National Stategies and Capabilities
for a Changing World

Panel 4: Service Contributions to National Security Strategy and Capabilities

Moderator:

Dr. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., President, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University

Panel Members:

General Eric K. Shinseki, USA: Chief of Staff, Army

Admiral Vernon E. Clark, USN: Chief of Naval Operations

General James L. Jones, USMC: Marine Corps Commandant

General Michael E. Ryan, USAF: Chief of Staff, Air Force

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: The title of this panel is Service Contributions to National Security Strategy and Capabilities. Over the past decade, as we all know in this room, each of the services has undergone change and adaptation in a transformed and indeed still transforming global security environment. With fewer resources and an uncertain security setting, each of the services has faced difficult challenges and choices in its ongoing efforts to prepare for a future that will require, again as we know in this room, next generation, as well as generation after next, modernization. While at the same time maintaining readiness to fight and win the nation's wars and again at the same time to provide for operations other than war.

Tonight we have a really unusual opportunity. This is something that doesn't happen very often. And that is to say the opportunity to have all of the service chiefs with us. We have asked each of the service chiefs to address issues such as those outlined in our discussion points that accompany Panel 4. They include, as you might well expect, issues of readiness and operational tempo. Issues related to developing new generation capabilities, and creating innovative force structures for tomorrow's capabilities.
My introductions will be very brief. The first we will turn to General Eric Shinseki, who became the 24th Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army in June, 1999. Then we will hear from Admiral Vernon E. Clark, who became the 27th Chief of Naval Operations this past July. Third, we will hear from General James L. Jones, who became the 32nd Commandant of the United States Marine Corps in July, 1999. And finally, we will turn to General Michael E. Ryan, who became the 16th Chief of Staff of the United States air force in September, 1997.

And I might say for me this is a specially great honor to have the opportunity to chair this panel, or to moderate it. And I'd like to say chair because what I am here tonight, at least for one evening, is the Chairman. So-[Laughter and applause] Although we will be hearing from the Chairman tomorrow morning. So let us proceed.

General Shinseki: Well, thank you Dr. Pfaltzgraff. And let me begin by thanking all of you for participating in these important discussions about the national security interests of the United States and those of our friends and allies. And let me further congratulate the previous speakers who throughout today have helped to set the stage for at least this panel's presentations on service capabilities and contributions to national security.

What is clear from those discussions is that we face an extremely complex and evolving, still evolving, strategic environment, but one that consists of a diffuse array of potential threats including conventional and asymmetric methodologies. Now, in discussing national security, the primary reason I would tell you as speaking as a Chief of the Army, a primary reason you have an army is to fight and win the nation's wars. And I would add the footnote decisively. That's the only reason to indulge a large and expensive peacetime standing army, to fight and win the wars that we cannot anticipate in any other way than to be prepared for them at all times. We are students of history in this and we know the lessons of those who have failed to heed history's admonitions.

Now we also know that you can do lots of other things besides war fight with an army. Depending on how much flexibility and versatility you're willing to design into its formations and we have been doing those things for the past decade. But the Army cannot fail to deliver on its war fighting responsibilities, its responsibilities as part of this joint team each and every time it's called upon.

And for those contests, we intend to win decisively. Seventeen to fourteen ballgames may be okay for the Washington Redskins, but not for us. In fact, I think the Redskins would be happy with a 17-14 outcome right now. [Laughter] But these are not our kind of contests. We want the hundred to nothing scores. Because you see, in its most brutish nature, war fighting is about the physical and the psychological imposition of our will over the enemy's. It is about achieving moral dominance over your adversary. And you cannot achieve moral dominance until you have broken his will to fight.

It is about getting your opponent to declare "no mas" at the end of the first quarter. War fighting is not clinical, and it's not neat. Nowhere is this more evident than in Chechnya where the leveling of the city of Grozny has failed to break the will of those upstart rebels. As we debate our national military strategy, we should begin without regard at the beginning for resource constraints. The senior leadership of our nation, the administration, the Congress, the Department of Defense, deserve a full hearing of the requirements of national strategy. Only in this way can they fully appreciate the effect that resource constraints would have on that strategy. Such a constraint defines the sobering reality of risk. And we as senior leaders must understand that risk. If we decide to accept such a risk, we must acknowledge that the cost of that risk will be measured, and the lives of young Americans we send into harms way.

We nearly paid the price for that ten years ago in Southwest Asia. At the outset of that conflict we called Desert Storm, we deployed a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division to deter Saddam from cutting off some essential entry points through which we would have had to deploy. To preserve those ports and airfields, we deployed the only forces we could get there in time. Special operations from the Army's standpoint. Special operations and a brigade of light infantry. Light infantry defending against a heavy mechanized threat, and it was not the fight that we would have scripted, and one that could have cost us dearly.

Physically the Army today resembles something of that Army ten years ago. It is a Cold War legacy force designed to fight and win on the plains of central Europe and designed well to do that. We leveraged that operational battle space in central Europe for all the advantages we could get out of it and won the Cold War in Europe without ever having to fire a shot. Well that Cold War army along with other members of the joint team here subsequently fought and won Desert Storm and in doing so validated 40 years worth of Cold War investments.

But Desert Storm taught us other lessons as well. While we could move light forces into the zone of action quickly, they lacked lethality and staying power. And it took tremendous effort to get our heavy forces into position for the counter attack, and that took too long. The lesson of history coming out of Desert Storm and our subsequent deployments is that the Cold War legacy army lacks strategic responsiveness and is not suited for full spectrum operations. And more directly, it does not today meet the requirements of JV 2020.

And so therefore, a year ago the Army, the leadership and decisions of the Secretary, myself, the Army embarked on an ambitious transformation campaign that could take us— Could take us up to 30 years to complete. We committed to stepping off in this direction because we reviewed what the world has challenged us to do over the last ten years, and we concluded that the current condition of the force will not serve us as well in the 21st century.

Our challenge is to transform that force while staying ready to fight and win the wars of the nation. That's the challenge. And that is what we've set out to do. We must sustain and selectively recapitalize portions of that legacy force. We must simultaneously field an interim force that will bridge the operational gap that I've often described between our heavy and our light forces. And then finally, in the longer term, we must aggressively pursue the science and technology solutions that will lead to an objective force that we have outlined before that is more responsive and more deployable. And yes, more agile, more versatile, more lethal, more survivable and more sustainable than the force we have today. And all three of those initiatives are essential to mitigate risk over time.

The objective force will provide the capabilities and characteristics necessary to insure that the joint team, joint teams full spectrum dominance. It will capitalize on emergent technologies in order to employ precision engagement on land with greater lethality and with ranges greater than currently achievable. The objective force will give the joint team the speed and agility and positioning and re-positioning that will assure dominant maneuver on land.

Moreover, that force will serve as a strong deterrent to potential adversaries because it will give our national command authorities greater flexibility through a broader range of strategic options. From peacekeeping to crisis to conventional conflict, all across the spectrum of military operations.

The Army is moving quickly to address the land force demands of the strategic environment. And as it does so, soldiers remain the centerpiece of our formations. We must train and educate our people now to develop the mental agility and adaptiveness needed to overcome the challenges they will face as the objective force is achieved and as they will serve as objective force leaders.

The Army is transforming at every quarter and at every level of its footprint. We are determined to be a strategically responsive and dominant Army bringing unmatched versatility and strategic agility to the joint team, to our friends, our allies, and to the national command authority.

As in all things, this is about our national will. If we want to develop these capabilities, we can. We do not know who our adversaries will be, and we certainly cannot divine their intentions. And as we heard so eminently today from Tom Friedman, technology and capability change rapidly. And for all these reasons, we must provide our national command authorities the broadest range of robust options possible. We are the lead nation in the world. If we want to maintain that leadership, we must have the will to invest in the military capability that underwrites much of our political, economic, and technological strengths and which will guarantee our strategic capabilities in the future. Thank you, and I stand by for questions.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Thank you very much, General Shinseki. We now turn to the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Clark.

Admiral Vernon E. Clark: Thank you very much. Well, it's a privilege to be with this august body tonight and to talk about the challenges that are laid out in the topic of the forum. And I was taken by the magnitude of that challenge, defining the future. It struck me that the chaplain had it about right at the beginning when he talked about how in our day to day events, there are a million things distracting us and vying for our attention. And so it's important to have sessions like this so that we can talk about them. The thing he didn't talk about is that to solve the challenge that is laid out before us, he probably should have talked about some divine intervention to help us deal with this. [Laughter]

I start— I'm the newest of the Chiefs, and I start my comments tonight by just saying that I come at this with a very joint perspective. In the decade of the '90s, I was in joint positions for seven years. And I am— I was raised to believe that we are all functions of our perspective and that perspective to me as the J3 and then as the Director, that experience as the military's operations officer has had a great impact on the way I think about potentially what tomorrow will look like.

And I think about the times that we were called upon to deploy forces and I think the— When we come to the bottom line, trying to answer the question that's laid before us, and I look at the very important questions that are addressed in the discussion points, not just the ones about whether or not we are going to be willing to change our force structure, or are we reluctant to change, but the other kind of questions about future technologies, and so forth. They all beg the question, what kind of military do we really need in the future, and what are we going to use it for?

I'm struck by one comment that was on the wall of the National Military Command Center, and it said, "The best strategy is to be strong." And my experience and my bias certainly reinforces that. And what I have— I come at this now back from jointness, back into the Navy and today 31 percent of my Navy is forward deployed. Ten years ago that number was 21 percent. What that means to me is that throughout the decade of the '90s, what we saw going on in the corporate world is that corporations who found out, who were going to succeed, figured out a way to get rid of their "excess capacity."

Now one of the things that I think has happened in the '90s that a lot of people in our nation haven't focused on yet is that there has been a lot of capacity leave all of the services, our entire military. I think about return on investment and what would be— What is going to be expected of us in the future, and a few points come to mind. Certainly for the Navy, control and command of the seas. And I'm a great believer that what the strategy for tomorrow must address, the kind of military that is going to be required to provide the kind of stability that is going— That our nation needs in a world where globalization is the rule of the day.

I fully expect Jim Jones to talk about the difference between national security and national defense. Jim, if you don't do that, I'm going to be disappointed here. But because we discussed this-[Laughter] Because we discussed this before, I want to align myself with his future comments if he decides to do that. Because I so believe that the points that I heard him make before is that our economic future is so tied to the ability of our military to create stability in the global marketplace, and I'll leave it there and see if he decides to expand on it. If not, we can maybe talk about it during questions.

The other thing that strikes me from my joint timeframe is how important access is. And as I think back through my experiences in the late '90s, and every time we got ready to go someplace and being present or giving talking points to senior military or administration leaders so that they could talk to leaders of nations and states about the access question, all of that leads me today when I talk about the Navy's role for the future. It is about the ability to be forward, and it is about the ability to take the sovereignty of the United States of America to the four corners of the earth. And to be able to influence events. It strikes me that the answer to our question hosted on either side of us here and about our capabilities certainly is about that capability to affect the events going on in the world.

And certainly one of the outputs of the investment must be our contribution to joint transformation. I really believe that balanced capability is of utmost importance. While I'm the Chief of the Navy, I don't expect our senior uniformed leaders to be talking about anything other than that kind of approach to this. It is so clear to me that our nation in the 21st century needs the capability that each of our services bring to the task. And I don't say that for some sort of a, you know, just getting along here at the table tonight. I genuinely believe, certainly the United States Navy cannot do it alone. And we have a special relationship with the United States Marine Corps. But our future really is about being a link and sometimes being enablers, sometimes being in a supporting role, sometimes being in a lead role, but being able, bringing a piece of the national capability to bear when the national command authority needs it.

Let me just close by saying that I think that that brings us to the point then that we— When we ask— Even when I look at the questions here, you know, about whether we're spending enough or too much or not enough on current readiness and our ability to change and our ability to transform, and all of these things. The transformation for us in the Navy is not about haul forms because today I have two-thirds of the haul forms that I'm going to have in the year 2020. The future really is about other ways. When you examine the principles of war and the way mass is going to be applied and brought to bear in the future, it's about the tools. The transformation for us is about the tools that will enable us to bring mass to bear. To bring lethality to bear. The things that General Shinseki talked about.

So I think that the question for us is, first and foremost, and my— The guy I really— Jay Johnson said this to me in turnover. He said, "Vern, I have not been tremendously successful in getting— Being able to lead a debate about what the Navy ought to look like in the 21st century." I think before we answer any— All the questions before us, we have to ask the question, "What do we expect our military to be able to do for us? What are the demands— What demands are we going to place on our military? What do we expect them to enable us to do?" And then we get to the point where we're going to then be able to answer the question.
It seems to me, though, I can't imagine a world where our national leadership would not expect us to be forward. To be expeditionary. To be able to apply speed and agility to the task and to be able to respond. And to deal with the access questions, or the lack of access questions that then would talk about the requirement for a Navy and a Marine Corps and our ability to take our sovereignty with us on our ships.

And I believe then that the answer to that then requires the national commitment to address how to do the things that we expect our military to do for us in the future. Thank you very much, and I look forward to the exchange in the follow up questions.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Thank you very much, Admiral Clark. We now turn to the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Jones.

General James L. Jones: Thank you. And thank you, Vern, for giving me a completely different venue to talk about.

Laughter] And what I was going to do, I had this really pretty neat speech for ten minutes about the flag and what it means to me. [Laughter] I will spare you that. There are written copies on each table if you'd like to read it.

I'm really proud to be here with my colleagues and I will tell that at no time was I prouder than a few months ago when we appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House Armed Services Committee to talk about readiness. And I thought on that issue, whether it was near term or far term readiness on that particular day, as a corporal body, we really did our job pretty well.

I am on record as I think having testified several times, both— In both the privacy of offices and in public that I feel that we need to have a national discourse on what the appropriate commitment of our— As a percentage of our gross domestic product we ought to accord to national security. And I use the term national security in the context that Vern wanted me to raise and I'll just talk about that in a minute.

I think that words are important and how we use them in our dialogue is extremely important. And we tend to get caught up in almost simplistic terms sometimes. And when people say, "Well, how much do you need for defense?" And because that implies that somewhere out there there's an offense. And to the— To those who don't spend a lot of time thinking about these issues, presuppose that there's always somebody out there to attack you and frankly the man in the street doesn't believe that. They feel very secure. They're confident about their economy. They're comfortable in their way of life. Everything looks pretty good, so why do we have to spend a lot on the military, or on the one word defense?

But if you changed the metric and change the dialogue and use different words, and you talk about national security, and you really start explaining the elements that go into national security and how it's expanding, it goes beyond just the Department of Defense, but it's inclusive of many other agencies, increasingly more so. And you get into the discussion of the potential threats and the variety of threats, forget the person or the country that's going to attack you, but think about the non-state actors, of the asymmetric threats, and the like.

And you talk about national security, and then you start thinking a little bit about the connection between the fundamental pillars that undergird our society as a results of the efforts of heroes of the 20th century. Then you have in my judgement a more appropriate conversation on which to make a case that perhaps 2.9 percent of our gross domestic product or that arguably the world's lone remaining super power, we might not have it exactly right.

The— and those relationships, simply put, are— My contention is, that failure to invest appropriately in our national security will affect, in the long term our economy, will affect in the long term our democratic values and our successful exportation thereof. Will affect whatever dominance our culture has in the world and ultimately will challenge our technological leadership, which I think is the emerging pillar of the 21st century which will kind of dictate whether we still where we are today 50 years from now.
And so in short order, that's really the discussion, I think, that we need to have before we decide how much for national security. It's not a stand alone investment. It does affect the other pillars of our society, and the 20th century does provide ample lessons of that. Before there was ever any kind of global economic trade or expansion of culture or expansion of democratic values, there was a man or a woman in an American or an allied uniform that fought and sometimes died to achieve that condition. And in many ways, in a more peaceful time in the 21st century, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and coast guardsmen are going to be deployed to do that. We bring people together. We bring nations together. We cause environments for— In which nations may engage in trade, engage in policies that might not be that way if there was a vacuum out there.

So somewhere in there, there's a question about whether we're going to continue to accept the leadership role that is our legacy. I hope we will and reasonably confident that we will. But that's essentially, to me, a question of national security and goes far more than the question of defense, which to me is a subset of national security.

We spend an awful lot of time, most of our time, worrying about winning on the battlefield, which is absolutely job number one. But we actually spend 95, probably 95 to 97 percent of our time these days doing operations that don't quite lead to that, although we have to be ready for it. And so there's a tension between the— On the one hand, peacekeeping and on the other hand war fighting at the MRC level. But that is where we are, and that's the world we are in and we have to be able to deal with that.

But there's no doubt in my mind that a substantial portion of the value that we get for investing in national security goes into engaging and shaping and setting conditions under which we don't have to fight, and we can set conditions under which nations of the world can come together and make the world a better place.

My staff has put a document on each table, and they were disguised as waiters when they did it. And it is a document that is not revolutionary, but evolutionary and it happened to coincide with this wonderful dinner and while you're watching the Florida recounts, you might want to read it during your spare time. But it's a document that basically talks about a recently arrived at vision for the United States Marines, and as I said, it's not revolutionary, but it is more evolutionary. And I'd like to just take a couple of minutes to talk about it.

It's rooted in our traditions and it's reflective of emerging requirements. And it articulates in very fundamental terms who we are, what we think we will be. And most importantly how we will achieve our desired end state. And the statement that's on page one serves a number of purposes. It's a unifying articulation of our strategic challenges, opportunities and priorities. It's a general guide for modernization and to us it's a durable and flexible expression of our view of tomorrow. It describes a Marine Corps that we see with strategic agility, operational reach, and tactical flexibility. We hope that it will be an improvement to the national command authority, and our Commanders in Chief by being scalable, interoperable, combined arms, Marine air/ground task forces which will help shape the international environment, respond to the ill-defined spectrum of crises, and conflicts which face us. And if necessary, gain access or prosecute forcible entry operations.

The vision prescribes no radical change or mandate for wholesale transformation with good reason. It's because the people who developed this, roughly a fourth of the general officers of the United States Marine Corps for about a six month period concluded that, in fact, the fundamentals are basically correct. We commit ourselves to innovation and experimentation. We're willing to embrace change which has insured our continued viability. So consequently, we don't feel the need to make dramatic changes.

But what is required, however, is a well-planned and purposeful campaign to synchronize our effort to improve our capabilities. And so the words have been carefully chosen, and they will serve as a lens to focus those activities and lead ultimately to a dramatically more capable corps of Marines.

Fundamental to this vision, we intend to make America's Marines capable of winning the nation's battles and creating quality citizens. To optimize the Marine Corps operating forces, support and sustainment base, and its unique capabilities. To sustain our enduring relationships not only with the U.S. Navy, but to reinforce our strategic partnerships with our sister services. And to that end, this year with the exception of the Air Force, but which we're going to do shortly hopefully in the near future, we've had a series of war fighting conferences with the senior leadership of our sister services which have yielded dramatic— I think dramatic potential and possibilities for the future.

We contribute to the development of joint allied coalition and interagency capabilities and we capitalize on innovation experimentation and technology. One of the things that excites me as Commandant is that if we take the programs that we are— That we have on the books right now, whether land based, sea based, or in the air, and we fund those programs with the will and consent of our administration and the Congress, that beginning in 2008, those lines of convergence start to cross and the IOCs whether it's joint strike fight or V22, whether it's LHD8, lightweight 155, high Mars and the like, all of those things can in fact converge to dramatically transform the capability of our expeditionary capabilities and of the Marine Corps as a total. So from that standpoint, with the programs that are currently on the books, and if we continue to do the work that we need to do to make our case, I'm very optimistic that the lieutenant and the captain of the day who will be the battalion commander of tomorrow will have a wonderful force to operate.

And just like those of us who were the lieutenants and captains of— In Vietnam inherited the force that was designed to defeat the Soviet Union but wound up fighting in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, gave us this wonderful capability. We have that kind of vision for our captains and our colonels of tomorrow for our young people today. Thank you very much.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Thank you very much, General Jones. We now turn to General Michael Ryan to hear from the Air Force perspective.

General Michael E. Ryan: Thanks, Bob. It's great being here tonight and appreciate the invitation to come here with these gentlemen on my right who are not only wonderful officers and leaders of their service, but great friends. And I've seen them under the most stressing situations and I am very, very proud to be able to serve with them. They are some of the finest officers we have ever had in any of our services.

I have to reflect back on what has gone on in the last ten years as we watched the end of this last decade. It began with the bang with the fall of the Wall and Desert Storm and went through a whole series of small scale contingencies. And in fact some major regional contingencies to lead us into the 21st century. And as you look back over that last ten years, you see that each one of our services and each one of the pieces of our forces were called upon and used in a variety of situations. And no one of them, no one of them, was particularly dominant. One may have lead, but others followed. One at one instance may have been in the vanguard while the others brought up the rear. But in almost every situation that we've gone into, we have had to use an across the spectrum kind of force that this military of ours is able to muster.

And this is during a decade in which we had a huge, huge change in our size and shape. Not until about two years ago had we stopped the downturn in our force. And the personnel issues that came from revamping and reshaping our forces over the past ten years have been real challenges for all of us. And that's an issue I think I would like to address with this group.

And that is we can have the most wonderful machinery in the world, but unless we have the best people, the most competent individuals to operate that equipment and to think through the tactical and operational and strategic problems that this nation will face in the future, we will be hard pressed to have the successes we've had in the past.

If you look at just one measure of how we compensate our people, pay scales, you'll find that in this booming economy of ours, that our military forces are very much tailing Charlie's. Particularly for the very, very special kinds of competencies that we need in our services. And that it doesn't matter whether it's an infantryman or an aircraft mechanic, the skills that these people have are in great, great demand on the outside.

I think one of the biggest challenges for us in the future, for all of us, for all our services will be how do we recruit and then retain these wonderful individuals that make us the greatest military power in the world. It will be an issue that will be at our— In the forefront, I think, of the debates as we go into this next quadrennial defense review. All of us are suffering in one way or another from the lack of compensation for our forces either in pay or in housing, in retirement. In a way that it's slowly eroding, I think, the draw that we used to have in the military to bring people in.

And I think that's a function of the demographic changes that we've experienced in our society. The Air Force is a good example, very much of a family, for 75 percent of the people in the United States Air force are married. Most have families. We're a for-deployed force, 80,000 for deployed which we turn over every three years. When you do that, the family life is disrupted and there's no compensation for it. Normally the spouse loses the job, the house they lived in you will have to sell, normally at a loss. The children move from school to school and there's no compensation for that.

That is not the same kind of compensation, the kind that we give, that is offered on the outside. And the disparity in pay and benefits I think will— Must be a major issue as we walk into this 21st century if we're going to keep the one thing that I think has made us special in this world, and that is we are an all-volunteer force. Not forced into serving, but volunteering to serve. But we can no longer, I think, in the future, continue to ask those kind of sacrifices from our folks in service of their nation.

I think that will be one of the themes of this quadrennial defense review at more of an operational level, but at a strategic level, I agree with some of the comments of my colleagues. That this nation will have to make a decision strategically about how it wants to engage in this world of ours. And I think the debate will come down somewhere between the hermit nation and the world policeman. And that the variety of issues that we will have to confront, the variety of operational challenges that we will have for the future will go across the spectrum. And that we must be prepared as the only— The only super power on this earth to address them either in their infancy, by some engagement strategy, or in their maturity when crisis become conflicts and we must win those conflicts.

From an Air Force standpoint, our transformation has been going on for the past ten years. We've transformed our Air Force from one of a Cold War stature to one of an expeditionary aerospace force. We've taken our bomber force, which was primarily a Cold War force and turned it into a conventional force. All of our bomber force capabilities were used in this last operation in Kosovo. Our intelligence and surveillance and reconnaissance force has shifted from primarily a collection force to one that helps in the targeting process. Can move from the strategic to the operational to the tactical very rapidly. And our strike force, we are slowly evolving out of what is an aluminum force to one that is stealthy and standoff with precision.

But like Vern's force, we will not change that force very rapidly. The average age for the United States Air Force aircraft today is 22 years old. And if we execute every program that we have laid out on the current budget projections, the average age of the United States Air Force aircraft will be 30 years in the next 15.

And so re-capitalization of our force will be a huge issue in this quadrennial defense review. The average age of our tanker today is 38 years old. The average age of the F15 force is approaching 20 and will be 25 years before we start replacing it with the F22. We're buying aircraft at a rate today of about one-third of that needed to arrest this continuing aging process.

So I think those will be the issues. The issues of people. Those issues of strategy, those issues of re-capitalization. Will be the kinds of issues that this next quadrennial defense review will bring out, and this nation absolutely needs to debate. I look forward to answering your questions and this is a great honor to be up here with these great officers.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Thank you very much, General Ryan. We now will move to the discussion period. We are limited in time, so what I would like to propose as we did in one of the panels this afternoon is to call upon members of the audience to pose their questions, and then we're going to give— The final word will be to the panel after your questions are put together, aggregated. And we will begin with General Ryan and work our way back over to General Shinseki for concluding comments which we hope will incorporate answers or discussions based on the questions that are asked, whatever else they want to say as well. So who would like to ask the first question? Yes, right here. And wait for the microphone and please identify yourself? The microphone is on its way. And then others, we can take a few more questions, of course. And please be concise.

Audience: I'll do my best. Rick Newman, U.S. News and World Report. I'll direct this to General Jones, but open it for the other panel members as well, the other Chiefs. General Jones, you called for a national discourse to discuss defense spending, especially and the prospect of raising it. General Ryan, you talked about the need for national debate. The evidence is that, I would say, that this is not happening and that it's not going to happen. You know, we just went through a campaign where Governor Bush made an attempt to raise some of these defense issues, and they didn't resonate at all really in polls or in most other ways. So it— It seems a bit like you're just kind of throwing this Hail Mary pass. And my question would be what is the sort of backup plan for if you don't get a one percent of GDP increase in defense spending? What is your backup plan to avert the erosion of readiness and the other problems you've described here?

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Okay, the next— Who was going to ask the second question? Yes, in the center. Please. Yes, next on the list after— We have one question. You'll be next on the list.

Audience: I'm Lieutenant Colonel Gary Crone. I'm in the Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel. I'm a National Security Fellow at Harvard. My question has to do with the evolution of roles and missions going on with the reserve component. I'd be interested if you could tell us what you think about what the future role of reserve component is, what it's expected to do for us. Basically, is it going to continue the title ten definition of a force held in reserve, or are we going to become more what appears to be happening, a force that's engaged? And what you think as far as on the spectrum of being an engaged force versus a reserved force?

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Okay, third question is from over here.

Audience: ... (inaudible) with Inside the Army. Earlier today, both Senator Levin and Representative Tauscher suggested that we should change the two major theater war scenario on which the national military strategy is based. Senator Levin said one major theater war and two simultaneous small scale contingencies. Representative Tauscher said one major theater or— And only one small-scale contingency. Could each of you please give his assessment of this proposal and also explain how this would affect your services' force structure?

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Okay, one or two more questions for the Chiefs? Who would like to ask the next question? Yes, please? Just so you understand, it's very difficult to see in the corners of the room because it's dark and we have these lights that are making it difficult. So my apologies if I don't always see you in the corners here. Please?

Audience: Tim Gregory from British Embassy. Given that results are unlikely to be adequate to meet all the commitments and the priorities that you've determined, do you believe it's time to take more joint decisions regarding priorities for future requirements rather than leaving it with Title 10 single service decision making?

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Okay, one or two more? Here, sir.

Audience: My question speaks to what was a common theme of all the presentations, and that is the re-capitalization of the force. My question is this. How much of that re-capitalization is either enabled or perhaps constrained by our ties through foreign military sales to our allies and friends?

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Okay. And then back here was another question? Right here?

Audience: My name is Dean Cash from Joint Forces Command. Two of the four Chiefs addressed transformation, one specifically joint transformation. My question is, can the service Chiefs give some specifics on how they plan to achieve joint transformation? And exactly what does that mean? Because I do agree with General Jones. Precision-guided terminology is very important because there's a lot of rhetoric. How do we achieve joint transformation?

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Okay. I'm sure the Chiefs will have answers to all of these questions in great detail in— With approximately three to four minutes each to respond. So we better cut off the questions at this point and turn to General Ryan first, and then work our way back across the panel to General Shinseki. Please?

General Ryan: The first question had to do with the lack of debate about the need for modernization and transformation of the forces. I would respond that the candidates did address that issue and both of them showed a very positive vector for that transformation. But I believe the real debate for that will come as we work our way through the change of administration and the quadrennial defense review because these issues will be teed up in a way that they must be addressed internal to the government and by— And there's nothing internal to the government, Rick, as you know, so it will be external to the government too, and I think we'll have an interesting conversation about that both on the administration side and with our colleagues in Congress.

Gary Crone asked the question on reserve and engagement vice, whether they are reserves or not, and I think we quite honestly have gone beyond the term reserve or even guard. Within the Air Force, we just try and just say Air Force. We engage our guard and reserve forces on a day to day basis around the world intermingled and almost unidentifiable in the operations that we run on a day to day basis. Guard and reserve take up ten percent of our expeditionary combat support requirements around the world on a day to day basis. They take up almost 20 percent of our aviation requirements.

So we— I see that the guard and reserve, particularly for the Air Force has evolved away from their names. They are not really reserves and guard, but full active partners in what we do on a day to day basis.

Scenarios. When we look at the two major regional contingencies as scenarios against we force structure, these are not— These are not strategies, they are force structuring mechanisms. In many cases we find that our day to day activities drive our force structure as much as two major regional contingencies. That our engagement strategies overseas, our overseas to CONUS ratios drive in many ways our requirement for force structure.

When we look at our need for intelligence and surveillance and reconnaissance on a day to day basis, in many cases day to day operations outstrip the requirement for those forces in purely a two major regional contingency structure. I think that we have drawn down the force to the point where whether you measure it by two major regional contingencies, or you measure it by an ongoing small scale contingencies, both of which must be services while we have enough force to go against a major theater war, that you'll find that you're not going to have large change in the amount of force structure required to do those kinds of activities.
The next individual brought up the idea of when are we going to be joint about our requirements process. I guarantee you, we're about as joint as you can get. Our JROC process brings our major capabilities to the forefront in a very, very joint way to make sure that the requirements mesh, not just with service needs, but also with joint force needs. And we pay a lot of attention to that. A lot of attention.

How much are we enabled or constrained by having foreign military sales requirements, we aren't constrained that I can see. In fact, often foreign military sales are a help because they drive down some of the per unit prices that we need on particular pieces of equipment. And sharing with our allies also can draw down some of our requirements if we can count on that ally to be there when we need them.

And the last was transformation, how do we keep it joint. I guarantee you that working with these individuals here and working with our joint staff and our Chairman and Vice Chairman, we on a day to day basis think about our transformations not in terms so much of individual capabilities of our service, but how we bring this to bear in a joint way because we're small enough now as a force that we can't do any of these operations alone. It must be joint.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Thank you very much, General Ryan. Now, General Jones?

General Jones: Well, Rick, you asked about a backup plan. I don't really think there is a backup plan, to be honest with you. I think you'll know you need one when what's going to happen happens. Fundamentally, if we don't adjust the requirements and resources attention correctly, then things are going to happen that will drive us to have to fix it. I mean, it's a question of whether you want to recognize it now or you want to recognize when you drive off the cliff.

You heard Mike Ryan talk about the average age of the aircraft. That is a correct figure and what he said is going to happen is going to happen if we do nothing else. Now, it may be that our national lexicon we may find that acceptable. I personally don't think we will, but there are some out there that probably find that acceptable. If you think that if we would do nothing else right now and do it just— Invest the way we are, that you're happy with a 250-ship Navy, then fine. Because we're headed that way. And if we're satisfied that the U.S. Army of today is exactly okay and what we want for the future, then sit back and do nothing.
And some day we're going to fix it. But all of these bills are going to come due at the same time. So you can— We can sit up here and talk to you about vision, but I learned in the last QDR that a vision without resources is a hallucination. [Laughter] And so sooner or later, these bills become due. And the fundamental discussion will be around the lines of what do we want to do as a nation. And there will be other signals that will tell you that your backup plan is nonexistent and that those signals will be by the signals generated by all-volunteer force who will vote with their feet in greater numbers than they are now.

So we should take advantage, in my judgment, of this unbelievable economy. And we should have a discussion about natural security vice defense and make sure that the captains of industry out there who've been getting a free ride for the last 55 years under this umbrella that's been out there all over the world, and they expect to be there, by the way, where business does in fact follow the flag, to set the conditions under which we can prosper. And we can continue to export democracy and transform armies to understand the values of democratic subordination to civilian rule and the like.

And those are powerful concepts. But if you look where we're not invested right now, in the regions of the world where the United States let's say are lesser invested, for instance Africa, or South America. You have indications of chaos that you don't have elsewhere. And I think as a world power, a super power if you want, that we ought to be concerned about that. And we ought to understand the relationships between the pillars of our society.

With regard to the roles and missions of our reserve component, I'll be parochial here an talk about just the Marine Corps. We have one reserve wing, one reserve division, and one reserve FSSG. Like our sister services, we generally don't go anywhere for very long without using our reserves. I think that the question of home land defense and the role of the guard and reserves is another issue very complex and immature at this point, but something that we have to deal with in the future. But let me be very clear, the total force concept is alive and well in the United States Marine Corps.

The 2 MTW national military strategy, the Marine Corps has always advertised itself as being a 1 MTW force. We win the battles that helps other people win the wars. I think we make an important contribution percentage wise, roughly on the order of 20 percent of the measurable combat power, whether it's battalions, fighter attack, aircraft, or combat helicopters and a substantial amount of logistics and the active force. But we will continue to advertise and posture ourselves to be a significant portion of a 1 MTW strategy.

Now, whatever you want to call it, but I believe the national requirement is such that the future is fairly clear, that it is going to be demanding of fairly robust and capable forces that have to be able to respond across a spectrum. And I do not philosophically ally myself with those who think that we should create peacekeeping forces or constabularies. I think that a well-trained soldier is by definition a good peacekeeper. The reverse is not true.

The articulation of requirements in the joint world vice Title 10 service requirements, I think is a process that's pretty well under way to be satisfactorily resolved with our— The CINCs integrated priority list, the cohesion that exists among the service Chiefs and the CINCs right now. There's a lot less tension out there that a lot of you might believe. The JROC process I think is fundamentally sound and works. And I think a lot of us are very conscious in this day of top line constraints that we have to create systems and generate requirements and allocate resources in such a way that they're complementary to as many people as possible.

How much a re-capitalization is constrained by foreign military sales, I think that's scenario dependent. In the case of the joint strike fighter, for example, there was a good case where many people are lining up to invest in the technology. It remains affordable. As a result of the competition by our two major competitors, there is a lot of money tied up waiting to be spent in support of the— Buying into that program, so in that scenario, it's very important and I think it's important to the nation and to the industrial base. So it's scenario dependent. But I don't think that there's a— I don't think there's one answer for all of that.
Joint transformation, I agree with Mike. I think that's achievable. I think the direction of the joint forces command is encouraging in that sense, and I think that we can work together to achieve joint transformation and we are in fact doing that. CINCs have a lot to do with that. We as force providers should listen to those requirements and should be flexible and agile enough to shape our forces to meet the requirements of our combatant CINCs and if we stay together on this page I think we'll achieve that. Thank you, Bob.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Next, concluding comments from Admiral Clark.

Admiral Clark: Thank you. First of all, with regard to the backup plan, I agree with everything that's been said, so take that as a given. It seems to me that plan B may be foisted upon us if we don't address the issues. And I think it's important to focus on where we've come from. For example during the decade of the '90s and the downsizing, we went through changes that nobody's experienced at making the changes. For example, in the Navy. Think about— We are 250,000 people smaller than we were ten years ago.

And I was thinking about QDR and Jim's comment about— His complement of the resourcing of it. And the— And what it takes us to. I mean, I'm under— We've got N strength shortfalls. You know, we missed the number by ten or twelve, maybe thirteen thousand people. That's not all that bad, given a 250,000 people reduction. But it's very difficult to recover those kind of resources. So Rick, what I think will happen to us, and if we think back in September of '98 as we began to get a hard data that showed what was happening to our readiness, and remember the debate at that point in time about, you know, openness about the readiness issues. The fundamental fact is that the Chiefs aren't going to go to the Congress and testify and build their future case on anecdotals. And so that the data was generated.

And I think that the strength of that argument will continue to improve. And I could go into great detail, but I would just say that I fundamentally don't have the resources that are required to sustain the force that we have. And the point I made about 31 percent of my force being forward deployed today, not under way, but forward deployed, as opposed to 21 percent ten years ago, what that suggests, if you analyze that model, the financing approach to that kind of corporate philosophy has to be different than it was ten years ago. I mean, all you have to do is consider that one— Our deployed force is either there, or it just came home, or it's getting ready to go. And so you multiply that number times three and you get a sense of what the excess capacity is. There's no place to reach for the resources to make that— To make the resource requirements whole.

So I think what we're going to see is we're going to see more inability to meet the requirements that are imposed upon us today and either, you know— One of the things in the thing about this particular session talked about realignment of the strategy. I mean, that's why I made the point in the first part of the session. We have to ask the question, and several others have made this point, what kind of military do we— What do we want the military, really, to do?

With regard to the reserve component, I just want to just say the question is reserve the right term, or engaged the right term? And the right term is engaged. Period. It— We're going to need— The reserves are going to model what future manpower approaches are going to look like. The 21st century are going to require us to use manpower session techniques that we never dreamed of in the 20th century. And I think the reserve model will lead the way.

When we talk about 2 MTW and they're— We could have a debate about whether 2 MTW is a strategy or a capability. The point is, that the force we have today and the resourcing of it so that it is sustainable, the sustainability of the current force is what creates the short falls in sustainability, is what creates the readiness challenges that we have today. I for one don't want to be part of an approach that gives us less capability and then expects us to do the same kinds of things. Back to the points I made about resourcing this existing smaller force. So if somebody believes that going to a 1 MTW and a SSC then allows you to become smaller and then allows you to go— Expects you to do the same kind of things, that is a nonstarter. And so I for one believe that this nation, the world leader, and a nation that believes it is supposed to be able to reach out and affect outcomes, and I know you had discussions today about what our true vital interests are, seems to me that it's a given that you're not— If you believe things like the best strategy is to be strong, well then you don't have that kind of discussion.

One point on future requirements. I believe that the real revolution will occur when we not only think about future requirements, but future acquisition. Tonight when we were— During the cocktail hour, Mike Ryan and I were talking about an approach where we can team with a support acquisition strategy on a new airplane. I think that's what the future really is all about.
Let me go to point six because it ties and I'll leave the re-capitalization and FMS alone. I think what's been said is sufficient. I really believe that our experimentation is vital to the transformation, and I believe that the steps taken to empower joint forces command to be able to do that are critical to our future. And that's because I think you can't have speed and agility without, you know, in a rather extreme way affecting the acquisition cycle and the ability to introduce new capabilities. I mean, to me that's what the revolution will be about in the 21st century. And for us, again, I say it's not whole forms. You know, Art Sebrowski coined network-centric and I truly believe that it is all about information and having better knowledge than an opponent.

In the Navy, what I expect to do is that I expect to align our experimentation programs with the joint unified structure, and that means specific embed it in joint forces command. I believe that will have the most force multiplying effect. And that the areas that I've addressed, you know, with regard to network-centric and C4 ISR and those kind of areas I think provide the most immediate payoffs. Thank you.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Thank you. And now we turn to General Shinseki for concluding comments.

General Shinseki: Let me begin with where Admiral Clark finished up. And this is I think Dean Cash's question about joint transformation. I did not use the term and I'd have to think about it a little bit, and this touches also on the question from the gentlemen from the British Embassy about joint solutions. I think it's important to understand that the reason you have service components here is because in our responsibilities to provide capability we all operate in a certain portion of this spectrum of providing capabilities. And in the case of the Army it talks about the Title 10 responsibility of prompt and sustained land combat. And to the degree that we can merge these capabilities in a joint sense, we work at that harder than most people think. And the JROC process that was described earlier is something different today than it was several years ago and it's different today than it was just a year or two ago. We learn as we go.

But that suggests that services bring capabilities unique to the service. Otherwise, we have made ourselves one force. Getting to your point, Dean, about joint transformation, I think that's appropriate if you have a fully integrated force or you don't. But to the degree that we can link our transformation efforts in the joint sense, I think JFCOM is imminently positioned to help us understand through experimentation what the future potential might be, just as we have learned out of the JROC process that we could do a lot more than we ever thought when we started out. So the answer to your question is experimentation as an adjunct to the JROC process is probably key. And JFCOM will have an opportunity to help us understand that.

Moving back up the other way, I'm going to leave the foreign military sales and the re-capitalization question. I don't know that there's an issue here or a problem. But I'm satisfied that I'm not aware of one, and I think the earlier questions pertain— Or the answers pertain.

To Erin's question on 2 MTW, I prefer to use the term scenario rather than strategy, and I think all of us have tried to make that fine point. That is really a sizing mechanism. If we consider the United States a global power, at least we claim to be, 1 MTW puts you into regional discussion. If you want to be a global power, then you're going to have to have the capabilities to demonstrate global reach, and the ability to go in more than just one direction. And the caution with a 1 MTW and no matter how many smaller scale contingencies that you might want to discuss, when you have the capability to do one of anything, the tendency is you will hold onto that capability and not commit yourself because you're not quite sure that the second crisis might not be more important or more significant than the first. So there's a tendency to face ingrained tentativeness.

Title 10 ACRC and reserve, for the Army a good portion of our capability to go to war is resident in the reserve component today. We could not get out the gates without the great support of our reserve components, and I don't mean that as a throw away comment. I do mean that we cannot get out the gates without our reserve components. They are part of our deployment mechanisms. In many cases, reserve forces are port opening capabilities for us, and they go in advance of our early deploying war fighting forces. As you may know, we've been sending army reserve and national guard units along with our active component forces to Bosnia for most of the last five years. In fact, the last rotation in Bosnia was commanded by a national guard division commander with authority over an active component brigade. For us, the evolution of roles and missions has already occurred, and so this idea that the Title 10 force in reserve is maybe something of the Cold War discussion. But it is not appropriate to the Army today. In fact, the great concern is how much use of the reserve components can we undergo without jeopardizing the full time livelihoods of our reserve component soldiers who have other careers that they come back to after those deployments. And then how many times can you send them again and again? Our experience, Kosovo now one year, Bosnia five. We've been in the Sinai waiting for a peace agreement for 18 years and we've got two fine battalions that have been going to the Sinai for 18 years waiting for a signature on an agreement.

So the tendency for us as we send forces over and over again, and where this is pertinent to the reserve components, the is a point in time where employers are going to stop applauding when they're going on multiple missions. And their businesses are in fact impacted. And we do a lot of work with employers on that to try to shore up that kind of support. And it's an important part of the discussion, something that doesn't get a lot of attention, by the way.

The last point I would make is going back, and I think it was Rick Newman's question about national debate on security and what's the backup. I think in some ways this is part of the backup, Rick. At least for the Army, we launched this transformation effort a year ago because we weren't quite sure what the opportunities for debate on national security with the Army's interest in it was going to be in a year that saw— Kind of began with Y2K in December, '99, and rolled into a run up to the national elections where whatever the interests are going to be could very well be something other than national security. And the hope was a conference like this, the one at NDU last week with Michelle Flournoy's taskforce would be an opportunity for a broader audience to come together and address what we consider an important issue on national security.

The next goal will be QDR and we will see what comes out of it. But hopefully the reports that you and the other members of the media provide over events like this and the gathering at NDU next week may help stimulate that discussion. But we appreciate all of your presence here tonight because that may very well be part of the backup plan.

And the last thing I would say, some of us and me in particular got a lot of credit throughout the day for having been part of this process. I just want to tell you— Set the record straight. I showed up here tonight. Folks like Bob Pfaltzgraff and Jackie Davis I think is sitting somewhere here in the audience, Andy Marshall who was here earlier, Larry Ellis off the Army DCSOPS staff and his folks: Bob Wood, Neil Anderson, Jason Comea and the real workhorse here, Captain Chris Hornbarger, are the real folks who deserve the credit. I think we've had a great first day and I hope you all got something out of it. Thank you.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Well, I would like to on our collective behalf express my thanks to the service Chiefs for what has been for really an outstanding occasion this evening. We know that the tasks that they face and the training and equipping the forces that we will need for the complex security environment of the 21st century are indeed formidable. We wish them the very best as they attempt to do so and we thank them again for sharing their insights, their experience, their expertise and their wisdom with us this evening. So, many thanks and of course thanks to you the audience for your outstanding questions and participation.
Let me simply announce as we adjourn for this evening that we will be reconvening in this room before 9:00, just before 9:00 to hear General Shelton who will be speaking at 9:00. So please be back promptly in advance of 9:00 tomorrow morning. This session, then, is adjourned. Yes. [Applause]