[Senate Hearing 114-765]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-765
THE LONG TERM BUDGETARY CHALLENGES
FACING THE MILITARY SERVICES AND
INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR MAINTAINING
OUR MILITARY SUPERIORITY
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 15, 2016
__________
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COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona, Chairman
JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma JACK REED, Rhode Island
JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama BILL NELSON, Florida
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri
KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
TOM COTTON, Arkansas KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York
MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
JONI ERNST, Iowa JOE DONNELLY, Indiana
THOM TILLIS, North Carolina MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska TIM KAINE, Virginia
MIKE LEE, Utah ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine
LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
TED CRUZ, Texas
Christian D. Brose, Staff Director
Elizabeth L. King, Minority Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
_______________________________________________________________________
September 15, 2016
Page
The Long-Term Budgetary Challenges Facing the Military Services 1
and Innovative Solutions for Maintaining Our Military
Superiority.
Milley, General Mark A., USA, Chief of Staff of the United States 4
Army.
Richardson, Admiral John M., USN, Chief of Naval Operations of 8
the United States Navy.
Neller, General Robert B., USMC, Commandant of the United States 12
Marine Corps.
Goldfein, General David L., USAF, Chief of Staff of the United 17
States Air Force.
Questions for the Record......................................... 55
(iii)
THE LONG-TERM BUDGETARY CHALLENGES
FACING THE MILITARY SERVICES AND
INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR MAINTAINING
OUR MILITARY SUPERIORITY
----------
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2016
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:34 a.m. in Room
SD-G50, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator John McCain
(chairman) presiding.
Committee members present: Senators McCain, Inhofe, Wicker,
Fischer, Cotton, Rounds, Ernst, Tillis, Sullivan, Graham, Reed,
McCaskill, Manchin, Shaheen, Gillibrand, Blumenthal, Donnelly,
Hirono, King, and Heinrich.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHN McCAIN, CHAIRMAN
Chairman McCain. Good morning. The Senate Armed Services
Committee meets this morning to receive testimony on the long-
term budgetary challenges facing our military.
I would like to welcome our witnesses: the Chief of Staff
of the Army, General Milley; the Chief of Naval Operations,
Admiral Richardson; the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General
Neller; and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General
Goldfein. I thank each of you for your years of distinguished
service and for your testimony today.
Far too often, Washington is governed by crisis and stop-
gap deals like continuing resolutions, omnibus spending bills,
and episodic budget agreements that are a poor substitute for
actually doing our jobs. It has become an, unfortunately, all
too familiar cycle of partisan gridlock, political
brinksmanship, and backroom dealing. Is it any wonder why
Americans say they are losing trust in government?
Through it all, we lose sight of the fact that the
dysfunction of Washington has very real consequences for the
thousands of Americans serving in uniform and sacrificing on
our behalf all around the Nation and the world. From
Afghanistan to Iraq and Syria, from the heart of Europe to the
seas of Asia, our troops are doing everything we ask of them.
But we must ask ourselves are we doing everything we can for
them. Are we serving them with a similar degree of courage in
the performance of our duties? The answer I say with profound
sadness is we are not. We are not.
Over many years across Presidents and congressional
majorities of both parties, Washington has overseen a steady
explosion of our national debt. This is just a fact. But five
years ago, rather than confronting the real driver of our
ballooning debt, which is the unsustainable growth of
entitlement spending, we looked the other way. We failed to
make tough choices and necessary reforms, and the result was
the Budget Control Act which imposed arbitrary caps on
discretionary spending, including defense spending for a
decade. When we failed to fix the real problem, we doubled down
on these reckless cuts with mindless sequestration. In short,
we lied to the American people.
The Budget Control Act and sequestration have done nothing
to fix our national debt. This is just mathematics. What is
worse, the people we have punished for our failure are none
other than the men and women of our armed services and many
other important agencies. The world has only grown more
dangerous over the past five years, but the resources available
to our military has continued to decline.
This year's defense budget is more than $150 billion less
than fiscal year 2011. Rising threats and declining budgets
have led to shrinking military forces that are struggling to
sustain higher operational tempo with aging equipment and
depleted readiness, and doing so at the expense of modernizing
to deal with the threats of tomorrow.
Our present crisis of military readiness is not just a
matter of training. It is also a capacity problem. Our Army,
Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps are too small to train for
and meet our growing operational requirements against low-end
threats while simultaneously having enough spare capacity to
prepare for full spectrum warfare against high-end threats. As
it is, our services are cannibalizing themselves just to keep
up with the current pace of deployments, as recent media
reports about the Air Force and Marine Corps aviation have made
clear. The result is that our fighting forces are becoming
effectively hollow against great power competitors.
If all of this is not bad enough, there is this. We are
only halfway through the Budget Control Act. There are five
more years of arbitrary defense spending cuts. It is true that
last year's Bipartisan Budget Act provided some much needed
relief, but this two-year deal is coming to an end. When it
does, those arbitrary caps will return and remain in place
through the next President's entire first term.
The Department of Defense and many of us in the Congress
believe this would devastate our national defense. Yet, we are
fooling ourselves and deceiving the American people about the
true cost of fixing the problem. Just consider the Department's
current 5-year defense plan is $100 billion in total above the
spending caps set by the Budget Control Act. In addition,
roughly $30 billion of annual spending for base defense
requirements is buried in the budget account for emergency
operations, requirements that will remain for our military even
if our present operations immediately ended, which of course
they will not.
What this means is that over the next five years, our
Nation must come up with $250 billion just to pay for our
current defense strategy and our current programs of record.
$250 billion just to do what we are planning to do right now,
which I think many of us would agree is insufficient to meet
our present, let alone our future challenges. A quarter of a
trillion dollars. That is the real hidden cost above our budget
caps that we must come up with over the next five years.
Put simply, we have no plan as yet to pay for what our
Department of Defense is doing right now, even as most of us
agree that what we are doing at present is not sufficient for
what we really need. Those needs are great indeed, from
maintaining the capability and capacity to wage a generational
fight against radical Islamic terrorism, to rebuilding a ready
and modernized force, to deter and, if necessary, defeat high-
end threats, to modernizing our nuclear deterrent, to investing
in the next generation capabilities that will preserve our
military technological advantage and ensure our troops never
find themselves in a fair fight.
The bottom line is this. From the Budget Control Act caps
to the so-called OCO [overseas contingency operations] account,
to our increasingly obsolete defense strategy, to the
modernization bow wave that is coming for each of the services,
we are lying to ourselves and the American people about the
true cost of defending the Nation. The result is that our
military's ability to deter conflict is weakening, and should
we find ourselves in conflict, it is becoming increasingly
likely that our Nation will deploy young Americans into battle
without sufficient training or equipment to fight a war that
will take longer, be larger, cost more, and ultimately claim
more American lives than it otherwise would have.
If that comes to pass, who will be responsible? Who is to
blame for the increasing risk to the lives of the men and women
who volunteer to serve and defend our Nation? The answer is
clear. We are, the President and the Congress, Democrats and
Republicans, all of us.
With budget debates looming ahead, the question now is
whether we will find the courage we have lacked for five long
years, the courage to put aside politics, to chart a better
course, to adopt a defense budget worthy of the service and
sacrifice of those who volunteer to put themselves in harm's
way on our behalf.
I am committed to doing everything I can as chairman of
this committee to accomplishing this task. I know my colleagues
on this committee are too. Despite the odds, I am ever hopeful
that together we still can.
Senator Reed?
STATEMENT OF SENATOR JACK REED
Senator Reed. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let
me join you in welcoming the members of the panel and thank
them for their outstanding service to the Nation and ask them
to convey our thanks to the men and women who serve so proudly
in uniform for the United States. Thank you.
The focus of today's hearing is the long-term budget
challenges confronting our Military Services. For 15 years, our
armed forces have been in continuous military operations. While
our men and women in uniform have performed their duties
superbly and doing all that we have asked them to do and more,
the intense operational tempo has had an impact on our
soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, their training and
their equipment. On top of all that, the services have had to
grapple with sequestration and constrained budgets, as the
chairman has pointed out.
The military leaders before us today have an important
task. As they plan their budgets for fiscal year 2018 and
beyond, they must anticipate emerging threats for the future
and how our military will address and ultimately defeat those
threats. As we are reminded on a daily basis, our country is
facing many complicated and rapidly evolving challenges that do
not offer easy or quick solutions.
For example, we have seen our near-peer competitors learn
from our past successes and make advancements of their own,
particularly in the areas of precision and long-range strike,
anti-access/area denial, space, and cyber. As a result, the
Department of Defense has embarked on a third offset strategy
to address the steady erosion of U.S. technological superiority
and recapture our qualitative advantage over our adversaries.
We welcome our witnesses' thoughts on how their respective
services plan to confront these critical issues again in the
context of these very difficult budgetary issues.
In addition to anticipating and planning our future
threats, our witnesses today must also ensure targeted
investments are made to rebuild readiness levels, modernize the
force, and maintain the wellbeing of our troops. Over the
course of this year, the committee has repeatedly heard
testimony on these issues, and I hope that our witnesses can
provide this committee an update on the progress that they have
made.
Finally, defense budgets should be based on our long-term
military strategy which requires the Department to focus at
least five years into the future. Last year, Congress passed
the 2015 Bipartisan Budget Act [BBA] that established the
discretionary funding level for defense spending for fiscal
year 2016 and 2017. While the BBA provided the Department with
budget stability in the near term, there is no agreement for
fiscal year 2018 and beyond. Therefore, without another
bipartisan agreement that provides relief from sequestration,
the Military Services will be forced to submit a fiscal year
2018 budget that adheres to the sequestration level budget caps
and would undermine the investments made to rebuild readiness
and modernization and other aspects of our military force.
Not only is the issue one of budgets, but the issue is one
of the certainty of knowing that you have budget levels not
just for a year but for at least five years. That is another
aspect we have to come to grips with.
I will, indeed, welcome the witnesses' thoughts and
suggestions as we move forward.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCain. General Milley?
STATEMENT OF GENERAL MARK A. MILLEY, USA, CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE
UNITED STATES ARMY
General Milley. Thanks, Chairman McCain--I appreciate
that--and Ranking Member Reed and other distinguished members
of the committee for the opportunity to appear before you today
to discuss our Army. Thank you for your consistent support and
commitment to our Army's soldiers, civilians, and families.
A ready army, as you know, is manned, trained, equipped,
and well led as the foundation of the joint force in order to
deter and, if deterrence fails, to fight and defeat a wide
range of state and non-state actors today, tomorrow, and deep
into the future.
Although there are many challenges, as I outline below, the
most important of which is consistent, sustained, and
predictable funding over time, I still want to be clear. The
United States Army is America's combat force of decision, and
we are more capable, better trained, better equipped, better
led, and more lethal than any other ground force in the world
today. We are highly valued by our allies, and we are feared by
our enemies. The enemies know full well we can destroy them. We
can destroy any enemy. We can destroy them anywhere, and we can
destroy them anytime.
But having said that, our challenge today is to sustain the
counterterrorist and the counterinsurgency capabilities that we
have developed to a high degree of proficiency over the last 15
consecutive years of war for many years in the future, the
prediction of which is unknown, and simultaneously rebuild our
capability in ground combat against higher-end, near-peer,
great power threats.
The Army prioritizes readiness in this NDAA [National
Defense Authorization Act] because the global security
environment is increasingly uncertain and complex. I anticipate
that we will have to continue to prioritize readiness for many
years to come. While we cannot forecast precisely when and
where the next contingency will arise, it is my professional
military view that if any contingency happens, it will likely
require a significant commitment of U.S. Army forces on the
ground.
The Army is currently committed to winning our fight
against radical terrorists during conflict in other parts of
the globe. Currently, the Army provides 52 percent of all the
global combatant commander demand for military forces, and we
provide 69 percent of all the emerging combatant commander
demand. Currently, we have 187,000 soldiers committed in 140
different countries globally conducting the Nation's business.
To sustain current operations at that rate and to mitigate
the risks of deploying an unready force into future combat
operations, the Army will continue to prioritize and fully fund
readiness over end strength modernization and infrastructure.
In other words, we are mortgaging future readiness for current
readiness.
We request the resources to fully man and equip our combat
formations and conduct realistic combined arms combat training
at both home station and our combat training centers [CTC]. We
request continued support for our modernization in five key
capability areas that we determined are lagging: aviation,
command and control networks, integrated air and missile
defense, combat vehicles, and emerging threat programs.
Our near-term innovation efforts are focused on developing
overmatch in mobility, lethality, mission command, and force
protection with specific emphasis on the following systems:
long-range precision fires, missile defense, directed energy
weapons, ground vehicles, vertical lift, cyber, electronic
warfare, robotics, networks, and active protective systems for
both ground and air.
We ask your continued support for our soldiers and our
families to recruit and retain the high level and the high
quality of soldiers of character and competence that you have
come to expect from the United States Army. With your support
through sustained long-term, balanced, predictable resources,
the Army will fund readiness at sufficient levels to meet
current demands, build readiness for contingencies, and invest
in the readiness of our future force.
Thank you, Senators, for the opportunity to testify, and I
look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Milley follows:]
Prepared Statement by General Mark A. Milley
introduction
Today, your Army is globally engaged around the world building
partner capacity in Iraq to fight terrorism and we continue to train,
advise, and assist the Afghan National Defense Security Forces. We are
engaging our partners in Africa, and throughout North and South America
and have committed about 100,000 soldiers to sustain regional stability
in the Asia-Pacific. In Europe, we are actively reassuring allies, with
rotational and permanently stationed forces, in the face of emerging
challenges and deterring Russian aggression. In short, the Army is
protecting important national security objectives in every region of
the world against five significant security challenges: Russia, China,
Iran, North Korea, and counter-terrorism.
Predictable and consistent funding is absolutely essential for the
Army to build and sustain current readiness and progress toward a more
modern, capable future force. We simply cannot sustain readiness or
build the Army our Nation needs in the future if we return to
sequestration-level funding in fiscal year 2018.
Although there are many challenges as I outline below, I want to be
clear--the U.S. Army is America's combat force of decision and can
rapidly deploy to destroy any enemy in the world today.
where we are
Readiness is the Army's number one priority. Readiness determines
our ability to fight and win in ground combat. It is the capability of
our forces, as part of the Joint Force, to conduct the full range of
military operations to defeat any enemy. Units that are properly
manned, trained, equipped, and led are the means by which the Army
generates the skillful application of land power with speed and
violence of action in order to terminate the conflict on terms
favorable to the United States.
While the Army is reducing end-strength, we made a deliberate
decision to prioritize readiness, reduce infrastructure maintenance,
and decrease funding for modernization. These choices devote resources
to today's fight, but decrease investments for future modernization and
infrastructure readiness, and emergent demands.
global demand and manning
The Army comprises 33 percent of the DOD force structure and
sources 52 percent of DOD's Combatant Command base demand for forces
and 69 percent of emergent demand for forces. While the demand for Army
units has been and is expected to remain high, we are reducing military
end-strength in all three of our components; Regular Army, Army
National Guard, and the Army Reserve.
training
In the last year, the Army has made significant progress in our
core warfighting skills across multiple types of units, but we have
much work to do to achieve full spectrum readiness in decisive action
operations.
To build sufficient operational and strategic depth, the Army will
prepare our formations for the entire range of military operations. All
Army training will include elements of the Army Reserve, National
Guard, and the Regular Army. Additionally, all units will require
multiple iterations of individual and unit home-station ranges,
challenging gunnery training, and realistic Combat Training Center
rotations.
Our challenge is to balance the requirements of remaining
regionally engaged while simultaneously preparing to meet the demands
of a globally responsive contingency force. About a third of our
Regular Army Brigade Combat Teams are currently ready for high-end
combat against a nation state. We will fully fund Combat Training
Center rotations and protect home station training to increase training
frequency, rigor and readiness across the force.
However, the impacts of reduced resourcing are being felt across
the force and throughout Army units and installations world-wide. The
increased training tempo required to train to high-end full spectrum
tasks to meet warfighting standards must also be balanced against
maintaining unit equipment to operational standards.
The last key factor for improving readiness is time. Our goal is to
have Regular Army Brigade Combat Teams achieve 60-66 percent full
spectrum readiness, and I estimate that it will take the Army
approximately four years to achieve that assuming no significant
increase in demand and no sequestration levels of funding.
equipping and modernization
Equipment readiness is a critical component of overall unit
readiness. We have deliberately allocated resources to prioritize
readiness of equipment for the current fight and we have deferred
investments in modernization. Our strategy has been to incrementally
improve on existing platforms and we are at risk to lag behind near-
peer adversaries in critical capabilities over the mid-term.
Our short-term equipment modernization strategy will continue to
focus on the five critical capability areas: Aviation, the Network,
Integrated Air and Missile Defense, Combat Vehicles, and Emerging
Threats. The Army will invest in programs with the highest operational
return and build new systems only by exception. We will delay
procurement of our next generation platforms and accept risk to force
in the mid-term, but we are committed to preserve some funding for
research and development.
leader development
Our Army thrives in complex and uncertain environments because our
soldiers, non-commissioned officers, and officers are well educated,
trained and equipped to think, improvise, and adapt to ambiguous and
rapidly changing conditions. Our strength is derived not from platforms
or high-tech equipment, it comes from our people. We continue to
recruit resilient, fit men and women of character and develop them into
competent soldiers. Training, educating and compensating our personnel
helps to retain the best of the best, which requires appropriate and
consistent funding as much as other readiness areas. This emphasis will
not change now or in the future as we reduce our end-strength while
retaining the best talent within our ranks.
innovation
The Army will work with all stakeholders across the Department of
Defense, other services, industry, research laboratories, and civilian
innovators to develop new operating concepts and technologies. In
particular, we are working with the Strategic Capabilities Office,
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Defense Innovation
Unit Experimental on innovative technologies to improve our current and
future capabilities. Our near-term innovation efforts are focused on
developing technologies to protect mission critical systems from cyber-
attacks and to sustain overmatch in the key areas of: mobility,
lethality, mission command, and force protection with specific emphasis
on: long-range precision fires, missile defense, directed energy
weapons, ground vehicles, vertical lift, cyber, electronic warfare,
networks, and active protection systems (ground and air).
acquisition
Our acquisition process must be innovative, agile, and effective to
maintain overmatch. Most recently, the Army announced the stand-up of
the Army Rapid Capabilities Office to expedite the design, development,
evaluation, procurement and fielding of critical combat materiel
capabilities to deliver an operational effect within one to five years.
The Army remains committed to ensuring that we make the right
acquisition decisions and that we improve the acquisition process to
maintain a technological advantage over adversaries and provide
requisite capabilities to soldiers.
risk
The Army prioritizes today's readiness and accepts risk in
modernization and infrastructure maintenance in the mid and long term.
We continue to implement efficiencies and find innovative ways to
preserve funding for our highest priority--increasing readiness. Over
the last few years, the Army has significantly reduced headquarters at
two-star and above echelons, adopted energy and other efficiencies, and
made significant business transformation improvements. Even with these
cost saving initiatives, however, we have had to make hard funding
choices such as deferring investments in housing modernization,
training facilities, and power projection platforms. Our fiscal year
2017 budget request represents the Army's lowest MILCON budget since
1998.
In the current global environment, the Army will continue to meet
the demands of the fight against radical terrorism and the predictable
demands of our geographic combatant commanders. Absent additional
legislation, the sequestration caps set by the Budget Control Act of
2011 will return in fiscal year 2018, forcing the Army to draw down
end-strength even further, reduce funding for readiness, and increase
the risk of sending under-trained and poorly equipped soldiers into
harm's way.
conclusion
Sustaining the high levels of performance our Army has demonstrated
since 1775 requires consistent, long term, balanced and predictable
funding. Without it, the Army must fully fund current readiness, reduce
funding future readiness in modernization and infrastructure
maintenance, and continue programmed end-strength reductions.
The U.S. Army has made difficult choices to sustain current
readiness for today and to be prepared for tomorrow. We request the
support of Congress to predictably fund the Army at balanced and
sufficient levels to meet current demands and to build a more capable,
modern, ready force for future contingencies.
Chairman McCain. Admiral Richardson?
STATEMENT OF ADMIRAL JOHN M. RICHARDSON, USN, CHIEF OF NAVAL
OPERATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY
Admiral Richardson. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Ranking
Member Reed, distinguished members of the committee, thank you
for the opportunity to appear before you today and thank you
for your sustained support to our Navy and our Nation.
I have been traveling around a fair amount recently to put
eyes onto our Navy around the world. As you know, the problems
they face are getting more complex by the day. But your naval
team is working hard, and our sailors, marines, and civilians
are simply astounding in their skill and dedication. We must
focus on them with everything we do to respect their mission
and their dedication.
I can describe our current challenges in terms of a triple
whammy.
The first whammy, as we have said, is the continued high
demand for our naval forces. We just marked the 15th
anniversary of 9/11. The past 15 years of high OPTEMPO
[operational tempo] in support of the wars has put tremendous
wear and tear on our ships and aircraft. It has also taken a
toll on the sailors that take those platforms out to sea, on
the skilled Navy civilians that build and repair them, and on
our family members.
The second whammy is budget uncertainty. Eight years of
continuing resolutions, including a year of sequestration, have
driven additional cost and time into just about everything that
we do. The services are essentially operating in three fiscal
quarters per year now. Nobody schedules anything important in
the first quarter. The disruption that this uncertainty imposes
translates directly into risk to our Navy and our Nation.
The third whammy is the resource levels in the Budget
Control and Bipartisan Budget Acts. Funding levels require us
to prioritize achieving full readiness only for our deploying
units. These are ready for full spectrum operations, but we are
compromising the readiness of those ships and aircraft that we
will have to surge to achieve victory in a large conflict. We
have also curtailed our modernization in a number of areas
critical to staying ahead of our potential adversaries.
One more related point. Mr. Chairman, this highlights a
point you brought up. Your Navy thrives on long-term stability,
and when putting together shipbuilding plans, it is necessary
to think in terms of decades. While I know we are mostly here
to talk about the current challenges, I feel I must say I was
struck by the recent Congressional Budget Office report
updating their long-term budget and economic outlook. In it,
they predict that within the decade, discretionary spending,
which includes defense, will drop to the lowest levels in more
than 50 years. It makes crystal clear that it is vital that we
all dive in and get to work on this problem now for the
security of our country.
In terms of a solution, we must work as partners. On one
hand, we must work to set sufficient resource levels and
restore stability to the budgeting process. On the other hand,
we must ensure--I must ensure that every dollar that the
American taxpayer gives the Navy is spent as efficiently and
effectively as possible. I am committed to meeting my
responsibilities here and in partnering with you as we go
forward.
Together with our sister services, your Navy is here to
protect our great Nation. Your sailors and civilians continue
to do everything that is being asked of them, even as the
demands continue to grow. Working together with you, I am
committed to finding a way to address these challenges.
Thank you, sir, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Richardson follows:]
Prepared Statement by Admiral John M. Richardson
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Reed, and distinguished members of the
Armed Services Committee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the
Navy's current and future fiscal needs. I have appeared before you and
your colleagues in the Congress multiple times to tell this story over
the last 14 months; unfortunately, little has changed during that time.
The gap between the demands the Navy is facing and the solutions
available to address them is growing, and remains my deepest concern.
As has always been true, each of the Military Services seeks to find
the best balance between readiness for today's operations and ensuring
adequate preparation for the future. The solution required to establish
the best balance includes two broad dimensions: how much resources are
provided, and how Navy uses those resources to best effect.
Regarding how much resources are provided, there is no question
that the fiscal limits imposed by the Budget Control Act (BCA),
application of the sequester mechanism, and even the slightly relaxed
limits in the Bipartisan Budget Act have made finding this balance much
more difficult. The Navy has seen increasing pressure on its budget
since President's Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 request. Against that baseline,
our funding has been cut by $30 billion, to include a $5 billion
reduction reflected in the pending fiscal year 2017 proposal.
Reduced funding levels are just one of aspect of the ``triple
whammy'' that the Navy faces. Those cuts come at a time when continued
mission demands result in high operational tempo, and there is
persistent uncertainty about when budgets will be approved. The
combination of these factors has resulted in Navy incurring substantial
``readiness debt,'' just like carrying a debt on a credit card.
The operational demands on the Navy remain high. The maritime
security environment is becoming increasingly congested and
competitive, when technology is advancing and being adopted at
unprecedented rates, and when competition in the information domain is
permeating every aspect of our existence. China and Russia are
leveraging these trends to expand both their capabilities and capacity,
and are making the maritime competition felt both at sea and in the
air. North Korea's missile programs continue to advance and their
provocations persist. Iranian forces vacillate between professional and
more threatening actions on the sea, raising the potential for
miscalculation, and ISIL continues to demonstrate its ability to
threaten America and its interests.
In response to these challenges, the Navy's sustained operational
tempo has been high. To meet demands, the Navy continues to extend
deployments and stress our platforms beyond projections. Our analysis
from the last 15 years of conflict shows that a seven-month deployment
is sustainable. But between late 2013 and the end of 2015, the average
deployment for our carrier strike groups was nine months. We are
currently taking steps to return to our seven-month goal as rapidly as
possible, but the need to support the fight against ISIL recently led
us to extend the deployments of the USS Harry S. Truman and USS
Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Groups to eight and eight and a half
months respectively.
The effects of this high operational tempo manifest themselves
through increased wear and tear on ships, aircraft, and people. As we
conduct much-needed repairs, the average amount of work needed for the
34 ships currently in private shipyards is exceeding our projections by
35 percent. For aircraft, our planned maintenance in depot work periods
for legacy F/A-18s is taking 345 days to return them to safe flying
status, almost double the 180 days we had planned. This results from
extended operations and increased use of our systems, which causes
material conditions to degrade faster than anticipated. Longer
maintenance cycles have operational implications, and often have a
cascading effect. Aircraft carrier strike group deployments are just
one example: last year, the USS Dwight D Eisenhower's scheduled dry
dock repairs had to be extended by nine months. In order to meet
mission requirements, the USS Harry S Truman's maintenance period was
cut short so she could deploy in place of Eisenhower. The deferred work
on the Truman will now be rolled into her upcoming maintenance period
that begins later this month. For surface combatants, the Congress is
currently considering reprogramming actions that will help us to
address cost growth and support planned maintenance availabilities for
three destroyers in this fiscal year, but sustained budget pressure and
higher than expected maintenance volume has already led to delaying an
attack submarine maintenance period beyond this fiscal year.
Our people are also feeling the strain. While we continue to meet
both our recruiting and retention goals in the aggregate, these numbers
mask lower retention for certain heavily stressed specialties like
SEALs (26 percent less than the goal from 2013 to 2015) and surface
nuclear officers (14 percent less than the goal over the same period).
Navy aviation is another area where this is a concern. We are seeing
declines in officer retention for multiple grades, and bonuses are not
proving fully effective. Though we are still able to meet our manning
needs, these trends are particularly worrisome given the projected
increases in civilian aviation hiring. This fraying of the team
represents a grave threat to our future. We ask a lot of our sailors,
and they expect very little in return. At a minimum, we owe them the
ability to sustain a personal and family life as they pursue their Navy
careers.
Constrained resources, reduced funding levels, combined with
operational and related maintenance challenges, have been exacerbated
by budget uncertainty. Building and maintaining high-end ships and
aircraft requires long term stability and commitment. Without it, costs
grow and work takes longer. Skilled workers leave the workforce--many
don't return. Private industry defers investments in necessary process
improvements. Despite these obstacles, recovery from our current
maintenance backlog is underway--but it will take time. We must find a
way to restore the trust and confidence that underpin the crucial
relationship with our acquisition and maintenance workforce. Our
ability to achieve true effectiveness and efficiency has been
undermined by budget instability, workforce limitations, and eight--now
likely nine--straight years of budget uncertainty and continuing
resolutions.
The impact of continuing resolutions is significant. Navy leaders
have essentially been managing an enterprise, with a budget the size of
a ``Fortune 10 Company,'' in what amounts to three fiscal quarters per
year. This compromises our mission, and drives inefficiency and waste
into all that we do. For example, a short term continuing resolution
requires us to break what would otherwise be single annual contract
actions into multiple transactions. This results in a 20 percent
increase in the overall number of funding documents for activities like
base support and facilities maintenance, and fails to take advantage of
savings from contractors who could better manage their workload and
pass on lower costs to the Navy. These redundant efforts drive
additional time and cost into the system, for exactly the same output.
As our first priority, Navy leaders ensure that every single unit
we send forward on deployment is fully prepared to conduct its mission.
Doing so at current budget levels forces difficult choices about
readiness levels of the force we have in reserve, and the resultant
length of time that would be needed if we are called upon to ``surge''
that force in response to a large conflict or emergent contingency. For
example, we are falling short in the numbers of ready aircraft and the
parts to support them. This means it will take more time and training
if there were a need to push them forward in response to a crisis. We
have also been forced to rely upon contingency funding to augment our
base budget. For example, our fiscal year 2017 budget proposal funds
only 20 of the 24 steaming days per quarter for non-deployed unit
training and readiness--the four remaining days are reflected in our
contingency request. If contingency funding is curtailed, the loss of
steaming days will directly impact the surface fleet's training and
readiness to conduct exercises at sea for basic, intermediate, and
advanced training.
The Navy's uncompromising commitment to preserving the readiness of
the forces deploying today also affects investments in our future
readiness, as reflected in our modernization accounts. Some examples of
this tension include lower funding for Counter Electronic Attack Kits
to defeat high end threats; continued procurement for next generation
F-35C aircraft; additional advanced tactical cryptologic and
cryptologic support tools; additional AIM-9X missiles; and a modernized
DDG combat system that leverages the latest advances in attack
capabilities. These are critical modernization capabilities that are
currently not funded at desired levels.
My top modernization priority, and greatest concern, is adequate,
stable funding for the Ohio Replacement Program (ORP) while still
providing a fleet that will meet other important Navy missions.
In the immediate future, January 2017 is planned to be a major ORP
milestone when we transition from research and development to ship
construction funding in order to conduct detailed design work. The
absence of an approved budget puts at risk this transition, and the
Program as a whole. If we cannot find a way to begin this work by the
beginning of the calendar year, ORP will almost certainly experience
unnecessary cost growth, as well as experience delays that threaten the
conduct of an existential mission that we have covered continuously
since 1960. I welcome the opportunity to provide any additional
information to further explain the imperative of keeping this program
on track.
I have other concerns as well. We foresee future shortfalls in our
Attack Submarines, Future Surface Combatants (including Destroyers and
Frigates), in strike fighter aircraft, and in facilities. We are taking
steps to mitigate all of those shortfalls as best we can. For example,
a major part of our aviation ``get well plan'' rests on a multifaceted
strategy that involves extending the service lives of the F/A-18s;
improving the capabilities of the F/A-18 Super Hornets to address
current and emerging threats; getting F-35s built on time, in
sufficient numbers, and out to the fleet; and pushing unmanned aircraft
out to the flight deck. Our MQ-25 Stingray program is the leading edge
of this effort, and I am driving this as quickly as possible so we can
capitalize on the step increase in capability unmanned systems will
offer us in the future.
Another area of concern is our shore infrastructure. It is aging,
and we currently carry a facilities maintenance backlog of over $5.5
billion--an amount that is growing at $600 million annually. We are
prioritizing funding those projects that resolve safety deficiencies
and repair the most mission critical facilities, but this is far short
of what is needed to support a reasonable quality of life and work for
the sailors, civilians, and families that make up our Navy team.
The other important dimension to closing the gap between mission
requirements and solutions is how the Navy uses our resources to best
effect. As I've previously testified, budget constraints are forcing
choices that limit our naval capabilities in the face of growing
threats. I look forward to providing any additional support I can to
inform discussions about how best to address those constraints, and
would be especially grateful for any solution that offered greater
budgetary stability.
But I also share some of the responsibility to address the gap
between Navy missions and the resources we have to address them. While
I do not write the amount of the Navy's check, I can ensure that we are
spending what we get to greatest effect. I see changing how we do
business to be faster and more efficient as both a moral and a
warfighting imperative.
To that end, I am working to the limits of my authority to bring
greater speed to our acquisition process without compromising the
discipline ingrained in our practice. We are increasing our emphasis on
rapid prototyping and experimentation and simplifying our bureaucracy
to the maximum extent possible, seeking input and ideas not only from
within but from our traditional and non-traditional industry partners.
This will save money. Even more importantly, it will put capabilities
in the hands of our sailors that they need to remain superior to
adversaries who are gaining on us in many key technology areas.
Given the pace at which things are changing, I also owe you hard
thinking about our future needs and how we can best address them. We
are nearing completion of our assessment of future fleet size,
composition, and capabilities, which is being updated to reflect
contemporary missions and threats. We are also engaged in a wide set of
studies, wargames, experimentation, and analysis to think through new
ways to ensure the Navy retains our advantage in an environment that is
dynamic, uncertain, and accelerating everywhere we look. We have
clarified roles and responsibilities for thinking through the near,
mid, and far term that will bring greater coherence and rigor to our
plans, and are taking a more strategic approach to allocating the
resources in support of those efforts. And we are doing all of this at
the same time we are reducing our headquarters staffs, consistent with
your direction. I am convinced that these adjustments, while painful,
will force us to become more creative and effective as we continue to
downsize.
In sum, taking all of factors into account, the fiscal year 2017
budget request represents our best proposal to strike the appropriate
balance between today and tomorrow, given available funding. The Navy's
budget addresses our gaps on a prioritized basis, takes measured steps
to improve current readiness, and starts to accelerate investments in
some of the capabilities most important to maintaining a competitive
advantage over our adversaries.
Looking forward, I remain deeply concerned about the gap between
what the American people expect of their Navy now and for the
foreseeable future, and the available resources to deliver on those
expectations. Your Navy team has always and will always do everything
that is asked of them, and every ship and aircraft being sent forward
is fully prepared to conduct its mission. The strain on the depots,
labs, shipyards, logisticians and others that allow us to maintain this
standard--which we will not compromise--is substantial. We are taking
every step we can to relieve it. For the Navy, the size of this gap is
likely to grow as the nation's strategic challenges increase in number
and complexity, and as resources in both the short and longer term
remain tight. A return to reliable and predictable budgeting is equally
important. To fulfill our responsibility to be effective stewards of
the resources we receive, we are doing all that we can to bring to bear
the ingenuity and creativity that has characterized your Navy
throughout its history. Thank you, and I look forward to your
questions.
Chairman McCain. General Neller?
STATEMENT OF GENERAL ROBERT B. NELLER, USMC, COMMANDANT OF THE
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS
General Neller. Chairman McCain, Ranking Member Reed,
distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear today and talk about your marines. I
thank you for your support of marines, sailors that serve with
marines, our civilian marines, and our families.
Marines have a unique perspective on readiness based on the
intent of Congress. We are the Nation's force in readiness, and
being ready is central to our identity as part of the Navy/
Marine Corps team.
That said, Mr. Chairman, my understanding of the purpose of
this hearing is for the Service Chiefs to provide our best
military advice on our current and future readiness challenges.
My experience in the Marine Corps has been to make do with what
we have been given. That is just the way I was raised, and I
have never been comfortable asking for anything more. I also
understand there are many competing fiscal requirements that
this Congress has to deal with.
However, based on the current top line in the future budget
projections and though we are meeting our current requirements,
I believe we are now pushing risk and the long-term health of
the force into the future. As an example, we submitted an
unfunded priority list of approximately $2.6 billion, which is
the largest we have ever submitted.
The global security environment drives our requirements,
and requirements equal commitments. Your marines are as busy
and as committed now as during the height of operations in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Current OPTEMPO balanced against fiscal
reductions, instability of continuing resolutions, and the
threat of sequestration during the past few years have driven
us to critically review the allocation of our resources in
order to meet these commitments.
We, like the other services, make tough choices every day,
and we are facing our readiness challenges head on. Our
readiness has been to deployed and next-to-deploy units.
Current readiness shortfalls in aviation, facility sustainment,
future modernization, retention of critical skills, and
building the depth on our ready bench forces at home are our
primary concerns.
That said, we have not stood idly by in planning for our
future. I am confident we have identified our requirements for
readiness recovery and improvements, and we are making progress
slowly, but progress nonetheless. Our Force 2025 initiative is
identifying the requirements of our future Marine Corps,
balanced against fiscal reality. Force 2025 addresses current
capability shortfalls, sustainment of capacity, and future
manpower requirements to fight on the 21st century battlefield.
Fiscal constraints necessarily bring tradeoffs, and to
paraphrase one of my predecessors, we will give you the most
ready Marine Corps the Nation can afford. The Marine Corps
remains good stewards of what we are given, and we will
generate the maximum readiness possible with the resources we
are provided. We will create and generate a Marine Corps that
is agile, ready, and lethal.
Working side by side with Congress, the other services, and
our Navy shipmates especially, you can count on your marines to
meet and exceed the standards the American people have set for
us.
I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Neller follows:]
Prepared Statement by General Robert B. Neller
introduction
The landscape and pace of the 21st century demands a ready Marine
Corps to buy time, decision space, and options for our Nation's
leaders. All Marines, past and present, understand the expectations of
the American people and their elected leaders--to answer the Nation's
call, fight, and win. Marine Corps capabilities and the posture of our
force would not be possible without the support and actions of the
Congress. A balanced Marine Corps is a force that is healthy, has a
sustainable operational tempo, is able to train with the needed
equipment for all assigned missions, and has a reasonable quality of
life across the force. The result of this balance is optimally trained
and equipped forces that deploy when planned, with the ideal quantity
of forces (capacity), on the required timeline with a steady reserve of
non-deployed forces that can surge to meet large scale contingencies
and operational plans. Today's force is capable and our forward
deployed forces are ready to fight, but we are fiscally stretched to
maintain readiness across the depth of the force in the near term, and
to modernize to achieve future readiness.
our threats
Multi-dimensional security threats challenge all aspects of our
national power and security. The evolution and expansion of the
information domain, advanced robotics, and improved weapons
technologies are causing threats to emerge with increased speed and
lethality. While your Marines and Sailors have been and remain
operationally committed in the current fight, our enemies and potential
adversaries have not stood idle. They have developed new capabilities
which now equal, or in some cases exceed, our own. This unstable and
increasingly dangerous world situation is further complicated by a
constrained resource environment from which we must continue current
operations, reset our equipment, maintain our warfighting readiness,
and modernize the force. We continue to make tough choices and balance
our available resources to meet current operational commitments and, at
the same time, achieve tomorrow's readiness.
our readiness
Marines have a unique perspective on readiness. The Congressional
intent to serve as the ``Nation's Force-in-Readiness'' guides who we
are and what we do--being ready is central to our identity as Marines.
As a force, we must remain ready to fight and win across the range of
military operations and in all five warfighting domains--maritime,
land, air, cyber, and space. The emerging technologies and threats of
the 21st century demand a modernized force with new capabilities that
complement our traditional warfighting skills and equipment. The fiscal
reductions and budget instability of the past few years have negatively
impacted our current and future readiness. As resources have
diminished, the Marine Corps has protected the near-term operational
readiness of its deployed and next-to-deploy units in order to meet
operational commitments; this has come at a cost. The current
operational risk to the Marine Corps is tangible.
amphibious warships and operations
Decreased quantity and availability of Navy Amphibious warships,
the preferred method of deploying and employing Marine Corps
capabilities, have resulted in establishing land-based Special Purpose
Marine Air Ground Task Forces (SPMAGTFs) to compensate so the Marine
Corps can meet operational commitments and ensure timely response to
crises. Where an Amphibious Ready Group/Marine Expeditionary Unit (ARG/
MEU) may have been the response force of choice in the past, these
SPMAGTFs have been called on to conduct operations in support of
Geographic Combatant Commands.
To be the Nation's expeditionary force-in-readiness the Marine
Corps must remain a naval combined arms expeditionary force. Our naval
heritage is based on more than tradition: it is mandated by law as our
primary service responsibility. As the service with the primary
Department of Defense Directive and title 10 responsibility for the
development of amphibious doctrine, tactics, techniques, and equipment,
our capabilities are reliant on the Nation's investment in our
partnered Navy programs. This requires the proper balance of amphibious
platforms, surface connectors, and naval operating concepts to shape
our force explicitly as part of the Joint Force.
The Navy and Marine Corps Team require 38 amphibious warships, with
an operational availability of 90 percent, to support two Marine
Expeditionary Brigades, and to provide the Nation a forcible entry
capability. The Marine Corps fully supports the efforts of the
Secretary of the Navy and Chief of Naval Operations to balance
amphibious platforms and surface connectors that facilitate operational
maneuver from the sea and ship-to-objective maneuver. The Long Range
Ship Strategy (LRSS) increases the amphibious warship inventory to 34
by fiscal year 2022.
We appreciate Congress providing the funding to procure a 12th LPD
and the funding for a second ship with the same hull form. The LPD and
the LXR (using the LPD hull form) represent the Department of the
Navy's commitment to a modern expeditionary fleet.
``ready bench''
The Marine Corps will continue to prioritize the readiness of
deployed and next-to-deploy units over non-deployed units. Our
deploying units are ready, while our non-deployed commands lack
sufficient resources to meet the necessary personnel, training, and
equipment readiness levels to respond today. To meet Congress' intent
that we remain the Nation's force-in-readiness, the Marine Corps
requires a ``ready bench'' that is able to deploy with minimal notice
and maximum capability. Commitment of regional SPMAGTFs removes
regimental-level headquarters and associated ground, aviation, and
logistics elements from their parent Marine Expeditionary Force, which
commits leadership and forces of what previously was the ``ready
bench.'' This requirement does not allow these units the stability or
time for additional training, professional development, and readiness
to respond to a major contingency.
aviation
For several years, our aviation units have been unable to
adequately meet our aircrew training requirements, primarily due to
Ready Basic Aircraft (RBA) shortfalls. To remedy this critical
situation, we have developed an extensive plan to recover or improve
readiness across every Type/Model/Series (T/M/S) in the current
inventory, while continuing the procurement of new aircraft to ensure
future readiness. In executing this plan, we are seeing slow but steady
improvements in aviation readiness, but the plan requires sustained
funding and time. The recovery and sustainment of our current fleet is
necessary to support both training and warfighting requirements. Each
T/M/S requires attention and action in specific areas: maintenance,
supply, depot backlog, and in-service repairs.
Operational tempo has increased the utilization and stretched the
sustainability of our most in-demand aviation assets. To continue to
meet operational commitments, we are reducing our MV-22 footprint from
12 to 6, and our KC-130J footprint from 4 to 3 for our SPMAGTFs in
CENTCOM and AFRICOM. To reduce risk in the stressed USMC TACAIR force,
we have reduced F-18 squadron aircraft levels from 12 to 10.
Over the past year, the Marine Corps committed nearly every MV-22
Osprey pilot to source all of its global commitments, and the increased
utilization rates on these airframes affects the longevity of their
service life. Exacerbating our concerns in aviation is a potential
exodus of pilots and maintenance personnel to join civilian airlines.
We anticipate requiring additional fiscal resources in future budgets
to provide bonus incentives to remain competitive and keep the talent
we have invested in. With the continued support of Congress, Marine
Aviation can recover its readiness by re-capitalizing our aging fleet,
while at the same time procuring new aircraft to meet our future needs
and support our ground forces.
ground forces
The Marine Corps is also executing readiness initiatives with our
ground equipment. Our post-combat reset strategy and Equipment
Optimization Plan (EOP) are key components of the overall ground
equipment ``Reconstitution'' effort. The Marine Corps has reset 90
percent of its ground equipment, with 61 percent returned to the
Operating Forces and our strategic equipment programs. This strategic
war reserve is our geographically prepositioned combat equipment,
located both afloat and ashore where it makes the most sense to respond
to contingencies. We remain focused on this recovery effort and project
its completion in May 2019. This service-level strategy would not have
been possible without the continued support of Congress and the hard
work of your Marines. That said, our ground forces require
modernization to replace legacy capabilities in addition to development
of new capabilities to be effective on the modern battlefield.
bases, stations, and facilities
Improving the current state of our facilities is the single most
important investment to support training, operations, and quality of
life. The Marine Corps has developed a Facility Sustainment,
Restoration, and Modernization (FSRM) initiative to achieve this
requirement. Our 2017 budget proposes funding FSRM at 74 percent of the
OSD Facilities Sustainment Model. This reduced funding level is an area
of concern because our bases and stations are more than where we work
and live--they are platforms from which we train and generate
readiness. The sustainment of military construction (MILCON) funding is
crucial to managing operational training and support projects. As we
transition to new capabilities and realign our forces in the Pacific,
adequate MILCON is a key enabler for the Marine Corps' future success.
Readiness is not just in our equipment supply and maintenance, but
also in the quality and challenging nature of our training through the
mental, spiritual, and physical readiness of Marines and Sailors across
the force. Readiness is the result of a variety of factors: commitment
of our leadership; standards-based inspections; evaluated drills and
training exercises; and an understanding that the call to respond to
crises can come at any time. Our Marines and Sailors know we must be
ready and able to answer.
training
Organizing and executing high quality training is not easy. It
takes time, deliberate thought, and effort. Our approach to training is
to emphasize the basics: combined arms, competency in the use of our
weapons and systems, and expeditionary operations; but also to
reemphasize operations in a degraded command, control, communications,
computers and intelligence (C4I) environment, camouflage/deception,
operations at night, operations in a nuclear, biological and chemical
(NBC) environment, and decision-making in rapidly unfolding and
uncertain situations. We must provide opportunities to experiment and
work with the latest technological advances.
modernization
The Marine Corps must continue to evolve. The change we see in the
21st century is as rapid and dramatic as the world has ever known. The
Marine Corps' modernization and technology initiatives must deliver
future capabilities and sustainable readiness. The Marine Corps must
continue to develop and evolve the Marine Air Ground Task Force
(MAGTF), ensuring it is able to operate in all warfighting domains. To
do so, Marines are re-invigorating experimentation of new concepts in
order to advance our capabilities.
The ability to properly plan achieves stability and predictability
for our personnel and families, ensures ample time to train, and
fosters development of our small unit leaders. Effective planning
produces unit cohesion and leadership in our operating forces, and
financial predictability for our necessary modernization programs. The
Marine Corps' goal is to retain our tactical advantage across the range
of military operations with the most capable systems today and in the
future. Our end state is to field and operationalize ongoing programs,
and continue to develop solutions that will enhance institutional
capabilities and retain our tactical advantage across the range of
military operations.
Modernization is a key part of our future readiness. The
recapitalization of our force is essential to our future readiness with
investments in ground combat vehicles, aviation, command and control,
and digitally interoperable protected networks. The Marine Corps has
important combat programs under development that need your continued
support. The Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) will replace our aging
Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV), which is now more than four decades
old. The Joint Strike Fighter will not only replace three aging
platforms, but provides transformational warfighting capabilities for
the future.
Our ground combat vehicles like the Light Armored Vehicle (LAV)
have an average age of 33 years and our M1A1 tanks have an average age
of 26 years. The Marine Corps is grateful for Congress' support of our
wartime acquisition and reset efforts of the MRAP, HMMWV, and the
contracting of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV). The
increasingly lean budgets of fiscal year 2016 and fiscal year 2017 will
provide increased readiness challenges and cause shortfalls in key
areas.
our challenges
As recently as the 1990s, the Marine Corps' operational tempo was
relatively predictable and sustainable (1:3 deployment-to-dwell.)
Marines were home for approximately 18 months and deployed for 6
months. There was a ``healthy bench'' of non-deployed forces to surge
in time of major contingency, such as Operations Desert Shield and
Desert Storm. Since the formal conclusion of Operations Iraqi Freedom
and Enduring Freedom, the Marine Corps, like the other Military
Services, has not had the benefit of an ``interwar'' period to reset
and reconstitute our force. Fifteen years of continuous combat have
created a high operational tempo, adding significant stress on the
force, specifically on our people, our equipment (particularly
aviation) and our readiness. There has not been a post-war intermission
to reset the force.
Today's Marines (and Sailors) are deploying at a rate comparable to
the height of our commitment during Operations Iraqi Freedom and
Enduring Freedom (1:2 deployment-to-dwell) with an end strength of only
183,500. The stress on our force will continue as we decrease to the
currently-planned end strength of 182,000. To mitigate our current
operational tempo, return to a sustainable 1:3 deployment-to-dwell
ratio, retain necessary combat capability, and grow future
capabilities, the Marine Corps will need to be larger, as such our end
strength needs to be revisited.'' Requirements will likely drive the
future force to consist of more senior Marines overall. A more senior
force will be more expensive to maintain. Without an end strength
increase and associated funding we will be forced to trade capacity
and/or capability to build the force we believe we will need.
The Marine Corps is now on its way down to 182,000 marines by the
end of fiscal year 2017. Although our recruiting force continues to
meet our recruiting goals, we are challenged to retain certain
occupational fields like infantry and aviation. The 21st century
demands capabilities in 5th Generation Fighter Aircraft (F-35), Cyber
Warfare, Information Operations, Special Operations, Embassy Security
Guards, and the Security Cooperation Group that advises and assists our
allies and partner nations. The Marine Corps must continue to maintain
the skill sets we need today, and develop future skill sets with
quality Marines.
The character of the 21st century is rapid evolution. Our potential
adversaries have evolved, and it is imperative that we keep pace with
change. The Marine Corps is no longer in a position to generate current
readiness and reset our equipment, while sustaining our facilities and
modernizing to ensure our future readiness. The efforts of the 114th
Congress provided sufficient resources to support the Marine Corps'
near-term readiness, and we thank the Congress for this fiscal
stability. However, current funding levels increasingly stretch the
Nation's Ready Force. This is not healthy for your Marine Corps or for
the security of our Nation as we prepare for future readiness.
Unstable fiscal environments prevent the deliberately planned,
sustained effort needed to recover current readiness of our legacy
equipment in the near term, and to modernize in the longer term. The
harmful effects of ``sequestration'' are well known and will continue
to harm the Marine Corps if they continue. A BBA II budget that allows
flexibility in distributing funding cuts according to service
discretion is certainly preferable to sequestration, but still does not
meet our readiness requirements. A Service Chief manages uncertainty
and risk through planning. The 2017 budget has yet to be approved.
Decisions in the 2017 budget will affect the 2018 program, which will
be impacted by sequestration or BCA caps if the BCA is not repealed.
Threats to our Nation remain constant. The Services have become all
too accustomed to Continuing Resolutions (CR). A short-term CR of three
months or less is undesirable but manageable, but a longer duration CR
dramatically increases risk to an already strained fiscal environment
and disrupts predictability and our ability to properly plan and
execute a budget and a 5-year program.
conclusion
The Marine Corps will continue to provide trained and ready forces
to meet current operational requirements. However, without consistent
sustained funding we cannot rebuild and recapitalize our readiness. We
have readiness recovery and future modernization plans to address
aviation, ground forces, and facilities, bases and stations. We can re-
establish our ``ready bench'' to ensure the Marine Corps has greater
depth to respond to crises or contingencies. With the continued support
of Congress, the Marine Corps can maintain ready forces today and
modernize to generate readiness in the future. The wisdom of the 82nd
Congress, and reaffirmed by the 114th Congress, remains valid today--
the vital need of a strong force-in-readiness. The Marine Corps remains
committed to be ready to go when we are called.
Chairman McCain. Thank you, General.
General Goldfein?
STATEMENT OF GENERAL DAVID L. GOLDFEIN, USAF, CHIEF OF STAFF OF
THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
General Goldfein. Thank you, Chairman McCain, Ranking
Member Reed, and distinguished members of the committee. It is
an honor to be here and to be a member of this JCS [Joint
Chiefs of Staff] team, serving beside men I have known for
years, fought with, and admire.
In the interest of brevity, Chairman, you and Ranking
Member Reed asked five key questions in your letter to us
requesting this hearing.
You asked, what are the Air Force's modernization needs? We
need to maintain stable, predictable funding for the F-35, the
KC-46, and the B-21 in order to outpace our adversaries. At the
same time, shoulder to shoulder with the Navy, we must
modernize our aging nuclear enterprise. While we continue to
extend the life of our existing fleets, we need the flexibility
to retire aging weapon systems and reduce excess infrastructure
in order to afford the technology needed to maintain our
advantage, given adversary advancements in satellite-enabled
precision, stealth, cruise and ballistic missiles, ISR
[intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance], and other
anti-access/area denial capabilities that continue to
proliferate worldwide.
You asked, how will the Air Force regain full spectrum
readiness? It starts with people. Our Bipartisan Budget Act end
strength totals 492,000 airmen for fiscal year 2017, 317,000 of
which are Active Duty. Based upon current and projected global
demands for air power to deter and, if required, defeat
challenges presented by China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and
violent extremism, we respectfully request your support to grow
our force to 321,000 Active Duty airmen by the end of fiscal
year 2017. This remains our top priority in the current budget
request.
You asked, how will the Air Force maintain its
technological edge? We are laser-focused on fighter, tanker,
and bomber recapitalization, nuclear modernization, preparing
for a war that could extend into space, increasing our
capability and capacity in the cyber domain, and leveraging and
improving multi-domain and coalition-friendly command and
control as the foundation of future combined arms operation.
You asked, how will your requirements impact the budgetary
top line from fiscal year 2018 onward? We will be forced to
continually make strategic trades to simultaneously sustain
legacy fleets engaged in the current fight while smartly
investing in modernization and the future technologies that
will be required to meet combatant commander demands in the
information age of warfare. Repealing sequestration, returning
to stable budgets without extended continuing resolutions, and
allowing us the flexibility to reduce excess infrastructure and
make strategic trades are essential to success.
Finally, you asked, what solutions are available for
mitigating growing costs such as new acquisition authorities or
innovative solutions to maintaining our military? As the chief
requirements officer, I review every major program to ensure
requirements are clearly published and sustained throughout the
program and by personally signing documents leading to
milestone A and B decisions to ensure we meet cost, schedule,
and performance standards for our warfighting commanders.
Additionally, we aligned our continuous process improvement
efforts with DOD's [Department of Defense] Better Buying Power
3.0 initiatives, as well as Secretary James' Bending the Cost
Curve activities.
In summary, all of our portfolios depend on steady,
predictable, and timely funding, and the flexibility to make
key trades to balance capability, capacity, and readiness.
Current global security demands remind us that America's joint
team must be ready to engage anytime, anywhere across the full
spectrum of conflict, all while defending the Homeland and
providing a safe, secure, and reliable strategic nuclear
deterrent. America expects it. Combatant commanders require it.
With your support, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines
will continue to deliver it.
We look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Goldfein follows:]
Prepared Statement by General David L. Goldfein
introduction
In today's world, credible and effective 21st century deterrence
demands both properly-sized nuclear capabilities and multi-domain,
multi-functional Joint Forces. Across the spectrum of national security
challenges the U.S. faces--China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and
Violent Extremism (Terrorism)--controlling and exploiting air, space,
and cyberspace is foundational to Joint Force success.
Against any of these global challenges, today's airmen are
organized, trained, and equipped to both deter and/or defeat these
threats while simultaneously defending the homeland and sustaining a
safe, secure, and effective nuclear enterprise. However, satellite-
enabled precision, stealth, cruise and ballistic missiles, and other
military technology proliferate worldwide. In short, the technology and
capability gaps between America and our adversaries are closing
dangerously fast.
modernization
Our curtailed modernization resulted in procuring approximately 175
fewer fighter aircraft per year than we did 25 years ago. As our
challengers employ increasingly sophisticated, capable, and lethal
systems, we must modernize to deter, deny, and decisively defeat any
actor that threatens our homeland and national interests. In order to
stall the shrinking capability gap, the Air Force remains committed to
our top three conventional acquisition priorities: the F-35A Joint
Strike Fighter, the KC-46A Pegasus, and the B-21 long-range bomber.
At the same time, we are focused on modernizing the nuclear
enterprise. The last major recapitalization of U.S. nuclear forces
occurred in the 1980s and many of these systems face substantial
sustainment and reliability challenges. While these forces are safe,
secure, and effective today, significant investment will be required in
the coming years to ensure they remain ready and credible for the 21st
century.
To address modernization challenges and ensure a reliable nuclear
deterrent for the Joint Force, the Air Force requires sustained
funding. The fiscal year 2017 budget request supports a number of
improvements, including recapitalizing legacy bombers with the B-21,
replacing aging Air-Launched Cruise Missiles with the Long Range
Standoff weapon, modernizing Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles
(ICBMs) with the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program, and critical
investments across the Nuclear Command and Control (NC3) enterprise
that are required to integrate and employ all three legs of the nuclear
triad.
Additional modernization efforts will allow us to balance new
capabilities that can defeat future threats with legacy fleets meeting
current threats. In fiscal year 2016, we invested in B-1 service life
extension to maintain this strategic capability against evolving
threats. In fiscal year 2017, we plan to modernize and sustain the
three combat-coded B-1 squadrons with additional precision weapons and
digital data links. Additionally, we are approaching our second service
life extension on F-16s. High demand for our F-15Cs and F-15Es drove
structural fatigue and require consistent funding for repairs.
full-spectrum readiness
The Air Force defines full-spectrum readiness as the right number
of airmen--properly organized, trained, equipped, and led--to either
lead and/or support Joint Task Forces (JTFs) in both contested and
uncontested environments. In order to meet the full requirements of our
Defense Strategic Guidance and current operation plans, our combat
squadrons must be full-spectrum ready.
To develop airmen properly trained to meet the Joint Force demand
signal, we are funding flying hours to their maximum executable level.
In addition, we continue to invest in joint and coalition combat
exercises such as Red Flag and Green Flag.
Weapon System Sustainment (WSS) costs continue to increase due to
the complexity of new systems, the challenges of maintaining old
systems, and operations tempo. We fly our aircraft to their full
service life and beyond which requires increased investment in
preventive maintenance and manpower. WSS thrives on sufficient, stable,
and predictable funding which facilitates planning to meet future
challenges.
With your help, the Air Force aggressively responded in fiscal year
2016 as a pivot to improve readiness conditions and increased our
manning by over 6,000 personnel. However, there is a lag between
recruiting airmen and presenting fully-trained airmen to squadrons. The
Air Force surged recruiting in fiscal year 2016 and will finish the
fiscal year by restoring our Active Duty force to 317,000 airmen.
Maintaining the force remains our number one funding priority in fiscal
year 2017.
We project airpower from our bases, and our infrastructure must
keep up with modernization and recapitalization to sustain a ready
force. Today, the Air Force maintains infrastructure that is excess to
operational needs. We have 500 fewer aircraft than we had 10 years ago,
yet they are spread across the same number of bases. This arrangement
is inefficient with aging, unused, and underutilized facilities
consuming funding that should be redirected to readiness and
modernization. Reducing and realigning Air Force infrastructure would
best support Air Force operations. Therefore, we support a new base
realignment and closure evaluation.
To put it simply, Defense Strategic Guidance places demands on the
capability and capacity of the Air Force that consume its resources in
today's fight and exceed our capacity to address readiness requirements
for a high-end fight against a near-peer adversary. If airmen are
unprepared for all possible scenarios, it could take longer to get to
combat, jeopardize our ability to win, and cost more lives.
maintaining the military's technological edge
Air forces that fall behind the technology curve fail, and if the
Air Force fails, the Joint Force fails. Thus, we must team with our
joint partners, labs, and industry to leverage existing technology
while developing new technology to maintain our edge. Recently, our Air
Combat Command Commander declared F-35A Initial Operating Capability--
meaning our Joint Strike Fighters are ready for limited combat. At the
same time, our F-22s are in high demand in the Central, Pacific, and
European theaters due to the increasingly aggressive and
technologically advancing nature of our potential adversaries.
Therefore, we must modernize our fleet to stay ahead of the evolving
threat with continued investment in the F-35A, along with a request for
additional funds to upgrade our F-15Cs with modern sensor and
electronic warfare suites, and advanced air-to-air weaponry. Fourth
generation fighters play a critical warfighting role as we develop,
test, and field fifth generation technology.
topline: fiscal year 2018 and beyond
The Air Force will be challenged to sustain legacy fleets and
simultaneously invest in developing and procuring the systems required
to counter threats in fiscal year 2018 and beyond. Given these
challenges, and current funding levels, we initiated a series of in-
depth enterprise-wide capability studies of the Air Force's five core
missions. Our first effort, Air Superiority 2030, identified a need for
increased research and development in advanced capability and capacity.
I fully intend to collaborate with Congressional, Department of
Defense, and Air Force leaders to build a force capable of achieving
our national strategic objectives in the more advanced threat
environment of the future.
In today's contests, decision-quality information is paramount--and
combatant commanders simply cannot get enough Intelligence,
Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR). In order to gain and maintain the
ISR advantage, the Air Force must find new ways to integrate
capabilities across multiple domains (air, land, sea, space, and
undersea) and cyberspace. Our next enterprise-wide capability review
will explore ISR and multi-domain command and control operations. With
the right mix of people, platforms, and resources, we will meet Joint
Force requirements across the full spectrum of conflict.
Meanwhile, space and cyberspace threats continue to grow. In space,
our Global Positioning System provides the world's gold standard in
positioning, navigation, and timing. Our 37 existing Global Positioning
System satellites remain healthy, but they are exceeding projected
service life. Further, their ability to provide unfettered information
is increasingly at risk from our adversaries. To maintain this
capability, we requested support to improve anti-jamming and secure
access of military Global Positioning Systems. We continue to partner
with the Joint Force on the Space Security and Defense Program and the
Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center (JICSpOC) to develop
options for a more integrated and resilient National Security Space
Enterprise. To improve offensive and defensive cyber readiness, we
remain on track to grow our 30 Cyber Force Mission Teams to 39 fully
operational teams in fiscal year 2018 and continue investing in the
Joint Information Environment (JIE).
Air Force command and control represents the connective tissue
among the Joint Force--providing the essential link between our Joint
Force Air Component Commanders and the joint team. The ability to
understand changing battlefield conditions and command friendly forces
is central to an agile, effective combat force in today's
transregional, multi-domain environment.
acquisition and innovation
The Air Force is committed to acquisition excellence. Our costs are
trending downward, we are meeting Key Performance Parameters for our
major programs at a rate greater than 90 percent, and we garnered
nearly $10 billion in ``should-cost'' savings--we are using these
savings to secure greater capabilities and additional weapons for our
warfighters. But there's ample room for improvement. We aligned our Air
Force continuous improvement efforts to the Department's Better Buying
Power 3.0 initiatives, as well as the Secretary of the Air Force's
``Bending the Cost Curve'' effort, all of which are designed to
strengthen our ability to innovate, achieve technical excellence, and
field dominant military capabilities.
In today's complex environment, rapid change is truly the new norm.
We believe incorporating strategic agility into the Air Force
acquisition enterprise is the way to capitalize on this dynamic
environment. Therefore, we are focusing on five key areas: 1) strategic
planning, prototyping, and experimentation; 2) requirements
development; 3) science and technology; 4) modular, open systems
architecture; and 5) acquisition workforce development. I am exercising
the increased acquisition authorities Congress vested in the Service
Chiefs to push these five key focus areas and drive for improved
execution of on-going acquisition efforts and formulation of future
acquisition strategies.
conclusion
We are grateful for relief from the Budget Control Act caps in
fiscal years 2016 and 2017. However, uncertain future budget toplines
make it difficult to deliberately balance investments to modernize,
recover readiness, right-size the force, win today's fight, and fully
execute Defense Strategic Guidance. Therefore, permanent relief from
the Budget Control Act--with predictable funding--is absolutely
critical to rebuilding Air Force capability, capacity, and readiness
across our portfolios. Global developments remind us that America's Air
Force must have the capability to engage anytime, anywhere, across the
full spectrum of conflict--all while providing a reliable strategic
nuclear deterrent. America expects it; combatant commanders require it;
and with your support, airmen will deliver it.
Chairman McCain. Thank you. I thank the witnesses and thank
you for your leadership and service to the Nation.
I think we would all agree that the world has changed a lot
since the initiation of sequestration. A simple question. Do
you feel that you would have resources and ability to defend
this Nation against present and future threats if we continue
down this path of sequestration, beginning with you, General
Milley?
General Milley. Under sequestration, no, sir, I do not.
Chairman McCain. Admiral Richardson?
Admiral Richardson. I agree with General Milley, sir.
Sequestration will prevent us from doing that.
Chairman McCain. General Neller?
General Neller. No, sir, we would not have the capability.
Chairman McCain. General Goldfein?
General Goldfein. The same.
Chairman McCain. Thank you.
Admiral Richardson, you talk about in your written
statement how our people are feeling the strain. We continue to
meet our recruiting and retention goals. But you go on to talk
about SEALs. You begin to talk about surface nuclear officers
not meeting the goals. Naval aviation is another area of
concern. We see declines in officer retention for multiple
grades, and bonuses are not proving fully effective.
I guess I would ask, Admiral Richardson, General Neller,
and General Goldfein. It is not a matter of money with these
young pilots. Is that not true? It is a matter of being able to
fly and operate. I mean, when we just talk about solving this
problem with bonuses, we are never going to compete with the
airlines because they can always up the ante. But when our
pilots are flying less hours a month than Russian and Chinese
pilots are, you are going to have a problem. I will begin with
you, Admiral Richardson.
Admiral Richardson. Sir, I agree with you. Our pilots join
the Navy to fly naval aircraft. That is what they want to do.
This is a much bigger problem than money. Money can help up to
a point. We want to make sure we adequately compensate all of
our people. There is competition, as you say. But at the heart
of the matter, this is a highly dedicated team that wants to
defend the Nation in high performance aircraft, and that is
what they want to do. They want to fly.
Chairman McCain. General Neller?
General Neller. Sir, I would agree with that. On paper our
situation looks a little bit better, but it does not take into
account the experience level of those aircrew. But it is all
about the best retention thing we can is provide modern,
maintainable, ready-to-fly airplanes.
But I would also say it is more than just the aircrew. It
is also the maintainers. We are making it now on the backs of
those sergeants and those staff sergeants out there that have
to do work twice and to get the part from one to put it on the
other. I am as concerned about maintainers sticking around. As
we go to depots, we compete not just with airlines for aircrew,
but we compete with contractors and commercial concerns for the
marines that maintain our airplanes.
Chairman McCain. While I have still got you, in your
written statement, you said the Marine Corps is no longer in a
position to generate current readiness and reset our equipment
while sustaining our facilities and modernizing to ensure our
future readiness. That is a pretty strong statement, General.
General Neller. Based on the current fiscal environment, as
was stated I believe by all my fellow chiefs, we are all making
trades, and those trades require us to accept risk in certain
areas. I would like to have our parts support when you look at
the aviation particularly, but I could say the same thing about
ground equipment. The amount of money we are able to put
against parts and supply support is not what we need to
maintain our legacy aircraft.
Chairman McCain. General Goldfein?
General Goldfein. Sir, I approach this as a balanced
challenge and opportunity, quality of service, and quality of
life. Removing financial burdens through aviation bonuses
certainly fall in the quality of life category. But what we
have found in the past--and we have been through this before
because airlines have hired before--is that quality of service
is as important as quality of life. Quality of service is
making sure that you are given the opportunity to be the best
you can be in your chosen occupation. Pilots who do not fly,
maintainers who do not maintain, controllers who do not control
will walk, and there is not enough money in the treasury to
keep them in if we do not give them the resources they need to
be the best they can be. In my mind, readiness and morale are
inextricably linked. Where we have high readiness, we tend to
have high morale because they are given the opportunities to
compete. Where we have low readiness, we have our lowest
morale.
Chairman McCain. General Milley, in your written statement,
you said our goal is to have regular Army brigade combat teams
achieve 60 to 66 percent full spectrum readiness, and I
estimate that it will take the Army approximately four years to
achieve that, assuming no significant increase in demand and no
sequestration levels of funding. That is a pretty alarming
statement when you look at the potential challenges that we are
facing. Do you want to elaborate on that a bit?
General Milley. Thanks, Senator.
For 15 consecutive years, the Army has been decisively
committed in Iraq and Afghanistan and other counterterrorist/
counterinsurgency type operations. In order to do that, we
essentially came off of a core warfighting skills of combined
arms maneuver against a near-peer or a higher-end threat.
For example--just a couple of examples. An armor officer
today, a tank officer, up through, say, the rank of major has
very little experience in terms of maneuvering tanks against an
opponent who has armor, very little experience in gunnery.
Artillery battalion have not fired battalion level fires
consistently in a decade and a half. We have to rebuild that,
and that is going to take considerable time, effort on our
part. We have made a lot of progress, by the way, in the last
year.
Chairman McCain. You cannot do it with sequestration.
General Milley. Oh, absolutely not. Sequestration will take
the rug out from underneath us. Absolutely.
Chairman McCain. Well, you know, I would just like to say
before I turn to Senator Reed at your confirmation hearings, I
asked you to come before this committee and give us your frank
and honest view. I appreciate the testimony here today, and I
think it will be very helpful in our efforts to eliminate the
effect of sequestration and give you the wherewithal that you
need to make sure that we meet the challenges which are, as I
said in the beginning, far more significant than they were on
the day that sequestration began. We have got a lot of issues,
but I appreciate the fact that you have outlined for this
committee and I hope for the American people the necessity of
us addressing these challenges. I thank the witnesses.
Senator Reed?
Senator Reed. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Again, thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony. It is very
insightful, very sobering, and also reinforces the point that
the chairman made that we just have to move away from
sequestration. One of the issues that has been illustrated by
your testimony is it is not just the limits on spending. It is
the uncertainty. Admiral Richardson, you pointed out that you
only operate really three quarters of a year, that one quarter
is just sort of standing around wishing and hoping. Can you
elaborate a bit?
Admiral Richardson. Well, sir, you know behaviors are
modified to adapt to the reality of the last eight years. Big
programs that require new funding and that require authorities
for new starts--those are all prohibited in a continuing
resolution environment. Rather than put those programs in the
first quarter and put them all at risk, we just live in a three
quarter year. That first quarter is a light touch on just
trying to keep things going.
Senator Reed. General Milley and then General Neller,
General Goldfein, your comments too about this uncertainty
factor. In fact, one could argue--let me get your insight--that
effectively you are losing lots of money and wasting lots of
money because of this uncertainty, not saving anything because
of sequestration. Is that fair?
General Milley. That is correct, Senator, because if all we
are doing is planning things year to year or actually three
quarters of a year to three quarters of a year, things like
multiyear contracts, developing long-term relationships with
industry where they can count on us and so on--that becomes
very difficult. What ends up happening is the price per unit
goes up. It has built in inefficiency. It has built in cost
overruns. It is an un-good situation. It is not good and it
needs to end.
Senator Reed. General Neller, your comments?
General Neller. It is very much the same, Senator. We have
got some major programs and we would like to have the certainty
and be able to tell the vendor that they have got the funding
there and we can press them to drive the cost down. If we live
year to year or month to month, that is not going to happen.
But in line with what General Goldfein said, I think the
force out there--they are watching us. They are looking at us
and they want to know what the plan is. People, for all of us,
are our center of gravity. That is the one thing we have to
protect. We can buy all the planes and ships and tanks and
vehicles we want, but this is a volunteer force. This is a
recruited and retained force. They watch everything that is
going on. These young men and women are very smart, and they
want to know that there is commitment that they can count on as
they decide whether they are going to continue to stay in.
Senator Reed. Thank you, sir.
General Goldfein?
General Goldfein. Thank you, sir.
Just perhaps to add some perspective, if we end up in a
long-term continuing resolution [CR], this will be the eighth
that we have had to deal with. To give you a scale then for
what will happen in the United States Air Force if we go beyond
three months into a long-term CR, that will be about $1.3
billion less that is in the fiscal year 2017 budget. Some
immediate impacts: KC-46 will go from 15 to 12 aircraft, and we
will be procuring munitions at the fiscal year 2016 rates. In
the fiscal year 2017 budget, we were actually able to forecast,
based on what we believe we will be dropping in the current
fight. That will go away, and so we will be procuring preferred
munitions at a lower rate, which not only affects all of us
that are engaged in the campaign, but it also affects our
coalition partners who are relying on us as well for preferred
munitions. We will have 60 acquisition programs that will be
affected and 50 MILCON [military construction] projects, to
include those that are new mission bed-down will also be
affected, that just by a long-term CR.
Senator Reed. Thank you.
One of the issues that you all discussed and the chairman
has made I think appropriate reference to is the changing
situation in terms of unexpected challenges in the last several
years. My sense too is that as we look around, particularly
from technology, you are beginning to discover unanticipated
costs for legacy systems in addition that we might not even
have added into the projection. Is that fair to say, General
Goldfein? Then we will go down the panel.
General Goldfein. Yes, sir. What happens is we do what we
call a service life extension program, or SLEP. There is
actually a reason it is a four-letter word because what we do
is we put an aircraft and we shake it and we put it through all
kinds of environmental testings. Then we find out what those
failure parts are, and then we either buy those parts or we put
them in the bench stock and we try to predict what we will
need. Then we certify that aircraft will fly to, you know, the
next 2,000 hours. The reality is we only fix what we can
accurately predict, and then we put these aircraft into depot
maintenance. We pull the skin off. What we find are there are
things that are breaking that we never predicted.
A classic example. F-15C has a nose wheel steering problem,
and we go look for the part and we have not made that part in
five years. Then we go out to industry and we find that we have
got to hand make now a part that we have not made in years, and
that just causes the costs to go up. What we have found over
the years is that older aircraft--it is actually not a linear
path in terms of cost growth. It actually gets at some point to
an exponential growth. Then that cost per flying hour requires
us to put more money into sustaining systems longer than
putting that money into the modernization which we desperately
need.
Senator Reed. Thank you. My time has expired. Thank you,
gentlemen, again for your service.
Chairman McCain. Senator Inhofe?
Senator Inhofe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, General Milley, when you were talking about
ground troops, I am reminded of my last year in the House. I
was on the House Armed Services Committee. It was 1994 when we
had an expert witness sitting out there like you guys are
saying in ten years we would no longer need ground troops. I
think about often what our needs are going to be in the future
and how we are trying to survive today. Looking into the
future, yes, you talk about the KC-46 and the need. The KC-135
has been around for 57 years, and it is going to be around for
a lot longer. This is not what the other side, the competition
does.
I think the chairman is right when he says that he asked
for your honest opinion. I do not have and we do not have the
credibility to go out to the public and adequately explain the
level of risk that we are accepting today and the fact that we
are in the most threatened position in my opinion we have ever
been. They depend on hearing that from you not from people like
me.
When General Dempsey said--and this is some time ago. He
said we are putting our military on a path where the force is
so degraded and so unready that it would be immoral to use
force. Now, that to me was a courageous statement that I have
used. People are shocked when they hear it. This is some time
ago now.
Winnifield. He made the statement there could be for the
first time in my career instances where we would be asked to
respond to a crisis, and we will have to say that we cannot.
You know, that is a shocker.
When our former colleague, Chuck Hagel, said American
dominance of the seas, in the skies, and in space can no longer
be taken for granted.
What I am saying is that you folks need to be outspoken.
You need to be heard because you are the experts. The public is
not aware of the threats that we have.
I want to ask you in a minute a question just on the size
of the military but let me give you a couple of--these are
quotes from you and other people talking about just the size.
General Goldfein, you said our strategic capability advantage
over competitors is shrinking and our ability to protect
strategic deterrence is being challenged.
Your predecessor, General Welch, said virtually every
mission area faces critical manning shortages, and the Air
Force risks burning airmen out.
General Milley, you said in light of the threats
confronting our Nation, to include Russia, China, North Korea,
Iran, ISIS [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria]--you know, we
need to talk about that--the Army has accepted high military
risk to meet the requirements of the national security
strategy.
General Allen. At today's end strength, the Army risks
consuming readiness as fast as it builds it.
I would like to ask each one of you do the realities of the
strategic environment today and the foreseeable future call for
a change in the size of our military. We will start with you,
General Milley.
General Milley. Thank you, Senator.
I think the Army has got adequate readiness and adequate
size to deal with our current demand which is fighting
terrorists, counterinsurgency operation in Iraq, Afghanistan,
elsewhere around the world, and to meet the current global
combatant commander demand for day-to-day operations.
Senator Inhofe. Now, you are saying the current end
strength or that which is projected?
General Milley. The current. The day-to-day, what is going
on today, the national military strategy, given that we are
actively engaged against ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other groups. That
is current.
The risk comes if we have a conflict with a near-peer,
high-end competitor. Those other contingencies that Secretary
of Defense Carter and many others have talked about with China,
Russia, North Korea, or Iran, each of which is different
operationally and tactically, each of which would require
different levels of forces, types of forces, and methods of
operation.
But the bottom line is with the size of the U.S. Army
today, if one or more of those other contingencies took place,
I maintain that our risk would significantly increase, as I
mentioned before, and if two of them happen at the same time, I
think it is high risk for the Nation.
Senator Inhofe. We understand. Of course, that is not
predictable. We do not know.
General Milley. Of course, not. But we have to be prepared
for it.
Just one last comment. You know, what we want is to deter.
Nobody wants to have these wars with near-peer competitors,
great powers. The only thing more expensive than deterrence is
actually fighting a war, and the only thing more expensive than
fighting a war is fighting one and losing one. This stuff is
expensive. We are expensive. We recognize that. But the bottom
line is it is an investment that is worth every nickel.
Senator Inhofe. Briefly, Admiral Richardson, size.
Admiral Richardson. Sir, philosophically I could not say it
any better than General Milley did. I agree with him.
In terms of the size, we are asking the same question. When
I first came in to be the CNO [Chief of Naval Operations], our
current fleet size--and there is more to capability than size,
but size does matter--is 308 ships. That assessment was done
without considering the emergent threat of Russia, without
considering the emergent threat of ISIS. We are completing a
study this month that gets at a new force structure assessment,
and we will be ready to bring that to you very shortly.
Senator Inhofe. You two generally agree with that?
General Neller. I think it is two things, Senator. First,
it is the capacity and the size that you talked about, but it
is also--I think it was mentioned by everybody else--the
capability sets that we have now. The future fight, if there is
one--hopefully there is not, but they deter a future fight.
There are capabilities that we do not in the Marine Corps have
that we are going to require because we focused on the fight
against terrorism in the last 15 years. How big is that force?
What do you do? Otherwise, you have to trade because there are
capabilities that we have now that we do not want to get rid
of. As you trade one capability for another, you either give
something up and you accept risk there to get the other
capability. Those are the trades that we are in and discussing
at this time.
Senator Inhofe. That is right. You have to accept risk. I
know that.
There is not time for you to answer that question, but I do
have another comment to make concerning you, General Goldfein.
I agree with the fact--and I talked to the pilots. They
want to fly more. That is significant. You cannot completely
eliminate the fact that it costs $9 million, if you take
someone off the street and make an F-22 pilot out of them. Yet
the bonuses--you were talking about what? $25,000 a year. That
has to be considered also I would say.
General Goldfein. Sir, in terms of the fact that we are
moving forward for an aviation bonus----
Senator Inhofe. You have to consider that too along with
the flying hours because the expense of taking someone and
putting them in advanced Air Force training and then you take
them all the way up to F-22 capability.
General Goldfein. Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, our
studies that we have done show that. We have not adjusted the
aviation bonus for a number of years.
Senator Inhofe. That is right.
General Goldfein. We are asking for Congress' support to
give us authorization for a higher level based on the data that
we have that shows that it will take more than what we offer
today to be able to provide the quality of life incentives to
be able to allow them to stay in.
But at the same time, I will tell you I am laser-focused on
the quality of service aspect to this because even if I pay
them more, if I do not get them in the air, they are going to
walk.
Senator Inhofe. You are right.
Thank you.
Senator Reed [presiding]. On behalf of the chairman,
Senator McCaskill.
Senator McCaskill. Thank you.
I want to associate myself with the opening statement of
Senator McCain in many ways because I think you all honestly
step forward and lead an amazing fighting force. I think we owe
the American people honesty about the military budget.
What is going on in the House of Representatives this year
is, once again, a phony budget gimmick to pretend that they are
somehow being fiscally conservative because they are using the
overseas contingency operations fund to fund the base
operations of our military. That is dishonest on its face. It
is inefficient and ineffective for our military.
General Milley, I would like to bring this home to my
State. Obviously, we have Fort Leonard Wood that dates back to
World War II in terms of some of its buildings, and we have
temporary military construction dating back to that time. We
are in an aggressive updating of that facility, which is such a
key facility for our Army. I noticed that they even had the
nerve to put military construction activities at bases in the
United States in the overseas contingency operating fund.
Can you comment about how this impacts your ability on
readiness and training when you are being put in a fund that is
year-to-year and not certain and you cannot plan with it?
General Milley. Sure, Senator. You are exactly right. You
cannot plan with it and you cannot just go year to year. Things
like multiyear contracts and having relationships with the
commercial industry in order to upgrade either weapons,
equipment, et cetera.
Now, specifically what you are talking about is
infrastructure, which is a key component. We often talk about
man, train, and equip sort of thing, but also the
infrastructure on Army bases is atrophying and the training
ranges are not as modern as they should be, throughput
capacities and so on. We have got a laundry list. It is not
just in Missouri. It is in many other places. That is of great
concern, and we have been robbing that account for quite a few
years now in order to maintain readiness in order to pay for
the war. That is another area of great concern is that
infrastructure.
Senator McCaskill. Our men and women that have been
deployed--they are not deployed for a half a year. We certainly
should not fund their money for half a year.
General Goldfein, I also had an opportunity to go to the
139th Airlift Wing over the last few weeks. You know, it is the
top gun of airlift in terms of training. The frustration there
is there seems to be a disconnect, and only you and people that
you interact with can fix this. That is, these are strategic
level courses. We are training people from all over the country
at this facility in terms of lift and internationally I might
add, our allies, as you probably well know.
But for some reason, they are having to deal with an annual
funding issue instead of getting programmatic funding. I do not
get that. I do not get why the National Guard Bureau and the
Air Mobility Command cannot get together because you know what
they are both doing? They are doing this. One is saying, oh, we
are putting it programmatic, and the other is saying, well, we
do not have it. It is really frustrating for that excellent
facility to have to continue to beat on this door and have
nobody answer. I would like your commitment today to look into
this and see if you cannot get this resolved once and for all.
General Goldfein. Yes, ma'am. I will just tell you quickly
that we had this come also up in the remotely piloted aircraft
business. What we found was that because there are so many
elements associated with actually getting a CAP airborne and
doing a sortie, that we had not gone through and done the work
that built the requirements that lay out over an entire year.
The wing commanders were having to plug holes and go month to
month to month. As a result of that, we put together a team and
we are actually working with the Director of the Air National
Guard to lay out annual requirements for the MPA [Military
Personnel Appropriation] days. Then once we have those annual
requirements, then we are going to fund them on an annual basis
so that wing commanders will not be there. I will take this on
and make sure that that----
Senator McCaskill. That would be terrific.
[The information referred to follows:]
Senator, as you know, the C-130H Weapons Instructor Course (WIC)
and the Advanced Airlift Tactics Training Center (AATTC), both located
at St. Joseph, MO and co-located with the 139th Airlift Wing, add
important combat capability to the Total Air Force. We recognize that
the C-130H WIC is a core requirement, while AATTC adds further value to
the Mobility Air Forces by increasing the warfighting effectiveness and
survivability of our mobility team. It is important to note that
requirements continue to be evaluated in the Mobility Air Force
community and we are actively engaged with the Air National Guard, Air
Force Reserve, other services, and allied nations to chart a long-term
programmatic path. Specifically, in November, personnel from the
National Guard Bureau, Air Force Reserve Command, and Air Mobility
Command will visit St. Joseph, MO to assess both WIC and AATTC
manpower, funding, infrastructure, and airframe requirements in the
near term and future years. Our intent is to develop options to
programmatically inform the FY19PB submission and provide an enduring
funding construct for the Weapons Instructor Course and the Advanced
Airlift Tactics Training Center. The contributions of the Missouri ANG
remain important to the success of war fighters in the Mobility Air
Forces, as well as the entire USAF, and we share your pride in having
them on our team.''
Finally for you, General Neller, I am a big, big fan of the
Marines. But I was struck when I was at Fort Leonard Wood. I
had a chance to visit with recruits who were in the last two
weeks of their training. They had done nine weeks. They were in
their AIT [Advanced Individual Training] training. I had a
chance to visit with these men and women. I was struck how many
immigrants were in this training class from South Korea,
Honduras, Costa Rica. They had just done a naturalization
ceremony on the base for 67 soldiers becoming United States
citizens. These people are saying they want to cross the line
and die for their country.
When I saw the way that the Muslim soldier was treated in
Parris Island, it hurt my heart, and I just want it on the
record for you to commit that you will get to the bottom of
this and there will be no question in the Marines that abusing
someone because of their ethnicity or their religion is
absolutely unacceptable or their gender orientation.
General Neller. Senator, you have my complete and total
commitment to that.
Senator McCaskill. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Reed. On behalf of Chairman McCain, Senator
Fischer, please.
Senator Fischer. Thank you, Senator Reed.
Thank you, gentlemen, for being here today.
I am going to pick up a little bit on Senator McCaskill's
expression of frustration and expand that. Many times the
American people--they hear different stories, different
information from different sources, and I would like to
highlight part of that today and get your response to that and
if you would clarify it.
General Milley, the ``Wall Street Journal'' published an
article by General Petraeus last month, and it was entitled
``The Myth of the U.S. Military Readiness Crisis.'' In it, he
characterized the Army's weapons inventory in the following
way. While some categories of aircraft and other key weapons
are aging and will need replacement or major refurbishment
soon, most equipment remains in fairly good shape. According to
our sources in the military, Army equipment has, on average,
mission capable rates today exceeding 90 percent, and that is a
historically high level.
General, do you believe that General Petraeus was correct
in this assessment that the equipment and the mission capable
rates are what he says they are? What does that tell us or
possibly what does it not tell us about the state of the Army?
General Milley. Thanks, Senator.
I know General Petraeus well and have got a lot of respect
for him, served under him, et cetera, along with Mr. O'Hanlon
who is the co-author. Both of them are very talented.
But as you might expect, I do not necessarily agree with
that. The title of the article is ``Readiness Crisis: A Myth.''
I do not know if ``crisis'' is the right word. That is packed
with all kinds of emotion. But there are serious readiness
challenges in the United States Army today. The operational
readiness rates for our key weapon systems are not above 90
percent. They are well below 90 percent in some cases, and that
is cause for great concern. They are improving, but they are
below 90 percent. 90 percent is the standard, nine out of ten
weapon systems ready to go to war at a moment in time. Our
weapon systems are not in that condition at this time.
Senator Fischer. Thank you, sir, for clarifying that.
Also, the column goes on to argue that training for full
spectrum operations is resuming. It claims that by 2017 the
Army plans to rotate nearly 20 brigades, about a third of its
force, through national training centers each year. The Marine
Corps plans to put 12 infantry battalions, about half its
force, through large training exercises, and the Air Force is
funding its training and readiness programs at 80 to 98 percent
of what it considers fully resourced levels.
Generals, do you think that accurately portrays your
services and their readiness to conduct the full spectrum
operations? General Milley?
General Milley. It is a partial answer. The flagship
training event for an Army unit, an Army brigade combat team,
is going to a combat training center at the National Training
Center or Joint Readiness Training Center down in Louisiana. A
few years ago, we were not doing decisive action operations
against higher-end threats. We changed gears about 24 months
ago, and about 12 to 18 months ago, we started putting brigades
through the paces of going against near-peer competitors unless
they were specifically designated to go into Afghanistan or
Iraq.
At the end of fiscal year 2017, by the end of next year,
100 percent of our brigade combat teams on Active Duty will
have one rotation. It is all about reps. If you were, back in
the day, pre-9/11, a typical battalion commander or a major,
for example, or a company commander, you would have three,
four, five, maybe more rotations through a training center by
the time they reached those levels. Today we have an entire
generation of officers going into the field grade ranks
commanding battalions or even in some cases companies that have
very little or no experience at a CTC. By the end of fiscal
year 2017, 100 percent of the brigades, but it is a matter of
reps. We have to do it over and over again.
The data I have and the forecast we have is by the end of
2018, 24 months from now, we will have nine of our brigades
with three rotations, 18 of them with two, and four with one.
That is not bad. It is better and all that is good. But there
is more to it than just going to the training centers. That is
a key part but there is more to it.
Manning levels are holding us back. We have over 30,000
non-available soldiers in the regular Army today. That is a
corps, an entire corps not available for medical, legal, and a
variety of other reasons. That is not even talking about your
training account, basic training, or the overhead it takes to
run basic training. Your personnel piece is big, and then
equipment maintenance, which you just talked about with OR
rates. Those are big. Those are all parts of readiness. That is
just readiness with the equipment, the modernization, the
systems we have today. Five or ten years from now, there are
lots of systems out there that we need to invest in to get them
online to be able to deal with a near-peer great power, if in
fact that day ever comes.
I do not subscribe 100 percent to what General Petraeus, as
much as I respect him, or Michael O'Hanlon wrote. I like them
both.
Senator Fischer. Thank you. I am out of time. But, General
Neller and General Goldfein, if you could get that information
to me, I would be happy to put that out.
I too respect the service that General Petraeus has given
to this country, but I think it is important that we get
correct information out to the people of this country so they
understand the situation that we are facing with our military.
Thank you.
Senator Reed. On behalf of Chairman McCain, Senator Hirono,
please.
Senator Hirono. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your
testimony and for your service and the service of the men and
women whom you lead.
Over the course of the many hearings that this committee
has had with regard to the negative impacts of sequestration,
we have been provided with objective information as to those
impacts that causes me to question the article that my
colleague just talked about, as much as, of course, we
appreciate the service of General Petraeus.
For General Neller, I have been monitoring the progress
with the Marine Corps Pacific laydown, including visits to
Okinawa, Guam, and CNMI [Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana
Islands]. I know that it will be very important to have
adequate training facilities.
General, can you talk briefly about the current status and
if you have any concerns about the progress so far of the
Marine Corps specifically to plan? I just read an article
recently about the Governor of CNMI and his position regarding
training in Pagan.
General Neller. Well, Senator, we are still in the
execution of the current plan of the Pacific laydown for marine
forces. The Futenma replacement facility has been separated
from the move from Guam, but from the very beginning our
movement to Guam was contingent based on the fact that we could
train and maintain our readiness once deployed there. Because
of actions of others and environmental impact, right now that
is potentially at risk and has pushed the timeline to the
right. We are still committed to go to Guam, but to go to Guam,
we have to be able to sustain the readiness of the force,
whatever that force is that we deploy there.
I am concerned with it. I am watching it. I think there may
be some other forces involved in this and that is causing
delays in this. There are also still issues on Okinawa about
building on to the north of the Futenma replacement facility
that are tied up between negotiations between the Government of
Japan and their prefecture of Okinawa, and we continue to
monitor that.
Senator Hirono. I share your concerns because there are a
number of moving parts with regard to the move out of Futenma
and Henoko, and there are now delays there.
I realize that we are doing the buildup necessary for Guam,
but we cannot send our troops there unless they have a place to
train. CNMI and the discussions that we are having and whatever
negotiations we are having with that government is really
critical, and I would appreciate your keeping me apprised as we
go along. Anything that this committee and I can do to help----
General Neller. Yes, ma'am, we will certainly do that.
Senator Hirono. For General Milley and General Goldfein, I
want to commend you in your leadership of your respective
services, including the National Guard components in your
mission. As you know, a combined force of Active, Guard, and
Reserve components is imperative to the defense of our country.
At our full committee hearing on cybersecurity this week,
the important role that the National Guard plays in
contributing to total force requirements was discussed. Can
both of you talk about progress in other areas where you will
be depending on your Guard components to fulfill Army and Air
Force requirements?
General Goldfein. Senator, I will give General Milley a
break.
We are looking across the entire enterprise of the five
core missions that the Air Force does for the joint team in the
Nation to look at where we can partner with Air National Guard
to leverage that component and the Air Force Reserves across
all these mission areas: cyber, intelligence, command and
control, nuclear enterprise, conventional air power in terms of
both bomber and fighter force. We are looking at all of that.
In the mobility portion of our business, you go into a C-17 and
ask the question in the cockpit today, okay, who is Guard, who
is Active, who is Reserve, and very often all three hands will
go up because we are that connected. We have three components.
We have one Air Force. We have five missions. We are looking
across all of those mission areas.
I predict that cyber will be a growth industry when it
comes to including our Air National Guard because it is ideally
suited for that mission set. We are looking across the
enterprise at ways we can partner and we can increase that.
Senator Hirono. General Milley?
General Milley. Thanks, Senator.
We have made a lot of strides I think in the last year in
trying to integrate and enhance the readiness of the National
Guard. It is my assessment that we are going to have to
significantly improve the readiness of the United States Army
National Guard and the Army Reserve.
We are the only service that has over 50 percent of our
force structure in the Reserve component, and we have got about
53 percent. A significant chunk of the Army is in the Reserve.
As was designed many, many years ago, the bottom line is
the United States Army cannot conduct sustained land campaigns
overseas without the National Guard and without the United
States Army Reserve. It is not possible. That is the way the
system was designed many, many decades ago.
Today what do we rely on? There is a considerable amount of
maneuver force in the Army National Guard. We are moving to 26
brigades with this President's budget--maneuver brigades. There
is a lot of artillery. There is a lot of combat power in the
National Guard, a lot of attack helicopters, and so on. If you
look at combat service support, logistics units, about 60
percent, 62 percent of the United States Army's logistics is
all in the Reserve component.
The Army, bottom line, could not fight, could not feed
itself, could not maneuver, could not conduct any sort of
extended land campaign anywhere in the world without the Guard
or the Reserve. It is absolutely critical to what we are doing
and we need to increase their readiness as well.
Senator Hirono. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCain [presiding]. Senator Sullivan?
Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, I want to thank you for your service. As a
matter of fact, somebody stated Secretary Carter, when he
testified last time, I know a number of us have had a lot of
criticisms with some of the Obama administration's foreign
policy and national security. But one area where I want to
commend the President is the quality and character of the men
and women he has been nominating that have come before this
committee for confirmation to lead our military. I think the
four of you exemplify that quality and character, and I just
want to commend you for that.
Part of the reason--and the chairman has already touched on
it--is the frank and honest views that you have been giving
this committee and others since your confirmations and your
important positions leading the men and women in uniform of our
Nation. I want to commend you on that as well.
General Milley, when you were here a couple months ago, you
talked about the issue--and you already restated it--of a near-
peer, full-spectrum threat in terms of a conflict. If we had to
address that, you stated that the U.S. Army would be at high
military risk and you mentioned again to meet our national
security strategy. Do you continue to hold that view?
I would like to have each of the other Service Chiefs here
give us your assessment of where your service is in terms of
risk. I thought it was remarkable. I thought it was courageous
of you to say that. The press did not pick up on it, but the
fact that the Chief of Staff of the Army was saying high
military risk is pretty remarkable. I just want each of the
servicemembers in terms of a full-spectrum conflict, the
ability to meet that for our Nation's security, where are we in
terms of risk for your service?
General Milley. Thank you, Senator.
My assessment remains the same. Just as a reminder, what
does it mean when I am using that term? I am talking about the
ability to accomplish the military tasks assigned to Army
units. The ability to do it on time and the ability to do that
at an acceptable level of cost expressed in terms of
casualties, troops, killed and wounded. But I maintain my same
assessment.
Senator Sullivan. High military risk.
General Milley. That is correct.
Senator Sullivan. Admiral Richardson?
Admiral Richardson. Senator, I concur with General Milley.
I have sort of forbidden my team to use the word ``risk''
because it has become so overused that you start to lose a
sense of what that means. But it is exactly as General Milley
described. If we get into one of those conflicts, we will win,
but it is going to take a lot longer than we would like. It is
going to cost a lot more in terms of dollars and in casualties.
Senator Sullivan. General Neller?
General Neller. Senator, in short, I agree. We built a
force that has been focused on a counterinsurgency fight, and
while we have been doing this effectively, our potential
adversaries have recapitalized and from ground up built a force
that has very significant capability that grows every day. We
are in the process now of getting ourselves back and looking at
those capabilities we need to match that up.
Would we win? Yes, we would win. But I would associate
myself that it would take longer and I think the cost would be
higher.
Senator Sullivan. You are putting the Marine Corps at high
military risk as well.
General Neller. If we had to do, based on the contingency
plans that were one major contingency and then a near
simultaneous of a second one, yes.
Senator Sullivan. General Goldfein?
General Goldfein. Sir, that is the key for this discussion,
which is ready for what. What we are all, I believe, talking
about is if the guidance tells us that we have to be
simultaneously ready to defeat a near-peer adversary in an
anti-access/area denial environment, a near-peer, while at the
same time imposing cost in deterring another adversary, while
at the same time ensuring your safe, secure, reliable nuclear
enterprise, while at the same time defending the Homeland to
the level that will be required, then we are at high risk. But
you have got to walk down that line----
Senator Sullivan. Right. But that is what we expect of you.
That is your mission.
Let me just end by mentioning we talk a lot about costs.
General Milley mentioned it. I know some of you in the Army and
in the Marine Corps--the book by T.R. Fehrenbach is still given
to our infantry officers to read, ``This Kind of War.'' When
you talk about costs--maybe this is for General Milley and
General Neller--when we are sending less ready units into a
near-peer fight, we talk about costs. That sounds like dollars
and cents. What is it? Relate that to ``This Kind of War.''
Relate that to the first summer in 1950 in Korea. The costs
were dead Americans in the thousands. Is that not correct?
General Milley. Well, that is exactly right. I mean, the
butcher's bill is paid in blood with American soldiers for
unready forces. We have a long history of that. Kasserine Pass,
Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Task Force Smith in the Korean War. It
goes all the way back to Bull Run. Lincoln thought he was going
to fight a war for 90 days. Wars are often thought to be short
when they begin. They are not. They are often thought to cost
less than then they end up costing, and they end up with
outcomes and take turns that you never know. It is a dangerous
thing.
The best thing I know of is to ensure that you have forces
that are sized, trained, manned, equipped, and very, very
capable to first prevent the war from starting to begin with,
and then once it starts, to win and win fast and win
decisively. That is the most humane thing to do when you are
engaged in combat. Otherwise, you are expending lives that I do
not think are necessary.
In the Korean War, the book you are referring to, in that
war, Task Force Smith, the 21st Infantry Regiment, was alerted
out of Japan, went forward to the peninsula on relatively short
notice, and they were essentially decimated. It was not because
they were bad. It was not because they were incompetent. The
battalion commander was an experienced World War II guy. It was
because they had two 90 millimeter recoilless rifles. Their
mortars did not work. Their ammo was not done. The training was
not done. They were not properly equipped. They were not in
great shape. They were doing occupation duty in Japan. They
were sent into combat, into harm's way unready, and they paid
for it. Tens of thousands of others paid for it in those early
months, the first six months of Korea. It is not a pretty
picture.
Readiness matters. Reps at training centers matter.
Equipment matters. Personnel fill matters. To do otherwise for
us at this table is the ultimate sin to send someone into
combat who is unready.
Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCain. That is a risk we are facing right now.
Senator King?
Senator King. Thank you.
General Milley, I think you have delivered the line of the
day for me. The only thing more expensive than deterrence is
fighting a war, and the only thing more expensive than fighting
a war is losing a war. That sort of summarizes the situation.
I would like to ask a couple of questions of you
specifically about Afghanistan and then go on to the more
general question.
I know the President has modified the troop drawdown
schedule in Afghanistan, which I think was an appropriate
response to the situation. Were the authorities maintained for
the forces that we have there that allow them to act
effectively to assist the Afghan forces?
General Milley. As I understand it, yes. I am heading over
there next month actually, and I will see General Nicholson.
But with my JCS hat on, as I understand, the operational
authorities are adequate to do his task. But I will double
check that and I can get back with you.
[The information referred to follows:]
Based on my conversations with Commanders on the ground, the
authorities are appropriate and allow them to effectively assist our
Afghan partners.
Senator King. The second question is related. Are the NATO
[North Atlantic Treaty Organization] commitments that have
been, in a sense, proportional to ours being maintained?
General Milley. I believe yes, but let me get you a better
answer than that. Let me get you a specific answer.
Senator King. I would appreciate it. Thank you.
[The information referred to follows:]
Yes. As a proportion, non-U.S. NATO Allies and partners will
increase their commitments to Afghanistan relative to the United
States. As reported at the NATO Summit in Warsaw just two months ago,
our Allies reconfirmed NATO's long-term commitment to Afghanistan's
stability. They declared that NATO will extend its Resolute Support
Mission to train, advise, and assist the Afghan security forces beyond
2016: pledged to sustain funding through 2020: and agreed to strengthen
and enhance the Enduring Partnership with Afghanistan. While the US
will draw down its own Afghanistan presence by 14 percent, all 38 other
NATO Allies and partners involved in the Resolute Support Mission have
committed to provide either the same number of troops as in 2016 or
increase their presence beyond 2016.
This hearing has focused a lot on money, and I think it is
appropriate. There should be some context. In 1967, defense
spending was 8.6 percent of GDP [Gross Domestic Product]. In
1991, it was 5.2 percent. Today it is 3.3 percent. I think
often the public and all of us get caught up in these big
numbers of $560 billion, but the reality is our commitment to
defense has fallen dramatically in the last 45 years in part
because of a perception that the world was getting safer and in
part because of budgetary issues.
The other thing I would point out is that net interest on
the national debt today is more than a third of the military
budget, and we are at an all-time low in interest rates. That
is going to only go up, which will tend to make the budget be
strained even more.
I just think we need to be talking to the American people
about the fundamental responsibility of any government, which
is to keep its people safe, and that the dramatic reduction in
the commitment that we have made to defending this country.
The follow-up point, of course, which has been made
previously, is that since 2011 and the Budget Control Act, we
have had Syria, ISIS, South China Sea, Ukraine, the North Korea
nuclear development, and cyber. To maintain a rigid budget
structure in the light of those changes, it just seems to me is
dumb. We are trying to protect this country. We have new
threats.
It is similar to the discussion we have had, Mr. Chairman,
about the troop levels in Afghanistan. We have got to respond
to circumstances on the ground, and the circumstances have
dramatically changed in the last five years in terms of threats
that this country faces.
The other point that has been made by Ranking Member Reed.
Certainty is as important as amount. I think you testified to
that. The other way we are not serving the public is by the
absolutely ridiculous process around here of not adopting
budgets, doing continuing resolutions, getting you the money in
the middle of the year, which does not allow you to plan, does
not allow you to do the capital planning and the long-term
planning that you need to do.
I realize I have talked a long time without a question. I
am going to add one more point.
The other piece of this financial burden that we are facing
is the nuclear recapitalization, and I have got some slides
that I think make this clear that to me are rather dramatic.
What we are facing is a very large bulge, if you will, in the
commitment, and if we do not make some additional overall way
of dealing with that issue, it is going to eat up everything
else. We are not going to be able to maintain aircraft or
develop the ships that we need because all the money is going
to go into that. I just point this out. It has been 40 years
since there has been a recapitalization, and we are heading
into a--we have got to have some special way of accounting for
this, it seems to me. It does not mean borrow for it. But it
does mean fund it in some way. Otherwise, it will crowd out the
necessity of modernization across the rest of the enterprise.
If you can find a question in there, gentlemen, you are
welcome to it. Admiral?
Admiral Richardson. Senator, I will jump on that because
between General Goldfein and I--and we are lockstep on trying
to solve this problem in every way we can. I think that that
bulge talks to a number of the points that you made.
One, as General Milley said, it is much cheaper to deter a
war, and this is what this program is all about. This is about
deterrence.
Senator King. It is a theory that has worked for us for 80
years.
Admiral Richardson. It has been absolutely effective for 80
years not only nuclear war, of course, but also conflict
worldwide. If you look at sort of before and after, it is a
startling difference.
The other point is that each of these recapitalizations,
the first one in the 1960s, then in the 1980s, and then now, we
are getting that mission done for less. Each of those peaks is
subsequently smaller.
Then to your point, we can get that peak even smaller if we
have predictable funding in place. We are going to recapitalize
the undersea leg with 12 submarines. If we get that to
predictable funding to buy that package in a block, we could
get those 12 submarines probably for the cost of 10 or 11. You
can see real savings that come through this predictability.
But I want to go back to my first point. It is absolutely
essential that we get this done because without that deterrent
effect--we think things are bad now--it would be much worse.
Senator King. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you all for your
service and for your outstanding testimony here today. Thank
you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCain. Senator Graham?
Senator Graham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let us see if we can summarize here.
All of you agree that a long-term CR is bad for the
military.
General Goldfein. Yes, sir.
Senator Graham. When I hear my House colleagues wishing for
a long-term CR, you do not wish for that.
General Goldfein. No.
Senator Graham. Okay.
To my House colleagues, the OCO account. Do you all have a
problem with what they are doing, taking OCO money to fund the
military?
General Goldfein. Sir, I will tell you that our preference
is a stable, long-term budget that we can plan on.
Senator Graham. Do you think OCO funding is not stable?
General Goldfein. It is one-year funding. It does not give
us long-term stability.
Senator Graham. Does everybody agree with that? You would
prefer not to go that route.
Why do they do this? They do not want to bust the caps.
They do not want to take on the right and tell them you all are
crazy. You know, this sequestration is not working.
Have you all talked to the President about this? Have you
told the President what you are telling us about the state of
the military under sequestration? Have you had a conversation
with the commander-in-chief telling him what you just told us,
General Milley?
General Milley. I have not personally had a conversation
with the President.
Senator Graham. What about the Navy?
Admiral Richardson. No, sir, not personally.
Senator Graham. What about the Marines?
General Neller. No, sir, not personally.
Senator Graham. What about the Air Force?
General Goldfein. No, sir.
Senator Graham. What are you doing at the White House, Mr.
President? You are threatening to veto a bill that would
increase defense spending because it does not have non-defense
increases. I will make some suggestions to you. Go tell the
President what you are telling us.
I absolutely see the flaws in what the House is doing. I
cannot believe the commander-in-chief is sitting on the
sidelines and watching this happen, taking a laissez-faire
attitude that if you send me a bill that increases defense
spending without increasing non-defense spending, I will veto
it. I find that as repugnant as what the House is doing.
Okay. By the end of 2021, we will be spending what percent
of GDP on defense if sequestration is fully implemented? Does
anybody know? 2.3 percent. Check the math. Senator King made a
very good point.
Do you see by the end of 2021, given the threats we face as
a Nation, it is wise to cut defense spending in half in terms
of historical numbers?
General Goldfein. No, sir.
Senator Graham. Do you, General?
General Neller. No, sir, I do not.
Admiral Richardson. No, sir.
General Milley. No, sir.
Senator Graham. Well, somebody should ask, how could your
Congress and your President allow that to happen. I ask that
all the time. I do not have a really good answer.
If sequestration goes back into effect in 2017, are we
putting people's lives at risk because of the effects of
sequestration in terms of training?
General Milley. Yes, sir.
General Goldfein. Yes, sir.
Senator Graham. Well, does anybody else listen to these
hearings but us? How do you live with yourself? I say that. I
include me. I am part of this body. I voted against
sequestration, but that is no excuse. Do you want to do revenue
to fix it? I will do revenue. But what I am not going to do is
keep playing this silly game.
When you rank threats to our military from nation states
and terrorists, would you say sequestration is a threat to our
military?
General Goldfein. Yes, sir.
General Milley. Sure.
Senator Graham. Would you agree with me, General, that the
Congress is going to shoot down more planes than any enemy that
we can think of in the near term?
General Goldfein. Potentially.
Senator Graham. Do you agree with me that we are going to
park more marines and take them out of the fight than any enemy
we can think of in the near term here, General, with
sequestration?
General Neller. Sir, nobody is going to park us. We are
going to fight, but we will be at risk.
Senator Graham. What is your budget in terms of personnel
cost?
General Neller. We pay about 61 percent of the green TOA
[total obligation authority] for personnel.
Senator Graham. Let us just walk through that real quickly.
60 percent of your budget is personnel.
General Neller. Yes, sir.
Senator Graham. If sequestration goes into effect, are you
going to lose marines?
General Neller. Yes, sir, we will.
Senator Graham. Okay. They will be out of the fight.
How many ships will the Navy have if sequestration is fully
implemented, Admiral?
Admiral Richardson. Sir, hard to say, but fewer than the
308.
Senator Graham. They say 278. Is that about right?
Admiral Richardson. That is in the ball park.
Senator Graham. The Congress is going to sink how many
ships?
Admiral Richardson. Sir, I might take you on with the word
'sink,' but it will be----
Senator Graham. Okay. Well, whatever. They are not going to
be there.
Admiral Richardson. Thirty.
Senator Graham. How many brigades are we going to wipe out,
General, in the Army?
General Milley. Our estimation is we will lose between
60,000 and 100,000 troops if sequestration comes out.
Senator Graham. Would you agree with me when you rank the
threats to the military, you would have to put Congress and the
President in that mix if we do not fix sequestration?
General Milley. I will not judge either----
Chairman McCain. You are not required to answer that
question.
[Laughter.]
General Milley. I am not judging the President or Congress.
Chairman McCain. Senator Blumenthal?
Senator Blumenthal. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCain. I would remind the witnesses. There are
certain questions that you are not required to answer.
[Laughter.]
Senator Blumenthal. I was about to say that I was going to
reask that question, but it would probably reach the same
result.
I just want to say how much I respect your service, and I
think we all do. Regardless of the demanding and tough
questions that have been asked, we approach this as a collegial
effort working together with men and women who have devoted
their lives to the service of our Nation with extraordinary
distinction and bravery. That goes for you and all who serve
with you. I just want to begin with my profound thanks for your
service.
Admiral, I want to talk a little bit about submarines. I
know that we are moving toward building two submarines a year,
Virginia-class. In your testimony, you briefly note your
concern for the future shortfall in our attack submarines. What
is the Navy's strategy to deal with that shortfall when the
desired 48-boat minimum in 2025 reaches a low point in 2029 of
41, potentially placing our Nation in jeopardy? Do we have a
strategy to address that shortfall?
Admiral Richardson. Sir, we do. First, that shortfall
highlights sort of a fundamental element of shipbuilding plans,
which is that you have got to think long-term. Some of these
things are very difficult to correct in the short term. It just
takes time to build submarines and there are capital
investments as well.
But we are building two per year. We are going to continue
to do that. We are also going to look to every possible way to
extend the life of the current Los Angeles-class submarines
that are carrying much of the burden today so that we can fill
in that trough as much as possible. We are building two
Virginia-class submarines a year. We are going to examine
continuing that as we bring the Ohio replacement program
online, particularly in the year 2021. If you put that
submarine in place, it actually starts to fill in a good
percentage of that trough. Then we will look forward to more
creative deployment options so that we get more out of every
submarine. We will use all of these methods together to try and
minimize the effect of that trough, but we are not going to be
able to erase it.
Senator Blumenthal. Your point about the importance of
planning I think is profoundly important, little understood by
the American people who often think we can snap our fingers and
turn on the spigot for submarines. But we know and so do the
dedicated men and women at Electric Boat in Groton that
planning requires investment in skill training and the defense
industrial base that consists of those men and women who in
many ways are as vital as the men and women in uniform because
they build the platforms, the submarines, that make our
projection of power possible around the world. Would you agree?
Admiral Richardson. I would completely agree. In terms of
their talent and the skill level, I wish we could take every
American through that facility up at Electric Boat and the same
at all of our shipbuilding facilities just to see what America
can do when it puts its mind to it. It is stunning.
But as we ramp up to build the Ohio replacement, the
biggest challenge is the workforce and bringing those skilled
laborers on. I agree with you 100 percent. It is a team effort,
and it is a tough job.
Senator Blumenthal. I hope you will come back. I have been
privileged to go through Electric Boat with you. I know Senator
Reed has on many occasions as well. This investment--it is not
spending. It is investment in our future--I think is really
vital.
Likewise, General Milley, on the Blackhawks, as you know,
the National Commission on the Future of the Army issued
aviation recommendations earlier this year, and these
recommendations create some budgetary tension with the aviation
restructure initiative the Army proposed in 2014. I am
concerned that the planned UH-60 Blackhawk procurement, which
is a vital modernization initiative for the Active Army and
National Guard across the Nation, will be reduced to pay for
other programs. As you move forward with the Army aviation
fiscal year 2018-2022 budget, are revisions being made to
assure that future aviation modernization plans will be
sustained in light of the commission's recommendation?
General Milley. Aviation is one of our top priorities. It
is one of the ones I mentioned in my opening statement,
Senator. absolutely we are committed to improving the
modernization, and we have got several initiatives underway.
With respect to the National Commission, we have put some
of the aviation requirements into the UFR [unfunded
requirements], into the unfinanced requirement list. Others we
are funding. We think the commission did great work, and we
intend to implement their recommendations to the extent we can.
Senator Blumenthal. Thanks.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCain. Senator Ernst?
Senator Ernst. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Gentlemen, thank you for being here today. It is a
privilege to be in the same room with you.
We do have a lot of difficulties coming up, especially with
sequestration, and I do not think I can be any more eloquent
than Senator Graham.
Admiral, I would like to start with you. I do understand
the Navy is facing some significant budgetary challenges, and
this is true of all of our services. However, I was able to
visit one of your ships earlier this year, and I was stunned to
learn about the requirement for up-to-date paper charts aboard
U.S. Navy ships and the low priority of celestial training. I
did send a letter to the Navy on this topic about two months
ago, as of yesterday, and I am still waiting for a written
response.
But what I would like to know from you, what steps are you
taking to increase basic nautical and celestial navigation
training for your sailors and remove dependency from electronic
devices? The way I understand it, they do use an off-the-shelf
product that other civilian navigators use, as well as a
program that is specific to the Navy. They just do not get
those up-to-date downloads, and they do not have the paper
charts necessary. Maybe you can fill me in a little bit.
Admiral Richardson. Well, with respect to navigation, it is
something that, obviously, we take very seriously every moment
that we are underway and looking into the future.
With respect to minimizing our vulnerability to electronic
navigation, global positioning system [GPS], and those sorts of
systems, really a multifaceted approach. We have started
teaching celestial navigation, and so those types of courses
are back in the curriculum at the Naval Academy and other
places. We can use technology to move us beyond the sextant in
terms of proficiency and accuracy there.
One of the things that I am working hard with our
industrial base partners is there are other ways to get
precision navigation and timing into our systems, which is so
critical not only for navigation, but also for weapon system
performance and everything across the board. That is an area of
emphasis as well. These would be systems that would be
independent of GPS and potentially more precise than GPS. We
are working very hard across the full spectrum.
Senator Ernst. Okay. That is very encouraging. We cannot
forget that we need to stay a little bit old school.
Admiral Richardson. We have got to stay in the channel,
ma'am.
Senator Ernst. That is right. Outstanding. Thanks, Admiral.
I appreciate that.
General Goldfein, I recently did have the opportunity to
visit one of my Iowa Air National Guard units, 185th Air
Refueling Wing, in Sioux City. One of the things I noticed was
the pilot shortage. They continue to talk about that. I know
the chairman has already addressed this issue. But what I would
like to maybe know from you is, is there a solution for the
Guard and Reserve force as well? What can we do to better
enable them with our pilot shortage?
General Goldfein. Ma'am, actually it is a very similar
solution to what we look at in the Active Duty because the
motivations are the same and the same pilot who joins because
very often, as you know, a lot of the Air National Guard
actually came from the Active Duty. The important part for us
is to ensure that they are getting the same opportunities to
train in the Air National Guard as they have in the Active
Duty.
Like General Milley said for the Army, the Air Force is
structured in a way as well that we could not do the job that
we are required to do without the Air National Guard, the Air
Force Reserves, and the Active component all working together.
Especially in the mobility community is where we are actually
the most connected in terms of these associations and how we
get together to get the mission done.
Actually what I mentioned in terms of quality of service,
making sure they have the hours to fly, that they have the
resources they need to be able to be competitive, at the same
time, we also provide the financial incentives they need to
stay. All those come together. That is going to improve our
retention rates, and we are fully committed to that.
Senator Ernst. Wonderful. Thank you very much.
Just very briefly, in March, the Army announced a new
associated units pilot program partnering National Guard and
Reserve components with an Active brigade combat team. My
understanding is that this could greatly increase the readiness
of our Reserve forces and reduce costs.
General Milley, do you have any updates on how this program
is working so far? Again, sir, very briefly, please.
General Milley. Yes. We have got 14 associated units right
now in the pilot program. We do think and hope that it will
increase the readiness of the Guard, along with increased CTC
rotations and increased requests for man-days. In combination,
all of those things will help increase the readiness of the
National Guard.
Senator Ernst. Outstanding. We love our Guard folks, do we
not?
General Milley. Absolutely.
Senator Ernst. Okay. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman McCain. Senator Tillis?
Senator Tillis. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
General Goldfein, thank you for being here. I would note I
was here for your opening comments. I had two concurrent
committee meetings I had to run to. But you said something I
think made me reflect on the 440th, and I am not going to focus
on it except to say you were saying you need the flexibility to
get to shed excess infrastructure if you are going to address
some of your budget constraints. I think the 440th was a
classic example of that because I know very well that there
were at least five or six other sites that were either
statutorily protected or protected by BRAC [Base Realignment
and Closure] that in your opinion would have been a better,
more appropriate way to get to the target that you were
hitting. I understand the pressure you are under.
Hopefully, we will repeal sequestration, but if we do not,
we need to find some other ways to provide you with flexibility
to weather this storm.
I have one question for you, and it really has to do with
the NDAA from fiscal year 2016 which has I think a requirement
to retain 1,900 aircraft. How are you going to comply with that
requirement, or can you?
General Goldfein. Sir, actually in this FYDP [Future Years
Defense Program], we will comply with that. The next FYDP
afterward is going to be a challenge because as we bring on new
weapon systems, given all the other challenges we face, being
able to maintain the 1,900 is going to be a challenge as we
also increase investment in some other key areas that the
Nation requires----
Senator Tillis. I am not sure I see how you do it. We
should probably, outside of this committee hearing, talk about
shedding light on that versus putting a requirement in there
that I do not think you are going to be able to achieve.
To the Commandant, General Neller, I have spent a fair
amount of time down in North Carolina at Cherry Point, and I
have had a number of discussions up here. I continue to hear
about challenges facing readiness for your aircraft, and then
you have the second and third order effects on challenges for
pilot flying time, training time.
How would you assess the current state of readiness? Give
me an idea of what the trend lines look like.
General Neller. The current state of readiness for Marine
aviation is dependent upon what model type series, but in the
aggregate, it is improving but it is not where we need it to
be. It is below an acceptable level. We are not flying enough.
We do not have enough ready basic aircraft, and that means the
aircraft that we fly get turned faster and so they are harder
to maintain. We are at our flight hour program, not that we are
flying a lot of hours, but that is also where we get our parts.
We are not where we want to be. I do not think we are going
to be where we want to be. Assuming consistent, stable funding,
if we can increase the parts support funding, it will happen
faster. If we can get new airplanes sooner, it will happen
faster. But the trend line is up, slightly up.
Senator Tillis. I tell you one thing I saw down at Cherry
Point where really the rubber hits the road and you are down
there and you see these repair operations. The way that it
works, they can go so far with certain repairs, and then they
are either waiting for parts or they are relying on some other
part of the supply chain to finish the repairs. We got planes
that could probably be ready to go but for changes in some of
the processes, some other things that we may need to do to
provide you with the flexibility or the funding to do it. I
know that has to do with funding in some of the accounts that
have been depleted over time. We have got to shed light on that
as we go into planning for next year.
General Milley, you made a comment about we are mortgaging
our future readiness to be ready today. I mean, we are creating
a debt. Would you mind getting into specific examples of what
that looks like?
General Milley. Well, specifically with respect to the
budget, we have, over many, many years now, undercut or reduced
our S&T [science and technology] and R&D [research and
development] parts in the modernization accounts. That part of
the budget, that part of the pie has been reduced over time.
That is the part of the pie that is future readiness because 10
years from now, 15 years from now, those R&D projects, those
S&T projects--they become real weapons or real equipment. That
is what I am talking about. That part of the pie has been
reduced.
We are trying to, in this President's budget, make some
hard choices as a service given a top line and given basically
a fixed amount on the compensation piece of it to try to
balance the readiness today versus modernization, S&T, and
infrastructure, et cetera for tomorrow. These are hard, tough
choices. In the Army's piece of it, we are preferencing, we are
biasing today's readiness because of the gaps from the last 15
years. We got to get them back up to speed because of the
threats we have all been talking about.
Senator Tillis. Well, thank you all for your service. I
thank Senator McCain for opening his question about your
position on the deleterious effects that sequestration is going
to continue to have. If we take nothing away from this, we have
to be unified and end this ridiculous way to budget and protect
our Nation. Thank you all.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman McCain. Senator Donnelly?
Senator Donnelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you all for being here.
In 2014, the Jacob Sexton Military Suicide Prevention Act
was signed into law through the fiscal year 2015 NDAA. It was
the first bill I introduced after joining the Senate, and it is
named after a Hoosier soldier we lost to suicide in 2009. Last
year was the fourth straight year we lost more servicemembers
to suicide than to combat.
My colleague, Senator King, is sponsoring a showing of a
movie, ``Thank you for Your Service,'' which touches upon this
very subject. When we talk about taking care of our troops,
when we talk about readiness, when we talk about maintaining
the strongest fighting force the world has ever known, I cannot
think of anything more fundamental than ensuring the physical
and mental health of our men and women in uniform.
The Sexton Act mandated that each of the services provide a
robust mental health assessment to every servicemember, Active
or Guard or Reserve, every year. I would like to know how each
of your branches are doing in implementing this requirement.
General Milley, if you could touch on that.
General Milley. Thank you, Senator.
Within the Army we are seeing in the last year an
improvement, meaning a reduced number of suicides, slight but
significant enough to be noticeable across the force. That is
important. All the efforts that we have done with your help and
Congress' help and lots of folks' help over the last several
years we think are showing leading indicators of improvement in
suicide, which we recognize is a component of readiness because
it is a tragic event.
Specific to your question, we are implementing through
MEDCOM [U.S. Army Medical Command] annual mental health
assessments for the force in the regular Army. I would have to
check on the Guard and Reserve on how that is being done. But
we are doing that throughout the force.
[The information referred to follows:]
In 2014, the Army began incorporating the annual Mental Health
Assessment into the routine annual Periodic Health Assessment, which is
utilized by all three components (Active Army, Guard and Reserve).
These assessments are completed concurrently. The Mental Health
Assessment questionnaire may be reviewed by a behavioral health
provider or the medical provider completing the Periodic Health
Assessment. The review is followed by a person-to-person encounter as
required in Department of Defense Instruction 6490.12, and section
1074n of title 10, United States Code.
The new Department of Defense Periodic Health Assessment will
provide an optional opportunity for a Behavioral Health provider to
review the Mental Health Assessment portion only, while a healthcare
provider will complete the rest of the Periodic Health Assessment.
Periodic Health Assessment completion is carefully tracked throughout
the Army.
The Mental Health Assessment is also fully integrated into the
Deployment Health Assessment program with a person-to-person pre-
deployment mental health assessment and three post-deployment mental
health assessments as directed in section 1074m of title 10, and
implemented in Department of Defense Instruction 6490.12, Mental Health
Assessments for Service Members Deployed in Connection with a
Contingency Operation.
We also do routine post-deployment health assessments. If
you go to Iraq, Afghanistan, come back, we do TBI [traumatic
brain injury] checks. We have got a lot of programs right now
throughout the force to focus on the very thing that you are
talking about. We are taking it serious, and we think we are
making some improvement.
Senator Donnelly. Thank you.
Admiral Richardson and General Neller, I know you are a
team in many ways on this. If you could touch upon it.
Admiral Richardson. Sir, exactly the same commitment. We
are on track to implement that completely in compliance with
your intent. We share your deep commitment to the mental health
of our sailors.
With respect to the other measures to prevent, we find that
the more that we can make our sailors feel like a member of a
team that they have got, a network of support that they can
fall back on, that seems to be one of the most effective
things. That, in combination with an assessment, we hope to
turn this thing downward.
Senator Donnelly. Thank you.
General Neller?
General Neller. According to the senior medical officer,
who is a Navy admiral that is for the Marine Corps, we are in
the process of implementation. He estimates on the active side
by the end of fiscal year 2017, it will be implemented. The
Reserve will probably take longer just because of the nature of
their drilling on weekends and having access. But as far as
filling out the questionnaire online and then having a care
provider contact them and have a conversation with all the
intentions of the legislation and the law, we are planning on
being fully implemented by the end of fiscal year 2017,
Senator.
Senator Donnelly. Thank you so much.
General Goldfein?
General Goldfein. Sir, I will just say we are in the same
boat, and we will be fully implemented by about the mid part of
fiscal year 2017.
But I will also add we are taking a little bit different
approach as well. It is fairly new. We are actually taking the
SOCOM [Special Operations Command] approach that they have
approached it with. Their approach is if we would take an
aircraft on the schedule at a certain periodic time to do
periodic maintenance and then take an aircraft off the schedule
at longer periods of time to do depot maintenance and make sure
they are in good shape and put them back in the fight, why
would we not do the same thing for airmen? We are actually
looking at taking your initiative to the next level, which is a
periodic maintenance schedule for the human to increase
performance. That takes the stigma off because if you are
having to go in based on a schedule and everybody is having to
do it, we think it will have profound effects.
Senator Donnelly. Okay.
Admiral Richardson, you were kind enough to visit Crane
Naval Base. It is integral to several modernization efforts we
have going, most prominently the Ohio replacement program. How
does our pattern of reliance on continuing resolutions impact
your ability to modernize the Navy?
Admiral Richardson. Sir, I think that we all sort of feel
this pain in some way or another. This continuing resolution
business really undercuts the trust and confidence that we have
with our suppliers, with the industrial base that are so key to
providing not only at the ship level, particularly in the
strategic deterrent business, but also down at the component
level. When you disrupt that trust and confidence, when you
double the amount of contracts that you have to write just to
get through the year, when you prevent the ability to buy
things in blocks over a long period of time, the only thing you
are doing is increasing cost, increasing time, and that
translates to increasing risk to our warfighter.
Senator Donnelly. Thank you all for your hard work and
dedication.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCain. Senator Manchin?
Senator Manchin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank all of you for your service and for being here
today.
The one question I wanted to ask--and I know it has been
batted around quite a bit, but the United States Air Force--I
will start, General Goldfein, with you, but it is really for
all of you. Standing tradition of leadership and coalition
building, which you all do, and it is evident today in the
significant role in the 20-nation air coalition aligned against
ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant], which you all have
done quite effectively. As you may know, only four of our
fellow NATO coalition members spend at least two percent of
their GDP on defense spending. The target for NATO countries--
there are 28, and it should be at two percent. There is only
five, including the U.S. That leaves 23 that do not seem to
care or make any attempt whatsoever. I cannot figure why that
condition was even put in if it was not intended to be kept or
met.
I think I would just like to hear your all's assessment of
this and what effect it is having. I know there have been some
wild political statements made about what would be done. I do
not subscribe to any of that. But I am thinking why do we still
have that condition if we are not going to force anyone or
there is no retribution if you do not. How is it affecting I
think, sir, is what I would ask.
General Goldfein. Sir, I will just tell you the Secretary
has been over there and talking to NATO significantly about
their contribution and increasing their investment in defense.
that was certainly something I think all of us at the table
would want to see not only in the air domain but in all the
domains.
One of the areas that we are focused on in the Air Force
specifically over the next several years is coalition-friendly
command and control because the information age of warfare is
more about data sharing. It is more about information sharing,
and it is more about being able to connect into a common
network and architecture. Technology has increased security
over time and has actually made that harder. As we partner with
not only our NATO allies but other allies and partners around
the globe, being able to have them connect into a common
framework, a common network, share information, and be able to
fight as a coalition is going to become more important in the
future, not less.
Senator Manchin. I know that, but I am just saying how much
of a strain does that put? We know with our challenges we have
financially and everybody else's challenges around the world.
But if they are basically able to just neglect that, thinking
we are going to do all the heavy lifting, which we have done
and I understand, but also come up with the financial
wherewithal to do it too. Is there anything that we could do
that kind of--do you see any movement in a positive direction?
I mean, I understand Germany kind of takes the lead on this and
the rest of them follow Germany. If Germany does not take it
serious, it is not going to happen.
General Goldfein. Sir, one of the areas that would be very
helpful I think--and we have had this conversation. I know I do
it as an air chief, as a global air chief, and my partners here
do as well--and that is, you know, we call something high-
demand, low-density, and then we tend to admire it over time.
We do the best we can to be able to increase the density or
decrease the demand, but it does not often happen. It would be
very helpful if our NATO partners and others could actually
contribute in those key mission areas and enablers, which would
raise the bar for everyone as opposed to sometimes what they
choose to invest in.
Senator Manchin. Would anybody else have any comments?
General Neller. Senator, I would just add that, first, this
is not a new problem. I was a NATO officer in the 1990s, and
after the end of the Cold War, they took a peace dividend and
they have not reinvested.
Second, our military counterparts--they want to participate
and they want to play, and they play within their capability. I
think we need to provide them opportunities to do that,
whatever their percentage of GDP is for investment.
Lastly, I think it is changing. I think it is changing. I
think the world environment and the strategic environment you
see particularly in Europe is causing them to recognize that
they have under-invested particularly if the Eastern European
countries are going the point. I think there will be some
change. I think we should encourage them. I think if there are
foreign sales, that we should facilitate their purchase of U.S.
equipment, which would increase our interoperability. Then
whatever way, whether it is FMS [foreign military sales] or
their own money, we encourage them to increase their
capability.
Admiral Richardson. Sir, I will just add onto that.
First, just like General Neller said, my counterparts in
NATO--they are as frustrated as anybody about this. They want
to be full participants in securing not only their nation but
Europe and contributing to global security and stability. To
that end, again, the importance of American leadership to
provide an example, be there is another thing that they comment
on consistently. As a team, whether it is equipment
interoperability, command and control, they want to participate
and they are as frustrated at these policy decisions as
anybody.
Senator Manchin. General?
General Milley. As you know, Senator, we have had a long
history in Europe with Army. We have still got 30,000 troops
over there doing a lot of exercises. We are putting out APS
[active protection system] systems, et cetera.
With respect to the NATO partner spending, et cetera, what
I have read is that their defense spending is actually
increasing with many of these countries lately, perhaps not at
two percent yet, but Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, even
Germany, Sweden, Finland, Norway, to include the U.K. [United
Kingdom] recently--they are reversing some of these trends
because of what they have seen in Ukraine, in Crimea, and
elsewhere. They are investing and they are expanding.
The key now is interoperability and work as a team.
NATO is a critical alliance. There has been a long peace in
Europe since 1945, so going on seven decades. Part of that is
because of nuclear weapons but also because 300,000 soldiers
stood on a wall up until 1989-1990, but also because of those
European allies all shoulder to shoulder facing down the Soviet
Union. That alliance is key. It is critical, and I think it is
mutually interdependent between us and them in order to achieve
effect on any kind of future battlefield.
Senator Manchin. I will just finally wrap up real quick. If
this is one of the conditions that the NATO member nations had
when they formed NATO, how many other conditions are not being
met?
There is no enforcement, no policing. There is no
retribution. I mean, it just seems that if you are not going to
do anything, why do we have it there? They are going to say do
not worry about that. The Americans will pick it up. They will
pay.
You know, you understand when we go to our constituents, it
is pretty hard to explain why is it there if you are not going
to make them do something, if there is no retribution. I am not
saying we are not going to help, not going to defend. But
maybe, you know, the World Bank, interest rates, things of this
sort that gives them privileges being a NATO member, that there
might be a little bit of a penalty. It might give them a little
bit of a push. I am understanding it is not from the military.
It must be coming from the policymakers and state departments.
But thank you all again for your service. I really
appreciate it.
Senator Reed [presiding]. Thank you.
On behalf of Chairman McCain, Senator Wicker, please.
Senator Wicker. Thank you, sir.
For General Neller, on April 6th, Secretary Stackley
testified that the required number of amphibious ships
necessary to provide the lift of two Marine expeditionary
brigades to conduct joint forcible entry operations is 38
ships. But he also said that number is fiscally constrained to
34 ships, with an operational availability of 90 percent.
We often hear about combatant commander requirements
concerning amphibious ships.
General, you are the man who provides the marines who
operate off those ships. What is the right number in your
opinion? What mix of ships should that include, sir?
General Neller. Well, Senator, you are correct. The
combatant commanders--if we could meet all the requirements, it
would take 50 ships. The fiscally constrained requirement is 38
with 90 percent availability. Right now, we are at 31. We are
going to go to 34 by 2022.
Senator Wicker. We will get to 34?
General Neller. We will get to 34 by 2022.
Senator Wicker. Where would that leave us? What would that
not permit us to do, sir?
General Neller. It will not give us, based on the average
availability, the ability to embark two Marine expeditionary
brigades which is the minimum requirement for forcible entry.
Ultimately we will get to 38, but it will be beyond
multiple FYDPs, I believe 33, and then it will start to go down
if we do not sustain it.
What is the right mix? The right mix is ideally a minimum
of 12 big deck amphibs that can handle F-35 and Osprey, 12 LPD-
17 class, and then a 12 other comparable hull forms, ideally
either an LPD-17 repeat or what we are calling the LXR, which
uses the LPD-17 hull form as its base.
Senator Wicker. That is only 36.
General Neller. You have also got two LHA(R)s and other
ships that would get you to 38. We have two non-well deck, big
deck ships which would actually get you 14 big decks.
Senator Wicker. Between the LDP-28 and the LXR, can you get
more ship at less cost if the schedule is accelerated?
General Neller. Well, first, Senator, I thank the Congress
for giving us the 12th LPD.
But absolutely. It is similar to what the CNO [Chief of
Naval Operations] said about submarines. Anything that we block
buy and that we can give the shipyard, whatever shipyard it is,
certainty where they can get the workforce, they can train the
workforce and they can learn as they build the ships, they can
build these ships faster for less money. If we were to block
buy five LPD-17 replacements or LXR, we could probably get
three and a half ships for the cost of five. But that is a big
number. I know Mr. Stackley would agree with that. It goes with
any type of ship or any type of platform, whether it is an
airplane. The more we can provide certainty to not just to the
primary vendor but all the subs that build the parts, we can
drive the cost down, and the workforce gets better. They get
smarter. They get faster.
Senator Wicker. Thank you, sir.
General Milley, about Afghanistan, my understanding of our
goal in Afghanistan is to participate in a sustained
partnership with the elected leadership there. I would observe
that we have had a sustained partnership for decades with our
friends in Europe and a successful sustained partnership in
Korea. Although there is not much kinetic warfare going on in
Korea at this point, we are there. We have had a sustained
partnership, and I think it has been successful for the people
there and for Americans also.
What is the understanding in your opinion of the Afghan
people about our purpose in being there and our long-term
relationship?
General Milley. Senator, thanks.
As you know, I have got a fair amount of time in
Afghanistan.
In general, the Afghan people are very supportive of the
United States military being there. They would be fearful of us
withdrawing completely, at least in the near term.
What we are trying to do is working by, with, and through
the Afghan Security Forces, who have been built up to a
significant size now--what we are trying to do is train,
advise, assist them in order to maintain stability against
their enemy, their internal enemies, so that the government and
the other elements of the campaign plan, the economy, and rule
of law, et cetera can be sustained over time. I think that is
going to take a considerable length of time. The attitude of
the Afghan people is, at least from my experience, that they
would prefer that we continue to stick with them. I think that
is our plan, our current U.S. Government plan, and I think that
is also the NATO plan is to continue to sustain that effort.
Senator Wicker. I for one concur in your conclusion there,
sir.
Is it unsettling to the Afghan people when they hear that
we might leave early?
General Milley. I would say yes, but I think that we, the
United States, and NATO have been very firm in our commitment
now, and we have said what we are going to have going forward.
I think that the government, the military, and the people
understand that message, that we are not going to abandon
Afghanistan.
Senator Wicker. Mr. Ranking Member, I understand we have
had some discussion about sequestration. But my understanding
is no one has asked these panelists if they are designing a
FYDP that reflects the return to sequestration. I realize I am
a bit over my time, but I think it would be important for us to
hear. I know they are horrified at the thought of sequestration
returning.
But if each of you could tell us, are you designing a
future years defense plan to reflect going back to
sequestration? General Goldfein?
General Goldfein. Sir, we are not.
Senator Wicker. You are not?
General Goldfein. We are not.
Senator Wicker. But you are aware it is the law of the
land.
General Goldfein. Yes, sir. We absolutely are.
Senator Wicker. Okay.
General Neller?
General Neller. Sir, we are not designing one, but we have
had discussions about what might be the consequences and some
actions we could possibly have to take if it went into effect.
Senator Wicker. Admiral Richardson?
Admiral Richardson. Sir, I would say our design is based on
providing the security that the Americans expect of the United
States Navy. But we have always got to start that conversation
with the sequestration levels, which puts us in a terrific bind
to be able to meet that mission.
Senator Wicker. No FYDP, though, that actually reflects the
draconian things that you would have to implement.
Admiral Richardson. No, sir. We would have to adapt.
Senator Wicker. Finally, General Milley.
General Milley. We have done some preliminary planning,
Senator. I understand what the order of magnitude actions that
would have to take place in the event of full sequestration.
However, no, we have not developed a POM [Program Objective
Memorandum] or a FYDP to that level of detail that would be
submitted to the President and the Congress.
Senator Wicker. Well, I certainly we can avoid it, but as I
said years ago, Senator Reed, it is the law of the land and it
surprised us all the last time when we got to that point and it
actually went into effect. I hope we can avoid it.
Thank you all for your service.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much.
On behalf of the chairman, Senator Shaheen, please.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you all very much for being here and for your service
to our country.
I apologize. I had two other hearings this morning. I am
sorry that I missed much of the discussion. I am sure you may
have already answered this question, but I think it is
important to ask again.
As I have traveled around the month of August, when we were
not here in Washington, and met with businesses, one of the
things I consistently heard from many of our businesses in New
Hampshire--and we have a significant number that have contracts
with the Department of Defense that provide equipment and
technology to our military--was concern about two things. One
was about the budgeting process and about the fact that we are
going in again with no budget for the upcoming year and a
short-term continuing resolution. Hopefully, we will have a
longer-term budget after the election. The other was about the
reduced investment in research and development.
Can I ask you to speak to what the impact is not just of
your budgets in the military but also of the industrial base
that supports our military that we need to maintain if we are
to keep our technological edge? General Goldfein, I see you
nodding. Maybe you could begin?
General Goldfein. Yes, ma'am. You know, the impact to
industry, when we cannot provide some stable budget and
projection for them, probably hits them the hardest in their
technical workforce. What I see as a rather technical force is
when I am talking to a company that is building, for instance,
let us just say, an air-to-air or an exquisite air-to-ground
missile or munition, they have got to keep a certain amount of
that workforce engaged over time. Then when I go to them with
one-year budgets and tell them my procurement quantities now
are going to be here and the next year, because of trades, they
are going to be down here, and I go jack them around back and
forth, it causes an incredible challenge for industry to be
able to sustain their workforce that we need. That does not
even go into at what point do I go to them and say because of
the global security environment, I need you to surge and build
even more capability and produce more weapons over the period
of time. what they tell me is, hey, we got rid of that
workforce because you told me that you were coming down this
year. Everything that we deal with in terms of an unstable
budget and one-year budgets actually gets accelerated into
industry as well.
Senator Shaheen. You alluded to the impact that has on our
national security and our ability to be prepared. But can I get
you to elaborate a little more on that?
General Goldfein. Well, ma'am, it goes to what kind of
weapon systems that we need to modernize. For the Air Force,
like all the services, we have got aircraft that have already
exceeded their service life or are at the end of their service
life and they have got to be replaced. We rely on industry to
be able to support us with our acquisition programs going
forward. If we do not have stable budgets, if we do not have
the research and development dollars to be able to develop that
technology for the future, then what happens to us is we
continue to push that to the right. Like General Milley said,
you start mortgaging the future to pay for the current
readiness in the fight you have.
The other challenge you have is as the aircraft age over
time, they actually become more and more expensive to fly. You
take even more of those dollars that you need for research,
development, and modernization, and you shift them left into
sustainment of older weapon systems. This all adds up to an
increased risk.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you.
Admiral Richardson. Ma'am, if I can pile onto that----
Senator Shaheen. Please.
Admiral Richardson.--in support of my fellow chief. This is
really a team effort, and this message of stability is critical
because it is not just government R&D but those businesses that
you visited--they are investing their own dollars in IRAD
[independent research and development]. They need to know if
they are going to get anything back on that investment. When we
do not give them that signal of stability and confidence, they
are simply not going to invest. They are going to cash out and
they are going to be out of the business.
The other thing is that particularly with technology
changing so quickly today--and Senator Reed highlighted it in
his opening statement--what used to be long-term future, that
is becoming a more short-term future. We are not talking
decades into the future anymore. We are talking single digits
of years because things are moving so fast in directed energy,
additive manufacturing, electronic magnetic maneuver warfare,
artificial intelligence, biotechnologies. We have got to keep
on the step with this because we are not the only team out
there looking to capture these capabilities.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you. Well, hopefully that is an
admonition to Congress that we get our act together and produce
a budget and some certainty for the long term.
Mr. Chairman, could I ask one more question?
Senator Reed. Senator King will have one too if you let
him. You go first.
Senator Shaheen. Okay.
I know this on budget, but I just came from a hearing in
the Foreign Relations Committee on Afghanistan, and I heard
Senator Wicker asking about Afghanistan. I wanted to ask you
all about the special immigrant visa program for the Afghans
because, as I am sure you are aware, it is about to expire, and
Congress so far has declined to extend that program. Therefore,
we have several thousand Afghans in the pipeline who it is
questionable whether they will get visas, and many of them are
under immediate threat or their families are being threatened.
Can I ask you to speak to the importance of that program to our
men and women on the ground and why it would be important for
Congress to extend it? General Milley, do you want to start?
General Milley. Yes. Thank you, Senator.
Lots, hundreds of thousands, of Afghans work for us, the
United States military since 9/11, since we went in in 2001.
They have been interpreters. They have been analysts. They have
been doing a lot of things. Many of them have asked to become
American citizens and get visas, et cetera. I personally would
be in favor of extending that because those are brave men and
women who have fought along our side, and there are American
men and women in uniform who are alive today because of a lot
of those Afghans were putting their life on the line, for their
own country, to be sure, but with us. Now they want to become
American citizens. I for one would like to afford them that
opportunity.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you.
Would anybody else like to add? General Neller?
General Neller. Yes, Senator. We saw a similar thing in
Iraq and the very same thing that General Milley described
where they are out there shoulder to shoulder with marines,
soldiers, sailors, and airmen risking their lives and sharing
the risk and providing great services to keep our citizens
alive, our folks alive. I used to interview them myself and
make sure they understood that this is not what you might have
seen on TV but you are going to come here, you are going to
work because you have an opportunity.
I think there is a proper vetting process. I know
commanders up to the rank of flag and general officers are
involved in this. I signed off on all of these myself. I know
there are background checks. I fully support, with the proper
vetting process, that this program be allowed to continue.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you all very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Reed. On behalf of Chair McCain, Senator King,
please.
Senator King. Just briefly, Senator.
One of the privileges of serving on this committee is the
relationship that we have with our services, and one of those
relationships is the military fellows that are assigned to our
offices. Today marks probably the last hearing for Lieutenant
Commander Dennis Wishmeyer, a naval officer who has served in
my office for this year. I just want to recognize the
importance of that program, recognize the work that Lieutenant
Commander Wishmeyer has made. If I have asked good questions,
they have been his. If I have asked stupid questions, they are
mine. I just wanted to provide that recognition.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Reed. He must have been here today, Senator King.
On behalf of Chairman McCain, let me thank you, gentlemen,
for your testimony, forthright and very sobering. Thank you for
your service individually and please extend our thanks and
gratitude to the men and women that you lead so proudly.
With that, I would adjourn the hearing.
[Whereupon, at 11:45 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[Questions for the record with answers supplied follow:]
Questions Submitted by Senator John McCain
future modernization vision and strategy
1. Senator McCain. I assume each of your services has a vision for
how your force should be configured ten years from now with respect to
warfighting capacity and capability, and accompanied by a modernization
strategy to meet the needs of the combatant commanders. Can you each
describe the major components of your respective Service's
modernization vision, and the strategy you will follow to achieve that
vision?
General Milley. The vision is an agile, adaptive Army that is
lethal, professional and technically competent with a decisive edge
over potential near-peer state adversaries. To achieve this, the Army
must achieve an affordable balance between modernization, readiness,
and manpower. Right now we are out of balance, with Army modernization
paying the bills to build readiness--we have no other choice.
Based on the current fiscal constraints, in the near- to mid-term
the Army will guide equipment modernization efforts through five
components: 1) Protect--Protecting Science and Technology investments
is key to ensuring the next generation of breakthrough technologies can
be rapidly applied to existing or new equipment designs; 2) Invest--The
Army continues iterative reviews of capability gaps to ensure proper
alignment of limited resources with mission requirements and Army
priorities; 3) Modernize--the Army must incrementally modify or
modernize existing systems to extend service life and maintain an
advantage at each echelon; 4) Sustain--Returning Army equipment to the
required level of combat capability remains central to regenerating and
maintaining near-term readiness; and 5) Divest--The Army divestment
process seeks to identify equipment and systems that are excess,
obsolete or no longer required to reduce and eliminate the associated
sustainment costs.
For the long-term we are in the process of identifying the
characteristics of the future battlefield, the attributes our soldiers
will require to fight and win on that battlefield, rewriting our
doctrine and, finally, determining what critical capabilities we
require to fight and win in that environment. We will have a phased
approach as we are investing in the development and fielding of new
combat capabilities while divesting others.
Admiral Richardson. The Navy vision for the future force has two
components: a ``fleet design'' and a ``fleet architecture''. ``Fleet
design'' is how the Navy fights and wins, expressed through concepts,
doctrine, and tactics, techniques, and procedures. ``Fleet
architecture'' refers to the activities that support the fleet design,
which include:
Presence, surge forces, and force packages
The processes through which forces are prepared for and
recover from deployment
Bases and facilities that support or host material
components of the fleet
Material components of the fleet, such as ships,
aircraft, unmanned vehicles, personnel, weapons, and sensors.
In order to achieve this vision, I have identified leads for fleet
design and architecture for the near-, mid-, and far-terms. In general,
I have designated U.S. Fleet Forces Command as the supported command
for the ``present-to-five year'' time horizon; OPNAV N9 for the
``three-to-ten year'' time horizon; and OPNAV N3/N5 for ``eight years
and beyond'' time horizon. These leads are currently taking stock of
the myriad ongoing activities across the Navy that inform our thinking
about fleet design and architecture. They are responsible for
aggregating the inputs from studies, war games, experiments, and other
exploratory activities into strategies, concepts of operations,
requirements, or additional study both within and across time frames.
General Neller. In September, we began a detailed DOTMLPF-C
analysis of the appropriate end strength for the Marine Corps as part
of our Marine Corps Force 2025 (MCF 2025) efforts. This analysis will
provide the associated costs, risks, and abilities associated with
various courses of action.
Assuming 182K end strength, Marine Corps Force 2025 emphasizes
improving information warfare capability and capacity to allow our
operational commanders the ability to fight in five domains and protect
our ability to command and control. Additionally, we will increase our
inventory of marines with special skills (e.g. intelligence, electronic
warfare, and cyber) that are frequently called upon to make repeated
deployments without even the minimum reset time. In order to do this,
we will have to make tough decisions between modernization and
readiness, along with force structure trades. However, some of the risk
can be mitigated in certain circumstances by our Reserve component or
the joint force.
General Goldfein. The Air Force has refocused its process to have
our strategy drive our plan and our plan drive our program. While a
primary focus remains balancing our investments in capability, ensuring
sufficient force capacity, and maintaining the readiness of our current
force, our new strategy, planning, and programming process (SP3)
provides a comprehensive and actionable pathway toward building the
future force. This framework is designed to provide our leaders with
the long-term outlook (10-30 years out) needed to analyze future
challenges and assess our modernization priorities. Those priorities
are then translated into programmatic actions in the short- to mid-term
(1-5 years), balanced against competing internal (e.g. readiness,
capacity, etc.) and external considerations (e.g. current operational
requirements, fiscal constraints, etc.) and subsequently submitted to
Congress in the form of the President's Budget. This ensures our
continued ability to meet near-term challenges while developing the
force of tomorrow.
defense modernization ``bow wave''
2. Senator McCain. Considering the additional acquisition
authorities Congress provided the Service Chiefs in the Fiscal Year
2016 National Defense Authorization Act, and is proposing in the Fiscal
Year 2017 NDAA, what specific actions will you take regarding your
Service acquisition programs that could help you successfully navigate
through the magnitude of the impending defense modernization ``bow
wave'' we are facing in the next decade?
General Milley. To navigate through the magnitude of impending Army
defense modernization ``bow wave'' I am leveraging the authorities
provided to me in the fiscal year 2016 NDAA by reinvigorating the Army
Requirements Oversight Council (AROC). The AROC was changed from a
staff centric to a commander centric forum. The AROC is the primary
forum in which I exercise my requirements authorities and question
assumptions. I review all categories of requirements for major
acquisition programs and concur in programs' cost, schedule, technical
feasibility, and performance tradeoffs before the programs' Milestone A
and B decisions. I use the AROC to review proposed tradeoffs in the
above areas with active participation from key stakeholders. The AROC
has been instrumental in driving improvements in requirements analysis;
resulting in cost savings, reduced acquisition timelines, and informed
risk management.
Also, to support execution of my new authorities, and with the
Secretary's approval, I directed a significant Army Staff re-
organization pilot effort by realigning requirements and resourcing
functions under a single three-star general, the G-8. My staff is also
examining long-standing processes and actively making changes to
solidify requirements and shorten acquisition timelines. For instance,
our Analysis of Alternatives process has been restructured and will be
initiated earlier in the requirements generation process. The Army also
announced the stand-up of the Army Rapid Capabilities Office to
expedite the design, development, evaluation, procurement and fielding
of critical combat materiel capabilities to deliver an operational
effect within one to five years. Most recently, we combined two
existing processes into a new, single process, the Strategic Portfolio
Analysis Review (SPAR). The SPAR reviews capabilities across a 30-year
period to prioritize existing and emerging capabilities against a near-
peer pacing threat that are aligned with Army priorities and
resourcing. The assessment will provide in-depth analysis the Secretary
and I need to make difficult requirements decisions within a
constrained resource environment.
As a result of these initiatives, I anticipate that some
requirements will be deferred, some programs will be accelerated, some
programs may be terminated and some current equipment will be divested.
In the aggregate, the Army cannot maintain aging equipment that is no
longer relevant and execute over 700 programs within the resource
constrained environment that stretch our fielding timelines over
decades to make them affordable. If we plan on defeating near-peer
threats, maintaining our technological edge, and addressing
modernization challenges we must use these initiatives to streamline
our processes. In the long-term, these initiatives will enable the Army
to better navigate its future modernization challenges.
Admiral Richardson. The 2016 NDAA has increased my ability to
exercise ownership of the Navy acquisition process. Ownership includes
four key elements: authority, technical expertise, responsibility, and
accountability. I'm taking a number of steps to better execute our
requirements, acquisition, and budget processes in ways that will
directly impact the warfighter. I'm committed to improving execution,
transparency, and integration in acquisition, with the goal of
increasing effectiveness, confidence and speed.
These efforts include an even more rigorous implementation of the
Navy Gate Review and Resources, Requirements, Review Boards processes
to better manage trades between cost, schedule, technical feasibility
and performance; my early involvement and approval of Concepts of
Operations and Concepts of Employment approval; a stronger role for
analytically-based concepts and analysis; and more accountable
timelines and tracking of requirements and acquisition decisions and
documentation.
I am also working to include discussions with industry as early as
possible to better understand the ``knee in the curve'' above which
additional cost yields only marginal capability enhancements. This
collaboration will help ensure only technically feasible and affordable
requirements are pursued.
I am taking steps to streamline the requirements and acquisition
processes for more concise, clear, and timely capability and
acquisition documents. In support, I'm also taking steps to increase
training, qualification, and career path management for our Navy
requirements officers and professionals.
Finally, I am convinced that we must deliver technological
advances, warfighting capability, and operational capacity to the fleet
more quickly. The Rapid Prototyping, Experimentation and Demonstration
(RPED) initiative to improve agility of capabilities and expertise
through prototyping and experimentation will result in more realistic
and informed requirements and deliver technological advances to the
Fleet more quickly. For technologies that are mature and ready to
transition to production, we are establishing Maritime Accelerated
Capabilities Office (MACO) programs to employ more tailored processes
and decentralized decision making, which will cut the timelines for
delivering new programs to our warfighters.
General Neller. The fiscal year 2016 NDAA redefined the Service
Chief role in the acquisition process with a focus on the authorities,
responsibilities and accountability associated with defining the
service as a customer of the Defense Acquisition System and the chief
as the customer's direct and accountable representative. Under section
801 of the fiscal year 2016 NDAA, the Commandant acknowledged
responsibility for improving our acquisition outcomes and identified
five fundamental focus areas shaping our actions in this commitment:
leadership, people, streamlining processes, role of Service Chief and
impact of funding stability. Subsequently, the report responding to the
section 808 requirement to identify actions taken and planned to link
and streamline requirements, acquisition and budget processes
identified in greater depth and breadth the Marine Corps initiatives
advancing this commitment. The pending legislation for the fiscal year
2017 NDAA essentially carries on the comprehensive focus on acquisition
reform. While the particulars may be negotiable on the Hill at present,
the underlying mandate remains clear--to drive innovation to meet the
warfighting needs and ensure accountability to deliver military
capabilities on time, on budget, and fulfilling stated requirements.
The Marine Corps modernization strategy is well-served by the
combined acquisition improvement initiatives of Congress, the
Department of Defense, Department of the Navy and the Marine Corps. In
our continued efforts to achieve better program outcomes, we recognize
the critical need to, first, get the requirement right. Our approach
begins with strengthening the decision support foundation. We have
anchored future capability development in two fundamental concept
documents. They are the Commandant of the Marine Corps Fragmentary
Order or FRAGO 01/2016: Advance to Contact issued in January 2016, and
the Marine Corps Operating Concept dated September 2016. These
documents will serve as the institutional mooring to continuously
inform our capability development and budget programming decisions. As
reported in our response to the fiscal year 2016 NDAA section 808, our
requirements definition employs a capabilities based assessment (CBA)
process for the necessary analytical rigor at a strategic level to
guide force development and set priorities for investments to build the
future Marine Corps. In coordination with organizations across the
Marine Corps, the Deputy Commandant for Combat Development and
Integration (DC CD&I), as the requirements process owner, leads the
annual CBA to produce the Marine Corps Enterprise Integration Plan
(MCEIP). This plan drives future capability development and associated
investments aligned to CMC's strategic objectives. The CBA/MCEIP
process provides the enterprise discipline to deliberately translate
our warfighting concepts into modernization investments while designing
our programs for success.
Specifically, FRAGO 01/2016 requires that the Commanding General,
Marine Corps Combat Development Command (the DC CD&I under a different
``hat'' that integrates training as well) will drive our capability
development process to ensure all materiel and non-materiel solutions
will be ``born MAGTF,''(Marine Air-Ground Task Force) optimizing the
MAGTF as our principal warfighting formation, known for its
adaptability by scalable task organization. The FRAGO also specifies
that we continue developing our concepts to take advantage of the
capabilities of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and all of our emerging
aviation platforms, particularly in regard to sensor fusion and
electronic warfare. We are committed to pursue technologies that
enhance our warfighting capabilities such as unmanned aerial systems
and robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomous technologies that
provide tactical and operational advantage.
The recently published Marine Corps Operating Concept (MOC) further
strengthens our requirements foundation by its unflinching recognition
of the challenge ahead. It emphasizes upfront that the Marine Corps is
currently not organized, trained, and equipped to meet the demands of a
future operating environment characterized by complex terrain,
technology proliferation, information warfare, the need to shield and
exploit signatures, and an increasingly non-permissive maritime domain.
The MOC challenges us to ``overcome enduring obstacles to leverage and
sustain commercial-off-the-shelf systems.'' An affordable 70 percent
solution now is better than an outdated solution ten years from now.
For improved capabilities in the high-demand, speed-of-light
warfighting function ``Command and Control,'' for example, we must
drive innovation by combining a mission perspective with commercial
developments that allow information providers to collaborate on a
situationally dependent architecture that lets information users opt-in
to access or create tailored data streams. We will be vigilant to take
more and better advantage of commercial-off-the-shelf network and data
solutions.
Future modernization efforts face the steep challenge of keeping up
with globalized, rapid technology growth and proliferation. This
demands the agility to accelerate the acquisition process when
appropriate. In this regard, we are working with the Department of the
Navy to create a menu of appropriate accelerated means to respond to
the urgent materiel priorities of the operating forces. Within the
Marine Corps we are establishing a Rapid Capabilities Office. This is a
collaborative effort integrating our warfighting lab, requirements, and
acquisition experts. Specifically of relevance to this QFR, The RCO
will enable the procurement of promising capabilities, through a
tailored acquisition process, while maintaining the ready capability to
inform future and ongoing requirements and resource planning for
potential transition to the traditional acquisition process. Our
acquisition professionals are ready to work the required capabilities
within the year of execution, specifically with emergent technology
that appears to offer significant military utility.
Our success in transforming the force for the future will also
depend on the collaborative ties we form. Specifically, we are strongly
partnered with US SOCOM and the Army through formal venues, such as the
Army-Marine Corps Board and ongoing objective-driven discussion, e.g.,
our series of regular staff talks between the Marine Corps and the
Special Operations Forces requirements and acquisition leadership. As
these USMC-SOF staff talks are getting underway, they have the
potential to yield quick wins, such as a tailored abbreviated
acquisition program, and expanded access to our innovative requirements
transition tool. Focused engagement with Industry will likewise serve
to strengthen our ability to modernize our systems. For example, we
recently kicked off the Marine Corps Infantry Equipping Challenge. We
are engaging Marine Corps stakeholders and industry to identify
innovative (COTS & Non-developmental Items) capabilities specifically
tailored to our infantry marines in order to rapidly evaluate and field
COTS & NDI technologies supporting their entire mission set.
Another illustration of our effort to more effectively engage the
industrial base is the recent release by the Department of the Navy of
a special notice to industry calling for white papers on technologies
that will be demonstrated in April. This is part of the aforementioned
menu of accelerated acquisition means. This project is known as the
Ship-to-Shore Maneuver Exploration and Experimentation Task Force in
cooperation with the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for
Research, Development, Test and Evaluation. It will explore the
potential for what may be rapidly prototyped to help with more rapid
ship-to-shore maneuver. We must define the art of the possible in this
regard, whether small boats with small teams to move ashore quickly;
robotics; manned-unmanned teaming; or unmanned aircraft systems able to
pass information, for example. After the demonstration, the government
will select technologies assessed good enough to sign a Cooperative
Research and Development Cooperation Agreement.
In addition to the foregoing, we are:
Working with the Service Acquisition Executive to define
in-depth the role of the Principal Military Deputy as central to the
Commandant's acquisition decision support under fiscal year 2016 NDAA.
Executing an Organizational Design Review of our ground
weapon and IT systems acquisition hub (Marine Corps Systems Command),
including its substantial realignment to implement MAGTF portfolio
management.
Conducting an Acquisition Workforce Review to identify
the optimal allocation of acquisition personnel in and outside the
acquisition community; to be completed by the end of fiscal year 2017.
As the Commandant emphasized in his 26 May transmittal of the 808
report, ``We remain committed to the challenge of innovating our
acquisition processes and tools to produce 21st Century military
capabilities apace with the changing global security, fiscal and
technology environments.'' The above provide a representative sampling
or snapshot of this leadership heading today, while nonetheless noting
that we continue actively exploring, experimenting and developing
solutions with the characteristic, forward-looking sense of mission
urgency that drives our Corps as the nation's expeditionary force in
readiness.
General Goldfein. The first action is to revamp our capability
development activities by reinvigorating Development Planning.
Accomplishing this action, in concert with experimentation, will
produce empirical data to inform Air Force strategic decisions about
how to move from nearer-term, stove-piped planning toward longer-term,
multi-domain integrated capability planning. We will also strengthen
our capability development by sharpening our focus on prototyping and
experimentation efforts. Our focus on prototyping and experimentation
efforts will inform critical decisions on operational utility,
technical feasibility, producibility, and programmatic risks and
accelerate the fielding of advanced capabilities to operational forces.
The second action is to insert agility and continuous improvement
into our standard acquisition processes. Our acquisition policy and
processes teams will review opportunities to tailor acquisition
regulatory requirements with the objective of delivering the needed
capability to the warfighter in the shortest practical time while
balancing risk, ensuring affordability and supportability, and
providing adequate information for decision making.
Third, we will refine our affordability assessment process to
inculcate responsible and sustainable investment decisions through the
formal examination of the long range implications of today's capability
requirement choices.
Fourth, we will acquire systems using a modular open system
approach which will accelerate replacements and/or upgrades to
capabilities and allow for open competition to more vendors. This open
systems approach, coupled with efforts to improve partnership with
Industry, allows us to insert speed and flexibility in product
development to facilitate rapid innovation and quicker technology
updates.
Underpinning all of these actions is our emphasis on fully
implementing Bending the Cost Curve (BTCC) which is focused on
expanding our dialogue with industry throughout the acquisition life
cycle and expanding competition among traditional and non-traditional
industry partners. We will strengthen our ability to innovate, achieve
technical excellence and field dominant military capabilities by
implementing AT&L's Better Buying Power initiatives as well as the
Secretary's Bending the Cost Curve initiative.
3. Senator McCain. The Air Force is the service most affected by
the impending modernization investment ``bow wave'' of the 2020s,
peaking at over half of the Department of Defense's modernization
investment requirement in a single year at approximately $35 billion.
When you consider all of your many modernization imperatives such as
the F-35A fighter, KC-46A tanker, B-21 bomber, JSTARS recap,
T-X trainer replacement, Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, Long Range
Standoff weapon; the list goes on and on . . . How will you approach
this seemingly insurmountable funding challenge?
General Goldfein. Without additional topline, the Air Force cannot
fund everything and adequately address the pending acquisition bow
wave; consequently we will be forced to sequence programs over time and
take risk in conventional capacity, capability, and readiness.
army modernization
4. Senator McCain. The preponderance of the combat equipment
resident in our Army today was designed and built in the era of the
Reagan defense build-up. Notwithstanding Army efforts to overhaul its
equipment and upgrade operational effectiveness of its combat assets,
do you believe your mission equipment inventory, from both a capacity
and capabilities perspective, is keeping pace with the capabilities
that other armies around the world, friendly or otherwise, are
developing and fielding?
General Milley. It really depends on the specific capability you
are referring to, in some areas we maintain overmatch and in a few
areas we have already been surpassed. For an ``overall answer,'' our
near peer state competitors are rapidly closing the gap in several key
areas, increasing risk. Today's Army is a decisive combat force, the
world's best, which can rapidly deploy and destroy any enemy in the
world. However, the size of the Army has decreased and for the last
fifteen years we have optimized the Army to focus on counterinsurgency,
counter-terrorism, and irregular warfare. At the same time, near peer
competitors have modernized their forces for higher end warfare.
Additionally, absent legislation, the sequestration caps set by the
Budget Control Act of 2011 will return in Fiscal Year 2018 forcing the
Army to draw down end-strength even further, further reduce funding for
modernization, and increase the risk of sending under-trained and
poorly equipped soldiers into harm's way.
In the future, the Army will operate on a highly contested and
lethal battlefield in multiple domains across multiple regions
simultaneously. Adversaries will attempt to degrade, disrupt, and deny
our ability to operate in the land, cyber, air, space, and maritime
domains. The Army is prioritizing investments to counter the threat
against mission critical systems from cyberattacks and to sustain
overmatch in the key areas of mobility, lethality, mission command, and
force protection. We are placing specific emphasis on long-range
precision fires, missile defense, directed energy weapons, ground
vehicles, vertical lift, cyber, electronic warfare, networks, and
active protection systems for both ground and air. Because the
resources required to invest for the future are in direct competition
with the resources required to upgrade and improve our current combat
systems the Army is falling behind and is at risk of losing technical
superiority and overmatch.
innovation and service competition
5. Senator McCain. In the report of the 1994 Commission on Roles
and Missions, Commission Chairman John White wrote that `` . . . while
DOD needs to increase jointness throughout the system, it is necessary
to place a high value on broad Service competition,'' to produce
``innovation in weapon systems, forces, doctrine, and concepts of
operations that yield the dramatically superior military capabilities
we need.'' Yet, in the ensuing two decades our armed forces divested
much of their warfighting capacity, took a ``procurement holiday'' from
modernizing and recapitalizing our most critical defense weapons
systems, and ultimately drove a strategy change from a two major
regional conflict force to something far less. In your opinions, is
this outcome merely a symptom of declining defense budgets, or is it a
product of the way our entire defense system is organized and allocates
increasingly scarce resources?
General Milley. It is probably a bit of both. The ``system''
rightfully allocates resources against what the leadership of the
Defense Department believes are the most critical capability gaps and
the more constrained the resources become, the harder the decisions on
which critical capabilities are resourced and where we choose to assume
risk. The easy decisions were made years ago--resourcing decisions made
today are truly which critical capability gets funded and which do not.
Additionally, because we have focused our combat development efforts on
irregular warfare for the last 15 years we are behind in the
modernization investments of our current and emerging near-peer threats
and face losing overmatch in several key areas. National defense
continues to be very expensive, but the alternatives are even more so.
Admiral Richardson. The primary driver of current reduced
warfighting capacity and modernization is the ``triple whammy'' of
reduced funding levels, high operational tempo, and persistent budget
uncertainty. The combination of these factors has resulted in a
significant ``readiness debt'', both in equipment and in personnel,
just like carrying debt on a credit card.
Since the Budget Control Act of 2011 was passed, defense funding
has been significantly reduced and the defense strategy has been
revised to meet the realities of year-after-year reductions to the
defense budget. For the Navy specifically, this has resulted in
weapons, aircraft and modernization reductions, as well as underfunding
of military construction and base operating programs. In addition, the
Navy has been required to defer some depot level maintenance which has
had a direct impact on Navy's overall readiness. Although operational
tempo and demand for Navy units remain high, there has not been any
corresponding fiscal relief to help offset the wear and tear that our
units continue to experience. As a result, we see the effects of
extended deployments in the degraded material condition of our ships
and aircraft. The budget uncertainty also causes cost growth and
program delays because building and maintaining high-end ships and
aircraft requires long term stability and commitment.
At the same time, the Navy must continuously look for ways to
maximize every dollar that has been authorized and appropriated to
support the defense of our nation. The enhanced Service Chief
authorities provided by the fiscal year 2016 National Defense
Authorization Act increased my authority in the Navy's acquisition
system and, coupled with previous requirements and budgetary
responsibilities, enable improvements in performance and agility.
Thoughtful changes that improve collaborative decision making and
oversight without creating excessive micromanagement or redundancy are
welcomed, and I am working to make such changes.
General Neller. Declining budgets impact our ability to field a
capable future force and hinder our ability to equip that force with
robust capabilities to ensure battlefield success. We must dedicate the
resources to be able to field the needed capabilities and technologies
to win today and more importantly transform our force with the winning
edge capabilities for tomorrow's fight. For the Marine Corps, it is
particularly challenging as our military personnel costs account for 61
percent of the Marine Corps' ``green'' baseline budget request. Of the
remainder, 27 percent is for O&M, nine percent is for modernization,
and three percent is for military construction. Additionally, costs
continue to rise while the budget declines. For example, the cost to
equip and clothe a basic rifleman is currently 5.7 times of what the
cost was in 2000 (this figure accounts for inflation and does not
include night vision goggles). In the meantime, many of our weapons
systems continue to age and oftentimes cannot compete with our
adversaries' technology.
Within that relatively small modernization investment, there are
some big ticket, high priority items for the Marine Corps-like the
amphibious assault vehicle (AAV) survivability upgrade which will
continue to provide a ship to shore self-deploying capability bridge
until we have replacement for our 40 year old AAVs. The amphibious
combat vehicle (ACV 1.1) is our first step in an incremental approach
to replacing those AAVs. Common Aviation Command and Control System
(CAC2S) and Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar (G/ATOR) provide an ability
to control our airspace enabling freedom of action to employ our
organic weapons with the speed and tempo that makes the Marine Air
Ground Task Forces successful. Communication Emitter Sensing and Attack
Systems (CESAS) II, Intrepid Tiger II, Network on the Move (NOTM), and
MQ-21 Blackjack unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) are some of the new
capabilities that we must buy to support the Information Warfare (IW)
enablers. These investments are just a few of our highest priority
capabilities and come at the expense of the other 150+ programs in need
of sustainment and modernization. In most cases the lower priority
programs are underfunded, not procured to the full authorized
acquisition objective (AAO), or not sustained at a level that would be
expected for the Nation's crisis response force.
The operating environment is rapidly changing due to the actions of
increasingly aggressive and capable peer competitors that are
demonstrating high end (to include space and cyber) capabilities across
the range of military operations (ROMO). These potential adversaries
are, for example, capable of creating combined arms dilemmas using
information, cyber, deception, unmanned ISR and long range precision
fires in highly advanced and lethal ways. The Marine Corps must not
only modernize, but also change in order to deter conflict, compete
and, if necessary, fight and win against such foes. Consequently, we
have identified several areas where significant modernization efforts,
to include new capabilities and additional structure, will be required
if the USMC intends to be able to fight and win as a Naval Force in
contested littoral environs against such highly capable foes. The
Corps' leadership is convinced that the threat is not emergent, rather,
it is upon us. The nation needs its Corps of Marines to move out on
modernization, and to make prudent and timely changes.
While we continue to accept risk as we prioritize our modernization
efforts, we are often thwarted by the lack of stability in funding.
Innovation is at the forefront of our pursuits, because we understand
that we must adapt all our systems to the challenges at hand.
Therefore, we appreciate the continued and redoubled Congressional
support to not only support and help stabilize our budgets but, equally
important, to continue working with the Department of Defense,
Department of Navy and the Marine Corps on collaboratively improving
how we equip our Marines to fight and win our nation's battles.
General Goldfein. Actually the outcome reflects both budgets and
organization. We are mindful of the fiscal situation and recognize that
our organizations must contribute to the government-wide deficit
reduction as a national security imperative. Our ability to make proper
investments to modernize and sustain the capabilities of the Air Force
is tied to the economic health of the United States. Nonetheless, we
must respond to a changing strategic environment that has evolved over
the past two decades. Since 2001, the Air Force has performed
exceptionally well during combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, these operations have focused on missions conducted in a
permissive air environment, with large footprints for
counterinsurgency. This left insufficient time or resources to train
across the full range of Air Force missions, especially missions
conducted in contested and highly contested environments. Any budget
increases that occurred during this time were primarily consumed by
operational expenses, not procurement. Moreover, we made strategic
trades to support the counter-VEO (violent extremism operations)
campaign. For instance, we reduced investment in `high-end' capability
to pay for capacity and readiness, build the ISR enterprise, and
maintain legacy fighter force structure. Additionally, while budgets
have tightened, health care costs have continued to increase. We must
now make strategically informed choices that build a future force
focused on the challenges posed by China, Russia, Iran, North Korea,
and violent extremism.
innovation and service competition
6. Senator McCain. What would you recommend as the way forward to
reversing this trend?
General Milley. Absent additional legislation, the sequestration
caps set by the Budget Control Act of 2011 will return in Fiscal Year
2018, forcing the Army to draw down end-strength even further, further
reduce funding for modernization, and increase the risk of sending
under-trained and poorly equipped soldiers into harm's way. To move
forward with any certainty, the threat of sequestration must be
eliminated. Sequestration is an impediment to good planning and
represents a threat to the Department's ability to develop and maintain
the military capabilities and forces we need to support the broader
national security strategy. The support of Congress to predictably fund
the Army at balanced and sufficient levels to meet current demands and
to simultaneously build a more capable, modern, ready force for future
contingencies is imperative.
Admiral Richardson. Constrained resources, reduced funding levels,
combined with operational and related maintenance challenges, have been
exacerbated by budget uncertainty. Building and maintaining high-end
ships and aircraft requires long-term stability and commitment. Without
it, costs grow and work takes longer. Skilled workers leave the
workforce and do not return, while private industry defers investments
in necessary process improvements. Despite these obstacles, recovery
from our current backlog is underway, but it will take time. We must
find a way to restore the trust and confidence that underpin the
crucial relationship with our acquisition and maintenance workforce.
Our ability to achieve true effectiveness and efficiency has been
undermined by budget instability, workforce limitations, and eight
straight years of budget uncertainty and continuing resolutions.
The solution will require that we work as partners to set
sufficient resource levels and restore stability to the budgeting
process, and also ensure that every dollar that the American taxpayer
gives the Navy is spent as efficiently and effectively as possible. I
am committed to meeting my responsibilities here and in partnering with
you as we go forward.
General Neller. We need to continue to strive for greater
flexibility within our acquisition process, so that we can modernize
our equipment, and provide our Marines the resources needed to win our
battles. Our nation has a world premier fighting force, however, our
equipment has been depleted by nearly 15 years of constant battles,
without the requisite maintenance and or replacements. Our aviation
community is particularly vulnerable when it comes to lack of required
maintenance and or upgrades.
We will continue to budget within our TOA. But in order to maximize
that funding we must look for efficiencies and opportunities to
incorporate evolving technologies. One of the ways we can achieve this
is by participating in joint acquisition efforts, such as the JLTV, to
reduce the per item cost and achieve more flexibility with developing
variants to an item.
The acquisition process, however, can be cumbersome when we are
trying to keep pace with changes in technology and weaponry advances.
Recognizing this, we whole heartedly support streamlining the
acquisition process. This was addressed in my May 2016 ``Report to
Congress on Linking and Streamlining Marine Corps Requirements,
Acquisition, and Budget Processes'' (per fiscal year 2016 NDAA section
808). It highlights the need for a menu of options by which we can
increase the responsiveness to our capability needs, including agile
adjustments to environment changes. The optimal system must build-in
process flexibility. Flexible examples that could serve as models in
addressing the optimal system design include the categorical tailoring
process of our Abbreviated Acquisition Program (AAP), our cyber process
streamlining, and rapid prototyping.
The 808 report describes rapid prototyping as a 21st century
solution to fast-track development and fielding of maturing
technologies and engineering innovations. This epitomizes to a
significant degree the challenge and opportunity of streamlining
processes as a key element in improved acquisition system design.
We are incorporating open architecture and modular designs in our
prototyping efforts, and will continue to require open architecture and
modularity in our formal acquisition programs, to further enable rapid
prototyping at the system and component levels and ensure technology
advancements can be quickly prototyped, demonstrated and fielded. By
designing our platforms and systems using open architectures, we are
confident that rapid upgrades can occur that will achieve significant
performance improvements at significantly less cost.
As we identify emerging requirements in our weapons procurement
programs, we are often frustrated by the lack of funding flexibility
and stability. The practice of reprogramming funds is necessary to
achieve flexibility in the execution of programs. In order to optimize
the funding we receive, raising the below-threshold reprogramming
limits for appropriations would allow increased resilience and
responsiveness to unpredictable changes.
Finally, inherent in improving our weapons procurement process is
also protest reform. Protests add program delays, financial costs, and
lost opportunity costs for the government. Again, our 808 report
details what we believe are thoughtful options for improvement. Our
ability to evolve and adapt to a rapidly changing battlefield will
ensure our Marines success. We must not only be prudent with our
investment dollars, we need to also streamline a system that will
ensure we field a modern capability for the current and future fight--
not an outdated capability from yesterday's fight.
General Goldfein. For our part, we are reinvigorating development
planning at the AF enterprise level to build-in agility and formulate
truly innovative strategic choices. Our capability development efforts
will foster the necessary close relationship between our operational,
science & technology, acquisition, and requirements disciplines.
Our efforts are aligned to initiatives which are designed to
strengthen our ability to innovate, achieve technical excellence, and
field dominant military capabilities. As a case in point, war in the
information age will consist of multiple nodes operating in a network
that can exist both physically and virtually across all domains. In
particular we need to be able to fuse data, collected from all assets,
to get decision-quality information to decision-makers faster than our
adversaries. This will require open architecture systems across the
multi-domain environment. We are focused on improving capability
development as part of a joint force for the joint fight and the
Nation.
nuclear enterprise modernization
7. Senator McCain. According to recent estimates from the
Department of Defense, the cost to operate, maintain, and modernize the
Department's nuclear forces will be $234 billion between fiscal year
2017 and 2026. These costs will increase as the Ohio-class Replacement
Program, B-21 bomber, and the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (the
Minuteman ICBM replacement program), all get into the heart of their
procurement and fielding portions of their acquisition life cycles.
Yet, it is also a fact that nuclear modernization will comprise only
about 12-14 percent of all DOD acquisition programs, so it is part of a
much larger modernization investment ``bow wave.'' As your services
comprise the three legs of our nation's nuclear triad, and if you
consider the Department's modernization investment ``bow wave'' of
costs peaking at the same time, how are you going to approach the
challenge of funding the nuclear enterprise amongst all of your non-
nuclear force requirements?
Admiral Richardson. My top modernization priority, and greatest
concern, is adequate, stable funding for the Ohio Replacement Program
(ORP) while still providing a fleet that will meet other important Navy
missions. ORP is paramount to our ability to strengthen naval power at
and from the sea, and is foundational to our survival as a nation. In
order to procure these vessels without impacting remaining procurement
plans, the Navy will continue to need additional resources for ship
construction beyond the Future Years Defense Program, not unlike those
that occurred during the construction of the Ohio-class in the 1980s.
To minimize overall impact to other department programs, the Navy is
pursuing an incremental funding profile for the lead and second OR
SSBN. The Navy is also leveraging over 50 years of submarine design and
operational experience to improve affordability and deliver the OR SSBN
in the most cost-effective manner. These improvements in affordability
allow the Navy to reduce the overall cost of the nuclear modernization
compared to those incurred in the 1960s and 1980s. The Navy greatly
appreciates Congressional support in overcoming the challenges posed by
funding ORP and the procurement authorities provided in the fiscal year
2016 National Defense Authorization Act that enhance affordability.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
General Goldfein. The Air Force is committed to funding the nuclear
enterprise at the appropriate level to ensure continued safe, secure,
and reliable operations, as well as required nuclear modernization,
including Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3). Of
particular note, the commander, Air Force Global Strike Command is the
single accountable officer to the Chief of Staff and Secretary of the
Air Force for all aspects of the nuclear mission. We have established
NC3 as a Weapon System and have outlined NC3 milestones and programming
actions. The Air Force's long term planning budget includes a
significant level of funding for the nuclear enterprise, based on
previous program estimates. As actual cost projections are refined, the
Air Force Strategic Planning and Corporate Process will revise the
long-term planning budget in accordance with established processes. The
Air Force will address any program shortfalls as part of the Air Force
Corporate Process, and may request additional Total Obligation
Authority to meet funding obligations.
__________
Questions Submitted by Ayotte
child development centers (cdc)
8. Senator Ayotte. Admiral Richardson, in April, despite the best
efforts of those at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (PNSY), there were at
least 163 families waiting for childcare at the PNSY CDC with average
wait times of almost 300 days. According to information I received this
month from the Navy, average wait times for children in category 2
remain above 300 days and average wait times for children in category 1
have actually worsened since April when the Navy testified that a
temporary solution, military learning classrooms (MLCs), would be
installed by the end of this fiscal year. Now, the Navy has informed my
office that these MLCs will not be installed until May 2017. What
explains the eight month delay in installing MLCs?
Admiral Richardson. The Navy is committed to providing quality
child development programs at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (PNSY) and at
Navy installations around the world to enable readiness and help Navy
families balance the competing demands of work and family life. We have
worked diligently to expand the childcare program PNSY by installing
Mobile Learning Centers (MLCs). During the planning and design phase
for this effort, the local public works staff determined the best
solution for PNSY families was to purchase MLCs specifically
constructed to meet Navy childcare specifications and to install those
facilities on underdeveloped land close enough to the existing CDC to
allow for convenient drop off and pick up. This course of action
triggered environmental compliance, land permitting and contracting
requirements that took several months to complete. The PNSY team
successfully completed all required steps and awarded the contract for
MLCs in September. The MLCs are scheduled to be in full operation no
later than May 2017.
9. Senator Ayotte. Admiral Richardson, what can the Navy do to
expedite the installation of the MLCs?
Admiral Richardson. I assure you the Navy is doing everything we
can to expedite this process, ensuring that we also produce the highest
quality childcare solutions for our families. We awarded a contract for
the installation of MLCs on Sept. 20, 2016. They are scheduled to be in
full operation by May 2017. Commander, Navy Installations Command will
continue to provide updates to Congress on the status of childcare at
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
10. Senator Ayotte. Admiral Richardson, in the meantime, what is
the Navy doing to provide PNSY the resources it needs to address
unacceptable wait times and wait lists at the CDC and to make life
better for the workers at the shipyard?
Admiral Richardson. The Navy has prioritized the addition of PNSY
in the Department of Defense's MilitaryChildCare.com system, which
provides a single gateway for military families to find comprehensive
information on military-operated or military-approved child care
programs worldwide. PNSY families can access real-time availability and
wait times for all military child care options based on their
individual family priority.
__________
Questions Submitted by Senator Deb Fischer
readiness: state of full-spectrum training
11. Senator Fischer. The Wall Street Journal published an article,
co-authored by General David Petraeus and Michael O'Hanlon, last month
titled: The Myth of a U.S. Military 'Readiness' Crisis. It claims that
``by 2017 the Army plans to rotate nearly 20 brigades--about a third of
its force--through national training centers each year. The Marine
Corps plans to put 12 infantry battalions--about half its force--
through large training exercises. The Air Force is funding its training
and readiness programs at 80 percent to 98 percent of what it considers
fully resourced levels.'' Does this accurately portray the state of
your service and its readiness to conduct full-spectrum operations?
General Milley. I respect both General Petraeus and Mr. O'Hanlon,
however, I do not entirely subscribe to the conclusions made in their
article. While the Army is facing serious readiness challenges, I would
not characterize it as a ``crisis.'' Furthermore, while large-scale
collective training like that executed at the Combat Training Centers
(CTCs) is essential, it is not the only critical component of
readiness.
Hard, realistic home-station training is a fundamental building
block of readiness, and is essential to preparing units for CTCs.
Demanding home-station training, coupled with the near-peer hybrid
threat scenarios experienced at CTCs, is critical to narrow the
generational divide in high-end warfighting experience between pre-9/11
and current field grade officers and senior noncommissioned officers.
With respect to numbers of CTC rotations, the Army intends to
increase Decisive Action, full spectrum operations, Brigade Combat Team
(BCT) rotations from 19 in fiscal year 2017 to 21 in fiscal year 2019.
Increasing CTC rotations will permit greater repetitions across the
Total Force. Units and leaders must get repetitions to be fully
trained, and this will take time.
Another critical aspect of readiness is manning. Significant
decreases in end-strength across all Army components--Regular, Guard,
and Reserve--compounded by elevated non-availability rates, are causing
manning challenges. While the Army is working aggressively to decrease
soldier non-availability within units, the overall smaller size of the
force makes this a greater challenge.
In addition to manning and training, a ready Army requires modern
equipment to win. An unintended consequence of the current fiscal
environment is that the Army is not modernizing the force at the
desirable rate and risks falling behind near-peer adversaries.
Lastly, a ready Army must have leaders of character who are
technically and tactically proficient, adaptive, innovative, and agile.
It takes time to develop leaders who can effectively train and ready
their units, and successfully lead them in the demanding and
unforgiving crucible that is ground combat.
General Neller. While the training that infantry battalions and
attached units receive at the Integrated Training Exercise (ITX)
contributes to unit readiness, these forces constitute less than half
of the Marine Corps' forces, which task-organize to deploy and fight as
Marine Air Ground Task Forces (MAGTFs). The Marine Corps is meeting its
Global Force Management Allocation Plan (GFMAP), contingency, and ``New
Normal'' requirements, but at the cost of readiness for non-deployed
forces, modernization, and infrastructure sustainment--all of which
lead to a degraded ability to generate forces per Operational Plan
timelines. There has not been a sufficient decrease to operational
tempo at the unit level that would permit training to full spectrum
operations, and that will not improve as the Active Duty end-strength
is reduced to 182,000.
Acute readiness issues exist in Marine Corps aviation units. Other
readiness concerns are: (1) training lapses in advanced warfighting
capabilities such as Marine Expeditionary Force-level combined arms
maneuver, anti-air warfare, and amphibious and prepositioning
operations; (2) personnel shortages from filling Joint Manning Document
and Individual Augment billets; (3) shortages of critical enlisted
leaders; and (4) the limited operational availability of amphibious
warships and maritime prepositioning force platforms, which restricts
core mission amphibious training to that of only our Marine
Expeditionary Units (MEUs).
General Goldfein. No it does not. Air Force full spectrum readiness
is at historic lows. The Air Force operational training enterprise is
unable to surge and quickly return the combat force to higher readiness
due to three key constraints: chronic manpower shortfalls; limited
capacity to train; and sustained operational tempo.
Chronic Manpower Shortfalls: Until the Air Force can solve its
manpower shortfalls, ``national training center'' style training will
only have a limited impact on improving full-spectrum readiness.
Current and projected aircraft maintenance and pilot shortfalls will
continue until the Air Force can recruit, train, and field critical
manpower shortfalls necessary to recover its full capacity to train to
full-spectrum readiness. This is why we have made increasing our end-
strength a budget priority.
Limited Capacity to Train: The Air Force currently cannot generate
enough sorties to meet both overseas contingency missions and required
flight training requirements. Our primary limiting factor is the lack
of sufficient maintenance personnel to generate sorties. Additional
limiting factors include tasks that take priority over full-spectrum
training to include directed partial-unit taskings (i.e. Theater
Security, Regional Assurance, Training Support), and continued low
intensity combat operations (i.e. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria).
Sustained Operational Tempo: Our Air Force has become highly
proficient in counter-insurgency air operations. Sixteen years of
continuous low-intensity combat operations have honed the skills of our
kinetic, mobility, support, intelligence, and space forces; however
this has come at the expense of full-spectrum readiness. The Air Force
simply does not have the capacity to continue both the current pace of
today's combat operations and simultaneously rebuild full-spectrum
readiness.
__________
Questions Submitted by Senator Dan Sullivan
freedom of navigation in the arctic region
12. Senator Sullivan. Admiral Richardson, if tasked by the
President, how would the U.S. Navy conduct a year-round surface FONOP
in the Arctic?
Admiral Richardson. The Navy currently provides year-round
capability and presence in the Arctic primarily through undersea and
air assets. Surface ship operations, including Freedom of Navigation
Operations (FONOPs) to challenge excessive maritime claims, would be
executed only after assessments of the specific operating environment
and application of Operational Risk Management (ORM) principles to
account for risk factors including sea ice, wind, ice accumulation on
equipment, and impacts to communications and satellite coverage.
The Navy also works in close coordination with interagency partners
in order to support the National Strategy for the Arctic Region. The
Navy would likely partner with the U.S. Coast Guard to leverage their
extensive experience in the Arctic region to conduct surface ship
operations, including FONOPs.
13. Senator Sullivan. Admiral Richardson, if Russia decided to deny
access to vital U.S. or international shipping in the Arctic region,
could the U.S. Navy conduct a surface FONOP year-round to challenge
that act?
Admiral Richardson. Freedom of the seas is a national priority. The
Navy will support access for the safe, secure, and free flow of
resources and commerce in the Arctic Region. The Navy is prepared to
respond to a wide range of challenges and contingencies if necessary in
order to maintain stability in the region.
U.S. military forces conduct Freedom of Navigation Operations
(FONOPs) to challenge a coastal state's excessive maritime claim in
order to preserve the global mobility of U.S. forces. As the Secretary
of Defense has said, we will continue to fly, sail, and operate
wherever international law allows, including in the Arctic region, to
protect the U.S. national security interest in preserving global
mobility of U.S. military and civilian vessels.
The Navy currently provides year-round capability and presence in
the Arctic primarily through undersea and air assets. Surface ship
operations, including FONOPs, would be executed only after specific
assessments of the operating environment and application of Operational
Risk Management (ORM) principles to account for risk factors including
sea ice, wind, ice accumulation on equipment, and impacts to
communications and satellite coverage. The Navy would likely partner
with the U.S. Coast Guard to leverage their extensive experience in the
Arctic region to conduct surface ship operations, including FONOPs.
The Navy's strategy in the Arctic emphasizes low-cost, long-lead
time activities, keeping pace with the changing environmental
conditions. Although a gradual opening of the Arctic is predicted, the
region's frequent harsh weather and sea conditions are significant
limiting factors for shipping in the Arctic region.
14. Senator Sullivan. Admiral Richardson, when was the last time
that the U.S. conducted a FONOP in the Arctic?
Admiral Richardson. The last time the United States challenged
excessive maritime claims in the Arctic was in 1964, when U.S. forces
conducted oceanographic surveys in areas previously claimed by the
former Soviet Union as historic waters. Additionally, the Navy has over
six decades of experience operating in the Arctic with our submarine
forces. The Navy currently provides year-round capability and presence
in the Arctic primarily through undersea and air assets.
15. Senator Sullivan. Admiral Richardson, should the U.S. Navy have
that capability?
Admiral Richardson. As the Secretary of Defense has said, we will
continue to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows,
including in the Arctic region, to protect the U.S. national security
interest in preserving global mobility.
The Navy currently provides year-round capability and presence in
the Arctic primarily through undersea and air assets. The Navy also
works in close coordination with interagency partners in order to
support the National Strategy for the Arctic Region. The Navy would
likely partner with the U.S. Coast Guard to leverage their extensive
experience in the Arctic region to conduct surface ship operations,
including FONOPs.
The Navy is taking a deliberate, measured approach to achieve our
strategic objectives in the Arctic, as outlined in our Arctic Roadmap.
We will continue to study, assess and make informed decisions on Arctic
operating requirements and procedures to keep pace with the changing
environmental conditions.
16. Senator Sullivan. Admiral Richardson, the U.S. stopped doing
surface FONOPs in the SCS for three years, an absence that China
capitalized upon to build militarized islands in sovereign seas of
other nations. Does the same principle of Freedom of the Seas--and the
FONOPs that help preserve it--apply just as much to the Arctic as to
the SCS?
Admiral Richardson. Yes, the United States is committed to
upholding all the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea and
airspace guaranteed to all nations under international law. As the
Secretary of Defense has said, we will continue to fly, sail, and
operate wherever international law allows, including in the South China
Sea and the Arctic region, to protect the U.S. national security
interests in preserving global mobility.
In support of this commitment, U.S. military forces conduct Freedom
of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) to challenge coastal States'
excessive maritime claims in order to preserve the global mobility of
U.S. forces. U.S. military forces execute FONOPs with respect to a wide
range of excessive maritime claims, irrespective of the coastal State
asserting those excessive claims.
The United States conducted FONOPs against the excessive maritime
claims of various South China Sea claimants in fiscal years 2012
through 2016. FONOPs are reflected in the annual Department of Defense
Freedom of Navigation (FON) Reports. The U.S. Navy also maintains a
consistent presence in the South China Sea through presence operations.
__________
Questions Submitted by Senator Mazie Hirono
general flag officer reductions
17. Senator Hirono. General Milley, Admiral Richardson, General
Neller, and General Goldfein, both House and Senate-passed versions of
the Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act look to reduce
the number of General and Flag Officer positions in the services. One
version prohibits component commands under combatant commands from
being led by an officer in a grade above Lieutenant General or Vice
Admiral. What are your thoughts on the proposed reductions in the
number of general and flag officers as well as the timeframe provided
to implement these changes? Are there possible impacts including those
at the second and third levels which could impact readiness and the
effectiveness of our military forces? Would you have concerns with an
implementation of these reductions and restrictions without the time to
adequately study, plan and manage them?
General Milley. The proposed reductions in the number of general
and flag officers, which would be taken without regard to the mission
of each general officer, would diminish the influence and authority the
services need to conduct their statutory functions and provide services
to the joint force. These actions will also lessen the services'
capacity to assist combatant commanders' in shaping the strategic
environment, influencing foreign counterparts, and expanding force
capacity in response to contingency requirements. Any reduction of
general and flag officer grades should be predicated on a thorough
analysis of mission requirements and scope of responsibilities to
ensure military leadership has the appropriate grade and experience for
their scope of responsibility. Implementing the changes on an expedited
timeframe would prevent the thorough analysis necessary.
Admiral Richardson. At a time when we are facing a wide array of
security challenges in the most complex security environment ever, a
dramatic change in our military's leadership structure would introduce
instability and adversely affect the Nation's warfighting capabilities.
Reductions to the leadership structure should only be done after a more
detailed study of the full range of consequences is completed.
As written, the proposed legislation could result in the reduction
of the grades of the Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command; Commander,
U.S. Pacific Fleet; Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe/Africa, the
Vice Chief of Naval Operations or Naval Reactors. These commands have
4-star leaders because of their wide-ranging spans of responsibility
and control; large personnel and budget portfolios; and, to a lesser
extent, but important one, their diplomatic roles. Reductions in flag
officer ranks need to be carefully weighed against the potentially
adverse impacts on foreign military cooperation, diplomatic ties, and
mission accomplishment. Any reductions may be viewed by our allies and
rivals as a lessening of the Navy's commitment to global maritime
security.
General Neller. The Marine Corps opposes the Senate provision that
would reduce the authorized number of Active Marine Corps General
Officers (GOs) from 61 to 47 and Reserve Marine Corps GOs in an active
status from 10 to 7. We also oppose the timeframe allowed to implement
this reduction.
The Marine Corps is our Nation's force in readiness. We require the
right leadership structure to support our evolving warfighting role.
This reduction would leave critical senior leadership billets unfilled
or under filled, negatively impacting the leadership, capabilities, and
readiness of the Marine Corps.
The reduction will also impact GO management, causing significant
promotion stagnation and a substantial loss of talent that will take
decades to recreate. As the Marine Corps is the smallest service with
the fewest GOs and lowest leader-to-led ratio, a blanket percentage
reduction will be significantly more difficult to absorb without
negative impacts to the Corps.
A thorough study of Department of Defense senior military
leadership should be undertaken prior to making any reductions,
especially in light of current efforts to reduce Senior Executive
Service and headquarters-element civilians.
General Goldfein. The 2017 NDAA language regarding general and flag
officer reductions is a complex proposal that requires in-depth
Department analysis prior to implementation. The USAF supports DOD's
efforts to conduct a detailed review of General and Flag Officer
requirements to mitigate arbitrary reductions that would have negative
impact on readiness and experience. The USAF also believes that any
adjustment to GO authorizations should consider the probable impact to
operational capability in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency.
Until a detailed Department analysis has been conducted, we cannot say
how we would implement the aforementioned changes. It should be noted
that the proposed HASC NDAA language prohibiting component commands
under combatant commands from being led by an officer in a grade above
Lieutenant General or Vice Admiral would eliminate five 4-star general
officer positions in the USAF. These positions include the commander of
AF Global Strike Command (AFGSC), AF Space Command (AFSPC), Air
Mobility Command (AMC), Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), and US Air Forces
Europe and US Air Forces Africa (USAFE/AFAFRICOM). These cuts along
with other proposed cuts in GO authorizations would have a significant
and adverse impact on the experience, readiness, and representational
duties of our senior leaders in the areas of air, space, cyberspace,
ISR, and nuclear operations. Moreover, it would further erode the
assurances we have provided our allies and partners in USAFE and PACAF
who rely on our regional leadership.
18. Senator Hirono. General Milley, it is important to have a
strong and stable presence in the Asia-Pacific region in light of the
actions of China in the South China Sea and the unpredictable threats
posed by North Korea. The House-passed version of the fiscal year 2017
NDAA prohibits component commands under combatant commands from being
led by four-star officers. How would this change affect the forces in
US Army Pacific? How would this provision, if enacted, affect our
strength and presence in the Pacific? How do you think other countries
in the region would interpret the change of the Commanding General of
US Army Pacific being reduced from four to three-stars?
General Milley. The Commander, U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC) position
was upgraded from a three to four star general in July of 2013 in
support of the administration's declared ``Rebalance to Asia.'' At that
time, this upgrade was explained as a sign of the U.S. commitment to
our allies in Asia and a recognition that a four star general will have
more influence in many Asian nations where armies are the predominant
Military Service. Because of the emphasis placed on the importance of
this upgrade, downgrading that position to a three-star command would
signal to our partners and allies in the Asia-Pacific region that the
United States is less serious about its commitment. The Asia-Pacific
region is a strategic priority given China's demographic growth,
expanding economic influence, and modernizing military. Maintaining a
four-star commander at USARPAC sends a message to allies and partners
in the Asia-Pacific Region that the United States is committed to
building and maintaining a robust network of like-minded states that
contribute to sustaining the rules-based regional order while deterring
those states that seek to reform it. Furthermore, a three star USARPAC
Commander would not garner the same level of access to senior
government leaders in partnered Pacific countries as does the current
four star Commander. The USARPAC Commander is also designated as the
theater Joint Force Land Component Commander (JFLCC) for U.S. Pacific
Command (PACOM) USARPAC Command, and provides critical mission command
capabilities for a full range of combat and non-combat military
operations throughout the PACOM Area of Responsibility.
19. Senator Hirono. Admiral Richardson, it is important to have a
strong and stable presence in the Asia-Pacific region in light of the
actions of China in the South China Sea and the unpredictable threats
posed by North Korea. The House-passed version of the fiscal year 2017
NDAA prohibits component commands under combatant commands from being
led by four-star officers. How would this change affect the Pacific
Fleet where about 60 percent of our Navy's ships operate? How would
this provision, if enacted, affect our strength and presence in the
Pacific? How do you think other countries including allies, friends and
potential adversaries in the region would interpret the change of the
Commander of the Pacific Fleet being reduced from four to three-stars?
Admiral Richardson. Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet is responsible
for production and consumption of readiness on a vast scale. As the
Theater Joint Force Maritime Component Commander to U.S. Pacific
Command, the Pacific Fleet Commander leverages a four-star command
structure that provides strategic and operational integration, de-
confliction, synchronization, and mitigation oversight in an AOR
geographically larger, and with higher human population, than the rest
of Global Combatant Commander areas of responsibility combined. The
Commander oversees complex, and sophisticated operational missions and
responses across the region, while commanding 3-star subordinates
(Commanders of Seventh Fleet, Third Fleet, and Fleet Marine Force
Pacific) who collectively lead the world's largest expeditionary force
and the most capable forward deployed Naval force on earth. The
Commander is responsible for U.S. Navy engagements with 36 nations
including five nations with whom the US shares mutual defense treaties.
Additionally the Pacific Fleet Commander oversees the man, train, and
equip responsibilities of three Type Commanders (Commanders of Naval
Air Forces, Surface Forces, and Submarine Forces Pacific) as well as
the regional responsibilities of Commanders of U.S. Naval forces in
Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Guam. With missions, functions and tasks
incorporating 140,000 personnel, an annual budget of $13 billion, and
ships, aircraft, equipment and infrastructure valued at over $500
billion, the U.S Pacific Fleet Commander's range and depth of
responsibility is without peer in the United States Navy.
In the case of the Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet, the reduction of
the service component commander pay grade from a four-star Admiral (O-
10) to a three-star Vice Admiral (O-9) would undermine the Nation's
credibility, reduce our ability to influence world events, increase
strategic and operational risk, and weaken the Navy's ability to
execute U.S. national security objectives in the Pacific Fleet Area of
Responsibility (AOR). Our current Navy rank structure in the Pacific is
a direct reflection of the variety, magnitude, and consequence of the
challenges faced in this region, combined with the preponderance of the
U.S. Navy's combat power located in the region, and culminating in a
level of responsibility and required authority far beyond the span of
responsibility of a three-star Flag Officer. At its outset, a pay grade
reduction would serve to discourage our allies and partners and
embolden our potential adversaries with a strong signal that will be
interpreted as a retreat from our commitment to America's Rebalance to
the Indo-Asia-Pacific, and a withdrawal from our long standing
commitment to the region's security, stability, and prosperity.
Overall, Commander, Pacific Fleet has a 4-star leader because of
its wide-ranging span of responsibility and control; large personnel
and budget portfolios; and, its diplomatic role. Reductions in flag
officer ranks need to be carefully weighed against the potentially
adverse impacts on foreign military cooperation, diplomatic ties, and
mission accomplishment. Any reductions may be viewed by our allies and
rivals as a lessening of the Navy's commitment to global maritime
security.
In the 71 years since World War II, our allies and partners in the
Indo-Asia-Pacific have counted on the U.S. Navy to anchor, with highly
capable combat-ready forces, the framework of norms, standards, rules
and laws on which their security and prosperity depend. The U.S. Navy
requires a four-star Admiral at Pacific Fleet in order to maintain and
ensure our Nation's role as the region's preeminent maritime power and
leader.
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