Have intervened during our civil war . Host ok, lets get one more call in. New jersey, democrats line. Caller hello . Host go ahead. Caller when it comes to defense, pass a bill the republicans vote against. Putting people to work. I dont understand it. The billions of dollars, the treasury department. Its all nonsense. Republican propaganda. Host the projects that you talked about, they are already in the pipeline. There is no sense that this will continue into the next administration and beyond . Guest there is a chance perhaps the two of them will be stopped. Particularly the Cruise Missile, the Cruise Missile designed that will be worked on the next couple years. That is the one that nonproliferation activists have targeted as the most likely part to be canceled. Expensivenot the most delivery system, but it would be something that would limit the capabilities, according to the pentagon. Host our guest reports for defense news. If you want to read more about how much things cost, find it on their website. Thanks for your time. Guest thank you. Host coming up, we go to the department of defense, the press conference on defense and National Security issues being held, featuring secretary of defense Ashton Carter command joseph dunford, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. That set to take place momentarily. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] him and him and we are lightbank at the pentagon this morning awaiting a briefing by defense secretary Ashton Carter and joint chiefs of staff chair joseph dunford. Live coverage on cspan. Is poised to become the 11th Living Service member to received the medal of honor. He rescued an american hostage in afghanistan in december 2012. Heat took part in the rescue of a man affected along with his driver and an afghan interpreter. We will have live coverage of the ceremony at 11 30 eastern today. Secretary carter good morning. All righty. Listen, thank you. Can everybody hear me . Thanks for being here. The chairman and i appreciate your being here, look forward to talking to you this morning. I will start. I just had the solemn honor of laying a wreath at the africanamerican civil war memorial here in washington, honoring the 200,000 africanamerican soldiers and sailors who served in the u. S. Army and navy during the civil war. To end thise helped award free over 4 million slaves, and the legacy stands as a reminder of the true price of freedom for us all, and this was an important signification of end today of black history month. This also marks the 25th anniversary of our victory in the gulf war. I express my admiration and thanks to the veterans of that war and their families. Contributions the of the fighting men and women in that war, our thoughts are also always with Service Members of today who serve in the same theater. Last month i outlined our strategy to deliver isil a lasting defeat in a speech to those service when they spoke at the 101st airborne at Fort Campbell in kentucky. I described it to our troopers the three key objectives of the campaign. And itso destroy isil, parent tumor in iraq and syria, and collapse its Power Centers in raqqa and most. Combat the metastases of the isil tumor worldwide. Third, to protect the homeland. Many are retreating into iraq to assist the mission from that soldiers from the 81st airborne affecting so admirably. Momentum is now on our site and not on isils. Our partners on the ground in iraq have retaken ramadi and maintains in anbar, while we are making operationally significant strides in our campaign to in syria. Isil in the last few days, capable local forces supported by United States have recaptured a critical mode for isil training and logistics. As our partners take control, i believe we will learn a great s criminalbout isil networks commits criminal enterprise, and what it does to sustain them. By encircling and taking this town, we are also working to separate the last major artery between raqqa and mostly, critical to dissecting isils parent tumor in a 2 parts, iraq and syria. At the same time, we are bombing isils banks as well as oil wells theyve taken over. We are also using several tools to disrupt isils ability to operate and communicate over the virtual battlefield. As we continue to pursue isils lasting defeat, secretary kerry has shown great determination in pursuing the diplomatic and political track in syria, which included the signing of the cessation of hostilities agreement last week. If properly and lamented and if to, we believe properly implemented and adhered to, we believe this can hasten the delivery of humanitarian aid. It could be a First Step Towards the end of the civil war and the. Uffering of the Syrian People were constantly monitoring the situation on the ground and we will see in coming days that all parties back commitments they have made in words with their actions. Let me also make it crystal is no decision of hostilities in the counterisil campaign. These operations continue unabated. And as i mentioned earlier, they are being solid being accelerated across syria and iraq. And ihairman dunford testified before Congress Last week, we describe how we intended to back out our operations against isil with the budgetsnding in michigan requesting 7. 5 billion, 50 more than last year. And as i described in the budget is one of five challenges we must address as part of the departments mission to defend this country. 2 of the other 4 challenges reflected the return to greet our competition. One, challenges in europe, where we take a strong and balanced approach to deter russian aggression. The other challenge is in the asiapacific, where china is rising, which is fine, but behaving aggressively, which is not. Meanwhile, two other longstanding challenges posed threats in specific regions. North korea is one. That is why our forces on the Korean Peninsula remain ready to come as they say, fight tonight. The other is iran. While the Nuclear Accord is a good deal to prevent iran from getting a nuclear weapon, we must still deter iranian russian counter irans iranian aggression and counter irans influence on our allies, especially israel. We must set the course on how best to prepare for the future. A common theme across our budget is that we in the pentagon have to innovate and think outside our fivesided box. That is why im continuing my effort to build bridges with the department of defense and our nations most innovative industries, enhancing ties that will strengthen this department and our nations security. This will be a key theme of my trip to the west coast that begins this evening. Over the next few days i will be discussing technologies, cybersecurity initiatives, and much more with some of the top minds in the tech world. I will also be meeting with some using troops, who are advanced technologies to keep us safe and prepare for every challenge on the horizon. Me andmand that helps the chairman and think through each of the five challenges we now face is our special operations, and i want to tony thomas on his nomination by president obama to assume command at special operations command. As i mentioned last month in tampa, the current commander will soon take command at centcom. General thomas has big boots to fill, but he has proven himself as a soldier, special operator, and later time and time again over the course of his illustrious career. Dunford,dent, chairman and i have complete confidence in his ability to assume the vital responsibilities of centcom. I want to thank the generals and their families for the continued service, and i hope the senate will act quickly on their nominations. I also want to express my deep thanks to general lloyd austin, for his inspired leadership as commander of centcom during an extraordinary time and throughout his remarkable career. Finally, i want to note that later today president obama will present the middle of honor to senior chief petty opposite edward byers, who visited my office last week with his wonderful family. I hope you will take the time to watch the ceremony later today in fact, later this morning. It was marketable honor for me to speak to such an understated who willingly use himself as a shelf of the hostage he was rescuing, exhibiting a tenacity to disarm an assailant with the composure to assess the situation and ask about the hostages condition during the whole fight. Ed the rest of his life, byers will be justifiably looked up to buy every special operator who goes out on another mission that most of the mission will never know about, but whose valor allows all of us to dream r dreams and build better lives for our children. He and his fellow warriors are the reason the general and i cannot every day. With that, let me turn it to the general. Gen. Dunford let me begin by echoing the secretarys comments about the soldiers, salmon, desert storms 25th anniversary, and recognizing 20 tony 20 Thomas Thomas leadership, and to recognize byers, who will take his award in a minute. I want to recognize a soldier that served for seven years. John campbell will turn it over and i will have an opportunity to recognize them in person later this week. I want to recognize his 18 months in the leadership position in afghanistan. Under very difficult conditions. We are fortunate to have had him during this critical period of transition and also recognize the sacrifice of his family as well, who have been without him for the last 18 months. With that, im prepared with secretary to take her questions. Mr. Secretary, you mentioned with regard to the counterisil campaign that momentum is now on our side. One of the big challenges looming ahead is mosul. By theave been movements iraqis to move troops closer to mosul. I wonder if your currency is that the u. S. Role have to get closer to the fight when it comes time to take mosul, something more than what they did, or is ramadi more the model for this current approach . Secretary carter well, i will start and then ask the chairman to pitch in. We are working with the iraqi forces for there envelopment and ultimately the seizure of mosul, absolutely. Ramadict it to be like in the sense that the Iraqi Security forces under the control of the government of will Prime Minister abadi, be in the lead, but we will be enabling them, and to get your specific question, we do more to enable them . That. E fully expect to do and when we have the opportunity, the time, the place, the strategic effect, yes, that only the United States can do come with indicated a willingness to do more and i expect we will have opportunities to do that. Very quickly from where we are in the process, the iraqis of the ball the plan. There is the process where general mcfarlane is looking at the iraqi plan to make recommendations and the secretary has called on capability enhancements to accelerate the campaign. I, like the secretary, think we thand do more in mosul remind just because of the order of magnitude of the operation in mosul would indicate to me that we have more u. S. Support in mosul than in ramadi. I will make us recommend asians to the secretary sometime in the near future. Make those recommendations to the secretary sometime in the new future. The operation against mosul has already started. We are isolating mosul as we speak. Same thing with raqqa. It is not something that will happen in the deep future. People are confused when would mosul be secure for operations to start. Both in terms of cyber capability and the operations to cut the line of communications and go offer target some of those operations have already started. For generalestion dunford on a different topic, afghanistan, which you mentioned in your opening statement. Given that the telegram the talibans Research Activity in helmand, i wonder if you think the trendlines are headed in the wrong direction, and are you considering the possibility that was the end of this year, you will need to keep more american troops there doing more than currently planned . Gen. Dunford what i would say is that in many ways what happened to this summit is not surprising when you think about the difficulty and the political transition. Weve looked at 2013 and assume a certain progression of ministerial capacity, intelligence enterprise, special operations and aviation. Many of the assumptions we made in 20 13 the aviation capability is not developing as fast as we wouldve wanted to. Many of the Afghan Forces were tied up in focus i focused on 2 major elections and a difficult political transition. This summer we have Lessons Learned. One is that the Afghan Forces remain resilient but they have the capability gaps that have been identified, and we are looking at that right now and i will be prepared to make recommendations to the secretary as to how we can incorporate the Lessons Learned from 2015 into more effective operations in 2016. It would certainly be premature to talk about for self and capabilities and those kinds of things. The key is that we will benchmark the recommendations on the Lessons Learned in 2015 and what we assessed to be the environment of 2016. I would like to see if i could continue down on your statement are prepared to do more than mosul. More in mosul. Were of the same, greater numbers of advisors . Are you talking about qualitative change and specifically putting advisors putting closer putting advisors closer to the front line, and using full air control to call in strikes . If i could ask you to be more specific on cyberattacks against isis . Secretary carter let me start on the first one and ask the chairman on both of them. With respect to the first one, i think we are talking about both. More of the things that we did in ramadi, but also about traditional things of the kind that we have offered previously. But that were not necessary in the case of ramadi, but might be helpful, might well be helpful, as iraqi forces moved north. Includes, in addition to directly enabling iraqi forces, some things like logistics, bridging, and a whole lot of capabilities. We fully expect to be doing more. Iffering in both scale and the kinds of things that we are doing. With respect to ciber, i think you are referring to our use of cyber, which we have talked about generally, in the counterisil campaign, particularly in syria, to isilspt, disrupt command and control, to cause them to lose confidence in their networks, to overload their networks so that they cannot function, and do all of these things that will interrupt their ability to command and control forces there, control the population and the economy, so this is something thats new in this war, not something you would have seen back in the gulf war. But it is an important new capability and it is important use of our Cyber Command, and the reasons Cyber Command was established in the first place. Gen. Dunford the secretary said we had an increase in quantity and quality. On the quantity side, the operation in mosul is much bigger than ramadi, and the training of the forces conducting operations in mozilla has already started. We looked at ramadi and we have looked at the iraqis closely to take a look at the Lessons Learned and theres a couple things we want to do. We want to position ourselves to most effectively support arms for iraqis as they conduct operations. The second piece is we want to ensure flow of Logistic Support. When i make a recommendation to the secretary, that is where the qualitative changes will be made. We take a hard look at the Lessons Learned in ramadi to see how we enable what is an iraqi operation to make to the combined arms are effectively delivered when and where the iraqis need them to go into muscle, and to ensure that they have the Logistic Support necessary to continue operations without we would describe as the operational quadrant there is qualitative and qualitative discussion into play. It is a fundamentally different than what we are doing it is not fundamentally different than what we are doing in ramadi could it is doing what we are doing in ramadi better. The broad functions that we will perform are much the same. This still is i would put an exclamation point at the end of the sentence still an iraqi operation. It will be informed by the Lessons Learned with isis but there will be changes. Ive seen things we can do better. Secretary carter phil . Sorry, go ahead. Reporter we get a list of airstrikes you conducted against isis. Can we add to that a list of cyberattacks . Secretary carter probably not. I think we can describe some of the effects there, but because the methods we are using our new , some of them will be surprising, and some of them are applicable to other challenges that i described, other than isil, that we have around the world. We will tell you what we can tell you, but not in a way that compromise is operational security. I think we can describe the effects were seeing and some of the effects we achieve. Reporter [indiscernible] secretary carter we have. But we are learning more, and we are accelerating this, just as we are accelerating over thing syriae are doing both in and iraq, whether it be the air war, the ground war, the cyber war were looking to accelerate as well. Gen. Dunford david, the secretary has talked a lot about physically isolating isil in other words, isolating raqqa, isolating mosul, keeping the lines of communications between the two separate, making it difficult for isil. I think conceptually that is exactly the same thing we are trying to do in the cyber war, trying to physically and virtually isolate isil, limit their ability to conduct command and control and ability to communicate with each other at their ability to conduct operations locally and tactically. I will be one of the first ones are going that is all we should talk about. We dont want the enemy t