 But in the context of the ongoing budget debates, there's obviously a lot of conversation about what the appropriate size of the military should be, what we're actually willing to spend on it, and a very fiscally driven sort of supply side, if you will, approach to military capability. And I think that's been a particular challenge for the Army, which is being cut substantially, mostly to account for the growth that occurred over the course of the last 13 years. But it looks like beyond that as well. And Army leadership has talked about how that presents some degree of risk. So I think this concept of risk is always difficult to translate in meaningful terms to the layman, the average person. How do you do that? What do you think the risk represents of an active Army at 470 or 450 or 420 or lower? And why should the American people care about that? Yeah. Okay. So obviously over the last 10 years, we've grown a bit, perhaps not as much as some people would suggest. But we're in the process right now of coming down from about a million 100,000 to, and that's across the active Army, the National Guard and the Reserve Force, to an Army of about 1,045,000. So that's a 490,000-man active force at 355 in the Guard and then the balance in the Reserve. We chose to do that without any significant, if any, resistance. We recognized that we had grown, and we didn't need to be near above well over a million as we were. We had 560,000 in the active force over the last 10 years, certainly in a latter half of the last decade. And that, so that 1,045,490 in the active force is kind of going back to where we were in the 1980s. That was a known point. We're pretty comfortable that we could respond to most challenges that might arise. We could continue to fulfill our responsibilities in terms of deterrence and engagement around the world and that sort of thing. So that was, you know, it's never easy to get rid of people, and that change has required a lot of reorganization of the Army, which is, you know, a challenge in and of itself. But that was a known point, and we were very comfortable going back there, and we knew we needed to do it not only because we couldn't justify the strength, but that, you know, the nation's got some fiscal challenges, and so we needed to contribute to that. We'll finish that reduction by 2015. Current budget trends will take us down to 980 across the total force, 980,000 soldiers across the three components, about 480,000 in the active force, by 2017. Not optimal, but we're comfortable that we can still meet our global responsibilities and not just at any given point in time. I say that because we did some very detailed analysis and looked over a 12-year period at the implications of that force, because it's not just what can you stack up at any given time. Most things that you wind up getting involved in tend to last more than a month, right? So we looked at a 12-year period. And if you look at any decade since World War II, you'll see that we do between three and five things, and not just the Army, but the Department of Defense usually winds up deploying some package of force three to five times in a significant amount and then a lot of smaller things. And then there's all of the presence around the world and that sort of thing. So we looked at being able to meet our engagement requirements as dictated by the defense strategy and the global employment of the force direction that we get. And then whether we could put forces forward, say to deter something into Persian Gulf, respond to a major theater war at some point in time, or a lesser contingency. And we did that analysis, as they say, over a 12-year period to look to see if the force could deal with all of that, and not all of it just in sequence, but in various combinations. And so there's some risk there, but it's manageable. And then we looked at going below that. And of course, if sequestration holds, we'll be at 920 and 2019. So that's 125,000 soldiers out of the Army from the number we'll be at in 2015, the 494, 125,000 soldiers leave the Army. The challenge is that will be a 25% reduction in our fighting capability, our combat power. That is not easily recoverable. So the first part of that reduction, down to 980, as I say, we think is manageable. As the Chief has said in testimony, and I think Council on Formulations as well, is that that last 60,000 across the active Guard and Reserve, about 30,000 in the active force, makes a big difference in our ability to generate the kind of capabilities necessary to meet our global responsibilities and also respond to an emerging crisis. And what's important about that, the response is important. But I think the thing that's more important is our contribution to conventional deterrence. Our enemies are not stupid. They can count our forces. They can see what we're capable of. They can go back and look at what we've done in the past. They're going to recognize that we're going to have less capability going forward. And what I worry about in that regard, the risk that we potentially incur is miscalculation. It's not a question of us not responding. It's a question of them thinking that we won't be able to respond and backing into a conflict rather than preventing one. Because as I think I said earlier, our first responsibility is to prevent conflict, especially where it has significant impact. We don't want war in northeast Asia, second, third, and eleventh largest economies in the world live there. We don't want war in the Persian Gulf to the extent we can prevent that, because that's the global gas station, has huge geopolitical and economic impacts for the entire globe and our economy and our way of life. So our first job is to deter. If you look at, I mentioned that Iraqi Perspectives Project, I believe in there they have a copy of a study that the Iraqi War College did on our potential invasion. Now it was not prescient, but it wasn't too far off either. So now they weren't listened to, obviously, and that was to our advantage. But my point is, our adversaries have people who study us deliberately and continuously, and I don't think we need to invite conflict by my, and that's what that risk component is. It's that step down from 980 to 920. Now, I mean, except all of that, we recognize that, and we also recognize that we have a responsibility to get the most out of the force that the government, you know, that the nation can afford. And when we think about the future, and those trends that I talked about earlier, we are looking hard at how we get more out of the force we have, because we're not willing just to create that risk and not do anything about it. We will do something about it. Because at the end of the day, we have to be engaged around the world. You know, sometimes you need some stand-on capability, not just stand-off capability. And a great example of that are the 600 paratroopers from the 173rd, you know, the four companies in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland. Those young captains and lieutenants and sergeants and soldiers are the, a physical manifestation of our commitment to our allies there. And they are reassuring them that the million 45,000 soldiers of the United States Army are backing them up. And I think that's usually important to maintaining stability and the health of that alliance, which has served us very well over the last, what, 60, 70 years. General Hicks, thanks so much for your time. No, thank you.