All right, i think well get started here. Thank you so much for joining us here at the heritage foundation, release of a major paper, which will be the focus. I was told we dont necessarily have to talk about silencing cell phones. We have a robust online audience, and, you know distractions, we want to minimize that here. Thank you for joining us here. Were going to talk about a new report on rebuilding the army. Its one of a series, actually the third paper thats out. The first one talked about how to think about the future, the one released one on the marine corps, this is a major paper on the army and how to think about its relationship with the imperatives of the National Defense strategy, National Security strategy, how the world is changing, and some recommendations for what the army needs to be and the path it needs to go down to get to where it needs to be with a look out to about the 2030 year time frame. Well follow up with a paper on the air force, which i think is coming out next month, and then well wrap up by the end of the year with a paper on the navy. So well have all four services covered, and how to think about preparations for the future. These papers are meant to give an independent perspective, advice and recommendations to the administration, to the military service in particular, leading officials and the Defense Department and hopefully to inform deliberations in congress and this one really hits the ball out of the park on that. Starting about 18 months ago the army did embark on a major effort driven by then secretary of Defense James Mattis on increasing lethality across the force and a real focus on getting back to an age of peer competitor fights with major opponents such as russia and china, how do you do things other than irregular warfare, which is what weve been immersed in for the last 20 years. This addresses those sorts of challenges. Participating in the discussion today will be the author, tom spoehr. He has served in the army for 36 years and retired in 2016 as a lieutenant general, its been a blessing having him here leading our defense efforts. Moderating the discussion will be miss jen judson. Shes the land warfare reporter for defense news and has covered defense matters in the d. C. Area for about eight years or so. Previously a reporter at politico pro defense and inside defense, a recipient of the National Press clubs best analytical reporting award in 2014. And named the defense media awards best young defense journalist in 2018. I dont know how long you get to carry young as a title. Ive aged out already. Is that it . Okay. Without further ado were going to turn to a great discussion and open it up for q a later. When we get to that point, identify yourself and who youre with so our online audience knows whos speaking as well. Try to focus on questions, not personal statements. Without further ado, take it away. Thank you to everyone in the audience for being here and for those also watching online and tom, thank you for all your hard work with this report. Since its been released its really triggered a decent amount of discussion and debate in the army community, which is obviously a good thing. So well dive deeper into those issues in our conversation. But, you know, its my feeling that its a good time to be making suggestions to the army. Since theyre in the process of developing the multido Main Operations concept, relooking at force structure and theyre heading down an ambitious path. Just to kick things off, tom, if you could talk about the purpose of the report, why you decided to write this report and how you went about researching and talk about how your background applies to what you were doing in the report. Yeah, thank you, jen, and thanks, everyone, for being here today and thanks for moderating this discussion. We embarked on this project, we call it the rebuilding americas project or ramp project probably two years ago. We really didnt know what would be happening at the time these papers came out and its really fortuitous as you kind of suggested that the army paper came out now. Theyve just had a theyre in the process of a major change of leadership. Getting a new secretary of the army, secretary mccarthy, has his confirmation hearing next week. The chief of staff changed over. The new chief of staff, general mcconville taking over a couple weeks ago. There was a clean break point where the army could reevaluate where they are and take a look at things as the introduction said we have a new National Defense strategy. Even though it was january, i think, of 2018, in army terms thats like yesterday. People say, hey, why hasnt the army or the department of defense adapted to the new Defense Strategy yet . It is worse than turning an aircraft carrier, you really it takes years to turn an organization like the army. So i think this paper came at a good time for us. The bipartisan budget act passed a month or two ago in Congress Gives the ability now to the army to focus on their future versus these near term, oh, were going to shut down, oh, were in a continuing resolution, oh, my gosh, how are we going to get through these months . They have the luxury, assuming that congress does what it needs to do, to think about their future in kind of an intellectual way. Which is rare lately in washington, d. C. That you could actually think about these things. Most of our research at heritage is focused on the near term fight. We write a lot about the National Defense authorization act, the f35 fighter. Things that are really kind of on congresss plate. This paper and the two that preceded this are different for us. Looking out further, and i thought 36 years in the army, i thought i knew a lot about the army. You would think i would know a lot about the army. But turns out i didnt know a lot about the army. Ive never really been a futurist in the army. Ive always been consumed on how do we get the current task done . This was a stretch for me. I had to educate myself on the army before i even got started writing this paper because id heard the folklore of, you know, general sullivan and don star, those kinds of things and it just kind of accepted it as a young army officer, this made me go back and actually learn it. That was forward for me. But in the end i liked it. So jumping in, what are some of the areas the army is rebuilding, did you look at briefly and what are some of your conclusions . Thanks, jen. Tried to look at all of it. You know, i because i spent a lot of time in the pentagon, and particularly in equipment modernization, and was a general there, i probably wrote more and thought more about those problems with which i was most familiar. So i looked a lot about equipment modernization, i looked at the Talent Management of secs and general officers. I looked at the concept. I will admit im not a conceptual kind of person so i did my best. I reached out to a lot of people, including some in this room, for their thoughts. And so i had to go to interviews because, you know, i dont live in a conceptual world. Theres a whole group thats almost a career field in the army that thinks about concepts. I was never in that group so i had to talk to those kinds of people to better understand that. By and large my conclusion that i reached pretty early on was that the army was on the right path and that a wholesale revision of the armys modernization plans was not needed, that there were course corrections. I saw some areas where the tapestry, if you will, was kind of fraying around the edges and that they could tighten up their story and they could tighten up their justifications for things. Some places where i could not frankly understand why they were pursuing a particular Modernization Program to the degree they were, long range strategic cannons falls in that category. And, again, i did my best to understand but there could be things that are classified that they werent able to share with me, to help me better understand. Another example of that is the requirements for the optionally manned fighting vehicle. I did my best to understand them only to find out near the end that theyre classified fouo. I couldnt get them. I couldnt really fully explore why the army was pursuing that vehicle to the degree it was. I looked at manpower, how big should the army be, how quickly should they grow their force . And i looked at organizations. What kind of organizations do they have now and what should they grow in the future and found some areas where i think they should develop some new organizations. Diving a little bit more into the modernization side, and you seem to think theyre on track. But, you know, this is obviously a complicated thing and theyre moving very quickly. So there is probably a lot of room for error at this point. But it sounds like since its so early on, course corrections can be a good thing, what are future challenges they could be facing in modernization plans. Lots of challenges. One of the first things i figured out is i looked at the history of modernization, luck plays a big underappreciated factor. You can have the best thought out conceived plan. And if the world environment changes, if your army needs to go do something, fight a fight, youre not going to be able to modernize to the degree you may be able to salvage some aspect of your Modernization Program but youre not not going to be able to carry out the plan you envisioned. Looking back you can see that that didnt occur in some cases. The army kept driving on, thinking that this whatever were fighting, thats just going to go away and we can continue with our plans. You see that with fcs. And so the army valiantly tried to keep going down the path with future combat system in the face of fighting two significant counterinsurgency fights in iraq and afghanistan. In the end they won and fcs lost. Thats not the first time its happened but thats the most salient example to me. So luck. If your funding gets cut. And whether or not you like it or not the armys funding gets cut once every 15 years, fairly dramatically. You cant modernize if youre trying to keep your service alive and keep your nose above the water. You do the best you can to survive until you start to get another influx of funding and you cant you cant protect your service and modernize. Its just too hard. So that was something i realized. So i think the armys doing a good job. One of the things that i also was underappreciated to me was the difficulty of facing two threats simultaneously. And so we talk about russia china. We almost its almost like a hyphenated word russiachina. But when you look one level below that, you know, its very different type of threats that they present. China presenting more of a maritime air threat. Russia more of a conventional ground threat. And for the time being they are using the same concept, and essentially the same types of equipment to address both threats. My sense is, over time, thats going to become harder and harder as these threats diverge, as china becomes more capable and its going to be hard to manage the duality of threat and maintaining your counterinsurgency capabilities. You talk a lot about successes and failures in the past and you mention fcs. Can you dive a little bit deeper in terms of the successes and failures that weve seen in the past, and do you think the army is applying Lessons Learned from those . Yes. So ill talk about some of the i dont know if you want to call them failures. Its so pejorative. I start out in the paper talking about the pan tommic division, which reaction to president eisenhowers decision to focus on Nuclear Weapons and how the army was almost in danger of becoming irrelevant so the chief of staff was persuaded to change his entire force to focus on nuclear warfare. He created this thing called the pentommic division that had essentially five large battle groups. The idea was so big a division and so dispersed it could survive Nuclear Attack and employ Nuclear Weapons. They rushed into this design and it almost immediately, maybe even before it was fielded people figured out this was not what the army needed to be. And it was an it was an example of where they rushed into a design, started designing the force before they even had the concept figured out. Fast forward to depew and tradeoc, had good ideas how to change the army. Concept called active defense, in response to a huge soviet army threat in central europe. How do i how do we actually come up with a concept to fight this . He came up with an idea, brilliant man of fighting an active defense. And it postulated falling back to various positions of strength, trading the enemy. The dilemma was he didnt share this concept widely with the army so it was kind of a small little staff group down in training in doctrine headquarters. When he finally uncorked this bottle of wine, if you will, it didnt meet with acceptance through the army. Whether you like it or not acceptance in the army is really a critical aspect of whether a concept is going to succeed or not. He kept it kind of close hold, brought it out and the army won because he hadnt shared, two, because it had this countercultural preference for the defense and the offense and like it or not all the military services tend to culturally favor the offense and so it really did not catch on and i was not in the army at the time but i was still i could sense that the moment i came into the army how we had this concept that nobody really bought into. In terms of successes, those are more fun to talk about and so ill talk about the striker brigade combat team, conceived s as the interim force. It was fielded by the army in record amounts of time, less than five years from the idea that we want an interim force, that we had striker brigade combat teams, maneuvering in the area of canakandahar rather iraq, im sorry. Very quickly got that concept out and it was just an example of how when you set your mind to something and you have cohesive leadership and focus on it it really can come together. Another example would be task force modularity. In the middle of the iraq afghanistan fights when the army was presented with a requirement for more brigade combat teams than it had it modularized its brigades and created more of them, they were selfsustaining, had their own artillery organic, all the capabilities it would need organic to that brigade and that happened in almost 18 to 20 months. It was really a quick effort. The classic example most Army Officers will point to is Airland Battle conceived by don starry, and codified in the 1982 edition of 1005 operations where he really followed all the precepts of successfully changing the army. He was intellectually prepared. He had a great team. He did the homework. He took it everywhere. Talked to everybody about it. And in the end it was a concept that served the army well for over ten years. I know one of the more controversial parts of your paper as regarding reordering prioritizations, you know, long range precision fires you said to keep at the top but you suggested bumping next generation combat vehicle down to the bottom and then underneath that future vertical lift from the number two and number three slots. You also recommended moving the network up to number two. Can you talk a little bit about your reasoning with those recommendations . Yeah, thanks, jen. Youre right, the moment my paper was published, my inbox lit up, my email inbox lit up mine did too. The number of people interested in my reordering of the modernization priorities. And so i dont know how the army established their first round of priorities. Theyve not shared that rationale. But i thought i would just use a very simple analytic method and think about in the multidomain concept how important is this capability of the successful execution of multidoMain Operations in the year 2030 . Looking forward, reading the concept, accepting it for what it is, how important is this capability in their concept . And then looking at the current force we have today and how close is that capability we have today to what we need in 2030 . So, for example, if we have a wonderful fleet of soldier lethality weapons, in my view we would be a 6 then. Were already where we need to be to execute multidoMain Operations in the area of soldier lethality. I took that very simple matrix and applied it to the six modernization areas. And in multidoMain Operations, long range precision fires are critical. And were in very poor shape today. So long range precision fires came out right at the top. And then if youre going to employ any of these capabilities, especially in multidoMain Operations, the network is key. I mean, multidoMain Operations talked about the rapid and continuous integration at war fighting domains. If you dont have the network to do that you cant do multidoMain Operations. That came out on number two. And then similarly i just went down the line. So air and Missile Defense we are in pretty poor shape right today and thats going to be a big thing in multidoMain Operations. It came out number three. And just on down the line. To make the list of the six modernization priorities already means your thing is important. So the fact that, in my ranking future vertical lift came out number six, does not mean future vertical lift is not important because thats six in a list of dozens upon dozens of army programs. The fact that you made number six should make you feel really good. That was not reflected in the correspondence i got from some of my friends. So it was useful for me. And i dont presume that the army as a result of my insightful analysis will change their modernization priorities. But what i would like is the next time they update or refresh them, whatever they do, that they also release their rationale for how they came up with this listing so that i can say, oh, yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. I understand how soldier lethality came out to be number six or Something Like that. I could not track the pedigree in the multidomain concept of their modernization priorities. I think thats an important point, and something i asked fi defense News Conference a few days ago of general murray, the Army Futures Command commander, kwha what was the rationale for the priorities and actually didnt get a straight answer. One thing he did mention is that theyre adamant the priorities are not going to change right now and its important to them in terms of making a case to congress to not sort of disrupt the list. Let me just add. I had that job of establishing the armys modernization priorities. Ive been on the cynical end of this business. When i was doing it we often would say, you know what, where do we have the most money . Where are we the most at risk . By golly if weve got x billion dollars in Army Aviation it only makes sense aviation is our number one priority. Money, priorities, it all matches, i got this. So thats a pentagon view of the world. And a budgeteers view of the world, not necessarily the right view of the world. Its interesting you point that out the commander also cautioned if funding were to change potentially the priorities would shift around as well. Can you talk a little bit about some of the feedback you gave, without naming names, the counterrationale that you got in terms of future vertical lift. Most of the feedback that i got back, a lot of it was very positive, including the chief of staff of the army, the secretary of the army, ive met with the chief of staff, talked about it for 90 minutes. Im due to meet with secretary mccarthy later this month. Theyve been receptive to my ideas and appreciative of the fact about a second opinion, an outside source. So i dont want to characterize this as the army has circled its wagons and that theyre theyre not. And general murray, i sent him a copy of the draft paper. He sent it to all of his four star contemporaries at the other army major commands. So i believe it is kind of filtered all throughout the army. Feedback has been good but i have been asked about my rationale, well just say. Aviation as i talked about being one of them. Most people say you dont understand. You dont understand why future vertical lift is so important to the future of fight, and i said i think youre probably right. I am maybe the only one of ten people that have read multidoMain Operations, the concept cover to cover, like ten times, held it up to the light trying to interpret it and could not really find an overwhelming argument in favor of future vertical lift. So that was one criticism. Ive gotten a little bit of criticism about the priority i a scribed to next generation combat vehicle. That could be i cant see how they established the requirement. The fact that it must carry this number of soldiers and must have a 30 millimeter gun with an option for a 50 millimeter gun, all those kinds of things its hard for an outsider to look into the armys rationale, why theyre making the requirements they are for that vehicle. Talk i know that you mentioned in the next generation combat vehicle bucket that with the optional fighting vehicle to replace the bradley that the army back off the initial requirement to have the vehicle be optionally manned or autonomous. And talk about why you feel that that should be dropped. And, you know, i was able to ask the next generation combat vehicle cft director Ross Kauffman on wednesday as well about that, he argued if we dont put it in the requirements now, if we think about it too late it will be more costly to incorporate late. Talk about why you think its potentially important to maybe back off of that in terms of the first i think autonomy, and robotically controlled theres a future for that in the military. But our army network such as it is today is not sufficient enough to really even do what its supposed to do today much less take on the burden of now controlling autonomously or robotic control vehicles across the battlefield. It just isnt. And you think about what lets say a robotically controlled vehicle will need multiple video feeds. So youre going to want to see in front of your vehicle, presumably youd want to see a little bit to the side and maybe even the back. Now youre streaming over whatever your network is, four or five video feeds and now you want to stream fire control and navigation and driver control back to somebody and now lets say you have more than one of these vehicles, you start doing the math on megabytes per second required to support the operation of a robotic infantry carrier, lets say, on the battlefield, its an extraordinary amount of wand width thats not currently available to army forces. Maybe at some point it will be but its not today. And then think about we cant really make today we cant make an Autonomous Car that can drive on interstate highways, and now think about you now want to take this Autonomous Vehicle and drive it across Something Like the National Train center at fort irving wood with way dees and ditches and at night with all those kinds of complications its an extraordinary requirement for a vehicle to operate like that, especially a combat vehicle where you have to be fairly certain that before you push that button and fire the main gun that youre actually pointing at an enemy versus a friendly. I think its useful to have the hookups and so lets say you want a the wires in the chassis already so that if you actually do want to drive this vehicle at some point robotically that the wiring is all in there and the connections are there, but the place where the box would go that would control this vehicle autonomously or robotically right now should be empty and it should not be contributing to the cost or testing of this vehicle. We could field it today and the army network is years away from being robust enough to support that. Ive said that to audiences and nobody says, oh, youre wrong, thats not right. Ive said it enough times that and maybe we can get to q a and somebody can tell me im wrong. Ive said it enough times and im starting to believe my assessment is correct on this. I believe in Autonomous Vehicles and robotics and saving soldier manpower and perhaps lives, i just dont think were ready to make it a requirement in our vehicle. Im going to shift gears and switch to focusing on multidoMain Operations. The army is working on that and it seems every service has a different take on what it means. But also the army is really spearheading this. What does your paper say about this and if you could talk a little bit how the army should potentially move to focusing more as, you know, for this as a joint force concept . Yeah. So i am very complimentary of the armys multidomain concept. I sat down with the authors, the people that supervised the authors, i am appreciative, and i think the thinking and writing that went into that document is fresh. The prior concept, i think, was 2014. Not fresh. It was warmed over. Kind of stuff from the refrigerator. This is actually fresh thinking. And it talks about the problem of layered standoff, the kind of you know, the russian, service to air missile batteries with the s400, keeping us out while theyre making their attack into latvia or Something Like that, talk abouts how to solve that challenge. And the thinking and the writing on that is fresh and good and sound. My questions revolved around you can read the concept and it uses the word army and joint force interchangeably and you cant it has to be one or the other. It has to either be a joint concept or the armys concept, it cant be both, and its theyve attempted to be both and its almost like theyre its a forcing function to the joint force, to, hey, you guys need to adopt this, and no one has ever said that to me but thats kind of the sense i got is that we think this is should be the joint force concept because the army cannot implement multidoMain Operations on its own. They just cannot. Like i said earlier it requires rapid and continuous integration of all war fighting domains, including the hard ones like cyber and space and navy of which the army really has no control and no assets, theyre receivers of these war fighting domains. Without the complete integration of the whole joint force the concept wont work. And they know that. So when i had that discussion with them, yeah, weve got it, we have to have chairman joint chiefs of staff, we have to have all the other services really seamlessly on board with this concept. So whats the plan . How do you get to that point . And theyre like not sure yet. Were working it. Were talking to the air force. I think the air force is maybe the closest to the army. Maybe the marine corps is second and then navy furthest. I think they have hope that when general milli, not to take anything away from general dunford, when he becomes the chairman he may have an urgency on making the next joint operating concept a lot like multidoMain Operations, i think were due for a joint concept, maybe were on the cusp of it, maybe it talks about multidoMain Operations. I worry about this diverging of the threat and whether or not one concept will be sufficient in future years to deal with coin, to deal with china and to deal with russia, all in the context of one joint operating concept. Im not sure yet but again i applaud the concept. I think its good. It has the hooks, if you will, to pull Army Capabilities. You can see where there are obvious deficiencies in Army Capabilities that need to be solved if theyre going to be able to implement multidoMain Operations. Weve talked about the equipping side of modernization, all the cool technology. But can you talk a little bit about what the army needs to do in terms of modernization related to having the right people in the right places for the right amount of time, what youre seeing the army doing now, and what they should be aware of and potentially make sure that theyre doing in the future to stay on course with their modernization plans . Ill talk about the Talent Management aspects first, i think, because i saw a lot of this when i was in the army on the joint staff, not on the joint staff, on the army staff, rather. We tend to put especially army general officers into positions for which they have no experience. And sometimes thats okay. So, for example, you can put a former Army Brigade Commander in command of an Army Division and he knows it. Hes got it. Hes watched his boss operate. He knows how this movie ends. But if you take a former Army Brigade Commander and now make him in charge of Army Modernization or put him in charge of a Cross Functional Team, you know, responsible for managing the testing and the finance and the requirements and the acquisition of a category of equipment, thats a task for which he or she has had no preparation. But we throw them into the pool. When i was in like sixth grade my swimming teacher threw me into the deep end of the pool, they figured hes going to figure this out. Thats kind of what we do in many cases with our army general officers. And so its not related to modernization. But ill give you an example of this. The last two commanders of Army Recruiting command, which presumably is a key and essential position for the army, recruiting is our life blood. Before they went to that job as a Major General they had no recruiting experience whatsoever and they were kept in that job for two years and moved on. They were both great officers. I knew them both. But what other organization would put people in command of a recruiting operation with no prior preparation, not even like a school, heres your twoweek school, learn how to recruit. Its just like hey, bud, you got this, make this work. We do that a lot in the modernization world so we bring in officers to the army staff that have had no preparation. Good preparation could include being the commandant of a branch school, working in a project managers office, working in the requirements world, we often dont do that. Once we get somebody in one of those jobs they need to stay there, they need to stay there for two, maybe three, even better, four years. You it takes you a year to figure out whats going on and then in that second year you start to see better ways to do things and in that third year you start hitting triples, and home runs. The second year youre in a job youre hitting doubles at best. Third year youre hitting triples. Most Army Officers never get to the third year. They leave at the second year and tell their successor hey, i just now figured out things. Heres a list of things i would do so your successor is getting this list and he says, well, ive got it but i need to look around for that first year to see if this is right. Then the cycle repeats itself. We need to train our officers, prepare our officers and keep them in the position so keeping the Army Futures Command, commander there for at least five years, keeping Cross Functional Team leads in their teams for at least two to three years. Where were about almost two years into the Cross Functional Teams, and four of the eight have already turned over. Now, maybe that was because this was like the initial crop of cft leads but theyve got to keep those people in longer otherwise they are going to reinvent the wheel and the next soldier team guy will come in and say, you know what, i know my predecessor thought that a squad automatic weapon replacement was really important but what we really need is this new pocket mortar or Something Like that and we repeat this cycle of changing priorities. One of the themes of your paper revolves around what you call group think and thats the phenomenon when subordinates, you know, mirror their superiorss opinions and are somewhat afraid to disagree. Thats suppressed. Kind of makes me think of pentagon wars, funny were talking about replacing the bradley, you see that happening in the movie. Its quite an accurate depiction, i think, of some of the things that have gone on. Have you seen the army doing anything to move away from this cultural issue that they have at this point . It seems like it would be an important time to focus on avoiding that. Yeah, group think theres a wonderful book on group think by a guy named irving janice. Its not military, its group think in general and how its contributed to bad decisionmaking like the orings on the challenger space shutting or operation market garden. Everybody is saying 24rs no way but no one wanted to tell the boss that going there was out of the question. And so we dropped in on arnum and got our guys killed. Group think is not a particular thing of the army but we do it pretty well and so i use fcs an example of group think. I was an independent at the time of fcs. Everybody could kind of tell that fcs had jumped the track. We kept changing it every year because we kept getting our money cut or something wasnt testing right. We couldnt get this thing to perform. So we would alter the program just a little bit. But if you were foolish enough to raise your hand and say why are we doing this . You would get cut off at the knees. At that time it was kept being emphasized and i think i was a Brigadier General at the time that this was an army thing, you dont question fcs, otherwise congress will get wind within the army, theres dissension and then wham, the money will be out of fcs. You know, so how do you combat group think . Because its insidious. If the chief of staff for the army, for example, says the next infantry fighting vehicle will have the ability to be unmanned, everybodys like, i guess we cant talk about that. Thats been thats been put in this category that is like chief of staff guidance. We can talk about, you know, does it have an automated turret or not but we cant talk about that. So youve got to be careful as a leader in the army of putting something in this cat gloegory cant be talked about, it is sacrosanct. Im not in the army so i cant see everything theyre doing right now and ive always been critical of general officers that get out of the army and talk about things they dont know about and this is one i dont know about the real current efforts of the army to combat group think. But i am still worried. I dont see a lot of articles, for example, war on the rocks that says this part of the army is screwed up. I see i was seeing lots of articles like that about the air force but i dont see a lot about the army and i dont see in like Army Magazine, i love Army Magazine by the way, i saw dan come in. But theres not a lot of questioning of current Army Modernization focus, like the long range strategic cannon that can supposedly fire projectiles a thousand kilometers, like from here to portland, maine. I can see that maybe technologically feasible. I just dont know if its a thing we need. But you dont see articles in the professional journals that talk about what are we doing . Why are we doing this . And written by captains or sergeants or majors. So maybe its happening. Im not seeing it. But Senior Leadership of the army really needs to be careful to make sure that sheez shoots and sprouts can grow and be discussed. In the end a decision has to be made. It cant be a democracy where everybody gets a vote but at least hear the thoughts out. We havent talked about force structure yet and thats obviously something thats very important as the army considers force structure aligning with its multidoMain Operations concept Going Forward so talk about some of the types of new units that you think that the army needs and how you address the mix of force structure between the active and the reserves . Great questions. One of the things that you find in competition against great power, china russia, is that brigades are longer going to be it. That was our thought recently as five, ten, seven years ago is that the brigade is it and divisions exist to tell brigades what to do essentially and all combat capabilities have been pushed down to the brigade level and any kind of capability, fires, anything else division or higher had been deemphasized, done away with. We did away with our core artilleries, things like that, gave all the assets we have essentially to brigades. When youre fighting a russia, thats not going to be enough. You need people that are thinking about the deep fight, the further back fight that the Brigade Commander cant focus on. We have to reinvigorate, which we nearly just all did away with, the etchelons of the army giving divisions and cores and field armies tasks appropriate to their level that they have the information they can deal with it and prosecute the fight, that testify the intelligence and the requisite assets whereas the Brigade Commander does not and cannot. They have to rebuild that. Its kind of funny because we nearly did away with all that so we kind of put that ship in reverse. The army hasnt talked much about that, i dont think, not hearing it but theyre in the process of reimagining what capabilities should be at the division level, the core and bringing back field armies for that even have capability. And so theres that. I see the need, and i think a lot of people do, for the army to have formations which can employ antiship missiles, ballistic missiles, that type of thing, in outside the normal Brigade Division construct. So if we need an antiaccess or antiship missile capability we dont want to have to deploy a brigade, because, oh, by the way, it has it inside of it, we want to be able to grab that capability, maybe its a battalion and send it to the philippines or vietnam or Something Like that. That doesnt exist now. I know theyre thinking about those kinds of capabilities, especially as they think about where do they nest their precision Strike Missile . And im guessing theyre going to probably announce that some day. But how do they intend to where are they going to put that capability . Wheres it going to live . Whos going to control it . That type of thing. Great people like general wesley are thinking ability those kinds of things and we just havent seen a lot yet. Hopefully that will be soon. Yeah. You also suggested growing the army to 50 bcts, talk more about that rationale. I can. I neglected to mention this was one of the elements of controversy i go and a lot of people surreptitiously sent me emails we agree with you about the size of the army but if we increase the size of the army we wont have the money. The army needs to be bigger if its going to do all the things it says it needs to do under the National Defense strategy. If its going to counter russia, Counter China and cover other hot spots of the world, about 50 bcts is the number that at heritage we think is about right and we did that based on historical analysis. We looked at past conflicts. In about 20 bcts was what the army needed, per major conflict, to kind of counterthings going on there. If you want to do two, thats 40. If you want to have enough to have some meager amount of rotation, some amount of presence in places you dont want to go to hell like korea in the meanwhile, you need about 50. General millihas said words to that effects. When you need 50 bcts it gets you to a regular army of about 540,000 soldiers. Can the army recruit that number . I dont know. Can the army afford that number . I dont know. Luckily i dont have to figure those things out. I just am saying what i think the army needs in order to do its missions under the National Defense strategy. We can either grow to that number or we should change the National Defense strategy but we should not live in this limbo where to execute the National Defense strategy is high risk with the army we have today at about 479,000 in the regular army. Have you considered when you look through the lens of what potentially wed see in terms of capability equipment, weapons systems, do you think that wed potentially need that same level of manpower . I mean, its somewhat hard to tell when were talking about autonomy and robotics and things like that. You know, whether we need to think about manpower the same way we have in the past. Great question. For example, if we can make an automated turret, or an auto loader for our selfpropelled artillery, if we can reduce the crew on a tank to two people by having an auto loader we might be able to get a smidge more out of the force and maybe a bct does not need to be like an armored bct does not need to be some 3,700 soldiers, maybe it can be a bit less. Theres opportunities there maybe to save but theres not a lot. You think about an Infantry Brigade combat team if you want to give it a sector, you need soldiers. You need soldiers that are covering, you know, their whatever you want to give them, ten meters or Something Like that of frontage or Something Like that. You just cant robotics is not going to save us a lot. Its going to get us a tank crew maybe of two or a selfpropelled how witzer crew less but not much. The other thing we need to account for is the enemy is modernizing too. Theyre bringing on capabilities. So, for example, the russian ar maw da tank already has a auto loader in their tank as well. So its not like were advancing technologically and everybody is standing still. Were in a world where everybody is racing ahead. Right. Im going to ask one more question and then well open up to the audience. What are some of the key signs, you know that, will indicate the army is succeeding or failing in its modernization plans and what are some of the biggest risks . One thing im looking forward im not looking forward to it. I hope it never happens, in fact. One of these 32 Modernization Programs the army has championed is going to fail. Its going to not succeed. Well put it that way. How does the army deal with that . Do they embrace that failure . Weve always talked about innovation, you embrace early failure, that type of thing, how do they deal with that situation . Im interested to see how that goes. They have put a lot of their reputation on the fact that they now believe theyre executing correctly. What does congress do . Congress has kind of shown early signs they may not be completely supportive of all the armys move that they made in the famous night court, that they unfunded i forget what secretary mccarthy says, killed 90 programs, you know, cut 90 Something Like that, congress is 140eing very early signs they may not be 100 on board with that. It only gets harder. And so the moves that the army made in 2020 are not that big compared to whats going to start happening in 21 and beyond. If congress cant support these money moves, the minor ones that took place in 20, the army is not going to be able to fully execute their modernization strategy. I worry about that. I worry about continuity and tenure. Right now we have great leaders in the army and weve always had great leaders in the army but the leaders now in the army are focused on modernization. That is an aberration. That has not been the case. And so army leaders in the past, because ive worked there, have seen working on army Modernization Programs as somebody elses problem. Do and this modernization that were on now that the army is on now is going to have to general mcconvilles successor and his or her successor, they are all going to have to continue this path and keep paying attention to this. Because if they allow it to drift off target it will not succeed. I think one of the fears is that the dream team has been broken up. Yeah. Unfortunately theres continuity with mcconville and mccarthy moving up. What happens if this team of leaders that worked well together arent there anymore . I remember going to the front office on the ering of the pentagon and talking to the scheduler for a very senior Army Official and saying, hey, i need an hour of so and sos time to come in and talk about army Modernization Programs and theyre like, no, can you do it in 20 minutes . And i was like, no, i really cant. And that was the end of the conversation. I never got my hour. And so youve got to devote time to this thing to make it work. Okay. Well, i thinktime to this thing to make it work. I think we will open it from questions from the audience. Theres a microphone going around. I guess my question is generated from the very short timeframe to deploy and seal Hypersonic Missile systems. I want to go back to your comments in the beginning of your paper about groupthink again and Critical Thinking. It seems we are a paradox. If you go to the National Training center and sit through an aar its Critical Thinking and an attitude where you are worried about what you say. If you see something wrong, you say it. But doesnt exist in modernization and im thinking specifically of a system like crusader where we denied even being a problem until the senate sent a staffer down with two engineering degrees and all of a sudden there was a propellant that started. We have smart people in the army that we could have listened to and i worry about the same thing happening in the extended range programs because the army is going to be focused on cost schedule performance. I know we started addressing it but the same things that happened at the Training Center in Modernization Program. I would talk about hypersonics. Again you read the multidoMain Operations concept and it doesnt put a hug. Theres a lot of hooks in it. I dont see a hook for hypersonics. Sometimes i worry in this town you would be astonished to learn that we get into a frenzy. The driving force is the fact that the chineseaare working on hypersonic weapons. What you dont see discussion about is hypersonic what does it solve for the joint force . If we hit it, what would that get us . I can see that from the chinese side and has mobiles robust Missile Defenses. What to Hypersonic Missiles do . Your point is well taken. The army has said we are going to have a Hypersonic Missile tested and 21 or Something Like that . Next year . I dont doubt if you put enough energy down that, gen. Thurgood is a really into officer and we can do that. Now what . Where does it reside and what is its problem set . Exploring those kinds of problems or something you dont see written in any kind of professional journals right right on these kinds of things to get that discussion going. Im a reporter from voice of america. I have two questions. First is regarding north korea. In your paper you said its traditionally less buddy sure size above the size. North korea introduced new technology missiles which is far much more better to avoid the Missile Defense. Many expressed actually concern about the dual capability. Not only a Nuclear Weapon but also chemical weapons. Regarding that, how do you think the united dates north korean army should address this issue . Second is, you talked about leaning more army signs. If you go for a real combat situation its about operation with the allies. They are cutting the size of the army to 0. 1 million. Because the environment of the peninsula is short range and some have to defend against the mess size, how do you think modernization of the ally structure would affect the overall strategy . You are probably right. What i typically find when you look deep into north korean Modernization Programs that they will announce to create fanfare and a feeling of a new system but then you look and in some cases they only feel one or two battalions worth, they have not achieved a decisive combat ability. So yes they have proven they can develop advanced Technology Like icbms and Nuclear Weapons, i would be surprised if they were able to get a thick capability. It is something we clearly need to take seriously but i dont think given the extraordinary economic pressure they are under that they will be able to modernize their army passed, they are probably Third Generation aircraft and most are fourthgeneration, some in fifth. There Nuclear Weapons pose no they are so close and have positioned so many close to the border that they are a time distance problem for south korea and thereby also the united states. I didnt get your second part. The size. Im worried about the south koreans cutting the size of the military. Im not an expert. I worry they are cutting it not because its strategy related but because they are having challenges recruiting and thats about all that i know about that. Great report tom. How does the us based on what you wrote, you talk about maybe mdl should be expanded beyond overcoming the access area denial problem. Just to do that problem the army is modernizing virtually everything, of dating concepts and accelerate them into doctrine at an unprecedented rate. If we extend the scope to get beyond the penetration problem what does that do . Will that cause the army to defuse efforts. I struggle with this point. We have had operational concepts that were too diffuse and did not focus enough. This is exquisitely focused on defeating layered standoff. Theres much about defeating the adversary and now what its almost an afterthought in the concept so i would have liked to see more discussion of how thats supposed to go. And maybe put the hooks in for what we need for the next generation combat vehicle which right now is not well covered. I dont want this concept to be a really big thing that covers every element of the army equally. I think its useful to focus. This is an area where i confess, i havent precisely defined the solution. I just think that i see a problem. Dave johnson. Digging more into the question of how do you create not groupthink, but the ability to have to set . Theres an interesting book by a who is in detroit i world war ii and he said ahead of detroit he said the problem with the army is engineering by and engineers have no rank. So when the chief is something or someone else has said something, that will be off limits. Can the army do that internally or do people outside have to do it . I like to think the army can do it internally because theres not enough people externally honestly. You can have a conference of people who think about the future of the army and fill a small Conference Room and that would be about it. You have to reward those that are mavericks. Even if you dont agree with their thinking and theyve come up with some idea thats counterculture, the rest of the army needs to see them being applauded or rewarded and somehow even better and bigger jobs. A trauma master when he was one star, im trying to think of a nice word. He was opinionated. [ laughter ] and would not let anyone silence his opinion. There was question about is this the end of hr . And hr progressed beyond anyones wildest dreams, probably his two. But how do you make sure that he keeps getting promoted and how do they not get hammered down . Writing contests may not be the right answer. A system that rewards those kinds of people, chief of staff, other leaders need to be patting those people on the back. 30 of it or Something Like that. I loved it when this guy in the air force was anonymous kept writing letters saying the way the air force manages people is wrong. Finally one day, gen. Said i want you to come work for me. I love that part because it showed he had thick skin and wasnt taking offense to this and he actually read war on the rocks. That hasnt happened in the army. You just dont see any articles. Its just an exemplar of a place where people write freely. Theres not much of a presence except for dave johnson. Not many people in the army right on war on the rocks. Thats a problem. We will take one more question we talked about a couple of things in terms of Talent Management and one was training, one was longer time in their jobs to learn the craft. These seems like tweaks on the current system. The task force was taking a look at how to design a new system that takes into account the services we were granted, things like opt out a promotion, and direct commissioning, merit based promotion, what are your thoughts on how the army should proceed with using information and Data Analytics to inform the way we bring talent into the army, maybe how we Branch Officers and the marketplace for assignments . How we select people and things like that. Thanks for what youre doing. I watch the army and it has changed even in the three years that ive left it. Now they are these assignment modules where managers of assignments post the open jobs that they have an officers can say i would like job. The units say thats the right person, i would like that person as well. Thats a huge step in the right direction. I love the authorities that have been granted and taken into sabbatical. Im not a big fan of the purple haired Cyber Warriors that we would directly but if we can bring in talent from the outside or a reserve component and can directly meet the need of an army thats wonderful. I want them to meet physical fitness and other standards but we cant confuse that person that we just commissioned with some other person that has spent 18 years on active duty. They are not the same. Just like you wouldnt put an army doctor instead of in charge of an infantry battalion. You wouldnt want to give them as spots abilities they havent been prepared for but i think its wonderful flexibility. I probably havent answered your question well. The army has traditionally focused on preparing officers for service at the next rank and that has been the fundamental imperative. I need you to be the Deputy Commander of a division so you can deselect did and that is the idea behind career progression. That probably succeeds in getting him or her promoted to maj. Gen. But what is does not do is get good outcomes and out puts from that officer because they are moving around so fast they are dizzy. Theyve been pushed through a division in 12 months. Maybe there were given a comment on at the Infantry School for another 12 months and now are a Major General. He got to be his maj. Gen. He got to be his maj. Gen. The Infantry School suffered in the division suffered because we felt an imperative to push him or her through so quickly. I know the army sees that what i dont think theyve reconciled themselves on how they are going to fix it. Thank you for taking the time this afternoon to go over your report with us. Thank you everyone for coming. [ applause ]