 Welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I'm David Burto. I'm the Director of the International Security Program here at CSIS. And I'd like to extend a welcome also to our viewers on the web. I suspect that the climate this morning and conditions have increased the number of people who are on the web and decreased the number here. But it's really a privilege to see all of you in the room. I want to give you a reminder to take your electronic devices and silence them. I'll do the same with mine right now. And one other administrative item. There are restrooms down the hall. We'll have a break partway through. You can use them then. This is the latest in a series that we call the Military Strategy Forum. CSIS has been conducting these for quite a number of years now. And we thank Rolls Royce for their generous support in underwriting this series. They've been our sponsor from the start. And we're very grateful for their contribution. So thank you, Rolls Royce. The Military Strategy Forum has been a place to advance both public understanding and discourse on a whole host of important national security issues. And I think today we have an extended session for you in that light, if you will. First, our distinguished speaker and then we'll be followed by a panel of experts to expand on an important related topic. That topic, and you've seen copies of our report outside, is the Future of Ground Forces. Our speaker, of course, is the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps. Now, Ground Forces and the Future of Ground Forces is obviously about more than the Marine Corps. And the Marine Corps is about way more than the Future of Ground Forces, but the two are intertwined, as you'll see, as we wind our way forward this morning. Here's how we'll proceed. First, we'll have our speaker. Then we'll take questions from the floor. I'll come back up to the mic and recognize you in our normal procedures. Then we'll take a slight reconfiguration break, bring up our panel, which our Senior Fellow, Nate Friar, will lead. And he'll introduce the panel at that time. So I'll turn now to our featured guest, General Joseph Dunford, the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps. He is the fourth of our Vice Chiefs that we've had here in this series. Those of you who study Title X will know that the role of the Vice Chiefs is not broadly and well and precisely defined in Title X U.S. Code, which I think gives you a lot of maneuvering room. But historically, the services have relied upon the number two guy as the operator and the manager. But in today's environment, though, I think it's a way bigger job than that. Because it has to be taken in the much broader context. And those of you who have been paying attention to these issues know that we almost don't have a definition yet of how broad that context is going. So budgets and drawdowns and future strategy, it's a dynamic that is ill-defined but rapidly evolving. General Dunford, of course, is very well prepared for that task, having served in nearly every important Marine Corps position in his career with just enough joint duty assignments at various levels of the joint staff so that his Washington experience is enough that he can kind of know his way around here, but not completely contaminated, unlike politicians. Lisa may feel that way sometimes. Besides that, of course, more importantly from my perspective, he's a died-in-the-wool baseball fan, Boston Red Sox fan. And a particular brand of that baseball fan, which only is a Red Sox fan, if you will. There's a certain level of angst, I think, that comes with being a Red Sox fan that only those who grew up in the area really know. And how that qualifies you to be a Marine, I don't know. But the best Marines I've ever known were Red Sox fans. So with that, sir, I will offer the mic to you. Hey, thanks for the introduction. Actually, thanks for the job description. After 13 or 14 months in the job and not having clearly defined it, I'm glad to find out that no one knows actually what I'm supposed to be doing. That leaves me a lot of latitude. Hey, thanks for, and I'm only using this, I guess, because they're trying to broadcast it. Thanks for falling out this morning on a rainy Pearl Harbor Day. It's a great day to pause, to reflect on those who have sacrificed in the past. But it's also a pretty good day to look towards the future with some degree of humility, which is the first thought I had as I looked at the Washington Post earlier this morning and saw the date, 7 December, and said, you know, you're going to talk about the future security environment. And there's plenty of reminders, many in the last year, about why you ought to look at the future with some degree of humility. But Pearl Harbor Day is certainly one of those occasions that needs not much of an explanation in that regard. What I wanted to do during the presentation part, first get to your questions as quickly as we can. But rather than talk a lot about the conclusions that we've drawn as we've wrestled with some pretty tough decisions that you're all aware of over the past year, what I really wanted to do was provide a framework within which we have made recommendations and decisions, frankly, those decisions that fall within our purview, decisions over the past 12 months. And that way, when we have the question and answer period, you have the context within which we came to the conclusions that we did. So, next slide, please. Really what I'm going to try to do is I'm going to provide you an historical perspective on Drudowns, I think it's important. You know, generals always get accused of fighting the last war. I don't want you to think I'm looking backwards to determine what we're going to do in the future, I don't think it would be equally irresponsible to not be informed by the past. And there are some critical parts of history that I think ought to inform us today as we go through this, what I believe to be, another one of those historic growdowns in our nation's defense. I'll talk a little bit about the future security environment and, again, more so about the assumptions that we have made in the future security environment and why we have made those assumptions, and I'd share those with you again opening up for discussion. And then the last thing is to talk about where I believe the Marine Corps can make a unique contribution in that future security environment. The last thing I wanted to talk to you about was the framework within which we are going to deal with the challenges ahead. Clearly, I can't talk today about sequester. I don't know where we'll go with sequester. I can tell you where we are at the end of that $450 billion plus drill that we have just gone through. I can tell you the framework that we're using to look at the results of that $450 billion drill to see if we got it right, to see if we did it in balance. And I'm going to share that framework with you because it's exactly the same framework we're going to use in the days ahead as we start to make even more difficult decisions potentially in the wake of sequester. Next slide. Look, I'm not going to give you a class on the iconic battle of Iwo Jima, although 70 years after Pearl Harbor, I'm inclined to do that, but I won't do that. But I would tell you this, this is not the first drawdown in our nation's history. We all know that we've had significant drawdowns in our nation's defense after World War II, after Vietnam, after the Cold War. I have gone back and looked at the post-World War II period because I think it's very instructive. If you take a look at that picture in Iwo Jima on the occasion of that picture being taken, the United States Marine Corps was about 475,000 strong. And that was when the Secretary of Navy was standing aboard a ship with Holland Matt Smith overlooking the flag raising and Sir Bach and he goes, hey, Holland, that flag raising will guarantee the United States Marine Corps for another 500 years. Less than 12 months later, less than 12 months later as they were looking at the drawdown in World War II, the Marine Corps was viewed as redundant, it was reviewed as not relevant to the future security environment. And the individual on the right-hand side of the picture is an individual by the name of General Vandegryph. He was our commandant at the time. He had been the commanding general at Quarta Canal of the 1st Marine Division. And he gave what was known as the Bended Knee and on the hill he said, hey, look, at that point the Marine Corps had 170 years of history. He said, if in 170 years we have improving our relevance to the nation, we have improving our worth to the nation, then I'm not going to get on Bended Knee and say that the Marine Corps ought to continue on into the future. That debate continued on and by 1949, the United States Marine Corps was about 75,000 in head and south. In fact, on the eve of the Korean War it was even somewhat smaller. And of course similar things were going on in the United States and the United States. And that debate ended in 1950. Next slide, please. I think you all know historically, June 1950, 11 divisions from North Korean people's army come crashing across the 38th parallel into South Korea. The United States was engaged at a place it did not expect, at a time it did not expect. What I think is instructive about that is the very best strategists our nation has potentially ever produced to include George Marshall, oversaw the drawdown in the 1940s. And their conclusion was we wouldn't fight in Asia. And certainly you remember Dean Atchison and his assessment of Asia. But we assumed at that time we wouldn't fight in Asia, that we would fight in Europe. So we were unprepared to fight in Asia. And yet, less than 30 days after the North Korean people's army came across the 38th parallel, United States did in fact decide to go to war in Korea. I want to describe to you, you're certainly more than familiar with this historical example, but I want to describe to you the first engagement of U.S. forces in the Korean Peninsula because I think it's instructive. The first unit was led by an individual by the name of Lieutenant Colonel Brad Smith. Brad Smith had 500 soldiers in his task force, two under strength rifle companies. He was part of the Japanese occupation army. He was literally called to an air field in Japan. And his division commander and individual by the name of Dean said, I'd like you to take your task force. I'd like you to go to South Korea. Move as far north to Osan as you possibly can. Find a good piece of ground. Establish a defense. God bless you. Good luck. Wish there was more I could do for you. Brad Smith took his 500 soldiers. He went to South Korea. He found a good piece of ground. Less than 7 hours after making contact with the North Korean people's army. Less than 7 hours later, Brad Smith killed, wounded, or missing from his 500 man task force. What he found out when he was there was something we already knew and when we sent him there was that his 2.36 rocket launchers were unable to stop the North Korean tanks. We had 3.5 inch rocket launchers in the inventory but we hadn't taken the time to field those to Brad Smith. We didn't think we'd need those in the Pacific. On the right are the W's. You can march through the streets. All I would tell you from this historical example is that when we talk about getting it right or getting it wrong what we're talking about is our ability to send Americans in harm's way with the wear-a-thall to accomplish the mission with minimal loss of life or equipment and the consequences of not getting it right are things like Task Force Smith. This is not an academic exercise we're in the midst of. This is not theory. When we make decisions to put Americans in harm's way in the future we do so in a way that makes sense and in this particular case I think it's instructive because we didn't get it right. Next slide. In the wake of that particular crisis in 1950 Congress of course was absolutely horrified that we had sent young Americans in harm's way without the wear-a-thall to accomplish the mission and they held hearings and they said hey how could this possibly have happened? How could we possibly have been unprepared for Korea? This can't happen again. And at that particular time in hearings in 1951 and 1952 they said that we needed to have a force that's most ready when the nation is least ready. We need to have a force that's in place at a high-stated readiness that can buy time for decision-makers. We needed to have a force that could respond to the unexpected. And because we were a maritime nation in 1951 and 1952 the Congress decided that that force was in place in the United States Marines because United States Marines were equipped to come from the sea and of course it was in the wake of the Incheon landing in the demonstrations in World War II of what amphibious capabilities could do. I would just remind you that in 1949, not just in 1946 Omar Bradley and Lewis Johnson both said that amphibious operations were archaic and we would never do another amphibious operation again. Sixty years we felt pretty comfortable in that role. The Congress had foresight. We responded to countless crises and contingencies to include countless crises and contingencies from the sea. And I think all the things that Congress had said really came true. 2010 in August 2010 Secretary Gates went to San Francisco and he gave a speech. And in his speech he said, hey, I need the United States Marine Corps to tell me what you will do in the future after operation and during freedom. The nation doesn't need the Second Land Army. The nation doesn't need a Navy police force. What will you do? Now, if you think about our history for those who know Marines and maybe didn't understand why we have paranoia as a core competency that paranoia is a core competency you can see it clearly in 1945 and 1946 why we might be a little bit concerned. And when Secretary Gates gave that speech the blogosphere lit up and I can tell you the retired Marine community was very active during that period of time and even those of us on active duty looked pretty hard in the mirror to say, okay, how are we going to answer Secretary Gates's challenge? Next slide. We locked up a number of colonels down in Quantico, Virginia for 30, I guess 90, 120 days as the commandant likes to say if we put all these colonels in a room we put peaches under the door, we said, hey, don't come out until you have some good answers. But in reality every week we met at the three and four star level in the Marine Corps to check their progress and provide course of speed corrections along the way and we looked at the future security environment. I don't want you to look at that very busy slide that's not my slide, that's a joint staff slide all I really want you to do is look at the top right and say complex, dynamic and uncertain look at all the factors that may go into future crises and contingencies look at some of the global meta trends that are on there and my conclusion simply from this slide the world will remain a dangerous place even after we complete the drawdown in Iraq even after we come out of Afghanistan we are not going back to pre-911 this is not a return to a peacetime military the world will still have numerous conflicts in the future and frankly from my perspective the world will be as dangerous or more dangerous in the next decade as it has been over the past decade next slide we also took a look again this is all part of the analysis of the functions that we have made about the future in America we also took a look at where our economy is relying it's relying on what Mahan called the global commons or quite simply in plain English the highways that are the sea that move 95% in the commerce in the United States we also took a look at where the population centers were in the world and if I took that previous map from the joint staff and I overlaid it on this map what you would see is those urban areas and those sources of conflict next slide we also took a look again not wedded to history but informed by history at the numbers of amphibious operations that we had done since 1930 I mean since 1990 the numbers that have been done over the past decade and quite frankly we looked pretty closely at what was going on when Secretary Gates was given his speech almost to the day Secretary Gates was given his speech we had a marine expeditionary unit off the coast of Pakistan with the assistance disaster relief almost 400 nautical miles inland that same organization of 2000 rains was flying harriers off a big deck amphibious ship in support of rains underground in Afghanistan 1600 nautical miles to the west that same marine expeditionary unit was taken down to pirates on the MV Magellan star and at the very same time a number of NCOs from that same organization were in Jordan helping to prepare the Jordanians for operations in Afghanistan or for the same day as Secretary Gates subsequent to Secretary Gates's speech we provided relief in the typhoon in the Philippines we conducted additional assistance in Pakistan we responded in the wake of the tsunami in Japan and we responded to the crisis in Libya both with harriers and V-22s if you remember the F-15 Eagle pilot that was picked up by V-22 so all those things happened in the wake of Secretary Gates's speech from all that also then took a look and developed some assumptions we said back to that slide the joint staff we said the world is going to be uncertain it's going to be complex it's going to be a come as you are affair we're going to be dealing with a hybrid threat weak and failing states will continue to exist so all this again is just to inform our future assessment of the security environment next slide I'm not going to go through this slide in great detail if you looked at the CSIS report this is my own personal list I sat down on Sunday and I said okay what would cause our nation to put boots on the ground what would cause our nation to put boots on the ground and these are among the things that I believe would cause our nation to put boots on the ground and again the list in the CSIS report is very similar but frankly in much of the discussion that we're having today many of these things are not considered and yet when you look at history and you look at things that our national decision makers have decided to do these are very much a key piece to putting boots on the ground next slide this gets to what Marines uniquely contribute and from all of that when we talk about being forward deployed being forward engaged what Marines uniquely contribute comes from again that assessment of the future security environment and what the nation will need us to do I would tell you this on a phase zero type environment as a combatant commander is dealing Marines or a board ship they're able to engage with our potential allies and our allies they're able to grow capacity they're able to develop the trust in relationships that will provide us with short access in the future in the sticker price of that same force is crisis response and in the sticker price of that same force is contingency response and so this is kind of where we fall up but again what was most important is the logic that helped us get to this point next slide about the size of the Marine Corps many people have said the Marine Corps needs to return to the post 9-11 size I would just offer to you this the gross capacity the aggregate capacity of the United States Marine Corps in a 186,000 man Marine Corps which is the results of that force structure review that I described to you is actually the same as it was pre-9-11 but what we did was we added special operations forces we added cyber forces and most importantly we had 172,000 Marines we had more structure than we had Marines and what we've adjusted is demanding so we can maintain a high state of readiness our units weren't properly manned in 1972 and so that's a key part of what we're doing with 186,000 Marines next slide this is this is the what keeps me up at night slide and some of the things we'll talk about some we won't health of the force obviously concerns me after 10 years of war we've got post traumatic stress to deal with we've got TBI to deal with and that's one of the things that's high on a list of my inbox resetting the force we've got about a $3 billion bill of equipment coming out of Afghanistan and we need to address that reconstitution, that's modernization that's ensuring that we have the equipment and the training and the people to have the capabilities needed for the future and then maintaining a high quality force look at in much of the discussion and debate that's taking place we talk about solutions of compensation and those kinds of things what we don't talk about is the impact on the force and I would tell you that the foundation of our success over the past 10 years the foundation of our success has been the high quality people our ability to recruit and retain high quality people will determine our success in the future and so when we have conversations about compensation it needs to be done in that context and finally maintaining balance and I'd like to go to the next slide when we look at readiness of the force we look at several pillars these are from my perspective the pillars of readiness high quality people I talked about that current readiness that's operations and maintenance that's flight hours those are the things we typically associate with readiness but there's far more to it than that capabilities and capacities versus requirements and again this answers the question how do you keep from being hollow you maintain high quality people you maintain current readiness you also ensure that the capabilities and capacities you have are the anticipated requirements of our nation finally infrastructure sustainment I've got some personal experience in this I can remember in 1991 sitting in a meeting much like the meetings I chair now the marine requirements oversight committee and at the time they were making some difficult decisions it was the Cold War drawdown and they said hey where can we find some money and they said hey we can find some money in real property maintenance that's where we'll accept some risk and then when I went out to Camp Pendle in California in 2001 I got a good appreciation when we had Marines living in barracks with as best as carpets and lead pipes and frankly in conditions that would embarrass us and we fixed all that over the past decade but it's what happens when you get out of balance it's not just about current readiness it's about the future as well and then finally of course equipment modernization last slide and it opened up with questions you know every I guess every good executive has three to five priorities this slide lists my priorities that may give you some indication of my abilities as an executive I'll get many more than that but this is my inbox and I offer this and I'll leave this slide up there because this maybe will help to help shape the questions that you might want to have these are the issues we're grappling with as we go to the future so what I've hoped I've done just for a few minutes is again share with you our perspective on the future provide with you the assumptions that we made when we developed the force structure that is in the CSIS report talked a little bit about the unique role and then I think in a question and answer period we can kind of flesh that out so with that I'd be happy to take questions I'll tell you what I'll leave you with this mic most of you know the way we run the drill here you raise your hand I'll recognize you you wait for the microphone identify yourself and your affiliation and there's about a two second lag between the time you actually get the mic in your hand and the time our electronic signal picks up that microphone so it's not quite real time so recognize that if you will so let's start here we got a couple at the front table Josh you want to bring the mic up to those and when you're done you just pass the mic to him thank you very much for your remarks I'm Ted Stroop and I'm from the Association United States Army this is not a hostile question I wouldn't expect it to be would you please expand on your bullet on Pacific lay down sure absolutely the United States Marine Corps if you go back to that slide I showed you with the world and our economy the Pacific is clearly inextricably linked to our future and we're reliant both on the Pacific from an economic perspective as well as a diplomatic perspective many people have kind of talked about the economy as being our number one national security challenge I think we're all smart enough to know that the diplomatic instrument the military instrument and the economic instrument are inextricably linked and for that reason the Pacific is important we've historically had a marine expeditionary force in the Pacific the expectation is that we will maintain an expeditionary force in the Pacific in the future because of our commitments in Afghanistan, in Iraq over the past several years we have drawn down our presence in the Pacific to some degree and the intent is that we reconstitute that capability with the agreements with the Japanese over the past several years to reduce our presence on Okinawa proper and therefore we will expand our presence in other areas Guam and Australia are both locations where you can anticipate Marines to be in the future but again the footprint will be a complete marine expeditionary force disaggregated throughout the Pacific but importantly developing the capabilities to aggregate in the event of a contingency Josh if you bring it to the microphone there Thanks Thank you sir I'm Jinning Wei with Voice of Vietnamese Americans he asked the first part of my questions and the second part is would you explain your idea about alliance capabilities and commitments? Sure, I have a bullet on the slide that talks about assumptions that says alliance capabilities and commitment and my perspective on that is for people who are arguing that we ought to look to others to pick up more of the responsibilities and I think as we build our force inside the Marine Corps what we have taken a look at is those alliance capabilities and commitments and we don't think we ought to make some assumptions that some other people will be the ones to maintain freedom of the seas as an example we don't think some other people ought to be we ought to be relying on others to do things we certainly want to develop capabilities of our alliances and trust we think that we're uniquely capable as Marines in a forward deployed forward engaged context to be able to do that but at the same time when we start assuming making assumptions about what our nation will need we ought not to be reliant on others completely I think there's an integration that needs to take place there's a partnership that can take place but there's also a need not to make some assumptions that others are going to be in a better position to grow capabilities and capacities I think if you look at the trends of our alliances right now there's equal to or greater economic challenges and they're making more significant cuts in the defense capability and so as we decide what we need to do we need to do it in that context Gina Cavallaro from Marine Corps Times I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about the drawdown and what you expect in the coming days as you mentioned in your remark so what we can expect to see in terms of the size of the Marine Corps how much smaller it might get and what that will mean okay I think what I showed you is that after the first round the recommendation that we made to the Secretary of Defense is that Marine Corps would be at about 186,800 and so that's right now no decision has been made to go below that and that's what we have briefed the Secretary of Defense in order to get there we're going to have a very deliberate drawdown over the next several years we think we can drawdown about four or five thousand a year or we can do that in normal course events just by adjusting the meter of how many Marines we enlist and how many Marines we reenlist we will not break contracts with Marines who right now are currently staff sergeants with 14 or 15 years would still be allowed to retire, mages would still be allowed to retire those kinds of things so we're anticipating a very deliberate drawdown to get us to 186,800 given the budgetary pressures were we to go down below that the key thing is to go back to that balanced slide I talked about and make sure that whatever size Marine Corps we have what we're determined to do is ensure that that Marine Corps is capable and not hollow which means that we balance our overall force structure with the equipping strategy that we have with the operations and maintenance strategy that we have to keep a high level of training and also that manning slide is very important we're not going to have more structure than we can properly man we're going to man our units at 99% enlisted 95% officers in the 1990s we manned our units at 90% officers and 93% enlisted and that typically would net you somewhere in the mid 80s which caused that cyclic readiness that we had with number one units that perhaps weren't as ready as they needed to be on a moment's notice but as importantly in some units we lacked the decisive and engaged leadership that we should have had and we're going to make sure we mitigate that and that's why you see in our decisions to get to 186,800 you see that 6000 man buyback that our units maintained that high state of readiness so we bought that 10% back if you will did that get it your question John Gallinetti, Rolls Royce Act Mac, good to see you sir thanks for your remarks regarding the $450 or $450 billion over 10 years or thereabouts and you talked about manpower could you further expand upon what you expected we'll do the procurement accounts and acquisition one thing we did in the last Marine Corps in the department as a whole people is obviously one of the huge cost drivers in the Marine Corps it's 60% of our total obligation authority is dedicated towards manpower we spend about 12% our investment account if you would ask the United States Army today what do you need to maintain as a profile for investment to properly modernize they would tell you it's at about 20% so we're investing about 11 to 12 so this gets at my point about balance if you want to get to the bill to get to the level necessary to meet the bill that we were given in the $450 billion drill we very consciously did not touch procurement in fact on the contrary what we did was we took the money that we had available we drew down in capacity we drew down in capacity in order to maintain balance and what we did was we took a look at our entire inventory of equipment we mapped that back to capabilities and we realized this is a 10 year plus problem so we took two fifth fit ups plus we laid out all of our equipment we walked across those two fit ups we identified the period when that equipment would have to be modernized in order to maintain a high state of readiness and we went ahead and kind of made some investment decisions based on that so the real thing that's important to point out is that right now we're not to have any more cuts we just stay at the $450 billion plus level we stay at about 186,000 Marines we're confident having looked across the Marine Air Ground Task Force that we can maintain a proper modernization profile to stay ready over the next 12 or 15 years we're confident in that regard so we very much protected modernization because we have historically been underfunded if you looked at our modernization profile we've been at about the $2 billion level for ground for our ground procurement for probably two decades and so obviously with overseas contingency funding and the war but that has been specifically targeted towards requirements for Iraq and Afghanistan so with regard to modernization we protected that we believe we're in a position to address those things not necessarily those things we want but we're in a position to make sure that we're in a position to address the requirements of all those things that we need then we'll go to the back table Sir, you know recently you took part in a JLTV industry day it's very interesting the industry the way that went with the chief staff of the army there also I know in the past the command line has also made mention of the lessons you learned from the EFV and that procurement I'd like to find out from you how do you felt that event went and what are you trying to do and where you're trying to go with the cooperation between industry and the service Thanks dude, that's a great question look my perspective in the old days was that what you did was the requirements guys develop requirements and it looked like two New York City phone books so here's my requirements and they give them to the acquisition guys and then for five or seven years the acquisition guys work diligently to try to get something that meets the requirements that were developed and then they show it the senior leadership and senior leadership steps back in horror and says what is that that's not what I want they say well that's what you asked for and in our big lesson learned as we've looked at that is that we believe particularly in major procurement programs that senior leadership needs to be decisively engaged throughout the cycle of the program we need to understand what the requirements cost we need to understand where the trade space is we need to be in a position to make decisions that balance the operation requirement that we have in our ability to afford it and so that's what the JLTV day industry was all about is that I want to know personally to help support the commonest decision making I want to know personally what's driving the cost of that vehicle and I will be honest with you I'm pretty proud of the work that we have done you know that vehicle if you read some articles was at 650,000-800,000 we're down to 238,000-240,000 right now for that vehicle we have a viable program in a joint like tactical vehicle and we've eliminated every single requirement that wasn't absolutely necessary to both services and so what we really want to do with the JLTV is used that as a vehicle to change the culture of acquisitions and if not a specific process is as well one of the other things we're doing is working on the testing regime and taking a look and saying hey is how we're testing right now make absolute sense and we're working very closely with OSD to take a look at that but we want to know what is it that drives the cost of these programs what is it that causes the time which is associated with the cost what is it that causes the time to stretch out so much and make sure we're in a position to fix that so I can tell you if you look at the F-35 F-35B in particular the program manager for the F-35B you know might be Admiral Van Lett but it's General Amos and I can tell you that every pound that's added to that aircraft he's sitting down asking where you're going to find that pound he's meeting in fact this morning he's meeting with the leadership of the F-35 team and we do that no less than twice a month soup to nuts the entire program every day on a dashboard he gets an update on that particular program and we're doing that with the joint like tactical vehicle as well and the other key program obviously is our amphibious combat vehicle but more properly the requirement that we have for operational and tactical ship to shore mobility that's kind of what we're grinding on through right now and I can tell you what you can take from the industry day at JLTV is that's the way we're going to be doing business in the future we believe that's the way we have to do business in the future in order to get the right result in the backside at the end of the day we've got limited resources every dollar has to count to make sure we get Marines and sailors the capabilities that they need to have and the only way we're going to make sure that happens is by using the model that I think we're using in the JLTV right now and again using that model to institutionalize some changes in behavior inside the department I mean this is not acquisition reform in theory we're not going to ask for six studies to be done we're just going to engage in the process and make sure that again it meets the time and the cost requirements that we've laid out and as importantly the operational requirements we'll take a couple more actually Otto if you can wait I'll let Frank take a question here from the front table Good morning general I'm Frank Sullivan at the Stena Center for Public Service I just wanted to ask you to expand a little bit about the Marines ideas about moving back to sea particularly the third and fifth things on your view graph up there the Navy's fleet is gradually getting smaller and I think it's expected to continue to get smaller and I just kind of wondered was Marines only on amphibious ships at the present time except for the carrier squadrons how do you see the Navy how do you see the Marines moving back to the Navy ships at sea you know first of all it's true that it's true that our priority over the last decade has been in Iraq and Afghanistan that's a fact we've never completely walked away from the sea throughout that entire time I think everybody here knows we've continued to source Marine Expeditionary Units what we have not done to the same degree is maintain that Marine Expeditionary Brigade level and above capability and focus our training on that nor have we been working with our Navy counterparts to do that so the question really is two fold number one is how do we become more engaged in things amphibious and we changed our organizational construct to ensure that we'll do that and we'll do that in the next three quarters that'll be partnered with their Navy counterparts on the pier to make sure that we're thinking about how we're going to fight in the 21st century and I won't go into great detail now because I know we're pressed for time but we've done that conceptually we've got fewer ships in the inventory than we need we haven't agreed upon fiscally constrained requirement of 33 we won't get there for about four or five more years so in the interim I think we need to take what we have use that to the best of our ability effectively on how to use other platforms that may be out there and I would give an example of the U.S. Stockholm which is one of our maritime preposition ships in the Pacific we put a flight deck on that ship we put some breathing quarters in there and we will use that for enhanced maritime interdiction operations as well as phase zero shaping operations in the Pacific as we disaggregate in the Pacific we're going to have to take a look at things like joint high speed vessels and other craft that will allow us to meet our operational requirements given the constraints that we know we're going to exist again this is a 10-year problem we already we are we don't have to wait to see what we're going to have in the future we already kind of can lay that out and we know we're going to what we're going to have in the future we know it's going to be not enough to meet our overall operation requirements and so what we've got to do is kind of use our brain housing group to think through different ways of using the inventory that's available right now to make up for that shortfall and amphibious ships that I'm very encouraged about is Navy's leadership and recognition of the readiness challenges that we have had and I think both Admiral John Harvey down in Norfolk as well as Admiral Green in DC have taken that on as a matter of priority to make sure that as we go through this drawdown we're attentive to the maintenance and the readiness requirements of the fleet I know they have both paid some personal attention to that and we are starting to see some results in that regard. I'll take a question from Otto. Sir to the point you made one you talked about that figure I think three billion dollars that's a little lower than I thought it was before but at a forum here a couple weeks ago Gordon Adams said that the ground forces have been resetting all along using OCO money I'd like to answer that and the other one on your modernization you'll just tick off your priorities on what the core looked at obviously aviation is one of your but what are your key modernization priorities. Sure let me let me put the reset in context first we have not rotated equipment back and forth in Afghanistan the equipment has remained we've had a principal in that in rotation construct but the equipment has remained as we move units back and forth and that's saved an unbelievable amount of money in time in terms of strategic lift that equipment when it comes out of Afghanistan is going to have to reset the bill is lower than one you've seen in the past I mean the good news is at one point it was 12 billion dollars we have done some that as we go that three billion dollar figure that I gave you really reflects the requirements of the equipment that's on the ground in Afghanistan and what we will need in the 24 months to 36 months after we come out of Afghanistan to get that equipment back to the condition it needs to be in for us to be ready does that answer the first that answer the first part of your question okay and with regard to our procurement priorities you know the F-35B is a critical priority but I would like to bring tactical aviation we have we have not bought airplanes in a decade we absolutely believe in the a in the marine air ground task force it's a critical capability for that for deployed force and so addressing our type of aviation requirements writ large the F-35 specifically is a priority meeting our our tactical and operational ship to shore mobility requirements is also a priority and then the ground type of vehicle fleet writ large but the joint type like tactical vehicle in the near term is a priority with the amphibious combat vehicle replacement to be the second be the second in terms of time but the number one priority in terms of importance your three your helicopter programs and if you want to add in osprey your three rotary wing programs where do they fit into your into your priorities question yeah I was talking about price of future the v-22 as you know is is 789 combat deployments right now and continue to be fed in and we're about I guess probably a little over halfway through the by with the v-22 so we feel we feel like we're in pretty good shape replacing our medium lift the Yankee and Zulu are also out there that's the Cobra and Huey replacement those are both out there in the fleet performing extraordinarily well and they're going to be a game changer particularly for our marine expedition units so we feel pretty good about that in the 53 kilo program is is is there it's healthy in in it's certainly a priority replace the aircraft but again I gave you the top three priorities I didn't give you the entire inventory of things that we need to do to maintain modernization so all those programs are important to us what I gave you was the tactical aviation the the strategic and operational lift from the sea and in our ground tactical vehicle fleet is being the top three we're going to take one more from the table here and then I'm going to exercise the host prerogative to ask the final question Bill shore of BAE system sir we've mentioned F-35 we've mentioned JLTV I'd like to know what your investment is going to be in the individual marine specifically lightning the load yeah no absolutely I mean that's that that I'm in the what we describe as the V-ring in that regard target is on my chest here from the common it's planning guidance to lighten the load I mean we we need to do that it's both an individual marine perspective issue as well as for the marine air ground task force as a whole I'll give you an example the CH-46 weighs about 16,000 pounds V-22 weighs about 29,000 pounds the Humvee weighed about 7,000 pounds you know MRAP stay 20 30,000 40,000 pounds in my career I think it was about 2005 was the very first time we waited out a ship was the USS Pelllew deploying from the west coast before we actually squared and cubed it out we usually refer to five fingerprints of lift one of which was not weight weight is what I describe now as a six fingerprint of lift it's a weight moment of issue for ships and it's a significant challenge so reducing the footprint of the MAGTF to make sure that we're heavy enough to carry today when we get to a crisis of contingency but light enough to get there is a broad framework and that's a critical piece and we'll work with industry to be able to do that I can tell you that weight is an independent variable for every piece of gear that we buy we put it through what the industry refers to as the five micron filter as we're buying a piece of gear to make sure that we've addressed weight as an issue so you can be sure from an industry perspective everything we buy we're going to be asking how much does it weigh how much does it weigh and and what we're doing is again two things focusing on the weight of the individual marine which right now you know just every marine carries 83 pounds and then depending on what his particular mission is it's additive to 83 pounds but 83 pounds right now is a base for our individual marines which is obviously too much and so we're working very hard to try to do that but as you know the challenge is meeting the protection requirements and at the same time reducing the load and that's a tough challenge that we're working through but we're you know again every decision that we make every investment decision we make both with regard to individual gear or overall equipment for the MAGTF is going to be done in that context let me take the opportunity to ask a question based upon your comments you mentioned you arrived at Pendleton and discovered the consequences of a hiatus if you will in real property maintenance and of course you were not the only one to discover that there's an equally pervasive problem across much of our infrastructure basing both here in the U.S. and around the world and that's the problem of encroachment and of course Pendleton's a clear example of that you look at how California has grown around Camp Pendleton it puts severe constraints over operational capability there same thing at Marine Corps Air Station you know Miramar as an example there are few places left where we haven't encroached yet but I don't hear much talk in the department about how to deal with that except on a small case by case basis you know kind of one endangered species at a time how does that factor into your planning and what do you do about that going forward? Sure one of the things we did without boring you with organizational construct issues but we just established Marine Installations Command typically it's been a very decentralized effort we've had regional approach to it east coast, west coast, overseas we've got a centralized marine installations command now as a result of the four structure review so we can actually take an institutional approach to all those issues that affect our bases and stations not the least of which is training opportunities and encroachment that you referred to in many ways you know you've got to have an institutional vision for the training areas that are required and so we've laid that out and then we delegate that to our subordinate commanders to go out here and make sure that we realize that on a routine basis. What we have found is very successful in California and that is the partnership with the one star headquarters at Camp Pendulum which has been the regional director the state and the local governments as well as the federal government and again I think much of that is first clearly articulating what you need for training areas and we've done that we've got a master plan now for the 21st century that tells us what we need to have a ground task force in the future once we have that we then have to identify you know where we are relative to where we need to be over the next several years and a campaign plan to implement that but there is no silver bullet to things like encroachment I mean you mentioned it's very much a decentralized issue it is in many ways in the sense that it's got to be solved one issue at a time but it's got to be solved one issue at a time in the context of your broader vision and that's that's where we are I think we have a couple more questions here in the front and if anybody else has got one I've got a couple sir, thank you for the briefing George Nuckelson from Strattcorp you talked about enhancing capabilities last month on Capitol Hill the commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command was Admiral McRaden was asked by Duncan Hunter what do you see as the role of the future for the LCS of supporting and he couldn't answer it last month also down at Quantico Mr. Shockley the senior acquisition executive for the Navy made the point that we've got to look at looking at platforms like the LCS for emerging mission areas i.e. support the Marines support CSARV particularly now that you've gone down the direction of the Navy I'm not downsizing to one LCS but particularly the larger one that could put two Blackhawks on the deck two in the hangar of DTOS what are the Marines doing at looking at using the LCS we had a discussion at the last Navy Marine Corps fighter about the module again there's modules that are mostly available but we haven't invested in those particular modules right now and so we identified to the Navy leadership the need to look at the Marine module for the LCS and that's all competing now as we go through the choices that have to be made in the coming days but the Marine module is one we're looking at and it really is related to Mr. Sullivan's question there in terms of looking at the entire capability that's available to us from a naval perspective and making sure we're using that to the maximum extent possible let's do one final question here on the on the right Sir, Colin Foussa from the French Air Force sorry for the voice first on behalf of the of the French Chief of Staff and the French Chief of Staff of the Air Force I'd like to assure you that on this particular day the thoughts and prayers of the French people in the military are with the US friends and codeparts the Marine Corps is really important for the French and the British Armed Forces as they are very comparable in size and capacities although still a little bit less than what you can provide so that's why we have actually two questions really related coming back on what you said first about the access capacity and the ensured access that you were talking about previously in your slides I'd like to know if the Marine Corps is preparing the future to be able to provide this ensured access in a very contested environment and particularly in the Pacific where we know that little amphibious ships and ships actually will be probably under threat with ballistic missiles and all these kind of things that will deny us the ability to get closer to the shores that's one thing for our Air Force as well and our Navy in the French Air Force and related to that we are talking about expeditionary we've seen in the last decade or so that the US were probably more deployable than expeditionary and I'm sure you see the difference in those terms it is important for us to understand exactly what expeditionary means in terms of readiness but as well in terms of capacity to have the smaller footprint as possible to go there, do the mission and come back as soon as possible rather than staying there and being stuck on the ground for years or decades sure with regard to the first question operating in an anti-access area denial environment clearly that's a tactical challenge I would offer that's not the first time in history we've had that tactical challenge and I'm a Kazi pilot was something that was designed to keep us from having access to an area or attack the mobility within an area it's a tactical issue, we need a concept to deal with that we absolutely believe that in our inventory we need to have the capability to provide the nation with a short access we can't rely from either political or physical perspective on the access that we would need to move the joint force into that wide range of missions we can't necessarily rely on political access or the physical access to do that so ports, airfields, access for the joint force, enabling the joint force to go where we need to go to accomplish the mission is a critical piece and so yes we believe we're going to do that in a contested area it's not a World War II come across the beach of Tarawa scenario that we're talking about, we're talking about providing difficult choices for the enemy, we think that having a short access capability is a cost imposing issue for the enemy, they've got to deal with that from a resource investment perspective, it's an operational challenge for the enemy because they've got to figure out how to deal with it and at the end of the day this is about putting the enemy on a horns of a dilemma and being at the time and place of your choosing and creating tactical and operational challenges for the enemy so that you can assure yourself access into an area that's clearly not just a Marine Corps problem it's a joint force problem and I think you've probably heard about the concept and that's a concept subordinate to the overall joint operational access concept that will help us to assure access into an area so that the in order to of course of access is to put boots on the ground with regard to the second issue with expeditionary since we're pretty short on time I would just tell you this I mean from our perspective it's the ability to operate in a steer environment without reliance on host nation infrastructure so when you come again go back to that word of come as you are and you can provide yourself with the fuel, the water, the chow necessary to accomplish the ammunition necessary to accomplish the mission for a period of time and our units are designed to do that that's the strength of the sea base is the ability not to be reliant on a host nation's infrastructure when accomplishing the mission General Dunford I want to on behalf of John Hamry our CEO and CSIS I want to thank you very much for being here with us this morning I want to thank you for sharing your comments it's many of us believe that in fact we haven't seen the bottom yet of budget reductions and that notwithstanding the position that the Defense Department has taken that this is as far as we can cut we all know that the pressures will remain for a long time it's gratifying to know that we're still going to have a balanced Marine Corps when that comes around in a previous drawdown one of your predecessors told me in response to a plan for reducing the amount of ammunition that the Marines had to carry when they were deploying he said well how are you going to accommodate that we just won't miss as often so with that kind of an attitude if you will I think we can look forward to a good balanced future I want to thank again Rolls Royce for their sponsorship for this forum we're going to take a short reconfiguration break but before that please join me in a round of applause for General Dunford thank you sir we just bought a five minute break in place and then if you could return to your seats shortly thereafter we'd appreciate it thank you that's good ladies and gentlemen if you could return to your seats and if I could have the panelists report up here to the stage I would be very grateful thank you ladies and gentlemen we're about to begin if you could take your seats good morning everyone thanks again for joining us my name is Nate Fryer I'm a senior fellow here at CSIS as well as a visiting researcher at the US Army War Colleges peacekeeping and stability operations institute I'd like to take another opportunity to thank General Dunford for his today I think they said our discussion for this morning up very well what we decided to do we've had General Dunford on the schedule for quite some time and we decided it would be a perfect opportunity for yet another conversation about the future of US ground forces going forward in the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this is as you may or may not know this is the second of two panels we've had on this subject the first was the release the release event we had for the report US ground forces through 2020 that was released on October 13th and the panel as well was on October 13th we think this is an exceedingly important topic especially given the increasing pressure to limit future defense spending limit the appetite within the United States national security community for extended foreign commitments and also extend advantages US defense advantages in ARC space and cyber capabilities going forward I'm not going to monopolize the time up here and do a lot of setup but let me just do just identify a few points of context as DOD goes forward and considers its strategic choices to borrow a term of art from the previous one of our previous secretaries of defense it faces a number of known knowns and a number of known unknowns the known knowns are that two wars are ending China is rising as a regional and potentially global power Iran is attempting to exert its influence in its region by expanding its capabilities defense resources are declining or at least plateauing and allied capabilities are certainly declining in real terms DOD also faces a number of known unknowns among them are the trajectory of the called Arab Spring the stability of a range of key strategic states around the world the security of weapons of mass destruction arsenals in a number of states and assured access to and use of the global commons, key geography and important strategic infrastructure both the known knowns and the known unknowns have implications for ground forces that is army marine and special operations forces I've asked the panel to consider three questions in this context first, how do current trends in defense strategy comport to their view of the strategic environment second, what are the key ground force priorities given their views and finally where can the United States accept increased risk and ground force capabilities going forward we're joined by a very distinguished panel from left to right Lieutenant General Robert Blackman who completed a distinguished career in the United States Marine Corps a 37 year distinguished career in the United States Marine Corps during which he held senior positions as U.S. Marine Corps Forces Command Commander U.S. Marine Corps Forces Europe Commander U.S. Marine Corps Forces South Commander and U.S. Fleet Marine Forces Europe Commander next to General Blackman is Mr. Timothy Bonds Tim Bonds is Vice President Army Research Division the Arroyo Center as many of you are probably aware of and Mr. Bonds has served in a variety of research and management roles since joining RAND in 1993 to Mr. Bonds left is Mr. Thomas Donnelly many of you are familiar with Tom's work Tom is a Defense and Security Policy Analyst and is Director of the American Enterprise Institute Center for Defense Studies he's co-author with Frederick Kagan of Lessons for a Long War and Ground Truth the Future of U.S. Lampar which came out in 2008 and finally to Tom's left is Mr. Frank Hoffman Frank serves at the National Defense University as a Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for National Security Studies and he directs the NDU Press he's lectured extensively and published over 100 articles as well as a book Decisive Force the New American Way of War so please would you with me welcome our panelists today Good morning and thank you for having me I really have five or so points that I'd like to make that pertain to the questions that have been asked and first let me say that the Ground Forces study that was just referenced I think is superb I mean through the years as was said I spent 37 years on active duty toward the end of that I was forced in some instances to read studies like that but the reality is that's perhaps the best piece of work along those lines that I've ever had the opportunity to read I mean some of them as the kids say it's more apt and obvious but I thought there was a tremendous amount of thought and experience that went into that study the study mentions that America's conception of its natural advantage is the ability to effectively leverage advanced technology to its benefit I'm sure that the study captured that correctly but I think it is absolutely wrong I think America's advantage in warfare are American servicemen and service women they are intelligent they are well led, they are well trained they're imaginative, they're a product of our democracy they're able to make decisions when decisions need to be made and not only are they good leaders when they need to lead but they're good followers when they need to follow and in my opinion that's the extraordinary advantage that America has and in particular as that pertains to ground forces ground forces are kind of the ultimate multi role weapon system we talk about the F-16 that's a wonderful multi role platform or the Arleigh Burke destroyer but those multi roles are in the upper ends of warfare ground forces as I said are the ultimate multi role weapon system you can re-estat ground forces from the lowest end of the spectrum of warfare to the very highest very, very quickly almost overnight a little tweak in training perhaps some changes in equipment and I think the inherent flexibility that ground forces have in terms of responding and adapting very quickly make them uniquely important to our national defense ground forces address two of the most powerful emotions that people have and we don't talk about it much fear and hope it's very difficult to understand how powerful those emotions are ground forces work with people eye to eye they generate fear think about what makes you afraid think about I mean really and truly what are you afraid of I don't mean falling down and breaking your leg or getting in an automobile accident but what are you really afraid of what are you afraid of when you're walking through a parking garage at night or you read about in the newspaper some kind of a home break in or a car jacking you're afraid of somebody and ground forces are that somebody somebody that can make eye contact with the people and generate that emotion of fear but they can also generate that emotion of hope platforms don't generate hope people do and that to me is the great strength of ground forces is their ability to interact with people and give them hope a few years ago I led the US effort for tsunami relief in the Indian Ocean Basin and it was the first time that I really began to understand that emotion of hope and on the other side hopelessness and I am here to tell you in Indonesia in particular in Banda Ace we arrived on an absolutely hopeless situation and there's no piece of steel no computer chip that can generate hope in people other people generate hope through their actions and their demeanor and that's what ground forces bring last another statement that was made in the study was many believe the era of large scale conventional wars has passed I mean clearly you know how do you know where does that come from you know since the mid 1950s we've been saying that the problem in Korea was going to be over in 10 years and we have I mean every year it's 10 more years and it's still there today so I guess if you keep your fingers crossed in 2021 2022 will be good there I think what those people are really talking about is it's wishful thinking because what they really want is immaculate warfare they don't want men and women to engage men and women face to face and I think I think you have to understand that in order to be successful in warfare you have to be a part of the operating environment that you have to be woven into the operating environment you have to be integral to what's happening on the ground and obviously only ground forces can do that but I think the whole concept of immaculate warfare is really our collective concern with casualties I think we want to avoid casualties at all costs I think we've backed into this idea of technology in immaculate warfare because of our fear of casualties and I think Congress leads that charge in terms of avoiding casualties one of the most remarkable things I've seen in my lifetime is the procurement of the MRAP I mean it is absolutely a remarkable effort no other piece of hardware or weapon system that I could even dream of would fit into that category why? because it was protecting American lives it was avoiding casualties and it did it saved an extraordinary number of lives and still does today but pick another piece of hardware and get the same support from Congress and the same fast track through the system it doesn't exist and so I think we have to recognize that in warfare if we're going to be successful unfortunately there are going to be some casualties and you can't make it any other way and regrettably the ground forces bear the brunt of those casualties always have and always will and I think we just need to recognize that that can't be avoided that's all I have thanks good morning my name is Tim Bonds I'm delighted to be here with you today thanks for this opportunity to speak I would like to follow on with some of General Blackman's comments I'm in broad agreement with them and I think I'd like to touch on some of them as I go forward let me remind the audience where the three questions were we were asked to address the first was how well do trends in defense strategy comport with future threats in associated demands for forces to do and I think General Blackman touched on many of those things number three, how much ground capability is enough that is, where and in what ways should we be willing to assume ground force risk and again I think General Blackman's comments helped to shape that let me take these questions in turn on the first, how well do trends in defense strategy comport with future threats I think that's unclear discussions of strategy seem to be divided between two different things two different opposing approaches if you will on one hand, balance approaches to a range of important challenges and threats such as those approaches described in the national security strategy the QDR report in the national military strategy and on the other hand one dimensional approaches which tend to focus on one challenge or threat and often prescribe a narrow range of military capabilities to deal with that challenge or threat not only is the balance approach better it's essential to our security a balance approach addresses our security priorities and obligations including among the documents I mentioned the defense of the U.S. homeland military support to civil authorities maintaining access to key regions routes and resources defeating criminal insurgent and terrorist networks countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction most especially nuclear weapons defending U.S. allies friends and interests from attack including deterring threats with nuclear weapons and deterring and defeating conventional attack and finally securing important commons and domains including cyberspace I couldn't write quite as quickly as general Dunford was going through his slides but I saw those same themes on at least one of his slides second point given these security priorities what should we design ground forces to do first of all the U.S. conducts joint operations and joint operations as practiced by U.S. our team operations so I think the right question is how should we design ground forces what should we be designing them to do as part of that team the answer should be that ground forces contributed to a comprehensive set of capabilities hedges and options to help joint commanders achieve security objectives I think one of the things that general Blackman pointed out in his comments is that there really is a complementarity between the things you can do with forces on the ground Army Marines and special operators they're difficult to do strictly when one thinks about warfare in terms of platforms or concepts built around them so let me use the missions I described in a moment to go to frame some of these examples for the defense of the U.S. homeland and military support to civil authorities an important capability for example would be a specialized capability like a suburney that's chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive consequent management response forces those are the sea smurfs that have been talked about in the QDR and other places it's important to ensure that those specialized capabilities like the sea smurf exist and are ready to prevent or mitigate harms it's also crucial to maintain capacity and general purpose active and reserve component forces as general Blackman mentioned these really are your full spectrum very adaptable assets that will help you in the case of defending the U.S. homeland or supporting civil authorities to provide the medical communications, logistical and other kinds of support that the nation's responders are going to need the next mission, maintaining access to key regions routes and resources here ground forces really expand the options of joint force commanders to counter or defeat anti-access forces such as high quality air defenses any ship missiles and other systems an analogy might be made to the combined special operations, air operations efforts to find and kill scuds during OIF future U.S. operations could expand on this concept perhaps by combining the full range of potential airborne and air mobile capabilities with advanced air and long range missile fires more on those points in a bit there is a key point worth emphasizing this in other missions adversary militaries might be able to match one or more dimensions of U.S. capabilities in a given set of circumstances however few nations will be able to match the combination of cyber land, air, sea and space capabilities that the U.S. can muster so let me coin a term here we can talk about air land battle we can talk about air sea battle those are useful constructs but I really think that the nation should be talking about class capabilities and concepts and that is cyber, land, air, sea and space it's really the combination of these things that the nation should be pursuing I think it offers a complimentary set of capabilities that no other nation can match and together I think it really maximizes the kind of effectiveness that our military can offer next mission defeat criminal and search and terrorist networks, state TIF Horn of Africa might be an example of this joint interagency task force tasked with conducting counter-terrops while other ground forces, marine army, provide enablers and quick response forces. Here's a counter factual for you. What would these capabilities have been useful, would these capabilities have been useful if they had been available to secure some of the advanced weapons like manpads, man-portable air defenses that were lost in Libya reports now that up to 20,000 of these weapons may have been lost reports down the press of some of them having made their way to Egypt and the authorities that picked up some. Some others appeared to have gotten a little further if we had had some of these capabilities available in that operation could we have secured some of those weapons before we see them coming onto our shores or the shores of our allies. For countering the proliferation of VWMD most especially nuclear weapons, we have one recent example planning a mission of this type that was a 75th exploitation task force that was hastily organized and tasked with inspecting a number of sites on our rock during the combat phase of OIF there were some difficulties with that mission the task took hundreds of troops but averaged to reach the sites that were known at the time that were suspected of having these important weapons were hampered by the lack of organic reconnaissance transportation force protection the 75th exploitation task force had with them also they had insufficient numbers of troops to secure sites once they had arrived at them or to conduct comprehensive searches. I'll try to move quickly um seizing, searching and securing suspected sites in a field north Korea as a different case might require very large ground force. It would have to be part of a larger campaign that would include security at ports, controlling movements on roads force protection, etc. It could require tens to hundreds of thousands of troops depending upon desired timelines the opposition encountered and the concurrent humanitarian operations are almost certain it would be taking place some of these same capabilities would be useful in defending US allies, friends and interests from attack a minimalist approach would be to provide enablers for combined operations including reconnaissance, intelligence and targeting communications, logistics theater, air and missile defense, etc a more extensive approach would be tens of hundreds of thousands of troops depending on the threat and allied capabilities and it's useful to remember that in many cases the allies actually are decreasing their ground capabilities even more quickly than we are contemplating doing so ourselves Lastly, securing important commons and domains such as cyberspace the Army has already made a large commitment here as well, US Army cyber or second Army comprises 21,000 military and civilian personnel for this mission and I might also mention that the Army space, national missile defense theater and missile defense forces comprises significant number of forces also Finally, I'll turn to your third question How much ground capable is enough? Where and in what ways should we be able to assume some ground risk? I'll give you a few observations that a colleague of mine Dave Johnson is made in his analysis of recent wars against regular adversaries potential adversaries know our capabilities and vulnerabilities and are adapting they've learned something from what they've observed from us especially over the last 10 years future challenges requiring joint forces that are prepared for a range of adversaries irregular state sponsored hybrid and states themselves prepared for operations in complex terrain particularly large urban areas with the adversary operating amongst the people and capable of joint combined arms fire maneuver are those forces that we need to have kind of adaptability that I think both general black men and others have observed in these wars balanced ground forces are key they will include armor in order to be able to be survivable against standoff fires and operate in the presence of them dismounted infantry, field artillery and air defense in order to have success against fully competent adversaries in scale matters it takes troops to control complex terrain in large areas and to deal with large populations for these reasons the current ground forces could be very busy preparing for the tasks that I've outlined above however the DOD must inevitably plan for future missions in the presence of known budget cuts and potential future cuts so the question should be how might those budget cuts be taken across the joint force in ways that minimize risk to overall US national security for that question the DOD should consider the level of expertise that makes these decisions missions conducted will have different scope and scale capability needs and readiness requirements some will be highly specialized for instance, countering anti-access forces some potentially large in scale for instance, countering the proliferation operations in a failed nuclear state like a collapse North Korea in response commitments and requirements will vary with the situation at hand each service then should be sized trained and equipped to maximize the joint force to meet priority security obligations for instance the end strength and structure of each service should be carefully examined in terms of day to day op-tempo and surge requirements we need to think about what the role of the reserve components will be we need to develop mechanisms to make reduced number of troops cover scope and scale of mission demands but in the final analysis I'd like to turn finally to I think the key point that General Blackman made in the final analysis what's really crucial in the case of the Army is to develop soldiers with really superb skills because our forces are small in overall size compared to previous eras compared to potential future competitors and our global security responsibilities that really span the full spectrum of operations of warfare if you will we need very high quality troops that will have superb technical capabilities the ability to think and reach decisions about complex situations that may be out of areas that they have trained or independent of senior officers often times the Army and Marine Corps have found small groups of soldiers and marines far away from higher echelons command they need to be able to make those decisions rapidly and superbly well this applies to both officers and soldiers it takes a very long time to develop this these are very long lead capabilities in order to have that competent force that can decide how to deal with many complex situations in very difficult circumstances with that I'd like to turn it back over great thanks Tom alright I'll try to be as efficient as Tim but take a tad slower my sermon begins with a reading from Scripture by Clause Witt and that the reading I'd like to start with is Clause Witt's dictum about determining the nature of the conflict the first in critical active statesmanship and strategy so figuring out what we want our ground forces to do and what we want our military more broadly to do is probably a good place to start this conversation rather than I will get through to the other questions but my view would be that trends, which these days are more often associated with twittering or tweeting than strategy making and strategy are becoming fundamentally different things successful strategies are long term strategies and the United States has had a very successful long term strategy since the end of World War II and I think it ought to be the rebuttable proposition that we're not going to deviate from that although there's obviously a lot of conversation and suggestion that we now do so the fundamental goals of the United States have not changed both the general and Tim suggested I think and General Dunford also made reference to this and there's pretty broad agreement that the United States wants to be able to secure and exploit both for commercial and strategic reasons the global commons to use the collective noun the seas, the skies cyberspace but also wants a favorable balance of power across Eurasia basically western Europe east Asia maritime east Asia where the United States has been a global power the dominant power, pardon me since the end of World War II and along the southern rim which initially when CENTCOM was founded was centered upon the Persian Gulf but I would argue is now expanding to include south Asia as well so I'm going to catch my further remarks those are what I see as the enduring strategy and the more recent trends in American strategy and again I'm not going to suggest that we alter our strategy but the question before us is whether we can better allocate the resources that we have to maintain a workable approach to that global strategy again I think it is a global whole not just an aggregation of individual peace parts and our military approach to all these problems has been pretty adaptable however there's a recent rise among people like Frank and others who have returned to an offshore balancing posture we have sometimes adopted that posture but particularly in Europe and in continental East Asia we've come ashore and more significantly and what's been the steady diet for American land forces for the past 30 years has been an increasingly onshore posture across the greater Middle East we are stepping back from that certainly beginning January 1st and possibly beyond that but I would question whether that's really a durable trend whether we can achieve the outcome that we want in that region and that's been pretty broadly consistent by retreating to an offshore posture the thing we did not want to come ashore in the first place we were dragged kicking and screaming over again three decades but that trend is pretty remarkable as well again particularly when one thinks about ground forces and so what are the most likely threats that require large scale force structure or have large scale force structure implications among those long term strategic interests of the United States well I would say that the the real canonical scenarios and the new canonical scenarios that we need to be thinking about nuclear Iran seriously what to do about Pakistan that internally collapses and of course how to balance China or geopolitically contain China not contain it in any economic or cultural sense but by containment I mean restricting China's ability to change the course of history through the application of military force either through intimidation or direct attack now the China question is the last one I will turn to but I want to talk a bit about the second question which I take to be a question about the character of the ground forces and Tim was quite right we do now fight in a pretty joint way I think that it's time to actually rethink that if we're going to essentially spread less butter across the same global toast in the future doing it jointly may not be the most effective nor the most efficient way to do so jointness is a product of the late Cold War when all the services were concentrated on a particular enemy and a particular conflict that we thought that we understood in the last 10 years in particular is that we can do long running regular conflicts in a joint way but whether that was the cheapest or the most effective way to do it I think is a question that needs to be revisited it's really amazing that we can fly carrier air cap over northern Iraq or northern Afghanistan from the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf but it's pretty darn expensive to do it that way are there other ways to provide fire support essentially and to advance to dispersed land forces and is that something that should be reconsolidated within a single service structure I want to talk a bit about the army and about the Marine Corps and about the larger long running conflict in the Middle East of which we've been a part and which Iran and Pakistan may be the most stressful campaign scenarios that one can imagine I would advance that the army just what we have an army for is sustaining long term conflicts or winning long running conflicts it's our long war force and the army hasn't fully adapted to this they've adapted in many ways but the temptation is now going to be to turn away from that and even if there's direction from higher authority to do so I'm not sure that's a wise thing to do and that army leadership needs to be thinking about what the nation will ask it was most likely to ask it to do over the long haul and there are things that can be done to better be able to sustain a substantial presence ashore in the Middle East most of these I think have to do with force structure rather than platforms or systems there are many advantages to the current brigade combat team structure but they're almost entirely optimized for force generation and rotation rather than sustaining a long term presence we've got to be thinking about things like field armies I think we ought to have more core headquarters I would rather have fewer brigade but more sustained brigades no brigade has deployed to any of these conflicts without an extra dollop of enablers that often adds up to about 30 or 40 percent of the book and strength of a BCT so we took those savings those personnel savings and those force structure savings in the expectation that technological transformation would make the battlefield transparent and our experience for a long time refutes that and that we've had to fight for information rather than simply collect it through technical means we've had to occupy territory we haven't been in a lot of big gun fights but we've had to stay where we go to achieve the political change that we want which is the purpose of the exercise I think we need to adapt to that more institutionally and finally while talking about the institution of the army I worried that the title X institution of the army the training and thinking parts of the army have been bill payers for scrambling to put forces into the field I think that's been neglected and we failed to rebuild those and in fact over build those by recent standards although they look like overhead and tail in the canonical tooth to tail construct but now's the time to put those things back together and actually again over build and rebuild things like the Sam's program or even maybe constructing an analog at the war college level and that's more important than equipment modernization in my judgment the people are more important and it's time also to I think fundamentally rethink the role of the Marine Corps Marine Corps has been an all-purpose force that's done a lot of different things but having to use it in a long running or regular warfare situation over the last 10 years is not the best use of the Marine Corps and it's not the most effective use of land forces in those wars again not knock on the Marines I think the Marines would actually have to get back to doing shipboard Marine things but to do that in a modern combat environment requires continued modernization and investment it's okay to have let the EFV go maybe but to lose the F-35B would really I think collapse the entire structure of the Marine Corps they'd be essentially ship-borne air-mobile infantry at that point and they would become a consumer of other people's firepower and mobility rather than a producer of firepower and mobility and I also think there's a great opportunity to expand the role of the Marine Corps in this regard an M-Fib with 30 stealthy jump jets maybe more productive and capable in many scenarios than a large deck carrier with 60 or so F-18s that's something that we should think about so when you're talking about the structure of the Marine Corps you also obviously think what the Navy looks like so if the Navy is not going to buy appropriate aircraft or vehicles to maintain the viability of its carriers which it's got another 50 years worth of investment already sunk in those assets are not going to be those will genuinely be wasting assets and so the Marine Corps also needs to be cocking an eye in the direction of operating in the anti-access environment not just in the Far East but elsewhere if you had to fight Libya again but again maybe had two large deck M-Fibs worth of F-35s available how would that have changed the campaign how would it have changed the outcome particularly if you had essentially a joint sea base force turning finally to the question of how much I can't do anything other than attack with two up one back and one in reserve consequently applying that on the grand strategic level and two land forces I think it's necessary to have basically a two station land force presence in the Middle East call them a rock and have can stand just for just for arguments sake that represent not just a continued stabilization of those countries but essentially platforms you know the condescents and surveillance units that are forward deployed and provide for the onward movement for other forces if things get out of hand likewise in the Pacific or at sea keeping at least two marine units at sea at any time strikes me as an absolute minimum of capability and again I would want to try to find a way to get the Marines out of obligations in the Middle East and to put them at sea and more present particularly in places like the South China Sea but in maritime environments or more maritime environments where their unique capabilities reward the investment the one back I think needs to be conceived of in terms of a regime change force regime changes a term that nobody likes to talk about very much anymore but it has been an American habit for a long long time and if we really want to affect geopolitical change it remains both the elemental measure of deterrence and of victory in times of conflict and finally the in reserve element we have not thought very much about keeping a strategic reserve in terms of the National Guard and reserve components for a long long time they've been sucked into the deployment conveyor belt becoming an operational reserve that in many ways is hardly different from the pace of people who are inactive units that makes them much much better than anybody anticipated they would be but it does mean the cupboards bear if we have things that we haven't planned for and you have to say that in many ways we have not been able to fight two simultaneous campaigns over the last ten years we've fought Iraq and Afghanistan essentially sequentially and we couldn't both surge in Iraq and Afghanistan and sustain it at the same time so that again elemental measure of a global power or a predominant regional power is something that we continue to need to make the building block when we ask how much is enough here end the lesson great thank you very much Tom Frank thank you very much I've got to issue a caveat I'm working for the Department of Defense I'm not speaking for Mr. Panetta I'm not speaking for NDU or any of my other prior appointees or appointments and they're very glad of that and it will be very evident for I'm not speaking probably for some people in the Navy or other places I'd like to start to say how annoyed I am at what passes for current strategic thinking in town I'm just I guess I'm not amazed because I've been in town for 25 years and seen the sign waves over time but it is amazing how quickly amnesia has set in and I think I would characterize as something we suffer from in Washington right now is strategic amnesia we're overlooking the entire last decade and every possible I think strategic lesson one can learn about what happened what many people want to learn from the last decade is boy we don't want to do that again and I don't I think that's the wrong lesson we need to understand how we got into that in the first place some of it was failures and thinking about the supreme judgment of the character of war which gets made between in Clausewitz's words both the statesman and the commander which is an interesting policy strategy development interchange that we seem to have trouble doing within this country but I think we're overlooking the true lessons we need to understand that we're not very good at predicting the future we should be really humble about that we don't imagine the character of our future scenarios very well or the character of adversaries and we should take that into account it ought to be something very humble about it part of this amnesia is what I call repeating the past we had this fatuation with concepts in the past and what I called TLA's and some of these will be familiar to people in the audience RDO NCW RMA and our real favorite BBO and so having learned this over the last 10 years what have we done we've created another TLA another three letter acronym and it's called ASB I hope we have more success intellectually capability wise with ASB than we've had with the other ones I'm not knocking ASB actually think Air Sea Battle is a very useful construct it's great it's necessary it's efficient gets me into my second problem what I call strategic oversight we are infatuated with what we call the anti-access threat you read the QDR the fourth out of the six major critical challenges of the future is deterring aggression in anti-access environments it's a valid point it's a growing emerging challenge at the strategic and operational level you read the Joe, the General Mattis developed and the chairman's capstone concept they both deal with addressing this and the focus on what I consider to be the outer half of the problem the ASB problem the emerging high-tech range and lethality and precision of an anti-access threat defeating that threat it actually has a purpose and that's to get the ground force in to deal with the air denial threat the adversary apparently has something he values that he is wanting to defend and hold us at risk by pushing us out obviously then we need probably to correspond to the ability to deflect that anti-access environment and to operate effectively inside his operating space there's something he values there's something he's risk we've gotten infatuated with the emerging long-range high-tech problem of the anti-access thing we forgot about the current accident threats that we already face inside of a place like Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan so we need to understand the whole problem the area defense challenge exists today things like the MRAP were produced to deal with that it's current it's deadly, it's purposeful and we need to worry just about as much as that as we do the outer half of the problem that ASB is focused on I'm going to focus my comments a little bit narrowly Tom and I can address some issues about land forces in the 21st century perhaps in the Q&A but I think Tom and I actually have a lot in common in terms I think of the capability of the force fully echo your comments on the F-35B and the Marine Corps Etsy where the investment is high but I think the payoffs is worth it I think the only difference between Tom and I I think we have the same capacity and the same capabilities desired it's just how you posture that force I'm in favor of maximizing our freedom of action politically because we can't predict where the next crisis is going to be so I don't want a lot of things you know fixed at risk in places where they're already inside the enemy's missile fans I don't want to infringe upon other people's sensitivities and political vulnerabilities around noble forces that are tied down to one situation I want to be able to move around the world and deal with things and so I think the difference between Tom and I is just one of posture I think we're both in favor of effective ground force in its totality I want to reference to the CSI report which I would give an excellent grade to if I was grading over it into you but also if I was the editor of any journals in into you which I think I am I wouldn't give it an outstanding grade but I have a little bit more work it's got an outstanding point about forceful entry which I strongly concur in and I'd like to see the why and the rationale for why retaining or preserving a forceful entry capability is in the nation's strategic interest in the 21st century not necessarily in the past so I'm going to focus my comments on that today the why so we can extrapolate why we're being asked to make this investment my remarks will be really short but if you want to see the fuller extended version the lead article in the current Marine Corps in December of this year has got a wonderfully strategically oriented article which I commend your attention I have no idea who the author of that piece is from my perspective there's at least five strategic advantages of having a flexible forceful entry capability gives the nation and General Dunford stressed that point today but I want to kind of riff off that a little bit and the very first one is is that we need to have and we need to be able to project a credible deterrent against aggression around the world and I think a forceful entry we need to have that capability call it offshore, call it over the horizon call it inside the brown water wherever you want I think provides that there's another report from another think tank in town that produced a report I think last month that suggested that amphib ships could be done away with because we haven't used them in 60 years and I know the general thrust of that comment is we haven't done an inch on a retiree regime and we haven't lost 3,000 people in one afternoon crossing a bloody beach someplace I realize that but I also realize that we've used amphibious operations since the Cold War and 50 times since 9-11 for various things including missions that General Blackman has executed and led at the JTF level and also know that we have conducted amphibious assaults deep into hostile territory with Task Force 58 when General Mattis was a Brigadier General with two muses at sea that came together and did something, they didn't cross a beach and lose 3,000 people in a day they avoided the enemy's strength and went in deep and see something that the National Command Authority told them to go take so we used this before and it was a very powerful capability I disagree with the idea that we haven't used it in 60 years but now we haven't used it in the sense but if you follow that logic to its extreme perhaps we'd get rid of ICBMs we'd get rid of a lot of nuclear subs because we haven't sunk any subs lately and we haven't fired off any ICBMs the point is we have certain capabilities because they change state behavior they deter or stop somebody from doing something I think that's why we have ICBMs that are very defective, very effective because we haven't had to use them and I'd argue that our credible strategic deterrent of anti-aggression with forceful entry capability has obviously been just as successful for the same logic of 60 years of not having to use it but it doesn't mean you shouldn't invest in it in fact since we use it so many times it's basically paid for itself with engagement with deterrence and kinds of things it doesn't have to necessarily justify itself on its usage level I do think we need to be able to negate an enemy's anti-access and aerodinial capability and that's what this forceful entry capability gives you in sync with the Navy the ability to get inside somebody's envelope negate the envelope, deflect it, degrade it, obfuscate it but get inside and put something at risk that that adversary holds dear and stand off further and further and further away may not be able to do that that's a hope for a strategy that's not a true strategy in my view and that need to deal with both the anti-access and the aerodinial anti-access is just somebody trying to keep you out you can bring that down so you can get in but then you also need to be effective inside many people have a very effective aerodinial capability of denying your freedom maneuver inside their ground space and we need to be just as effective against the aerodinial threat as we now think of ourselves in the anti-access and the third and the fourth reasons are somewhat related I think you need to think about imposing costs on people and when you have the capability of taking something away blowing it up is one thing but seizing it, holding it you're forcing somebody to have to defend it and forcing it to defend it in different ways defend it from strike, defend it from maneuver creates dilemmas for the individual and he's got to expend resources to defend that I think we're doing a wonderful job with China right now to spend all kinds of money on the anti-access as are the Iranians and I think we want them to continue to spend that money hopefully waste it the second and related is is diluting an adversary's investment portfolio if all the enemy has to do is deal with your T-lamps coming from a thousand miles away and that's all he needs to focus all his defensive shield issues on he might find a way to do that if all he has to do is deal with a helicopter assault from the deck of an amphib and he only has to worry about Hilo assaults, he'll focus all his money into man pads or something that takes down helicopters he might actually get that if all the enemy has to do is a short-legged JSF that is allegedly stealthy today but may not be in 10 or 20 years that's all the enemy has to worry about and he gets to focus all his money just on that one little problem you haven't complicated for him he might be successful at that and if he is successful then you have to report yourself to the president at some point in time you've denied him a range of options and you have generated no dynamics and no dilemmas for the adversary whatsoever and the president has an empty quiver finally at the end of the day you want to be able to go to the president as commander and you want to be able to assure access you want to hope for you don't want to hope that somebody gives you permission to come into a third party country you don't want to have all the infringements, the costs or the political vulnerabilities of going into a third party then coming into a more expected route you want to assure access at a time and place of our choice not somebody else's those are five reasons that I think access and forceful entry are important and hopefully if CSIS gets more grant money from appropriate sponsors they might consider those there are some other operational advantages that I listed in my article you might want to think about but operational independence from offshore I think is a valuable commodity it's not a be all end all I think we'd like to set initial conditions when you have those forward forces you can get in early and you can set initial conditions you're not always having to react to an enemy's first move you can generate surprise he thinks you can only land in a certain area because you need some airfield but we can get ashore some other place you're extending the battle face both in depth because I can get deep at 400 miles or I can come through the beach and get in quickly you're extending his operational problem diluting his defenses posing dynamics and dilemmas that he might not be prepared for because we're multi-dimensional than he is rapid force closure is something we tend to overlook the marine unit coming on board a ship some army units can get there I think even quicker than the Marines but the Marines will come with a full kit the command and control, the logistics it'll be a cohesive unit that can maneuver from at sea ashore doesn't need 10 days to set up doesn't need 5 days and when it shows up it's got a couple weeks of food and ammunition it is a full up around when it gets there that rapid closure including the transition ashore is pretty seamless and then the organization can have the agility and I think the tempo that we want out of an operational force the early entry time of forces not a war winning force but the ability to make transitions from sea from peace to crisis from crisis to war from at sea to ashore from a stability operations into a fight kind of things that General Blackman did when he was out in the Pacific I think an operational advantage that these four ready forces give you flexibly at sea and with that I'll conclude my remarks and we'll go into Q&A hopefully great thanks everybody now talk from the podium or at least stand at the podium so I can see everybody and if I can just push this back a ways so that the panelists can actually see this table over here we'll begin with Q&A so if we have any questions yes ma'am I wanted to ask Frank Hoffman a follow up question on this issue of air sea battle being infatuated with the anti-access threat but ignoring I believe you said existential threats that we face elsewhere in Afghanistan Iran I mean can you elaborate on what some of these threats are that are not being addressed a little bit difficult for me because the air sea battle concept that I know is a classified document what's out in the public domain right now is a caricature of the concept what the Air Force the Navy put together is a very detailed comprehensive approach to the anti-access problem which is the outer half the ability to move from islands in the western Pacific closer to some other large country that shall not be named or to operate inside the Gulf at sea it's the anti-access problem it defeats the ability of an opponent perhaps to hold you at risk at long length it still doesn't accomplish the things that both Tom and I talked about it getting a shore accomplishing something holding something or destroying somebody seizing something or destroying something sure that's the air denial challenge ASB doesn't deal with the air denial challenge there's another joint concept that's being being developed to deal with that but it's a holistic problem when you read the literature most people are using the shorthand A2 AD but they're forgetting that AD part the joint concept deals I think effectively with the back half of the problem about how you can operate effectively against somebody who's using EFPs high-end RPGs precision rockets, the guided rockets artillery mines and munitions problem the G-RAM threat that's already assured we're getting caught up into what I consider to be the emerging long range challenge that ASB is focused on it's real it's a legitimate effort to try to do this and that concept deals with that but to me it's not holistic enough to deal with both ends of the problem the A2 and not the A2 AD yeah I got to keep it on that first of all the focus of airsea battle seems to be sort of too operational and not strategic enough particularly when applied to places like the Gulf and East Asia our goal is to preserve the access that we currently have so the goal of the adversary is to try to push us out of places that we already are also we have allies and partners who are more reassured by the fact that we're there than the fact that we might be able to fight our way back in at some future date and also the fact that they're concentrating on this shows how what a geostrategic whole the adversaries are in. Again they're trying to push us back from their immediate doorstep and they have to go to war with the United States they have to kill Americans in order to even threaten to kill Americans to intimidate their front line states that's a hugely good strategic bargain for us so Frank puts it pretty well more you know ballistic missiles for example the Chinese the less investment they have for other military capabilities that would really be more decisive you know in a in either a long term strategic or political competition or in an actual war and so I think we're kind of looking through the long set of lenses a lot of times and we should begin with looking at what victory looks like for us and in fact what we're trying to preserve is access that we already have so let's solve that puzzle the access preservation puzzle John Denney in the back all the way in the back Hi my name is John Denney from the SSI up at the Army War College I've got two questions actually first for General Blackman I think your assessment of the comparative advantage that is spot on having spent several years working overseas I've seen this firsthand I'm curious to know in your years of experience working for the military have you seen any of our allies approach U.S. capability in this regard and if so could you comment on those experiences my second question is for Mr. Donnelly I think your analysis of the problem facing the Army in terms of its four structures is spot on also but the direction the Army appears to be moving in is away from obviously things like more cores and field armies and so forth I see great value though in the utility of those and achieving interoperability with our allies and so are we going to lose that over the next couple of years and how do we turn that around over the next at least five years given the budgetary situation I think the generally speaking the four eyes UK Australia, Canada approach U.S. capability in that regard and I think it's as much a cultural aspect as it is anything else I mean there are some democracies quite frankly Japan comes to mind where the culture tends to create unbreakable hierarchy if you will you know we almost encourage subordinates to challenge seniors for example which I think to a point is healthy you know to challenge higher headquarters assumptions and those kinds of things I mean that's unheard of quite frankly you know in a lot of sources around the world with the possible exception like I said of the four eyes and I think all too often you know based on my comments and yours we generally think only we focus that thought at the lower end you know the squad leaders and second lieutenants and those kind of folks where we have to be careful that we maintain that edge is frankly at the very highest levels that our senior officers feel that they're in a position to challenge higher headquarters assumptions to challenge DOD assumptions if you will in a professional measured way I think I think that's really healthy and I think from top to bottom is where we hold that edge I'm very appreciative of your comments I think you're exactly right if it's one thing that we turn out to really need more of in the past 10 years it's not guys who could win a battle but guys who could run a war that is America's military comparative advantage over pretty much any other military on the planet and we ought to preserve that and enhance that and if we're going to be in an era of a lot of small wars you still have even an operation like Libya which is a much more politically trying campaign than it was a tactically trying campaign in many ways I think if you're looking to preserve the crown jewels of what we got and build some more you know headquarters like that and officers who are trained to run them are really the comparative advantage that we have a lot of people can bring a lot of infantry some nations can bring a lot of airplanes and a lot of tanks to the table nobody can bring too many ships to the table anymore but there's only one country that can put them all together to design a campaign that could win a war we have a question right down here in the front thank you Andrea Bauman I'm a postdoctoral fellow at SICE it's been mentioned by two speakers that it's the people ultimately that matter and I was wondering whether the panel could comment on the challenge to train and prepare a force that is equally good at instilling fear and generating hope as the general put it and doing so within the same operation and often in quick oscillation in the same space and the type of trade-offs that that might create the answer kind of goes back to general Krulak's view of the three block war and again going back to the quality of our servicemen and women you know it's been my experience here especially over the last 10 years that those young men and women are very capable of making very very fine judgments and very discerning decisions if you will and I think some of that is a result of education and training but I will tell you I think an awful lot of it is just the individual I mean I think the going-in product is prepared for that and our training and education really do little more than sand the edges and put a nice coat of varnish on it I think the fundamental character of the individual service members puts them in a position to re-estat back and forth in minutes I'd like to add to that comment if I could I think this is among the hardest things that our military has to do now in a spirit of giving a little bit of my own background I started my professional I said as an aircraft designer I actually designed some of the aircraft that Tom and Frank have been talking about or their predecessor is not the newer systems my experience a little more day than that the joy about being an aircraft designer is part of the purpose is to remove the humans as far away from the effect you're trying to generate is possible and as an engineer we actually wanted to get rid of pilots too we wanted more unmanned aircraft and less manned aircraft with apologies to the pilots in the room what fascinates me about the problem you've asked the real human capital problem that all the services face but I think is faced in the fashion you ask a question more acutely in the special operations forces and the marines and the army is that it's the most difficult thing I think the general is correct that a lot of these human traits are innate within the people that hopefully are attracted to these services, attracted to this kind of service I think there are things the services can and should do to match people with jobs well there was a British experience when the Northern Ireland conflict first began where they learned that they had to start a new training program to take British officers from the army of the Rhine and also from other places and sort of steep them in some of the tactics and techniques and philosophy they'd have to have in Northern Ireland I believe that was called the NITAT it was the NITAT it was a special program to train them and then when they came out in a shorter time frankly than the marines or army have faced in Afghanistan or Iraq they had to be retrained again in the conventional operations this is kind of a long winded way of saying you've put your finger on I think the hardest thing that the services face and that's to identify those individuals that have the right perspective for each kind of activity you mentioned but then the services obligation is to provide to recognize the train that has to go into preparing them for that and sort of redirecting reorienting them when they come out again I'm a really simple minded guy but it'd be worth sort of asking ourselves the question what is the first hope of people in Afghanistan or people in Iraq I would say that if you gave them one wish and they were free to exercise it they would say please don't abandon us the thing that would give people who have been living in a war zone the greatest hope for the future would be that they'll have a secure environment to do more normal human activities which they're perfectly capable of doing on their own but that hope for security the hopes to become more educated or to develop socially or economically are always forestalled you've identified a key readiness challenge for the future and it depends on what you think the future is there's people in town who talk about things going high and low in a conflict spectrum that we need to worry about very low issues and provide a lot of hope to failed states and at the other end of the spectrum we have some very high end threats to deal with in space and cyber and missiles should be what we'd be investing in and kind of ignore the middle if you're like me I see a lot of things converging in the middle I see people that are non-state actors and they're sending and blurring them in such a way this is my hybrid threat argument that you need to focus on that and some people think of that as the middle of the conflict spectrum but I think it's a little more chaotic than that but something to think about Dave Johnson's work at RAND was cited again today and I commend that to your attention he talks about minding the middle where this convergence is perhaps the more likely and perhaps equally consequential as high end warfare and it's a good pivot point perhaps for our ground forces to be ready for we just need to make sure that it's true readiness and not rhetorical I worked for General Krulak in the mid-1990s and tried to help him implement the three block warren strategic corporal concept and we failed and I went away came back in the early 2000 period and was working for General Mattis and got the same task you know let's add to the squad leaders course let's make the strategic corporal real not just a phrase because we failed in the 90s to implement what General Krulak's vision was because some people focused on our naval routes and operating at sea and didn't see a need to empower corporals to do things that we now take for granted as we do the downsizing and or decompression of defense spending some things are going to be thrown away some things are going to be put on the shelf and some things are going to be institutionalized the things that we now take for granted among our ground NCOs the things that we've empowered them to do are things we need to ensure that we institutionalize my name is Carl Ozgood I write for executive intelligence review I really wanted to pick up on the comments that General Blackman made about the immaculate war because what you all just have said in response to the last question is what we don't do if we're fighting an immaculate war I mean the idea that comes to my mind is using special forces and predator drones to go after al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia but has no effect on improving the conditions the living conditions of the people who live in the country so I'd like to ask if the dependence the enamoration with this immaculate war actually might have the effect of backfiring on us of having an effect that maybe we don't desire I think it absolutely has the potential to backfire on us you know war has a one of our dear one of those dead Germans that we hold so dear here that we've talked about a couple of times you know you this is a human endeavor it's a conflict between people and to believe that we can take that element out of it we can fight a war you know tens of thousands or ten thousand miles away from Whiteman Air Force Base misses the reality of it yes our technological advantage increases literally daily but ultimately it is a test of wills between people and ultimately nation to nation test of will it rolls downhill to the corporal and the sergeant and his squad on the ground who are being asked to make extraordinary decisions in seconds or less so I think it's a tremendous mistake to go down that track and as has been referenced before we thought we could do this some years ago I was trying to think who was the vice chairman Navy guy Owens who created this box where we would have perfect understanding I mean absolutely perfect understanding of what was going on inside that box well it's been some years you know that was what in the mid 90s or so it's been a long time and my gosh we don't know in places like Afghanistan what's going on around the next corner over the next rise in the ground so we just got to I think get away from that I think that last point is key we can always you know within the Beltway within this building we can always sort of assume away future conditions we can make a decision or we can promote a decision for what we're going to plan for what we're going to resource or invest towards but we can't decide what challenges we're ultimately going to face and I think oftentimes in past conflicts you've seen us enter in with one set of plans notions about what we wouldn't do but ultimately found ourselves in a different kind of conflict or a different kind of situation and I recognize that going in and I think it's important not to be too enamored of the technologies which is I think the important point that was raised earlier I can't resist I think you know if one reads the papers lately it begins to look like we're in this kind of silent war when it comes to Iran and actually to conceive what's happening on the F-PAC border is simply an anti-al-Qaeda war is probably wrong too so we may be closer than we imagine to finding out what the downsides of drones plus covert action plus Stuxnet viruses and things like that turn out to be and if it drives our enemies to have a different cost benefit analysis than we do to do things like hire Mexican Zeta Hitman to go blow up Georgetown restaurants to kill Saudi ambassadors that's a lot of blowback time for one more question and that's right here my name is Bob Simpson I work at TRADOC in the Army Capability Integration Center I'd like to avail myself of the ability to challenge a superior here and I want to make sure I understand the panel's position on what comparative advantage is there's a difference I think in appreciating the sacrifices and skill of our soldiers tactically and saying that they are the national comparative advantage at a minimum I would suggest you can't draw that conclusion from our fights against Al Qaeda in Alabama unless you're saying and this is my question that were the technological capabilities reversed and they had air dominance in our systems and individual kit would the innate exceptionalism of our soldiers have caused us to still win the tactical engagements or would our exceptional ability to manage war overcome that kind of advantage if I'm looking to cut the defense budget I would love to be able to say well the innate exceptionalism of our soldiers will overcome me cutting the F-35 and all of these other technological programs and I'd like to start with General Blackman since you challenged the idea that our technological advantage is a comparative advantage what I said early on was a quote from that study somewhere and it's America's conception of its natural advantage technology in my mind is not a natural advantage technology is bought and paid for and that's the direction I was going do I want to do I want to take on the Taliban or anybody else in the world you know on an equal footing absolutely not we are extraordinarily technically advanced if you will we do have control of the skies we do have command and control capabilities that allow us to execute the Udalloop inside of our adversaries but I stand by the fact that our natural advantage if you will that you really can't go out and procure from a defense contractor is those servicemen because they have taken they are extraordinarily adaptable and they have taken those platforms that were bought and paid for in a lot of cases something completely different from what they are being employed now and they have found ways of optimizing all aspects of them in the current operating environment I'm a self-convest technology guy I'm a craft designer I've never gotten too far from my technology roots I don't think you'd ever want to give up any technical advantage willingly if you can have it that's a great thing but what I'd like to do in response to your question is make an observation that Dr. Mel O'Neill the former assault recently assault had made there are situations today where you don't have a local technical advantage an example that he would like to talk about is the water that tactical small unit on patrol somewhere that sometimes very often more often than we'd like to believe does not have UAVs or other eyes in the sky within sight of it a long way away from their higher headquarters or any source of support or help they find themselves perhaps surprised by an ambush and oftentimes the adversary gets off the first shot what I'd like to say is in those situations you're completely dependent on the comparative quality of those individuals in that unit and in situations we face today and those aren't the universal situations we'll face in the future, understood but you really are dependent on having the right quality of individuals and leadership in those units and so I think that too often we think of technical solutions as has been observed earlier as sort of our sine qua non or as the solution to too many different problems and I think a more important place to start is with that human capital General Freakley made a comment one time that he would trade kit with anybody else and he would still bank on his soldiers I wouldn't want to trade kit but what I do want to take away from that comment is that we absolutely have to emphasize the quality of the individual, the training, the leadership and it's expensive it takes a long time to do but I think it's absolutely requisite if we're going to maintain the kind of quality our armed forces have I'd like to open the aperture a little bit look whatever is a comparative advantage is what drives trade if we remember our classical economics and in this regard I would say American military power has really driven geopolitical trade and changed the fundamental nature of the competition for power in the world over the past decades great powers have disarmed in Europe and Japan you know China didn't need to begin a military build up it got rich within the you know construct created by the United States and enforced by the US military so overall this is and we've done it remarkably cheaply we're down to you know four and a half or less percent of our wealth which is certainly over the last 60 years a historical low we have reaped an immense comparative advantage in international politics by being the predominant military on the planet so that's the kind of comparative advantage that I would like to hang on to for a while okay ladies and gentlemen on behalf of Dr. John Hamry our president and CEO and all of us here at CSIS we are very grateful for your attendance today and the thoughtful questions you asked and I'd ask you to join me in a warm round of applause for our presenters