Improving military health care and a preview of the annual confererence and trade show. A welcome to defense news. Im vago muradian. Nato leaders agreed to arrangege measures to strenengthen the alliance andnd turn moscowow frm aggression in the future. That iludes a new Rapid Response forcef 5000 troops to respond whin days to a threat to natos borders. Will also bes improved. Many Alliance Members are cutting defense spending. That means nato will have to do more on a flat budget. Joining us today is the supreme allied commander, in charge of shaping nato training and coming up with new concepts and innovative ways to economically increase capabilities. Is chief of the French Air Force and is a Top Air Force member. Welcome back to the program. My pleasure. Charge ofmmand is in these future concepts for nato. What is the best way to deter russiaia which is provoking its neighbors . Missionhas a clear which is divided in three parts. Collected defensnse, according o article five of the washington treaty. The first and foremost. Crisis managemen. Ll of that nanato should be able to fulfill its missions. Now we are reconcentrating on defense. What we do . First and foremost, we have a strong planning to m make sure e are ready to answeto anyind of situation. And we have improved dynamic presence. Numumber ofoved the the training activities. This is s crucial to show a nato is ready. Nato was there. ,nd to make sure nobody can there cannot be anany misunderstanding about the nato ll to prevent, to deter, and to act. The president of the United States said the borders would not violated. He w was in estonia where made a speech and as the summa was ending, the russians grabbed inn ficer an took him back. There are a few incidents like that tt have concerned nations in the baltics. You are a senior commander. You are in the region. What are some ofhe things you arare telling theeaders of these countries to reassure them the alliance is about action and words . I i can tell you ii was in estonia the week befor they know whats our commitment. I can tell you thehe shadow gene is really taking that very seriously. They show their will as well to do whatever they nation. Rotect their own ththey are looking for nato to support t them. This is what we trained for. , thee permanent presence fact we go there and lot of highlevelel polical and military leaders showed not only their presence, but there will to be there. And a very strong declaration. Myself, i did that in estonia. It wasas well received. We really mmitted to say we are ththere. We will be there. You can count on uand we will improve ourur presence. We will make sure it is a a deterrence. Rroringn mio anybody. Even when you were chief off the frerench air force, you were talking about the importance of readiness. You have to respopond rapidly. In this instance, we are talki about the readiness a action pln to create this Rapid Response force that would he able to address a threat. Talk to us about how this force wille formed and what will it be composed of and how soon will be ready r action. The question ofof readiness s not new. War, the end of the cold we have this question at hand crises,the emergence of emerges that such a speed. You have that much time to react. But put that in order. Sum of thes the equipment, the expertise, and the will to employ them. Arehe capabilities, we working on that. This is part of our day to day job, improving capabilities. We will come back on them. On the training exercise, we are. Oing a huge effort and it works. We havimproved the number of excises. We are improving the training of our people. This is absolutely indispensable. At is what i will call the readiness. Going to responsiveness, to be even more prprecise. What we see is that we have no time to prepare our forces. We must be ready. More and more. We have seen that in many instances. Now i it becomes clear. So how we improve that. We have invented the Nato Response force, which is fine and which improved the capabililities of the forces. Within this response fce, we have an Immediate Response foe. Plus the air and navy. Wouldw we e are looking, i say inside that to say, weeed to makeke sure we put in place whatever is need, joint intelligence, reconnaissance, in full coordination. This is very importt to understand. On the oneand you have the natitions in charge and on ththe other hand you h have nato who should be rdy to plug and play. This is why. Training is important. Let me ask you about that. You are trying to build this on more forces s can pl intot. The russians are doing mobilization exercises where putin canuster troops in a few days. He has done that repeatedly. This nato needed too mass modernization exercises as well so it can move thosese forces if they needed to . Of the must take care overall spectrum of its mission. Next, we will have a major exercicise which will take plac, in spain, portugal, italy. We have plned that one year. Wherere we will l monstrate credibility and the overall spectrum of capabilities of nato. We are not attached to on single feeder. Theat. We should havthe full spectrum of t the missis end of nato. This is important. R sure, the capabilities we will d demonstrate will be available anywhere and any time for nato. Coming up, more with jean paul. Yoyou are watching defense new bacack with the nato supreme allied commander headquartered in virginia. Let me ask you. Of summit has a whole series requirements. Ciber, maritime training, which is areat list. The issue is nonee of the governments have money. W are you going to be able to achieve an increasen these areas on a flat budget . First and foremost, wee prioritize our needs. This is very importantnt. Have a very tight budget and a small margin. Secondly, we are looking foror novative Multinational Solutions and we are improving what we call the small defense projct and we have now natio mmitted. We have a clear commitment from many nations. So i think everything is in place. Wewe must keep to our commitmt to make sure we deliver the best th the budget we have. The u. S. Acquisitionhief is looking also revitalizing the u. S. Acquisition system to be able to field more equipment more qckly and reducuce cycle times. You come to the pentagon often. How do you see cooperating with him to help t United States and nato with it . My role in nato is to make sure we take the best of all of the good itiatives and that we share the best practices. This is exactly what we need in the interaction with the tions, to see how we can improve this procurement process. On the one han this a lengthy process and on the othe handwe have a shortened cycle, ftware driven piece of equipment. To worork thrilled with the u. S. And with many other countries to improve our collective ality to fulfill the task. Let m me ask you about afghanistan. This is a mimission countries he been anticipating in for 13 years. New leadersp in afghanistan. The mission is going to be continuing. Nations are looking to the future. What is the right approaoachch . First and foremost, i have inicated a strong commitment afghanisn. These people deseserve our full support. Im really happy to see the evolution of the mission. Now we are transitionning to advising, assting, and training. This ia mission in a combat environment. Webe frank with everyrybody, will assume alongside with Afghan National security forces, they will provide highlevel traiaining and im ve happy nato can carry on thahat way. Will keep2,000 people ere. We are really striving to make the best ememployment of those. Let me go back to the mobilization question. You were talkingbout a big exercise. Do you also need to do shorter span mobilization drills to see you can respond quicy to a crisis situation . To double been able e number of exercises we do in eastern europe. This is as shortterm mobilization. Let me ask you a cyber question. This is s a given the danger ciber presents, does the alliance have to discuss whether collective defense has to extend to cybersrspace . Thresholdbout the that will be assessed with the 28. We take ciber seriously. To improvelan capabiliti. We are c capitalizing on the center of excellce in estoni we will use what we call thehe cyber range. Have the ability to assess the level of threat of risk a then to put that to the politicacal leaders for them to see if it can reach a threshold. You are connectinyour annual conference. You have asked me to modete that conference we could not find better. Why is this a priority and what do you hope to accomplish . We have t to make p partnersp with all of the people who c help us. We have to improve our acquisition process. We have to make smart reququirements to make sure are this is how we will improve the effectiveness of our spending. Ewinit with science and technology to look into the futurere with industry because t will deliver a and with the operationanal guidance, becacaue they knowhat we need. This i is what imm looking at s industry for, whicwill be a greatt place. General, thananks very much. We appreciate e it. Next howhe dense Health Agency impving military health carare. You are watc the defense Health Agency was formed one year ago. It is to improve military health care and cut costs. It operates a Health Care Plan and a vast array of services for active guard and reserve military members and families. Dha and 50 billion on medical a military force that is healthy and ready for action. Joining us today is alan middleton. Welcome to the program. You have had your first birthday. How did the consolidation go . How much work you have to do . It werent well. It went well. Year, weime the last have been able to bring all of the services we were directed to do to operating cap the ability cability. We met all of the requirements we had. Theegan to transfer resources to the agency from the surfaces to provide better consolidation. And what is next . One is to bring those the services we have like pharmacy and health plan logistics and toilities, to bring those full operating capability. We believe that several of those we can bring to capability this corridor of this fiscal year. We will bring the rest and during the course of this year willat october 2015 we have full capability. We will look at other services, other common business practices. We will look at those and take a look in a very disciplined and structured way on how we can bring those into the agency. Can you say how much money you guys have saved while doing all of this . Our estimate is for fiscal year 2014, looking in the i. T. Area, we have been able to save about 250 million actually. That we think we can quantify as being savings for the program. And bring that to the table for other purposes and other needs in health care and in the department of defensnse. Health soundry quality of care varied. What are you doing to change that . Are beneficiaries going to see better information . Absolutely. When we did the revieiew, we compared ourselves with some of the top systems in the country. We had six experts from outside the Health Care System looking at our methodology for the review and looking at the results. What we found was that by and large we were, as the secretary said, we are providing solid, safe, care. At over 100ok at it measures, every facility, many facilities were far exceeded and some did not make the benchmarks. What we want to do is go back to come up with a plan to look at those benchmarks, how we can improve those facilities, and these are high benchmarks. Ag in which to achieve higher benchmarks across the system. No single hospital has achieved all marks. Or below the benchmarks. We want to make sure that his public to see. We will put t that on our websi. We will have data. They will be able to measure that progress against access, quality, and safety. Of thein the process now secretary wanting an initial plan the first of november. We are in the process of building those plans. Some of the datata we alalreadye on our website. We have data people can look at. It is not only getting the data, but also finding it in a way are beneficiaries can understand it and they can make sense of it. That is important. Hasatricia of military time written on the best and d worst hospitals. That is up on military time. Com. Sretary to what hegel had said, wt are the areas that require the biggest improvement for you guys . At, we have aked dichotomy between what we see in our statistics and what the beneficiaries are telling us. We s we are meetg access standards but our beneficiaries are expressing they are not satisfied with access. We have to focus on access. In terms of quality and safety, we provide a safe Health Care System that meets the norms of this nation. We can do better. So there is all kinds of aspects of that we need to look at. Care. Far as quality of the measures we really need to focus on in terms of demonstrating it is a quality system. To see ite e you doing continues to operate efficiently . Repurchased 16 billion worth of care every year. This nation does not have a clear set of quality indicators for the nation. Systems toto compare systems. We have to look k at the placese purchase care. We have to look at what is out there that we can harvest and demonstrate to our beneficiaries who may not get services wit us. And talk to us about the multiservice market. The six markets where we have more than one service diego andand in san fort bragg, that represent 42 of the workload. Those are tremendous platforms to launch from. Tremendous training platforms. And westream of money can create a better integrated system. Antonio,n, d. C. , san we think we can have a better way in which we can interrogate care integrate care. What towe come back, expect from the a association of the United States Army National meeting inin washington. You are wat the t top leadership gathers for a conference and tradeshow where Service Leaders unveil new concepts and initiatives to ship the force. At this years gathering, general ray will unveil a new concept in projectors will display their wares. Joining us now is roger thompson, a retir Lieutenant General who is now ausas Vice President of etings. You get to start breathing on wednesday sometime . Wednesday night. You will be 100 thursday morning. What is the theme and what are some of the highlights folks should be expecting . Trust theng is professionals today and tomorrow. And we of course highlight that across a variety of areas. Is a key part of it this year. The chief will announce that in a form away at the luncheon on tuesday. On the exhibit floor, we have a number of things that are different. Probably the largest one is the increase in Small Businesses coming to the annual meeting. 70 three exhibits compared to 35 last year. The department of Homeland Security is playina much larger role. Their secretary, mr. Johnson, will speak in one of our forums. The aligned forces initiatives is another key part of this. Tom brooks will be there as a part of them. On his panel, will be the chief of the Japanese Selfdefense ground force. Which is amazing. One of the challenges in these times, obviously youre going to some of the smaller companies. What sort of attendance do you expect . Had 28,000. We this year it will be closer to 30,000. In part because about 800 army leaders are coming this year compared to zero last year. In aovernment was involved shutwn that precluded the army from funding travel. This year there will be 800 army leaders. Andison commanders, sergeants. And a few seconds we have, what are the new features you have that you will be introducing for exhibitors . Iovators corner is one of them. This is a new spot on the floor where people with new ideas will be coming in and giving presentations. And demonstons . Some demonstrations, or video versions. We think tha is going to be great. We have talked about the growth of small business. It is going to be great. We will be there. We will bring you a piece of that show next week. Things very much for watching. The ausa show and the new capstone concept. A special report on the g ground vehicle modernization and japan and what is next. Im vago muradian. Until then, have great week. Captioned by the National Captioning Institute www. Ncicap. Org [music] and i want u to think about your home and how you can improve, how you can make it and dont give up. It might be. No matter whats happened, you dont give up. God placed you there for a reason. And if you will listen to him carefully, he can make you a strong influence. And your children will grow up to have the right kind of and theyll pass on what you pass on to them. And that will make a wonderful family for you. Today on in touch, a stng family. [music] there have always been rulers and kings
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