Stimson Center “Ground Forces and Great Powers: A Conversation with U.S. Army Secretary …

Barry Blechman, Stimson Center Co-Founder: Good morning and welcome to the Stimson Center. I’m Barry Blechman, co-founder of the Center, and it’s my pleasure to welcome the Honorable Christine Wormuth to our stage here. This year – actually, it was in July – is the 35th anniversary of when Michael Krepon and I had the modest and no doubt youthful idea that we could transform the world.

And how would we do it? Well, by creating another think tank. Actually, there weren’t that many back then. I had worked at four of them and I visited almost all the others, and I knew their food was just terrible, so we could do better.

Actually, they were either partisan or academically oriented, or kind of lunch clubs where you got to network but little else. And Michael and I had the idea that we’d like to get some things done in government, or at least encourage things to move along.

We took John McCloy, Stimson’s deputy, who once said that ‘You could get anything done in Washington if you’ll give other people the credit.’

And that was sort of a motto, but it also meant nonpartisanship, devotion to excellent scholarship, a good sense of how government works, and maybe, most importantly, an understanding of politics – the dominant factor.

We named the Center after Stimson because he was a devoted public servant. He was –

painfully at times for him – bipartisan.

And also, frankly, he didn’t have any heirs, so we could use his name without any legal problems.

The Center has been transformed over the years. It’s grown tremendously, and I can bore you endlessly with its accomplishment. But the person on the stage, Brian Finlay, and Rachel Stohl are really the reasons. They’ve transformed the Center and made it as influential as it is now. So let me turn to our guest –

Secretary Wormuth has had the most extraordinary career. It’s a career I had hoped for at one time. We both started as a Presidential Management Interns in the Pentagon, separated by a few decades – three, actually.

We both had political appointments at middle age, and middle levels, at a young age. And then our paths diverged, and I went to the private sector and Secretary Wormuth prospered in government.

She served as a senior defense official on the NSC, as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, and then as Undersecretary for Policy. And now Secretary of the Army, and frankly, I envy her.

Although I would have preferred to be Secretary of the Navy if I had a choice.

As the 25th Secretary, Secretary Wormuth oversees the service’s nearly 200 billion dollars budget, and is the senior civilian official responsible for decisions affecting more than a million uniform personnel and 300,000 civilians.

And she’s made the well-being of these personnel a very high priority, and also has devoted much of her time in office seeking to transform the army to incorporate the technologies and practices that will be necessary to ensure our security in coming decades.

Finally, I just add that in the few years between her extraordinary government service, Secretary Wormuth spent a little time in the private sector, including some obscure organizations like RAND and CSIS — small places.

But, more importantly, she was a senior manager at my Company, DFI International. So welcome home, Secretary.

U.S. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth: And I was his research assistant here at the Stimson Center, but it was over at Dupont Circle. But Barry has been my boss not once, but twice.

Barry Blechman: So I’ll turn it over now.

Brian Finlay, Stimson Center President and CEO: Barry. A big thanks to you, and thank you for founding the center as well and getting us all together. This was a high school passion project for him, this is why he looks so youthful.

Madam Secretary, a big welcome to you. Maybe before we begin, with your permission – and I know I have it – I just want to take a moment to acknowledge that we are gathering one day after what I’m sure was a busy day for you, commemorating the anniversary of September 11, obviously a day that changed this country and the world forever.

But in many ways, it’s fitting to have you here today as a way to, I think, acknowledge the bravery, the dedication, and ultimately the sacrifice of so many Americans – servicemen and women and civilians alike.

Before we kick things off, I do want to remind folks both in the room as well as online, just give you a little order of battle here. I’m going to engage in a little conversation with the Secretary, and then we will have time at the end to gather some questions here in the audience. If you’ll wait for a microphone and ultimately identify yourself so that Secretary knows who she is speaking to, I would be grateful. For those of you who are tuning in online – and I know that there are many – you can go online to stimson.org/questions, and we will collect those questions as well and hopefully fit as many as we are able in.

But, Madam Secretary, with that long throat clearing, I want to really sort of take you on a little tour of the world if we, if we can. And you have spent the past three and a half years traveling much of that and visiting our service members around the world.

Most recently you were in the Indo-pacific, where you visited three countries: South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines.

So I want to just start by letting you kind of riff a little bit on maybe some kind of strategic observations – kind of help us frame the Army’s current and potentially future role in the region. How are you thinking about it? What does the future look like? And go –

Secretary Wormuth: Sure. Well, I think one of the things that I was most struck by on my trip in August, to the countries you mentioned – and then last summer I also was in Australia went to see Guam. You know we’re building up our defenses in Guam. The thing that really strikes me is how the relationships in the region – our alliances, our partner relationships, have grown ever closer.

I was Undersecretary of Defense from 2014 to 2016 in the Obama Administration, you know, as we were working hard to implement the Rebalance or the Pivot to Asia – which you can pick, which you prefer. And I just was struck this past August at how much closer our relationships with our allies and partners have become. And I think frankly, some of that is driven by the PRC’s behavior in the region. I think there’s been a lot of coercive behavior that has really, I think, caused countries like Australia, like Japan, like the Philippines to feel like it is in their interest to strengthen their relationships with the United States.

And you know, we’ve obviously always played the role of the guarantor of security and stability in the Indo-Pacific theater.

In terms of the role of the Army, you know, my colleagues in uniform in particular will always remind you that the usually the strongest branch in Asian countries is the Army. The army is usually the largest military service, and most of our ally and partner countries in theater, and we have very, very strong relationships as a result.

Again, whether it’s with the Philippine Army, whether it’s with the Indian Army, I would say our relationship with India and the Indian Army has really grown over time. And so a lot of the role that the Army plays in particular is leveraging as much as we can those relationships in the context of deterrence, you know, and being able to demonstrate that we are interoperable with our allies and partners in the region. We do that through exercises –

USARPAC (US Army Pacific) has a series of exercises called operation pathways.

And what we’re really seeing over the last few years, is that the scale and scope of those exercises is growing. It’s becoming more complex. You’re seeing more multilateral participation in those exercises.

And not only does that demonstrate our interoperability with our allies and partners, it also provides an opportunity to show our combat credible forces and capabilities in the region. So, for example, we have a new capability called the Mid-Range Capability, which is part of our long range fires portfolio, and we were able to take the MRC Capability over to the Philippines this year and have it be part of our exercises. We haven’t done a live fire yet, but we are using the MRC.

The Army is building five Multi Domain Task Forces – I can say a little bit more about that in a minute. But we have two of them right now that are that are aligned to the Indo-Pacific Theater – the 1st and the 3rd MDTF. And the 1st MDTF was in the Philippines, again as part of our exercises.

So a lot of what we’re doing is in that competition, deterrent space. And if we were to get into a conflict, you know, the Army, I think, would be an important part of the joint team. We would be doing a lot in terms of helping set up staging bases, helping protect air bases, protecting ports. We have an incredibly important role to play in terms of logistics and sustainment – you know, getting troops, equipment, supplies, fuel around the theater.

And then again, we’re going to be a part of the long range fires that you would see in a conflict. And again, that’s where something like our mid-range capability comes in. We’re working hard to develop a long-range hypersonic weapon. That would have an incredible amount of utility in the Indo-Pacific theater, given the ranges. And you know, any of you who’ve gone anywhere in Asia on a commercial airline, know there’s a lot of water out there. Things are very far apart.

So I think you’d see the Army playing a role in a conflict from a number of different dimensions.

Brian Finlay: So I want to dig a little bit deeper into one particular dimension that has been traditional for the US Army. You said last year, I think quite interestingly, that many of us in the National Security Community kind of tend to think of the Indo-pacific as the domain of the navy of the Air Force. And of course the US Army has played a critical role in the past –

largely, in many ways, but including in air base defense for the US Air Force.

Now, I think, recognizing fiscal political constraints, the Air Force is moving to the agile combat employment in the Indo-Pacific, which is presumably going to change the role of the US Army. So how does that impact how the Army operates in region? And will it fundamentally change the Army’s posture as we look down the road into the future?

Secretary Wormuth: Yeah, I mean, this is something that the Air Force has been thinking about for a while, and again, I can think back to the Obama Administration when we were looking at the degree to which China has built out its anti-access area denial capabilities. You know, they have thousands of missiles of all sorts of different ranges, and the kind of operational situation that that sets up means that we’re not going to be able to mass many, many, many fighter jets in one particular place, because it’s too rich of a target.

And so what the what the Air Force has come to is, “Okay, that means that we need to disperse. We need to be able to, you know, have smaller numbers of aircraft in a lot of different places. We need to be able to move those aircraft around quickly so that they’re not easy targets.”

And that makes sense. And I think what that means for the Army is, you know, we, as the service that often does a lot to do the protection — to do the air defense role – and again, as I said, to do a lot of the sustainment, we have to be able to move around quickly with the Air Force.

Now, there are some challenges to that, and I think one of the biggest challenges is capacity, particularly when it comes to our air defense capabilities. Our Patriots, for example, are probably our most stressed force element for the United States Army. They’re in huge demand, you know. I know you all know Ukraine wants more and more Patriots for understandable reasons. We use Patriots to protect our forces out in the Middle East, for example.

And so, not only do we have a finite number of Patriot batteries – although we are growing that particular piece of force structure in the Army – we are adding an additional composite battalion. We’re also adding an additional patriot battalion in the next few years. In addition to growing some new air defense capabilities, we’re growing something called the indirect fire protection capability, so there will be several new battalions of that. We’re doing some counter-UAS batteries, but the issue is tension between supply and demand. And I think that’s the biggest issue that we have to manage with the Air Force is how are we going to try to meet the needs that they may have in the Indo-Pacific, while also continuing to protect forces in the Middle East or other places.

And that’s, you know, that’s kind of the big dialogue that we have to talk through. A lot of that will come down to resources – the Army has had a very flat budget for the last few years – but it also comes down to manning those pieces of force structure. And again, because of the high op tempo for our air defenders, retention is an issue in that community. It’s hard to recruit into that particular branch and set of military occupational specialties because folks know that when you sign up to go into that particular area, you’re going to be busy. You are deploying, and you’re away from your family more often than almost anyone else in the United States Army. So those are things we’re going to have to work through.

Brian Finlay: So I want to come back to the three countries we referenced earlier – Japan, South Korea, and Philippines. US Army is obviously very active in terms of helping to build readiness in those three countries. So I want to know, why is it important – why are those three countries of particular importance? What, exactly, is the US Army doing? And, three, are those partners doing enough for themselves in your estimation?

Secretary Wormuth: Okay, so let’s start. I mean, you know, I think on the Korean Peninsula, i’s obvious what the challenge is there. And we’ve had 25,000 Army soldiers or more on the Korean Peninsula for decades. And you know, obviously Kim Jong Un and the North Korean military just continue to build out their capabilities. So particularly when it comes to Korea, we’re focused on working closely with our ROK allies to make sure that we’re ready to fight tonight.

When I was there in August, we were actually doing a deployment readiness exercise to prepare for Ulchi Freedom Guardian, which is one of our big bilateral exercises that we do with the ROKs. And I think the ROKs are putting their money where their mouth is. Again, I think our alliance with them is incredibly strong. I think one of the challenges that the South Koreans have – and I’m sympathetic to this – is recruiting. The size of the South Korean army is decreasing.

I think their view is they’re going to try to offset some of that with relying more on technology. And looking, you know, investing in high tech systems. And I think you know there is – you can do that to a certain extent. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to have a lot of soldiers, given that threat.

But I think that’s really the focus that we have with the South Koreans, although I would say again, I think they, too, are looking beyond the Peninsula to the broader dynamics in the region. And one thing that struck me that I think is very positive is how the bilateral cooperation between Japan and South Korea and their militaries is increasing. And we’re having more trilateral activity as well. And you’re seeing the ROK army come off the peninsula for exercises, I think, to a degree, that that’s productive and helpful. So that’s a big focus there.

Japan, again, the journey that Japan and their Self Defenses Forces have been on the last 10 to 15 years in terms of being completely inward and self-defense-focused to now,

looking much more outward, is remarkable, and, I think, incredibly important and positive. We are working closely with Japan through exercises. I think it would be very positive – we’ve had a lot of discussion around what we could do, together with the Army’s Multi Domain Task Force. I think we’ll hopefully see elements of that going to Japan in exercises, as we’ve seen with the Philippines.

The Japanese have recently decided to host one of our composite watercraft companies, which I was able to see in Yokohama. And that’s important because, again, that capability – the Navy is not the only service that has ships. The Army actually has some pretty big ships, too, and we use them to carry troops, vehicles, supplies through, for example, they could be very useful in the Southwest Islands, as well as beyond in the theater. So I think a lot of really positive work with the Japanese.

And then with the Philippines, again, our posture as the US military has been heavily weighted to Northeast Asia for many, many years. It’s largely Japan and Korea, and I think when you look at some of the challenges with China and their activities in the region, we really need to get distributed more if we can throughout more of Southwest Asia. And that’s why Guam, Australia, the Philippines are so important from an operational perspective.

And so what we’ve been focused on with the Philippines is building up interoperability again. The Army has something we call Security Force Assistance Brigades, we have five. They are aligned to each of the combatant commands, including INDOPACOM. Our SFAB in INDOPACOM has done a lot of work with the Philippine Army. We’ve been helping them, as has our Multi Domain Task Force. We’ve been doing a lot to help them with domain awareness as they face challenges around things like the second Thomas Shoal, for example. But again, I think the more we can deepen our relationship with the Philippine army, the better.

Brian Finlay: So you may have heard there’s some criticism floating around of our NATO allies in terms of their overall level of burden sharing. Is it fair to say that you’re generally satisfied with the level of burden sharing we’re getting from those three Indo-Pacific partners?

Secretary Wormuth: Well, I think it’s always helpful for countries to look at their security position and make sure that they’re investing the resources that they need to in their own militaries to provide for their own self-defense. And that’s always a challenge.

I’m somewhat loathe to tell our allies and partners what they need to be investing when we have challenges passing our own appropriations bills, and we also have challenges balancing, you know, making hard choices about where we spend resources. But again, I think if you looked at the percentage of GDP that countries in INDOPACOM are spending over the last few years, I think you would see that that investment is going up. And again, I think that’s based on their own assessments of the security environment in the theater.

Brian Finlay: So I want to take you over to Europe, a place that I suspect you’ve been spending a little bit of time over the past 30 months – we have now crossed the threshold with that particular war in in Ukraine. And I wonder if you would draw — what lessons is the US Army drawing from the changing nature of conflict that you are observing on the ground. In Ukraine?

Secretary Wormuth: There are a lot of, I think, very important lessons for the United States Army and for our sister services coming out of what we’re seeing in Ukraine.

First of all – you know, I think there’s been a lot of discussion about what these lessons are, so they won’t surprise you – one is that the battlefield is becoming increasingly transparent. You know it is increasingly difficult to hide. This, again, is one of the, you know, one of the drivers behind the Air Force’s agile combat employment concept.

We have to disperse, we have to be more mobile. What that has meant for the Army, for example, is that we’ve really been focusing on shrinking the size of our command post footprints, and being able to set up and take down our command posts much more quickly. So, for example, you know we do – our brigades come to our big training centers out at Fort Irwin, California, or at Fort Johnson in Louisiana. We also have a training center in Germany.

And, you know, if you’d been there three years ago you would have seen a command post with probably five, six, seven different vehicles. The antenna farm would have been right next to it, the sustainment stuff would have all been in one place. Now, if you went to Fort Irwin or our training center in Germany, you would see maybe 2 Humvees, you know, with just a handful of soldiers, the antenna farm would be displaced quite a distance away, and you’d be able to set up that command post in 15 minutes and take it down in 15 minutes. And that’s a huge change, and it’s driven a lot by what we’re seeing in Ukraine. In that, you know, there’s nowhere to hide. Related to that, we had a huge focus on decreasing our signature. You know whether it’s from electronics – everything from again, the antenna farms to the fitbits that our soldiers love to wear and the phones that we all love to carry. Those create signatures that can be seen, you know, by an enemy.

And we’ve really been working on getting that signature as tight as possible. You know. Another lesson I think we’ve seen is just the importance of long-range fires, you know. Artillery, I think, was not the sexy thing 5 years ago. But now people understand the importance of fires. The incredible ubiquity of drones and the density of drones, the different kinds of functions that drones are serving on the battlefield in Ukraine, that has all provided huge lessons to us. A direct result of what we’re seeing in Ukraine is causing us to – in our budget that will come up next spring, you’ll see a significant increase in investment in unmanned aerial systems, counter UAS and electronic warfare capabilities as well, because that’s something — part of, there’s a very tight cycle between the Ukrainians and the Russians in terms of developing a capability and then developing a counter to that capability. But one of the things the Russians have really been cycling quickly on is their EW capabilities, and that’s made it harder for the Ukrainians with their drones. So we’re seeing that. So there’s just a lot of lessons coming out of there that are incredibly relevant for the Army.

We did a big study several years ago that I think foresaw a good amount of this and that really guided, you know, our investment portfolio. But I think what we’ve seen since the invasion a few years ago is a confirmation and a validation of some of the things that our analysis pointed to.

Brian Finlay: So sticking with the lessons learned theme – You were in Germany earlier this year visiting our servicemen and women who are engaged in training of Ukrainian soldiers.

And I wonder what you learned from that trip, madam Secretary, in terms of – You used an interesting term for this, it was a “a two-way training”. You said that that they are certainly learning stuff from our servicemen and women, but we’re also learning from them. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about at a more tactical level, what are we learning? What are they learning from us? And maybe even more importantly, what are we learning from them?

Secretary Wormuth: A couple of things I would highlight I was out at Grafenwoehr in February, and there was a Ukrainian BTG group was just finishing up – excuse me – its training there, and I was able to talk to the battalion commander, who was clearly a very combat-hardened leader.

And one of the things, I think, where we were learning almost more from the Ukrainians than they were learning from us was about how to use drones on the battlefield, how to defend yourself against drones, and how to do things like 3D printing, you know, at the tactical edge to again try to stay ahead of the adversaries capability, And the Ukrainians have had – you know, they’re an incredibly innovative people. They have a lot of scientific and engineering expertise  that that they had before the war kicked off, and I think that they’ve put that to very good use. And so what I saw was our US Army soldiers were then starting to do some 3D printing themselves to be able to attach, you know, new payloads to basically commercial off the shelf drones and be able to use that to very good effect.

So that was something, I think that we really learned from. Another thing, I think, that that the Ukrainian battalion commander emphasized was the importance of night operations, particularly when the density of the drones was so thick, and that that you actually have a better chance sometimes of doing it at night, where it’s a little harder for the user on the other end of the drone to see things. Now, of course, night operations has been a strength of the United States Army for a long time. But again there, there was just kind of an extra emphasis on that.

Brian Finlay: So the tee up to this question may make you nervous, but rest assured I’m going somewhere with this. I think, despite what we have heard in the presidential debate – this is not a political question – you said, and have called US investments, US spending in Ukraine – and I’m going to quote you – “an investment in Ukraine’s self-defense, an investment in the strength of the NATO Alliance and an investment in America’s deterrence posture in Europe.” So tell me how continued US support for Ukraine’s self-defense is vital to our national interests, and, as importantly, what do you need to see, Madam Secretary, to be able to tell the American people that we are seeing a return on those investments.

Yeah, I think the reason that supporting Ukraine and seeing Ukraine get to a point where it can remain a democracy, protect its territorial integrity. Why does that matter to the United States? It’s because if we let Putin basically violate a democratic country’s sovereign borders with impunity, what comes next? It’s a direct threat, I believe, to NATO. It’s a direct threat to the principles that have basically provided security and prosperity to our country, you know, since the end of World War II.

And not only do I think it’s critical in terms of maintaining security, defeating Putin in his effort to take over Ukraine is critical for us in terms of maintaining the cohesion of NATO. But it’s also – the world is watching what happens. You know, deterrence is indivisible. What happens in Ukraine has consequences and implications for what happens in the Middle East, for what happens in INDOPACOM. And I think if other countries see us let Ukraine be consumed, it may make them more opportunistic, more adventurous in ways that are very detrimental to the United States and our own security.

And I do think we’re seeing a return on our investment. It’s an incredibly tough fight, but the Ukrainians are holding their own. We’ve seen them, you know, make the incursion obviously into Russian territory that they have.

I think that they are, you know – It was critical that the supplemental passed a few months ago, so that we could begin sending them more lethal equipment once again. But I think another thing that a lot of Americans don’t realize is that the assistance we’ve been providing to Ukraine, part of what we’ve had to do to give them the equipment is invest in our own industrial base, in the Army’s organic industrial base and our broader defense industrial base. That has allowed us to begin building up our munition stockpiles, which again we’re going to need, wherever the next conflict may be. And, moreover, that rebuilding of our defense industrial base is being done by Americans all across the country, we opened a new plant in mesquite Texas, for example. These are good jobs for the American people, and they’re happening at plants all around the country, so I think that’s a return on investments that many Americans may not be aware of.

Brian Finlay: So I want to ask you. I want to press you a little bit on resources, because of some comments that you’ve made in the back in February on a resource issue which we’ll get to here but maybe challenges a little bit that your ability to ensure the indivisibility of deterrence right? So in February you noted that we may have to begin scaling back some NATO exercises within CENTCOM in order to continue training Ukrainian forces, similar challenges in the Middle East, I think.

You know, between budgets, between limited human power, that you know, the Army, I think, is oftentimes being seen at least recently – in part because of the conflict – robbing Peter to pay to pay Paul.

And I wonder if you would say a little bit – Does the United States have sufficient troops to meet our global obligations?

Secretary Wormuth: So let me start first, I want to say, yes – several months ago we were in a position where it looked like we might have to scale back some of our exercises, but that was not about the size of the United States Army. That was about the fact that the Congress was not able at that time to pass the supplemental, which we were basically having to – to be able to continue training the Ukrainians, we were cash flowing that out of our regular Army budget, if you will, instead of being able to use money from Congress to do that. And I cite that you know as being important, because, as we now are on the cusp of what looks like, you know, another yet another continuing resolution, that is creating real challenges for the United States military that don’t have anything to do with our size.

It’s just that we need to have predictable funding so that we’re able to carry out our new modernization program, so that we’re able to do our exercises, so that we’re able to just do regular business, and that is very hard to do when you’re constantly going through this cycle of a six-month continuing resolution, are we going to have a government shutdown, you know, et cetera, et cetera?

I mean, just, you know, another example — Wveryone knows we’re trying to build more. 1.5 millimeter shells. We are doing that. We are also trying to produce more GMLRs. And if there’s a continuing resolution that’s going to negatively affect how many GMLRs that we can produce in the next few months, for example. So that, I think, is very important to understand.

That said, I do think the United States Army needs to get bigger. You know, we have faced some very serious recruiting challenges, and have spent a ton of time and done a lot of things to turn that around. And I’m very pleased to say that I think we are going to meet our recruiting targets this year. And I think we’ll be in a much better position starting in FY 26 to be able to begin our recruiting efforts from a stronger position. So my goal – and General George and I share this goal – is to grow back Army and strength over time, because we do need to get bigger. It is a very dangerous security environment, and a larger Army – an Army bigger than 450,000 – is needed, I think, to grapple with what we’re doing. But at the same time, I would note that the US Army has been able to meet all of the requirements that have been levied on us by the combatant commanders, you know, whether it’s Erik Kurilla in CENTCOM, Admiral Paparo in INDOPACOM, General Cavoli in EUCOM.

We’ve been answering the call — We’re as busy as we were during the war on terror, and I think that is, you know, an illustration of the fact that we’re busy. And I think we’ll remain busy, but we’re also going to try to grow to be larger.

Brian Finlay: So there’s been a lot of news as of late, of course, about the recruiting crisis – the Army is the smallest it has ever been since the end of the Second World War. Are we in a crisis? And how are we addressing the recruiting issue, specifically?

Secretary Wormuth: I think, shortly after I became Secretary it was evident that, yes, we were facing a recruiting crisis. We responded to that crisis and again have done a tremendous amount to turn that around.

One of the biggest things we did was create something called the Future Soldier Prep Course, which is sort of a mini boot camp for young people who don’t score quite high enough on our academic tests to qualify for the Army, or who are not within the range you need to be for body fat – you know, we have an obesity challenge in this country, and so part of Future Soldier Prep Course helps our kids just get more fit so they qualify for boot camp. We’ve graduated 26,000 kids out of that program since it started just over two years ago. But we’ve also overhauled our marketing, we have created – we have just started to create –essentially what will be a specialized recruiting force.

The US Army has always – the way we’ve recruited is we take NCOs from all across the Army. You could be a vehicle maintainer, you could be, you know, someone from an intel community, and we would bring you in, give you a little bit of training, and you’d spend two years as a recruiter, and then you go back out and you do the thing that you normally do.

You go to any Fortune 500 company and the people who recruit talent into those companies – that’s all they do. And we realized that we needed to take that kind of approach. So we’re now creating a specialized, not just for NCOs who will be recruiters, but we’ve also created a cohort of warrant officers who will give us extra talent in terms of data, analytics, marketing, expertise, and so on.

So we’ve made a lot of changes that I think will position us to be successful in recruiting. Even as, frankly, I expect those headwinds that created the crisis to continue blowing in our direction. A lot of it is about more and more kids are going to college – although also, it’s worth noting we’re about to face an enrollment cliff. You know, people in the financial crisis in 2008, a lot of people decided to stop having as many kids because they couldn’t afford it. And so the percentage of people who are going to go into colleges is about to get a lot smaller, and you’ll see that colleges are very nervous about that, and that’s going to affect us as well.

There’s declining trust in institutions, there’s concern about politicization of the military. So there are a lot of headwinds that are going to keep blowing. But I think that the transformation of our recruiting enterprise that we’ve worked on the last year in particular, is going to put us, I think, on pretty solid ground.

Brian Finlay: So the crisis is, do you think the crisis is abating? How much sleep do you do you lose thinking about this issue?

Secretary Wormuth: I still worry about it. I’ll be honest – I still worry about it. I mean, I think you know, it is hard to persuade young people to join the military for a lot of different reasons.

And you know, barring some terrible event – and I don’t want to wish you know you mentioned 9/11 yesterday – I don’t want this country to have to experience another event like 9/11, which did, which was a boon to recruiting for the military. So, barring an event like that, I think that recruiting is going to be the close fight for the United States Army for the foreseeable future.

Brian Finlay: So I want to turn the page and talk about climate for a minute in the US Army’s 2022 Climate Strategy. Shame on you, to anyone who didn’t know that there was a climate strategy. The US Army, you noted, and I’m going to quote you again, “The effects of climate change have taken a toll on supply chains, damaged our infrastructure and increased risks to Army soldiers and families due to natural disasters and extreme weather.”

I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how the US Army is working to build resilience and meet climate impacts. What are the most acute climate impacts – to assets and to people? And as importantly, is this the mission of the US Army?

Secretary Wormuth: You know, I think the way I think about our climate strategy is that it’s it’s embedded in everything we do. It’s inseparable from sort of how the Army operates around the world, and let me give you some illustrations of that. First of all, on any given morning, you can turn on NPR and hear about how climate change is creating instability all around the world.

I just heard a thing this morning about a country in Africa that it’s getting so hot that it’s ruining their bananas. And so they’re making banana wine, which doesn’t sound all that appealing. But in any case, you know, climate change is a driver of instability and insecurity, and often, you know who gets called to go in and respond to instability? The United States Military, the United States Army. So I think we have to think of it in that context.

It’s affecting our ability to train, you know. I’ve visited our basic training facilities a number of times, as well as like Fort Johnson I mentioned – one of our training centers for our brigades.

It’s hotter than you know what down there most of the year, and that affects our soldiers. We’ve got to protect them from heat exhaustion, and we’ve done a lot to modify how we train our soldiers in those hotter parts of the country, and a lot of our big bases are in the Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas – you name it. You’ve probably seen headlines about the quality of our barracks – struggles with mold and with air conditioning. Well, a lot of that is because of the increasing climate. So we have a whole line of effort in our strategy focused on our installations.

We’re investing a fair bit in microgrids, for example, to make our installations more resilient. We’re also mindful of the fact that there are, frankly, cyber threats to our nation’s power grids, and we’ve got to be able to keep running our bases. And so some of what we’re doing is investing in making sure that we have access to energy, even if the civilian power grid in our installations goes down.

But we’re also looking at – we do have a line of our strategy that’s looking at our actual capabilities, the systems that our soldiers use. And we’ve set goals to have our non-tactical vehicles – you know, basically, things like shuttle buses and trucks that you’d see on our installations – be all electric by 2027.

I don’t anticipate that we will have electric tanks on the battlefield anytime soon, because the north star for our combat capabilities is operational effectiveness. And given that we’re still having trouble having chargers for all of our electric vehicles, you know, here around the country, it’s hard to imagine that we’re going to have chargers on a battlefield.

So I think going fully electric and combat vehicles is decades and decades down the road. But there’s a lot of advantages operationally that can come from hybrids – silent, idle that would allow our vehicles to be much quieter, to be able to charge systems on some of our vehicles that have hybrid engines. Those are all things that I think have promise. So I would say, we have a very comprehensive approach to climate change, and I think we have to to be to continue to be operationally effective.

Brian Finlay: So I want to turn here in just a minute to the audience. So, please, if you have questions, you’re going to flag my colleague and let them know. And as they are coming up with their questions, Madam Secretary, a quick one — Blechman here was crying about 35 years of the Stimson Center. You are about to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States Army, and a big part of that, of course, you’ve been talking a lot about Army transformation.

And I wonder if, rather than giving you an open remit to talk about what that transformation looks like, instead, I want to talk about – I want to come back to resources and ask you how you are balancing, particularly in the budgetary environment that you just described to us, how are you balancing modernization efforts versus covering kind of the core requirements of the US Army?

Since I’ve been Secretary, we’ve taken a balanced approach to our budget. We have tried to strike the balance between investing enough in our modernization portfolios, we are transforming the Army’s weapons systems in the most profound way in the last 40 years. So modernization has been a huge focus for us.

But we are not doing that at the expense of our readiness, or at the expense of investing in our people. So, in other words, that’s why, we’re spending over two billion dollars a year on barracks across the active Army, the Guard and Reserve. That’s why we continue to give pay raises to our soldiers so that they have good quality of life. That’s why we continue to focus on investing in things like daycare centers, for example.

You can’t tilt too far, I think, in one direction or another, you know – we have to be able to do everything. And so General George and I have taken a balanced approach. But I would say, if I could have a birthday present for the army’s 250th birthday, it would be on-time appropriations, because that is, you know, that is critical, and we could get more bang for our buck if we had predictable reliable appropriations. Thank you.

Brian Finlay: So we’re going to turn to some questions here, my colleague, when you get the microphone from my colleague, I would ask two things – One, please identify yourself where you are from, the Secretary does not need to know where you went to high school, and please, a short question rather than a statement, sir. Yes.

Ken Moriyasu, Nikkei Asia: About the mid-range capability that you said that is in the Philippines. Some quick questions. Are they still in the Philippines? And is the plan to move from the Philippines directly to Japan without coming back to Washington State? Is it important to practice moving from locations such as the Philippines to Japan?

And if I may, if the mid-range capability does go to Japan, do you envision it being in the southwest islands? Thank you.

Brian Finlay: So before you answer that, ma’am, if I may, I’m just going to collect one or two more. I’m going to help – I’m going to help keep you keep you honest here.

Sir.

Jack Myint, US-ASEAN Business Council: Thank you, Madam Secretary. Jack Myint – I’m the director for aerospace defense and security at the US-ASEAN Business Council. We represent 180+ US Companies doing business in Southeast Asia. My question is, you know, if you could be so kind to shed some light on your security policy and engagement strategy towards key southeast Asian countries, and how the administration plans to balance it with its broader foreign policy that largely focuses on human rights and democracy.

So I’m specifically speaking, of countries – if you’ll bear with me just one second – of countries like Thailand, for instance, our oldest treaty ally but recently has seen a regression in its political space. Right? I’m talking about, well, Indonesia, with a new President-elect who has a human rights record that the US has spoken about and, of course, the Philippines, which is great on the political front, you know, saw the 500 million dollar FMF on that front, but still with their procurement, needs to. Yeah. And and Vietnam and Cambodia.

Brian Finlay: Thank you. And I’m going to do one more. I’m sorry I’m going to do. I have a list, though, for you. I have a list for you.

Yannick Tona, Embassy of Rwanda: Thank you very much, and good morning. My name is Yannick Tona. I work at the Embassy of Rwanda. I’m the head of a political department. I’m biased because I’m from Africa, and I want to ask you a little bit if you could talk about the partnership with Africa and what does Africa offer to the United States. You’re talking about, Ukraine and what you’re learning from them – what are you learning from Africa?

Because a lot of time we hear about the challenges in Africa. We don’t really never hear about what Africa is offering to America? Why should Americans care about Africa and so forth?

Brian Finlay: Thank you very much. Great question. So I’m going to let you dance around these three questions –  mid-range capability, policy question about our engagement in Southeast Asia, as well as, of course, Africa.

Secretary Wormuth: Sure. First, let me say as the as the Secretary of the Army, I’m not developing US foreign policy. The Army is essentially one tool in the President and the Secretary of Defense’s toolkit that can be used, you know, to help advance our policy objectives and advance the country’s national interests. So I think what I would say broadly on the on the ASEAN questions, for example – the Army does quite a bit with all of the countries that you’ve mentioned, and the primary tool that we use is our Security Force Assistance Brigade. So, elements of that Security Force Assistance Brigade have done work with the Thai Army, for example, have done work with Indonesia. You know, a number of the countries that you mentioned participate in the various exercises that the United States Army participates in.

And I think we see those nations as being very, very important to the broader security fabric in the Indo Pacific theater. I often say – and I believe this – that our network of allies and partners is an area of comparative advantage for the United States. We have other areas of comparative advantage, but I think that network of allies and partners is critical, and the Army always tries to do as much as we can to thicken that connective tissue of relationships.

I believe the mid-range capability is still in the Philippines. I do not know, frankly, what the plan is for where it goes next, or whether it’s going to come back to Washington State to joint base, Lewis McChord, where it’s based. Certainly, that kind of experience with deploying out to theater and coming back is very important and good training for our soldiers. I think there, again, as I’ve said in other forums, we have an active conversation with the Japanese army about how the MDTF could potentially work with the Japanese military and the mid-range capability as a part of that, but there are not firm plans at this point.

Coming to Africa, I think we need to care about Africa for a variety of reasons, one of which is, it is one of the most rapidly growing parts of the world in terms of population. And you know it’s an incredibly dynamic region, both in terms of opportunities, but I think also in terms of challenges – as you’ve noted, there is a tendency to talk more about problems in Africa. And like the ASEAN countries, the way the United States Army primarily interacts with African nations is through our Security Force Assistance Brigade that is focused – the second SFAB for the army is focused on AFRICOM and we do a lot of training with countries in the region.

We have a very – our US Army Europe headquarters is actually Us. Army Europe and Africa. So there’s a lot of focus out of the 173rd in Germany, on cooperation with various African militaries. And again, I think there’s a lot of promise there. Obviously, there’s been some challenges in terms of governance in some of those countries, and we’ve had to make some adjustments. But we certainly try to seek opportunities to do as much as we can as with countries on the Continent.

Brian Finlay: So, Madam Secretary, you mentioned you would like a birthday present for the US – reliable budgets, which seems pretty reasonable. We had Secretary Del Toro in that chair just a couple of months ago, Secretary of the Navy, and we asked him the same question. He put submarines and aircraft carriers on his list. I’m going to give you one other chance to come back, and to add to your list of what would be a kind gift to the US Army in addition to reliable budgets. What’s your priority look like?

Secretary Wormuth: Well, I think I would say, continued success on the recruiting front. You know that, as I said, we do need to grow back Army and strength, and like I’ve said, I think we’ve made a lot of good progress. But I think there’s still work to be done there. And it’s sort of the foundation of our house. So I guess I would wish for continued success in that area.

Brian Finlay: So this event was recorded, and you can go back and watch it online at stimson.org. While you are there, you can also leave the Stimson Center a birthday present, if you would like for 35 years, if you can make a contribution online to some of the great programming here at the organization.

Madam Secretary, you are always welcome on this stage. We take full credit for your career, by the way, I will say. You are a great American, and you’ve done. You’ve had a remarkable career of public service. We have such great respect for you.

Thank you so much for making the time, and thank you for your service.

Secretary Wormuth: Thank you. It’s my pleasure. Thank you all for coming out.

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