[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 115-57]
NAVY READINESS--UNDERLYING
PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH THE USS FITZGERALD AND USS JOHN S. McCAIN
__________
JOINT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
meeting jointly with
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
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__________
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
JOE WILSON, South Carolina, Chairman
ROB BISHOP, Utah MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire
VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia
ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York SALUD O. CARBAJAL, California
MARTHA McSALLY, Arizona, Vice Chair ANTHONY G. BROWN, Maryland
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee STEPHANIE N. MURPHY, Florida
TRENT KELLY, Mississippi RO KHANNA, California
MIKE GALLAGHER, Wisconsin
Margaret Dean, Professional Staff Member
Brian Garrett, Professional Staff Member
Mike Gancio, Clerk
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES
ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia, Chairman
K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama, Vice Chair JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
MIKE GALLAGHER, Wisconsin JOHN GARAMENDI, California
DUNCAN HUNTER, California DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey
PAUL COOK, California SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
STEPHEN KNIGHT, California A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana
David Sienicki, Professional Staff Member
Phil MacNaughton, Professional Staff Member
Danielle Steitz, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Page
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Bordallo, Hon. Madeleine Z., a Delegate from Guam, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Readiness.............................. 2
Courtney, Hon. Joe, a Representative from Connecticut, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces......... 6
Wilson, Hon. Joe, a Representative from South Carolina, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Readiness...................................... 1
Wittman, Hon. Robert J., a Representative from Virginia,
Chairman, Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces....... 4
WITNESSES
Moran, ADM William F., USN, Vice Chief of Naval Operations,
United States Navy; and RADM Ronald A. Boxall, Director,
Surface Warfare (N96), United States Navy...................... 8
Pendleton, John H., Director, Defense Force Structure and
Readiness Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office........ 8
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Moran, ADM William F., joint with RADM Ronald A. Boxall...... 59
Pendleton, John H............................................ 66
Wilson, Hon. Joe............................................. 57
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
Mr. Gallagher................................................ 97
Mr. Hunter................................................... 97
Mr. Norcross................................................. 97
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mr. Courtney................................................. 101
Mr. McEachin................................................. 101
Mr. Wilson................................................... 101
NAVY READINESS--UNDERLYING PROBLEMS
ASSOCIATED WITH THE USS FITZGERALD
AND USS JOHN S. McCAIN
----------
House of Representatives, Committee on Armed
Services, Subcommittee on Readiness, Meeting
Jointly with the Subcommittee on Seapower and
Projection Forces, Washington, DC, Thursday,
September 7, 2017.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 3:10 p.m., in
room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Joe Wilson
(chairman of the Subcommittee on Readiness) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE WILSON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
SOUTH CAROLINA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
Mr. Wilson. I call this joint hearing of the Subcommittees
on Readiness and Seapower and Projection Forces of the House
Armed Services Committee to order.
We are here in honor and memory of the 7 USS Fitzgerald
sailors: Shingo Douglass, Noe Hernandez, Ngoc Truong Huynh,
Xavier Martin, Gary Rehm, Dakota Rigsby, Carlos Victor Sibayan;
and the 10 USS John S. McCain sailors: Kevin Bushell, Dustin
Doyon, Jacob Drake, Timothy Eckels, Charles Findley, John
Hoagland, III, Corey Ingram, Abraham Lopez, Kenneth Smith, and
Logan Palmer.
And we are very grateful that today we have Ms. Rachel
Eckels, the mother of Petty Officer Timothy Eckels, Jr., is
here with us today. Ms. Eckels, we send to you our deepest
sympathies and profound sorrow for your loss and appreciation
for your son's service to our Nation.
I want to welcome our members to today's hearing. And I
want to especially recognize that we have with us the committee
chairman, the Honorable Mac Thornberry. Chairman Thornberry has
been the leader of our ongoing efforts to mitigate our military
readiness challenges. And I want to thank him for his
leadership and for being here today to hear about the
challenges illuminated by the tragic collisions in the Pacific.
I also want to send a warm welcome to Congresswoman
Elizabeth Esty from Connecticut and Congressman Rodney Davis
from Illinois.
I ask unanimous consent that a member who is not a member
of the Committee on the Armed Services be allowed to
participate in today's hearing after all subcommittee members
and then full committee members have had an opportunity to ask
questions. Is there an objection?
Without objection, such members will be recognized at the
appropriate time for 5 minutes.
As we begin today's unclassified hearing on ``Navy
Readiness--Underlying Problems Associated with the USS
Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain,'' I have no doubt that
our Navy remains the most powerful in the world. But these
recent tragic events only reinforce our committee's concerns
about the depth of readiness challenges the Navy faces. I am
especially concerned about the shortfalls in the force
structure, and whether the sustained operational tempo of a
reduced 277-ship Navy may have contributed to these events.
I also believe that the first responsibility of the
national government is to provide for the national security for
our citizens to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. And
that is especially true of our sailors, soldiers, airmen, and
Marines. Therefore, it is our responsibility as members of this
subcommittee to continue to better understand the readiness
situation and underlying problems of the United States Navy,
and then for us to chart a course which best assists the
Department of the Navy in correcting any deficiencies and
shortfalls.
We now ask the senior leaders of the U.S. Navy and
Government Accountability Office here with us today to be
candid and, in your best judgment, advise us on the underlying
problems associated with the USS Fitzgerald and USS John S.
McCain and how to recover from these tragic events.
This afternoon we are honored to have with us Admiral Bill
Moran, the Vice Chief of Naval Operations; Rear Admiral Robert
Boxall, who is the Director of Surface Warfare; and Mr. John
Pendleton, the Director of the Defense Force Structure and
Readiness Issues of the U.S. [Government] Accountability
Office.
I would like to now turn to our ranking member,
Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo of Guam, for any remarks she
may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wilson can be found in the
Appendix on page 57.]
STATEMENT OF HON. MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, A DELEGATE FROM GUAM,
RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and
Chairman Wittman, for agreeing to convene this timely hearing
on the Navy readiness, particularly with regards to the 7th
Fleet operations in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. Chairman
Wittman and I recently returned from Japan where we visited and
met with Vice Admiral Sawyer, and saw the damage to the USS
Fitzgerald firsthand.
Thank you to our witnesses for joining us today. Admiral
Moran and Boxall, I appreciated our meeting earlier this week,
and I look forward to continuing our discussion.
Mr. Pendleton, thank you as well for your time and your
work on this subject, as it is critical in aiding our oversight
mission on this committee.
The recent mishaps with the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John
S. McCain resulted not only in significant damage to the
vessels, but also the tragic, tragic loss of life of 17
American sailors. Earlier in the year, we saw two additional
mishaps, avoidable, as I understand it, also involving surface
ships assigned to the 7th Fleet. While investigations into the
specific mishaps are still ongoing, and the Navy is in the
midst of conducting two separate comprehensive reviews of
surface fleet operations, I am interested to learn of the
initial findings and the foundational challenges that need to
be addressed to reverse the concerning trend that we are seeing
with the readiness of our forward-deployed naval forces [FDNF].
Specifically, I am interested to hear what steps may be
taken to ensure appropriate time is allocated for crew training
and ship maintenance in the forward-deployed naval forces
model, and how the chain of command will be held accountable to
ensure Navy standards are being met. In addition to the
training and the maintenance time, I will be interested to hear
how the Navy is investing in developing and utilizing next-
generation training systems to maximize the efficiency and the
effectiveness of this time.
This committee and the Navy's military and civilian
leadership owe it to our sailors to learn from these incidents
and take appropriate actions to ensure the contributing factors
are properly addressed. Points have been raised about how the
forward-deployed forces model in the Pacific AOR [area of
responsibility] has both stressed existing resources and
highlighted gaps and deficiency in the manning of our vessels,
the training of our sailors, and the maintenance of the fleet.
Understanding that a balance needs to be struck and a review of
posture in the region is underway, let me note that I believe
maintaining a forward presence in the Indo-Asia-Pacific is
critical to our security in the region.
Whether it be for deterrence, power projection,
humanitarian assistance, bilateral and multilateral exercises,
or a myriad of other critical missions, the Navy is able to
rapidly react to contingencies only with forward-deployed
forces. However, these missions and our credibility are
undermined if we are not able to effectively manage and operate
the fleet.
The Navy's deployment of significant capabilities overseas
didn't occur overnight. And the Pacific did not become a heavy
traffic theater overnight. So I am concerned that the request
for resources and the strategic prioritization of where to
spend these resources has not properly reflected the
operations, the maintenance, and the training needs of the
fleet.
Finally, I will conclude by stating that today's hearing
and the Navy's ongoing investigations and reviews should be
viewed as just the starting point. I hope that we will have a
continuous dialogue between this committee and the Navy on the
issues, the lessons learned, and specific actions that need to
be taken to ensure the readiness of the surface fleet.
I want to thank you, the witnesses, and I look forward to
the discussion. And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Ranking Member Bordallo.
We now will turn to the gentleman from Virginia and
chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee,
Congressman Rob Wittman, for any remarks he may have.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT J. WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE
FROM VIRGINIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND
PROJECTION FORCES
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Chairman Wilson.
I want to welcome Admiral Moran, Rear Admiral Boxall, and
Mr. Pendleton, and I want to thank you all for attending our
hearing on this tremendously important issue. I, again, want to
thank Chairman Wilson for offering to hold this joint
subcommittee hearing today. It is of essence that we get to the
bottom of this in the interest of our Nation.
I believe that we may arrive at some conclusions that
require the joint efforts of both of our subcommittees, and I
look forward to working with the gentleman from South Carolina
to expeditiously resolve these potentially egregious underlying
issues to our surface Navy forces.
Before I proceed any further, I also want to recognize our
special guest in the audience today, Ms. Rachel Eckels. Ms.
Eckels' son, Petty Officer Timothy Eckels, Jr., lost his life
onboard the USS McCain just a few weeks ago.
Ms. Eckels, thank you for being here with us today and for
the enormous sacrifice that you and your family have made for
this country. We are here today to ensure that the Navy--yes.
[Applause.]
Mr. Wittman. We are here today to ensure that the Navy and
Congress learns from these tragedies and makes the necessary
changes. I want you to be assured that your son's life, given
on behalf of this Nation, was not given in vain.
Naval warfare is inherently dangerous. As we continue to
review the recent collisions associated with the USS Fitzgerald
and the USS John S. McCain, it is important to note that even
in a benign environment, we send our sailors into precarious
and oftentimes deadly situations. Our Nation asks much of our
service members, and they never fail to deliver.
I hope that today's hearing provides some positive steps
forward to ensure that our sailors are provided the best
training and the best ships to sustain their daily lives, and
in time of war, prevail over our enemy. I think we can all
agree that our Nation failed these 17 sailors and their
families with these tragic collisions.
Last week, I led a bipartisan congressional delegation with
the gentlelady from Guam, Ms. Bordallo, to visit the 7th Fleet
commander, Vice Admiral Sawyer, and the sailors homeported in
Yokosuka, Japan. I was encouraged at their zeal and the overall
tenacity of the fleet, even in the face of these difficult
events. Nevertheless, I look forward to turning our attention
to assess whether there are procedural issues that may have
contributed to a degraded material and training readiness of
our forces in the 7th Fleet.
As the committee reviews the degraded state of the 7th
Fleet, two things are painfully obvious. The material condition
and operational readiness of the ships are significantly
degraded and not acceptable. Of our large surface combatants,
the majority of forward-deployed ships are not properly ready
to perform their primary warfare areas. Overall, the negative
trend lines associated with the operational readiness of our
forward-deployed ships are deeply troubling. These negative
training trends clearly contributed to the lack of seamanship
evident onboard the USS John McCain and the USS Fitzgerald.
As to the ships themselves, the material condition of the
forward-deployed ships suffer as Navy prioritizes operational
deployments over maintenance and modernization. This
maintenance and training model places sailors at risk, and most
likely contributed, in part, to the incidents that we have
witnessed with the 7th Fleet.
It is equally problematic that the Navy intends to increase
the number of forward-deployed ships over the next few years
with no increase to the maintenance capacity in Yokosuka,
thereby increasing the risk to the fleet and our sailors. This
increasing reliance on forward-deployed naval forces is a model
that is not sustainable and needs to be significantly modified.
We have also learned that many of the destroyers based out
of Yokosuka are only supposed to be forward deployed for no
more than 7 to 10 years. However, we know that the USS John S.
McCain has been forward deployed to Japan for over 20 years.
Further, the USS Fitzgerald, USS Curtis Wilbur, and USS Stethem
have each been homeported in Yokosuka for well over 10 years.
The Navy has proven that it cannot manage the requirements
for forward-deployed ships in the 7th Fleet with a fleet of
just 277 ships. The ships in Yokosuka have been outside the
continental United States for too long, and consequently, their
material condition is in an unacceptable state.
I remain convinced that one of the long-term fixes of this
problem is to increase the overall force structure and build
the Navy that our Nation needs. A larger fleet would allow the
Navy to place less strain on each available ship, which would
reduce the chance that any sailor is placed in a high-risk
environment.
In the short term, I fully support the need to adequately
fund training, and most importantly, provide the fleet the time
it needs to complete required maintenance and training.
I think there are a number of contributing factors that
should be explored, including Navy training models, impacts
associated with the cannibalization of other ship parts,
overall funding requirements associated with ship maintenance,
and the incredibly high operational tempo endured by the fleet,
specifically in the 7th Fleet area of responsibility, and also
the operational failures that have occurred with our surface
fleet. Each of these areas deserves additional assessment.
The forward-deployed Navy model is ripe with risk, and this
risk will increase in the future. The Navy needs to offer an
alternative model that meets the Nation's need at reduced risk
to our sailors.
I thank Chairman Wilson for working with the Seapower and
Projection Forces Subcommittee on this important issue, and I
yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Chairman Rob Wittman.
And now for the gentleman from Connecticut and ranking
member of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee,
Congressman Joe Courtney, for his remarks.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOE COURTNEY, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
CONNECTICUT, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND
PROJECTION FORCES
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to
Admiral Moran, Rear Admiral Boxall, and Mr. Pendleton for your
testimony today. And I would also like to recognize Ms. Eckels
for being here today and putting a human face on the subject
that we are talking about here today, and really representing
the other families. That is an important contribution that is
being made here today.
So thank you, Ms. Eckels.
The circumstances that bring us to today's hearing are
painful and tragic. As our lead witness today, Admiral Moran,
pointed out in his order to the Navy's Fleet Forces Command
dated August 24, 2017, in the span of 65 days, 17 sailors were
lost in ship collisions and accidents on naval vessels. These
were not, as he pointed out, limited occurrences, but part of a
disturbing trend of mishaps in the Asia-Pacific region that,
since January, has involved the USS Antietam, the USS Lake
Champlain, the USS Fitzgerald, and the McCain. To put that in
perspective, these heartbreaking casualties are more than the
number of service members that we have lost in the Afghanistan
war zone in 2017.
Two of those sailors are from my State of Connecticut:
sonar technician second class Ngoc Truong Huynh of Watertown,
Connecticut--and the Congressman from that community,
Congresswoman Esty, is with us here today--and electronics
technician second class, Dustin Doyon, from Suffield,
Connecticut, in the northwestern portion of my district was
lost onboard the USS John S. McCain. Their families and the
entire State of Connecticut are mourning the loss of these two
patriots, and are intensely watching the response of the Navy
and Congress to fix this disturbing trend.
Several reviews by the Navy and the Secretary of the Navy
are underway right now to dig deep into this disturbing trend.
I applaud those efforts, and I know I think I speak for all my
colleagues today, that we expect the Navy to be fully
transparent with our panels as these efforts move forward and
that we will convene again as many times as needed to provide
support to fix this problem.
Indeed, article I, section 8, clause 13 of the U.S.
Constitution is very clear. It is Congress's duty to, quote,
``provide and maintain a Navy,'' which certainly means a Navy
that is well-equipped, well-trained, and adequately manned.
What does seem to be clear at this early stage is these
incidents are a glaring manifestation of the sharply increased
demand being placed on our forward-deployed Navy vessels,
particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, and the declining
readiness of these forces. We ask these forward-deployed ships
to do difficult work, which is oftentimes not well understood
by the public at large.
For instance, prior to her collision, the USS McCain
conducted a highly visible freedom of navigation operation in
the South China Sea. Likewise, the Fitzgerald was a pivotal
player in providing needed presence in response to Kim Jong-
un's recent threats and missile tests. Simply put, these are
not the kinds of ships and crews that we can afford to lose to
preventable mishaps.
As my colleague Mr. Wittman correctly pointed out, one
obvious response to this high operational tempo is to grow our
fleet and shorten the backlog of repair and maintenance for the
existing fleet to take the pressure off the heel-to-toe
operations of our forward-deployed ships in places like
Yokosuka, Japan, and Rota, Spain.
These two committees, I would note, have pushed more
aggressively on a bipartisan basis to add funding to ship
construction and readiness than any other entity in the
Congress. This year's House NDAA [National Defense
Authorization Act] plussed up these accounts significantly
above the White House's budget that was submitted last May, and
passed with the biggest bipartisan vote since 2008. We will
have more work to do to complete the 2018 process, and I am
sure this hearing will increase the members' determination to
get the best outcome possible.
But today is not just about resources. It is also about
whether Navy systems and policies need to be realigned to
improve readiness. Unfortunately, concerns about systems and
policies are not new. As the GAO [Government Accountability
Office] has repeatedly reported over the last several years,
and as our witness today will discuss, a growing number of our
forward-deployed vessels are operating without the
certifications expected of a ship heading out to deployment.
Unfortunately, this trend has worsened since the last report in
2015, and this needs to be corrected.
Similarly, in 2010, the Navy conducted a review by Vice
Admiral Phillip Balisle, which outlines shortfalls and concerns
about surface force readiness that are strikingly relevant
today in looking at these incidences in the larger state of
Navy fleet readiness. One of his priority recommendations
includes clarifying who in the chain of command specifically
has the ultimate say in whether a ship is manned, trained, and
equipped to the level needed to safely do their job before
being sent out on deployment.
To put it another way, the certification process which
covers key competencies in seamanship, surface warfare,
ballistic missile defense, to name just a few, need to be
reviewed and approved by an accountable decisionmaker.
Unfortunately, this recommendation raised by Vice Admiral
Balisle has not been addressed in the 7 years since his report
came out.
We expect a lot from the Navy, and with good reason. Our
sailors are the best in the world. And the sight of a U.S. Navy
vessel in a foreign port or operating in international waters
sends a powerful message of protection for a rules-based order
in the maritime domain. And those sailors do what they need to
do to keep the peace and the sea-lanes of the world's great
oceans free and open. In return, our sailors and families
should expect that their leaders, who send them out to sea,
have done all they can to provide the tools, resources, and
training they need to conduct their work safely and return
safely.
I hope today's hearing will focus on the steps that the
Navy will take to fulfill that expectation and what it needs
from us here in the Congress to get it done.
Thank you. I yield back my time.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Ranking Member Joe Courtney.
Admiral Moran, we now turn to you for your opening remarks.
STATEMENT OF ADM WILLIAM F. MORAN, USN, VICE CHIEF OF NAVAL
OPERATIONS, UNITED STATES NAVY; AND RADM RONALD A. BOXALL,
DIRECTOR, SURFACE WARFARE (N96), UNITED STATES NAVY
Admiral Moran. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be short.
I want to be very clear that no matter the circumstances,
the operating environment, or how strained our force might be,
we should not and cannot have collisions at sea. Fundamental
professional seamanship is the foundation for safe operations
around the fleet. In all of the marvelous technology, the
magnificent hardware that we put together on these ships, and
the power of our weapons systems are meaningless without well-
trained, skilled, patriotic, and experienced sailors, who are
well led.
You have my promise that we will get to the bottom of these
mishaps. We will leave no stone unturned. We will be
accountable to you, to our sailors, and to the American public.
Like you, our Navy stands with Ms. Rachel Eckels and all of our
Navy families with hearts broken, but determined to investigate
thoroughly all the facts to get at the root causes, to address
contributing factors, and to learn so that we will become a
better Navy at the end of this. We have an absolute
responsibility to keep sailors safe from harm in peacetime,
even as they prepare for war.
Mr. Chairman, although we are 20 feet apart, there is no
gap between what we need to do from here on out. Admiral Boxall
and I look forward to your questions.
[The joint prepared statement of Admiral Moran and Admiral
Boxall can be found in the Appendix on page 59.]
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Admiral.
We now turn to Mr. John Pendleton from the Government
Accountability Office for your opening comments.
STATEMENT OF JOHN H. PENDLETON, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE FORCE
STRUCTURE AND READINESS ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY
OFFICE
Mr. Pendleton. Thank you, Chairman Wilson, Chairman
Wittman, Ranking Members Bordallo and Mr. Courtney, Chairman
Thornberry. Thank you very much for having me here today to
summarize GAO's past work on Navy readiness.
Unfortunately, grim circumstances do bring us together. Mr.
Chairman, I don't know what specifically caused the accidents,
but I do know the Navy is caught between an unrelenting
operational demand and a limited supply of ships.
The Navy has been warning for some time that they have been
keeping a pace that is unsustainable. Our work has confirmed
the difficulties and our reports have shown it. However, our
body of work has also spotlighted risk associated with the way
the Navy is managing the demands on it. Some of these risks
present significant challenges in the building blocks of
readiness, training and manning, and maintenance.
Just over 2 years ago, we published a report warning about
the increased reliance of overseas basing of ships. In that
report, we found that ships based in Japan did not have
dedicated training periods like U.S.-based ships. Their
aggressive deployment schedule gave the Navy more presence, it
is true, but it came at cost, including detrimental effects on
ship readiness.
In fact, we were told that the overseas-based ships were so
busy that they had to train on the margins, a term I had not
heard before. And it was explained to me that meant that they
had to squeeze training in when they could. Given the concerns,
we recommended that the Navy carefully analyze the risks that
were mounting, especially given the plan to increase overseas
basing in the future to meet the demands.
I think it is important to note that the Department of
Defense, on behalf of the Navy, wrote the response to our
report, and they concurred with the report and our
recommendation, for the most part, and I think their response
is instructive. And I am going to read a short passage, please.
We assess the Navy is well aware of risk associated with
increased reliance on overseas homeporting. The decision to
accept these risks was ultimately based on the operational
decision to provide increased presence to meet combatant
commander requirements.
Mr. Chairman, I fear this was a bad gamble, in retrospect.
In preparing for this hearing, we followed up on that work and
learned a couple of things that concerned us.
First, the Navy had told us that they planned to implement
a deployment schedule for the overseas ships that will allow
dedicated training. As of the writing of--as of this hearing,
they have not yet done that. They have a notional idea, but it
has not yet been implemented.
The second thing we learned was that training
certifications--this is the way the Navy periodically
determines that its crews are proficient in everything from
seamanship, driving the ship, to warfare areas--were being
allowed to expire at, frankly, an alarming rate. In 2015,
looking just at the cruisers and destroyers, all of the
certification areas, about 7 percent of those were expired. By
late June of this year, that number was up to 37 percent
expired, a more than fivefold increase.
Manning has been a persistent challenge for the Navy. The
Navy had a study in 2014 that indicated that sailors, on
average, were working well over 108 hours a week. The Navy
concluded at that time that this was unsustainable and could
contribute to a poor safety culture. Maintenance is also taking
longer and costing more. Due to the pace of operation, ship
deployments have often been delayed. Although, Admiral Moran
told me before the hearing that, you know, been keeping
deployments shorter lately. But deployments have been extended,
and then the ships have more problems when you bring them in.
And the shipyards have trouble keeping pace for a number of
reasons, which I think many of you are aware of.
At this point, the lost operational days because of the
maintenance delays number in the thousands. And having two
destroyers out of service due to the recent mishaps is not
going to help rebuild readiness. In fact, I think the Navy is
treading water at this point in terms of readiness rebuilding.
Mr. Chairman, GAO has made 11 practical recommendations to
the Department of Defense to help guide the Navy and all the
services toward improved readiness. The DOD [Department of
Defense] and the Navy have concurred with our recommendations
generally, but today have partially implemented only one.
Several of the recommendations are crafted on--excuse me--are
focused on crafting a comprehensive readiness rebuilding plan
that balances resources with demands and is transparent about
what it will cost and how long it will take.
We have also made recommendations specific to the Navy that
are directly relevant to today's conversations, particularly in
the areas of analyzing the risk associated with overseas basing
and reassessing the workload that sailors actually face, and
using that to decide how many people to put on a crew.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, I should acknowledge that we did
all of this work because this committee requested that we do
so. Thank you for your foresight, and we are honored to assist
the committee in its oversight going forward. Thank you very
much. I am happy to take any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pendleton can be found in
the Appendix on page 66.]
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much. And, Mr. Pendleton, we all
appreciate the Government Accountability Office for your
independent professionalism. As particularly important to me
personally, I have a son serving in the U.S. Navy, and your
recommendations are so important for the health and safety and
protection of the American people.
Additionally, I particularly appreciate that a report was
presented as a report to congressional addressees on June 14,
which highlighted the issues of readiness just 4 days before
the Fitzgerald incident. And so your efforts just could not--
and your organization's efforts could not be more timely, and
they are greatly appreciated by all of us.
The GAO statement today that you have provided indicates
that the expired training certification as provided by the
afloat training group for cruisers and destroyers homeported in
Japan had increased fivefold since the 2015 report, from 7
percent expired to 37 percent expired in June of this year.
Again, the month of the incident.
Mr. Pendleton, can you explain the sharp trend of the
training certifications since your report? What are the GAO's
observations in what is happening with our forward-deployed
forces?
Mr. Pendleton. Sir, we updated that information in
preparation for this hearing, so we have not been back out to
talk to the fleet about them. We did gather that information
when we did the work a couple of years ago, and we asked for it
to be updated, and the Navy provided it.
And when we looked at it, we saw that, again, if you
imagine all of the 11 ships based in Japan, 3 cruisers and 8
destroyers, and then 21 or -2 certification areas. When you
look at--the ones that were red that they were expired, it had
grown to 37 percent. Of all those little blocks, if you imagine
it being red.
Another thing that concerned us is there were specific
areas that were even higher than 37 percent, and one of those
was seamanship. Eight of the eleven ships had expired
certifications for seamanship as of late June, and there were
some other areas as well that were sharply lower than you would
hope to see.
Mr. Wilson. And, again, I want to commend you, the analysis
that you did is going to be so helpful to us, and then the
actions needed to address the mission challenges are real
world. And it is just, again, reassuring, as a Member of
Congress, but as a parent. Thank you for what you are doing.
Mr. Pendleton. Mr. Wilson, if I may, the report that you
held up is a compilation report and it is designed to identify
what we believe is the major challenges facing the Department
of Defense. I think what is significant about it is we lead
with readiness rebuilding, that really we think is one of the
priority areas the Department needs to focus on.
Mr. Wilson. And you also provided extraordinary insight in
regard to health care being provided to our military personnel.
I urge all members of both subcommittees and the full committee
to get a copy and--and it is really very helpful.
Mr. Pendleton. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Wilson. Admiral Moran, obviously, the trend is so
significant, and I appreciate your heartfelt statement earlier.
Can you help the subcommittees better understand the
issues? I am trying to figure out how most--our most forward-
deployed ships are apparently not being held to the same
standards as the rest of the fleet. Who certifies the ships
homeported in Japan?
Admiral Moran. Mr. Chairman, the certification is done
locally by the operational commanders in Japan. So it starts
with the commanding officer of the ship that makes a request
for waivers or to extend their certification. It goes to his
direct--in the chain of command, there is a DESRON [destroyer
squadron] commander, and that is worked out then above his
level with a one-star, two-star commander of the task force in
Japan as well as the 7th Fleet commander ultimately makes that
decision.
Mr. Wilson. And----
Admiral Moran. So if I could, there--when someone is
expiring on a certification, they are required to put a risk
mitigation plan in place and request the waiver. And once the
risk mitigation plan is approved in the chain of command, then
they are allowed to operate along those certifications. So
while the certifications are expired, there is a risk
mitigation plan for each one of them.
But to your point, and to the point that the GAO has
thoughtfully put out here, is the trend of the number that we
are asking for waivers is increasing at an alarming rate, one
in which ought to give us all pause for just how hard we are
driving the crews in 7th Fleet. Changing schedules, delayed
maintenance, and additional missions that they have been asked
to perform, are making it more difficult to get the ship and
the command, which is called the afloat training group in Japan
in WESTPAC [Western Pacific], onboard the ship to do the
certification at the right time before it expires. It is not an
indication necessarily that they are not qualified to do those
missions or those certifications.
Mr. Wilson. And what is the role of the afloat training
group and what certifications?
Admiral Moran. I will let Admiral Boxall address it. He has
got direct comms [communications] with that group.
Admiral Boxall. Sir, the afloat training group is how we--
they are the senior sailors, usually at the senior enlisted
level, who go out and are experts in each area of the
specialties, the 21, 22 mission areas that the GAO mentioned.
Those sailors that do that work for us generally need the
time to go do that. And so these sailors will go out and they
will observe operations. There is a series. And for each of one
of those certifications, you know, zero might be making sure
the training is there. Step one might be to make sure that the
team knows how to do the basic drill sets to an assessment in a
phase 4. So if they do not meet all four of those phases, they
do not get the certification.
Mr. Wilson. And what would be their professional skills and
training?
Admiral Boxall. So they are usually assigned to ATG, afloat
training group, only after demonstrated fleet performance. So
these are our best of our sailors, we look throughout the
fleet, that are--so one may be a boatswain's mate for deck
evolutions, for example, or a quartermaster for navigation, or
an electrician for engineering, those types of sailors.
Mr. Wilson. And these are extraordinarily important people.
And are they fully staffed to perform their duties?
Admiral Boxall. The answer is they are not fully staffed to
their--so in Yokosuka, for example, there are two afloat
training group areas. One is in Sasebo, Japan, and one is in
Yokosuka. The two together work together to try to help ships
from both homeports meet their qualifications.
We have put a lot of money into buying the manpower or
buying the people we need to get those billets. We have
increased from 120 up to 180. Unfortunately, they are only
manned not quite to that level. Actually, they are missing
about 30 to 40 folks on that team due to the fact that it takes
many years to generate an E-7 or an E-8, that senior enlisted
specialist, and the priority goes to putting those specialists
first on ships and then out to the ATGs.
Mr. Wilson. And as I understand it, they have 22 areas of
certification. And is there, again, sufficient personnel with
skills to really determine the level of certification?
Admiral Boxall. So in a perfect planning world, the answer
is we would. If we had all the people we expected and we had
the time to do it, then we probably would. But the reality is
that we are seeing that, because of these compressed timelines,
they have to train in smaller and smaller periods, meaning we
have to send those evaluators to different places to catch up
with the ship. That is a very inefficient model, and it further
exacerbates a challenging certification process.
Mr. Wilson. And in line with that, is it normal to have a
single mission area of certification waived prior to
deployment?
Admiral Boxall. So we use the term--we create this risk
area mitigation plan. Before a certification goes out of
periodicity, because of all these challenges they have--the
time to do it, sometimes there is a specific piece of
equipment, sometimes it is an exercise that can't get done, and
so those ramps have to be put in place for every certification.
They are put in place by the commanding officer of the ship
through their commander, back to the surface force commander,
and then that is reviewed as the operational chain of command.
Mr. Wilson. And is this the same standard that is used in
Norfolk?
Admiral Boxall. The difference in Norfolk is that ships
coming from the mainland United States from the east and west
coast, they work up together with an aircraft carrier, and the
answer is no. They work a plan that gives a 36-month period to
get those qualifications done, but it is a very regimented
piece. All the ships come out about the same time. They go into
a training period for about 6 months: basic, intermediate, and
advanced. And then they work up together, deploy, through the
deployment, come back, and are prepared to surge, if needed,
and then they start the cycle again. That is the Optimized
Fleet Replacement Plan.
Mr. Wilson. And with the number of waivers being provided,
say, per ship, when does it become dangerous for personnel to
be serving on that particular ship?
Admiral Boxall. Well, sir, I think that is exactly one of
the things that we are going to look very closely at in the
comprehensive review, because we do have different models.
Those ships forward that are in Yokosuka are closer to the
operational areas that we deploy ships to. And so the trade-off
of where is the operational risk too great is exactly something
that the fleet commander's interest is focused on today, and we
are looking at the comprehensive review to make a permanent
process change.
Mr. Wilson. And who in the chain of--Navy chain of command
grants the waivers?
Admiral Boxall. So in the chain of command for a risk area
mitigation plan is--all those plans are approved by the surface
force commander. They are the man, train, equip person at
Commander Naval Surface Forces, and they review all those to
ensure that they can do everything they can to make that ship
meet what it can do given the constraints of time or exercise
or the equipment that is not available to help them achieve the
certification.
Mr. Wilson. And then, finally, was the Navy leadership
aware of so many forward-deployed ships' certifications being
waived?
Admiral Boxall. Sir, I think that is something that the
comprehensive review will look at. Again, I defer to the fleet
on this one because--and Admiral Davidson will certainly get to
this as the United States Fleet Forces commander. But I think,
clearly, this is an area that we have to get to the bottom of.
Where is the right amount of risk given our over-focus on
trying to achieve the mission?
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much.
And I now will refer to the ranking member, Madeleine
Bordallo of Guam. And of course, the American people are so
appreciative of the very patriotic, dedicated citizens of that
very vital American territory.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to take
this opportunity to thank the military for providing the great
security that they did for Guam during this exchange with North
Korea. So thank you very much.
It definitely is apparent that training and certification
issues have been building for years within the forward-deployed
fleet.
Now, I have this question for both Admiral Moran and
Boxall. I am concerned that there is a critical deficiency in
the feedback loop. Are ship captains voicing their concerns
regarding the readiness of their crews and the condition of
their ships? If they are voicing those concerns, who is
assuming that risk? And do you feel they have an adequate
understanding of the risks they are assuming and how that
impacts the sailors that are forward deployed? I will start
with you, Admiral Moran.
Admiral Moran. Yes, ma'am. It is a great question. First of
all, it is the obligation of any commanding officer [CO] to
voice concerns, if they have them, with respect to the
responsibility that they have, the obligation that they have to
protect the safety and well-being of their crew. It is not
unusual at all for a CO to express their concerns when there
are manning issues or training issues, resourcing issues, and
those conversations happen on the waterfront all the time.
What I think has happened here, though, to I think Chairman
Wittman's point, is we have allowed our standards of the
numbers of certifications to grow--our standards to drop as the
number of certification waivers have grown. While not against
the rules, they are below the standard that we should accept.
And to Admiral Boxall's point earlier, these are the kinds
of things that the comprehensive review that Admiral Davidson
is going to undertake to look at is where is the acceptable
standard for the number of certifications? And then how are
those concerns by commanding officers being transmitted up the
chain of command and what are they doing in response?
Once the commander's senior approves the waiver, they are
in a sense accepting that risk. They are allowing the ship to
move with a greater number of waivers and a number of expired
certifications. And so the responsibility of our fleet
commanders and our commanders in the operational environment is
to wake up every day, assess the environment and assess the
risk that they are taking from unit to unit across the
waterfront. And so I think we have got a lot of learning to do
on that front to your very good question.
Ms. Bordallo. Well, thank you, Admiral. I think what I
really would like to know, have these captains or commanders
ever come to you with risks? Is there a list somewhere? Or have
they never said anything? That is what I would like to know.
Admiral Moran. Well, are you talking specifically
Fitzgerald and McCain?
Ms. Bordallo. Yes.
Admiral Moran. Yes. So that is part of the investigation--
--
Ms. Bordallo. Or any ship for that matter, but especially--
so you have never received any complaints or----
Admiral Moran. At our level, we would not necessarily
receive direct from the commanding officer. There is a chain of
command that runs through the operational chain to the surface
force commander, and then it would come to us if it were
something that they needed additional resourcing that they
couldn't provide for themselves.
Ms. Bordallo. I understand the protocol, you know, that the
commander should do this. But I just wonder, are they doing it
or are they just avoiding some of these things?
Admiral Moran. I think as Admiral Boxall described, they
are following the process that requires the chain of command to
get involved in the risk mitigation process and the steps to
mitigate any certification that is about to expire. So they are
all taking on that risk by mitigating it with very specific
steps that are outlined that they have to follow through on.
Ms. Bordallo. So, Admiral Boxall, have you--do you have a
list of some of these risks?
Admiral Boxall. I can give you an example of the type of--
the mitigations that are in place. For example, as I described
to Chairman Wilson, the individual steps that it takes, they
may have four steps or five steps in a process of one
particular qual [qualification]. They may have--for example,
they may need to go out, and for a seamanship, they have
achieved, you know, the basic, the second part where they
have--and they get to the point where they meet something, they
didn't have an opportunity to moor to a buoy, for example. That
becomes a mitigation so that they do not certify, but they say,
well, the risk of that ship going and doing a moor to buoy for
what I want them to do probably isn't an issue, and therefore,
that has been addressed operationally by the commander.
Now, to your question whether or not the COs will tell us
when--we expect that, we train them to do that. We go through a
lot of workups when our command qualifications almost
exclusively puts COs in a bad position where we have to ensure
that they will tell leadership when they don't feel they can
meet the demand. That is what we train them to do.
Now, the question, if they are going to go be doing an
operational mission, you know, our sailors are kind of
conflicted because they want to do that mission. And so the
question is, is do they feel it, do they want to do that
mission, do they feel--that is something I think the
comprehensive review is going to get to. Do we have systems in
place that accurately measure the risk independently, and the
operational fleet commander ensures that due diligence has been
done to the level of risk for the level of operation that they
will be doing. And that is what I think we are getting to.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you. I feel that, you know, if
maintenance and training and all of this is lacking, the
commanders, the captains of these ships, should be, you know,
letting everyone know about it, and certainly maybe we wouldn't
be in this fix.
The other question I have is, Admiral Moran, the need to
grow the size of the fleet has often been a point raised when
we talk about the Navy readiness. However, the Navy's proposal
to grow to 355 ships would take decades to be realized, which
means we have to make do with the size of the fleet that we
have in the near term.
With that in mind, what near- and mid-term measures are
being considered with respect to how we crew, train, and
maintain the ships that we have today in order to rebuild and
sustain readiness? How will the Navy prioritize missions or, in
some cases, turn down missions so we don't put sailors at risk
by running the fleet ragged without being properly trained and
maintained?
Admiral Moran. Yes. It is--a key question for Admiral
Davidson's team is to assess how much operational tempo in
places like Japan, Rota, Bahrain, where we have forward-
deployed forces is--reaches a point where we can't do the
maintenance and the training and have the appropriate amount of
time left to do the operations.
On forward-deployed forces like in Japan, the training is
done while you are at sea operating on deployment, for the most
part. There is not dedicated time, as the GAO pointed out, like
we have back here in CONUS [continental United States]. So that
is an issue that both chairmen have raised as a serious point
that we have to study to make sure that when we build the model
for how we maintain and operate ships in the forward-deployed
naval forces, we have sufficient time to do those things.
The size of the force, of course, as I testified last
February and March, does matter. But wholeness of the force
matters just as much, because you can have a large force that
is not whole and you are going to run into these problems. If
maintenance takes longer, it disrupts the schedule. If the
schedule is disrupted, it disrupts the ability to train. If the
training is disrupted, you end up in these places you have
described with expired certifications and so on and so forth.
So we do have to look at this model from the ground up.
But we also recognize, part of the reason why we have FDNF
forces is because we get four times the presence with those
forces than we would if we had them all in CONUS. So, for
example, the fact that we have got one carrier in Yokosuka, it
actually gives us an equal--roughly equal to 16 carriers when
we only operate 10. That is a big difference. Having four
destroyers in Rota, Spain, operating off of BMD [ballistic
missile defense] stations was the principal reason we wanted to
put those forces forward was to get more out of those ships and
not have to rotate as many from CONUS to do those missions.
So all of these things culminate with this notion that we
aren't big enough to do everything we are being tasked to do.
And our culture is we are going to get it done because that is
what the Navy is all about. And sometimes our culture works
against us. And I think we ask the sailors to do an awful lot,
to your earlier point, and perhaps we have asked them to do too
much, and that is what the comprehensive review will look at.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you.
I have just one quick final question for any one of you who
want to answer. Would you say that sequestration might have had
something to do with the lack of maintenance and the training
and so forth, funding not being there?
Admiral Moran. I am on record, ma'am, that that is
absolutely the case. That along with nine consecutive
continuing resolutions, and we are about to hit another one.
Those budget uncertainties drive uncertainty into schedules,
drive uncertainty into maintenance. Our private yards, our
public yards, this is an issue across the board. So the most
useful thing we could have out of Congress right now in terms
of addressing a lot of our readiness concerns is stability in
the budget.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you. And I am looking forward to the
report. And I do want to say, I had a nice conversation with
Rachel before the hearing today. She is one brave woman.
Thank you, Rachel, for being here with us.
And I yield back.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Ranking Member Bordallo.
We now proceed to Chairman Rob Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Chairman Wilson. Admiral Moran,
Rear Admiral Boxall, Mr. Pendleton, thank you for coming before
us today. Thanks for your service, and thank you for your
candor and frankness. It is critical for us to get to the
bottom of this.
Mr. Pendleton, I want to begin with you. In terms of the
material and training readiness of our ships homeported in
Japan versus ships homeported in the United States, is there a
difference in levels of readiness? And which group of ships are
more ready than the other?
Mr. Pendleton. The information that we have in the 2015
report that we weren't able to update shows trends, and the
Navy calls them equipment casualties, it is broken stuff, had
basically been upward for both U.S.-based and overseas-based
ships. The overseas-based ships casualty reports were--and,
again, that is equipment--was more steeply upward. But we
weren't able to update that trend line since then. So I can't
answer it since 2014 when our data ended.
Mr. Wittman. But the recent data you have, lower state of
readiness for forward-deployed naval forces versus those in the
United States?
Mr. Pendleton. We saw more--a more steep increase in
breakdowns for the overseas-based ships.
Mr. Wittman. Admiral Moran, do you agree with GAO's
assessment?
Admiral Moran. I do, Mr. Chairman. There is a--I think this
speaks to what you raised earlier in terms of the--if we are
not rotating those ships back, the older they get, the more
care they are going to need. And that might be an indication,
and it is part of what we are looking at in the comprehensive
review, is these extended periods at FDNF having a detrimental
effect and impact on their material condition the longer they
go. And is the SRF [ship repair facility], the ships force--the
maintenance force in Japan, have enough capacity to deal with
the increased numbers we have put in FDNF Japan in the last 3
years.
Mr. Wittman. Following up on that, in order to maintain
overseas presence, will the Navy increase or decrease forward-
deployed forces in Japan and elsewhere?
Admiral Moran. Well, I think we have all taken a pause
here, for all the right reasons, to figure out whether our
current plan is the right plan. And we are looking forward to
Admiral Davidson's report in 60 days to let us know whether we
need to make adjustments to that plan.
Mr. Wittman. Was the plan prior to this to increase or
decrease that in the future?
Admiral Moran. The current plan--we just completed the
third DDG [guided-missile destroyer] crew DASH [drone anti-
submarine helicopter] ship in Japan that was added to that
force.
Mr. Wittman. Okay.
Admiral Moran. And so I am not aware of additional ones
this year or next year.
Admiral Boxall. The strategic laydown plan as we bring in
LCS [littoral combat ship] in station and rotate them forward
will increase the presence. But, again, that is with the
existing strategic laydown plan. We are going to look at that,
I am sure, as part of this review. Certainly, how we do that
is, you know, a double-edged sword. We know it is harder, more
expensive to maintain, but we need ships forward to be there,
given especially the number of ships we have.
Mr. Wittman. Gotcha. Very good.
Mr. Pendleton, from a financial perspective, is it more
cost effective to homeport ships to the United States or to
forward deploy those ships?
Mr. Pendleton. That is a hard question to answer. I mean,
if you look at it on the margin, it is marginally a little more
expensive to have ships overseas. We did analysis to show that.
I would caution against the rule of thumb, not to differ with
Admiral Moran, because I have heard this many times about you
get four times more presence. That is true from a four-
structure standpoint, right? I mean, one ship can cover down on
what four ships would do. But that is mainly because of the way
they are deployed.
So, essentially, the U.S. based--the OFRP model, the
Optimized Fleet Response Plan model has them going out 7 months
out of every 36. FDNF ships are scheduled to go out 16 months
out of every 24. There is a graph in our report that describes
this. I mean, it is difficult to quantify the impact of that,
sir.
Mr. Wittman. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Pendleton.
Admiral Moran, do you agree that if we had more ships in
our Navy fleet, we could spread the workload more evenly, we
wouldn't be pushed up against the demands and the stresses that
happen when you have ships forward deployed for more than the
planned number of years, extended maintenance periods,
truncated training periods? Give me your perspective about how
the number of ships we have today--and let me put it in
perspective.
If you go back to the 1980s when we had a Navy of 600
ships, we had 100 ships forward deployed. Today, we have 277
ships. We have 100 ships forward deployed. Give me your
perspective about the size of the fleet in relation to where we
are today with forward-deployed naval forces.
Admiral Moran. Well, you just gave the answer for me, Mr.
Chairman. I mean, that math is pretty hard to argue with. And
while Mr. Pendleton and I have had this discussion, you can
argue over the factors, you know, it is four times or three
times, but the fact is, even with that, those ships are a lot
closer to where we might have to fight by being there. And I
think that is a value you can't put a times anything on. It is
clearly--and the message that sends to our allies and partners
in the region is vitally important.
That said, I think you made the point about if we are still
operating 100 ships deployed today at a force that is 40 plus
percent smaller than it was in the 1980s, it is--actually, the
1980s and 1990s, it is going to be a bigger stressor on that
force. So, yes, I agree with you.
Mr. Pendleton. Mr. Wittman, may I add one thing?
Mr. Wittman. Yes, please, please.
Mr. Pendleton. The admiral makes a great point. And it is
important to emphasize that the Navy doesn't create the
demands, the Navy responds to demands. They are being asked by
the combat commanders and the Department of Defense to fulfill
those demands. So it is important to make that distinction.
Mr. Wittman. Gotcha. Very good.
Rear Admiral Boxall, let me ask this. In order to get ships
ready today to deploy, you spoke a little bit earlier about
what they do for material readiness. And what we see is them
going to other ships, cannibalizing parts in order to get ships
ready to maintain that material readiness. Is cannibalization a
systemic problem with surface ships? And is the root cause
sufficient money to procure new parts or stocks of parts to
make sure you have them on hand to keep up with routine
maintenance or expected problems with wearing of parts and
wearing of systems?
Admiral Boxall. Sir, the cannibalization of parts off ships
is something we try to avoid as much as possible. But there is
a lot of reasons why we do it. Sometimes it is the availability
of the part. Sometimes it is the--even when we have the money
to buy the parts is--you know, we have had a lot of money
restored in the last year, especially the 2017 RAA [request for
additional appropriations]--but it takes time to go buy that
part. Some of these are made by very unique vendors, so there
is some pent-up readiness, spare parts, sparing challenges out
there, contracting time to do those things. So we are seeing
some cannibalization increases.
We are also seeing an increase in the C2, C3 CASREPs
[casualty reports]. That to everyone is kind of--a C2 is where
it becomes kind of an attention getter for an operational
commander. C3 means there is a major issue on that ship we got
to get to very quickly. There is kind of two reasons for that.
One is the actual material readiness is degrading and we need
to bring it to the leader's attention. The other reason is is
that in places where we are having a difficult time getting
work done to repair these CASREPs in the yards because of the
demand, the commanders are trying to boost the priority of
their jobs to get them in because it is the best way they know
how. That is a signal back to us also that says, we got to get
something right and get--not just because we want the reporting
to be accurate. We don't want commanding officers--again, we
challenge them with telling us when things are wrong, and when
they do, they send the flare, and we expect them to do that.
But if they are doing it because it is the only way they can
get the response, then that is another issue. And this goes to
the demand that we have specifically in SRF, ships repair
facility, in Yokosuka for is probably the more significant
example.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Chairman Wittman.
We now proceed to Ranking Member Joe Courtney.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Admiral Moran, I
guess--one thing I think might he helpful, for some of us
anyway, just sort of walk through what the investigative
process and reporting process is going to look like over the
next, you know, 60 to 90 to 120 days in terms of the various
efforts that are underway.
Admiral Moran. So immediately after both collisions, any
mishap, we stand up an investigative team. In the case of these
two collisions, in Japan, we put a dual-purpose investigation
together. That includes the normal safety investigation and the
JAGMAN [Judge Advocate General Manual] investigation. Those are
privileged investigations. We do not share that information
publically so we can protect folks from being very open with us
and giving us as much information as possible to determine the
root cause.
So those investigations are stood up immediately by the
convening authority. The convening authority for Fitzgerald was
the commander of 7th Fleet. The convening authority for McCain
was Admiral Swift because of the other investigation going on,
and because we relieved the 7th Fleet commander in the interim.
So those investigative officers are usually--in this case,
are both flag officers. They take a team to the site, to where
the collision occurred or where the--in this case, both ships
were brought back to appear--one in Singapore, one in Yokosuka.
And they go through every aspect of an investigation. There is
a checklist of things you do. We added cyber to that checklist
because of obvious concerns with the fact that everything we
operate has a cyber component to it--networks, gear, radios.
Everything. And so we want to make sure we understand that that
is not--we want to eliminate that as a potential causal factor
to a mishap.
Those investigations can take a week, 2, 3 weeks. And a
report is then passed to the convening authority. The
investigation is not complete at that point. That convening
authority then gets to endorse the report, ask additional
questions, go review the following things--I am not satisfied
with X, Y, or Z. And then the investigating officer has to go
back, look at those things, and provide an addendum to the
report.
And then when commander of the 7th Fleet is complete with
his endorsement, it gets passed to PAC [Pacific] Fleet. And in
the case of Fitzgerald, that is where the current report and
investigation reside with Admiral Swift. He then has a
responsibility to look at the report for completeness and any
findings of fact that he is unsatisfied with and wants further
investigation. He can direct it in that endorsement.
Ultimately, it comes to me, both of those investigations.
So a lot of people think that once the investigating officer
submitted a report, the investigation's done, we should share
that information. But I appreciate the opportunity to explain
that the endorsement process is still part of the
investigation, because we could ask for additional
investigations. So that is on the investigation side. That is
the very tactical level. What happened to that ship? What
caused that particular incident?
The comprehensive review that we directed Admiral Davidson
stand up, 60 days was to go out and look at all the man, train,
and equip functions across the force but with specific focus on
FDNF Japan because of these four mishaps that have occurred in
the last year out there, to look for things like career path
management, for are we doing the right training? Is the model
for how we employ forces in FDNF the right model? Is the
maintenance model that supports it the right model? All of
those things we have kind of already talked about in this
hearing.
And then above that level, the Secretary is doing a
strategic readiness review where he is going to look across the
Department at things that are policy related, resourcing
related. Are we making the right choices? Do we need more
guidance?
And it will be a nice complement to the comprehensive
review, because it will look above where Admiral Davidson is
looking. So we will get a very strategic, operational, and
tactical understanding of what has occurred, why it occurred,
and then what are the things we are going to do to fix those
issues. Does that help?
Mr. Courtney. It is. Thank you.
And I think it is important just for the public and
obviously the families to understand, you know, again, the
different steps. And I am sure, you know, the committees will
be, you know, following it like a box score in terms of, you
know, asking questions.
In your written testimony, which I know you summarized, and
we, you know, appreciate that. But you did make, I thought, a
very powerful statement, which is as follows: No matter how
tough our operating environment or how strained our budget, we
shouldn't be and cannot be colliding with other ships and
running aground. This is not about resourcing. It is about
safety, and it is about leadership at sea.
And, again, just to go back to the process we are in right
now. That is really what the 60-day comprehensive report is
really aimed at in terms of just, you know, why is this a
recurring event in this particular area of the world; is that
right?
Admiral Moran. Yes, sir. But I would also compliment GAO in
this regard, that I think they offer a pretty nice blueprint
for some of the things we need to go look at in terms of trends
and what of those macro trends and what do they imply about the
force readiness in FDNF Japan and across the fleet.
So we will get at some of those as well inside a
comprehensive review. But it is part--a key part of it is do we
have the right training in place for our commanding officers?
Are they getting enough of what they should have to operate in
waters that have become highly congested and contested in that
region. And it is a lot busier than it was just 8 years ago.
And so we need to review that, and we need to review the
training. We need to review the career paths for our officers,
our junior officers, and we need to make sure that we
understand that we have the right manning models in place. And
GAO calls this out in the report about how we establish the
workweek and how do we respond to the manning profiles for
those ships.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you.
Well, and, again, I think that sort of follows up on what
GAO sort of was asking for over the last couple of years as
well.
I guess one sort of footnote I was wondering, you know,
what you would think about this in terms of that statement,
which is that it is about leadership at sea, but it is also
about leadership, I think, ashore as well in terms of just, you
know, the way, you know, decisions are being made. And I have
to say, going back to the Balisle report, which I am assuming
all the witnesses are pretty familiar with--I mean, that was
sort of a key critique that Admiral Balisle had which is that
the lines are kind of blurred in terms of just dealing with
some of the issues we are talking about here today.
I mean, ultimately, you know, we are trying to figure out
who decides. You know, when you have the certification issues
that Mr. Pendleton described, you know, who calls, you know,
time-out and just says, you know, no. You know, as persistent
as the combatant commanders' requests are, you know, when does
it reach a point where--on where does it reach the point where
someone says, you know, that is just not going to be deployed
because it is not safe and it is not ready. And so I am
assuming that that is also a part of the comprehensive review.
Admiral Moran. Yes, sir. And I believe the Secretary is
going to look at that, and a strategic review as well, for
organizational C2, command and control. Who is responsible
precisely for readiness and man, training, equip, and
operational demand in the Pacific Fleet? And how does that get
balanced against the larger fleet that Admiral Davidson is
managing out of Fleet Forces [Command]?
Mr. Courtney. Because even today, I have been a little
confused about, you know, who is the decisionmaker. You know,
is it the operational commander? Is it the, you know, forces
commander?
And I think, again, Admiral Balisle really, I think, nailed
that pretty well in terms of just that being an issue that has
got to be cleaned up. So----
Mr. Pendleton, you described the trend of the increasing
lack of certifications which was kind of a top line in terms of
the number of ships that are out there.
Can you give us some more specific information regarding
the Fitzgerald and the McCain, to what extent do they lack
certifications?
Mr. Pendleton. I would rather defer specific questions
about the Fitzgerald and McCain. They did have missing
certifications, as did most ships. I would like to talk about
the key warfare mission areas, though, if----
Mr. Courtney. Sure.
Mr. Pendleton. And I would give the admirals a chance to
comment on the specific ships with the ongoing investigation. I
am uneasy about that.
I mentioned earlier that 8 of 11 seamanship certifications
of 11 ships in Japan were expired. There were others that had
fairly significant expirations of 7 of 11 ships for fire
support and surface warfare. And for undersea warfare, 8 of 11
ships had expired certifications. Some of those certifications
were several months overdue.
So when we looked at some of the basic certifications, the
things you have to do to, you know, keep track of maintenance
and antiterrorism and communication, that kind of thing, those
were better. They weren't great, but they were better. It
seemed that seamanship stood out as a problem area. And then
when you got over into the warfare mission areas, the kind of
things that you have to do together to be able to do the
missions of the ship. That is when we started--I presume that
those were more complicated certifications to obtain. Honestly,
I haven't been out to talk to them about it. Those were--had
the higher percentage of ships that had expired certifications.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you. Well, again, I am sure my question
is going to be asked at some point----
Mr. Pendleton. Yes, sir.
Mr. Courtney [continuing]. In this process because--and,
frankly, it is a question that needs to be flushed out.
Mr. Pendleton. Yes, sir.
Mr. Courtney. So thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Wilson. And thank you, Ranking Member Courtney. And
truly an indication of how important this hearing is. Our love
and affection for the 17 sailors that we have lost and others
who were injured, we have been joined today and we now turn to
the full chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Mac
Thornberry.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all
for being here. I just want to say I really appreciate the work
of GAO as well as the work of these committee members and our
staff on these issues.
The leadership of the Department in the last administration
denied we had a readiness problem. They said we were just
making it up. And I appreciate the persistence [of] members on
both sides of the aisle in getting the facts. And certainly GAO
has helped with that.
Admiral Moran, I very much appreciate you and Admiral
Richardson's commitment to get to the bottom of this matter. I
looked a little earlier at your testimony from earlier in the
year, and you highlighted the stresses and strains on the force
based on the operational tempo, et cetera. You also testified
that you thought that the deployed fleet was in pretty good
shape, the ships here in the United States were really
suffering.
Based on what you know today, would you revise that
assessment?
Admiral Moran. Mr. Chairman, so--I promised you I would be
frank, and I will be. I personally made the assumption--have
made the assumption for many, many years that our forward-
deployed naval force in Japan was the most proficient, well
trained, most experienced force we had, because they were
operating all the time.
I made the assumption. It was a wrong assumption, in
hindsight. And so obviously, at this point, I would tell you
that what we have sent from CONUS to deploy, I would maintain
my position in the hearing last February.
Clearly, because the models are different and because the
strain on the force in Japan is so evident to us today, we are
going to have to get after that question. I don't know
precisely. And, you know, I am also very anxious to remind the
committee that--the committees that we have to get to the root
cause of both mishaps before we can make a determination.
But the trends that the GAO has pointed out, the trends
that we are seeing in our reporting stats are concerning, and
they do demonstrate a fraying of the readiness on the edges
that we need to address.
The Chairman. Yeah. I would just comment: I don't think we
can look at this too narrowly. This is looking at the surface
fleet. But we know we cannibalize submarines, we have got these
problems and a variety of other problems. And the other
services have it too, by the way, which is a more widespread
problem.
Let me just ask you this. We talk a lot about the stresses
and strains on the people. How come the Navy has not asked for
more people, increased end strength.
Admiral Moran. Manpower, as you know--3 years as the Chief
of Naval Personnel, I have dealt a lot with the manpower
issues. Manpower requires you to project at least 2 years ahead
to be able to know if you are getting to the right numbers. And
I don't want to bring this back to uncertainty in budgeting and
resourcing, but it impacts our ability to assess the right
number of people when we can't predict or project what we are
going to be in 2 years.
So it has an impact. We are always trying to catch up with
manpower, and I think that is part of what Admiral Boxall
described in the afloat training group. We bought the billets 2
years ago. But it takes time to fill those billets, because we
have to go find the right experienced, right folks that have
operated and understand what the challenges are in building and
attaining certifications.
So manpower is a bit more challenging to get precise. And
as you know well, manpower also costs an extraordinary amount
of money. So we are always trying to dial it right. We are not
getting it exactly right, but we are doing the best we can with
the inability to project precisely where we would like to be in
2 years.
The Chairman. Okay. If you are going to be frank, you got
to be frank with us and tell us where we complicate your life
with CRs [continuing resolutions] and the Budget Control Act.
You did that earlier, and I appreciate it. But don't hesitate
to----
Admiral Moran. Sir.
The Chairman [continuing]. Where we are deficient.
Let me just ask this, and it goes right back to something
Mr. Courtney was talking about. It seems to me the hard issue
is--and you talked about it--for a commander in a ship, saying
okay, I have got these problems. I got to ask for a waiver. I
have a risk mitigation plan. You and Mr. Courtney talked about
it a little bigger. But what is going through my mind is, when
do you and Admiral Richardson basically say to the Secretary of
Defense or the President, We cannot do what you expect us to
do? And to us?
You said earlier the culture works against us. It is true
in every service you salute and say, You give us a mission, we
will do it. I don't know if you have any comments on this. But
what is going through my mind is when does a service chief or
vice chief say, We cannot do what you expect us to do with what
you have given us?
Admiral Moran. Sir, there is one very good example of where
we have done that in the past few years. You will recall where
we gapped carrier presence in the gulf for several months. We
have done that twice. And that was a recognition that we were
going to overstress the force and weren't able--we were
concerned about sticking to our plan in Optimized Fleet
Response Plan, which was a 7-month deployment. We wanted to get
there, and we wanted to maintain that.
The world gets a vote. A lot of pressure came up. And we
went down and argued why we thought we needed to stick to those
7-month deployments. And the joint force accepted those gaps.
It was painful. It was a difficult message to send to the
region, but it was necessary to be able to continue to try to
reset the Navy.
The Chairman. We are going to stay after this, ma'am. We
are going to stay after this.
I yield back.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Chairman Mac Thornberry.
We appreciate your leadership.
We now proceed to Congresswoman Susan Davis of California.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. I want to thank all of our chairs
who are up here today and really have provided a lot of good
leadership of walking us through these issues. And thank you to
all of you for being here. And to Ms. Rachel Eckels, thank you.
Thank you for being here on behalf of 17 shattered Navy
families who are grieving today. We appreciate that. And it
helps us to think about your son as well.
I know that we have been talking a lot about all the
problems that have been encountered, how tragic they are. But
one of the things I wanted to ask very quickly was really about
the heroism that was demonstrated on the ships as well.
And I know, in having read almost that minute-by-minute
account of what happened on the Fitzgerald, that there were
specifically two sailors who were mentioned repeatedly for
their heroism. Are they up for awards? Have those been
submitted for recognition? What are we doing to really
acknowledge the heroism as well?
Admiral Moran. Well, I appreciate you asking that question.
There is a difference between heroic and valorous. And
people often get confused by that. And it sounds like you are
not. So I appreciate the fact that the question resolves around
our sailors who operated that night, some who lost their lives,
who gave their lives for others.
It is a command's responsibility to initiate the
recommendation for awards in any circumstance. So as you might
imagine, right now their focus might be elsewhere. But we will
get to those. And when they come forward, we will do the
appropriate recognition that comes from those recommendations.
In addition to that, though, I think you also know that we
posthumously advanced all 17 sailors to the next pay grade in
recognition of who they could have been. So thank you for the
question.
Mrs. Davis. Sure. Thank you. I wonder as well--we have been
talking about whether or not the forward-deployed model is
sustainable and the fact that it is used so much. I wonder as
you are--have looked at a whole host of different areas if you
are feeling comfortable yet kind of ordering those in terms of
priority. Is it the training for sure that has to be different?
One of the things that I recall reading with this is--I
guess at one time it sounds like the initial training, sort of
the foundational training, if you will, was much longer and so
that our sailors really, you know, were intimate in many ways
with the apparatus, with everything that they are asked to do
differently. Maybe you can speak to that.
You know, people who know how to build computers obviously
can respond to the needs of a computer a lot faster than those
of us who just, you know, use it to get our job done. And so is
that true? I mean, is there a real difference in the time that
is spent helping to familiarize our sailors with the ship, with
what they work with. And on the other hand, then, it is driving
under, you know, sub--you know, decent conditions that they
also have to have to be aware of. Where does that fit?
Admiral Boxall. As we look--we are continually modifying
our training methodologies, new technologies we have. You know,
I am sure you have heard, since the Balisle report, we had
taken a lot of our initial training away for our new
commissioned officers. We used to have, up at Surface Warfare
Officer School in Newport, a very long 16-week course.
Since that time, we have restored 15 of those 16 weeks in
either pre-division officer training, when they first graduate
from the academy or ROTC [Reserver Officer Training Corps], or
whatever, and then another 5-week period, 6-week period
afterwards. So we have restored a lot of that. We have got a
lot of the same peak U.S. personnel qualifications standards
that we require every person on every ship to go through.
I do believe that we should be open to looking at all of
this as part of the comprehensive review. And Admiral Davidson,
as a surface warfare officer himself, certainly understands
that, you know, we focused our training a lot on ship handling.
These are very powerful ships. We want to handle them close to
a pier, where we need to be. We put a lot of money and time
into bridge resource management, that team piece. The combat
team and the bridge team working together.
As we go forward, we will look and say, Do we need to do
more of that type of training by individual training. I don't
know the right answer just yet. I am open to the fact that we
may have it wrong.
Mrs. Davis. All right. Thank you. I believe my time is up.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Congresswoman Davis.
We now proceed to Congressman Duncan Hunter of California.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you to both the chairmen and the ranking
members for having this hearing today. Gentlemen, thank you for
being here and for your service.
I will just get down to brass tacks really quick.
You had seven ballistic--you had seven BMD ships forward
deployed. You lost two. What are you going to do in the
meantime for those two? What is going to fill that gap while
they are getting repaired?
Admiral Moran. Admiral Swift has moved ship deployments and
ships around within Pacific Fleet, which is our largest
contingent of naval power. I can't talk about who and what and
when, for obvious reasons. But he has what he needs to replace
the BMD capability that he thinks he needs to have at this
crucial stage.
Mr. Hunter. So we know you had seven. Seven minus two
equals five. Are you planning on going back to seven?
Admiral Moran. Are we replacing the capability we need to
do the operations we have been tasked to? The answer is yes.
Mr. Hunter. Okay. Are you going back to seven ships?
Admiral Moran. The seven ships will be--yes, sir, we will
stay with seven ships.
Mr. Hunter. Okay. So you will have seven ships there.
Admiral Moran. Remember, seven ships--some are in
maintenance and some are--you know, they are not always all at
sea. So we are able to move some of those around to accommodate
Admiral Swift's demand signal.
Mr. Hunter. So you will be replacing those two ships--you
will be replacing the capability of those two ships?
Admiral Moran. We will be replacing----
Mr. Hunter. So you will have the same capability that you
had beforehand.
Admiral Moran. Yes, sir.
Mr. Hunter. How long will that take?
Admiral Moran. As long as it takes.
Mr. Hunter. I mean, how long until that capability gap is
filled?
Admiral Moran. Oh I am sorry. I don't have a specific. I
can get back to you on that.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 97.]
Mr. Hunter. Okay.
Next, I have been seeing some articles that said that
surface warfare officer [SWO] training was cancelled. And I
haven't gotten to the veracity of this. There used to be like a
6- or 7-month SWO school. And there is not. Now it is DVDs
[digital video discs] and on-the-job training. Is that correct,
or no?
Admiral Boxall. It is true at one point. Back in 2003, we
initiated what we call computer-based training. That lasted
about 5 years, 6 years. And then it was--it was removed as a
bad idea for all the reasons it still sounds like a bad idea.
Mr. Hunter. So you don't mind stopping there--we have a
virtual trainer in San Diego for one of the LCS variants that I
went to, I don't know, 4 or 5 years ago. And it is like
basically being in a--like an F-35 trainer or something. But it
is the ocean and the whole bridge. Is that what you call
computer training?
Admiral Boxall. Absolutely not. The computer-based training
that I am speaking of are--think PowerPoints on a CD [compact
disc]. So that is what was kind of given to them. Because we
took away their school, we said go to the ships. Do all your
training there.
As I mentioned to Mrs. Davis, we have restored almost all
of that timing. We do it in the fleet concentration centers
instead of in Newport right now at the division officer level.
And all other training is similar.
But you bring up a great point. Our training for LCS, the
littoral combat ship, that we do in San Diego, and Mayport will
be doing, is the best there exists that I have seen in surface
warfare. And so I believe that we will look forward to--as part
of this review, looking at where we can better use. And we
already do use a lot----
Mr. Hunter. Let me interject, now that you said that. There
is two things. One is called the immersive virtual ship
environment, right? That is the LCS----
Admiral Boxall. Yes.
Mr. Hunter [continuing]. Trainer that we were on the actual
bridge. Then there is a live virtual constructive training,
right? And that is the--that is like an Xbox game where you
can--you can have the ship blow up in places and do things. And
then you can basically see all the outcomes and affect those
outcomes like with an Xbox controller, right?
So my point to this--so after you say that it is great, the
Navy has only fulfilled 40 percent of that contract, and that
is a semi-parochial thing, because it is in San Diego. But I
would think that you would have these virtual trainers for
every bridge, for every deck, because they are so inexpensive
and so much easier to train the guys and have them, you know,
fall in immediately as opposed to doing on-the-job training.
Admiral Boxall. So certainly we are looking at what you
call live virtual constructive is--we kind of use that for our
advanced training when we integrate ships, submarines, aircraft
in a--you know, we don't want to know if it is real, live, or
not. But for the specific type of technologies, we already have
that in other areas, not just LCS. But I do believe that we are
getting some economy with it in that we are getting better
quality fidelity training. And we are doing it at a better
price.
If you will go back and look at those folks that--the same
trainers that criticized computer-based training, the same
types of folks that are leading this other virtual training
that we are doing are like ``This is a best of both worlds.''
Mr. Hunter. Let me get into--I appreciate that. Let me get
in one last thing.
I think we--Mac said--or the chairman said he didn't want
to get too narrow on this. I think there is a lot of things
that we are blaming from forward-deployed model, fleet size,
maintenance schedule. This wasn't a complex--like a suppression
of enemy air defense, or something crazy like that. These are
ships hitting other ships and running aground. And I think it
is easy to obfuscate and say there is all these different
problems as opposed to not seeing a ship on a radar or with
your binoculars out the window. I think it is almost easy to
get too carried away and not be narrow enough in this case. And
I hope we just stay on this.
Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Wilson. And thank you very much, Congressman Hunter.
We now proceed to Congressman Don Norcross of New Jersey.
Mr. Norcross. Thank you, Chairman. And very humbling day
when we go to review something like this. But having been on a
job three times in my lifetime when somebody was killed, it
immediately took me back to the thoughts that people that I
worked with immediately reviewed what it is that they are doing
and how can they prevent something from happening.
So there was the first collision with the fishing trawler.
Then there was the Fitzgerald when seven people were killed.
And I would think that every commanding officer in every ship
would immediately look to see how they are performing so it
didn't happen to them. And then the McCain happened.
So I ask you: What is preventing the next one from
happening? What is being done different today that was being
done different from before the McCain accident and before the
Fitzgerald?
Admiral Moran. Sir, it is a very appropriate question that,
as you--I think you are aware, we conducted an operational
pause around the entire fleet. An operational pause is not
something we take in lightly. This happens in every region on
the globe where we have got ships operating and those tied up
at the pier back home.
It is an opportunity for commanding officers to do just
what you said, to also review what they--lessons learned from
other similar mishaps so that we give them a chance to decide,
is our training where we need to it be? Are our standards as
high as they should be? What do we need to do as a team to
operate better as a team? Because driving ships around is
incredibly team-oriented. And that is one of the things we are
looking very closely at, at both of these investigations.
Mr. Norcross. But the pause happened after the McCain,
correct?
Admiral Moran. Yes, it did.
Mr. Norcross. Why didn't that happen after the first
collision? After the second collision?
Admiral Moran. Sir, it should have.
Mr. Norcross. As individual COs on the ships, wouldn't they
go through a self-evaluation almost immediately to say, What am
I doing and how do I prevent before somebody has to tell me
that?
Admiral Moran. Absolutely.
Mr. Norcross. Do you know if that happened on the McCain?
Admiral Moran. I do not know exact. We are waiting on the
results of the operational pause. We asked every fleet
commander to provide input back on what did they learn from
that operational pause, talked about these things, who actually
took some action, what kind of additional training. The
commander of surface warfare sent out additional types of
training for every commanding officer to use in that with their
representative crews. But I do not have a list for you. I am
not sure if Admiral Boxall does.
No, we do not. But we will get you one when we have it.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 97.]
Mr. Norcross. Finally, what is happening today differently
other than the operational pause? Is there anything during the
operation that you have sent out to all the commanders to say
you need to do this immediately?
Admiral Moran. Yes, sir.
So Admiral Swift has already initiated several steps,
several actions to include a zero base review of the material
condition of every ship at FDNF to find out where they have
issues both in the physical plant but also perhaps with
training and certification. They are going to zero base the
certifications and make sure that all of those get recertified
across the force in FDNF and then expand it into the entire PAC
Fleet.
He is doing a zero base review of the ATG manning. I am not
sure you were here when we talked afloat training group. But
that is the group that goes out to the ships as an independent
team to look at whether that crew is operating to our
standards. And so he is going to probably ask for more
resources for all of those things.
Mr. Norcross. Has any of this immediate review in turn
caused any ship to be returned home or to cease operating
because they were in such violation?
Admiral Moran. Not to my knowledge.
Mr. Norcross. Thank you.
I yield back my time.
Mr. Wilson. And thank you very much, Congressman Norcross.
We now proceed to Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler of Missouri.
Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Thank
you, gentlemen.
So I, like many others here, heard the news of the first
accident. And I was just--I couldn't believe it. Like, how can
this happen? And then to have it happen a second time. It is
both disheartening and disturbing at the same time. And I
wanted to follow up with some of the things--line of
questioning of my colleague, Mr. Norcross, in that what are we
doing now?
And one thing is--I mean, we knew there was a pause. But
did you say that you haven't gotten the results of the pause
yet where we had the USS Fitzgerald in June had the accident.
So you haven't received that yet?
Admiral Moran. The operational pause, ma'am, was taken
after the McCain, not after Fitzgerald.
Mrs. Hartzler. Okay. Okay. But you haven't received those
results either.
Admiral Moran. Not----
Mrs. Hartzler. That is just----
Admiral Moran. No, ma'am. Not all of them.
Mrs. Hartzler. Okay. I want to talk about the number of
hours. Mr. Pendleton, you touched on that. But how much are
sailors expected to work right now? And is over 100 hours out
of line for that? And how do you think the Navy should address
this?
Mr. Pendleton. Yeah. I will defer to the admirals to talk
about how much they are working now.
In 2014, a Navy internal study indicated that the average
sailor was working over 100 hours a week, about 108. And they--
so that meant--there is 168 hours in a week. They had--so they
were working 108 and they had 60 off. So that is about 15\1/2\
hours a day.
The standard workweek, which is founded on a 70-hour base
workweek and ultimately, when they add other duties, is 81, it
is fairly grueling in and of itself. So.
If the Navy was--to the standard that it has, it would--the
sailor would have 81 hours off and roughly--excuse me, 81 hours
on and 87 off.
So just about--just over 11 hours a day is what is sort of
programmed in.
Mrs. Hartzler. So Admiral Moran, is that something that
you-all are striving to get to, those type of numbers?
Admiral Moran. We are examining that through--we have an
organization down in Millington, Tennessee, that is used to go
and look at all sea duty to determine what the right workweek
levels ought to be. We have done this for decades.
We have been pretty consistent with it, but I think, based
on the trend lines that we are seeing in FDNF that we referred
to earlier, it is certainly time to look at whether the
maintenance backload, the work effort that is going on at FDNF
Japan today, by sailors on the waterfront, is reaching a point
where that workweek needs to be modified.
Mrs. Hartzler. Great.
What about--when I first heard about this, I had the
thought that maybe it was cyber. Now, I have read some reports
saying that, perhaps, that has been ruled out. But you did
mention that you are going to--in this study, in the review,
they are going to make sure it is eliminated.
What can you tell us about that? How do you go about
eliminating that somebody took over your systems?
Admiral Moran. It is relatively new ground for us. This is
the first time we have sent a team from our Cyber Command here
in Washington. Commander, 10th Fleet, sent a team over there to
pull as much data from that ship as possible that records data
to see if there were any disruption or interruptions that are
abnormal.
I would also offer to you that just about every three-
letter agency in Washington, DC, has looked to see if there
were indications of an intent or potential acknowledgment of a
cyber attack. We have seen--I have personally not seen any
evidence of that.
But we are not stopping there. The team is in place in
Singapore today, has been for several days, capturing all of
the computer and network information to see if they can find
any abnormalities or disruptions.
Mrs. Hartzler. Okay. Well, I am glad to hear that. And in
some ways it would be easier if you could blame somebody else
rather than taking a hard look at, you know, maybe it is just
that we need more training and it is our own policies and
procedures that need to be addressed.
But the last thing is that--you know, I take very serious,
as do all fellow members, of appointing our young men and women
to your service academies. And the Naval Academy is just
exemplary. But it is always a very sobering, but inspiring as
well, event when I have the parents and the young men and women
come that are going to have this opportunity. But it is
sobering, the fact that I look into the eyes of those parents.
And that while they are very, very proud, many times I see a
little bit of fear in the back too. What is going to happen to
my son or daughter?
And so this is a tough question. But, Admiral, from a scale
of 1 to 10, with 10 being 100 percent confident that, when we
send this young man or woman out to sea, that they are going to
have the resources they need to come home safe, not from an
enemy but from our own equipment and our own readiness.
How confident are you that you would tell me so I can go
home to my parents and look them in the eye and say they are
going to be okay?
Admiral Moran. Tough question to answer. How I would answer
it--how I will answer it is that I have incredible confidence
in this team to learn from this and to get it right. And I
would share that with any parent that has got a son or daughter
who is considering the Naval Academy or enlisting in the
service.
We are not perfect, but we need to strive to be that. And
that is part of what this review is all about is to make sure
we understand what went wrong and fix those things to the best
of our ability to regain the confidence of not only our parents
and their families but our sailors as well.
Mrs. Hartzler. Absolutely. They deserve that. And I know we
all stand ready to partner with you to do whatever we need to
do to get this right so our sailors come home safe.
Thank you.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Congresswoman Hartzler.
We now proceed to Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa.
Ms. Hanabusa. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, gentlemen.
And thank you, Mrs. Eckels, for being here. Thank you very
much.
Admiral Moran, one of the things that you said is troubling
to me. And as you know, the GAO report in 2015 had a
certification and looked at, I think, 22 areas, 11 were found
to be, I guess, expired. And the one that seems to be
appropriate for what happened is the mobility seamanship where
8 certifications out of 11 had expired for about 73 percent.
What I am first curious about is--we have to look at these
two collisions. And they are really with commercial vessels,
large commercial vessels--the tanker for McCain and then, of
course, the container ship for the Fitzgerald.
I am curious as to whether part of the training that they
receive--and you said it yourself in your testimony. It is very
congested. And when--in these areas than they were 2 years ago,
just the amount of traffic. And we all know. The Asia-Pacific
area has just grown, and the amount of commercial traffic that
we are dealing with is different. And it is sort of the tension
between commercial plus military. And I am pretty sure our
ships don't go out and advertise that they are going out.
So what is it that is done in terms of the training of our
sailors as to how to prepare when they are--you know, it is not
whether you can aim the missile correctly or anything like
that. This is different. This is just being in--like on the
freeway. How are you going to manage that? Is that something
that we have sort of overlooked? We are so busy training them
on cybersecurity and radar and everything else that we are
not--we missed the fundamental types of issues like how to
navigate?
Admiral Moran. We are asking the same question. And I think
Admiral--I know Admiral Davidson is going to look very hard at
that in this comprehensive review.
But you are absolutely right. We have moved from a country
road to 395 going south right now in places like the Singapore
Straits, in the Red Sea, and other areas where we need to be as
a Navy.
But it is--I would offer Admiral Boxall, who has been there
and driven ships in that region, maybe he could comment on that
as well.
Admiral Boxall. Absolutely.
The region has gotten much more difficult to navigate.
There is no question. But to your point of, we ought to be able
to do it there, anywhere, all the time. And we absolutely agree
with you there and why we are so committed to getting this
right.
We have--to your question on the certification
specifically. There is two certifications that I think come
most to mind when you look at our ability to safely navigate.
One is MOB-D, mobility--I'm sorry--MOB-N, mobility navigation,
and the second one is mobility seamanship.
The seamanship looks mostly at deck evolutions. Those are
how do you tie up the ship, how do you use boats and things
like that. The navigation one is absolutely critical and why,
if you look, most of those are done first when the ships come
out.
We have a tiering concept now that focuses on those skill
sets. And even in the GAO report, he will let you know that the
tier 1 are less expired than the tier 2, warfighting.
We probably need to look more closely at--there might be a
tier 0, ones that never go out. And these are the types of
things that we need to look very closely. That is what I sense.
I have been in those waters. I had a carrier strike group
there, but I have done it as an ensign off the Singapore
Strait. And I am shocked at the difference between those 30
years in my career. It is like two different worlds.
So this does--you know, we are preparing for a lot of other
missions as we return to sea control. But this, if nothing
else, reminds us of our absolute imperative to get mariner
skills right. We are committed 100 percent to doing that. And
we will do whatever it takes. And that is what--Admiral
Davidson will make that a fundamental part of his
investigation.
Ms. Hanabusa. And I guess--I am almost out of time. But how
do you prepare for that? It is like learning how to drive,
right? You got to be on the road, and you got to do it. There
is no, I guess, replacement for that.
So is there an idea how you are going to train your sailors
to do that?
Admiral Boxall. Absolutely. I have a teen driver also. I
use this analogy. My teen driver next month will be able to
drive anywhere in a car, according to the State. Not according
to his dad. So there is this same type of process. We have got
to give them the basic tools, we have got to train them
together, and someone--and this is what we will look at--has to
ensure that they meet a standard--not just that officer but the
team--to keep that team safe.
It is not just that one radar operator. It is not just the
lookout. It is not just the person driving the ship. It is the
team, the ability to communicate that data to keep situational
awareness and keep that ship out of danger. We owe nothing less
to those sailors.
Ms. Hanabusa. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
The Chairman. And thank you, Congresswoman Hanabusa.
We now proceed to Congressman Bradley Byrne of Alabama.
Mr. Byrne. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen.
I was listening to you, Admiral Moran, about the
difficulties presented to you when we pass a continuing
resolution.
Last July, July of this year, the House of Representatives
passed an appropriations bill. Last year in the appropriations
bill, we appropriated $38 billion for operation and maintenance
for the Navy. The Navy requested a $7 billion increase this
year. And our appropriations bill that we passed in July, we
plussed it up another $500 million above your request.
So the House of Representatives appropriated the money for
fiscal year 2018 that you need for your readiness. The response
we have gotten back today from the United States Senate is a
90-day continuing resolution. Let me read from your prepared
testimony and ask you to respond to that in light of your
statement: Funding at prior year levels through a continuing
resolution not only disrupts the gains, it begins to reverse
them.
Are you telling us that a continuing resolution actually
reverses the gains you are attempting to make in readiness for
the United States Navy?
Admiral Moran. What I mean by that, Congressman, is that
when we cannot put ships on contract for avails
[availabilities], and we were on a recovery path, and we no
longer can stay on that recovery path, we are reverting back to
a different plan--a different ramp.
Mr. Byrne. But that is as a result of a continuing
resolution----
Admiral Moran. Yes, sir.
Mr. Byrne [continuing]. As opposed to actually
appropriating.
Admiral Moran. Yes, sir. That is correct.
Mr. Byrne. All right. So explain in a little more detail
exactly how does a continuing resolution disrupt that or
reverse that? What is it in your process that that causes a
problem with?
Admiral Moran. Well, if you can't put an avail that you
have told the yard that they are going to get on contract,
because there is--the limits of our continuing resolution rules
do not allow us to put those new contracts in place until we
have a budget, then that yard has got to do something with its
workforce. And when we do get the money and go back to the
contract in the next quarter, it is going to be less efficient,
and it is going to be far more--well, I won't use that word,
but it will be more expensive, because they have had to make
adjustments. They have had to move work around. They have maybe
had to let people go and then hire them back.
So those are some of the impacts in disrupting the yards
that are trying their hardest to help the Navy get better in
terms of eating away at that mountain of backlog maintenance
that we all know is out there. And they have done a terrific
job over the last year.
And thanks to Congress's support in the RAA in 2017, we
were able to put $1.6 billion immediately on contract to bring
avails back into 2017, which we were planning now to have to
defer into 2018 only to have them deferred again. So that is
the disruption I am talking about.
And Ron, if you want to add anything to that.
Admiral Boxall. No, sir. That is----
Admiral Moran. He is the guy that pays the money when you
appropriate it. So--it is important.
Mr. Byrne. We appreciate what you both do.
Let me go back to the administration's request for fiscal
year 2018. The administration requested the construction of
nine new ships for fiscal year 2018, and the House passed
NDAA--we passed earlier this summer. We authorized the
construction, and our appropriation bill followed this, for the
construction of 13 ships.
So I think--listening to your prior answers to Mr.
Wittman's questions, I think you would agree with me it is
better for us to be finding the extra money to buy those extra
ships than to stick with what the original request was. I think
you would agree with that.
Admiral Moran. I would agree we need a larger Navy, sir.
Mr. Byrne. Yeah. But to get there, we have to spend more
money.
Admiral Moran. Yes, sir, because the trade-offs we are
having to make, I think, are pretty apparent. And most of those
trade-offs involve readiness, training, and manpower. When you
buy ships or you prioritize ships, those are the trade-offs you
got to make inside a limited control on your top line.
Mr. Byrne. Well, Admiral, there was a lot of talk about
what is your responsibility in all this. Congress bears a
responsibility in all this. If these accidents tell us
anything, it is that we can't wait to build up our fleet. We
need to start now. And so I was proud to vote for that
appropriations bill and our authorization bill earlier this
year.
I am disappointed that the Senate has chosen to send us a
continuing resolution instead of making an appropriations bill.
But I believe you can count on the members of this committee
continuing to do everything we can to provide you with what you
need, not only to defend America but to keep our sailors safe
in doing so.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Wilson. And thank you very much, Congressman Byrne.
We now proceed to Congressman Anthony Brown of Maryland.
Mr. Brown. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I too believe that Congress has a responsibility to fully
resource our armed services. In fact, I will go so far as adopt
and associate myself with General Milley's comment, and I
paraphrase, that continuing resolutions--and I will add
sequestration--is comparable to legislative malpractice.
But also, Admiral Moran, I want to thank you for
acknowledging, and Mr. Courtney pointed out, and I am reading
from your statement, this is not about resourcing. It is about
safety, and it is about leadership at sea.
Something is wrong. In a few months, 2 cruisers, 2
destroyers, 17 lives. I represent the Fourth Congressional
District in Maryland. Three of those seventeen young men were
Marylanders: Alex Martin; Kevin Bushell; and Timothy Eckels,
whose mother was here today.
Something is definitely wrong. In my 9 months as a member
of the House Armed Services Committee, I think I have lost
count at the number of times that senior leaders from all
services have come to this committee and said that ``We are
ready to fight tonight.'' I don't think that these collisions
are consistent with that claim. And regardless of the OPTEMPO
[operations tempo] or the resource constraints, whether you
have a 250- or 350-ship fleet, whether the defense budget is
$550 or $650 billion, we all have a responsibility. And yours
is to manage those resources in a way where readiness is not
exclusive or mutually exclusive with safety.
I thank you for your leadership. And I understand and I
acknowledge that you get that.
So here is my question, and it has been touched on earlier.
Admiral Moran, in your written testimony, you identified
cybersecurity afloat and ashore as a significant readiness
shortfall that was helped by the fiscal year 2017 additional
appropriations. So that is good. You have identified it as a
shortfall. You came to Congress, and Congress helped.
Can you elaborate on the progress that the Navy has made to
improve cybersecurity on our forward-deployed naval forces, and
are the forward-deployed naval force cruisers and destroyers
and their control systems currently equipped to defeat cyber
threats?
Admiral Moran. Congressman, I would appreciate an
opportunity to come and bring that to you in a more classified
setting. It deserves that kind of detail, otherwise I am just
going to gloss over it here and it won't be satisfying.
Mr. Brown. And I appreciate that. And I would hope that,
through committee staff and my personal staff, that we can do
that, because--look, I was on the USS Nimitz 4, 5 months ago. I
went to the command information center. I visited the bridge.
There is a lot of floating technology. There is a lot of
networking--ship to ship, ship to air, ship to shore. It is not
a floating city, it is a floating State. Tremendous
technological assets. And the first thing that came to my mind,
when I read about the first incident of two large vessels
colliding with one another, is how does that happen?
And I think, as my colleague from California said, you
know, sure, we talked about certification and training and
maintenance. We are talking about men and women on a bridge
with equipment and technology to see on the open seas. How does
that happen?
So I would really like to have a better understanding of
the cyber vulnerabilities, our defense, our security, when it
comes to our floating, you know, vessels. I mean, it is--
because I have got to believe--and I am glad to hear that you
are including that in the investigation, that your surface
vessels, your aircraft are just as vulnerable to cyber attacks
that are going to be disruptive in combat and noncombat
operations. I certainly welcome the opportunity to hear more.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Wilson. And thank you very much, Congressman Brown.
And we now proceed to Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New
York.
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to associate
my questions with a follow-up to my colleague Mr. Brown. I too
think it is incredibly important that we receive a briefing in
a classified setting regarding cyber threats to our naval
ships.
But I want to ask you specifically. You mentioned that we
are integrating cyber and network vulnerabilities as part of
our ongoing investigation. How is that happening specifically,
even if it is just to rule out cyber as a potential cause?
Admiral Moran. Specifically, Vice Admiral Gilday, at 10th
Fleet, is our fleet Cyber Command, he has a team that he has
formed that will go--they are a team of experts. I mean, very,
very talented young men and women that will--that are in place
and will use their knowledge of how they would attack to
determine whether we have been attacked. And they will know
where to go look.
This is the first time we have done this. And we are not
stopping just--this is to try to institutionalize doing cyber
as part of any mishap--aviation, submarine. You name it. We
need to go look at it as an order of business and not hand-wave
it to its cyber.
Ms. Stefanik. Yes.
Admiral Moran. That is where we are headed.
Ms. Stefanik. Yes. I agree with that, and that leads to my
question. You mentioned that you are institutionalizing this
process. This is the first time that cyber has been integrated.
Is that servicewide? Is that going to be a part of any future
investigation?
Admiral Moran. Yes. Absolutely.
Ms. Stefanik. Can you describe other activities the Navy is
institutionalizing, like Task Force Cyber Awakening and
CYBERSAFE, to up our game when it comes to protecting our
critical tactical platforms from cyber threats?
Admiral Moran. I am sorry. Can you repeat the question?
Ms. Stefanik. Sure. What other activities is the Navy
institutionalizing, such as Task Force Cyber Awakening and
CYBERSAFE, to increase our cybersecurity when to comes to
protecting our tactical platforms?
Admiral Moran. Yes. Great question.
So those efforts weren't started and completed. We continue
to work through several of the--several of the discoveries
during tests for Cyber Awakening, as an example.
One of the journeys that we are on right now that our CNO
[Chief of Naval Operations], John Richardson, has really
brought forward is this notion of understanding all of the
digital connections that are in--that are resonant within every
system we have out there today. And they are not connected as
well, and we are not able to operate them as effectively as we
should.
That is also driving--when you dive into it that deeply,
you also realize that there is a cyber component to trying to
make the Navy more digitized, because it could become
vulnerable more quickly unless you protect that--those digital
databases and the ability to do analytics and those sorts of
the things.
So, again, when we come over to brief you on the classified
level, we will show you what we did with the money that
Congress gave us at the end of this year, in fiscal year 2017,
where we applied it, to what defensive systems and protections
that we needed to do.
And in some cases, it is fundamentally basic things like
shifting to the new Windows across the board where we are
getting commercial protection that comes with that product as
opposed to living off of older Windows versions on older gear
that are very vulnerable without that protection.
Ms. Stefanik. Sure. Just to use that example, there is a
sense of urgency to this. Technology is changing. If an example
is making sure that you have the updated version of Windows, we
need to do better in terms of addressing this.
Admiral Moran. And the Department of Defense has mandated
that across the services. All of us are responding to this. We
have a deadline; it is coming up. And we are all--I can only
speak for the Navy, but we are on track to meet that deadline
on things as basic as what you just described.
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you very much, Admiral Moran.
And I yield back.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Congresswoman Stefanik.
We now proceed to Congressman John Garamendi of California.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to thank my colleagues for delving into this
issue of cybersecurity.
Admiral--Admirals--and we thank you for all of your service
and for being on top of this. The loss of life is of great
concern to all of us, and our hearts go out to all the
families.
The question of cyber is much more than hacking. The single
point of failure of most everything is GPS [Global Positioning
System]. I assume you will be looking at the downgrading of GPS
that can occur rather easily, particularly in those areas where
there happens to be other folks around. So I would like to have
that as part of that review.
Also, the electronic equipment, not specifically with
regard to hacking or cyber but, rather, its validation that is
it actually working as it is supposed to, navigation equipment,
all of the radar and so on, I assume that the review will be in
that area as well as the cyber area. Is that correct?
Admiral Moran. Yes, sir. That is correct.
Mr. Garamendi. Okay. And I would suggest that the companies
that built that equipment not be the ones responsible for
certifying that it is actually working. You might think about
that.
Also, the commanders, the commanding officers of the ship,
how often are they moved from one ship to another? What is the
length of time that they spend on any one ship?
Admiral Boxall. As a commanding officer?
Mr. Garamendi. The top three officers.
Admiral Boxall. Okay, top three officers.
So the executive officer on the destroyers--right now, we
are on a model that has the executive officer fleeting up to be
the commanding officer. And the intent was to build continuity
to ensure that there is a clean turnover. So that tour is about
18 months. There is a short break in the middle to kind of get
them a little bit of head-clearing, and then they go back to
the same----
Mr. Garamendi. On the same ship or to a new ship?
Admiral Boxall. On the same ship.
Mr. Garamendi. And the commanding officer?
Admiral Boxall. The commanding officer, after they leave,
will go ashore, usually, or to another at-sea job. And then
they will be up for a major command job on a cruiser, for
example, or a big-deck amphib or a major command-level ship.
Mr. Garamendi. I have a general concern about the way in
which the military moves people from one job to another within
very, very short periods of time. The concern is that it was
the previous guy that is responsible and left the problem and
it is not really solved. I have seen this in other areas. I
would like to have a fuller discussion about whether that cycle
is too fast and nobody is around long enough.
I am pleased to hear that the executive officer stays with
the ship. Or not?
Admiral Boxall. Yeah, the executive officer usually stays
with the same ship. Sometimes there is an anomaly, but for the
most part--but we are looking at the whole training model, not
just the commanding officer level, but also at the division
officer level we do rotate ships. There are advantages to doing
it, in that you get different perspectives. There are also
disadvantages, in that you lose continuity on that ship.
This is something that Admiral Davidson, we believe, will
address as he looks at the training paths of those that
ultimately command those ships. Command of those ships is
critical, and obviously we want to make sure that they have the
most qualifications they can have.
Mr. Garamendi. When the final reports come back, I assume
we will have another hearing on the final reports, and that
will be informative.
My final question really goes to a piece of testimony
earlier having to do with virtual training facilities. You
specified the LCS as a successful virtual training program. I
assume that is a bridge that is virtual.
Could you go into that for the next minute and talk a
little bit more about that and how that might be expanded if,
in fact, it is as good as you say it was?
Admiral Boxall. Well, again, we are looking at the feedback
from people using it and then from the fleet. So this is not
all done virtually. We still do real, live, similar to how a
pilot will get simulator time. What is different is that we can
create a virtual environment. We don't have to have the level
of feel and touch that an aviation helicopter or fixed-wing
aircraft will have to use.
So this technology is out there. The sailors are
comfortable with it; they understand it. And perhaps we can use
that to continue to improve these skills where we may not have
the dedicated at-sea time to do so while the force is working
very hard to meets its commitments.
Mr. Garamendi. Those virtual experiences have proven to be
very successful in the airframe operations. And further
discussion on that would be useful, and your report, I suppose,
will deal with that as a potential training asset.
With that, I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Congressman Garamendi.
We now proceed to Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin.
Mr. Gallagher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for joining us today.
I want to revisit two lines of questioning, hopefully
without being repetitive. I think one of my colleagues
mentioned the 2015 GAO study that found the Navy was only able
to meet 44 percent of requests from combatant commanders
[COCOMs] to meet operational requirements. At the time, the
Navy indicated that it would require over 150 more ships to
fully meet all COCOM demands.
So my question is, has that number changed? If so, what is
the number now? And what fleet size would that correspond to?
Admiral Moran. Sir, I do not know whether that number has
changed. It has probably gone up, not down. So I will do some
research and get back to you, if that is okay.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 97.]
Mr. Gallagher. Sure.
Admiral Moran. Thank you.
Mr. Gallagher. Yeah, I just think, obviously, the reviews
are underway, and we really appreciate your commitment to
getting a thorough understanding of what happened. But I
suspect, when the dust settles, the simplest conclusion will
remain, that we have placed an enormous amount of stress on the
fleet.
So I think the question we need--and I know that Chairman
Thornberry alluded to it earlier--the question we need to
answer is, what is the right number of ships you need in order
to avoid placing that stress on the force and avoid tragic
accidents like that?
And I think you have a variety of people here on this
committee that are committed to making an argument for that
number. And I think we forget that the 355 number that we throw
out so often is indeed a minimum based on the requirements that
the COCOMs are seeing out there.
Separately, there was a talk about the 10-year hiatus for
surface warfare officers and training, and I would just like to
dig a bit into what appears to be the relative deprioritization
of surface warfare in the Navy.
It has been about 10 years since the SWO commanded the
Pacific Fleet and 9 years since the SWO commanded the 7th
Fleet. Isn't the Navy's traditional policy to rotate these
commands so that the standards are upheld amongst the surface,
submarine, and aviation communities?
Admiral Moran. At this level, at the three- and four-star
level, we pay less attention to what the community device you
are--and what community you are from than we do at experience
level, judgment. And, you know, in very simple terms, best
athletes for the job.
It, of course, would be ideal if we had an even spread all
the time, but that often gets disrupted by some of the other
issues we have been dealing with here for the last several
years that I think you have read about that have put a real
squeeze on the talent level that is available because of
ongoing investigations. So hopefully that ends here real soon
and we will be back to more of a steady state.
Mr. Gallagher. Sure. So it would be fair to say that, if we
have concerns that there are no qualified surface warfare
officers available to relieve the vice admiral--I forget the
last name, apologize--from your perspective, that is less of a
concern because the particular heritage of that officer, their
community, matters less than their overall fitness.
Admiral Moran. Yes, sir. Admiral Sawyer, who we put into
7th Fleet, he was already designated to go there. This--clearly
near the end of his predecessor's tour, so he was already
confirmed by the Senate.
But here is an officer, a submarine officer, that operated
extensively in 7th Fleet as not only a commander but as a
junior flag officer, but also as the deputy fleet commander in
PAC Fleet, so enormous experience and credibility in that
region. So, I mean, we looked at that much more than we did the
fact that he was a submariner.
Mr. Gallagher. Is it not true, though, that if you look
more broadly at Navy leadership from a historical perspective,
there is a relative dearth of surface warfare officers at
present at the highest levels of service?
Admiral Moran. Well, we have Admiral Davidson and Admiral
Howard as two four-stars leading our Navy in critical places
around the force. We have three-stars in very important places
throughout the Navy. So I wouldn't call it a dearth,
Congressman, but I would call it maybe less than our average
for this point in time.
Mr. Gallagher. Got it. And, finally, I just would like to
echo what my colleague from Alabama said about our
responsibilities here in Congress to provide you with the funds
that you need in order to do your job. And, you know, in light
of the job that we are asking your sailors to do every single
day--and, you know, a lot of this goes unnoticed, right?
Because the majority of what you do in uniform is actually not
high-end combat; it is waging peace.
I just really feel that we need to step up to the plate and
do a better job here in Congress to end the defense sequester
and begin the process of rebuilding the Navy. So thank you,
gentlemen, for being here today. This is important.
I yield.
Admiral Moran. Congressman, if I could, just for the
record, Admiral Kurt Tidd, a surface warfare, is commander of
SOUTHCOM [U.S. Southern Command], a combatant commander as
well, sir. Thank you.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Congressman Gallagher.
We now proceed to Congressman James Langevin of Rhode
Island.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, gentlemen, I want to thank you for your testimony
today.
The incident involving the USS Fitzgerald and the McCain
were tragic events, and I wish we had never gotten to this
point. And my thoughts and prayers are with the families of
those who were lost and those who were injured, and we are all
anxious to get to the bottom of what happened.
But this appears to be a symptom of a larger problem. I
know we have touched on this in many different capacities here
today, but the U.S. Navy--it is my understanding of all of
this--has moved training out of the schoolhouses and, instead,
embraced an on-the-job training model, which has left sailors
really to operate with little sleep and without a singular
focus on learning.
So, you know, in an attempt to meet a high OPTEMPO demanded
by the Navy, which only continues to increase, we have made
structural choices that have left us with insufficient shore-
side training infrastructure and really hindering our ability
to keep our sailors safe, in my view.
Would you agree with this assessment? And how do you
believe we can reinvigorate training initiatives to make sure
that any incidents such as these are not of our own making.
And I guess----
Admiral Boxall. Yes, sir. I will take that, if you don't
mind.
The Surface Warfare Officers School, obviously, in the
great State of Rhode Island, is an absolute core place where we
achieve our competencies, from division officer all the way up
to major command and further.
We are going to look at that training. As I said before, we
did take the schoolhouse training for division officers out of
Surface Warfare Officers School and move them to a surface
warfare officers school in the homeports where they are going.
So we took that 16 weeks of training we used to go when I was
an ensign versus the 16 weeks we do in a 9-plus-5 and -6 model
we are on right now.
So, to your point of what else can we do, I think the
review will look at that, whether we need more improved and
more capacity of training in the schoolhouse, whether it be on
the waterfront or up in Surface Warfare Officers School. And,
you know, again, I think we will have more information when we
see the outcome.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you.
Mr. Pendleton, do you have anything to add?
Mr. Pendleton. Not really, sir. That is not something we
looked at specifically, the schoolhouse training.
What we pointed out was, respect to the forward-deployed
naval forces, is they were just so busy that they didn't have
dedicated training time. So most folks arrived--we heard when
we went on ships and did focus groups that the fact that
sailors would arrive green and untrained put a burden on the
sailors that were already there. And we heard that
consistently.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you. Admiral Moran and Admiral Boxall,
I also fear that the current OPTEMPO is not sustainable but
that we seek to sustain it to the detriment of training and
certification requirements.
Now, recent reports indicate a large margin of separation
when it comes to training and certifications between U.S.-based
cruisers and destroyers versus forward-deployed naval forces.
So were there any indications or warnings that the forward-
deployed naval forces' OPTEMPO was leading to a train-on-the-
margins scenario and not meeting qualifications or
certification standards for key surface warfare systems?
Admiral Moran. Sir, it is a great question and one that
Admiral Davidson will absolutely look at in his comprehensive
review. What did we miss? What should we have seen earlier to
address them in order to prevent the trends that were already
starting earlier with Antietam, for example, and Lake Champlain
that preceded both the Fitzgerald and McCain?
So we have to get after this question about why didn't we
see these trends earlier, why didn't we take more action much
earlier than now, for example. So it is a fair question and one
that Admiral Davidson will look at.
Mr. Langevin. Good.
Well, I know that the review is also looking at any
potential cyber vulnerabilities. I have had a chance to speak
directly with Admiral Gilday about this from 10th Fleet,
something that first came to mind when I heard of the incident.
I hope that is not the case, but I also think that we are going
to get to the bottom of the training issues.
So I appreciate your due diligence on the review, and we
are going to continue to focus on this as well.
Thank you, and I yield back.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Congressman Langevin.
We now proceed to Congress Rodney Davis of Illinois.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks
to all the members, especially Chairman Wilson and Chairman
Thornberry, for allowing a non-committee-member to be here
today.
And I really want to say a special thank you to the HASC
[House Armed Services Committee] staff. They helped connect my
office in a very difficult time for one of the families in my
district after the loss of Petty Officer Logan Palmer, one of
the sailors on the USS John S. McCain.
That is why I am here today. I am here because I appreciate
what my colleagues on this committee are doing to urge the Navy
and urge our military to investigate what caused these tragic
accidents and what caused the tragic accident that took the
life of my constituent, Mr. Palmer. We are never going to
forget the service that our sailors have provided, or their
sacrifice. And we are praying for all their families and
friends and also the shipmates during this difficult time.
And it is up to us as Congress to allow you the opportunity
and the resources to fully investigate why these accidents have
occurred. I really, getting here at the end of the hearing,
have been able to listen to so much and so many questions that
I would have had, be it the issue on the possible cyber attack
that my colleague from Missouri brought up, be it the
sequestration issue and the funding issue that we in Congress
need to do a better job of addressing so that our military,
each and every one of you who are leading our young sailors,
you have the resources that you need to not only investigate
what happened but also to ensure that it never happens again to
any of us and any of the families that have been affected.
So we want to provide you those resources, and we want to
do a better job on our end. But throughout this process--which
was a first for me, to be so engaged with a family who lost one
of our heros. And I want to ask you about what maybe you can
do, as a military, to do a better job of serving those families
during these difficult times.
I didn't have the best experience working with the Navy.
And, again, very appreciative of the HASC staff for their
intervention. And the families didn't have the best experience.
While the personnel was very good at getting answers, it just
seemed like it took a lot longer than what I would have
imagined. It was very bureaucratic. And just getting
information on Logan took too much time, and it involved way
too many people.
What can be done or is actively being done to help the
families have a better, more streamlined process when tragedies
like this occur? Because, again, my first experience, the
Palmers' first experience, while it was good, could have been a
lot better.
Admiral Moran. Sir, I don't think there is anything that
anybody could have said today that would have made us feel any
worse than to hear that a family member experienced something
less than the sufficient amount of service that we owe those
families. So I will take that on personally, and I promise you
that we will fix whatever issues came up with the Palmer
family. But I will tell you that we would all appreciate your
personal involvement in helping get some of the information for
the Palmers.
We know we fell short on transportation issues. We know we
fell short, in some cases, on announcing that missing sailors
had been found before we got to the families. We know that the
social media environment that we are in works inside of our
ability to move information around to those who need it first.
Our focus has always been, ever since both of these
tragedies, has always been, first and foremost, the families.
And we thought we were doing a pretty good job, but from time
to time we didn't meet our own standard. And I am afraid to say
the Palmers were one of them, and I regret that. I apologize
for that.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Well, I appreciate your regret. I
appreciate your willingness to work together. Let us help you
make the steps even better. I don't want to see any family not
get any answer. Granted, I know you got a lot of good people
working this case.
I will tell you, I was probably most concerned that an
outside organization had to pay for the flights of the family
to go see their son's body returned to Dover Air Force Base.
Admiral Moran. It wasn't that they had to pay for it,
Congressman; it was that we did not get the government to move
as fast as we should have.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. So the government does have a
process then.
Admiral Moran. Yes, sir, they do.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. That is not a requirement, to go to
an outside----
Admiral Moran. No, sir, it is not.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. So, yes, thank you for agreeing to
do a better job to make sure those families, who may not live
as close as others----
Admiral Moran. Absolutely.
Mr. Davis of Illinois [continuing]. So they have the
opportunity to get to that point to see their loved one return
for the sacrifice that that entire family has made. So I
appreciate----
Admiral Moran. And for them to be with the loved ones and
crewmates of their fallen sons and husbands in the location
where that crew is going to memorialize their falling. And we
are doing that.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. I appreciate your service, I
appreciate your recognition of the issues, and I look forward
to working with you.
Admiral Moran. Thank you.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Wilson. And thank you, Congressman Davis, for your
compassion for the family.
And we now proceed to Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty of
Connecticut.
Ms. Esty. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, again, I want to thank the committee for their
allowing my colleague Mr. Davis and I to join in today's
proceedings.
I, too, lost a constituent, Navy sonar technician third
class Ngoc Truong Huynh, on the Fitzgerald. It was his
birthday, and the family basically surmised by checking his
Facebook feed, and when the responses to his birthday wishes
stopped coming, they began to worry. And that is the era we
live in now. That is the era we live in now.
So my focus, also, as a member of the Veterans Committee,
is thinking about what we owe those who serve. And so my focus
is very much going to be on the human side, not so much the
equipment but rather the human side, because much of what has
been reported on today has to do with training, with
leadership, and a culture of safety.
And I say this as a daughter of a Navy man, who insisted on
great discipline in our household. And it does make me think
about what we can do better, as so many of my colleagues have
said, that we owe it as Members of Congress to provide you with
those resources. We need to ask you to say when we are asking
too much with what you have and to be willing and able to say,
``We cannot do what you are asking us to do without putting the
lives of men and women at risk.'' And we need to know that from
you. And I understand that is against your culture, but it is
required because of the commitment these young people have made
to this country.
So that is unfair, that we put you in that position. And
sequester and continued resolutions has made that worse. But it
makes it all the more important that you stand up for them and
for this country and for their safety. So that is one.
I look at the safety culture and think about the importance
of leadership from the top. These incidents, I note, seem to
have occurred in the wee hours of the morning. I wonder if that
is an overreliance on equipment and technology with very young
sailors who may be concerned and not have the experience with
how heavy the shipping lanes are.
So I think the heaviness of the shipping lanes suggests we
maybe need to do different training. But also a safety culture
of, if you have any doubt whatsoever, anything that seems not
right, you must immediately notify right up the chain of
command. Do not worry that you are waking someone up. Do not
worry that you have never seen this before and it is your
second week on the job.
So I think if you have a safety culture, that might empower
our young sailors, and then go to the training of those young
sailors. The notion that they are working hundred-hour
workweeks is really terrifying for them and for us. And it
makes me think about what happened in medicine when we looked
at the death rates with new interns who are working in
hospitals and working very long shifts. It got so bad that
States began to pass laws prohibiting longer workweeks.
So, again, I think that is something you need to look at,
the capacity of people to operate under pressure with those
kinds of hours. It is simply unfair to them, it is unsafe, and
it is wrong. And we need to do our job with providing you the
resources. But, again, we can learn from other areas, like
medicine, where, again, you are talking about young people who
are working very long hours and being given enormous
responsibility. So I hope we can learn from ``The Checklist
Manifesto'' and other areas which could help save lives here.
So those were really kind of my thoughts about what we can
do but also what we may all collectively need to do to protect
the lives of these young people. And I think about this as the
aunt of a nephew who is training to be a SEAL [Sea, Air, and
Land teams] and is in process of that right now; of the young
men and women who come to us, who we are honored, as colleagues
have mentioned, to nominate to the academies, who hope to make
their way to the ranks of commanding officers. And we owe it to
all of them to do a better job.
So I hope you heard from all of us, we are not looking to
assign blame, but we are looking to correct this as rapidly as
possible, and then to be honest with the American public about
what those demands are and what resources are necessary to meet
them.
So, again, I want to thank you for your service, but it is
urgent that we address this immediately. And we owe it to the
families who are here today, the families who were unable to
join, and the traumatized shipmates of those, and those who
went back into those ships to try to retrieve their friends and
their comrades.
So, again, thank you very much. And, again, many thanks to
the HASC committee for their hard work in assisting us, those
of us who are not on the committee, in trying to do our jobs
for our constituents.
Thank you, and I yield back.
Mr. Wilson. And, Congresswoman Esty, thank you very much
for your positive comments and input today.
Two brief questions from me, and then we will proceed to my
other colleagues here, and then we will be concluding.
But, Mr. Pendleton, how do you believe that you be will be
able to determine when the services are achieving readiness
recovery?
Mr. Pendleton. Mr. Chairman, we are doing a broader body of
work essentially monitoring the readiness recovery efforts. We
made a series of recommendations in September of last year,
basically saying that the Department of Defense needed a
readiness rebuilding plan that matched the priority it was
claiming that it had that said what the goals were and when
they would be achieved and what it would take in terms of money
and time, and that there needed to be agreement on it from the
top.
Because what we saw when we looked at it in depth was all
the services were pursuing individual plans in zeal but not
necessarily being pulled together in a departmentwide plan. So
what we are looking for, is it clear what the goals are, and
how are we doing against those goals?
In the case of the Navy--Admiral Moran mentioned it--they
had a glide path that got them to close to where they wanted to
be at some point in the future that was classified. And our
concern was the glide path didn't necessarily constitute exact
goals. So, he mentioned earlier, this is going to knock them
off the glide path.
So being able to articulate the impacts of the decisions
that you make if you continue with demands and that kind of
thing, that that is the way we are going to look at, sir.
Mr. Wilson. Well, again, thank you. And I just have to
reiterate again how professional and independent your reports
have been, and so helpful for Members of Congress and our
military.
And speaking of a plan, Admiral Moran, do you believe that
we have an effective plan for readiness recovery, to erase the
maintenance backlogs, to restore the manning shortfalls, to
allow the Navy to meet the critical operational requirements,
again, without risking the lives of our sailors?
Admiral Moran. We do have a plan. We think it is an
appropriate plan for recovering all the areas you just talked
about--buying down the maintenance backlog, getting our
manpower in the right place. We must have some stability in the
budget so that we can follow through on those plans. If we are
constantly changing it year after year, quarter to quarter, it
makes it difficult to assess our baseline.
So I think we have a much better understanding of what it
is going to take to recover in CONUS than, clearly, we
understand what it is going to take to recover in FDNF. And
that is what we have to get after.
Mr. Wilson. And with the accidents, is the technology
available to maintain and determine the perimeter of vessels so
this won't happen again?
Admiral Moran. We have a lot of systems that do it,
contribute to the information that is available to the team on
the bridge and CIC [combat information center] and elsewhere.
What we have to do is really examine--and Admiral Boxall has
talked about this--the integration of those systems and do we
have all of that information being provided to multiple sets of
eyes on that bridge at any given time.
Mr. Wilson. Well, that is so important for Navy and
military families.
Chairman Rob Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral Boxall, I want to go back to you and get some
definition about time versus resources.
The Navy asked for a billion dollars to be reprogramed into
maintenance and modernization accounts and now says that in
2018 those accounts will be fully funded. We know what happens
with a CR.
But let me get to a more fundamental question, and that is
time versus resources. Understanding those situations, are we
in a situation of having the proper resources going forward to
get all of the modernization and maintenance work done to make
sure we have the full capability so that mission certifications
can be gained on time? And do we have the time to do that?
So I just want to get your perspective on time and
resources and where you see it going forward to get to where we
need to be, based on the inadequacies we see today.
Admiral Boxall. Sure.
Time is critical. I think you heard that over and over
again today. If we don't have the time to train, we don't have
the staff to maintain the ships to the level we need, then the
maintenance goes longer, the time to train gets shorter,
OPTEMPO goes up, and we get into this spiral that is not
healthy.
Having said all that, we also need to maintain a good path.
I mean, those yard periods are for a reason. We are restoring
that readiness. We have put a lot of capacity in there because
we are trying to restore that readiness. Trying to do them both
at the same time is having some of the effects of trimming that
time available.
So we need to be modernized as well. As we look at choices
between readiness and force structure, a very key element of
that is modernization. And year after year, we unfortunately
have to make the difficult choice to delay modernization, which
goes to our capability to stay up with the threats as we see
them around the globe.
I do worry about that, and that is something that we will
continue to press forward as we continue to submit our budgets
to restore readiness. It also includes that keeping up not just
the capacity but the capability that is achieved through
modernization.
Mr. Wittman. Yeah.
When you talk about capacity and capability, let me talk
about it in a different sense, and that is in the yard capacity
and capability.
When we talk about time, time is an element for the Navy
when you have the capacity in the yards to get the work done.
Then it is a matter of managing where things go. But doesn't it
get to a point where there is only so much capacity and
capability in the yard, to where time is then not manageable by
the Navy because you just don't have enough capacity to get the
work done? And when that work stacks up, then there is no way
that you can pipeline.
And give me a perspective about where things are with the
Navy, where we are today, and the capability and capacity in
our yards.
I am going to ask you in a larger perspective. I know that
your OPNAV [Office of the Chief of Naval Operations] duties are
there with the surface Navy.
But, Admiral Moran, I will get you to pipe in too.
That becomes a bigger issue when it comes to what we see
with submarines and other ships in the force. It kind of
cascades.
But, Admiral Boxall, give me your perspective from the
surface Navy standpoint. I will get Admiral Moran to add in the
larger perspective of the Navy, because I do think it has some
reverberations there with surface Navy work.
Admiral Boxall. Absolutely, sir. As you know, all surface
ship availabilities and maintenance are done in the private
shipyards. They want stability, as you know, and to get
stability you have to have the money there and the commitment
to doing that maintenance and modernizations that we--so, right
now, we are putting money into that, and we are seeing this
kind of lagged response and delay in building the workforce,
delay in having the available private shipyard workers, and,
oh, yeah, the quality of the people in those shipyards. They
are all competing for the same workers.
So, as the workload goes up, good news story that we are
restoring readiness. But we can't do it quickly enough, and we
are going to get bogged down, which will put more pressure on
those forces.
I think that is what you were hopefully trying to get at.
Mr. Wittman. Yeah, it was.
And then, Admiral Moran, I wanted to get your perspective,
because we are starting to see some of that reverberate over
into ramping up there also with the public yards. And then
there is a crossover, because the public yards and the private
yards are competing for the same skilled workforce. So then,
Admiral Boxall, that complicates your issue in getting
throughput through the private yards.
Admiral Moran. Yes, sir. It is a tough problem just in the
talent that we have across the yards. But on the public side,
it is the only place we can do nuclear work. So it is the only
place you can----
Mr. Wittman. Yeah.
Admiral Moran [continuing]. Build and fix carriers, the
only place for----
Mr. Wittman. Uh-huh.
Admiral Moran. Yes, sir. Go ahead.
Mr. Wittman. And I think as far as the whole scope of this
goes, one of the things we have seen both with the Secretary of
the Navy's office and within the Navy is a roller-coaster ride
on throughput of work. And if we have that roller-coaster ride,
we won't be able to maintain capacity and capability to get the
work done.
So even if we do have the will and the resources and then
we make the time for this to happen, if we don't have the
workforce there or if we ask the workforce to spin up with
thousands of workers and then spin down by sending them out, we
are going to be in a very, very difficult situation.
So I am hopeful that, as you all look at this, both in
Admiral Davidson's view of what is going on, the internal
review, as well as Secretary Spencer's review, that it also
carries over into the courses of action to correct this and
seeing what do we do to make sure that there is that capacity
there that is sustainable in yards public and private.
Admiral Moran. Yes, sir. That is a critical element of
these reviews, no doubt.
Mr. Wittman. Yeah. Very good.
Let me end with one additional question for Rear Admiral
Boxall.
In each of the two collisions for Fitzgerald and John
McCain, these were happening during routine operations. And
what we see around the world today--and you all have alluded to
that--that there are over 50,000 vessels transiting in the
oceans every day. That is a lot of traffic out there. Even
though the oceans are big, that is a lot of traffic. And as you
point out, too, much of it is necked down into some critical
areas--Tokyo shipping lanes, Straits of Malacca, Straits of
Hormuz, all those areas where the Navy operates on a daily
basis.
What we see, too, is we have the ships that we interact
with that are much less capable as far as the capability of
their sensors, their situational awareness. Our warships, the
best in the world, lots of sensors, lots of capability.
Admiral Boxall, as you know, and going to your background,
being the former Shiphandler of the Year there, Pacific Fleet,
you have firsthand experience about what it takes to
successfully handle a ship. Based on your experience, give me
your perspective on where we need to go in training within that
realm today and what we need to do to make sure we are
developing the best mariners for our surface force.
And I know you spoke a little bit about that, but I wanted
to get your perspective, because you have been there, you had
that experience, you were there on the bridge handling that
ship, have been recognized for your skill in doing that. So you
have a unique perspective.
I just wanted to get you to share this as we kind of close
things down. I know we are going to go to Mr. Courtney too,
so----
Admiral Boxall. Yes, sir. Honestly, when I have heard of
these incidents, I was, frankly, shocked. I have observed a lot
of strong professionalism in the folks that I have dealt with
in my strike group tour, throughout the service. So I am not
sure what that is going to find and what we are going to do and
how we address those things.
But to your question of how we get good at our mariner
skills, we have to get back to basics. I mean, yes, we are
warships with the best sensors and capabilities in the world. A
lot of those aren't used for navigation. But yet our tools for
navigation are good enough to do what we need to do. The
question is, are we using them the best way we can?
I know you are a fisherman in your past, and I know you
spend a lot of time on the water, as I do. And I believe there
is a fundamental skill that mariners, whether you are in a
fishing boat, whether you are in a merchant vessel, or whether
you are in a U.S. Navy warship--but we in U.S. Navy warships
absolutely have to make that our core competency.
I have had several discussions with Admiral Rowden, the
Commander of Naval Surface Force, about this. He is as adamant
as I am. I had command of a ship just like McCain, and every
time I see the pictures of those sailors, I think of the ones
that were with me. And I know we have a lot more to do.
And so I am not sure where we go from here just yet. I
would like to see what the teams find out. And then I am ready
to go and roll up sleeves and go do whatever it takes, to
include coming back here to ask you to maybe assist us, as we
make any changes in those recommendations.
Mr. Wittman. Well, listen, I appreciate that. I appreciate
your perspective too. I know that you are extraordinarily well
respected. A former employee in my office today, Commander
Kevin Bosse, served under you, learned a lot, and is very
complimentary of your experience there and how you pursued
things.
I know that you will use that experience in what we need to
do collectively to make sure that we are gaining the correct
and directed seamanship skills, navigating skills, with all of
our officers and crew members onboard our surface fleet.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Chairman Rob Wittman.
We now proceed to Ranking Member Joe Courtney.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Again, I want to thank all the witnesses for your
outstanding testimony here today.
You know, I was thinking, having listened to the whole
hearing, about Admiral Moran's first visit to this Congress
back in January, where, again, there was a lot of excitement
over the Force Structure Assessment and increasing the size of
the fleet. And, again, I think our committee has gotten us off
to a good start in terms of the NDAA.
But your testimony was: Let's remember, first things first.
We have to, you know, focus on the existing fleet to make sure
that, you know, during that time that it takes to--with
shipbuilding being such a long game, to get to these higher
numbers, that we are still able to perform the missions of the
Navy.
And I think, again, those words really reverberate today in
terms of just, you know, the discussion and the incidences that
we are talking about, that, you know, focusing on what you told
us to focus on is really critical to all of the goals that we
are trying to achieve, which is to, you know, do what the Navy
does in terms of its missions but also making sure that it gets
done safely.
And I guess, you know, Mr. Wilson asked the question about
how do we get to that level of adequate readiness. And your
comment about the fact that, you know, the forward-deployed
forces is still really the tough one here in terms of just how
do we, you know, achieve that. I think you said you had a
pretty good vision or the Navy has a pretty good vision about
how to do it with the ships that are based in the U.S.
And, Mr. Pendleton, your graph on page 6 of the report,
which, again, showed the difference between, you know,
training, maintenance, and deployment and planned schedules
for, you know, U.S.-based ships versus Japan, again, really
vividly shows the sharp difference in terms of--and that sort
of adds the degree of difficulty in terms of trying to solve
this problem.
So, in the meantime, the question which we have been
talking about is, you know, who is the decisionmaker for the
forward-deployed forces while we are trying to figure this out?
And I know that is probably going to be part of the Davidson
study, in terms of just trying to get the lines of decision
making clear, but one last time: Who decides, you know, for the
forward-deployed fleet in terms of man, train, and equip
decisions and, you know, the final decision to send these ships
to sea? Is it the operational admiral, or is it the forces
commander?
Admiral Moran. Yeah. Understandably, Congressman, this is
not simple. And I think when we talk about man, train, and
equip, there are many people that are responsible for that. It
works its way all the way through the surface force, for
example, when we talk surface ships. Obviously, the carrier has
components of aviation, so on and so forth. So there are many
places and people that are responsible for adequately
resourcing the manning, training, and equipping.
The operational tempo, the operations and how often those
ships and what types of missions they are going on and how to
prioritize the training that they do get, or that they are
required to get, for those missions, is clearly the local
operational commanders in Japan.
The model, though, the model that you reflect here on page
6, is a big Navy discussion. So the CNO and I and the four-star
fleet commanders have got to look at what Admiral Davidson's
review finds. Is the model out of alignment for what we have
asked them to do? And, going forward, do we need to make
adjustments? That will be title 10, [section] 1, if you will,
responsibility to make those course corrections based on the
recommendations.
In the interim period, Admiral Swift is going after this to
make sure, as we go through the review, he has a deeper
understanding and will adjust where he needs to adjust to lower
the tension, if you will, between that OPTEMPO and the
maintenance/training aspects of what he is doing out in Japan.
Mr. Courtney. I think that answer sheds more light in terms
of the question.
And, again, I thought your answer to Chairman Thornberry
about the fact that, you know, the Navy made a tough call in
terms of the carrier deployments, but, again, it was just
driven by external forces, you know, that we had to set up a
schedule and stick to it. And I think that answering the
question that you just did and Admiral Davidson's report is
going to help us sort of make sure that we are just not biting
off more than we can chew.
And I think it kind of screams out from the report from GAO
that that is something that we have to understand, that, you
know, a 100-hours-a-week deployment has--you know, there has to
be a way to decide when to rebalance.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Wilson. And thank you very much, Ranking Member Joe
Courtney.
And we want to thank all of our witnesses for your being
here but, also, in particular, for your service to the American
people to protect American families.
Also, it is an opportunity for us to thank the professional
staff who have been here and have been so helpful. The Armed
Services Committee is just blessed with remarkable people. And
we are particularly blessed with Margaret Dean, because not
only is she a professional staff member but she was a very
appreciated member of the Navy Reserve.
So, at this time, we shall adjourn.
[Whereupon, at 5:55 p.m., the subcommittees were
adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
September 7, 2017
=======================================================================
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
September 7, 2017
=======================================================================
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
=======================================================================
WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING
THE HEARING
September 7, 2017
=======================================================================
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. HUNTER
Admiral Moran. Commander Naval Surface Forces (CNSF) is currently
evaluating the plan to replace these assets and ensure long-term multi
mission capability across the Fleet. In the interim, GFM allocation
will ensure we maintain the same capability and meet operational
requirements within the Seventh Fleet AOR. The long term laydown of
FDNF-J forces will be incorporated into the 2018 Strategic Laydown and
Dispersal Plan (SLD 18). SLD18 is currently in development and is
expected to be presented to Congress in March 2018. [See page 27.]
______
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. GALLAGHER
Admiral Moran. In recent years, the Navy's ability to meet COCOM
demand has fluctuated between 40% and 45% of their requests for naval
forces. For FY18, Navy will meet 44% of COCOM demand. While COCOM
demands fluctuate from year to year, both overall and for class of
ship, the trend over the last few years has been an increasing one. The
Navy's 2016 Force Structure Assessment determined a requirement for 355
ships, when measured with today's platforms, as an acceptable level of
risk. A larger fleet would be needed in order to fully meet all COCOM
demands. [See page 39.]
______
RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. NORCROSS
Admiral Moran. In the immediate aftermath of the collisions, the
CNO directed the Navy to take an ``operational pause'' in all of its
fleets around the world, to allow fleet commanders to assess and review
with their commands the fundamental practice of safe and effective
operations and to correct any areas that require immediate attention.
This pause has been completed, with commanders incorporating deliberate
processes in their operations to better manage risk. The following
immediate actions are being undertaken to prevent another mishap.We
have commenced Readiness for Sea Assessments (RFSA) for all ship
assigned to Japan, to inspect and assess watchstander proficiency and
material readiness to ensure ships are able to safely navigate,
communicate and operate. Immediate remediation will be conducted for
ships found deficient, and they will not be assigned for operational
tasking until they are certified to be ready.
We have taken measures to ensure our Sailors get
sufficient sleep in all shipboard routines to address fatigue concerns.
All material problems involving ship control have been
given increased priority for repair.
To ensure SEVENTH Fleet ships are properly certified, the
Pacific Fleet Commander is standing up Naval Surface Group Western
Pacific (NSGWP) to consolidate authorities to oversee the training and
certification of forward-deployed ships based in Japan.
We have commenced a review of certifications of each
ship, to include developing a plan for each to regain currency and
proficiency across all certification areas. All waivers for ships whose
certification has expired will now be approved by the Pacific Fleet
Commander.
We have increased focus across the force on open
communication and thorough debriefing and assessment of operations and
evolutions through instilling the practice of ``Plan, Brief, Execute,
Debrief'' across commands. Other cultural changes include increasing
unit-level operational pauses, increasing access to lessons learned,
and encouraging time for repercussion free self-assessments.
[See page 29.]
=======================================================================
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
September 7, 2017
=======================================================================
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. WILSON
Mr. Wilson. Admiral Boxall, I understand that the U.S. Navy is
developing advanced radar capabilities under a research, development,
test, and evaluation program called ``Next Generation Surface Search
Radar''. Such advanced capabilities would improve situational awareness
for piloting and surface contact management, as well as for combat
operations. As the Navy, the Committee on Armed Services in the House
of Representatives, and other entities strive to address training and
other requirements highlighted by the recent catastrophic collisions,
it's equally important that we provide our sailors and Marines with the
best available radar technology to reduce watch team workload and the
likelihood of human error; they need to be equipped with more
integrated radar, navigation, and contact information for better
situational awareness and decision-making. Therefore, please share with
us the status of this Next Generation Surface Search Radar RDT&E
program, including but not limited to considerations regarding future
RDT&E requirements and funding. In addition, how will the Navy use this
program to address radar upgrade requirements going forward? Please
describe the U.S. Navy's acquisition approach to this capability, as
well as the status of any plans to field this capability within the
surface fleet.
Admiral Boxall. The AN/SPS-73(X) Next Generation Surface Search
Radar (NGSSR) upgrade leverages RDT&E work performed for a classified
shore based system, as well as previous investments in Small Business
Innovative Research (SBIR) technology for both the AN/SPS-74 periscope
detection radar and AN/BPS-17 submarine navigation radar. The AN/SPS-
73(X) NGSSR will update eighty-one AN/SPS-73(V)12 and sixty-seven AN/
SPS-73A(V)12 systems to provide situational awareness and contact
management, supporting ship self-defense, gun fire support, periscope
detection and discrimination, remotely operated vehicle management,
navigation, search and rescue, and electromagnetic maneuverability
evolutions. Eliminating reliance on militarized commercial off the
shelf transmitters, the NGSSR will be an all-digital multi-function
high resolution radar with a solid state transmitter, which includes
Automated Radar Plotting Aids (ARPA), fully programmable waveforms, and
performance improvements over AN/SPS-73(V)12 and A(V)12, AN/SPS-67(V)
variants and commercial navigation radars. The NGSSR acquisition
approach (Items Less Than $5 Million; BLI 2980) leverages existing SBIR
contracts with Ultra/3 Phoenix, Wake Forrest, NC, for NRE and follow-on
initial production. PB18 includes funding for the procurement of 3
upgrade kits for qualification testing (land based, shock, vibration,
environmental, etc.) in FY19. In FY20, 12 production kits are planned
to be procured for initial shipboard installation beginning in FY21.
The initial units will support new construction installations as well
as start to replace AN/SPS-73(V)12/(A)(V)12 systems on in-service
surface combatants. PB18 supports continued procurement and
installation of NGSSR throughout the FYDP.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. COURTNEY
Mr. Courtney. Can you please provide us the total number of
certifications that were expired on the USS Fitzgerald and USS McCain
and what those specific certifications were?
Admiral Moran. USS Fitzgerald: At the time of the collision,
expired certifications (14) included: Communications, Mobility-Air,
Mobility-Engineering, Mobility-Seamanship, Supply, Air Warfare,
Ballistic Missile Defense, Cryptology, Electronic Warfare,
Intelligence, Strike-Cruise Missile Tactical Qualification (CMTQ),
Strike-Naval Surface Fire Support (NSFS), Surface Warfare, Undersea
Warfare, Visit Board Search and Seizure. USS John S. McCain: At the
time of the collision, expired certifications (10) included:
Maintenance and Material Management (3M), Anti-terrorism, Fleet
Support-Medical, Search and Rescue, Air Warfare, Strike-CMTQ, Strike-
NSFS, Surface Warfare, Undersea Warfare, Visit Board Search and
Seizure.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. McEACHIN
Mr. McEachin. How much discretion do current policies afford
individual ship commanders with respect to the kind of choices that may
have contributed to the recent collisions? Are there best practices
that are implemented on certain vessels, but not widely--for instance,
requirements that watch bills reflect a) the biological reality of
sailors' circadian rhythms, and b) fact that human beings work best
with the benefit of consistent sleep schedules?
Admiral Boxall. The Navy recognizes that its sailors, the men and
women who crew our ships, are the critical enabler to warfighting.
Ensuring they are healthy, fit and rested will make them more
productive and effective during training and in combat. Over the past
three years, (starting in May 13) CNSF promulgated guidance on
Circadian Rhythm (CR) Watchbills intended to encourage the
implementation of innovative shipboard watch rotations and daily
routines that maximize the effectiveness of our watchstanders. In Jun
2016, CNSF promulgated Warfighting Serial Ten, focusing on
warfighting--our people: ensuring they are healthy, fit and rested.
CNSF has sponsored a series of interrelated studies on crew endurance
and Sailor resilience undertaken by the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS)
which are receiving widespread attention throughout the Fleet. Since
CNSF began promoting circadian rhythm in 2013, commanding officers have
had the latitude to determine the most effective watchbills and
shipboard routines to employ onboard their ships--circadian rhythm was
a best practice shared with waterfront leaders and strongly encouraged.
In the spring of 2017, CNSF queried the surface force regarding fatigue
management, sleep and resilience and circadian rhythm watchbills to get
feedback on how CNSF could help with fatigue management. The large
majority of responses agreed that circadian rhythm was the best way to
combat fatigue. Lessons were collected and shared. CNSF's recent
circadian rhythm direction, informed by NPS studies and fleet feedback,
is an order and will be implemented by 20 Dec 2017. However, commanding
officers have flexibility in how they execute circadian rhythm.
Additionally, CNSF, working with NPS, is providing tools to the fleet
to train leaders and Sailors on how to properly implement circadian
rhythm best practices on their ships. The proper use of these shipboard
routines and watchbills will provide watchstanders with a repetitive
watch schedule that allows the body to establish a sleep pattern
resulting in adequate rest and greater alertness on watch.
Mr. McEachin. How much discretion do current policies afford
individual ship commanders with respect to the kind of choices that may
have contributed to the recent collisions? Are there best practices
that are implemented on certain vessels, but not widely--for instance,
requirements that watch bills reflect a) the biological reality of
sailors' circadian rhythms, and b) fact that human beings work best
with the benefit of consistent sleep schedules?
Admiral Moran. The Navy recognizes that its sailors, the men and
women who crew our ships, are the critical enabler to warfighting.
Ensuring they are healthy, fit and rested will make them more
productive and effective during training and in combat. Over the past
three years, (starting in May 13) CNSF promulgated guidance on
Circadian Rhythm (CR) Watchbills intended to encourage the
implementation of innovative shipboard watch rotations and daily
routines that maximize the effectiveness of our watchstanders. In Jun
2016, CNSF promulgated Warfighting Serial Ten, focusing on
warfighting--our people: ensuring they are healthy, fit and rested.
CNSF has sponsored a series of interrelated studies on crew endurance
and Sailor resilience undertaken by the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS)
which are receiving widespread attention throughout the Fleet. Since
CNSF began promoting circadian rhythm in 2013, commanding officers have
had the latitude to determine the most effective watchbills and
shipboard routines to employ onboard their ships--circadian rhythm was
a best practice shared with waterfront leaders and strongly encouraged.
In the spring of 2017, CNSF queried the surface force regarding fatigue
management, sleep and resilience and circadian rhythm watchbills to get
feedback on how CNSF could help with fatigue management. The large
majority of responses agreed that circadian rhythm was the best way to
combat fatigue. Lessons were collected and shared. CNSF's recent
circadian rhythm direction, informed by NPS studies and fleet feedback,
is an order and will be implemented by 20 Dec 2017. However, commanding
officers have flexibility in how they execute circadian rhythm.
Additionally, CNSF, working with NPS, is providing tools to the fleet
to train leaders and Sailors on how to properly implement circadian
rhythm best practices on their ships. The proper use of these shipboard
routines and watchbills will provide watchstanders with a repetitive
watch schedule that allows the body to establish a sleep pattern
resulting in adequate rest and greater alertness on watch.
[all]