Everybody. We are really glad you were here. For those of us joining online and certainly in person, welcome to the second installment of the Strategic Landpower dialogue. On general bob brown i am general bob brown. We cannot do it without the support of General Dynamics make in this series happen. Thank you for the great support to make this possible. He opened up the first Strategic Landpower dialogue a few weeks ago, pointing out the longoverdue need to have a forum like this to discuss Strategic Landpower. We could not have picked a better kickoff event than having secretary wormuth and now confirmed chief of staff randy george. They did a great first job on the dialogue. But there is no better way to follow up than getting general Charlie Flynn, commanding general big u. S. Army pacific, an incredible war fighter and pacific expert, here to discuss the role of land power. I saw when i was u. S. Army Pacific Commander that the indopacific is a region where we most fall victim to the myth that there is a short, simple and clean way of winning wars. That does not require land power. And we should start with the historical perspective, since 1941 the United States has fought three major wars in the indopacific and all of them have been predominantly ground wars. It would be naive to assume the region and the nature of war has changed so much that this cannot happen again. Winning the war as a joint force requires combining a unique capability of each service in every domain to pose multiple dilemmas to an adversary. If deterrence fails, it will lead to victory. There will always be our requirement for the army to defend or impose will where people live on the land. Fortunately, the army could not have a better leader at this time in the most decisive region. General Charlie Flynn assumed command in june 2021. He was commissioned in 1985. He has commanded numerous times in iraq and afghanistan. He commended it at all levels, from platoon to now the largest Army Service Component command. I had the honor to serve with him. An unbelievable division commander, an inspirational leader, understood the region and was absolutely amazing. And then he carried me through his unbelievable work. He has an understanding of the region that is second to none. He is beloved by allies and partners in the region. We are so glad he is in the pacific. I could go on for hours. Let me turn it over to dr. Tom karako, who will be our moderator. Dr. Karako thank you, general brown. The army is a Big Organization and the pacific is a big place. We have a lot to talk about. As general brown said, we cannot do better than to have you out here. We will have to do this again soon. Land is one of the domains and it is the one where human beings spend most of their time. We will start off with the same question we kick off the series with and that is, what is your view of the role of land power for the joint force . Gen. Flynn first of all, thank you for allowing this platform to talk about this enormously important region, but also the value of land. And land power. I will start by saying land is the prize because if you control land, you can control people. We are seeing that today in europe and right now in the middle east. It has been going on in the middle east for a long time. And what do armies do . They do three things. We seize, hold and defend terrain. And the armies in this region are working to seize, hold and defend terrain and they want to do that with their partner, the u. S. Army. Why . Because what is happening in the region is the aggressive, responsible and insidious behavior of the piercy p. R. C. They are violating the territorial integrity and National Sovereignty of these countries and nations. And the armies, the land Power Network plays a central role in being able to seize, hold and defend their territory. At the end of the day, a nations obligation is to protect its people, preserve its territorial integrity by defendant its borders and protect its homeland. I guess the point i would make is that when land is the prize, and that you have a military instrument that is exercising and demonstrating that it intends to militarize land and seas land for its own benefit, that is what is happening out in that region right now. Land Power Network, the armies play a central role to help them find ways to continue to preserve their territorial integrity. That partnership with the u. S. Army plays a vital role in being able to protect the indopacific. Dr. Karako in your new vision document, you talk about territory, homeland and political integrity. It is almost like a different way of talking about wars as an extension of politics. The protection of sovereignty. Gen. Flynn yes. What is happening out there again, i just came back from us trillion, malaysia, korea, japan and india. The nations in the region, because of the way that the chinese are behaving, prior to speaker pelosis visit to taiwan, these kinds of actions were incremental and insidious. I am adding irresponsible because of what happened when the speaker went to taiwan and then Speaker Mccarthy had a meeting in california. What has happened is that behavior is being seen as overly aggressive by the region. They are responding by participating more in our multinational exercises. Their participation in these exercises, parading opportunities for the region to come together. That is the way they are speaking by their actions. Their actions are trending toward being a valued partner with the United States army. Dr. Karako you mentioned the policy visit nancy pelosi visit and the tremendous chinese reaction to that. Have you seen the threat perception change . I know you spent almost 10 years in the pacific. You might talk about how that has changed. Gen. Flynn i will go back to the 2015 timeframe, an important period. In 2015, that is when their transformation and reorganization blended together. At the same time, they also put in a training methodology and put Training Centers in. They also built their space force in 2015. Between 20142018 when we were out there in the region, what i saw them doing training wise in exercises and rehearsals was not anywhere near what i see them doing today. If you rewind the clock between 2014 2021 and d advances they have made, and i project out over the next decade, that is a dangerous trajectory for them to be on absent us slowing them down. Being able to create capabilities and message and allies and Partner Network coming together as a counterweight to what to the way the chinese are behaving. That is what i think is important about looking back over the last decade and looking out over the next decade, because i am not going to sit here and give you a time on it. What they have done over the last 10 years and what they are signaling over the next 10 years should be consuming for all of us. And it is definitely concerning for the region. Dr. Karako lets pull that thread. In your vision statement, you talk about psychological warfare, Public Opinion and all the military stuff. Maybe walk us through that and some examples of how you see the chinese threat. Gen. Flynn i think their actions in south asia, from the conduct of their investments in bri, the way they come into countries post exercises. An air intercept is easy because it is a video. And on ground intercept, they conduct reconnaissance before the exercise. During the exercise they go to low level listening. Then they come in with coercive power, mostly money, and they are trying to find individuals who are receptive to that. That undermines what we are doing out there. The point i would make in all of this is that we are trying to support the three pillars of the National Defense strategy deterrence, campaigning and building during advantage. I think our theory of victory there is best articulated in those three ways. Dr. Karako you mentioned belt and rode. That is all with people on land. If there is one thing people know about sun tzu, it is winning without fighting. A lot of people are familiar with brigades and battalions. Talk to us about the type of organization that you command. Gen. Flynn it is a theater army and it actually has four rules. One role is as a Army Service Component commander. There are three of the roles that we perform. Those are on behalf of the joint force. There is the Army Service Component command, an administrative line of authority to the army. Our operational minds of authority to the combatant commander. Those operational hats is the other rules i play for the combatant commander. We get certified in training. That in essence is what the theater army represents. We have a field army in korea. We have Army Service Component command in japan. We have two division commanders, one in alaska and hawaii. We have a core commander at joint base lewismcchord. There are more than 10 flag officer enabling commands in hawaii that give really a scale and depth that are provided through the joint force commander in my joint combat commander role. Dr. Karako you mentioned the three pillars. Can you walk us through your three big efforts to implement that. Jpmrc, operation pathways. Gen. Flynn campaigning, integrated deterrence and building during an advantage. The three ways we are supporting those pillars is jpmrc. The first combat Training Center the army has built in the pacific in the first one they have created in close to 50 years. That one has a hawaiian campus and an alaskan campus. The hawaii campus and the alaska campus are basically revolving around the 23 Infantry Division in hawaii and the 11th Airborne Division in alaska. What is unique about those environments is that they replicate the regions. In eight island archipelago where we have training areas across three of the islands. Up in alaska i grabbed highaltitude, you have highaltitude, cold weather, mountainous. We are surrounded by joint assets in both hawaii and alaska. It gives us an advantage by remaining in the region and generating readiness. We deployed that readiness in the region in a second way. We support operation pathways. Campaigning and the definition is the logical arrangement of operations, activities and investments that benefit security objectives. When we have more than 40 joint exercises on operation pathways, that is the logical arrangement in time and space of operations activities investments. We do over 40 a year. Some are joint. Some army to army. What operations pathways represents is a series of rehearsals and training venues to conduct our operational approach to campaigning in the region. It is adversary focused and it does three things. It creates interoperability between allies and partners and builds confidence. The second thing is it provides us the ability to increase joint readiness of the joint force while we are operating in the region. The third thing it does is it denies terrain from the prc and the adversary. They are in the region seeking ways to counter, that by seizing terrain. We are doing joint interior lines. As a result, we create joint interior lines and there are four parts. Command control, protection, sustainment and collection. Those elements using my headquarters, using the Theater Enabling commands, using the multiple divisions that are out uprooting. What we are trying to do out there is a range in locations by bringing capabilities, posture, messaging what were doing and demonstrating u. S. Will by having soldiers on the ground operating amongst the people. What the joint interior lines do for the joint force is provides think power and operational reached for our ability to conduct operations in the region. All of that has a deterrant element by being forward and presenting a combat credible force that is operating as a joint force, in support of the joint force. And then on key terrain throughout the region to be able to seize, hold and defend that terrain. Dr. Karako let me walk through each of those. I want to start with joint interior lines. Joint intern lines is hard for land forces in the region that has so much water. Can you talk about the challenges of pulling that off . And why you signal it in the way that you do in your top three efforts . Gen. Flynn let me tell you why we need interior lines. The chinese have three things we do not. They are operating on interior lines 100 miles from taiwan. They have mass and they magazine depth. And we are trying to counter those three things. The second thing they have is they have created an arsenal that is primarily designed to defeat air and maritime power. It is designed to disrupt space and cyber. It is not however designed to find, fix and finish land forces. So by creating interior lines and distributing, dispersing, connecting the joint force and the multinational partners forward, we are presenting an asymmetrical dilemma to our adversary. While we are forward, we are not just presenting at the limit our adversary. We are creating opportunities for interoperability and we are providing confidence that we are going to be there because we have treaty allies and we have obligations to help them defend as a result of our treaties. I do not think it is that hard. We have to get busy and we have to be active doing it. We are starting to do it right now in japan, philippines, australia, singapore and thailand. I could argue that today we are ready have interior lines in the northern corridor of the region, korea and japan. Where we have to create opportunities is in the central corridor, in the southwestern corridor and the western corridor. That is basically the rest of the theater. This is where we are trying to improve our forward position. Dr. Karako you said we have to get busy. To what extent are the joint interior lines still a vision as opposed to them being . I am thinking about infrastructure. That was really important in february 2022 to rapidly mobilize in europe. To what extent does that manifest today . Gen. Flynn we are making a lot of progress. For example, after australia, we left equipment in australia. We are working with their government on the placement of that. In the philippines, there are five enhanced sites that are now nine. We also have police a lease in the bay. We are doing maintenance of equipment in the port today. That is a great location to support the sites there. Many of you know we have stocks in japan and korea. What we are trying to do in places like japan throughout the southwest silence, in southwest silence islands is to be able to distribute stocks. This is the work that is ongoing. Which is to disperse those people positioned stocks. What we are trying to do is activate them more often during training, rehearsals, deployments and exercises so that we are exercising the issuance and recovery of that material. The other aspect is that i refer to the material we put their as consumables and dual purpose. There consumables we can use while we are training, but they are also dualpurpose because a bandaid is a bandaid is a bandaid, but is also a repair kit. Your going to need it in order to repair damaged airfield. I mix i did about the gains being made with our posture. There is still miles to marx before we rest. However, some of those gains that have been made in the past two years are very positive and their trending in a positive direction. Dr. Karako you already mentioned the philippines and australia. Talk to us how are they being manifested . Gen. Flynn the Security Forces brigade is a great addition to the region. I could use two of them because of the expensive nature and the role they play. Generally speaking, it is in 1214 countries. The way we are using Security Forces systems brigade is in my dialogue with the army chiefs in the region, i asked them what are their needs. How do they need assistance with training, education, leader development, any number of things. In the dialogue i have with the army chiefs, we come up with a path for that particular advisor team to work with their army. Some countries we have one advisor team of 18 people. In other countries, we have a number of them, two or three, depending on scale and the needs of that particular force. So this is one of the important elements that is added to our capability in the region. I think one of the more important parts of the armies modernization armys modernization is the organizational changes that are happening in the army. Let me point to four of them that have been central in the indopacific, particularly for u. S. Army pacific. The first is the Security Forces systems brigade. The second are the Multidomain Taskforces which were with me this week on a panel. The third is a theater buyer element that is in my headquarters to conduct joint fires. The third the fourth rather is a theater information advantage directory. One of the missed stories in the army plus ps transformation is the organizational adaptation going on. It is adding value to the theater army and adding value to the joint and combined force at the operational and theater strategic levels of war. These organizations and i will use the Multidomain Taskforces as an good example. The Multidomain Taskforces came out of a concept. In 1819, we were having difficulty understanding its role and at what exelon should operate at. Echelon it should operate at. The owen no is the organizational table to do it. A decision was made to put that at joint base lewismcchord. It went there when the current chief randy george was the first corps commander. We put a Brigadier General in charge of it. In broad terms around 2019, that was getting built and organized. It is 2023 today and what i think is really important here is that organization is three years in front of the delivery of the new Weapons Systems that are on the way. Midway capability, tomahawk, prism, hypersonic, you can go down the list. While those things are important, the most important part i believe of the continuous transformation going on in the army is these organizational adaptations and these organizational transformations that are going on that are able to then deploy and employ those Weapons Systems when they arrive. If you think about it in reverse, had we just issued new weapons platforms to affirmation and the formation was a legacy formation, it would not understand how to deploy those Weapons Systems. The improvements in human, technical and procedure interoperability are being down now so that when these new Weapons Systems arrive, the organizations are all doing intel, there are all doing intelligence and warnings support to joint targeting. They are doing strategic reconnaissance. They are doing lethal and nonlethal targeting. They are seeing and making sense and understanding what is happening out in the environment. It is a really important part of what the army is doing and it is not getting enough mentions. Dr. Karako you are primped and all of my questions here. Preempting all of my questions. Let me stay with the organizational thing. It also brings to mind a lot of what the marines have been doing. How much you mentioned general brown, how much new experimentation and new organization is yet to be done . To what extent do you think those new organizations are being sufficiently resource . Gen. Flynn i think they are being sufficiently resource. I am petite pleased pretty pleased. Those four adjustments and. I just chained mentioned. I think they are adequate for what were doing right now. Dr. Karako you rattled off the tomahawk and dms six ms6. To what extent is it a fires formation or is it a maneuver formation . Gen. Flynn it is a maneuver formation that provides fires. I am going to come back to jpmrc , experimentation and exercises. This Training Center being built in the pacific, this year it was validated by the joint staff as part of the joint National Training capabilities so it is recognized by three pillars in it. The experimentation that can go on not on at a Training Center across the islands of hawaii and into the region, particularly out into the Second Island chain, is a really important part of what we are doing. Same thing in alaska. We are surrounded by joint assets or the multinational partners are coming to these locations. To be able to bring technology, organizational adjustments into those training venues and then be able to extend them into the region is a very important part of what we are doing. Recently, we just finished talisman in australia. We linked live virtual and constructive simulation from the west coast to hawaii to japan down into australia, into their combat Training Center that they are building. A Theater Command brought some experiments as part of their joint petroleum over the short and joint logistics over the shore. Even the organization of the joint theater sustain command was something that had not been done in a long time. Mobility guardian was something that air Mobility Command was doing in the pacific as part of indo pacoms broader contributions. The combination of bringing air Mobility Command together with a eighth Theater Sustainment command. 15 nations and 30,000 joint and multinational Partners Operating down there. I have described this before as it was a rehearsal of our plans on a different piece of terrain. That is the benefit of what jpmrc represents in the region for the joint force. While it is an army Training Center, we are out there doing operations. The third mlr is based in hawaii. We have synergy by location by having the joint force together to be able to do these really important training, exercising and if we are smart about it, we are inserting experiments into each of these training exercises to be able to develop. Dr. Karako i want to remind people we do have the submission of questions online. Lets stay with this subject. It has been several years. The reason i was asking you about maneuver versus fire is because they are blending different things. Can you speak to some of the nonconnecticut things nonkinetic things . Gen. Flynn the combination of the information, intelligence, electronic, warfare, space and cyber teams inside the battalion. The work they are doing together to understand what is happening with misinformation, cyber penetration, what is actually happening in the space domain and the effects it is having on the ground, those kinds of things are the great work going on with two new organizations. If we had not had the director at the theater army working for the theater joint Land Component commander and being able to type that with our core headquarters down to multides moines taskforces who are forward all the time. There forward seeing, sensing and making sense to understand what is actually happening in the environment. I mean in the environment inside the theater and in all of the domains. In the philippines right now, the Multidomain Task force pulled together seven or eight open sourced applications to build a common operational picture. Those applications report air and maritime tracks. Working with their northern command, those organizations now have a common operation sure to be able to see into the air and into maritime. That allows them to be able to report on the things happening within their territorial confines, to be able to understand how to react when things are happening just off the coast, and then what they can do to counter some of those incursions. That is a really great effort on the part of the Multidomain Task force, the theater fires element that we have at our command. Dr. Karako let me go back to the connect piece kinetic piece. Especially in the early stages, how are you thinking about the targeting challenge, to make sure they can complete the kill range. Gen. Flynn this is the important part of the multidomain battalion. The important part, being out in the first island chain, to be able to collect and understand what is happening. We are working on that through the joint fires network. Each one of these exercises, we are improving procedures, working through technical components of it. My only concern is that sometimes in these exercises we can walk away from them and sort of pat ourselves on the back when we cannot when we get a couple of ships connected to be able to do kill chain. But a couple of ships and couple of planes is not the scale that we need to be able to do this at. There is a lot of work i had a boss. I am encouraged by what we are doing out in indo pacom. The fact of the matter is we still have a lot of work ahead of us to do that. But i will say continuing to find out where we have gaps and other challenges by being able to do that, and then bring our Multinational Force together, i think were that. Were learning quite a bit from europe and the middle east on that. Not all of it is transferable to the pacific, but a good deal of it is. We are taking us practices from that and applying it to the region. Dr. Karako last year the army put out a new fm30. How do you see the army implementing that . Gen. Flynn what i am most encouraged about is that the doctrine gives us a guide when we have these new organizations. I think the next step in this is that we need to take concepts of agile combat, maritime operations. I would tell you i think the indopacific theater is the best laboratory to work on those all coming together. I am glad the army put doctrine out on multidomain operations, but i have also talked to Senior Leaders about we also need to be working on the next war fighting concept at the operational level of war. The organizational constructs will change how we fight. I think the work going on by the way, europe has a Multidomain Task force. They have a theater fires command. I think the work going on between the theater armies to advance the doctrine and create our next concept at the apparition level of war, i think it is really important work. Because we are going to get new Weapons Systems and new capabilities, but what are those new organizations that we need to adopt now to get ahead of when those systems come . Dr. Karako we have a question from the audience here. This is from tony from bloomberg news. He is talking about china. What is your assessment of chinas capability to conduct combined operations against taiwan . Gen. Flynn here aside, what i would say is what i have seen them doing in the last decade, when i put a marker down on 2023 and i think out to 2033, the advances that they have made in the last 10 years, i will assume they can continue to make advances in the next 10 years. To me, bad is a trajectory that is read jurors. That is a trajectory that is dangerous. Dr. Karako we talked about the win without fighting thing. You have to prepare for the kine tic side of the house. How do you think about the chinese invasion of taiwan relative to the win without fighting thing . Gen. Flynn i guess what i would say is that this is back to interior lines. We have to have in that theater theres a lot that has changed, but the geography has not. You have to have commandandcontrol forward first. You have to have those four war fighting capabilities at the joint force forward first. Otherwise your wasting your capability. I worry less about what they are doing and more about what we are doing. We have to get into position right now to counter what i just explained as their trajectory through training and exercising. That is a dangerous path they are on in the next 10 years. So we right now as a joint force and a military, that is what i worry about, being able to counter that is by getting forward. By training, generate readiness, applied the readiness and create interior lines. To take time and space away from the responsible behavior of the chinese. Dr. Karako i was recently in guam. What i heard about is we do not have enough repair depots. We cannot be calling back to hawaii for spare parts. The repair depots and all that sort of stuff. The deputy secretary of guam recently designated the army as the lead service for the defense of guam. The army is working on the strategy. I will not ask you about the details. How do you think about the utility of active air and Missile Defense within all of the other capabilities and . Gen. Flynn there is three arms of protection. It is engineering, it is medical , and it is integrated are air and Missile Defense. It is counter you a. S. , short range. It is midtier with patriot, upper tier with fab. Guam is a position that we are working with the joint force to converge some capabilities there to create a 360 defense. But maybe more importantly and less understood is we have done multiple patriot live fires in the philippines and australia. Demonstrating those kinds of capabilities, most of those are coming out of japan in okinawa, and being able to deploy those patriot assets into other countries and demonstrate the mobility of those capabilities. Dr. Karako staying with that, is patriot the lf groundbased sensors, but it is helpful to have elevated as well. Gen. Flynn i am a huge fan of the work going on for highaltitude balloons. We have had those out in the region before. We have deployed them from the continental United States. 18 months ago in philippines we used highaltitude balloons and we launched some from the states and some from the philippines. It was very positive. That is a great example of an experiment that is going on as part of the exercises we are doing in the region. Dr. Karako another question from the audience i want to get to. How is the army prepare for the Nuclear Domain in the indopacific . Is it part of your planning process . That is from michael. Gen. Flynn for a long time, on the korean peninsula, we have forces there and forces that would deploy early to operate in a contaminated environment. I think one of the limits of Nuclear Deterrence that is not often talked about is our ability to operate in a contaminated environment. There is a lot of work for us to do in this area because we have largely not been exposed to that. I think i know it is not part of the triad, but a form of deterrence is to have land forces that can live, train and operate in contaminated environments. And once upon a time in our army we were pretty good at that. We have some skill degradation that has been going on. Dr. Karako lets go back to analyze manPower Network. Land Power Network. Walk us through the region in terms of different countries, south korea, australia, vietnam that your working with and some of the initiatives there. Gen. Flynn i would remind the audience that this region is defined by the armies. I know when you look at a map you see a lot of blue and it is often referred to by many as a maritime eater, but it is actually a joint theater. I believe that what is happening out there with the size of these armies, 65 percent of the Japanese Military is its army, 80 of the Indian Military is the army. They turn to their armies to provide security for their people. I will use the Philippine Army as an example they have 12 divisions. They have 11 lights divisions and an armored division. They have been focused on an insurgency in the south. They are trying to take their army and the marine corps and special Operations Forces are part of the philippi army. And what they are trying to do is be innovative and thoughtful about how to we organize, reorient, retrain so they can conduct Territorial Defense operations. They have recently announced that they are buying missiles from india. I think there is other elements of capabilities they are looking at. They have talked with us about a combat Training Center. The conversations that we are having with that one partner are reflective of a number of other conversations we are having a senior levels about the kind of training and exercises that allow them to make sense of what is happening and be able to defend their territorial integrity. Dr. Karako one of our think tanks in australia asked me about a report called u. S. Land power and opportunities for the australian army. You have highlighted landbased fires. Do you see that percolating to some of the other armies deppe armies . Gen. Flynn it can do that, but what we really need to do is control key terrain. These chokepoints are really important. If we can at risk through the employment of capabilities in key terrain we can in many ways create an advantage for the air and maritime force. So if you were able to put capabilities in at key chokepoints, in key terrain and actually make the joint force maritime commander larger than it is because they were not have to pick a piece of terrain where you want to demonstrate the ability to seize control. Whether you can actually sync actually sink the ship. We are bringing in capabilities to do that but i think the key part is having our Multinational Force in those key locations to be able to see sense and make sense of actually whats going on so that if you have to interdict then you have the capability they are to do that. Tom the ukrainians have been using some groundbased fire to the sink some russian ships. I think there was another report on that this week. What are some of the other observations what are you seeing in ukraine that is inform to how you are doing her job . Gen. Flynn training. Training started with the the Training Group that we started in 2014 after what happened in crimea so i think the result of the of the performance of the Ukrainian Forces has a lot to do with the training that went in place back in 2014. The second thing i am picking up for my insight about what is happening with the fight in europe is that on the spectrum of information war being where we think we are with hightech and industrial war in world war i and world war ii era, i think we are further over into the hightech information part of the war. You sought this weekend with what is happening in israel. War is vibrant violent, human, unpredictable, and long. So what we are seeing is where we think we are with hightech and exquisite information, but the reality is low cost and committed forces who are well trained have an enormously Important Role on the battlefield. The second part of what i take away from the fight in europe is when i was a young officer, my close fight, i was trained by many in the audience to be able to kill everything at 3000 meters and be able to suppress everything at 15 km. I think todays fight is 35 to 40 km and that is because of the ability of Unmanned Systems to be able to sense, to detect, to strike, to jam, and conduct reconnaissance in a wide range of areas. My view on this is that that will have a profound change in how we train our jr. Ncos and jr. Officers. The other part of that particular aspect, and i use this in the indo pacific, now from the land we must be able to kill and then suppress at the close fight down at the very most jr. Tactical level of command, the Company Battery and troop level, out to 35 km. That is a major difference in they need to be able to kill and suppress on the land because we are a land force but the land force also needs to be able to suppress, identify, strike, sense, and jam in the air and in the maritime out to 35 to 40 km. Tom that is a big difference on how we train, educate, equip and conduct leader development, and that part to me is one other point. My take away from what is happening in europe. Our equipment works. The u. S. Systems work. And i guess i would say the arms dealer, particularly in the indo pacific, has largely been russian. And i think that everyone is waking up to the fact that maybe some of the stuff they have is not so capable. Lets stop there in terms of the ua s threat and the need for counter uis. The army is moving out on nextgeneration short range, basically the stinger followon. I suspect demand for that in your part of the world is tremendous. Likewise the army is also the lead service for counter uis. There are all kinds of interesting widgets, but we need capacity and training. How does that manifest to you . Gen. Flynn the 25th division has already gotten some commercial offtheshelf and i think this is a challenge rightly placed on all of us. They have already got some stuff on hand now that can be used in training to actually put red usaf up against our forces in the field and it is having profound changes on how they are trained. What their command post looks like, being able to drop emitters on top of them so someone could strike your position. That they are also using the swarm uavs to be able to do that against the enemy forces. So i think this kind of work that is going on in our Training Centers is really important. And being able to bring those kinds of capabilities into the region and share them with our partners in the region and then work through all the tactics, techniques, and create and procedures of being able to identify, jam, strike and use Unmanned Systems is vital. I would also say i know the navy is working on a number of Unmanned Systems subsurface. That is another sensor that can be out there to be able to collect and provide information to go back to make sense or do something to counter the threats. Tom another thing i was struck by in the vision document you put out last month is all the attention to history. You even note that the army in that part of the world has more Campaign Streamers in the indo pacific than all of the wars outside of the u. S. Combined, which of course came with a heavy cost. But you highlighted world war ii especially and the experience of that. How do you think about that . What are the lessons, episodes, and events and tragedies of that conflict that we ought to be thinking about today . Gen. Flynn first of all, i think that many people forget they were actually three theaters of war going on. China verma india theater, the southwest pacific, and then the Pacific Ocean area. So just the size of that theater warrants an army to be able to provide the depth, scale, and operational endurance as a Land Component in support of the combatant command. The other aspect i find interesting from history is, back to the comments i made in the beginning, the objective for nimitz and macarthur and in the great book defeat into victory was to seize, hold, defend terrain because they need to be able to extend it reach back into the theater and regain control of key terrain so that they can continue advancing across the pacific. I think the lesson today is given the arsenal the chinese created. We do not want to cede that space or give up any decisive terrain because we will pay a heavy price to retake it. So that is essentially why i believe that our approach of training in the region through jpm rc, contacting campaigning through operation pathways and the creation of joint interior lines provides us in my view with an operational approach and theory of victory to be able to deter, and then have a force combat credible in position in the event that the deterrence or assurance would fail. Because we are going to have to have a force in position to be able to provide a capability and the will or resolve to defend our treaty allies in the region. So that is my take away from it, while some things have changed, there is still an absolute need to control terrain. And that is what armies do. We seize hold and defend the terrain with our allies and partners. Tom i always ask folks what they are reading and what you think other folks, whether they are soldiers or people here in d. C. Or the broader public ought to be reading to related not only understand the history you mentioned but other perennial lessons . Gen. Flynn dr. Mcmanus, his trilogy is fantastic. I am a huge fan of slims book, defeat into victory. It is a wonderful book. I refer to south asia as sort of the soft land underbelly of china. There was a lot going on between vietnam and pakistan and Southeast Asia and i just reread it recently because ice bent a lot of times on airplanes flying around asia and i think that those books right there are very insightful and helpful by way of lessons for all of us to be mindful of. Tom excellent. We have covered a lot of territory and topics. Anything you want to close out on or that we have not hit on yet that you want to . Gen. Flynn i appreciate this venue. It is long overdue and i am thankful that we have this Strategic Land power dialogue here at csis and i am thankful for the opportunity to be able to come up here and have this platform to share some of my thoughts on what is happening. Tom thank you for your time and your leadership and please join me in thanking general flynn. [applause]