Hegseth leads high-stakes talks on AI warfare, America's military future

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Good morning, everyone. My name is Sean Parnell. I'm the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, the Chief Pentagon Spokesman, and I'm a Senior Advisor to Secretary Hegseth, and I'd just like to tell you a little bit about why we are here today. When I was leading an infantry platoon in Afghanistan, we lived a brutal reality every single day. We faced a determined enemy that constantly adapted their tactics to find cheap and easy ways to wound and kill American soldiers. In combat, whoever adapts the fastest controls the battlefield. It's just that simple. Everyone in this room knows that very well. You see, for years, the Pentagon spent billions on elaborate platforms that took decades to field. Our adversaries weren't waiting. They were fielding new weapons in months. And today, under President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, we are fundamentally changing our tactics to the way it should be. We are no longer taking 10 years to adapt. We're doing it right now, in real time, to protect our warfighters and ensure there is always a decisive American victory. Just look at Project Agincourt. It's not another procurement effort. It is a warfighting revolution. It pushes dollars, decisions, and development directly to the tactical edge, uniting our frontline operators with world-class commercial builders. Just look at this stage here today. Owen West, the CEO of Project Agincourt, is leading this panel. Our great Secretary of War and our great Service Secretaries are up here with the Assistant Secretary for Solick. with the Assistant Secretary for Solick. This is the first time ever all of these positions, all of these leaders have been on the same panel, on the same stage. And that's because this isn't bureaucratic business as usual. This Secretary is driving change faster and more aggressively than anything the Pentagon has seen in generations. And this department is in lockstep. Every branch, every agency, every leader is unified behind one and a singular objective. And that's putting better capabilities in the hands of our troops faster. This isn't modernization for modernization's sake. A high-low mix of mass autonomous systems and exquisite capabilities means our soldiers fight with every advantage against any adversary on earth. We have the will. We have the best leadership. And we have the best team. My soldiers in Afghanistan did not have time to wait on a 10-year acquisition cycle. And thanks to the leadership of Secretary Hegseth, today's soldiers won't have to either. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what this panel is all about. And with that, my friend Owen West, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you, Sean. [00:03:26] Speaker 2: Before we get started, I just want to express how honored I am as the Acting Secretary of the Army to have the services and I want to be honored to be honored to be here for this conference. This is a demonstration of our unity, and I couldn't be more proud to have it here at this venue. So thank you. [00:03:49] Speaker 3: Well, let me see how personally pleased I am to see Derek up here. Solix has come a long way, baby. You're doing the job better than I ever did. And you're also demonstrating your political warfare skills on stage. Mr. Secretary, you chose a Marine to moderate this panel. And, you know, having seen the breathtaking, beautiful gear that's about to hit the Army, I suppose that's because I can report back to the Marines what they can expect to see in their armory 50 years from now when these guys handed down to us, used. When we received Gore-Tex in 1995, seven years after the Army, it was like a friendly tribe coming over with fire. But, you know, you must be buoyed as I am, you know, having had a short tour at DIU to see all these new entrants who, in basic terms, they're all capitalists, but they have come to the defense of their nation, and they're out there today. Can you explain the Arsenal of Freedom tour and how that is beginning [00:04:56] Owen West: to change the paradigm of our previous buys? Well, first of all, Owen, thank you. Thank you to the Secretary for having us, for hosting us for AUSA, this incredible conference. I've been watching for a couple of days, from your presentation to General Laniv, us casting the vision for ground warfare. It's an exciting time in the Army. We'll just wait for a second. I caught the last part. Yeah. [00:05:27] Speaker 3: Minus that. I am not the best looking man on this panel, but thank you. [00:05:39] Owen West: She thinks highly of me. The reality is I feel quite comfortable up here. These chairs and these lights, it feels like a television set. It feels like I'm outnumbered here or something. But we're here talking about a deadly serious topic. It appears we have a bit of a tactic. So back to the Arsenal of Freedom. The Arsenal of Freedom is about ensuring that this nation rebuilds its defense industrial base and manufacturing base in ways that we have not been since World War II. President Trump requires urgency. He requires scale. He requires mass, timeliness, open architectures, you name it. If we don't have the next five to ten primes, if we don't go from the five we have right now to ten or fifteen by the end of our term, then we haven't succeeded in opening the Aperture up. And so at every level from what we need Congress to fund to what we're doing here in autonomy, our job is to open the Aperture up to these incredible new companies, that new entrants that want to access the Army, that want to access SOLIC, that want to be a part of what the Air Force and the Navy are doing. But our Pentagon bureaucracy has been at war with them for 20 years. And our big, strong prime contractors, as exquisite as the platforms are that they make, and we need them. So it's not, I'm not here to deride what they do or what they're capable of doing. But ultimately, ultimate, so what, but it's not just about talking to companies and going on the road. Project Agincourt is the end state of something we focused on since day one. So yes, we're focusing on culture and doing things operationally, but we started with drone dominance almost the minute we got here. The president put out an executive order, we got one billion dollars of funding on drone dominance, which we put straight into the hands of operators out into the field. I mean, when we showed up, there was not a single one-way attack program at the Department of War. Not, not one. Ultimately, we will be fielding hundreds of thousands of one-way attack systems this year and into the millions and years to come at a pace that this department's never, ever seen before. And it's because we went from drone dominance to a derpum to all the things that you've been a part of at the same time. [00:08:29] Speaker 3: We're going to get to the budget in a second. We're going to get to 1.5 trillion. I think this is a semi-coordinated effort, but let me say something about the new entrance. I must say when you encounter these young companies, you're left with the reality that no one does it better than the United States. We have the world's best entrepreneurs, we have the world's best engineers, and our capital markets fuel this like a rocket. For those of you who want to approach Project Agincourt, by the way, with weaponry, I'm not the operational expert. My partner, Max Streisus here, is our expert, and he is in dress blues. He has a trident. Yeah, why don't you take a stand, Mark? And he is the man to talk to. Max likes, like most seals, has a terrific head of hair that rivals the secretaries. I didn't say which secretary. But let's get back to what you said right before we sat down, Mr. Secretary. You want candor on this stage, and you want simplicity. And you also said no notes, but for us amateurs who haven't been on TV for eight years, a few of us have notes. Do you know what the acronym KISS is? I think so, but tell me. I mean, I know what it is. I do know what it is. Secretary Cal, you know what this acronym is. Yes, keep it simple. Yes, so I'm going to keep this very simple. I'd like to take the audience on a journey to your decision to move what is probably the biggest doctrinal change since air land battle and sea plan crack the Soviets, or help crack the Soviets, and the biggest budgetary change since building out the ICBM force. Sean invoked Iraq, Afghanistan. You and I served, and hundreds in this room served in those wars, and on this panel. The United States invented the drone, but the drone was not cheapened by scaling and given to our ground forces. From your position now, why was this? [00:10:53] Owen West: Our building, our process, a political system that incentivizes existing efforts and existing programs, and the ability to keep funding them and iterating on them and preventing new entrants and competition. I mean, effectively, you've got a building that's the world's largest bureaucracy affixed to companies that have become appendages of that, and because they've got more lawyers and accountants and lobbyists than anyone in the world, they're able to protect what they have and build more of it over time as opposed to innovate and change. And that's why big changes in this department have always that's what I think makes this so unique, is large changes in our department usually come with internal infighting. Whether it was the establishment of SOCOM, whether it was Bob Gates trying to get the MRAP, took him seven years to fight the fight the building, whether it was Goldwater, Nichols, you name it, different departments, different aspects fought this building. So what makes this different is that every single member on this stage has said I'm all in for autonomy, we need autonomous warfare command, and it started with every process of operationalizing it. Because we could have come in day one, this is an idea that should have been done four, five, six years ago, or even earlier than that. It didn't. We could have declared it and said, may it be so, it'll put a four star in charge and grab a bunch of great headlines. Instead, we said, let's get to work first. First, we have to operationalize the acquisition system. So drone dominance is how we buy them and buy them quickly and scale them quickly and send the demand signal to all these young, hungry companies that were open now for that kind of business. And when you action that, then you add a Derpum on top of it that can drive that kind of change. Jayada 401 inside the army, which has become the the world-class leader in all of those systems. Then you add the dog on top of it to operationalize the Defense Autonomous War Group, which now we've merged all together into Project Agincourt, which will lead to a four-star combatant command with service-like authorities in Auto Warcom, which is then running with millions of drones and the ability to push .milpf throughout the services. And oh, by the way, these services are not fighting us on that concept. They believe in it. And you've seen Adam announce it yesterday. You're seeing more announcements. You'll see more announcements from each one. And then you get to watch it being operationalized in real time. I mean, who ran Dog? General Donovan. General Donovan's now our SELFCOM commander. SELFCOM is our first command with an autonomous Auto Warcom in SELFCOM, operationalizing it. What do you see in CENTCOM with the rescue of Apache pilots? What do you see in one-way attacks being used in CENTCOM right now? It's because it's not just what we do to train it and work on it in a schoolhouse or in an industry. It's how do we get it out to frontline leaders and test it and iterate on it and then drive it at scale in real time so it's actually on the battlefield. I mean, that's the big step change difference here. Yes, you have autonomy, you have robotics, you have SI, you have space. It's that the folks who acquire it need to be right there up with the warfighter at the same time who understand how to iterate it and change on and innovate on it. That's a different battlefield. We've learned a lot from Ukraine, but you can't use everything that's in Ukraine because of all the Chinese components involved in it. So you've got to be able to ensure that we take the best of that and the lessons learned, which the army's done very well, and then push it through. Then an Auto Warcom, a commander with four stars who has the ability to drive that change. So we've done a lot with acquisitions and a lot with industry from day one to modernize, realizing this is the future of warfare, including announcing a future of warfare initiative here coming up. But you ultimately have to drive it into those that fight on our behalf, and that's the uniform class. That's the services, that's the combatant commands. And this Auto Warcom is what's going to create that multi-domain, that domain synthesis that you need so that from space to what we're doing subsea in autonomy is able to work together in a contested environment. And that's what all the uniformed folks in here who know that so much better than I, our job is to equip you to be able to do that as fast as humanly possible. [00:14:54] Speaker 3: So, Mr. Secretary, it seems to me there's been a progression. You start with drone dominance following the Secretary's executive order. You consolidate, because organizationally we're fragmented, as well as purchasing these drones. They're all over the place in the department. You get in an order. But establishing a four-star combatant command is a huge leap. How'd you come to that decision? [00:15:18] Owen West: Well, as you know, we've been doing some-- [00:15:20] Speaker 3: Let me just ask the blunt question. You said, I'm to be blunt. For 15 years, Congress has asked the Department of War to reduce the number of general officers as a percentage of its overall force. You actually started to do this and received some criticism. But here you are establishing a combatant command, probably with several general officers who have to lead this. Mm-hmm. How'd you come to that decision? [00:15:45] Owen West: Well, we've not been shy about reducing the general officer corps, because it needs to be done. Anyone who's been inside our formations knows how rank-heavy they are. It doesn't take-- and with more layers and more rank comes more distance between the warfighter and the decision-maker, and not necessarily better outcomes. In fact, there's an inverse relationship between success on the battlefield the number of four and three-star generals since World War II. Back of the envelope, common sense says there's a lot of efficiencies we can find there. And so while the media will call it a purge, they call-- they spin everything negatively, of course. We've been quite precise about understanding where those cuts need to come from and ensuring we're not-- we're not-- we're taken from tail, not from tooth. But at the same time, if something is this important as it is, just like when President Trump established Space Command-- or excuse me, Space Force, you need to give it the authorities in order to drive that change. So it had to be-- it's going to be not just a four-star, but I'm sure one of our best four-stars, fully empowered to run as fast as possible to ensure that we're operationalizing these capabilities to all these gentlemen and all the service members out there as quickly as possible. So I think it completely meets the intent. Let's put rank where we need it to ensure we can drive change quickly. That's why you've seen derpums on really important programs, whether it's submarines, or the B-21, or our nuclear triad. It's-- we're going to use rank to drive change with the right people in those positions, but not just legacy formations and commands which have gathered over time and haven't led to battlefield efficacy. In this case, we need this kind of authority yesterday. Should have been established a long time ago. I say this, and I don't mean it flippantly. I actually don't know what the previous administration did for four years in this job. When you look at the future of warfare and where it's going on hypersonics, I mean, on hypersonics, they took a nap. On space, they took a nap. On weaponization of space, they took a nap. On drones, they took a nap. Like, as the world was evolving and changing and adversaries were shaping the way they fight, they seem to think the world is static. And what you will see from President Trump is that we have to adapt in real time. Adapt, iterate, innovate. That's our competitive advantage. I mean, from what Troy knows in space, from what we can do in the ocean and autonomy right now, and building out a fleet, to what was laid out by Adam, to what our special operators did at DOG. By the way, we put it at SOCOM initially, so it would drive and move fast and operationalize in a way that only SOCOM can do. So, what you know you will get from us is urgency. Urgency to address threats [00:18:21] Speaker 3: around the world as well. So, you've given, uh, you've given Adjutant Court a one-year deadline, October the 1st, 2027, to stand up this command for Max, myself, the chairman, the joint staff, and the services. I must say, by the way, the, the joint staff has been terrific in forming this OPT, because we want to make sure that the commander is fully empowered to drive institutional change with the authorities he or she needs to do this. That's fast, though, to stand up. Well, and by the [00:18:55] Owen West: way, I can't tell you how many meetings happened between OSW and the joint staff in real time, collaborative to get to this point. Uh, so you've also got uniform and civilians working together hand in glove, the chairman and I hand in glove on this, and then working with service secretaries and chiefs and others, uh, to get feedback on where should this live. And frankly, initially, we didn't have it as an autonomous, as a four-star combatant command, and then we iterated on what that might look like, held another series of meetings, and real, and realized, no, this is where it needs to land. So, it's been a, it's been a civil, uh, civ-mil collaboration from the start, which is why I, I believe not only will we get it done by the deadline, but I think we'll get it done sooner. We got incredibly capable leadership. Great, a great op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, by the way, by Owen West, if you haven't read it yet. We've got, we, what we do, I, I think that is a, is a common sense leadership principle, is find your fastest runners, empower them, and let them run. That's who Max is, that's who Owen is, that's who General Donovan is, and other leaders like that across our joint force. Empower them with a clear vision and at Max authorities, and they can get a lot done very quickly. [00:19:56] Speaker 3: Before I get to the service secretaries, one final thing, the big looming issue, I want to address the budget. Uh, when Ike shifted from the U.S. Army mostly to ICBM, he wielded 10 to 12 percent of GDP as our defense budget. You've invoked Ronald Reagan in the arsenal of freedom. Reagan wielded 6.2 percent. Gradually, our armory has eroded over time, and we, uh, about five years ago, we ended up at about three percent, and our debt service is about to spike. You've asked for a one-time pivot, or the President, you and President Trump, how important is this 1.5 one-time hit, and what are the consequences if we don't get critical reconciliation? Absolutely critical. Uh, when, especially when you look at the [00:20:50] Owen West: deferred maintenance and the CRs that have, uh, that the, the services have had to endure for years and years and years and years and the, and the chronic underfunding that's existed. Add that to the bureaucracy, which adds more to personnel costs and exquisite systems, which crowds out O and M, and certainly doesn't leave any, any, any opening for new innovations and new investments or new entrants. And so it becomes the existing primes, uh, and, and the service obligations, and then personnel and healthcare, and pretty soon you've got the entirety of the budget. So a one-time generational investment gives us a chance to reflect the President's priorities. And this is all President Trump saying we need, we need to ensure we fully rebuild this given the threats of today. We're in a, we're in a different moment. We've got a near peer adversary who's building a military, the most historic military buildup potentially in, in world history. That's not, uh, that's not hyperbole. That's just an objective truth. You add it with the step changes in autonomy, in robotics, in space, and AI, AI. Whoever's ahead now is going to get much further ahead. Whoever's behind now is going to fall even further behind. And so investments now are going to matter and they're going to ripple not just for years, but for decades across our joint force. President recognizes all of this and said, hey, we'd love to do it through the regular budget process, but if we cannot, then we'll do it through reconciliation. And, uh, we will ensure whether it's 350 is a minimum of a reconciliation bill or more, that we meet the President's expectation. Take autonomy, for example. There's about 50 billion dollars in autonomous and robotic system in the reconciliation bill that would go into DOG, into Project Agincourt, and into Autowarcom. When you think about the fact that the Biden administration invested, I think, 200 million max, we supercharged it with 1.2 billion initially in the One Big Beautiful Bill, and now 50 billion. I mean, scaling that quickly requires the architecture of an Autowarcom and the services flowing in the same direction. That's how you get from a thousand drones to a hundred thousand to a million to scale and a treatable, you know, group one through four in a way that are now we're changing the cost paradigm for our adversaries on the battlefield. And they're the ones having to understand how to deal defensively with our capabilities. And we're already seeing that, uh, in some places. So it's a critical investment. It's our number one priority. The chairman and I spoke about it this morning. Uh, we're, we're lockstep on that with the White House. And we will ensure, uh, regardless of what happens in the midterms, we're running fast immediately with the committees to ensure that that reconciliation bill at a minimum of 350, potentially more, uh, ultimately fills up what this department needs in order for the president to ensure that we reestablish deterrence and rebuild the military around the world. So it's, it couldn't be more, [00:23:29] Speaker 3: more important. Yeah. 4.4% of GDP, given what you face and the pivot, uh, and this moment in time and the reality of the probability of major war seems very modest. Yeah. I hope Congress comes through. Secretary Tell, the, the army has done so much transforming, but I'm going to stay on the budget for one second because I think, uh, the audience could use a view from how difficult this is to, to pivot under the current conditions. And your predecessor recently wrote, I'm often asked whether the U.S. military should prioritize high volume, low cost equipment or exquisite programs. Unfortunately, we need both, but the army's struggled to fund both. How do you see this changing? And are there other things beyond fiscal maneuvers and diversification the army has done to commercialize and modernize? [00:24:24] Speaker 2: Absolutely. Oh, and, and, and thanks for the question. Um, I would say that what we've done as an army is to be ready. I think about how the army fights, which general and Eve unveiled yesterday. This is a very fundamental framework that organizes the army and explains to every one of our 1.2 million soldiers and civilians, how they fit in to the modern army. And as we bring on these capabilities, as warfare evolves and we bring on and we, and we're, we're doing more drones, more autonomous ground systems, autonomous fires, autonomous lift, all the things that we're working on today. It gives us a place and a framework where our commanders at each echelon know exactly what their role and responsibility is. That's a foundational document. Um, and, and, and, and general and Eve, it costs, uh, approximately zero dollars to the taxpayer for him to deliver that kind of leadership so that when we do get these resources from the Congress, we have the ability to optimize their use in the army. Just yesterday, just last night, in response to Secretary Hegseth's establishment of autonomous warfare command, we announced, uh, futures and autonomous systems command, uh, within the army. This is our way to make sure that we take all of the great work that's been happening with the resources that we have today and we centralize it. We, we, we are going to keep it distributed to our units. We're pushing autonomy down into our units, but when it comes to having and making sure that we, the left hand and the army knows what the right hand of the army is doing, this is, this happens at FASCOM. And then FASCOM feeds up into auto war com, um, and we work across the services. Uh, there's commonality, there's best practices, there's scale. Think about the buying power of the army, the buying power of SOLIC, the buying power that Hung has in the Navy, the buying power that Troy has in the Air Force. Our ability to- You didn't mention the Marine Corps. Well, Hung, Hung owns the Marine Corps. Uh, sorry. Buying power. Keep hitting you on it. What it does is it allows us to look across and make our demand signal even bigger, which helps the nation scale, which helps our industrial base partners scale. But not just that, it allows us to share best practices. I think about the investment we're making as an army right now, and it doesn't, it doesn't garner as many headlines as some of the things we're doing, but we're making a huge bet on next generation command and control. I call this the magic in the middle. When you think about the army and this, what we deliver to the joint force is scale and mass. We have 1.2 million soldiers and civilians, like I mentioned, they have dozens of pieces of kit each. You start doing the math and you, and it's really the command and control in the middle that enables all those things to go off like a symphony is being conducted. And I look forward and Hung and Troy and I have already started talking, and Derek as well, about how do we take each of the services command and control capability and merge them into a joint command and control that rolls up to auto-warcom and more importantly, our theater commanders who are who are taking on the fight every day. And I'll just end with this, Owen. One of the things I said on Monday, and I think it really fits the conversation we're having right now is, you know, we go to a conference like this, like AUSA, and people are thinking about what, you know, is the next big acquisition program for the army? Is it a helicopter? Or is it a new tank? Or is it a new missile system? And I think for all of us across the services, the Department of War, I think the real acquisition that's underway right now is a new frictionless symbiosis between ourselves and our partners in industry. Because as Secretary Hegseth mentioned, our greatest strategic advantage in America, in addition to our deep capital markets, which you mentioned, Owen, is the ingenuity that our system of government has allowed to take place within the American heart. That's our biggest strategic advantage. That's something that no one else has. And the pace of change has accelerated so much that it's on us to go to industry and say, hey, tell us what you're doing now. You've already solved the problem. You've already spent the R&D. Let us adapt what we need to what you're already doing. Let's use your assembly lines. Let's use your know-how. And let's be flexible enough to change. I mean, what Secretary Hegseth said at the outset, it takes real determination and a clear-eyed perspective to take what is the world's most effective in many ways bureaucracy, but its largest and most complex, full of friction bureaucracy, and make it march and change to the modern realities that we face. And we're all working on that together. The last thing I'll mention, one of the things we've done to meet the Autonomous Warfare Command vision that Secretary Hegseth has laid out, and this is just a small example of how Derek and I are working together. We have an MOS in the Army called 390 Alpha. It's a robotics expert. And these folks lived in Eustacek, in the Army's portion of Derek's portfolio. Traditionally, historically, those types of MOS's might live with the Special Forces and never be proliferated throughout the Army. And I would just say that Derek has leaned in, the team has leaned in, to make sure that that 390 Alpha MOS, a warrant officer who can keep the specialty and the skills over the duration and teach our soldiers how to do robotics, our partnership to grow that MOS is something that could have never happened under any other administration. So thank you for the question. [00:30:01] Speaker 3: Secretary Tell, you mentioned our strategic advantage. Secretary Hegseth, you've mentioned before that our military's greatest comparative advantage is our NCO Corps. So at some level, it's free leverage, you know, in my judgment, to begin to push decisions and dollars forward. An example of this, Secretary Tell, that we've all been impressed with is your drone marketplace, which I believe now is the departments at some level. Of course, this reflects what's happening in Ukraine, where a small portion of the, of, you know, the average BCT's budget, 5 to 15 percent, is actually donated in the form of, or gamified in the form of points where people can purchase directly off a website similar to yours. What's your vision? Where are we in two years with the drone marketplace? [00:30:48] Speaker 2: Look, we've talked a lot about it here over the last few days. I mean, this, this marketplace, and it's just such a simple thing. It's amazing, sort of like auto war com that we haven't done it sooner. But what this is really about, if you think about it, is you got this, these layers of bureaucracy that Secretary Hegseth, Secretary Hegseth has described between industry innovators, and in our case, soldiers. And, and in order for this demand signal to get from our soldier to industry, and for industry's capabilities to get from them back down to the soldier had to go through dozens of layers of bureaucracy. What the marketplace does is it cuts out that bureaucratic middleman. It connects soldiers directly with builders, and it allows in real time, just like on amazon.com, you know, soldiers to give a three star review to this drone, or a five star review to that drone. And then the builders can iterate on the basis of the feedback they're getting in real time. Soldiers can read each other's reviews and say, oh, that's exactly what I need, or no, that's not exactly for us. The beauty of this thing is we're scaling it to the other services. As you mentioned, I think we've signed agreements. We signed nine agreements yesterday with our partners, partner militaries. We're opening this up to our partners as well. So you think about what this allows us to do to scale. We've already run $800 million worth of purchases through this marketplace, and that's just the beginning. The other thing we've done that I mentioned, Owen, that I want to make sure, and I know Derek is extremely focused on this, and Hung as well, and Troy, is we've developed a capability. We liken it to booking.com in the same way that I just liken the marketplace to amazon.com, but it's about our test ranges. We have these amazing facilities throughout the Department of War that allow our soldiers, our units to iterate in a joint way, hopefully. Before, we kept these test ranges to ourselves for our own purposes. We were prioritizing and micromanaging the use of these ranges. This new tool that we have allows industry, and I've heard from several people here this week who said, "Man, this is really a game changer. You guys are letting us onto the ranges. You're opening up the number of ranges. You're stretching, and we're able to go out and iterate." I mean, you think about a creative person who develops a new capability. They're fueled on that positive feedback loop, or if something doesn't work, on the negative feedback loop. And to the degree that our bureaucracy is getting in the way of our most innovative people from iterating quickly, it's a shame. And so we've opened up these test ranges in a way that we've never done before. And again, just the beginning. We're going to keep going. [00:33:26] Speaker 3: Ranges, spectrum, classification. These are all examples of that old adage that you know you're getting close to war when you waive the rules. Mr. Secretary, you've said before that our greatest risk is risk aversion. And you've been trying to push this down into the force to take more risk. I'll give you small examples of enormous ranges that only allow two quadcopters to fly or fear that some Lance Corporal will fly a quadcopter onto I-5 or Route 95. So there's still some bureaucracy that Project Agincourt will tamp for your full endorsement. [00:34:03] Owen West: And what I've told you time and time again is most of this stuff is not statutory. Almost all. It's all directives or, you know, rules, measures that have been added on top over years that have turned into a feeling like it's a statute and you can't do anything about it. And so I've said to you and to everybody else, tell me where I can sign what I can sign to rip all that away. And drone dominance was a part of it, but at every moment. And that's why we want so much field real-time feedback from my team traveling around the country. Tell us what you need and help us and we will help you get there. We've said the same thing to new entrants. What do you need for the door to get opened up? What rules do you need removed? What risks are you not able to take because of some layer of bureaucracy or process that gets in your way and we're ready to slash it? [00:34:51] Speaker 3: At some level, I want to go back to the budget because this is portfolio diversification and make clear to the audience that your deputy secretary in 2025, with the help of Doge, Jay Hurst, Bryn McDonald and Comptroller, did move an auditable 25 to 30 billion dollars from tail to tooth. And somewhere the deputy secretary is probably still in his office right now. He works tirelessly doing the same thing. In other words, this is not just about a slug of money being delivered to the old Pentagon where it gets gummed up in the process. That reconciliation at a very basic level demonstrates the money can be spent well. [00:35:36] Owen West: Well, and thank you for mentioning our secret weapon, the deputy secretary, Steve Feinberg. When the story of this chapter is written about how we've moved as urgently and quickly and efficiently and differently as possible as the president demands, Steve Feinberg's name will be on the top of that list. Because what he has done with industry to say the days of us paying for all of your investment in new plants and then waiting years and years while your outdated processes produce wonderfully exquisite platforms that take way too long and are way over budget are over. And so you've got tens of billions of dollars of private industry investment in new plants, in new equipment, in new American manufacturing, thousands of American jobs all across the country in defense in exchange for long lead times on munitions and other systems, five to seven year contracts that also save the taxpayer money because you're paying today for a Pac-3 MSE the same amount seven years from now as you are today when it comes off the assembly line. And Lord knows we're going to need those things and our allies going forward. I mean, even just organizing what munitions we owed whom through FMS when we first got here took weeks and weeks to understand certain systems. It was just a bureaucracy running on autopilot. The deputy has overturned that completely. And that means not only are we saving a bunch of money, which you referred to moving it to higher priority programs, but you're you're ultimately ensuring that those investments are wisely scaled going forward in a way that the president demands. He doesn't want another shift to make it a 24 hour shift. He wants 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x in munitions, which is what we are already seeing happening in real time. And it wouldn't happen unless without the business acumen of Steve Feinberg. So he definitely deserves a shout out. [00:37:22] Speaker 3: Secretary Cowell, father of a Marine, but the the Navy also has made tremendous organizational changes, but also is up against it, it seems to me, on its budget. Chairman Wicker said that the Navy's spend on unmanned systems was inadequate, but that's changing. Can you explain why and what your vision is to merge these complex and probably the most complex domain, the open ocean and sea states, to merge unmanned boats and ships with your fleet? Well, as the secretary said, in the [00:37:58] Speaker 5: Straits of Hormuz, we use the Corsair 2 to recover two Apache helicopter pilots. Then we also use the unmanned underwater vehicles to demine that area. That's it's it can't be done in a contested area unless it's using unmanned underwater vehicles. Right now the Teddy Roosevelt carrier strike group just deployed on October 8th with a medium-sized unmanned surface vessel. This is the first carrier strike group to ever deploy with a large size unmanned surface vessel. And this is a force multiplier. Imagine having more [00:38:32] Speaker 3: guns out there. And what about the speed of production? There must be a basic difference from the smaller unmanned ships and this large backlog we have. Absolutely, because building an unmanned ship is a lot easier, [00:38:47] Speaker 5: because you don't have to worry about life support systems, you know, like heads, latrines, you know, feeding, caring for the troops, because, I mean, it's unmanned and it's great. And then, again, we will then integrate it into Troy's satellites to be able to have command and control to transfer that command control to a combat controller or an ODA team or something like that. This is joint warfare [00:39:07] Speaker 3: that's best. Secretary Mink, by the way, the Air Force was the best performing force in the eyes of Doge in terms of tail-to-tooth movement. But in those meetings, I always wanted to ask you, the impression of us ground pounders is that the Air Force is dominated by fighter pilots and a manned airplane culture. I'm not sure what the Space Force culture is, but I'd like you to address that. Yet, you've talked a lot about unmanned systems, and some of the gains in terms of development have been astonishing. Can you go over your own philosophy of unmanned? [00:39:47] Speaker 6: Yeah, thanks, Owen, for that interesting question. So, uh, by the way, I got a, it's the first time I've been to AUSA, so it's a little bit of an army form, I'm guessing, by looking out the crowd. So, how's everybody doing this fine Air Force morning? Definitely don't scream beat army, [00:40:05] Speaker 5: because you'll get hauled off or something like that. How about this fine Space Force morning? [00:40:09] Speaker 6: Wow, I'm getting nothing here. This is not the usual crowd. How's the fine Joint Force morning? There you go. There you go. So, thanks for the question. Yeah, I mean, the Air Force has been, the leadership of the Air Force has been dominated by combat pilots. No question about it, all the way back from when the Air Force first stood up. That's one of the reasons, and that's a good thing. That's one of the reasons why we're the most effective combat Air Force on the planet, and the Space Force is growing into that. So there's no question though that there's a shift coming. I talked about pieces of it, but it's adaptability, scalability, and affordability. The only way we're going to meet the threat is with autonomous systems. Working with Secretary Fearnberg has been phenomenal, because it's not just adaptability and scalability. We've got to make sure this stuff is affordable. We've got to make sure we're buying it efficiently, and depending on how you do the comparisons, we're talking five to ten times cheaper to feel some combat power with these autonomous systems compared to not. So it's critically important. The good news is, in my mind, there's no question that the leadership we have in the Air Force and the Space Force, both military and civilian, is ready to do that, and you see that with the results already. We are integrating autonomous fighters into experimental ops units out at Creech right now from a year from when they first flew to when we are integrating them into experimental ops units. That's unheard of. And it only took two years to build the first one. So it's in the scalability and the producibility. In many ways, cost goes with schedule. If something is super expensive, there's a reason for it, which means it's probably going to take a long time to build. So we're really focusing on rapid production and scalability, which means we have to get the cost down of these systems as well. Your last gig out of DIU, really the autonomous fighters are already production. Now we're looking at essentially the autonomous strike platform, autonomous bomber. We just awarded those contracts the fifth with DIU in collaboration with DIU. We're going to be building operational prototypes by 28 and we're just awarding the contract now. That's the speed of what we're fielding capability and in the production, large-scale production starting in 29. That is the goal now. It is heavily dependent upon the resources we get from the hill, but I think we are not only going to deliver significant combat capability, but we're going to deliver quickly and efficiently. Same thing on a lot of the long-range weapons. We're driving SI and other capabilities into these systems so that they can not only be built faster and cheaper, but they have a lot more flexibility in how they operate and search and hunt for targets. You mentioned space. Space is critical both from the Department of the Air Force perspective, but really from the entire Joint Force. We look at how we do sensing, how we do targeting, tracking, data fusion and dissemination of that data. The Space Force is leading that. We went from some of the new sensing platforms that will be able to sense aircraft in the air as well as systems on the ground and on the sea. We went from contract award to launching in large numbers in six months. That was unheard of in the past. Huge progress being made across both the Air Force and the Space Force and not only support the Air Force itself, but the entire Joint Force and Autonomous Warfare Command is going to be critical in trying to pull all that together. A lot of what the Space Force does is really for the entire Joint Force. As a matter of fact, most of what the Space Force does is for the entire Joint Force. It's how we make sure we enable these autonomous systems that are going for further and further ranges against more and more complex target environments. What we do in the Space Force is going to be critical and I think we're making huge progress. [00:43:59] Speaker 3: One of the lights that came on for me personally at DIU was just the astonishing drop in prices because of the commercialization in space, but also the fact that we have the lead. And we have a huge lead, 95% of the space mass or something. A few weeks ago, you mentioned, you said something in your panel that we were getting close to weaponizing space. But I want to ask a different question that relates to Autonomous Warfare Command and that's on sensing. Let's move again five years into the future and look at where our adversaries were five years ago. Will every large platform be seen from low Earth orbit by that time? And will there be so many commercial satellites that any mass, anything slow will be [00:44:46] Speaker 6: discovered instantly and in real time? I mean, I think when we look at what's happening in the commercial world, as well as what we see China doing, we are rapidly heading to a point in time where depending on what your signature is, how fast you're moving, the enemy is going to have some sense to where you are, no matter where you are on the planet, right? And once they have that sensing, they're going to be able to start looking at how they targeted that. And we see that and probably, you know, we're looking at China, the largest weapons buildup probably in the history of the world is going on right now. And they're leveraging that fact. So the question is, is what do we do about that, right? How do we degrade their systems? How do we make sure our systems are survivable, no matter what domain we're in? And that's what we're working across the entire joint force to do. And the autonomous systems are going to be a big part of that, right? You can, as Hung just said, you can put those systems into threat environments that you would be hesitant or just would not be willing to put manned platforms into. So that gives us a lot more flexibility to deal with that new environment we're looking at five years or sooner in some [00:45:52] Speaker 7: cases, right? So lick. Are you going to get rid of the lick? More to follow on that. I'm working [00:46:02] Speaker 3: on it. But look, SOCOM, one of its major missions is to transport equipment and tactics, the general purpose force. Sometimes SOCOM has struggled to do that. But what lessons from SOCOM [00:46:17] Speaker 7: can AutoWARCOM learn? Yeah. First, I'd like to thank the President, Mr. Secretary, for this absolutely needed generational change in AutoWARCOM. And the Secretary, you invoked 40 years ago of SOCOM. So, you know, a little lesson for folks out there that don't know, 40 years ago, when they saw a need to have a SOCOM and a SOLIC to oversee and consolidate our special operations forces, there was a ton of resistance within the Pentagon. Tons of resistance. You can read about it and see it throughout. What's fascinating, and I'm going to, you know, piggyback on Adam here, but the fact that 40 years later, we're doing another generational change with AutoWARCOM and a four-star command, and you have every single service secretary and SOLIC up here supporting. So that in itself, as Adam mentioned earlier, is huge. But what I'd like to do is kind of go and talk about what we did in SOCOM with the dog, right? So two years ago, at the beginning of this administration, the secretary and the deputy saw a need to address the autonomy issue. SOCOM raised their hand. They said, "Hey, we're here. We're able to support." So what we did is we created three task forces, Abel, Baker, and Charlie, that attacked different problem sets. One countered the UAS, the problem set. One was the UUV, the underwater and USB. And obviously, we worked with our components, NSW, AFSOC, and USASOC, to attack those problems. But it made sense for SOCOM to do it, right? Like our people, our soft truth number one, right, is people are more important than hardware. And so our people are those unique individuals that are able to adapt. We have unique authorities in SOCOM. We're smaller. We're able to iterate at the speed of relevancy. I mean, you highlight MAX as a great example, right? We joke, and I'll probably get hit by someone about this, but we have folks that have PhD minds, but that can get into a bar fight. And I think that's pretty interesting when you're asking to tackle our problems for the joint force. Our soft operators on the ground are doing it. One of the things I saw that was really awesome about the dog specifically was we got to see operators fully kitted up sitting in a little talk with a testing site right outside of that talk with a small little group of a command to make sure that the conditions were set and everything was safe. And you had industry sitting over on the side. So as our operators were iterating over and over on these systems, the data was immediately going into our industry partners. They were iterating on that, putting it right back into the system. So we weren't waiting weeks upon weeks to go back and iterate on these systems. And it was absolutely fantastic. But we learned things, right? We learned things internal to SOCOM that we saw some need and change that we'll work obviously through the services on. But one of the things we noticed, and I think either the secretary or Adam, you might have mentioned this, is our ranges, our exquisite ranges, right? There's bureaucracies within domestic ranges for us to be able to utilize them. So what Admiral Bradley and I talked about and what we charged our theater special operations commands, those TSOCs that fall under our GCCs, to do is look for what we're calling theater edge innovation labs, where not only of our operators sitting here stateside iterating on these autonomous systems, but when they move forward, they have a place to go and iterate on them there as well. So I think that's going to be not only great for the SOCOM world, but for the GCCs out there. The other thing we did is obviously you've heard probably over and over again, the secretaries beat the drum on this on acquisitions. We saw that there were some niche little problems that our TSOCs were trying to solve, specifically Jasper Jefferson Sockscent and Socksouth. And what we did is we, with Ms. Care Teeter over on our SSO side, we hosted what was an accelerator day. So what we did is we asked the TSOCs, what are the specific problems, I think we got like eight or nine problem sets. We issued it out, pushed it out to industry, you said you got 30 days to give us white papers, and in 30 days we had them come pitch us. They had war fighters in the room, acquisition officials in the room, the TSOCs in the room, and we were able to award a contract on that day. So we're talking an 18 to 24 month period, and we iterated on that within two months. Absolutely amazing. Now again, we're small, so come small, so we're iterating on smaller problems. But it was absolutely amazing. And then a lot of folks ask, you know, what is DOG? What are we going to do with DOG next? So what Admiral Bradley and I have done is we'll take DOG and transfer it into Task Force Autonomous Warfare in SOCOM, and that is going to be direct support to you and Max at the DERPM and AutoWARCOM so that we can keep iterating and there's not this stagnant pause in the middle as we figure it out. Our guys are going to keep pushing forward. So I'd say that, you know, the soft value proposition is our ability to iterate quickly. But again, my Army Green Berets Rangers are Adam's Army Green Beret Rangers, same with Troy and Hung all the way down. So it's been an awesome experience. [00:51:08] Speaker 3: You mentioned that people are more important than hardware. And I'd like to come back to you, Secretary Hegseth, on your golden rule, which I think applies not only to military commanders, but those of us with great responsibility. In the audience, you know, this is a family business, and so it's not unusual to run into general officers, admirals, senior staff NCOs, senior civilians, Secretary Cao, who have children, who are entering this force again. Mr. Secretary, you and the President have turned around recruiting. And there are people desperate to get into our military now. We've raised the standards very quickly and have very few Class Fours. ASVABs are skyrocketing. But at some level, we have the responsibility, as you've said, to outfit them with the bristling combat power of the United States, which is right here, which we invented and we can scale. Can you talk about the golden rule and your vision of auto-warcom two years from now? [00:52:11] Owen West: So the golden rule, which I've talked about, is do onto your unit's formation that which you would want done onto your son or daughters? Meaning, if your kid was in a formation, would you want it, you know, quotas established or lowered standards? And the things that we saw for years that demoralized the force and that led to the family business saying, maybe I don't want to recommend my kid to join because I don't like the way this is going. And so, you know, we've attacked culture and not walking on eggshells for commanders and reinforcing standards and discipline inside formations. Summarized as, you know, no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals, just warriors, right? And so the press runs at the chum of the headlines of culture change. But everybody here knows that's the foundation because people are the foundation. And if you can't lead at the NCO level or the junior leader level because the inmates run the asylum and it's upside down, then you can't act, then you can have all the hardware you want and software you want in the world, but you can't actually lead your formation. So that's, that's the foundation underneath the entire thing. But why part of the reason I'm so glad to be here with these great leaders up here this morning is to demonstrate that while we're doing that and, and, and the press and everybody focuses only on that, we've been moving on acquisition reform and modernization just as quickly, if not even more rapidly, to ensure that my vision for Auto Warcom in two years is that we're still iterating, we're still adapting, we're still learning, and, and we're moving faster and faster because we're doing it, we understand how to do it better with each iteration. I mean, look at it, when you told me this, I was told this morning, this is the first time we've had all of these secretaries on a stage like this at a form like AUSA. And I, I think it's a wonderful demonstration of the joint force, but think about what it took over 40 years, Goldwater-Nichols and everything to actually, there's been, it's been service silos with a little joint sprinkled on top for a very long time, which has created inefficiencies and redundancies and cost overruns that were unnecessary given the way that we fight in this, in a multi-domain environment. We just, we can't fight that way anymore if we're going to out-innovate, out-inerate, and adapt on the, on the modern battlefield, which, you know, you talk about space is required. So, Auto Warcom's need to be, is going to need to be fully empowered, fully integrated with the services, running in the same direction, uh, with, but ultimately it can't be, it needs to be ingrained into the uniform leadership. That's why a four-star commander, a combatant command was so important. What actually matters is where it meets the man or the woman in boots, on the ground, in space, uh, in a, in a ship, fighting the fight. Do they have what they need? And, and, you know, my, my wife said that from day one. This is about barracks. She's like, "Hey, you got all these incredible Americans joining. You better make sure we got barracks that meet their expectation," which is a battle we've got every single day and another one we intend to win and invest in. And then, because we know the problem's as large as you know it is, uh, and we're hell-bent on actually fixing it and addressing it and the quality of life for soldiers and every service member. But the same for, you bring in the top Americans and they can't be falling in on 1990s equipment, and they can't be falling in on sprinkling a drone on top, uh, against a, a new modern battlefield, which fights completely differently doctrinally the things that we're learning and iterating on in real time. But when you add our capital markets, our innovators, our companies, our defense industrial base, and then you reinvigorate all of them, and then you cast a vision with Autowarcom and say this is the future of warfare and where we're going and the services are all on board in a true joint fashion, no one can beat the United States of America. I think that, that motivates young Americans to want to join. The silliness is gone and the urgency of the moment has arrived, and when you match those two, uh, you've got an opportunity to ensure that you actually do deter the threats of the future, that you ensure peace through strength. That's the, that's the whole point. The protesters, you know, are spouting off slogans. Iran really will never have a nuclear weapon. That's the president's job. That's my job to ensure generationally on behalf of the American people that we do what is necessary in order to do that. What's contributing to that? An ironclad blockade. What's contributing to that is amazing fighter pilots and space capabilities. Special operators, uh, dude 44 alpha and 44 bravo, or what's happening in Venezuela. What's contributing to that? Air defenders, uh, in the army. Or the 82nd airborne, who's literally controls the Strait of Hormuz right now. Uh, and most, most Americans don't understand that. Or in our hemisphere, seventh group, and what they're doing with a triple C America's counter cartel coalition. It's the humans, but by damn, we're going to get them the absolute best kit as you said possible. And it can't just be better kit from before. It's got to be things we're not even thinking of right now, one or two years down the line in a, on a future battlefield with an, a command with the authority to drive that change as rapidly as humanly possible. And that's, that's the vision for autonomous warfare command. Uh, it, it, it will be a leader in the way we fight going forward. And I think we'll look back and say that was, that was a no brainer. We should have done it 10 years earlier, but at least we did it. And when in America, what, what's the Winston Churchill quote? Uh, America always gets to the right answer. Sometimes it just takes us a while. Uh, in this case, it may have taken us a few too long a bit to get there, but not, not, not in this administration. Like from day one, we saw it and iterated to operationalize it before we put a command on top of it. And now we're institutionalizing it with that command while the, the underbrush of operationalism is already there so that it can actually run at speed. [00:57:54] Speaker 3: Well, the United States has harnessed a second mover advantage, uh, before. In fact, several times the first and second industrial revolutions. We're in this position now, but as you've said, we can perform this technological leapfrog. There are things in automatic target recognition, right? Uh, we are the leaders in super intelligence. We are the leaders in space. Um, and as you've said, you, you mentioned, and by the way, I was counting or trying to count iteration and adaptation seven times, um, in that solo, little soliloquy. You've also said that the end product here is not the individual drone and not to get fixated on a magic technology. That's going to be plugged in to existing doctrine to win a war. But this is a change, the way we fight situation in pivoting our institution around new technology, but applying the American way of war. Can you leave on that note and explain, you know, what our basic strengths are and where we'll be, you know, in, in, again, two to five years? Well, we just launched, uh, a joint, [00:58:59] Owen West: joint warfighter evaluation from the 06 to 07 level. And it's part of restoring the warrior ethos. And as we institutionalize these things, it's going to be the captains and the majors and, and the colonels coming through who understand how to best operationalize it. And then we're going to expect that they know how to fight in that way. Now that's where I, that's where my knowledge stops and yours starts. It's my, not my job to understand and tell you how to, how to fight. You've got four stars and three stars and colonels and captains and majors out here that have done the thing far more recently than I, and have gone through the schools and understand the doctrine. And I watch them on a daily basis, look at these systems and imagine what they could be used for, or then look at the battlefield in Ukraine and say, well, with what we can do and how we can develop it, we would adjust our tactics and procedures that way. That's, that's, that's our people. They're the best at it. I mean, I see general Rudd right here in, in cybercom NSA, what we're going to have in that domain and the ability to be, to be ahead and get ahead. And the advantages that provides us with super intelligence, uh, and targeting, uh, already in real time is happening as he takes an operational warfighting approach to cybercom and, and it iterates into how it feedbacks to, to real time operations. So it's about providing the best possible options to the commander in chief, ultimately. Uh, and you do that by creating, uh, reveal and conceal options, but also echelons of deterrence that make your adversary wonder whether today is the day. And I sort of look at Troy specifically on that because you mentioned space, uh, what we're able to do in space and will do in space going forward, um, will, because of the investments of president Trump, because of the investments of this department, because of what a reconciliation bill will fund, uh, a generational leap in capabilities that no other country on planet earth can do. Uh, and then you add that to all the other services and autonomous warfare command, and that's our job. That's peace through strength. That's the urgency of this moment. That's what the president, uh, expects. And, and we can, we've done it before. Uh, that's why we allude back off, oftentimes to, you know, the efficacy and, uh, uh, what was accomplished in the mobilization of world war two. We've done it before. We have those same types of DNA and Americans here in the soldiers and, uh, in this auditorium in the company, the great American companies here, different types of great American companies, but still world-class American companies that when leveraged, uh, can give us a decisive advantage. This is part of helping to leverage that. And I'm, I'm excited about where we're going. And I, I would just end by saying none of it happens without the kind of commander in chief who says, I'll fund it and I'll back you up to do it. And I'll give you every authority in the process and you bring in your team necessary to make it happen. Uh, and then when, when you do, uh, our expectations that you go out and do good things on behalf of the American people, which is he empowered, [01:01:47] Speaker 3: he's empowered us to do. Well, I think to, to achieve the president's vision, to achieve your vision and changing this force, uh, this group will be tested in the next year. Uh, and that, that new commander will be tested, but, uh, your vision is clear and even adaptation at the edge where we're fusing right development and operations just to be unambiguous about it. We're talking about pushing tens and maybe hundreds of millions of dollars forward, uh, to these prototype incubator units. Uh, so we will need your support, Mr. Secretary, over the, over the, uh, over the coming year. But, but thank you. And Secretary Tell, thanks for hosting this. And, and, uh, you got to get us some [01:02:33] Speaker 2: of this great gear. Absolutely. We're, we're ready. And the people in this audience are ready. And I think we've all got to go tell our story to our stakeholders across the country, most specifically on Capitol Hill, uh, here in the, the next few months are going to make the difference in whether everything that we've laid out here today becomes reality. Our country needs it. Our president has cast has, has given us room to run and our secretary of war has cast the vision. And so let's all go [01:02:59] Owen West: forward and get it done. That's exactly right. I'll just end right there. The deals, the deputies cutting, the drones that this will require, uh, all of those investments are part of reconciliation of that 350. And if you're a part of talking to the people who are making those decisions, the coming months will be critical. Uh, and I, I, I, it's not hyper hyperbolic to state whether or not we rebuild our military to meet the threats of the future will depend on funding the president's vision for $1.5 trillion. And, and our, our goal will come hell or high water. And we're working shoulder to shoulder with the chairman and the joint staff to get it is to make sure we hit that number on behalf of the president and the country. So thanks for noting that. Thank you to the United States Army and the U.S. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks.