Discussing Current Operations and modern efforts. This is close to an hour. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. New at my virtual fireside, and improved, we are graced with the presence of Ryan Mccarthy and 40th chief of staff. Thank you both so much for being with us today. First i want to throw it over to the secretary and the chief for opening remarks. This is the closest i will get to switzerland. A great opportunity to be here. As we discussed in the green room, these are wonderful opportunities for us to talk about how we will transform the army. Effort, notssive only in how we train and modernize, helping our people reach their maximum potential. The third year of a massive , creating an organization to modernize the. Orce readiness, modernization and reform as a tool to help us evolve. Look over three years ago, two brigades. Very proud of that, but one of the things that we recognize with all the changes that we face in the world, is something that you will see particular interest in. They did a remarkable job getting us to focus. Now, how do you take these units and project them quickly, worldwide. We did that on new years eve. Team. Ed a brigade combat people out of parties. Moving heavy formations within days to get them on ground with partners in europe. We are getting boots on the ground quickly. Effortsive restructuring , reducing the decisionmaking. Forging better relationships between the Requirements Community and Acquisition Task sustainment. Prototypes because we moved 80 of the funding. That was about two years ago. Efforts, we have gone through our second evolution. Against these priorities. New capabilities. A huge change within our enterprise. If these prototypes are them into, bringing the formation to start to scale. Big challenges ahead of us. Helps us evolve as an institution. It helps us do a better job of managing every dollar. 4 billion a year back to the treasury. Continue to get better there. It is amazing how it works. It means that we have to get out more and communicate. We saw that on the we saw that on new years eve. The last hundred years or so we have had major transformations. In 1980, a lot of us came into the army and had a major transformation. We are talking about transformational change. We are not looking for incremental improvement. Just one aside. We are not talking about new equipment. We are excited about what is going on in the army and we look forward to your questions. Why we start these conversations . Says has ar birthday party. Turned two. It feels like the strategy is in the terrible twos. So, i want to start off by asking both of you, how is the army doing when it comes to being measured up . I will try not to grade to liberally. The proof is in the pudding. We would put our money where our mouth is. Those Weapon Systems have to get through. We put a very Aggressive Program in place where we can do these in europe and east asia. We will do one in east asia. Funding towards exercises. We are looking at his position in a capable basis. Headquarters. Ced they will operate in europe. Think we are a solid be at this point. B at we are going to fight as a joint force. , oure joint level contribution to that is made operations. Believe it will be contested in cyber, in space, and we recognize that. We recognize that there will be a lot of cross domain contributions. Probably one of the best examples is longrange decisions. Potential access or denial capabilities that will enable maritime or air force maneuver. I want to come back to that concept, but first want to dig a little deeper on the principal priorities with the competition between russia and china. How has the armys view evolved . About what theg armys role would look like . Last century we have always been in asia. How many people do we have assigned . 91,000 people. You see much more emphasis over the last years. Just in a hawaii come going through the plans. We made the adjustment and to invest in the capabilities. We have the defender exercise that we will put in place. We have doubled down on that, going forward. No greater deterrent. We are looking at the duration. Great competition does not necessarily mean great conflict. Strongonflict relationships with partners and allies. , on the capabilities side what does that mean in asia . Some have set up systems. To make it more difficult. It to be able to force and whatir that allows us to do a defined that capability. Is talking about the competition. I want to ask if we could dive a little deeper. Same thing in europe. Standing together with our allies and partners, showing. Trength it is an exercise that allows us to rehearse and bring forces into europe. The chief will watch an airborne drop and i will go watch him unload Armored Vehicles. You will be able to see us driving through cities. To be a great opportunity. Conducting various exercises. The secretary said, we saw that in iraq and the second airborne division. Multiple forces biplanes, automobiles and ships. That is what we tend to do. Clearly a lot of progress. The where does the work still need to be done when it comes to implementation . Modernization. We are blessed with budget increases right now. The chief and i have maintained a role in our jobs. We have such a massive investment. We can reduce your risk. We do very well. If there is a place where i do not worry as much, modernization is going to be tough. We are moving along. We have very proud of our modernization priorities. Success is in units. We are in the process. It means success when all these priorities are in the hands of soldiers. That is good an excellent segway. Before we get into the specific moreams, i want to ask broadly, what does modernization mean to the army aside from equipment. I talked a little bit about some of the old folks in the room remember the 1980s. It was the new way that we were going to fight. Our combat training centers, the way we would fight in the 1980s. It was a lot more than just the big five. We are moving to the main operations. We will have five of those. We are taking a hard look at information warfare. Now we are going to train in virtual reality. Can do those operation things that we need to do. Thing is power management. A lot of ways, Industrial Age is mitek systems. We are putting systems in place to do that. Young people today do not want to be interchanged with part. From there, lets move through priorities and talk about them. We talked about it a little already. How has your thinking about this development changed . . Ow does it contribute what does it look like in motion. We moved ahead. We are excited about this. From north,stance, hit with precision. Able to double tactical artillery that weekly. They have twice the volume. We are extending the range of these systems. It will give us greater ability to maneuver against potential in the future. The entire department against this effort. They are sharing the information. We are doing this jointly. The first to be feel this capability. 10 billion across the set up. We have put a lot of funding towards it. They have stepped up to the plate. When we take a look at how we deployed it, that is what it comes down to. An organization and we do not know what looks like, but we know what it will be able to do. It will be built around an organization. Intelligence, information and electronicer warfare. To doo had the capability longrange precision firing. Next is the combat vehicle. I want to talk about how it stumbled out of the gate, but what have you learned from that experience. Heres my point. This is for a lot of the industry that we are working closely with. We will do things differently in the army. Developcesses, where we documents over five to seven over to ourss them acquisition professionals. We developed a system and in 15 to 20 years, we come out the other in. Process. Anging our. Coming out. A list it means so much to those business. We are coming out with a list of characteristics. Well be asking the industry to come in with a design, probably other capabilities. Last them to come in with technology that would fit this design. We will incentivize that. We will go to a detailed design. Actually build it. Without spending a lot of money for requirements that we did not think were needed. I think it is interesting, particularly what you just described is a process that has a lot more ability to iterate , in order to solve the armys problems. You are applying those lessons across the board. We have industry and many of these people will have to change the way they do business. They are very comfortable with the process. I am more interested in the outcome the process. Is in our portfolio. Makes the industry goggles. That visual reality. Projectthat commercial and the interface, you can control the implications. We can put maps in there. Picture. N operating ambition. E what is interesting is what we learned in the process. Us. As granted to the speed of business. We go through the problems together. They historically help us with email and now they are helping us with night vision. Is thent he is making speed of business. It gets them excited about it and puts them in a position where their cash flows are better. That is the thing about transformational change by incremental improvements. We are doing the same thing with night vision goggles. Goggles anduy these got a little better. We came in from the side and now it is not just a night flight but a whole new way of doing business. That is what we are looking for in innovation. You can be in a vehicle from behind, under armour and looked through the walls. That is the way that combat soldiers do business. We are trying not to exactly what we want thats why we want to throw it out there. That is exactly what happened here. We didnt know microsoft was in the business when this thing happened. Didnt even know. The first time we went through it and convinced secretary mattis, we set up this house in the courtyard of the pentagon because we couldnt get him to go. We went and looked at it a couple months early and were looking at the synthetic training scenario and it was like dragons and spaceship and i remember looking and saying oh, god, we are going to get fired. [laughter] we did this in front of mattis. Like, whatopped, have we done . You realize the speed of that industry within like three or four months, they show up and its a near peer and you think you are in a city. It was within a matter of months how fast he could move the software. That has honestly worked out for us. But at the time, you think you but it is slow, remarkable the engineering talent of some of these companies. Yeah. Business is pretty smart. They built the mountainside out of camp and elton in the simulation. He got a chance to go through that with a near. Peer. The upgrade from the dragons. The fantasy game was not going to impress the gentleman. Certainly not. I want to look a little better about the network which is eggss of the wee priorities. They are forced, it was a big talking point for them. This idea of connecting and he censored, any sugar across the joint force. Army outpost of, how do the investments fit together . Because it is essentially adjourned thing that has to have. First of all, all the joint cheese support commandandcontrol this joint it is a different perspective, because we are on the ground with hundreds of thousands of users on the edge that need access. I think the secret is i have learned a lot more than anyone about it, and it is all about data. About how we transport the data. How we store the data. How we secure the data. We all talk about Machine Learning and artificial intelligence, but until you deal with the data problem, you really dont have a system. So what we are doing is criminally have an integrated command system which is tying our sensors to the shooters. We have an integrated Tactical Network that is bringing their communications that our soldiers need to the edge. The secretary has been all over the cloud and in data standardization. So we are bringing all of that together and working very closely with the air force, and we hope to have an agreement around the april time frame that brings this whole thing together so that we can communicate in reality and not on powerpoint slides with lightning bolts. Thats what we have to work out. [laughter] okay. Lets talk a little bit about air and Missile Defense. Seems like theres never enough eight to go around, right. Its one of those chronically highdemand, lowdensity assets. Also another one of the big six modernization priorities. I wonder if you can bring us up to date on where you are in that piece of the puzzle in terms of both capacity and improved capability. First, we are very, very proud of our air defenders. Theyre all over the world right now. Just went out to visit them. Theyre in the middle east, theyre in europe, theyre in korea and theyre doing an incredible job. So we are really proud of them. The future for air Missile Defense, though, is the way we see it is, is really sent to the shooters. Its not just one sensor for one missile system. Its having multiple sensors that are integrated and then you can pick them. The arrow, so to speak, from the quiver you want to use. We are developing high energy lasers, were doing things with microwaves, electronic warfare, we are doing things with missiles, we are doing things with guns, so what you dont want to do is take a look at some of the problem sets we see in the future that range from Unmanned Aerial Systems or swarms, you dont want to be shooting patriot missiles at small uass. You have to come up with sets to that t and then on the far side you have hypersonic missiles you have to deal with. What it really comes down to is a layered type defense that picks the right Weapon System at the right range and protects the forces. Thats where were going with that. Critical to successful Missile Defense portfolio will be lower satellite orbit architecture over the top. Without it, we are not going to have the ability to cue with speed and be relevant in the future. Of poking at risk a sensitive topic is that capability going to move to space force . Are we still making a determination . Well, with every merger theres divestiture, so i think that were in the process of helping stand that organization up. Well clearly have a role. We still have watercraft and we still have helicopters. Even though we have a navy and air force after the army was stood up first, obviously. I think over time the assets will divest and go to the space force, but weve worked very hard to help them with that. We have relationships with the nro and nga. Theyre working with our intelligence folks as well as helping us look at how do we cue satellites and test satellites at lower echelons. Were going to be doing that as early as this spring in the defender series exercise. As the chief talks about we get to this multidomain organization, a lot of it is the behaviors, bringing that down to an echelon like the brigade combat team, having leaders look at how they task an asset is something we havent done before. But the partnerships have been wonderful with the intelligence community, but things will change over the next couple of years as s matures. As space force matures. Susanna i want to talk a little bit about how the army is thinking about autonomy and ill paraphrase my old boss, bob work, who says, you know, if in the future the first soldier through the door is a human, weve done something is wrong. So i want to dig a little bit about, how are you thinking about autonomy and Autonomous Systems as you develop new operational concepts particularly in this multidomain environment . I like the idea of a personal loop, so to speak, but i agree with bob work, that i dont think that any place is a dirty or dangerous job that we can put a robot or autonomous we should do that. We should not be clearing mine fields with soldiers. We should be doing that with robots. We should not be going through breaches with soldiers. Going into an integrated air defense network, we probably should do that with unmannedtype systems. The interesting thing, i still think theres a need for soldiers or a person in the loop , because, you cant fail through if theyre completely autonomous, you really dont get a sense of what is going on. The second thing is, even those involved with remote operations, probably the best civilian example is if were doing this by video teleconferences or vtc, this would be a very different kind of session here. You cant feel the people. You cant look around, the person way back there is sleeping i am just kidding. [laughter] you look around in the room you get a sense of how youre coming across. Its still a situation where we want to have that capability and we look at some systems like even like with ivas, the fact that you can see and project yourself into a vehicle you can be in the lead vehicle but not physically be there. You take a look at an apache helicopter, we kind of do that right now. If youre in the back seat flying through a heads up display unit, but the system is actually in front of you flying the aircraft, so why cant you move that to the lead vehicle and you can sit behind or the lead helicopter, those type of things. So there is a lot of things we can do as you get this convergence of different types of technology. That is what we are looking for, start thinking about, how do you do those types of things differently . You can be the third vehicle, but for all intents and purposes, because youre looking through a heads up display, you think youre in the lead vehicle and you can help it out. Susanna the same could be true in the future vertical lift and the Helicopter Program . Absolutely. I see that same thing. Susanna theres potential for operationally manned platforms in that space . I look at operationally manned and mentally manned. Some of the things, ive been thinking, we got 35 rangers getting ready to go into this, you know, this attack and you put them in there, it would be tough if they look in the front of the helicopter and theres no one there. You know . [laughter] heres the deal. You know, were competing for pilots so maybe you dont have three or four crew members up there. Theres just one, and maybe that crew member is more there if something goes wrong or something changes. They have the capability. Thats just a different way of thinking about it. Susanna we might get used to it in the future as well if driverless busses become a thing. But then you have options , too. The aircraft youre flying youre going to do a very Difficult Mission where you have to get in the place and take something out or put cargo into that and you dont want to risk pilots. If they shoot it down, you just lose the cargo, with