Remarks from Military Branch secretaries from the army, air force, and navy expected this morning here at the center for strategic and international eddies. They will discuss priorities at this event. It is about to get started here. Live coverage on cspan. Good morning everybody. Welcome. I am president here at csis, and the reason we are kind of rushing is because we only have an hour. We have a wonderful opportunity to listen to these three secretaries. I will be very short. We always start with a safety announcement. I am responsible for your safety today. They have some guys backstage with guns that will take care of that. Followed bynything, instructions, we will take the exits right behind us, go down Near National geographic, and i will take everyone to see the great new show on the evolution of jane goodall. We have never had anything happen, but i want you to be ready. Know who these people are, so i do not need to introduce them, but you know the absolutely Critical Role that they play. They are running giant organizations and they have to manage today, tomorrow, and 20 years in the future. It is constantly in their calculus about how they posture in shape these remarkable institutions not just so they can do the job today, but the job in 20 years. Each one of them is working on critical dimensions of that as we speak. So think about this unique role that they play. Other people under the other than the secretary, no other person in the department has this kind of response ability. We are fortunate to have them here today. We will lead an initial conversation and bring you into it later on through your questions, write them down on your cards, but welcome with your warm applause our three secretaries. [applause] thank you, john, and thanks to everyone who is joining us here, both in the audience and online today. I know we have a big online crowd. We have cards in your chairs and the way we are going to do this session, we will have a discussion on stage for two thirds of the time, give you plenty of time to pass up your cards. There will be people that come around. Justu have a question, hold it out. People will come by. Most overtly, who will have the best football season, College Football . Wow, no one. We are improving already. [laughter] years ago we had a National Defense strategy out. We hear lots of talks from the department and the community, and you have submitted the president s budget, the last budget of this president ial term. I would love to go down the line and hear a little bit from each of you about the pathway your service has taken. From that strategy coming out to today, and how you feel you have developed your service, helped lead your service to contribute to the joint more fight in line with the strategy. Why dont we start with you . You and you, and to john, thanks for having us today. It is always a wonderful opportunity. You give us wonderful advice when we need your help, so i appreciate this opportunity. For us, we have the challenge of managing the current condition. We are 60 of combat requirements worldwide, people to ploy in 140 countries. The Current Conditions make it very difficult. That said, we conducted the most complex reconstruction of the army in over 45 years, created an organization, collapsed the stakeholders under one roof, so we have reduced the decisionmaking. We have moved 45 billion against our modernization see aties, so you will roughly 5050 mix between investment in new capabilities and legacy platforms. So we are putting our money where our mouth is. We have tried to organize against the problem. Challenge we have faced as the breathtaking demand we face worldwide. We have increased our [inaudible] as well as our defender series exercise. We take our Counter Space and send them to the pacific, as well as european theaters. We have increased the rotation of the claimants to areas of the world where we have a particular competition in play, if you will, against our competitors. We are trying to strengthen the balance between current demand and the National Defense strategy, and we think we are doing pretty well. Targeteddget is really to modernize and strengthen our people. So we are going to modernize by divesting to invest, to connect sensor,ooter to every every sensor to every shooter as well as a and we are looking to strengthen the role of our people. Situational awareness is important to a pilot. We Pay Attention to write now, is a bigpace force part of what we will be carrying in our budget. It is not a massive part of the budget, but it is a massive park of what the budget is focused on enabling. Us, the underlying principle of everything we are trying to do is to increase the agility of our forces and our people. That is because of increasingly complex security environments. Rings are getting far more complicated, far less predictable, and we need to invest in those capabilities and those skills and that Human Capital that can adjust to that. I bucket it into three broad categories, which i call great gray halls, h gray matter, and. 355eed to grow our fleet to ships or more, so we have to determine how we are going to do that. Will it be the same mix that we have been talking about over the last several years, or a new mix that makes more sense . Deals withtter piece the people, developing the intellectual agility and our people. We put a lot of money and education, our higher study, and are receiving a lot of broad reforms across educational institutions to link them back into the war fighting community so that we can have a learning organization that is understanding the challenges, our competitors and adversaries, and adjusting our structure in how we address that through intellectual develop and. And gray zones, when people think about gray zones, they think about little green men running around in ukraine. Im talking about the things that happened behindthescenes at the department of the navy. Our business systems, i. T. Systems. Things people take for granted. When they are taken for granted, band of being sub optimize they end up being sub optimize. Sub optimized. Secretary mccarthy discussed some of the things to be done as you reflected here. Can you talk a little bit, and i will come down the line and give secretary mccarthy a second shot on the same type of question, about the challenges and barrier in front of you that your most looking at in this coming year you are most looking at in this coming year . Sec. Mccarthy we are facing in competing several pressures. We are trying to push to a larger fleet. We also have a whole we are trying to dig ourselves out of, and the third piece is, we look at the budget projections going forward. It is relatively flat for us. We have to figure out a way we look and see what that future force looks like. We did a new future force structure assessment. It is a bit of a different mix than we have been talking about before. We will iterate that to determine what the right path is, but there are some north stars in that structure that say we have to start moving out in certain directions. That is going to challenge our topline considerations. What i told the department is, we need to look internally first, at ourselves, to see where we can find savings within the way we traditionally do things to help fund that before we can ask for anything more from the taxpayer. That is the process we are going through, that is what the stem to stern review is, and it is a staggeringly low number relative to our topline. Our topline is over 200 billion a year. 5 , 6 offree up that, we can move down the path and get to a 355 ship plus navy in the next few years. But we have to do some soulsearching to get to that. Finding the most confounding challenges to confront right now . Sec. Barrett this will take a toll on all of us. [inaudible] [laughter] [inaudible] sec. Barrett motion activated lights. So we are working especially ways of process reform, building faster, better processes. The acquisitions process has been too cumbersome, too slow. We need to find ways of doing that faster. But at to minimize risk, the same time we are looking to investof old equipment, in more modern, more capable, more lethal equipment, and with all of that building our space capabilities. Oft is the transformation how we have been doing it and moving into new capabilities in a domain that has previously not been perceived as a war fighting threat. The significant risks we will areaking risks that measured, calculated risks, and building for a longerterm, strong future. Enter the psychological warfare section, your thoughts . Sec. Mccarthy the comments i had at the beginning, 60 of the ourirements, readiness is number one priority and will be there for as long as i have this job. We would not be able to have the first of the eight or second 82nd deployed, literally coming out of new years eve parties and be boots on the ground in the middle east the next day. We are proud of that. To be able to deploy that quickly, locked and loaded in less than 24 hours is amazing. Because of the investment and the leadership in particular in the execution and training plans. 60 of the Balance Sheet is fixed. We will have to stay that way, because you have to meet those National Objectives every day and forms of deterrence worldwide. When you have 40 or less of a budget to be able to modernize a force, the challenge is striking that balance between the new capabilities and did a stitcher iture, andt divest that is tough. Able tot, you will be flesh out the new capabilities over time. You have to deal with components , with congress and industry and others, so that will be a challenge for the army in the future. Am glad you brought up those other stakeholders in other industries. How have those conversations been going in terms of looking ahead to the future and all the services are dealing with areas where there may be very good arguments for divestment where there is strong and strong congressional interest otherwise . How are you approaching those conversations and how have the members bent to it . Sec. Barrett sometimes it is a bit of a challenge, because what we need to invest in might not be visible, or tangible. Not on the production line already. Sec. Barrett it might not be associated with the constituency yet. Things like connectivity. Those things are invisible and harder to identify with. Similarly, space it is ubiquitous but invisible, therefore, a lot of people do not appreciate how engaged each of us are now with space. Investments we that may be a bit out of the past patterns will be space and technology linkages, and those are harder to sell because there are no tires to kick. That is a challenge that will be faced. The Defense Industry likes predictability and stability, and we understand all that. But all of us are moving into an era where things are going to become less predicable. We have to work with industry to be able to adapt with us as we change. As mentioned, our four structure, we look forward to we will needships 10 to 15 years from now . They do not exist right now, and it takes a long time to develop and research them and make sure they actually work, but we have to get after that right now. Someugh we may be shifting capabilities around, there will be tremendous opportunities for industry to participate in that. We cannot do it without them. It is just establishing that dialogue. To some degree, we would all like to move faster. We put a lot of constraints on ourselves in terms of how we can actually do that. Mandate for uste that we have to figure out how to work with them, and work with them more quickly to iterate as we move forward. Sec. Mccarthy reinforcement, made, the points tom and predict ability. We have been consistent with our priorities and we have put our money where our mouth is. That is the only way you can get an executive to make a bet, to put that investment in their own dollars, to change the tune on the production line and make it go for a new capability. Robust communication and conviction behind your budget proposals, because the underlying theme here is you have to have the will to Look Congress in the face and say, we need a product in a district where they do not make it anymore. But it becomes a trust issue that you have to build with the communities committees first and then the rest of congress. It is that consistency over time. Sec. Modly there is a great example we are all working on together, and that is in the hypersonic space. It is pretty obvious we are investing in this capability. We are doing it together. We are using the technology, but moving it to Production Capacity is a big, big leap. We will have to send some very strong signal to industry that that is the direction we are inded, otherwise if i was their shoes and controlling other peoples capital, i would want to have a better sense that that is the direction we are headed in. A lot of this technology is really new, so we have to make sure that it works before we jump to fao far. Secretary esper has hinted or implied that there is a desire from dod to be a higher top line at the end of this budget deal, the fy 21 budget is constrained by, so presumably he means going and a new trump administration, or the new administration might want more top line. But the history is not supportive of that. Even in the reagan administration, there was a strong effort to constrain defense spending in the second term, and the debates going on right now on the democrat side seem to be indicating stable or less versus more. Let me assume for the moment that plan a is get more top line. My question is, is there a plan and are you allowing more ensuring that your teams are thinking through what those backup approaches might be . Im not moving out with any assumption of an increase in topline. I think that is too presumptuous, and that is one of the reasons why we are doing this review, to see how we can fund this internally. We have a pretty big mandate to grow the fleet by 30 to 40 from where it is today. At some point, those elements of math are not going to match up. We support secretary espers request for that. If one thing is consistent over the last 40 years, the navys percent of overall gdp has gone down consistently, as a percentage of gdp. The entire budget is being squeezed out by things that are not defenserelated. If you look at statistics, you can see that it is clearly not the fence putting pressure on the top line of our overall putting defense pressure on the topline line of our overall budget. We need to learn how to work more with the means that we have, be more innovative. Great example, a we have concentrated in our costs onot more a fewer number of platforms. If you look at the fleet we built under the reagan administration, 600 ships, the average cost of that fleet was about 1 billion per ship. Our average cost today in real dollars is about 2 billion a ship. We have to reduc reverse that t, mannedhter, more lightly ships as well. Echo tomshy i sentiment as well, the fiscal environment is tough. Investiture of legacy capabilities, the only way you are going to get there is by increasing your buying power. There are a lot of things we are doing better. We have reduced the obligations by billions of dollars. Count making every dollar within the Balance Sheet. Improving your buying power can help you mitigate the risk of not getting the fiscal increase [inaudible] so a tough environment and again, the challenge the army is facing will be the modernization wave that is coming with growth and strength. That will be two big verticals in our budget, and it will hit no later than 202020 2022, 2023. Sec. Barrett we do not anticipate a topline growth, although we certainly have ways we could use it. We face two thirds of the Nuclear Triad modernization, and that is coming. We have all of the expenses that would go with increased capability in space. The same time, we are implementing reforms. The acquisition reform taking not just money but time out of the process to the extent possible, improving efficiencies, cutting time, our Acquisition Team at the century project taking already over 100 years out of acquisitions procedures and targeting 200 years of aggregate time in the acquisition process. Looking at reforms that will help improve efficiencies, but at the same time, the expenses of the technology that we buy, the air and Space Business is an especially Technology Dependent and that is a growing part of the economy, of defense, and higher expenses. Is there a hope there can be some joint approaches, joint solutions and so on . Hadthere efficiencies to be there . Some of them might be jaundiced from past experiences with joint programs. Should we be hopeful . Sec. Barrett absolutely. Some of these things cannot be done individually, in the individual services. We must be cooperating, and we are. Building connections, connection shooter ach connecting each shooter with each sensor, working in the Artificial Intelligence center and on hypersonic stash we are all involved in that. The development of technology is very much a joint effort. If we didnt it individually, we would be finding duplication and did it individually, we would andinding duplication inefficiency that we cannot afford. What is the navys view of space force . Barbara said it well. We are completely dependent on each other. Pacific look out at the theater, a lot of water, a lot of space, we have to have awareness on it and our ships cannot have their dependence or interdependence on the space domain. We are working very closely with the air force on that. Is the same true on the army side, in terms of space . Sec. Mccarthy absolutely. We are the largest consumers of space in the department. It really comes down to the operating concept of how you are going to fight in the future. For us to be able to mitigate a you will needeat, a lower orbit satellite architecture, a much wider array, and the ability to queue targets very quickly to mitigate the threat. There is a technical aspect, and a war fighting one. It isng from changing from a prostyle offense to a spread. Tank is really going to have to drive the outcome of how we are going to change the way we do business in the future. Directedary esper has the joint war fighting concept, with all the chiefs signing on. What is the role for the Service Secretary in that discussion . If i can flesh that out a little, in building out the funding for the force over the future, part of this too is ensuring you have a healthy service, innovative culture, etc. Maybe that is a better way to put it. As secretary you are thinking through to make sure you can bring forward, in your case in army, that is as innovative as possible to add to that were fighting concept . Sec. Mccarthy a lot of them are behaviors. We lunch together, have breakfast, meet all the time. If you look at the hypersonics efforts, it is joint interest, not like a big joint program office. What we do is we share information and look at the test data, we meetre together constantly. The mechanisms of how this is going to be used and employed, the domains are different. But the domain and the process, we can help each other. It is a lot of how weve established these efforts, they have not been the traditional approach. A lot of it has been the relationship driven nature of it. And from the perspective of a job, working together to finance these efforts, to explain the incredibly important nature of these Strategic Programs and industries on the hill. Of the big issues many of us are looking at is the valley of death, if you will, the movement from having these new approaches, whether it is an hypersonic systems or other areas, space, cyber, etc. , where we are prototyping, looking at fielding, but there are procurement challenges. Is this part of the acquisition challenge or are you looking at another set of challenges these days . Sec. Barrett this and others. We have counterpart examples. This is a process that started in the early 2000s and it is nearly 20 years later and we are looking for a fully functioning aircraft. Valkyrie with a project that started 2. 5 years ago, to go from initial designs to flight. We have book and examples on how it has been done and how we will hope to see a lot more done. We have new ways, they are is beingnd it effective, and we meet regularly with the secretary of defense, as well as the deputy secretary of defense. We are really sharing Lessons Learned and moving to implement those in our shared knowledge. Reminder, if you have cards, please put them up to get picked up. The other piece coming through very strongly in all the data we see and things we have heard coming out of the department is the rising personnel costs, personnel directly and other pieces that are in direct, compensation issues and benefits. Given the fiscal challenge you personnelbing, this is taking up more and more of the percentage of the dod budget. How do you approach that problem . Sec. Modly i think we always want to ensure that our Service Members and their families are extremely well taken care of, so the cost of doing that, not just for us in the department, is in society. Ally, it is hard for us to buck that trend. It is what it is. ,hat we have to think about especially in the marine corps, is how do we reduce the number of people we have and distribute the force that we have . How to we get lethality out 300 peopleut having on a ship to deliver it. It also requires an increase in the level of capability and skill of the people that we have on the force, and that is why we are investing so much in education. It will ask people to be a lot more adaptive in the job we are asking them to do. It is sort of a philosophy behind the whole Frigate Program we are doing right now. That is going to be a very lightly manned ship with a lot of capability on it. When you talk to some of the manufacturers that are building at some ofnd look the ones that have been developed, you say, i have a great example of a ship i will not mention what manufacturer it was, but they showed me a state room with four bunks in it, its own bathroom and shower facility, and i was in the navy and the cold war. I said, wow, this is a nice state room for officers. They said no, this is where our enlisted people live. Why did you design the ship like this . We designed the ship for people who we want to recruit to our command. Skilled have highly people with lots of opportunities to do things in other places, so we have to be able to attract those people. It is a big, big part of our challenge, but we definitely ourt want to short change sailors, marines, or families. Mccarthy, personnel costs are impactful on the army. You have in the 2021 budget request a light decrease in what you have previously been seeing as your line for the act. It is still picking up. Can you talk through how you are thinking through the cost elements of that, and you have alluded already to trying to get this balance right across readiness structure and modernization. The army to the glee gets of the most of those in modernization. The army typically gives up most of those during modernization. Where are you now . Sec. Mccarthy our fundamental approach, coupled with 3. 5 unemployment, made it a perfect storm. We made adjustments and marketing, adjustments to our approach, got back to the cities, engaging with civic leaders. We are back on track. The slowing is much of knowing you are going to be able to hit your target, modest growth yearoveryear so you continue to get into formation. We are [inaudible] and some is less than that. We have been deployed every single day since 2001, and it is stop, in combat in particular. We have to keep growing the force until we can get it better , because it becomes a huge tension issue for us. As i stated earlier, a lot of collision course. 2023 timeframe, that is where their are going to be some hard choices in front of us to wear, do we have to stop . Do we have to find more buying power . I want you to reflect on these. There is so much conversation on technology, and i am not one that thinks that technology is the center of the ecosystem. What is the area where you see thatservice investing in is the most interesting or insightful for our audience here to hear, could generate some . Eal Game Changers sec. Barrett it is people, talents, technology. That is exactly what we do. It is smart people designing new capabilities. When i think about it, i think about the gps system. In the history of mankind, has there been a technology that has been as influential, as changed livesically many peoples as gps . That system, everybody uses it today, but that entire system, for the world, is operated by seven people sitting at consoles in colorado springs. A total working staff of 40 people. Seven on ap ship, a staff department. It is the genius combination of people together serving the american public, the global public, including our war fighters. We get extraordinary value of thoughtful innovation and if the value is not just for the war fighters, it is especially pivotal to our way of life. The talent is a different kind of talent. The innovators, the people putting ideas together and making good things happen, and the operators might be fewer than what would be expected for the output. We face the pilot shortages. The pilot shortages, i have watched for the past 40 years. In the time of the good economy, there is a pilot shortage. As the economy turns out, pilot turns south, pilot shortages go away. We are increasingly using Autonomous Vehicles. There are technological revisions happening that change a lot of that. One of the things that is is that theght now space force has been an extraordinary magnet for young people to want to be a part of the military. Many young people have said, i did not want to be part of the military, but i wanted to be part of the space force. The applications, the online tapping to be part of the space force has been significant. We found that is not affecting just the space force candidates, but the air force as well. I would not be surprised if the navy and the army also are getting a resurgence of attention and attraction because the space force is bringing positive attention to the military. On the technology piece of that, is the take away, it is sometimes the least expected . Gps is an enabling technology that has fundamentally changed the way everything has done. Are we under appreciating, if you will, in the outside community, where the next eight opportunities are . Next big opportunities are . Sec. Barrett i think we are. It went from the sputnik era, where every young person was motivated by it, to more recently it has been a shrug. Now, because of the space force, it has come into its own again. People have not understood how much they use it, but now they do. I think at first, the space force was a mockery. Now people are quite coming we hadto the point where 288 votes in favor, bipartisan, great support for something that set up the space force. Space is invisible to most of us most of the time, but it is ubiquitous. Everyone is using it, we cant live without it, and only when we stop and think about it do we realize how important it is and how fragile it is. Therefore, space is an important main press to be paying attention to defending. Mccarthy, same question. What is a Technology Trends that is exciting for the army . Sec. Mccarthy longrange precision fire. Have 10 billion invested it is a place where our organizations are partnering very well. If you look at the investments the by competitors, capabilities, the only way to reverse that is to put investments against that that can change the geometry of certain areas of the world, like the South China Sea or eastern europe. This creates the ability to maneuver and helps enveloped battle space in places where if you cannot get a ship or a plane in there, you can take them out and bring them back in. It is a way for us to mitigate. What ryan i echo said. Every day, i am introduced to something amazing the navy is working on from a technical standpoint in the world fighting were fighting realm war what i willlm, but have to say is the digital monitors in the back office. We are about 15 years behind where the private sector is on this. There are huge opportunities with respect to improving our networks and improving how we do business through the better use of technology. Our ability to understand where things are in our inventory system. Another monday and topic is the audit, we go through the audit undane topic is the audit. We go through the audit. We found a hangar in florida with 150 million of airplane parts into it. We enter those parts into the system. Within a week, 20 million requisition on parts from that warehouse that we did not know we had. There is a huge opportunity for that, to improve readiness, the speed at which we can do things, educational content delivery, which is critical to the innovation and agility we want from our people, can be really enabled by this. I am excited by that. I will go to the audience tostion and the first links the last question from each of your perspectives on the health and quality of the Industrial Base and if there are specific areas of challenge, what should they be doing differently to get there . Imstart with you sorry, you just picked up a glass of water. Sec. Modly i was trying to think of what to say. Thank you for coming at me. [laughter] sec. Modly i think we have an amazing Industrial Base in the United States. ,he challenge that we have is particularly in the capitalintensive things we buy, we do not have enough competition, frankly. It is what it is. There is one company in the united if that can build an aircraft carrier. We need aircraft carriers, so we have to work with them. They have been good partners with us, but it creates challenges. The more competition you have, the more ideas you get, the more you can write cost down. That is the concern i have, that the competitive field is not as broad as i think it would like i would like it to be. Anyone can look at a chart to see what is happening with defense consolidation, and there are not as many competitors providing new and innovative ideas. I think they are incredibly capable and responsive, all these technological i taught things that i talked about, the Amazing Things i see the butstrial base is amazing, we do not move fast enough for them, i dont think. I do not think we get the greatest signals about what we want to do give the greatest signals about what we want to do in the future, and they will migrate to the places where they get the best return on capital. We have to work hard to maintain that balance and make sure we have it from the Industrial Base. Perspective, i would say we will probably have a healthier Industrial Base 10 years from now because of that either city of things that we will want the diversity of things that we will want to be acquiring. Supplychain security can you talk about that . I will ask the other two as well. Sec. Modly it is a big concern for us. It is the second and third tier suppliers that have a lot of vulnerabilities. The navy did a study on this about a year or so ago. It is Big Investments for Small Companies to create the types of security that we need. We also need to come up with a better way to protect information. Our adversaries are coming out is through that channel, and they are able to fish their way up that channel. They might find a piece of information that is not classified in and of itself or that important in and of itself, but when they piece it together with all the other stuff they find, it matters. It ruins our competitive advantage. Your thoughts . Sec. Barrett i agree with what tom has said. We have the same problems in the air force. I believe in the discipline that competition provides. In what we buy, we do not have further competition in order to have the discipline we would like to see. On the other hand, there are pockets of exciting new competition in space launch, for instance. We have gone where that was the exquisite territory of a few providers, and now we have some new providers that are increasingly capable of being responsible for military lift. In ans a good expansion area that was so expensive that it would have been perceived that it would have been difficult to have new competition there, but we have it. Sec. Mccarthy definitely the aspect of being able to do business more effectively with the department is always something that hinders the Industrial Base. Go find new customers. One thing that concerns me is semiconductors. We do not make those in america inmore and they are everything. Where do you find the capabilities for components that you are going to put into these Weapons Systems in the future . How could the department of defense work with industry to help protect that market . How can you compete . That gets into the safety of your supply chain where are these components made and who is making them . Been doing a remarkable job on attacking this issue, but it is something that has gone on for decades and it is only getting proliferated more around the world. Relationship between the dod the military, more generally, and tech. Can you talk about the efforts the bridgederway, tech brings a lot to bear on the hardware and software side. Are you finding receptive either receptivity there . A firm inthy we have austin, texas. They do not wear suits, they , we area highrise doing everything we can do to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit of the country and get rid of the flagpoles and tanks outside. Some of it is the business practices, embracing the authorities that in particular, the leadership gave us over the last three or four years it started with mccain and reed, and followed through with being able to get things on contract quickly, reducing the cash flow pinch that Small Business has when they tried to engage with the department of defense. Culture is us getting our Contracting Officers to understand these authorities and being able to take the risk to do that. I think the air force and navy had success with this. We are getting some success with this, but it is a big cultural shift where us shift for us and we have jumped in head first. We. Modly i would say, appreciate the Congressional Authority and are using it hoping wend we are are proving the value of authorizing faster actions on the part of the government so that we can buy things sooner and intimate faster. Faster. Ment we have lunch on the time, but that is the first time i have heard about a hoodie uniform. That is an opportunity to collaborate on that one. [laughter] bit ofdly there is a distress in hightech with the military, certain areas, and we are trying to overcome that. To ank it translates larger issue that we have, where many people in the country, when i go out, do not know what the navy does. They are not as well connected to the military. I think that is on us. To get out more and have our people communicate more with the populations so they understand what it is that the services do. The next question is on allies, one of the three themes at the National Defense strategy. The question is for all of the secretaries what have you done to realize that vision of leveraging were working with allies and partners . Well, having served as a diplomat for the United States and a couple of ists in a couple of posts, think this is one of our most important elements of the National Defense strategy. If it is a war against us, we would if it is the world against us, we lose. We have to have allies. I have been in turkey, spain, england and germany, and we have partners both in nato and bilateral partners that we really count on we count on them, they depend upon us. It brings strength to us and brings opportunity to save soldiers lives. If we do diplomacy well, we save lives. It is a combination. We talked a bit earlier about how Foreign Policy and defense policy are a bit of an artificial separation. The conversation we were having in the green room. Sec. Barrett yeah. I really think these are intertwined, and we should be working very closely as a state department, defense department, to advance missions. Allies and partners are urgently important, and the air force has been using allies and partners tremendously, yet there is a lot more to do. Secretary mccarthy . Sec. Mccarthy it shows how important relationships are in afghanistan, we walked into a hangar before we were going to launch. [inaudible] we never go to war alone. Greatally allies like britain, who are always there for us. We have 180,000 people deployed worldwide. We have increased our defender exercise program so we can have thousands of troops deployed and train alongside our south in Southeast Asia, europe, south america this is an incredibly important skill set. Specific sets that are trained to advise and assist missions. Two of them are deployed to afghanistan today, have been over the past few years. This is a critical aspect of our whole posture worldwide, and concepts inasic Southeast Asia as well as in europe, so we can continue to andmically grow the force extend the duration of these deployments so they get more repetition and more time. Sec. Modly i think it is not an accident that the allies and partners emphasis is number two in the National Defense strategy, behind readiness. Echo what barbara and ryan said, we cannot find alone fight alone and we will not win. I think the navy, particularly the navy plays a very unique because we are out and about all the time with our ships. I emphasize this to our sailors and marines when i see them. In some cases, you are the First Americans someone is going to meet. You have a responsibility to create a strong impression. This is how we mitigate unpredictability, having partners and alliances that we can count on. That is done through relationship building. Not just at the secretary level, but the sailor and marine level, on the ground and their families. It is an Important Role for them, and i emphasize that every time i get around. I spent a long trip last year in the pacific and went to many islands in the pacific that many people have not even heard of, and i would say that our adversaries in the region, particularly the chinese, they are all over these places, trying to establish a presence there. Universally, the people i met there would rather have us be the ones there than the chinese. So we have to take that seriously, and there is a huge opportunity for us there if we capture it in terms of mitigating that unpredicted ability. Last question is what im going to characterize as , and it gets to some of the themes that have come out in the discussion we have had here today, around the force being out and about, the force being deployed every day. It is true across all the services. The question for the Capabilities Development of the future and of today is, how do x thatvelop a force mi is able to deal with lower thatsity requirements, strained capacity, and can create those higherend war fighting or other capabilities for. Petition for peer competition . How are youdly, thinking about that lower end but consistent competition level of demand, and how you are going to attack it in terms of your force structure . Sec. Modly it requires more presence. It requires presence to secure ceilings, to give assurances to our partners, to also provide opportunities to exercise with our partners. A lot of our partners that we have in these regions, it is difficult for them to go out and exercise with the Carrier Strike group. It is better for us to have smaller platforms that allow us to have constant interaction with them. A consistent maritime type of strategy. That is the change we are looking at in our core structure. Will we see more unmanned, more quick return commercial ship approaches . How will we see that manifested . Sec. Modly yes, yes. We are looking at all those things. Clearly, a taunus systems or lightly meant Autonomous Systems were lightly manned systems are what we or lightly manned systems are what we are looking at in the future. Not just on the technical side, but how you fight with that. It is a new way of thinking with be deliberate about that. It is also part of a cycle of creating a learning organization for the navy that can constantly iterate that. We will put a core structure out in the next several days that will be the sort of northstar but we are heading towards, we have to constantly iterate that. The world is changing. We have to pull our timelines in and think about what the next force will look like. Sec. Barrett things like economist vehicles Autonomous Vehicles, that is not new for the United States air force. This is such standard technology, we are retiring early generation Autonomous Vehicles that have been used so much and so reliably that they now have reached their design capacity. This is really what the United States air force is all about, a mix of manned and unmanned. The employment and lasting employment of unmanned vehicles that then we can improve upon the capability, do new generations, better, more capable, less expensive versions of those things. This isnt anything new for the air force. It is long since been employed has long since been employed, and we are looking at the next validity, andtter valle the future generations doing improvements on what has been perceived as new technology. Is there an enduring role for fourthgeneration aircraft and things that are less capable than the