SAN DIEGO -- Certain things just aren't said in public.

Former Navy commanders don't harangue sitting Navy undersecretaries.

Coast Guard advisors don't suggest that "hanging a few colonels" might be good for the services.

Marine generals don't advocate a greater role in domestic law enforcement at the expense of civil liberties.

And Navy admirals and Marine colonels don't discuss turf battles between major U.S. military commands that allow criminals to have their way.

	The floor of the San Diego Conference Center before thousands flocked to the West 2010

Having reported on the military for 24 years, I can tell you that these conversations just aren't held in public.

Yet all took place during the three-day 2010 West Conference & Exposition, the largest gathering of defense contractors specializing in communications, electronics, intelligence, information systems, imaging, military weapon systems, aviation and shipbuilding on the West Coast.

The theme of this year's conference "Smart Power: Does the Quadrennial Defense Review Get Right?" is provocative itself in that it calls into question the sagacity of the QDR at its most basic level.

A wonkish document with increasing real-world application, the QDR is a Defense Department study that analyzes strategic objectives and potential military threats. The QDR is the main public document describing U.S. military doctrine.

The congressionally mandated report directs the Defense Department to undertake a wide-ranging review of strategy, programs and resources and outline a national defense strategy consistent with national security priorities by defining force structure, modernization plans and budget plans allowing the military to successfully execute its missions.

Cutting through the verbiage, the QDR is supposed to be a plan for the United States to kill any military force that stands in its way while meeting a budget.

The first day of the conference, Feb. 2, opened with military leaders outlining the need for quicker product fielding and a greater focus on cyber space. The word "cyber" was dropped so many times that I thought commanders were being paid for each time they used it.

Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the, made a grazing remark on the American attention span - or lack thereof.

"As you look at the Department (of Defense) and you try to understand what's different and where we are going," Cartwright told about 1,200 defense contractors and service members at a breakfast event, "you have to put in context the fact that we are, in fact, a nation at war."

"That seems to often escape the public eye. But we are fighting a war on two fronts, Iraq and Afghanistan. And it is killing young American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, and that is a huge price to pay and a huge burden to carry, particularly inside the military. But it is what is making the demands of what we are doing in policy and strategy every single day."

Cartwright said this review is a bright-line departure from past QDRs because it jettisons the long-held working premise that the military should be designed to fight two major engagements at nearly simultaneously for a more pragmatic approach.

The reality of combat today, he said, is that U.S. troops face "entity level" threats posed by small groups planting IEDs or lone suicide bombers - and not maneuver forces of a standing foreign army. That being the case, the military must adapt accordingly.

For me, this was the first time that I had heard the term "entity threats" used. But I suppose it's more a precise phrase than referring to these adversaries as "insurgents" or the vague "bad guys."
Cartwright went on to say that, "The QDR is a statement of a fact that we need to focus on and prosecute and equip for the wars that we are actually in, not the wars we hope we'll be in. And at the same time hedging for what the future might bring."

Against this backdrop of change and uncertainty are economic realities, Cartwright said, that cannot be dismissed: eight years of costly conflicts, an economy that has yet to find its feet and a massive deficit.

"So how long can we sustain this? How much can we put on the backs of the American public to recapitalize these forces to be ready for the next conflict wherever it is? And what posture should we have those forces in?"

Cartwright said the military is looking to private enterprise to help solve questions such as how to build an aircraft carrier or airplane that last 50 years "in a world that turns on 18 months (technology) cycles."

This challenge can be seen in improvised explosive devices (IEDs). It takes insurgents about 30 days to create an IED that skirts detection and another 30 days for the U.S. military to figure out how to defeat it. The insurgents then build a new IED and the process starts anew.

The current acquisition system just isn't keeping up with battlefield realities, he said.

"The fights that we are really in have a duty cycle of about 30 days," Cartwright said. "And we put that on the backs of the soldier, sailor, airman and Marine to stay adaptable. But quite frankly we've got to start to put it on the back of some of the systems ... We've got to give them (the troops) help."

Cartwright then talked the diminishing deterrent threat of U.S. nukes, missile defense, space and cyber space.
The nuclear threat of "mutually assured destruction" needs to be replaced by a "more realistic" deterrence for "the adversaries we actually face," he said.

While nuclear weapons have a place in the U.S. arsenal, the chief concern now is ensuring that they are "state of the art safe, state of art secure and state of the art reliable," he said.

Replacing the threat of nuclear weapons, he said, is an expanding multi-national missile defense web that is leveraging defense and sensor systems of other countries and is becoming "an anchor point for our deterrent strategy."

"When you look at what we have done in the Pacific, where we have based the sensors, who we have linked together in South Korea, Japan and other nations, it is incredible what we are starting to do," Cartwright said.
Space was another of Cartwright's topics, and one where he fears that U.S. firms are losing ground. I am sure his comments were much appreciated by U.S. satellite makers.

"The ability for our industries to compete globally in space, to provide services, is hugely hampered by the rules and regulations that we put around them," Cartwright said. "What it has done to us is make us non-competitive in this environment largely."

Then Cartwright moved into an area that raised eyebrows and one that no-doubt makes many in the military uneasy.

Take a look at a blog posted on U.S. Naval Institute website to better understand the concern: http://blog.usni.org/2010/02/03/gen-cartwright-meet-ben-franklin/

Here is a taste of what was written:

"Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Cartwright said something roughly along the lines of this: Some Americans might be willing to say I will voluntarily give up my privacy to ensure that I will be protected.

"He saw this as a good thing. Something to be hoped for. Something to be encouraged. And they should give that privacy up to the uniformed services.

"Gulp. Yes, a 4-star American General said that in the context of it being good - good for the security of the state."

Cartwright said that Title X of the United States Code allows the military to defend its bases and stations in the United States against cyber attack. Cartwright said the United States military could expand that mission beyond military installations, if laws are changed.

"We are working hard inside the government," Cartwright said, "to try to understand how we might be able to better protect critical infrastructure, build a construct in which it is legal to do that."

Continuing the cyber theme, though taking a step back from the "give up some privacy rights to achieve security" idea, Adm. James Stavridis, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, spoke about the opportunities and perils of cyber space or "the Cyber Sea," as he coined it.

"What I will try to do is convince you that the cyber space is greater than just cyber warfare," he said, before offering a tutorial on the astronomical rise of the Internet and where it might take us next.

"Paper money: kiss it good-bye. It is going to be phased out," the engaging Stavridis said. He said that the United States was already using direct payments to cell phones to pay some in the Afghan Army, and that the technology had enabled reductions in corrupt "skimming" seen when payments were made by paper currency.

He said trends in education, finance and culture all point toward cyber space playing an ever-expanding role in daily life.

"It's just like the beach at Kitty Hawk. It's just the beginning," Stavridis said, referring to the North Carolina site where Wilbur and Orville Wright achieved their first rudimentary airplane flights in 1903.

Then he spoke of terrorists using the web to recruit, fundraise and communicate -- and even steal video feeds from multi-national unmanned surveillance aircraft in Iraq.

In recent years, there's been a thousand-fold increase in websites advocating jihadist causes, he said.
He mentioned the "dramatic cyber intrusions" on four countries in 2007-2008, including the Republic of Georgia, which was involved in armed conflict with the Russian Federation.

"I believe an attack will not come from bombs off bomb racks, but from electrons," said Stavridis, who advocates for an interagency cyber-security task force to be set up within the Department of Homeland Security.

Seemingly more mindful than Cartwright of the civil liberties implications, Stavridis asked the private sector.
"You need to help us find the balance" between "the openness and security," Stavridis said. "You must help us tame the outlaw Cyber Sea."

Finding the right balance of things was also the theme of day two of the conference, on Feb. 3.
At a breakfast dialogue, Robert Work, the under secretary of the Navy, was challenged repeatedly on the Navy's blueprint as laid out in the QDR, which had been released just two days before.

"I would suggest the Navy that we need is probably bigger, probably different and probably concentrates on different things than the 313 ship-Navy we have planned," said Bryan McGrath, a former active-duty commander and lead author of the 2007 Maritime Strategy.

"I think we are over-subscribed in land attack. I think we spend entirely too much time and effort on doing things in the Navy that other services do really well. And that we sometimes don't spend enough time and energy on those things that navies and only navies can do, specifically sea control," said McGrath, a retired U. S. Navy commander. "If you can't control the seas, if your access is denied your power projection forces are feckless."

Work countered that Navy strategy isn't designed in a vacuum, but shaped by the priorities of the executive and legislative branches and aligned to mesh with what other services are doing.

He said the Navy's current configuration is poised to prevail in current wars and in the years to come will improve its ability to fight and win both low-end and high-end conflicts.

"What we want is a lot of payload space," Work said to quickly project U. S. power where needed. "I think the Navy is the most flexible fleet we have ever had."

Work and McGrath then opined on whether the Navy should be built on the supposition that the United States and China will trade shots in the next 30 years.

Absolutely, said McGrath. He said today's Navy is designed to defeat a non-existent foe: the Soviet Union. He said the Navy should concentrate beating the real-world threat that China represents.

"A war with China is a superb force-planning construct for this Navy. I am not saying that we should fight a war with China," McGrath said. "I am not saying it is necessary, inevitable or any of those things."

"I am however saying that when you look at the next best, biggest navy that is increasingly showing a desire to operate out where we operate, it is probably useful to start thinking about fighting that navy. And do we have the navy now to fight that navy and beat that navy or do we have to make some course corrections?"

"We need a navy-killing navy if we are going to beat China if it ever came to that," continued McGrath, who commanded an Aegis destroyer that he said lacked the ready ability to destroy another ship.

Work said China is indeed a rising naval power, but that the U. S. strategy is to work with the Chinese where feasible. He conceded that China is developing capabilities that could give the U. S. fleet a run for its money if it came to a fight.

"I can state pretty much with certainty that building a fleet to fight China is not the overriding consideration of this QDR," Work said. "It is to win the wars we are in. It is to hedge and deter against all manners of threats and to prepare our Navy to be able to operate against any adversary."

"Our idea is to work with China and to prevent the rivalry from getting out of hand," the undersecretary said.
During a discussion panel entitled "What can be Done with North Korea?" two panelists enumerated the actions by a recalcitrant regime that seems bent on regional destabilizing by any means.

"In North Korea, often nothing seems off the table," said Sydney A. Seiler, deputy North Korea mission manager in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

While North Korea's action-cycle is well known: negotiate, prevaricate, escalate and renegotiate, Seiler said ways to influence the country are not. He suggested that maintaining strong alliances with Japan and South Korea while preventing North Korea from exporting nuclear materials is the selected option.

John Hill, principal director for East Asia, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs, echoed the sentiment, adding that the United States believes China can play a larger role in calming its neighbor. He said denuclearizing North Korea through talks and other non-violent means is favored.
The blah conversation took life when the third panelist, Kongdan "Katy" Oh, a researcher with the Institute for Defense Analyses and a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, suggested the option of ""constructive destruction"" of the North Korean government.

"Waiting for the Kim Jong-il regime to go away might not be the brightest thing," said Oh. "It is time to deal with the hidden 22 million people (North Korea's population) who are getting smarter. If you provided an alternate option, I think constructive destruction is very possible."

She described the options outlined by fellow panelists as "a monkey show that does not work" because "nukes are their platinum card" and "dictators never change."

During the question and answer session that followed, Seiler said, "The end game is certain: the (Korean) Peninsula will be reunited." The difficult part, he said, will be integrating the haves (Southern Koreans) with the have-nots (North Koreas).

Oh said that South Korea is building a fund to assist North Koreans assuming eventual reunification.

Refreshing arguments also carried that day as a panel tackled the question of: "Pirates: How do we Defeat Them?"

Moderator Virginia Lunsford, a U. S. Naval Academy history professor, gave a quick overview of the piracy problem, including the fact that a black market stock exchange exists where shares of companies run by seaborne highwaymen are traded.

Business is booming.

Pirates took nearly 900 hostages in 2008-2009 and were paid about $60 million in ransoms last year alone, she said. That very day came word that pirates had seized a 4,800-ton, North Korean-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden.

Lunsford no sooner restated the panel's question than an answer came loud and clear.

"Kill the pirates," boomed Col. David W. Coffman, commander of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit at Camp Pendleton. "How do you defeat pirates? I think that it's pretty simple: Kill the pirates."?

The audience of about 300 broke into applause. Coffman said making pirates go away would be relatively easy, but there is "no appetite" among senior U.S. military leaders to do it.

The un-politically correct answer threw Lunsford. She wasn't dealing with a class full of been-nowhere, know-nothing midshipmen.

Just a little bit about Coffman, who is as sharp as he is blunt.

He graduated cum laude from Duke University, and was commissioned in May 1985. He completed flight school and was designated a Naval Aviator in May 1987. Coffman graduated with honors from both The Basic School and the Amphibious Warfare School, earned a Master of Arts in National Security and Strategic Studies with highest distinction while attending the College of Naval Command and Staff at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He also completed a fellowship with the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California where he served as commandant of the Marine Corps Fellows program.

Barring a crippling professional set-back, Coffman is well on his way to wearing a star if not multiple stars on his collar.

"We are ready to rock. This is what we do for a living," Coffman said. "The challenge is not capability. "The problem is … my favorite word from admirals, 'no appetite.' "

Rear Adm. Terence McKnight, commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 2, disclosed another problem: The U. S. Central Command and U. S. Africa Command are at loggerheads over who is responsible for dispatching the pirates.

One command is responsible for the sea and another the land, so neither is moving aggressively. "An impenetrable barrier of our own making," McKnight called the pirates' ability to exploit the operational seam.

The most unguarded comments of the conference might have been uttered during a discussion on: "Global Maritime Domain Awareness: Can It Be Achieved?"

There two main problems preventing the U.S. military from a better understanding of who is doing what and where on the world's oceans, said Christopher Miller, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, Atlantic technical director.

"We have a culture problem: We hate to share." The other problem has to do with the timely supply of hardware and software.

"I'm dealing with people who are going to Circuit City and EBay, and I have to deal with Congress. It hurts my head," Miller said. "We have to figure out how to work on the Internet. China and Russia are using Gmail for command and control."

"I am here to tell you that we are not going to win this battle unless we get creative," Miller said.
F. R. "Joe" Call, III, strategic advisor to the Coast Guard's assistant commandant for intelligence and criminal investigations, offered a striking, though tongue-in-cheek, solution to get commanders to actually share information, instead of just saying they will.

"Every once in a while you have to hang a few colonels," Call said. "If you hanged a few colonels for not sharing, I think the behavior would change quickly."

Like I said, certain things just aren't said in public, but they sure are a lot more fun when they are.