Joint Chiefs head eyes tough choices in unsettled threat environment: ‘I might p— some people off’

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TAMPA, Florida — The U.S. faces an “incredibly complex” threat environment and a fast technological revolution at home. Under these conditions, the U.S. will need a tougher, unapologetic approach to identifying, buying and fielding military capabilities, said Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.

Speaking at the Special Operations Forces Week convention, Gen. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 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 tough choices.

Some corners of the Pentagon and the military industrial base, represented here at the 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 aligned on goals and 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, along with the technologies many of them could bring to a fight, call for a new approach to the development and fielding of virtually every 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 on a panel 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, Hamas attacked 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 to meet with industry leaders and see some of the products that will give America an edge. Each of the specific capabilities he mentioned 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 adversaries.

“We have no defense for hypersonic missiles, yes or no? Mr. Hill? Any defense on hypersonic missiles?” asked Mr. King, Maine independent. 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 article.