 So, welcome everybody to the next panel. What are the challenges the Air Force will face in 2030 and beyond? So, here we'll have Dr. Heather Wilson, who is the 24th Secretary of the Air Force and is responsible for the affairs of the Department of the Air Force, including organizing, training, equipping, and providing for the welfare of 685,000 active duty, guard, reserve, and civilian forces and their families. She oversees the Air Force's annual budget, which is over $138 billion in direct strategy and policy development, risk management, weapons acquisition, technology investments, and human resources management across a global enterprise. She, before assuming this position, she was the President of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and Engineering and Science Research University. And from 1998 to 2009, she was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where she served in the House Armed Services Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee. She was in the third class of female graduates from the U.S. Air Force Academy, was formerly a Rhodes Scholar, and we also have President Michael Crowe of Arizona State University. He's an educator, knowledge enterprise architect, science and technology policy scholar, and a leader. He became the 16th President of Arizona State University in July 2002, and has spearheaded ASU's rapid and groundbreaking transformative evolution into one of the world's best public metropolitan research universities. As a model, New American University, ASU simultaneously demonstrates comprehensive excellence, inclusivity, representative of ethnic and socioeconomic diversity in the United States, and consequential societal impact. Thank you for being here. My pleasure. So, why don't we start with, your story has always been interesting to me, since we first met several years ago, and this notion of coming from a family of pilots, and getting involved in aviation really early, and then going to the Air Force Academy, just as women were being first admitted, and then somehow finding your way into the Air Force, and then ultimately into politics, member of Congress, state politics in New Mexico, running a company for a while, making things happen, and then all the things that you've done, it's just so intriguing to me. So, just start with a little bit about yourself. What has been this drive for you, and now you're taking this new job in just a few months at the University of Texas at El Paso as President there, which is really a frontline institution in the United States of really significant importance. What, let's go all the way back to, you know, you first started to fly when? Oh, preschool. Preschool, right. And then you got your pilot's license? Well, my father and my grandfather would fly it, fly or so. Barnstormers, your grandfather was a barnstormer? My grandfather was a barnstormer and flew in the First World War and the Second World War, and my father was also an aviator, and so I actually don't know how old I was when I first went flying with my dad, but I do know that the door was open on the Piper Cub because we always flew with the door open, which I think of that now, I would never put my preschool children in a Piper Cub with the door open. My mother was such a tolerant woman. So the love of aviation, the love of flying, the love of all of that is from childhood forward? It is. But so I, you know, I've lived a blessed life. My entire life has been a diversion from its planned course. I was a junior in high school when they opened the Air Force Academy of Women, and while I was a good student in high school, that was not a door that was open, and I hadn't really thought of it. I don't spend too much time looking at closed doors, but when that one opened, that was intriguing. And so with my grandfather's blessing, I applied to the Air Force Academy and was accepted, which was a life changing opportunity for me because it was a full ride scholarship as well, which my family was not wealthy and nobody had ever gone to college before, so that was a big deal. Yeah, and so you're sitting over at the Air Force Academy and you did very well, and you became Vice Commander, you know, you did a lot of things while you're over there, and then something, another application comes along, you get to win a road scholarship. You don't just take the B fill or the M fill, you go for the D fill. Okay, that was all a mistake too. So actually I, so I was taking this summer's course in computer science because I had a really heavy fall course load, so I gave up my vacation to take computer science in the summer at the Academy. I had a great professor, really interesting, loved computer science. Punch cards. Punch cards, you know, the whole. I hated them all. I actually loved computer science and this says something, I suppose, but I remember my professor that summer saying something to me. He said, you know, if you weren't so busy doing all this other stuff you're involved with, you could be, you could apply for a road scholarship. I had no idea what a road scholarship was. I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know anybody who'd ever gone to graduate school. Why would you spend so much time in going to school, you know? But he said I couldn't do it, which made me at least curious about what he thought I couldn't do. And then I ended up applying and the neat thing about the roads is there were 32 Americans each year wearing a road scholarship. We all met New York to fly over to England together to go to Oxford University. The neat thing was that of the 32, 30 of us felt that we were the one mistake. And the other two were jerks. So it's something that is, it's not really something you earn. It's almost by the grace of others or a higher power. So you get over there and then your interest was clearly and then later your service in the Air Force as an officer was really about strategy and bigger and bigger complications. Right, so just talk a little bit about that. I did international relations and international law and then I served as a negotiator for the U.S. Air Force overseas, both in the U.K. and then at the U.S. Mission to NATO in Brussels, Belgium and at the arms control talks, which was fascinating and great fun. And I got to do things as a captain that I should not have been able to do. And then I left the service. I was going to go to law school and I was narrowly saved from going to law school. So I married a lawyer. Despite that he's a nice guy. But I never went to law school. I ended up coming to the National Security Council staff for the first President Bush at a time when, of course we didn't know it at the time, but I was working on NATO policy and conventional arms control in Europe at the time that the Berlin Wall fell and the Warsaw Pack collapsed. And so it was just a fascinating time. So your academic work, your staff work at NATO headquarters and among and between the Allies and then later at the National Security Council where obviously we're working on relationships and very complicated interplay between countries and so forth. And I'm going to build up to the role of the Air Force today. What did you learn about alliances and how they work and how you build them? So you studied them. You worked at the ground level making them happen. You managed them as a part of your role at the National Security Council. What is it about these alliances and then this notion that that's an important element of American strategic policy? That we are stronger together than any of us are alone. And that's true for a great power as well as for any other nation in the world. There are some countries in the world. I was just last week on Friday, I stepped Thursday and Friday I was in Warsaw and with the Poles. And we, you think about it on the first day we went into Afghanistan after 9-11. It was the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland. Very close ally but a small country in a very dangerous neighborhood of the world. And so for the Poles, having allies is vital. For us I think it's no less vital even as and it's actually a strategic advantage because there are countries who want to be alive for the United States because we stand not just for our power but for their freedom. And so it's a strategic strength of the United States of America and it has helped to keep the peace for over 70 years. So how does one maintain an alliance? Like any long-standing relationship has its ups and downs and its moments and its arguments and its disagreements and so what goes into maintaining an alliance? Taking the long view for one and secondly it's often about the little things that nobody pays attention to on the front page of the paper just as an example. Common training, commonality or interoperability of equipment. You know one of the fascinating things that I think is one of the strengths of the United States relationship with our emerging allies and partners started right after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the fall of the Berlin Wall. We started something called the state partnership program. Probably nobody in this room has even heard of it before. All right. I went to Poland. Okay. Then you know the Illinois National Guard is partnered with the country of Poland. It's the great thing about the guard is that the guard is usually more comparable in size to some of the emerging nations and there's longevity. If you're on the guard you're there for 30 years. These relationships can be deep and long-lasting. The Illinois Guard has F-16s. So does the Polish Air Force. When we asked Poland to come with us to Iraq they said okay we'll go but we'll only go if the Illinois Guard goes with us. Because we know them. We know them. They know us. They've helped us. There's no one of Polish descent in Chicago. Yeah. It's the second largest Polish speaking city in the world. So that depth of connection over entire careers is foundational. The head of the Polish Air Force has deployed with the United States forces in Iraq, in Afghanistan. There are really deep connections. Likewise in Italy where I was also last week the Italian Air Force trains maybe 50 pilots a year. 40 of them go through pilot training in the United States. They start out being trained in the American system of how to fly. So you can't beat that over a 20 or 30 year period. Because it creates organic connections and like-mindedness that transcends the issue of a political moment. So speaking of politics you served in Congress representing New Mexico. I was released for good behavior. Yes. Congress is an interesting thing. It gets all this flak and here it is. It's the institution that we constructed to have our arguments without killing each other. And it's worked very well. We have our arguments and we make progress. We've made a lot of progress. But what is it about Congress? What did you learn in Congress that helped you to be a better secretary of the Air Force? I actually think it helped tremendously. And I think Dave Goldfein, our chief of staff, my kind of partner in this leading the Air Force would probably agree that understanding one of the most important things that the service secretary does and the Pentagon does is secure the budget and work with the Congress on the annual authorization bills on fixing all kinds of things. The Air Force, my perception of the Air Force, and I think most people would agree with this, was the Air Force was responsive to the Congress but not proactive. So if you've got a question we'll give you the answer. That's not particularly effective to work effectively with the Congress you need to teach and engage proactively because they have to be responsive to so many different things. And so we've tried to be much more proactive and engaged and I think it's been effective. So I understand what it's like to be a member of the House particularly but a member of the Congress and the demands. If you don't have attention deficit disorder when you are elected you have to acquire it in order to survive. So many issues. So little. I actually now teach a little course for our legislative liaison on a day in the life of a member of Congress. So you can understand what their lives are like and why it is. I can say this as a former member. So I usually start out the class by saying give me some descriptors of members of Congress. And I said unless you think that I'm sensitive about this and I go up to the white board and I write down there are a bunch of idiots. And then we do some exercising things. If you have to be asked in one moment about pesticide regulation for the apple crop and then about 8A housing vouchers and then about whether we're going to open Yucca Mountain Waste Repository and then the readiness of the United States Air Force you're never going to be. You're always going to feel like an idiot. Right. And that's what their lives are like. So as the Air Force we need to understand that and help them to understand what they need to know. And never ceases to amaze me the lack of that understanding. You know a man a committee of like a board of directors of 535 people for a 325 million person society and a 20 trillion dollar economy and all of the complexities that we have is just beyond belief that there's not more recognition of what we ask them to do. So you did a lot of things and then now you find yourself as a wartime secretary of the Air Force you know where we've been in continuous combat for 28 years. The Air Force is delivering lethal munitions almost every day somewhere against adversaries of various types and various configurations in various theaters operating on a global basis with unbelievable complexity political complexity social complexity cultural complexity this notion of of how we do that and how we execute that against both symmetric and asymmetric opponents and you know all these things going on at the same time. And back at the ranch so to speak here in Washington you know you're trying to oversee both the Air Force that's delivering this public policy outcome which is lethal engagement as well as attempting now to deal with all of the of the challenges and the opportunities and the threats that lie ahead of us. And so so before we talk about the details who would want that job. Yes people that fly in Piper Cubs at five years old with no door not strapped in. And so and so how do you approach it so that you feel confident that you are informed enough or able to be informed enough because you mostly make decisions to make the best possible decision at that particular moment realizing that you may have to modify that decision inch by inch by inches. So how do you approach it. Well it's not unlike what you've had to do as a leader in higher education. The first role is to recognize your job as an executive leader is not to do all the work but to find great people who can take chunks of this effort and move things forward. And the second is to set major strategic objectives start out with a plan and engage other people in the accomplishment of that plan. I don't tend to be a micro manager but I do try to look for alignment with people and have them develop for me how they're going to achieve certain objectives. And so so we knew we needed to restore the readiness of the force to win any fight any time particularly in a shift to great power competition. And so we have been working on restoration of readiness. I didn't write that plan but we got people engaged in pull together 50 people from around the Air Force to really dig deep and figure out what we needed to do and then go forward and execute and they owned the plan once they developed it. The second is implementing acquisition reform. When I was a member of Congress I talked a lot about acquisition reform. It's a heck of a lot easier to talk about than it is to do it. And so we have been focused on buying things faster and smarter and taking these new authorities that have been given to us by the Congress to strip time out of acquisition and to get capability to the warfighter faster. I think the Air Force probably more than any other entity in the federal government has been embracing this. We've now stripped in the last 10 months we set ourselves a goal take 100 years at a Air Force program plans. The neat thing to me is the number of small programs that are taking out 45 days by speeding everything up speeding everything up not taking out essential steps but taking out unessential steps. The other is working with small business. We did our first pitch day in New York. Small business innovative research grants we have to spend six hundred six hundred sixty SBIRs. That's the common right. So six hundred and sixty million dollars a year that we spend with small business required. It's in the it's in the budget. But we were taken 180 days to contract through that program. That's an eternity for a small business. We drove it down to 90 days and then we said OK what can we do in a single day. And that just broke people's heads and they got the lawyers together. They came up with a one page contract and the swipe of a government credit card to do a progress payment so that we could do not one day contracts but 15 minute contracts. We then did a pitch day our first pitch day in New York. We came. We said you know broad announcement. Some of our toughest problems. We didn't put it in the federal register. We put it on Google and LinkedIn and other places. Give us five pages in a pitch deck. We got over four hundred submissions from small businesses universities. Everyone we chose about sixty to come to New York for a day for pitch day. Fifty one companies walked out with contracts in the first progress payment. The average time to contract was 15 minutes. The fastest was three minutes which is faster than you can buy a beer in a bar in the city of New York. And thank goodness for Bank of America. There's this guy named Scott at Bank of America was on the phone with us all day because when you swipe us credit card for over ten thousand dollars it I mean it raises all their all names Scott at Bank of America with three point seven five million dollars of progress payments on a credit card that day. We're going to do the next one in Los Angeles focused on some of our space problems. We had to change the way in which we do business in order to engage America's most innovative companies and people. And we are breaking the mold and I so buying things faster and smarter. Did I come up with all those plans. No we found great people. We told them we give them top cover. We told them the first big mistake that we have. I'll buy the sheet cake as long as there's a lot of frost and I don't like cake. I like frosting so so well we'll and we enable great people to do good work. That's and the top cover mattered a lot to them. So when something got screwed up they said well who's going to be accountable for that. And Will Roper and I looked at each other and said are we OK taking responsibility for this. And we said yeah OK well then let's do it. And what are they going to say. The both of us think OK. So I didn't apply for this job anyway. I didn't anticipate coming back to federal service. Might as well do something while we're here. And so we are. So you're you're the chief executive officer and the chief political officer in the sense of governing the Air Force from a political perspective in the in the spirit of the American design which is that civilians will always ultimately be the decision makers for the military in terms of directing them and what they do. And that goes back to our our fundamental design and we're a long way from you know the old Gregory Peck 12 o'clock high army Air Corps air wing. Thank goodness we got our independence. Yes emancipated yes emancipated from the army. But so now let's so you're so you now are managing you know the the strategic air command you're managing this massive supply and logistics aspect of the Air Force. You're managing cyber command the emerging space command and space force and you know all these things that are going to the assignment for the Air Force going forward is is in some ways almost beyond belief because because you you're given this multidimensional space of basically limitless complexity. And so you know you have the possibility of space warfare and the maintenance of national security in low earth orbit and then ultimately low earth orbit won't be enough. There'll be high earth or even beyond that. Geosynchronous orbit or even other things that are in the in the works and so forth. So so as you think about now the Air Force and all of its missions and the complexity of managing it as an entity while at the same time involved in these these combat operations all at the same time. How do you build organizational learning and organizational resilience. Those two things. Yeah. First let me talk a little bit about the civil military relationship. So so because it's it's fascinating. I never worked in the Pentagon before this job. I avoided it as I mean actually in the building right. Yeah. I visited you in your office a few months ago and a friend of mine and I were there and we left the office and we somehow ended up going out the wrong exit. Very bad. Four days later we found the guy that was supposed to give us a ride. That's pretty bad. So so here's an interesting thing you mentioned about the structure of our government. The service secretary has by law pretty much all of the authority. The chief of staff has almost all of the influence. If you figure out how to work closely together. The four star. The four star. Dave Goldfine in my case. If you figure out how to work closely together to accomplish major things you can get a heck of a lot done. If you're not aligned almost nothing happens. So one of the mere blessings of this job has been Dave Goldfine serving with Dave Goldfine as the chief of staff as he is an absolute a player. And we we actually started the same day at the Air Force Academy. So we were sworn in the same day at the Air Force Academy. And and while we didn't know each other well at the Academy there's a common you know I have tremendous respect for his expertise and leadership. And one of the most important things for a civilian service secretary to do and say is what do you think chief. It is to get the best to solicit the best military advice. Because if you don't there the military will allow me to fail gracefully. You know that's it's not really but but there is another one of those secretaries exactly you know they told us what to do and it's not going to work but they didn't ask us. So so asking for advice is one of the most important qualities of a successful service secretary. And this weekend we were working two or three things over the weekend. In both cases he and I were both were aligned initially. We both said you know there's a couple of people we ought to talk to on this. We did. They changed our minds and we adapted the decision as a result. In the end we both started out together. We both changed our minds and we both ended up together. But that takes a level of communication that's apparently unusual sadly. So that now it's shifting to big challenges particularly in space which in America America is the best in the world at space and our adversaries know it and they're seeking to develop the capability to deny us the use of space in crisis or create a new point of vulnerability. Yes. Exactly. And because we're so good at it what do we do in space. Well we do miss a warning. We do communications. We do what we call position navigation and timing. MTV. Which all which for all of you means the blue dot on your phone. Provided courtesy of about 40 yearmen outside of Colorado Springs Colorado. Average age 22 which should frighten everyone that they enable an 80 billion dollar industry and provide GPS services to a billion people every day all over the world. So that's provided by the United States Air Force. So we do that's what the Air Force contributes to our space capabilities. That was all developed at a time when no one could touch us in space. And now we have to shift to the reality that space will be contested in any future fight. And that means understanding the threat developing the strategies to meet that threat and then the programs to support those strategies so that all of us know that if warfare extends into space everybody loses. Everybody loses. So we must develop the objective is to avoid that by by and develop the capabilities to deter in space in the same way we do in other domains and thereby encourage an adversary to choose wisely and deal with our diplomats and not with our war fighters. That's the nature of deterrence. So when you think about let's go back to so that there's obviously unbelievably complicated weapon systems deterrent systems information systems satellite systems. And so when you and I have talked a little bit about this in the past you know the notion of what does the airmen or the officer or all of them together as well as civilians how do you prepare your workforce for these complexities. I mean so you now are cyber offense cyber defense 25th Air Force in San Antonio all of its reserve units all over the country. People don't even know very much about these things that are going on. You've got all of your interfaces with the alphabet agencies and you know treaties and agreements and new weapons systems F 35s coming online which are unbelievably complicated in and of themselves. You know you've got you've got this whole new strategy for renewal of our nuclear deterrence and how that's going to work and then working with all the brainiacs that are developing that. And then this notion of the missile systems and anti satellite systems and all these other kinds of things. And so in 2025 or 2030 you know what does what does an airman first class need to be and what does a second lieutenant need to be. Yeah. And it's not just that airman first class and the second lieutenant. It is what are the captains major. So I'm starting with the newbies the new more than any other institution in America. I think we have an obligation to show what continuous learning throughout a professional life looks like. And the services are have always been focused on training and development of people and the Air Force more than other services is very technically oriented. But but this is going to happen in every profession throughout America and and you've faced it as a leader of American universities. The the the need for a continuous loop of learning for this generation is is is nations that do that will succeed and nations and communities that don't are going to be left behind. So for our for our generation you know we change jobs 10 times in a career. Our children are going to change professions two or three times in their lifestyles which means we need education and training on demand as well as on command. Most people don't know this but to be a senior enlisted person in the Air Force 90 percent of senior listed in the Air Force have at least one college degree. Many of them have master's degree. That's the enlisted force. You don't get promoted people have no idea about this. Yeah. You don't get promoted as an officer unless you get a master's degree beyond a certain point. But it's not just the structural kinds of degrees. And you and I have talked about this. It is the attitude developing the attitude of continuous learning that that every organization is going to have to go through the United States Air Force is going to have to do it as well. On cyber we're trying to engage American universities to look at how do we make available certificates and other kinds of things that are readily available to airmen and every small business in America to to be able for people to develop themselves in the area of cyber and and we're trying to do it across the board so that an airman it is easy for an airman to do choose to get you know develop their understanding of poshtune with an app on their phone and also to figure out and get the training they need an augmented reality or off their phone or wherever to fix the next generation engine to figure out OK. And we talked about augmented reality for our maintainers. It's it is rapidly changing and we either embrace it or we're going to be left behind. So before we turn to questions I want to talk about this discussion that's gone on the last couple of years about the expansion of the role of the Air Force in space. There was a lot of debate and discussion going on here both within the administration and within Congress on Space Command versus Space Force versus this versus that. I was kind of hopeful that they just say we'll just call it all Starfleet and move on. And so but they didn't. And so and so where where is where is that ending up what sort of phase are we at. And where do you think all that's going first. We have reestablished and the commanders up for confirmation. Jay Raymond is up for confirmation to be the head of Space Command. So a war fighting command for space which we had before 9 11 and has been reestablished. The Congress decided that last year it's moving forward and getting implemented and getting established. Second the president has put forward a proposal to the Congress which they are considering now to establish a separate Space Force under the Air Force. And the argument is but first of all I think we have to give the president credit for making space a kitchen table kind of discussion when it's a fairly small part of the military but it is a key enabler for all kinds of things. And so elevating the understanding of space and increasing the budgets for space over the last three years. So we've had double digit percentage increases in the space budget in the Air Force over the last three years to get after this war fighting domain. This the organizational structure will be sorted out by Congress there. They've looked at the proposal from the administration. I think in May they're doing their markups to say OK what do they think of that and then what are they how do they want to move forward. So a lot of that's happening real time. So and all of this will help then set up this deterrence environment for at least the near earth objects. For us it's from low earth orbit out to geospatial orbit. So you get to low earth orbit in about three minutes with a surface to surface to orbit missile. It takes maybe five hours to get out to geospatial. So that's a huge area. We have to prevail in space and develop this deterrent capability no matter what the org chart is. But there's the debate on the org chart of what will make us more lethal and more lasting over time. And that debate is playing out now. OK. I think we have a sense of the secretary and her assignment and at least a little bit of a glimpse of its complexity. Again I mean you're not talking about three dimensional complexity here talking about multiple three dimensional forms of complexity. So let's open it up for questions from anybody. And if you could identify yourself there's one in the back I see back there. Hi I'm Jillian rich with investors business daily and I had a budget related question said that the budget would include one hundred thirty five billion across the joint team for penetration projects. Can you go a little bit about the capability and why that's important now with great power competition. Sure. We think the way we try to think about this is two sets of problems penetrating and standoff. And for us penetrating would include things like the B 21 bomber for example. So designed to know country. People think about air defense and things like you know putting a block of wood over some country to keep us out. Nobody can really do that. The best they can do is Swiss cheese. And our job is to find the holes and get in and go after targets if we're assigned to do so. And actually it's not even Swiss cheese is more like fondue because the bubbles move. So so so penetrating is for us it's things like the B 21. I don't know what exactly included in the number that you cite but other things like hypersonic weapons research which is one of the keys for us going forward speed matters. And particularly if you're trying to strike a moving target you need to be able to launch and get there fast. So a small hypersonic weapon would be a penetrating weapon as would some other non man stealthy platforms. We have one called the the RQ 170. So those kind of those kind of things would be penetrating weapons for the Air Force. OK. Other questions as one over here. Ma'am John Herman. I'm a former Air Force guy myself. As you all know there's long been a tension between training and education versus operations. And there was a certain stigma associated with being too academic to ivory tower and that being a negative for things like promotion potential or selection for certain things. As we move to a necessity of a growth education and training mindset shifting culture is harder than shifting technology. What steps is the Air Force taking to counter that culture and to beat down the idea of pursuing education or training is somehow against operations as opposed to supporting it. It's a great question. I did not set this up but but I but I I love the I love the softball of the plate here. The Chief and I just signed out several pieces of guidance that we hope will help to change the culture over the time. One is that for instructor duty that will now be part of the consideration for promotion. So you will be boarded for instructor duty very historically and this gets back to not value valuing education. We also didn't value instructor duty. So if you taught at Lackland or at the Air Force Academy or at ROTC or at any of our service schools for maintainers or anything else that was kind of well because you couldn't get another better position and it's kind of a dead end. There's those that teach and then there's those that do. Right. So we have now flipped that much like joint service used to be required for once once that was required for promotion and we made that clear that it is a responsibility of every officer to make the unit better. And that means the unit as a whole and that means developing the next generation of airmen. So we want our best role models and best people in those positions. That means all of you high need achievers are going to have to serve in that way. The Marine Corps does this now. It's almost no officer, senior officer in the Marine Corps that hasn't done time in the recruiting service. It gives them a different perception of what developing the future force means. So we are now boarding and recommending people for instructor duty and you're not going to be able to get it unless you're the best of the best and that will also be a consideration for promotion. That will help change things. The other thing is we've now set up a PhD management office so that if you have a PhD in the air force your assignments will be managed like general officer assignments. So they will be basically hand done so that we are managing and developing and storing that talent. There's too often in the service if you come forward and say you know I'd really like to get my PhD in electrical engineering and cyber security. The answer is well you know that'd be a dead end for your career. We can't be, we can't do that. And so we have set up a PhD management office. The final thing that we'll be rolling out this month, we've been working on it for 18 months is a change to the promotion categories. The air force, the Navy has much more stratification for surface fleet submarines and so forth. The air force has had other than lawyers and doctors, pretty much everybody is line of the air force and they all compete against each other. Well how we want to develop you as an acquisition officer is probably different than how we want to develop you as a maintenance officer. Yet we throw you all into the same mix for promotion and then just hope that this big system results in enough talent being through pulled through in different areas. We're finding ourselves to be very short on senior level expertise in space, in research and development, in logistics, because we're not promoting properly and developing people. We will be shifting to six sub categories. One will be for the future force, research, development, test, evaluation, acquisition. One will be for space. One will be for operations and special operations. And within those large categories we will develop people for leadership along the way of their career and you will promote and compete against other people in your category so we can promote to need. Those things won't have an effect really this year, I mean obviously they start this year. Real effect will be seen 10 years from now when we actually have more PhD scientists and engineers who are able to stay in for a long meaningful career. Maybe one more question. There's one back here. Commander Armand Lanchand, French War College. At the end of last year the president, French president Macron announced his wish to have an European forces. From your perspective, how do you consider this under US on NATO point of view? The separate European force? Joint European, so this is the joint European force separate from NATO? Yes. Merci beaucoup. The United States, so anything that Europe does to increase the percentage of its GDP that goes to defense is a good thing. The goal is 2% minimum. I think five NATO countries are on the track to meet that goal so increasing the contribution to defense, interoperability of those forces, but I think the most important thing for Europe to consider and NATO has always thought this way is that it is vital for the security of Europe to maintain the close connection with Canada and the United States. There's common values and if a European force appears to be disconnected from the security responsibilities and the umbrella and the connection to Canada and the United States that that will weaken us all. And so I think that is the only area of concern is to make sure that the NATO alliance stays strong. I would also say that I remind some of our American citizens about this that Article 5 of the NATO treaty which says an attack on one shall be considered to be an attack on us all. So it is the foundation of the NATO mutual security guarantee. That article has only come into force one time and that was in the United States was attacked on 9-11 and our allies came to our defense. No one ever expected that. It was always about the American security guarantee to Europe but we should always remember as Americans that it is a mutual security pact and the only one who has ever really benefited for it in active combat is the United States of America. And then the NATO allies responded and when the combat immediately in Afghanistan. Our allies were there. Merci bien. Well let's thank Secretary Wilson.