And weve only just begun as a community to grapple with a world in which even nonstate actors will be able to get anything the internet. Second, the sizes of battlefields will expand. The proliferation of precision munitions and the isr network that supports employment are increasing the effective range of military units. Our adversaries will not only be able to get what they can see but also strike u. S. Forces actually over longer and longer distances. Third, concealing military forces will become more difficult. More actors are developing sophisticated capabilities designed to find and target their adversaries. On future battlefields find the enemy will be much easier than hiding from him. I believe these features are the operating environment, ubiquitous munitions, larger engagement zones a more transparent battlefields are clearly apparent today. For instance, the obvious hesitancy on the administrations part to assert freedom of navigation rights in the South China Sea in my mind is due at least in part to chinas multidecade investment and long range guided antiship ballistic and cruise missiles. We see russia deploying and reinforcing what our top military commander in europe, generageneral breedlove, called antiaccess bubbles over parts of ukraine and syria. Or even the when nonstate actors like hezbollah and some inside syria today are using advanced antitank guided munitions. The logical extension of these trends into the future should concern us all. In order to better prepare for this emerging reality we need to demand creative thinking from the pentagon and across the entire defense communicants and have to change operational concepts. These are the things which you guide how u. S. Forces plan to engage adversaries in different possible contingencies. Core operational concepts will need to focus more on enhancing our ability to strike at range, or assist in site contested areas blogger creates a time, dispersed our forces over wide geographic areas while still retaining the ability to consolidate power mass our firepower when you do. I described is that in some length in my written statement. If our operational concepts begin to evolve along these lines i believe it will help guide us toward the defense investment portfolio that does three fundamental things. First, shore up our air and maritime power Projection Capabilities by employing land and particularly for carrierbased unmanned strike platforms. I note that chairmans leadership in this regard. Emphasizing cyber incident cant attack from a positions. Developing dispersed undersea sensor grids and unmanned attack platforms that can persist inside and adversaries contested maritime zones for long periods of time. As we heard the other day, ensuring a new long range Strategic Bomber is procured in numbers large enough to 100 points is very important i think to constitute a credible, sustained power projection ability. Second, we need to ensure u. S. Ground forces are rapidly adapting to guided munitions warfare. By pushing guided munitions down into the squad and even the individual level for our Ground Forces, experimenting robust with robotic ground systems and air systems that can obviate the need to risk human beings and some highrisk missions in developing platforms that can deployed alongside our dismounted units to provide them some protection from adversaries a guided munitions. Third and finally ensure our for basis that the forward bases can defend against guided munitions by more aggressively funded research and development of directed Energy Systems and explore innovative basic concepts that can dispersed u. S. Military forces across larger geographic areas. Mr. Chairman, americas finally honed but technical edge is about and policy makers have a closing window to arrest this country for decades our adversaries were convinced by u. S. Forces would be able to see them first and shoot them first due to our overwhelming advantage and precision guided munitions and the means to deliver them at a time and place of our choosing. If this is allowed to continue, the deterrent power of the United States will erode as well causing significant disruptions to the global balance of power and we must not let that happen. Thank you for the great honor of testified before you. I think the witnesses and i think its very important and i hope that all of our witnesses will read your written statements, which i think are very important as well. That is robust enough to bond with the pentagon has argued for some time along with your leadership and the leadership of others and as i said, i think the erosion of our policy has to be addressed. Size is important, the quantity is important, but i worry that unless we allow this erosion of our military technical edge to continue at this pace, it will pose great danger to our men and women. Mr. Donnelly. I would suggest the president try to read posture American Forces farther forward per shipment particularly in the South Pacific and also in europe and the middle east. That is something he or she could do even with the force that will be inherited and its important First Step Towards reassuring our allies that the United States is serious about preserving the world that we live in today. Out of curiosity, are you related . Very distantly, sir. I did the Research Years ago and it asked out as distant as you can get. Still a great name. It is a great name. Thank you, sir. My advice to many president s is to get back to strategy. Strategy is about choosing and that means setting priorities. We have not done a good job of that and i understand that when you articulate those priorities you send signals, some of which are not necessarily welcome. Some are necessary and i do think its important to send a quite a different message to our allies that we will forever have at their backs and ever and that they are expected to do anything that is to assist us and i dont think thats wise in the long term going to effective. I dont believe that the United States have the ability to foresee for many many other countries what their Security Priorities are better than they can. Student mr. Would. Inky mr. Chairman and i believe the president needs to clearly define the Us National Security interest and then resource the interests. How could you do otherwise . If you are not willing to devote the resources necessary and you need to recast your interest in the role you want to play in the world. Will see the impact of baseline budget of 500 million with the erosion of the army dropping from 520,000, 490, 450 and potentially lower and we have seen that the deck degradation and tricky jump capacity for Us Military Forces to do things, so if we want to maintain a primary role in the world, the leading primary role that we need the resources and so i think the recent budget deal where we got to 607 billion i think when its added up is merely to extend the erosion we have seen and will not buyback significant readiness or rebuild combat teams and we have seen them drop from 45 to 42, so that is the bare minimum that folks have been able to agree to and i think the funding needs to increase and the services themselves will figure out how to solve operational challenges. They need that capability and capacity to do the exurban tatian testing, see new how technologies if they dont have the capacity to do that and the capacity made possible by Adequate Funding and we will build to get ahead of the curve and we have been having a terrible record of trying to predict what the next war will be, against you and what the characteristics will be. What symmetries are asymmetries will be actually in that mix of the current conflict and to have that kind of ability to test those kind of things capacity, i think, is the overarching need and finding Adequate Funding to have the military to regain its military role in the world. I think the first order of business, assuming we continue to sustain the vital interests we have established for ourselves in middle east, the far east of europe is to come up with a strategy to deal with the three revisionist powers and describe what the priority is among those three. Not only in the near term, but over time, so its a time sensitive strategy and i think by going in position would be that in the far east we need a defense posture is strategy and i think in the middle east it has to be footprint combined with expeditionary posture and i i think it Easter Europe it would be tripwire forest with the potential for reinforcement if necessary and i think finally we need to come up with a strategy to address the problem of what i would call modern strategic warfare that involves not only Nuclear Weapons now, but advanced Nuclear Weapon defenses against missiles and cruise missiles, Cyber Weapons and advanced conventional weapons capable of attacking targets that were once reserved only for Nuclear Weapons. My time has expired, but i would ask witnesses to give it me a written response to what you think is the future of the Aircraft Carrier. I ask that because the Aircraft Carriers been the backbone of the navy as we all know since world war ii, and theres significant questions about the carrier itself, its size, they air wing, the role and so i would appreciate that answer. Thats one of the issues that we will be grappling with when we are talking about a 10 or 12 billiondollar weapon system. I think the witnesses think the witnesses. I also want to thank the witnesses for their comments. Lets me ask all of you a question. Is been highlighted in your comments. One of the most rapid errors of change technological innovation which is world wide affecting ourselves and affecting our competitors and the other dynamic, which i would ask you to focus on is a lot of this technological change taking place outside formal government defense industries. You know, military installations , the private sector and how do we fit that into our operations . Me start return to go down the line. I think thats integral to the socalled byrd offset strategy and my senses some of my colleagues mentioned the advantage we develop for us ourselves and provision warfare that was based on the decision of the 1970s to ask for the Information Technology as a source of competitive advantage, that advantage is now a wasting asset. So, where do we go next . If you look as you said, we are where technology is going today and whether its big data or robotics or directed energy, those technologies are widely diffused and available to anyone with the resources to buy and develop them. So, historically speaking i dont think as my former colleague as bob work and i discussed you would back the 1950s or the 1970s and you actually have to look back at the interwar period of the 1920s and 30s and in that time you had a number of great powers and i mentioned revisionist powers that we deal with now and technology that were moving quickly then, the automotive industry, radio, radar, aviation were available to us, the germans, japanese, the britts and so on. What made the difference in world war ii were two things. Number one, operational concepts who figured out best to employ those emergent technologies. So, when it came to mechanization, aviation, radio the french did in six weeks. You look at other aspects, the first integrated air Defense System and that was the british. The germans were a bit behind on that, so it was a combination of figuring out how best to leverage that new technology to deal with the problems that you identified. It was also the speed at which you could develop and imply that. So, we start world war ii with eight Aircraft Carriers. We ended the world with 99. Ninetynine Aircraft Carriers of all types. This gets, i think im about to issue of time. How effectively can you exploit time and that is one of the reasons i would certainly commend the committee for its focus on defense reform because we are a terrible competitor when it comes to exploiting time. The better you can exploit time at the last Standing Military capability you need in the better you can exploit time the more range of possibilities that are open to you. The better you can exploit time, the more uncertainty you generate in the minds of your adversaries because of the potential direction you can go in. So, i think in terms of your point about technology is why it is wide diffusing, i think those of be the two critical discriminators and who develops the best operational concepts and who can do it fast. My time is diminishing. Quickly then, i think we need to have units Information Available to incorporate an extent that with these things as they come in because the change is so rapid and what residual capability do we have that free enough to do the type of experimentation that dr. Krepinevich mentioned in a wartime. Set kelly, we need formation that can operate independently to become critically dependent on a massive interconnected system that if the enemy compromises the entire formation is now vulnerable, so dispersed units that can operate independently, gps independent kind of precisions, closed loop types of systems and a scan of things where what one part of the formation can take a hit and the rest of the force can continue on. Thank you very much. Again, my time has diminished. Quickly, im concerned about the proliferation of technology down to nonstate actors and weak states and especially brings us into an era of defensive dominance. It does then raise issues of will we risk truly explicit platforms of technology and risk large numbers of lives if we are projecting power into other peoples area in this new era of defensive dominance. Red means go. Again, i think visible task is to understand what our geopolitical purposes are, technologies as dr. Krepinevich suggested it means Different Things to different people in different circumstances, so we have to figure out what elements of this technology are central to us and our job is still as it was in 1942, to figure out how to have an effect on the far side. We do not want to experience another sort of pearl harbor event and our purposes are quite different than they were in 1941. We are trying to preserve an international system, not build one from scratch. Finally, mr. Grimley. The number i associate myself entirely return to his comments annealing out dads i understand this committee is holding a hearing and i think looking at that piece of legislation ever together i think the 198647 amendments to the act that created special operations and the unique Acquisition Authority that is used pretty well to go into the commercial industry and pull things and experiment with them and bypass a lot of the acquisition bureaucracy. Investor getting deeper into those authorities and how they have been used and how they might be replicated across the board would be interesting. Thank you and again thank you very much for your testimony, gentlemen. On behalf of chairman mccain may recognize senator hamilton. Just an observation. You have already observed this and we have had a lot of great hearings on this condition, this subject of today. A kind of fall into two categories. Hearings with the uniform presence with a lot of those people responsible for the mess were in now. Then, we have about others come outside experts and that is certainly you that fall into that category. Last week we had five professors and that was really really useful to see from the outside he read we are hanging around here listening to each other and i would like to listen to those who are outside. I would also kind of single out one individual as dakota would, he certainly has spent time, two decades in the marine corps and has been an outstanding leader in america. Far more significant than that, hes from claremore, oklahoma. Thats one of the homes that will rogers, so you see a lot of characteristics that he exhibits so, let me read something. This is 30, 35 years ago, but you go back and compare the criteria that was set up in developing it a Defense Budget under the Reagan Administration with what is happening today. I will ask you to respond. Dakota, you have already read this. He said in his 1983, set quote we start by considering what weve done to maintain peace review all the possible threats against our security. Okay . Then a strategy for strengthening peace in defending against of those threats has to be agreed upon. Finally, our defense establishment must be evaluated to see what is necessary to protect against any and all of the potential threats. The cost of achieving these ends is totaled up and the result is the budget for National Defense. What do you think about that strategy mr. Wood . I think as many members have already noted previously that we this has been a budget sort of exercise and how much money do we want to spend on defense ended and we try to make do with that, so i think what was what Ronald Reagan was getting at is that figuring out what it is you want to be in the world, where your priorities are at and that resourcing with those interests, so it should be strategy driven. Us interest driven and if you want to shoulder the burden, you have defined the funding and the resources to do that. To do that you have to prioritize and i think most of us up here, i cant speak for the rest, but that is our number one priority. And does anyone disagree with that . If the second part that i would disagree with. I have come to believe particularly since the passing of the budget control act that in effect what we have seen over the last five years is its not unarticulated strategy, it effective strategy wherein the president and say the more libertarian members of the house of representatives agree that america is doing too much in the world and if we take away the means of t