 Thank you. Afternoon, everybody. Thanks for coming. We are here today to have a follow-on conversation to one that we started a while ago when the Army announced its aviation restructure initiative. And it was one of the more contentious elements of the Army's portion of the FY15 budget debate. That debate is now over, as of a few days ago. And so we wanted to have a follow-on conversation about where that initiative stands and the future of our aviation writ large, given the guidance that was recently given by the Congress. And to do that, I think we have a really terrific panel lined up. So to my right, immediate right is Brigadier General Frank Muth. He is the director of the Quadrennial Defense Review Office. He is a career aviator who had the opportunity to command a troop in Iraq and then go back with a brigade many years later, which while he was there became the first enhanced combat aviation brigade, so was in charge of all operations in Iraq. He's done a few other things along the way. He first came to the Army staff in G8 in 2011, I believe, and then was able to escape for a year and go back to the real Army at Fort Riley, where he was involved, intimately involved with the implementation of regional airline forces and how that applied to aviation in particular. And then was dragged back to the Pentagon to be the director of the Quadrennial Defense Review Office. Good job coming right after it was done. So he's leading the charge. It's all about timing. Framing the next one, maybe. I don't know. But manages to keep busy. And he's going to offer some perspectives on the overall Army budget, the fiscal landscape in which the aviation conversation is taking place. To his right is Colonel John Lindsay, who is the director of aviation in Army G357. Colonel Lindsay was one of the architects of the aviation restructure. So he's going to talk about how that's proceeding and sort of where that stands looking forward. And then finally, it's always great to have back our alumna. Colonel Wally Rugen was a CSIS fellow in 2012. He was noting that that was in the old building. The digs have gotten a little nicer since he was here last. Also, a career aviator who commanded both in the general purpose forces and in the special operations, aviation regiment at Fort Campbell. He just came from brigade command in Korea. So has now the opportunity to implement or try to synthesize all of the lessons that he's taken away from his various assignments into being the director of aviation force development in G8 for General Muth. So again, I think great breadth of expertise. You guys are sort of cumulatively have touched many of the same places along the way, but have also sort of embodied the broadening kind of career. Yeah, no, like a lot of the aspects of the enterprise piece is what we like to talk about. But we were talking before we got here, and between us, about 8,000 flight hours and about over 1,000 combat flight hours as a KW, Mike Model Black Hawk guy, as an Apache guy, and as a special operations Black Hawk aviator. So I mean, you know, got that. I'm safe. All right. So, sir, over to you. All right. Good afternoon, everybody. This is our version of a Christmas party. So please, you know, keep the jocularity going. So my name is Frank Muth as I was introduced. And what I'd like to do is, as my position before when I was in the G8 as the director of material and also as the FDD division chief for 2012-2013, I think I got a pretty good kind of experience as where the budget was going specifically related to the equipping peg or associated with the modernization. And so what I'd like to do is, having that perspective and then turning around in 2013 and going back and being the deputy commanding general for support for the big red one, by the way, the oldest most historic division in the United States Army, I got my perspective of what is the impact of budget here. I got a vision or not a vision, a window of what impacts are the budget constraints and also the potential for sequestration have on our readiness within the division. And I know we're here to talk about AI, but I think it's important to frame it around the discussion of the budgetary cuts and also the impacts of sequestration. So let's talk strategic quickly. So in the last, because of the budgetary constraints and also the sequestration, well over 270 programs have been impacted. And whether that has been, programs have been basically taken off the books, whether they've been descoped or whether they've been delayed in some way, shape or form, 270, that is a significant amount. If you look at the overall equipping peg, on average historically, it ranges anywhere in a balanced force, not a hollow force. It ranges anywhere from 22 to 24% of the overall budget within the EEPEG. Or the EEPEG is about 22%, 24% of the budget. Right now we're sitting at about 17%. That is a significant cut in our monetization programs and a significant impact kind of to the overall strategic place where the army is right now with, as it pertains to the budget. So if we go to full sequestration, what then occurs to those programs that I talked about? Because I've talked to impacting of over 270 and some of them more than once. Because when you reshape one year and you have a more budget cuts than next, you have to keep descoping. An additional 137 programs, whether we'll either be killed or whether they'll be descoped or moved to the right some way, shape or form. That is a significant strategic impact to the modernization of our army. So that's kind of the strategic side of it. And let me explain to you real quick what happened last year when I went back to the big red one. So it was September timeframe when I was the deputy commanding general for support. We went into the government shutdown and we also occurred that we were told, even though we requested based on our previous year's budget which was about 147 million to run the division, we requested about 135 million. And now that understand that that's two armored brigade combat teams, two infantry brigade combat teams, an aviation brigade and a sustainment brigade. And so what happened was, when all of that occurred in September, October, November timeframe, we were told you're gonna get 77 million. And this was before the BBA kicked in and the bipartisan budget agreement. And so we had to readjust how we were gonna train the division for that year. So everyone always asked, hey, how do you portray the impacts of readiness? Well, this is what happened in a division. Immediately we had to implement anything over $50,000, any type of purchase for the division. I had to personally approve. Now you have to understand that a armored brigade combat team for a year on an average, this is very rough order of magnitude, about $14 million to train. That's at home station. That doesn't include a CTC rotation. Okay, 14 million. You can imagine what that, our average brigade combat team was sitting, we think for the year based on what we were rejecting at about four to five million. So you go, okay, well, what does that mean? One tank engine on an average is about $742,000. So you could go through almost two and a half months of budget for a brigade if one tank engine went down. So everything we did, we stopped driving our vehicles, we stopped shooting, we stopped training. And at the operational side, so I talked strategic here at the big army, and at the operational side at the division, we stopped training, we stopped driving our vehicles. And I said to myself, that's probably, that could be just the big red one. I talked to another deputy commanding general for the 25th in a class last week. He said they did the same thing with their strikers. They drove them back and forth three or four feet just so the tires wouldn't get kind of indented on one side or another. Just to keep the chassis moving, just to keep the engines rolling. Because you didn't have the gas, you didn't have the money to pay for any miles or miles to drive or any type of bullet. So that's operationally, and that's the division, and that's trying to get ready to do some of the missions that we were tasked to do, whether it's regionally aligned forces or potentially other requirements. So what was occurring tactically at the company level? Nothing. I mean, they're doing as basic training as they possibly can for soldiers, for some leadership development, but when it comes to trying to do collective training at the platoon of the company, which requires you to get into your Bradley's or get into your M1's and go out there and maneuver on the battlefield or in the training area back in Fort Raleigh or shooting your weapons systems, going through your table sevens up through 12s or at this point 11s for platoons, they couldn't do it. They could not train. And then what happened? In November, when we started, finally found out that we were gonna actually get the budget that we asked for, then we could start to get that training back up and we were able to get back onto a path. But everybody always asks, what happens? What is the impact? What's the vision of sequestration? From my perspective, at least last year, I think we saw a pretty good idea of what would occur at a division if sequestration occurred and your budget was cut essentially in half. And that's what happened to us. And to me, that was very telling and then coming back in here to the building and having some dialogues with folks and trying to explain to them, hey, this is what occurs at a division. Oh, by the way, your aviation brigade went down to less than 11 hours per month per pilot. So you can maintain what we call your current, all right, and your current, but are you proficient on day, night, aerial gunnery, team operations, platoon or company, decisive actions? Absolutely not. So the readiness impacted the division significantly. And that's what, if we move forward with sequestration, at least what I saw last year, I could certainly see that, we could see that occur within the division when it comes to the readiness and the impact of training overall. I look forward to having a dialogue about aviation restructure initiative, how the impacts of both cost avoidance and the savings of around $12 billion, little over $12 billion has on that, both strategic aspect, but what are the impacts potentially for the operational and the tactical? Thank you very much. John? Sir, thank you very much, I appreciate it. I see a lot of familiar faces in here today. We've talked to many of you in the past year and a half. It's been a long road, it feels like in many respects we're sort of building ARI as it goes, but that's in fact not the case. We conceived of this a long time ago with some very solid analytical underpinnings and it feels like it's a long road because of the process, right? The process is we submit something into the 1519 Palm and that happened in the fall of 2013. It gets sent forward in February of this year as part of the Secretary of Defense and the President's budget and then it gets discussed on the Hill, marked up in committees and we just got the NDAA. So it has been a long process to get to where we are today, which essentially keeps all elements of the Aviation Restructure Initiative intact, but because of the group that we have here and the folks that are listening in, I thought it would be important to kind of refresh some of the major parts and pieces of aviation restructure just to reset. We were facing very significant cuts in the program due to sequestration and that kind of set the stage for the way we thought about our structure going ahead and eventually BBA kicked in and that was helpful. But nevertheless, our top line for equipping a loan was gonna be significantly reduced and Colonel Rugen is gonna talk about that here in a little bit. The Army of course came up with a plan to reduce its aviation force and the approach was very characteristic of the way things are often done and that is a salami slice. That's a cut of whole units. We didn't look into the units and rearrange things in them. We cut whole units out of the force and that was five aviation brigades. We had 25 aviation brigades and the plan was to reduce it by three and the active in two in the reserve component. And what we did not like about that plan is that it reduced, it cut all of the modernized systems associated with those aviation brigades. It cut all of the best stuff. It cut Apaches, it cut CH-47s, it cut UH-60s. And when we looked at that in the summer of 2013, we thought there's got to be a better way because this plan, this original plan included keeping many of the legacy systems that have been in our fleet, have been in our Army inventory for 40 years and that included archival warriors, our OH-58 Alpha Charlies and our aging training fleet. So what the Army's plan did was solve for a short-term fiscal bogey but it didn't solve for many of the long-standing issues we had in our branch. It didn't solve for a training aircraft. It didn't solve for a scout helicopter. The approach was to put billions of dollars into the aging cavalry warrior which was only gonna give you a marginal upgrade and capability down the road. It didn't do anything to our aviation structures. They all remained the same and we had seven different variants of aviation brigades across the force. So we took a different look and we said, let's see if there's another way to go about solving many of aviation problems and one of the things we put together was this idea that we wanted to keep, preserve our best stuff. Let's not take our aircraft, our best stuff and sweep it off the side of the aircraft carrier into the ocean. Let's not do that. Let's save our Apaches. Let's save our CH-47s. Let's save our UH-60s and that became an organizing principle for Army aviation. There was no idea that we were going to be able to go back to the leadership of the Army and ask for more money, more TOA, to top-line authority. That wasn't going to happen. The money was gone in the program in the out years. So we had to make some difficult choices. If you agree that your organizing principle is to keep your best stuff, then you have to throw into play, throw into the mix the idea that you divest your older stuff and included in that mix, of course, is your OH-58D aircraft. We've had about 368 aircraft in the fleet. We've got 10 squadrons, nine in the active component, one in the reserve component. And we imagined what the Army would be if we divested the OH-58D. And of course the question came up, well, what do we do next? What happens with the scout mission? Who assumes that, what assumes that? Of course we have the AH-64D, which studies have shown can and has over the past many years performed the scout role very, very effectively in the Army. So that is one of the organizing principles in the Army. We had to pay close attention to the mix within the AC and the RC because, again, divesting those OH-58Ds out of the fleet because we didn't want to invest billions of dollars into those platforms was gonna reduce the number of battalions, shooting battalions in the Army from 37 down to 20 battalions. And when you go down to that few number of battalions based on the op tempo that we have sustained over the past 13 years at least, then you have to think very carefully about where you put those assets. And we made the recommendation to the leadership, leadership agreed that we needed to put based on op tempo and training requirements that asset, the AH-64, into the active component. That was the decision. We knew, of course, that we could not move one thing from one component into another without having a corresponding balance back to the reserve component. For that reason, we made the recommendation based on shedding structure, active component aviation brigades. We would be able to move some UH-60 structure into the National Guard and the Army Reserve. So that is essentially what we're doing in aviation restructure. The other thing we were able to do and recommend to the leadership was take our LUH-72s that we had here in the active component and the reserve component and repurpose those aircraft as the training aircraft. We currently have a single engine, non-glass cockpit trainer, TH-67 down at Fort Rucker. And the idea with moving the LUH-72 to Fort Rucker was to put a dual-engine aircraft in place with a glass cockpit that does a couple things for us. That eases the transition from training aircraft to advanced aircraft. And it also reduces the amount of time that you've gotta invest and spend on doing emergency procedures, training and touchdown crash embankments as we call them down at Fort Rucker. So we think those savings are gonna be significant down the road. We'll go into some more detail if you'd like about how that's being implemented in the future. But the point is, as far as aviation restructure goes, we are moving out with implementation. Aviation restructure is happening. And if you haven't heard too much about it, it's because most of all of the change is occurring in the active component. We held a warren officer transition panel in the past couple of months that identified over 350 warren officers for advanced aircraft transitions. And so those folks are currently being programmed for the next several years to pursue training in other aircraft. That's happening. We have canceled OH-58D training down at Fort Rucker and at Fort Eustis. We have turned in all of our OH-58 deltas at Fort Rucker in the training base and moved them to Davis-Monthan for demilitarization. We're in the process of converting our AH-64 Delta to Echo model units. We've got four units already complete. Gray Eagle Fielding is underway. We've got 63 aircraft currently fielded and that process is ongoing throughout the Army. We've converted to aviation brigades who have the objective structure right now for the aviation combat aviation brigades in the active component. So that has been completed. So it's a good news story for Army aviation that we were able to undertake things within 18 months and begin to transform and transition the Army to what we think is going to be a far more capable force. So with that, I have plenty of other information we can share once we get to questions, but I'll pass it off to my wingman, Colonel Ruegan, who can talk a little bit about the strides we're making in equipment modernization. Well, good afternoon, everybody. Colonel Wally Ruegan and I'm in the G8. My team and I manage the 22 Army aviation programs that comprise the aviation portfolio. So not only the airframes that we're all familiar with, but quite a number of enablers. Certainly the theme has been as the Army gets smaller, Army aviation's obviously getting smaller. And as I came on, the ARI team, just managing the implementation of ARI has been a full-time job that goes along with managing also the portfolio. So certainly an exciting time. Even without sequestration, we see significant pressure on the aviation portfolio. Where over 20% of the Army procurement dollars go to Army aviation, and that's a significant investment by the Army. And certainly we take it our job very seriously. So getting the best bang for our buck and being the best stewards of the taxpayer dollars. Certainly what we put in front of us as we go forward. This year, we have reallocated the Kawa Warrior funds, the CASAP funds, or the cockpit and sensor upgrade funds. That's been about 1.4 billion. We've put that into our ARI stalwart program. So the remanufacturer of the H64 into the ECHO model, some modifications of the H64 have also benefited from those funds, the shadow as well. We've been able to put an encrypted data link in the shadow and we'll continue to do that. And also we've invested some of those funds into Gray Eagle. And so certainly the theme, as you see, is we have to stick on this modernization path. We have to stay focused on keeping the most modern platforms and equipment that support those platforms in Army aviation. And that's certainly what ARI has been able to accomplish. And lastly, we're neutral in cost. So a significant number of these CASAP dollars, the sensor upgrade dollars have gone to the training that John Lindsay brought up. And so there's no extra cost in training and reformatting our force to get them into the right platforms. So quite a few of those dollars, over 600 million went into those transitions. And lastly, thanks to CSIS for bringing me back. The place looks great. And I wish I could have been here for the ribbon cutting. Well, thanks very much to all of you. I'm gonna start with a couple of questions and then we'll open it up to all of you. I forgot to mention it's been fortuitous, but I just remembered to turn my phone off so people can preclude any future phone calls. That'd be great. And then when we bring the mics around, if you could wait for the mic and then quickly identify yourself and ask your question succinctly if possible, it'd be much appreciated. I have two questions. You can divvy them up however you'd like. But the first is about, we've had a series of events around the future vertical lift initiative and sort of longer-term aviation prospects. And the Army is a major player and probably the principal player in that initiative. So I wanted to know either from gentlemen Luther from Kroningen has, what's the impact of the fiscal environment that you talked about on the step after the restructure? What does all of this mean for FEL going forward and how important is the development of those capabilities to the future Army aviation? My second question has to do with how you view the impact of the commission on the active and reserve components for the Army which will have to, whose activities over the next year and a half will inform how ARI goes forward. Well, let me take the commission first and then I'm gonna let my esteemed colleague at the end of the table because they just finished up with some analysis with Lyra and things like that. I can talk about the potential path forward or the path forward with FEL. So the commission, I think pretty common knowledge that the Army did not think we needed a commission just because of the studies that have been done whether it's been with Rand and of course Cape just did some analysis and of course we did our own internal analysis and we thought it was very good. A lot of analytical rigor put to it to determine the cost benefit analysis with ARI and how that impacts both just like John talked about the modernization and the impact to aviation as an entire branch and its ability to kind of move forward as we continue to kind of develop and have to restructure based on a lot of the budgetary constraints. But all indications are there is going to be a commission and so of course if there is as transparent and as whatever the commission needs in terms of information, the Army is gonna move forward and provide that information to ensure that they have everything they need at the end of the day to make the best recommendations to go forward and then we'll go from there. But as John already talked about, there's several things and I'll let him explain more about that later, I'm sure there'll be some questions. ARI as he already talked about is more than just a patchy moves. It's several other things that are already taking place and those things will continue to occur whether it's the, we've already stopped the training of cowboy warrior pilots. We're already starting to retrain cowboy warrior pilots. All those things he talked about, that stuff will continue to occur and it appears the language is going to indicate that on the 1st of February, 2016, the commission will be complete and have their report done. So that all of that will continue to occur between now and then. Wally, do you wanna add something to that before we get into that? Well the timing I think is important on the commission. The commission is scheduled to report out as General Moot said in February of 16 so we were aware that that was a proposed date in the NDA language from early in the process and so when we were putting together our implementation plan, we were very selective when it came to the timing associated with the transfer and inactivation of certain units. So our template calls for the inactivation of some units in the National Guard in particular in FY 16, those units have not been named but that's what when we talk about 48 aircraft in the NDA, the language as written, that's what the plan calls for. In addition of 48. You can move up to 48. We can move up to 48 between the 1st of October, 2015 and the 31st of March, 2016. That's what the language calls for. So we were mindful of that and that's baked into our plan and that's what the force structure files over in the G3 all reflect so in no way are we getting ahead of or contradicting anything that's currently written in the NDA. Okay, so on the FVL, we've just been through our long range investment strategy brief outs in staffing and we look at our 20 year plan and certainly FVL's part is one of our priorities in that 20 year plan. We're looking very closely at the joint multi-role tech demonstrator that is the S&T effort that has been awarded this past September. So as those two efforts go forward, we're gonna watch the tech demonstrator for exactly what kind of technologies come out of that and certainly that'll inform FVL but we're excited to be partnering with our joint partners, Socom, the Navy have certainly signed on along with the Army and we've been in touch with the joint staff with many of our aviation leaders on FVL. But the budget is the budget and I go back to my previous statements on the Army's getting smaller and the Army Aviation's not immune to that so if we're forced to keep additional structure that's not part of the program or procure additional aircraft that is not part of the program, that's impactful to our modernization and FVL, even though it's a priority along with the number of other priorities, the aviation portfolio is not, it's a very finite portfolio even though it's large, it's finite and so if we see additional demands come into that portfolio, something's gotta give. So it's a math problem and currently it's supportable, FVL but it assumes ARI, ARI allows us to modernize. And so here's the pressure that's on the entire budgetary process right now especially as it relates to the equipping pay. FY 11, the research development acquisition program had $30 billion in it, right now it has $20 billion. And out of that, the procurement from FY 11 had $20 billion and now it has $13 billion. So you can see the downward pressure on every program and on every portfolio within your equipping pay because remember there's seven divisions and the largest consumers of the dollars that go into the procurement of the EEPEG is aviation, ground combat vehicles and the communications or WNT capability sets. So those consume most of that, a huge chunk of that. So when there's pressures which includes FVL and everything within those programs decisions have to be made and you have to de-scope. Those are the programs I was talking about already about the 270 and the potential 137 in the future if sequestration hits, those are those programs that get impacted and it's a huge bill that you have to try to assume and absorb within your portfolio. Sorry, did you wanna add anything else, Molly? No sir, it's a great follow up, it is a priority. Questions from the audience? Hi, Jen Judson with Politico. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the spending bill that passed Congress and there's report language in there to study the impact of the TH-67's retirement. What are you doing to take a look at those impacts and have you made any headway in discussing things with Bell helicopter? You wanna start it off? Well, I mean, yeah, we're studying the language. Obviously this is not necessarily a large surprise to us the TH-67 aircraft as we divest of those. They're an old aircraft that have really been used very, very hardly in the training base. As you know, as John talked about, we do a lot of auto rotations to the ground and so these aircraft are probably older than their 20 years would show on them. But we are studying that, we owe that industrial base impact study to Congress, we plan on cooperating with that. And again, the whole aviation enterprise from the folks in the ASALT to G8 to G3 to the PM are mindful that we need to have a light hand on our industry partners because they provide us these great capabilities. So we'll continue to look at it. So the one point I'd make is that aviation restructure calls for the divestment of about 780 over 780 legacy systems. That includes OH-58, Alpha Charlie's, Delta's, and then of course your TH-67s. For the Alpha's and the Delta's, Alpha Charlie's and then the Delta's, which is the balance of those 780 aircraft, those aircraft will be divested and demilitarized and essentially have no commercial application. What we're talking about with the TH-67 is the remaining 181 aircraft in that fleet and what happens with those aircraft. And of course, as many of you know, there's a long process that the Department of Defense has to go to per guidance from both statute and DOD policy for the divestment process for those TH-67s. The last step of which is to put it in the hands of the entity within the Department of Defense and GSA and make it available for commercial sales, if it gets that far. Hi, Sidney Friedberg, Breaking Defense, although I'm gonna channel Gus Harget for a minute here because he doesn't have a guy up here so I talked to him before I came over. I mean, the folks in the guard community seem to have three big concerns about ARI particularly the Apaches, of course, which very emotional. One is the big policy issue of the RC should mirror the AC and the guard in particular should mirror the combat portions of the Army, not just CS and CSS. The second issue that they bring up is in your saying that ARI pays for itself, the transition and so forth, are you accounting for in the guard potential need for Mil-Con, for guard specific retraining and for possible personnel churn across states as missions change in units? Because they can't just order people to pack up and go to Fort Hood or wherever. They actually have a long and painful process of persuasion to restructure in many cases. And finally, the argument going back to what General Moose said about readiness, if the AC is so hit hard on readiness, if even the official plan without sequester is tiered readiness, is there such a huge advantage in readiness for an AC battalion versus one that remains in the guard? Okay, I'll take a crack at that. Unless you wanna jump in, sir. I'll jump in where I can. Yeah, so what we would say to the point about units mirroring one another in the active component and the reserve component, we say that our units should be and capability should be complimentary. Not every unit that we have in the active component is reflected in the reserve component. We don't have a Ranger regiment or Ranger battalions in the reserve component. We don't have FAD in the reserve component. We do have TASM Gs, which are maintenance support groups in the National Guard, which we don't have in the active component. And we have SNS battalions in the National Guard, which we do not have in the active component. So SNS, security and support battalions. Those are your LUH 72 battalions of which we have six in the National Guard. So we don't have that capability because we have a different mission. That principally serves a Homeland Defense function in the Homeland here. So I'm not sure we are in agreement that we have to look exactly. And the other piece of your question that we have to point out time and again is that it is absolutely incorrect to say that a UH-60 helicopter and a CH-47 helicopter are not combat aircraft. They are combat aircraft. And they are called upon to go into some of the most difficult and challenging and harrowing places in the world every day. And the bravest people, some of the bravest people we know are UH-60 drivers. And Wally can certainly attest to that fact having spent some time in special operations aviation. So I think that is to the first point. On the second point about the movement of people, personnel and mil-con, absolutely. We have accounted for the transition and training of people in the reserve component who will assume and fall in on the new structure. Now that is not to say everybody in the National Guard who flies aircraft like Pachy's today is going to get a transition. That's not gonna happen because we don't have a one for one exchange of aircraft going between a Pachy's and UH-60s in the National Guard. We are going to transition people that we require for the new structure. We said we had I think 750 or so active component warren officers who fly OH-58Ds and not every one of those individuals is going to be transitioned into another aircraft, an advanced aircraft. Only about 350 have been so designated. So we're getting smaller in the active component, the Army Reserve and the National Guard. I will point out a success story that we have in the reserve component and that has to do with the 8th of the 229th. 8th of the 229th is stationed at Fort Knox. It's a US Army Reserve Apache battalion who has moved out well in advance of the effective date of that unit's transition to an assault capability and to date they have already trained 50% of their UH-60 crew chiefs. So they have broken the code in the reserve component and they have many of the same concerns about folks coming from other places in order to fall in on that structure for training and readiness, et cetera. Now as far as the readiness question goes, whether or not we're gonna have tiered readiness, we hope that whatever low levels we have to assume in terms of preparedness and readiness, flying our op tempos, et cetera, we hope that's a temporary condition because we cannot afford to maintain 20 battalions of UH-64s at a low level of readiness. We have to maintain a collective capability which is after all why we made the argument to put that those aircraft in the active component in the first place. There's a couple things that UH-64s do that no other aircraft does. We shoot weapon systems, we team with unmanned platforms and we fly this thing called a night vision system which is unique to the UH-64 platform and requires a high degree of op tempo and training. So I hope that answered most of your questions, Sidney, if there's anything I missed, let me know. You'd like to chime in. I think that was spot on. I'd only add phenomenal protection to the pilots flying the aircraft. One in the back. Hi, my name is Andrea Peterson. I'm with the National Guard Association. Thank you for taking the time to be here today. I have a follow up to Sidney's question. ARI creates a situation where there are two types of aviation brigades, those with guns, those without. Given the likelihood of non-linear battlefields in the future, it's hard to imagine a situation where attack aviation would not be involved in the equation. If Army Guard brigades are capable of deploying with augmenting patch units, how do you see the two training together in peacetime operations? Would ACARBs be deployed to Army Guard training activities? Can I answer that number? Yes, sir. So I've had the opportunity as a COW Warrior Squadron Commander in the 82nd Airborne Division in 2004 to deploy with the first National Guard Division. I want to say, I think, I got this history right since the Korea War. It was the 42nd Infantry Division and I deployed as their CAV Squadron Commander. Worked for Major General Toledo and the Brigade Commander was Mark Burke. And we did the entire train up together. And matter of fact, we brought in the reserve. Apache Battalion was the 8th to the 229th and then we had another National Guard Assault Battalion or G-SAP Battalion out of New Jersey. So that made the aviation brigade and the entire division was made up of a multi-compo of active duty and National Guard. I have to assert and reserve. I have to assume, no, I know for a fact it would be done the same way, which is we all spent about 90 days training together up at Fort Drum, New York, multiple exercises before we deployed. And then we did some training together in Kuwait and then we fought together side by side for 11 months. Fast forward to 2010, deployed as a Brigade Commander and I didn't have the opportunity to train with all of the battalion commander, battalion commands that I worked with, but I had underneath the command three National Guard battalions, first the 140th out of California, first the 147th, first Mike Model battalion in the National Guard, phenomenal out of Wisconsin, Minnesota. And then, did I say that right? And then second to 285th out of Arizona. Again, we didn't get the opportunity to train together. We met mid stride, phenomenal relationship. I would hope to say, I mean, they would agree with me. We worked well together, did lots of combat together. I flew personal missions with at least first the 140th and with first the 147th. To answer your question, I don't think it would change from what we've done the last 12 years, which was train together, fight together side by side and continue that brotherhood, sisterhood into the future. Yeah, and I would make the point that our aviation brigade that we currently have in Kuwait today is a National Guard aviation brigade and working for that National Guard aviation brigade commander in Iraq is an active component AH-64 battalion. So, exactly like it's working so well today, downrange is how we expect it would work in the future. Hello, Doug Harpel, Defense Systems Journal. I'd like to ask for a little bit of clarification on the changes to the training fleet and the schedule associated with those changes. When does the new syllabus start for the new pilots? What of the lawsuit and why not compete this one? I'll give you a rundown on the status of where we are with the training fleet. That's, we've got about 12 aircraft LUH-72s scheduled to be at Fort Rucker by, I think the end of the quarter. We've already undertaken a training of our instructor pilots down at Fort Rucker who are currently TH-67 pilots, but now are proofing the LUH-72 program of instruction. So that's underway. We expect that we'll get to the point where we're capable of going through a program of instruction from start to finish in the summer of 2015. And then our first class is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of FY-16. So that's when things begin and it's not something that you can do very quickly. You can't turn over the entire fleet in a 12 month period. It's gonna take several years to do that so that by FY-18 we'll have our full compliment of about 187 LUH-72s on hand and everybody on the instructor pilot side trained and ready to carry the students through from start to finish about 1,000 students a year. So that's where we are on the training fleet if you wanna talk about the compete piece. Yeah, so we have to remember how this generated. So the initial plan was that we were not, the initial ARI plan was that we were not going to increase our LUH-72 fleet at all. And as part of a large compromise, the secretary of defense agreed to, because the Army National Guard came in and said, hey, these aircraft are in almost every state and territory and they're critical to our mission. And so the secretary of defense agreed to this compromise to add some additional aircraft to our requirement. And so initially, as we went into this plan, the plan always was to cascade additional or existing airframes into Fort Rucker. And so as we've gotten the top line add, I think that's why there was no compete and we felt again, as we went from seven fleets of aircraft to four and the LUH being the fourth fleet, we like the efficiencies and the savings that brings us to bring another aircraft in was just not economical, feasible or affordable. And so in the tradition that army aviation has routinely done with the UH-1, the Air Quoi and the OH-58 Alpha Charlie, we took existing on-hand aircraft that we owned and maintained already and we transitioned that into the training fleet. And so that's kind of the history there. And again, ongoing litigation, we're not sure exactly where that's gonna be so I don't know that I can comment on it. It's certainly above my level. Hi, I'm Marcus Weiss, everyone with Defense One. Several months ago, Frank Kendall asked for a business case on the ARI. Has that business case been delivered and can you share some specifics from it? Are we talking about the CAPE study? I don't think that's- Is CAPE analysis? A bunch of reporters in August, he said he's asked specifically for a business case on the ARI. CAPE did a comparison analysis of both the ARI plan and what the National Guard had proposed as a counter. When was it done? It was done throughout the summer and into the fall. Is it gonna be released publicly? Not very many CAPE analysis are. Well, it's a controversial issue and the Air Force, when they had the C-27 issue, they came and released a lot of documents after the fact to aid their arguments, so. I don't have the authority to- I'm not in the position to be able to answer if that's gonna be released or not. It's no way we're working on it. I hope we're not talking about two different things. Can I take your name and let's follow up with you on your specific question? Because I have been to OSD several times. I've never briefed personally, Mr. Kendall, but I've definitely briefed several members of his staff. I just wanna be sure I'm answering the right question and we're not talking about two different things. One, a business case analysis, and one is a analysis of a National Guard counter proposal by capability assessment program evaluation. So, I think that might be two different things, but we'll clarify it for you if you wanna see- So, personally, I haven't worked on anything other than what I just described, which was the comparison of both ARI and the National Guard proposal. The OSD, the OSD evaluation. Right, for Cape. For Cape did it. Okay, I think Sidney, do you have another question? Other questions out here? Yeah, go ahead. To be quick for a change. The additional 100 LUH 72, as they were called, that's money that's above BCA caps. And I believe that goes over some years. So, how is that money at stake if sequester returns? I imagine a lot of money is, but those aircraft are not yet in the bank, as it were. Well, it was an OSD top line ad as you referenced and it was, we procured a number and we'll procure a number in 14, 15 and 16 is the program. And again, many of them are already procured. So, of the OSD top line ads, of the 100, yes. A quick question about a slightly off topic, sort of off topic, about mostly for you, John, about the innovation initiative and how it impacts the aviation community specifically. Again, having, you're in the middle of something now, but as you also are required to think about the future with your other elements of the aviation enterprise. What types of aviation innovation are you, are you thinking about or would you like to be thinking about looking longer term? So I would like to spend more time thinking about innovation, but I and my friend here, we spend most of our time in a knife fight every day, looking for money, looking relatively short term and by relatively short term, of course, we're mean within the program and that's short term when we're talking about innovation. So we are definitely tied in with the aviation enterprise, the smart guys who run the show and that includes General Lundy, of course, down at the Aviation Center, Mr. Shepley down at Fort Eustace and many others. And I know that General Lundy's probably the best person to add, but based on our six pack conversations, I don't know if you wanna- DVE. Yeah, DVE is interesting. DVE is probably a big one that, and again, talk to any one or any aviator out there that's been deployed to combat. You just know that DVE, what it could provide for both, I'm sorry, the great visual environment. So basically it provides you the ability to see through whether it's weather or also dust. Dust is, it was traditionally what it was brought to forth to dialogue about because of the dust landings and the threat to the crews as you were going into with a Black Hawk to a combat situation landing to the X as a combat aircraft. And so a lot of times we had aircraft that would run into significant issues because of the dust. So DVE helps get through that, but also it can add another tier of capability which goes into working into a very complex environment with whether it's smoke, whether it's fog, whether it's some type of weather or whether it's dust. It's all of that and it's not just about landing, it's potentially about operating, fully operational in that environment, whether it's self-generated, your own smoke or operating an environment that has it, whether it, again, mega cities in the future, things like that. So to me, I think DVE, if you're really trying to be innovative, something that's out there, DVE. And it's about, yeah, so that's about secure. How do you secure an advantage that is not equalized across the board? It used to be nights and night vision systems came on board many years ago. That gave the US military in particular a decided advantage and we hope someday that our ability to overcome the degraded visual environment is gonna give us that asymmetric advantage down the road. The other thing, of course, I think is unmanned systems and what manned unmanned teaming is going to bring. We're on the very edge of proving out what some of that capability is and can be in combat environments. And of course, when we look forward to what happens beyond our gray eagle capability, beyond our shadow capability, that's certainly an area for growth and improvement. And we can capitalize on some great lessons learned. First of the 229th, 16th cab just came back from deployment down range with the Echo models. And we look forward to sitting down with Paul Mealy and a great team of warriors to figure out those lessons learned, what they learned, what we can do better across the board to improve that capability. But I mean, that's the cutting edge and the flying tigers, which we know we have some people with some history with that in the audience. And they did Phenom, so we look forward to sitting down and kind of, you know, what's the path forward and what are ways we can improve that collective team working together with that new capability that we have within the Echo model H64. I echo all those comments. We spent a lot of time on aircraft survivability equipment. I think that's a very high growth area. You know, we have to keep up. I think the threat out there is much cheaper to develop. And so we're constantly countering that. I think the ITEP is exciting and we're pleased with the pace of the ITEP and how it's looking. JMRTD, exciting S&T as well, and we're watching that, which again feeds into FVL, which goes into my last comments. We've done obviously training innovation too. You know, I mean, we are transitioning Fort Rocker into a dual engine glass cockpit trainer. And I think we're gonna see some really good things from that too. Everything from cost savings to better simulation to, you know, just again producing a better system operator leader, aviation leader. And I guess last thing I'd say is we are working on sustainment as well. I mean, we continue to try to chip away at what can we do to lower the cost of our per hour, because we're quite expensive. And so we're constantly grinding on that as well. So we do, we spend a lot of time on this because, you know, one, we gotta maintain our asymmetric advantage that has been Army aviation these past 13 years, but we're not gonna rest on our laurels. And I think we see that there's a lot of threats out there and a lot of capabilities that we wanna leverage to maintain it. So as we move forward with these three areas that we've talked about, we also have to take in, you know, I mean, how do we nest this, all of this with the Army operating concept? And you know, as the Army operating concept, you know, we as the Army will either be part of or lead a joint inter-organizational, multinational team kind of scalable, tolerable to be able to be expeditionary. So how do we innovate with our capabilities with Army aviation to ensure that it's both nested with this capability and with what the AOC of the Armory Operating Concept is going to take us into 2025? So we've gotta make sure that as we come out with these great ideas, it's also, we're nested within that capability. So I mean, these are great technical capabilities, but unless we can apply it on the battlefield of what we're doing in the future, whether it's, you know, natural disaster support or whether we're out there trying to combat Ebola or whether it's dealing with issues in Europe or also in Afghanistan. We wanna make sure it's all nested in moving forward to 2025. Let me ask the final, oh, sorry, we'll have the final question from one of our multinational partners. Sir, Lieutenant Colonel Tom Briggs from the British Embassy, just following on from a point you made there and with the recent events in Europe and the repositioning of some of your armored combat teams back to Europe, are you confident that under the restructuring initiative that you've got the right assets or enough assets within Europe or would? John, you wanna take the first part? I think we spent a lot of time talking to our ASCCs around the world, our Army Service Commands. Right, Component Commands. And sorry, with the acronym SUP here, we were talking about pegs earlier, so we have quite a record on that. So we stay closely tied and of course, the aviation restructure initiative is about adding capability, increasing capability, even though we're gonna have less structure because it is the best step. And we're gonna tie that to the idea that we need to become more expeditionary and we need to rotate forces on a regular basis. We did an exercise in Hawaii this past summer and we put a company out of Colorado in Hawaii for three months and that was a great example of how rotational forces can work. We haven't made any decisions, the Army hasn't made any decisions about stationing beyond what's already been announced and that includes the 159 deviation at Fort Campbell. Beyond that, it would be a little premature for me to talk about what it looks like anywhere else around the Army. But yes, we think we have it right and we have accounted for the requirements of our combat commanders and our ASCCs. But when you talk about, and I wanna go back to my former job as an aviation brigade commander in Korea, when you talk about rotational forces and what happened to second cab over in Korea, we had an ARS or OH-58D squadron rotate in and it was a game changer. They came trained ready. I wasn't doing the constant training as I got typically one year tours out of my air crew. These guys came for their nine month rotation and they were trained and ready and it took just a small amount of time to get them environmentally current in the area. But after that, it was a tremendous capability and so I think our partners who receive rotational forces will see that because we're able to train them here at CONUS and then rotate them in, they're gonna see a better product. That was my experience anyway. I mean, it's very similar to what we've been doing the last 12 years. I mean, I talked about the three National Guard Battalions that we had under the command during that 12 months in Iraq. It wasn't all at once. I mean, the Arizona guys were, the first ones in for about three months and then came in the Minnesota, Wisconsin and then after that was the California. But they arrived fully trained ready to hit the ground running. And so if you look at our force being a rotationally focused force but surge ready. So rotationally focused but surge ready. I mean, your ability to get that unit to see one before it goes into a rotational requirement hits the ground and you've got their focus for nine months, whatever, I won't put a month time on it but it's for a duration. And then they rip out with somebody else. I mean, these guys are ready to go and we've proved it the last 12 years. Okay, thank you all very much for taking the time to come out and we look forward to seeing you in the new year if not before, but I hope you all have happy holidays and thanks to all of you. Happy holidays, everybody. Thank you. panel.