Young Professionals Briefing: The State of U.S. Defense Policy

CFR Military Fellows discuss their career pathways and how U.S. defense policy has evolved through their years in service.

The CFR Young Professionals Briefing Series provides an opportunity for those early in their careers to engage with CFR. The briefings feature remarks by experts on critical global issues and lessons learned in their careers. These events are intended for individuals who have completed their undergraduate studies and have not yet reached the age of thirty to be eligible for CFR term membership.

LAFOLLETTE: Hello, everyone. If you could just please take your seats, we want to get started and try to start on time. So grab your beverage, your plate of cheese, and please come and sit down. Plenty of seats up here in the front if everybody will stream up to the front. As everyone takes their seat, I will begin so we can get the conversation started.

Good evening, everyone. Happy new year. Thank you all for joining this evening at this Council on Foreign Relations meeting, which is part of CFR’s Young Professionals Briefing Series. Now, we have young professionals here. We also have term members here. So welcome, one and all. I am Stacey LaFollette. I am associate VP of the Meetings Program here at the Council.

Now, as part of this Young Professionals Briefing Series, you all get invited to at least one event per month in New York, D.C., or on Zoom. You also receive a monthly newsletter which highlights CFR resources and also gives you access to some highlighted events that we hold, not only young professionals but also our wider member events. So I really encourage you all to open the newsletter and take a look. We hope you find those materials useful.

Now, if you’re sitting here and you’re not quite sure how you got here, that means that a CFR member recommended you to us. So we regularly go out to our CFR members and ask for recommendations of young professionals, so that’s why you’re here. We hope you’ll take advantage of the program and that you find it useful to your lives.

Tonight you’re going to get a chance to hear from CFR’s visiting military fellows, or at least some of them. Each year the Council hosts a group of military fellows from Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and Space Force, and each service nominates an outstanding officer as a candidate for this fellowship at the Council. And what it means is these selected officers get to spend a wonderful year with us at CFR in New York; and they use that time to research, to reflect, to attend events, and to engage with our members, our staff, and with other participants such as you all. So it’s a really, really impressive group, and I know you’re going to really enjoy tonight’s discussion.

Now, logistics. The first part of tonight’s discussion will be a conversation between our military fellows and our moderator, Brit McCandless Farmer, who’s a wonderful moderator. She’s a term member herself and with 60 Minutes.

And the second part is going to be a question-and-answer session, so get your questions ready. Please do not be shy. I encourage you all to ask a question whether you’re in the room here in New York or you’re joining on Zoom.

And then, after the discussion, we’ll have a quick reception at the back of the room. So I encourage you all to stay for at least part of that.

Now a few quick reminders. This meeting is on the record. If you’re in person and you’d like to ask a question, please raise your hand. Our moderator will call on you. Stand and wait for one of these microphones, introduce yourself, and ask your question. If you’re on Zoom, you can also ask a question. Click on the “raise hand” icon on your Zoom window. If our operator announces your name, just accept the “unmute now” prompt so that everyone here in the room and onstage can hear your question. So please go ahead and introduce yourself and ask your question.

Again, a reminder this meeting is on the record. And I really hope that you all enjoy tonight’s discussion. And now please welcome our military fellows and Brit McCandless Farmer. Thank you, everyone. (Applause.)

FARMER: Good evening. Welcome, everyone, to the Young Professionals Briefing with our CFR military fellows. We’ve also got some term members in the room, online. I know this is going to be a pretty terrific conversation.

As she said, my name is Brit McCandless Farmer. I’m the digital producer at 60 Minutes, and I’m also a current term member. The pamphlet keeps saying that I’m a former; they’re trying to kick me out early, and that is fine. (Laughter.) They’ll find me here in the baseboards next Tuesday. I am not going anywhere. (Laughter.)

Anyhow, we’re going to have a great conversation. I’ll talk for a little bit with the guys and then we’ll open it up to your questions. I have no doubt you’ll have some good questions. And I will note that Colonel Trusty on the end has to skedaddle a little bit early, so if you’ve got questions about Space Force keep them in mind. We’ll kick off our—probably our group conversations with questions for him.

But in the meantime, we’re here to talk about the U.S. defense policy, how it is changing. And my question—I want to set the stage with you guys—what was U.S. defense policy when you were first commissioned? How did you conceive of what it was looking like at the time? How did that inform the early decisions you made in your career? Keep it brief, just so we can set the scene for who they are.

You know, wait. Hold on. Let’s introduce. Who’s speaking? You’ve got to know that first. We’ve got the colonels. We’ve got Colonel Zeb Beasley from the U.S. Marine Corps. We’ve got Colonel Paul Townsend from the Air Force; he will be known henceforth by his callsign, “Klaxon,” so just keep that in mind. We’ve got Colonel Christopher Nyland from the Army. And as I mentioned, Colonel Corey Trusty from U.S. Space Force.

So let’s just go down, set the stage for them. What was U.S. defense policy when you first commissioned? How did you conceive of it? How did it inform your decisions?

BEASLEY: So good evening and thank you all for being here tonight. We agreed prior to walking in that the first person that spoke would make sort of the public disclaimer for all of us—(laughter)—that the views that we express are our own and they don’t represent our service, the United States military, or the views of the Department of War.

But once again, thank you for being here in person. And for those of you online, thank you for spending some time with us tonight.

I came in the—I joined the United States Marine Corps in 2000, so the first departmental policy that I recall that affected me was the—was the Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Afghanistan. And at that point in time, when we first had the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, if you recall it was to defeat and dismantle al-Qaida. The one that affected me the most throughout my career, though, came later, in 2003, with the invasion of Iraq.

TOWNSEND: So, just like Zeb, I commissioned in 2000. You know, I remember being at the Air Force Academy and getting the emails about our Operation Allied Force and the shootdowns of Serbian MiGs, and I was like, hey, I want to—I want to do that. So I tracked into the F-15C, which was the fighter platform both in Desert Storm and in Allied Force, 104-0 in air-to-air combat. And I was like, hey, I definitely want to do this, and so I jumped right in. And like Zeb talked about, you know, the change and the shift in the Air Force, as, you know, we were focused on things like air security, and how do we gain and maintain that, and against, you know, what was previous—the Soviets, later Iraq—and really, the focus when I was in the Pacific was on North Korea.

And really, what changed the most over time is I think the military development that we’ve seen from China, right? And so while we were still supporting this counterterrorism/counterinsurgency fight in the Middle East, you know, like, there was a pretty significant ramp-up that we saw from the People’s Republic of China building advanced capabilities, what started off with procurement of older Russian and Soviet technology and come into indigenous production, you know, really that buildup to now what we see today, more of a pure competition environment.

NYLAND: So I’m the old man of the group. I came into the Army—I commissioned in 1997. So if you think back to that period of time, we were still riding the peace dividend after the end of the Cold War. We were the global hegemon. There was no one that would ever compete with us. And really, what you saw was a major drawdown in the armed forces across the board because there was a general thinking that, hey, we need to be spending a lot less on our military and a lot more on other things. So that’s the Army I came into. It was—I wouldn’t say it was a hollow force, but it was not flush with either resources or people. So I spent my first four years—four, almost five years in that military before the Global War on Terror kicks off after 9/11, and then really the vast majority of my career has been defined by Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq, and then the subsequent follow up on operations from there.

And it wasn’t until much later, you know, as those—as our active efforts in those two conflicts were starting to draw down mid-teen years, when we started heading towards the pivot to Pacific, did it see us start to at least start looking that way. Now, most recently, what you’re finding is that I think—speaking from the Army specifically, we’re grappling with the end of the counterinsurgency focus and looking more towards what the Army has to do to prepare for large-scale combat operations. That’s really where our focus is right now.

TRUSTY: All right. So I am the baby of the bunch. (Laughter.) So I commissioned in 2004, and during that time we were—you know, the Space Force was actually still a part of the Air Force, or at least the space that we were doing—you know, that we’re doing now as a separate service we were doing within, you know, the Department of the Air Force. And you know, we were, you know, not, you know, our own little separate entity.

But when I came in, and kind of like these guys, I mean, we were in the Middle East for so long that, you know, counterinsurgency was and counterterrorism was kind of like the flavor of the day. And when we looked at space, space was that thing that kind of quietly supported everyone, and then when people—when they planned for, like, air, land, and sea, they were like, ah, I think I want to sprinkle some of this space on top because, you know, I think we may need it. And so it went from, you know, this whole thing of being just this small entity as part of the Air Force to kind of like where we are today with kind of, like, great-power competition where now space is a key enabler to a lot of the services, and maybe even some of those things that the other services will start to support.

FARMER: I want to talk about that pivot to the Pacific that a few of you guys mentioned, and that shift from counterterrorism/counterinsurgency to now preparing to fight a near-peer adversary like China, like Russia. I have been given permission to call them by their first names, which feels a lot like calling your teacher by her first name. (Laughter.) So if I call Zeb “Zeb,” know that in my mind he’s Colonel Zeb. (Laughter.)

Colonel Zeb, force design is preparing the Marines to—for war against China. How is that changing training, changing acquisition, and changing perhaps cooperation and coordination between the branches?

BEASLEY: Yeah. So I—there’s an interesting debate that is always—I think all the services have of: Can you build a military that’s the jack of all trades? Can you build a military that can fight and win a counterinsurgency fight, and can that same military then turn around and fight and win a conventional fight against a near-peer competitor like China? Or do you need—or, are those two separate forces; the force that’s going to win in one won’t necessarily win in the other? That’s a—I think an interesting academic debate. The reality, though, is the expectation is that we have a United States military that’s flexible enough to do both of those things, and is prepared if required to defend the nation against a near-peer adversary like China and then, if need be, conduct counterinsurgency operations in the Middle East.

So the reality, to your specific question about—you know, the Marine Corps spent two decades fighting a counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that not only drove how we organized, but that drove how we equipped the force. We bought equipment—stuff—that was good at that fight. The same equipment that—or, the same acquisitions process we have to then turn around and retool/reequip/reorganize the force to fight against a near-peer competitor in China, and I would argue that that equipment—those equipment sets are not the same, the way that you organize your people is not the same, and the way that you train is not the same.

So for the military, I think for any service really, is it a paradigm shift to go from what we’ve done in Iraq and Afghanistan to what we are doing based on the 2025 National Security Strategy that just came out, and what the expectations are. Not only is it a paradigm shift mentally—it’s one emotionally, for sure—it’s also one when you start to look at the materiel, and the equipment, and the training, and the training pipeline that you need to get there. So it has been a significant emotional shift. It continues to be one, because I at least fall into the camp of the way you man, train, and equip a military force to fight a near-peer competitor is different than the way you would do it for a counterinsurgency adversary.

So we are going through, I think, a major paradigm shift for the United States military writ large and for the Marine Corps specifically as we enter into this new era of—well, it’s not necessarily new, but as we enter into this area of increased focus on near-peer competitors.

FARMER: Colonel Corey—you’re all going to still have the “Colonel.” (Laughter.) Colonel Corey, we were talking, and you have said the Pacific is somewhere you think Space Force is really going to start to take the lead. It won’t necessarily be the support anymore, but Space Force can really flex its muscles. Can you explain for them, what does that mean? What does that look like for Space Force?

TRUSTY: Yeah. So—and it’s kind of funny; I was just writing some thoughts down. But when I kind of look at that—so when I talked about before how it was all about—like, for instance, I’ll ask you a question: Who’s ever really thought about space? Right. Like, it’s not—it’s not a lot of people, you know, that have really kind of, like, thought about space and how they use it every single day.

But now, when we’re going out here and you’re looking at—our adversaries had twenty years to look at how we operated in Afghanistan, right? And they looked to see, like, hey, if we let our allies—the U.S. and our allies and partners in, then we can’t win. And so now you look at that, that they added to their, you know, kind of defense calculus, and you look at the kind of time—that distance gap that we have when we use our different services, whether it’s our boots on the ground, planes in the air, boats on the water, there’s things that’s going to have to happen in order to enable that. And space is going to have to do that because we’re going to need long-range comms, we’re going to need our GPS there, and there will be certain things that we may need other services to do to help enable our space superiority.

And so when we look at that shift of the Pacific, we’re saying, like, hey, there are a few things that we need as—to have our theory of success; which is, when we look—when we shift it from counterterrorism now to long-range kind of strategic competition, there’s things that we’re looking at when we say, hey, we need to have competitive endurance. And part of that is potentially being supported. And when we have competitive endurance, we want to have great situational awareness of what’s going on. So we may need some of the other services, like I said, to take out some nodes so that we can see what’s going on, so that our satellites aren’t being, you know, messed with by some other, you know, country, whether it’s China or whoever else.

The other thing that we’re probably looking at as well is we’re trying to deny first-mover advantage. And so if we know what’s going on, then we have a great opportunity of denying our adversaries from doing things to our other joint forces.

And then the last thing that we’re looking at is kind of having responsible counterspace campaigning. Meaning that, yeah, we want the global commons of space to be peaceful, but we say, like, hey, we may not start it, but we sure will finish it.

And so that’s kind of the attitude we’re going to go about it, and so we’ll probably need some support from, like I said, the other services to help enable us so that we can continue to support them with what they need to help put bombs on targets or continue to communicate to each other.

FARMER: Let’s talk about spending, budgets. The 2026 defense budget is about 900 billion (dollars). President Trump earlier this month proposed that U.S. military spending for 2027 could run closer to 1.5 trillion (dollars). I’d like your thoughts. Chris, I know you’ve got an anecdote about—(laughter)—how the Army budget has changed over the past few decades. But does the—does the defense industrial base have the capacity to deliver on what that budget would fund at $1½ trillion? We talked a little bit about the role industry plays, but is that a—is that realistic? Do we have the capacity to scale up to 1.5 trillion (dollars)?

NYLAND: Absolutely. The capacity isn’t the issue. I mean, we’re sitting in the city that has the biggest financial markets, and capital flows like water down the streets here in New York City. And you know, we have—we have this conversation quite a bit, is that, you know, right now in the department there’s a lot of talk about getting private capital involved in the defense industrial base and into national security. I see a lot of heads nodding out there.

I’ve got a—I’ve got an opinion, and it’s my personal opinion, that if capital thought they could get the returns that they needed from the defense industrial base, it would already be there. OK. So then the question becomes, well, what do we need to do to create those conditions? Well, predictability, a steady demand signal. And you know, not—those things are not all in the control of the military. You know, I liken it to the Department of War has got a board of directors that are 345 people large—

TOWNSEND: Four hundred and thirty.

NYLAND: Yeah, I just—a little dyslexia there. And very few of those folks agree. But they’re the ones that come together to create that budget every year to finally give us our budget every year. And rarely does that happen on time. And rarely does that create the common—you know, the consistent demand signal that the defense industrial base would need—that would need in order to be able to ramp up to meet those demands. Could they, if there was a consistent demand signal? Absolutely, my personal opinion.

Two things I think it’s very important to understand about the department’s budget. First and foremost—and these are not my words. I watched a great set of testimony from General Milley when he was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in front of the—I think it was the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he was getting hammered by the Senate Armed Services Committee about why were we spending more money on defense than our—our peer competitors, China, yet he was standing there in front of the Senate saying that, hey, they’re getting near parity with us. They’ve potentially passed us in certain places.

And he made the point then, and it’s still true today, that over 50 percent of the department’s budget is paying for its people. It’s salaries, benefits, it’s—and healthcare are really the three primary drivers for that. And so when you really look at the money that we’re putting into procurement or research and development, as compared to the peer militaries, it’s actually a much smaller number. And actually we’re lagging pretty far behind. So there’s a whole discussion there.

I will never stand in front of a group of citizens and say—and advocate that the department needs more money. That—again, this is my personal opinion. But primarily the reason that when you look at it, it’s—you decide what you want your department to be able to do. And so we have a very hard time of telling people—my personal opinion—we have a very hard time telling people, eh, I’m not sure if we can—you asked us to do all these things. I’m not sure if we can do these things. We tend to say yes. But then we’ll come back around and say, hey, we need more money. (Laughter.) You know, it’s always the big joke about we love to give the Air Force a hard time. You know the one that I’m going to.

TOWNSEND: Yeah, you built the officer club and the golf course and you ask for the money to build a runway. (Laughter.)

NYLAND: Yeah, because the runway is kind of essential. So, yeah, so I think that’s the other thing. But I think the point you’re alluding to, right now, much like—much like Zeb talked about, the Army’s going through probably the most significant transformation that they have in at least the last fifteen years, I would argue the last thirty years. And the really unique thing about the transformation your Army’s going through right now is we have no idea what the end state is. Anytime I’ve lived through that in the Army over the past thirty years we’ve said, hey, we look like this now, we want to look like this, and the hard part has been making that transition.

What we’ve said right now is, we look like this right now, and we’re not sure what right looks like. But we’re going to try a whole bunch of different things. We’re going to try to figure out what that right looks like through experimentation, through bottom-up feedback from a lot of folks who are about the same age as the people in the audience right now, and then we’re going to come up with a procurement strategy. But in order to do that, we need a lot of flexibility in how we spend our money. So if you go back and you look at the history of the Army’s budget, back in 1950 our budget had about sixteen different line items. There were about sixteen different ways that Congress said, hey, we’re going to give you money, you can spend it in this category. Last year, our budget had about 1,400 lines.

So you take something like our unmanned aerial vehicle program, and Congress says, hey, we’re going to give you this much money to procure this number of this exact type of UAV. And what the Army is doing right now is they’re going back and saying, hey, look, Congress, we understand your role in funding the military and oversight of the military. But what we’re really asking for some flexibility. So let’s combine a few of the program’s line items so that we can chase best in class, so we can try something out for a little while and decide that’s not for us. We want to do something different.

And that’s really a lot of what Secretary Hegseth and the department are trying to look at, as they have announced some of the major aspirational goals for changing the acquisition methodologies in the department. It’s going to require a lot of help from Congress. Going to require a lot of help in a bunch of different areas, because it’s not all the department’s—inside the department’s bailiwick. So hear, hear, brother.

BEASLEY: Can I comment real quick on that? Just another thing. When you think about the—in many ways, the Department of Defense is America’s best jobs program. Because whatever that number is, if it’s 1.5 trillion (dollars), you have to consider the amount of that—or, the percentage of that 1.5 trillion (dollars) that goes back into the U.S. economy. Because most of that is going to go to build new ships and create jobs at shipyards. It’s going to build more airplanes. So most of this budget doesn’t go—or disappear into a black hole somewhere. The majority of that, aside from what we need for supporting personnel—

NYLAND: Like 90 (percent)—

BEASLEY: I’m sorry?

NYLAND: Like 99.9 percent of that goes back into the U.S. economy because we’re not allowed to buy things from foreign countries.

BEASLEY: It is—so when—don’t think about it necessarily just as that 1.5 trillion (dollars) is going to the military and it’s going to stay in the United States military. That 1.5 trillion (dollars), though then gets parceled up. And we create manufacturing and industrial base—a lot of manufacturing and industrial base jobs for American citizens with that 1.5 trillion (dollars).

NYLAND: Yeah, I’ll give you an example of that. So one of the jobs I had, I was effectively the city manager for Fort Meade up in Maryland. I had no idea going into that job how popular of a person I would be in Maryland, because Fort Meade, and our expenditures, and the amount of money that we brought to the state accounted for about 3 percent of the state of Maryland’s GDP—just our little post. So, yeah. I mean, that’s—yeah, all that money goes right back into the economy.

FARMER: It’s helpful because you see the price tag, and I’m sure the uninitiated bristle at it. So it’s helpful to have context.

We’ve got a group of smart folks in the audience, some of whom will no doubt be policymakers, have the ears of policymakers. Klaxon, I haven’t heard from you. I want to hear from you. (Laughter.) What do you wish policymakers better understood from where you sit about military readiness, about pivoting, about having a defined end state? What do you wish policymakers had better context of?

TOWNSEND: No, and I tell you—like, so I’ve done, you know, jobs in the Pentagon where you interact with a lot of—that’s really where the policymakers reside, there in the Pentagon, in the staff of the Office of the Secretary of War and those types of things. And it’s a lot of hard charging. I mean, I remember—I look in the crowd and it’s just surprising to me of I think when I was your age I was worried about flying airplanes and doing that kind of thing. And to have this interest in the broader world is phenomenal.

You know, you get individuals that are very—they’re very smart. They know a lot about the direction, where the administration and that top-down guidance. But, you know, the things that make things happen is teamwork, is working together. And a lot of times, you know, we military members—and, you know, I might be in the room where I’ve had twenty-plus years of experience and the individual, you know, it’s their, you know, first week there in the Pentagon, right? But if there’s a team mindset, working together, being receptive to the inputs, understanding what you don’t know, and asking questions, you know, ultimately, you know, especially when I was on the Joint Staff, you know, my role was to advise and prepare the chairman so the chairman could fulfill his responsibility to be the senior military advisor. And those individuals that are working for the secretary are doing the same things. And you’re collaborating, and you’re working hard as a team to kind of provide that best guidance and best advice.

You may not necessarily move the needle or go where you’re—you know, where things have been in the past, or whatever the case is. But to me, as long as the process is solid, that collaboration occurs, that team mindset occurs—and I think ultimately, you know, being in the flying business, you know, a bad day is somebody dies, right? Very rarely in your different areas of work does a bad day mean somebody’s losing their life, right? Whether it’s a business deal or whatever the case is. And so I think, you know, for us in the military that’s why you hear this focus on readiness is, you know, so that you’re ready and you can minimize the risk of those things occurring. And so I think those are really the big things that I try to provide, you know, my experience and my input to kind of provide that perspective, and then really work through that process to produce what’s kind of best for the military and what’s best for the country.

FARMER: Terrific. Thank you, gentlemen. Just about time now to open it up to this group, to the folks online. With a reminder, Space Force over there is going to head out in about fifteen minutes. So if you’ve got questions on your mind or for that we can start there.

TOWNSEND: Break the ice.

FARMER: That’s right.

TOWNSEND: Jump right in.

Q: So I have had a lot of thoughts over the past couple of months. I’m still formulating my question, right, but bear with me as I ask. So you highlighted the thematic difference of we’re moving from counter insurgencies, small ops, and kind of, like, insertion into more large force projection and a theater that we last saw probably in like World War II time era, right, with the Pacific campaign. Simultaneously though, like, with the post-World War II and Marshall Plan era, we were—our force projection was tied to ideological and economic concepts. Now what I’m observing is we’re decoupling the ideological and the economic force projection. And we’re focusing more on the economic-driven force projection, and kind of bifurcating or separating the world into different sectors based off of that economic projection.

How do you guys see your deployment pattern and kind of military patterns throughout the world changing? Because, from where I stand today, I feel like we’re carving up the world into four or five different sectors. And within the Middle East there is, let’s say, like, the Aegean, Southern Mediterranean—or, like, Eastern Mediterranean line. There is the South China Sea, that area. And then the Indian Subcontinent. And then for us, it’s the Americas and the immediate neighbors. And Europe is no longer a priority. And with Asia, the priority is more economic warfare rather than diplomacy and ensuring that we’re obliging by a lot of the promises that were made by different administrations. That’s how I see it. I would love to hear your perspective and if that’s correct, or how I should adjust my mental model. Thank you. And thank you for your service, everyone. Appreciate it.

TOWNSEND: Well, I’ll start, and I know the folks can jump in. So, like, broadly, when we look at the military, we organize ourselves across what’s called Unified Command Plan, UCP. And so that’s traditionally been divvied up via combatant commands that are geographic and combatant commands that are functional in nature, right? And so whether it’s Indo-Pacific Command, or European Command, Africa Command, North and South America, there’s been different ways that we’ve organized geographically. And then functionally, you know, transportation, special operations, cyber, Strategic Command, those types of things. So we’ve always kind of had this organization—

TRUSTY: Space! Space!

TOWNSEND: Space Command, of course. You know, it’s not a quiz on me—(laughter, inaudible). I’m just establishing an example for the room. So my military—

NYLAND: Anyone got a little brother? (Laughs.)

TOWNSEND: So my military arts and science instructor from the Air Force Academy is over my ear right now giving me the whale eye. So we’ve always kind of identified ourselves geographically. And we’ve always, you know, kind of had a balance and a shift in the prioritization on where those, you know, things lie. And there is discussion over a change to the UCP. And I’ve not seen anything specifically about, hey, this is where we’re going to go, or how that’s being updated. So I think we’re still waiting to see, you know, essentially how we’re going to organize in the future to align our forces, you know, better for what we’re doing.

BEASLEY: I would say you’re right, in some contexts. We don’t have an ideological adversary the way we—to the extent that we did immediately after World War II. And so perhaps we are looking at other drivers to organize by. But I would offer two things. The first, if you’re—if you’re basing your interpretation off the National Security Strategy, let’s see if resources fall out that way too. So just because—you know, there’s an argument to be made that the National Security Strategy is not written for the United States or a domestic population. That it’s written as much for our adversaries and our allies as it is for us. So we don’t necessarily take that document and then start divvying up resources based on prioritization that we interpret from the National Security Strategy. I think we’ll see if that ultimately happens, though. It hasn’t happened yet.

NYLAND: I mean, that’s the classic. You show me your budget. I’ll tell you what strategy says. (Laughter.)

BEASLEY: Or what your priorities are, yeah. So I’ll just leave it at that. I am not sure that resources are going to fall out the way that you just described them, even if we are talking about rebalancing our mindset and the way we view the world from a political and a security perspective, that necessarily, you know, we’re all of a sudden going to leave the Pacific and shift all that to South America, and we’re going to pull out. I don’t know—I would be surprised if resources fell out that way.

TOWNSEND: Right. And the kind of constant is the enemy gets a vote, right? Essentially, you may—you know, for a long time we wanted to make this pivot to the Pacific. And that was the strategy. But in 2011 or 2012, I think it was when it announced, and, you know, essentially we had another ten-plus years of conflict in the Middle East. So I think, you know, that’s always something as well. The enemy gets a vote. And you need to be prepared and ready to execute.

TRUSTY: Yeah. And for space, we’ve always kind of seen it as global, you know, because we’re one of those functional combatant commands. And so we’ve always looked at, hey, how can we enable the joint force, you know, globally? And so at least for us, I don’t think that’ll change much. Hopefully, we’ll get a little bit more money, though.

NYLAND: If you’re interested in diving down that line a little bit deeper, these guys are going to roll their eyes because I say this anytime we have this—start this conversation, what I found helped me understand the underpinnings of the National Security Strategy and some of the moves that the administration has been taking lately is when I read Elbridge Colby’s Strategy of Denial. He’s the undersecretary of war for policy right now, so he has a pretty strong voice in a lot of the discussions that are going on when we’re talking strategy.

FARMER: We’ll take one more in the room, and then go online. There in the back. (Laughter.)

Q: James Kennedy, Business Executives for National Security.

You kind of touched on it with the geographic combatant commands. And I wanted to ask for your thoughts on the recent realignment. I know the Army’s kind of in there on its own, but as well for the secretary of defense, kind of with International Command, INDOPACOM command, and then a Western Hemisphere command. What your thoughts are on that realignment, how that kind of changes operational planning or resources available to different commanders? Any thoughts on that would be great. Thank you.

NYLAND: Yeah. So I’ll start with the with the Army’s recent transformation. So, without giving an entire treatise on how the military organizes, what the army has recently done is—generally every combatant command is supported by what we call a component command. So you’ve got, you know, EUCOM, the European Command. You’ve got U.S. Army Europe. U.S. Air Force Europe. What do you guys call them? U.S. Marine Corps Europe?

BEASLEY: Yeah.

NYLAND: Right? So what the Army’s done is for the component command for NORTHCOM and the component command for SOUTHCOM, they’ve taken those and they’ve combined them with the organization that was responsible for training and equipping our unassigned combat formations. And they’ve basically oriented them on the Western Hemisphere. So we’re calling it Western Hemisphere Command.

There’s some internal—in my opinion, there’s a little bit of internal department politics driving that a little bit, when it comes to—because effectively, what you see happen oftentimes is that combatant commanders always want more resources in order to do the jobs they’ve been asked to do. And where do those resources come from? They come from the services. And so really by doing this a lot of what the Army has done as kind of gotten out of the business of going, hey, we can give you this or we can’t give you this, because now every Army combat formation is already assigned to a combatant command. So it’s about the combatant commanders fighting amongst themselves for these resources.

The other thing that drives a lot of this has been the department—under Secretary Hegseth the department has had a strong focus on reducing the total number of general and flag officers. And so this significantly reduces—this gives the Army some free maneuver to cut away at some of those—some of those general officer positions.

BEASLEY: I would say, if you’re going to divide up the world, where you draw the lines matter. And if you draw a line between North America and South America, you’ve created a chasm between North America and South America. And as demographics change over time, I think it’s always wise to go back and look at where you drew the lines and see if they’re still in the right place.

TOWNSEND: Yeah. Well, I’ll just speak to my own—to my own experience. So I’m the installation commander at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. I’m in Pacific Air Forces. So assigned to Indo-Pacific Command. I reside physically in Northern Command, and support missions and operations there. And there was an event, you know, where we had forces that came in from Indo-Pacific Command, forces that came in from NORTHCOM to plus up, and additional Strategic Command. So I had three combatant commanders, not the people but their forces, descend on my base. And if I have one fuel truck, right, am I the one who makes the decision on where that fuel truck goes? It kind of ends up being—I don’t think I am, right? And it shouldn’t be on the secretary’s plate. So in a lot of ways, I think that there’s an opportunity to simplify, you know, the way that we organize in order to kind of remove some of those friction lines.

NYLAND: And I think too, if you go back and look at when we came up with this approach to organizing our forces, it was a period of time where most conflicts would be—we imagined most conflicts would be regional. And now we’re having a very hard time imagining any conflict with the near-peer competitor being anything but global, or having potential global impacts, now that so many other domains have opened up, like cyber, like space. (Laughter.) You know, and the ability to create effects anywhere in the world from a region.

TRUSTY: And now you seeing too, like, I mean, other countries, kind of, you know, jumping onto this as well. When you look at NATO saying, like, you know, hey, you know, space is a warfighting domain. When we look at, you know, the National Security Strategy with kind of our pivot here to the Western Hemisphere, you really don’t see space mentioned at all. But, you know, be for sure that space will be supporting, you know, the folks here that has to, you know, conduct whatever missions they need to in the Western Hemisphere, you know, in concert with the national security strategy. And so that’s things that we’ll continue to consider. Those are things that we’ll continue to support. And if there is a, you know, shift, we’ll be ready to kind of move to that too.

FARMER: Perfect. Let’s go to a question online.

OPERATOR: We will take our first virtual question from Dana Cody. Please remember to state your name and affiliation. Please accept the unmute now prompt. We will take our next question from Roger Matthews.

Q: Hi everybody. Thank you so much to everyone on the panel for being here. And thank you, again, for all of your service. It’s been fascinating to listen to thus far.

I had a question specifically for Colonel Trusty, but I do believe it applies to all of the branches present here. But as you think about low Earth orbit as a potential novel landscape or battleground for the future, wanted to ask how does the Space Force navigate this populated space, particularly with private companies like Starlink populating the space with tons of satellites in the past year, and expected to be many more launched this year? As you look towards the construction of novel defensive bubbles, whether that’s the Golden Dome or other methods, how do you manage these relationships with private corporations sending tons of satellites into space. And then when you think about potentially adversarial weaponized satellites, how do you start to monitor this crowded space in a new way?

TRUSTY: That’s hard one. All right, guys, I got to go. (Laughter.) No, that’s a great question, man. You know what? Even though, you know, we talk about space being crowded, space is still pretty huge. You know, there’s a lot of folks out there, there’s organizations who’s meant to go out there and manage, you know, whether it’s frequencies in space, slots in space. Those are some of the things that we have had to look at as a service to see how it’s going to, you know, one, kind of help us. Because when we look at the Space Force, you know, we’re small. I tell everyone, you know, all the time, we’re only about 16,000, you know, people in the Space Force. Of that, only 8,000 of that is active duty, and the other 8,000 is civilian.

And so when we went to go visit NYPD and they said they were, like, 50,000 strong, I was, like, oh my God. (Laughs.) But when we kind of look at this, we know that we—you know, we built ourselves to be lean for a purpose, right? And so we know that we’re going to have to depend on our, you know, public-private partnerships to help with us—help us do our mission. You know, it’s a—we’ve been working with private companies for a while. They’ve been in our op centers. We’ve been trading information. We work with them doing foreign military sales and direct commercial sales as well. And so these things are kind of baked into what we do.

When I left my last job in SAF/IA doing foreign military sales and direct commercial sales to for space, for our allies and partners, those are things that we, you know, kind of kept forefront of how can we get capability out there, especially with space being contested, congested, and competitive. And these are things that we’ll have to continue to kind of work with and figure out as space becomes cheaper. You know, SpaceX has made, you know, the access to space relatively cheaper, because when we first started launching rockets—I was at Cape Canaveral at the time. When we first started launching rockets, we would launch it, and then next thing you know, you know, ULA will be like, I guess I don’t need this booster anymore. You know, that’s millions of dollars going down the drain. And when, when Elon Musk described it, he’s, like, it’s like taking a trip, let’s say, from here, from New York to LA, and then you get rid of the plane, you know?

And so now that the access to space has become relatively a lot cheaper, you know, you’re giving, you know, folks who weren’t going to be spacefaring nations the opportunity to be spacefaring nations. However, we kind of work through certain norms that we have with the—you know, the global commons of what we call space, meaning that we want to use it in a peaceful and prosperous way. However, there are some malign actors, when you look at, you know, your Russians and your Chinas of the world, who are doing things in space that may not be, you know, or, as always, kind of pushing, you know, up to the edge, maybe not crossing, but continuing to push up to the edge to kind of violate some of those norms. But we continue to monitor those. We let folks know that we’re continuing to monitor those particular actions. And that’s why we’ve declassified some of the satellites that we used to have as classified type of capability, to let people know that we can see what you’re doing. And so it’s kind of hard at times to have a deterrent if no one knows that you actually have that deterrent.

And so, you know, for us, we’ll continue to, you know, grow and work with our—you know, our private partners. We’re still looking at how can private equity and private capital, you know, come into the Space Force, because those are things that I don’t think we’ve really kind of graphed as of yet, because when you look at folks who potentially want to invest in space, you know, you’re going to look for something that’s going to give you to give you kind of more, like, an immediate return. You know, you guys are kind of working projects. You know, you have certain milestones that you need to hit. In space, you know, we’ve constantly had times where, you know, we’ve had, you know, folks on a contract overpromise and underperform, not meet milestones. And then next thing you know, cost goes way up.

You know, you might already have a, you know, a satellite that’d be worth $5 million, and then, you know, a rocket or a booster that’s worth $10 million. And if you have something that raises the price even that much more, now you’re looking to say, hey, how’s that, you know, stemming our capability somewhere else? Or that’s money we could have spent somewhere else. And so now we’re kind of looking at how we can do that better, faster, and smarter. And the private industry is going to help us with that, big time.

FARMER: I’m going to just ask a brief follow up on that. And I know you’re going to have to head out fairly soon.

TOWNSEND: You could get a mic drop off of that.

FARMER: I know that was fantastic. (Laughter.) Exactly. On that private-public partnership, can anyone speak to the role industry is playing in terms of innovation, in terms of scaling up equipment? We were talking briefly backstage about Anduril. Can anyone speak briefly about the role that industry is playing?

TOWNSEND: Well, you know, I think it’s important. When you look at the way—it used to be over 70 percent of the R&D investment came from the government, and about 30 percent from the private, you know, kind of companies. Well, that’s completely flipped the script. You know, 70 percent of the R&D is now in your private sector, and a smaller proportion that’s coming out of the military. And so, and especially when you’re looking at, you know, some of these new technologies—and, you know, whether it’s additive manufacturing, or AI, or, you know, just advanced capabilities, you know, it’s really a lot of ways the private sector leads the way in a lot of these capabilities, and it’s now we’re more the customer. How do we leverage, and those capabilities?

And I think it’s always been, especially as we move forward, one of the things you’ll hear discussed is this kind of high-low mix. So I need a certain amount of very high end, exquisite, you know, capabilities are going to be those expensive systems and platforms, but now I maybe look to say, can I have a lower-end capability that’s more precision, mass, or I can do cheaper. And I think, you know, that’s one of the lessons that, I think, has come out of the conflict in Ukraine, of I don’t necessarily need, you know, a force that’s just weighted to one area. I can have other capabilities. And we’ve seen, you know, in the partnerships with, you know, these private companies. And, you know, that—you know, aren’t necessarily—that didn’t—you know, started in venture capital, went through some type of growth phase, you know, now—and, well, actually the start is maybe some small business money from the military or from the government. And, you know, VC funding, you know, now into private equity or private capital. And you see the growth, and now really starting to advance and show capabilities.

And, you know, Anduril is a great example of its competition. The collaborative combat aircraft, along with General Atomics, kind of the first phase that the Air Force is exploring. So I think you’re seeing that innovation, that tech, that ability to move fast, and then really, with the funding, not necessarily coming from the government early—maybe, maybe not—but really being able to grow on their own merits.

BEASLEY: Go ahead, please.

NYLAND: Well, I think the other thing that the government really has to do in order to enable that also is either partner up the smaller companies with a more established company that understands how to do business with the government, or to help break down those barriers. If you ever want to put yourself to sleep in a half-second, pull out the Federal Acquisition Regulation. It’s worse than the Generally Accepted Principles of Accounting, you know? And, yeah. So that’s one of the areas. And there’s all kinds of small organizations that—I know the department’s started, whether it’s DIUx, or some of the ones that the Air Force has done. Every department’s got—is trying to do some of that to enable those really innovative young companies to deliver capabilities, especially right now when we’re all just kind of learning and testing.

BEASLEY: I think part of our challenge is understanding how we stimulate private industry to innovate in the direction that’s advantageous to the United States military, or to national security. And I think that starts ultimately with, how do you close the gap between private industry, private equity, and the military itself? I mean, how do you—where do those ties, where are those actual physical connections taking place? So there’s an understanding of where our shortfalls are when it comes to national? What are the things that we need in the United States, military? How do we make—how do we create a system where innovation benefits private equity, private interests, and the United States military at the same time? And then, how do we break through barriers so our government is not—is not crossing any red lines when it comes to picking winners and losers in the private industry? But we’re also understanding that it takes capital to get there. How do we work through those challenges and barriers when it comes to giving money, and so it’s not just your Boeing, and your Lockheed that are always—where all your innovation is coming from.

TRUSTY: And then also kind of figuring out where that red line is between profits and national security. You know, because that question will continue to be asked. You know, you don’t really have to ask that when you have, you know, like a China and they have, like, these, you know, dual use, you know, particular, you know, capabilities. But, you know, here in the U.S., you’re going to really have to take a look and see who’s going to answer that question and make that decision,

FARMER: We’ll go to someone else in the room. Sure, right up here, up front.

Q: Hi. Thanks so much for coming and talking with us. My name is Emily Willrich.

And I’m curious. I’ve been seeing some analysts report that the U.S. military is spread too thin right now with all the operations in the Caribbean, also Trump, like, looking at potential operations in the Middle East, and then, of course, monitoring China. So I’m curious what you all think of that assessment, if you think it’s accurate.

TRUSTY: I mean, for the Space Force, we’re deployed in place. (Laughter.) So we’re good.

Q: Especially regarding space, please.

BEASLEY: I would ask, spread too thin to do what? I mean, and I think, are we spread too thin right now to aggregate the force for major theater war? I think the answer to that, in my opinion, from the way I look at the posture of United States military, I think we are. But to conduct, you know, anything below that, I would say that the United States military, in my opinion, is not postured too thin. There’s no—I don’t think we’re at a point where what we call depth to dwell or operational tempo is too high. And I think we have global force posture, in my opinion. You know, it’s changing, but it’s changing in the right directions. And I think we have it about right, or we have a plan to get it about right. So my answer generally, you know, would be I don’t think we are spread—I don’t think we are spread too thin. And I don’t think combat power in the Caribbean or down towards South America is taking combat power away from a critical deterrent mission, for example, in Asia.

TOWNSEND: Yeah. And I think that, you know, fundamentally, right, we’re about deterrence. And, you know, we rest well at night, every day on the deterrence capability that we have through the military force and our posture. And then you got to think too, I mean, the military is about rapid power projection capability. And, you know, you look at our ability to surge into theater in a short amount of time with the assets that we need, I think is really second to none.

BEASLEY: One more thing. We talked at the beginning—an interesting point. We talked at the beginning of this conversation about paradigm shifts. And about shifting away from counter insurgency towards more conventional, large-scale conflict. Realize that part of the answer to your question is we have to—we can’t call a timeout and retool the force, bring it all back home, reset it, and then redeploy it again. So as we undergo organizational transformation, and these large transitions that we’re talking about, we have to build that airplane while it’s still flying. See I got that joke. (Laughter.)

TOWNSEND: That’s right.

BEASLEY: We got—we can’t land the plane, fix it, and then take off again. That plane is out there every day with a mission that it has to do of deterrence, primarily. So that is another challenge that we think about when we’re asking ourselves, are we spread too thin?

NYLAND: While I appreciate the metaphorical analogy on landing the airplane to fix it, I don’t know the answer to your question. If I was sitting in OSD policy looking at readiness across the force, I would be reminded that the more ships you steam and the longer you steam them, the more maintenance you’re going to have to do, and the longer downtime. The more aircraft that you’re flying, and the longer you fly them—it’s like taxes. You can push the bill out, but it’s eventually going to come due. And then so it’s really about—it’s not so much about whether we’re spread too thin right now, it’s can we spread that readiness out so that we’re ready in the future, once aircraft, or ships, et cetera—or do we have the money to invest in shipyards and phase maintenance of aircraft in order to even that out?

TOWNSEND: I think the finance folks call—dry powder, is that—am I getting that right? The dry powder?

NYLAND: For sure.

FARMER: We’ve got a question online. Let’s go online.

OPERATOR: We will take our next question from Rafael Nachman. Please remember to state your name and affiliation.

Q: Rafael Nachman, calling in from the Army in Germany.

So, gentlemen, you’ve already mentioned how the Army and the military as a whole is transitioning from a counterinsurgency framework to a more LSCO, large scale combat operations framework. Much of this conversation that we’re hearing, at least at the junior officer level, is centered around direct conflict with our near-peer threats. But with adversaries who are increasingly comfortable operating under the specter of hybrid warfare and plausible deniability, how prepared is our military to meet and defeat those threats more in the competition and crisis phase of that conflict continuum?

NYLAND: So, you know, this kind of goes back directly to a point Zeb made earlier with regard to, you know, there’s the existential debate about, OK, can a force that’s ready to defeat a near-peer competitor also do counterinsurgency? And I will tell you, from the Army’s perspective, for the longest time we always looked at it from a risk mitigation perspective. If we didn’t do well in counterinsurgency, what’s the worst that could happen? Versus if we weren’t ready to fight a large-scale combat operation against a near-peer competitor, what’s the worst that could happen? So the severity of not being prepared for large-scale combat operations was enough—was enough to drive us towards doing that well, and then we’d muddle through if the situation was something else.

So, you know, from my perspective, to answer your question, I don’t think you can afford not to be prepared for large-scale combat operations, even understanding that you may—that the next fight may be in the gray zone. I mean, I will tell you, our nation—and not just the military, but our nation, the national security professionals in our country—I think have about a zero percent batting average on guessing where the next major conflict is going to occur. So, you know, the argument—the Army’s argument is always we got to be prepared for the worst, and anything else we’ll figure it out.

TOWNSEND: Well, and I think, you know, to me, the question of the gray zone and hybrid, right, really points to, you know, the target isn’t necessarily the fielded military force. It’s us. It’s the room. It’s citizens. You know, whether it’s infrastructure that you’re attacking or, you know, the spaces where people congregate, or whatever the case is. And so, you know, that’s something, I think, that, you know, you have to be serious in thinking about is the resiliency. And, you know, you know it’s one thing that you need to generate and you need to deploy, but, you know, the hybrid nature of it potentially creates challenges that, you know, maybe prevents you from ever leaving where you need to go.

So when you look at the Chinese and the unrestricted warfare that was published several years ago, it really doesn’t talk about military, you know, domains, per se. It kind of opens it up the whole-of-society type of consideration. So I don’t know necessarily—I completely agree that there’s challenges, you know, with identification, and saying who conducted this threat, and then responding, you know, with the means that you would desire. That’s always going to be a challenge in the gray zone, and being attributable. But I think really it comes down to resilience of populations, because a lot of times those maybe are more so the target.

NYLAND: Yeah, I think, if you look at too—if they look at the military’s role in gray zone conflict, you’re really talking about cyber capability. It’s too bad Corey’s not here. You’re talking about space capability. Some informational warfare capability. So if you take a look at some of the things that the Army has been doing, specifically in the Pacific with regard to information warfare, and then irregular warfare, what you’re seeing, you know, with the capabilities of some of the special operations organizations and what they’re doing. So that’s really the military’s direct role in gray zone conflict. That’s also when you start really relying on some of the other instruments of national power. You know, the big E for the economy, you know, information, you know, and diplomacy. Those are really a lot of the tools that you’re going to use in a gray zone conflict.

FARMER: Zeb, was there anything else you wanted to say?

BEASLEY: No, that’s good. Thank you.

FARMER: Well, that’s just about time. The Council has a hard and fast rule that we will start and end on time. So, Rafael, thank you for staying up late in Germany and joining us. Hope you get good rest tonight. Thank you all. Thank you, Colonel Beasley, Colonel Townsend, Colonel Nyland, Colonel Trusty, in absentia. He had mentioned his contact information is online if anyone else has any questions for him. But thank you guys so much. And for those of you in the room, there is a reception right outside and we invite you to join us. Thank you guys.

BEASLEY: Thank you all for coming. (Applause.)

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.