The Threat and the Strategy, 2019 Air Space & Cyber Conference, Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Stephen W. Wilson and Mr. Elbridge Colby, Principal at The Marathon Initiative.
Transcript
[Announcer] AFA’s Executive Vice President, Major General Doug Raaberg. (triumphant music)
Well, good afternoon. All I wanna hear from an applause was, was there a change in the wind with the chief’s speech the morning? Let’s hear it. (audience applauds) Welcome back from lunch. The topic of this session this afternoon is now taking threat and the strategy. I hope everyone in the audience today has had a chance to read the National Defense Strategy. Our two panelists this afternoon, are here to delve into the threat environment that our United States Air Force faces and the strategies that we need to succeed in the 2030 timeframe. As the chief shared this morning, we need to work toward the Air Force we need. Additionally, the Air Force will need to be more agile. We need to acquire our weapon systems faster and smarter. Our panelists, this afternoon, will discuss how to work towards this strategy so the Air Force can win the battlespace of the future airspace and cyberspace. So without further ado, please give a big, warm welcome to the Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, General Seve Wilson and the Principal of the Marathon Initiative, Elbridge Bridge Colby. And oh, by the way, if you’ve read the National Defense Strategy, he wrote it. 2017-2018, Bridge served as the lead official in the development of the National Defense Strategy. What we’ll do this afternoon, is start with a series of questions that will set the dialogue. Please send me your questions so that we can pick up from the audience after we set the tone about the strategy and the threat. It’s good to have you two here as our honored guests. So let’s start off with the first question. So the National Defense Strategy notes that inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in United States National Security. That’s a pretty bold statement and a significant departure for what has dominated the department’s focus for close to the last two decades. General Wilson, Bridge, can you expand on that a bit?
Bridge, I’ll start off with… So look around the world today and see what’s changed. You see the change that we’re living under. It’s pretty crazy. As the vice chief, I spend a lot of time helping the chief and his three hats ’cause he’s an international chief: the chief who organizes, trains, and equip the force and a member of the JCS. In a sense, we’re spending a lot of time talking about that threat and the threat that, again, we see changing throughout the world, we’re trying to look through the lens of threat, strategy, concept of operations, force design. How do we build the requirements and acquire things in that lens? But as a Vice Chief in the meetings, I spend a lot of time in The Pentagon, we’re talking a lot about the threat. So the threat has changed. I think now we’re looking through a lens as an existential change and an existential threat out there and we have to be prepared for it. And we have a generation of airmen who’ve been focused on a fight for the last two decades and a fight in the Middle East. But we have to think differently because of this world change. So I tell people, if you think back in time, if you think back to the world on December 6, 1941, and then December, 8th, the world changed and we thought completely differently. We thought differently on October 4th, 1957 than we did on October 6th when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. And we thought completely differently on September 10th, 2001 than we did on 2012 because of a changing world environment. And I think that’s what we’re looking at today is this changing world environment where we’ve always been the big guy in town. No one could compete with us. And now I think we’re in a time of strategic competition with pure competitors. When I tell people it’s not gonna take just us in the department. Surely it’s gonna take part of the Air Force, but it’s much bigger than the Department of Defense. It’s actually bigger than the Whole-of-Government; it’s a Whole-of-Nation-effort to get the sense of urgency about what’s going on in the world. That’s where I need the help of the industry and academia and our departments. All of us have to come together to understand the threat and be clear-eyed on the competition that we face.
Well, great. Well, first off, thanks to the Air Force Association and it’s a real honor to be on the stage with General Wilson and General Raaberg, and a real pleasure to be able to talk to you. I think this is where the energy is. I mean, I’ll probably mention Secretary Mattis a few times, but I think one of the things is he wanted a strategy with something that would set a framework for, sort of, the professionals in uniform and civilians as well. So I think a lot of the energy is no longer at the strategy formulation level, but really out with you in the creativity. And I’ll talk about that maybe a little bit going forward. I think what General Wilson said about December 6th, or what have you, is a great example. Because I think what Secretary Mattis, and the rest of us, were trying to do is to get… a useful strategy has to get out in front enough to be useful and it’s gotta show enough clarity. Strategies, they talk a lot about complexity and that everybody has to cover all the bases aren’t very useful, especially as they go down an organization. And I think Secretary Mattis said the other day, he said that, “All strategy is, is priorities.” Because we all know the world is complex and so forth, but the question is what to do with that and where to allocate your time and resources? And I think what he did and what the administration did and the Defense Department did is to say, with a lot of hemming and hawing, is to say, “Look, “what’s the biggest problem out there?” The biggest problem out there is great powers and particularly China, which essentially is the largest competitor we will ever have faced as it continues growing. And what’s the particular problem? The problem is that if the Chinese and, to a lesser degree, the Russians see the use of military force as advantageous, that’s gonna change the world. Our political objective here is sustain favorable regional balances of power to sustain the free and open global order that we wanna preserve. And I think General Wilson is absolutely right that the military’s only a part of it, but it is an invaluable part of it. I think sometimes people say, “Well, the competition “will be largely political and economic.” That’s only if you guys do your job right. And it’s a really, really hard job, but I think it’s also a tremendously challenging job. I actually, in some ways, I envy people in uniform who are now having to grapple with problems that are much tougher, but demand the creativity and professionalism that was required after Sputnik or the Plan Oranges of the 1930s. That’s the level of creativity, vision, agility that I think the country needs and only the military can provide.
Can I pick up on Bridge’s comment about China, just in terms of I want people to be clear-eyed on the competition and the challenges ahead with a country the size of China. So if we look at what’s going on in China, and I’ll get this, I call it a 15:1 problem, but here’s my explanation of it: our economies are nearly the same size. Ours is a little be higher and there’s a lot of people that would say that our GDP’s more than theirs. And there’s others who would say, economists who would say their Purchasing Power Parity is actually higher than ours. But I’m gonna say they’re roughly comparable in size, 1:1 in terms of economies. 2:1 is their growth rate. All right, they had their lowest growth rate in 38 years and growing at 6.7%; that’s double what our growth rate is. 4:1 is their population compared to ours. Actually, it’s 4.2:1, the United States population. And they’ve been graduating eight times the number of STEM graduates that we have for the past few years. Eight X. So eight, four, two, one is how I get my 15:1. So I tell people I just project those statistics forward for a decade. And what does that mean? And what does that mean for us? And what I think it really means for us is we have to, again, get this sense of urgency. And we have to start acting more like David than Goliath. And we’ve gotta be that… The Bridge point, nimble, agile, quick, and be able to show strength through our military. But, again, I want everybody to be clear-eyed on that competition out there, what’s going on globally. And as Bridge talked about, China’s, I think, the pacing threat and we look at both their capacity and what I’m gonna about: their belief, their sense of urgency that this is their time and they’re planning, if you read their 2049 plan. And then they’ve actually outlined some intermediate objections, Objectives that they would like to be the world’s dominant country by 2049 with the premier military by 2030. And to do that, they’ve got huge investments in things like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, space, hypersonics, 5G, and they’re moving out on those plans. So they have a plan and they’re moving out to it and they’re gonna get in their belief. And I don’t wanna get into the part, but I’ll even go culturally how they get things, right? So being able to steal intellectual property, I would think, is not just… that’s kind of expected. That’s just a way of doing business. That’s how we operate and, again, let’s be clear-eyed on the competition of which we face as a country. That’s why I say it’s not a DoD effort; it’s bigger than a whole government effort. It is a Whole-of-Nation effort to be clear-eyed on the competition in front of us.
So a short question is we’re talking about the threat, so who’s the peer and who’s the near-peer in this threat?
Well, I think one of the things is that, actually, Secretary Donovan, I think you were in this meeting, but I remember very vividly at one point Secretary Donovan saying, “I think a lot of the strategy “is basically getting back focused on the threat.” I was like, “Man, that’s actually pretty good.” I mean, my view is a good strategy should be kind of boiled; you should be able to boil it down into not so many words. I mean, there are a lot of words in the strategy, but it’s to kind of give context. But it should be able to be relatively readily communicated. I think, look, basically, certainly with China we are facing, essentially, a peer. And particularly, when you think about this as a contest, that is taking place in a regional context in addition to a global context, so as the Department of Defense is excellent in the specific strategy talks about, released in June of this year, the Indo-Pacific is the world’s largest market. All of the growth dynamics that General Wilson’s talking about vis-a-vis China, also pertain to the region as a whole. That is increasingly the world’s center of gravity. If China can, as it clearly seeks to attain, achieve regional hegemony there, it’s gonna then set the rules of the road in a very material way for the American people. Sometimes people say, “Well, you know, strategic competition “with China isn’t resonating with the American people.” Well, if you ask it that way, it sounds very academic and kind of removed, but if you say, “Is China a challenge “to the way you’re living, to your job “and the way they’re behaving?” Well, imagine if they can dominate all of the rules of the road in the Indo-Pacific economy. Now, again, a lot of that’s gonna be political and economic. We’re gonna wanna work increasingly with countries. Any country that shares a shared aspiration to avoid an Asia dominated by China. To be emphatic, we do not seek to hold down China or to prevent it from growing. I mean, obviously as Americans, we wish other people well; we have a long record of that with China. And our own wealth, to some extent, and our future depends on Chinese prosperity. What we don’t want is a China, or excuse me, an Asia where everybody has to check with them. And, again, the military role is so key. So I think the peer context is… You know, I talk a lot about the fait accompli as the Indo-Pacific strategy talks about. And I think General Wilson’s point about being quick, agile, is critical because we cannot allow the Chinese to have the military instrument, in addition to their political and economic pressure and leverage that then allows them to say to a country like Vietnam, Taiwan, Philippines, ultimately Japan, India. Look, you might not like it, but this is what you have to deal with. And so I think that’s the kind of a problem space that I increasingly see the Department of Defense and, I think, it’s really commendably the Air Force working on and that’s exactly what we need. Because our military strategy, we don’t have the resource and we don’t have the abundance. Slight digression, I’m working on a book and one of my points to the publishers is to say there hasn’t been a defense strategy book, in a real way, in almost a generation ’cause you didn’t need to. ‘Cause we had so much power and so much skill, or you guys did, in particular, that we could handle all the problems. Now there are hard choices to make and you need a clear framework. And I think that’s what, hopefully, the National Defense Strategy’s producing. I think the Air Force is clearly moving forward in that direction.
Yeah, so I think to Bridge’s point, the chief talked about it today, we integrated with Bridge and his team and we’re on version 67 and very inclusive as we thought through this strategy. All right. But to outline, there are three lines of effort in there, what we’re gonna try and do. And he’s highlighting the middle one, in terms of allies and partners and how important they are. And I contend that this is a battle of cultures and beliefs and values, all right? And so our partners who believe in free and open and transparent societies and liberal democracy, as opposed to something else, and we have to offer that alternative in a good valuable partner that they can trust.
Let’s up the game then. Some have raised concern that we may be entering into another costly arms race, that by competing with states like Russia and China, we may be inviting conflict. So the question is how would you respond to such concerns?
Yeah, let me jump through real fast on that. Nobody in the military wants conflict. There’s a guy named Curtis LeMay who talked about peace through strength, right? And I contend that’s what we should be striving for, that we provide a very strong deterrent. All right, that both the capability in the world and have an adversary or people around the world look and say, “Hmm, not today. “I’m not gonna try today because they’re too strong.” So having a strong, lethal and ready force is critical. And I would tell them, just like the chief, I am confident of our ability today. We have the world’s best military. We’ve been fighting as a joint team for the last two decades and we’ve got this incredible joint team. But as we look to the future, we also know that we’ve gotta adjust how we’ve done business. So with the threat and the strategy, we’re now looking at new concepts of operations, right? And how does that play into a Joint Force design. You heard the chief talk about Joint Force excellence, right? So how does a Joint Force… What’s it look like in a future fight and how do we design that force? And that’s what Tim Fay and his AFA team with Fan Man and Q are working on. That’s what Dr. Roper’s working on, the acquisition part. But to be able to have a credible force, so that on any day that any adversary says, “No, not today. “I’m not gonna take on the United States.” And so we have that today, but the thing is that our adversaries have looked at us, they’ve looked at our way of doing business and they’re closing the gap. Again, that’s why I come back to we have to change; status quo is not acceptable. We have to take the world as dominant military and take it to the next level, right? So that’s what we’re trying to do.
Yeah, if I could just add on that, I think one of the things that we emphasize in the strategy, and Secretary Mattis talked about a lot, is it’s a strategy of competition, not confrontation. I think there was a very strong perception throughout the department that we needed to… There needed to be a sharp change in emphasis, both within the Joint Force, but also internationally. I kind of like the term a costly signal. The trajectory was not on the right path, particularly vis-a-vis China. And going back a number of years, hopeful expectations had not panned out and the power trajectory and economic trajectory were not going in a good way. So there was a, kind of, a sharp sort of shift or turn, precisely in order to preserve the kind of peace that is born of the deterrence, that I think General Wilson is talking about. I mean, the reality is that the PLA has grown by roughly 7-10% every year for the last 25 years and they’re pacing threat is United States. They’re almost exclusively focused on us. Whereas the United States has had multiple missions all around the world, as General Wilson and many of you obviously know, multiple operations in the Middle East and elsewhere. So we were kinda behind the curb and that’s important, not only for the joined force, but also internationally for countries to see that we are serious. Now, I think the most persuasive point, the point I try to communicate with the Chinese is, look, we are not trying to dominate you. We’re not trying to split you up. I mean, we’re Americans. We hope one day you become a democracy; that’s our fondest aspiration, of course, but we’re not gonna use our military to try to obtain that objective. But we are gonna help our allies and partners, and those who wanna live in a free and an open Indo-Pacific, effectively defend themselves. So there’s a very clear equilibrium point. If China can learn to accept that, we can live together. There may be tension, but my hope is over time, after we’ve gone through a period of really focusing and getting our, sort of… getting our ducks in a row, if you will, then we can be in a different place and the optics and the relationship will be more placid. But you have to go, sometimes, in a negotiation or anything in a relationship, you have to go through an uncomfortable period before you get to a positive end state.
They’re very good points because China has really capitalized, and definitely Russia, on the period of strategic opportunity as we would call it. The real question, both from a force provision level at the Air Force, but a strategic level for the strategy itself. What really has changed today between Russia and China regarding conventional nuclear capabilities?
Well, we look at where they’ve modernized their forces. And Bridge just talked about the Chinese and their growth and their modernization and how they’re focused on us. We’ve done a little bit of the same thing, but as the chief talked about, is talk a little today in the last few years have been very helpful from Congress, getting stable, predictable and adequate budgets. And we’ll also throw in there the budget flexibility will be important moving forward. And we’re modernizing our force. We’re looking no further than a nuclear triad, the thing that backstops everybody. We’re putting significant effort to modernize our nuclear force. But as the chief also talked about, we spend a lot of time looking at the question Congress asked us of the Air Force we need and what does that look like. So what’s the theory of victory? What is the operating concept to meet with this strategy? And what would that force design look like? And then we’re, in a way, building that. And if I were to connect, to tell you my synopsis of what that looks like for me, I’ve gotta be able to provide a global-sensing network. But I have to be able to connect that through a multi-domain commander control. And I have to do convergence of effects, across all demands with speed, range, and mass. And we do that by owning the high ground. We do that by, again, this multi-domain commander control. We do that by delivering combat Power and we have to be able to move to win. And you heard all that from the chief. So designing that Air Force we need is what we’ve been spending the last year-and-a-half doing. But with that, also comes a really important part. And as Bridge started off the discussion, strategies are about priorities. We also, then, have to prioritize what is the Air Force we don’t need? And that’s where it gets hard and uncomfortable for everybody. And I’ve been asking a question and said, “Okay, in this 20:30 fight, “if we can’t connect, “if I can’t increase my speed or lethality “then maybe that needs to go under this pile that says, “this is the Air Force I don’t need.” It would take those resources to help build the Air Force that we do need.
Yeah, just building on that, I think the work that General Fantini and General Hinote and their teams that I think General Wilson mentioned, is from what I can tell, is superb and just the kind of thing you’d wanna see. Some people sometimes say, “Well, how’s NBS implementation going?” And I’m a very much a glass-half-full person on this because I say you wouldn’t wanna see zero to 100, right? Because it’s not necessarily clear what the technology that Will Roper is talking about and the acquisition capability. What are the posture possibilities with new political relationships and deepening political relations we’re developing? What we wanna see is, I think, a Joint Force and certainly an Air Force that’s developing towards the problem. And I think that the work of AFWIC and the chief, and the vice chief, is right on this, which is to quickly contest Russian or Chinese aggression against an ally or a partner like Taiwan from the get go and be able to achieve operational effects very, very quickly. Even, in a sense, without ever attaining the degree of dominance that the Joint Force enjoyed in a, kind of, post 1990 period. The second point is I absolutely, 1000% agree on the hard choices. And I think one of… I remember sitting in Program & Budget Review and one of… a general officer from another service kind of said to me, “Look, Bridge, you guys… “You’re telling us great power competition is important, “but you gotta tell us what not to do. “Because it’s not fair. “We can’t decide. I said, “That’s perfectly legitimate.” And one of the many reasons I think the strategy, Secretary Mattis’s strategy, is distinctive is it did very clearly elucidate here are the things; “I, the Secretary of Defense, the politically accountable authority am willing to take risk on.” And that I think is pretty unprecedented. And I think it’s incumbent upon the department to follow through. It’s incumbent upon the Congress and the chattering classes, of which I’m now again a part, to be supportive of that. I think I told CQ recently, I wanna get to a point where a member of… You’re never gonna get a member of Congress to vote to close down a factory, but you might get other members of Congress to say, “Look, I can’t vote to keep open your factory “because we know it’s gonna lose. “It’s gonna be too embarrassing.” And that’s gonna be the conversation. And I think that’s one of the areas where it’s really important. It’s, of course, a nuance point especially for me. But I think to say, “Look, we have the best. “The nation has the best military in the world right now, “but we can’t take that for granted; “that’s not a given.” And so that’s on, not just on people in uniform, but on the people who are appropriating the money and authorizing an so forth. And so I really commend it and I, certainly for one, for what it’s worth, I intend to really try to blow the trumpet in support of the hard choices because that is really what needs to happen.
So let’s continue this shift as we bridge from, really, the threat to the overall strategy and both of you have touched on this. And the chief talked about essentially a new deterrent into the 21st century; a new way of looking at it, especially in multi-domain command and control. So basically, what is the strategy to accomplish this? Is it just about restoring our readiness or recapitalizing after two decades of war?
Well, it’s really both, right? ‘Cause, to Bridge’s point, we can’t just shed one without having something to replace it. So we’ve gotta be able to recapitalize. We also have to be able to modernize. And, again, to me as we design this force of the future. Again, the chief started out a year and a half ago talking about does it connect, does it share, does it learn? So how do we build a global sensing grid that can provide the information that we need through resilient communication, to a command and control network. It will be… We’re gonna get out of the platform centric and into the network centric warfare. That MDC2 that’s enabled by artificial intelligence with humans on the loop that can take that information and give it through strategic operational and tactical command and control to something that can do something with the data and to provide a convergence of effects. Again, it’s speed, at range, and at mass against any and all domains so that an adversary can’t keep up with it. That’s what we’re trying to build in this Air Force we need for 2030. So, yes, it has to be modernized and, again, we’re doing that across many of our weapon systems and fleets. I started talking about the nuclear recap, right? So with the new B-21 bomber, with investments in B-52, with what we’re doing with NC3, absolutely important that we continue those efforts. But we also have to be able to bridge to that Air Force we need and then look through the lens of what is it that doesn’t connect? What isn’t gonna make us more lethal, isn’t gonna provide more speed, and if so, I need to put that money aside and that resources aside because it has to be evolved into building the force that we do need.
Bridge? I think this is a good opportunity to talk about the national defense strategies, kind of that global operating model. It does represent a new conceptual paradigm shift, which is tremendous. But really, truly, what do you see as the biggest challenge facing the Air Force as we try to seek that vision in this new strategy?
I’ll start off. And my biggest challenge is cultural and then how do we impart the sense of urgency that we need as a nation to understand the competition to realize that status quo is just not acceptable. It’s a Jeff Bezos Amazon. All right? We can’t become a day-two company. We can’t have stasis, all right? We can’t slide back. We will not win doing that. So we have to build this sense of urgency across our country, across academia, across industry, across all our national labs, across the Whole-of-Government, but the Whole-of-Nation of the competition and to realize, be clear-eyed on it and say, “That’s what it is,” all right? And we have to move out. We have to, all of us, unite and come together and move out. And I use an example from the early ’60s, all right, when we were surprised when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. And as a nation, we went, “Holy cow!” All right? And on May 25th, 1961, President John F. Kennedy went to the nation and said, “We’re gonna go “to the moon and back.” And in eight years, we went to the Mercury, the Gemini, and the Apollo program. We had 36 space launches. We built the largest structures in the world. We built the largest rockets in the world. And in eight years, we went to the moon and came back. Today, it often takes that long to get through the analysis of alternatives, right? (laughing) That’s where we gotta change. That won’t work. That won’t work against a peer competitor. That won’t work against a peer competitor who is determined for them to win, all right? So my biggest thing I go around talking about is I can’t beat the urgency drumbeat loud enough for all of us. And so I gotta tell your family, tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your people at school, and churches and community, “Here’s the competition. “We have to be all in.”
Yeah, no, I just… I mean, I think when Secretary Mattis and the strategy talks about expanding the competitive space and the continuing use of the term competition. I think that’s what he really intended was to reignite, I mean, not to suggest people haven’t been this way before, but at a very profound level, that this is a competition; we can’t take our national security or, let alone, our military superiority, our political interests abroad, which are so vital for our well-being, for granted. I mean, I think a couple of points: the urgency is absolutely there. And I think that was the, kind of, key messages. National Defense Strategy Commission Report was even a bit more blunt, saying that we could lose in a couple of key scenarios that have major geopolitical impact. And I think, on that note, and I’m stealing a page from Will Roper’s speech, I’m sure, but is the… Not only was the… Those launches were based on ICBMs that were developed in the decade before, which involved multiple missiles blowing up, I think, (laughs) on the launch pad. Which is to say, “If you’re gonna move forward “in that kind of way, there are gonna be failure,” and that’s part of the deal. I think the basic idea of the Global Operating Model is to deal with the Red theory of victory, and particularly, the fait accompli; it’s not the only one, but I think it’s the most dangerous and the blunting idea is, again, getting there very, very quickly with significant effects to deny their military and ultimately their political objectives. I think the hard part of that, what’s so challenging, is we’re dealing with a country of this scale that we’ve never dealt with before and that is a massive challenge. I think reason for optimism, in addition to the fact that we’re all Americans and I think, obviously the men and women of the Air Force and so forth, is what are we actually asking? We are not saying you gotta go all the way; you have to establish complete dominance. It’s basically saying we’re trying to effectively defend our allies an partners, along with greater effort on their part. And that’s that line of effort too, figuring out how to integrate and be more interoperable. That is feasible. It’s going to the moon, it’s not going to Jupiter and establishing life on that, right? So I think it’s feasible objective. It’s a relatively clear idea and it should, hopefully, imbue what the Joint Force is doing, as well as the work with our allies and partners.
So, okay, break down this to Bridge. He talked about optimism. I’ll tell you why I’m really optimistic. A couple weeks ago, I had a fantastic job, although when people were asking me what my job is, I would say, “My job is I’m the king “of everything the chief doesn’t wanna do.” Right? But I get to do some really cool things, right? So I went to San Antonio recently and I went to the 33rd Network Warfare Squadron and I met a first lieutenant. And the first lieutenant is briefing the vice chief of staff on a really hard problem. And he tells the story about (mumbles) I went to my squadron commander and told him, “Give me five people. “In five days, I’ll have this problem solved.” And at the end of the five days, he came back and said, “Hey, boss, I didn’t solve the problem.” “It’s actually a wicked hard problem and I need 10 people “and 45 days.” So his boss said, “Okay, I got it. “I think you’re right.” And he actually gave him the resources and the time. The lieutenant went away, beavered away, built this team, really scoped the problem, saw how difficult it was, and came back at the end of 45 days and said, “Hey, boss, I failed again. “I need another 10 people and another 45 days.” Boss said, “Okay.” And he said, “Here’s my plan, boss. “I’ve been doing this just inside of “our Air Force and with our joint partners, “but I realize it’s much bigger than that. “So I’m bringing in a big inner agency team. “I’ve got people from all these different agencies helping “with this problem. “And I think we’ve got our arms around it.” At the end of 90 days, he came back and said, “Boss, I didn’t get you what I told you. “We’re not there yet.” His boss still believed in him, still trusted him, still empowered him. And about another two or three weeks later, he came back and they hadn’t completely solved, it’s not something that will ever go away, but they had gone after and had the first victory on a really significantly hard national problem. So here’s a first lieutenant who is courageous, who is not satisfied with the status quo, who wants to make a difference, who sees the size of this problem, and he fails three times. But he doesn’t give up. He is determined. He’s relentless. I love it. Again, this brings me great optimism when I see our young airmen like that. It also makes me really happy when I see squadron commanders just like the chief talked about, right? That trust the lieutenants, that trust the airmen, that empowered them, that let them fail. They didn’t discard them aside. They helped them, got them the resources they need and let them succeed. And I contend when we do things like that and that scales across our Air Force, nothing can stop us. So when I talked this urgency’s really important, I’m really optimistic when I meet our young airmen out there that wanna make a difference, that wanna be part of something bigger, that have this sense of urgency, that know how to build a team and be able to drive relentlessly to success.
Well, speaking of the airmen out there, it’s time for us to take the questions from our audience and God bless the senior airmen and the lieutenants that do make the difference. So our first question from the audience. And this brings it home to test of our strategy, especially the future of the National Defense Strategy of 2018. In light of the recent tensions with Iran, do we have the strategy right? And if so, how do we accept higher risk to meet our priorities? Dealer’s choice.
Yeah, I mean, I think obviously I’m not in the government, so I can speak freely. Obviously, General Wilson will give you a more authoritative answer. I think we do. I think one of the keys is the strategy’s not saying that everything’s gonna be hunky-dory in the Middle East, in particular. But it’s trying to correlate the level of effort and the level of attention to the various, sort of, threats and problem areas with the consequences of failing to address them. So Iran is clearly a malign actor. Iran has significant capabilities, but they pale, just orders of magnitude, in comparison to China. And the strategy, and Secretary Mattis is very clear, I mean, I would say nobody’s more CENTCOM than, probably, than former General Mattis. I mean, it’s hard to find somebody with more credibility there, but I think he recognized, for a variety of reasons, that, that is not the primary theater and the primary threat, but that the Force needs to find ways of more economically dealing with the challenges there, including through allies and partners, by, with, and through, of course. But also in our own way of using the Force. I mean, I’m not the expert on it, but obviously light attack has been on the conversation for many years. I’m not trying to say that’s a silver bullet, but ways of operating where we are planning for a longterm presence and, sort of, capability set in the Middle East and elsewhere. But really understanding that decisive theater where we cannot get it wrong and where the challenge is greatest, is the Western Pacific, vis-a-vis China.
Completely agree. So I think this is showing the National Defense Strategy is well-written, is well-crafted, is able to deal with this. We’ve said the pacing threats will be China and Russia. That there’s others that we will be urgent, but not existential. And so we’ve gotta be able to prioritize between those. And so that’s exactly what we’re doing today. Not without challenges, right? Do we see what’s going on in the Middle East today? And we just all have to get our arms around, while that’s very important, it’s a different threat and a different competitor both than China and Russia and we’ve gotta be able to adjust accordingly and we are.
I think this next question from the audience kind of marries up the chief discussion this morning about talent management. And now we’re gonna bring it to the strategy and the threat. So it’s a people issue. So what are some of the things the Air Force is doing to recruit and retain the next generation, both civilian and military? General Wilson?
Yeah, and I’ll start off with Jeannie Leavitt’s here, with her Air Force recruiting service, is doing a fantastic job. Every year, we bring in about 30,000 airmen. We’ve just recently started a Total Force Recruiting initiative. So that we’ve got all components, active guard reserved, going thorough Jeannie Leavitt, and how do we bring forces into our military? And I’ve told Jeannie, to me, there’s kind of two questions that we wanna ask young people today: do they wanna be in uniform or civilian? Do they wanna serve full or part-time? And if so, we have a place for them. And so her and her team are looking to do that. And how we do that with all the components to make sure that we optimize the forces that we do have and the people coming in to serve across our country? And I think we have a really good value proposition. We talk about what makes the Air Force unique. We’re the most technologically advanced service. We’re the youngest service. We’re the, as the chief talked about, the little bicycle innovators. We go over, not through. So I think we have… Young people wanna come to our Air Force. Now we just have to make it easy for them to come in. And that’s not only our active guard reserve, but it’s also civilian. So we’ve got efforts underway. How do we get people from college universities across America to be able to easily enter our service? We’re not where we need to be yet. We’ve greatly reduced the waiting time for folks to come in and the civilian service. But how do we, across all the components, make sure that we’ve got the right talent in the right place at the right time. And Jeannie Leavitt and her team are doing just that.
You know, the world is kind of speeding up and it’s connecting even more. So, Bridge, this is gonna be, kind of, a question for you from the audience and then to General Wilson. Everyone is speaking about building hypersonics. At one time, these capabilities were considered destabilizing. Can you, personally, comment on the delicate balance of a hypersonic deterrents in defense?
Yeah, I think I deferred to General Wilson on this, I’m sure. But just on the stability issue, I think one of the things that I’m thinking a lot about, and we tried to get out a bit in the National Defense Strategy, I think it’s a bit underdeveloped for a variety of reasons. Not bad, but is this issue of, General Wilson did touch on this, that conventional nuclear integration. Greg Weaver, who’s very involvement at Nuclear Posture Review and I always say we’re trying to solve each other problems, or, really, ideally, the NDS solves the nuclear problems. You don’t have to rely on nuclear forces, but I do think the reality is the American military advantage has eroded, largely due to investment by China, in particular, but also reinvestment by Russia. This is kind of an anecdote, but one marine officer I worked with, he said that, “The biggest difference between you “and many people, in and around the Pentagon, “is you think a war with the Chinese and the Russians “is actually possible and many people don’t.” And I think that’s kind of an underlying theory. Obviously, the idea is to deter it, but I think that’s a reality. And I think my view is very much General Wilson’s view, which is if you’re not prepared for it and you don’t have a good theory of the case how to use military force to deny their objectives and to come to satisfactory objectives for ourselves, they’re gonna be much more likely to do it. I mean, my favorite analogy is we may not be perfect, but the kind of behavior that led to the 2008 financial crisis, if it hadn’t been allowed, would have made the financial crisis less likely. So you get, kind of, systemic catastrophes when people don’t take seriously the possibility that something like that could happen. And I think what I’m getting at in the hypersonic context is to say, “Look, “hypersonics are obviously critically important “in some way that it’s connected “to the employment of military force “for political objectives.” There are going to be stability and escalation risks, but those stability and escalation risks are A: gonna have to be managed and dealt with, and B: in a sense, are gonna be a front of their own. So if there’s gonna be a war with the Chinese and the Russians, how a war is bounded is, itself, going to be a strategic exchange. And the military needs to be thinking about that in consultation, of course, with civilian oversight and civilian strategy, and so forth. But I think we need to think about hypersonics and all these kinds of capabilities. Space and counterspace, it’s no longer sanctuary so there’s gonna have to be, kind of, more discussion of offensive space, for instance. But in a way that’s conscious of the stability and escalation risks, but not, sort of, chained by them. And I think that’s one of the many ways in which we’re getting into a world in which this kind of thing is possible. But the best way to deter a conflict is to have a very clear way of using force that ties the political objectives in the hypersonic context and (mumbles).
Yeah, we were doing hypersonics in the 60s before it was cool, right? And then we stopped doing it. We had other priorities. For the last couple decades, we’ve been engaged in conflict in the Middle East and we haven’t been focused on it. But others have. And others have studies us and other’s technology’s advanced. And we see clearly where they’re headed. We see the number of papers being written by the Chinese in hypersonics. We see the investments they’re making in their infrastructure and their hypersonic wind tunnels and other things. And we’re carefully following all the aspects of what they’re doing. And we also have got our efforts underway. Dr. Roper can talk to you at length about our efforts, but it’s not just the Air Force. We’re in alignment with our sister services, the Army and the Navy. We’re also doing hypersonic work and so we’re moving out in that direction. Again, it’s something we were doing in the 60s, but we, quite frankly, stopped doing because A: it was really expensive and we didn’t need it, but we look around today and see that others are. Into Bridge’s part, how do we think through all the consequences of that? And how the stability and escalation and assurances that we’ll need to have as these weapons proliferate around the world.
Now, thank you. So here’s a bonus round question. So we have plans for dealing with China and we also have plans with dealing with Russia. But what’s being asked is if they decide to team up, what happens then?
Well, we’re seeing today where there’s cooperation and coordination between China and Russia. There’s a exercise together. And so we don’t want competition, well we want competition, we don’t want conflict, right? And so having a credible force, a global force, postured in the right places with strength, being able to know that they can’t accomplish a fait accompli, whether it be in the east or the west or wherever it may be. That we’ve got, not only that, but we’ve got a range of allies and partners with us and that we provide a different alternative to them is something we’re gonna continue to build on. And the National Defense Strategy talks about that, having a lethal and ready force with a network of allies and partners, and being able to maximize the dollars that we do have in the government as we reform government to be able to get that right balance.
Yeah, if I could just… Just building on that, General Wilson’s point, I mean, I think thinking very, very clearly about the particular problem of simultaneous conflicts with the Chinese and the Russians is important. I mean, the Chinese are the bigger challenge. So my view, that would be the priority, without getting too much into detail. I think the more that our force can be specifically scoped to defeat their theory of victory, particularly the near term, and then things can be more sequenced, but with our own forces, or own conventional forces, so we don’t have to unduly rely on our nuclear forces beyond what’s necessary; that’s very viable. This is also a critical part of line of effort too. And I think it’s important for allies and partners, including our ally and partner Air Forces understand this: that the United States, and I say this to the Europeans all the time, is the United States is going to be focused primarily on China; it’s simple necessity. The United States is not gonna ban the NATO; it’s not gonna get out of it. We are inextricably tied up with the security of Europe, but we need our allies and partners to understand our strategy. So, for instance, I talk to the Germans. In 1988, the Germans had 12 active divisions on the inner German border and three in ready reserve. That was is now is a West Germany that’s 2/3 the size of the present federal public. Now, Germany today has a much, much, much smaller force. Now, if Germany could build up its capability for allied purposes, that could really take away some of the pressure on the simultaneity issue. It’s not saying the Americans are gonna get out of Europe or wouldn’t allocate in the event of simultaneous conflict, but that’s a way where, I think, building in and really making that interoperability, not just at a, kind of, attack level, but all the way up. And saying, “Look, here’s what we’re trying to do “and here’s how you can help us out.” Not help us out, but help yourselves out as well is really important.
It’s often been said that a strategy really eventually has to come in contact with the American public. So one of the questions from the audience, very insightful: do you believe the American public truly understands the challenge of near-peer competition and the need to preserve the military advantage we, in the United States, have taken for granted in the past decade?
Yeah, my short answer’s no. And that’s why I need your help. That’s why I’ve been saying we need to build this drumbeat of urgency across all our communities so that they’re clear-eyed on the competition. We’ve enjoyed and we’ve been uncontested as nation for the last 40 years, since the fall of the wall, right? Now it’s different. We’re in this strategic competition. We have to start understanding it, thinking like that as a Whole-of-Nation and I don’t believe the American public fully appreciates that yet, and that’s why I need all yours help to be able to do that.
No, I think that’s right. I think they don’t, although I do think there’s an inchoate sense of the stakes, right? I was at a conference a couple months ago and there was a very, kind of a leading Republican center and a leading Democrat center. And the one thing they did agree on was that China opposes strategic competition, that people feel it; they know there’s something that’s changed in the world. And, in a sense, you see it all around the world, but you certainly see it here. People know that something’s changed economically. It’s not 1999 anymore and people get that. They don’t quite know what it means. The problem with the military thing is you need to be 10-15 years ahead because the planning horizon. And so I think that’s part of what, hopefully, I can do, but also more importantly, the Strategy tried to communicate to the American people, but to keep banging on that. I also think this is a really important part of the choices piece because the choices allows you to differentiate from “We just need to be strong,” which may or may not resonate in a world in which social security and Medicare are gonna come up at some point. But you’re saying, “Look, we are making hard choices “internally in uniform and in the Defense Department, “and this is why. “This is how it’s so significant.” I think that will resonate with the American people over time.
I think the best way to wrap up is a very, very short answer from me to you. And that is I saw a string of the same question. And that is, beyond this administration, will this strategy endure? I won’t ask the how.
I believe it will.
I’m very confident it will.
Then I guess those answers… Go ahead General Wilson.
I’m looking out here in the crowd and I wanna make a point. I see there’s a group of folks here. I see Dash Jamieson and her team and they’ve got… They’ll have the session tomorrow and it’s about information and how do we control the information, share the information, and what’s information warfare look for the United States, and how do we get after that? So General Holmes and his team are working on it hard. As you heard the chief talk about the new stand up of the new numbered Air Force, 16th Air Force, we’re bringing that together in the air staff. We’ve got a general officer now focused on that and there’ll be a session tomorrow afternoon. And I hope people will attend that will about information and how do we get the information out to our public. And then we’re speaking the truth to people and they understand what’s at stake.
Well, this has been an absolutely delightful discussion, both on the threat and the strategy. The next thing I ask of both of you is simply please wear these crazy socks and show everybody your support for the Air Force Association. We can’t thank you enough. Let’s give them a big hand, please. (audience applauds) (triumphant music) Bridge, thank you, and…
Thank you.
Thank you, sir (music drowns out speaker)
No problem. (laughs)
Next session will be in the Air Force Town Hall with your Air Force leaders right here in this room. Thank you very much.