General Vance, I want to carry on the conversation that we were having privately, if you will, earlier this morning. The military forces are becoming more and more dependent on training and intelligence. They are trying to recruit the best and the brightest. I was on a ship this summer, and the captain of the ship was talking about his need to get trades people, particular in the highly skilled trades, computer people, and people of that nature.
I wanted to get you to talk about the issue of recruitment and retention of the best and brightest in the military colleges, while simultaneously maintaining, if you will, the military culture. I generally characterize the military culture as a pretty straight-line culture. You wear a lot of gold there. It's a pretty command-driven structure. There are organizational charts and all of that sort of stuff. Yet we want to get into the military colleges, at the highest level, the future officers. These would be people who are extraordinarily bright, who think in ways that are not linear, shall we say, and who may see two or three or four solutions to the same problem. Yet you're asking these people to, if you will, wedge themselves into linear command structure.
Looking at the issue in terms of readiness, and also in terms of where we're going for the next five or ten years, how can you expect a lot of these kids who come to RMC in first, second, and third year--the best and the brightest, with the highest grades in their classes--to be jammed into a command structure that at times requires, if you will, repetitive and useless tasks that have no apparent utility?