[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                         [H.A.S.C. No. 114-129]

                           AVIATION READINESS

                               __________

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                       SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

                                 OF THE

                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                              HEARING HELD

                              JULY 6, 2016


                                     
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                       SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

                 ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia, Chairman

ROB BISHOP, Utah                     MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri             SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia                JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York          TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey        SCOTT H. PETERS, California
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama                 TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
CHRISTOPHER P. GIBSON, New York      BETO O'ROURKE, Texas
RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida           RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona
BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio               (Vacancy)
SAM GRAVES, Missouri
STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma
                Margaret Dean, Professional Staff Member
               Vickie Plunkett, Professional Staff Member
                          Jodi Brignola, Clerk
                           
                           
                           C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

              STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Bordallo, Hon. Madeleine Z., a Delegate from Guam, Ranking 
  Member, Subcommittee on Readiness..............................     2
Wittman, Hon. Robert J., a Representative from Virginia, 
  Chairman, Subcommittee on Readiness............................     1

                               WITNESSES

Davis, LtGen Jon M., USMC, Deputy Commandant for Aviation, U.S. 
  Marine Corps...................................................     3
Manazir, RADM Michael C., USN, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations 
  for Warfare Systems, U.S. Navy.................................     8
Mangum, LTG Kevin W., USA, Deputy Commanding General, U.S. Army 
  Training and Doctrine Command, U.S. Army.......................     5
West, Maj Gen Scott D., USAF, Director of Current Operations, 
  U.S. Air Force.................................................     6

                                APPENDIX

Prepared Statements:

    Davis, LtGen Jon M...........................................    45
    Manazir, RADM Michael C......................................    75
    Mangum, LTG Kevin W..........................................    56
    West, Maj Gen Scott D........................................    65
    Wittman, Hon. Robert J.......................................    43

Documents Submitted for the Record:

    [There were no Documents submitted.]

Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:

    Mrs. Hartzler................................................    85

Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:

    Mr. Peters...................................................    89
    Ms. Tsongas..................................................    89

                           AVIATION READINESS


      House of Representatives,
        Committee on Armed Services,
          Subcommittee on Readiness,
            Washington, DC, Wednesday, July 6, 2016.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:03 a.m., in room 
  2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Robert J. Wittman 
  (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.......................
                OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT J. WITTMAN, A 
                  REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA, CHAIRMAN, 
                  SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
Mr. Wittman. I am going to call to order the House Armed Services 
  Committee, Subcommittee on Readiness...........................
I wish everybody a good morning, and thank you for being here 
  today to discuss a topic that is instrumental to the success of 
  our military operations, and that is aviation readiness........
Over the last several months, we have heard testimony from each 
  of the service branches about what needs to be done to overcome 
  our significant readiness challenges. A critical part of that 
  testimony has dealt with the negative impacts that aircraft 
  shortages, maintenance, and lack of adequate hangar space 
  continue to have, not only on our overall readiness levels, but 
  also on our military aviators..................................
In separate hearings about naval infrastructure readiness, both 
  Admiral Mary Jackson and General Azzano testified about 
  aircraft hangar fire suppression systems that were unusable and 
  inadvertently activated........................................
At the Air Force hangar at Eglin Air Force Base, the instability 
  of these systems ultimately rendered the entire hangar unusable 
  for nearly 3 months. The impacted portion of the hangar, 17 
  percent of that hangar's airspace, remains today unusable......
The Marine Corps and the Army face similar facility challenges. 
  The service branches also face real obstacles when it comes to 
  the retention and training of flight and maintenance crews. 
  Aging aircraft and prolonged maintenance times, not to mention 
  the operational demands associated with the fight against 
  terrorism, means that aviators and other personnel are dealing 
  with more danger and fewer training opportunities..............
Regrettably, the rash of recent military aircraft crashes have 
  highlighted the human and other cost of dwindling aviation 
  readiness. We owe our warfighters every protection and 
  precaution available and I look forward today to hearing from 
  each of our service branches about aviation readiness, 
  readiness recovery, impacts to safety, and where we can 
  continue to take risks and what risks are acceptable and those 
  which are not..................................................
With that, I welcome all of you, our members of our distinguished 
  panel and senior aviators before us today. We have with us 
  Lieutenant General Jon M. Davis, United States Marine Corps, 
  Deputy Commandant for Aviation; Lieutenant General Kevin 
  Mangum, U.S. Army, Deputy Commanding General, U.S. Army 
  Training and Doctrine Command [TRADOC]; Major General Scott D. 
  West, United States Air Force, Director of Current Operations; 
  and Rear Admiral Michael C. Manazir, United States Navy, Deputy 
  Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Systems..................
Gentlemen, thank you for your presence and your testimony today. 
  I look forward to hearing your insights about the readiness 
  challenges to military aviation................................
I would now like to turn to our ranking member, Madeleine 
  Bordallo, for any remarks that she may have....................
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the 
  Appendix on page 43.]..........................................
                
                STATEMENT OF HON. MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, A 
                  DELEGATE FROM GUAM, RANKING MEMBER, 
                  SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
                  
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and good morning 
  to all our witnesses. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding 
  this hearing about some of the challenges and the solutions 
  that we are facing with regard to aviation readiness across the 
  services. We know that readiness shortfalls exist, from 
  degraded maintenance capabilities to reduced training hours, 
  and we need to address them....................................
Just as it will take time to build back readiness, these issues, 
  of course, did not arise overnight. What the services are 
  experiencing now and what we are working to remedy in the 
  fiscal year 2017 NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] are 
  the consequences of years' worth of high operational tempo 
  experienced by fewer aircraft with fewer experienced operators 
  and skilled military and civilian personnel to sustain them....
The services have responded to falling material readiness 
  conditions by identifying deficits and prioritizing training 
  and maintenance needs, but these efforts are hampered by the 
  continuing impacts of sequestration and unstable and 
  unpredictable funding. When coupled with reductions in skilled 
  personnel at aviation depots, severe challenges in obtaining 
  spare parts for legacy systems, late and unpredictable funding 
  due to multiple continuing resolutions [CRs] and the 
  unrelenting operational tempo required by today's complex 
  security environment, it is not surprising that we are dealing 
  with what some are calling a readiness crisis..................
Just as these readiness issues did not arise overnight, they 
  cannot be resolved in a single fiscal year's defense bill. More 
  aircraft would bring some relief to the stress of high 
  operational tempo, but these aircraft need more trained, more 
  ready personnel to operate and sustain them and improved base 
  infrastructure to support them.................................
So, we also cannot just throw money at the problem though, and it 
  has become clear that consistency in funding are more helpful 
  than increased budgets.........................................
I welcome this opportunity today to hear from our witnesses about 
  the challenges they are facing in their services to achieve and 
  sustain aviation readiness. And I also encourage my colleagues 
  to listen to some of the underlying causes of our current 
  situation and also to think about the long-term financial 
  commitments we are making in the fiscal year 2017 NDAA.........
And I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and yield back....................
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Ms. Bordallo.............................
Gentlemen, I have been told that each of you will make an opening 
  statement. And please proceed. And as a reminder, your written 
  testimony has already been made available to the members and 
  will be part of the official record............................
So, General Davis, we will begin with you........................
                
                STATEMENT OF LTGEN JON M. DAVIS, USMC, DEPUTY 
                  COMMANDANT FOR AVIATION, U.S. MARINE CORPS
                  
General Davis. Chairman Wittman, Chairman Thornberry, Ranking 
  Member Bordallo, distinguished members of the House Armed 
  Services Committee, Subcommittee on Readiness, and other 
  distinguished members, thank you for your continued support. We 
  appreciate the opportunity to testify on the current state of 
  Marine aviation readiness......................................
The Marine Corps' title 10 responsibilities are to be the 
  Nation's force in readiness. We are charged and expected to 
  always be the most ready when the Nation is least ready. This 
  responsibility is the very core of our identity as Marines, 
  your ``fight tonight'' force...................................
The last time I testified, we were only able to fly on any given 
  day about one-third of our aircraft. Today, we have improved 
  and can launch 42 percent, 443 aircraft, of our required 1,065 
  flight-line inventory, a 9 percent improvement. We could not 
  make this progress without your support. Thank you very much. 
  However, we are still far short of what we need to be the force 
  of readiness. Forty-two percent is not good enough; it is not 
  good at all....................................................
We are constantly transferring aircraft to fill out our deploying 
  squadrons. Deployment success is at the cost of our non-
  deploying squadrons. We balance F-18, Harrier, E-6, and CH-53 
  squadrons by reducing the number of aircraft per squadron 
  because of a lack of aircraft inventory........................
So, yes, while I can tell you we are improving, I would 
  characterize our current state of recovery as fragile. We are 
  in a deep hole and have a ways to go to climb out. Continued 
  progress in our race to recovery depends on consistent, 
  reliable, and targeted readiness and procurement funding. Our 
  risk is bought down through fixing old and procuring new.......
The CH-53K recently lifted more than any helicopter in history. 
  It is doing great in tests and is on track for replacing our 
  CH-53 Echo. Just last week, we stood up our second operational 
  F-35B squadron, VMFA-211 in Arizona............................
Today, we have five lieutenants, brand new guys, training to fly 
  the F-35B in South Carolina. The F-35B procurement ramp is 
  approaching 20 per year, enabling the transition from our 
  legacy strike force to an aircraft that can protect marines and 
  any threat as a fifth generation strike fighter, and then, at a 
  time and place of our choosing, transition to a fourth 
  generation bomb truck..........................................
We need the F-35s and 53Ks as quick as we can get them to replace 
  our proven but worn-out and wearing out F-18s, Harriers, EA-
  6Bs, and CH-53 Echos. The combination of fixing aircraft while 
  recapitalizing with new gear are both critical to Marine 
  aviation and the Marine air-ground task force [MAGTF]..........
I measure our recovery not only in terms of ready basic aircraft, 
  but also on how many hours our crew fly. The ultimate readiness 
  metric is aircrew flying hours per month per crew. The last 
  time I testified, Marine pilots averaged between 6 and 9 hours 
  per month. That is not good, either. Today, our non-deployed 
  aircrews average between 7 to 11 hours per month. This is an 
  improvement, but still 6 hours per month shy of what a trained 
  and ready force requires.......................................
The lack of ready aircraft in flight line is a reason for the 
  shortfall, but more concerning is the loss of experience this 
  generation of Marine aviators has preparing for the future. 
  Marine aviation has a history replete with being exceptional in 
  the air and able to provide unmatched aviation fire support to 
  our ground forces. Every hour not flown today by our forces 
  today means that they will have less of an experience base for 
  our future.....................................................
Our enlisted marines are the highest quality ever. They work hard 
  to sustain our aircraft and maximize every flight opportunity. 
  They do get frustrated at the lack of parts available for 
  fixing aircraft. They do work hours--long hours and weekends 
  just before deploying to get that last aircraft up to make that 
  on deployment or to complete a transfer to make sure their 
  deployment numbers are whole...................................
Our deployment-to-dwell is not an ideal 1:3. It is a sustained 
  1:2; technically a state of surge. We are answering the 
  combatant commanders' demand for incredible capabilities our 
  MAGTFs offer, but doing it with aging aircraft, not enough of 
  those aircraft, and our marines are stretched thin. They are 
  doing their level-best to make themselves ready to be that 
  potent and formidable combat-capable force, ready to take on 
  any threat, any place, any time across a range of military 
  operations.....................................................
In summary, Marine aviation readiness remains in jeopardy in this 
  fiscally constrained environment. We have a plan to recover. 
  The plan includes aircraft recapitalization, legacy aircraft 
  recovery and reset, and that plan is showing positive results. 
  But success requires continued funding stability, our 
  production ramps in new aircraft to stay whole and the 
  resources for our marines, sailors, civilians, and industry 
  partners to recover the readiness of our aging legacy aircraft.
Thank you for your time today. I look forward to answering your 
  questions......................................................
[The prepared statement of General Davis can be found in the 
  Appendix on page 45.]..........................................
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Lieutenant General Davis.................
We will now go to Lieutenant General Mangum......................
                
                STATEMENT OF LTG KEVIN W. MANGUM, USA, DEPUTY 
                  COMMANDING GENERAL, U.S. ARMY TRAINING AND 
                  DOCTRINE COMMAND, U.S. ARMY
                  
General Mangum. Chairman Wittman, Chairman Thornberry, Ranking 
  Member Bordallo, distinguished members of the Readiness 
  Subcommittee and other distinguished members, thanks for the 
  opportunity to appear before you today to address Army aviation 
  readiness......................................................
As a career Army aviator, I am proud to represent all the 
  terrific soldiers of our total Army aviation force who serve 
  our Nation faithfully every day. I can also definitively say 
  that the total Army aviation units across all our formations 
  and components have performed magnificently over the last 15 
  years of sustained combat and operations in various threat 
  environments...................................................
I say this knowing full well that Army aviation faces the same 
  and similar challenges and concerns as the rest of our Army in 
  this budget-constrained environment............................
Our aviation modernization and procurement accounts have slowed 
  to a snail's pace in order to build readiness for the current 
  fight. We have had seven serious manned mishaps, or Class A 
  accidents, and eight unmanned accidents thus far this fiscal 
  year. Flight training hours are our only resource to achieve 
  platoon-level readiness, proficiency...........................
And our aviation maintenance soldiers and our combat aviation 
  brigades are not deploying with their aircraft and aircrews, 
  which is causing an atrophy of critical skills that will be 
  needed for expeditionary operations in combat zones that do not 
  allow for contract maintenance.................................
While we have resourced our deploying aviation units to a level 
  of proficiency sufficient for the current and recent fights in 
  Iraq and Afghanistan, we see peer and near-peer competitors and 
  know that we will require resourcing our units to higher levels 
  of proficiency in order to train for combined arms maneuver 
  fights that will likely come...................................
We also know that with the prospect of sequestration in fiscal 
  year 2018 and continued unpredictable budgets, these areas of 
  concern may get worse before they get better as we prepare for 
  the future threat environment..................................
As a result of these operational, strategic, and budgetary 
  challenges, General Milley, our Army Chief of Staff, asked me 
  to lead a holistic assessment of Army aviation with the mission 
  to conduct a comprehensive assessment of all things Army 
  aviation. I was supported by a superstar team of Army aviation 
  subject matter experts who I would like to thank publicly today 
  for their incredible effort to complete our initial work.......
I have briefed General Milley on our initial findings and have 
  received his guidance to finalize our report, which we will do 
  very soon. And I am confident that those recommendations will 
  set us on a path to get after some of the readiness challenges 
  and opportunities that lay in front of us......................
I often describe aviation as a fragile ecosystem. In order to 
  keep this ecosystem healthy and thriving all the requisite 
  parts must be nourished routinely. If any get out of balance 
  for long, the whole system can begin to fray and collapse, 
  putting soldiers at risk.......................................
For army aviation and our readiness, this includes our personnel, 
  pilots, crews, maintainers and all those who work the numerous 
  support roles, our manned and unmanned aircraft systems, our 
  installations and training ranges and facilities, and the 
  resources and time necessary to meet battalion-level collective 
  proficiency with modernized equipment..........................
While we can and have continued to assume risk in some areas of 
  the ecosystem, in order to build the readiness needed to meet 
  global aviation commitments, we do risk getting out of balance, 
  which of course has consequences...............................
In order to meet the challenges of emerging and future threats, 
  we must provide realistic training, resource with time and 
  dollars and couple this with exceptional leader development. In 
  doing so, we set the best possible conditions for success to 
  provide a trained and ready aviation force whenever needed in 
  support of combatant commanders to meet any threat or 
  contingency....................................................
That said, what we cannot do is resource our aviation units to 
  platoon- or company-level readiness, yet expect that these same 
  units--these same units to operate in environments that require 
  battalion-level proficiency and flight skills. If there is 
  something that keeps me awake at night, this is it. 
  Additionally, if we do not address the issue of time and 
  dollars and the demand signal for aviation forces continues to 
  increase, we will consume readiness faster than we can rebuild 
  it.............................................................
In a nutshell, we need to resource Army aviation units to train 
  to battalion-level proficiency to keep the ecosystem in 
  balance. This will allow our units to become proficient in 
  those collective tasks required to operate at higher threat 
  levels against peer or near-peer adversaries. This also means 
  that our pilots and crews will get more repetitions to master 
  their craft, and more is better................................
The same is true for our soldiers who maintain our aircraft. They 
  will get more opportunities to fix, repair, and maintain, which 
  is critical to skill proficiency...............................
Last, and certainly not least, is that training to battalion-
  level collective proficiency allows for more robust leader 
  development to ensure our leaders can operate against complex 
  hybrid threats in the future...................................
Notwithstanding the challenges and concerns, the United States 
  Army retains the largest, most modern, and best trained 
  aviation force of its kind in the world. One that has been 
  tested in a variety of operational environments and whose 
  soldiers met and are meeting today, the tasks at hand no matter 
  how difficult the danger.......................................
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today, we 
  appreciate your support and I look forward to answering your 
  questions......................................................
[The prepared statement of General Mangum can be found in the 
  Appendix on page 56.]..........................................
Mr. Wittman. Lieutenant General Mangum, thank you. Major General 
  West, we will now go to you....................................
                
                STATEMENT OF MAJ GEN SCOTT D. WEST, USAF, 
                  DIRECTOR OF CURRENT OPERATIONS, U.S. AIR FORCE
                  
General West. Chairman Wittman, Chairman Thornberry, Ranking 
  Member Bordallo, distinguished members of the House Armed 
  Service Subcommittee on Readiness, thank you for conducting 
  this hearing today and allowing me to join Army, Navy, and 
  Marine counterparts in testimony on our service readiness......
Today's national security challenges come from a combination of 
  strong states that are challenging world order, weak states 
  that cannot preserve order, and poorly governed spaces that 
  provide sanctuary to terrorists................................
The Nation needs a strong joint force and that force depends upon 
  Air Force capabilities at the beginning, middle, and end of 
  every operation. The Air Force must be able to disrupt, 
  degrade, or destroy any target in the world quickly and 
  precisely with conventional or nuclear weapons to deter and win 
  our Nation's wars. Whether in support of counterterrorism 
  operations or near-peer deterrence, your Air Force remains 
  constantly committed, as we have for 25 years..................
However two and a half decades of continuous combat operations 
  and reductions to our total force, coupled with budget 
  instability and lower-than-planned funding levels, have 
  contributed to the creation of one of the smallest, oldest, and 
  least ready forces in our history. While the Bipartisan Budget 
  Act of 2015 provides some space to recover readiness and 
  continue modernization efforts, the Air Force needs permanent 
  relief from the Budget Control Act, flexible funding, increased 
  manpower, and time to recover..................................
Today less than 50 percent of the conventional Air Force is ready 
  to conduct the full spectrum of combat operations. While we are 
  able to conduct nuclear deterrent operations and support 
  counterterrorism efforts, operations against a near-peer 
  competitor would require a significant amount of training. If 
  called upon to fight state-to-state, an associated training 
  delay would pose a significant risk to mission. Conversely, 
  deploying airmen in their current readiness state to fight 
  along soldiers, sailors, and marines, would significantly 
  increase the risk to success of the joint fight................
Accordingly, we will address readiness shortfalls in five areas: 
  critical personnel skills, weapons systems sustainment, 
  training resources, flying hours, and operations tempo. All 
  five must be synchronized and balanced. Since development of 
  human capital takes the longest to complete, we must first 
  address personnel shortfalls in critical skills................
We will also need to stabilize weapon system sustainment and 
  improve our training infrastructure............................
Finally, we need to increase our training hours and reduce 
  operations tempo to provide the time our airmen need to prepare 
  for full-spectrum operations...................................
Mr. Chairman Wittman, Ranking Member Bordallo, distinguished 
  members of the subcommittee, I look forward to answering your 
  questions as we work to resolve our readiness challenges.......
[The prepared statement of General West can be found in the 
  Appendix on page 65.]..........................................
Mr. Wittman. General West thank you so much. We will now go to 
  Rear Admiral Manazir...........................................
                
                STATEMENT OF RADM MICHAEL C. MANAZIR, USN, DEPUTY 
                  CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS FOR WARFARE SYSTEMS, 
                  U.S. NAVY
                  
Admiral Manazir. Chairman Thornberry, Chairman Wittman, Ranking 
  Member Bordallo, distinguished members, I am proud to be here 
  with my brothers in arms. Thank you for the opportunity to 
  testify on the state of aviation readiness in the Navy.........
For the first time in 25 years, the Nation and your Navy are 
  facing the challenges of a return to great power competition at 
  sea. Provocations from state and non-state actors continue to 
  cause instability in almost every region of the world and pose 
  a significant threat to U.S. interests, our allies, and the 
  homeland.......................................................
But our Nation continues to answer the call. Today the Navy has 
  four carrier strike groups forward deployed: John C. Stennis, 
  Ronald Reagan in the Pacific; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harry S. 
  Truman in the Mediterranean and Arabian Gulf. We also remain 
  vigilant with rotational presence of land-based aviation forces 
  such as EA-18G Growler, P-8 Poseidon, and the P-3 [Orion] in 
  the Middle East and the Western Pacific. These missions not 
  only demonstrate our Navy's responsiveness and warfighting 
  power, but also maintain our sailor combat proficiency, 
  readiness bought only with time at sea.........................
This required level of readiness is fragile and can be 
  squandered. As we reset in stride following 15 years of combat 
  stress to the force, we continue to face challenges associated 
  with balancing readiness for today and modernization for 
  tomorrow's fight. More of our force is being demanded, deployed 
  longer than planned; intended replacements are not keeping pace 
  with attrition. Fiscal constraints continue to force difficult 
  trades in capacity and readiness for long-term capability 
  improvements...................................................
Achieving full-spectrum aviation readiness requires us to restore 
  capacity and throughput at our aviation depots primarily 
  through workforce development changes and process improvement. 
  Through a concerted hiring effort with the support of 
  congressional budgetary increases, the recovery and maintenance 
  capacity is underway and continues to progress.................
Fleet Readiness Center hiring is on pace, and training continues 
  so that we may ensure the depots can meet the looming workload 
  demand. We have increased capacity at field sites, and are 
  swarming repairs of aircraft on the flight line................
So far in fiscal year 2016, we have completed 50 percent more 
  depot-level repairs on the flight line than we did in fiscal 
  year 2015. We have also partnered with industry to incorporate 
  additional engineering, maintenance, and depot capacity to 
  accomplish inspections and repairs outside of government depot 
  facilities. As a result of process improvement implemented in 
  2014, we saw a 44 percent increase in fiscal year 2015 F/A-18 A 
  through D depot production when compared to the prior year.....
We are recovering from a readiness deficit that started to accrue 
  in 2009, and was exacerbated by sequestration effects. With the 
  submission of the fiscal year 2016 omnibus request yesterday, 
  and with a fiscal year 2017 President's budget request, we have 
  invested to provide the maximum predictable and sustainable 
  presence under the Optimized Fleet Response Plan...............
The budget request harmonizes our readiness accounts to improve 
  aircraft availability, the leading factor in our readiness 
  challenge. Harmonization means that with the 2017 President's 
  budget request, we realigned funds from the flight hour 
  program, which is constrained by aircraft availability, to 
  readiness enabler accounts such as depot maintenance, aviation 
  support, aircraft spares, and aviation logistics. Each of these 
  vital programs underpins the flying hour account, but has been 
  critically underfunded in previous years.......................
Specifically, programs like the Aviation Support Program funds 
  engineers and logisticians, who help diagnose and develop 
  repairs for failed components discovered by fleet maintainers. 
  In this approach to readiness harmonization, the budget for 
  aviation support is broken into individual program elements 
  tied to specific platforms.....................................
In this manner we can track platform targeted investments, which 
  over time will yield improved aircraft availability. While we 
  are seeing signs of recovery, and our processes need time to 
  mature, we need funding stability to support our plan. The 
  bipartisan budget agreement of 2015 gave us the stability to 
  make target investments in the near term, but the threat of 
  continuing resolutions and the prospect of return to 
  sequestration would undo this progress, and further hamper our 
  fragile recovery plan..........................................
Ladies and gentlemen, your Navy aviation arm is the world's 
  premier sea-based airpower. That advantage could be lost if we 
  do not achieve stable budgets and make deliberate investments 
  in future readiness, while ensuring the force can fight 
  tonight. Mr. Chairman, distinguished committee members, we 
  welcome your continued support as we work together to overcome 
  these challenges, build and sustain the preeminent force of the 
  future. Thank you for your commitment to naval aviation, I look 
  forward to your questions......................................
[The prepared statement of Admiral Manazir can be found in the 
  Appendix on page 75.]..........................................
Mr. Wittman. Admiral Manazir, thank you..........................
I wanted to thank our other panelists here, and now I want to go 
  to the chairman of our committee, Chairman Thornberry, for his 
  comments and questions.........................................
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to take 
  a moment to thank you and Ms. Bordallo for holding this 
  hearing, and for all the members of the subcommittee and your 
  staff for your deep dive into this important issue. I think it 
  is very important that we and the American people understand 
  what is happening, and I really admire the witnesses today and 
  their efforts to make the best of a difficult situation........
So first and foremost, I want to thank you, and as well as our 
  witnesses, for dealing with this. I want to take just a moment 
  and clarify one issue with General Mangum, if I may. You 
  testified sir, that starting in fiscal year 2015, a combat 
  aviation brigade was deployed to Afghanistan--it was supposed 
  to have 2,800 soldiers, it only sent 800, right?...............
General Mangum. Yes, sir.........................................
The Chairman. And one of the ways you got from 2,800 to 800 was 
  to leave most of the maintainers behind, right?................
General Mangum. Yes, sir.........................................
The Chairman. And so what do those maintainers do when they are 
  left here in the states, when their aircraft and their pilots 
  are in Afghanistan?............................................
General Mangum. Sir, they are not doing a whole lot of aviation 
  maintenance....................................................
The Chairman. Well, and I think that your point, as I understand 
  it, is that does not help readiness when you have important 
  maintainers without aircraft to work on........................
General Mangum. No sir, we are building a deficit of experience 
  and expertise in our formations as a result....................
The Chairman. And then my second question was, as I understand 
  it, what is happening in Afghanistan is that we have 
  contractors who are taking care of those helicopters, right?...
General Mangum. That is correct, yes, sir........................
The Chairman. And does that cost more or less than if the 
  maintainers had been there with them?..........................
General Mangum. It costs more....................................
The Chairman. To have contractors?...............................
General Mangum. To have contractors there, we are paying around 
  $100 million this year for contractors in Afghanistan..........
The Chairman. And that practice that started in fiscal year 2015 
  continues today?...............................................
General Mangum. Yes, sir.........................................
The Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I just think it is important for 
  members to understand this point. I understand that there may 
  shortly be an announcement on troop caps for Afghanistan, and 
  one of the ways the troop caps are reached is like this........
And it costs more, and yet where does that money come from? It 
  comes out of the readiness of all these folks, and what they 
  are trying to do. It is only a subset of the issues you are 
  looking at today, but I think it is important for us to 
  understand it..................................................
Thank you for letting me take a moment to clarify that. I yield 
  back...........................................................
Mr. Wittman. Well, thank you Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you 
  bringing that up...............................................
I know Lieutenant General Mangum and I had a chance to talk about 
  that the other day, and that does get down truly to the element 
  of only platoon-level readiness, and if you don't have the 
  maintainers there and the ability to operate at those higher 
  levels of training at the battalion and brigade level, then it 
  creates a whole new set of circumstances.......................
I would like to ask a question collectively of all of our 
  witnesses. In looking at the scenario we had today, each of you 
  spoke about where we are today with the President's budget for 
  2017, and then the NDAA that was passed both by the House and 
  the Senate, and the appropriations bills for national defense, 
  one here in the House, one soon to be taken up there in the 
  Senate. Those all have us at higher overall spending levels....
We can debate back and forth about how many of those dollars are 
  OCO [overseas contingency operations] but how many dollars are 
  in the base budget, but overall an increase. And each you all 
  spoke to that and how that increase is helpful to you in 
  regenerating readiness. And where we are today is just 
  preparing the conditions to reestablish that readiness, so it 
  is not even getting on that steep glide slope of rebuilding, it 
  is just setting the conditions.................................
Give me your perspective in that element of setting the 
  conditions, of what a CR this year would do to you in getting 
  where we need to be, in reestablishing that aviation readiness, 
  and Lieutenant General Davis, I will begin with you............
General Davis. Thank you, sir, for the question..................
We talked about stable funding, and I think the hard work the 
  Marines put forth this last year, to recover from what I 
  consider to be the lowest ebb of Marine aviation readiness in a 
  long time. F-18 pilots on average 8.8 hours a month last year. 
  That is about half what they should be flying..................
Now we are about 9.8 for those that aren't deployed. That is 
  still way below where we should be. So we are eking out inch by 
  inch a progressive recovery out there. So the recovery, and the 
  budgets, while good, we need to make sure they stay whole, sir. 
  Why is that? We need to procure the new airplanes that are--a 
  lot of our old F-18s and 53 Echos are really old and we are 
  running out of service life and it is really hard for those 
  marines to keep them going.....................................
So, buying the new--putting the readiness recovery money into the 
  platforms, we have like 53 reset, allows us to extract maximum 
  value out of any risk to those funding profiles puts that 
  recovery at risk. And I would say we are in a period of risk 
  right now in Marine aviation to recover to get back to full 
  warfighting formations to be the force in readiness that this 
  body told us we have to be.....................................
Mr. Wittman. Very good...........................................
Lieutenant General Mangum........................................
General Mangum. Mr. Chairman, the greatest risk for CR to Army 
  and Army aviation is in training. We have programmed to 
  kickstart our readiness recovery with increased flight hours to 
  get us from--to start the journey from platoon-level collective 
  readiness to company-level collective readiness................
We would remain at platoon-level readiness funding under the CR, 
  as well as putting further constraints on our modernization 
  programs that are already at the floors for multiyear 
  procurement. So, it would definitely constrain our ability to 
  start our journey to readiness recovery........................
Mr. Wittman. Very good...........................................
Major General West...............................................
General West. Yes, sir. I would echo the same comments, that if 
  we are faced with a continuing resolution this year, as has 
  happened in the past, we will be capped at previous spending 
  levels, which prevents us from realizing the benefit of having 
  increased funding levels in fiscal year 2017 to address 
  readiness......................................................
When we are capped at previous year's funding levels, we 
  prioritize. Our first priority is to support troops in combat. 
  Second, those that are forward deployed to assure our allies, 
  which means the bill-payer for training are those that are here 
  in the United States. So, it exacerbates the issue not only 
  that we not be able to begin to slow the rate of decline, it 
  delays the start of us being able to stop the rate of decline 
  of our readiness...............................................
Mr. Wittman. All right. Thank you................................
Rear Admiral Manazir.............................................
Admiral Manazir. Thank you, sir. The neat thing about being last 
  is I get to capture all the comments, and agree and summarize..
You spoke of that increase, and I would like to complement the 
  teamwork that we have had in all the services and especially 
  your committee on building this case for readiness. You spoke 
  of that increase, so the President's budget was an increase. 
  The various bills are increases. If we go with a CR, all of 
  that increase gets wiped out...................................
Additionally, each year, as was spoken by Scott West, we program 
  to a set of operations in a year. So, more deployments for 
  Navy, different deployments, different length of deployments, 
  different employment of the force. Our request reflected that 
  operations, maintenance, and training for fiscal year 2017.....
It is a deeper request because we have to recover the readiness 
  and support those maintenance and support. So therefore, if we 
  stay with a CR, it will not reflect the request that we sent 
  over from our budget...........................................
Mr. Wittman. Very good. Thank you................................
We will now go to Ms. Bordallo...................................
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman..................
General Davis, could you explain the consequences for current 
  Marine Corps aviation readiness of not executing a reset 
  program to bring all equipment to readiness standards, as the 
  Army did for nearly two dozen major units during OIF [Operation 
  Iraqi Freedom] and OEF [Operation Enduring Freedom] instead of 
  waiting until now, as the Marine Corps has done?...............
General Davis. Well, I think the community that was particularly 
  impacted was the CH-53 Echo. And we have--had low numbers of 
  CH-53 Echo.....................................................
The reset is not the only reason for the low readiness. We have 
  a--I would say a very debilitating ``not mission capable-
  supply'' problem in CH-53. But the reset will allow us to 
  basically get our aircraft back up to speed, while, you know, 
  in the timeline--an ability to order the parts we need to get 
  our supply bins full so we can get maximum value out of the 
  airplane.......................................................
But the CH-53 was about one-third of the CH-53s we have in the 
  inventory we are able to fly, maybe even a little bit less. 
  Recovering that now, the flight time was very low. A lot of 
  those units now, the flight time has about doubled what it was 
  last summer. So, we are recovering in CH-53, but the reset is 
  essential to do that now.......................................
So we copied a playbook out of the Army. We had an independent 
  readiness review that looked at what was wrong with the CH-53 
  and why we couldn't get our readiness out of that aircraft. We 
  also did it with Harrier. The Harrier has recovered its 
  readiness. We are generating the numbers we need to out of that 
  airplane. It is serving, again, really great in combat and we 
  are able to track the training missions we need to out of that.
CH-53 is going to take a longer time to recover. It will take us 
  until about 2019 to 2020 to get all of our CH-53s back up in 
  the battery that they should be and the numbers they should and 
  a highly reliable airplane. It is a good airplane now, but it 
  will be highly reliable. So, we should have done that before, 
  we didn't, and we are doing it now.............................
And also, too, we have to address the not mission capable-supply 
  problem, which the low inventory masked how bad that really 
  was............................................................
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you. Thank you, General. I have another 
  question for you and General Mangum. In your opening 
  statements, both of you discussed trends in Class A mishaps, 
  which result in loss of property and/or life. Could you discuss 
  your findings and whether you believe there is currently a 
  correlation between degraded readiness, whether due to 
  maintenance failures or inadequate training?...................
And the other witnesses, I welcome your remarks as well. So, 
  begin with you, General........................................
General Davis. Ma'am, I will tell you that we don't fly any 
  aircraft that is unsafe. I will say that my pilots across the 
  Marine Corps are not getting the flight time they need. With 
  the exception of the F-35; we are generating our hours in that 
  new airplane. They are not getting the hours they need to be as 
  proficient as they should be...................................
So, while historically, our Class A mishap rate is higher--is 
  high--it is high, but it is actually kind of on par where it 
  has been in the past. But I--smaller number of flight hours, 
  every mishap makes that bump up a lot..........................
What I will tell you is we are seeing a spike, almost double the 
  number of Class C mishaps than we had last year and we are 
  trying to look at why the reason for that is...................
What I will tell you is kind of hard to take a look at from 
  today's standpoint, but we are flying less, getting less 
  experience. So my flight leads 2, 3, 4 years from now are not 
  going to be guys with 1,000 hours or 1,500 hours, like I had. 
  And you have got a youngster on your wing that is having a 
  problem, you go, do this or do that. The flight leads coming 
  back now, because they are not getting the flight time they 
  need, will have 500 or 600 hours...............................
They don't have that looks at the ball like my compadres talked 
  about that will say, this is what you should do. So, I think we 
  could see future mishap spikes in the Class A realm because of 
  the low flight time and the low experience our guys are getting 
  right now......................................................
So, while the numbers are steady, they are unacceptable. We 
  should be driving those numbers down. And it is something we 
  need to work on and I--it is hard to tie the low flight time to 
  a Class A mishap rate right now, but we are seeing the high 
  OPTEMPO [operations tempo]. The deployment-to-dwell I think has 
  an impact for sure on our Class C mishap rate, which impacts 
  our readiness to a great degree. If--again, 100 percent 
  increase from last year in the Marine Corps in Class C mishap 
  rate...........................................................
Ms. Bordallo. General............................................
General Mangum. Ma'am, this year, our Class A accident rate for 
  manned systems is down, and not to historically low levels, but 
  we continue to trend down. So, correlation between the hours 
  and our accident rate is a bit tenuous.........................
However, more repetitions is better. Practice makes perfect, and 
  as we increase our flying hour program to achieve higher levels 
  of collective readiness, that gives our flight crews more 
  repetitions, it gives our maintainers more repetitions.........
However, as we start to go to higher levels of collective 
  training, say at the National Training Center or Joint 
  Readiness Training Center, as we ask those crews to do some 
  things they had not been doing to the same level, we will face 
  increased risk as we increase the flight hours.................
That is a bit counterintuitive but I guess to specifically answer 
  your question, ma'am, we don't see necessarily a correlation 
  based on them being isolated events. This year, we have had 
  1.16 accidents per 100,000 hours which is the military and 
  industry standard to measure those against which is down from 
  last year......................................................
We are seeing a spike in our unmanned systems and those are still 
  under investigation to try to determine what the root cause of 
  those are......................................................
Ms. Bordallo. General West.......................................
General West. Yes, ma'am. We have not--we analyzed our mishap 
  rates over the last 10 years, which we keep the data for. We 
  can't find that there is a correlation between our trend in 
  mishap rates and our readiness levels..........................
Our mishap rates still are at the same rate that they have been 
  over the past 10 years. I would expect, because of our 
  readiness concerns and deployment-to-dwell issues that we might 
  see some trends related to human factors.......................
Either operators that are complacent when they are back in the 
  United States or maintainers that may fail to follow tech order 
  guidance in the maintenance of aircraft. But we haven't seen 
  that and I think that is emphasis on professionalism that we 
  don't sacrifice airworthiness or safety standards to recover 
  readiness......................................................
Same thing in our depots; the workforce that sustains systems, 
  some over 50 years old require more time to be able to complete 
  the work in the depots and they take the time necessary to 
  provide airworthy and safe systems to be able to operate.......
I think that has contributed to the fact that we have not seen an 
  increase in material failures in older systems. However, 
  separating mishaps and the fact that right now we are having 
  the same decreasing trend in mishap rates does not mean that we 
  don't have a readiness issue...................................
We still have a readiness issue, it is just not manifesting 
  itself in our mishap rates.....................................
Ms. Bordallo. Admiral............................................
Admiral Manazir. Ma'am, thank you. We do not see our mishap rates 
  manifesting themselves from a lack of readiness. Our Class B 
  aviation mishaps are down this year over the last 2 years and 
  our Class As are consistent....................................
We looked at the Class A mishaps and they were a very small-
  number to see if they were proficiency-based. In other words, 
  not enough flight time or aircrew executing operations that 
  they were not proficient for. And in fact, that was not the 
  case...........................................................
The aircrew involved--and I won't go into the causal factors 
  because they are privileged--were well-experienced and they 
  were proficient at their trade. The Class C mishaps, we have 
  seen an increase to nearly double what it was since 2008, so 
  similar to General Davis' testimony............................
We are diving hard with the safety center to see what the causal 
  factors would be for an increase in Class C mishaps, ground 
  mishaps, were the mistakes made because of inexperience, were 
  there procedures that were not followed........................
This might be an indicator at the lower level of our mishap 
  classes of potentially some effects from readiness. But when we 
  asked to look at the way that we put causal factors against 
  mishaps there were none that stood out as low readiness, low 
  currency, lack of familiarity with procedures for our aircrew 
  or our maintainers.............................................
But we continue to look at that Class C mishap rate to see if 
  there might be a problem. I will endorse the comment made by 
  several of my compadres here that we probably won't see the 
  effects of a critical underfunding of readiness, critical 
  underflying, critical lack of experience, for several years....
As people are now put in leadership positions and they are 
  leading larger flight operations or they are leading squadrons 
  and with a lack of experience, that lack of exposure, you might 
  start to see some effects on the units that they lead because 
  of the lack of flying several years ago in different positions.
So it could have a lagging effect in the future. We are worried 
  about that.....................................................
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you..........................................
I have one further question, Mr. Chairman........................
To any of you, though both situations would be ideal, which 
  fiscal remedy would help build back readiness most effectively 
  over the long term? Increased funding or stable predictable 
  budgets?.......................................................
General..........................................................
General Davis. Can I say both, ma'am.............................
[Laughter.]......................................................
Obviously, stable budgets are key. As you know, we are in 
  recovery so we have a little bit more requirement for that. We 
  have kind of held off, we are right now in the heyday of our 
  procurement, our recapitalization in the Marine Corps..........
We are only about--we are just starting now our TACAIR [tactical 
  air] recapitalization so all the Harriers and Hornets have to 
  be replaced and our 53s have to be replaced. Stable funding is 
  best...........................................................
But also, too, it is if you are funding below the minimum 
  required then--if you are funding below the requirement--you 
  have got a requirement--you are going to end up with something 
  that is--I am no math major, but that is a recipe for disaster 
  and kind of where we are right now.............................
Ms. Bordallo. General............................................
General Mangum. Ma'am, the answer is both. Stable predictable 
  funding; we have brought down our modernization counts to the 
  floors of our multiyear contract. So we have slowed our 
  modernization to a snail's pace................................
And if our predictable funding keeps at platoon- or company-level 
  collective readiness, we are not on the recovery path that we 
  need to be.....................................................
Ms. Bordallo. General West.......................................
General West. Yes, ma'am the answer is both here, as well. Given 
  an--I will give a response for the need for stable predictive 
  funding based on the effects on industry.......................
If you operate a fleet that is decades old, you have to be able 
  to give the business case--make the business case--of why 
  should you stay in this business to make a reasonable profit, 
  given that we don't know if we are going to have a predictable 
  level of funding to be able to warrant you being in this 
  business. That has an impact on older systems..................
As to the top line for increased funding, that is also important 
  because we have to balance the discussion topic here today, 
  which I define a little bit separately from modernization, 
  because we will have a bow wave of issues of modernized 
  projects to come up in the next decade that we will have to 
  address........................................................
Otherwise, the things that we are readying today will be 
  irrelevant in combat given the gaps that our near-peer 
  competitors are closing technologically........................
Ms. Bordallo. And finally, Admiral, do you agree with your 
  compadres?.....................................................
Admiral Manazir. Ma'am, I say it is stable and predictable 
  budgets but only after you have increased the budget to buy 
  back the readiness deficit that we have built. So we have to 
  get back at--buying that whole back and then you can probably 
  decline that level and get to stable and predictable so that we 
  can stay with the readiness capability of our force............
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you..........................................
And I yield back, Mr. Chair......................................
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Ms. Bordallo.............................
And now I will go to Mr. Scott...................................
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman...............................
Gentlemen, thanks for being here and I want to go back to what 
  Chairman Thornberry said that is one of my great frustrations 
  is that, you know, some political strategist somewhere 
  determines that it is going to be popular to say that we have 
  drawn down a certain number of troops..........................
And so we are sending the pilots and not the maintainers and in 
  fact, we are actually paying more for the equipment to be 
  maintained by contractors. And all over something that reaches 
  a political target and has absolutely nothing to do with 
  winning the war................................................
With that said, I hear your comments about the continuing 
  resolutions and the other issues. I want to encourage you, as I 
  have in private meetings, and I want to do it publicly, to meet 
  with members that are not on the Armed Services Committee......
The term ``readiness'' is not something that, if you are not on 
  this committee, that you would normally hear. And I think the 
  majority of the members of this committee will vote to support 
  you in the things that you need. In order for us to win that 
  vote, we have to have votes from members that are not on that 
  committee--on this committee and I would encourage you to meet 
  with them as well..............................................
But General Scott, under the Budget Control Act, the funding 
  levels--what are the hardest readiness choices you will have to 
  make in the Air Force fleet? And what impact do these have on 
  your ability to meet mission requirements, national defense 
  strategy, both today and in the future? And I would appreciate 
  it if you could be specific on that............................
General West. Today your Air Force is able to support nuclear 
  deterrent operations. We are growing our cyber capability. We 
  are able to conduct space operations. We will have to continue 
  to modernize in space. And we have grown and will continue to 
  grow our ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] 
  capability.....................................................
To get to those four areas of operations, we had to make trades 
  in people and our conventional air forces. We downsized 252 
  aircraft, 10 squadrons' worth of fighter squadrons to--and made 
  people trades that today has resulted in our first readiness 
  issue and that is to address critical skills...................
That is mainly in maintenance. We need an increase of 4,000--up 
  to 4,000 to be at end strength of 321,000 for the Air Force. 
  And that is the first readiness hurdle that we need to be able 
  to have support, and I think we do have that to get after our 
  readiness recovery.............................................
Because that takes up to 7 years to build the maintainer of the 
  future we want, which is not just freshly out of high school 
  and trained, but has experience on how to trouble-shoot the 
  aircraft, particularly those that are older. That timespan 
  means we can start later on increasing weapon systems 
  sustainment, improving our range infrastructure, adding to the 
  flying hour program, and last, working within the Department of 
  Defense to reduce our operations tempo. So our first--the first 
  criteria--first thing we would ask for is for a modest increase 
  in end strength................................................
I didn't quite answer your question, sir. Let me go back to where 
  our concern is. What our concern is not that we can't conduct 
  counterterrorism operations today, nuclear operations, space, 
  cyber, and ISR. We do that. We rotate through the Middle East 
  and we support our joint partners. Where we have concern is to 
  have the time and the resources available to train when not 
  deployed, for full-spectrum combat. That is the concern........
Mr. Scott. Is it accurate to say that the fleet--the Air Force 
  fleet is older today on average than it has ever been?.........
General West. Yes, sir, it is. I had an anecdote that a B-17 that 
  flew in World War II, which they were made shortly therefore. 
  If it had flown in Desert Storm, the aircraft bombers we are 
  using today are older than those B-17s would have been. It is 
  an aged fleet..................................................
Mr. Scott. And how many fewer men and women do you have today 
  than you had in the first Gulf War?............................
General West. It is on the order of thousands. I will get you 
  that. I will get you the data, but if I could put it in terms 
  of fighter squadrons, we had 134 fighter squadrons at the 
  beginning of the Gulf War. Today we have 55....................
Mr. Scott. One hundred and thirty four at the beginning of the 
  Gulf War and today we have 55..................................
General West. Fifty-five. Yes, sir...............................
Mr. Scott. Could you touch briefly--I am down to about 30 
  seconds--on the status of the Air Force depots and how they 
  contribute to the increased readiness of the Air Force?........
General West. It is critical. They find--they weigh--they sustain 
  the older systems that are decades old that we use and operate 
  today. Our KC-135 mishap--reliability rate is outstanding to 
  me, and I think it is on the backs of professionals that work 
  in our depots..................................................
Mr. Scott. Gentlemen, thank you for your service and I look 
  forward to working with you to resolve these issues............
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Scott................................
We will now go to Mr. Peters.....................................
Mr. Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman..............................
Thank you, gentlemen, for being here.............................
General Davis, you may have answered this question in response to 
  Ms. Bordallo, but I wanted to sort of explore the mitigation 
  strategies that the Marine Corps might have in the event that 
  the F-35 squadron transitions take longer than the expected 2 
  years, or if the F-35s continue to experience technical delays.
General Davis. What we are seeing right now, sir, the F-35 is 
  exceptional capability. Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 121 
  [VMFA-121] ran their, you know, their kind of an operational 
  readiness inspection; knocked it out of the park. We just 
  finished the Weapons and Instructor Course [WTI], VMFA-211 
  stood up. And we actually have three airplanes over in the 
  United Kingdom [U.K.] right now getting ready to do the 
  Farnborough and Riyadh Air Show................................
A lot of excitement over in the U.K. We are very excited about 
  the airplane. I can tell you we just ran a transition board for 
  F-35 and everybody that can put in to fly the F-35 is--to 
  include my oldest son who is getting ready to fly that 
  airplane; youngest one would like to do it, too................
We are not seeing a problem right now. The production line is 
  ramping up to full-rate production. What we have to do is keep 
  our F-18s and our Harriers going, sustain them properly to make 
  our F-35 bridge. Right now, we are seeing no problems with that 
  airplane. What we are seeing is high readiness rates and 
  incredible capability..........................................
We just ran a WTI drill where normal scenario that we would have 
  with our legacy aircraft out there. I was a CO [commanding 
  officer] at the weapons school. Generally about half the 
  airplanes that go into the across the--ROMO [range of military 
  operations], the high-end threat, Prowlers, Hornets, Harriers, 
  and generally about half to a third of the airplanes don't make 
  it through.....................................................
The F-35s, 24 to zero kill ratio. It killed all the targets. It 
  is--it was like Jurassic Park, watching a Velociraptor. It 
  kills everything. It does really well, so we can't get that 
  airplane fast enough into the fleet, sir.......................
Mr. Peters. Okay, I know we are putting some hangars up at 
  Miramar. Hangars are the least of your worries, I think, so....
General Davis. Actually, hangars are essential. A lot of our 
  infrastructure in our bases is World War II-vintage. And so 
  Miramar--what we are building is a two-squadron hangar out 
  there at Miramar. So we are really happy to get the support on 
  that...........................................................
We are very tightly aligned with the United States Navy on the F-
  35 program. We are going to procure four squadrons of F-35C, 
  the tailhook variant of the airplane. And when the first 
  tailhook-capable carrier for F-35C moved from the east coast to 
  the west coast, we had planned on standing that squadron up on 
  the east coast. Now we have moved it to the west coast.........
A lot of help from you guys; worked inside the Marine Corps on 
  green dollar budgets to build a hangar out there at Miramar and 
  got that done so we can actually be ready to take that airplane 
  when it comes. It is not just the hangar. It is the training 
  facilities and everything else that goes with it. So a lot of 
  excitement at Miramar to get that airplane out there...........
Mr. Peters. Okay, terrific.......................................
One other question about training. You have discussed the hours 
  and in terms of experience, and it has been reported in the 
  press, General West, that the Air Force Research Laboratory's 
  secure live virtual constructed advance technology environment, 
  advanced technology demonstration--that is a simulator. Does 
  that help address the gap? And tell me kind of what advantages 
  that offers? And where it leaves you short.....................
General West. Well, sir, in general there is a right balance 
  between what training we can conduct in simulators versus what 
  training we need to conduct and do conduct on live ranges. And 
  the balance is this. In simulation, you can train operator or a 
  maintainer to do certain tasks very well. You can integrate 
  operations between different operators.........................
But what you don't do in a simulator is assess the entire 
  performance of the system: do the sensors work, because--for 
  example, because the sensors are replicated in simulation......
So you have to have a balance between stressing and training the 
  entire system, maintaining, generating the sortie, loading the 
  weapons and actually performing against threat replicators in a 
  live range to see how the sensors work--do they work as they 
  are supposed to do--and crews make decisions on what to do, 
  versus what you can replicate in simulation which doesn't 
  stress the entire system but gives you great capacity to train 
  the human being................................................
Mr. Peters. In terms of the simulator part of the budget, do you 
  think that we have adequate resources to stay on track and keep 
  the program goals?.............................................
General West. Yes, sir...........................................
Mr. Peters. So that it is after the simulation that you are 
  concerned about the training primarily?........................
General West. Yes, sir. It is getting the right mix between 
  simulation and supporting the funds necessary to upgrade our 
  ranges to replicate what threats airmen are going to face in 
  the future, which are closing the gap, if you will, on our 
  technological advantage that we have right now and also 
  sustaining our ability to employ and train and test weapons, 
  and you need live ranges to be able to do that.................
Mr. Peters. Okay.................................................
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having the hearing. And I yield 
  back...........................................................
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Peters...............................
We will now to go Ms. Stefanik...................................
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you, Mr. Chairman............................
My first question is for General Mangum. As you mentioned in your 
  testimony, the Army aviation community is blessed with agile 
  and adaptive leaders. I have seen this firsthand with the 10th 
  Combat Aviation Brigade at Fort Drum in my district............
My question is, how will certain force structure reductions 
  combined with such a heavy demand for aviation assets impact 
  overall readiness? We know the Army prioritizes operational 
  readiness, but where does it assume risk for the future?.......
General Mangum. Ma'am, currently, we have 11 combat aviation 
  brigades in the Active Component and 12 aviation brigades in 
  the Reserve Component for a total of 23. Twelve of those 
  twenty-three brigades have elements deployed overseas today. So 
  the--that fine balance between consuming readiness and our 
  ability to rebuild it, we are on the edge......................
And again, I think we have all used the word fragile, there is 
  some fragility into this system. So we are, again, about at the 
  tipping point. Several years ago, we did a study that 
  determined that we needed 15 or 16--between 15 and 16 combat 
  aviation brigades in the Active Component. We are on glide 
  slope to go to 10, the National Commission for the Future of 
  the Army recommended maintaining an eleventh...................
So we are--again, we are at the tipping point. The National 
  Commission for the Future of the Army recommendations are--
  Secretary Fanning and General Milley will consult with 
  Secretary Carter here soon, but all of those recommendations 
  come with no resources.........................................
Ms. Stefanik. My next question is for Admiral Manazir............
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to embark on the USS 
  Harry Truman with my colleague Mr. Peters. How will the recent 
  30-day extension of the USS Harry Truman's deployment impact 
  future carrier deployments? And is there a concern that future 
  deployments could be extended? And what is the impact on the 
  carrier air wing?..............................................
Admiral Manazir. Yes, ma'am. First of all, thank you for going 
  out to Harry S. Truman and seeing what our great Americans do 
  on that flight deck and around the carrier strike group........
The Harry S. Truman, as you read from the press and saw the 
  reports--maybe on a classified level--had a superb deployment, 
  both in the Arabian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea and 
  demonstrated the power of mobile sea-based aviation............
We build into our Optimized Fleet Response Plan the capability to 
  continue to deploy or to extend the deployments of our carriers 
  once they go on deployment. The model is 7 months for the 
  deployment, but we build in some surge capability on the 
  carrier when the Nation calls, as in this case, they did.......
The particular impact is--required more readiness dollars to keep 
  the carrier strike group out there for an additional month. So 
  we had to pay for that. That caused some impacts to the 
  training--the forces in training down the road. But it didn't 
  impact the Truman strike group, particularly because we had 
  already planned for that, both the air wing, the ship, and the 
  accompanying ships.............................................
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you very much................................
I yield back.....................................................
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Ms. Stefanik.............................
We will now go to Mr. Ashford....................................
Mr. Ashford. Thank you...........................................
Just a comment--a question to General West. First of all, 
  General, thank you for and thank the Air Force for moving 
  forward on the restoration of the runway at Offutt. I think it 
  is a great improvement for the 55th and I appreciate that......
I have a couple questions related to the ISR mission, 
  specifically the 55th, that is the mission that I am most 
  familiar with. I have visited in Qatar and just recently at 
  Mildenhall and several visits at Offutt. The nature of that 
  mission is obviously an ISR mission, a highly--high-tech 
  mission. The vast majority of the military personnel on those 
  airplanes are not pilots, they are actually back in the back 
  working on the computers and intercepting the information that 
  they are getting...............................................
The concern that I always get from them, and you have really 
  talked to it, not specifically on this issue, but is the 
  training. And I know during the time prior to 2015, there was a 
  great deal of concern about training in language proficiency 
  and--which is a major part of the mission. How do you see that 
  improving? And I know there are some languages where there--we 
  need more proficiency..........................................
At Mildenhall, I was able to visit the training center there 
  where they are doing great work and getting people up to 
  proficiency and continuing to move forward into their testing 
  regimens and so forth. But how do you see that evolving? And 
  what impact would it have if we were to go back prior to 2015, 
  specifically on the language issue as it relates to the 55th 
  and other related missions?....................................
General West. Thank you, sir. I am not familiar with the language 
  issue to which you refer.......................................
Mr. Ashford. Just the proficiency in the various languages, which 
  is the--you know, the central core of that 55th mission........
General West. Yes, sir...........................................
Well, I would say this. The 55th has capabilities that are 
  absolutely necessary if we had to go to combat versus a near-
  peer, state-to-state combat. The training that the 55th and 
  operations that the 55th conducts now down range, as they did 
  for me in Afghanistan and others in other places, doesn't place 
  the demand signal on proficiency that training would for other 
  scenarios......................................................
So providing not only just the maintainers that we need, which is 
  mainly for--not for the big wing ISR at Offutt but other 
  platforms, but providing the weapons system sustainment, these 
  are older platforms............................................
Mr. Ashford. Right...............................................
General West. The training range infrastructure that includes 
  simulation that we can upgrade to replicate what is now not 
  only possessed, but being exported by near-peer competitors, 
  and working with our Joint Staff partners on deploy-to-dwell 
  issues so we have got more time to be able to train with the 
  flying hour program............................................
All of those have to be synchronized in order to start to recover 
  readiness. It is not just one individually can work it.........
Mr. Ashford. Right...............................................
And I--my point, I guess, is to--is that I was--it is very 
  impressive to see what has been achieved in the last year and a 
  half in upgrading the training and getting more people trained 
  in specific line language, and obviously, the maintainer issue 
  is always--is also a big issue.................................
But the gaps that existed prior to 2015, to a great extent, have 
  started to be extinguished on the training side on language 
  specifically. But I just--the comments that you have made 
  regarding readiness generally and training generally and 
  maintainers generally applies, I think, to the language sector 
  as well. And I just applaud the Air Force for moving quickly to 
  fill those gaps................................................
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back............................
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Ashford..............................
We will now go to Mr. Cook.......................................
Mr. Cook. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman......................
A couple of my questions--a little bit different. I want to talk 
  about the--maybe the F-35. And airspace, particularly on the 
  west coast and particularly in California and--training time, I 
  think, is essential. And we have some issues that I think 
  everybody, all four services, are impacted by the FAA [Federal 
  Aviation Administration], and I am talking about the corridor 
  that goes into the Los Angeles area............................
I am a ground guy, so I can't even spell air. But the problems 
  that we are going to have with the F-35 in the envelope and 
  they even effect ground weapons, such as the HIMARS [High 
  Mobility Artillery Rocket] system at Fort Irwin. And some of 
  the paths that they have to take affects Mugu, it affects the 
  Air Force base that--all the ranges are basically in my 
  district, and most of them in San Bernardino. China Lake, I 
  don't have the headquarters, but I got all the ranges..........
I have got obviously Fort Irwin, and the--some of the 
  restrictions that are coming out would have a major impact on 
  the training of all four services. And if you could address 
  that or how concerned you are about this because I just think 
  it is going to get worse and worse and worse. This is not the 
  old aircraft, and that is--but the F-35 is--operates in a 
  different area and some of these newer weapon systems..........
So if you could comment on that, please..........................
General Davis. Sir, I will take that question to start. We are 
  very concerned about it. And as you know, I am a guy who joined 
  the Marine Corps not knowing they had airplanes. So, rifleman 
  first, aviator second always. Hoorah...........................
Mr. Cook. Thank you..............................................
General Davis. That should probably scare you a little bit, that 
  I am running Marine aviation right now.........................
But bottom line is the F-35 is a qualitatively different 
  airplane, both in capabilities and also watching the way the 
  Marines are flying it. They fly Twentynine Palms, Yuma, out 
  there. They are using a lot more airspace to extract maximum 
  value out of that airplane. And I can't talk about all the 
  numbers because they are classified, but it is more and it is 
  different. I think those ranges are national assets and we have 
  to do our level best to protect them...........................
The Marine Corps, like the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, are 
  all trained to fight not today's fight, but also tomorrow's 
  fight. And it is a very high-end fight and at the end of the 
  day, we cannot be caught short because we didn't have this much 
  altitude or this much range space to bring these qualitative 
  advantages that you are providing for us and our marines, 
  soldiers, sailors, and airmen are fighting and flying with.....
We need airspace. You need to spread out, train against the near-
  peer competitor. It is not what we have been doing for the last 
  15 years in the aggregate. It is very different. And all of us 
  need to train and be able to do that, and we need the space to 
  move out and train.............................................
We are seeing that with the Air Force out there at Nellis and the 
  Navy up at Fallon and even at the National Training Center and 
  our ground forces. Long-range rockets that--we need the ability 
  to fight at range, see at range and dominate at range and kick 
  anybody's butt that is out there at range. And we need the 
  airspace and the ground space to do that, sir..................
Mr. Cook. Thank you..............................................
Anyone else?.....................................................
Admiral Manazir. Sir, OPNAV [Office of the Chief of Naval 
  Operations] has an office inside of the Director of Air Warfare 
  that works directly with the FAA on encroachment issues. I 
  would echo what General Davis said. Our ranges are crown jewels 
  in our ability to train........................................
We have worked with the FAA on airspace corridors. There are 
  limited places to go supersonic, especially in the West. There 
  are small corridors. It is--the airspace is very dear. 
  Connecting the ranges between Nellis and Fallon, Point Mugu, 
  the sea ranges over to China Lake is something that we already 
  do.............................................................
But encroachment is a gigantic issue. So, not only the airspace, 
  but encroachment on the ground towards our training ranges for 
  peaceful issues like wind farms and the partnership with wind 
  farms all the way to nefarious threat countries who would try 
  to buy property in close so they can monitor what we are doing.
The F-35 is different. I would offer to you that our networked 
  way of warfare, the way we are going to do warfare with fifth 
  generation would take up about three quarters of the United 
  States if we could have it. And so that goes to the value of 
  what General West talked about, which is this live virtual 
  constructive training..........................................
So, when we have to go to the high-end fight using fifth 
  generation and full, full capabilities, it is not just the 
  geography of the airspace which is getting limiting for F-35, 
  but also our ability to practice how we are going to really 
  fight. And so we have to tailor what we do in the air..........
Mr. Cook. I appreciate that comment. I am not always sure that 
  the FAA is on the mindset of a lot people in this room here in 
  terms of readiness, readiness, readiness, combat readiness. And 
  they might have other priorities that are not the same. And 
  obviously, I think this is a battle that is going to be a 
  bureaucratic battle just like you fight about the budget and 
  everything else................................................
Just one last question I have, and that is on tempo of ops, and 
  it has always been my concern that we overload that box. The 
  planners, we are going do this, this, this, this, this. You can 
  only do so much. And I think, yes, but the big wars and 
  everything like that, but you are going to see more and more 
  come-as-you-are parties. And maybe that is a bad phrase. But 
  you never know what is going to--and you have got to be ready 
  to go when the balloon goes up.................................
And any comments on being overloaded with tempo of ops, which I 
  think are always going to be there?............................
General Davis. If I could, sir. The demand from the combatant 
  commanders is strong. Again, we go back, I think the demand is 
  reasonable and if you got the assets that you need to go do the 
  job right. Right now, we are shy on the number of platforms we 
  have. So, the Marines are working really hard to make ends 
  meet...........................................................
So, I think the dep [deployment] tempo of 1:2 is manifested or 
  made more deep, and the fact that they just don't have enough 
  of the assets to go around so they are working harder to make 
  ends meet......................................................
Right now, the world is a pretty dangerous place and we have got 
  marines forward deployed at sea and at shore, and all of them 
  are very gainfully employed. So we are doing our level best to 
  try to pull some of that--try to do a little bit better with a 
  little less to reduce the number of assets we have forward 
  deployed, but it has met with not a lot of positive effects 
  from our combatant commanders right now........................
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Cook.................................
We will now go to Mr. Veasey.....................................
Mr. Veasey. Thank you............................................
I wanted to ask Admiral Manazir a question about training and 
  transitioning from F-18s to F-35s, including the training and 
  re-training of pilots and the maintenance personnel. How will 
  this transition affect the availability of units for 
  deployments?...................................................
Admiral Manazir. Sir, we are going to initial operational 
  capability the F-35C in August of 2018. There is some risk to 
  that date, but we are planning to that date and on path working 
  with the Joint Program Office to do that.......................
The first squadron will be ready for deployment shortly after 
  that initial operational capability. We will then go through a 
  heel-to-toe transition of units from generally the F-18C, but 
  some F-18Es and F units will transition through a process that 
  we have mapped out already. And they will do that at Naval Air 
  Station Lemoore in California..................................
The transition takes about a year to do it. We have that planned 
  into our master aviation plan, which is laid out to support all 
  the deployments necessary to support the combatant commander. 
  So, the simple answer to your question, sir, is that the 
  transition to the F-35C will not affect our ability to provide 
  the combatant commander with the forces that he needs as we go 
  forward to source the global force management plan.............
Mr. Veasey. Thank you very much..................................
And wanted to ask Lieutenant General Davis a question also about 
  the F-35. I was just curious, what is the plan to follow on 
  development of modernization for F-35s to ensure that the 
  aircraft continues to have the upgrades necessary to maintain a 
  capability advantage over threats through the life of the 
  aircraft?......................................................
And--the same thing, I wanted to also--if you could just touch on 
  just the transitioning, as well, as you move from the F-18s and 
  the AV-8s and how that is going?...............................
General Davis. It is F-18s, AV-8s, and EA-6Bs; we have two 
  Prowler pilots flying the airplane very successfully right now. 
  One, in fact, is an instructor in VMFAT-501 [Marine Fighter 
  Attack Training Squadron 501] and we picked four EA-6B pilots 
  this last board to transition out of the 16s. So, a quarter of 
  the guys we picked are Prowler pilots to basically make maximum 
  use of the electronic warfare capability of that airplane......
The transition is going well. Again, we just stood up our second 
  operational squadron. We will stand--the next one will be an F-
  18 squadron that will shut down VMFA-122, will move to Yuma, 
  Arizona, and stand up as an F-35B squadron; then VMFA-314, 
  which will be the first Charlie squadron, in Miramar in 2019...
So, the transition is going well. What we are doing is we are 
  managing the inventory of our AV-8s and our F-18s. The good 
  news, on our readiness recovery, we solved some of the problems 
  we had with Harriers. We have actually burned some--built some 
  margin in Harrier that can keep the Harrier going a little bit 
  longer if we need it to, so we can balance between F-18 and 
  Harrier, which, you know, we sundown next to make those--to 
  make our transition............................................
Right now, VMFAT-501 in Beaufort, South Carolina, is scheduled to 
  get bigger to handle more students. And so, that is growing. 
  And the production line, really sir, and the spare parts that 
  flows with that, is getting ready to go up to 20 aircraft a 
  year, which we need, just on Bs alone, which we need very 
  desperately....................................................
So, the transition is going well. We are managing that inside the 
  Marine Corps. We are making a little bit of our own luck with 
  better readiness in Harrier, which is good, and then working 
  very closely with the Navy to extract maximum value out of the 
  legacy F-18....................................................
And on Block four--I am sorry--Block four, I think is was you are 
  talking about the capability modernization development. I 
  worked that very closely with Admiral Manazir and my Air Force 
  counterparts to make sure we are getting the very best combat 
  capability for the country.....................................
I think we are close to slapping the table and all that we have 
  put into that modernization program out there but it is 
  actually very exciting. We compete and push to see what we want 
  to put in there in the timeline we get it. We broke it up into 
  four chunks, which is smart to go do...........................
And bottom line is bring in the great capabilities that the Block 
  4 upgrades to the airplane as quickly as we can................
Mr. Veasey. Over the last several years, the numbers of the 
  squadrons that you have, have dropped from about 70 to 55, or 
  so.............................................................
General Davis. Yes, sir..........................................
Mr. Veasey. Is that hampering the transition at all, or----......
General Davis. Well, what we are--sir, we--right now, we are at 
  20 TACAIR squadrons and we, like the Air Force, came down after 
  Desert Storm. I think we are about 28 TACAIR squadrons during 
  Desert Storm. And over time we are down to 20..................
And right now I am 19 because one of my Reserve squadrons is 
  cadred. So making our own luck with F-18 and the Harrier, 
  keeping them robust will allow us to make that transition......
But right now, we are executing a transition in stride and we 
  will shut down--you know, we have basically worked out a long-
  term training and deployment plan for the Marine Corps so that 
  we can sundown our squadrons and stand up in stride............
And we just did that with VMFA-211, so VMFA-211 came back from 
  combat deployment. There is--the VMFA-121 was a F-35 squadron 
  in Yuma. It grew to be larger than a normal F-35 squadron and 
  then what we did is when 211 stood up, they split off their 
  airplanes they were supposed to have and the maintainers and 
  the pilots so they can be a going concern from the beginning...
We will do that for the rest of the squadrons itself. I will say 
  that the ramp for F-35 in the Marine Corps has been very slow. 
  We are looking very much forward to getting a faster ramp and 
  be able to stand squadrons up faster and still making all of 
  our operational commitments....................................
Mr. Veasey. Thank you............................................
General Davis. Thank you, sir....................................
Mr. Veasey. Chairman, thank you..................................
Mr. Wittman. Very good, thank you Mr. Veasey.....................
We will now go to Mr. LoBiondo...................................
Mr. LoBiondo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman............................
General West, I know that you know this but some of the others in 
  the room may not, that the 177th Fighter Wing that I represent 
  has a state-of-the-art infrastructure including state-of-the-
  art alert hangars that can accommodate the F-35 and we hope 
  will, someday..................................................
Admiral, if you have or having challenges with the FAA, I would 
  appreciate knowing a little more about it. I chair the Aviation 
  Subcommittee which has oversight with the FAA. I certainly 
  would be happy to weigh in and get their attention on this if 
  there is something we can do...................................
And General Davis, a short while back maybe 4, 6 weeks ago, there 
  was a report on one of the cable channels about the 
  cannibalization. Are you familiar with that?...................
General Davis. Are they talking about the F-18, sir?.............
Mr. LoBiondo. Yes................................................
General Davis. I am, sir.........................................
Mr. LoBiondo. They had to go into a museum and get parts and so 
  on and so forth. So is--are we going to see more of that?......
What is the status of that? Is it more than just in the Marine 
  Corps? Anybody else or--was pretty disturbing report...........
General Davis. What I will tell you, sir, is on that--we were 
  looking for a hinge for a nose gear of an old model, A model F-
  18, no longer in production. And a lot of those airplanes were 
  built in lots and they are all different.......................
So we do, we have done that in the past, go out and look at a--
  for a part. And it just so happened that one of the squadron 
  members was out there looking; said hey, that is as close to 
  the bureau number..............................................
It didn't match up but the good news to it in that is there was 
  no part to be had so we 3D-printed the part and then 
  manufactured the part, Okay? And so they--so the company was 
  able to make that part for us..................................
You also heard on the news that the Marines are also going into 
  the boneyard to get F-18s. We are doing that, sir. We took I 
  think 23 out of Davis-Monthan. But those are 23 airplanes we 
  had put in in 2007 to kind of preserve the life................
We--they are low flight hour F-18s now we will basically--we are 
  bringing them back into service now to go fly them, to go make 
  our operational commitments and it goes back to how we manage 
  the F-18 life to the end of its service life, extract maximum 
  value..........................................................
We would like to recapitalize faster, that is what we need to do, 
  that is what we want to do. By the--until that time, we are 
  going to do what we have to do to make our operational 
  commitments with our F-18s and our Harriers....................
Right now, my two communities at greatest risk for making their 
  flight hour goals and making their readiness goals is CH-53 
  Echo and the legacy F-18.......................................
Again, 53 Kilo will replace the Echo and is doing great in tests 
  and the F-35 is going great in its production and its tests and 
  its initial operating capability development out there.........
So replacing our F-18s with F-35s as quickly as we can is our 
  strategy.......................................................
Mr. LoBiondo. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.........................
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. LoBiondo.............................
We will now go to Mrs. Hartzler..................................
Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman...........................
Thank you, gentlemen, for being here today on this very important 
  hearing dealing with aviation readiness........................
Rear Admiral Manazir, I would like to start the question with 
  you. So the committee has heard testimony in prior hearings 
  about a strike fighter shortfall and some of the issues you 
  have to manage as a result.....................................
So how have training hours for Navy and Marine Corps pilots been 
  impacted and do you see an impact to pilot readiness due to the 
  shortfall now or in the future?................................
Admiral Manazir. Ma'am, I will let General Davis answer the 
  Marine Corps question because the impacts to both services 
  while founded in the same challenge are different in how we 
  train..........................................................
Strike fighter shortfall we now term as inventory management, so 
  if you have a shortfall that means your supply doesn't equal 
  your demand and so you have to manage that force...............
The proximate cause of the strike fighter inventory challenges 
  particularly in the F-18 and the JSF [Joint Strike Fighter] is 
  the JSF sliding to the right. General Davis testified that he 
  wants to see a faster ramp to F-35, to the new, fifth 
  generation fighter.............................................
We want to make sure that there is no delay to the F-35C 
  arriving. But it has slid several years. That has caused two 
  problems. The first one is that we have had to induct more of 
  our F-18 A through D legacy force into the depot...............
We didn't plan to do that maintenance and when we opened those 
  airplanes up they had significant corrosion that we did not 
  plan for. And so that created a depot load that we had to 
  change the process and how we manage that. That created 
  shortfalls on the flight line..................................
The second effect it had was we were over-flying our F-18s, Super 
  Hornets, Es and Fs. We didn't plan to fly them this much nor 
  this early in their life. So it is accelerating the life use on 
  the F-18 Es and Fs.............................................
And in fact, our unfunded priority list--the number one priority 
  from the Chief of Naval Operations is 14 Es and Fs to help 
  cover the gap that we never foresaw between the F-18 C and the 
  F-35...........................................................
We are taking--as you know, we do what is called tiered 
  readiness, it is phase-based tiered readiness, I explained it a 
  little bit in my written statement, where the deployers are 
  full up ready to go for any high-end mission. And then the next 
  to go are also trained at the intermediate, advanced level.....
Where we see the effects on training, ma'am, are in the early 
  training phases leading up to advanced training and then it is 
  sustainment when they come home from extended deployment. You 
  will see some of the resources having to be moved to the next 
  deployer.......................................................
So on either end of that deployed cycle, that is where we see 
  those hits. That aircraft availability, just exactly what 
  General Davis says, that limited aircraft availability--
  especially early in the phase--doesn't allow us to train those 
  aviators that are in that phase. And we have to steepen the 
  training ramp to get them up to speed before they deploy. Those 
  are the effects................................................
Mrs. Hartzler. How many hours short are you, would you say, for a 
  normal training? If you have optimal training for all tiers to 
  be fully trained, how many hours more are--you need?...........
Admiral Manazir. So it is a--that is a difficult calculation 
  because we--it is almost area under the curve. There is a 
  certain number of hours at the very low maintenance level, its 
  currency hours is just 11 hours per pilot per month............
And then it goes up to the fully deployed to about 27 hours per 
  pilot per month in each type model series. The fiscal year 2017 
  President's budget request does give us a readiness level that 
  is executable because of the numbers of airplanes..............
Sometimes people will say, hey, you need to fly more hours and so 
  we are going to give you more flying hour money. One of the 
  causes of why we are where we are today is money went into 
  flying hours but the underlying accounts, the enabling 
  accounts, were underfunded.....................................
So the airplanes weren't available to fly. So I would rather not 
  tell you that I need more hours. What I need is the fiscal year 
  2017 submission and the bills that the chairman talked about to 
  get that readiness level up so that we can increase the flying 
  in those lower stages of training..............................
Mrs. Hartzler. As you know, we have got the 14 extra F-18s in the 
  NDAA and we are going to try and bring that across the finish 
  line. Is that enough? Would you like more if you could?........
Admiral Manazir. In the 2017 budget, that 14 remains the request. 
  CNO Greenert testified earlier in 2015 that we need two to 
  three squadrons to fill the gap in our total force with a 
  tiered-readiness model.........................................
We haven't quite got to that point of having all of those 
  squadrons and all of those numbers. As we continue to use the 
  airplanes that we are using, I think you are going to see 
  repeat requests for Super Hornets as we go forward in future 
  year budgets...................................................
Mrs. Hartzler. Sure..............................................
Nineteen seconds General Davis--has pilot readiness been 
  impacted?......................................................
General Davis. I will tell you exactly, we are 6 hours--about 6 
  hours per month per pilot short on the TACAIR fleet, 
  specifically F-18. We fixed the Harriers; they are doing better 
  right now......................................................
We have got one squadron that is in Bahrain that is flying a lot, 
  about 800 hour a month for a 10-plane squadron, so those guys 
  are doing well. But on average, low. We have asked for two F-
  35Cs and two F-35Bs to help fill our coffers out there.........
Our plan is to put our guys in an 8,000-hour airplane, the F-35B 
  and C, and basically take advantage of that full ramp. We have 
  been having a lot of help from Boeing Corporation to help fix 
  our legacy airplane............................................
So four things that F-18s--legacy F-18s are down for. They are in 
  the depot. They are--need an in-service repair, which is too 
  much maintenance for my marines to fix. They need the special 
  permissions to go do that. Not mission capable-supply or -
  maintenance. A large number of our legacy F-18s were on the 
  flight line, needed a minor repair that my marines aren't able 
  to do it, same thing with the sailors..........................
So we didn't have enough depot artisans to do that work so we 
  took some depot artisans and put them up at Miramar and that 
  has had a palpable and positive impact on my flight line 
  readiness for F-18 in Miramar. We basically hired Boeing--Navy 
  blessed Boeing Corporation folks to go do that ISR [in-service 
  repair] work. It makes sense, they built the airplane, and 
  bottom line is we are getting much better readiness out of the 
  Beaufort effort, as well.......................................
That just started................................................
So taking those in-service repair airplanes, a large slug of our 
  airplanes, if we could get at that would actually help on my F-
  18 readiness as they are doing that now. So hats off to Boeing 
  and using the OEMs [original equipment manufacturers], not just 
  for the F-18 but across the spectrum to help increase our 
  readiness wherever we can......................................
Mrs. Hartzler. Hats off to all of you for taking a difficult 
  situation and making the best of it............................
Thank you, Mr. Chairman..........................................
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mrs. Hartzler............................
We will now go to Mr. Gallego....................................
Mr. Gallego. Thank you, Mr. Chair................................
This question is for the Navy-Marine Corps team. Recently, the 
  Marine Corps announced plans to rotate another amphibious 
  readiness group [ARG] or Marine expeditionary unit [MEU] in the 
  Pacific by 2019................................................
However, when the announcement was made it was acknowledged that 
  sourcing plans had yet not been worked out. While the Navy-
  Marine Corps continued to maintain a forward presence through 
  aircraft carriers and MEUs for example additional requirements 
  such as two special purpose MAGTFs and this proposed ARG-MEU 
  continued to place additional requirements on the force during 
  a time of constrained resources................................
So my question, very simple: How much more operational stress can 
  the Navy and Marine Corps aviation enterprise take within what 
  I described? And also, can we continue to extend our presence 
  under the current readiness projections?.......................
General Davis. I can answer part of that. The special purpose 
  MAGTFs--we have one in Spain and one in the Central Command 
  area of responsibility. The reason we did that, 12 V-22s and 4 
  C-130s, is because we didn't have the amphibious shipping we 
  needed to put out there........................................
So I could cover down on the requirement with four V-22s if I had 
  an amphibious ship to embark those marines on, but they have 
  got to fly, a lot of times 2,000 miles. So the beauty of sea-
  based assets, whether it is on a carrier or an amphibious 
  carrier, is you can move that ship around and put it to close 
  proximity of the action and get out there without a tanker. It 
  could fly there without a tanker...............................
So the fact that we don't have the ships does add to wear and 
  tear on airplanes like the V-22 and C-130s. So I would have 
  more amphibious ships. I know this is an aviation hearing. I 
  would have a--my guys go off the ships and off the 
  expeditionary bases ashore. But that helps us get closer to the 
  objective area, so more of that would be certainly helpful, 
  sir............................................................
Admiral Manazir. Okay, Mr. Gallego, the Navy works closely with 
  the Joint Staff to source a global force management plan. We 
  currently are resourced to deploy two amphibious readiness 
  groups and two carrier strike groups. It will take us to about 
  the end of this Future Year Defense Plan, 2020 to 2022, to be 
  able to resource a third deployed amphibious readiness group. 
  So our current capacity is two amphibious readiness groups.....
Mr. Gallego. Excellent, thank you................................
General Davis, we spoke a little bit earlier under--from 
  questions from another Member of Congress regarding parts. But 
  you have advocated for resizing the spare parts account to 
  increase readiness. Such a change would ensure more parts are 
  on hand instead of waiting on the supply chain. Can you 
  describe how much additional funding you think it will require 
  in future years, and whether this would demand a policy change 
  in how spare parts programs are maintained?....................
General Davis. I can get you the exact number, sir, but that is 
  something we are looking at. This year, you can see from our 
  unfunded priorities list that we ask for help on spare parts, 
  specifically F-35. They have been underfunded and that has an 
  impact not just in the year of execution, but it is 3 years 
  later when those parts are supposed to be there to make sure we 
  get maximum value out of that..................................
But I think in the aggregate, we could look at how we spare our 
  programs in the Department of Defense. I don't know any airline 
  out there that has got a not mission capable-supply target 
  anything other than zero percent. So we have these great 
  airplanes, but we put a marine out there or a sailor, soldier, 
  airman, and they don't have enough parts.......................
If your target is 10 percent non mission capable-supply, I am 
  worried about that 10 percent. Where do they get that part? It 
  has usually got a bureau number written on it..................
And then airplanes like the CH-53, we had marines for a number of 
  years who would go to an airplane that couldn't fly and take 
  the part off the airplane. These are great maintainers. I worry 
  about the pilots and retaining pilots. I worry about my 
  enlisted marines, my enlisted maintainers. Those are the guys 
  if I have got to focus on retaining anybody, I am going to 
  retain them; give them the tools, not just the tools in the 
  shop, but the pubs, but also the parts they need to be--to 
  extract maximum readiness out of the platforms we have.........
I will come back to you, sir, and tell you exactly what I think 
  they would cost, but it is the cost of low readiness is, I 
  think, something our Nation can't afford. And if having that 
  airplane, as great as the airplanes we are all procuring out 
  here, to not have a part for it is kind of crazy...............
Mr. Gallego. Thank you...........................................
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Gallego..............................
We now go to Mr. Lamborn.........................................
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you...........................................
We have all known for some time that readiness is a big problem 
  and including a recent focus by this committee, under the 
  leadership of Chairman Thornberry and Chairman Wittman.........
So from an Air Force perspective in particular, recently the 
  Thunderbird crash in my district, along with the tragic loss of 
  life in the Blue Angel crash the very same day, really got 
  people's attention.............................................
These tragic events, along with other recent crashes, have caused 
  the American people to ask a lot of questions including: Why 
  did these crashes happen? And what can we do to prevent this in 
  the future?....................................................
The answers to these questions are undoubtedly complex. But 
  getting the right answers and taking the right action is 
  vitally important. The very lives of our aviators depend on it. 
  And also how well prepared we are to fight a war if necessary..
So I know it is your job in the military to make the most of what 
  you have and to carry on with the mission regardless, but I 
  really ask for the maximum frankness and being candid on your 
  part...........................................................
So, General West, what are the trends in Air Force mishaps over 
  the past 8 to 10 years?........................................
General West. Thank you, sir. We haven't seen a correlation 
  between mishap rates and our readiness concerns now over the 
  last 10 years..................................................
Mr. Lamborn. We have or haven't?.................................
General West. Have not. Our mishap rate is about the same, 
  trending down, as it has been over 10 years. That doesn't mean 
  that the goal for mishaps is not zero. We don't want to lose a 
  single airman or lose equipment. But we don't have a 
  correlation because of our readiness issues that would seem to 
  indicate that either human factors, largely driven by 
  complacency, operations or maintenance, or material failures of 
  operating systems that are decades old, are having--they have 
  an affect on readiness.........................................
But we haven't seen that the trend data shows that they have had 
  an affect on safety. That doesn't mean we don't pay attention 
  to safety. In every case, we do conduct two investigations 
  afterward--one safety for the safety privilege reasons; the 
  other for legal purposes. And those--the legal one is public 
  knowledge. The safety one under privilege is meant to uncover 
  things with privilege so that we can take action quickly, if 
  necessary......................................................
Mr. Lamborn. Okay, well let's focus then on readiness in 
  particular now. How many hours did the average pilot fly 10 
  years ago versus today, as far as you know? And is there a 
  difference in either flight hours or maintenance or the age of 
  aircraft 10 years ago versus today? How would you summarize 
  that?..........................................................
General West. Yes, sir. Well the--I don't mean to be flippant at 
  all, sir. They are 10 years older, the aircraft, obviously. And 
  that comes with the challenges of when you perform depot work, 
  you are going to discover things that weren't anticipated 
  because the original service life wasn't intended to be this 
  many decades old. And we make choices of sustaining legacy 
  systems within a certain amount of budget, with modernizing for 
  the future.....................................................
So the longer we sustain systems that are older, then the closer 
  we get to where they will no longer be relevant in combat 
  because of other systems that are fielded by potential 
  adversaries. So we have to make choices........................
Mr. Lamborn. Now if the replacement rate is equal to the rate at 
  which they are being mothballed, there would not be--the 
  average would not be 8 or 10 years older. It would be constant.
General West. Yes, sir...........................................
Mr. Lamborn. But you are saying that that is not the case; that 
  the average rate is now 10 years older versus 10 years ago, of 
  the aircraft?..................................................
General West. That is the way it is going to be outside of the 
  ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] community, 
  which MQ-1s and MQ-9s are a brand new weapon system. But we 
  continue to operate A-10s, F-16s, B-52s, B-1s, B-2s, KC-135s, 
  KC-10s. It is the same fleet that we have operated successfully 
  for years......................................................
We will have a large modernization effort that will come forward 
  in the 2020s, B-21, KC-46, the bulk of the F-35s, et cetera, 
  for a long period to come. But right now the fleet is aging....
Mr. Lamborn. Now as aircraft reach their expected life, or exceed 
  their expected life, what happens in terms of maintenance or 
  flying hours and things like that?.............................
General West. We conduct a service life extension program to 
  extend the life of the aircraft. It varies by aircraft what 
  that entails technically. But we extend it by some number of 
  thousands of hours, and we work at how long we want to extend 
  the service life based on when we expect a replacement to come 
  into play......................................................
If I could go back to your question about hours. The hours are a 
  concern for training, but more important than just the hours 
  that crews get, are the intensity of training during those 
  hours. Our crews get excellent training to be able to go down 
  range and conduct ISR, strike, airlift, close air support, 
  electronic warfare.............................................
What we are not able to do with the training hours we get in the 
  United States is sufficiently prepare them for combat with that 
  near-peer competitor. That is a different level of intensity 
  that requires investments along five different fronts, first 
  starting with the maintainers to be able to do it..............
And that is a different dynamic from events when you are training 
  versus just hours. Our crews get a lot of hours down range. But 
  that is not the same level of intensity........................
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you very much.................................
Mr. Wittman. Lieutenant General Davis, I wanted to follow up on 
  some of the comments that you have made concerning training 
  hours. You have talked about making sure that you had 
  maintainers that were capable and that you were short in the 
  amount of seat time that pilots had, real flying time, not 
  simulator time, and talked about needing to have that ready 
  bench, and that when you lack aircraft to train pilots and 
  train maintainers that ready bench gets pretty thin, and in 
  some instances non-existent....................................
I wanted to, and you spoke earlier about Class A mishaps. I do 
  want to try to drill a little bit deeper. We know about a year 
  or so ago, there was a tragic CH-53 accident off the coast of 
  Hawaii; challenging conditions. But that being said, in talking 
  about those shortfalls that you have there in making sure 
  maintainers have what they need, making sure pilots have that 
  seat time. And I know that the investigation for that accident 
  is coming to its completion....................................
Can you maybe talk a little bit specifically about that? Do you 
  believe that the elements that you spoke about in the training 
  side, both maintainers and pilots, could have had any impact in 
  that particular accident?......................................
And I know we can look at rates, but I want to be able to look at 
  specific recent instances, because I think that is what Mr. 
  Lamborn had spoken about, what we are hearing from folks about 
  the concern about that particular situation....................
And whether it is the tragic accident with the Blue Angels pilot, 
  the Thunderbirds pilot, whatever it may be, the question 
  becomes as we highlight these shortfalls, what association 
  might that have with this? And I want to ask you specifically 
  about that incident because I know there are a lot of different 
  conditions there that were at question.........................
General Davis. Yes, sir, thank you for the question. As you know 
  that investigation is still underway and I don't want to do 
  anything to get out in front of what they might tell us........
I am highly confident that that crew was flying good airplanes, 
  that both crews were flying good airplanes, they were properly 
  maintained, and it is a tragedy................................
I mean this is a real tragedy, all of our losses to include the 
  Blue Angels, tragedy. Here is what I worry about the most, if I 
  had to kind of step back from this. That crew was safe but that 
  crew could have been a lot more proficient at the combat 
  mission that it is on task to go execute. So I don't know how 
  well trained they would be to go fight the high-end fight......
They were doing what was a pretty straightforward mission that 
  night. Tragedy though. I worry about my young aviators that 
  aren't getting the number of hours they need to. And so it is 
  the mishap that looms on our bow that we don't see coming just 
  now............................................................
I remember that as a young guy I had a couple close calls; as I 
  young guy I had some close calls. I do not know how I would do 
  having the amount of flight time that my youngsters get. And I 
  have got two sons that fly Marine airplanes....................
They're not complainers, but as a dad I worry about it. They're 
  just not getting the looks at the ball that I got. So when that 
  bad thing happens to them, or when they're a flight lead, and 
  they're trying to take somebody out there and a bad thing is 
  happening to the youngster that they're leading, man or woman, 
  will they have the experience to keep that bad thing from 
  happening?.....................................................
Saying I see this, I know this, I feel this--I know the science 
  of aviation but you have me up here, General Neller has me, to 
  understand the intuition and the sense of aviation as well. We 
  are not where we need to be. So we are proficient but we are 
  not as good as we need to be because we don't get the number of 
  hours that we need to get because there is just not enough 
  inventory there................................................
You know, the old days when I was a lieutenant, it was 75 percent 
  mission capable rates, those were all the numbers we knew. I 
  will tell you that in order to get to 75 percent mission 
  capable, I would need about another 366 airplanes in the Marine 
  Corps that, they are there, they don't exist, they don't have 
  parts, they are stuck in a depot, or they are on a production 
  line someplace coming to us. I think I can--I can't make a 
  direct line to the Class A, but there is risk there by not 
  flying and not building the experience out there...............
It has not been borne out in an investigation. It doesn't mean 
  that a mishap investigation 3 years from now isn't going to say 
  that this person here did not have the experience they needed 
  to get as a young captain and now he is a major or she is a 
  lieutenant colonel, squadron commander, and she just didn't see 
  this before because she didn't have the experience. So I would 
  worry about the stuff that looms in our bow sir................
Mr. Wittman. Thank you General Davis, and I want to kind of tie a 
  string between each of these instances that you all have 
  highlighted today. And we will start there in the Marine Corps. 
  You have spoken about the shortfalls that are there with 
  maintainers, aircraft to maintain, the ability for that 
  experience with our maintainers and with our pilots all 
  manifesting themselves in different ways.......................
General Mangum, you spoke about the same thing. Situation where 
  if a helicopter is deployed in Afghanistan, maintainer is back 
  home. That creates an atrophy there in that force in that 
  capability that not only will we see today, but as you spoke 
  of, we will probably see in years to come. General West you 
  spoke of the same thing there..................................
A shortage of maintainers in the Air Force. Making sure too, that 
  we have the senior NCOs [noncommissioned officers] there in the 
  Air Force that are the backbone of training, the new airmen 
  that come in to be able to maintain those aircraft. Making 
  sure, too, we are transitioning from maintainers that are on an 
  A-10 aircraft to the new F-35 aircraft. You know all of that, 
  creating a challenge, a deficiency I would say within the realm 
  of what we need to have........................................
Admiral Manazir, you spoke of, too, the element there of what you 
  are dealing with today, going from a backlog of 12 F-18s to now 
  nearly 200, with legacy aircraft and Super Hornets, getting 
  them to that depot.............................................
We have flown those aircraft more than we expected, therefore 
  when they get to the depot we are having to do much deeper 
  maintenance, maintenance that really wasn't originally designed 
  to be done at the depot level, but you all are managing to get 
  that done......................................................
There is a common theme here we see across the realm here, we are 
  pushing harder, we have fewer resources, we have fewer of the 
  skilled people in the necessary positions to do all the things 
  that we need to do to make sure that we are not just rebuilding 
  that readiness, but maintaining the current level of readiness.
To me, that is a very, very deeply concerning issue. I know the 
  chairman and myself, as well as members of the committee and 
  the ranking member all have a deep level of concern............
And while it may not show itself directly today in the rate of 
  mishaps, I do believe it exhibits itself in additional risk for 
  the brave men and women that serve in our Air Force, our Navy, 
  our Army, and our Marine Corps. And to me, that is deeply, 
  deeply disturbing..............................................
And as you know, that bow wave that happens with that many times 
  doesn't manifest itself until months or sometimes years into 
  the future. I think our obligation on this subcommittee, as 
  well as the full committee, is to make sure we understand the 
  full scope of that, understand the challenges that you all face 
  which you have very eloquently stated to us today, but then 
  make sure that we get from you what do we need to do?..........
Now, we talk about preparing the conditions to restore readiness. 
  I mean, that is just building the foundation so you can 
  actually begin to build the house, as I put it. You know, this 
  is about building that two-story house. We are just right now 
  building the foundation. We can't even talk about the materials 
  that we need to actually build the structure of the house......
That is my concern and we need to understand not only what we 
  need to do to continue that effort, but where do we go and 
  where do we make sure we get there in the shortest amount of 
  time possible..................................................
This is also an issue not only of resources, but also of 
  capacity. You know, even if we were tomorrow able to write the 
  check, which we at this time can't, but if we were, the issue 
  is of pipeline capacity. Even if we wanted to, there is only so 
  much that you can do to get to that particular point. So you 
  know, our thrust from this hearing is to make sure we get from 
  you not only where those shortfalls are, but what do we need to 
  do to continue on that path of creating the conditions to 
  rebuild readiness and then how we expect to get there as 
  quickly as possible because the shorter time it takes for us to 
  get there, the less reverberation of effects that we will see 
  years down the road............................................
And we absolutely want to be able to prevent that with everything 
  that we have and we have to be able to, as Mr. Scott spoke 
  about--we have to be able to communicate this with folks that 
  are not on the Armed Services Committee. I think most of the 
  folks on the Armed Services Committee get it, they understand 
  the concept of readiness.......................................
But other members don't, so we have to be able to take from you 
  the headlines that they read about mishaps or shortfalls in 
  aviation across the spectrum and say okay, what are the things 
  that we need to do to be committed as a Congress to get those 
  things done? Maintainers, pilots, air time, experience in 
  maintaining, all those elements, and I think people intuitively 
  get that as long as we can provide them the specifics of that..
So our challenge is to make sure that we get from you, as an 
  outcome of today's hearing, in order to be able to do that. And 
  I know Mrs. Hartzler has another question that she wants to ask 
  that I think is within that realm and I want to make sure that 
  we give her that opportunity...................................
Mrs. Hartzler....................................................
Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman for the additional time. 
  Well said. The purpose of this hearing and the importance of 
  this hearing, not only for our current readiness but also as we 
  look to the future and future platforms that are being 
  developed, maybe lessons learned and that is where my question 
  is focused.....................................................
The excellent airmen at Whiteman Air Force Base know a little bit 
  about readiness, and certainly, they have done an amazing job 
  in keeping the B-2 aircraft viable and mission-capable even 
  though there are only 20 aircrafts and they have had issues 
  with parts, sustainment and now, they are doing the DMS 
  [Defensive Management System] modernization all at the same 
  time. But yet, they are doing a great job......................
And I just wonder, as we look to the B-21, this question is for 
  General--Major General West--as we look to the B-21 being 
  developed, what lessons learned are you gleaning from the B-2 
  that can be a part of the sustainment plan for the B-21 going 
  forward?.......................................................
General West. I would say--I am not that closely connected to the 
  B-21 program. But we want the systems that we procure in the 
  future to the max extent possible to use proven technologies 
  that reduce the amount of time it takes to field and reduce the 
  cost as efficiently as possible, while at the same time, 
  fielding systems that are going to be relevant in combat for 
  years..........................................................
And there is risk with both to be able to do that. We want to 
  make them as maintainable as possible. We have made great 
  strides in maintaining stealth from the original platforms to 
  F-117 to F-22. Now, F-35 is much more maintainable; it will be 
  in the future. We are going to have to be able to share and 
  fuse information for B-21 crews just the same as we are going 
  to be able to do with the F-35.................................
And long-term lifecycle costs have to fit within our requirement 
  to have to modernize many other systems, KC-46, F-35s, weapons 
  associated with platforms to go with it. It all has to fit 
  within a certain top line......................................
So the lessons--not necessarily from B-2, but just in general 
  is--it is the entire life cycle and it has got to be able to 
  perform in combat for decades because it is likely we will 
  operate the B-21 just like we have other platforms and they 
  have to be relevant for a long time............................
Mrs. Hartzler. Certainly, having an increased number of airplanes 
  manufactured will be a big help. At this point, we are 
  projecting 100, from what I have read. But yet, I have also 
  read that that is a little bit short, that other people are 
  saying that we need about 174 to 205 B-21s.....................
Do you have any insights into that issue?........................
General West. No, ma'am. I don't. I will have to take that for 
  the record.....................................................
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on page 
  85.]...........................................................
Mrs. Hartzler. Okay. Well, thank you for what you do.............
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back............................
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mrs. Hartzler............................
I want to thank all of our witnesses today, General Davis, 
  General Mangum, General West, Admiral Manazir. Thank you so 
  much...........................................................
I also want to thank, too, the officers from your staff that are 
  here. I know they are extraordinarily valuable in things that 
  they do to provide the information collectively to us today. So 
  I want to thank each and every one of you......................
I assume we have some junior officers here today, too, so they 
  are certainly seeing and hearing things that they will be 
  dealing with in the years to come..............................
So we appreciate everyone here. Thanks--thank you so much for 
  your leadership and providing us a perspective that we need to 
  make sure that we are making the right decisions to support the 
  great job that you do..........................................
Please thank all of your great airmen, marines, soldiers, and 
  sailors for the job they do in maintaining our aircraft and the 
  job that they do in keeping those aircraft in the air and the 
  job they do in piloting those aircraft. We have absolutely the 
  best in the world and please thank them on our behalf for that.
And with that, our subcommittee is adjourned.....................
[Whereupon, at 11:51 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]......



      
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                           A P P E N D I X

                              July 6, 2016

      
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              PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

                              July 6, 2016

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    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

      
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              WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING

                              THE HEARING

                              July 6, 2016

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            RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MRS. HARTZLER

    General West. The Air Force is currently conducting a 
congressionally-mandated study to determine the appropriate B-21 fleet 
size. We expect to submit the results of this study to Congress in late 
2016/early 2017.   [See page 36.]

      
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              QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING

                              July 6, 2016

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                   QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. TSONGAS

    Ms. Tsongas. Rear Admiral Manazir, during the February 2nd, 2016 
Tactical Airland Subcommittee hearing on Naval Aviation, you noted that 
you were focused on driving down the rate of physiological incidents 
experienced by F/A-18 pilots. Has that occurred? Has the rate of 
incidents decreased since we last spoke?
    Admiral Manazir. The Department has not yet seen a decline in the 
rate of reported F/A-18 physiological incidents. We are continuing 
efforts to educate our aviators about the risks of physiological 
events, and encouraging them to report even minor events which will aid 
in more accurate tracking of the incident rate and diagnosing the 
problem.
    Ms. Tsongas. Rear Admiral Manazir, during the same February 2nd, 
2016 Airland Subcommittee hearing, Rear Admiral Moran noted that 
addressing the physiological incident rate in the F-A/18 fleet was not 
a question of resources. Do you still feel like that is the case?
    Admiral Manazir. The F/A-18 Physiological Episode Team does not 
have any efforts or mitigations that have not been pursued or that have 
been put on hold due to a lack of funding. All reasonable efforts to 
reduce Physiological incidents are being pursued and are currently 
funded.
    Ms. Tsongas. Rear Admiral Manazir, during the same February 2nd, 
2016 Airland Subcommittee hearing, Rear Admiral Moran also indicated 
that the Navy was looking into extending the capacity of the backup 
oxygen system in order for pilots to have longer access to pure oxygen 
in the event of an emergency or if they felt the onset of a 
physiological event. Can you tell me where the Navy is in those 
efforts?
    Admiral Manazir. The Navy is in the process of awarding a contract 
in the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2016 for the developmental 
engineering design to increase the NACES seat kit emergency oxygen 
capacity by adding an additional oxygen bottle to the seat pan. The 
Navy will field the solution immediately following successful 
development and testing of the system.
                                 ______
                                 
                   QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. PETERS
    Mr. Peters. The Secure LVC Advanced Training Environment ATD will 
provide a technology framework for LVC integration into 4th and 5th 
generation aircraft for a 2022 Program of Record. This program is 
intended to help meet increasing demand for higher fidelity, contested 
environment combat training and maintain a critical technology and 
training advantage. Given the significant cost savings and higher 
fidelity training SLATE ATD will help deliver, please provide an 
estimate of additional program resources to achieve all identified 
program goals including physical cockpit integration and testing, 
encryption, and 4th and 5th generation interoperability.
    General Davis. At this time, information regarding additional 
resource requirements has not been determined due to the immaturity of 
SLATE ATD. USAF-led efforts to test and field SLATE ATD will continue 
to be monitored with interest and no financial burden to the USMC. If 
the program matures over time and is determined to meet USMC LVC 
training capability requirements, then efforts to join the program may 
begin. In the meantime, the USMC will continue to research this and 
other LVC training options.
    Mr. Peters. The Secure LVC Advanced Training Environment ATD will 
provide a technology framework for LVC integration into 4th and 5th 
generation aircraft for a 2022 Program of Record. This program is 
intended to help meet increasing demand for higher fidelity, contested 
environment combat training and maintain a critical technology and 
training advantage. Given the significant cost savings and higher 
fidelity training SLATE ATD will help deliver, please provide an 
estimate of additional program resources to achieve all identified 
program goals including physical cockpit integration and testing, 
encryption, and 4th and 5th generation interoperability.
    General Mangum. The Secure Live, Virtual, Constructive (LVC) 
Advanced Training Environment (SLATE) Advanced Technology Demonstration 
(ATD) system is not an Army program of record for our aviation assets 
nor, is it on any transition path for any Army training aids, devices, 
simulations or simulators.
    Mr. Peters. The Secure LVC Advanced Training Environment ATD will 
provide a technology framework for LVC integration into 4th and 5th 
generation aircraft for a 2022 Program of Record. This program is 
intended to help meet increasing demand for higher fidelity, contested 
environment combat training and maintain a critical technology and 
training advantage. Given the significant cost savings and higher 
fidelity training SLATE ATD will help deliver, please provide an 
estimate of additional program resources to achieve all identified 
program goals including physical cockpit integration and testing, 
encryption, and 4th and 5th generation interoperability.
    General West. The SLATE program team has developed and coordinated 
a set of priorities, focus, and a revised timeline for an extension to 
the SLATE ATD to align with the availability of an F-35 aircraft for 
flight testing. The extension timeline would cost $48M and would add 
2.5 years to the schedule. In addition to testing SLATE components and 
models on the F-35, the extension expands the capabilities of the 
baseline demonstration with a larger number of sensor models, cyber 
vulnerability assessments of the SLATE infrastructure, and additional 
trades on range infrastructure, form factor processors, radios, MILS 
devices and 4th and 5th gen integration.
    The Air Force considers it essential that the potential for a 
timely training capability remain the practical imperative of the SLATE 
ATD program.
    Mr. Peters. The Secure LVC Advanced Training Environment ATD will 
provide a technology framework for LVC integration into 4th and 5th 
generation aircraft for a 2022 Program of Record. This program is 
intended to help meet increasing demand for higher fidelity, contested 
environment combat training and maintain a critical technology and 
training advantage. Given the significant cost savings and higher 
fidelity training SLATE ATD will help deliver, please provide an 
estimate of additional program resources to achieve all identified 
program goals including physical cockpit integration and testing, 
encryption, and 4th and 5th generation interoperability.
    Admiral Manazir. The Department of the Navy (DON) is collaborating 
with Department of the Air Force as a supplemental contributor to Air 
Force led Secure LVC Advanced Training Environment (SLATE) ATD efforts. 
DON hopes to gain a better understanding, through advanced or 
experimental waveforms, of how to improve data transfer capabilities 
driven by future aircraft training requirements. However, as a 
supplemental contributor DON defers specifics of SLATE ATD program 
goals and resourcing to the lead service.

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