Bush bunch of negative outcomes. The russian economy will contract 3 or 4 this year and will remain into concession next year. Take stands in stark contrast to the vast majority of the worlds economies that are projected to grow this year. Just in the last three years, weve seen the russian economy plummet in size from being oneeighth the size of the u. S. Economy to being onesix teteen. So with all due respect to our friends in spain, that is not a country that is thriving. They are sustaining significant economic costs and responding to a situation where they see their influence diminishing and ross prospect of a significant long Term Investment in syria going down the tubes. So i guess thats the case that i would make. One of the that yfof the hallman strength is the fact that at least in this situation the United States is leading a coalition of 65 nations carrying out an integrated stwraemrategy destroy isil. Is it accurate then to say that the president is comfortable with the idea that russia will take a larger broader role in the region even as the u. S. Sort of steps back in particular in syria . Is that accurate, is that inaccurate . I think russia would be wise to consider recent history before they take a wider role in the region that is focused on imposing a military solution inside of syria. Recent history makes pretty clear that they will not succeed in that regard and they certainly will not success any more than the United States was able to impose a military solution in iraq in the last decade. And they certainly wont sub seed any more than the russian effort to impose a military solution on afghanistan three decades ago. So i think this is the backdrop to the Russian Military activity that we see inside of 150syria today. And i know we often end up with news reports when things go poorly for the secret service and having come off this this dramatic week where they were very busy, im just curious, has the president personally gone out and thanked the women and men who not only protect him but also a number of high level visitors in the last week or so . You make an appropriate observation. Which is that the men and women of the secret service over the last week have faced the kind of significant challenges that no Law Enforcement li i think yo could make a strong case that this has been the busiest week in the history of the secret service. They were responsible for protecting the pope over three different cities, when you consider that they have been responsible for the safety and security of the chinese president during his multiday visit to the United States that included at least two cities that im aware of, and when you add on to that that that took place while the United NationsGeneral Assembly was going on where there were more than 100 World Leaders gathered in new york, there were a wide range of significant responsibilities that the United States secret service had to live up to. And it wasnt just a matter of keeping all those individuals safe. It was also making that you are this she could travel around the country and cities, and at least when it caming to te into the pg to balance the desire of the pope to remain safe with his desire to engage with the american public. A long way of saying that they are dedicated and over the course of the last week once the rest of todays briefing online. We leave it now to take you live to the pent gone apentagon and briefing with ash carter. Last week i observed from this podium as i had observed privately the week prior that there is a logical contradiction in the russian position and now its actions in syria. Russia states an intent to fight sigh still isil on the one hand and to support assad regime on the other. Fighting isil without pursuing a parallel political transition only risks escalating the civil war in syria. And with it, the very extremism and instability that moscow claims to be concerned about and aspire to fighting. So that approach is tantamount to pouring gasoline on the fire. In contrast, our position is clear that a lasting defeat of isil and extremism in this syria can only be achieved in parallel with a political transition in syria and we will continue to insist on fur pursuing these two objectives. I would hope riussia would join us which they claim to share rather than a sequence which that cannot succeed. I also told him i was prepared to send a d. O. D. Team to meet with counterparts to ensure that we avoid any inedvertinvertent. There are goals for this meeting are the following. To facilitate the flow of information between Coalition Forces and russian elements that will help us maintain the safety of our personnel in the region. Which is critical. To ensure that any additional russian actions do not interfere with our coalitions efforts to degrade and defeat isil. And to clarify that broader u. S. Security commitments in the region remain unchanged. As ive said before, we will deliver a lasting defeat to isil with a Global Coalition of over 60 nations, were taking the fight to isil across the physical, virtual and ideological battle space. The coalition has conducted over 7100 air strikes, hampering isils movement and operations and systemically targeting this terrorist groups leadership. And the coalition will continue to fly missions over iraq and syria as planned as we did today in support of our International Mission to dehe grade and destroy isil. As we pursue the defense level talks with russia on syria, i want to be absolutely clear that these talks will not in any way diminish our strong condemnation of russianing ing aggression ine or clak change our sanctions and security supports. On that subject, the facts remain. If russia wants to end its international isolation, and be considered a global power, it must stop its aggression in Eastern Ukraine and attempted annexation of crimecrimea. Next let me say a few words about the immediate budget impasse that we find ourselves facing in washington. It appears that we will avoid the trauma of a government shut do down for now. But thats not enough. This is about more than just the short term damage of a temporary shutdown. Its also about the able coupccg and lasting damage that comes from a paycheck to paycheck approach to budgeting the defense of our country. We need to innovate, we need continue to attract the best people to develop the next generation of capabilities and meet the current generation of threats. Yet again we face the real risk that political gridlock will hold us back. Without a negotiated budget solution in which everyone comes together at last, we will again return to sequestration level funding, reducing Discretionary Spending to its lowest real level in a decade despite the fact that members of both parties agree that this result will harm National Security. The alternative to a budget deal, long term continuing resolution, is merely sequester level funding under a different name. And the longer that continuing resolution is, the worse it becomes. Eventually resulting in a 38 billion deficit in resources for our military if congress chooses to pursue this path for the full year. The department of defense has done its best to manage through this row longed period of budget uncertainty seven years in a row of continuing resolutions making painful choices and tradeoffs between size, capabilities and readiness of the joint force. But the world has not stood still. Russia and china have advanced their new capabilities and new imperatives such as ensuring a lasting get of isil have emerged. We need to be dynamic and responsive. Wheth what we have is a straight jacket. We would be forced to make irresponsible reductions when our choices should be considered carefully and extra strategically. It is therefore wasteful to taxpayers and stwri. Its dangerous for our strategy and frankly its embarrassingit taxpayers and stwri. Its dangerous for our strategy and frankly its embarrassing in front of the world. Most importantly to me, for our men and women serving our National Defense and their families, it adds an absolutely undeserved element of uncertainty about their future. Finally, as we plan for the force of the future, i note the reports that will be submitted by Service Leaders came today to the chairman with their recommendations on positions they plan to open to women as well as any exceptions. When i myself review these reports, i was gone coming on the quality of information and analysis behind the recommendations. I want to hear from everyone, but im less interested this who said what but why they are saying it. And to be clear, i will carefully review the information analysis from all four services and special Operations Command to make my final determination. As secretary of defense im committed to seeing this through because attracting the best and staying the best means that wherever possible, we must open ourselves to the talents and strengths of all americans who can contribute with excellent to our force. As ive said before, everyone who is able and willing to serve and can meet the standards we require should have the full opportunity to do so. I look forward to your questions on this or any other topics. Mr. Secretary, do you believe based on what you have seen and heard today that russia has been targeting isil in the strikes that they took overnight or do you believe instead that they attacked perhaps some other Opposition Forces that have been waging war against assad and can you give us we have been observing russian activities and i dont want to go into detail about that at this time. But the reason one of the reasons why the russia position is contradictory is that exactly the potential for them to strike as they may well very in places where in fact isil is not present, others are present. And this is one of the reasons why the result of this kind of action will inevitably simply be too inflame the civil war in syria. And why therefore its ill advised to take this kind of action in support of assad only without pursuing a political transition there. And thats why we;re trying t get them to that same position. So your question exposes exactly what is the fallacy in the russian approach into why its doomed to failure. And is that i just want to make sure i understood your answer. Are you saying then that the strikes were in a place where you believe there were no isil fighters and therefore leads you to that . Again, i want to be careful about confirming information, but it does appear that they were in areas where there probably were not isil forces and that is precisely one of the problems with this whole approach. Mr. Secretary, youve been dealing yourself with the russians for years. So russian general shows up this morning at the embassy in baghdad and afternoon pareppare note saying air strikes will begin in one hour. What do you make of that . As secretary of defense, is that acceptable military to military relations with you and where does this leave you if you sit down and talk to the Russian Military about a way ahead . Is this not a little bizarre . Youre right, i have been dealing with them for a6kc long time and is this not tthis is nf behavior that we should expect professionally from the Russian Military professionally and one reason why i think its a good thing to have an avenue of communication that is less unprofessional than a dropin where we can talk about professional defense matters, but i think also, and this is something that will occur in diplomatic channel, its important to see if we can get russians in a position where they are coming to understand the contradiction in the position that they now have and the possibility that by seeing that political transition and defeating extremism as pursuing something . Parallel, maybe they could make a constructive contribution. But theyre not on the path to doing that. What are your concerns for u. S. Military pilots right now flying over syria . Were always concerned about the possibility of inadvertent incidents and lack of communication. Thats why its important to have communication. And thats the reason for the talks. Have you spoken with your why havent you spoken again with your russian counter part as all this is happening and secretary kerry has spoken with his counter part . And getting back to barbaras question, given that there is a considerable risk to the u. S. Pilots carrying out these missions without direct coordination with the russian, are you taking any actions to circumvent a potential the next step and next dialogue will be in the professional defense to defense channel. Thats precisely our next step. Thats the next step that the defense minister and i discussed when we talked. One that our president and president putin a couple of days ago. I do understand secretary kerry speaking to foreign minister lavrov. And i think these discussions are good. It doesnt mean youll agree. But it is it mean you have the opportunity to try to clarifyi mistake. Will you be speaking to your counterpart . I dont rule that out. Of course not. Ive done it for many years in the course of my career. Thats not the next step, though. Next step is these talks which i i wanted to ask you about women this combat. There are indications that the marines have asked for an exemption or waiver barring some women from or women from some Ground Combat units, infantry units. Is that true . Let me back up. I dont want to characterize recommendations. There are no recommendations made to me yet. Remember the process here which is the services are doing analysis. What they owe to first the chairman and ultimately to me by the end of the year is their analysis, their studies, and their thoughts both about which specialties, if any, should be left closed to women and importantly how they intend to make any adaptations that are required. So there are many different aspects to this. Its all important. And the only point i want to make at this juncture since it will be some months before these things make their way to me and i to want to give the chairman the time to as has been planned for him to look at them, the only point i wanted to make is i am going to be very facts based and analysis based. I want to see the grounds upon which any actions that we take at the first of the year will be made. Thats the frame under which ill be looking at in their summary that women are less lethal i really wont charactertize it. These things havent come to me. Mr. Secretary, back to syria it. These things havent come to me. Mr. Secretary, back to syria. Were you notified in advance that russia is moving toward that target . I think its been widely reported their deployment of aircraft certainly both in the conversations with our president and our secretary of state and in my conversations with the minister, they indicated a desire and an intention to conduct operations. And then you heard about a communication this very morning about the specific activities that happened today. So thats the way we have learned. To follow up thank you, mr. Secretary. Back to the deconfliction issue. Is it equally important now that we tell inform the russians when were conducting air strikes over syria . For instance we conducted air strikes over allepo. Does that go both ways . Lets see how esven chew eights from this, about the conversations to exchange. But thats the purpose of the talks to decide exactly what kinds of information it is important to exchange to avoid incidents. Yesterday secretary kerry said it would be an opportunity for the United States. Do you agree . I said it could be but not in the form in which they now conceive it as at least as they state it and described to me. And i tried to distill that into the contra particulars on the one hand saying we want to fight extremism and on the other hand supporting assad. We believe those are in contradiction with one another. And that a position that would sustain perhaps two of russias objectives in a different way, but they would have to change the position, is one in which they fought extremism which we believe also obviously must be fought, but they backed simultaneously a transition in assad to a government that can end the civil war and preserve some level of decency and good order in the state of syria. But those things cannot occur in sequence. Now, if they came to the position of trying to achieve those two objective, a political transition and fighting extremism in parallel, then i think our interests would have some overlap. And whenever you have overlapping interests, you have the possibility of cooperating. So i hope we get to that point. But that would require a change from this current position which is as i said just not logical. The two pieces of it dont match up. Mr. Secretary, can you going back to the timing really quickly. Since you Just Announced that the military to military talks were going to be going, you Just Announced it yesterday, were you not surprised that the russians began their air strikes before the talks even started . And secondly, when the talks do start, how can that not slow down the u. S. Led campaign against isis if you have to deconflict . It gets back to the previous question. They have indicated for quite some time they were going to begin air operations and we have agreed to quite some time that we were going to get these talks under way just as soon as we could agree mutually on a place and time. Weve agreed upon that now. Those will get under way within days. And i think they will be very constructive. To the second part of your question, but intend to continue to conduct the air operations, the entire coalition does, to combat isil and other extremists in syria as we have been doing. He dont intend it mato make an changes in our air operations. You said, mr. Secretary, that the russian strikes today were not an area where isis is present were where others were present. So if it those those others are Syrian Opposition, what responsibility does the coalition have to protect those Opposition Forces from air strikes . Your question points up the whole contradiction here in the russian position. Which is that by taking on by supporting assad and thereby seemingly taking on everybody who is fighting assad, youre taking on the w