JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD—Within weeks, the Defense Department will begin rolling out the results of its Goldwater Nichols review, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Friday.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. Photo: Pentagon
U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. Photo: Pentagon

“We’ll propose things as we conclude our studies of them,” he told reporters at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. “Some of these things will require legislation, and therefore we will be asking the Congress to consider them. I hope we will be persuasive and therefore accepted by the Congress.”

Other policy changes can be implemented without altering current statute, he said.

During his visit Friday morning at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Carter visited troops from the 262nd Network Warfare Squadron Air National Guard Cyber Unit and the Air Force’s 62nd Airlift Wing.

“It’s important to take a look at the Goldwater-Nichols structure because it made a tremendous difference to our military,” including changes to its chain of command that increased the services’ ability to conduct joint operations, necessitating bases like Lewis-McChord where troops train together, he said. “It did a lot of good things. At the same time, that was a long time ago, so it makes sense in view of the changes in the world to take a look in the same fundamental way they did then.”

Among those changes is the emergence of the internet, which has driven the Pentagon to develop defensive and offensive cyber capabilities. The review will also assess whether the acquisition system or other command structures need to be modified, he said.