Remarks by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine at the National Guard Association of the United States 147th General Conference & Exhibition
Thanks so much. I am incredibly grateful today to be here around Guard Nation, and the Secretary—I talked to him this morning—and he asked me to send his very best to each and every one of you, and thanks, also, as a fellow Guardsman, for what you all do each and every day.
I also want to take a moment today, first and foremost, to introduce a teammate here this morning. He does not yet know the Guard as well as I do, but boy, he sure will soon.
So joining me today is the sixth ever, and first Navy, Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman. Most of our 1.8 million enlisted service members know that they are represented every day to General Nordhaus, General George, and the other Joint Chiefs—and I—by the SEAC. He is a servant leader to his core, so please join me in a Guard welcome, the first ever Navy, United States Navy Seal SEAC Dave Isom, down here in front.
[Applause]
And that’s a big deal for us, and we are both so humbled to be here today in the great city of Milwaukee and this extraordinary forum amongst our National Guard family, 54 states and territories, our industry partners, our elected leaders, family and friends in this awesome, awesome community.
As I mentioned, this is really like coming home to me, and I want to say thanks to a few people right up front. Let me start by saying thanks to the entire Wisconsin National Guard who put this event on, the TAG and all of the team—let’s give them a round of applause.
[Applause]
General Rogers, thanks for the introduction. General McGinn, thank you for the warm welcome. I also want to thank the TAGs that walked me in.
I especially want to thank the Virginia TAG, Jim Ring, whom I have known for 39 years. When I was a young freshman at VMI, General Ring was an upperclassman, and he gave me a lot of pure, unambiguous, often-times loud and direct leadership development feedback. And you still do, and I appreciate that.
But in a moment of gratitude, thanks—you really invested in us early on, and you showed us what leadership is really supposed to look like. It’s selfless, it’s caring, and you’re still doing that altogether with the TAGs that are here today, and I am deeply grateful for that, and all those people that poured into me.
Senator Baldwin, I know you’re here somewhere, Ma’am—thank you for all that you do to support the National Guard and the Joint Force.
It’s great to see General Nordhaus here. Chief, thanks for letting me be here. General George is somewhere here, or will be. It’s an honor for me to serve with both of you and to consider the difficult questions that are in front of the Joint Force. And thanks to both of you for investing in me with your wisdom.
I heard a rumor Johnny Lamontagne was going to be here—I don’t see him sitting in the front row, but thank you for what you do.
I see General McKinley and General Hokanson down here, both of whom graduated earlier, a couple years ago. Thank you both for your service.
General Hokanson, your hair looks good, but Sasse’s looks a little better, I will say it. Sasse is here.
All the other General Officers that are here, thank you so much. To all 40-plus Adjutant Generals that are here, thank you for what you do.
Most importantly, to Guard Nation—all the officers and enlisted leaders who took time from their schedules to come here to NGAUS. And to all that are not here, thank you for what you do for this great nation. Thank you for what you do in the service of our nation. When you mobilize the Guard, you really do mobilize the nation, and that is true, first and foremost.
Last night it was great for me to come here back to NGAUS and see so many friends. And I could certainly not imagine that I’d be standing here today, and have the honor of standing here with so many of you.
The Guard has given me more than I could ever give the Guard. And it’s really the gift of each and every one of you.
For my entire career, I’ve had the incredible honor and privilege of seeing the Guard in action, to see what it means for citizen-soldiers to go the extra mile. From the opening days of the war on terror on 9/11 to the most recent strikes in Iran, each and every time I turn around, I’m gifted to have this incredible vantage point of seeing what the Guard does for the nation—not only overseas, but right here at home.
To watch you move towards our nation’s challenges. To watch you lend a helping hand to our neighbors in need.
Guardsmen like those 113th Wing’s weapons loaders on 9/11, who, despite the acrid black smoke rising through the trees, had a look of determination that I will never forget my entire life.
It’s Guardsmen like those when I was in New Orleans and got to meet with them as they trudged through the deep sludge to rescue family members who were trapped in a post-Katrina environment, and did so leading forward all the way.
Guardsmen like the Pennsylvania TAG who moved into Syria to help the Joint Force create combat capability to deter a foreign nation—using the skills they learned not only in their military life but in their civilian life, bringing together the fusion of our private sector and civilian lives with that of our military.
To most recently having the chance to see B-2 crews from the Missouri Guard go into the Oval Office, and remembering so clearly that it was weapons builders from the Guard that created those bombs that did our nation’s business. And Guardsmen who went in and got after it in the darkness of night to do the things that our nation calls upon us.
And most recently, down in Texas, where I got to stand with members of the Texas Guard who went out into the flood zone to do something so incredibly hard—to take care of your neighbors in a time of such incredible pain and suffering, and to do so in such a caring and thoughtful way.
That is the Guard that has given me so much that I can never give enough back. It’s just extraordinary.
And rooted in all of our history is the Guard. From 1636 to 2036 and beyond, the Guard will always be there.
430,000 members of the Guard who selflessly serve to do big things when we need to do them.
And I will tell you, my brothers and sisters, you’re living in dynamic and delicate times. The challenges we face right now are extraordinarily complex.
I met with some company-grade field officers a little while ago, and for the first time ever, when I said, “Raise your hand if you’ve not heard of Tom Clancy,” no one raised their hands. What I normally say is that Tom Clancy, on his most creative day—and then I have to explain who Tom Clancy is—and I did not have to do that today.
But Tom Clancy could not have come up with the multiple simultaneous issues we are facing today. Just pause for a moment to think about it.
We’re three years into a war in Europe, a Middle East in crisis from Gaza to Tehran, and so much more. Just from my time in the Agency, we had somewhere between six to eight coups in Africa. The DPRK still on the rise, the march of nuclear capability. There are organizations in our own hemisphere who move drugs into the U.S. populace. Adversaries that are increasingly aligned, and of course our pacing threat on the horizon—and that’s China.
Our global risk score really has never been higher, but I’m comforted by the fact that you are there. You are a part, and a key part, of the greatest military ever to be on the face of the Earth. You are essential to how we reestablish deterrence, rebuild our military, and achieve peace through strength.
We are strong now, my brothers and sisters, and we will be stronger in the future.
I want to share just a few minutes with you about what I’m thinking about in Washington as we move from strength to strength and talk briefly about what my priorities are as your Chairman.
First, the President and the Secretary have been crystal clear with me on their priorities for the Joint Force. Teammates, we have one job: we will sustain peace for our nation by delivering deterrence through overwhelming strength. And if called upon, we will fight and win our nation’s wars.
To achieve this, we’re going to do four things together as a family.
First, we’re going to make sure that we’re properly armed. That means delivering the right mix of combat capabilities for you and the Joint Force—and in the Guard—at the time you need that capability, not when leaders are contemplating crisis or conflict.
[Applause]
Led by the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Services, we’re reinvigorating our national and our defense industrial bases.
This means a closer relationship with industry. We’ve got to share risk between the government and the private sector. And I know this because I was in the private sector as a traditional member in the Air National Guard. And we’ve got to focus our nation’s industrial base on the things that we need.
Second, we have to have an even more globally integrated Joint Force. Now, I don’t command anybody—not even the SEAC—in my day job. But in 2017, the Congress tasked the Chairman to be the Global Integrator. So the Joint Staff and I spend a lot of time trying to take all of the capabilities of the United States military and integrate those to be better, more interoperable.
To deliver peace through strength, I need each and every one of you in the Joint Force—including the Guard—to be relationship entrepreneurs. To miss no opportunities to create trust across the Joint Force, with our Allies and Partners, and with our teammates. And the Guard is a very special part of that.
This means, through your work, taking the best of Title 32, plus the best of the active duty Title 10 force, plus the best of the Title 50 intelligence community, law enforcement community, the rest of the interagency, our Allies and Partners, and the private sector, and especially through incredible things like SPP, which is, in my mind, one of the great force multipliers inside the Joint Force.
And to do all of this, we’re going to integrate more, we’re going to integrate often—all with the goal of creating multiple simultaneous, cognitive, and fiscal dilemmas for our adversaries. And we’re going to create doubts in the minds of those leaders. And through that integration, we’re building the connective tissue that we have from all the years of the war on terror and binding that into the next conflict. We’re going to create irreversible trust within our Joint Force.
And I want you to know, each and every one of you—as I said on day one of this job—I trust you. You will get after the things that we need to. So get after it, in this environment especially, and build relationships and be relationship entrepreneurs.
And for those younger service members in the audience here coming to their first or second NGAUS—drink water. A lot of water.
Third, my sisters and brothers, we’ve got to be ready.
This means, of course, being organized, trained, and equipped, but it means missing no opportunities to think about readiness, to think about combat, to work towards those essential things that we have to deliver to the Joint Force.
And this really starts with a mindset. We must be clear-eyed about the challenges in front of us and be ready to serve. And this extends not just to the force, but it also extends to our families, and being ready to go as a Joint Force family.
The last thing that is my priority is you. You don’t have to be doing this. You do this because you care about something greater than yourself. You do this because you love our great nation. You do this because you love each other.
And the Joint Force—and the SEAC and I—are working every day to deliver for the 2.8 million Americans and their families who remain in the Joint Force to serve. And it is an incredible honor to serve with you. You can never forget—certainly the SEAC and I never forget—that humans will always be more important than hardware.
The last part of that is something I want to say about America’s enlisted force. You are the envy of the world. You are what every other military in the world wishes they had. It is the Joint enlisted force that brings the true exclusivity that America’s combat power has.
No one in the world is better than you. And oftentimes, I contend that no one in the world is better than the enlisted force of the National Guard. Because you bring your civilian experience together with your military experience, and you deliver exponential returns for the United States of America.
You are the very definition—not just in the enlisted force but now also in the officer force—of relationship entrepreneurs.
My friends, thanks so much for all you have done since December 13, 1636, to today. The lineage that we hold so dear runs across the entirety of the history of our great country. It is the wish and dream of everyone to be a citizen-soldier, and to serve in this great country.
So as I close out, I just want to say one more thing about those members of the National Guard who are out there doing our nation’s business right now.
As we walk through the events today here at NGAUS, may we never forget those that are deployed right now from our states and our territories. May we also never forget the many, many Gold Star families in our National Guard family who have given the ultimate sacrifice through the sacrifice of their loved ones. And the example that they give us—those family members—every single day, on what true tenacity and grit look like, as they show us what selfless service looks like as they continue forward.
Teammates, thank you so much for letting us be here today. The SEAC and I thank you very much. I hope it’s a great NGAUS, and again, to those youngsters in the crowd—drink water.
Thanks.