[applause] >> good afternoon, everybody. it is good to be. secretary, i didn't see. good to see you. it is an honor to be here. thanks very much to all csis, doctor henry, thank you. it's kind of interesting being a vice chairman. it's kind of not, i don't know how you would describe it but it's, until you have experienced it it's hard to imagine all the things that happen when you're vice chairman but there's an interesting dynamic that happens because on 18 november i change commit at your strategic command. what a a changean commit change commit at you strategic command i was in command of 150,000 americans that went to work every day to do, and 150,000 americans, interesting element in command structure. and then on the 21st of november i swore in as vice chairman of joint chiefs of staff and if went to a staff of five because i'm actually not ie command of anything anymore. i have no command responsibilities. i don't command anything, and when we drove out of omaha on the way over here, and were in a little bit of a hurry because the children had been without a vice chairman for a little while and he wanted me there quick so we were moving pretty fast across the country and my wife looked over at me so in kentucky and said, this feels quite different, doesn't it? i said, what you mean? and shehe said, well, it's likea huge burden is lifted off your shoulders. even when you're -- use were in as vice chairman that word will not be there to guide the direct responsibility for not just the 150,000 soldiers, sailors and marines in the command also the nuclear weapons of the united states of america. each and every day. 150,000 sold marines and the command that the nuclear weapons of the united states of america. each and every day. the movement of every one of those weapons and the readiness of every one of those weapons and when i started there was a space capabilities cyber capabilities and all the pieces that came across and all of a sudden there i am in the middle of the kentucky and it's all gone. then i swear in as vice chairman and now i'm an advisor.that's what my job is, i'm an advisor.the second highest ranking person that was introduced that's true but i'm just an advisor and i'm not in the chain of command. the chain of command goes for the president, secretary defense to the combat commanders. i'm not in the chain of command anymore but i very critical position where my advice is very important. my advice on as a member of the joint chiefs of staff and statutory responsibility there i take very seriously my advice on the fourth design of the future capabilities of the united states, my advice on our partnerships with our allies and how to reach allies and i'm about to take our first trip overseas to europe in a couple weeks, actually i went to romania very briefly last week probably uso got called back because some things were going on in the world and the chairman said leave and i got on a plane and came back right away. i'm involved in almost everything. but it's a very different role. i meet with the joint chief of staff, i meet with the secretary of defense, i meet with the president of the united states frequently but it's a different function. when i think about my priorities, when i thought long and hard about the priorities i need to have their very different than the priorities of a commander. my priorities i have three priorities, it's a good way to start the discussion. my three priorities are pretty straightforward, number one as a member of the joint chief of staff and vice chairman most important word in that duty title is vice my job is to make sure that i do my job as a member of the joint chief of staff that i support the chairman and being successful in his responsibilities, i support the secretary of defense and give honest best military device to the presence of the united states when i am asked. thus the number one priority. that takes up most of my time. it's seven or eight weeks in the job it taken up most of my time because it's been a very busy world since 21 november. the second priority, that kind of gets into things i can control a little bit. things i can control a little bit is that one of my responsibilities as i'm the head of the joint requirements oversight council. the council such requirements for the future force capabilities of united states of america. i'm also on a number of different councils and committees in the pentagon that look at budget i look at acquisition i look at force design and force development, all of those structures and i work those issues very seriously and the one thing i noticed about all those processes when i look at even the j rock is that the one element that is not in those processes is speed. it is not a rapid process anywhere in the department of defense. i will talk about some of our competitors here shortly but when you look at our competitors large and small, one of the things you find that they have in common is they are moving very fast. very very fast. we are not. my second priority is to do everything i can to insert speed into the processes inside the pentagon. that's going to be a difficult challenge because we have built processes over the years but by design are not built for speed. by design they are built to remove risk. and if you have a process designed to remove all risk it becomes very deliberate. very structured, very bureaucratic, step overture step after step and you basically relate authorities from the field and move them into the pentagon so you can make sure that we don't take risk. and that means you go slow. if you have an adversary, competitor that's going fast and you are going slow, that doesn't matter how far ahead you are, at some point that adversary will catch and pass you.that's the nature of any competition. if we are in competition in the united states and i don't shy away from competition i like competition but the goal of the competition is to win. not to finish second and in our business finishing second is bad, there is no such thing as second place in our business, which means we have to put speed back in the process we have to understand how to take risk how to properly manage risk how to delegate risk down to the people that can actually move fast and move on from there. that's gonna be a significant challenge and while in vice chairman and going to work hard at every element of the pentagon i'm involved in to try to put speed back into that. we will come back to that in a second. a third party, third priority is to basically make sure we don't forget that we are nothing without our people and their families. when i look at the structure of the joint staff, and i testified in front of congress many times a look at the structure when i look at all the people and family programs we have in a look at the way we actually testify in front of congress the way we tell our stories realize that basically whoever is going to testify the staff is working that particular problem whatever problem it happens to be comes running to you and says here's your talking point, say this, you go to the hell you say this and move on and go back to the rest of your job. if you look at all the issues we have across our people programs and family programs, i think you will see that in many cases we are not succeeding. in many cases, things are getting worse. if you look at our housing problems, the housing problem is not an overnight sensation. somehow the privatized housing issue has come to the forefront after the last few months, last year but that issue has been around for a long time. i've lived in privatized housing i work with privatized housing contractors i see good contracts and by bad contracts that i see the problems there somehow we just kept going down that path and things kept getting worse and worse and it became a crisis. he looked at the numbers for suicide prevention you look at the numbers suicides in the military they are not getting better. some people like to say, that's a societal problem the numbers are no different than society, from my perspective that's hogwash and acceptable. when the mothers and fathers of our nation give their most precious item in the world, their sons and daughters come into the united states military, they expect a better environment and better world and they expect us the leaders of the military to take them. which means, and i've had to deal with it multiple times, suicides in the military i walk up and look at the mother and we failed, we absolutely will be a single suicide that's acceptable. we will probably never get to zero but it has to be the goal for look at the numbers, they're not going the right direction. which means that everything we've been doing, everything we've been doing is not working. we have to take a fresh look at that. you look at our healthcare in the military healthcare is actually quite good. unless you have a very unique capabilities, a lot of those revolve around what we call accepting family members. usually kids with very special needs. it is very difficult to figure out how to get the special needs kids into the right treatment to our very bureaucratic healthcare system. it got to figure out how to do better because a family that comes in a has a special needs child has to be taken care of it has to be work because we want the member to know their family is being taken care of. you look at sexual assault the numbers there are going the wrong way as well. we have to make sure we take a look across the board and we've had many programs in that area to look after it is not getting better. i so i'm going to hire a special assistant to the people in our families she's going to start work next tuesday and report directly to me report required and will get after all these people and family programs to make sure we are taking part of our most precious resource. those are my three priorities. make sure i support the chairman, support the president, act as a member of the joint chief insert speed into everything we do and take care of our people and families three priorities. pretty straightforward but very hard to do given the challenge we have. willing to spend a little time now talking about our competitors and relating it into the priorities to the issues but i want you to take a step back and think about a couple of things that have been going on in the world over the last few decades in last few years. i'm going to use china and north korea as examples of what consisted strategies mean and what the ability to go fast means. let's look at china. take a look at china, i'm looking around i see different ages of people and different audiences some of you are under 40 some over 40, some of you are way over 40. [laughter] edited point fingers anywhere. a little over 40 years ago, 1979, china came up with a new strategy the strategy of allowing foreign investment the strategy of free market. that was 1979. when they did that, their country, if you look at the numbers, 88 percent of the chinese population lived in poverty in 1979. 88 percent. today, six percent of the nation lives in poverty. that's in 40 years. that's an unbelievable transformation. it shows you the power of free market the power of it shows you the power of integrating into the world economy. at the same time, they realized they needed a different security strategy and started going down a different path. it's interesting to me when we look at china and many of the readings you do, china was our friend until just a few years ago. china was our friend until a few years ago. their strategy, their military strategies dates back to the mid-1990s, and their military strategy in the mid-1990s you can go read it because it's in public documentation was focused on countering the united states of america and our allies. it started in 1990s. the interesting thing about their economic power and structure that came from that decision in 1979, is tied very tightly to the military because everything that happens in china, every technology in china is available for military use. there is not the separation like you see in the west, the separation you see in the united states, it's very tied together all the economic power can be brought to bear for military use at the same time. when that happens, if you end up with this competition going on. this is not an overnight thing. when i look at what china has done in space they now froze those initiatives back in the 1990s. i read them in the 1990s. but it wasn't until a few years ago people started looking and saying, this is new no it's not, they have an economic strategy that dates back to the 1989. they been on a consistent approach to dealing with those pieces and if we don't wake up the world is good to be different and in many cases, that's not good. some cases it is good but in many cases it's not and we have to deal that. that consistent strategy is hugely powerful in terms of achieving the objectives they stated as long as 41 years ago. china is a powerful economy. let's look at another powerful economy. i put that in big quotes. north korea, north korea is 115th most powerful economy in the world. 115 out 192, one of the poorest countries in the world. somehow over the last few years north korea has developed a ballistic missile program that can threaten its neighbors and threaten the united states and nuclear program that can threaten its neighbors and the united states and they've done that and change the entire structure of the world with 115th most powerful economy in the world. what's been different about north korea? they learn how to go fast. if you look back at kim jong-un, look at his father and his grandfather, it there are some significant differences. when his father and grandfather ãbhis grandfather launched i think nine, his father launched i think 22 during their entire tenure. kim jong-un has lost 67. he's lost over a dozen in 2016, 2017, 2019, didn't want anything in 2018. his father and grandfather, when they were failures in the missile program, let's just say the engineers and scientists that failed were not treated well. kim jong-un realized that was not the way to go fast. the way to go fast in the missile program and i've been around rockets and missiles my entire life, my dad worked on a saturn five is been about around rockets and missiles my entire life, i know how they work, i know how they test. i've been working in the business since the beginning of time, if you want to go fast in the missile business, you need to test fast, fly fast, learn fast. look at spacex in this country. there are some pretty spectacular failures. did they stop? no. they had instrumented the heck out of their capabilities, they learn from failures, launched rapidly again and change systems and changed subsystems, they go in a completely different direction, that's what north korea has been doing and north korea has been building new missiles new capabilities new weapons as fast as anybody on the planet with 115th most powerful economy in the world. speed itself is efficiency. speed builds capability and savings into your programs. but you have to be able to accept failure. if the dictator of north korea has learned how to accept failure, why can't the united states learn how to accept failure? we need to understand what failure is and learn from those failures, learn from the mistakes we make. move quickly from these mistakes. i look back at hypersonic's, we are in a significant competition with a number of competitors around the world, we were ahead in hypersonic's a decade ago. we had two programs, two flights, they didn't quite work. what did we do after they failed? we instituted multi-year studies into the failure process and then canceled the programs. that's not how you go fast. every time we have a failure in a large business, i been in there and it's not a good thing. we stopped for years at a time to recover. if there's human life involved that's essential like if you have the tragedy of the challenge or columbia you have to because you can't risk human life but if you don't have human life involved, you have to figure out how to go fast. that's why we need speed back in our processes. we have to learn how to take risks. when you look at our nation today and he looked at our stature in the world in terms of a competitive environment, there are so many places where our country is the leading technology engine of the world. in the information technology area, in the information application area, we are the leading? why is that? because we go faster than everybody. we turn faster than others can get started. the defense sector that's not the case. but it has to be the case. which means we have to do something. back in the 1980s when i started in the space business, and that's kind of my background, the space business was really a government only business. there was really no commercial sector to leverage. we decided we would leverage everything into the commercial side and everything would be good and it didn't happen. he said we have to do everything ourselves and we went and put everything back ourselves and went back to these long structured risk adverse programs and while that was going on marshall sector did develop in the commercial sector now is starting to lead the world in many areas. we are starting to embrace that but we haven't fully embraced yet. we've got to embrace the elements of this country that are going fast but know how to do things. have you watched how the united states america build software? it's amazing. when you go to the commercial sector and watch how we build software is so fast. look at google or facebook or amazon web services or any of the small startups in cambridge and silicon valley and seattle and here in washington it's amazing. ãb the united states doesn't know how to build software? we are the leading software nation in the world. we just haven't translated that to the department of defense. and by the way, there is a j rock requirements process that has to be changed in order to allow that kind of thing and there is statutory requirements that drive the j rock but the j rock is an industrial age model. not an information age model. we have to change the structure we have to change how we are going to do business across those lines. that will translate into the acquisition business. that will translate and the biggest thing with doing the acquisition business is real simple, we have to allow people to take risks and delegate responsibilities to people that are executing programs. we don't train people how to bind things anymore we train people how to get programs to the pentagon and the congress. what we are really doing is buying stuff, buying stuff for many people in this room, but we don't know how to buy stuff anymore. we have to reengineer how we buy stuff and secretary lord and doctor griffin and department of defense are starting to do that, we push things down back at the services and it's good now we have to line the rest of the department to those initiatives and make sure we take advantage. i could go on and on about that structure but i just think back for a second on where china has been in the last 40 years and the constancy purpose and ability to move fast anything about north korea and what they've done in the last few years anything about the potential of the united states of america we should be able to defend ourselves against anything, we should be able to deter any adversary from taking action against us with a $700 billion defense budget we should be able to create the environment of peace in the world across the board. in order to do that we are going to have to look at the world, compete in the world and that means we have to go fast again. i'm going to stop there and open it for questions but i thank you for your attention i think you for your time and i look forward to questions and answers as we go forward. [applause] >> thank you general hyten as i said in the green room i knew in advance the major themes you would touch on, this is music to my ears. i will talk a bit about, a few questions on the first and third point really focusing on the speed piece which is one i really want to dig into. let's talk about the advice piece, just with the most recent example of iran, there is this discussion out in the public sphere about how the military is doing in terms of generating clear options for the president being forthright about sharing risks and i want to get your, as the main advisor the deputy, the advice to the chairman, can you help us understand the quality of the advice you think the military is getting today and the thoroughness of the process using to do it. >> i guess that's about a two hour answer. >> you can do it much shorter. >> if you think about that structure, the first thing you need to know is, i can tell you one of the differences of being the vice chairman, even over commander schreck, is the level of intelligence i get every morning. at schreck, got pretty good intelligence. now i see all the intelligence. the intelligence is remarkable. it's amazing. but it's also in many cases, fragile. that's why we don't talk about intelligence in public. that's why military people don't talk about the intelligence because the sources that we use save lives, the sources that we use are critical to our defense and talking about intelligence, i see exquisite intelligence, it's just amazing. with that intelligence we put together very very good courses of action to brief the secretary of defense and it's the job of the secretary of defense and chairman to bring those options to the president of the united states. that's the way the process works. it goes from the secretary of defense and chairman to the president of the united states. as a member of the joint chiefs i get to give my independent military advice when asked and i do that and we had very interesting observations in the pentagon and very interesting conversations in the oval office. but i can tell you from my experience with the president of the united states, he gets the detailed options. we have those arguments they are arguments and discussions, as you would hope i expect them to be because these are very difficult decisions the most important decisions we make as a nation and our security. the discussions are open, thorough, and well supported by the information we have. once we are done we get to those pieces and the president of the united states makes a decision as commander-in-chief we execute where the president wants to go. and it works. i've been very impressed in my less than two months on the job about how well the interaction with the president of the united states is. and it's frequent, more frequent than i thought it would be, i didn't understand how much time i would spend in those discussions when the chairman is out of town my schedule changes a little bit. that's okay, the president very much wants to hear from his advisors. by the constitution, we are asked to give independent military advice and we do and it's listened to and sometimes it's counter to the mainstream and we have those discussions back and forth and we end up, and since i've been here i feel like we made very good decisions. >> let's talk a little bit about the people piece, there are two questions that come to mind, the first is, this is of course what all leaders rightfully say as a priority as people and you pointed out that you are setting up a special assistant in the organization inside your office to help you think through that. how can we manifest that more fully beyond just i'm sure your thoughts are broader than just this assistant who is going to help you think through an agenda. what you think it's going to come out on top of that agenda that gets beyond the rhetoric of people first. >> i've been asked that question a lot in the last year. multiple times as a strict calm commander as i was going through preparation to be vice chairman i kept getting the question, we keep hearing people first and then i look at the numbers and we are not doing anything. and i've been involved in the military in all these programs, all of these programs we put in place and i've noticed interesting things about those programs. some of those programs have been really good, some of those programs have been not so good. but whether they're good or not so good, they have a shelf life of about 12 months maybe 24, before they all become no good. what that means is, all those programs are band-aids to a problem. and a band-aid stops the bleeding but if you have something seriously wrong, it doesn't fix the problem. i think that we have to get in to the structure right from the beginning of entry into military service. i think we have to start from the beginning i know all the services are starting to move that into basic training to move that back for it to understand the culture and the care. we have to start going down from the beginning and not try to add band-aids after 10 or 15 years of service because that is a work. the other interesting thing is how we look at mental health. there is a number of things that have been in the news recently that attentive examples of that and we have tried to make the point, we the leaders of the military have tried to make the point about mental health and issues like that is that it's actually no different than any other illness. if you're sick you go see a doctor, but still not quite the way we treat it. we make it so people don't know you're going to see mental health. if reporting people in a place to go see mental health veto on people to know we set up society and give them that means clearly mental health is not like physical health. it's different. >> there is a stigma. >> there is a stigma out there and as long as that stigma is there we won't treat it effectively. we have to somehow remove the stigma. we are going to get after that issue to try to do that where people should be able to come if they are injured, don't see ãbgo see a doctor. that could be physical health provider or mental health divider but don't go see a doctor. as long as the stigma is out there and people stay away, that's when bad things start happening. starting early and making sure we treat people and provide the right kind of care from the beginning without the stigma is going to be important and that's difficult. she's going to look at us with a set of eyes that's completely different then all of us who have lived that in the department of defense for years and decades. >> are you open to conversations about where sexual assault should be reported whether in the chain of command or outside of it if it's something that comes forward to the process? >> i'm open to everything in that discussion right now that structure but one thing i know having been in the military for almost 4 years that no problem has ever been solved in the military unless the chain of commands as part of the solution. the chain of command has to be part of the solution. what that role is, i'm willing to look at everything. >> speed, which i may appreciate you brought into this discussion. let's talk about jay rock first. the much-maligned j-rod. are you in a point where you are thinking we need new statute on the jay rock we should disband it? we should completely blow it up? or are you more in a revise and reform and refocus mindset. >> and actually in neither position at the moment. where i am right now is in a data gathering because when i come if you look back to when i was to start, some of the people in this room were working with me when i was space acquisition in the pentagon, i have a dumb acquisition in 20 years basically when i came back and was put into that. since i have a demo for 20 years i decided i would go read so i pulled three documents up. >> a fine nightmare reading. that was so enjoyable only be by the regulations. and the chairman described -- the interesting thing i found when i went through all of those documents is that actually, if you want to go fast, all the authorities are right there. they're written down and they are aallowed. all you have to do is get the bosses to say, yes go do there and sometimes you have to go to congress and say, yes, i'm going to do this instead of that, but everything is right there for you to do. however, in setting up the structure over the years on whether the x is inside or the requirement side, we've set up a bureaucratic risk averse setup to do that and there's a right way to achieve success without failing at the end. when you do that and if you go to the defense acquisition university that's how we train people to get through. there's a best answer, almost in every case those answers are very slow and those answers are built to remove risk so what i didn't want to do is just jump in and say blow up the jrok. it's very flexible document with lots of flexibility in there. i think that most of it is our own, you know, not congress's fault, our own fault for the pieces that we have to do and now we're going to have to be transparent with congress and all the things that we're going to do, but if we do it right, i don't think we have to blow up those pieces. we have to take advantage of what is in there, but i don't know enough now to say this is what we're going to do, but i can tell you one thing i know when it comes to 21st century capabilities, all heavily dependent on software, the jroc process and the current process that we have for building software is horrible. that's one thing we are going to change out. i've talked to secretary lord and she's trying to do the same on acquisition side, but she needs help on the requirements side. i don't know what to call it yet so my working term is process requirements. because here is the way we write requirements today. we write requirements for a product, build that. i want that built, i want it delivered in 10 years, i want it perfectly cyber secure and i want it perfectly everything, deliver it in 10 years. that's the way the process is. so if you do that, deliver me a capability 10 years from now. that is to defeat 10 years ago. and the cyber, the threat, as soon as you hit it, tomorrow you're out of date not five years from now. tomorrow you're out of date. how do i move fast in at that structure? i think you have to go back to a threat-based view of the world. say, here is the threat. the world will update that threat and you have to monitor that threat and there's got to be a process in order to deliver the pro that allows you to get into that. that's the structure that we need as you go forward that you figure out how to do and that's the structure we have to figure out how to do. >> what role do joint concepts play in that process? >> so, the big thing that we need at the top of it is a joint war fighting concept. when you look at force design and force development, there has to be this joint war fighting could be september that describes the broad-based capabilities and attributes that we need into the future that we need to do that. but that is not systems. those are capabilities and attributes. what we've tried to do in the past with joint concepts is take the systems and build it into a joint concept. that will always fail. so what we'll try to do now on the joint staff, we have a concept that we're working with, the office of secretary of defense, to basically build a singular joint war fighting concept with a number of different elements underneath it that will have to support it and the elements underneath it are service concepts and capabilities and also these joint concepts like command and control, joint logistics, things that have been orphaned in the processed because they don't neatly fall under a single service. we have to figure out how we're going to build those capabilities as well, but our job and the joint staff is not to define the system. that's the services job. our job is to find the capabilities and attributes that we need without getting into the system design and in many cases when you read the joint requirements that come out of jroc, it's designed specific to build something, i understand why, but that's not the job of the joint staff. so we have to make sure that we focus on our job. >> what about incentives for experimentation for taking risk? can you talk any specific ways to get that to speedier risk taking process? >> i've had some interesting discussions with congress on this, because congress has been helpful the last couple of years on encouraging through law, which is always interesting encouragement, and the services has been moving out to the field. i've told the members of congress and there's a pretty easy metric to effective or not. and all you have to do is take their calendar for the last three months, add up the number of days in washington d.c. or the pentagon and add up the number of days they've been in the contractor plan and the day, the number of days they've been in the contractor plan exceeds the number they've been in washington d.c., you'll have changed the risk equation. it's really that simple because risk has to be pushed down to that level if you're going to be fast. that means that captain, that navy captain, that army colonel, has to have the authority to make those decisions and move quickly. i go back to when i was a young engineer because i started as a ng near in the military and i was in los angeles as a young space engineer and i tell you the person i wanted to grow up and be was the colonel who was the program manager, i didn't want to be the general. that was nightmare. i wanted to be the colonel. why did i want to be the colonel? because that's where all the authority and responsibility was. they had the budget. and i remember the failure of a program in los angeles in the late '80s and the firing of the about earn in charge and it was ugly, but also remember there's 10 colonels lined up, saying i can do it, put me in, coach, i'm ready to go. that's just not today. that's just not today because the authority and responsibility is down there. if you want to see a military person go fast, all you have to do is give them the authority and responsibility. and then when they fail, well, you have to fire them and go find somebody else. but isn't that the way america works? why does at that sound so strange? i remember senator mccain, god rest his soul, i really do miss senator mccain, and oh, by the way, if you go back and watch some interactions i had with senator mccain, man, he beat the snot out of me multiple times. >> i share that. >> i remember him screaming at me one time about a major acquisition program that was not doing well and he screamed, who are you holding accountable? who are you going to fire? and i said, senator, the problem is, it's a committee in the pentagon. and you don't hold committees accountable for anything. so i'm not going to fire the colonel because it's not his or her fault. that would be wrong. now, if that person had the authority and responsibility, and they failed, well, then they get fired, but you didn't do that unless they have the authority and responsibility. so it's really that simple and the good news because of congressional law things are pushed down because the objections in osd and ans are pushing things down. now we have to transition to start training our people again to go buy things. and we've been training our people not to buy things, not to enter into good contracts, not to understand what a good contract is, you know, i'm going on and on, but this is an important subject. i remember as a young engineer negotiating a big contract for what was then the f-15 anti-satellite program and i was a software engineer and i remember sitting outside the door waiting to go in and negotiate with the contractor on my particular issue for days when i finally got to go in and i went in, i knew my issues backward and forwards better than anybody that was there and all the other engineers outside knew those issues and we would negotiate down to get to a good contract and hold the contract responsible to that. and i watch how we negotiate contracts today and it's not that way. it's not that structure. the engineers we have need to know as much about the system as the contractors do and it's not that way because we've trained them on process to get programs done, not on how to buy things. so you can't say you have the responsibility, but we haven't trained you how to buy things. one of the greatest things that happened to me as a young officer, my commander made me go out on the sites, and learn how to build missile defense systems and i was one of the first engineers on sdi back in the day, and you know, i didn't know what i was doing, i was going to get out of the air force, it didn't matter. i realize i walk in a contractor plant now and i can tell the good and bad just by looking at it. when i'm operating the system i know the good and bad because i understand how it works. that's hugely beneficial to an operator. hugely beneficial. so we have got to get after this structure. >> okay, we're going to go ahead and collect your cards, please, if you haven't passed them in, do so. i want to ask, since you broached us toward the next topic, which is space force, you have as a member of the joint chiefs of staff expanded-- you have an expanded membership, you have a new member to join. can you give us a little insight inside the building, the efforts underway right now? congress gave quite a few study requirements for the department to think through, aspects of space force and integration within the department. give us a peek at some of the big questions that you all are thinking through right now? >> you bet. so it's pretty interesting time to be a space guy. it's kind of weird, isn't it? never been a space guy on the joint chiefs of staff. now there's two. what the heck is that? the hardest thing i have to do is realize i'm not the space guy. i'm the vice-chairman. the space guy is general raymond. when those issues come in i want to jump in and i've got opinions and by the way i'll state those opinions, but general raymond gets first dibs because he's the chief of space operations, he's the guy at the top of the space force, but, you know, pretty interesting they think happened right away because the law didn't make us put general raymond on the joint chiefs of staff right away. it actually said you could take up to a year to put him on the joint chiefs of staff. the secretary and chairman and i certainly got a vote on that, made a decision right upfront on day one, general raymond is now a member of the joint chiefs of staff. and i think general raymond was excited about that until he saw the calendar for the joint chiefs of staff and realized he's also the commander of the u.s. space command. oh, my gosh, there's no sleep on his calendar anymore. 's going 100 miles an hour, but there's a lot of decisions that have to be made upfront. there's a lot of things that have to happen. the first thing we've gone ahead and moved 16,000 people in. there's a lot of-- >> is that all air force? >> all air force, but that's actually goes into the answer about one of the things that we have to look at early. we have to look at the army and navy and we have to look at the guard because you actually can't do the space business without the national guard. the national guard is a perfect partner for the space mission, much more than the other missions we do. the guard, it's perfect. in many cases a stateside mission, a homeland mission is done in one place and you can build very, very good expertise in that one area and have a guard unit that's focused on a singular mission. it's perfect. so, we have to figure out the guard, we have to figure out the army and navy and when i look at the army and navy, there are two elements going to be in the army and navy and we only have a year to figure it out. maybe less. because congress is going to make a decision next year how the army and navy is going to be treated and we need to try to be ahead of that. so the questions are pretty straight forward because each service, whether the air force, the army, navy, marine corps, air force. and air force being the biggest they all have it, that is a space capability that brings space into your army maneuver unit, navy fleet, marine corps, whatever it is, you have an element that knows how to integrate space into your force. that's actually a service function that should stay in the service. and then you have capabilities like flying satellites, building satellites, delivering satellites, and that's a space force function. so as we move into the future, we have to figure out which element goes in the space force and which stays in the service and different services are structured different ways right now in order to do that, but they both, they all need that capability. so one of the first things we'll worry about is figuring how to do that and we would like to make sure that we have a voice in that decision, which means we have to do it pretty quick because come this summer, probably as soon as hearings, congress is going to be asking that question. >> do you have a sense for the time line determining a term e-permanent home for space command? >> i think it will be sometime in the next year. i can't tell you exactly when. interesting thing about being the vice-chairman is that i'm actually not involved in that decision. [laughter] >> that's one of the things i actually don't have insight into. >> okay. >> because that's done inside the air force and the air force set up a really good process each of the services have, about how you do a basing decision, it's kept close hold through a structured process because it becomes so political that you want to make sure that you have all of your ducks in a row to do that. and so, secretary baretta, i'm sure knows exactly where it is right now and i don't, but i do know that we need a decision, i think, this year sometime. i think as long as we have it sometime this year we'll be okay that's why i said roughly a year, i hope it happens sooner about you we need it in a year. >> so one of the questions is related to space questions, which is you raised of course, hyper sonics, hypersonic missiles. my colleague tom hates when people call it hypersonics, sorry, tom. what can you tell us about a sensor layer for that capability? >> so, you know, it's important to realize that it doesn't matter what the threat is, if you can't see it, you can't defend against it. if you can't see it, you can't deter it either, and that second piece is actually maybe the most important thing. if you can see it, then you can enable your entire defense. you can enable your deterrent capability. you don't have to be able to build hypersonics, you have to have a capability that you're attacked by hypersonics. hyper sonic missiles, i'll use the correct term. it is the correct term, by the way, nonetheless i'll probably slip again because everybody else does. nonetheless, when you look at that capability, if you can't see it, you can't defend it. if you can't see it, you can't deter it. so, if you want to do that, the first thing you do is have to build sensors in order to see it. what's the best sensor to see a hypersonic, the best sensor a probably a ground-based radar? what's the problem with a ground-based radar? well, the earth is a big place. there's not enough islands in the pacific, not enough room on the east coast to build all-- and imagine the cost it would take to build that amount of radar. you can't get there from here. that means you have to go to space in order to see those capabilities, absolutely. so you look at our capabilities, the missiles in geo siynchronous orbit. if you want to see a dim target and by the way, a hypersonic missile is a dim target. you have to get closer. and you have to orbit in order to see that and start building. and that's what the sensor layer is and from my perspective i would like to see research and development into low earth orbit as well as medium earth orbit to figure out what the right mix of capabilities are to see that. that's the only way to get a global capability that's affordable to actually deter that threat and a lot of people think the only reason you build it is to build a missile defense capability. we should have some missile defense capabilities for point defenses, et cetera. we have to do that with hyper sonics, just like with ballistic missiles. that's a critical element of the arc. the first reason you do, the first reason we built all of the early warning radars we have around the world. we built that before we had any missile defenses. we built that to enable our deterrents, we built that for early warning. we need the sape for a hypersonic missile threat and enable ours first and defense-- >> is that already a priority space central air in the department? >> it is a priority. it's one of those things, again, i'm a little frustrated as our ability to go fast. and i won't beat up the space sensor layer and the depth time. i'll go back to a historic issue of missile warning because it's the same thing. so when we're going from the space infrared system to whatever the next is it going to come, we actually started that transition in roughly 2006, 2007. no, i guess it was 2007 we started that. and then every summer between 2007 and 2014, i was involved in the summer study that would look at what the next replacement for that typically was, and we would decide it in the budget and defer it a year and go back and well, we actually need to study it before. i did seven summers in a row i did a study. that's what we're doing on space sensor layer. we're studying the heck out of it when actually what we need to do we need to say -- 'cause i know the two basics, there are only two orbits that make sense, that's it. now, what kind of sensors can i put? there are all kinds of sensors out there, put them on satellites, fly them cheap and fast and figure out what to build. if you do that you'll go faster, save enormous amounts of time and money and get the capability factor. that's not how we do it, we try to study it to get to the perfect answers before we start something. i think that's crazy. >> and bob gates used to call 80% is good enough for-- >> in this case, 50% is good enough on that. you don't have to get to 80. you know the basics, the basics are known issues, explore that, lou r and e to explore that. and in a couple of years you'll have the information that forms the 80% answer and start down the 80% answer. >> another related issue on missile defense more specifically, do you think that current missile defense systems in the united states are capable of protecting the united states from north korea's new missiles? >> they are. i have 100% confidence. literally, i don't see 100% very often. i have 100% confidence in capabilities against north korea, you've got to understand, that's what they're built for. they're built for north korea, not built for anything else, they're built for north korea and they're going to work against north korea god forbid if we ever have to. again, that's not the perfect answer. i think, when you look at our deterrent, the rest of the world looks at deterrents as the integration of offense and defense. that's the way the rest of the world looks at deterrents, and by the way, when i look at us, we look at that was deterrents. we need to talk about offense and defense as deterrents as well. and we need to look at the next generation of defense and what we're going to walk into that. and if you want to know how you know that we don't look at it together. the last time we had an opportunity to look at them together was the beginning of the administration, and we decided to do a nuclear policy review and a missile defense review separate. >> and a strategy review separate for those two. >> and a strategy review. it's all singular strategy and you have it decide what you want to do and by the way, as a nation, we understand that missile defenses are critical to our future. they're critical to our defense, they're critical to the rogue threats, they're critical to north korea, but we haven't made a decision about what the role is of missile defense modder in our overall -- we have to make that decision and that's a national decision. that's not a joint chiefs decision, that's not a -- that's a national decision that we have to make. >> so you're doing a great job of segues from question to question without knowing it. one of the things i understand the chairman asked you to pay special attention to is nuclear weapons from strat com commander. we have a question on expiration of new start in february of 2021. can you talk a little about the merits of extension on in you start and the specific-- on new start and the specific query, and you've expressed concerns about new weapons under developments by russia, but moscow said that two will be covered by the treaty at the others couldn't be ready until 2026. could we have an extension of the start treaty to prevent deployment of further russian weapons? >> it's a really, really important topic and a topic we're having significant discussions right now not just in the department, but in the interagency and the white house. so, i'm not going to share my military advice. i'm just going to structure the elements of the problem so you can understand it. i will go back and i'll tell you what i've said in the past because i still believe that and i believe that new start is a good thing. if you're the strat com commander, new start is really important. you know why new start is important as a strat com commander? because it gives you a number that's at the top of the strategic return element and allows you to posture your force and what you have to do in order to deter the adversary, russia in this case and tells you what to do and gives you insight into the russian nuclear forces because of the verification on the new start treaty. and those are very, very important issues. those are the good things about new start. that's why even as the vice-chairman i'll push for that kind of peace, but there's a really negative piece that's going on right now. the negative piece is that nuclear weapons are no longer a bilateral problem. it's a multilateral problem and china is growing as fast as anybody in the world. at some point we better sit down with china and figure out how we are going to do that and be nice if we started early rather than late. start early before we get into a position of potential conflicts. start now and have those discussions. the other piece of the problem that is a big problem for strat com, for the nation, for the world, is all of the weapons that russia is building that aren't under the new start treaty and by the way, it's not just the -- not just all the things that president putin talked about in the march of 2018 speech, it's not just the nuclear torpedo with a nuclear weapon on top or-- those are significant about you it's the thousands of lower with epps that they have deployed in many, many areas that aren't accountable in the new start treaty. if you read new start treaty it specifically lists the platforms and weapons in the treaty and everything else is out and from the moment russia signed that treaty they've been building weapons outside of that treaty. so i think we have to make sure that when we sit down with russia, we talk about all the nuclear weapons that are out there. isn't it kind of foolish to think about sitting down with a nuclear power and saying, okay, we'll talk about these, but over here, all of these nuclear weapons, ah, they don't really matter. let me tell you, every nuclear weapon matters. there's no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon. it's not. and when i see doctrine out there in russia about the employment of tactical nuclear weapon, it scares the heck out of me. that will not being tactical, it will be strategic. it will be responded to in a strategic way, that's a place you don't want to be, which means when you sit down with the russians, you need everything on the table. so those are the aspects of new start. now, i won't, i won't tell you exactly the discussions that are going on, but those are the pieces of the puzzle. >> very helpful. okay, a few more from the audience. what changes are being condemn plated for changes to the unified command plan to integrate space force, for example? and where will the people come from? >> so-- to address that latter piece. >> so, it's pretty simple. the space force is not in the unified command plan. space force is a service. the way the united states military is structured, we have services that organize forces and command forces. you have them to strengthen and equip and give them to space command and other combatant commanders, too, by the way, to operate in the unified command structure. so the changes that will happen in the unified command plan will be expansion of u.s. space command responsibility as we continue to grow out, but the space force itself doesn't change that. with the space force changes, is how we train our people, build our people, equip our forces, build our stuff, that's what the space force will do and have focused points in that, i asked a question a while ago about congressional oversight and oh, my gosh. if you read the law, the congressional oversight is intense. it's like every 60 days you have to be up there explaining it. why is it that way? it's that way because congress doesn't want the bureaucracy to get out of control. and given our nature as bureaucrats because there's a bureaucratic nature for every one of us in the pentagon, i hate that with a passion because it does exist and you better, it's step one of the 12-step process, you better realize you are there because otherwise you're not going to be able to fix it. so, we are that, so we have to figure out how to stay out of our own way. i talked about 16,000 airmen moving into the space force right now, 16,000 and the marine corps is 187,000 roughly. that's the other smallest service. 10 times bigger than the space force. so if we create a staff over top of the space force, that's a small staff like the marine corps, it's by definition 10 times bigger than the force itself. so, i mean, it will be a general for every airman or a general for whatever we call that person and i'm not using the term, i'm not going in that direction, we'll figure it out. i'm not going there. >> i help-- >> thank you for that. we're going to figure out that kind of structure, but congress wants to make sure we don't go crazy and i actually think that's good. what i hope, and i'll have role in it because i'll be part of the space governance process, is what we feed congress is our explanation of how we're meeting their intent and we don't require them to engage very often. if we actually have a structure to do that and we know this is we know what you're looking at and here are the elements, walk over that, every 60 days, here is where we are now, here is where we are now, it won't be so bad. we are going to have to figure that out. getting there and making sure we don't create this bureaucratic element over the top is really important. because what the problem is in space, is we have a threat. it's a war fighting domain now. we have to figure out how to deal with the threat with a war fighting culture and that should be the whole focus and all the other stuff, all the other overhead should not be that big. so that's why in the air force is so important to me, it became important to the vice-president and to the president, too, because otherwise the overhead you'd have to create to create a separate service would be just enormous. so-- >> just more generally quickly on unified command plan, i think it's statutorily on some-- >> every couple years. >> are we going to see a cp sometime soon on that schedule? >> i can't remember the exact structure. i'll give you the generic piece is that we had an interim change at ucp that allowed space command to stand up. and that was done and it put the basic function underneath and then the rest of the stuff will be done under the normal unified command plan update that i think is scheduled for later this year roughly. i think that's when the rest of the stuff will come in. but we had to have an interim change to establish u.s. space command last august. >> great. okay, last question is about, really, partnerships on this issue of speed and this particular question, it's on silicon valley, i welcome you to talk more generally about how you're thinking about bringing in partnerships. how will you take speed lessons from a silicon valley that succeeded because it rejects regimenttation and control? >> so i guess there's two parts to the question pt one is the partnership and it's not just silicon valley, but it's the commercial partnership across the board and it's also allied partnership. because we need to be more aggressive in partnering with our allies and that's across all the lanes. we have to be more aggressive in partnering with our allies and understanding how to bring those pieces together, but if you look at how to integrate the silicon valley structure, but it's not just in silicon valley because it's in cambridge, it's in seattle, it's in l.a. i'll just use the spacex model. spacex was an interesting dynamic in the way they worked with the united states air force. and i lived that from the time i was in the pentagon as a two-star all the way through my experience as a four-star and space force command and a little bit at strat com and i'll tell you that what spacex had to do to effectively do business with the united states air force is embarrass us in public. and when they embarrassed us in public, no service secretary likes to be embarrassed in public and they look at us and say, hey, i don't like that, go fix it. but the interesting thing about that partnership is -- and this, i hope it's not lost in history, but that turned into a mutually beneficial partnership because we actually, we, the united states air force, i'm joint now, but i still wear an air force uniform and i'm proud of that, but we, the united states air force helped teach spacex what mission assurance really was. what it took to actually build a rocket that would work every time. that's a hard thing to do. that's a hard thing to do and spacex taught us that you can do that in a commercial model and actually go fast and the two weren't mutually exclusive. and it was difficult for our culture to accept that, but it was also difficult for their culture to accept it and it was the merging of the culture that created a great partnership and then that pushed out into the broader launch sector and including the united launch alliance because the united launch alliance realized for us to be effective we've got to take some of those things and transition those pieces. so if you look right now, just think in history, in 2007 the united states air force had to, would with lockheed and boeing to basically create a company called united launch alliance because the launch industry in this country was about dead, and we weren't going to have our own access to space. we were almost on the verge of having to go overseas to provide access to space. and look where we are today. i talked about the china 40-year story, that 12-year story is almost as remarkable, where it went from a dead industry to now the industry that leads the world in commercial launch, that leads the world in every element that is building entire different structure, that is robust, that has multiple partners, that has so many people involved in it, that's because remarkable. so if you want to figure out how you work with silicon valley, you have to figure out how to take advantage of their techniques, their ability to go fast and then search your own, i'll call it mission assurance, requirements, because the thing about a military capability is that when you call upon it, it has to work. but the interesting thing about a commercial company is if they have a product that doesn't work, they're not in business very long either. so it's ultimately the same motivation and then, if you're an american company, there's something about an american company that wants america to lead the world. it doesn't matter whether it's commercial, whether it's military, you want america leto lead the world and you mix the strength of both and i've spent a lot of time in the last year, at strat com, in seattle, silicon valley, cambridge. looking at companies and understanding how they actually do business and it's amazing, and there is partnership that is right there, we just have to figure out how to do it. >> great, general hyten, i want to thank you for your time today and for your leadership of this incredible military that we have. please join me in a round of applause for general hyten. [applaus [applause]. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> when the senate impeachment trial resumes, senate majority leader mitch mcconnell plans to offer a resolution that would give house managers and president trump's legal team 24 hours each to present their arguments over a two-day period. after that, senators will have 16 hours to ask questions before hearing an additional four hours of arguments, equally divided between house managers and the president's lawyers, on whether to subpoena witnesses and documents. senators will then have time to deliberate and vote on the motion, as well as a possible motion to dismiss the entire case. follow the impeachment trial live on c-span2 on-line at c-span.org or listen live on the free c-span radio app. for the third time in history a president is on trial in the u.s. senate. watch live today at 1 p.m. eastern as the senate begins the trial with a vote on rules. the senate impeachment trial of president trump, live unfiltered coverage on c-span2. on demand at c-span.org/impeachment and listen live on the free c-span radio app. >> campaign 2020 watch our continuing kochl of the presidential candidates on the campaign trail and make up your own mind as the voting begins next month, watch our live coverage of the iowa caucuses on monday, february 3rd. c-span's campaign 2020, your unfiltered view of politics. >> earlier this month, taiwan's president won a second determine and the democratic progressive party kept its majority in the legislature. next, taiwan's representative to the u.s. and house foreign affairs committee member ted yoho look at what this means for the u.s.-taiwan relations. 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