SECRETARY OF DEFENSE ASH CARTER: Thanks, Lieutenant Cutler.
Hello, Cadets.
Let's see. I know Colonel Milton is over here. I want to thank him for this. General Hughes is around also.
But look, I've got two things to say. The first is, and relax everybody. It's hot enough out here. I'm going to keep my suit on because in a minute, we're going to shake hands and get a picture of you, and I'll try to look as good as I possibly can in that picture.
But first, two things and then I'll take some questions. One, I am so proud of you guys. And I say that because you wouldn't be here if you weren't good. And I -- I'm proud of it not just on your behalf as individuals, although I am that, but I'm proud of our country because we have the finest fighting force the world has ever known. And the reason for that is our people.
We've got lots of other things going for us. We're a great country with a wonderful, bright future. And we're a world leader and we inspire confidence in people around the world, and rightly so; and fear in the people who need that.
But the reason we're the best is because of you. And one of my jobs as secretary of defense is to make sure that I leave to my successor and my successor's successor a force as fine as the one today. And that means I need to make sure that folks in my generations are followed by people in yours who are the best. That's what you represent.
So I'm very proud of you. Our whole country is proud of you. You should be proud of yourselves. There's nothing better than contributing to the noblest mission a young person can devote themselves to. And that is protecting our people and leaving a better world.
And that's what you do. You get to wake up every morning and be part of that. That's important. And it takes the place of anything else in life that can give you meaning and make you proud of yourself and how you're spending your lives.
So, you should be proud of yourselves and you should know how proud I am of you.
The other thing is that it's a competitive world out there. And whether it's Russia or China or ISIL or North Korea or Iran, it's a competitive world. And we -- it's like anywhere else, the only way to stay ahead is to keep challenging yourself, keep pushing yourself, keep getting better, keep competing to get better.
And that's the spirit I need you to have in yourselves, in your leadership, and in your Army in the future, one where it's never good enough to be the best. It's only good enough to stay the best. And we've got to keep challenging ourselves.
I always -- I say, to use the expression, since we're in the Pentagon in Washington, we need to think outside of the five-sided box. We need to push ourselves to remain competitive. How can we do better? How can we do better? How can we do better at getting people? How can we do better at getting technology? How can we grow our people better? How can we turn them into better leaders? How can we spend taxpayers money better? How can we connect better to our people so that they know who we are and have confidence in us, the confidence that they deserve to have in us, that we're going to protect them? And we need to be constantly challenging ourselves to do that.
One of the things you're taught here is not only that you can be a great leader, and I think you -- I hope by now are feeling the confidence that you should have in yourselves and that's building. But also, the sense of responsibility that comes with being a soldier in the United States Army. It's a very, very big responsibility.
One of the things I'd like to say, and I was saying to some fellow cadets who I was having lunch with today, is I travel all over the world and I'm talking to foreign leaders, and one thing they always say is they like working with American military people. That's a huge source of strength for us because it means we have all the friends around the world. And if you think our -- of our principle antagonists, they don't have any, or very few.
And we have that for lots of reasons. We have it because we're strong, sure. But we also have it for -- because of what we stand for, and that's embodied in each and every one of you and that's something that makes me incredibly proud. When I hear that, my ears just ring with pride for the United States and for you.
So you should feel good about what you're doing here. I feel very good and your country does about what you're doing here. So keep pushing yourselves. It's not good enough to be as good as you already are. I'm going to be pushing us to develop you more and more. I'm going to be pushing us to create and be an army in which you want to stay, because I can't afford to lose good people when I've invested in them, as we are investing in you right now.
So I'll do my part of things; I need you to do your part. And I'm confident you will.
So that, let me take some questions from you. It can be any subject you want, anything at all, and it doesn't even have to be a question. It can be a, "Here's something I think you ought to know or something I've wanted to say if I ever had a chance to bend the secretary of defense's ear." Now's the chance, so go ahead and take it.
Peter, can I just go ahead and recognize folks here? I see this guy right here. Come on up. They've got a mic here. Go ahead.
Q: Mr. Secretary, I'm Jacob McConnell. I'm a senior at Louisiana State University.
My question is for you when you refer to the world being competitive, specifically China, Russia the growing threat of ISIS, how does the United States handle these challenges and -- with the ongoing conflicts and tensions around the world with a military that is constantly shrinking and with an aging arsenal?
SEC. CARTER: Well, first of -- I'll come back to the constantly shrinking, aging arsenal. I'm going to take a little issue with you on some of those aspects in a minute.
But on the -- on the variety -- we have no choice. We have to do all those things. We have to deal with all of those current or potential threats. Now, that is reflected in this full spectrum of training we're going to be requiring you to get so that you know how to work from a counterterrorism or counterinsurgency kind of environment, or even a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief type environment, right up to full spectrum combat.
We don't have any choice. I can't narrow that down for you because I need you to do it all, because our country needs to do it all, because our world needs to do it all.
Now, on the second part, I have tremendous confidence in the people that make up our military. I also have tremendous confidence in our military. Now, do I get all the money I want? No. And so I -- of course, I'd like to have more. But you raised both modernization and force structure. And -- and the quibble I want to make a little bit with you is this.
What we're prioritizing especially in the Army at the moment, and I'll explain why in a second -- General Milley, myself, your new secretary of the Army, Secretary Fanning – is, in fact, readiness. Now, you always have to balance force size, force structure, end-strength, modernization and readiness, in any military investment. And as I said, if we had more money, I could give money to everything. But the reality is we -- we have what the taxpayer is willing to give us.
Again, I'd like that to be more, but I have to be realistic about what I have. And in today's climate, your leadership is prioritizing readiness.
And the reason for that is, first and foremost, I never, ever want you to go into combat, or any situation where we're counting on you, not fully ready. I can't have that. You can't have that. You can't excel. It's not safe. And you won't win. So I need -- I need readiness. And as I just said, we need readiness across an incredibly wide range of potential contingencies. And that's expensive.
So where we make tradeoffs at the margin, we're tending to make them in terms of the readiness of the current force, rather than having either a few more soldiers or putting a little money into modernization, both of which we'd like to do. And we are at a size -- remember, we're changing the Army. The Army's size has a lot to do with the extra growth associated with Iraq and Afghanistan.
They were long wars where there was a big rotation base. And so we -- we increased end-strength in order to service those two strategic ends. Now, we have a wider spectrum of strategic ends and we need to balance our spending a little bit differently. And we need to get back to full-spectrum combat training. And that's why readiness is such a big deal.
Q: Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
SEC. CARTER: Thank you. Good question.
(CROSSTALK)
Q: Good afternoon, Mr. Secretary. My name is Cadet Hamm, Christopher Hamm from Georgia Southern University, Eagle Battalion.
My question for you, sir. I know that you just wrote up that we need to be able to do more with less resources. But considering the last -- the evolution of warfare over the last two decades, do you -- how do you -- what do you think would be good changes that we could make in the Army in order to meet the new requirements and be more adaptive in modern warfare?
SEC. CARTER: Well, there are lots. And it's not that you're not making them, but we need to make these and we need to push ourselves to make them faster. I'll just give you a few.
One is people -- how we manage people. I'll give you some examples. I've been -- I talk about the force of the future. What is the force of the future going to look like? Are we building the force of the future?
So, for example, I have created new avenues that you all will be able to avail yourselves of to give you advanced education and training, because in today's world, you don't just get the -- you know, you're -- the education you get now is great and all of you are getting really superb educations.
But you've got a long -- bunch of runway ahead of you and you need -- in today's world, people need to be educating themselves right up until the day they die in order to stay -- keep up. So I need to change the way we do things, because in the old days, we looked at education as the thing you did when you were young, and then you were educated or not or whatever, and then the rest of your -- then you lived the rest of your life. That's not the way people are looking at life today.
Technology allows us to do more kinds of education and training, so I want you to have new opportunities. Now, that's got another dimension to it, which is it makes military service more attractive to you, which means you're more likely to stay. On the other hand, it makes you more attractive to other potential employers, which I love on your behalf, but I hate on my behalf because I don't like to lose you. I don't like to lose good people.
So I need -- so we need to stay in the game and I need to -- I need you to continue to feel that the Army is a place where you can grow for the very selfish reason that I want you to stay. So personnel management, huge amount of stuff going on.
The other cadet was asking about equipment and modernization. And well -- well -- well, he might have -- we're doing a lot in terms of changing the equipment and environment of a soldier. It's going to -- and that's a revolution that's going to continue to grow with automation, visualization tools, all the communication. So I've just seen it myself.
You guys are too young to see this. But you know, you go into a -- you know -- Jesus -- you know, a platoon command post and you have the equipment today that a division headquarters had 20 years ago in terms of communications equipment. And so even as what you have on your belt and your phone is better than, you know, companies had in big warehouses filled with old mainframe computers in the old days. So a lot of stuff is changing and we have to be at the very cutting edge of that in our society.
We need to continue to draw from all our society because I -- I want the best, right? I want people like you. I don't want a cross-section of people -- of Americans. I don't. I want the best. I want to pick and choose; that's what an all-volunteer force is like. So I want to pick from the whole of the country.
That's by -- by the way, the reason why I opened up all positions to women, because they're half of our population and I want to -- I want the best and I want to be able to pick from everybody. That doesn't mean everybody gets to do what they want. Everybody qualifies, but I get to pick from everybody. That's good for us. It's good for our army, so it makes good sense.
So in all these ways, we've got to keep up and keep challenging ourselves to do thing differently so that we keep that lasting value, which is the excellence, the honor, the trust of the profession of arms in a changing world.
Q: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I appreciate you coming out here to talk to us.
SEC. CARTER: Thanks. Thanks for being here.
STAFF: There's another one over here.
SEC. CARTER: Okay. There he is.
Q: Mr. Secretary, my name's Cadet McCurry. I'm from the University of Cincinnati.
I was wondering what steps when you were our age led you -- that you took led you to become as successful as you are today?
SEC. CARTER: Well, I appreciate you -- I appreciate you saying -- you know, what makes me feel successful is -- is -- is being the leader of you guys. So I appreciate you saying that.
And I'll tell you, you know, I was like you probably are, namely I wanted to do something good and I wanted to do something well. And I didn't know what it was. And so I groped around a little bit and -- and so forth. And I lived in a different generation, I should say also. It didn't influence me all that much, but the climate was very different for military life in those days.
We had the Vietnam War going on. It was a completely different era. And it was very unpopular on campuses. It was a very different environment. Thank God that's over.
But what caught me is two things, that I could -- I felt like I could make a contribution in this field. And that the skills I had could make a contribution. And then secondly, it was about the most important thing I could possibly do.
So you put those two things together, I can do it and it's the most important thing that anybody can do -- that's a pretty magical combination. So that snagged me. And I think it's probably snagged you guys, too. You get through here. I'm pretty confident most of you are going to feel you're pretty good at it. And then you think about it a little bit and say, "Well, you know, there are a lot of things I can do in life." And, you know, in fairness there are a lot of important things and meaningful things to do in life.
But man, it's hard to beat protecting people. Because they can't have all the rest of life without what you do. People can't get up every morning and take their kids to school, go to work, live their lives, dream their dreams, if they can't be safe. So we give them the thing that makes everything else possible. That's a pretty cool way to spend your life.
And if you feel like also you're actually able to contribute -- you're not just watching, you're able to do something. And of course, I work hard, like you work hard. But that's -- that's a pretty magical combination. It's hard to find many places in life where there's that combination. For me, that just lit me up as a young person.
STAFF: Sir, we have time for one more.
SEC. CARTER: Okay.
Q: Mr. Secretary, I'm Cadet McClure from the University of South Alabama. You spoke on this earlier, but my question was: How do we balance combat readiness and modernization with the current military budget cuts?
SEC. CARTER: Ah. Yeah, well, I'm going to complain a little bit on the budget, if I may. And I mean, I -- look, we have a large defense budget. I'm grateful for the country. I'm grateful to the taxpayer. I think we try to give them excellent value. I am a stickler for reform in how we spend our money. I expect you in the course of your career to always remember it ain't your money. It's the taxpayers' money.
And if they don't have confidence that we know what we're doing with their money, they're not going to give us the amount we need to protect them. So it's a two-way street of confidence.
That said, I am frustrated with gridlock in Washington. We've had it now for six or seven years. And it leads to very herky-jerky budget environment. And we try as best we can to, in those of us who need to manage in that environment, to limit the instability as it affects the force because our leaders need to have enough visibility into their budgeting future to build the force in the way they need to; our Army leaders, our Navy leaders, our Air Force leaders, our Marine Corps leaders and me. And our individual service members need enough stability in their lives that they'll stick with us.
So I -- I'm constantly appealing -- can you give us some stability here, and the only way that can happen is if the country can come together and kind of bury the hatchet.
Now, if you do the math, and you guys are all smart enough to do this math, and you're -- you're concerned about having to -- about budget deficits, which is a reasonable thing to be concerned about -- if you do the math, you'll quickly conclude that the discretionary part of the budget is not the part that's going to make the difference.
So you can starve -- the discretionary part of the budget is the part that is not entitlements, Medicare, Medicaid and so forth, and the things -- and things like interest on the debt that can't be -- you know, things that -- it's the part that can be controlled, which is the military budget, the education budget, the roads budget, the science and technology research budget.
These are pretty important things, right? I mean, starting with us. And they're only a slice of the budget. So people need to take on the other parts of the budget that are not discretionary and they need to take on the issue of taxes.
Now, those are big electric issues in our country, and so a lot of the politics tends to end up focusing on the part they can get their hands on, which is us and the rest of the discretionary budget because people don't want to touch taxes and they don't want to touch Medicare and Medicaid. And that's the reality. And I -- I -- that's not a balanced view of investing in a country's future.
So I make that point all the time and I try my best, but the reality is, is we've had a lot of gridlock and I'm hoping we get over that. We had it -- the -- the -- (inaudible) -- we don't have anything to do with this. Secretary of defense doesn't have anything to do with this. This is done by the leaders of Congress and president.
But they -- they -- they reached a budget deal last year that was supposed to be a two-year budget deal. Two years, okay? I'd like even longer, but two years. Six months into it, it's already in question. So I'm facing the end of a fiscal year and the beginning of a new fiscal year in which we -- where we might not have an appropriation, which if you read the Constitution, you know is kind of necessary.
That's the way things work. Now, the only place you can get an appropriation, also according to the Constitution, is -- is from the Congress.
And you know, we'll do our best, we'll soldier on. We manage through everything. But it -- it -- it's not okay and, you know, I -- all I hope is that people can come together, get past gridlock and rise up and -- and give the country the way of handling its budget that -- that people deserve when they pay their taxes.
STAFF: Great. Thanks, everyone. We're going to do -- (inaudible).
SEC. CARTER: Okay. So -- yes. I think what -- what happens now is everybody come up one by one, I get a chance to look you right in the eye and congratulate you and thank you and we'll get a picture of you. And I'll give you a coin. You've all been around long enough to know in the Army to know what challenge coins are. And this is the mother of all challenge coins, too, by the way, I guarantee, just simply because -- so you -- you -- not that I want you doing this, but if you did ever once upon a time, when you're much, much older have a drink, you can get one for free from anybody by -- by showing this coin.
STAFF: Would you guys line up this way?
SEC. CARTER: Okay, ready? All right.