The war in Iraq may end, the administration may meet its deadline for an end to the American deployment in Afghanistan, but the needs of many of the veterans of those conflicts will go on for decades.

That was part of the message Adm. Mike Mullen brought to the University of Pittsburgh on Monday. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spent the day in Pittsburgh as part of a multi-city listening tour, highlighting the challenges and search for solutions to the needs of returning veterans.

Adm. Mullen contrasted the reception current veterans have encountered with the estrangement between the military and much of society after his Vietnam-era graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy. But he suggested that the "sea of goodwill out there," was not enough to effectively deal with the physical and mental challenges encountered by many returning warriors.

"When you get injured, that's the day the fight begins," the admiral said of the bureaucratic and societal challenges of many of his troops face. "It's you against a big system."

Adm. Mullen said that the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs were committed to improving their services, but said that their efforts would never be sufficient to meet veterans' needs. Teamwork with community-based organizations across the country, he said, would continue to be essential, and one of his goals in touring the country was to better understand and communicate with such community organizations.

"The Department of Defense can't do it alone; the Department of Veterans Affairs can't do it alone," he said.

The chairman said part of the reason he came to Pittsburgh was because of the reputation its scientific and medical community had gained in research dealing with some of the signature injuries of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including traumatic brain injuries and burns. Part of his tour took him to the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, collaboration between Pitt and UPMC.

"An incredible part of this tour this morning was to look at skin grafting breakthrough research," he said.

He also described a visit to the entertainment technology labs at Carnegie Mellon University, where he saw a demonstration of how video game technology could be harnessed for physical rehabilitation.

The nation's ranking uniformed officer suggested that the multi-disciplinary approach was a metaphor for the broader collaboration society and the military must muster to address the needs of veterans.

"One of the things I've learned is that we're living in a world that grew up in various stovepipes. ... We've got to be integrated from a systems engineering standpoint and learning about each other in that integration, we need to be much more transparent," he said during and panel discussion at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum. "We need to be much more collaborative than we've been in the past."

In a subsequent news conference, Adm. Mullen stressed that among his priorities for dealing with returning veterans was to better address the challenge of homelessness among veterans and to institute a more effective system of mental health assessment.

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