Readiness of our u. S. Armed forces. Today we are joined by nearly 1000 who have registered for this very important event. Despite our attention being focused on other things in the lead up to the election there may be no more vital of a topic for our country then this. Americans have had the good fortune of living in unparalleled freedom and prosperity for nearly 250 years and these gifts are maintained by a powerful and ready military that prevents our adversaries from destroying what so many of us as americans have had the opportunity to experience. President Ronald Reagan said that a truly successful military is one that because of its strength and ability and dedication wouldnt be called because no one would dare provoke it. He calls it peace through strength and that is how we won the cold war against the biggest enemy in history. Yet, in a time when those nations are reeling from a deadly disease outbreak, racial unrest and economic upheaval to many citizens and lawmakers argue that america has two turn inward and ignore the many outside threats to our country. But, we know we cant do that. Our adversaries are looking to grow stronger and north korea threatens missile strikes, iran continues to be the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Russia and china, their governments have attempted to influence our election, invaded our allies and spread propaganda throughout our media. They also continue to build up their militaries to use for aggression not to maintain peace. The u. S. Has maintained military superiority for so long that many take it for granted but it is far from guaranteed. If we dont continue to invest in replacing decadesold ships, planes, tanks and other equipment you will soon fall behind. And then, it may be too late to catch up. Given that our forces may also fight outnumber we need to look at every option to ensure that they are welltrained, well prepared for the rigors of combat and finally, we need to always consider what we can do to take better care of those who are willing to put their lives on the line for this country. The department of defense under the stellar leadership of secretary esper has pledged to rebuild u. S. Military readiness and they have made great progress. There are challenges that still remain. The secretary is here today to tell us what we, as a nation, must do to preserve americas founding promises of peace and prosperity and freedom. And how we might help. But first, let me give you a little background. Doctor mark espers graduate of the u. S. Military academy and saw combat in the gulf war with the 100 first airborne, screaming eagles, the only air Assault Division of the u. S. Army and later commanded a Rifle Company and an airborne battalion combat team. After leaving active duty this highly decorated veteran chose to join us here at the Heritage Foundation and serve as our chief of staff while continuing his military service in the National Guard and the army reserve. He eventually left heritage and became a senior staffer about the Senate Foreign relations and Senate Government affairs committee. He also was a policy director for the House Armed Services committee and the First National security advisor for former Senate Majority leader bill fritz. He also served as a Deputy Assistant secretary of defense under president george w. Bush. Later, he was working on number of privatesector positions positions, including chief operating officer and executive Vice President at the industries association, executive Vice President of the u. S. Chamber of commerce and Vice President for Government Relations at raytheon. He was nominated by President Trump in 2017 and confirmed as a secretary of the army. In 2019 he was nominated and confirmed as secretary of defense. It is truly an honor and privilege to welcome to the Heritage Foundation and welcome home, i might add, one of our distinguished alumni and a dear friend of this organization. Secretary of defense, mike esper. Secretary esper. Good afternoon everyone and enqueue k for that very kind and generous introduction. I want to say a big thank you to the Heritage Foundation for hosting this discussion about the successes of the deferment of defense of the challenges we face when it comes to implementing the National Defense strategy in the era of Great Power Competition. Today our strategic competitors china and russia are attempting to erode our hard earned gains as they undermine International Rules and norms and use coercion against other nations for their own benefit. We continue to see this behavior globally from beijings predatory economics and its aggression in the south and East China Sea to moscows violations of its International Obligations to the sovereignty of its neighbors. What i was confirmed as secretary of defense in 2019 i made my top priority for the irreversible implementation of a National Defense strategy and the strategy guides our work to protect comparative and competitive advantages and to defend a free and open global order along three lines of effort. First, improving the readiness of the force and second, strengthening allies in Building Partners and third, reporting the department for greater efficiency and accountability. I also added a fourth, personal priority, taking care of our servicemembers and their families. We have made great progress on all these fronts which we distilled into ten targeted goals to drive change across the entire Defense Department enterprise. From focusing the department on china to developing poor guidance to strengthen allies and build partners and for modernizing the force by investing in Game Changing technologies to reforming the state and from reallocating, reassigning and redeploying forces in accordance with the mds and to developing a new joint war fighting concept just to name a few. In recent weeks i have discussed our progress in several of these areas including modernization in our plan for our future, naval fleet of over 500 ships went today i would like to highlight our efforts on another top ten goals, achieving higher levels of sustainable readiness. First, it is important to define what it means in the United States armed forces, simply put our militarys ability to answer the nations call and to fight and win anytime, anywhere. It was comprised of the training and equipment we provided our soldiers, sailors, airline marines and space professionals as well as the deployment and may didnt schedule the driver operations in the way we keep our servicemembers physically strong and mentally tough. The bottom line is that each part of the readiness lifecycle is vital to preparing and enabling our men and women in uniform to successfully execute their mission and the question we must answer is this, if called upon to fight tonight are we ready . Today, given our efforts for the past few years i am fully confident that the answer to that question is a resounding yes. I will explain why in a few minutes because first i want to show to the historical example how we learn the hard way the costs of not being ready. In july 1950 at the beginning of the korean war under battalion an artillery battery close to 500 american soldiers rapidly deployed to the outbreak of that conflict to position north of south korea to delay the invading north Korean Forces these men known as Task Force Smith arrived without the standard kit of a regimental combat team, including tanks and air defenses. Moreover they had very little ammunition in the training was inadequate and few had any combat experience and their antitank weapons were ineffective. That they were soon encounter thousands of enemy forces and dozens of north korean tanks and outgunned by heavy armor and outmaneuvered by enemy infantry Task Force Smith was forced to retreat suffering heavy casualties in the process. The battle of oce on demonstrated the tragic consequences of leaderships failure to understand the mission and their responsibility leaving american troops unprepared to obsolete equipment and heavily outmanned. For many years to include my time on active duty as an infantry officer in the 1980s the training imperative of the army was no more Task Force Smiths. That must remain our mantra today. Our security and environmental looks much different 70 years later but the lessons we learned about the importance of readiness remains with us. Today the nds requires the United States military to focus on preparing for a highend fight against near peer adversaries and to do so we must acknowledge for the past two decades our attention was directed mainly towards fighting low intensity conflicts against insurgents and violent extremist organizations. Moreover, years of insufficient budgets and sequestration to our readiness until 2017 and we were able to begin pursing course on over 200 billion to our budget on fiscal 19 and over the past two years they refocused with the mds along three major categories people, policy and performance each of which i want to outline in greater detail . In the policy category the permit has made our biggest changes in Global Force Management since the early to thousands with the aim of creating ready forces with far greater readiness and operational unpredictable it he and the mds recognizes the need to balance the departments modernization for highend conflicts with the bands of current operations. To do so would be to grow our available pool of ready forces and next we can deploy them with crises and strategic opportunities and finally we must be more disciplined in how we manage this ready supply from the services with requests of combatant commanders. In addressing this challenge the department has undertaken to major policy shifts good first, implement team Dynamic Force employment allows us to rapidly reposition forces to enhance deterrence, introduce operational uncertainty into our adversaries calculus and to take advantage of Global Opportunities and emergency situations into test our own readiness. Second, increasing the number of highly ready Immediate Response forces in following Contingency Response force units and providing greater Central Authority to use them globally allows us to tailor the readiness for joint force for the most stressing war plans. While also grading predictability and efficiency within our programming and budgeting system. Particularly salient example is the Bomber Task Force operational concept. In april of this year i approved an air force construct to improve the readiness in strategic flexibility of our bomber force. Moving away from a 16 year static and predictable presence on guam that was burning down readiness. This change is also necessary to complicate beijings decision decisionmaking and prevent them from targeting rfs or limiting our range with their growing capabilities. The impact of the Bomber Task Force concept extends beyond the indopacific, however, offering a range of options in multiple theaters including europe. In august bombers supported by a robust airborne tanker brigade over flu all 30 nato countries in a single day. This robust show of force by a Broad Coalition did not go unnoticed by moscow. Neither did our ability to rapidly deploy our bombers anywhere at any time sending a strong message of our commitment to our allies and partners. Moreover, the air force continue to maintain a heightened posture voting is to deploy fighter squadrons on short notice much like we did late last uses for saudi arabia following irans attacks on its soil. Another example, the aftermath of u. S. Air strikes against iran backed militia sites in iraq last year. On december 31, pentagon Senior Leaders were in form of a large violent protest outside the u. S. Embassy in baghdad, followed hours later by notice of the possible embassy breach. This triggered a a requiremento deploy an Immediate Response force which was successfully accomplished within 19 hours of the incident. Over the next three days an entire Infantry Brigade combat team consisting of more than 3000 soldiers and equipment was deployed halfway around the world to secure american lives and property in iraq. The navy is also executed multiple short notice movements under Dynamic Force employment. This includes the deployment of the uss dwight d. Eisenhower earlier this year which was quickly adjusted in light of the coronavirus outbreak and forced the ike remain at sea for seven months to continue its maritime stability and Security Operations in the middle east. It also includes a rapid appointment of the comfort and Mercy Hospital ships to the east and west coast of the United States in march to provide medical support in covert hospitals to support the American People. Moving on, the department has pursued several initiatives to train our personal for Great Power Competition, to better prepare them to deploy if called upon and to ensure they are less likely to serve in backtoback deployments, all while improving their quality of life. Our path forward also relies on Service Level training and professional military education that builds the expertise of our force on Chinese Military systems, tactics, and doctrine, much like my generation did when we study the soviet armed forces during the cold war. As part of our top ten goal to focus on china i directed the National Defense university to refocus its curriculum by dedicating 50 of the course work to china by Academic Year 2021. I also passed the military services to make the Peoples Liberation army that pacing the threat in our professional schools, programs, and training. Another critical factor in our readiness is at the size and composition of our deployable force which we now track in ways we never did before. We have added nearly 30,000 military personnel to our ranks since 2016 and made great gains not centered by growing are end strength but by maximizing the number of servicemembers we were able to deploy at any given time. This was result of close seniorlevel and Senior Leader attention to need reforms such as quickly resolving medical conditions, enabling servicemembers to get back to ready status center. Ultimately we drove down nondeployed numbers, passed our goal of 5 force, increasing readiness by returning tens of thousands of personnel to fully deployable status months ahead of schedule. For example, over the last few years the armys nondeployed the population has decreased well over 50 meaning many more soldiers are available for potential highend fight if called upon to go. Since 2017 the air force has recruited and trained 4600 additional maintenance personnel which, coupled with additional investment, drove a 19 increase in overall unit readiness. At the same time the number of sailors building operational duty billets is at its highest point since 2014. Meanwhile we are doing everything in our power to balance the inexorable demands of overseas deployments with writing this and our Service Numbers commitments at home. One of our first tasks before make a decision to send forces abroad is to determine how the deployment will impact their worklife timelines. By increasing and monitoring these thresholds, we are working to make sure every war fighter and unit gets adequate time to recover from the last deployment, as well try to prepare for the next one. And on a more personal note, experiences more of the important moments in their families lives. We aim to do all this while enabling the service to computer genius rate enough readiness both today and tomorrow generate cheat or peoples ability to to ask you the mission is their resiliency and wellbeing. This is why we continue to take steps to improve servicemembers qualityoflife, including by expanding the availability of child care, helping spouses sustain their careers through multiple moves, improving housing and providing Mental Health resources and other support. It is also why we remain focused on reinforcing Ethical Leadership across the force, fostering trust in the chain of command and promoting inclusion and equal opportunity for all. Finally, regarding performance, the department is working alongside Industry Partners to improve maintenance and sustainment while investing in highend training and exercise to increase the proficiency of the force. Many of our aircraft have undergone extensive maintenance and much needed upgrade over the past