 are in lead at the Center for Strategic International Studies. I'm very honored today to have John Dave Perkins, the new commander of the Army Training and Doctrine Command here with us. General, it's great to have you here. You're, I think, a little over a month in the job. And have not had the opportunity, I don't believe, to speak publicly very much yet. Just with the change of command space. Most of these people aren't here. So we're very much looking forward to hearing your vision for where Trey Dock will be going in the next, under your tenure, and how that's going to fit into the broader progress of the Army going forward. So John Perkins has done a number of amazing things. He has, in many ways, spanned the Iraq experience from brigade command and thunder run up to Baghdad initially and then back as part of the MNFI staff to serve as the direct, sorry, deputy commanding general for strategic effects. And then finally, as division commander of the fourth ID up north, trying to train and assist the Iraqi forces. There, he has not, however, been limited to the Middle East. He's had multiple deployments and stations in Europe and elsewhere. And so, and most recently came to Trey Dock from being the commanding general of the Combined Arm Center at Fort Leavenworth. So has an operational background as well as an institutional one and has had the opportunity both to serve up in Congress and on multiple different types of organizations. So a really, really very diverse background that I think makes you uniquely suited to take the helm of Trey Dock. So we look forward to hearing what your plans are. All right, Mark. Well, thanks. I appreciate the chance to come speak with you and provide the venue with a lot of folks that I hope will provide me insights into how people maybe view the Army. Some of your questions are very insightful for those of us that are working specifically on the future of the Army to either clarify misunderstandings that we have about what we think the nation wants the Army to do or misunderstandings about what you think the Army, as I say, what we are for. As Moran says, I've been there for a little over a month and so haven't been able to break too much of Trey Dock yet. I think you're all well aware of the many things that Trey Dock does and I'm starting to become more aware of them myself. We are referred to many times as the architect of the Army. I like to say we're the architect, but we're also the general contractor in many ways because not only we design the future, but we run recruiting command, cadet command, initial military training. So we bring in the folks like going out to buy the lumber after you design the house and then we train them in many ways, equip them from basic training all the way through command and general staff callers. We continue to sort of product improve and of course we own the sort of from the capabilities integration point of view, the future of the Army and of course we write all the doctrine and run all the schools and all that. So it's a broad portfolio and there are a lot of things that contribute to both designing, building and maintaining an Army. I'll tell you right now, in fact, just came from the Pentagon with the Chief of Staff and the Army and the Army Staff. The Chief is very much focused on working on the future of the Army and so that is consuming a lot of my personal energy right now, initially making sure we're defining the problem properly and then we get the right vision and it has to be a vision that we can articulate is understood within the Army as well as outside the Army, that being Congress, that being American people, other policy makers and then how are we going to go about doing that? So I always tell folks you, especially when I was the Combined Arm Center with the SANS folks, sir, you gotta have a strategy, ends ways mean, so they're always talking strategy and so I always apply the former armor officer approach to which do simplify things so that I and others might co-work and understand I said, but you also have to have a strategy to get a strategy and it's usually that first part that sometimes becomes a more difficult thing. So if the strategy is for the Army to do X, Y and Z, what is a strategy to make that a reality? In other words, how do you build consensus? How do you align your institutional processes to drive that change? How do you leverage all of the capacity inside the organization to move forward in the same direction? And in many ways, spending a lot of time on that first part, strategy to get a strategy. How do we focus science and technology? How do we take a look at an era of decreasing resources, both money and personnel? A process to say, where are we going to take risks? Because this is about taking risks, both when you're in combat or as you're dealing with the future, you know, it's like they say, if you're defending, if you defend everywhere, you defend nowhere. Well, you can't cover all bases of what is most important to the Army, therefore, the nation, the joint force. What do you invest in? Which generally, that's not the hard part. I find as I go around and I talk to people in the Army, the Pentagon, I say, you know what? I agree with you. We're going to invest in what you do. We're going to invest in what you do. They're like, that's great, that's great. We should have this guy as a trade-out commander a long time ago. It's when I go to other people and say, you know what? I think we're going to disinvest in that. I recommend we disinvest in that. That's where I tend to get pushed back. You know, hey, you're not the boss of me. And so what we're not going to do and where we're going to disinvest, that actually becomes a more difficult problem than where we are going to invest in, somewhat, especially when you had this many resources and now you have less resources. I will tell you in the process of doing that, spending a lot of time with my other joint force partners, I was down to Quantico, spent all morning down there yesterday with Ken Gluck, when General Odierno was the MNFI commander, I was the MNFI CJ9 and Ken Gluck was the chief of staff. So I worked for him there and worked for General Odierno. So, you know, the wars have sort of flattened the earth in many aspects of it. And so sat through their Expeditionary Force 21 discussion. I thought very well done from the Marines did a very good job of kind of succinctly describing what the Marine Corps is for and how they're going to go about doing it and have done that also with Air Force and Navy folks because, of course, the Army is a key element of the Joint Force. And one of the things we have to make sure we do well is are we clearly integrated into it? Are we providing unique capacity that only the Army does? And are we leveraging other capacity that other joint partners have out there? And are we providing a capacity that our unified action partners need? And then lastly, one of the things coming to grips with initially is what size is the Army? Everyone loves to talk about in terms of whether it's brigade combat teams or division. I mean, we love metrics. We love the metrics to be in the shape of an icon in the Army because it's understandable and that's what we work with. But trying to determine what really does size in organization, as I told folks I worked for before and with, that is we're going through our various 25% reductions or one-to-end reductions. I said, well, what is it the size of your organization? When I was out at Combined Arms Center, one of the institutions out there at Command General Staff College. For instance, the thing that really sized the Command General Staff College was student to teacher ratio. You change that by just one number and also you have a significantly different size of the staff and faculty and you've changed nothing else. It's the one variable that you change that has dramatic impact on everything else. And then once you select that, you kind of lock yourself into a general size of what you're gonna do. Then the other alternatives do, you know, change student body or seminars. Well, that's kind of what we're focusing on in the Army right now is what really sizes the Army. And then once you size it for that, now there's a lot of utility you can get out of it and how you meet that requirement then is one of the things you take a look at and say, well, as I meet that requirement or the ways that I can be more useful to the nation, more useful to the joint force. But sometimes we confuse the two with coming up with a lot of things that are of utility, but they're not really the things that ultimately size the Army. And a lot of that has to do with our policymakers view of life and historically what we Army to do. But I find that's almost one of the first questions you have to come to grips with. And so I'm spending a lot of time thinking about that, what are the things that drive the size of the Army? And there's big policy issue things that drive the size of the Army and then there are tactical and operational ways that we employ the Army, the things that we buy, how our doctrine is laid out. They have inherently sizing constructs built into them. And so those are the things that are, I'm spending a lot of time on, I think probably the best thing is to get into a discussion if you think that all would be useful. Sure, let me ask one question if I could and then we'll open it up to the audience. And by the way, if people would like to, people watching on the web would like to submit a question, they can do that either through our Twitter account, which is at CSISGRDforces, GRND, excuse me, GRNDforces. Or you can send me an email at mleed, m-l-e-e-d at CSIS.org. So we'll try to get the broader universe into the conversation as well. So you alluded to going around to, or talked about going around to the other services and hearing their arguments about what they're for and what utility they offer to the Joint Force. Do you have a clear, as you do, your thinking about the size, do you have a clear sense in your own mind of how you answer that question for the Army? You know, the way that I look at the Army, for one thing I tell folks, we are not a boutique force. The United States Army, we are not a niche capability. Our nation has niche capabilities, our nation has these exquisite, for lack of a better term, boutique forces, some of them are within the Army. But the United States Army, as an institution, that is not what we are. We are the iron fist of our national defense. That's what the United States Army is as an organization. And so with that in mind, because I think we have to avoid sometimes the coming to the challenge du jour of the day, which tends to be described in boutique kind of packages that are easy to understand and deal with. And we've got to have a capacity to deal with that. But in essence, that's not what the Army is for. You don't need a large standing Army to do that. And so if you take a look at what we are charged with doing, I think there are three words that describe it fairly well. And as in a lot of our documents is, assure, detour, and compel. And there's a number of aspects of that, but they actually are all interrelated. And one of the challenges as I go around and talk with people, they do try to parse that off as if you can have one but not the other two or two or not three, but they're all inextricably linked. And so I'll start at sort of the far right of the spectrum if you see the range of military operations with the compel part. And I think that is inherently a major requirement for our Army. And when you take a look at things that size it, I think that is one of the big drivers. And examples I use is that general, and I have to tell you as a nation, sometimes that is a difficult thing for the Army to describe and maybe even for people to accept because I think we see as a nation that we would prefer to convince people to do things. It's, I think it's kind of in the American DNA, we're a democracy, et cetera. So we would like to convince people to change their ways. And there's lots of different ways to do that. We can have presence. We can have very precise operations. We can leverage capacity that we have. We can do it at great standoff capability. Again, that is, I think, people generally in democracies around the world prefer to think of the ability to do that, to convince people from a far distance to do things to change their way, et cetera. And I'm all for that. And if that can occur, then all the better. But an example I use is Saddam Hussein, starting from Desert Storm, we tried to convince him that he should either change his ways dramatically or even relinquish power. And so we had Desert Storm and then we had no fly zones and then we had shock and awe and various precision strikes. Jay Dam's constantly trying to convince him to dramatically change his ways or to give up power. It wasn't until some 4th Infantry Division soldiers pulled him out of a hole physically and grabbed him, said we are here to compel you. Okay, so that's what the United States Army does in the end is we provide the ability of the United States to compel our will on other people around the world. And that's sort of very, you know, I bluntly said. Now, the challenge is if you do not have the capacity to compel, your ability to deter is significantly undercut. Because most people are only deterred if they think in fact that if they are not convinced to change your ways that you can compel them to change your ways. And the other than the third aspect here, assure, I think is a very critical thing that the Army does. In fact, I would say our 173rd Airborne Troopers that are in Poland and other places are very reassuring. In fact, that is the term our policymakers have used. We are there to reassure our NATO allies that the U.S. is with them, et cetera. But they would not be very reassuring if they had limited deterrence capability and they would have limited deterrence capability if the United States Army was not able to compel its will. So if you can't compel, it's very difficult to deter. And if you are of no deterrence value, you are very little assurance value. So you have to have all of those capabilities. Preferably if the 173rd companies of Airborne Troopers out there can reassure our NATO allies that we are with them and the NATO pulls together and is able to deter further aggression, then that's fine. We don't want to get into the compulsion mode, but we may have to. And therefore, I think when you take a look at sizing the Army, you've got to start with the ability to compel, which may then allow you only to have to use a company from the 173rd because they're leveraging the known capacity to compel. Thanks very much. Okay, so if people can put their hands up if they have a question, someone will come around with a mic, if you can, A, identify yourself, B, be succinct, that would be much appreciated. So, okay, we've got one in the back right there and then come up here to the front and then we'll go over there. Michael Schrag with MIT, I read an interview, General, that you gave about the importance of having adaptive soldiers, not just adaptive generals. It's very clear that the technology resources that soldiers are going to have at virtually every level are dramatically increasing. I'm sort of wondering, is the trade-off of the future going to become schizophrenic about doctrines that become too technology, situational awareness dependent, versus out on your own survive? How are you managing that? Because you can get more bang for the buck for technology, but you want to improve the situational awareness and adaptability of soldiers and that, to a large extent, comes from the technology they have access to. Well, I do appreciate the way you formed the question as you said, is trade-off going to become schizophrenic, which means you think it is not now. So, I do appreciate that vote of confidence. I think our latest doctrine is coming to grips with that as well as we've ever come to it, and not just because I left Levenworth where we wrote it. But if you take a look at our capsule manual, Unified Land Operations 3.0, what we say the Army does is we seize, retain and exploit the initiative to gain a position of relative advantage. Okay, we don't say we seize the high ground, we hold on to a bridge crossing, we seize, retain and exploit the initiative to get to a position of relative advantage, not absolute advantage, relative advantage. Why do we say, because why wouldn't you want to have absolute advantage? We say relative advantage because we know everything in life is relative because everything is constantly changing. And so, I'll give a terrain-based example, but again, this could be the initiative with regards to the Taliban or the initiative with regards to dealing with Hurricane Katrina. But if you're at this piece of high ground and the enemy's down here, you can say, okay, you're at a position of advantage. But if you say, I'm merely going to retain the position of advantage and not exploit. That's the key thing, we want everybody to exploit. I'm just merely, seizing and retaining initiative should be adequate, most people would think. The problem with that thinking is, I'm here, bad guys down there, I'm gonna just retain this position of advantage. I'm gonna dig in, dig in deeper, bring in reinforcements overhead cover. What if overnight, the bad guys down here sign a coalition treaty with folks up here? The sun comes up, nothing has changed for you, but you are now at a position of disadvantage because a geopolitical situation has changed. So by you merely retaining a position of advantage, you have now solidified a position of disadvantage once the world changed and you did not react to it. So what we're saying is you constantly have to not only be retaining the initiative, but you have to exploit the initiative because everything is relative and everything is constantly changing. And so we say, that's what we want privates to do, that's what we want generals to do within commander's intent in their area of authority. So then that's why we came up with mission command as are both a command philosophy and war fighting function synchronization war fighting function. And that is that through mission command, through understand, visualize, describe, you direct people based on a common understanding of the problem and the visualization in a way that empowers them to exploit the initiative. People say, well, did you get rid of the word command and control? No, it's still in our doctrine, but it's not a war fighting function. Mission command is a war fighting function. What we say mission command does is balance command and control, but we balance command and control not from the old construct, which was command was issuing orders and control was ensuring compliance. We are now applying control measures not to ensure compliance, but to empower subordinates to exploit the initiative to get to a position of relative advantage. And so I think that doctrine is very much in line with technology and proliferation of different modes constantly changing, because what we are challenging people with is you have to maintain constant situational awareness of geopolitical situation, of the technology issue, and are you doing something? Are you either using a piece of kit now or inappropriately leveraging a piece of kit that is going to put you at a position of relative disadvantage? So I think conceptually, we have the right foundation. We just then have to operationalize that. What you're saying is IT in your context? Well, I mean, that's a great example. Yeah, exactly. What IT does, if you look at our logic map, we have mission command as I just outlined, unified land operators. Then at the bottom, you have the enablers. At the bottom, you have IT. You have our mission command systems. You have boxes and fiber optic cables and all that. But all that does is enable people to understand the problem, create a visualization and exploit the initiative. They are merely enablers. They are not ends and of themselves. Okay, I think we're here and then back there and then to the front. And then over there. Thank you. General Sidney Friedberg. Yeah, good to see you again. Yes, breakingdefense.com. And actually recognizing you also from your iBook, realizing that about the Thunder runs into Baghdad, where you, sounds like not just exercise initiative, but actually didn't quite tell your superiors what you were doing until you already had done it. But a more pausey, early question. You talked about the Marines, having Exhibitionary Force 21, which is a very cogent statement of what they're about. And they're supposedly saying, we are focused on, we are going to be the premier crisis response expeditionary force. And we are going to cede or relegate to second place the major combat operations mission. How does the army compliment that? You guys obviously don't have a one thing you do, but one of your problems in selling yourself to the American people on the hill is short of major theater wars, which no one wants to get into. It's sort of hard to say, the army is essential for this one thing. So how do you fit around EF 21 in particular and the other services fairly clearly defined and frankly a lot sexier visions of what their core competency is? Yeah, well actually, I think you've described part of the challenge we have. First of all, I don't see myself in the role of selling the army. I mean, my job is actually not to sell the army, it's to build the army and to meet the requirements that our nation puts on us. But what I do have to do is describe it. And there's a difference between selling it and describing it in a way that results in a true understanding. So in fact, I had the same discussion with General Glock and the folks down there, literally as you're asking me, was it a chronicle in your state? And so I read through Expeditionary Force 21 before I went there. I may be ahead of many Marines, although I'm sure they're a very disciplined force and when they put something out, they all read it. Um, enviable position to be in at times, but and they do, and I said in some ways I was jealous in that they were able to define pretty succinctly what they do as well as what they don't do. I mean, you brought this out. They really made it pretty clear where our core companies are and what they are gonna do and what they are not gonna do and that is very important for an organization to do. And I think the Marine Corps, they really have done it well because even a former armor officer, I sort of understood it and it briefed it back when it was a chronicle. They say, I think you got it. One of the challenges the Army has, we really, our nation really doesn't allow us to say, there's really nothing you can say you don't do. That just is inherent since 1775. The Army has always got to be the force that eventually, because we are not a niche capability that the nation could turn to and say, I have this problem set. No one else can do it. I'm not asking you if you can do it. I'm asking you to do it. That's a different problem set to be in that we always have to be on the receiving end of any mission the nation gives us versus on a screening criteria. Say, well, I already, didn't you read the book? We don't do this. That is not the role that the Army serves our nation for and we need to come to grips with that. So we don't have that luxury of doing it. What we do have to do, I think, is seriously take a look at, and that's why I was down there and actually Ken and I had a great discussion. So they had this Exhibition Army Force 21 and they've got deep blue water ships and then they have sort of this connecting tissue. I know it's not a proper maritime term. They get to the land and various things. But if you read their document, it says the Marine Corps is an expeditionary force and it defines it, which is, again, very well written. Expeditionary force defined as we conduct operations for a specific objective in a foreign country. A specific objective in a foreign country. Well, of course, the Army, first of all, we have a large requirement here in the homeland with the National Guard and all that. So everything we do is not in a foreign country. So that's one pretty big distinction there, that the Army is not just for foreign country activity. The other part is, and they say it's on page three, actually the second paragraph down in this one paragraph that outlines it, that they conduct a specific objective and that they will then go ashore, secure that objective to either accomplish the mission or accomplish the mission or provide time and space for follow on forces. And so they even, and their doctors say that there could be things that the Marine Corps does this and then we have to plug into the joint force to do other things. So the question he and I had is, well then, what is the interface with the Army? What's the role of the Army ragers, the 82nd Airborne? And then after we do that, if you need an armored brigade combat team, because you've gotta go deep, you've gotta stay long, et cetera. So I don't see what the Marines and the Army do as competitive whatsoever. In fact, I think their document is incredibly clear and actually makes it easier for folks like myself in the Army to say, I understand what you're for, what you're sizing your forces, what you're capability. This now provides clarity for me to say, if you can do that, this, do you know what? This is what the Army rangers could do with the Marine Corps. This is what the 82nd Airborne could do. This is how we could work with the Navy. I think it's been quite clarifying to know where limits of everybody's operational construct are. So I think it's been quite useful. What, did you have a follow on question or? Of course, we don't do windows. Yeah. Right, me from the Army point of view or from anybody's point of view. Yeah. Right. Give him the mic. Saying we do all these things and can't turn anything down. You had a clear mission in the Cold War, which was the folder gap and Korea. You had a clear mission in the interwar period, which was mobilizing for the war in Europe that was for sure was coming. There is not, as I can see it, a clearly explicable urgent need for a large land Army, which is why people are saying, well, just park it on the National Guard. Yeah. And we'll roll it out when we need it. So when you're trying to talk about the need for a large standing active duty Army, what is the urgent compelling case you can make besides, well, we don't know where, but bad things will happen? Well, that's actually probably about as good as I can come up with. And I will only go back to my experience showing off the Army that it is great when you have a very well-defined enemy and if you actually can pinpoint that enemy on the map and then you have very good intelligence about that enemy, but the fallacy is then what happens is when you get that specific, then you say, well, clearly, that enemy has no windows. So I'm not gonna do windows. And so you have to avoid that trap. So give a quick anecdote last year when I was a Calculator, I was down at a forum from actually the Navy hosted it. So they were very gracious to invite me. And we were talking about the future. That time I was the training leader, development person for the Army and we were talking about the future. Everybody loves to talk about the future. And they said, okay, and they at Air Force, we start Navy, we start on the game to me. And they're talking about, everyone's talking about great technology and stealth this and pilot this and unmanned this. And they came to the Army and said, well, take a look 50 years out. Kind of a little bit of the exercise you're asking me to do here. 50 years out, define the enemy. What are you gonna build? What's the new stealth bay and that look like, et cetera, et cetera like that. I said, well, kind of thinking is that we got to be careful to fall into that trap because we may then convince ourselves that we don't do windows and eventually we may be facing a window. I said, well, let me, let's assume I was at this venue 50 years beforehand. And I said, and I got asked that question. It kind of just show you that, I know it sounds a little bit tug and sheet that all the best I can say is bad things will happen and we have to be ready for it. But I said, if I was at this venue 50 years ago and you had asked that question, you said, hey, Army guy, describe the future 50 years from now. What kind of flying tank are you gonna have, et cetera like that? I said, okay. Now remember, this would have been 50 years when they asked me would have been before the World Trade Center was built. I said here, go to the mines of the Army together and we've figured out the future. What's gonna happen is about 10 years from now, two tall buildings, they don't exist yet, but two tall buildings are gonna be built at the Southern tip of Manhattan and they're gonna become the center of sort of the world economic system. And they'll say like, what is this guy, civil engineer, why is he focused on building? I said, you follow me. So they don't exactly, but these two tall buildings are gonna get built on the Southern tip of Manhattan. And then 25 years after that, the United States is gonna come under attack of which the results will be worse than Pearl Harbor. We are gonna take losses worse than Pearl Harbor so the continental United States is gonna come under attack. And one of the results of that attack is these two tall buildings, which don't yet exist, will come crumbling down. And I can see everyone talking, what is this guy's infatuation with these two random tall buildings that I've never even heard of before. And so I, then people could say, well, I'm not sure what this infatuation, two tall buildings, but okay, General, so what was this? So you're talking like 30 years in the future. What were the main attackers armed with that brought down these buildings? Were they neutron bombs, directed energy weapons? What were they? The main weapon the attackers were armed with is box cutters, were box cutters. They're saying, really? These attackers are gonna attack the United States with box cutters and create more havoc than Pearl Harbor? Let's say yes. Well, there must be some giant command and control system with UABs or something that are controlling. These must have been tens of thousands of box cutting, wielding assailants because you're talking future stuff. You're talking 35 years ago which brought down these tall buildings. I'm gonna say, well, actually it was a radicalized individual in a cave in Afghanistan. So they're saying, the best you can do, Army guy, is that the future is gonna be built around some radicalized guy in a cave directing guys with box cutters that's gonna create more havoc than Pearl Harbor. I said, that's it, you've been following. Well, okay, so what is the mighty United States of America gonna do about the radicalized guy in a cave in Afghanistan? I said, well, it's clear we're gonna invade Iraq. And I'm sure they would have said, okay, this guy's been hit and happy hour too soon, get him out of here, but pretty accurate, right? But it's almost as useful as saying, I don't know what's gonna happen, but it's gonna be bad and the Army has to be ready for it. That's kind of life. Now, obviously we're being much more precise than that. We're looking at cavabilities, et cetera. But we have to avoid, I grew up in the Cold War and so we were focused very much on the central plains of Europe and we knew a lot about the enemy. I had my general defense plan, I had all five of my tanks, that dates me and I knew exactly where they were gonna be. I knew the echelons of the Soviets that were gonna come across. I knew their time, space, thing that they were gonna come. I knew which power lines I was gonna bring down to shoot the tow missiles, all that. And since we knew so much about it, we did something about it, because that's the way the US military is. We just have to do something about it because we know about it. But it's almost like the Heisenberg principle. If the fact of measuring something changes it, it's almost like if you know something about the future, it's almost a guarantee it's not gonna happen. Because we knew about the Cold War, we did something about it and it didn't happen. So by the more accurate you are in predicting the future, almost you are guaranteeing almost that it will not happen. And so what happened is something we didn't know too much about. I'd never heard of Al Qaeda and I was very little concerned with boss cutters as a tank platoon leader. So generally it's things you don't pay attention to that you don't know about that are the problem. Because our enemies and potential enemies around the world have realized once the United States military decides to focus on this problem and solve this problem, they will be undefeatable. They will figure it out even if it kills them getting ready for it. And so where our vulnerabilities are, they literally are the things that we almost can't conceive and can't think about. And that becomes a very difficult problem set to solve but I think it is kind of the lesson learned since I've been in the Army that pretty much the things you're focusing on almost are guaranteed not to happen. So what are those base capabilities you have that provide you the ability to exploit the initiative? One of them is leader development. Who are you assessing into the Army? How are you developing people? Are you giving them the critical thinking things to ship from the Central Plains of Europe to Baghdad to take a weapon system that was built to deal with the Soviet Union and the time, space, battlefield calculus and now make it work in a very urban environment, et cetera, because we aren't gonna have time to redesign the tank. We can't redesign the Army, et cetera. We just, you gotta have leaders that can take that stuff and do all kinds of Rubik's cubes with it and now make it work there. And that really, I think is our big hedge on the future is our training and leader development, that critical thinking for us to the article a couple of weeks ago about basic training. Because a lot of people think, well, so you're gonna need a new elective in the Army War College. And the Army War College is a great institution, but you can't wait to the Army War College and have an elective on critical thinking. So if you take a look at what we're doing with basic training, literally when they get right off the bus, it's very different now. We're giving them critical thinking problem sets, team building exercises, et cetera like that. We are trying to make them think differently about how they solve problems. It is not controlled to ensure compliance. It's mission command to empower subordinates to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative. Okay, we've got one here, one here. I've got a couple on my phone and so we'll do those and then we'll, over there and, sorry. Sure, Byron Callan, Capital Alpha Partners, sir. I wanna go back to the first question on technology and in a resource constrained environment where commercial technologies are really working at warp speed and you're not driven by requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan. How do you think about training, experimentation? How do you get some of these commercial technologies into your exercises so you can stress and see where there may be new avenues to take? What could be those surprises? Not just box cutters. You know, that is the area that we're really focused on because I think that's where we can get a lot better than what we do. I spent a long time just saying, this is Secretary of the Army, Mishu, talking about that very specific problem you mentioned that our old way of acquiring material is just not going to work, not just from a bureaucratic point of view, but it's not going to let you exploit the initiative with regard to using the technology. And so how do we do that in a way that makes our processes relevant? It's very interesting. We say we want agile and adaptive leaders but it's very hard to be an agile, adaptive leader if you don't have agile and adaptive institution. And so what we're looking at is how can we do that? And of course, there are internal Army processes, there are DOD processes, there are statutory issues with how we go about it. But I think it's one of the areas, this is having a strategy to get a strategy. How do we take a look at how do we drive innovation in the Army? How do we change it? And is that relevant to the timelines that we are facing in the world now with compressed rates of human interaction, et cetera, and all those things? Are these processes, and I think we would agree, most of them sort of make the whole process irrelevant. And that is, as I sat down with her yesterday, we decided to take down that sort of as a major science project and almost take some examples so you can get your hands around and almost try to drive those through a new way of thinking about it as well as acquiring it to show that they become a critical part of seize, retain, and exploit the initiative. It's not just our soldiers have to seize, retain, exploit the initiative, but it's really the Army, not just with regards to, on the battlefield, but with regards to technology and what's available. I mean, it's really the strength of the United States is our ability to innovate. And so how do we leverage that capability, both cognitively, as you bring in the American soldiers, we want them to innovate, but with regards to the material that we're acquiring. I mean, that is not going to be an easy process. I have a related follow on that somebody sent in about the role and importance of experimentation in building the future Army and at the service joint levels and also in what kind of setting virtual, live, constructive, et cetera. Yeah, when I was at a cat, we were thinking a lot through our live virtual constructive interface. And our goal is to get what we call integrated training environment. What we have now, it's really a hybrid in that if we have an exercise, we cobbled together a bunch of boxes and cables and we stand up and we green tape stumped together and all that, and we pull off an exercise. We do great training. We've got soldiers in the dirt and then we've got virtual and constructive training going on, but the problem is generally once the exercise is over, we tear it all down and all the contractors go home and the capability is no longer resident at the home station or wherever it is. So what we are looking at and have some pilots going on, we started down at Fort Hood when I was here, is that this has to be resident all the time. You have to have integrated training environment. The live virtual constructive is there all the time because then what I saw when it was there all the time, you didn't, well, we're just gonna bring in for the bigger exercise. All the generals and contractors show up. It's a great display of technology, but then it goes away. The generals lead, the contractors go away and there's just tape marks left for where we pieced everything together. That when it was resident all the time there, I was standing with a young sergeant and the sergeant said, hey sir, you know, this is now resident here. We come over and play with it. And you know what I've found? That if I do this, this and this, actually I can integrate in the Blackhawks. We were told that we didn't buy the Blackhawk module, whatever it was to input this. He said, but actually I found a way that I can do it. I'm not sure the contractor was exceptionally pleased, but he says all I have to do is take this personnel harness and I just throw it in the Blackhawk and it actually tracks the whole thing and works perfect. We don't have to have this other aspect of it. And now that I can have that into my constructive training, what I can do is I don't actually need to have all those folks here. I can just do this with one and do this. And this was an E5 sergeant who had exploited the initiative by having this thing there all the time and not having a contractor run it, but he ran it and he figured this out. And so I think there's a huge power in this because I think what we will find is it allows our soldiers to be innovative. And not only does it allow them to be innovative, they get ownership in the training exercise and the experimentation. And I found that that really gets their energy going and they're incredible. They come to us quite honestly from a society with actually some pretty decent critical thinking skills. We just have to make sure we leverage them and we can empower them. But also, we do have to train and educate them so they can contextualize what it is they're doing and what we kind of need them to focus on. That's right here and then over here. Hey, sir. Good afternoon. Don Lauren, former deputy assistant secretary of defense. Thanks for. J5. And prior to that, J5. Thanks for joining us today. And on behalf of guys like Skip Sharp and myself and anybody else that has served with you, the nation is really fortunate to have you in the position that you're in. So congratulations. Great discussion, great answer and the quality of your answers has improved significantly over the years. Well, sir, and you. Great answer. I'm teachable. We don't do windows question. But you defaulted to let's invade Iraq, okay. And there is no question about the fact that the core competency of the army and one of your key responsibilities is to organize training and equip the army to fight and win the nation's wars. I think Gordon Sullivan invented that phrase. The reality is, if you look at the DOD, Defense Support of Civil Authority, the two years ago Mission Assurance Force Protection, again with a homeland element to it. And in fact, the 2014 QDR with the four pillars, one of which is Homeland Protection, that you have the dichotomy of having to sort through how much you devote to fighting and winning the nation's wars and the core competencies that we must never sacrifice for the United States Army, yet this very important and increasingly more important Defense Support of Civil Authority, which goes from how do you work with our North and Northcom and the 54 National Guards to how do you defend against cyber attack and what might your role be in there. And so I'd be interested in knowing what your thoughts are on going forward as we wrap up the two wars we've been engaged in that we prepare for whatever future war we will have to face. How do you address what's your thought on approaching this significant responsibility? You know, so that actually I've spent a lot of time on that because there does tend to be a focus a lot of times if nothing else from, you think you've talked foreign policy on that about sort of compelling will outside the continental United States, but if you could say some of the worst case scenarios are from a homeland defense point of view. With regards to the cyber aspect, that clearly is a growth industry, both with regards to the demand to provide that capability as well as the rate of expansion of technology, et cetera. And so in coming to grips with that, the Army has decided that we actually are going to make it a branch and that we are standing out to be cyber center of excellence. The Army has our centers of excellence, the maneuver one, which is infantry and armor, you're familiar with, fires is field artillery and air defense artillery, then we have intelligence center of excellence. And so it's generally a branch or a war fighting function. So what we are taking is Fort Gordon, which is previously our signal center of excellence and is becoming the cyber center of excellence. And cyber is going to be a branch. So you've got infantrymen, armor, artillery and cyber warriors. And then we're taking Fort Gordon and then we'll have two schools, the signal center and the cyber school. And so we've decided that specifically the cyber piece, and it's not just a homeland piece, but that's a part of it, requires such a level of focus. And in the Army, if you have a branch, you become the force modernization proponent that you have to have that ability for somebody to focus specifically on modernizing the force and the proponent to deal with.milpf, doctrine, training, leader development, et cetera, to deal with that, that we're making that a branch. The last branch, I believe that the Army stood up was special forces. I don't know, historians, general scales is there, I see. I think that was the last one, wasn't it? Yeah, so you can see when we're serious about it, we did that and it's worked out well for the special forces folks. So that's a level of vigor we're putting on with regards to that. When you take a look at the National Guard, two weekends ago I was up in New York State to their annual state gathering with the tag and all the deputies, and you got into a good discussion with them about it, as, and I think this will be, it continues to be one of the important things that we have to get right. People tend to look at it as, what's in the active component, what's in the reserve, what's in the guard? But they kind of tend to do it with regards to, but in therefore, you gotta get the balance right so that when we do Iraq again, it'll come out right. Well, it really has to take a look at, and if you take a look at our aviation restructure initiative, which everybody is not in favor of, that is one of the calculations that this homeland defense part of it and what, for instance, our gardenies, one could argue that by putting utility helicopters there, it really facilitates what we want them to do in this other role. So in quite honestly, when we take a look back to the cyber aspect, we're finding that a lot of our great Americans, both in the reserve and guard, that based on their day job, they actually have some great capability within that area. So I think you're gonna see some unique relationships between the guard and reserve with regards to the area of cyber than you may with regards to infantry. And I love infantry, command and infantry division, but some different dynamics there. So we fully realize that requirement and are working very closely with them as we are with Northcom and in our north because those are, in many ways, growth industries from a threat perspective. I've got one here and then I've got one more and then I'll back there. John Tilson, late of US European command, where the general and I worked together on trying to preserve army force structure in Europe, especially at least one of the two heavy brigades, which we failed to do to some significant degree because the army was opposed to keeping a heavy brigade in Europe. With recent events, and I've seen in the press, Secretary Gates and Admiral Stavridis both writing about the need for force structure in Europe. And I was wondering if you think the army is likely to change its position on the issue. I'm a former armor officer myself and I don't see much dissuasive power in an airborne infantry company and I would rather see something with a bit more heft to it in Europe. Well, Sir, I mean, I tell you, I've personally not been in any discussions with regards to if we're gonna send additional forces or whatever, that's not been my focus right now. We see with the 173rd Company there, it really is representative of the commitment and their ability to deter has to do with the perceived level of commitment of the United States in our historical legacy of leaving no one on the battlefield. So they know that literally it is the tip of the spear and our job is to make sure the rest of the spear is fully ready to go if the tip needs some help. I think when we take a look at force mixture, mixture of wherever it is, one of the things that your strategist and deal with is that it does not do military strategy, it could be business strategy or wherever it is. One of the keys is that to your antagonist or opponent, you have to present multiple dilemmas. You can't just present them one dilemma because most folks, if you present them one dilemma, they can kind of, they'll figure out how to mitigate. They'll either say, well, I'll suck that down or I'll parry it. It's when they have multiple dilemmas that they get to the point where they're dilemma overload. They're like, there's just no way, I could deal with three of them, maybe five, but not all 10 and the fact that I don't know what 10 are and that when I'm mitigating this one, this other one will come at me, that is I think one of the unique aspects of the US military's joint force that we can provide at any given time, we can access dilemma capacity to somebody. And I think that's very important. Both either perceived dilemmas that come their way, the potential to create a dilemma or an actual dilemma for them. So I think when we take a look at force mix, force structure, where is it? We have to take a look at it from a joint construct. And so if we have a geographic combatant commander, what kind of dilemmas does he or she have to provide somebody? How can we leverage the joint force capability? What are the things that we can do? There is a level of assurance and deterrence in some ways if you have to move something someplace because if it's already there, you can say, well, it's not much effort just to shine the spotlight on it that it's there. If you have, and I'm not saying it's good not to have stuff where you need it, but there is a certain signal that I cared enough that I actually changed what I was doing and focused on you. So pay attention because now I'm very, very serious. There was, I think, Admiral Kirby, that the chairman's spokesman was talking about moving the 173rd to the Baltics and the Poland. And he said, okay, we're doing this. We want to reassure our folks. And I think I said, and to our friends in Moscow, they need to understand we are very, very serious. So I sort of tongue in cheek drew up a flexibility turns option with the new doctrine turns like mildly interested, we'll do this. Somewhat concerned, we'll do this. Serious, we'll do this. Very, very serious. We are gonna put United States Army soldiers in the dirt. We are gonna move them from someplace and put them on your border. Now we are very, very serious. And then the last one I had was no, I really mean it. And it was a picture of pulling Saddam out of the hole. So again, what we owe our national policy makers is a range of options from mildly interested to very, very serious to no, I really mean it. And that's what the Army has to do. And we have to keep in mind as we provide dilemmas to people, there are lots of different ways to do that. Okay, I've got one from a major on the Army staff. Oh, okay. He's probably grading my slides, I sent up for tomorrow's three. It's not about your slides. He says, if I and not General McMaster were taking the lead at ARCIC, what would my top three priorities be in shaping the future of the Army? What existing projects might I want to focus on to support your priorities? So if he was gonna become HR, is that what I'm saying? Well, no, if he was gonna, if somehow HR were to become something else. Well, he's not, HR's not getting out of it, so that might actually maybe HR. It could be, it could be. If we could check the IP address of that, do we have any cyber folks in here could maybe try to get up? In fact, I was just at a meeting with HR. Well, major HR. Your priorities are. Whereas you get to trade off, it was just at the meeting I was at. You can kind of, you know, the overly general big hand little map, like this Guderian-esque armor officers tend to be and say, it's the future, but I will, he wanted three, so break it down to three. Three by size pieces. One, it is to make sure that we not only have the right concept, but there is no end state, but the concept of how the Army goes from 2020 to 2025 and beyond, a concept of how we are gonna do this sort of assured deter compel in a way that you can describe it that resonates with other people that have to do something about it. Okay, so you have to describe it in a way that other people who have to do something about it can see where this is gonna go. And those are, I mean our friends in Congress, the people on the Joint Staff, OSD, other people in the Army Joint Service, we have to describe it in a way that they can understand it. They say, just like when I was down to Quantico, the Marine Corps was explaining what they were doing. I said, you know what, I can see where the Army will fit into this. I can see now how you're thinking big picture, and I can see where the Army can fit into it. So, so. Did you say that connective tissue thing to them? Well, yeah, I think they, and I think I called watercraft boats or something, and then I had, it was absolutely, but. So that's the first thing. The second thing is it is getting after sort of the strategy to get a strategy. How do we organize ourselves for innovation? How do we organize the Army, the whole DOD structure, and it's not just for the Army, the Army. It is getting at what a couple of gentlemen brought up here, hey, technology's changing at this rate. I mean, are you being innovative? Are you being agile, adaptive with regards to that piece of it? And then the last thing is, for lack of a better term, what is some low-hanging fruit, and I tell folks, I don't like to use that term because I said low-hanging fruit equals short-sightedness, so I, but for this discussion I'll say, what are things that we can do now that really don't require a major material buy, that don't do that, that via doctrine, training leader development, through changing just the way we think about the problem, really can drive a lot of change too, too long is like, once we get the 10 ton tank, our problems will be solved, not really, but if the major could do those three, actually I'll fire HR and we'll hire the major, okay? But somehow I think we'll keep HR on. Arno has had his hand up for a while and then we probably have room for two more and then we've got to let you go catch plane. Honor DeBorgrave, CSIS General. I recently asked a retired Army Chief of Staff why we still had 7,000 tanks in the arsenal and his reply was you cannot imagine how difficult it is to move things two degrees to the right or two degrees to the left, whereas what's really needed for robotic warfare, cyber warfare is 180 degree turn, you agree? Well, I agree that when you talk about unmanned systems, things like that, they are, I think, critical to our future and for a number of reasons. One, when you take a look at, one of the things we have to do is always provide our policy makers options, not ultimatums. We have to get out of the business of providing ultimatums and provide them options. It's not like, well, it's either this or nothing. What are the options that we have? One of the options has to be, so in the military we are in the business of mitigating risks, generally tactical operational risk to soldiers and units. Our policy makers are in the business of managing political risks. That's what they're voted for to hire. I mean, that's what they do. So our options have to not only provide them military advantage, they have to provide them political advantage as well. And in many ways, robotics unmanned systems generally will reduce the exposure of US forces and so high casualties is a political risk that has to be mitigated. It is a way to prevent dilemmas to other people that are very difficult sometimes for them to deal with and if you have unmanned systems, robotics, et cetera, generally you can put them at greater tactical risk to exploit initiative than you would a human. So they have a lot of other benefits to them rather than just, well, they're lighter than a regular tank. They really, the most important thing about them is they provide us lots of options and they let us mitigate risk much better than humans. So it's really not, a lot of people think it's just from a technology point of view. I really see it as providing options and managing risk both for our political leaders and our military leaders. So I think it's critical to the future. Okay, so let's do these two questions if we can do them together and in order to try to keep you on time. Okay. Kevin brings my idea. The bright environment and the people who think about things differently. Right. You brought up a key point about, people think about things differently and especially in this, you know, very quickly changing world in many ways. The world I grew up in as a young armor officer in sort of a bipolar world was much simpler because generally our enemy thought about things generally similar to us, what would deter us would deter them. And so it was easy to try to understand how they view things. So one of the things we have in our new leadership doctrine so that people can seize, retain, exploit the initiative. We have personal attributes that we want our leaders to have and one of them is empathy, not sympathy. Empathy, you know, sympathy means I feel your pain. Empathy means I can see how you could feel pain. Not that I feel it, but I could see how that could be possible. And empathy is ability to see the problem through other people's eyes. Not agree with it, but see it through their eyes. And I think that is one of the challenges historically and especially as we've got into these recent fights with cultures very different than ours and with very different types of threats out there is, and this gets back to deterrence, things that would deter us do not deter them because they have different value structure. They see life differently. They have different kinds of weapons systems. They're willing to take different kinds of risk. And so it's very important for our leaders as we develop them to have this ability, this empathetic ability to see problems as others would see them. And what we would think is maybe unthinkable, they may think is a perfectly logical use of a capability or a weapon system. And therefore, how do you deter that? Or more importantly, how do you compel them? Not to do that. You may not be able to deter them. The things that when we think of deterrence theory are not gonna work against them. The only way to stop it is to compel them not to do that. And so this ability to see problems through other people's eyes is one of the reasons as we're developing officers, we're working more and more to give them what we call a broad range of experiences. We want you to be fully founded in your skills to be infantry battalion operations officer, but we really would like it if you've spent time at different cultures, if you've worked in the inner agencies, if you have an advanced degree, if you've done these things. Because of nothing else, we have exposed you to people who think differently about life and about problems and then you understand how to access different points of view than you may have seen in your infantry battalion where you may have had a lot of similar points of view. There we think a difference in point of view is, should I use the machine gun or the main gun? There actually is a broader range of views than that. And so I think that's gonna be critical to the future because of all these things that we would have seen as unconceivable, we've gotta figure out how you deter and or compel them. Sir, I hope that you see that there's a lot of unmet demand here from questions and therefore I hope that you will agree to make this part one of a continuing conversation and that we can have you back tomorrow or the next day. But hopefully sometime soon, can't thank you enough for making the time to come over. We really appreciate it. I think everyone found it to be really interesting. My pleasure is sort of the new guy on the block. It's great to kind of get this feedback about maybe not what might not be clear about as the Army describes itself, but we'd love to, as we kind of work through this journey and that HR solves those three problems, maybe he and I will come up here together or that major and we'd love to entertain more sessions like this. Really, honestly. Have you back next Tuesday. I don't know.