my name is michael anderson and i'm the board director here at the atlantic council. on behalf of the our center for strategy and security and for defense practice, i would like to welcome you to this exciting second installment of our 2022 series, a conversation with secretary christine wormuth on the national defense strategy. thank you so much for joining us today. when the atlantic council launched the series in 2009 our vision was to establish flagship speakers for the most important security challenges now and in the future. this series has been useful for defense companies like us to help us better understand challenges and priorities in order to inform our investments and partnerships, particularly when it comes to research and development, better preparing ourselves to meet huge research capability needs. today's event is the second installment in 2022. last year we were honored to kick off the series with a discussion on advancing army priorities with john whitley and general james mcconville. general mcconville has been a frequent guest at the commander series. the year prior he featured in a discussion on adapting army operations to prevail in competition for peers. today's events will add to our further track record on army leadership engagement. we are delighted again to host the secretary of the u.s. army, the honorable christine wormuth, to build on these previous discussions. there is no better leader today to discuss the role of the army on deterring actors across the globe. thank you again for spending time with us and we look forward to hearing your insights in the coming hour. with that it is my great pleasure to introduce jane, my colleague, who will make a couple of announcements and further introduce our esteemed guest. jane is also a board director and president and ceo in north america at a company that works on solutions to protect the integrity of products and documents. jane has held previous roles as deputy terry sector -- deputy secretary of the department of homeland security, assistant secretary-general of the united nations and member of the security council in the bush and clinton administrations. she has also had a distinguished career in the army pleading service in the gulf during desert storm and she deeply understands the importance of the topics we are discussing today. jane, thank you for joining us today. over to you. >> thank you very much, michael, for that introduction and for your generous and long-standing support for the commanders series. it's a pleasure to hear from these leaders at the military council that we have hosted over the years and i am particularly looking forward to our discussion with today's remarkable guest. we are joined by the secretary of the army of the united states, christine wormuth. thank you very much for joining us and we look forward to your insights in the neck our. here at the atlantic council the center for strategy and security works to develop sustainable nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the u.s., its allies and partners. the center seeks to honor the legacy of service and eat those that is nonpartisan commitment to the call of security and peace. while we are working together on these issues related to security and peace, the united states and its partners and allies really have so much to thank the general for. consistent with his teeth though sand with the mission, -- ethos and the mission we are shaping the debate around defending the united states around forward-looking assessments with concepts that will define the future of warfare. that future is only becoming more complex as we are currently seeing with the evolving crisis and war in ukraine. this year the biden administration is set these i national defense strategy that will provide a roadmap for the department of defense near-term priorities. the recently released sheet provides a glimpse into the department's strategic thinking, stressing integrated deterrence, campaigning, and building, enduring the advantages of the three main lines of effort. the u.s. army, alongside sister services, will need to coordinate with allies and arteries and affection across all domains and theaters of warfare to maintain military advantage now and into the future. additionally, deterring china and russia remains both a top priority to the u.s. defense as russia challenges the united states and allied leadership abroad. u.s. troops are reinforcing nato countries in ukraine in response to the intensifying aggression. meanwhile, the united states continues to recognize china as a pacing threat while the current administration gradually shifts resources to the indo pacific and the army makes a case for their joint force operations there. in response to an evolving defense landscape the u.s. army must adapt its posture and update its arsenal to support u.s. and allied security imperatives. secretary of war myth --wormuth will sit down with us to discuss the army's role in beating national and global defense priorities today and tomorrow. as secretary of the army, she is the defense department's senior civilian official related to all matters at the u.s. army and in her role she is responsible for the function and readiness of the army ranging from personnel to financial matters and is -- has formally held senior national security roles in the obama administration, special assistant to the president and was the national security senior director of defense. secretary christine wormuth also served as the deputy under secretary of defense for strategy, plans, and forces, including the 2014 quadrennial defense review. she has also served as the under secretary of defense for politics, advising the secretary of defense on a range of functional and regional issues. i would be remiss not to mention that she also served as the founding director of the resilience center, striving for sustainable solutions to climate, migration, and security problems. sec., thank you for taking on the myriad security challenges now facing the nation. moderating the conversation today is vivian, who serves as a national security reporter at "the wall street journal," having covered foreign-policy and national security for two decades and has reported from 70 nations. before i hand it over to secretary wormuth for keynote remarks, i would like to remind everyone that this is a public event and on the record. we encourage our audience on zoom to direct questions to the secretary using the q&a tab that you can find at the bottom of your screen. be sure to identify yourself, please, and your affiliation as you ask your question. we will be collecting them throughout the event and then vivian will pose some questions to our guest at the end. we also encourage our online audience to join the conversation on twitter by following us there and using the hash tag forward defense. thank you all for joining us for what i'm sure will be a stimulating, captivating conversation. without further ado, secretary, over to you. >> good afternoon. it is delightful to be back at the atlantic council. it is great to see some of my former colleagues who i so enjoyed working with and jane, thank you so much for that introduction. i really appreciate it. you have been a woman leader in our homeland security and national community and like everyone who has served in the army you are also a soldier for life. thank you so much, it's great to be here. i spent the last few weeks testifying with general mcconville in front of congress and meeting with senators and representatives and talking about really the top three priorities of the army. people, modernization, and readiness, talking about striking a balance between meeting the demands of today while also preparing for the future. but given this audience and given everything i know about the atlantic council i thought that this afternoon i would talk a little bit about how the army is going to play its part in implementing the national defense strategy that the department has just issued in the last several week. there are three primary lines of effort in the national defense strategy. the first is campaigning or active campaigning. the next is integrated deterrence. the third is enduring advantages. the army has a role to play and all three pillars and i thought i would talk briefly about our role in each part of the strategies. first, the army is campaigning out in the world every single day. campaigning strengthens deterrents and enables us to give advantages against the full range of competitor actions. but really the core of campaigning is using operating forces and synchronizing them and aligning our u.s. government activities with other instruments of national power, nonmilitary instruments of national our all to underline acute forms of competitor coercion and complicate adversary's military preparation as we develop our own war fighting capabilities with allies and partners around the world. we in the army are campaigning every day in europe and the indo pacific and other regions all around the world. in europe, for example, the army invested $2.4 billion just in fy 22 for the european deterrence initiative and we have seen the return of that frankly on the investment in our troops were able to deploy and basically go to europe, fall in on the army sets of equipment and be out in the field doing live fire training with that equipment all in about a weeks time. that would not have been possible had we not made the investment in edi that we have made in the last couple of years . the army also reestablished fifth corps in 20 and stood up a forward headquarters element that i visited in poland. that forward headquarters has been very important in everything we are doing right now as we confront russia's completely unprovoked invasion of ukraine. these investments have also allowed us to build up infrastructure throughout nato territory and undertake considerable training with nato allies. we actually just wrapped up signature exercise for the region, defender europe 2020 two, which took place across nine different countries and included more than 3400 u.s. troops and 5100 multinational members from 11 allied partner nations on top of everything that we are already doing to again deter aggression against nato territory and to help ukraine defend itself. turning to the indo pacific and what we are doing to campaign there, in the indo pacific we have invested over $1 billion in fy 23 on the specific deterrent initiatives modeled on edi that the obama administration established when russia went into ukraine the first time in 2014. marking the event in the indo pacific, it's called operation pathways and it encompasses about seven major exercises in the region. we have cobra gold in thailand, salic a tan in the philippines, tiger balm in singapore, talisman sabre in australia, garuda shield in indonesia, and [indiscernible] in the philippines again. as we do all of those different exercises, general flynn, our four-star commander of the u.s. army pacific is working closely with army partners in all of those countries to deepen the complexity and expand the scope of those exercises so that they will be more and more useful to us in terms of interoperability with allies and partners. we are also looking in the indo pacific getter as we have done in europe at how we can get the best use of our army pre-position stocks. we are looking at how we can make better use of our aps in the indo pacific since we want to be able to use the equipment for as much of the year as possible. and in parallel with our exercises we are also making good use of what we call in the army our security force assistance against. teams largely comprised of meat to senior level noncommissioned officers that were designed frankly originally to go into afghanistan and help build a partner capacity with afghan security forces but we have taken the concept and really used it as a centerpiece for how we are thinking about ill ding partner capacity for around the world and in the last two years the fifth security force assistance for gade sent advisory teams to over 14 different countries and of those, any time i talk a combatant commander, whether it is the indo pacific commander or if it is steve townsend, they always want another security force assistance brigade, which i think speaks to the utility of that particular formation. another really important part of what we are doing in terms of campaigning is using our joint pacific multinational readiness center. i would ask portable combat training system. those of you who know the army know that we send our brigades to do major training at the brigade and battalion levels to fort irwin in california and fort holt in louisiana. now what we are doing in the pacific is allowing troops who are stationed all the time in hawaii to be able to engage in that kind of complicated training from home station. we are also able to take some of the capabilities of the jp mrc and use that with our allies and partners in the region. we are looking forward to building out on that. while i focused on talking about what the army is doing in europe and the indo pacific in terms of campaigning, i would be remiss if i didn't mention that we are also in the middle east, africa, and latin america and we are also of course we have our army special forces who are working all around the world on all of those continents every day and i would just highlight, focusing on europe, in the last seven years it really has been the army substantially that has deployed to train and use this -- assist of the ukrainian military to help them build up resilience and resistance capabilities and i think we see the return on that investment very much with what we are seeing right now and when russia went into ukraine in late february we sent the 10th special forces group to develop a coalition planning cell that enabled us to bring together 20 different nations to coordinate information with international soft partners and allies and it has again i think contributed significantly with the effectiveness and deed of the assistance and training that we have been able to provide. turning to integrated deterrent, everything we are doing on campaigning contributes to building integrated deterrents. anytime adversaries or potential adversaries can see crom -- combat credible forces operating in the field, it helps to build integrated the torrent and as of right now russia can see 48,000 army soldiers in europe standing firm in defense of nato territory and standing firm with ukraine in its efforts to defend itself. but we are not just thinking about combat credible forces today. in the army we are also thinking about strengthening integrated deterrent by building the forces that we need for tomorrow. i wanted to talk a bit about our modernization strategy. i spend a lot of time thinking about modernization for the army . first, making sure that we are investing enough in our enduring systems we will need, in addition to thinking about the new systems that we need to develop for the future better -- battlefield. for example the army is currently updating the abrams tank version three, the same tank that i would point out we will be selling to poland. poland will be buying the unocal a most advanced, lethal american tank that one can possibly by and i think it will be even tested for strengthening interoperability and deterrent work with nato and we are thinking about enduring systems to modernize and invest in the apache attack helicopters, for example. we are developing an echo model to improve the lethality and survivability of that attack helicopter. the echo model will be whipped with an open system architecture incorporating the latest navigations, sensors, and weapons systems. when it comes to developing new systems we are thinking about the modernization effort in terms of six different portfolios. first, long-range precision fire. then next generation combat vehicles, thinking about replacing the bradleys, for example. future law -- future vertical lift to replace the black hawk and the capabilities of the kyla , which hasn't been in the army fleet for some time. we are improving air and missile defenses, soldier lethality systems, and the network that underpins those other five portfolios. week, starting with the development in the establishment of the army futures command in austin have been working really hard on modernization in the last few years and i think we are starting to see the effort to pay dividends and we are now at the point where we will be putting prototypes and in some cases fielding actual new systems and getting them into the hands of soldiers. fiscal year 23 alone for example we will have 24 systems going into the hands of soldiers either in terms of prototypes where soldiers will be giving us feedback on the designs to help us move into procurement or in terms of actually putting programs of record into the hands of soldiers. in fy 23 we will be putting into the field four long-range precision systems. first, the long-range hypersonic weapon. second, the precision strike missile. third, the ship killing mid range capability. last, the extended range canon artillery. this will allow us to strike targets at ranges that before were never possible for the army . we are also modernizing as i set the air and missile defense system and will have more capabilities around funding the development of helicopters that we will see several years from now in the 20 30's. we are not just building new weapons systems. we are developing new formations to use the systems and the one i will highlight is what i will call the multi-die main -- multi-domain task force allowing us to combine kinetic effects like long-range precision fire but also allow the army to conduct non-connecticut types of attacks, for example, using cyber capabilities, electronic warfare, and space capabilities. we will eventually be building to a total of five systems and all of the new systems help us to build integrated deterrents. the last part of the strategy where i see a big role for the army is in the enduring advantages where we think about how we continue to out pace our competitors over time. we have to be able to innovate and experiment with new concepts, new technologies, start figuring out how we can really build a joint force that can work together and really, then going beyond the u.s., how can we work together with allies and partners? basically as we have seen in the last couple of decades we rarely go someplace alone. we usually go with allies and partners and the primary way the army has been in pursuing experimentation and innovation is through a series of activities called project convergence, a set of experiments we started two years ago in 2020 and we have slowly been building the complexity into widening the aperture in terms of organizations that are participating in the pc series and looking to project convergence 22 we will be working with all of these sister services and how we can first use scenarios anchored in the european theater, the indo pacific gator, looking at the operational challenges in those theaters and how can we as a joint force fall back together. a big part of what we are doing is looking back at how we can connect the best sensors to the best shooters. we would like to get to the place where you might have army early warning radar systems sending us sensor data to perhaps an f-35 who then sends it to the best shooter, which could be again and army platform like the precision strike missile working together to neutralize the threat. that is what we are building to and trying to do when you hear people talking about it. we have work to do to get there but i am very proud of what the army is doing to contribute to helping us get to that goal. finally, building enduring advantage isn't just about hardware and software. for the army it's also about the people. our people are really our best asset, our best weapons system. we are looking at how we can get the most in the best from our people and a lot of what we are doing there is try to take a much more talent taste sec. wormuth: the army is about a one million people. we are really trying to move to a digital age approach where we are recognizing the individual capabilities. the talent of individuals and really trying to think about how can we have a talent-based approach to our work force. in closing, i thought i would talk a little bit about ukraine and what lessons learned there are for the army. we are looking every day what is happening and what we are seeing with the russian military and trying to glean as many lessons learned. there are a couple of lessons. first, if you look at the russian military failures, i think it underscores the importance of leadership, training and discipline. the russians do not train like us. i think the terrible civilian atrocities that you have seen some of the russian military's, is directly due to the lack of leadership training and discipline that they appear to have in their ranks. for us, you would not see that because we have a core that is the backbone of the force of the u.s. army. something else you see the russian struggling with this delegating responsibility down to lower echelon. that is something that army does extremely well. -- that is something the u.s. army does extremely well. a third lesson is logistics. you often hear the expression amateurs do strategy and professionals do logistics. i think everything we are seeing in ukraine underscores that. you can be the best equipped military in the world but if you cannot sustain your forces it does not matter. the russians have displayed a notable deficiency in this area. this is also a strength for the u.s. army. i think it underscores we have to focus on how do we provide logistics effectively in a contested environment like the one we know we would face in the future. that is one of the reasons we are investing in more modernized aircraft so that we will be able to move supplies around the pacific where you see the incredibly vast distances. another lesson coming out of ukraine is the importance of secure communications and the consequences of one soldiers use their cell phones. when soldiers use unencrypted communications, that makes them a target. we will have to think about that. most of our young soldiers are used to having their phones with them. more broadly, we will have to look at how we can reduce our signatures of our formations on the battlefield as much as possible. the battlefield of the future will be highly transparent. two last lessons. everything we are seen in ukraine underscores the growing drone threat. drones and other unmanned systems are going to pose significant challenges for us. i would say drones are an issue here at home. we have been appointed the executive agents for the joint counter unmanned aerial systems at the department of defense. lastly, everything we are seen in ukraine underscores the importance of maintaining our industrial base and our munitions stockpile. munitions are going to be important in the future, particularly if we get in a protected conflict. -- protracted conflict. we are talking with industry about what can we do to think about stockpiling some of the longer lead items. there are 10 more lessons that you could list, but in the interest of time, i will stop here. it is such a pleasure to be back at the atlantic council and i look forward to my conversation with vivian. >> thank you so much, madam secretary. you and i were supposed to have this discussion in late february, but the war upended both of our schedules. i am glad we made it happen. the invasion has thrown into sharp focus the debate over u.s. troops being permanently stationed in europe. there has been maneuverings including army personnel. today there are 100,000 troops deployed to europe since 2005. president biden says their mission will focus on eastern flank allies. we need a permanent presence to show russia we are there and committed to our allies. can you tell us if a decision has been made about a permanent u.s. troop presence there? and if not, do you anticipate reinforcing troop levels and rotation currently? sec. wormuth: i do not think i will be breaking any news. the issue of future posture and presence in europe is going to be one of the centerpieces of the conversation at the nato summit in madrid. we are looking at that and looking at what makes sense. we have announced the replacement of the units that are there right now. we will be seeing that same number of about 40,000 army troops continuing to stay in europe over the next several months. whether that enhanced force posture will be permanent or rotational is the key issue. i am no longer in a role where i am in the situation room and actively participating in those discussions. i think there are those like turman millie -- chairman mark milley who would say as permanent presence. there are others, our eastern flank allies, would very much like permanent troops and feel like permanent troops are more effective in deterring. that is the heart of the discussion right now. what is the best way to provide deterrence. i do think you will see an enhanced posture overall when we are on the other side of this. >> president biden has said there will not be boots on the ground in this conflict. i heard military leaders are concerned that as this conflict becomes prolonged, momentum to assist and to keep on giving them weapons and training, could start to wane. how do you see the u.s. sustaining this level of support for ukraine? sec. wormuth: i think the administration has done an admirable job helping the alliance come together and have a strong position against the russian invasion. i think we will continue to see that unity. it will take work. back in 2014, for my own experience, it takes a lot of diplomacy to be able to sustain that unity. all of the nato country see what is at stake and that alone is an incentive to maintain unity. in a practical way, we are looking at what do we need to be doing to allow us to continue to sustain the lethal assistance we are providing to the ukrainians. that is why we signed contracts to replenish our javelins. we have taken some risks to our group -- only readiness, but i think we will continue to do that. i think the nato countries know what is at stake. >> where do we draw the line? a lot of reporting that it will be announced this week. where does the u.s. stand as far as those types of systems getting into the hands of ukrainian fighters. sec. wormuth: where the u.s. stands in wanting to provide all the assistance that we can to buy ukrainians without escalating the situation to appoint -- a point where the war spills over her goes in a terrible direction. if putin starts to feel cornered, what he lash out? would he used chemical weapons or a technical nuclear demonstration? we have to prudently measured those risks and to think carefully about how can we best gift the ukrainian military what they need. it is going to be more challenging to sustain the morale of the ukrainian forces given the bombardment they are being subject to. we cannot allow this war to escalate. then i think you will see that unity will be more challenging to sustain. >> the russian military showed third deficiency in the fact that they cannot sustain their forces. best surprised observers who expected its mightiness might be too much for the ukrainians. moving forward, where can the united states plug holes to make a difference and get the ukrainians over the line and some of these problems? are you going to start trimming more people on newer systems? -- training more people on newer systems? sec. wormuth: we have started providing more training as we have given them more complex systems. the javelins and the stinkers are not particularly complex systems. even i was able to take out a target with the simulator. we more recently gave the ukrainians artillery, the system takes more training, and we stepped up the training we are providing to the ukrainian military. we also helped them to sustain those types of systems, not just how to use them to hit targets, but how to make sure to maintain the tires, to load the shells accurately so that the system can keep working. that will be increasingly helpful to the ukrainian armed forces. >> there has been some troop movement in belarus and has been some concern. argue monitoring that? -- are you monitoring that? sec. wormuth: i am looking carefully at the intelligence. what i have mainly seen is small advances. that is due to the fact that they clearly scaled back their objectives and it to focus on the east, focus on the donbass, and the terrain is more favorable to the bombardment campaigns that the russians are notorious for. >> there was concern that president putin could have nuclear weapons. what is the army's role in preventing that kind of scenario? sec. wormuth: what we can do -- first of all it is important to say we are looking at that type of contingency and thinking about what options would be available if that were to happen. the army can try to provide training for how to operate under those kinds of conditions. we have personal objective equipment and things like that. if putin were to decide to use a nuclear technical demonstration, that what he race any possibility -- that would erase that he could be any thing but a pariah leader. he would have to think long and hard about that, since he wants to bring russia back into the international community at some point. i do not inc. he can do that if he goes nuclear. -- i do not think he can do that if he goes nuclear. >> i want us to move to the indo pacific. how does the army balance requirements in europe? what is the army's role in this case? sec. wormuth: we have a tremendous military and a tremendous army. we can walk and chew gum at the same time. everything we have been doing in europe since late february, we have continued to do all of the activities that we had planned in the indo pacific. all of the exercises for example that i talked about. one of the things that the army brings to the indo pacific, perhaps that is a little bit different, is the relationships with the armies in the region. most of the militaries in the indo pacific are dominated by the armies. if you look at the counter parts of our chairman of the joint chief, in most of the countries those are going to be army generals and we have relationships with them that we have built up over time. we have built relationships that can increase the potential for us to have access in the future if we were to have a conflict. if we were to get into a conflict in the indo pacific a lot of what the army would be doing is being a supporting force. we would help to set up staging bases. we would use our planning power to plan for the entire joint force. we would provide logistic discs for -- logistics. with the new long-range precision fire systems that we have we would be able to bring that to bear as well. i think the army has an important role, but any kind of a future conflict in asia would be a joint force effort. >> president biden said that will u.s. could intervene militarily if china takes time one force. the white house played his response. from the army's perspective, what are the options for involvement? can you help us understand how it compares to ukraine? sec. wormuth: any attempts by china to forcibly reunify type one -- taiwan would be a complicated undertaking. i am sure china is looking at the challenges russia has had. that is probably giving them paul's -- pause. the army's role would be along the lines of what i just said. we would be providing air and missile defenses. we would with our mid range capability system, that is a land based system that can sink ships. i think the army but have a number of roles, but we want to make sure every day china's president wakes up and decide today is not the date to try to forcibly reunify with taiwan. >> the army has been discussing the need for further innovation. can you talk in layman's terms about why this would make a difference for our soldiers and how does it play out in terms of modernizing our military? sec. wormuth: i would pick two examples. we are developing robotic combat vehicles. these are autonomous vehicles that can navigate complex terrain without having soldiers in them. doing that means any soldier or any vehicle that is able to go out on unexplored terrain and if there are minds on that terrain, a soldier will not be at risk. whereas today's soldiers are out on the front lines. if you think about the ied threat we have had, you can see how robotic combat vehicles would be helpful for soldiers. another example where we are bringing artificial intelligence into our formations, we have a program we are developing called rainmaker that is a software program that is able to take data from different sources, different weapons systems, and bring it together so that we are able to share data from different centers to different shooters in a way that we were not able to do before. that will allow us to bring combat power to bear much more quickly. >> i want to turn to a couple of our audience questions. do you have any goals for the army recruitment that could change in terms of where people are recruited from? what is the army doing to change how and where it recruits? sec. wormuth: we have already started recruiting in different ways than we have before. to the question of where we are recruiting, we targeted two years ago 22 cities across the country in urban areas where you have higher concentrations of african-americans or hispanic americans, to try to reach demographic communities that we have not reached in the past as successfully. we set up internships for african-american and hispanic american officers to encourage them and to come into the combat field. i think we need to do more of that. we are facing some significant recruiting headwinds right now. we are competing for talent. we have to do more to figure out how we can talk to a wider band of americans about what the value proposition is for them in the army. >> a lot of allies have supported ukraine with soviet era equipment. what is the army doing to support those nato lx? -- allies? sec. wormuth: we are working with nato countries. we are trying to make it as easy as possible to buy american equipment. with the ukrainians, some of the artillery systems that we are providing, that is allowing us to buy new systems. instead of replacing old with old, we are replacing old with you. >> can you speak to the impact of putin's work in ukraine and strengthening the army and nato leadership in europe? sec. wormuth: we have very strong relationships with the armies of nato countries. we do counterpart meetings every year. there is a conference for european armies. we would try to keep those relationships very strong. through the army national guard state sponsorship program, we have deep relationships with not just ukraine, but all of the nato countries. the officers in the national guard, their tenures can be long , and that allows them to sometimes have relationships with nato countries that last for years, not just a couple of years. you are able to have a diverse set of connections through that program. >> regarding about potential new members bringing nato -- joining nato. sec. wormuth: it has been a while since i have been deep in nato activities. even though sweden and finland were not actual nato members, they were very close to nato. they participated pretty deeply in exercises. there is not a big gap there to bridge. they will come into nato pretty quickly and assimilate. >> what is the u.s. army's force posture strategy in oceana? sec. wormuth: the state department has the lead on diplomacy, but we are certainly having conversations very actively with the countries of both siana and -- oh siana -- oceana. the army has very good relationships with australia. we are looking at can we do more with them and the philippines? that is a series of ongoing dialogue. a lot of what we are doing right now is trying to maximize what we are getting out of those exercises that i talked about in my remarks. >> china and russia last week help their first joint exercise last week while president biden was in the region. do you think it was a symbolic move? how concerned are you about that partnership given how stretched thin the russian military is at the moment? sec. wormuth: undoubtedly come out a head of state goes to visit -- undoubtably, when a head of state goes to visit, there will be some symbolic exercises. i do think it is concerning that the relationship between russia and china has deepened. you have seen increasing participation with chinese forces coming to the series of exercises that russia conducted. i think there are going to be eventually limits to that partnership. russia is likely to be the junior partner in that relationship, which is not something that president putin enjoys. a lot of what china is seeing in terms of what is happening to russia is probably raising questions in their mind. >> what is the armies strategy in small business innovation to encourage technology startups? sec. wormuth: we have tried to work closely with small businesses. you have all these great startups that have all of these cool new technology. and because it can be very difficult to work with the department of defense, it can be hard to bring those programs into field think. -- fielding. we chose to locate futures command in austin because austin is such a technology hub. we have tried to develop partnerships with small businesses. we have monthly and quarterly programs where we invite small businesses in to work with us. we are interested in leveraging new technologies. >> one of the things that the ukraine war showed us is how quickly equipment can outpace replacement for equipment. do you see your role for platforms that are less complex to enable faster combat replacement? sec. wormuth: we need to look at systems that we can afford to have be cheaper, more numerous. it makes it harder for the enemy to know what they should be targeting. another thing we are trying to do is looking at advanced manufacturing and 3d printing. instead of having forces that are out in the field have to requisition their parts and supplies all the way back to wherever, is having capability to build those parts in the field. >> the ukrainian army is effective at destroying russian tanks and vehicles. do you see this invasion --. sec. wormuth: we absolutely have to be in can about protection systems for our tanks. -- thinking about protection systems for our tanks. we have not seen the russian military do combined arms effectively. they have not used if a treat to do screening for them. -- infantry to do screening for them. we would be operating with our tanks differently than what we have seen the russians do. >> the marine corps gave up it stinks a few years ago -- its tanks a few years ago. are you rethinking the armies commitment to having combined army formation? sec. wormuth: what we see in the ukraine underscores that there was a need for heavy forces, for armored forces. i look at the european theater and i talked about the army being the support for it. the army would be the center of gravity in a nato fight. in the indo pacific, i see it more as being the support team. our heavy tanks are not as relevant in the indo pacific. we are designing a lighter tank that gives you some of the lethality of a tank. >> as far as getting equipment into the hands of ukrainian forces, how is the u.s. working with ukraine and other allies to ease the transfer so they get them a lot faster? sec. wormuth: we in the army are trying to focus in the couple of ways. one is to try to provide coordination. i talked about that combined action sell -- cell. bring the legal assistance to where it is needed. --lethal assistance to where it is needed. another thing we can help with this intelligence about where the threats to those convoys may be. it is going to be a continuing challenge. a lot of that assistance is being provided by road and by truck, you have logistical challenges there. we will do everything possible, but that is going to be a growing challenge. >> we have 30 seconds left. what is keeping you on -- up at night? sec. wormuth: i think probably a person problem -- a problem is our recruiting challenges. it is rare to have a young american walk through the door and say i would like to join the u.s. army. as we see fewer americans eligible to join the military, whether it is because of behavioral issues or weight issues, that is something that concerns me be --. we have work to do to make sure we can keep up. >> we have to leave it there. thank you so much for joining me. thank you to the atlantic council for hosting us. i hope you all have a wonderful afternoon. 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