So welcome to the annual lecture. Featuring our special guest general david berger in the marine corps. He is a true american patriot, he is making very exciting changes to the recorder and he is here to share with you. We are honored to have him here to hear his insights and to see what the future holds for the marine corps. We would like to think the sponsor for this event James Mcginley who makes a series of lectures possible. The annual colonel lecture always features an distinguished speaker talking about the topics of national security. In the past we have welcomed david hansen senator jon kyl and james mattis, a distinguished list and were very happy to have another distinguished speaker here today. The Foundation Also partners with the Marine Corps University foundation to host this event. And Lieutenant GeneralRichard Mills who is the president and ceo of the Marine Corps University foundation. General mills enjoyed a 40 year career at the marine corps and led marines all around the globe bosnia, somalia, iraq and afghanistan. He was also the priest enter marine corps to beat nato forces in combat. So to get this started we would like to ask all of you to join me in welcome General Mills to the heritage foundation. [applause] thank you good morning. Indeed im the chief executive officer of the ring core foundation. On behalf of the foundation is my privilege to welcome everyone to the shoes lecture. The foundation motto is educating 21st century leaders and war fighters in the mission is to enhance and enrich military education and Leadership Development to activeduty marines both officers and enlisted at the University Campus on board and throughout the marine corps. In addition to lectures such as the mckinley lecture we have ten chairs at the university and we have other seminars and special events to enhance leadership of our students on campus and off. It is our privilege to be able to part of the heritage foundation. Over the years it is brought forth numerous and Critical Issues our country and also is involved in a very engaging and interesting discussion following the speech. I have the unique pleasure to introducing not only our host to the event but the individual who is responsible for bringing us together. For whom this event is named. Colonel James Mckinley has spent his entire life protecting american interests here, at home and abroad. He is a 30 year rate officer who served his country in war and peace in numerous positions with trickle responsibly. I first ran into him in iraq in 2008 where he was serving in baghdad, he was a Deputy Commander at the chief of staff for an iraqi assistance group. We served again later in Central Command where he was a Deputy Commander for strike group five in the water of the gulf and afghanistan. Now that i think about it, every time i serve with him they will be shooting alice. [laughter] we have to be careful as we sit through this. Still as a marine aviator he plays heavy lift helicopters dispatched only by his legal skills during his legal career he deckard out individuals from fraud him practice in the medical field and was featured in Time Magazine or his compliments. However, he has not outdone his accomplishments by his wife this morning. Mary Beth Mcginley is a force to be reckoned with in or entertain world and artistic talent in her business skills. Ladies and gentlemen is my pleasure to introduce the namesake sponsor of todays lecture, james the mcginley United States ring core retired. [applause] thank you very much for that very kind introduction, i appreciate that very much and mentioning strike group five i look at my partner over here admiral harris who wa and were d to have him hereto. [applause] because this is a big week for marines i like to take one privilege and mention the general joe dunford is concluding 42 years of service and i would think our 38th would agree with me that the 36, not probably was one of the most general officers in my generation. And we complement him on his lifetime of service and what he has done for a country. I think also distinguishes himself as the first marine Corps Officer to have served and four star. An amazing, schmidt and amazing firing an example to all. With that we are in for a really exciting lecture today in the marine corps is constantly productively some critical and we look at our mission and how we are constructed and i think our new, nongeneral david berger will be a key catalyst for change at the right time as america reset coming off of iraqi freedom. Thjust to give you background, i think the partner jumped out of me in service for comment on is the fact that he had the combat team and had a very difficult time and did an extraordinary job, his Planning Guidance which has recently introduced over the summer, i think it does have a slice in which really looks at the selfanalysis and a real detailed look at force design, one course that jumps out at me, seek the affordable and plentiful as the expense of the exquisite, if you think about how we might only do that in the small marine corps but what that might mean for the rest of the public defense, i look forward to them on the issue and the implications it might have. Today i expect well hear about the marine corps orientation into the indo pacific and also the need for commanders ability to meet rapidly evolving future threats, i expect that will be a significant part of the challenges that all the services as we go forward in a more dynamic world. With that please join me in welcoming general david berger. [applause] sitting next to General Mills, we are infantry guys, so we look at the guy who introduced me and figured out in pensacola what aircraft we will fly he will not fit into a jet cockpit so he might fly helicopters. General mills is one of my mentors for life so intimidating to be appear and if i follow your footsteps and do half as good as you i would be really be happy. Its good to be here. Doctor holmes thank you for allowing me too be here as well. Its a privilege to be in that kind introduction and thank you for keeping it short. I have to think how you got that call sign bullet. Theres probably a story behind there. Real quickly, more help to me over the years then you all will understand. But he is a lot like me and he is a critical thinker and thats how i was trained to think, every path you go down questioning that and for continuing to do that please do not let obama at all. I thought this morning i would offer two parts to this. First i owe you some perspecti perspective, we publish the summer. I want to say i had the benefit of several months of knowing where i was going and when you have several months he can sit down and think and write. I contrast that with my battle buddy who has two weeks, that is not much time to think your way through so i was hugely beneficial of several months of time to think. The second part is to listen and to learn. I say that and i mean that genuinely. Your thoughts, your questions, your criticism and your poking out ideas is a very healthy thing and i welcome that in advance. Im thinking you and advance. And i think we start off talking about where ics. And the fact that were in an era of Great Power Competition and some might debate that for some period of time, i dont think thats open for discussion any longer. The National Defense strategy which you all are very familiar it acknowledges that and demands in no Uncertain Terms of the Services Change to meet the challenges of the new world. The guidance is very clear. I can tell you there marine corps embraces the components of the National Defense strategy and i think there will be domain Going Forward and everything that we do has to be aligned with that. The world obviously is changing rapidly. I would like to think those who had a hand over the spring and summer time shaping the deep thinking and before you publish this document that we had a chance to do. In your thoughts, criticism improve in places like this are petri dishes for that thinking and they are very valuable and i am asking you to keep challenging us. I think the realities will cause us to think differently going into that. I believe the realities of the world causes to draw old assumptions and start fresh. We cannot assume that todays equipment and the way we organize and how we train and select leaders, all the war fighting concepts, we cannot assume they will remain relevant in the future. My assumption promises, they will not. This requires unshackle yourselves from previous notions of war what it looks like in reimagining how marines will train, operate and how we will fight and it requires very honest assessment of our strength and wha weaknesses. Based on my observations and those of other folks, including a bunch in the room who have known for some years, i would like to tell you that our current force, your current marine corps to include a large part of the Program Marine corps is not optimized for great competition. It is not optimized to support enable campaign. It is not optimized to support permission like see denial and not optimized to deter abasing threat. So, that is a diagnosis and im asking you to ride along, you can have your own opinion but thats where i am so will go forward from there. Anyone who had a chance to read the guidance that we publish the summer, you will know and recognize that force these nine is my top priority, i think that is my principal vehicle for redesigning and realigning the marine corps as part of enable Expedition Force which is part of a joint force and all requirements that are layout in the strategy. So, with the summer in the last 30 or 45 days we have whether marine corps will need to go into the future. Heres where this is a little different, then previous attempts, not attempts but effort to do this. The task was truly do force design, look beyond the fiveyear defense plan, look beyond the manpower management cycles deeper, ten years into the future and imagine what force we will need based on assumptions about the pacing threat and mask that forced backwards to todays, not forward and there is good reasons for doing that. I dont think this is Ground Breaking necessarily but clearly threat based force design. To help those rationale the logic behind this, about three or four years ago while i was in hawaii during a congressional visit by some members that were traveling to asia over top of the math three time frames that i thought were relevant. I was talking about poor posture in the composition of the force. In arguably 50 51 until 1981, in 1990 when a very clear picture of who are pure threat was, it was a bipolar world in both conventional and Strategic Deterrence and play but they do who the opponent was. But all that changed in 1990 but 1990 until 2012 to 2015 mark 2016 we shifted deliberately into the capability of, we did not have a threat, we had advantages and resourcing. We went after capabilities, because we had no. Adversary, no. Threat. Along comes. Threats again into some in this room it is not back to the future but it is in a way and approach that some are familiar with with the 70s and 80s. That is where we are right now. We have a threat perhaps for conventional deterrence and Strategic Nuclear deterrence are in play and both are moving and advancing and in terms of a pacing threat which if you want to talk about later i took is a fascinating topic both return to gain an edge over each other looking for vulnerability on the other side sort of like a slinky. One aspect, if you have thoughts i would very much appreciate it, the sense if you set the pace of your runner or a nation you are breaking trail and working harder and spend more money. So your choices are, if both are moving in your inner. To. Scenario, do you want to set the pace, if so can you afford to do so because you will set the pace the whole time and if you dont youre in a rehab mode. And someone else is setting the pace. In my opinion in the last several years, to some degree we have let an adversary set the pace. I think all that requires tough choices, i am have to lewdly confident that we will get to a new design by making large changes, not small ones. I do not believe the annual pace of force development, that grind will not achieve what we have to do. There will be an ever widening debt if we have to do so. We have to do it for design and change your posture around the world. In other words i am not content and we should not be content to try to keep up. We should set the pace. There are some things we can introduce today in the near term, in terms of media effect and there are others that will take some years that will happen. We will make these adjustments. It will not be an overnight process. We are trying to visualize the force that we have a plan backwards, we will have to be flexible because adversaries making decisions in the world changes in those ten years. To adjust along the way. But a threat based design allows you to do that. It enables you to do that because the competition is not standing still. The next budget request for fy 21 which we are in the latter stages of finalizing was submitted to ost the summer and you will probably see some changes along the lines of what i refer to today because where we are in the budget cycle i think itll be the following year where youll see the bulk of them. Today i know it would be great and i would anticipate it be great if i can be very specific for force design. Id love to take a moment this morning to do that. It is the reason why. We have 8085 picture of what the marine corps will need in a decade. But this last step is so important because when we run that force against the threat ten years out over and over and over again to develop the analytical base that is the foundation in my opinion we need to justify that force. So i believe in experimentation in the Analytics Foundation were at that stage where were testing the force where we think we will need and that will conclude in a month or two and perhaps in the future it would be a great discussion to have. Were in the latter stage right now. Let me talk about the future in broader terms, three parts are relevant. First is an integrated naval force. To be competitive i believe in the Indo Pacific Region in the mediterranean and elsewhere around the world requires an integrated naval force, this is not a personality based relationship. I think both the navy and marine corps drive us towards an overlap in our unique roles and omissions. We have not focused on that aspect for 20 years. We have to get creative and when i say creative i mean what can the marine corps do, what can marines just to help the commander fight his flea, how does that contribute towards a joint fight. That could mean marines ashore with longerrange antimissiles, and you can visualize them as an extension of the fleets magazine basically. In other words air and ship based fires, you want to add options for fleet commander to get after the geometry challenges that we will have. It also means stopping Weapon Systems to the decks of ships and use all that happened a month, six weeks ago in the middle east passing through where counter you a system that we developed strapped on the deck of the ship very successful and will need to do a lot more of that. Its entirely possible that you can see marines doing rearming and refueling for the joint force for the naval force. That is certainly not a comprehensive list but different rolls in different mission sets for the marine corps Going Forward. Second for me is the concept of a stand in force. I think the question the advancements in technology and resourcing that china has put in to the Missile System tells you every word that we will operate and in a mere time environment you should plan on it being contested. So theres no way that we will travel around and complete control of all those domains and we will need to persist and remain inside the surveillance range and inside the weapon range of an adversary. And inside the envelope, heres why in my opinion, being inside if youre a stand in force allows you to maintain awareness and critical for the naval and joint force. Its very difficult to sense from the outside in. It is much more clear picture to sense from the inside so collection and understanding is very important. And you can also deter much more effectively from the inside than from the outside. Longrange deterrence loses its defects. There is a physical geographical aspect. Lastly in my experience in nato and indo pay, deterring is one half and reassuring your allies and partners being the other half. Being on the inside of a standin force does achieve the reassurance to allies and partners that is so critical its a huge advantage to the United States task. I think we will have to fight in a distributed manner, i am absolutely distributed maritime as a concept. We must distribute the force, for two reasons. One is because in a. To. Fight what you do not want to do is drive into the heart of Weapon Systems, you want to distribute your force so you propose a dilemma in multiple domains. The byproduct of disturbing as you become more survivable and difficult to detect. High think you will see naval formations much more to sherwood and i think thats right down in the marine corps in terms of empowering to make decisions on their own. I think it drives into the heart of expeditionary spaces which we are very good at but have not done operationally in a wild but those advances give you the agility and sustainability we will need. As quoted earlier i am absolutely a believer in the plentiful over the exquisite and expensive. We spent a lot of