Says he has not received instructions on from the National Press club, this is an hour. Good afternoon and welcome to the National Press club, the place with dues happens. Im aaron bell kind, the 2014 National PressClub President and the chief for the Associated Press in indian, england and japan. And now the chief journalism and and public affairs. Before we get started i wanted to remind our inhouse audience to please silence your phones if you havent already done so. And for our viewing and listening audience please feel free to follow the program on twitt twitter at nbc live. Before i introduce the head table, i wanted to recognize two very special tables on my right, and your left in the audience, which are comprised of members of National PressClub American leaders post 20. Which was founded on november 11, 1919, one year of the sooning of sam cities that ended the first world war. Led by post20 commander and f gc member, please stand and be acknowledged. Now, id like to introduce our head table, please stand when i call your name. And to the audience, please hold your applause until all the head table members are introduced. On your right, kevin win stand, retired u. S. Navy campaiptain a member of the mpc Headliners Team that planned these events. Brendan mccarry, managing editor of military. Com. Lisa matthews, Vice President at hager sharp and cochair of the mpc Headliners Team. Helen mitchell, defense reporter for the hill. Scott mass own, defense reporter for federal news radio. Jazmin, reporter for National Offense magazine. Josh roggin, columnist for the Global Defense of the the washington post. Speaking from our defendant from the home, aaron nelson, a senior producer specialist for the press and the mpc Headliners Team members who coordinated todays lunch. Thank you eric. Jim michaels, military for usa today and former marine officer. Amanda monosay yas. David mcgungter, defense editor. And alfredo diaz, retired army master sergeant, head of vietnam, iraq, panama and the device manager. Id also like to acknowledge briefly Additional Press club members responsible for organizing todays event. Thats official london, john don lly, and russo, staff lauren cocoa and lindsay underwood. With just the the army is the oldest and largest of Americas Armed services. Its fiscal 2018 budge request is about 166 billion, including proposed war spending in the context of a roughly 639 billion total pentagon budget request. The army faces a host of challenges today, and President Trump added a new challenge yesterday with his tweets barring transgender people serving in the military. And in case you are not aware, we have some breaking news update on that story, which is the news that a little while ago as we were preparing for this lunch, marine general joseph did you know ford, the charity of the staff spoke at the club a few weeks ago, sent a note, wrote a message of the chiefs of services and senior enlisted leaders that the military will continue to quote, treat all of our personnel will respect, end quote. And in two key paragraphs read out, quote, i know there are questions about yesterdays announcement on the trad policy by the president. There will be no modifications to the current policy until the president s direction has been received by the secretary of defense. And the secretary has issued implementation guidance. In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect, as in partly different the current fight and the challenges we face, we will all remain focus in accomplishing our assigned missions. General joseph did you know ford, chairperson of the joint chiefs of staff. The ranks enlarge of 911 and shrink after the iraq and afghanistan and now they have begun to inch back up. The army wants to be sure that the units are larger and they are properly trained and equipped. The army and other services have said their readiness and preparedness tonight is not up to standard. To improve the situation, the army wants more money, but everyone agrees it needs to be wellspent. The army has had trouble in particular executing large weapons acquisitions and billions were spend on the crew saider, command chief and future combat system programs for example, which much less to show for it had originally been planned. The army is battled hardened today but has waved one particular type of war, counter insurgency. Tomorrows night might be different in character. To stay ahead of the curve, the army is focused and keeping pace with rapid technological change. General mark billy is keenly aware of all these challenges and is in the midst of addressing them. General milly became the 39th chief of staff in august of 2015, before that he led Army Forces Command in fort brag in north carolina, has held multiple staff and command positions and eight divisions and in Army Special Forces units throughout the last 35 years. He has deployed to multiple theaters of conflict. He graduated and received his commission through the rotc program through bridgeston university. He holds masters degrees from Colombia University and International Relation and war klums and national security. Hes the recipient of military awards including the braun star. There are two numerous to mention. Just look at his chest. General milly is a native of winchester, massachusetts, he and his wife had been married for 30 years and have two children. Ladies and gentlemen please join me in a major big welcome from the National Press club to army chief of staff, general mark milly. Thank you. I love coming to the National Press club and getting headline news. Thats great, i really appreciate you doing that. And so, thanks. Thanks for the opportunity to be here. And i dont know how many of you know it but myra is also a veteran himself. Served in vietnam as a young man, he was on general west more lands staff in the early years of vote yam, 64, 65 year frame. So thank you also. And i thank all of you for being here. Im here to talk about the new England Patriots and how they can bat 283. Just kidding. No, i realize everyone hear is keenly interested in that which goes on around us and im a shoulder, a public figure, a chief of staff with the army as you heard mauro say, a significant budge, a lot of soldier, young men and women of our nation and i feel an obligation to explain what we do, why we do it. And answer questions for the American People and the American People oftentimes get their news, get their view of us, the army or the military through the media, not exclusively but its one of mechanisms and i have the obligation of chief of staff of army to do that. What i want to talk today about there are four topics, i think i got about 20 minutes or so and we want to open the rest of it up to q a. I wont be able to talk in depth of these subject but ill be able to throw them out and if you have any questions. But i want to give you my view on what the United States army is being canalesed with around the globe today. Second, i want to tell you a little about your army and the second of readiness and what we prepare for. Thirdly i want to talk about the future and lastly i want to throw out a myth of the obligation that i think are wort while of discussing. But i do want to mention up front, the transgender news that came out the other day. I want to reiterate what was sa said. And i foe know theres a lot of questions out there. The military is a military that operates today to date of walking in here i have yet to receive implementation guidance and directives. We grow up and learn to obey the chain of command and mine is the secretary of army and the secretary of defense right, and the president. So we will work through the implementation guidance when we get it and then well move from there. And to my knowledge of the department of defense secretary mattis havent received direct orders yet. I know there was a opportunity over of what was said. Well act when we receive directives through the proper command of chain and well evaluate what we have and move up from there. In the meantime, hes exactly right. The entire chain of command will, always has, will today, will tomorrow and always should treat every single soldier, airman, marine, with the dignity and respect of our operations bar none. Thats where we stand of today. Ill be happen to fill whatever questions that are on peoples mind. I want to talk about this strategic environment briefly. As of right now, we define some of the challenges globally. We use a knew monoic four plus one, theres a lot of ways to describe security challenges, you can talk about them functionally such as merry time challenges or cyber challenges. Within the department of defense, at this time, broadly speaking were defining them. Its not the only way to do it and we recognize that. And then one broader challenge which are terrorists and ill walk you through each one of those. We do recognize theres other ways to define secure challenges. But beau security challenges of today that we design the apply to the force, the man training equipment force and joint force. I say this with caveat because secretary mattis is leading us through a detailed global review. And i would expect that well probably complete that perhaps sometimes maybe in the fall. And then that may or may not change how we view the strategic challenge. But at this point and time, the way i look at them is through the lens of four nation states and one group of fawn state actors. In the nation states, china, north korea and koran. And other states i would call violate terrorist organizations and extremist organizations. But you foe three, taliban, isis, al qaeda, other groups that seek to do damage to u. S. Interest. Let me start with what is clearly the most cabpable of thm which is russia. The way i look at challenges or threats is capability and will, and theres a lot of subsets and categories. Thats a pretty conventional look, a normal standard look of people in the military of any country, is capability and will. With russia it is clear that russians, military capability is significant and in fact its the only country on eartha represents a threat because they have the capabilities of weapons, and we do too by the way, that can destruct america. Other countries have Nuclear Capabilities as well but only russia has the capability to destroy the United States. In addition to that, their traditional capability has been modernized in the last five or ten years or so, maybe 15. Then you get into will. Thats a much more subjective capability piece. You can do the math, add it up figure oit out. When you get into will and intent thats quite subjective. There youre dealing with a higher order of justice. All we know for certain from behavior russia has acted aggressively to its boundaries, in places like crimea, georgia and elsewhere. We also know that they operate and try to undermined things like elections in European Countries and other countries. We know that theres a variety of cyber activity that goes on. A variety of other sorts of nonmilitary direct actions pressures that are done. Then you ask yourself why are they behaving like that and youll get owl kinds of debates on all kinds of arguments, then you got to figure out how to handle it. But id argue, this is me now, id argue that the runner leadership is truly active. It is my belief that russian aggressive can be deterred through use of tools. There are russia states, United States needs to carefully and cautiously deliver and work to its common objectives and prevent undermining of our interest. Thatll involve assuring our allies and partners. But i believe with proper methods and leadership et cetera, that could be managed. China is a different situation. China is a significant rising power, and id argue that in chinas case youre looking at a country that reforms of 1979 and over the last 39 or 40 years, china has advanced to really significantly in terms of economic development, it was taken off 10 gdp growth a year, theyve slowed down over the last seven years. This is open to argument i suppose, but probably one of the most significant, if not the most significant economic shift in Global Economic power in the last five centuries. Since the west and the industrial revolution. The China Economic growth over the last 40 years is really really significant. What does that mean . When economic power shifts so significantly, military power typically follows and i believe were seeing that today. Were seeing a significant increase in the capabilities and capacity and size and strength of Chinese Military capability. Then you get back to will and intent. Whats theyre will and intend. Whats they trying to do. They have been very trans parntd about that. Theyre intent is to restore their historical 5,000 year role to essentially be the most significant power in age and they want to be coequal with the United States and achieve that by midcentury. Theyre very trarnz parent, they put out articles and books about it. Theyd like to do that as peaceful as they can, called a winwin strategy. If they cant do it peacefully theyre building that military. So stand by. China is not enemy, neither is russia. Enemy has a specific definition and that is a group of people or nation states that are currently engage requested are in conflict with. Sometimes words like that are used wrong. Competition is one thing, even if its add verily, even if theres some things below the level of conflict that happen that are not necessarily savory but theres a big difference between open conflict if the activities blow open conflict. Competition without conflict is probably a desirable goal, especially with the two countries given the size, capacity and capability of those subjects. Thats kind of where were at. China is also one of the most rational activists in the system. I believe to shift engagement and to deter insurance measureses that we can work our way into the future without significant conflict. But these are Unanswered Questions and we dont know until we get there. Whether you get to iran you have a different situation, iran desire for Nuclear Weapon have been sort of put on pause we hope for good, but were watch that closed closely. But even if it is we can say with certainty that iran tries to undermined u. S. Security interest in the middle east. They do that through means and terrorist groups. We are always an aposter realtive to iran. The fourth country i think it is one thats in the news a lot and rightly so which i think is the single most country thats facing the United States today, and that is the threat of north korea. I dont want to go into a tremendous am of detail on it, most of it is clarifiy classify classified but it is clear based on the july 4th weekend. More to follow but the time has shortened significantly and north korea is a significant threat. United states policy for many many decades now has been the the objective has been that north korea will not possess Nuclear Weapons and they wont possess Nuclear Weapons that will strike the United States. Were trying a wide variety of methods in the diplomatic and economic atmosphere. We in the military fully support those and want those to succeed. There is still time left, the pressure campaign, you can read about it in the media. We are fully in support of the secretary of state and department of state in their efforts to bring this to a future resolution. However, time is running out a bit. So, north koreas is extremely dangerous, gets more dangerous as the weeks go by so well see on that one. Last one is the violent extremist for terrorist organizations. I think frankly you got a situation in iraq, syria, yemen and libya, west africa and each one of those has different factors and analysis sis and every one of them is fled in different ways so you cant group all these in one. Id suggest we are in a long struggle against violent extremist who have a different view of the world than we do and they want to kill americans and kill local friends and partners not only in the middle east but elsewhere. We in the military are willing to help in that effort. Our revolution to that is to work with our friends and strength their capabilities. And try to where local Police Forces can manage those at a local level. You see whats playing out against isis which i think has been quite successful today. It will dispurse into some other form but its current form with its very very traditional structures of that is likely to be destroyed. But they will disperse, all of these organizations can morph into different forms and they are all dependant on a radical ideology which ultimately will have to be destroyed, mostly by the people of the region. So, thats sort of the world in a nutshell as fast as i can do it. And i know theres a lot of Unanswered Questions in there. Let me shift gears real quick. You heard mauro talk about the army, we dont have a small army. But the question on size and forces, army, navy, affairs marines, its relative question not a revolutionary question. The question is what do you want it to do. The United States military is a Global Military and we have been for sure since the first world war, and with absolute certainty since the break enwood agreements which is world war ii, which is established the order of the regime but which the world is run tod