U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

i 

28–969 2018

[H.A.S.C. No. 115–66] 

READYING THE U.S. MILITARY FOR 

FUTURE WARFARE 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

JANUARY 30, 2018 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS

WILLIAM M. ‘‘MAC’’ THORNBERRY, Texas, Chairman 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

ROB BISHOP, Utah 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

PAUL COOK, California 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio 

BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York 

MARTHA MCSALLY, Arizona 

STEPHEN KNIGHT, California 

STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana 

TRENT KELLY, Mississippi 

MIKE GALLAGHER, Wisconsin 

MATT GAETZ, Florida 

DON BACON, Nebraska 

JIM BANKS, Indiana 

LIZ CHENEY, Wyoming 

ADAM SMITH, Washington 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

BETO O’ROURKE, Texas 

DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey 

RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona 

SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts 

COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii 

CAROL SHEA–PORTER, New Hampshire 

JACKY ROSEN, Nevada 

A. DONALD MCEACHIN, Virginia 

SALUD O. CARBAJAL, California 

ANTHONY G. BROWN, Maryland 

STEPHANIE N. MURPHY, Florida 

RO KHANNA, California 

TOM O’HALLERAN, Arizona 

THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York 

JIMMY PANETTA, California 

JEN STEWART, Staff Director 

TIM MORRISON, Counsel 

WILLIAM S. JOHNSON, Counsel 

BRITTON BURKETT, Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Davis, Hon. Susan, a Representative from California, Committee on Armed 

Services ................................................................................................................. 2 

Thornberry, Hon. William M. ‘‘Mac,’’ a Representative from Texas, Chairman, 

Committee on Armed Services ............................................................................ 1 

WITNESSES 

Mahnken, Dr. Thomas G., President and Chief Executive Officer, Center 

for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments ......................................................... 2 

Scharre, Paul, Senior Fellow and Director, Technology and National Security 

Program, Center for a New American Security ................................................. 6 

Thomas, Jim, Principal and Co-Founder, Telemus Group ................................... 5 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Mahnken, Dr. Thomas G. ................................................................................ 44 

Scharre, Paul .................................................................................................... 57 

Smith, Hon Adam, a Representative from Washington, Ranking Member, 

Committee on Armed Services ..................................................................... 42 

Thomas, Jim ...................................................................................................... 48 

Thornberry, Hon. William M. ‘‘Mac’’ ............................................................... 41 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.] 

(1) 

READYING THE U.S. MILITARY FOR FUTURE WARFARE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, 

Washington, DC, Tuesday, January 30, 2018. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:02 a.m., in room 

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. William M. ‘‘Mac’’ 

Thornberry (chairman of the committee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM M. ‘‘MAC’’ THORNBERRY, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM TEXAS, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. The committee 

meets today to hear perspectives on the future nature of warfare. 

No one can predict the future with certainty. We will inevitably 

face surprises, but we have to try to peer into the fog looking for 

trends that point us towards where warfare is headed. History tells 

that even great powers can be overwhelmed by change that they 

do not recognize or to which they do not adapt. Neither our adversaries nor relentless change will wait for us to catch up. 

Responding to these future indicators does not mean that we can 

necessarily walk away from more traditional capabilities. The challenge of our times and the challenge of our budgets is that we must 

be prepared for the full range of threats from having a strong credible nuclear deterrent to nonkinetic political influence operations 

and everything in between. Despite the controversy, there is a lot 

of truth in former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s comment that 

‘‘you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want 

or wish to have at a later time.’’ The military that the United 

States has depends on the decisions made by Congress as part of 

our constitutional responsibilities to raise and support, provide and 

maintain our military forces. Secretary Mattis has testified that 

the American advantage in every domain of warfare is eroding. 

That is the reality with which we must prepare for whatever the 

future brings. 

We welcome three well-qualified witnesses to help us peer into 

the future today so that we can better meet our duties under the 

Constitution to our troops and to our Nation. But before turning to 

them, I would yield to the distinguish acting ranking member, Mrs. 

Davis, for any comments she would like to make. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Thornberry can be found in the 

Appendix on page 41.] 
2 

STATEMENT OF HON. SUSAN DAVIS, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM CALIFORNIA, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I also welcome our 

witnesses today. Thank you very much for sharing your views with 

us. 

On behalf of the chairman, I want to ask unanimous consent to 

submit his statement for the record. And if I could just highlight 

a few things that I know the chairman shares as well and the 

ranking chair, particularly highlighting the importance of a wholeof-government approach. And we know how really important that 

is in successfully implementing the National Defense Strategy. So 

I just support to expand our partnerships and strengthen our alliances. 

Of course, fiscal certainty is also critically important, and we are 

all well aware of the challenges in that regard. And wanting to also 

speak again, we have to eliminate sequestration and lift the BCA 

[Budget Control Act] caps. That is going to be important to future 

efforts of the Defense Department and certainly in defense and in 

protection of our troops. 

I hope that we can look at all of our investments and take actions that would yield savings or raise revenues. We certainly have 

a duty to manage our resources, and we appreciate your insights 

today. 

Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, the full statement of the ranking member will be made part of the record. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith can be found in the Appendix on page 42.] 

The CHAIRMAN. We are pleased to welcome today Dr. Tom 

Mahnken, president and chief executive officer of the Center for 

Strategic and Budgetary Assessments; Jim Thomas, principal and 

co-founder of the Telemus Group; and Paul Scharre, senior fellow 

and director, Technology and National Security Program at the 

Center for a New American Security. Thank you all for being with 

us. 

Without objection, your full written statements will also be made 

part of the record. But I would yield to you at this point for any 

oral comments you would like to make. 

Dr. Mahnken. 

STATEMENT OF DR. THOMAS G. MAHNKEN, PRESIDENT AND 

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND 

BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS 

Dr. MAHNKEN. Thank you, Chairman Thornberry, Acting Ranking Member Davis, distinguished members of the committee. 

Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today. 

This really is a vitally important topic. In recent years, it has become apparent that we are living in a world characterized by 

peacetime competition between the United States, China, and Russia. And both the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy have rightfully emphasized this. Of course, competition isn’t the same thing as conflict nor does competition necessarily lead to conflict. But it must be admitted that the chances 

of great power conflict are increasing, maybe remote, but not incon-
3 

ceivable and growing. What was once a hypothetical future contingency is now a real and present danger. 

And in my prepared statement, which has been entered into the 

record, I—you know, I talk about a number of the challenges. But 

rather than reading from it, I would like you to join me in a 

thought experiment, a thought exercise exploring how a future war 

could unfold. And it touches on the themes that I lay out in my 

prepared statement. 

So let’s imagine a war between the United States and China over 

Taiwan. For our purposes today, it is unimportant to describe how 

the war would break out, merely to believe that such a war is possible, however unlikely. 

Such a war could very well begin with massive attacks by precision-guided missiles not only against military facilities in Taiwan 

but also against U.S. bases in the region, potentially including 

those in Japan and on U.S. territory on Guam. How well prepared 

are the United States and its allies to meet such attacks? 

This campaign, this massive conventional precision missile campaign, could inflict considerable damage on U.S. forces in the Pacific, including U.S. air and naval forces. Where would the United 

States find replacements for these lost forces? 

Imagine further that Chinese submarines armed with landattack cruise missiles are presumed, suspected, to be lurking in 

international waters off of American ports, American naval bases 

such as Norfolk and San Diego. How would the United States balance the need to act in the Western Pacific with the need to defend 

the U.S. homeland? 

Now imagine also that China’s mobile nuclear land-based ballistic missiles leave their garrisons and are largely unlocated and 

that China’s nuclear ballistic missile submarines put to sea. How 

would the possibility, the threat, of Chinese nuclear coercion and 

retaliation, however explicit or implicit, affect our ability to act in 

the Western Pacific. 

Accompanying this massive missile barrage that I described earlier would likely be attacks, perhaps overt, perhaps covert, on networks that support U.S. military operations to include logistics networks as well as on U.S. communication and imagery satellites. 

Again, as I say, some of that might be overt and apparent, some 

of it might be quite murky, difficult to attribute. Precision navigation and timing networks, such as the Global Positioning System 

[GPS], that support the military and a lot more might be disrupted. 

How prepared is the United States for a conflict in space and cyberspace? 

Also accompanying this would likely be a Chinese political warfare campaign aimed at blaming the war on the Taiwanese Government, perhaps, and perhaps combined with messaging targeted on 

members of the U.S. business community with large investments 

in China warning of the dire consequences that they would face 

should the United States intervene in the conflict. 

Imagine tailored messaging to U.S. allies and friends in the region viewing the United States or portraying the United States as 

the interloper, as the outsider. Imagine other messages warning 

that the Chinese Government could not guarantee the safety of the 

thousands and thousands of Americans in China should the United 
4 

States act. How prepared is the United States to defend against 

and respond to such political warfare campaigns? 

Now let’s imagine what many of us would see as a positive outcome, a happy outcome, a battlefield victory. Let’s imagine that 

Taiwan, backed by the United States and perhaps others, is able 

to resist Chinese aggression, that this missile campaign, these 

other things, don’t cause the Taiwanese Government to fold, they 

just steel Taiwan’s will. But the result, of course, is not peace, but 

a protracted conflict with China gearing up for a long war. How 

prepared is the United States, and how prepared are we and our 

allies, for such a situation? 

Mr. Chairman, as you noted in your introductory comments, military planners have to place bets against an uncertain future. And 

it is only when war comes, and, of course, we hope that war doesn’t 

come, but it is only when war comes that we can figure out whether those bets have been good ones or not. This scenario and my 

written testimony point to some current shortfalls as well as the 

way forward to address them so that we can strengthen deterrence. 

First we need to field Armed Forces that possess depth and resilience to be able to fight, accept damage, and recover. Today our 

forces lack readiness and are in dire need of modernization. Moreover, from the bottom to the top, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and 

Marines have grown used to fighting terrorists and insurgents and 

are unfamiliar with the challenges of great power war. 

Second, we need a defense industrial base and a national security innovation base more broadly that is capable of supporting protracted operations. For two decades, the watchword has been efficiency rather than effectiveness. Moreover, in a globalized interdependent world, we need to think carefully about foreign investment 

in strategic industries that bear on defense. 

Third, we need a logistical system capable of operating in contested environments. Getting needed men and material from the 

United States to forward bases and staging areas to the battlefield 

will be an increasing challenge. 

Fourth, we face a growing need to defend the United States, to 

include our networks and military bases as well as our space assets. 

Fifth, we will need to develop ways to identify and counter foreign efforts to influence our society and those of our allies. Russia 

and China have been practicing political warfare on us for some 

time, and the magnitude of those efforts is only now becoming apparent. We need to develop countermeasures and responses to 

those efforts. 

Here, as in other areas, past experience can certainly inform us. 

And as a historian, I believe in the power of history and its importance. But the past can also mislead us. There are clearly areas 

where we need to relearn lost skills, skills that we possessed during the Cold War, to include logistics and mobilization. But we 

shouldn’t mindlessly ape past behavior. Great power competition in 

the 21st century will not be a replay of the Cold War. In the future, 

great power war, should one occur, will not be a rerun of World 

War II or the never-fought World War III between the United 

States and the Soviet Union. 
5 

Instead, we need to assess thoughtfully the similarities and the 

differences with the past and rebuild, and in some cases just build, 

intellectual capital and acquire the capabilities we need to deal 

with the era that we are in and likely to be in for the foreseeable 

future. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Mahnken can be found in the Appendix on page 44.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Thomas. 

STATEMENT OF JIM THOMAS, PRINCIPAL AND CO–FOUNDER, 

TELEMUS GROUP 

Mr. THOMAS. Thank you, Chairman Thornberry and Ranking 

Member Davis and members of the committee, for inviting me to 

testify today. 

I would like to focus my remarks on America’s ongoing strategic 

reorientation towards great power competitions and highlight the 

significant implications this reorientation will entail. Only a few 

years ago, senior defense leaders believed it was inconceivable that 

the United States would ever fight Russia or China. And while war 

with great powers is not inevitable and can certainly be prevented, 

it is no longer inconceivable. 

The new defense strategy has called for treating competitions 

with China and Russia as the Department’s top priorities for planning. This represents a potential sea change for readying the U.S. 

military for future war. To understand why such rebalancing will 

be necessary requires understanding the profound ramifications of 

this modern, multisided, great power competition and its impacts 

on U.S. defense planning. 

First and foremost, a renewed emphasis on great power competition with Russia and China should lead to a comprehensive reevaluation of the U.S. military’s joint expeditionary warfare approach. Both the Russian and Chinese militaries are capable of 

achieving limited local military and paramilitary objectives before 

the bulk of U.S. forces could arrive in proximate theaters. And both 

have built up formidable A2/AD [anti-access/area denial] complexes 

that would hinder the U.S. military from gaining footholds nearby 

or operating with impunity. 

To be clear, the erosion of the U.S. military’s positions in Europe 

and the Far East is less a consequence of being outmanned than 

of being increasingly outgunned, outsticked, outpostured in tough 

away games. The fact that expeditionary warfare lacks the potency 

and credibility it once had requires the United States to identify 

and adopt new approaches to projecting power. The prioritization 

of great power competition in U.S. strategy also means that nuclear 

forces are once again coming to the forefront of planning efforts. 

War games and other planning exercises must consider scenarios 

involving their use, in an effort to understand potential escalatory 

dynamics. The United States must also shore up its theater nuclear 

warfare capabilities by fielding theater-range, difficult-to-intercept 

nuclear cruise missiles. Such missiles could be air or submarine 

launched and should have a high probability of arrival at a target 

despite the presence of precision air defenses. 
6 

Beyond the nuclear dimension, great power competition will also 

require rebalancing U.S. conventional forces. In particular, it will 

place a premium on low signature forces with light logistics footprints capable of operating independently far forward in denied 

areas. Such forces include submarines and unmanned underwater 

vehicles, long-range penetrating surveillance and strike aircraft, 

special operations forces, ground-based missile forces, cyber and 

electronic attack capabilities, and space-based persistent surveillance systems. 

All of this coupled with vastly greater quantities of precision 

standoff and direct attack munitions. These forces represent only 

a fraction of the current U.S. military but are likely to constitute 

the core element of a joint vanguard force in any future great 

power contingency. 

Rebalancing our forces should be informed by the fact that war 

with Russia and/or China would involve target sets that are potentially vastly greater and more geographically distributed than 

those of regional opponents like North Korea. The United States 

may have to increase its stocks of preferred precision-guided munitions and delivery systems by more than an order of magnitude to 

ensure its conventional deterrent is credible. 

Whatever dangers of collusion and opportunistic aggression there 

were with respect to region rogue states, they pale in comparison 

with the risks associated with Russia and China. Indeed, should 

war break out between the United States and one of these powers, 

it is difficult to imagine that one party would not coordinate its 

warfighting efforts with the other. 

A strategy that emphasizes great power competition should take 

account of the likelihood that the other great powers will collude 

in opposing the United States both during peacetime competitions 

as well as in a state of armed conflict. This places a premium on 

globally fungible forces and capabilities that could be used to inflict 

unacceptable levels of punishment on multiple adversaries simultaneously. 

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the competitions the United States 

faces with Russia and China are likely to last for decades. Winning 

will likely come from our staying power rather than victory in any 

decisive battle of annihilation. Thus it will be critical to maintain 

national solvency over time and to judiciously apply scarce resources—fiscal, human, natural, allied, and technological—in order 

to fulfill our duty to provide for the common defense not only for 

ourselves but for our posterity. 

Thank you 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Thomas can be found in the Appendix on page 48.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Scharre. 

STATEMENT OF PAUL SCHARRE, SENIOR FELLOW AND DIRECTOR, TECHNOLOGY AND NATIONAL SECURITY PROGRAM, 

CENTER FOR A NEW AMERICAN SECURITY 

Mr. SCHARRE. Chairman Thornberry, Ranking Member Davis, 

and distinguished members, thank you for inviting me to testify 

today. 
7 

The title of today’s hearing is ‘‘Readying the U.S. Military for Future War.’’ I regret to say that the U.S. military is not ready for 

the threats we face today. 

In a recent simulation of a war in the Western Pacific, colleagues 

of mine at the Center for a New American Security showed that 

a Chinese missile strike on U.S. bases in the region could destroy 

more than 200 aircraft on the ground, crater every runway at U.S. 

air bases in Japan, hit almost every major headquarters within 

minutes of a conflict beginning, destroy key logistical facilities, and 

hit almost every U.S. ship in port in Japan. 

Similar analysis done by other defense experts have consistently 

shown that the United States ability to project power abroad has 

been steadily declining. China’s arsenal of hundreds of cruise missiles and over 1,000 ballistic missiles poses a significant threat to 

U.S. bases in the region and aircraft carriers. The U.S. military 

faces similar problems in Europe where the United States has fallen behind Russian investments in long-range precision strike, integrated air defenses, and electronic warfare. 

These problems did not spring up overnight. Broadly categorized 

under the label of anti-access capabilities, these threats to U.S. 

power projection are well understood. Defense analysts have been 

warning about the U.S. military’s diminishing ability to project 

power into contested regions for the past two decades. And these 

threats have been recognized in every official DOD [Department of 

Defense] strategy document since the 2001 Quadrennial Defense 

Review. 

Moreover, the steps necessary to counter these threats are clear. 

Increased investment in long-range strike, stealthy uninhabited 

aircraft to hunt mobile targets, advanced munitions, electronic warfare, and undersea strike. Yet the military has made only halting 

steps towards these investments. The Air Force is still heavily 

weighted towards short-range tactical fighter aircraft, and under 

current plans, will remain so for decades to come. The Navy’s aircraft carriers similarly only carry short-range fighters limiting the 

carrier’s usefulness in the early stages of a major conflict. 

Despite strong pressure from Congress, the Navy has no plans to 

invest in a long-range strike aircraft to extend the carrier’s reach. 

The Army has even more acute problems in power projection due 

to reduction in Army brigades forward based in Europe and the 

complete lack of any effective Army modernization for the past 15 

years. 

Why are we here? We spend more money than our adversaries. 

The United States is a global technology leader, and our warfighters are better educated, trained, and motivated than our adversaries. We have seen this problem coming for two decades yet 

we have failed to adequately respond. It is not for lack of money. 

With sufficient reforms, there is ample money within a $600 billion 

defense budget. 

Budgetary stability is needed. The current budgetary instability 

inflicted on the military due to a failure of the Nation’s political 

leaders to reach a bipartisan deal on taxes and entitlements has 

severely hampered readiness and modernization. 

We cannot fuel the first-class military through government shutdowns, continuing resolutions, and constant uncertainty about 
8 

long-term spending. But these problems predate the current budgetary crises. 

Money alone will not cure what ails the Pentagon. Nor is it because DOD has been fixated on wars in the Middle East. A lot of 

taxpayer money went towards military modernization for future 

threats even while troops were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

The reason we have failed to adapt is because our system lacks 

sufficient strategic agility. We have a ponderous and risk-averse acquisition system that develops weapons on decades-long time horizons. This is too slow to keep pace with the rapidly changing world. 

This problem is compounded by political pressures in the Pentagon, industry, and Congress that make it exceedingly difficult to 

cancel legacy programs that are less useful for future wars. If our 

military is to adapt to these threats, Congress must be a willing 

partner in terminating programs that are no longer needed. 

And finally, cultural resistance within elements of the military to 

new paradigms for warfighting, particularly when it comes to using 

uninhabited and robotic systems. Congressional leadership is needed to help prod the military services towards new ways of fighting 

that may be uncomfortable but are necessary if the United States 

is to remain a global military power. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify here today, and I look 

forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Scharre can be found in the Appendix on page 57.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Thank you all. 

Okay. We asked all three of you-all to help us peer into the future about the nature of warfare. And all three of you-all come 

back and say what we have to prepare for is peer competitors, Russia, China. Now, is that because the new defense strategy says 

that, or do you-all really believe that is the direction things are 

headed and that is the threat for which we have to be prepared? 

Just run down the line right quick. 

Dr. MAHNKEN. Sure. Well, I am on record, over the course of 

years, I hate to say it maybe more than a decade at this point, saying that great power competition, the prospective of great power 

war, is the most consequential threat that we will face and, therefore, it really should be the centerpiece of our planning. Not to say 

that there aren’t other contingencies, but the most consequential, 

the most important contingency we face out there is the prospect 

of a great power war. 

Mr. THOMAS. I think that is—Tom put it just right, which is it 

is the most consequential, even if perhaps it is not always going 

to be the most likely or the most frequent. And if we prepare adequately for conflict and competitions with great powers, that is our 

best chance at avoiding that very outcome. 

Mr. SCHARRE. So, Chairman, the new NDS [National Defense 

Strategy] says that inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, 

is the primary concern in U.S. national security. I don’t agree with 

that assessment. Terrorists killed 3,000 people on 9/11, and terrorists remain a direct threat to the safety and security of American 

citizens. I think it is important to distinguish between threats to 

U.S. citizens and their lives and American interests abroad. 
9 

A lot of other places, Taiwan, the Spratly Islands, Ukraine, those 

are not U.S. territories. They matter to U.S. interests, right. And 

I think we do need to prepare for both. I don’t agree with the ranking ordering of them. 

From a financial standpoint, the challenge is that it costs a lot 

more to compete against countries like Russia or China or to defend against ballistic missile threats from North Korea than to 

fight terrorists. 

So there are investments we need to make to do things to prepare for terrorism, things like a new OA–X airplane for the Air 

Force, sustaining, for example, the MQ–9 fleet. But they are not as 

costly as the things you need to do to prepare for inter-state strategic competition. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. You just confused me. So you are saying 

that because we can do some things cheaper, we ought to do those 

and ignore other things—— 

Mr. SCHARRE. No. 

The CHAIRMAN [continuing]. Because they are more expensive? 

Mr. SCHARRE. We have to do all of them. We have to be able to 

do all of them. 

I don’t agree with the rank ordering that demotes terrorism as 

though that is not a concern. We have to be able to do all of those 

things. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Yeah. All right. That, I agree with. 

But then Mr. Scharre was very explicit saying we are not ready 

for great power competition. Do you-all agree with that? 

Dr. MAHNKEN. I do. We have taken essentially a quarter century 

hiatus from thinking about and preparing for these types of contingencies. 

Mr. THOMAS. I would just add to that in agreement that we have 

honed our warfighting enterprise around fighting smaller regional 

contingencies. Our expeditionary warfare approach is tailor-made 

for going up against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. But it would require 

a tremendous amount of adaptation to face Russia or China. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, and I guess that is the last question I want 

to ask for now. 

So on 9/11, we were woefully unprepared for the kind of conflict 

we were going to engage in for the next 17 years so far. How big 

a deal is this cultural mindset to shift from terrorism and regional 

sorts of situations that you describe, Mr. Thomas, to this return or 

emergence of multiple great power competitions? 

I will start with you, Mr. Thomas, and then I will get everybody. 

Mr. THOMAS. I think it is challenging but in a variable way 

across the force. And really what you are talking about, and I think 

Paul was getting to this, is it is really about rebalancing inside of 

each one of our services. In the Air Force between short range and 

long range. In the Navy between surface and subsurface. In the 

Army between maneuver force and fires. Within special operations 

between direct action and unconventional warfare. 

So we have big changes to make across all of our services as we 

adapt. And it is not a question of jettisoning global counterterrorism operations, but it is a question of, essentially, adjusting the 

rheostat for the joint force. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Scharre, do you have any comments on that? 
10 

Mr. SCHARRE. Yes, sir. We do need to rebalance our forces, but 

it is not actually from terrorism to great power conflict. It is really 

this middle kind of space that Mr. Thomas described as expeditionary warfare that the military has been focused on. It hasn’t 

really been terrorism. It has been basically refighting the Iraq war. 

So if we need to go overseas and fight a smaller middle power 

where we could have ready access to a nearby land base, or we can 

bring our aircraft carriers up close, we are well positioned to do 

that. If we had to fight from a distance, what we don’t have access 

as a great power, we don’t have an ability to do that. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Dr. Mahnken. 

Dr. MAHNKEN. I guess I see the cultural challenges as a significant one. You know, we spent the first decade after the end of the 

Cold War in a period of sort of unchallenged dominance. And then 

as you point out, since then we have really been focused on terrorism and counterinsurgency. 

We have a whole generation, so 25 years, a professional lifetime 

in the military, professional lifetime functionally in the civil service, we have a whole group that really knows nothing other than 

that. And I will count myself as part of that, as an Iraq war veteran. We have people who have had very, very difficult, very personal experiences in a particular type of war that may provide experience, but also may mislead. 

And it is often said, you know, with respect to, say, China, Well, 

China hasn’t fought a war since, well depending on how you count 

it, 1953 against us in Korea, in 1979 against Vietnam. I always ask 

the U.S. armed services, when was the last time that we fought a 

peer adversary. For the U.S. Navy, I think that was 1944. I 

wouldn’t even give credit for 1945, the last year of World War II. 

And so we need to re-acculturate to a very different type of situation than we faced in the last about 17 years. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Thank you all. 

Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I wonder if you could talk about the role—more of the roles 

and—of alliances and partnerships in future wars. I think we 

would probably all agree that there is certainly an importance to 

that, and a defense strategy speaks to it. But being more nuanced 

about that, more detailed, what is it that—how would we want to 

encourage them in certain areas? And what are we expecting of 

them? 

And then, finally, if we don’t have that as a priority from the 

highest levels of government, how do we—how do we function with 

that? 

Mr. THOMAS. You know, for most of the last 25 years, we spent 

a lot of time encouraging our allies to go out of area with us, to 

go to the Middle East to provide tanker refueling in the Indian 

Ocean and doing other things such as that. What we really need 

right now are allies on the front lines in Europe and in East Asia 

who are really focused on their own—on defense of their own sovereignty, of their sovereign air space, their land borders, and their 

maritime approaches to a far greater extent. 

And so this is really—I think this is really hard for the United 

States because in the past we have asked our allies to be little 
11 

mini-me’s; we wanted them to be a smaller version of the U.S. military. 

What we are talking about now, I think, is radical differentiation 

where, in fact, we want our allies to look some ways a lot more like 

our adversaries. We want our allies to have their own anti-access 

and area denial capabilities so that they can fend off the power 

projection gambits of potential aggressors. 

We also want them to provide some sanctuary for us so that we 

can either forward station forces in peacetime as part of a deterrent or, to a more limited extent, flow forces in to reinforce them 

in a crisis or conflict. 

Dr. MAHNKEN. Yeah, if I could build off that. 

So first I would say, you know, our alliances, our allies, really 

are a comparative advantage, and they offer the United States a 

lot of—a lot of benefits. But to agree with what Jim just said, I 

mean, I think we need to have, both here at home and also with 

our close allies, a very frank conversation about what sovereign capability we and our allies need to possess and what areas we can 

truly rely on each other for. 

So as one example, we have a lot of information-sharing agreements with our close allies. We rely, on a day-to-day basis, on information not just produced here but produced there. We rely on 

that. I think that is a good basis. Are there other areas where we 

can do that? And to the extent that we can develop truly shared 

capabilities, it means that we—that they may not have to reproduce everything that we have, and we may not have to reproduce 

everything that they have. 

I think the time is right because of the threat environment, because of the fiscal situation, for that type of frank discussion between ourselves and our allies. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Mr. Scharre. 

Mr. SCHARRE. Yeah. So I certainly would agree that our alliances 

are an asymmetric advantage. And we want to make sure that we 

take care of them and have them ready to use. 

One of the challenges I think is that we have been viewing often 

alliances in this role of adding sort of political top cover when we 

go overseas and do—we add more people on, build a coalition of the 

willing. That is important, that is very valuable. 

For many of these future conflicts against, say, a Russia or 

China, we actually would be looking for allies particularly for basing and access. Our ability to get into the region. And so not just 

sort of having more flags around the team but that they really 

would be vital members for us to be able to go in and operate. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Is there more than a role only for the military in this 

as well? How would you characterize that? Because we know that 

in many cases our ambassadors, our State Department help negotiate some of those basing agreements. So how critical—are we actually even looking at that as a priority in that particular need? 

Mr. SCHARRE. Absolutely it is critical. We certainly—diplomacy is 

the method by which you build those alliances and sustain them. 

Mrs. DAVIS. All right. 

Dr. MAHNKEN. Here I will invoke history. You know, during the 

last period of great power competition, during the Cold War, the 

whole U.S. national security community was involved in the effort. 
12 

You know, my godmother who was in the State Department, she 

was—she was part of our effort to counter Soviet communism, Soviet, you know, political ‘‘political’’ warfare. My first job in the Pentagon way back when was doing technology transfer controls. 

Again, that was part of dealing with Soviet technology theft. And 

today, similarly, we need a multidimensional effort. 

Now, of course, there are certain things that only the U.S. military can do, and so that needs to be part of it. But certainly we 

do need a whole-of-government and multidimensional effort to deal 

with the challenges we face today. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you very much. I hope the National Defense 

Strategy leads us in a direction that we can actually analyze that 

in a productive manner. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Wilson. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank each of you for 

being here today. And Dr. Mahnken in particular, being the president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, we 

need your input here in Congress on budgeting and look forward 

to that. 

As we discussed emerging technology and maintaining a strategic edge over our adversaries, I am concerned about the fundamental question that directly impacts our military’s readiness for 

future warfare. 

The current fiscal environment that we live in is lurching from 

one CR [continuing resolution] to another. According to Pew Research, the average time between the start of each fiscal year and 

the date that the year’s final spending bill becomes law has grown 

from 56 days in fiscal year 1998 to 216 days in fiscal year 2017. 

Fortunately, with the leadership of Chairman Mac Thornberry 

and Speaker Paul Ryan, defense funding has passed the House 

twice last year. And then again today, the House will be voting on 

defense funding, but the Senate has not achieved votes for passage. 

I believe that the primary function of Congress is to fund common 

defense to protect American families, to do for us what we cannot 

do for ourselves. 

Could you again, Dr. Mahnken, describe the impact of the inconsistent, flat, or restrictive funding, through the concurrent continuing resolutions, has had on the military’s ability to prepare for 

future wars. 

Dr. MAHNKEN. Thank you, Congressman. 

Yeah. Look, I would agree with you that the habit of budgeting 

through continuing resolutions has been a tremendously corrosive 

one. And I know, you know, in this committee, I am pretty much 

speaking to the choir. But I am concerned, as much as an American citizen and American taxpayer as anything else, that at the 

end of the day we—you know, that Congress will pass a continuing 

resolution, Members will pat themselves on the back that they 

have done well. 

But, you know, it does have a corrosive effect. If we just take, 

let’s say, a program. It could be a bomber program, it could be a 

submarine program, whatever. A program that is ramping up, that 

is moving towards production as we need modernization, what does 

the continuing resolution do? Continuing resolution freezes the 
13 

funding at that of the previous year. Where more funding is needed, where we need to gear up a production line, where we need to 

hire people, where we need to get things going to move something 

into production, something to replace aging equipment, CR really 

hurts that, and it delays it. And CR after CR after CR just compounds that. 

And so, again, I worry that too many people think that we are 

doing well because we are passing CRs. But particularly when it 

comes to modernization, not exclusively modernization, but particularly when it comes to modernization, it is truly corrosive over 

time. 

Mr. WILSON. And equally, the effect on contracting with private 

businesses, can you explain how that is affected? 

Dr. MAHNKEN. Yeah. Absolutely. They are—you know, they are 

putting resources—they are making bets towards future—towards 

future funding. And that amounts to hire—again, hiring people, 

hiring talented people to help with design, with production, and 

where the money is either not forthcoming or it is delayed, it is just 

more and more difficult to get those talented, skilled people onboard to produce the capabilities that we need to defend the Nation. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. 

And, Mr. Thomas, as a grateful dad of sons who—four who 

served in Iraq, Egypt, and Afghanistan, I was so pleased to know 

we had technology like unmanned aerial vehicles over their head, 

which I counted on to protect them. 

And then recently I have had the opportunity to see advances of 

unmanned ground vehicles. It is just—the technology is just phenomenal to climb stairs, to go through hallways, to go into caves, 

forested areas. But I am really concerned. 

What recommendations do you have to expedite these new technologies so that they are not multiyear delays? 

Mr. THOMAS. Thank you, Congressman. And I really appreciate 

your remarks. 

You know, the unmanned revolution is coming, and I think culturally this is often seen as a threat to our—to some of our service 

members in the sense that it is a robot versus a human. And I 

think you really put your finger on it, which this is about saving 

lives, and this is about augmenting and empowering humans so 

that they have greater span of control and they can do more things 

and overcome some of the physiological limitations of humans. So 

all of that is to the better. 

In terms of accelerating the entry into the force, you know, I 

think we have a couple problems. One is we have a technology 

transition problem, that there is lots of stuff that is going on in the 

DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] world. But 

the programs then get caught in this valley of death, that the services are not integrating them into their program objective memoranda as quickly as we would like. And I think part of the problem 

is that collectively we tend to commit acquisition infanticide. 

Once you are in the program of record, you are in pretty good 

shape, because there are lots of special interests and there are 

service proponents and there are lots of people who will keep you 

in the program of record. But it is very tough for some of these new 
14 

technologies and some of these new systems to just gain entry into 

the program of record. And this is something where—as Paul was 

saying earlier, this is a critical role that Congress can play in essentially stimulating the Department as it has done historically on 

a lot of critical capabilities like Tomahawk cruise missiles in the 

1970s and 1980s, or Predator UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], 

where Congress really can play a catalytic role in driving this. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Brown. 

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank each of 

you for being here and for the big thinking that you put into the 

question of, you know, future warfare and our readiness. Thanks 

for your perspectives here today. 

It seems that our services strive to be ready and well equipped 

to do everything. I think one of you testified that we need to do 

everything. And I think each of you agree that it is just a matter 

of balance and setting the priorities. And that is true whether our 

budget is in the $500 billion range or, what we are looking at 

maybe for fiscal year 2018, in the $600 billion range. The President, I believe, is going to be asking for something in the $700 billion range for the next fiscal year. It is about balance and priorities. You take on all of these missions and tasks that the services 

have been asked to address. 

A few months ago, a member of this committee asked senior military leaders to identify either acquisitions, or programs, or maybe 

even missions that they would rather not pursue, but for reasons 

beyond their control, namely Congress’s will, they are forced to 

pursue or to procure or acquire and spend. 

Does your view, your study of these issues, are you able to identify, perhaps today, give some examples of some acquisitions or programs that are way out of balance? And when I say out of balance, 

more on the side where we are doing too much of it today and we 

could actually scale back so that we could invest resources in those 

areas where the balance is working to the detriment of an important mission or program? 

Dr. MAHNKEN. I will give one example. It is not a program, but 

it is in infrastructure. I mean, I do think that the U.S. military, 

Department of Defense, has more infrastructure, more bases than 

it does forces. And I think that infrastructure, that overhead, costs. 

And so not to bat things back in the court of Congress, but I think 

another round of base realignment and closures [is] at least something that should be on the table. I wouldn’t prejudge the outcome 

of it, but that is—I think that is something that is—that should be 

part of it. 

I think, unfortunately, all too often, because we have deferred 

modernization repeatedly, particularly for the types of contingencies we are talking about, it has—the programs that should 

have been cut were already cut, maybe even some of the programs 

that shouldn’t have been cut have already been cut in past years. 

So I am at pains to find savings there. I would be looking—I would 

be looking elsewhere. 

Mr. THOMAS. I would add two categories to that broadly. I think 

one is, given this issue of great power competitions, it is about 

range. That we have to rebalance across our entire joint force be-
15 

tween short range and longer range forces. And there I would say 

we are probably overinvesting in short-range systems, whether 

those be aircraft or those be ground-based artillery systems and the 

like. We are going to need just much greater—to operate at much 

greater distances than we have in the recent past. And in this way, 

this is kind of reminiscent of the Cold War where we had to think 

about long-range, ground-based missile systems. And we had a 

much larger bomber force and the like. 

The other area, as was mentioned earlier, is in terms of balancing between manned and unmanned systems. We know that the 

biggest driver on DOD cost growth has come from personnel. Personnel compensation, benefits, et cetera. As we look ahead, unmanned systems not only may be more operationally effective for 

many of the missions we ask them to perform, but they also can 

help us in terms of lowering the cost of things like training and 

life-cycle sustainment and the like. How do we essentially position 

ourselves to reap some of the downstream cost benefits from these 

systems I think will be important. 

Mr. SCHARRE. Just to add on to what Jim said, I see within both 

the Navy and the Air Force, some fundamental cultural realignments will have to change over the coming decades. For the Air 

Force, it is principally about range. And it is important. It is not 

just about hardware, it is about people inside the Air Force, because what you are talking about doing is changing the organizational structure inside the Air Force, who has power. 

Moving from what has been a fighter-centric organization over 

the past several decades towards one that now has greater emphasis on long-range strike, long-range bombers, and reduced emphasis on fighters. And that is going to change the sort of balance of 

power inside the services between these communities. And that is 

where congressional leadership is very important. I see a similar 

need in the Navy to emphasize undersea. 

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Lamborn. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all for 

being here. 

We have vulnerabilities as a Nation, whether it comes from legacy or whether it comes from a strong reliance on exquisite satellites in space that are very expensive, very capable, but also potentially very vulnerable. But I want to turn this around. You 

know, we have our vulnerabilities. What vulnerabilities—you 

know, God forbid there is ever a conflict. But what vulnerabilities 

do China and Russia have in particular that it might be wise to 

pay attention to? For all three of you. 

Mr. THOMAS. Well, if I could maybe begin. 

I think the greatest source of vulnerability for both China and 

Russia is their lack of political legitimacy long term. That is fundamental. And both of them face enormous internal security risks, 

how they meet the demands of their people. But, you know, if you 

are Russia, you have got to govern and you have got to maintain 

security across 11 time zones. 

If you think we have problems with thinking about concurrency 

and can we fight two nearly simultaneous wars, what does that 

look like from Russia’s perspective? Or China’s, for that matter? Do 
16 

they have the command and control to do it? Do they have the logistics to do it? Can they split their forces like that? 

They also have a number of historical competitions on their borders. They don’t have great neighbors like we do with Mexico and 

Canada. And so that is something that they always have to be on 

guard about. 

So I would just leave those as a couple major vulnerabilities that 

these countries have. 

Dr. MAHNKEN. Yeah, I would agree with that. And I would say, 

really, the political warfare campaigns that we see China and Russia waging against us are, in fact, efforts to weaken us, to weaken 

our morale, to divide us, because what they actually fear is, you 

know, that the vibrancy of our democracy. It is a reflection in a 

way of the weakness of the authoritarian political model. 

They see us as trying to overthrow them. Whether we are actually doing it or not, our culture, our society is—offers such an example that others within their borders, without any backing by the 

U.S. Government, seek to emulate it. 

So I think the authoritarian political system is a deep critical 

vulnerability for those—— 

Mr. LAMBORN. Okay. I hear what you are saying. I agree a thousand percent, but you are really getting more into soft power. And 

I agree that that is vital and is our ace up the sleeve, you might 

say. But I want to talk about hard power. 

What are military vulnerabilities that these two near peers 

have? 

Mr. SCHARRE. Sure. So if I may, I think certainly in electronic 

warfare and cyberspace, they have similar vulnerabilities that 

come from any kind of digitally enabled or network system that we 

have. Those are places where we ought to be able to exploit those. 

We are a high-technology country. We should be able to be dominant in those spaces. It is going to be contested, but we should be 

able to use that space to exploit their vulnerabilities and disable 

their systems, or degrade them at least. 

I also think on the command and control side, because of the nature of being authoritarian regimes, even inside their military 

structure they are likely to have more vulnerabilities to their command and control being more brittle because their people are—they 

are likely less to trust their people and they are less likely to be 

able to take the initiative the way that U.S. personnel are going 

to be able to do. And so that is something we ought to think about 

how to exploit that in a wartime environment. 

Mr. THOMAS. Let me just take a shot at judo throwing the problem that we face from an American perspective, which is we see 

that power projection is getting tougher for us and our ability—you 

know, that our position is eroding across all domains of warfare. 

This affects us the most because we are the country that has most 

branded itself as being in the power projection business. But it is 

going to affect all countries, and it is going to affect Russia and 

China when it comes to local power projection. And this is something we can exploit. They are going to be very vulnerable as they 

try to project power beyond their borders, that they are going to 

have a lot of problems we do but at a smaller scale. 
17 

And this is something we can exploit by, you know, arming our 

allies with anti-access and area denial capabilities, by denying 

them effective use of the electromagnetic spectrum, by pinning 

them in geographically into certain areas and not letting them 

break out. These are things that we can—that we could do very effectively. 

But, again, it requires a radically different approach to warfare 

than the one we have had for the last 25 years. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Panetta. 

Mr. PANETTA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you 

for being here. Good morning. 

I come from the central coast of California. On the central coast, 

I am sure you have heard of the military institutions that we have 

there. Educational institutions such as Navy Postgraduate School 

[NPS] as well as DLI, Defense Language Institute. And so—just to 

kind of give you a foundation of what my questions are going to 

be focused on. 

You know, obviously you have talked a lot about operational, 

what we can do in the future for operations. But you also mentioned a couple words like cultural resistance, I think you used, 

and multidimensional efforts as well. Narrowing it down in regards 

to our educational investments, would that be a part of these 

multidimensional efforts? Would it be a part of helping the cultural 

change? And if so, what types of investments should we have in our 

military educational systems? 

Dr. MAHNKEN. So as somebody who spent a good chunk of his career in the professional military education system, it won’t surprise 

you to hear—look, I think professional military education is crucial 

to this. And I was heartened by the language on that in the summary of the National Defense Strategy that was released the other 

week. 

Look, I think both at sort of at the strategic level and understanding the character and conduct of war, understanding strategy, 

understanding foreign cultures, and becoming true military professionals, education is crucial. I think that, you know, part of the cultural change that needs to come about can come about through professional military education. 

When it comes to—and you mentioned DLI. I mean, I think the 

Defense Department does about as good a job as can be done. Educating adults in foreign languages, I think we need to—we need to 

do that. We also need to look for ways to bring in folks, heritage 

speakers of foreign language, to kind of get them along that—along 

that path. I think we should explore things like bonuses or—either 

requirements or bonuses for ROTC [Reserve Officer Training 

Corps] scholarship recipients, cadets, midshipmen to take on hard 

foreign languages, because the earlier you learn a foreign language, 

the better off you are. 

So I think education clearly is key to our strategic effectiveness. 

Mr. PANETTA. Thank you. 

Mr. SCHARRE. Thank you. You know, I think that these institutions can be really vital in helping to encourage service members 

to experiment, think outside the box about new ways of warfighting. And I will give two examples. At NPS in particular, there 
18 

is a really incredible experimentation going on on swarming warfare tactics. People that—things that no one has really thought 

about before now that you have robotic swarms, and we have demonstrated them over 100 small drones flying together as part of a 

swam, how do you fight with that? 

How do you command and control that entity? How do you 

counter someone else’s swarm? What is the right tactics for that? 

NPS is doing both physical and then modeling in simulation computer experiments trying to figure that out. 

But, you know, more broadly I frequently get service members 

reaching out to me from these institutions when they are there 

working in courses. Give them a role, I think like asking questions 

about, hey, I am writing a paper on some new concept for warfare, 

whether it is robotics or something else. 

And, you know, hey, are there things I should look into? Are 

there things I should be reading about? Can you give me some 

thoughts on this? So it gives service members an opportunity to 

then take a step back in their careers, think about history, think 

about broad patterns of innovation, and then start to apply that 

kind of thinking to the future of warfare and their roles going forward, which is great. 

Mr. THOMAS. Yeah, I would just—I think cross-pollination is really critical. And, you know, I think back to a previous revolution in 

warfare in the 19th century, and there were leaders like Bismarck 

and Prussia who happened to also be in the railroad business, and 

they were able to take lessons they were learning from the commercial sector and bring them in and transform warfare. That is 

a role that professional military educational institutions like Naval 

Postgraduate School can play today. And it really is a national 

gem. 

I would say the other thing that is really important is IMET, but 

it is our International Military Educational and Training programs, 

and bringing ally and partner military leaders to the United States 

where they are going to interact on a daily basis with rising U.S. 

military officers and NCOs [noncommissioned officers]. 

But they are building personal connections that will last a lifetime. But it is also the cross-pollination that—you know, the 

United States doesn’t have a monopoly on all the great military 

ideas, and there is a lot we can learn from some of these students 

coming through our programs. 

Mr. PANETTA. Great. Thank you. 

I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Wittman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thanks so 

much for joining us. 

I want to begin, Mr. Thomas, with you and go specifically to Secretary Mattis’ National Defense Strategy where he notes that rapid 

technological advancements and the changing character of war are 

going to force the U.S. to change and modernize more quickly than 

our adversaries, which is sort of the beginning of where things are 

going. 

He did mention specifically directed energy and hypersonics as 

some of those areas where we really have to make those advancements. And in my district in Virginia, the Dahlgren Naval Support 
19 

Facility is doing a lot of work within those particular areas. Let me 

get your perspective on what we face as far as emerging capabilities with our adversaries, things like unmanned systems. Give me 

your perspective on what we are seeing now where we are going 

to have actually the employment of a more modern laser onboard 

the USS Portland, LPD–27, in an upcoming deployment. 

Give me your perspective there in countering what Mr. Scharre 

had emphasized or talked about, and that is drone swarming. Are 

those weapon systems, like a laser, able to do that? And how quickly do you think we can get a weapon system like the railgun deployed so it can actually be there to counter what we see as emerging technologies from our adversaries? 

Mr. THOMAS. Thank you, Congressman. 

A great question on all of these technologies. And if I could, just 

broadening directed energy out from just thinking about lasers, as 

you rightly do in your remarks. It is, in fact, also about hypervelocity projectiles using railgun or powder gun technologies. These are 

coming along at a much faster pace than anyone would have anticipated certainly a decade ago. And they are seen as technologically 

feasible. 

There are some technical challenges in terms of improving the 

two performance for a greater number of shots, as you know. But 

I think these are things that will be worked out within a very few 

years. 

These have the potential to radically transform the offensedefense equation, to make defense much more cost-effective against 

incoming salvos, attacks on our naval forces, on our ground forces, 

on air bases, and the like. So that is a really big deal, especially 

as we think about how we buy back some of the value of our overseas bases or how we are able to push our naval forces further into 

contested environments in the future. 

With respect to hypersonics, this is one where we obviously are 

making big investments, but so are our competitors. And, again, we 

have a much more level playing field in terms of basic science and 

technology research, especially vis-a-vis China, than we did in the 

Cold War. So we are going to have to adopt, I think, a very different competitive technological strategy than we have had in the 

past. 

Thank you. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you. I think that is a great point, especially 

on the acquisition side. You know, they start with a blank sheet 

of paper, no limitations. Our piece of paper is full of noes. No, you 

can’t do this; no, you can’t do that. We have find a porthole through 

there to find a way to get to yes. So I think those are great points. 

Dr. Mahnken, can we go to you? I want to talk a little bit about 

Chinese Navy capability. We see today they are retiring their legacy combatants. They are now building very capable multi-mission 

ships that can—that can compete in an anti-ship environment with 

great self-defense systems, anti-submarine, anti-air systems there. 

And now as you see their deployments are not just there in their 

near territorial waters. 

They are projecting power into the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic 

Ocean, the Baltics. And they are sustaining those operations there, 

something that is extraordinarily significant, I think, as far as 
20 

what we are looking at. Obviously we are trying to also match with 

modernized naval capability. 

Give me your perspective on where we are as the United States 

Navy versus the capability in the Chinese Navy and remembering 

that it is not just quantity there, they have many more ships than 

we have, but they are also now putting in that quality perspective 

which we used to have the advantage. And give me your perspective on where we are in countering China looking at our naval 

forces today. 

Dr. MAHNKEN. Thank you, Congressman. It is an excellent question. 

I would say, look, actually, China conceptually is building three 

navies. So there is this sea-denial, anti-access ‘‘navy,’’ and I use the 

quotes because it goes beyond the People’s Liberation Army Navy 

to include their anti-ship ballistic missile systems and other capabilities that reside outside the navy. 

There is a sort of a softer soft-power navy that is a humanitarian 

assistance, disaster relief, friendly navy. 

And then, as you point out, there is increasingly a power projection navy. And that is increasingly equipped with modern surface 

combatants with some pretty impressive capabilities. 

You know, the U.S. Navy has been the world’s dominant navy for 

decades. I think in a number of areas, we have rested on our laurels a little bit, and particularly in anti-ship capabilities, anti-ship 

cruise missiles and so forth. So I think we find ourselves a little 

bit of a step behind. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Khanna. 

Mr. KHANNA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Scharre, I really appreciated your testimony. You say that 

one of the reasons we aren’t ready is, quote, ‘‘It is not for a lack 

of money,’’ and you point out correctly that we spend more money 

than all of our adversaries. As you well know, we spend more than 

the next eight countries combined. And you say what we really 

need is sufficient strategic agility. 

And my question is, in the part of the country where I come 

from, in Silicon Valley, if you have a company that is getting 

money and is getting three times more than its competitor and isn’t 

executing, the last thing you want to do is give them more money. 

That would be the last thing you would want to do to get reform. 

What is your view on giving more money? And do you think that 

the principles in the private sector should apply to the military? 

Mr. SCHARRE. Yeah, I mean, there is some degree of—I would 

say that more important than the quantity of money is budgetary 

stability, right? If we can get budgetary stability for the Department, then we can live with a budget probably in the mid-600s, 

provided that there is sufficient reform on cutting programs you no 

longer need and orienting that money towards future threats. But 

I am most concerned about things to speed our acquisitions process 

so that we can bring things to market faster. 

I do think, you know, to your questions about whether or not the 

same principles should apply, there are obviously very fundamental 

differences. The Pentagon has a large board of directors, in the 

form of Congress, right, who all have veto power over what the 
21 

Pentagon spends on, and, you know, defense industry has a big influence, as well, that is different. 

But I am more concerned about how do we get these decisions 

done faster, because if we keep building things on these decadeslong time horizons, we are always going to be building things too 

late. 

Mr. KHANNA. I agree with you on stability, and I know Chairman 

Thornberry has been an eloquent voice on stability. And I don’t 

think there is anyone in Congress who disagrees that we should 

not be funding the Pentagon on continuing resolutions. 

But I would be curious from our other witnesses, as well. You 

know, I mean, obviously, we have the best military in the world. 

I don’t think anyone would say that our troops aren’t more resilient, aren’t more creative and competent than the Russian or Chinese troops. We have the best military leaders in the world. 

So I guess what I am struggling to understand is: We are outspending folks three to one. We clearly have better character and 

resilience in our troops. What is going wrong? I mean, why are we 

not three times more effective? 

Dr. MAHNKEN. First off, Congressman, and with all due respect, 

I don’t know whether we have the world’s best military when it 

comes to the types of contingencies that I described. What basis 

would we have to judge that? Because the scenario that I laid out 

was literally unprecedented. I don’t know. And so I think we 

shouldn’t reassure ourselves falsely that, ‘‘Oh, yes, we have the 

world’s best military,’’ when the truth is we don’t know. 

When it comes to comparisons between the military and private 

industry, I think those are useful. Let’s think about personnel. In 

private industry, you can hire and fire more or less at will. When 

it comes to the military, you can’t just get, you know, a skilled aviator off the street; it takes time to train that person up. And then, 

because of the retirement system, because of all sorts of benefits, 

you are paying for that person throughout his or her life. And that 

is about 50 percent of the budget right there. 

When it comes to acquisition, when I used to work with thenDeputy Secretary Gordon England, he used to say, what is a defense contractor? And he said, a defense contractor is anybody who 

is willing to put up with the mountain of paperwork that was the 

Federal Acquisition Regulations [FAR]. That is a defense contractor. Our competitors get to deal with everybody else. 

So, in private industry, if you are not dealing with the Federal 

Government, you have a lot more flexibility. You don’t have to adhere to the FAR. 

Mr. KHANNA. I just want to give Mr. Thomas—— 

Dr. MAHNKEN. Yeah. 

Mr. KHANNA [continuing]. 30 seconds. 

Dr. MAHNKEN. But just a couple differences. 

Mr. KHANNA. Thanks. 

Mr. THOMAS. You know, I think here is the fundamental issue, 

is that we almost have to take a back-to-basics approach for the 

Department of Defense, that since the creation of the Department 

in 1947 we have grown the bureaucracy and we have grown the enterprise, but if we are fundamentally in the business of projecting 

power—that is, visiting violence on those who would do us harm 
22 

as a deterrent or in conflict—the number of arrowheads in our system has just shrunk massively over time. We have fewer and fewer 

weapons; we have fewer and fewer delivery systems. 

But we have more and more of a support structure for all of that, 

which costs a lot of money. And, at the same time, where have we 

seen the biggest cost growth over the last 15 years? It has been in 

personnel costs. And when we talk about increasing the size of the 

force or anything else, it means that our downstream costs are 

going to be that much more in terms of compensation and benefits. 

So that is something where we want to try to arrest that cost 

growth and, again, buy back some of our weapons and delivery system capabilities, at the pointy end of the spear. 

Mr. KHANNA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

As we discuss this, I just kind of globally go back to the fact that 

there are over 7 billion people in the world, 300 million Americans—325 million Americans. Less than 1 percent serve in the 

Armed Forces. And I think that not just U.S. security but the 

whole world’s security is contingent upon those men and women 

and the partnerships that we have with other countries in the 

world. 

Certainly, if a country partners with China or with Russia, they 

have to worry about China and Russia taking them over, but they 

don’t have to worry about that with the United States. And so a 

focus on those partnerships with our allies and alliances and 

friends is key to that security. 

One of the things I am concerned about, as I look at the fight 

with Russia and China and the expansion of the battlefields into, 

specifically, space with China and Russia—cyber is something that 

smaller countries can compete in, which makes it, I think, even 

more difficult than space—but it is the cost of space and the dependence on space and our Department of Defense’s desire to move 

more and more to dependence on space, the cost of space and the 

technology. And if we become too dependent on it, if China and 

Russia find a way to break or to defeat us in space, what vulnerabilities does that leave us with if we no longer maintain our existing system? 

So could each of you quickly discuss the risk on our DOD becoming too dependent on space and what alternative approaches could 

operate in conjunction or in addition to space? 

Mr. SCHARRE. I think you are right, sir. We are already too dependent on space. And right now the Department’s answer has 

been to basically double down on that, on what is right now our 

asymmetric advantage in space but also our Achilles’ heel. 

The real solution? There are steps we can take in space to make 

our space architecture more resilient, but we also need to be building capabilities outside of space that give us additional redundancy 

and resiliency. 

The Department has for several years been looking at a Joint 

Aerial Layer Network that provides similar communications, position, navigation, and timing, passive GPS signals, through an aerial architecture. You are never going to get the same sort of peacetime-level cost-effectiveness that you might get with satellites, but 
23 

you might get better wartime resiliency because you can move aircraft around in a way that satellites move through predictable orbits and are easy to target. 

And so, you know, one of challenges has been, from an organizational standpoint inside DOD, you have offices inside the policy 

shop, inside the acquisition shop, in OSD [Office of the Secretary 

of Defense], and then in the services that are in charge of space. 

You don’t have people in charge of, sort of, global C4ISR [command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] the same way, which is what you really 

need, is sort of building a global architecture in multiple domains. 

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Thomas, could you speak briefly to that? 

And, Mr. Mahnken, I am going to change the question for you. 

Mr. THOMAS. I think Paul put his finger on it, in terms of how 

we organize is a major part of the problem, in terms of thinking 

more about portfolios and about how you balance risk to provide 

the same enterprise service, whether it is surveillance or communications or position, navigation, and timing. The—— 

Mr. SCOTT. Okay. Thank you. I am sorry. 

Dr. Mahnken, the 2017 Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments’ report, there is a statement in there—‘‘Force Planning 

for the Era of Great Power Competition.’’ There is a call for the development of low-probability-of-intercept/low-probability-of-detection communications and secure data links to create ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance], strike, electronic warfare, and airborne battle management, command, control, communications, and intelligence systems. 

It goes on to say, ‘‘Networks should support communications between fifth- and fourth-generation aircraft and direct coordination 

with sea-based assets and ground fires units. The ability to be integrated into a network of sensors and shooters should be a baseline 

requirement for all future combat aircraft.’’ 

Do you share your colleagues’ recommendations in regard to the 

need to develop airborne battle management systems with network 

communications to support strikes in contested areas? 

Dr. MAHNKEN. Yes, absolutely. 

Mr. SCOTT. Do you see current systems designed from the start 

with open mission systems architecture, such as JSTARS [Joint 

Surveillance Target Attack Radar System] recap [recapitalization], 

as a vehicle for rapid application of these concepts? 

Dr. MAHNKEN. I do. And we need to have the incentives for an 

open architecture and incentives for interoperability kind of built 

in from the beginning and not added or sprinkled on at the end. 

Mr. SCOTT. Gentlemen, thank you. I am down to about 15 seconds. Mr. Thomas, sorry you got cut a little short. But thank you 

for your service to the country. 

And, with that, I yield the remainder of my time. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Larsen. 

Mr. LARSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

It seems to me that this hearing is mis-titled. It should be 

‘‘Readying the U.S. Military for Present Warfare,’’ that we are already past this discussion. We are not talking about the future of 

warfare; we are talking about—you all have testified about what 
24 

we ought to be doing right now, not what we ought to be doing in 

10 years. And we are a little, I guess, behind the eight ball. 

And I am just wondering—and I have gone through your testimony, but—how we stumbled into great power competition. Ten 

years ago, it was near peer. Even 5 years ago, it was near peer. 

It seems like there is this progression of titles we are moving towards, talking about the other folks in the world, from nonexistent 

or folks who were on the downhill slide, to near peer, and now they 

are even with us. 

Would you argue that, say, China and Russia are even in terms 

of power with us? Are they great? Are we one of the great powers 

in the great power competition? Are we talking about others in 

this? Or are we all at the same level? 

One at a time. 

Mr. THOMAS. Well, I guess the place to start is by talking about 

some of the asymmetries between the great powers and that the 

biggest is that, when we talk about China and Russia, we are normally talking about local theater competitions. We are not talking 

about a global competition—— 

Mr. LARSEN. Right. 

Mr. THOMAS [continuing]. As we were in the Cold War. This isn’t 

the Soviet Union. 

But what we see is that they have favorable time/distance 

asymmetries in terms of local power projection. Their ability to go 

and grab something before we can dispatch forces to react and 

counter them is far greater than it was dealing with countries like 

Iraq or even North Korea on the Korean Peninsula. 

And so I think that is a big difference. I mean, the United States 

has the burden of providing global security, that we have to be in 

multiple theaters of the world policing at once and, at the same 

time, policing the global commons and protecting the homeland. 

For these countries, they are able to really focus their attentions. 

We also assume that, in most cases, they have the initiative, that 

it is not the United States that is starting some war in Europe or 

in Asia, but we potentially are going to have to react and come to 

the aid of an ally. 

Mr. LARSEN. Can I, before I—I need to move on to a different 

point related to that point. Would you argue that is one of the reasons why we spend X times what Russia or China spends and yet 

we can call them a great power, even though we are outspending 

countries by, you know, the last previous eight countries’ defense 

budgets? 

Dr. MAHNKEN. Yeah, I think the comparison oftentimes is a false 

one. Again, we have global interests. Competitors have regional interests, by and large, although sometimes getting larger. You 

know, we pay. We pay professionals. They don’t always have to. 

Too often, when we get to these gross comparisons of defense 

spending, I just think it is apples and oranges. 

Mr. LARSEN. All right. Do we buy apples and oranges for our Defense Department? 

Paul, if you could address—and just even getting down to the 

R&D [research and development] issue and the focus on R&D. You 

testified in front of us a few weeks back on some of this. We are 
25 

trying to do everything, but do we do R&D well? Are we investing 

in the right things? 

If you looked at the appropriations we are voting on today, when you look at the President saying he wants $716 billion, is all that 

for more steel and, you know, more platforms that Members of 

Congress can take credit for, or is it actually in bits and bytes and 

electrons and things that we don’t see and can’t take credit for but 

is more necessary? 

Mr. SCHARRE. Yeah, I mean, I think we could do better in a couple ways. 

I think we could have more strategic plan, as a department, 

about how we invest our R&D dollars. Right now, a lot of it is bottom-up from within the services. There is value in both approaches, 

but having a more coherent strategy would, I think, benefit the Department. 

But, more importantly, there is so much innovation happening 

outside of the traditional defense sector that we need to do a better 

job of drawing that in. There are lots of U.S. companies spending 

a lot of money investing in better computer chips, better artificial 

intelligence [AI], better networking. We don’t need to try to replicate that. What we need to be able to do is to spin that technology 

in easily. 

And that is really the barrier right now, was we built up these 

walls to innovation, to bringing that kind of technology in. So we 

want to sort of tear down those walls and find ways to allow those 

companies to then work with DOD better. 

Mr. LARSEN. All right. That is fine. 

Thank you. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Byrne. 

Mr. BYRNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, there is a common concern in your written testimonies that the current structure of the U.S. industrial base is illsuited to produce the assets necessary for the U.S. to initiate and 

sustain a great power war. 

You are talking about something I know a little bit about, and 

that is shipbuilding. The Navy shipbuilding industry is a good example of our declining industrial base. At the end of the Second 

World War, the United States had 8 public shipyards, along with 

64 private shipyards. Since the 1940s, there has been a nearly 90 

percent decline in shipyards. We now only have seven private shipyards building our fleet. 

Additionally, the latest census indicated that only 0.3 percent of 

high school students pursue vocational or technical education, 

which you need to know to make ships. This lack of supply can 

hardly keep up with the demand of skilled-labor jobs in the civilian 

labor force, especially in the shipbuilding industry. 

Since we have reached a period where we have lost the institutional knowledge on great power wars and apparent lack of priority 

for the U.S. industrial base, what would be your advice to the Department of Defense on how to protect and catalyze our defense industrial base to prepare it for a future conflict? 

Dr. MAHNKEN. Congressman, that is an excellent question. 

So, you know, I think for too long we have been focused in the 

defense industrial base on efficiency, not in really determining 
26 

what it would take to yield the capabilities that we will need in 

war, including the types of war we are talking about here. And 

that may not be the most efficient route. I think that type of assessment needs to go on. 

I think also, as an extension of what I was saying earlier with 

that deep conversation that needs to go on with our allies, we need 

to have that conversation as well. You know, are there ways that 

we can deeply collaborate when it comes to our industrial bases, or 

do we have to have all that capability resident in a particular sector, resident in the United States? It really is time—it is overdue— 

to have that type of a conversation. 

Mr. BYRNE. Well, let me ask you in maybe a little bit different 

way. Should it be a priority of the Department of Defense to maintain and rebuild our industrial base for the various assets that we 

need? 

Dr. MAHNKEN. Congressman, I think it is time, but I also think 

we need to look beyond that, meaning there is—the defense industrial base of 2018 is not the defense industrial base of 1945. And 

the defense industrial base of 2030 is, I would venture to say, not 

the defense industrial base of 2018. 

So we need to be looking not only at the traditional sectors, I 

think which will endure, shipbuilding being clearly one of them, 

but we also need to look to adjacent sectors, that if we were having 

this hearing in 2030 people would be talking about the defense industrial base, but we don’t consider part of that base today. 

And where I have concerns there are foreign acquisitions of some 

key companies in some of these cutting-edge areas—— 

Mr. BYRNE. Right. 

Dr. MAHNKEN [continuing]. That may be undermining our lead 

in some of those areas that are just adjacent to today’s defense industrial base. 

Mr. BYRNE. Well, let me make this suggestion. In a prior life, I 

was the chancellor of the 2-year college system in Alabama and the 

chair of the Workforce Planning Council. And I was charged at one 

point with building up the labor force for a shipyard that was 

building from the ground up. 

Getting people with those skills is extraordinarily difficult. First 

of all, you have to find the people that are willing to take the training and do the work, and it is hard work. And, secondly, you have 

to get them not just sort of the book-learning but the actual experience of doing it to where they get to be proficient at it. 

And so this is not something you push a button and say, ‘‘Hey, 

we need to hire a thousand shipyard workers,’’ and the next day 

you have them. It takes years for those people to build up to the 

point where they are performing at the level that we are going to 

need them to. 

And I think about World War II. In my hometown, they were capable of turning out one ship a week. Now, these were Liberty 

ships. You know what those were. But we don’t build Liberty ships 

anymore. We build extremely sophisticated ships. And so the level 

of expertise we need and the ability to turn them out, there is no 

way we could go back and do what we did in World War II. We 

don’t have the workforce, we don’t have the shipyards, particularly 

given the sophistication we are talking about. 
27 

So it seems to me we ought to have a national discussion about 

how we have an industrial base, period, but, secondly, how we have 

an industrial base that can meet the needs of the new assets that 

we are going to have for the future warfare. 

Dr. MAHNKEN. I agree. 

Mr. BYRNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Stefanik. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

This is a follow-up to Mr. Byrne’s questions. 

And, Dr. Mahnken, you mentioned what we are going to be talking about 30 years from now will be very different than today. 

We just held an Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee hearing looking at China’s use of emerging technologies. And 

one of the themes that resonated was the need to increase and sustain our own science and technology innovation and investments. 

As an example, high performance in quantum computing was highlighted as an area where the Chinese are proving to be more reliable investment partners than the U.S. for research, which could 

significantly degrade our ability to compete. 

So I have two questions related to that. 

The first is, for each of you, what critical technologies should we 

be investing in, and are we investing enough in these areas? Some 

that come to mind are quantum, artificial intelligence and machine 

learning, nanotechnology, robotics, even gene editing and synthetic 

biology. That is question one. 

Question two is: Any strategic areas of concern where you would 

recommend a rapid acceleration of development so that we are better postured for that 10-, 20-, 30-year outlook that you noted, Dr. 

Mahnken? 

So I will start with you. 

Dr. MAHNKEN. I think, actually, your list is a good one, and I 

think that is the right list. And I think the nature of R&D is, in 

general, within limits, the more resources, the better, because you 

don’t know what is going to pay off, when it is going to pay off. 

To take the example of directed energy that was raised earlier, 

directed energy has reliably been sort of 5 or 10 years out for my 

adult professional career, except I think now we are actually at a 

stage where we are getting there. So forecasting breakthroughs can 

be difficult. So I think more resources are needed for those areas. 

I think in terms of areas where we may be falling behind, many 

of the same areas. I would put hypersonics in there as well—I 

think that is an area of concern—AI, most certainly; and quantum, 

most certainly, as well. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Mr. Thomas. 

Mr. THOMAS. Yeah, I think that is a great list that you have got. 

A couple things. One is that, during the Cold War, the United 

States was able to sustain technological leads across the board. We 

just ran up everything. I don’t know if we are going to have the 

fiscal luxury of doing that on the competitions that are coming, so 

we are going to have to be far more selective. I think your list is 

an excellent one in terms of how we think about perhaps narrowing 

scope. 

I think the other is really think about what are the applications, 

practically, in two ways. One, how are they going to change the 
28 

sources of national wealth in the future? How do you get rich as 

you look out 30 years from some of these technologies? And what 

is the impact of that on our broader society and economy? But then 

there is the more limited question of what are the military applications going to be, and how is this potentially going to change the 

way wars are fought? 

And in a number of these technologies—quantum, for instance— 

it really happens across the board. It changes our ability to sense, 

it is going to change communications, it is going to change computation and in ways that could overthrow, kind of, the existing 

warfare regime that we have today, with supersensitive sensors 

that can detect magnetic anomalies and things like that that are 

really beyond our scope today. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Mr. Scharre. 

Mr. SCHARRE. Yes, ma’am. So you heard some of my views on 

this in the last hearing. I think that if I had to choose to prioritize, 

I would focus things in information-based technologies. Those are 

things where we are seeing most rapid advances, and there is a lot 

of intersection and synergy among them—relationships between, 

for example, artificial intelligence being able to then process large 

amounts of data and having effects on, for example, synthetic biology. 

That is not to say that other areas like directed energy, hypersonics, they are not important. They are important. DOD needs to 

invest there because we are not seeing commercial investments in 

those places. Right? Google is not going to go build a hypersonic 

weapon; we have to do that. But I think we are more likely to see 

the payoff in information-based technologies. They are more likely 

to mature fastest and change warfare most significantly. 

Ms. STEFANIK. I have 30 seconds left. 

You know, as we consider making sure that we are maintaining 

an edge in 21st-century technologies, I am concerned about our 

ability to enact national-level whole-of-society plans. Obviously, 

China has a distinct advantage just in their top-down, whole-ofgovernment approach. 

What can we do to improve our national-level coordination plans 

when it comes to this technological development? 

I am almost out of time. You can follow up with the record on 

that. 

The CHAIRMAN. Important question that we need to talk more 

about, because we see what others are doing. 

Mr. Hice. 

Mr. HICE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

And as the newest member of this committee, I want to thank 

each of you for your expertise and what you bring to the table 

today. It has been extremely insightful and helpful to me personally. 

The Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy actually 

states that the current bureaucratic approach, centered on exacting 

thoroughness and minimizing risk above all else, is proving to be 

increasingly unresponsive. 

Interesting to me how they have raised concern over a culture of 

minimizing risk above all else. Would you share that same concern? Each of you. 
29 

Dr. MAHNKEN. Yes. 

Mr. THOMAS. Yes. 

Mr. SCHARRE. Yeah, absolutely. 

If I could just give one example. If you go look, for example, at 

the number of people working on the Joint Strike Fighter program, 

okay, giant program. You got people doing it—you got engineers, 

you got people building the thing, you got people down on the floor 

constructing it. But then you have people sort of checking everyone, 

right? Just managing the program, supervising things. What is 

their role? It is to keep costs down. But they are adding to cost, 

right? 

And so this gets to this risk aversion that we have in the Department that ends up slowing things down, adding cost, and adding 

red tape. 

Mr. HICE. Okay. Well, you bring up a good point then. What 

other risks are, in itself, embedded within a culture of avoiding risk 

above all else? 

Mr. THOMAS. Well, so one of the things that I think Paul is getting to is that the testing regime for systems is one of the things 

that really slows us down. 

Industry is amazing. I mean, we can prototype advanced technological systems in a question of months. But going from 0.9 version 

of a system to the 1.0 version that has a user’s manual with it and 

has been fully tested and all the kinks have been worked out, that 

takes years. And that is one of the things that is really slowing us 

down. 

Having more of a prototyping mindset and actually pushing more 

prototypes out into the field faster, systems that we can experiment 

with. And, you know, the Navy developed the X–47B as an experimental prototype. It now is being retired. That is a system that actually still has lots of life in it. We have made a tremendous investment. And that is one where we could be out there experimenting 

or we could use it for the MQ–25 program, to begin training aircrews now so that they will be ready to accept the MQ–25 when 

it comes on line, as an example. 

Mr. HICE. Okay. 

Dr. MAHNKEN. And I would agree with that example. I mean, 

there is a case where the American taxpayer has already invested 

significant money in a capability, and not only is it being retired 

but may even be dismantled. It makes no sense. 

I think the biggest risk in a risk-averse culture is the risk of not 

having the capability we need when we need it. 

My father was involved in the Atlas ballistic missile program. 

You know, they were given a target, to get a capability in the field 

to defend the United States. All else was secondary to that. And 

they went—herculean efforts, a lot of failures along the way, and 

it produced the first intercontinental ballistic missile to defend the 

United States. 

We can still do that, but so many of the incentives that we face 

today are 180 degrees out from back when we were truly serious 

about these things, when we faced an existential threat and needed 

to respond to it. 
30 

Mr. SCHARRE. If I could just—so I think, you know, one of the 

things that is really essential is that Congress looks at putting the 

right incentives in place, sir. 

So, if you go to, like, a venture capital firm, you know, they understand that a lot of their investments are going to fail, and that 

is what they are betting on, is they are going to take risk, right? 

And they are looking for the one that is going to pay off big. 

We have the opposite structure. So, if you look at this example 

that my two colleagues mentioned about an X–47, if the Navy were 

to go ahead and do this, they would likely get a lot of heat from 

Congress, right? Because you would be saying, ‘‘Well, you got this 

one program over here. You got this other program over here. It 

looks redundant. What are you doing?’’ 

The smart thing, I agree, would be to continue to keep this investment we have made in these demonstration aircraft, use them 

for the Navy or the Air Force, get some mileage out of this, and 

be able to do interesting things, be able to take risks. Do a demonstration, and maybe it does not work, and that is okay, because 

we are learning from that process. But it requires kind of the political top cover to say, ‘‘Go forth and do.’’ 

Mr. HICE. Okay. I appreciate those answers. 

Let me transition real quickly. You mentioned earlier one of the 

vulnerabilities is space. I would guess, probably, with the emphasis 

we place now on cyber, that is also an area we have to focus on. 

So, with that in mind, what capabilities should we really be investing in in these areas? 

Dr. MAHNKEN. As a country, we are undergoing a commercial 

revolution in space. So we are actually, in some ways, better positioned than anybody to take advantage of it. DOD needs to take 

advantage of that. 

And, conversely, you know, as we are dependent in space, as 

China is increasing its space capability, China is becoming more 

dependent on space as well. 

So I think we actually have real opportunities to turn the tables 

when it comes to vulnerability in space. 

Mr. HICE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Hartzler. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Scharre, in your written testimony, you state that one of the 

priority investment areas for airpower is to maximize the rate of 

production for the B–21 bomber once it goes into production. 

And we have heard testimony from the Air Force that it needs 

a minimum of 100 B–21 bombers. So is this number sufficient to 

meet the wide array of current and future threats? 

Mr. SCHARRE. I can’t imagine that it possibly is or that it is 

based on any kind of serious analysis. It seems like a round number that they just kind of made up, I mean, frankly. 

You know, any reasonable analysis that I have seen from outside 

experts comes up with numbers that are significantly larger than 

that. I don’t have a specific number, but it is certainly going to be 

bigger than 100. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Okay. I would agree. So, interesting. 

It was recently reported that Russia purchased 10 supersonic 

bombers. Unfortunately, while the United States was cutting the 
31 

defense budget, Russia was aggressively investing in its military 

capabilities. 

So the B–21 program remains largely classified, but how would 

you recommend we invest in our bomber fleet to ensure that our 

capabilities are not outmatched by Russia and the fleet remains a 

credible and reliable deterrent? 

Do you want to start? 

Mr. SCHARRE. Yeah, I think there are a couple things. 

The first and most important thing is we have this aircraft, the 

B–21, in development. Once it goes into production, as I said, maximize the rate of production so that we are buying as most of them 

as we can over time to start to execute this shift towards more 

longer-range aircraft. 

We want to look at things that can augment the B–21, particularly long-endurance unmanned aircraft that are stealthy, that can 

persist forward into contested areas, that can provide surveillance 

and targeting and some limited strike capability for the B–21; as 

well as then we want to look at munitions and other air-delivered 

vehicles that are onboard both of those kinds of assets—things like 

small air-launched swarms, drones that might be used for surveillance, battle damage assessment, jamming, electronic warfare, decoys, all of these things that then go into the aircraft that make 

them more effective and survivable. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. I saw in your testimony that you were also suggesting that we build more bombers that are able to take off of the 

aircraft carriers and in that realm as well. 

Mr. SCHARRE. Absolutely. We need a long-range strike aircraft off 

the aircraft carrier if it is going to remain relevant. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Uh-huh. Very good. 

I wanted to ask Mr. Thomas, you earlier talked about, when I 

came in, the record of issue—I mean, program of record issue— 

yeah—and that Congress can help push that for the small contractors. I have heard that back home, as well, many times, that that 

is an issue. 

Can you expound on that a little bit? Because you said Congress 

can help with this. What are some incentives we can do to help the 

small companies, the small innovators, and get that first program 

of record? 

Mr. THOMAS. Well, I think Congress historically has just been an 

early adapter or an early proponent of some of the technologies 

that end up being embraced by the military later but are opposed 

when they are first being proposed. 

And the Predator UAV is an example of one that ran into enormous resistance, and Congress was able to overcome that, to a 

point where people, over the last 10 years, really couldn’t get 

enough of them. When you look at the Tomahawk cruise missile, 

it was, again, one which was pushed by Congress. 

More recently, Paul was mentioning the X–47, or the idea of a 

long-range strike system from aircraft carriers, where there was a 

lot of congressional support despite resistance on the part of the 

Navy. 

If I could, just going back on the B–21 and talking about nextgeneration strike in general, when I was in the Pentagon we were 

authoring the Quadrennial Defense Review in 2006. The 2006 
32 

Quadrennial Defense Review called for fielding the next-generation 

bomber this year, 2018. We have lost close to a decade. 

And so we are behind the gun when it comes to the numbers. 

This was a well-anticipated requirement that was going to be needed, and we failed to meet that deadline. 

The other was that, when we talk about numbers, not just for 

the bomber but across the board, switching the topic and focusing 

on Russia and China, you are talking about a sea change in how 

we think about the stockpiles of our munitions and the delivery 

systems that are going to be needed. Most of the figures that were 

used to develop requirements are really driven by old scenarios 

looking at wars in the Middle East and the like. All that needs to 

be updated. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Go ahead. 

Dr. MAHNKEN. I would agree with everything that has been said. 

I would just add a couple things. 

One is, back to the continuing resolutions, I mean, I think B–21 

is a poster child for how continuing resolutions can just corrode a 

vitally important program. 

And when it comes to numbers, yeah, I think we are already, I 

think, underprojecting the bomber requirements, and so we are 

going to need to look for force multipliers, we are going to look for 

adjuncts, and I think ultimately we are going to need to look to a 

much larger production run than currently anticipated. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Agreed. Thank you. 

I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I have a few follow-up questions for you—and really appreciate 

your testimony here today—the first really relating to Ms. Stefanik’s questions about how confident or what is your level of confidence that we have a national strategy that is looking out multiple 

years. 

Dr. MAHNKEN. I think about strategy a couple different ways. I 

mean, one is a formal written strategy, the result of, you know, deliberation. And then the other is maybe a little bit more informal, 

really driven by the press of events. 

And I think what I have seen over past administrations, Democrat and Republican, is the growing urgency of dealing with great 

power challenges. And I think past administrations have come to 

that realization at different times in their time in office. 

What I would say for the current administration is they appear 

to be dealing with that up front, and I think that is commendable. 

I think the concern there is—or the possible downside is that we 

get sidetracked. 

As was previously alluded to, the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review really did, you know, preview, foreshadow many of the challenges that we face today and actually contained a very good set 

of operational challenges. It is worth looking back with 17 years of 

hindsight and asking where we are in relationship to the challenges posited in 2001. I think in each case our situation has eroded. And so I think that the situation is much more urgent today 

than it was in the past. 
33 

Mr. SCHARRE. You know, I think, ma’am, when it comes to these 

challenges and sort of a national strategy in investing in the 

science/technology base, unfortunately not only do we not have a 

strategy, the implicit strategy that I see out of this administration 

is running counter to what I think is one of the most important 

issues, which is human capital. 

And the broad sort of anti-immigration sentiment, I think, is actually quite harmful towards bringing in some of the best and 

brightest from other parts of the world and incentivizing our entrepreneurial base here. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. I appreciate that. 

I guess a follow-up question to that really is whether or not we 

have—that we are looking at this strategy and, again, where it 

falls short or does not, with the resources that we would want to 

have versus the resources that we have, and whether we are providing the opportunities to address those areas when, clearly, we 

have to deal with a whole host of issues, political as well as others, 

that impinge on our ability to have those resources. That is a tough 

one. 

Mr. THOMAS. You know, I think the strategy gets high marks in 

terms of placing emphasis on great power competition. We have 

known for quite some time that China was a rising power, and this 

has been a focus. Russia has been more of a surprise, quite frankly, 

in its behavior over the last 5 to 8 years. But we can be fairly certain that China is going to be around for a long time—not absolutely certain, but we have a good idea that China’s growth economically will continue to fuel its military developments. 

So I think this is an appropriate focus for the strategy. The real 

question, I think, for this committee and Congress as a whole is 

really about the implementation of the strategy. And what I see is, 

as Paul and Tom have already alluded to, is that there has been 

the disconnect for so long between an appreciation of the threats 

that we face, the security challenges that we face, on the one hand 

and where we are with our program of record on the other. And 

we have to find a way of closing this gap. 

Mrs. DAVIS. How much time do we have? 

Mr. THOMAS. We are out of time. I mean, we are over time. 

These are things that should have been done yesterday and they 

should have been done a decade ago. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Yeah. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. You all have mentioned it, but I have been surprised there has not been more discussion of political warfare, of— 

somebody calls it psycho-cultural warfare. 

We can prepare for great power, near peer adversaries, but it is 

not a lesser included case to deal with some of these campaigns the 

Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, even the North Koreans have 

undertaken that undermine our ability to defend ourselves or divide our alliances and so forth. 

Would each of you make whatever comments you think are most 

relevant to that aspect of warfare? 

Dr. MAHNKEN. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think it is an 

excellent topic, and it is actually a topic personally that I am 
34 

spending some time working on and hopefully will have something 

to show for it soon in terms of a publication. 

But I think it is useful to realize that, say, for both Russia and 

China, they see political warfare, whatever we want to call it, as 

an integral dimension both of peacetime competition and of war. 

We kind of hive it off, we see it as something separate, to the extent that we even pay attention to it. They really see it as integral. 

And if war is ultimately about affecting your adversary’s decisionmaking calculus and affecting your adversary’s leadership, it is integral. And, you know, so they are going about a particularly, if 

you will, authoritarian approach to political warfare. 

Now, there is an alternative tradition, and that is, if you will, 

democratic political warfare. In the old days, we used to do it passably well. We still do it, I think, subconsciously, meaning our society does it even when government doesn’t pay attention to it. But 

it clearly is an area that deserves more attention. 

I think it is also an area where we can learn from our allies. I 

think some of our allies in Europe, Australia, in some ways they 

are farther along than we are in having this national conversation 

about foreign influence, foreign attempts to manipulate them than 

we are. And I think, again, that is an area where we could deeply 

collaborate with allies and with friends. 

Mr. THOMAS. I agree with all that. 

Political warfare is not new. It was an integral component of the 

Cold War. And so, in some ways, this is more of a reawakening of 

a classic form of warfare. 

Tom is exactly right, which is our adversaries have a much more 

holistic concept of warfare, which includes both political as well as 

economic and information warfare, in addition to kinetic activities 

and the like. 

The other thing that I think is really important, especially when 

it comes to Russia and, maybe to a lesser extent, China, is a Russian conceptual rejection of a binary choice between war and peace, 

that it is seen that you are much more on a spectrum and it is a 

much more fluid concept. 

And I think that this is actually closer to the reality of what a 

great power competition is going to be than the American conception. I think this is one where we really need to rethink how we 

compete and how we essentially can frequency hop in our activities, 

as well, to match them move for move. 

And I think the last is, really, this is going to require an integrated, concerted defense effort on the part of the United States. 

And we are going to have to do a much better job of protecting our 

national hardware, critical infrastructure protection against things 

like cyber attacks and the like. But we also, I think, have neglected 

or we have allowed to atrophy, some of our civil defenses for what 

I call the national software, things like our societal cohesion and 

governance. And these are going to have to be improved in the 

coming years. 

Mr. SCHARRE. Yeah, I think Tom and Jim both hit on this, the 

central problem that the things that others are doing, if you look, 

for example, at Russia’s efforts in disinformation and propaganda 

and hacking, they fall within this gray zone between war and 
35 

peace, from our standpoint. They see it as warfare, it doesn’t fit our 

kind of paradigm, and we are caught flatfooted. 

And so, when you look at these Russian disinformation efforts, 

well, whose job is it in the U.S. Government to counter that? Is it 

the Defense Department’s? They would say, ‘‘No, it is not war,’’ 

and, frankly, I am not sure that they are the best entity to do that. 

Is it the State Department’s? Well, not the State Department as it 

exists today. The intelligence community has a role but probably 

not a public-facing one. Is it DHS’s [Department of Homeland Security’s] role? 

No one has a job for countering that, right? We don’t have an 

agency for countering that. So I do think there are some fundamental questions we need to ask ourselves sort of in terms of how 

we are going to approach that, whose job is it, what are the tools 

we need. 

I also think that—so, right now, we are basically leaving it up 

to people outside of government to even out these Russian entities 

and say, you know, Russian bots are spreading this information. So 

how does the government think about structuring itself to do that? 

There is also probably a role for legislation and regulation with 

the private sector. Just like we have legislation about material support to terrorism, probably a need for some legislation that actually 

drives private-sector incentives to cooperate with the government 

to out these actors and actually blunt their attacks. 

The CHAIRMAN. Challenging questions, and yet, as I said at the 

beginning, our adversaries aren’t waiting. Change isn’t waiting on 

us to get our act together and answer those questions. And I am 

concerned about where that leads us. 

All very interesting. Thank you all for being here. 

The hearing stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

JANUARY 30, 2018 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

JANUARY 30, 2018 

(41) 

House Armed Services Committee Chairman William M. "Mac" Thornberry 

Opening Statement - Prepared 

Full Committee Hearing on 

Readying the U.S. Military for Future Warfare 

January 30, 2018 

The committee meets today to hear perspectives on the future nature of 

warfare. 

No one can predict the future with certainty. We will inevitably face 

surprises. But we have to try to peer into the fog, looking for trends that point us 

toward where warfare is headed. History tells us that even great powers can be 

overwhelmed by change that they do not recognize and to which they do not 

adapt. Neither our adversaries nor relentless change will wait for us to catch up. 

Responding to these future indicators does not mean that we can necessarily 

walk away from more traditional capabilities. The challenge of our times-and the 

challenge of our budgets-is that we must be prepared for the full range of -from 

a strong, credible nuclear deterrent to non-kinetic influence operations-in the 

constantly evolving art and science of warfare. 

Despite the controversy, there is a lot of truth in former Secretary of Defense 

Rumsfeld 's comment that "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army 

you might want or wish to have at a later time." The military that the United States 

has depends on the decisions made by Congress as part of our constitutional 

responsibility to "raise and support," "provide and maintain" our military 

forces. Secretary Mattis has testified that the American advantage in every domain 

of warfare is eroding. That is the reality with which we must prepare for whatever 

the future brings. 

We welcome three well-qualified witnesses to help us peer into the future so 

we can better meet our duties under the Constitution to our troops and to the 

nation. 
42 

House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith 

Opening Statement - Prepared 

Full Committee Hearing on 

Readying the U.S. Military for Future Warfare 

January 30, 2018 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to welcome our witnesses today and 

to thank them for sharing their views. Their testimony will be beneficial as we 

continue to evaluate the recently released National Defense Strategy and the future 

conflicts our military could confront. 

In the future, our country will continue to face a range of national security 

challenges. The international rules-based order is threatened in a variety of ways 

by Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and violent extremist organizations, such as 

lSIL and a! Qaeda. 

The threats posed by Russia are especially concerning. Russia is seeking to 

weaken liberal democratic institutions in order to promote authoritarianism. Russia 

has meddled in electoral processes, has adopted a revanchist posture in Europe, 

used influence operations for malign intent, and systematically pursued efforts to 

undermine alliances and partnerships of which we are a part. Deterring Russia will 

require working in close cooperation with our partners and allies in Europe. We 

cannot face these threats alone. Cooperation with allies and partners will be 

essential to deter future conflict and successfully implement the National Defense 

Strategy as envisioned. 

The United States must concentrate its efforts on countering this threat. As 

the National Defense Strategy accurately asserts, long-term strategic competition 

and our national security involves much more than defense. We must adopt 

whole-of-government approaches to strengthening our defenses and meeting future 

challenges. Just as addressing violent extremism requires more than military force, 

future challenges will almost certainly continue to require addressing the political, 

economic, and social conditions that fuel them. 

Such a whole-of-government approach is essential to successfully 

implementing the National Defense Strategy's line of effort to expand partnerships 

and strengthen alliances. That said, the Administration must now demonstrate that 

alliances and partnerships are a priority at the highest levels through cooperative 

efforts, support for diplomacy and development, and by ensuring that State 

Department and USAID programs receive adequate funding. 

Further, fiscal certainty is required to successfully implement the National 

Defense Strategy and build the force to meet the challenges that the spectrum of 

capabilities future warfare may present. Long-term planning requires a reliably 

funded, comprehensive, long-term national budget. We have not yet seen the 

President's request for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2019 but, if press 
43 

speculation is accurate, it could once again exceed the budgetary caps imposed by 

the Budget Control Act of2011 (the BCA). 

I continue to believe that Congress should eliminate sequestration and lift 

the BCA caps. I also believe that defense dollars should not come at the expense 

of the non-defense accounts. As I've said before, investments in diplomatic efforts, 

foreign assistance programs, and emergency preparedness are just as important to 

our national security as traditional defense spending. We also need to invest in 

infrastructure, research and innovation, energy solutions, education, health care, 

and many other facets of enduring national strength. 

If we truly care about making sure that our troops have enough money, we 

need to make tough budget choices. If the national defense strategy exceeds the 

amount of money we have, the ones left holding the bag are our troops. They are 

the ones who are asked to train and execute missions that they are not adequately 

resourced and equipped to perform. As but one example, the $1.2 trillion nuclear 

weapons enterprise expansion is devoid of any budget realism or realistic planning. 

When you look at the national defense strategy along with all of the government 

programs that the public wants funded, they are beyond the amount of money that 

we have. 

As we look to the future, we need review our investments and take actions 

that will yield savings or raise revenues. We have a duty to manage our country's 

resources responsibly in fielding an effective military. We must invest wisely when 

it comes to national security and take a hard look at spending. Our overall 

strategic approach must coherently match our national security goals with the 

resources necessary to support them. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses. 
44 

January 30, 2018 

Statement by Thomas G. Mahnken 

President and CEO, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments 

Chairman Thornberry, Ranking Member Smith, and distinguished members of the 

Committee: thank you for your invitation to appear before you today to discuss the 

need to prepare the U.S. military for the challenges of future war. 

This is a vitally important topic. In recent years it has become apparent that we are 

living in a world characterized by peacetime competition between the United States, 

China, and Russia. Both the National Security Strategy and the National Defense 

Strategy have rightfully emphasized this. 

Of course, competition is not the same thing as conflict. Nor does competition 

necessarily lead to conflict. It must be admitted, however, that in addition to the reality 

of great-power competition, we face an increasing possibility of great-power war. The 

possibility is remote, but not inconceivable, and it is growing. What was once a 

hypothetical future contingency is now a real, and present, danger. 

This is significant for three reasons. First, and most obviously, the consequences of a 

war between the United States and China or Russia would be enormous. It would be 

one of the most consequential events of the 21st century, with implications for world 

order. Second, great power conflict is largely outside the professional experience of 

senior civilian policy makers and military leaders. It has been a quarter century since 

we have thought seriously about great-power war: a professional lifetime in the 

military and civil service. Much of the expertise that we once possessed- in 

government, the policy community, and academia - is gone. 
45 

Third, the armed forces that the United States and its allies possess today were 

developed for very different circumstances than we face today and will face in the 

future. While the United States was focused on defeating insurgents in Iraq and 

Afghanistan, Russia and China were focused on acquiring capabilities to defeat us. As a 

result, we find ourselves a step behind in a number of key warfighting areas. 

Thus for the first time in decades, we face the need to think seriously about greatpower war. Indeed, I believe that that the requirements of great-power war should be 

the most important test of the adequacy of our force structure and posture. 

A war between the United States and China or Russia would literally be without 

precedent. It would feature adversaries armed with nuclear weapons and precision 

strike systems and would likely include operations not only on land, in the air, and on 

and under the seas, but also in space and cyberspace. Such a war would likely look 

much different than recent wars. 

• It might be short, particularly if an adversary were able to achieve a fait 

accompli, but might just as well be protracted, particularly if the United States 

and its allies achieve initial success. 

• It would likely feature high expenditure of weapon systems and munitions and 

could result in high attrition, and consequently the need for social and industrial 

mobilization to support the war. 

• Nor would the U.S. homeland necessarily be a sanctuary. It would likely feature 

non-kinetic and likely kinetic attacks on the United States as well as enemy 

forces deployed off our coasts and potentially near our borders. 

• It would likely include efforts to undermine our willingness and ability to fight 

by sowing discord and exploiting cleavages in our society. 

• It would also likely feature military operations in space against U.S. and allied 

satellites. 

• And it could ultimately lead to the disruption of the global economic system. 

What are the sorts of things that we need to do to prepare for such a war, if only to 

convince a potential aggressor of that it would be fruitless to take on the United States 

and its allies and thus enhance deterrence? 

First, we need to field armed forces that possess depth and resilience to be able to fight, 

accept damage, and recover. Today, our forces Jack readiness and are in dire need of 

modernization. Moreover, from the bottom to the top, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, 

and Marines have grown used to fighting terrorists and insurgents and are unfamiliar 

with the challenges of great-power war. 
46 

Second, we need a defense industrial base, and a national security innovation base, that 

is capable of supporting protracted operations. For two decades, the watchword has 

been "efficiency" rather than "effectiveness." Moreover, in a globalized, interdependent 

world, we need to think carefully about foreign investment in strategic industries that 

bear on defense. 

Third, we need a logistical system capable of operating in contested environments. 

Getting needed men and materiel from the United States and U.S. forward bases and 

staging areas to the battlefield will be an increasing challenge. 

Fourth, we will face a growing need to defend the United States, to include our 

networks and military bases, as well as our space assets. 

Fifth, we will need to develop ways to identify and counter foreign efforts to influence 

our society, and that of our allies. Russia and China have been practicing political 

warfare on us for some time, and the magnitude of those efforts is only now becoming 

apparent. We need to develop countermeasures and responses to those efforts. 

Here and in other areas, past experience can both inform and mislead us. There are 

clearly areas where we need to re-learn lost skills, to include logistics and mobilization. 

But we should not mindlessly ape past behavior. Great-power competition in the 21st 

century will not be a replay of the Cold War, and a future great-power war will not be a 

rerun of World War II, or the never-fought World War Ill between the United States 

and the Soviet Union. Instead, we need to assess thoughtfully the similarities to and 

differences with the past and rebuild (and in some cases just build) intellectual capital 

and capabilities to deal with the era that we are in, and are likely to be in for the 

foreseeable future. 
47 

Thomas G. Mahnken 

President 

Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments 

Dr. Thomas G. Mahnken is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Strategic and 

Budgetary Assessments. 

He is a Senior Research Professor at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at The Johns 

Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and has 

served for over 20 years as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, to include tours in Iraq and 

Kosovo. 

He currently serves as a member of the Congressionally-mandated National Defense Strategy 

Commission and as a member of the Board of Visitors of Marine Corps University. His previous 

government career includes service as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning 

from 2006-2009, where he helped craft the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review and 2008 

National Defense Strategy. He served on the stafl'ofthe 2014 National Defense Panel, 2010 

Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel, and the Commission on the Intelligence 

Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. He served in the 

Defense Department's Office of Net Assessment and as a member of the Gulf War Air Power 

Survey. In 2009 he was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service 

and in 2016 the Department of the Navy Superior Civilian Service Medal. 

Dr. Mahnken is the author of Strategy in Asia: The Past, Present and Future of Regional Security 

(Stanford University Press, 2014), Competitive Strategies for the 21st Century: Theory, History, 

and Practice (Stanford University Press, 20 12), Technology and the American Way of War Since 

1945 (Columbia University Press, 2008), and Uncovering Ways of War: U.S. Intelligence and 

Foreign Military Innovation, 1918-1941 (Cornell University Press, 2002), among other works. 

Education 

B.A. in History and International Relations (summa cum laude) 

University of Southern California 

National Security Fell ow 

John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies 

MA and Ph.D in International Affairs 

Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAJS) 

Areas of Expertise 

Defense Planning 

Future Warfare 

Intelligence 

International Strategic Studies 

Strategy 
48 

TESTIMONY 

BY ..JIM THOMAS 

BEFORE THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 

..January 30, 2018 

Chairman Thornberry, Ranking ,\[ember Smith, and l\fcmbcrs of the Committee, thank you 

for your imitation to testify on the issue of readying the U.S. military for future warfare. 

While North Korea is the most acute foreign threat facing the United States and its allies at 

the moment, it is Russia and China that present the most vexing military challenges to the 

United States' global position and they will likely continue to do so over the next decade and 

beyond. I do not believe that war \Vith Russia or China is in any way inevitable, but prudence 

dictates taking actions to arrest the erosion of our military positions in Europe and the Far 

East, lest weakness encourage hegemonic appetites for further probing and expansion. In my 

testimony today, I \Vill focus on America's ongoing strategic reorientation toward great 

power competitions with Russia and China and highlight the significant implications this 

reorientation will entail. 

Over the last twenty-five years, "future warfare" connoted for many a science fiction-like 

competition with a near-peer rival that might emerge one day in the far-off future to 

challenge the United States, but such a competition was not viewed as a pressing or 

particularly serious matter. Lacking a sense of urgency, there was little impetus for the U.S. 

military to orient itself to such a challenge. Even as it fought extended wars in Iraq and 

:\fghanistan and conducted global counterterrorism operations, the U.S. military has with a 

few notable exceptions (e.g., expansion of Special Operations Porces and creation of armedreconnaissance U XV squadrons) retained the post-Cold War shape and size outlined in the 

1993 Bottom-Up Re\iew for fighting wars against mid-sized regional states like Iraq and 

North Korea. 

Over the past decade, though, the future has rapidly converged with the present. In place of 

a faceless ncar-peer competitor, China and Russia have arisen as determined rivals 

attempting to redefine the world order. The challenge Russia and China each pose is 

markedly different from the other and each will demand a tailored and differentiated 

approach to counter. Russia's military challenges stem from the Kremlin's sense of selfdecline and its attempt to reclaim some of its forn1er sphere of subjugation in its near-abroad 

while it still can. By contrast, China's military challenge is driven largely by the wealth it has 

generated as an economic powerhouse and used to acquire formidable fuil-spectnun military 

capabilities for righting what it perceives as a century of foreign humiliation. Both of these 

powers are challenging the United States and its allies at multiple levels: 

Below the threshold of armed conflict in the so-called gray zone with non-military 

and paramilitary forces, covert activities, and influence operations aimed at gradually 

shifting territorial and geopolitical realities as well as undermining foreign societal 

cohesion and governance in the twilight between peace and war; 

"\t the theater warfare level ·with advanced conventional capabilities, including 

sophisticated sensor networks, arsenals of precision-guided munitions (PGMs), cyber 
49 

and electronic warfare systems, world-class air defenses, fifth generarion fighters, 

quiet submarines, large numbers of sea-mines, and sizable arsenals of ground-based 

rocket arrillery and coastal defense missiles; and 

At the strategic level with modernized, survivable nuclear forces capable of attacking 

the U.S. homeland, and novel forms of strategic attack such as cybcr and 

counterspace warfare capabilities to hold at risk crirical infrastructure or threaten U.S. 

nuclear command and control. 

Both Russia and China assess that they have sufficiently survivable nuclear arsenals to 

preclude the possibility of disarming strikes by the United Stares, and that allows them to 

take varying degrees of risk regionally below the strategic nuclear threshold (Russia tending 

to be more open to risk-taking, China being more cautious). Their conventional anri-access 

and area denial (i\2/ AD) capabiliries, in turn, are perceived as able to prevent the U.S. 

military from coming to the aid of allies and partners while also providing ovcrwatch for 

sub-convenrional gray zone acriviries. Neither state intenrionally seeks a war "vith the United 

States and its allies, but they see backdoor vulnerabiliries in the c\merican expeditionary style 

of warfare that confer time and space advantages for them to achieve their strategic goals 

without fighting. Consequently, Russia and China arc waging new "struggles for mastery" 

that will decide the fates of countries in Eastern Europe and maririme "\sia, as well as 

determine what America's power posirion will be entering the second half of the century. 

The new Narional Defense Strategy has recognized that great power contests are likely to be 

the defining narional security challenge for the foreseeable future. It therefore calls for 

trearing the comperirions with China and Russia as the Department's top prioriries for force 

and operarional planning. This priorirization of great power comperirions represents a 

potenrial sea-change for readying the U.S. military for future war (if we take miou.r/y it.r 

and should lead to an aggressive rebalancing of effort and reallocation of 

resources. To understand why such rebalancing will be necessary requires understanding the 

profound ramificarions of this modern multisided great power comperirion for U.S. defense 

planning: 

First and foremost, a renewed emphasis on great power competirion with Russia and China 

should lead to a comprehensive reevaluation of the U.S. military's joint expeditionru:y warfare 

approach to power projection. Expeditionary warfare has been the defining characteristic of 

the U.S. military for the last quarter-century. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military 

has drawn down forward-starioned forces in Europe and the l'ar East while favoring 

months-long rotarional deployments of forces from the continental United States to 

maintain a forward military presence in these regions, as well as in the J\iiddle East. If 

conflict broke out in any of these theaters, U.S. forces envisage surging from the conrinenral 

United States over several weeks, inserting into theater sea- and airports, and then 

conducting counter-offensives to defeat hosrile forces. In the past, this planning assumed the 

U.S. military enjoyed gross qualitarive and quantitarive advantages over potenrial regional 

aggressors such as Iraq and North Korea, as well as escalarion dominance given its nuclear 

deterrent. It assumed unfettered logistical lines of communication to distant theaters; ports 

and airfields for receiving U.S. forces that would be largely safe from attack; and the ability 
50 

to gain local air, sea, and land control quickly. But these assumptions collapse when 

confronting the Russian or Chinese militaries. 

Both the Russian and Chinese militaries are capable of achie"dng limited local military or 

paramilitary objectives before the bulk of U.S. forces could enter proximate theaters. "\nd 

both have built up formidable .\2/AD complexes that would hinder the U.S. military from 

gaining footholds nearby or operating with impunity. Russia enjoys favorable time-distance 

factors for quick land grabs, while China benefits from U.S. forces relying on a very small 

number of airbases and ports in the Western Pacific and the vast distances at which U.S. 

forces would have to operate if they were deprived of those forward bases. 

The fact that expeditionary warfare lacks the potency and credibility it once had requires 

United States to undertake a broad reevaluation of the U.S. military's posture, capabilities, 

organization, concepts, and plans for force generation in crafting a fundamentally new 

approach to projecting power. Perhaps it will require permanently forward stationing certain 

types of ground forces in Europe. These forces might include heavy armor for blocking the 

advance of mechanized ground forces; short-range air defenses for denying an enemy forces' 

air cover; rocket artillery for suppressing enemy air defenses and deep strike; special 

electronic warfare units to gain advantage in the electro-magnetic spectrum; and Special 

Forces and Joint Terminal Attack Controller-qualified personnel for bolstering local 

resistance forces and ensuring air-ground integration. Together, these forces would allow the 

U.S. military to create unconventional defensive barriers against conventional aggression (in 

other words, friendly .\2/.\D complexes). Such an approach would benefit from the 

construction of deep underground facilities and tunnel complexes for command and control 

and pre-positioned weapons storage, as well as the clandestine laying of fiber optic cables for 

protected local communications. This ground posture might need to be coupled with air and 

naval assets that could operate from 1,000-plus mile ranges to penetrate into contested air 

and maritime areas and circumvent or overcome enemy coastal and air defenses to engage 

hostile forces. 

It is also necessary to reconsider the force management / force generation model the 

Department uses, placing less emphasis on rotational deployments of forces and more on 

some combination of permanent forward stationing in overseas theaters, differentiated units 

of force depending on the theater to which they arc assigned, and the conduct of sustained 

high-tempo naval and air strike operations from ports and airfields outside the reach of most 

of an adversary's A2/ .\D forces. 

2. Re-Emphasis of Nuclear Weapons and Strategic Warfare 

For the last quartcr-centmy, the United States has sought to de-emphasize the role of 

nuclear weapons in national security while Russia and China have modernized and placed 

increased emphasis on their own nuclear forces. In the case of Russia, it has leaned more 

heavily on theater-range nuclear forces as an insurance policy against the failure of its 

conventional forces in a regional conflict involving NATO. The prioritization of great power 

competition in U.S. strategy means that nuclear forces should once again come to the 

forefront of planning efforts. Wargames and other planning exercises must consider 

scenarios involving their use in an effort to understand potential escalatory dynamics. 

Beyond investments in strategic nuclear forces like new penetrating bombers, land-based 

intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear ballistic missile submarines, and nuclear command 
51 

and control and communications systems, the United States must also shore up its theater 

nuclear 'Narfare capabilities to deter symmetrically the use of enemy theater nuclear weapons 

and thereby, seemingly paradoxically, reduce the possibility that strategic forces would have 

to be generated in a theater war 'v:ith another major nuclear power. This will likely require 

the development and rapid fielding of a theater-range, difficult-to-intercept nuclear cruise 

missile. Such a missile could be air- or submarine-launched, and should have a high 

probability of arrival at a target despite the presence of precision air defenses. 

In addition to countering classic nuclear weapons threats, the U.S. military will also have to 

identify or develop defenses, resiliency measures, counter-attack capabilities, and declaratory 

policies against novel forms of strategic attack, including attacks on: 

Critical infrastructure or the financial system; 

Agriculture and livestock; 

Transoceanic fiber optic cables; and 

Constellation of satellites for intelligence warning, communications, and position, 

navigation and timing. 

Great power competition will also require significant rebalancing of U.S. conventional 

militaxy forces. In particular, it will place a premium on low-signature forces with light 

logistics footprints capable of operating independently far forward in denied areas. Such 

forces include submarines and unmanned underwater vehicles, long-range penetrating 

surveillance and strike aircraft, special operations forces, ground-based missile forces, cyber 

and electronic attack capabilities, and space-based persistent Sltrveillance systems coupled 

with vastly greater quantities of precision standoff and direct attack munitions. These forces 

represent only a small fraction of the current U.S. military but are likely to constitute the 

core element of a joint vanguard force in any future great power contingency and would play 

the most demanding roles deterring opportunistic aggression by a second party. Over time, a 

greater proportion of resources should be allocated to such forces at the expense of those 

forces and capabilities less suited for operations in contested environments. 

'f. Intensified Military Activities in Spac~Cyh~Ele~t!!J~is~and the Ungersea 

Domains 

1\Iodcrn "great games" in the form of constant probing and dueling arc already being played 

out in the space, cyberspace and undersea domains. As during the Cold War, when a silent 

war was fought lmdersea between dueling U.S. and Soviet submarines, great powers may 

engage in covert activities prior to conflict to map each other's networks, place destructive 

or corruptive implants on those networks-including submarine telecommunications cables 

and seabed energy extraction infrastructure-and interfere or prepare to interfere with one 

another's satellite constellations using lasers, radio-frequency jamming, or kinetic \"chicles. 

Inadvertent detection or contact in one or more of these domains could be a trigger for 

rapid escalation to overt, general war. 

The expansion of military activity in these domains should lead to the emergence of new 

military missions, particularly for suppressing sensor networks and achieving domain 

superiority. Just as the suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) has historically been the 
52 

primary precursor mission for achieving air superiority and permitting strike operations, in 

the future, similar missions may be necessary to suppress enemy anti-satellite systems, 

disable hostile network security systems, and deafen undersea sensor networks using swarms 

of small underwater vehicles. i\ common characteristic of such new missions is that they will 

likely be conducted using robotic, automated, and increasingly autonomous systems. 

5. Refocused R&D Efforts 

Since the defeat of Nazi Germany, the United States has been unrivalled in basic 

technological research. The nuclear, precision strike, and information revolutions in 

technology all stemmed from U.S. government-led efforts. Today, however, the U.S. 

government enjoys less commanding leads in the pursuit of quantum computing and 

communications, artitlcial intelligence, massive data set analytics, gene editing, directed 

energy, hypersonics and advanced materials science relative to its great power rivals. , \ large 

portion of U.S. spending on research and development, moreover, comes from private 

companies focused on commercialization, not national security. In the t!clds of quantum, 

directed energy and hypersonics, the Chinese government has made sizable investments that 

have been driven by a perception of national security as well as industrial opportunities. 

While China will be a tougher R&D competitor across-the-board, Russia, too, has protected 

select industrial R&D efforts in niche military areas including nuclear weapons design, 

submarines and torpedoes, ballistic missiles, hypersonic systems, and cyber and electronic 

warfare. 

Given the stiffer technological competition posed by China and Russia, the United States 

will need to update its R&D approach. lt will need to improve dramatically its intelligence 

efforrs aimed at monitoring the research efforts of competitors to avoid technological 

surprise. It \viii have to focus its limited government resources on national security "big bets" 

that the commercial sector has little incentive to make in order to roll out new technological 

surprises to influence the decision calculations of great power rivals. And it will have to 

become a much more effective second mover technologically by quickly comprehending the 

significance of foreign technological developments to adopt them itself and operationalize 

them faster than its competition. 

(i,_Warfar~~t Scjik:_S!_Q_<;kpiling,_Inc!l1strial Procl_y~tioQ,__:!_l!!:Ll\iQIJilizati<!_l! 

Preparing for the possibility of war with Russia and/ or China with the aim of deterring such 

an event is radically different from planning for the possibility of \Vats \vith smaller regional 

opponents and presents an enormous problem of scale. Potential target sets are orders of 

magnitude greater and more geographically distributed than those for regional opponents 

like North Korea. ,\s a reference, in 2003 the U.S. military delivered on average 750 PGMs 

per day during the opening combat phase of Operational Iraqi Preedom against a country 

that is one twenty-second the size of the United States \vith less than one tenth the 

population and at the time possessed relatively antiquated air defenses. Operations against 

great powers would likely require many times more sorties per day, and preferred PGMs 

could be depleted within days. Shallow magazines of standoff and ditect attack precision 

munitions, as well as insuftlcient numbers of law1ehers and survivable delivery systems 

represent critical gaps between the ambition of the defense strategy and the means to 

execute it that will need to he addressed quickly. 
53 

Beyond scale is the issue of protraction. War is difficult to imagine between great powers, 

but it is even harder to imagine a s\vift, decisive outcome if it breaks out. Protracted or 

frozen conflict may be more likely, creating enormous societal burdens that are more 

comparable our grandparents' experience in the world wars of the early twentieth century 

than to any conflicts we have engaged in over the last tl.fty years. Such a protracted war 

would require large-scale mobilization of civilian resources and could massively disrupt the 

global economy. Large-scale strategic physical and cyber attacks on the U.S. homeland 

should be treated as a likely condition of future war against a great power. 

The ability to sustain war efforts despite economic dislocations and to surge production of 

war-related items could be critical to winning such a war. Our defense industrial base, 

however, is ill-suited for such a conflict. While the United States and its close allies have in 

the aggregate excess capacity for shipbuilding and aircraft manufacturing, they have grossly 

inadequate industrial capacity for precision munitions, trusted foundries for microelectronics, 

and advanced sensor production to support a large-scale and likely protracted war against 

one or more great powers. In the armaments industry there will always be inefficiencies, but 

could excess capacity be driven down over time in areas where it is less useful and increased 

in areas that would confer advantage and strengthen deterrence in long-term competitions? 

7, Inereasi11g Important of Concl!rrency 

During the post-Cold War period, U.S. force planning constructs dictated that the U.S. 

military should be shaped and sized to wage two nearly simultaneous regional wars more or 

less unilaterally. This two-war principle was seen as critical for deterrence, because it 

discouraged collusion between potential aggressors as well as opportunistic aggression by a 

second belligerent if U.S. forces were already engaged in one war. Whatever dangers of 

collusion or opportunistic aggression there were with respect to regional rogue states, 

though, they pale in comparison to the risks associated with Russia and China. Indeed, 

should war break out between the United States and one of these powers, it is difficult to 

imagine that one party would not coordinate its warfighting effort with the other. A strategy 

that emphasizes great power competitions should take account of the likelihood that other 

t,>reat powers will collude in opposing the United States both during peacetime competitions 

as well as in a state of armed conflict, placing a premium on concurrency. 

One possible way to maintain the strategic imperative of concurrency while avoiding the cost 

of a large force build would be to retlne the unit of concurrency-how war is definedwhile emphasizing globally fungible forces and capabilities that could be used to inflict 

unacceptable levels of punishment on multiple adversaries simultaneously. Long-range 

surveillance and strike aircraft, non-kinetic cyber capabilities, globally-m-ailable space-based 

capabilities and deep magazines of PGM stocks could all play a role in maintaining 

concurrency as a force planning principle. 

8. Re-Thinking Arms Control 

A resumption of great power competitions also should entail a reevaluation of arms control 

arrangements, both to jettison constraints that no longer make strategic sense for the United 

States in this new era as well as to identify new arrangements that should be pursued to 

manage the competitions and increase strategic stability in areas of mutual interest. 
54 

Thus far, Russian violations of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (lNF) Treaty 

and China's build-up of a sizable arsenal of ground-launched intermediate-range ballistic 

missiles, have gone unanswered by the United States. It has done little to redress the 

disadvantages under which it is operating in the area of intermediate-range ground-launched 

strike systems. The U.S. Congress might consider a commission to reevaluate the INF Treaty 

and its costs and benefits in the years ahead, and to make recommendations for a path 

forward. In the meantime, it may be prudent to postpone major invesrments in new treatycompliant, ground-based precision fires pending the outcome of such a review to avoid 

squandering resources should the United States ultimately withdraw from or amend the 

treaty. We should not lock in the U.S. military's future invcsrment plans based on treaty 

constraints from a previous era. 

On the other hand, the United States should explore the possibility that verifiable arms 

control measures could be developed in other areas. For example, all of the great powers 

would have an interest in mutual non-targeting of dedicated (exclusive usc) nuclear 

command and control systems. c\lthough the technical verification challenges appear 

daunting, such a regime would be beneficial to all great powers through its enhancement of 

strategic stability. Similarly, prohibitions on biological weapons might need to be updated to 

account for the growing potential of gene editing. And new anns control measures should be 

considered to address the expansion of military-related activities in space, cyberspace and 

tmdersea perhaps by prohibiting certain types of countervalue, or non-military, targeting. 

It has been many decades since the United States has put serious effort inro civil defense and 

integrated it into a broader defense strategy. A re-emphasis on great power competition \vill 

necessitate such efforts. Greater thinking about civil defense is needed to confront an array 

of nuclear and non-nuclear forms of strategic attacks, including electro-magnetic pulse, 

biological warfare, and catastrophic cyber attacks. Part and parcel to this will be enhancing 

the resiliency of our critical infrastructure, our "national hardware." But the United States 

must also be concerned with protecting its "national software": its societal cohesion and 

governance, which can be undermined through influence operations and information 

campaigns. These efforts must be integrated \V:ith more classical military preparations. 

The competitions the United States faces ·with Russia and China are likely to last for decades. 

"Winning" is likely to be much more a matter of staying power than victory in any decisive 

battle of annihilation. For this reason, maintaining national solvency over time and the 

judicious application of scarce resources-fiscal, human, natural, allied and technologicalwill be critical to successful competitive strategies. We ha\~e a duty to provide for the 

common defense not only for ourselves but also for our posterity. The continued 

postponement of hard choices and major shifts in the U.S. military's program of record both 

extends gross inefficiencies and costs into the future and retards the development of credible 

deterrent forces that are already required to arrest the erosion of our regional military 

positions and strengthen deterrence. 

While there may be a need for increased defense spending, there are risks in applying new 

funds toward near-term capacity needs (increasing end-strength and force structure) at the 
55 

expense of improvements in capabilities. The erosion of the U.S. military's positions in 

Europe and the Far East is less a consequence of being out-manned than of being 

increasingly out-gunned, out-sticked, and out-postured in tough away games. A strategy that 

prioritizes great power competitions should, in turn, ensure that the reshaping of the U.S. 

military in terms of its capability mix takes precedence over resizing. It should be wary of 

increases in personnel during what is likely to be only a fleeting period of defense budgetary 

growth. The longer term fiscal picture suggests an almost inevitable and persistent downturn 

in defense spending in the years ahead given the crowding out effects from interest 

payments on publicly held debt and growth in entitlement spending. When such a downturn 

occurs, personnel increases will cause cutbacks to be all tl1e more painful. 

Only a few years ago, senior defense leaders believed it was inconceivable that the United 

States would ever fight Russia or China. Such thinking has vanished almost overnight. While 

the probability of war against one or both of these revisionist powers remains thankfully low, 

war is far from inconceivable any longer. It is commendable that the new defense strategy 

prioritizes great power competitions as the central force planning and deterrence challenge 

for the U.S. military, but the implications of great power competitions must be fully 

absorbed to ensure the strategy's effective implementation. 
56 

Jim Thomas 

Principal and Co-Founder 

Telemus Group 

Jim Thomas is an experienced analyst and practitioner of strategy development, scenario 

planning, operational planning, force design, and conventional and nuclear deterrence. He served 

for thirteen years in a variety of policy, planning, and resource analysis posts in the Department 

of Defense, culminating in his dual appointment as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for 

Resources and Plans, and Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy. 

During his tenure in the Pentagon, he was responsible for the development of U.S. defense 

strategy, guidance for conventional force planning, resource assessment, and the oversight of war 

plans. Mr. Thomas spearheaded the 2005-2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and was the 

principal author ofthc 2006 QDR Report to Congress. 

Mr. Thomas cun·ently serves on the Board of Advisors ofthe Center for a New American 

Security (CNAS), as an Adjunct with the RAND Corporation, and as a Consultant to National 

Defense University's Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction. He frequently 

testifies before Congress and has published numerous analytic studies with the Center for 

Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), the International Institute for Strategic Studies 

(l!SS) and CNAS. His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The American Interest, The 

National Interest, and the Wall Street Journal. 

Prior to co-founding the Tel emus Group, Mr. Thomas was Vice President and Director of 

Studies at CSBA. Earlier in his career, Mr. Thomas was Vice President of Applied Minds, Inc., a 

private research and development company specializing in rapid, interdisciplinary technology 

prototyping. He has previously served on the National Security Agency Advisory Board External 

Affairs Panel and participated in several Defense Science Board Summer Studies on Constrained 

Operations (2016), Capability Surprise (2008), and Future Warfare (2007). 

A former US Naval Reserve officer, Mr. Thomas served as an analyst in the Office of Naval 

Intelligence and watch officer in the National Military Joint Intelligence Center. He was awarded 

the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service in 2006. Mr. Thomas is a 

member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds an MAin Strategic Studies and 

International Economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International 

Studies, an MAin Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia, and a BA degree with high 

honors in International Relations from the College of William and Mary. 
57 

January 30, 2018 

Testimony before the House Armed Services Committee 

Readying the U.S. Military for Future Warfare 

Paul Scharre, Senior Fellow and Director 

Technology and National Security 

Center for a New American Security 

Chainnan Thornberry, Ranking Member Smith, and distinguished members, thank you for inviting 

me to testify today. 

The title of today's hearing is readying the U.S. military for future war. I regret to say that the V.S. 

military is not ready for the threats we face today. 

ln a recent simulation of a war in the \\'estern Pacific, colleagues of mine at the Center for a New 

American Security showed that a Chinese missile strike on U.S. bases in the region could destroy 

more than 200 aircraft on the ground, crater every tun way at U.S. airbases in Japan, hit almost every 

major headquarters within minutes of a conflict starting, destroy key logistical facilities, and hit 

ahnost every {1

.S. ship in port in Japan. 1 

This is not a new problem. Similar analyses done by other defense experts have consistently shown 

that the United States' ability to project power into the \\'estern Pacific has been steadily declining. 

China's arsenal of hundreds of cruise missiles and over 1,000 ballistic missiles poses a significant 

threat to U.S. bases in the rq,>ion and aircraft carriers. The U.S. military faces similar problems in 

Europe, where the United States has fallen behind Russian investments in long-range precision 

strike, integrated air defenses, and electronic warfare. 

These problems did not spring up overnight. Broadly categorized under the label of anti-access 

capabilities, these threats to U.S. power projection are well understood. Defense analysts have been 

warning about the U.S. military's waning ability to project power into contested regions for the past 

two decades. And these threats ha;-e been recognized in e;-ery official DOD strategy document since 

the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Re,·iew. ::vioreover, the steps necessary to counter these threats are 

clear increased investment in: long-range strike, stealthy tminhabited aircraft to hunt for mobile 

targets, advanced mnnitions, electronic warfare, and undersea strike. 
58 

Y ct the military has made only halting steps towards these investments. The Air Force is still heavily 

weighted towatds short-tangc tactical fightct aircraft and, under curtcnt plans, willtemain so fot 

decades to come. The Navy's aircraft carriers similarly only carry short-range fighters, limiting the 

carrier's usefulness in the early stages of a major conflict. Despite strong pressure from Congress, 

the Navy has no plans to invest in a long-range strike aircraft to extend the carrier's reach. The 

Army has even more acute problems in power projection due to the reduction in Army brigades 

forward based in Europe and the complete lack of any effective Army modernization for the past 

fifteen years. 

\X11y are we here? \l!e spend more money than our adversaries. The United States is a global 

technology leader. And our warfighters are better educated, trained, and motivated than our 

adversaries. \\:e have seen this problem coming for two decades, yet we have failed to adequately 

respond. 

It is not for a lack of money. \\'ith sufficient reforms, there is ample money \Vithin a $600 billion 

defense budget. Budgetary stability is necessary. The current budgetary instability inflicted on the 

military due to a failure of tbe nation's political leaders to reach a bipartisan deal on taxes and 

entitlements has severely hampered readiness and modernization. \X'e cannot field a first-class 

military through government shut downs, continuing resolutions, and constant uncertainty about 

long-term spcnding2 But these ptoblcms predate the current budgetaty crises. Money alouc will not 

cure what ails the Pentagon. 

Nor is it because the Pentagon has been fixated on wars in the J'vliddle East. From 20()1 to 2008, the 

base budgets of the Navy and Air Force grew 22°/., and 27~1.,, respectively, in real dollars. c\t the 

same time, the number of combat ships declined by 10% and combat aircraft by 20% m-er that same 

period.' The Army squandered over $18 billion on its Future Combat Systems program, with little to 

show for it. On top of that, the Pentagon wasted an additional $25 billion on other failed 

modernization initiatives in the early 2000s 4 Taxpayer money - a lot of it - went towards military 

modernization for future threats, even while troops were fighting in lraq and A.fghanistan. 

The reason we have failed to adapt is because our system lacks sufficient strategic agility. \\;' e have 

seen these threats coming a long ways off. \1(1

c have spent money. Yet we ba\'e a force that is not 

appropriately designed for the threats we face because we have not adapted quickly enough. 

There arc three main obstacles to more rapid adaptation: a ponderous and risk-averse acquisition 

system; stickiness in our programs that makes it difficult to cancel legacy systems less suited to 

future needs; and cultural resistance within clements of the military to new paradigms of warfighting. 

The need for acquisition reform is well-understood in defense circles. Reform can mean many 

different things, however, and some goals for reform may be at odds with others. For example, 

reforms aimed at reducing wasteful spending- a valuable goal could end up adding red tape and 

slowing down an already sluggish process. If the l'.S. military is to be more adaptable, then the 

prin1ary goal of acquisition reform should be speed. The DOD must accelerate the pace of 

requirements and acquisitions. 
59 

DOD has some experience "~th rapid fielding. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, DOD 

accelerated the acquisition of vital capabilities- body armor, counter-improvised explosive device 

(lED) technology, mine-resistant ambush protected (J\!RAP) vehicles, and intelligence, swyeillance 

and reconnaissance (ISR) assets. Unfortunately, to do so senior defense leaders were forced to go 

around the standard requirements and acquisition processes, rather than work within it. To field 

combat capabilities in a relevant timeframe, senior leaders had to create standalone ad hoc 

organizations: the Rapid Equipping Force (REF), Joint lED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO),Joinr 

Rapid Acquisition Cell OIL\C), l\.IIL\P Task Porce, and ISR Task Porce, among others. 

These organizational initiatives are often held up as examples of successful innovation, and while 

individually they arc success stories, it is worth putting their creation in context. During two of 

America's longest wars, the DOD's standard methods for fielding new equipment were too slow to 

be useful. Even worse, senior leaders were not effective in creating a generalized rapid process, 

despite efforts to do so. Rather, for each new capability, senior leaders had to create purpose-built 

organizations that reported directly ro senior leaders so that they would not be stymied by other 

parts of the bureaucracy. This is not the hallmark of an agile system. 

Even when innovation occurred, it often came late to need. Urgent requests from combat units in 

Iraq for MRAPs languished in the halls of tl1e Pentagon for two vears before Secretary of Defense 

Robert Gates became personally im·olved and directed MRAJ' procurement. c\nd this was in spite of 

intense pressure from Congress, including this committee, to urgently field MR,,\Ps. The cost to this 

delay was hundreds and possibly thousands of serviccmembers' li\·es 5 In a major war, the cost could 

be e;-cn greater. Por perspective, the three wars it took ilie Pentagon to field MRAPs corresponds 

to nearly all of U.S. involvement in World War II. If the request had been submitted on the day after 

Pearl Harbor, units would not have arrived in significant numbers nntil the final six months of tl1e 

\Vat. 

In a major power war, we >.viii be required to innO\-ate on timelines of months, not years. 1\nd we 

must have these processes of innovation in place today. DC )D has taken steps to institutionalize 

some of the rapid innovation processes used in Iraq and Afghanistan and has created new 

organizations, such as the Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO). These organizations are valuable, but 

we must also make speed-to-market a goal in our standard acquisition process as well. At present, it 

can take decades to bring a new major weapon system to fruition. This process is too slow, and 

often the security em ironment evolves in the intervening years to make systems less valuable. In 

short, reality is operating inside our bureaucratic OODA loop.' 

The DOD needs to acquire major weapons systems on shorter timelines. Perhaps counter-intuitively, 

this means that the best strategy for preparing for future wars is to eschew ambitious "leap ahead" 

transformational progran1s and instead orient modernization initiatives to what is achievable in the 

near-tenn \\~th existing technology. DOD should invest in emerging technologies, but protoryping 

and experimentation should be separate from acquisition. DOD should not embark down the path 

of procuring a new major weapon system nntil the technology is mature. 

1 The "OODA loop" comes from a paradigm for combat in which the winning competitor is the one who 

completes a cognitive process observe, orient, decide, act (OODA) faster than his or her adversary. 
60 

The slowness of our acquisition system is unfortunately compounded by political and bureaucratic 

stmcturcs in the Pentagon, defense industry, and Congress that make it exceedingly difficult to 

cancel or curtail programs that arc less useful. Defense secretaries who seek to reorient the DOD to 

future threats face an uphill battle against their own subordinates, indust1)", and too often members 

of Congress who seek to defend existing programs. Existing programs are "stickv"- they have 

advocates throughout the defense enterprise. There are fewer institutional advocates for new 

programs: no program office in the Pentagon to defend their goals, no money to defense 

contractors, and no jobs in n1e1nbers' districts. This asyrm11etric incentive stnKtw:e is baked into our 

process and there is no easy fix other than strong leadership. If DOD is to be adaptable, Congress 

must be a willing partner in cancelling or curtailing programs that are no longer best suited for 

future \vars. 

Pinally, in some cases, cultural resistance to new paradigms for warfighting can be a hindrance to 

some kinds of innovation. Many forms of innovation fall within existing paradigms for warfighting 

and arc easily embraced by military communities - for example, longer-range missiles or more 

maneuverable fighters. Some kinds of military innovations, however, require major paradigm shifts 

in combat, such as the transition from horses to tanks. These shifts arc often met by resistance from 

military communities, in spite of the fact that these innovations would lead to combat advantage. 

Unfortunately, tlus is the case for some kinds of innovation today. 

The Air Force and Navy aviation community have both been extremely reluctant to adopt 

uninhabited combat aircraft. The c\ir Force has embraced uninhabited aircraft for reconnaissance 

missions, but not combat missions. The Navy is investing in an lminhabited carrier-based aircraft for 

tanking, but not strike missions. This is consistent with a pattern across the military services of using 

uninhabited and robotic systems in support roles, but not combat roles, even when they have clear 

advantages. In the case of airpower, uninhabited aircraft are essential for power projection into 

contested areas because of their greater endurance than human-inhabited aircraft. \Xiith refueling, 

lminhabited aircraft could stay aloft for 10 to 20 hours or more, far longer than what is possible with 

a human in a single-seat aircraft. These advantages were first recognized over a decade ago in the 

2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, which directed the Navy to: "develop an w1manned longerrange carrier-based aircraft capable of being air-refueled to provide greater standoff capability, to 

expand payload and launch options, and to increase naval reach and persistence."" Despite intense 

pressure from Congress and impressive technological progress in the form of the X -4 7B 

demonstration aircraft, these goals remain unfulfilled. The Navy's current carrier-based uninhabited 

aircraft program the 1\!Q-25, is oriented towards aerial refueling," and the Na\')" has no program 

underway to develop a penetrating strike aircraft. This gap means that aircraft carriers, a \'isible 

symbol of American power and a significant financial investment, will be of reduced value in the 

early stages of a conflict against major competitors, when they are most needed. 

More generally, rebalancing the military to project power in the face of anti-access threats requires a 

fundamental re-look at the balance of investments \\~thin the Navy and ,\ir Force. The vast bulk of 

the Ai.J: l:'orcc's combat fleet consists of short-range tactical fighters. Unfortunately, these will also be 

of little utility in the early stages of a high-end conflict, when adversary ballistic missiles will hammer 

U.S. air bases. The .-\ir l:'orce needs to extend its reach. The B-21 bomber is a key capability for 

doing so, and Congress should work with the DOD to ensure that once the bomber enters 

production, it is procured at the maxi.Jnum rate of production. The B-21 must also be augmented 
61 

with stealthy uninhabited aircraft to provide persistent surveillance and strike capability against 

mobile and rclocatable targets such as missile launchers and radars. Congressional leadership is 

needed to help ensure DOD is maximizing its opportunities in this area as well. Over time, the Air 

Force needs to shift its investment profile away from short-range fighters to longer-range aircraft, or 

else DOD will face a long-term horizon of waning airpower and combat effectiv-eness. 

For the Navy, acquisition of a stealthy uninhabited penetrating strike aircraft is essential to keeping 

the aircraft carrier relevant in the face of longer-range ballistic and cruise missiles. Even with this 

capability, though, the proliferation of precision-strike suggests a fundamental re-examination of the 

balance of investments across the three components of American sea power: surface ships, carriers, 

and submarines. Today, the United States has an unparalleled advantage in undersea warfare 

capabilities. The United States is able to use the undersea environment as a sanctuary and operate 

deep within adversary anti-access regions and strike enemy targets from undersea. The Navy should 

capitalize on this opportunity, expanding Virginia-class submarine production. The Navy should also 

invest in uninhabited undersea v-ehicles (UU\'s) and undersea payload modules to expand sensor 

and strike capacity. 

The Army and l\Iarine Corps are culturally in a better place, as the transition away from longduration counterinsurgency \vars to\vards more traditional threats is 1nore \Vithin their comfort zone. 

Nevertheless, they face challenges as well. The Army has similarly been slow to embrace grmmd 

robotic vehicles, particularly armed systems, in spite of significant Russian investment in armed 

ground robots 8 The /umy also must m'crcome a strong anti-technology strain of thinking, a 

product partly of the failure of technological adv-antage to yield meaningful strategic outcomes in 

Iraq and Afghanistan.' For the Marine Corps, anti-access threats pose serious challenges to current 

amphibious warfare tactics, and the Marine Corps must evolve new technologies and concepts for 

amphibious assault and forcible entry. 

The United States military is capable of adapting to these future challenges. C.S. warfighters can 

generate creative solutions to operational problems, and the U.S. industrial base is capable of fielding 

unparalleled military capabilities. The most difficult challenge is focusing defense institutions on the 

right problems and holding the military services accountable for developing solutions. Power 

projection in the face of anti-access threats is a major problem for the C.S. military today, and 

Congressional leadership will be essential in ensuring that the military reot~ents its forces to dev·clop 

effective solutions. 

Priority Investment Areas 

Listed below are priority investment areas for modernizing the U.S. military to meet future threats. 

Air power 

Long-range penetrating strike aircraft- Maximize the rate of procurement for the B-21 

bomber once it goes into production. 

Persistent surveillance and strike aircraft- Dev-elop a stealthy uninhabited combat air 

vehicle (CCAV) to persist inside enemy territory to hunt mobile and rclocatable targets. 
62 

Robust, secure networks Build an aerial layer network for resilient communications and 

position, navigation, and timing (l'N'l) in the event of dismption of space assets. 

Next-generation weapons- Increase quantities of the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff MissileExtended Range (JASSM-ER) and Long-Range .-\nti-Ship ;\{issile (LRASl\1), and develop a new 

longer-range air-to-air missile. 

Air-launched swarming drones- Field small air-launched swanning air vehicles for jamming, 

decoys, reconnaissance, battle dan1age assessment, and strike. 

Low-cost delivery systems Maximize the use of existing aircraft (e.g., B-1, B-52, F-15, F-16, 

and 1\IQ-9) and consider new, low-cost air vehicles to act as delivery systems for standoff 

\vcapons, decoys, and air~launched S\varms. 

Light attack aircraft- Field a low-cost, light attack aircraft for counter-terrorism, close air 

support~ and other 1nissions in permissive air cnvirontncnrs. 

Artificial intelligence- Leverage artificial intelligence and data analytics to help process large 

volumes of data and cue items of interest to human analysts. 

Emerging technologies Invest in and mature key emerging technologies such as artificial 

intelligence, autonomy, and directed energy weapons. 

Sea power 

Carrier aviation- De,·elop a stealthy, uninhabited combat air \'chicle (l!C\ \') to extend the 

reach of aircraft carriers in contested environments. 

Submarines Increase the rate of Virginia-class submarine production to capitalize on the 

linited States' undersea advantages. 

Undersea- Procure large-diameter uninhabited undersea vehicles (l'CVs), both submarinedelivered and ship-delivered, to augment undersea capabilities. Experiment with undersea 

payload modules as low-cost means of augmenting undersea payload capacity. 

Lower-cost expeditionary ships Invest in commercial-derivative ("black hull") 

expeditionary sea bases for more cost-effective expeditionarv operations. 

Robotics -Field low-cost uninhabited surface vessels for anti-submarine warfare and to act as 

additional missile batteries to augment destroyers. 

Missile defense- Im·est in hyper velocity projectiles and mature electromagnetic rail gun 

technology to improve ship defenses against ballistic and cruise missiles. 

Protection - Invest in armed uninhabited surface vessels (l'SV s) to act as escort and 

intercliction ships for high-value assets against potential threats in high-threat areas, such as 

during strait transit. Equip surface ships' small boats with robotic applique kits to allow them to 

operate "optionally manned" for usc as uninhabited interdiction hoats against potential threats. 
63 

Land power 

Armor Increase the mm1ber of active duty armored brigade combat teams (BCTs). 

Survivability- l:pgrade ground vehicles with active protection systems (APS) to intercept 

precision-guided anti-armor vveapons. 

Fires Increase the range, capacity, and lethality of long-range precision fires. 

Communications and electronic warfare Invest in protected conunnnications, electronic 

warfare, and electromagnetic decoys to ensnre forces are smvivable and can communicate in 

contested electromagnetic environments. 

Air defenses Invest in short-range air defenses to protect ground forces from air attack. 

Missile defense- Upgrade Paladin 155mm howitzers with hyper v-elocity projectiles (HYPs) 

and targeting capabilities for ballistic and cruise missile defense.tu 

Robotics- Experiment with new operational concepts leveraging air and ground robotic 

tcatnmatcs. 

Lethality Mature and field advanced precision-guided weapons for dismounted troops, such 

as counter deftlade weapons and smarr rifles. 

Mobility J\Iature exoskeleton and exosuit technologies to improve indiv-idual mobility and 

protection. 

Protection Increase troop protection against blast-induced brain injury through improved 

helmet design. 

Human performance -Research the benefits and risks of human enhancement technologies, 

such as transcranial direct cmrent stimulation (tDCS) 11 and pharmaceutical enhancements to 

improve alertness and cognitive performance, such as modafinil. 12 Establish a DOD-wide 

process for integrating these technologies aud techniques into the force iu a safe and ethical 

manner. 

Recommendations for Further Reading 

Susanna V. Blume and Lamen Fish, ""\ Brief Instability," November 8, 

2017, 11llicc'S"l'.Y'07lV:~lfi,Q"U)2]l_tl)l,:llllQ1tl!iLt:!:]2<2tl;;frl!_ill1cchill\lt.):::<l!c:fl0_c:n~~::2_1lc~t:ill!'t.'1llilll}:. 

David Ochmanek, "Recommendations for a Future National Defense Strategy," Testimony before 

the Senate Armed Services Committee, November 30,2017, 

https:/ /www.rand.otg/pubs/rcstimonies/J~"[~8~.html. 
64 

Paul Scharre, "Future of All Arms Warfare in the 21 ''Century," Testimony before the 

Subcommittee on Airland of the Senate ,\rmed Services Committee, ~larch 15, 2017, 

Paul Scharre, "Future of\X'arfare," Testimony before the Senate ,\rmed Services Committee, 

November 3, 2015, u''V'II\\'"'"'u'a'.Ult;fl'w',uutuc>m 

1£_5j:j_-!I_10D~-bcfiL!~~llSCl_. 

Paul Scharre, "Robotics on the Battlefield Part II: The Coming Swarm," Center for a New :\merican 

October 2014, 16, bnp~:/_Lc,'''l'.\L~ll'\~t9Xdrml>Jiq,JiQ'b'i.t:~)?l'_mb5Jb.>tig;,Qg,crhe:l.>il!!kli~J<J: 

Thomas Shugart and Javier Gonzalez, "First Strike: China's .'.fissile Threat to U.S. Bases in Asia," 

Center for a New American Security, June 2017, 

CNAS Funding 

C:NAS is a national security research and policy institution committed to the highest standards of 

organi%ational, intellectual, and personal integrity. The Center retains sole editorial control over its 

ideas, projects, and productions, and the content of its publications reflects only the \'iews of their 

authors. In keeping with its mission and values, CNAS does not engage in lobbying activity and 

complies fully with all applicable federal, state, and local laws. Accordingly, CN AS \\~ll not engage in 

any representation or advocacy on behalf of any entities or interests and, to the extent that the 

Center accepts funding from foreign sources, its activities will be limited to bona fide scholastic, 

academic, and research,rclated activities, consistent with applicable federal law. A full list of CNAS 

supporters and the center's funding guidelines can be found here: lo_ll~'~L,L;:":l\',<;_n_<JLQW;Lf1.1L'Jl'!.rl.: 

Consistent with Rule 11, clause 2(g)(S), of the Rules of the U.S. !-louse of Representatives for the 

115th Congress, a detailed list of CN ,\S federal contracts or grants (including subcontracts and 

subgrants), or contracts or payments originating with a foreign government, received during the 

current and two previous calendar years has been provided to this committee as an attachment. 
65 

Notes 

1 Thomas Shugart and Javier Gonzalez, "First Strike: China's Missile Threat to U.S. Bases in Asia," 

Center for a New American Security, June 20!7, h11f!"'l/\\'\\'\V~~'l');>,_o_t:glp_tiQU£~tiQI}~/r<el'QE!§Ll\~;;!c§tt:L~~ 

c_h_ina~:~1} issi i c;-_\breat ·Jq-_~l-0':Q_~s~s:- tq-as_iq.. 

2 Susanna V. Blume and Lauren Fish, "A Brief History of Defense Budget IwscwuHllY. 

American Security, November 8, 2017, 

defense-budget-instahilitv. 

3 Paul Scharre, "Robotics on the Battlefield Part ll: The Coming Swarm," Center for a New American 

Security, October 20 !4, 16, l1\tps:/ /www .CI}as.oro/p~J>lic_ations/.@Jlorts/rohotics-Qil-the-battJ.tilleld.::pm·t-i i-

~h_e:-~Q!~)!Dg:-§!Y~~~T~. 

4 Todd Harrison, "Analysis of the FY 2012 Defense Budget," Center for Strategic and Budgetary 

Assessments, viii. 

5 Christopher J. Lamb, Matthew J. Schmidt, and Berit G. Fitzsimmons, "MRAPs, Irregular Warfare, and 

Pentagon Reform," Institute for National Strategic Studies, June 2009. 

6 Department of Defense, "Quadrennial Defense Review Report," Febmary 6, 2006, 46. 

7 Naval Air Systems Command, "MQ-25 UAS," 

httQ:i/v.~_wvv.nfl_v_air.J1~vy.InillincJe.x.cf!_n')fusca_ction~_home.di~play&kee_.'\ I l)i\3_766-li~6[)-4AI'_A-J2462-

F91FE43IRJAF. 

8 Samuel Bendett, "Russia is Poised to Surprise the U.S. in Battlefield Robotics," Defense One, January 

25, 2018, htt].l:/lwww .de Censeone.com/ideas/20 !8/0 l/russia~r>oised-surprise:us:b<]ttle lie ld~ 

robotics/145439/. 

10 Sam LaGrone, "Pentagon: New Rounds for Old Guns Could Change Missile Defense for Navy, Army," 

USN! News, July 18, 2016. 

11 Jeremy Nelson, R. Andy McKinley, Edward Golob, Joel Warm, and Raja Parasuraman, "Enhancing 

vigilance in operators with prefrontal cortex transcranial direct stimulation (tDCS)" Neurolmage 85 no. 3 

(January 20!4), 909-917. Justin Nelson, Richard McKinley, Chandler Phillips, Lindsey Mcintire, Chuck 

Goodyear, Aerial Kreiner, and Lanie Monforton, "The Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation 

(tDCS) on Multitasking Throughput Capacity, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, (20 I 6). 

12 Arthur Estrada et al., "A comparison of the efficacy ofmodafinil and dextroamphetamine as alet1ness 

promoting agents in aviators performing extended operations," United States Army Aeromedical Research 

Laboratory, Report No. 2011-05, December 2010,4. Amanda Kelley eta!., "Cognition-enhancing drugs 

and their appropriateness for aviation and ground troops: a meta-analysis," United States Army 

Aeromedical Research Laboratory, Report No. 2011-06, December 2010,4. Amanda Kelley, Catherine 

Webb, Jeremy Athy, San ita Ley, and Steven Gaydos, "Cognition enhancement by modatinil: a metaanalysis." Aviation, Space. and Environmental Medicine, 83 no. 7 (July 20 12), 685-690. 
66 

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