Thank you, sir. That is a very hard question.
It's comparable to our allies, as one would expect, but each nation has unique characteristics. The U.S. Army is so large in its services that quantity has a quality all its own. So they're able to specialize to a far greater degree. We don't, so we have to be more generalist in nature. We have a smaller base and we ask our people to do more. We train subordinates, for example, to be able to step up at a moment's notice to take the responsibility of the boss. That provides us with that institutional flexibility.
Training costs money. Maintaining an army, regular and reserve, costs money. We try to move through a system of graduated readiness. So we're not like we were back in the days of the Cold War, when a huge number of soldiers were always ready to go to face that set. We try to move through a system to make it predictable, to mitigate the tempo, to balance the individual courses and career courses that are necessary, and to balance the professional military education. But that means that the army is continuously engaged in a training cycle, and it's managed by brigades, units, and sub-units, all the way down right across the army.
I would say, trying to put it in the American context, that we're more comparable perhaps to the Dutch. On the equation with the British, right at the moment it's very difficult for me to say, because I haven't been exposed to them and they're undergoing some profound changes. So we need to understand that we stack up on a pretty good basis, but it comes at a cost. It truly does.
Perhaps there's a more specific piece you'd like me to answer.