Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us this afternoon for this contemporary military forum titled Integrated Deterrence through Resilience Whole of Government Response to Hazards and Threats. As your professional association, the Associates United States Army is proud to provide forums like this for all of us in our professional development. AUSA will amplify the US Army's narrative to audiences inside the Army and help to further the association's mission to be the voice of the Army and support for the soldier. Of course we cannot do this alone. We do this through your membership. If you're a member we thank you for that membership and if you are not we encourage you to visit the AUSA member portal or our booth downstairs and join this great association. That is booth 307 in exhibit hall A. On behalf of General Brown, AUSA's president and the rest of the AUS team we have a small token for our speakers that'll be here, a wonderful deck of cards that they can take and keep by the way. At this time it's my pleasure to introduce Major General Bob Weddle, the Deputy Commanding General of US Army North, who will introduce our panel and will lead this further. Thank you sir. Okay thank you Red. Mr. Munn magically came on. We'll find out if yours does. But I'll hand you this one if it doesn't. So we work through with the mics. Hey it's really great to see everyone today and we're thrilled with the turnout here and after the panel I'm sure you'll tell everyone how incredible all this was and they'll all wish they had been here with you but thank you for the for the great turnout and I'd like to just start by saying this is we'd like to thank AUSA for this this opportunity to have a panel on Homeland Defense and we're gonna we're gonna begin I'll introduce General Van Herk the North Com commander in a moment he's gonna give some remarks he's got 30 minutes with us so the rest of the panel is is gonna join us after 30 minutes but he'll give some opening remarks probably three to five minutes and then I'll ask him a series of questions and I think you're we're really gonna get a lot out of it. So General Van Herk he's commanded at every level of the Air Force of course he was the the J-5 on the joint staff which does all that interagency work all the policy work for the chairman the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then he was director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and now he is the commander of US North Com and NORAD and obviously a large scope of responsibility so we're really thrilled that you've taken time out of your schedule to be with us today you're the only combatant commander that's gonna be here at the AUSA conference really means a lot to to the Army to have you here with that so I'm gonna turn it over to you. All right well check it's working great thanks well thanks Bob don't time me on three to five minutes okay I appreciate that thanks thanks for all that you do in the Army North team what you do for the United States and Northern Command is we defend our homeland and provide defense support of civil authorities really important and theater security cooperation I have to think AUSA I won't say everything again but for the opportunity to be here I think the Army's got five combatant commanders six and I'm the only one there force guy shows up it's hard to believe but anyway I'm not critiquing my fellow combatant commanders it's great to be here I have to thank Secretary Wormuth and Chief McConville the Army has just knocked it out of the park when it comes to my role as a commander United States Northern Command for the last almost 26 months the Army steps up every time we need support whether that be through COVID whether that be through allies welcome whether that be through hurricane response I never get the is that a valid requirement a request I just get what we need to accomplish the mission and I'm so grateful for that I would also thank the Army for embracing the Arctic strategy that the Department put out if you didn't notice on Friday the White House suddenly put out an Arctic strategy as well and the number one pillar on that Arctic strategy is defense of the Arctic and so look forward to that the Army is leading the way with what you're doing up in Alaska with the 11th Airborne Corps as well and the things that you provide us for our campaigning so thanks to the United States Army for supporting United States Northern Command and NORAD I'm going to talk to you real quick about how I see the strategic environment from a homeland defense perspective what we're doing to get after that and then I think Bob's gonna create some havoc by asking me some questions so I really look forward to that but in my nearly 36 years or so this is the most dynamic and challenging time that we've seen if you just look around and pay attention to the news for the first time in our nation's history to strategic peers both nuclear armed that we need to deal with and we've got a third out there actor that continues to shoot ballistic missiles and you know use the rhetoric the nuclear rhetoric as well that continue to challenges violent extremists haven't gone away transnational criminal organizations are a significant threat creating significant challenges not only in the western hemisphere and on our border but around the globe I could keep going on and on and on the bottom line is in the environment that we're in today before we commit forces anymore in the conventional fight potentially we ought to ask ourselves a couple of questions the first question we should ask ourselves is what's the risk of an attack on our homeland and then what's the risk of strategic deterrence failure I would tell you that those questions haven't been asked for about three decades they need to be asked before we find ourselves on an escalation ladder that we can't get off of I would tell you that you find yourself in some pretty pretty tough decisions that we have to make as a nation once you get on that escalation ladder and I think it's my job to have that discussion early with the president and with the secretary defense before we jump on that ladder and understand what those risks are our competitors those challengers potential adversaries continue to develop capabilities to challenge us in the homeland with the intent to reduce our decision space to delay and disrupt our forward power projection to destroy our will to intervene in a crisis that may be regional in nature but that they understand after watching us now for the last three decades that if we're allowed to project force from our homeland that it's not going to go well for them we're going to open up that canna you know what on them once that force gets in place so they're developing those capabilities to disrupt us I would tell you that we're under attack every single day in the cyber domain and in the information space and I'll talk a little bit more about that my biggest challenges domain awareness you certainly can't deter and can't defeat something if you can't detect it and I'll talk to you a little bit more about that and how we're getting after that as well but the challenges with domain awareness are eroding strategic stability each and every day strategic stability is really important today being able to understand what potential adversaries are doing that enables us to provide continuity of operations continuity of government to posture our nuclear forces those kind of things and those are being challenged each and every day I would also tell you that I feel like at times that the United States Northern Command is a bit of the Achilles heel for our forward power projection in the time that it takes me to set the homeland for defense is outside of the timeline that my fellow combat commanders may require based on the threats in their AOR to project a power that they need to respond to and so I think it's my job to to get inside that timeline so that I am not the Achilles heel and the president's not asking me or the secretary of defense is not asking me when can you get the homeland ready the homeland needs to be ready each and every day we shouldn't have to be asking ourselves to get forces ready in time of crisis we must be ready each and every day I would tell you that the PRC and Russia are challenging international norms laws rules that have existed since the end of World War two and have kept us safe and sound and that you see playing out today in the Ukraine and you see it playing out with China with their Belt and Road Initiative and the final thing I tell you is that the environmental change will continue to challenge us it's not going to go away it's creating opportunities and it's creating vulnerabilities the question is what are we going to do about each of those and we're going to take advantage of the opportunities and reduce the vulnerabilities and I look forward to some more questions so how do we getting after it at the norad in the United States northern command it starts out with policy first what must you defend and from what believe it or not 26 months ago when I got in the seat we didn't have policy on what to defend it shouldn't be a guy in the uniform figuring that out for a nation that should be policymakers that make those decisions so I'm proud to report we actually have policy defense policy but now we need to have a broader whole of nation discussion about what it is we must defend those things that might bring us to our knees in a time of crisis but we don't need to defend everything it's not a patriot and that on every street corner and fighters all over the place it's a small number of things that make it very challenging for any strategic competitor or adversary to be able to slow us down bring us to our knees in the time of crisis or conflict so that vision translated into a strategy merging two strategies nor at any United States northern command into a single strategy that focused on integrated deterrence now I'm talking in 2020 December of 2020 before the current administration was in their seat by the way that we were focused on integrated deterrence and campaigning we've created a homeland defense campaign plan and now a campaign order and I'm happy to report that campaign order now we're out about two to three years out in front so we can be inside the gift map process the global force management allocation process to get access to forces and also inside the intelligence communities need to be able to give us measures of effectiveness and measures of performance and I think that's really important but it doesn't start in the homeland by the way my defense strategy starts forward through that integrated deterrence and what I would call layered defense defense starts with our allies and partners forward my fellow combatant commanders generating effects so that I don't have to generate effects here in the homeland those effects can be generated forward whether those effects be defeat effects or deter effects I believe it's the same and that's how we need to take a look at this and focused on campaigning each and every day and people ask sometimes well why do you campaign in the homeland well you campaign in the homeland to demonstrate your readiness your capability and most importantly your resilience your resiliency so that anybody that ever thinks that they could be successful with an attack on our homeland or even an attack forward questions in their grey matter their ability to be successful I think that's really important and that is serves on a foundation of the information environment deterrence relies in his focus primarily on the information space that can happen through covert clandestine or overt activities and that's it really important for us I think the NDS has got it right I'm a big fan of the NDS when it focuses on integrated deterrence and I think the NDS is right that the PRC is the pacing challenge with us but I've fought really hard to get the Russians in there candidly this was before their acts of February 24th they are now threat to the homeland they are the primary military threat to the homeland today when it comes to kinetic capabilities and also non kinetic I like to say that the PRCs about seven to ten years behind Russia when it comes to threats to the homeland and so we'll talk a little bit more about that I am the only combatant commander with a geographic area of responsibility without threshold forces threshold forces are what's determined by the secretary of defense that you won't go below we need to be ready to fight in and from our homeland and the way I get my forces is through an RFF with just in time request for forces just in time to meet that need those are things that we need to change as we go forward and we're working on changing we need to look at our infrastructure we work closely with the administrator Chris well who you're going to get to hear from here a little bit later about our resiliency our ability and our reliance on our partners out there whether it be in municipalities states industry etc to make ourselves more resilient and finally I think we need to look at some reforms I told you three to five minutes when gonna work by the way so we need need to look at some reforms in the department I hope you give me the opportunity to talk about some of these Bob but we need to approach the threat today from a global perspective the days of a single supported combatant commander for a regional fighter over okay we're gonna have multiple supported combatant commander simultaneously and we just need to move on past that and approach it from a global in an all domain perspective and we need to basically move past legacy processes designed to field ships tanks planes those kind of things into a digital environment where we're moving at the speed of relevance in today's environment inside the department so I look forward to your questions and see what you have to say hopefully you got questions teed up with that yes sir well sir thank you for those for those opening remarks and one of the things you mentioned is that the threats to the homeland are real and I think for our audience today there they'd be very interested in that because frankly a lot of leadership over the past couple generations haven't really made that remark before but things are changing in the homeland and the threats are real and I was wondering if you could elaborate on that and then convey what challenges those threats pose to homeland defense to include that decision space that's being taken away from senior leaders sure Bob that's a great question so you know some people like to say the homelands no more not a sanctuary anymore I think that's pretty cliche I don't I don't say that very often but I will talk about the threats to the homeland you know a little over 30 years ago shock and all was truly shock and all to our potential adversaries and competitors as they watched how we projected power in Desert Storm and they took note allowed to build up power over time and the use of technology the use of stealth that opened their eyes and so during that time while we were focused on violent extremists for last 20 plus years they were developing capabilities to hold our homeland at risk and they being primarily of the People's Republic of China but as I said the primary military threat to the homeland of Russia. Let's let's talk canatically first and so about three to four years ago Russia fielded the first hypersonic glide vehicle sitting on top of an ICBM that's nuclear capable it's been out there for you four years operational with the United States of America and North America in its sights. A lot of people don't realize that you know some have said that the fractional orbital bombardment was one of those significant moments. I would say that actually Russia fielded those capabilities well before the Chinese did that's just one of their cruise missiles they've developed that can be employed from land air subsea sea are very low radar cross section now they make our north warning system look like a picket fence it was designed for a 36000 foot bomber back in the 70s and 80s timeframe and now they can know where all those radars are and circumnavigate those long range cruise missiles by the way they can take off over Russian air bases today and launch their cruise missiles from over Russia and attack almost all of North America including the United States of America other submarines they're feeling right now they're on track to field nine subclass submarines what has been an episodic threat to the homeland typically in the fall and through the winter time frame will become a persistent proximate threat they just moved serves into the their first seven to the Pacific I've got a seven the Mediterranean right now and another that's out on its way into the Atlantic that will be a persistent proximate threat capable of carrying a significant number of land attack cruise missiles that can threaten our homeland today China is not far behind like I said about seven to 10 years both China and Russia in the space and cyber domain or peer competitors for the most part and they develop those capabilities to delay and disrupt our power projection and destroy our will in the homeland so that's how I look at that let me expand a little bit more and talk to you about the Arctic and what what's going on is there as well so as environmental change happens both Russia and China significantly interested in the Arctic it's the closest route to the homeland by the way if you're going to attack the homeland that over over the Poland and from the Arctic Russia's already modernized their Arctic infrastructure by the way and they've modernized their nuclear forces more than a dozen installations or so across the Arctic with the intent to change norms and rules that have existed since the end of World War two as I said demanding things like putting military personnel on commercial vessels that sail through the Arctic and control and who who actually uses what today is routine commerce sailing through the the northern passage up there and ensuring commerce flows back and forth that's what they're doing China is not far behind there they're continuing to do surveillance in the Arctic under the guise of research and development we know is that's also military development as well and we look forward as China builds their type 95 and type 96 submarines that they're going to field ballistic missile capabilities and park them in the Arctic just off the Alaska coast which significantly reduces our decision space and timeline you asked me what why does this matter what matters because it erodes strategic stability or it risks this strategic deterrence failure you know if you can't detect a threat I can't provide continuity of government warning I can't provide warning to our nuclear force posture so you have to start making some assumptions and those are significant threats also as well I want to talk about one final threat and that's transnational criminal organizations that are global in nature that in many cases are more powerful than some state military capabilities and they're right there on our just south of our border in the western hemisphere and now I don't go after the symptoms of those that's Homeland Security what I'm concerned about is the problem that they create which is instability right here in our own hemisphere that allows access potentially for nations is such as Russia China violent extremist organizations as well and so it's crucial that we maintain an eye on those transnational criminal organizations sir thank you thanks for for expanding on those so sir you had mentioned during your opening remarks you spoke about integrated deterrence and campaigning and I'd like you to discuss with us what what that means to you and what opportunities it opens up great so the secretary of defense has got it right with integrated deterrence and and how he talks about it integrated deterrence is the use of all levers of not only our nation whether it be the military lever other agencies in the interagency but my fellow combatant commanders as well but just as important what I think is our asymmetric advantage Bob is our allies and partners as we campaign together demonstrating each and every day our readiness our capability and our resilience so that's what we're focused on it nor add in the United States Northern Command through our campaign plan which is crucial and it doesn't start here in the homeland this is global campaigning that that what I would say is I mentioned it earlier is you know the regional construct of campaigning is over China and Russia and others are global problems and we need to look at campaigning from a global perspective and global objectives and global resource in how we're going to get after these problems and we need to look at campaigning more longer term I thought I told you we're out two to three years the department I think we're a little bit inside of that and we need to expand our lookout with that what I would say is a global framework for campaigning based on secretary of defense priorities secretary of defense resource decisions secretary of defense risk global risk decisions today we look at things in a regional perspective I think it creates great opportunities the things I need the department to help me with is working with the interagency on campaigning for me campaigning the homeland is really really important to demonstrate that resiliency and the readiness I think everything that we do whether it be under service authorities while you're building readiness or whether it be responding to a hurricane or allies welcome if message properly has a deterrent value no other nation on the planet can do what we do when it comes to hurricane response when it comes to the things that you saw with COVID response or allies and welcome as well sir thank you I appreciate that you brought out the importance of the interagency and and trying to synchronize that through unity of effort as we work forward sir you also mentioned layered defense and I was wondering if you could give us your vision on what that looks like and then more importantly what capabilities you see as being required to execute layer defense yeah absolutely Bob so layered defense to me as I said my strategy starts forward not in the homeland if we're shooting down cruise missiles over Washington DC or Ottawa I think I've failed and so what I want to do is partner with my fellow combat commanders and allies of partners to generate effects forward you know I have the the smallest targeting shop of the combat commanders and people would say well why do you need a targeting shop what are you going to target in the homeland well I'm I'm not targeting anything in the homeland I'm generating effects forward through other combatant commanders to produce targets to get on their target list so that they can service those targets whether non-kinetically or kinetically before they become threats to the homeland so to me that's what layered defense is really about this defense in depth about generating those effects before their threats now how do you do that well I think you need to have a single pane of glass where you can collaborate in real time across all domains to give you a picture so can you imagine if you could sit down in a single pane of glass and have all the j2s across the combatant commands with allies and partners being able to collaborate on a global picture across all domains to give you a global assessment of what's ongoing and then simultaneously the j3s the operators are doing the development of deterrence or potentially defeat options in the same single pane of glass while your j4 is your logistics and your engineers folks are validating whether those are operationally feasible is the fuel in the right place or the planes the ships everything ready the weapons everything loaded are the air crews ready folks you don't have to imagine that we demonstrated it now four times and that capability exists and so to do layered defense and integrated deterrence you have to have tools to collaborate in real time to be able to develop that from a global picture here's how it works today okay if we have a challenge it'll be approached from a regional perspective and a regional combat commander will develop options and an assessment those options will be looked at through a lens of a regional perspective and they'll be brought into the pentagon where the first time you actually collaborate globally is at the four star level with the chairman potentially even the sector what i just told you was aos at the lowest level being able to collaborate in real time and develop in a picture what do i need i need the services to help us think like that the services are focused on sensor to shooter i'm focused on sensor to decision maker enabling deterrence to be able to create those decisions that we just talked about so those are some of the capabilities that we need as well as sensor to shooter i'm not i'm not saying we don't need sensor to shooter but we also need the sensor to decision maker and sir i think you just actually spoke about this a bit at the end of those comments but as a department you've mentioned we need to with some urgency change culture change process would you like to elaborate on that at all sure Bob you're gonna get me in trouble well i i told you that uh you know our processes for acquiring capabilities is built on what i would say is an industrial age process development playing tanks ships those kinds of things and we're in a digital environment you know the capabilities we've developed we change the software on them every 14 days yet when i presented something like that to the deputy secretary of defense what i got back from the staff not her she's on board now was hey come back next year with an issue paper i'm like that that's two to three years in the future we've got to adapt our cultures to field capabilities like that single pane of glass that i just talked about much sooner i talked to you a little bit about the the regional perspective our global force management process is in one silo our joint exercise process is in another silo and theater security cooperation is in another one all of those have effects on integrated deterrence when you exercise your theater security cooperation with allies and partners when you exercise amongst ourselves as a joint force by the way the joint force the way it works is it goes through j-tems which is a volunteer system why wouldn't we look at all of those from an integrated and global perspective to be able to field what we have is a limited joint force to get after the secretary strategy not a regional strategy the secretary strategy with the limited joint force that that we actually have so those are just a couple of things that i would tell you bob yes sir thank you so sir given what you said about the challenges of homeland defense how can the joint force be better posture to support the that mission requirement yeah so the first thing i told you was the censor to decision maker i think we we got to be able to go down that path quicker than 2030 uh those capabilities exist today folks data and information are strategic assets that we need to take advantage of now you know google amazon others have figured out how to share data and information what we need to be focusing on is making our data available not in stove pipes and being able to receive that data i think that's one of those other things i told you a little bit about how i get forces through your quest for forces i i think there's things that we can do as a department and i'm encouraged where we're going the global force management implementation guidance will give me some additional help with having forces that are available to me in a timely manner what i told the secretaries one of my biggest challenges with executing my con plans and no plans is access to organized trained and equipped forces in a timely manner to operate through my aor more than 50 percent of my or is in the arctic yet we we're not organized training equipped to be able to operate in that arc in that arctic environment in a timely manner those are things that we have to look for and i'm encouraged where the army is going uh as i said the white house on friday put out their new arctic strategy the number one pillar is defense in the arctic so probably ought to get after that from a department perspective some other things um i think since i'm in the the army's uh environment here you know one of the things i told you about is the timeline takes me to set my aor one of those challenges is access to air defense capabilities in a timely manner that have to flow all from fort blitz texas primarily uh some need to go to alaska some may go to the washington dc maybe we need to look differently at how we posture those and i'm not saying you need a base everywhere but you can certainly have pre- surveyed and built locations with fiber connected and the assets there that we can campaign with and you can move them out in a timely manner and demonstrate readiness uh those kinds of things so that that's something we need to look at uh now i'm going to talk a little fiction for you i i think the future looks vastly different than today uh when i come in with my rff we have to adjudicate in real time their need for my forces against endopacoms or against you come because they're not planned for on a day to basis day to day basis same thing for stratcoms forces so that adds risk in the time of crisis i i think we need forces that look vastly different than what we have today that reduce the demand for tankers that reduce the demand for fighters and what i'm talking about is autonomous and unmanned systems think about vessels that you can park off the coast against uh some of those threats that i talked about that policy gives you and those vessels have a domain awareness capabilities that can see potentially even over the horizon and they also have kinetic capabilities such as sm3 sm6 but more importantly they have non-kinetic effectors denial and deception think of pnt denial and deception or high power microwave or laser capabilities now i'm not asking for all the fighters that are competing directly with admiral aquilino or general cavoli in yukam and i don't need all the tankers for that if we position those in key locations around the country the same thing can be said for autonomous air platforms that give me domain awareness that can loiter for 18 24 hours and beyond that that provide domain awareness but they also provide potentially that kinetic effect or non-kinetic effect so so what i may be talking about here is a fiction to some i'm telling you it's not fiction it's probably within a decade and those are things that we need to be thinking about yes sir i the audience here they've been circulating among all the vendors here at a u.s.a. and there's a lot of autonomous ground capability and their capability on display here it's pretty amazing so to your point it's not science fiction anymore it's just science so this is the the last question i have for you and it's it has to do with again with the homeland you said it's almost a cliche now no longer being a sanctuary but what do you see is the implications of that new reality and in particular what are we seeing in the cyber and information domains yeah great great question so first it's really a reduction in decision space you know the days of being notable to project power from a homeland that is uncontested at our own timeline place of choosing wherever we want to go they're pretty much over and the risk of that is that decision space erodes for our nation's most senior leaders as you alluded to so that's crucial so those are kinetic threats the thing that concerns me most when i talk about domain awareness and domain awareness is from undersea to on orbit and including cyberspace is our domain awareness challenges in cyberspace candidly and you know the power the the projection of forces from the homeland about 80 to 85 percent comes out of the homeland to forward power projections so whether it be into paycom or whether it be you come you got to be able to get that force out of the homeland in a timely manner and as the administrator would tell you that we are heavily reliant on outside of dod and federal sources if you will for that power projection a vast majority of comes from local municipalities states industry and others that provide c2 for me to defend our homeland we have to be as i told you be able to fight in and from our homeland and i worry about the unknown i don't know the vulnerabilities in cyberspace candidly and that's something we have to look at now who's responsible for that i'd ask you i'll answer that question for you it's not general nakasone he's responsible for the doden it's not jen easterly it says that she's responsible for other federal networks outside of that it's play if you want or can okay and so we don't know what we don't know for those companies those municipalities how secure they are in the cyber domain and that is a concern for me in the information space real quick and then i'll i'll turn it over we're under attack folks if you haven't figured that out what you see in social media what you see fan the flames of internal discord whether it be politics or not and i'm not going to go into that but our competitors are fan the flames of our internal strife and discord to make sure that we are fighting amongst ourselves they are trying to undermine and erode our democracy on a daily basis and don't kid yourself that that's not happening we just need to understand that and we're at war every day in the information space in the cyber domain appreciate the opportunity to talk about that yes sir what sir thank you for being with us today and that on behalf of general evans and army north we're we're very proud to be the army component for north com under your leadership and i don't know if the audience knows that in your spare time you supported the resettlement of over seventy thousand afghan refugees and that mission was just completed on uh september thirtieth the the homeland portion do d portion of that mission and sir it's a pleasure to work for you and thanks for joining us today thanks bob thanks for being here i appreciate it i'd like to ask our panel members to come on up and take your seats and if you could get the doors in the back gentlemen thank you all right well it was great to hear from gentleman hurt today as he really set the table for us and many of the things he talked about today was how how we can prevent or stop an attack on the home wind which of course would be the first thing that we'd want to do and another large part of homeland defense of course is consequence management and that is if there is a cyber attack that gets through and has an effect on the homeland or anything else vandalism whatever it may be there's a whole consequence management side to that as well and so our panel here today is prepared to discuss all those things homeland defense itself consequence management how the interagency works together and I would encourage all of you please to think of some questions because they told me earlier unless we get 10 questions from the audience today they won't leave and I just asked the guys they've locked the doors in the back so I'll ask the first the first couple questions and then then we'll move to the audience because I think it's really important to address what you would like so initially I'm going to introduce all four panel members and then I'll go to each one for some short opening remarks and then we'll go right to the questions so first I'd like to introduce Dianne Criswell she is the FEMA director for the Department of Homeland Security right now even though we have Hurricane Ian going down in Florida she still took a few minutes out of her out of her time you've probably seen her on television recently with all that and thank you so much for for joining us and so just a little bit about her she's the 12th administrator for FEMA she's also the first woman to be the administrator for FEMA she has 30 years of government service ranging all the way from local to her last job where she was the commissioner of the New York City emergency management department from 2019 to 21 which was during the COVID response so incredible experience there two years of experience in industry as well so for all of our industry professionals that are with us that's very important and what I think is the best thing is 21 years in the Colorado Air National Guard as a firefighter to include two deployments to Kuwait and Cutter so we also have Lieutenant General John Evans who's my boss the commanding general of US Army North Fifth Army he just came well a year and a quarter ago from being the commanding general of US Army Cadet Command he's got the full range of operational experience has commanded at every level to include the deputy commanding general of the Second Infantry Division but also the regimental commander of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment Airborne the Night Stalkers he's a 1988 graduate of Appalachian State University and I know that he'd like me to point out that they did beat Texas A&M this year in football so we have Ms. Heather King who is the Dasty for Homeland Defense and DISCA we mentioned earlier about resettling 70,000 Afghan refugees I bet you're sleeping better at night now that September 30th has come and we've had that done because she has been our DOD lead for that and we really appreciate the working relationship that we have with her but she's served on the National Security Council for two different administrations in multiple positions advisory roles also for FEMA and the Customs and Border Patrol Agency and we're really glad to have you here again this year Ms. King thank you for joining us and we have Lieutenant General Sassville here as well he's the 12th Vice Chief of the National Guard Bureau a US Air Force Academy graduate in 1985 with a Bachelor's in International Affairs and like everyone on the stage multiple other degrees as well he had active duty tours in Europe and the Pacific as a pilot and then his last job he was the Commander of the Continental US NORAD Command Region and First Air Force vital job in the Air Force and now of course a vital job in the National Guard so thank you for joining us and so what we'll do is I would just ask us we'll just go we'll just go right from from left to right on the stage as you're looking at the stage and start with Ms. Deanne Criswell thank you all right thank you so much it's really great to be here today and you know I enjoyed hearing General Van Herk talk because it is about partnerships right and to have both civilian and military here in the room to have this conversation about Homeland Defense and Homeland Security really strikes the right tone and especially I think as you are talking and the theme here is building the army of 2030 it's very timely the conversation that I have been having across the emergency management enterprise or the Homeland Security Enterprise for that fact is that we cannot continue to do our planning and our actions based on the risks of the past we cannot continue to plan against our historical risk because our threats are emerging our threats are evolving so when it comes to FEMA and it comes to the consequence management portion that we have we are very focused obviously on the things that we are seeing as a result of climate change it's been a very busy couple of weeks for me I went from Puerto Rico after they first I went to check on the recovery from Hurricane Maria and then they had Hurricane Fiona I went to Alaska because Alaska had just gotten impacts from Typhoon Murdoch I think it was and the fishing villages on the western coast of Alaska and then down to Florida for the impacts from Hurricane Ian and we're seeing these threats continue to change and evolve and they're different right the the hurricanes that we're seeing today are producing more rain they're producing more water they're flood events they're water events they're not just wind events and as you've seen in the news there's been a lot of conversation out there about you know whether or not evacuation orders were given in a timely manner but because our threats are changing because our threats are emerging and evolving we have to be adaptive we have to adjust the way that we are approaching things and we cannot base all of our actions on how we responded to things in the past and Hurricane Ian is a great example of that and even Hurricane Ida last year which stayed a category for Hurricane for almost four hours over the southern coast of Louisiana but then killed a dozen or more people in New York City because of the rainfall that continued to go across the United States I think when I think about these emerging threats and these emerging challenges that we're having what I think about is how we are very siloed or are very focused in our hierarchical structures in our very linear processes and we have to evolve we have to now move into more adaptive thinking that makes us more agile so we can keep up with the threats that we are seeing that the emerging threats that are continuing to evolve are the risks that we're seeing from natural hazards and when we talk about the partnerships like in this room these emerging threats continue to evolve they continue to evolve to the point where we have now stood up at FEMA an emerging threats office so while we're focused on the consequences of natural hazards we're also very focused on the consequences of man-made disasters and the partnership that I've had with General Van Herk and talking about how we can continue to work together to build a structure that can think about the fact that we're going to have limited resources when it comes to these types of threats when I think about Hurricane Ian and the potential vulnerabilities we have for somebody to come in and create additional adversity through perhaps a cyber attack while we're trying to respond and support the individuals that have just been impacted by this hurricane we have to be more adaptive we have to be more agile and we can't be so focused on the linear processes that we're used to the historical risk and the historical ways that we have responded to things in the past it's been a really great partnership my journey that I have had throughout my emergency management career has been one of partnerships and I talk a lot about partnerships when I think back to my time in New York City as the Commissioner of Emergency Management the partnership that I had with the Department of Defense to come into our hospitals to support and decompress and provide that additional staffing made a world of difference but it wasn't just the staff it was the hope that it gave and I love to share a story and I want to share it here too about during that time we had well over I think 800 military Title X personnel that came into New York City to support us and when the last team was leaving one of the hospitals I believe it might have been Elmhurst when the last military medical were leaving our last hospital they had the ceremony to say thank you and what they said was you were the miracle we needed when we needed it most thank you for being our miracle that level of hope comes from the partnerships that we forged during times like this forums like this where we come together and talk about what the needs are going to be and the threats that are changing and evolving and how we're going to be able to continue to support each other as these threats continue to change I fast forward to Hurricane Ian we set up the largest search and rescue footprint than we ever have prior to landfall not wanting to be late to need from a previous North Com commander it's something that I think we all have to strive for and we have to make sure that we are adaptive and agile enough to make sure we can have those forces in there ready to respond in support as needed we did need them we did need some of them unfortunately but the fact that we were able to bring everybody together ahead of the storm was remarkable and it was our state it was our local search and rescue teams it was our FEMA search and rescue teams and it was our Department of Defense search and rescue teams all pre-staged in a way that was going to be able to respond in immediately as needed those are the types of partnerships and relationships that make a difference and I'm very happy to be part of this conversation today thank you okay thank you General Evans sir is it on there we go hey Administrator Criswell thanks so much for your comments and really appreciate what my boss General Van Hurk had to say to kind of set the stage here I will say that the partnership that we have particularly with FEMA as probably our most supported lead federal agency is is incredibly important and increasingly as we think about homeland defense and as we think about the concept of what globally integrated deterrence looks like that partnership is important but but also despite the fact that defense support to civil authorities comes with one bend of authorities and money and holistic defense kind of comes with another bend of authorities and money and sourcing they are increasingly growing together so the slide you see that I asked them to project it should be the only slide we see today unless Mark brought a slide with him I don't know but but it really is it's a it's a non-scientific slide so don't don't go troubleshooting you know and wargaming my my critical path there on the bottom but what it what is supposed to demonstrate is it really if you start on the left-hand side of that slide since about 1915 just before our entry into World War One projected out through about 2035 it shows where we've had peaks and valleys in the relative threat to the homeland so I'm often asked when people are looking at me you heard the boss say hey we don't say the homeland's not a sanctuary anymore that's become very cliche it's become kind of passe and people tune that out what what I'm saying is we've faced some pretty significant times in our history if you take a look at the big spike there at World War Two if you take a look at the the plateau that occurred as we were in this mutually assured destruction bipolar world with the Soviets throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s if you look at the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 if you take a look at some of these seminal events and then there's a small blip there for 9-11 right an attack on the homeland which was horrible and claimed lives and property and really changed the American psyche in a very significant way it wasn't however existential and as you see that continued graduation as we look out through the current time frame here in 2022 out to 2035 and you look at what our adversaries or potential adversaries have done to leverage technology and close our comparative comparative advantage gap that they're working at near parity with us and they're able to do that because of what General Van Herk said and that is we have over the course of a number of years for very good reasons and under different leadership throughout our country's last 30 years or so drawn our forces back into the homeland for a very good reason but now what we see is threats, competitors potential adversaries external to the homeland that we know we will have to project combat power to and assure power projection in order to set the stage for decisive combat operations at a time and place of our choosing which is what our combat commanders do on a daily basis so here in Northcom and as the J Flick at United States Army North I am always thinking about how can I better set the theater for the combatant commander so that when or if Admiral Aquilino asked for forces or when and if General Cavoli asked for forces we can with assurance project those forces and make sure that they arrive there in time to be able to execute war plans because if we cannot deter the enemy from attack which is our first option we've got to be able to respond decisively and so as we open the aperture up on this discussion I want us to think about the fact that an attack in the homeland a kinetic attack would be on the high end right General Van Hurt talked about some of the capability that our competitors are developing right now that could hold the homeland at risk below the threshold of nuclear war with kinetic capability but let's say it's not kinetic even if it's in the temporal domain cybers or space they can still create multiple dilemmas for us in the homeland that we have to respond to and we'll do that in partnership with our local state and federal partners so that we can continue to project combat power forward that's what our JFLIC is focused on when we're not out assisting our lead federal partners with fires and hurricanes and finding homes for displaced people from Afghanistan and the like so as you're thinking about the questions for the panel here think about how you would approach defense of the homeland and setting the conditions so that we can deter our potential adversaries from attacking us here because that's what they want to do and that's what they know they have to do because if they let us get forces forward like the boss said we can open a can up on them so thanks Bob thank you sir Ms. Heather King I think I turned it on okay so just a couple of quick points at the top as my colleagues noted you know obviously the threats and hazards are evolving for a myriad of different reasons one of the things I just wouldn't note and I would be remiss because of my technology background not to note it but that as boundaries are no longer defined by geography alone right they are often our adversaries are looking at this very differently than we traditionally have first you know based on geography and it is far more based on digital ability to to get into networks and such so that's the first point I'd like to add related to just threats and hazards as a whole the second point I wanted to touch on is the value of partnerships I wanted to pick up on something that the administrator noted my office is responsible for reviewing all of the different requests for assistance that come in across the federal government so we take a look at you know for a variety of things first and foremost back to what John was saying authority what authority is available what funding is available what capability is being asked or requested and then we look at the timing in which the request is coming in for when is it needed by we look at it for a number of things and in the course of the last year just to give you a sense of what my office has been responsible for and I see some familiar faces in the audience because these are teammates that I can I see that I worked very closely me and my team worked closely with and several of the folks here on the stage but we provided support for COVID response operation allies welcome Southwest border hurricane response wildfire response that's just a name a few and then my office was responsible they were the incubator for operation warp speed that many folks heard of and then supply chain logistics work that was done in response for COVID that's just an example of all the different things that my office is responsible for reviewing those requests for assistance and working across the department internally to determine how best to provide support work very closely with General Van Horck's team and John Evans team as well and then partnerships so that's internally but partnerships externally I can't tell you enough how much I'm on the phone with my colleagues at other departments and agencies thankfully I spent 17 years at FEMA and so that that experience is always helpful but I can't tell you enough of to the points that have been made before me time is of the essence so when you have an emergency that you can see or you can anticipate being on the phone and anticipate to anticipate what's going to be requested what's going to be asked my team always knows that it's a team sport and we're constantly looking around corners to figure out what we think is going to be needed so that we can help those on the ground more so in their time of need and then finally you know I think of resilience very much in in the perspective of the greater prepared we are as a nation the more resilient we will be and so I think about it in mathematical equations often you know the input is preparedness so the more prepared you are as I noted and that means planning, training, exercises the output is resilience and so ideally you'll be greater resilient and therefore when we're demonstrating resiliency to our adversaries we're being able to project overseas we're able to provide a variety of different support to our departments and agencies then we're demonstrating competence that builds trust amongst us as a team but then it also demonstrates resilience to any any given challenge that we might be facing and then finally I work very closely with our department fellow departments and agencies to help them build their own resiliency right as I tell my my son who in a few years will be going to college I'm not going to be doing his own laundry when he's in college I need to teach him how to do his laundry now so that when he gets to college he can do his own laundry and so a part of that is helping departments and agencies be more resilient themselves so that they are able to accomplish their missions I would often say FEMA is the the closest to us in terms of being the easy button because we often help our help our partners both departments or agencies rather and so working together as a as a valued part of that partnership but also helping them to be able to achieve their own mission so I'm going to stop there and turn it over to to you Bob yes sir you're not sassful please so they stuck with it right they showed remarkable resembleness and allowed me to continue to come on here on stage and go through some thoughts about the how to that have the 440,000 soldiers and airmen that make up the guard and we have two actually the channel that I picked out playing a live that's these two that are making more thanks for coming to participate in here you know it's really impressive work that we do through FEMA right it's a it's a fantastic system that I think job number one for the National Guard is the governor's local state authorities are the crowd beneficiary of that and general manager talks about homelands that fighters and tankers that are ready to jump up they're out there they're on the bench we have to consider those it's like by everything that we are talking about they really that we're talking about a whole different set of the resilience we the guard as a professor it means how do we operate in that space cyber a big space that the National Guard operates so I think that's appropriate for this audience probably thought more about that term you didn't think though things that I wonder about is in the major environment and sir could you explain to the audience what you mean by RFF I know the boss the combatant commander used the term a couple times but or I can do it real quickly so it's basically it's called a request for forces and so it's when a when a combatant command is asking for forces in order to execute something so for example when Harkin Ian hit initially FEMA had teed up a request for aviation and what we do then Army North is we ask Northcom for the aviation they ask the joint staff and then the joint staff will ask the services but I just wanted to give an explanation continue sir please thank you on redundancy have different paths have different ways to do the same thing and dispersal I think that that's probably something that we ought to get a little bit more sophisticated not as well but the 312 yeah we need resilience but how exactly do we want it and so finally I want you just wrap up so we could so we don't worry on today but happy to look happy for the questions of the conversation and we the National Guard are probably being part of the joint force no matter what and that the the difference and we're earned and sir thank you I do I do want to just make do one shout out for the Army you talked about the request for forces and how convoluted it is but what we can tell you is that every time we get a quick request for forces and we let the army know right away ahead of time usually general pat work over in the army staff the first thing that the chief tells general Evans the chief of staff the army is you will get whatever you need and so that's always good to know right when you're the FEMA director that that's kind of how it works on the army side since we are at a USA thought it'd be good to bring that out what I'm going to do then is I'm going to go through some questions and I will direct it to a panel member and then the other panel members can jump in if they have something to add and I'll I'll move relatively quickly through these because we do really want to hear from the audience and for the audience when you ask your questions we have a we have a couple rules right so you've all been to panels we're an audience member none of you would ever do this but we're an audience audience member comes to the mic and they like tell a story and you almost think they're on the panel and then they ask the question we would like you to just ask the question succinctly and you can elaborate a little bit but again we don't want to accidentally hijack the panel none of you would ever do that so maybe that's what I'm doing right now though so let me ask go ahead and ask the question I want to go right to interagency coordination which is so important when we do our mission and so I'd like to start of course with with the director of FEMA who does interagency coordination almost every time you execute a mission if you could tell us how you go about achieving it any lessons learned and then we'll see if any other panel members have anything to add so Ms. Criswell please thank you such an important topic right and I touched on it very briefly in some of my opening comments but FEMA you know does not have a lot of resources everything that we rely on relies on the interagency and we do that through a mission assignment process when you hear about the request for forces how that happens is we will direct a mission assignment to an interagency partner and that mission assignment then gets vetted and figured out how we can source it I would say the beauty just to add on to that conversation a little bit is that we have several prescripted mission assignments that have been pre-approved through the Secretary of Defense so we can hopefully expedite that process because it is while it is lengthy and long it is time consuming and sometimes we just don't have that time to wait as we just saw as we were preparing for Hurricane Ian but the interagency piece is critically important and I think the the way we do it and the way that we have been continuing to mature it is through our emergency support function leadership group we call that S-Flag and that has we have 15 emergency support functions that are outlined in the national response framework and each of those ESFs emergency support functions has a lead agency and then supporting agencies this group meets on a monthly basis during blue skies so we can make sure that we are coordinated and we're talking through our plans of how we're going to respond to different events making sure that we keep the connections and the relationships built and they are then those people that come together after an event happens like Hurricane Ian and we do our 1230 video teleconference every day during a disaster and it's those ESF leads that come in and report about their actions and so the relationships that we build during blue sky days with this group of individuals is what makes us so successful when we're responding to an event where we are working to improve our capability and to mature our processes is how we do that during recovery we have gotten very good at doing this during response but we have to do better when we're talking about long-term recovery and then in the national disaster recovery framework we have recovery support functions there's only six of those we've never really operationalized those to the level that we need to and that's something that we are very focused on right now is how do we now operationalize our recovery efforts in the same way that we have operationalized our response efforts comes with some challenges so on the ESF side and the response side I talked about how we mission assign them which means that FEMA also comes with a very large checkbook and we pay for those resources to come in on the recovery side it's all under their own authorities their own budget and so it's harder to get that level of cooperation when they're having to use existing resources organic resources and organic funding to make those things happen but we have to get there these disasters are becoming more complex the recoveries are taking longer and they're very complicated we have to have that same level of partnership and engagement in the recovery process as we do in the response process that we have right now so we have a lot of work to do but we have a great RS flag right now that has really been focused on how do we operationalize what we're doing to support what we know and what we anticipate are going to be the complex challenges in Florida for Hurricane Ian and then how are we going to take that to mature this process going forward thank you Miss King do you have something to add yeah the only thing I would add is just just to kind of draw this out a little bit so when a mission assignment is is sent over my team actually receives that with the team at Northcom and just to give you a little bit of context further I think Dan your team does a fantastic job they will often call over and say hey we're going to be sending you all this mission assignment we want to give you a heads up and then there will be a dialogue about sort of what the capability what the ask is and then we're working with Northcom and oftentimes maybe pulling in joint staff is necessary to work through all of those pieces so that we're really aligned with not only FEMA but within DOD as well to work out any sort of just sort of like further details that need to be worked in fact we had one over the weekend that we were we were working so it works out really well partly I would say kudos to the Northcom team and our North and FEMA your team that's calling over and giving a heads up so we can move on it okay thank you okay so the next question is on critical infrastructure in general evidence sir I'd like to address this one to you and the question is is how how do you determine critical versus non critical infrastructure and then once you determine a piece of infrastructure is critical then what happens next what do you what do you do to protect it or what do you do about it yeah so that's a great question Bob and you know general van Hurt talked about the fact that we finally got policy guidance on what defense critical infrastructure looks like and I can't go into great detail about that because of classification guidelines but it's nice to finally have kind of a mark on the wall for some things here's what I've learned in my 14 months of command at army north critical infrastructure is in the eye of the beholder everybody's got some so if you were to ask 10 different governors what they think national critical infrastructure is you get 10 different answers if you ask the administrator what she thinks it is you get a different answer and one of our policy makers might give you a different answer to we try to collate all this because because it's a loosely defined term frankly and everybody that's got an equity in things that are critical for the continuity of government and things like that has has their own definition here's what I would say and this is what I think is important is what general van herks trying to get to is what the department is trying to get to is what our interagency partners are trying to get to is we've really got to to focus in on the things that we must protect because at the end of the day we are going to have some degree of liability and vulnerability for other things and every you know every mayor of every town every governor of every state believes that what they've got in their municipality is critical and it may be for their ability to keep their power grid up for 8,000 people it may not be with regards to keeping the power grid up on the east coast so it's really a function of what we believe is critical and then DoD's got a role that is almost exclusively those things that allow us to protect continuity of government our nuclear enterprise and projection of combat power and then we've got other infrastructure that's critical for other functions in the government that really kind of speak to what our basic human needs are and what the American people need so it's very complex in that regard with regards to what I think about as I'm defending it I try to think about how could I assist should I get MAs from FEMA and should the department tell me okay hey we've got what we need to take care of department stuff now the administration has decided this is also something we've got to protect and DoD you've got the you've got the task to do it so what what capability going to place against it Mark talked about it a little bit some of it has to do with having redundancy some of it has to do with hard-pointing or building better physical you know resiliency so it can't be physically defeated and then some of it has to do with dispersal right what is it that we can move make mobile make it a harder target with regards to whichever domain is going to be attacked through so a very complex question I think we're having the conversation more now I think we've got to continue to have the conversation but critical infrastructure you can't just say it and everybody understands what it is yes sir okay yes sir please go ahead thanks bob just to augment what John just said about six months ago maybe a year ago chief national guard bureau asked the agitance general to coordinate where their state emergency partners to identify the top 10 things that they could see in their states that were most important to them along the 16 areas right so there there's 16 widely accepted sectors right and and those are well defined so which of those 16 are most important to the states I'll give you the top five that are important to the governor's transportation energy government facilities I think that's kind of like command and control essentially water and IT those were the top five defense from the governor's perspective out of the 16 was like number 13 so this is kind of going back to what I what I said earlier if it's a bad day for America and we are stressed we're fighting a hurricane we're under cyber attack and we've got to deploy you name whatever bct has to get out of matzoo are they are if that's going to come fast enough who's going to be around to do the things that we want them to do and and who won't right and so that that's kind of the scenario that I think we need to to have in mind and to exercise and to think through and to plan a little bit we're working on it we're not there but I think that's where we're headed thank you sir miss chris wall yeah and so the conversation about what do we want to defend is extremely important but as I reflect on hurricane Ian it's also about what am I going to need to restore as quickly as possible after the threat has passed and so they go hand in hand though light and so if we're having these conversations about what we're going to need to restore it'll also help us understand what we need to defend and I find it very interesting what the what the governors had listed as important but just an example from Ian and the thing that we were the most worried about when the hurricane was approaching landfall is if it took out the port of Tampa the port of Tampa provides almost the entire fuel supply for Florida and other parts of the Southern United States and so we did a lot of pre-planning on what the cascading impacts would be and the interdependencies would be for that and even if we moved and expanded all of the fuel capacity into the port of Orlando it would not cover what was needed and so we would need additional resources to come in and so then we talked about expanding the ability to utilize the colonial pipeline now if we go back one year we know that there was a cyber attack on the colonial pipeline and so all of these interdependent conversations about the port of Tampa even then if it didn't take a direct hit which it didn't from the hurricane we're also now in a very vulnerable spot for our adversaries to then do something to also take away that critical resource that critical piece of infrastructure that we're going to have to figure out is it a cause from the storm is it a cause from something else and provide the mission assignments to help restore the capability as quickly as possible because the cascading impacts across the United States would have been so significant okay thank you it's it is it's great to hear how the national response framework comes together to solve those problems so we'd like to go out to the to the audience for any questions I know several of you so I will start calling on people if we don't get any but please okay there's a microphone right here sir if you'd like to use it well thank you all this has been a phenomenal my name is Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Scott PhD candidate NC State my research deals with understanding the active duty role in in supporting during a crisis such as the things that you discuss so one of the questions that I had then is do you think we are training the operational and tactical level leaders for the level of complexity that you all have discussed whether it's you know preparing those leaders to respond to a hurricane while also simultaneously being prepared to deploy a combination brigade are we doing it and really the feedback that we're that we get from that I'm curious to see what feedback loops are you getting to say yes we are effective beyond the willingness and professionalism of the soldiers when they show up to support but really are they prepared in the train that we're doing and hopefully that question makes sense to you okay great we'll start with Lieutenant Joe Evans yeah so it's a great question we spend an awful lot of time kind of staring into that problem I think what you find is as you as you take a look at the way that disc and homeland defense come together you start to lose that the very clear line starts to get blurred very quickly particularly if you're talking about a national level attack right I'm not talking about a near peer adversary decides they're going to hold our homeland at risk and they're going to do things to create multiple dilemmas in the homeland some of which might be attributable others which may not be and if they're smart and savvy they do it at the same time we've got an E and rolling up the east coast or that we've got something else wildfires burning out west so that we've got all of these other dilemmas that we're facing and trying to deal with our challenge is we teach our war fighters to to fight war forward right so we focus them on combat tasks and we employ them under title 10 authority with very clear and unambiguous rules of engagement now let's back up the truck a little bit and consider that we suddenly have to defend and I'm talking about physically defend some type of infrastructure or something from threats unknown whether that's saboteurs whether it's people who might be seditious in nature or whether it's frankly civil unrest that is rolling towards a major piece of infrastructure now you've got title 10 forces a little bit different for the guard now you've got title 10 forces and you're asking a young man or woman okay you need to defend this we'll defend it with what with with lethal force we don't have the authorities to do that in the homeland for very good reason so now you start to get into the more complex question of okay do we ever extend that authority and there are ways to do that legally when do we do that how do we inform decision makers about how we do that getting back to your basic question I think we train our leaders to handle a multitude of dilemmas very ably adding the homeland dynamic to it makes it incredibly complex so we're probably not there from a training standpoint and it's not something that the army is asked to train to we do it a little bit in the guard but the active army we don't do it Joe sassville just one quick point since your question is about training something to add to the conversation there is a after Katrina we learned that when you have a bunch of title 10 coming in 32 already on the scene maybe or vice versa you really need unity of command and so the team put together a dual status commander course that is a vibrant course it's taught out at headquarters there Colorado Springs and it's a very well established process with approvals all the way up and down we got close to using it here recently wasn't needed because no title 10 forces went to Florida but that would be something that I would point to for leader training okay thank you sir all right man we'll go to you and then we'll go to Gil Sandborn after that thank you my name is Barbara Meadows I work for Denny Criswell I'm the in response and I am the the planning and exercise division regional branch chief so my responsibility is to ensure that deliberate planning specifically is integrated and is going well within the regions historically we've planned without having a constrained environment we have plans so that we know that everything is available whether that's from the interagency whether that's from DOD so now we're looking at planning in a constrained environment so my question is about the National Guard and oh by the way with putting it all out there I'm also in the National Guard I'm in the Maryland National Guard and I'm the J34 so knowing what it means to be title 10 versus title 32 versus state active duty you mentioned something about will a governor be able to retain their folks on state active duty when a title 10 mission comes down the pipe do you see resolution to this especially since we're talking about this very big problem down at the state level about any type of a response whether or not the National Guard will be available whether they're overseas or there's something else going on on the homeland do you see this as a policy issue or do you see this as a legislative issue as to whether or not a governor can retain if they're doing a critical mission within the state so thank you for the question I see it as both and it depends to figure out how is this going to play out the federal government so the National Guard and as I mentioned job number one is fighting nations wars right and and and that was the deal that's been in in in place for the past hundred years that's why we're the National Guard not the Maryland Guard or the Delaware Guard or whatever it is right we're the National Guard and the and and what that gave us what that gave us the nation was essentially primacy to the federal government that they could be called up to go overseas anytime so it depends on whether it's a federal emergency or not fundamentally right so I'm not a lawyer I would need a secure legal opinion if I really get into this but fundamentally if it's a federal emergency a national emergency things are going to look very differently than it's if it's a regional one but I do think that we need to look closely at that and I'll turn it over to Miss King I don't want to put her on the spot if she's got any thoughts on that but I do think that the a legislative turn would be required if policy were to be changed so I think you may see some some of that and and can it be fixed without policy I don't think we know the answer to that yet because we haven't really to your point stressed the system I think you used the word constrained right but if if if there are tremendous demands on the nation I don't know that we've really exercised or planned to that level that to the maximum level that we can or should yet thank you so the only thing I would add is my lawyer would would and he we actually talked about this last week and so it does it depends that is literally his answer to me it depends on the authority uh well depends on the request specifically right and and so it starts off with exactly what are the parameters with the request authority and then all the way down the line and so we get questions like this a lot we have to look at the nature of the request to general Sasserville's point right we you know we have a global mission and so all of that is sort of balancing land looking at sort of what is being asked is it a capability so equipment or air transportation or is it personnel and and it's a constant sort of looking at all of these issues against the authorities so I've learned if anything I need to be a lawyer so thank you depends it's becoming a part of my vocabulary on a regular basis thank you very much sir okay thank you Mr. Sanborn good afternoon Gil Sanborn I'm a CASA from Northern California first thanks very much for a terrific panel here I'm not going to tell a story but I'm going to put my question into a context yesterday the secretary of the army talked about our incredible challenge in recruiting and part of that is the very small propensity to serve nine percent which means 91 percent don't have a propensity to serve and that's not organic to those young men and women it has to do with influencers and people who steer people away from service you are our best asset because you represent our ability to deal with threats that are threats to the homeland what's your strategy in terms of telling that story in terms of projecting it out in collaboration with the rest of our public affairs and outreach program because what I see is when people don't think they need an army that changes immediately when the flames are in the backyard or there's a land slide or an earthquake so how are you integrating your public affairs with the the fact that the army needs to tell its story into the homeland general editor yeah I'll jump on that first and mark might want to jump on it because the guard does a fabulous job of this talking to and recruiting people by talking about how they can help their state and their homeland so so I'll leave that to him but it is a challenge right I think a lot of it gets back to what general van herk was talking about about campaigning and about projecting and messaging and controlling our narrative right we tend to lose our narrative right now we're struggling a little bit I think because the information space is being challenged some of that's internal strife but some of it frankly is like he said people with disinformation and misinformation trying to generate and churn that internal strife which takes our young people who are principal recruiting population and and you know makes them think well why would I want to be part of that mess right now what why do I want to be part of the government if it looks like things are just not the way they're supposed to be now you know under the layers of what we see in the social media threads and other things it's pretty solid group of folks still very patriotic great culture still doing the right things for America how do we get that message out there and I think it's all about what what general van herk said every opportunity we have we should campaign we're campaigning to make sure our adversaries or potential adversaries know that they should not contest try to contest us in our homeland we need to make sure that the American people see that we are taking a strong stance to protect the homeland and that it's worth investing their son and daughter's in to be able to carry that forward and it's all about our culture just a couple thoughts and we were talking about this in the van on the way over here first of all the guards situation is unique obviously because we're community-based right we're in all 54 and so the challenges are frankly quite different right the networks are there there's no rotation every two three years you PCS out and go do something different so our recruiting we have challenges in the guard right 98% this year and the forecast isn't too rosy either for a whole bunch of different reasons but it is a little bit different between the compost I'm not a recruiter I won't speak for the recruiters my sense is we might not be hitting the right targets right so if if if you're taking marketing to a movie theater audience you're not probably hitting the people that you want to be hitting because they're not going to the movies anymore right they're on on these things a significant amount of the time on different types of social media and that's where you're going to make the connection I think so I understand I'm not sure but I think the army's got a program to really boil all this down and say where are we actually making contact with with with youth for today and then and then finally I I think there's a sense that we don't maybe we're not under threat anymore there's no evidence of that I think the the now that we're out of Iraq people are thinking okay well you know shows over nothing to see here we can go on and all we're really left with is trying to describe it verbally of what a hypersonic missile is what a cruise missile is and that's really tough to do so I was thumbing through twitter last night yesterday and so I for the first time I've seen a crew a Russian cruise missile flying in I don't know if anybody else saw this it does its fly up maneuver tucks over and impacts the ground impacts kiff that little clip is exactly what we ought to be showing the kids and saying here's what the threat looks like here's what we're talking about when we're the next generation of of Putin's six new threat systems that he's building this is one of them this is what that's so so maybe that's actually helping us if we can capture some of that footage and and put that in a real context for America's youth can I just want to add one thing to that what I find is that it's not just here right it's public service in general I just came from this morning around table with different associations with the fire service same question we're having trouble recruiting firefighters when I became a firefighter it was very competitive and it was hard to get there and now they can't even get enough people to apply for these different types of positions I think to what to what the panel has said our approach has to be so different because we have to somehow reinstill the sense of duty and that sense of desire to want to be a public servant and what it means to be able to give back to your country in whatever way whether it's in the armed services firefighting emergency management and we're just losing that and so I think we just have to have a whole different conversation about how do we reach people to help them understand the value of public service and and what it can do for them in their career long term thanks very much okay thank you Gil it sounds like the theme for next year's AUSA should be we're hiring right so okay sir hi good afternoon my name is John Conger I'm the former DoD deputy comptroller and I was assistant secretary of defense for energy installations and environment my question is on the demand signal for forces when you're responding to a disaster can you talk a little bit about the readiness impacts that are on across the board on forces as they respond to these demands to natural disasters to other homeland defense missions but but in addition to that can you speak to the the degree to which that demand is going to start to impact force structure decisions you know or are we actually going to to size the force to accommodate these kinds of missions as they grow into the future I'll take that one to start with and a little bit to unpack there I'll answer your first your last question first and that is no so we're going to build a military force to fight and win our nation's wars that's what we do the first question you ask is a really good one it's one we struggle with all the time and I'm looking at Heather here because this is what we we go back and forth on you know the administrator is kind of you know at the regional level her her regional administrators are taking a look at the hard requirements and going okay yeah we think this is probably in DoD's lane then they kick it up to national and national looks at it goes yeah we need to go to the department and the department looks at it and goes okay you know hey the cost is high here you know because there's going to be readiness impacts there's going to be training impacts and so they are very very diligent about saying this is something that only DoD can do force of last force of last choice and we saw this with Operation Allies welcome which is probably our most recent pain right pretty significant undertaking but frankly nobody else had the capacity or the scale to be able to do it based on the immediacy of the mission and how critical it was to our national interest so the the services swallowed hard they came to the table but what they did is they went back to the secretary and they said here's the cost here's what you don't get if we put men and women at Quantico or JBMDL for the next three four five months taking care of this problem set they're not out there training they're not they're not building readiness we are backing up people who are on deployment timelines we are having to double down we're having to assume risk which is really what it's all about in the end state is how much risk are we willing to assume so I don't know and I and I don't think we'll ever find the ability to build capacity just to do that I think we leverage our compo two and three partners pretty well in that space but when you start talking about bringing title 10 forces in there's a significant cost and and I'm sure Heather will talk about how the the department goes through that that mental gymnastics yeah it's a it's a it is a that is a very good way of describing it mental gymnastics so I think operationalized welcome is a really good example of that that was cited you know we we absolutely looked at you know we were essentially told within less than two weeks time we needed to prepare and it and the numbers kept going those in the audience that were working on this mission recall we prepared for 6500 and before long it was 50,000 more and that was that was in less than two weeks time period that we needed to have it ready have the the eight installations ready and it was really through John Evans and the work that you and your team did and others did within the guard and with joint staff and others but I would say in terms of readiness you know one thing I've learned is in my conversations with the interagency I'm constantly having to explain what do we mean by readiness folks on the outside of DoD they don't know really what that means and so a lot of times in my conversations whether it's with joint staff or with army or whomever I'm really asking I'm pushing because I'm saying okay what do you what do you really mean what is that you know are you talking about a battalion or a some unit that is that is mission that we absolutely need to be able to move forward with if we if we get caught into a particular conflict what does that mean for that unit or that battalion or what have you and so I'm constantly pressing and part of why I'm pressing internally is so that I can go and explain it in layman's terms to folks that don't live and buy DoD lingo and it's helpful right because I spent most of my life outside of DoD so I'm constantly translating between DoD folks and then outwardly to whether it's the White House or with other departments and agencies I really see my role as a big translator the more that we can make it real and make it you know a lot of times I'll explain it as look this is the real impact that you're asking for this capability or you're asking for this duration here's what we mean by the real impact and I put it very very I had a conversation recently with the interagency partner and I said look our folks don't train for that mission that you're asking for and here's what you're explicitly asking and the impacts and when I did it like that they were like oh okay I'm not going to ask again okay so that's a lot of translation I will tell you the secretary and the deputy secretary take that very candidly the readiness impacts that is part of the conversations it's part of the memo whenever we tee up a decision for review and consideration we are including that because we want to make sure they're armed with all of the facts right part of my job is making sure working with our partners that we are arming decision makers with the facts so and if I could just add a little bit on that and I think taking it from a different lens from my perspective I look just look back to COVID-19 and we had a nationwide response and so when we're talking about threats to the homeland there is an example of a nationwide response that we really relied on one specific component of the Department of Defense and that was medical personnel but a large number of that came from the reserve forces and so while we talk about readiness of the armed services we also have to think about the de-conflicting where we're getting our resources from so in that example we were pulling medical personnel in through the Department of Defense to support the operations but we're pulling them through the reserves from the local hospitals that they're working in and we create this conflict of resources and so having those conversations about what the risk is isn't just about the readiness of the forces but where are we getting them from I think about you know other times where it's we will mission assign the Department of Defense to do something but it's a contract that they're going to use to execute that I think a lot about DLA and fuel but those are the same contracts that our local providers are using and so we actually can create more problems sometimes if we're not thinking through the unintended consequences and the interdependencies of how we're sourcing the requirements my two cents so administrator great great example on on the reservists that went up into New York City and and did God's work up there that's it that's exactly the scenario that I'm concerned about on the cyber front where we pull reservists to defend the Dode and probably the hardest target in the world and then we're leaving cyber capacity or tapping on cyber capacity that's not available out to the critical infrastructure so to your question from a guard perspective on the latter piece super hard to move structure force structure around from state to state it's kind of stable there if you're not talking about increasing in strength or adding to it you're talking about taking from another state to put into another one right so it's a zero some game very difficult to do small trades on the margins typically but but nothing sizable the states have other options that they are looking at to help with a manpower issue and there are some that are concerned about that so it is a real conversation but it's a tough conversation to have on the readiness side again to the administrator's point there are things that you can't capture that aren't easily measured in terms of sorts or Durr's rating on a right on the C or YQ scale the double tapping the community is one but the other thing is if you're talking about using a guard unit that's basically in reset it's okay for them to be down on readiness because that's what's expected so the danger isn't low readiness ratings there the danger there is overuse and we don't have a great way to capture overuse and just wearing guardsmen out that's what we asked the agitist general to keep track of hey let us know what's happening in your state they're there they're they're on the ground they're they're understanding their guardsmen better than anybody else how are things going can you take more no I need a break I need to pull back and so that's an intangible but it's a very real thing and it's not a readiness thing for us most of the time thank you okay great all right so we're gonna take two more questions and then I just want the panelists to think about I'll give you each a chance to make some very short closing comments and sir yes Mark McCarly from a general perspective upon the invocation of the Stafford Act and followed by the stand-up of a joint command post with our North and with FEMA and its ESFs circling around the campfire so to speak what role does the governor of the particular state in which this unforeseen consequence took place retain in the overall command and control of the execution of both response and recovery I can start with that one yes ma'am the governor has it's all about the governor right so in order to declare for the president to declare a disaster it has to come as a request from the governor there are certain situations that the president can do it without that request but by and large the governor has to make the request I make the recommendation of the president the president makes that declaration so that's how the Stafford Act gets started and it frees up the funding and the ability to then mission assign our federal partners to come in and support the governor also has to cover cost share right and so all of the resources that we mission assign whether it's the department of defense whether it's interior whether it's energy the governor has to cover 25 percent of those costs and so the governor needs to sign off on every mission assignment as well right so the request they will send the original request up and they need to know and we brief them this is what it's going to cost you we've often and we have done this right now for Hurricane Ian we will cover 100 percent of those costs for the first 30 days in Ian right now we're covering that for the first 60 days because our focus is on saving lives and we don't want that cost to delay the ability to save lives or stabilize that incident because it has so many cascading impacts but once you get beyond that or if that hasn't been designated because it's not for every disaster just depends on the severity of the event then the governor has to have that request and has to acknowledge that they're going to cover 25 percent and we will let them know how expensive the department of defense is and that they have other resources too right that they can emack the emergency management assistance compact much cheaper for them to request other state assets to come in and support sometimes that's done through the national guard as well but the difference in cost is but now you're weighing time in cost right because it could take more time than it would take perhaps the department of defense so the governor is very involved at least his representative in those conversations on the military side and you heard general sassville talk about it a few minutes ago once we invoke a dual status commander that really becomes kind of the inflection point for the governor and the tag to kind of provide their you know requirements priorities of what they want to me as the as the joint task force commander so to speak the j-flit commander we saw this a lot with COVID when we had multiple dual status commanders invoked across many states and we might even have a dual status commander who's out doing firefighting in California while everything else is going on and that really becomes the the input point as it were so that we can make sure that the priorities that do is tackling is number one the things that we've been put on task to do which is very important right because the mission assignments very prescriptive in that regard and then number two the things that that are ticking away at that priority list that the governor might have appreciate it thank you okay all right sir the last question goes to you hey good afternoon my name is Kevin Lohan I'm an army officer currently on loan to FEMA and my question is about General Sassville's sort of bad day for America scenario so you mentioned that there are a lot of unknowns in terms of force availability and other sorts of planning factors and my question is what are we doing both in terms of the interact agency collaboration space and the exercise space to try and reduce some of those unknowns and playing against that sort of doomsday scenario that you described well of course we have the you know the standard planning and the standard exercises and I'll ask Ms. King here to jump in that's that's her domain I'm not going to stick my nose into that and the administrator probably has some thoughts on that too but but I think we're positioned to get at it we we need a little probably a little bit of push and a little bit more fine tuning of exercise scenarios willingness to actually go there right because it's that's not an easy thing to get at right and you got to be careful of wanting to have the answer if you're gonna if you're gonna put the question out there right so we talked about the authorities piece and making sure everybody understands that and then fundamentally I'll stop here it would be very helpful for everybody to be on the same sheet of music when it talks when we when we're talking about definitions right so what is homeland defense what is not homeland defense what is homeland security what is not homeland security there's still a little bit of refining I think to be done to make sure that we're not talking past each other inside the inner agency let alone inside DOD frankly so on the latter point I think from a policy view we are doing some internal work that we're going to be working on of the next several months with our partners focused on clarity of definitions so homeland security versus homeland defense what exactly do we mean so that we can have those conversations too with the inner agency over the next several months so more to come but that work is very much starting to make sure that we're very clear about what we mean by these terms and then having conversations with the inner agency partners too for on that on that on related to to your exercise point there's a national exercise program when I was housed at FEMA for a long time that FEMA actually runs on behalf of of the USG I'm going to turn it actually to to the administrator to talk about it but it is a robust program that's been around for a long time and I'm a huge fan of so turn it back to you yes so we do have the national level exercise program conduct an exercise every other year and then in the off years we do more FEMA centric exercises I think what I would say though and Lieutenant General Evans and I had this conversation at our first meeting we don't exercise to failure enough we we script them too much that we all look good at the end of the day we all win and everything's perfect and if we can't be willing to actually run these scenarios these no wind scenarios that truly call out our gaps then we're not going to know what we need to fix and so we have to be brave enough to start having more exercises that truly test our weaknesses and not be afraid of failing but actually do it to failure so we can improve and that's the direction that I think that we need to go and that's one of the conversations we've been having if I could just add on your point I think it's a really important one before I came back into DoD I was in the technology sector and I will tell you there were posters up everywhere that said fail fast and often right and it was about like don't be afraid to make mistakes be vulnerable be humble and we were constantly pushed to the end to the degree and we had very candid conversations I worked for the CEO and CEO of that company and we were working very closely on I remember going through exercises scenarios and they weren't scripted not a one was scripted and we were working through it in real time talking through if such and such event happened how would we deal with it I can't encourage you all enough I think that's a really powerful point be vulnerable actually do away with the talking points and don't be afraid to to you know make mistakes as you're talking through things so it's really important okay thank you so we have 10 minutes left on the panel I would just like for each panel member if you have a concluding comment or something you want to leave the audience with with respect to your agency and Homeland Defense that would be great and Ms. Criswell will start with you and go down the line that'd be great I think just to summarize it's really kind of where I started our threats are evolving our threats are emerging there are a lot of interdependencies in the decisions and the resources that we have that are going to affect our decisions the cascading impacts are getting more complex with each and every type of man-made or natural disaster that we're facing and we have to I think as a federal family learn how to become more adaptable and not just focus our efforts on the way we've always done them and learn how to do things in parallel fashion even though our processes are very rigid they're very linear I think as you heard Heather talk about how we have conversations ahead of time working the process so they can get through faster we have to be that agile we're never going to keep up with the complexities that we're facing from natural disasters from the consequences that we're going to be facing from our adversaries if we don't learn how to be more adaptable and more agile to approach them yeah I think I'd kind of harken back to what General Van Herc said about our national defense strategy it's a good strategy a well researched well written and on point and the number one priority in it is homeland defense you know last week or the week before last we were talking in real terms in many circles about what does the use of a tactical nuclear weapon look like and what does that do to the world order we haven't had that discussion in a long long time and sadly we're at a point where we have to entertain those types of ideas because of things that are going on in the world and so what I would say is I'll get back to what both Administrator Chris Will and General Sasseville said and frankly Dusty King as well we've got to have a willingness to have the uncomfortable conversations now that is hard in the homeland because it is not politically popular to it to suggest to the American people they may not be safe in their homes or in their country but we've got to start to open the aperture there and have real discussions about what the risks are here because if our enemies can hold us at risk below the threshold of nuclear war to accomplish their means in their part of the world in their region I believe they'll do that so I think that's what we have to be focused on so all the points before me spot on I think that the one thing I have learned the more and more that I work in this space every day is every time you think you know it all check yourself because none of us know everything and constantly constantly be humble and rely on your teammates right everything is a team sport that we do and I harken back to operational allies welcome it was you know working with my teammates Bob Fenton and several others working day in day out it was a very very challenging mission it was constantly changing on challenging changing us and challenging ourselves but one thing it taught me was the persistence resiliency and team team camaraderie we together across the entire interagency and within DOD I saw things that I you know attributes of teammates that I was completely just in it was inspiring and then I would just leave you with that mission you know I was I visited all the installations constantly I knew you did as well John Evans and and Quantico when I was walking around there were two little girls that came up to hold my hand they must have been three and four years old and I'll never forget they came out of nowhere just to walk around the installation with me and hold my hand and they they were looking up and smiling at me as I had like all of these military men around me and I will tell you it taught it really showed these little girls a it was they were going to have a totally different life here in the US and B one day they can do anything if they work hard enough and so just I encourage you all constantly be humble and challenge one another so I talked about war fight that's job number one you know back at home here taking care of the homeland job number two and then partnerships is the other pillar I guess that we talk about in the National Guard partnerships within the states between the states interagency and and that's not going to change I think that is something that we need to focus on in the future you hear NDS allies and partners and for the overseas peace and we got neighbors to the north and good neighbors to the south but I'm really just talking about as a nation the partnerships that we need to continue to develop be be active in that be active in developing those reaching out to people that you didn't reach out to before because to get through this next decade two decades in the national security environment that we're in is going to require that and it's going to require agility of mind it's going to require us to do some things differently than we've done before and we need to embrace that that's the only the only constant is the change nothing's ever the same there's always new missions new ways of doing things technology improves that both on the blue and on the red side so we cannot afford to be entrenched and I know again for the this is an army audience but building the army of 2030 clearly you'll know that change is a big part of that and that applies I think also here to defending the homeland okay sir thank you so we'd like to thank AUSA for hosting the panel today thank our panelists and of course general van herk as well and this great audience you all were wonderful appreciated the questions and your attentiveness so let's just give everyone a round of applause please thank you and this concludes today's panel