Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences

The 33rd IFPA-Fletcher Conference
on
National Security Strategy and Policy

October 16-17, 2002
The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
Washington, D.C.

Transcript Session 4

Transformation for a Changing World
Address by Admiral Thomas H. Collins, USCG, Commandant, U.S. Coast Guard

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: We now turn to our final member of the panel, who is Admiral Thomas Collins. Admiral Collins became the 22nd Commandant of the United States Coast Guard on May 30 of this year. He has, of course, had numerous previous assignments in the Coast Guard. Let me mention a few of them. They include Vice Commandant, 2000 to 2002; Chief of the Office of Acquisition at Coast Guard Headquarters; Commander of the 14th Coast Guard District in Honolulu; Commander of the Pacific Area; Commander 11th Coast Guard District based in Alameda, California. He is a graduate of the United States Coast Guard Academy, and he served as a faculty member in the Humanities Department at the Coast Guard Academy between 1972 and 1976. He holds an MBA degree from the University of New Haven. And he threw out the first ball at Fenway Park just a few days ago, speaking of the baseball motif that seems to be pervading this panel. And last, but not least, I had the opportunity to work with Admiral Collins in the development and holding of the very latest conference before this one in the series, which was on homeland security. And there are copies of our report from that meeting outside this room for you. So, it is with very great pleasure that I welcome Admiral Collins to this panel.

Admiral Thomas H. Collins: Thank you, Bob. The Red Sox really needed me that game. They were about to suit me up. We lost to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, I think, eight to two or something like that. But you have no, as a long-suffering Red Sox fan here, no sympathy from me, Jack, on the Yankees. In fact, a little gloating.

But it’s great to be here. Thanks for the kind invite to be among the leaders of what we all know is the greatest military service and force that I think this planet has seen. And we’re all dealing, the Coast Guard among the services dealing with unprecedented change. And I use the word unprecedented in terms of the rapidity at which we in the Coast Guard have to address this. You know, if you’re dealing with gradual transformation, you can do it in a deliberate, maybe a measured way. But imagine if the transformation that you must deal with happens overnight. You know, like if you were moving from childhood to adulthood overnight and not over a decade. And how you deal with that.

You know, there’s a movie that’s exactly based on that premise. If you remember the movie Big, I think it was about 1988, and Tom Hanks played Josh, the 13-year-old that was wishing to be an adult and enjoying a lot of the perks associated with that. And then the next morning he found himself, he woke in shock to find that, in fact, his wish had been granted and somehow he was transformed overnight into a young man. Not only was he older and bigger, but everything in his world had changed. The pace had changed, his place in the world had changed, his relationships had changed, his financial situation had changed, his perspective on life had changed. Everything about his life is changed. The only thing that didn’t change, he still was this little boy, in terms of character and perspectives, in this bigger body.

And my purpose in bringing this up is not to trivialize transformation, but to underscore a couple of aspects of it. And one, its scale and its dimension. And the second is its speed, the speed by which we have to address it. And third, the relevance to critical national priorities. You know, the President’s national security strategy points out the need very, very clearly in very, very bold print. He says, “The major institutions of American national security were designed in a different era to meet different requirements, and all of them must be transformed.”

So, we’re talking about transformation with a capital T. That’s big. And it needs to be done with a sense of urgency. Ten years ago in the United States Coast Guard, we anticipated the changes in our world of work, threats and so forth, transnational threats, asymmetrical threats. The need to re-baseline our mission set for the work ahead. We published a document called “Coast Guard 2020.” It paralleled very much the effort for the joint vision 2020 effort that was in the Department of Defense. We anticipated a deliberate transformation based upon that work, that transformation would happen over a decade or so and we would be ready at the end of that time to deliver the operational excellence that the nation needed and expected from us.

Well, our plans were well underway as we entered the new century. And we were planning to recapitalize our ships and aircraft with what is a groundbreaking approach to acquisition. We call it the “Deepwater” approach, which calls for new network-centered and integrated system of resources designed to meet specific capabilities rather than a one-for-one replacement. We were designing a wholesale change to our integrated logistics support system. We were building a new approach to human resources and human resource management. We called it Future Force 21, designed to restructure our workforce to allow for greater specialization, allow for the way it changed the way we manage career entry and assignments and the like, and to address the changing nature of the labor force and the marketplace and its demographics.

So, our transformation, we were all set. And our transformation was going to be this measured, deliberate, gradual thing. And then the future arrived on September 11. And a little bit more suddenly and a little bit more violently than what we had anticipated. That changed everything. And suddenly the Coast Guard and its op tempo increased dramatically and our mission profile was turned on its head. The value and the vulnerability of our ports, our waterways, and coastal regions became clearly apparent in the wake of the terrorist attacks that occurred in the skies of our nation.

I think our service responded fairly well, reallocated resources, 1½% of resources pre-9/11 to homeland security, 55% of our resources allocated in the post-9/11, and I would submit about 9/12 and 9/13. We established new port security zones. We reinvigorated our offshore boarding scheme, we established sea marshal concept for ships, increased presence in our ports and waterways. And in just a few months, stood up a new unit called Maritime Safety and Security Teams to provide for the security in our ports.

From a resource perspective, this has been challenging, to say the least. To meet these requirements and have balance across our mission, literally overnight we mobilized, activated a third of our Reserve, selected Reserve, to help fill the gaps.

And currently, the President has designated the United States Coast Guard as the lead federal agency for the maritime component of homeland security in a document that was promulgated on 16 July. He’s asking Congress to establish a new Department of Homeland Security in which the Coast Guard will be a central figure. He’s directing, as you know, a major transformation of our services to meet the demands of the war on terrorism and providing at the same time greater security for the homeland. This is a new paradigm. It’s a two-front, as very, very clearly outlined by General Jones, a two-front war that puts a very, very different dimension on our posture. And it also uniquely combines civil authority and military authority to get that job done.

Like in Hanks’ movie, you know, everything in our world has changed. And it’s happened virtually overnight. The difference is, this is not a comedy and there’s nothing funny about it.

What does it mean for us? It means vastly different capabilities and competencies than we had in the pre-9/11 era. Transformation is all about capabilities. It is all about capabilities dealing with the new profile of threats and risks. We must change our internal organization and our structure. We must change our relationships. And very soon, the Coast Guard will be in a different department. That presents the prospect of tremendous cultural transformation. We must change how we allocate resources and deploy resources. We’re shifting from, and this is good news from my perspective, from a retrenchment mode to a growth mode. Our budget in 03 is growing at an unprecedented 20% to help meet the growing demands of our service. And that puts increasing demands on good stewardship to satisfy the competing interests on our scarce resources.

We must also figure out how we’re going to spend our time and effort. How we’re going to use the increased capabilities and operations directed to homeland security while doing other non-homeland security missions.

And we must quicken the pace of our efforts to recapitalize our network-centric approach to ships, boats, and aircraft. Again, we call that system our Deep Water System. It was important before 9/11, it’s now urgent for the nation to have that capability.

Most importantly, from our perspective, is the need to develop and share intelligence, how we do that. How we use information for strategic operational and tactical advantage, both internally and externally. And I would submit this is one of these fundamental key issues of transformation for every one of our services. That is why we in the Coast Guard have established a new Assistant Commandant for Intelligence, and that is why we are investing an incredible amount of our time, our energy, and our resources to build network-centric systems.

The other thing, and I wholeheartedly agree with the approach of our U.S. Navy brethren. We are also hardware and gadget freaks, and hardware becomes sort of a central feature of a lot of our strategy and effort. But I think we all know it is the people that make that work, and there are more people challenges, I think, than hardware challenges for each one of our services. And we truly must transform the way we attract, develop, educate, train, and retain people. It’s absolutely fundamental to our success and we applaud the work of the United States Navy and Vern Clark in their approach to the people issue of transformation.

In the last month, President Bush announced the new national security strategy, based on the strategy of preemption. And along with organizational transformation and hardware transformation and so forth comes strategic transformation. The preemption strategy is incredibly on point from our perspective, and, in part, it says, “Given the goals of rogue states and terrorists, United States can no longer rely on reactive posture as we have in the past.” Obviously, the President here is absolutely on point as to what the four services and Department of Defense have been doing, and doing exceedingly well over the last year.

But I would submit it has very much a homeland security dimension to it as well. We can no longer rely on a reactive posture. We don’t want to be on the consequence-management side of the equation, as we were in the World Trade Center. That’s not where you want to be. You clearly need to be on the awareness and prevention side of the equation, and that’s very much a part of the President’s strategy for homeland security and the maritime homeland security strategy that we have built within the Coast Guard to support the President’s effort.

This is all about strategy and change and transformation with a capital T. And, you know, as in the Hanks movie, if you recall, I guess you could call it a happy ending. You know, Josh returned back to the life as a 13-year-old, back to his home, probably a little wiser, probably with some interesting perspectives, but he was able to turn the clock ahead and turn the clock back.

That’s not relevant to us. We’re not into turning the clock back, nor should we turn the clock back. And I think the time is at hand for us to move ahead with a great sense of urgency. We in the Coast Guard, as expressed by Bill Fallon, have an incredible sense of urgency to get on with the business of transformation. Oh, by the way, we don’t have any choice. It’s upon us, and we’re going to be in the midst of that overnight.

As the only non-Department of Defense member up here on the panel, I would just like to close with a couple of comments as we all plot and scheme and deal with transformation and all the dimensions of transformation. Just some key comments that have to be included as we deal with that.

First, many of the future threats will likely be low-tech, so let’s not overlook the obvious. The enemy also will continually adapt to our responses. We found that out very clearly in our efforts in the counterdrug arena. We must be able to anticipate, communicate, and cooperate.

Third, preemption is a valid and necessary tool. For the sake of our security, both over there and over here, we can’t afford to react, just react. To get the preemption, those technologies and processes that give us awareness in our respective environments are critical. So, things like surveillance and tracking technology will be vital to our capabilities to anticipate, to be preemptive. They require our greatest thinking and perhaps our most intensive investment.

<<Top>>

The full spectrum of warfare is no longer limited to an away game, over there. The war has come home. And it looks like it’s going to be home to stay for a long time. That type of warfare requires both the application of civil authorities and military authorities and the blending of the two. That issue will be square center on NORTHCOM’s plate as it configures its world of work ahead.

And another observation, that the homeland security component has to be seen as an integral component of national security. Again, don’t forget the home game.

And one last thought is on the concept of jointness. I can’t agree more about the comments on jointness of the panels here this morning. We’re into jointness as an organization. All our missions call for jointness. And I use that with a big J. It is not only jointness within the services. It’s not only jointness with our allied commanders. It is jointness in the full meaning of the word, and that is interagency process, state, local, and federal. This is an all-hands affair. Many of the efforts, you’ve got to get down and look people straight in the eye to do your business. It’s not as easy in all realms as firing a missile at somebody. This requires an all-hands affair, and the jointness extends beyond our individual services. It means jointness into the full range of the intelligence apparatus. It means jointness into the full concept of federal, state, local, and federal and international. And, again, it’s increasingly going to be a greater part of all of our world of work.

Thank you very much for including me in the conference to give a perspective on transformation from the United States Coast Guard. Again, it is facing us squarely in the face. Hopefully, this month or next month we will have a bill that will, in fact, define who we will work for in the future, and that’s playing out and we have a lot of stake in the game. But it does mean the organizational, structural part of transformation is going to be a large issue on our plate.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Questions and Answers

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: So, we now have some opportunity for discussion, for questions, very limited, unfortunately. So, what I’m going to propose is that those who would like to ask questions do so, and then we give the last five, six minutes or so to the panel for a comprehensive response, if that will work. Let’s hope so. Let’s go to the back of the room. I see a hand up back here, all the way back. Please identify yourself now.

Dr. Jon Czarnecki, Naval War College: This is for General Jumper. In the past days, we’ve heard a lot about preemption in our doctrine now. How is the Air Force going to use preemption in a kind of proliferation intervention? How have we enhanced our capability to target and destroy NBC facilities, especially those that are deeply buried?

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: How about some more questions for the panel.

Dr. Jon Czarnecki again, still with the Naval War College. A very quick comment and then a question concerning your education, concerning professional military education. I know that many of you, all of you mentioned the importance of personnel and training. And I just give a word of caution as a professional educator for some quarter of a century, that the cheap ways that people are advising many of you concerning CDs and web-based learning, there is no cheap way. And I don’t want to take up too much more time on that, it’s just a word of advice.

The question, though, is what, and it’s really to anybody on the panel, what is being done to develop common recognition of professional military education across the services? We know about JPME, but in terms of-- If I go to an Air Force school as an Army guy or, more importantly, as a non-resident member, is there going to be common recognition as a way of achieving the jointness, achieving true transformation in terms of mindsets?

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: So, how does professional military education fit in with transformation? Next question.

My name is Karen Johnson. I’m with Old Dominion University. And my question is for Admiral Fallon, and it’s kind of a two-part question. First, what benefit does the Navy leadership hope to achieve in transforming its carrier aviation force from a force of multiple aircraft with specialized capabilities into a carrier force of a single aircraft expected to effectively perform a variety of critical tasks and functions?

And second, will relying so heavily on a single aircraft decrease or harm the Navy’s ability to successfully carry out its mission?

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Next question is all the way over here, I believe.

__: Just like to expand on the first question a little bit and direct the question to all of you on preemption. What sort of capabilities from a service standpoint, from a joint standpoint, do you think we’re lacking or need to further a little bit to implement a strategy of preemption?

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Right down here, please.

General ...(inaudible), Sandia: I’d like to hear anyone talk about integrating the intelligence community and real-time situation awareness with our war fighter capabilities.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Maybe one or two more questions. Who else would like to?

Jacquelyn Davis: You all mentioned the importance of reforming the acquisition process. I wonder if you have some specific ideas, and in that context, how can we more effectively use the JROC process and integrate CCNC requirements, Combatant Commander requirements, and service requirements as defined by OSD? How can we effectively get that done and marry up requirements with the budget priorities?

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Now, I know we have enough questions for about five hours more of discussion and presentation. But is there one more now, because this is your last chance?

Okay, then, let’s start with the panel members and ask each panel member to respond to any or all of these questions. Shall we start with General Jones?

General Jones: With regard to the education question. I think that’s a good question, and I take the full meaning of your statement to heart. The challenge of professional military education is that we have to figure out a way to transform it in such a way that we make as much education available to a broad number of people. I’m somewhat frustrated by the fact that we have a system where we have a physical number of seats and many, many more officers who need the education than the physical limitation of the classroom permits.

And, so, the question for the future is how do you solve that problem? And within the Marine Corps, I think we’re doing some things that are going to address that. But it’s going to be a network of educational systems that reach out to our bases and stations. Instead of requiring everybody to go to Quantico, for example, for nine months, why can’t we, under the auspices of the Marine Corps University, take the education to the people who need it? Whether they be in Camp Pendleton, Hawaii, and so on. We have not harnessed the power of the retirees, for example, around all of our major bases and stations, who would be fantastic instructors to conduct a quality professional military education that can be delivered locally. In other words, we don’t always have to come to the classroom to get the quality education that you need.

A second point is that I’m increasingly of the opinion that starting with our command and staff colleges, there would be great benefit in considering whether to make all of those schools truly joint PME schools. And instead of a Marine Corps command and staff college, for example, that has, let’s say, out of 200 students, 140 Marines, why couldn’t we have command and staff colleges that teach maybe some emphasis of what the Marines teach but certainly a broader mixture of the student population, being soldier, sailor, Coast Guardsman, airman, starting at that level. Because that’s really where you want to make that cultural shift into the joint world.

The dichotomy for the services, as I said earlier, is to preserve the service cultures and make sure that our Marine warriors and our airmen and our soldiers, sailors, Coast Guard know what they’re supposed to do. And you can do that through the company grade levels, but somewhere at the field grade levels you need to start making that transition. And, so, instead of continuing to teach individual service cultures in individual service schools with a little bit of attention on jointness, you might be able to do some pretty dynamic stuff in terms of getting people on the same page at an earlier age.

With regard to preemption, I’m not sure from a Marine perspective, being forward deployed, hopefully, being near a point of engagement where you might be asked to implement that strategy, whatever the case may be. We are working very hard in partnership with all the services, but, obviously, with the Navy perhaps a little bit more, to make the sea-basing concepts of the 21st century be so powerful they can offset somewhat the sovereignty access questions that are going to be presented. So, it’s a question of being there and being useable immediately on a particular focus. But I don’t think there’s a particular weapons system, other than the ones we’re searching for right now, in terms of transformation that we’re lacking to integrate this particular strategy.

With regard to intelligence integration, the Marine Corps has, within the last two years, promoted its first general officer who has an intelligence background. We really should have done this about 10 or 15 years ago. We’re a little late in coming to the ballgame on this one, but that has had a major transformation. And, as I alluded in my opening remarks, being able to support the task force in Kandahar in Camp Rhino with a lot of the intelligence products and real time for the Marine Corps intelligence activity in Quantico, Virginia, was really eye-opening for us. And, so, we need to continue to make a great contribution in the joint arena.

From the acquisitions standpoint, I think there is great progress that can be made and should be made with regard to taking into account the various interests of all of the players. The Combatant Commanders’ conferences that we have, for example, I think are very good opportunities for us to not only read what the Combatant Commanders want, but we also spend a lot of time talking to them throughout the year.

I think transformation is really fundamentally on the shoulders of the services. The Combatant Commanders don’t have time to worry. They may be able to transform some new operational concepts and things like that, but if you’re going to transform and you’re going to do the things we’ve all talked about, it’s going to be done by the services, the ones who organize, who train, and equip, who deliver the force for employment. We want the feedback from the Combatant Commanders as to what it is they want, what capabilities they want. It’s our job to go out and get that.

And with the JROC and the service chiefs-- Nobody should think that the JROC functions independently of the service chiefs. The vice chiefs might want to think that, but they don’t. At least they shouldn’t. And I don’t think they try to. But there is great connectivity there. And I really believe that the JROC process under the current construct has the capability to do great things. But I also believe that we have to change some of our laws. And we have to change some of our rules so that there can be more players in the process, because it’s fairly exclusionary right now.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Thank you very much, Jim. Now we go to General Jumper.

General Jumper: Well, I’ll try to be brief. Let me start with the preemption notion. The con ops that we’re writing for things like preemption are what we call the global strike task force con ops, and it’s advantage is still standoff and precision.

Now, with regard to hard and deeply buried and specific targets, it’s true that we’re still working hard on the hard and deeply buried issue. But I don’t consider that the only answer to that is something that comes out of the air. At a certain point in time, you put people on the ground and they go and deal with those things very well. They’re trained to do that, and we take advantage of that. And we do what we can in this con ops orientation to enable that ground force to go in and deal with those situations.

We are looking toward developments in the future like the Mach 10 weapon that comes from very high in the sky. And, as you all know, Mach 10 you could hit something with a piece of Quaker Puffed Wheat and it will make it go away. You don’t have to worry about the cave entrance, you just make the mountain go away. If you want that kind of power, it will be available in the future.

With regard to PME, I’m in 100% agreement with Jim Jones. I think that we should all transition ourselves to the point where our PME is all joint in nature, and we certainly don’t mind doing it from a soldier’s or a marine or a sailor’s standpoint at their school or an ...(inaudible) standpoint at the appropriate school with the right slant on it but with the goal that it does, indeed, fill a joint square. I think that’s well worthwhile.

The question from Sandia on integrating intelligence with war fighting is right on. It’s part of my stovepipe theory. You are in a habit in the intelligence community that says you collect, then you analyze, then you report. If you’re in that mindset, it’s very hard for that same group of people to shift seamlessly and effortlessly to a find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess kill cycle. But, in fact, that’s exactly what we have to do. And that’s one of the paradigms we’re watching being broken right now with the Predator UAV, as we have traditional target tiers actually sensor operators on the UAV and being able to put those skills to work in real time. The trick is to be able to work that into the joint context so that you can shift seamlessly back and forth between a collection requirement and a time-sensitive or time-critical target and kill requirement and then back to your collection responsibilities in a seamless fashion and to be able to manage that in real time and be able to train the people to do that.

And, Jackie, on acquisition reform, one of the things that we’ve done in our development of command control at ...(inaudible) at Langley Air Force Base is a bold experiment on putting testers, developers, the companies, and the operators all under the same roof and forcing them to get along. And as they do this, what we have found is the testers when they’re in on each phase of the evolution of a program, suddenly the test requirement comes down, orders the magnitude. When the operators are involved, you’re being able to do technology trades with requirements on the fly in a reasonable way and through the appropriate process in a way that does not violate acquisition laws or rules, maybe habits. But the end product is coming out many times quicker than we’ve ever been able to do it before. This is a small step, admitted, but I think it’s a template that is worth exploring in the long view.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Thank you very much, John. And now General Keane.

General Keane: I’ll also try to be brief. In the education, I accept your caution, but the reality is that distant learning is here. And we can reach a larger audience more frequently and stylize it so that it can penetrate an audience and be complementary to their duties. For example, we have new soldiers who do not have college education, so a very aggressive business learning program that we’re providing to them, we’re giving them a computer and access to colleges of their choice. And they’re taking college courses around their schedules, which, in the Army, has always been very troubling to us because we have more youngsters who have dropped out of our courses, even when we try to do it on the weekend or during non-duty hours. And for our officers and non-commissioned officers, it’s here to stay, and I think it’s going to enhance our capability, as I said, to reach a larger audience and to do it more frequently.

I also want to associate myself with the comments made about JPME. We are pushing down into our staff colleges considerably more joint education than what we have historically done in the past, because we recognize that our officers and non-commissioned officers have to be equipped much earlier with the skill sets and education requirements to meet the needs of an ever-changing joint environment. And it’s just essential that we do that. And we’ve already got that in place.

On preemption, it’s clear that we have forces that are stylized to do that. Our special operations forces, our capacity to do forced entry today, and our transformation strategy is all about being able to provide forces to the joint team to be able to do those kinds of tasks.

And integrated intelligence, you know, General Schwarzkopf, after Desert Storm said, and it was his number-one criticism, that the national intelligence community was not able to effectively, in a timely and responsive fashion provide intelligence to the tactical field commander. And I know for a fact that in the 18th Airborne Corps, which I have associated most of my life with, in the five divisions that were there, despite the fact that operational objectives-- We were there for five months, and when operational objectives were assigned, we did not know the composition or disposition of the enemy in any of those objectives, despite we had been there for that period of time. We have changed that. There has been dramatic change in getting national intelligence sources in the hand of war fighters in the ensuing 11 years. It is truly remarkable. But we still have a very large national intelligence apparatus, it is still stovepipe post-9/11 to some degree, despite all of our efforts to change it. We won’t get there, I don’t believe, until we have truly shared databases, where an intel analyst who is pursuing something, say, with Osama bid Laden, and asks that question and all of the databases respond to his question, because he’s authorized to ask the question and he has access to the information. We still do not have that today. We’ve got to get to it.

And the acquisition process, to me, the number-one issue is the cycle system itself and all the ensuing underpinnings for it that you have to change to get to that. And the JROC, General Jones, we take our guidance from our service chiefs, as we always have. In the JROC process, I think we are on the cusp of some fairly profound change in this requirements process. Because we are looking at an operational concept and developing that concept, a joint operational concept, from which will flow the capabilities that you need to meet the requirements of that concept. And then you turn to the service, and you ask the service to provide these capabilities. We have never, ever done that in the past. It has always been bottom up.

—decision makers at the highest level. My view is that we provide the capabilities and tools to carry out any decision, should one be made to preempt. We think we have the capabilities and we keep them forward deployed in our Naval forces. We work in concert with the other services to execute whatever the desired outcome is.

Professional military education, one of my priorities. A graduate of the War College in Newport and proudly stated, we’ve got a challenge, particularly in the Naval service, and that is getting the time to get our people to do these things. We ask a lot of them. We want them to be professionally trained to do their warfare missions. We want them to be educated and well understanding and capable of operating in the acquisition environment, the business side of the house. We want them to have graduate education in special areas that they can lend their expertise. But we clearly recognize the need for JPME, again, endorse stronger the idea that we figure out a way to get joint credit for these courses at the staff colleges. That’s a no-brainer to me.

To the question from my colleague at ODU, we’re not quite at the single aircraft mode on the aircraft carriers yet. I think you’re probably referring to the fact that we have just introduced the F-18E and soon the F-Hornet to go with our other forces. It’s going to be quite awhile before those appear in great numbers throughout the fleet. And, so, we are in an evolutionary process here where we are exchanging some tired iron and some of it very, very capable. I have a son who flies an F-14D and he badgers me every day to no end, what is wrong with you, Dad? You’re throwing away a beautiful, wonderful airplane, the F-14D is the best thing you’ve ever seen. And I said, I agree, but there are some things out there with tremendous capability, in some areas much better, and, by the way, it’s going to be maintainable a lot easier than the kind of things you’re struggling with. So, we’re in transition. We will have F-14s probably another five, six, seven years. They are going to give way to F-18Fs, they’ll be complemented by Cs, and as we do the Naval integration piece, we envision a Marine squadron in every one of these airwings. You’re going to see a Marine Airwing Commander before very long. And we are going to jointly be able to cover the missions of both services. And this is just the strike fighter business. E-2s are going to be a mainstay of our air capability of our force for a long time. We firmly believe that electronic attack is a necessity and, so, we’re going to have prowlers, and the helicopter is going to play an increasing role in all of our con ops as the air capabilities have just been dramatically expanded. So, I think there’s a pretty good mix, and we really believe that we can answer the mail when we’re asked to do it.

Intel integration, ditto what’s been said. You know, we put the two and the three, the intel and the operations people together for a reason, because they are constantly in communication, need to be, so they’re almost always placed in close proximity, even if there are only two of them, so that they can get the right information to the decision maker. We’ve got a way to go to this. No doubt about it. We spend a gazillion dollars here in this nation on product that often is in stovepipes, and we’re just going to have to work on it. In the Naval services, we are looking very hard at how we might integrate our intelligence, Navy and Marine Corps intelligence, to come up with a better product for ourselves and for other services.

Jackie, the acquisition thing. Jack’s touched on this business of the joint con ops. This will truly, truly shake the place and turn it upside down. Just how we’re going to do this, and we’ve got a Title 10 reality here that all the money comes through the services and how we change this piece of the culture, not to mention the other aspects of it, it will be truly a challenge. But we’re taking that on in the JROC, trying to figure out how to do this. But I think when that day dawns, we’ll be in a new era and we’ll be the better for it.

Thanks. Tom?

Admiral Collins: Just a brief comment on three of the questions that were posed.

Education and training, it’ll cost us more money out of training and education costs, but I would submit there are a couple of things. You’ve got to make the business case, you’ve got to look at the return on investment. And there are multiple delivery vehicles that you can use. Use the one that makes sense and gives you the performance you need at the lowest cost. I think performance is the magic word here, that you’ve got to start at the higher level, education and training and what is the performance of the work force. And there are human technology folks that look at this from a systems perspective and look at a whole host of interventions, education, and training as one, but there are others. I think you start at that higher level systems approach to performance of the work force, then you make the right business case, and then you make the right investment.

On preemption, my only comment on preemption is that we’ve got to ensure that we think of preemption in the broadest strategic concept. It goes beyond the traditional military approach to preemption. It means from a national perspective, use all the tools in the toolkit, economic, diplomatic, and on and on interventions to give you preemption. There are many ways to get preemption. Working through international bodies in a proactive way is a preemptive type of approach, and we’ve just got to not get into the trap of thinking of preemption too narrowly, but how does our piece of it fit into broader approach to preemption.

On acquisition reform, I’m not totally objective here, but I think our integrated Deepwater system is a very imaginative, very forward-looking, very flexible, focused on requirements performance approach. Take a test drive on that one. Take a look at that. I think it’s an incredibly flexible approach, and there are a lot of people looking at that as a model, and the jury’s still out whether it will be totally successful. We just awarded it on the 25th of June, but it’s a system, performance-focused, life cycle cost-focused procurement over a number of years with incredible flexibility, but accountability built in. You might want to take a test drive on that one.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Well, thank you very much to this outstanding panel. We’ve run about 10 minutes overtime, but I believe it’s been worth it. We thank you for being with us this morning, for adding so much to this conference.