 I'm Maaren Leid here at the Center for Strategic International Studies and I'm very honored to have, in addition to the four representatives of the Army here today, also Reiter General James Rainey who is joining us by phone. I hope. General Rainey, are you there? Okay. We're here for Benning. Great. So we're having a conversation this morning about the Soldier and Squad system. CSIS undertook some work on this last year which culminated in a report we put out in April. We were very grateful for the support of Dupont and the Warrior Readiness Protection Coalition who allowed us to go dig into this in a little bit more depth. I think it goes without saying that the Soldier and Squad is the foundation of the Army. It's the bedrock of the Army. It's something people care passionately about but it's time in the limelight sort of ebbs and flows and while the vision of an integrated system to address soldiers and then later squads has been around for a couple of decades, Jay, can you turn yourself on? Let that be a no-tallness including me, please turn your ringers off if you would. I think what we found, let's try this again, please turn your ringers off. What we found is that the Army has made more progress with the Soldier and Squad piece than the system piece and there are some very good reasons for that. One of them is it's incredibly hard to integrate such a diverse portfolio and the fact that there are so many people on this stage and there should have in fact been more people on this stage reflects some of that. We have Major General Dias here from the Force Development Division of the Army G8 who owns the resourcing piece of this along with two of his key staff who help with this Colonel Keith Hawke who is the Director of Materiel and Colonel Keith Barkley who is the Chief of the Soldier and Maneuver Division within Force Development and G8. As I mentioned, we have Brigadier General Rainey who is the Deputy Commanding General of the Maneuver Center of Excellence who owns the requirements piece so the principal advocate for the requirements for soldiers and squads although with help from all the other centers of excellence and then we also have Miss Kathy Gerstein who is the Acting Chief of Staff for Program Executive Officer Soldier, PEO Soldier who owns the acquisition piece. Again, there are lots of different organizations across the Army who have pieces of this problem set and one of the things that we found in our work was one of the challenges is that the systems view and achieving that integrated approach is complicated by the fact that not every organization sees the systems elephant in the same way so all of them obviously have a piece of it but there's no shared vision of where the system starts and where it ends and again one reflection of that is that this conversation is likely to largely focus on the equipping and material component of that obviously there's a whole other element of multiple other elements to include the human dimension component of it how do you optimize soldier performance not just in the material context but in the psychological and social context so this is in this discussion will also be limited and not fully systemic in its breadth but again I think it's a reflection of really how complex this issue set is but with that said I want to just dive into the conversation so that we can open it up to all of you to participate. Let me just say give a quick order of battle General Dias will talk then I think General Rainey if you could keep looking up if he's in the sky somewhere ask General Rainey to make a few comments and then Ms. Gerstein if you could talk a little bit about some of the view from your foxhole I feel very safe up here with couple infantry officers an armor officer an acquisition an engineer and an infantry officer ready to parachute in from Fort Benning if we need him so I think we'll have a really robust conversation we'll have everybody make a couple of remarks I'll ask a few questions to kick it off and then we'll open it up to all of you if there are people watching on the web who want to pose questions I was telling them earlier that this is the it was a first for me this morning where I got a question before we even started the event if you have questions you can email them to me at mlead at csis.org it's M-L-E-E-D you can tweet I believe at ground g-r-n-d forces I think that's right so anyway feel free to participate via web should you so desire so with that John that's how you thanks Marin first of all I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy fiscal new year and hopefully it will be happy and I'd be glad to make comments or perhaps take questions on on that last week we had a senior leader development seminar which was hosted by the chief of staff of the army and which primarily gave trade-off and opportunity general Perkins general McMaster general Brown to talk about several things one of which was the new operating concept that the army is going to roll out at a USA and I'm not going to jump necessarily on on their thunder and seal their thunder there was some discussions at the conference and they were tweaking it slightly however when I was writing in to work this week I was listening to an NPR article and the discussion was essentially what took out of it there's there's art and science and I think that we tend to at least on the material side we really hone in on the science as a prove do the cost analysis etc and I think what I'm articulating is that the art part is going to be the concepts things that trade-off rolls out because they're working on an army what does the army look like in 2025 and when general Perkins described hey we had air land battle we got the big five but we had a sandbox it was clearly defined it was Western Europe we knew what the intervisibility lines were we studied that hard we worked hard on the science and we got the material from that we're not going to have as clearly defined sandbox in the future that we had in that time period when we develop those material but that does not mean that we can't articulate a vision of how we're going to operate as an army and from that operating concept we're going to derive how we're going to equip ourselves how we're going to train ourselves how doctrine is going to be written how facilities how ranges will be upgraded etc so that was one part I wanted to describe Jim's going to Jim Rainey at Benning is going to talk about at least if there's a requirements questions talk about that but I also worked at ARCHIC in my last job as the requirements integration director down there so of the three pieces of the circle that you have the defense acquisition university resources represented by the G8 requirements in this case represented by the maneuver center of excellence at Fort Benning and then acquisition is represented by P.O. soldier and Kathy Gerstein okay I think it's all I'm gonna say Jim over to you this is Brigadier General Rainey down at Fort Benning can you hear me okay sir sure can yeah so I will state the obvious that you're counting on us down at Benning to figure this out and we can't can't do a VTC video connection to you so don't be alarmed by that technical difficulties I apologize for yeah I'll just throw a couple things in real quick kind of what we're doing down here less on the technical side and kind of like like general Dias said there's there's some thinking that we think needs to be done to inform this process and nobody thinks we're in any kind of operational pause there's any peace dividend coming out but but we do think that we need to spend some time thinking about the future of maneuver as a subset of the army effort to think about the future of conflict future warfare and you know a good place to start some of this work is probably what do we need this what do we need to be able to do as a maneuver force in the future specifically to this discussion you know so what do we want a squad to be able to do knowledge skills attributes what kind of missions are they going to do and then use that to inform our our way forward on the squad as a system so we fought two wars for 12 years paid a dear price for that in in terms of blood and treasure so we need to make sure that we're studying that I like to talk about the difference between a lessons observed and lessons learned and you know we throw the term lessons learned around but but did we really learn from that and what the things we learned what were conditional specific to Iraq and Afghanistan and what are enduring things that we need to incorporate as we move forward an example of that just the real quick one is you know we learned a lot about a squad leader and expectations but how much of that was because we had squads doing things way above and beyond what they were designed for you know no one ever felt like they had extra combat power and Iraq and Afghanistan a lot of time squad leaders were leaned on to do things that were originally designed to be platoon leader tasks and just me personally and I think on anybody who's served in the room with you there would tell you similar you know I bet about 57 months in the deployed in the two wars and I've personally never seen a nine-man squad on the battlefield by itself doing anything just just to SP you got to add engineers medics FSO fires capability female engagement teams so do we even have the right base model as we look at the future force there are a few things we think we know general Perkins said recently and that the way we're doing business now is not going to work there's no amount of patriotism hard work effort energy the current system processes we have will not ever be responsive in us for us to deal with the rapidly changing future where we stand up and talk to lieutenants and captains about them being agile adaptive innovative creative thinkers and I think we at the senior level owe them better processes that aren't hypocritical when we talk about them I think that the human performance is something that we've just tapped into it's kind of an effort in the army we probably have a better chance of working on cognitive improvement physical improvement education leadership things like that there's a higher payoff in there and they're cheaper and harder to do but but not resource intensive and that's something that we got to make sure we make progress on not just material solutions to everything and I do personally believe very strongly that no matter what happens in the future the fact that the infantry formation is going to be the decisive land force there they're the only thing we have that's designed trained equipped to dominate the the intersection of the human domains cyber domains land domains and that you know I think history kind of bears out that if you ever need to destroy something or take something away from the enemy and hold on to it you're going to need an agile adaptive infantry formation so that's really all I had for opening comments but I look forward to the discussion and thanks a lot for including us over thanks sir okay my name is Kathy Gerstein mayor and I'd like to thank you for allowing me to represent PEO soldier here on this panel today for those of you who are not familiar with PEO soldier we are the material developer for the majority of the equipment that the soldier wears carries or shoots we feel that we have the best equipped soldiers in the world but we also know that due to the the emerging requirements that came out of the last 12 years of war we got equipment to the soldiers quickly but we may not have integrated it the best way possible our challenge going forward is to work with the soldier enterprise to ensure that we prioritize the equipment that the soldier will need and work with them to make sure that it is the least burdensome upon them okay thanks so there are lots of different ways we could go with this I want to talk first about generalized you alluded to some of the the fiscal challenges that we face I was thinking this morning that you probably average seven or so all ponds a year in your time and something like that so I don't know how much time you actually have to think about much of anything other than generating the next piece of sausage but from your perspective this issue of not only I think general Perkins was talking not only about the requirements processing to change but the resourcing process need to change how does that affect the soldier and squad particularly and how do you make those changes when there's so much pressure on money well we certainly would like to have a stable funding I think that what I hear from industry is that we're not able to do long-range planning because we can't tell you what the long-range fiscal forecast looks like and it's the same really for me inside of my organization because we're doing the multiple poms as Marin said because we're not sure we have to do a high palm we have to do a low palm if we have BCA you know the Budget Control Act is a law that's on the books for 10 years 50 billion dollars a year for the Department of Defense last year we got a one-year reprieve on the bipartisan budget agreement so I'd like to be able to say that there's a steady stream of resources that are going to flow to be able to tell industry what it looks like and unfortunately I'm unable to do that I am going to ask when congressman asked me is like hey what can we do for you I said you can take sequestration off the books and so in your own lanes in your own ways I just asked that if you have an opportunity to do that that you would address the people who make the laws and who write the checks and that would be a very helpful both for the Department of Defense for the Army as well as I believe it will provide some stability now in the soldier portfolio we did have to pay some bills and so soldier portfolio but I think if I can't give you exact numbers but this portfolio looks at least steady with slight increases across the palm starting in 16 so that's that's essentially where we are on resourcing yeah if I can ask you one of the things that I think we found when we visited with both maneuver center and peo soldier was that you are taking some some clear steps in trying to advance a more systems-based approach and that has a lot of implications for some of the processes that we've been talking about but I just want to get your take on where is the soldier enterprise in becoming more integrated having a a an integrated vision from the outset that helps to inform how requirements are developed that helps to inform resourcing because sometimes those processes inhibit that comprehensive approach to moving things forward. So at PEO soldier and working with our enterprise partners the S&T and the user community we've attempted to within the last couple of years or so try to chart our path forward like I like I mentioned before we realize that our integration is still a challenge to that end at PEO soldier we've instituted a warrior integration site or wind site that's a collaborative effort where the any any of the organizations that would touch the soldier can come and see how we model the soldier as it is we use a variety of methods we have mannequins now that we've been able to kit out for the entire squad that has set the baseline for what the soldier by doctrine is supposed to carry we have the 3d printers we have the 3d scanners what we've also instituted a effort where all of the systems engineers across PEO soldier will meet probably every two months or so because our commodity items are four very distinct pms we in the past tended to be a little stovepipe so what we've attempted to do is to make sure that our our engineers know that we need to integrate more and look across the entire soldier portfolio rather than just our own little viewpoint to that end we've included our S&T partners in this because they're the ones that tell us the art of the possible we also work very closely with the maneuver center of excellence primarily but we do have other centers of excellence for which we get our requirements from it it became very obvious that one of our last capability portfolio reviews to DA staff that we were probably not all having that same vision and we realize that if we didn't tell them how the soldier should be somebody's going to tell us and that was a very eye-opening experience we the soldier community kind of closed ranks and and we've been working in a very collaborative manner to make sure things are more integrated less burdening to the soldiers I'm gonna open it up for other questions I have I can keep going all hour if I given the opportunity but if people could identify themselves wait for the mic I'm sorry raise your hand wait for the mic and identify yourself and briefly ask your question that would be much appreciated so let's start in the back and we'll move forward yes ma'am Dave Wiles from Textron I have a question really for I think it's really for Fort Benning focused on the future force force 2025 and it has to kind of two parts an organizational question and so still have a nine-man squad there in the future force and related to that on the material side as far as the squad integrity on platforms both ground and air what's the thought process of keeping the squad together and on those platforms versus dispersed on multiple platforms thank you hear that question yeah yeah I sure did great questions so I go I go back to my initial point about a little bit thinking about the future I think the answer to both those question lies in what are we gonna expect a squad and the platoon that a couple squads make up to do on the future battlefield so right now there's not any talk about coming off the nine-man squad that I'm tracking but what do we need a squad to do in the future can it be can it be smaller enabled by technology probably I mean I'm open to that that discussion and that thought does it need to be bigger like it's been for the last you know 12 years that we fought you know the soldier load stuff is still you know you whatever you divide by nine it's still a pretty pretty big number of weight the complexity of the future battlefield argues for a leader to lead ratio or an experience level in the squad may not be the place for 10 level soldiers as far as the vehicles go yeah there are people that are very passionate about about single delivery of a squad together I I don't think that that's something that we ought to wet ourselves to because that obviously like y'all know better than I do that that drives your weight and your mobility up so if we're thinking about the future that we're going to need to be able to rapidly deploy that we're going to have to do forcible entry operations we're going to have to figure out the weight thing it doesn't look like technology is going to solve that problem for us so squad split across two vehicles is something that I would say you know it's just my personal opinion I would say is not probable but possible going forward I don't know if that answers your question I hope so okay thanks we had one here and we'll come up here and we'll go back there yeah Dan's an ADSA I see you know requirements historically have always been reword looking trying to fill gaps of the conflict you just came out of and sometimes a little bit of evolutionary look going forward but if you think about the environment we're in the day it's fundamentally changing almost on a daily basis three months ago and no one thought about sending soldiers off for Ebola containment you know the the deployments into Eastern Europe were just beginning as you go through that whole business and and ISIS was you know still an idea and Bokeh harm we hadn't even thought about how we deal with them and as you look forward it seems you know that most of the world population is going to be an urban environment most of them are going to be interneted and self-exposing as you go as you go through that it appears that kidnapping the heading is the new IED and the force protection challenge as you go as you go forward with it so as you think about the tasks that you want soldiers and squads to do it seems the biggest variable is the conditions standards remain the same but the conditions become the most the biggest variable and those drive what you end up having to put in the requirements business so how are you dealing with that as you as you look forward I'll start to general rain you can jump in I think on this if you have a concepts driven army that the operating concepts and then the each one of the centers will be doing their functional concepts and then they're looking forward as opposed to looking back to determine what the gaps are and so that that uncertain situation that you describe which the conditions will change with the task and standards remain pretty much the same I I agree with that and from those functional concepts that the centers are right that's where we'll start to move towards perhaps a different organization maybe not perhaps a different training regiment perhaps a different funding toward that training perhaps a different material solution but I think looking forward to 2025 operating concept functional concept gap determination that's the way we'll determine and I'll open for anybody else generally do you have anything to add to that just real briefly I I don't think the answer is one or the other I don't think looking backwards is a bad thing I think military history is invaluable tool I'm amazed by the amount of things that keep happening over and over but obviously you got to look forward so what we're talking about down here at the maneuver center is the idea of kind of a new fundamentals so that the things units have to be able to do move shoot communicate survive haven't changed but the context of those fundamentals is changed dramatically so I it's probably not a good answer but but I think it would be a huge mistake to wait looking backwards or looking forward you know in the pursuit of the future forget the things that have borne themselves out time and time again throughout the history of our profession over I'm gonna general any if I could pile on to that question briefly to try to integrate it with the question I received earlier by email which was about non-lethals if if the the problem of shooting in urban environment and in particular places a higher premium on the ability to move up and down the spectrum of lethality can you talk a little bit about how the maneuver center is thinking about the balance between lethal and non-lethal fires don't really I heard I was trying to think of something intelligent you could have pretended you just dropped off I can help them out a little bit because really that a lot of the non-lethal requirements come from the maneuver support center of excellence primarily through the MPs because they have a law enforcement type of mission and that sometimes carries over into our combat formation so a lot of the non-lethal non-lethal investments that were made in the last 12 years were made through OCO primarily with the sets and kits that were delivered to combat formations for example and then the tasers that the military police train on and use that's primarily our non-lethal capability so bending would incorporate them into formations but they don't necessarily generate the requirements from the maneuver center of excellence anything you want to add generally or is that you off the hook no no that was a great answer sir thanks it's illustrative not the topic my we were talking about earlier about the history so you know mega cities obviously going to be a huge problem for us in the future but you know I think it would be a huge and I'm all for pursuing non-lethal technology and everything else but if we decide to fight in an urban area it is going to be you know the civilian cost of that is going to tie and and we need to acknowledge that it's historically a given and you know the decisions that get made in reference to starting those kind of conflicts or we're deciding to contest a a large urban area with the mixed population it you know it we just need to be realistic about the amount of you look at the battle of Fallujah you know all the way back to World War two thing things change but there are a lot of constants about urban conflict underground facility ideas the mega city stuff that we that we see as clear threats going forward it would be a huge mistake I think to overestimate our ability to do what we do and and not have to deal with those kind of tragedies of war when it comes to human life over here and there and then we'll sorry thanks dr. Sydney Friedberg breaking defense calm gentlemen ma'am and voice in the ceiling as well thank you to follow up on general Perkins remarks when he was pretty emphatic when I cornered him after his remarks at another think tank they'll remain nameless saying you know really the requirements acquisition process that whole thing is really as you said not not working and especially in this area you know the stove pipes simply don't encompass it in a in a useful way so but if you integrate things if you try to break open those stove pipes people lose comfortable processes and they lose power so what parts that system need to break open what centers in the bureaucracy need to give up some power and or funding to make this work better and conversely you know what are the essentials that think that people like p.o. soldier like g8 like for bending need to hold on to no matter how you know holistic the approach gets there's probably been and somebody could probably tell me how many acquisition reform studies have been accomplished in the past pick a 10 20 year time frame and well more poems than and so my perspective is every time there's an acquisition reform study done there's more requirements that are piled up on the people that do it in in the well-meaning way of trying to do just what you said break open some of the stove pipes I spend energy on trying to make the system that we have a little bit better by talking to the requirements community letting them know how much resources we have talking to the test community talking to the requirements community again about how they write the requirements and quite frankly you know to the industry people that are in here it would be very helpful to have the discussions it will be one-on-one it say if we're in a competitive environment you have multiple vendors you one-on-one with the three communities the acquisition the resources and the requirements community that you essentially come in say hey look the way we read this requirement that's going to drive us to this type of solution if you would write that requirement to say this many miles an hour this many slope whatever the requirement is a little bit differently we'd be able to provide this solution to you at this cost that and the to the testing guys people write the requirement so it's a continuous kind of test that means it just it has to go on forever you can write requirements so that there are it's a one zero it's an on or off it's a yes or no did you kill as many targets as the last vehicle that's a yes or no as opposed to commander site and gunner site must be within point three seven mils of each other in a requirements document well the testing guys have to build a microscope with full motion video in order to determine that requirement did it kill as many targets as a Bradley yes or no in the same amount of time that's those are kind of requirements that can be written that's a kind of industry feedback I think can go back to requirements folks informed by resources so to answer your question I'm not sure how many stove pipes you can break open because I think all those hundreds of reform studies have tried to do that and just add more owners task on top of the things that are already there I think there is that I think that you can and so you try to break through that lease on my on my side on resourcing you I know when the palm is going to go promise like I said last week is it's a conveyor belt it's going to deliver on the first week in February usually the president's budget and we know when it goes to the OSD for review we know when the services provide their input so that conveyor belt is going to go when we have requirements documents come in in order to inform that palm is important and that's what we've been working with inside of the g8 with the requirements and and with the acquisition quite frankly thank you brisfetti with Institute for Defense analysis within the last two years DARPA did some work that they referred to as squad X which significantly augments the squad level with various technologies a wide variety of technologies so that the squad is substantially more effective at the 9th 9 person level 9 soldier level of course that was a thought piece it's moving forward in the domain of how can we provide a greater level of adaptivity and lethality to nine folks the question becomes then both how do we plan for the technology insertions that may be useful coming out of such research as well as the communication architecture that the squad leader needs to be able to command the augmentations adequately and in particular it seems that today's come architecture at the squad level would not be sufficient for that would you comment on that please I'll talk a little bit about the long-range investment requirements analysis the Lyra process that the army started which essentially is a 30-year view on the other side of the it's 25 years the other side of the palms 30 year total view and in that trade-off would identify where we want to go and then we will identify requirements documents that need to be made and then the S&T community which are tied probably closer to DARPA than than the acquisition side starts to line up their S&T lines of effort their swim lanes in order to inform requirements in order to start putting money against that about where we want to go and all driven by a trade-off in the concept you want to talk a little bit about how PEO soldier integrates that kind with them network I'm sorry well actually PEO soldier has been working with DARPA on their squad X concept we've held regular meetings we understand that some of their technologies could in fact transition to us we've made those ties early on so if there's any way that we can shape you know what squad X will become we're there at the inception of it as far as the comms go for the squad leader we PEO soldier does have our our net warrior program that will be for the individual soldier to be able to communicate within members of the squad and we understand that as technology gets a lot better the the material items that we provide to the soldier could change also now hi Doug all of it with New America particularly when we think about the the dismounted squad it seems that in at least its communicate and its move aspects not the chute there are clear civilian analogs that have large commercial markets personal electronics extreme sports human enhancement how what is the strategy to stay ahead of the commercial market and what is the Koch strategy to to just bring things over to keep parity well PEO soldier along with the maneuver center of excellence we do have the soldier enhancement program program of congressionally funded back in 1989 or so that's to it's a buy try decide type of effort anybody can it can put in a proposal small pot of money that we purchase supergates worth of the Cots or gots equipment and push that out to the soldiers so they can try it and see if if we can use that to inform our requirements going forward Dan George I Institute for Defense Analysis General Dias or general rainy the average soldier according to an MCOE study a couple years ago was carrying 122 pounds on the battlefield as of late we have added net warrior rifleman radio man-pack radio what are we doing to try to stop the the increased battery usage I think the average infantryman is carrying nine pounds of batteries on the battlefield for a 72-hour mission what are we doing to try to stop or come up with an appetite suppressant as far as power demands on the battlefield I'll let general rainy start the great question soldier load you know it's one of the enduring challenges we face in the infantry really in the army I'll give you the what I honestly believe is the answer and I don't mean to be flippant but it's all about leadership it's about it's about understanding and managing work so you know unless we have some huge technological breakthroughs you know it's gonna come down to leaders battalion brigade division commander leaders empowering their junior leaders to make risk-based that's ill or bold load on mission enemy time troops that standard variables that affect operations I was very encouraged I just got back from Afghanistan in about July and for the for the first time my personal experience we finally got to the point where that was occurring at least in the division that I was I was serving in but I think throughout the theater we finally figured out that trusting and empowering our young leaders to make hard decisions and then managing that risk at higher levels is really the only way we're gonna ever get out of the monster rucks now technologically I think there's some battery battery technology I think I think there's some robotics and ways to either help carry the load or deliver resupply at a faster better rate I think there's some promise in those technologies but I'm telling you it's gonna come down to leaders having the the ability to accept and manage that risk and trust their people to make good decisions over well I was just I was just gonna add a point and I want to pile in a little bit on what General Rainey just said the first gentleman asked the question about the nine-man squad and you know what does that mean in terms of vehicles and systems the related piece of that to this question is as we look at other systems you know whether it's JLTV whether it's striker and what we're doing with the ECP program for the striker we are looking at how can we build exportable power capability into other systems because that that really enables some of the leadership that I think General Rainey is talking about because that gives the leader on the ground the squad leader in this case the option to manage his soldier's load knowing that he's at least got a vehicle close at hand where he can off-ramp some of that load to you because he has exportable power he has the ability to recharge some of those batteries so you know while we're talking about squad as a system it's not a system in and of itself that stand alone there are other systems that we manage across the entire material portfolio where we're looking at trying to help the squad solve some of these problems and this is a this is a very good example of one of those instances which makes the dismount the IBCT was the still one of the biggest gaps that we've got to support because they don't have the striker vehicle in the near vicinity or vehicles in their in their formations that are close by. Question up here, I know we've got a couple over here, was it okay? Left sign here. Joe DiFrancisco from LIDOS. Listen to General Rainey's description of what we might learn from history keyed me down to reading these bios quickly again I see that one of our panel members actually took place in Operation Urgent Fury some years ago and with the political environment as it is today with our administration saying no more counter insurgencies we're not going to get into long drawn-out land wars it seems to me that something like Operation Urgent Fury could well repeat itself different place different circumstances so the question I have if you put aside the joint implications and some of the combined arms challenges from that operation what is it that we called upon our squads to do in that operation and what might they have been able to do better if they had increased training specific increased training or modern technology is there something we can learn from looking back and extrapolating forward well I happen to be there yeah I happen to be that and Joe DiFrancisco it's a magnificent tie you have there I probably came as close to being killed in Grenada by the US Navy than any other situation I found myself in and it was because we didn't have good communications and I think it's pretty well documented that you know Goldwater Nichols came about in 86 some of between Desert One and the communications between the Joint Force we had Anglicos and Alos on the ground but that didn't keep the the Navy from strafing that one position that was a second brigade talk where I had just left from within 30 minutes before so I I think that the basic formation is about the organization is about the same that we had then it was sound it was solid we had beginning of snipers program which was very helpful at that time and I think still continues to be I think communications is probably from my perspective the biggest gap that we had then and we probably still remain working on that that gap I think it is because that was a if you remember the Beirut barracks bombing for the Marines had just occurred in the middle of the month and we were alerted and we thought we're all going to Lebanon and there was only a second page small paragraph about something happening down in the you know lower Caribbean it was it's a complex world that we're in then although it was more clearly defined as a Soviet US you know Cuba Panama Canal and Grenada with the large runway there as well as the disturbance took us there that means that our Army has to be prepared to go to any complex environment on no notice that's the way it's the same and and that squad will still have to interact with you know everywhere from kinetics to engagement with local towns people and law enforcement people evacuating students as we did then I mean it was you couldn't make that up I mean it's just that's how it rolled out let me follow on a little bit to Doug's question one of the things that we that I came to appreciate much more in the context of doing our work in this area was the breadth and complexity of the industrial base and and from shoelaces to high-end optics and that while there is a significant portion of it that is driven by commercial industry that's that's not true there's very very few things I found about this portfolio that you can say that hold for the whole portfolio it's it's just so incredibly it has such breadth and so many different piece parts and one of the challenges associated with that is understanding exactly what the industrial base looks like the industrial base is a big concern for the army going forward in many areas but this is a really complicated one and one that the even the industrial base process isn't accustomed to thinking about in its totality and part of this assumption I think that because some of the things are commercially available that therefore they will be there in perpetuity when it's distorted by things like the berry act and other other things so so I guess my question is do does PEO soldier feel like they have a good handle on the industry the soldier industrial base as it stands is it is it robust is it something that John Dias how to be concerned about in in among many of your other concerns should that should we is it on his concern list or should it be on his concern list well those PEO soldier type industrial base issues our body armor our I squared some of our small arms parts we do attempt to keep a that industrial base those industrial base efforts of warm because we know that it takes a long time to restart everything once things get turned off I I just keep going back to we do have the best equipped army in the world right now we know what we need to turn back on if things do get turned off and we're working with a lot of uncertainties here we have no idea how big the force is going to be we are coming into this fiscally restrained environment almost Mac dab in the middle of it so we PEO soldier in working with the army we have put together on the deployer equipment bundle this is a deb it's a an effort where we are taking those common items that the first deployers are going to need we're we're phasing that out over four or five years and there will be instances where the industrial base will have to provide us kit to go within that so that is one of the ways that we're trying to keep them warm to the equipment that we need and I'd say that in some areas we are technology takers and some areas we are technology makers and I think one of the areas I look at particularly I know night vision is proliferating to a certain level I think that we need to continue to work on having the best type of night vision available to our soldiers and that's one thing I'll watch pretty closely but there there's lots of things in the soldier portfolio that actually gain benefit from having commercial type activities go so the things that are where technology makers those are the things that I watch more closely thank you David Costello I serve as executive director for the Warrior Protection Race Coalition we represent the industrial base for everything the soldier wears or carries and thank you for raising that arm because just as an example of some of the challenges that the soldiers are facing right now in the industrial base face is we had eight boot makers left the United States in June of this year that make combat boots for your soldiers two of those closed in June and that lost 25% of our capacity to produce combat boots in the United States another one is under threat to close which would be another 25% for just a basic boot combat capability in the US there's one soul maker in the US that makes every pair of souls on every pair of dress shoes or boots you've ever worn and if those folks decide to leave the industry you cannot produce boots or shoes in the United States there are two shoelace makers left so these are very small dark corners of the industrial base but you really do need boots to go to war and they do deserve analysis and consideration as you are considering all the things that you have to be worrying about so I just wanted to point that out and we do appreciate work that PEO soldier is doing to keep its eye on what we're doing thank you. Excellent question. We had one I just had her head up for a while and then we'll come up here. Ellen Mitchell inside the Army I wanted to go back to General Rainey's comments about the future fighting vehicle he said it was not probable but possible going forward that it would have the full squad carrying capability so if it doesn't have that then what what is the future fighting vehicle look like because the Army made that a big selling point with the JCV so what's going to be taken from that going to the future fighting vehicle? I'll start I'll just say that we we have to go back again with the operating concept and take a look at all of those requirements so I think that's on the table and and over to you Jim I think we're going to have to take another swing at the requirements. Yeah, just don't rain. Yeah, I would say that it's not probable that we go away from single unit integrity per vehicle per squad but possibly but yeah and that you know keeping the integrity of the squad and being able to deliver it is incredibly important and as you balance that against the tradeoffs I would be reluctant anytime you know with any current systems we have to come off of that squad requirement. I mean that's why we built them to deliver organic squads at one point in the battlefield so the possibility in the future that we could come off of that if that was if that was the only way we could get the vertical development requirements we need for a for a future fight. I think we could go that way but just just to be clear that the value of having squad integrity on a vehicle is is is critical and I don't know now to 2025. I mean any of the current systems we have. I don't see coming off of that over well here and then last question in the back right here. Joe cooled from Defense News. General Rainey talked about tradeoffs between mobility and weight and recently the the maneuver center of excellence has been in discussions about a family of lighter vehicles possibly sling loadable and General Rainey also talked about forcible entry operations. How are how might those vehicles be a reflection of some of the challenges in recent operations and how might they be reflective of future operations having a lighter maybe less armored vehicle. Jim you want to start on that one? Yeah, yes sir. Nothing's decisional. We are working on a lot of things. There's a a from the time you put a ground force you know on the ground as part of an airfield seizure and until you can get air land and build enough combat power with our current systems. We think there's an opportunity to do something to to help the the initial entry forces increase their mobility but it's more a logistical challenge early warning type capability than a than a maneuver vehicle that you would use to expand the work the air headline for example where you you would depend on your land vehicles for that. But but we're doing a lot of work on that. I don't think anything's decisional at this time over. Thanks sir. Okay, last question in the back from HQDA. We've we've had a lot of conversations about increasing complexity mega cities, the increasing complexity of technologies that we're putting on our soldiers. We've also talked about the physical burden that they are increasingly having to endure. I just like to ask a little bit more about the mental side of it. What work are you doing with maybe the Mission Command Center of Excellence or in conjunction with DARPA or technology development agencies to explore the boundaries mentally of the squad leader in particular and and consider what might be the limits of the burdens that those young leaders are going to be capable of of bearing particularly in a congested environment like a ferrule mega city, which is very very complexly connected in terms of social media and technology and so on. Yeah, I'll start and General Rainier anybody else can jump in. Last week at that senior leader development seminar, the chief said his number one priority was leader development. And the of the three main speakers that were there General Perkins, Commander Tradock, General McMaster, Director of ARCHIC, and General Brown, Commander of Combined Arms Center at Leavenworth. General Brown's block of instruction was all about the human dimension cognitive, physical, social aspects of being a soldier. So if you put the two things together where the chief says his number one priority is leader development and the development of the human dimension, I think that would give you some insight is that we think that that is an area that the army should be investing in. Now what is the actual direction? How does that turn into a physical program? I think we've got to work through that but you've got like the senior leaders of the army discussing intellectual capital is maybe the most important asset we have as an army when you go into a complex, uncertain environment. You know we didn't have these PMTs and ETTs and training teams in 2000, but we essentially figured out how to do that as an army by 2003-2004. And that was based on the intellectual capital that we had in the army in order to change organization training, perhaps even doctrine on the fly to meet a emerging requirement. And General Rainey, you can anything there? I think that's a great answer. We don't really know what we don't know about the human dimension. I mean everybody kind of sees it as a huge opportunity and something we really need to understand better and get after. And there's a lot of research that's already been done that's you know we don't have to start from scratch on this so it's a lot of partnering with academia and industry and somebody talked earlier about learning from pockets of excellence in our society which I think it was Doug I think that's a great point and we're trying to do that. One interesting that I didn't mention yet but simulation and training, training devices, you know the idea that we have to adapt all that stuff as part of the system we think there's a lot of opportunities to use simulation to get a cognitive load you know not to replace training to improve leaders ability to enter that training before using that time and resources more effectively to add complexity you know it's hard to get at the modern battlefield in a training environment even live fire at night without adding and developing the ability to add the complexity you need develop the human dimension and then follow on the collective live training you know how can we go after the lessons learn a our comments in simulation. The last thing is kind of the I think this my personal opinion that getting after the instructor so if it's if it's a cognitive human issue and we have this education apparatus in the army that I personally think is pretty good but we always you know want to get better it it really comes down to the instructors so you get you get better instructors how do we recruit how do we manage talent to make sure that when you when you find a place like the small group you know the small group instructor model we use at the captain's career course here I think SAMS is another pocket of excellence where they have you know all their instructors are former successful battalion commanders and phd's or class sizes small that the adult learning model type approach I really think the developing human capital and talent one of the critical things we got to get after is the the right instructor to start the process over. I apologize we have to end it there we're actually a little over time I want to thank all of you for coming today General Rainey thanks for making it by phone if not with your we have a we have a static photo of you up so it's kind of like you're in the room with us thanks again for making the effort to do that thanks to all of you for coming and we appreciate your attendance we look forward to continuing the conversation.