Thank you for the question.
I'm not in a position, by virtue of the job I'm in, to really look at or understand any shortfalls. There are no shortfalls in my world, because we frame operations such that we can do them. I'm dealing with the here and now.
The vice chief would be able to describe where we would need to invest more so that we have the force we want in the future—a little more of this, a little less of that. He's in a better position because the design of the force, the force development process that goes into it, comes up with a model of how we want to be, where we want to invest. Then you invest in the delta.
Again, I don't mean to sound facetious. I handle the forces from zero to three years; that's the horizon I work within. From where I sit, I don't have what I would classically call shortfalls. We need to make certain that we continue to invest—and so this is not about a shortfall, but about an area to invest in, and I've mentioned our cyber capacity before. We want to make sure our networks are secure no matter what happens in the future. And we want to make certain that we increase our ability to use our own or others' ISR capacity. We want to make certain that our intelligence networks remain intact with our allies, to inform us well of what's going on around the world. Some of this demands investment in people, equipment, and training and education.
I don't go to work thinking that I have a major shortfall, that we have a big problem. It would be disingenuous to say that it would be great to have more of this. We have it. If it needs to be moved through readiness and be invested in so as to be immediately available when it's asked for, that's actually a professional responsibility of mine. It's not a hole; it's my job.
I try to ensure that I contribute to the work that goes on to determine what needs to be invested in so that it's ready at the right time. Do we continue to produce army battalions so that they're ready? Do we continue to have ready-duty ships? Do we continue to have ready aircraft? Do we need to tweak that? That's what I do, and at this point in time I'm not seeing any gap in our ability to respond to what we're being asked to respond to. I guess that's key.
If someone were asking me to do something I weren't ready for, I might have a different answer, but so far that has not been the case.