AUSA 2024 | AUSA Contemporary Military Forum: Enabling Transformation

The Army is making significant strides in human-machine integrated formations, using robots to make first contact on the battlefield. Hon. Doug Bush, Assistant Secretary of the Army, emphasized this as a pivotal moment in military technology at the recent AUSA conference. Gen. James Rainey, commanding general of Army Futures Command, underscored the Army’s commitment to integrating robotic combat vehicles for safer, more effective operations.

Adam Bry, Skydio’s CEO, shared how Skydio’s drones are already enhancing mission effectiveness with advanced autonomy

0:00 well good afternoon I'm General Dennis V Executive 0:05 Vice President for Buel Hamilton a retired General United States Army and 0:11 also a senior fellow with the association of United States 0:17 Army thank you for joining us for this uh contemporary military Forum titled 0:24 enabling transformation it's great to see the standing room only here today 0:29 for this great panel that we've assembled as your Professional Organization the association United 0:35 States Army is proud to provide forums like this one throughout the year that 0:42 broaden the knowledge base on Army professionals and those who support our 0:49 army a USA exemplifies the US Army's narrative to audiences inside and 0:57 outside the Army and help to further the association's mission to be 1:03 the voice for the Army support for the soldier of course we cannot do this 1:10 alone a USA relies on the members to help tell the Army story and to support 1:17 our soldiers and their families a strong membership base is vitally important for 1:24 advocacy efforts in Congress the Pentagon and the defense industrial base 1:32 and to the public and communities across the country through a USA's 1:38 122 chapters within United States and nine countries over 1:45 overseas who here is a member of a USA would you raise your hand please yeah 1:50 that's great for those who raised their hand we thank you for everyone else 1:56 unless you opted out when you registered you are now a basic at no cost member of 2:04 a USA and so we thank you if you're not already a premium member and would like 2:11 to elevate your member benefits please visit the a USA member Zone located at L 2:18 Street bridge near Halls DN or sign up online at a 2:25 usa.org membership a a is a membership 2:32 organization we can't do it without you you help a USA to Be an Effective voice 2:38 for the total Army and provide support for the soldier and their 2:44 families we also for this distinguished panel today we have a gift for you that we'll present following but thank all of 2:51 you for taking time out of your demanding schedules to be with us today please join in a round of applause for 2:56 our panel today 3:03 and so behalf of General retired Bob Brown a USA's president and CEO and the 3:09 rest of the a USA team the speakers have been given a small token of appreciation 3:14 for your time next I would turn it over to Major General excuse me Mr Greg Potter 3:21 corporate lead executive for Army Futures command and the Army's programs for north of gr over your great good 3:29 deal good deal thanks thanks General VI I appreciate that we welcome everybody 3:34 this afternoon I'm uh Major General retire Greg Potter and as general Vice said I'm the corporate lead executive 3:40 for Army Futures and for Army programs at north of Grumman uh at north of Grumman we are 3:46 proud partners with a USA and strongly support its mission to serve our 3:51 soldiers their families and army civilians disruptive technology is 3:57 everywhere on the battlefield and today is no different today's panelists are charged with the critical task of 4:04 enabling the Army's transformation to meet the rapidly evolving threats General Ry has described the 4:10 process of transformation as everything we do to turn the Army we have into the 4:16 one that we need the path to modernization begins with Innovation and 4:22 Doug bush is at the Forefront of that effort working with industry to ensure soldiers receive the best T best 4:29 technology available at the best value for the taxpayer Doug I think I could speak for 4:35 many of us in the room that we in Industry greatly appreciate your partnership and Leadership especially 4:41 during covid and the war in Ukraine we at northr grman are also on a 4:46 journey of transformation similar to the armies we are creating digital ecosystems for every 4:54 aspect of weapon systems life cycle to improve cost and schedule and deliver 4:59 capabilities to our warfighters faster we're proud of our track record of developing Advanced Technologies that 5:06 support the Army's monitization priorities in weapons ammunition 5:12 propulsion and air and missile defense we're executing with speed and discipline to deliver capabilities our 5:19 army customers need now working together with our army Partners we're defining 5:24 what transformative Innovation looks like for our next generation of soldiers 5:30 and now it's my pleasure to turn things over to our panel moderator Miss Heidi Grant vice president of global growth 5:36 and engagement with Boeing defense space and security thank you very much thank 5:46 you all right everybody put their seat belts on you ready for this I mean we have a great distinguished group here of 5:54 uh panelists but I I just want to point out to you first of all that everybody attending today and even those that 6:00 aren't attending today have a role in this transformation and enabling transformation and I can tell you it 6:07 starts with me as a moderator does anybody notice anything different about 6:12 this panel usually the moderator sits over there by the podium so we decided 6:17 just to start it off today by mixing it up turning it on its head so I just 6:23 invite all of you before I introduce these distinguished panelists that you you think about this and what you're 6:29 hearing today and what are you going to take out of this a call to action to do 6:35 your little part for transformation and supporting our army so first of all let 6:40 me just uh start with the honorable Doug Bush uh Mr Bush is assistant Secretary 6:46 of the army for acquisition Logistics and technology and the Army acquisition executive uh in his pivotal role Mr Bush 6:53 oversees the Army acquisition function and is instrumental ensuring that our forces are both equipped with the most 7:00 advanced Weapons Systems and Technologies with a wealth of experience 7:05 from his time in the house armed services committee he brings a unique perspective on the intersection of 7:11 policy and procurement emphasizing the importance of production at scale and 7:18 acquisition at speed to maintain our military's Edge Mr Bush is a strong 7:23 advocate for continuous transformation with the Army focusing on Innovation and emerging Technologies like artificial 7:30 intelligence and improving contested domains such as cyber and Logistics his input today I can tell you 7:38 is going to be invaluable as we discuss how to enhance the adaptability and lethality of our forces in an Ever 7:45 evolving Global landscape our next distinguished panelist is General James Rainey as a 7:52 Commanding General of the Army's Futures commands he leads the Army's newest major command dedicated to ensuring 7:58 future read and war-winning capabilities with a distinguished career 8:05 that spans multiple combat deployments and Leadership roles from Platoon to the 8:10 division General rainy brings valuable experience and perspective into the rapidly evolving landscape of Modern 8:17 Warfare he's focused on evaluating requirements and also identifying the 8:22 best ways to innovate and integrate these capabilities to address how 8:27 rapidly advancing technology is changing the character of War his leadership at 8:33 AFC is pivotal and shaping the future operational environment making his 8:38 contributions to our discussion today crucial as we explore how to prepare the 8:44 Army for the challenges ahead and then finally I have my industry colleague Mr 8:52 Brie Mr Adam brie is chief executive officer and co-founder of skyum a 8:58 leading us drone manufacturer and a Pioneer in autonomous flight technology 9:04 with over two decades of experience in small unmanned aircraft systems Mr Brie 9:11 has been at the Forefront of innovation from his early days as a national champion remote control airplane 9:18 aerobatics pilot to Leading groundbreaking research at MIT that laid 9:23 the foundation for autonomous drone flight so he advocates for the rapid 9:29 integration of autonomous systems across the US military drawing lessons from 9:34 Ukraine's experience to enhance capabilities at the Tactical Edge his 9:39 insights today will be crucial as we discuss how to harness these Cutting 9:45 Edge Technologies to strengthen our military Readiness and Effectiveness in future 9:51 conflicts so we are really excited to get started now so honorable Bush if you would kick us off with your opening 9:58 comments sure uh good afternoon everybody uh thank you Heidi for the introduction and 10:03 I'm honored to be on this panel with these gentlemen uh to my left um especially um no you know nothing 10:09 against industry but my Army partner General Rainey um we're in this together every day so thanks for being here with 10:15 us today uh so I want to keep it kind of high level and I really want to get to 10:20 your questions but I want to emphasize two things Heidi mentioned them um they've been the load Stones we've been aiming to in the Army acquisition since 10:28 I arrived arrived and really before I arrived I I'm building my efforts on my predecessors who did great work the 10:35 first one is acquisition at speed so it's a ter my coin but really it's the AR Army acquisition uh body's response 10:42 to this urgency um that has been called for by both the American people their 10:48 representatives in Congress but also the Army itself so just doing our job well 10:54 but much faster than in the past has been a constant demand signal and a very fair one it's based on a couple things 11:00 one the pace of Technology we all live in a world of technology rapidly evolving in our personal lives um it's 11:07 happening on the battlefield too so um we have to adapt our processes to the speed of technology to stay ahead of our 11:14 enemies um but it's also about the threats so as the secretary very well 11:20 lined out this morning um we are we've got a war going on in Europe where we 11:25 are supporting a major Ally we've got a war in the Middle East where we are supporting a major Ally we have to also 11:31 deter a potential enemy in the Pacific uh all of those things are happening at the same time uh there is no time to 11:39 waste so that the temporal aspect of acquisition in terms of acquisition at speed has been a critical thing we've 11:44 been working on we are seeing successes so I'll give you the good news first we've gotten actual programs into 11:50 production and fielded to soldiers in times that were never thought possible before our new rifle and automatic rifle 11:57 the M7 and m250 from from really a requirement to in the hands of soldiers in 3 years the uh M10 Booker requirement 12:06 to low rate production in four years these are becoming for even Weapons Systems like that where we do a lot of 12:12 development to make sure they're safe and effective that three fouryear timeline should now be the norm and 12:18 that's what we aspire to with all of our platforms now against the usual traditional 7 to 10e timeline if you 12:24 look historically at the Department of Defense so speed still matters it always 12:30 did but it really matters now and we are doing everything we can in acquisition to facilitate that how well we have 12:36 gotten a lot of help from Congress I must say we've got authorities now that my predecessors didn't have to go faster 12:43 not just in how we do the acquisition process but also um the Contracting process behind it now there's more 12:50 reform to be done there as a secretary noted we can find ways to still go faster uh while still retaining 12:57 important things safety reliability things need to actually work 13:02 um and you know if we're going to send our soldiers to war with them we need to know they work so that takes more 13:07 homework than other countries do perhaps but it's our standard and we're going to keep meeting those things but we're 13:12 going to do it faster um the second uh part of the task though and this is where I think the war 13:19 in Ukraine has revealed this is production at scale so technology does move quickly and we have to adapt 13:25 quickly but for the United States the way we look at the world the way we have 13:30 Global responsibilities to support ourselves and our allies we have to be the country that leads the Free World in 13:36 terms of scale of production we have Amazing Allies and there's representatives from a lot of them here today who have done tremendous work with 13:43 us in Ukraine and around the world and we need them but we still have to lead so we have to find a way to both be fast 13:50 but also be able to scale up quickly so the good news here is the American 13:56 people the American economy American entrepreneurs no one's better at this than we are I don't just you know you 14:02 can I'm happy to debate that with anybody but when we put our mind to it and we get the resources from Congress 14:07 and we get out of our own way we can do remarkable things remarkably quickly working with our defense industry 14:12 Partners um no one can beat us at this and we've done that with a lot of the work we've done to support uh Ukraine in 14:18 particular but also for the US Army so I'm optimistic in that sense so that's 14:24 kind of the good news where do challenges lie so I'll give you a couple just as food for thought one is we are 14:29 still working through and we welcome input how to adapt our processes and going faster to the world of software we 14:37 want in the future platforms to be upgradeable with software downloads to give them whole new capabilities perhaps 14:43 even over the a in a matter of minutes not through a upgrade cycle that can take years but us doing software in a 14:50 way on platforms like even our new helicopter or our new Bradley replacement the xm30 we have to do the 14:57 software in a way that enables that down the road so this is where we need your help so there's uh lots of American 15:04 talent um General rainy was speaking this morning in event I was at where he spoke of in glowing appropriately 15:10 glowing terms of America having the best software companies in the world we need them to stick with us we need you to 15:16 work with us and to work with our providers who provide us our big platforms so we get the best of both 15:22 worlds but I recognize the Army has a long way to go in terms of doing software in a truly modern way we're 15:29 open to ideas but we have already made great steps in that direction we're we're Contracting differently we're 15:35 doing requirements differently um and general Rainey uh one of the things with our next Generation command and control 15:42 the requirements for that and the software requirements specifically that underlay that are going to be something that probably never been seen before in 15:48 an army program so we have more work to do there but we're open to ideas but we need to get better there um the other 15:55 one I'd mention is working with industry and secretary mentioned that the this morning on we have the best weapon 16:01 systems in the world and it's being shown in combat today frankly in most cases nobody has 16:07 better stuff than us um but that Exquisite capability does come at a time 16:13 cost in producing them right now so for example our Precision weapons the really high-end ones still take two or three 16:19 years to make one we've got to work with industry to find a way to make them perform at that level but also be 16:26 producible faster than that and that's a going to have to be a conversation um between the two of us to work through 16:32 how to get here again speed but also scale because as we've seen um the 16:38 demands of modern war always outpace how much you think you're going to need in Munitions and precision Munitions in 16:44 particular are concerned and the last thing I'd mention here too is um and why 16:49 um we're joined in our panel by U one of America's leading uh U companies is that 16:54 the area of unmanned systems um particular starting with uas but coming to on the ground robots at some point um 17:02 another area of innovation where we need industry's help now here I'm very optimistic by what we're doing so far 17:07 every time we put out a request for proposals in this area we get sometimes 10 20 respondents that are 17:15 serious new companies often small ones brand new ones want to enter the defense space and work with us so this is a a 17:22 budding fresh uh area of defense technology with tons of competition and 17:27 Innovation we just need to find a way to go fast enough so we can do it um fast 17:33 enough for these companies business models but also scale affordably to get Mass not just um Precision equipment or 17:40 you know high-end drones we need both a lot of them and really good ones so that's the those are the two things 17:47 we're trying to meet so a few good things going on actually a ton of good things going on I could go on all day 17:52 believe me actually Miss Grant pointed out to me that if I talked too long there wouldn't be time for questions so I'm not going to follow that guidance 17:59 um but we have a lot of success under our belt the last really five or six years even before my tenure um but a lot 18:07 more to do and I just mentioned a few areas as food for thought but there's other ones we could talk about thanks 18:12 yeah thank you very much I appreciate that um you know so again just to reinfor force some of the comments were 18:19 you know we need to look at acquisition at speed production at scale but make 18:25 sure we don't forget about safety reli ility so General rainy can I turn over 18:31 to you for some opening comments please yeah thanks a lot um thanks to a USA General VI great to see you again um 18:39 it's a great opportunity to be here so thanks everybody for for investing some of your time in us today I I don't take 18:47 that lightly I know everybody out there is very busy so um continuous transformation so whether you're in the 18:54 Army now or you're in industry or anybody else that's trying to help us 18:59 it's worth taking a few minutes to understand what we're doing in the Army and those words matter so so continuous 19:06 transformation transformation is bigger than modernization modernization is 19:11 essential it's the material aspect of changing the Army um but it takes the 19:17 whole team General brdo General papus and forscom and and trock uh have 19:23 critical roles in this because we all know that our real superpowers the men and women who serve right our people 19:30 Advantage is the biggest Advantage we have over anybody and preserving that followed closely by the fact that we do 19:37 maneuver Warfare as part of a Joint Force with partners that is unprecedented and while we're learning a 19:43 lot of fascinating things by watching these these horrific conflicts happening in the world uh it's important to 19:49 remember or ask yourself would the US Joint Force do that and fight that way 19:55 and then make sure we're learning the right lessons because there's a lot to be learned but there's also some risk to that so transforming the army takes the 20:02 whole team General General brto papus like I said General Mohan uh Mr Bush's 20:08 team and my team are are at the Forefront and we have the responsibility for the majority of that work but it 20:14 takes everybody to include industry The Joint Force I'm so glad to see so many of our partners and allies out here uh 20:21 because in a lot of cases they are ahead of us in some areas so this isn't a US pulling our partners along we're all in 20:27 this together and need to learn from each other continuous State the obvious 20:33 has to be constantly ongoing and iterative um we don't have the luxury of 20:38 setting aside part of our great Army to hey you guys go out to Area 51 and 20:43 transform while the rest of us fight all the fights and go respond to horrific flooding things like that so we got to 20:49 transform uh while we're doing that the chief is going to talk later about the first part of that is transformation in 20:56 context so think inside a couple years we got to go fast we got to be ready to fight tonight um I don't I don't want to 21:02 take away from from his emphasis on that um we have a role in that but it's 21:08 primarily in innovating in processes so we have to do things like directed 21:13 requirements which we've had some great success with as Mr Bush mentioned um and 21:19 not combat development but there's a lot of cases where the technology we want and need already exist and the ability 21:26 to go out and rapidly acquire that get it into formations and turn it into real capability inside a couple years and you 21:34 know all know how difficult moving money around in that period is but process Innovation Focus things we're focused on 21:40 in that in that space is command and control people say the network the Network's interesting but it's really 21:46 command and control putting the commander back in command and control so that's where the C2 fix things you hear 21:53 about human machine integrated formations the the the militaries that 21:58 figure out the way to optimize humans and machines most effectively offload 22:03 risk onto machines and optimize your men and women for the things that they're the only ones that are ever going to do 22:10 um Free Will initiative judgment values based decision making no computers or 22:16 machines are going to do that so human machine integrated formations we have a big industry day 67 22:22 November down in College Station if you're not tracking that and you're in that space just a little little shout 22:28 out there between Mr Bush's team and mine um so that's inside two years middle period think like about two to 22:34 seven years so pal F Deb kind of time frame U Loosely um army signature 22:42 modernization is Mr Bush rightly and he's very humble his his team has done phenomenal work uh over the last four or 22:48 five years um our signature modernization efforts are doing really well if 22:54 anything more of them are working than we can probably afford so that's a good problem to have right we're like the dog 23:01 with a mouthful of Fender in some cases with a few exceptions most of our stuff is getting fielded faster most of it we 23:08 could be going a lot faster if we had money I would personally buy out the entire Army's worth of next gen weapon 23:15 systems if we could as one example we've got uh real Shore ad capability in 23:22 sencom right now it's in Europe we're putting long range Precision fires into the Pacific I mean this isn't just like 23:29 PowerPoint making progress we're actually delivering on our signature modernization efforts that's underpinned 23:36 primarily by project convergence from my standpoint which is an experimentation program series of events where we would 23:43 love the industry to partner with us some of you have taken us up on that and go out and actually show us what your 23:50 kit can do in a field environment and I think it's good for you the feedback I get from industry is they appreciate the 23:56 opportunity to test and experiment with stuff so the project convergence and the 24:02 deliberate transformation and then I started left to right I personally live right to left 24:07 so the decade from about 30 to 40 so it's not the army of 2040 but in that 24:13 10y year period that second and third fep where we haven't started laying in money yet and actually have some 24:20 flexibility that's where we believe some major major revolutions are going to happen in in our profession of arms data 24:29 Centric Warfare algorithmic Warfare the combination you know offense and defensive fires merging together um the 24:36 real breakthrough on autonomous systems in the land domain is coming the the UAV 24:42 thing as fascinating as it is is really just the Leading Edge of what I believe 24:48 will be a major disruption of the land domain caused by technology finally 24:53 advancing to a position relative to the laws of physics that it's going to robot 24:58 icts are going to uh fundamentally change the way we fight but going back 25:03 full circle they will never replace the men and women who who you know selflessly are able to conduct close 25:11 combat close with and destroy our enemies because that part of our our Warfare is not going away so we got to 25:17 make sure we never give up that most valuable part of our military so continuous transformation it's happening 25:23 in three periods of time there's opportunities for industry to collaborate with with us in all three of 25:29 those periods and I look look forward to taking your questions thank you yeah thank you General i' I've heard you talk 25:35 about this before in three areas where it's transforming contact deliberate transformation and concept driven 25:42 transformation so I'm sure in the question answer people ask a little bit more about that for you to flush that 25:48 out if I if I may it it is it's not that I mean you're it's not that clean obviously to State the obvious if if we 25:54 have a brigade down at Fort po Fort uh Fort Johnson doing transformation and contact we have 26:01 AFC we have acquisition PMS we have we have people there watching because that 26:07 has to inform that middle and deeper period and at the same time some great 26:12 companies got ired dollars we're doing S&T universities are doing research if 26:18 we figure out something we're not going to wait you know until we're not going to wait like hey you can't have that 26:24 you're in the 30 to 40 period right we got to early adopt techn techology as it adjust and then in the middle like our 26:31 secretary said this morning we're spending big dollars on big programs we feel good about them but we got to 26:37 continuously evaluate those and not fall in love with them and the other comment I want to pull out is I can let you know 26:43 that industry would be really happy if you got all the money you needed to buy everything you wanted to so but I was 26:50 told not to get political on the panel so with that I'll turn over to Mr Brie to talk about industry 26:56 participation so I I don't think there's any question that we're having this conversation at a moment of transformation in the domain of of 27:04 unmanned systems um and if you look at the the two conflicts today in Ukraine 27:10 and in Israel I've had the opportunity to to visit both and meet with their operators and see what they're doing uh 27:16 and they really don't do anything without putting drones in the air you know the war fighters in Ukraine have 27:22 drones flying constantly over the battlefield they're constantly surveilling the enemy it's how they're delivering a significant percentage of 27:28 their strikes uh and similarly in Israel uh in Gaza the the IDF soldiers going 27:35 going Street to Street and door Todo have drones in the air constantly both above the buildings and inside the 27:41 buildings to get a better understanding of what's happening and and and also to deliver strikes um and I think the 27:47 explosion we're seeing in in unmanned systems uh is really largely enabled by 27:53 cross-pollination with the civilian sector and a lot of the technology that is proliferated is is benefiting from 28:01 very fast-paced lowcost relatively lowcost consumer electronics kind of 28:06 methodologies uh but the wave that's cresting but I think has not broken yet is is the application of of AI to these 28:13 systems now ai is being used in some form today but as important and as large scale as the use is today I think it's 28:19 still very early days and when we see AI applied in a really deep way we're going 28:25 to see the paradigm shift from this kind of like one operator to one system which is still the dominant mode that these 28:31 things are being used today on the actual Battlefield to one to many uh and this is something that gets talked about 28:36 quite a bit but I I still don't know that we fully internalized the uh the ramifications for that I think it's it's 28:42 going to be a true transformation in the kinds of capabilities that are available um for both us and our our 28:49 adversaries uh now skyo wouldn't be here today without a lot of forward leaning 28:55 folks in the military so we started like as a civilian drone company um and we're 29:01 only here and we have a significant presence in the defense space because a lot of forward leaning folks uh 29:07 recognize that this class of system the kind of Civilian quadcopter with the right adaptations could be extremely 29:13 useful to the war fighter uh and and beneficial to the killchain um so I 29:18 think a lot of good stuff has happened to date the the final element that I think is really important to understand 29:24 is that this this unmanned systems domain uh has really brought to the for 29:30 the geopolitical and Technology competition with China so skyio has the the great joy of getting to compete 29:35 against Chinese drones in the civilian markets and the other thing that I think Ukraine and Israel have proved just 29:41 beyond any doubt is that we know with absolute certainty that our adversaries in any conflict are going to be flying 29:47 Chinese drones and I think it's imperative as a country that we have the technology to to match and compete and 29:55 ultimately I think there's an opportunity for us to Leap Frog in this transition to Ai and autonomy uh and the 30:03 the two theaters where this matters most right now are Ukraine and Israel so we have a lot of energy as a company 30:08 focused on making our systems as useful as they can possibly be to the war fighters on the front lines uh and we're 30:14 ultimately making the bet that the the technology development we do there benefits all of our customers uh the US 30:20 and and the rest of our allies well thank you for those comments and you know you've just I think sparked 30:27 interest of the entire group here you're talking about Israel but let me start with uh 30:33 Ukraine um you and your team you've traveled to Ukraine repeatedly during 30:38 this conflict and hired employees you've deployed hundreds of systems so can you 30:44 tell us like what have you learned from the deployment of these uh systems in Ukraine like transforming contact and 30:52 you know how does it shape the work you're doing with the US military so I I would say the the overall lesson that 30:58 applies in different ways is just the speed of iteration um and in Ukraine the 31:04 two dominant technologies that keep going back and forth are electronic warfare and and robotic systems uh and 31:11 the technology in both evolves really on the time scale of weeks and then the tactics that are being deployed evolve 31:17 on that same time scale uh so you know this this gets talked about a lot but I think you can really see these things as 31:23 software defined systems there so one of the things that that we've really emphasized is is just the speed of 31:28 software development which is why we've hired teams there why we've got our product and Engineering teams and myself 31:34 visiting to to just rapidly soak up the learnings uh and apply them as quickly 31:39 as possible um now on the on the battlefield in Ukraine the the dominant 31:44 tactic is the Drone versus electronic warfare so GPS basically never works comms are continually jammed uh and with 31:51 the AI and autonomy Foundation that we've had that's sort of the ultimate antidote to to electronic warfare 31:57 because you can make the Drone completely self-sufficient not relying on external signals from GPS or even signals from an operator uh so we had 32:05 sort of a technology Foundation that gave us some advantages in in iterating but I think the macro lesson is just the 32:11 importance of the speed of iteration and in particular the speed of software iteration there's only so fast that you can move Hardware but software you can 32:17 move almost instantly if you have the Frameworks in place to to ship it and deploy it and have it be adopted no 32:24 that's helpful um so I have some questions that I was going to ask the panel but I just want to make sure 32:30 everybody knows that we value um making sure you walk away from here getting your questions answered so I believe 32:36 there's been cards uh distributed for you to fill out can whoever's handed out 32:44 the cards does people have cards to ask questions I just want to make sure that's happening yeah there's a couple 32:50 over there okay good so I look forward to the audience questions but while you're thinking of them I have a few in 32:56 my hip pocket here that I'm going to go ahead and ask the team um so next I would like to go to General Rainey um 33:03 how is rapidly advancing technology finally how's it reshaping 33:09 the nature of warfare um 33:15 so absolutely the most disruptive period of time in terms of technology that I 33:22 would offer probably ever um certainly you got to go back to 1930s where people 33:29 were inventing combustion engines airplanes and radios you know that's the order of magnitude and even that problem 33:37 you just had to solve once you know gadarian figured it out we figured it out later but better won the war um now 33:46 whatever you know now to Adam's point is interesting but you better be thinking about what's going to be like 60 90 80 33:54 days so the speed and Pace uh the disruption of our our profession is is 33:59 unprecedented is just going to be a constant characteristic of the future of the war the we're going to be talking 34:04 about uas and counter uas the way we've historically talked about artillery and 34:10 counterfire so that we just have to uh get used to that the biggest 34:15 implications for war fighting in my opinion are number one uh we are going to operate under constant observation 34:22 and in constant contact of some form so the days of getting a break or being far 34:28 enough back where you could make a massive logistical or Aviation assembly area or uh being able to use terrain 34:35 masking to maneuver those days are over uh but again we're pretty good so 34:43 anything the enemy can do we can also do and I would offer better and the challenge you know you don't just ring 34:49 your hands what it means is we're going to have to contest the ability the enemy's ability to understand what they 34:55 are seeing as opposed to contesting whether or not you can be seen so that's 35:00 a big giant one the other one that is a little more tactical but is just 35:06 absolutely fascinating to me specifically with uavs in this case 35:12 as a Warf fighter I grew up and all of us grew up picking between precision and 35:18 mass so when we were looking at firing Solutions there were times we would go 35:23 with an Exquisite capability to hit a 10-digit grid hit a radar there were 35:29 times where we went to Good Old King of battle 5,000 round 35:34 155h really bad if you're on the using end of that right so but it was always a 35:40 dilemma um uavs are providing the opportunity to merge those two things so 35:47 we are now able to mass Precision weapons uh the cheaper we get the better 35:53 the our enemies can do it it's democratizing lethality and ways and there's some really bad actors that 36:00 don't have a really good army that are now going to be able to confront us with precision and mass and autonomous system 36:06 so there's a couple examples of the kind of gigantic disruptions that we're we're paying attention to right and I I think 36:13 you've highlighted the the need for this continuous transformation understanding as the enemy adapts how we're adapting 36:20 uh with these autonomous opportunity so thank you for that um okay Mr Bush in 36:26 March this year secretary warmouth issued a new Army directive on software 36:32 modernization and the stated purpose is for the Army to institutionalize modern 36:37 software development and acquisition approaches agile lean um in line with 36:43 industry best practices so how's the policy helping the Army to enable this 36:50 transformation yeah so first of all that policy really brought together strands 36:55 that were already happening so it was a little bit of a codification of efforts that have been underway for several years even some started before I arrived 37:03 um so overall it is going well I mean our first big program we got where we 37:09 had to train change to an agile methodology to actually get it is one that touches every Soldier and that's iPay our new Personnel system um which 37:17 had floundered frankly for years until we applied different leadership and an agile software development methodology 37:23 working with our industry partner to actually get it in the field and that happened with the big lesson learn L was 37:30 we worked for 2 years an integrated team of the users so you think the Army 37:36 Personnel experts were right there with the contractors writing the code right there with our folks overseeing 37:42 everything so that was our first big one there's more to come so I think uh we've 37:47 had several big software successes in kind of the I would call it kind of the business side of the army where uh the 37:54 agile methodology which is just how industry does it applying that to um our methods as working now that's enabled by 38:02 here Congress was quite showed a lot of foresight the new software acquisition 38:07 pathway um one of the six Pathways um is in many ways far more radical than even 38:14 middle tier acquisition because of its openness the ease of getting into it the lack of paperwork required to start this 38:21 with the expectation of getting in one year from starting execution to um a Deployable product and then having 38:27 at a minimum it's years but really what we're seeing now is really more monthly updates at the slowest this is now 38:35 becoming just normal so we are trying to Vanquish the old monolithic waterfall 38:40 based planning system where we would go off and work on it for five years and turn it to General re's guys and they 38:45 tell us it's terrible uh we are trying now to just um do this in a completely 38:51 industry friendly way the part we have to work through with our industry Partners uh however is making sure that 38:58 as we do this adaptation there is still a way for companies to have profits so we want our industry Partners to have a 39:03 way to make reasonable profits working with us that's not a bad thing so we 39:08 have to think through what's best for the government but also what's best for industry and bring those two threads 39:13 together so we can leverage the commercial software companies out there not just a few specialized ones that 39:19 happen to work with the army so so far early days but I think early returns are 39:24 good that's fantastic thanks for explaining that I don't know you just made me think of something that we've 39:29 been working on for a long time you I'm my background's in for military sales passionate about it so anytime somebody 39:36 says oh four military sales is broken it just makes me spin out of control um because four military sales is on the 39:42 backbone of the acquisition process so I want to say thank you publicly I've told you personally everything you're doing 39:49 to transform the acquisition process is actually going to you know trickle into 39:55 the foreign military sales process and be supportive of all our International partners that we want to be capable out 40:01 there so thank you for what you're doing in that area um now I'm going to go back to General Rainey so what challenges 40:08 does AFC face in integrating technologies that are already in the pipeline versus those that are emerging 40:15 emerging unexpected and how does the command balance like the immediate needs with 40:22 more of the longterm yeah it it it that's not an AFC 40:29 challenge that's an army army challenge that that you described you know uh 40:35 afc's piece of it is requirements writing um we are trying to be 40:40 Innovative I mentioned the directed requirements you know if there's a piece of good kit that already exists we don't 40:47 need to do a lot more than write a requirement to put it in formation and what we've worked with Mr Bush and his 40:54 team is even though we're going to eventually Buy 58 brigades and 20 divisions worth of something uh we would 41:01 like to move to a tranch buying model like we're doing with our new company level uh uas system where we did a down 41:09 select to a couple companies but we only signed up for three to five brigades we're going to recompete it every year 41:15 so the best companies keep competing so that's an innovation the characteristic and need statement that Mr Bush referred 41:22 to for Next Generation command and control it's on sam.gov it's not secret 41:28 but uh we are going to we are going to fundamentally reinvent and redesign command and control uh for Warfare and 41:35 the Army is going to be the first ones to do it and we're the only ones who are doing it from the bottom up and taking 41:40 the data Centric out uh so I'm pretty passionate about this in case you didn't 41:46 notice but we started that process by writing a two-page document clearly describing the problem we're trying to 41:52 solve and describing about 10 or 11 characteristics that we think that f future command and control system needs 41:59 that was the first contact with industry go out to Industry and start there now 42:05 that's not going to get us there's there's going to be requirements at some point hopefully soon um but but that 42:12 iterative process where we're having the humility to acknowledge that in the tech space there is more expertise outside 42:18 the Army than in and that's okay because all the war fighting expertise is inside 42:23 the army so we ought to just talk about what we're trying to do iterate that way so those are some examples um fiscal 42:30 agility that are chief and secretary advocating you know I mean the money we're given by Congress is what it is 42:37 everybody has opinions on it it's a lot of money the ability to move the money they've given us more fluid agile so we 42:45 don't want to buy 16 different uavs one at a time we would rather have UAV money 42:50 so when skyo or somebody has a breakthrough we can capitalize on that a little quicker Innovation and 42:56 acquisition more more and faster Contracting and we have great contractors in the army 43:02 people that write contracts um Contracting off we are great contractors too but Contracting officials we just 43:08 don't have enough of them and I would offer they're probably not exactly in the right place we got to test different 43:14 you know shame on us if we're running like we're testing a robot like there's going to be four four soldiers in it we 43:21 probably lost our mind you know so we got to get better at testing um I think there's a role for industry to reimagine 43:28 the traditional integrator role that's not the future we need you to figure out how to 43:34 self-organize and build teams of Industry that can respond to the kind of things the Army is asking to do so 43:39 there's there's a few examples yeah I want to I want to yeah go ahead please just a follow on that so you know I 43:46 think what you talked about there is super interesting to me if you look at uh our purchasing patterns we see from 43:52 our customers in the civilian sector it's very common to have say a public safety agency buy like three drones and 43:57 then five drones and then 10 and then 50 and then scale um and and I think that the incentive structure that creates for 44:03 industry is very healthy because basically means that you're you're only going to keep doing business if the 44:09 product is working if they're succeeding with it if they're finding value with it uh and you it's not like we we don't see 44:15 that in the dod but we don't see as much of it uh and I think from the industry perspective especially for the smaller 44:20 lighter less expensive class of systems where it's easier to scale and deploy them that kind of model uh I think makes 44:27 makes a lot of sense and then the the other point I'd make is if you just if you look at the sort of ratios and the 44:34 quantities of systems that are being used in this class this category of of unmanned systems on the smaller lighter 44:40 cheaper end of things uh in actual active conflicts versus what the US military is doing it's we're still I 44:47 think very very shallow sort of scale scope of of uh purchasing penetration 44:53 and and deployment and you know I think the senior leaders get it uh but there's inertia in having that propagate through 45:01 uh and and get to the actual adoption by by the end users yeah now thanks for 45:06 adding Mr did you want to add anything to that one okay all right good um so 45:12 let me go on to let me ask uh Mr Bri how how are defense technology and dual use 45:19 companies working to enable the Army's um objective of production at scale and 45:25 what do companies need from the Army to achieve that objective so if you could answer for whole or whole of Industry 45:33 sure so you know we definitely have a perspective on this you know I clearly not everything is is is dual use um you 45:40 know there's certain categories of system uh where the military's requirements are completely unique and 45:45 it's going to require a unique development pathway uh but I think with a lot of these unmanned systems at 45:52 different layers of the stack uh there's just clear benefits from from harvesting what's coming from civilian 45:59 Technologies uh and uh you know I think you can see this probably most clearly 46:05 in drones where the uh you know the sort of small electric camera carrying 46:11 quadcopter really grew up and matured and reached substantial scale in civilian markets uh and then was pulled 46:18 in and adapted and extended uh for use on the battlefield and our adversaries 46:24 are using Chinese drones and hacking them to do what they need uh you know I think fortunately thanks 46:29 to to Ford leaning folks in DOD there is a a US drone ecosystem and a lot of the most successful companies there sell to 46:36 both civilian markets uh and and defense customers I think the key is being able 46:42 to like to adapt and customize and and specialize the civilian technology foundation for the needs of of a Warf 46:50 fighter uh which is something that you know for example at skyio we have a dedicated team uh from an engineering 46:56 perspective that is Sol focused on on specializing and extending our system 47:01 both in hardware and in software uh to make them as useful as they they can possibly be on the battlefield and I 47:06 think you're going to see a lot more of that model at different sort of layers of the stack either taking raw ingredients coming from civilian markets 47:13 or taking whole products and then extending and and adapting them for for what's needed on the 47:21 battlefield okay let me go to General Rainey again um you mentioned those elements of decision Deion making that 47:27 are innately human um can never be done by machines there's some things out there such as uh 47:34 morals ethics and so they want you to expand on 47:40 that a little bit and I think there there's a concern what people are seeing now in some situations there's a belief 47:46 that um there's examples of humans who are immoral or inhumane yeah well I'm 47:53 not a super tech person so I I hesitate to say never but anytime soon let's say 48:01 um there there are part and we have a lot of combat veterans and very experienced War fighters in here in from 48:08 several countries um there's a moral aspect of the 48:14 profession of arms especially if you're a values-based military in country like ours so the law of armed conflict 48:22 matters uh to us and if you look at a lot of the things and that's this isn't a political thing but I'd ask you to 48:29 look at Ukraine both sides Gaza both sides and and ask yourself if a US Army 48:38 Commander would do some of the things we're seeing in terms of protected status protection of civilians so uh I'm 48:46 very proud of our army and our military that we subscribe to that value system the bad side is our systems got to be 10 48:53 times faster than the enemies because we have we are going to practice ethical decision making so that that underpins 49:00 my comment um there are things that soldiers and commanders do that I don't 49:05 think computers are going to do anytime soon ethical decision making so I'm all for AI telling me the probability of 49:13 there being civilians in a building before I drop a bomb on it but I'm I own 49:18 that you know I've done this I own that as the commander and I would never see a point where we would let a computer make 49:25 that decision but but the other one that's really cool is like this whole Free Will idea right so uh I a fan of 49:33 man of humans in the reconnaissance system somewhere because I have numerous 49:38 combat experiences where I'm looking at a screen full of things telling me one thing and a staff sergeant who I know 49:47 who I was at NTC with last month who I've been in combat with on a radio 49:53 telling me that that's not the case and maybe I'm old but I'm sticking with a 49:59 human who I know and trust giving me feedback is going to Trump any amount of 50:05 data because I know how easy it is to jam and disrupt that so the other thing our great cavalryman out there I happen 50:11 to be an infent I love my Cavalry men they will do stuff on the battlefield that makes no freaking sense you know 50:18 they're out there you issue them an order it's us and then they come up on the net and they're like like what the 50:24 hell are you doing over there this applies to Air and but the reason is because they listen to 50:29 what I was trying to do right and even though I gave them the wrong way to do it I gave them good intent and they're 50:36 going to move they're going to practice free will they're going to attack when I told them to defend they're going to 50:41 transition to the defense when I tell them like there's no codent about that that's the that's the awesomeness of our 50:48 people so I think it's at the same time this technology stuff's going crazy we 50:53 still got a ninan rifle Squad and we're jamming and stuff in there and I've been in a lot of firefights and there's 50:59 nobody looking for stuff to do right there's nobody sitting around going I wish I had something to do so we already 51:04 got the cognitive look I've been in a turret of a tank in a Bradley in a in a in combat there's nobody sitting around 51:11 looking for stuff to do so the opportunity is get the cognitive load off onto the machines get all the risk 51:17 onto machines like shame on us if we lose you know we should never enter a building again with a human being you 51:24 know we shouldn't find IEDs with man Vehicles so offload risk onto machines 51:30 offload cognitive stuff onto machines but the whole point is to optimize our 51:35 superpower our men and women for the things that they're only going to be able to do yeah you're you're making me 51:41 remember yeah exactly yeah yeah I I'm I'm flashing 51:48 back I was at us centcom from 202 to 2008 with the whole counter IED 51:53 initiative and I just remember you know we were like like hey put the 70% solution in there and they'll figure it 51:59 out we have the smartest War Fighters out there and they'll they'll figure out what to do with that technology so this 52:05 is just promising uh to hear the great great things that are happening on the ground um so this is both for Mr Bush 52:13 and general rainy um transformation requires all stakeholders to make it 52:19 happen What we what can we do in the private sector to better support this 52:25 important effort sure I can start there I think um you 52:30 know from at the big big picture you got to line up three things to do something new in the Department of Defense you 52:36 have to have the need understood sufficiently and that's requirements um 52:42 you have to have the acquisition Contracting uh aspect you have to select the right way 52:48 to do it um to meet the needs of the the whatever the system is but then you also 52:53 have to have the resources lined up so aligning those three things is what at our level General Ry and I spend a lot 52:59 of time doing it's like we have tons of smart people below us who can actually do the acquisition of the Contracting or 53:04 write the requirement but getting those three things aligned um uh on a timeline 53:10 that can meet the need is the hardest thing so how can industry help so in one instance of course is we need your ideas 53:16 like General Rey said the government doesn't have all the answers or should we um and we need to know the art of the 53:24 possible in areas where um especially when it's something the Army thinks it's got all figured out we need the courage 53:29 for industry to come to us with a way to potentially disrupt what we're doing even if it's uncomfortable for us and 53:35 have have those conversations um the other one is um working with us on 53:41 timing of of resource flows so for example um there are going to be times where aligning that third leg of the 53:46 stool the money because of either for example A continuing resolution or just 53:53 the need to go through process in the Department of Defense to get the money lined up may not be as timely as we want 53:59 we do need and this happens it happens all the time industry is often quiet about it to make their own Investments 54:06 to put a little faith in us to get it figured out but to work with us and sometimes make your own Investments um 54:12 in advance so that when we do get those three things aligned we hit the right moment with you and then we can go 54:19 really quick now it's a lot to ask I know um there is a little frankly a little patriotism involved in that 54:24 approach from industry which we great value um you know we're we are all in this together um America when we go to 54:31 war it's really we all go to war together and you know we make some of our own things in the government but we 54:37 have a private sector model of producing for this country um that is our one of 54:42 our superpowers but it does require companies to sometimes take risk so please work with us and uh where it's 54:48 smart for you and you can make it work please make those take those risks but hopefully an informed Risk by 54:54 communicating with us but um so not making excuses but I'm just telling you on the government side 55:00 aligning those three things doesn't always fit your business timeline so we just have to work together to try to find a way for everyone toh succeed 55:08 together is there anything that you wish the industry would be asked to do 55:14 that you're not being asked to do you know I I think so we scoto is a 55:20 Silicon Valley technology company so we don't come from sort of a a traditional uh defense 55:26 defense company background you know I the the world that we love living in is we're successful when we can build a 55:33 product that's useful to the end user and and I think the the closer we can 55:38 get to that where the incentive structures and the requirements are set up such that companies take risk and if 55:45 they build a great product they're going to succeed and if they don't they're not uh I think the the more successful and 55:51 the healthier everybody's going to be okay thanks so so General 55:56 what what changes in Army Doctrine and culture do you foresee being necessary to fully embrace the concept driven 56:04 transformation ensure the Army's postured to meet future 56:10 challenges um that's a big giant question 56:15 um I would say the first thing is we got to preserve the strengths we have so 56:21 whatever we do to transform the Army making sure we keep an all volunteer Force our national our our 56:27 non-commission officer Corps is the treasure it's the Envy of the world nobody else has anything even close to 56:33 it the quality and time and energy we put into building leaders and then the things that the men and women who 56:39 command our formations can do followed closely by maneuver Warfare which is 56:45 underpinned by just ruthless approach to training that we have in the United States Army so it would be tragic if we 56:52 made transformational decisions that walked away from our people came at the expense of of making sure that whatever 56:59 Army we have is absolutely lethal and able to dominate so don't change that 57:05 part of the culture uh a couple I would like to see us get a lot better at is adaptability number one closing the 57:13 acquisition kill chain you know from seeing something happen and being able to put it into a formation not just the 57:21 kid but with leaders who know how to use it and the ability to train on it um we're going to have to we're either 57:27 going to develop that capability when we go to war or before we go to war and and Mr Bush and I are working real hard on 57:33 making Insurance before we go in war because no matter what happens even if we guess everything right China and R 57:40 we're going to fight some good enemies and they are going to continuously adapt just like you know Adam pointed out the 57:46 fascinating thing to me is the speed with which the Russians and ukrainians are going back and forth not so not any 57:52 one particular capability but the iteratives that's not something that we're we're really famous for in the 57:58 Army adapting its speed and then as a country and Industry and Mr Bush has done unbelievable stuff with the defense 58:06 industrial base or the organic industrial base but we got an endurance problem you know at scale so if we ought 58:14 to be really clear R this short sharp War somebody's going to whip Precision Munitions back and jam each other and 58:21 space that that's not going to happen that may be how it starts but if we fight an existential war with a 58:28 superpower or a combination of superpowers that hate what we stand for we better be ready to mobilize we better 58:36 be able to build an industrial you know think 1938 and it's going to be the American industrial base you know RCA 58:44 Ford G people are going to stop making cereal and start making MREs I mean that's the kind of mindset we need to 58:51 have and be ready for it as a country uh to include being contested in the Homeland for the first time in a long 58:58 time so adaptability for sure and and we ought to be thinking about endurance yeah please just just on that 59:05 point one of the things uh that I got to see on one of my trips to Ukraine I visited one of the factories where 59:11 they're building their kamakazi drones so these are like the highest volume strike drones that are carrying 59:16 Munitions uh and i' I visited a lot of factories over the last 10 years building scoto we run a factory in in 59:21 the US I have never seen the level of intensity that I saw on that floor I 59:27 mean over the over the factory floor where they're building these things they literally have videos of the drones that they're building delivering strikes uh 59:34 and you know I don't know that you can replicate replicate that outside of of wartime uh but I think that kind of like 59:40 purpose was something that uh was inspiring to me as somebody who's who's leading a company to to have that that 59:47 sort of dedication in what we're doing in the sense of purpose and what we're delivering to to the users of our 59:52 product so Mr brsh I know you get this question a lot lot about requirements 59:58 creep and especially on major weapon systems so what's been put in place or 1:00:05 can you explain how you would prevent requirements 1:00:10 creep well first of all it's not fundamentally an acquisition question per se but I think my observation is 1:00:17 having watched a lot of programs from the Congressional side I think the Army frankly I think the Army's got this now 1:00:24 now there will be exceptions of that rule but we've got a ton of examples now in the past few years of using the 1:00:30 middle tier acquisition pathway which allows you to get into a program without having as well defined or poured in 1:00:36 concrete requirements and adjust them as you go with user feedback based on what 1:00:41 industry can do on the timeline within the money you have so this is making requirements a variable not a fixed 1:00:49 thing around which everything else pivots and in the past where we've run into challenges is when we've we've held 1:00:55 our breath and said we absolutely cannot change the requirement one iota and then we find we don't have the money and time 1:01:01 to actually get what we want because and it's perfectly reasonable the tech 1:01:06 wasn't for example quite there and we thought it was we now have the ability to adjust the requirements to what's 1:01:11 possible and doable within our other resource boundaries and we've been doing that so um on a number of programs I 1:01:18 give you one example in the um we're working on the uh unmanned space it's one of our early efforts to get it 1:01:24 launched effects uh the conversation was look we can do a rapid prototyping to get to Rapid Fielding in a couple years 1:01:31 with this system air launched but it doesn't meet the speed requirement you know the aviators wanted something 1:01:36 really fast maybe more like a jet engine type speed or a rocket but we can do this other thing that's only a little 1:01:43 bit slower than that in a couple years follow it with a program that gets to the full requirement and that was a 1:01:49 conversation between my acquisition folks the requirements holders and then 1:01:55 our potential industry Partners on whether that was feasible and we got to yes among the three of us that's the kind of 1:02:02 thing we should do because um our Exquisite requirements or needs while we 1:02:07 aspire to them and want them for our soldiers um we have to be more flexible and I think this is where um the biggest 1:02:14 change that's happened in acquisition is our ability to do that using the middle tier pathway so um there are different 1:02:20 opinions about that pathway this is rapid prototyping and Rapid Fielding I think they are wild success 1:02:26 and I give full credit to my colleagues in Congress um members and staff and it wasn't me who came up with this idea I'm 1:02:33 now getting to use it but I think that's the future we have got to be more adaptable and the flexibility that 1:02:40 General Ry referred to on um the funding side this is where we need Congress to go 1:02:45 along uh the secretary alluded this morning to potential future changes in law to let us continue to have greater 1:02:51 flexibility this is an example so I think there is hope in other words so I 1:02:57 I haven't really had a situation in my tenure where my requirements holder has been in any way unreasonable um and 1:03:04 usually as long as we have the conversations early and often we can work through it so I think um the 1:03:09 biggest change since AFC was created was improving the Army's requirements process and that is producing Real 1:03:17 Results in my view and that was one of the selling points of AFC and I think it is right now proving to be a unequivocal 1:03:24 success in terms of doing requirements better that's just my opinion but I think things are going pretty well 1:03:30 actually that's awesome did you want to add anything just uh I I just to pile on that as before my time my predecessor 1:03:37 Mike Murray who stood up the the leadership of the army across two 1:03:43 administrations uh a couple acquisition Executives two Army Futures commands uh 1:03:50 commanders has been consistent so that so we we have not changed our 1:03:56 modernization priorities for going on six years now General Murray with one of 1:04:02 the indisputed success of AFC we're still working through a few things but uh but indisputably the cross functional 1:04:09 teams right I clear problem statement identify the right people from both 1:04:16 sides put them together they they measured 10 times and cut once so so on 1:04:21 the signature modernization efforts they put the work in to get the requirements about right and then coupled with a 1:04:28 little bit of agility and mid- tier and and you know secretary War don't don't under you know walking away from a 1:04:36 couple you know because the other the epic failures we've had are when we move the goalpost I.E move requirements 1:04:42 around when we set out to do something that was technologically impossible 1:04:48 right but the really epic ones are when we knew that and rote it in anyways on Su cost right so we got a chief and a 1:04:55 secretary that have the intestinal fortitude to go hey we don't have enough money for everything this one we're going to walk 1:05:02 away and double down on some of the ones that are so I mean start you know everything fundamentally is a leadership 1:05:07 challenge leadership problem and we're pretty well l in this very well l in this space over several several turns of 1:05:14 those key leaders thanks so Mr Bri you you made a big bet on aut autonomy about a decade 1:05:22 ago um with the founding of scoto um how have you seen autonomy add value 1:05:29 in current military operations and where do you think the technology is heading you touched on it a little bit about AI 1:05:35 or but if you could expand a little bit on where you see it heading sure so the 1:05:40 you know the kind of founding bet of skyio was that drones can be useful for all these different applications in the military space but also in the civilian 1:05:46 space uh but needing to have a really skilled expert pilot that are flying it all the time it's just a fundamental 1:05:52 limiter to to how useful the systems can be so the the way that we think about it is you're basically building the skills 1:05:59 of an expert pilot into the Drone which then relieves the requirement to have the expert pilot there on the ground 1:06:06 which unlocks a whole bunch of things so uh in the defense context and we're seeing this in Ukraine uh it means that 1:06:12 you're way more resilient to electronic warfare because you're not dependent on the real-time command and control link 1:06:19 from from an operator on the ground you can do autonomous navigation based on computer vision and other things um so 1:06:24 this has been a huge breakthrough there our systems have have passed really like the most stringent Ukrainian electronic 1:06:30 warfare testing it have been deployed on the front lines um but then the other 1:06:35 element of it is this kind of cognitive burden uh that General Rainey was alluding to uh and you know from a from 1:06:43 a soldier standpoint our goal is to make the system so kind of intuitive and easy 1:06:48 to use that anybody can pick it up and be proficient in just a few minutes it's not to say that more training could be 1:06:53 beneficial uh but they can be proficient in a few minutes and they can pay as much or as little attention to it uh as 1:06:59 they want um and and that's one of the reasons why I think our systems have been uh successful and useful in in the 1:07:07 the dod and then the final piece of it uh which is what's coming is the one to 1:07:12 many and I think we're still early days in this you know we've we've demonstrated some very compelling 1:07:18 capability we're a single operator can kind of specify a high Lev task and then five or 10 drones will go off and try to 1:07:25 accomplish it uh and I and I think we're going to see that over the next 5 years really 1:07:30 proliferate and and The Leverage that you get when you do that just continues to go up and up but none of that works 1:07:36 or makes sense unless you've got the kind of AI and autonomy foundation for the system to be able to fly itself in a 1:07:42 useful way okay thank you for that okay General 1:07:47 a couple people questions that I'm going to kind of group together um as you identify moving faster with continuous 1:07:55 trans transformation you identified our service members are our true 1:08:00 superpower as the environment quickly changes what Support Services will they need to be most resilient as they endure 1:08:08 the anticipated rapidly growing changes 1:08:14 and and then kind of another question that was similar that I just got was like you know how does the army ensure 1:08:21 the soldiers can effectively employ and maintain rapidly evolving weapons systems but if you want to 1:08:27 yeah that's a I might miss on this so let me talk about the workforce so so we 1:08:35 we need to upskill Res skill new skill the men and women we have you know I I 1:08:41 certainly in a in a 1.2 million person Army um we're 50,000 100,000 positions 1:08:50 that that need to have some some Advanced understanding of of data and 1:08:56 technology and general brdo and his team at trok are leading a study on that 1:09:02 we've got a couple uh small things we got the a school that we run down at in 1:09:09 Austin that went out and found people in the army that despite any formal education actually are very good at at 1:09:16 coding and working with applications and we've got that um we've got a very high-end program that we partner with 1:09:23 Carnegie melan on where we're taking the absolute top .1% of brilliant people in 1:09:30 the Army and and getting them Advanced degrees and studying so we're on both ends of the periphery but there there's 1:09:37 going to be a requirement to upskill new skill reschool res skill people um and 1:09:42 it's not replacing a great infantry men with a data scientist we're going to 1:09:48 have uh Baseline level skills that our great infantrymen need to add and 1:09:54 nothing's coming off the plate you know it's like well quick worrying about qualifying on your weapon and learn how to understand your presence in 1:10:00 electromagnetic spectrum you know it's it's it's really complicated uh the support of 1:10:06 soldiers um and like any senior leader in the Army we care deeply about 1:10:12 nothing's good enough for our soldiers and their families in the perfect world we would make sure that we spent 1:10:18 unlimited amount of money on it but but balance it kind of gets to my point about preserving preserving the all 1:10:24 volunteer for for us and the education the money we spend on training and education in the Army is something I'm 1:10:29 incredibly proud of so I would be very concerned if we walked away from that to 1:10:35 buy things so you end up with an untrained poorly L unit with really cool 1:10:40 kit because I would fight you know I would if I had to pick I would take good leaders and tough soldiers and fight 1:10:47 with whatever I could find laying around if I had to the key is how do we balance those two things um on a you know 1:10:57 a tight budget I'll say uh to stay in the safe space I think that was music too many years in his room too thank you 1:11:04 for thinking of people first yeah it's awesome it's not it's not me I mean our secretary and our chief are absolutely 1:11:10 committed to soldiers families spouses preserving all volunteer Force that's 1:11:16 awesome and Heidi if I could that's reflected in the Army's budget I mean it's 184 billion 20% of that is 1:11:23 procurement and R&D so clearly 80% is what general Ry just spoke of is is keeping the quality Force 1:11:30 we have and taking care of them and training them so the world we live in most days is what's in that 20% and how 1:11:37 we can use it the best um but I think his point of uh you could if having 1:11:43 great Tech with bad soldiers is is not the Army anyone wants to see and I don't think we're headed there either it's 1:11:49 just um we just got to keep a good thing going and and the best innovation in the Army is happening at Gra Grassroots 1:11:55 bottom up you know I say it all the time the closer you are getting shot the better you are innovating so the uh the 1:12:04 the stuff again I'll stay out of the chief's Lane for a lot of reasons not the least of which he's better at 1:12:09 talking about it and he's my boss so that's two good ones he'll talk more about that but but what we are finding 1:12:15 is getting good enough technology into the hands of the men and women while 1:12:20 they're out there deploying while they're training and getting that feedback tweak requirements and making 1:12:26 sure we're speeding up the the turnover as we inject technology is all 1:12:32 fundamentally dependent and the only reason we're able to do that is because of how talented those young people are I 1:12:38 love it and there's no Tech adoption like somebody ask me you know are you worried about I'm like the only thing 1:12:44 I'm worried about is is you know making sure we keep listening to the young people who are you know don't have any 1:12:50 problem getting a new piece of Kit I asked the soldier I'm like are you getting good enough training Go sir I wish they would just shut up and let me 1:12:57 go do it I got it I don't need any more classes just get out of the way uh and 1:13:02 that kind of motivated me a lot I love it so at the end of the panel I want to 1:13:08 meet the transformational leader out there that decided not to use a card and use the yellow uh paper here but uh the 1:13:15 question is with the Advent of low uh latency uh Leo satellite networks and AI 1:13:22 based compression for spectrum optimization high-speed teleoperation of 1:13:27 unmanned Vehicles is now possible offering crude vehicle performance at 1:13:33 lower costs faster deployment all the while maintaining human oversight how is 1:13:40 the Army incorporating these advancements into its strategy for unmanned robotic vehicle deployment did 1:13:47 you get all that did someone write that in a s yeah I promise I didn't make it up is that one I think whoever wrote 1:13:53 that come see me afterwards yeah I need I need a new speech writer cuz that I think that's a complete sentence well 1:13:59 they probably they probably either work for me or Mr Bush is to Heckle on us but go ahead yeah right so I'll I'll start 1:14:04 so first of all let me start with the kind of the underlaying thing at the top of that stack which is which is what you 1:14:09 can do now and in probably exponential scale from lower through orbit so it's going to affect a ton of things in the 1:14:15 Army so the first thing it's already affecting is um our future vision of command and control and networks so the 1:14:22 army that you know I I was in and General readings still serves in like back when we were doing this as a 1:14:29 younger men you know we had vehicles and we had units some of them had satellite 1:14:34 Communications it was kind of an exotic thing it was something that a few little places had maybe at a command post way 1:14:40 up high above you or something like that that satellite capability and that satellite coms is now becoming 1:14:48 ubiquitous um and is expected to be more so I think a great conversation I had speaking of going down to where 1:14:55 expertise is I asked a question at an army base among the signal officers I was talking to whether or not you know 1:15:02 that low earth orbit satcom is going to be so good that that becomes like the 1:15:07 primary net for comms not the secondary net or the backup and then the split was 1:15:13 fascinating the people my age are like N I don't know about that but the younger officers all said yeah probably um as 1:15:19 long as industry keeps investing there and we keep up with it so that is a huge change for How We Do networks and if 1:15:26 that promise plays out it frees us from some of the frankly I don't know how many signal officers are in here it's a 1:15:33 tortured class of folks including my uh you know my uh my three star um the 1:15:39 ability to bring a cell phone like experience to a battlefield is extremely difficult because of terrain you don't 1:15:45 have cell towers you got to do with radios um that has been something AR's been trying for decades now the 1:15:52 satellite capability May May we hope be a way to get that kind of capability 1:15:58 much further down in our units to enable the kind of flexibility and speed that General rain's talking about so 1:16:05 everything after that in that question I honestly don't have any idea but that 1:16:10 part um is an enabling thing that I had not thought of the link between that and unmanned systems but I would turn that 1:16:17 to my colleagues here to talk about that yeah I and I'm sure Adam has great insightful thoughts better than mine but 1:16:24 what's interesting is is we've been pursuing autonomy in the air and autonomy on ground separately as a 1:16:32 country as an industry um I I absolutely think that those are right now one thing 1:16:39 and and we can't afford to have an autonomy solution for robotics an autonomy solution for uh unmanned aircraft 1:16:49 another one for manned aircraft army or joint so I I think you're to see one 1:16:55 approach to autonomy so that using satellites and we just did this out at 1:17:01 an ex experiment called Edge there's there's a company that flew put a UAV up 1:17:07 and had it control a robot on the ground now one to many would be really cool I'm 1:17:13 with you on that but it was it was an example of what's in the realm of the possible I also think all the great 1:17:18 companies out there all have their own approach to autonomy and the Army uh most of this is on AFC but we need to 1:17:26 get a little more not total standardization but the sooner we get some run rules of how we're going to do 1:17:32 autonomy it's going to free companies up to put all the energy they're putting into figuring out their own solution to 1:17:38 AED Target recognition or autonomous or I'm doing air autonomy ground autonomy I 1:17:44 think we're on the cusp of a big breakthrough in that space just like Adam said yeah so this one's about 1:17:50 supply chain so I think this is both important to the Army and to industry it 1:17:55 says as the US continues to build develop and produce capabilities the shortage of repair parts often 1:18:03 manufactured in China uh is a significant Readiness challenge what is the US doing to increase us 1:18:10 manufacturing of uh these parts um so that we can come closer to the supply 1:18:16 chain in the US and it may not as yeah I could start um so I think uh it's been a priority of 1:18:23 this Administration but frankly the one before it to um be smarter about our Global Supply chains now co uh the 1:18:31 crisis um kind of uncovered a lot of um things that were very efficient in our supply chains but turned out to be 1:18:37 vulnerabilities when they or fragility when they were put under a little bit of pressure much less combat so I think 1:18:45 what we learned from that is we need to have in government uh better visibility of our supply chains I think we have 1:18:51 that now there's tons of great companies in the space that we work with um who have off-the-shelf solutions that we're 1:18:56 using to see our supply chains better um one good thing here to keep in mind 1:19:02 though is not everything has to be in the United States to be secure now we of course sure in theory America we can 1:19:08 make everything um but we need to use the whole free world's capabilities here 1:19:14 um so yeah not China not Russia not North Korea not Iran but everybody else 1:19:20 has got a lot of stuff and a lot of great capability and we are utilizing that now for example in our Munitions 1:19:26 buildup we still have Global Supply chains but we are getting those Global Supply chains into friendly countries 1:19:32 countries we can count on allies um countries that share our values who sure we might have differences of opinion 1:19:38 over trade policy but we're never going to cut each other off so we have to leverage the whole world not just the 1:19:43 United States to make our supply chains more secure but I would take our supply chains excluding those four countries I 1:19:49 mentioned I would stack up those countries capabilities against those four any day of the week we could do 1:19:55 this without them so we just have to be willing to be smart about it sometimes pay a bit more if it means being more 1:20:01 secure I think right now uh Congress is willing to let us in the department pay a bit more to be more secure in our 1:20:07 supply chain and that's okay um so I think the policies in the and frankly this is quite really a bipartisan issue 1:20:14 there aren't a ton these days but this has really been a bipartisan one where all the input I get from all members of 1:20:19 Congress on all parties um both parties agree on this so I think 1:20:25 conditions are set to be good about it what we have to do though is work with um our industry colleagues on when we 1:20:31 get in a situation where um we have a dependency we think through it by either stockpiling or finding another way to do 1:20:38 it in a friendlier place okay did you have anything thing 1:20:43 can supply chains are like there's different ways you can think about a supply chain but supply chain is basically a bunch of companies 1:20:49 collaborating and ultimately Supply chains are responsive to demand and if demand spikes Supply chains will respond 1:20:56 if it goes down Supply chains will will kind of Wither and I think one of the things that we've seen in the Drone 1:21:01 space is historically most drones in the small light class have been made in China most of the components are made in 1:21:07 China I think the blue uas program uh and NDA compliance sent a very clear 1:21:13 signal to the market that there was demand and need for drone components uh 1:21:18 that weren't coming from China uh and and there's been a response and I think the the stronger and clearer the demand 1:21:24 signal about what you need and what you care about from a security standpoint the the more that everybody will respond 1:21:30 because everybody you know all the way down to the people making like drone Motors and cameras and sensors like people pay attention to to what 1:21:38 purchasers are saying uh and and they act accordingly thank you well with only 1:21:44 eight minutes left and being the moderator I know I'm not going to get to all these questions I apologize those 1:21:49 that I didn't get to but I'll make sure the the panelists get these questions and somehow we get these answers uh back 1:21:58 uh to address all of you but as a moderator I have the privilege of uh using my background experience to pick 1:22:03 the one that's important to me what role if any do our foreign Partners or 1:22:08 International Partners have in the US Army's transformation well I mean just to State 1:22:16 the obvious we we can't do it without him so you know there there is no scenario no 1:22:23 expectation no nobody that I know that's a serious professional thinks that the 1:22:28 next time we fight it's not going to be with partners and allies you know especially you've talking about 1:22:34 existential type kind of you know there's not going to be a whole bunch of neutral neutral people in that in that 1:22:41 kind of thing so so uh we we are absolutely committed to our partners and 1:22:46 allies whether it's nato in in Europe the the land power Network that General 1:22:52 Flynn is just incredibly built over the last 3 years or so out in the Pacific 1:22:58 any any anywhere pick a place uh we're going to fight as a Joint Force we're going to fight with Partners we're going 1:23:03 to fight out with allies the more we can experiment with them train together 1:23:08 operate together send each send our soldiers and leaders to each other 1:23:14 schools you know um there there's nothing we can do that would be to the 1:23:19 point where I'd say that's too much in terms of working with partners and allies and like I said earlier we have a 1:23:25 lot of partners that are better at things than we are for different reasons 1:23:30 um and and you know we got to maintain the humility to genuinely partner with 1:23:36 defined as learning from each other yeah I witnessed something recently with um 1:23:41 some Ukrainian soldiers uh they were being trained on how to use a weapon and 1:23:47 it was through translation you know of our instructions and they found a better way 1:23:53 to do it and you know it's one of those things that I just think the more we listen and learn from each other the the 1:24:00 stronger we're going to be as a combined force and um and get after this so what 1:24:06 I'm going to do now in closing is I I just want to make sure that each of you were able to get the messages out to 1:24:12 this awesome audience if there's any last you know kind of wrapup statement 1:24:17 you want to make uh to the group I'll leave it to that and then I'll do final wrap up sure so just a couple things one 1:24:23 to pile on with General R answer he just gave which is great is that on the industry side we need the world's 1:24:28 industry to work with us so there are Technologies in other countries that where uh there are Innovative companies 1:24:34 that have something new that we need to leverage I mean working with our American Partners but also working with our Allied uh countries and they're you 1:24:41 know I go to trade shows around the world every year I see tremendous Innovation across the Free World not 1:24:47 just in the United States so we have to be willing to sometimes admit you know what that thing's better we should just get that thing or find a way to bring 1:24:53 that Tech here so that's one the other one is industrial uh capacity Ukraine 1:24:59 has shown supporting that effort that we need not just the United States to be the arsenal of democracy but we need an 1:25:06 arsenal of democracies we need our Democratic Partners to also scale their 1:25:12 industry up to work with us to provide the needs for a large scale War we can doesn't have to all be us shouldn't all 1:25:18 be us and the war is showing that we still in our ammunitions build up um just an artillery ammunition we still 1:25:25 have Global Supply Chain compe you know people that contribute to that effort from around the world um that's a good 1:25:31 thing so we just need to be make it easier to work with the United States in terms of Technology transfer and trust 1:25:38 and security clearance all these little things that get in the way of working with others and industries and other countries we've got to find a way to 1:25:44 make more progress on that you know the effort with the UK and Australia on OAS 1:25:49 is an example but that can't be the only place we're doing that we need multiple efforts like that so we can work with 1:25:56 Innovative companies uh the last thing I leave that want to leave folks with is in the area of uh unmanned systems 1:26:02 broadly speaking both in the air and on the ground um there's a lot coming and it's about to come really fast from the 1:26:08 Army so we are we have now got our requirements thought through in a way that we can categorize what we want from 1:26:15 industry we are now aligning the resources to enable us to start hitting 1:26:20 you with requests for proposals urgent need statements all sorts of things that are going to let us go a lot faster in 1:26:26 the area of both unmanned systems and counter unmanned systems so I think the urgency you've heard the chief and 1:26:31 secretary talk about is real we have done great work behind the scenes General rainy's colleagues and my team 1:26:37 to get the requirements and the money lined up so now when Congress comes through with a 25 approaches Bill and 1:26:43 then helps us go forward um with reprogramming I think there's going to be a lot happening real fast so this 1:26:50 space is about to explode in in in the best way way um and we are going to need 1:26:56 Industries partnership to do that um working with our great colleagues um in the Army to make it all come together so 1:27:04 thanks yeah just start and where I started just thank you thanks to everybody if you are serving thank you 1:27:13 if you have served thanks for making it possible for us to be doing this you know the privilege of wearing the 1:27:18 uniform today and if you're one of the teammates out there that's helping with this problem anyway thank thank you 1:27:24 thank you very much you know I'm I'm not naive I know there's a little bit of capitalism in there somewhere but but uh 1:27:31 I I feel a little feel a little sense of urgency and patriotism and you you all 1:27:37 love the Constitution and want your grandkids to have the same quality of life for better just like just like we 1:27:42 do so uh I thank everybody not just for your time today but for everything else you're doing to help help us on this 1:27:49 journey thank you I mean we we've talked about this moment of of transformation I think it's 1:27:55 worth coming back to where we started in many ways I think the like the front lines of that transformation are 1:28:01 happening now in in Ukraine and Israel and people talk about learning the lessons from those conflicts to apply 1:28:06 them you know I think potentially the the better step than learning the lesson is to actually deploy our technology 1:28:12 there as sort of the ultimate Proving Ground I think it's the right thing to do for our allies and for our partners 1:28:17 uh and the unmanned system space it often times means we'd be displacing Chinese systems and I think it's the best way to ensure that that that we on 1:28:25 the Leading Edge and and have the technology we need in uh in future conflicts so this is something that that 1:28:30 we're super passionate about as a company and I think it's a real opportunity for us to do the right thing as a as a country yeah so one ask from 1:28:39 Boeing from industry as a whole is bring us in early and 1:28:46 often so what I've been going around asking people is those exercises that are happening out there transformation 1:28:53 bring industry in um because we put a lot of money in each of our companies into research and 1:28:59 development and we want to make sure we're putting that next dollar towards what you want what's going to make a 1:29:06 difference so I think bringing us in early and often in those exercises uh as you're doing the 1:29:13 transformation I think it is very important but hopefully everybody's walking away today with a real call to 1:29:20 action that it's going to take each one of us in this room anybody who's you know listening virtually and for our 1:29:28 media or comms that are out there make sure you get this message out is that we all have a role to play in 1:29:33 transformation whether it's a decision process tool that you have in your 1:29:38 office to Innovative technology to congressional oversight it's going to take whole of us 1:29:47 nation whole of our International Nations for us to get after this Global 1:29:52 Security challenge and make sure we're continuously transforming to get after it so again thank you so much for being 1:29:59 an awesome audience and for participating today appreciate [Applause] 1:30:08 it so that was an excellent panel excellent panel discussion and so us from a USA thank everyone here um before 1:30:16 you part I want to inform you that right outside those doors there's a education Zone where you can get papers and other 1:30:24 educational resources about topics just like this but also we are hoping you go 1:30:29 out there and you take part in a podcast recording is a impromptu podcast 1:30:34 recording where you can be heard and share the reason why you serve so thank you everybody for coming and definitely 1:30:41 stop by the education Zone