As a proud army brat, it is my honor to introduce fourstar army general David Perkins. As the commanding general of the u. S. Army training and doctrine command, general David Perkins is it possible for selecting and recruiting every u. S. Army soldier, training and educating professionals, and designing the future u. S. Army to support National Security. A graduate of the u. S. Military academy at west point in 1980, general perkins has had numerous Senior Leadership positions over his career. These include special assistant to the speaker of the house, 104th u. S. Congress, Battalion Commander beating over 1000 personnel during operation able sentry, Brigade Commander leading over 3000 personnel during the invasion of iraq in 2003, executive assistant to the vicechairman of the joint chiefs of staff and Division Commander leading over 10,000 personnel during the transition of u. S. Forces from iraq 2003 2011. Q from 2010 through on november 2011 through february 2014, general perkins committed the u. S. Armys premier education and Leadership Institution at fort leavenworth. Responsible for Training Development and support, developing the u. S. Army doctrine and the synchronizing Leader Development, all of which provides foundational elements for the u. S. Army to conduct its mission. General perkins is a native of new hampshire. Behold the master degree in he holds a masters degree in Mechanical Engineering and university of michigan, and a masters degree in National Security and strategic studies of the naval war college. Please join me in giving a round of applause and a warm welcome to general perkins. [applause] gen. Perkins thank you. Thanks folks. Dont get too far forward, or you will get feedback. No need to leave your eardrum injuries tonight. My appreciation to all the folks who worked, the folks at westminster. Mr. Ambassador, being a big supporter of this and everyone involved with ucct. Its a great chance for me to get out and talk to you all, the american people, because as the Senior Leader in the United States army i would say you are the board of directors. We are your army. It is always great to come out to the board of directors, the american people, and give you an update on what we are doing and get a q a. I need to change direction or anything, dont hesitate. Im looking forward to the q a as much as anything else. I really do commend you all for as the charter is given to sort of the proactive citizens and our democracy. Our democracy is based on that. As i travel around the world in some less than garden spots i think when people use the term democracy and what is involved they dont realize the responsibility put on the shoulder of the average person to pull that off. I do appreciate the fact you all internalized that it stayed internalized that and stayed engaged and tried to be informed citizens as well in this very complex world. I will talk about as i was coming out here, i think it was developing strategic leaders for the future, etc. I will talk about that. Understanding we in the army dont make policy. We execute policy. It is our job to understand what the policy is. More importantly, prepare ourselves for that. As you can see on the big slide behind me i command you say to i command the United StatesArmy Training and doctrine command. Most folks have no idea what that is. It is tradoc because the army loves acronyms. It does a number of things for the army. I will highlight some of them so maybe you can get a vision of that. It may cue up some questions you have and may make sense, the topics im talking about. I will kind of hit some of the tips of the iceberg of what we do for the army, and then i will pull it all together on what that means for the future and what we are doing about that in the army to prepare for the future in this very challenging world we find yourselves today in. Probably more so. One of the things we do is called the architects of the army. We design the army. We are looking out to the years 2025 to 2050. You may think that the long ways out, but when you are building an army like hours of 1. 2 like ours of 1. 2 Million People that spans the entire world that is not too far around the corner. What are organization does is we try to describe the operating environment. What are the geopolitical situations we are facing around the world . What are the demographics, the economics, the challenges we will face . What are the competitors we will face . What are potential adversaries possibly going to do to us . Once we have that figured out in the crystal ball we designed the army. As i said, in our role as architect without the concept of what we want the battalions and brigades and divisions to be. We write the requirements for the next helicopter or the next tank and we basically put together a blueprint for the army for the next 30 years. This is what we want it to look like. These are the first capabilities the army is to have, the kind of equipment we want, etc. That is one of our responsibilities. Another thing is we recruit the army. I spent today with down at a recruiting statement here downtown. When you drive and you look at the strip malls and assess armed forces recruiting, that is tradoc. We recruit the soldiers to the army. Another thing we do is we run it at command. There are some great rotc folks in the audience. I just spoke to some not too long ago. We generate the majority of the officers of the run connect command. We run basic training. Our beloved drill sergeants and those folks that leave a lasting impression on young soldiers. We run advanced individual training and all the army school systems. Armor, infantry, aviation, and any school the army has in the process we write the doctrine we teach in the schools and then the Lessons Learned and informed the doctrine. That seems like a wide range of topics. When you link them together it sort of makes sense. With the army has done is taken one command and they say youre the person you design the army. Then you go out and recruit the soldiers and officers. Once you require that, i want you to build that. You send them to basic training and Flight School and then i want you to constantly improve the army. New doctrine, the Lessons Learned, sending folks to the academy, etc. Make the army better. We design the army. We then go out and acquire the army we design. We build the army we acquired. And then we constantly improve the army we built. Thats what keeps us busy, at least until noon on most days. Training and doctrine command is a large and expensive organization. We are in 1634 locations around the world. We dont hit every one of them every year. Today we happen to get here in the utah area doing a number of things with recruiting. This venue has afforded us the opportunity for me to report back to the board of directors, the Senior Leader of the army. Now that ive laid out what we do for the army, what i want to focus on is what we are looking forward to the future, how we describe the future, and what we are doing about it. That might be of some interest to you. Maybe it will generate some questions. If you could put up the first slide please. I only have three slides and mostly they are pictures. So, when i was growing up in the army, when i first came into the army and graduated from west point it was the height of the cold war. I was a young officer. Tanks and mechanized infantry. I was sent to the german boarder like all good armor officers should be at the height of the cold war. I would pull duty along the west germanyeast german border. I can remember that. Our whole army was designed and focused primarily on being able to deter and defeat the soviet union in the Central Plains of europe. I came in the army in the early 1980s, the height of the cold war. We focused our army on being able to deter and or defeat the soviet union, in the Central Plains of europe. That was a challenge in and of itself, but we designed the army that way. This is a picture right out of the manual i grew up with called fm1005. This is a picture out of the one on my desk. I keep it there today since im in charge of writing the manual. Im always told that the gold standard, so i refer back to it. A couple of things jump out at you. One is if you are standing looking east, he would look eerily similar to this. What our army did, and these are units in the army. This is a diagram of how we would arrange the army. We sent one of the things if youre looking to the future, you are going to build an army, you have to describe the environment it will operate in. This describes the environment i was brought up in. We have a known enemy calmly we have a known enemy, the soviet union. Very wellknown. We know a lot about it and our mission was to know even more about something we know a lot about. We knew exactly where we would fight the soviet union on the Central Plains of europe. It would look like this. We knew what coalition we would fight that enemy. It was nato. In that coalition, it did not change very often. It was not like, well, the country would say i would be in nato on monday and get out on thursday and maybe get back in next week. We went for decades and you did not change who got in or who got out of nato. We started thinking about it. What we have is a challenge. The army focused on the soviet union, a wellknown enemy. Focus on the Central Plains of europe, a wellknown location. We were part of nato, a wellknown coalition. We built an army to deal with that. What we did was build an army to deal with a known problem. When you build an organization to deal with a known problem, you build it a certain way. Ok. You buy certain kinds of equipment. You buy equipment a certain way, and you train people in a certain way. This lieutenant perkins, since we had a known problem and on location, said he will take your tanks and you will dig them and 1500 meters. This is your location. The first echelon, the soviet took them over and you will do with it. The way will train you is every 90 days you will go up to this same location, the general defense plan. You will go there and recon it again and again and again. You will learn more about something you already know a lot about. You are going to rehearse it over and over and over. You will have a little battle books with maps and acetate. You are going to line on it were your routes are and where you would cash amo and things like that. We are expecting that at the balloon goes up, world war iii, you just execute the script. Open up your battle book. You execute the script you have been reversing every 90 days. Been rehearsing every 90 days. That is how you build an army to deal with a known problem. You completely rehearse over and over again a script and thats a you train as lieutenant perkins. When i came in the army. The chief of staff of the army said the world is changing. Look out for 2050 and describe the environment and build an army for that. Now, what i have come to understand and experience throughout my career is we are not particularly good at predicting the future. We are not good at it. The only thing we get right all the time is we have a perfect track record of being wrong about who we will fight. A lot of people, looking up to 2050, weve took that into account. When i speak to groups, they say you are the future guy for the army. I guess so. Well, when they say tell me about 2050, what they want me to do is give them a prediction. Well, what are we going to do in the mideast, the balkans . You know, really, as i look at the future, what im saying is it is unknown. I dont know. They are saying, so thats it . Youre just giving up . No, the future is unknown. You are not going to do anything more about it . Are you stupid and lazy . I wont argue that point, but the issue is thats all i need to know. I dont need to predict the future. What i need to do you build an army is described future. Theres a difference. When you predict the future you get to a level of specificity that becomes dysfunctional because you become so specific if it doesnt happen, youve optimized the army for an event that will not unfold. But we have focused on doing is describing the future, describe it in a way that provides you with enough clarity about how you start putting the pieces in place for an army that youre pretty sure youre going to need. I said thats what were going to do. That is what we did with our last operating concept. I grew up with a battle, this one. When we published it last october, i said, ok, we did exactly the same thing they did when they did this. I was told that the gold standard. Told that was the gold standard. We did exactly the same thing. We came up with exactly the same product, only its completely different. Exactly the same, only completely different. What . This is ours. To win in a complex world. It is tradoc pamphlet 52531. I am sure you all know that. It is the Army Operating concept. This was the concept i grew up with. The one we just wrote. I said is completely the same only completely different. To clarify in case any of you are Naval Academy graduates, the first difference is this is in color and this one is in black and white. [laughter] gen. Perkins thats more than just a slick marketing ploy. I described this one here. I said, so, the first concept has to do with described the environment you will operate in in the future. We described this year with the word complex. It is unknown, unknowable, and constantly changing. Unknown, unknowable, and constantly changing. For the physics major is like the heisenberg principle. Measuring something in and of itself changes it. That is my view of the future as well. If you know something about it, it will almost assuredly not happen. If you know what will happen, you do something about it and it will not happen. Did we ever fight the soviet union in the plains of europe . No. Why . We knew a lot about it and we did a lot to prepare for it and it was part of the whole to the whole deterrent. It never happened. What i tell folks, this describes the future. So does this. They are exactly the same thing , only a completely different answer. I told you this was what . The soviet union and the Central Point of europe. Nato. Complex is unknown, unknowable and constantly changing. Both of these ascribed the future in general terms. This was describing a known problem. This was describing an unknown problem. I tell folks there is a guy who is supposed to design the army. I only have to know one thing about the future. It is a known future or an unknown future. Thats all i need to know. That is describing the future. Not predicting it. I cant tell you whats going to happen in the middle east, korean peninsula, all he knows future now or unknown. Is the future known or unknown . If the future is known you describe one kind of army. You write a kind of doctrine. This kind of doctrine. If you describe the future is unknown, to come up with a very Different Army with very different capabilities and you train people very differently. I get asked this question a lot. To put it in perspective i was at a venue once. We had i was the token land guy. The army general. We had a navy admiral and an air force general officer. They were talking about the future. They are going down the panel. I was the last guy. They talk so the air force general and said tell us about the future of the air force. He explains we will have stealth fighters in space this, and all this kind of stuff we will have. Im reassured because i want to be in a country that has that air force. It sounded very good. In the navy admiral says we will have undersea this and stealth and these kind of things. I want that kind of maybe. Im feeling good because i like what the air force guy set in the navy got. Ok, perkins. You are the future guy for the army. Tell us about the future. What they really wanted me to do was what . Predict the future. They said sometimes you army guys are shortsighted. We want you to look out 50 years. Look out 50 years and basically predict the future of what is going to happen. I paused for a moment. One of my previous times in the army i have done stuff with media. They teach you if youre in an interview and some he asks you a question and its a tough question, just respond with another question. As we say in the army ok, perkins, predict the future 50 years from now. I paused. I say, look, is that really the question to be asked here tonight . Buys me a little bit of time. I said i dont think that really possible. I dont think its very useful. Lets assume i was here 50 years ago and you asked me that question. Youre asking me to predict that the years out with a level of specificity i think is not useful, but you keep pushing me on it. Lets assume this was 50 years ago. You are asking me this question. My answer might go Something Like this. Remember, 50 years ago the World Trade Center was not even built. I said 50 years from now . Will happen . I dont know. 10 years from now we will build these two really Tall Buildings at the tip of manhattan. They become the Financial Center of the world. Im sure some he said, why is this army of talking about these buildings . A Civil Engineer or something. Let him go. We are going to im predicting the future, you are very specific, 10 years from now will build these buildings. We will build these two Tall Buildings. Whatever. 20, 30 years from that we will have a very large attack on the continental United States. The result of that attack will be such that it causes more death than pearl harbor. More casualties than pearl harbor. They are thinking, what is this guy talking about . One of the other result is that the two Tall Buildings we are going to build 10 years from now, 30 years from now they will