Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences

The 34th IFPA-Fletcher Conference on
National Security Strategy and Policy:
Security Planning and Military Transformation

December 2-3, 2003
U.S. Chamber of
Commerce Building
Lafayette Square, 1615 H Street, NW
Washington, D.C.

Address by Admiral Vernon E. Clark, USN, Chief of Naval Operations

Introduction by Dr. Jacquelyn K. Davis, Executive Vice President, IFPA

Thank you very much, Jackie. I want to thank you, Jackie and Bob [Pfaltzgraff], for your participation and your leadership in this conference, and IFPA and the friends of Fletcher, and each of you who have come to be part of this, DTRA for also cosponsoring this event. And I believe these are very, very important sessions. And I've been privileged now, because I've been doing this for three and a half years, to have participated in these before. And I'm very pleased by the reports that we've received about the success of the event yesterday. And our objective today, all of us sitting up here, is just to make sure we can measure up to what happened here yesterday. And of course, following Art Cebrowski is always a treat. I'm sure that you all have some new words in your vocabulary. But he's always challenging.

I'm also very appreciative that I get to sit up here with a group of people like this. And I want to thank each of them, and the representatives from the services, for being part of this. I asked to go last because I just wanted to hear what they had to say, and also so I could align myself—I didn't know for sure I was going to say this, but I was pretty sure I would—with Mike Hagee. I mean, do you realize what a treat it is to be able to sit here and listen to Hagee talk like that about stuff, and us to be so much in alignment, and hear him talking about sea basing, and sea strike, and these kind of things? It's a real treat to be alongside my number one joint partner, Mike Hagee and the Marine Corps.

And of course, I also want to align myself with the comments of the others. As Pete told you this morning, he and I were having breakfast, and we really didn't talk about this session at all. But we were talking about the thrust of this conference, and the way Jackie phrased the initial question, and how we're going to put together the forces that we need and the structure that we need in the 21st century. And of course, the Coast Guard and the Air Force, the things that Tom and Duncan have said here are absolutely right on the mark. And it's a special treat to be aligned with them. And I'm a joint guy. I'm a great believer that every one of us bring unique and special capabilities to the fight. And our real task is to figure out how to optimize that, to extract all the utility that we can from the investments that the taxpayers of the United States of America have made in this capability, so that we can provide the kind of responsive force that this nation needs in the future.

I was thinking about how important this time is. And I believe this: There's no better time to have a conference like this than where we are today, and the geopolitical military lay-down that we see in the world that the others have addressed. [Secretary Rumsfeld] talks about the importance of challenging every assumption, and I'm absolutely convinced that he's right on that, and that when you listen to the chiefs talk about the things that we're facing in the future, I can count myself fortunate to be working with a group of people who believe that too. Certainly, what I thought the question was, “what does transformation mean to you, and the experiences from OEF and OIF?” And that's what I prepared to talk about.

But because Jackie asked us the other question when she did— She said, "So, what does this mean to the services?" I wrote down these five things. And each of the panelists haveaddressed these. Number one, people, and in a broader sense, the human resource structure, which is what I think that really is all about. The force structure itself, number two. Number three, organizations. Number four, the way we do things. And number five, the joint operational concepts that are going to be required for us to have the kind of force and fight the right way in the 21st century. So if I can get credit for answering the question, and then talk a little bit, and talk more about those as we talk about—I would like to just make some observations about my reflections from the experiences of OEF and OIF.

Mike talked about the uncertain world that we live in. The first thing I want to talk about is the value of readiness. This may seem like a strange takeaway, and what it means transformationally, but I believe that all of our thinking about what readiness even is has been challenged by the experiences that we've had. When I say the value of it, I'm separating it just from just readiness You know, among the panelists, I think I'm the only one here that was here on 9/11. And then on 9/20, I was at that joint session of Congress, when the President spoke to the nation. And by the way, I was in the building on 9/11, and so in very special ways, I take this pretty personally. The President, on the 20th, when he was speaking to the nation and the combined houses of Congress, a third or so of the way through the speech, he paused. And you will probably remember this moment, but not like I do. He paused, and he looked down at the chiefs, and he got that finger out. And he pointed at us, and he said, "I have a message for the military." You remember that? "Be ready."

Now, I'll tell you, there was a time when we weren't. And I make this point because I believe that one of the things we better understand—One of the things I said is, that we had better be thinking about the way we are going to create a ready force, so that we give the Commander in Chief the options that he needs. We had time to respond to OIF, because a long time had gone on since 9/11, and warnings were being made. But I remember in OEF, for example, the time was short, and we needed to surge the force. And when it came time to do OIF, in the Navy, we deployed 54% of our fleet. We had time to get ready.

But one of the lessons for me—And I look down at my little list here. I had seven carriers out. I had 70% of my carrier air wings deployed. We had three-quarters of our amphibious structures carrying the Marines, and supporting the Marines. We had submarines, and dozens of surface ships, and all of the apparatus that's required to respond. My takeaway from this was that being ready once wasn't good enough, and that we in the Navy needed to rethink the way we thought about readiness itself. And we had devised this thing called the Fleet Response Plan that fundamentally says this. In December—and Dick Myers is going to be here and speak to you at lunch— Dick turned to us. We were in a tank, he turned to me and he said, "Vern, can I have four carriers?" Well, I will tell you, in the middle 90s, you would have been hard pressed to get four with all of the things that you would like to have in it. And I'm talking now about the precision pieces, and so forth. You could get four out there. But it was a proud moment for me to be able to look at him and say, "Yeah, Dick, you sure can. You can have eight if you want."

And to me, the value of readiness that it will allow us to respond to the challenges that Jackie talked about, that you talked about yesterday, in the global war on terrorism. The President said, "We're going to keep this enemy on the run.” We're not going to keep enemies on the run with forces that aren't ready. And this nation has to make investments in it to make it a reality. And I will tell you that in the decade of the 90s— And I remember a hearing, in September of 1998, when the chiefs were in front of the Senate armed services committee. We told them that the number one issue for us is transformation, and the lesson that we learned, is that we've got to fix the way we think about this. I believe we fundamentally got too predictable. And I think Pete's (General Schoomaker) the one that mentioned we had Cold War thinking in the way we put our structures together, and the way we were doing things. And for me, it was, deploy, come home, go in the shipyard, and deploy. We're deployers. And I'm fond of, when I talk to our sailors, I say, "You know, being too predictable in war is a bad thing." And we had become too predictable. And when I'm talking to the sailors, I say, "You know, if anybody wants to know what we're going to do, all they have to do is go down to the Navy Exchange—" for you Army types, the PX—"talk to the cashier down there, and find out when we're going next, and who's going next." And that's not good enough.

And so, the first transformation that we're working on now is how we create a ready force that's able to respond anytime, and give the Commander in Chief the kind of options that he needs. And on the 21st of last month, we fundamentally had the bulk of the carrier force re-cocked, and ready to go. And our new structure calls for the ability to respond anytime in 30 days to give the President six of them, fully in the green and ready to go, and two more in days following that. We're able to do that today. The aegis of those aren't as important as our thinking about the way we are going to be able to sustain the readiness that the military structure needs in the 21st century.

My second takeaway has been referred to by every speaker, and so I won't belabor it, and just say that it's the power of joint operations. My commander in OEF in the CENTCOM AOR was Vice Admiral Willy Moore. He had a three and a half year tour over there as the commander of the Fifth Fleet, and is the most experienced war fighter I have in the Flag community in my Navy. Willy said to me that his experience over there led to this conclusion after OEF, that it was the most joint experience he had had in his life, and he had never seen it work any better. Our task is to continue to make it so, and as Pete said, to make it better every day. That's what our task is all about.

When I think about the joint operations, and the lessons that I have learned, and what it means to me, I think about a couple of things. Speed and agility is one. I think that we have to, as a military writ large, we've got to come to grips with the issue of speed, and how much—By the way, you can talk about tactical lessons learned, operational level lessons learned, strategic level. So, three levels of war. This is talking from the strategic point of view, which is where I'm supposed to be doing the work. I'm not supposed to be working tactical issues from Washington. But to me, the strategic speed question is, “how quickly you can get the force to the fight?”

And it happens to be an acid test question that I'm asking everyone. For every program that they bring to me, the first question is, can we get it to the fight, and how quickly can we do so? Obvious advantages to being able to do that that I don't need to belabor, except that it does raise the question for us, then, about what kind of forces those need to be. And that is bullet number two on my list, the right kind of force structure for the 21st century. I happen to believe that smaller, lighter, easily deployable, and the smallest footprint, is the right way to think about this.

Flexibility and agility. What comes to mind is Kitty Hawk in OEF. Pete and I were talking about this at breakfast. He happened to be part of the Haiti operation when we loaded up carriers with Army helicopters. And one of the things that happened to us in OEF is that people who had had that experience in Haiti were on hand in the Special Forces, Special Operations structure that allowed us to execute that—Their experience, their training, their perspective allowed us to execute those operations in a flawless kind of a way. I think about Task Force Sword, and the commanders from Haiti. And they could not have envisioned that they were going to be operating deep into Afghanistan. And to me, that kind of agility is required. The way Pete said it earlier was that we all have to understand each other's domain, so that we can extract the operational and tactical advantage for the nation as we integrate our forces together. I certainly want to align myself with that kind of thinking.

I've also become a great believer in—And I guess I always was a believer, but driving home the point of the importance of precision. Duncan talked about it. So, I believe that when we look at this, and try to conjure up what it means for us in the future, is that we look at speed. We look at precision. We look at, then, agility, and the ability to be flexible, and the ability to, in very fast order, group the various capabilities together to attain the operational advantage that we're looking for is really what this is all about.

One of our huge challenges for the future is to learn how to exploit and apply precision fires across the board in a more meaningful and fuller way. How do we do that? I will tell you, to me, it means DD(X). And I was telling Pete this morning, we're investing in rail gun. Rail gun will revolutionize the process. You know, being able to fire hundreds of miles away and hit this table is the kind of capability that any unified commander that exists will joyously figure out how he's going to tap into that and utilize that capability. And of course, you have to have knowledge. And I call that the awareness, pervasive awareness kind of challenge for the future. Other speakers mentioned the importance of the command and control apparatus. To me, those are the important lessons that then point us to the kinds of things that we need to be able to deal with in the future, and the challenges in transformation.

I can't leave this without talking about the word that I throw out the most often. I call it my favorite, new word, and it's persistence. And Duncan referred to it, and others in more indirect ways. But when we went to Afghanistan, in the Navy, we hadn't thought about the kind of operations that we faced there. And the Marine Corps, operating at distances that were unprecedented in our history from our support structure. For an F-18 and an F-14 pilot operating nine-hour missions—By the way, any of you ever sit in a fighter seat? Just sitting in a fighter for nine hours—Person ought to have a medal hung on them when they climb out of it. But, nine-hour missions, 8-, 900 miles inland—By the way, could not have even thought about doing this without the United States Air Force. And we have in the Navy those experiences that Duncan talked about, with the leaders on the ground. And very personal relationships developed between those young Special Ops troops that were on the ground with Afghanis, and began to understand the rotation in and out as flyers came and went. Because we were there 24 by 7, for months.

What I learned out of that is the importance of persistence in combat range. Because range translates into persistence. And I will tell you that I can't wait to get JSF. Because an F-18 went out there, and went to the tanker, on a nine-hour mission, went to the tanker four times, but to get to, and to execute that mission. When we get JSF, you'll be able to get all the way to the target area, that kind of distance and back, without ever going to the tanker. That kind of capability is capability that we need quickly.

Let me go to the final point. I talked about this, and so let me pass on this, and just talk about the issue of sovereignty. When I talk about why we have a Navy—When I got this job, I learned I was going to get opportunities to speak to groups about why we needed a Navy. And I'm not going to do the 30-minute version on you. But I have to have a 30-minute version, and sometimes a 15, and sometimes just a 10, and maybe even five. Hard to do in five. But I've found that sometimes I needed to be able to do it just in 15 seconds. I had a chance to share this with the President one day, and it goes like this: credible combat power far corners of the earth, sovereignty of the United States of America, anywhere, any time, options for the President without a permission slip.

The importance of sovereignty and the sovereignty issue was driven home to me once again. And what Operation Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom proved to me again is that my favorite new word, credible, needed to be added into this. Not just credible combat power, but credible and persistent combat power. And that the sovereignty issues, I believe, are going to persist in the future. That's what I believe. I may be wrong, but that's what I believe. And I believe that we must be, as part of this joint team, that at the top of our list of the things that we have to do, item number 5, I had on my answer to Jackie's question. We have to put together joint operational concepts around which we're going to build the capability for the 21st century.

And I believe the sovereignty issue is an important one. And I raise it because it is going to help me define what that transformational force structure is that I'm going to be required to build in the 21st century. I happen to believe, aligning with Mike's comments, that the ability to operate from the sea base—He has defined it the way he defines it, and I agree with him completely. I define it for my sailors a little bit differently, in this way: that our task is to exploit all the utility that we can from the freedom of maneuver that we have operating from our domain, the maritime domain. And I believe that that's going to be critical to us for the future.

Let me say one thing about people, and it's been addressed, but one more point. The issue of—And the reason we've been successful—My secretary talks about the importance of technology, and of course we all understand that. It is one of our asymmetric advantages. But our most importance asymmetric advantage is the genius of our people. And I'm absolutely convinced that the heart of what we have to do is that we have to win that battle for them. I'm convinced that we are laden with a Cold War human resource system. And I'm encouraged by the changes that have been enacted into law to help us on—And I'm not talking just about the military side of this. I'm also talking about the civilian side of this.

And the reason it's important, that I'm focusing on this, is that—and it goes to the point that Duncan made, that I believe that we have to address squarely—is that, how will the nation pay for the things that we dream about in creating the military capability of the future? I have found in my experience here that I'm paying between 800 and 900,000 salaries out of my TOA. I'm the one chief that is working real hard to make my Navy smaller in manpower. And this year, I have taken a step toward it. Because I'm convinced that, first of all, in terms of job content, and the capability, the genius that our people are bringing to the task, that we can get the job done with fewer people.

But I also, because I believe I'm spending 65% of my TOA paying salaries, I believe that if we don't also transform the way we do things, that we will not realize our dreams for the future about what kind of military that we've got to have. And in order for us to do that, I believe that we are going to have to have a set of tools and incentives that allow us to build the human resource structure and compete in the marketplace in the 21st century for these young people. Because they are terrific. Pete said it exactly right. I think I'm the oldest sailor in the Navy. And the most rewarding experience that I'm having, and have had in my life is that I get to rub elbows with these young kids. They are absolutely phenomenal. It has been said exactly right.

And so, there's a number of things for us to work on, but it starts with people. We've got to build the force structure, and transform the force structure in the 21st century that gives us the kind of combat capability we want. We've got to challenge the way our organizations are put together. We've got to look and examine the way we do things. And we have to have joint operational concepts that will extract all of the utility that the taxpayers of the United States of America have invested in our various structures, so that we can get the job done for America. Thank you very much.

Dr. Davis: Thank you very much, Admiral Clark.

Questions and Answers

Audience: James Kitfield [?] from National Journal magazine. I'd like the chiefs to address the issue of end strength in transformation. As we all know, this force was not sized recently. It was sized in the 1990s. And it was not sized for a global war on terrorism. Intuition would tell you that now that we're in Afghanistan, in Iraq, we need a bigger force, because these are new contingencies that we were not planning on. We're told that we probably don't need a bigger force, because this transformation has allowed us to do things with smaller forces, and so the joint staff is now reworking the war plans. If you're in Iraq, and you see how stressed the Army is, it seems to me that that's not a transformational mission. The stability operations are manpower intensive. Is this force big enough, basically, for the contingencies it's facing now? And is transformation really a way out of confronting the fact that this force is very, very stretched thin right now.

Dr. Davis:Who would like to begin? General Schoomaker?

General Schoomaker: If I understand the tenor of your question, you're speaking to the end strength issue, whether the force is large enough to do all of the kind of things that we're doing right now. And I can speak for the Army. I think Vern had it exactly right. I think that transformation is going to give us capabilities that is going to allow us to use our people smarter. But we have a more immediate problem right now. I'll call it kind of, in the Army here, the fundamental question. We have over a million people in the Army, active guard and reserve. We can't reach a million. And the big challenge that I've got, resource-wise, is paying for more people, exactly what Vern was talking about, and putting them into a bankrupt structure, and then end up having to pay for that with the top line pressures in the future that you heard from over here on the left, on my left.

So, one of the major things that we're doing right now is mining the structure that we have, and aligning it, and getting it balanced so that we can get access to the force structure we're paying for, and making sure it's ready and available to us. And we're doing pretty well. There is no commander in Iraq or Afghanistan that is asking for more people. That is, it's not a bumper sticker that this is true. And we constantly are in dialogue about what the requirements are over there, and there's nobody that's asking for a bigger force over there. They feel they have the force that's required. My problem is the persistence, and how do we generate this force over a long period of time? And quite frankly, we're working that very well. We may end up coming up having to ask for more force structure, or for increased end strength. But I am not prepared at this time to give up on the fact that we're making quite a bit of headway right now, in terms of the balance, and getting access to what we have. So, it's an open question. And it's a good question, but I think you're jumping to huge conclusions, that the answer is just supplying more soldiers to the battlefield. It's not the issue.

__: If I might, I addressed this briefly, but let me tell you the things that we're doing. We did a pilot, a pilot called sea swap, that would keep our ship on station, rotate our people. Buys more capability if we don't have to pay for the transit every time. We're going to end up leaving a ship over there two years, and see what we learn. That's going on now. We're on our third rotation.

I've got another pilot going on called optimum manning, figuring out how we can inject technology into the process, and reduce the size of the crew. We will apply those in the next submission, across the whole force, because it's been very successful. DDX, that we will build, instead of having a 500-person crew, will have a crew of between 100 and 125 people. Technology will allow us to do that. Those are changing the ways we do things some, but also the application of technology. But the biggest savings will come to us when we learn how to do things smarter, and we revolutionize our processes, and run the business end of this thing more effectively.

So, I'm going after less end strength, but I'm doing it with a very clear objective in the strategy. That's where I'm going to get the resources to recapitalize. Jackie said, "Is transformation modernization? Is it—" Well, you know, it might be modernization. But certainly, here's one of the things I've come to believe, that if you miss the opportunity, when you are modernizing, because you're getting rid of old stuff and getting new stuff, when you buy that new stuff, it's going to be set in the structure, for 30, to an aircraft carrier, for 50 years. And so it is vital that we think through the transformational process as we are going through the modernization process. And in my case, I am actively pursuing less end strength.

Dr. Davis:Next question? Right here. Oh, come on. This is your chance. There's one back there.

Audience: Ed Rowney [?], retired lieutenant general. I want to follow up on that last question. I did not get an adequate answer, and I want to pursue it a bit. This is mostly to General Schoomaker. Given that you're transforming, and having lighter and more mobile forces, and can possibly do this with a few fewer people, given that the reserves need to change, and more regular Army people need to have those missions of medics and engineers and whatnot for reconstruction problems, given that the National Guard has to reorient its mission from overseas to more home security, I wonder, and I want to ask the question, can you possibly do this with not only the possibility, but the probability, that you're going to have to not only stay in Iraq, but have more Iraqis, can you possibly do this with anything less than 50 to 100,000 more troops on the ground?

Certainly, we should save money. Certainly, I applaud all the things that Admiral Clark said. But, you know, we've spent 6, 7, 10% of our gross national product before. We're now spending 2.9%. We're in the fight of our lives for this war on terrorism. Certainly we can afford more than 2.9%. So, I'm going to just pursue this question, just to be a pain in the neck. Can you possibly do this without fewer than 50 to 100,000 Marines and Army troops on the ground.

General Schoomaker: General Rowney, you're talking about on the ground in Iraq?

Audience: No, I'm not talking about on the ground in Iraq. I'm not going to contest the question of the soldiers saying they don't need more forces. Sometimes I wonder about that. I thought, you know, that we should have had a little more forces going in, because you had to have some contingencies. And the force, the division couldn't get in. So, I happen to believe that we didn't have enough.

Let's wipe all that out. Let's agree with the commanders in the field that they don't need more. But I'm saying, we're going to have to stay there. And right now, the reserves are hurting. The Army is hurting, on moving back and forth. The National Guard has to have a homeland mission. I see a need to persist in Iraq. I see a need for planning against future Iraqis. I don't know whether it's going to be Syria, or Iran, or North Korea. There's certainly going to be more before we finish this war on terrorism. Therefore, I say, let's do all these other things, but let's not believe that we're going to be able to do this without more Marines and Army boots on the ground for the future.

Dr. Davis:Generals Hagee, Schoomaker, do you have a follow-up comment?

__: I would actually follow up from what Pete said. He made very good points there. But the way I look at the battlefield is, what we're doing right now, is this what we're going to be doing five or 10 years from now? In other words, have we arrived at a point where we're going to have forces, as General Schoomaker talked about, spread throughout the world, the Sinai, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan? If we are, then I think the answer might be that we do in fact need an end strength increase, just as General Schoomaker mentioned. But if we're not, if this is a spike, even though that spike might be a year or so, my professional opinion is that right now we do not need an end strength increase, if in fact it is a spike. And that is—I think this is what the Chief of Staff of the Army talked about—that is what we are looking at right now, and that's what we're trying to look at into the future, and make a good call on that.

Sir, as you know, you cannot stand up a division overnight. It takes a couple of years to stand up that division. We stand up that division, and we find out that, in fact, two, three, four years from now, we don't need that division, because it was in fact a spike. Have we, in fact, used the resources of this nation correctly?

__: I think I also owe you a little bit on this. You know, if we were unconstrained, and had no issue in that regard, obviously, we could build a force where there was no risk. Then we ask ourselves, can you recruit and retain the force that we're talking about, at that level? If you take a look at what we have right now, you know, we are operating—Right now, the reserve component's under a thing called partial mobilization. It's not PSRC. This is not the typical thing that we've operated under in the past. This is partial mobilization. This gives the President and the Secretary of Defense access to one million people in a reserve component for two years. One million people for two years. And we are not anywhere near that level of commitment.

Right now we have mobilized, counting the next mobilization, about 40% of the reserve component. So, I can tell you that it's not only possible and feasible to continue this level of operation with the force we have, but that if we can get access to a lot of the force right now, because of the way it's structured, and bring it into the thing, that we'll get much better use out of the force that we're paying for, which we are not getting right now, we haven't gotten for years, and we need to fix. It's time to quit thinking the old way on this. And if we can't do that, then we are going to have to go, and we're going to have to spend a premium on the most expensive element, and then worry about whether or not we can recruit and retain that large a force. So, I think I owe it to the people, the Army, and to my boss to do the very best we can to figure out what we can do with what we have before we get into this other question. Because the other question is not going to solve our problem for us right now.

Audience: ...[inaudible] the National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center. My question really is for General Schoomaker, although I expect it pertains to the other panel members as well. There is a perception that our reserve component is fairly heavily committed at this point. Because of the nature of the business, many of those men and women are also our firefighters, policemen, EMS techs, Hazmat folks. And so their deployments not only have a personal impact, but also a very real impact on local jurisdictions' preparedness. So my question is, in the transformation, are we looking at ways in which we can minimize the impacts and the commitment of our reserve component?

__: Well, again, that's probably a question that's more germane to the Army. We realize that. I mean, I was just with the 30th Brigade, and a high school principal was one of the sergeant majors that was there. There were about seven state troopers in one company that I was with. There are county sheriffs, and firefighters, just like you talk about. But, you know, we mobilize who signed up, and who we have in that structure. And the reality is, when we do mobilize them, they come out of the communities. And you're exactly right. These are exactly the same kinds of people. So, I guess the bigger question is, is the construct that we have for the United States Army, which was designed to fight and win the Cold War, and to mobilize and expand, still a viable construct?

Because when we call up units, we don't ask how many principals are here, and how many state troopers, and how many prison wardens, and all that. We call up soldiers, and that's what shows up. And I don't know another way around that right now. So if we're going to escape that issue, it's a whole new question, in my view. You're exactly right. That's exactly what occurs right now, and they serve very well, and they're very proud of what they're doing.

Audience: Jason Sherman [?] from Defense News. My question is for General McNabb and General Schoomaker. Admiral Clark and General Hagee outlined a broad vision for where they'd like to take their services, with this notion of a sea base. Would the two of you be willing to endorse their vision, particularly the joint aspect of it, and say what role you see for your respective services in this sea base?

Lt. General McNabb: Well, if you ask us if we endorse, we obviously do. I think it's a great concept, and they are going to be betting on the Air Force support as needed. And I think that there's no question that this is the kind of thing that is, they come forward with that vision. We will look at how we need to support that vision for the employment of their forces.

One of the things that I think, and it kind of gets to maybe this end strength issue that you all talked a little bit—One of the things that you can see is, if we have to surge, and spin the dollars for a surge force, it becomes cost prohibitive. But one of the things that we can do by working together with capability type packages, instead of talking about platforms, we talk about, what capabilities do we bring? What you can end up doing is often the combatant commander's packages of capabilities that will allow us to take care of each other's surges, and perhaps mitigate it. Where the Air Force might be surging and needs help, the naval and Marine forces come to fruition. Sometimes it would be a combination of air and Army forces coming together to say, "Hey, combatant commander, you need this."

So, I look at the vision of the Navy, the sea basing, when they brief that, to the programmers and the op steps (?), one of the things that became very clear is that our role in that is absolutely essential as well. And now the part is, how do we fold into that? That's the part that we were talking about the future of joint ops. I mean, it's great to see where they're going, and then we can say, "Hey, what else can we do for you? How could we make it even better?" And I think those relationships are really there. It's really going to make a big difference.

General Schoomaker: I think—In fact, Vern and I talked about this ...[inaudible] Not only do I subscribe to it now, and support it. I have for years. And I'll just go back. I was on the mission to go into Iran and rescue the hostages, 1980, one of the ground force commanders there. We used sea basing as part of that construct. When we went to Grenada, I was on that mission 1983. We used sea basing as part of that construct. When we did Haiti, we used sea basing. I had my jessodiff (?) headquarters on the aircraft carrier America, with 64 Army and Air Force and Marine helicopters abroad that ship as a central element of what we did. We had a maritime construct involved in Just Cause, when we did that.

You know, I am a joint officer, and have been since 1987, that happens to be in the Army. And this is not a big stretch, as far as I'm concerned. I think it's a hugely important domain, and if we're going to move an Army to war with campaign qualities, and even in an expeditionary sense, the way you're going to move it fastest is by sea, and augment it with airlift for the kinds of things that you need early in the deal. But I mean, this is a domain and a dimension that is absolutely essential.

And I'd just like to go a step further here. You know, a lot of people think that Desert Storm was a joint operation on the thing, going back to one of Vern's things here. You know what it really was? It was joint de-confliction. That's what Desert Storm was, joint de-confliction. The war we just fought in Iraq was joint interoperability. Where we need to go in the joint world is to joint interdependence, where we trade some of our capability for other people's ability to deliver. That's where we need to be going.

Audience: Rick Middle (?) with the "Dallas Morning News." General Schoomaker, I wasn't going to ask this question, but your enthusiasm for sea basing tempts me. What role might the V-22 play in the Army's future? Are you considering that aircraft, particularly since you participated in the mission that inspired the Marine Corps to develop it?

General Schoomaker: Well, the Army right now does not have any role with the V-22. As you know, I commanded US special operations command, and as you know, special operations command is committed to 50 CB-22s for its thing. The reality is, that kind of capability allows you to move at C-130 speeds and C-130 distances. It's huge, in terms of what it means for battlefield mobility and agility. And I think the Marine Corps, when it gets the V-22, is going to find itself able to operate, as we discussed this morning, you know, in the old sea echelon concept.

When I went to the amphibious warfare school for a year with the Marine Corps to get educated on amphibious warfare, we learned the sea echelon concept. Well, you can't survive that concept anymore. You've got to be further out over the horizon. You've got to be able to close that distance. You've got to go deeper, beyond the old force beachhead line, to do the kind of things you've got to do. B-22 will do that. I think we'll be informed in the Army by that technology. I think we'll see some opportunity there. And, you know, just go back to Afghanistan. You know, when SOFF was inserted in Afghanistan, those were 900 mile legs by helicopter. That is four air refuelings each direction, to put teams in. V-22 will do it with less refuelings, and at twice the speed on the deal.

And so I think it's a huge dimension, and I think it's something the Army is going to get informed about. And quite frankly, I think part of what we're looking at is transformation of Army aviation, and we're going to have to look at those kind of speeds and distances. That is not to say that we have active interest, or doing anything right now with the V-22, but I think we're going to be quite informed in terms of what that means. And if we are joint interoperable, and we've got a partner here that's got a hell of a lot of them, we just might end up finding ourselves riding them some time, you know? By the way, you know, he also owns 51% of the C-130 tankers.

Audience: ...[inaudible]

General Schoomaker: Well, there's nothing to pin down.

Audience: But it sounds like you're saying that you do see a V-22 in the Army's future.

General Schoomaker: I did not say that. We're talking about capability here. And I think we'll be informed by that kind of speed and range. And if it makes sense, we may go that in direction. But there is nobody right now that's thinking about buying a V-22 for the Army. I want to see what they do with it, and I want to see what SOFF does with it, and I want to see what's beyond it. There's a dimension beyond that. It's like V-22 capability with a CH-47 size box, or a C-130 size box on it, tilt rotor. You've seen that, the advanced tactical transport.

Dr. Davis:Unfortunately, I see many hands now rising to ask questions, but the chiefs have to get back to the building. And it remains for us to thank them for taking their precious time to be with us today.