Efforts, this is about an hour. Good afternoon, i am Michael Hanlon and its my honor to have the undersecretary of the army, Ryan Mccarthy with us to talk about the armys ideas on modernization of its future. I will ask you in giving him a big brookings welcome then we followup with a discussion between him and me and then go to your questions, all of that by 2 30. Mr. Mccarthy is a proud native of chicago, he went to the Virginia Military institute with a bachelors in history. Then he joined an Operational Army unit, was deployed in afghanistan during the 1997 to 2002 careers, since that time, he has done all of the kinds of additional things that you would want someone to do who has the kind of job he has, he was worked on capitol hill and for the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology and logistics and he has been in the Defense Industry with lock lockheed martin. He was the acting secretary of the army in addition to being the undersebt of the army while we waited for the permanent secretary to get through the nomination process, he has a lot of on plate including some interesting ideas in army modernization, but before we start that conversation, join me in welcoming the undersebt of the Army Undersecretary of the army. Thank you, i appreciate this opportunity to come and sit here with the brookings institution, i had my first blush with this on capitol hill and at the department of defense, in my Job Interview with secretary mattis i saw two of the doctors books on the shelf and i went and read them. Its a storied history. Its a privilege for me to be here and thank you for the support that you have given me, this is our third evolution in the last four months, we have been looking a lot outside of the army to help us think through this Major Initiative that we have in restructuring this whole part of the army, quickly, i came into the job in august but really it started in the springtime with my interview with secretary mattis, we were working on a strategy that he published a couple of weeks ago about how we modernize the force and maintain our overmatched position against our competitors, the rise of north korea, iran, china and russia and their investment and the competition has garnered a lot of attention and the choices that they have made have started to close the gap towards our overmatched position and the question of why now, the army has to continue to modernize itself to maintain the position as number one in the world. There is no time like the present, even though when you look at the challenges that the army faces, 185,000 troops deployed world wide. We are in a challenge with our fiscal position in the country, we have budget deficits over the last few years but with those challenges, we know we have to evolve. We have an Industrial Age system that was created years ago, the responsibility of how we do Weapons Systems development is spread across these commands and the relationships are not as close, in the fusing of information of how we development a requirement, work through the trade office and go through the process. On my first day on the job when i was talking to the jedges, we talked about how to get better and faster and we looked at where the responsibilities lie in the sneus, first we had to be specific about what we wanted. What were the priorities that we need to drive through and get increased capability, they were simple, an army shoots after it communicates, we looked at the portfolio and the capabilities and realized that long range precision and future vertical lifts and networks span across all fundamentals, we locked in on these capabilities, asked how are we investing in these capabilities, we conducted reviews and moved the funding against these priorities, upwards of 80 of our research bej wept to those capabilities, we looked at how to conduct material development. We saw across the enterprise that there were responsibilities that worked with the major commands, we said how to you restructure and put it all under one roof. The tal ept is where it is in the country, wut where is reports is what we focused on. Formalizing the relationships between reform and acquisition, its wholly about people. I give all of the credit to my wing man. He went and hand picked the officers that we put in the cross functional team. The qualified officers that we led in the cross functional teams, fused requirements of testing and equipment. It was amazing, we looked at this process and talked about education and staffing and the command experience. If you look at history, we have been successful in the department of defense when it was about people. Who is in charge and who is accountable and how to generationally change the outcome, over time, the right people worked their career paths to sustain the great outcomes, we have the cross functional teams that we stood up immediately. I signed on to eight acquisition authorities that were granted to us in the fy 15 authorization act that put the system in emotion, the doctor was confirmed in november and he brought communications into the process, but the four of us have to constantly interact and engage with industry, not just the traditional Defense Industry but across the country, we look at foreign partners and into the potential of doing work with them as well. We wanted to eep up the areas wide to get the best ideas that industry could bring to bear, we said in the first days, we are not changing our priorities. We have to communicate and put our money where our mouth is. We are now approaching the 120 day mark that i layed in last fall for our condition setting task force looking at the restructuring and teeing up the courses of action that we need to look at to make a decision on how to move the responsibilities into this organization that we call the army command. Ideally we are looking at an end of march time frame to make an announce pt and have an interim operating force by summer. Thank you, let me, if i could, try my understanding of what you are doing and ask you to comment, if i have it right. I will take a different tack, we know that the United States army had a tremendous Success Story in the regan period and into the 1990s with the so called big five and great helicopters, good Missile Defense systems that kept getting better. They did well in operation dessert storm. Then we saw war getting more complicated and messier even in somalia and then the army had a few problems, future exat systems, commanche crusader. Many of those were canceled. Your predecessors in uniform and the civilian work force did a lot of innovative things but the big programs were less successful. On top of that we have seen the pass of innovation picking up, noble here, noam in the United States military but in china and russia, secretary mattis mentioned when he unveiled it strategy a couple of weeks ago, we have a tremendous innovation in the country that the department of defense is not well placed to keep pace with in terms of the time cycles that Silicon Valley is capable of generating. So in terms of the past problems, but maybe more because of the rise of china and russia, you decided that you needed to do things differently, if i understand, there are two big things that you are aspiring to accomplish, one is to create these cross functional teams in six major areas of army technology. It involves the technologists and the war experts talking as a team. Also i may have to go to congress and change within the department of the army how fast you make certain kinds of decision and what kinds of shorts authorities you have to reallocate funds, how much of that story did i get right . Keep going. The nature of the cross functional teams is to tie that operational confidence with the technical confidence, you highlighted some of the more catastrophic failures with the acquisition programs. We changed the operational constant. Whether you got it right or not, world events altered the thinking of what objectives that will you please you wanted to achieve. So that the mining of the technical communities is a foundational element of the cross functional teams. If you look at the cross functional teams, we are trying to reduce the numbers of layers, by the reduction of layers, we bring accountability and speedy decision make. So thats where the challenge and the frustration with congress has been for a long time. When a program fails, who is accountable. It starts with the people in the corridor. We are trying to bring that into the fold. We have to sit on top and provide the access to the decisions that are brought faster so we can move money and provide the authority necessary, its at the heart of what we are trying to achieve. So the six categories, long range fires, artillery and missile strikes, that is where we are falling behind. So its missile and air defense, thats the second category, ground vehicles is the third. Rotary wing and future lift is the fourth. Then the command and control Center Networks is the fifth and the soldier is the sixth. Not sixth in priority just the way i listed it. Are there any one of the six that is going to benefit the most of all others from the new concept. Not to side step that but we find that the mission and the choices that we make within those portfolios effect the others, so wherever the Technology Comes forward will make those choices. We have a strifed to tell our team leaders to provide us a portfolio capability, like a hedge fund manager, how do you deal with threats and laterally integrate with the teammates, so we can meght the threat of the Technology Based on the investment on one of the other portfolios, we have turn the knobs just right. The teams have been in place for three months and they are bringing forward recommendations, we have an interesting 75 days ahead of us, thats how we are approaching the challenge, baw you cannot because you cannot make that happen without mitigating the increased capability. We have to look to the other weapons forms. You described a couple of things you are hoping to accomplish, one is improving speed. You also talked about the teams and the combination of balance that they bring together. To make that link real, dayto day, it strikes me through the technology, that the speed benefit is perhaps going to be most notable in the network area, you have, as we were discussing, the pace of modern electronics is so bad that you need to react. Plus the benefit of having the cfp and the technologist talking to the visionary, so a concept that sounded great in a brookings seminar maybe was not as readily deployable in part because you have visionaries here in one comabd and technologists in the other and they did not see themselves as part of a team. We have general gallagher, one of the cfp leaders. Thank you. For awful you, its an honor to be here today. One of the things we have learned, we have to move with speed and precision and stay ahead of our adversaries, we have large programs to field. As we took a good hard look at the network we realized that we need to cut out a few of those programs that may not deliver on the future. We are adapting and buying new solutions that are readily available. If our teams have something that we can put it immediately, we want to get it out to the soldiers so improve our ability to fight. Then we ask what is next. What will allow you us to explore the art of the possible, what we have been trying to do is to get associated with units that are focused on the Global Response force and our most pressing plans and get capabilities in the hands of the voters, to get feedback and make add jusms, we want to fail early, fail cheap. When something is working and red ready, we want to get it out as quickly as possible. We have to move as quickly as possible especially in it. We in the network are cross cutting. Sensors and tactor acquisition, we have to have a network that enables that. We have to have a network that is trusted. We have to make sure that we are going going to hit the target that we need to help. It has to be an ecosystem. The secretary mentioned it before but all of the hor hor horizontal integration has been significant, we have looked at our science and technology portfolio, what are we investing in that is going to deliver capability . And what is research and development investing in, what is the department of defense investing in and other players in the space that have network implications, where are they investing . We have to find out who is doing what in this phase and how do we explore that and exploit it as quickly as we can by getting it in the hand of the soldiers. Thats what is all about is fighting and winning. I ask for an example from either of you, maybe its unfair because its too broad of a question, but how much faster do you want to get. If there is a notional program that is taking five or 10 years, how much faster can we realistically have in the space of the network. In my opinion, in the technology today. We can put it in quickly, where we have been hampered is large programs that take years to fill. In many cases because of the budget being where it is, we have fielding a couple of brigade combat troops a year, we are giving them yesterdays technology and its not what we need. There is no doubt in my moind that we can cycle faster, we are working with industry to identify, what are the quick wins, making sure that we have freedom of action to insert the technology and fail as we need to. I think that we can can move fast. There are some long horizon technology. Also Artificial Intelligence and knowledge learning in the network so we can simplify what the soldier and the leader had has to do on the edge, that is done in sanctuary and the machinery does all of the work, technology is evolving and we need to keep pace. Is there anything in particular about the authority that was granted . Including the threshold program, thats jurisdiction to move the money around. Thats always a challenge. With respect to the other portfolios and some of the larger hardware development. We have to get development down to two years, five to seven years is too long, we have to get better at that. We put focus on that i have one more question, what do you need from the department of defense or the congress to do that