Transcripts For CSPAN2 Discussion On Army Operations Priorities 20240713

Secretary and chief and i will have a little chaff about the defense strategy. About their president s budget request that just came out. As well as the emerging concept. We will save about 15 minutes at the end to take questions from the audience here. First, i want to throw it over to the secretary and chief to give some opening remarks. Thank you, suzanne. The closest to switzerland. As we discussed in the green room, wonderful opportunities for us to try to talk about how we are trying to transform the army. We are in year three on a very aggressive effort of transforming the army and not only how we train the force, modernize and ultimately help our people reach their maximum potential. Emphasizing through a year of massive restructuring like we have not been in over the years in the army, creating an organization specifically to modernize the force, but staying against the fundamentals. We use reform as a tool to finance and help us evolve. On the readiness standpoint, we are north of 25 today. Very proud of that. One of the things that we have recognized with all the changes and challenges we have faced in the world, it is something you will see focus with the leadership. Abe abrams did a remarkable job getting us back to focus on getting tactical readiness and a great place. Now, how do you take these units in project very quickly worldwide . We did that on new years eve. Remarkably well. A cold start. Moved the brigade and within hours the First Battalion on the ground. Literally took people out of new years eve parties. Cold start. Moving heavy formations within days to get them on the ground with partners in europe and east asia. Something that we are really focused on. Made some investments and we will continue to do that as we march across so that we can improve in that span kind of getting boots on the ground quickly. Modernization effort, massive restructuring over two years ago to bring all the stakeholders together in one week. Bringing clarity and decisions. Forging better relationships between the requirement Community Acquisition sustainment. Very proud of that. Very excited. A lot of prototypes because we moved 80 of the funding against those six modernization priorities. A little over two years ago. Between our night efforts which were basically zerobased budgeting reviews, we have gone through our second revolution. North of 45 billion across moving these priorities. A lot of energy. You will see about half of the procurement dollars against new capabilities. A huge change within our enterprise. That brings nothing but tough choices and 22 and 23. If these prototypes are successful, that is where the choices are being made. Into the formation and to start to scale. Big challenges in front of us. We emphasize the word reform repeatedly. That helps us evolve as an institution. It helps us do a better job of managing every dollar we have shared dollars are like bullets. Just pounds the commanders. Three or four years ago, wed have obligations it was 4 billion a year that would just go back to the treasury. Continuing to get better there. That is just in leadership. Just pounding people on the screen. It is amazing how it works. We have been improving dramatically from that standpoint. Changing the operating model and doing a lot of things differently. That means we have to get out more and communicate and emphasize the things we are trying to do. I think the chief would be great to talk more on the specifics of those initiatives. We saw that on new years eve we also have to invest in the future. I look at the army over the last, you know, 100 years or so. We have had major trance formations over the last 40 years. In 1980, when a lot of us came in the army, we had a major transformation on how we do business. Now we find ourselves in 2020 and we have to transform the army. With moving from an Industrial Age, the information age, we have to do things differently. Talking about transformational change. Not looking for incremental improvements. If you take a look at what we are doing when it comes to modernization, that is exactly what we are getting after. We are just not talking about real equipment. We are talking about new, a new way that we will fight. New organizations. Organization priorities. We are also talking about how we manage people and the 21st century. We are excited and look forward to your questions. I will start this conversation. That is with the strategy. A defense strategy. Secretary esper had what i would call a Birthday Party a couple weeks ago. Just turned two. It certainly feels like the strategy is in the terrible twos. Very dynamic moment. And a lot of happening. Hopefully in the end, rewarding. I want to start off by asking, you know, both of you, how is the army doing . Also, in your joint chiefs hat, how is the joint force as a whole in achieving the goals that were priorities. We have moved billions of dollars to develop new weapon systems. I think the first, we put our money where our mouth is. They will have to get into formation to truly be successful a very Aggressive Program in place, right in this exercise. Do it in europe and east asia. Doing one that is starting right now. The element on the continent. Following year in east asia. We put a lot of funding and troops towards these exercises. Strengthening partnerships and increasing presence worldwide. Southeast asia. We have an ounce headquarters that will have. It will be specifically to operate in europe. We are looking at partnering in asia for where we would have that. I think we are probably a solid b at this point. A lot more work to do. We talk about the joint force. It is very important that we share the same vision. Right now at the joint level, all the Main Operations concept. The contribution of that is multi demand operations. Two domains. Now we believe we will be tested in all domains. We recognize that. We also recognize a lot of cross contributions to the joint force probably one of the best examples of this is longrange division fire. Penetrating potential antiaccess area denial capabilities that will enable either maritime or air forces maneuver. I definitely want to come back to the concept. First, i want to dig a little deeper on the two principal priorities with china and russia. I would like to start by asking, how has the armys view of its role in asia changed or evolved as a result . Are you thinking about what the armys role in that conflict or potential conflict would look like . Three ground wars in the last century in asia. We have always been in asia. How many people do we have assigned . 91,000 just assigned to that command. We have been instrumental for a long time now. You see much more emphasis over the last several years. When he and i were the under vice team, we went out and spent about three days with admiral Phil Davidson just going through the plans. What do you need to invest against the capabilities that he needs to win . The defender exercise that we will put this in place. We have always been, and we double down on that Going Forward. There will be no greater deterrence than boots on the Ground Training sidebyside with allies. We are working very hard with our disposition. You will see a lot of moves associated with that over the next eight piedmont. Talking about great competition. It does not necessarily mean great conflict. You avoid that through strength. Strong relationships with partners and allies in the region. Working together. That is the strategy that we are pursuing. On the capabilities side, specifically, talking a little bit about longrange precision fire and post inf and what does that mean in asia in terms of war fighting capability. Taking a look at longrange precision fire. Some have set up systems which we use the term antiaccess or denial that may keep us, make it more difficult, if we ever got in a conflict to penetrate. We want to have the ability to penetrate with naval or air forces and what that allows us to do is divide that capability. I wonder if we could then turn to russia and talk about how the army is thinking about that particular competition and, also, if we could dive a little deeper on the defender exercises. I think thats a really exciting development, actually. Same thing in europe. A lot of partners and allies. Nato is a very strong relationship. Great power. Competition does not necessarily mean great conflict. Standing together with our allies and partners showing strength. It is an exercise that allows us to practice, rehearse our ability to bring forces into europe and work very closely with our partners. That is what will happen over the next couple of months. I am really about it. An airborne drop in georgia. I will go watch him unload Armored Vehicles out of a ship. You will be able to see us driving through cities and we will be alongside them. We will do our exercises. It will be a great opportunity. You will have tens of thousands of americans dynamically employing two Different Countries and conducting various exercises. Dynamic force of employment. The secretary said we saw that in iraq. It is also the ability to maneuver, or, move, multiple forces by multiple means biplanes, automobiles, trains, and ships. Clearly, a lot of progress there appeared i wonder if you could give me a few comments on, where does the work remained to be done . What is still on your to do list modernization is, just what i do, you know, what keeps you up at night. The time. We are blessed with budget increases right now. Just nailing these investments. The chief and i have maintained a role, even in our new jobs, staying on top of this, more so than we would maybe historically. We have such a massive investment. If we can get these prototypes to be successful, it will make these decisions and 22 and 23 that much easier. That standpoint it is really large. The readiness piece, something that we are remarkably proud of. We do very well. Turn on very quickly. The most part tinted seasoned combat leaders in the history. If there is a place where i do not worry as much, it is because i know weve got them. We do not deter conflict. We are moving along and we are very, very proud of our modernization priorities. We get close to prototypes. To me, success is when your out operation units. Weve got great programs going. Wonderful great things. We are in the process of getting close to prototype. Success is when all of these priorities we have are in the hands of soldiers and we get the chance to exercise. That is excellent segway. Almost like we planned it. A staff taking on the modernization priorities, but before we get into these programs, i want to ask a little bit more broadly, what does modernization mean to the army besides equipment . Obviously, a huge part, but what is the other piece . I will take that. I talked a little bit about some of the older folks in the room, remember the 1980s. We came out with a new way we would fight. We came up with new units. We developed our special operation units. The one 60th came out of there. Some of our special operations came out of that. Our combat training centers. 1980s. We had the big five. We also went through our volunteer force. A lot more than just the big five that modernize the army. What is new. It starts with multi demand operations. Moving to multi, Main Operations multi task forces. The assistive brigades. We will have five of those inactive. We are taking a hard look at information warfare. What that looks like so we can compete below the level of conflict. Dirt combat training centers. Now we will train and virtual reality. Train and cyber ranges. So we can do those Information Operation things that we need to do. We talked about the big six. Spending a lot of time on talent we recognize that we are in a war for talent. In a lot of ways, Industrial Age Personnel Management systems. We believe we want to keep the best and brightest in the United States army. We will compete for their talents. We are putting systems in place to do that. Most young people today do not want to be interchangeable parts in the industrial system. They want to be recognized for their talents and that is what we are doing. I think from there, lets step to the big modernization priorities and talk a little bit about each of them. We talked a little bit about this already. I want to dive a little bit deeper into, you know, how has your thinking about the development of this easily changed post inf . How does it contribute to kind of the joint problem specifically in the eastern pacific. What does it look like in motion . The dynamic this way. We moved ahead for the full production. Extended range artillery. We are excited about this. We fired a wraparound twice the distance. 39 kilometers at yuma hit with precision. We are excited about this. To be able to double tactical artillery that quickly, we know that there is a lot of margin for growth there. Very excited about that. A successful test in november. Having twice the value. Now, we are in a post inf rule. We are extending the range of these long range systems. Which will give us a greater ability to maneuver again potential adversaries in the future. Hypersonics effort, the chief handpicks for that job has been outstanding and literally corralled the entire department against this effort. Finding economies to scale with the buys. They are sharing the information. We are doing this jointly. He has collapsed the span time. Fiscal 23. Longrange precision fire Program Number one. North of 10 billion across. We put a lot of funding against that. A lot of talent. Some very talented folks have stepped up to the plate and they are swinging hard. We are excited about that. Do you want to talk about the employment capability . That is what comes down the most, i think. Task force organization. We do not know exactly what it will look like, but we know what it will be able to do. Longrange precision affects. Built around an organization, i 22, intelligence, Information Operations. It will do cyber. Electronic warfare. It will do space. It will also have the capability of doing longrange precision fires. Hypersonic batteries, prism batteries that can sink ships. We will determine based on the requirements. Okay. Next on the list is combat vehicle. I want to talk a little bit about stumbling out of the gate. What did you learn from that experience . His leadership here was tremendous. People often talk the old saying you want to fail early. I dont think with that system we early. I think we learned early. This is for a lot of the industry that we are working very closely with. We will do things differently in the army. Developing large requirement documents over fiveseven years. Then we passed them over to our acquisition professionals. Fifteen20 years we came out the other end after spending billions of dollars. We did not have what we wanted. We are changing our process. You will see very shortly a list of characteristics coming out. We are moving away from the word requirements. It means so much to those in the business that it actually constrains innovation. We are coming out with a list of characteristics that we want. Latest authority capability. They will fit in this design. Once we get that back, we will take a look at the characteristics and say we need to define these a little better. The characteristics will get a little sharper. It will go to a detail design. Then we will go to a prototype design. We will actually make sure we can build it. Not until we built the prototype when we get the requirements. Then we will know exactly what the trades are and we will be able to proceed in a much quicker manner without spending a lot of money or without going after requirements that we did not think we needed. I think it is really an interesting Lesson Learned here. Particularly as what you just described as a process that has a lot more ability to iterate with industry and tap into the talent that exists in order to solve the armys problems. You are applying those lessons kind of across the board to these other programs as well . Yes, we are. We are learning as we go through this. We have operators. We have acquisitions. We have industry. Many of these people have been doing it a certain way for a long time. Changing the way they do the business. Sometimes its hard if you are very comfortable with the process. Other than the outcome. I am more interested in the outcome they in the process. The ipad system has a very similar acquisition strategy. Integrated visual augmentation system. It is in our portfolio. Basically, the gaming industry, see if i can do it here, the gaming industry makes these goggles and you can play call of duty or something and you are in that kind of, the visual reality you see kids playing video games. You buy that commercial product called interface. And then the interface, now we can control the applications that we put on the goggle. Day site, right site. We are looking at do you put in a Common Operating Picture so that the fourman start going through the door, you can see that at headquarters. You have Companies Like microsoft involved with us which historically would have helped us with email but now are helping us with manufacturing or even more so but since training others so the point he is maki making, the speed of business, they are not getting tied up for months or years to getting something on contract. It gets them excited and put them in a position where they will invest in their business instead of investing in Contract Experts so they can spend years backandforth moving paper. That is the thing about transformational change by incremental improvements. Ive used a phone as how we went around with the phone and on the iphone came in and out maps and pictures in every thing else but we are doing the same thing with our nightvision goggles. The old folks here used to buy these there were both base goggles and then they got better and we wanted to but formal in there so we are going down improving on nightvision capabilities, thermal and nightvision capability altogether and then they came in from the side with a whole new method of doing business and now its not just a night site but a way of doing business. Based on a conversion it really came out of gamers and they were doing Different Things and that is what we are looking for for innovation. All of a sudden, we dont even know the things they will do. As you stop to think about it now you can see and video and be in a vehicle from behind and under armour and look through the walls and there are a whole bunch of things that will fundamentally change the way our combat soldiers do business and those are the type of things we are looking for and try not to restrain industry with these very prescriptive requirements because they wont meet our requirements but we dont know exactly what we want. Thats right we throw it out there and thats what happen here. We do not know micro soft was in business when this happen. The first time we went through it with secretary mattis set up this house in the pentagon because we couldnt get them to go so we went to look at it a couple months early and looking at the synthetic training scenario and it was like dragons and spaceship and i thought oh god, we will get fired off mac my heart stopped and it was like what have we done but you realize the speed of that industry within line three or four months they show up and its a near peer and you thank you are in a city and it was with a matter of months how fast they can move the software and, you know, it worked out for us but at the time you think you will move real slow but it is remarkable, the engineering talent from these companies. The business was pretty start and they built out at Camp Pendleton inside simulation and general mattis, big marine, been there a whole bunch of times and got to go through that and it wasnt a bad way to do business. The upgrades and the dragons then you have the fantasy game and. [inaudible conversations] i want to talk about the network which is another of the big six priorities and the air force was a big talking points for them and their rollout and they made a big investment on behalf of the joint force and these capabilities that i think most of us agree will be critical to what chris would describe as the new its this idea of connecting any sensor to any shooter across the force and how does or how do the Army Investment or how do those investments fit together is my question because its essentially a joint think that has to happen. First of all, all the joint chiefs support a joint command and control. We have to have that. Each service has been approaching this problem set from not a if you are on the ground you have hundreds of thousands of uses that need access but i think the secret is and i learned a lot more that its all about data and us all standardized in our data and how we transport the data and how we store the data and how we secure the data and we all have to understand this because we talk about machine learning, Artificial Intelligence but until you deal with the data problem you dont understand have a system. What we are doing is we have an integrated battle command system which is working with our shooters and integrated technical thats bringing can vacation for our soldiers to the edge and we been all over the cloud and data standardization so we are bringing that together to work closely with the air force and we should have an april timeframe that brings us Holding Together so we can can mitigate in reality and not powerpoint slides. [laughter] okay, i think lets talk about air and Missile Defense read it seems like there is never enough to go around. It is one of those chronically high demand, low dust in the assets and another one of the big six modernization priorities and wonder if you could bring us uptodate on where you are and that piece of the puzzle in terms of both capacity and improved capability. First, we are very proud of our defenders and they are all over the world and they are in the middle east and in europe and in career and do an incredible job. We are proud of them. The future for air and Missile Defense is the way we see it is it is sense for the shooters. Not just one sensor for one Missile System but it is having multiple sensors that integrate and then you can pick the arrow, so to speak, from the quiver you will use. We are developing highend queue lasers and things with microwaves and Electronic Warfare and missiles and doing things with guns and doing things with so when you dont want to you look at some of the problems that we see in the future that range from Unmanned Aerial Systems you dont want to shoot patriot missiles at small you a s so you have to come up with a solution sets to that and then on the far side you have hypersonic missiles so what it really comes down to is the defense that kicks the right weapon systems at the right range and protects the forces but that is where we are going. Critical to successfulness of the defense portfolio will be the architecture over top and without it we will not have the ability to queue and speed and be relevant in the future. At the risk of poking at a sensitive topic will that moved to space force or are we still making the determination . With every merger there is the vestige are so i think that we are in the process of helping stand that organization up and clearly we will have a role but we still have watercraft and helicopters so even though we have a navy and an air force after the army will stand up first, obviously. Over time the assets will devasting go to the space force but we worked very hard to help them with that we have relationships with nga where they are working with our our intelligence folks as well as helping us look at how do we queue satellite past satellites and that we will be doing that as early as the spring so as the chief talks about as we get to this multi domain organization a lot of this is behaviors and now bring that down to an echelon like Brigade Combat Team having those leaders know looking at how they task an asset is something weve not done before and the partnerships have been wonderful with the Intelligence Community but things will change over the next couple of years as the space force matures. I want to talk about how the army is thinking about autonomy and i will paraphrase my old boss who says if in the future the first soldier is a human you done something wrong and so i want to dig a little bit about how you are thinking about autonomy and Autonomous Systems as you develop new operational concepts particularly in this multi domain environment. I like the idea of a person in the loop so to speak but i agree with bob in that i dont think that anyplace is a dirty or dangerous job that we can put a robot or some economist and we should not be clearing minefields and we should not be going through and if you go into an integrative air Defense Network we probably should do that with unmanned type systems but the agency thing is i still think there is a need for soldiers or a person in the loop because you dont or you cant fail through first of all, if youre completely autonomous you dont get a sense of what is going on in the second thing is even those that have evolved in remote operations the best civilian example is if we were doing this by video or teleconferencing this would be a very different session here and you cant look around and they go back to the sleeper to look around in the room and get a sense of how you come across so it is still a situation where we want to have that capability and we look at some systems like with the fact that you can see and project yourself into a vehicle you can be in the lead vehicle but not physically be there. We do that in the Apache Helicopter right now and if you are in the backseat and having a display unit but its in front of you that is fine the aircraft so why cant you move that to the lead vehicle and you can sit behind so there are a lot of things we can do as we get this convergence of different types of technologies that fundamentally change the way we do business. If you think about how we do those type things differently and you can be the third vehicle but for all intents and purposes youre looking for the heads up display anything you are in the league and can help it out. The same could be true in the future helicopter program. Absolutely. Theres a potential for platforms in that space. I look at because some of the things you get 35 ranges to go on into this attack and put them in there and would be tough if they looked up the front of the helicopter and there was no one there. But that doesnt mean but here is the deal. We are competing for pilot so maybe we dont have 34 crew members of their but it is just one and maybe that crewmember is more there if something goes wrong or something changes and they have the capability. And you might get used to it in the middle as driverless buses become a thing. But then you have options. Maybe that aircraft you are flying you will do a very Difficult Mission or you have to get in the place and maybe take something out or put cargo onto that and you dont want to risk pilots because if they shoot it down you lose the cargo and you dont lose the crew. There are when we talk about this and the characteristics we want in each system we want to keep options open for the commanders and then then we get an idea if we can do this. If they show we can do it and start requiring it and creating a system so its just a matter of we can do this with software that is what we want. I want to come back to you as i wrap up here to talk about all these things that we just discussed s splashing in the background and i want to hit a point you made at the top little more directly because its not intuitive for those of us who do not spent time in the programs. Army is a commendable job of moving resources to invest in these prototypes but at some point the prototypes have to enter production in order to get to the soldier in the fields and that is where the big dollars happen. Can you talk about what that evolution will look like when it will happen in how you will handle it. Yes, with the perfect storm hits and everybody performs to highlight the challenges it will be ruthless prioritization and ultimately the chief will get the senior commanders in there and we will have to make very hard choices of the weapon systems we need to scale and inmate require even a tiered nature with the units that would receive them and if it is something that we are having deep discussion about to prepare the institution for this which will really hit within the next 24 months and to your point it will start scaling across the 8201st and will be expensive and challenging for the physical environment that is where the vestige are legacy systems there will be nowhere else to go when you are six to present Combatant Commanders require it worldwide, 180,000 people and under this current demand over half of our Balance Sheet is to finance what is going on in the world and we cant pull back because the world needs americas leadership in need the u. S. Army forward. We recognize that that is in front of us and we will make those hard choices perform. On that cheerful note, we will turn it to the audience were christians and if i could ask you to wait for the mike from to get to you and then let us know who you are and where youre from, we have microphones, right . Appear turtleneck, second row. I am with the Atlantic Council and several other institutions. Thank you for an interesting briefing but my question is if you worked in beijing or beijing or moscow and leaders of your army how would you look at what america is doing in testing the weaknesses and how you would respond to what you quote just described in the very interesting terms. Yeah, the way i would hope they would respond is the idea that power competitions does not create conflict and we compete for the security of various regions in a non kinetic type away. What i would like to do or at least what i see is take off the table the idea that we will have a conflict and i think we will have whether they call it unless or impotent competition will just happen by the nature of great powers and you will have people competing for resources and that will happen and what i think is important is we take that off the table and they will take a look at the systems we are developing and if you look at what some have done is a strategy has been denial type capabilities so some of the systems that we are developing will allow us to certainly deal with that and certainly give us options and dilemmas that they will not tap so they will have respond in some way to what we are doing to overcome and we look at them as options and they probably look at the fact that were operating in all five domains they will have to do the same. [inaudible question] [inaudible question] well, when we are done and i dont want to get too far into it but the stars simulation and extermination that is why we are shifting to operations and modernization priorities because when we simulate an experiment with them thats how we get the insights we need to deal with some of these problem sets and that is why we are not going with or be transformational right now. If i could add russia plays their hand very well considering how weak their Industrial Base supply chain is that the challenges they face every time we conduct these exercise they spend per menace amount of resources and energy when they try to do their exercises in parallel so they play their hands very well and it may sound investments with any access or denial type capabilities that you mention it we making investments to strengthen our networks to try to be on the defensive nature but the cyberspace is a dynamic environment and as much about the authorities that we are granted is how we compete in that space as opposed to playing defense and taking punches and i will leave that at that but from the chinese standpoint one belt, one road is designed to commoditize quality of life for over a billion people and without it they will be hardpressed and they are having a hard enough time responding to a flu virus. You are learning about that government to respond as well but a lot of it will come down to economics for the country of china and as you know the chinese are undergoing a fairly serious transformation. [inaudible] they are certainly going to and are in the process of transferring their army and we seen how theyve operated over the last 20, 30 years and we will see how they operate in the future. Here on the isle . John harper with National Defense magazine paid could you give us an update on your thinking and plans for an abrams replacement and what capabilities you are looking for their when we might see a lot of pna dollars going into that and when you would hope to plan, excuse me, feel that type of system to trips in the field. The abrams is still the heavyweight champ and in its class. We are focusing right now on the Armored Vehicle fleet we are looking at how you continue to have the capabilities necessary Going Forward but that is further back in the sku and we will continue to upgrade them and bring in a brigade set here this fiscal year budget over one lane dollars invested against abrams again this year so right now we will continue to upgrade the current fleet. This is a little more on that as far as the thought process as you know, we are replacing the bradley but were also part of the next generation combat vehicle developing three prototypes for a white weight, Medium Weight and heavyweight robotic combat vehicle and we are trying to see it as we experiment with them with the soldiers that tell us insights on what it looks like in the future and then it will be in a much better place to decide where we go with the abrams and how that plays out. Fbi energy, i would like to hear a little more just a little about the focus on propulsion and diversification of fuel and fuel efficiency, transporting less fuel across the battlefield and fuel diversification with it being able to relate to or reach sources of other sides of fuels that can be used not just depending on [audio difficulties] one of the things that we are developing Engine Program but i would say that as part of our incremental along the lines that we will be your fuel and get give us much more capability and that is part of things were doing and were doing the Research Develop and work and new ways for propulsion and again as we take a look at some of these vehicles that will be developed, next generation combat vehicle, we not prescribed what will drive that but the idea that how we reduce logistics is one of the characteristics of that and when you look at what we do to maintain the supply lines or our vehicles, 5000 gallon tank is going along the road so anything we can reduce fuel propulsion can help us out in the same thing with parts. If you can make parts Going Forward at a manufacturing and how we can do things there because we do want to reduce the amount of logistics we have to support our systems. I think we have time for tomorrow. Here on the isle. Patrick tucker from defense one, on the longrange fires as you begin the process of winnowing down 23 the solutions that will be most useful to you are you talking particularly partners in asia and are you finding among them a willingness or eagerness to house potential longrange fires that range from china and how that would influence your decision about what to pursue next because of their enthusiasm and capability. We have not had specific conversations about capabilities per per se in country expert and why the chief and i both have been into the region in the last 45 days and its amazing how energetic they are for us to establish more robust Expeditionary Base and increase the size and scale of our exercises more for military sales so it is the Tremendous Energy not having a specific discussion about that to date but nothing but excitement and the thing i am most remakes these conversations very easy for me is over 70 in the countries in asia are army chiefs. Again, highlighting just how important the army is for that part of the world makes the conversations much easier. Tremendous energy, a lot of conversations underway but what you see from year to year across the specific pathways exercises weve gone from three months, six months deployments and we are going to more countries with consistency, thailand bought 60 strikers and want to buy another hundred now. There is the trends are going in the right direction and a lot will happen in the next couple of years. Last question right here on the aisle. Barbara hoffman from samsung. You talk about virtual reality, cyber trading, security, speeds, the infrastructure so does 5g fit into that infrastructure having been in dod for 34 years and ran the joint Service Provider i know the capacity and limitations to a lot of our infrastructures. How will you process that information, data, and secure it . This is one of the Biggest Challenges we face in the department right now. The providers that we will do business will be the ones we can trust and so there is a lot of Energy Related to that we are trying to put Solutions Forward but we are not in a position to discuss it at liberty at where we are headed at this point but we are experimenting with 5g right now. Everyone please join me in thanking the secretary and the chief. [applause] please, keep your seats until they depart. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. [inaudible conversations] campaign 2020 is in nevada today. Live at 3 00 p. M. Eastern as President Trump speaks in las vegas ahead of the states caucus. Live coverage on cspan, watch ondemand at seasonal. Org and listen on the go with a free cspan radio app. This week we are featuring book tv programs showcasing what is available every weekend on cspan2. Tonight starting at 8 00 p. M. Enjoy book tv this week and every weekend on cspan2. Sunday night on q a, we discussed notable speakers of the house with Catholic University America Political science professor, matthew green. Become a long ways from the days of Dwight Eisenhower and the idea that you Work Together even if you are in separate elected institutions and this idea that the speaker of a particular should be deferential to the president. There is a way in which that is a sign of a healthy, vigorous partisan differences and if you disagree with the president or the speaker you should not be afraid to do so but i think since this is what troubles me and ive written about this there are certain ways in which our elected officials we expect to share some common agreement on issues or at least the sounds they share or have these important roles to play, institutional roles that should rise above their policy differences. Watch sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan q a. Cspan your unfiltered view of government. Created by cable in 1979 and brought to you today for your television provider. Congressman joe kennedy is challenging incumbent senator ed markey in the Massachusetts Democratic Party primary contest. Held march 3 when voters go to the polls. The two candidates face one another last week and a debate hosted by wgbh tv in boston. This is a wgbh news special presentation. The first Massachusetts Senate primary debate between incumbent senator ed markey and congress meant joe kennedy. Broadcasting across the commonwealth in partnership with wca i in new england public media