The 40th chief of the army general james mccarthonville. The secretary and chief and i will have a chat about the defense strategy, the armys modernization priorities, the president s budget request that just came out, as well as the emerging joint war fighting concept and well 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 the chief to give a couple opening remarks. Thank you, susan. Its the closest i will get to davos, switzerland. Great opportunity to be here. Thank you. As we discussed in the green room, these are wonderful opportunities for us to try to talk about how were trying to transform the army. Were in year three of a very aggressive effort of transforming the army in not only how we train the force, how we modernize and ultimately help our people reach their maximum potential. As i emphasized the third year of a massive restructuring like weve not seen in over 40 years in the army with creating an organization specifically to modernize the force, but staying against the fundamentals, readiness, modernization and we use reform as a tool to finance our ambition and help us evolve. On the readiness standpoint, when you look back over three years ago, two brigades at the highest levels of readiness, were north of 25 today. One of the things we recognize with all the changes and challenges we face in the world, the force projection is something youre going to see interest in focus with the leadership. General milley and general mcconville and abrams did a remarkable job getting us back to focus getting tactical readiness in a great place, but now its how do you take these units and project them very quickly worldwide. We did that on new years eve. Remarkably well. Maybe Second Airborne Division on a cold start moved a Brigade Combat Team and within hours had the First Battalion on the ground. Literally took people out of new years eve parties. Cold start. But at scale, moving heavy formations within days to get them on the ground with partners in europe and east asia is something were really focused on. Made some investments in the 21 budget and we will do that as we continue to march across so we can improve that span time of getting boots on the ground quickly. The modernization effort, massive restructuring over two years ago to bring all those stakeholders together under one roof, reducing the span time and Decision Making but also bringing clarity in decisions. Forging better relationships between the requirements, community, acquisition, tasks, sustainment. Very proud of that. Very excited. A lot of prototypes because weve moved 80 of the funding against those six modernization priorities. That was about a little over two years ago. Between our night Court Efforts which were basically zerobased budgeting reviews weve gone through our second evolution. Weve got north of 45 billion across that we moved against these priorities. Lot of energy. Youll see about half of the procurement dollars against new capabilities by the middle of this. A huge change within our enterprise. That brings nothing but tough choices in 22 and 23. If these prototypes are successful, thats where the choices will be made bringing in, into the formation, 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 at managing every dollar we have and the chief says this all the time, dollars are like bullets. He pounds the commanders. You know, about three or four years ago, we would have obligations upwards of 4 billion that would just go back to the treasury. Were less than a billion today. Continue to get better there, but thats just been leadership. Him sitting in a Conference Room pound people on the screen and its amazing how it works, right. Weve improved dramatically from that standpoint. Changing the operating model and doing a lot of things differently, and that means we have to get out more and communicate and emphasize the things were trying to do. I think the chief would be great to talk more of the spixz with each of those initiatives. I agree with the secretary. We have to be ready now. We saw that on new years eve and we are. We also have to invest in the future. And when i look at, you know,s the army over the last hundred years or so, weve had major transformations about every 40 years. 1940, going to world war ii we transformed the army. In 1980, when a lot of us came into the army we had a major transformation on how we did business and now we find ourselves in 2020 and we have to transform the army. Thats what were going to do. Were moving from an Industrial Age into the information age. We have to do things differently. We talk about transformational change. Were not looking for incremental improvements. Were looking for transformational changes. If you take a look at what were doing when it comes to modernization, thats exactly what were getting after. Just one aside or one kind of of were just not talking about new equipment. Were talking about a new way were going to fight, were talking about new organizations, were talking about modernization priorities and also talking about how we manage people in the 21st century. Were excited whats going on in the army and look forward to your questions. All right. So im going to start this conversation where i always start these conversations with a strategy, defense strategy. Secretary esper had what i will call a Birthday Party for the nds a couple weeks ago, just turned 2 and in a way, it certainly feels like the strategy is in the terrible 2s. Three dynamic moments. A lot of change happening, which is always hard. Hopefully in the end rewarding. So i want to start off by asking, you know, both of you, how is the army doing when it comes to being measured directly against nds implementation and general mcconville, also in your joint chiefs hat, how is the joint force as a whole doing in achieving the goals that were the priorities that were laid out in the nds . So ill try not to grade us too liberally, but really, the proof is in the pudding. Weve moved billions of dollars to develop new Weapons Systems. I think the first we put our money where our mouth is. The second standpoint, granted those Weapon Systems have to get through that modernization knot hole and be successful. If you look we put an Aggressive Program in place, emergency deployment Readiness Exercise where we can do these in europe and east asia. The defender series exercise between doing one thats starting right now in europe, put a division size element on the continent the following year well do one in east asia. We put a lot of funding and troops towards these exercises to help strengthen partnerships and increase presence worldwide. To the chiefs points earlier were looking at our disposition for expeditionary capable bases in southeast asia. We have we Just Announced a core headquarters that were going to have that will be the Service Retained but the flag will be planted in the states but specifically designated to operate in europe and looking with partner nations for where we would house that. I think were probably a solid b at this point. A lot more work to do. When you talk about the joint force, were going to fight as a joint force. Its very important that we shares the same vision how were going to fight in the future. Right now at joint level, developing in the joint alldomain operations concept. Jdao as they call it. So normally we had air, land, battle that recognized two domains. Now we believe we will be tested in all domains, in cyber, space and we recognize that. We also recognize that there will be a lot of crossdomain contributions to the joint force and probably one of the best examples of this is longrange precision fire where we can envision us providing longrange precision fires that penetrate potential antiaccess air denial capabilities that will enable either maritime or air forces maneuver in the joint fight. So i definitely want to come back to that concept, the joint all domain war fighting concept. First i want to dig deeper on the two principle priorities the National Defense strategy, strategic competition with china and russia and start by asking, how has the armys view of its role in asia changed or evolved as a result of the nds . How are you thinking about, you know, what the armys role in that conflict or potential conflict would look like . We both ought to talk about this. I think three ground wars in the last century in asia, weve always been in asia. We have how many people we have assigned to the endo paycom . 91,000. Just assigned to that combat and command. We have been instrumental in deterrence for a long time there. You see much more emphasis over the last several years for the pacific pathways exercise. When he and i were the under vice team we went out and spent about three days with admiral Phil Davidson in endo paycom in hawaii going through the plans, what do you need. We made the adjustments and to investigate against the capabilities that he needs to win. The program highlighted, the defender exercise that were going to put in place, so we have always been and we have doubled down on that Going Forward and theres going to be no greater deterrence than boots on the Ground Training side by side with allies. Were looking very hard at our disposition and the duration of forces west of International Dateline and youre going to see a lot of moves associated with that over the next 18 months. The National Defense strategy talks about Great Power Competition, but Great Power Competition does not necessarily mean great power conflict. The way you avoid conflict is through strength, the way you avoid is strong relationships with partners and allies in the region and working together and thats really the strategy that were pursuing. On the capability side specifically, you know, maybe we talk a little bit about where longrange precision fire is headed and postinf, what does that mean in asia in both deterrent and warfighting cape snblts. When you look at longrange precision fires, some have set up systems for which we use the term antiaccess air denial that may keep us make it more difficult if we ever got into a conflict with the ability to penetrate and we want to have the ability to penetrate with naval or air forces and what that allows us to do is to divide that capability. I wonder if we can turn to russia and talk about kind of how the army is thinking about that particular competition and also ask if we could dive a little deeper on the defender exercise. I think thats an exciting development, actually. As far as, you know,s the same thing in europe, we have a lot of partners and allies and nato is a very strong relationship and again, Great Power Competition does not necessarily mean great power conflict. Standing together with our allies and partners, showing strength and an exercise that allows us to practice, rehearse our ability to bring forces into europe and work closely with our partners and thats whats going to happen over the next couple months. Im really excited about it. The chief is going to watch an airborne drop, going to georgia, and im going to im going to go watch him unload Armored Vehicles out of a shipyard. So youre going to be able to see us driving through cities and were going to be alongside them and going out and do live hp fi fire exercises. Its an exciting spring and you will have tens of thousands of americans all over deployed in Different Countries and conducting various exercises. One of the key tenants of the National Defense strategy we call Dynamic Force employment and the secretary said we saw that in iraq with the 82nd airborne division, but its also the ability to maneuver or move multiple forces by multiple means, whether its by planes, automobiles, trains, and ships. Thats what we intend to do. Yeah. So clearly a lot of progress there visavis the nds. I wonder if you could give me a few comments on, you know, where does the work remain to be done, whats still on your to do list when it comes to nds implementation . Modernization is the just what i, you know, what keeps you up at night. The time. We have were blessed with budget increases right now and just nailing these investments, so the chief and i have maintained a role even in our new jobs of staying on top of this pretty regularly, more so than maybe historically, but we have such a massive investment and if we can get these prototypes to be successful it will make these decisions in 22 and 23 that much easier and you can reduce your risk. From that standpoint its really large. The readiness piece, its something were remarkably proud of and do very well and something we can turn very quickly. You have the most hardened and seasoned combat leaders in the republic. If theres a place i dont worry as much because i know we have them. Modernization is going to be tough. We dont deter conflict with powerpoint slides. Were very proud of our modernization priorities and theyre moving along and were getting close to prototypes and theyre in the hands of soldiers. To me success is when theyre in the hands of a soldier in an operations unit. Its nice we have all these great programs going and we have wonderful briefings and we are in the process of getting close to prototype. To me, success is when all these modernization priorities we have are in the hands of soldiers and theyre getting a chance to exercise. Yeah. Thats an excellent segue, almost like we planned it, into stock taking on the big fix modernization priorities. Before we get into the specific programs, i want to ask a little bit more broadly, you know, what does modernization means to the army, aside from the the equipment . Obviously the new kit is a huge part of it, but whats the other piece . You should take that. Ill take that. You know, we thought our way through this. Again, i talked about some of the older folks in the room remember the 1980s and in the 1980s we came out with a battle, a new way we were going to fight. New units, some of you remember desert one where we developed our special operations units, the 160th came out of there, and our combat Training Centers the way we were going to fight came out in the 1980s, the big five, and went to the allvolunteer force. It was a lot more than just the big five that modernized the army. Move forward to 2020 whats new, it starts with multidomain operations. Moving from air, land, battle to multidomain operations. Were starting to stand up new units, Multi Domain Task forces, Security Assistance forces brigades and five of those in the active and one in the regular army. Were taking a hard look at Information Warfare what that looks like so we can compete below the level of armed conflict. Where we had what we called dirt combat Training Centers now were going to train in virtual reality, train in cyber ranges so, you know, we can do those Information Operation things that we need to do. We talked about the big six, but the other thing were spending a lot of time is on talent management. We recognize that were in a war for talent and, you know, we had in a lot of ways Industrial Aged Personnel Management systems and we want to keep the best and brightest in the United States army we have to compete for their talents and putting systems in place to do that. Most young people today do not want to be interchangeable parts in Industrial Aged system. They want to be recognized for their talents and thats what were doing. Okay. Well, i think from there lets step through the big modernization priorities and talk about each of them. Longrange precision fires we talked about already, but i want to dive a little bit deeper into, you know, how has your thinking about the development of the capability changed postinf, and how does it contribute to kind of the joint fires problem specifically in the asia pacific . What does it look like in motion . I can talk about the program. The chief is probably better suited to talk about the dynamics in the South China Sea and others. We moved ahead for the full production for the program, extended range cannon artillery, were excited about this. We fired a wraparound twice the distance of the from 39 north to 70 kilometers, hit with precision. Were excited about this. To be able to double tactical artillery that quickly, we know theres a lot of margin for growth there so were very excited about that program. Precision Strike Missile had a successful test in november. This is the replacement. Youll have twice the volume and now were in a postinf kind of world you will be able to go upwards of 600 kilometers. Were extending the range of these longrange precision fire Weapons Systems at every echelon which will give us greater ability to maneuver against potential adversaries in the future. The hypersonics efforts, Lieutenant General feelgood, the chief handpicked for that job has been outstanding and literally corralled the entire department against the effort. Were finding economies of scale with the buys. Theyre sharing the information. Were doing this jointly within the test regime. He has collapsed the span time and the army will be the first to field this capability. Whats that early 23, fiscal 23, and so longrange precision fire program is number one. Its north of 10 billion across. We put a lot of funding against that. But a lot of talent. To the chiefs point before, some talented folks. Industry has stepped up to the plate and theyre swinging hard. Were excited about that. Okay. . You want to talk about the deployment of the capability. I think, you know, when we take a look at how we would deploy that, thats what it comes down to the Multidomain Task force. We dont know exactly what its going to look like, but we know what its going to be able to do and what its going to be able to do is have long range precision effects, built around an organization, called i 2 q but it will do intelligence, Information Operations, it will do cyber, Electronic Warfare and space, and then it also will have the capability to do longrange precision fires whether that has hypersonic batteries or precision batteries to sink ships we will determine based on the in igs requirements. Great the mission requirements. Great. Next is the next generation combat vehicle and i want to talk about a little bit about omfv, stumbled out of the gate but what have you learned from that experience and taking that forward . His leadership was tremendous. You should take this. I will take this one. People often talk the old saying, you want to fail early. I dont think with that system we failed early. I think we learned early. Heres my point. This is for a lot of the industry that were working very closely with. Were going to do things differently in the army. Many of you are familiar with our old Industrial Aged linear processes where we developed large requirement documents over five to seven years and passed them over to our acquisition professionals and over the next five to seven years we tried to develop a system and maybe 15 or 20 years came out the other end after spending billions of dollars and may have had what we wanted or didnt have what we wanted. We are changing that process and you can see very shortly a list of characteristics coming out and so were going were actually moving away from the word requirements because it means so much to those in the business that it actually constrains innovation, so we are coming out with a list of characteristics that we want for this manned fighting vehicle. We will be asking industry to come in with a design, probably five other transaction authorities capability and were going to ask industry to come in with technology that they think with would fit in this design and were going to incentivize that. Then once we get that back, were going to take a look at the characteristics and say hey, we need to define these a little better so the characteristics will get sharper and go to a Detailed Design and well down select from that and then well go to a prototype design and then well actually make sure that we can build it. Out of the prototype, not until we build the prototype will we get the requirements. What we believe is then well know exactly what the trades are and well be able to proceed in a much quicker manner without spending a lot of money or without requiring industry to go after requirements that we didnt think we needed or that were unattainable. Yeah. I think its really interesting Lesson Learned here, particularly as what youre just described as a process that has a lot more ability to iterate with industry to tap into the engineering tall thant exists in industry to solve the armys problems. So youre applying those lessons kind of across the board to some of these other programs as well . Yes, we are. Again, this is learning. We are learning as we go through this because, you know, we have operators, acquisition professionals, we have industry and many of these people have been doing it a certain way for a long time. They will have to change their way they do the business and leading change sometimes is hard if youre comfortable with the process that seemed to work for all the players other than the outcome. Im more interested in the outcome than the process. The system has a very similar acquisition strategy, and thats where remind everybody what that is. The integrated visual augmentation system in our soldier fo soldier portfolio where the gaming industry says heres my prop. The gaming industry makes goggles and you can play call of duty or something and youre that kind of visual reality you see kids playing games. You buy that commercial product but you put an interface and then the interface now, we can control the applications that we put on the gogel, synthetic training, day sight, night sight, put maps in there, were looking at put in the Common Operating Picture so the fourman stack going through the door, you can see that at headquarters. Thats the ambition behind this. Whats interesting about it what we learned in the process because we used the ota or the Transaction Authority granted by the house and Senate Armed Services committee was the speed of business, allows you to buy prototypes and unleash the engineering talent of the Great Companies and then we go through the problems together. You know, you have Companies Like microsoft involved with this who would have historically helped us with email, now are helping us with night vision. You know, even more so than just night vision, but synthetic training of others. But the point hes making, the speed of business. Theyre not getting tied up for months and years to getting something under contract. It gets them excited about it, puts them in a position where their cash flows are stronger and now theyre going to invest in their business instead of investing in Contract Experts so they can spend years back and forth with us moving paper. Thats the thing about transformational change by crin mental improvements. Ive used a phone as an example how we went around with the phone and all of a sudden the iphone came in and we use maps and pictures and everything else. Were doing the same thing with our night vision goggles. The old folks here, we used to fly these pvs 5s, fullfaced goggles and got them a little better and then we wanted to put thermal in there. Were going down the route of improving on night vision capability, thermal, and a night vision capability altogether and we came in from the side with a whole new method of doing business and now its just not a night sight, its a whole new way of doing business. Based on a commercial knowledge. Gamers. It really came out of gamers. And they were doing different things. Thats what were looking for, for innovation, is all of a sudden we dont know all the things were going to be able to do. As you start to think about it, you can see, you get video on this thing, you can be in a vehicle behind, under armor and look through the walls. Theres a whole bunch of things thats going to fundamentally change the way our combat soldiers do business. Those are the types of things were looking for and were trying not to constrain industry with these very predescriptive requirements. We dont know exactly what we want thats why we want to throw it out there and thats what happened here. We didnt know microsoft was in the business when this thing happened. Didnt know. The first time we went through it and convinced secretary mattis, set up this house in the courtyard of the pentagon because we couldnt get him to go, so we went and looked at it a couple months early and were looking at the training scenario and it was like dragons and spaceship and i remembered i looked at him, oh, god, were going to get fired. We did this in front of mattis. My heart stopped. What have we done . You realize the speed of that industry within like three or four months, they show up and its a near peer and you think youre in a city and it was within a matter of months how fast they could move the software. Thats, you know, obviously worked out for us, but we were but at the time, you think it was going to move real slow and its remarkable, the engineering talent of some of these companies. Yeah. The business is pretty smart. They built the mount sight out at Camp Pendleton inside simulation. General mattis, big marine, been there a whole bunch of times, got a chance to go through that with a near peer. Wasnt a bad way to do business. Yeah. An upgrade from the dragons. The fantasy game was not going to impress the generale. Probably not. I want to talk a little bit about the network, another of the big six priorities, and, you know, the air force, it was a big talking point for them in their rollout that they made a big investment on behalf of the joint force and these capabilities that i think most of us agree are going to be critical to, you know, what Chris Dougherty would describe as the new american way of war, this idea of connecting any sensor to any shooter across the joint force. Where how does the how do the armys investments fit together, is my question . Because its essentially a joint thing that has to happen here. Yeah. First of all, all the joint chiefs support a joint command and control system. We have to have that. As we take a look, each service has been approaching this problem set from not a different i guess a different perspective. We were on the ground, you have hundreds of thousands of users that are on the edge that need, you know, access, but i think the secret is and i learned a lot more than i ever knew about, its all about data. Its about us all standardizing our data, about how we transport the data, its how we store the data, its how we secure the data and we all have to understand this because we all talk about machine learning, artificial intelligence, throw those things around, but until you kind of deal with the data problem, you really dont have a system. What were doing is, you know, we have an integrated battle command system which is really tying our sensors to shooters. Were working that. We have an integrated Tactical Network that is bringing the communications that our soldiers need to the edge. The secretary has been all over the cloud and in data standardization. Were bringing all that together and were working very closely with the air force and hope to have an agreement, you know, around the april time frame that brings this whole thing together so we can communicate in reality and not on power point slides with lightning bolts. Thats what we have to work out. Okay. I think lets talk a little bit about air and Missile Defense. Seems like theres never enough to go around, right. Its one of those chronically high demand, low density assets. Also another one of the big six modernization priorities. I wonder if you can bring us up to date on where you are in that piece of the puzzle in terms of both capacity and improved capability. First, we are very, very proud of our air defenders. Theyre all over the world right now. Just went out to visit them. Theyre in the middle east, theyre in europe, theyre in korea and theyre doing an incredible job. Really proud of them. The future for air Missile Defense, though, is the way we see it is, is really sent to the shooters. Its not just one sensor for one missile system. Its having multiple sensors that are integrated and then you can pick the arrow, so to speak, from the quiver you want to use. We are developing high energy lasers, were doing things with microwaves, Electronic Warfare, with missiles, were doing things with guns, were doing things with i mean so, you know, what you dont want to do, you take a look at some of the problem sets we see in the future that range from Unmanned Aerial Systems or swarms, you dont want to be shooting patriot missiles at small uass. So you have to come up with solutions sets to that and then on the far side you have hypersonic missiles you have to deal with. What it really comes down to is a layered type defense that picks the right Weapon System at the right range and protects the forces. Thats where were going with that. Okay. Critical to successful Missile Defense portfolio will be lower satellite orbit architecture over the top. We will not have the ability to cue with speed and be relevant in the future. At the risk of poking at a sensitive topic is that capability going to move to space force or are we still making a determination . Well, with every merger theres divestiture, so i think that were in the process of helping stand that organization up. Well clearly have a role. We still have water craft and helicopter, so i mean even though we have a navy and air force after the army was stood up first, obviously. I think over time the assets will divest and go to the space force, but weve worked very hard to help them with that. We have relationships with the nro and nga. Theyre working with our intelligence folks as well as helping us look at how do we cue satellites and test satellites at lower echelons. Were going to be doing that as early as this spring in the defender series exercise. As the chief talks about we get to this multidomain organizations a lot is the behaviors. Bringing that to an echelon of the Brigade Combat Team having leaders look at how do they task an asset is something we havent done before. But the partnerships have been wonderful with the Intelligence Community but things will change over the next couple years as space force matures. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about how the army is thinking about autonomy and ill paraphrase my old boss, bob work, who says, you know, if in the future the first soldier through the door is a human, weve done something is wrong. I want to kind of dig a little bit about how are you thinking about autonomy and Autonomous Systems as you develop new concepts in this multidomain kind of environment . I like the idea of a personal loop, so to speak, but i agree with bob, as i dont think that any place is a dirty or dangerous job that we can put a robot or autonomous we should do that. We should not be clearing mine fields with soldiers. We should not be going through breaches with soldiers. Going into an integrated air Defense Network we should probably do that with unmanned type systems. The interesting thing, i still think theres a need for soldiers or a person in the loop because you cant fail through if theyre completely autonomous you dont get a sense of whats going on. The second thing, even those involved with remote operations, probably the best civilian example is if were doing this by video teleconferences or vtc, this would be a very different kind of session here. You cant look around, the person way back there is sleeping, im just kidding, you look around in the room you get a sense of how youre coming across. Its still a situation where we want to have that capability and we look at some systems like even like with ivas, the fact that you can see and project yourself into a vehicle you can be in the lead vehicle but not physically be there. Look at apache helicopters, we do that right now. If youre in the back seat flying through a heads up display unit but the system is actually in front of you flying the aircraft, so why cant you move that to the lead vehicle and you can sit behind or the lead helicopter, those type of things. Theres a lot of things we can do as we get this convergence of different types of technology that will change the way we do business. Thinking about how do you do those type things differently and you can be in the third vehicle and but for all intents and purposes because youre looking through a heads up display you think youre in the lead vehicle and you can help it out. The same could be true in the future vertical lift and the Helicopter Program . Absolutely. I see that same thing. Theres potential for operationally manned platforms in that space. I look at operationally manned and mentally manned. Some of the things, ive been thinking, we got 35 rangers getting ready to go into this, you know, this attack and you put them in there, it would be tough if they look in the front of the helicopter and theres no one there. But that doesnt mean heres the deal. You know, were competing for pilots so maybe you dont have three or four crew members up there. Theres just one, and maybe that crew member is more there if something goes wrong or something changes. They have the capability. Thats just a different way of thinking about it. We might get used to it in the future as well if driverless busses become a thing. You have options too. The aircraft youre flying youre going to do a very Difficult Mission where you have to get in the place and take something out or put cargo into that and you dont want to risk pilots. If they shoot it down, you just lose the cargo, with you dont lose the crew. When we talk about this, we talk about the characteristics we want in these systems, we want to keep operations open for the commanders and start giving industry an idea, can you do this. If they show we can do it and you start wiring it and creating the system so its just a matter of hey, we can do this with software, thats what we want. Secretary mccarthy, i want to come back to you as i wrap up here, we discussed dollar signs flashing in the background and i want to hit a point you made at the top a little more directly because its not intuitive for those of us who have not spent a lot of times with program, army has done 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 field and thats where the big dollars happen. Can you talk a little bit about what that evolution is going to look like, when its going to happen, and how youre going to handle it . When the perfect storm hits and everybody performance in the out years, to highlight the challenges, its going to be ruthless prioritization and ultimately the chief will get the, you know, the senior commanders in there and we will have to make some very hard choices of the Weapon Systems we need to scale, and then it may require even tiered nature with the units that would receive them. The so if it is something that we have deep discussion about right now to prepare the institution for this, which will really hit within the next 24 months. To your point, scaling across the 82nd, 101st, it will be expensive and very challenging with the fiscal environment but thats where divestiture legacy systems, there will be nowhere else to go. When youre 60 of combat and commanders worldwide, 180,000 people deployed, under this current demand, over half of our Balance Sheet is to finance weight going on in the world. We cant pull back because the world needs americas leadership. They need the u. S. Army forward. So we recognize that thats in front of us and well make those hard choices if these prototypes perform. Okay. On that cheerful note, well turn it over to the audience for questions and if i could ask if you could wait for the micro tone to get to you and let us know who you are. Up here in the second row. Im with the Atlantic Council and several other institutions. Thank you for a really interesting briefing. My question is, if you were in beijing is or moscow and leaders of your army, how would you be looking at what america is doing and testing the weaknesses, how you would respond to what you both just described in very interesting terms . Yeah. I think the way i would hope they would respond is the idea that Great Power Competition is not great power conflict. We compete for the security of various regions in a nonkinetic type way. What i like to do from what i see is take off the table that were going to have a conflict. I think were going to have what they call it endless or infinite competition, its just going to happen by the nature of great powers. Youre going to have people competing for resources, thats going to happen, and what i think is really important is we take that off the table. Theyre going to take a look at systems were developing. You know, if you look at what some have done, the strategy has been an antiaccess aerial denial capability. Some of the systems that were developing will allow us to certainly deal with that and certainly give us some options in dilemmas theyre not going to have. Theyre going to have to respond in some way to what were doing to overcome. We look at them as options. They probably look at them as dilemmas. The fact that were operating in all five domains they will have to do the same. But do you [ inaudible ] strong ideas about russia [ inaudible ] back to 1999 the pla and [ inaudible ] unrestricted warfare. China has been looking at disrupting our systems. If you read the secretary of the navys cyber study a year ago, basically it argues that all of our systems have been corrupted, all of them. I think that russia and china would be far more aggressive in our weaknesses [ inaudible ] and your question is how are you making sure youre one step ahead of them . Well what weve done i dont want to get too far into it experimentation, thats why were shifting to multidomain operations and modernization priorities. When we simulate and experiment with them thats how we get the insights of how we need to deal with these problem sets we have. Thats why we have to transform and be transformational right now. If i could add that, you know, the russia plays their very well considering how weak their Industrial Base and supply chain is. Exercise expends tremendous resources and energy when they try to do their exercises. They play their hand very well. They made sound investments with the antiaccess denial capabilities. Were making investments to strengthen our networks to try and be on the defensive nature. Its much about the authorities that were granted and how we compete in that space as opposed to playing defense. And taking punches. Ill leave it at that. But from the chinese standpoint, really designed to equality of life for over a billion people and without it theyre going to be hard pressed. Theyre having a hard enough time responding to a flu virus, youre learning a lot about that governments inability to respond right now. Lot of it will come down to economics for the country of china as you know, china is going under a transformation of their own. Theyre certainly going to school on what were doing in the process of transforming their army and we have seen how theyve operated over the last 20, 30 years and theyll see how they continue to operate in the future. Thank you. John harper with National Defense magazine, can you give us an update on your thinking and plans for an abrams replacement, you know what capabilities youre looking for there, when we might see a lot of dollars going into that and when you hope to field that system to troops in the field. The abrams is still the heavyweight champ in its class. Were focusing right now on the Armored Vehicle fleet because were looking at how you continue to have the capabilities necessary Going Forward but thats further back in the queue and were going to continue to upgrade that and were going to bring in another brigade set here in this fiscal year budget, over a billion dollars invested. So right now, well continue to upgrade the current fleet. Just a little more on that, too, as far as the thought process, as you know were replacing the bradley but were also part of the next generation combat vehicle, were developing three prototypes for a lightweight, Medium Weight and heavyweight robotic combat vehicle. Were trying to see as we experiment with them as soldiers that will give us insights on what it looks like in the future and where we go with the abrams and how that all plays out. Id like to hear a little more, just a little about the focus on propulsion and diversification of fuels, fuel efficiency, transporting less fuel across the battlefield, fuel diversification relating to being able to reach sources of other types of fuels that can be used not depending on just one type. Thats of interest to me. Thank you. Do you want to talk about the Engine Program . Go ahead. Start with the Engine Program. One of the things is that, you know, were developing the Engine Program, you know, but id say thats probably more incremental along the lines because its probably going to burn fuel but it gives us much more capability thats part of the things were doing. In the research and Development Network looking at new ways and again zyou know as we take a look at some of these vehicles that are we going to be developed, we havent prescribed you know what will drive that but the idea of how we reduce logistics is one of the characterists of that and when you look at what we do to maintain the supply lines for our vehicles, you know, there are 5,000gallon tank are going along the road so anything we can reduce fuel can really help us, same thing with parts, if we can make parts forward, were looking to manufacturing and how we can do things differently. We want to reduce the amount of logistics to support our on the longrange fires, as you begin the process of whittling down until 23 the solutions that are going to be most useful to you, are you talking to partners in asia and are you finding among them a willingness or an eagerness to house potential longrange fires that range to china and how would that influence your decision about what to pursue next, is there enthusiasm for housing that kind of capability . We havent had specific conversations about what capabilities per se we would house in country x or y, the chief and i have been both to the region in the last 45 days, its amazing how energetic they are for us to establish more robust expedition nary and to increase the size and scale of our exercises more for military sales so its the tremendous energy, not a specific discussion about that to date, but nothing but excitement and the thing im most that makes these conversations very easy for me, over 70 of the jobs 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. So, a tremendous energy, lot of conversations under way but what you see from year to year across these specific pathways exercises, were going from threemonth to sixmonth deployments, more countries with consistency. Thailand brought 60 strykers. The trends are all going in the right direction. You know, lots going to happen in the next couple years. And last question right here on the aisle. Barbara hoffman from samsung, you talked about virtuality, cybertrading, security, speeds, infrastructure, where does 5g fit into that infrastructure, having. Been in dod i know the capacity and the limitations to a lot of our infrastructure, how are you going to process that information the data, secure it . This is one of the Biggest Challenges were facing right now as in the department and the providers were going to do business with is ones that we can trust and so theres lot of Energy Related to that and were trying to put some solutions forward, not in a position to discuss at liberty where were heading at this point. But we are experimenting with 5g right now. Everyone, please join me in thanking the secretary and the chief for being so generous with their time today. Please keep your seats until they depart. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Museum week continues this evening with a visit to the National Museum of American History. To learn about this centennial of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote. A preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Watch museum week all this week starting at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv here on csp cspan3. Tonight, President Trump holds a Campaign Rally in phoenix, arizona xz live coverage starts at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Also watch online at cspan. Org. Our cspan campaign 2020 bus team is traveling across the country asking voters what issues should president ial candidates address. This election is the most important issue for me is civil rights and civil libts, like voting rights, reproductive rights, criminal Justice Reform and reproductive freedom. Were seeing these being violated left and right. But theyre just as important as every other issue. The issue thats most important to me right now is the fact that our veterans dont have housing. I feel as though New Hampshire since its one of our 50 states should do more for us veterans and right now veterans have to leave and either go to vermont or massachusetts in order to get the services they need. I dont think thats appropriate. These people make a sacrifice for our country and they should be able to have the Services Come home. Environmental policies. Carbon emissions and incentivize renewable and the most important thing is the truth. We need to work on gun violence, we need to work on health care, we need to work on college education. But when the senate votes openly and against the truth in a part son manner its time to return to our roots, face facts, listen to witnesses and its just time to face the truth and move forward and we cant do that if we dont open our eyes and pay attention. One of the most important issues for me in the 2020 election is education and including the current cost of education for postgraduate and graduate work and also, two, the kind of concerning legislation thats been coming out of the Trump Administration in regards to secondary ed and k through 12. Devoes hasnt done a lot of good for teachers as a teacher i have seen it and for me edge skags number one and thats why im voting. Voices from the road on cspan. In phoenix, Arizona Governor doug ducey talks about increasing teacher pay in the state, his