TAMPA, Florida — The U.S. faces an “incredibly complex” threat environment around the world and a remarkably fast technological revolution at home, which demands a tougher, unapologetic approach to identifying, buying and fielding the capabilities the American military will need, Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an audience here.
Speaking at the Special Operations Forces Week convention, Gen. Brown signaled that the rapidly evolving challenges confronting the U.S., combined with the proliferation of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence, are forcing the Pentagon to make highly difficult choices. Some corners of the Pentagon and within the nation’s vast military industrial base, represented here on the sprawling Tampa Convention Center floor, won’t agree with those choices, Gen. Brown indicated.
He said that in the past, different offices inside the Defense Department have dealt with the same companies but haven’t always appeared aligned on the military’s goals and its requirements. That, he said, must change.
“We’re often talking to the same companies and we confuse them because they don’t understand what our priorities are,” Gen. Brown said. “And the organization that wins is often the one that has the loudest voice and the most money. But that is not the capability we may need.”
“As chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I see it as my role to step back, look long and to think globally to ensure that we’re ready to make some hard choices and make sure we’re pursuing the best tools … with the right balance of capability and capacity,” he said. “… I might piss some people off, but I’m OK with that. We need to do what’s right for the Joint Force and what’s right for our allies and partners to make sure we have the combat capability I require.”
Gen. Brown’s comments reflect the reality facing the U.S., its military contractors and its allies: The number of American adversaries today, along with the cutting-edge technologies many of them could bring to a fight, call for a new approach to the development and fielding of weapons, vehicles, hardware, software and virtually every other vital military tool.
To put that in perspective, other military officials here spoke of how challenging it was last century just to effectively and regularly combine the air, sea and land domains and use them all in concert to achieve America’s missions.
“I can make an argument for anywhere from five to eight different domains. It was hard enough taking three domains and combining those,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. Dagvin Anderson, director for joint force development for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, speaking at a panel discussion on Tuesday.
“It gets exponentially more difficult with how you look at seven, eight domains and how you bring forces to bear,” he said, citing space, cyber, and other modern-day domains.
Gen. Brown, who assumed the role of Joint Chiefs chairman last fall following the retirement of Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, took the reins at a pivotal moment. Within his first week on the job, the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas launched its massive terror attack on Israel.
The Russia-Ukraine war had already been raging for 18 months when he assumed the role. In the months since, China’s provocative actions in the Pacific theater have continued, Iran launched a direct attack on Israel, the U.S. began a major maritime campaign to blunt attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels against international shipping lanes, and the terror group ISIS-K has demonstrated its international reach by carrying out major attacks in Iran and Russia.
All of those developments, he said, are just pieces of the puzzle.
“The combination of advancing technology and stressed global conditions have made the strategic environment incredibly complex,” Gen. Brown said. “Development and proliferation of small, uncrewed systems, one-way attack drones, electronic warfare and long-range fires, along with the rapid flow of information and growth within space and cyber domains, are reshaping the way that we fight.”
The Special Operations Forces Week convention here provides a key opportunity for Gen. Brown and officials up and down the Pentagon’s chain of command to meet face-to-face with industry leaders and see some of the products that will give America an edge over its foes in any future conflict. Each of the specific capabilities he mentioned — air and sea drones, electronic warfare systems, and others — are on full display across the convention. Finding the right capabilities and fielding them quickly, he said, is crucial.
“We need to be so good at what we do that we deter any adversary who would want to come to conflict with us,” he said. “We need to be our adversaries’ worst nightmare.”
Some of the apparent gaps in U.S. capabilities were in the spotlight this week.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Strategic Forces subcommittee Chairman Sen. Angus King laid into Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space and Missile Defense John Hill about why the Biden administration’s 2025 missile defense budget request falls far short on funding the senator said was needed to meet the growing threat of hypersonic missiles from foreign adversaries — in particular, Russia.
“We have no defense for hypersonic missiles, yes or no? Mr. Hill? Any defense on hypersonic missiles?” Mr. King, Maine independent, pressed during one exchange. If Russia launches a hypersonic missile traveling 6,000 miles per hour and “you are the commander of an aircraft carrier in the Greenland Gap. … What do you do?”
Mr. Hill responded: “We have some systems in the terminal stage, but we need more. You are correct … our hypersonic defenses are inadequate. … No argument, we need to focus on hypersonic defenses.”
• Guy Taylor contributed to this story.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.