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 Lieutenant General Robert W. Wagner, USA, Deputy Commander, U.S. Joint Forces Command

Introduction by Dr. Charles M. Perry, Vice President and Director of Studies, IFPA

Dr. Perry: Let me welcome you to our last panel of the day, on the topic “Coalition Operations and Alliance Transformation.” Now, as we have already had more than once in this conference, we continue to enjoy an embarrassment of riches this afternoon, with five, highly-prominent speakers from diverse regions, all deeply involved in shaping the defense policies of their respective countries, including their approaches to coalition planning and alliance adaptations for the 21st century.

Now, as you may have guess, I say five because we’re only slightly less rich than we had expected, since unfortunately, Secretary Richard Lawless had to be drawn off to another meeting that competed. He sends his apologies, and we also regret his not being here, but that’s said. We have, as I said, an ongoing embarrassment anyways, with the wonderful people we have here before you.

You have their individual bios in your program, so I won’t read them here. But just to be sure that everyone knows who’s who, I’ll just introduce the speakers in the order that I’ve asked them to speak, beginning with General Wagner, Deputy Commander of the U.S. Joint Forces Command. There’ll be Tony Brenton next, number two of the British Embassy here in Washington. Third will be Ovidiu Dranga, who’s the Deputy Secretary of State for Euro-Atlantic affairs -- NATO affairs -- the Romanian Ministry of National Defense. Next will be Nobukatsu Kanehara, who is now the Political Counselor at the Japanese Embassy here in D.C., but was most recently also Director of the Japan-United States Treaty Division in the Foreign Ministry, so deeply involved in these issues. And last, but far from least, Brigadier Mark Kelly from the Royal Australian Army, who also is now detailed to CentCom and will be speaking from that perspective today, as well as from his national perspective.

With that introduction, it’s horribly-- I’ve taken something of a modified regional approach, beginning first with our U.S. Command, that has responsibility for this entire issue of integrating U.S. forces, training them for transformation, but also integrating them with allies and coalition partners, and then moving to Europe, and in the Euro-Atlantic and NATO region, and then moving to Asia, with our most important ally in that region, Japan, and then finally, again, to Brigadier Kelly, who will speak a bit about his national experiences from the Australian point of view, but also speak about CENTCOM as the region which really begins to bring together all the new allies from Europe and from Asia, at least from an operational sense. And it may continue to do for some years more, as we’ve been speaking about this last day and a half.

Before turning the floor over to General Wagner, let me just make three very quick points about the basic theme and topic of this panel that we might all keep in mind as we listen to the presentations, and think about what we might want to ask each of the panelists.

I think the first point to make is just simply to underscore, as many have at this conference already, the importance of coalition and alliance planning to future military operations of the 21st century. For even though we’ve been bombarded in recent months by near-constant commentaries regarding the American impulse in unilateralism, and despite the fact that United States can, and sometimes must, take the lead and act alone, the simple truth of the matter is that, more often than not, we have acted as part of a coalition, rather than alone, both by choice and sometimes by necessity -- maybe at all times by necessity. Certainly depending on the circumstances, the coalition might be smaller or larger, and it may be more active in one phase of the operation as than in another, but it is a coalition nonetheless and that’s what we need to be planning for.

The second point follows from this first one, and it relates to how we think about and define coalition and coalition operations. And again, simply put, when we think about coalition operations, I think we need to think about much more than just the contribution of combat troops to combat operations, as important as that is. Keep in mind that the allies and the coalition partners can, and do, bring to an operation a broad range of assets and capabilities, material, and otherwise, and they can, and do, do just that across the rather wide spectrum of time, ranging from pre-conflict to the actual conflict, and as we now are seeing, at least some(?) are post-conflict phase.

So, apart from military forces, they can bring, among other things, crucial diplomatic support, important intelligence, access to key on-route facilities, and, not to be forgotten, vital insights into the nature of an adversary or a combat environment based on their own experience that we don’t have and we need to have access to. So, all of this will be as crucial in the future as it is today. We need to keep that. Bottom line is, we need to think about coalition and alliance planning in a larger context, and we have to think about wider range of options and a number of different time frames and keep those in mind, I think.

And the third and final point I’d leave you with is just to remember that coalitions of the willing are really just that, voluntary associations that we can’t just assume will be there, ready and available when wanted and needed. Indeed, as recent U.S. consultations, even with old friends, regarding potential contributions to the effort in Iraq confirms there’s often a good deal of diplomatic work and in-country political wrangling that needs to be done before a decision to join a coalition will be taken. And even after that decision is made, there’s generally a good deal of additional training and organizational work that needs to be done, before deployment can actually take place.

So, in other words, we need to be working very closely, very intimately, every day with good friends and allies well ahead of any contingency for which their help might be needed, or that help might never come, or at least not in a very timely and effective way. Fundamental point, again, is that transformation, with transformation -- and probably even because of it -- the alliance and coalition dimension of military operations will remain vital, and it will require an enormous amount of advance coordination and joint preparation to get it right.

So, with those brief introductory comments, let me pass it to the real experts, who are doing just that work.

General Wagner? You’re up first.

Lt. General Wagner: Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be here today to talk to this distinguished audience on behalf of my boss, Admiral Giambastiani, who is today in Brussels pursuing the themes and objectives of this conference with our allies and partners.

I’m going to go through a series of slides -- I won’t talk to the words on all the slides, but perhaps they’ll give you a point of interest that you want to come back to during the question and answers. Slide please.

These are the main points that I do want to talk about. The need for transformation in a changing environment. The fact that, to transform, you really do need dedicated organizations and you need dedicated resources. It is comprehensive and across many different spectrums. It has to be done in partnerships. And it is about culture and it’s about process. Slide please.

We like to start a lot of our presentations by saying, “What are the Department of Defense priorities?” These are very clearly stated and, to show those which are most important to our command, I have starred where we have primary equity, but, the same time, I think you’d see that those are also of interest to this audience, in terms of what they are and the areas that you’re addressing, successfully pursue the Global War on Terrorism, strengthen combined/Joint warfighting capabilities, transform the joint force, and optimize intelligence capabilities. Slide please.

This is our command’s mission. You see we start with the “future”, and then we say “the present”. And that is what we look to; we look to how we’ll do things in the future as we lead transformation. And we really do it through four different areas -- through joint concept development and experimentation, through joint requirements and advancing interoperability, through joint training, and through providing joint forces. That is the focus of our command, each and every day. Slide please.

What is transformation? It’s changing the nature of military competition and cooperation, through new combinations of concepts, capabilities, and organizations to help underpin peace and stability in the world. You have to have a vision about where you’re going, why are you changing, what are you changing to do, and it includes the full range from new high-tech weapons to changing ways we think, train, exercise, fight, and our partnerships in the complex world. Slide please.

Why transform? Well, clearly the environment is changing, and if you look at the top, left on the bar -- what are our forces optimized for? A major war. Is that the environment we see ourselves faced with? The threat environment is changing. And what are our capabilities? How do we match the capabilities of our equipment, the capabilities of our forces, the power of our nation to the changing environment? The elements are all changing together; it requires us to change. Slide please.

We look at how our military has changed. And if you start at the left of the chart, this is how we used to operate. Our effort was to de-conflict areas. We would give an area to the Army, to the Navy, to the Air Force, and to the Marines, and we would work in our separate areas. But we’ve had to change that. It was not efficient, it was not effective, and it’s not the way we’re most optimized. As you start to move to the right, we see ourselves somewhere between the third and fourth, between the integration of service capabilities and a coherently joint force leveraging collaborative capabilities, effects-based operations, network centric and integrated with interagency and multinational capabilities.

To the far right is where we need to fully be, where we’re integrated with not only the services, but with Special Operations Forces with the Interagency and with our multinational partners. That is the trend; that is where we are going. Our area of responsibility is the future; we don’t have a geographic area. It’s looking to the future to how we will operate in the future. Slide please.

These are what we call our “engines for change.” Through concept development and experimentation, what are the things that we are trying to create, what are our insights to the future, and how do we imbed those insights and capabilities into our training and then be fully interoperable with the other forces we will operate with. How will we provide a force that’s been enabled by those capabilities? Slide please.

What are some of the emerging thoughts and the views? We have transitioned from the Industrial to the Information age, from the large, heavy forces to a threat of a terrorist and non-nation states, from massed forces to massed effects, from linear to non-linear, and from long build-up times to rapidly deploying a force to achieve quick termination.

The Information Age empowers us with knowledge-enabled understanding, “systems” understanding and analysis, collaborative capabilities, reach-back, networked capabilities and precision engagement. Using the power of information to allow us to see the world differently. Slide please.

The battlefield no longer looks like it did on the left, where you had linear boundaries and you started from a line of departure and you moved forward on a battlefield. Look at the right-hand side of the chart, to a changed environment, where you’re not focused on a battlefield, but on a battle space. You are using all elements of power of the participating nation, throughout the width and depth of the battlespace, at the points and times of your choosing to achieve the effect you desire. It’s not massed forces; it’s massed effects. It’s not how many tanks you have, but what are the effects that you can combine in the battlespace, the intelligence that you’ve applied, the precision weapons, but it’s also information operations. It’s the power of the nations that you’re participating with. The networked operations -- all those things. That’s our vision of the future, and what we do through our concept development and experimentatio—through training —as we move from the left-hand side to the right-hand side of this chart. Slide please.

I know you’re interested in talking about the difference between Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom and what is the context of the difference? Well, OIF had fewer land and air forces, extensive integration of Special Operations forces, robust collaborative planning, greater maneuver distances, enabling commanders to take the fight to the precise place on the battlefield at the right time to have the major impact with fewer munitions and at a reduced cost. Slide please.

But then, let’s make sure we realize that the context of OIF was unique. Clearly we had Operation Northern Watch and Operation Southern Watch operating for twelve years, with one year of selected air interdiction. The Afghan experience was a perfect rehearsal for the forces that followed. Existing Land, Sea, Air, Special Operations, and headquarters enabled us to fight as a well trained joint force. Tremendous investment in the lift enabled us to deploy faster. We also saw increased bandwidth and mission rehearsal training events. The differences are important to understand. Lessons Learned must be viewed within this context. Combined, these events were extremely powerful and contributed to achieving over matching power—the ability to determine the time and place of attack, rapid achievement of air and sea supremacy, precision fires and speed and depth of maneuver. Slide please.

What were some of the capabilities that reached new levels of success, what were some that demonstrated considerable effectiveness, and what were some that fell short of expectations? Well, upfront, the joint aspect was incredible. The most joint fighting force we’ve ever been able to field, largely because of the in-place team that General Franks and his team had as they started their experience from Afghanistan, the long-standing nature of the forces, joint interagency and the joint interagency multinational partnerships, and the SOF conventional integration. Those were very strong.

Area for enhancement include urban operations, information operations and intelligence surveillance, reconnaissance. Short of expectations—battle damage assessment, and a different way of doing battle damage assessment. Given that we intend to conduct effects-based operations, we need to be able to do effects-based battle assessments. You don’t necessarily need to see a picture anymore to determine what happened. We have other ways to sense the effectiveness of our actions. Our deployment process needs to improve. The integration of our reserves has taken on a new level and we have to get them to the fight, and the reserves must be more ready. And then coalition information sharing must improve. Slide please.

Well, another very important change that happened within the last year was a standing up of the Allied Command Transformation. SACLANT, a command of the Cold War, is gone, and we replaced that with a command whose focus is to transform NATO. Admiral Giambastiani is dual-hated as supreme Allied Commander of Allied Command Transformation and JFCOM. The operational focus of NATO has moved entirely to Europe under General Jones. The transformation aspect of NATO -- is the responsibility of Allied Command Transformation, which resides in Norfolk, where our command is. Slide please.

What is the relationship between ACT and JFCOM? In large measure, they are parallel organizations and our goal is to share with our NATO partners the work they and we are doing, so that we can transform together. In January of this year, we had a conference of senior NATO leaders to talk about transformation. Sometimes we have difficulty within our own military talking transformation. Then you draw together that many nations to talk about transformation, and what does transformation mean? Collectively, we have made extraordinary progress since then. We see parallel processes in NATO and in our own US initiatives merging extraordinarily well—common understanding and dedicated organizations to help make the same changes within NATO that we have in our organizations. Slide please.

Some of the things we are trying to work on in the near term – and, if you’ve been following the media most recently, you see these topics being addressed in the conference in Europe right now: NATO Response Force (NRF) training, shared joint force training models, lessons learned and multinational concept development and experimentation. And I will tell you too—we are the beneficiaries. It’s not a one-way street here. We get a lot of good information and experience coming from our partners. Slide please.

These are the priorities -- transforming NATO’s military capabilities. Some of our own forces are too heavy and some of our structure needs modernization. The same is the case for our partners, with fixed heavy land forces and an inability to deploy quickly. Working to change the forces, the organization and their structure, and development of a rapid reaction force, changing the training, and looking at how to integrate new equipment and capabilities. Slide please.

Concept development and experimentation is a part of everything we do, we are running two paths in parallel. In one, concept development, we are looking for a new way to do something, while in the prototyping, we are trying to take an idea and make it a reality and improve existing capabilities something that we have and make it better. And why do we do that? We started with many systems that were designed to operate separately—separate Army ways, separate Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps ways. We have to integrate those. The integration is a necessary but inefficient way of moving to the future. Your best way for the future is to develop something that is designed to be joint from the beginning: designed to work for all the services together. So in nearly everything we do-- We have one pathway that we’re on where we’re trying to improve what we currently have and make concepts tangible. While on a different pathway, with different people approaching it-- If you had a clean sheet of paper, how would you come up with a better system to do what you’re trying to do? That’s the way we approach our training, the equipment that we have, and our concepts. Slide please.

We take that thought along the concept that’s shown on this chart. If you look at the dotted line for innovation, people might think that things just kind of go along on this dotted line and you advance from one thing to another, along the dotted line. But in fact, what happens is more along the solid line to the bottom. And so, the issue here is the concept of disruptive innovation. While one person is trying to ride on the success of the current product they have, somebody else is trying to create something else that’s better, to replace it. The guy who’s got the product that has been on the market resists change, because he’s wed to it. He sees success and thinks, “If I could just improve it a little bit more, I’ll be okay.” But the fact of the matter is, you’re wrong, because technology is there to replace it in a totally better way. And that’s why we keep our two pathways. We keep the one that’s trying to make some improvement right now in the short term, while we’re looking for “what is an all together better way to do it in the long term.” And if you look to this -- you can look back to a cassette, to a 8-track, to a videotape, to a CD, and a DVD—as these things have gone along, if you’re the guy who is invested in the cassette, you’re hoping that you can keep your market share, unless you’re smart and you’re trying to figure out how to put yourself out of business by “inventing” the next generation. That is the approach we take. Slide please.

We try to look at things we are trying to develop. As we’re working on a new concept, how long do we take it until we say, “Okay, this is good enough,” that we can now field it and put it in the hands of our forces, whether it’s equipment or a capability or technology, and let them start to work with it while we continue then to branch off onto another path. So, this is our process of integrating ideas. Slide please.

And you can just look at this chart, showing airplanes and ground transportation, strategic defense -- and in each of these, there’s an element of something that’s there now and something that will replace it. Leading change requires creative though, a studied vision of the future, and an evolving roadmap. Slide please.

Back to the main points that I wanted to talk about. It does take dedicated organizations to guide transformation and change. When you look to our combatant commanders, they are busy in the world of today. They don’t have a lot of time that they can focus to the future. But when you can dedicate a command like Joint Forces Command -- where you’ve allocated the resources, you’ve allocated the people, and you’ve given the mental and the physical energy to look to transformation, to look for change, and the opportunity to work with our partners, whether they’re partners from other nations or they’re within the Inter-Agency -- you can draw all the energy you need for the effort. You also need the leadership vision provided by the Administration and the enthusiasm and commitment of the Secretary of Defense. Change does not happen by accident. You have to design for, invest in and empower agents for change. The investment that our military, our government, has made in Joint Forces Command enables us to provide that capability for our military.

Hopefully those comments will give you something you’d like to ask me during the questions and answers. Thank you very much.

Dr. Perry: Thank you very much, General Wagner.

Questions and Answers

Dr.Perry: We have some time for questions now, and I’m sure we’ve got some questions out there to these presentations, all very interesting and compelling. Right here, first question?

Audience: Peter Sharpen, Mider [?] Corporation. General Wagner, one of your slides indicated that, in the retrospective on Operation Iraqi Freedom, one of the areas where we need to do better is coalition information sharing. Could you discuss a little bit the directions in which you think we might move to do that better?

General Wagner: Well, certainly, it is a frustration, not only to the United States forces, but also to our allies and partners who we attempt to operate with. In the past eleven months, I’ve had the opportunity to host twenty-two MoDs -- Ministers of Defense, or Chiefs of Defense -- from other nations, and, endurably, we get to that topic. In fact, in talking to Australia, their comment was, “We want to be by your side when the war fights start, but we can’t be there unless we’re part of a planning upfront -- enabled to see the planning, see the information, and share in the development of it.” That is just one country, who would say the same thing. And in fact, many of our operating forces have had to figure out ways on their own, where they can figure out how to share the information because our systems don’t allow us to do that.

Really, we do think that there are technologies solutions to this. A large part of our information-- Of course, we do a lot of our work and a lot of our planning on secure nets -- a secure net which has more information on it than you want to share. And so, the question is how do you allow partial access. And there are technologies now that will enable us to do this. Plus, as you know, perhaps, that DEP STEP DEF(?) is just recently authorized, and written provided guidance set(?) enables us to do more information sharing. So, it’s a question of policy, and it’s a question of technology.

This certainly isn’t a question of a lack of desire on the part of either(?) the United States forces or our allies, who we’re working with to share the information. But it is a question of setting the rules, and the business rules, that allow us to share that information. And I think we are making progress, and I think we have reason to be optimistic. This is an issue that is-- the importance of which we share it(?) at all levels. And we do have some technologies that we’re working on, that allow us to have somebody have access to the computer and limit the access to where they can go within the information that’s available. So, I think there’s reason to be optimistic, and I think that the DEP STEP DEF(?) has made a first, good step along that line, and I think we’ve got some technologies solutions.

Dr. Perry: There are two questions, back there on that table.

Audience: Wendy Jaffe, General Accounting Office. With the U.S. Army investing in future combat system and network-centric operations, provide through network-centric operations, how is this going to affect U.K. forces and Australian forces, in terms of inoperability?

Dr. Perry: ...[inaudible] who the question is directed to?

Would you care to address it from your standpoint?

Mr. Brenton: The issue goes slightly wider than network-centric operations. The U.S. is spending-- It’s a fascinating fact about U.S. military spending. The U.S. are now spending more on Defence R&D than any other country spending on its entire defense budget. And this is obviously a challenge for those countries that expect to be working closely with the United States in future campaigns, to ensure that we can. And the trick has to be, as these systems evolve, to be involved ourselves, to evolve parallel systems or to have a share in the systems, and to ensure that our doctrines and practices, and equipment, develop in parallel with those in the United States. I quoted the example of joint strike fighter -- it’s exactly an application, that sort of approach.

Dr. Perry: Anyone else like to add to that, or--?

We had another question at that same table -- one more?

Audience: Ray Stuchohl, a student at Catholic University. In the last three year, there have been several occasions when the U.S. worked hard to involve ally partners throughout the world in operations or goals. One that I can think of is missile defense, then, of course, operations Enduring Freedom and Iraq. General Wagner just mentioned information operations as a possible lesson learned. Can you tell us some other lessons learned for the future, that we might want to look into?

General Wagner: Other areas to look into -- and I’m sorry, into which area? Can you--

Dr. Perry: Other lessons learned from the combined operations of the--

General Wagner: Would combine?

Mr. Stuchohl,: ...[inaudible] Sorry. More in getting the allies on board to support us, particularly some of the errors that might have been made with First Missile Defense, and then with convincing other countries to work with us on Iraq.

General Wagner: I think that the first thing I would say, for OIF, would be the phenomenal amount of cooperation and support that was provided by other nations in many different ways. There was information sharing; there was logistical support. There was basing. There were nations who were riding the one aircraft that they had or the one courier(?) that they had. There was a tremendous amount of support that did come from other nations, so the first thing to do would be to acknowledge the tremendous amount of cooperation and support that we did get from many other nations, not least of which was seen at CenCom in the planning and the support there.

I think there’s also a lot of operational sharing of how to do things, how to operate in an urban area. There are other forces that have been operating with terrorist forces for a long time. Their forces have been operating in the build-up areas against an organized crime. So, there’s all sorts of information that’s been shared, and tactics and procedures that have allowed us to operate more effectively and to, in fact, save the lives of the soldiers of all countries, as they are operating on the battlefields. So, I think that there are many, many successes, far more so than become a current from what we would normally read in the newspapers. A very strong partnership has been mentioned by General Kelly, not just in CentCom, but on the battlefield, and the support from the nations that we have operated from.

Now, specific other aspects besides the information sharing -- Clearly, we were able to engage targets with our aircraft. With the information that we share, we can use precision munitions together. There are many aspects of the battle fight that have been fought, and are very much of a coalition aspect, with absolute sharing of the same training techniques.

And one of the aspects that we’re trying to do is through our joint national training capability, that soleverage(?) the same experience that we found in Iraq, in our training. If you were to take the map of the world and you put on it, Iraq, where do forces come from to fight? They never got together at a given stage, and based and planned. They came from all around the world, and they came to fight on the battlefield. That’s where they first joined for the operational forces. They launched from bases all around the world, and they came to fight. That’s the way we fight. We don’t get together -- all gather together at Fort Benning and have a big conference to decide how we’re going to fight. We come from all the bases around the world, whether the naval, ground, or air assets(?), and we join on the battlefield to fight. And that’s what we’re trying to replicate with a global-national training capability, where we replicate that on our training fields, around the world.

So, we feel that we’ve learned a lot and are willing(?) to work together. We have done extraordinarily good job of doing that, but we want to build--
Audience: -- and how -- what, perhaps -- is going on between your forces and U.S. forces or other coalition forces, or might go on, that would improve the chances for coalition combined operations?

Brigadier Kelly: We shouldn’t underestimate the benefits of the ongoing exchange programs that many of us share, in a bilateral sense and also multilateral sense, and the joint combined exercises that our forces participate in, at a variety of time.

If I look back at our experience before going into East Timor in September of 1999, we had done a series of activities with U.S. forces from the Pacific -- by naval, marine, and air force—as well as from USARPAC in Hawaii. And in a series of command post exercises and other planning activities that were totally unrelated to the events of September 1999, we actually then had similar personalities come and join our team in that combined force headquarters for the Internet operations. So, the fact that we understood, knew these people, we shared common procedures—these are things that allow you to meet in the dark night before going into an operation and actually work through things in a very balanced way.

But that means that we need that time to continue that sort of remediation training, when we are fully committed to ongoing operations, which global war on terrorism actually presents at the moment. So if we’re dealing with nations that have small defense forces, they need time to remediate themselves; they can’t sustain a level of operation. So, we have to be able to pace ourselves, as I said, and, indeed, Admiral Olson mentioned it yesterday. We’re involved in a marathon, not a sprint. So, our planning has to actually be able to articulate to our coalition partners potentially how long this effort is required, and they may be able to identify certain events in the timeline where they can contribute another niche capability which will actually relieve the pressure from another senior partner.

So, all of that is within the same sphere of the planning required, but also, the relationships that develop during those combined exercises that we’re fortunate to participate in, as well as the exchange programs and the exchange of officers at our respective command and staff colleges.

Dr. Perry: Anyone else? Question, here, in the front.

Audience: Jason Sherman, from Defense News. My question is directed to Kanahara-san. Near the end of your talk, you outlined a seven point initiative that you said reflected your personal views for a set of modernization and policy initiatives that the Japanese self-defense forces might do well to adopt. I’m wondering if you might be able to offer us any insights into the ongoing National Defense Program Outline, the NDPO, that the Japan Defense Agency is undertaking, that is expected to inform new thinking and new decisions in terms of how the Japan military is organized and any new modernization initiatives they may undertake.

Mr. Kinehara: To be clear for everybody here, the Defense Program, ours, is based upon five years programs ...[inaudible] continuous. We are now in the fourth year of that chairman and we have to make a new one next 2005. For several mid five years program, we set big policy guideline that is defense outline, and that will be changed for we are facing new threats and new missions. And debate is going on, in December, I think a decision could be made, but I don’t know, really. This is really hot issue, and my government is working on this very hard. I’m not allowed to discuss anything here; I’m sorry. [laughter]

Audience: ...[inaudible] to discuss enhanced cooperation with the U.S. missile defense capability and a small ...[inaudible] strategic air ...[inaudible]. Are any of those things being discussed and debated? Can you tell us some of the things that are being debated?

Mr. Kinehara: I can give you some basic line of thinking. As I said, our forces are based upon the exclusively homeland defense posture, and this defense posture will not change, because we are still in alliance with the United States. U.S. is a spear, and Japan is a shield. That is our basic concept of our defense.

But, because of that, we have no long legs(?), cargo planes for example. When we started our peacekeeping operation in 1993, we sent our air forces to Rwanda, in Kenya, to have strategic transportation there. But we had only C-130s -- still have C-130s only -- and our Chief of Air Staff went to Rwanda, made six stopovers. And we think it’s too obsolete; we have to have new cargo planes to have new missions. That does not mean that we’re going to have huge, power-position capabilities like U.S. It’s not our intention. But we have more international missions that were not conceived in 1960s, 1970s, and to cope with these new missions, we have to have suitable instruments to deliver these missions.

Our threats too—the ballistic missiles were luxurious weapons for ships of powers. But, these days, they’re proliferating and the concept of deterrence has changing. It’s no longer the way to defend itself by pointing guns and-- but through(?) here. But we see now many people having guns; why not putting bulletproof here? So the concept is changing. We have to prepare new threats and new defense concepts. But, what would be the final decision of the governments is top secret; sorry, can’t tell you.

Dr. Perry: We’ll be waiting for December.

Question, here ...[inaudible]

Audience: Ed Bruner, from the Congressional Research Service -- direct a question to General Kelly. I was very much unaware of your coalition planning group, but I applaud the apparent promise that this approach would hold, and wonder if you might share with us a coalition perspective that the group perhaps developed and presented to the commander?

Brigadier Kelly: Just a ...[inaudible]

Mr. Bruner: A coalition-- You said, one of your missions was to incorporate the coalition perspective under the overall planning. I’m just curious if you could offer us a type of coalition perspective that might have come out of that process.

Brigadier Kelly: One of the products that we produced on behalf of command of Central Command is a quarterly area of responsibility-wide estimate, which is a bit of a rugged check. It was formerly done by an element within the J-3 Operations Directorate of the headquarters. It’s now solely done by the Combined Planning Group. So, it’s a refreshing perspective for the commander. It looks at his full area of responsibility, not just specific sub-theaters that are active at present, and it provides him with a view drawn from a variety of sources -- but quite often, open sources -- and gives him just a view as to where we are. It may inform or influence other planning efforts, but it’s presented to his senior staff and himself; it’s an internal document. And he’s certainly been challenged by the view, which is now done by a twenty plus team of coalition officers versus a uniquely U.S.-only product, as it had been done prior to December, last year.

So, that’s one example. The other is within some of the courses of action being developed within the review of the campaign plan. Again, we are drawing on a wide variety of experience, a wide variety of national, cultural, religious, and regional perspectives, and so, different militaries have different ways of dealing with the problem. And so, some of the solutions will be different from a U.S.-only planner’s perspective to the way to conduct the operation. And that’s what this group is being acknowledged as providing other ways of doing business.

Dr. Perry: Question, here.

Audience: Colonel Jim Holzerith. I’m the Canadian Military Attaché here in the Canadian Embassy. My question actually goes back to Admiral Cebrowski’s notions this morning, that he introduced on interdependence versus interoperability. And, I think he introduced to them the joint context, but I would extend it to the multination(?) and coalition arena as well. And I guess, it really does tie back into the notion of design -- joint -- or design with interoperability in mind, in the first set. My question really is, is to what degree are we able to do that? Perhaps beyond concept development and experimentation, collaborative planning upfront, to truly get to an interdependent or at least a stage of coalitions where you can burden-share and plan on specific capabilities or leverage specific capabilities within a coalition.

Dr. Perry: General Wagner, do you want to--

General Wagner: ...[inaudible] from the standpoint of ally command transformation, NATO, and the operations that are going on there, and say that-- I think that that is exactly what you will see happen. That is exactly what should happen. We’ve heard Japan talk about the fact that they don’t have the long legs, but they need the long legs. They have the willingness to participate, but they don’t necessarily need to buy everything they need to do that. We need to share, in doing that. And so, that is an interdependence, just as within our own military. The Army does not need to buy their own transports. We are dependent upon the Air Force for the transport.

That same sort of a concept is what you will see come out of the work that’s being done with ally command transformation and NATO, as they look to the capabilities that they need to collectively and figure out who’s going to buy which piece of the part that is required for the whole. And so, I think you’re 100% right in your direction as to where things will go -- is that they will go to a direction of interdependence, not just interoperable. And they should be; it’s an efficiency, and it’s an effectiveness. It’s a partnership and it’s a trust. And I think that we are there to the point where we can do that, and will do that.

Dr. Perry: Tom, perhaps time for one more question? Another one, anyone?

Okay, I think that will do it for this afternoon, and I want to thank all the panelists for wonderful contributions. And, I would ask that-- [applause]

I would ask everybody, please, to just stay where you are for a few minutes, so Dr. Pfaltzgraff and Admiral Green can come up and make a few closing remarks.