Buckeye broadband supports cspan as a public servicelong with these other providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. Our coop next, a group of generals and admirals from the six branches of the u. S. Military discuss modern welfare warfare and preparedness. Topics include collaboration within the military and industry and Lessons Learned from regions and conflicts such as the indo pacific and the Russia Ukraine war. This discussion was part of the center for strategic and International StudiesGlobal Security forum. Its about an hour and 20 minutes. Ladies, we are back. Thank you for joining us. I would like to introduce dr. Seth jones, Senior Vice President and director of the International Security program here at csis. Seth has done work on the Defense Industrial base, china, ukraine, israelgaza, terrorism, many themes likely to come up in his panel discussion. We are fortunate to be joined by all six vice chiefs of staff of the military services. The theme of todays forum is gathering strength, how we must use american strength to navigate these security challenges facing our country. Our military forces are a source of american strength, but our military advantage is not guaranteed. The panel will discuss what it takes to maintain that advantage and prepare for the environment we are facing. I am pleased to hand off to seth. Dr. Jones thank you and thanks to all the team who put this Security Forum together. Where we sit, for those of you just joining us, is we started off looking at broad strategic questions. We will move from this from the intelligence picture to the thoughts of the chairman of the joint chiefs, and we will move in the afternoon to the Defense Industrial base and then emerging technologies. The theme of the Global Security forum really does pick up on Winston Churchills the gathering storm, as carrie mentioned earlier. His book the gathering storm, which came out in 1948, looked at geopolitical changes. I am in the middle of reading Andrew Roberts 1000 page biography of churchill. It also feels a little likely the churchill position in the 1930s where he is looking at german rearmament and pushing the u. K. To take the threat seriously, which much of the leadership in the house of commons and within 10 downing street does not take the threat seriously, which puts the british in a difficult position as the germans start to move on poland and other countries. I would like to start with general mingus first, then general mahoney, then open up to anybody else. I want to start with the current wars both in ukraine and the middle east. The focus of the panel thanks to all of you for joining is on the future of warfare, but part of the question is, what are you seeing, general mingus, as you look at ukraine, now in its third year . I was over there a few weeks ago to talk to senior Ukrainian Forces about innovation. There is a lot there. We would certainly fight differently. In many ways we have different cap abilities, precision strikes, logistics, electronic warfare. When we move over to the middle east, the active war in gaza, the back and forth fighting we have seen along the lebaneseisrael border, the red sea dimension, the iranian strikes against israel and the israeli response. As you look at where we are and where we have come from following the russian invasion, what are you seeing in terms of some of the primary lessons from the current wars and how are you looking at adapting and evolving the army based on those . Gen. Mingus i would start with 2014 instead of 2022. 2014, a lot of people forget that thats when this really started. We have had teams embedded in europe and ukraine since the original incursion in 2014. It has obviously gone to a different level after 2020 two. We continue to pull all those things. We embed those in our combat training centers. I will go back to the gap analysis we did in 2015. Our adversaries have watched us for a long time and as such to the conclusion they dont want to get into a close fight with United States. They have developed a series of tactics where they want to sense further, shoot further, disrupt us further so they dont have to experience the close fight component. The proliferation of technology, the fact you cant hide anywhere. There, land, sea, space. We are trying to learn from that. Where we are trying to go inside the army is the ability to counter that. It boils down to command and control, longrange precision fires, how we keep pace with technology when it comes to unmanned systems, how we pull that together in the way we will fight today and in the future. Working with the services here today, a lot of the lessons are universal but at the end of the day we have to match the adversary when it comes to longrange precision fire and command and control. Dr. Jones if i could follow up, one item that the war planning concept highlights is the war fighting maneuver. How are you thinking about the maneuver . Gen. Mingus the cornerstone behind the joint fighting concept 3. 0 is the term expanded maneuver. We have expanded the definition of maneuver. Maneuver in the classic sense is geographical, movement and fire. You move to replace better fire on the adversary and you place fire on the enemy so you can move and those things are inextricably linked. You can also move in cyberspace, in space. You can have effects in cyber and air. The classic definition of maneuver, which is one of the nine principles of war, has expanded and we have to embrace that. Dr. Jones general mahoney, i wonder if we could come to you next, then im going to move to the red sea and open to anyone else. Gen. Mahoney maybe just a couple of fill ins on a great response from my fighting mate. The first thing is if you are facing a confident adversary, the idea of short and sharp conflict is probably a thing of the past. If we look at ukraine two years plus on, that has been the definition of not short and sharp. When we go to the red sea, we can talk about our counter moves against the houthis. They are difficult to uproot. Protraction in time is a foregone conclusion and that connotes the requirement to remove, reset, repair, reintegrate into the fight. It also connotes depth, which we see right at the forefront of ukraine with the National Security supplemental just past. If we think that is going to be limited in time due to our choosing, we may want to think again. The second was brought up with a different perspective, observation. You will be seeing in the individual spectrum, dem spectrum, so you have to integrate the ability to either camouflage, deceive, maneuver in order to make that observation less consequential. We are seeing that in spades in the ukrainerussia example. May be specific to marine corps capabilities, in the black sea and certainly the red sea, but all of it can be contained to the black sea until we move on, is the idea of land impacting the c word maneuver space. Small, distributed units with the ability to sense and fire has sunk at least 13, 15 russian ships. Nelson said a ship is a full to fight a port. When they did, they figured out that maxim, though old, is still true. Mahan said without protection from the landward side, you have a fortress fleet where the fleet cannot sortie much beyond its protection from the land. We have seen that happen in the black sea where the russians have enabled a corridor to open up and enabled more freedom of movement by the ukrainians. Small, maneuverable distributed units that have longrange precision flyers is a big lesson for us. Dr. Jones one followup is one of the challenges both with the russians and ukrainians as the war has been protracted is there Industrial Bases and ensuring that forces on the ground have sufficient artillery fire, air defense capabilities. How do you think, as we look toward the possibility of protracted conflict, how are you thinking about, whether it is stockpiles or the broader industrial basin, some of the challenges we have . Gen. Mahoney i think on the far backside, you need to have an Industrial Base that can produce at scale right now war ramp up quickly to build that depth of magazine. We have to have the ability to source those weapons at the time and place of our choosing. You need a different relationship right now between the operating forces as it goes back through to the Defense Industrial base. You just wrote a piece on empty bins about the timeframe through wargames where we would go through some of our preferred munitions in a matter of days, if not weeks. There has to be an appreciation for that on the military side and the Defense Industrial base side. Can i throw a red flag for pandering to the moderator . [laughter] i am not done, jim. [laughter] i am just starting. [laughter] dr. Jones i have lost control of the panel right now. I want to make a comment and then i will go to the red sea piece. I wont quote mahan but i will quote Steve Majewski from 2020 when we did a panel about force design from the marine corps. He said something about flipping the script. We tend to think of marines going from sea to shore and that flips this script. Whats happening in the black sea as evidence to that effect, that we should look forward and think about, and you are doing that and we should do that. From a red sea perspective, it takes a joint force. Everybody brings something to that game. The navy brings a mobility aspect with the marine corps when we dont have basing rights that are helpful. And we didnt at the beginning of this conflict. We found every day we have to adapt. The adversary was going to adapt , change their tactics, watch us. We should assume thats going to happen and get better. What we have to do from a Technology Perspective is tighten up the data reduction and introspection of, did the system perform as we thought it would . If it didnt, what can we do about that . Did the humans perform as they thought we would . If they didnt, what can we do about that . And provide that lesson to the fleet. To me there is a quick learning cycle that can be applied, now aided by technology to take that data reduction, send it to shore, and see what the system did. That is to our benefit. We should use it for every ounce we can provide. Dr. Jones one issue that has come out of the red sea is we are certainly trading off when we shoot down drones or cruise missiles, some pretty expensive systems for particularly some of the drones. The ua asked has some pretty cheap ones. How are you thinking about, as you look to the future, ways to counter you af uaf that is a slightly better tradeoff on cost . There is definitely emphasis on counter uas. Navies focused on it from both a shore and ship perspective. We need to do more work there. When people learn me into that discussion, i pushed back and say the crew of a ddg is worth more than that. Where we are now, we have a shot, we should take the shot. We put those Commanding Officers in a very tight box where they have 10 to 15 seconds to make the decision. Lets encumber that, and you put your ship in a position where you can maximize the effect of that. And then lets go reflect on this and figure out a better way to do this through some directed energy, electric warfare, highpower things in the future. I think we are looking at that and we appreciate the quickness of our system to look at the ability for some of our Electronic Systems libraries to update them and that has increased the pace in the red sea. The Intelligence Community has played in this and reached the same parody as us with our combat systems. I think we just have to keep doing that. If i could add a couple of things on counter uafs, it is an acute threat we are putting a lot of time and resources to figure out how to counter that. Longer term, it has to be viewed through the broader mr. Defense architecture because it is defending through the air. The way all the services have looked at that problem is we defend points on the ground or a spot on the ground or a critical asset or something fixed. We have to change that approach and look at it more likely would in a typical defensive posture where you establish engagement areas and you have things that can disrupt and break, and you have that last line of defense. We are the same way when you look at the engagements. A missile is relatively expensive but i would never question an operator, do i shoot at 20 kilometers or wait until it is one or two kilometers out . So you are never going to sacrifice decisionmaking at the tactical level. The flexibility of the joint force to readapt and provide additional layers should not be lost on an aircraft. Shooting down cruise missiles from the air force, navy, and marine corps. To me thats another thing to do what jim said, lets not put ourselves in the box. This jim, by the way. There is a couple of us. Its going to get confusing. We like to sit together to confuse people. Dr. Jones i wanted to open up to see if there were any other comments on this issue. What i would offer, first, thanks and having read your really excellent [applause] [laughter] frankly should have been a Pulitzer Prize winner in my opinion. Dr. Jones you are just trying to get softball questions. Adm. Kirby the best way to deter is to be perceived as being prepared to fight. As we think about the strategic environment, where in many ways these are the inner warriors. You started off talking about the gathering storm. What was going on during the gathering storm . The spanish civil war. There were a lot of lessons to be learned in the spanish civil war. You wonder whether things like ukraine and what is going on in gaza and the red sea, is this the spanish civil war of our era . Shame on us if we dont learn the lessons we need to learn to more effectively deter so we dont have the storm that may be gathering. When you look at lessons we ought to be learning right now, i think for the air force, for a long time we boastfully said no american has been killed by air attack since 1953. We cant say that anymore, and we cant say that because our traditional conception of what things like air can air superiority mean have changed. Quad copters with a hand grenade can kill an american just as easily. As we think about what air superiority means in an era of proliferated small uafs and one way attack drones and so forth, i think there are some lessons to be learned. We are soaking that up right now. The other thing, general mingus talked about movement and firepower. One thing you can look at in ukraine is it is the return of firepower. The reason it has become so bloody is because of the lack of ability to maneuver. One component of that is the inability of both sides to achieve air superiority in the face of a proliferated air threat and formidable air defenses. I think there are some lessons we can be learning and frankly are. You asked about the exchange ratio. Our Coalition Forces had a pretty successful weekend a couple weekends ago against a really concerted iranian attack on israel. You asked about exchange ratios. Some of what was shot down was shot down with bullets. 20 millimeters shells coming out of the front end of a fighter. That is a pretty favorable cost exchange. I dont know that that is scalable, but we are thinking about, as general mingus talked about, this layered defense. I think it showed the value of our work several weeks ago. Dr. Jones if i could ask one followup, because you mentioned air superiority. One of the challenges in areas like the pacific is in and around bases. How are you thinking about air superiority in the construct of base defense . Including air defense. I realize this pulls at least the army into this response as well. How are you thinking about the joint this that is necessary jointness . To guam, for example. Guam is a particular case study, but its a broader question than that. One of the comparative advantages i think the u. S. Enjoys, and there are a host of them, Capital Markets is a comparative advantage. Innovation in the commercial marketplace is an advantage. Empowered ncos and petty officers across the joint force are a competitive advantage. Another one of our comparative advantages are our ability to operate jointly. I can tell you on the topic of air defense specifically, there is not a closer relationship than that specifically between the army and the air force inside the department right now of jointly attacking this problem, looking at the analysis of what are the most effective ways to contribute to air defense, and i am encouraged by oz leveraging one of our comparative advantages, which is our ability to work jointly. Dr. Jones either of you on current wars . We will come back to lots of other questions. To build on what jim just talked about, we are seeing that more than we have ever before and i think it is something that our near peer adversaries counted on against us. They did not think we would be able to fight joint or with our allies or commercial partners. What we are learning from not only whats going on in the middle east but especially ukraine is we are bringing all this to bear simultaneously on adversaries, but the adversary is also bringing similar to bear against us. It is requiring us to be more integrated in Network Going forward and that is where we are spending our energy. In our roles as vices, we find ourselves in similar forums where we meet and discuss problems at a joint level. We also go to the dmac, a similar forum, to do that. I think acknowledging the reliance on each other from a program perspective, like i need some stuff that the spaceports is going to give me if i am going to close the longrange fire or the air force. That understanding requires us to be a little less parochial and more thoughtful. The effort that has been going on for quite some time is an imperative. How we get there is what we need to focus on so we collectively can benefit from each other. A micro example of a Success Story we jointly share with the marine corps im sure other services have them going back to your question about Industrial Base and Les