Transcripts For CSPAN Air Force Operations 20140803

And max, depending on briefing on the air force budget and operations. A Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the negotiations concerning your brands and Nuclear Program irans Nuclear Program. Book tv in American History tv take you on a trip across the country for the history and there during the life of man is locales including the beauty of Point Roberts in washington and the oyster industry. History of the music and the restoration of the f 100 jetfighter. Hear the voices of the mormon choir in salt lake city. Today at 2 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan 3. Silvia is our guest on this weeks q a. She was so beautiful and so witty that she was always irresistible to men. Richard cohen a room washington columnist was at the party and they had coffee. She began to stroke his beard. Heavens, he said. I never met an 80yearold i want to go to bed with. She had this quality her entire life. Silvia morris on the life and career and sharing the personal relationship during her final years tonight at 8 p. M. Eastern on cspan. The air force recently held a press briefing. Addressedh lee james air force readiness. General mark welsh provided an update about a body found on a plane. He says that raises security concerns and that they would review protocols. This is one hour. What we are going to do today is secretary james and general welsh will invoke their remarks and we will open it up for questions and answers. Please, state your name and affiliation when asked. We will do one question and one followup and then depending on how much time, we will see if we can get to other questions. If there is any other questions, you are more than welcome to call the air force press room. Without any further ado, secretary james. Thank you for joining us and spending some time this afternoon. As thebeen on the job 23rd secretary of the air force for about seven months. During that seven months, i have spent my time here in washington focused on working with our congress, working on budget matters, a variety of budget issues. The other part of my time i have focused on getting out and around and seeing our air force in action. I have seen all of our five including 30ork, nine different bases across the United States and 22 of our states. Ive been overseas twice. Afghanistan, kuwait, and germany. Covert, i did establish bright from the beginning three priorities that are critical for all of us as we go forward. These three priorities are taking care of people. Number two, shrinking the right balance between the readiness of today and providing for our readiness and modernization tomorrow. A very tight budget environment, we need to make sure we make every dollar count because the tax fire dollar is precious and we need to spend all of those dollars wisely. What i would like to do is give you my take, my update on how i think we are doing against all three of these priorities. Beginning with taking care of people critically important and there are many elements to the people in the air force. My take is we are very blessed because we have really impressive ehrman. They are smart, dedicated, motivated. They are tough. Fortunatee been very to have and continue to have solid recruiting and retention. For the most part across our air force, morale is high. That is very good news. I do feel that our airmen are feeling some strain. The biggest reason for this the Biggest Issue on the minds of our airmen i know this because i do calls everywhere i go is the uncertainty that they are facing because of the downsizing and the uncertainties of budgets and where are we going with our air force. General welsh, when i yield to him, he will give you an update on that downsizing and how our course management. Now and il say for speak for both of us, our mutual desires to get where we need to go as quickly as we can to get it over with as quickly as we can and then to move on to the future of our air force. Beyond that, there are two special topics i would like to talk about. There are two others i would like to touch upon an the first one is Sexual Assault. Very important topic. Go, eache i installation, i always ask and i have met privately with our Sexual Assault response coordinators around the country and around the world. I be with them in private and i asked him to give me the utmost candor. The question i am is asking is do you think we are in the right path . Are we in the right progress . My take on this after seven months and all of my discussions, plus my discussions with other leaders, the general, is that we are making good progress. Our reporting is up. We reports andeased preliminary reports for fy 14. That is good news because i believe it means our victims are feeling more confident, theyre feeling more comfortable in coming forward and explaining what happened to them. We do not yet have our Prevalence Data which will be coming later in the year. We do not yet know the progress we have made or not made when it comes to prevalence, but we will know later this year. I am hearing from the field of that they believe the commanders are in top of it, they are taking it seriously. It is a serious matter across the air force and it is viewed as such. Im hearing our training has been improved. I have gone through the training myself it is terrific training. It is improved over the last year. We are constantly looking at the care that we give to victims. Tweak it this way or treated that way to make it the most important we can. Proposition al rededicated ourselves of the last few months to what we call core for valiums our values which reinforce over the entire for the entire. Air force. We are making progress in this front. Progress is not good enough. We have to keep on it. Focused,for system persistent leadership, and persistent lacks in action. The chief and i are fully committed to doing that. We are going to be assessing are forced to see what we can put in the future into the guard and reserves and we believe we will have 80 of that force look at between now and the end of the year. We do not know how that will turn out but i will ask that at that out of that we will come up with additional missions, additional capabilities that we will ask our guards and reserves to resume. I see the future of the people to be more reliant, not less reliant on our National Guard and reserve. Shifting down to the balance between readiness of today and the modernization of tomorrow. Years of war 13 and most recently coming off this sequestration i will say we are not where we need to be or want to be in the air force when it comes to our full spectrum of readiness. Certainly, if you look back over the last month, it has been an extremely volatile world which makes me concentrate even more on our readiness. I am talking about the ukraine and russia. We are talking about the situation in iraq with isis. You can go on and on. It is a volatile world and readiness is key because anytime we can be asked to step up to the plate and conduct serious missions. That is why we chose to put more money in the Budget Proposal to get those readiness levels up in our air force, fullspectrum readiness. This includes investment in training, range infrastructure, maintenance. All of these things play into readiness. Know, we have to figure out how to pay for this sort of initiative and among other things, we suggest retiring from older aircraft to pay for this priority as well as tomorrows modernization. It has been difficult to get some of these proposals approved through the congress. Is not done yet but it has been a difficult road. That we will not be provided with the authority to do another round of closures base closures. The message we keep taking the congress at every stage we can it is congresss prerogative to rearrange priorities. Do not carve money out of our readiness account as these priorities need to be paid for because readiness is key and meaning to get those levels up. Congress, please, lift sequestration because these choices daschle on to your hats, it will get worse and more difficult in fy 15. This is the message i want to repeat and i think it is very important. Now that i talked about todays readiness, let me shift to the future. Tot is our air force going look like 10, 20, 30 years from now . Were ready told you i think will have greater reliance on our reserve because our numbers have been coming down. We are going to leverage the reserve more. We have to maintain that technological edge. We have to remain ready with topnotch people as we have today. We need to become more agile, more quake and everything we do. What is all that mean . It means a lot of things. We need to keep working diligently on our top three programs the new fighter, the new tanker, the new bomber and general welsh will give you some updates on those three in a few moments. There are the technical investments as well. We would need to invest more, in my opinion, on cyber as we go forward. Your survey you have heard me say this we need to continue and invest more in the nuclear enterprise. Waited to get the focus on readiness and people Going Forward. All of this is tricky business because we are back to that story of the budget which is likely to remain flat, i think, if we are likely. It could be going down do to see which nation was raised into the third priority and that is make every dollar count. As it isainly focused, general welsh, getting the absolute best value of the taxpayer. This goal, weieve have to do a number of things we had to keep our programs on track and delivering on schedule, not overrunning to the very best of our abilities. We have to build affordability right from the beginning into our new programs whenever we have the opportunity to do so. By the way, that is what we did with the longrange strike bomber, with combat rescue helicopters, we need to keep that up. We have to attack had coders spendings. Reduced 20 to be in one year, not five so we are address will be going after that. We are going to after contract spending as well. Spending on contractors. This has artie been happening and we want to take afresh fresh look at that and see if we can do better. We are bubbling up ideas from the field we have uninvited airmen to come in and give us ideas about what they see from their Work Environment has ways we can do things differently, save money, save time. Make every Dollar Count Campaign and we have gotten thousands of ideas from our airmen. Moment toidea is a mobile we are reviewing the ideas and implementing some. Projecting 76 million in savings from the ideas we have already approved. This is our way to get everybody involved with making every dollar counts. Before iraq and yield to general welsh, just a few more words about the air force of the future. We are rolling out today a new strategic framework. We are calling it a call to the future. Roadmap tosents a help guide our longrange Planning Efforts and will also help us, this is very important, make smart money and policy choices Going Forward. Through withollow the choices and policy choices. Mya was going through confirmation process on capitol hill, i would do my Courtesy Call to senators, i would frequently year they felt the air force seem to lack consistency in our policy choices, resource choices, one year we would say this and another unit would say that. That was this perception i here heard. This kind of a framework should certainly help us have better results and consistency. The document is a third in what you would call a trilogy. The first is our vision document. It tells who we are our airmen. This sector 1 global vigilant, global power. This is a document that talks about the Core Missions and what we do. The third one is what we are rolling out today talks about where are we going . We have the who, what, and where. National a new security strategy. It doesnt replace current doctrine. Rather what it is, it is a framework which is intended to help guide us in our title x responsibilities for our air force which is organizing and training and equipping Going Forward. We basic premise is that never ever seem to accurately predict the future. Therefore, we will have to continue to be able to step up to the plate and do a range of missions and also that we need to get ahead of the curve when it comes to the enormous and very rapid change that were seeing in a world. I am sucking on changes in technology, changes in different nations and groups requiring weapons, changes in how we communicate with one another. Whoever saw facebook and twitter 10 years ago . These are enormous changes in a short amount of time. The hallmarks of the strategic environment that we will face. Therefore, instead of focusing on us in civics threat, we are trying to focus and recognize this quick pace of change and we have to recognize ourselves the imperative that we should be able to change more quickly as well. Strategic agility is what we are shooting for. Strategic agility should allow us to rapidly adjust to evolving threats in the environment, factors in our adversaries encounter some of these great uncertainties. Tos whole concept is going take time obviously to instill and to big institutions like the air force because i do not think we are known for being and honestly agile at the moment. We have to start somewhere and so this is where we are going to get started. We just reorganized our headquarters in order to take these points and ultimately over time make these decisions and policy decisions to make this strategy real. As we move forward, i will predict that you will see us imb ed this concept into a lot of key areas that we will be working on. Inn it comes the people training which is a title x responsibility, you will see us embed into policy decisions the concept of more empowering for our air force. The more continuing of service, the flow between active guard and reserve and back in a more seamless way. More live, Virtual Training so we can train in different ways. Diversity of thought Critical Thinking for airmen. These are things we will work out when it comes to people and training. In acquisitions designed agility into our requirements across processes do have more pivot points which will mean more opportunities to modify or abandon the colleges within programs and be able to harness rapid prototype into design ideas into service more quickly. You will see us continue to elevate affordability in these programs as well as export ability. We want allies, we want interoperability. What kinds of things that we exports and build requirements . When it comes to investments, i think you can see us talk about things you are well of or maybe some other things. We have to invest more in our nuclear deterrence. We will continue one that. Isr will continue to be extremely important and we will continue to invest. I already mentioned the importance of space and cyberspace. Technologies that could be game changers, we dont know yet. Things like hypersonic, directed energy, to name a few. The last point i will see is we talk about the multidome in approach. This is the idea that we have three domains that we operate in. We operate in the air, space, and in cyberspace. For any new challenge that we might encounter, in may be the not correct answer that requires a new plane or new munition. Maybe there are ways to leverage cyber in order to address the problem. We have to open up on reince much more to what we are calling the multi domain approach. As i conclude, the bottom line myt would give you after first seven months on the job our air force is in good shape today. We are feeling some strains. The future depends, i think in large part, on how well we plan and execute some of the things we have talked about today and how well we do that consistently over the years. We certainly hope and expect and continue to work with congress to help us in this regard, to support us. We will continue to talk about lifting sequestration and protecting readiness. I want to thank you for your time today. I will yield to general walsh. Thank you for being here. It is a fastening time to be in the u. S. Military and it is always a good time to be an american airman. We have operations all over the world everyday whether it is Ongoing Operations in afghanistan, counterterrorism and africa, ensuring friends in eastern europe, the american midwest, building missile defenses in the pacific, standing watch in korea, or sending defense alerts at home. Commandersto provide with air power options to handle any contingency they may face. Were pretty good at our job. Andill continue to do this we have responsibility to our airmen to maintain the balance between being ready to do the job today and being able to do it 10 years from now. The is not an easy task in best the Financial Times but in these days, it is getting difficult. We prioritize three acquisition programs this year. Kc 36, and the longrange bomber because we believe they are Operational Imperatives to 2035 and beyond. If we expect to be the worlds leading airpower nation, distinction that gives us the undeniable advantage today, we must recapitalize our aging fleet. Let me start with the fighter fleet. Answer thatthe only will ensure future air campaigns are not a fair fight. There was good news to report. We are reaching important milestones like an air force base that the delivery of 36 f 35s and may. It has its full complement of aircraft. Fleeet. A major t. Well down costs are and testing and Training Programs are moving forward steadily. The recent engine fire has gotten a lot of attention. It will completely understand. A restricted flight onboard which were made in effect until we understand the cause completely. Too think it is important remember that engine fires happen when you fly highperformance aircrafts. This is not the first one and not the last. I think it is important to keep this particular fire in context. 8700s now flown about flights. This is the first time we had a major engine fire. Respect ever other engine and we didnt find anywhere in tear in those. I am confident this program will remain on fact ontrack. This fire is not going to affect that. Our air force refueling fleet is a life saver. Kc46 pegasus is an operational imperative. Andill fill between 2016 2028 with more refueling capacity and improve and this is a improved efficiency. The first test aircraft essential to fly this fall. Boeing who is up to the terms a committed to. They have met every contractual requirement. Those of you that follow the requirements saw the recent announcement of the change the charge against the program to correct the deficiency in the wiring system. The contract will cover those costs, there is no additional cost to the government. We remain on track for all Major Program arsenals and we will work closely with the company to bring this online. Global reach is fundamental to our work success. Pegasus will make it a reality for the next 40 years. The longrange strike bombers is the third of the main programs. It will give the country the ability to have any rest. It gives us the ability to conduct extended campaigns and provide flexibility. , highlybe a longrange survivable aircraft with significant nuclear and conventional standoff and direct offense fights. We will have additional capabilities in the mid2000 20s. It will be an adaptable and highly capable system based upon technology. As i think you know, we have established a stable requirement with a realistic target cost. We have a request for proposals and have competition. The contract is expected in the spring of next year. Wallys acquisition programs are critical to our success, there was nothing more critical to our success in the airmen who power these greater forms. This is a tight time for some of them. Whereas in great men and women to do everything their nation asked of them in some pretty tough places to involuntarily believe our air force. There was nothing good or easy about this. The secretary have a trainingility to have in operation. We need to do it before we return to the question efforts. It eases the law continues to take effect. We have in fy 15 budget that reduces the number of active do we airmen to 3007000 within thrive years. The action has been held has already approved about 13,400 airmen to voluntary separation and over 6000 for involuntary separation. They will leave our air force by the spring of next year. Air force Budget Proposals are still debated by the congress. We are not sure whether or not we will be allowed to have more infrastructure. Those decisions have personnel implications. Are final decision cannot be made until those final decisions are made by the congress. It is difficult tsee,. We have done and are doing everything we can to maximize voluntary separation programs prior to implementing in voluntary measures. That one i make it any easier. Do everything in our power to ease the transition back and visit daily life are those airmen and their families and we thank them for their service. A want to finish by saying rmn will meet the challenges we meet head on and overcome them. They will continue to be the best in the world of what they do. They aspire us to try and do the same. Thank you for being here. We would love to take your questions. Thank you. The question for either a view about the framework document you are publishing today. Turns discuss the and deterrence deterrence. It should be modernized when needed. It strikes me as a noncommittal statement. I am wondering if you feel that is necessary and needed and how will you afford it . I will start. I think we do to modernize it. It is a question of when. We are doing that within the air force budget. We are going to the next cycle. We are in discussion with ocd. They are extremely interested in this area as well. A point i continue to make and i believe there is agreement on this is a national aspect. Is not just an air force issue, it is a national asset. Is an issue for all of us. I think as we work through this process, we will have more to share. I will suspect he will see more money put into modernization. You mentioned is a national mission. Are you saying that air force should have a bigger piece of the pie as a result . What we are doing is we are trying to explain the total picture of our air force. And some of the strain that talk you about. This blog and figured out in the next several months, but, we feel additional moneys could be in order because this is such an Important National asset. The document part a ofd today is three documents which will form our overall air force strategy. This is a call to the future. It will pull us into a direction of those principles, the behavior that we think we have to have to be successful. The next piece is the air force master plan. We will take the 12 existing core function master plans, consolidate them into a single master plan. That master plan should of the detail you are looking for. Their work will be driven by the words you just read. We need to make sure the infrastructure is capable of doing the job and supports the airmen who werare conducting the mission. The third piece is a tenure balanced budget that will renew every year so we can actually over time create consistency across missionaries. A call to a future we update every four years, and master bound at as resource 20 year rate. A tenure balanced budget. Each year, we hope that will have consistently in funding and build trust with the people we have to trust with to have consistent, and investment in those programs that have to be maintained, upgraded, recapitalized. Does that make sense . Yes, sir. You want to pump more money into it. How can you be 100 one the performances across the enterprise . My answer to that is we cannot do everything and therefore, we have to have clear priorities. Nuclear is number one. People need to understand that. That is why were shifting resources and are shifting personnel. The personnel are not there on station yet but they will be coming. There are eight critical specialties within the career field. They have to be staffed at 100 . That is the decision. I will tell you also we staffed at 100 level our overseas forces. That is also very critical because, again, there is nuclear in the sphere. Part of it has to be a hard look in the mere are about how we do business. Because if the requirement for byple could be reduced getting smarter about how we do the job without putting the mission at risk, we can actually free up resources. That is part of the process. I know you under briefing on this recently. The that technology be replacement to the men . That is the big picture for me. Speed compresses. Reduces the enemys decision time. That is an important concept. Anything we can do to speed up the effect is a good thing. I do not think hyper son a in the near term will him plot hypersonic in the near term will impact anything in a term. I think it is too early to tell. Amy . Of a like to ask you about as a result of the situation in russia, there has been sort of a systemwide reaction to some of the decisions that were made to let us to the situation now. Some people on the National Security frameworks is we should have implemented some of the contingencies that were on the table. Now you have and have 35 situation. Told we are doing very well on testing, we are halfway through development. You have a fleet grounded. How do you reconcile the lesson that is remaining with the challenges that could be faced with having one engine for entire allied air force . Would you say your last sentence again . Probably not verbatim. How do you rectify the lessons that has been experienced and the performance issue you could be cut off with the situation you now face with f 25, whether it is a performance issue, youre facing a performance issue. 10, 11 allies relying on this system. Is there a lesson that should be implemented . I will take the first cut at it. First of all, big picture. But, the big picture on russia. The United States, we are Standing Firm with nato. We are Standing Firm with our allies. It is an extremely important topic. Thele are monitoring situation with russia, it is receiving attention at the highest level, the nomadic overtures and sanctions. I think everybody is aware we have proposed as part of the European Union Reassurance Initiative additional moneys for additional rotational forces, exercises, different and gauge been activities so that our presence, the presence of our nato allies is very much there. All of that is Going Forward. , we respect to the rd 180 are heavily reliant on it for our Lunch Program launch program. We want to get off of that reliance assumes we can. There has been no interruption as of now despite tweaks to the contrary at one point. We do have a twoyear stockpile. We are working through our options on how we will get off of that reliance. We have nearterm and longterm things that were looking at depending on how world conditions go. For example, speeding up the delta. At that as an american produced engine. Expensive,to be more but that certainly is an option for us. We are working to get the new entrance, one new entrants is getting close. To getworking busily those people against that certification process. Were trying to figure out how we get a new engine. Could it be a Publicprivate Partnership . We are working through all of that and we expect to have more to say on that in the coming months. With respect to the engine and the f25, the entire fleet is not grounded. The fleet is flying again. It has limitations. We expect those limitations will gradually be eased. It is not unusual to have Something Like this happen. It has happened before. We are very optimistic we will be working through it. I do not see and the chief said the same thing that this is not a showstopper. It is unfortunate, but they are trying to mirror don narrow down for and root cause. I think we will work through both. It will take us so longer. It is a little alarmist to assume we have a problem. Some gooden doing engines for singleengine airplanes for a long time. I think what we found in the program so far almost 9000 it works pretty well as well. We have to figure out why. Do you feel the decision to get rid of the f136 was premature . I would love to have many with engines that work every day. There is a paragraph and the document dedicated to Unmanned Systems. Dd spending armed drones around the world. There are 23 countries that currently have a programming developing armed drones. In 2020 five and beyond, how they respond to criticism from people that say the u. S. Is over investing in expensive mad systems across the world and people are spending on more lethal Unmanned Systems . I will give you a personal opinion on this one. Beingou are talking about in battle space where people are fighting and dying, there is a space we have been replicated yet and that is what sits on your shoulders. It is unlike anything else we have been able to make. If we are ever able to replicate that, think again changes. Until we are, yet the put Unmanned Systems into missionaries where it makes sense to have Unmanned Systems because they are better. I do not think they are better. We have less than 10 of our total. Is not like theyre taking over at the moment. We have to be very careful not to assume they will. We will continue to expand this missionary. We will yet to where it makes sense but we have to take it a little slow and not get rd is way i head of our technology. I just noticed that david was sitting here. He is a 2014 air force airmen of the year. I want to point them out to you and ask him to say hi if he has a chance. Is a great air man. Maybe he can build a new platform. You can build anything he can build anything. The title listed utica debilitating. The title is strategic ability. Seem to change the body requirements. And how do you reconcile them . Had you take advantage of new technology that comes a row without change in the requirements . Our best opportunity is in a new program, the existing program. They are what they are. We have to do what we can do with the architectures that have been developed. When it comes to the new program, open architecture, these are ways we can plug in different types of capabilities, different types of technology as technology changes. That is the idea to inform more of our future programs canh we can do the best we for the sistine programs. For the existing programs. Let me use an example. Engine technology which proves you can create systems that save you editor 5 of your or 30 fo cost. Of fuel cost. We should implement that because it will pay for itself very quickly. I think we should take advantage of things as they change. It may not be a major missionary change but we shall look forward at every level. What is coming up that you can work you are new paradigm on . What programs reflect these new ideas . We have a replacement, a new trainer that will be coming up within the next two years. Louie . Can i ask about the recent incident in africa . Newou have any developments . Does that raise red flags about andrity for your aircraft going towards the readiness issue you were talking about . It does raise security flies for everybody involved. It has command for that airplane. The european command wants to make sure they are trained properly. The latest i heard about is the u. S. European command has told us the young man died of asphyxiation. Y believed are indications on her knowhow you will phrase it he got on a plane. I do not know if he is from mali or not. Only other thing is he was discovered on a postmission expansion inspection. Airplane lands and gets gas and turns and the crew chief will check. He was not in a position where he could be seen. They had to remove an outside panel to remove his body. How he got in there is a huge question. The u. S. African command will conduct the investigation. We dont know anything more right now. Wouldadiness issue there be shortfalls . I would say fullspectrum security. As the chief said, it is a question of what was the security, what are the standard protocols for this sort of thing because whatever happened here something fell through the cracks . They were not able to gain access to the aircraft. I wanted to pick up on amys question and your point about the ability to be more agile. I guess theres no point in asking about water under the bridge. Do you now, looking back at it, was it a mistake to put so much faith into a program like the f35 and have three very complex challenges . Towhat extent are you able Going Forward create opportunities for more competition . And potentially a new engine. You are going to be flying this for so many years. It is looking bad, looking for question. At the end of any program, if you can learn the program, you should. I think we have learned an awful lot. We have learned some things we might consider doing differently in the future. The important thing is not to look back and be critical, figure out what it means Going Forward. I think this idea of strategic agility in everything we do is one of the lessons were learning. The problem is we are not the only ones involved. In the process has to be more agile. Everybody would agree. How you get there from here is the problem. That is why this is a 30 year document. This is something, everything we do in our master plan, as we look at how we move forward with acquisition, acquisition strategy, and development of programs, we should consider this program of how will you be more agile consistently and constantly over time. It includes all the partners. One of the big critical ones was the way the panel and the inability of some of the key , in the manufacturing to get access to the aircraft and being able to stop the process quicker. What are you doing about that . Tumor meant that from happening again . I have a different view. Just so you know. The problem with an accident scene is that somebody has to be instantly accountable for making sure you control the evidence. That is really important in any kind of major safety hazard. That is the first responsibility of the interim safety responsibility president , who was appointed as soon as it happened. Isolated so that pieces will be lost. The evidence help determine the problem. It takes about one day and a half to get the full president on board at the site. Then have experts start to show up to form the board. That is very fast. It happen that quickly this time. In fact, something happened that normally does not, that is on the morning of the second day, general brand approved for the interim safety board president of the flight recorders removed before the safety board arrived. He does until because until that is available, trying to piece together what happened is impossible. Unless there is very clear visual evidence of what the root cause was. I was removed from the airplane and sent to the contractor the second day, which is way ahead of a normal timeline. The confusion got to be, what we have not done, as put together among the three department of defense, that if we had a serious incident were going to bring representatives from all of the right places together to be part of the process so everyone would have access to the key data quickly so they could make certification decisions to the Engine Company to start working the root cause analysis, so that the j polk and j po could have the information to know exactly how it affected their test program. People from all of those organizations were there. They are there all the time. They were there with the interim safety board, but nobody really knew who was officially the connection to the navy or the marine corps or the jape oh. J po we have to put something together, were working on it now so that the next time it happens there is a very weak response and Everybody Knows exactly who is authorized, how we can get information, how quickly, how to manage it. We will fix it. This will not happen again. One year ago, we were being told about the problems in the air force. Half of the combat force was not ready to fly and so it was a big crisis at the time. Now, secretary james said congress is potentially going to listen to your testimony and accounts to pay for these other programs in 2016. Are we going to be back to that place where half of the force was not going to be ready to fly . What kind of measures are you taking to prevent that, and what options do you have . Of course, congress has not completed its work yet. The message we are putting forth to congress, and there are people who are very interested in this, so please do not misunderstand what im saying. As congress shifts priorities and decides yes this will happen or know that will not happen, they are working with the same top line numbers with the budget control act as of course we had to budget against. As they are doing this, what were saying is please do not carve money out of readiness. Readiness is too important to us. We need to recapture some of that loss readiness, which by the way, one year will not allow us to capture. I would also say, certainly something i have learned, and have a much greater appreciation for now seven months and my job, is that there are i will take as an example. There is flying, and there is riding. You cannot stop for seven months and then be able to get back in and do the same right away. There are very difficult maneuvers. This is very High Technology equipment, which is why we put equipment, which is why we put an emphasis on the full spectrum of readiness training. This is the highend difficult type of flying. Simulated threats that we could face in some of the most vocal parts of the world. It is particularly that type of flying that we feel we have got to have more of. We have to focus on that. These are the messages we are putting forth to congress continually. Is there going to be another crisis in a few months when sequestration hits . They cannot fly unless they get the money from congress . What is your prediction of what might happen . So of course, the law of the land right now says that these socalled sequestration level budgets will return in fy 16. We know what that means for defense. We are in discussions. It is quite possible that the president s budget request that goes to capitol hill could be higher. Were not sure yet, but it could be. The most recent years, what we have done is we have created several versions of budgets. That is what we did this past year, as you will recall. The president s budget level, and that a lower level. I will predict we will go through Something Like that again for the next budget submission. We will put forth what we really need, and we will put forth, if we had to live with it, here is how we would manage under sequestration. I saw julian before. Thank you. Wall street journal. Question for you, secretary james and the question for the general. It sounded like you had a solution there, spend down the stockpile. Build more deltas. Use space x will you are developing a replacement engine. Is that correct . Are you ready to do that . Why not do it now in order to put more pressure on the russians . For the general, in your framework document, when you think about agility in your mind is it more important for future airframes to build them and design a more quickly, build, build, design, and field more quickly, or design platforms that can evolve over time and last 60 years. What is the future in your mind . On rd 180 there is no solution yet. In my earlier answer was trying to paint the picture of some of the options are on the table and i was also trying to paint the picture that the situation with russia is serious, we are quite reliant on the rd 180, but we are not exclusively reliant. So we have options here. Were taking some time, not a huge amount of time but some time to think through the way forward. If there is one underpinning that there is great agreement on, it is we do not want to have this kind of reliance Going Forward on russian engines. We do need to develop these alternatives. I believe two things, i think both are true. It depends upon what your building and designing. For example, platforms that we have proven were going to keep for long periods of time because they cost a lot of money, we should design for longer life and be able to grow them over time. Whether that is takers, bombers, whatever it might be. There are other things we should look up more rapid acquisition programs, like weapons. As with a shorter shelf life that we know are going to change and we will be looking for Different Solutions for. It is a combination of the two. That is where agility comes in. We do not have to have the same prices for everything. Any updates . No sir. Congress has the and points and they are going effective platform against terrorism . It is a great platform against lots of things. So are other things we do. Do you think terrorism will go away in the next 10 years . No. It is about balancing an aircraft to provide a spectrum of missions. If i ask the commanders today, because ive done it, if you had 4 billion to spend, would you prefer to keep the a10 . Or would you prefer to buy more isr or other things . I now have a list of 15 things they would prefer us to spend the money on. We do not buy our requirements, we do not make combat requirements. Commanders create the requirements. This is a vital platform for afghan fighting over right now, well probably be in the series. Critics say that we are not coming off 13 years of war. You said how do we know what the 10, 15 years coming up will be like . If you look at iraq all over the world, we will still be in these battles and more my answer to that would be it is possible that we will need, after we wind down the combat operations in afghanistan, we cannot predict, it is possible we could get into something where we need higher levels of Close Air Support in the next year, or two, or three. If that is the case, we have it. The f16 and other platforms as well. Additionally, with respect to the a10, this was designed to be a fiveyear gradual retirement plan. It is not as though we ever suggested the a10 go away overnight. It was a more gradual thing. The Close Air Support mission is a sacred mission, and we got it. Could we have one more question . We have a very patient gentleman. The question is what you want to give up instead . Sequestration is the issue. We have to come up with a plan that is 20 billion less than the plan we had three years ago. 20 billion a year. If anyone else has got a solution that balances air force capabilities across the mission we would love to hear it. We sure have not found it yet. Yes sir . Thanks for your patience. Federal computer week. Can you elaborate on what this strategic framework says about the services aspirations in cyberspace . What capabilities for technologies are you lacking now that you might like to require over the next months and years, and as a corollary, the air force usually recently put out an rfp on a moving target defense. I am wondering what that says about your goals in cyberspace, too . I wanted it to the Bigger Picture and answer the second part first. I do not know what it means about our goals. I am not familiar with the details we put up the request for, other than i know we put out white papers asking for information. That did not come to my office, i do not know what we are looking for exactly. We can find out more about that, and i will see if i can give you a better answer. As far as the framework document goes, would it really calls for is for us to get our act together. What were going to do in the cyber domain in the future. We are making a change in the cyber from an air force perspective. From a group of Technology Technologists that grew up supporting very narrowly focused support to u. N. Operations, that is where cyber began. There are lots of organizations in our government who do that very well. The air force and air Component Commanders are worried about big effects on big battlefields. Our job is to fight the big fight. How do we reshape our thinking to think about executing the five Core Missions that are only job was to mark there are only five of them. How do we get to doing more of those jobs in the multiple domains the secretary mentioned . Do we do more isr . More command and control . More strike of different types . What kind of targets of an up to us and what can we produce now that we could not before. That is the change the cyber the main. Domain. Make it mainstream to the five core domains instead of a niche capability with talented people doing it behind the green door. That is what it is calling us to figure out how to do. Are you fighting hard to preserve the funding for cyber in particular . I think the funding we have in there now is pretty stable. Theres no intent to pull it out of that domain. We have to become experts in that domain, just like we are experts in others. If you remember what i said, this is a framework that is designed to inform us and guide us when we are making money and policy choices. As we go forward, if there are are suggestions to cut cyber, we have something to go forward on. Thank you. Thank you. Next, a Senate Hearing committee on negotiations concerning irans Nuclear Program. At 7 00 a. M. At your questions and comments on washington journal. Today, on book tvs indepth,o. Join the conversation. Live, three hours, today on cspan two. Watch more when congress is on recess. Monday at eight 30 p. M. Eastern. A wide range of topics including fromuana, and book fares across the country. Television for serious readers. Guest onhor is our this weeks q and a. She was so witty that she was always irresistible to men. Even in old age, at her 80th she sat withy, them and having coffee. At one point, she began to stroke his beard. And then she said, i have never met an 18yearold before that i would go to bed with. She had a seductive quality her entire life. And career of claire booth luce. And her relationship with her during her final years. Wendy sherman is the leading u. S. Negotiator with the iran. She testified on tuesday. The hearing included a Treasury Department hearing. Also heardembers from former george bush advisers will stop a july 24 deadline was recently extended by four months. This is two hours and 45 minutes. This hearing will come to order. We have two panels today to give us an overview of the status of the talks. Looking back at what we have learned over tas