It is my pleasure and my honor to introduce our keynote speaker who is the assistant secretary of the army. He assumed his position following confirmation by the u. S. Senate in mid january of this year. His responsibilities include supervising Manpower Personnel and reserve Component Affairs to the department of the army and is the principal advisor of the policy of human resources, training, readiness, military health sales, equal opportunity in marketing among others which makes it striking that he finds time in his schedule to come talk with us today and we are grateful for that. Dr. Wardynski is a graduate of the Us Military Academy and hold same masters of Public Policy and a phd in policy analysis. During his 30 year career he served as a special weapons officer within the United States and in korea. He spent 10 years as an associate member of economics where he was also the director of the us armies office of economic and Manpower Analysis advising Senior Leaders on officer retention Talent Management and marketing. My favorite piece of the introduction is that he created the awardwinning stateofthe art Americas Army game which served as a Key Recruiting tool for the service as well as the virtual army experience. Im expecting we should all ask him questions about that after. [ laughter ] among military awards and decorations are the distinguished Service Medal and merit Service Medals. Please welcome dr. Wardynski. [ applause ] well it is afternoon. Good afternoon everybody, its terrific to be here. On behalf of the secretary of the army i bring you greetings. The chief of staff of the army, i bring you greetings. I think those of you who have served for your service and the rest of you for your attention. What i wanted to do was touch on some of the points brought up in the last session, perhaps add background in color to them, and talk about perhaps the flip side of this which is could the United States ever go back to a draft army . I would lead you to a quick conclusion. I doubt it. The draft army ended in 1973 and 69 as youve been told. The National Commission on the all volunteer army was formed by a gentleman who became secretary of defense gates. One of the Commission Members took note that a volunteer army could probably work during periods of peace but in a period of conflict and stress upon the army it likely would not work. That was an academic point until a day in september 2001. They had been on a flight out of New York Newark airport. Next was the one that took off and crashed in pennsylvania. I didnt know those folks were on the plane but by the time that i landed i knew the United States was in some kind of difficulty. My mom called me and when i got to the burger king, my plane was grounded. She said im so glad you are still alive. Im like, okay. My mom doesnt call every day so it was a little unusual. I said why wouldnt i be alive . And she said we thought you were in the pentagon today and that you may have been on the plane attack on the pentagon which i didnt know about. The plane indeed did hit the pentagon and had killed my boss who was in charge of army personnel. If i had been in the pentagon i may have been in that area but i wasnt. I sometimes go by the g3 of the army, gen. Larry ellis, to study what could be done about patriot missiles and something more mobile. If they had done a little more homework the could have done anything the United States would have given them because their defense became a key concern. I never dreamt the last time i go to the weapons i would see defense weapons in the parking lot. A few days later i had to take a train down from west point where i was the director of the office of economic and Manpower Analysis. I was going to to meet the gentleman who has the job that i have now that point. If you are not familiar with the secretary of the army you had the secretary in overall control of the army. The chief of staff of the army, the senior military officer is his advisor. The secretary has several assistance,. General counsel installations and the reserve affairs which has a fairly large portfolio and probably about 60 of the armys budget. And all things human to include Training Operations and mobilization. I was there to see mr. Brown on the topic of the all volunteer army. The United States by that time clearly was in a war and we were still figuring out who we were at war with but it was a pretty good indication that it was going to be a serious undertaking. Mr. Brown wanted me to come down to talk to them about how we might hold the volunteer army together. Went into his office. My office is sort of where the whole is today. His was in a different part of the pentagon, the g1 office. I went in and a person i quickly thought was a crazy woman was a political appointee so he couldnt get rid of her i guess. But she was parading him about the need to reinstitute a draft and why wasnt he beginning mobilization and calling for the Selective Service . He finally heard what she had to say. They looked at me and i looked at him quizzically and was like , where did she come from . He looked at me and said so what are we going to do . At that point forward, the outfit that i ran, and my comrade here in arms, 80 of the time was how do we hold a volunteer army together for an indeterminate period of war which will stretch probably very close to its limits . We spent a good bit of time worrying about that. Many of the ideas that we returned to were not that novel and that was general maxwell mad max at they called him. A littleknown individual but one i think the volunteer army is living off of. As the panel discussed, the army was struggling. I was a cadet at west point. Morale at west point wasnt particularly high. The class of 72 is not manned. It was the first time in history it could not fill the core of cadets. My classmates on the topic of hair tended to be a longhaired bunch. Officers tended to have short hair and it had more to do with getting a date than anything else. It was a curious time in our history and at that point there was a lot of concern about the volunteer army. There was concern about qualification scores and the quality of the force as you have discussed. The army was not particularly happy with the way things were going so general was sent out to crew recruiting command which was in chicago at fort sheridan. Very close to america obviously in the middle of a big city and his mission was to make the all volunteer army work. He brought in at that time the best minds that he could find and there were a lot of them. The army at that time was very much in the vein of a thing called programming planning budgeting execution system. Was brought on board in the army was bludgeoned with that in the early days and the army had formed occupations to do with quantitative analysis of matters of budget and they brought in the same folks in to deal with matters of recruiting analysis. These officers began work of setting the needs down to a level of occupation skills required and intelligence levels and so forth. And then, trying to map that against what they could draw out of america. In the early days it was a struggle and for some random reason he had requested an officer from west point to join his team. As his team was completing the plan of action this officer from west point stood up and said you dont know what youre doing. It is not a command of controlled environment, it is a market. You must go into labor markets of the United States of america and compete. You must recruit. So, its not really a volunteer army. The army must compete in labor markets to draw in the youth of america. There are a number of other uses of their time to join the military and serve. From that point, gen. Thurman said you work for me now and created the office of Economic Analysis at west point which is all the economist were. He was a big believer in competing analysis. From that point forward the analytic pieces begin to fall into place and they studied advertising and things like jingles, the army college fund, the programs put into place and any number of incentives. Ultimately you know the history. Things began to turn around and i would say by 1983 the volunteer army was privet performing quite well in terms of meeting the needs of america because it had a volunteer army and the medes the needs of the army with a good supply of Young Americans willing to serve on terms that met the needs of the army and have the attributes that they called for. Generally as it was brought up today, when i concluded my remarks i would argue that we are very close to 1983 again in terms of a big change in direction in the United States army with regard to how we are going to operate within the volunteer army. I will hold that for just a few moments. There we go. The last panel was a great precursor. Theyve told you things im going to tell you again but a little more structure to think about how the army operates today, and maybe get to my premise that will be very difficult to drink bring a draft back. First, you can see the structure of the army. We call that the total force, the guard, the reserves, and the active component. The reserve is closely linked to the active army and that the secretary and i had a great deal of control over it, how its funded, structured, and all of that. But then you have 54 other armies that comprise the National Guard. He typically belonged to the governors but secretaries or strong authorities there with well when regard with regards to document training and so forth. Until federalized they are under the control of the governors. In the time of vietnam, this was the total army of about 2. 1 million. The active component was very large relative to that 1. 5 million. When you look at the army today its quite a bit smaller. The active is now the minority, not the majority. Active is about 478,000 soldiers by the end of this year with the guard being the next biggest component in the reserves. Each of those serve a different function, heavy and combat formation, reserve and specialty things, a lot of medicine and things like that. As you can see, the early army total the active is not that large. As you can imagine that means the active with ongoing collaboration and participation are the other two components. Thats not an accident. Melvin layered at the end of vietnam and most likely political reasons measures at national will concluded it would not be a good thing again to send the army to war without bringing online the rest of the population. Im a bit of a mental freeman myself. The long history of the United States i think there have been 30, 40 years of drafts in the normal course of affairs we did not have a draft. When we did have a draft and towards the end of vietnam the draft was falling on such a of americas youth, Something Like for Young Americans in every age group, it was no longer a universal on the young and was a very uneven tax. That was not a good attribute for the army and was not a good thing to send the army to war without a Firm Commitment from the country that it ought to go to war. One that would require significant level of effort would therefore require significant mobilization of reserves which would bring political early and not later on and could perhaps have raised some questions that folks today talked about in terms of 1965 versus future engagements that the army might participate in. So that was people, this is money. I did a lot with money. 100 billion which is quite a lot of money. As you can see here on the left was the distribution. 25 billion was a lot of money in the 60s. It gives you a feel for inflation. You can see that the black is Everything Else the army is doing and the price of the human parts of the army. You can see the guard and reserve were small pieces of the puzzle. One third of total Army Spending, the active component. Today the human is about one third of Army Spending but the active component is about 27 . That tells you a lot. If you follow the money it will tell you what they value. We highly value the reserve because they make a significant component of the total force and a great component of our ability to wage war. In terms of magnitude but the other thing that is important is that it was about half the size that it was but allocation of resources for the human component, now the volunteer component is about the same which gives you an idea of the shift and resources that had to take place to make the volunteer army work. The last panel touched on that as well. Folks were worried about the commitment of resources it would take to draw Young Americans in without taxing and drafting them and get them to come in as volunteers. Another thing to note is that the United States in small ways than large have been at war a good bit of the time the volunteer army has been in existence. From the left to the right is years, north to south this total Army Strength. Even as Army Strength was coming down the number of engagements were going. Some are not particularly long and didnt require significant formations from the army. Grenada, libya, panama. Others require substantial effort but as you notice after the came down in vietnam in the end of the cold war never moved very much. The army has been able to wage war by relying in large measure on the guard in the reserves the call up of the draft. One is to commitments to the engagements and the other is for about 50 years now the army has been able to define the terms of service under which the service in the army, in vietnam those terms of service were much different. Draftees made up about 60 of the folks entering the army to get them here. They came in on two years of service. It would prove politically and otherwise very difficult to do. Typically it was twoyear inductees. Today we had no one entering the army. Minimum services two years less training. We have a volunteer army to Young Americans to enter training four, five, and six years of service. Half of our folks are coming in on 3 years. Probably 20 or 30 on 4, another 20 on 5 and the remainder on six you are lismans. We paid bonuses. Combat folks tend to be on shorter terms and specialists on longer terms. 50 years of doing that. If you have to bring in people for twoyear terms of service think of what you can do in terms of preparing them for war training, organizing them into Army Formations and having those organized and trained as units. It will be very limited. Terms of service we have today we configure the army to fight at levels of operation that were not thought of in vietnam. Night vision gear was just coming in. Nighttime operations were not the norm. Today the army said i would prefer an operating environment is one where we have the advantage against many of our enemies in the night is the preferred area of operation. To do that takes a great deal of training and collaboration across teams. While that requires certain inducements. The yellow line is in dollar terms, 20 19. What was soldier pay in 1969 timeframe and what is soldier pay today . Its just a private, right . And two years of service. You can see its twice what it was then. And if you look at the others, the orange bars in the gray bars theyve really grown. Those are some of the things youve heard about, qualityof life things. A measure was discussed, soldiers pretty much have weekends unless we are trained. That is not a dollar, that is value. Thats the business of the barracks. Almost every measure measure you can think of, the life of a soldier today is different from that of 1969 who had been drafted. The reason is because we have to compete for labor. These are Young Americans, they came in, they are expected to have a car, a license, and the wherewithal to participate in the american dream. Men were getting married very young. In those days you need a permission. When i came into the army my wife was on my efficiency report. Today no one would dream of such a thing so not only were you drafted but it was always your spouse and was expected to do a whole bunch of other things. So you can see quite a contrast between a draft army and a volunteer army. With regard to living quarters, soldiers of the vietnam area but have seen structures in the upper right. A lot left over from world war ii. There were facilities with bunkbeds, gain latrines, gang showers, probably didnt have stalls in the toilets. And of course, they were not gender integrated either. The lower left theres a sample of what you would find for single soldier quarters. The barracks are divided. Typically its a plus to structure. Twobedrooms and two common spaces. To soldiers will each have their own private living quarters and they will share a kitchen and bathroom. They can do quite a bit in that space in terms of customizing it to their likings. In addition there will be parking nearby. If they are deployed the army will ensure that their cars are protect did and stored protected and stored. When they get back they can go to a worldclass fitness facility, dining facilities, recreation facilities, and great deal of effort made to improve quality of life for soldiers. You can kind of reflect on thinking about the text that was put on young people and particularly if it was placed on only five or 10 of young people and how inequitable that would be. So not only pay but all the at all these other things the army does to provide a high quality of life that most americans would think is reasonable coming from the civilian world. Turning again to terms of service, if