Here we are again folks, right after noon Ted Rawlson here in downtown Honolulu at the Think Tech Studios overlooking gorgeous downtown Honolulu, of course you can't tell that from the background here because we have all the frame spaces up there, but our show where the drone leads we bring to the community in Hawaii and anywhere who's listening to this show or sees the YouTubes afterwards current topics in the world of unmanned air vehicles, UAVs, drones, whatever you might want to call them. And we mark this show by the people we bring on because they have the expertise, they have the knowledge and the insight to help us push forward in this dimension. Today is no exception, we have with us today from San Diego, put a whole boy, actually a boy many years ago, no longer in that, but they're in place, welcome aboard again sir. Thanks Ted, how are you this afternoon? Pretty good, and notice the sun hasn't quite set in California and it hasn't set here in Hawaii yet, so we're kind of under a common bright blue Pacific right now, together here. Anyway Dave has a lot of experience in the world of UAVs, we'll hear about that in a minute, but what I wanted to do on this pretty good time we have here, and we only have half an hour now, we used to have 45 minutes last time you were on Dave, I think we shrunk that down to half an hour now, but we had Brian win on this show two weeks ago, as you know I think you had a lot to do with setting it up, and Brian had come from a week at the White House where many aspects of expanding the dimensions and the boundaries of drone business, drone technology, drone regulations, the use of drones in our infrastructure and in our world were discussed with the White House Office of Science and Technology, a number of key players in the country were there, and Brian Wynn, AUVSI CEO and president was there. So we talked on that pretty good episode about what this expansion means in terms of the role that the state UAS test sites need to play. As you know we've got these six groupings of states, Hawaii, Oregon, and Alaska combined in one of these FAA authorized UAS test sites, and now we have to examine how to make that test range concept useful and dynamic in regard to the expanding business and the new dimensions of business that were discussed at the White House a couple weeks ago, and we have an immediate need here in Hawaii to get very serious about that. Hawaii, again, is under the Alaska FAA contract, but we have to think here in Hawaii of things that are specific and purposeful in Hawaii that would challenge the rules and the limits of current UAS certification in technology and authorizations for operations and find ways to test and find how to progress into the dimensions such as be online a site over the cliff, far out over the ocean in the tropical environment with the saltwater intrusion and such against the Coalaw background with all the reflections of the GPS signals and such. These complex environments will be stressful and we have to find ways to test in those environments in order to let this new dimension of UAV expansion occur. So without putting you on a spot, Dave, you know what Hawaii is all about since you were born and raised here and went to school here, and you've got incredible background experience in the world of UAVs. Let's first just talk a little bit about that, about your own background and where you've been since graduation and how you've come into the UAV world, then we can figure out how that applies to our test site needs here in Hawaii. Well, I wasn't born in Hawaii. I went to high school there. My dad was stationed there a couple of times. Actually, I was born in Indiana, but that was just a few years ago. That's right next door. H and I had a side-by-side in the alphabet. I did go to, I graduated from Punahou and then I attended University of Hawaii for three semesters and then I went into the Navy and that was a few years ago as well. But during the latter part of my naval career, I was the commanding officer of the, at the time, the Navy's only UAV squadron, which was VC-6. We were flying the old pioneers that we bought from the Israelis and that was back in the mid-90s. And at that time, the services were just starting to look at these, at the time they were calling them RPVs and then the Air Force calls them RPAs or Multi-Pilotated Aircraft. And, but most folks call them unmanned aircraft systems because it's not just the UAV, which is the vehicle, but it's the entire system. And there's a lot of pieces and parts associated with that system, the vehicle, the payload, which is the key part. And that's where I will certainly see the potential for the test ranges to become more involved. 20 years ago, my little crystal ball said, you know, there's something to this unmanned stuff, so I've been doing it for, well, now, like 24 years. But with that as a rough background, within the military, which really was the impetus for the initial development and all the investment by the government, DOD in particular, their mission sets are completely different. I mean, they do a lot of ISR, Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance, which some of that applies to the commercial and civilian sector. But then mission areas like battle damage assessment, fire support, those type of missions really don't play very well in the civil market. Having said that, there are a lot of different applications for unmanned aircraft systems and their payloads. They don't all have to have cameras. I mean, you can put a signals intelligence package on it. You can put radios on board to be like a small satellite to extend telecommunications. So I think we are just beginning to scratch the surface. And that's why AUVSI about five years ago said, you know, we need to look at other markets other than DOD. And some of those that stood out were autonomous cars, precision agriculture, public safety, like law enforcement, disaster relief. And some of those other areas that AUVSI identified, those are the areas where we need to start focusing some of our efforts. There's a lot of smart folks in industry and still in government. I mean, there's some good folks there too. But they, like I said, they have a different mission set. So the test range in between Oregon, Alaska, Hawaii, and then a little bit with Kansas State and Iceland, that particular group needs, and you have a unique situation, fairly unique, not all the test sites. Some of them are landlocked. The one up in New York doesn't have a lot of water. The one in Nevada doesn't have a lot of water. There's some off the east coast, but I think these, the Pacific Partnership test range most certainly ought to be looking at maritime applications. So you go, well, what are maritime applications? If you go back to the Scan Eagle days, the Scan Eagle was initially invented to be to go hunt for fish. So looking for schools of fish. So there's an application that is most certainly in the commercial realm, but not really defense centered. So one of my other assignments was as the Southern California offshore range, officer in charge and then subsequently the operations officer. So I have a pretty good feel for what ranges can do. What what kind of precautions you need to take regarding safety, keeping the range clear of folks that we don't want to get hurt, but it's a big ocean. So but I really think that the Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon test range ought to be focusing on the maritime, some of the maritime applications for unmanned aircraft systems. And then you have all the safety issues related with the range. So that's just kind of generally what I'm thinking. Okay, that's cool. You gave a very small part of your background. You've actually been involved in with Naval Postgraduate School and the GIFIX program up there extensively. So you've actually had a lot of recent participation in in current developments in in the miniaturization of UAS and of the signal distribution from a central command station back to the rear area, for example. So Dave, tell us a little bit about what's going on with the world of technology evolution in that domain of UAS in GIFIX? Well, so GIFIX is the Joint Interagency Field Experimentation, which is a area that is designed to support the combatant commanders. Once again, it's kind of military centric. But having said that, a lot of the industry folks bring some of their new developments. The folks at Stanford have brought in a detection system where they can isolate where other UAVs are operating. So that's one of those areas. They look at a variety of different sensors. They're at GIFIX. And then the other program that is the director for GIFIX is Dr. Ray Bittner. He's also the director for a group called Cruiser, which is a consortium for robotics and unmanned systems education and research. So that's that has some military applications, but they look at the whole scope of educating and researching. Cruiser does a few things. One of the most prominent things they do is they publish a newsletter about once every 10 days. And that's a compilation of press releases, you know, from Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Defense News. So it's a it's a whole variety. And within those newsletters that in anybody in the audience can join Cruiser. If you go to the just Google Cruiser and you've it's there at the Naval Post Graduate School, they have a website and you can just join now. Can you spell that again? So we make sure we spell it right. Cruiser is C-R-U-S-E-R. So it's a different kind of cruiser. It's a different kind of cruiser. There's no eye in there. Right. Okay. But it is a consortium. It's international. So people write articles in Cruiser News. And then there's this unmanned system Sentinel, which is another product that has a compilation of fairly recent press releases. And you would be amazed how much stuff is out there in the press. And that's the thing that I wanted to discuss, because I think that's so important that is informing what we do here in Hawaii or Oregon or Alaska really needs to have the benefit of that daily and weekly scraping, scrubbing of all the information that's being developed around the world that is available in these websites and documents even such as the ones you put out. So one of the I think big roles here we're going to have to figure out is how to inform our our evolving idea of what this test range is going to be good for. You've outlined it that outline for us that the maritime environment is a place we should really focus because we're unique in that. And not only that we have a stressing maritime environment. We also have some stressing landside or land maritime interface as well. So we got that. That's cool. The informing as to what other people are doing, what technologies are available and what industries might be searching for a way to put their equipment at test. That sort of thing information can come from this this daily and weekly scrubbing of information that you're on top of and help us help us see. Well, I think you very well define the challenges associated with the environment there in Hawaii and in Alaska has its own challenges as well. So I think you've done a real good job with that. The and I don't think that the test ranges shouldn't be operating in isolation. I think there's a lot of opportunity for some synergy. We don't need to repeat what the folks in Nevada or the folks in New York or Texas are doing. So we can leverage and share that information. I mean, this is, you know, we're not playing. I got a secret here. It's we ought to be sharing with the other test ranges. But I like I said, I think that the Hawaii environment and as you have said is most certainly challenging to say the least. But it's different from what the other test ranges have to offer. I don't think it's a huge step to try and corral cope with the environment. You just have to make sure you do it safely because, you know, a lot of folks say not not when or not if we have a UAV incident, but when we do because, you know, you got hobbyists that are trying to fly and most certainly Honolulu International Airport right there with Hickam. That's a challenging environment. So you got to make sure that we got to make sure that we keep any operators, not just the the test folks, but we need to inform the public there in Hawaii. Don't be flying your quadcopter underneath Honolulu International. Let's get back to that in a minute after the first break here. What I want to do is just take a little bit of a break and then come back and talk about specific opportunities we could create along the lines you've laid out informed by that gathering that takes place daily of information about what's going on in other areas. We'll come back to that right after our break. I'm Jay Fidel and I'm here with Pete McGinnis-Mart to talk about HIGP and research in Manoa. What about that show, Pete? I think it's great, Jay. Research at Manoa really provides faculty members of the University of Hawaii with an easy way of explaining some of the research activities we're conducting on the campus. For example, I do a lot of space research, whether it's the moon and Mars, but many of my other colleagues do other interesting kinds of work, whether it's exploring the ocean floor in submarines, studying earthquakes and tsunamis, or other activities. So research at Manoa really provides us with a way of telling the general public some of the activities which we're involved in as well as communicating to our colleagues and students. This is a fun science and we really appreciate the activities which research at Manoa enable us to talk about. I love research at Manoa. Come around, join us. It's Monday, one o'clock p.m., every single Monday. Be there, we'll be square. Ted Rawlsson here, folks, with our guest, David Place, down in a place in San Diego. David Place in place in San Diego. David, welcome again. Thanks, Deb. We were talking just before the break about the two things, about the environment in Hawaii that sets the stage for how we need to think about our UAS test range here in Hawaii. And by the way we have the University of Hawaii Applied Research Lab, will be the agency that will be actually executing that. So that's kind of where you went to school, Dave. But then we need to determine and create very robust mission statements that are associated with the testing we could do in that environment that would be useful and interesting to industry, to government, and to the general quality of life. And think of those types of missions that UAS could do that are not possible today with the technology we have today or the authorization principles we have today. But the testing we would do would find those technology barriers, would find those administrative and regulatory needs and create a path for getting that functionality into the system. And then, with that in place, we have to promote and advocate government support, research support and commercial support for that kind of work. That's how I see what we have to do here in making some value out of the FAA test range that's been defined to us. By the way, I'll say that we've had other guests on the show in the past who've talked about the value that the other sites have generated in terms of the information, the data, and the problems and such that have shown up by virtue of the UAS test ranges, which has informed the way the rules are written. So there is a really good coupling here between the experience and the knowledge the FAA gains by these test ranges and how that then turns into rulemaking procedures and limitations and criteria and requirements. So it's not like an isolated thing that sits out there by itself. So these test ranges exist in order to allow challenges to occur to push the UAV functionality beyond its current limitations and find what has to be done technically or administratively in order to make them function. So that's a lot of words. What I was thinking of is the proposed expansion of the Papahonu Mokuakea, the large maritime reserve, fishing reserve that's established between Hawaii and Midway, is being proposed to be expanded quite a bit. A lot of islands in there, a lot of sea conditions, and when you expand something like that, there's a requirement to enforce it or police it or observe it. So you can spend a lot of fuel on manned aircraft and manned helicopters and do your surveys and such, or you could do a lot of that job with small unmanned systems, especially if you're going to go ashore on an island. It would be quite reasonable to think of a small UAV collecting the information that is necessary to proceed your landing and not spend much fuel or much, not trip up the environment much in the process, or in some cases, even collect the information, the imagery or other, even collect physical material from the island without even having to go ashore. So it simplifies and reduces the footprint below the environment by using unmanned air systems and policing some kind of a fragile natural environment like that. So my thought is that if we could create that use of UAS and tie it to the monument expansion, that itself would provide something that has a long lasting value and it would bring in a lot of researchers and a lot of companies who want to participate in that. And that would then fit in what you're talking about, Dave, using the marine environment as it is to form the challenge that we go forth and do testing associated with. Well, you've hit on a couple of key points there, Ted. I mean, any time you're talking about a preserve, it's normally a fairly large area and it takes a significant amount of resources and manpower to survey and identify what are the key components within that reserve, whether it be wildlife, fish, plants. Retrieving something off an island might be a little bit of a challenge, but most certainly a lot of the other sensors that are available in today's market space are there to do collection of probably not a lot of signals collection, but most certainly there are sensors out there that can detect chemical, biological data, and those are the type of data that when you're looking at a preserve and you're going, well, do we have a sensitive area here? Is there an endangered species? And you most certainly can get up close and personal by using an unmanned aircraft system to help resolve some of those issues. So I think there's lots of payloads and I would most certainly think that the environmentalists and some of the industry folks that zoologists, you know, entomologists, I mean, there's just a whole cadre of scientific folks that I would think would be interested in identifying what's available in that preserve and what areas we need to keep away from and why part of the challenge most certainly is going to be the beyond line of sight. But since you're in international waters, you can probably we can probably get away with doing pretty much what we want. And if you're using a small UAS, if you want to do beyond line of sight, you need a little bit bigger vehicle to carry the radios because most certainly when you start putting expensive sensors on board, no matter what you're trying to detect, they become much more expensive and we don't want to lose them because we lost the command link to the vehicle. That's a really good point and the value of something like the Pacific Monument Range would be that we are free to do testing out there. The consequence of losing something is not going to hurt anybody in the process and it might even be recoverable if we put flotation on, for example, and so determining where the technical limits are such as the communication link you mentioned, such as the reliability and the duplicity and multiple systems on board in order to accommodate failure, in order to accommodate sudden changes in the weather. These things could all be developed and failure is an option and then when we develop what the failure mode is, you then come up with a solution that works around that and that's what the FAA is looking for. What is it going to take to make this very simple thing beyond line of sight be as reliable as aviation is today in manned aviation and that's a great way to think of that challenge. There's two others that come to mind, we probably won't have time to think of to talk about them here because we are on a half hour module, but two others that fit the picture very well, also Pacific and also in this domain, somebody else mentioned this to me a while ago, but we've got mosquito-borne illnesses that are going around and one way to take care of that is to have DNA edited mosquito larvae dropped into a pond in some remote location that you can't get to very well and that those edited larvae cause the offspring to not be reproducible or something like that. Anyway, the population goes away after a couple of rounds of reproduction, but what you have to do is get those larvae in a cold condition, get inject them into the forest, into the jungle and down into the pond at night if they're night biters or daytime if they're day biters. That's a complex operation and it's only maybe a quarter mile or half mile, but it's beyond line of sight because it's up over the forest and down in a hole in the forest. So that sort of thing I think would be, that mission would repeat in many places in the monument in terms of injecting a sensor, injecting larvae, recovering something. This same mission has a lot of operations and a lot of values and it also is challenging the limits of where we are today and produces the necessary data in order to fix the thing technically and to work the administrative rules and allow you to operate it. So I bring that one up as a very small example. That's an application I had not thought of, but I mean you mentioned GIFIX-TED and that's one of the tenants behind GIFIX is Go Experiment and if you fail, great, but let's fix it right there on the spot and what better way to fix an issue than instead of saying, okay well I'll go back and work on it in the lab for the next three months and then we'll come back. Do it right then, do it right there. So I think that GIFIX sets a nice model and most certainly that I think that's a pretty good model for the test range and as far as the FAA goes, you know, they don't move quite as quickly as a lot of us would like but their job is to maintain safety in the national airspace. So they are taking baby steps and they're making steps forward like the part 107 and the recent rules, small rules, those are most certainly steps in the right direction and they're just progressing down a very, very focused path. So any data that any of the test ranges can collect will add credence to the data that the FAA needs to develop more rules. So I think that you're right on the mark and there's most certainly huge potential to support not only the FAA but industry and a lot of scientists and you've given an example there that I hadn't even thought of. Okay, that's good and I think you gave an example I hadn't thought of. I think that connecting the Hawaii range operationally in with GIFIX through you perhaps would be a really superb way to get current information flowing both ways. Things that are developed in the range could benefit GIFIX and things you come across and GIFIX could feedback and help us architect out the range. Yeah, the most certainly is true. Like I said the the folks there at GIFIX, I mean they're trying to support Paycom is one of their key customers and I know that the University there has some ties with the Pacific Command but Paycom is one of the primary clients of GIFIX and normally the Paycom Rep is at GIFIX it's once every once a quarter. So we can tie those together. We have one more minute here. I want to throw one more thing in the table before we have to bail out for the weekend but we won't have much chance to discuss it but the big fuel tanks down in Pua Law here in Honolulu, the 28 story high tanks that are having some leakage issues. Those are well big enough to be inspected on the inside by some form of UAS that has no source of ignition on it. There's got to be fuel vapors in there that we have to be careful of. But let's talk about that maybe offline. I think there's another application that's staring us in the face here. Anyway, Dave we are coming to the end of our very short half-hour period. I'm sure we'll talk a lot more afterwards about the ideas that come to mind here but I really wanted to thank you. First of all I'll bring you on once again but thank you so much for the the deep thoughts you've got that you have brought to us from years of knowing you and contact at AUVSI and GIFIX and the industry in general and that's very useful and very helpful to us. We got to find a way to pull that expertise that you sit on top of into our thinking pool here as we construct our state site functionality at the UAS test range here in Hawaii. I think you most certainly have some challenges Ted but I think you also have some great opportunity. Okay Dave place thanks again for coming on and we'll see you again in the next time we get you on the show. Oh kid Oak all right you guys have a good weekend. Okay thanks a lot.


So, just to give you a brief overview of the six factors we can see have an impact on why some countries do better than others and we'll dive into them in the chapters to come, but we can see, I'm sorry to say this and burst your bubble, but money does matter. It's really complex and there's a lot of nuances there, but we can see that richer countries, richer people are on average happier. But again, a lot of nuances, so we'll get into that. Secondly, health. Obviously, if we are ill, if we are sick, we are less happy, but there's a dual relationship there, which we'll also go into. Thirdly, we can see that freedom matters, the American Declaration of Independence, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, those things are linked. We can see that people that feel in charge of their lives, that feel as captain of their destiny, are on average happier. We'll get into that as well. Fourthly, we call it the fourth factor, different things. We call it freedom from corruption. We call it good governance. We call it high level of trust. So, do people trust their governments? Do they trust the institutions? Do they trust the neighbors? Do they trust people on the street? That creates a more convenient society and a less worryless society. Sorry, English is not my first language. And then, fifthly, we can see the level of generosity, the level of kindness in a society matter, how we treat one another. And that links into the sixth factor. We can see also have a tremendous impact and perhaps is the best predictor of whether people are happy or not, are relationships. So, the level of social support that we experience.


Hi and welcome to the session. Let's work out the following question. The question says a bill of Rs 5300 drawn on 16th January 2003 for 8 months was discounted on 12th February 2003 at 10% per annum, buying the bankers gain and discounted value of the bill. So let's start with the solution to this question. We have drawn date of the bill as 16th January 2003. The term of the bill is 8 months. Therefore due date of the bill will be 19th September 2003 and date of discounting will be 12th February 2003. Therefore number of days from the date of discounting due date is equal to 16 days of February, 31 days of March, 30 days of April, 31 days of May and so on till 19 days of September. So this equals to 219 days or we can say that T is equal to 219 divided by 365 days. Now S is rupees 5300, R is 10% that is 10 by 100 that is equal to 1 by 10. Therefore VD that is bankers discount is equal to S into R into T that is 5300 into 1 by 10 into 219 divided by 365. And that is equal to rupees 318. So discounted value of the bill is equal to 5300 minus 318 that is equal to rupees 4982. Now true discount or TD is equal to SRT divided by 1 plus RT that is equal to 318 divided by 1 plus 1 upon 10 into 219 divided by 365. It is further equal to 318 into 10 into 365 divided by 365 0 plus 365 plus 2190. Sorry in the denominator here we will have 10 into 365 plus 219 and this is further equal to 318 into 365 0 divided by 3869 and this is equal to rupees 300. Therefore bankers gain that is BG is bankers discount minus true discount that is equal to 318 minus 300 that is equal to rupees 18. So our answer to the question is that bankers gain is rupees 18 and discounted value is rupees 4982. So this is our answer to this question. I hope that you understood the solution and enjoyed the session. Have a good day.


Hello, my name is Jill Terina, Applications Engineer for ST Microelectronics. In this video, I'm going to demonstrate just how simple it is to get your STM32WB ZigBee device connected to a commercial ZigBee Hub like the Amazon Echo Plus, which many people already have in their homes. The Amazon Echo Plus has an integrated ZigBee Hub and acts as a ZigBee coordinator and it can allow other ZigBee routers or end notes to join its network. Then you can use the Alexa user interface to control your device. To get started, make sure you have the software tools installed. The CUBE programmer to update the corresponding ZigBee stack, the CUBE IDE for building and programming the ZigBee user application firmware, the CUBE WB package, which is where the ZigBee stack and examples reside, and finally the Alexa app on your mobile phone to use as a user interface. You can also refer to the tools installed video number three of the STM32WB Getting Started series for step-by-step instructions. You'll also need a Windows PC, a Micro-B USB cable, a WB Nucleoboard, an Amazon Echo Plus, and an iOS or Android mobile phone. Once you have all the software tools and hardware ready, you'll need to start by updating your WB Nucleoboard with the latest Fuzz and ZigBee stack. For instructions on how to do this, you can follow the instructions in the release notes found in the STM32 CUBE WB package, or you can follow the stack loading video number nine of the WB Getting Started series, which you can find in YouTube. Next, download the STM32 CUBE WB package from st.com and unzip it. Then find the ZigBee on-off server distributed example and open the project by double clicking on the .project file. Give your workspace a name and click Launch. Close the information center window to see the project workspace. Then open the app underscore ZigBee.c file to edit and change the channel mask to WPAN underscore channel mask underscore 24 megahertz to scan all 802.15.4 channels during the network discovery, since we don't know which channel the Amazon Echo ZigBee network will be on. After the edits, save the changes and build the project. Then download and debug to load the application program on the WB Nucleoboard, which should be connected to your PC with the USB cable. Click switch and finally run the program. Now that we have the WB Nucleoboard running the on-off ZigBee application and within range of the Echo Plus, we can now command the Echo to look for new devices and connect. We can do this from the Alexa app installed on the mobile phone. Make sure to restart the server by resetting the WB Nucleoboard after the Echo has started to perform the device discovery. If everything goes well, the WB Nucleoboard device will be recognized as a switch and we can command to turn the board's red LED 3 on and off from the app user interface. I'm now going to delete the device as I want to also show how you can use the Alexa voice assistant to do the same. Alexa, discover devices. Starting discovery, this will take a few moments. Power on your new devices now and if need, I found first switch and you can control it by saying, turn off first switch. Alexa, turn on first switch. Okay. Alexa, turn off first switch. Notice how the app syncs up and that's the discovered switch device as well, which we can also control it from us before. I hope this demonstrated the power of ZigBee's interoperability and just how simple it is to get started developing a ZigBee project with the SEM32WB Wireless MCU. Our ZigBee ecosystem includes much more so if you would like to learn more, please visit ST.com or submit any questions through our online support channel or community forums. Thank you for watching.


Hi everyone. I'm Kathleen Hicks. I run the international security program here at CSIS. It's great to have such a wonderful crowd here despite the two-hour delay of the federal government today and the massive snowstorm you all had to endure to get here, so I'm glad you made it through the melting half-inch of snow that we had here in Washington. It's with great pleasure that I'm here today to introduce General David Rodriguez. This is our first military strategy forum of 2015, and with great thanks to Rolls-Royce North America for making this series possible, we couldn't hope to begin with a better representative from the Uniform Services. General Rodriguez says, I think everyone here knows, is the commander of U.S. Africa Command, U.S. AFRICOM, which is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, so maybe a little more snow there than here. And of course, AFRICOM has been at the center of many, many of the major issues affecting the world in this past year, from Ebola to Libya to Mali to Somalia, and that's just the very northern part of this very large continent for which General Rodriguez has responsibility for the U.S. military. He has served really at every level of the military and in many different components from the Joint Staff to OSD to the combatant commands, and of course, having served in Afghanistan as well. Without further ado, let me introduce General Rodriguez. Thank you, Kathleen. Good afternoon to all of you, and thanks for the invitation to speak to you today about U.S. Africa Command's contributions to U.S. security efforts in Africa. Africa continues to present a broad and complex spectrum of opportunities and challenges to the United States, our allies, and partners. Several factors contribute to this complexity. Africa is diverse. The continent contains a mere 54 countries and over 800 ethnic groups and more than one billion people that speak over 1,000 languages. Africa is young and growing. 41 percent of Africans are under the age of 15, in contrast to 15 percent here in the United States. Based on current demographic trends, in 2050, one out of four people on the planet will live in Africa. Africa's security environment is dynamic and uncertain. Many African nations are challenged by weak leadership, ineffective governance, and systemic corruption. These factors combine to fuel instability that can be exploited by criminal networks and violent extremist organizations. 15 U.S. embassies and consulates designed as high risk or high threat are in the Africa Command area of responsibility, and nine in the United Nations 16 peacekeeping missions are located in Africa, with nearly 80 percent of U.N. peacekeeping forces deployed on the continent in support of these missions. And, of course, Africa is immense three and a half times the size of the United States. Infrastructure is limited across much of the continent, presenting both opportunities and challenges for development and security. Looking across this vast and complex landscape, our African partners and the international community face several challenges. In East Africa, security in Somalia has improved, but al-Shabaab continues to present an acute threat to U.S. and allied interests. In North Africa, violent extremist groups are building capacity and exploiting poorest borders to train and move fighters. Boko Haram is an increasing threat in Nigeria, and has expanded its reach into Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. Maritime criminals remain active in the Gulf of Guinea, threatening critical maritime trade routes, and Central Africa faces sectarian violence and destabilizing activities of armed rebel groups. Despite these challenges, Africa abounds with opportunities. The continent contains tremendous resource wealth, eight of the world's 15 fastest-growing economies, and a growing middle class. The potential for future economic engagement and investment is bright. African partners are demonstrating increasing willingness and capacity to lead counterterrorism, peacekeeping, maritime security, and disaster response efforts. We are expanding our cooperation with allies and African partners based on trust, shared interests, and mutual responsibility. All these factors combine to present a complex and dynamic operating environment for Africa command and our partners. Our mission is to advance U.S. national interest by disrupting transnational threats, protecting U.S. personnel and facilities, preventing and mitigating conflict, and building defense capabilities in order to promote regional stability and prosperity. Accomplishing our mission supports our national strategy by denying adversaries the opportunity to plan and carry out catastrophic attacks against U.S. territory, helping to ensure the security of the global economic system, building secure, confident relationships with reliable allies, and protecting American citizens abroad, and where possible by expanding universal values and support of fundamental human rights and freedoms. We accomplish our mission by building partner capacity, enabling allies and partners, and one appropriate taking unilateral action. We work closely with multinational and interagency partners to align strategies, leverage and support allies and partners, and ensure we effectively support comprehensive U.S. government efforts led by our U.S. ambassadors. We work closely with other combatant commands, especially U.S. European Command, Central Command, Spential Operations Command, and Transportation Command. Five immediate priorities guide Africa command's efforts on the continent. The first is countering the violent extremism and enhancing stability in East Africa. Our East African partners are leading efforts to neutralize al-Shabaab in Somalia and increase opportunities for the Somali government and people to make progress in state formation, developing a sense of national identity, and building national institutions including security forces that are representative of the population. Off the coast of Somalia, collaborative efforts of military forces, international organizations, and the private sector continue to sustain maritime security progress made over the past few years, and no ships were successfully hijacked by pirates in the region last year. Several years of modest U.S. security assistance in East Africa, including advice and assistance to military forces, have helped our partners gradually strengthen their capacity and cooperation to conduct peacekeeping operations and counter violent extremist organizations in Somalia. In the past year, with advice and assistance from U.S. forces, African Union forces have improved their operational planning and demonstrated increased proficiency on the battlefield. They have seized key terrain from al-Shabaab, reducing the group's ability to train, conduct operations, and resource itself. The African Union mission in Somalia, the United Nations mission, and our East African partners have improved their coordination and planning for offensive and stability operations. U.S. forces also conducted successful unilateral operations against al-Shabaab leaders this year, including its former emir Ghadani and his intelligence chief. Although al-Shabaab is weaker today than it was a year ago, it continues to conduct attacks against regional and western targets in East Africa, and is continuing to try to rebuild additional operation capacity if given the opportunity. Over the past year, al-Shabaab has planned or executed increasingly complex and lethal attacks in Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti, and Ethiopia. These attacks are aimed at impeding Somali's political development and discouraging African Union mission in Somalia troop contributing countries from sustaining security commitments to Somalia. Increasing military pressure on al-Shabaab and strengthening governance in Somalia will help to finally neutralize this group. Our multinational coordination will be necessary to increase pressure on al-Shabaab and to accelerate the Somali federal government's progress in governance and development. The federal government of Somalia's ability to hold terrain, govern effectively, and deliver services to the Somali people will ultimately determine its ability to sustain security gains and stabilize the country. Our second immediate priority is countering violent extremism and enhancing security in North and West Africa. Our allies and partners are increasing their capacity and collaboration in addressing security threats across the Maghreb, Sahel, and the Lake Chad basin regions. Conditions in Libya have declined significantly in recent months as competition between rival to brook and Tripoli-based governments and allied militias have fueled conflict and disrupted oil exports. Libya's insecurity has negative consequences for its people, its neighbors, Europe's southern flank, and our peace and security objectives in the Middle East. Foreign fighters, arms, and illegal migrants are flowing from and through Libya, supplying fighters to the Syrian conflict and stressing North African partners and southern European allies. In Mali, security has declined and the North's terrorist organizations have taken advantage of reduced military pressure and the flow of arms and fighters from Libya to continue to strengthen their capacity. Terrorist organizations and insurgent groups have increased attacks against Mali and French and United Nations forces in the northern part of the country. While security has declined in Libya and Mali, the international community's coordination in addressing regional security challenges has increased. Algeria and Morocco are building the capacity of NATO partner African countries. Algeria, Tunisia, Niger, Chad, and France have strengthened counterterrorism and border security efforts, often in collaboration with partners. NATO countries are working together more closely to address threats to Europe's southern flank, including foreign fighter flows emanating from North Africa. U.S. engagement and assistance have facilitated the strengthening of regional dialogue, partnerships, and capacity, and we have enabled partners to disrupt criminal and terrorist threat networks. We have also helped partners prepare for deployment to multinational peacekeeper operations in Mali, where 11 African countries are contributing to military forces, contributing military forces to the U.N. mission. Africa Command is also working with U.S. European Command and Central Command to monitor transregional threats, including foreign fighter flows associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other terrorist organizations. Africa Command has also supported law enforcement operations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to help bring the justice to perpetrators of violence against American citizens and interests. Last year, U.S. forces captured Ahmed Abu Katala and Abu Anas al-Libi. Abu Katala is a suspected ringleader in a 2012 attack against U.S. facilities in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans. Al-Libi, who recently died in custody, was suspected of planning the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Although the security situation in Libya has limited the international community's ability to support the development of security institutions and forces, we continue to look for opportunities to constructively influence the situation in Libya and the region. As conditions improve, we will be prepared to support the development of Libyan defense capacities and executive functions generating forces and operating forces. In Nigeria, Boko Haram is conducting increasingly complex and lethal attacks aimed at terrorizing civilians and destabilizing a government that is also facing significant political violence and economic challenges heightened by falling oil revenues. In the past year, we have continued to partner with the Nigerian military in areas like counterterrorism and maritime security and have increased information sharing to support Nigerian military efforts against Boko Haram. In addition to its campaign of violence in Nigeria, Boko Haram is expanding its activities into Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. We are working with Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria and allies to support regional efforts against Boko Haram and to facilitate the development of the late Chad Basin Multinational Joint Task Force. Our third priority is supporting the State Department and protecting U.S. personnel and facilities. As I mentioned earlier, 15 of the State Department's high risk, high threat diplomatic posts are located in the area of responsibility. To increase our ability to preposition forces closer and reduce response times when there are indications and warnings of crisis, we are developing additional infrastructure at cooperative security locations in Africa. Our response forces include Army and Air Force elements staged in Djibouti, a Marine Corps crisis response force and fleet anti-terrorism support teams based in Spain, and other crisis response forces stationed in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. With limited infrastructure, with limited forces and infrastructure, and a large area of responsibility, we are working with allies and partners to maximize our adaptability and flexibility. We are also repositioning and flexibly using intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance assets so that they can be utilized more effectively to increase our situation awareness and support operations. In the last year, Africa Command and our component commands have reinforced the security of U.S. embassies in both South Sudan and Libya, supported the departure of U.S. and allied personnel from Libya, and provided security to enable the resumption of U.S. embassy operations in the Central African Republic. Our fourth priority is enhancing maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea. Regional partners are gradually strengthening their capacity and cooperation in addressing maritime security challenges. The scope of maritime threats makes regional cooperation and interoperability essential to effective maritime surveillance and interdiction efforts. We are helping partners strengthen their capacity and interoperability through multinational training programs like the African Partnership Station, combined operations like the AFRICOM Maritime Law Enforcement Partnership, and regional maritime exercises that have included have included significant participation by European and South American navies, as well as the private sector. We continue to support regional maritime security initiatives and to look for opportunities to complement civilian initiatives that address the root causes of maritime crime by strengthening governance and promoting economic development. Our fifth priority is countering the Lord's Resistance Army or the LRA. Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan have contributed some forces to the African Union Regional Task Force against the LRA, which has led military efforts to reduce the group's safe havens, capture key leaders, and promote defections. The African Union Regional Task Force, with advice and assistance from U.S. forces, has made significant progress in weakening the LRA and reducing its ability to threaten civilian populations. As the combined result of efforts by military forces, civilian agencies, and non-governmental organizations, the LRA no longer threatens regional stability and its capacity to harm civilian populations has been greatly diminished. Today, there are approximately 200 LRA fighters remaining in communities in the LRA-affected areas are better prepared to respond to attacks from the LRA and other armed groups. It is unclear whether the LRA is likely to rebuild, but any potential regrowth will be gradual and will face local populations that are more resistant and resilient to attacks. You may have noted that I continue to reference our efforts to build partner capacity and enable allies and partners in conjunction with all of our immediate priorities. Now, T. Lawrence once wrote about working with partners that it is better to let them do it themselves imperfectly than to do it yourself perfectly. It is their country, their way, and our time is short. Eighty years after his death, Lawrence's advice still makes sense. Sustainable security in Africa depends on African nations and regional organizations who can develop the institutional, operational, and tactical capacities to provide for their own security on an enduring basis. Our activities should account for this principle in every way. Our recent activities in West Africa supporting the U.S. Agency for International Development and their Ebola response demonstrate how we can address mutual threats with partners while simultaneously building relationships and capacity. Nearly 3,000 Department of Defense personnel, including civilians and contractors, deployed the Operation United Assistance last fall to support the Liberian government and USAID in addressing the complex humanitarian emergency associated with the largest Ebola epidemic in history. Under the superb leadership of Major General Williams and U.S. Army Africa, followed by Major General Valesky and the 101st Airborne Division Air Assault, the men and women of Joint Force Command United Assistance provided communication and coordination support, logistics, engineering, and health worker training. By supporting efforts to control the epidemic, Liberian and U.S. personnel helped save the lives, helped save lives, and potentially averted a global health crisis. When called to assist, the Liberian military responded in a tremendous manner, reflecting Liberian leadership and the impact of modest and sustained U.S. investments in building the capacity of the Liberian armed forces. The U.S. military's response demonstrated our flexibility and capabilities step in when others cannot and ensured that critical initial gaps were filled while civilian partners built their capacities. I believe the deployment of U.S. forces boosted the confidence and courage of others to join the effort and help to catalyze the robust international response required to turn the tide of the epidemic. Joint Forces Command United Assistance has successfully transitioning military support tasks to civilian partners as they develop sufficient capacity. We're also retaining and building capabilities that will allow our regional partners to respond more effectively to future health crises and humanitarian disasters. I'd like to wrap up by noting that as we look to the future, Africa's significance to U.S. national interests of security, prosperity, international order, and values are likely to continue to grow. Comprehensive and multinational approaches will be required to advance our enduring interests. We will continue to sharpen our prioritization, aligning our resources to strategy, and seek ways to enhance our operational flexibility as we make informed decisions to minimize risks and further the national interests of the United States and our allies and partners. Thank you again for the opportunity to speak to you today, and I look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thanks for all that. Hopefully the microphone's on. There we go. You know, you were the third AFRICOM commander, and when AFRICOM was firsted up, I think it's fair to say there had been some concern about whether AFRICOM denoted the beginning of a militarization of U.S. foreign policy in Africa. That was something people worried about on the continent, but it was also something people worried about in the development community and maybe even in the diplomacy community. When you took over and as you've encountered the job to date, do you find that those suspicions are still there? And if so, how do you best approach them? And if you think they're have really dissipated, why do you think that is? I don't see that information nearly as much as we used to. I think it's dissipated for a couple of reasons. First off, you know, when we split from UCOM, it really changed the ability of the U.S. military to focus its energy. And I think also our relationships that we've developed over the years and the way we've gone about supporting the U.S. embassies as well as the countries themselves and supporting them really where they need it, not where we want to do it. I think that has led to a change in attitude from almost all the players that you mentioned. What do you think is AFRICOM's compare of advantage? What do you provide to the U.S. government and then also to partners and allies that really make you a valued partner? Well, I think the things that we bring the most are the capabilities and capacities that the people in the African countries need most. So I think it's really, it's their demand that has driven anything that we're able to do. On the African continent and in most armies throughout Africa as well as navies and marine and air forces, you know, they usually need the same type of help. It's in command and control, intelligence, logistics, mobility, specialty skills like counter IED or special operations forces. And again, it's their demand that drives what we do and how we conduct our business. And you know, we like to say that, you know, first it's a host nation plan, then it's a country team plan, then it's our plan. You mentioned capabilities and capacity. You have an extremely busy AOR and yet it's also one in theory where we have less priority maybe than, for instance, in the Asia Pacific in terms of military force. So I'm sure that creates some asset squeezes for you. What are the areas where you feel the most concern about what you're able to bring to bear versus what that demand signal is? Most of it is built around the intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance. When you're in a theater that doesn't have a long, you know, well developed network of information. So that's one continuing challenge. But the other important part I think to make is we do this with a very small number of people in just the right places. And again, if we're filling the demands that they need, we're looked at as value added and you know, helping them where they need it most. So that's why I think that they appreciate the most. You also mentioned in your remarks, of course, the support to the State Department and Embassy Security. I think that was your third priority. And that's something that's always been there, of course, but in a post Benghazi environment. It's a real challenge for area like Africa. The distances are unimaginable really for most people. Can you talk a little bit about some of those challenges and maybe some specific either countries or situations that worry you the most in terms of your ability to provide that support? Well, as you can imagine, just in the last year, we had the challenges in both South Sudan and then Libya itself. Again, so I think there's the Defense Department and the order that they put out to protect U.S. personnel facilities across the world has given us some flexibility where we can adjust and access forces. So we have a force sharing agreement with the European Command so we can share those forces much quicker than we had in the past, as well as the one for the new normal where we actually accessed CENTCOM forces in South Sudan. Plus, as I mentioned, the cooperative security locations are places where we can move those forces to get closer to the challenging areas that change every day. And we're really, as we continue to watch the security situation as you can imagine right now, Nigeria is up on the list just based on the situation. And it's flexible and, like I said, the indication and warnings lead us to where we need to go. And the close cooperation and coordination with the State Department and Diplomatic Security, I think, has enhanced our ability to support them. On Ebola, which obviously has been a high priority mission for the United States in the last year, seems to be that the crisis has largely passed, the immediate crisis has largely passed, but we all know and have known even before Ebola that these kinds of health security threats are going to emerge more and more in a globalized world. What do you think are the lessons that you take away from your experience with Ebola that can be applied in the future in terms of the U.S. military's role and assistance? Well, I think that, you know, we were called in to bring some unique capabilities in a rapid manner that, you know, people need to help with again. And I think that was about the communications and the coordination. It was about engineering skills, especially out in the field and the distant stations. It was about logistic support, again, one that's always needed in the African nations. And then lastly, on training. So I think that those were hugely important to getting everything moving forward there. And then, you know, USAID and the Liberian military and the Liberian leadership really did a great job of, you know, informing the people how to protect themselves and everything. And that was probably the number one thing that made the biggest difference. Is there a long-term capacity building that AFRICOM assists with maybe in support of USAID on the health security structure side inside these countries? Or is that really over to the civilians? It's mainly led by the civilians. But yes, we have a responsibility to help with the African partners. And we have a capacity building program for all of West Africa now to help give them the capacity to better handle these things. It was also interesting, as you can imagine, the Liberian military, which I talked about, has had a long-term relationship with us and built into about a 2,500 man force. And, you know, they learned to do infantry skills very, very quickly and everything. But about three months before the Ebola broke out, I was talking to their chief staff, the Air Force, and he said, we need help in logistics and engineering. So when I was down there talking to him, I said, you're going to get a crash course in both those things. But the investment we had made over those, you know, 12 or 13 years of being working for them was really paid off and everything. They're very, very well disciplined, very well respected, and they did a pretty doggone good job figuring out logistics and engineering and, you know, that capacity is now there now. That's great. With all the crises that you've had in the time since you've been in Africa, are there issues that you feel like we're overlooking and we haven't had the time to develop as well as we should in terms of dealing with security threats or emergent threats on the African continent? Are there things maybe not keeping you up at night? It's maybe too strong, but issue areas where you really wish you could dig even further if not for the constant demand on your time. Well, I think the challenges are in places that we, you know, can't understand or see what's going on well enough. So when you look at some of the challenges that the whole international community is facing in Libya right now or in Nigeria, those are the challenging situations that you always wish you could know more about. And that gets in some ways to skill sets, too, because I would imagine part of that is, you know, your ability to have the systems in place that the U.S., maybe it's U.S. military, but also U.S. government writ large that the military can tap into that has the cultural expertise, it has the knowledge. How do you think we're doing as both inside the military and then more broadly in terms of having the right skill sets available? Well, I think we're learning a lot and we're learning quickly and we're also tapping into a great bunch of allies and partners as well as host nations who, you know, understand it better than anybody. Yeah, and actually you've probably had as much experience in Africa working with the French, the Brits and others as maybe the Yukon commander has had. How has that experience been? Do you feel that the United States and its allies have common cause in Africa in their dealings? And is there some advantage to be had for us working together? Oh, yeah, I think we do have a common cause, as I mentioned, they're worried about terrorism on their southern flanks, illegal immigration, drugs, and yeah, we have a very, very common cause and I think we have great relationships. First of all, the relationships have been built over many, many years of fighting in the counter-terrorism challenges that we've all faced. And when we go around to see all our, especially the southern European partners and everything, they're very interested in working with us. They do a great job and we've seen, we have several multinational planning efforts with our partners, both African as well as European, where, you know, rather than, you know, each going our own way, we all work together to make sure the plan is consistent. We're all working together. And I think the relationship that we have with both the French and the Brits is as good as it's ever been in a place like Africa. There has been over the past, say, five years, some folks who get worried about the Chinese, for instance, in Africa and into the Western Hemisphere. But in the Ebola case, there have been some opportunities to, again, have common cause with the Chinese. Are there other examples where you found that they've participated in several of the UN missions? So they participate in UN peacekeeping missions. And of course they do a significant amount of infrastructure development, which helps everybody in Africa. And off the coast of Somalia, they also participated in some of the maritime security things that have improved that over there too. Well, very good. I'm going to open it up to questions now. And as the mics come around, please make sure you make it a question. And we're going to ask for your name and affiliation. So let's see. We've got some mics around the room. We're going to start right over here. Good afternoon, General. Thank you, Kath. Eric Lecklin from the Office of the Secretary of Defense. And sir, we had the pleasure of serving together in Afghanistan when you're IJC commander. My question is about the lessons that you learned from that experience in Afghanistan and how you think about your role as combatant commander. If you think back to the experience of ground forces command when you were IJC commander, and we were working with the Afghans to establish a three star operational command that really didn't fit in the history of their way of doing command and control. There's some evidence now post-2014 in full transition that ground forces command will fade into the sunset, and Afghan support is no longer there for that command. In retrospect, now in your new role, how do you look back on that experience? And was it the right call at the time? What are you learning from it now as combatant commander? Well, I think the most important thing is to first, to totally understand the situation and understand what's best for them. And I think that whatever nation we're working with, they usually have a way of doing business and everything. And it's right for them. So we ought to support that as best we can. And again, we have not only the host nations, but also a bunch of allies who understand that because of their long history in Africa and everything. So I think the lesson learned is really you have to do what's right for those organizations in those countries. Okay. Thank you. Let's see, we've got a couple over here. I've got one way in the back over here. Thank you. Thank you very much. My name is Ni Akwete. General, I'm struck by the contrast between support for Nigeria to fight Boko Haram and what's going on with ISIS. It seems to me Nigeria is not getting as much help as you would think given that Boko Haram has been there for five years. And with the Chibok girls, several international powers said they will help. So can you talk about why we don't see as much support and why the fight against Boko Haram from the international front is not as vigorous as we might expect? Thank you. Well, I think there's a tremendous effort to combat Boko Haram in the multinational task force that I've said is getting built. And the efforts in all four of the nations, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger, there have been some long-term capacity building efforts that are helping out. In Nigeria, we have continued to build their naval security apparatus that's going very, very well. And we have expanded our intelligence and information sharing efforts with them over the challenges with Boko Haram. And as you know, they canceled one of our latest training efforts. And we continue to look at ways to constructively support the Nigerian military and their efforts and continue to work with all the nations around there. Because again, it's a regional challenge and it's going to continue to be that way. And we hope that that gets better and we hope we start to train and equip more more. Okay, very good. Let's see. I've got one right here. Thank you, sir. Lieutenant Colonel John Oakley, National War College. My question, sir, is really about natural resources. And obviously from rare earths to precious metals, water, timber, the animals, things like that. Do you see a role for AFRICOM in terms of a part of a U.S. strategy dealing with the natural resources in Africa? The part that we've been helping out is both in counter illicit trafficking and helping building the partner's capacity to secure those things. But that's really what we work and I'll focus on so we don't get out of that lane in that situation. Okay? Thank you. Come back over this way. I've got one back here. Do I have a mic? Thank you. My name is Hermes. I just wanted to know if you envision in your fight against terrorism in Africa a component, an ideological component, if you envision to fight them through ideas, through strategies that speak about their way of thinking? Yeah, I think that the challenge against the ideology is a huge one. And we support our interagency partners and really that's normally led by the State Department. And we support those efforts and compliment those efforts. But countering the ideology is a big part of how we have to counter the terrorism effects overall. What are your thoughts on how the relative roles of government versus non-government sectors in that realm? Because it strikes me that anything that comes out of an official U.S. government counter ideology campaign is already suspect from many folks. How do you think about how to bring in other sectors and what role the military can play in that? Well, I think a huge example that quite frankly has what was done against the counter LRA. I mean, the efforts of the non-governmental organizations, the efforts of international aid organizations was a huge part of that. And what we did was help try to support those efforts and try to expand those messages that those communities were working very hard to do to help take care of the people that were taken advantage of by the LRA. So I think you're right, Kath. I mean, it's really the host nation and the people and the leadership. And another positive note was really the piece about the Ebola in that it was the Liberian leadership that got all the way down to the local leaders who passed the messages out about how to best protect yourself. And I think it's the same thing. It was really a thing, a situation in the LRA about protecting their own selves from the LRA. And I think that's how we best do that. That's how the interagency and State Department leads that effort. I mean, it's not coming from us because, as you mentioned, it's really got to come from the political and military leadership of those nations. Great. Okay, let's see. I've got one right here. Oh, the microphone's coming. Thank you very much. My name is Mohammed Bashir I come from Eduguri Borno State, Northeast Nigeria, the epicenter of the Boko Haram crisis. We know how it feels being from that part of the country in Nigeria. The international community has closed its eyes. No international reporters are there. No media is there to take the news of what is happening around Northeast Nigeria to the world. As of today, most of the people in that area live in the cities. It seems like the world has abandoned that area to the Boko Haram. Boko Haram, by its definition, means Western education is seen. Today, most of the pupils, students, and those who are interested in going to school are no longer going to school because they are displaced. They live in centers like Meduguri, which is currently also under attack. For the past seven months or so or last five years, no educational activity is taking place in that region. The government of Nigeria is not taking any concern or paying attention to that. All those pupils and students who are losing quality education time are no longer in school. So it looks as though that area is being left for the Boko Haram to succeed. So let me just stop you there. So I think the question is, is the international community, again, the question is, is the international community paying attention sufficiently to the crisis that's going on in Nigeria? I think that the international community understands very well what's happening in northern Nigeria and has seen the negative impacts of Boko Haram, which has grown over the last six years. And I think that several of our international partners are working with Nigerians to support their efforts to combat this threat. But I totally agree that it has to be much more effective all the way around to change what's going on there. The negative impact on the people, as you mentioned, the number of people displaced is just staggering and continues to go in the wrong direction. And I think it's going to take a huge international and multinational effort there to change the trajectory of that, which continues to go in the wrong direction. I think the Nigerian leadership and the Nigerian military are going to have to really improve their capacities to be able to handle that. And I think that they're all going to need help to do that. And I hope that they let us help them more and more. Sorry to have interrupted you. I was going to ask, what are your priorities for working with your Nigerian military partners? What are you trying to get them? Well, first of all, at the head of list, really, is a real strategy, a long-term interagency coherent strategy to change what's going on in there. The initial challenges that the Nigerian military had in their response was not working very effectively, which actually, in some places, actually made it worse. So we're working very hard with them to help build their capacity, to build a comprehensive strategy across the board, not just military. Because as you said, it's about economic, it's about education, it's about medical efforts, it's about taking care of the people up in the north road in a way that's representative of how everybody gets taken care of in Nigeria. And then, of course, the intelligence effort on what their military needs to be able to do that is a big focus of effort. We've built some capacity at the national level, and hope to build some more capacity down at the local level to do that. Hi, Scott Masionium, a reporter with Inside the Pentagon. I was just wondering in the past how have you been affected by sequestration, and if sequestration were to return in 2016, what kind of programs or other things within your command do you see being affected by that? When the sequestration hit, of course, we got less forces to participate in all of our programs. We had to cancel several exercises, and then some of the capacities that we had been using before were reduced. So, just like the whole Defense Department, if sequestration comes back, it's going to be tough on all of us, and we'll have to change our strategies and readjust what we're doing. Thank you. Good afternoon, General. William Watson with the Security Association for the Maritime Industry. In West Africa, the issue of commercial crime and piracy against commercial vessels operating in the Gulf of Guinea, I was wondering if you could address the strategies being implemented by the coastal states and the reticence of those same states to allow the industry to use the same private security teams that have been successful against Somali piracy? Yeah, great question, sir. Thank you. We have first of all, as far as bringing all those partners together, we do that through multiple capacity building efforts, exercises, and as I mentioned, the exercises we do in the Gulf of Guinea include both European as well as South American navies. We also have brought in many of the civilians and the energy sector who also talk about the issues. We're building the capacity of many of those nations to build Maritime Operations Center and help their capacity to do lawful see-going seizures of both people as well as contraband, and then I think bringing all them together and also getting some of the bigger partners to help each other, that is starting to take shape and I think having a positive effect. And then lastly, we have shared the lessons learned and the positive effects that were attained over off of the Somalia Coast, which included several industry best practices, as you mentioned, and working on them to develop those same type of agreements. Some of the challenges, of course, just on the Gulf of Guinea that you don't have on the east is the number of countries you have to get agreed to do them, but that's what we'll continue to work on and everything. I'll also say that the Secretary of Navy has an international cease symposium each year up at Newport, Rhode Island, and this year he dedicated a half a day to the region, which brought all the regional chief of naval operations together to talk about the Gulf of Guinea. And we've developed and helped several of the West African nations develop a maritime strategy and how they should go about this. Thank you. Okay, and I've got one all the way to the right here. Hi, General Kevin Baron from Defense One. Back on Nigeria, short of a multinational, international, large-scale effort that you just described, what could be done or is there any is there any middle ground there? There's a lot of questioning of where is the U.S., where is the West as, especially in the last couple of weeks that that region and Boko Haram just get more and more embroiled in violence. What can be done that's something that's short of that large scale, which honestly just sounds like coin all over again to change something there? Well, I think, again, the ones who have to lead this effort are the Nigerian government and everything. I mean, they're going to do the lion's share of their work anyhow, but your question though is really a policy decision on how much people are going to get involved. As you saw, Secretary Kerry has been out there just recently and everything and will continue to participate in the policy discussions as the leadership determines how they're really going to respond and what we can do and what we're willing to do. When you laid out your priorities at the beginning, you sort of walked, I'm simplifying, but you walked sort of from east to west. East to northwest, right? Has that been consistent since your time at AFRICOM or has that shifted over time those priorities? No, that's been pretty consistent since I've been there. That's really based on, again, the transnational threats to U.S. and U.S. interests and everything. We're looking at and watching very carefully what happens in Libya, obviously, that could cause that to change here. Okay, let's see. I want to try down the middle again. I've got one right here. Eric Schmidt from the New York Times, General. Just picking up on that last question in terms of Libya, can you perhaps give us some more detailed threat assessment, particularly now that you've got three groups that have claimed affiliation with the Islamic State? Also, do you see General Heftar and his forces as part of the problem or part of the solution in Libya? On the first part, the challenge, of course, is really the two competing governments, the General National Congress as well as the House of Representatives, and then the militias that claim allegiance to one of the other. That continues to be the challenge as you have the competing factions there. It's really a struggle over both power and resources with the oil revenues and the militias and who they really support. The challenges in security, the threat, is mainly focused, from my perspective, around the eastern part of Libya and the north part there and around Benghazi and Dharna. Then there's a challenge in the southwest also around Sebhan. The ISIL piece that you talk about and mentioned is mainly about rebranding for the people that are now supporting the allegiance to ISIL, as well as the movement of some of the facilitators and leaders who are trying to expand ISIL's reach all the way across North Africa. North Africa, as you know, also provides many, many fighters to the security challenges being faced in Syria and Iraq. We continue to work with all the commands, CENTCOM, UCOM as well as SOCOM on the challenges with foreign fighters as well as the host nations who are working very, very hard to prevent those challenges. We also, with the Libyan challenge, working hard with the boarding countries, whether it be Chad or whether it be Tunisia, we're continuing to strengthen their capacities and the border security capacities of all nations surrounding Libya. On General Haftar, we don't really know him well enough to understand where he sits and exactly who's working with him and who's not. That's part of the challenges and everything without the embassy there. We don't have quite the situational understanding we'd like. Our efforts at this point, of course, are focused on the policy and how we can diplomatically get them to start to agree and move forward together. I think the rebranding is taking advantage of the information environment, but what we're worried about is the movement of the facilitators and leaders and then follow that by the movement of arms ammunition explosives that follow the same type of networks. Let's see. How about all the way to the end there? The lady, I'm sorry, you just put your hair, yep, right there. You got it. Hi, sir. Courtney Alban with Inside the Air Force. You mentioned a little bit the demand for ISR and I wondered, can you tell us, are you currently getting the ISR that you need in AFRICOM? And then also, you talked a little bit about flexibility and kind of using the ISR that you are getting in the most effective way. Can you break that down a little bit? How do you most effectively use what you're getting right now? I think that we have on first everybody wants more ISR and always will. So that's never going to change. And I think the flexible piece of it that I mentioned was first has to do with access and locations where we can operate from. So that's got a great deal to do with working with our partners on that. The second is we have a mixture of both manned and unmanned ISR and we use them for different purposes in different locations. So we have extended legs of manned ISR by refueling and things like that to increase our range of flexibility. We're also happy that the Air Force is going to put some extended range tanks on some of them that will help out. It's also help out our capacity and the ranges that we can also, but also reduce the footprint. And that's important too because we don't want to have a footprint that is disruptive to our allies' efforts. Okay. Okay, we're going to take one last question. Let's go right here at the lady in the glasses right here. Hi. Thank you for a great talk today. I'm Bill and Joe Donald. And my question is the African Union standby force is going to be launched this year. What are you hoping to see? What are you hoping to see? Okay. Well, the challenges that the African standby forces have been challenged by us, they've built that capacity is a lot of them are being used. You know, in Somalia, you've got five African nations serving every day. In Somalia, you've got 11, down in the force integration brigade, down in the Democratic Republic of Congo, you've got three. So that's been some of the challenges that the African Union has as they put these together. But they are working hard. Each of the regional economic councils on bringing them together, bringing them the interoperability so that they can command and control and communicate together, as well as the readiness level of the forces. They're continued to be challenged, of course, by resourcing with that. But we're hoping that we'll be able to work with State Department to use some of the African standby force and the readiness money that's coming that the President announced and his new initiative to help equip them a little bit better because they're all stressed because of all the things that they're doing right now. But again, the African standby force is a great concept and the fact that the African nations are working together. So 15 years ago, you wouldn't have seen 11 African nations in another African nation trying to help each other out. So we think that's a positive effect. Okay. Well, General Rodriguez, just from the discussion, your own talk, and then the discussion here, I think it's evident the incredible span that you cover in terms of both territory, but also in terms of issues. So we appreciate you sharing that with us and, of course, taking time out of your day to come here. Please, everyone, join me in thanking General Rodriguez.


So the workshop followed on from the symposium in November. It was also held at the Research School of Social Sciences at ANU Canberra. And the aim of the workshop was to develop a program for how we can move forward from the current state of Australian vocabularies towards a future state that meets next generation vocab requirements. That is particularly vocabularies that are fair and well-governed. Progress. Oh, here we go. So the focus questions to help us progress this agenda and aim were focused around thinking about what is our current vocabulary landscape and what does it need to look like in the future? What would constitute the fair, the optimum future state, and how we could work towards that future state? What we might need to do to be able to harmonise and converge our thinking and how we might achieve sustainability for longevity of critical services within the vocab landscape so that they will be there within five, ten plus years time. So the participants was an invited workshop due to a number of practical constraints and meaningful, you know, important engagement with the group size that was reasonable and could be handled. So the invited participants were from across the thematic areas based broadly on the ARDC thematic research data commons areas of people, planet, has an indigenous and we also had some representatives from generic cross-domain areas such as services, tooling, tooling provision and geospatial areas. There were, now I did count, I didn't go back and check exactly guys, but 21 participants with organisational and research affiliations with a number of organisations, infrastructures and initiatives there. The workshop structure, roughly it was, well, it was very fluid. So, you know, met the needs of the discussion as the day, the days flowed along and it was facilitated by Kiran, which he did a great job and he's here today. So he might be able to hear from Kiran. Once this is finished up here, so we had a context setting and mapping of the current landscape in day one and then Thursday we did some planning and had some planned discussions to be able to talk about what do we want to, you know, form a roadmap and what does that look like, what could the next steps be and how we spend our Friday and on the Friday we planned, we did start drafting a roadmap and planning a pathway forward, which we'll discuss with you today. And it was very, as I said, very hands-on and fluid workshop. So day one was context setting and mapping the landscape. The idea was to collectively map, have discussions around the Australian vocabulary ecosystem as we all had experienced and understood it from our domains and discussed relevant international engagements that were important to and across our domains and the intent of this mapping was to help identify what's available now, services and relationships and how they meet, do not or could meet Australia's next generation vocab requirements. So this included requirements within the domain as well as cross-domain and generic vocabularies, infrastructure and we had a good discussion about some relevant documentation and communities that we engaged with as well. So day one, we had introductions and we had a nice presentation scene setting from Adrian Burton who discussed ARDC and their role, a little bit of the importance of vocabularies and why we were all meeting and what we hoped to get out of the workshop and the rough structure of the flow of the days. So we then had a presentation by Andrew Hancock from Stats New Zealand, he's a principal analyst and chair of the UN Committee of Experts on International Statistical Classifications and he presented some inspiring work to us on the modernisation of statistical classifications, combining technology and partnership working together within New Zealand also across, you know, being adopted and adapted across countries, jurisdictions as well. So that was a nice scene setting, gave us plenty to talk about, talk and think and reflect on and he did present the talk is not available at the moment but it was quite similar from memory to the AVSIG meeting that content wise that Andrew presented so if you missed that meeting you might let to go back and have a look at that one. So we then broke into thematic areas of people, planet has an indigenous as well as generic, sorry generic people, broadly applicable across theme including chair spatial and we had a number of things to sit and review, we had a look at the responses of research birds feather where we asked folks to focus mostly on the question around what's the current vocabulary landscape, how did they find it and the reflections from the vocabulary symposium that Rowan shared, the results of that and the breakdown of those word clouds, the main themes we could see coming out. We discussed where we understood within our domains, Australians were mostly utilizing international vocabularies, vocabulary resources and where it is appropriate to have local, national and international vocabularies and use those and whether there was any consensus within the group there. So this session focused on, this discussion was, stress was mostly on vocabularies, not the services which follows in the next. Now throughout we did have a list of vocabularies which was started up in the symposium that folks, the 200 or so participants and the ones in this workshop could contribute the vocabularies that they believed or saw or used that were critical within their domains and just see whether there was multiple versions of or whether there was any important that we saw missing but that wasn't particularly a focus of an activity. The worksheet was just run up and available throughout and that worksheet is still available that Excel. So folks can still add to it and we can share those links. Sorry, I can't pop the links into the chat because I can't see my speaker notes. So activity four, we focused on infrastructures and again we broke out into thematic groups. We discussed vocabularie repositories. That's meant to be number one actually. So vocabularie repositories, how many are there, are there assets fair, how many portals there are, again a day fair, vocabularie advocates, I mean vocabularie aggregators in Australia, RVA being one, are there any others systems that managed and edited vocabularies? I'll touch on that in the next slide. And did anybody have, were there any connections between the service aggregators, portals, et cetera with any major international efforts and were there any international equivalents that we preferred or did use for certain purposes instead of Australian specifically hosted ones? And were there any, did anyone see any glaring gaps that they may have seen compared with the offerings or scope of international infrastructures? So back with the question how many systems are there to edit and manage vocabularies and what are their sustainability and their stability? I'll just touch on that we didn't review that in detail. Some of you attended the Dagstool Down Under workshop last year and remember that a workshop output spread tooling was collated. I did see Nick and Edmund in the attending here today that they did work on that and others as well. A few here may have so we didn't go into the tooling too much. Some notes from Rowan were that he touched base with ARDC that support the maintenance, support such an output if it was demonstrated as valuable to the community. But we hadn't particularly received any strong feedback one way or the other around that list and particularly if it is of interest to the Australian and or international community where would it be hosted? How would it be maintained? And Leslie had an approach VSIG. The vocabularies, what is that? Vocabularies serve as something, something they're scoping what it might look like in the next few years and activities and I'm not really sure where they got to. So if anyone has any interest in maintaining or has views on that tooling list been touched with us and through the VSIG group would like to hear about it. So generally we reported back on that whole wide range of topics had touch back ends and the views, ideas, general themes, etc. Broadly were intended to shape important content, objectives, outcomes, etc. That a roadmap would need to touch on if we went that way. Day two, the groups were across domains so we formed across domain groups and again we had discussions and activities which were aimed to inform a roadmap for day three. We started off by reviewing and scoping documents that could influence the vision and the objectives of the roadmap. They could either support or constrain. So we looked at briefly groups and communities of practice and also working in vocabularies here and internationally we needed to consider and we started a summary, a list of summary of key guiding documents groups and communities of practice including the quotes and excerpts of relating specifically to the support or the need for vocabularies and I believe it was Leslie did an excellent job there so we'll be happy to share that in some output form in the next month or two or going forward. We'll discuss that in some of them in the next slide. We asked participants if they knew of any other documents that could inspire the roadmap and there was a number both nationally and internationally and at a glance they did all mostly appear to support rather than constrain the case for vocabularies into the future though it is positive some also inform or would inform vocabulary best practice things like privacy acts, code of ethics etc. So there is some of the influential documents and of course this slide actually doesn't include the ones that the participants added also. So folks if you know of any you could flick them our way and we'll discuss how the community can contribute to these efforts towards the end of the presentation. So we also touched on current planning documents some of you are at the RVA review that was a while ago back wasn't it? I can't remember what year 2019 or something and the roadmap was the product and there was an output of that so we pulled out there were some key quotes for that we didn't dive into that too much but it's important to consider in the building of a roadmap and there's a link to that there and community practice of SIG and Oldwig their role and there was a couple of others that we could and possibly should engage with we then worked through a cross-domain scenario that a virus had come into northern Australia that it was causing people to die that sounds a little too familiar doesn't it? So spreading fast amongst the population it could be transmitted by air or animal so we got into cross-domain groups panels of experts to save the world from imminent doom so we discussed the role of this obviously advice to determine the environmental social impact determinants of disease so which vocabularies would be required to assist in the scenario and which are the barriers to linking across infrastructures and with a social technical governance etc so the aim of this was to stimulate discussion to feed into the roadmap of cross-domain vocabulary use so how can we use vocabularies to advance those great big ticket items and big wicked problems I guess you'd say we did some stakeholder mapping customers customers suppliers and suppliers suppliers and as I said to somebody only a group of vocabulary managers and etc would come up with such a comprehensive list here and then we started we did some oh now this might have been getting into day 3 no maybe day 2 still so we mapped out everyone taking on board the activities of the last couple of days we pulled out main themes that we thought should be included in a roadmap key features and they were popped up on the wall and moved into key groupings or themes starting at the top front of the document intro content and basically areas of focus to improve work towards our vision outcome areas that we believe we should focus on came into key areas of standards norms culture relationships infrastructure technology skills and policy so the next the last day we started a pathway forward so in basic agreement well okay let's begin this roadmap there's value in it we began to flesh out those ideas from the day before we split into across the main groups and started drafting from some points and reported back on how the basic content how we found that and the structure then we discussed a pathway a pathway forward so Friday was a half day we wanted to establish an agenda for how will we further develop our ecosystem in Australia to meet our future reuse requirements particularly across domain we discussed obviously there was an interest in developing a roadmap for vocabularies and semantic resources in Australia amongst the folks in the room we thought well the initial working group to continue on this rough draft could be say this month the workshop attendees so to continue on with that work we started up until December 2023 oh 2022 look at that we've got a whole year to draft 23 not ambitious at all one month we're going to continue on with our draft and then we'll take it out to the community and the broader all you folks here today are probably interested in contributing so we'd like to talk about that the time frame we thought one to one year outcomes and five year were tangible and impactful and we discussed the need for a broader advocacy group to drive and take home for this roadmap to take it forward work on it, maintain it etc it was actually flag between the participants as an appropriate group old wigs a little more specific around government focused agencies so I would like your thoughts on that there yeah there was thought that it would be great to release this roadmap at the time that there was a document coming out from the department Department of Education that Adrian did touch on that that will be coming out next year so I can't remember the exact name of those recommendations or that scoping activity but I think the plan was to finish a roadmap by kind of mid next year at the latest and folks could probably comment on that that were in the workshop and I think that's about it .