 Chief you could have stayed there Good morning everybody We're delighted to have you here, and I very grateful to have General Welsh with us today to discuss the the Air Force Here at our military strategy forum and chief this is my I think the first time we've had a chance to have you here I'm really honored for that. Thank you. Thank you for coming. You know, I'm always Marvel that our system does bring forward the key leaders at the right time and We're going through really tough tough days right now but I've had a chance to watch the stewardship of General Welsh and this is exactly what we need we need your leadership and stewardship right now chief and I want to say Thank you and we have everybody in this audience for what you're doing for the Air Force Just a little sad news news Jim Schlesinger died last night Jim has been struggling he Had been up at Johns Hopkins For being treated for pneumonia. He this has been a a little bit of a kind of a continuing problem But late last night about three in the morning Jim passed and we lost a really a great man But I tell my staff I'm too old any longer to spend my energy on anger and Sadness just have time and energy for joy and he was a remarkable man and we should celebrate that remarkable life so Chief we we are grateful that you're here and I want to buy should say just say thank you to our friends at Rolls-Royce that are Allow us to make this program available for the policy community in Washington so that we can hear The key leaders who are shaping our national security trajectory at a very important time I think the events of the last two weeks Have brought back a consciousness that this is still a very uncertain unsettled world With long-term significance. This is not a 20-week problem that we have in Ukraine This is a 20-year problem and of course this is a chief who before he was elevated and brought to the chief was Heading up all of our forces air forces in Europe and so he has a rich perspective. I would ask you to be Careful, however in this that we're in a sensitive moment As a country, you know the chief does not make national policy the president does and so I would ask you to be Be careful on how you ask questions and I'd ask Kath to make sure she deflects them if they're not the right questions Okay, but but you go ahead and try all right. So anyway, would you please with your applause welcome and thank General Welch for being with us today? Thank you folks and good morning. Thank you so much for letting me be here Dr. Hammering. Thank you especially for allowing me to join you in the beautiful new building pretty impressive Speaking of great Americans. There's a couple sitting in the front row. You know, Dr. Hammering. What he's contributed There are many others in this room and I'm just honored to have Dr. Kathleen Hicks here to help Help me get through this next little bit of time. Thank you, ma'am for everything you've done to serve our nation and for your help this morning Folks if I get the first slide and let me talk you about the only real Policy decisions I get to make can I get the next slide, please? I'm not sure how the clicker is working here We have as my wife reminds me five long days left in mustache March for her force My wife is actually giving up kissing me for Lent This has actually been an interesting experiment lots of ways in the Air Force But the the most significant thing has been that since we started this The scathing scalding really ugly emails that all the service She's get every day on whatever the latest issue is that affects your service I haven't gotten any of them the only emails. I'm getting are ripping me apart about mustaches. I Can live with this? We may do this every month Let me tell you what I'd like to do this morning for just a couple of minutes and then see what you'd like to talk about What I'd like to do is talk to you about four areas that we're kind of focused on right now as we move forward And let me hit the next slide, please if I could First one is kind of reminding ourselves of what it is We do because I think every service has to do this routinely and for the Air Force This is actually pretty easy actually for all the services pretty easy What we do is what we've done and what we are going to do is what we do today Those are the five core mission areas. They haven't changed since 1947. They're not going to change in the next 30 to 50 years How we do them will change and That's the way we are trying to adjust our thinking We added one thing to that first mission area from what the president gave us in 1947 instead of air superiority We now have air and space superiority. I don't think the president had that space thing figured out back then But if you look at the rest of them the wording is almost identical to the executive order that we were given in 1947 The difference is at the bottom of the page. We now do these things in three domains In 47 it was operating through the air domain now We operate in and through the space domain in the cyber domain and what's changing most dramatically for us these days Is that those two domains are getting more contested and more congested every day? And they have to be decongested and deconflicted Primarily through technical means As we move forward and so what we're going to be doing for the next 30 years. I think is adjusting the ratio of What we do in each mission by domain So things we've been doing in the air domain for years will shift to the space domain as you know They already have we do ISR through the space domain We do command and control and then through the space domain in the cyber domain We're doing strike through the cyber domain We're doing the global strike mission. We're doing Intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance. We're doing command and control all the kinds of things. We've done in the air domain We will do in these other domains in the future Precision airdrop we're going to be doing precision drop of data in the cyber domain We're going to be doing armed escort of data in the cyber domain Do a little bit of that already and we're going to be doing more of that So the ratios will change which allows us to be more efficient in some ways It allows us to cost less than other ways it allows us access to targets We can't get access to to create effects. We can't create today That's going to be the change for our Air Force But these missions are what the combatant commanders in the nation expect us to provide. This isn't going to change But the way we think about them has to next slide I'm stole this slide shamelessly from a great friend of mine named Dave Golfin who's the director of the joint staff Dave is a really really big thinker. I am not So whenever I see a good slide from Dave, I just say hey Dave, I'm stealing it This is actually an interesting concept. I was trying to figure out how to say this and I heard him describe it So let me just tell you how he described it One of the problems we have is an Air Force one of my biggest frustrations is when we get into budget discussions Or we start you start reading all articles in the paper about capabilities of services We talk about carrier battle groups. We talk about brigade combat teams. We talk about fighter and bomber squadrons Well, the Air Force has a whole lot more going on than fighter and bomber squadrons In fact Most of what we are doing day-to-day is not fighter bomber squadrons that's visible to the to the combatant commander Dave said, you know, there's lots of things that we do in the Air Force That are just kind of like the light switch and you're in a room You walk into the room the light switches there. You look at it. You have no idea what's behind the wall But you know every time you flip the switch Every time you flip the switch the lights come on That's kind of way the Air Force is these days In areas like ISR you have no idea that 35,000 people are doing ISR today in support of combatant commanders all over the world They're running the processing exploitation and dissemination architecture. They're doing collection management. They're managing sensors in space and air They're doing all kinds of stuff You just don't know what's going on But there's 35,000 of them doing it every day and it's Flip the switch you get your picture you get your significant collection you get your report Same thing with airlift. We have 130,000 airmen who do airlift every day 600 sorties a day The one question I've never heard asked in a policy or strategy discussion or response to a contingency Contingency discussion the tank not once have I heard anybody ask can we get it there? When we were Patriot Battery Turkey good idea Nobody ever asked can you get it there? We'll get it there We don't ask about getting special mission force to some part of the globe We don't ask about getting You know a ranger battalion to point x or point y it just assumed we can Just flip switch Precision navigation timing when precision weapons Better have the United States Air Force and the great folks in Air Force Base Command working You want to be have precise navigation from GPS? You want to have timing exactly right for every mission we do around the world You better have the capabilities provided by 25,000 airmen every single day around the clock Running space satellites run an architecture doing space surveillance doing missile warning for the nation all those kind of things are just happening in the background Same thing with two legs of the triad Until there's a problem in the force. You don't think about them But they're there they've been there forever as we've changed all these different Ways of looking at national security over the years the one piece of national security wallpaper That's always in the background is nuclear deterrence Because they're really good at it And then even things like air superiority space superiority homeland defense As we sit here We've got fighters all over the country mostly manned by your National Guard members sitting alert to defend the homeland Most people don't know that goes on every day all that stuff costs money. It call it requires training. It takes people It's part of infrastructure. It's part of what makes our Air Force the best Air Force in the world But every time you hear a briefing about DoD capabilities, there is one word on one slide that captures all that it's enablers And one of the keys for us moving forward as as a nation really is that we start to completely understand that those Enablers are now the mainstream of the business. We do day-to-day They are military capability now They're not some new thing that's in a back room that's gonna help us be better at some other mission. This is the mission We have 220,000 airmen every single day supporting combatant commanders around the world They're not bombing things They're collecting data. They're doing command and control. They're they're they're moving people around the planet They're doing all the enabling things and that's typically wrapped up in one word on one slide We've got to break the word out Because it's critical to national defense You can't do the other things we want to do with all the services Unless these things happen and by the way, there are things in the other services, too This is just the Air Force picture, but we got to understand these we want to be serious about national security in the future next slide We've been working really hard on this idea one Air Force, you know We have three components on our Air Force in my perfect world. There's only an Air Force. There's no guard There's no reserve. There's just an Air Force and we do it all we got full-time people part-time people more part-time people We handle state requirements. We handle national requirements. We could do that by the way We'll never will politically that is not an acceptable solution But if you think of it that way it becomes a lot easier to manage As long as you can remove all the rules the laws the policies that are in place that make it impossible to think that way We've got too many restrictions on doing things that make common sense When the governor of Wyoming wants to send one of his C-130s with the garden members on board to California to help fight wildfires He's probably got the airplanes parked on the ramp. He might not have enough crews to send them all when he gets the phone Call from the governor of California There's an active duty associates sitting there In the unit with active duty crew members who are fully qualified in the mission, but he can't send them That makes no sense And you think it'd be as easy as a phone call to the secretary of the Air Force or to me and say I want to send them And we'd say go That doesn't work either So it takes a few days to respond and while we're working the response homes are still burning We have to get rid of some of these these rules and restrictions and the things that we put up to defend things over time We gotta get rid of them if we really want to integrate we gotta put common sense back in the equation There's reason for policy and guidelines, but some of these have grown up just to protect things What we've done over the last year is we actually have looked hard at this idea of efficiency versus capability meaning if we can become more efficient With our total Air Force by pushing more stuff into the reserve component Why wouldn't we money's an issue if we can become more efficient? We should but as you do that analysis you have to figure out as you push more into the reserve component Where do you hit an operational bumper if you will a reason not to go farther? You can't get there fast enough with enough force structure You can't respond with enough in the first 30 days you can't meet the war plan requirement whatever it is or Simple things like you can't keep an experienced guard and reserve if you don't have a big enough active duty Or if you have overseas force structure in the active duty, you've got to have a base in the conus to rotate to it Where your active duty people will never come back to the stage They'll always be assigned overseas which won't keep them in long because their families won't like it So all that analysis has to be done before you make these decisions We have been working very hard at building a decision support tool I'm not going to go into the tool, but let me tell you how we did it. We did it side by side We did it with a guard the reserve the active duty the tags are all sitting in the room And we use the same cost model we use the same decision support tool We've looked at all the options together So we understand the problem better than we did before and then we've made recommendations and about 60% of our Frame frame types so far it takes a while do this analysis right and you got to get it right You can completely break the Air Force if you get it wrong So what we've done is airplane by airplane look at how much can we push in reserve component especially by specially how much can We move in the reserve component and then the reserve components look at where does it make sense to put those things? They can recruit well in some areas others they can't Associate units make sense in some places other places. They just don't and so we've got to put the logic together build this whole plan We've incorporated about 40 to 50% of this into the 15 budget. We'll do the rest by the 16 budget We'll have the analysis done by the end of this next budget cycle So that's the game plan going forward We've had great support from the guard bureau great support from the tags when I take a palm briefing to the secretary of the Air Force The chief the guard the chief the reserve are there with me as are the two tags who advise us in this effort They have a voice in the meeting they have a say and There's no restrictions on communications with the guard or the tags of the states That's the way it's been working. It'll continue to work like that and we're going to just make this institutionally the way we do business We're looking at deployed to do all goals The guard bureau has signed up in the future because we want to push more in the reserve component and they want to take it They believe they can handle a one to five deployed to do all model We're a little worried about that in some missionaries particularly the fighter force They haven't volunteers has been fantastic By the way if the last 14 years it's not a matter of being able to do the job But one to five puts a big strain on employers on communities on lots of things So we're going to do a one-year test here this year it's the middle of this here to middle next year and just see if it works If it doesn't we'll have to change how much we push in those particular areas into the reserve component if it does We have other options But we got to get a motion off the table put logic on the table And so that's what we're trying to do we're going to test the concept this next year We're doing personal integration everywhere from fighter wings We have a fighter wing in Ohio a guard wing the 180th fighter wing that was just assumed command by an active duty officer Who was kind of made a guard officer on the day of the change of command? And it's now kind of a has holds a dual commission and a servings a commander of a guard fighter wing We'll look for opportunities to do that go the other direction as well Major General Kathy Robertson just took over as our excuse me Kathy Johnson just took over as our deputy a4 on the air Staff deputy director of logistics for us on the air staff. She's a reserve officer We would like to have that be the model in every directorate So the director of the or the deputy director is a reserve officer over time now It's a huge commitment for the Guard and Reserve Because they've got to commit to qualify officers over time to be ready to handle those positions You're gonna be the a3 of the a4 of the Air Force. You can't have done it two weeks a year for the last ten years So it's a huge commitment required to get this right, but we're gonna try and then finally we should be exploiting the strengths of our components The political power of the Air National Guard should be a huge strength of the United States Air Force Somehow we turned it into a weakness We've got to reverse that if we want to be successful. It's got to change next slide Let me very briefly talk about a Change in the way we do strategy and planning because to me all this sounds cool, but if you can't get where you need to go The ideas are cool, but and people don't take it their process does when it comes to strategy So we put out a vision about a year ago with which is intended to remind our airmen that they're they're the engine that drives the terrain next slide We also put out a concept that said if you do those five core missions I mentioned before and you do them well then we provide global vigilance reach and power for America This is kind of what we do for the nation and we want to make sure they understood where they fit in that next slide We also built a resource strategy a ten-year resource strategy based on getting from here to the Indus Equestration We call that Air Force 2023 it assumes sequestered levels of funding and it takes us to the best air force We think we can have by 2023 at the end of sequestration the best air force we can realistically have Not what we'd like to have next slide, but the piece has been missing and all this is actually the big strategy. I Wanted to have this out within the first six months of my time as the chief But we have been beating the people who do strategy work in the Air Force because they also do the palm work in the Air Force And all of you know that for the last year that process has been just Immensely painful multiple palms for multiple years. We were working them seven days a week now. I just said take a deep breath We'll get to the strategy next spring. I Just didn't feel like we could beat him anymore, but it's almost spring So about two months ago. I pulled the guys in and said, okay, you're no longer palm guys You're now strategy guys. We're gonna publish this thing by June and the idea is that we are gonna actually change the air Staff we're gonna create an a 5 8 on the air staff that will do strategy plans and long-range resource planning The day-to-day grind of the palm is gonna move into FM We're gonna move the whole engine room that does the accounting and the processing the palm into the FM It's been embedded side-by-side with the people in FM for the last three or four years We physically co-located them three or four years ago. It's time just to take the lessons learned from that and make it Part of the FM. It's fine Part of this was just we don't want to do that because it puts it under the secretary We're all there. I'm not worried about that This will actually do something else for us next slide Because this time for the Air Force to figure out what our guiding concepts are gonna be for the next few years first slide World War two you guys know we came out of that with this idea the strategic bombardment was a wave of the future And after it next slide after a short kind of diversion in Korea short but painful diversion We got into strategic bombardment. We shifted into nuclear deterrence and that kind of drove us with all the theories associated with it for The next 30 years next slide Airland battle kind of sprung up in the 70s and in early 80s next slide Then we went to a global reach global power parallel warfare around the late 80s and early 90s next slide Then we got into counterterrorism and coin and that's been driving our train for the last 15 18 years really next slide And now global vigilance reaching power next slide and the key for us isn't where we are today It's where we go on next slide And one more I think there you go. I Think this is it. I don't know this is it But I think in 2040 2050 what our Air Force needs to have really have is strategic agility And there's lots of ways you can talk about strategic agility is everything from decision-making process to resourcing process to the Acquisition process to the ability to respond to a crisis to how you deliver weapons on the battlefield, but I think this is it But just saying that won't get us there So we need a game plan next slide we haven't had a strategy in almost nine years in the Air Force We need to have a strategy that lives that breeze that somebody manages every day that we talk about that we argue about that We kick around the table that you guys write about That we adjust over time because it makes sense to adjust over time. So here's what we're going to try and do We're going to build a strategy strategic document really has three pieces the top piece is a 30 year look I think looking beyond that we're kind of kidding ourselves But you can't just look at 30 years and pretend like it in the world ends then The goal of any strategy is to always have you striving to look over that 30-year hill and see what's on the other side So in my mind, I would start at the bottom of those bullets on the left. This is our call to the future It identifies a strategic environment. We think will exist the threat assessment It's a strategic priorities for the department and how the Air Force fits into that lines of operations on things like science and technology R&D Human capital development education training as the world changes in those arenas It is the call to the future to keep pulling our service forward because our service will fail if we don't stay on the front end of technology development education training We will fail eventually We'll update this every four years kind of to align with chiefs and secretaries changing over and we'll review it every two years Next slide Second piece of this is going to be one Air Force master plan right now We have 13 one for each of our core function areas They're developed in different parts of the Air Force and then we kind of stand up next to each other and admire them They got to come together because what we aren't able to do when we do it that way We get great expertise in those core function areas. That's been a benefit of this Our folks out there in the major commands who build these plans really understand the portfolio But it doesn't allow us a great opportunity to trade across the portfolios to make the strategic trades that we really have To be making as a service especially when resources are constrained Because we have to have the debate now about space capability versus pick a topic close air support air superiority We've got to have those debates every year We need to be having the joint arena by the way But but this is what we we've got to be having inside the Air Force And it's got to have all those things in that 20 year look and the big thing I would tell you is attached to this master plan our flight plans or roadmaps if you will for things like remote Aircraft for training education for Partnerships for whatever it is that you're managing but all that has to come together in a single master plan We'll review this every year. We'll update it every two years By the way, this is a 20 year look and it's fiscally informed So if we all the stuff we know we're doing in that 20 year period the numbers are factored in for spending Anything new we propose those numbers have to be factored in for spending and we're going to look at the budget projections And if they go above that line you can't add it Right now we have a plan in the mid 20s and beyond that we can it's a pipe dream We can't afford it So what are we really going to prioritize? So that Congress understands so the Department of Defense understands so there's a real clear understanding of where we're going as a service And over time we can build a little bit of trust that we're actually going to get where we're say We're going which will allow a little more consistency in funding a little more consistency in support Inside the Air Force inside the Department and hopefully inside the government. So that's the game plan Next slide and the third piece of this is that 10-year funding strategy Air Force 2023 is this we built that first because of the pressures from sequestration And now this year we will build the top two pieces and In 17 we'll go through the whole cycle for the 17 budget. We'll have the whole thing in place But this 10-year funding This 10-year budget will be a balanced 10-year budget Kind of like you have to do at home and the first five years will be our palm But there won't be stuff out there. That's 50 percent above what we expect our funding line to be We can't operate that way and we have to be able to then go to the department and say look here's what we can afford to do Here's what we can provide you you want more than that? Show me the money We just got to get realistic about how we're looking at the future It's the only way to assess logically where we're going to be We got to quit hoping next slide Okay By the way, it's posture hearing season. This is kind of a posture hearings feel like Just had one yesterday So i'll be glad to answer any questions that you have about that about anything i've said or about any other topic You'd like me to get into thank you so much again for letting me be here. Thanks for what you do for national security Thank you very much general welsh for for those comments and any briefing that ends on a dog slide is usually a crowd Pleaser so well done on that particularly I'm sure you were not equating dogs and congressional testimony season in any way, but that's also a crowd pleaser in Washington Let me pick up on the thought you Came to toward the end on strategic agility which certainly resonates with me and I'm sure many in the audience But let's talk a little bit about how difficult that is to practice and what I mean by that is You're looking at a world with a lot of uncertainty. We face uncertainty Day-to-day certainly the Ukraine crisis is an example of that But also uncertainty over 20 to 30 years is immense on Unmeasurable really and at the same time as you try to be agile against that uncertain world You're facing tremendous budget pressure as you said and you have to be realistic about what that what that means What are the ways in which you're thinking through how to prioritize in that world? How do you think about it? In a general sense, how do you come to a way to prioritize against that kind of uncertainty? And what actually are you thinking are those priorities as you move forward? Yeah, we the biggest problem we have right now is that the what sequestered funding levels mean to all the services is That every decision hurts We're way past easy choices at this point and so every decision every recommendation you make is going to impact something dramatically Everything on our budget this year will result in a combatant commander having less capability less capacity Less ability to respond less flexibility. That's what is happening right now And so the first thing we have to do is understand that our ability to do things as a nation is going to diminish It just is we the expectation has got to change This funding projection that's in the law That's called sequester will actually change our ability to do things around the world. There's going to be less And people just have got to understand that If that's not acceptable then we need to change the funding profiles And so we that's kind of the way we're looking at it So we're prioritizing the things we think we will be asked to support and we're putting the things that would have the least impact At the top of the list to cut Now it doesn't mean they don't have an impact every one of them has an impact But they have the least impact compared to the other things in those five core missionaries We have to provide the biggest danger is that the event of the day the crisis of the day the contingency of the day Will drive you to focus way too much on any one of those missionaries It's for the exclusion of others an example would be in for the last 14 years. We've been doing close-air support That's all anybody here really knows the Air Force has been doing in Afghanistan Iraq We've been doing all that other stuff by the way, but you don't see all that stuff But most people just know about close-air support. So the concern right now is you can't cut close-air support Well compared to the other things you would have to cut It's actually the right choice if you're worried about fighting a large conflict in the future If you're not worried about that and the nation decides that the optimal approach should be to get ready for a counterinsurgency fight We would change what we prioritize, but that's not why superpowers have air forces They have an Air Force to fight a full spectrum high-end fight if it should be required And so we are optimizing to be able to do that and we can do a counterinsurgency support with the things that do that But it's not optimized for that, but that's the kind of debate we're in right now The other debate is how do you balance readiness today versus capability and capacity over time? If you're an Air Force, can you not modernize and just keep more old stuff because it's cheaper you can And it helps you for a couple of years, and then it's a real problem Ten years from now the older stuff won't be competitive in the battle space Just won't be you can wish it was but it won't be and so one of my jobs is to make sure that we take a very Realistic look at this and give an honest assessment of best military advice of what we need So you get into modernization being not an optional thing for the Air Force We have to modernize and then you talk about de-recapitalized or de-modernized Do you just upgrade old stuff or do you recapitalize by buying new and there's some areas you've got to buy new You can't dress up a fourth-generation airplane or legacy fighters and make it competitive with an F-35 Can't be done Again, we'd like to do it because we a lot cheaper can't be done And so the real question for me in that kind of discussion is do I want to look the moms and dads of America? And the I and say it's okay that your son and daughter will be flying that older airplane because they're really good And they'll win the war anyway More will die I'm not willing to have that conversation the number one superpower in the world shouldn't The issue of balance is one that's throughout the department's communications this in this budget season and in this QDR Season and Secretary James also mentioned it yesterday exactly as you just did on the Underscoring the need to balance readiness and future capabilities when she when she testified yesterday What is your sense of how well you are able to achieve that balance? Or how did you do the balance as you look out across the pond that you've just submitted? We actually looked at everything as an option. We looked at every modernization program We started with a recapitalization discussion What do you have to recapitalize and there's lots of details behind it? But we decided on the F-35 the KC 46 and a long-range strike bomber for Operational reasons and I'd be glad to go on in more detail But I'll say that in case you're not interested, but those were the big three Those are expensive and so we then had to look at every other modernization program and figure out what we couldn't afford and we cut About 50% of them The ones we kept were the things that were absolutely required to keep an aircraft or a system viable against the future threat or against future technology As an example, we don't have enough have 22s to do air superiority on a theater scale And because they were capped at 187 which means we have to support them with something else to do that today It would be the F-15C the F-15C radar needs to be upgraded It's not going to be competitive even against today's threat in some scenario So that's a case where we will upgrade that radar we have to but we're going to cut the overall fleet because we can't afford to do Both and so it were those are the decisions we're making And then we prioritized by looking at what a combatant commander needs in a major air fight And all those five missionaries I talked about and we tried to balance those in a way that we could provide the command Commander the support they would need in that conflict Although it wouldn't be enough capacity in any one area we could do Every mission that they needed us to do that was the balance and we did saw a lot of operational analysis on this and compared different options You know, is it better to cut a 10s? Is it better to cut more f-16s? Is it better cut f-15s or b ones or just buy less f-35s or and we looked at all that versus an operational analysis It's pretty detailed and that's how we came to our decisions How confident are you in our ability to for the Air Force to track readiness accurately to have a good sense in a timely manner of how Ready the force is so we can adjust as necessary. Yeah, we're really confident in that We do this every single day our squadron to assess the I mean literally weekly and we get we wrap up reports monthly Readiness has been declining for us for a long time The war in Afghanistan and Iraq has drawn a lot of the the training time Especially the the full spectrum training that we would like to do more of an Air Force to do all the missions that we're kind of tasked against We haven't had as much of that especially since about 2003 As a result we have not had people go to red flag as often as we'd like for example We do not do as much full spectrum high-end contested type training and so our readiness is kind of slowly declined for about the last 10 11 years Very noticeably before it's declined for about 10 years before that because we never really left the desert after 1990-91 And so all that has had an effect over time the decreased funding lines have meant that we haven't funded our training ranges as well As we would have liked to we haven't funded live virtual constructive Simulation capabilities the way we would have liked to we've taken money out of training time for pilots assuming We'd be able to replace it with training time in these simulators and then haven't fully funded the simulators There's just been this steady decline over time and it's time to stop it one of the reasons we're working our Very difficult force management plan here for the next couple of years to shrink the number of people in the in the Air Force is That if we don't do that and the law stays the law and we return to sequestered funding levels in FY 16 We can't afford to train and operate the Air Force anymore We have got to get rebalanced at a size that we can afford to train and operate so we are ready The readiness model is always a question because everybody compares us to the Navy or the Army and they say Why can't you have tiered readiness? Well, it's actually a very logical reason to this if if you're a force that has more fuss for structure than your standing requirement If you have two times as many of something a carrier battle group Let's say then what you have to have at any given time available Then the ones that aren't available on those days can be in some kind of tiered readiness same things true for brigade combat teams in the Army if for the Air Force our Standing requirement for bomber squadrons is more than our number of bomber squadrons our Standing requirement for fighter squadrons is higher than our number of fighter squadrons in our standing requirement for ISR as we above the amount of ISR Platforms we have You can either buy more force structure and let us go to a tiered readiness model Which costs a lot more money than just funding readiness of the fleet you have so for us where they're ready or we're not By the way the Marine Corps about the same model Let's talk a little bit about that the high end that you referenced there in the in the readiness decline that that you've Experienced and in particular talk a little bit about the Pacific rebalance, which is a Something that's been a core tenon of the the strategy for some time now and and articulated since 2012 and again in this QDR How are you looking from an Air Force perspective at? Supporting the Pacific rebalance both in terms of the high-end capabilities, but also in terms of engaging throughout Asia and Posture any other aspects to it that come to mind you know from an Air Force perspective the Pacific rebalance has in practical terms been happening for 20 years We have about the same force structure in the Pacific we had 20 years ago We have 75% less force structure in Europe than we had 20 years ago So this balance has actually been happening for a long time our force structure in the Pacific never left It's still there and so in practical terms what the rebalance means to us is focusing on Reinforcing some things that were strengths partnerships with key allies Training opportunities we've had for years with some partners in the Pacific And then doing things that enhance or build new partnership enhance older build new partnerships Getting stronger communication with Air Forces in Malaysia Indonesia the Philippines Singapore Strengthening relations and training exercises with Japan and in South Korea Doing more coalition type training up in red flag Alaska and bringing more Pacific nations together to do that Which they have not done a lot of in the past It's doing things like sea search and rescue exercises. It's changing our fellowship construct inside the Air Force So we have more fellowships oriented toward the Asia Pacific region It's more of a mind shift a mental shift than it is an actual shift of equipment and gadgets and then it's things like Air Sea battle which is Not specifically focused on the Pacific but it's very good for looking at how you would operate in the Pacific theater and air sea battle is nothing more than a Way of thinking it's for those of you who remember your land battle back in the early 80s and beyond It was just a kind of a conscious approach to how do you make the army and the Air Force work better together When I was flying a 10s back in those days, we couldn't talk on a radio to the army tactical operation center for the unit on the ground We didn't share radio frequencies. We had an FM radio, but it didn't work very well with theirs We couldn't speak and in a secure means at all And so that was one of the objectives there a land battle talk to each other You know we create the technology the equipment the tactics so you can communicate And that's that's what air sea battle is it's just a way of looking at a fact that Enemy sensor ranges are getting longer their weapons ranges are getting longer and we have got to adjust to that And we've got to figure out how do you connect? Data systems, how do you connect sensors? How do you extend weapons ranges? How do you plug and play systems whether it's a marine aircraft arriving into an Air Force? Information bubble or it's an Air Force aircraft arriving into a Navy information bubble now that should be seamless for us That's what air sea battle is all about. This is not cosmic That ties I think very much to the points you made early on about New domains cyber in space and in particular as domains where the Air Force has to apply those same principles Into the future in addition to those domains. I want to add to this new technology or the prospects of a new technology Can you tell us a little bit about how the Air Force is culturally shifting? To deal with these new domains and to be thinking about things like teaming on manned and manned thinking about the possibilities of robotics or 3d printing or any of these pieces how How are you thinking about? Institutionalizing culturally a shift into the next wave of technology. You know for us. This is actually pretty easy It's not a big change We're a service that it's spring from technology and that has been focused on it since the day we became independent even before And so our people are kind of naturally inclined to gadgets and they're naturally inclined to new ways of using them If you look at what our battlefield airmen do today versus what we could do 10 years ago It is unbelievable what they're doing with technology How we're sharing data between the ground in the air the ideas are coming up with for how to move Things around the world Air Force special operations command is a fascinating place to visit not because they do cool stuff But because they got cool people there and everything to them is a puzzle everything's a toy that you can play with and make it more fun You mentioned laser printing you know the places they live and operate out of when they deploy all over the world are places That you don't have a FedEx, you know Line coming into routinely and so things like laser printing to them is just a very practical next step You know if I got normal parts on the airplane if I can do laser printing and create a new part a new gasket a new seam A new bolt. I don't have to carry them with me that way I can carry more bullets I mean, it's all practically based technology development innovation in their world And so for us, it's a pretty easy problem to get people psyched up One of the real success stories we have in our Air Force research lab community and our weapons development community For example is our intern program for young engineers young engineers come in the door and they spend summers during their educational period working on new weapons or working on new systems or doing things like Examining you know bug bodies and figuring out how can that translate into armor plating for airplanes and they graduate We offer them a job and they take it because they enjoy it now How long they stay is now up to us if we can keep it interesting fascinating Make sure their job is not at risk if we can do that we can create a workforce It's just phenomenal as we have in the past and we can maintain it can't do that. There's a problem The nuclear enterprise is something that we had Secretary James recently at CSIS at a prior military strategy forum Speaking about I wonder if you could provide an update maybe in the last few months about how the Air Force has been dealing with the challenges On the nuclear enterprise for just for the Air Force sure any time you have a An instant that gets your attention the nuclear business on campus a little thing or a big thing the first concern is Can we do the job? I mean have we put nuclear safety nuclear security or or nuclear surety or the mission itself at risk and the answer to that is no That has not happened And that's not an assessment. Somebody gave me I spent time with every missile crew member in our Air Force after this latest incident And talked to them about what's going on. How's it happening? What what is being what is being done? Why are we sure you commanders there that this is not putting the mission at risk? And so this latest incident really did not do that But it certainly indicated that we have a problem that we have to get very serious about and and so I think in the very near future Here you're gonna the secretary is gonna release some more information the results of the investigation She's gonna be very clear about what we found what we what we need to do going forward We have developed a series of a 400 plus recommendations by the way the Air Force has been working this hard for the last six or seven years This is not a new issue. We've done 20 studies over the last six years on the nuclear enterprise inside the Department of Defense The Air Force has taken I won't get the number exactly right but about a thousand and fifty recommendations out of those studies 92% of them have already been completed Incorporated or part of how we do business today The others weren't ignored the others were things that take longer term study or they're things that are kind of recurring Were things to review so they'll never be closed But we've already done a lot of work over the last five or six years But like the cheating thing we missed it none of those reports mentioned that and so you can't ever go to sleep on this stuff We have something we have to take on institutionally make sure that we eliminate this as a an environment that's acceptable ever and move forward 99% of our folks do great work, so I'm celebrating them the 1% needs some attention some serious attention And I'm worried about how it got to be 1% instead of point zero zero zero 1% So we're that's what we're focused on. Okay, very good. I'm gonna open it up to audience questions We have mics that will come around and when you receive the mic Please state your name your affiliation and please only questions short questions So why don't we go ahead with one right up here? morning sir Colin Clark breaking defense you mentioned the Recommendations are gonna come down soon. You've got 400 of them. You're the training and equipped guy Are you going to change how miscellaneous? Face the future what? What kind of jobs they job path they'll have and Will senior people be held accountable and Names, please Yeah, Colin as the secretary promised We looked at everybody we did a command direct investigation that looked at accountability looked at training I look at evaluations that look at all those things Now the recommendations spring from that CDI as well as from a force improvement program that the commander global strike commander Put together that was kind of internally generated. They form teams from all around the ICBM community They went and interviewed everybody in the community. They had a couple of thousand surveys. They had hundreds of interviews From all the entire demographic that makes up that mission area And that's where these recommendations came from and the boss will release all those here shortly Part of that will include the accountability piece and and you'll see the results of that when she makes them public But all of that stuff is going to be included. There's no secrets here And the logic behind where we go will be real clear when you see the results and the recommendations And we're gonna walk through those recommendations one by one by one Some of those recommendations are things that may not end up happening Many of them are things that should happen some of them are things we've looked at in the last five years And for other reasons decided not to push hard in that area But times change things change and so we need to relook This is not something we can pat ourselves in the back for having discovered it before if we didn't fix it We had to do something different this time and so that's going to be the approach going forward But as we have been since this thing broke there don't can be any secrets here. We'll tell you I'm not telling you today Sorry, let's anything over here. Yes back here. Thank you general be one with Hong Kong Phoenix TV um, I Recalled when China announced AD icing is China see you the US flew to B-50 to bombers now after almost three months How did this impact your? Operation in that area especially especially the surveillance operation Can you still do business as usual? And secondly could you talk about what what is the role that US Air Force is playing in the Malaysian airline? Rescue and search and how concerned are you about when the flight can turn off the transponder and after seven hours no military radar can immediately detect it. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am the When the aid is was stood up the there are lots of Training areas and air routes covered by that aid is that many countries have been operating in for years And people kept operating in those areas. It didn't have a major impact In in that way So that is airspace that people train in the operating routine link not just the US Air Force But other air forces as well, and I believe all that that activity continues on the Malaysian Airlines aircraft there are a number of nations and a number of agencies inside the United States who are assisting in that effort in any way They can the Malaysians have accepted help in some areas and other areas They think they already have enough information and don't need additional help Every service is volunteered to support this the Department of Defense has been engaged in offering help So wherever we could help we helped The issue of turning off a transponder is not a new issue where there are radars We can see military traffic South Indian Ocean is not a place that is completely covered by military radars. So if you turned off the transponder You would not be seen. It's come over on this side Remarkably good. Okay, we've got one all the way in the back by the mics Thank you. I'm Namrita Goswami. I'm a research fellow at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis in India So my question is related to what was mentioned before and that is your rebalance to the Asia Pacific So the strategic perception in India is that there's a lot going on with the Indian Navy and the US Navy But not really much between the Indian Air Force and the US Air Force So in that context where India has been identified as a strategic partner in the DOD guidance doctrine How much is the US Air Force actually looking to establishing much more contact with the Indian Air Force? And do you in your own strategic guidance have a policy or a kind of a Option of having Indian Air Force officers posted in your own team in terms of doing strategy. Thank you Thank you, ma'am We don't have any Indian officers currently posted on our team One of the first air chiefs that I hosted for dinner at my home in this job was the Indian Air Chief Who is a remarkable man by the way very impressive guy and his wife is even more impressive the the we actually one of the Casualties of sequester last year was a very significant casualty in terms of relationship and military cooperation with India because the Indian Air Force Was scheduled to attend a red flag training exercise last year That I was hoping to meet their air chief again at as they as he came to visit during that exercise And the exercise was cancelled because we didn't have the money to conduct it And so one of the effects of sequestration has been on our ability to work more closely with partners Who we really want to work more closely with So I will tell you the intent to continue the relationship is still very strong Our Pacific Air Force's commander has visited India has continued to develop this relationship with the Indian Air Force And we are looking for opportunities to exercise and train together frequently We hope to get back to another red flag exercise with India participating This is just a matter of of the financial times not a matter of not wanting to do it over the last year Let me Interject question. I'm some slightly amazed no one's mentioned the active Reserve issue because you you dressed that square on and and I was quite struck by the way in which you framed that given the You know experience that the army had two years ago in rolling out the its budget and its plans and where that has brought The Air Force I know there's still a commission. I think underway. I don't think it's reported yet Out a congressional commission on this topic, but clearly you as the chief coming in since that time have Have a viewpoint on how we think about the active and reserve Do you think that there are lessons here that you hope to have institutionalized and carried forward for the Air Force based On the experience of the last several years. Oh, absolutely. We have to The Commission has reported out and they they have 42 recommendations of those We completely agree with 11 of them There are 25 that we don't disagree with we just want to look at the analysis We probably I think we agree. We just want to make sure we understand what the what the analysis says about the second third-order effects There's five of them. We think need more analysis and there's one we disagree with And so and that's it We so in general we agree with what the Commission recommended We gave them access to everything we're doing from the time they stood up So in fact some of the things they recommend we are already well down the road on And have been working them for over a year And so I think there's some great synergy here that can come out of the Commission's effort I think that we see the world really in general terms pretty much the same General McCarthy who is the chairman met with the secretary and I here about two weeks ago Before our first posture hearing just so we can make sure we understood what he was saying in the report a Couple areas that we had questions about and I think there was much much more agreement than disagreement And so I think that's a good sign We have got to institutionalize this when we looked at building this decision support tool starting the analysis that we've done over the last year We formed a group called the total force task force It was a two-star from the active component one from the reserve one from the guard They worked on on my staff, but basically reported to me they worked for my a eight my three-star planner They actually represented their own component They beat each other up for about three months with all the myths and the legends that each of them brought into the discussion And after about three months they became the three amigos because really for the first time We had officers from each component that really understand everybody understood everybody else's perspective and from there They built this plan going forward. We've replaced them with three one-stars now And this group will now transition into the next group, which will remain one-stars But they will just become part of our staff. We're going to fully integrate this into the way we do business on the air staff there can't be a Different planning group that comes up with one set of recommendations for the guard one for the reserve and one for the active component And then everybody goes waving their number around it. That doesn't make any sense for the nation So we will go forward together. We have committed to that the National Guard Bureau is committed to supporting us in this General grass has been fantastic And as I mentioned that the agent generals state agent generals who've been part of this effort have been Unbelievably supportive and helpful in helping us frame the discussion. So the question for us is just it's simply balanced How do you balance the state's title 32 requirements versus national security requirements that the active component is focused on? And how do you build a force that best meets both for the least possible cost without losing operational effectiveness? That's a bit that's in everybody's best interest. So we have got to institutionalize the process We have to experience Air Force senior officers in operations in the total force I don't think it'll probably take us 15 years to get there But we should not have a chief of staff of the Air Force sitting here 15 years from now Who doesn't have something in his record indicating that he has worked with it as part of a total force team at some point in a career? But we it's almost like the joint qualification in the joint world We ought to have a total force qualification inside the Air Force. We can do this. We just have to commit to doing it Okay, let's see. I've got one on the end. I got two right next to each other. Why don't you give both questions and then General can answer them accordingly I'm gonna follow up on the whole commission Mary Katherine out with the National Guard Association So I'm hoping the one recommendation you didn't agree on is the one I'm gonna mention But the Commission recommended that the Air Force should stop looking at cascading equipment and new weapon systems to the reserve component And I know as the two tags that you've been working with a lot of the concern in the air guard community Is that the C-130 models in the air guard are the H and we don't have the recapitalization plan for the J models So as you look and assess moving emission sets and looking at how to utilize the reserve component better Have you reassessed how you want to? You know recapitalize the National Guard and specifically on the J models. Yeah, you know I hear criticism a lot that well, we don't have the new stuff. I mean we have F-22s in the guard We got B-2s in the guard. We do have C-130 J's going into the guard We have C-130 J's in the reserve and remember the reserve component is both guard and reserve And so we do have those platforms We aren't bringing in that many C-130 J's into the Air Force right now And over the next four or five years most of them are going to the special operations community and Overseas to other other nations and so if we if there's a decision to buy more C-130 J's we will repopulate C-130 H's with J's as we can The but F's I was also criticized for well you cut the F-16 capes program Which is so you're hurting the gut. Well, it's not just guard and reserve Active duty airplanes are getting it either and so the intent is for us to build a plan that that modernizes over time everybody I mean clearly that's the goal The F-35 bed-down plan It doesn't put anybody behind the power curve. The plan is a training unit followed by an active unit Which makes imminent sense actually and then a guard unit and then we'll go active guard reserve active guard reserve We're going to do it and see it just takes a long time to populate the fleet So it seems like nothing's happening same thing with the KC-46 It'll be training unit active guard And we'll make the choices for the following bases and those same kind of sequences. So we will populate the reserve Proportionally, they just won't be the first unit that gets it And I think that's correct by the way, but people are complaining about that. That's just that to me That's not a valid complaint the C-130 fleet is that something we have to focus on so we've already talked to the staff Because of this concern and I've asked them to give me the overall C-130 modernization plan not for the next five years But for the next 30 years and then let's sit down. We'll talk with the tags We'll show them the plan and we'll if it's not good enough. We'll fix it But there is no intent to have somebody have equipment that isn't going to be capable of doing the job That's just not the way it is today. It's not the way it's going to be in the future We but we got to make sure everybody understands where we're going Most of this is about communication I mean it just is we lost trust and we got to regain it The sad part for me is you got to the front end of the business You can't tell who's a guardsman or reservist or an active duty member. You just you know way to tell They're side-by-side doing doing the nation's business and they're phenomenally good at it And then we get into these discussions and all of a sudden it's like we live on different planets and that can't happen It won't happen. I mean we're just we're committed to getting this right Those of us who are more senior in all the components. Oh the people on the front end more than that and We're the governor's more than that. So we'll keep grinding on this I think we've made huge progress in last year quite frankly, and I think the tags would agree with me Okay, this was the last question is right there. Yeah, my name is Everett Piat with the McCain Institute former exact former acquisition executive in the Navy my interest is acquisition or acquisition questions in order Sir, I have to want to comment we found in the Navy that the elimination of the naval material command improved responsiveness and Overall systems acquisition. It was taken about about 25 or 30 years ago. No one has proposed Replacing it the Air Force might look at the same answer I think you will find your your systems commanders will like it They will have full responsibility for their products and be more responsive to you the second a question then is Do you really believe the 550 million dollar number for the for the new bomber? Considering the fact that the Air Force is paying about about 250 for a tanker and the Navy's paying about the same for p8 Yes, sir. Let me answer the second one first You know better than I do that there are about a thousand ways to calculate the cost of an airplane And the acquisition pros can do it all and they can do it intuitively and they can do it in a heartbeat The the $550 is based on what it actually will cost to produce an airplane when it comes off the line through the program life of the of the airplane it's not the The fully burdened cost of the entire program stand up And so yes, I believe it and here's why I believe it. I own the requirements They come through me We have all kinds of people wanted to add new things to this bomber new capability to this bomber and the answer right now is no Until we get to a point in the program where we can understand the trades that we'd be making Understand what it gives us in terms of capability versus cost All those trades that you got to make in every program until we really understand that and we're not at that level maturity in this program Then we can't decide to make a trade yet And so we're sticking firmly to the idea that we need 80 to 100 bombers from an operational perspective To fight a major conflict and to provide nuclear terms. That's what it takes That you can do any analysis on any scenario. That's what it takes And so we're going to lose our b-52s eventually You know they They really shouldn't be flying at a hundred years old, but we're trying and we'll have 20 b2s left And so we need that 80 to 100 to get to that 8100 number that we need to Meet our real operational requirement to do that. We believe we've got a hold steady on this cost Even if it means it's not as fancy a gadget as we'd like to have our problem has been trying to create a fancy gadget And then making it fancier as we built that as you well know Which brings me back to the first part of your question Because part of the reason for that is the way we have been organized in the past as you know We went from a systems command to a material command our material command reorganized here two years ago To focus on center activities to determine not just acquisition, but life cycle cost of platforms We have made some really really good progress in those areas that I won't go into now But I'm really proud of what our logistics and our existing workforce have done in this regard to start thinking life cycle In every discussion We do still have some duplication between our SAF acquisition chain the acquisition authority that goes up through SAF a queue All the way down through the commander of Air Force material command the peos who administratively worked for her And we think we can remove some of those duplications and redundancies and create a streamlining effect Is like the one you referred to there is some benefit to having our acquisition? PEO's program managers working inside and completely understanding the center construct of life cycle cost just as one example And so we're seeing the benefit of that right now We probably won't change that anytime in the near future But we are looking at how do you eliminate the redundancies the multiple oversight requirements? All those things that make program management so onerous to the people who are good at it And let them get back to focusing on their program Yes, sir Well general us you've been incredibly generous with your time here today I want to conclude where where John Henry started which is thanking you for your leadership of the Air Force at this very critical time thanking you for coming here today and a final thanks to Rolls Royce North America for making this possible So, please join me in thanking the general