Speakers
Maj. Gen. Frank M. Muth, Commanding General, U.S. Army Recruiting Command;
Mr. Thomas F. Greco, TRADOC G-2;
COL Timothy Hummel, Director, TRADOC G-2 Operational Environment
Transcript
I would put Russia right now, from a military perspective, as the number one threat. I would also add China, North Korea and Isis, along with Iran.
[Narrator] While the United States has been engaged in counterinsurgency operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan, our adversaries have made other investments creating multiple layers of stand-off capabilities that are as good or in some cases, better than our own. Among the most critical areas of adversary investment are Electronic Warfare, Integrated Air Defense, Counter Space and Precision Navigation and Timing, Cyber and Social Media, Recon-Information Strike Complex, use of UAVs, Massed Artillery and Fires, Protection, Proxies, Deception and Ambiguity, CBRN/WMD. But, as we learned when we fielded the Big Five, materiel is by itself not decisive. Capabilities require a modernized approach across doctrine, organization, training, science and technology, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, policy, experimentation and learning. When we apply this lens to the operational environment, we find our most capable potential adversaries are Russia and increasingly, China. Both Russia and China possess capable militaries with many similarities between the two, in terms of their focus on area denial anti-access capabilities that focus on standoff, the types of systems they employ. Their ability to challenge us across all domains and their sophisticated approach to cyber and information operations. Both also have robust military research and development and technology acquisition programs focusing on a range of advanced capabilities including hypersonics, artificial intelligence, directed energy, railguns, advanced human performance and quantum computing among others. But the differences largely come in three areas; geography, capacity and capability. Over the past three years, in a series of war games, experiments, simulations and tests against the anticipated adversary of 2030, the army has identified several key gaps which must be addressed and eliminated. If the United States is to prevail over our adversaries, we require the proper capabilities strategically positioned during the competition period that are able to effectively integrate with whole of government capabilities designed to challenge our adversaries across increasingly complex diplomatic, information, military and economic spheres. China and Russia will continuously exploit the conditions of the operational environment to achieve their objectives without resorting to armed conflict by fracturing the US’s alliances, partnerships and resolve. They attempt to create standoff through the integration of diplomatic and economic actions, unconventional and information warfare through social media, false narratives or cyber attacks and the actual or threatened employment of conventional forces. And if we should find ourselves in conflict, we need to prevail on all domains in an environment characterized by the potential for overmatch and standoff operations in complex terrain, contested in all domains across the full spectrum of operations, where cyber increases the momentum of human interaction, but where the soldier and leader remain the decisive edge of the decisive force.
The United States has been primarily engaged in counter insurgency operations. And we’ve been focused primarily on individual soldier protection, and rightfully so. With the few exceptions, that was the primary focus of the United Stated Army. While we were doing that, our adversaries were watching us and they were learning from us and they were seeing how we fight. And during that time they were investing heavily in those items that you see on the top left. They spent a lot of time, a lot of resources, a lot of money into developing capabilities that could defeat the United States. In the interest of time, I’m just gonna hit a couple of the key points. So when you’re talking about electronic warfare, if you go back to the days in the 80s and the 90s when Lieutenant Hummel and Lieutenant Muth were running around the CTCs. And you looked at a average battalion talk or an average brigade talk. It was maybe a map on a wall, a couple of computers, a printer over in the corner that really didn’t work or always ran out of toner and then you had a coffee pot. And that was your average talk back in the 80s and the 90s. If you go to any CTC today, whether it’s NTC or JRTC, or out at GMRC in Hohenfels, the brigade and the battalion talks are gonna look like porcupine farms. You cannot fight and win in that environment. And our adversaries have taken note. And they’ve invested heavily in defeating us or separating us from all of our electronic capabilities. That includes GPS navigation. That includes Blue Force Tracker. That includes Over-the-horizon comms. So they know that if they can separate us from those capabilities, they’re gonna have a better chance of beating us in a fight. The next is integrated air defenses. They’ve known and they watched and they’ve seen how we fight and they know that if they can keep us out, then they win from the beginning. So they’re investing heavily in that A2/AD structure. They also know that if they can’t successfully keep us out, that they can at least separate us, if only temporarily. Us being the United States Army from our joint capabilities. And they know that we rely heavily on those joint capabilities to bring the full force of the United States Army to bear on the enemy. So again, those are just a couple that I wanted to highlight on the slide before we move on. So if you move down to the bottom left and you look at potential overmatch. So there are some instances right now, where our adversaries capabilities are potentially overmatching what we have and what we can defend against. So for example, electronic warfare. We know that our adversaries have electronic warfare capabilities as small as a quad-copter drone that can go deep into our area all the way up to satellite destroying missiles. So they’re focused on separating us from our need to rely upon our communications and our electronic devices. So as you move to the upper right and you look at what those pacing threats are, we’re talking about Russia and we’re talking about China. They are right now near peer capable of attacking us and fighting us in large scale combat operations. (coughing) Some of the things that we need to highlight however are, they both like to use a whole of government approach. So when you’re looking at Russia, Russia will usually lead with the M and Dime, so they’ll lead with the military and then follow it up with information in diplomatic. When you’re looking at how the Chinese, they will usually lead with the economic and follow that up with information in the D and then eventually go to the military. So there are some key differences there. One of the other key points on that part of the slide is right now Russia is outpacing China in both capability and capacity. And we predict that China will surpass Russia by as early as 2028, indefinitely by 2030, if we continue along that route. So what is really different between the two is when you look at their capacity and their competence. So right now, the Russians have a little bit more capacity and they are a little bit more experienced based on their operations in both the Ukraine and Crimea. Whereas the Chinese are focusing heavily on training operations (clears throat), excuse me, in order to build that experience to help surpass their peers by 2028. If you then move to the map, you’ll see that this competition and this potential for conflict isn’t just localized to certain areas. It’s not just the first island chain, it’s not just the second island chain. We’re not just talking about the Arctic. We’re not just talking about Crimea and Ukraine. We’re talking about a global scale. So it’s everywhere and it’s all the time. Right now China is investing heavily in the One Belt One Road initiative and they’re moving very freely through Africa. Now don’t get too excited about the two flags that are sitting in the middle of Colorado and Kansas. That’s not to represent that we’re in conflict right now in conus, what it represents is yes we will be contested should we have to transition to conflict in large scale combat operations. I think the days of us being uncontested as we move from fort to port are long in our past. I think our near peers are gonna look to contesting us as we move those assets. Not just with kinetic means but also with information as well. So what are we doing about it? If you look down at the bottom right where it talks about fundamental changes, well the army is changing and we recognize the need to change. So we stood up, AFC, we stood up, Army Futures Command. And we stood up cross functional teams that are looking at what are the next Big Five. All right and in this case, we have six cross functional teams. What we’re looking at what is that next Big Five gonna be. But also with that is leader development. We have to train leaders to fight and win in this environment. It’s not just the stuff that you have, it’s what you do with the stuff and how you use it and that’s where leader development is key. So training in this type of environment is one of the most important things we’re gonna do for the next five to ten years. Ensure that that operational environment at the CTCs and at home station training includes the full spectrum of the operational environment so we can truly train two multi-domain operations. So next slide please. So what does that mean? That means the next fight is gonna be very lethal, it’s gonna be very rapid and it’s gonna include longer standoff than we were probably ever used to up to this point. And that’s the key take away from this slide. You can see the increased lethality, you can see the selected overmatch when we’re talking about A2/AD in that center top. And then in the bottom we’re gonna be enabled by autonomy robotics and AI. So the future leaders, the future battalion and brigade commanders in 2035 are commanding in the army right now. They are the ones that Major General Muth and his team are recruiting right now. The future division commanders that are gonna fight with AI and robotics in 2035. They are the company commanders right now. They’re the squad leaders right now. So we need to focus on the development of them, so they’re ready to fight in this type of environment. So before I hand the mic over to Major General Muth. For those of you that are also fellow history nerds, you’ll recognize that those numbers represented the British expeditionary forces in July of 1916 to November of 1916, in the first Battle of the Somme. So I would argue that that was two years into the conflict, it wasn’t even the first fight of the war, it was two years after they had started fighting. And they still failed to recognize the operational environment that they were in and how to plan, prepare and fight and win in that environment. So here we are, the army’s recognized the need for an operational environment to train in. We recognize the need for multi-domain operations and we’re doing everything we can to prevent that next first Battle of the Somme. So with that I’ll turn the mic over to Major General Muth. He’ll discuss a little bit about the leader qualities.
Thanks Colonel Hummel. (clears throat) How’s everybody doing this morning? All right so first my name is Major General Frank Muth, I’m an American soldier and I command the United States Army, recruiting command. And I say that because in 2018 we didn’t make the mission. We missed it by 6500. And three weeks ago, we spiked the ball on the end zone and we made mission, 68187. And all of our quality marks went up. So no we didn’t sacrifice quality over quantity. So why do I bring that up? Why is Frank Muth commanding, US recruiting command up here talking about MDO. Because we are today. You saw it on the stage with the secretary. When those future soldiers raised their right hand and swore to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, that 15 years from now could be the first sergeant that’s leading the company in charge through a trench. And that’s who we’re recruiting. So what we found last year when we took over recruiting command, we kinda pulled it apart. Why did we fail, what are we doing? We were still handing those young Z geners a piece of paper and say fill this out for a lead card. Today Z generation looks at that card and the piece of paper and they go, this is a foreign object and throw it away. Because they are completely and totally digital natives. They are on the digital platform on social media and they’re nowhere else. You can’t call ’em on the phone ’cause they look at it, they don’t recognize the number, they don’t even answer. But that’s what we are now recruiting for tomorrow. Slide please. So before I talk about the digital natives and all that they’re doing in the technical world. What we do know for a fact, no matter how high tech we get, no matter what we’re doing in the digital world whether it’s a ubiquitous communication. Whether it’s artificial intelligence, whether it’s blended reality and virtual, nothing changes when it comes to leadership qualities. Passion, compassion, standards, discipline, leading from the front, setting the example, always out in front, always supporting your soldiers and supporting their families. And making them part of a team. Nothing will change when it comes to what we do and how we lead. What we will change is how they fight and what they’re using to fight with. And just like we went out there last year and we got to know the Z generation. So remember the millennials, they’re tech savvy. Z generation, they are tech innate. They live on that video screen. Millennials, they used to look at two screens. Today Z generations look at five. So when we look to the future, what kind of weapon systems we’re doing. Think about an aircraft that’s out there, it’s a single pilot, he’s the right seater. Left seater is sitting there with the screen and that left seater’s operating, what, five UASs at once. They are out there and they have the ability to multitask. By the way Z generations, eight second attention span. So if you think you’re gonna send ’em something that’s gonna capture their attention, you get one shot after that, they’re just gonna keep flipping through. But they’re ut there and they have the ability to multitask, multi-understand, have situational awareness. And they are true digital natives and innate ability to operate in that world. We don’t get that. The average age of the NFL football watcher today, 35 years old. They don’t even watch that stuff anymore. What do you think they’re doing? By the way Z generations, 33 million of them out there. 56 percent of them are playing esports games everyday. If any of you have any kids out there, they’re all playing video games. They’re playing Fortnite, Apex Legend, Legal Legends, OverFighter, doesn’t matter. We tapped into that and we found that they are learning skills out there in the digital world in the esports world that are translating into what we’re gonna do into the future. Because whether it’s embedded and integrated sensors AI, they are out there doing that right now, they see it, it’s all virtual I get that. But as we translate virtual into reality in the future, just like the secretary said that right now our enemies are investing in their army in the future today. We are recruiting the army of the future, today. And we are going after these Z geners ’cause the other piece is this, they wanna serve. They wanna be part of something, better themselves, bigger than themselves. And we know that and we tap into it. And they’re bringing some of those high tech, science, technology, engineering, math. All those skills they’re bringing. We just gotta get ’em in a little better shape. And we need to get them integrated into the army. ‘Cause all of this is what we’re gonna do into the future. I’m gonna read a couple things to you ’cause I’m not smart enough to remember it, but you gotta at the end of the day take away some of these capabilities that our Z geners that we are recruiting today for tomorrow and how it’s gonna integrate into all of our weapons’ platforms. The innate ability to interact with technology will translate to the weapon’s systems of the futures as tomorrow’s soldiers will be bombarded with information from multiple interfaces. Think about that, the armies are the future as they’re getting all the sensor data in. They’re getting all the unman aerial systems in. They are getting every bit of tech feed they have to be able to take that, crunch it quickly and at speed to combat decide what they’re gonna do. The Z geners can do that. Warfare at a machine speed. Warfare at a machine speed. AI is gonna make combat of the future move much much faster than we ever can anticipate. We have to be blended with human decision making, with artificial intelligence to ensure that we can keep up with the pace of battle. It’s gonna require a soldier that is capable of quick decision making, adaptable, possesses problem solving skills, spatial regioning, strategy development, logic planning, multitasking, dexterity communications and teamwork. And what we found as we stood up a competitive esports team, we found those Z gens that are out there utilizing the esports today, they have all of those capabilities in them. That is the first sergeant of the future. That first sergeant raised their right hand on that stage today ’cause 15 years from now, they’re gonna be leading the fight and they’re gonna be tech savvy, tech innate because of what they bring to the plate today as they’re coming out of the Z generation. And we don’t know what the next generation’s gonna be. But I know this, in the US Army and in recruiting, we’re gonna stay ahead of it. ‘Cause we wanna bring those soldiers of the army tomorrow into our ranks today. Thank you very much, have a great day. And we have our esports trailer right down there. Go see it, whenever you get a chance, and we’ll take you questions, thank you. (audience applauds)
Gentlemen, when we look at multi-domain and advisory technology threats. How do you seek to maintain a cohesive, realtime, OE environment that can support current, generating and future force training and modernization.
Well thank you for that question, sir. I think the most important thing we need to do in order to make sure that we remain current is it’s continue to pull that intel that we have. And find out exactly what those adversaries are doing. And then as we churn in the Tradoc G2 and we turn that into an environment that we can distribute to the soldiers. So for example, as we’re talking about developing new technologies, we figure out what those technologies are, we turn it into an unclass environment and then we deliver it out to the soldiers in the date. So we have these tools in the Tradoc G2 that are very easily updatable. We’re not talking about PDFs and old school manuals. We’re not talking about disks that we send out to the force. It’s all web enabled tools, so that we can rapidly update the decisive action training environment. Update those scenarios, update our training packages and then send them out to the forces. And that also keeps the CTCs relevant. So we can continue to keep the CTCs relevant. We do have teams in the Tradoc G2 that go out periodically to the CTCs. And accredit the opt-4 to make sure that they are staying with the most recent tactics, the most recent equipment and the most recent ways of fighting. Make sure they’re fighting like the opt-4 would not going up against just another group of blue-4. Does that answer your question sir, thank you.
[Audience Member] General Muth, good to see you.
Hey, we were OCs together at Hohenfels too.
Indeed, very good. I got a question about building propensity. You talk about 34 million or so young adults who are potential candidates. But you have a much smaller population of qualified and propense doing a lotta things to help recruiters out. What are you doing to help drive propensity?
So right now we focused on 22 specific cities that we already know. We have what we call a QMA or Qualifies Military and Available. Yet we have a low propensity. We should be deeper into the markets than we currently have. And out of those 22 cities, it’s Chicago, it’s Boston, it’s New York, it’s Kansas City, it’s Denver, Milwaukee, Detroit, pretty much and then there’s a few more of course. So what we’re doing is we’re driving the market. Well first we pulled it apart and did a deeper dive in the market segmentation and micro targeting. We’ll actually go down into the exact street where they are and what they’re doing. What are they driving, what are they wearing, what are they eating, what are they watching on TV or not on TV, maybe on the digital network. All of that. And then we pull out, what we create packages for our recruiters to be able to micro target those areas to be able to drive up discussions. Because propensity is based on knowledge. And once you are able to talk to a Z gener and define what, just talk about what the army offers, we find that it changes at least, how they decide. ‘Cause the questions you get today from those places are, am I allowed to have a dog in the Army. Do I ever come out of the uniform. Can I live off post, can I own a car. So the knowledge is just not there. So we go in there and we drive that up. And I’ll tell ya, the Z geners, again like I told you about, we’re using this esports to be able to talk to them online. And they don’t really wanna talk to you face-to-face at first. They wanna meet you in the digital world, figure out if you are, are you a bot or are you a real person. And then once they do that, they’ll start a dialogue with you. But we are driving into what we call must win markets. So we have, must win, all those cities I told you about. And then we have ones that we’ve one and we call must keep. And we’re doing this deep dive because again, we can never ever fail mission again. ‘Cause our nation and our army counts on us, thank you.
[Audience Member] Morning, sir.
Hey, good to see you again.
Yeah long time, it’s always good to see you. So we talked a little bit about casualties on the battlefield for historical perspective. And the Army is now developing isolated soldier guidance in case an individual gets separated from its unit. Do you think a gen Z individual is going to be able to build up that protective capacity should they become isolated on the battlefield, potentially isolated by the enemy.
Well I’ll tell you what, what we’re still finding though. Whether it’s O-set or the training that we provide them. Again, helps build that capacity up. And it comes down to resilience. Are you able to, under stress, be able to operate. We still feel they can. But I, ’cause again I think it has to do with, do they wanna be part of the army. And we’re seeing they do wanna join. And then when they go through training they’re given that training. Now increasing the, like the MP3 I think we just increased it to 22 weeks That is significantly starting to help. And a lot of that capability, multiple, multiple iterations. Muscle memory type of stuff. But now I still think that, one you’ve gotta teach ’em and then two yes, they’ve got the capability. What we are seeing ’cause it’s a national crisis, obesity is the highest reason why people cannot join the army. But what we find is once they come in, they even if they’re like right on the edge, they lose the way and now especially with the ACFT, I’ve taken it twice. You better get your game on, if you’re gonna take that thing. And I’m a crossfit functional fitness person. That is no more just running and push ups and sit ups ’cause you won’t pass. I think that is changing how the army is also doing physical fitness, which I think will help.
[Audience Member] Thank you for your good presentation. The question for you is this, in the future the complex environment and the people, the young soldiers they have to be well trained in term, not only they being trained in the army, but while they, before they join the army. That means from the education system or from the school or elementary up to high school. Do we have sufficient, do we have plan to enhance the education at that level.
Okay so, we have different programs and recruiting. That gets down to STEMs, Science Technology Engineering Math, we’re not doing across the board. Can we do better, yes. But we have certain and brigades that are partnering with schools and they’ll do robotics competitions. And so what we do is, we’ll go in there and help sponsor it with the soldiers being there with them. Either doing the, being the judges or else what we call register to win. So they get a play station or something, whoever wins. But we’re trying to promote that more and more ’cause I couldn’t agree with you more. Whether it’s AI, robotics, unmanned aerial systems. It takes a lot to train those folks. And they’re out there, whether, drone racing. Be part of all of that, what they’re doing. Because all of that technology and that knowledge is going to translate the way we’re gonna fight in the future. So you’re right. How about this, is there an instruction for Fortnite today? Or to Call of Duty, or for Leagues of Legends? No, it’s inherent, it’s innate, not innate. But it’s embedded within their ability to pick up a controller and they just operate it, right. I think that’s what our weapon system should be in the future. I mean they should completely understand it, the control systems can be the same. And they can train on it or use it live or virtual. But, yeah.
[Audience Member] I’m from Damo TRO. I saw a good article the other day about, the army was teaching millennials how to work with the Zegian and how to help them into the leadership. Can you say anything more about that ’cause that’s a ongoing thing.
I have not, I didn’t read that article.
Well.
Yeah so what were they saying, what was the basis of it?
The basis was Zegian has a lot of information and they wanna, they want somebody to help them with that. But also become leaders too.
Yes.
But many of us have a different view.
Well the other thing we find is they don’t have a lot of soft skills. And that’s, you know, and that translates into all of you. That translates to our, the employers of America. The soft skills are, and they ask all the time, ’cause they want to take our veterans and our soldiers and hire them, why. ‘Cause they show up on time. Guess what, this odd thing about maybe showing up after lunch. Because that doesn’t happen a lot. How about showing up with the right uniform, with the right attitude. You want to win, you want to be part of a team, you can communicate and we teach you all of that in the army. And that’s, when they leave, a lot of companies come to us, we have a thing called Pays Partnership For You Success. When they sign up for the company, it guarantees a soldier that gets out two interviews, not the job, but the interviews. We have 800 companies that have signed up for it. A hundred are the Fortune 500. But what we’re finding is, you’re right, they wanna learn but they don’t have some of those skills. They come in and we teach it to them.
Sir if I could piggyback on that real quick. So going back to the operational environment. It’s a very information intensive environment. And right now the amount of information that’s out there for soldiers and leaders to digest is almost overwhelming. And it’s only gonna increase between now and 2035. Now I say it’s almost overwhelming, but it’s also, they’re inundated with it and everybody wants more. So you’re already overwhelmed with what you have and we’re all gonna want more information and it’s only gonna have to increase between now and 2035. The other challenge is what do we do when we don’t have that information flow. And that goes back to that EW example I have earlier. You’re gonna have to operate, fight and win in an information degraded environment. And that’s one of the challenges that we’re going through as we develop the operational environment and the decisive action training environment that we’re pushing out to the training centers to make sure that we have that rigger in the training scenarios and we have that rigger in the opt-4. So that our junior leaders all the way up to through the BCT commanders and even in division and core ware fighters are still able to fight and win with all the information and then without the information.
So on the same realm of a mass amount of information coming in, having to sort through it and decide. With our esports team, I know some folks are gonna giggle. We stood up a granger school, gaming ranger school. But it’s about fitness, it’s about decision making. We do brain training. So we stood this school up and they’re doing actual one hour brain training. What we’re finding is, they’re actually tired more after that than when we put them through an ACFT training session. And they do at least two to three hours of physical fitness a day. That, because if you look at these games, they are seeing and watching multiple amounts of information. They’re having to sort through it and make an immediate decision on what they’re doing. I get it, that it’s virtual. I get it, it’s a game, but think about what that does to the brain. Because it’s a muscle memory piece and soon as you can take that information and decide quickly and do it over and over again. That truly gives those guys a capability to be able to translate to something else. So we think it’s beneficial in the long run. I think we’re out of time. Did they hold the sign up, five minutes, I’m sorry.
[Audience Member] One.
Yeah one more question, sir.
[Audience Member] Japan Ground Defense Force is very interested in multi-domain operation. So I’d like to know how it goes joint concept. I’d like also how you would like to harmonize with a joint concept. And also I’m very happy if you tell me when is the next version multi-domain 2.0 is going to be released, I’d like to know.
It’s yours.
Yes, sir thanks for that question. So to be brief, we want multi-domain operations for the army to be the joint concept. We want everyone to be on board with the multi-domain operations concept that we have in the United States Army. And I think for the most part we’re going in that direction, we haven’t completely solidified it yet, but we’re almost there. And as far as when is 2.0 coming out, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know for sure. And I’ll have to get back to you exactly when the next version of MDO 2.0 is gonna come out. So I apologize, I’ll have to get back to you on that.
All right so as we wrap it up. I just want to point out one more time. In the far corner, the only one that exists in the United States is an esports trailer that we built, your US Army did. And it’s got, what do they call it, eight scorpion chairs in it. They’re really good gaming chairs if you’re a gamer. Anyway, if you get a chance go see that because our esports competitive team’s down there and our new, brand new army competitive fitness team, both those teams were stood up to be able to connect with our generation that’s out there, the young ones that we’re trying to bring in the Army today. Guys it’s been a pleasure, have a great week.