    [House Hearing, 116 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

    .
                             [H.A.S.C. No. 116-83]

                             FUTURE FORCE STRUCTURE

                              REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

                               UNITED STATES NAVY

                                   __________

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                 SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES

                                     OF THE

                          COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                         ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                                  HEARING HELD

                                  JUNE 4, 2020

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                  __________

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    47-045                     WASHINGTON : 2022

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                 SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES

                      JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut, Chairman

    JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island      ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia
    JIM COOPER, Tennessee                K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
    DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey          MIKE GALLAGHER, Wisconsin
    SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts          JACK BERGMAN, Michigan
    FILEMON VELA, Texas                  MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
    GILBERT RAY CISNEROS, Jr.,           VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri
        California                       PAUL COOK, California
    MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey           BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama
    JARED F. GOLDEN, Maine               TRENT KELLY, Mississippi
    ELAINE G. LURIA, Virginia, Vice
        Chair
    ANTHONY BRINDISI, New York
                  Phil MacNaughton, Professional Staff Member
                    Dave Sienicki, Professional Staff Member
                               Sean Falvey, Clerk

                               C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page

                  STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

    Courtney, Hon. Joe, a Representative from Connecticut, Chairman,
      Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces.................     1
    Wittman, Hon. Robert J., a Representative from Virginia, Ranking
      Member, Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces.........     4

                                   WITNESSES

    Clark, Bryan, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute....................     7
    O'Rourke, Ronald, Specialist for National Defense, Congressional
      Research Service...............................................    10
    Roughead, ADM Gary, USN (Ret.), Former Chief of Naval Operations.     5

                                    APPENDIX

    Prepared Statements:

        Clark, Bryan.................................................    65
        O'Rourke, Ronald.............................................    78
        Roughead, ADM Gary...........................................    55
        Wittman, Hon. Robert J.......................................    53

    Documents Submitted for the Record:

        [There were no Documents submitted.]

    Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:

        [There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]

    Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:

        Mr. Courtney.................................................   113
        Mr. Golden...................................................   116

         FUTURE FORCE STRUCTURE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE UNITED STATES NAVY

                                  ----------

                      House of Representatives,
                           Committee on Armed Services,
                Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces,
                                Washington, DC, Thursday, June 4, 2020.
        The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:02 a.m., in
    room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Joe Courtney
    (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

     OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE COURTNEY, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
    CONNECTICUT, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION
                                 FORCES

        Mr. Courtney. I am going to call the Seapower and
    Projection Forces Subcommittee hearing to order. And I want to
    begin--I just want to begin by saying, noting the fact that
    this is actually the first official proceeding of the House
    Armed Services Committee since early March, and it is--again,
    already we know we have got good participation from the
    subcommittee to join us here today. And obviously, we have
    great witnesses here this morning.
        I want to just, first of all, though, begin by thanking the
    staff for really doing great work in terms of uncharted waters.
    It is a good Seapower metaphor that, you know, again, we have
    set up what I think is a very workable process today to make
    sure that we can conduct this proceeding in accordance with the
    new rules that were adopted on May 15 that, again, allow the
    subcommittees to, again, officially act, using technology for
    some members, and, obviously, affording others the opportunity
    to be here in person.
        Again, just sort of a little bit of housekeeping, and then
    I am going to make a brief opening statement and yield to my
    great colleague, the ranking member, Mr. Wittman, to weigh in,
    and then we will have the members or the witnesses begin with
    their statements.
        Again, just as is obvious, we have numerous members of the
    subcommittee participating remotely today. Members
    participating remotely are reminded to keep themselves on mute
    until they are recognized to speak. In addition, remote members
    are reminded that once they do start speaking, there is a
    slight delay in the camera feed switching its focus to you. As
    a result, please include a brief preamble of some kind before
    you start into your questions to the witnesses, which I know
    most Members of Congress are very good at those preambles, so
    that shouldn't be, I think, a problem at all.
        Again, I would like to remind all members, this is the
    first time the committee has done such an event, and I ask for
    your patience as we do our best to make it work. If necessary,
    I will briefly go into recess to address any significant
    technical issues, but I don't anticipate that today, again,
    because I think the staff has done such a great job.
        One other reminder is that people really need to keep--the
    members need to keep their videos on during this, just to,
    again, make, sure that, you know, we keep a head count in terms
    of who is participating. That is apparently, I think, part of
    the regulations which the House Rules Committee issued.
        I would note, again, we have got great witnesses and great
    content to discuss today. There also, I think, is another layer
    of significance to this pursuant to the House rule that was
    adopted on May 15. Again, in order for committees to move
    towards markup, they actually have to conduct two official
    proceedings before that can happen. And again, the plan right
    now for Armed Services is that this morning's subcommittee
    hearing will constitute one of those two required events.
    Again, it is Mr. Smith's plan to have a full committee event
    coming up shortly, which, again, will satisfy that additional
    procedural requirement, and then we can move into full markup
    of NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] which, again, we
    have lost some time because of COVID [coronavirus], and--but
    again, I would just note, and I know Rob can attest to this is
    that the subcommittee staff, not just on Seapower, but all the
    subcommittees, have been working hard since March. So, that
    again, I think a lot of the marks are really pretty much on the
    runway, ready to go, again, the minute we get clearance in
    terms of both process and timing to move forward on the mark.
        And at this point, the tentative schedule will be that the
    subcommittees will have a premark and mark probably, you know,
    late June, and again, the plan is to have a full committee mark
    the first couple days of July with floor action sometime later
    in the month of July, which, again, will keep us reasonably on
    track in terms of trying to get an NDAA done certainly before
    October which is always the ideal situation.
        So again, today's hearing is the ``Future Force Structure
    Requirements for the United States Navy.'' Again, we are sort
    of resuming a conversation which started back in February when
    the President's budget was submitted. We did have some input
    from Pentagon leadership, Navy leadership, Chairman of the
    Joint Chiefs, as well as a subcommittee hearing with some of
    the assistant secretaries. Mr. Geurts came over, along with
    some of his colleagues, to talk about the budget.
        Again, there was definitely a number of issues which I
    think our subcommittee had concern about regarding the Navy's
    budget submission. Again, we have been operating right now on a
    force structure assessment that goes back to 2016, you know.
    The world doesn't stand still. Issues are changing, you know. I
    think a lot of ideas about, you know, whether or not that force
    structure assessment needed to be revisited, you know, was
    certainly something that was a big topic of discussion, really
    going back into 2019. We had been promised by the Department of
    the Navy an updated force structure assessment late in 2019,
    then early in 2020, then a little later in 2020, and now,
    again, we, to this day, still have not received an updated
    force structure assessment. In addition, we did not get a 30-
    year shipbuilding plan, which is required by law. I know some
    of the testimony this morning will get into that.
        So again, as we approach the mark for 2021, I mean, the
    committee's going to use its good judgement. Again, we have
    got, you know, experienced members that have been through a
    number of these situations in the past. But again, it really, I
    think, emphasizes the importance of this morning's hearing to
    get really good input from great witnesses about, really, what
    we should be keeping focused on as, again, we move forward with
    the 2021 mark.
        I mean, I think the one issue that I think a lot of us on
    this subcommittee know full well is that when you talk about
    Navy budget decisions, it is a long game, and you really cannot
    sort of allow a pause button to get hit from one year to the
    next because frankly, it carries a legacy and a hangover that
    is really just going to, you know, basically haunt future
    Congresses and future naval leaders.
        So, again, as I said, we have got certainly a lot to talk
    about here this morning. We have three great witnesses starting
    off with Admiral Gary Roughead, a former CNO [Chief of Naval
    Operations] back in the 2008 to 2011 or 2012 time period.
    Again, a distinguished record in the Navy. He had six commands,
    different ships during that time period. Again, worked in the
    Atlantic, worked in the Pacific, worked on the Hill, you know,
    headed up the Naval Academy. Again, you know, somebody whose
    background, again, is just really very strong and very solid.
    And again, his testimony today I think will be very helpful in
    terms of the issue that we are discussing here this morning.
        Bryan Clark, who, again, has been a frequent witness over
    the years, again, also served in the Navy as a submariner, and
    again, has worked with different think tanks and policy groups
    in Washington, is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
    And again, I think one of the comments in his testimony that
    the Navy is arguably facing a once-in-a-century combination of
    challenges and opportunities as it embarks on a new family of
    ships, kind of summarizes really how critical, you know, the
    topic is today, as well as the mark that we are about to
    proceed on.
        And finally, we also have Ron O'Rourke, who is a specialist
    in naval affairs for the Congressional Research Service. Again,
    he is someone who has been working at that job since 1984. His
    wealth of knowledge and experience in terms of what he brings
    to this topic is really almost unmatched, in my opinion. And,
    again, his historical institutional memory in terms of, you
    know, the issues of force structure going back again to
    different times in our country's history is just invaluable.
    And again, I just think all of us should be very, very grateful
    for the work that he does at the Congressional Research
    Service, not just on this subcommittee but the Congress as a
    whole.
        So again, we have got a great lineup of witnesses, and we
    have got members who are itching to ask questions. I am going
    to yield now to the ranking member, Mr. Wittman, to weigh in
    again and help kick things off this morning.

      STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT J. WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
        VIRGINIA, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND
                           PROJECTION FORCES

        Mr. Wittman. I want to thank Chairman Courtney for
    yielding, and I want to thank our witnesses for participating
    today. Our witnesses are esteemed naval theorists whose years
    of blood and sweat to support our naval forces should be
    particularly insightful as we review our maritime force
    structure.
        Naval shipbuilding is a long game. With some ships taking
    over 8 years to construct, and billions of dollars in
    investments, it is important that we be able to translate the
    National Defense Strategy into a coherent shipbuilding plan. I
    look forward to our witnesses' thoughts on how they best
    propose to better allocate resources to accomplish our defense
    vision.
        In my estimation, there are three particular issues that I
    hope to address today, which include our undersea strike
    capabilities, unmanned technologies, and our support naval
    instruments. As to undersea strike, I continue to believe that
    our Nation rightfully relies on the silence of the sea to mask
    our strategic undersea strike capabilities. I support our
    latest force structure assessment that highlights the
    diminishing resources of our attack submarines, and advocates
    for a significant increase in this area.
        I read an article earlier this week that seemed to indicate
    the Department's support to accelerate unmanned, underwater
    capabilities to replace the diminishing undersea strike
    capability. While unmanned, underwater vehicles are essential
    to augment the attack submarines, I am not convinced that they
    are currently able to replace the manned force structure.
        Additionally, I was disappointed that the budget request
    had sacrificed an attack submarine and believe it essential
    that Congress reverse the perilous decline of our attack
    submarines.
        As to unmanned capabilities, I am particularly concerned
    that these nascent products are being billed as being capable
    of replacing strike capabilities. There are a multitude of
    issues associated with the development of unmanned vehicles.
    Concerns with their reliability, their ability to operate in
    comms [communications]-denied environments, their ability to
    sustain operations, and their ability to strike using the law
    of war, are all points to a developing capability, not one that
    is mature. And I don't believe that they are a product that is
    currently ready to enter into the fleet. We need to develop
    baseline requirements and rapidly adapt commercial
    capabilities, but we should painstakingly review the
    application of these assets to ensure their sufficiency during
    times of war.
        I also want to take a moment to highlight the many
    instruments in naval force structure that are essential to our
    Nation's success. Many of these capabilities are not
    immediately apparent, but are fundamental to projecting power.
    For example, while many of our citizens believe the United
    States Coast Guard is constrained to our Nation's coastline,
    the reality is that this committee supports these forces and
    our daily diplomats provided to a wide variety of host nations
    who yearn to be better aligned with our United States ideals.
        We support a 60-ship Maritime Security Program that are
    daily integrators of our logistics training. We support all of
    our oceanic cable repair capability to ensure continuity of
    international communications, on whose backbone rides over 99
    percent of international data. And we support increased tanker
    capacity, in which last year, this subcommittee took the first
    step towards supporting the diminishing international tanker
    fleet who will be essential to allowing our naval forces to
    operate in a disaggregated manner.
        My point in highlighting the softer instruments of naval
    power is to ensure that all of these elements are adequately
    integrated into a cohesive naval strategy. It is not simply
    enough for us to count our Navy ships and assess critical
    weaknesses. It is paramount to develop all of our naval
    capabilities, and align them in a common purpose.
        In conclusion, I remain concerned that our emphasis on
    naval force structure highlights some of our strategic
    weaknesses. The integration of commercial sector practices and
    other maritime instruments are essential to projecting power.
    We need to be diligent in reviewing the real opportunities of
    developing capabilities. We need to be brave and lay out a
    coherent Navy force structure that integrates the Navy, the
    Marines, the Coast Guard, and the Merchant Marine into one
    battle force capable of dissuading aggression.
        We emphasize joint operations with our partners around the
    world. It is time for us to emphasize the integration, the full
    integration of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, and
    the Merchant Marine. If we fail to do so, our Nation will look
    wantingly on our inaction during this critical time.
        And again, I appreciate Chairman Courtney for having this
    important hearing, and I yield back the balance of my time.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the
    Appendix on page 53.]
        Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Wittman. And again, before we
    start with the witnesses, again, just a gentle reminder to my
    colleagues. Under the House rules, you need to keep your video
    feed on. Most of--it looks like a bunch of you are, but,
    apparently, the staff said a couple are still not. Again, if
    somebody has to take a phone call or do something and leave,
    again, you can just turn it off and then come back, but again,
    please remember to please keep the video feed on.
        And with that, I would now--it is my pleasure to recognize
    the witnesses. We will start off with Admiral Roughead and go
    right across the room.

      STATEMENT OF ADM GARY ROUGHEAD, USN (RET.), FORMER CHIEF OF
                            NAVAL OPERATIONS

        Admiral Roughead. Thank you very much, Chairman Courtney.
    Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the members of
    this subcommittee to discuss the future force structure
    requirements for the United States Navy. It really is a
    pleasure for me to be here with the other witnesses who I have
    long held in very, very high regard for their knowledge and
    their experience on this particular matter.
        I would ask that my full statement be entered into the
    record, but I do want to touch on a couple of quick points. As
    both of you have mentioned, getting future force structure
    right is really hard, and it does take a long time. The
    uncertainties of rapid technological change, predicting what
    the geopolitical military and geoeconomic environment is going
    to be, adds to that difficulty. Assessing global naval trends,
    and then deciding on should the force be large enough for
    presence, which is now best defined, I think, by this idea of
    gray zone competition, where you have to be there, in some way,
    to influence events, or is it about combat?
        I do believe that there is too little discussion on the
    effect of combat losses on major capital assets. We have been
    free of that burden for a long time, but in peer competition, I
    am not sure that one can assume that we are going to have an
    immaculate war.
        There has also, in my mind, been an overfixation on the
    total number of ships as opposed to the nuanced numbers of
    specific types of ships that support viable operational plans.
    There is also the need to understand just how small our allied
    navies have become. And in the past, we have always looked to
    our allies to support us, but those navies are extraordinarily
    small. And then, as Mr. Wittman mentioned, the supplying of
    naval forces at sea is a challenge, and particularly, the
    ability for us to provide rapid sealift to support combat
    operations is woefully inadequate.
        I think in the future, there is going to be reluctance for
    this country to commit ground troops on foreign soil, and there
    will be reluctance for other countries to accept those ground
    troops. China is going to continue its rise as a maritime power
    and as an naval power, and I think it is important to make that
    distinction, that their maritime industry, whether it is
    shipbuilding, shipping lines, port networks around the world,
    that is going to continue apace.
        The probability of Taiwan becoming a military flashpoint, I
    think, will increase. But I also believe, as has been said,
    that submarines and the undersea domain are a winning hand, and
    we have to preserve that, but our adversaries are going to look
    at ways to diminish our undersea capabilities.
        I do not believe that there is going to be a significant
    increase in allied naval force structure, and the reliance that
    we will have on U.S. flag shipping is not going to diminish.
        The new technologies that are so promising, I think that we
    are often overly optimistic in how quickly they will arrive.
    And in that optimism, we do not plan for gap-filling
    capabilities that allow us to be prepared and be ready, should
    our forces be called into action.
        Accordingly, I think there should be a high-low mix of
    surface ships, and I would say that the high end will operate
    more in the Western Pacific dealing with China, and that in the
    Middle East, which we will not be free of, because of the
    geoeconomic importance of that region, is best addressed by a
    low-high mix. The Atlantic will require significant
    antisubmarine warfare capability, because I think that the
    Russians are going to be active with their submarine fleet in
    the Atlantic.
        As was mentioned, submarines, very important, but the dip
    that takes place in submarine force structure numbers later in
    this decade, I think, is dangerously, dangerously low. The
    guideline of four ships to make one in a particular area of
    operations, I think, will remain valid, and that doesn't make
    any difference if it is manned or unmanned, and that is a rule
    of thumb that I think needs to be adhered to.
        Logistics will continue to matter greatly. I have already
    talked about our sealift. The Ready Reserve Force now, in my
    mind, is a tremendous opportunity to take advantage of the
    depressed shipping industry and be able to acquire some of
    those older--what I would call older new ships, or new older
    ships, even if they are foreign built, to be able to close that
    gap, and now is the time where I think some good deals can be
    made.
        I firmly believe that unmanned is in our future, but we
    have to be more aggressive. We have to be more risk tolerant.
    And I am pleased that the committee shares the view of really
    having to focus on unmanned capability. We have let too many
    years go by without aggressively pursuing that.
        Invariably, your committee is going to have to deal with
    the issue of aircraft carriers, and in this world where we will
    be less likely to put our young men and women on the ground in
    a foreign land, other countries less willing to accept them, I
    do believe that those sovereign American airfields are
    important, are versatile, and that they can move power in and
    out of areas faster than any other military service in the
    world.
        The last point I would like to make is that all of what we
    talk about with naval force structure is only made possible by
    the maritime industry that supports it. Whether it is
    shipbuilders, the suppliers to those shipbuilders, those that
    manufacture aircraft, the technology that goes into unmanned
    systems, the seafarer that sails on our sealift ships, all of
    that is in a very, very fragile condition, and that is an area
    that even though we can talk about the physical things, we
    really need to look at human capital. How do we incentivize it?
    How do we make it attractive for individuals to want to pursue
    careers in that area, and also, for companies to want to make
    investments?
        I don't minimize the challenges that you have, the budget
    challenges that are before you that will only worsen, in my
    mind, in the coming years, but America, as a maritime nation,
    with our interests around the globe, we need to focus on force
    structure, and I thank the committee for the opportunity to
    share my thoughts.
        [The prepared statement of Admiral Roughead can be found in
    the Appendix on page 55.]
        Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Admiral.
        Mr. Clark.

       STATEMENT OF BRYAN CLARK, SENIOR FELLOW, HUDSON INSTITUTE

        Mr. Clark. Chairman Courtney, Ranking Member Wittman, and
    distinguished members of the committee, thank you for inviting
    me here today to talk about the Navy's future force structure
    requirement. It is an honor to be here with Admiral Roughead
    and with Mr. O'Rourke, two gentlemen that I have worked either
    for or with over the years, and I have great respect for, so
    thank you.
        The Navy, as you noted, is at a crossroads. Right now, 20
    years after the drive for transformation led to us starting a
    series of programs--like the Ford-class carriers, Zumwalt
    destroyer, and littoral combat ship--that had problems over
    their life cycle, difficulties with technology insertion, and
    continue to be costly endeavors, we are now embarking on a new
    family of ships in almost every vessel class of the Navy. And
    as you noted, we are facing this kind of once-in-a-century
    combination of challenges and opportunities.
        We have got a set of rising peer competitors, certainly in
    China, facing the United States, fiscal constraints that are
    likely to constrain the ability of the U.S. to develop better
    versions of today's fleet. There is a, you know, challenge with
    regard to the viability of our primary capital ships similar to
    what we had back in the interwar period. And then, the last
    thing is we have got new technologies that are going to
    potentially disrupt our force designs and those of our
    potential adversaries.
        So, the Navy needs to address, to come up with a new force
    design to address this new period. That new force design needs
    to be guided by a theory of victory, or operational concept
    under which the Navy is going to be able to contribute to kinds
    of operations it is going to need to do in support of the
    National Defense Strategy. We don't really have that clear
    theory of victory or operational concept today.
        There is a lot of really good work going on inside the
    Department of Defense to develop joint warfighting concepts,
    distributed maritime operations, littoral operations in a
    contested environment. Those concepts are all driving in a good
    direction to try to come up with a new way of fighting that
    doesn't involve strictly attrition-based warfare, which is sort
    of the approach we took largely after the Cold War ended.
        They are driving us toward what is essentially a return to
    maneuver warfare, or decision-centric warfare, where we plan on
    using our forces to create dilemmas for adversaries that
    prevent them from being successful more than us being able to
    project power and take over locations of our own choosing.
        So, this decision-centric move in warfare is going to
    require us to have a fleet design that reflects some new
    characteristics, different than the characteristics of our
    previous fleet. So, defensive capacity in each ship, in each
    combination of ships that is able to prevent an adversary from
    executing a rapid and successful attack on them while they are
    deployed in theater, offensive weapons capacity that allows
    them to actually fight back and deliver strikes and attacks
    against the enemy, and create a threat that the enemy has to
    respect but distributed in such a manner that the enemy can't
    take them out with a single large salvo attack of their own.
    Diversity for force structure at various scales so that we can
    have options to conduct countermeasures to gray zone operations
    being done by our adversaries, like China and Russia.
        Today, we have a limited set of options. We can only send
    in large force structure elements to deal with a gray zone
    altercation. I think the most recent example of China and
    Malaysia, where we sent an LCS [littoral combat ship] to
    intervene on behalf of the United States was a really good
    example of the kind of smaller scale forces we need to have
    that we don't really have in large numbers in today's fleets.
        So those options need to be afforded by having a greater
    diversity of force packages. And then, also, complexity. If our
    goal in fighting is going to be to try to create dilemmas for
    an adversary, we can't do that using a small number of very
    large, expensive capital ships; we need to have a greater
    diversity and rebalancing of the force to create a more complex
    picture for an adversary to deal with that might force them to
    either be dissuaded from starting an act of aggression, or to
    seek an off-ramp once that act of aggression starts.
        And then finally, and most importantly, we need to have a
    fleet that is actually affordable. So both from the perspective
    of buying the fleet and then owning the fleet, we need to
    ensure our force design reflects a concern about
    sustainability, and that is something that today's fleet
    doesn't necessarily reflect to the degree it probably needs to.
        So we have a window here where we can start making some
    changes in the Navy's force design to reflect these
    characteristics and a new way of fighting, and a new theory of
    victory in warfare against pure adversaries that have a level
    technological playing field, and have a home-field advantage
    that we are going to have to contend with.
        But that window is going to close. We are already facing
    fiscal challenges that constrain our ability to evolve the
    fleet quickly, and we have rising peer adversaries that are not
    going to wait for us to get our act together. So, they are
    going to take advantage of the opportunity provided by either
    our reticence to intervene, or the COVID-19 impact on our
    potential operations and those of our allies. So, if we don't
    act towards a new force design now, this may encourage
    adversaries like China to be more aggressive, near and abroad,
    against our allies.
        The elements of this new fleet are fairly straightforward.
    We need to think about rebalancing the fleet to incorporate a
    larger number of smaller platforms, as Admiral Roughead said,
    to create this greater diversity and opportunity for more
    complex force structures. We need to incorporate new
    technologies in a reasonable and realistic way. As Congressman
    Wittman mentioned, unmanned systems aren't necessarily going to
    be able to replace manned platforms in this future fleet right
    away or even ever, necessarily, but they can complement it, and
    they can provide opportunities to increase the complexity and
    the capability of the forces that we are deploying.
        We need to protect the health of the industrial base as
    part of this, and then we also need to think about building a
    stronger, as Admiral Roughead said, logistics capability to
    allow a more distributed and disaggregated force to be
    sustained in theater.
        These are all possible. So, we--in my written statement, I
    included a description of one force that might do that. The
    math that we have been working on with both the Office of the
    Secretary of Defense, and with the Navy works out. You can
    build a force that has got these characteristics and these
    elements. It is just making some choices in the relatively near
    term that is necessary to allow it. So I hope that the Congress
    and the Navy are going to be able to drive those changes, and
    come up with a force plan that I think could be more credible
    and something that both our industry and our U.S. allies would
    be able to depend on. So, thank you for your time.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Clark can be found in the
    Appendix on page 65.]
        Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you, Mr. Clark.
        Mr. O'Rourke.

    STATEMENT OF RONALD O'ROURKE, SPECIALIST FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE,
                     CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE

        Mr. O'Rourke. Chairman Courtney, Ranking Member Wittman,
    distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
    opportunity to appear before you today to testify on future
    Navy force structure requirements. This is a topic I have
    worked on throughout my 36 years as a CRS [Congressional
    Research Service] specialist in naval affairs. And I want to
    echo the remarks of my co-witnesses that it is an honor to
    appear with Bryan Clark and Admiral Roughead at this hearing.
        With your permission, I would like to submit my written
    statement for the record and summarize it with a few brief
    remarks. As requested, my testimony includes a discussion of a
    30-year shipbuilding plan in the next force structure
    assessment. The annual 30-year shipbuilding plan is intended to
    provide Congress with supporting information for conducting
    effective oversight of DOD [Department of Defense] plans for
    the Navy, and for assessing and marking up the Navy's proposed
    shipbuilding budget. The 30-year plan does this by helping
    Congress assess a number of key issues, including whether the
    Navy intends to procure enough ships to achieve and maintain
    its force level goals; whether DOD ship procurement plans are
    likely to be affordable within future defense budgets; and
    whether the Navy is making reasonable assumptions about ship
    procurement costs and service lives. It also helps Congress
    assess the potential industrial base implications of the Navy's
    intention for ship procurement.
        Since the submission of the fiscal year 2001 budget 20
    years ago, which was the first time that a 30-year plan was
    required, there have been three times when DOD was legally
    required to submit a 30-year plan, but did not do so. Two
    occurred during the first years of the Obama and Trump
    administrations when the absence of a 30-year plan was
    understood to reflect the need for a new administration to
    spend its first year reviewing and revising the previous
    administration's defense plans.
        The third occurred in fiscal year 2006 when DOD provided
    only a brief document that included few details about projected
    ship procurements. If DOD does not submit a fiscal year 2021
    30-year plan, it would be the first time since fiscal year 2006
    that an administration, not in its first year in office, was
    required to submit a 30-year plan, but did not do so.
        The delay in submitting the fiscal year 2021 30-year plan
    raises a potential institutional issue for Congress regarding
    executive branch compliance with statutory requirements that
    are intended to support Congress' role in conducting oversight
    of executive branch operations and authorizing and
    appropriating funds. This potential institutional issue is not
    the only one that Congress may consider in connection with the
    Navy's fiscal year 2021 budget. An additional one is posed by
    the budget's treatment of the procurement dates of the aircraft
    carrier CVN-81 and the amphibious ships LPD-31 and LHA-9.
        The Navy states that its proposed fiscal year 2021 budget
    requests eight new ships, but that figure includes LPD-31, a
    ship that Congress procured in fiscal year 2020. Excluding that
    ship, the Navy's proposed budget requests seven new ships
    rather than eight. That is less than the 11 ships that the Navy
    requested for fiscal year 2020, or the 13 that Congress
    procured in fiscal year 2020 or the 10 that the Navy projected
    under last year's budget that it would request for fiscal year
    2021.
        In dollar terms, the Navy, for fiscal year 2021, is
    requesting about 15 to 17 percent less funding for the
    shipbuilding account than it requested in fiscal year 2020 or
    what Congress appropriated for fiscal year 2020, or what last
    year's budget projected would be requested for fiscal year
    2021. The Navy states that its 5-year plan includes 44 new
    ships, but that figure includes the amphibious ships LPD-31 and
    LHA-9 that Congress procured in fiscal year 2020. Excluding
    these 2 ships, the 5-year plan includes 42 new ships, which is
    13 less than the fiscal year 2020 5-year plan, and 12 less than
    last year's budget projected for the current 5-year period.
        Statements from Navy officials suggest that the new force
    structure assessment that the Navy reportedly completed months
    ago, called the INFSA [Integrated Naval Force Structure
    Assessment], could shift the fleet to a more distributed
    architecture that includes a reduced proportion of larger
    ships, an increased proportion of smaller ships, and a newly
    created category of large, unmanned vehicles. Such a change
    could alter the mix of ships to be procured and the
    distribution of shipbuilding work among the Nation's shipyards.
    More recently, it has been reported that OSD [Office of the
    Secretary of Defense] has been reviewing the INFSA, and
    conducting its own analysis of Navy force structure
    requirements, and that the INFSA won't be released until OSD
    completes its work. Given its potentially significant changes
    in force level goal and fleet architecture, not having access
    to the INFSA could impact Congress' ability to assess and mark
    up the Navy's fiscal year 2021 budget.
        The remainder of my testimony explores various factors
    relating to the future size of the Navy; to procurement of
    submarines, aircraft carriers, surface combatants and
    amphibious ships; and to the process for how these ships might
    be built. Bryan Clark mentioned that this is a once-in-a-100-
    year opportunity to think about redesigning the Navy, but if
    you are going to do that, it may also present an opportunity to
    think about reconsidering the ways that we build ships, and my
    testimony includes some remarks on that.
        Chairman Courtney, this concludes my statement. Thank you
    again for the opportunity to testify, and I will be pleased to
    respond to any questions the subcommittee may have.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. O'Rourke can be found in the
    Appendix on page 78.]
        Mr. Courtney. Great. Well, thank you to all the witnesses
    again. Without objection, all the written testimony will be
    submitted for the record, and I appreciate the summarization
    that each one of you did. Again, we are going to try, and
    again, make sure everyone gets a crack at asking questions
    here, so I am going to try and start by leading by example by
    trying to adhere to the 5-minute rule as best as possible, and
    I know Mr. Wittman is similarly situated. If we have time for a
    second round, we will obviously accommodate that.
        Mr. O'Rourke, again, thank you for, you know, your really
    thorough breakdown in terms of the institutional issue that you
    described, you know, about the need to get a 30-year plan. Just
    two quick follow-ups. The process that the 30-year plan by law
    follows is that it is submitted at the same time as the budget,
    and then that also triggers a follow-on window of action by the
    Congressional Budget Office [CBO], which, again, sort of
    marches in a, you know, order so that, again, we can do our
    job. Again, if you could just sort of, for the record, just
    state what that 60-day follow-on that CBO follows when the 30-
    year plan is triggered.
        Mr. O'Rourke. The same law that requires the Department of
    Defense to submit the 30-year shipbuilding plan also requires
    CBO to then take that plan and conduct its own independent cost
    estimate of the cost of implementing the 30-year shipbuilding
    plan so that Congress can have that estimate to compare to the
    Navy's own cost estimate. And the CBO report that is done as a
    part of that law forms an important part of the annual
    discussion over the Navy shipbuilding plan. It provides very
    important perspective to the Congress, and is part of the way
    in which the 30-year shipbuilding plan and the legal
    requirements surrounding it support congressional oversight of
    the Navy's proposed shipbuilding budget.
        Mr. Courtney. So, at this point, again, there is no CBO
    analysis because there was no 30-year plan that has been
    submitted. Is that correct?
        Mr. O'Rourke. If the 30-year plan--as long as the 30-year
    plan is not submitted, CBO does not have a firm basis from
    which to proceed to make its own report. At some point, CBO may
    try to put together a synthetic equivalent of what they think
    the Navy might have done, but, of course, it would be
    preferable for CBO--if CBO had access to the actual 30-year
    plan to see exactly what the Navy might be planning,
    particularly because there are changes in the 30-year plan from
    one year to the next, and not all of those changes can
    sometimes be anticipated or synthetically created.
        Mr. Courtney. And you sort of laid out a legislative
    history regarding the 30-year plan requirement, which goes back
    to the early 2000s, when it was enacted. Again, actually
    Congress, at one point, did kind of tinker or consider the
    possibility of waiving the 30-year plan for a 2- or 3-year
    period, but then, actually, I think, reconsidered and
    reestablished, again, the annual 30-year shipbuilding plan.
        In terms of just Congress' own bipartisan support for this
    process, again, it really has shown that it really wants this,
    because it waived it for a year or two, but then decided by law
    that we should, again, reestablish that requirement. Is that
    correct?
        Mr. O'Rourke. Exactly. A few years ago, Congress amended
    the law to require that it be submitted only once every 4 years
    in the same year that a Quadrennial Defense Review would be
    submitted. But when we got into the implementation of that new
    situation, it was actually the House Armed Services Committee,
    among others, that found that situation unsatisfactory, and
    requested that the Navy submit a 30-year plan anyway, which the
    Navy eventually did in somewhat truncated form, but all the
    data was there. And Congress, having gone through that
    situation, then decided to amend the law back, once again, to
    reinstate the requirement for the plan to be submitted each
    year.
        Mr. Courtney. Well, thank you for that perspective. Again,
    when Secretary Esper and General Milley were here, again, we
    obviously raised this issue because it was missing when the
    budget came over. And, again, I think a number of us pretty
    forcefully, you know, indicated this is not a feel-good law.
    This is necessary for us to make investment decisions which,
    again, are a long game and really require a longer perspective.
        One other just quick point, and I hope you guys can see
    this. But again, Admiral Roughead, you mentioned how our
    submarine force is sort of the invisible queen on the
    chessboard. Mr. O'Rourke described them as the jewel in our
    fleet. Again, we also talked about the trough that is fast
    approaching. For your benefit, because I know that is kind of
    fine print from where you are sitting, again, we are roughly at
    about 52 attack submarines, and then you can just see as the
    Los Angeles-class fleet gets into pretty high volume
    retirement, the blue line shows the fact that we were going
    down to 42 by 2027, and then starts to climb back up as the
    two-a-year program of record for Virginia class kicks in and
    recovers. The orange dotted line shows what the budget that
    came over this year would do, which is, it actually worsened
    the trough.
        Again, Admiral, you sort of mentioned--``dangerous,'' I
    think, was the term you used. Again, looking at that chart, I
    mean, we are actually--that budget would really aggravate that
    problem. Is that correct?
        Admiral Roughead. Absolutely. And I think to overlay a
    couple of the other things that I mentioned, there is no
    question that the demand for submarines, particularly in the
    Western Pacific, is going to increase, so you have that factor
    that needs to be considered. There is also little doubt in my
    mind that activity in the Arctic is going to intensify, and the
    ship of choice up there, in my view, is going to be the
    submarine.
        So, in addition to this drastic dip that exists, I also
    envision significant increase in demand. And I don't want to be
    a prophet of doom, but I think it is important to think about
    combat or mission loss of submarines.
        In World War II, we lost 52 submarines. Very few people
    recognize that fact. So, you know, those are factors that have
    to be accounted for and overlaid on that force structure chart,
    in my view.
        Mr. Courtney. Great. Well, thank you. Again, after the
    budget came out, the Navy did send over their unfunded priority
    list, and number one from Admiral Gilday was to restore and
    protect that two-a-year program of record. So obviously, your
    testimony is helpful in terms of guiding the subcommittee as we
    move forward on our mark.
        And with that, I will go to the ranking member, Mr.
    Wittman.
        Mr. Wittman. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to
    thank our witnesses, again, for joining us. I would like to go
    and begin to talk about our proposed unmanned surface vessels.
    You know, the fiscal year 2021 budget request from the
    administration looks to get into serial production of unmanned
    surface vessels. And listen, the Navy's been experimenting with
    unmanned surface vessels for a number of years, but it is one-
    off experimentation. I think there are a lot of questions still
    left out there: reliability, operational employment, law of war
    applications.
        So, my question is this to the panel members, and Admiral
    Roughead, I will begin with you. Do you think the Navy's ready
    to enter into serial production to immediately get to that
    point? Are they ready to fully integrate this into the fleet?
    And what elements do you think have to be overcome in order to
    completely and effectively integrate unmanned surface platforms
    into the naval force structure and operational plans that we
    have right now?
        Admiral Roughead. Thank you for the question. If by saying
    entering into serial production to start a ship class of
    unmanned surface ships, I would say no. But I really do believe
    that there needs to be a much more aggressive push to develop
    some operational prototypes that can be used, that can allow us
    to go after what I think are going to be some of the
    challenges. Just the networking of those ships, the security of
    where they may be operating, but those are things that you can
    develop over time.
        So I really do believe that we have to look at it and not
    consider some of these prototypes to be a program of record,
    because once you get into that mode, you get into a very
    lockstep process with too much time, in my mind, to fill the
    gap. And even though your question was on unmanned surface
    ships, I reflect that we flew an unmanned aircraft off of an
    aircraft carrier in 2012.
        Mr. Wittman. Yeah.
        Admiral Roughead. 2012. That has not happened again.
        Mr. Wittman. That is right.
        Admiral Roughead. Eight years, in my mind, of a hiatus in
    trying to advance this new technology is not aggressive by any
    stretch of the imagination. So I think that there have to be
    provisions for the Navy to construct some of these, for them to
    be able to deploy them, even before they meet all of the
    operational wickets, so that we can learn, and from that, work
    out some of the issues that you highlighted.
        Mr. Wittman. Very good.
        Mr. Clark.
        Mr. Clark. Absolutely. I agree with Admiral Roughead that
    we should be thinking about fielding some prototypes on
    unmanned vehicles in general, and then there needs to be a
    space during which we do concept development and evaluation to
    determine what their eventual configuration should be, and then
    also, how they might contribute to the fleet. So, there always
    should be some gap of several years between the time you finish
    that prototype and field it, and then get into serial
    production of whatever the eventual version of it might be.
        The other thing that comes in with unmanned vehicles is
    there are some challenges and opportunities that are there,
    particularly with the large unmanned surface vessel the Navy is
    proposing. The challenges are, obviously, reliability, how we
    are going to fix it if it breaks down at sea. There is law of
    war considerations about can it protect itself, or can it
    simply be herded off and boarded by other players like the
    Chinese. And then the CONOPS [concept of operations] are
    questionable, like, well, if it is an unmanned vessel that is
    going to have to operate in concert with manned platforms,
    because it does have this vulnerability to being boarded and
    taken away, well then, you are constraining its ability to
    contribute to the fleet, because now it is basically just
    another missile magazine that is going to follow along a
    destroyer or a cruiser, which limits some of the valuable--you
    know, the value that it might provide given the cost.
        And then the opportunities that we might leave on the table
    are the fact that it could, if it was manned, contribute to the
    fleet as another manned combatant doing security cooperation or
    operating in regions where our larger combatants can't go, and
    give more diversity to the fleet and command opportunities for
    junior commanders. I think that is something to consider.
        So we have been proposing that instead of this large,
    unmanned surface vessel, the Navy, instead, pursue a corvette,
    that is maybe similar-sized but is a manned platform, and the
    cost difference between the two is actually not that
    significant. But yeah, in general, we should be thinking about
    the CONOPS when we start thinking about where the unmanned
    vehicle might be a player in the future fleet architecture.
        Mr. Wittman. No, I agree, and I think you all bring up
    great points. Another thing, too. Secretary Esper mentioned,
    and I think it is another concept to look at, and that is,
    lightly manned.
        Mr. Clark. Right.
        Mr. Wittman. You know, look at this as a transition,
    aggressively pursue this, because Admiral Roughead, as you
    pointed out, it is not the absolute number. It is the types of
    ships that we have as part of that number, and then their
    operational capability. And then total fleet integration, as I
    talked about, is integration across everybody that has a
    maritime presence. That has to be key.
        Let me jump into one other question, and then I will make
    sure we get to our other members. One of the things that really
    concerns me, and I know many of the other committee members
    too, is logistics. How do we make sure we support operations in
    the long term? And we have seen the Navy's very anemic response
    to recapitalizing the Ready Reserve fleet. We have seen
    recently, too, the capabilities that just aren't there. We see
    the Coast Guard pulling certifications for those ships. We see,
    in the turbo activation, some pretty startling lack of
    operational capabilities there that we see before us.
        With this tepid recapitalization process that we have seen,
    and we have given permission for the Navy to do some things,
    they are finally starting to do it after what I think are
    unacceptable delays and projected retirements of these ships,
    and many of them very old. In fact, I argue many of them belong
    in the Smithsonian, they still use steam plants, as you know.
    Getting a steam plant-certified engineer is very difficult
    these days, you know. We ought to retire them to the
    Smithsonian, not keep them operational.
        That being said, what do you believe are the implications
    of diminished surge capacity, not just for the Navy, but for
    the total force structure, and especially when it comes to what
    we may see in the future, and what our operational plans
    dictate if we are talking about all of this capability and
    presence necessary, Admiral Roughead, as you said, in the Indo-
    Pacific area? If our adversaries see warships there, but they
    know that those warships are not going to be able to be
    supported very long, the question is, is how capable are those
    warships of creating a deterrence?
        So, Admiral Roughead, I will begin with you and then go
    down our panel members.
        Admiral Roughead. That was one of the points that I made in
    my oral and in my written statement----
        Mr. Wittman. Yes.
        Admiral Roughead [continuing]. That we neglect logistics,
    and logistics is how this country has won wars.
        Mr. Wittman. Yes.
        Admiral Roughead. And I will share an exchange I had with a
    Chinese admiral during the time that I was on Active Duty where
    he made it very clear to me that our logistics ships were a
    primary target----
        Mr. Wittman. Yeah.
        Admiral Roughead [continuing]. Because if he can take out
    logistics, he takes out the lifeblood of the fighting ships, if
    you will.
        Mr. Wittman. Yes.
        Admiral Roughead. The other thing that is important is that
    I do believe that many of the ports that we routinely rely
    upon, particularly out in the Western Pacific, are going to be
    vulnerable, and so how are you able to sustain that force if
    you can't go in? You know, we have operated in the Middle East
    with, really, logistic impunity. We have been close to ports.
    It has been a benign flow on the sea lanes, and we have to
    rethink that.
        So, the distances that we are talking about in the Pacific
    are huge, compared to what we have been used to, and I think
    that if there is one thing that the committee really needs to
    pay attention to is, okay, we have the fighting force, how do
    we keep it fighting? And logistics will be how you do that to
    include how do you replenish at sea? Some of the new weapons
    that will be coming along.
        So, I would highly recommend a spotlight being put on the
    logistics force. There is a line I read many, many years ago as
    a young officer that logisticians are a sad, embittered race of
    men, and I think that is true, but they are the ones that we
    rely on in war.
        Mr. Wittman. Absolutely.
        Mr. Clark.
        Mr. Clark. Absolutely. I agree. And there are problems in
    basically the two different elements of the logistics force.
    There is the Combat Logistics Force that supports those
    operating forces at sea that are deployed overseas. There are
    challenges there with regard to its fit, meaning it may not be
    designed to support a more distributed Navy, because it is
    composed of a relatively small number of relatively large
    logistics vessels. So, we need a more distributed logistics
    force to support that more distributed operating Navy.
        And then the sealift force, we have got aging ships that
    need to be recapitalized, we need expand the MSP, the Maritime
    Security Program, to help fill in where those aging ships are
    unable to deploy. And then probably the most egregious part of
    the sealift fleet is the tanker fleet, where we only really
    have access in the U.S. Government to about 9 tankers of the 80
    or so that we need to be able to support a large operation
    overseas, both Navy and the other parts of the joint force.
        So, having some kind of way to access more tankers to
    support the joint force in a large overseas contingency is
    going to be a critical element of, you know, kind of future
    policy decisions for the Congress.
        Mr. Wittman. Mr. O'Rourke.
        Mr. O'Rourke. Yeah, very quickly. I agree with the earlier
    comments that planning for these kind of ships is always at the
    tail end after we figure everything else out. It is almost an
    afterthought. And I break things down the same way that Bryan
    did in terms of the UNREP [underway replenishment] ships for
    the battle fleet. There has been a general proposition that
    distributed maritime operations will require a different
    combination of support ships, but we have seen very little
    about what that new combination might be, other than a few
    scattered words in last year's 30-year shipbuilding plan.
        And in terms of surge sealift, if we are not going to
    recapitalize that adequately, it is going to get to a much
    larger question about what our national strategy is, because
    those surge sealift ships support a national strategy of
    intervening in the affairs of Eurasia, so as to prevent the
    emergence of regional hegemons in one part of Eurasia or
    another. So, if you don't do that, you are not following
    through on your national strategy, and you are calling it into
    question.
        And very quickly, if you will indulge me, I have, like, 30
    seconds on your earlier question about unmanned surface
    vehicles.
        Mr. Wittman. Yes.
        Mr. O'Rourke. And you raised many technical challenges and
    risks, and the other witnesses talked about those as well. I
    think to add to that, very quickly, I would say we need to
    understand better what the Navy has done to show analytically
    that this concept for distributing the Navy in this way not
    only makes sense, but that it is the best or most promising
    possible way forward.
        We have had an assertion that this is the way to go, but I
    am not sure how much analytical underpinning there has been for
    it.
        And also, as Bryan mentioned, it is one thing to say you
    are going to do this; it is another thing to develop the
    operational concepts to actually figure out how you are going
    to operate these ships and not just be a topic of hand-waving,
    you know, and briefing slides with electric bolts on them. And
    so, the analytical basis and the operational concepts need to
    be developed if they haven't already, and that needs to be
    shared with the Congress so that Congress can look at that and
    factor it into its assessment and markup of these proposed
    budgets.
        Mr. Wittman. I agree.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
        Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you, Mr. Wittman.
        So now, we will turn to member questions. Again, under the
    House rules, again, folks who are joining us remotely are on,
    you know, parity with folks in the room, again, by seniority.
    So, our first member question will come from Mr. Langevin,
    followed by--next up after him will be Mr. Conaway.
        Mr. Langevin. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can you
    hear me okay?
        Mr. Courtney. I hear you fine, Jim.
        Mr. Langevin. Great. Well, good morning, everyone. First of
    all, let me start out, Chairman Courtney, congratulating you
    for being the first subcommittee chair to hold a hybrid
    hearing. And given the fact that you are and I are--our
    districts abut in Connecticut and Rhode Island, I find that I
    am the first member to ask a question virtually, so New England
    and Red Sox Nation are leading the way.
        So, to our witnesses, I want to thank both of our
    witnesses--all three of our witnesses today, Admiral Roughead
    and Bryan Clark and Mr. O'Rourke, for attending today's
    hearing, and accommodating to the new format of these hearings.
    I appreciate your flexibility, as everyone across the country
    is doing their part to practice social distancing and get
    through this pandemic that we are dealing with right now. I
    have got some practice doing this with Bryan, as he recently
    virtually interviewed me a few weeks ago. It is good to see you
    again.
        So, let me begin my first question with Admiral Roughead.
    If the future defense budgets remain flat, which Navy programs
    do you believe are a higher priority? And the current CNO
    stated that the top priority is the Columbia-class program.
    Would you agree or disagree with that?
        Admiral Roughead. Yes, sir, I would. I think that in the
    world that we will be entering into, particularly with
    conventional challenges that we will be facing, we have to
    ensure that we have a strong, robust, and modern nuclear
    deterrent. And, of course, you know full well the importance of
    our sea-based deterrent, so I do agree that that is the number
    one shipbuilding priority.
        Mr. Langevin. Thank you. And attack submarines remain
    behind their goal of 66, where we should be, yet we face
    challenges with expenditures, with expanding production. How
    can the Navy mitigate this upcoming risk? To all three of our
    witnesses, whoever would like to chime in.
        Mr. Clark. In terms of mitigating the shortfall of attack
    submarines, one option is going to be for the Navy to extend
    the lives of existing submarines and try to get a few more days
    or hours or, rather, deployments out of them, so the Navy is
    making that effort right now. That is one option.
        Another option would be to increase production of existing
    submarines, Virginia class, as they are in production. The
    industrial base will be challenged to do that, but I think it
    is a worthwhile effort. The Navy may need to consider accepting
    longer construction timelines, considering that the
    construction yards will be building both Virginia-class Block V
    and Columbia-class submarines. So, if more submarines were
    bought to add to the two per year, certainly they want to fill
    in the one that is missing from this year's budget. There would
    be an opportunity to do that, and it may just be a partnership
    between the Navy and industry to come up with an appropriate
    timeline for construction of those submarines. But that is an
    option to help fill that gap that the Navy could pursue.
        Admiral Roughead. Mr. Langevin, I apologize. My hearing is
    not what it used to be. But just to amplify on what Bryan
    mentioned, I really do think that this is a place where a good,
    hard look has to be taken at the submarine industrial base,
    because in addition to the desire to increase the build, I
    think it is important that the submarine industrial base be
    able to return submarines back into service quickly. And I
    think that if we are only looking at the base as building the
    boats, we are not looking at the big picture.
        So, I really do think this is one area in particular where
    we really need to look at the physical aspects of the base, but
    we also have to put a hard light on the workforce, and how do
    we attract young people to want to be part of this enterprise.
        Mr. Langevin. Thank you. Mr. O'Rourke, did you have any
    comment?
        Mr. O'Rourke. Yes, very quickly. In terms of mitigating the
    shortfall, there are various options that can be pursued. And
    when the chart was shown earlier, it actually brought back some
    memories of mine. I have been reporting and testifying on the
    projected SSN [nuclear-powered attack submarine] valley since
    March of 1995, and when I first did that, it was in this room
    before I think the Procurement Subcommittee. Duncan Hunter,
    Sr., was the chairman of that subcommittee at the time. And to
    illustrate that coming shortfall, I stood up and presented a
    chart that was the same size and looked very much like the one
    that was presented just a few minutes ago.
        So, there are some things that can project that if you
    don't take great steps to change it, those things will come
    true, and now it is baked into the cake.
        So, what do we do about it now that we are in the
    situation? One is what Bryan mentioned, that the Navy is
    already moving forward with to refuel five, or as many as seven
    existing 688s [Los Angeles-class SSNs], and get several years
    of additional service out of them. That could help fill in the
    back half of the valley a little bit.
        You can also take steps to maximize the readiness of the
    attack submarine force during the bottom years of the valley.
    Whether that means adjusting your maintenance schedules or just
    putting extra money into them, you want to make sure that if
    you are only going to have a minimum of, like, 42 submarines in
    the late 2020s, you want to make sure that they are in the best
    possible condition during that period of time for deployment.
        You can also think, perhaps, about forward homeporting an
    additional one or two submarines in Guam or some other forward
    location.
        Mr. Courtney. The time has expired. So, again, I'm sure
    this topic will continue. So, thank you.
        Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I will yield
    back.
        Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Langevin. Next up is Mr.
    Conaway. He is followed by Mr. Norcross.
        Mr. Conaway. Thank you, Mr. Chair, I appreciate that.
        It is a bit surreal that we are having these conversations
    because in the light of the fact that our Nation has just spent
    or committed to spend $3 trillion, money that was not budgeted
    anywhere at any point in time, was not contemplated having been
    spent in any of these projections. And so, I don't think
    Members of Congress yet have absorbed that. I don't think our
    Nation has absorbed that. So, all of these conversations will
    have to be reset, I think, at some point to reflect the reality
    of that spending that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do
    with the topics of today. But we can't ignore it nor I think
    should we ignore it going forward.
        But, with that said, Admiral Roughead, you mentioned that a
    ratio of four ships to one deployed is a good rule of thumb.
    Would you apply that to our carrier fleet as well?
        Admiral Roughead. Yes, sir. I apply it to everything. The
    only way that you can skew that number is, as was just
    mentioned, by forward homeporting. And, quite frankly, I do not
    see aircraft carriers more than the one that we have forward
    now being able to do that because of the complexities of the
    air wing maintenance, what have you.
        So, if in fact you want the presence in the Middle East and
    the Western Pacific, that is a good rule to have, and it drives
    the numbers. If you don't do it, you begin to short
    maintenance, you begin to short training, and you begin to
    short the opportunities that our people have to recharge back
    home.
        Mr. Conaway. So the numbers that we have right now at 11
    won't work. And then if he went to 10 or 9, then you are going
    to have, at best, 2 ships deployed under that [inaudible]. So,
    thank you for that.
        I have been around a little while and long enough to watch
    the LCS come and go and come and go and the issues there.
        As we talk about all of these new classes of ships and new
    capacities and new capabilities, everything else, are there
    lessons that we have learned through the exercise of designing
    the LCS trying to--perhaps being overly optimistic about what
    the capabilities would be, that variety and versatility that we
    thought that ship would have. Are there lessons learned through
    that that the system can use to avoid similar impacts of these
    new classes of ships that are being proposed. Any of the
    panelists want to start?
        Admiral Roughead. Yes, sir, from my perspective, I do
    believe that lessons have been learned with the Navy shifting
    away from the littoral combat ship. I think we put too much
    stock in some of the mission modules and how quickly they will
    come along. So, I do believe that we are shifting back now to
    something that is a bit more certain.
        One of the other areas that I would just offer as a
    caution: In many instances where we have talked about crewing
    concepts for ships so that we can get more out of them because
    we will use double crews, we often short the back end of what
    makes that model work. And, you know, we offer up our SSBN or
    ballistic missile submarine force as the poster child for how
    you can do blue and gold crews, but people often do not
    recognize the vast investment that was made and continues to be
    made into making that scheme possible.
        So, as we look at maximizing availability of ships and if
    we do it with innovating crewing concepts, you have to pay for
    it.
        Mr. Clark. I would agree. And one of the lessons we learned
    was that technology insertion needs to be done in a more
    realistic fashion with some time period for the development of
    the substituent technologies before you start building the
    ship. So, getting land-based prototypes done, beginning the
    investment to put that kind of technology onto another ship so
    you can evaluate it in an operational setting.
        So LCS incorporated a lot of new technologies into the
    mission modules that were not really fully developed or even
    partially developed before the ship actually was fielded. So,
    getting those technologies developed in advance of the ship
    being pursued is a key element of it. And then also having this
    gap between the initial fielding of prototypes and the actual
    serial production of the ship will be important to be able to
    refine the design and ensure that the ones that are built in a
    serial fashion actually reflect a design that makes sense given
    the CONOPS that the ship is going to pursue.
        Admiral Roughead. Just two points that I would add to what
    has already been said. First is that the Navy moved very
    quickly at the outset of the LCS program to try and shorten the
    acquisition cycle time for that class. And some people would
    argue that the Navy wound up paying for that over the longer
    run by having to make a lot of adjustments in that program
    along the way.
        Secondly, this was built not as a multimission ship, but as
    a focused mission ship that would have one primary mission at
    any given point, depending on what mission module is placed on
    the ship. And that gave it less of an ability to respond to
    changes in strategic circumstances. And the Navy has
    traditionally built multimission ships that can adapt to
    changing world circumstances. And moving forward, we face a lot
    of uncertainty about what the international security
    environment could be, and that might argue in favor of once
    again building ships that have a broader set of capabilities
    that would enable them to better adjust to shifts and changes
    in the international security environment over their life
    cycle.
        Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Conaway.
        Next up is Mr. Norcross. He was signed in. I don't see him
    on the video screen. I don't know if he is still with us or
    not.
        Don, are you there? It doesn't appear so.
        So next up is Mr. Moulton who also--I see him on the
    screen. So, Seth, you're up.
        Mr. Moulton. Thank you very much. I would like to just
    first of all start with a couple of just quick comments based
    on what I have heard, and thank you all very much for joining
    us this morning.
        First of all, I couldn't agree more that this is not about
    the total number of ships but about their capabilities. From
    what I can tell, the Chinese see the future in unmanned
    vehicles: surface, subsurface, aerial, and space. And in my
    mind, we are unquestionably moving too slowly. We have got to
    move more quickly. And we have got to recognize that
    experimentation is okay. One of the things the private sector
    has to learn in the tech age is that it is okay to fail; you
    just want to fail quickly so that you can learn from those
    failures and move on. And I think that caution is really
    putting our national security at risk, given how long it has
    taken to produce and field these unmanned vehicles.
        One lesson I learned as a warfighter in the Marines is the
    need to move quickly. It is better to move fast and break
    things than to hold back. Holding back is what gives your enemy
    an advantage, and I fear that is where we are.
        I also learned a bit in the Marines about getting to the
    fight in care of the U.S. Navy. And my first trip across the
    Pacific was in a cruise ship built in 1968 that I believe is
    still in service carrying Marines and has a steam propulsion
    system, as Mr. Wittman described. And, you know, we only lost
    all power and went completely dead in the water turning
    sideways to the waves once in the journey. That was an
    interesting experience.
        But I imagine that part of the reason that we were building
    steam-powered ships as recently as 1968 is in fact because
    there were Members of Congress who said we are not quite sure
    about this new technology, this turbine stuff, and diesel
    engines, or whatever else, and we should hold back and use the
    trusted and hold true. And I think now we are suffering the
    consequences.
        So one of the people I think who is really trying to change
    this and trying to push this forward is the new Commandant of
    the Marine Corps, and he is asking some really tough questions
    and questioning some long-held assumptions about the role that
    Marines should play.
        I would love to hear from you what you think about General
    Berger's comments and his plans to divest of certain defense
    programs to make room for new ones. I am with Mr. Conaway that
    we cannot avoid the reality here that we are going to have to
    make some tough decisions, some new tough decisions based on
    the budget realities we face coming out of this pandemic.
        Admiral Roughead. Well, thank you for the question, sir.
    And I would--I applaud the Commandant for taking a fresh look
    at how the Marine Corps is going to operate, more distributed,
    lighter. I think that is the role of the Corps in the world in
    which we are going to live.
        I would, however, say that it can't be done in isolation.
    We need to look at how that force will be supported, how it
    will be supplied, and how it will be networked into the broader
    joint force, and I would say starting with the naval force. So
    I applaud what is being done, but I think it is important to
    really dig into the operational concepts and to make sure that
    all pieces of determining what that force's effectiveness will
    be need to be examined closely.
        Mr. Clark. Yeah, I think the work that the Commandant has
    done with his team to develop the elements of a new force
    design for the Marine Corps is terrific. It is moving in the
    right direction. Because for a long time we questioned the
    ability of the Marines to do a large-scale amphibious assault
    in the manner they did during the Korean War or the Second
    World War.
        Now, looking at that force design, as Admiral Roughead
    said, we are going to have to think through the operational
    concepts and what that implies for the kinds of forces we need.
    The force structure work that we have been doing, that I
    included in my written statement, reflects some of those
    insights about the fact that the amphibious fleet is probably
    going to become larger and more diverse and have a larger
    number of smaller platforms that will enable moving Marines
    around in these island locations where they might be standing
    up expeditionary bases.
        But there is a lot of work that still needs be to done to
    evaluate, how are Marines going to get to that fight? Are they
    going to be prepositioned, or are they going to be brought in
    when the conflict starts to begin? Are they going to be moved
    around in a way that allows them to exploit their mobility? How
    is that going to happen? And then what is their role? And I
    think the work that the Marines are doing right now to evaluate
    their role in the joint force is going to be really important
    because a small Marine force based in a place like the
    Philippines or the southwest island chain of Japan can make a
    difference, but that difference is going to be mostly in
    impeding the progress of Chinese power projection over the
    first island chain, rather than in denying areas of the sea to
    Chinese military forces in China's own backyard. So, thinking
    through----
        Mr. Moulton. What is small, light, and nimble in the Marine
    Corps mean for the United States Navy? Because I think part of
    the general's--the Commandant's concern is that a troop ship
    like the one I was just describing is a big target. I think
    that, at the same time as China sees a future in unmanned
    vehicles, they also see our aircraft carriers as massive
    targets that they quite enjoy.
        Mr. Courtney. Make this one quick.
        Mr. Clark. Small and nimble is generally going to mean a
    company-sized type force or a ship that is able to carry that
    company-sized force, like 100 to 200 people with their
    equipment. That is what we are talking about is that kind of
    scale.
        Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Moulton.
        Next up is Mrs. Hartzler, and she will be followed by Ms.
    Sherrill.
        Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to
    all our witnesses today.
        I usually like to stay within my lane as far as
    subcommittee questions, but this one is more--falls under
    Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee. But I think it is
    also relevant to our discussion here of the overall Navy future
    force structure. And it has to do with the discussion about the
    Navy's management of their strike fighter fleet. I have raised
    concerns over the Navy's decision to eliminate 36 new F/A-18E/F
    Super Hornets from its fiscal year 2022-2025 Future Years
    Defense Plan. I think this could create greater risk for
    combatant commanders and increases the Navy's current strike
    fighter shortfall in fiscal year 2021 from 49 to 58 aircraft,
    which amounts to about 1 carrier wing's, air wing's worth of
    aircraft. If you factor in attrition requirements, it is
    actually even worse than that.
        I understand the Navy hopes to fix this shortfall in the
    2030 timeframe with initial fielding of its next-generation
    fighter, the
    F/A-XX, which is in the concept development stages now. And I
    appreciate the need to focus on development of next-generation
    capability. And I understand the Navy, like all the other
    services, have to make hard decisions given constrained budget
    top lines. However, I think the new Super Hornets would have
    the most immediate impact on the inventory and fleet readiness,
    given that it will take almost a decade at least before the F/
    A-XX is slated to be delivered, and that is assuming this
    program is able to stay on schedule and be affordable. I recall
    the Navy took a similar approach to FA-18 procurement approach
    about 10 years ago with aspirational goals to maintain strike
    fighter inventory levels with planned procurement of F-35Cs.
    That plan was not realized, and the Navy in turn had to restart
    production of Super Hornets to help mitigate operational risks.
    And I am wondering if we are repeating history here.
        So, Mr. Clark, you have also expressed some recent
    skepticism regarding the Navy's management of the strike
    fighter fleet. In your view, what is the consequence of paring
    back the production of new Super Hornets, and should we keep
    this production line going until we have a better understanding
    of F/A-XX and its timeline?
        Mr. Clark. Yes, thank you for the question. Great point
    about the strike fighter shortfall in the near term and
    balancing that against the development of a future aircraft. I
    think the F/A-XX is going to need to be probably a derivative,
    an existing airplane rather than some complete new clean-sheet
    design, given the fiscal constraints we are under and also
    given the uncertainty about what the future of unmanned
    aircraft in the air wing is going to be. Therefore, keeping
    production lines going for both of our existing strike fighters
    is a good idea to allow you that--them both to be an option for
    this future F/A-XX.
        Mrs. Hartzler. Very good. You all know that the cost of the
    Navy's force structure has to take into account not only the
    initial cost of procurement of weapons platforms, but also the
    personnel, training infrastructures, sustainment costs, and
    logistics chain that the Navy requires for its platform.
        I am growing increasingly concerned that the sustainment
    cost of these sophisticated weapons system are taking up the
    larger percentage of the Navy's annual budget. There is
    certainly a necessity for revolutionary capability, but at what
    cost.
        So, once again, Mr. Clark, you have studied not only the
    effects of current weapons platforms, but also how the Navy
    intends to sustain them over their life cycle. Are you
    concerned about what the growing sustainment costs of platforms
    might do to the procurement budgets in future years?
        Mr. Clark. Yes, as a matter of fact, it is already making
    impacts on the procurement budgets. Some of the changes we saw
    in this year's budget, the reductions in platforms such as FA-
    18 are both impacted by their rising operations and maintenance
    cost for the Navy. So, a future fleet design needs to
    incorporate explicitly the long-term total ownership cost of
    platforms. And, also, we need to think about how to make each
    platform less expensive over its lifetime. So that needs to be
    incorporated into its design. If we don't start making those
    changes, we are going to continue down this road of cutting
    production to support the current fleet, and, eventually, the
    fleet will just shrink down to a force that is going to be much
    smaller than of that today because that is what we can afford
    to own given the nature of the platforms and their costs.
        Mrs. Hartzler. Do you see any ways that right now those
    sustainment costs could be reduced with the fleet that we have?
        Mr. Clark. There are some ways we can better manage the
    fleet and its maintenance. So if we better organize the
    schedule of ships so that they can go in and get the
    maintenance done at the most efficient time possible and avoid
    delays, make sure we do adequate inspections to ensure we have
    a good work package before ships go into maintenance, those are
    factors that can be used to--or those are ways we can drive
    down the cost of the subsequent maintenance.
        Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you, Vicky.
        Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you. You bet.
        Mr. Courtney. Next, Ms. Sherrill was on, but I think she--
    we may have--she may have gotten pulled away.
        So, in order on the Democratic side is Mr. Golden, and then
    he will be followed by Mr. Byrne.
        Mr. Golden. Thank you very much, Chairman, and thanks for
    getting this hearing pulled together.
        In his prepared statement, Mr. O'Rourke observed that the
    upcoming IFSA [integrated force structure assessment] could
    result in a once-in-a-generation change in the Navy's fleet
    architecture.
        Mr. Clark also proposed a similar revolutionary approach to
    Navy in its recent ``Taking Back the Seas'' CBSA [Center for
    Strategic and Budgetary Assessments] report. As you all know,
    any major change in naval procurement in fleet architecture
    requires a corresponding adaptation by the shipbuilding
    industrial base. This isn't a change that can occur overnight
    either. Shipbuilder selection and training requires long-term
    strategic planning and meaningful sustained congressional
    oversight so we can ensure our robust skilled shipbuilding
    workforce. The Navy's fiscal year 2019 and 2020 reports to
    Congress on the annual long-range plan for construction of
    naval vessels identified the shipbuilding defense industrial
    base as fundamental for achieving the Navy shipbuilding
    requirements. That seems a rather obvious observation, or at
    least it should be. And it also made clear that it was a unique
    national security imperative that required congressional
    management and protection.
        So, I wanted to ask Admiral Roughead, given your experience
    and expertise, I would appreciate hearing from you on how to
    achieve this transition in a manner that protects and builds
    our shipbuilding workforce. Specifically, how do we go through
    this proposed transition and architecture without repeating the
    harm caused by previous boom and bust shipbuilding cycles, what
    types of investments do we need to see in training to achieve
    this change? What obstacles do you foresee, given shipbuilder
    demographic challenges that we are struggling with right now?
        Admiral Roughead. Yes, sir, and thank you for that
    question. I think it is one of the most important ones of what
    the committee has to deal with. You know, the fragility of the
    base and the limited number of shipbuilders and suppliers that
    we have to support shipbuilding, I really do think we have to
    acknowledge that. And as we think about future force structure,
    I really do believe that industry has to come in in the
    beginning and talk about how they can adjust what the impact of
    certain investments will or will not be on their future. We
    have not done that. I would argue that, even among the
    shipbuilders, they are probably reluctant to come together and
    talk about it because of the competitive issues. But I honestly
    believe that we as a country, we don't have the luxury to not
    have a more integrated approach on how we want to go forward.
        I would also argue that we have to be far more aggressive
    in appealing to young people and providing the fundamentals
    that allow them to work in what some may perceive as an
    antiquated industry, but really when you get to it, there is a
    lot of high-tech stuff that is going on there. And so being
    able to create opportunities, particularly in the areas around
    the major shipbuilding centers, to build and encourage young
    people to want to go into that industry is going to be very
    important.
        Mr. Golden. Thank you for that feedback. Very important.
        You earlier talked about needing a high-low mix in surface
    warships. Could you talk a little bit--I think, during your
    time as Chief of Naval Operations, you were actually very much
    involved in development of the missile defense capabilities of
    Flight III DDG [guided missile destroyer] that we are bringing
    into the fleet right now, the SPY-6 radar system.
        Can you talk a little bit about where you see in the Navy's
    fleet architecture the role of the Flight III DDG or some kind
    of future large surface combatant? What role should they play
    today and in the future?
        Admiral Roughead. Yes, sir. I think that, when I talk about
    the high end, these are the ships that we can put in very
    challenging undersea warfare areas, that can perform air
    defense and also increasingly missile defense, that can begin
    to accept the defensive systems against hypersonics. So that is
    where I see the higher end ships, the Flight III and then the
    large surface combatant when we get there.
        So I think it is important that we do the high-low mix
    because just going back in my time, it was always frustrating
    to take a very high-end ballistic missile defense-capable
    guided missile destroyer and send them down to chase Somali
    pirates. That to me was a wasted asset when you can have a
    smaller combatant go down--less capable combatant go down and
    do that. And that is why I think the high-low mix is the only
    way that we can go forward.
        Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you, Admiral.
        Thank you, Jared.
        Next up is Mr. Byrne, and he will be followed by Mrs.
    Luria.
        Mr. Byrne. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
    witnesses being here today. It has been really good. A lot of
    our discussion has been about the need for a distributed
    maritime presence, both for the Navy and Marine Corps, lot of
    talk about smaller classes of ships.
        Let me ask you about two classes of ships we haven't talked
    about. One is the expeditionary fast transport vessel, and the
    other is the light amphibious warship. Can each of you comment
    on how important you think that is going forward for the future
    of both the Navy and the Marine Corps?
        Admiral Roughead. Yes, sir, and again, I am not privy to
    where the Marine Corps may be thinking. But, you know, that is
    the type of ship that I think can be effective in the
    Commandant's concept of, how can you configure it to move the
    types of weapon systems or sensors that you may want to put in
    some distributed areas? How can you move large number sort of
    troops? I recall my first visit to the LCS that was being built
    down in Mobile. When I came back----
        Mr. Byrne. I am very familiar with that.
        Admiral Roughead. I figured you would be, sir.
        When I came back, the first person I went to see was to
    walk down the hall and to talk to the Commandant in the Marine
    Corps because I said you, you know, can configure this ship to
    move a significant number of Marines over a short period, and
    in archipelagic areas like the Philippines and Indonesia, they
    are ideally suited for types of things like that.
        So, I would hope that that is where the Marine Corps is
    thinking. I will leave it to Bryan. He might have more insight
    on that.
        Mr. Clark. I think absolutely both those platforms are
    going to be important. The light amphibious warship is going to
    be essential for that company-sized movement of forces around
    within an archipelago like the first island chain of the
    Philippines and Japan. Also, it is going to provide the Marines
    the ability to distribute those forces coming from a larger
    warship. So, a larger amphibious warship can now divulge--or
    distribute those Marines over a larger area and then move them
    around during a period of conflict. So, the light amphibious
    warship will be very important for that.
        The expeditionary fast transport [EPF] has--that role can
    be done by--but it can also do a lot of other roles. I think we
    have--the Navy has been exploring those, the use of it for
    theater security cooperation, the use of it in counter--drug
    countertrafficking operations where its ability to act as a
    command post has been really important. And, also, it can be a
    medical platform. We had the recent experience with the Comfort
    and Mercy being deployed to Los Angeles and New York where they
    weren't really fully utilized because they are a very large
    ship being used for a purpose that was very different than its
    original intent. A smaller medical ship might be able to
    operate in a more distributed fashion, more efficiently provide
    the kind of services you might need in a location like New York
    that is experiencing a pandemic.
        So, I think those are applications that have not been
    really fully explored, but the Navy is starting to do that.
        Mr. O'Rourke. Bryan stole a couple of my points, but what I
    will say is that the EPF is an example, to some degree, of an
    open architecture ship that can be adapted to a variety of
    missions in the future, depending on how you fit it out on the
    inside, whether it is for medical care or other things. And
    since we face some uncertainty as to the exact mix of missions
    that we might want to pursue in the future, that is a platform
    that can be seen as something that can be adapted to the mix of
    missions that eventually emerges because it is a ship with a
    lot of open spaces on it and represents an implementation of
    physical open architecture in ship design.
        Mr. Byrne. Admiral, let me ask you about--Mr. Clark
    mentioned that turning some of these smaller ships like the EPF
    into a hospital ship. Where do you stand on that?
        Admiral Roughead. I really do think that we need to rethink
    our hospital ship concept. I used Mercy very extensively in the
    Pacific when I was out there. It is an extraordinary
    capability, but in some cases, I think it is too large. I do
    think that, depending on whether the Navy and the military is
    called in to go in and work with small remote populations, I
    think it can be hugely important.
        The point that Bryan made, you know, you--for example, in
    pandemic areas, I think you could probably put in packages that
    have the right pressure characteristics so that you could do
    some isolation of patients in ways that would be well-suited.
        So, I would recommend looking at a range of ships. I do,
    however, think Mercy and Comfort are really large for the
    missions that I envision in the future. So, I would look at
    something smaller, and that's one option that I think is
    viable.
        Mr. Byrne. Thank you for your answers. I will just make one
    observation, Mr. Chairman. I agree with Mr. Moulton. One of the
    things that I think we make a mistake about sometimes is that
    we don't understand that we can move faster with our technology
    if we put our minds to it.
        When it comes to the unmanned vessel, I think we need to
    start making our minds move a lot faster. I think if we do
    that, I think we will get the technology we need.
        With that, I yield back.
        Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Byrne.
        Next up is Mrs. Luria, and she will be followed by Mr.
    Kelly.
        Mrs. Luria. I want to thank you again, gentlemen, for being
    here today. And something that we have talked about a lot--you
    mentioned it in your testimony several times--is that, and I
    will quote Admiral Roughead, there is an overfixation on the
    number of ships. And we have touched briefly with talking about
    different ship classes on the capabilities of ships. But
    something we haven't touched on is the employment of ships.
        And, Mr. Clark, I am curious, what force generation model
    did you use in the analysis that you did, specifically for your
    testimony today? And just on that note, I had also referenced
    some work that you coauthored from 2017 with CSBA. And the
    number, although, you know, we discussed the fallacy of just
    resting on a number, was 340 ships, and in today's testimony
    you say 473.
        So, I suspect that there is significant changes between the
    model that you used. And really what I am getting at is the
    force generation model. Admiral Roughead's comments that it is
    a 1-to-4 ratio as far as deployability. And then where we have
    gone with the OFRP, the Optimized Fleet Response Plan, do you
    think that that is an effective model and sustainable, and does
    it give enough deployed presence specifically for the
    investments that we are making in these ships.
        Mr. Clark. Thank you for the question. Those are great
    questions. The difference in the numbers is in large part due
    to the rebalancing of the force to incorporate a larger number
    of smaller platforms and a smaller number of larger platforms.
    So that increases the size of the fleet in terms of the number
    of ships, of manned ships. And, also, the force generation is
    an aspect of that. So, we have had to incorporate a realistic
    expectation for what the OFRP can deliver, which is you are
    generally at this point going to be 1-to-4 to 1-to-5 ships. So
    that increases the number of ships you need.
        We also didn't try to make overly optimistic projections
    about forward basing of ships, which does give you some benefit
    in terms of the rotational cycle. But a lot of the benefit of
    forward basing comes from the fact you use a shorter
    operational cycle that gives you a higher operational tempo.
    So, those ships get worked a lot harder while they are deployed
    overseas, rather than the more steady pace that you get back
    home.
        So doing those things drove up the number of ships because
    we had to think about what is a realistic expectation for how
    often a ship can deploy, and we have made some assumptions in
    the past that were probably overly optimistic.
        So, yeah, going forward, we need to reexamine the OFRP and
    evaluate if that is really the right force generation model. If
    we can go to a model that maybe generates forces more quickly,
    a higher OPTEMPO [operational tempo] model, which we did
    advocate in that 2017 study, which is more like the model we
    use overseas. I think it is possible to do so, but it will
    require us to have an industrial base that can support that
    throughput of ships for their maintenance cycles. And it will
    also require flexibility in scheduling so that, when a ship is
    ready to go into maintenance, it can do so, rather than waiting
    around for a yard to open or going on deployment and getting
    stuff broken----
        Mrs. Luria. So, to touch on that, when we had testimony and
    Secretary Modly earlier this year testified that the rough
    number that the Navy could hope to maintain in the near future
    was about 310 ships as far as adequate manning, maintenance
    capabilities, and the industrial base. Yet the Navy has stood
    by the 355 and made indications that that number is going to be
    higher when we see the new integrated force structure
    assessment. But the trajectory that they had requested,
    especially in this year's budget, and Mr. O'Rourke correctly
    noted that the numbers are actually going down from what they
    projected. So, they are not on a trajectory to get there.
        And just in the time I have left, shifting back to
    capabilities. So, in your 2017 CSBA study, you mentioned a T-
    AKE [dry cargo/ammunition ship], so a logistic ship with VLS
    [vertical launching system]. And a lot of what we do is looking
    at capabilities and the ability to have those capabilities
    forward, and in that includes the VLS and the strike
    capability. And I really haven't heard much about this. I have
    talked to the MSC [Military Sealift Command] commander about
    it, the past MSC commander. Specifically, and do you do any
    work at all in sort of more innovative thought processes of how
    we can better utilize some of the platforms such as the MSC
    ships to augment our other forces and provide more firepower
    forward? Can you comment on that?
        Mr. Clark. Yeah, absolutely. So, the reason we wanted to
    have that VLS magazine equipped T-AKE was to allow reloading of
    ships in a forward location. Also, theoretically, it could
    launch weapons from there. But, most importantly, it was a way
    of bringing weapons forward in a ready manner that could just
    be pulled out and put onto a ship. So, forward reloading and
    rearming of ships is going to be essential in any of these
    operational concepts because we can't have ships driving back
    to Japan or Pearl Harbor to get reloaded when their weapons
    usage is going to be pretty high in some of these conflicts.
        So using the MSC fleet more innovatively and incorporating
    some platforms into the MSC fleet that can move forward and
    provide that ability of reload and rearm and repair forces in
    the field is going to be essential if the fleet is going to be
    able to sustain operations.
        Mrs. Luria. Well, thank you. I just think that is a concept
    that requires further examination. And knowing how the mission
    data is loaded in a Tomahawk missile and a VLS launcher, there
    really isn't a need to transfer it from one ship to another
    with the technology that we have today. It could be a command-
    and-control solution.
        Mr. Clark. Right. You can launch on remote.
        Mrs. Luria. A launcher in another type of platform. And we
    have talked a lot about platforms that are less expensive to
    operate and less expensive to build. So, I think that that is
    an important element in evaluating our future.
        Mr. Clark. Absolutely, that is why we included the corvette
    as well in the fleet that we proposed.
        Mrs. Luria. Well, thank you. I think my time is expired. I
    yield back.
        Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mrs. Luria.
        Next up is Mr. Kelly. He will be followed by Mr. Cisneros,
    who will be followed by Mr. Waltz and Mr. Gallagher.
        Mr. Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I thank our witnesses for being here today.
        First of all, I want to echo what Mr. Moulton said. I think
    as far as research and development and what platforms and how
    we use those, I think we have to execute quickly. We have to
    accept failures, and then fail quickly, like you said, and move
    forward.
        The second point. I am really concerned that we are still
    waiting on the 30-year ship plan from the Navy. I think it is
    very hard to execute anything and for our industrial base to be
    ready to produce whatever we need when there is no plan. And
    when there is no plan, people just wander aimlessly because
    there is not anything out there to do.
        So, part of it is we have got to research and develop,
    decide what we are going to build in the future. When we do
    that, then we have to violently execute. I see so often we
    start and stop and start and stop, and we don't allow our
    industrial base to build the things that we are committed to.
    So, whether we are talking about unmanned systems or hospital
    ships, we have got what we had until we got something else.
    Then that is why we have to have this plan.
        I would go back to my question now. Admiral Roughead or Mr.
    Clark, the Navy is pursuing advanced technologies through its
    Naval Power and Energy Systems Technology Development Roadmap.
    Among these technologies are innovative approaches to energy
    storage and management. Could you describe why this is
    important now? As we enter critical stages of development for
    future systems, where would you prioritize these efforts within
    the Navy's research and development portfolio, and what
    additional steps could the Navy take to better meet its future
    power and energy storage needs?
        Admiral Roughead. I think one of the things that we need to
    do, particularly in the area of unmanned systems, we have
    already talked in general about the need to accelerate efforts
    there, but when we get into unmanned underwater systems, my
    sense is that we are always drawn to either the weapon, the
    sensor, or how these unmanned systems link with one another,
    which is all very important, all very interesting. But if we
    cannot sustain the underwater systems at sea for a long period
    of time, they really become very, very limited and become very
    expensive unusable assets. So, in my mind, there really should
    be a national push on long endurance, safe, underwater power if
    we really want to capitalize on that capability. And it is not
    just how long they can stay out. But in many areas where it
    will be important for these vehicles to operate, there is going
    to be high currents, and you are just going to use a lot of
    power. So, I think that we got--we have to get off this idea of
    what is the combat capability, and power is the key.
        I often used to say that Admiral Rickover didn't transform
    submarines by designing a new hull. He transformed that entire
    capability by changing the power. And I think that is where the
    key is in unmanned.
        And if I could, one of the things that we are frustrated
    with the pace of our development. But as I look at coming off
    of COVID and where countries are going to be economically, I
    really do believe that China is going to be spending a lot of
    money on its digital future and also on its energy future. They
    also will likely have to divert some of their shipbuilding
    capacity so that they don't have underemployment and probably
    throw that at the naval mission. And so if we think that we are
    on a particular trajectory and we are forecasting where an
    adversary may be, we better be really careful, because I
    honestly believe that we are going to see an acceleration in
    digital power and naval ship activity coming out of China as we
    all try to recover from our economic circumstances.
        Mr. Clark. And I concur with all of that. And I would also
    add that power conditioning and power generation are going to
    be really important to directed energy weapons. That will be an
    essential part of surface warfare going into the future,
    particularly for air defense. Electronic warfare, high-power
    microwave, lasers are all going to be an important element of
    future air defense concepts. So that will be an important area
    of investment as well.
        Mr. Kelly. And Mr. Chairman, my next question had to deal
    with directed energy, and you kind of addressed that. But we
    need to make sure just very quickly, are you looking at
    building ships that house the amount of energy taken for
    directed energy impacts, or are we building the future and--are
    we looking at old ships and can we put these systems on there,
    or are we trying to build new ships that allow the capacity for
    these directed energy systems?
        And, with that, I would yield back, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Clark. Right now, we are building ships that are going
    to incorporate these systems, but they will have some method of
    being able to condition or store the power to be able to do
    laser operations. And then the next generation of ships are
    incorporating a kind of power generation capacity to allow
    these systems to operate continuously.
        Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kelly.
        Next up is Mr. Cisneros followed by Mr. Waltz, then Mr.
    Gallagher.
        Mr. Cisneros. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the--
    our guests being here today.
        Look, like everybody else, I believe research and
    development is very important, and we need to invest in this.
    But I also worry that maybe we are moving too fast.
        The Secretary of the Navy told me in my office that the
    DDG-1000 was a failure. We have had problems with the LCS. How
    do we strike this balance, you know? Might it have been better
    to build maybe a newer better frigate than moving to the LCS?
    So how do we strike this balance of really modernizing our
    fleet but not getting too far ahead of ourselves to where we
    are having these mistakes like the DGG-1000?
        Admiral Roughead. One of the things I think is to look at
    the ambition you have and how much technology you are trying to
    introduce into a new class of ship. And there is no question in
    my mind that our approach on the DGG-1000 was far too
    aggressive, and we reached for too much with the DGG-1000. But
    I do think that it is important that we pursue the new
    technologies, that perhaps we don't set ambitions of large
    numbers of ships in a class if our objective is introduction of
    technology.
        I can go back in the Navy's history, and we have a lot of
    examples of one-ship classes where we tried something and it
    didn't work. We were in a far different position then with our
    industrial base and, in some cases, with our budgets. But I
    think that if we are pursuing new technology, smaller classes
    may be the way to go and then evolve it that way.
        Mr. Clark. I think a key area is also looking at the
    operational concepts, or how is the new technology going to be
    employed in practice before we invest significantly in actually
    fielding that technology? So, for example, with unmanned
    vessels, we talked about the large unmanned vessel and how that
    might be really challenging for the Navy to implement. But the
    medium unmanned surface vessel that the Navy is pursuing could
    be something they could actually go very aggressively into
    because it is a small vessel. It is relatively inexpensive. It
    has got a limited set of missions that the Navy plans for it to
    do. We believe that it could do more in the antisubmarine
    warfare realm. It could do a lot in sensing and in
    countersensing.
        So, if you have got a good set of concepts for how the
    technology could be employed, it may allow you to be more
    aggressive in employing it because you have got the trade space
    kind of confined, as opposed to, for example, like LCS where
    you had fairly ambitious concepts that then the technology was
    not able to meet in, you know, short term. So, I think that is
    really important as an element of this.
        And then the second thing would be also when we are
    changing ships or we are adapting a hull type over time, as
    Admiral Roughead had said, we want to avoid changing all three
    elements of the ship at that same time--the combat system, the
    hull, and the propulsion system.
        So, as we go from one ship class to our modification of a
    ship class to the next, maybe we modify only one of those
    things at a time to allow you to improve it over time. And that
    is what we have done with some of these previous one-off ship
    classes, is where we changed the propulsion system, where we
    changed the combat system, but left the rest of the ship more
    or less intact. And that is a way to incorporate technology
    that is more realistic or less risky.
        Mr. Cisneros. Right. I appreciate that answer.
        The second question I wanted to ask, and Admiral Roughead,
    you kind of alluded to this a little bit earlier, but China
    aggressively may be making a change to more aggressively
    increase its shipbuilding. It was already kind of headed on a
    path towards a 400-ship Navy. How is our naval makeup looking
    to meet that challenge of China? Are we building the right
    ships in order to interact with them in the future?
        Admiral Roughead. I do believe that we are focused on the
    right high-low, and then particularly submarines. In my mind,
    it's going to be a question of capacity. I think that is going
    to be our greatest challenge. Because when you get inside that
    first island chain, not only do you encounter significant
    numbers of the PLA [People's Liberation Army] Navy, but their
    coast guard, some ships of which are bigger than some of our
    largest combatants, and then you have the maritime militia. So,
    numbers are going to be important. How you distribute the
    force, how you network the information, all of that is key. So,
    I think we have the right path forward. Capacity is going to be
    an issue. And then rapid introduction of technology is going to
    be key.
        Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Gil.
        Mr. Waltz, you are up.
        Mr. Waltz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Do you hear me okay?
        Mr. Courtney. Loud and clear.
        Mr. Waltz. All right. Thank you. And thank you for having
    this today. Thank you to the witnesses. I just wanted to echo
    my colleagues' concern about the 30-year shipbuilding plan. I
    just can't imagine as a former CEO [chief executive officer]
    going to my board and asking for the amount of money that the
    taxpayers are producing without a long-range plan. So just to
    echo those thoughts and very much looking forward to seeing
    that from the Navy soon.
        So, I have just two quick questions. I wanted to add on,
    and I am happy to hear the conversation on power, very
    concerned about power, and particularly our raw ingredients
    when it comes to the battery power and storage I think we are
    going to need as we are starting to project the need for
    unmanned underwater systems, unmanned aerial systems, and
    others. I think worth noting for the committee that right now,
    China, Australia, Chile, and Argentina produce 90 percent of
    the world's lithium. And the rest of it are in other countries
    besides the United States as well. We really lost that refining
    capability.
        So, what--I would just ask for any of the witnesses to
    comment on the fact that our supply chain that our naval forces
    need to predict is incredibly vulnerable. I mean need to
    protect--excuse me--is incredibly vulnerable. And it is a bit
    of a negative cycle that those forces are absolutely dependent,
    particularly the Navy of the future, on the raw ingredients
    that the United States lost the capability to mine,
    manufacture, refine, and produce. And I would just welcome some
    additional commentary there.
        Mr. Clark. Well, it seems like we need--the government is
    trying to do a better job of evaluating where the supply chain
    vulnerabilities might be. I think the recent--the pandemic and
    certainly our trade confrontation with China both created an
    opportunity to better examine where our supply chain goes--
    comes from and where we might need to shore it up by investing
    in a domestic source of some of those materials. So, the
    Defense Production Act is an option for being able to do that.
    That kind of research needs to be done in more aggressively
    going back into the research and development chain, though. It
    is not just a matter of what we build today; it is also where
    our vulnerabilities with regard to what we are going to be
    building in large numbers tomorrow, to your point.
        Mr. Waltz. Just to add onto that question. How much of
    those vulnerabilities are being incorporated into the type of
    Navy that we think we have the ability to produce going
    forward? How does that factor into that long-range planning?
        Mr. Clark. Well, it is likely, as we go into a more diverse
    and distributed fleet that is more rebalanced towards more
    smaller platforms, we are going to have more of these
    technologies that rely on materials and parts that come from
    suppliers we don't necessarily have the best relationship with.
        Mr. O'Rourke. Right now, we don't have a whole lot of
    visibility into the question of foreign content in our
    shipbuilding programs at the component, subcomponent, material,
    and software level. So, in my view, that is something we need
    to gain a better understanding of.
        And in terms of certain key raw materials, Congressman, you
    mentioned lithium, but the issue of rare earths also comes into
    play here because they are critical to many of the combat
    system pieces of equipment that are incorporated into our
    ships.
        Mr. Waltz. Thank you for that. And just for my colleagues,
    I introduced legislation that is taking a hard look at how we
    can improve that here domestically, and I welcome their
    support.
        My follow-on question is, just to state it bluntly is, and
    this is adding on to my colleague Mrs. Luria, is OFRP still a
    valid concept? Is it in real trouble? And if it is, how do we--
    I will just welcome more of your thoughts on how we get to the
    maintenance issues and the industrial base issues? I know I--I
    heard in some initial testimony that it is incorporated in your
    written--I look forward to reading that. But if you could just
    spend a few minutes on that, I would appreciate it.
        Mr. Clark. So, the challenge with OFRP is that we need to
    be able to have ships be able to do their maintenance when they
    are available to do it. And that is one of the challenges with
    having a more flexible schedule for ships that the government
    is pursuing with this dynamic force employment concept. So,
    having a predictable schedule for maintenance of ships does not
    necessarily align with a dynamic force employment concept. And
    so that is one of the challenges that is being encountered by
    OFRP right now. The Navy is getting better at being able to do
    the inspections and predictions for the maintenance so they can
    plan work packages better. But they need to address this
    scheduling challenge. And they also need to address the
    industrial base challenge of the industrial base that does
    maintenance on ships today has rightsized itself to meet the
    exact demand that we had maybe 5 or 10 years ago. And as that
    demand changes, that industrial base needs to adapt in support
    of that. And that is something the Navy might need to think
    about investing some time or money into developing,
    particularly dry docks on the east coast.
        Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Clark. And thank you, Mr.
    Waltz.
        Next up is--Mr. Gallagher is up next. And I believe Mr.
    Vela has rejoined us, so he will be up after Mr. Gallagher.
        The floor is yours, Mike.
        Mr. Gallagher. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
    it. Thank you to all of your witnesses. This has been
    incredibly helpful.
        I want to follow up on something that we talked about
    earlier. I think in some ways our ability to learn lessons and
    move on from LCS and DDG-1000 is the frigate itself.
        And Mr. Clark, you played a key role in CSBA's 2017 fleet
    architecture study that called for more than 70 frigates. Can
    you just talk a little bit again about why small surface
    combatants are so important to the future fleet, and if you see
    the demand for them going up or down in future years?
        Mr. Clark. Yes. Thank you for question, Congressman.
    Absolutely, they are important to the future fleet. They
    provide you the ability to distribute the capability out of a
    larger number of areas and a larger number of ships. One of the
    challenges we are already seeing with COVID, for example, is
    that you have got a fleet of a relatively small number of large
    ships. A challenge like a pandemic can take an entire ship out
    very quickly whereas if we have a larger number of smaller
    ships, you are more resilient, you degrade more gracefully. It
    also allows you to address challenges that maybe don't require
    that larger ship, as Admiral Roughead said, deploying a
    destroyer to go do a pirate counterpiracy exercise or operation
    is maybe not the appropriate use or best use of that platform
    and tends to then have this cascading effect into the challenge
    of their operational schedule being unpredictable and difficult
    to allow maintenance to be done in between deployment.
        So, there is this interrelated effect between maintenance
    and the size of the fleet and its composition. So, frigates are
    an important element of the fleet to allow you to have that
    more distributed capability than what we have in today's force.
        Mr. Gallagher. And in your network fleet design, would the
    frigate serve as a C4I [command, control, communications,
    computers, and intelligence] node for network unmanned
    platforms?
        Mr. Clark. Yes. So, we saw the frigate as doing the C4
    function for unmanned systems doing antisubmarine warfare,
    countermine operations, as well as surveillance and
    countersurveillance operations. So, we saw it was--it had this
    really important role to manage unmanned systems.
        Admiral Roughead. If I could just add, I am [inaudible]
    enough to have operated with frigates when we had a very fairly
    sizable class. And they really do become the workhorse. As the
    battle force may be focused on a particular area, the frigate,
    it just gives you tremendous flexibility, its size, its draft
    allows it to go places. And you can be confident in its own
    ability to protect itself and still project power. So, you
    know, and I can even go back in the days of Nelson and talk
    about frigates, but I won't go back that far. They are going to
    be instrumental, and I think we are going to work the heck out
    of them.
        Mr. Gallagher. That is great. I want to follow up. You made
    a comment, I believe, earlier in the hearing that subs will be
    the platform of choice in the Arctic. Can you comment on the
    fact that, unlike the Los Angeles class improved and the
    Seawolf subs, our new Virginia-class boats are not ice-
    hardened, meaning their sails and their bows are not reinforced
    in the manner that the previous two classes of ships are? Help
    me understand why did we make the decision not to require full
    ice-hardening for the Virginia class?
        Admiral Roughead. My sense is it likely came down to cost.
    But I think I have a submariner here to my left that might want
    to address that.
        But I still think that the submarine in the Arctic even un-
    ice-hardened is still going to be a significant player. And I
    firmly believe that we are going to see the environment change
    up there quite a bit during the course of submarine's lifetime.
    And I think that their flexibility will increase because the
    environment is going to change.
        Mr. O'Rourke. Just very quickly.
        Mr. Gallagher. And then--please.
        Mr. O'Rourke. And just very quickly, I think the answer is
    cost. The 688s when they were originally designed were not ice-
    hardened. Ice-hardening was incorporated into the 688 class
    with the San Juan and 751, the improved 688s.
        I think the Navy's thinking is that not every attack
    submarine needs to be under-ice capable. Some fraction of the
    fleet needs to be, and the Navy manages that over time by
    incorporating ice-hardening into some of its attack submarines
    as needed to replace the ice-hardened submarines that are
    retiring due to age.
        Mr. Gallagher. Thank you. My remaining 40 seconds, Admiral
    Roughead, while you were saying that we made significant
    investments in the X-47 Bravo prototypes that could serve as
    unmanned combat aerial vehicles, now we seem to be limiting
    unmanned aircraft in the carrier air wing to a tanker role. Why
    do you think that is?
        Admiral Roughead. I think it is a mistake. I really do
    believe that we need to be able to strike deeply unmanned off
    of an aircraft carrier. Earlier, I had mentioned the fact that
    we have lost 8 years in that process, and I think that we need
    to try to regain that ground because being able to go unmanned
    at a great distance, to be able to replenish an air wing at
    great distance with unmanned vehicles is something that is
    going to transform the nature of naval aviation.
        Mr. Gallagher. I agree, and I am out of time. So, I won't
    make a comment how you dated yourself with the previous frigate
    comments, which I very much appreciated.
        So, I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Courtney. Mr. Gallagher does that to all of us.
        So, is Mr. Vela still with us? I guess we lost him here.
    So, we do, if it is okay with the witnesses, have some members,
    I think, who would like to do a second round. I am going to
    reserve. I have one question. Mike Conaway, I think, in terms
    of the first order, you were first on the batting order. And
    look, you have another question that you wanted to ask?
        Mr. Conaway. Yeah. No questions. I just thank the witnesses
    for being here today, and I do think that all three of them
    would do the Nation a great service if they could reflect on
    their thoughts relative to the $3 trillion we have committed to
    spend in the last 3 months and what impact that will have on
    our capacity to actually execute all the great things that they
    talked about.
        So, with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Mr. Courtney. Thanks, Mike. I don't know if that was, you
    know, just an editorial comment or a question, but if anyone
    does want to weigh in on that, you know, you've got time.
        Admiral Roughead. Mr. Conaway, I can't even begin to
    underestimate the challenge that this poses for the country and
    the burden that it will be on all of us, and particularly on
    you, as you have to make the hard decisions, but I do believe
    that being able to provide a viable Navy forward is important.
        I would also, as we look at how do we stimulate and bring
    the economy back, that we should look at opportunities to
    address the industrial base, to address education systems that
    give our young people skills that can go into that.
        I also alluded to the fact that now is the time to,
    perhaps, jump on some opportunities that may be there,
    particularly in sealift. The prices are going to be
    extraordinarily good for recapitalization of that fleet. Might
    not last very long, so I think it is important to do that.
    Those are just some thoughts.
        Mr. Clark. And I would also add that this is--one of the
    drivers behind having a fleet that is more affordable is going
    to be the potential concern about budget pressures coming from
    the amount of debt that we have been incurring to support the
    current response to the coronavirus.
        So that is one of the drivers behind the fleet architecture
    that we proposed in our written statement.
        Mr. O'Rourke. Very quickly, I actually touched on this
    point a little bit in my prepared statement. I noted the fact
    that there are some people who are arguing that the
    expenditures that we have made to support the economy during
    the stay-at-home period could have the effect of putting
    further constraints on the defense budget in coming years
    because of the impact on the deficit and the debt situation.
    But I pointed out that even if defense spending as a whole is
    suppressed, that does not necessarily mean that that would
    carry through to the budget of the Navy. If we are going to
    adopt a less expensive concept for our national strategy and
    our role in the world, if we are going to stand off Eurasia as
    some people are advocating, that can actually require a Navy as
    capable as the one we have today, because you would, under even
    that more retrenched strategy, depend as much or more than we
    do now on using the oceans as a buffer for protecting the
    United States from security challenges that might arise within
    Asia.
        And I did find it interesting that one policy group here in
    Washington, just within the last few days, they happened to
    advocate a smaller defense budget, but they went out of their
    way to say that within that smaller defense budget, they think
    that the Navy should get a larger share of that budget, because
    it is a key service for implementing that kind of a national
    strategy, should policymakers decide that they want to go in
    that direction.
        So even if the defense budget goes down, the point is it
    does not necessarily imply or mean that the Navy budget would
    go down with it. What it implies is a need to make choices
    about what your strategy is and how to implement it.
        Mr. Courtney. Right. Well, thank you to all the witnesses
    for those answers, and again, Mr. O'Rourke, again, your
    testimony, I did read that section that you just cited, and
    it's, again, really a great thought provoker for all of us, so
    thank you for mentioning that.
        So next up, Jared, you, again, are on the batting order if
    you have a question you want to offer to the witnesses.
        Mr. Golden. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for the
    opportunity, Mr. Chair.
        I wanted to follow up a little bit on my previous question
    as well as Congressman Gallagher was talking about the frigate
    class. And with my first question, I talked with Admiral
    Roughead about the future of the DDG Flight III's role in the
    Navy today. Some people have testified a little bit in your
    statements for the record about a potential for a Flight IV, or
    talked briefly about the potential for the future large surface
    combatant.
        Mr. Clark, in your prepared remarks, you talked a little
    bit, and also just talking with Gallagher, you talked a little
    bit about how the frigate should play, like, a lead role in
    antisubmarine warfare or escort surface action groups. I think
    you also talk a little bit in your prepared statement or in one
    of your reports about a smaller surface combatant like a
    corvette class or something. I just wanted to give you an
    opportunity to talk a little bit about what you were
    envisioning for the future of the fleet force when you were
    talking about that.
        Mr. Clark. Sure. Thank you. We recently did a study looking
    at the future of the surface fleet, and we saw the need to
    rebalance it more than the Navy is already pursuing. So, the
    frigate is a great step in the right direction to provide an
    alternative to a destroyer that essentially provides the same
    capability as a destroyer, but with a smaller capacity, and in
    ASW [antisubmarine warfare] it would actually provide some
    additional capability.
        So, we see that need to rebalance away from the destroyer
    as the only surface platform, to add the frigate to the LCS,
    and then we also saw a need to further distribute the fleet by
    adding this corvette.
        The challenge with the frigate is that although it is
    smaller and less expensive than the destroyer, it is still, you
    know, a $1 billion ship or so, and it is going to limit how
    many you are able to buy and deploy and maintain in the field.
    It also has an operation and support cost associated with it
    that will constrain how much you can use them as an element of
    the fleet.
        So we needed another platform that was even less expensive
    to build and to maintain that could act as a distributed source
    of fires and that could act as a security cooperation platform
    in peacetime, and we saw that corvette as being a way to do
    that. So the corvette would be maybe a 3,000-ton vessel that
    would be an alternative to the Navy's proposed large unmanned
    surface vessel, and it would carry vertical launch system and
    missiles so that it could provide fires, and, perhaps, rotate
    through surface action groups as an element to do that. And
    then it could also act as a counterpiracy platform, maritime
    security platform, and do training and operations with our
    allies and partners overseas.
        So that rebalancing of the surface fleet to a more diverse
    set of platforms was really important to manage costs, but also
    to provide a fleet that is maybe better suited for the
    environment that we are embarking on, where we are going to
    have this range of gray zone through great power high-end
    competition where we need a more diverse set of platforms to
    support that.
        We saw the destroyers as being the key element to providing
    missile defense, both to larger force formations like carrier
    strike groups and amphibious ready groups, as well as places
    ashore that require ballistic missile defense that can be
    relocated, and that is something they do today. So, we saw the
    DDG's role evolving as well in that future surface fleet.
        Mr. Golden. Thank you for that, and I just wanted to give
    you the opportunity. I had read that. I thought it was
    interesting, and I appreciate the testimony.
        Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you, Jared.
        So next up is Mr. Gallagher, followed by Mrs. Luria.
        Mr. Gallagher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. O'Rourke, to go back to your comment about budgetary
    constraints, I mean, are you suggesting, I mean, that we need
    to be having the broader conversation about the size of the
    budget that seapower consumes relative to land power and air
    power, particularly if we have, as I believe we do, a National
    Defense Strategy that prioritizes seapower in INDOPACOM [United
    States Indo-Pacific Command]?
        Mr. O'Rourke. That is always a question that the Congress
    or policymakers, in general, can consider, and questions like
    that and others, I think, are certainly going to be on the
    table as we move into whatever the world is going to look like
    after we get past the current pandemic situation.
        There are a lot of uncertainties about what the pandemic
    may do to change the international security environment going
    forward, and that particular question is one among several that
    can be considered as we examine what our national strategy
    should be, and our military strategy within it.
        Mr. Gallagher. And then one follow-up on the ice-hardening
    conversation. As we look at the retirement of our Los Angeles-
    class subs over the next decade, with the exception of the five
    to seven boats I think we are looking to refuel again, it
    appears as though we are going to lose a lot of the ice-
    hardened subs. So, is there any conversation about a new ice-
    hardened variant of the Virginia class, and I apologize if you
    commented before and I missed it.
        Mr. O'Rourke. I haven't heard of it, but I would suspect
    that within the Navy, they are very aware of that factor, and
    my presumption would be that they are planning on continuing
    that capability through modifications to the Virginia class
    that would be procured in coming years.
        Admiral Roughead. And as we discussed earlier, I think it
    is important that we begin to think about the Arctic, because
    Russia will be there, China will be there. So, how do we want
    to do it? And I wouldn't be surprised if the Navy wasn't
    thinking about that.
        But further to Ron's point, I really do think, and I know
    this is a very hard, inside the building, inside the Pentagon,
    and also up here, but the one-third, one-third, one-third is
    really something that needs to be addressed, and by that I mean
    equal shares to the services. And I know that opens up
    parochial fissures and fights, but where does the country want
    to be? What are the types of capabilities? And the budget needs
    to support that.
        Mr. Gallagher. And I completely agree, Admiral Roughead. I
    mean, I confess my navalist bias and my seapower bias, but it
    would make no geopolitical sense that, you know, the allocation
    of resources would fall neatly in a one-third, one-third, one-
    third bucket. So, I think it has to be informed by strategy,
    and I really appreciate those comments.
        I want to ask one last question. I am sorry. I don't want
    to go on here on my second round. But Mr. Clark, there has been
    some conversation about, perhaps, a new carrier design to place
    the Ford class. Given that our air wings are now around 65
    aircraft, could we go to a smaller carrier?
        Mr. Clark. In theory, we could, but we have done a lot of
    analysis on this in support of this work that we have been
    doing in concert with the Navy and with OSD. And the challenge
    that we found is that the nonrecurring engineering cost
    associated with building a new smaller carrier ends up eating
    up most of the cost savings that we would harvest as a result
    of going to that smaller carrier. And, so, we found that
    really, we might as well stick with the Ford class that gives
    us, you know, the capacity and the, sort of, generation
    capability, and the new technologies that have already been
    incorporated into it.
        All those are good things, and once we have kind of come
    through the maturation of them in this very long and painful
    process, we should stay the course on that, because we found
    that shifting ended up being more problematic than staying on
    the current design.
        What we did see instead was a value in using the large deck
    amphibious ship or the amphibious assault ships primarily as
    fixed-wing carriers. So transitioning them from being kind of a
    multi-purpose amphibious ship to using them almost exclusively
    to do fixed-wing F-35B deployments, that would give you that
    smaller carrier that is able to do operations in environments
    where they don't need the kind of sorties that a larger carrier
    would provide.
        And the Navy and the Marine Corps are already doing that a
    little bit today in the Middle East. Often, that is the only
    air--sea-based airplanes are coming from an LHA [landing
    helicopter assault ship] or LHD [landing helicopter dock ship].
    So, taking that concept into the future and using the F-35
    Bravo to its fullest extent would be a way to get you that
    smaller carrier.
        Mr. Gallagher. But didn't the Navy announce the
    cancellation of its future carrier study? If so, why? I mean, I
    know the debate gets very fraught politically in Congress, but
    why not have the debate?
        Mr. Clark. It may be just a matter of, you know, internal
    dynamics within the Navy that caused that effort to fall apart
    because of leadership changes, but I do think there is a lot of
    value in going back and continuing to evaluate what the right
    design for carriers is going forward, because at some point, we
    will want to transition, you know, away from the Ford class,
    and then that transition probably should be looking at a
    smaller carrier if we are going to make that nonrecurring
    engineering cost investment anyway.
        Mr. Gallagher. Thank you. Thank you all for your testimony.
    This is very helpful.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
        Mr. Courtney. Thanks, Mike.
        Next up is Mrs. Luria.
        Mrs. Luria. Well, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
    the opportunity to go into the second round. And I wanted to
    follow up on the theme that Mr. Golden was speaking about with
    Mr. Clark's response about the smaller ships, but I wanted to
    switch over to Mr. O'Rourke, because I know in reading your
    testimony, you commented on this, and I think I am quoting you.
    It may have been one of the other testimonies. The FFG [guided
    missile frigate] is one-third of the firepower, but two-thirds
    of the cost. And I saw that you had made some suggestions as to
    ways to build more platforms at the lower end. So if we are
    talking large surface combatant small, we really want to talk
    small-small, and some of the ideas and specifically
    coordination with the Coast Guard and how we could leverage off
    of the designs that they have already implemented as naval
    forces. Can you comment on that?
        Mr. O'Rourke. Yeah. The quote that you had is from Bryan
    Clark's testimony, but the general point is, is that the
    frigate that we have in the FFG-X is a 7,000-ton ship. And I
    will say just very quickly, in answer to the earlier question
    about lessons learned from the LCS, the LCS was a new hull
    design and some new equipment. The frigate is working off a
    parent design and is not to have any new development items on
    it. So, in terms of managing its technical risks, we seemed to
    have learned a lot of lessons from the LCS.
        Now, as a frigate, it is a fairly large frigate by world
    standards. It is in the 7,000-ton range. And in my testimony, I
    talk about that creating room or opportunity to consider
    smaller ships underneath it, something perhaps in the manner of
    a 5,000-ton ship, which would be a smaller frigate or something
    in the 1,000- to 4,000-ton range which would be a corvette of
    the kind that Bryan Clark talked about.
        There are many possible ship designs out there for doing
    that, including designs that have come out of the Coast Guard's
    cutter procurement program, including the national security
    cutter, and the designs that have been developed for the
    offshore patrol cutter. That creates a once-in-a-generation
    opportunity to think about commonalities that work across the
    services to get greater production economies of scale so that
    you could work more toward the goal of optimizing our national
    shipbuilding effort as opposed to suboptimizing our
    shipbuilding effort at the individual service level.
        Mrs. Luria. Well, thank you.
        And Mr. Clark, I wanted to go back to some comments in the
    2017 CSBA Restoring American Seapower study. I noted in there
    that you talked about the model that we are using with
    geographic combatant commanders and shifting that to a
    deterrence and maneuver model. And although we say we have
    global force management to source our forces around the world,
    often that creates geographic stovepiping of resources. And
    there is sharing, and the combatant commanders do work
    together. But can you describe your model, and specifically in
    terms of how you think that could help us gain more efficiency
    in providing presence?
        Mr. Clark. Yes. So the model we moved to is similar to what
    was adopted in the National Defense Strategy after that. So the
    model where you have forces that are focused on local
    operations overseas in different theaters, so there is a
    deterrence force for the East China Sea, and there is one for
    South China Sea, and there is one for the Persian Gulf.
        Mrs. Luria. And it seemed to--sorry to interrupt, but you
    had a lot of forward-basing of these forces.
        Mr. Clark. Right. Right. And those forces would
    predominantly be forward-based where they would be able to, you
    know, get used to the neighborhood, learn the allies, learn the
    potential adversaries, understand the geography. So, we saw
    there being a lot of value in that model which has been very
    beneficial for our forward-deployed naval force that is in
    Japan, where those forces gain that level of familiarity. And
    it also allows them to pursue this higher operational tempo, or
    this shorter operational cycle, because they don't need to
    relearn everything every time they go on deployment, because
    they know where they are going. And they know the people they
    are likely to deal with.
        So those deterrence forces were then augmented or
    complemented by a blunt force, which is the carrier strike
    groups that would be deploying out of the continental United
    States that would be going on these longer deployments, that
    would be operating on a slower, more like the OFRP operational
    cycle. We saw it would be really important to look at the
    divergence between two different operational cycles, because we
    saw it being necessary to maintain presence overseas, to get a
    higher operational tempo out of some of our forces, and we saw
    the way to do that as giving them this limited responsibility
    as a deterrence force, where they didn't have to go through as
    long a training cycle for each deployment. And because they
    would be remote and located near the areas where they were
    going to deploy, the transit time would be shorter, and so they
    could maintain a higher operational tempo and, therefore, a
    greater presence.
        So that model was incorporated, to some degree, into the
    NDS [National Defense Strategy] in the form of the blunt force
    that the--the blunt and contact forces that the National
    Defense Strategy discusses. The contact forces, like our
    deterrence force forward, largely forward deployed, operating
    in concert with our allies and dealing with adversaries, and
    then the blunt force was this larger force that remained
    offshore and operated from CONUS [contiguous United States],
    for the most part.
        Admiral Roughead. If I could just add to that, I think the
    concept works well, but it also requires political flexibility,
    because building ships and having them forward where they are
    not being maintained in the continental United States where the
    economies aren't benefiting from the crews, but that is
    political reality. And if we want to be able to be more
    flexible, if we want to be able to have these forward forces,
    that is something that, I think, needs to be addressed.
        Mrs. Luria. Well, thank you, Admiral. And I just want to
    close by quoting something that Mr. Clark just said in his
    testimony when answering a previous question. I am quoting you
    that you said, ``The resulting lack of a product or response
    from the Pentagon was based off of internal dynamics of
    leadership changes.'' And I think that we are caught up in
    exactly that term right now, because we don't have a 30-year
    shipbuilding plan, we don't have a force structure assessment,
    and the Navy has needs. We are here to meet those needs. But if
    you can't tell us what they are because of the internal
    dynamics of leadership changes that continue to happen, it puts
    us in a difficult situation, and I think it puts the sailor on
    the deckplate in a difficult situation, because I truly feel
    like there is not a consistent vision. And even when we have
    had a 30-year shipbuilding plan, when it changes every year in
    years 1 through 5, that is still not a clear vision.
        So, I appreciate your work. I appreciate the thought and
    insight you put into how we can develop our future Navy, and I
    look forward to hearing from the Navy what they truly want to
    request to meet their mission, so thank you again.
        Mr. Courtney. Thank you. Well put, Elaine.
        Next up, again, Mr. Wittman has a couple questions, and I
    have one, and then we will call it a day.
        Mr. Wittman. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
        I wanted to ask for our witnesses' perspective on our
    maritime forces interoperability. As you know, the Chinese are
    much better than we are by taking everything across the
    spectrum of their maritime capabilities, and we have seen that,
    what has happened there in response to the Taiwanese, to the
    Japanese in certain disputed areas, where the distinction
    between one force and another is not significant. They are
    amassing their naval forces or their maritime forces.
        What I see in the United States is, we have the United
    States Navy; we have the United States Marine Corps; we have
    the Merchant Marine; we have the Coast Guard. Obviously, all
    have mission areas that are unique, but also do not operate in
    an interoperable way. And I would argue that there are many
    opportunities where they should. And if they don't, and the
    Chinese do in those sort of gray zone areas where the Chinese
    have become very, very effective in doing that, and we are
    looking at the challenge of amassing enough maritime forces to
    deter and to operate in a conflict, then it seems like to me,
    we ought to be using every single element of maritime force
    structure in the United States. It doesn't seem like we have
    that. Doesn't seem like we even have a plan going forward.
        So I wanted to get your perspective on what should be the
    path forward for all of those elements of maritime forces in
    the United States to have a formal plan of interoperability,
    much like we have with other forces around the world. You know,
    we jointly operate elsewhere. We do RIMPAC [Rim of the Pacific
    Exercise]. Why don't we have the same sort of operational
    exercise with all U.S. maritime forces which we never do? So
    anyway, I wanted to get your perspective there.
        Admiral Roughead. For fear of sounding like a dinosaur, you
    know, I think that we have focused on the joint force, and
    there is no question, you know, in my lifetime, I have seen us
    become a much more effective military because of jointness. But
    I think the one thing that we seem to have neglected is to
    acknowledge the fact that the maritime space is different.
        Mr. Wittman. Yes.
        Admiral Roughead. And to your point, within the maritime
    domain, it almost is a joint force unto itself.
        Mr. Wittman. Right.
        Admiral Roughead. And I really do think, and I was part of
    the National Defense Strategy Commission, and we were very
    blunt about the fact that there were not operating concepts
    about how we would move forward, how we would engage. There
    were piecemeal parts. So I really do think that, you know, the
    maritime strategy that was developed for a different time
    during the Reagan administration, for a different adversary,
    but very high-end warfare, is something that needs to be done
    today, and I don't think we should be shy about the fact that
    it is maritime.
        Mr. Wittman. Yeah.
        Admiral Roughead. That it is about our maritime forces that
    require certain types of capabilities to come together, that we
    can rely on elements of the joint force. But we really need to
    start thinking more about the maritime domain, because I would
    argue that the PLA, if you look at their writings, they have
    transitioned, and a lot of their work is into a maritime space.
        Mr. Wittman. Yeah.
        Admiral Roughead. And I think if we do not acknowledge the
    fact that we have maritime needs, capabilities, and we have to
    integrate all of it, we are going to be behind the eight ball.
        Mr. Clark. Certainly. And you look at the Chinese case, and
    they have got the People's Maritime Militia, the PLA Navy, and
    then they have got the coast guard, all operating under a
    single command organization. That is something we need to look
    at; certainly in the Pacific Fleet that is happening today.
        So, we are now starting to deploy Coast Guard cutters
    regularly to the Pacific. They are operating under the command
    of Pacific--Indo-Pacific Command and PAC [Pacific] Fleet. We
    need to do more of that. That is going to require maybe some
    force design changes in the Coast Guard, so you have got more
    forces that are able to deploy overseas and act in that manner,
    because we are the away team, you know. The home-field
    advantage afforded to the Chinese gives them the ability to
    have all these different units occupy the South and East China
    Seas.
        So having a command structure that is organized around, you
    know, having all of these elements under their leadership,
    having more of these forces that can deploy overseas, and I
    think you bring up a great point with the Merchant Marine is,
    we do have CLF [Combat Logistics Force] forces and sealift
    forces deployed over in the Pacific that could do more to
    contribute to our operations.
        And so, as we move towards a more distributed logistics
    force, it is going to be able to contribute more directly to
    the capability of the forces that are deployed. And they can do
    more than simply just, you know, bringing material back and
    forth. They could do more of the surveillance mission. They
    could do more of the response mission when there is, you know,
    a boater that needs assistance or a piracy attack on somebody.
    So, there are areas where we may look at more unified
    operations between the Merchant Marine, Coast Guard, and the
    naval forces out there, but it requires these force design
    changes, and it requires that unified command structure.
        Mr. Wittman. Yeah. Very good.
        Mr. O'Rourke. Very quickly, you mentioned interoperability
    in the Pacific. And if we are considering that on an allied
    basis, then I think that the first country to talk about and
    the most significant one is going to be Japan, because they
    have the largest of the allied navies in that part of the
    world.
        And in terms of interoperability, if you talk to Navy
    personnel out there, one of the points they will make is that
    it would help if Japan's own forces became more joint than they
    are because their Navy and their Air Force don't work as
    closely together with one another as we are used to our own
    Navy and Air Force in the U.S. context. So that would be one
    thing where you could get more bang for the buck, just with the
    forces that you have.
        Secondly, it would then be a matter of having the Japanese
    forces, the Navy, and also their Air Force, work with greater
    interoperability with us. Several years ago, our fleet may have
    told you that that was at a certain level and that there was a
    lot of room for improvement. My understanding is that there has
    been some improvement and that our interoperability with the
    Japanese forces is better.
        Finally, in terms of making use of all the available force
    structure that is out there, I have tried to scour the world
    for unrealized western naval force structure, and the number
    one opportunity that I have identified is the Japanese attack
    submarine force.
        For industrial base purposes, they build one per year, so
    that they have a steady drumbeat. So, the size of their force
    depends on how long they keep them in service. They keep their
    submarines in service for 22 years, because they have a force
    level goal of 22 submarines. But if they were to simply make a
    decision to keep their submarines in service for 30 years, more
    like our own service, they could grow their submarine force
    from 22 to 30 without building a single boat more than what
    they already planned to build.
        And, furthermore, if they were to grow that force from 22
    to 30, it would grow from that number at the very same
    timeframe that we are going down to the bottom of the valley.
    They would hit 30 within a year of when we are at the minimum
    of our own attack submarine valley. Now, those are diesel
    boats, and they can't do as much as a nuclear boat, but they
    can do some things.
        So if we are talking about interoperability and trying to
    make use of available force structure, this is one option, and
    it is something that I have talked about with our Navy, and
    with the Japanese Ministry of Defense as well. And so, I am
    watching to see whether they will pull the trigger on that
    because right now, they can expand their submarine force
    without building any more boats than they already plan to.
        Admiral Roughead. If I could just add to that, I think Ron
    hit on a terrific point. You know, we talk about our allies,
    and we have a pretty exclusive club with what is called the
    Five Eyes, and there are certain things that we do with them.
    But I really do believe that it is time that we change the
    nature of our alliance with Japan. Japan has some things that
    they need to do to accommodate that, but I really do think that
    that has to be an elevation because, as Ron said, they have
    really good stuff----
        Mr. Wittman. Yeah.
        Admiral Roughead [continuing]. And they are very, very
    proficient operators. The recent changes in their
    interpretation of laws have made that change dramatic, and I
    think that we have to think differently about Japan.
        Mr. Wittman. I think that is a great point. That mil-to-mil
    [military-to-military] relationship should be turned up a notch
    on the effort to make sure we have capability to bridge that
    gap. Interoperability, as you said, is not just, you know,
    within the United States military, within our maritime forces,
    it is also with our allies.
        I do want to emphasize that, you know, there are parts of
    interoperability within our maritime forces. The problem is it
    is fragmented. And normally, it is Marine Corps to Navy, and
    then Navy to Coast Guard instead of Coast Guard to Marine
    Corps, and interoperability in all four of those, Merchant
    Marine included. So, we have pieces of that. The key is how do
    you fully integrate all of that? I think there is a tremendous
    amount of capability there that we can bring to bear, both on
    deterrence, and on being able to operate in contested
    environments, I think, too.
        And then, you know, the big thing in those environments is
    how do you create more uncertainty? As our allies look at this
    and say, Wow, we didn't see this type of interoperability and
    then exercising that, so our adversaries look at it and go, We
    are not quite sure what the Marine Corps can do in conjunction
    with the Coast Guard or, you know, what support elements are
    brought by the Merchant Marines.
        Those things are going to be critical, especially in times
    of limited resources, so use what we have got. Ron, you bring
    up great points about getting our allies to bring into service
    a greater period of time availability for those submarines, all
    great aspects.
        So, Mr. Chairman, with that, I yield back.
        Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Wittman. And great, great
    comments.
        So, you know, I just wanted to close out, maybe, with Mr.
    Clark just for a minute, to go back to where we sort of began
    the conversation a couple hours ago which is--and Elaine
    described it, I think, aptly. It is just that, you know, we are
    on the brink of making, you know, a big decision in terms of a
    markup, and we are going to be investing money. But in my 14
    years here, I have just never been in a situation where it is
    just, you know, kind of this radio silence in terms of what is
    the normal operating procedure. I don't know whether, Mr.
    Clark, you had any sort of thoughts about what you see
    happening in the Navy and the Secretary of Defense office that
    is sort of holding up the show.
        Again, Mr. O'Rourke's report, kind of in excruciating
    detail, you know, talked about some of the leaks and the, you
    know, press reports about, you know, whether it is going to be,
    you know, this number or that number, you know. Why don't we
    have a plan? And what is your observation as someone who is a
    pretty, you know, savvy guy who has been around in this town?
        Mr. Clark. Well, so what I see right now is we have got--
    the Navy has a plan that maybe wasn't adequately addressing
    some of the concerns of the Secretary of Defense's staff
    regarding cost, and then maybe an evolution of the fleet
    towards a new design. So maybe less--more conservative than
    what the SECDEF [Secretary of Defense] staff might have been
    looking for. The less--the more conservative approach towards
    changing the fleet also means that it might cost more, and
    there is a cost concern there.
        So reconciling those differences is what this current study
    is trying to do, is evaluating what that fleet design should
    look like to try to deal with cost constraints that are likely
    to be in place while also evolving the fleet to create the
    capabilities we are talking about here, incorporate new
    technologies, create more uncertainty for adversaries, start to
    make the fleet a little bit more distributed compared to where
    it is today. But do so in a realistic way that doesn't damage
    the industrial base.
        So, squaring all of those different considerations is what
    this current study is trying to do, and our contribution to it
    was attempting to do it as well. I don't anticipate we are
    going to get results out of that until basically the lead-up
    until the program budget review which will happen this fall.
    So, this summer will be the time when a lot of this
    reconciliation occurs. Some final answers might come out around
    the time that that ends, and then going into program budget
    review for the fiscal year 2022 budget will be when some
    decisions are made about what the Navy's shipbuilding plan and
    force structure assessment is going to look like.
        So, we may not see those answers until that timeframe which
    will make it difficult for the Congress to decide on how to
    mark up the bills.
        I think in terms of what the budget is going to look--or
    that the force structure assessment will look like is, it will
    look very similar to kind of what the, you know, previous plan
    looked like. So, we are not going to have a dramatic change. We
    are not going to get rid of classes of ships, for example, and
    start new ones from scratch, but there is going to be this need
    for investment in the new platforms that we need to distribute
    the fleet, to complement the platforms we already have. So, we
    are going to continue building DDG-51s and Virginia-class
    submarines, and Columbia class will continue, and amphibious
    fleet will continue. LPD production Flight II will continue,
    and the LHA-9 will still come. But we need to think about
    investing in the R&D [research and development] necessary to
    start those new set of platforms, and that is maybe something
    where the Congress can start to lay that seed corn in because
    the Navy is going to need that to start rebalancing the fleet
    for the future.
        I think an important element of it also would be to ensure
    that the current classes that are in production are sustained
    and give that demand signal to industry, because otherwise, you
    are going to have industry starting to hold back its potential
    capital investment out of concern that we are throwing away
    classes of ships and betting on the [inaudible]. And the Navy I
    don't think is going to do that. I don't think that is what the
    Secretary of Defense's intent is either, to throw away the
    existing capability and bet on the new one. So, we will have to
    do both for a while. So, making those investments will be
    important, I think, and that is what the markup may need to
    entail.
        Mr. Courtney. Well, I appreciate that. I mean, it is an
    explanation. It is, in my opinion, not a justification because
    just, you know, having this sort of blackout is, you know,
    given all of the--I wouldn't say, you know--well, yeah, urgency
    that we heard from, you know, members as well as the witnesses
    here today.
        Again, it is just, as I said, something that I have never
    experienced on this subcommittee during my time. But your
    testimony today was extremely helpful in terms of providing,
    you know, I think great guidance both, you know, long term,
    short term.
        Again, I just can't thank all of you enough for, you know,
    being here today, and your patience answering two rounds of
    questions. Again, kudos to the staff for, you know, really
    bringing this all together in an, you know, unprecedented
    fashion.
        And, again, I think we certainly checked the box in terms
    of the Rules Committee's requirements today, but more
    importantly, I think the content of the hearing is going to
    give us the right guidance so that we move forward with a
    strong mark.
        So again, thank you to all the witnesses, and with that, I
    will adjourn the hearing.
        [Whereupon, at 12:34 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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                                A P P E N D I X

                                  June 4, 2020

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                  PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

                                  June 4, 2020

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    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

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                  QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING

                                  June 4, 2020

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                      QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. COURTNEY

        Mr. Courtney. The Navy's force of SSNs is projected to experience a
    valley from the mid-2020s through the early 2030s, reaching a minimum
    of 42 attack boats in FY2027-FY2028. This valley was first identified
    by CRS in 1995 in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee
    and has been discussed in multiple, annual CRS reports since then. What
    strategy or strategies do you feel are best suited to mitigate the SSN
    valley in the short and long term?
        Mr. Clark. The upcoming valley in nuclear attack submarine (SSN)
    inventory results in part from DOD's mid-1990s post-Cold War
    ``procurement holiday'' when Los Angeles-class submarine production
    ended and only three Seawolf-class submarines were constructed.
    Combined with the early retirement of almost half the Los Angeles-
    class, dramatically reduced submarine construction is now coming home
    to roost as the last of the Los Angeles-class submarines reach their
    end of service life during the 2020s.
        There is no way to make up for submarines that were not built, but
    the impact of the coming trough can be mitigated in three main ways,
    which the Congress should address and support:
          Continue construction of two SSNs per year. Sustained
    submarine construction is essential to eventually rebuild the U.S.
    submarine inventory and strengthen the submarine construction and
    supplier bases.
          Life extension of remaining Los Angeles-class submarines.
    The U.S. Navy is planning to refuel or extend the hull life of select
    SSNs. This effort should continue and be expanded if additional ships
    are able to continue serving.
          Improve integration with allies. The U.S. Navy already
    closely coordinates SSN deployments with the Royal Navy, whose Astute-
    class submarines are nearly as capable and quiet as the U.S. Virginia-
    class. The Navy should more tightly coordinate submarine operations
    with other allies such as France and Japan to provide more effective
    submarine presence in key areas like the Mediterranean, North Atlantic,
    and Western Pacific.
          Encourage allies to grow their submarine forces. Allies
    would have a difficult time growing their SSN forces due to industrial
    base and financial constraints, but more conventional submarine (SS)
    could be maintained in service to mitigate the shortfall in U.S. SSN
    presence in European and Asian littorals. For example, the Japan
    Maritime Self Defense Force could retain their Soryu-class SS in
    service longer than the current 20 years to grow their submarine force
    from the current 22 to more than 30 at a modest additional cost.
          Adopt new anti-submarine warfare (ASW) concepts that use
    unmanned systems. One of the largest demands on the U.S. SSN force is
    ASW operations, both for peacetime surveillance and to defeat enemy
    submarines in wartime. A combination of unmanned sensors and surface,
    air, and undersea vehicles would be well-suited to relieve SSNs of much
    of the ASW mission. These unmanned systems are already fielded or being
    prototyped today and the sensors and weapons they would deploy would be
    the same already in use by U.S. or allied navies. This shift to
    unmanned systems is absolutely necessary to get the most value from the
    shrinking U.S. SSN force as well as enable affordable and scalable ASW
    operations in the future.
        The U.S. Navy needs to address the coming submarine shortfall
    through a combination of ship construction and sustainment, alliances,
    and new operational concepts. All three elements are needed both to
    address this challenge during the next decade as well as sustaining
    America's long-term undersea advantage.
        Mr. Courtney. The Navy's force of SSNs is projected to experience a
    valley from the mid-2020s through the early 2030s, reaching a minimum
    of 42 attack boats in FY2027-FY2028. This valley was first identified
    by CRS in 1995 in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee
    and has been discussed in multiple, annual CRS reports since then. What
    strategy or strategies do you feel are best suited to mitigate the SSN
    valley in the short and long term?
        Mr. O'Rourke. Options for mitigating the SSN valley that the
    subcommittee may consider include the following, which are not mutually
    exclusive:
         Options for increasing the total number of U.S. submarines
    in service during the valley:
              Procure Virginia-class SSNs over the next few years
            that are in addition to those the Navy already plans to procure
            during those years. This option would mitigate the bottom and
            the back half of the SSN valley and accelerate the valley's end
            date. This option could begin with procuring an additional
            Virginia-class boat in FY2021, which would make for a two-boat
            Virginia-class procurement in FY2021 and a total of 10
            Virginia-class boats under the FY1019-FY2023 Virginia-class
            multiyear procurement (MYP) contract, which includes an option
            for a tenth boat. The Navy's FY2020 budget submission projected
            a request for two Virginia-class boats in FY2021 and a total of
            11 boats over the period FY2019-FY2023. The procurement of a
            second Virginia-class boat in FY2021 is the number one item on
            the Navy's FY2021 unfunded priorities list (UPL).
                 Navy officials testified this year that their earlier
            concerns about the ability of the industrial base to execute
            the construction of an additional Virginia-class boat have been
            satisfied, and that the only remaining issue regarding the
            procurement of an additional Virginia-class boat is
            availability of funds. The Navy estimates in its FY2021 UPL
            that fully funding the procurement of an additional Virginia-
            class boat in FY2021 would involve adding about $2.77 billion
            to the Navy's shipbuilding budget. In dollar terms, such an
            addition would fund 51% of the Navy's FY2021 UPL and more than
            75% of the net reduction in the Navy's FY2021 shipbuilding
            funding request relative to what the Navy's FY2020 budget
            submission had projected would be requested for FY2021.
            Alternatively, an additional Virginia-class boat could (with
            congressionally granted authority) be procured in FY2021 with
            incremental funding, enabling the FY2021 appropriation to be
            something less than $2.77 billion.
                 If Congress were to procure an additional Virginia-class
            boat as soon as FY2021, Congress would then have the option of
            exploring the feasibility of adding still more Virginia-class
            boats to the Navy's planned procurement profile through the
            mid-2020s. It could also consider making investments in the
            capacity of the industrial base to support that additional
            work, so as to further mitigate the back half of the valley and
            further accelerate the valley's end date. Unlike the options
            discussed below, procuring additional Virginia-class boats
            could not only mitigate the SSN valley, but help achieve the
            Navy's 66-boat SSN force-level goal sooner.
              Refuel five to seven Los Angeles (SSN-688) class
            submarines and extend their service lives by about 10 years
            through Engineering Refueling Overhauls (EROs). This option,
            like the one above, would mitigate the back half of the SSN
            valley and accelerate the valley's end date. It likely would
            not, however, accelerate the date for achieving the Navy's 66-
            boat SSN force-level, because even with 10 years of additional
            service life, these boats would likely age out and be removed
            from service before the SSN force would begin to approach that
            goal. These EROs would each cost something more than $500
            million. Initial funding for the first of the EROs was provided
            in FY2019 and FY2020.
              Expand and/or accelerate procurement of Extra Large
            Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (XLUUVs) as supplements to the SSN
            force. XLUUVs can be viewed as small, unmanned, non-nuclear-
            powered submarines. The first five XLUUVs were funded in
            FY2019. The Navy wants to procure additional XLUUVs at a rate
            of two per year starting in FY2023. The Navy's FY2021 budget
            submission does not include funding for the procurement of
            additional XLUUVs in FY2021 or FY2022.
         Options for maximizing the material readiness and
    capability of U.S. SSNs that are in service during the valley:
              Eliminate the SSN maintenance backlog, so that no
            SSNs are idled while awaiting the start of their maintenance
            work.
              Provide robust funding for modernizing combat systems
            and other equipment on existing SSNs, so as to increase the
            capability of each in-service SSN.
              Provide robust funding for procuring Mk48 torpedoes
            and other weapons, so as to reach inventory goals for Mk48
            torpedoes sooner and maximize the capability and diversity of
            weapons available for arming in-service SSNs.
         Options for maximizing the fraction of the SSN force that
    is at sea and on station on a day-to-day basis during the valley:
              To the extent possible--and without jeopardizing the
            material readiness of the SSN force--examine options for
            shifting SSN maintenance away from the lowest years of the
            valley, so as to increase at the margin the number of SSNs
            available for operation during the valley's lowest years.
              Temporarily increase average transit speeds and
            reduce time spent making port calls for SSNs that are traveling
            between their home ports and their operating areas, so that a
            marginally larger percentage of their deployments can be spent
            on station. Increasing average transit speeds could shorten the
            service lives of SSNs by using up their nuclear fuel more
            quickly, unless the period of increased transit speeds is
            offset by reduced average transit speeds in other years of
            their lives. The diplomatic impact of reduced port calls made
            by SSNs could be offset by increasing port calls made by
            surface ships. The impact on quality of life for submariners of
            making fewer port calls might be offset by making investments
            to improve their quality of life in other respects.
              Shift the homeports of some SSNs from the continental
            United States (CONUS) to locations closer to Eurasia during
            some or all of the valley years, so as to reduce their transit
            times to and from likely operating areas. In the Pacific, for
            example, this could involve homeporting one or two additional
            SSNs at Guam or Pearl Harbor. The homeports of these SSNs could
            then revert to CONUS locations as the valley ends.
              Employ dual crewing on some SSNs during some or all
            of the valley years, which would increase, perhaps by about
            40%, the fraction of time that they can be on deployment.
            Single-crewing could then be reinstated as the valley ends.
         Options for increasing allied submarine capacity (numbers)
    and capability (quality):
              Encourage Japan to increase its non-nuclear-powered
            attack submarine (SS) force from 22 to 30 during the years of
            the U.S. SSN valley. In part to support its submarine
            construction industrial base, Japan builds its SSs at a rate of
            about one boat per year. The size of Japan's attack submarine
            force is thus determined by how long each boat is kept in
            service: Japan had previously planned to maintain a force of 16
            SSs, and thus planned to keep each boat in service for 16
            years. As part of its most recent defense review, Japan decided
            to expand its SS force from 16 boats to 22 boats, and thus now
            plans to keep each boat in service for 22 years. Japan could
            further expand its SS force from 22 boats to 30 boats by
            deciding to keep each boat in service for 30 years, which would
            be consistent with the potential service lives of well-
            maintained modern SSs, rather than for 22 years. Expanding
            Japan's SS force from 22 boats to 30 boats consequently would
            not require Japan to build any boats that Japan does not
            already plan to build, just as expanding the force from 16
            boats to 22 boats did not require Japan to build any boats that
            Japan did not already plan to build. If Japan were to begin now
            to implement an expansion of its SS force to 30 boats, the
            force could increase from 22 boats in about 2021 to 30 boats in
            about 2029--an increase that would occur at the same general
            time as the front half of the U.S. SSN valley.
                 These eight additional Japan SSs would not be as useful to
            the United States as eight U.S. SSNs, because SSs are not able
            to perform certain missions that can be performed by SSNs, and
            because these SSs would be under another country's control.
            Even so, they could be of value to the United States in terms
            of helping to maximize combined U.S.-allied undersea warfare
            capability during the valley years. The eight additional SSs
            could eventually be removed from service as the U.S. SSN valley
            ends. Japan sets the planned size of its SS force to meet its
            own needs. The goal under this option would be to encourage
            Japan to consider not only its own needs, but the larger
            context of combined U.S.-Japan naval capability, in setting the
            size of its submarine force. The potential expansion of Japan's
            SS force to 30 boats is one of the most significant lower-cost
            options for bolstering Western naval force structure globally
            that I have been able to identify.
              Work with Australia and regional allies and partners
            to explore options for forward-homeporting some of Australia's
            SSs closer to the South China Sea. This could increase their
            potential for responding to issues of common U.S.-Australian
            concern in that area.
              Work with Japan and Australia as needed to ensure
            that Japan's and Australia's SSs are highly capable in terms of
            their combat systems and other equipment, armed with adequate
            numbers of highly capable weapons, operated by highly
            proficient crews, and well maintained by their supporting
            industrial bases.
                                     ______

                       QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. GOLDEN
        Mr. Golden. ADM Roughead described maintaining the health of the
    shipbuilding defense industrial base as ``one of the most important''
    issues requiring the subcommittee's oversight and observed that the
    ``fragility of the base and limited number of shipbuilders and
    suppliers that we have'' will impact on the Navy's future force
    structure plans. Admiral Roughead made clear that neither the Navy nor
    the shipbuilding industry have ``the luxury of not having a more
    integrated approach'' towards naval shipbuilding going forward.
        Given your particular experience and expertise, I would appreciate
    your responses to the following questions:
        (1) How can the Navy and Congress achieve the anticipated change in
    naval force structure without repeating the industrial base harms
    caused by previous ``boom and bust'' shipbuilding cycles?
        (2) What investments in shipbuilder training may be helpful to
    achieve this transition?
        (3) What obstacles do you foresee given shipbuilder demographic
    challenges, in which there are large numbers of new shipbuilders still
    learning their trade, large numbers who are senior and nearing
    retirement, and not enough personnel in the middle of their careers to
    teach new shipbuilders vital skills?
        (4) What legislative or oversight options might the House Armed
    Services Committee have to encourage the ``more integrated approach''
    between the Navy and the shipbuilding defense industrial base ADM
    Roughead feels is necessary? Has there been previous Congressional
    action on this issue?
        Mr. O'Rourke. Regarding question (1), options that Congress may
    consider include the following, which are not mutually exclusive:
          Use the 30-year shipbuilding plan to explore
    possibilities for shifting projected procurement dates of new ships to
    years that would not be optimal for replacing aging ships precisely at
    the ends of their projected service lives, but would nevertheless be
    beneficial in terms of dampening boom-and-bust cycles for shipyards and
    associated supplier firms.
          Use multiyear contracting (i.e., multiyear procurement
    [MYP] or block buy contracting) where appropriate to help enhance year-
    to-year planning stability for shipyards and associated supplier firms
    while permitting the Navy to reduce unit procurement costs.
          Use Profit Related to Offer (PRO) bidding (i.e.,
    competition for profit, as opposed to competition for quantity) where
    appropriate to help enhance planning stability for shipyards and
    associated supplier firms while still permitting the Navy to employ
    competition to restrain prices.
          Bundle shipbuilding programs together and compete those
    bundles periodically between individual shipyards or teams of
    shipyards, perhaps with PRO bidding, so that reductions in one
    shipbuilding program can be used to offset increases in another, and
    then perhaps implement those bundled efforts with multiyear
    contracting.
          Build ships with modular and loosely-coupled open-
    architecture hull designs, so that these in-production designs can be
    easily adapted and remain cost effective to build in modified
    configurations. This approach could help enable ongoing shipbuilding
    programs to continue--thereby preserving some production stability and
    production learning curve benefits for shipyards and associated
    supplier firms--if changes in strategic circumstances require new ships
    to be built with a changed mix of capabilities.
          Maintain an awareness of both Navy and Coast Guard
    shipbuilding programs, and of how declines in one service's
    shipbuilding programs might be offset by increases in the other
    service's shipbuilding programs. Maintaining such an awareness might
    not have been important in earlier years, when the Coast Guard was
    doing relatively little shipbuilding, but it might be more important to
    do so now, with the Coast Guard currently executing multiple
    shipbuilding programs.
        Regarding questions (2) and (3), which relate to shipyard
    workforces and their training, my understanding--based on discussions
    with shipyard officials in recent years--is that at least some
    shipyards are contending with (or will soon need to contend with) the
    retirement of relatively large cohorts of older and highly experienced
    workers, and consequently now (or soon will) need to replace these
    retiring workers with relatively large cohorts of newly hired younger
    workers. This could lead to shipyard workforces that include relatively
    large numbers of younger and less-experienced workers (aka green
    labor). The percentage of green labor could be increased further in
    shipyards that are seeking not only to replace retiring older workers
    on a one-for-one basis, but to increase total numbers of workers in
    response to the increased shipbuilding work associated with enlarging
    the size of the Navy.
        My understanding from shipyard officials is that compared to
    earlier generations of newly hired shipyard workers, today's newly
    hired shipyard workers can sometimes bring a different set of initial
    skills into the shipyard. They may have less prior experience using
    mechanical tools, working in an industrial setting, and working in
    settings with regular, fixed schedules. On the other hand, they may
    have more experience than older workers in using digital devices to
    access and work with information in electronic formats, and they may be
    more used to shifting from doing one kind of work to another. They
    might also have different learning styles (i.e., learning by reading,
    learning by watching, learning by doing, etc.) than earlier generations
    of workers. Training of shipyard workers, both in shipyard schoolhouses
    and on the waterfront, may need to adapt to potential differences such
    as these. Even with such adaptation, some shipyards will continue for a
    time to have workforces with a relatively large amount of green labor,
    and productivity models for shipbuilding programs would need to take
    that into account.
        Regarding question (4), Admiral Roughead is not the only observer
    to recommend an approach to shipbuilding that features a greater degree
    of integration between the Navy and the industrial base. I have heard
    other observers make similar statements over the last 10 or 20 years,
    though what these observers have in mind regarding the specifics of a
    more-integrated approach can vary from person to person. U.S. naval
    architects and engineers are currently focusing in part on best
    practices used in South Korean and other Asian shipyards for designing
    and building warships, because in the view of these naval architects
    and engineers, ``Asian navies are building larger warships that are
    easier to construct, easier to maintain, and that have greater service
    [life] allowances for future combat system upgrade. It is also reported
    that they are also doing this at significantly lower costs than US
    practice.'' The approach that these U.S. naval architects and engineers
    see being used in South Korean and other Asian shipyards features a
    higher degree of industry participation in the early stages of naval
    shipbuilding programs than is typically the case in U.S. Navy
    shipbuilding programs.\1\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ See Peter E. Jaquith, ``Asian vs. U.S. Warship Design,
    Production Engineering, and Construction Practice,'' Naval Engineers
    Journal, December 2019: 55-58. See also Tony Jang, Lois Pena, and
    Nicholas Abbott, ``Realizing Flexible Ships: Lessons from Allies to
    Improve the U.S. Shipbuilding Affordability, Capacity, and Schedule,''
    Naval Engineers Journal, December 2019: 59-71.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        One option for Congress would be to review the approach outlined by
    these naval architects and engineers. Whether this approach would make
    sense from a congressional perspective is an open question, because it
    could, for example, substantially alter the point in a shipbuilding
    program where the Navy would conduct its source selection and award a
    contract for building the ships. If Congress determines that the option
    makes sense from a congressional perspective, Congress could then
    consider legislative options for having the Navy provide its
    perspective to Congress regarding the potential merits and legislative
    authorities needed to implement this approach. Offhand I do not
    remember a prior legislative provision that was focused on the
    potential merits of a more-integrated approach like the one outlined by
    these naval architects and engineers.

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