staff of the Army has said that the way that he plans to mitigate risk to the downsizing of the active force of roughly 72,000 troops is to increase his reliance on the Army Reserve. Great news for us, job security. But will we be ready when we get called to mitigate that risk? Why does the reserve make sense? Well, it's interesting. 20 percent of the Army's operating force sits in the Army Reserve at a cost of just shy of 6 percent of the Army's base budget. 20 percent of the force for 6 percent of the cost. For those in the private sector, that's a win-win all the way around. So a lot of bodies at lower cost. So we are highly cost effective and we run the gamut, I should say, wait, not we, the Army Reserve, make sure which hat I have on, the Army Reserve runs the gamut of military operation specifically in the enablers. Security cooperation, nation assistance, humanitarian and disaster release, stabilizing forces, legal and provincial reconstruction teams, theater opening, theater gateway, theater sustainment, all the major things that are necessary for the U.S. to go to war are located in the Army Reserve. And you think about how much of those things are located in the Army Reserve and why is the Army Reserve so important? Because just north of 50 percent of all of the Army's units in things like JAG, civil affairs, chaplain, PSI OPS, postal and personnel, quartermaster and medical are located in the Army Reserve. North of 50 percent of all of the Army's units in those areas are located in the Army Reserve. Now, if you add in our National Guard brethren, you will be north of 75 percent of all of those capabilities. And you would add in chemical, public affairs, transportation, engineers and military police. So quite simply, the United States is not going to war without the Army Reserve. Big Army cannot function without the Army Reserve. Why is the Army Reserve so cost effective? Because we leverage our civilian expertise, right, the citizen warrior, that person who for the most part is doing the same thing that they do in their civilian career when they put on the uniform and they come on to active duty. They are doing it all the time. Major General Ron Giusecchi, my commanding general, by the way. Again, a citizen warrior, an incredible executive in the health care system who is the commanding general of the medical deployment supporting command. So again, that expertise that we bring from the civilian community, you know, 75 percent of the doctorates and 50 percent of the master's degrees held by individuals in the Army are held by individuals in the Army Reserve. An incredible depth and breadth of expertise. We are present in our communities. 1,105 Army Reserve Centers, six Army installations, 56 training areas, 30 equipment concentration sites, 1,417 area support activities. We are gaining a bigger role in defense support to civil authorities, right, the immediate response authority given to reserve commanders to be able to respond in their local communities to mitigate loss of life and protect property. In the NDAA for fiscal year 12, more authority was given to allow a call-up for up to 120 days of reservists to serve on disk emissions. So we are increasing our awareness, our visibility, and our ability to serve even at home. I still believe there are five significant challenges that the Army Reserve will face in trying to maintain its status as an operational reserve, and the first is going to be funding. So over the last decade, the military has largely depended on overseas contingency operations funds, the OCO funds, to fully operationalize the Guard and Reserve forces, right? So base budgets, take care of the man-trip and man-training equip. OCO, to go to war money, significantly increased over the last 14 years because we were fighting in two different theaters. Well, that OCO money is starting to diminish and has been on the down slide every year, with the exception of this year, which is another story for another time and place of why it went up this year. But we've seen decreasing OCO monies over the last several years as we started to draw down. Now, the problem is the OCO money has been drawing down faster than big Army has been able to move capabilities into base budgets. And so we face a real risk of losing the expertise, the experience, the operational capability because we can no longer fund it, because it was reliant on overseas contingency operations monies. OCO funds have decreased approximately 60 percent from FY08 to FY15 from approximately $187 billion to $74 billion. Again, don't count this year, because it's an anomaly, it's a budget gimmick that we need to use for something else. So OCO funds simply cannot be counted on in the long term to finance the readiness of the Guard and Reserve. And this is on top of the decreases in DOD-based budgets in addition to that. So we would say that DOD has not fully funded the Reserve to the point where it needs to be funded, in my opinion, because they have in their grand scheme competing priorities. We've relied on OCO monies to provide that operational capability. So DOD-based budgets are going down, meaning that they're going to be less inclined to put more money into the Reserve. And OCO monies going away, meaning the funding source that has operationalized the Reserve is also going away. Further, we have seen attempts to decrease procurement funding for the National Guard and Reserve components through the equipment accounts. Because DOD was more focused and Department of Army more focused on making sure that active components were adequately staffed with their levels of equipment, Congress implemented a separate appropriations account just for Guard and Reserve equipment, the NAGREA account, the National Guard Reserve Equipment Account. And that's where Congress through the appropriations process has plused up monies for the National Guard and Reserve to go out and make sure that they have the equipment necessary to be a ready go-to-war force. The problem is we started to see folks wanting to cut that account as well. And like all appropriations accounts, it's subject to the whims of Congress. Again, not a tool that can be used for long-term planning in how we go forward in recapitalizing the Reserve force. As we've seen degradation in equipment because it's become outdated, we get the hand-me-downs from active army, no longer modernized, they've seen the wear and tear of going to war, units been directed to leave their equipment in theater when they redeploy. So we have significant equipment shortfalls that need to be recapitalized that will become increasingly difficult to do because of the cuts in DOD-based budgets and the attempts to cut the NAGREA budget. So as the services continue to make difficult resource choices, the risks to the Reserve component are significant. If the Reserve component is underfund, it continues to transfer outdated equipment from AC to RC. We label equipment on the active side that is obsolete, but when it comes to the Reserve side, it's all of a sudden called modernized. We will no longer be able to go to war and interact with our active duty brothers and sisters. So with all that, if the administration's risk mitigation strategy, as put forward by General Odierno, is to rely on the Guard and Reserve, and they're publicly stating that the maintenance of our operational reserve is essential to the new strategy, it would seem reasonable that they would not want to cut the equipment accounts by nearly half, especially with the impending reduction of OCO monies. So, challenge number one, financing to maintain an operational force. Challenge number two, clout. The Reserve is constantly fighting against not just the active duty, but the National Guard for its place at the table and for the resources that it needs. Why is that? In my opinion, as a member of Congress and seeing folks who come in to talk to us about their needs, there is no ownership of the Reserve units in somebody's community, but the National Guard, that's a State asset, right? National Guard seen as a State force, every member of Congress wants to own their unit in their community, that's a National Guard unit. There's this disconnect between National Guard in the community and Reserve components in the community. And so the National Guard quite honestly has a much better lobbying organization, and that's why they tend to come out a little bit better off, I believe, when it comes to funding and equipment. So the Reserve needs to change that dynamic. Now, you would think, as I listed off, the number of facilities, units, the presence that we have in local communities, why do we have that disconnect? Why is there that disconnect between the Guard and the Reserve? And of course, there's the competition now between the active component and the Army Reserve. Because as Optempo on the active side starts to come down, they're starting to try to grab some of the missions that have been historically done by the Reserve side, so that they can remain relevant and that they can show that they need the additional funding and the additional equipment. And so not only is the Reserve trying to keep its place at the table against the National Guard and try to gain more ownership by local communities and by members of Congress to look out for their best interest, but also against the active duty as they try to come in and take historical Reserve component missions away so that they can remain relevant and come back to the Pentagon and come back to Congress and say, no, no, we need that extra money because now we're doing Mission X, Y and Z, which we didn't do last time. But the reason why you're doing Mission X, Y and Z is because you took it away from the Reserve. So we have that issue with cloud, number two. Number three, again, ties in, I think cloud is public awareness, branding. The Army Reserve, I don't think we got a brand. Okay, National Guard, got a brand. Active duty, got a brand. Reserve, mobilized, goes out, does their job, comes home, just assimilates back into the community. There's just not that public awareness, I believe, for the Army Reserve as strong as there is for the active duty component and for the National Guard. So the Army Reserve has got to increase its brand awareness, which I think will help then increase its cloud when it comes to Congress. Fourth area is relevance, and to both internal and external audiences. Again, comes back to public awareness, comes back to trying to build cloud. We've got it, the Army Reserve has got to remain relevant to internal audiences, Congress, DOD, big Army, and to those external audiences, the communities in which the Army Reserve members live and serve. And the last thing is recruitment and retention. And this is the area that I obviously tend to concentrate on most, is my role as chairman of the Military Personnel Subcommittee. Look, we are at a time when graduating members of a high school class have the lowest propensity to want to go to serve in the military than any time in our nation's history. The propensity to want to serve in the military is at an all-time low. And then when you get those who decide that they want to serve, three out of four of them won't qualify to serve because they don't meet either medical or academic requirements. So we've already got a decreasing pool of individuals that are thinking about serving, and then you take that pool that want to serve and three out of four of them won't qualify. So recruitment and retention is going to become a major issue, especially for the Army Reserve. There's a lot of instability right now, a lot of confusion, a lot of questions about what's going to happen to the future of pay and benefits and allowances, especially as we have the Defense Authorization Act debates that are going on right now as we try to rectify the differences between the House Pass Bill and the Senate Pass Bill in light of the military retirement and compensation modernization report that recently came out. Our committee is trying to drive changes based on what is the best way to recruit and retain the best and the brightest to have a propensity and meet the standard. It's not driven by a budgetary goal. I refused to look at those provisions put out by the Commission solely based on whether or not it was going to be a cost savings. We looked at it and talked with all the veteran service organizations, the military service organizations, obviously the active duty force, the reserve components. What works here in the Commission's report that's going to help you get the people that you need to come in and stay in? And I believe that the House Pass Authorization Bill follows that path, making some changes to retirement, maintaining pay and benefits as currently structured, trying to make sure that we continue the specialty types of benefits that are out there for the reserves, tri-care reserve select for health insurance, the tri-care reserve dental plan, to try to make sure that our reserves have an ability to get health insurance and dental insurance and help maintain their medical readiness so that they are ready to go when called. Looking at some of the other things that have been put into place to try to increase reserve participation, independent duty training, travel allowances so that folks that live too far away from home have some reimbursement to be able to get to their unit for drill, lodging in kind and allow us to help folks actually pay for their hotel when they come on a B.A. week, battle assembly weekend, again when they have to travel away from home. All those are critical tools to the Army Reserve to make sure that the bodies that we do have want to stay. And as certain folks inside the Beltway looked for budgetary savings, those are some of the programs that are being looked at. It bothers me that although the current formula in law calls for a 2.3 percent pay increase for members of the military this year, the presidential budget in the Senate bill only calls for a 1.3 percent pay increase. That 1 percent really loss of pay will compound over time. It is not just 1 percent this year. That 1 percent compounds over the 20-year career of somebody who just came into the service, calls to decrease BAH, calls to cut out for dual military families, BAH for both members, increasing tri-care co-pays, maybe increasing the costs of groceries at commissaries. You add all those things on at one time. Not that these things should not be looked at. Perhaps there are cost savings to be had. But think about a married military couple, that they are looking at losing so 2 percent of their pay. They are looking at a 50 percent cut in their BAH, on top of that another 5 percent cut to the BAH. And then we are going to ask them to pay more for their tri-care prescriptions and for their groceries. Who in their right mind would want to stay in the service? So those are the issues that we are trying to deal with as we talk about recruitment and retention and trying to get that soldier for life. 72,000 troops coming out of the active force over the period of sequestration, we want to get a lot of those troops to come on into the Army Reserve. And then give that soldier the opportunity to move between different statuses. If at some point in their life they need to go into the IRR to do something else, go into the individual ready reserve. But with the goal of coming back as an active reserve soldier at some point in time, need to become an individual mobilization augmentee because it changes in your life situation. Go ahead and go and be an IMA with the goal of coming back to being a full-time TPU soldier. Congress has to be able to give that flexibility to the service to be able to move that soldier across the spectrum of service categories and possibilities to make sure that we actually do recruit and retain that soldier for life. So despite of all of these challenges, whether it's trying to figure out what the strategy is, whether it's trying to figure out how we're going to resource it, and whether it's how we're going to get the bodies that we need and keep the best and the brightest in the force, the men and women who serve in the Army Reserve will remain resolute, courageous, and adaptive just as they have since 1908. And with that, the Army Reserve will remain a life-saving, life-sustaining force for the nation. I appreciate the opportunity to address you this morning. And if we have time, I'd be happy to take some questions. So we have a few minutes. By the way, my name is Stephanie Sannick-Costrow. I'm a senior fellow here at CSI's in the International Security Program. And over the last few years, I've spent a lot of time looking at the National Guard and wondering why we weren't looking a little bit more closely at the Army Reserve as part of the total force. And so I'm glad that you are all here to join us today for this half-day event focused on the Army Reserve. I'm also an Army Reserve spouse, so I'm doubly grateful for your attention and your energy today. I did have a question for the congressman specifically about the commission that was stood up in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 15. And that recently started its work, and its report is due to Congress in February of next year. I'm very familiar with this because my boss, Kath Hicks here at CSI's, is a commissioner on that commission. But having been a congressional staffer myself, I always wonder about the legislative intent and what the expectations are from congressmembers about what they hope to get out of a commission. And so if I could ask you, sir, to talk a little bit, before we open the floor to audience questions, to talk a little bit about what you hope to see regarding the Army Reserve specifically in the report that comes out in February. Yeah. So hopefully it will address the questions that I raised today. That's the intent of the congressional mandate to have the commission stood up and the study done on the role of the reserve components. Again, obviously I might be a little bit biased, but I think that the reserve provides a significant value for the dollar to our nation. And in an area and an era of decreasing financial resources, we have to look at how we are, we being Congress, has to look at how we are going to leverage every available dollar to its best use to make sure that we can fulfill the executive branch's strategy with the least amount of risk. And I think that's going to show an increasing reliance on the reserve components. And we've heard the administration say that they're going to rely on the reserve to mitigate risk, yet there are still calls to decrease funding of the reserve components. And so hopefully this study in due in February of next year, and it will probably be split, jurisdiction will probably be split between the Readiness Subcommittee, which really is responsible for reserve integration and the Military Personnel Subcommittee, I am hopeful that it will bear out some of the outcomes that I talked about today and answer the questions that I raised about how do we actually leverage the armed reserve to its greatest capability to be that life-saving, life-sustaining force for the nation. And also I would suspect to reflect more accurately becoming an operational reserve, as opposed to a strategic reserve, and what that means practically as you look at regular Army reserve and the Guard. I'd like to open the floor to questions. The way we'd like to handle this here at CSIS is if you could stand, wait for a microphone, wait to be recognized, stand, get a microphone, and then if you could introduce yourself, your affiliation, and actually ask a question. We have no problem with people offering their opinions, but we would like a question mark at the end of the statement, and more than just raising your voice at the end. So anyone, questions for Chairman Heck? Here up front, please. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Bob Norton. I'm with the Military Officers Association of America. First, I want to thank you for your leadership in Milpers on behalf of military families, the troops, and the total force. Great, great continuing job. My question concerns really something you've already talked about, and that is retirement reform. I'm wondering if you could give us a little bit more context about the pluses and maybe even some of the uncertainties or the cons, if you will, about retirement reform, which will be coming out of the conference in the next couple of days. Yeah, sure. Yeah, thanks, Bob. Thanks for the question. Thanks for everything that Boa does. I mean, always has a presence at the Milpers Subcommittee making sure that they're looking out for their members and all members of the military and as a Moa member. I love when I get the Military Officer Magazine, and it always has the postcards in there that say send the postcard to your representative, and I send the postcard to myself. So the House tweaked the commission's recommendations in consultation with DOD, because the concern was if you changed the retirement compensation plan to a great degree, you would lose the retention tool that the retirement program is. But my approach and what we tried to drive through the subcommittee was that 83% of enlisted and 51% of officers leave the service before 20 years, so they leave with nothing. And you go back to the 14 years of war that we've just been through with reservists or active duty members serving two, three, four deployments to the point where they're broken, whether it's physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and they just say, you know, I came into the military thinking I was going to serve for 20, but after these last five deployments, I don't think I can do it anymore, and I'm getting out, and they leave with nothing. And I think that's unconscionable. And so the thought was, how do you give someone who has served honorably for a period of time, but not the full 20, something for their service to take with them? And that was, you know, for me, the motivating factor behind pushing the compensation reform where it goes to retirement. So what does the retirement system do? First, and I think this is critically important, it does absolutely nothing to anybody that's already in the service. It will only affect those individuals who assess the day after enactment. So anybody who's serving will not see any change. Now, those who are serving, if they decide they want to opt into the new system, they can. But anybody who's currently serving will see no change, and I think that's an important point that sometimes gets missed, and it's one of the reasons why there's so much angst amongst the current force, because they think we're going to change their retirement, you know, they're approaching their 16-year mark, and they think, oh, my God, what are they going to do to my retirement? So it doesn't affect anybody who's already in the service. And then it moves from the strictly defined benefit plan to a blended plan of defined contribution and defined benefit. So right now, the multiplier will decrease to 20 percent of base pay as opposed to 25 percent. And in exchange for that, there will be participation in the Thrift Savings Plan, the same Thrift Savings Plan that every Federal employee has the opportunity to participate in. It's not creating a new plan, the same one that military members can elect to participate in now through payroll deduction if they want, 1 percent automatic, and then the same matching that a Federal Government employee would get. You would have that out. We changed the Commission's recommendations to make sure that they were matching dollars all the way through service time, right? The Commission recommended that match stop at 20 years of service, realizing the issue of wanting to keep those service members who are at the 20-year mark, if they wanted to stay to 25 or 30, and being concerned about the changes in retirement being a disincentive. We made sure that the match would continue for the life of service. So whether you're in 20, 25, or 30, you would continue to get the match. You would be able to collect your defined benefit piece when you're retired after 20 years. But you would not be able to dip into the TSP piece until you hit the standard retirement age 59.5 before you can take TSP distributions. And the thought there was, again, and I know this is a subject of controversy, especially amongst a lot of the VSOs, but if somebody comes in at 18, 19, and they're out after 20 years at 38, 39, they are considered that working age retiree, and no one really expects that that individual is not going to have a second income and that they're going to rely on their defined benefit plan to take care of them until they hit 59.5. So you get the defined benefit contribution at that age, but when you actually need that additional money, when you're actually in retirement, you have the added TSP. In addition, there is the opportunity to have continuation pay. Again, realizing that we need to do something to shape the force and to keep those in service that we need to keep in service. And so that allows for one-time lump sum payments with a lot of flexibility given to the Department on what MOSs or AOCs would be eligible, how much that would be, and at what year of service that would be offered based on the needs of the service. And that could be anywhere from 2 to 10 times monthly-based pay as a one lump sum payment. Now, in fairness and all disclosure, when you compare the lifetime benefits via the current defined benefit plan versus the blended plan, the numbers in the blended plan count on that lump sum payment being invested in the TSP. So that was glossed over, I think, in the Commission's reports. But if you really want to do an apples-to-apples comparison about the full benefit value of the current plan versus the blended plan, the blended plan counts on that lump sum payment being put into the TSP when it's given and not spent on a Harley. So that, I think, is one of the potential cons, is that there is a lot of financial literacy training that's going to be implemented in conjunction with this change to the retirement plan, mandated financial literacy training on ascension, on reporting to First Duty Station, on PCS moves, on major life changes like getting married, having a child, because we want to make sure that the troops truly understand what their options are and what the impacts of their decisions will be, which is very hard to get a 19, 20, 21-year-old to think about what's going to happen when they're 60. So part of that is the mandated financial literacy training, which I think is going to be a big plus regardless of what happens to the retirement plan. We have a very paternalistic attitude towards our service members. We basically do everything for them and tell them everything that they're going to do. And all of a sudden, after 20 years, they're out trying to make decisions on their own when it comes to finances, and there's a lot of problems. So that increased financial literacy training will be a plus either way. There's been some thought that perhaps this is going to be a disincentive for folks to stay in past 20. I personally don't believe. I think that when somebody comes into the army or into any service, they're not coming in thinking that I'm going to be here for 20 years and get a retirement. They're coming in out of a sense of service to the nation. Once they hit that 12- to 14-year mark, then they start thinking, wow, another six to eight years, and I got a pretty nice retirement. That's when they start thinking about wanting to stay till 20. And it's at that point that we have the continuation pay to be that added bonus to say, if you decide to stay for another four years or six years, we're going to give you this lump sum payment of up to 10 times your monthly base pay, and then they're out to 16 or 18 years of service. Like, I only got two to four left. Might as well stay in. So I think on the whole, there's more pros than cons. But of course, hindsight will come back to let us know after the implementation. This lady in front of you, Jamie. Thanks. Good morning. My name is Christy Kaufman. I'm the executive director of the Coda Support Foundation. Two quick questions. The first question is you mentioned this being the lowest propensity of graduating. Where are you getting that from? Is that from a particular survey? Yeah, there was a survey done. I'd have to pull the actual citation, but there was a poll done about two years ago of graduating high school seniors asking, you know, were they considering entering the military post high school? And the results had been that at no time during the period of reporting had the propensity been as low as it is to actually want to go into military service post high school. Okay. My second question is you mentioned when people are being pushed out of active duty. I have a lot of friends who are getting pink slips right now. Is there anything in process to kind of bring them to the reserve? Because I'm not hearing that. People don't really understand their options and they think it's either, you know, up or out. Yeah. There is a significant gap to be overcome, especially when somebody is out processing from the active duty force. And we're trying to work with the reserves is trying to work with the recruiting commands with the transition assistance programs. You know, the problem is as somebody is punching out of active duty and they're going through their mandatory transition training, looking at all the PowerPoint slides and turning, you know, signing a bunch of paper, they're really not thinking about what the next step is. And we've got to get them to think about what the next step is. That is a significant gap in trying to harness those that are leaving active duty and get them to sign up for the reserve component before they actually leave the active duty installation. And the reserves is working on trying to close that gap. Time for one more question. So it'll be up here. Mr. Chairman, thank you for being here today. My name is Jeff Phillips. I'm with the Reserve Officers Association. And we were an early supporter of the blended retirement. We're very happy to see it moving forward. Assuming the importance of integration between the, shall we say, tribes of the Army, the AC, the RC. And given the necking down of the integrative forcing function of war, how do you see integration moving forward, being preserved and even enhanced? Yeah. Great question. I think part of it is going to have to come at which already is starting to come from increased integrated exercises where you have AC, RC, National Guard, all participating in the same exercises. And part of that is bringing the active component into some of the CSTXs and the war rexes that are done by the reserve component and getting reserve component troops to participate in some of the active duty exercises. So I think the key to maintain that integration, let's face it, I was there, my first deployment when I showed up as a reservist, the response was, Jesus, another reservist. That doesn't happen today. My last deployment was, thank God, another reservist. We want to keep that idea, we want to keep that in the forefront of our active duty brethren and the way to do that in decreasing wartime operations or actual military operations is to increase it in the exercising function. Again, thank you very much for being here. I'm sure the rest of the day is going to be extremely enlightening. Unfortunately, I have to leave for an intelligence briefing at this time. So thanks for participating. Those in uniform or who have worn the uniform, thanks for your service to our nation. God bless you. Thank you, sir. Everyone, we will take a short break as we escort Congressman Heck out, but please be back in your seats at 9 a.m. Thanks. If I could ask folks to take their seats, please. Again, if I could ask everyone to take their seats, please, we'll start momentarily. Well, thank you again all for joining us this morning. As you may have noted from the agenda, we do have a structure to today's discussion. After hearing so much information from Congressman, Chairman, Dr. General Heck, we are moving now to our first panel discussion. And this panel is comprised of three outstanding Army reservists who come to us from industry and here to give their perspective on what it's like to be a citizen soldier. You'll note the panel is entitled, Citizen Soldier, Twice the Citizen. And then we'll follow that with a panel discussion starting at 10 o'clock of folks who can talk about how they use Army reservists practically. And so without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to your first panel's moderator, Mr. Bruce Hock. Now, when I was asking Bruce how he'd like to be introduced, he referenced President Eisenhower, who was then General Eisenhower when he talked about the military industrial complex. And no person in this room probably embodies that concept better than Bruce. He spent more than two decades wearing an Army uniform, followed by eight years on the Hill, and then within those eight years stepped out to work for industry, for Northrop Grumman, for six years. So if you look at his history, talk about a military industrial complex. This is a man who has worn many hats, but all still focused on sort of his eye, stayed on the service ball, so to speak, in terms of what he can give back to the nation and being able to do that from various perspectives. I first met Bruce when he was on the Senate Armed Services Committee and I was on the House Armed Services Committee. I did not have much to do with military personnel or hardware. I was a policy wonk, which is why I'm at a think tank. But I have so much respect for those who can look through, follow the numbers, follow the policy, and understand exactly what it is the military industrial complex is up to at any given day. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to Mr. Bruce Hock. Thank you, Stephanie. And I really thank CSIS for hosting this event. I think Congressman Heck made a very important point that actually kind of surprised me that the reserves seem to be a little bit of a disconnect in the community. And I think it's all boils down to learning about the reserves and what they do and what they bring to the table. And I think today's panel will do an excellent job for us on that. As was noted, this panel actually represents the prairie roots of the National Reserve. I mean, they started as medical officers and we have three distinguished individuals from the medical community, starting off with Major General Ron, I practiced. I'm sorry, Ron, I practiced it. Who's the Chief Operating Officer at the University Case Medical Center. And he's also the USA, our third medical command commander. A very distinguished individual. He's actually an undergraduate from Yerselin College, the Finest Woman's College in Ohio. He actually graduated from the first male to graduate from the nursing program there. Ron has a great legacy. Ron has a wonderful legacy of both his mother and father served in World War II. His father actually started as a buck private, as he likes to say, and retired 28 years later as a Colonel Brigade Commander. He served in Korea as a combat engineer in the remainder of his time and was in the reserve. So he has quite a legacy there. And his mother was also served at the 127th General Hospital assigned to Support Patents Corps and she left the service after World War II. He does have a black sheep in the family in that he has a brother who served 30 years in the Navy. Let me forgive that. I'm the only person in my family on the wife's side who actually is in the Army. Everyone else is in the Air Force, including my son. But I don't hold anything against him. His civilian resume is just as impressive. He's the Chief Operating Officer, as I said, at the University Hospital Case Medical Center. And when we mentioned that the medics were the first to have a unit deployed in World War I, it was actually his hospital that did that. And the battle flag still flies in the main lobby to this day. And they also were the 256th Combat Support Hospital, US Army Reserve, located in Ohio. And it was the last hospital unit to leave Iraq. So I think Ron will bring quite a bit of expertise to this. Next to Ron is Colonel Dan Arkins. He's the Regional Director for MetLife Disability and also the USAR Colonel in the 108th Training Division. Dan has had over 30 years of experience at MetLife Disability. And I think he's going to talk to you quite a bit about transitioning. I think what he does is just fantastic. And I'll leave it to him to tell about what he does. He's a 1981 graduate of Boston College with a BA in History. He has a Master's of Science in Organizational Leadership from Norwich University. And he's a 2014 graduate of the United States Army War College and with a Master's of Strategic Studies. So he's got a well-rounded president to talk, speak from. He's a Colonel in the Army Reserve, as we said, and he's served in active duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Dan is also former Co-Chair of the MetLife's Military Veterans Network. And I think that's learned a lot from him. Finally on the far end is the, I don't know how, is it Sergeant Major Doctor or Dr. Sergeant Major Jim Bridgers. He's the Deputy Health Office, Charles County Department of Health, and he's also Command Sergeant Major of the 151st Theater Information Group. He's earned a BS degree in Psychology, a MS degree in Health Education from Howard University in Washington, D.C. and has a PhD in Family Studies from the University of Maryland. He's a Command Sergeant Major who's has 28 years of combined reserve and active duty experience. He's the epitome of a reserve NCO. He has backgrounds with military police, chem bio, health and behavior, health operations and logistics. I'm going to have a question for him later on regarding his role as a Command Sergeant Major in managing unit level pre- and post-mobilization program activities. I think that's important for the reserves right now. He has over more than 20 years experience in various public health and social science areas. He's managed projects for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. And right now he's also served as the project manager for the Ryan White Care Act programs, three distinguished members of the committee. Before I turn it over to my colleagues here on the panel, I'd like to draw attention to a excellent article that I read just a couple of days ago written by Lieutenant General Dave Varno and Nora Bechal regarding a need to reconnect our soldiers and citizens. They noted the growing divide between the civilian and military populations and dangers associated with them. I'm not going to go into those dangers. I think that article is well worth to read. But the dangers had to do a lot with related to the relationships, and their prescription to address these problems in the military is for the military to engage or re-engage civilian populations. And I believe the U.S. Army is well positioned, or excuse me, the Army Reserve is well positioned to do that. And again, I encourage you to read the article. And I think our panel today will show exactly the way the Reserve can connect to those communities. And with that, Ron. Thank you. When we were asked to participate in the panel, it's kind of trying to figure out how you want to start the discussion. But I think I'm going to go back to what was indicated as far as the family legacy of service and how I ended up as a citizen soldier. So I'm a baby boomer. So when I grew up Memorial Day, the veterans all got together. You did a Memorial Day parade. And then you spent the day, my father would spend the day, my mother would spend the day talking to all their veterans or going off to veteran events to discuss what happened in the past and their years of service. So my foundational upbringing was based on, and even though I lived in Ohio, it's not a very military state. We only have one active duty post. It's the Wright-Patterson Air Base, which is about three hours away from me. So there's not a high density in the community other than as indicated by Congressman Hack as far as the National Guard. So there was not a lot of active duty post. However, because it was the post-World War II post-Korea, there was a lot of veterans' activities. VFW was very active. American Legion was very active. So my decision to join the military actually happened late. I was already married, had two children, had already been a trauma nurse working at a county trauma hospital. So I was a 66-hotel, 8-alpha. For those who don't know, that's a med-surge nurse that was certified in critical care. Working at a county hospital like the Cook County Equivalent, so we had air medical evac. We saw about 56,000 patients per year and I worked in the knife and gun club, essentially. So I had a skill set that I felt was transferable to the military because being a certified critical care nurse, working at a trauma facility, that's a skill that was required in the military. There's three ways you access as an officer in the military. You can go to the academy, you can go ROTC, you can get a direct commission. So the reserve, at least in medical, a lot are coming out of direct commission. So I got a direct commission, go before a board, they appoint you as an officer and I joined an evac unit initially and then got transferred into a general hospital. The reason why the Army Reserve relies upon that is because, as indicated earlier by Congressman Hack, the density of specialties within the Army Reserve are drawing off professionals that have civilian acquired skills. So my undergraduate education was paid for by a hospital. It was not paid for by the military. Actually, my first master's degree was paid for by another hospital. So I'm a master's in business administration from John Carroll with a focus in finance and then my third master's degree was paid for by the government because my master's in strategic study came from the war college. So we have these civilian acquired skills, so certified critical care nurse, same with the JAG Corps, where the JAGs are coming out of law schools to direct commission and then to support. I think what's important is I'd listen to Congressman Hack talk about as far as a reliance on the active component on the reserve is the fact that the density is going to increase. I'm going to get my finance head on here. So as the active component draws down, the reserve does not draw down at the same rate, the percent of penetration as far as JAG, medical, transportation signal is going to increase. So I think on the private sector side, we look three to five years out on a planning horizon. So when I look at what's happening in the Army and Armed Forces as a total force, I have concerns related to how we're going to continue to bring these individuals in with civilian acquired skills to be able to support the total force. The other piece of the puzzle for the individuals within the Army reserve is the fact that we maintain our skill set, again, from a civilian acquired basis. So my certification in criminal care or a taking of the bar or taking a specialty certification in any area is usually paid for by a civilian employer, which means we have to have the support of those civilian employers. So the MOIA, the ROA are key elements. So like in the ROA, every year you publish a magazine that shows the top 50 employers in the United States. So those are the kind of employers, then, that we rely upon to seed us with members to serve within our ranks. I think that the concern I have is, as I started off talking about my legacy coming out of a military family, less than 2 percent of the U.S. population today knows someone serving in the Armed Forces. So as you go out in the community, they don't know who we are. The only perception they have of us is what they get off of Twitter, what they get off of Facebook, and what they get off of the little bits of information they're getting from CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News, depending on which station they prefer. So they don't understand what the citizen-soldier concept is. They don't understand what the Army National Guard is, per say. They may have a little better understanding because, again, they're state-based and community-based as opposed to the Army Reserve where we cross across mobile state boundaries. So it's going to become more difficult for us to maintain that unless we are able to continue to drive what Congressman Hex said was the brand. So as the Army transforms, yes, we have civilian-acquired skills. The question is to be asked is, so if you have civilian-acquired skills, why do you need training dollars to support you to be able to do your mission? Well, my hospital doesn't teach me how to get out of a vehicle and a convoy during a rollover. It's not something that doesn't happen. We don't teach that skill set. So you think about the basic skills you would need to operate in an austere environment. That's the training we need to be able to take and give to these citizen-soldiers to complement their already acquired civilian professional skills. The other piece of that is not just limited to the officers. The enlisted have the same thing. My command sergeant major is here today. He's a network administrator. So he's an IT geek. He's an infantry guy. So here you have somebody who went to Benning, the infantry school, but on the civilian side, he's a network administrator. So that network administrator skill set actually helps blend as we have to do our missions because we can rely upon those unknown civilian-acquired skills as we attempt to operationalize, for example, a medical brigade in a theater or operationalize a combat support hospital in a theater because they help problem solve. So I think for me, the key takeaways when I talked to, when I heard congressman Heck talk was a, how do we improve public perception of what the brand of the citizen soldier is because that's going to allow us then to continue to recruit and fill the ranks at a time when the total, the active army is going to decrease and our percent density is going to increase, which means our reliance is going to need to increase. So that's my opening comments. Thanks, sir. Thanks, Bruce. And first of all, disclaimer, I am an insurance guy. I am not part of the medical community. I'm the bane of their existence, but I'm not a medical guy. My connection to the medical group, though, is my son's trained to become an 18 Delta Special Forces medic at Fort Bragg as we speak. So there's my connective tissue with you guys. And I'm really honored to be part of this panel today. And I can tell you 32 years ago when private first class Arcons was going through basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, he would never imagine he would be on a panel with a two-star general and a command sergeant major. And as a chief of staff for a two-star general, I am much more comfortable with general officers now. So, sir, you don't scare me, but as a prior service enlisted guy, the command sergeant major scares the hell out of me. So CSM, if I... He scares me, too. Yeah. So if I mess this up, don't be too hard on me. I'm going to focus my comments today about the army reserve and the entire reserve component, really, is the connective tissue, not just between the military and our communities, but between the military and the entire private sector. And, you know, the congressman pointed out earlier, we traditionally focus on infrastructure when we talk about our connectivity with our communities. We talk about our reserve centers and we talk about our national guard armories as very visible, tangible manifestations of our military commitment to the community. And I want to turn that around a little. And I think I've come to a much different conclusion over the years as I've become involved in veterans advocacy issues after my two deployments and my activities with the MetLife's Military Veterans Network. And if you take our experience as a microcosm, private sector employee resource groups focused on veterans employment and veterans advocacy issues are real forced to be reckoned with and real of the true connection between our military, our communities, and our employers. If you look at our group, and by the way, it was started by two army reserve officers and it's currently co-chaired by a retired United States Army reserve colonel and a USAR staff sergeant. And that's the only reason we get anything done is we have an NCO working behind us. But it grew from an idea that got sparked at an ESGR employer support of the Guard and Reserve awards ceremony from MetLife. And over the last four years, it's become one of the most vibrant groups within MetLife. We've grown to over 300 members composed of veterans currently serving reservists, military family members, and supporters with absolutely no connection to the military other than the fact that they want to support those who've served. We have 15 chapters around the country right now. And I had the honor recently to travel to London to kick off our first overseas MFED chapter. And if you look at our British allies, they have the exact same issues going on with their veterans that we do around veterans unemployment, post-traumatic stress, and dealing with 15 years of war in both Afghanistan and Iraq. So what kind of impact can these employee resource groups really make? And I can tell you personally by engaging our senior management, and we're a $47 billion company with 67,000 employees in 110 different countries. It's kind of hard to get the CEO's attention about anything. But we went in, built a business plan, and went in and talked to them. And one of the things that the reservists can do, we can talk military and we can talk business. And what we did is we built a business plan, went into our chief executives' officers, and convinced them to hire a full-time talent acquisition manager focused on veterans hiring. We now have a full-time veterans program director who's looking at everything that touches veterans and products directed at veterans within MetLife. We've been able to get our charitable foundation to make over a million dollars in contributions to veterans' activities important to the members of our veterans' groups. And finally, we're a business. We're out there to sell insurance. And thank you for anybody who has a tricare dental program. That's one of ours. But we've engaged our product development folks to do focus groups involving our veterans' group to talk about products specifically geared to veterans. So if you talk about a win-win, about being able to leverage for a business, to leverage the military experience within your own ranks, to turn into a business proposition, that's a great example of that. And frankly, MetLife is not alone in these efforts. And probably the most visible group out there is the 100,000 jobs mission. And that was started by J.P. Morgan Chase back in 2011 with a very, you know, we thought manageable goal of hiring 100,000 veterans, transitioning veterans as they came off active duty. And that coalition is now made up of over 190 private sector employers, and you would recognize every one of them, who've hired last count over 240,000 transitioning veterans. And I know from personal experience, all of those companies have incredibly vibrant employee resource groups focused on veterans, many led and manned by active reservists who are making a huge difference in the lives of veterans and their families. So, you know, we heard the congressman talk about, you know, over 300,000 Army reservists have been mobilized or deployed since 9-11. Over 2 million post-9-11 veterans out there that we've created, you know, essentially created an entire new generation of veterans over the last 12 years of war. But like every other war, they end eventually. And all of those people have to go back to their communities and reintegrate. And I think anyone aware of what's going on with the veterans community in the United States, we had an incredibly high unemployment issue amongst veterans. Fortunately, it's come down over the last couple of years to a more manageable level. But I think you're going to see that the private sector had a lot of impact in making sure that veterans' unemployment was a focus issue for them. And unfortunately, it's not over, as the congressman pointed out. And recent announcements just from the Army, you know, we're looking at an immediate cut of about 40,000 personnel in the Army ranks in the very near future. So, you know, we can't lose focus on this because that battle continues. So where does the Army Reserve come into this from, you know, the chief's level? It's initiatives like the Army Reserve Private Public Partnership Initiative or P3I are an incredible example of, you know, the connective tissue once again between private industry and the Army Reserve to address not just the needs of transitioning veterans, but the folks who currently make up our force. And the only reason I'm here today is because I got to be friends with Ms. Erin Thede, who is a force to be reckoned with. And I'm not sure if Erin's here, but she's the director of the P3 office with the Ocar. And her ability to do outreach to companies like MetLife is absolutely critical to building the bridges between private sector and the Army Reserve. So it really is so much more than just reserve centers and national guard armories. The real connection between the Army Reserve and our communities are our soldiers and who not only fill our ranks, but fill the ranks of America's companies and employers. So thank you. Sergeant Major. Good morning and thank you for inviting me to this panel. It is indeed an honor. I feel very honored to be not only a Sergeant Major, but also a public health officer a little different than the medical field, but also looking at soldiers in transition as well. Also consistent with the reserve strategy now to enhance the operational aspects of our citizen soldier. So I'm on a panel with the Major General and a Colonel, and I see a Sergeant Major in the audience. So it is indeed an honor to be here. I'd just like to share a couple of points from an individual and a community standpoint. You heard Mr. Hock say my resume and that I have a PhD, but I love being an NCO. I love being an NCO. I was an OCS, but it was that one drill sergeant that kind of pulled me over to the dark side. And so for 28 years I prided myself on mission readiness and the welfare of our soldiers, which is part of the NCO Creed. So in that realm, I'd like to just share with you my individual and community aspect. Through my job as a deputy health officer, we have many returning veterans coming to our agency, seeking behavioral health support. I think the benefit of me understanding some of those concerns from an individual and a community aspect strengthens the operational aspects of the Army Reserve just by knowing sometimes they just want you to listen and just get a better sense for their concern and their family challenges. I think that this is one of the strengths that the Army Reserves bring to the table. It also is supported by our warrior transition through family reintegration and dealing with their soldiers, as I said before. I was hired by the Department of Mental Health and Hygiene through my networking through the Maryland Veterans Administration. So it shows the community connection. We talk about branding. So being a command sergeant major, when I think about branding, I think about the readiness and the operational aspects and training our soldiers. My current unit is in the field now doing a mission readiness exercise. And I tell you it's nothing more enriching than seeing these soldiers prepare for battle. Getting out there training them and you look at an operational aspect and you think about what the Army Reserve brings to the table. They aren't training just because they're at reserve duty. It's not reserve duty to them. It's training, it's mission and accomplishment. So they can deploy at any time. It's that level of readiness that they're looking for. They're looking for that guidance, they're looking for that mentoring. And it's not seeing just from a reserve standpoint, it's seeing from an operational aspect. And just having that background awareness and situational awareness to help empower them in what they do is a significant driver. There's resiliency in today's reserve force. We're often tasked with meeting mission demands with limited resources, but I think it's that level of resiliency that also adds to the strength. We often solicit feedback from our soldiers regarding requests and needs for additional services. And then my last point is that things that we do as far as educational aspects, most of my educational enrichment was through scholarships and fellowships. But I looked at my career progression, which ran both a parallel track and a military track. And every time that I either moved to a unit or moved to an employment, I looked at those dual opportunities that would also strengthen my ability to lead, but also inform the decision-making process. I look at one of my old bosses out in the audience, Colonel Marty Klein. And when I worked at OCAR and PAE, I didn't really understand budgeting, but I had the situational awareness and I rolled in an MBA. And so now I had a better sense of understanding and appreciation for big budgets, for force structure, for understanding resourcing. And so I'm able to take that capability and share with my leader, my boss, and look at potential outcomes, potential rewards. So we look at those knowledge, skills, and ability to not only move the football downfield, but also increase our impact on what we do for mission readiness. And with that, I say thank you again for inviting me to this panel. I look forward to questions. Thank you. Thanks to all the panelists, Sir Major. You and I have a, I also have a PA&E background, so cool. Same, what we're going to do is I'm going to ask a couple of questions to the panelists and then open it up to the floor. I want to remind you all that please be recognized, stand and get a microphone. That's what they do here at CSIS. This is my first time I've moderated a panel, but I've sat out in the audience and have been chastised for not waiting for the microphone, so please bear with us. Ron, I wanted to ask you a question. You and I had a nice discussion in the ready room regarding demographics. And I kind of think that your legacy with your family has really represents what we see in the military now. That statistics say that 60 percent of the serving military have had either a parent or a grandparent or a family member serving with them. And there is a concern that we're becoming too close to society. And you and I talked about the demographics that you have your wrestling with. And I was wondering if you could share with the audience what you and I discussed regarding demographics and how that is a way of broadening the potential recruits or potential members to serve. So the discussion we had was on the private sector side. So I work for integrated healthcare delivery system, 15 hospitals across the 15 county market in northeast Ohio. We've got an academic flagship. We generate about $1.5 billion in revenue, small in comparison to my insurance petty. And we have about 25,000 employees. Actually, we have more now because we just did two acquisitions. We just acquired two new hospitals. And what we see, the difference between the diversity in the Army, I can't speak to the Navy and Air Force versus the diversity of my civilian workforce is the Army has a more diverse population than my private sector does. So when I look at my 30,000 plus employees across those 15 county markets, our penetration in the underrepresented minority is less. And I'm in my 32nd year in the Armed Forces. So on the Army side, the percent of underrepresented minority is high. So we're actually trying to figure out how to change that. We're trying to increase our density, whether it be in residency programs, trying to bring in, we have a set your fellowships now, trying to bring in a higher number of underrepresented minority in our physician groups or whether it's in our registered nurses where we actually have set some targeted numbers based on certain standards nationally. So I found it very unusual. But to me, it speaks to what the Army and the Army Reserve has been able to do, unlike society where it's able to break that barrier and increase its density. And we've actually, we've attempted to leverage some of the recruiting capabilities or the concepts the military uses in our private sector jobs to try to change that diversity mix that we have in the civilian sector. One of the comments that was made was that when you need to do a public affairs event, you have access to that from your civilian perspective. Well, I'm glad Congressman Hecks gone or any other congressmen or senators in the office in the room. So being a C-suite executive and a large integrated healthcare delivery system, you know, if you want to get changed, you have to have access. And you have to be able to do that elevator speech to representatives and lobbyists do that on a regular basis. But so I wear two hats when they come to my office. So if you come to my office at University Hospital, you'll find out that it's got 31 years of paraphernalia collected from every continent except for Australia and Antarctica. So I've got something, I've got something that represents the military to include pictures of my, my, my parents and my, my brother. So they know I'm in the military and I usually try to blend in a military speech or elevator speech into it as well, talking about whatever the current issue is. So whether it's, you know, Congressman Renacey, Senator Sherrod Brown, Portman, you know, Congressman Capter, I use that as an opportunity. So, you know, access is the way in which you make change sometimes. And so I have, I have these little note cards in my desk and I pull one out and I, at the end of my 15 minutes of fame with them, I actually add in one to two minutes that gives me a different kind of access than most individuals do with serving within the armed forces. The other piece of the puzzle is I don't come to Washington to do my access. I go to their local offices and I talk to their chiefs of staffs and I do that on a regular basis. Sometimes I take issues with me. Sometimes it's just open discussion, allow them to ask questions. One of the questions, I go back to what Congressman Hex said, I asked one of the Congressional offices, what total number of, of national guard soldiers are in the state? Bam, they hit the number right out of the head. What's your total number of Army reserve soldiers in your state? No clue. So they had no, that congressional representative's office had no idea what the density of the reserve forces were in their state. And I think that's, that goes back to what Congressman Hex said about brand. We need to figure out how we're going to sell the brand because it can't be done, again, in my opinion, it can't be done in Washington. It has to be done in the local market, so. Thank you. Dan, really appreciate the efforts of you and the community you've pulled together to help active duty transition and your wounded warrior type aspects of it. One thing that struck me in your remarks was that the fact that you're, you depend a lot on, or you've managed to have the civilian sector make donations and we also have the Hill who tries to encourage these kinds of programs. But from, just from your perspective and experience, what do you think needs to be done to make sure that this is an enduring program? That's an excellent question. I think any one of us who has served kind of recognizes that we're the issue du jour. Okay, we're the cool kids right now after, 12 years of conflict. And I would say this generation of veterans is far more appreciated than some past veterans, particularly Vietnam, Korea. And we've been the beneficiaries of that. So there's a lot of love for us right now, but I keep telling everybody there's a window of opportunity here. That's only going to be open for so long. So I think one of the things that a reservist brings to the table is we are a constant reminder whether we've deployed or whether we're going away for our two weeks of annual training that the military exists. Once again, the fact that we are getting the attention of private sector employers to improve their policies around military leave while we're obviously doing things on the charitable giving front, it's just a matter of we're there and we are a very tangible real life example of citizen soldiers who every once in a while have to go put our other set of work clothes on and go somewhere. Thank you, Sergeant Major. I know that I think you've addressed, actually you addressed some of my questions I was going to have and that's okay because I can always think of another one. That was my job. That was my job. No, you're all, I'm just really pleased with the panel and pressed with the gentleman I'm sitting here with. My question really has to deal with pre and post mobilization activities. When you deal with the reserves, you're not dealing with active duty soldiers or national guardsmen. You're dealing with people just like the National Guard being pulled from the community. Have you, what kind of issues have you seen regarding the community's support for mobilizing reservists? That's a great question. I think from a community standpoint, me personally, when I was called to active duty in 2009, my boss actually welcomed the challenge. They embraced the challenge. For some it may be a strain, principally a role strain, but overall going back to the notion of branding, I think from the community based on my situational awareness embraces the engagement both pre mobilization and post mobilization and through reintegration into the community. I think what I see most prevalent with pre and post mobilization is that a soldier's acclimation, if you will, it's a continuum of activity, but it's the heightened. So if you look at a training effect, it's a return to a crawl walk one phase. The soldier returns pre mobilization, the skills, the knowledge, the abilities are there. They actually look forward to the pre mobilization activity. The community engages that and embraces that from what I'm seeing. And just in talking to soldiers, post mobilization upon return, those skills are there. And they carry over into the community. For me, and just looking at an individual perspective, my boss appreciates the attention to detail. Sometimes I'm at a meeting five minutes before she is, and so similarly, I have things set up and things are ready, but that's throughout training process. And so that's the applaud that I see from the community. That's the kudo of being a citizen soldier, having that ability to be meticulous, having the ability to articulate the needs of the service and what the service has done for that soldier. So through the mobilization process, it's just the way I see it. Yes, there's a requirement. There's a pre mobilization and a post mobilization, but it's ongoing. It doesn't start. It's a continuum. Thank you. Now I would open up questions to the floor. Good morning. JC Cardinale from Senator Hatch's office and also a Army Reservist. I have a question with the, do you see with the increase in PTSD awareness that we're seeing a situation where the general public or employers in particular, excuse me, are seeing soldiers as somewhat of a broken commodity? And kind of how can we address that? I'll start off. So my answer, at least again in my area of influence is the answer would be no. So we look, you know, if we're looking for entry level leadership position, we're looking for individuals coming out of the armed forces. It doesn't matter the branch. It doesn't matter whether it's reserve, national guard or what have you. And the reason being is because they're coming with a skill set and I think it goes back to what was said earlier from the Sergeant Major with the resiliency that they have. So, you know, with an employee base of 30 plus thousand, they all have issues as it is. And I think the problem for me I was thinking about also about suicide. The only reason why we know the PTSD rate is because we're looking at a known population. I did research as well, clinical research many years ago. So you have a known population of sample size you're able to abstract data out of. The average society, you can't get that data because it's distributed across all of society. You don't get it. Same with suicide rate. We don't actually know what the actual suicide rate is based on certain other types of jobs because there's no aggregate database to give it to you. So my answer, at least from my perspective, the answer is no. Because it's no different than any other type of illness that you have to be able to accommodate for based on an ADA issue. So we're actually looking for the higher. And I think the advantage I have, however, is I have a greater access to higher professional recruiters to be able to recruit when it comes time for the Army to recruit somebody and me to recruit somebody at college. And the good news is because of the civilian acquired skills, we can recruit them in our institution. And we use the ROA as a step bridge to change our policies. So right now, if you're a deployed reservist, we match your compensation, we'll match 100% of your pay for the first six months you're deployed. We'll match 50% of your loss for the remaining tour. Not a lot of employers will do that. And then as far as health insurance benefits, I'm not in a big tri-carrier. So if a soldier gets deployed, they got to change their primary care physician, they got to change their pediatrician, they got to change your cardiologist. We bridge their insurance at the same rate as if they're employee. So we actually have the opposite. We're trying to get more members of the armed forces in. And I can tell you that's another area where veterans-focused employee resource groups within private employers are absolutely critical to changing that perception. The real upside of being visible and the cool kids right now is everybody's aware of issues around unemployment, suicide, PTSD. But with that comes a lot of misconceptions, too. And I think what we've seen amongst veterans groups at private employers is we are huge advocates for developing supervisor and manager training about integration of transitioning veterans into the workforce. One of them is that, no, we don't all have PTSD. We're not all broken. We all come back a little different from our deployments, but we're not broken. And a lot of times we're a lot more resilient, better leaders than we were when we left. So what I'm saying at the public health level from local health department is that there's an embrace to support our returning veterans. As Colonel Arkin said, there is that advocacy. There is that referral. There are those linkages to get soldiers into care, to reacclimate and reintegrate them into a level of normalcy that supports not only themselves and their family. So it's not a level of whether it's any stigma associated with it or I have PTSD is more so thank you for your service. Let us help you. Let us let us advocate for what your needs are. What are your family needs? And that's what I'm seeing as a public health official, looking at referring those soldiers into care, finding them jobs, allowing them to return to a level of normalcy. And that's a plus from the community. The community is really embracing that. And that's what I'm seeing, especially in the state of Maryland at the local health department level. Thank you. Anyone else? Hi Sergeant Major, you just mentioned the family members. I'm curious how that the integration of the family members in the reserve plays out. I'm an active duty spouse. And so we have all kinds of programs. And I know Guard and Reserve have less access to that. So I'm just curious how that works in transition. And also just wanted to mention that we have to we have to have an expectation, I think, of the civilian sector that they're a little bit more educated about mental health and PTSD because the majority of people who have PTSD aren't broken and they're still working, right? So I think we have to be careful when we talk about that that just because you have PTSD doesn't mean that you are crippled and you can't work because most people do. What I'm finding is that for families to have families educated, education has been the key to help understand their service members return. And there's also strength in support groups. And so having the level of support groups, be it an active state or a reserve state, but I like to look at it all as an active because even if you, regardless of the compo, it's an active, it's an active focus from my standpoint. And so support groups having soldiers, not only talking to soldiers individually, but also talking to spouses and children of those soldiers who may be caregiving in the absence of a spouse. Having that family system understand what those services are, educating them, supporting them, providing transportation. They may be transportation issues. There may be other external factors that may prevent a soldier from seeking care or having services or having referrals. And so I think that's what the community is doing to enhance and support better outcomes for our returning veterans. And there's a real challenge in the reserve component because of geographic diversity of where we live. I live in Boston, Massachusetts in commute to Charlotte, North Carolina for reserve duty. My wife is not going to go to Charlotte for a family readiness group meeting. So it's more of a challenge. And I think then we rely a lot more on social media technology, if you will, than in-person meetings. But the family readiness group is as important to the reserve component, probably more so because our spouses, family members, tend to be less educated. We don't live on bases. We don't know about access to services. From a private employer perspective, we've had to educate the folks who deal with our wellness issues. So we have reached out to our employee assistance provider to make sure that they have resources focused on the needs of transitioning veterans and their family members. Because I think the congressman pointed out, you leave military service and the warm embrace of everything that you have from the commissary, your medical, everything is there on the base for you. We don't get that in the reserve component. So we have to educate people about what resources are out there and how to access those a lot more aggressively than the active component. I wanted to make one last comment. The reserve has the citizen soldiers that have a civilian acquired skills, but it's a bidirectional education. So the members of those reserve units go back in their community, go back to their employers, and they bring concepts from their civilian employers into the Army Reserve. At the same time, they take reserve concepts, armed forces concepts back in their local community. So when we do strategic planning, we use an MDMP process to do a course of action analysis for whether we want to put a new infusion center up in a location and how we're going to support it. I do disaster preparedness for the 15 county area for our health system. I just come back from a Jmark visit in Afghanistan and the Boston bombing had occurred about a year later. So doing disaster preparedness, we were working with first responders. Well, if you remember the Boston bombing incident, they were using cords from microphones that put tourniquets on the runners and the people that were hurt by the bomb. All right, what our health system did, there was a couple of people on the committee that are also prior service armed forces. We went out and bought 40,000 cat tourniquets and we issued them out to all the first responders in the Northeast Ohio community. Now, the average person in Northeast Ohio didn't know what a cat tourniquet was. Those are tourniquets we use in theater. Every soldier carries it up on their cargo pocket. If you don't have one on, you look down the body, look for the tourniquet. It means it was either put on him or put on somebody else, but we're continuing to take those concepts that we're learning to preserve life, preserve the fighting strength, and we're taking them in the civilian sector. So I want to make sure you know there's a bi-directional information sharing that also then improves that civilian employer's capability and or brand within that community. The bad news is, it didn't say, given you by the United States Army Reserve, it said this cat tourniquet was provided to you by University Hospital Case Medical Center. So I mean, the good news is, we took a concept we currently save lives with in theater and hopefully we'll never have to use them in Northeast Ohio, but those are the kind of things that are going on each and every day across the United States, and there was no expected payback for that. We did it because we felt it was a responsibility to the public to preserve life, just like we do on that reserve side. Any other questions? Well, I'll surprise the panelists and ask if any of them have any final comments. You're not obligated to, but if I was far more stressed out going back to my civilian job than I was ever during a deployment, people actually listen to me at my Army job. It's a little tougher trying to go through a bureaucracy that is a large insurance company. The only comment that I like to leave the group with is we talk about validation doing pre and post-mobilization, but the thought that I had in route this morning on the Metro was there's this validation process, but when we transition from an active to a reserve state, there's a certain level of validation that goes there because when that soldier gets off of active duty and comes in a reserve state, the community, the individual is looking for certain qualities, certain skill sets, certain assets. Similarly, when a reserve soldier comes, is activated, there are those same skills, abilities. One of the things that I pride in myself on, especially when I was a drill sergeant, was I was a soldier first. And when I had my rank, there wasn't an R designator on my rank. And that's the pride. That's the pride of being a reservist that I leave the group with. Well, I'd like to thank the panelists today for supporting us here at CSIS as well. General Talley, I think you have some really good reservists, a whole hundred and ninety five thousand of them for right now. Thank you everyone right now. I think we will have a short break for the next panel to set up, but we'll start at 10 o'clock. Thank you very much.