Political charges. We are here on honor to have the chief of staff of the United States army general james mcconville. I have been lucky to know you for a number of years and we have had you here at brookings and as super prepared to complete the chore as tour as chief of staff, it is a privilege to host you and it is an opportunity to honor you and thank you for your service and i will think everyone asked everyone to join me in a round of applause ask any everyone to join me in a round of applause. [applause] i would like to say more words about this soldier. He has been in uniform for four 46 years if you count all four years at west point and grew up in quincy, massachusetts near another young man, a promising future american named joe dunford. And Amazing Group of visuals an Amazing Group of individuals on that same town in the boston reason and he went to west point and studied science and a master of science degree from georgia technology. He served in Operation Iraqi freedom and in afghanistan and he has been vice chief of the army. He has seen a lot. We have been talking about the National Security strategy, the National Defense strategy. I want to talk about you as a soldier and your fellow shoulders and the state soldiers and the state of the was army and ask you about the volunteer force. How are we doing . How are we recruiting and retention doing . How is your ability to draw an adequate pool of americans who might want to serve, how are you handling the political pressures on january 6 and the criticisms of the wealth woke culture . Can i ask to begin about how is our all billing all billing all volunteer force today . Gen. Mcconville people are the greatest asset that of the United States army and i am talking about soldiers and i am talking about civilians and families and our soldiers. When i take a look at the people in the army, i think we have the best leadership coming into the army. These are combat proven veterans. As far as leadership goes, over 20 years of combat, i think we are in great shape. Retention is at a historical height and people who stay come to the army are staying. Recruiting is a challenge and we did not have a good year last year and we are at a fullcourt press to inspire young men and women. You mentioned different people saying Different Things. I will stay out of that. The military we are nonpartisan. We are a political and we need to do that and when we talk to young people, one of the things we found, there are a lot of challenges after covid with young people who want to serve to meet the standard. We made a boot camp for boot camp. We are finding pretty good results, 95 of young men and women who come to our future soldier prep course make it through and go on to initial military training and not only are they passing the train, they are exceeding standards and taking leadership positions and doing well physically. There is something there. We brought back be all you can be, some of the older soldiers, the resonates with different campaigns. I did not think that hit the mark but this hits the mark because if you are a parent and i am a parent of three soldiers. You asked them why should your kid go to the military, a good answer is you want to get to be all you can be. We are trying to invest in American Youth. I think we need to inspire young men and women to serve, not necessarily in the military but across all institutions we have. That is important. Michael i think you are the one who said before covid, if i remember the numbers, about half of all of your recruits came from 10 of the nations high schools. Is what you just said away to think about broadening the concept of service to make sure that the other 90 of high schools, dont catch up fully with military service but we change the culture in the u. S. About National Service writ large and if so, how do we do that . Your message is helpful but how do we broadened it broadening it broadening broaden it . Gen. Mcconville 44 of american you have a Jrotc ProgramAmerican Youth have a Jrotc Program. 40 go into the military but they are not necessarily in jrotc but they are exposed to it. 83 that come into the military come from a military family. We have become, in some ways, a military Family Business and we need to become an american Family Business and we are spending more time doing that, and even the commercials. They are a chance to expose young men and women to what the military is all about. We are going back to high schools. We are getting our divisions. One division is in support of recruiting. Is an usual it is an unusual relationship but we went to see american show americans what the military does. Michael the army has continued to downsize, early because the surges of iraq and families tsay and are over but also because of the challenges in recruiting. Which you describe the current challenges with recruiting as nearing a crisis proportion or do you feel that, while there is strain and trouble and shortfall, that this can be largely explained by the covid period and address through angst like preboot camp boot camp through things like preboot camp boot camp. Is this one of the worst periods of recruiting and terms of maintaining numbers we need . Gen. Mcconville we did not have a good year last year and in 35 years, if we will have challenges with commission officers. What i said right now, we are not in a absolute crisis but we dont want to get to that crisis so we are pulling out the stops in the army. It is the number one priority with recruiting and it is not just the recruiting command challenge. It is everyone challenge. In ap army, in the army, it every once jobs is a everyones jobs is a recruiter. We had a young man who finished basic training go back he went to a wrestling tournament and he signed up 19 kids. People have to be able to see themselves in the army, see themselves in the military, especially places where they are not used to seeing the military. Michael not to talk about specific next phases that you are anticipating, and National Strategic leadership from an army and soldier perspective, what have you learned . What have you been surprised by . How does that affect your priorities without the u. S. Army should be adapting . Gen. Mcconville we are learning a whole bunch are watching you bring. Ukraine. When i put it into context, last time we did a major transmission of the army was in 1980, late 70s. The time before that was 1940. Every 40 years, we transform. In 1973, the leaders were coming out of vietnam and they looked at the arab israeli war and they got a sense of future combat and they came up with a new doctrine and organization. And the all volunteer force and that is what drove them. That is what we have used, incrementing incrementally improving. We are in different place and as we take a look at ukraine, what we are seeing and confirming, it will be a multidomain fights. It is not just contested on the land, it is an a vicious went. It is contested in the air. You fly in the air with jones. It is we are contested on the sea. We are contested in cyber and space so we have to operate in that environment and that is driving our doctrine and new organizations. That is driving our modernization priorities and our personnel system. As we take a look at what is going on, long range precision buyers and people talk about py lars being important. We are developing hypersonics and all these capabilities will be in the hands of our soldiers by the end of next year into the next year and that is important. If you do long range precision fires, you have to do it at the speed of relevant so it is great that we have systems that go fast. It is great we have systems that go far but the secret sauce is how quickly you can take information from sensors and get it to lethal means . Things like noncommissioner officer corps. If you have a complex plan and if you look at the russian plan, it was a complex plan. They were doing airnd and Amphibious Operations and you have to have a highly trained force to do that and have to have noncommissioned officers to lead small units. Logistics, logistics, logistics. I am proud with what our team has done with supporting but put us in a place that we can reinforce allies. People asked me at the beginning of the conflict, the javelins and the standards look work well the stingers look work well. My response is you dont need tanks if you want to win. You need combined arms and combined services and combined allies and partners and you need to Work Together and take advantage of the strengths of each system has, each service as, each branch has two present bengs were adversaries. You want to throw a whole bunch of valves. Michael i want to follow up on that and talk about army modernization. Your point about tanks is intriguing. What has got my curiosity is watching the russian attempt from the north where they sent in a lot of vehicles on the principle path of approach along major roads. It was winter. There was snow on the side of the roads. Some of it was liked light. Not the easiest environment for support vehicles but the russians came down the highways and they did not have proper unpredictability of their approach that they did not have dismounted infantry to snuff out javelin wielding teams. In my probably correct in that analysis and if so, does that mean that tanks are just as useful as ever if you operate them correctly or are they marginally less useful . Gen. Mcconville if the russians had done combined arms and head infantry, we never employ tanks without intercede infantry but also employ until we have intelligence gathering platforms and it is hard to fire a javelin if you are taking artillery. You dont want to hang around it artillery is hanging raining in. You dont want to present your adversary with one dilemma. If that is all they have to focus on and you throw in logistics, you didnt have gas or parts for tanks. You didnt set yourself up for success. I dont know for a fact but i think they thought they could just drive in and people would surrender. That is not what happens and as command, you plan for the worst case. There was going to be a big fight and have you set conditions to move quickly with armored type forces. In history, they would jump in and sees bridges siseze sieze seize bridges. Michael to build on what the History Lesson of previous transformation, the army tried to transport himself itself in the early 2000. There were benefits but the big idea not pan out. There were other setbacks in the 90s with kinds of open systems. Weapon systems. You have u. N. And you were talking about six major areas of modernization. I wanted to invite you to update us on one or two of them. There is long wage longrange fires in vertical lift and network and soldier and missiledefense. Maybe it is mechanized vehicles and tanks. How does that group of six, are there one or two that are showing the most promise and are there some that are lacking . Gen. Mcconville i talked about 24 signature systems. The six modernization policies, there are 34 systems. 24 of them were will either be fielding and testing or enhanced by shoulders and a 23 by soldiers in 23. I think it is because we do things differently. We are moving away from spending the gears to define requirements ending gears to define requirements spending years to define requirements. Technology has changed and requirements are no longer relevant. A thumbnail sketch of how we do in business is saying, we went something that does want something that does this. Echoes this far and comes back to us with a white paper. What do you think you can do . This is presented to many partners and we get 100 white papers and we pick 10 and you will get money to go to the next set step. We go to initial design and talk about what industry says they can do and you can do one in powerpoint. It is easier to do things in powerpoint and paper to build stuff. You go to initial design. We are updating characteristics. We are saying, we want to see this thing. We go into design and prototyping. With the prototyping, we are able to drive or fly before we buy. It is different from what we used to do and if you look at future vertical lift, the two competitors are flying those things so we know and they are transformational in how they are changing the way aircraft and not helicopters anymore. It is allowing them to get the speed and range but we know they can do that. We picked a new vehicle for low protective fire and that went through the same thing. We put it in the hands of soldiers and they used the vehicles from 69 months and we had a good idea of what they wanted. We are driving before rebuying and flying before we are buying. One of the systems not moving as fast but i think is one of the most transformational is imas. To understand that, to understand that, you look into the future. We have night vision goggles and we have improved those. We have a set that is a good set of goggles and it fuses and balint ambient light. It is very helpful as being a good set of night vision capability. I have asked for something different. I have used the analogy of the phone. You went from a phone on the wall to a cordless phone to a cell phone and we had a good cell phone. All of the sun, the computer folks came up with the smartphone, which transformed how we use phones. For younger people, we have things called cameras. We did not take pictures with our phone or navigate or watch movies with phones. I have an old phone in my house. That is what imas will be. They have to be persistent and consistent in stay with it. And stay with it and it is clunky now but it will transform the way our leaders and soldiers operate the battlefield. We have to be patient but get it done. You can bring video in. You can have man and unmanned teaming. You want to have the ability to pass data to leaders. Michael one last question and i will handed off to melanie. I wanted to talk about how the army will respond to the security events in europe, not to get to the portfolio so much as your per folio on how the army of 450,000 active duty soldiers, how is that army going to handle maintaining mine this modest but significant footprints in the world where the european footprint will grow . In particular, to bring us to a question, what it be better if the army will be in eastern nato territory, police with a couple battalions at least with a couple battalions, would it be better to place that permanently better than a rotational system that requires 34 units to sustain one . Whatever footprint we have in eastern member states, perhaps it will be permanent station stationing . Gen. Mcconville it is a bunch of all. In europe, we have permanent station troops in italy and germany and throughout europe. That makes sense. We have rotational troops. That has value in the fact that it gives us flexibility on how they move in and out. It gives us value where you dont have to bring families. In some places, you dont have the capacity to bring families and schools. It is a privilege to do that. You want to bounce that. The other thing is, is the benefit of having prepositioned stocks. The first brigade of the third infantry division, we could deploy a team in a length ash a little under a week. Their equipment, it was a water nice Brigade Combat Team of armor sitting there and maintaining logisticians. They moved it to the range and when they so showed up, they move the airplane when they showed up, they move the airplane moved the airplane. We will take what we have and provide options and as far as permanent or not permanent, those are decisions above us. Melanie thanks for starting up the conversation with an important set of topics. And thanks for joining us. Must lets stick with what mike was talking about but put it in broader context. If you look at today, that informs the work you are doing with the behalf of the u. S. Army so in that broader geopolitical context, how do you think about how big the army needs to be and where it needs to be . Gen. Mcconville we want presence in support of the National Defense of energy. When i use europe, it shows how quickly we can respond with allies allies. We have strong allies and partners that are they there. There have been rehearsals where you can quickly move systems across europe to respond and you are there and we take a look at pacific, we have some places where we are present in other places we are not. Those relationships are important. We talk to decisionmakers and make sure, if we want to do Something Like this, we need to have this capability in this region are we have to do it differently. What i see from the army standpoint, i want to make sure we can provide capabilities that they need to do to assist in the National Defense strategy. People say, in europe, you dont link need longrange fires because they wont let you bring in its in. That may change. Maybe in three or four years passed, they would not. Having some type of access to presence in regions is important. Melanie to mention the National Defense strategy and you have spoken clearly on the difference between competing and being in conflict. You compete below the threshold of conflict and the National Defense strategy in 2022 incorporated the idea of campaigning. You think of those two as similar contracts, competing below the threshold and campaigning and are they different in what is . The role of the army . Gen. Mcconville campaigning we are never going to fight them all and if you take a look at ukraine, it is a great example of a country that we are able to help with capabilities and capacity and what their confidence with the trading with their confidence with the trading they are doing but they provide the will to fight. That needs to be the framework on how we look at campaigning. I would argue that, country has a lot more will to fight if they have the capabilities and the capacity and confidence and they know people can support them. That is how i see campaigning. The Security Force persistent brigade to build a partner capacity and we have special forces doing great jobs around the world and we have National Guard state partnerships and working with allies and partners to build capabilities. We do lots of exercises in critical theaters to make sure we are ready and work through problems thats problem