[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 114-71]
EFFECTS OF REDUCED INFRASTRUCTURE
AND BASE OPERATING SUPPORT
INVESTMENTS ON ARMY AND MARINE CORPS READINESS
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
DECEMBER 3, 2015
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
97-822 WASHINGTON : 2016
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing
Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800;
DC area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2104 Mail: Stop IDCC,
Washington, DC 20402-0001
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 JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama SCOTT H. PETERS, California
CHRISTOPHER P. GIBSON, New York TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida BETO O'ROURKE, Texas
BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona
SAM GRAVES, Missouri
STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma
Michael Miller, Professional Staff Member
Brian Garrett, Professional Staff Member
Katherine Rember, 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
Halverson, LTG David D., USA, Assistant Chief of Staff for
Installation Management; accompanied by MG Robert P. White,
USA, Deputy Chief of Staff, G3 (Operations), U.S. Army Forces
Command; and COL Andrew Cole, Jr., USA, Garrison Commander,
Fort Riley..................................................... 3
Hudson, MajGen Charles L., USMC, Commander, Marine Corps
Installations Command, Assistant Deputy Commandant,
Installations and Logistics; accompanied by MajGen Brian D.
Beaudreault, USMC, Commanding General, 2nd Marine Division, and
Col Chris Pappas, Jr., USMC, Commanding Officer, Marine Corps
Air Station Cherry Point....................................... 22
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Halverson, LTG David D., joint with MG Robert P. White and
COL Andrew Cole, Jr........................................ 37
Hudson, MajGen Charles L., joint with MajGen Brian D.
Beaudreault and Col Chris Pappas, Jr....................... 48
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
Ms. Duckworth................................................ 62
Mrs. Hartzler................................................ 61
Mr. O'Rourke................................................. 61
Mr. Scott.................................................... 61
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mr. O'Rourke................................................. 70
Mr. Wittman.................................................. 65
EFFECTS OF REDUCED INFRASTRUCTURE AND BASE OPERATING SUPPORT
INVESTMENTS ON ARMY AND MARINE CORPS READINESS
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Readiness,
Washington, DC, Thursday, December 3, 2015.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 8:04 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 call to order the House Armed Services
Subcommittee on Readiness. I am going to wish everybody a good
morning and thank our panelists for joining us. Today's hearing
is on the ``Effects of Reduced Infrastructure and Base
Operating Support Investments on Readiness.'' \1\ For this
hearing, we will have two separate panels, one with the Army
and one with the Marine Corps.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The official title of this hearing was amended to read
``Effects of Reduced Infrastructure and Base Operating Support
Investments on Army and Marine Corps Readiness.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would like to first welcome our distinguished panels of
experts from the Army. This morning, we will have with us
Lieutenant General David D. Halverson, USA [U.S. Army],
Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management; Major
General Robert P. White, U.S. Army, Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3,
-5, and -7; and Colonel Andrew Cole, U.S. Army, Garrison
Commander, Fort Riley, Kansas.
Overall, operational readiness recovery has been the focus
of much of the Readiness Subcommittee's information gathering,
legislation, and oversight since the drawdown of forces in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Over the past decade, the Department of
Defense has consistently taken risk in infrastructure
investments and reduced mission support services by redirecting
funds from installation programs to other operational and
training budget priorities.
This risk has been exacerbated by uncertain funding level
stemming from repeated continuing resolutions and
sequestration. These infrastructure and installation support
risks pose a challenge to the recovery of military readiness.
The purpose of this hearing is to clarify the Army and Marine
Corps' risk choices for infrastructure and installation
services, also to address funding priorities and mitigation
strategies, and to gather more detail on the current and future
impact of these decisions on operation and training from a
commander's perspective.
As the witnesses testify today, I would ask that you
address existing risks in the infrastructure and installation
support program and impacts to readiness, and also how the
recent 2-year budget reshape will affect those risks and
impacts, and what will be the level of risk and impacts over
the next 10 years if budget levels remain constant.
I would now like to turn to our ranking member, Madeleine
Bordallo, for any remarks that she may have.
STATEMENT OF HON. MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, A DELEGATE FROM GUAM,
RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you for arranging this hearing on our infrastructure and its
effect on readiness.
And gentlemen, thank you all for being here today. Often,
in Congress, it is the topics that intersect multiple areas of
interest or jurisdiction that fall through the cracks, or they
struggle to get the attention they deserve. I have personally
experienced the challenge of working on several issues that
cross the lines of work being performed by the Armed Services
Committee and the Natural Resources Committee.
We are lucky that this intersectional topic, that of
infrastructure and readiness, happens to fall almost completely
within the jurisdiction of this subcommittee. Over the years,
this committee has held hearings on the state of our military
infrastructure and the impact that budget decisions have had on
the Department's [Department of Defense] ability to maintain
that infrastructure.
Similarly, this subcommittee has closely examined issues
impacting the state of our military's readiness and the
devastating impacts that sequestration have had. However, I do
believe this is the first time we have held a subcommittee
hearing where we look at the intersection and attempt to
understand the impact that budget decisions on military
infrastructure and installation support are having and will
have on training and readiness in the future.
We have heard evidence from several military installations
that are indicative of adverse impacts to training and
operations due to degraded infrastructure and installation
support. So if this is the case, the subcommittee needs to
understand what those impacts are and what needs to be done to
address the situation.
Already our full spectrum readiness recovery timelines
extend beyond 2020, and even that is only with stable funding.
Maintenance can only be deferred for so long before
consequences have the potential to be catastrophic, and we need
to ensure that we don't get to that point by protecting our
infrastructure because there is no question that without it, we
are incapable of generating readiness.
So, again, Mr. Chairman, I thank you, and I look forward to
hearing from our witnesses this morning.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Madeleine.
General Halverson, we will begin with you. I would ask that
you limit your comments to 5 minutes or less. Your written
testimony has been made available to the members and is entered
into the official record, so I will now turn the floor to you.
STATEMENT OF LTG DAVID D. HALVERSON, USA, ASSISTANT CHIEF OF
STAFF FOR INSTALLATION MANAGEMENT; ACCOMPANIED BY MG ROBERT P.
WHITE, USA, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF, G3 (OPERATIONS), U.S. ARMY
FORCES COMMAND, AND COL ANDREW COLE, JR., USA, GARRISON
COMMANDER, FORT RILEY
General Halverson. I thank you, Chairman Wittman and
Ranking Member Bordallo, and the distinguished members of the
committee for allowing us the opportunity to discuss the
effects of this reduced infrastructure and base operating
investments on Army readiness. Joining me today, obviously, are
General White, the Forces Command operations officer, and you
know, Andrew Cole, the garrison commander at Fort Riley, which
will give you a good perspective of the one who is in charge of
readiness, like Pat [General White], and tracking its readiness
and with the impact and where they want to go, to someone who
has to execute it at the day-to-day level of trying to provide
that support to the commander as they build that readiness,
especially for decisive operations.
I also want to thank you for your support in the recently
passed Fiscal Year 2016 National Defense [Authorization] Act.
We really appreciate your all's work and to make sure that we
do have the funds available to make sure that we can and do
train our force.
The Army is at a critical point in installation readiness.
Budget constraints are affecting the Army's ability to provide
facilities that our All-Volunteer Force and their families
depend upon to sustain readiness. Our installations truly are
our Army's home, and the availability of the quality ranges,
maneuver areas, airfields, classrooms are essential to a unit's
and the institutional Army's ability to train.
As we say, installations serve as the readiness platforms
for our Army and its training. Our Chief of Staff, General
Milley, clearly stated that his number one priority in this
complex environment is readiness and there is no other number
one, so for that reason, it is important and vital that we
focus our efforts to provide that realistic training
environment so our soldiers have the ability to fight and win.
Over the past year and a half, I have visited many
installations throughout the globe and met our men and women
that provide that care to our installations and the soldiers
and the families that then live on those posts. These men and
women operate and maintain the training areas, the airfields,
the maintenance, ensure that the sewers, the lights go on, all
these type of things that provide that capability to set the
environment so therefore our soldiers can have that realistic
aspect of what they need to be able to do, to have the
overmatch and the capability and the confidence they need to be
able to win.
And we are working hard to mitigate, as you said, the
reduced funding brought on by the Budget Control Act of 2011
[BCA]. Even with their efforts, the persistent funding
constraints and the cumulative rising costs of the personnel,
of energy, construction, water, and engineering services have
forced the Army to take risk in installations to maintain a
ready force.
The reduced buying power due to these rising costs drove
significant personnel and service reductions. The cumulative
effect of these reductions impact the throughput of our
soldiers and the training and the number of rotations we can
support. The direct effect of these reductions in the garrisons
being that many of the areas were at the razor's edge of
manning to provide those enablers that the units need.
Even with BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure] 2005
improvements in infrastructure and reposturing, the fiscal
realities are showing the decline in our facilities, and are
affecting our future readiness. As the chairman says, how we
are going to be postured for the future and what we need to be
doing? You have to invest now. So those long-term challenges
are there.
The Army's installations are the power-projection
platforms, enabling the readiness and ensuring deployable
combat forces, but what we are seeing, as I visited, the
personnel tempo and the operational tempo is increasing because
of our decreasing number of soldiers that we do have as we go
to 490 [thousand] and then to 450 [thousand], and so,
therefore, the Army is very concerned about the risk of the
installation funding and its effect on the total Army.
I am just very pleased to be able to answer your questions
and then hear what the panel--because this is, like you have
mentioned, the first time people are starting to understand
that your installations and your investments equate to enabling
our ability to train our forces that we need now and in the
future. So I look forward to the questions that you may have.
Thank you.
[The joint prepared statement of General Halverson, General
White, and Colonel Cole can be found in the Appendix on page
37.]
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, General Halverson. We appreciate
the opportunity to get a little further understanding about how
installation capacity and the current budget situation affects
Army capability, and we appreciate your perspective on that.
As you had spoken of, there are a number of challenges, I
think, that all of our service branches face but especially our
Army and our Marine Corps. If you can give us a perspective on
what categories of facilities and the types of installation
services are most important in raising and sustaining levels of
Army readiness, and given the consecutive years of funding
where funding has been reduced, the things that you have had to
do to try to sustain that, where do you believe you need to go
to recapture or to recapitalize in these areas?
General Halverson. Chairman, that is a great question. I
say the biggest things that we have to be able to provide
enablers, for General White and his forces and the senior
commanders, are our ability to have the ranges available. As we
sit there and we have gone through the last 13-plus years of
war, what we found out, we were doing a lot of asymmetric
things where things were fairly static, where we had FOB
[forward operating base] base structures and then, before, we
had to be able to train.
As we now have gone to decisive operations, what we found
out that we did not have the targetry or the other aspects that
we needed to facilitate our home station training that we need
to then optimize our decisive operations that we have at our
combat training centers. That is one aspect, so, therefore, we
really have to look at our training support systems and our
other systems that we have in our ranges to be able to
facilitate these requirements that we do.
The same thing is--so, therefore, folks like range control,
air traffic control folks, all these types of things are areas
that we have to invest. What we found out is that, because of
the rotational model, we never had the full force at home
stationed at the same time as they are there, so, therefore,
the scheduling of ranges, the optimizations. Usually we used to
go to a model of a 6-week lock-in. What we are finding now in
many of our installations that we have to go a lot further
because of the availability of the ranges that we do have.
A place like Fort Huachuca may have only five of the nine
ranges available to it because of a manning shortage for our
ability, so we have to plan out farther. We have to leverage
these things.
The second thing we have to really start investing on from
an investment perspective are things like live, virtual, and
constructive aspects of how do we optimize time. So we need
simulators to be able to facilitate those things so we can
integrate those types of things. I think General White can just
kind of say what he would need as he sees these mission control
aspects and home station training control approaches or
capabilities that he needs at his home station. Pat.
General White. Thank you, sir, and Chairman.
So there are four things you need to generate readiness.
You need airspace. You need land. You need IT [information
technology] infrastructure so you can push through the pipes.
And you need personnel--well, really five, and time. We have
taken risk as an Army over the past 10 years by pushing our
resources into the direct readiness generator, which happens to
be OPTEMPO, operations tempo, and taken risk on infrastructure
at facilities. I will give you an example, one vignette, to how
this has affected this Army taking risk.
So we are programmed to finish a company gunnery on a range
in 12 days. That is what is programmed. That is what our
strategy says. That is how we are resourced for ammunition,
fuel, and time. Because of some of the issues that General
Halverson mentioned, it now takes us 14 to 16 days to complete
what should be done in 10 to 12 days.
So there is more time spent on the range. That is due to
many factors. One is manning of range control personnel, 16
hours, 5 days a week, vice 24 hours, 7 days a week. There is
the currency of the targetry. As many of you have visited our
installations and our ranges, we have digital multipurpose
ranges at some installation. We have what you call multipurpose
ranges at other installations, and so that affects our timeline
as well because the digital is very complex. Soldiers can't put
their hands on it, not allowed to; it is contracted out. And
they are contracted for 16/5 [hours/days per week].
A place that has an MPRC [Multi-Purpose Range Complex], you
can put soldiers, touch targets, touch target lifters, and help
with the range. So long way around of saying, because of the
risk that we take, and we are now starting to see the effects
of how much time it takes to generate readiness at our tactical
levels, and I am sure we will cover more on the subject of
airspace, which is crucial to our readiness as well.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you.
Colonel Cole, I want to get your perspective. If you would
let us know, how does corporate Army infrastructure and
installation support decisions and guidance impact your ability
to provide mission support for operations there at Fort Riley?
Colonel Cole. Good morning, Chairman. I appreciate that
question. It, in some instances, can be a little bit of a
challenge. So, from this perspective, as we talk about ranges,
to kind of continue that thread of discussion, one of the
things that has impacted us at the local level is a thing
called contractor de-scope. So those contract support services
that we have out on the ranges that help us maintain and help
us operate those ranges have been going through a review on,
what should the size of that contract be? And, ultimately, at
the end of that string down at the installation level, it
challenges us with being able to provide the appropriate
support and meet the senior commander's training requirements.
So with this full nest concept, kind of as we have
discussed earlier, with more forces home--and you can even add
an additional piece to that, which is Reserve and National
Guard units that come to an RCTC [Reserve Components Training
Center]. So Fort Riley is one of those locations; we have to
factor them into what we call our gun line. And so it becomes
to put a stress on your ability to fit all the units that are
home, to turn that range maintenance so that it is reset for
another unit to come in.
So that is just an example of how it can be challenging
down at the local level.
Mr. Wittman. Very good.
General White, you gave us a good perspective on how the
current impacts installation support is affecting readiness.
Give us your perspective on how this new 2-year budget window
now affects that ability. What does it do to either allow you
or not to allow you to regenerate certain elements of readiness
through installation infrastructure and support?
General White. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The analysis that we have done to this point, based on what
we know, is we will decrement our operations tempo because we
have taken so much risk in the past 10 years on our
infrastructure, so although the Chief's priority is readiness
and it is generated through the installation platforms and with
operations tempo, it looks as if what we will decide to do in
the future if we continue to take decrements is to go after the
operations tempo of units, which means less time on ranges,
which means it takes longer to generate readiness.
Mr. Wittman. Got you. Very good.
Ms. Bordallo.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have a couple of questions here. I think, General
Halverson, you or any of the others may be able to answer.
At what level are the connections made between the training
requirements of a unit and the ability of an installation to
support those training requirements, and how often are they
reevaluated? In other words, at what level are the decisions
impacting military infrastructure and installation support
being coordinated with those in charge of training and
operation requirements?
General.
General Halverson. Ma'am, that is a great question because
it is very complex. Obviously, we have our processes where we
sit there and build our requirements of what they need, how
many soldiers will be there, what is the availability of the
ranges, and all those types of things, so we have a good
process from a corporate perspective from us to be able to take
those requirements, vet those requirements, and to be able to,
like Pat was saying, how do you go then from what is your
priorities, and then prioritize these as what we need from a
funding perspective.
What we try to do--and it is really a bottom-up--you know,
it is a top-down but a bottom-up refinement of it that we try
to identify with these requirements because we want the senior
commander who is responsible for that organization to have the
impact that he needs to do this.
This is where the challenge like with Andrew [COL Cole] has
because I have a certain amount of funding level that then
impacts my ability to say how much I can do. It is going to be
very, very hard for him to then be able to execute it.
So like what Andrew is saying, I have had to be able to
take risk because personnel costs are high, are a high cost
driver for things, so that is a place that we have to look at:
How can you be more efficient or more effective with less
people? At times, it becomes a tension point to him when the
senior commander then says, I will give him, you know, like he
was saying, 16 hours, 5 days a week, but he really needs 16
hours, 7 days a week, for him to execute the extra time he
needs.
So we then start going with overtime or other issues that
then at the end of the day, when you rebalance yourself, it is
all from one pot, and that is what the challenge is from us,
from a corporate. So we have a good process of doing that, but
we push down that then to him to integrate that at the local
level to ensure that he meets the senior commander's
objectives.
He then has that perspective of--and then this is where
some of the risk comes in, as you well know. That he, because
he will need to be able to push money somewhere, will then
defer other maintenance he has to do in some of his other
infrastructure stuff, which could be barracks for the housing
for our soldiers or for his ability to do some restoration or
modernization. That is the challenge, I think, Andrew has, and
he can probably, you know, articulate that at little bit better
at the local level.
Andrew.
Ms. Bordallo. Colonel.
Colonel Cole. Yes, ma'am. The other challenge that we often
face is as budgets are passed down and we receive what our
local discretionary authorization is for what we call our
sustainment, our restoration and modernization budgets,
oftentimes we are having to take risk between where can we
accept a greater risk in doing standard maintenance of
facilities versus our restoration and modernization, which we
have to use to program to do significant repair of facilities.
So with that being said, over the last number of years, we
have received a lesser percentage of what we believe to be our
requirements are for facilities maintenance plans. So when you
compound that effect, one of the challenges today is, how do we
take what we really need 90 percent of our funding for but yet
we have only received, for example, 65 percent, where do we
accept that 15 percent of risk?
And so we make choices, and we make some decisions, and
ultimately, if there is a catastrophic failure, then we have to
end up allocating our funding against that. And we don't have
the space, we don't have the flexibility to treat our normal
maintenance plan.
So, as an example, one of our headquarters buildings was
located in a historical facility at Fort Riley. Because of the
constraint in funding for maintenance, we weren't able to do
some of the preventative checks on that building. Ultimately,
we had what we call a glycol hose leak, so the HVAC [heating,
ventilating, and air conditioning] system failed over a long
weekend.
With that being said, we had, for lack of a better word,
coolant leak over about three different floors, which did
significant damage to the building. When you go back and try to
repair those tiles, you now have pulled back asbestos tiles, so
now you have not only run into a repair issue, you have now run
into an asbestos abatement issue. So could we, if we had had
the appropriate funding to do the sustainment of that building,
maybe what could have cost us then thousands of dollars would
not now cost us multimillion dollars in repair?
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you.
And it is certainly a challenge. I have one other question.
How have base operation support programs been impacted by
repeated reliance on continuing resolutions rather than an
annual appropriation and the attendant lack of predictability
in the timing and the amount of allocation of funding? Can you
give specific examples of how this impacts training and
readiness? General.
General Halverson. Ma'am, the bottom line, yes, because
with a continuing resolution, you have less buying power for
what you need. So the predictability like we have had with at
least a budget, we can then make good fiscal decisions on how
we can then write our contracts to get more capability for less
price.
So when you have the continuing resolutions for month per
month or quarter by quarter, it causes us to spend more because
of the workforce aspect of it.
The second thing is, also, it is just a strain on the
workforce to be able to manage that because now you are having
to touch it a few times every year and not being able to have
some comfort levels where you are monitoring the contract
instead of just sitting there, you know, doing it. So what we
are finding from the workforce stress is that there is also
workforce stress for them to be able to monitor it.
Ms. Bordallo. Right.
General Halverson. So getting away from continuing
resolutions and getting more predictability will greatly affect
our readiness because we will be able to buy more capability
for less dollars. That is the predictability that we need
within the installations.
What happens is that we get caught up into the day-by-day
aspect of not knowing the unknown, which then causes chaos, I
think, and not being as predictive as we need to. And it gets
really down into like what Andrew was saying, is that when you
are only doing sustainment at a certain level, which really
means you are not doing your oil checks, right, and so,
therefore, you are not checking that stuff, you are not putting
your eyes on those things to make sure that you are doing it.
You are waiting for the life, safety, and health issues that go
on.
And in a lot of locations where we are, we just have a
challenge with that because, you know, if you don't have HVACs
working, you are going to have mold and you are going to have a
health issue. And that is where the garrison commanders and
their team and their senior commanders are putting forth some
of their effort so, but----
Ms. Bordallo. Well, I can understand----
General Halverson [continuing]. And we appreciate that to
try to get away from CR [continuing resolutions].
Ms. Bordallo. Yes, I can understand the challenges.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Ms. Bordallo.
Mrs. Hartzler.
Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, gentlemen. It is great to see you, and I look
forward to getting to visit with you, Colonel, at our sister
installation there across the Kansas line, but we in western
Missouri certainly appreciate all you do at Fort Riley, and
Fort Leonard Wood, certainly very, very important mission
there.
I have some general questions about the topic, but I wanted
to start more specifically about something that happened at
Ford Leonard Wood that deals with installations in general and
safety of our soldiers. About 5 days before I was sworn into
office in January 2011, you remember, there was a tornado on
New Year's Day that went through Fort Leonard Wood and
destroyed several homes, as well as part of--impacted some
other infrastructure there. I believe the sewer plant, et
cetera. And, thankfully, no one was hurt seriously or killed,
and it was just the perfect day if you were going to have
something that happened, a lot of the soldiers were gone.
But looking back on it, it raised a lot of concerns about
safety. The homes didn't have basements. They didn't have
places for the families to go. And it went through the--as you
remember--a lot of the training grounds. And the thought was,
if, on a normal day, there would be thousands of soldiers out
there, and there was no place to go in the event of a tornado.
And since that time, I know they have installed some
facilities where soldiers can do that. But when you live in
Tornado Alley--and I know Colonel Cole probably appreciates
this. I am just wondering, because at that time, General
Quantock was the commander there, did a wonderful job, and
thankfully we had the engineering school there with all the
equipment, able to quickly help clean things up and get going.
But I followed this for a while, and I haven't asked the
question lately. What are we learning from this, and what
lessons have been learned installation-wide to putting
facilities in place for soldiers in the event of a tornado? And
has there been any changes made to Fort Riley as a result of
the tornado or any vulnerabilities that we discovered may be
needed to be addressed?
General Halverson. Ma'am, good question. I commanded Fort
Sill, which is Oklahoma, which is Tornado Alley, too. And one
of things that we have done, just like you said, is as we have
looked at our housing, how do you exercise and how do you have
evacuation places that do have, like you are saying, tornado.
We are not at the level that we need to be, you know what I
mean, and we are looking at, holistically, at the effects of
some of those.
But, once again, the challenge we have is as I look at that
and as we are looking very firmly at those, the ability to put
those in when you have other driving costs, so it is a fiscal--
when you have fiscal constraints, and from a priorities, how do
you get these, as you know, safe houses and stuff like that. So
within Fort Sill, we did put in some of those and maintain
those and then have to make sure that the people are aware.
They are not at the numbers that they need to be because it
was not integrated in the original plans, but I think that is
one I will take for the record and give you the pure thing from
a policy perspective of where we are.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 61.]
Mrs. Hartzler. And, again, I know the housing that was
rebuilt, they put a safe room in.
General Halverson. Right.
Mrs. Hartzler. But there is still a lot of housing that is
old and maybe doesn't have that, but, you know, I just think
that is a practical thing that can happen, and then dealing
with installations, we need to make sure that our soldiers are
safe, whether it be on the training ground or their families
and their housing, so----
General Halverson. I agree totally, ma'am.
Mrs. Hartzler. Sure. Regarding maintenance, another
question that comes from home.
Hard to see you. There we go. There you go. Dr. Wenstrup,
thank you.
Dealing with maintenance. I have heard from local people
both sides of it. Some have argued that we need to be using the
Active Duty soldiers more in doing maintenance on the bases,
that they have the capabilities. Why aren't they asphalting?
Why aren't they doing groundskeeping? Why aren't they doing
some of these other basic things that could be carried out? And
the argument is that that would be most cost-effective, plus
they could use their skills.
Then I have heard from other people to say: Well, we need
to contract out more to private entities and that it would be
more cost-effective.
So as we are looking at limited dollars here, installation,
maintenance cost, what is your matrix to determining if you ask
the soldiers to do the work around the base or versus you go
private, and which is more cost-effective?
General Halverson. That is a good question. The issue here
is it is really called borrowed military manpower that we do.
So some places, like Forces Command, where you have a large
TO&E [Table of Organization and Equipment], you have a lot more
capability and flexibility to be able to do that, so things
like force protection, gate access and stuff, where it is a
skill set that we use when we go to FOBs or if we get deployed,
you may have to do it, has a one-to-one correlations.
There are other issues, as you know, from a soldier's
perspective, what, you know, is--it is part of life. So you
have to have the capability. For a TRADOC [Training and
Doctrine Command] post, they have very little capabilities,
like what Fort Leonard Wood is, because you basically have your
drill sergeants or you have a schoolhouse that then has very
minimal capability to have soldiers because they are either in
the classroom or they are teaching or instructing young
engineers, chemical, and the capabilities you have like at
Leonard Wood.
So what we are seeing is that TRADOC posts have very little
capability and you have--where we can do it, like a FORSCOM
[U.S. Army Forces Command] post, we will have them manage that
internally of what they have to provide services for that
capability.
From a cost-effectiveness--the model is various things.
Much of the things that we are talking about, it could be
ground maintenance or whatever, is not cost-effective because
what you are doing is you are taking a soldier away from his
collective or individual training time, and what we are seeing
is that you need repetitions, just like in the weight room, to
be an infantryman, to be an engineer, and you need to spend
time in your squad or those aspects that you do.
So it is a very, very fine line that commanders have to
articulate and balance that readiness equation.
But you know, Pat, you may have something on that, but that
is really where the concern is.
Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you.
Colonel Cole. Ma'am, if I can just add real quick--and I
think we do--at the local level, we really do try to do our
best, and then giving you an example. For example, for
engineering work. So at a FORSCOM installation, where we have a
number of differing disciplines, when we come across those
projects that may be able to be done by some of our military
engineers, we do do the crosswalk.
So in those instances where you can meet both the
requirements of the installation and also count that as
appropriate training in the military occupational specialty of
that soldier, then we do seek those instances out. So there are
some engineering projects that we are asking our engineer
brigade to do because they have the talent, they have the
skills, and it counts for training because they would do that
potentially on a mission someplace.
So in those instances where we compare them and line them
up, we do attempt to do that and, again, be cost-effective.
Mr. Wittman. Very good.
Thank you, Mrs. Hartzler.
Mr. O'Rourke.
Mr. O'Rourke. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The 18 percent excess infrastructure that the Army has,
what force size is that based on, or is it directly correlated?
General Halverson. Congressman, obviously, when we talk
about the excess capacity and the things that we talked, 18
percent, that is for a force size of Active Duty of a 490
[thousand] force, in which we are at now, you know, I mean, and
obviously, we are going to 450 [thousand] in the near term.
Mr. O'Rourke. And how elastic are those perimeters? So if
we went down to 420 [thousand], does the percentage increase if
we went to 550 [thousand]? Does the percentage decrease, or is
that 18 percent cover a band of, you know, 50,000, 60,000.
General Halverson. Obviously, that is our best guess right
now. We have an order out for all of our garrison and our
senior commanders to be able to look at their excess capacity,
so it is our best estimate. Obviously, you know, we would need
more guidance from Congress to be able to look in detail what
we think our excess capacity is, but our best----
Mr. O'Rourke. Are you saying without a BRAC process, you
cannot get that detail?
General Halverson. Without a BRAC process where we could
actually look at what our capacity is for this. The bottom line
is that we have the same amount of posts, 155 installations for
a force that we had of 460 [thousand] in the Active, now going
down to 450 [thousand]. So it is a huge gap that we have, and
the challenge we have is that we can't optimize our investments
or optimize if we don't have some authority to study like a
BRAC and how we can move forward.
Mr. O'Rourke. Got you. Yeah. And so understanding that a
BRAC would give you more detail, where you are now, what is the
estimate on what it costs you to maintain that 18 percent?
General Halverson. Sir, right now, the rough estimates as
we know, it is about $480 million a year that we spend on the
excess capacity that we do have because you need to keep those
buildings going; you need to have water and all those types of
things. So it is about $480 million a year that we have because
of excess capacity. Our initial estimates with 450 [thousand]
is like 21 percent, so it goes up to almost $470 million of
the--$570 million that you need----
Mr. O'Rourke. So somewhere around half a billion dollars.
How much readiness annually would that buy you?
General Halverson. That would buy a lot of readiness, and
it would also focus our efforts that we would need for
investment purposes to get the quality ranges and the manpower
and the human capital that we need to ensure the top quality.
Mr. O'Rourke. Beyond the dollar amount, is there a way to
quantify or qualify or illustrate that readiness that we would
be able to purchase?
General Halverson. We do that----
Mr. O'Rourke. What are we not doing now that we would be
able to do going forward?
General Halverson. I could take that for the record, but
you are right, we could--obviously, Pat knows, the money he
gets in his OMA [Operations and Maintenance, Army] account a
year in the multibillions, that $500 is a--you know, is a good
chunk of change that he could buy flying hours; he could buy
other issues that he would need to be able to sustain his
force.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 61.]
Mr. O'Rourke. Yeah. And it would be, and perhaps this is
pending a BRAC process, but I would like to know the band of
force size that we would have with that reduction in excess
capacity.
For example, you know, given all the threats that we
encounter today from, you know, Central Asia to the Middle East
to potential future threats in the South China Sea, I think we
want to have the ability to ramp up, and I don't think anybody
wants to get down to the sequester level of 420 [thousand].
So I just want to make sure that we wouldn't be necessarily
cutting anything that would prevent us from increasing force
size, but if readiness is the single greatest priority, as you
said earlier, and if it is going to determine the success and
perhaps even survival of our service members overseas, I want
to make sure that we are investing in that sufficiently. And if
this is a way to get there, then, you know, I want to find a
way to do that.
I do have a follow-up question to one that Ms. Hartzler
asked. We were recently in Afghanistan and meeting with one of
the commanders at one of the installations there, one of the
bases. They essentially talked about transferring
responsibilities from service members to contractors as we drew
down our force size there and perhaps creating or seeing some
efficiencies. You, in answer to her question, mentioned why
contractors make sense to allow service members to focus on
their responsibilities. Do you see any costs or negative
consequences of our reliance on contractors?
General Halverson. It is a triad balance between our
military, our DA [Department of the Army] civilian, and our
contractor. I think that triad is good. If you are overreliant
on one of them, you are out of balance, and at times, we are
out of balance because you have to be very firm on your
contracting approaches that you do have.
So we are at that razor's edge, like I said, for myself
personally because when you come down like in forces, we were
saying the 490 [thousand] to 450 [thousand], we have done a
RAND study here where it is not a one to one. Some people think
it is a one to one. You take a soldier out; you can take a DA
civilian out to run an installation. Our workload is really
over how many square foot of buildings you have, how many
square miles that we have to be able to maintain.
So when you have an infrastructure of 155 installations we
have, I mean, that infrastructure portfolio is valued over $300
billion, you know what I mean, and really, when you talk about
the percentages that we are putting in for sustainment, we are
only putting in 1 to 3 percent of those in sustainment for
infrastructure we have.
So, from that perspective, that is why we have to optimize
all this stuff, and so I appreciate your questioning.
Mr. O'Rourke. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. O'Rourke.
And there is language in this year's NDAA [National Defense
Authorization Act] to direct all the individual service
branches to do a capacity analysis, and so that we get a modern
one. The other one is just a projection from the 2005 analysis,
just projecting it forward. We have asked them to do a detailed
analysis so we can truly look at what the capacity is, whether
over capacity on a service-branch-by-service-branch basis, so
we should have that information for next year. Very good.
Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Colonel Cole, I am one of the few people that has actually
gone to Riley County, Kansas, from time to time voluntarily. I
hunt in that Tuttle Creek area from time to time. But one of
the stories I have heard out there--and I have been hunting out
there for years--is that the Army was forced to put in
skylights at a big tank facility because of an energy mandate
that Congress had passed down and that when they got the
skylights in, the contractor didn't unhook the electric lights.
And so there was a tremendous amount of money spent but no
reduction in the amount of energy used.
Are you familiar with that story? Can you tell me if that
is true or not?
Colonel Cole. Sir, thanks for that question. I am going to
ask if I can take it for the record to check that. I am not
familiar with that specific story. And while I track our
energy, our energy consumption, and where we are at on reducing
that, I am not familiar with that one, sir.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 62.]
Mr. Scott. General, you were shaking your head ``yes,''
that maybe you had heard about that?
General Halverson. No, I have not, but, you know, nothing
surprises me being in the military 36 years, whatever, so we
are really working, you know, sir, on the renewable energies
and to be able to get within our perspectives. That is one of
the, obviously, the net zero and other issues that we are
really trying to work toward----
Mr. Scott [continuing]. And we all know this, but if you
put skylights in and then you don't unhook any of the
fluorescent lights, then there is no net energy savings. There
is just a cost of putting the skylights in.
General Halverson. I agree totally.
Mr. Scott. And that is one of the things that, you know, as
I am traveling around, we all get kind of ribbed a little bit
about how, you know, the military says they are broke and look
how much money they waste on these things, and it is somewhat
friendly ribbing, if you will, from friends, but it is also a
concern of mine because that money can be--we don't have the
money to waste, and certainly I am concerned about the
environment and think we should do our part, but we also need
to be smart about what--you know, doing something for the sake
of saying that we did it----
General Halverson. Right.
Mr. Scott [continuing]. Is different than doing something
and accomplishing something, and I would just----
General Halverson. So I think that is really important
because that is one of the things we have seen with our energy
conservation because you have to really--everyone is involved
in energy conservation like you are seeing soldiers in that, so
half the campaign is working with, you know, our leaders and
stuff to make sure that we are driving down usage and stuff and
doing the smart things like you said, and that is why----
Mr. Scott. Let me--if I could, and I apologize. I mean no
disrespect. I only have 5 minutes. But the other thing I would
tell you as somebody from Georgia--and I have a lot of friends
who have done work on the bases--Davis-Bacon, the same person
that I pay $45 or $50 an hour to someone who is in a business
to work on my house or a building or something, when they are
working on a military facility, because of Davis-Bacon, the
military is being billed twice that. I mean, even the
contractors complain about it. Can you speak to that issue? Do
we know how much Davis-Bacon is costing us?
General Halverson. Sir, I will take that for the record,
the aspect of what we do for small business and disadvantaged
business and stuff. To let----
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 61.]
Mr. Scott. I am talking about--well, some of them are
minority-owned, but some of them aren't.
General Halverson. Right. No, I agree. But one of the
things I would tell you is that is an area that we are looking
at greatly because of what you said. You have to be able to get
your best value for the dollar you have in constrained fiscally
tough things. So my new operations director I brought into the
ACSIM [Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management]
used to be the contracting commander that we had at Huntsville.
His number one issue was to look at our buying power and where
we have these cost drivers that really need to be looked at
because of the fair value that we do need to gain, yeah.
Mr. Scott. Point being, the same contractor is charging the
military significantly more for the exact same work because of
other laws that are on the books that are forcing--that are
changing the cost of the bid, and that is--this has already
been mentioned. The military is quick to give us a dollar
figure of what the excess capacity is costing us.
If you can give us the dollar figure on what it is costing
us, then you absolutely have to be able to tell us where that
is coming from. I don't believe that you can calculate it
without knowing where it is coming from, and then if you could
speak briefly to enhanced-use leases and whether or not you
think that is an efficient way for us to spend dollars.
General Halverson. Let me take that one for the record, the
advanced-use lease and stuff like that, you know, Congressman,
okay.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 62.]
Mr. Scott. That is fine.
General Halverson. I appreciate that.
Mr. Scott. Thank you.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Scott.
We now go to Ms. Duckworth.
Ms. Duckworth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just to touch on Davis-Bacon, I mean, General, I would
assume that you would not want to be responsible for avoiding
Davis-Bacon, to try to get around Davis-Bacon, and if you were
to use a contractor that did not pay the wages according to
Davis-Bacon, you are more likely to use someone who is
exploiting undocumented workers, someone who is perhaps
participating in wage theft, so there is a reason that Davis-
Bacon is there, and that is to protect the workers.
So I want to return to the conversation on readiness
levels. To what extent do your reporting for readiness levels
reflect the conditions of your facilities? For example, are
there data points that you are reporting, metrics that you are
reporting that say, you know, my readiness level would be, you
know, I would be a green, but I am an amber because I have
these particular facilities that I am being forced to maintain?
General Halverson. I will give you the macro aspect.
And then, Andrew, you can talk to your own installation.
We have a very detailed what we call installation status
report that our commanders then--those have all the metrics we
have, be it from the facilities to the range control to
airfields and all those things. And we view these aspects of
what we do have from there.
So a Q1 and Q2 are good facilities and ones that we have--
or the Q3 and the Q4, Q4 being the worst, are the ones that are
not. What we have seen is that with BRAC 2005, we had an
increase where we were from 19 percent up to 30--60 percent,
and now we are seeing a degradation of our readiness because of
sustained funding, so we are seeing a dip in our Q [quality]
ratings in our facilities because of decreased funding or
ability to do the sustainment and the restoration and
modernization that we do need in some of the facilities.
But, Andrew, you can probably talk to Fort Riley.
Colonel Cole. Congresswoman, yes, so we have those local
challenges. And we do, again, our best because it is--part of
it is predictability of where do we anticipate that we need to,
based on our ratings that we input into the what we call our
Web RPLANS [Real Property Planning and Analysis System], which
has then enterprise-level visibility, where do we go and
allocate resources against improving something from a Q3, for
example, or an F3, facilities code 3 rating, to a 2 or a 1.
But in those instances, when you have a plan and because of
constrained resources, something occurs that you have to re-
shift or reprogram funds that now inhibits your ability to
maybe address that red or that lower rating to get it improved
because now you have had to address a life, health, and safety
issue.
For example, if, at the childcare centers, you lose an HVAC
system, that is where your priority is going to be versus going
into that operations facility for that company and improving a
COF [Company Operations Facility] or improving another one of
your facilities, so it becomes risk acceptance. But we do
quarterly report these to our higher headquarters and to the
Army at the enterprise level.
Ms. Duckworth. Thank you. And as you are making these
shifts and you are moving your resources around, I know we are
really focused on Active Duty units right now and Active Duty
facilities, but every one of us have National Guard and Reserve
units in our districts. How does that affect--you know, how
does that cascading priorities affect the ability of our
National Guard and Reserve units to access these facilities,
and is it affecting their readiness as well?
General Halverson. Ma'am, the answer is yes in the aspect
that we track the Guard and Reserve facility modernizations and
their Q ratings, too, so I work very close with Tim Kadavy and
Jeff Talley and stuff, and we look holistically, so that helps
us with our parity of how much we give when we do it from the
program that I build for the Army and stuff like that.
So you are exactly right, and I am concerned somewhat for
those abilities. And so when we lose modernization or we lose
restoration and modernization, it affects it because it is
cascaded, and actually, it costs you more when you have to push
it in from year to year, so that is one of the concerns we have
within the Guard and Reserve.
Ms. Duckworth. Do you have any estimate costs, just very
briefly, on what it would cost, or is there legislation that
would help you to dispose of unused buildings? You know, I
worked at the VA [Department of Veterans Affairs] for a while.
One of the problems that the VA has is they have all these
buildings, legacy buildings, that have asbestos, that the
carrying cost is lower than the disposal cost, so they can't
dispose the building in the short term, but then they are stuck
with these buildings for an infinite amount of time, and do you
have any of those estimates? Or is there legislation we can
help you with here in Congress that will help you dispose of
some of these buildings?
Are you responsible, for example, for paying the mitigation
costs--even if you wanted to transfer a building with known
asbestos or mold to a civilian entity, you can't do it because
you are now responsible for that--is there things that we can
do to help you?
General Halverson. Ma'am, yes, in the aspect I think we
need that support. Right now, in demolition, that is one of the
challenges we have with demolition and stuff, part of my R&M
[restoration and modernization]. We try to fence demolition as
much as we can so we can take down old buildings, but it is
just like what Andrew kind of said, when we have seen at Fort
Gordon, with the Cyber Center of Excellence and other things,
we are getting into a lot of this asbestos that would then
drive the cost and the time it takes because of our ability to
demo [demolish] or refurbish a building because of the asbestos
issue.
It is a reality that we are dealing with from the 1960s now
that we are up now with--in today's dollars that we are trying
to work through each of these. But we need to get more into the
demolition of our capabilities, so that is why we put out an
order that we cannot build without taking something down. But
right now, with the fiscal constraints, we do not have enough
to put into demolition that I need. We still have, as you know,
units with World War II woods around our posts that we really
need to get rid of.
Ms. Duckworth. Thank you.
I am out of time, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Ms. Duckworth.
We now go to Ms. Stefanik.
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for your testimony today. I represent Fort Drum,
and in March, during a subcommittee hearing on this same topic,
I brought up the World War II era buildings that currently
house the NCO [non-commissioned officers] academy. And
thankfully, in this year's MILCON [military construction], we
were able to provide the funding for the modernization efforts
which are critical for the installation I represent.
But during that hearing, one of the witnesses mentioned
that 24 percent of the Army's infrastructure is currently in
poor condition. Can you walk me through the Army's
prioritization of the facilities that you choose to update and
modernize and how that decision-making process has been
affected by the defense sequester?
General Halverson. Thank you, ma'am. The issue, as you
know, is that the units build projects. They always have 13--we
call them 1391s, which is their engineering designs, and they
feed that into us, that it becomes a fiscal issue, so they are
all racked and stacked ready. Now it is a priority issue of
what we want to be able to do.
We have gone from a historical low, as you all know, of
military construction, MILCON, that now is--we used to be $4
billion a year. Now we are into the $1 billion a year. With the
driving costs, what we are seeing is that we have very, very
little flexibility to give to some of these needed things at
the local level because of the higher priorities that they
need, be it at Cyber Center of Excellence or other issues that
we have that are going to build capacity for the whole Army as
a whole.
We give the garrison commander and his senior commander the
flexibility--they rack and stack--to be able to do, but the
things that we have seen is that fiscal constraints that we
have had--and we are trying to do life, limb, and safety stuff
now--does not give us much flexibility to do that. And it
becomes a movement, so we try to be--even sometimes we see the
migration of sustainment into restoration and modernization,
which then causes us, you know, the effect that what Andrew was
saying is that you are not doing your maintenance. Then it
becomes a multiyear, multimillion dollar issue. So that is the
challenge, but we are committed to give flexibility to the
garrison team to be able to provide him to try to take care of
it, but what we were finding out was there is just not enough
money to do the projects that are needed like, at Fort Drum, as
you know, is indoor type stuff because of the snow and all
those things for facilities for fitness. They need that just
like they need it in Alaska because the ability--in that cold
weather, like your record 184 inches, does not give you the
flexibility to do physical training you need unless you have
the indoor facilities to do it.
Ms. Stefanik. Absolutely.
My next question. I wanted to expand upon a comment that
two of you made during your opening statements regarding the
importance of airspace. One of the aspects that makes Fort Drum
unique is our airspace. We are near the Adirondack Park in
upstate New York. Can you expand upon why that is so critical
for maintenance and modernization?
General Halverson. I will have Pat--Pat, do you want to--
the bottom line is it is a force projection thing, I mean, for
us, to be able to do it. As you well know, I was amazed at what
happened at Fort Drum when you just had that big snowstorm,
where all the things--and the family members of soldiers were
coming back, and the workforce actually cleared the runway so
we could land the plane back. It was a 24-hour delay, but what
they had to do to clear all that stuff was remarkable.
As you all know, it is not only landing the aircraft but it
is also all the work to remove the snow causes wear and
deterioration, and if you don't have the sustainment dollars
you need to fix the runways and do those things, it causes us
great things. We have challenges at Fort Campbell, Kentucky,
and we have had to put a lot of restoration and modernization
into the airfield at Fort Bragg. But, Pat, if you want to, you
know, go on any further.
General White. Thank you, sir.
Ma'am, so if I understood your question right, it is about
how does airspace relate to generating readiness. And so there
are a couple components to it.
One is the airspace itself, which the military would need
to control at times to fly fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft
through that airspace. There is the infrastructure that allows
the airframes to take off and land--the runways, the hangars,
and the maintenance facilities that are associated with it.
There are also the crews that are involved in manning the
towers that allow you to control the airspace and to fix the
runways and to provide maintenance for those airframes.
So there are really four components--personnel that are
involved, so they have to be available. They have to be
available 24/7. In some cases, as with Fort Drum, we don't have
them available 24/7. We have them available about 5 days a
week, sometimes up to 16 hours a day, which limits when a unit
can train, when it can actually take off and fly an aircraft
either inside of that airspace or through that airspace.
There is the equipping piece of it. So if we don't have the
facilities that are associated with it to get into that
airspace to lift engines out of, you know, the top of Black
Hawks, to fix a CH-47 [Chinook] so that the mountain troopers
at Fort Drum can actually conduct an exercise--airlift, land,
and assault.
And then the final piece is the parts and pieces that go
into fixing those pieces of equipment, the airframes, whether
it is fixed-wing--we need facilities for that. We need to be
able to account for them. We need IT infrastructure that allows
you to transmit from a local database into the Army database
that says, I need this particular part, I need this part in 3
days in order to have this aircraft be able to fly.
And that is probably a really longwinded answer to your
question, but that is it.
Ms. Stefanik. No, that is very helpful. And I think it is
one of the unique aspects of Drum as an installation, is the
airspace, in terms of how it aids our readiness and training
capabilities. So thank you.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Ms. Stefanik.
We will now go back to Ms. Duckworth.
Ms. Duckworth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the good
things, nice things about working on this committee is how
bipartisan it is, and you are being very generous to give me a
second question.
This question actually goes to Colonel Cole.
And you may not have the answer for this, but it has to do
with the intersection between energy savings and attempts to
modernize our garrison commands and cybersecurity.
So I, not too long ago, was visiting a business that had
won a contract to provide some energy savings in terms of the
lights. And I went into this business, into a room, and they
were very proud to show me this technology they had where they
promptly were able to dim the lights at a major maneuver
command headquarters. I won't say which one it is because it is
classified. Well, it is not classified, but I don't want folks
to know where it is.
But I watched as they dimmed the lights and turned them on
and off on a major roadway at a major base of an Army maneuver
command in the United States. And I said, ooh, that is great.
And they were showing how they were doing the energy cost
savings, they were dimming the lights, you know, all of that.
And they were very proud of this technology.
And then I asked the question of the gentleman who was
operating the computer and said, ``Do you have a security
clearance?'' And he said, ``No.'' And I said, ``Is this room
secure?'' ``No.'' ``Who in this business has a security
clearance?'' Well, the chief engineer has a security clearance,
but none of the computer programmers, none of the other people
there did.
And I let it go, because they were very proud to show me,
and they were saving a lot of money. It was a great business,
what they were doing. But I am really deeply concerned that, in
attempts to do cost savings or modernize, even if it is not
that aspect, but we are linked into the infrastructure grid for
major cosmopolitan, major metropolises around this country. And
this maneuver command is not out in the middle of nowhere. It
is right next to a major, major city in the United States. And
I am deeply concerned.
So what are you doing there in terms of your linkages, your
tie-in to the civilian infrastructure? And what costs are there
associated with providing the protection for your installations
so that you are secure from being able to be hacked through the
infrastructure network?
Colonel Cole. Ma'am, thank you for that question.
At the local level, what I can say is, from my vantage
point at Fort Riley, we have the benefit of receiving energy at
a reduced rate. So, from the larger Army's perspective, Fort
Riley is not at the top of the priority list for some of these
security initiatives.
With that being said, we certainly have our standard access
security parts and pieces in place for securing the locations,
et cetera. Now, what we are able to do is, as we do find a
project that may be of appropriate cost savings, we are able to
elevate that to the enterprise level. Because, ultimately, it
is well above the installation that has the approval on it. And
I will defer you to General Halverson, but we do have the
opportunity to elevate that when we do have a situation where
we can save monies because of those types of initiatives.
So, sir.
General Halverson. Ma'am, great point. And we are, from a
critical infrastructure perspective, working very closely with
our, you know, energy partners to be able to ensure that we do
have mission assurance, just like you were saying, because of
the abilities for outside folks in the cyber world to be able
to affect this. So we are working very closely in those
meetings.
What you will see now with our energy managers that we have
at each one of our installations, they almost become, you know,
very much cyber folks, because you need to know the electronics
of all this kind of stuff. So it is not just the easy things
like turning on the lights and everything; it is getting very
sophisticated.
But we are working. As a matter of fact, we have met with
DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] and stuff,
and there are some testings that we are going to be doing to
make sure that we are more protected.
The things that we can control is that we are trying to put
power stations on our installations for their own security so
we have uninterrupted power. Because mission assurance, from a
force projection perspective, which is readiness, we have to do
that. Because if we have a catastrophic thing in the United
States, we need to be able to be mission assured to project
power or to sustain that capability that we need, working with
the communities.
But I appreciate that question.
Ms. Duckworth. In my remaining 12 seconds, I would like to
ask if you could get back to us with perhaps a cost estimate of
what you think the escalating costs are going to be into the
future, as now, you know, cyber is suddenly part of your
operating costs, and it would be nice to know what you need.
General Halverson. Yes, ma'am. Thank you.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 62.]
Ms. Duckworth. Okay.
Mr. Wittman. Very good. Thank you, Ms. Duckworth.
And I would like to thank General Halverson, General White,
and Colonel Cole. Thank you so much for joining us today.
And we are going to take a few moments to switch panels and
ask our Marine Corps contingent to come up. So we will do that
and begin the next panel in just a few minutes.
Thank you.
General Halverson. Thank you for your time, sir.
Mr. Wittman. Ladies and gentlemen, from our Marine Corps
today, we have with us Major General Charles L. Hudson, U.S.
Marine Corps, Commander, Marine Corps Installation Command, and
Assistant Deputy Commandant, Installations and Logistics
Department. We also have with us Major General Brian D.
Beaudreault, U.S. Marine Corps, Commanding General, 2nd Marine
Division; and Colonel Chris Pappas, U.S. Marine Corps,
Commander, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, which we
recently had an opportunity to visit.
And, General Hudson, I understand you would like to make an
opening statement, and we would ask that you do that within the
5-minute realm. And I want you to know that all the panel
members have a copy of your remarks, and your remarks are going
to be entered into the record.
So, General Hudson, to you.
STATEMENT OF MAJGEN CHARLES L. HUDSON, USMC, COMMANDER, MARINE
CORPS INSTALLATIONS COMMAND, ASSISTANT DEPUTY COMMANDANT,
INSTALLATIONS AND LOGISTICS; ACCOMPANIED BY MAJGEN BRIAN D.
BEAUDREAULT, USMC, COMMANDING GENERAL, 2ND MARINE DIVISION, AND
COL CHRIS PAPPAS, JR., USMC, COMMANDING OFFICER, MARINE CORPS
AIR STATION CHERRY POINT
General Hudson. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Bordallo, and
other distinguished members of the committee, on behalf of the
Commandant, General Neller, and the thousands of marines,
sailors, our dedicated civilian workforce, and our family
members, thank you for your continued support to the defense of
our Nation and to the United States Marine Corps.
As you have indicated, sir, I have General Brian
Beaudreault with me this morning, Colonel Chris Pappas. And,
although not sitting at this panel, sir, I would like to
introduce my sergeant major, my senior enlisted leader,
Sergeant Major Tony Cruz is with us here today, as well, sir.
The Marine Corps is the Nation's expeditionary force in
readiness. To that end, Marines serve forward to shape events,
manage instability, project influence, respond to crises, and,
when necessary, serve as the Nation's initial response force.
Our role as America's 911 force informs how we man, train, and
equip our force. It also drives how we prioritize and allocate
the resources provided by Congress.
Within the Marine Corps, we look at readiness through five
pillars: high-quality people, unit readiness, the capacity to
meet combatant commanders' requirements, infrastructure
sustainment, and equipment modernization. These pillars
represent the operational and foundation components of
readiness across the Marine Corps.
Marine Corps bases and air stations provide a platform from
which to deploy and, in the case of several of our
installations in the Pacific, directly employ for either combat
operations or humanitarian assistance disaster relief
operations. These bases and air stations also serve as
platforms from which marines conduct realistic and relevant
training that is necessary for them to accomplish assigned
missions and then return home safely to their families. And,
finally, our bases and air stations provide a critical support
system to our families when those marines and our sailors are
deployed forward.
General Dunford, as the Commandant, has previously
testified that the Marine Corps' first priority is to reinforce
the near-term readiness capabilities needed by our marines who
are currently deployed or about to deploy. To accomplish that
priority, the Marine Corps will accept risk in our
infrastructure accounts.
Hard decisions, difficult decisions will be required to be
made. We will be required to prioritize the maintenance of
nearly 15,000 buildings, range complexes, barracks, and
airfields to ensure near-term readiness. Robust investments to
repair, replace, or consolidate poor facilities will need to be
deferred.
Long-term underfunding of facilities and sustainment
requirements will result in a gradual degradation of our
infrastructure and create a bow wave of increased long-term
costs to return these assets to proper conditions.
With an eye on the future and the support of Congress, we
have been able to expand the physical size of our largest and
most capable training range at Twentynine Palms, California.
This expansion will allow the Marine Corps to exercise a three-
maneuver battalion, Marine expeditionary brigade, and a live-
fire training environment.
Also, with your support, we are presently expanding the
Townsend Bombing Range in Georgia, giving us the ability to
train with precision-guided munitions here on the East Coast,
which is of extreme importance as we field the F-35.
However, in recognition of the currently constrained fiscal
climate, the Marine Corps has been required to sacrifice
further range modernization for the sustainment and
recapitalization of existing capacities and capabilities. This
means that we are unable to adequately address the required
training enhancements associated with new and emerging
operational requirements.
Your marines are the Nation's expeditionary force in
readiness. We focus our resources on maintaining the readiness
of our forward-deployed marines and those about to deploy.
Although our investment in future modernization and our
infrastructure are less than what we believe is required, we
will remain diligent stewards of the assets provided to us.
Thank you for your time and the opportunity to speak on
behalf of the marines and sailors and our family members and
civilian employees. I look forward to your questions.
[The joint prepared statement of General Hudson, General
Beaudreault, and Colonel Pappas can be found in the Appendix on
page 48.]
Mr. Wittman. Very good. General Hudson, thank you so much.
Thanks for that great overview, and we appreciate deeply what
the Marine Corps does for our Nation, for what your marines do
in accomplishing the mission in the Marine Corps.
In looking at the total scope of what we are dealing with
in the past several years, you have seen consecutive-year
reductions in funding that is below the targeted infrastructure
investment goals and also reductions to your base operations
support accounts.
In that realm, how have you prioritized funding in terms of
your facility investments and services supported within the
Marine Corps? And then what categories within the facilities--
categories or the elements within that and the types of
installation services are most important to the Marine Corps?
So kind of give us your prioritization, give us the realm
of what you have had to do to make those priority decisions
within the scenario we have seen in the last couple years in
reduction of dollars to go to those areas.
General Hudson. Sir, clearly, in order to maintain the
readiness required to meet our day-to-day commitments, we have
accepted risk in our infrastructure accounts, sustainment
accounts, and the like. And, clearly, it is something that we
will need to address in the future.
Currently, our institution's focus is on supporting the
focus to the Pacific initiative and actions related to our
aviation campaign plan actions, introduction of new weapons
platforms, the F-35, and MV-22 capabilities around the globe.
So, within our military construction budgets, those are our
main efforts.
Within our sustainment accounts, we have had to defer many,
many requirements, many capabilities, either within FSRM
[Facilities, Sustainment, Restoration, and Modernization] or
within MILCON. But the primary focus, of course, is to prepare
for our forces to deploy, now or tomorrow, and we made an
institutional decision to first defer sustainment requirements
till later on.
Of course, that will result in a gradual degradation of our
capability, and, over the long term, that will cause the costs
to increase dramatically. We expect that, as this goes to the
right, as the requirements continue to push to the right, as I
said in my statement, we will see a bow wave. And, within our
sustainment dollars, we are projecting within about the next 5
years, we are projecting about a $1 billion bow wave of
requirements that we are not able to meet today----
Mr. Wittman. Yeah.
General Hudson [continuing]. Based upon pressure on the top
line or reduced funding levels writ large.
Mr. Wittman. Very good. Thank you, General Hudson.
Colonel Pappas, give us your perspective on how corporate
Marine Corps infrastructure and installation support decisions
and the guidance affect your ability to provide mission support
for operations and training there at the Marine Corps Air
Station Cherry Point.
Colonel Pappas. Thank you, Chairman. That is a phenomenal
question here.
We right now focus our efforts, as an air station
commander, on the air station itself, the airfield itself, on
air traffic control facilities, on our range facilities, to
make sure that we provide a capability for all of our operating
forces.
The challenge that we face is, when you look at an air
station like Cherry Point that has been around since 1942, I
still have facilities around from when the airfield opened in
1942, coming close to 75 years old at this point. And so, when
we look in terms of across the airfield, there is a great
number of facilities that are getting old and are in need of
repair that don't meet the cut line currently for both
modernization and for recapitalization across current military
construction. And so we live with those types of facilities.
And those are just the challenges that we have to face as
the Marine Corps looks to prioritize its very scarce resources.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you.
General Beaudreault, there are obviously risks that are
associated with infrastructure and installation support
reductions, and, obviously, there are impacts. Give us your
perspective on how those impacts affect your ability to
maintain full-spectrum readiness across your different units.
And how does the recent 2-year budget deal affect that? Give us
that perspective.
And then if you would also look out 10 years into the
future, assuming that under the best-case scenario we would be
level-funded past the end of this 2-year budget deal, which
averages the defense budget at about $610 billion, give us your
projection there.
And also a scenario where, if at the end of this 2 years we
drop back to a sequester mode, if you would kind of give me
your perspective there about what you see with that and what
happens with your infrastructure and installation support
dollars as they have occurred recently and where that is with
full-spectrum readiness.
General Beaudreault. Thank you, Chairman.
I can address that question, sir, from really two
standpoints--first, training readiness to meet our three
standing global deployment requirements, as General Hudson
referred to.
Our number-one priority is to meet the demands of the
forward-deployed forces. I have three requirements I need to
meet each and every day. And that is to send marines, trained
and ready, to Okinawa on unit deployment; our special purpose
Marine air-ground task force [MAGTF] that is in Moron, Spain,
and throughout Europe; and, thirdly, our Marine expeditionary
units [MEUs]. We provide the battalion landing teams for those
forward-deployed MEUs.
I also have two domestic requirements that we stand each
and every day. We have a CONUS [contiguous United States]-based
alert force, and I also have forces on stand-by intermittently
between the West Coast and the East Coast, shares the
responsibility of having forces ready to go in the SOUTHCOM
[Southern Command] AOR [area of responsibility] if we need to
forward-deploy from here.
So we can't accept risk in meeting any of our combatant
commander requirements. We have to go out ready to fight and
operate across the full range of military operations. Pressure
on the top line for that budget impacts our ability to train
locally at Camp Lejeune, so that requires me to often go off
installation, places like Twentynine Palms, places likes Fort
Stewart, Fort Bragg, [Fort] A.P. Hill, Fort Pickett, where I
can ensure that the force that I am deploying forward can meet
every one of its demands.
So we have an area for range maintenance, much like General
Halverson and General White talked about. We need to maintain
the targetry. We need to keep the ranges, the berms, the roads,
the firebreaks. There is a cost to do business just for the
ranges as they exist. There is pressure on modernization of
current ranges to instrument those ranges, if need be.
And then there is the future of range development, things
that don't exist today that we need--live-fire combat towns. We
have shooting houses, but we don't have a town where we can put
a large-scale unit in and prepare to fight in places like we
have done in the past in Fallujah and others. We recognize the
urbanization that is occurring in the future operating
environment, and we need to have the money in place to build a
facility that allows us to get after that challenge locally. We
can do it on the West Coast. They have done some out at
Twentynine Palms, and we thank you for the money that allowed
us to do that.
Secondly, the way that I can look at it is the quality-of-
life and retention issues that go with barracks that become
dilapidated over time.
I have 68 barracks in the 2nd Marine Division that my
marines live in, 28 of which have been renovated or were newly
constructed. And, again, thank you for the new construction on
that.
Forty of those remain. Under the current funding line, it
will take until 2034 to renovate the remainder of those
barracks. Any further pressure on the top line and any delay to
that just continues to deteriorate and gets to the end result
that General Hudson talked about
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, General.
Ms. Bordallo.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to also welcome General Hudson, General
Beaudreault, and Colonel Pappas.
Before I begin my questions, I just have to take this
opportunity to say that Guam is anxiously awaiting the arrival
of the marines from Okinawa. And, as the people of Guam say,
you liberated us during World War II, so this will be a
homecoming.
So, Mr. Chairman, I have a couple of questions here.
First, in your written testimony, you noted that, due to
the BCA, you have, and I quote, ``had to make some difficult
decisions to defer modernizing some of our training facilities
to ensure that we could sustain the capabilities we have
already fielded,'' unquote.
Now, can you please describe some of those, and I quote
again, ``difficult decisions'' and what impacts they have or
have had on training and readiness?
I guess General Hudson.
General Hudson. Ma'am, if I may start on that, and then I
can certainly turn to Colonel Pappas to talk about aviation
range capabilities, aviation training venues, and General
Beaudreault, as well, on ground side, as well.
But, again, clearly, based upon the requirements that we
have to prepare trained, combat-ready marines to deploy at a
moment's notice, the requirement for training venues, not just
ranges but venues, to include simulation centers and emerging
combat trainers, emerging infantry trainers, is a valid
requirement to ensure those marines are prepared to go into
harm's way.
Oftentimes, when you talk about the repair of those type
facilities versus a barracks--and I just visited one of General
Beaudreault's barracks about a month ago down at Camp Lejeune,
North Carolina--that there is no way I would put my son or
daughter to live into a barracks in that condition. As a matter
of fact, that battalion commander made the decision that he
wasn't going to put any of his marines in there.
So it is a balance of competing requirements. It is a
balance between ensuring that the marine who is going to get on
a ship or get on an aircraft to deploy forward into harm's way
is ready to go or to ensure that they have an adequate facility
to live in or to work out of or, for that matter, an adequate
chow hall that is sufficient to meet their daily requirements.
So it is, again, very, very competing requirements, and so
those are the difficult decisions. It is the right balance
about combat-readiness versus some of those life support, life,
health, and safety-type issues and challenges and requirements
that we need to meet just in order to set the foundational
conditions for them to go train and be prepared to deploy.
Ms. Bordallo. I understand.
Are there any further comments?
I have another question. I asked this of the Army, but I
would like to hear your reply on this, as well.
At what level are the connections between the training
requirements of a unit and the ability of an installation to
support those training requirements? And how often are they
reevaluated? In other words, at what level are the decisions
impacting military infrastructure and installation support
being coordinated with those in charge of training and
operational requirements?
Whoever would like----
General Hudson. Ma'am, if I may, I will start with that.
Clearly, we report readiness across all units within the
Marine Corps, regardless of what unit. And so my installations
support their readiness based upon mission-essential tasks that
they have to execute, whether it is an actual Marine Corps
base, a ground base, or whether it is a Marine Corps air
station who is being required to support aviation operations.
And so, on a quarterly basis, those commanders inform me,
my commanders inform me via our readiness reporting system of
their red, green, or yellow capability to support the members
of the Marine expeditionary forces [MEF] they are supporting.
And we are in a supporting relationship with our MEF
commanders, with our division commanders, with our Marine air-
ground commanders. And so, on a quarterly basis, through the
formal readiness reporting system, we are able to determine how
well we are supporting them.
I had the opportunity to spend 2 years at Marine Corps
Installations Pacific in Okinawa, headquartered in Okinawa, had
the opportunity to span installations from Hawaii west. And so,
very frequently, I would sit down with my supportive MEF
commander, saying, ``Sir, here is what my commanders are
telling me that they are able to do for your marines, for your
commanders. Does that synchronize with what you are seeing,
with what you are hearing?''
And then, based upon that, then you are able to allocate
resources, either manpower or fiscal, to weight the main effort
at that particular point in time.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you.
Anybody else who would like to comment?
Yes, General.
General Beaudreault. Ma'am, the only thing I would add to
that is that, in October, unbeknownst that this hearing would
occur, I sat down with my commanders, and we looked at our
training gaps, what are the major training gaps that we have in
the 2nd Marine Division. And the number-one thing that came out
had to do with range modernization, range development.
So Marine Corps Installations East Brigadier General Tom
Weidley and I sat down shortly thereafter and were trying to
work out a plan of how we can get there, understanding the gaps
we have, the resources available in getting those hard choices
on the table for General Neller to have to make on how we
allocate that dwindling amount of money.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you.
And Colonel.
Colonel Pappas. Thank you, Congresswoman.
I am fortunate enough that I am actually collocated with my
major support command in the same facility. So we have a very
close relationship and understanding of what the mission
priorities and training priorities are on a regular basis.
Across the Marine Corps and aviation, we have training and
readiness manuals that dictate what our standards are. And we
report against those--an operational commander report on a
monthly basis. And I understand where their concerns are from
frequent meetings. We report on a quarterly basis, as General
Hudson mentioned.
And what I would like to comment on is that most of this is
on a very near-term focus for current readiness. One of our
challenges now in regard to range modernization in our airspace
is new platforms bring a great deal of new capabilities. And,
quite frankly, they are stressing our capability of our ranges
to meet those requirements.
For example, with the MV-22, we now fly twice as far and
twice as fast as the legacy helicopters. The Joint Strike
Fighter is going to have new weapons systems that are going to
dwarf the capabilities--that currently dwarf the capabilities
of legacy aircraft today. And they are putting a great deal of
pressure upon our range space that were perfectly acceptable in
legacy airframes, and how we are going to deal with that in the
future.
So that is a bigger challenge that I think we are going to
have to look at to meet future training challenges.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you very much, Colonel.
And thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
giving me extra time.
Mr. Wittman. Absolutely. Absolutely, Ms. Bordallo.
I do have one final question, and I will direct it to all
of our panel members.
A couple of things. We have seen, leading up to where we
are today, a sequence of continuing resolutions. And,
obviously, as you all are doing infrastructure planning, trying
to set a course to meet those needs, I want to get your
perspective on how continuing resolutions affect your ability
to get to where you need to be.
And then, secondly, on your plan to restore full-spectrum
readiness, how will the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 affect
that? And we all know that our service branches are all faced
with getting full-spectrum readiness back, unfortunately, a
number of years in the future. Will the Marine Corps' plan be
able to stay on track with the current budget deal that has
been reached for the next 2 years?
So I will open it up for any of you all to give me your
perspective.
General Hudson. Mr. Chairman, if I may, I will start, and I
will start with a response relative to the continuing
resolutions.
Clearly, the instability and the unpredictability of a
budget causes challenges across the board. And it is not only
challenges relative to the execution of military construction
projects--no new starts--or the ability to execute the
sustainment and restoration and modernization programs.
We have gone to great lengths over the last 3 years inside
the Marine Corps, working with Naval Facilities Engineering
Command, to shift what has historically been most of our
projects in the fourth quarter to where there is the 25 percent
in the first quarter, 50 percent in the second quarter, 25
percent in the third quarter, where we have them designed and
ready to execute. The challenge, of course, is that, based upon
when the receipt of funds occurs, it could be at any time
during the course of the fiscal year.
So, both from a design work--although designs are primarily
done--from an execution perspective, it makes it extremely
difficult for the Naval Facilities Engineering Command to
actually execute the contracts to actually, you know, start
horizontal/vertical construction. So that is a challenge, as
well.
Not to mention the fact of the uncertainty on our
workforce. And it is not just marines in uniform. It is our
civilian employees, and it is our contracted workforce, as
well, because we have contracting capabilities. Many of them
work in chow halls or dining facilities day in and day out. But
it is also the family members, as well. Extremely concerned
about what is going to happen. If you are a civilian employee,
am I going to have to go home? Am I not going to get a
paycheck? And, to a lesser extent, to the Active Component
uniformed personnel, as well.
So, as you take a look at infrastructure development,
master plan development, and as you take a concerted effort to
plan the future of a base or an air station, it takes a couple
years to get the master plan right. And so you have the vision
for what you want to occur, and you have an associated timeline
with that, a campaign plan to actually execute the vision. A
hiccup in the stability of the receipt of funds causes
challenges and obviously defers the program, as well.
Mr. Wittman. Very good.
Gentlemen, any other perspectives on how CRs affect you?
Colonel Pappas.
Colonel Pappas. Thank you, Chairman. I would offer another
piece, is that one thing it does for us also, it buys us lost
time. So even if I get the money later on in the year, what I
have lost is the time to execute my mission, and I can't get
the time back. And that is one of the biggest concerns that I
have as an installation commander.
For me, for having a base master plan, it requires both the
plan, it requires sustainable funding. It also requires the
people and the trained workforce to be able to execute it. And
with the top-line budget pressures, all of those have been
challenged. When we don't gain the military construction funds,
it further pressurizes our modernization and sustainment
accounts. If we don't get those, then it also, for me
personally, impacts my local repair accounts.
And just as an example, Mr. Chairman, over the past 2
years, due to our budget pressures, we now have a 4-year
backlog on routine maintenance. None of this is life-and-limb,
it is all very mundane stuff, but it just gives you the
challenge of what the workforce is going through on a weekly
basis to prioritize very routine maintenance actions that we
are deferring.
And to echo some of the comments from the Army earlier,
what it is going to do is it basically makes me, instead of
being proactive and having a solid plan, it makes me very much
reactive in terms of how I am doing my job on a day-to-day
basis.
Mr. Wittman. Very good. Thank you.
General Hudson, let me just get you to elaborate on the
Bipartisan Budget Agreement of 2015. Will that allow the Marine
Corps to stay on track with restoring full-spectrum readiness?
I know all the service branches have a plan as to how they
will restore that. Obviously, more years out in the future than
we would like to have. But will the Marine Corps be able to
stay on track or even move things to the left in that timeframe
with this new budget agreement that gives you certainty, at
least over the next couple of years?
General Hudson. Mr. Chairman, it will certainly assist with
the stability of our infrastructure capabilities. And, as
previously indicated, of course, the focus of readiness is to
ensure our marines are able to get out, and rightly so. And so
our infrastructure accounts have kind of taken a backseat to
that. But we have a solid game plan to execute the requirements
as funds are available.
And so the challenge, of course, up to this point, is we
have had to continue to push projects, both military
construction and sustainment requirements, continually to the
right. But we have those teed up, ready to go. In most
situations, the designs for projects are ready, they are on the
shelf. So it is a matter of, when the funds are received, we
can take them off and we can execute them.
So, certainly, it will go a long ways towards alleviating
some of the pressures that we see both at the enterprise level,
at the institutional level, but also at the local level, as
well.
Mr. Wittman. Very good. Thank you.
Any other comments, gentlemen?
General Beaudreault.
General Beaudreault. Sir, down at the division level, it is
really second- and third-order impacts of decisions that are
made by Programs and Resources and the Commandant and others.
But I will say that our near-term readiness, I remain
optimistic that we will be adequately funded to generate T-1
forces going forward in support of the combatant commander
requirements.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ T-1 refers to the SORTS [Status of Resources and Training
System] value meaning fully trained for mission requirements.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
What we see are maybe some indirect effects when there is a
cutback to installations and I have to send, say, 147 marines
to augment the base MPs [military police] that aren't out
training with the rifle companies getting ready to go forward.
Mr. Wittman. Got you.
General Beaudreault. Again, like General Halverson
mentioned, less simulator time because of contractor cutbacks.
And now we are not 24/7 on our simulation systems.
So those are kind of the second-order effects we see, but--
--
Mr. Wittman. Sure.
General Beaudreault [continuing]. Near-term readiness, I
feel confident we will continue to generate what the Nation
needs.
Mr. Wittman. Very good.
Well, gentlemen, thank you.
Ms. Bordallo, any other question?
Ms. Bordallo. I have nothing.
Mr. Wittman. All right. Very good.
Well, gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us today.
Thanks for your perspective on what we need to do to continue
to help you to restore readiness and make sure that our
installation support and infrastructure is on track to where it
needs to be.
We appreciate the great job that you do with the dollars
that we give you. We know the Marines are very austere in many
different ways and take a dollar and stretch it to the maximum
extent possible. But, as General Amos once said, he said, ``We
are at a point where we are going to do less with less.'' And
we don't want to put you in that particular position. You all
have done a great job in doing more with less, but I do think,
with what we have asked you to do and extend things out, we
don't want to be in a position where you can't do the things
that you need to do for our marines.
So, again, thank you all for your service. Please give our
best to our marines that are there in your units and forward-
deployed. Thank them for the great job that they do for our
Nation. And we look forward to seeing them as we all get around
to visit those Marine Corps facilities across CONUS and OCONUS
[outside the contiguous United States] too. So thanks again.
And we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 9:34 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
=======================================================================
A P P E N D I X
December 3, 2015
=======================================================================
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
December 3, 2015
=======================================================================
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
=======================================================================
WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING
THE HEARING
December 3, 2015
=======================================================================
RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MRS. HARTZLER
General Halverson. Many sheltering and notification improvements
occurred at Fort Riley since the November 2005 tornado. These include
the installation of 2,289 storm shelters in on-post housing. Corvias,
our privatized housing partner, constructs storm rated shelters in all
new housing units and retrofits units being renovated. Currently, 76.7%
of all housing units have shelters (or basements). We relocated
exterior concrete storm shelters from demolished relocatable buildings
sites to twenty-one selected higher-use Range/Training Area facilities
and Fort Riley access control points. There are now interior storm
rated shelters in all Child Development Centers and hardened gyms in
the new Fort Riley Middle School and two new Elementary Schools. Our
Soldier Readiness Processing Center is a historic facility with
hardened restrooms for shelter. Seven 24/7 community shelter facilities
with signage direct pedestrians and motorists to these facilities if
needed.
Fort Riley improved the ability to notify Soldiers, Families,
Civilians, and visitors with the installation of two additional tornado
sirens addressing the outdoor recreational coverage gaps. This provides
a total of nineteen tornado sirens. We also installed thirty-one
additional Giant Voice towers for a total of forty-eight which provide
robust coverage to the entire cantonment and housing area footprint.
Upgrades to our network-based desktop alert system (AtHoc Connect)
increased our coverage from 3,400 to 22,670 accounts. We added text
message alert, e-mail and telephonic notification capabilities with
over 7,350 subscribers. Finally, Fort Riley informs new Soldiers and
Family members on how to plan for and deal with emergencies with a
robust tornado/severe weather awareness campaign in coordination with
Public Affairs Office, local media and the National Weather Service.
[See page 10.]
______
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. O'ROURKE
General Halverson. Over the past several years, the Army's Total
Obligation Authority, was insufficient to allow the Army to fully fund
its training strategy to achieve desired Decisive Action proficiency
and strategic depth. Overall, the Army only funded approximately 85% of
the total requirement. Interestingly, the leading indicator of an
underfunded training strategy is not an initial drop in training
readiness, but rather it first manifests itself in terms of diminished
equipment readiness. Commanders continue to apply their limited
resources to executing key training events while conserving funding by
deferring maintenance on equipment. FORSCOM is clearly seeing this with
over $300M in deferred maintenance and repair parts orders.
Should the Army be able to recoup the approximately $500M currently
spent on excess infrastructure capacity and reapply all of it to
readiness, it could, as an example, help eliminate the existing gap
between current funding levels and our Training Strategy. This would
allow Commanders to plan and execute training without deferring
maintenance on their equipment to generate funds for future training
events. Further, the $500M could, as an example, help the Army to
address Reserve Component pay and allowance shortfalls that impede
their ability to achieve the training readiness we desire in those
Components. [See page 13.]
______
RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. SCOTT
General Halverson. The Army does not have empirical data to assess
the impact of the Davis-Bacon Act on military construction. There is
speculation that the absence of the Act could lead to cost savings
through lower wage and benefit payments and administrative costs. One
of many unknowns is whether, in the absence of Davis-Bacon Act
requirements, the Government would see lower-cost, equally-qualified
tradesmen, or less-qualified tradesmen, being hired for projects due to
wages lower than the prevailing rate.
In 2010, the GAO examined the effect of applying the Davis-Bacon
Act to a number of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funded
Federal programs, including some not previously subject to the Davis-
Bacon Act. The findings of the study vary. For example, the study
suggested that Davis-Bacon requirements impact wages and administrative
costs for small construction projects in rural areas more than major
construction projects in large metropolitan areas. [See page 15.]
General Halverson. Enhanced-use lease is a term that commonly
refers to long-term leasing of government land for private sector
development and use. The military departments' authority to lease real
and personal property is codified at Section 2667 of Title 10 United
States Code. Leasing is one of many useful tools for managing the Army
real property portfolio. If there is no current or anticipated military
requirement for a certain property, it is processed for disposal as
excess property rather than leased. However, when property is not
excess but is not needed for a period of time, leasing can be an
efficient and economic means of managing that real property asset. It
can provide valuable revenue, defray Army costs to maintain the
property, and can enable private sector uses of the property that
complement Army missions. Revenue from leasing is generally available
for construction and maintenance of Army facilities and similar
expenses. However, leasing property is not appropriate or prudent in
every case. In some cases, especially with property of relatively low
market value, costs associated with planning and implementing a lease
may not be recovered. Sometimes private sector uses of leased property
might be incompatible with adjacent Army activities, or could preclude
potential government use of the subject property. The Army takes these
and other factors into consideration when deciding whether leasing is a
prudent course of action in any given case. [See page 15.]
Colonel Cole. Fort Riley installed skylights in building 8100, our
Logistics Readiness Center's Maintenance Facility. Safety issues on
cloudy days mandated that mechanically-controlled lights remain. Fort
Riley installed photo cells in addition to motion sensors to control
the mechanical lights. When the skylights provide adequate lighting,
the mechanical lights are off. [See page 14.]
______
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MS. DUCKWORTH
General Halverson. The Army is focused on addressing cybersecurity
for industrial control systems related to real property. Processes are
in place to properly authorize systems to operate on the Army network.
We are developing a new holistic program to assess and identify the
threats to ensure appropriate protective measures are in place for
systems.
As the program develops, we expect to see some increases in
operating costs to maintain the assessment and authorization process
for these systems. The costs associated with this program are
undetermined at this time. [See page 21.]
=======================================================================
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
December 3, 2015
=======================================================================
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. WITTMAN
Mr. Wittman. What specific examples can you provide of facility
conditions affecting the readiness of installations to carry out their
assigned missions? To what extent have any reported issues been
addressed? How quickly were any issues able to be addressed?
General Halverson. Current budget caps forced the Army to focus its
scarce resources on training and modernization, and assume more risk at
its installations. The result is a limited pool of available funds to
execute critical construction and restoration and modernization
projects.
An example of facility conditions affecting the readiness of
installations is modernizing delays to Fort Hood's Tactical Equipment
Maintenance Facilities. Fort Hood's motor pools were ``state of the
art'' in the mid-1980s. Currently, the day-to-day impact on readiness
is visible as Soldiers perform maintenance outdoors that should be
performed inside a building because the facility doors are not wide
enough to accommodate the Stryker. Further, the overhead lifts are not
sufficient to safely handle the heavy powertrain components.
A second example of inadequate Restoration and Modernization
funding is the deteriorating condition of the Libby Army Airfield and
related taxiways at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Repair and replacement
costs are projected at $20 million. Reduced manpower for airfield
operations negatively impacts TRADOC Unmanned Aerial Systems (Grey
Eagle) Training, wildland fire support operations, Military
Intelligence Battalion Special Electronics Mission Aircraft training,
and other supported aviation missions. Other agencies that use the
Libby Army Airfield include the U.S. Forestry Service, Department of
Homeland Security Customs & Border Protection, and U.S. Air Force.
Readiness-related facility condition issues are addressed
immediately at the local level when resources are available. If
resources are not readily available, the requirements are addressed
through the respective reporting, planning and programming venues.
Critical funding issues, validated by HQDA, were generally resolved
within 60-90 days.
Mr. Wittman. To what extent do the reported readiness levels of
installations take into consideration the condition of their
facilities? Are there other metrics or data points used to assess the
effect of facility condition on readiness? How have the services
attempted to quantify the risks they are taking by perennially reducing
their investments in base support services and infrastructure, if at
all?
General Halverson. Facility condition is a principal factor for
installation readiness. The Army uses its Installation Status Report--
Infrastructure, or ISR-I program, to provide a comprehensive statement
of a reporting location's facilities and infrastructure status. It does
this by determining the quality of facilities compared to existing Army
standards in nine Facility Classes. The Quality, or Q-Rating, indicates
the physical condition of assets. The Army Q-ratings are compatible
with and correspond to prescribed DOD criteria.
ISR-I also uses Mission Support Functional Capability Ratings, or
F-Ratings. The F-Rating indicates whether the existing configuration of
an asset impairs the tenants' capability to support their missions.
Both data points are required to be reported to the Office of the
Secretary of Defense on an annual basis as part of the Army's Real
Property Inventory submission. For example, facilities with an F2
rating are those facilities that meet the minimum functional use, but
are not the optimal design or size. Such facilities are still mission
capable, but could be modernized to operate more effectively and
efficiently. This includes operations and training, maintenance and
mobility infrastructure. For example, a well maintained building with
the wrong layout or configuration to support the mission could have a
Q1 quality rating but a F3 or F4 functional rating.
The Army generates these ratings for installations across all
components of the Army. The ISR-I results are used in a number of
readiness reporting platforms such as the Defense Readiness Reporting
System--Army, the Army Strategic Readiness Assessment, and the
Strategic Readiness Update, to provide Senior Army Leadership with
actionable data as it relates to facility condition and readiness. Risk
considerations are integrated in the base support services and
infrastructure support assessment and ratings process. Risks are
quantified through applied performance, facility, and mission support
metrics.
Mr. Wittman. What steps, if any, are installations taking to reduce
the risk that facility conditions will negatively affect their
readiness to carry out assigned missions? For example, are
installations dedicating more sustainment and recapitalization funding
to higher priority facilities and reducing or delaying funding for
lower priority facilities? How do the installations determine which
facilities are higher priority for purposes of funding needed
sustainment? How effective have any risk-reduction actions been? What
long-term effects, if any, are expected as a result of these actions?
General Halverson. Commanders must balance infrastructure readiness
against risk. Installations prioritize sustainment, restoration and
modernization requirements locally based on not only current facility
conditions, but also on impacts to readiness and training. For example,
many installations take risk on horizontal infrastructure, such as
roads and utility systems, to preserve capabilities that have a more
direct impact on their operations. Specific types of facilities vary
from installation to installation based on their primary mission. For
example, hangers and airfield pavements are a priority at Fort Rucker
Alabama as the Army's Aviation Center of Excellence, while classrooms
and training ranges are critical at installations that conduct Basic
Combat Training.
Determining which facilities receive a higher priority for
sustainment funding involves a collaborative, informed approach. The
installation's Garrison and Senior Commanders work together to
determine local sustainment priorities. The Garrison prioritizes
routine sustainment based on established preventative maintenance tasks
necessary to preserve the full life expectancy of facilities. The
Garrison prioritizes larger sustainment projects based on the facility
condition of enduring infrastructure, inspected failing components, and
mission impact.
Our risk-reduction measures are or were partially successful in
mitigating impacts to mission by focusing on critical Army
requirements. However, reduced Sustainment, Restoration and
Modernization funding causes long-term impacts. Generally, long-term
impacts of these actions are increased ``penalty costs,'' including
increased restoration costs due to degradation, or increased MILCON
requirements which occur when cost-benefits no longer support restoring
or modernizing a facility.
Mr. Wittman. What progress has the Army made in implementing the
2013 and 2014 OSD policy memorandums regarding the standardization of
facility condition assessments and use of the Facility Sustainment
Model? Do you expect to meet the timelines laid out in those
memorandums? Have your efforts to implement to date affected fiscal
year 2016 and/or future budgets?
General Halverson. Currently, the Army uses facility condition
assessments aligned with the OSD policy. The Army fully incorporated
and actively uses the Facility Sustainment Model in its sustainment
requirements programming. The Army manages 90% of its railroads with
the RAILER Sustainment Management System (SMS) and 60% of its pavement
inventory are in the PAVER SMS. The Army will fully implement and
reconcile the RAILER and PAVER SMS data with the real property database
by the OSD deadline. The Army is preparing the BUILDER SMS evaluations
for integration with its existing Installation Status Report (the
current Facility Condition Index generation system for the Army), the
General Fund Enterprise Business System, and the Logistics Management
System. We anticipate completion of the BUILDER SMS implementation by
fiscal year 2021. OSD policy implementation did not change Army fiscal
year 2016 or future year budgets.
Mr. Wittman. What are the services' plans to mitigate the impact of
reduced OCO funding on base operating support and facilities
sustainment, modernization, and restoration?
General Halverson. The Army requires no mitigation plan for CONUS
installations because no OCO funding is applied to base operating
support of facility SRM stateside. However, the Army relies on OCO
funding for base operating support and facilities SRM for specific
initiatives in Europe and CENTCOM. The Army will need to prioritize
funding for the most critical initiatives, scope facility requirements
to minimum standards to support mission, and leverage host nation
capabilities to mitigate reduced OCO funds.
Mr. Wittman. Given consecutive years of funding below the 100% of
BOS requirements, how is BOS funding prioritized in terms of which
activities and services will be supported at a given installation? How
have those decisions to reduce services or support impacted military
readiness and operation or training requirements?
General Halverson. BOS funding distribution is prioritized based on
life, health, and safety as well as statutory and fiscal obligatory
requirements such as: salaries, utilities, leases, fire and emergency
services, environmental compliance, and essential Family programs. As
the result of consecutive years of funding below 100% of requirements,
the Army has taken risk in areas of facility operations in engineering
and municipal services, and the environment. These funding reductions
create challenges across our installations as the Army seeks to provide
a sustainable base for training and quality of life for our Soldiers,
Families, and Civilians.
Mr. Wittman. To what extent has BOS funding been used for other
department priorities or taken away from other department priorities in
recent years? How has this affected the services' ability to provide
installation support?
General Halverson. The Army took risk in BOS to support training
readiness. Taking risk in installation funding affects readiness and
negatively impacts the ability to proactively manage the installation
to ensure adequately sustained facilities and efficient predictable
service delivery. Soldier training and power projection are dependent
on installation facilities and support. Continued risk in installation
readiness erodes the ability to maintain this vital balance.
Mr. Wittman. Have reductions in civilian- or contract-provided
services for utility system operations; installation equipment
maintenance; engineering services including fire protection, crash
rescue, custodial, refuse collection, snow removal, and lease of real
property; security protection and law enforcement; and motor pool
transportation operations impacted availability of facilities that
support operations and training?
General Halverson. Yes, reductions in civilian/contract provided
services have affected the availability of key facilities because many
of those services ensured the continued access to both facilities and
infrastructure. Reduced civilian/contract services create unpredictable
support and increase response time to address basic garrison operating
functions. Soldier Readiness relies on predictable training, which
requires assured access to not only operations and training facilities,
but to all the underlying infrastructure and utilities on an
installation. The reductions in civilian/contract services also include
municipal services, feeding our Soldiers in dining facilities,
providing readiness enabling logistical services, and operating
physical fitness centers. The reduced civilian/contract services erode
the capability of an installation to provide training support, adequate
facility sustainment or react quickly to an infrastructure failure
which interrupts the carefully planned training requirements for our
units. Current funding requires installations to scale back or cancel
service contracts and even delay much needed information technology
infrastructure upgrades.
Mr. Wittman. What impact has the substantial reduction in MILCON
spending had on the ability of installations to support readiness and
serve as power-projection platforms?
General Halverson. At current funding levels, the Army can address
only its most urgent facility needs in support of Army readiness
initiatives, range and training modernization and Combatant Commander
Global Posture requirements. General infrastructure recapitalization is
limited to only those failed facilities that most significantly impact
unit readiness, unit operations and Soldier and Family quality of life.
Current funding levels are also constraining facility sustainment,
causing accelerated facilities deterioration. Taking risk in
Sustainment, Restoration and Modernization funding means facilities
will cost more to fix later than to sustain now. Therefore, the status
quo of historically low MILCON funding cannot be maintained
indefinitely.
Mr. Wittman. What specific examples can you provide of facility
conditions affecting the readiness of installations to carry out their
assigned missions? To what extent have any reported issues been
addressed? How quickly were any issues able to be addressed?
General Hudson. One example of facility conditions affecting
readiness of installations to carry out their assigned missions
concerns outlying landing fields (OLFs).
Deteriorating conditions of OLF runways affect a multitude of a
unit's training and readiness events (T&R). The use of existing runways
by Fleet Replacement Squadrons (FRS) for new pilot generation and
operational squadrons for pilot sustainment training becomes limited,
forcing the need for additional leased tactical landing zones (TLZs) to
accommodate training. Units conducting parachute drop zone (PDZ)
training encounter additional administrative and logistical burdens by
having to transport back to fixed wing capable runways to reload
aircraft. Units conducting long range raid packages in support of
advance airbase seizure exercises have artificially limiting parameters
placed on the tactical employment of forces.
Of the eight OLF runways in the Marine Corps Installations East
AOR, only one is in a good state of order, one is in fair condition,
and six are in poor condition. In the last eight years, only one has
gone through a restoration program. Under current funding projections,
it could many years to repair all of the runways. Delay of repairing
leads to further deterioration of the airfield, increasing the ultimate
costs of making the runways operational again.
Another example is the severe lack of operations and command and
control spaces at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. Staff directorates
are not co-located and spread out in various facilities which adversely
impacts operational support. Many facilities designated for operations
and administrative uses are World War II wood framed structures or
Quonset huts. These facilities lack proper heating and ventilation
systems and are no longer meeting life, health, and safety codes. The
average age of all administrative facilities at Camp Pendleton is 33
years with over one-third of these facilities over 50 years of age.
Given current competing priorities, major repair or replacement of
these facilities are not affordable.
Mr. Wittman. To what extent do the reported readiness levels of
installations take into consideration the condition of their
facilities? Are there other metrics or data points used to assess the
effect of facility condition on readiness? How have the services
attempted to quantify the risks they are taking by perennially reducing
their investments in base support services and infrastructure, if at
all?
General Hudson. Readiness reporting for installation facilities
falls under Mission Essential Task (MET)/Marine Corps Task (MCT) 4.9:
Provide Base and Station Facilities and Related Infrastructure. Under
this MET, installations report on providing, developing, and managing
all real property necessary for the effective administration,
management, employment, and training of military organizations. This
includes engineering support; coordination of all real estate
agreements; construction management; encroachment control; sustainment,
restoration, and modernization of all Class I and II real property to
include family and bachelor housing; and utility services.
Installations report on their ability to provide environmental
services, housing (billeting, transient, and family housing), and
utilities (water, electrical, natural gas/compressed gases, sewage and
waste) to all supported commands. Additionally, designated
installations report on their ability to provide safe haven and COOP
during times of threat or recovery from destructive weather as well as
progress towards compliance with CMC alternative energy goals.
Funding of FSRM below requirement leads to more costly repairs,
restoration, and new construction in the future, creating increased
long-term costs for the American public. Once these facilities degrade,
there is an increased cost to return these facilities to an acceptable
facilities condition to meet mission requirements. Continual
underfunding will lead to a bow wave of requirements in the out-years
just to bring our facilities back to their current condition ($1
billion).
Investments in MILCON will continue to primarily support new
warfighting platforms, training for the 21st century Marine Corps,
replace poor and failing facilities, and improving our security and
safety posture. Reduced funding availability in MILCON will most likely
result in reduced investments in projects that support the
consolidation of functions or replacement of existing facilities, which
would cause degradation in the long-term health of existing facilities.
Not as many projects would be affordable in any given year delaying the
positive impact that these projects would have on readiness.
Marine Corps currently funds base operations to the minimum
acceptable levels necessary to continue operations throughout the
fiscal year. At the minimum acceptable level, only mission-essential
services are provided and minimum legal and safety requirements are
met. At reduced funding levels, the Marine Corps bases and stations
will be forced to curtail base operations functions during periods of
the fiscal year or eliminate lower priority functions that least affect
the training and operations of our deploying forces. These actions will
result in immediate and noticeable reductions in service hours,
customer support, and access to training areas and facilities that
support routine operations of the Marine Corps and quality of life
programs.
Mr. Wittman. What steps, if any, are installations taking to reduce
the risk that facility conditions will negatively affect their
readiness to carry out assigned missions? For example, are
installations dedicating more sustainment and recapitalization funding
to higher priority facilities and reducing or delaying funding for
lower priority facilities? How do the installations determine which
facilities are higher priority for purposes of funding needed
sustainment? How effective have any risk-reduction actions been? What
long-term effects, if any, are expected as a result of these actions?
General Hudson. The Marine Corps has implemented a mission
dependency index (MDI) that provides the relative value of the mission,
tasks and functions performed by a facility. The Commandant has
directed that we prioritize our future investments to ensure proper
maintenance and repair are allocated to those facilities that have a
direct mission impact--deemed as mission critical or mission
significant.
Underfunding of facilities sustainment in the long-term increases
the rate of degradation of Marine Corps infrastructure. This leads to
more costly repairs, restoration, and new construction in the future--
also known as the ``cost of neglect.'' Once these facilities degrade,
there is an increased cost to return these facilities to an acceptable
facilities condition to meet mission requirements.
Continual underfunding will lead to a bow wave of requirements in
the out-years just to bring our facilities back to its current
condition.
We will take significant risk is certain categories of facilities
such as administrative facilities, warehouses and some personnel
support facilities in the short term. However, with over half of our
facilities directly tied to readiness (runways, operations and training
facilities, utilities) or quality of life (barracks), reduced funding
over the long term will have an adverse impact on both warfighter
readiness and quality of life for Marines and their families.
Mr. Wittman. What progress has the Marine Corps made in
implementing the 2013 and 2014 OSD policy memorandums regarding the
standardization of facility condition assessments and use of the
Facility Sustainment Model? Do you expect to meet the timelines laid
out in those memorandums? Have your efforts to implement to date
affected fiscal year 2016 and/or future budgets?
General Hudson. The Marine Corps has fully implemented the OSD
policy memorandum regarding the standardization of facilities condition
assessments.
The Marine Corps met or exceeded the OSD policy memorandum on
Facilities Sustainment through FY2014.
The President's Budget in FY2015 was the first year the Marine
Corps did not meet the OSD guidance on Facilities Sustainment (79%). We
had to take risk in our facilities investment programs to support near
term readiness for our Marines.
Mr. Wittman. What are the services' plans to mitigate the impact of
reduced OCO funding on base operating support and facilities
sustainment, modernization, and restoration?
General Hudson. The Marine Corps receives very little OCO funding
for BOS and FSRM. However, a reduction in OCO for the operating forces
results in increased competition for limited resources in the base
budget.
As the Marine Corps prioritizes near term readiness, there is
further migration of funds from installations to the operating forces
to cover higher priority shortfalls due to the lack of OCO funding. For
instance, during OIF/OEF, OCO funds typically covered all costs
associated with both the Personal Effects and Privately Owned Vehicle
(POV) storage contracts. Although II Marine Expeditionary Force (II
MEF) and Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC) were the principal
users, the installation commanders on the East Coast (home of the
deploying forces) are responsible for paying the bill. During peak
deployment years, both contracts accounted for almost $1M annually. OCO
funds have not been available since Fiscal Year 2014 so both contracts
have required a plus up in baseline funding. In accordance with the
Joint Travel Regulation, both programs are entitlements and, therefore,
fully funding the requirement is a ``must-pay'' bill.
Mr. Wittman. Given consecutive years of funding below the 100% of
BOS requirements, how is BOS funding prioritized in terms of which
activities and services will be supported at a given installation? How
have those decisions to reduce services or support impacted military
readiness and operation or training requirements?
General Hudson. The Marine Corps prioritizes mission-essential
services related to life, safety, and health at the bases and stations.
Fire protection, emergency response and services, and occupational
safety and health and programs fall into this category.
Secondary to this, the Marine Corps prioritizes mandatory and
statutory programs, including environmental compliance.
Finally, the Marine Corps considers utilities and civilian labor as
must pay bills for the continuance of operations and maintaining the
morale of the workforce.
Mr. Wittman. To what extent has BOS funding been used for other
department priorities or taken away from other department priorities in
recent years? How has this affected the services' ability to provide
installation support?
General Hudson. Marine Corps bases and stations are currently
funded at a high risk level in most areas of BOS, with funding limited
to basic life, safety, health and statutory requirements.
Reductions in BOS to the high risk level have impacted civilian
personnel, including reductions in our Law Enforcement Program, delayed
replenishment and replacement of furniture and equipment for BEQs and
office spaces, reduced Semper Fit, Community Support and Family Care
programs, and increased risk enterprise network infrastructure
operations.
As an example, for Marine Corps Installations East (primarily
located in the Southeast portion of the United States), the most acute
impact of funding cuts is felt by the civilian workforce. At Camp
Lejeune, before the massive construction build up to support the
increased Marine Corps force structure, the base had a large deficit in
bachelor housing, maintenance, warehouse, and administrative
facilities. The large investment in military construction funding
during this build-up addressed many of these requirements. However, the
base staff is now in a position of supporting a larger facilities
footprint with a smaller workforce. The workforce may be able to keep
up with immediate tasks, but it is extremely challenged to perform the
long-term tasks necessary to sustain and operate the additional and
more complex infrastructure and preserve the capabilities and readiness
of Marine Corps installations.
Mr. Wittman. Have reductions in civilian- or contract-provided
services for utility system operations; installation equipment
maintenance; engineering services including fire protection, crash
rescue, custodial, refuse collection, snow removal, and lease of real
property; security protection and law enforcement; and motor pool
transportation operations impacted availability of facilities that
support operations and training?
General Hudson. While there is limited direct impact on our
facilities, there is greater impact on our Marines.
The requirements to execute these functions (facilities
maintenance, utility system operations, installation equipment
maintenance, custodial, refuse collection, etc.) continue despite the
reduction in civilian and contract provided services. As a result,
Marines are required to perform some of these ``housekeeping'' duties
which takes them away from their mission of training and operations.
Instead of conducting pre-deployment training for our forward deployed
mission and MOS specific skill training, Marines are cutting the grass
and maintaining the equipment and infrastructure. Shortfalls in
security manning for our installations results in the Operating Force
having to augment installation security.
Mr. Wittman. What impact has the substantial reduction in MILCON
spending had on the ability of installations to support readiness and
serve as power-projection platforms?
General Hudson. Investments in MILCON will continue to primarily
support new warfighting platforms, force relocations (Pivot to the
Pacific, AVPLAN), training for the 21st century Marine Corps, replace
poor and failing facilities, and improving our security and safety
posture.
Reduced funding availability in MILCON will most likely result in
reduced investments in projects that support the consolidation of
functions or replacement of existing facilities, which would cause
degradation of the long-term health of existing facilities
With lower budgets, not as many projects would be affordable in any
given year, delaying the positive impact that these projects would have
on readiness. Given our focus to support new warfighting platforms and
Pivot to the Pacific, reduced funding will likely decrease our ability
to support other required MILCON efforts such as:
ATFP projects to meet standards and security programs
Environmental compliance
First Responder support
Ground maintenance and depot operations
Quality of Life
Utilities and communications modernization
In addition to funding challenges associated with MILCON, the
Marine Corps will also be challenged to support all training needs.
Installations must continually evaluate emergent training requirements
to support the operational forces. These requirements are developed
from new weapon systems, ammunition, tactics, and techniques, and
theater specific training requirements. While there is a necessity to
continually provide innovative relevant training venues and systems to
the operating force, constrained funding pits modernization efforts
against sustainment and recapitalization efforts. This requires a
tradeoff between preparing for the future while maintaining the
baseline necessities to fulfill the training and readiness standards
for the operating forces.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. O'ROURKE
Mr. O'Rourke. Is there a way the Army can translate funding spent
on excess infrastructure to readiness? For instance, if the Army were
able to dispense with the 1% of its infrastructure (of which 18% is
estimated to be excess) how much readiness would that produce? What is
the best measure?
General Halverson. The associated costs of sustaining and managing
excess infrastructure impact readiness, however, the costs do not
typically have a one-for-one relationship. Reducing excess
infrastructure improves the readiness of our installations and the
ability of our installations to support mission requirements.
The money spent on sustaining excess infrastructure is an
opportunity cost. Most of the excess infrastructure is in the form of
underutilized (not empty) buildings. Eliminating 100% excess
infrastructure capacity is unrealistic because some underutilized
capacity is on high-military value installations. Utilizing this excess
capacity may come through a BRAC to reallocate resources.
The Army's $500M estimate of excess capacity expenses is
conservative. It only considers the costs of sustaining 160 to 190
million square feet of excess capacity. The cost of providing
utilities, security, and running the installations upon which these
buildings sit, is much more significant. Base Operations Support (BOS)
costs do not change significantly when an installation loses 10 or 20
percent of its assigned personnel, because installation operational
costs are relatively fixed.
Thus, closing a few lower military value installations through
BRAC, and realigning the remaining missions into available excess
capacity at the remaining, higher-military-value installations, is
where the Army would produce the vast majority of BRAC savings.
Whether excess capacity is reduced at the margins (i.e., using
current law), or reduced significantly through the BRAC, the Army would
seek to free up a reoccurring source of savings to reinvest and
increase our installations' capacity to support mission or training
readiness.
[all]