foundation in washington d c hosted the conversation. it is about one hour. >> the heritage foundation senior research fellow for defense policy and the heritage foundation center for national defense. [applause] >> good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the heritage foundation. it is a great place to be on this wednesday morning, and i see some really wonderfully familiar faces in the audience and i am grateful you are here. for those of you streaming online, thank you for joining as. you are in for a treat today. we have the 26th secretary of the air force, secretary frank kendall. he has a next ordinary background. he is a west point graduate, which i will try not to hold against him in the conversation. he served honorably in the united states army as an infantry man in the acquisition corp. during the cold war in the 1980's when we were both on the ground there. his career beyond skyrocketed and the experience and acquisition inside the world of osd and into the industrial base himself as a senior executive. it gave him a great condition for where he is right now. it is my pleasure to introduce secretary frank kendall to you all, ladies and gentlemen. why don't you give him a warm welcome? [applause] >> it is a great pleasure to have you here and to be in this room full of smiling faces. i don't think you can see this at home, but these folks are really good looking in the audience. some of them have masks on, but you can see they are striking even beyond that. for you, sir, i would like to give you a warm welcome. you have been on the job for a little over a year, year and a half. sec. kendall: close to a year. col. venable: when you have been up against and waited into is quite significant. i would love to hear your thoughts on where the service is right now and what you are thinking. sec. kendall: sure. he mentioned my cold war experience. it is relevant to why i am back again. i came back for one fundamental reason, china, china, china. i became concerned about china's military modernization program in 2010 when i came back to work. what i saw that china was doing was involving capability to attempt to defeat american power in the region. i was in the pentagon in the earlier tour for the first gulf war. the united states demonstrated a dramatic improvement in conventional war fighting capability, unlike anything anybody has seen before, frankly unlike what we expected in the first gulf war. we were talking about 10,000 or 20,000 and had a few hundred. we demonstrated through a mix of precision munitions, systems, network capabilities that we had a profound advantage in veteran warfare over a traditional soviet style military. nobody paid more attention to that then china. there was a big reaction afterwards and within the u.s. too about where we were headed. there was an impression created in the u.s. that this level of dominance was going to be the norm going forward. but people reacted and nobody looked at it more or reacted to it more strongly than the chinese. 1994, i remember my intelligence people saying at the time china is not very capable right now but if you come back in 15 or 20 years because of the way their economy is going, they can be much more. i came back in 15 or 20 years, 16 to be exact, and they were much more capable. they were becoming capable in a way that was very focused. there is an acronym. as time went on, they were extending the capabilities and the range. i briefed susan rice once and my summary list to her was the u.s. is the top power on the plane until you get within 1000 miles of china and then it starts to change. this time, more of the same. china is not just try to develop the capabilities that we have today but thinking about the things they expect us to have tomorrow and working on things that will defeat those systems. some of the things we are doing like hypersonics, which gets a lot of attention, the very large inventory they have of cruise and ballistic missiles is significant. they have a pretty good potential. they are fueling hypersonic's because they anticipate us reacting to them because of the targets. we have a big problem. the people serving today have very little experience if any with a pure competitor engaged in the race for technological superiority like we are now with china in particular. you can say russia is a competitor as well, but we are seeing a demonstration of a couple things that should get our attention. one is a power committing an aggressive act. but another is the russian military is much less capable. of the two competitors, china is facing a challenge. we talk about russia as a threat because of the propensity to aggression. to give you a factoid that puts this in context pretty easily, the defense department has $770 billion. that is about half the gdp of russia, half the entire russian economy. it is also 5% of the gdp of china. the two are not the same in terms of the ability sustained and the military. you have to worry about both of them as well as more traditional threats in the modern era. but the challenge is china. their modernization program of which they have been specific, it has taken the form of attacking -- building capabilities to attack high county assets. satellites are a certainty with which we have operated within a long time. not in the cold war but since then, we have operated that way. they have a full-spectrum of capabilities designed for our satellite systems. aircraft carriers are an important target. and foreign airbases are another one, as well as some logistics and command control. when you add all of those upcoming you get a few tons of targets -- tens of targets. they have shot out the tech to attack the first target, pretty sizable. it is what we are reacting to. it is a position that i think is more significant than anything i saw in the cold war. we had a pretty formidable opponent in the cold war. they lacked a lot of our manufacturing cap abilities. they had pretty good engineers. the soviets i am talking about. the scenario was an invasion of europe. i served back in the cold war in the army on the border when they were still a divided germany as an air defense officer. that was a pretty significant problem.it was a problem largely of mass and we had a strong deterrent capability with forces in place and large forces that can deploy very quickly. and then if things did not go well, and escalation step -- did not go well, and escalation step. nato right now is expanding and has been united against this act of aggression. but it is a very different situation geographically, geopolitically. we have strong allies out there. that is important. but it is a long way away. it is a very different way to project power. we don't have some of the same situations i mentioned back in the era of the soviets. ? -- what am i doing? i am engaged in a number of activities. the rubric is operational mirrors. i formulated this list last fall as a way to have operational analysis to be able to identify investments. after they were numbered by the staff, i change the order. and it completely messed up the staff. in any event, the seven are in logical order, the things that i think that we have to be able to do successfully to be successful. it starts with getting our space battle right. that is largely about resiliency. the space force has to protect the joint force. services include navigation services, timing, communications, missile warning. isr and targeting of threat systems. the space force also has joint force targeting by the adversary systems. it is both an offensive and defensive side. moving in this direction started during the obama administration. we changed our strategy then in recognition of what was going on. and we had started the process of identifying fuel in reaction to that. i was very happy with raymond and his team. but we have a lot of work to do there. we want the intelligence community to get that right. that is number one. the next one is about double management. we've heard a lot about the air force management system. we are getting much more focused. and what do we actually need to do to get better decisions that matter that give us better outcomes? what information is needed to support those decisions? bringing them together in a timely way? beyond that, as i came back into government, we really needed to do more to modernize our systems in general. we have a lot of systems. the mig 16 was a good example. we have to respond to that. the chief was getting battle management right. so we are looking at both space-based and airborne targeting systems. there is a preference for space. it can be made fairly resilient. some of the jobs are relatively hard to do. which also presents a tough call on the adversary. we have both air and ground moving targets. that includes maritime targets. that system is designed to process those targets as efficiently as possible. so management is dependent on the ability to target. next on the list is the tactical air part. i started a program when i was in the acquisition job. it was a prototyping program. we put it on contract that 2015. and we can go on and build a platform. but it's not just about a platform. part of that family of systems, we're going to introduce those. and one way we think about it is the combination of aircraft with aircraft that are controlled by that. so we're going to go in that direction. there is a lot of evidence that this could be done. so we are going to move in that direction. what we are designing is a forum and combat aircraft with communications and central weapons. col. venable: can i ask you about that program? sec. kendall: i'm on number four, then there are three to go. that family of systems is number four. our tactical air force is dependent on runways. those are all very targetable. with a mix of cruise missiles, the mix of hardening, defense, what we need to optimally defend those bases and create alternative bases. if we can't get that one to work, we have a problem with tactical air forces in general. the next one on the list is a similar concept. we are introducing the b 21 enter production. -- into production. it's doing reasonably well and we are headed to production on that. it's an expensive aircraft. one of the problems is all the things that we are trying to buy right now are very expensive. the f-35 costs about the same. and so to have unaffordable air force, we have to introduce some lower-cost platforms. as well as a combat aircraft that would be through the b 21 and the family systems approach. in the last thing on my list is pay attention to the folks that come out here. this is a particular cybersecurity problem. the personnel, the transportation, the logistics systems. the medical system. all of the things that we have to get people involved in the fight. you have to make sure. the work that has been going on for six months now, and it has come to a point where we wanted to -- we have a reasonable balance. we have a reasonable balance between the air force providing the space force with commanders now, and investments in the future. we need a transformation. the efforts that i just subscribed will help us do that. so we have a down payment on that transformation. and with any conceivable budget, there will be hard choices ahead. we have to invest in a lot of things that change the nature of the force and also consistent with that, how to use the force. there is a lot going on. there are a lot of stages. i think we have a good start, but there's a long way to go. col. venable: thank you for that synopsis. i apologize for interrupting. a couple of slides so the audience can keep up with us. capacity has really dropped since the cold war when we were in europe in the 1980's. we had a very robust force. and today we are a little less than half that size. just focusing on those two areas right here. we had a 4400 fighters in the cold war. that is total aircraft inventory, active in the national guard reserve. tinker wise, we are 480 today and we have something like 780 back then. bombers, we had twice as many bombers as we do today. thinking about this and what the cold war demanded back in that day and what we might be looking for in the next pure competitor find. the air force has done many studies, but this was the only one that was published and it shows federal shortfalls in those four areas. if you were to pair the fighters, the airlift, the tanker, and the bomber shortfalls, you can see the numbers of aircraft in red. 15 air lifters, 70 five bombs, 182 fighters. many more tankers. when we start going down the path of that, we have more thought processes. looking at the capacity today, if we were to add all of that into the air force we need, it would bring us around 2200 fighters. your having to make significant cuts right now in the structure and capacity to be able to field those future platforms. we talked about funding starting in 2015 for mgad. it takes the best of the systems since the of 16 -- 15 were developed in the 70's and 80's. it takes about 17 to 22 years to feel that platform. sec. kendall: sorry to interrupt you, but -- col. venable: i think that is a great point of departure when you look at capacity and you think about where we are today. it's more like 2000 fighters. but in order to make the funding come out right, we are looking on the order as i understand it of a net cut of 400 fighters over the course of the next five years. so that will bring us to capacity significantly lower than where we are today. it's about a 20% cut from where we are. thinking about that system to replace those fighters had the feeling will be 21. -- and the fueling will be 21. do you have thoughts about the capacity and where we will need to be? sec. kendall: i'm as worried about capacity numbers as i am about capability. i was there at the end of the cold war. i was the director of research for a tactical unit. [indiscernible] we have used various force sizing constructs. at one time, we used the two major contingencies. the new defense strategy focuses on the pacing challenge. we are living in a different world in a lot of ways. i think we have to be very careful about it. the idea of hanging onto legacy equipment is the right thing to do. i would say the same thing about buying more. we have an affordability problem, for sure. we need to start to buy some things that cost less. we mentioned the $80 million. we need quite a bit more than that for an end gap. -- mgap. it's not going to happen with any foreseeable budget. i date back long enough to have at least known people that were there for the f-16. it was a sound concept. again, it was for a different area. i had an experience when i was in government before, somewhere around 2016 when one of the service chiefs came into my office. i won't say who it was but you could figure it out. i don't have the number. i'm ok where i am. everybody has to have a number that they go rally. i think we have to worry about capability. and what we need to do is get to the next generation. part of my history, right after the cold war, it was director in the 70's. he consciously invested in r&d. we were turning our attention back to the soviet union as the basic challenge of that time. and bill thought we had to get to the next generation of capability. we invested in r&d. systems at the time, we had a budget that we could not pay for. we got the big defense production bill in the 80's. what we went through was part of the cost of getting those systems. it was a huge deal. so we made trade-offs then. there's new technology and new capabilities. it paid off enormously. the secretary of defense kind of did the same thing. basically, post-cold war, there were a few that i could name. we got very small numbers. we got very small numbers of those platforms. and in retrospect, we would've been better off to get more of those. now we are in a situation where we need to move to the next generation and get out of that. the fifth generation aircraft is the best fighter out there, but it's an expensive fighter. the technology that allows us to do new and different things that are very creative. one of the things that i observe about the chinese as they are unconfined by culture, service rivalries, things like that. they seem to be very able to make centralized strategic decisions without investments. they decided after the first cold war, 20 years ago, that they shrunk it something like 70%. the increased funding for their air and legal forces. they also created the strategic rocket forces which is a mix of unconventional rockets. they created two new services. we created the space force. they do what we see is the future of health air. it is clearly in the pipeline. i don't think we are in a race for quantity as much. we are not trying to build more dreadnoughts than the other guy. a reporter asked me if i thought we were in an arms race and i said yes, but i meant it in that context. i think winning that is really going to be that going forward. the data shows -- i used to publish annual reports on this. our average analyst program takes just under seven years from the time you start -- [indiscernible] the f-35 is used as an example, but it's a dramatic outlier and how long it takes. what i have told my people on the acquisitions side, and i try not to do my old job but i can't help it sometimes. i like infrastructure programs to have meaningful capabilities. i'm not interested in demos and experiments unless they are a necessary step on the road to real capability. we tend to a quick demo and then started development program and wait several more years because we did not start development function. we should go right to development production and get as quickly as we can -- get there as quickly as we can. we should do that in a focused and efficient way, then get on with it. and how much overlap there will be in production. i'm willing to take some risk there. there's enough maturity in the technology now with the things we have seen done that we can do that. the point of all this is that we need to think about capability, not just capacity. i'm in a running battle. they give us a lot of support so that we can free up resources for modernization. we need to continue down that path. there is a reception gap and a creative gap. the gap is a gap between the capabilities we have today. by having more of the things that are not adequate today and using resources for those as opposed to getting the things we need to close that gap, we've got to get to the future. col. venable: interesting statistic. seven years. sec. kendall: i can put you to the report if you like. col. venable: going back to the funding 2015 for mgap and in theory, it should be hitting the street pretty soon. sec. kendall: we can't talk about numbers on that. but what we did was not in the emd program. it was a prototype and experimental. it was designed -- we have now started with the emd program to do the development aircraft. so the clock didn't start in 2015. it is starting roughly now. col. venable: so seven years to eight years from now. sec. kendall: we think we will have capability by the end of the decade. col. venable: this is a fascinating thought process and i completely agree with you. if you go back to the cold war days, the reason we developed the f-16, f-15, and a 10, is because we were outnumbered in europe significantly. we also have the training side where our guys were really leading edge. across-the-board, we were just bone crushing. i talked to a polish pilot who flew during the cold war. we did a numbers comparison. when i told him i was getting 250 hours a year, he said that's not possible because they were getting 100 to 120. the idea of moving into the next generation, i agree with you. i would respectfully challenge the thought process that numbers don't matter. i think they do. particularly in a fight with china. not the numbers we necessarily have today, but significant numbers to face and adversary. sec. kendall: you are right. quantity has a quality all of its own. jack benson quote. which is why i'm trying to get elements of that. col. venable: moving to tankers really quickly. you can see the numbers that the air force we need, the study that we came out with was about 680 tankers. we had 760 at the end of the cold war. a recent study by an excellent team, not too far away from us, came up with this chart that is here. it talks about the numbers of tankers that basically the 483 fills out. that green area in the middle says about 200 tankers that we would need to face competitors. if you go back to recent conflicts, desert storm, all the way to operation iraqi freedom. we had day-to-day demand of 180 tankers for the duration of that find which exceeds numbers by about 50%. the yellow portion for that is to deter a second theater. that would get us there in a regional contingency like desert storm or operation iraqi freedom. but the logistics and the supply lines, and the lack of facing in the pacific would give us much larger demand. kc 46 has had issues getting fielded. we are looking at casey white getting to follow us. can you talk to us about what we are looking at numbers wise and how do we absorb the risk? sec. kendall: we have a cap right now at 479. and we are asking for 455. and we think that is adequate to do the basic challenge. and we are prioritizing. we can't do everything all the time. the idea that we can do that simultaneously is a stretch. the demand is high. there are threats to the survivability of tankers. we are going to start to think about what follows that. and we're looking at the current production. and what we put in the budget this year, we continue through that. as i've told the congress at one time, we were in competition and we are less confident of that now because of what is coming out of -- [indiscernible] there is a question of my mind about what follows that. what does that look like? the kc 135 -- [indiscernible] i had a ride on a kc 46 and i compared it to the kc 35 which is a night and a comparison. -- day comparison. they lost a huge amount of money on those amount of programs so far. we are now supporting 85% of the aircraft. i think that serves us reasonably well. i do think that number would be adequate. col. venable: let's go to the world of readiness, if i can. the russian invasion, you talked about the failures of the russian military going into ukraine. i would imagine mr. putin thought that they were going to do a bit better than what they did. both with what he had been fed as the leader from a military standpoint saying we are ready to go, and against a very poor foe that turned out to be a very brave adversary. back in the day in the 1980's and 1990's, we had external air force teams that conducted operational readiness inspections. they were independent. they could not be command influenced. they came in every two years and evaluated the ability to generate, mobilize, deploy, and employ in a combat scenario. they could cause the wing commander to be fired. today, we have shifted around 2014 or 2015 away from those ig and to squad commanders evaluating their own units. basically with regard to resources and the training the units have. this is a little bit of a chart, but the commanders and ability to rank c1, c2, c3, c4. see one, they are ready to do any mission. c2 is most missions, c3's submissions. in c4, they need more resources. the idea of sorties and where we are with this back in the 1980's through about 2005. fighter pilots were getting around 13 to 15 sorties a month. which is more than three times a week. and if you think about where that is, pilots are getting better at what they are doing. below that, they start offering eight sorties a month. that's the number that is required for an experienced pilot to be considered combat mission capable. the lowest is basic mission capable. and if you go back to 2017, that year, we had to come out of the bca, the budget control act. draconian levels of cuts. they started to recover and in 2017, they started to falter again. what you are looking at all the far right side is 7.5 sorties a month per pilot. and when commanders rated their units, they came up with just four. the united states combat air force active duty, they were ready to go for any mission. and something less than half were ready to do any other side. really low mission capable rates, really low training rates. if you look at where we are today, these are the statistics from the air force. and from the far right side, our fighter pilots on average, the combat fighter pilots are getting less than five sorties a month. it is flying about 1.1 times a week. and that is where you really have a hard time doing basic things. as a fighter pilot, i remember being quite incompetent firing -- flying at that rate. i'm sure today's pilots are much better. but it is hard to imagine that anybody is above the c3 line. and it's really hard to think about how long it would take to recover from that. could you talk to us about readiness and where you think we are and what changes need to be made, if any. sec. kendall: it is something we paid a lot of attention to. part of it i don't think is entirely true. ig still does assess units. i looked at their report. i've seen what their findings are. i'm not sure they do it with the same frequency but we still do those assessments. i just show secretary austin chart, something similar. we have 30-year-old airplanes on average. and operating this aircraft is under 50%. just having aircraft available for people to go out, and then there is a question of what kind of flying. the type of sortie matters. as well as the numbers. for 20 years, even operationally, our policy of flying relatively straightforward operational profiles -- we were doing several things here. one is we are changing the model for how we do this. we are kind of the rotation between levels of capability people get and being fully ready to reset mode. it is a fullface system. [indiscernible] we are funding our maintenance, our sustainment to a level that we think is as high as we can afford right now. so that is a factor. you have to have the aircraft. i'm not happy with where we are. the other factors, the budget control act was passed. and we haven't really ever gotten out of that. there was improvement. i agree in general, that there are some things to get the training advantage. we can do more with simulation. we are trying to take advantage of that. we are trying to take advantage of pilot training. we are trying to make sure that we produce pilots more efficiently. in maintaining their proficiency , i don't disagree with that at all. col. venable: we have filibustered much of our time. i will make room for just a couple of questions from the audience. and then we will take one from you. -- from the field. >> stephen metz asked a question about personnel. the service personnel leaders testified that 2022 is shaping up to be arguably one of the most ethical tears for the all volunteer force in terms of recruiting. we also know the air force has confronted a pilot for years now. which was maybe put in a better place because of covid. but now because covid is gone and the airline traffic is ramping up again, airlines need pilots. can you talk about where the air force stands with particular pilots? sec. kendall: our recruiters could not go to high schools and students were in high schools. we couldn't have the contact we normally do. another factor is the economy right now. we are about 3% unemployment right now. a number of factors came together. the air force is locked into shape for 2022. we have a pretty significant backlog of people. and we are very actively looking at this. i don't want to wait until the crisis is here in anticipation. we are trying to do a number of things with the bonuses. we are doing a lot of outreach. we are addressing this. and i'm hopeful that we will be able to get through this period. we are close for 2022, but i think we will get there. but 2023 -- we are focusing on as much lead time as we can to get ready for that. we are not short of operational pilots, we are short of staff officers. we want pilots and those jobs because of knowledge they bring. that is where the shortage comes. we reduce that number by about 300 over the last year. we continue to do a number of things to try to attract people for that. we look at other career fields. we have some coming from there. we always do. col. venable: i was going to say, you just wanted to get out of there. it was really fun to get out there. i saw him talking to professors. and you can be proud in general. space for send air force. it's a terrific group of people. they are just as patriotic and just as passionate. anyway, i digress a little. col. venable: this was a fantastic question and goes back to 2016. we had a 2000 pilot shortage. this last year in 2021, the air force has reduced that to around 1600 total pilots. when you think about that, it sounds really great. but there was the covid bump because of retention. sec. kendall: the airline shut down and people stayed in. col. venable: we are 650 pilots short in the world. covid folks refusing to take the covid shot. estimates vary between 600 pilots and about 400 to 450. could you talk about the retention aspects? and how the flying hours coupled with the readiness challenge might be a drag on retention. sec. kendall: i have not seen a number on pilots. we processed about 400 people. 399 was the last number i saw. we have people looking through the process. if you're going to be in the military, we can follow orders. we are processing those through a two-step process. we are being generous with people on that in terms of what we are requiring to demonstrate that. we would like to accommodate you if we can. if you can't be deployed, that is the majority of the ones you're looking at now. i would be really surprised. i think it is much smaller, quite frankly. col. venable: that is the estimate. sec. kendall: i will try to get you a hard number. col. venable: i would love to see them if they are available. i will make catherine very unhappy because i will take a question from the audience. a microphone? it's working. maybe not. we are doing a little bit of pt coming around the back. sec. kendall: i can repeat it if you want to. >> thank you, sir. you said china, china, china is why you've come back. can you tell us where the pacific air force stands in terms of refueling, ace, base operations, base defense? and in the context of china's competition in the pacific, china is trying to sign agreements within pacific islands. where does the pacific air force stand in terms of these? and what do they need to do now? sec. kendall: he and i had a conversation about this the other day and i said that we agreed that we made a good start. but we still have a ways to go. with the air force adopted is a very solemn concept. use multiple bases. we have done quite a bit of exercise with that. and in the pacific, part of it, it's a reduced number of people because your crosstraining people with multiple disciplines. this is a fairly near-term when. it could've evolved -- involved other things to do that. it will be detected as well. we need hardening to some degree and logistics assault. there is a list of things that have to happen to make it a total reality. i know of one agreement. japan obviously has a base now. we have guam. they can accommodate you really well. col. venable: one last question. will it be 21 fly this year? sec. kendall: i don't think i can answer that. i think the details of 21 are classified. i don't think i can give you an answer. i was asked about the schedule. every acquisition program has the ability to get in trouble. development is hard. it is hard, it is difficult. and you always end up with things you didn't have. our average acquisition program is about 25%. a time and money kind of thing. we want to get it down to something like 15. we should expect the acquisition to have issues up to a point. we should not expect 35. they did bidding, right? and they will win. we have a more risky remote duty station at the time. and we talked about whether or not we should speculate. and all my five requirements you got to let the contractor do what he wants. col. venable: i love the response. we are all but out of time. do you have a finale you have a finale want to close with? sec. kendall: i just did breakfast at the white house with goldstar families. and we went to arlington cemetery with the president and the tomb of the unknown shoulder. -- soldier. i can tell you that as americans, we should all be fond of that. there has always been very strong bipartisan support for national security. i think that continues. and we protect our values and our democracy. i wrote a piece for forbes about how president biden's greatest challenge would be the good samaritans depending on which side you think you are on. we are a country with strong values. we've had a more diverse military than we've ever had before. i would think you for your support for national security. thank you all. col. venable: thank you, sir. ladies and gentlemen. [applause] thank you all for being here with us in person and for those of you online, thank you for joining as well. you will get a survey here in the next day or two. i would really appreciate it if you would fill it out. and if you want to say anything about me being strikingly handsome or the secretary, please do add those in. thank you for coming back. sec. kendall: good to see you. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2022] >> scene one focuses on the presidency of lyndon johnson. you hear about the 1964 presidential campaign, the march on selma, and the war in vietnam. >> not everyone knew they were be recorded. certainly, johnson's secretaries knew. they were tasked with transcribing many of those conversations. in fact, they were the ones that make sure the conversations were taped, as johnson would signal to them through an open door between his office and theirs. >> you also hear some blunt talk. >> i want a report of the number of people assigned to kennedy the day he died and the number assigned to me now. if i can't ever go to the bathroom, i can't go. i promise you, i won't go anywhere. i will stay right behind these black gates. >> next, secretary of state antony blinken talks about the biden administrations