By Cheryl Pellerin
American Forces Press Service
OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. – Likening
the global security environment to strong winds such as those that come with
severe weather here in the central plains, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff spoke today about challenges buffeting the nation.
Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey and his
wife, Deanie, spoke with 300 service members, Defense Department civilians and
family members this afternoon at this base in Omaha -- an American Indian name,
the chairman noted, that means “those who go against the wind.”
“It’s a pretty challenging time, and we
only get through it because of perseverance,” Dempsey said, noting that the
past decade has seen the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the global terrorism
threat and emerging security and economic challenges.
The chairman’s town hall meeting
included a cross-section of Offutt Air Force Base, home of the 55th Wing, U.S.
Strategic Command and the Air Force Weather Agency.
Stratcom is responsible for the U.S.
legacy nuclear command and control mission, space operations, global strike,
Defense Department information operations, global missile defense, and global
command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance.
“Deanie and I want to compliment you on
what you do for your country with a rather incredible portfolio,” the chairman
said.
Dempsey talked about his focus on three
major defense transitions. The first transition the chairman described involves
resetting the force for different kinds of security challenges.
“We spent 10 years focused like a laser
beam on counterinsurgency,” Dempsey noted. “We’ve got to still do some of that,
… as well as confronting global terrorism for the foreseeable future.”
But most of the force will be resetting
itself, the chairman said, “rekindling skills that maybe have been sidelined,”
to get ready for the challenges expected in the second half of this decade.
The second major transition will be from
a bigger budget to a smaller budget, Dempsey said.
“The question we will answer with your
help is how much smaller will that budget become and still allow us to preserve
the resources necessary to live up to the responsibility we have … to prevent
the United States of America from being coerced in any domain. We are a global
power,” the chairman said.
“I think we can figure that out with
your help,” he added.
The third transition, of a military at
war to a more peaceful time, may be the most challenging of all, Dempsey said.
The Defense Department must do it right,
he added. “[We must] make sure that we don’t abandon someone who has served
their country in time of war and toss them over the transom,” he said.
The challenge will come from trying to
merge the processes the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments, as well as
trying to reach out to the civilian sector and academia to help service members
who, in increasing numbers, will become veterans.
“Over the last 10 years, what has kept
us together is a bond of trust, probably unique in any profession at any time,”
Dempsey said. Seeing these transitions through, he told the audience, will help
to sustain that trust, even through uncertainties of budget or security.
The first question Dempsey took was
about the nature of his service to President Barack Obama as chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“One of my responsibilities … as part of
the Joint Chiefs [is to] take a look at the individual issues that consume your
time -- so Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Egypt, wherever it happens to
be,” he explained.
“Our job is to make sure we see the
whole thing in context. … We try not to look at a particular event -- for
example, a ballistic missile test -- but rather to provide the context in which
that event exists,” he added.
Such a test could be described in the
context of a North Korea interested in becoming increasingly nuclear and having
a new leader, in a region dominated by a China that had changed over 10 years
and one in which the United States is assuming a larger presence.
“Our advice becomes how to address that
range of issues,” Dempsey said, “but in context, so that we can shape the
future regionally and globally, not narrowly.”
To a question about health care costs,
the chairman said it’s a topic he wrestles with intellectually and emotionally,
along with issues of personnel costs, compensation and retirement.
“It’s a big pile of money -- in fact
it’s the biggest pile of money that we have in the budget, and … that manpower
account is placing a greater demand on the budget overall than it ever has, and
it’s not sustainable,” he explained.
“I’m not saying that to be Chicken
Little,” Dempsey added. “I’m telling you the facts: that our manpower costs, at
the size force that we have today, will quickly overwhelm the budget.”
The Defense Department has to figure out
how to make its manpower costs more affordable, he said.
“If we fail to do that, and we are
precluded [by Congress] from shedding unneeded infrastructure, … then the only
place you can absorb the reduction is in operations, maintenance and training.
And that is not an Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force or Coast Guard that I
want to be part of,” the chairman said.
Dempsey predicted that the department
probably won’t be able to balance the manpower account in the fiscal 2013
budget, which means next year the department will try again to make that
happen.
“The commitment I’ll make to you is that
we will do so in as equitable, fair, transparent, credible way we can," he
said, "but we have to touch it."
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