He is the chairman of the House Armed Services committee. The first texan to ever have that role and a texan whose family goes back to ranching in the 13th district as far back as 1881. Probably wondered what he was doing in a rainy washington up here dealing with the federal budget when he could have been back home in the texas spring time but we are grateful for your service and to all of you for being here today. District as 1881. Probably wondered what he was doing in a rainy washington up here dealing with the federal budget when he could have been back home in the texas spring time but we are grateful for your service and to all of you for being here today. It is a momentous time in American Foreign policy and defense policy. Well get quickly to matters of the Defense Budget, defense spending and where the entire debate may go with tomorrows release the president s budget and Congress Really gearing up in its normal hearing season on these subjects but i thought just to get us energized on a good monday morning if you could please join me in welcoming the chairman to brookings. And, chairman thornberry, before we get to budget i thought maybe i could ask you to summarize your acquisition reform bill of last week. Any couple three headlines that you wanted to make off that and one additional aspect of my question might be that i remember last year when you were here and elsewhere talking about your efforts with senator mccain and others last years acquisition reform, a lot of what you emphasized was, listen, if it saves money thats nice but the most important thing is to get technology to the war fighter quickly and efficiently. I know that remains your driving concern but i was also struck in this bill that youre also trying to help the taxpayer with reforms and efficiencies that may save money looking hard at contractors, looking Harley Davidson at various kinds of requirements, Logistics Matters and how we purchase regular supplies so i wondered if you could explain the latest reform proposal in the context of how you think about acquisition reform. Chairman thornberry sure. Maybe ill start with a bit of context as you alluded. I think as far as congresss responsibilities when it comes to National Defense these days we essentially have two. One is to help rebuild the military. To the second is reform help the military be more agile and innovative. And so the budget largely deals with the rebuild. What you spend money on, etcetera, on the agility side, e face a world with the widest array of complex challenges we have ever faced and a world where technology moves and adversaries can direct investments and capabilities at a much faster pace than they ver have before. All of that requires us to be more agile and thats the reason i think acquisition reform is so important as you point out. It is about all of that requires us getting our country can provide into the hands of the war fighter in a timely way. We owe them that. A lot of what weve done in the past two years has focused on the big acquisition programs. Planes and carriers and all of that. This years bill focused as you mentioned more on the daytoday sorts of things. So probably the thing that will resonate the easiest with folks is one of the reforms we roposed is to ahow d. O. D. To buy things on, commercially, online like on amazon business to business. There are several other competitors like that. So now youve got two choices. You can go off the g. S. A. Schedule, which costs more and which Many Companies have decided theyre not going to participate in because of the requirements. You can go through that contracting process, which takes forever and youve got to do the bids and all of that sort of stuff. None of which is the definition of agility. So one thing is to allow d. O. D. Folks to go buy commercially, on these lf items online portals. We also try to update the audit the way that companies are audited on the costs they incur. Theres lots of different sorts of audits at d. O. D. But this one basically starts bringing in private sector Audit Companies to do some of this job. Its happening in other agencies. It ought to be able to happen in d. O. D. Just two more right quick. 70 of the costs of programs are on sustainment not on buying it at the beginning. Its on everything it takes to keep it operating over its lifetime yet we dont really Pay Attention to that. We just buy the cheapest thing we think will get the job done at the beginning. One of the changes is to require you consider sustainment costs from the getgo. And then the other one as you mentioned, Service Contracts of all of the things that d. O. D. Contracts for, 53 of it is service, not weapons and equipment. Yet if you ask d. O. D. What are you spending this money on and lots of other logical questions they cannot answer it. So this years bill we try to get our arms around the Service Contracting that d. O. D. Does with an eye toward making it, yes, more efficient but also more agile in the future. There are other things. Others in the room may want to return to this topic a little later on. Well have a conversation up here for a bit longer and then go to you for questions. Let me move on to the defense budge. We have slides up that are showing some of what you presented and proposed. But even if they dont come up for whatever reason let me quickly summarize what i understand to be state of play with your proposal. As we all know, President Trump has proposed a, quoteunquote 4 billion increase in the 54 billion increase in the budget for 2018. That is measured against the sequestration. Against president obamas level it is only about a 20 billion increase, which is real money but only a few percent of the Defense Budget over all. What you are now suggesting is President Trumps proposal is not enough and you want to add roughly another 37 billion to what he suggested. Wondered if you could, partly because our technology is failing here, but lay out a little bit of what the major components of that additional 37 billion would be and we can talk maybe a little about each of them. Sure. A little bit of context. Last year as House Republicans were putting together an agenda to run on the speaker asked our committee to look at what we think needs to be spent on defense. What would it take to repair the damage that has been done from eight years of c. R. s, five years of the budget control act, a high operational tempo . All of these things had accumulated. His charge to us was okay. Lets figure out what it would take. President trump is elected. He starts talking about a specific size navy, etcetera. How t we did was to say, much money would accomplish the goals that President Trump has set forward but could be responsibly spent we believe in fiscal year 2018 . Ats where we end up at 640 billion. I think that the budget that the administration will propose is roughly 3 more than what president obama had suggested for this year. Its roughly a 5 increase over current years funding. So i think it is fair to say its basically the obama approach with a little bit more but not much. Whats the difference . We try to lay that out and i think this shows some broad categories, air dominance for example is about 10 billion above what president obama has suggested. Now, that is these are kind of broad labels. Thats not just more airplanes. That includes the maintenance and the operations, the training thats required for us to go against, high end adversaries like russia, china, which we have not done so much of in recent years. So thats the reason you see these categories there. Some of it bring our Ground Forces up to date. Some is Ballistic Missile defense. If i were to look at this today, looking at whats happened with north korea im not sure we put enough into missile defense. Both increasing the number of interceptors in current systems which are woefully short, and research into other kinds of systems that hopefully will be more effective and cost effective. Im not sure we put enough into munitions by the way. There was a little bit in munitions and appropriation bill that just passed. We put some here but we have some sig can munitions shortages in various items if you look at it. But that is the reason that there are these categories. Im afraid when we talk about budgets we get into these numbers games and say, oh, this number, that number. Throw them around. What we lose sight of is what the numbers mean. And which capabilities are we willing to forego with a different level of budget . I think we have to be concrete about that. Because the men and women on the front lines will have their life affected by what were not fixing by the new capabilityy were not getting or whatever choices were making. We need to make it more concrete rather than a 640, 620, well split the difference. Just to underscore and thank you for putting the slide up this is the base budget. This does not include war costs. Were talking about the base budget for the department of defense and Nuclear Weapons activities in the department of energy but the 640 billion you would recommend would then have an additional 60 billion roughly in overseas Contingency Operation costs . Just for ballpark . Yes. I think all of the estimates have roughly 65 billion in oco account. The you are absolutely correct. This is the 050 account which includes n. S. A. And department of energy and other things not all strictly pentagon. This is not trying to change the long standing practice of putting base costs in the oco account. In other words there are some people who have been saying what we should try to do is take all of this, quoteunquote, war costs in the overseas Contingency Operation budget many of which are now base budget related and try to put them back in the base. You dont have enough money here to do that, right . This is not accomplishing that goal. It does not. I think that is a worth while conversation to have. What concerns me is that if there is just transfers from o. C. O. Into the base budget and people call it a defense increase it will not be accurate. It will not tell you the facts, which is you really havent increased anything at all. You just changed the label on the money. I still think it is a worth while conversation to have mainly because putting base requirements into o. C. O. Makes it very difficult to plan and means the money is not spent as efficiently as it could be. And yet we have become very dependent upon that over the years to get around the budget. So the 2018 proposal you are offering as you said is designed to fund things we know we can actually do reasonably well in reasonably short order. Is it also fair to say this is consistent with the candidate trump vision of roughly a 350 ship navy now, the generals proposal to increase the size of the air force which candidate trump also proposed, getting the army back to 540,000 or so active duty soldiers, are those sort of the four Structure Goals behind this . Yes. I just want to be clear though. You cannot accomplish those goals in a budget or two. It takes time. The general has told us, for example, it takes 10 years and 10 million to grow a fighter pilot. So the air force today is roughly 1500 pilots short. You cannot snap your fingers and then open the Training Pipeline up big enough to fix all of those problems. This takes time. If i can make one other point on that, earlier this year we had the testimony about the state of our military. General points that wills made is that air force pilots today receive fewer hours of training in the cockpit than they did during the military of the 1970s. So that was my reaction. I went back then and looked. Okay. We all know about the hollow military of the 1970s. Nobody would suggest that we have equivalent problems with people and so forth but there are a remarkable number of parallels between the damage done today and the damage that was done then. What did it take to get out of that . The last year of jimmy carters administration was a 15 increase in defense spending. President reagan comes in and has a 17 . The next year an 18 . The next year a 13 . And then three more years of 10 . Thats what it took to overcome the neglect and damage done in the 1970s to our military. I think that sort of context kind of helps us with the size and the duration of what sort of repair work is needed for the problems that we have created. By the way, ive noticed in recent weeks for example in an aviation week in Space Technology article last week there was more data about which aircraft have which Mission Capable rates. Do we think we need to get more of that data to the public . I know there is a tension between classification concerns not wanting to tip off adversaries but also trying to be specific about the defense needs. Ive been pushing for more openness and frankly have had some debates with the leadership of the pentagon about this because they are concerned about telling our adversaries too much about what our problems are. My focus being more political admittedly than theirs is to get the Political Support we need to have the sort of rebuilding like they did in the 1980s well have to be more explicit about that. Now, i will say when you have things like happened last month you had a fair number of pilots go on strike because they believe the aircraft they were being asked to fly were not safe. It does help wake people up a little bit. I think but weve had a number of classified briefings with my committee and i think the more people know about the facts, the more urgent fixing this problem becomes. Let me bore in on one more example about readiness problems, which is army brigade combat teams. And for the last two or three budgets the army has been saying it wants to send roughly onethird of its brigade combat teams per year to the National Training center to do the full unit, you know, threeweeklong exercises in training that are sort of the culmination. One would think if weve been trying to fund that for two or thee years and doing onethird of the brigades per year were starting to catch up and apparently were not, right . The army is still talking today in the same kind of dire tones it was two or three years ago at least to my ear about the state of readiness, the lack of proper, full unit training and exercising. So whats going on . Is it because of all these continuing resolutions and other problems that impede the army from, you know, carrying out its plans even if it winds up close to the amount of money requested . We have been spending 600 billion a year on the military. Its not chump change. Why hasnt the army been able to catch up . I think you are right for part of it. We have not been spending money efficiently and certainly for units to rotate through the National Training center you got to plan for that. So we havent been doing that. Ill tell you, again, part of the reason i believe the readiness problems are deeper than most of us have realized is just like we are cannibalizing parts off of planes to keep other planes flying, cannibalizing parts off ships, we are cannibalizing army units in order to make those that we are sending on deployments full. And so you talk to the commanders about this and part of their challenge is they never have their full units. You have these people coming and going all the time and so if they have a chance to go to the National Training center, they come back a bunch of their people are taken away and plugged into other units and so theyve lost a lot of that benefit. The general says what he is looking for to increase the number of people in the army is not to increase war structure but to plug the holes so that you can keep units together. Units training together is required to go required to go against these more sophisticated adversaries. Theres a number of other examples where our people are so good when you send them off on a mission, they will accomplish that mission. But if you look at the cost, the damage that is done to accomplish that mission, whether it is mechanics working around the clock or the cannibalization, that is part of the reason im convinced the damage is deeper than we understand. One morelon should part of the readiness debate be thinking about how we do foreign deployments. We are going to poland now. We still have that brigade in korea and its generally rotated soed and its a strain on the army. Could we start considering some deployments to be permanent with families . Allow one unit to do the job instead of three units . Things like that . Chair thornberry i think so. Study basedd for a on cost, at least. About is thelking human toll on families and weewhere and i do think ought to look at those options. Part of the reasons we ought to is to show our commitment to allies in various parts of the world but part of it is strain on the force and then we need to evaluate. I dont know what the cost data will show. Convinced that it is cheaper to rotate a bunch of units through rather permanent presence. Mr. Ohanlon it strikes me this 640 billion plus the war costs, its a lot of money in one sense but only 3. 5 of g. D. P. Done the math . Rep. Thornberry thats in the ballpark. And i think one of the most one can see iss the percentage of g. D. P. Over time weve spent on defense. Reagan bump but then its been plummeting. Question,on my last this is the inevitable question because everything sounds so reasonable while were talking about it in defenseonly terms but then theres the question of how to pay for it. Were seeing increasing discussion about President Trump wants to cut the state department, cut foreign assistance accounts, leave aside domestic issues which will be controversial and a lot of people are saying the d. O. A. Ons budget is capitol hill because of the cuts but i do wonder if there are you wouldinciples in mind. S to pair rep. Thornberry the first job government is to defend the country so the first dollar we receive from taxpayers ought that purpose and then Everything Else is secondary. So i guess thats the principle, start. Focusing more on the budget, we in context, 2 3 of the federal budget are mandatoryt or spending programs. We are now for defense, we are the federal budget. Needless to say, we are not budget problems by cutting or even curtailing while ignoring the percent that is mandatory. I think we have an opportunity and i realize this will sound pollyannaish, but there are big entitlements that people are not onlybout reform, help peopley but to receive Better Benefits from it for example, more state flexibility on medicaid. If youre coming from texas, a lot different from new hampshire. So theres opportunity there. Tax reform is in play. Moving pieces are being discussed and that gives an opportunity to put a intoe bit of common sense this discussion. Will it happen . I dont know. Will politics trump Everything Else . I dont know. We have an opportunity, if get people of goodwill on both sides to set down and look at these big moving pieces, we can put defense and everything track. A better mr. Ohanlon ive got one question for later which will be longerhinking more about term innovation. As you pointed out, some of the debate is emphasizing nearterm readiness. The thirdstart in row. Please wait for a microphone and identify yourself before you pose your question to the chairman. Thanks for doing the event. Question is about whether you how important these reforms are for cyber security, when youre talking up the bidding process, for example, to new companies, not having to be so rigid. Can you talk about how that appeal to other companies who might want to be involved, to siliconing out valley, for example. How are you thinking about that . Rep. Thornberry i think shes jumping ahead to your question a little bit. Just to clarify one thing. On being able to go online to items, we allow the pentagon to decide which bought. Al items can be so, for example, if you are softwareptops or thats going to be plugged into sensitive systems, then there has to be checks there. So my point the pentagon will to decide which commercial offtheshelf items be boughtriate to in that way. But the broader point is we absolutely have to help the be more userfriendly for companies to do business with. Of my concerns and thats part of the reason we have a lot are inreforms that there, is that more and more commercial companies are saying, its just not worth doing the pentagon anymore, too much of a hassle reasons and im not going to do it. Time, a lot of innovation in this country happened in government labs and thats still innovation occurs there but more and more innovation occurs in the private order to defend its country we have to make possible, desirable, more of thatve for all innovation that goes on in the private sector to be brought in defense world and so that is exactly what i hope one of effects of the acquisition reform that we have been working on the last couple of years will do. Mr. Ohanlon here in the fifth row. Hi. I see that you identify 1. 1 billion in unfunded medical requirements. Can you give any details on that . Chair thornberry one of the key things our troops have come to expect and i think we expect it for them is to be within an hour ifreceiving medical care they are injured on the battlefield. Called the golden hour. You start looking at a variety of operations around the world, what it takes to maintain that golden hour, and it requires some more investment. So that is one of those things that i think we have to maintain, and it does require some more money. Thats part of it. Mr. Ohanlon sidney, here in the front row. Chairman, to ask mikes question but more rudely because thats my role chair thornberry your role or your personality . Im just kidding. Good point. On the one hand, as you say, the new administration is allowing up theto shake discussion about entitlements and so forth, regarding the obstacles to any budget change, budgets. Defense on the other hand, we have a president who is seeming to shoot himself in the foot on a regular basis. You have budget coming out very late. Fidub numbers. O we have a skinny budget coming out earlier. It seems while there might be more room for an upside and great progress, theres a lot more room on the downside, possibly both extremes are greater. Just having lived in d. C. For a while, my gut is that things will get worse rather than better. So whats the best scenario you can see, blessed plausible scenario . Whats the worst case of gridlock, and where do you think the odds lie . Chair thornberry as president bush said in a different context, dont be guilty of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Which, i understand, you can point to past failures and say, this is never going to happen, they will never get their act together. Even some of my colleagues are saying, we are in for a yearlong cr. If thats our mindset, we will bring it to pass. And i think thats a mistake. I cant tell you what will happen. What i can tell you is that there is widespread agreement in both parties that we have cut defense too much. We are roughly 20 below what it was in 2010. Let me throw a couple other numbers that you, to back up for a second. If you look back at what we are spending now versus 2000, our Defense Budget has gone up about 40 , over that same period, the chinese Defense Budget increased four times. The russians about three times. Just in a bit of context, we spent three times as much on medicaid today as we did during bill clintons time. So thats where the growth has been. Its been in mandatory spending its been with our adversaries. It has not been with our Defense Budget, and we are paying a price for it. Back to your point. My job is to describe what i think is necessary to fix the problems, and to try to be as effective an advocate as they i can be for the men and who risk their lives on the front lines to keep us safe. Thats what im going to do. I cant tell you how the washington games will play out. We haven tell you is, some serious not just real but there is damage that needs to be repaired our adversaries are not sitting still. Do wehanlon to do this need a repeal or reformulation of the budget control act . Only way to do it . Rep. Thornberry its not the way. You can keep adding oco to get to whatever number you want to, but its not a good way to do it. We ought to say, the budget control act was designed to bring mandatory spending under control. It is a complete failure. We ought to repeal it and try something else. As i say, five years of this, 50 of the cuts under the budget control act has been inflicted on 14. 7 of the budget. It hasnt worked. You. hanlon thank fifth row. E im the ceo and president of tape, small government contractor. Thank you for coming and talking to us today. My question is about Small Business. I recently saw an interview with you where you referred to mid tier. And mid tier is a term being thrown around which means inadvertently, the acquisition system currently punishes Small Businesses, inadvertently punishes Small Businesses for success. As soon as they pop out of the Small Business or small, Small Business, theyre big but not big. The Small Businesses and the mid tier group are some of the most innovative places. Can you address that subject and what you see for the future of trying to help that situation . Chair thornberry first, i completely agree with your premise. That much of the innovation thats going on today is with small and Midsize Companies. I cant define how many employees or revenue that is but the point is, theres a lot goes on aton that the big five but there is a ton especially for future systems, that goes on with Smaller Companies and im sure the big Defense Companies will be able to adjust to regulations d. O. D. Puts out. They can hire more accountants, more lawyers, they can adjust. Its really difficult for Smaller Companies to be able to do that. And so, i talked to a number of companies that will put in bids for something, but they dont hear an answer for a couple of years. How are they supposed to keep the doors open while they are waiting to get a response to the there . At they put in thats part of the reason i keep agility. N the idea of we have got to be faster. Faster at making decisions, faster in developing and fielding new capabilities, and small, Midsize Companies will be crucial for that. Mr. Ohanlon john, red tie. Chick feldmeyer, retired army consultant. Ent what is your view of the president s directive as it affects buy americans and flowing the requirements down to the second and third tier, and can we expect to see anything in the ndaa for fy 18 along those lines . Chair thornberry just back to a detail, on my commercial offtheshelf buy it on amazon businesstobusiness or some other portals, we leave in place the current requirements. Soh as buy america and forth. Think theres obviously several aspects to this issue. One of which is, its harder and harder to figure out in a Global Supply chain what is made in the United States and what is not. The other aspect of the issue is that there can certainly be implants of various kinds in equipment, and it is a challenge for us to know that the equipment we are fielding is bug free. For lack of a better expression. And so, we are never going to be able to be on either extreme of this. The world is too complex. We have to have mitigation strategies. But none of that can slow us down because, again, the worst the sort ofk agility that we were just talking about, i think. Here in the man sixth row. Good morning. Margaret cope, air force, retired. Im very familiar with the issues of cannibalization and maintainers. My question has to do with, last year on that House Armed Services committee voted to include women in the Selective Service act, and it passed in the house committee. However, then it went to the floor and didnt pass. It passed readily in the senate to be included in the ndaa. When we are talking about workforce development, over 50 of the population is women, we are sending a real negative recruiting signal to women that they arent wanted in the military, and why doesnt the house rectify this . All of the military chiefs have requested that it be done. Thats one question. Another one is, with the budget control act, why dont we consider an updated simpson situation . Chair thornberry i disagree with that is a message that is being sent to women, because of the Selective Service. Think the message is we need to step back and assess whether orneed Selective Service not. And then if we decide we do, to consider who should register. But you shouldnt get to the second and third tier questions before you answer the first question. The first question is, what is the role, if any, of Selective Service in todays world . That was the reason it came out like it did rather than jump to a second conclusion. Lets step back and we have appointed a commission that is supposed to look at all aspects of this, report back, and we will see what they say. Ended, what, 1973 or Something Like that . In many respects i think the all volunteer army has been an incredible success. One of the big reasons i say the problems we face today are in many ways different from what we faced in the 1970s is because of the success of all volunteer force. But it seems appropriate that however many years later, we step back and take a look, ok, is Selective Service needed, and, just one bit of context, depending on whose estimates you the, Something Like 70 of Eligible Age Group of young people are not fit for military service for a variety of reasons. So all of that social context, as well as military need, needs to be looked at in the broader sense before we get to the other. Why not another Simpson Bowles or some other name deal . Im for it. I dont know whether it will happen or not. If that can help us get to a better, more logical budget approach, im for any of that because certainly what weve the last few years has not been working. Mr. Ohanlon i want to build on beforeestion if i could we go to the audience again and ask you about how we think about the state of the military and today and how many people are willing to consider address thatwe question we go through ebbs and flows in the National Debate areo whether enough people thinking of joining the military. Address that an institution that most people are glad to have but not themselves n weve had this debate for a long time. Im wondering if you see this issue at thep tier moment. You mentioned 70 of the is considered not eligible. Should we try to change that in some way . You can imagine things like tree sign upp where people and they can join the military complete the phys ed camp. You could imagine letting people go out of the military and come back and more easily. You could imagine a campaign for National Service like Stan Mcchrystal proposed in which we at least try to send a message to those who are eligible, encouragement and appreciation and maybe some benefits if they join either the military or some other kind of service. On thated a debate right now . Or is that important but a issue . Tier rep. Thornberry was it good to those bookse of and has urgent, important quadrants. I do think its important. Urgent. Think its but i do think weve got to keep our eye on this issue. Ive been very sympathetic with the idea of National Service. Could we do, as some other countries have, a requirement that everybody spend a year or two and some form of National Service . We are a long way politically from that. I think it would have enormous benefit. At the same time, im not sure i foresee us ever going back to the kind of warfare that people,llions of requires of millions of people out on the battlefield which we need ainto, ok, do draft to draft them off the farms and factories, go through boot camp and send them over the beaches . Is that something we need to for . Contingency plans im not sure. But i do think that Civil Military relationship is important. That secretarys mattis edited before he became thattary looked just at particular point. And side note, we talk a lot about iraq. Theres a lot of ways to evaluate it. Its an interesting thing that is not discussed very much. If you significantly reduce the number of communities that have military bases near them, how does that affect the relationship between civilian sector and the military, or does it . It may. We need to keep our eye on changes in society and this evolving military, with more and more specialists, more and more highly trained folks, higher and higher demands on the people who serve, to keep that healthy. I dont think we can take that for granted. Michael thank you. Here in the seventh row. Suit. Man in the black keep coming forward. Thank you. Veronica cartier, think tank policy. R nuclear my question is about security prevention. Is there any budget place for Early Warning modernization for readiness to any mode of war, air, land and maritime . And will you speak about how current are we on the system . Thank you. Chair thornberry im not sure i understood the question. Michael Early Warning on Nuclear Matters . Early warning for nuclear . Yes. In case we have a conventional strike, how current are we on the Early Warning system here at home . Chair thornberry you have obviously the Intelligence Community and a number of systems in the military that are designed to help provide early for missileecially launch or for other kinds of indicators that we may need to of. On top i think the whole nuclear enterprise, from Early Warning to actually delivering strike has been neglected for 30 plus years, and is the Foundation Upon having a credible nuclear deterrent, is the Foundation Upon which the rest of our defense efforts rest. And so part of what you see, and what we need to do in the future, is to modernize every aspect from the Warning Systems to nuclear commandandcontrol to the Delivery Systems to the warheads themselves. But ill just say, in addition to that, we have to have part let me back up. The Intelligence Community has suffered just as the rest of the department of defense has suffered over eight years of c. R. s, five years of budget act, et cetera. Its not just missiles flying through the air that we need to worry about. Its submarines, all sorts of threats and having a robust Intelligence Community is essential to warn against all sorts of threats. It may benuclear, biological, it may be chemical sort. E other michael all the way back. Thank you so much. Scottie greenwood. Mr. Chairman, i be interested in your thoughts. Later this week the u. N. Is having some meetings with defense ministers. Then there will be nato defense ministerials, as well. I would be interested in your thoughts on multilateralism, engagement of the u. S. And various multilateral institutions, and in particular on nato, the president called it obsolete. Not sure if he still thinks that. What is your view on the role of our nato allies and u. N. Peacekeeping . Thanks. Chair thornberry i think nato has been the most successful alliance in history. I think the more recent comments the president and certainly folks in his administration have made reaffirm the importance of nato. I think the president has had a positive effect on encouraging nato allies to increase their contribution to natos defense efforts. And i read in the press that announcement an related to that in the next few days as the president is in europe. All of that is good. At this pretty simply. Cant do everything that needs to be done in the world. We have to have friends and allies and part of the concerns i have heard the most in recent hard is that its really to be your friend, as i have a of defense ministers and Foreign Ministers and ammeds, as bit. To travel a be athink we have to better friend and certainly trues true in nato, its in asia, its true all around world. And just one small example, weve got friends who want to come buy weapons and equipment from us, willing to pay cash, and we make it excruciatingly difficult for them. So improving our ability to sell, much less to provide, weapons and equipment to friends who can, as they become more capable, take some of the responsibility off of us, is one of the things we are looking at as far as the d. O. D. Portion of one example. Obviously i think theres a place for u. N. Peacekeeping. There are limits to what the obviously i think theres a place for u. N. Peacekeeping. Hello, chairman. Will your bill marked to somewhere in the middle deck of . This goes back to the soft bigotry of low expectations. People are cynical, and theres a lot of reason to be. It is the job of the military to help propose what they think is needed for them to execute permissions they are ordered. To make it falls to us those decisions. We ought to bear the spots ability of those decisions. Ive been concerned through the obama years about the military has not been willing to stand up and say this is what it needs. They hedge their bets because of either pressure they feel, or think is from leadership. And so, i worry that we start hedging our beds at the at thes bets beginning, where you end up his way down here somewhere, where is the real need we really lose sight of. My focus is, whats the need . We will have a discussion in the house about where we are with the budget process, where our mark ought to be, and take it step by step. I think its important to say ok, if you want to do these things, this is what it takes. If youre not going to do that at that level, youve got to be really clear and bear the responsibility for the things you are not doing. For the capabilities you will leave off, for the repairs you will not carry through. Here in the 8th or 9th row. Amanda withber mazon, jewish response to hunger. In addition, partners of ours have stated there is at least one food country on every naval and marine base in the u. S. Talked about entitlement programs, needing more flexibility. Food stamps is an entitlement program. How do you propose to address the issue that so many of our military are going hungry, and how does that fit in with the need for readiness and an effective Defense Force . The mostple are important benefits for our National Defense. You have to have pay for the most important part of your National Defense. We have had to ask for Additional Information on these issues as we look at it. It turns out that your eligibility for snap is dependent on the people in your household. Military families that are low ranked with a bunch of kids and they absolutely can be eligible for food stamps. Onhink what we have to focus is making sure that anybody who serves in the military has to pay and benefits that are appropriate for someone who is willing to in turn risk their lives for all of us. Anyone whodnt be falls into that category. But its more the focus of treating our people right. So, one of the big things weve had for years, as you will remember, is according to the formula, the military pay raise should be a certain amount. President obama, every year, had it lower. Last year, we required it to be at the level the formula said, which i think was 2. 1 . We are not talking gigantic money. But that is finally is what was enacted. But it was the exception. Every year before, it has been whittled away at least. 5 . So, i hope we are on a better track. Not only in how much people get paid, but ensuring that the benefits meet their needs. And so weve had commissary reform last year, we had tricare reform on the health care site last year, we have instituted a new retirement system which changes the 20 year are nothing approach the military has had for so long. Trying to update all of these benefits to be more appropriate for the times we live in has been something we just persisted in. Im going to take the last question, take the prerogative here to come back to this question of shortterm versus longterm. I know youve been an advocate of thinking about our National Needs across different domains , but also across different time frames. My question is less about your priorities than about the nations, and whether we are capable of addressing nearterm crises but also keeping our eye on the longerterm ball. As we see a lot of attention to the readiness problem, which is understandable and essential, how do we make sure that we think longerterm about everything from the Cyber Threats that defense has said may make our military forces vulnerable to serious hacking. Space satellites and other capabilities that may be vulnerable to being taken down quickly and not easily replenished, and we have become very dependent upon those. Taking advantage of trends in robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Are you comfortable that we are sort of at a fairly good path with some of these things, or is there some added impetus we need to give to those thoughts as well . Chair thornberry if i were comfortable, i wouldnt be doing all the reforms that we have. Back as we were describing i visited a number of small and Midsize Companies in robotics and other areas. D for me howe difficult it is to try to do business. Last week we had testimony from the 809 panel, and one of the witnesses was an executive for irobot. He described how he went to meet with wall street, and they advised them to get out of the defense business. Because of because of all the hassles, it wasnt worth the rate of return, and they did. Now there are a couple of spinoffs up in boston the people who were part of the company. That is what worries me. There is tremendous innovation and tremendous capability. The challenge we face is bringing it into the pentagon and to defense programs. More stable budgets. A little more flexibility in funding. In fundingty categories makes a harder. Businessculty in doing with the federal government, trying to improve that, all of those are key to help feed those things in as well as the approach we have laid out on is openion which as architecture and modular systems. You can make improvements as time goes on. There is a significant part of that our policy decisions. What do we expect the military to do to the spend defend the country in cyberspace . We have never come to grips with that. What about Unmanned Systems and the capabilities of that . What about Artificial Intelligence . All sorts of issues that are out there that we do need to be , but in order to have those options, we will have to have an acquisition system that pushes innovation more. One of the big restructurings we did lester was to break up a company to have a new undersecretary to just focus on innovation. There are offices that are workarounds that are doing some good things. But we have to bring the whole system of several levels in order to cap is what we need to for the country. Great way to venice. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Please join me in thanking him. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] this morning, russia and the 2016 elections. Tuesday, a hearing on efforts to identify and remove the individuals who overstayed their visas in the United States and pose a National Security risk. Where live from the subcommittee hearing starting at 2 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan3. Cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up, limiting the power of the federal government. Then, democratic congressman al green on his recent call to impeach President Trump. And documentary film maker michael kirk will join us to talk about his new film about white house strategist steve bannon. Beginning that live at 7 00 a. M. This morning. Washington journal, join the discussion. The announcer cspan, where history unfolds daily. Cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies and is brought to today by your cable or satellite provider. President Hassan Rouhani won the election last week, capturing 57 of the votes. Iranll hear about u. S. Agreements and the deal signed during the obama administration. The National Atlantic council hosted this event. If everybody could take their seats please i think we are almost ready to start. Welcome everyone. I am barbara and i direct the program at the council and i am