Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday pledged to exhibit to China that the US will proceed supporting its allies within the Indo-Pacific area.
The U.S., nonetheless, just isn’t going to create pointless battle with Beijing, Hegseth mentioned in a question-and-answer session throughout a city corridor with Protection Division personnel.
“We’re clear-eyed concerning the communist Chinese language, the [People’s Republic of China], however we’re additionally not making an attempt to provoke battle or create battle the place it in any other case doesn’t have to exist,” Hegseth mentioned. “We’re going to face sturdy with our companions. After which President Trump, at his strategic degree, is the one who’s having the conversations to type of make sure that we don’t ever have a battle.
“We don’t need that, [the Chinese] don’t need that,” Hegseth continued. “We simply have to stay sturdy as a way to be in the very best place.”
The Pentagon posted a transcript of the city corridor Friday night, after a livestream of the occasion was lower off following Hegseth’s quarter-hour of opening remarks.
Hegseth’s feedback about China got here after an Air Power official requested him whether or not the Protection Division could be extra assertive within the “grey zone” space — wanting battle — to discourage China and Russia.
“There’s grey zone actions that exist, a few of which you’ll be able to acknowledge, a few of which you can not,” Hegseth mentioned. “However definitely, we need to ship the indicators to China that the [Indo-Pacific] space can be and continues to be contested.”
In response to a query about potential workers cuts at DOD, Hegseth additionally mentioned that “there are literally thousands of extra … positions [across the Defense Department] which were created over the past 20 years that don’t essentially translate to battlefield success.”
“[There are] extra workers, extra layers of forms [and] extra flag officer positions that we might be remiss if we didn’t assessment,” he mentioned.
Hegseth famous that the division operates in a “funds constrained surroundings,” and highlighted the armored cavalry unit at Fort Bliss, which has needed to lower a collection of upcoming coaching assignments resulting from tight budgets.
“If you’re dwelling off of continuous resolutions and caps, after which you’ve gotten contingency operations and issues that change, immediately you’ve gotten shortfalls and now unit coaching falls by the wayside,” Hegseth mentioned. “From my perspective, that’s fully unacceptable.”
Hegseth mentioned that along with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, the Pentagon must slash hierarchies and layers of forms that aren’t serving the army.
That might additionally contain a discount within the variety of four-star generals and flag officers, he mentioned.
“We received World Warfare II with seven four-star generals,” Hegseth mentioned. “As we speak we have now 44. Do all of these instantly contribute to warfighting success? Perhaps they do. I don’t know, nevertheless it’s value reviewing to ensure they do.”
In the course of the city corridor an official from the Pentagon’s Price Evaluation and Program Analysis workplace, which gives unbiased evaluation on DOD applications, requested whether or not the army’s acquisition course of ought to deal with smaller capabilities that might be fielded extra shortly, or larger-scale capabilities that may do extra to discourage adversaries.
“In an ideal world, I’d say each,” Hegseth mentioned, citing the effectiveness of low-cost drones within the battle in Ukraine.
The Pentagon can work with Silicon Valley and fast-moving new contractors which can be capable of quickly discipline new techniques, he mentioned.
And the Pentagon wants to hurry up its testing course of so commanders can see how new techniques work within the discipline, after which scale up manufacturing as soon as it’s clear how a lot sensible use these new applied sciences have.
Moreover, Hegseth famous one query that highlighted the challenges going through army households, equivalent to frequent strikes, was “100% proper.” And he steered that large army applications might have to take a backseat to household considerations.
Households’ frustrations are “a large readiness and retention problem and a morale problem,” he mentioned.
“Funding yet another multibillion-dollar system just isn’t as essential as funding the households and the capabilities of our human techniques that make all of it occur.”
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Protection Information. He beforehand coated management and personnel points at Air Power Occasions, and the Pentagon, particular operations and air warfare at Army.com. He has traveled to the Center East to cowl U.S. Air Power operations.
