test. test. test. test. test. world you live in and for those who don't live in this world of this, you can watch if you want, but the first offset was essentially the reliance on nuclear weapons in the early cold war when the soviet union created such an imposing threat so we relied more on nuclear weapons. the second is when nato went high-tech with land battle and precision long range strike capabilities and the force and use conventional high-tech technology and nuclear weapons. and whether or not that would have fully worked, certainly the weapons and technologies did well in desert storm and built on that sense and a little more is a diffusive concept but a suite, a range of high-tech capabilities that we're now developing from cyber to microelectronics to all sorts of other realms, robotics and so forth to compensate for the distance even if we do outmatch them in defense budget and ships and tanks and so forth, although, on some of those, you could debate whether we outmatch them longer but the first offset is a bigger broader term and tom, i think you were getting at this when you said you worry less about the defense budget top line and more about areas with weaknesses and advantages we can build further upon and you want to elaborate on any of that? >> firstly, i do think it should remain part of the thinking even if secretary hale said that the words go away and each administration wants its own way of framing it, but i think if you look at asia, just as an example in terms of what you mentioned there on the budget side, the administration has talked a lot about building, you know, up the navy and ships over the long-term and by having massive shipbuilding program, that will reassert the bounds of power in the region but in truth, it probably will have very limited effect. not just because of the time factor but because of the problems that the u.s. confronts with china are usually very about the overall naval sort of balance of forces and there are these specific provocations and that beijing initiate and then had to respond to it and those, i think, are likely to be protracted over many years and adversaries, of course, get to play a large role and have a large say in the type of dilemmas that are posed and they rye to pose the most difficult ones possible and they will continue to do so. so i think it's about hundreds of different decisions, strategic decisions that would be taken in the asia pacific, if i had to respond not just to each individual provocation or act of provisionism but more on the totality of shaping that sort of environment and regional order. so if trying to build a way for an island for the atlantic strip and it was impossible to actually deny them access as secretary tillerson mentioned in his hearing, because that might be escalated, what are the type of things that can be done to ensure that's a strategic liability over time rather than the asset and counterproductive from their point of view over a 5 or 10 year period? so to me, the strategic thinking that's going on about how to respond to these challenges is as much about really trying to figure out a way to effectively counter and ultimately, deter future acts of vigilism and coming up with asymmetric strategies rather than a traditional ship or for or dollar for dollar competition. >> excellent. mohler, you got these in the first comments, but anything you want to add? >> i agree with the panel. one key thing though, as we grow the capacity and capability of the u.s. military, where you put that increased capability is important so rather than have specific rebounds where you take one theater and put to another, i would argue that the national security strategy needs to attack a vetake a very hard look. if you increase the size and capability of the u.s. military, where do you put that high end capability? is it in the pacific first, if you get the capability and then ensure that, in fact, you can actually match the asymmetric strategies of theater or in fact, do you build two theaters up near simultaneously to make sure that you've got an east and west capability to respond? and you add that to the experimentation and the initiatives from secretary carter and i think you'll find that you'll come to a very comprehensive holistic strategy in the next three years. >> in sop wme ways, it's a different take on the same issues we've been debating but i'm not going to ask you to critique donald trump's last defense speech where in many ways, built on what i think was a heritage foundation defense proposal from last year and endorsed various increases in the services, size and capabilities, but i would like to ask you, if you were setting up a study right now within the trump administration, what other options should be on the table? what other specific capabilities should be considered besides the ones that trump has put forth because, and here you can comment on the way i'm framing this too. the way i would look at trump's defense speeches from later part of the fall are basically a fairly standard mid level defense build-up across the board. but that's the way i would sum it up. and frankly too revolutionary i saw. i see roughly a 15% size increase of most of the services. and a little bit more for the navy and roughly 15%. it might mean the budget goes up 15% or a little more. there's a full funding of things like tack air modernization. not so much talk of new and innovative forms of warfare, but obviously, a rising tie would lift rnc budgets. army and marine corps growing but not with radically new kinds of units. so it looks to me like a standa standard mid sized defense build-up. two questions. do you agree with my caricature of what we know of donald trump's earlier thinking and second, if you were framing a debate or an analysis of different options right now in the trump administration, what else should be on the table besides that kind of relatively across the board set of increases? secretary hill? >> the clean-up. but we'll go in reverse order. general. >> well, i think with the new national security advisor in place with general mcmaster and with secretary mattis's guidance to the department, i think their only beginni -- they're only beginning to start working on the strategy and integrating that into the new national security strategy. i would say that i do believe that this national security strategy needs to ensure that it incorporates all of the domains and i know that's a well used term here, but we, as a nation, and as the u.s. military, the services are very good at traditional air/land/sea/undersea domains but ensuring you have an integrative cyber-strategy interwoven from start to finish is one area where president trump's team really needs to focus. >> thank you. tom? >> yeah. i think national security strategies tend to work when there's clear guidance from the commander in chief from what he wants to do and the problem is if it's provided, it would be the wrong guidance. his views on foreign policy and defense policy are pretty much diametrically opposed, thankfully, to his cabinet. they have very different ideas about it. they are much more traditionalist. his views, which he's described as america first, are essentially to, you know, to do much less for the allies and then to sort of be very skeptical of alliances and to have a much more counterview on economy and to have a positive attitude towards russia and relaxed attitude to the russian threat in europe. and now one of the big stories has been these appointments he's made which i think reassured a lot of people this particular and the appointment of general mcmaster and yesterday. but that has put an incoherence at the heart of this administration and we, it would remain, i think, very much to be seen how that plays out, but i do not believe that those cabinet appointments will be able to fundamentally change his mind so that he plays a constructive role in the process. they won't turn him into an internationalist or a traditionalist, but they will be able to do, i think, a lot of good internally in terms of a day-to-day basis, more traditionalist administration. one final on the defense budget aspect of this, mike, that you raised. trump going back to the mid 80s, has described himself as a militaryist. which is an odd phrase to use. i've never met someone who says that but he says that. he wants a strong defense budget but in his mind, that is usually quite sort of crude in terms of much more nuclear weapons, more sort of traditional military force and not really wanting to use it internationally at all, not thinking about a broad base in terms of alliances, but it's almost like a fortress america thing and measures it as far as we can tell from the different things he said, in terms of raw numbers and in terms of troops. he sort of looks at those top line things. that's why i think he found the navy build-up thing pretty attractive because it was a very sort of way of communicating that strength. the challenge will be, to go back to the question and related matters, the challenge will be to convince him, i think, that there is a more sort of complex nuanced way of conveying strength and that there may be sort of decisions that need to be taken as part of national security strategy and defense strategy that don't necessarily quorum conform to his preconceived notions. i'm more optimistic than i was maybe 6 weeks ago because of the different appointments but i think they have their work cut out for them. >> i'll take your big picture question and answer it through the lens of a former comptroller. if i were the comptroller right now, i'd say to my staff, what i like to call the dark corners of the budget that haven't gotten that much attention or gotten negative attention and try to fix some of these problems as the budget increases, there would be things like military construction. right now, we spend $6 billion. that's probably putting defense over long-term on a hundred year replacement strategy. it's not viable. so we need higher levels there. as mike said, we have done and i did it purposely and consciously when i was a comptroller under funded facility and facilities maintenance. it's something you can cut quickly when you're in a desperate mode like we were in 2013 in sequestration and all the services did it. we need to fix that because if you leave it unfixed, you'll have long-term problems with facilities. and the other thing i'd mention in terms of dark corners, non-major procurement. about half doesn't go for all the big ticket stuff we all know and love. it goes for munitions and large spare parts and all the unexciting stuff you need to make a military work. typically, you cut that most and i haven't looked at the numbers lately but it's fared worse than the overall procurement budget. we need to fix non-major procurement. another thing, let's strike while the iron is hot on business reform. and a secretary who's endorsed this. let's put forth an aggressive proposal on business reform that would include, in my view, brac. ought to be involved in the civil service form but ought to look at the mix of people in the military and the department of defense, military, civilian, and contractors and ask if it's the right mix and finally, if i understood, apartments, budgetary lunch is eating by operating and support costs. it desperately needs to look for a way to control costs and be a great thing for them to take on as an issue. >> thank you. and we'll go to you in a second. one other word on hr mcmaster. i'm thrilled the president picked him as national security advisor. he did an event a year ago and what he helped write the army operating concept or win in a complex world. he is aware of the broad range of conflicts, so if you were going to look at hr mcmaster as an indication, it's one more voice in favor of not oversimplifying future combat. that's my one sentence takeaway but obviously remains to be seen how the internal debates shake out and who influences which di decisions, so if you could wait for a microphone and identify yourself. two questions at a time and then we'll go to the panel. we'll start with the gentleman with the red tie. please. >> hello, tony from mid side defense. i want to ask about capacity over capability. it seems that there's a lot coming from congress about getting the forces larger. there's a lot of that readddadr. and it's going to be a larger force. is there concern that the onm and personnel would eat into n monetization? >> the gentleman here in the brown jacket on the aisle, and then we'll do another round. >> ken meyer. i do a tv show called civil discord. what is the status of president obama's proposal to upgrade our nuclear arsenal? and if implemented, what is its impact on the budget likely to be? >> you want to start and work down? take both or one. >> let's talk to the nuclear question. the nuclear arsenal is a still relatively small part of the defense budget. it's probably in the order of 5 5%. i suspect this administration will move forward with the obama plans which included things like the oil class submarine and a number of other and then go further. in terms of perhaps modernizing the land based deterrent more aggressively than the obama administration had in mind, certainly, a significant buy of bombers which was going forward under the obama administration, but did not make any commitment to it. so i would expect to see obama and then more. i mean, the president has been adamant about his commitment to nuclear weapons, so i'd be surprised if we didn't see an increase there. >> just on the punuclear questi, and then one quick on the other question. i think the president has been clear he does sort of favor modernization, but i think there's one issue on the table because of his stated views that maybe hasn't been on the table for a while which is the credibility of extended deterrents and i think they need to take steps to shore that up because his comments, frankly, on alliances, raise doubt about commitment to extended deterrents so to the modernization mix, i think we have to add sort of reenforcing extended deterrents as sort of the key purpose of the national security defense policy going forward. i'm probably not the best person to answer the first question but i agree with the question, the emphasis is on the overall sort of force numbers, i think it could come at the risk of innovation and i think that's what i was trying to get it when it's important to try to convey to the president that it is more sort of complex mix and strength is not just about the top line numbers. >> general? >> i'm just going to answer the capability versus capacity discussion because secretary hale knows we spent hours and hours talking about, as we conduct the drawdown, what's the right mix to make sure we don't unbalance the force? and i know since you read the memo, secretary mattis' guidance was clear. program balance. so when we talk about the overall growth of the armed forces, it's the pace that matters. so it's the speed that matters. as you grow the force, you have to make sure that you've got the capability to match to these new srl soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, because if you grow too fast, you have to take from the maintenance accounts to pay for it. if you grow and got the capability match to each of the individuals as well as holistically from the services when it comes to training, when it comes to facilities and training and the professional development, when it comes to the actual costs for each of the individuals that twe bring on t the service, if you do that over a period of time and it's predictable, then it's certainly possible and secretary mattis has been very clear. we need the make sure we balance that growth with and don't break healthy programs that we'll need in the next five to ten years. thank you. sf >> second round of questions now. if we could start in the front row and then go over here. >> hi there, i'm ingrid johnson. a freelance writer. and i think this is a great conversation on national security issues. great overview. so my question is, well, i feel like this event was a good overview of defense priorities of the brookings institute so do you think that the president is listening to conversations like this and do you think he has the mental capacity to engage meaningfully with it? >> i'll take the gentleman. >> tweets about brookings. >> so far, so good. >> thank you, dave ben wits. the secretary sort of touched on this today but a lot of jobs that used to be done by active military personnel who had been through at least basic training and available for other military assignments if necessary are being done by civilian contractors who don't have that training and i was wondering, would it make sense to bring those jobs back into the military so you increase the active military personnel while having relatively little impact on the cost? perhaps even saving cost. >> why don't we start this round with tom who can either defend brookings honor or not and then we'll go to bob and mike. >> just on the first question, you know, i see a few cameras here, so i guess it depends whether or not there's a clip on "morning joe" or "fox and friends," in which case, i think he'll see it, but otherwise, probably not. i think it is actually an important question because he clearly is not intellectually curious in the sense of looking at the broader debate on these issues, but then he has appointed these people to the positions who are. i mean, secretary mattis and hr mcmaster are probably two of the most widely read officers of any generation in terms of their sort of interest in these broader debates. and so the administration, i think, and i say this as someone who's been quite critical and skeptical of them, i think that has been one of the few sort of positive things developed. so there are multiple ways, i think, for those folks who work these issues to ensure that those arguments are heard from within the administration but not necessarily from the oval office. i think the big question is how this all plays out in this internal competition of ideas and particularly when you have someone like the chief strategy, steve bannon, woho would be widely read in a different direction and different debate and ideas. what happens when he bumps up against the more traditionalist forces, but it's going to be a very different time, i think. there are, i don't think we totally know how that sort of battle of ideas will play out. it will be quite unusual. so i do agree with that. >> secretary hill? >> i return to your question first. i'm acutely aware as a former obama political appointee out of office. it's kind of like being dead. but, so i've tried to focus on what secretary mattis and the president said when i talked about priorities. mattis said russia is his highest priority. he made that quite clear. the president mentioned isis repeatedly. readiness, mattis said that too. so i think i would expect to see those priorities in his budget. if not, i think it's fair to ask why he's changed his mind, so trying to get that trump administration view even if it isn't always my own. i couldn't agree more that we need to look at the mix of personnel. generally speaking, military personnel more expensive than civilian government employees. government is an issue, depends how it's used but there are cases where we need the military and there are cases we can't use contractors because of inherently governmental. we need to step back and ask and maybe a good way to start, something that congressional budget office did and interesting, the services have done the a point is ask how the services vary in the way they handle certain routine activities this terms of personnel. you find wide differences and that's not the end of the debate but it's a starting point for asking questions about what the chief mix is, so i can't answer your question definitely because i don't think that study has been done. i'm not aware of an overall look throughout the obama administration and i'm not sure even before then. i think it's high time that we did it given all the concerns about civilians and contractors. >> i'm going to extend the answer from secretary hale. i agree with everything that he said and in addition, as part of that look, we really, the services, take a hard look at what our dual military and what we would consider civilian say at home capabilities and make sure that even when we've got some overlap, the importance of, if you hand it all over to a civilian or contractor, what does it do to your force? i'll use the example of civil engineers in the air force who used to be responsible for running the entire installation, the entire base. when we, when the service, when the air force moved that to an almost entirely civilian contractor responsibility, what we found is that the drawdown for civil engineers combats civil engineers that we need to deploy the actual numbers were just too small. so as part of that mix, we need to take a hard look as part of those dual capabilities, what numbers do we need in order to be effective across all the services? thank you. >> another round. yeah? thank you. >> good morning. my name is dominic kramer. we focus a lot, obviously, this president isn't really thinking in grand strategic erterms. we know people in his administration are. he's focused on where to take credit in contracts or new programs and things we've talked about for procurement so primarily for the general coming for industry now, but where do you see the president looking for competition in the defense industry and what's likely to catch his attention and what should catch his attention? as a priority in the broader context. >> one more question here in the third row, please. >> hi, my name is kaitlin kenny. my question is what you guys discussed earlier about how administrations concerns are about russia and isis, but over the next four years, do you kind of see maybe another region or another conflict around the world that might be an even bigger concern? you know, there's a lot of issues in africa and the middle east, the pacific that you mentioned, europe, do you see any other really big issues they're going to have to work on? >> great. let me start with general moel ler. >> i'll take the second question first. i'm convinced that the department is going to take in the new national security strategy, a very hard look at the global environment, the strategic environment and they're going to take a hard look not just at the theaters as they are now but identify and identify potential future hot spot iss and then, what are the capabilities we need? the rapid capabilities we need in order to get to the unpredict unpredicted, unpredictable pop-up spots if you will. that would be from my perspective and the second piece, every administration, in my career and especially in my time spent working in budgeting and program development, every administration has taken a very hard look at the defense institutional from a costs perspective as well as from what's the capability that you're getting? is it delivered on time and is it on cost? so those fundamental questions run through every administration. so nothing different there. i would argue that if you want to talk about actual how we need to function as a department going forward, the department of defense going forward, if you really want to look at how you're going to get to on cost, on time and you're going to get speed, that is, you're going to bring acquisition programs from ten years to three, you need to do four things. first, reform the acquisition system process. which he did with better buying power, up to 4.0 when he left, but that has to, that better buying power started at the secretary level and worked down, but it didn't make it through all of the layers down to the acquisition, individual acquisition and contracting officers. you need to take a hard look and go all the way to the very tip of the spear when it comes to getting new programs. so that's the tifirst. the second is that you really have to have, ask for support for congress to get budgets on time and as i talked about earlier, i think longer, a promise of more than five years. you really have to get a long-term funding stability, if you want to talk about getting fast. the third is that it's a contract between the services and industry, the services have to provide clear requirements and have to commit to faua fund profile and program. the industry has to make the commitment and deliver the capabilities and they have to do it on time and they have to do it on cost. if you do those pour thifour th sounds easy, right? you'll get after what the president is focused on. >> tom? >> yeah, on the second question. probably should have said, but i think the president has been clear about his priorities. his first priority in terms of the regions in the middle east, number one, isis, number two, iran, and second is asia. number one, china, and number two, north korea and the third by some distance is europe. he really doesn't care about europe, and he really thinks, i think, it's largely irrelevant or actually a problem in terms of the eu, so the first comment i would make and that is not the view of secretary mattis, that is not the view of secretary tillerson and certainly not the view of the national security advisor but it is the view of the president very clearly and i think that one of the jobs of his cabinet is to sort of underscore that europe may be the most pressing problem that he could face and that european problems tend to be worse when they emerge than problems elsewhere and ought to keep an eye on that. so that would be the first comment. the second is u.s. strategy for many decades has been largely to people on international problems. so a lot, whether it's pakistan and anything you can imagine, the u.s. is engaged to try to limit that and the president has been clear that he doesn't really see a role for the united states in playing that preventative sort of diplomacy and long-term sort of defense policy reassurance. but those problems will emerge. i think it's impossible to predict what they are but whether it's the fall of collapse of the venezuelan regime or inside asia, something else, they will emerge. i think it's important that the mindset in the oval office that the u.s. has an important role to play and i think the cabinet of secretaries want to play that role but need to be sort of empowered and allowed to do so, i think, by the president. >> bob? >> so i'm guilty of the russian/isis and it was a shorthand. you heard there's more sp sophisticated set of threats and when i worked for secretary bob gates, he said we're 100% accurate at getting wrong where to fight next. i think he's right. the question suggested, we're not sure where the next threat will come from. >> i'll add a couple of words. sometimes we're successful in e deterring a threat we can identify and that's why we fight in a place we can't anticipate. so it was slightly unfair,i i think, to the foreign policy but add a couple of things on scenarios and one is an advanced advertisement for a paper i'm finishing with general odearno. he's been obsessed about this since he was army chief of staff and likes to point out that we now have, for the first time in human history, more than half of all people living in major urban areas or cities of some kind. that number will go to about two-thirds by mid century and we're going to have several dozen megais cities. think in terms of cities. it doesn't mean someone will all of the sudden create a five division out of karachi but it means the cities can present a combination of crime, terrorism, cartels, sometimes in countries with weapons of mass destruction and breakouts of disease but what happens in cities and growing in uncontrollable ways and mega slum areas hard for authorities to reach is another dimension to national security planning that i know hr mcmaster is well aware of but have to think more broadly. donald trump is not going to want to think broadly. but you may not have an interest in war but war may have an interest in you. we may find some of the cities are not ones we can easily ignore depending how and where they develop. one point on the weapons industry question if you don't mind and i'm aware that i'm speaking to this issue with a representative of the company but the excellent engine for other aircraft including the f-16. donald trump talked a lot about the f-35 joint strike fighter program, the lightning too and i'll just say. i've been a critic of the size of the program. >> you can see the entire program on c-span.org. go live now to capitol hill where house majority leader kevin mccarthy and others are holding a briefing on the replacement health care plan. >> the process. the energy and commerce committee marked up more than 25 hours. 18 hours, collectively, 45 hours of debate and deliberation. this is with the american people

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