Here. You can watch the rest of it online at cspan. Org. We go watch the heritage foundation, where Lieutenant General thomas ford is set to speak on his report on modernizing the u. S. Army. Im told we dont necessarily have to talk about silencing cell phones, but im going to save anyway. We usually have a robust online audience and we want to minimize distractions. Thank you for joining us. We are going to talk about a new report on rebuilding the army. Its actually the third paper out, the first talked about how to think about the future, and we released one in the marine corps. This is a major paper on the army, and how to think about its relationship with National Security strategy and how the world is changing, and some recommendations for the path of with ay needs to go down look out to a 30 year timeframe. We will follow off with a paper follow up with a paper on the air force next month, wrapping up by the end of the year with a paper on the navy so we have all four Services Covered and thinking about preparations for the future. Give ane meant to independent perspective, advice, recommendations to the administration, to the military service in particular, leaving officials in the Defense Department and hopefully informs deliberations in congress. Ago, the armynths embarked on a major effort driven by then secretary of Defense James Mattis with a real focus on getting back to an age of compete peer competitor fights with major opponents such as russia and china. This outside of regular warfare, which is what we have been doing for the past 18 years. Participating in the discussion spohr, the author, tom who directs our center for National Defense here at the heritage foundation. He served in the army for 36 years, retired in 2016. He has been leading the defense efforts. The discussion will be miss johnson. She is a land warfare reporter for the defense news and has covered defense matters in the d. C. Area for about eight years. Previously a reporter at andy recipient of the best analytical reporting reward into award in 2014. And best young a defense journalist in 2000 18. I dont know how long you get to arry young as a title [laughter] we will turn to a great discussion, then open it up for q and a. When we get to that point, we will pass around a microphone, please identify who you are so the online audience knows who is speaking. We try to keep focused on questions, not personal statements. Thank you for being here, and for those watching online. And tom, thank you for your report. This has triggered a decent amount of discussion and debate in the army community, which is a good thing. We will dive deeper into those issues in my in our conversation. It is a good time to be making suggestions to the army, they are in the process of developing them multidomain operation concept, looking at force structure and heading down and ambitious and an ambitious path of modernization. Talk about how you went about researching and how your background applies to what you are doing. Thank you everyone for being here today, and thank you for moderating this discussion. We embarked on this project, we called it rebuilding americas ago. Ct or ramp two years we did not know what would be happening when the papers came out. Suggested, as you suggested, the armies in the process of a major change of leadership, secretary mccarthy has his confirmation hearing next week, the chief of staff it was a clean break point where the army could reevaluate where they are and take a look at things. As the introduction said we have a new National Defense strategy. Even though it was january of 2018, in army terms thats like yesterday. People say why havent the army or department of defense adapted to the new strategy . Its worse than turning an aircraft carrier. It takes years to turn an organization like the army. I think this paper came out a good time. The bipartisan budget act passed a month or two ago in Congress Gives the ability to the army to focus on their future, versus continuingterm resolution, shutdown, how will we get through these months . They now have the luxury, assuming congress does what it needs to do, to think about their future in an intellectual way, which is rare in washington, d. C. Most of our research at heritage is focused on the nearterm fight, we write about the natural Defense Authorization fighter and things on congresss plate. This is different for us, looking out further. And i thought 36 years in the army, i thought i knew a lot about the army, you would think that i did, but it turns out i didnt. Ive never been a futurist, i was always consumed on how do we get the current task done. , i had to stretch educate myself on the army before i started writing this paper. I heard the flow floor the folklore of general sullivan and just accepted it as a young officer. This made me go back and learn it. It was hard, but i liked it. Areast are some of the that you looked at, and what are your conclusions . It ry to look at all of tried to look at all of it. I spent a lot of time in the pentagon in particular, and equipment monitors nation. Monitorization. I wrote about problems that i was familiar, equipment modernization, talent, management, i looked at the concept and i will admit that im not a conceptual person. I reached out to a lot of people, including some in this room for their thoughts. Ive had to go to interviews because i dont live in a conceptual world. Theres a whole group thats almost a career field in the army that thinks about concepts. I was never in that group. So i had to talk to those kinds of people. By and large, my conclusion that i reached fairly early on was that the army was on the right path. A wholesale revision of the armies modernization plan was not needed, there was course correction, i saw some areas where the tapestry was fraying around the edges and they could tighten up the story and justifications for things. Some places where i could not frankly understand why they were pursuing particular modernization programs to the degree they were, longrange strategic canons fall in that category. I did my best to understand, but there could be things that are classified and they were not able to share with me. Another example is the requirement for the optionally manned fighting vehicle. I did my best to understand them only to find out that they are o and i cannot get them. Thei cannot understand why army was pursuing that vehicle. I looked at manpower, how big should the army be, how cliche they grow their force how quickly should they grow their force . And i found some areas where i think they should develop some new organizations. Diving into the modernization they are seem to think on track. But this is obviously complicated and they are moving quickly. Theres a lot of room for error at this point. It sounds like since its early on, course correction could be good. What are some of the future challenges they could be facing in modernization plans . , luckooked at the history plays an underappreciated factor. You could have the best conceived plan, and if the world environment changes in your army needs to go do something, fight a fight, you are not able to modernize to a degree. Maybe you could salvage some aspect of the program, but you will not be able to carry out the plan you had envisioned. That did not occur in some cases. The army kept driving on, thinking that whatever we were fighting was going to go away, and we could continue with our plan. You see that with scs. They tried to go down the path system,uture comeback in the end, the counterinsurgency fight won. Thats not the first time but it was the most salient example to me. So luck. Not,hether you like it or the armys funding once every 15 years. Yourenot monitor if trying to keep your service alive. Until the best you can you get an influx of funding. Your serviceotect and modernize. Its too hard. That was something i realized. I think the army is doing a good job. In one of the things that was underappreciated to me was the difficulty of facing two threats simultaneously. We talk about russia and china. Its almost a high sit a hyphenated word, russiachina. One level below that they represent different threats. China representing a maritime and air threats, russia more of a conventional ground threat. For the time being, they are using the same concept and same types of equipment to address both threats. My senses, over time, that will be harder as the threats diverge and china becomes more capable. It will be harder to manage that duality of threat while also maintaining a counterinsurgency capability. You talk a lot about successes and failures. You mention fcs, can you dive deeper into the successes and failures that we have seen in the past . Do you think the army is applying Lessons Learned . Yes. I dont like calling them failures because its so pejorative, but i Start Talking about the pentatonic division, which is the focus on Nuclear Weapons under eisenhower and how the army was in danger of becoming irrelevant. The chief of staff was persuaded to change his entire force and focus on nuclear warfare. So he created the pentatonic division which had five large battle groups. The idea was so big a division, so dispersed that it could survive Nuclear Attack and employ Nuclear Weapons. They rushed into this design, maybe before it was fielded, people figured out this was not what the army needed to be. It was an example of where they rushed into a design, started designing a fourspeed or they had the concept designing a force before they had the concept figured out. Traderward to pew and dock. There was a concept called active defense in response to a huge soviet army threat in central europe. How do we come up with a concept to fight this . Of the up with an idea fighting in an active defense, and falling back to various positions of strength. The dilemma was that he did not share the concept widely with the army. Just a small staff group at the headquarters. When he finally uncorked this bottle of wine, if you will, it was not met with acceptance. Acceptance in the army is really a critical aspect of whether a concept will succeed. He kept it close and when he brought it out, and because he had not shared it and it had this countercultural preference for defense over offense, all of the military services tend to culturally favor the offense, it did not catch on. I was not in the army at the time, but i could sense that the moment i came into the army how we had this concept that nobody bought into. In terms of successes, those are more fun to talk about. I will talk about the stryker brigade combat team. Conceived as an interim force by , andal shin czechia fielded in a record amount of time. It was the idea that we wanted an interim force with stryker brigade combat teams maneuvering in the area of kandahar, rather, iraq. We got that concept up and it was an example of how when you set your mind to something and you have cohesive leadership and locus focus, it can come together. Another example is task force modularity. In the middle of iraq and afghanistan fights, when the army was scented with the requirement more combat team than it had, it modularized the brigades and made more of them. They were self raining, org selfsustaining, all activities were organic to that brigade. It happened in almost 18 to 20 months. It was really a quick effort. And the classic example most. 2 iscers went to airland battle. To is air land battle. Precepts were followed in changing the army. They werent likely paired, a great team, they did the homework, they spoke to everyone. In the end it was a concept that serve the army well for 10 years. The more controversial parts of the paper is regarding reordering prioritization. You said longrange precision fire should be kept at the top but you suggested bumping next generation combat vehicle and future vertical lift from the number to zen three spots. And working the network up to number two. Could you talk about the reasoning with those recommendations. The moment my paper was withshed, my inbox lit up a number of people interested in my reordering of the modernization priorities. I dont how the army established their first round of priorities they did not share the rationale, but i use a simple , in the method multidomain concept, how important is this capability to the successful execution of multidomain operations in the year 2030 . Looking forward, reading the concept and accepting it for what it is, how important is this capability in this concept, and looking at the current force we have today, how close is that capability we have today to what we need in 2030 . Fleet ofe a wonderful soldier lethality weapons in mind, we are already where we need to be to execute multidomain operations. I took that very simple matrix and applied it to the six modernization areas. In multidomain operations, longrange precision fires are critical, and we are in poor shape today. Longrange precision fires came out of the top. And if youre going to employ any of these capabilities, especially in multidomain operations, the network is key. Talksdomain operations about the rapid and continuous integrations in fighting domains. If you dont have the network to do that, you cannot do those operations. Down the line,nt air and missile defense, we are in poor defense poor shape. It came out number three. And just on down the lane. To make the list of the six modernization priorities, the main thing is importance. Future vertical lift came out and number six but that does not mean its not important. That is six in a list of dozens upon dozens of army programs. That you may number six should make you feel really good. That was not respect reflected in the correspondence i got from my friends. It was useful for me. Army,t presume that the as a result of my insightful analysis, will change their modernization priorities. But the next time they update them, if theyh could release their rationale for how they came up with that listing, so i could say yes, that makes thence makes sense. Track thecould not on the multidomain concept of their modernization priorities. Its an important point, and something i asked a few days ago , what was the rationale for the priorities . And i did not really get a straight answer, but one thing mention was that the adam to see that the priorities are not going to change the adamancy that the prioritys are not going to change. Of respondingob to that, i have been on the cynical end of this business, and often we would say where do we have the most money and where we most at risk . If we have billion dollars in it makesmy aviation, sense that aviation is the number one priority. The pentagon view of the world, a budgeteers view of the world, its not necessarily the correct view. And defunding were to change, priorities could shift and if funding were to change, priorities could shift. Could you present some of the counter rationale, especially in future vertical lift and x generation combat vehicle. A lot of the feedback was positive. Including from the chief of staff of the army and the secretary of the army. I ask met with the chief of staff of the army and we discussed this concept for 90 minutes. I was do to meet with secretary mccarthy later this month. They been receptive to my ideas and appreciative of an outside opinion. I dont want to characterize this as the army circling its wagons. They are not. I sent a copy of the draft papers and it was sent to the fourstar contemporaries and army major commands, and it has filter now throughout the out the army throughout the army. But i have been asked about my rationale, aviation being one of them. Most people say you dont understand why future vertical lift is so important to the future of the fight. I said i think youre probably right. I think im one of 10 people who read multidomain operations cover to cover 10 times. I have held it to the light trying to interpret it and could not find an overwhelming argument in favor of the future vertical lift. That was one criticism. Ive gotten some criticism about the priority that i ascribed to nextgeneration combat vehicles. It could be that i just cant see how they establish their requirements. That it must carry this number of soldiers, have a 30 millimeter gun with an option for a 50 millimeter gun, all of those things. Its hard for an outsider to look into the armys rationale and why they are making the requirements they are for that vehicle. Mentioned int you the next generation combat vehicle bucket that it would be an optional command fighting vehicle to replace the bradley, that the army back off the initial requirement to have the vehicle be optionally manned, or autonomous. Talk about why you feel like that should be dropped . I was able to ask the next generation combat vehicles director about that and he argued that if we dont put it in the requirements now, and we think about it too late, it will be more costly to incorporate later. Talk about why its potentially important to back off of that . I think autonomy and robotically controlled theres a future for that in the military. Such as ity network, is today, is not sufficient enough to do what is supposed to do today, much less take on the burden of controlling autonomously or robotically controlled vehicles across the battlefield. It just isnt. If you think about what a robotically controlled vehicle will need, multiple video feeds. You will want to see in front of your vehicle, presumably to the side and did the back and in the back. Now your streaming over your feedsk four or five video and 90 want to stream fire control and navigation and driver can troll to somebody control to somebody. He started doing the math on megabytes per second required if you start doing the math on megabytes per second on a otic tree care to her robotic infantry carrier maybe at some point it will be possible but not today. Today, we cannot make an Autonomous Car that can drive on interstate highways. And now you want to take this Autonomous Vehicle and drive it across the National Training center in fort irwin, in ditches, at night, with all of those complications, its an extraordinary requirement for a vehicle to operate like that. Especially a combat vehicle, where you have to be certain that when you push that button that you are pointed at an enemy versus a friendly. Its useful to have the hookups. You want the wires in the chassis already, so if you want to drive this vehicle at some point robotically, that the wiring is in there and the connections are there. But the place where the box would go that would control the vehicle robotically should be empty right now. And it should not be contributing to either the cost or testing requirements of the vehicle because we could field it today and the army network is years from being robust enough to support t