Indopacific region at the heritage foundation. His talk focused on the future direction of the marines and the technology in their future missions. This is an hour and 20 minutes. [ applause ] were sitting next to General Mills and were infantry guys so were not pal, but you look at the guy who introduced me and i dont know down in pensacola, they decide what aircraft theyll fly, but that guy will not fit into the cockpit and he must fly big helicopters. General mills is one of my mentors for life so its sort of intimidating to be up here in front of him. I if i could follow your foot steps and do half as good as you d i would be really happy, sir. Good to be here this morning. Dr. Holmes, thank you for allowing me to be here this morning, as well. It is a privilege just to be asked. In that kind introduction, thank you for also keeping it short, sir. Bullet. I have to think of how you got that call assignment, bullet and theres probably a story there. Dakota, very quickly, has been more help to me over the years than you all will ever understand, but hes a lot like me in that hes a critical thinker and thats sort of how i was trained and every assumption and every direction and every path that you go down questioning that and im just thanking you for continuing to do that. Please dont let up on it at all. I thought this morning i would offer two parts to this. First, ill give you some i think i owe you some perspectives on the Planning Guidance that we published this sum e and i would just tell you, i had the benefit of several months of knowing where i was going and when you have several months you can sit down and think and you can write. I contrast that with my my battle buddy, admiral gil who had two weeks. Thats not much time to think your way through, so i was hugely beneficial of several months of time to think. The second part, though, is to listen and to learn, and i mean that, i say that genuinely. Your thoughts, your questions, your criticisms and your poking at our ideas is a very healthy thing and i welcome that in advance, so im thanking you in advance. I think, let me start off talking about where i see us. I think the fact that were in an era of great power competition, perhaps some might debate that for some period of time. I dont think thats open for discussion any longer. Our National Defense strategy which you all are very familiar with this acknowledges that and demands, in my term, demands in no Uncertain Terms that the Services Change to meet the challenges of the new world. The guidance, i believe, very clear. I can tell you that the marine corps fully embraces the components of the National Defense strategy. I think there absolutely will be jermaine Going Forward and valid and everything that we do has to be aligned with that. The world obviously is changing pretty rapidly, and id like to thank those who had a hand over the summer in the spring . Summertime shaping and the deep thinking thats required before you publish the sort of document that we had a chance to do. Your thoughts and your criticisms improved that and in places like this are petrie dishes for that and i think theyre very valuable and im asking you to keep challenging us. I think the strategic realities will cause us to think differently, and im going to go into that. I believe that the realities of the world kwauz us to throw out old assumptions and start fresh. We cannot assume that todayy equipment and the way we organize how we train and select leaders and all of our warfighting concept, we cannot assume that they would remain relevant in the future. In fact, my assumption, my primm premisis that theyre not. This requires us unshackling ourselves to what war looks like and reimagining how marines will train and how we will operate and how we will fight and it requires very honest assessments of our strengths and our weaknesses based on my observations and on other folks that i listen to keenly including a bunch in the room like sync and others that ive known for years i can tell you that our current force, your current marine corps to include a large part of the program nearterm marine corps is not optimized for great competition. It is not optimized to support a naval campaign. It is not optimized to support the fleet through missions like sea denial and it is not optimized to deter a threat. So if thats the diagnosis and im asking you to ride along with me you can have your own opinion and for the rest of my session thats where i am and well go forward from there. For anyone who had a chance to read the Planning Guidance that i published this summer, youll know, and you will recognize that forced design is my top priority i think that is my principle vehicle for redesigning, realigning the marine corps as part of a Naval Expeditionary force which is part of a joint force and all of the requirements that are laid out in the National Defense strategy. So over the summer and for the last 30, 45 days weve been developing a vision for where the marine corps will need to go into the future. Heres where this is a little bit different than previous attempts not attempts, but previous efforts to do this. The test for us this summer was truly due design. Look beyond the fiveyear defense plan and look beyond the manpower and management cycle ten years into the future and imagine what force we will need based on some assumptions about our pacing threat and then map that force backwards to not forwards, and there is good reasons for doing that. I dont think this is Ground Breaking necessarily but clearly it is clearly threatbased force design. To help illustrate the rationale, the logic behind this, about three or four years ago while i was in hawaii, during a congressional visit by some members that were traveling to asia, i sketched over the top of them of a map three time frames that i thought were relevant. I was talking about both poor posture and the composition of the force. I said arguably from about 1950, 1951 until 1989, 1990 we had a very clear picture of who are peer threat was, it was a bipolar world in both conventional and Strategic Deterrence and play, but everybody knew who the opponent was. But all that changed in 1990, but 1990 until 2012 to 2015, 2016 we shifted deliberately into the capability mode. We did not have a peer threat, we had advantages and resourcing. We went after capabilities, because we had no peer adversary, no peer threat. Along comes peer threats again and to some in this room, it is not back to the future, but it is in a way and approach that some are familiar with with the 1970s and 1980s. That is where we are right now. We have a threat perhaps for conventional deterrents and Strategic Nuclear deterrents are in play. Both are moving and advancing. And in terms of a pacing threat, which is something, if you want to talk about later, i think is a fascinating topic, both are trying to gain an edge over each other looking for vulnerability on the other side, sort of like a slinky. One aspect, if you have thoughts i would very much appreciate it is the sense if you set the pace, whether you are runner or a nation, you are breaking trail, you are working harder, and you spend more money. So your choices are, if both are moving and in a peertopeer scenario, do you do you want to set the pace . If so, can you afford to do so, because you will set the pace the whole time, and if you dont, youre in a rehab mode. And someone else is setting the pace. In my opinion, in the last several years, to some degree we we have let an adversary set the, pace. I think all that requires tough choices. I confident that we will get to am a new design by making large changes, not small ones. I do not believe the annual pace of force development, that grind will not achieve what we have to do. There will be an ever widening gap if we have to do so. We have to do it for design and change our posture around the world. In other words, i am not content and we should not be content to merely try to keep up. We should set the pace. There are some things that we can introduce today in the near term, in terms of immediate effects, and there are others that will take some years that will happen. And again, the timeline i am choosing is 10 years, 2030. In 10 years, we will no doubt make these adjustments. It will not be an overnight process. We are trying to visualize the force that we will need in 2030 and plan backwards. We will have to be flexible, because the adversaries making decisions, and the world changes in those 10 years. It to adjust along the way. But a threat based design allows you to do that. It enables you to do that because the competition is not standing still. The next budget request for fy21 which we are in the latter stages of finalizing, was submitted to osd this summer, you will probably see some changes along the lines of what i refer to today, but because where we are in the budget cycle, i think itll be the following year where youll see the bulk of them. Today, i know it would be great, and i would anticipate itd be great if i can be very specific for force design. I would love to take the chance this morning to do that. I cannot. And here is the reason why. We have now 80 , 85 picture of what the marine corps will need in a decade. But this last step is so important, because now is when we run that force against a peer threat ten years out over and over and over again i will ask to develop the analytical base that is the foundation, in my opinion, we need to justify that force. So i believe in experimentation. In my opinion, we need to i believe in the analytics as a foundation. So we are at that stage now where were testing the force where we think we will need and and that will conclude in a, mother to. And perhaps in the future, it would be a great discussion to have. We are in the latter stage right now. Let me talk about the future in broader terms, three parts are relevant. First is an integrated naval force. To be competitive, i believe, in the Indo Pacific Region and in the, in the mediterranean, and elsewhere around the world requires an integrated naval force. In other words, this is not a personalitybased relationship. I think both the navy and marine corps drive us towards an overlap in our unique roles and omissions. We have not focused on that aspect for 20 years. We have to get creative, and when i say creative, i mean what can the marine corps do, what can marines do to help the commander fight his fleet . How does that contribute towards a joint fight . That could mean marines ashore or afloat with longerrange antiship missiles, and you can visualize them as an extension of the fleets magazine basically. In other words, augumenting air and shipbased fires, you want to add options for fleet commander to get after the geometry challenges that we will have. It also means strapping weapon systems onto decks of ships. You saw that happen a month, six weeks ago in the middle east passing through where counter, you counter a system that we developed strapped on the deck of the ship. Very successful. And we will need to do a lot more of that. Its entirely possible that you can see marines doing rearming and refueling for the joint force for the naval force. That is certainly not a comprehensive list but different roles and different mission sets for the marine corps Going Forward. Second for me is the concept of a stand in force. I think the question the advancements in technology and resourcing that china has put in to the Missile Systems tells you every where that we will operate and in a mere time environment you should plan on it being, contested. So theres no way that we will travel around in complete control of all those domains, and we will need to persist and we need the force to remain inside the surveillance range, inside the weapons range of an adversary. And inside the envelope, heres why, in my opinion, being inside if youre a stand in force allows you to maintain awareness, which is absolutely critical for the naval and the joint force. Its very difficult to sense from the outside in. It is much more clear picture to sense from the inside, so collection and understanding for the inside is very important. And you can also in my opinion deter much more effectively from the inside than from the outside. Longrange deterrence loses its effect. There is a physical geographical aspect to deterrence. And lastly, i would offer to you in my experience in nato and, indopacom, deterring is one half and reassuring your allies and partners being the other half. Being on the inside as a standin force does achieve the reassurance to allies and partners that is so critical. It is a huge advantage the United States has. The third part i think we will, have to fight in a undistributed manner. I am absolutely distributed maritime advancements as a naval concept. We must distribute the force, for two reasons. One is, in a peertopeer fight what you do not want to do is, drive into the heart of weapon systems, you want to distribute your force, so you pose a dilemma in multiple aspects, in multiple domains. The byproduct is you become more survivable and more difficult to detect. I think you will see naval formations much more distributed, and i think thats right down in the navy and marine corps in terms of empowering to make decisions on their own. I think it drives into the heart of Expeditionary Advanced spaces, which we are very good at but have not done operationally in a while. But those Expeditionary Advanced spaces give you the agility and the sustainability we will need. As quoted earlier, i am absolutely a believer in the plentiful over the exquisite and expensive. We have spent a lot of money on highend ships and planes and assistance for the last 20 years. Now, once again, mass will have an equality all on its own. We have to go after the plentiful and we have to go after families of systems and families of ships, and just one caveat to that, when i say that, i mean lowcost not cheap. We have to operable systems and dependable systems and they have to be lethal. But they also have to be affordable, where we can have them in the numbers that we need. An adjunct to that, my learning over time, we need to drive Unmanned Systems from the top down. The system is built to resist that. It is built from a Program Perspective to defend manned programs and manned platforms. We have to mandate very aggressive pace and fueling Unmanned Systems. Altogether, i think that game plan is all about the opposing cost is all about the ability to impose cost and bring in a peer threat to the point where the decision is not today. That is the game plan. Some of the characteristics, there are many more but i think, i will probably stop there, because really i mentioned the most important aspect of this morning is listening to your questions and having a dialogue back and forth. I will pause there, mr. Wood, i think if thats ok with you. applause thank you so much. Yes, sir. Ive got kind of four baskets of questions. Im a fan of the document. Ive underlined and highlighted too many things to go into the details in such a short period of time. But i stepped back and looked at kind of the baskets or the buckets that i think a lot of this subcomponents are derivative of. We try to have a conversation, not some kind of a wooden dialogue here, Something Like that, and as mentioned, you all came here to participate in some way. Were going to try to maximize q a, so im going to keep this brief. Just to kind of expand on some of the points you made, skepticism runs rampant in d. C. Right . You know and some of our colleagues here know that the battlefield does not prize mediocrity or complacency, so there are realworld consequences to kind of taking a halfhearted or halfstep approach. Oftentimes what weve seen is services make these giant, grandiose plans, promise in the world at nickel prices, were going to deliver it in 18 months, and it never works so in your Planning Guidance, you made some very bold statements. Marine corps has been talking about operations for three decades. Some of the first documents came out in 1992, i think. How does this effort presumably differ from all the other stuff that we have heard for years and years . Is it that make sense . I think the way you characterize it is accurate. Some of those ideas and you and i know the thinkers in the early 1990s, i think therpt right idea. They were not the wrong idea. But to take an idea into execution, some things have to fall in place, and they were not in place. My my sense is they are right, right now. There was no peer existential threat in the 1990s time frame. There was no pressing need to change. It was an idea that wasnt driven by anything to get it there. I think the second part is there was no pacing threat, there was no peer adversary, so we are just developing capability. It was an idea time frame. Now theres clearly a sense of urgency. If we do not make a change right now, then the balance is not going to work in our favor. So half steps when you have an adversary thats going full zpeps youre going half, that math is not to work out in the long run. It does leave the openended question of resourcing, and that i cant answer. I know what would be required to make it happen. That means were going to have to kill, divest of some legacy, some systems right now that were very comfortable with and go into other things. And the big gambit is, will Congress Resource us to do that . That is at the heart of a lot of these rhetoric reality gaps, is what i talk about. Great rhetoric, we say the right things across d. O. D. And services and all that, but you dont see that manifested in the programs. Counterparts in the army went through very detailed processes saying some of the legacy stuff doesnt isnt relevant anymore. We want to cancel that, reprogram funds, try to get the army going in the direction it needs to be, and just recently congress has come back and said we werent consulted, were putting the kibosh on all this stuff, these great ideas for fy2020, we need to go back and revisit. The system seems to have these antibodies built into it, and you almost have to be a bulldozer, this relentless kind of thing, to drive that. Clearly its in the Planning Guidance, but your sense of receptivity on the hill and even within marine corps . I would say a bulldozer approach will not work. First of all, you have to have the war fighting concepts behind it or else it wont fly. Second part of it, you have to have the analytics to support it. If youre going to sit down with staffers and ask them to cancel this, but put your money over here, they want to see how that fits into a warfighting construct. Even though theyre not military. If you cant paint that picture for them clearly, then a bulldozer is not going to help. Even after that, even after walking in through this is how the naval force will fight, which we spent a lot of time over the past 12 months doing, after that, you still have to have the analytics to back it up or else its just intuitively i think this will work, and that dog wont hunt either. It has to be conveyed in plain speak, right . Most of the stuff that comes into d. C. Is incomprehensible. Its just in a foreign language. Moving charts and slides that are just kind of awash in arrows and everything else. I like the plainspokenness, the frankness of this particular document, and i presume the video that was released yesterday, etc. Is trying to make this in common language. Yeah, because i think the people we have to convince in congress, you have to talk in plain language. No acronyms, no complication, straight forward. The second bucket i labeled for myself is dependencies. The marine corps can have great ideas about distributed whatever, put in small terms, any missiles or something, but how you get there, how you sustain and support that, it is so. The marine corps is so critically dependent on the navy and its programs, and youve got these big bogeys out there, the fourclass carrier, just all the agencies in town from c. B. O. And crs others have talked about the skeptical view of ship building programs, the ability to make substantive change, ship design connectors, whatever the heck those are, just all the stuff so. How do you deal with these dependencies where youre not the master of your own future . Thats exactly the lens that i looked through for 35 years. How much do we need the navy and how much do they need us . The difference is now. Arguably, i can turn that and around say we did not actually need each other for the last 20 years. We didnt actually need each for her for the past 20 years. We were in the middle east doing one thing, the navy was doing another thing, and we didnt need. Now im looking at it through a different lens. What is what does the nation need from its military . What does the joint force need from the naval force . Thats where i think there is a convergence of our roles and missions to achieve what we have to do against a peer adversary. Long way of saying, the interdependencies between the navy and marine corps, im not even thinking about anymore. It is what does the joint force need from the naval force, and how do we produce that . This is not about me and the admiral. This is about our naval capability. The joint imperative had lots of great thirnings its also been an incumberance in some ways. I was a huge fan of battle when it first came out, and then the joint monster grabbed onto it, and it was going to be everything to everyone and every set of circumstance and became so watered down that its essentially irrelevant. Thats my view. So we see this shift from other regions to the indopacific. We have this famous pacific pivot some years ago, but then everybody wants to jump on that train, so all the services have to be relevant. They all have to be equal players. So this imperative presumably that everything has to be joint and in equal measure, to me it doesnt seem to make sense. If european theater is essentially landair, youve got the indopacific theater, which based on geography, is more air and sea sort of things, so you have different weights of the size of the force. Are you getting good feedback from your fellow Service Chiefs and the joint community . Yes, i think there absolutely was, not a struggle for, thats probably the wrong way to characterize it, but the theme of is it what were doing relevant was part of the conversation. Because if youre not relevant, then youre not going to get resoursed. Thats where it ends up, right . Every year, every exercise, every operation, everybody wants to play to be relevant. Because if youre not relevant, youre not going to get resourced. I see much less of that now, not because everybody has to play equally, but because no service has all the capabilities needed to match up against a peer threat. In other words, you need all elements of the joint force not in equal measure, no. I agree with your view, and the joint force as its applied in the pacific and the indopaycom area would look very different from the joint force in another theater. Theres been a change in kind of capacity, right . The force today is 2 3, sometimes less than what it was at the end of the cold war. Again, just citing an army number, 780,000 soldiers in 1989. It went from 66 down to 32. Ship count is below 300. It seems theres plenty of work for everyone to do, have everyone thinking they have to be involved in equal measure and every theater. But maybe part of the argument. The third bucket was this, i guess its winners and losers. I mean, its a shifting of priorities and weighting of efforts. You clearly articulate were focusing on the indopacific. If the marine corps focus is there, what is latin america, europe, other parts of the world . Operations in and around africa, etc. Looking at the type of equipment, various communities, you know, when you shift a weight, then youre putting more emphasis on platforms or dynamics or regions or partners, and that generally has to come from someplace. So there is kind of a winnerloser dynamic in play here. Im assuming and you your advisors have taken that into account and understanding some of the frictions that generates. Could you talk about that . Perhaps from two angles. First is that if you accept that this is great power competition, then the corollary to that is global, not regional. In other words, any bewing conflict in one part of the world, all the global powers will have global consequences, so you cannot, in any sense, try to isolate geographically a conflict into a very small area and hope that its just going to stay there. So the approach is now, whats the global consequences . The second part is the discussion that we have is how do you define that in terms of risk . Risk being where you are not in as big a footprint, the platform youre not going invest in, what is that risk . Not in terms of quantifying it necessarily, but relative risk, because thats what Senior Leaders get paid for, right . Understanding strategic risk, placing investments where they think they need to, and with a clear eye of understanding, im accepting risk, and it could change. That decision is happening. Hopefully additional questions from the audience. The last bucket, and i do want to move to getting all of our attendees involved here, and that has to do with this i call it shocks to service culture, change management. Design is your priority, but when you look at the documents, it does take up a significant number of page count if you look at how much attention you focused on it, but almost twice as many pages or material are spent on people related sorts of things, how we manage the workforce, talent management, how you assess in. Youve set up this very kind of progressive approach in dealing with things like paternal and maternal leave and why does somebody always have to be in a specific career track for 20 years or interest change, and man power needs to shift. You also say, if youre not competing, youre out of here, right . Theres a difference between inhouse Residence School and not. School evaluations are given weight. Theres a component. The education system, so all the things that you wrote about really have to do with people, and you set up some dynamics in there where there will be those who progress on and those who are asked to, thank you for your service, and go another direction so. This Human Element of dealing with marines and marine families and all that, if you could just talk about the people part of this equation. That ratio intentional, not by accident. Perhaps unique is the wrong word, but the marine corps has never been an equipmentcentric force. We are a peoplecentric force that bysie quiment and provides it to the human beings, but were not buy the equipment, and then lets worry about the person behind it. That part is not new. But how we train, how we select, how we retain all have to change. Because we are stuck in an Industrial Age mode in many ways how we educate and, in fact, how we train right now. We have to adjust that. The healing part i think in terms of what we bring into the service, how we evaluate, how we assess them also has to change. In other words, in the end for the marine corps, we are a very powered down, decentralized, allow great officers, theyre the ones making the decisions. If youre that young a force, then you need to train them to a higher level. And right now, we do not give them the reps that they need to build up that experience and make the right to put in enough situations where the first one is not the first one. I have heard countless Senior Leaders talk about mistakes that they made at the junior level, and some other service will kick in the pants, get back into the fight, and they say that today that just doesnt happen. I mean, its a very riskintolerance sort of world, you get a single black mark on your record, and youre done. And what you talk about is kind of empowering, Holding People accountable, but not killing them for making understandable mistakes. Im not new eve. You can im not naive. You can make an argument for a riskaverse element. I cannot tell thaw does not exist. I will tell you my own view is the larger, the bigger driver has been the pace at which we run the military didnt allow you to do things two, three, four times. In other words, you went on deployment for six months, you were back 10 months, you had no redo. If your evolution didnt go well, there was no time to do it again tomorrow night. So there is a risk averseness part, which we must guard against, but we also have to build time back in between deployments where your battalion has enough time to build cohesion, enough time for your leaders to make mistakes, go back, do it again. Right now we cannot do that. We havent been able to do that for 15 years. We have run the machine too fast. Not overworked, but it didnt allow you to do it again and again, critique yourself, go back, do it again. There was no time for that. Overworked . This was more of a capacity issue. If the force is 100 employed, 100 of the time, where is their slack . You indicate youre not intending to grow the force. In fact, you might sacrifice. If the force is shrinking to provide resource not shrinking, but to get resources to use in other areas to make these changes, if the workload doesnt change. Workload has to change. I dont know how you go about doing that. We shift from doing Theater Security cooperation, how many events a year are you doing, to a very, not surgical, but a very targeted, focused approach where we do things has to matter. If it doesnt contribute to the National Defense strategy in some way, why are we doing it . All right, we got a good 30 minutes or so, and i saw a hand shoot up right away. If you would, when you get the microphone, state who you are, if you have an affiliation. No fiveminute speeches or a question in seven parts. If you got a quick comment to make, fine, get to a question, because we want to be respectful of everybody else, too. Thank you. A moment ago you mentioned acquisition and development of Unmanned Systems. I wonder if you could elaborate specifically on what unmanned and a. I. Systems you want to zpwop how those differ from what your predecessor was experimenting with. We have some years of unmanned aerial systems. All the services have experience there. So we have a head start there. In terms of unmanned surface vessels and sub surface vessels, the navy has a few years, more than a few years of experience there. But there wasnt an accelerator, there wasnt a driver. Now there is. The initial driver was dont put a human being in there if we can put a machine in there. In other words, lower the risk to the human. But now the additive part of unmanned is how can you make your force look bigger, operate bigger with unmanned and manned teams. How can my wing man or two of them be unmanned . And how does that enable notice actually accomplish the mission in a better way . Initially it was in places like explosive Ordinance Disposal where you could put a robot to dismantle a bomb. Why put a body there . Now its more like, even offensively, how can i move from ship to shore in a way that i can look at multiple sites, go deeper, the force have longer endurance with Unmanned Systems . And im being brutally honest. My learning over time is unless you artificially demand a rate of investment, of advancement, it wont happen. Its not that we dont like them, its just everything is built to man. Resourcing is built to resource manned platforms. Unless you say five years from now i want 50 of it unmanned, now youre driving it. You may not achieve that, but you need a driver. Overlay artificial intelligence, you can talk certainly for hours, people can, on that. I would just say we view it as a way of getting through multiple options in a very rapid manner, shifting through the enormity of data in your command center in a more rapid fashion, getting it down to two or three options that make sense. Im going to try to balance left and right here. Good to see you again, sir. Just wanted to get more of your vision on the outlying ions. The agreement, i think the latest was 2012, the latest kind of update to that agreement where japan and the u. S. Would invest in moving or in building things on guam as part of a is that what youre getting at, the whole buildout of that joint training area, and shifting marines from now stationed in japan to guam. That plan is in execution. Have you been to guam lately . Yeah, a month ago. So you know the status of the hangar thats up, the hangar thats under scrurks construction, the buildings that are being done. I think u. S. And japan are watching each others investments, and the environmental challenges are slowing things down and driving costs up, like youre very well aware of. But the movement along the program as its laid out right now has not slowed down. Theres an agreement between the two countries to move the forces out of japan in the first half of the 2020s. In the back here. General, you mentioned a bit earlier about having to make those choices to divest from legacy systems to shift over to modernization. The army has instituted a process. Do you see the marine corps formalizing a similar sort of process . No. Heres why. For different purposes. They were Going Program by program by program. Our approach was for one year, from last summer until this summer, with the navy, work hard on a war fighting construct for the future, figure out what that is. Were there now. And from that, what force do you need to execute that . As opposed to every night come in and defend your program. So step one for us is center on the war fighting aspects of it, figure out what resourcing youre going to need to do that, and what youre not going to need to do that. In the future, will we use that methodology to scrutinize programs . Probably so. But its in a different way. Rather than a to z. We work backwards. Michael gordon, wall street journal. Following on your answer there, you mentioned that you werent ready at this point to unveil a force design because youre still doing experimentation. Could you explain in a little more detail please, how those experiments will inform those design decisions, what those specific decisions are, and how those experiments relate to it, and when might you be prepared, do you think, to have a forced design . And lastly, i think were entering an era with trillion dollar deficits where its clear theres not going to be steady real increases in defense spending. Just an internal reality in the United States. Are you planning, is everything that youre projecting can it be accomplished with a static Defense Budget . Ill tackle the last one first, sir, if thats ok. Our assumption, my assumption is flat or declining in a nut shell, not rising. If that happens, great. But this is all built on, based on flat or declining. In terms of the latter stages of force design, ill break it up. The way that i view it sir, i would carve it into three categories, war gaming, experimentation, and modeling and simulation. In some exercises theres a combination of the two, but all are in play. For the war gaming part, we look to things like the navy and marine corps global series of exercises, where you bring real current commanders in to fight a 10year scenario with future programs to see how that would play out. Thats one aspect of it. Experimentation is more platform by platform, concept by concept, how will that work . Thats always ongoing. The last part is really our focus right now. The first two are enduring. They will never stop. The last part is once you have an organizational construct, put it into a computer model, play it against what the joint force right now in using in terms of a future scenario, and then change a couple of variables and run it over and over and over and over again until you get very confident in the construct that youve got. All three for me are part of the solution. You talked about building a war gaming center, in , correct. The last part of that, i know were wanting to move on, like most of you are aware, part of the challenge in the last couple of few years, the war games and the modeling simulation now have to go to a much higher classification level, which we werent, that wasnt the norm before. Now its more and more the norm. Go here in the center. Good morning, general. So we have right now a concern. Im working with the center for security policy. The chinese have now got the opportunity to be in our investment, the retirement funds, which is going into effect on 2020. Essentially were going to be funding the rope that will hang us. About 5. 7 million military veterans, active duty personnel, Government Employees do not necessarily realize that many of their funds are going to be with these Investment Companies from china. So the Weapons Systems that could kill us, ships that are being built, the chinese islands, this communist party essentially is going to get money off the backs of retirees like myself and active duty personnel that are investing in t. S. P. Its not getting any coverage by the media. I dont know if, from where youre sitting, if theyve even brought it to your attention. Not yet, but thanks for bringing it to my attention. You got it now. Down here in the front. Im sorry, in your guidance, you make an emphasis on shifting from the standard gators to different ships, including the eclass and you even mentioned black bottom, which are commercial ships. How are you going to make these commercial ships not made to take combat by civilian mariners who are supposed to go into combat and normally not trained for combat operations. How are you going to make that work . As a family. I understand the nature of your question. What i know will not work is a few dozen grey holed lclass ships by themselves. They will be targets. We need them, but we need much more than just that. We have to be much more creative in how we use, to your example, eclass ships, which for a while, frankly, we were standoffish from because we felt they were threaten the amphibious ship building plan. I dont talk about them, because then we wont get enough ships. Im in another place where we need all of that. We need to really think creatively about how we embark forces and systems on platforms that are not necessarily a lpd17 or a flight 2. If theyre floating, we need to figure out how to use it. The civilian mariner aspect of it absolutely is in play. I dont know whether that will fundamentally change. We should not push it off the table just because its manned by the mariners. And youre not suggesting that we do. It is a different era, yes. Wynn got folks by the podium. Yes, maam . Hi, sir, thank you for being here. You talked about the execution of ideas and you said that youre likely to see the implementation really come in 2022 and 2023, but were working backwards from 2030. Can you talk about what the implementation is going to look like in the near term, and what were likely to see coming down the pipe in the next few years . I cant get sideways with my boss. In terms of where the budget cycle is. Until you knowthe rest of the process. Until you know the rest of the process. Let me say a couple of things. A couple of things we dont need to make changes, but we have the authority to do right now. How we train, how we move resources right now within our authority, we can do without asking congresspermission to do so. We have to make those changes. How we evaluate people. Even the structure of our headquarters is not a match for the future. We have the threestar Lieutenant General as head of our man power. We have a threestar Lieutenant General in charge of force development and the equipment that we buy. And we have a twostar general in charge of training. If the Services Responsibility is to man, train, and equip, is that the right setup . Some things i think we can change, we need to change sooner, not later. The larger divesment of things will take time the larger divestment of things will take time. The u. S. Doesnt have the luxury to pull its team off the playing field, make it into a new team, and two years later go back on the field. We have to make things, we have to make changes in stride. In some of the platforms that were going to need in the next five, six, seven years, they are not ready for production yet. There has to be a sundown sort of program for one and a buildup of another. To your point, the buildup of the other may not be a replacement for the one that were terminating. It may be completely different. I think in many cases it will be. My name is from radio free asia. Can you tell me how the capability of north korean, and last question is about u. S. Marine exercise. Do you have a schedule to implement . What was the last part, just to make sure i got it . The exercise between u. S. And iraq, marine exercise. Do you have a schedule to implement exercise . Yes, those have continued. A series of exercises between marines largely from japan, third marine expenditiary reports, the south Korean Marines have continued. They have not but pause for a while about a year ago, and then restarted it and they have remained continuous exercises since them. Obviously any slacking off of that at all. Its good for both of our marine corpses to be training alongside each other. Was there another aspect, earlier aspect . Whats your question about it . I think thats a fair question, but probably not for me to do the assessment of. Morning, thank you, you spoke about the need to get ahead of the pace, that our adversaries are currently leading. And one of the things there is that do we actually know the real rules of engagement that we need to be entertaining in order to do that . 20 years ago, the guys who wrote unrestricted water had really interesting ideas, and the example that this lady gave could be one of them. I know its not just the marine corpsresponsibility, but are there people who are really looking at those kinds of rules of victory, lets call them. Yes, but i think you highlight a really relevant topic. Our rules of engagement, our Standing Joint rules of engagement every day are not built for what some people call gray zone competition. Theyre built for highend conflict. Its much easier sort of a choice. But the competition, the world we live in right now, every single day in multiple domains, there are standing rules of engagement, a challenge there, as you highlight. Yes, we are sorting our way through that. Its magnified i would say also by the fact that the adversary is not a democracy. Their extension beyond not just accepted norms of behavior, but even into offensive activity in areas like cyberreally impress us, really theyre not constrained in the same ways that we are, i would say. I think your topic, the issue you bring up is spot on, and yes, were discussing it. It needs to be changed. General, thank you. I want to make a suggestion, and then ask a question. My suggestion is that at marine corps university, theres a dakota wood hall next to ellis hall. 100 years ago i live in stafford, so i love that. There you go. My question is about seat control and your relationship with both the navy generally, but also with the with c o. 100 years ago, earl ellis was thinking through the marine corps contribution and pivotal role in seat control. What kind of conversations are you having with the c o about that in the face of this headline from the Washington Times reporting on the parade from this mornings Washington Times, reporting on the Chinese Military parade, that chinas military display forces the pentagon to confront the end of american dominance. The implication is that seat control is not challenged and may be no longer in our hands. What is the role, not just as a user and provider of it . I think you rational thinkers accept right now that any presumption of universal dominance across all spaces, sub surface and sub face all the time, 24 7, is not a rational thought right now. It is a competition. So to your point, whats the marine corpsrole in seat control . How does this become an extension of the fleet . Here i draw on thoughts like the book on tactics. I draw on admirable richardson to now admirals belief that they need to elevate the level of war fighting to its fleet level, back to a fleet level. That means that, for the marine formation and integration into the construct, understanding what roles, what functions can marine elements do to make that naval force more lethal, for powerful, and that drives us down into methods like exwe decision air bases, small units, distributed mobile that can reform, refuel, sense forward, kill forward, to do all those things, and move. All that worry signature. The point about captain wayne hughes. I believe it should be required reading for anybody interested. Agreed. Front row with all those folks behind the podium here. Thank you, general, and thank you for coming here, thank you for the opportunity. I met you at the passage of comand in vietnam, i have a whole host of questions, but ill have to get some of them offline, but as one of the earlier introducers mentioned, madison is now gone. And the army is in control. How do you figure youre going to coexist in the tank when the army as exemplified by general , how are you going to be able to get the marine corps to survive, because when madison was there, we controlled the world. Now its just you and frank mckenzie, and ill bet that mill lee will do everything he can to figure out some to replace frank because he wants that job. And secondly, would you support changing the name from the department of the navy to the department of the navy and the marine corps . And finally, on behalf of your Senate Liaison office, they dont have any swag in the Senate Liaison office. This is a frank discussion. This is a frank discussion. The middle one, first, the department of navy and marine corps. Thats got to be up there with, are you going to change the tattoo policy . Its way up there, sir. Thats a political decision. My personal opinion really doesnt matter. I understand all the rationale behind it. I dont have a view. Its only a personal view, and its really not relevant. As far as the first part, on monday, i think today is thursday, on monday evening, the joint chiefs met, because he has taken over that morning. Good discussion, good, frank discussion. I think there are more than a handful of leaders who were in the same way. Worried about them steamrolling over everything else. I am not worried about them. Heres why. I have worked as his counterpart when i was in the g3 of the marine corps shop, working for general dunn ford. General milly, he was my counter part every day for two years. I know him very well. He has the intellectual capacity to do the job. He also understands this is not his job as chairman is not a parochial service role. I think there will still be some angst about that. Im telling you, im not worried about it at all. There are enough checks and balances in our system where even the chairman who is very service centric wouldnt go very far. I dont know the secretary of defense all that well, just the last three or four months. He seems to be very much focused on strategic issues, not army issues. Im not naive. Im just telling you, based on my personal experience of knowing and operate ago longside mark or milly, i am not concerned that its going to become an armycentric joint force. If theres evidence to that, i am confident there are enough checks and balances in the system. Im not spending a minute thinking about it. inaudible id like to shift it on the ambassador. Thank you for a very interesting conversation. You have emphasized repeatedly that you would like to change the way you recruit, train, select the people. Could you elaborate a little bit . What kind of new people are you looking for . First of all, i think the way that we recruit right now is very successful, very good. We dont need to fundamentally change that. The best i can do to describe that for you, if this room were all 80 of us marine generals, and you ask how many of you have been on recruiting duty, a third of them would stand up. A third. Me included. If you want quality and you really care about recruiting, you put your best talent out there, and we do. That said, i think there are tools that we didnt have 10 years ago to better screen, to better understand an applicant in high school than just taking a written test and a physical test. We have more ways now to understand whats up here and whats the potential to actually make it through recruit training and on through the whole first enlistment. We didnt have the tools some years ago. Now we do. We need to learn how to use them, not as a screening tool, but as a way to better understand the population that were bringing in. Retention. The Gunnery Sergeant behind me retired. Every four years, in her fourth year, she would apply to reenlist, right . And that application would go all the way to the headquarters of the marine corps, who would ultimately decide yes or no, and they did. Multiple times. Our approach now is why are we still doing it that way . What if in the third year, the second year, we determined, she is what we need, she wants to say, why cant we reenlist her early . Why cant her commander reenlist . Why does it go all the way to the headquarters to do that . In retention, we have to be more agile. We dont have to wait till her last year, last six months, and it doesnt have to go all the way to washington, d. C. If shes got the qualities that we need, she wants to stay, why cant her commander reenlist her . I think we have to become more agile in how we retain. There was a third part. Actually not very much. That part does not change. I think the level of were looking for a person coming out of high school or college that wants a challenge physically, mentally, in all aspects of challenge, wants to be part of a bigger team. In other words, can put something above themselves. They want to make a difference. They want to see the world. They want to see how hard they can push themselves. And lastly, i would just say, they want to be part of something special, something elite. Elite in a positive sense, not in an elitist sense, but in terms of the very small, very competitive they want to be part of that team. That has not changed. Not since she came in, not since i came in. Thats the person were looking for. My body geometry is oriented this way. Ive been ignoring this part of the room. In the back, the two gentlemen. Good morning, general. Im a current student. For our Research Paper that im writing, im focused on your guidance, looking for the need for the corps to change the way it trains and promotes its greatest resources, people. What are your thoughts about moving away from an up or out Promotion System towards a system thats more focused on mature, well trained, technically capable force that can perhaps specialize at a particular rank or grade to produce more lethality, complex capabilities . I think as i wrote, we have to look into that. I dont know where that takes us. Part of the value in writing Planning Guidance is its Planning Guidance. Its not heres all the answers. These things we have to figure out. The upper out system that we have right now, its intentionally put in there in the Planning Guidance as a topic we have to revisit, because we are pushing some talent out that perhaps we ought to keep. At the same time, we cant stagnate. Theres not a constant infusion of people coming into the service and someone can stay here for 20 years and clog the pipes. There has to be a way for you to become a major. If all majors stayed in the same spot and park there forever, theres nowhere for you to go. I think we are losing talent right now in a literal sense upper out sense, that we have to open or appearer find room to try to keep more than were keeping right now. But we cant do it in a way that constipateless the whole system. Or else youll be a captain for how long were you a captain for . Too long. Actually it was about five or seven years. Ok. Long time. How long do you think youre going to be a captain . Could be five, six, seven, right . Send me your paper when youre done writing it. Im also with the marine corps university, currently a student. My question is for operations. In looking at distributed operations, particularly looking at is the marine corps, additional intercongratulations with the army or any other joint forces in addition to the navy, and what is the marine corps doing with leveraged partner forces, as well as allies and regions, to enable operations . In terms of the joint force, yes. But not as mr. Wood accurately portrayed. This is not everybody gets four people on the team approach. That is not what were after at all. But in my view, if youre a captain and youre running an Expeditionary Advance date, it can serve multiple functions for anybody. You dont care. Its not a im association we only refuel the navy here. No. If youre in the Expeditionary Advance base, your service is in the task, sensing, killing, rearming, whatever your role is. In terms of whats at that site, like you were brought up and same as me, task organized, right . If that requires some expertise that we dont have, should there be army or air force or whoever has the expertise . Absolutely yeah. But youre going to to want keep your Expeditionary Advance base somewhat small, because you got to pick up and move it every 48 hours, right . This is not everybody gets 25 on the team. Sort of the same way, if youre planning an air assault mission, every butt has to earn its seat, that approach. No extra seats. Earn your way on. You got the last question. Congressional research service. This integrated naval force has a certain fixed wing attack air, and you own some of it. The piece of it that you own imposes costs on a marine corps, not just support, but leadership attention, leadership structure. Its upwards of 75 years since frank jack took his carriers and went away. On the table, is it conceive thabble you could think about that as something you divest of for the purposes of repurposing those resources . The topic hasnt come up. What has come up is whats the right mix of f35 bs or cs, which is definitely related to attack air integration and how much of an investment the marine corps makes in terms of support of certain air wings. As far as what could i envision, could that be a topic that came up . I hope you got the picture that everything needs to be on the table is there a red flag on it right now . No. But everything we do has to be scrutinized. But again, i circle back to integrated in terms of the capability, the naval capability is what were after, if that means we need more flying off the carriers, we ought to be willing to do that. If its less, we should be fine with that. Its all about what is the capability and capacity of the naval force that we need. Not what is the servicecentric view. Thats a different way of looking at it. The commandant has another event, and i believe its a about a 30minute drive and you have 32 minutes to get there. If youve got a minute or two of closing comments, and then well hasten your departure. I told you my goal was twofold coming in here. One, to not educate, but to inform, to explain. And the second was to listen. And weve got note takers in here who took good notes, so im very grateful first for the chance to do both. I would, if its possible, ask to circle back on something that you value asked, if you can help me get to those people. Because im i want to follow occupy their questions. Not just intrigue me, but they cause to us think through things. Grateful for the opportunity, and the only ask is the chance to follow up on a couple that i would like to dig into deeper. I have the archives to go back and review that, but the protocol here is first name, last name, so if anybody has a question you didnt get to ask, seriously, send it to me and ill make sure it gets to the commandants team. Thank you, sir. Join me in thanking him. applause if we could just have everybody sit in place, i believe youve got more. The George Washington wall review and the National Constitution center cohosted a symposium on 100 years of Supreme Court clerkships