[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 114-127]
AIR DOMINANCE AND THE CRITICAL
ROLE OF FIFTH GENERATION
FIGHTER AIRCRAFT
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
JUNE 18, 2016
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____________
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio, Chairman
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
JOHN FLEMING, Louisiana NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts
CHRISTOPHER P. GIBSON, New York HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr.,
PAUL COOK, California, Vice Chair Georgia
BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
SAM GRAVES, Missouri TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota
MARTHA McSALLY, Arizona DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey
STEPHEN KNIGHT, California RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona
THOMAS MacARTHUR, New Jersey MARK TAKAI, Hawaii
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina GWEN GRAHAM, Florida
JOE WILSON, South Carolina SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts
John Sullivan, Professional Staff Member
Doug Bush, Professional Staff Member
Neve Schadler, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Page
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Chabot, Hon. Steve, a Representative from Ohio, Chairman,
Committee on Small Business.................................... 4
Stivers, Hon. Steve, a Representative from Ohio, Committee on
Financial Services............................................. 5
Turner, Hon. Michael R., a Representative from Ohio, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces................... 1
Wenstrup, Hon. Brad R., a Representative from Ohio, Subcommittee
on Tactical Air and Land Forces................................ 3
WITNESSES
Harris, Maj Gen Jerry D., USAF, Vice Commander, Air Combat
Command, U.S. Air Force........................................ 5
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Harris, Maj Gen Jerry D...................................... 30
Turner, Hon. Michael R....................................... 27
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
.
AIR DOMINANCE AND THE CRITICAL ROLE OF FIFTH GENERATION FIGHTER
AIRCRAFT
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces,
Washington, DC, Saturday, June 18, 2016.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in
the Carney Auditorium, National Museum of the U.S. Air Force,
1100 Spaatz Street, Dayton, Ohio, Hon. Michael R. Turner
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL R. TURNER, A REPRESENTATIVE
FROM OHIO, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND
FORCES
Mr. Turner. The hearing will come to order. Good morning.
This subcommittee meets today to receive testimony on air
dominance and the critical role of fifth generation fighters.
We welcome our distinguished witness today, Major General
Jerry Harris, a Vice Commander of Air Combat Command [ACC],
United States Air Force. General Harris, we thank you for your
service, and we look forward to hearing from you and your
important testimony today.
This hearing will be the first of two oversight hearings
the subcommittee plans to hold on air dominance and the
critical role of fifth generation fighters. Air dominance means
that friendly aircraft can fly anywhere in enemy territory and
can also be effective at performing their mission.
Today's ground and naval forces count on our combat air
forces to provide air dominance so that movements of troops,
supplies, weapons, and ammunition can quickly be brought to
bear in order to win decisively. Here at the National Museum of
the United States Air Force, I can't think of a more
appropriate place for us to begin this series on air dominance.
Those of you who have toured the museum have noted aircraft
such as the P-51, which was developed in World War II to defeat
the threat posed by the German forces. The Korean War brought
new challenges, such as the jet-powered MiG-15, which our Air
Force answered with the F-86, eventually resulting in a 14-to-1
kill ratio over North Korean fighter aircraft. The Vietnam War
saw the advent of radar-guided surface-to-air missiles, which
resulted in the development of the F-105G Wild Weasel aircraft,
designed to detect and destroy those missiles which were
threatening our Nation's capability to achieve and maintain air
dominance.
After the Vietnam War, lessons learned and technical
advances by both our Nation and near-peer adversaries required
the introduction of new fighter aircraft like the F-14, F-15,
F-16 and F-18, which we call on today. We call these fourth
generation fighter aircraft, characterized by improvements in
maneuverability, radars, sensors, and weapons.
That fleet of aircraft overwhelmingly achieved air
dominance in the first Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm.
Although modified somewhat to keep pace with threats, our
fighter aircraft inventory today is comprised largely of those
fourth generation fighter aircraft we used in Operation Desert
Storm. Like we have seen historically since World War II, our
adversaries have not stood still in their efforts to counter
American air dominance since Operation Desert Storm. Integrated
air defense systems with more powerful radars and more accurate
and longer-range missiles have been developed. Many of these
systems are so mobile, they will be much more difficult to
target. Our adversaries are also developing advanced fifth
generation aircraft which include the Russian Sukhoi T-50 and
China's J-20 and J-31.
To maintain future air dominance, our Nation will require a
fleet of fifth generation aircraft characterized by a much
lower radar signature to negate our adversaries' advances in
radars and radar-guided missiles. Our fifth generation aircraft
will also need to have machine-to-machine interfaces, giving
pilots unprecedented situational awareness of where those
mobile surface-to-air and air-to-air threats are in real time.
Our air dominance force of the future will need to have the
capability, capacity, and readiness to meet those future
challenges and threats.
The Air Force's current fleet of fifth generation fighter
aircraft consists of the F-22 and the F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter. This subcommittee has received briefings from the
National Air and Space Intelligence Center, or NASIC, located
here at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, on the threats we
are currently facing, and I am convinced now more than ever
that we must resource and invest in fifth generation fighter
capability. The investments we make now must be based on
capability and countering the threats facing our national
security.
We only produced 187 fifth generation F-22 aircraft, but
that number was 194 aircraft short of the requirement of 381 F-
22s. Unfortunately, the decision to stop F-22 production was a
strategy driven by budgeting goals rather than one driven by
the need to obtain a required capability. That is why the House
Armed Services Committee directed the Secretary of the Air
Force to provide a report to the congressional defense
committees on the costs associated with restarting the F-22
production line to procure those 194 additional F-22s.
Regarding the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Marine Corps
achieved initial operational capability [IOC] in the F-35 Joint
Strike Fighter with 10 aircraft at Marine Corps Air Station
Yuma, Arizona, last year. Between August and December of this
year, the Air Force will achieve its initial operational
capability with the F-35A at Hill Air Force Base in Utah. This
is good news, and indicates that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter
is remaining on cost and schedule. However, we are currently
not producing F-35s at the rate that we had planned even last
year. That is why the House passed the National Defense
Authorization Act [NDAA] for Fiscal Year 2017 by adding 5 F-
35As to meet last year's Air Force F-35A budget plan for 48
aircraft in fiscal year 2017, an unfunded requirement
identified by the Air Force Chief of Staff.
The House bill also added additional F-35Bs and Cs for the
Navy and Marine Corps, also unfunded requirements identified by
the Navy and Marine Corps.
Our Nation has met the challenges for air dominance in the
past, and I am confident we will do so now and in the future.
But we must remain committed to providing the resources
necessary to provide the capability, capacity, and readiness
necessary to accomplish the critical mission of maintaining air
dominance.
Before I begin, I would like to recognize each of the
members of our panel today and then give them an opportunity to
also provide an opening statement.
Dr. Wenstrup from the Cincinnati area serves on the Armed
Services Committee and on the Intelligence Committee with me. I
have Representative Chabot, who is also from the Cincinnati
area and serves as the chair of the Small Business Committee.
And we have Representative Stivers from Columbus, who also
serves on the Financial Services Committee and the Rules
Committee, which is the committee that determines all of the
business that gets to the House floor.
I appreciate each of you participating, and it is great
that we can, with what I would call the powerful Ohio
delegation, constitute a full field hearing on this very
important topic.
And with that, I would like to recognize Dr. Wenstrup.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Turner can be found in the
Appendix on page 27.]
STATEMENT OF HON. BRAD R. WENSTRUP, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM OHIO,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES
Dr. Wenstrup. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate the
opportunity to be here today, and I want to thank all those
here at the museum and the Air Force for hosting us. But I
think it is important that we discuss the maintenance of air
dominance and the role that the fifth generation fighters are
playing, especially in comparison to our traditional
adversaries in the world. It is really a precondition for any
military victory to be able to control the skies. Our ground
forces rely on it. They expect it. It affects our ground
maneuvers. I am an Army guy, so I am speaking from the ground.
And also as an Army doctor, it affects our MEDEVAC [medical
evacuation] operations, which is very important to our troops,
obviously.
I think that we have enjoyed the dominance in the air, and
we have to continue that, as well as dominance in air, land,
sea, cyber, and space that are so important today.
But you know as we have seen over a decade of war or more,
we have seen recession and budget constraints, and there are
concerns over modernization, obviously, and maintenance and
training for our troops, especially in the air. And it is
important to note also what our adversaries are doing. So I
hope that is part of our conversation today as best we can to
talk about what we need to do to prioritize modernization and
technology.
So I enjoy the opportunity to be here today with you, and I
look forward to your testimony.
Mr. Turner. Thank you.
Representative Chabot.
STATEMENT OF HON. STEVE CHABOT, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM OHIO,
CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
Mr. Chabot. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for
holding this subcommittee hearing today at Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base in your district. I happen to represent Warren
County now, and a lot of the folks from Warren County work here
at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, so we especially appreciate
that, and thanks for the invitation to be here.
I would also like to especially thank Major General Harris
and all those who have served our country or are currently
serving our country in the military. We appreciate the
sacrifices that all of you are making for us every day and the
need to make sure that we provide our men and women on the
front lines with the very best equipment that is available,
while also implementing the right strategy to maintain our air
dominance, and to a great degree that is what this hearing is
about, is maintaining that air dominance.
I certainly look forward to hearing Major General Harris
about the strategy to prepare our Air Force for the future to
confront the numerous growing threats. I am especially pleased
that we were able to hold this hearing at Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base. This base is a vital asset to our military and
comes with a great tradition and history. My dad, who was a
World War II veteran, and my mom for many years got their
health care here at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. They would
drive up here from Cincinnati, and it was outstanding care, and
I certainly appreciate the care that they got here.
Our family used to come up here for the Dayton Air Show,
which is, I believe, this weekend----
Mr. Turner. It is.
Mr. Chabot [continuing]. Or this week. So we would
encourage folks who may see this hearing to come here to
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and enjoy that experience.
And of course, Wright-Pat, a lot of the name is the Wright
brothers, who grew up right here in your hometown of Dayton,
Ohio. I would like to highly recommend a book that I brought
along with me, a little prop here today. This showed up on my
desk about a month ago. We reformed the congressional gift
laws, and there are bans on certain stuff you can get, but we
can still get books. And I am kind of a cheapskate, so when I
get one I virtually always read it, and this one was great. It
is called ``The Wright Brothers.'' It is by David McCullough. I
strongly recommend it. That is the only ad I am going to give
during the course of this hearing.
But again, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you holding this
hearing and yield back my time.
Mr. Turner. Thank you. Thank you for acknowledging David
McCullough's book. The Library of Congress actually had Dave
McCullough in to do a presentation on his book, and I was very
honored to have Stephen Wright of the Wright family present
with me. But it was nice to hear him highlight Dayton's role in
the Wright brothers' success, and it is not just a story being
told in Dayton because he actually saw that Dayton itself, its
infrastructure, was critical in the Wright brothers being able
to achieve what they did. I thought that was certainly a great
story.
In representing Steve Stivers, I also want to acknowledge
that Dr. Wenstrup and Representative Stivers currently serve in
our Armed Forces. So in addition to serving their country in
Congress, they also serve in the Armed Forces, and we certainly
thank you both for that.
STATEMENT OF HON. STEVE STIVERS, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM OHIO,
COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES
Mr. Stivers. Well, thank you, and thanks for allowing me to
be here. I want to thank Chairman Turner for holding this
hearing. You know, he is a true leader on the House Armed
Services Committee, and especially anything involving airpower,
he is the go-to guy. I am just excited to be here at Wright-
Pat. I want to thank the folks from Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base and the National Museum of the Air Force for hosting us
today. As a 32-year member of the Army and currently a colonel
in the Ohio Army National Guard, I appreciate what goes on
above my head when I am wearing the uniform, and air
superiority is important to everybody on the ground because if
you control the air, it is easier to control the ground.
I am looking forward to General Harris' testimony and
answering our questions, especially with regard to the F-22, F-
35, manning, and resources. So thank you for being here,
General.
Again, I want to say thank you to Congressman Turner for
putting this together and for his leadership in our military to
make sure that our military is at the cutting edge and can
defend our own national interests. So, thank you, Congressman
Turner, for your leadership, and I yield back the balance of my
time.
Mr. Turner. Thank you.
General Harris, before I turn it over to you, I will tell
you that you are speaking in front of a group that have been
strong advocates for relieving sequestration that, of course,
has been a scourge on our military, has made it very difficult
for us to achieve our advance acquisition programs, and it
certainly has had a huge impact here on Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base, where when sequestration went into place over
12,000 people were furloughed. But you are speaking in front of
a group that not only is sympathetic but has been actively
working to set aside sequestration and its effects on your
work.
General Harris, we look forward to your message. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF MAJ GEN JERRY D. HARRIS, USAF, VICE COMMANDER, AIR
COMBAT COMMAND, U.S. AIR FORCE
General Harris. Well, thank you, Chairman Turner and
Congressmen Wenstrup, Chabot, and Stivers. Thank you two also
for your service and serving as Congressmen.
The opportunity to discuss the Air Force capabilities and
the challenges delivering air superiority is a great venue, and
we appreciate your time.
As the Vice Commander of Air Combat Command, I have the
privilege to oversee 140,000 airmen and civilians. Air Combat
Command is responsible for organizing, training, and equipping
the air superiority mission. This mission, as you have heard in
the opening comments, is instrumental in achieving freedom of
maneuver in the air, on the land, and on the sea, and it is a
precondition for success.
I am grateful the committee shares our interests and that
we are looking at the advancement of air superiority, and I
know that your combined concern and collaboration and work with
us will assist in achieving these results and what they provide
to the country.
Air superiority capability remains at the highest level,
but our near-peer adversaries are closing the gap. The image
you see with me today over my left shoulder illustrates our F-
35 compared to a Chinese J-31. It depicts our adversaries are
not only impeccably imitating platform design, but they are
also achieving comparable capabilities and technology.
Improvements in the future and investments are certainly
necessary to continue to outpace the adversaries in advance of
this crucial mission.
[The graphic referred to was not available at the time of
printing.]
General Harris. My first main point. We recognize the
absolute imperative need for air superiority and its importance
in ensuring our national defense. The goal of ACC is to be so
capable that our enemies choose not to fight. During Operation
Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the Iraqi Air Force chose to bury their
MiG-25s rather than face American airpower. That is exactly the
response we are looking for.
Our fourth generation fighters continue to effectively
maintain air superiority in the permissive environment, but
advanced air defense systems are making that more difficult.
Our advanced fifth generation fleet have moved into a more
prominent role of anti-access aerial denial, but continue to be
in limited numbers, and they are used as a balanced approach
with our fourth gen [generation] fighters.
It is critical to rapidly increase our fifth generation
fleet to ensure that the air superiority capabilities in the
future are maintained. Along those lines, I would also like to
thank the team for the five F-35s that were added to our
upcoming fiscal year purchase.
Second, our challenges do occur and are maintaining the
dominant reign in air superiority, but Air Combat Command has a
vision and a plan to ensure continued success. One of our
largest, our most expensive to overcome in terms of money,
manpower, and time, is the size of our force. We have 79 fewer
fighter squadrons now than we did in Desert Storm, and we are
more than 500 fighter pilots short on our rolls. We have
enacted a fighter enterprise redesign to study and actively fix
this. The Chief of Staff of the Air Force also commissioned Air
Superiority 2030 Enterprise Capability Collaboration Team--and,
Chairman, if you're okay, I will refer to that as ECCT from
here on out--and that is to highly address the contested anti-
access area denial environments of the future.
This plan highlights the requirements of a family of
systems for success, and multiple domains will include new air
superiority fighter aircraft. Agile, efficient acquisition will
be the critical enabler to attain this budget within a relevant
timeline. Forty-four years ago was our last combat loss in air-
to-air arena in Vietnam. Yet, near-peer adversaries are working
towards being capable of ending that winning streak. It is the
goal of ACC to advance air superiority capabilities to ensure
that this never happens again.
I thank you for the invitation to participate in this
important hearing and to share our ideas on how to advance the
mission in defense of our Nation. I welcome questions, sir,
from the chairman and from the members, and ask that my written
testimony be entered into the record.
[The prepared statement of General Harris can be found in
the Appendix on page 30.]
Mr. Turner. General, thank you.
There have been recent news reports about the supply chain
for spare parts for operation of our equipment, where even
museums have been raided for some of their parts. In fact, as
we were touring today, one of the members with us said, ``I
wonder to what extent this museum is in the inventory supply
chain of spare parts for the Air Force.''
Could you please speak for a moment on the pressures of
sequestration, the effects that it has had? And one of the
items I would also like you to mention is the effect that it
has had on rated fighter pilot personnel. So both overall what
you see sequestration doing, but also the concern of our
ability to maintain air superiority while having the personnel,
the manning to be able to accomplish it.
General Harris. Well, thank you, sir. Those are great
questions. Sequestration is hard on the services, and not just
the Air Force, but the entire Department [of Defense]. We are
struggling and we are challenged to achieve the missions
success that our country expects of us, and that is winning in
a dominant fashion.
As much as sequestration has hurt, we need a stable budget
that we can count on for year after year after year for our
plans because, as you said, our fifth generation fleet is going
to look different now from what we planned last year because of
the changes that we have put in front of us each year. So our
approach to that is, yes, we have a lot of fourth generation
airplanes that we have intended to retire. We would like to get
out of the fourth generation business to a fully fifth
generation fleet, but we need to do that on a timeline that is
both fast enough to ensure we have enough fifth generation
airplanes and not so fast that we outsize our ability to train
to that mission.
So we will continue for the foreseeable future to fly
older, fourth generation airplanes with dwindling parts
supplies, as you mentioned, where we will have raids to
museums. Really, we have a boneyard process of airplanes that
have been retired that are in the desert in Tucson that we are
able to go out and pull parts from as airplanes as we need to,
and we can't get them from diminishing manufacturing supplies.
That will continue to be a problem for us over the next decade
or two as we fly these older airplanes, yet we try to modernize
them with newer parts, with upgrades to give us better
capabilities with that, and that is one of the ways we are
trying to work through the sequestration, is as a teammate,
rather than an adversary. That is part of what we need to do
for our support of the Nation.
When it comes to the people and the cuts we have had to
take for the last 5 or 10 years, the Air Force has gotten
smaller in an attempt to preserve the equipment that we have,
but we realize we went too far, and we would like to thank
Congress for the help in growing over the last couple of years,
well this year and next year, the authorized growth that we
have had, which allows us to start getting at some of the
manpower shortages. Fighter pilots are one of those, so we have
increased our throughput of both Air Education [and] Training
Command pilot production, and then we are going to add in 2017
and 2018 additional F-16 training squadrons to produce more
fighter pilots in general. So that is part of it, and we would
also like to thank Congress for the increase in the aviation
career incentive pay, which allows us to retain a few more of
our experienced pilots, which is important to us also, not just
developing and bringing new ones on.
And then finally, sir, maintenance. That is another
manpower issue we have had where we have had significant cuts
in our maintainers, and I would say right now the Chief quotes,
every squadron is 90 percent manned, so a 10 percent shortage.
So 1 of every 10 people are not in the squadron doing work.
That applies to our maintainers also. And we are finding that
getting their expertise back is not easy, so we are trying to
do some of our easier maintenance work at our training
locations with contract maintenance so we can continue to
produce and get the training and readiness that we need. Those
contracts have to be hired from somewhere, and a lot of the
times a young maintainer who is on a flight line realizes they
could do the same thing in a civilian environment and not have
to deploy and do those things. That is going to be another
drain on us. So we are working both the pilot side and the
maintenance side to fix that.
Mr. Turner. General, the numbers I have indicate that due
to experience levels and the needs in air superiority
squadrons, that you may already be over 700 pilots short of
your projected plans. Give us a feeling as to what that means.
What does it take to catch up, and what does it mean if we
continue with that shortfall?
General Harris. Sir, again, that is a great question. Your
numbers are right on. We closed out last year over 511 fighter
pilots short of what we need to be 100 percent manned. We
expect to close this year out just over 700. So your numbers
are on target.
What that means, the impact is that right now we are still
able to man all of our flying organizations at 100 percent, but
all of our supporting staff--so my command staff, headquarters
Air Force, those staffs are manned at about 25 percent, right
in that vicinity. So every place you should have four fighter
pilots, you have one doing all of that same work, providing the
information, and that is impacting our ability to plan and
foresee things in the future and to do the things that we need
from a staff perspective.
How do we fix that is the increased production at the start
to try and build an additional 100 pilots a year so we can
reverse the trend of losing more and start building more, and
we won't be able to fix a 700 shortfall in a year, but we will
also retain some of the more experienced pilots, which are the
ones that we have worked 10 or 15 years to develop, and they
have a lot of combat experience that we would like to retain.
So we are working on both ends of that spectrum, and we do
that through job satisfaction, through the pay and incentives
that they get with that and, to be honest, taking care of their
families, because that is the most important part is taking
care of our airmen.
Mr. Turner. Because just hitting the number, as you just
described, is not the only issue. It is ensuring that they have
the experience level. As we look to the operational capability
of the F-35, we need to make certain that we have the greatest
capability not just in the aircraft, but also in the pilots
that are flying them.
General Harris. Yes, sir. That experience in the F-35, as
obviously we are building that today, but the way we initially
put the cadre into the F-35 on both the maintenance and on the
operational side is to have pilots that are experienced in
other weapons systems, so they are new on the systems, but they
are experienced in the overall environment, and we are doing
the same thing for the maintainers. We are cross-training them.
Instead of an A-10 or an F-16, they are now working on an F-35,
and that is an easier transition than taking a brand-new start
from a technical recruit and building them up, which we will be
doing that shortly also.
Mr. Turner. Thank you.
Dr. Wenstrup.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, that graphic there is very telling and obviously
very concerning and likely a pretty clear indication of their
ability to tap into what we are doing and our technologies. So
given where we are right now as you look at that, you could say
they are pretty much copying the outer structure, and as we
continue to develop the F-35 and modernize it because things
are changing so quickly, how do we protect that from getting in
their hands as well?
And I don't mean to go into a classified area, but I mean
let me ask it differently. Are we doing things at a higher
level of scrutiny that may be able to protect us from them
getting that information as well?
General Harris. Yes, sir. The way you present that is right
on target. We are, but we are required to be transparent, and
we see that now at the B-21. Where our approach is we want to
tell Congress everything, and we do, we just do it sometimes in
classified formats instead of open formats. But I don't think
between our relationship--I think it also goes back to our
defense contractors and just our industrial database, and where
a lot of this is being worked within their own facilities, that
we are seeing our adversaries catch up with different things.
As you said, the mold line is exactly right. Those
airplanes look very similar when you cut a line down the middle
and you put them together. Clearly, there is some copying going
on, but we see a lot of our adversaries are still struggling on
some of the avionics. Their radars may not be as good, and they
have engines that are not as good as what we are working on. So
everything that we are putting together and integrating as a
package, that is what is keeping us ahead of them, and to
continue to make sure that we are procuring at a number that
allows us to have the numerical superiority so that they don't
want to fight us.
Dr. Wenstrup. Maybe we can feed them some bad information
in the same process or something along those lines.
So you talked a little bit, too, sir, about the challenges
that you face with number of pilots, and you coupled that with
budget reductions, lesser training opportunities, maintenance
inadequacies. I mean, these are tough times. We get it. My
question is how do we--and again, sometimes you are getting
into classified information. But how do we best get the
American people to get it and, for that matter, sometimes other
Members of Congress to really understand the jeopardy that we
are putting ourselves in?
General Harris. Well, the reason that we need to keep
modernizing is so that we have fewer blue losses both in the
air and on the ground. We are trying to keep our military alive
and, to be honest, in a war, kill more of their military. That
is what it boils down to. That is what it is looking at.
We just completed--the first operational squadron is not
IOC yet out of Hill, but should be soon--just completed a
deployment to Hill Air Force Base, and the airplane, while it
is still immature, is performing fantastically. And how we get
that information out to the public is very important. Using
forums like this that are open will help us with that message.
But that unit deployed, flew sorties, and then flew home. It
was scheduled and planned to fly 88 sorties with 7 airplanes,
and flew and actually were effective with 88 sorties. They
didn't drop a single sortie, and every one of the targets they
struck they were 100 percent hit rate with precision munitions.
So I couldn't ask for more of a mature system, let alone an
immature system, so that was fantastic for us.
And then because it is F-35 and fifth generation, flying
where they were, they were teamed up with some fourth
generation fighters in scenarios that only the F-35 was
surviving and some of our fourth generation fighters were
taking losses. So clearly, the airplane is performing the way
we want, and when I talked with pilots two days ago, Thursday
at Nellis, they are very pleased with it.
So we do have modernization work to do. We've got some
other things we need to integrate, additional weapons systems
to put into it, but it really is the airplane that we are
looking for, and we are just trying to procure it at the rate
that we need.
Dr. Wenstrup. And certainly that is encouraging in that
regard, but we are still asking so many to do much more with
less, and I think that probably makes it tough on your
retention as well, especially for pilots where there are
opportunities in the private sector. You are always battling
that, but maybe even now more so than others. If there are
things that we can try to do from Congress to turn that tide,
we would certainly always be interested in knowing what those
things are.
But I think that that graphic right there is something that
the American people need to see to know what we are up against.
You bring up a very interesting point that we all recall from
Iraq, where they buried their MiGs, right? They didn't want
anything to do with us. That is peace through strength. That is
where we always want to be.
Anyway, I thank you, and I will yield back.
Mr. Turner. Representative Chabot.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to reiterate something that my colleague,
Congressman Stivers, said, and that is that I would hope the
people in the Dayton area realize how aggressive you have been
in protecting Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, that we are out
here today. We have had innumerable conversations about
sequestration and adequate funding for Wright-Pat, et cetera,
and I know you have done that with our colleagues on both sides
of the aisle to make sure that this air base gets the support
that is necessary for it now and into the future.
My question, General, would be, could you discuss Wright-
Patterson Air Force Base's specific role in the near term and
in the future in air dominance and the protection of our
Nation?
General Harris. Yes, sir. Congressman, Wright-Pat has a
storied history that everybody is aware of with the birthplace
of flight and everything that started here. And I will be
honest, when you look at Wright-Pat as an Air Force base, from
Air Combat Command I don't see fighters and bombers. What I see
is that integral cell of all of our Air Force research labs
that get their genesis from right here. It is the scientists
and the people at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base that look at
some of the theories and the advanced initiative that we are
looking at. They study that across the labs and they task and
get so much work done for us that allows us to look at what is
next. If we have fifth gen airplanes that are so capable that
are being cut, should we now look at sixth gen? We see a lot of
genesis coming from that.
The way we treat a weapons system, it starts and ends right
here at Wright-Pat with our Air Force LCMC [Life Cycle
Management Center], and it is our life cycle maintenance
command that, cradle to grave, from an airplane when it first
starts or, to be honest, any weapons system, because they are
not all airplanes, we have our command and control to include
our human design and our development of people, it all starts
and ends right here. So that is significantly a portion of what
Wright-Pat does.
But we have other organizations such as SIMAF [Simulation
and Analysis Facility] that takes some of our capabilities and
helps us integrate those and shows us what we can do across the
spectrum, and that power is central right here.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you very much, General.
Next, General, I know we have already referred to the
graphics up there, but I think the similarities illustrated in
there are so striking that it says a lot just by looking at the
picture. Could you discuss, to the extent that you can in a
non-classified setting, what role cybersecurity warfare has in
something like this and how seriously we as a nation need to
take that?
General Harris. Sir, cybersecurity has a huge role, because
any information that we are doing in today's age, it is going
to be electronic, what we are doing back and forth. We have
ideas on the back of bar napkins, but we are using computers to
plan, process, and disseminate everything that we are doing. So
cybersecurity will play a huge role in that, and that can be a
weakness at times when people are trying to steal things from
us. So we have a huge defense effort that comes down to every
single airman, soldier, sailor, and marine to make sure that we
are doing what we are told to do and using the systems as we
are supposed to rather than circumventing those, and that is
not just the military, but that is with our defense contractors
and everything else.
We will always have concerns of espionage and other events,
but how we use these systems in cybersecurity, we can actually
start monitoring some of that and making sure that we
understand what is processing and who is doing what on our
classified systems. That significantly helps us because that is
the internal threat. It is the unclass [unclassified] side for
the external threat.
And in cyber also is getting to play a role as a
warfighter. It is its own domain from an airman's perspective,
and we think that air superiority can be helped through cyber.
There are things that our cyber professionals can do to reduce
the effectiveness of an adversary's capability, and that is
something that we are looking at very hard now and working our
way through for the future.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you very much, General.
Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Turner. Mr. Stivers.
Mr. Stivers. Thank you very much.
Thanks, General, for your testimony. I will quickly just
comment on something that both Congressman Wenstrup and
Congressman Chabot brought up.
When you look at that graphic behind you, it is clear that
is not by accident. This is a deliberate stealing and copying
of our technology. We are lucky they cannot perfect it today,
but we have to do more in cybersecurity. I don't think our
problem is with our uniformed personnel. I think we have an
agency problem with a lot of defense contractors who are
supposed to protect American secrets, and it is not always
their bottom line they are protecting. It is the taxpayers and
our own secrets as a country, our technology. So I am going to
continue to fight to make sure that we raise the level of
requirements on those contractors to protect our true national
secrets.
So, that was more a comment than a question, but I just
want you to know that the folks in uniform are doing a great
job, but we need to expect more from our contractors, and there
are people out across the world trying to steal our technology
every day, and you can tell by looking at that picture that
that was no accident. That is stolen technology, and I am sure
they got it through some cyber stealing. So we need to all, as
a country, pay attention to that and be ready for the future.
So I do want to talk about--you answered some questions
from Congressman Turner--about the shortage of your rated
pilots at this point. To what role can the Air Force Reserve
and the Air National Guard help this shortage by either
allowing some of their pilots to be called to active duty or
maybe assuming some missions? I know you said you are actually
shorting your own command staff and other things like that to
meet the need at this point. Could those organizations
supplement your staff and other staffs as well to make sure
that we are able to meet the needs we are supposed to meet?
General Harris. Well, sir, that is a great question, and to
be honest, they are already. They are in the exact same
position we are in. The staff that I talked about that is 25
percent manned includes my Guard and Reserve teammates. The 55
fighter squadrons that we have today includes our Guard and
Reserve teammates. So they are wearing the same uniform we are
wearing, and they are part of this daily effort with us. So the
same pressures that are on me are on them. As the airlines are
hiring now and continue to do more in the future, which is
always a draw for pilots in any service, they are seeing the
same vacancy rates that we are.
As long as we have the ability to continue to use the Guard
and Reserve, if you take airmen who are going to get out
regardless of what we do and retain some of them for that
capacity and that call-up in the future, then I think they are
hitting the mark and doing exactly what we ask of them. Yet, as
you know, they are doing so much more because they are
deploying at a rate that is significantly above what we call
the strategic reserve, and they are as ready as we are or as
unready as we are on the active side, and they have been
fantastic teammates for us.
Mr. Stivers. Thank you, General.
With regard to the fourth and fifth generation aircraft, do
you believe policymakers in Congress should actually dedicate
resources to upgrading our fourth and fifth generation aircraft
to make sure that we can maintain our technological edge?
General Harris. Yes, sir. I would say the team is from
Congress and OSD's [Office of the Secretary of Defense]
perspective. We are dedicating resources in that direction. We
do need to upgrade our fourth generation airplanes to make sure
they meet the mandates to fly in the airspace and to have the
required equipment to just be able to fly like any other
airplane, the airlines, those types of things, since we are
changing our airspace structure, but then to continue to update
the defensive and offensive systems that are on those. We are
making our recommendation as to where those should go because
10 to 15 years from now, in the contested environments, the
highly contested environments that we are talking about for air
superiority, there may not be much room for fourth gen
airplanes. That is why we are so concerned about giving the
fifth gen at the rate we need. And, yes, we are still updating
the F-22 and modernizing it with the systems that go through it
to make sure that as the threat evolves, so does our aircraft
to stay in front of that, and we are doing the same thing with
the F-35.
So we are currently buying Block 3F-type airplanes, and we
will soon have a Block 4 that's coming off, and what goes into
that is part of the ongoing study that we are doing for the
Defense Department, and then we will look at the funding from
Congress through the normal processes.
Mr. Stivers. Thank you.
I yield back to the chairman.
Mr. Turner. Thank you.
Representative Stivers' question is a great passing of the
baton in the work that I get to do next. As you know, I chair
the Air and Land Subcommittee, which means I write the portion
of the bill for the National Defense Authorization Act that
covers the acquisition programs for the Air Force and the Army.
We have gone through the House version of the bill, which has
passed the House floor. The Senate bill is proceeding. There
are differences between the House bill and the Senate bill, and
here is my opportunity to ask you questions that can help us in
conference in advocating on the side of the House bill. That is
the context in which the question is being given to you.
Representative Stivers indicated about the modernization of
the fourth generation and the fifth generation. Although we
will achieve the F-35, we will have to continue its
modernization which, because of the manner in which the plane
operates, the heavy reliance upon electronics, as you
indicated, is a significant undertaking and its modernization.
The GAO [Government Accountability Office], which is
actually based here at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,
recommended that the F-35 follow-on modernization be treated as
a whole separate acquisition program rather than just a
continuation of the F-35 program. On the House side we were
able to defeat that measure. There was an amendment offered
that would have implemented that GAO recommendation, and the
reason why we defeated it is because we had additional
information post the recommendation from the GAO, and that
additional information is that it would result in a 6- to 12-
month delay and over a $13 million cost increase overall in the
maintenance and the modernization of the F-35.
Now, General Bogdan has indicated his opposition and that,
in his assessment, that the delay and the increased costs
exceed the benefit of having the modernization program being
treated as a completely separate acquisition program.
General, do you have a perspective on that?
General Harris. Well, Chairman, thank you. I do, but part
of that is outside of ACC's area of expertise. So I will defer
on the cost and the schedule delays to the JPO [Joint Program
Office]. I have no doubt that their authenticity is correct. I
can say that. I suspect they are very accurate with what they
say because they are the ones closest to it and looking at it.
My concern as Air Combat Command is if we do that, the
additional oversight that we are looking at the program will
cost more, but more importantly it is going to delay the
upgrades, and it is not minor things. It is upgrades to the
electronic warfare system. It is radar enhancements. It is new
weapons integration. It is all of those things that we are
trying to get to mature this weapons system in a hurry, and any
delays that we have are going to impact not just the U.S. Air
Force, but all three services that are flying that and all of
our partner nations that are part of this funding. They are
paying their portion for the upgrade for the first time ever in
any other weapons system. When they bought F-16s, they just
paid for what the Air Force already paid for, and now they are
part of that investment. So I would hate to delay that because
it might put in jeopardy other funding sources.
So my recommendation is that those capabilities become at
risk if we delay, so we shouldn't delay.
Mr. Turner. Thank you. Well another provision that is in
the House version of the NDAA is looking at the cost of
restarting the F-22 line. Now, the Air Force Chief of Staff
recently said that it is not a crazy idea. I will take that as
an endorsement.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Turner. Obviously, there was a significant amount of
shortfall in the number of F-22s that were produced. That goes
directly to the capability of your command. Would you please
give us your view of the issue of the shortfall in the F-22,
any thoughts that you have on trying to produce additional ones
to increase your overall command capability? As you know, you
have--I believe it is 187 have already been produced, a
shortfall of 194. General.
General Harris. Chairman, I think we as an Air Force and a
country would have been better suited to have those additional
194 airplanes already in the inventory and being participants
in everything that is going on, and it may have changed some of
that calculus for what our adversaries are doing. But we just
completed the 2030 Air Security ECCT study, and those results
have been out-briefed to the Chief, and he has accepted those.
One of the recommendations in that was not to restart the F-22
line.
The major concern was that the funding that would be
required would be significant and it would take away from
additional funding of somewhere else within the service that is
probably a higher priority, and there is nothing higher
priority than air superiority. But the concern is that we would
be 5 to 10 years away from the delivery of the first airplane
because in 2009 when the line closed, all of those
subcontractors have moved on to other things. We would have to
rebuild that base. It is not a short-term fix. And then when we
started taking delivery of those airplanes, the airplane itself
would be 20 years old, and we are ready for what is next, and
that is part of what that study is recommending.
So as we look at those requirements and the future
capability, we think it is wiser to keep the investment in the
F-35 at the production levels that we need for our fifth gen to
fill in where the gaps were from the F-22, and that will allow
us to bridge into what is the follow-on to those two platforms.
Mr. Turner. General, I am aware of that study, of course,
and our aspect of requesting the study that is in the House
version of the bill is actually doing a holistic view of what
would those elements be. Whether it be the F-22 or not, we are
going to need something more than just the F-35. I know that
your concerns, as are evident throughout the Air Force, is
budgetary. You would not want to cannibalize one system in
order to be able to launch another.
But I am certain that as we have additional discussions, I
am going to ask you as we close off our round to give us
greater detail as you describe the F-35 and the fourth
generation and how they work together. Having more cards in
your deck of greater capability I am certain will be important.
So the study itself gives us greater fidelity on some of
the things that you identified. It doesn't conclude. It really
does that holistic assessment of what would it take, which
could result in an additional--a different airplane. But it
certainly should look at that, recognizing the gap, that you
have a gap.
General Harris. Yes, sir, we do.
Mr. Turner. What would it take to fill in that gap, and
what are our overall costs?
So I appreciate that, and we look forward hopefully to the
Senate agreeing to getting a greater understanding of what are
those missing elements to study, and I will just rely on the
Chief of Staff saying it is not a crazy idea.
With that, Dr. Wenstrup.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you.
So a little bit, somewhat off the main topic, but overall
air superiority. We look at the global threats and potential
threats and the ability to be a deterrent, as well as to fight
terrorism and to stay ahead of our traditional adversaries. Do
you feel that we are positioned forward enough in the world, in
enough locations? Let me give you an example.
An Army guy's observation serving in Iraq. I had a chance
to go up to Sulaymaniyah in Kurdistan for a couple of days
while I was deployed for a year, and my thought as the war went
on and as we were being more successful--and ultimately I say
we won that war; and since, things have changed. We won that
war, and I thought the Kurdish area would be a great place for
an air base. It was the only place I went in Iraq where I
didn't wear armor. We were loved. They love Americans. We would
be so central in the Middle East. We would have a show of force
and authority there, and what a great place this would be for
an air base, and I still think that if the climate was right.
But my question really comes down to do you think with
today's threats that we have, are we forward positioned enough
with our air forces to be comfortable?
General Harris. Sir, that is a great question. And you and
I, based on your military background, look at it a little
differently from our perspective. Your Air Force deploys really
quick. It doesn't take us weeks and months. It is normally days
and sometimes hours to get into place to do what we need to do.
So I balance our ability to be forward with our requirement to
defend our homeland and to be home where we get some of the
best training, because when I am forward at those bases, I kind
of have to limit my training because a small country that loves
us as an organization, as an American people, I still have to
train outside their borders, and I don't want to give up things
to my adversary where they can see what I am doing on a regular
basis.
So we have some strengths for that. And on that argument,
if you look at my active duty F-15 placements right now, if you
are an active duty F-15 maintainer, F-15C maintainer or pilot,
your only places are Japan and the United Kingdom. We have no
continental U.S. for those to go. So if that is what you do,
you are either overseas at one or the other locations, or you
are flying with one of our Guard units. It is flying them here
in the continental U.S. for homeland defense mission, or you
are on a staff. And again, I only have 25 percent on my staff.
So it is not easy already. We are fairly forward deployed.
Yes, there is that deterrent, that ``fight tonight'' effort,
and that applies both to the Pacific and Europe, and we are
just as concerned with everything going on in Europe. So we
started ``Rapid Raptor'' deployments to where overnight
airplanes show up and nobody knows that they are coming other
than the host nation that has invited us and the training that
we do, and we are seeing that from a lot of our new NATO [North
Atlantic Treaty Organization] allies, saying come more often
and stay longer, and we do understand that. But we do have to
have that balance between being able to train and have that
white space at home to also be ready for.
Dr. Wenstrup. Yes, and we are seeing movement by the
Chinese, as you know, without going into too much detail, that
is concerning. So I am sure that that is something that you
have to watch on a constant basis.
So as we are talking about fourth and fifth generation, one
of the things that I think is Members of Congress, and the
military as well, our role is to always be looking towards the
future, what do things look like 20 years from now. So I am
just curious how we are doing on sixth generation.
General Harris. We are doing well, at an unclassified
level.
Dr. Wenstrup. Very good. That is all I need to hear.
And then I guess one more question I do have is specific to
Wright-Patterson. So how important is the role of Wright-
Patterson in Ohio for the future of our air dominance?
General Harris. I am impressed every time I come to Wright-
Patterson. The people I see around on the base, it is just a--
the density of those smart scientists that are warrior
technicians that have come here, they really seed our labs
across America. So we come here from an airman's perspective
and try to give that operational flavor so that, as we look at
the things that they are studying and doing at Wright-Pat, how
that might apply to us. We actually have some of those, that 25
percent of fighter pilots. We have some of those on the staffs
here at Wright-Pat, and AFMC [Air Force Materiel Command], just
to help General Pawlikowski and the team out so that we know
what can bridge and what is not going to go anywhere from what
they are looking at.
Quite often they will say, hey, this is a success, we just
don't know how to use it, and you get that in the hands of an
operator or a maintainer and they say I know what to do with
that. So how we work together with it, a lot of that happens
right here at Wright-Pat, and that is kind of the focus of
where we get a lot of our research.
Dr. Wenstrup. Very good. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Turner. Mr. Chabot.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General, I am also on the Foreign Affairs Committee and
chaired the Middle East and Asia Committees in the past, and we
have had innumerable hearings with respect to Asia, and China
in particular, and how aggressive they have been of late, in
the air and on the sea and building islands, and now
militarizing them, much to the chagrin of much of our allies in
the region, from Japan to South Korea to the Philippines,
Taiwan, and countries that we have better and better relations
with, like Vietnam now. They are all very, very concerned.
Do you believe that the current planned F-35 squadrons are
adequate to maintain a forcible presence in the Pacific theater
while maintaining our current commitments in Europe and the
Middle East, for example? And with current force projections,
do you believe that we will be able to maintain our air
superiority with respect to China over the next decade and into
the future?
General Harris. Congressman, that is a great question
because the next decade really is of concern. If we are
acquiring 48 F-35s a year, China will have more fifth gen
fighters 15 to 20 years from now than we have based in the
Pacific, and that is including what the Marines are doing in
Japan and what the Air Force intends to do with future basing
and where we are going in the Pacific.
So in a ``fight tonight'' scenario, they may actually
outnumber us with airplanes like that than we are. That does go
back to that forward deployed question that we spoke about
earlier. What is in theater does matter, and both in the
Pacific and Europe we look to make sure we've got sufficient to
deter, but that we've also got ready forces at home that can
reinforce, and we are concerned.
The number of F-35s to procure a year is probably closer to
60. The program of record says we should be at 80 a year, and
that would allow us to have the numbers there sooner before
China can get their fifth generation airplanes fully
operational. We think that would deter that conflict, but I
don't think it is going to stop them from still building any
islands, and we will continue our freedom of navigation
exercises in the air and on the sea to deter and make sure they
recognize what we consider international laws and norms to be.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you. Thank you, General.
One area we haven't touched on really yet this morning, and
since this will be my final question I will at least touch on
it, and that is with the increased reliance of unmanned aerial
vehicles, UAVs or drones, how do you see the integration of
UAVs with the planned strategic roles of our F-35s, for
example, and our other assets? How does this all fit in, and
how important is it?
General Harris. Well, if we looked at today's UAVs we would
probably think of it from a fourth generation perspective, the
way they are being employed with a manned cockpit somewhere
back in the U.S. or wherever they happen to be flying. And
again, we are doing that in our Guard, Reserve, and our Active,
teaming up with somebody that is forward deployed.
I think, though, as we look at the air superiority study
that we have been talking about, part of that does talk about
UAV teaming and doing that in more of an autonomous fashion. We
have that machine-to-machine communication so that while we
still have people in the loop, they are not having to
necessarily do as much as they are doing today of physical
flying. So maybe then one crew can fly five UAVs, or one manned
aircraft can have a dozen UAVs flying off of it and taking
commands and signals from it.
So we are looking at that from that air superiority study,
which would make this much more defensible, and the risks that
you can take with an unmanned system, or at least no person in
the forward of the airplane, can actually help you with that if
somebody is back flying from somewhere else. That is a
different risk calculus, and we are willing to do that to
achieve our Nation's goals.
So that is part of that study, and that is part of the
family system. So it is not going to be a single silver bullet
that solves any one of these. I think it will be a follow-on to
the F-22 and the F-35, not just the 15 and 16. But it will also
be improvements to our current UAVs that will all come together
with our cyber and the assets that we bring from space to make
this a solvable problem.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you, General.
Mr. Chairman, yielding back, I would just like to say I
think this has really been a great hearing. The information
that we have received from the general here is very important
and helpful to us, and we will take it back to our colleagues.
Thank you.
Mr. Turner. Thank you.
Representative Stivers.
Mr. Stivers. Thank you.
I would like to follow up on the last question that Mr.
Chabot just asked. General, could you talk about the importance
of voice and data communication in future air dominance?
General Harris. Very important, and right now voice
communication is a lot of times our primary mode of
communication. Our fifth gen and our fourth gen don't talk as
well together as we would like to, machine to machine. So we
are actually using the aircrew voice to get the information
back and forth, and, I would be honest, that is probably third
generation.
So we are working on a couple of projects and efforts to
make sure that we can get communication and awareness that the
fifth gen airplanes bring down to the fourth gen fleet, to our
command and control, to everything else, so that all of our
sensors that are so far forward and doing great work because
they can penetrate air defenses, come back and provide that
information to everybody. So that makes it critically
important, and we have a couple of different paths we are
working on.
Not all of it is based in the air. Some of it will be land-
based, some of it will be space-based. So it is a family of
systems, again, to get to that solution.
Mr. Stivers. Thank you.
General, could you talk about the impact any reduction in
the 1,763 aircraft requirement would have on ACC's capability
and capacity and readiness to meet the requirements for fifth
generation fighter aircraft to assume air dominance in support
of the national military strategy?
General Harris. Congressman, it is hard to talk about that
reduction because 1,763, if we are producing, let's say, 60 a
year, that is still buying F-35s out in the 2030s. So I am less
concerned about the overall number and the rate that we are
acquiring them to make sure we can deter and defeat, if
necessary, our adversaries in the next decade or so. If our
further study in sixth gen says that we are able to develop and
come up with a family of systems that allows us to stop
production early on the F-35 and move into something else, I
think we are willing to do that. But we don't know what that
number is at this point, so I would rather not speculate.
Mr. Stivers. Thank you.
General, I really appreciate your testimony today, and I
just again want to commend Chairman Turner for his leadership
on the Tactical Air and Land Subcommittee and what he has done
to protect Wright-Pat and build a consensus in the Ohio
delegation to help further our national security and make sure
that we can be a major player right here in Ohio through
Wright-Pat and the things that are happening at Wright-Pat. I
want to just comment and add to the comments that all my
colleagues have said.
Wright-Patterson is a very important strategic asset for
the United States, not just for the United States Air Force,
but for the United States. To the thousands of men and women
who are working here at this base to help ensure that you can
provide air superiority, General, I just wanted to say thank
you to them, and thank you to Congressman Turner for making
sure that he supports them and our national military the way he
is doing. I wanted to acknowledge his leadership.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Turner. Thank you.
General, I appreciate your comments to what Dr. Wenstrup
said and Representative Stivers said. You focused on
highlighting what Wright-Patterson Air Force Base does, and I
just want to underscore one aspect of the debate that we always
have in Congress with respect to personnel and how it affects
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
The issue of civilian career personnel continues to be a
ball batted around in debates in Congress. But as you know by
what you just described, the engineers and the scientists here
at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base are largely going to be
career civilian that populate NASIC, our National Air and Space
Intelligence Center, and are doing the assessments on what our
adversaries like China are doing and what we need to make
certain we put in your hands to scope what the threat is.
The Air Force Institute of Technology. Of course, there we
have the graduate school here at Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base populated by professors and assistants and those that make
that system work, largely again going to be career civilian.
The Air Force research labs, the engineers and scientists that
really try to define what is the possible, because here at
Wright-Pat it is not just the battlefields of today, which are
also a focus, but it is also the battlefields of tomorrow, what
can we push in our boundaries of knowledge, just as the Wright
brothers did, to make certain you have that air dominance.
And of course, all of the acquisition support that we have
here that is necessary for contract management, the oversight
that we expect our government to do, is done largely by career
civilians. So thank you for highlighting the fact that they
play an important role in your combat command and ensuring our
dominance.
I want to go back to that topic again of dominance. You in
the beginning foreshadowed the issue of fifth generation and
fourth generation flying together. You also foreshadowed that
our intent to retire fourth generation, as we look to 2030, we
are going to be in a blended formation. Could you please give
us a description, if you will, where people can understand how
does fourth and fifth generation work together, and how is it
going to ensure our capability as we look to that time period
when fourth generation may be retired?
General Harris. Yes, sir, in an unclassified format. The
air superiority approach, because that is what we are primarily
talking about from this, with the fifth and fourth gen working
together, can get sticky pretty quick. So in not so much an air
superiority role, but in today's fight, when the F-22s fly over
Syria, their sensors see so many things and share that across
the spectrum through our command and control efforts, that
fourth gen fighters that would not otherwise have been aware
have much more situational awareness, and that is what fifth
gen brings to the fight.
In an air superiority type of a role, we expect the fifth
gen to be the only things that can initially penetrate, go in
and make some of the initial kills or reduce an enemy's IAD
[integrated air defense], which will then allow fourth
generation to even participate in the battle, and if that is a
long distance away, it may take days and weeks to get air
superiority. If it is something near, it just may take multiple
sorties over a day or two period.
But if it is truly in a highly contested environment,
that's going to include an integrated air defense where it is
both aircraft and SAMs [surface-to-air missiles] and the entire
package that an adversary brings against us, fourth generation
may not have much play in that for a while until the air
superiority portion is gamed and our adversary recognizes that
this is important to us, we are not going to give up, and we
are going to continue to risk our fifth gen aircraft, our
people, the things that we need to do to get the Nation's
tasking done, and then fourth generation will be able to step
up and participate at that point.
That is our concern, the blended effort. We are leaning
more towards fifth gen as quick as we can.
Mr. Turner. So in other words, fifth generation can go into
a contested environment and clear the way so the threat level
is lowered so that fourth generation can go in and continue to
fight in the contested environment.
General Harris. Yes, sir.
Mr. Turner. Excellent. Thank you.
Dr. Wenstrup, closing questions, comments?
Dr. Wenstrup. I did have one other question. You talked
about 700 pilots short from where you would like to be. So
where does the Air Guard come into play with that, and is their
role helpful in that regard?
General Harris. Yes, sir. When I say 700 pilots, that is
fighter pilots. We have shortages in other weapons systems
also. But the Air Guard, they are seeing similar vacancies,
although not as fast as the Air Force is. They are probably
only a couple of years behind us. To be honest, they are on the
leading edge of the airline hiring because several of those
have already taken those job applications based on what they
are doing but continue to fly for the Guard, which is exactly
what we are looking for on a part-time basis.
Where we are finding concern in the Guard is that they are
deploying so much to support places that the Active Duty can't
go to because of our readiness and our OPTEMPO [operational
tempo] already, that someone's saying I was deploying this much
when I was on Active, why would I expect to do that now when I
am in the Guard? We find that they are getting some pressures
that they haven't seen in decades before based on their OPTEMPO
also. I think they are in the same boat as we are.
Dr. Wenstrup. Okay. Thank you.
So in conclusion, I want to thank you, General, for being
here today and for everyone here accommodating us so well. It
has been said by my colleagues here the relentless nature of
Chairman Turner and his concern for this base, and for our Air
Force and our military in general. I can speak to it firsthand,
serving on two committees with him, and on his subcommittee,
and I thank him for his leadership in that regard.
Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Turner. Well, I want to thank all my fellow members for
attending. As they've described the aspect of protecting
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, it is both a game of advocacy
and a game of whack-a-mole. Every now and then, we have to make
sure that we do defend the assets that are here, but we also
advocate for them, and every member here has been a part of
that, and I greatly appreciate their support. Thank you for
taking your Saturday to come out and do this.
But I want to assure you that it is not just a Saturday
morning that these gentlemen have given. They are part of what
Ohio deploys in order to protect Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base and to advance the Air Force.
General, thank you for your service and thank you for your
team giving their Saturday, and also for the team from the Air
and Land Subcommittee. We appreciate them traveling here to be
able to do this. General Harris, we hope to welcome you back to
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the assets that are here.
But thank you for your leadership, and thank you for giving us
this insight.
As you know, from your position, your answers are not just
informative; they actually translate into policy. We have to
take them back and place them in the legislative decisionmaking
and in debates that help us ensure that you have what you need.
So, thank you for helping us today.
General Harris. Sure.
Mr. Turner. With that, we will be adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:14 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
June 18, 2016
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
June 18, 2016
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