 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Ray Dubois, the senior advisor here at the CSIS. Thank you all for coming. On behalf of John Hamery, our president and CEO, I welcome you to this panel, a congressional panel on the Quadrennial Defense Review and the National Security Strategy in Formulation. As you may know, CSIS has held a series of eight different QDR panels over the summer period, beginning in early June. Begin with Michelle Flournoy, the Intersecretary of Defense for Policy, and from a colleague of ours here at CSIS. She was followed by the Forest Service Chiefs, along with General Mattis, the Joint Force Comm Commander, General Renwart, the North Comm Commander, and General Haas Cartwright, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The QDR, as you know, is a creature of the Congress. And every four years, the Secretary of Defense reports to the Congress on the National Security Strategy. This particular QDR, having worked on the prior one, I believe will be quite instructive. I think it will provide the intellectual and analytic underpinning for the announcements that the Secretary of Defense made on the 6th of April, as well as the announcements that will be forthcoming in the 2011 budget, plus four, that will be coming out, as you know, in January. That will be the first pure Obama budget. This is also the first Gates QDR. And the last Gates QDR. The members of Congress, who you see here in front of you, Senator Wicker of Mississippi, Senator Udall of Colorado, Congressman Thornberry of Texas, Congressman Marshall of Georgia. The two senators serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The two members of the House serve on the House Armed Services Committee. It should be noted that the two senators also served in the House of Representatives. And they have promised me that they will keep to the five-minute rule allowing their colleagues from the House an opportunity to speak. We believe that the involvement of the Congress is a very important involvement with respect to the QDR. What they say today in the teeth of the debate on the floor of the Senate with respect to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 ought to be, at the least, very interesting. And perhaps even informative with respect to the environment to which the QDR will be released after the first of the year. There will be, perhaps, the Secretary of Defense will appoint an independent panel, which is called for in the legislation, although prior secretaries have not necessarily honored that particular encouragement by the Congress. I understand in the House bill there is provision to have a congressionally appointed panel of the QDR. When I set out the invitations, and we set out the invitations for this panel, a friend of mine who I serve with on several boards, Paige Haper, former Assistant Secretary of the Army, for acquisition, said it was terribly brave of me to expect four members of Congress, two of the House and two of the Senate, to stick to merely an hour in discussing such a complex and important subject. Brave or not, I think we are going to be very fortunate to hear from them. And I will now ask Senator Udall to lead all. After the four men finish, Dr. Merrin lead my colleague, who chaired and moderated the prior eight panels, will moderate this panel. So for those of you who wish to ask questions, please identify yourself and your affiliation and get to the heart of the question. No speech is necessary. Senator Udall, the floor is yours. Thank you, Ray. Good afternoon to all of you. One of the prime reasons I accepted this invitation, other than to spend some time with my erstwhile House colleagues, was because of the tremendous work that CSIS is doing in regards to the QDR, but of course on an ongoing basis. And it forced me, this invitation, to work through all of the fora, Ray and Maran, and the rest of you who participated that you all have been holding. Very valuable, very insightful, very interesting set of documents and conversations. So I'm sure that my colleagues and I want to add value to that. I'm here as much as well to listen and learn from the three gentlemen surrounding me and from Maran and from all of you. We were challenged, Roger and I, back in the green room, to be short, to be succinct. I'm inclined to tell a quick story about Calvin Coolidge, who was known for being succinct and short and to the point. And the press corps had a bet, as the story goes, that they couldn't get him to say three words, a particular reporter. And the reporter went up and told President Coolidge that there was a bet in the press pool that he wouldn't say three words. And Coolidge responded, you lose. So I'm going to try and be succinct and to the point so we can have a conversation this afternoon. I think this QDR process is one of the most interesting ones that we've had in a number of cycles, as I think you all agree. Secretary Gates said that he just presented the first 21st century budget for the DOD. This obviously will be the first 21st century QDR you could argue. There are key roles that all of the various institutions play. I see Congress's role as reviewing what's in the QDR substantively. And then, of course, we have the power of the purse and how we then apply the priorities identified in the QDR to how the money is allocated is key. Strategy is a path down which you spend money. That's clearly a key element of the QDR. And it's an important tool for those of us in the Congress. I know we'll get to the meat of some of the substantive debates in the QDR, but my own experience serving, again, with Congressman Marshall, Congressman Thornberry in the House was this increasing focus on the integration of and the interaction between conventional warfare approaches and irregular warfare approaches. That has to have a central focus in the QDR. There are other key areas that were, as I've said, we'll kick around here. Two Colorado-centric comments as I finish that are tied to the QDR because sometimes it seeps down. Sometimes it floods down. We have an ongoing debate in Colorado about the training needs of the Army in a little place called Pinion Canyon. And there's a group of farmers and ranchers who lived there for generations, Jim and Mack, and they are patrons, many of them are veterans, but they're very concerned about another 100 or 200,000 acres being transferred over the Army for training. I hope the QDR will help us get a better sense of the Army's training needs. Secondly, Congressman Marshall and I were both eagerly waiting the arrival of the 46th, the 47th, or the 48th BCT to Fort Steward in Jim's case and Fort Carson in my case. The Secretary's decision to hold off standing up those BCTs, I think, can be defended. He said, we're undermanned and overstructured, but there are two BCTs in Germany that may well be redeployed. And I know both Jim and I are being very curious about how the QDR sets out the strategy in the long term and whether those BCTs might be coming to either Fort Steward or Fort Carson. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Congressman Margaret. Well, I appreciate the invitation to be here, and I certainly appreciate all that CSIS does to enlighten us all on national security. I guess the first point I'd like to make is I think it's very important that we take this QDR process seriously. Sometimes in the past, it's been criticized as a budget-driven rather than strategy-driven. Sometimes in the past, it's been criticized as merely a justification for what they wanted to do anyway. And neither of those is particularly helpful. If you think about all of our lives, we have a tendency to focus on the urgent and let the maybe less urgent at the moment, but very important things lapse. And this was designed by Congress to make us, at least every four years, focus on the important, not just the war that we're fighting today, not just how many planes and ships we're gonna buy next week. And if you look at the legislation itself, it's heartening to me because it's pretty strong. It talks about the Secretary of Defense having to look at the overall strategy for the country, and then the people and budget and resources and plans to implement that strategy. It's where the rubber meets the road. Are you just gonna have a piece of paper out there that says it's the strategy and then do what you wanna do year by year in defense bills and budgets? Or are you gonna bring those two things together? This is the opportunity to bring those things together and that doesn't happen very often. It seems to me in public policy, a lot of the times we lurch from one thing to the next. This is the opportunity to bring it together and that's why I think it must be taken seriously. Not that we can predict the future, although the legislation requires a 20 year orientation, a 20 year timeframe as you're doing this. We can't predict the future, but on the other hand, that sort of planning helps us to understand better our strengths, vulnerabilities, and can help and should help guide us as we move ahead. Secondly, I favor an independent look at this in what has been called the National Defense Panel. The legislation, as Ray mentioned, requires that there be an independent assessment, but the past several QDRs have been more of a kind of an in-house, red team critique of what the Pentagon came up with. It was only the first QDR in 1997 that had a truly independent group of experts that made their own cut at it, and I found that tremendously helpful, partly because it challenged assumptions in the underlying QDR, partly because it came up with issues that it didn't think got proper attention, and I mined that thing for ideas for years to come. It was to be selfish about it, and you don't want to have, in my view, kind of an excuse for guerrilla warfare for people who are afraid the QDR is taking the wrong way and they want to protect their rice bowl, but I do think getting outside smart folks to have their own cut at it is a helpful resource and a check on what the building does. Last point I want to mention is at the same time the QDR is going, there's also something called the Nuclear Posture Review. A lot of times the nuclear deterrent, I think, kind of gets sidelined as, well, that's not really relevant anymore, we're past the cold, we don't have to worry about it. We have to worry about it a lot. I believe that nuclear weapons are still the central element of our national defense strategy, and I'm a little worried that the president went to Moscow and already agreed to cut a specific number of warheads and number of delivery systems before the Nuclear Posture Review ever figured out what was in our national interests. Maybe they'd done all the work ahead of time and consulted with our allies and all the things that one needs to do when dealing with nuclear weapons, but I worry a little that we're getting the cart before the horse, and yet it's not just Russia, as y'all know, lots of people, friends and potential adversaries watch very closely what we do with our nuclear deterrent and they, because what we do affects them so much, that needs to get just as much attention as the QDR part of it, as the two things go together. Senator Whitaker? Thank you very much, and I wanna thank all of you for readjusting your schedules. I really didn't know that we'd have a room full because this was initially gonna be at three o'clock and we sent the votes and now those votes have been postponed to four, so we could have had it at three anyway, but I appreciate you making all the phone calls and sending out the emails and getting the crowd here at the right time. I thought what I would do is say a word about the national defense panel that we've already heard about and then maybe mention three or four things that were in the QDR last time that I don't think will be the same for sure this time. Indeed, we will go to conference with the national defense panel being a conferenceable item. It's in the House version. It is not in the SAS version and will undoubtedly not be amended on the floor, so that's something we'll be talking about. What the House version does, it directs the panel to conduct an assessment of the assumption, strategy, findings, costs, and risks of the report with particular attention paid to the risks described in that report. It also, the structure of it is something that, if it's a matter that goes before conference, we might want to revisit it. I think it would be good if the panel were totally bipartisan that it establishes a 12-person panel now. Six would be chosen by the Democratic leadership of House Armed Services and SASC to be chosen by Secretary Gates and four remaining are delegated to the ranking Republican members. So that's the structure of it and the task of it. I happen to know that Senator McCain thinks this is a bad idea. He thinks it's a matter of appointing a panel to second guess the Secretary. Also, he doesn't think it's a very good job for someone to accept for a year to present this report. I think the House version envisions an interim report and then a final report. And thirdly, Senator McCain says this will cost $6 million and it's just not worth the extra funds it would take to actually have this panel. So I think it's something, and Senator Levin actually is not that opposed to it. But I think the chairman feels it's something that we need to have in conference that needs to be a conferenceable item. And so it's something that he'll have to bargain with. Now for at least three things that I thought I would quote from the 2006 QDR, that I do not think will be in this one. And one is the two major theater war construct. It would be a major departure from what we've had and what has been our strategy and position for decades. But that page 36 of the 2006 QDR says swiftly defeat adversaries and two overlapping military campaigns. Page 38 says wage two nearly simultaneous conventional campaigns or one conventional campaign if already engaged in a large scale, long duration, irregular campaign. Well we know that actually General Cartwright has already testified advocating quote a departure from the two major theater war construct that we have adhered to in the past. And Secretary Gates in a joint press conference with Admiral Mullen on June 18 stated quote, if there's one major aspect of the QDR that I have insisted that we try to get away from, it's this construct that we've had for such a long time that we size our forces to be able to fight two major combat operations. So I'll be surprised if this language from 2006 doesn't change. A second thing would be reduction in military manpower that was advocated in 2006. To quote from the QDR then technological advances including dramatic improvements in information management and precision weaponry have allowed our military to generate considerably more combat capability with the same or in some cases fewer numbers of weapons platforms with lower levels of manning. I don't think this QDR will be talking about lower levels of manning. I think they'll be talking about boots on the ground. And thirdly, transition from garrison forces to expeditionary forces as part of the transformation concept in 2006. The Defense Department is and I quote, is transforming and how the senior leaders of the department view that transformation. It's useful to view it as a shift of emphasis to meet the new strategic environment. From static defense garrison forces to mobile expeditionary operations. Perhaps that will be thought of, rethought also in this QDR. And finally, final thing I don't expect to be in the QDR would be any mention of the need for a strong American economy. But clearly when you're talking about 4% of GDP invested in national security and national defense, it matters what your GDP looks like. And clearly we've seen from experience the Soviet Union's 1980s military strategy simply couldn't be sustained by their economy. So the economy is gonna have a lot to do with what our defense posture looks like over time. I actually think just as an aside before I give my remarks that what I thought I'd say when I got here that the defense panel is a good idea. As far as formally second guessing the Defense Department and the Secretary, Congress is gonna do it anyway. We might as well have the help of real experts in doing it. And $6 million sounds like a lot of money, but the help that that group can give us is pretty significant. Maybe our questioning, our formal questioning will be guided a little bit better than it otherwise would. And in any event, all of you are going to be questioning the QDR. So there's gonna be a lot of second guessing going on. So I thought about today's panel in the QDR generally because of the 20 year timeline, the focus. It dawned on me that a good starting point is Fukuyama's argument what back in the late 80s, early 90s after the fall of the Cold War that we'd reach the end of history. And if he's right, then the end of history that we're in, this is not a very stable state at all. We've got all these threats out there that go well beyond the conventional threats that we're all familiar with. And well beyond just Iraq and Afghanistan. The globe is very interdependent. It's not very well integrated. Population's growing rapidly. We're gonna have all kinds of challenges, climate, weather, challenges that are sort of dumped in our laps as a result of our economic system, our global economic system that we can't predict right now. The only way, in my opinion, that we deal effectively with these challenges is by partnering well with groups across the globe. It's probably ultimately gonna be, at least in the 20 year timeframe, to effectively address all of the security challenges, pandemics included, a partnership of partnerships. Because one partnership isn't gonna get it. And we're gonna have to effectively be able to work with a broad range of countries persuading them that they should adopt strategies that meet global needs and our needs. And so it just sort of occurs to me that the QDR is going to have to anticipate what our partners will be willing to do in the future and how they are going to evolve. Of course what our enemies, the threats are and how our enemies are going to evolve and how the threats are going to evolve. And then finally, and almost shamefully, DOD's gonna have to figure out how the US government is going to evolve in all of this. And that's the part of this process that really disturbs me. The rest of it we're stuck with. In planning for 20 years down the road, we are going to have to take all of these things into account. And we're gonna have to go about the process of trying to estimate how different characters are gonna act. But that we don't have a whole government approach to this, that we've got DOD out there with the QDR as opposed to our government out there with the QDR, I think is a real shame. And it's a real problem for the QDR because it basically involves the Defense Department trying to predict how the federal government itself will evolve and what capabilities will be brought to the table by all of the different other players in the federal government to try and address these threats that are obviously out there on the horizon. In thinking about the challenge that the Defense Department has in this QDR, since addressing these threats that are out there in the horizon won't effectively occur unless it's a whole government effort, that includes the Congress. And so not only does the Defense Department have to assume what other groups within our own country are going to be able to do to address these challenges, but the Defense Department's gonna have to make some judgment concerning whether or not Congress is gonna be capable of reorganizing itself. One of the hurdles that the Defense Department runs into when it tries to change, when it tries to address novel new threats is the structure of Congress and Congress's tendency to wanna maintain a jurisdictional power, personal power, Congress's tendency to try and stay with the familiar. So the QDR's gotta take that into account as well, which to me at least means that the QDR is gonna be really challenged. If it's done well, if it actually addresses all of that, it's gonna step on a lot of toes. I don't see how it can avoid stepping on a lot of toes. Number you probably read the article in the paper this morning by Ladondo, I think it was, about the US military being constrained in Iraq. I, for one, found that to be pretty instructive. I mean, that is the sort of future that we face to me the quality of the personnel that we put on the field to leverage our power, our resources through this partnership of partnerships. It's the quality of the personnel that we put on the field. And it's not just in the military, it's across all branches, across all departments. That quality is gonna determine how effective we are. And right now we're sort of growing willy-nilly the military and I don't think we're paying as much attention to quality as we need to be paying attention to quality. And the decisions that we're making right now concerning growth are decisions that constrain us 10 to 20 years from now. What we're doing right now, as far as building our military forces, those decisions that we're making right now effectively constrain what we're gonna be able to do 10 to 20 years from now because we're gonna have those folks with us during this entire period of time. With that, I'll stop. I think I've covered my five minutes. Thank you very much. Let me add my welcome to everyone. Thank you for coming this afternoon. I just wanted to follow up a little bit on the comments about the earlier series of events that we held. There was a report published on Friday that summarizes those events and gives a little bit of analysis that's available on our website if hopefully many of you got the notification of that. But if not, feel free to check the website and take a look. Let me exercise the prerogative of the chair and start with a quick question following up on Senator Wicker and Congressman Marshall's comments about what the QDR, what you would like to see in the QDR. Senator Wicker talked a little bit about what he thought wouldn't be in there. And Congressman Marshall mentioned some things that he thinks should be there. Do either of you have thoughts on things that you think are important that the QDR addressed? In addition to the nuclear issue that I mentioned, I'd throw out these new domains of warfare, cyber and also space. I'm convinced there will be a lot of words about cyber in the QDR. But it is an enormous challenge for a lot of the reasons that Jim was just talking about to get the whole government together. And yet it is a part of defending the country as much as guarding sea lanes and airlines. I think space, it may not talk as much about and I worry about that. We are becoming more and more dependent upon space. People see that dependency and therefore it creates a potential vulnerability for us. And what is our approach gonna be? Are we going to defend our assets in space? And that gets off into all sorts of controversial topics. So I think those new domains of warfare are very important to be included. I think Mac mentioned the nuclear posture review. There's one underway as well when it comes to our space assets and it includes also the cybersecurity realm. And I think we've all been sitting in some very interesting classified briefings that raise real concerns because of the civilian military interface, not to mention the other relationships we have with other countries and with other societies. So it's clear this is an area where we really have to pay some attention. I would add to what Congressman Marshall said as well and what he's really talking about is a world that works. And I think we're gonna ask the military to take this concept of jointness and apply it across an even tougher barrier which is into the civilian sector, into the other agencies of the government. I would note that in the Pentagon's own call to action in regards to the QDR, there's mention of DNI and there's mention of DHS, but not USAID or the State Department. And yet you have, the Secretary, you have Admiral Mullen and other things. We've got to have a better coordinated approach here, particularly given the lessons in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Three other quick points. I would add, and these won't surprise anybody, and I mentioned this to my initial remarks this, this hybrid warfare conversation we're having. How do you determine conventional forces and how they can also be prepared to fight in a regular war setting? That's number one. Two is the strain on our forces, but also the opportunity because increasingly we understand this is not just general officers. It's certainly not mid-level officers. It's that corporal and that sergeant on the ground that are really gonna have the effect that we need them to have. And then finally, I was pleased to hear Jim talk about climate. I know Secretary Flournoy has been pointing out the real potential threats there. So those are three other additional elements I think have to be considered from the center. Senator Wicker? Well, I've been trying to get an answer recently about the size and the look of our fleet four years out, 20 years out. And we had the Navy in before the committee the other day, or a subcommittee I can't remember. And I asked the question, are we just giving lip service to this 313 ship Navy? Whether we're engaged in conventional traditional warfare, or whether it's just projecting power around the globe to meet these irregular threats that we have. Regardless of that, we're gonna need a bigger Navy and full disclosure, we build boats in Mississippi and we kinda like to build boats. But being able to keep our industrial capacity and churn out boats often enough that it is economical is something I'd like to see us talk about. And when I ask the question, aren't we just giving lip service to this 313 ship Navy? Basically, the essence of the response was, we're waiting on the QDR for that. And but Admiral Mullen believes that a 313 ship Navy is a minimum. And it's necessary for our national defense and national security. So I'll be interested to see what the QDR says about that. Another thing, we do, this is about budgets and it's about trade-offs. And I think you heard from Secretary Flouinore that the QDR wouldn't be driven by the budget, would be constrained by the budget. So I'd like to have a little discussion at some point, either in the QDR or the National Defense Panel that follows it about the discussion leading up to the conclusions. What trade-offs there were, what risks we analyzed in getting to the plan and what risks we are willing to accept as not being something that we can afford to address because of budget constraints. Well, I just, there were lots of things I'd like to see in the QDR, but sort of staying with the theme that I started out with. I'd like the QDR to address a better planning process than the QDR process. And so that would be one useful thing that the QDR could do. It's pretty clear to, I think everybody in this room, that it's a lot easier for our country to sustain effort, spend money, on things that are identified as security issues than on other international matters. And we're in this era in which an awful lot of the things that state USAID and others are doing really are security issues. And yet it's very difficult for us to fund on a long-term basis in a democracy where people are gonna take cheap shots all the time on spending elsewhere, instead of spending here in the United States. It's awful difficult for us to fund in a sustained way the kinds of things that they ought to be doing in this new world for our security. So I hope the QDR will talk a little bit about that. I personally have every single time the choice between putting a particular program in DOD or in state has come up. I've always favored putting it in DOD because I actually think we can do it. We'll stick with it. We'll go ahead and see that program through as opposed to putting it elsewhere and then having it attack. So something along the lines of talking about how the funding becomes stabilized to do a lot of the things that many people would describe as feel-good things. We should be doing the United States. Why are we doing them elsewhere? What's this got to do with our security? Anticipating those kinds of political problems and just addressing them heads up and the QDR would be good. I wanna make sure that we have time for all of you to ask questions. So we'll just go to Q&A. If people could come up to the microphones in the front, we'll try to take two or three questions at a time so that we can get to as many of them as possible in the time we have left. So if people have questions, if they could step to the front. And in the meantime, I'll ask a quick question while people step up just to, since people seem shy. I just wanted to follow on to Congressman Marshall's points about the challenges associated with congressional organization and how what an obstacle that poses to whole of government approaches to things and get your take on the prospects for modification to that. How do we bring that about? What's the way forward? I'll start out and say that somebody has to have sort of a clear statement that there is a problem and here's how it needs to be reorganized. You cannot expect Congress itself to say that Congress is the problem or a major part of the problem that Congress should reorganize itself. And perhaps as part of the QDR, there would be suggestions along those lines. Certainly the panel should think about those kinds of issues and how Congress might think about reorganizing itself. Jim, it's just such an excellent point and maybe you've got to find a way first to the mechanism by which you make those recommendations. But we talk about kicking problems down the road with studies and that's a long held legislative tactic. But if you look at the 9-11 commission, you look at the Homeland Security Commission. Both those commissions serve this very, very well. Maybe this is an opportunity for that kind of an approach. Okay, thank you. All right, let's go to questions. My name is Jay Mohana, work on the Army staff. Senator Udall, you mentioned about relieving the stress on the force. What are some of the things that you all could see the QDR to do? The Army had more suicides in January and Bade and combat casualties. So what are some of the things that we could look at to relieve the stress on the force? Thank you. Yeah, let's, we want to just take it. I'm Hank Gaffney from CNA. In my 47 years watching defense here in Washington, I've noticed that the defense budget is determined exogenously by OMB depending on what the administration can have as a tolerable deficit. Of course we have intolerable deficits right now. And I noticed that Congress never deviates from that grand total, maybe only 1% plus or minus over all these years. Do the QDR terms of reference as they're set up now would probably require a doubling or tripling of the defense budget. As far as ships goes, all Congress has to do is add 10 billion and they would be able to buy the 313. But they never do. And I just wondered, isn't Congress restrained by its own budget resolutions and by other factors like that? And given healthcare and energy, isn't it also a restraint on an unconstrained QDR? Okay, let's take those two. Beth is on the budget resolution. I'll take the first. The QDR probably is not going to have any immediate impact on current stress on the force. It's this long-term view. It's sort of the current stuff that we're trying to do that can have, that can give some help, trying to decrease the amount of rotation focusing on soldier wellness and mental wellness as well. Post-traumatic growth programs as opposed to post-traumatic stress programs, preparing troops for the kinds of trauma and stress and et cetera, better preparing, I guess I should say than we do, for dealing with that. And it goes beyond just in combat. It's also family matters, personal matters, those sorts of things. Those are all things we're working on right now. I know you know that already. But I would say that the QDR, which is this sort of 10 to 20 years out plan, is unlikely to have an impact on stress right now. Except maybe as it deals with total numbers in the future as you go out 10, 20 years. And that may not solve the stress problem, but it is one of the, how many people you bring to implement the strategy is one of the issues. On the budget right quick, I don't think Congress is constrained by anything except its own political will. Look at how much money we have spent on so much stuff since January. And so if Congress wanted to spend $10 billion on new ships, of course it could. One of my beefs in previous QDRs is that it didn't lay out the choices and consequences and risks plainly. And more what we get is, we got this whole thing figured out and we are just gonna tell you, and everything's perfect and hunky-dory with the world. It's not that way. We make choices and we take increased risk in some areas. And I think people who would read such stuff would appreciate having those risks laid out. We're not funding, hypothetically, we're not funding this many ships and therefore we have increased risk in these areas. Being more plain spoken about the risks that go, I think would be a helpful exercise. Now I think that's really the point I was trying to make in the trade-offs. It is hard to offer an amendment to spend an extra $10 billion. I don't know that we're constrained by the QDR, but we are constrained by our budget resolutions. It would be helpful though if the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who says a 313 ship navy is an absolute requirement would somehow go back and work with the secretary and the bean counters in the administration and actually provide us with an alternative path to getting where they say we need to be. It's hard for the public to hear those statements about the need for warships and view those credibly if there's no suggestion about getting there. And I'm hopeful that the testimony in the committee that we're waiting on the QDR will turn out to be true but because I do worry that we don't have the means to project enough power around the world in terms of our navy. With regard to the stress on the force, and I was out of Walter Reed today, Mississippi Air Force Sergeant lost a leg and is fighting to save the other one. He said that he is required to get counseling whether he believes he needs it or not. And I'll just say having been a member of the Veterans Affairs Committee and the Armed Services Committee and VA approach in the house, I think we're beginning to do better in terms of post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury. Although we're not there where we need to be by any means. But we're improving. If I could just follow up quickly on what Roger said, I think once again we're going to ask our military and more specific for men and women in uniform to help us better understand both opportunities but challenges that we have as human beings. And right now the military is beginning to open some doors into this wonderful organ that we call our brain. And we're going to see in the long run, I think great advances in understanding how our brain operates, how it works, how you keep it healthy, how you repair it, how you help it recover. As the military has done both in developing technologies and equipment as well as, for example, integrating the cutting edge of our society, there isn't very much of silver lining. Jim I think was on point that it's easy to start to talk about the QDR in the broadest terms and try and solve a lot of problems with the QDR when some are outside the realm of the QDR. And I think Mac pointed out the size of the force for the gentleman to ask the question about this train. That's really where I think we start and then we look at the kind of training and the kind of, particularly for mid-level officers that we're going to put in place to encourage them to serve in the ways that really match the 21st century challenges in front of us. But they're rewarded for pursuing the kind of training that makes sense in the world that we now face. Cindy Rae, LMI government consulting. With regard to the concept of taking a holistic government approach to the QDR, can you talk a little bit about how you see the new quadrillion diplomacy and development review that is just beginning this fall and the traditional QDR interacting and affecting each other? We'll take two more and go ahead. Timothy Walton, Georgetown University. My question is regards to the F-22. The last year Congress has received conflicting testimony. General Schwartz himself stated that 243 is a medium to high risk estimate, but now is encouraging that the Air Force doesn't buy more of the aircraft. And weighing risks going forth if whether we should dedicate more resources to counterinsurgency forces or more conventional strategies, how do you think the QDR should assess this question and maybe personally do you think the United States should buy more F-22s? Okay, one last one. I'm Bill Whitaker from the UN Information Center here in DC and I have a two-part question very quick. Representative Marshall, you were talking about the partnership of partnerships. And I was curious, one, if you felt that international peacekeeping operations, do you see them as an aspect of US national security? And two, just generally, the international community and international organizations, how do they figure into your assessment of US national security in the future? If I can start on the State Department or the quadrennial diplomats, whatever they call it. QDR. Q-D-D-D-R, Q-D-D-D-R. That strikes a chord with me because someone who served on the original National Defense Panel in 1997 suggested to me that we ought to make the State Department do a QDR. Take their strategy and look at their resources and people and plans and see whether and how they match up. So I introduced a bill to do that many years ago and I have ever since and it's never gotten any attention which shows my ineffectiveness apparently as a legislator until Secretary Clinton announced that they were gonna do it themselves here last week. I don't know that that completely gets to where both Jim and I would like us to be in a whole government approach, but it's not just the Pentagon that needs to plan and prepare for the future and bring its resources to match its budget strategy. So I'm very delighted that at least there is a step in that direction being taken and so that part, that instrument of national power can take a step up closer to where it should be. Okay, we have a, anybody else wanna address that question? And then we can turn to the other team. Oh, okay, we'll talk about non-governmental organizations and international. Yeah, I refer to it loosely to a partnership of partnerships and I do think that what our international allies do and international forces do and I can't think of an exception to this. It winds up helping our security as well as global security. And so, and when I say a partnership of partnerships, I have in mind that we'll still have state actors predominating. States are becoming less and less important as you see more and more non-state phenomena that are global, internet-driven and otherwise coming to the forefront, but I think a lot of the organization will still focus on states, trying to prop up states, trying to work effectively with states so that within their borders, they're controlling the threats or prepared to address the kinds of threats, not just military but beyond that that can become challenges for the whole globe. And then we have that. Mack, if I could go back to the first question. I came here armed with the idea that you've had, which is we require that kind of joint review. Let's see what happens. And maybe we can join forces across the capital because it should happen. Amen. F-22, I've said through a lot of hearings. In the SAS markup, I voted with Chairman Levin, a ranking member of McCain to keep the number where the secretary proposed it should be. Having said that, I expect a robust debate on the floor of the Senate. And a very close vote. And a very close vote. And I think both the camps, if you can divide people into two camps in that regard, have legitimate points of view. And I think the members of the House and the Senate will bring those cases and we'll see what happens. I'm somebody who's on the other side of the F-22 issue. Where are you from? I'm from Georgia, but there's no F-22 work in my district. The avionics will be done in the district as a matter of whether you've got 187 or 243 or whatever it is. I do think it speaks to the question, and I'm interested what the group here thinks of the manufacturing base and how do we keep it strong? How do we make sure that Roger's alluded to when it comes to shipbuilding? The F-22 debate is about that as well. Those are very legitimate questions that we're grappling with right now. I don't want to give a short shrift to the question about international peacekeeping forces. On the one hand, it's hard to keep the peace if there's no peace to start with. And I think that's sometimes we have to over-test the international peacekeeping forces in that respect, but the international groups, I think are doing a wonderful job in Africa. There's a lot to be done and much genocide going on there. But clearly from our history, I don't think the United States public has any stomach for sending our troops to places like that. So I salute what some of the agencies in Southern Sudan and Darfur and Congo are doing to alleviate the really terrible situation. Colin Clark with DOD Buzz. First off, I'd like to hear the senator's vote counts on the F-22 and whether you think it's gonna be more than two separating. Very clever side. And more importantly, the 2011 budget guidance is out to the services. Secretary Gates has made a fundamental commitment to rebalancing the forces. The F-22 is all part of the FCS decisions. Doesn't it seem as if many of the major choices that the QDR might have looked at have already been made and you're essentially going to get a okay, this is why we did what we did and this is why we're going to do what we're going to do QDR instead of a true planning document looking out for the future? Greg Tomlin, George Washington University. Sir, you were just talking about Africa and in light of the president's recent visit to Africa, I was curious if you were looking at any mention of AFRICOM specifically in this QDR, is the first time since it was established as an independent combatant command? Do QDRs mention the commands specifically? I think the type of threat that we face in Africa will be mentioned in the QDR, whether it will mention AFRICOM, I do not know, but I will say that that continent provides the Taliban and Al Qaeda with a real opportunity and we need to pay very serious attention to it. It's not all altruism, although there's a lot of suffering there too. As far as the coordination between current actions and what a plan for 10 or 20 years down the road is going to look like, when the same actors are doing both, it would be a shock if there wasn't coordination. If somehow the Defense Department winds up doing X and then a few months later saying X doesn't really fit in with this plan that we're rolling out, I think all of us would be shocked. So obviously there's gonna be a relationship between the two and hopefully we are doing real planning and we recognize that decisions being made today are going to constrain what we can realistically plan to do 10 to 20 years from now. On Africa, I do think it is exactly the sort of place where Jim's partnership of partnerships applies and I do think we have to have a major new emphasis on training and working with other militaries to provide their own security and that also applies very much in many places in Africa as well as other places around the world. So the kinds of in some ways more complex situations we're gonna find ourselves in for the next 20 years, I hope the QDR takes us on the road to be able to deal, have that kind of greater capability in order to be successful. I tend to agree, as I mentioned earlier, I tend to fear that QDRs become justifications for what they were already intending to do anyway. Now the truth is, QDR comes out and obviously they can make budget adjustments before the next budget comes and things can change and this process takes so long they have to get the guidance out. So I don't fault that at all but what the QDR originally intended and envisioned was a fresh long-term broad look at our national security, not a lot of spend for what we were planning to do anyway. And that's why I said at the beginning, the more seriously we take that part or that function, the better I feel about the QDR and hopefully about the national defense panel that will provide a contrasting look. We miss the signals in the Middle East. They're very obvious to us when it comes to Africa. This is a chance to use the QDR to do what we say it's supposed to do. So I anticipate more than a passing mention and the concepts that we're grappling with right now when you come to a conventional warfare versus a regular warfare, how you create a hybrid approach, how you have modular versus garrison-based forces that Roger referenced is really at the heart of this and we all know sitting in the classified briefings that we're in that when we're successful in Iraq as we are now in track to be and when we help stabilize what's happening in Pakistan that those elements of chaos and destruction are moving to the Horn of Africa or moving to supports of Central Africa. And the signs are clear, let's get ready. Let's be ahead of this. Okay, well thank you all of you very much for coming and spending an hour of your day with us, we greatly appreciate it. And we thank you for your insight. We will do our best.