Rep. Colleen Hanabusa asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey to articulate their vision of the future of the U.S. military on Thursday.

“We don’t predict well, but we are here and that’s almost what we are forced to do,” Hanabusa said during a House Armed Services hearing. “What is this vision that you want to share with us that you perceive this military has got to look like?”

Panetta ran through a list of “serious” national threats, including those related to:

•  Terrorism

• Ending wars

• Iran and North Korea

• The Middle East

• China

• Cyber security

“We’ve got to be able to have an agile, deployable, effective force that can respond to each one of these threats,” Panetta said. 

Hanabusa asked him whether such a broad range of threats requires distinct specialized forces. 

“To be agile, aren’t we looking at different types of forces?” Hanabusa asked. “We have counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and all of those are different… If you’ve got a limited amount of resources, what rises to the top?”

Panetta responded bluntly: “You’ve got to be damn flexible, and that’s what we’re going to have to be in the future.”