Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Service Secretaries Speak on Autonomous Warfare at AUSA

UNKNOWN: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today for the Department of War's panel on Project Agincourt Autonomous Warfare. Please welcome your panelists. Panel moderator, Chief Executive Officer of Project Agincourt and the direct reporting portfolio manager for unmanned Offensive and defensive Systems, the Honorable Owen West.

[Applause]

Assistant Secretary of War for Special Operations and low intensity conflict, the Honorable Derek Anderson.

[Applause]

Acting Secretary of the Navy, the Honorable Hung Cao.

[Applause]

Acting Secretary of the Army, the Honorable Adam Telle.

[Applause]

Secretary of the Air Force, the Honorable Troy Meink.

[Applause]

The Secretary of War, the Honorable Pete Hegseth.

SEAN PARNELL: 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 war fighting revolution. It pushes dollars, decisions and development directly to the tactical edge, uniting our front-line 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 SO/LIC. 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 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.

OWEN WEST: Thank you, Sean.

[Applause]

SECRETARY TELLE: 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 our great Secretary of War and you, Owen, represented here at AUSA at the Army's 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.

OWEN WEST: Well, let me say how pleased I am to see Derek up here. Uh, SO/LIC has come a long way, baby.

UNKNOWN: That's right.

OWEN WEST: You're doing the job better than I ever did, um, 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. Uh, but, you know, you must be buoyed, as I am, you know, having had a short tour at DIU, uh, 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.

Um, can you explain the Arsenal of Freedom Tour and how that is beginning to change the paradigm of our previous buys?

SECRETARY HEGSETH: Well, first of all, Owen, thank you. Uh, thank you to the secretary for having us, for hosting us for AUSA, uh, this incredible conference. I've been watching for a couple of days, from your presentation to general and eve [ph], casting the vision for - she thinks highly of me.

[Laughter]

[Applause]

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.

OWEN WEST: So back to the Arsenal of Freedom.

SECRETARY HEGSETH: 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, uh, timeliness, uh, open architectures, you name it. If we don't have the next five to 10 primes, if we don't go from the 10 we have right now, five we have right now to 10 or 15 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 SO/LIC, 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.

Uh, 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 -

[CHANTING USA]

So what - but it's not just about talking to companies and going on the road. Um, 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. President put out an executive order, we got $1 billion 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, uh, program at the Department of War, not one. Uh, ultimately, we will be fielding hundreds of thousands of one-way attack systems this year and into the millions in years to come at a pace that this department's never, ever seen before. And it's because we went from drone dominance to [inaudible] to a DRPM -

OWEN WEST: 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. Uh, for those of you who want to approach Project Agincourt, by the way, with weaponry, I'm not the operational expert.

My partner Max [inaudible] is our expert and he is in dress blues. He has a trident -

[Applause]

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 Secretary's. I didn't say which secretary. Um, but let's get back to, uh, to what you said right before, uh, we sat down, Mr. Secretary. You want candor on this, um, 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?

SECRETARY HEGSETH: I think so, but tell me. I mean, I know what it is. I do know what it is.

OWEN WEST: Secretary Cao, you know what this acronym is?

SECRETARY CAO: Yes, sir, keep this simple, simple [ph].

OWEN WEST: 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 Airland battle and sea plan cracked the Soviets, or helped crack the Soviets, and the biggest budgetary change since building out the ICBM force.

Sean invoked Iraq, Afghanistan. Uh, 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?

SECRETARY HEGSETH: Our building, our process, um, 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, you know, an idea that should have been done four or five, six years ago or even earlier than that.

It didn't. We could have declared it and said, may it be so, and we'll put a four star in charge and have - 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 DRPM on top of it that can drive that kind of change. JIATF 401 inside the Army, which has become the world-class leader in all of those systems. Then you add the DAWG 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 AutoWARCOM, which is then running with millions of drones and the ability to push DOTMLPF 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 DAWG, General Donovan.

General Donovan is now our SOUTHCOM commander. SOUTHCOM is our first command with an autonomous, uh, AutoWARCOM in SOUTHCOM, operationalizing it. What did 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 industry, it's how do we get it out to front line 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 has done very well, and then push it through then an AutoWARCOM, a commander with a four - with four stars who has the ability to drive that change.

Uh, 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 AutoWARCOM 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 on a - in a contested environment. And that's what all the uniform 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.

OWEN WEST: 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 did you come to that decision?

SECRETARY HEGSETH: Well, as you know, we've been doing -

OWEN WEST: 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. How did you come to that decision?

SECRETARY HEGSETH: 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. So 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 taking 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, uh, 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 DRPMs 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 DAWG, 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 around the world as well.

OWEN WEST: So you've given - you've given Agincourt 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, that 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 -

SECRETARY HEGSETH: And by the 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. 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 to get feedback on where should this live.

And frankly, initially, we didn't have it as an - as a four star combatant command, and then we iterated on what that might look like, held another series of meetings and realized, no, this is where it needs to land. So it's been a civ/mil collaboration from the start, which is why 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 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal today, by the way, by Owen West, if you haven't read it yet. We've got - what we do I think that 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.

OWEN WEST: Before I get to the service secretaries one final thing, the big looming issue, I want to address the budget. When Ike shifted from the US 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 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 reconciliation?

SECRETARY HEGSETH: Critical, absolutely critical, especially when you look at the deferred maintenance and the CRs that have - that the services have had to endure for years and years and years, 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&M and certainly doesn't leave any opening for new innovations and new investments or new entrants.

And so it becomes the existing primes 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 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 [SI]. 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 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 in autonomous and robotic system in the reconciliation bill that would go into DAWG, 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 100,000 to one million to scale an irritable, 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 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 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 couldn't be more important.

OWEN WEST: Yeah, 4.4 percent of GDP, given what you face and the pivot and this moment in time and the reality of the probability of major war seems very modest. I hope Congress comes through. Secretary Telle - 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 pivot under the current conditions.

Your predecessor recently wrote, I'm often asked whether the US military should prioritize high volume, low cost equipment or exquisite programs. Unfortunately, we need both, but the Army 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?

SECRETARY TELLE: Absolutely, Owen, 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 LaNeve 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 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 General LaNeve, it cost approximately $0 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 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 are going to keep it distributed to our units. We are 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 FASTCOM, and then FASTCOM feeds up into AutoWARCOM 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 SO/LIC, the buying power that Hung has in the Navy, the buying power that Troy has in the Air Force. Our ability to -

OWEN WEST: You didn't mention the Marine Corps.

SECRETARY TELLE: Well, Hung owns the Marine Corps. Uh, sorry.

UNKNOWN: Buying power.

UNKNOWN: Keep hitting you on it.

SECRETARY TELLE: 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 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 AutoWARCOM, 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, well, 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, uh, 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, um, 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, um, it takes real, um, determination and clear - and a clear-eyed perspective to take what is the world's most effective, in many ways, bureaucracy, but it's largest and most complex, uh, 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, um, called 390 Alpha.

It's a robotics expert. And these folks lived in USASOC in the Army's portion of Derek's portfolio. Traditionally, historically, um, those types of MOSs might live at - with the special forces and never be proliferated throughout the Army. Um, and I would just say that Derek has leaned in, the team has leaned in to make sure that that 390 Alpha MOS warrant officer who can keep the specialty and the skills over the duration and teach our soldiers how to do robotics, um, our partnership to grow that MOS is something that could have never happened under any other administration. So thank you for the question.

OWEN WEST: Well, Secretary Telle, 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 Telle that that we've all been impressed with is your drone marketplace, which I believe now is the department's, um, at some level.

Of course, this reflects what's happening in Ukraine, where a small portion 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?

SECRETARY TELLE: Look, we've talked a lot about it here over the last few days. I mean, this marketplace, and it's such a simple thing. It's amazing, sort of like AutoWARCOM, 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 has described, um, between industry innovators and, in our case, soldiers.

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. Um, 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. Um, 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.

Um, the other thing we've done that I mentioned, Owen, and 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 likened the marketplace to amazon.com.

But it's about our test ranges. We have these amazing facilities, um, throughout the Department of War that allow our soldiers, our units to iterate in a joint way, hopefully. Um, 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, um, 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.

OWEN WEST: 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 forest to take more risk. Um, 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 [inaudible]

SECRETARY HEGSETH: Well, and what I've told you time and time again is, 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 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 said the same thing to new entrants, what do you need to get - 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.

OWEN WEST: To 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, Brynn MacDonald and comptroller, did move an auditable $25 billion to $30 billion 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 Pentagon, where it gets gummed up in the process, that Conciliation at a very basic level demonstrates the money can be spent well.

SECRETARY HEGSETH: Well, and thank you for mentioning our secret weapon, the Deputy Secretary, Steve Feinberg. Uh, this - 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.

Uh, because what he has done with industry to say, the days of us paying for all of your investment, 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 in 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 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're 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.

OWEN WEST: Secretary Cao, father of a marine.

SECRETARY CAO: Yes.

OWEN WEST: But 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 in sea states, to merge unmanned boats and ships with your fleet?

SECRETARY CAO: Well, as you - the Secretary said, in the Strait of Hormuz, we used the Corsair two to recover two Apache helicopter pilots. Then we also used the unmanned underwater vehicles to de-mine that area. That's - it can't be done in a contested area unless it's, uh, using unmanned underwater vehicles. But 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, uh, a large sized unmanned surface vessel, and this is a force multiplier. Imagine having more guns out there.

OWEN WEST: And what about the speed of production? Um, there must be a basic difference from the smaller unmanned ships and this large backlog we have.

SECRETARY CAO: Absolutely, because building an unmanned ship is a lot easier because you don't have to worry about life support systems, you know, like heads, latrines, uh, you know, feeding, caring for the troops, because, I mean, it's, it's unmanned and it's great. And again, we will then integrate it into Troy's satellites to be able to have command and control, transfer that command control to a combat controller or an ODA team or something like that. This is joint warfare at its best.

OWEN WEST: Secretary Meink, the, uh - by the way, the Air Force was the best performing force, uh, in the eyes of DOGE in terms of tail to tooth movement. But in those meetings, I always wanted to ask you, uh, 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, um, the gains in terms of development have been astonishing. Can you go over your own philosophy of unmanned?

SECRETARY MEINK: Yeah. Thanks, Owen, for that interesting question. So, uh, by the way, I got a - first time I've been at AUSA, so it's a little bit of an Army forum, I'm guessing by looking at the crowd. Um, so how's everybody doing this fine Air Force morning?

SECRETARY CAO: Definitely don't scream beat army because you'll get hauled off or something like that.

SECRETARY MEINK: How about this fine Space Force morning? Wow. I'm getting nothing here. This is not the usual crowd. Uh, how's this fine joint force morning?

[Applause]

There you go. There you go. Uh, 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. Uh, no question about it, all the way back from the Air Force stood up. Uh, 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. Uh, so there's no question, though, that there's a shift coming.

We've 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. Um, working with Secretary Feinberg 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, uh, we're talking 5 to 10 times cheaper to field 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, in the Space Force, both military and civilian, is ready to do that.

And you see that with the results already. Um, we are - we are integrating autonomous fighters into experimental ops units out at Creech right now. Um, from a - a year from when they first flew to when we were integrating them into experimental ops units, that's unheard of and it only took two years to build the first one.

OWEN WEST: Right.

SECRETARY MEINK: Uh, so it's - and the scalability and the producibility, in many ways, cost goes with schedule, right? If something is super expensive, there's a reason for it, which means it's probably going to take a long time to build. Uh, so we're really focusing on rapid production and scalability, which means we have to get the cost down on these systems as well.

Uh, your last - your last gig out of DIU uh, the really, the autonomous fighters are in production. Now we're looking at essentially autonomous strike platforms, autonomous bomber. We just saw those contracts the fifth, uh, with DIU, in collaboration with DIU. Uh, 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 feeling capability and, in the production, uh, large scale production starting in '29. That is the goal. Now, it is heavily dependent upon the resources we get from the Hill, uh, but I think we are not only going to deliver a significant combat capability, but we're going to deliver it quickly and efficiently.

Uh, same thing on a lot of the long range weapons, we're driving, uh, 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. Uh, you mentioned space, space is critical, both from, you know, the Department of the Air Force perspective, but really from the entire joint force.

Uh, we look at how we do sensing, how we do targeting, tracking, data fusion and dissemination of that data. Uh, the Space Force is leading that and we are - you know, 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, and we went from contract award to launching in large numbers in six months, right?

That was unheard of in the past. So huge progress being made across both the Air Force and Space Force. Uh, 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.

I mean, a lot of what the Space Force does is really for the entire Joint Force, and 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.

OWEN WEST: Now, 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 percent 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 discovered instantly and in real time?

SECRETARY MEINK: 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're targeting - targeted that. And we see that and probably - you know, we're looking at China the largest weapons build up probably in the history of the world is going on right now and they're leveraging that fact. Um, 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 it gives us a lot more flexibility to deal with that new environment we're looking at five years or sooner in some cases, right?

OWEN WEST: SO/LIC, are you going to get rid of the LIC?

SECRETARY MEINK: More to follow on that.

OWEN WEST: OK.

SECRETARY MEINK: Working on it.

OWEN WEST: But look, SOCOM, one of its major missions is to transport equipment and tactics to the general purpose force. Sometimes SOCOM has struggled to do that but what lessons from SOCOM can AutoWARCOM learn?

ASSISTANCT SECRETARY ANDERSON: Yeah. Um, first, I'd like to thank the president, Mr. Secretary, for this absolutely needed generational change in AutoWARCOM. And Mr. 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 SO/LIC 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 in SO/LIC up here supporting.

So that that in itself, as Adam mentioned earlier, is huge. Um, but what I'd like to do is kind of, Owen, talk about what we did in SOCOM with the DAWG, right? So two years ago, at the beginning of this administration, the secretary and the deputy saw a need to address the autonomy issue. Uh, SOCOM raised their hand.

They said, hey, we're here, uh, we're able to support. So what we did is we created three task forces, uh, Able, Baker and Charlie, uh, that attacked different problem sets. Um, one countered the UAS, the problem set. One was the UUV, the underwater USV. And obviously, we worked with our components NSW, AFSOC and USASOC to attack those problems.

Um, 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 SOF operators on the ground are doing it. One of the things I saw that was really awesome about the DAWG specifically, and - 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. Um, 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 as 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 are 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 Secretary's beat the drum on this on acquisitions, we saw that there was some niche little problems that our TSOCs were trying to solve, specifically Jasper [inaudible].

And what we did is we, um, with [inaudible] 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, said you got 30 days to give us white papers.

And when 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 18 to 24 month period and we iterated on that within two months, absolutely amazing. Now, again, we're small. SOCOM is small, so we're iterating on smaller problems. But it was absolutely amazing.

Then a lot of folks asked, you know what, what is DAWG? What are we going to do with DAWG next? So what Admiral Bradley and I have done is we'll take DAWG and transfer it into task force autonomous warfare in SOCOM and that is going to be direct support to you and Max at the [inaudible] 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 and Rangers are Adam's Army Green Beret, Rangers. Same with Troy and Hung all the way down. So it's been an awesome experience.

OWEN WEST: 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 have - 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 AutoWARCOM two years from now?

SECRETARY HEGSETH: Um, so the Golden rule which I've talked about is do unto your units formation, that which you would want done unto your son or daughter's. Meaning if you're - if you're 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, uh, and not walking on eggshells for commanders and reinforcing standards and discipline inside formations. Uh, summarized as, you know, no fatties, no trannies, no beard-o's, no weirdo's, 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 at the junior leader level because the inmates run the asylum and it's upside down, then you can't act - then 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 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 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 AutoWARCOM in two years is that we're still iterating, we're still adapting, we're still learning, 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 - 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 forum like AUSA. Um, and 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-iterate and adapt on the - on the modern battlefield, which you talk about space, is required. So AutoWARCOM 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 ship fighting the fight, do they have what they need?

And, you know, 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've 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 because we know the problems as large as you know it is, 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 against 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 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, 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 an 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 in the Army or the 82nd airborne who 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 ACCC, America's Counter Cartel Coalition. It's the humans. But by - 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 a command, with the authority to drive that change as rapidly as humanly possible. And that's the vision for autonomous warfare command. It will be a leader in the way we fight going forward and I think we'll look back and say that was a no-brainer, we should have done it 10 years earlier.

But at least we did it and when - and America, 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 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 underbrush of operational-ism is already there so that it can actually run at speed.

OWEN WEST: Well, the United States has harnessed a second mover advantage before, in fact, several times. The first and second industrial revolutions were in this position now but as you've said, we can perform this technological leapfrog. There are things in automatic target recognition.

SECRETARY HEGSETH: Right.

OWEN WEST: We are the leaders in superintelligence. We are the leaders in space. And as you've said, you mentioned - by the way, I was counting or trying to count iteration and adaptation seven times in that 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 again, two to five years.

SECRETARY HEGSETH: Well, we just launched a joint warfighter evaluation from the O-6 to O-7 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 the colonels coming through who understand how to best operationalize it, and then we're going to expect that they know how to fight 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 fight. We'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 our people. They're the best at it. I mean, I see General Rudd right here in CYBERCOM NSA. What we're going to have in that domain and the ability to be ahead and get ahead and the advantages that provides us with super intelligence and targeting. Already in real time is happening as he takes an operational warfighting approach to CYBERCOM, and it iterates into how it feedbacks to real time operations.

So it's about providing the best possible options to the commander in chief, ultimately, 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 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 expects. And we can - we've done it before uh, that's why we allude back oftentimes to, you know, the efficacy and what was accomplished in the mobilization of World War II. We've done it before.

We have those same types of DNA in Americans here in the soldiers and in this auditorium, in the company - great American companies here, different types of great American companies, but still world-class American companies that, when leveraged, can give us a decisive advantage. This is part of helping to leverage that.

And I'm excited about where we're going and 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 you do, our expectation is that you go out and do good things on behalf of the American people, which is he - he's empowered us to do.

OWEN WEST: Well, I think to achieve the president's vision, to achieve your vision and changing this force, this group will be tested in the next year, uh, and that new commander will be tested. But your vision is clear and even adaptation at the edge where we're fusing 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 coming year but thank you. And Secretary Telle, thanks for hosting this and, uh, you got to get us some of this great gear.

SECRETARY TELLE: Absolutely. 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 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 given us room to run, and our Secretary of War has cast a vision and so let's all go forward and get it done.

SECRETARY HEGSETH: That's exactly right. I'll just end right there. The deals that Deputy's cutting, the drones that this will require, 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. And I - it's not 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 our goal, 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 US - AUSA.

Thank you.

OWEN WEST: Thank you.