 My name is Stephanie Sanic-Costrow. I am a senior fellow here in the International Security Program at CSIS, and it is my great pleasure to welcome you to today's event on security cooperation and the enterprise going forward into the future. As you all know, the United States has long made security cooperation with allies and partners a national priority. Security cooperation as a term covers all Department of Defense interactions with foreign defense and security establishments to build defense relationships that encourage and enable international partners to work with the United States to achieve strategic objectives. From a US perspective, these objectives include promoting specific US security interests, developing allied and friendly military capabilities for self-defense and multinational operations, and providing US forces with peacetime and contingency access to a host nation. Perhaps in no other area is interagency collaboration and cooperation more relevant and more present on a daily basis than in discussions of security cooperation. There is a particular Department of Defense directive that outlines policies and responsibilities for a host of DOD players ranging from undersecretaries of policy and acquisition technology, logistics to the secretaries of the military departments, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the combatant commands. This particular directive also identifies the Defense Security Cooperation as an integral defense security cooperation agency as an integral player. And of course, the State Department has the lead in representing US interests abroad. This interagency dynamic, the push and pull between the defense and foreign affairs ministries, is also present in other nations that approach security cooperation in a similar way. Increasingly tight fiscal constraints have underscored the need to find areas in which such cooperation can be both effective and efficient. Our discussion today will explore US government efforts to better prepare and position the security cooperation enterprise for future challenges. As a side note, this event today is part of what we at CSIS call our Federated Defense Project. It's a multi-year effort that will draw on a range of programs here at CSIS to look at defense concepts, capabilities, posture, and relationships. And so security cooperation fits very nicely into our broader project here at CSIS. And I encourage you to look at our Federated Defense Program as sort of an aside. We've completed our look at Asia and how we are working with our Asian counterparts supply chain issues. So it runs the full gamut of defense issues. But coming back to today, as a reminder, I will note that this is an on-the-record discussion. If you all wouldn't mind turning your cell phones and whatnot to either stun or silent, I would appreciate it. And without further ado, I'd like to introduce our opening speaker. It's Vice Admiral Joseph Rixie, the director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. He's a Naval Academy graduate and a Naval Aviator by training. He's completed several operational tours, as well as shore assignments, for better or for worse, I'm sure. Before assuming his current post, Admiral Rixie served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for International Programs and as a director for the Navy International Programs Office. So again, without further ado, Admiral Rixie. Glad to see some familiar faces out there. So hello. And I'm going to be very brief. I'm going to talk to you about three quick topics and then introduce, and the panelists will be introduced, and they will speak as well. I chose to stand up because I can't see half of you sitting over here in this seat. And I'll sit back down again. Panos will speak, and then we'll roll into Q&A. But I want to talk to you a little bit about the background of four military sales to include the goals and objectives, the environment that we work in. We're looking at past trends and the current status of foreign military sales. And I'd also like to introduce to you the what we call DSEA Vision 2020, which is the strategic plan for the security cooperation community. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. So first of all, I want to thank the Center for Strategic and International Studies for allowing me an opportunity to get up in front of this audience of experts, practitioners, and stakeholders for the security cooperation enterprise. And I do want to note, and thank you for allowing us to be part of the Federated Defense Project, which I'm understanding is exploring the idea of pooling international resources. So many thanks for that. I want to thank the panelists for being here that are sitting to my right, Mr. Baker, Mr. Kozner, Mr. McCarthy, and Mr. Ross. In particular, to Mr. Tommy Ross, who is now the DASDI Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security Cooperation. And he will be talking about security cooperation writ large, and my comments very briefly will be on the Security Assistance piece, which is commonly known as four military sales. So thanks, gentlemen, for participating. First of all, as the Director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, I'm responsible for guiding via policy and resourcing the security cooperation community, which is just the subset of the enterprise writ large. We're known for our execution of four military sales. We're also responsible for executing for policy the Building Partnership Capacity programs to include those Title X and Title 22 efforts, Defense Initiative Building, Counterterrorism, the 1206 programs I met, and Humanitarian Assistance. But like I said earlier, I'll just focus on four military sales. Our goals, obviously, are to contribute to partner and regional stability, enhance the mill to mill cooperation, enable interoperability, and to develop lasting relationships. I'm going to slide, don't go to it yet, but I'm going to talk a little bit about the status of sales and where sales are now. And I have been accused that all I think about are sales. That's not our primary goal. Obviously, partnership capacity, relationships. More importantly, it's about national security. It's about foreign policy objectives. It's about the industrial base, and it's about supporting the US economy. So we go to the next slide. That's the environment, and that's sales over time. I want to focus in before I get in and talk about the trends is where we are today, that little blue dot above the FY14. As of 31 October, we went over $33 billion in sales this year, 5.4, which was for military finance, but that still means we had a great year. In the world of I met, which wasn't shown, we executed $105 million, which means we trained, and you look at all the programs, we trained 4,771 students. We have relationships with 242 countries and organizations. If you look at the number of cases that we're executing that are currently open, that number is 12,916, with a value of $414 billion. And the workforce required to do that is almost 10,000 strong. So you can see that we're very busy. On average, we do about 140 LORs for LOAs on a monthly basis, so per month. So you can imagine we're doing quite a lot of work throughout the community. When you look at the slide going left to right, you can see that we averaged about 12 to $13 billion from 01 to 05, mostly viewed as capital improvements. And speed and agility were really a secondary consideration. And then you see that ramp. And that spike in 12 was associated with the F-18 to Saudi Arabia. But if you take that out, we've been averaging around $30 billion a year. And our workforce ramped up accordingly. What I look at that chart is where are we going? And what does the future look like? And when I first took over the job, we had a little bit of a down year, $27 billion. And I thought, are we going back to the 12? Are we going to be 30? Where are we going with this? And what do we need to do about that? And you always wonder, what caused the shape of that curve? Why did we ramp up almost threefold in our workforce accordingly? And we've looked at it, and I don't have a great answer. The best that my folks can do, the only curve that's shaped like that that may correlate is the OPEC oil price. So I'm not saying that's the reason, but it certainly is an interesting correlation. But where are we going? And if it continues to go down, what does that mean? And so when I look at that, and after a year in the job, I realize there's a new norm out there. And we're seeing that, and we're experiencing that new norm. And first is the global defense budgets worldwide are strained, including ours. What else we're seeing out there is competition. And what I mean in competition is that there are some European and other foreign goods and services that are quite capable. And so there's a competition in that regard. Flexibility is required. My agency is known for four military sales. We prefer four military sales. They're a bilateral arrangement with the country. It's a bilateral agreement. But we also support, and the misperception is that we don't like direct commercial sales. We do. We support them wholeheartedly under certain circumstances. What I usually note is that if you have a mature technology and you have a mature procuring partner, DCS is probably a preferred methodology. And I'm going to talk a little bit about the benefits of FMS and the downside. But we do support it. But the flexibility that I'm talking about are hybrid approaches. We have to get used to hybrid approaches. And I'll give you an example. India PAI, which was the Maritime Patrol aircraft, they procured direct commercial from the Boeing Company. But in order to complete the execution of that aircraft, they were required to bring in five four military sales cases to support. And to time, getting the cases signed and through the government of India and the government of the United States in a timely manner to support the contract with Boeing and the deliverables associated with it was a lot of work. But again, being part of this new norm, we are going to rise the occasion to support it, because we need to if we're going to compete for market share. So we recognize that. You all know, and I think you all know, the benefits of four military sales, it's the total package approach in our mind. We are very proud of the goods and services the United States provide quality is what we're known for. In addition to that, we like to deliver the product, the interim support, and a follow on case for the total support. So that it's completely supported throughout the life of the program. We believe the process is transparent. We believe it's corruption free. And I'll tell you, there's a lot of countries that come to us for that alone. We believe that we were able to leverage existing contracts to keep costs down and to take advantage of the benefit both the United States and to the foreign partner to leverage those existing activities are out there. We believe we can max interoperability, which is critically important for partnership capability. We think we can maximize commonality, which for them in the long run, is long term support ability, which their total ownership costs can be addressed in that regard if they're pooling with us in terms of support. And I know that the downside of going for military sales is the 3.5% fee that we assess to every case in order to feed the 10,000 strong that have to go off. Let's execute those cases. It's our overhead. Another one that's not very well-liked is the end-use monitoring piece. And the standard terms and condition is we make sure that the goods that we provide are monitored in the end. Third-party transfer restrictions. Customer can't transfer to another country without the permission of the United States government. We've been accused of not being very fast and our costs being high. And so we recognize that. The other new norm is that we're being thrust for military sales case, they're being thrust into international competitions. We're an FMS case, which we consider a bilateral agreement where our costs are designed for execution and not to capture the competition. They are conservative and they are provided to our international partners with the intent of you go to your budgeting folks, your treasuries, you get the money allocated and we will execute in those numbers. They are conservative. They don't compete well with direct commercial offerings from international vendors. That said, we have to compete there as well. And so what all this is telling us and what this environment is telling us is that we must evolve. We must evolve at DSEA. So my last slide. I assumed the job about a year ago, executing under Jeff Waringa's Admiral Waringa's plan that expires at one September or the end of the fiscal year, sorry, but took an opportunity that we knew we had to publish a new multi-year plan that we will publish on one October. And back in January, we looked in earnest at reassessing our business and our engagement strategy. And the results are this document right here, which is on its way to its printer right now. There's three things we wanna focus on and that's our foundation. We're gonna focus on the people, the organization and our values, mostly at headquarters and our satellite commands, alignment with our stakeholders. And that's to include all of our friends in the interagency, the international customer, our industry partners. One of the things we have to do is really learn how to prioritize our finite resources. And finally, the third thing we're looking at doing is reducing the cost of doing business. And when you saw the backing to that curve, regardless of what direction we go, if we can reduce the cost of doing business then we can probably reduce the rate. And if we can reduce the rate, then we can probably encourage more sales. So we're looking at that. And I think that's one of the primary missions that we're on there is reducing the cost of doing business. And in order to execute this mission, I had to do an internal reorganization. That too will be published on one October. It's a matrix organization focused on its original focus. Their focus will be on the day-to-day execution of problems and that'll be on a vertical alignment, on the horizontal alignment is the functional focus. And they'll focus on the eight goals and 23 initiatives that are in that document to improve the process. So by reorganizing internally at DSEA, I'm bringing accountability to two fronts. The first, the front of quick reaction. And the second, the most important is process improvement. We've been working with the foreign procurement group, our friends and allies and the embassies around here. We've been listening to our customers and our stakeholders. There's a lot of things in there that we need to work on and we're going to get after that. So we're going to rebuild the organization to execute this vision. So in summary, our goal of DSEA is to build partnership capacity quickly, effectively and in a very transparent manner. Second, we recognize the environment is changing and this vision 2020 in our reorganization is designed to get after that. I'm looking forward to hearing from the panelists, the rest of the panelists and I look forward to your questions in the question and answer period. Thanks very much. Thank you very much, sir, as we move the obstructive podium. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome his fellow panelists. As I mentioned earlier, security assistance and presenting U.S. interests abroad is false to the responsibility of the State Department and so it's only appropriate that our first panelist after Abner Dixie is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Regional Security and Security Assistance, Gregory Gausner. He's responsible for advancing U.S. foreign policy and national security interests through managing political, military and regional security relations at the sale and transfer of U.S. origin defense articles and services to foreign governments. He directs over $6 billion annually in U.S. military grant assistance to allies and friends as well. As I mentioned earlier, the Admiral comes from the aviation community and as I understand, Das Kausner does as well so we're just stacking the deck early on here. And then I will turn to Mr. Tommy Ross who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security Cooperation, responsible for prioritizing Defense Department bilateral and multilateral security cooperation activities and aligning security cooperation resources to defense strategy. Like Mr. Kausner, he has an impressive background on the hill but I understand as opposed to the Navy, he has completed the Air Force's Air Command and Staff College so we have a little bit of jointness and diversity up here. He also has a Certificate in Africa Intelligent Studies from the National Intelligence University. The next panelist after DASD Ross will be the Principal Deputy Director for Strategic Plans and Policy on the Joint Staff, Mr. Jim Baker. He's responsible for leading and managing a culture of strategic thinking across the J5 organization, providing creative and global strategic perspectives on the full array of palm ill issues facing joint staff leaders. He's also dual-hatted as a strategist to the chairman and in that capacity, Mr. Baker develops and presents initiatives regarding changes in the geostrategic balance. And finally, because I don't want this to be a US-centric discussion only, we've asked a wonderful colleague from the British Embassy to join us, Mr. Steve McCarthy. We are fortunate to have him with us today. I believe it's day 10 or 11 on the job here in Washington but he's no stranger to DC. As I mentioned, he began his appointment. He's the Minister for Defense Materiel at the British Embassy. Jointly with the defense attaché here, he's responsible for all aspects of the US-UK defense relationship. Immediately prior to this role, he worked at the UK Ministry of Defense as the Director of International Security Policy, where he was instrumental in UK policies on security cooperation. Before I turn to Das Kausner to start off with a few brief remarks, I will note Mr. McCarthy as a Brit is not quite open to discussions of Scotland today. As he mentioned in the green room beforehand, the polls are still open and he will not address questions regarding devolution or Scottish independence. So I wanted to make that clear from the outset and I will now turn to Das Kausner to kick off the brief remarks. Thanks Stephanie and thanks to CSIS for holding this panel. I don't think there's any question that security cooperation has become a fundamental tool of our foreign policy, which is why this discussion today is all the more important. We're grappling with questions associated with training and equipping partners to help us confront some of the most significant challenges of our time. From encroachment in Eastern Europe to security, maritime, territorial disputes in Asia Pacific to the fight against ISIL. So while we grapple with these questions in the interagency and the government, I'm sure there's a question that many of you all are grappling with right now, which is what exactly is the guy from State Department doing on this panel? So I'm gonna take a second to contextualize the state's role as it relates to security cooperation and then just briefly outline some initiatives we're pursuing to help improve the efficacy and the efficiency of our policies and our processes. So folks are often surprised to hear that State Department has oversight of our traditional security cooperation authorities. In some countries, I think the sale of arms, for instance, is considered a commercial transaction, a military transaction. But for us, it's a matter of foreign policy. It's every time we transfer either through the foreign military sales process or the direct commercial sale process that Mariksy talked about or we use our grant assistance accounts just for military financing, international military education and training, peacekeeping operations, or some of our new authorities such as global security contingency funds to train and equip our allies and partners. It's an opportunity for us to export our values, to insert our leverage on the global scene, to build bilateral and multilateral partnerships, to improve interoperability, and of course ensure that we maintain our access, which facilitates our global posture around the world. So I think there's this narrative that has developed both inside our borders and outside that the United States is in retreat, that we're afraid to lead. I'd argue that our strength remains unmatched. I mean, not only do we have the most dynamic economy, the most advanced educational institutions and the most developed industry in the world, but we have this incredibly sophisticated network of security relationships. I mean, as President Obama said, from Europe to Asia, we are the hub of alliances unrivaled in the history of nations. We also have an unrivaled military, because we have that unrivaled military power doesn't necessarily mean we can be everywhere at once, nor should we be, which is where building partnership capacity comes in. I mean, we should and can rely on our allies and partners to step up and share some of the security burden with us. But of course, we've got to provide them with the right training and the right tools to be able to do just that. So of course, that's the whole, the purpose of the security cooperation enterprise from Joe Ricks and his team to Tommy Ross and his, to our folks at State Department working together to make sure that we achieve real impact with our security cooperation, that we're good stewards of increasingly limited resources and that we're leveraging defense trade to achieve our foreign policy and security policy objectives. So with that said, I'll just outline briefly some initiatives we're helping spearhead at State Department to do just that. First, we renewed, the President renewed at the beginning of this year the Conventional Arms Transfer Policy. Now, this policy doesn't upgrade processes or efficiencies, but it does underpin everything we do as it pertains to security cooperation. It outlines clear criteria, which we have to consider when making arms transfers. It requires policy makers to balance two fundamental tenants. One, that building partnership capacity is an absolute necessity in today's security environment that will help us achieve our national security objectives. But on the other hand, ensuring that we are not providing a destabilizing flow of weapons into a region or a country. So this policy, by renewing it, it certainly reaffirms the importance of security assistance, security cooperation, but it also provides a very transparent framework for the American people and for the world to see how we make these determinations. So that brings me to the second initiative. We thought it was important to not only update our policy as it pertained to arms transfers, but also as it pertains to security assistance accounts. So we updated our broad implementation and policy formulation processes as they relate to foreign military financing. So foreign military financing, the great assistance we provide partners and allies to enable them to purchase U.S. defense articles and services. At an age of fiscal austerity, it's clear we're gonna have to figure out ways to do more with less. In 1997, we allocated FMF to 24 countries. That number has skyrocketed in 2014. For instance, we're up to 78 recipients. So we've got to squeeze efficacy out of every last penny. And so that's why we issued this guidance. And the guidance is designed to not only guide our use of foreign military financing, but our grant assistance across the board and we're working to implement it. So some highlighting principles that we issued are as follows that FMF can and should fill both diplomatic purposes and capacity building purposes. And we're actually trying to build something with our FMF and not just send a diplomatic message. And that goes to the second point, which is capacity. We're trying to build long-term capacity, not fill short-term stop gaps. We want to reform militaries. We don't wanna foster dependency or sustain them for eternity. The third point is that FMF can and should be, FMF programs can and should be developed in consultation with our partners, but not in deference to. We have to remember this is US grant assistance. These are taxpayer dollars. And so we have to achieve US security objectives. And it brings me to the final point as it pertains to grant assistance. We ultimately are trying to achieve an objective and graduation is a good thing and failure is a fact of life. So we have to assess whether our programs are actually working. And then once we do that, determine whether or not we need to alter our procedures or move money elsewhere. So that brings me to the third overall initiative. We can, when we provide grant assistance, it's the beginning and not the end of an enduring relationship and Admiral Rixie referred to this. So it's incumbent upon the US government to make sure our money is being spent for good purposes, which is why we're developing a robust monitoring and evaluation framework. Now we do this already through a whole host of initiatives. Joe mentioned some of our end use monitoring programs where that's golden century as pertains to FMS or Blue Lantern for direct commercial sales. We also conduct security assistance round tables at state department where we bring in appropriate stakeholders to plan for our security assistance programs in future years. We conduct security assistance management reviews in conjunction with our partners in DOD and regions to track each and every program we have out there. And then we initiate targeted assessments for key programs on an annual basis as well. But what we need is a framework to capture all that good work and a robust methodology to look at monitoring evaluation. And so what we're using is a tiered mechanism. And the first tier will assess the demand signal. Why do partners actually need security assistance? That means we look at internal and external factors from terrorism to whether or not neighbors are destabilizing. And then we move into the second tier which is actual capacity. Like what are the capabilities we're targeting with our assistance? What's the baseline and how can we improve that baseline with our assistance? So through monitoring and evaluation, I think we'll better be able to inform our resource allocations and ultimately provide accountability. So we can do all the monitoring and evaluation we want to at the end or certainly at the point of the security cooperation where we're implementing assistance. But if we don't get our planning right at the outset, we have a little chance to succeed. So at State we realized this was a deficiency and we reformed our planning process. This is a major finding of the QDDR. It assessed that we needed to link strategy, top-down strategy to bottom-up resources. So like DOD, we've got some strategy documents at State Department. The Joint Strategic Plan feeds into our regional security strategies and those regional security strategies feed into integrated country strategies. So I'll take a second to talk about our integrated country strategies. The key word is integrated. These are integrated not just in State Department but throughout the interagency under chief emission authority for each and every state. So what we're requiring now is that every time we have a resource request in State Department that that resource request be linked to the integrated country strategy. So again, strategy to resources. It's muscle memory we're creating inside State Department and we think it's going to be very effective. So the next step in that process and this is something that Tommy Ross and his team have really done a lot of good work on in a short period of time is linking not just resource requests to strategy but all of our security cooperation programs to strategy. Now we do that now but we can do better. Working with the interagency to look at capability capacity gaps of our partners to identify systems that can help fill those capacity gaps because it's in our national interest and then working with our partners to build that capacity and linking that all back to strategy is key. I think this will enable us to not only build the interoperability that I'm a Rixie mentioned to but really burden share and also it'll help us inform industry which brings me to my final initiative that I'll highlight today which is advocacy. So I think there's no question that as we constrain our own defense spending here that companies, our defense industrial base is looking to offset their losses in foreign markets. Now we don't sell arms to improve the bottom line of our industry but we would be foolish not to consider the impact on our national security of the health of our defense industrial base. Not only does it affect their economy but it affects our ability to produce new technology to stay on the cutting edge. So that goes in when I talked about the Conventional Arms Transfer Policy before that goes into our thinking as well. So we're working to improve our processes inside the US government to do a few things. One is to coordinate our efforts. State and DOD getting on the exact same page singing off the same sheet of music so that we're at trade shows so that when our principals are traveling overseas certainly at our level but ideally above they are aware, they're conscious, we're all conscious of competitions that are going on so that we can make the case for the US solution, the total package approach that Emeryxie mentioned. And the second thing we're working on is organization, right? So again an interagency effort to ensure that we're not only just formulating talking points that's nice, it's good to advocate on behalf of the industry that way but real advocacy is identifying challenges that we have in specific tenders and then identifying points of contact in the US government and overcoming those challenges for the win. So we're doing I think a better job lots of work to be done but doing a better job of tracking those instances and then finally communication. Communication means a lot with respect to our foreign partners but I know there's some folks in this audience that would welcome some more transparency with respect to industry and we're working at that. We're developing forms where we can give industry steer on what the US foreign policy direction, US security objective direction is so that industry can stay aligned with the US government because as a team I think we are unbeatable. So concluding remarks, I think all those initiatives that I outlined are certainly necessary but not sufficient. We have quite a bit of work to do. I think from the State Department perspective we're committed to continuing to work with our fantastic partners and DOD to improving our policies and our process to achieve maximum impact with our security cooperation programs. Thanks Tim. Thank you. Dazdi Ross. Thank you for having me. Greg talked about aligning security cooperation as a tool of foreign policy and I wanna talk about the same thing as a tool of defense policy but Greg sort of toward the end of his remarks talked about how DOD and state need to be singing off the same sheet of music and I was sitting here thinking he mentioned a lot of themes I wanna cover aligning strategy resources, doing more with less, working in a dynamic security environment, improving our ability to deliver by effective evaluation monitoring. All these different commonalities that started to seem to me like if I didn't know better there might be some interagency coordination which is a good thing. So I think we're definitely working towards that goal of singing off the same sheet of music but my role in particular is as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Security cooperation with the Defense Department is really to drive the security cooperation activities of the department in support of defense strategy and the role of security cooperation I think is the theme that you will see laid out repeatedly in a number of different ways through our Quadrennial Defense Review. You know, one of the things as Greg mentioned is that is mentioned throughout the QDR is that we are working in a dynamic and diverse security environment where we face the host of different challenges not all of which we can or should be responsible for taking on alone or even in the lead. So we've seen over the past several years over the past few years we've seen a developing model where our partners and allies take the lead and the United States lend support in order to help our partners and allies take on missions that achieve United States national security interests and objectives. We've seen it in Libya, we've seen it in Mali where the United States worked with the French to enable their efforts. We've seen it in Somalia where the United States has supported the Ugandans and Burundians and others to enable their efforts. I would suggest that as we look around the world now and only see a proliferation of different and diverse crises that is a model that is likely to be more and more important in our national security planning and strategies we move forward and that's reflected throughout the QDR. I think the other thing that's reflected is that we do have new fiscal realities that we need to face and that is challenging the department to turn to security cooperation in a couple different ways. One is that you see we are not going to have the resources to project an international presence to the same degree that we have in the past and what that means is we will need to turn to allies and partners to do more in their regions to bolster regional stability and security. The second thing though is that security cooperation is part of that solution because as we are able to project U.S. forces less extensively throughout the world or with less duration, fewer permanent presences, security cooperation can fill the void, security cooperation can help us maintain important relationships around the world without necessarily having a full-fledged enduring troop presence. So you see those two things reflected in the QDR. I think the other thing that the QDR brings to light is that we are moving away from a period of over a decade of war and focus on counterterrorism operations to a focus more on full spectrum operations and that's something that needs to be reflected in security cooperation as well whereas instead of focusing on preparing our partners and allies to carry out counterterrorism missions, we need to build capacity and build relationships to support missions across the full spectrum. That means we're gonna need to look at investing in areas that maybe have not been traditional strong points for our security cooperation activities. One of the ones that I'm particularly focused on right now is logistics. We actually worked with UCOM, or it's actually in process today, we're having a conference in Germany bringing together three different COCOMs, several different partner nation militaries, transportation command and others to talk about how we can do more to support logistics capacity building and the importance of that in doing what Greg was talking about in terms of getting the most out of our investments and building sustainability, building the partner nation ability to take over the maintenance and use, sustainable use of the equipment and resources that we work with them to provide. Those are important goals in line with the QDR but the Defense Department I think has some challenges in order to meet them effectively. In 2011, the Secretary of Defense established a security cooperation reform task force and I wanted to read you a few of their findings because this is the environment that is facing us in terms of trying to drive towards these objectives. The task force found that security cooperation is largely slow, reactive and risk averse. There's no systematic department-wide approach to planning at the country level, specifically with respect to identifying partner country capability needs. DoD lacks formal means to prioritize competing requirements among and between partner countries both within and across COCOMs and there's no DoD-wide methodology for capability package planning, planning that organizes and synchronizes security assistance with related security cooperation activities to account for institutional sustainment, training and infrastructure needs. So that was 2011 and some progress has been made but there's a lot more work to be done and that really is why my position in my office was created, was to drive further progress in addressing those needs so that we can meet the objectives spelled out by the QDR and other strategic guidance. So our office, I'm a little bit more senior than Mr. McCarthy, he's been here 11 days, I've been here a little over double that long but so I'm new, my office is new but we have a clear sense of our mission and I wanted to talk to you a little bit about what that is. We are seeking to address the gaps that that task force identified but specifically I think one of the things that we wanna do in partnership with Admiral Rixie, in partnership with Secretary Kausner, in partnership with the joint staff and others throughout the department, AT&L, DITSA and so on, our office sees it as a mission to try to use security cooperation as a tool to drive strategic initiatives, to drive, to look for breakthroughs in bilateral relationships and to look for breakthroughs in terms of providing functional capabilities as I mentioned before, whether it's logistics or maritime security or cyber security or other areas where the department has traditionally invested less than it may need to invest in the future. We also, and this is probably less sexy but the most important thing we do is to drive methodologies that do what we've been talking about that prioritize resources that make effective use of evaluation tools in order to ensure that our investments are hitting the mark. So that we have methodologies in place that really allow us to ultimately align resources to strategy. And then finally, what I've talked about a couple of times with logistics and capability package planning and so on, what that really is about is paying attention to building the institutional capabilities at the same time that we're building military operational capabilities. Providing a weapon system is important but ultimately it's an investment that doesn't go very far unless the institutional capabilities are in place to sustain that weapon system to ensure that there is a process in place for using that weapon system in accord with a foreign military strategy and doctrine for using that weapon system in a way that incorporates all the other elements, all the other military enablers. We've seen in a lot of cases that militaries may have very good combat capabilities but have very limited capabilities for lift and resupply and that kind of thing. That's really where we need to build and we need to have that institutional focus in order to help our foreign military partners really see that as a priority equally important to building out its military arsenal. So that's where our office, that's a few of the areas where our office will focus. We have a number of initiatives underway that I'm happy to talk about in more detail but I think that's sort of a good picture and I think, let me just end by reiterating, our office, our role really is to drive the alignment of security cooperation with defense strategy. There are a lot of other motivations and interests in the security cooperation enterprise across the government and our office will only be successful to the extent we're able to work in those interests and to work with the people that represent those interests. So we're part of a team and this sitting shoulder to shoulder up here with that team hopefully is a good metaphor for that but I think it's going to be critically important for our success and for the success of everyone else who's up here talking about their initiatives that we remain linked and so that's our commitment. Thank you. You know, I forgot to mention, I mentioned that we've got two Naval aviators up here and that someone with experience at the Air Force, I forgot to mention that Mr. Baker has some experience with the Army, one might say. So with this panel up here and the addition of Mr. McCarthy in the end, I think this is probably the first joint combined panel that I've hosted in a while. So over to you, Mr. Baker. Thank you so much, Stephanie. It's an honor to be part of this panel by the way and I'm deeply appreciative to you and to CSIS for pulling this forum together. As well frankly as for CSIS's thought leadership on the whole federating defense concept and where you're trying to pull us. I'd like to talk about three things briefly. One is the chairman's intent with respect to security cooperation. The second is the actions that he's been taking over the past year or so and then finally just some personal observations that should not be attributed either to him, the joint staff, the Department of Defense and so on. A little more personal. I think it's fair to say that the chairman has been, has had two roles with respect to his intent on security cooperation. And the first one is to be a cheerleader and the second one is to be a scold. The cheerleading part is everywhere the chairman goes he hears from his fellow chiefs of defense about the importance of cooperation with the United States. I certainly think it's fair to say that there's never been more of a desire to partner with us in multiple ways, not just material ways but also with respect to doctrine and with respect to operating together. So that's one message he gets and he carries that message to both combatant commanders and to his service chiefs to reinforce, to share lessons, to invigorate them. He also hears almost everywhere he goes about the failures of our security cooperation system, some of which have been already highlighted by my fellow panelists. I probably sat in a thousand meetings with prime ministers or presidents or chiefs of defense where the first talking point that they're given is an extended lamentation about the state of our FMS and so forth programs. Where is it? Why don't we have it? How slow is it? Why does it cost so much and so on? None of that, frankly, prevents them from coming back and buying US as Admiral Rixie pointed out in terms of our sales over time. But the competition is increasing and I know that that's on the chairman's mind. You've seen in perhaps in the chairman's QDR assessment that he identifies in the sphere that he has influence in two or three things that he thinks should be our focus for security cooperation. He talks about blended pools of force. He talks about increased visibility into force management and he's also talked about moving from less of a direct action role for the United States, particularly with respect to CT and more of an enabling role with our partners. I think all of those are good emphasis areas and I'm happy to go into them in Q&A. The chairman's point man for security cooperation is General Lewis. Ken, would you stand up so everybody can see you? So this is a flag officer devoted on the chairman's personal staff to try and identify and track and drive reform and change in these areas. The chairman's also been out and about talking with his closest allies and chiefs of defense about how we can do better together. So he's convened a series of defense chiefs, strategic dialogues with a number of countries. I think we've had about 10 sessions now with a push to at a very deep and robust level to make sure that we've identified shared objectives, we have a common threat picture, we've shared lessons between the two services and that we're able to have visibility into each other's forces and the choices we make about how forces are deployed and employed. So that's a little bit about the chairman's intent and some of the things that he's been working on. Some personal observations from my perspective are that planning, the types of work that the DAS and the DASD here are doing are very difficult. On the military end of things, by the time we get to committing to action, we actually know how to do that pretty well together. We've been operating with closest allies for a very, very long time. But getting over the hurdles of sovereignty and bureaucracy, very difficult in the planning sessions, which is exactly where my colleagues spend most of their life. I don't wanna underestimate the degree of political and military skill diplomacy it takes in order to coax each other along. And maybe Mr. McCarthy can talk a little bit about how good our coaxing actually is. I also wanna footstomp DASD Ross's point about prioritization. Frankly, because the resources are increasingly slim, we are not going to be able to do everything that we want to do or hope to do and prioritization becomes critical. It's not a strength of the Department of Defense to prioritize, but it's inevitable and we need to welcome it. Lastly, despite all those challenges, the impulse to cooperate with the United States is everywhere. You see it particularly in Asia, but certainly also in the Middle East, given Secretary Kerry's and Hegel's recent announcements about support for operations in Iraq and Syria. So the question is not whether or not there will be a demand for increased cooperation. The question is whether the United States government can be nimble enough to seize it. Thank you all very much. Mr. McCarthy. Thank you very much. Thanks, Stephanie, and thank you both to you and to CSIS for inviting me here and recognizing that on the topic of security cooperation, perhaps it's sometimes quite helpful to our foreign voice, albeit one that almost speaks the same language as the US does. I just wanted to pick up on one point that James made just there, which is that while we're talking about the future of security cooperation, this isn't actually a new topic, of course, it's been going on actually for centuries. I mentioned that not because when I picked up my rental car when I arrived here, it had a Maryland War of 1812 bumper sticker on it. But actually, because of course, we're in a time of anniversaries. We're in the 100th anniversary of World War I. We had the 75th anniversary of D-Day very recently. We, some of you may know in this room next year, will be the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. Also, by the way, a coalition operation. We'll have to look it up. But of course, while we're here talking about the future, I think it's important to recognize that one of the key parts of the way, which at least in the UK, and I think here as well, we think about future operating environments, revolves around those famous six C's that the future operating environment will be congested and cluttered and constrained and contested and connected. But the important sixth C, at least for us, is it will also be coalition. And from the UK's perspective, we firmly believe and have been in this space for many years that the only way in which we can deal with the future security challenges we face in Britain is by doing that in partnership with allies and with other nations around the world. And so future security cooperation for us isn't sort of theoretical or even a business proposition. It's a fact of security. And it's the reason why we have been, for many years, putting so much effort into ensuring the way which we do security cooperation in the UK, not just with our closest allies, like the gentleman to my left here, but also with other countries around the world has been so important to us. And I'll talk a bit more about that in just a moment. But that thinking drives many of the things that we do. And just to pick out a few recent examples, as you all know, we recently hosted the NATO summit in Wales. We were very proud to do that. The Prime Minister made it a personal decision that we should make that offer. He thought it was the right time to make the offer to host the summit. And I think most commentators have concluded that the things that came out of the summit were important for our mutual cooperation, not just across the Atlantic, but also more globally. It was the reason why the UK was one of the countries leading the charge on trying to encourage people to recognize that as all the speakers have mentioned in a time of austerity, defense has taken hits, but needs to be part of the recovery program too. So we led the charge on encouraging more countries to spend 2% of GDP in accordance with the guidelines. And although bureaucrats, by the way, I've never served with any of the three militaries, so I'm the real joint part. I'm the purely civilian guy up here. But we recognize that one of the key things in all of this is that if you don't spend enough money at the end of the day, you are not gonna meet those security challenges. Of course, you have to spend the money in the right way, and that's what previous speakers already talked about, but you do have to spend enough money in the first place. It's also why we in the UK have been very forward-leaning into the new Redness Action Plan that came out at the summit, and why we will be making our commitments to secure as that program gets developed. But today, UK Armed Forces are operating in the Asia Pacific. They're operating in Africa. They're operating in Middle East. They're operating in the Americas. They are, of course, operating in Europe, too. And part of that historical context for us is that international cooperation is a natural thing. It's not something new. It's exactly the same for the US. And one of the points that I think, when you have that broad and longstanding perspective, you begin to realize is you can't do international cooperation strangely enough without talking to foreigners. It really is as simple as that. So what you have to do is begin to think as you approach your global challenges, how can you best enable your partners and friends around the world to do the things that you want them to do to help you? So from our perspective, one of the things we've done recently in the UK, and this is very similar to the things I've just heard from my colleagues on my left here, is try to bring all this thing together in a program that we call the International Defense Engagement Strategy. That was published in February of last year. It's still, therefore, relatively new. But there are a number of important strands to that, which I just wanted to outline for this audience to give you perhaps a bit more of a context of where the UK comes on this piece. The first is, in the same way that people here have already mentioned the interagency approach, the International Defense Engagement Strategy of the UK is a joint foreign office and ministry defence publication. It was developed with colleagues from the aid department, from the trade department, from the security agencies. So it really is very much an interagency product for us. And what that does is look at, and the process of developing it did, was to look at all of the security cooperation we did around the world, understand the context of that exactly in the space of UK foreign policy and our strategic goals globally, and try to prioritise effort in accordance with existing strategies and with new strategies in order to make sure we got the most out of what we were doing internationally. And that means that we built on long-standing relationships, not just through NATO, but also through the UN as a member of the Permanent Five of the Security Council, through slightly less well-known, perhaps, programs like Five Eyes Corporation or a thing called the Five Powers Defence Agreement, which is a long-standing arrangement that we, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore enjoy in that part of the world. And try to bring all of those corporations together with some rather new activities, which drove us, for example, to increase our defence corporation in a slightly, perhaps, opportunistic way, but nonetheless a very important way with countries like Burma, a whole new area where an emerging opportunity to really begin to drive a country's future development in a secure and stable way, presented itself to us and which we found ourselves well-placed to try to take. We've also gone back over some more recent, less happy corporations and out of some of those things we've done, for example, came the first joint British-Irish deployment to a conflict zone when Irish personnel joined British infantry training teams in Mali. And any of you who know anything about Anglo-Irish history will know that was a pretty important moment after about 100 years of not quite seeing eye to eye, shall we say. So we're doing all this thing based on a strategic analysis of where our priorities are, and we're doing it also to try to cohere the approach that we have to security cooperation around the world, whether it's through capacity building, whether it's through defence training or defence education, whether it's even, frankly, the supply of marching bands to some event somewhere. The influence that you get from bringing all these things together, it can be significant, and that matters to us, and it matters that we do it, it seems in a quite coherent way. So for us, this is not a new thing, it's a long-standing thing. For us, it is the way in which we will develop our future cooperation as we go around the world. One of the great and exciting things that we have now with the US is further ability to discuss how we can both work together in third countries, and that's a really important piece too, because security cooperation isn't just about the US or the UK or France or other countries doing things in those places, it's about us as allies doing them together to have joint effect, and that really is an important part as we move forward. So just to bring those remarks to a close, I think I'd offer, as a punchline for us, it's not really about the future of security cooperation, it's the future of security is cooperation. Thank you. Thank you all very much. I will exercise the moderator's prerogative to ask the first question, but hopefully we can get through it fairly quickly and turn to you all for questions. We have about half an hour, and so when we come to audience questions, I would very much like you to raise your hand, wait to be recognized, introduce yourself and your affiliation, and to ask a question, and that means a sentence with a question mark at the end of it, not just raising your voice at the end. The question that I have, and it's kind of remarkable to me, and it could be because of my history on the House Armed Services Committee staff, that no one really talked about Congress going down this panel, and the question that I have, nine years ago then secretaries Rumsfeld and Rice co-signed a letter asking for the creation of several different authorities, one of which had become the 1206th authority for global training and equip, and the argument underpinning that as the creation of a new authority was, the FMS system is broken, it's very time intensive and extensive, and I'm sure the Admiral can talk about process improvements that may be necessary at some point for FMS, but the question that I have is, with creations of new authorities like 1206, which now I understand isn't as rapid as it had been envisioned to be, and then the creation of a global security contingency fund more recently, interactions with the Hill, explaining security cooperation and security assistance to the Hill, understanding what the different thresholds are, knowing that the Hill likes to earmark funds for particular countries, which in a way, very real way, constrains the executive branch's ability to use resources in a way that they might otherwise want to use. If I could turn to both Mr. Kousner and Mr. Ross to address briefly, when you're talking about security cooperation and changing the security cooperation enterprise, what is the receptivity on the Hill? Do they understand it in the way that you would like them to understand it and what kinds of considerations will you have going forward in engaging with Congress? Thanks, Stephanie. I think it's an excellent question. So Tommy and I both have, I'm sure, unique perspective on this given the fact that we came from the Hill. So I, for one, certainly think that the role Congress plays in terms of oversight of all of our security cooperation is vital. And I think that the sort of scrutiny that's paid to these programs is a reflection of what we've all addressed in terms of resource limitations, right? We cannot throw money away on programs that are not well thought out and developed. And part of 1206, 1206 requires State Department concurrence. The Global Security Contingency Fund is actually unique in that it's dual key. You have dual planning, you have dual resource allocations or 1206 is DOD money again, but State Department concurrence. But with both of those programs, they require this joint planning that we've talked about some today. Now, again, I think some of our traditional authorities also mandate that planning. I mean, there's ways to circumvent it, but that's in no one's interest. So in short, I'd say that congressional attention paid to all of the security cooperation accounts is vital because we have to be able to explain what we're doing and not only the Congress, but the American people. So we relish the opportunity to go up and talk about our initiatives, our thought process behind pushing the initiatives. And another thing, we learn a few things from what Congress says. We take their insights into account, we try to fold that into what we're doing, and I think it's an incredibly valuable relationship. I just add, on the Defense Department specific authorities, so many of them have grown up over the last 10 years in the context of Afghanistan and Iraq and counterterrorism missions. In response to perceived needs that were current at the time and in many cases have persisted, but there has not, to my knowledge, been a comprehensive look at what authorities are needed to accomplish the objectives that are tied to our strategy. And that's really what we owe Congress before we can expect Congress to have a meaningful reaction to what we're trying to do. Congress has been a great partner over the last several years in hitting those immediate needs that have been identified, but we really, I think we know that there are gaps in the security cooperation reform task force that I mentioned, the Defense Policy Board recently, several others have identified that there are gaps in the authorities that we might want to have to seek the objectives that, again, are linked to the defense strategy and that there also is a need for greater flexibility in some cases, there are redundancies in some cases. All of that needs to be rationalized and I think that's something that our office, within the Defense Department, is eager to undertake. Thank you. Sir. Yeah, I just want to comment on a couple of times I've heard that the FMS system is broken. Sometimes, and I've been looking at this for a while, I've been, I was in NIPO for four years or three years and I've been here, and what you're asking yourself is, are these well-intended checks and balances that allow us to move something or not? Should we have them? I have found that if it's a high enough priority and supported off at the highest levels of government, we can move product using the same FMS systems immediately. Okay, so what's the real question? Are we overburdened? Do we have, when I told you the volume of cases that are coming in, is there too much? And so what it really comes down to, what we're trying to achieve is, through this prioritizations system, to understand what is the best way to align ourselves, what is, we need to understand our priority so we can move those cases through in a timely manner. We have to ask ourselves what are the priorities of these things that we're trying to push through the process? We're not gonna move a product that touches human rights issue to a country that has human rights violations. We're not gonna put technologies in the hands of countries that don't protect it. And I know that we're doing a lot of reform in terms of tech transfer and I know we're doing a lot of reform and coaxing our fellow nations to be where they need to be. But the fact of the matter is, I fundamentally believe that the FMS process works. It's just a matter of the priorities and it really becomes down to the volume of which we're pushing things through. So, and we're gonna understand that and we're gonna work with the panelists right here to understand those priorities and so that we can manage those finite resources. But anyway. I didn't mean to offend you. I was just conveying at the time. No. One other thing is that, and I understand that there's some frustrations. One of the things we're looking for in terms of speed is that I think our foreign customers really don't want speed over everything. They wanna have a quality product in terms of letter of an offer and acceptance and they want their expectations to manage properly and they want insight into the process. That's what I think we can do. We can control that and we can fix that. And the other thing we need to do is work on getting to know quickly as well. And so we're working on that. Thank you. I'd like to turn to the audience now for questions. First off, the gentleman in the back. Hi, thank you all for making time. I know you have very busy schedules. My name is David Adesnik. I'm an international affairs fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. And I'm tempted to ask a question about the future of US security cooperation with Scotland but perhaps that's a question better answered tomorrow. So instead I'll ask a question about a different mystery which is the counter-terrorism partnerships fund that the president announced in May. I mean, it struck me as something with the potential to be a major reform. It was potentially increasing by an order of magnitude the funds available for counter-terrorism partnerships. And it seemed to be a surprise to just about everyone outside the administration and even for some people at pretty high levels in the administration. And then we've heard Congress most recently, both the ranking member and the chairman on House Armed Services really tear into the deputy secretary quite a bit for saying it still has the form of a slush fund. So I was wondering what you could tell us about, I mean, especially Mr. Ross and Mr. Kausner about the development of plans for this. Is it gonna move forward? How big is it going to be? And what authorities will be used? Will there be a new authority for this? Or is it gonna be channeled through some of the existing ones? Well, to begin with the end, you know, the authority is pending in Congress. So I think that's something which will determine the answer to the rest of your questions. I mean, we are awaiting congressional action on either approving or not approving that authority and the funding to go with it. I think that, you know, the details will then be sort of ironed out within that process. However, I think what the counter-terrorism partnership fund brings, number one, is a pool of resources that can expand what we're already doing to help build partner capacity around the world for counter-terrorism. And there is certainly the need for those resources. The second thing is that it allows some of the flexibility that I was talking about a moment ago to be able to move funds to the right accounts at the right times in order to deliver solutions on a rapid and agile basis. And third, I think one of the things that our office is interested in exploring, you know, I was talking about the capability, I forget what I called it, this was from the capability package planning. I mean, this is the idea of being able to pair together different activities within the security cooperation realm so that, you know, if we're working with a partner, a counter-terrorism partner, and we know that they need a certain weapon system or a certain type of equipment, we're also helping them build the systems to support and sustain that weapon system or equipment. And so, you know, the idea that we can pair together a few different authorities within a single package I think has a lot of potential, and that's something that this fund would allow us to do. So that's sort of a start. I think there's a lot of potential but until the authority is passed and we see what the details are that Congress chooses to include, it'll be hard to give any concrete details about this implementation. The only thing I would add is counter-terrorism is not just about fine-fix finish. There's a significant soft component as well. When I say soft, I mean soft that is in, you know, countering violent extremism through narrative and other types of authorities that don't fall under either DOD, security cooperation authorities or state department security assistance authorities. So I think what you're likely to see is a comprehensive approach based on the resource allocation that we hope Congress provides us to attack counter-terrorism across the spectrum of activity. I'm gonna change the format just a little bit. I'm gonna call on three different questions from the audience and we'll hold the responses until we get the three questions on the table. So who would like to answer? This lady in the middle here. I'm Allie Weinberg. I cover the state department for ABC News and I invite whoever wants to take this question, but it's about Syria. As we go forward with the mission to train and arm the rebels, I want to know to what extent has the program that you, Desk-Houser, laid out in terms of laying the groundwork for knowing the capabilities of these, in this case, the moderate opposition to maintain control of the weapons that we might be giving them and how you see that process, how you see that inter-agency process that you laid out informing the mission, that particular mission as we go forward in terms of the arming component of the moderate opposition as they go to get trained and then come back to fight ISIS. How do you see this inter-agency process that you laid out informing that going forward? Thank you. Thank you. Who would like to ask a second question? This gentleman, and then we'll ask this gentleman over in the side. Hi, Walter Kreiler from Northrop Grumman. I'm just curious, with a range of initiatives you all have discussed this morning, how do you see aligning with the technology release community? Because, of course, as we increase partner capacity and capability, that may take a second look at how we do that. Thank you. Please. To you behind you. Inter-agency Embassy of Estonia. Today, Ukrainian President Poroshenko is visiting Washington, and probably one of the points he is raising with his American colleagues is lethal weapons and heavy weaponry that the US could possibly donate to or sell to Ukraine. Now, if he will ask that question, what would be the answer of US administration at this point? Interesting. Before I turn to the panelists, on the Syria question, since it's all very fresh and happening as we speak, really, one thing I'd like to highlight for folks is Congress certainly has an opinion on who gets these weapons, and really, across the board, when you hear vetting of people who receive US arms transfers or buy from the United States with US government assistance, or otherwise known as lehi vetting, really knowing who you're giving weapons to and then also how they're going to treat them once they have them, what they're going to use them for is not important just to Syria. It's important across the board, and earlier we've heard a little bit about human rights vetting, making sure that they don't fall into hands that they shouldn't. We have experience with that. And to this day, I think folks, lobby, Capitol Hill, it's going no more schools of the America's experiences. And so I take the question and I'll see who on the panel would like to tackle that, focusing on the interagency process that you asked about. Does anyone wanna tackle that? Sure, General Allen is at State Department right now working through a coalition building, identifying not just State Department resources, not just the AOD resources, but worldwide contributions to this fight. I think the administration's been very, very clear this is not gonna be a U.S. only initiative. We're gonna coalesce the strengths of all of our partners and allies, see what folks are willing to bring to bear to the fight and then I think in good time, we'll roll all that out. And Secretary Kerry and Secretary Hagel, I think articulated that fairly clearly on the public record in testimony over the course of the past couple of days. But work, a lot of work is being done with respect to arms falling into the wrong hands, as Stephanie said, and I couldn't agree more. We are conscious of that with every program, whether it's a Title X or a Title 22 authority and in the case of Syria, it's something we'll pay very, very close attention to. It's something that we'll watch down the road. There's not much more to say about it right now, but there will be in the future. On the tech release question, I'd actually like to turn to the Admiral a bit. Talk about how DSC might interact with DITSA, the Defense Technology Security Administration and real questions about tech release and you mentioned a monitoring evaluation and end-use monitoring, so, sir. Yeah, well, I'm gonna kind of duck that one. But I am gonna say that we, you know, Beth McCormick at DITSA is not here and Keith Webster of AT&L, I see he's not here as well, but they chair that at our SIG and they're fundamentally working extremely hard to improve the tech transfer process. What they do and what we do, the gentleman on the panel right here is we sit together on a monthly basis and we have roundtable discussions that include both DITSA and ATL and IC to understand the issues and the concerns that we're working on. And so they continue to work that. And I think Mr. Kendall and my boss as well recognize that this is still to be a focus area, but you need to know at the working level, at this level, we continually discuss those issues that we need to work. And that's about the best. It would be nice at a future panel to have them sitting up there as well so they could address that directly, but we're working on it, so. Kind of just one thing, you know, I think our goal with the AT&L SIG and within our office and with a number of different initiatives that Mr. Webster and Ms. McCormick and others are working on is to be, you know, is to move from a posture where we're reactive to a more proactive and anticipatory posture with regard to weapon sales and security assistance, security cooperation at large. That should allow us, you know, in an ideal world to identify and address technology release issues early on in the process and be able to move out, you know, sort of operate, get our ducks in a row before we ever get into the L-O-R-L-O-A phase of a package. That's good for industry because it gives a little bit more certainty about what's coming down the road. It's good for the department because it allows us to be more agile and hopefully it's good for the foreign partner because it allows them to get the capability they want in a more rapid manner. The third question, as I understand, it was on lethal weaponry and Ukraine. You know, I would highlight the NATO summit that was recently held, talked about Russian aggression and talked about Ukraine as a partner, obviously not an ally, and very sensitive to any activity that happens from anyone in the alliance to work with Ukraine and how that might be perceived by Russia and then an alliance. Kind of look at it. Who would like to take on the question of lethal weaponry in Ukraine? Well, I'll just, I'll say, I think it's important to put this in context. Tommy mentioned something that we are very, very focused on which is building a long-term defense institution capability. And so I think there's a comment and this doesn't just pertain to Ukraine, but conflict around the world, there's a common tendency to migrate towards the shiny object, which is the lethal defense article. I mean, that's not always what's required to achieve our ultimate objective. We have to look at the less sexy reform. And so that certainly comes into play with respect to Ukraine, but I think it's also important to recognize we've provided $70 million of security cooperation to Ukraine in the span of just a few months. So you've seen the U.S. government respond in a very, very aggressive manner to supporting Ukraine in the face of aggression. So I'm obviously not gonna preempt what the president says. That's not a good career move. But look, it's safe to say that we continue to stand with Ukraine and try to provide them the assistance they need. Anyone else? Slade up front, please. Hi, I'm Laura Lempe from Open Society Foundations and thanks to all of you for being here and being with us today. I had a question. Several of you talked about prioritization and the importance of it and the difficulty of it. Admiral Rixie, I was kind of stunned when you said you had FMS cases with, I think you said 242 countries and organizations. That's, I scratched my head. I guess it's a lot of organizations because there aren't that many countries. Yeah, yeah. And Greg, you talked about FMF going from 24 countries in 97 to 78 now. Tommy pointed to the importance of the need to build institutional capacity for the partners that you do prioritize to be able to absorb and sustain the equipment as being key. I would say that for some of the partnership building capacity, some of us look at Mali, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq showing that the ability of those Ministry of Defense institutions to absorb is key but even more important is the ability of the government to have oversight and governance structures in place that can utilize that MOD effectively. And so I know that when the African Heads of State Summit was held, a new security governance initiative was announced which was gonna prioritize really just that, helping focus on that capacity to oversee the security assistance and the security sector more effectively. I wonder if one or all of you and maybe primarily it's a question for State Department perhaps, but whether you could speak to how you're seeing that prioritization of absorptive capacity at the government level and not just at the MOD level when you make your decisions about who to prioritize. Are there any other questions that we could answer at this time? All right, thank you. Laura, it's a fantastic question. I mean, we have got to acknowledge we can partner with effective security institutions all we want, but if there's not the overarching or actually underpinning government to support those institutions, we have very little hope. So it truly needs to be a comprehensive effort. I think you've seen, as you mentioned with the Security Governance Initiative, a growing recognition inside the US government that it has to, we have to take this comprehensive approach to security, cooperation, security assistance. And so I think the folks that are represented up here today certainly are focused on one component, but that doesn't mean it's the total component. It really is the full spectrum. So we're doing our best to align those efforts. And in terms of prioritization, I mean, that's one of the things that Conventional Arms Transfer Policy reaffirmed. It reaffirmed that it's not just about interoperability. It's not just about burden sharing. When we talk about US national security objectives, human rights are right up there on par with those other imperatives. And so is the fact that a country has to actually be able to absorb what we're providing an absorbed means feed into an overarching government system. So it's essential. I'd actually like to ask a question. As I mentioned earlier, this event today is part of, we consider it here at CSI as part of our Federated Defense Project, which really is looking at pooling resources and complementarity among nations in pursuing their objectives abroad. And so one important reason why we had Mr. McCarthy here is to talk about what is the UK doing versus what the US is doing, how we can be complementary in certain regions of the world where the UK, for example, may have greater influence or interest than the United States. I hesitate to say interest, but longer relationships, more interest in enduring relationships in that particular region, whereas we can focus resources across the board. If I could turn to Mr. McCarthy to answer that question in terms of, what do you see as opportunities for the United States and the UK, for example, to work together in security cooperation around the world? Yeah, sure. And thank you for breaking me out of my roles as a token foreigner. That's quite helpful. Yeah, I mentioned this very fleetingly when I was giving my remarks, and I do think it's one of the big new opportunities that we need to drive and we'll be working with Tommy and the team on this because what we found is that actually very often through our networks of defense attaches and other agents around the world, actually when we get on the ground in an individual country, there's quite a lot of close cooperation and coordination. What I think we rarely done, rarely tried to do in a systematic way anyway, is look at it in a case by case strategic dimension. So we are going to be engaging not just with the US, but that's an important partnership but with other friendly allied nations as to how we can see our engagement with other countries. It just makes sense to do so. Not only from the viewpoint of economy, but also from the viewpoint of effect because actually we want it to be a multiplier and not an overlap. And if I might just pick up on the last question too, and that's another part of this that from our perspective just as on the US side, defense engagement, the phrase we tend to give security cooperation really doesn't work if you try and do it in isolation. You have to do it in the whole piece. So a lot of what we do is around broader security sector reform. And one of the, I mentioned for example, the work we're doing in Burma, one of the key things we've been doing with the Burmese military is a course called Managing Defense in the Wider Security Context, which is broadly speaking about defense activity being part of civil society and civil control, not the other way around. And so that's absolutely a fundamental part of what we do. And I think as we continue this dialogue, we'll find ourselves more and more and more in that space. I just want to add to that because I think working with the UK as a beginning, working with other partners as well, but to not only de-conflict, but really begin to integrate our thinking about how we approach security cooperation is a really important effort within our office. And I do think it ties in really well with Laura's question because a lot of times when we're not working in coordination, we're contributing to the problems of absorptive capacity and weak institutions, both at the national government level and the military level. I was just coming across this case that I'll give as an example where the UK, the US and the French were working with one nation's military in particular. And the nation's military was about the size of our Marine Corps. Our Marine Corps just as an example trains on one battle tank for the entire Marine Corps. This partner nation military through FMS sales and similar sales with the British and the French and others maybe ended up with nine different battle tanks, seven different personal assault weapons and several other duplicative weapon systems through its military. And then of course was completely unable to train their military to operate across these different systems to sustain those different systems and so on. In that case, I think this was a country where people have criticized the security institution as being weak, but we were one of the key problems with that because we weren't coordinating with our friends. And so I think our ability to begin to integrate our thinking and our planning about security cooperation as we go into different countries where we share interests has absolutely enormous potential. I think it probably goes back to what you were talking about, capability packages and making sure that it's appropriate for the country and that they can operate something because once they acquire something through FMS, operations and maintenance costs over time can be difficult for particular countries to foot the bill. We've run out of time. We're trying to end exactly at 1130 so I think we've reached that point. Please join me in thanking our panel. Thank you. Thank you.