 Good afternoon everybody good to see some of you all again here so I'm Command Sergeant Major John Wayne Troxell the Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Dunford I also serve as the Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Secretary of Defense thank you all for being here today we really appreciate this dialogue we're going to have between our combatant command senior enlisted leaders who are in the operational environment every day getting up to the mission this is all part of my annual Defense Senior Enlisted Leader Council meetings and it's a council that is drive driven by my my boss's policy that gets after education and development of senior enlisted it includes a service senior enlisted that you heard from yesterday and it also includes the combatant command senior enlisted so we're on day two here and no better way to close out the day than to have a dialogue with all of you so thanks again for being here what we'd like to focus on today in terms of three main areas is joint operations and joint forces global integration and international partnerships so let me introduce my battle buddies and my colleagues here so all my immediate right is the Pacific Command Senior Enlisted Leader Sergeant Major Tony Spadaro to his right is the Strategic Command Senior Enlisted Leader Chief Massard and Pat McMahon next to him is the European Command Senior Enlisted Leader Fleet Master Chief Chris Addington and on the far right is the Transportation Command Senior Enlisted Leader Chief Massard Matt Caruso on my immediate left is the United States Africa Command Senior Enlisted Leader Chief Massard Ramon Colón Lopez better known as CZ next to him is the Central Command Senior Enlisted Leader Sergeant Major Bill Thetford next to him is the Southern Command Senior Enlisted Leader Sergeant Major Brian Zickafus and on the far left is the Special Operations Command Senior Enlisted Leader Sergeant Major Pat McCullin now unfortunately our NORAD Northcom Senior Enlisted Leader Chief Massard Buddy Hutchinson could not be here today because he's dealing with a family emergency so with that we'll open it up to your questions yes sir good to see you again go ahead sir thank you sir thank you very much I just want you to if you can be on the record please yesterday's my question as far as US-India relations are concerned military to military and so much is happening between the two countries back and forth visits and so forth what and how much what would you advise to the president or the secretary on the future of the two countries of relations so I'll start off by answering that sir and then I'll go to the Pacific Command Senior Enlisted Leader where India is part of his area of responsibility so the Secretary of Defense one of his lines of effort is strengthening our alliances and attracting new partners we understand to combat the threats around the world that we need strong partnerships and alliances to get after peace and security so we're going to look globally where we can continue to attract new partners who have shared interests and that we can mutually support each other in peace and security so Tony I'll ask you to talk about specifically India in the pay-com. India remains one of our most valuable partners that we have in the Indo-Asia Pacific if you notice even the term Indo Asia Pacific and there's a reason for that because the demonstrated value of the partnership we've had with them mill to mill it is probably one of the strongest in the pay-com AOR right now my boss Admiral Harris is that continuing dialogue with the Minister of Defense with the President even this this past year so when you're looking at for opportunities for advancement in the region India remains probably the best partner we have in that region right now for increasing that. If I just quick follow please I'm sorry to interrupt you how would you rate as far as India in the middle of two well adversaries I would say or enemies like Pakistan because there's a terrorism inside Pakistan still today and there is a China and how much can you trust Pakistan or how much can you trust China today. Okay we're not going to address you know our dialogue with China in Pakistan but I can tell you in terms of global peace and security as I mentioned earlier and getting after the threats where it be aggression from a nation-state or a non-state to actor committing violent extremist kind of a tax or anything we're going to continue to look for ways to strengthen our relationships globally to better combat those threats and I'll ask you to come back on that in terms of India. Well if anything you know India is part of our ongoing efforts to fight anything with against counterterrorism so they're with us all in so I don't see where that's the issue where you're trying to identify two other countries I think the most part is that we're working together and that partnership also demonstrates to the allies a position of strength and I think that's the more important thing that you need to look at is that the US and India together comes from position of strength for the rest of the region. Okay ma'am you had your hand up first back there I'll go to you. Thank you so much I actually have a quick question for Pacific Command and African command and special operations commands I'll start with the Pacific with this current recent launch in North Korea what more can you tell us about this launch do you have any additional details for us and how does that affect your troops? No ma'am I can't speak even at a hypothetical right now we just everyone as everyone knows we know it happened it just happened today you know the continued missile and nuclear test that just does demonstrate that North Korea poses not only a threat to the United States but to our allies as well and into the region and this is what we have to look at right now it's just part of the continuing process so as it develops we'll know more but right now it's too early to tell you what is going on. Thank you on Africa have you been seeing an increase in movement for Islamic State fighters into different pockets in Africa we've we've seen the reports coming out in street increase in strikes in Somalia against Islamic State for in the past month we've seen what has happened in Niger we've seen additional strikes in Libya so can you lay that out for us what is the threat of Islamic State in Africa currently well first of all we need to identify that the threat is there second the increase in strikes has to do with authorities that we didn't previously have until last year and that's when we started exercising that authority to get out there so naturally you're going to have more attacks on the enemies and lastly with regards to the spread of ISIS pretty much everything that you're getting an open source is what we're seeing you have flows of foreign fighters that went from Africa to fight in Iraq and Syria and they're coming back and our job right now is to be able to contain them and keep the pressure on the network to prevent further spread. Where are you most concerned about Islamic State spreading? Well we're concerned in the continent large for a lot of different reasons primarily the youth bulge in Africa because right now we have a country that you're focused on. Well you realize that the entire continent is about 50% under the age of 24 very few opportunities which is clearly concerning because when you have even the smallest of pockets of these VO's and they're providing opportunities to the to the youth of Africa is clearly concerning to us. And finally with special operations command we've been seeing an increase in the reliance on special operations forces across the globe. What's your what's your force level? Are you confident that you can still handle all the missions that you're being tasked with or have you had to say no to some of the recent missions? Thank you for the question. We certainly are at a sustainable level to maintain across the globe but but that doesn't come easily. We are always evaluating the mission sets that we're doing forward and working through buying with our partners to make sure we build capacity so that they're able to solve the problems themselves. It's kind of a force multiplier. It's so calm we use a process the the global synchronization of soft forces and essentially what that means is we look at the forces available. We balance that against GCC requirements around the globe and then we allocate forces to meet those requirements. And right now we feel like we're in a pretty good place with that but again it's a constantly ongoing process for we're evaluating divesting of some missions that we may or may not be doing and then moving into other areas. Ma'am if I could just add on from a OSD perspective we know that the the threat of ISIS and violent extremists they're a trans regional kind of threat. Obviously you know born out of places like the Middle East but it's spilled over into Africa as Chief Colon Lopez talked and it's we've seen attacks in Europe but we've also seen them in the Pacific as well. So when we talk global integration it's key that all of us here work together and from a perspective of by with and through our partners in building partner capacity it's important for us to be focused on things like developing small unit leaders specifically their non-commissioned officer corps that can execute disciplined initiative within commander or officers intent and accomplish the mission. When you talk about Africa and I'm going to come back to my battle buddy here and I'd ask he just had a very spectacular event that I had the opportunity to come and speak at as well as Sergeant Major Macaulay and Fleet Addington over here his AFRICOM senior listed leader conference. The first one of its nature that's ever happened and I'll let you talk about that in the level of attendance and the level of dialogue. Certainly CAC. So for the first time ever we were able to have a continent wide senior listed leader conference and a lot of it was synchronization with our partners to be able to maximize the capabilities in the continent. By virtue of the sharing co-coms with regards for operations in Africa we extended the invitation to Sencom, Socom, UCOM amongst other including NATO and the SEAC and also Chief Master of the Air Force was present just to be able to have a dialogue over four days on what are some of the things and initiatives that we need to be getting more aggressive on and what methods we need to further utilize to ensure that they have professional forces that are number one obedient to the rule of law and they're able to go ahead and affect security in the region. The event went great and I will quote the African partners when they stated at the end and I quote we came here as NCOs of our country we live here as NCOs for Africa we need to tackle these problems together. I guess finally to just to follow up with your since you opened it up so where in the globe do you see most of the ISIS fighters going right now? Well as we continue to liberate areas in the Middle East like we just liberated uh rock of we I should say our partners that we are advising uh and assisting um they're going to continue to look for areas that they can uh build capacity and continue to do the kinds of activities they've done before so we have to be sensitive to that so when we talk about ISIS or violent extremists as a threat you know years before we used to talk at it as a sent com problem now it's a global problem that requires all of our bosses to be involved in working together to get after this threat. Okay sir I'll go over you next. I'm Kevin Barron from Defense One and I'll continue on Carla's question um so calm and some of the others um with the expansion uh and spread of terrorism the projection that there's going to be more fighting more by within through more troops on the border in Europe um all of this is under this this umbrella of readiness that we're talking about in Washington a lot about can some of you just give some of the metrics that that are on your mind right now of of how you're measuring and what you need for your forces for what it comes to equipment or pace of rotational deployments whatever it is just give us a sense of of where things are now and why you're in Washington what you're asking to this town to your two leaders here so if you don't mind sir I'll talk from a defense department perspective then I'll ask for my battle buddies so we we understand that we have some readiness challenges um 16 years of high operational tempo and then unstable budgets have caused us to you know defer some modernization programs that we needed to get after it's caused us not to be able to get after maintenance programs we needed to get after and it's caused some of our service members to use worn out equipment so what we need to get after this readiness is we need a stable budget that allows us to get after line of effort number one by the secretary and that's adding building a larger more capable force and a more lethal force as we go forward so I'll ask uh uh fleet master chief uh Chris Addington from Ucom for his comments on that I'll ask another one and then I'll go down to Silcom yeah so thank you for the question first of all and and from a from a european commands perspective uh the the big uh the the big ask uh per se is as we develop uh the ready and postured forces uh for europe the the rotation of the armor brigade combat teams uh the uh the the build out of the uh the aviation units uh the build out of the sea uh in order to deter uh and and focus on on uh building partner capacity uh within the region that's probably the biggest to work on uh uh making sure uh that it's not a us only so you tie the by with and through but it's but it's it's it's about working together and being interoperable it's not about just building something it's about building the right things and so uh from from the european perspective it's it's it's make working through nato to make sure that all the nations are working together developing the right way so that we're all uh looking at the same things and I'll ask uh US strategic command chief master on pat mcmann if you can talk about some of those challenges hey thank you see you know from our perspective really when you look at our portfolio you know my my my boss's priorities uh general heightened is number one priority strategic deterrence and so from a strategic deterrence perspective how do you have to look through it and it really is now in this day and age it's really how do you how does 24th century strategic deterrence differentiate from 20th century and it's exceedingly different because the environment's changed and typically when I talk to individuals to me it's like you have to have a comprehensive understanding of the threat in the strategic environment that's out there and things have changed for you know if you look back 25 plus years ago we're in a cold cold war posture there's really a bipolar world and then you look at the complexity and uncertainties of the day where it really is a multipolar world and as you look at the strategic capabilities that our command provides whether it's it's the nuclear deterrent whether you look across space capabilities cyber capabilities as you look there has been a recognition so right now modernization across the nuclear portfolio investments in space investments in cyber it's been recognized that we have to move out on that because it really is how do you ultimately integrate and aggregate effects at the time and place you're choosing okay and then I'll ask central command okay so from central command it's similar theme to what my teammates have already said yes we have aging equipment and I'd say it keeps our maintainers pretty busy to keep it running sometimes the equipment runs because we have some creative young folks that are motivated and want to just get the job done would they like new equipment absolutely but not because their desire comes from a sense of entitlement it's because they want to be successful and they want to get after the mission and we'll close out on this question with socon certainly like has been discussed you know budget concerns always are going to be forefront any discussion about this but but you touched on something else with a spreading of terrorism across the globe we've been at war for 16 years that that is a reality and in soft we certainly have felt that with a little bit more of a senior age wise force so your average age is a little bit more than you see across the military fortunately for us the Department of Defense as well as Congress have allowed us to have programs to help deal with those realities in our case the preservation of the force and the family initiative which helps us look at the the spiritual domain the physical domain the social domain all these in the psychological domain to help ensure a long term that we're able to keep people in the fight as this continues to go on generationally I'm sorry you get that good reviews absolutely absolutely okay with socom and african about just the the geographic size of african alone is a concern so when you when you talk to some folks about what's coming next or is that something that you're talking about you're preparing for you're concerned with absolutely it's a great question and africa represents a challenge and I'll pass it over to the african cell here in a minute obviously as we discussed you know our enemies are going to go where we're not they're going to go to ungoverned space they're going to go to places where they can get freedom of maneuver those particular locations present challenges they present challenges when you start talking about logistically how do you support folks that are in the fight forward I mean that is a challenge that we're constantly looking at and developing new and better ways to be able to facilitate operations in those types of areas yeah so you know as I stated before the youth bulge is really concerning to us because where the foreign fighters go where they decide to grow their man in pool if you look at africa right now there's 1.2 billion people there by 2050 is estimated that it's going to double to 2.4 and what happens when you have 600 million youth right now without any opportunities for education or jobs and then every year that passes by you have 11 million more entering that empty pool of labor that they're either going to migrate they're going to go ahead and join the os we just don't know what's going to happen so from a national security perspective I think it's imperative that we stare at the african problem because it can potentially be a hotbed for terrorism in the future and that is just based on facts and data okay jim we'll go to you and then terrible next thanks sorry major I've heard partnership I've heard by with and through from all of you and a lot of the countries that you deal with don't have an nco court and I have to wonder what they think when they meet you guys do they want to emulate you do they what do they want from you when you go out and and talk to these uh these uh these people in these nations so I'm going to start off on that and then I'm going to ask our major zikafoos from south com to follow me um so jim it's kind of goes both ways sometimes culture of the country you know they can't overcome their culture to have empowered enlisted leaders to get after business so for 27 months I served on us forces Korea and it was challenging to get them because they were conscription military and uh you know because of culture it was tough to get them to empower small unit nco leaders and trust them to get after mission command now also they haven't had the combat experience that we've had over the past 16 years and we've learned over the last 16 years that you can expand the commander's reach in their area of responsibility by empowering enlisted leaders but that has to come through training education and then you have trust and when you have trust you can empower those enlisted leaders but then there's others you know sir major spedaro and I just recently went to taiwan and uh you know uh we were asked by their chief of defense hey what do I need to do to get after more efficient small unit kind of operations and we talked about nco development and empowerment and we thought it was a two-tier approach from bottom up and top down so your small unit nco courses and things like that that can gear small unit leaders to get after the things they need to get after like pre-combat inspections training you know and stuff like that but they also needed somebody at the top who had grown up in this military and can tell them what's going on and where they need to go so we recommended that the chad appointed seac and two months ago they appointed their first seac and he just recently returned from taiwan on a business i'll ask you to comment on that right quick and then z will come down to you you know that that's a great question because this is what we're seeing in the indio asia pacific it's a growing awareness of the asymmetric advantage by having an empowered nco core so for example when the seac and i was in taiwan in may their chad looked right at him because what do i need to do and the seac looked at him and says you need a seac he named one two weeks later and it took about a couple months to get in place i just left there last week and i had a great conversation with him and he said you know what my boss is making me put together a five-year plan of what direction we need to do better nco growth development so there's an example i was in singapore two weeks ago and i watched an empowered nco core dealing directly between officer and enlisted seamlessly we had our our chad seo conference this year two years ago i had six seac show up to it this year we had 16 so to me there's a growing awareness and how we get to that growing awareness is when you see the gentleman at this table here when they're traveling with their bosses and our partners see this too they're saying hey there's a validity there's a value of having empowered senior enlisted leader sri lanka just named one and we're hoping to keep growing this in the region so in the indoe Asia pacific we see a growth in this right now kz go ahead just just as the xz and this our major uh uh said there it's it's about leadership it's about you know development uh we go to these part of these nations and they see us sitting next to our our admirals or our generals and they say how do you affect what do you affect and we tell them that they want the same thing as we do we talk about the imperatives we talk about the u.s southern command the four imperatives nco development human rights being joint and then gender integration and perspective they want the same things we do they just they're trying to get it at the same time okay terra go ahead thank you um tarp military times i have a couple questions um i wanted to get back to the strategic deterrence piece and ask both uh stratcom and pecom what does success look like for north korea is it a north korea that um has ballistic missile capability but is contained the pentagon just confirmed that it was an ic sorry i'm still getting over this an icbm that was launched um so its success a contained north korea is in a north korea with no nuclear program if you could just just talk to us a little bit about that well thank you for the question you know i would offer right now if you look from it from the military dimension it really is in support of diplomacy right now you look you know nationally and as well as our regional allies it really is about how do you put pressure on that regime to change behavior and so from from a policy perspective i think ultimately you have seen denuclearization is the ultimate goal but right now from the military dimension and what are we doing from a you know broad our command perspective into deter and as importantly assure our allies in the region as well and so as you've looked over as this as north korea has has ramped up their cycle really over the last 18 months if you will the the the actions that we've taken with their with our allies in the region and so i travel with general heighten over the summer into uh into sar major spedaro's aor and and visited united states forces career would worry brooks and commands our major patent reside at and spent time there spent time with the united states forces japan and met with both you know our joint partners there as well as our allied partners into really it is it's about solidifying that that that assurance piece and collaborating ultimately to sit there to support diplomacy our state department our national security apparatus cool and tar i'm just going to just echo those remarks you know we're just going to seek the peaceful denuclearization of that peninsula and that's our u.s stance and that's how the only way we need to get about it right now but is that possible at this point it seems north korea is pretty bent on continuing both it's that's why we're hoping for for diplomatic solutions at this point and and right now if you look at it i got that there was a test today but there's also continuing diplomatic process that's been going on and i think from that diplomatic process if you if you look at the calculus behind that there is achieved effects right now and it's also you know we're also demonstrating to our allies we're demonstrating the partners also into the region that we're all into this and i think they want a peaceful and a denuclearization of the peninsula and i think if you remember on the trip we just went on together to korea um you know as general dunford and secretary mattis got after the military committee meetings and security consultative meetings i did what i'm charged to do and let's go out and check on the troops so i went up to the demilitarized zone to check on the rock troops i went and talked to the u.s troops because i wanted them to understand that um even though we nobody wants high-end conflict with korea the bottom line we're charged uh by our commander in chief to be prepared to fight win if we have to so not only as this gets back to the multinational part of this not only was i out there checking on the u.s forces but it was the korean forces as well uh because in the end not only is it going to be a combined forces command fight but our united nation sending states are going to be involved as well so i think that's what we have to focus on is making sure we're getting after uh the level of readiness and preparedness that we need in case we have to go to war go ahead i thought you had a problem two more uh first so calm um way to log things we're coming over here next christina you got to get fired up all right first so calm what is uh your dwell right now for enlisted going you know with all of the various countries that us forces are in right now is it above a one-to-one dwell or where are you all at um overall we're above a one-to-one dwell certainly it's episodic across our force you know there are the vast majority of our forces within an acceptable norm uh you know in all honesty and in special forces we're still working towards getting there um we are we are above a one-to-one but we're not where we want to be at a one to two or a one to three at this point it is an ongoing challenge and one that we keep looking at every day um i think we are on a glide path to get to those um those dwells uh long term and i think we're in a good spot i'm going for but i don't want to pay any um you know rosy picture here it is a challenge that we we are dealing with um but it is tenable right now so without getting too specific it's just slightly above one-to-one i mean that seems to put an incredible amount of strain on your forces and their families certainly there's strains on the forces in the families as well um and as i mentioned earlier the potev program we use to help you know facilitate alleviating some of that stress to include some programs for the family members for the wives and the support infrastructure for all of our folks um most of us will tell you that right now it'll one to two that we feel like it's sustainable long-term goals we have parts of our force that are at one to three um others based on you know really skill setter at a one to a maybe a one point two one point five which is not where we want to be optimally but it's been gliding and trending towards much better we want it to be um i just have one more promise uh from you uh from yesterday um one of the programs that the uh pentagon has used to bring in recruits with needed skills especially translators is reach out everywhere as the mavney program i'm just wondering if you could talk about the value that you've seen in that program and whether it's something as the pentagon assesses it uh you think should be continued well i'll start off with that and then i'll ask for uh my colleagues to comment i think uh first of all um these programs are very important especially when we're looking at bringing in talent that can allow us to be more of an enabler or a facilitator to the force that we're conducting security force assistance with or whatever um and that we ought to look at that as a way of building on uh the competitive war fighting advantage that we're trying to get in the human domain we already own a significant uh advantage in the human domain because of our empowered enlisted force but programs like mavney just allow us to get after that even more and i'll ask anybody else have comments on this don't all talk at once perfectly yeah if you don't mind i mean yeah you can add diversity again yeah i mean you talk across the force and and adding uh adding those pieces and that ability uh it just makes us a stronger force so and i would even go as far and matt i'll ask you to comment on this down transcom perspective what we need in terms of military sea lift and air mobility and surface deployment and distribution you know sometimes we have to go to civilian type stuff and everything so can you comment on that in in terms of what we need and to get after and then how people that are in this mavney program can assist us as we're doing these overseas kind of movements and deployments thanks ciak i appreciate it and thanks tara for the perspective and the question you know from a transportation mobility logistics standpoint and as it relates to defense and all the things we're trying to do to help the global security environment honestly i think a lot of our allies and partners especially the ones up and coming buying more equipment buying more airplanes and more sea lift or weapons whatever what have you they forget a lot of time there's a sustainment tale that comes that comes with that there's a bill on maintenance and supply and sustainment and we have to do i think we could do a better job there's a lot of opportunity here for us to grow and show our allies and our partners what that looks like over the long-term life of a weapon system say or whatever capability our partners buy purchase and what have you but as far as our our enterprise goes you know i'd say that and mobility command surface deployment distribution command and military sea lift command and our commercial partners which general mcdu calls our fourth component appropriately um we are feeling just about everything we can right now as far as uh meeting the requirements of the all of the co-coms right so we're a functional combatant command just like my teammates in stratcom socom and now cybercom but we have global responsibilities and that comes with a huge bill obviously uh to our to our forces but our capability as far as our weapon systems go and um when you think about general mcdu's authorities and the the equipment he's responsible for to execute the nation's wars or supply the forces for the nation's wars um their strategic assets and they take a long time to build they take they take a long time to pay for and so when we get into the the piece where we have crs uh when we get into the piece where um the budgets have been somewhat stable or flat over many years now it's hard to purchase more ships and that's that's what we're asking for and we consistently message to congress and our leaders we need more ships for the out years we need more airplanes we'd like to see pc-46 come online soon we're excited about that and other assets but thanks for asking the question siac and give me an opportunity to hear if i can close out with the mavmy thing so just a personal example in 2007 and eight during the surge into iraq i was a striker brigade command sergeant major and my interpreter was an army o09 lima if you remember the program where they brought people in specifically to be interpreters however he was a soldier he was a rifleman and so not only was he a lethal part of my force to be able to defeat any threat but because he was an interpreter and he could help me in my key leader engagements he helped me with the non-lethal stuff which was as important as the lethal stuff so i think those kind of programs we have to continue to have those kind of programs to get after a capability that we're going to need in the future as we continue to be this expeditionary force so thanks okay man shoes rock and roll 2007 and eight in iraq absolutely at 49 infantry right man shoes go ahead so on the right hand side of the table over here we've got a tremendous amount of decades of special operations experienced in the in the persons of these three gentlemen's you know command sergeant major my colleague command sergeant major at that ford and uh matt chief chief matt sergeant yes okay so i wanted to ask that wasn't by design by the way yeah i gotta talk to my guy over here i wanted to ask kind of a longer term question about you know the way roles and roles of soff have changed in the time that you guys have been in the force you know ten years ago we would hear a lot about how soff was all into direct action everybody was doing direct action now we now it's kind of the opposite i mean it seems like everybody does by within through and foreign internal defense you got seal platoons doing it msots doing it you even got man i don't know if you could have imagined when you were a young ranger of port lewis um sergeant major that for if you could have imagined rangers now doing the kind of stuff they do with the kate haas today in afghanistan so as you kind of circulate around the force and talk to special operators who have been at this a long time i mean what do they think of this evolution what do guys think of kind of everything being by within through everything being with partners i mean i certainly know special operators who um who joined the force exactly to do that i know ones who joined the force exactly not to do that right um so i i just wonder if you could sort of speak to how this sits with the force how guys adapt to doing it in these many many different theaters um you know everywhere from from west africa to the philippines to everywhere in between deal go ahead okay yeah so for some of our forces like you said they're by nature or direct action force so there's a bit of an evolution for them to kind of understand it you know right now what we need them to do is work with a partner force and and use that by with through approach and over time if you communicate to the troops why it's important and you kind of give them a chance to to buy into it then they get it and you mentioned the rangers in the kate house and they've done a phenomenal job and that's just one good example of a direct action unit that kind of grabbed on to the uh you know the lead and and buy with through and they've done a great job at it i think if you look at the evolution of software really the history of soft what you'll see is we've always been very opportunistic on how we engage our enemies we've been able to change based upon the threat based upon the environment and found unique and differing ways to always get after the enemy um so i don't think this is anything new i think it's really a matter of emphasis foreign internal defense your regular warfare unconventional warfare special reconnaissance all those tasks have been in the books forever it's just we've started to emphasize those more with certain units taking on increased responsibility a great problem that we have is that our folks want to be out there on the tip of the spear and certainly you're going to have folks that want to be out on the battlefield you know going back and forth with the enemy those folks are not always going to be ecstatic initially to okay we're going to train a partner force to be able to conduct operations this is a good problem for us to have because our people want to be out there so it takes a pretty pretty consistent communication from us but once they understand the effect that they can have and really through partners and with partners how it's exponentially bigger than just themselves and their organization they they almost universally buy into that and they're very thankful to have the opportunity to continue to serve their nation in that capacity so since the early days when we first deployed to Afghanistan clearly SOF had a specific niche mission i.e. direct action and so on but as the years went by you have to realize that SOF is a very very small pool and being smart about the way that we fight wars we train other people to go ahead and take over some of those missions so that they can go ahead and spread the span of control in the battlefield so what you see there is just a few subtle differences due to the nature of war today it's very regular and now you have conventional infantry units that are carrying out SOF-like missions but SOF always has a specific advantage with the way they operate that is secretive for lack of better words just because it's that element of surprise that gives this man the advantage and here assumed winning so that's what you're saying to them if i could finish this one off from a DOD perspective in terms of risk to the force and risk the mission if you remember back when we had 150,000 troops in iraq look at april of 2004 we lost 140 americans in action in that month hundreds severely wounded and we were trying to build this capacity in the iraqi security force we were trying to defeat an insurgency so now look where we came at with the strategy we have now where we have this by with and through this build partner capacity train, advise and assist and in some cases with our special operations forces that have the authorities they will accompany the partner force under certain restrictions though but the risk to our force has significantly dropped in 2011 and 12 i was the sergeant major of all combat forces in afghanistan as the isaf joint command sergeant major all of our patrols were partnered but the majority of the casualties were us and coalition more so than afghan now i'm not wishing any harm on our afghan partners but if we're building the capacity into our partners then they need to be in the lead so as we reduced formations and it caused us to do more through our partners and everything so the risk to our force has gone down the risk to the mission of stability and security has gone down but more importantly it's caused the risk to our institutions over the long haul to come down as we move forward so ma'am i'll go to you quick follow up on yeah go ahead then ma'am i'll get you and christine i'm coming to you after that and then sir i'll get you over on the you know the stretching force thing that tar brought up with regard to sauf can you guys say whether i mean is the the dwell issue is that worse with the kind of the building block teams of the force the msats and the odas and the silplatoons or is it worse with the the headquarters units you know the battalion or squadron level elements they're going over there and staffing all these task forces certainly there's challenges with the headquarters elements going forward i would say from the from the overall perspective it's really with our enabler population that you see a lot of stress on the force the folks that do those very specialized mission sets the intelligence folks the communicators they're the ones that have a recurrent mission that whenever you stand up a headquarters forward they're the folks that fall in on that so certainly they have felt quite a bit of strain across their force okay yes ma'am hi caroline hack with defense one just a quick question for you com with now that we're kind of nearing a year in with the first year of the e of p battle groups and the edi is becoming more entrenched more stabilized into the base budget there's some talk now about whether the rotational deployment is the correct approach and whether we should whether it should switch to a permanent permanent stationing so i'm wondering what you're hearing from troops on the ground is there a desire for that permanent basing or they are they getting value from their rotational heel to what are what are you hearing first of all thank you but you know kind of the look and from the troops you know on the ground working through we've worked through the three four rotational brigade we're now two one is over there just relieved them and and it's really about deterrence and it's about being able to provide the force structure to deter aggression in this case from Russia and you know the numbers show that we need about a division's worth of material there in Europe in order to properly deter now that's not move a whole division there and re-establish that division but that's a division worth whether that's using you know forces that are currently stationed there along with the rotation units along with the APS units the the preposition stores that we have so those three combined to make up a division worth of stuff we feel along with our our counterparts our NATO allies and partners is what we need on the on the European continent in order to deter further aggression from Russia see see it may I address that go ahead yeah I'd like to Caroline thanks I'd like to address it from how we review ourselves as a superpower and the projection of forces and the the European AOR is a good example thankfully in the last 18 months or so we've had I'll just do the army as an example as well an army on the move and commanders in the army have responded to our call to ensure that we know how to ship our equipment from the conus to the ports and from the ports across the oceans or flying them if required but more so the sea lift option into the ports of northern Europe to understand the challenges of getting equipment down into Europe you know delivering that decisive force and I'd offer that you know that really our projection our ability to project or anywhere in the world whether overnight with the airlift or in a decisive way over three or four months of a gay combat team and so on or other and other major equipment and personnel delivery it's a super power the only country in the world that can do that and our men and women all across all of our service all across all of our co-coms and the headquarters that that run those those operations it's just an incredible synergistic enterprise that you just you got to be proud of in in fact with everything we have on our plate and all of the the equipment that's getting older and older every day the young men and women of America that join our service continue to crush it every night and I can't tell you how proud we are up here to serve for them Christina go ahead so both my questions were taken by other people so I had to make some up on the fly especially after you called me up is there an increasing reliance on special operations forces in your AORs and why and secondly does the military need to shift to get on this by with and through footing does what adjustments need to be made so I'm going to frame this Christina from a DOD perspective and then I'm going to ask Sergeant Major Zucca Fuss and Sergeant Major Spadaro to comment on this so and I think CZ kind of started off talking about this we're looking for ways to get after are there missions out there where well trained general purpose forces can move in and do the job that we've previously had special operations forces doing under the right training guidance under the right authorities and things like that the answer is yes and we're doing that across theaters where because of the experience we've had over 16 years of decentralized kind of operations and this foreign internal defense kind of stuff that Sergeant Major McCauley talked about are general purpose forces are conditioned through a training program and everything to do those kind of things so we're constantly looking at that so that we can alleviate some of the stress on our special operations forces Z go ahead so we have a very small footprint of special operation forces and we'd always take more but in reality is you know we we get a special purpose magtaff that comes down about halfway through the year and works HADR and also works other missions within you know within our Central America and in South America where they actually get with their partner nations and build that part of capacity you know from everything from you know NCO development to shooting swimming all those things we need you know to build that partner capacity so yes you know always need more but in reality is we can do the same thing with the forces we have today special operations command specific has been absolutely magnificent for us and the they have done for us it's just they're not a they're beyond a partner builders for us they they have literally they're unattended diplomats for us we're seeing our pack teams doing magnificent work and the really cool thing about it it's done by enlisted men and women that are assigned to them that are doing just the work of angels for us over there but with that too we also see successes that we've carefully integrated conventional forces because they do need relief over there because of the workload it just keeps increasing in the Pacific for our special operators so we've seen success with as Sergeant Major Zickuf who said when you have the special mag tasks come in we've also said when we introduced our UAS assets to bring relief to them and they've integrated magnificently and I think because as the 16 years have just proven time and time again how to make this work so what's the future hold and I think that's where we have to start taking a deeper look is how are you going to carefully integrate conventional forces to alleviate some of the mission sets to our special operators good easy you want to come so you just wanted to give you a quick example we have a lot of places in Africa where literacy rates are not really all that great you're talking about 60 percent of them can read or write then you have a soft specific force that goes into training and in essence the the training that soft may provide may be too specialized for the capacity and capability sense sustainability of that particular force to where we may be better served by having a basic infantry unit teach them how to shoot move communicate and do basic life-saving skills so there's a lot of places I mean it's one of their core missions but does the shoe fit every time absolutely not I think sometimes we need to go ahead and rely on other assets to be able to provide that relief to get after those dwell rates to measure that we allow our soft forces to train for soft missions so just to close this out one of the strong programs we have in our national guard is our state partnership programs that are around the world and so fleet Eddington and I were in Ukraine several months back and what I saw out there that I thought was pretty unique and pretty good was that we had soft forces out there training soft tasks to Ukrainian forces but we had national guard non-commissioned officers out there teaching small unit leadership to Ukrainian NCOs another country that badly needs this empowered small unit leadership to get after the challenges they're having in the eastern part of the country there so that was a pretty good example that I saw from there yes sir Phil Stewart from Reuters I was hoping to get your thoughts on one of the partner forces particularly in Syria you know what do you think the the kind of the folks on the ground there our partners will need to transition from kind of clear force to to a whole force and kind of looking looking ahead you know what are the what are the shortcomings and and where do you think the U.S. has to so I'll ask the cent com senior listed leader to comment on that you're speaking of our SDF Syrian democratic forces well they're getting they're getting practice at it right now because they'll tactically go in do a mission clear ISIS from an area and then before they move on to their next tactical objective they leave behind a civil council to stand up basic services for the population because we know if you don't govern you've got a limited amount of time or that vacuum will be filled by the next group of terrorists so the SDF is not only are they good fighters but they're good leaving behind a civil council to take care of the population I guess I'm wondering is what happens to fighters and what do you think your role is is trying to make sure that they're they're trained right to transition to a whole force because you know part of the job is that just to create the social and the governmental conditions to prevent a return of ISIS but also to ensure that you have the military cohesion and staying power because it's easy to be united when you're fighting an enemy but when that fights not so obvious things can get complicated so people can be faction off from sort of wondering how you're looking at that more specific military problem I don't know that we've kind of tackled that just yet right now the Syrian democratic forces are busy in their in their clearance of ISIS from East Syria once so once they get to where they're going to have their limit of advance and we've got to look and see what what do they do what is their long-term future is there a model you're going to look at is there some other force that you might be a model for you every case is going to be unique and so I think what the SDF have earned is a is a seat at the table to see what what comes next for Syria as a whole so if I could add onto that and I'll ask Sir Major McCauley and I what about a month ago a month and a half we were in Raqqa, Syria and got to see the SDF in action and I will tell you as I mentioned yesterday we were on the ground for four hours and I don't know how they were holding out from all the lethality that the SDF along with us assisting them on them but as they continue to pursue this enemy one thing we've noticed is that the minute they led up this is a very resilient enemy that will come back and attack and try to look for vulnerabilities to come after and get them so we're going to continue to support the SDF they got a lot of hard fighting to do it's like Sir Major Thetford said and we're going to continue to support them as we continue this effort to liberate more areas along the Euphrates River Valley and also continue to get after the defeat of ISIS do you think you want to add on it to say the SDF is a unique partner and that you know it's made up of you have Sunnis and Shia you have Christians you have you know Arabs and Kurds males and females all in in one organization and what we can look at holistically as we can look at their body of work what they've accomplished how far they've gone and what they've done in their wake because that in a lot of ways is going to be an indicator what we can expect in the future and I can tell you that as the sea I can I can travel to cross country it's pretty evident that one thing that they are absolutely doing in their wake is they are governing in their wake there were police forces that were in all of the cities there was governance have been returned in a lot of those places business as usual it almost come back you wouldn't realize that there was a war going on so it's it's a unique organization certainly what will the future hold for them that's not at our level obviously to to figure out but they have been an outstanding partner for us and I think all indicators of what we've seen from them have been positive can I follow on this yes sir I was just at the Halifax Conference where the the Turkish chad came out and it was probably the third senior Turkish official in the couple weeks to come out blasting the SDF as basically equivalent to the PKK calling them terrorists calling on the United States to pull back their support pull back their arms how does it help you if you were just out there I know you can't speak to one of these policy decisions that will be made but what are but what are you what did you hear from the SDF fighters about the mood about the hear this coming from the Turks on one side and the American backers on the other and what are the American advisors and sisters what are you calling them your forces your forces saying about this talk if that if they're hearing it if it's filtering down to them so I'll I'll start off and then Pat I'll ask you to so when I was out there and we were engaging with the I've been out there twice now I went in May initially and then I was just there recently the star major McCauley and I will tell you this kind of never came up as a topic of conversation with me because the level of partnering and the level of support they were getting by the forces on the ground kept them engaged and they were seeing the successes they were having and they were going wanting to continue to pursue this enemy so that level of conversation never came up with me but I'll let Sir Major McCauley talk about the American troops yeah American troops supporting the SDF what I saw was a cohesive relationship between the two and they were mutually focused on pursuing and defeating this threat go ahead absolutely great relationship with the folks that are on the ground you know many of them will tell you this is if not the best one of the best partners they've ever worked with very very good at what they do and then very eager to learn one of the things I think it's lost a lot of times is that the SDF is more than half of it is made up of Sunis that are not Kurds they're actually Arabs that are doing the fighting and I think that kind of gets lost to the translation somewhere as we look at that force holistically but it's quite a quite a unique and mixed force that's out there on the battlefield right now are you talking to that's the next wave of Americans goes out there this is physical territory that Americans have helped the SDF take and there's already talk at the international level that it may go back that the Turks may want it back that when it comes to the peace this none of this may last and so it means I'm hearing from some truth the sense of you know maybe like Iraq or like parts of Afghanistan we fought for places that people that America's died for them and we're going to have to give it all back because of some some geopolitical concerns so I would just comment that as we've seen since we've been partnering with the SDF they've been pretty capable not only of defeating the enemy but governing afterwards so I think there's momentum with this force that they're going to have a seat at the table in whatever final resolution is and that's not for us to decide here as was mentioned earlier we focus on the task at hand as senior enlisted advisors and that's going out and visiting those troops finding out the concerns they have and then bringing it back to our bosses so I think we can take time for one more question thank you John oh yeah go ahead you finish all just to kind of follow up on that then I'll go to you from the your you know European and one of the things as I was visiting the troops at Inserlich okay the Turkey has been all in on the counter ISIS okay they have been you know despite the political side that you read and you see and you hear they've been all in on the counter ISIS campaign and they have been a great ally with protecting our troops that are on the ground in Turkey and so I just wanted to add that that despite that political rhetoric they're a wonderful ally and they continue to protect you know the the the bases that we do have in Turkey sir you have the last question that's very specific to the Marines after Sergeant Major Spadaro well I know him Senior Instructor Gunnery Sergeant Spadaro when we talk about when we when we when we talk about so you actually know him in a social kind of okay social construct yeah let's hope you behave well stand up straight very specific to I'll tell you want to talk no hi sir hi sir um very specific to the the low-key concept that the commandant has unveiled in this past year I'm curious when you talk about joint forces and and allies and global integration when you look at paycom are there opportunities starting now or in the near future we're going to see integrating other national forces within the littoral kind of combat sphere that you guys are developing oh no hey Todd that is that is a phenomenal question because yes we are seeing that I mean I just returned from Singapore and even there we have our littoral combat ships based out there right now so you're seeing where Singapore is invited us in as a valued partner so that's growing there and we see the Marine Corps right now if you want to talk there Sri Lanka at the beginning of this year developed a Marine Corps based off our visits so as visits in the conduct of the Marines working with our Sri Lankan partners Sri Lanka said they actually did a reduction and moved their other forces and developed a Marine Corps now to go after specific mission sets that's going to help Sri Lanka especially along their coastal waters where the Marine Corps is going to operate best of so they've created a Marine Corps you're seeing developments in Indonesia you're seeing developments in Malaysia so with that I think though it's just not the Marine Corps that owns this though the U.S. Army Pacific with their Pacific pathways is growing this we have the Navy now when they're going out doing joint operations with other navies with India they're operating specifically with so you're watching this it's such a growth it's happening now it's not it's for the future it's something that's happening now and we're just going to seize because this is how we're going to embolden our partners to also to address the same problem sets of defending their homeland you know you got to look at it defending the homeland side is not a Transdential statement it's a transferable statement for other partners to defend their homelands okay ladies and gentlemen unfortunately we're running out of time but I think I can speak for this entire group up here we really appreciate you taking the time but more importantly we appreciate what you do every day to support the troops and tell the troop story Christina whether it's being at Wounded Warrior events with you or Tara or Jim being on overseas flights with you and and out where the troops are at and you know we never get to send you to you know garden spots like New Zealand Australia we send you to you know the Middle East or or you know North Korea or excuse me South Korea or whatever but the bottom line is we appreciate you and that's why we hope this dialogue will be something that's enduring as we move forward I'll leave you with this we talked a lot about a lot of good things that are going on in the operational environment but let there be no doubt we do have challenges we have writing as challenges that we have to get after and as I mentioned earlier it's because of unstable budgets that we haven't been able to get after this modernization program like Pat McMahon just talked about or maintenance programs and stuff like that but I go back to what I said earlier and what I said yesterday we absolutely still can defend our homeland in our way of life we can meet our alliance commitments and we absolutely have work fighting competitive advantages in every war fighting domain some of those not as much as we'd like to because of this unstable budget but the bottom line is our greatest competitive advantages is our enlisted force and as you go around the world and as we go around the world we see men and women that are enlisted leaders that have been empowered by commanders or officers to get after the mission they're applying discipline initiative and agile adaptive thinking and they're accomplishing the mission even though they may not have all the people that they should have or all the resources that they should have but they're taking that risk that's out there they're mitigating it but more importantly they are sharing that risk with their higher headquarters but also they're anticipating that risk and getting after the mission and how to accomplish it so once again thank you all it's truly an honor for all of us to be here and we hope to do this again soon thank you