Transcripts For CSPAN Extreme Weather Preparedness 20140217

People will overwhelmingly approve it. I thought it wouldve approved in 2000 or 2008. Im not sure about the palestinians. I have to be honest about that. I hope it would be the case they would support it as well. Asking the impossible conundrum. , i wroteof years ago an oped in the wall street journal. Was about the birth of it was about the book of jonas. Who the story of a profit say if you dond not repent, you will be destroyed. He realizes this is a nowin situation. If he tells them to repent and they do repent, three years later, they will say, why do we have to repent . Nothing happened. Or if he goes and they do not repent, then he is a false prophet. That is the paradox of prophecy. It is a nowin situation. You can house the same question about the maintenance of american hegemony in the middle east. If america had not maintained hegemony over 50 years, it may be nothing wouldve happened to the u. S. If america had let its guard something worse than 9 11 happened, and the paradox would have been there. Why didnt america maintain its hegemony . Theres no conclusive answer to your question. The decisionmakers in realtime and something ive learned to that they have to confront those that paradox all the time everyday. They have my sympathy and my respect. Sometimes even when they make the wrong decision, they take the responsibility. They assume the paradox of papa c. They know they make a certain decision, it may have untold consequences. If they do not make a decision, it may also have untold consequences. Consistently and consecutively over the past halfcentury and even beyond, american policymakers have overwhelmingly come down on the side of maintaining american hegemony in the middle east. And i think with humility and some very powerful minds and good hearts. Have to give them credit. Ambassador michael oren, a couple of things in the closing. [indiscernible] thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] next on cspan, a look at u. S. Crisis Response Options in the middle east and north africa. Obamasllowed by the lan on Climate Change and energy policy. And hearing how well states are for extreme weather. Later, lee ellis. Tamari can watch elena kagan tomorrow you can watch elena kagan and ruth bader ginsburg. It will begin at 10 a. M. Eastern here on cspan. It will befall a discussion of the three branches of the u. S. Government, the future of democracy, and the 2014 midterm thations with her faster is at 11 30 a. M. Eastern also on cspan. A conversationt, with republican senator bob corker on his early career in business. I have started working at most folks when i was 13 doing all kinds of odds and ends. I migrated to being a construction laborer, a rough carpenter. When i graduated from college i ended up being a construction superintendent. After about four years, i had built some reasonable regional malls around the country and learn how to build projects. When i was 25 years old, i went into business. I started doing a lot of repeat work come a Small Projects where i could be paid quickly. The company grew about 80 a year. We ended up building Shopping Centers around the country, retail projects in 18 states. It was energizing. It was a great place to be. The energy when you come into the front door, it would almost knock you down. I sold that when i was 37 to a young man who had worked with me for many years. , i have done several things since. I ended up acquiring a good deal of real estate. Through the years, through portfolios and other companies. I love being in business. Later we will talk with democratic senator Amy Klobuchar of minnesota on being in the senate and the mother of a teenage daughter. She called me and i picked up the phone walking into the senate. She is in tears. Mom, we cant wear a bikini at the pool party but you is and dadankin doesnt understand the difference. I go, get him on the phone right now. I walked into Lindsey Graham and knocked him over practically. I thought, i am not doing this balance very well. For any mother, it doesnt matter if youre a senator or a nurse. Trying to balance the family and the work, you never do it perfectly. Anyone that says they do is wrong. American profile interviews with senators bob corker and Amy Klobuchar tuesday night starting at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan, cspan radio and cspan. Org. Next, colonel scott brown discusses how his team would respond to crisis situations in the middle east and north africa. He is the commander of a force of approximately 500 marines and sailors trained to support u. S. And allied interests in the United States Africa Command area. From the atlantic council, this is just over an hour. Good afternoon, welcome to the atlantic council. I am the, none of the marine corpss fellow here at the council. Today we have the pleasure of ,osting colonel Scott Benedict the most recent commander of the special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force Crisis Response. Grundenrator is stephen who lent his considerable secretary ofe defense, the Charles River andciates and is now the ma fellow for emerging defense challenges here at the atlantic council. Following the 2012 attack in benghazi, we focused on protecting u. S. Citizens and their interest. The marine corpss answer was a special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force. Crisis response, a tethered ground force along with a command element and supported by six ospreys and others. Tour, colonel benedicts they evacuated u. S. Personnel from the embassy in sudan, patrolled the mediterranean and africa for a Contingency Response and engaged in bilateral Training Exercises with the french legionnaires, the senegalese military. Colonel benedict is a copilot by training and has spent time with the infringer he, serving with h force and retellings retaliatory units. He is presently Commanding Officer of the 24th Marine Expeditionary unit. He is a graduate of the u. S. Naval academy, a nato command Staff College and the marine corps war college. Wevelcome me in join me in welcoming colonel Scott Benedict. [applause] thank you for that introduction. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you here today about the Crisis Response. 24ths mentioned, expeditionary unit, Commanding Officer and i took command of that unit in march. About three or four months later, we employed diploid deployed into the european and african areas of responsibility. The core element of that came from our staff. We just returned in january, handed that force over to another commander from the eighth marine regiment. What i am going to do today is talk of little bit about capabilities, some of the issues that we ran into while we were overseas, some of the things we think make this force unique and answer any questions you have at the end. Ok, i am just going to start off with a little bit of marine corps 101 on how we organize our forces. A special Purpose Marine Air ground task worse, the way the marine corps organizes its task forces is with four elements. Is thend element which top box in the upper lefthand of that side. We have the air combat element, the ground element, and the logistics element. We think this is what makes us unique. You get a task force capable of operating across the mission sets assigned to that force. The marine corps has freestanding magtfs. Starting on the far right, Marine Expeditionary forces. They encompass the operating forces. This is the bulk of the marines that deploy or come out of these forces. This type force is used for major combat operations. It is a corps sized force like what you saw made the march to baghdad in 2003. Next to that, you have the brigade commanded by a onestar. It says up to 15,000. This can range from a joint Task Force Headquarters up to aggregating multiple forces in support of major combat operations. Then you have the two on the left, which we would consider our Forward Deployed forces that we would project forward and anticipate would be operating in theater all the time, not just when there is a crisis. The one we have traditionally deployed is the Marine Expeditionary unit. It is about 2500 marines. It is associated with amphibious shipping. That is what you mostly see on the news, marines operating off of the ships. We have two of those on the water at all times. One in the pacific and one generally in the european, african, and Central Command regions. Very capable force. Runs the gamut from working Security Cooperation issues up to having the capability of executing Forcible Entry or having a play inside a major theater operation. The last one on the left is the special purpose. They do not have a size. They do not have a number associated with them. They can be created in order to meet whatever the Mission Requirement is. In this particular case, our Crisis Response was established with about 550 marines. It was based around an Infantry Company sized force. The command element was taken largely from the 24th. Designed for specific evolutions or missions, hours being Crisis Response. I will get into the details on that in a moment. Next slide. This was our mission. We were a forward applied Crisis Response as mentioned. It was established starting last year around the april timeframe. Just one of many options the marine corps has, along with the augmentation of security forces, fleet antiterrorism security teams, and special purpose magtf africa that does cooperation on the continent. It is different. It is not the same. It does not have the same capabilities. Certainly not the combat power it brings to the fight. The box on the right is alluding to what we see as the continuum of Crisis Response. I know it is hard to see a lot of the words. As you start moving up the slope towards the bang, a lot of things happen, particularly when youre talking about support to embassies and government facilities overseas. A lot of indications and warnings. The crisis starts to bubble up. We would like to get a force like spmagtfcr in early to deal with the situation early and diffuse it right its presence or action that might be taken such as reinforcing. We are one of the red boxes on the bottom, or one of the many options. There are four deployed. But not the only option available. Key missions we train to expeditionary enforcement, site security, tactical recovery of aircraft or personnel, as well as noncombatant evacuation operations. We are capable of being a lead for a followon force on the way that we could scale up. We were unique in the theater based on our ability to self command and control, deployment, and the mobility we brought as part of the task force. That came from the combinations as well as the task organized ground element could that allowed us to project this force a long way. Even though we were based in spain for the majority of the time we were deployed, we were able to rapidly project the force. When we got where we were going, we brought everything necessary to operate. We believe that is the ground of the Marine Air Ground task force. It comes as one consolidated package that is scalable to be able to break pieces apart if necessary and also be able to quickly be organized in order to accomplish the mission without a lot of external support. I have already mentioned it does not replace it. There were questions about whether we were there in lieu of. We do not think so. Because of the lack of mu presence in the mediterranean and african region, spmagtfcr filled that gap. We felt it was complementary. This is a little bit about the operating area and time and space for the problem framing. We self deploy this force from camp lejeune to spain. That distance on the red arrows is about the same as it is down to the gulf of guinea. Pretty significant. That is to scale. A map of the United States. It is about 3. 7 times the United States that can fit inside the continent of africa. When they built maps, it always looks like the United States is a good size. Russia is a goodsize compared to africa, but africa is huge. You start running into significant problems or issues operating there. We also moved the force from spain to djibouti and then further on. The distance from moron, spain, to djibouti is about 34 nautical 3400 nautical miles, about the distance from alaska to florida. We repeatedly moved from moron, spain, to support operations in the african region. That is the distance from new york to new orleans. Even routine movement which we did several times from moron, spain, is not routine based on this distance. The combination enabled that to happen. For the last six and a half months, i will start on the lefthand side of the screen. We did a lot of theater Security Cooperation and partnering with our host nation spain as well as the government of france and the French Foreign legion units in the southern part of france. That is how we train in order to team up with a partner nation. In this case, the spanish army and spanish marines and the French Foreign legion which allowed access for us into areas for us to operate and execute full Mission Profiles where we are able to put the force together and tie together our Ground Combat element and insert them into a range and long enough distance away that he was able for us to replicate to scale what it would be like to project a force into some of the areas we were responsible for. We also took the v22s in support of those doing support operations for africa. When they were training in senegal, we supported them with equipment, approximately 1600 nautical miles from moron to senegal. Pretty significant movement. It was the first time v22s were introduced in the western part of africa. We were able to do key leader engagements throughout the western and northern africa. On the left of the slide, you see support operations for africa in may, september, and october. We were also able to take marines in theater, the black Sea Rotational force, special purpose magtf africa, although their missions are not merely Crisis Response, all marines have the capability to do Crisis Response. We brought those two forces together along with ours, aggregated them in the european theater, as well as operating with the Anti Terrorism support team. We brought those forces together and did a mock embassy reinforcement followed by a reinforcement with the spmagtfcr on tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel and also ran mock evacuation exercises, so we were able to rehearse with all the Marine Forces in theater the type of mission sets we thought we might have to employ. A pretty important point just to say the way we are organized as marines allows us to be very flexible and scalable. Bringing these different forces together along with other joint forces is very easy based on the way we organize and command and control the force. This was a good opportunity. The first time this had been done in the european and african theater. On the bottom right is the movement we made down to djibouti to support operations in south sudan, which ultimately led to support and evacuation of american citizens from the embassy in cuba. I hope everyone has at least heard a little bit about the new normal environment moving out into the future. If you have not heard about it, a couple of quick points on it. The new normal is the way to describe macrostability, not being in major wars. At the same time, a lot of potential crises, rapidly moving crises that can occur for all kinds of different reasons, whether they be religion, politics, social issues, demographics, things like the arab spring that started in one place and rapidly moved to another. As part of that, the state department and department of defense working through this problem set. As i showed you earlier on the continuing slide, the state department has made a pledge to look early to see where we could get dod support if necessary to provide security early in the process rather than later. Dod agreed it would pay more attention earlier and plan for support of u. S. Government facilities and personnel overseas prior to crisis. What we saw with the Lessons Learned in south sudan what we believe is the first execution of one of these new normal type missions where we used a new normal force, spmagtfcr, deployed in support of a u. S. Embassy. The army as well projected a new normal Response Force into the embassy. You have both the marines and army come together under this construct underneath a joint commander and executed this mission. I have put up a couple of different thoughts on things we might need to think about as we move forward executing these types of missions. The types of resources we should put against them, how long we would leave those resources in place, who would make those decisions inside of our government when we do those types of operations. Pretty difficult problem set, particularly when you look at the size of the forces we have available in dod and the size and scope of africa and the time, space, and force issues associated with projecting force across the continent to the many high risk type embassies or facilities that may be at risk. That is just one theater we operated in. You could expand that through the globe in a number of places we would consider hotspots. With that, i would turn it over. I will step up here and we will start a conversation with ourselves and the audience. Thanks very much. I thought that was great. [applause] i am going to exercise my privilege as moderator to get a small handful of questions in myself before turning the attention over to questions from the audience. One of them i dare say is prompted by the last slide. That list of questions. As a commander of the special purpose magtf and now the mu, i assume those are not rhetorical questions. Are there answers to those questions . Is that work to be done . I think that work needs to be done every time we execute these types of missions. It is work that is being done as well. The point of me putting those up there, when i get a mission for a force like this, i do not have a question about what the mission is and i did not have a question about the mission in south sudan. As i look across the scope of potential areas that are having problems, i think we need to be asking those types of questions each time we employ a force like this. When we employ a force like this in one place, we are not providing coverage in a lot of others. I wanted to be the guy who helps put context to a lot of what you said for perhaps a less than fully expert audience, which i doubt is in the room, but maybe watching elsewhere. For example, tell us about the v22. 3 4 of the room knows about it. It sounds like the way it was configured and the mission assigned might not be possible without that system. Go right to the root. What is it . The mv22 takes the qualities of a helicopter which can land vertically and combines them with a transport aircraft and puts the two things together, so you get quite a bit of range and speed of a turboprop aircraft but when it gets to where it needs to set down directly, it can set down like a helicopter. What you have done in a place like africa is you have greatly expanded the area and envelope you can operate in. I would agree when we are a landbased force like spmagtfcr is, having the capability of the v22 combined with the kc130j refueling aircraft, that gives you the reach that would get you into the continent. Amphibious shipping off of the coast provides a more direct path to that. Without that being shore based in the southern european region, an aircraft like the v22 gives us that capability. When you fly from miami to anchorage, that is three or four refuelings for an mv22 . It is more than that. It is about three to get from moron to ciganella, which was the first piece of the leg, new york to new orleans. I was talking earlier today about this. The number of refuelings, it does not have to be done by the same aircraft leading it forward. Another aircraft can meet it at a point, you can plugin, and keep going. It is limited by the amount of gas that can be provided. At some point, you start running into the number of hours the pilots are flying. That range capability is greatly extended with the v22. To the end of getting the rudiments on the table, i want to ask if you could talk more set some expectations. I think it would be correct to say the impetus for the formation of this force was the attack on benghazi. I wonder if you could talk about setting expectations on the actual capabilities of 500 dismounted marines around a huge area of operation, in terms of lead time and other things that you would need to have an effect on the ground. I think this force was formed in response to situations in the new normal. I would suggest benghazi was one of those types of actions. A company of infantry marines is pretty capable. I did not mean to suggest otherwise. I am sorry. We like to say we are responsible for limited Crisis Response. Clearly, if you had a situation where you had to force your way into an environment or secure a large area, you would need a larger force. But tailored primarily for the missions i flashed on the screen, which would be embassy reinforcement, site recovery, this is a very capable force to accomplish those types of missions. Not designed for Forcible Entry, for example. Finally, and then i will turn to those of you in the audience, i want to draw on your more than 20year career in the marine corps and in other assignments and ask if you could put into context the new normal relative to other deployments in the past that you have been involved in, bosnia, haiti, others of these new normal deployments you have been involved with for more than 15 years. Are we Getting Better at this . Are we still learning the new normal after 15 years . What is your sense of it after having been firsthand involved . For me, it is a little bit of back to the future. This is what marines have always done. This is the type of thing i did at the beginning of my career. You mentioned haiti. We got an airplane within 72 hours and flew down and stood up a special purpose magtf for haiti. 19931994. I think this is what we do. The marine corps, we have a long history of these types of operations. We have a generation or two of marines coming in in a rack and afghanistan. I think this is more a turn back to the way marines have traditionally operated. This is not an area i feel uncomfortable in. Many of the places we have operated, countries, partners we have operated with, i spent the first part of the year banging around on a ship in the mediterranean, working. So the new normal is not all that new to you . I think that is one way to characterize it without getting into the social aspect of media and all those things that we have talked about a lots. For example, the arab spring. I think the new normal tries to characterize the speed at which these crises will the iraqs and the speed with which they can transfer interrupted violently. I think that might be a little bit of a change. I think for marines to be deployed, to be ready, to be in position, i dont think that is new. Ok. Thank you for indulging my questions. I will say that our conversation is entirely on the record. We do have microphones. If i call on you, introduce yourself in a clear voice before you ask your question. I will start with this gentleman right here and then i will go to the gentleman in the last row. Thanks very much. I served in many of the embassies you mentioned. The ones you have not had to evacuate yet and probably will. Im a little worried why youre briefing. As i recall the news stories, you went into a fairly nonpermissive environment. You do not fly with a lot of protection. Is that the army attitude . Im a little unclear on any protections you had going in . Yes, there were a couple things going on in south sudan. Let me interrupt you and ask you again for people who have no idea what youre talking about what that mission was, when it happened, etc. So everyone knows what we are talking about and when. In the middle of december, violence started kicking up it mean to tribes in south sudan. One that was loyal to be Vice President and one that was loyal to the resident. There was disagreement between those two gentlemen as to whether a coup had been attempted or not been attempted and fighting broke out. There were several folks at risk throughout the country. There were a lot of ngos operating throughout the country. The diplomatic corps fell in south sudan. The eastern Response Force was brought into the embassy to assist with the security, and the embassy had also ordered evacuations. They had already drawn down a large portion of their embassy. Some cb22s we tried to evacuate personnel from further north in one of the camps, and they were shot up. We ended up coming in after that. We were focused in north africa and west africa. We were directed with about 12 hours notice to make that flight to djibouti to evacuate the rest of the embassy. We did assist with the continued withdrawal of personnel out of the embassy. As far as the conditions we executed, we felt that the security was adequate for us to do that. Im not sure if that answers your question. I will take the question right next to the camera there please. This is joe talbot. Sir, i would like to ask you about the Legal Framework of your missions. Do you usually need to clear the mission with your local authorities . If yes, do you coordinate with the local authorities in securing an embassy . Absolutely. The ambassador does that coordination within the country that we would be operating in, and we would only do that under her or his request. So, that coordination would be done. As far as the countries we operate from, we have agreements in place or missions that we are responsible for and we are not doing any operations that are not, that do not have visibility or approvals of those countries we operate from. Let me take a question from this gentleman right here with the glasses. Ok, we will start there and go to the gentleman to the right. Please. I wonder about the relationship of the marines to our special forces, navy seals, army rangers, delta force. To take a current example, there is a report we have special forces in southern libya right now where forces loyal to the former regime took over a military base. How would you decide who reacts to that . Is a clearly defined whose function is which . Would it be a joint operation . To respond well, we are a conventional force. We are not a special operations force, a special purpose task force. That just defined this as not a standing magtf as is determined by the data, the Marine Expeditionary force. I will get any orders from a Combatant Commander who i am responsible to. In this case, it would be general rodriguez. He will make the determination for what is the best force for what the requirements are. Does the scope of the Crisis Response force per se change over time . Or not necessarily . Not necessarily. However, that is how we envision the force, that we would be tasked with a mission that would come up. We would execute that mission, be prepared to operate over a wide area, because its just not enough units like this to operate in multiple different places at one time. We do have the capability to have forces join ours and roll up underneath it. We do have the scale to do that. We would have the tape abilities that would help augment another force. We could certainly do that as well. A question for the gentleman right there. Thank you. I want to ask about the applicability of the structure, particularly this task force. Is this something you have had an opportunity to reflect on at all . Secondly, i want to talk about the quality and character of the relationship with the french and spanish allies. Is that something we could expect to see in action in a cooperative fashion anytime soon . Thank you. Regarding the mass atrocity, we have capabilities that would enable us to support humanitarian support or disaster relief, just basic capabilities, how the aircraft could move things, move people, move supplies, those types of things. This organization did not have specific training or, you know, unique capabilities that would allow us to respond to a mass atrocity. As far as our relationship with the spanish in the french, the relationship that we have with them now is primarily a training relationship, partnering to do training. Not an operational relationship. I would understand that president obama and president hollande have released a communication today at least intimating there would be some more regular cooperation between the two. Would you like to comment in that regard . I just heard about the oped as i ran in here as well. We have the capability to work with partnering nations. We have the capability to work with the department of defense. Either one of those is something we would be capable of executing. If i could take that a little farther, your unit did a Training Exercise or otherwise with legionnaires. Could you put that in perspective . How long, where . There is a perpetual relationship between the French Foreign legion brigade and the marines second division. These Second Marine Division is out of camp lejeune, north carolina. We are able to if a site that relationship with the french. That is of great advantage to us to work with the legionnaires who are very comparable to marine infantry in skills and attitude and the way that they employ their force. Also what it did was it took us just far enough that it really got us to stretch our legs, to do aerial refuel, go to an uncertain area, operate in an uncertain environment, training environment we had not seen before. To tie all those things together and execute a full mission row file, it ended up working out very well for us. What it also did, weve done a lot of work with the spanish as well. With the spanish and the french. Having that force in that part of the mediterranean does hearken back to what we discussed earlier. In the 1990s and the 1980s, we did a lot of training with the french, italians, spanish, our partners in the southern mediterranean. We have not been able to her the last several years due to commitments in iraq and afghanistan. Your response my mind me reminds me in the pentagon and around washington, we often hear the term deployed presence. Particularly in discussions about budgets and how to trade off allocations of budgets. I think it is an aspect correct me if im wrong of what our military is doing every day. I doubt most americans have much appreciation for it. If you are out on a six or a month deployment or so, how much engagement is there not only with allied forces, but partner forces. Does that change . Is that more, the same, less . Where are we in our presence posture, if you will . Certainly in the mediterranean bases, some of that has been interrupted. From the marine corps stance, it has been interrupted by a lack of training in the mediterranean, conducting those exercises. I think it is the tremendous value. I imagine it is probably in the interest of all partners to work with us. I will say as well, the experience that provides our younger marines when they get the opportunity to go into an arduous Training Exercise, training regimen and come out the other side and do social activities and a change of ideas, camaraderie with our partners, its really an event they are going to remember for the rest of their careers. Its not something that marines who have joined since 2001 have had much opportunity to do if they have not been part of a Marine Expeditionary unit that has been deployed. I would guess from what you said that working with those partners is one of the features of the new normal . Im not sure that we ever stepped away from our partners. We have been working with them in a different environment. It is probably a return back to those engagements we had habitually done in the 1990s. All for deployed forces, the opportunity to train with partner nations in their country. Im just trying to keep my perspective at the level of normal americans. How they do not appreciate how much interaction, comingling, of capability there really is when our forces get out in the world. There is a question from a woman in the dark blouse on the second row please. I wonder if you could comment on relationships with the department of state. And also usaid. What we have done with this force, i have not done anything with usaid, specifically. The partnerships with the state department have been great from my perspective. I mentioned on the slide we call it to leader engagement. I probably shouldve done a better job explaining that. I was fortunate enough with members of my staff to visit with a few embassies that were within my area of responsibility and work with the country teams there. That is the way that we operate. In france, italy, we spent a fair amount of time engaging with the state department, engaging with those country teams in order to make sure, as the other gentleman asked me, that we have a common understanding of these forces, its defensive nature, and how we would operate if in fact we were called to operate and execute from that country. I think that my slide about Lessons Learned is in no way a slight one way or another. It is just that sometimes this is kind of a hard problem. In order to be out and operate in some dangerous places. One of the things a force like this does is it enables our diplomats to be able to operate, and i would not say take risk, but however what it ought to do is make them feel a little more comfortable with the many risks they do take in the course of their duties, knowing they have a force like this standing by that will make its best effort to support them as needed. Thank you. There is a question right here on the second row, please. Then i will come here. I have a question. Colonel, two things general paxton, the assistant commandant, said a couple weeks ago that your magtf would have benefited if you had gators, amphibious shipping to work from. You mentioned the lack of one in the area. Could you talk about that, and how a couple of things you did mightve been better if you had at least part of one . And you talked about your command elements. How about the rest of the ground and air combat . Where did they come from . How much training time did you guys have to prepare for that mission before you went into theater . Ok, great questions. As far as the amphibious shipping and the impact, it again gets back a little bit to the question of operating in somebody elses country or even having to fly over somebody elses country. We are very keen to that, obviously. I think sometimes when we operate in the United States we forget that we have a lot of the latitude to operate inside our training areas and do the type of Mission Support and training we need to. Then we go to another country and the expectation is that we should do the similar or the same things and the reality is we are operating in somebody elses country. We need to be respectful of their procedures and policies and rules that govern the operations there. So, absolutely we are a maritime force. We maintain the capability to operate off ships. We maintain that currency as well. The capability that a u. S. Naval vessel brings to a force like this is incredible. Just having that u. S. Sovereign territory that can move around and not worry about diplomatic clearances and issues associated with overflight or operations is a huge force multiplier. Given an opportunity to be on a ship versus operating often, marines will take being on a ship any day, a u. S. Navy ship. I hope that answers the first part of the question. As far as our organization, all the elements of this force were drawn from the operating forces at camp lejeune, the Second Expeditionary force. These were forces that were trained and ready. In some cases they had other missions that were assigned and were off ramp. Then they trained for this mission. Then we have the opportunity to bring the force together. It was not a comprehensive Training Force program. It is not what we do for some of our Standing Forces such as the mew. Our training organizations, our special operations group, if you are familiar with that, and our Security Operations group that supported the training in the theater. It is a trained and certified force drawn from cap lejeune. There are two questions over here. I would like to take them in turn starting with the gentleman on my far right. If there are other questions, please signal to me as we draw down to the bottom of the hour. I have three questions. The first one is, when you are deployed for a longer, a long presence in a country like afghanistan or iraq, do your members get any sort of cultural training to avoid cultural misunderstandings with members of those societies . Lets take those one at a time. Go ahead. Yes, we certainly do. Iraq and afghanistan, both of those have cultural training that was part of those workups. I will say from my experience taking my squadron over to iraq and for this training, we also brought in a gentleman who had spent about 20 years as a french careen marine embedded inside of a lot of the military organizations in west africa. We did cultural training as well. One more question about that thank you. Members of local communities were recruited, im not sure if they were recruited specifically by your team or another part of the u. S. Military. I want to say, how does that work . Do you usually work with the local in terms of fighting the enemy, whether it is al qaeda or any other . This force is not specifically organized that way and of course would not established was not established then. We were just established in 2013. Let me take the question right next here. Thank you. Thank you. John roden, cna. I wonder if you could talk about the logistics combat aspect, how long you could sustain yourself, those types of things. I also wanted to talk about the training aspect a little, and ask if there is anything particularly notable, special, specific about the prettied up predefined training ort whether it looks like these smaller missions that . Thanks. As far as the logistics combat element we brought with this force, it is tailored for the size of the force. Would like to talk about our standing Marine Expeditionary units. 15 days, 30 days, 45 days of sustainment. We felt five days was the right number for this force. That level of sustainment allows you to employ the force him immediately. Employed a force and not immediately have a problem on your hands as far as keeping the force moving. We have tremendous capability inside the combat element. Most of it was through this type capability in order to operate the hub which is our main base in moron. What that enabled us to do was essentially bring a equipment through that area and get it out wherever the force might be at the time. Very good capability and side, but tailored, certainly not as robust as the standing light tfs that wemag have. As far as the training or anything notable, i think that it was a scaleddown version. This is a standup organization. Did not exist last year in april. That is about the time he started training to head over to spain. I think probably the most notable thing we did, when we did training, we did training to make sure that command and control could cross all the mission sets. We had a reserved organization at the time which actually belongs to my Marine Expeditionary unit. We were able to command and control their organization while they went through their certification. We were going through hours and we essentially did it in parallel. Thank you. Two more questions. Im going to squeeze one in. Then we will plan to wrap up in about 10 minutes. The next question i had over here. Yes . Eric schmidt with the new york times. Colonel, thanks for doing this. You talked about your experience in north and west africa. We have at least two large Al Qaeda Linked organizations there, as well as smaller organizations in libya. As you per pair your as you prepare your mission how do you assess the threat on , the ground . And given how crises shift very quickly, what have you had to do as you think of the threat on the ground in this new normal environment . Thanks. As far as the responsibilities, the personal responsibilities we had related to the u. S. Government facilities, missions as well as personnel, we tended to focus our efforts towards those. Some of the areas that you talk about, the threats that operate down there, our force as the capability its own self Protection Capability when it is deployed. And if we are employed into some of those regions, we bring our own organic selfdefense capability in order to accomplish those missions. Most notably in some of those large wideopen areas, things like the recovery of aircraft or personnel. We have certainly worked through that process, what that situation would look like on the ground and had to make sure in he execution had rater risk. Along those lines, does this company sized element get a daily threat briefings so youre beginning to vector on different problems 24 hours at a time . Yes, that is part of what we call battle rhythm. We will be looking at the problem sets every day across the areas we are responsible for. Its a pretty difficult problem. You have this huge area the size of the United States and a lot of really bad people running around. And some of these places are clearly operating and they are operating in a place there is not a lot of u. S. Government interest either. Im not sure we spent a ton of time focusing on areas i was not directly responsible for on a daily basis. Ok, a question right here i believe. The command element going on and deployment for the time that you were on, didnt have an impact on readiness . Lets say, the recon for the next mission set . Probably this is as much the impact it would have on the ace as well. We have rotated the squads. The squadrons have been originally out in support, so they have been home for quite a bit longer than we have. Regarding the command element, there is a little bit of a doubleedged sword. On the one hand, we were away. Things that we might have needed to take care of at camp legitimate in order to sustain the lead up to the next deployment, we were not able to do. By the same token, a majority of the staff served along with me and some of my key advisers and executive officers. Some things like getting to know the commander in a deployed environment and things that are recorded important to me and not important, all those types of things that we might not have learned onto we got in the crucible of the workup, we were able to look on bush that while we were deployed