- Good morning, my name is Ray Carpenter, retired Major General and a Senior Fellow with the Association of the United States Army. Thank you for joining us for this contemporary military forum titled Multi-Domain Battle: Converging Cross-Domain Solutions. As your professional association, the Association of the United States Army and the Institute of Land Warfare are proud to provide forums like this one throughout the year to broaden the knowledge base of Army professionals and those who support our Army. These professional development seminars are AUSA's way of amplifying the U.S. Army's narrative to audiences inside the Army and help to further the association's mission to be the voice of the Army and support of the Soldier. Of course, we cannot do this alone. AUSA relies on its members to help tell the Army's story and to support our soldiers and their families. A strong membership base is vitally important for the advocacy efforts in Congress, the Pentagon, the defense industrial base and the public and communities across the country, through AUSA's 121 local chapters. On a personal note, I've been a member of a, a life member of AUSA for 20 years and had a special moment on Sunday during the Army 10 miler. On mile nine, my daughter's boyfriend proposed to my daughter and she got a ring. Somebody asked me if I was there, I said, "No, I was on mile five." (audience laughing) For those of you who are not yet members of your professional association, we encourage you to join the, a special introductory offer, and join the association. You will find the invitation on your chair, just bring it to the AUSA membership booth, booth 307 in Exhibit A, or online at the AUSA membership site. If you are already a member of AUSA, thank you for staying with us and please give your invitation to a fellow professional. You'll be doing a service to the association and to the United States Army. Let me introduce our panelists, first, The Honorable Elbridge A. Colby, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development, United States Department of Defense. General James M. Mike Holmes, Commander, Air Combat Command, Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. Lieutenant General Robert S. Walsh, Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command. Major General Stephen G. Fogarty, Chief of Staff, United States Cyber Command. Vice Admiral Kevin D. Scott, Director, Joint Force Development, J7. And Lieutenant General Frank Leidenberger, Commander, German Army Elements, Multinational Headquarters and Basic Military Organization. At this point, I'll turn it over to General David Perkins, Commanding General, United States Army Training and Doctrine.
- You're only as good as your last panel, so hopefully, maybe that's a, promise of the future. Well, thanks a lot. Thanks, folks, for coming out here this morning. Thanks to my distinguished panel here. You'll notice, not by accident, as you look across the panel, we have tried to represent all the domains. And in fact, there are only two of us that have the same uniform, but Steve's here as a cyber guy anyway. And then, the cleanup batter at the end is my good friend General Frank Leidenberger, from the German Army, so not only do we have somebody in a different uniform, but he has a very distinctive foreign accent. So we're here to show that this is not just an Army thing, but in fact, it really can't come to fruition without all the organizations these folks represent. The other point is, so last year, as a concept, we rolled out Multi-Domain Battle and we had a similarly distinguished panel with a couple of chiefs of theirs services and all of the domains represented. And this year is kind of the next phase, so as I always my folks, these are not individual episodes, like on a TV, it's a mini-series. So this is a continuation from last year, so if you're not up on it, you can go onto TRADOC Netflix and download the whole mini-series of Multi-Domain Battle. But, we're intending to show the progresses being made in how we are going about actually operationalizing this. So last year, we rolled it out as a concept and defined the problems we were trying to solve. This year, we're talking about how we're converging solutions to it. In the Army, we come up with what we call DOTMLPF solutions, doctrine, organization, training, leader development, material, personnel, facilities, et cetera. And so our first doctrinal manual, last year it was a concept, this year we put out our first doctrinal manual. FM30, I don't know, Mike Lundy, do you have a copy of it? No, or you've given yours out already. (man speaking off microphone) Yeah, okay, so light reading there, he's got a Warrior's Corner, that he can discuss it. So the Army has put out our first operational doctrinal manual, I've taken components of this and putting into operating force. In the last year, as we've been working on this, I'll highlight some of the feedback we're getting. Because I get that a lot when I talk to folks. What kind of feedback are you getting? Are you getting any pushback on the Multi-Domain Battle concept as it become doctrine? And probably the most common feedback comment we get from a lot of folks, whether it's a blog or in questions is, you know what, as I understand it, this is really old wine in a new bottle. It's sort of what we've being doing all along, it's kind of AirLand Battle 2.0, et cetera, like that. I said, respectfully, it's built upon a lot of those tenets, but there's a couple of things that are distinctly different. And it manifests itself across the DOTMLPF paradigm and actually when we talk about building the future force and there have been discussions these last couple of days about where we've come as an Army. The theme is World War I through Multi-Domain Battle. And I know a number of discussions were held yesterday on readiness and now we're focusing today on the future. Let me highlight a couple of the differences. When I was growing up, we would look at a problem set that you would break it down into different what we now call warfighting functions, or different domains, where we say, okay, here's a problem in the Central Plains of Europe, with the Soviet Union, so there's an air component. There's a land component and then within those we have an intelligence aspect, a maneuver aspect, a sustainment, a fires, et cetera. And then people would run off either in that domain or that branch or that warfighting function and come up with a solution. And then at the end of the day, you would have all of these federated solutions. You would have intelligence systems, you would have fire systems, you would have maneuver systems, sustainment systems, the air domain was being dealt with in a way that really optimized it for their world. The land domain was developed in a way that lent itself to what we do on land. And then you would try to bring them together, you would then try to synchronize them. And we would use that word all the time. And in all the manuals, you would see, synchronize this, synchronization board, synchronization cells. Well, if you have all this time synchronizing and boards and cells, that must mean that it is inherently unsynchronized. Or else, why would you have to synchronize all of it? And that was one of the challenges we had because the problems that, when it got broken down into its bits and pieces, you would have all of these, for lack of a better term, these stovepipe solutions. A series of federated solutions that now had to be resynchronized. And what happened is you would come up with bridging strategies or black boxes or whatever it is to make sure at, first of all, they were deconflicted. And then maybe you would have a level of synchronization. One of the biggest differences with this is that we're starting out from the very beginning to say, we need to define the problem differently. The problem isn't a series of 10 separate problems, the problem is inherently multi-domain and multi-functional. There are no single domain problems. There are no single branch problems. There are no single national problems. These are all going to be coalition problems. So you define the problem that way. And if you were at the opening ceremony with Secretary Mattis, he said, one of the most important things is defining the problem properly. If you don't define the problem properly, what's going to happen is you end up with an answer that really doesn't solve that and then you have to synchronize the answer with what the problem was. So we couldn't really have a better opening comment to this panel than I think what Secretary Mattis says, is properly defining the problem. And what we're saying is the problems are inherently multi-domain, multi-functional, multi-branch, multi-national and therefore, when you start solving them, as you head down that road, based on whatever domain you are in, you have to instinctively think, is this going to work as I interface with the maritime domain? Is this going to work in the space domain? What does cyber effect going to have? When I organize my staff, are all of those domains represented? When I come up with a plan, are they all integral parts of it? Versus, well, I'm going to really come up with the maneuver plan and then we'll just sprinkle some cyber on it at the end, kind of like frosting. No, it is inherently part of it. And that is actually already bearing fruit out. And you can go see Mike Lundy down in the Warrior's Corner, or other places and I know General Mike Holmes and I, since he is my landlord, I am a tenant at Joint Base Langley-Eustis. We're saying the Air Force operates one way, really kind of functionally based to the Army as echelon. It's not a matter of deconflicting them, it's converging them. Can you converge those battlefield frameworks, that from the beginning, that is how we want to solve the problem? So I thought I would just make that as an opening remark that probably the biggest effect this has had, and it's only been a year since we last met, is that it has really helped us bring clarity to defining the problem, which means we have headed down different paths toward the solution. And that's why, in fact, we have so many people representing different parts of the problem, but still it's the same problem. So with that, I'd like to pass it off to Mr. Colby to give a perspective from his perch up there in the Department of Defense. And we'll go down with opening comments from everyone and then really want to open it up to questions from the group, so, sir. - Thank you very much, General Perkins. And thank you to General Ham, General Campbell and the AUSA for the invitation to be here. It's an honor to be addressing such a distinguished crowd and to be on a panel with such a distinguished group of officers, so thank you. Just for your background, I'm the Policy Deputy Assistant Secretary responsible for Defense Strategy, Force Development and Analysis Issues. So my remarks are mostly going to focus on the political military context and hopefully will help situate or contextualize the discussion going forward on Multi-Domain Battle. As you well know much better than I, the Army and much of the rest of the department over the last 15 years have been focused on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But as we've all seen, the strategic environment has changed significantly over the last decade and a half. After being relatively subdued since the end of the Cold War, by historical standards, the world is returning to a more competitive pattern of international politics. The global power balance is changing. In particular, wealth and the military technological capability that flow from it, are diffusing, particularly to Asia. While non-state actors, maligned, benign and in between, play an increasing role in the international arena, the primary actors continue to be states. Only states can martial the economic, political and especially military power to sustainably impose their will on other states. Thus, competition amongst states is reemerging. This is a product of structural, but also other factors. In the immediate post-Cold War period, it seemed to many that market liberal democracy would prevail everywhere and that states had moved beyond strategic competition. Events of the last generation, however, such as the failure of reform in Russia, the Rise of China, under the Communist Party, U.S. travails in the Middle East, and the financial crisis of the last decade have undermined this perception. We have now entered an era in which states with a quite different conception of international order from the United States and its allies and partners are increasingly powerful and more assertive in seeking to establish their influence, particularly in their regions. Above all, I refer here to Russia and China. While our relations with both Moscow and Beijing are needless to say complicated, each appears to be seeking to assert their influence over and reshape the order in Europe and East Asia, respectively, in ways unfavorable to our interests and those of our allies and partners. This effort cuts against our fundamental interests in open, congenial orders in the key regions of the world, including Europe and East Asia. Throughout our history as in independent nation, we in the United States have had a profound interest in ensuring that both of these regions are free from domination by an unfriendly power and open to our commerce and engagement. As Secretary Mattis reminded us on Monday, since the Second World War, we have understood that the best way to pursue this aim is through an alliance structure of like-minded nations focused on maintaining favorable balances of power in Europe and East Asia. This is what is under challenge today, and is likely to be increasingly so. Accordingly, as Secretary Mattis has repeatedly emphasized, we are today both recommitting to these alliances and ensuring that they are more equitable and fair arrangements. This is actually a return to our traditional policy of strengthening our compacts, while ensuring they are mutual, balanced and equitable. The only way that they can maintain the support of the American people over the long term. As this audience well knows, though, the challenge to our alliance structure is not just a geopolitical one. Rather, it is very much a military one. Russia has undertaken a major military rejuvenation over the last decade, indicated a willingness to use military force in its near abroad, and developed strategies to use its military and unconventional capabilities to achieve limited but significant political objectives. China, meanwhile, has invested great sums into modernizing its military. One increasingly able to contest supremacy over and project power into the Western Pacific and ultimately, possibly beyond, quite likely. Moreover, its ambitions have expanded as its power has. A trend that appears likely to continue. With their sophisticated capabilities and integrated defenses, including A2/AD and counter-C4ISR, these two states can establish contested environments in every domain in these key regions of Eastern Europe and the Western Pacific. This challenges our traditional deterrents and defense model with respect to these areas. Accordingly, the central problem, to return to General Perkins's and, I think, Secretary Mattis's admonition to define a problem statement. The central problem for the Department of Defense is ensuring that the United States, together with our allies and partners, maintains effective deterrents for all alliance system, even in light of these developments. Concurrently, the United States must also defeat ISIS, conduct effective counterterrorism operations over the long term and stand strong against North Korea and Iran. As this audience knows all too well, and as Secretary Mattis discussed on Monday, Korea presents a special pressing and very urgent problem, not least for the U.S. Army. As Secretary Mattis said, the Army stands ready to provide credible, plausible, military options for the President. With respect to the major powers, though, the best way to maintain effective deterrents, vis-a-vis Russia and China, is for the United States to retain the military advantage with respect to plausible scenarios that touch on our key interests, while favorably managing escalation. This standard requires not only military superiority in a general sense, but advantage with respect to plans and capabilities that would actually plausibly be used by our political leadership. This is a crucial point, given that any conflict, God forbid, with Russia or China would be shadowed by the mutual possession of nuclear weapons. Accordingly, effective strategies for the United States and our allies must take this reality into account and prepare for it, rather than ignore it. In particular, credible strategies and capabilities designed to support them need to push the burden of escalation onto the opponent, so that it is they, rather than we, who are inclined to fold rather than continuing to raise the stakes. Relatedly, the standard also puts a special emphasis on regional balances. Particularly in Europe and the Western Pacific. And ultimately, beyond. Moscow and Beijing appear first to be set on establishing their influence or predominance in these regions. Therefore, we and our allies must develop regional strategies to protect our interests. Initially, the challenge presented by adversaries integrated defenses was seen as one of first rolling back these networks to gain superiority in every domain so that the Joint Force could then operate as it had for the past 25 years. Essentially, the traditional post-Cold War American way of war adapted for more sophisticated and ubiquitous adversary capabilities. In the initial conception, and in previous years, the rolling back was to be largely the work of standoff and penetrating air and naval forces. Ground forces would only be introduced once superiority had been established. As the department has become increasingly to understand, in a tactile way, a difficulty and problems posed by a rollback approach to adversaries' integrated defense or A2/AD bubbles, the department has increasingly come to understand contested environments and dealing with them as a fact of life of the modern battlefield. The challenge is increasingly seen as one of fighting into and within these contested environments. Ground forces in conjunction with the rest of the Joint Force are crucial to denying adversaries the ability to dominate these domains from the get-go and to creating corridors into these contested spaces and then surviving and fighting within them. Quite a different conception from this rollback model. This is particularly important because of the time-distance advantage that our potential adversaries have to execute rapid attacks that establish facts on the ground before we are able to respond or respond in ways that are politically plausible. And that are important for alliance cohesion. As a result, the department is now increasingly sensitized that the Joint Force must be able to fight from within the contested environment at the onset of the conflict in order to frustrate adversary plans and enable those surge forces that are crucial to termination on our terms. Moreover, forces positioned inside contested spaces at the outset are postured to help seize the initiative and enable follow on forces. As you can imagine, the Army will play a leading role and increasingly salient role in addressing this central challenge. In our thinking, we would propose that this role is three-fold. First, the Army will be on the front lines of deterrence and defense through combat credible forward forces positioned to operate inside adversaries' A2/AD bubbles at the onset of conflict. Of course, it's not only the Army, but this is a special role for the Army. This requires resilient, survivable, tangible and lethal forward force posture. Second, the Army remains a decisive war-winning surge force, although these forces will no longer deploy through a permissive environment, but rather need to fight their way into theatre, potentially from the homeland on. Secretary Mattis on Monday discussed the role of the Army, crucial role of the Army, as the ultimate decisive factor in conflict. Third, the Army will be critical to building and enabling allied warfighting capability and ensuring interoperability between the Joint Force and our allies. So the challenge to the Army is to field and ready a force able to meet this demanding requirement along side allied forces capable of integrating with. And as General Perkins remarked, the Army is planning, rightly, for conflict with allies and partners. The Army has already done much commendably to bring the department to a common diagnosis of the problem and along with its sister services, has taken an important and crucial first step with Multi-Domain Battle that is to be applauded. In addition, its modernization plan, including the recently published science and technology portfolio realignment memorandum of late last month, the Army has also undertaken significant progress in reprioritizing capability and S&T investments for high-end warfighting. This is to be applauded as well, as modernizing the Army and the Joint Force to deal with the challenge posed by major powers over plausible fights is crucial for our national strategy. But, and this audience knows this far better than I, but the Joint Force will need further innovative doctrinal and material solutions, generated by the professionals who are experts in ground combat. In some ways, we face a challenge that resembles that of the interwar period of the 1920s and '30s, where emerging technologies invalidated previously successful doctrines. The history of strategies, of course, is a history of adaptation. But to my eye, the closest historical parallel to our own era is that of the time after Vietnam. As the Joint Force wrestled with how to restore conventional and integrated deterrents in an era of intensifying great power competition and new technological breakthroughs that included the precision missile competition. This is where this conference can be so helpful in catalyzing thinking to build on the excellent work and experimentation already underway. My sense is very much that the Army is in the process of redoubling its efforts to deal with these challenging, but tractable problems through innovative thinking, rigorous analysis and wargaming experimentation and doctrine. The nation, you need hardly hear it from me, you know it much better than I, requires no less and the same goes for our allies and partners. I look forward to your questions, thank you very much. - Good one, go ahead, Mike. - Thanks, thank you Mr. Colby. I want to start by saying thanks to the AUSA. I'm the child of a Army officer, I spent my first year at Fort Knox while my dad went to basic armor officer course. He's proud of what I've done, but he's going to be really proud to find out I finally made it to the Association of the U.S. Army (audience laughing) convention, and I'll be letting him know. So thanks for inviting me to be here today. And thanks to fellow panelists for being here as well. But first, I really want to thank TRADOC and I want to thank Dave Perkins for the work that was done to start the work to lay out the view of Multi-Domain Battle, that we've had the chance to collaborate on. And I want to thank General Perkins personally for the spirit that he took it under of being open, of asking for insights and including them in the product and giving us a chance as joint partners to influence that product. So thanks, Dave, you're a great teammate and I've enjoyed working with you. The product that TRADOC produced, Multi-Domain Battle, I think at Air Combat Command, we think it does a great job of capturing the complexities of the battlefield that we may find ourselves facing. And we have turned, over the last 15 years, we turned the Army and the Air Force into a machine that was designed to support conflict in permissive environments. And now we've got to work together to figure out how we're going to turn the Army and the Air Force back into a joint team that can prevail in this more complex environment. It identifies the impact of those complexities as well. And it identifies the areas that we need to work together to figure out how we'll approach it and drive solutions. And I think as Dave pointed out, primarily, there's a need for a new battlefield construct. And when our predecessors at TRADOC and the organization formerly known as Tactical Air Command, now Air Combat Command, got together after Vietnam, like Mr. Colby said. They put their heads together and they came up with a battlefield construct of AirLand Battle. That as Dave has taught me, didn't spell out exactly how to fight or how many squads would be in a platoon, it laid out a view of the battlefield that everybody could understand. And realize that they were going to have to fight more than just a close battle and push back into a deep battle and protect the rear area as well. So we've enjoyed the work there, to try to lay that out. And as Dave said, we often speak past each other between Airmen and Soldiers. So when TRADOC lays out their battlefield construct, they rightfully start off with lines on the ground and echelons and who will be responsible for which area? What are the responsibilities and authorities that ground commander has within those areas? Who will they support? Who's supporting, how will they share the boundaries? And that's as it should be, that's the way you should look at it. Then that drives a multi-echelon approach of corps and divisions and brigades and working together to control that space with a commander given charge of a particular part of the battle area. When an Airman looks at it, we look at it and we say, "But everything I have can work "in any of those lines." Because it can, because of the range and because of the flexibility. So we start out talking past each other. In general, we've evolved into a single echelon command and control in an air operations center, where everything is planned together there and then executed in a decentralized way. And so how will we take the experience that we've gained then and bring air, space and cyber together at that single echelon? And then how will we make sure that we can provide that down into the Army's echelons and bring it all together into a converged solution, as Dave said. So the flexibility, the range, the agility that we bring and our tendency to look at functional areas. So instead of thinking about what will we attack in the enemy's strategic rear, we tend to think, what function is it that we're trying to neutralize? Or degrade, and where would we attack across a battlefield to do that? That gave us the opportunity to talk through some issues and Dave and I have an article coming out this spring that will lay out the fact that instead of saying one or the other has to win of those views, how can we put them together and make sure that the air, brought through the Air Operations Center will be available at every echelon? And not just the air, but the multi-domain capabilities that come through the Air Force. So when we look at that battlefield, we think that the ubiquitous long-range precision fires that are changing the character of the battle that we're facing, whether that's land-based systems or standoff systems or gravity dropped precision weapons, change the character of the fight in ways that we don't yet understand. Flying around Afghanistan for a year in an F-15E, with eight to 10 bombs and an advanced targeting pod that will point at any set of coordinates I give it. And then I can refine that down to coordinates that will let me drop a pretty inexpensive JDAM within three meters of any target in Afghanistan, basically any time I want, has given me a new perception of what it would be like to be on the other side of that. And I'm not sure we completely grasp that yet. That in an area where the enemy controls the air, what does that mean to us, in our bases, or in our positions on the ground? So we worked through that and then we face enemies that marry that with exquisite multi-source intel. So they provide their own national technical means, like were used to exploiting. They combine that with commercially available tools. They're building unmanned aircraft systems to be able to go out and get realtime data and find people. And then they take publicly available data off our social media feeds and all those work, combine it with information tools. So I think what that means, as we look at this new battlefield is that although we'll still have to think about boundaries and echelons, for the enemies' long range precision fires, they don't really see that. For the enemy, there are no boundaries on where they can reach with those fires. And they can hit it very precisely because of the intel. That means there are no hiding places for us on the battlefield, whether that's our ground echelons in the close battle or whether that's our bases and ports. Where we're trying to come in to the area. And there are no sanctuaries. There's no place that we can say we're out of the battle. The cyber attacks will start while we're trying to load our equipment onto rail lines and take it to the port. And we'll be in a constant battle all across the environment, from our garrison at home up to engaging in the close battle. The struggle may be for our twos, instead of how to we find the enemy and know where they are? It may be how will we disrupt the trust in the enemy's data? How can we make them not be sure where we are? How can we inject uncertainty into what they're doing? And what they know about where we are? And then if we're going to win in that environment, I think it's going to be because of our things that we teach our junior leaders. To have initiative, to operate at high speed and high tempo and to bring the multiple domains together that Dave talked about to try to bring multiple solutions and put the enemy on the horns of multiple dilemmas. So if we're going to do that, if we're going to make the enemy react, instead of dictating terms to us, then one of the areas that we think we need to look at is how we will lash up our command and control systems together. So instead of having independent, redundant stovepipe systems, will every service have to build its own cyber coordinating authority? Its own space coordinating authority? Its own joint fires coordinating capability? Or will be be able to share some of that and have one component, one echelon do that for an area and take advantage of it? Will we be able to do cooperative converged solutions, like Dave talks about? Ultimately, that will come down to trust. The Army and the Air Force have been constantly at war now since 2003. Really, every day, for those years. I'm not sure there's ever been an Army, and I don't think there's ever been an Army and an Air Force that were at war together for 13 or 14 straight years, every day. We've built teamwork between our junior leaders. And we need to build on that and build on the trust that it will take for us to operate at the speed and tempo we'll need to operate. So that means I think we have to look at things like the joint boards, as Dave talked about. Will we have the luxury of picking targets that we're going to hit three days from now in a joint board or will those targets be gone? And maybe the fires that we're going to use to go after them are no longer available to us? And how can we operate through that. I spent a great day at Fort Drum Monday, watching 10th Mountain go through part of their warfighter iteration as they go through their training cycle. One of the things they were experimenting with is the JAGIC, or a Joint Air Ground Integration Center, I think is what it stands for. So right next to the JOC floor in the Division Main is the JAGIC, with Soldiers and Airmen that are working in realtime. The joint fires coordination on the battlefield and being bale to deconflict the airspace in real time. Being able to bring in fires from the Air Force or from the Naval component and integrate them. First, I said, okay, so this means we don't need those boards and we don't need to think. When I talked to the guys there, they said, "No, we still need a plan." We still need a plan for the future, we need to know the priorities, so we can adapt in real time. But without going too far into it, they also showed me that the night before, when a new target set had come up, basically the enemy was reacting to their perception of what the division's main effort was going to be the next day and was erecting barriers and doing things against it. Because those targets weren't in their three-day out plan, they watched them overnight and let the enemy build those obstacles, instead of shifting their plan with the fires that they had and countering that. They're doing a great job working through this. There's some really interesting things going on there. It was a great day there. But we're going to have to figure out that balance on how we do it. In the Air Force, we'll have to look at that one echelon construct. We will have to distribute some planning down to lower echelons. And the JAGIC, again, is an example of how we might do that. We tie them into our planning and plan for the division along with the division, as their planning happens. Then we'll be better prepared to support it. So the experiments, the exercises that we'll do with TRADOC and that we'll do in other places will help us determine the way forward and where we need to get. Ultimately, I'd like to get to a point where we're able to conduct one of our Blue Flag exercises, which is our warfighter exercise for our theatre headquarters at the AOC, alongside a division or a corps doing their warfighter exercise and go after the same problem and see how we can figure out to address it together. Having peer adversaries is motivational. It makes us all wake up a little bit from a nap of how to think about going against them. We'll have to work on, as we talked about, our doctrine, our processes, our TTPs, our C2, how will we build command and control to let us converge? But, as you've talked about this week, there are some lessons for us from the past. When we entered a campaign against a peer adversary in North Africa, we had a lot of lessons to learn. We had trouble working through it. We were eventually victorious. And when we sat down then, the Army wrote a field manual, FM100-20, which laid out air and ground operations and provided the backbone for the future operations in the rest of the European theatre. The first sentence of FM100-20 says, air and land forces are co-equal and interdependent, neither is the auxiliary of the other. And when we think about where we've gotten that wrong, on Airmen's side, we've had zealots that said, "All you really need is Air. "We'll take care of it, don't worry." Which is not true. And on the other side, we've said, "Hey, we subordinate everything to the close battle "and the ground commander that's in charge." And we find out that's not the most efficient or effective way to do it. I wonder, as we go forward, if we'll have to expand that statement to say, air, land and cyber power are co-equal and interdependent, neither is the auxiliary of the other. Or air, land, space, and cyber power are. And we'll have to think through that. Lastly, I want to come back to trust. There's a story that we like to tell from General George Kenney, who was General MacArthur's air component commander in the Pacific. And the story's in General Kenny's book. There's a press, they're having a session with General MacArthur and the reporter says, "General MacArthur, where's 13th "Air Force dropping their bombs today?" And General MacArthur says, "You know, that's really "a better question for General Kenney." And the reporter says, "General MacArthur, "do you mean to tell me you don't know where "13th Air Force is dropping their bombs today?" And General MacArthur says, "No, I know where "they're dropping them, they're dropping them "in the right place. "I wanted you to ask General Kenney where that was." (audience laughing) Probably a true story. General Kenney quotes it. The last one, there's a little video out there from a war bonds rally in Los Angeles Colosseum at the end of the European campaign. And General Patton and General Doolittle are addressing a crowd in Los Angeles to try to raise money to finish the war effort against Japan. And I watched that clip and I watched the way they talk about each other. And they say things like, "I wish the American "people could see what happened to Hitler's forces "after 3rd Army and 9th Tactical Air Command "got through with them." They don't say, who was supporting and who was subordinate, they don't work through that. They approach it, it was a team that did the work. And it'll be up to us to figure out together as a team how we will do the work that TAC and TRADOC did post-Vietnam to put together a framework that worked to deter peer adversaries. And it'll be up to a broader group to do as we go forward in the future. So, I'm really pleased to have been here with you today, and thanks, Dave. - Thanks, Mike.
- Good, well, thank you, first off to AUSA and the Army team for pulling this together. As the other panel members said, very important and General Perkins, for you leadership down at TRADOC, for Multi-Domain Battle. As a Marine, we work very closely with all the other services and what I would tell you as Soldiers, you should be very proud that one of the things that we as Marines pick up on all the time is how well the Army does concepts. And how well they do doctrine. And we learn an awful lot from them and work very closely. So this is just one example of that from General Perkins, from what TRADOC has pulled together and how we've learned and worked together so closely with you on this concept. What I'd like to start with is, backing up a little bit on how we got here. Because it drives in a little bit with what Secretary Colby was discussing at the beginning. That compete thing, and as we came out of that influxion of large forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and how we got here. Well, the Marines and the Army were working fairly closely together, thinking about something called multi-domain battle. And a lot of it was being driven forward by the previous administration. And we were working at what we were calling the Third Offset Strategy. And as we were looking at that, that Third Offset Strategy, a lot of that strategy was coming from things like AirSea Battle. And we were looking at this as OSD, which is very budget focused in a lot of cases. Different than from the policy section, was focused on where's the money going to go? And where's the equipping going to come from to be able to do this third offset? Now even though we talked an awful lot about organizational change and concepts, we spent an awful lot of time really grinding away and where's the money going to get spent? So what we looked at in that whole process was, there was a process going on tied to Third Offset called the Long-Range Research and Developed Planning Program. And we looked at that, and again, when we talked about the land domain, a lot of discussion was all about how the air domain and how the sea domain were going to support the land domain. And we said, "Well, that's not exactly "the way we viewed things, we looked at it "much more from a combined arms standpoint." And how are we going to bring in our capabilities to be able to fight on the land domain and integrate that together? So we got with OSD and we developed a thing called the LDRP ground combat, which was a piece of that. And then we started driving more of that in. But as we did it, we said, in this new influxion point that we're at, if we're going to talk about equipping the force differently and where budget decisions will be made, we really didn't have the concept right on how we were going to get after the problem. And everything starts with the concept. And again, I think that's where the Army is very good at doing that and we worked very closely with them. You've gotta be able to tell the story. And everything in our world really drives from the concept. And Multi-Domain Battle, it's not doctrine, it's got a ways to go. And it's going to take a lot of time before we put it into a doctrinal pub. But it's a start point. It's a start point to get us after wargaming, experiments where we put our science and technology, our research and development money, where the operating forces exercise and we learn from them. And then we drive forward and eventually we get into Admiral Scott's world, and we we get it into doctrine and some of the other joint concepts. But I think it's important to get back to that. We started with the multi-domain, we said, well, what's different if we're going to drive this concept? And I think the difference is is what General Perkins was saying. If you look around what's in the battle space today, it's a different operating environment. So not only do we have land, air and sea, but we certainly have things like cyber and space as two defined other domains. And I'll touch more on that, that the Marines see that even at wider and broader when we look at information warfare. So I think that that's where it all started from, from what I saw, from our foxhole. And General Perkins said, hey, come at this from your own service views. So from a Marine view is, from a domain view, and last time the term was used that we were talking about domain owners. Well, that's not an area that we're comfortable in. We don't own a domain, we don't dominate a domain like the other services do and the other panel members. We really work across and attack across domains, as a expeditionary forward-deployed force. And many times, forward-deployed on the scene to be able to deter, assure allies, be able to be that first in force, inside, operating inside. How are we going to operate inside that contested battle space? And also assure allies and deter threats? So I think that as a domain owner, we are more of an enabler to that Joint Force in a lot of ways. And we have to partner with those domain owners. As I look at my partner, Admiral Scott, here, in the Navy. We're a naval team, we can't do anything coming from the sea unless we have the United States Navy with us. If we're going to conduct any type of operational maneuver from the sea, we need our Naval teammates with us there, setting the conditions, doing sea control. Doing all the things that we need to do to be able to conduct any type of operations that will move towards land operations and working with the United States Army. When it comes to operating with the United States Air Force in the air domain, we can put F-35s up and integrate into their air tasking order. And support the SEAFAC. But the harder part is when we want to really integrate control of our battle space with our command and control capabilities into the SEAFAC's overall command and control of the air domain. And that takes a lot of work and a lot of partnership of working closely with the Air Force in that area. And then certainly when we get ashore and operate with the Army, the United States Army as the JFLCC or the CFLCC, we've got to be able to integrate and leverage those tremendous capabilities that the United States Army brings that we don't bring, necessarily, in a lighter force coming from the sea. So from a MAGTF standpoint, that's how we view things. We naturally have to integrate. And our capabilities that we bring in a Marine Air Ground Task Force have to integrate in that way. But getting back to multi-domain, of looking at it, the things that I feel very comfortable with in using it is combined arms and maneuver in a 21st century way. And how to use those other domains that we've talked about in a 21st century way. As I look at that, it's again, defeating the cohesion, shattering the enemy's cohesion. Finding those gaps and seams. Being able to maneuver to where you can bring those capabilities to bear in an integrated fashion from all those domains at that point of attack. So the force can either aggregate there or operate in a more distributed manner. One of the things we're seeing also is the capabilities we're having, we're finding is, the ability to operate more in a distributed manner. And the necessity to operate more in a distributed manner. If you think Ukraine, if you aggregate and turn all your radios on, you're going to get attacked and you're going to die. So in today's world, to be able to distribute, to bring those capabilities to bear in an integrated fashion at that right point in time, is what multi-domain battle is really all about. And it's not all about really just the physical. It's also, as soldiers, you understand that better than absolutely, it's about cognitive side. And I think that what we see with today's generation, that we have the real advantage that we have across all the services is the free-thinking, Western developed, independent thinking, young people that we have today. That truly is our advantage. If you just take a look at what they do, and we see it all the time with our NCOs and our young officers, how they take the capabilities we give them and use them in completely different ways. We see it all the time. So I'm a big believer that giving them these right capabilities, they will be able to distribute and operate in much different ways, aggregate and integrate those domains in a complete different fashion in the future. I think they will be the ones that really operationalize Multi-Domain Battle. Taking it from a concept to doctrine in the future. I also think that Multi-Domain Battle fits in very well with Admiral Scott's world, of the joint access and maneuver for the global commons. Which is really our joint concept, which is, how do we gain that access? And how do we maneuver within that battle space? In that contested battle space? So I think we marry up very much with this. From a Navy-Marine Corps standpoint, the Commandant and the Chief of Naval Operations just signed a concept, it's a subordinate operating concept, at the JMGC, which is Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment. And exactly how the naval force will operate in that contested environment. So I look at MDB, or Multi-Domain Battle, concept exactly fitting in right with that on how we leverage those and work together with that. Another subordinate operating concept that we're working with the Navy on that we're just about complete with is Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations. Those advanced bases that we can move around, mobile bases with small signatures, in a very expeditionary way that can cause problems for the enemy to be able to maneuver in the littoral operating environment is another way to look at the multi-domain battle environment. How we give them problems. And it's also operating inside their contested area. Giving them problems and certainly a deterrence advantage that we have for them. So I think that's an area that we work with very close. I also think that these concepts, we should look them, certainly Multi-Domain Battle, to attack the enemy's strategy. They will attack all the way down to the lowest echelons, but it's really not attacking their equipment. What we need to look at is attacking the enemy's strategy. And I think if you take a hard look and read Multi-Domain Battle, you'll see how we do that. An example of trying to integrate better and how, as General Holmes talked about, command and control and how important that piece of it is. One of the things that we've been working on inside Littoral Ops in a Contested Environment with the Navy is, what we saw after many years on the land that our command and control between the Marines and the Navy had moved apart, had shifted apart. The Navy, looking at higher-end threats and developing a capability of command and control called Composite Warfare Command. So now, as we come back out to sea, we're really working hard on how do we integrate our two command structures together. A piece, I think, of Multi-Domain Battle, so operating and attacking the strategy at the higher levels, but getting down to that lower level, one of the things that Marines are not afraid to do is leverage ideas of other people. When you take a look at maneuver warfare and some of the things we developed early on, and if we look at our concept for our Marine Corps Doctrinal Pub 1, Warfighting, which really is not our doctrinal pub, it's our philosophy. And maneuver warfare is throughout there in everything. In fact, there's no numbers on the paragraph. Is a philosophy, it's like our bible. But if you read that, a lot of the things came out of there from a great Airman, John Boyd. And we leveraged a lot of his ideas. Just with that, as we're working some of our ideas and concept, one of the ones that's helping us and is a great mentor is Major General Bob Scales. And trying to put that emphasis on Multi-Domain Battle, down to the lowest levels. Because if you take a look at the lowest levels in close combat, that's where the nation gets its most casualties. It's also the place where we have the least advantage, when you compare to the other areas. When I take a look at our Marines that have M4s or M16s, in comparison to AK-47s, it's a big difference from a MiG-21 and a F-35 that our Marines have. Trying to get that down to the lowest level, we've been very focused on that through our experimentation program called Sea Dragon 2025. We took one of our battalions, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, and made them an operationally deploying force. In fact, they're deployed right now to the Western Pacific and the 31st MEU. They just came out of Talisman Saber in Australia. But we reconfigured them, each company configured in a different way to experiment with them. We've given them different weapons. We've given them different sensors, both unmanned ground systems, unmanned air systems. Given them more intelligence, more EW, we've pushed this down to the lowest level. And what we're seeing from those Marines, at the lowest levels, those NCOs, those staff NCOs, those platoon commanders, is what we're seeing is they're embracing this and they're operating with Multi-Domain Battle at a much lower level. So I think that is a piece, if I could leave you with where industry can help us, and we've got our industry partners here, is I talked about the youth that we've got today and the advantage we have with them. The other huge advantage is with all of you that we have in here right now, our industry partners. That is what gives us the advantage on the battlefield. And we need you helping us. So the advantage I see today is, number one, in the information warfare area. And we talked about cyber and space, but in our Marine Corps Operating Concept is, what we really drive to is the information warfare area. So when I talk information warfare, we want to turn using information warfare the new night. Just as when we started with night vision capabilities, information warfare is going to be our new night. We talk about signals intelligence, cyber, electronic warfare, information operations. Artificial intelligence, cognitive learning, those kind of capabilities is really what's going to give us the advantage on the battlefield. In the Marine Corps Operating Concept, we developed Marine Corps Force 2025. We've done a force structure review over about the last year and a half also. And we've come up with a new MEF information warfare group. That MEF information warfare group is very much with what General Holmes was talking about, is almost a completely different area than we looked at air-ground integration. If you look at the way we organized our air teams, all the way up the MEF level, division level, all the way down to the platoon level, we've had for many years air officers, forward air controllers, air planners, at all levels down that integrate air with ground, that's what we do. Now we've developed in the same type of capability throughout the force with information warfare. We've centralized it up at our MEF information group. And we're pushing those planners and those teams all the way down to the company level. So I think that's a piece there that if you can help us with is the information warfare. And how do we grow those capabilities? Working closely with the Army on counter air. Again, the threat now that we're seeing in the air is much different than we've seen in the past. So working with the Army on integrated air and missile defense, we're shoulder-to-shoulder with you on maneuver SHORAD and we're going to go in the same direction with you on that. And the other one I'd throw out there is counter-UAS. There's a lot of people making a lot of money and we're trying a lot of things in counter-UAS. But it's really literally kicking our butt. We've got a long way to go with that. These things are fast, they're made out of plastic, they fly around all over, we're leveraging them, too. For light, loitering munitions because they work well. But it's something that we've got a lot of high-end capabilities, this is one that we're struggling with. Mobile mesh networks, of being able to get that we talked about, that information so we can distribute it down to the lower level. How do we get those mesh networks down that can be resilient, where we can share information across these domains down to the lowest level to our junior leaders? Close combat lethality of extending the range. Working closely with the Army and the next gen weapon, squad weapon. We'll go that direction with you and we're going to work closely with you on that. And then finally, sensor fusion and decision making. Down at the low levels. How do we get that down there, so those Soldier, Marines, special operators, have the same capability that an F-35 pilot has on his visor, that they've got that same fused information so they can make that type of decision making down at the lowest level. Virtual training is another key piece for us that I would say and I saw a lot of good stuff walk around the floor here. But it's all about getting sets and reps. How do we get more time? We see these young leaders today, when it comes to wargaming, they're big wargamers. So we're pushing those capabilities down to the battalion level to wargame more and all the way from the squad level all the way up to our battle staff. So wargaming, being able to take that into force-on-force and more constructive-type training is an area that we've got to be able to grow into. And then the last thing I'd do is challenge industry on is help us develop, as the Commandant, our Commandant calls the next generation, fifth generation, capabilities in our ground combat vehicles. So when we talk about those kind of capabilities in our aircraft, we're now starting to see the miniature and cost go down that we can get these on our vehicles. So when we start talking about sensor fusion. Being able to launch its own unmanned air and ground capabilities. Centralized or fused battlefield network capability. EW and cyber capability, along with indirect precision fires and final vehicle protective systems. We're working very closely with the Army as we're putting the Trophy capability on our M1A1 tanks from a demonstration experiment capability. Those are the kind of things we see in our aircraft, those are the kind of things we want to see in our ground vehicles. So in conclusion, I would say, Multi-Domain Battle, what we see it doing for us is defeating the enemy's strategy. That's the start point. Put them at the horns of a dilemma with the strategy that we develop. Make these solutions that we're coming up with, with the panel members which are saying are all born as an integrated multi-domain solution. And I would finish with, it requires wargaming, experiments, exercises, learning from our operating forces. And that will determine what our investments need to be. Concepts do matter, if the thing I would say is, at the end would be, we talk these concepts very seriously. They will drive, Multi-Domain Battle, along with our Marine Corps Operating Concept, will drive where the Marine Corps goes in the future. We've been here before and I know we can do it again. So thank you.
- Thanks, Whaler. All right, Steve?
- Aye, sir. I'm representing Admiral Mike Rogers, my boss, who was unable to join us today. He actually arrived at Andrews about an hour ago, from a visit to the CENTCOM area of operations. But I am very happy to join this panel this morning. The three principle elements of USCYBERCOM's mission is to ensure DoD mission assurance. So think, defend DODIN, our data and our weapons system. To deter or defeat strategic threats to U.S. interests and infrastructure. And the third is to achieve Joint Force commanders' objectives. And as you look at that list, or listen to that list, I'd ask you to think about what we're really talking about is a full spectrum cyberspace operations. So it's offense and it's defense. It's tactical to strategic. And that's actually where we're conducting operations today. If you look at the members of this panel, and act of Congress made us all general officers, but I will argue that the network is what makes us commanders. And I say that because I want to launch on what I think is very critical. Admiral Rogers will talk about defense is number one. And this recognition that the Department of Defense Information Networks, they're the foundational, most important operation and weapons platform that DoD conducts 24 and seven. Commanders have to understand it. They have to own it, they have to master that weapons system like any kinetic weapons system. Because, in fact, this is the capability that allows them to deliver kinetic effects when they need to do that. So think about that. The most important weapons system that DoD operates is and, for the cyber force, it is our weapons system, the network. So we have to be able to protect it, we have to be able to defend it, we have to be able to maneuver it. And it's not just a cyber weapons platform. And I can't state that emphatically enough. It is DoD's principal weapons capability. So why is it so important? Well, it enables mission command. It's what connects us to our sensors and our high-end ISR capabilities. It provides just-in-time logistics. It enables precision fires. If you need a medevac, you're going to depress that handset and what you expect is that message will get through and that you will get that assistance where required. It provides situational understanding for our commanders. It connects us to the advantages that are GPS constellations. So PNT and space borne capabilities provide to us. And it's not just the network. It's the network, it's the data. It's actually the sub-weapons systems within that network that are so critical to our commanders. Our adversary, they understand this. They're actually afraid of it. And that's why they have invested so much effort and so many resources to actually deny our use of that weapons system and of that capability. So I think that's really important. When I spoke in front of a capstone class that visited the command about two weeks ago, I asked the question, what is the most important weapons system that the DoD operates? And that class, unfortunately, shot all over the target. And what I told them was that if I was sitting in a Russian capstone class or a PRC, PLA capstone class, and you would have asked them, what is DoD's secret sauce, they would have jumped on that immediately and they would have said your network. Is your ability to bring that capability to your commanders to allow them to execute mission command. And again, they have made significant investments. That's why we know they believe it's so important. I think we're victims of our own success. If you look back over operations in about the last 16 years or so, the network's really been like the air you breathe. It's been there. But it was frankly, built very rapidly, it was built for capacity. It was built for speed of deployment. It was built for reliability. And we accepted some risk with security and resiliency. So I think we've recognized as we've watched our near-peer competitors get after this in a big way that we have some changes that we have to make. If you look at a lot of the literature or the news articles that have been published during this conference, they'll talk about things. Particular weapons systems. It could be 1T, I could be NFU. The multi-functional EW capability. Those are things. Don't lose the big picture. Which is regardless if it's 1T or something else. That it is all about ensuring that that network provides the capability, the services that we require when we need it. Now, this isn't the future. This is now and we're watching this in real time. As we look at potential adversaries with peer capabilities operating. And I'll give a couple of examples here in a second. As we started at the Cyber Center of Excellence, as the Army cyber, as Cyber Command has looked at this, we realize it's not just about cyber. I think the Marines actually, you've got the big idea right. It is information warfare. Cyber is a piece of this. You've got to start some place. And this is where we've started. And if you look at what the Army did with FM3-12, joint pub 3-12, is Cyberspace Operations. What we realized is, again, it's more than cyberspace. So FM3-12, which was published last year, talks about cyberspace and electronic warfare operations. And I think the next iteration of that will be information warfare operations. So it'll be cyber, certainly, it'll be EW, certainly. But it will also contain all the other information related capabilities. Because that's what we're seeing the competition evolve to. And they've been able to wield those capabilities very, very effectively. So if you think about the Ukrainian example that was mentioned, I would argue that the Russians are skillfully integrating all of the information related capabilities. And what they've actually been able to do is use those capabilities to find, fix and in some cases, finish their opponent with information related capabilities. And I'll talk just a second about this. So find, they're able to detect, they're able to geolocate. And do that with the full range of capabilities. From social media scraping to tradition SIGINT collection, to direct reconnaissance. So they're able to actually provide that locational data and then, and I'll talk a little bit in a second about the finish, but they have the sensor to the shooter links to very rapidly turn that information into a significant action. For the fix, what they're able to do after they detect and they geolocate their adversary, they're able to fix them. And they do that by using information related capabilities to create a physical effect. Because if you're jammed, your networks are being hit by RF energy as well as cyber capability, you don't know potentially where you're at, you don't know where friendly units are at. You don't have the ability to call for fire support, for medevac, for resupply, you can be physically fixed in place. And then they're able to finish with traditional combined arms maneuver or long-range precision fires. But we're also seeing them finish, in some cases, with cyber capability. So think about the use of black energy on Ukrainian civil energy infrastructure. They were able to find, fix and finish, in this case using cyber capabilities. So that is the potential, and they're actually using it. But they didn't just use that as a cyber capability alone. They very skillfully applied information operations. They were experts at military deception. It's the integration of those capabilities that provides them such power as they employ these capabilities against their adversaries. And this ranges from tactical to strategic. I've given you some very tactical and I've given you some strategic examples. And certainly, there are some operational examples that I can provide also. One of the things we have to understand is the temporal aspect of this space. I'll talk a little bit later today at a different speaking event, where I'm going to make the argument for the need for speed. And this is idea that the actor who can sense, who can understand, decide and act faster and with more precision than its opponent enjoys decisive advantage. So that's what we're seeing. If you've seen some of the YouTube videos, again, brilliant IO from the Russians as Ukrainian soldiers have talked about, seeing Russian UASs fly over their position. And within five to seven minutes, have MRL grad rocket rounds impacting on that position. You can think of the shock effect that it has. You can think about the speed that is required to actually conduct that operation. In this domain, the cyber domain, and I would argue in all other domains, that speed is becoming increasingly more important. So your ability to not only collect, but is to process, to fuse, to understand the data that you're seeing. So a commander can then decide and act, that's what's going to give you decisive advantage. Because the battlefield, the systems are so lethal now, whoever can detect, whoever can understand, and whoever can shoot with precision faster, again, decisive advantage. And cyber helps facilitate that understanding, it helps facilitate that collection. It helps ensure that you have the ability to operate at the speed, at the tempo, so you can present the enemy with multiple dilemmas instead of being on the receiving end of that. And that's absolutely critical. So what do we need to do? I think we've got to accelerate our work on network convergence. That's absolutely critical. We've made some strides, but we have to move even faster in that area. We have to accelerate this information related capabilities convergence. The Marine Corps has done a very good job, I think they've defined the problem well. They've established that framework. They're moving out and we have to scale their efforts, we've got expand the scope of their efforts. That's absolutely essential for us to get ahead of the curve here. And again, time is not on our side. So the temporal aspect of this, I can't overstate. We've got to be able to train in complex environments. So it's one thing to do it on a cyber range, where we're shooting electrons at each other in a pretty isolated way. It's a completely different situation when you're out in the field, you're dealing with just the normal friction and fog of operations. You have line of sight issues. You have miscommunication. You're being spoofed. You're actually being actively contested, in all of these environments. So our training centers, we have to make significant investments, and it's not just at the CTCs. These are capabilities that our forces, have to be able to use, again, from the very tactical to the very strategic level. And they've got to have access to this at all times. Because that requirement for reps, what we're finding, with our cyber operations, and it's no surprise, it's like any other domain. The more reps that you're able to practice and get underneath your belt, the faster that you're able to operate. The more confidence that your force has in their ability to provide these capabilities to our commanders. So that's a very important part. We work very closely with the Joint Staff, J7, on expanding that capability to provide cyber capabilities, actually to all aspects and all other domains, vitally important. And then the last thing I would encourage is that commanders, you have to understand this. You have to understand it better than your cyber guy or your intel guy. You've got to be able to maneuver this weapons system, just like any of your other weapons systems. In some cases, particularly before we get into Phase 2 and 3 operations, this may be your principal maneuver capability. And what we can't allow to have happen is for the commander to turn it over to the tribes, the multiple tribes, that actually inhabit the space today. And you know who they are, if I asked you to raise your hand, it's the signal tribe. It's the intel tribe, it's the cyber tribe. It's the IO tribe, it's the EW tribe. And General Perkins, two years ago, visited Fort Gordon. And he asked a very simple question. He said, "Steve, is the biggest challenge "moving cyber where it needs to be? "Is it the technology? "Is it the authorities?" I said, "Sir, both of those are challenges." But those are not insurmountable. The toughest challenge I face and the toughest challenge I think the military faces right now is the cultural challenge. So we got to get over that. We got to get over it very quickly. Because what I'll tell you is our peer competitors and future or potential adversaries, they've gotten over it. And they've had impressive results because they've been able to do that. They're not 10-foot tall, but they've got good capabilities, we can be there, I think. But we've got to get over the tribal block, the cultural block and then we've got to get on with this. Sir, that's all I have, subject to questions. - [David] All right, thanks Steve. Go ahead, Kevin.
- Thanks. One, I'd like to thank the AUSA and General Perkins and the TRADOC team for allowing me to be part of this prestigious panel up here today. You've heard from a lot of great speakers. I won't take a ton of time, but I thought I'd just touch base on, from a strategic perspective, where the Joint Force is and where we're going. I think I have the luckiest job in the world. I get to build the vehicles for which all of these great people up here on the stage and all of you get to go after these types of challenges. But as I look out at the audience and I listen to my brother here, talk about tribes, is there a Naval officer in this audience? - Back there.
- There's one back there. Well, I'm pledging to, once I leave here, I'm pledging to become a member of AUSA to change that.
- There you go. - Break down these tribes.
(audience clapping) We gotta do something about it. - [David] Yeah, well, you get a discounted rate, actually. - Thank you very much, thank you very much. But again, I won't be long. I wanted to just touch on the reality that we face today. As I go back just a couple years, I was a Deputy Commander in 5th Fleet, working for then, General Mattis. General Brooks was the ARCENT, General Goldfein was AFCENT, General Miller was MARCENT and it was a great team. But before a lot of this discussion and this framework happened, we were out there trying to figure out a lot of what we're talking about here today. And I will tell you, we didn't have the tools. And we probably didn't take advantage of some of the tools that might have been out there. But we did the best that we could. So you had things like Apaches flying out of Kuwait landing on our Navy ships in the Gulf. You had areas around the Gulf protected by Patriot batteries that were defended by Marine Corps types of units. You had such an integrated force, but what we're talking about today is that the world has changed. The complexity and the speed with which change is going about is going way beyond our capability to keep up. And will just refer to you just, I guess, about a couple years ago, I was sitting in on a VCT with all the combatant commanders. And in that process, the combatant commanders would list their top three or five types of challenges. 95% of the combatant commanders, I think there may have been one that was different. Their top three or top five were all the same. And that was an epiphany for us, that we need to get after this. So Chairman Dunford, again, he sends his regrets to not be here today, but he started us down a road of global integration. Which is, again, to go after, at its base, to go after the triage, but to go after the regional perspective with which the world that we operate today does not function. He revised our national military strategy and rewrote it to go after this. And he set it upon a construct of 4+1, I think some of you may have heard about that. You may be familiar with it. But he talked about the challenges that we face. We got off of the who and went after the challenges that we looked at that we're going to face in the next 15 to 25 years. And that 4+1 challenge that's equated to the challenges that those nations and those organizations present to us. So Russia, China, North Korea, Iran were the four. And in that concept, it wasn't about operational plans or anything, it was about the challenges and technological challenges that those adversaries present to us that we have to face. And that if we are doing a good job facing those challenges, that short of men from Mars, we will be in a pretty good place in 2020, 2025 and 2030 and 35. And then the plus one is obviously the violent extremist organizations that really have pushed us and test us to go across the transregional multi-domain environment. But the bigger plan of that was that the was strategy. And we needed a strategy. As we sit here today, the Office of Secretary of Defense staff, Mr. Colby and his team, are working with the Joint Staff and others to put together a national security strategy. Again, that will be the capstone above that that will set a force. But as we go forward, we continue to work. So as you talk about what is one of the most important questions that you need ask, you need to ask do you understand what the environment's going to be like as we go forward in the 2025 and 2035 realm? And so we, on the Joint Staff put out a document, Joint Operation Environment 2035, we called it the JOE, that goes after this point. It's the first start to lay those out. And there's two key areas that we lay out there. We talk about contested norms and persistent disorder that we speak of that will shape our futures. And it describes the challenges from an increasingly powerful provision of states. And also is characterized by an array of weak states that become increasingly capable of maintaining domestic order and governance. So we set up the foundation of the JOE to go after those particular things. In addition to the NMS, we've gone after the assessment piece of understanding not only that environment, but understanding where our strengths and weaknesses are. So we revised the assessment system of the Joint Force that takes the combatant commanders each individual assessments and then we combine it into a joint military net assessor. And it includes the environment. So now we not only have a strategy, but now we have an understanding of where we are, where our adversaries and peer competitors are and where we need to go. So the past six months, we've taken the next step from that and we've gone about framing the execution piece of this in terms of our global campaign plans that go after the 4+1. So gone are the days of the tribalism, or if you want to call it the regional type of tribalism that comes in from Europe or the Pacific or Asia or South America or that hemisphere, and says this is my problem. And we need to resource and solve this particular problem. Without taking into consideration the global implications across the force and across the resources of our nation. So we've structured the 4+1 nested on top global campaign plans, which will set the executional arm of how we're going to go about setting the globe, setting the force to go after these particular things. It's with that context, when I say I have the luckiest job in the world, as I sit here in J7, my job is to support and to promote the future force as we go forward to get after those things. Not only joint exercises and training that you heard that we need to do. Everyone up here has talked about how we go about that. But also the concept of development. The future concept developments that take the Multi-Domain Battle and these types of things and brings them into a joint type of context. So we're aggressively going after those particular things as well. As you see, when we design this, we have a strategy. We have a global campaign plan that's going to have the executional arm. And now, as we start thinking about the future piece connected to that, through not only how we train and how we fight, but how we think about the future, we have the organizational structure to keep this table connected and keep us moving into the future. With that, in the essence of time, General, I'll wrap up there, but I'll leave you with one thought. War is ultimately a human domain endeavor. And when we talk about the Third Offset Strategy, as you hear some of the folks up here talk, we tend to talk about things, stuff, trons. But really, it's about us and it's what's between our ears. So we're really aggressively going after the human aspect of that in terms of not only the professional military education, the doctrine, development, but going after its core of how we become agile and analytic thinkers to be able to survive in this world. And so what I've done is I've reversed the conversation from a standpoint of, we're from our tribe, our uniforms, we've become, and we pass this magic portal and all of the sudden we've become a joint officer and the things that I give you late in your career. We understand that that's not effective today. In fact, we have E5s on the ground in Syria that are doing amazing work. So we realize we have to take advantage and move this thing to the left. With that aspect in mind, we've combined a group that combine our educators, our talent managers and our operators across the services to form a board called the Joint Leadership Development Council. To go after the best practices and the new things that we need to do to change to bring our people up to the challenges that we face today. So with that, I look forward to your questions. - [David] All right, thanks, Kevin. And Frank, we've left it up to you now to solve all the problems that we've teed up throughout this whole table, so we look forward to the solutions. - Well, first and foremost, thank you very much, indeed to, for having me on this distinguished panel. And I apologize for my accent. (audience laughing) But on behalf of all those that are sharing me in this accent, at least as a non-native English speaker, let me make one statement. We were all listening to Secretary Mattis and General Miller's comments on coalition. And whether we are together or not. And I would like to express specifically my personal, but I guess all our gratitude for that comment. It is reassuring and I can reassure you also that we are with you, with the Multi-Domain Battle. But we will have to, let's say, fix it in a way that it is not only a national enterprise, but that we as a coalition can contribute to that. So let me take you, because I'm German Army, I have to take you through the three levels of tactical operations strategic view. But let me beforehand make one comment. We have a new white paper in Germany that was released in 2016 that was making it pretty clear that we have a 360 degrees view. So while we are all, at least in Europe, understand that we to refocus on reestablishing deterrents, by improving our high-intensity capabilities for waging war, we nevertheless, we will continue to be in the struggle with terrorism and in other theatres, so whatever capabilities we will create, they should be, let's say, adaptive enough to be useful in all the other enterprises we are engaging in. I think the most important challenge from the last 15 years to now, and that was expressed by all the previous speakers is that we will see a race to the swift again at the operational level. So we cannot come back and win another day. We have to be prepared to do it tonight. So from an Army's tactical view, I think we look at three basic trends. One is, and that was, I think, already mentioned, but it is a lack of MOS. The lack of MOS, of let's say, armored platforms. And we as an army, we were very much focused in defending against armored platforms. But this lack of MOS is not only on our side, but we anticipate it's also on our potential peer adversary side. So if we have a very lethal force on both sides, this can be over very quickly. At least, in terms of maneuver warfare. And we are thinking through that process and questioning ourself, what does it mean for our reserve force concept? And so it's maybe not only the high-intensity piece that could be over also, this night. The other issue is the transfer in battlefield. I think we all work on the assumption that the battlefield is transparent, but we have to work for that. We talk a lot about sensor-to-shooter, but the sensor needs to see something. So we really have to work it and I think also on the other side, we all understand that the art of deception is essential if you wage war on the operation level. So I think we should also reconsider our efforts in that context. And A2/AD, from a German perspective, I have to say is not only a defensive problem. If you go to the Kaliningrad Oblast and you put some long-range rockets there, Berlin is immediately at risk and we would consider that being an offensive measure. So these are the three trends we are looking into. And then, of course, the threats were mentioned and I think we are completely aligned. It's in direct fires, long-range, it's the air threat that is migrating into the directional swarms. It's cyber and electronic warfare all over the place. That was pretty clear and we share with you absolutely. And we see another trend that is, as the three initial threats are mentioned, we do believe that maneuver formations will develop a collective defensive system. So like we don't send our cruisers and frigates without SHORAD, that will extend, I think, even into the domain of counter rockets, ammunition and mortar. So we will see that. And we will go the same direction. Because otherwise, we do believe that maneuver on land is really then at risk. So our response to these threats and trends is not new. And I think that is probably the challenge to convince people that despite the fact that it is not new, we need to do some investment. So we do believe that we move from voice to data and that allows us to integrate sensors-to-shooters. Not really new, but it is providing us a new capability and new dimension of the capability to stand off from the targets. And to do precision strikes. So we do believe that from a, let's say, conceptual perspective, we should more think about maneuvering with fires instead of maneuvering with force. That is also linked to the question, what is the relevance of space in the maneuver. So there is a tendency that we think we should make a clear, or have a distinct view on there's a separation of what we do in urban areas and what we do on, let's say, the open terrain warfare. We do believe that this is separating even further in the future and that we have to consider that for our capabilities. It was mentioned that of course, when we maneuver, we expect the GPS is denied and that we have to cater for not only navigation, but also our coordination without the mastering of the electromagnetic spectrum on our side. So we will be more dispersed. But that causes other problems. It was already indicated, a distributed operation is a very interesting concept, but you need to have medical support, you have to replenish your forces. You have to run logistics in a dispersed way. So it's really the question, at what level do we form our maneuver units? Are we more focusing on brigade size formation? Will it be more a task force orientation? A lot of these things will be driven by the question of how sustainable these forces are in the field under this threat that I already mentioned. So I think we all agree on that, basically. And therefore, let me move to the operational level. I think we have some real challenges there. I already alluded to the relevance of terrain. Maybe we are well-advised because it provides an overall, let's say, concept to look at the terrain war from the network perspective. So there are lines and there are knots. Typically those knots are bigger villages and cities, but it's also, if you look to the cyber domain, you can have another net map. And maybe we need to understand to operate in this net. Having said this, readiness is another issue. If we are to transform our force to become high-readiness, a mechanized, high-intensity capable force, how we sequence our readiness and how we get that coordinated with the spiral development that comes with the digitized force. Because you have to redo it every other year, more or less. That drives us to also, from the procurement perspective, look into a totally different, let's say, approach. Typically, armies were procuring platforms. Tanks, APCs, helicopters. And we do believe that we have to change the perspective. And go for what we call the frigate of the Army, which is a brigade. We think we will acquire in the future complete task forces or brigades because they will be discreetly improving over the time. So the German Army, by 2030 will have 10 brigades. And we anticipate that one of these brigades will be in the shipyard, getting the whole refurbishment. The crew comes back, takes its brigade and is then the newest one, while we take the oldest one into the shipyard. This is a long way, we need a lot of money to make that happen and that industry needs sufficient capability, but we do believe that if we want to get a digitized force, there's no way for us to integrate all the elements. Then we need help to do that. The next operational challenge, from our perspective, is the hybrid versus the leaded perspective. And I guess this is a specifically a European perspective, and very special German perspective, on how we separate our legal authorities between police, intelligence services and the military. And we do believe and we understand we fully subscribe to the idea that there's a competition phase we already in. But for us, at least from a German perspective, this is a significant challenge in bringing all these elements together and while we understand that we have to be in the fight, with the police force, with our intelligence services, we nevertheless also recognize that if we want to achieve strategic gains, we are well-advised not to fall into the trap I would assume the Russians do. Because they are so much focused on ambiguity, on deception. And if you go for the strategic, I think, morality has a value. And therefore, I think from an operations strategic perspective, while we do Multi-Domain Battle as a coalition, we definitely need to consider legal dimension and not to say that lawfare aspect of our undertaking. With that, let me just come to the strategic. It it was well mentioned. A coalition has the thrangs of morality. But it's of course, not the most efficient, not the most effective force, we all understand that. And I think from a European NATO perspective, it is our challenge to get our act together and come to grips with the lead you are taking. And be a relevant element that is really then supporting. And as you are struggling, I'd guess from a U.S. perspective, how you do multi-domain command, this is another issue if you look at NATO. How do we do multi-domain NATO coalition command? With a view to, we need to be ready now. I think this is the challenge we face together, but we are all set to attack that and make it happen. There's Joint Force commands out there, there's a big discussion about the NATO C2 architecture, how it links into the force structure. And I think we can do that, but we need those panels and the followup discussion to move forward. Thank you very much, indeed. - [David] All right, Frank, thanks. What we'd like to do now is open up to questions. So I think if you just move to a microphone, we have a couple of them in the aisle ways. We'll just call on folks, and Sidney, it looks like you won the race to the microphone, so go ahead. - I was forward deployed.
- I noticed that. It's all about location. - [Sidney] This is a question, essentially for you and General Holmes, I think, although I'd appreciate anyone's insights on it. Multi-Domain Battle has a tension at its heart between, on the one hand, we want to be more joint and bring that together effects across domains and service boundaries. On the other hand, the communications and networks that allow us to that are going to be under a level of attack that we haven't experienced. And particularly, for the air-ground aspect of this, when you try to superimpose and I hate to say the word synchronize, those two battlefield frameworks, how do you make it so that you can adjust to, at some points, you need to coordinate, attack Ms or LRPF, firing in support of air. At some point, you need to coordinate air in support of ground maneuver forces. At other points, there's static on the coms and you have to be able to operate those two sets of forces independently. The air doing what it can in a contested environment and the ground forces trying to op to these self-sufficient operations that you speak about in the doctrine. How do you manage to create a system that actually handles all those circumstances and not just in a nice sequence, but constantly going back and forth? - I'll take a first shot and then I'll let Mike talk. So you've highlighted the challenges with regards to a lot of this and Steve Fogarty has talked about this as well, too. I think that's why yesterday when you heard our Acting Secretary of the Army and General Miller speak, one of our six priorities is the network aspect of it. Because so much of this, in fact, every, I think, speaker up here today talked about that. The part of it isn't just making sure we can talk to each other, it's the survivability, the resiliency, and then throwing on top of that, the doctrine and the training and those things that General Holmes talked about. And that you actually, you have to understand, and I tell folks, you have to have a doctrine, tactics, techniques and procedures, your facilities such that you assume you will have intermittent connectivity, but constant command. So those are two different things. And the command part goes to the philosophy aspect of it. Whaler talked about that. How you've exercised together, et cetera. And you have to understand that that is going to be the environment, yet you have to develop ways to work through that. Which is why these concepts and doctrine become some critical, because you have to address those and have multiple ways to get after that. And Mike, any thoughts from your point of view? - I think I'd go back to the experiments that I saw happen at Fort Drum this week. Which is an effort to try to get after, in exactly that problem, how will we divide up the airspace so that it's flexible? So everybody can use it when they need to? And how will we communicate with the resources directly and with the echelons where they'll be employed from that perspective. I think Dave did a good job talking about the philosophical part of it. If I would get drug down then, away from that part into that hows, it's we gotta make sure that as we pursue new battle networks that both of us have struggled, acquisition-wise and had troubles with is make sure we go down the same path to make sure that whatever path we take works together and that we can communicate with each other. And that we take advantage of the efforts we doing at the multiple echelons to make sure that we're tied in there together with Airmen and Soldiers together in the same place, able to do that real time work. Like they're experimenting with today. - And of course, our intent is to provide that environment to the enemy as well. So again, war is a relative thing. That we don't want him to have uncontested domains as well, so we just have to better at dealing with that than he is. Sir, oh, go, go ahead, yeah.
- There's one more question of framework that will serve us well as we go forward in this is the, and we're in revision at this point, is the Chairman's Concept for Joint Operations. Where we go after the pillars of mission command agility, flexibility, seize the initiative and those types of things. It's from those concepts that we're actually going after the exercise and training foundational piece that will serve us well as we go forward. - [Audience Member] Does mission command have (mumbles)? - Well, we had it in our 2020 version and it's in revision right now. So I believe it will carry forward, but don't hold me to that. - [David] Sir, over here. - [Dr. Karsting] Sir, Dr. Karsting, I'm in Center for Army Analysis. I have a question for General Walsh. 7, August, 1942, 1st Mar Div lands at Guadalcanal, seizes control of Henderson Field. That control of that airfield allows Navy and Marine aircraft to come in and gain air dominance. Which then allows the Navy to come back, resupply 1st Mar Div, bring 14th Corps to clear the island of Guadalcanal. My question for you, sir, is how is Operation Watchtower different than the Marines Advanced Based operation, and minus cyber and space that didn't exist at the time, different than Multi-Domain Battle today? - That's a great question. In fact, I think if you heard General Mattis yesterday, to predict the future, you have to understand your past. So we've looked a lot at, if you look back at that, Operation Watchtower, but above that, Warplan Orange, from a strategic level, on what we were trying to do during that same time period, to operate in an anti-access area-denial environment. That's exactly, how did we be able to push in there, and it was gaining that foothold and operating inside that ring, that the Japanese forces had developed. And it was being able to gain that foothold, in essence, have a aircraft carrier on land that we could begin to operate inside that and begin to gain that access and maneuver, in a strategic operational sense. Start to maneuver across that battle space. That I think it's very much the same type of thought, but operating more in a 21st century way. So when you have the sensors and capabilities that we're talking about in Ukraine, and you put that same problem set into an environment like that, whether it's on land, in multi-domain, or whether it's in a littoral environment, how can we quickly deceive, move, use information operations, keep our signature down, very small footprints. And we're operating this right now with our F-35s, on very small footprints and how we can maneuver those bases very quickly. In many ways, at a much faster rate than they were doing in those days, because they didn't have the same threat. So it's taken the threats today and trying to operate in that multi-domain environment. But a lot of the same concepts are very much the same. - Can I add something to that? I think beyond just clearing the island and the operation that took place to clear the island and to work across the Solomons, it was the idea that we found something valuable enough that the enemy felt like they had to come out of their denied space and come out and fight. So to me, the strategic win there was the destruction of the flower of Japanese naval and ground air forces that made the rest of the thing possible when you go across. It was a joint force effort that, to use a minimum force that we had available at the time to achieve a strategic effect. It made it possible then to go penetrate the larger A2/AD environment later. - Thank you.
- Thanks. Ma'am, go ahead.
- Good morning, gentleman, I'm Major Wilshere from the Air Land Sea Application at Joint Base Langley-Eustis. My question is regarding the integration of cyber within the multi-domain. As many of you have already mentioned, our military has done well in manning theatres for the last 16 years at the tactical level. You mentioned the JAGIC at 10th Mountain, already integrating air and ground NTCs and JRTCs. But what has been a bit more challenging has been integrating the cyber piece. Specifically, simulating the enemy's cyber capabilities against our forces. So my question is, Major General Fogarty and Vice Admiral Scott, can either of you or both of you discuss how we can look to integrate cyber during our joint or multinational exercises or NTC rotations throughout the entirety, the entirety of the missions, not just a sprinkling of cyber effects in the early phases of an operation? - Yeah, so that's actually a good question. First of all, remember, CYBERCOM just celebrated its seventh birthday. So part of this, again, temporal aspect. We haven't had cyber capability, at least organized cyber capability for that long. If you look at what Army Cyber is doing with their cyber support at the corps and below, at the CTCs, you actually saw that start at a very small level, expand at the last year to include electronic warfare. And they're not only doing more operations, more rotations, but they're also bringing more capabilities, more forces. And it's gotten from just a very tactical application to really that tactical to strategic. They've also been able to fold in commercial networks, IO and it's getting to be a much more realistic environment. We're working, actually, we were just talking this morning before we came in here, with the persistent cyber training environment. So a significant program that the department has invested in. And what it allows us to do is really provide realistic cyber simulation, down to that post, camp, station, ship, air squadron, wherever you're at in the world. And it knits together really a disparate group of capabilities that exist today. So part of it's going to be time. We're going to get, part of it's going to be education. We've got to educate at really all levels. So you're starting to see it getting inserted into all of the, at least for the Army, all of our basic advanced courses at the staff colleges, the war colleges. So it really becomes a multi-pronged approach to this. And it's just going to take some time to get it to everybody. And then the last thing I'll do is I'll put a shout out to our Guard and Reserve component. Both for the Army and the Air Force, is that there are some great exercises that the Guard have sponsored. And they're actually running that, we're sending active duty forces to. We're working very close right now with a set of interagency and foreign partners. We know that we have to expand that to bring more of our non-Five Eyes partners into this. But we're running some exercises, actually, this year up at Fort Mead. Where we're bringing foreign partners in. So this is a rapidly developing capability. - Just one thing to touch on that real quickly. And Steve did a great job to cover a lot of those aspects. One aspect as well, which is in terms of the Joint Force and what I talked about, about the 4+1 and the integrated and the interoperability, we've created a program called the Global Integrated Exercise Series. So the vehicle that goes beyond the man, train, equip and the framework of the force, is that the top tier, one tier two level, we're developing exercise series that are now connected across combatant commanders and in the future, with our allies and partners. So again, the framework is there. The precision training environment is coming. So now the capstone of that is we're actually having exercises now that are integrated in that way, where cyber is now going across the components and the co-coms. - Go ahead, sir. - Pete Herrly, AUSA's European Affairs Director, based in fact, Europe. And a veteran of the J7. So watch out, Admiral, because this one's for you. It's been talked about that this is PhD level stuff. And General Perkins, you talked about you have to bake in the synchronization beforehand. You just can't do it after. And I'm wondering about the execution in joint operational art. And specifically, and maybe this is gratuitous, but not just what you've been talking about, the ability to do the coms, all that piece that enables you to confront this. But, getting the joint operational artists, the General Vandegrifts, the Admiral Kincaids, the General Kenneys don't particularly grow on trees. And I'm just specifically thinking about JPME. Can you use it as a forcing function? And can you up the grain to, I guess, pick on one of you guys to run a genuine joint warfighting group that's actually going to be in the guts of the fight in the South China Sea? Or somewhere up in the Baltics? - I'll just touch on that quickly, but I'd leave it to this JLDC, which is the Joint Leadership Development Council, that's actually going exactly after that. When you talk about the technical challenges that we face, that's one thing, but when you talk about the cultural challenges that goes after the expertise that we're trying to get after. Specifically to your point, we are redefining PME to go after these particular skillsets. But again, and I'll be frank with, we talked about the tribes. Right now, the agent that controls how we man, train and equip our forces and focus on these emerging technologies in these emerging threats, come right up against our cultures. And what we value. We've realized that the interdisciplinary nature of the future of our forces, the future of our young people is very important. So the Army has done a great job in reviewing their officer continuum. We're working them along the way. But there are going to be particular less than right skillsets as we go down this road that's going to have to be addressed. And it's going to have to be addressed in combination with the managers of the talent of the services and the operators of the services. To make sure that this is a priority. When it gets down to it, is our young soldiers going to be rewarded for going after this, from the standpoint of the opportunities and promotions and those types of things. So that's exactly what this JLDC is about, in concert with the folks up here in this table. - All right, sir, go ahead. I think this is the official last question here. Keep us on time, go ahead. - Gentleman, Colonel Vega from the Army Cyber Institute. And thank you for your time and for the information you shared with us. I ask the question, is there some part missing on this discussion, or a group missing, that's the private sector. Especially in the cyber domain. We are operating on and with their equipment. They own most of the infrastructure. So when we talk about conducting military operations, there's that challenge of you're doing something on somebody else's network, that isn't privy to the discussion. How are we integrating the private sector? And some of these discussions? - Steve, I'll let you.
- Yes, sir. - Take a swing at that. - So I would argue that it's not unique to cyber. If you look at support, whether it's for aviation, logistics, a whole range of capabilities, that we have tremendous interdependency with the commercial sector. So absolutely, for cyber. We don't own, don't want to own, every portion of the network. And I think what it does, it gives us a lot of agility. If we have an outage in one place, we can reroute, shift, the civil corps does that very, very well in conjunction with our commercial partners. So I think there are some really strong relationships. And it doesn't matter if it's a satellite provider that we're leasing a circuit from, or it's a ground circuit someplace in CONUS, or a connection overseas. I think the harder challenge, though, are with some of our partner militaries. And this goes down to even the very tactical level, with the exchange of encryption keys. So we're seeing some cases, I can get the big data moving fairly reliably and it stops at that tactical edge. So we've got some investment, we've got some work that we have to do here. And you'll walk around the floor on Monday afternoon, I saw some of the vendors who are actually trying to get at that problem. And we're seeing this, again, the more we exercise these capabilities, we're going to find out where those seams and those gaps are. I just think we've got to accelerate the solutions for those. And it's just got to be good enough at this point. I think that's one of the things we've looked at with some of the big programs, is they became so large they weren't agile enough, or flexible enough and they just became so prohibitively expensive. So good enough is probably the mantra. And we'll expect the maneuver commanders to decide what is good enough. And then we'll build to that. - Well, again, thanks for a robust discussion here. I think it's illustrative, so as Steve said, Cyber Command, this is the seventh year birthday. This is the 12 month birthday of Multi-Domain Battle. So still new enough that it's still malleable and we're working on it, but I think what was reassuring, this whole panel, we assembled together, I think a solid 15 minutes before we walked in here today. But the good news is, we've been all working together, us and our organizations at this for all 12 of those months. So as we went through and we hadn't compared notes or anything, you had these themes that kept coming up all the time, which is in itself reassuring. And as a former armor officer, I'll distill it down to three, so I can keep track of them. But you heard it many ways. First of all, this issue of convergence. General Holmes talked about convergence of the battlefield framework and the construct. General Fogarty talked about convergence in the network, this whole aspect of converging of solutions, prior to the final solution, verus the synchronization and deconflicting post-sub-optimal solutions. The second one, Secretary Colby brought it up, and Whaler brought it up and others about you can have no uncontested domains. There are no like domain sanctuaries. As has been mentioned many times since 9/11, and I have enjoyed, as I've gone to combat like most folks here have, that the air space, thanks to the U.S. Air Force and others, was uncontested. I never worried about it. The maritime domain, I never worried about anything coming from the sea. The cyber domain, space domain, I considered when I had access the whole time, uncontested. I didn't worry about amphibious operations. All I worried about was the land domain. As we look to the future, the enemy is going to contest all of those domains and we need to leave them uncontested to him as well and no domain sanctuary. And the last thing is, and we talked about whether it was tribalism or however you want to couch it, that we have to get away from this idea of domain ownership and focus on domain user-ship. Versus everyone would say, how do I own this domain? Where do I put out the stakes? If you come in my domain, you need to clear with me, et cetera. How do we use the domains? Because everybody has to use them, they have to maneuver not only in their domain, but probably through others. Whaler and the Marines probably have the experience in this, I think he articulated it very well. It's not about ownership and control, but it's about empowerment and using what's out there. So those three, though in a different form, tend to be themes that came out through the whole thing. So again, I am reassured, as we are heading into our 13th month now of trying to figure out Multi-Domain Battle that we're coalescing on the similarity and description of the problem, which Secretary Mattis apparently would reaffirm that we're focusing on the right things. I appreciate the contributions of my Multi-Domain Battle here, panel here, Multi-Domain Battle panel. Not just today, but for their organizations that you represent and I look forward to continuing to work this with folks here. And again, appreciate your input and continued dialogue. And have a great day, folks, thanks. (audience clapping)
