Those of you who are at the chow line can stock up and head for your seats We generally try to have enough food here to make it through till lunch Keep you alive for a short period of time here. This looks like a voracious crowd. Yes So good morning and on behalf of our CEO and president Dr. John Hammer I want to welcome you all to the Center for Strategic and International Studies Also want to welcome our viewers on the web. I don't know if my mic is loud enough. You guys picking me up, okay? All right I've got a couple of administrative details and then want to kind of outline what we're here for and are doing today We have a really wonderful terrific timely report and topic to discuss this morning Administratively we're going to be here for about 90 minutes If you're viewing on the web You should be able to download a copy of the report and And follow along at home. We probably won't refer you to page numbers as we go So you you'll have to do a little work on your own I'm not sure but you also may be able to download the the view graphs So those in the room will see them you'll be able to see them from the web as well This is on the record. We are recording this that will be an archive of both the video and the audio It'll be posted at CSIS afterwards So if if at the end of this you look at and you say what the heck did Frank Hoffman actually say you can go back and Pick up on that. Okay afterwards a mystery So it's what a time we're in we we have We're in the middle of as all of you know our fourth downturn in the last 65 70 years and And we have no idea how low it's going to go how far it's going to go, etc You've got some very important questions about what do we need this military for and how do we size and shape it? Properly, how do we align strategy and programs and policy and resources going forward? You had in the past week Some very lively exchanges I would urge you to watch the videos if you haven't Between the chief of staff of the army and members of the various armed services committees. It's a quite a robust Example of the difference between article one of the Constitution and article two You can look those up on your own time the We're really wrestling with the questions like you know, do you Are we looking for the force we can afford or are we trying to figure out the force? We can that we need here and are we preparing for a world that we're trying to make it come out a certain way Or are we preparing for a world that is what it is and we're going to have to deal with it And of course, it's it's a complex set of questions. I'm making it look like binary issues, but they're not very binary issues at all Yeah Traditionally the military has assessed the adequacy of its force structure including readiness and training and equipping and so on Against a set of threats and and the war plans that are designed to meet those threats But that's probably not the approach that we're going to need in the future or rather. It's that and a lot more Because we have a complex set of future scenarios and we call them in this report vignettes because we're not quite ready to Distinguish them with the acronym or the or the name scenario because that implies then that you've got to build a plan To to deal with it, but from a vignettes point of view it allows you to scope against a huge set of issues if you will and we have an assessed in this report the budgetary and Resource requirements to deal with these vignettes if you will that's work that still has to be done And this report is focused not on the whole world But on the parts that are have primacy in the defense Strategic guidance that was issued January a year ago So a very strong sent-com focus Middle-East and counterterrorism a very song pay-com focus Rebalancing to Asia and counterterrorism, etc And of course the theaters don't mirror one another the way they did when I was growing up in this system Where it was pretty fungible to have forces that were relevant for one set of plans in one theater to be relevant to another So all of that adds to the complexity and then of course from yesterday's wire services comes word that In fact that one headline said army seeks to complement air-sea battle You know Secretary McHugh said the army is moving forward and we've heard this word In fact, I think general Odierno talked about this office of strategic land policy when he was here in this very room November last year You know to deal with ideas about Forcible entry and power protection and in the involvement of ground forces in anti-access and aerial denial Operations so to cover all of that we've got both a nice thick document and a very robust conversation here this morning Leading this is is our senior fellow Nate fryer. Nate fryer had it was a career army officer Spent time at the Army War College spent time in OSD spent a lot of time in theaters of operations Especially Iraq and has been a senior fellow here at CSIS now for about six or seven years And he's joined by a marvelous panel. He'll introduce the panel So I want to ask you all to please join me in welcoming Nate fryer CSIS Sam you can we can move out here to the podium. Well, thank you very much David That's a very kind introduction to what has been a very what I think is Been an exceptionally challenging report study in a time of great change inside the Department of Defense Before I begin talking about the substance of the report. Let me first Take an opportunity for some thank-yous and then also introduce my panelists Before proceeding first, I think this report would not have been possible without the support of the Army G8 and in particular The Army quadrennial Defense Review Office Inside G8 under the leadership of Major General John Rossi With the able assistance of Tim much more and Jim Botner in particular with respect to this report Their assistance has been invaluable. We also received a great deal of support from US Pacific Command US Central Command the service component commands underneath them the joint staff OSD etc in the process of this and their contributions to the substance of this report have been Both invaluable and at many times groundbreaking in the ideas we arrived at Through their assistance. We had a great working group and a great senior review group We spent time with us going over our ideas fleshing things out and testing testing things They too deserve some credit. You can see who is involved in that when you pay it when you leaf through the report We're indebted to some several CSI senior scholars Who also helped us a great deal in sort of guiding the report and arriving at some of in particular our regional insights that we came to Finally, let me just and actually publicly mention the research team Who worked very hard at getting a report? I think that will be very influential will be influential going forward In the defense review season Stephanie Sannick senior fellow and direct deputy director of the international security program Jacqueline Guy Curtis buzzard Errol Lalman Steve Nicolucci JP Pellegrino our military fellows Sam Eaton and Megan Loney also interns with the program they've been Absolutely great teammates in this process, and I wanted to thank them publicly As for the panel I'm going to spend about 10 minutes talking about the 10 or 15 minutes talking about the report itself But I'm joined on stage here with a By this panel that I think will bring a great deal of insight and experience to the discussion On my far right is mr. Barry Pavel. He's director of the Brent skull croft Center on international security at the Atlantic Council spent 18 years Inside the Department of Defense in various positions in the senior executive service And also was a special assistant to the president and a senior director for plan Defense policy and strategy in the White House from 08 to July of 10 To my right is lieutenant general retired James Dubick. He's a senior fellow at the Institute for the study of war He is a career infantry officer if I'm not mistaken. I'm sorry to hear about that. I'm an artilleryman, so He spent 37 years in the United States Army and commanded as a general officer the 25th Infantry Division first Corps at Fort Lewis and The multinational security transition command in Iraq Then on my left an old friend and colleague Mr. Frank Hoffman. He's a senior research fellow at national defense universities Institute for national strategic studies. He's a former Marine officer. I'm sorry about that as well Also an infantryman who's walking carry a pack of rifle ridden everywhere He's recently left the Department of the Navy as senior director for naval capabilities and readiness He's widely publicized and a prolific commentator on the future conflict and on hybrid warfare in particular Frank And I've been jousting mates many times and co-conspirators many times on a lot of Ideas before I began I just want to remind everybody as well to turn all cell phones pagers blackberries, etc Off so we don't get interrupted in the process All the panelists will make some kind of a presentation and then after the presentation We'll have time for questions. So just let us run through our Run through our discussion and then we'll open it up to the floor for questions There will be microphones present throughout just raise your hand And I'll moderate the Q&A and make sure that you're called on in an orderly fashion So the intent of today is to talk about a report again. It was chartered by Army GA on The the potential the future potential for the large-scale employment of the US ground forces that being US Army Marine and special operations forces in the US Sankam and Pekam AORs and alongside that sort of view of the prospective employment of those forces We were sort of chartered to evaluate What the Department of Defense calls future challenges risk associated with The employment of those forces and with that we started the process in October of really the right around the beginning of October of The previous year of last year going through this process and what you see here today is really the culmination of that effort So if I could the next slide, please Here's our study purpose. It's all in the past tense now. Thankfully This is what we did Our charter really was to identify core interests in the two regions and identify ground Relevant hazards in those regions that are most likely to threaten those interests over the next two decades as I said in Before we Developed a framework to assess future challenges risk and then assess that risk against a set of what became 20 regional vignettes that really grew out of our assessment of The trends and insights in the in the two regions of concern to the report Finally, we compared our risk assessment to the current direction of strategy and policy to arrive at certain judgments on General risk mitigation policy level risk mitigation measures that the Department of Defense might take Going forward. Let me make a few Qualifications because I think they're important Number one large-scale in the context of this report is not necessarily What was considered large-scale in the past or would have been interpreted as large-scale our floor in this report is really An army division the ground combat element of marine expeditionary force or some combination of special operations Marine and army forces that equal up to that's the floor the ceiling could obviously be much higher than that So that in our in our in the context of this report is large-scale our judgments are qualitative. They're not quantitative Okay, so what we're we were charted to look at is what the force might be asked to do Not specifically the extent to which the force might be asked to do it That is really a follow-on I think to this effort and then finally we accounted for what we Labeled in a question that I've been very interested in for quite some time We we tried to account for what we call problems that emerge from disorder or the failure of Component of authority to control resources territory dangerous resources, etc As well as unfavorable order which would be Really what it sounds like a rising regional peer Another great power that rises up in in a very traditional military fashion threatens US interests in a way that Forces us to respond next slide if I could Sam I'm going to cut right to the chase. We came to four key findings. Basically. We came to a lot of findings It's a very big report But really there's four key. I would call these themes, you know finding themes that rolled out of our report the first Is that the US does face? Future contingencies where US policymakers will want the option to consider the large-scale employment of ground forces In a lot of conversation that may appear to be a mom and apple pie conclusion frankly but but but our view was in the contemporary debate where this you really do have this perfect storm of Resource challenges inside the Department of Defense and a long experience with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan There the trend in strategy and policy right now is to really discount a large number of potential Contingency events in the future is is not necessarily breaching a Threshold that would have us employ ground forces, but we think that the future is somewhat different than that we envision an expansive role for Army Marine General Purpose and and General Purpose forces and special operations forces in both regions and one of the things we found is that the more conflicts the more conflicts and crises involve challenges between peoples The likelier that ground forces provide a qualitative advantage in the US military response second After looking at the vignettes that we developed which I'll talk about in a bit if you're looking at the vignettes We found that ground the large-scale ground force Responses in the future will really fall into what we think are five basic archetypes humanitarian response Distributed security enable and support actions peace operations or limited conventional campaigns. I'll talk much more about those as I go forward but We found it to be most plausible that over the next two decades ground forces are more likely to respond to foreign internal or cross-boundary Disorder natural catastrophe or third-party conflict or finally some kind of large-scale enabling effort Then they are to respond to overt cross-border aggression by an adversary of the United States In this whole construct of the five there are two really There are two war fighting Real war fighting focused missions, which are the distributed security in the limited conventional campaign Archetypes we found the distributed security to be the largest cluster of demands Over the next 20 years and therefore Potentially identified we identified as the the best or likely as war fighting focus for the ground forces going forward Perhaps the most controversial Finding that we came to is that classic major combat operations or the extended to post stabilization Operations of the kind that we've experienced over the last 12 years are likely the lesser included case over the next two decades And I'll talk more about that in the future Regional shaping we found to be a dominant demand peacetime demand for all the ground forces across the board going forward Some would argue that it should be a force driver, but we certainly see it as a we see it as a dominant mission going forward But important as we found in consultation with regional strategists the most important shaping efforts are those that are with Partners that are most capable that appear to be most capable and most willing to actually participate in future Contingency operations with the United States going forward. That's number one and second They should focus on preventing the most dangerous outcomes and preparing to respond to the most disruptive outcomes in each one of the regions Finally we found that current defense priorities and Really service priorities may not really align well with what we see are the future demands for the ground forces I'll get into that a little more in the future in a few moments, but but suffice it to say that We have six basic risk categories We found future challenges risk to be either increasing or static and all six of those categories We found strategy strategy and policy really are too focused on the most evident traditional state-based challenges and not really focused enough on consequential disorder Distributed security itself is very is really inconsistent with the current direction of policy And we found this idea of enabling support actions to run to be somewhat counter-cultural to service culture Finally I think one of the biggest Contributors to this problem is the fact that the force itself has become conditioned to respond to one contingency Type in particular, which is counter insurgency from sort of fixed a fixed and very Sophisticated support architecture, which we don't think necessarily will hold you in the future Let me go to the next slide Here's just a pictorial of the five archetypes because that's the first question we always get Note that we have the large circle just talks about the fact that the army in particular has a very large Theater setting bill really the army provides the foundation for all major operations in the areas of You know communications ISR logistics Etc and that on top of that all of these operations would occur You can also see by this that we placed the distributed security vignette or this Distributed security archetype in the center of this chart largely because it's the greatest reservoir for future capabilities Its success draws on the capabilities necessary to conduct the other operations And therefore we think it's kind of the centerpiece of future capability next slide, please Really what we wanted to depict in this chart is the way do d assesses risk They they assess it in in four major categories institutional risk force management risk Operational risk and future challenges risk In borrowing from my friend here Frank Hoffman, we actually borrowed this idea from him That's what we call the fulcrum chart. The bottom line is is Institutional and force management risk really provide the foundation upon which the other two Can be assessed and and rest and in the current in the current Sort of structure the way dod man or assesses risk going forward is Operational risk being sort of over the next 24 months. Can we perform our war plans? It is heavily favored and more Formalized than is this view of future challenges risk and what we've tried to do is actually take a crack at Rewriting the balance of that chart a little bit and looking more holistically at future challenges risk one thing That's important though that we see is really today's operational risk is tomorrow's future challenges risk. They really are a continuum one assesses the ability of The ability of the force to to respond to problems it sees now the other Sort of assesses the force the forces ability to problems that we see in the future And so they really do have similar characteristics and therefore are joined somewhat next slide, please Sam As a context for our study we identified five core interests I'm not going to go into great detail on those core interests, but it was one of our charters in the study We think that these five core interests That we derived really from an assessment of 25 years of national security policy and Sort of public pronouncements of interest on a part of US policymakers We think that these provide a foundation and are really translatable across combatant commands and you can see that you can see their individual sort of implementation or Manifestation in those combatant commands. So these five core interests actually provided a foundation upon which or through which we could look at The challenges in the particular regions and arrive at conclusions and what the likeliest demands would be in those regions Next chart, please In the process also as we came up with the interest. We also developed a set of insights We have ten basic insights That we worked off of and these insights like the interest became a bit of a lens For us to look at the regions and determine what the nature of the challenges in those regions will be and let me Just go over these a Little bit these insights by the way sort of are both a combination of assumptions and preliminary Conclusions as we went into the beginning of the study and then and they held his insights largely because they were confirmed in the course of the study We do think that the United States will maintain its military advantages, but those advantages will erode and it's very consistent with Will erode over time and that's very consistent with current policy and thought in this area However, having said that in spite of the erosion, we do also think that given a commitment to deterrence major Major conventional traditional conflict between the United States and other great powers is largely preventable However, an area where we have probably the least capability of preventors is the area of spontaneous civil conflict inside states, especially states of Importance to the United States as well as proxy resistance the United States by another great power We do think that the two AORs of concern to this report are particularly Troublesome with respect to the generation of consequential threats to core interests And we also came to the conclusion perhaps in spite of current directions and policy that wars between nations and between peoples and the conflicts that they actually Generate will be will continue to be important to US strategy and policy going forward and will be The subject of contingency planning for some time to come We do think the threats threats to access are real and that states and non-state actors will continue to generate threats to access And frankly threats to our freedom and maneuver in specific operational areas and that that threat is becoming more prolific And the capabilities are actually migrating down and democratizing CBRN will be a problem in the future chemical biological Radiological nuclear weapons and their control proliferation and development will be a problem for the United States and will be a primary concern in US strategy for the next two decades One key finding I think that's very important is that this idea of whatever you want to call it the information revolution access to information Etc. This is almost having a viral effect on the ability of conflicts to sort of spread not only is it a challenge to Operational security, but it allows a greater diverse a greater more diverse universe of actors to interact with one another Organize at at distance and at range and conduct some somewhat coordinated actions that complicate us interests a host of Accelerance will be a problem going forward over the next two decades. They include challenge governance catastrophe climate change environment environmental degradation and also the increased increased Competition for strategic resources We will the United States will have continued to have a number of strong bilateral multi multilateral partnerships going forward But frankly in the same way American defense Resources are declining the resources of many of our partners are declining as well Which will leave us? In a position where we will remain sort of the most capable and able to respond to many instances of common concern between our allies and Us and then finally I would just like to say that we think strategic warning for the most traditional military challenges Will remain stable and significant whereas strategic warning for those instances that spring from some kind of disorder will be much more in question and in doubt and will actually sort of Compress the decision-making space afforded to us decision-makers next slide Sam, please. Thanks Very quickly. Let me just talk about our the trends we identify in us Sencom You can see on the right hand side of this chart. We talk about these Trends in particular in the takeaways, but the trends themselves are most Most important to this report the bottom line is is we think there's three basic trends in Sencom That will be the focus of us defense strategy and planning going forward for the next for the foreseeable future First is a prolific challenge to the authority and stability of vulnerable regional governments Second is malign Iranian behavior and its impact on the stability of the region and finally is the uncertain control Chemical biological radiological and nuclear capabilities. I can talk about any one of those in great detail You can see sort of some of the reasoning behind our Our thoughts in that regard on the right, but in the interest of time I want to move on and talk about the next region and then we'll we'll punt to Q&A for the detailed discussion next slide, please pay come So pay come has four or five basic trends from our perspective. The most Dominant is an increasing competition for regional primacy territory resources And freedom of action within the region and into the region. There are some alternative China futures That we think are probably under considered You know currently when you look at pay come the the most common thought is the dominant sort of rising China That stays on a linear path upward We also think that there's you know, there is some Discussion of a different path for China and a weaker China or a failing China is just as probably troublesome to the region as is a strong China in addition to to that there is also this idea that If you see China as a principle focus of you know, US strategy in the Asia Pacific region the Chinese themselves could opt for a Competitive strategy that basically occurs largely outside of the military domain and therefore sort of undercuts any military You know any military buildup that's associated with countering them We do think that the uncertain trajectory in North Korea will remain a dominant Concern particularly for US ground forces for some time to come North Korea has three paths It can either you know at some point unify with South Korea. It can collapse in on top of itself or it can actually continue to Engage in provocative or aggressive behavior that somehow leads to war between the north and south So we do think North Korea remains important perhaps pay comes most dominant daily trend frankly is natural catastrophe and climate change It was a dominant theme when we went out to pay come and talk to him It's probably there, you know, they're their most frequent Requirement for contingency response So we do think it's one to consider in the the pay come realm and then finally there's enduring ethnic and ideological disputes in the Pay come region, but we found them to be Probably not to a level that would require the large-scale employment of US forces So next slide we came up with 10 20 vignettes I can talk about any one of these in detail during Q&A, but here are the 20 vignettes Listed side-by-side and US Sencom They really range in likelihood from a Syrian sanctuary problem that we're really seeing unfold as we speak all the way to a future Syria-Turkey conflict in a post-Assad environment and you can see we have eight other vignettes between those that we considered in US pay come again, sort of ranging from the likeliest demands all the way up to sort of Speculative demands we we range from a pan Pacific tsunami which largely requires sort of a homeland defense Response on the part of the United States all the way down to a Taiwan counter-lagement. We're actually fighting physically in Taiwan Next slide some of the major implications for ground forces that we came to That I want to just highlight first. I really want to highlight this fact that future operating environment Will be disordered asymmetric distributed and less decisive. We think the more there are a number of constraints They're emerging at the policy level coming out of Coming out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan there will be a natural aversion and Self-deterrence associated with future contingency operations Objectives pursued will be more limited and therefore the operations themselves are likely to be less decisive US Sencom and US pay come are very different in their their demands accepting the possible the lower probability possibility of a major conventional or Operation in the region. We think US Sencom is really defined by its distributed security and peace operations And US pay come really by the enable and support actions and humanitarian response Again riffing off this idea on warning. There may be limited warning For the like what we saw as the likeliest war fighting demands again falling in this distributed security category And that's really largely stemming from this idea that they're most likely to emerge from challenges of disorder and And then finally, let me just again Emphasize the point that risk in all six categories that we identified as either increasing or static Sam if you could go forward two slides Let me just make a couple points on our risk assessment, and then I'm going to turn it over to my colleagues Oh The overarching challenge in the risk assessment Problem we think is two fold First there is a general sort of prioritization away from consideration of large-scale ground operations now going on Inside the Pentagon for a variety of reasons. There's war weariness. There's Resource challenges, etc. etc in the place that You can go to mine sometimes the most resources is in the most manpower intensive services obviously And that is competing really with this idea that We have become accustomed to one Contingency focus over the last 12 years and have actually dispensed with a number of capability and Capabilities and competencies that are more relevant. We think going forward and that we're going to have to capture those On the issue of projecting forces also. I think that's a key area Increasingly the forces conus based there are fewer forward deployed forces Which will require the United States to really have an employee equals or a deploy Equals employee mentality with all of its ground forces that will be increasingly challenges Challenging with the forces based in the United States and with the challenges we have in logistics and lift We think across the board forces will be more vulnerable to myriad threats From a wider variety of actors and and as a result of that protecting those forces will be Increasingly important in giving forces across the spectrum of response more Ability to both protect themselves and conduct offensive operations will be More important and then finally one interesting Point we came to on terminating military operations is that we think that given this idea that Operations will be less decisive the forces themselves will have to become more attuned to the idea of actually Disengaging from environments that aren't necessarily fixed Where the conflict will the conflict or crisis is still very much in train at the time that That we disengage but we have pushed it to a level that's manageable to the To the view of us policymakers and therefore it's time for us forces to disengage It's a very different mindset than that we've had in the future or in the past and as we go forward We think it's one that's likely to require more attention on the part of the forces I'm going to turn it over At this point we have some more charts. I don't want to bore you anymore And we'll kind of punt everything to question and answer after that, but thank you very much We're very grateful for your being here, and we look forward to the Q&A portion after my colleagues have an opportunity to talk mr. Pavel Thanks Nate very much, and thanks for inviting me to this Session I'll be very provocative and very brief in the interest of having a conversation and also because there's a lot of rich knowledge to mine Among my fellow panelists sort of first and foremost. I think this is a really excellent and rich Study, and I think it avoids the most common error That I see in strategy and force planning and that is obviously emphasizing the contingencies that have dominated our thinking over the last decade or so and So I think it has imagination and conceptual innovation, and I certainly applaud it It also happens to hit on some of the same issues that I've been very concerned about Including when I was helping the White House Sort of oversee the last QDR, and I'll get into that in a little bit I'm just going to make four basic points, and then again. I'll be very brief and Hopefully I'll stimulate some conversation. I think I will Number one we are just terrible at predicting future contingencies. I mean there's no other way to say it The only thing that's certain is that we will be surprised again by major future contingencies I'm doing a lot of work at the Atlantic Council with the National Intelligence Council and with other governments on global trends and disruptive technologies and It's pretty clear to me after three trips to Silicon Valley over the last eight months that the world in five to ten years Is going to be is going to have some very different Dimensions than it has today, and if we think the iPhone and the democratization of Communications technology has changed things wait till you see the rest of the technology revolutions Come to play in terms of biotech and the democratization of production That's represented in 3d printing and a range of other Technologies that are coming on top of each other, and we don't know how it's going to play out But we do know it will be disruptive in some ways that that disruption will be very beneficial and official for the United States, but there's always a dark side to each of these Technologies that can be applied so The key trend I'm seeing is that of individual empowerment, and this is enabled by the large massive shift of resources To Asia that's currently or back to Asia. I should say massive shift of economic strength That's currently ongoing that will bring about a very significant rise in the global middle class But there's also this technology element that's that's at play as well So let's start sort of with the baseline of the strategy that the that the United States currently has in play I think we need a strategy and a portfolio of capabilities that hedges against this very uncertain environment in appropriate way in appropriate ways It's really important to keep in mind that I was part of the bureaucracy before but the bureaucracy's strong inclination is to resist change and To strive to focus on the comfortable and in this case the comfort zone Is one where we love to deal with? Militaries that look like us and so in this case I think that the department's natural inclination to focus 80% of its efforts and strategy and planning on on dealing with a Chinese contingency is Understandable makes some strategic sense, but I think it's overplayed to a degree and as I said, I worry very much That the uncomfortable, but extremely plausible scenarios some of which Nate covered in this study very well I think are going to come come back to bite us in unfortunately very damaging Ways and so my the summary of my first point is that the current culture of sort of a automaticity of Autonomy of the key departmental components in the Defense Department and of the drift towards the symmetric is Probably the single greatest strategic challenge that we face I think it's much more significant than the resource constraints, but we can talk about that So we can't wish away scenarios that we would prefer not to engage in it certainly would be nice if the world would let us Pivot toward Asia and focus our efforts There, but we do know that when we're surprised and when we're attacked when our interests are dealt a very severe blow We will deploy ground forces in very messy scenarios again. I have absolutely no doubt My second major point is we have a very under hedged portfolio. It's related to the first point And and there's a lot of scenarios that could place very significant demands on our military forces in particular our ground forces and The current DoD strategic trajectory Implies a much greater degree of precision about the locus of future operations than is really warranted It strikes me that the best way to prepare for being surprised, which we should do is to ensure that we ingrain strategic foresight Into our planning processes to a much greater degree than is currently the case I think the likelihood of strategic shocks that Nate mentioned is very high over the next five To ten years just look back over the last five to ten years that the near misses at the things that actually did happen And you'll have a sense that The next five years certainly will include some of those and so the department's process needs to change more to One that systematically scans the horizon in key areas and then appropriately hedges our strategies Capabilities and military posture accordingly. Let me just mention two scenarios that I spend a little bit of time Talking to people a lot smarter than I am About so I would not say I'm expert in these but these are two that I worry about number one is That the scenario of failed states with WMD seeing that play out a little bit in Syria, but I promise you I wrote these words before we heard about the the red lines being blurred to a pink line And it strikes me that in for this scenario said I think there is some good work going on in the department I don't want to be too Too much of a blunt instrument, but the current approach to this set of scenarios in particular that of Pakistan is to That the department undertakes is to highly compartmentalize the activities that are underway It's very sensitive and so we have to be very careful, etc. Etc. And so I think this actually has a way of limiting the needed strategies and investments and Capabilities because it's so sort of off on us on one side. We need to open this up We need to talk about this the way a healthy democracy Helps to ensure that there's a fully informed defense policy Debate and I worry when I look around the world and see where's the greatest Gap between supply of capabilities and demand on our forces to me. It's this scenario set It's extremely uncomfortable. We don't have the strategies. We don't have the capabilities in some cases We don't have the technologies in some cases where we do have capabilities We don't have enough of them. So there's capacity questions We don't have the alliance relationships, and we probably don't have the necessary resources besides that we are all set for these Scenarios and I think they should be central for sizing and shaping Elements in this QDR that's about to kick off The second set is a little fuzzier, but I'm worried about bio and I think bio enabled attacks The chances of those are going to increase as the biotech revolution accelerates and as it proliferates centers of excellence across the world The chances of a non-state actor using these technologies to greatly damage us interests is unfortunately rising very dramatically and We can certainly talk about some of those things in the Q&A And I don't think the department is close to being prepared for such contingencies When the Atlantic Council had a conference on global trends last December and there was a panel on the future of war With Michelle Florinoy and Tom Enders. This was the one question. I asked Michelle You can check it. You can check out the video of this panel. It's still on our website I said how prepared is the department for this set of scenarios? She said nowhere near being prepared For these which is very concerning to me Point three a little bit more on these scenarios You know, it's these were interest number five on Nate's on Nate's list of US interests And I think you know, I look at the defense strategic guidance from last January of 2012 It listed counter WMD as one of the missions, but I would argue that it really isn't a priority Unfortunately, or at least as much as it should be there's a gap between the mission list I think in this case and the capabilities and force posture That would be needed to carry it out with confidence There's sort of over a dozen different units and organizations that sort of have pieces of this mission In the department, but there's little synergy from what I can tell and there's not very strong integration or unity of command You know, if you can name one officer at even the three-star level that has this mission as his or her singular priority I'm willing to listen. I'm not sure if I found that person yet If you counted the number of WMD professionals in the combatant command staffs I think you'd have an interesting indicator of the degree to which This priority mission which was listed in the president's guidance is actually being resourced even in terms of personnel Allocation but let alone in terms of other Aspects of how one underwrites a strategy So my own view is we should reverse this Chain overcome the stove pipes and do a little more balancing of our limited resources To get this to the level of national attention that it warrants before it's too late Billy My fourth point is a very basic and very short resources I think we've all been to enough of these events that talk about the resource constraints that we're working through I think they have a way a beneficial way of tending to focus the mind a little bit on what strategy really is Which is the art of connecting your resources to your strategic ends using various Various means and so I think anyone who says you know, we should develop the strategy and have the Capabilities in a resource unconstrained environment here. I quote. Hoss Cartwright strategy without a sense of resources as a hallucination and so Strategy actually demands a sense of the resources that we think we will have available That doesn't mean you can't marshal more resources perhaps the president's job the Congress's job But we can't resource everything to the fullest extent. That's not strategy. That's just doing everything we want to do So I think a heavy dose of resources is useful in this discussion But I don't think that we're anywhere near the point where we can't resource the most important priority missions in A cost-effective way that does assume that the Pentagon actually comes To realize what the private sector has realized this thing called 21st century business practices Headquarters operations. I could give you a list of the redundancies in the headquarters of the of the Department right now that would probably squeeze out another 10% of the budget, but that's probably for another seminar. No end there great. Thanks general Thanks, Nate. Thanks for the introduction. Thanks for inviting me not just here but to participate in the thinking process through I'm going to pick up where the study actually ended And that's with denial which of course is not just a river in Egypt It's a climate very much alive here within the Beltway We just would like not to have to have large numbers of ground forces We'd like to believe they're not really necessary. We'd like to think that we can anticipate the kind of war that the future will hold for us and Shake the strategic environment And our military force to that future one wonders if we could actually do this. Why haven't we done it? We'd also like to think that we can prevent the future threats to American interest because of our advanced intelligence forecasting Capacity I'm gonna leverage up that again one wonders if we could actually do it. Why haven't we and But we believe that should we fail in the forecast Some rapid decisive operation or lethal fast remote use of force will resolve the issue or We'll have enough time to raise the forces that are necessary to meet whatever the challenge we're facing and Finally, we like to think that the destructive power of our military forces, which is pretty significant We'll resolve whatever conflict of the day the nation faces End of destruction equals end of fighting equals end of war equals end of problem Though history in of course the last 12 years of war should Teach us exactly the opposite But this is the story though that we tell ourselves the story isn't true It's fiction and it's not been true for a while and We've covered the fiction in the past because we had sufficient size We built a sufficiently large military force with balanced capabilities and naval power and air power ground power Special operations power to cover the fact that we really don't know what the future will hold And though we didn't want to admit its size and balanced capacity offset uncertainty and Inability to predict in the past matter of fact the study that Nathan is colleagues authored quotes secretary Gates at West Point who says And I quote when it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagement At least since Vietnam our record has been perfect. We've not gotten it right once What remains unstated though is that these lesser included contingencies of the past that is all of our actual Operations were possible because we sized against large conventional threats Dealing with Noriega in Panama required large numbers of ground forces So did receding the Aristide government in Haiti. So did enforcing the Dayton Accords. So did liberating Kuwait All this while the Berlin was Berlin wall was falling the Soviet Union was collapsing And we've paid ourselves a peace dividend by shrinking the very forces that were now more often being used Dear ground forces were certainly Necessary for the destructive phase the regime changes in Iraq and Afghanistan But we seem to have already forgotten because we're tired that the post regime Operations required the nation to transform the army reserve components to 200,000 more Operational reserves in higher almost 200,000 contractors The stress in our military is not the result of having too many It's the result of having too few Now we tell ourselves never again, which of course we have told ourselves before but with the CSIS study and the National Intelligence Council study global trends 2030 and CNAS's study driving in the dark and a bunch of others We have several data points that tell us that Uncertainty is the norm in our strategic environment The potential for conflict is increasing and the types of conflict are most likely the kinds that can't be resolved with mere destructive power the global trend study comes right out to say that the potential for multiple forms of war Comes at a time of rising uncertainty as to the United States willingness or ability to be the guarantor of security and At a time of increased ambiguity as to the stability of international systems in times of such uncertainty and Ambiguity with increased likelihood of conflict. We need to tell ourselves the truth not to hold on to our fiction a Strategic leaders need more options not less and the options associated with the kinds of complex contingencies that are in the CSIS study or the kinds of hybrid warfare or regular warfare Interstate warfare war amongst the people wherever else you want to call these things will require a more ground force capacity not less Of course, we prefer at least a relatively clearly defined semi-conventional state-based threat Upon that the US military must deter and defeat and upon which we can size our forces Unfortunately, this is not the reality that we face We have to we do have some potential Threats like this and we have to have the military forces necessary to deal with them But these now have become Unlike the past the lesser included contingencies The real issue is having a large enough and balanced enough force to deal with the areas of increasing risk Outlined in this study the areas of likely our typical mission sets in this study and others similar to them The problem is doing so doesn't fit our story Because making these adjustments may require more ground forces not less Changes not stability Unfortunately, reality has a way to forcing itself on a nation with global responsibilities and global interests Certainly the Johnson administration didn't want to get bogged down in Vietnam The Bush 41 administration didn't want to invade Panama the Clinton administration didn't want to do Bosnia the Bush 43 administration didn't want to fight terrorists and nation-building and Some future administration may well find itself having to do just what it does not want to do and When they find themselves in this position and turn to the military for options time and decision space will not be on their side Forces in being provided the previous administrations with options forces in potencia count much less So the CSIS study we're talking about today as well as others is very clear The varieties of confrontations and conflicts that seem part of our collective strategic future Cannot be resolved by destruction alone Or solely by light lethal fast and remote military action or by small special forces operations The real threat my view anyway the real threat that we face is ourselves and our ability to deny What we need and choose instead what we prefer Thank you. Great Mr. Hoffman. Well, thank you very much Thank you for letting me be part of this study. I'm a career think tanker and this is unfortunately an all-too-rare example of a useful think tank product That I think provides some intellectual scaffold and that OSD I think will ultimately appreciate even if they might not recognize it immediately Per barrel remarks, you know the the art of strategy is all about thinking about possible futures To inform decisions you make You know today in the present and that's a challenge that the department is facing Uncertainty friction and constrained resources are the unwanted but constant companions of defense strategists And we've all faced this in our time in the building And as defense fending gets quite constrained which Unfortunately, it appears it's going to the next few years defense planners are really going to have to come to some fundamental assumptions Open up some biases and think through Creatively the ways and means logic that we've used in the past and there's a lot of pressure on the way on the mean So I think we're going to be more creative about the ways a formulating sound strategy It's going to require thinking anew about scenarios, which I think is the most commendable aspect of this particular Approach here. We're going to make some tough trade-offs Which this study tees up for conversation and we're going to have to face some new threats and missions As Barry and this report suggests more than we're currently doing right now I was asked to talk about risk today the part I like about the this particular study the most is about risk It's a component of strategic planning and we often talk about the logic of end ways and means but the fourth component is Exploring understanding and not denying risk as the general pointed out We do face limited information and we have to admit That that there are some limitations to both our decision-making ability and our processes It's not about our intelligence or it's not about our intelligence agency It's just the nature of the environment in fact one criticism about a slide in there There's a there's a phrase, you know for the foreseeable future. There's no such animal as the foreseeable future so a Prudent strategist is has to ask the right questions and that's what this particular product is all about It's about questions and exploring issues that we're not comfortable with We're coming to grips with a deep underlying trends that are going to reshape the secure environment in the landscape in the years ahead My boss general Dempsey has been doing this with his speech on the security paradox This this notion that peace is breaking out or that we can control the world and influence events With a smaller and cheaper force With the with the range of changes going on in the out years creates a huge paradox There's many people very comfortable that we live in a very Prosperate world in which the number of wars or the lethality of wars is going down and that's not the trend that I'm seeing for the next 10 or 20 years The evidence suggests that our future is not going to be linear Continuation the last few years or the next couple of months It's not going to be as benign as error that we've lived in since the fall of the Cold War and we need to anticipate that I think with a little more intellectual rigor I liked again this risk aspect in the study the balance beam metaphor between The current force and the future force That's that's the essence of thinking about the future and you can get that balance wrong if you can over invest in your comfort zone and Sustain the forces you have today And you can create future risk by being unprepared for the future and conversely You can think about things you'd like to think about and ignore reality and you can over invest in the future or in the wrong future because you're blinkered By denial as the general pointed out and you can create a force that is unprepared for the future Although you've tried to anticipate it with the greatest degree of rigor that you could We should not look out too far and we should not create Our own risk by not being prepared for the things that we we know to be much more likely You know the kind of contest that's going on in Washington DC that studies like this kind of Exposed a little bit is there is always you know a war going on between the past and the present folks that are holding on to their Comfort zones the forces that they're most familiar with the scenarios that they understand the most But that the more you do that I think the greater you're setting yourselves up for future risk with far greater impact than we recognize now Which are really like Barry's comments about the future the revolutionary changes in multiple sciences and the combinations of those sciences Suggest that we really need to think much more rigorously about the future. I Think DOD recognizes this risk, maybe not to the degree and open forums that we that we did but I think in the last QDR and particularly in the strategic guidance We I think we tried to come to grips with many of those things to the degree that we could We had a very rigorous process There's a pretty complex range of scenarios that was employed Combinations of different scenarios to test the force and both its shape and its size The guidance is a little more explicit than some people would like there's aspects in there that are hedging and mitigating the reversibility language I know the guidance has its its critics and occasionally I get critical about some aspects of it But things like the shift and the pivot to the Pacific the things like airsea battle concepts whether you like it or not our attempts by the strategy community to Move forward to look at the future and to deal with future challenges risks and this upcoming QDR I hope hope language like this is going to influence that a little bit. So again, we can continue to push forward into the future Again minimizing future risk. Unfortunately, there are a number of contextual Factors that are really going to influence. I think risk even more than than we've mentioned today in addition to the disruptive revolutions that Barry identified I've got five contextual Factors that I presented to this particular group and one that we should concern us is that it's just a scale Scope and viability of our industrial base. I believe that Manufacturing and some areas of the of the force the industrial base is pretty fragile if not thin Dave Briteau and some others here are experts in that particular area But in my time in the building the amount of effort we had to do to sustain naval aviation Naval shipbuilding and missile production capacity is is at a tenuous level in some areas And I think it's going to get a little thinner in the near future. We also face a rising manpower cost problem The percentage of the of the budget available to pay for the force is what is another factor that's driving the force size down If every soldier and Marine is 60% more expensive today than they were when the war started We're going to end up cutting the size of the force just to keep the pay and benefits up It's crowding out investment and it's pushing down the force size. The same is true with modernization costs You know, we're replacing $50,000 jeeps with $250,000 vehicles. We're replacing $1 million vehicles with $15 million vehicles We're replacing $20 million helicopters with $120 million helicopters that too at those kinds of replacement costs curves You know, we're on the wrong side of the costing posing strategy And we need to get our hands around that but it's very hard and again That pushes down your force structure size and it and it pulls up investment level, but for a much smaller force Clark Murdoch's done a very nice study here about the erosion of these inflation factors eating up the inside of the budget While at the same time we're pressing down. That's kind of a double whammy That's really going to affect the capacity and the size of the force And so our ability to deter and our ability to respond the amount of time It takes to get to places and to assist people is is going to be longer more risk more costs over time In addition to the double whammy of Clark's favorite, I'd add the triple whammy I think we're going to have fewer friends and allies and partners in the future that are viable Successful and interoperable with us. I see we have a few allies and friends in the room today but in general through their demographics through politics through ours of Demographic decline and economic distress in some areas in Europe. We're not going to have these Assistance and the friends and the allies we've had in the past at least in quantity. Hopefully they'll be there with us But if that produces a triple whammy and all this affects the size of the force and affects the demands We're putting on a force trying to do many many things. It's not going to be a specialized force It's going to be a general purpose force and it's going to have to adapt to different scenarios over time And that in and of itself is a training risk and a force management risk that we're not dealing with on top of these Contextual factors I think increase future for challenge risk is the what I call the cognitive challenge the general Dubic dealt with There's an idea that we can have wars that are short clean and easy rather than brutish Hard ambiguous and long and we need to get past that the last the last decade is noted It's ugly. It's expensive. It hasn't been very successful But as this scenario development exercise indicates Unfortunately, it's going to be more frequent in our future. We can ignore it. We can be unprepared We can react unprepared and put the burden on the soldiers and Marines are going to respond But that's not a proper strategic approach So let me wrap up a little bit here risk can be self-inflicted can be self-inflicted by denial It could be self-inflicted by our own strategic unwillingness to challenge our biases and unexamined assumptions Can be self-inflicted by bureaucratic inferences seams and mission orphans and we have some of those we cannot eliminate risk and avoid all surprises There's no such thing as a risk-free secure environment scenarios and studies like this I think are really critical and all too rare unfortunately to avoid Self-inflicted surprise and enhanced strategic decision-making the building and for that I find it to be a very commendial activity In Closing you know the kind of scenarios here I think in the building we're going to have to come to grips with the frequency and the consequence of these the timelines The importance of some of the scenarios. There's a there's another level of analysis that needs to go on with this particular work That hopefully somebody in the building will want to see done Maybe look give it to me to do Maybe look give it to you to do But we need to think through these things some of these scenarios. I agree with Barry are Outside and should be Thought of as part of the QDR for sizing and for shaping a thought process and would probably have to be resourced Some of them may be inside the the major scenario and have to be thought of as a limited You know lesser included offense for which we're not as prepared for which we're not willing to train to Which we're not willing to have the unique doctrine or the opportunities and the correct equipment in every single case We just have to have to come to that that's as ultimately is The risk money match Balance beam that the building is going to have to do we probably can't do that here from the outside So let me wrap up I always like to quote my good friend and colleague over in the UK Colin Gray Colin says force planners folks like myself and Barry have only two cardinal virtues two cardinal principles We must follow prudence and adaptability Prudence is all about risk and being honest about risk Understanding risk not just closing your eyes to it. It's saying that you've accepted it But truly understand the risk that that's in it Studies like this are very prudent adaptability Building the forces we probably need not the ones we want to have but the ones we really need and making them adaptive enough to react to multiple Scenarios is probably the kind of premium We're going to have on our force size and you have suggested here in this study The range of adaptability the range of scenarios and the missions and the capabilities that the force is really going to need Now the big question is capacity That I'll close. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thanks to all the panelists actually they did a great job So what I'm going to do now is we'll open it up to questions. We have microphones back there Harlan I see you have your hand up right away. We'll go ahead and Get you first Eva Gore I'm Harlan Oman. Thanks for your comments I'd like to expand the aperture of the study three ways first as Frank Hoffman mentioned CSS did a very good study with which I agree that by the end of the decade if you assume constant defense spending You'll be faced with either having no procurement or cutting the force in half So how do you take into account those resource realities? Second it seems to me our failure has not been military over the last 12 years But it's the civilian side of the effort and I find it difficult to see Engaging in a lot of areas by the military without any kind of civilian backup So how do you deal with that and third this report obviously has been isolated to look at ground forces But can you say what you need in terms of the supporting maritime and naval forces, which obviously are going to go along with this package? Great Okay, so I'll take a crack at all three of those from the perspective of the report and then I'll open it up Clearly the resource realities. I mean my view on the resource realities Is this First you have to get the capability right Like what is it that you're going to ask your force to do and then and then you and then you need to worry about the capacity now Unfortunately, those are both under those questions. We're trying to answer both of them at the same time under an extreme amount of pressure We've suggested The capabilities probably different than what you wanted pre 911, you know pre 911 We were really focused on the North Korea Iraq problem post 911 We became focused on the extinguishing terrorism problem and counter insurgency We think we're probably entering for the ground forces a different epoch that requires Different capabilities the question. I think that the point that Frank brought up on what's then the capacity. That's the next step You got to test it I'm a bit You know concerned that we're not going to get to that next step We're just going to actually make the reductions first and then figure out if we can do something with it later But but I think that's what I'm getting the capability right is is important now on your point on the civilian I just actually was at the army war college and I talked about Very similar topic on the civilian military balance with respect to complex contingencies I mean, I think that if you think the defense budgets going down, don't expect the civilian capacity to suddenly Expand I mean it's going to go down as well Unfortunately, the military is always as as as of late anyway Filled the capacity gap in that regard and will likely be asked to continue to do so Which is another reason why you need to maintain an adaptable force that has the ability actually To do multiple missions and multiple roles and take on things that aren't necessarily purely military responsibilities all the time I just am not confident that there's going to be a sudden revolution in civilian civilian Contingency capacity and then finally joined forces I mean, I would say the one thing that really comes out clearly in this and this will be again a Question of assessing the balance between what you believe is the most important threat is with a conus base force right now Largely conus base and that includes both the army and the Marine Corps. Frankly. They have to get there And the places that we're currently assuming the most risk is in the area of strategic mobility And and that the likelihood that that's going to continue to be an area of Risk based on current policy priorities is increasing I mean and we found that to be the longest pole in the tent with respect to projecting the forces you have fewer forces forward You have more forces back in conus and you're taking more risk and deployability and in power projection Somehow you either have to determine that you don't want to project the force and the numbers that might be suggested or Jeff to take some Remediation to change that imbalance right now anybody else. Yeah, I'll take a little little crack Harlan I think in terms of the resources the easy way out is to cut the number of Marines and soldiers The personnel cost they are going up. We have to we have to figure out a ways to reduce the personnel cost no doubt about it, but the Issues of modernization cost that Frank talked about the bureaucratic overhead cost that Barry talked about the shrinking of the industrial base that drives caught cost up these are all really hard and my opinion will be less likely to address and Therefore get to the scenario that you've described Where we just keep cutting the personnel Size because it's the easiest the one with the least lobby But then that drives us to a position where You don't have an adaptable force because you don't have a force right if you don't have a force you can't adapt any right and one thing that as a as a trainer and a commander many of the skills and Disciplines and competencies that I used in the invasion of Haiti in 1994 in the piece of court and Enforcing a piece of course in Bosnia and in training the Iraqi security forces are derivative From the the skills that you get from a general purpose force They have to be modified no doubt about that But that the adaptability comes from those core skills and from this and from the core equipment So I I I see the the ease of personnel cost Being driving us to a position where we are incurring the most strategic risk Okay, next question. Yes, ma'am right here in the middle. Okay, we have a mic coming right up behind you Hi, Sam Oh, I am Yep, you're on good. Hi, Sandy source box from China Lake I'd like to go back to the comment that Frank made about cognitive challenges Of getting over the clean and easy wars and trying to explain that we're going to have nasty wars General Mattis addressed that too and one of the speeches he gave at the Kennedy School When he says you're going to go to America and say give us your sons and daughters and a lot of money I'm kind of summarizing in a lot of money and trust us How do we go to the American people and how do we go to Congress and form that narrative because we're wrestling with That in the Navy too and how do we form some kind of a narrative that says hey We know what we're doing and we explain it pretty well because we don't seem to we don't seem to be able to get the message across that things aren't really going Spiffily and you don't you know you don't need to send everybody home because everything's fine We don't seem to know how to get that message across to middle America or to the folks that are coming into Congress who are increasingly isolated from the military And I'm a little bit up to anyone in the panel any ideas on how to keep Jim Mattis around a little bit longer Well, let me take a quick crack I mean one of the things that think that we came to in the process of this study is we we think that In general there's going to be a greater degree of and you're seeing it right now play out frankly with respect to Syria There's going to be a greater degree of self-deterrence right and that's gonna there's there's a couple of Impacts that that's going to have on operations the first impact. It's going to have is you're likely to go late You're going to wait so long that you're likely going to enter under very you know in perfect Circumstances and therefore the art of the possible is actually limited from the beginning But by the same token, I think the missions themselves will likely be chartered But there's there'll be a tendency that the missions themselves will be chartered under a more limited mandate than we've seen In the past an open-ended and I think a limited mandate all and accepting all of the professionals on the stage here who will You know tell me that the fog of war and mission creep and all those things actually always extend a limited mandate But the bottom line is is a limited mandate is more easily explainable, right? It is instead of revolutionary transformation of a society or raising a democracy and In a foreign country or something like that a much more limited mandate, which we suggest our report Falls many times under the distributed security mission where you're literally Standing with your backs to something important in your rifles pointed out that's at risk and important to you That limited mandate is is more explainable to the American people and then I'll open it up Yeah, particularly I made some of these scenarios are more humanitarian You know they're easy to sell I think we need to explain the American people the treaty Treaty requirements we've established we have friends partners and allies We have commitments to and I don't hear too many people particularly even among my civilian political class, you know Recognizing that we have we have agreements and obligations to people and we need to be prepared to live up to those agreements and obligations as well and I hope Some of our other friends in both in Asia and Europe can sustain their obligations and their partnerships as well But I think we can explain that to the American people General Manistus a really good job There's there's there's Both on the civilian side and I think on the military side. There's there's people who recognize this This is what we wrestle with in the building all the time And it's hard. It's there's you know, there's there's priorities that do have to be said. It's not an easy job It's not that people are You know pulling something over on the American people are pulling you know wool over their own eyes It's it is a hard task and we have to adapt from the past This contest between the the future in the past we have to unleash ourselves a little bit There are our new challenges and it's hard to get rid of the old challenges and start making the investments in cyber bio And the things that fully agree with Barry That a decade ago several of us thought was was going to come with much more fury and much more Violence and lethally than than we've seen. Thank God up to this point But these these revolutions intersect informatics material sciences and nano and cyber and bio and they just they're they're gonna They're gonna impact us. I think we can continue to educate the American people but you know Bracks reinvestments alterations getting rid of the Going towards more lean operations less headquarters taking out positions of government that I've been in it You know the middle management level level You know, maybe maybe we need to get to those points so we can invest in The capabilities at the pointy end where people really have more more risk than getting a paper cut like I had my time I got Next question. Yes, sir right here in the front George Nicholson a policy consultant for special operations You alluded to it, but I know congressman Adam Smith Ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee said you know what a huge supporter I am with the defense budget, but I go back to my district and I've got Fort Lewis in my district I've got my court Air Force base my constituents don't want to hear about problems Drawing down the military what they want to talk about is social security what they want to do is talk about Medicare Medicaid losing their 401ks and We just don't seem to be getting that message across and the other piece of that is we saw on Tuesday the release of the French White Paper on their defense budget.  Why should we be doing being the worldwide policeman? Well, I think the first thing I would suggest that we didn't take a position that we should be the world wide policeman In fact, I think one of the one of one of the things we really endeavor to do in this report is actually talk about the the real Need for some appetite suppressant with respect to contingency operations I mean that that you you really endeavor at the beginning again back to my point over here endeavor at the beginning to really set minimum, you know minimum acceptable and achievable Objectives set out to achieve them and when you do, you know, then you reevaluate whether to disengage or not But but setting expansive objectives and then the other thing is the the whole reason that study was chartered on this Idea of core interest was really to get down to, you know brass tacks and say let's talk first about what's really important To use our ground forces for it may be for example, then you're talking about a once in 20 years Sort of employment of your force. I'm not suggesting that I'm just saying but then At least you've actually defined with the left and right limits of that are and and frankly then the sizing argument comes Oh, is this is that's why it is the second step determine first what it is you want your force to do and and and really Focus and target it in an era where we all know that the resources are declining and therefore you're gonna have to be more Pennywise with respect to what you're investing in and then and then you get to the capacity argument later Yeah, we have a study coming out of end to you here pretty soon on discriminate force then I'm a study member of and You do need to impress the American people that you're being more discriminant and more deliberate and more discerning about the situations that We get into and how we get in and and accomplish what needs to be done You've just pointed out basically the sixth contextual factor. We should incorporate in this and I've been worked with Adam Smith the last couple of years You know this this is a problem, you know if we're over investing in Things overseas that people don't see any value in You're gonna lose the support of the American people And we need to maintain that support and unemployment up in Fort Lewis at 12 to 14 percent While we're worried about keeping a brigade say in Germany and keeping some, you know some village, you know More important than Fort Lewis, you're gonna lose the support of the American people over time That's something to factor in your strategy I'd just like to add I'm not not to refute anything you're saying because when I go back Back home that's and talk to my family. It's the same same issues, but gaining access is not just fighting your way in That's that's one way to gain access but gaining access is establishing relationships having rights having bases having allies and Relationships require an investment in time. No relationship is built on the virtual basis You can use virtual means to maintain a relationship But it's people that are really and you have to be there with people So we're in a we're in a position where for good reasons were what we're drawing into the United States And becoming a conus base have been for a good number of years a conus base force but the Fortress America approach is not in our is not in our best interest either and The balance and the trade officer are gonna be real and that's got to be part of the of the thinking Into the basing strategy and access strategy not just bombing our way in It's just a really important point that I don't think gets a disgust enough and there's a continuum Going too far and bringing everybody back Making all the congressmen happy And not having the benefits of what general Dovick talked about but I think currently we're too far to the other end of the spectrum in terms of our engagement activities I don't see any sense of discipline or focus in our sort of far-flung You know co-com driven engagement and security cooperation strategies when When when the Defense Department can demonstrate to the American people that they have indeed focused it and and made it sort of Live within the resources that we have Then I think we'll have a stronger story to tell and a stronger message But I'm sure if you picked a random co-com and said how many countries are you engaging in in? 2013 you know sequestration aside, which may have changed things in the last couple of months. I Imagine you won't get a very sort of a very tight answer To that question times have not changed enough in the way the Department of Defense does its business and it needs to change Yeah, this idea of strategic targeting is like extreme. I mean, it's really important with we ran into this in the report as well It's just focusing Your shaping activities, you know first start with your interests and work your way back on the things that are most important And then if you find at the end of the day, you know You have more in your checkbook than you thought then you start adding on to it But I think that this is this idea of actually demonstrating the American people Responsibility and the use of resources is a first step in that regard. We have time for one more question. It's this gentleman back here and We'll wrap up. Thank you My name is Bill. Is this working? Should be okay, my name is Bill Courtney and with CSE General Dubic you talked about reducing end strength being the easy option if other things aren't done If the army were a company and of course Secretary Hegel addressed us the other day about some analogies being appropriate. So I'm not but if it were a company First thing we would do would be consolidate facilities. So we would adjust things like BRAC and depot Let's say in the army Second thing we would do would be compensation reform if we're overpaying some employees and underpaying others Let's say if we've had a transition in technology or market conditions or whatever There've been a lot of proposals from military compensation reform from the defense business board and and others The third thing we do is we partner with other companies to get capabilities that we don't have quite so efficiently or effectively Ourselves and so you correctly point out about the importance of relationships with partners and things like that so if you look at the two options of If you will on the one side Improving the tooth to tail ratio kind of the way a company would do but of course the army has much greater political obstacles For example depots and things like that Versus end strength Is there much potential to improve the tooth to tail ratio? So that and strength doesn't have to be brought down so much Or is in strength going to bear all the hits because politics make it too hard to reform military compensation or consolidate facilities or or modernize IT and business processes and things like that Well, I mean first off if you're Understand to the tail ratio as reduction of overhead infrastructure and we should get at that In in terms of compensation reform we have to get in terms of modernization acquisition cost All those things we have to get it But there's another dimension to the tail ratio that we have to be careful about and that was in the theater setting circle at the CSIS Study did a pretty good job in describing You can have a low to the tail ratio in Some some services because the army has the tail And it is the tail for everybody so As we analyze this this kind of stuff We just have to be accurate about the way we do it and I Think go after the political support necessary for those kinds of mechanisms that we know are real hard I mean how many times if if all of us would add up the number of times we heard the term acquisition reform You know, we would run on a paper right in it You know, we've got to you know, we've got to get the political support necessary to take on some of these Really necessary and would be very helpful to the tail ratio without destroying the to the tail ratio that we do need another another example of my opinion of Misanalysis is echelonment. Why don't we just cut out echelons in between? Well because because a military force is not Walmart the The the environment in which you fight wars is much more uncertain than the environment In which you restock your shelves And further the the psychological benefit that junior commanders get from senior commanders and The information benefit that senior commanders get from junior commanders is very much embedded in the echelon that of our force So again, I'm all for to detail ratio reduction in those areas that are That are smart to do so, but I also think we keep our eyes open for Some of these things that are false saving a second that friend a real quick I'm a shameless self-advertisement But another thing we would do in the corporate world is we would raid all the training and education accounts and we would under undervalue human capital education R&D and things and I do work at National Defense University And I would strongly suggest although educational technology and educational reform and educational niches are also Part and parcel of overhead reduction and thinking about the future differently But we should maintain our human capital to the degree we can on the qualitative and educational side Well with that I think we're gonna have to wrap up I would like to actually thank the panelists with a round of applause actually I think they did a wonderful job Helping us talk about this The report itself is available online as well as the critical question that we handed out at the beginning a Video of this event will also be available online. We're extremely grateful For your attendance today and on behalf of CSIS and our President CEO John Hamery. I am very grateful for your attendance today and look forward to engaging with you on this important issue going forward Thank you very much Thanks guys