 Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning for our latest iteration of the Military Strategy Forum and thank you in particular for Rolls-Royce North America for their continued underwriting of this series. I'm going to remind everyone and I think that ding just did as well to please silence all your phones and it's my pleasure to quickly introduce the speakers and we'll get right to the topic of the day. Today, we're honored to be joined by Debra Lee James, Secretary of the Air Force, as the 23rd Secretary of the Air Force. She is responsible for the affairs of the Department of the Air Force, including the organizing, training, equipping and providing for the welfare of the more than 690,000 active duty, guard, reserve and civilian airmen and their families. She also oversees the Air Force's annual budget of more than a hundred and ten billion dollars. Ms. James has 30 years of home land and national security experience in the federal government and the private sector. Prior to a current position, Ms. James served as president of SAIC's technical and engineering sector, following on nearly a decade of work with SAIC and UT. During the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1998, Ms. James served in the Pentagon as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs. In that position, she was the Secretary of Defense's senior advisor on all matters pertaining to the 1.8 million National Guard and Reserve personnel worldwide. Prior to her Senate confirmation in 1993, she served as an assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs and from 1983 to 1993. She worked as a professional staff member on the House Armed Services Committee. Also joining us this morning is Lieutenant General Stephen Wilson, Commander Air Force Global Strike Command, which is headquartered at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. In this role, Lieutenant General Wilson is responsible for organizing, training, equipping and maintaining all U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear-capable bomber forces. His command's mission is to develop and provide combat-ready forces for nuclear deterrence and global strike operations to support the President of the United States and combatant commanders. The command comprises more than 23,000 professionals operating at various locations around the globe. The command's six wings control the nation's entire inventory of Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, B-2 and B-52 bomber aircraft. General Wilson received his commission from Texas A&M University in 1981, and he is commanded at the squadron group, wing and numbered Air Force levels. The order we're going to go in this morning is Secretary James is going to make some remarks followed by Lieutenant General Wilson. We will then open up questions and answers with the audience here, which I will moderate. We will end promptly at 10 o'clock. And when you ask your questions, I am going to remind you at the time, but please make sure you're ready to ask a question rather than make a statement and make sure you give us your name and your affiliation. With that, I'm pleased to introduce and please join me in welcoming Secretary James. Thank you very much, Dr. Hicks, and thank you to CSIS for organizing this event today. And good to see so many folks in the audience, many of whom, some of whom anyway, I know. It's good to see old friends and colleagues. I certainly am well familiar and very respectful of CSIS and have been involved with CSIS through the years, both or throughout all of my jobs, really. The House Armed Services Committee, my previous tour in the Pentagon, and certainly my time in industry with SAIC. So glad to be back and thank you very much, the General, and I very much appreciate the opportunity to be here. I'm also very proud to come here as the 23rd Secretary of the Air Force. And I hope after you hear me today I will get invited back because there are many important issues that we can be talking about over time. Many important and exciting facets to our Air Force today. Everything from strategy to budget issues to technology to the industrial base to the evolving missions that we are performing and very important people issues that we're facing. So lots to talk about over time. And I certainly have begun to scratch the surface in all of these areas during my first eight weeks on the job. So that's how long I have now been in the Air Force. But none of the issues really has taken up more time and attention for me in this first eight weeks than the matter that brings us here today to talk to all of you. And that is namely our nuclear enterprise. Now I think as everybody in this audience probably knows, the Air Force is responsible for two of the three legs of our nuclear triad in the United States. We have the ICBMs, which provide stability and survivability. And we also have the nuclear capable bombers, which provide flexible and visible global force projection. Our partner, the Navy, operates the third leg of the triad, which is the submarine launched ballistic missiles, and they provide survivable deterrence at sea. Now all three legs of this triad are complementary. They are not duplicative, but they are complementary. We have the responsiveness of the ICBMs, the flexibility of the bombers, the survivability of the submarine launched missiles. And the three of these things together enable us to manage risk, provide effective deterrence to prevent an attack, they provide assurance to our allies around the globe, and they also offer our president a range of important options at his disposal. Now some say that the Cold War is over. We don't even need these weapons anymore. Well, I disagree with that. Now certainly there is room as there is room in our entire military to build down prudently, and certainly we have begun to do that. We'll be doing that under the new START agreement. However, I would argue that as the numbers decline, the importance of the triads, diverse and complementary attributes will be on the rise. It will only go up. For so long as there are countries around the globe that possess these weapons or countries that are trying to develop these weapons, no mission will be more important than maintaining nuclear deterrence and safeguarding our nation's nuclear capabilities. And all of the key leaders in government from the president on down agree with this fundamental point. We're all in lockstep. So the nuclear enterprise is very important to our country. It's very important to our Air Force. It is here to stay. So let me now tell you a little bit about the people, the people who provide this mission, who perform this mission for you and for me. The airmen of our nuclear enterprise perform their duties in a variety of locations. Some are in missile silos. Some operate as part of bomber crews. And by the way, the missile bomber crews are probably the most well-known of the teammates. These are the people who get the most attention. But actually the team of the nuclear enterprise is much broader than that. The full team also includes security forces who protect these weapons. It includes maintainers on site and at our weapons sustainment depots. It includes people in the program office who keep the modernization and sustainment on time and on track. Flight test personnel who ensure that the weapons are viable. We have stockpiled technicians throughout our enterprise. Not to mention a variety of people who are essential to training and to providing support to keep these operations going all the time around the clock. There's 36,000 people involved with this nuclear enterprise all in all. 25,000 of whom fall under General Wilson in the global strike command. Now, our nuclear enterprise personnel serve in a variety of locations, mostly in the United States, but they're in such locations which many of them are quite remote. So these are places like Minot, North Dakota, Malmstrom in Montana, F.E. Warren in Wyoming, Hill Air Force Base in Utah, Vandenberg, California, Whiteman, Missouri, and Barksdale, Louisiana. I think you'll also be interested to know, I was very interested to learn that this force, the nuclear enterprise force, is actually a younger force than the Air Force at large. I mean, this is particularly true in the missile community which is populated with a larger percentage of junior officers and junior enlisted personnel than the rest of the Air Force. And like other parts of our Air Force, this team has been undergoing reductions in force structure. We've had various command arrangements and command structures over time. So it's a team that's undergone quite a bit of change. And then finally, unlike other parts of our Air Force, the day-to-day success of this team and the greatest service that they provide for our nation is never having to actually execute their responsibilities for real, but nonetheless always standing ready to do so if called upon. That is major success for this team, and it's unlike every other team in the Air Force. So the bottom line is this is quite a unique team. It's unlike all the others. It's very, very important to our national security, and yet we face some important challenges. As all of you know, we have announced publicly that there are 92 missile crew members, all of them young officers at Molstrom Air Force Base in Montana that have some level of involvement with a cheating incident involving a monthly proficiency test, which was originally administered back in the August, September timeframe. Now, some of these officers were directly involved with the cheating. Others knew something about it, but they failed to stop it and they failed to report it. So this particular story began to unfold actually during my, it was either my second or third week on the job. And so the first question that I asked and that I wanted to know about, and I'm sure it was on the minds of many, in view of what has happened, is the nuclear mission safe and secure? So let me first cut to the chase on that one. I am very convinced that the answer to this is yes, the nuclear mission is safe and secure. And the reason for this is that one proficiency test does not make or break anything. There are many checks and balances within the system. There are outside inspections that take place regularly. There are simulator experiences that take place continually. And so there are many ways that we look at the proficiency individually as well as how the teams operate. So one test does not make or break anything. In addition, shortly after we became aware of this, we retested the entire missile community within about a 48-hour period. And that produced a very high pass rate, 95.5% pass rate. So my point is I am convinced that the mission is safe and secure, but nonetheless we are left with what was absolutely a major failure of integrity on the part of some airmen. So how did this happen and what should we do about it? More importantly, what should we do about it? And believe me, I am asking these questions, but I am not the only one. General Welsh has been asking these questions. General Wilson has been asking these questions. Secretary Hagel very much is in search of answers as well, and he is concerned. And as you know, Secretary Hagel has established an internal review group to ensure that we in the Air Force sit down with the Navy and OSD and the Joint Staff and that we work together on the nuclear enterprise going forward. He has also directed us to submit an action plan within 60 days on what we intend to do about this matter. And he has also established an independent review group led by Larry Welch and John Harvey, which is also on a fast track to look at certain matters. Now, the week after we announced the cheating incident, I personally decided I wanted to go on the road and I wanted to see more and learn more for myself directly. General Welch did exactly the same thing. We were not together on our trips. We were crisscrossing the country, but ultimately we hit the same locations and we spread out and talked to as many people as possible. So speaking from my perspective, at each of my stops, which included Effie Warren, Malmstrom, Minot, and the Air Force Global Strike Command at Barksdale, I received command briefs, I took tours, I learned about the mission firsthand, and very importantly, I talked directly to Airmen. And I did this in large town hall environments, but I also did it in small, what I call focus group environments. And these focus group environments, by the way, it was just me and the Airmen. There were no commanders, there were no note takers, it was just me and the Airmen. And we chatted. We chatted, and during the course of these focus groups, I spoke not only with the Missileers, and I did speak with the Missileers, but also the security forces, the maintenance, the support people, facilities personnel, all the people that I talked to you about earlier. I got a microcosm of all of the different types of teammates. And what I learned in all of these settings is actually very enlightening. So based on all of these discussions and the tours and the travel, as well as some other research, I came up with what I call my seven observations from the trip. And all of these seven areas will be addressed as part of our action plan that we owe the Secretary of Defense after 60 days. And that action plan and how we develop it is going to be the subject of what General Wilson will talk to you about in just a few minutes. So here are my seven observations. The first one sort of goes to the heart of the question that I get asked a lot. I think a lot of people wonder about. And that is, is there something widespread? Is there something cultural? Is there something bigger than just this particular incident going on within our missile community? And again, based on my trip, based on the talking that I've done, based on the focus groups, based on the review of past studies, and there have been a number of past studies done in recent years on this matter, I believe that in fact we do have some systemic problems in the force. I picked up on morale issues as I went from place to place. Morale is the way I would put it, spotty. There were pockets of high morale, but then there were pockets of low morale. I picked up on what I call the need for perfection. The need for perfection has created a climate of what I think is undue stress and fear among the missile community about their futures. And I'll come back and explain more about this in a moment. I heard repeatedly that the system in its totality is very punitive, comes down very hard even in the case of what seems to be very minor infractions, but it is not equally rewarding and incentivized for good behavior and good developments. I heard about micro-management. I also heard in many quarters that we as leaders talk about the importance of this community and talk about the importance of the mission, but do we then back that talk up with concrete action? I heard that question over and over again. And again, it wasn't just at Malmstrom where the cheating incident occurred. I heard this at every place I visited. So my first observation, I do think we have some systemic things going on, and I do think that in order to fix a systemic problem you need a holistic approach to just go after the incident of cheating is not adequate. And so I think holistic is the way to go. My second observation has to do with the testing and the way we are using test scores. So the way we are using test scores, at least it seems to me in this community, appears to be breeding an unhealthy climate. Now here's what I mean by that. When it comes to monthly proficiency tests, of which the miscellaneous take three, three such tests every month, scoring 90% on each of these tests is the standard. This is an acceptable grade. This shows proficiency. When a miscellaneous meets the standard, that's good, but it's insufficient by itself. The miscellaneous also have to perform well on periodic simulations and other forms of outside inspections and evaluations. So once he or she demonstrates the proficiency on the monthly exams, as well as comes through with flying colors on these other kinds of evaluations, they are deemed proficient. So all that sounds straightforward enough, except that I didn't come up with a single miscellaneous who felt adequate being able to score a 90%. Because if you score 90%, that means you might get a couple of questions wrong. What I found is that the miscellaneous felt driven to score 100% all the time. And this is because the commanders were using the test scores as either the top differentiator or the sole differentiator in this community as to who would get promoted and who would not. So to me, a huge irony in this whole situation is that these miscellaneous who cheated probably didn't even cheat in order to meet the standard or to pass. It could well be that they cheated in an effort to get 100, 100 all the time, because that is the mentality. So as I said, I don't think the use of test scores in this way is healthy. I don't think it's the right way to measure people, and I would like to see us move to a whole person concept, looking at the entirety of the person's record and their performance on how we then decide on promotions. So testing was my second observation. The third is accountability, and I'll be short and sweet on this one. There is going to be accountability in this matter. There certainly will be appropriate accountability for the individuals who participated in the incident. We're also assessing leadership accountability in this. So there needs to be accountability and there will be. That's my observation number three. Number four has to do with professional and leadership development. And I think we have some work to do here as well. So the questions in my mind coming out of the trip and coming out of my review and thought process here are, is the missile career field well-regarded and is it explained in our commissioning sources? How do we talk about this at the Air Force Academy? When people go through ROTC, what are they learning? Is this a career field which feels attractive to young people who are entering the Air Force? Is it or isn't it? And if it isn't, what can we do to improve this? Once they're in the front door, are these airmen getting the right forms of training, not only on their jobs but on leadership? You know, we place a great premium on leadership in the Air Force. Are they getting appropriate levels of leadership? Do they get the professional mentorship and supervision that I've seen go on elsewhere in the Air Force? As I mentioned, this is a young force. So mentorship in that leadership from higher levels is important. And are they getting it? What are the career path opportunities? Can these officers see a path to advancement? Can they see a path even to the top? I know that in the Navy, your officers can see such advancement. They can see a path. I'm not sure our people see it the same way. In short, there's a whole series of questions, at least that I'm hoping we can answer. And the idea here is to make this career field, in fact, and in perception, something that young airmen want to do and aspire to do. Fifth observation is we need to reinvigorate our core values. And just as a reminder, our core values in the Air Force are integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do. And of course, this was a major failure of integrity, integrity first. So airmen need to be reminded, and we need to look for ways to build this in at all levels throughout their careers. That integrity first means that you not only are charged with acting in a high integrity way yourself, but if you see something going on in your environment that is wrong, integrity requires you to put the Air Force first and come forward and let us know about that. So somewhere that went wrong in this instance, and we need to make sure that we have, that we are taking actions to remind people of that throughout their careers. By the way, you've probably seen that Secretary Hagel announced last week that he plans to appoint a general officer to his senior staff, who will be working daily with all of us on issues focused to core values, ethics, character, leadership, and whatnot. We want to do this across the board in the military, and certainly we in the Air Force will be an important part of this effort. Number six, observation, and I call this incentives, accolades, and recognition. And here's where the questions on my mind at least, should we consider some sort of an incentive pay or some sort of educational benefits or for certain types of work in this career field so that it becomes more attractive. They do such things in the Navy. We're learning more about what they do in the Navy. The Navy, of course, is different than the Air Force and the nuclear mission, but that's not to say we can't learn some lessons and we're trying to learn and see whether they should apply to us. What about metals and ribbons and other forms of accolades? This is done elsewhere in the Force. Should we do it here for the missile ears? So we need to look at all of that. And by the way, we need to not only do this for our officer corps, but we also need to do it for the enlisted forces, as well, because they are working extremely hard under what are arduous conditions as well. Last observation is what I call other investments, and this gets to the point of, okay, we say this is a very important mission, but do we put enough of our money where our mouth is? So this is everything, should we consider some additional funding to either increase the manning levels or to give a higher priority to certain forms of military construction or maintenance? There are quality of life issues, perhaps we should address. I mentioned earlier these are sometimes remote locations, so quality of life counts. So there's this specific cheating incident. We certainly are going to get to the bottom of that, but in so doing, as I mentioned earlier, we are going to take a holistic approach and look at the totality of our nuclear enterprise. I do not have anything, nor does General Wilson have anything specific to update on that incident. So we don't have any new reports of that nature, it's again designed to be a holistic approach going forward, and it is comprised of an approach that involves senior level persistent oversight from the SEC DEF on down, and it will include this comprehensive action plan to address all of these observations as well as some others that are coming up along the way. You may have noticed each of my seven observations directly relate and focus on people. I think people are the core of this, and so getting this done right for people in the future will be key to us moving forward. So I want to wrap now and give it over to General Wilson, but before I do, just one more reassurance to everybody. Although this was a bad failure of integrity on the part of certain airmen, it was not a failure of the mission. The mission is safe and secure. I'm very confident of that. General Haney, strategic command commander is confident, and so is the Secretary of Defense. I'm confident of the leadership of the Air Force. We are all confident. I also want to reinforce with you that the vast majority of our airmen, particularly the vast majority, the 36,000 that are involved with this mission, they are performing superbly, they are working hard, they are doing great work for you and for me, and with great pride every day. As for these challenges, we will address them. People will be held accountable appropriately. We did not get here overnight. I'm sure we will not get everything to fix it done overnight either, but we will get there. Again, persistent focus, persistent leadership, persistent action. That's what we're going to deliver here. So General Wilson, over to you. Thank you, Madam Secretary, and Dr. Hicks for inviting us this forum and for allowing me a few moments to speak about something that's near and dear to my heart. I flew in last night from F.E. Warren Air Force Base, where it's actually a balmy, it was a balmy day yesterday. It was in the low 30s with wind chills in the 20s, and yet our main maintainers and operators and defenders were going about their job. It was a completely different experience that I had last week when I was at Minot Air Force Base, but I got the opportunity to spend the week, last week at Minot, and it was a very informative visit for me across multiple fronts. But I got to visit the members of the 91st Missile Wing as well as the 5th Bomb Wing and see what they do every day. From the young defenders, again, who were preparing the convoys to support the weapon out to the field, to the missile maintenance crews who are actually doing the job in the field, to the helicopter crew who flew me back from the field, and what I saw was pride and dedication in everything that they were doing out there. Let me give you a couple so you can kind of see the experience that I had. The Bearcat with the Lieutenant Convoy Commander as we took a weapon out to the field. We spent 2 hours that day going out there. It was minus 18 was the temperature and that was not what the windchill. It was minus 50 on the windchill. And the Lieutenant told me about how much he enjoyed driving the Bearcat compared to the up-armored Humvee that this was so much nicer and so much warmer. Now, this is the guy that just me came from Louisiana. I was wearing my Louisiana boots. My feet were frozen solid. My outside leg, I couldn't feel it. You would have known that from this young defender. He was really proud of the job he was doing and had a bounce and a step along the way. So when we arrived at the facility there, the maintenance team got into action. I have a hard way to describe it other than it was like an Indie 500 pit crew. Not in the speed and the precision of what they did. They were truly exceptional. And if you could have seen that team and how they performed, I think everybody in this room would have been truly inspired. I also got to meet the second Lieutenant out there and just like every second Lieutenant who got so much energy and can do spirit, and he's in the Civil Engineering Squadron. This is Lieutenant Lund. Brand new has been in the Air Force for six months. He's also in charge of the largest construction project in the United States. He's got out Air Force bases, got one of the oldest runways in the Air Force and we're going to fix it and repair it. But it's a single runway at a major bomber base, so to do that's not easy. So it's been a three year effort. One year we've placed one into the runway, the next year another into the runway, and this year we'll replace the whole center section. It's a $42 million project and it's being led by a second Lieutenant and he's knocking it out of the park. You can see some of these young officers and young enlisted folks as they do their mission out in the field. And I can tell you that there was actually a bounce in the step of the folks that might not because they just come through with two major inspections. Both the fifth bombing and the 91st missile wing had undergone a nuclear surety inspection as well as a nuclear override. And you know it's a good day when the inspectors step up and say we don't have to talk about any unsatisfactory or margins or satisfactories because the team here only scored the best results or outstanding. So it was a great day. Now this isn't from my command inspection team. Well it was, but it was also in independent agencies. We had the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. We had the Joint Staff. We had the StratCom staff. We had the Air Force IG was part of that inspection team that oversaw the efforts. So the team really did well and you could see it in their pride and everything they're doing there in spite of all the good things going on. We have some challenges in Air Force. So let me address a couple of things that we're doing right now and efforts underway. Currently Lieutenant General Mike Holmes and he's the Vice Commander at Air Education and Training Command is leading a command directed investigation that I set up a couple of weeks ago. He's on the fourth of fifth legs. He's leaving Monod this morning and he's going to mount some Air Force Base. And I directed him to do an outside independent investigation on how we test, train, and evaluate our ICBM forces. And secondly, I wanted him to give me an assessment of the culture and the leadership environment. Now it's really an easy call reaching out to General Holmes. First of all, he's in the training business and I don't think there's anybody who understands the training business better than him. And he's done that for many years. He's going to help us clear up the blurred lines between training and evaluation of the ongoings. Now, his report is due to me at the end of the month. General Holmes' investigation is just one of the few ongoing efforts that I've asked to do. One of the other efforts that I think will produce the greatest change in our force is something I'm calling the force improvement program. Now this force improvement program it's going to utilize a different approach than things we've done in the past. Instead of the top down directed approach this is a bottom up grassroots level effort from which we're going to initiate this. And we're going to look across all the different disciplines in our missile field. So we're going to look at our security forces, our maintenance, our mission support group, our operations as well as our helicopters and how we do business. This is us looking at us but it's with a twist. Our force improvement initiative is to identify those challenges and stressors that detract from the mission effectiveness and the morale of our airmen. And it's going to combine inputs from members of all three wings and it's also going to use those junior experts in the field who are doing the job as well as we're going to ask the families what they think as well as do surveys of the leadership at all the wings. Now I'd like to say I can take credit for this idea but I didn't think of it myself. I reached out to our joint teammates who had a similar challenge and gave us this idea. So Vice Admiral Mike Connors was one of the submarine forces and he's one of my counterparts. And so when I was talking to him about things that they've done in the Navy in the past that they've used that were helpful, he's the one who gave me this basic idea. So not only do we to borrow his idea we we borrowed his team who did it. So Mike's inviting his sailors to be part of our team as well as the specific experts that he had on the team to help us in our efforts. And frankly I think they're going to ask questions that we wouldn't have asked of ourselves. So another outsider that we've asked to help on this team is Colonel Mike Tishner. Mike Tishner is currently the Director of Operations at 8th Air Force so he's got a bomber background and he's also the Director of Task Force 204 which is the Nuclear Reconnaissance Task Force for Admiral Haney. So he's going to lead this diverse team comprised primarily of missile airs, missile maintainers, helicopter crews and other support personnel from across all the bases and on top of that we threw in bomber crew members both B-52s and B-2s. Now our team also includes external folks to Air Force Global Strike Command. We invited Lieutenant Colonel Denise Cooper she's from the Air Force Academy she's got a PhD in the behavioral science and Miss Sherry Hernandez she's an expert from Air Education and Training Command who does a curriculum development as part of our team. We also have our fortune to have Mrs. Wendy Peck and Dr. William Casey on board. They're both from a group called the Executive Leadership Group and it's a group that creates human performance systems to implement organizational strategy and programs. They were part of the Navy team now they're also part of our team helping us in this endeavor. The whole team is about 65 people and they came together a couple of days ago at Barksdale. I gave them the charge in the morning that evening I talked to each individual group as they moved out and I said here's what I want you to do I want you to think big and I want you to think bold. Nothing is off the table and as we speak that team is leaving Barksdale Air Force Base and they're en route to Minot Air Force Base today and we're over the next 8 days so go to every wing and talk to all the experts in the field. And specifically I've asked them what are their concerns and then really what can we do about it. So the work that they're going to accomplish I think will touch every aspect of the ICBM mission and I think we'll have the opportunity to shape that for the next generation. Now our force improvement program is about taking care of people as the secretary said this primarily is about a people business and their environment but I've also asked the team to look at how we communicate and then how we develop our leaders in the field. We're going to look at the culture and we're going to determine do we have an integrity issue and what are those obstacles that we need to overcome in terms of mission and manning and resources and any of those other things we may have out there. So at the end of this month I'm going to get an out brief from both the CDI team as well as the force improvement team and what I will tell you is I'm committed to changes and as you heard from the secretary so is she and so is the senior leadership of the department. The changes that I can make at my level I will. Those that I need the secretary and the chief of staff of the Air Force to help I'll take to them and those that we need the help of the secretary of defense will take to him for him. What I'd also like to tell you is that these efforts are part of the journey. The journey that's been going on since 2009 as we strengthen and develop and broaden all the efforts across the nuclear enterprise. You know the efforts that included we stood up Air Force Global Strike Command five years ago. We created a new director inside the headquarters Air Force A-10 that oversees Air Force's nuclear mission. We've tackled some discipline trends. We've improved the ICBM readiness and the bomber readiness across the fleet. We've done lots of personnel actions in terms of personal development programs and education and we've completed quite frankly 92% of over a thousand action items identified by previous studies. That's some of the efforts that have been ongoing over the last five years and this is another effort in that journey. What I would tell you is I think the glide slopes in the right direction. We're making some very positive we're making positive developments across the whole length of the force. And I'd like to leave you with this takeaway. Our nation demands and deserves the highest standards of performance and accountability from those entrusted with the world's most powerful weapons. There are over 25,000 people in Air Force Global Strike Command. I want to focus on the 99.5% of those people who do an exceptional job every single day defending our nation and deterring our adversaries. They not only abide by, but they live our core values. They certainly have integrity. They do service before self and they have excellence in all they do. They're well trained, they're confident, they're proud. The mission that they perform strategic deterrence is vital to our nation and our Air Force, and as you heard from the Secretary, is committed to strengthening, broadening, and deepening both the performance the way we access, recruit, train, and the mission modernization and human capital across the whole nuclear enterprise. So with that let me stop, tell you thank you very much and we look forward to your questions. Thank you very much to both Secretary James and to General Wilson. Let me start with a question which wouldn't have been the one I would have asked before you spoke but I think both of you covered so much territory. It changes somewhat how I certainly think about the issue. One of the things that comes to my mind both from Secretary James's remark about how many studies have occurred in the past General Wilson, your comment there near the close about having completed 92% of the action items that are out there. It does make one wonder if that last 8% is the hard 8%. And I'm wondering if you can reflect at this point in what you both have looked at in your experiences certainly to date even beyond this looking into the issue most recently what are those remaining barriers that have made it hard to get at the issues that remain and are the tools within the reach of the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Department of Defense or will you end up needing help for instance from Congress? So maybe I'll start Dr. Hicks but then General Wilson please jump in as well. So in terms of what are the remaining barriers might we need to help from Congress and so forth the answer is don't know yet fully. I mean that will be we'll know so much more when our 60 day review is completed. As to the studies of the past I will say I have certainly reviewed those studies and some of the themes that we've talked about here were mentioned in some of those studies. I don't think at least not that I recall was this cheating situation brought up in any of the studies but certainly some of the morale issues have been talked about before and so forth so there has been some repetition there. I think a clear barrier clear barrier to anything nowadays that one has to at least think through is money money is tight resources are not plentiful and but again if you're committed to persistent focus persistent leadership persistent action you have to put resources against a particular matter. So we'll know a lot more at the end of 60 days and be able to answer that more fully. The only thing I'd add this is as the secretary mentioned in her comments is a journey that we've been doing we've had years of atrophy probably in the 90's in the early 2000's that we've put lots of efforts in the last 5 or 6 years across the nuclear enterprise in investments and everything we do from the people side down on through part of that journey. I don't think there's any of those things that are not insurmountable we just need to get after them and secretary and I are committed to doing just that. Okay we're going to have mics coming around and we'll start right up here and remember to give us your name and affiliation and a brief question please. Brendan McGarry with military.com you talked about there being some responsibility or accountability for this does the Air Force still have confidence in the commander of the 341st wing and if so why? Well right now we have a command directed investigation underway to look at all the people involved in this so I would be premature for me to comment on any particular person the secretary has visited the wings chief staff has visited the wings we are confident in the people doing the mission out there but we're going to let this investigation come to a conclusion before we draw any results out of it. We'll come to you next. Sorry all the way in the front. Thank you. Hello I really really enjoyed that whole discussion about the cheating my name is Samira Daniels and I am interested in testing as you know it's function in different organizations and I just wonder do you think you're going to continue with that testing mode as I know you stressed that you wanted to look at the holistic have a holistic but it seems to me that if indeed these students were testing above 90% and they were looking for the 100 there may be some ways of introducing questions changing the format in a way that would mitigate against cheating since it is you know probably multiple choice and so forth and I think there are tests that can better test the kinds of capacities you need for these missions so so I'll take a shot at that so having appropriate tests and evaluations and inspections I think is an essential thing within this community really all communities to ensure that individuals and teams can perform their duties so I am certainly in favor of that the troubling part to me though was the what seemed like enormous power that these individual proficiency tests and the desire to score 100 seem to have and the fact that these were being used as a top or a sole differentiator to determine whether you get promoted that breeds an unhealthy system now the whole testing regime is part of what is being reviewed as part of the command directed investigation and as general Wilson said we have a top officer whose specialization is training looking at this whole area which gives me comfort that we will you know get to the bottom of this and how to do it appropriate because we certainly need appropriate evaluations and tests but when it comes to promoting individuals I do think a whole person concept is what we need to have. It's exactly what the CDI teams looking at is how we train tests and evaluate the teams about 10 people and they're looking exactly the questions you asked. Microphone before. Hi John Harper with Stars and Stripes I know that the review that you're undertaking is still ongoing but can you share any preliminary conclusions that you've reached and also the Navy doesn't seem to be having the same problems within its nuclear missile force that the Air Force is having why do you think that that's the case? Yeah I'm not I can't give any new information in terms of the ongoing command directed investigation in terms of the force improvement program it's starting today so we're going to it's kickoff they're heading to Minot Air Force Base as we speak and I can't comment on what the Navy does or does differently than us I can tell you that what we're focused on is our what we have in front of us now the secretary she talked about she didn't she walked in this on week two of this and we're going to meet this head on across the spectrum of the things we've discussed. No. Okay right back to this gentleman. Thank you. Thanks very much Aaron Meadow with Defense we defended the three legs of the triad and your opening comments there's one other aspect that you didn't mention which is the missiles attached to fighters that are in Europe there's been talk that maybe that's a mission that given the cost needs to be looked at and potentially moved away from so two part of question the first is is that something the Air Force is interested in looking at potentially moving away from secondly former Chief of Staff Schwartz in a speech recently said he believed the F-35 nuclear capable that money should be spent elsewhere is that something that you agree with or looking at. Yeah I think we're committed to our extended deterrence of our allies I don't think there's anything that we're looking at that would change that perception and I know that the former Chief of Staff Schwartz article and I saw that same thing too and I really I'm not able to comment on that was his opinion on that. Okay very good let's go right Daria Thank you. My name is Hasmukh Shah from Business Times just concluded Defense Expo in India has attracted 60 plus US defense companies to participate that shows that India is a big market for defense industry of our USA and especially in the energy nuclear energy there's a lot of prospects can you Secretary James could you explain to me what are the prospects on the nuclear area between US and India business opportunities thank you. That is probably white outside the scope of what we're talking about today I'll let you comment if you like but I regret that this is outside the scope of what we're talking about today so I'm afraid I don't have a good answer for that very good. Excuse me let's do I try to keep to the top of the secretaries come to talk about and we're right over here with the Blue Tie thank you. Graham Jenkins site to our corporation the Air Force has done a pretty good job of trying to consolidate the nuclear enterprise but within headquarters Air Force you still have two separate groups with very conflicting missions you've got A5XB which does arms control and A10 which does more of the planning side and would combining those two help somewhat with morale and the mixed messages from the top are there any plans for that. So I'll say that we're sort of looking across the board at the headquarters elements and looking for ways where we could sensibly combine and put teams together and what not you're aware we're also trying to reduce our headquarters by Secretary of Defense has asked us all to reduce by 20% we're actually trying to take a challenge a little bit above that we'll see if we get there or not so everything is on the table but it's a little premature to talk to that directly. Okay how about right over here this gentleman right up front. Thank you. Tom Giuliani I teach a distance learning course on the history of nuclear policy for AFFET. The command emphasis and the secretary and the general Wilson have indicated certain ways of helping focus the attention of the people involved on the nuclear mission which has always been positive as part of that culture do the people in the missile wings understand why we got to the particular status we have in our nuclear mission. It's been a long, long times and weapons were first used a long time since the Cold War but certainly an understanding of what happened in the past, what questions were asked, how they were answered in different epics under different conditions would probably be an interesting aspect of improving the culture I would think. So maybe again I'll start but general Wilson please jump in. So based on my observations I would say that the missile teams are very up to speed with sort of current world conditions current threats and so in that regard they're inspired by knowing that there are dangers in the world and how they fit into the overall equation of deterring those dangers and protecting our country. Now as to the heritage and so forth I'm a little bit less clear but that's an interesting idea and I think living your legacy is something that inspires all of us. So that might be an area that we could work more on. I agree. I think our missile crews today understand and get it may not be ingrained across the fabric of our Air Force like it should and so as part of our developmental what we're going to do at every level from everything from squadron officer school to air command staff college or war college we're going to strengthen and continue to strengthen the message that we tell folks about what our nuclear weapons do, what deterrence is how it's used, how do we deter and assure and again that's part of this professional development course that will spread throughout the fabric of our Air Force. Okay very good right here on the edge. So I'm Randall Ford with Raytheon the Air Force Academy has been mentioned a number of times and my understanding is the Academy has a standard that a cadet will not lie, cheaters steal or tolerate those who do. So I'm curious of the 90 cheaters at Malmstrom were any of them Air Force Academy graduates and if so has that given you any cause to go back and look at some of the fundamental cultural issues at the Air Force Academy and the kind of standards and ethics that they teach and instill in their graduates. So I'll take a shot at that not sure as to the first part of your question but as to what do we need to do at the Academy it so happens my next trip which will be later today if I can beat the snow is I'm headed to the Air Force Academy. So again this is a trip that I had planned anyway but now given this body of work that we're engaged in this is a particular area that I'm going to talk to the superintendent about and to understand more fully how is it that cadets end up in certain career fields versus other career fields and how are the various career fields talked about and what sorts of education they receive at the Academy about the different parts of the Air Force and the heritage and so forth. So this is a line of questioning that I'll be talking about over the next few days as a matter of fact and also say as the secretary talked about this reinvigorating our core values education across all our commissioning sources so to get to your question yes all commissioning sources are involved here from ROTC from the Academy and from OTS but that's why this effort is going to be for our core values across our Air Force and not just for missile airs but across our Air Force. Okay very good let's group a couple questions because we're running on time so both of these in either order is fine. Hi Brian Everstein with Air Force Times could you give us an update on the OSI investigation where things stand there are we still looking at just moms from and just the August September timeframe and if you said it's systemic how likely is it that just stays there and also the drug investigation that sparked all this. Okay and let's take them sorry if you don't mind take the questions behind him. Justin Anderson, SAIC and for Secretary James. In recent years have been in a number of think tank analyses that have suggested ICBMs may be redundant and while those are outside of government I don't think missile airs are immune to the suggestion their jobs might not be important in the future so I wonder if you could respond to the conclusions of those studies that ICBMs might not be important to the future nuclear mission. Thanks. So as to the first question we don't have anything new to share on the investigation aspect so it is ongoing but we promise transparency and as you know we've updated a couple of times and we will continue to do so but we just simply don't have anything new on that today as to the various studies and opinions that you hear now nowadays about we should do away with nuclear weapons or we don't need a triad it's a dyad you know different people have different points of view and that's what America is all about we all have different points of view and we debate these and so forth but I hope it came across loud and clear what I think I think we need a triad it's worked very well for us over the past 50 years we need it for the next 50 years and probably beyond that as well it is not duplicative it is complimentary for the various reasons I said but never mind that I said it the president has committed to it the secretary of defense has committed to it all of the people in positions of authority believe this to be the case so you're right though our misleaders are well read they hear these things they wonder about it and certainly to the extent I was asked about it this is the sort of answer to the question I gave them people have all sorts of points of views about all sorts of things it doesn't mean that it's going to happen or that the people who are you know in charge of our government are making these decisions feel that way okay we have room for a couple more so right in the back here and then we'll go to the side I say size I want to ask Secretary James President Obama said about the new world without New York so what do you think about this kind of position with the job the fear of the airmen about the future and to President James Wilson last spring the Air Force deployed nuclear bomber to North Korea what is your evaluation of that operation okay so a global zero question and a B-52 overflight question so if I heard the question correctly the bottom line here is that you know President Obama is committed to the triad and I think for all the same reasons that I tried to try to articulate and that was reaffirmed most recently in a nuclear posture review so that is sort of the bottom line for that question and for the B-52s correct that they didn't fly over North Korea they flew over South Korea and the B-2 did also so what I would say is as a secretary talked about the strengths of the triad and the bombers bring a flexible invisible signal and that's exactly what it did it was a signal invisible signal to our allies to assure both South Korea Australia and Japan as well as to deter any adversaries in this case it sent a very strong message I think to the North Korean regime at that time was being has had a lot of rhetoric about what we were doing so I think it sent a very powerful signal both the B-52s and the B-2s as an assurance and deterrence mission okay and I already gave the last question over here Matt Dalgan with Congressman Mike Kaufman identified it will pursue funding for a next generation bomber has there been any discussion in divesting in the current legacy fleet specifically the B-1? all I'd say is that what we are committed to is a new long range strike bomber it's one of the secretary and chief's top three priorities and we need one the rest of our bomber fleet our newest bomber our B-2 is 25 years old and the other ones are older so as we bring on new airplanes we need a new long range strike bomber I think the four structure will be looked at in the future and I don't have a good answer in terms of what we'll look at specifically but I do know we need a new bomber and the secretary and chief are committed to getting this one Secretary James General Wilson this is an incredibly challenging time for the Air Force it's a hard way to start month two or one or wherever it came but I think we're all impressed by the great leadership that you are both showing and that the Air Force do this kind of command climate as they look internally to the issues to resolve here I'm going to ask the audience to remain seated as the secretary and general Wilson depart out the back exit but please do join me in a round of applause to thank them for coming here today