 for ability with our partners and allies. And what I've been studying and meeting with numbers of folks in the various nations over in Europe is understanding what their capabilities are, what are they interested in doing in multi-domain operations, and then how can we interoperate. And I'll tell you that that is not an easy task, but I think it's absolutely pivotal for the future as we look forward and try to understand how can we gain exponential results in this multi-domain fight that we're going into, whether we want to or not. Of note, what I have found is, as a general rule, not everybody wants to create what we have, this multi-domain task force. Each nation is approaching this problem set as they see best based on their interests that they're developing. But what is powerful is each of them are making investments in particular aspects of this. And if we all understand what we're doing, that is what I'm really working hard at, is trying to understand where those capabilities are and how we can gain the exponential results as we move into the multi-domain fight in the future. So with that being said, I'll turn it back over to General Moranian. Okay, well thank you. And I hope that that gives you a little bit of meat on the table to stimulate your thoughts and we're looking forward to answering your questions about our formations and what we're doing currently in Europe and the trajectory of where we're headed. Yes, sir. Here you go, sir. Thank you. Sebastian Sprenger with Defense News. As you visit the partners in Europe, what state do you find their fires organizations to be in? Given that maybe you could make the argument that weapons class sort of fell out of fashion for the Europeans for a while. And then what are some of the obstacles you're finding when it comes to coordinating fires? Is it mostly a technical issue or where do you start there? Thank you. Okay, thank you. So I think it varies. All nations to include the United States after the wall fell in the early 90s took a trajectory with regards to combat forces that was a result of the peace dividend. So several countries did decrease the amount of their artillery forces. And so I think what we're seeing from watching what's happening to our East is seeing that fires formations are very relevant in 2022 and in the future. And every nation that I've engaged has fires formations and they aspire to modernize and grow them just as the United States is as well. With regards to the challenges that we face, we've had exercises, one of the great testimonies of how well our exercise program has been designed over the years is it's rated us for where we are in time and space right now. So for us in Europe, the premier exercise that we run as an artillery formation is called dynamic front. We've done six or seven iterations of that over the last decade and they grow ever more complex and ambitious year in and year out. The last one we did was in July and we had 19 nations participating, had over 2,500 soldiers participating. We for the first time did a proof of principle where in addition to having a U.S. artillery brigade that stationed at Graf and Veer Germany, we put together a multinational fires brigade comprised of 11 different nations that came together as a headquarters under the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps as the command and control. And they had multiple different nations that formed firing elements and were able to validate the concept that you could put together formations of smaller donations from countries that don't necessarily have a full battalion or brigade to give to a formation but can still contribute to the Alliance by operating together. So it's an exciting time and things like that as we go forward as I engage with different allies and partners that what I'm finding is common threads of places where we can pull together capabilities as John mentioned and creating the exponential growth. So as we cluster potentially nations that are geographically close or have cultural commonalities or even weapon systems commonalities, I think that's the way ahead as we look to be able to optimize the artillery that does exist in the Alliance as we modernize and make sure that everything is be able to be brought to bear in the fight. So thank you. Hi, Sidney Friedberg from Breaking Defense Generals. Thank you very much. And congratulations. Seeking particularly to the MDTF, you mentioned the intelligence capacity is key. Obviously you're not launching your own geostationary satellites and so forth. So how do you plug, what's the combination of the connections to your organic ISR assets but also other Army assets, US joint assets and the multinational assets available in the Alliance that you can draw on for that intelligence capability within the MDTF? Thanks, Sidney. Good to see you again. Sir, thanks for the question. Okay, so, and this may seem a little elementary and basic thinking, but how I approach that is we, in order to be successful in this multi-domain task force in doing one of the two tasks that the Chief of Staff of the Army gave us, which is to synchronize long range precision effects across multiple domains. The intelligence aspect of that is pivotal. And what I have found is, and I've seen this honestly in all aspects of, in other organizations that I've been involved in is federating among the intelligence community is absolutely pivotal. And so for us to do that, what I'm doing is investing in understanding all the various intelligence capabilities in all those areas you talked about, whether it be within the Army, whether it be within the Joint Force, whether it be with our multinational partners, is building the framework to be able to maneuver through those various intelligence capabilities and to draw from that to go against our very specific problem set. And I think that's important to understand for the multi-domain task force. Where we become effective is we're an entity that can focus very, at very with precision against problem sets that are given to us. And therefore I can draw from all those various entities that are out there to answer those specific problem sets that I have. And that just goes with good communication. I spend a lot of time on the road talking to various entities, especially in the intelligence communities to make sure they understand the problem sets that I'm interested in and can then help us out with that federation of intelligence. And Sidney, if I could add additionally, we do spend a lot of time working with our joint partners in theater as well. US Air Force is Europe and Africa is a full partner in our federation that John described. So we're looking at this from both an Army standpoint but also from a joint and a combined standpoint as well. Sidney, could you say that again into the mic please for the live stream? Sure. How much of that is a people problem, a human dimension problem, in the words of the new doctrine, of getting to know who's who in joint and multinational intelligence? How much of that is a technical problem, a networking problem, of getting the data to flow from different intelligence systems, different databases, different standards and get it into actionable form that you can pass along to the fires community in the really tight timelines people are envisioning for multi-domain fights. John, can I take that? Sure, sir. So that's the big elephant in the room, Sidney. How we're able to in the future be able to leverage the advancement in supercomputing and AI to be able to gather from all sources whether it be national technical means, whether it be an observer on the hill with binoculars and everything in between from not just the United States, not just the U.S. Army, but our joint and allied partners as well. How do we take all of that data that's gathered, wash it through AI-enabled decision-making tools that allow commanders to be able to visualize the battlefield in real-time and make decisions or affect the decisions that have already been made by passing in real-time through a cross-domain solution to the best shooter whether they be an allied high-mars battery or an Air Force Squadron or whether they be the organic assets within the multi-domain task force? I think the answer is yes, it's both. There is a human side of things because we're going to have to grow to get comfortable with the direction that we're going to go in the future with AI-enabled decision-making tools, but it's also a technical challenge that will continue to grow and evolve and things are just going to get faster as we go. So thank you for that. Sir, it's Lieutenant Colonel Skrzyk. I'm the Polish Army liaison to HQDA. I wanted to ask because we are talking about very sophisticated capabilities here and these are very welcome and some of them are connected directly to forward posturing. And what kind of challenges and what are your expectations? What kind of challenges do you see when dealing with partners at the frontiers of NATO within this forward posturing realm, especially when those allies and partners are not part of the Five Eyes and this is the more challenging. Let me start and then, John, please feel free to jump in. So that's an excellent question. And I think in an alliance of 30, we have, of course, 30 and soon to be 32, national policies on how we share information, what's available, what's not. And so I try to think of it as positive and not a negative. There's an opportunity to get better at sharing information. I think the mission partnered environment initiative that is ongoing in Europe to be able to bring folks into a network that allows us to share information is the key. I think partitioning that to allow each nation to be able to share what they feel comfortable sharing is going to be the way forward. So bringing everyone into a mission partnered environment that can be tailored and managed based on national caveats and national beliefs is the key to how we get around that. I think it's an opportunity as opposed to a challenge. John, if you'd like to jump in. The one thing I would add to that then, Sir, just to continue that conversation is the exercises that we're doing with the various nations, allies and partners are absolutely pivotal to working through what you're talking about. We can sit here and think through this all day, but until we actually work together in very realistic exercises, whether those, you know, be command post exercises and force ourselves to have to be able to work on that communication, that interoperability. What I've seen is we're able to make significant gains in the areas that you're talking about when we work together very closely, when we actually conduct these exercises. And I see it improving dramatically. I've seen it with the various exercise campaigns that we've had, and Sir, you might want to mention a few of those. So one of the things that I think is critical as we look at how to optimize the mission partner environment is to make sure that we're not building a structure for an exercise and then tearing it down after the exercise. What we need to do is ensure that we've got a rel-nado environment that is persistent, that exists at all times, so that our day in and day out interactions can be conducted via that network. And then, you know, as classifications go up and down based on national policies, then we work through those. But I think if we look at the technology enabling us to be more inclusive, as opposed to being more restrictive, it certainly is a trajectory that we want to go. Thank you. I think we have time for a couple more. Generals, thank you. My name's Mark Sevens. I'm a Colonel in the British Army and the Futures Directorate. Thanks so much for the talk. We're fully on board with the direction of travel. How much are you intending to drive NATO standards into your work? I think that's absolutely critical. The interoperability from a much more than the human interoperability which we practice all the time, the technical and procedural are so much easier when they're driven by stain ags that we've agreed to. And so as we start breaking new ground into thinking through how we create effects in domains that have not been widely rehearsed and practiced in the past, I think we need to continue to evolve using our time-tested procedures of developing the stain ags to allow us to understand what the baseline is for interoperability so that we can snap that chalk line and then adjust from there as we need to. Something that we're doing is approaching this problem set differently. We're wanting to start with the NATO structure and then build backwards which I wouldn't say we always have done well in the past but I think it's going to be absolutely pivotal because depending on the situation as various entities participate, if you have that structure built into it that can adapt to various NATO countries involving themselves in an operation or other aspect, it's pivotal to have that. I think it'll speed things up, it'll speed up how fast we can communicate, work together and interoperate. And I would add in addition to our travels to visit bilaterally with our allies and partners, we've also spent a bit of time traveling to NATO headquarters as well. We're limited obviously by the amount of days that we can be out and about but we have been to NATO Corps, we have been to the JFC, we have been to NATO headquarters at ACO and we continue to have conversations about how we become a combat multiplier for the alliance and not just for the US Army or the US Joint Force in Europe. Sir. Lieutenant Colonel Lakey retiring, the guy who drew this up on a whiteboard for General Brown back many years ago, I don't know if you've ever heard people say bad things about me, but my question is a little bit, how did we see this evolving? Cause I've been out of it for a few years and how do you relate, I've got two parts, the other part is how do you think about the difference between a multi-demain task force in Europe and of course we envisioned a lot of it in the Pacific. So I think that's another key theater and those are two things I just wanted to ask you. Thank you. First, and this is my viewpoint, I think we have it about right in terms of the framework, in terms of the task organization. So if you built that, what I'm seeing is between the first and the second who we communicate very closely with. It is, it's very applicable as a whole to various problem sets, but make no mistake, the different theaters are approach, you approach them very differently from a multi-domain operational aspect. And some of it is extremely obvious, they're dealing with large oceans in the Pacific and the tyranny of distance in Europe, that is not the worry, they're working at trying to break in, understand the A2AD bubble and how they can penetrate that, whereas in Europe you're basically within that. So you approach the problems that very differently. I think the key difference in this is you're each gonna have different priorities from that combatant commander and the ASCC commander. What I've seen is the difference is those priorities are just different based on the theater on what you're gonna focus on. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, from the high levels, they gave us full flexibility to approach this multi-domain problem set to be able to tackle that and figure it out based on the theater. So I've had a lot of flexibility in doing that. I was not caught in having to do it like somebody else, sir. Well, listen, this has been an absolute pleasure. We look forward to continuing the dialogue with you as we walk around throughout the rest of the week here. We are unfortunately out of time, but thank you for your attention, thank you for your thoughtful questions, and have a great day.