[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                        [H.A.S.C. No. 117-41]

                                HEARING

                                   ON

                   NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT

                          FOR FISCAL YEAR 2022

                                  AND

              OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS

                               BEFORE THE

                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                   SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS HEARING

                                   ON

         FISCAL YEAR 2022 BUDGET REQUEST FOR MILITARY READINESS

                               __________

                              HEARING HELD
                              JUNE 9, 2021


                                     
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                               __________

                                
                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
48-441                    WASHINGTON : 2023                    
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------     

                       SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

                  JOHN GARAMENDI, California, Chairman

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut            DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
JACKIE SPEIER, California            JOE WILSON, South Carolina
JASON CROW, Colorado                 AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia
ELISSA SLOTKIN, Michigan, Vice       JACK BERGMAN, Michigan
    Chair                            MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana
JARED F. GOLDEN, Maine               MARK E. GREEN, Tennessee
ELAINE G. LURIA, Virginia            LISA C. McCLAIN, Michigan
KAIALI'I KAHELE, Hawaii              BLAKE D. MOORE, Utah
MARILYN STRICKLAND, Washington

               Jeanine Womble, Professional Staff Member
                 Ian Bennitt, Professional Staff Member
                           Sean Falvey, Clerk
                           
                           
                           C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

              STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Garamendi, Hon. John, a Representative from California, Chairman, 
  Subcommittee on Readiness......................................     1
Lamborn, Hon. Doug, a Representative from Colorado, Ranking 
  Member, Subcommittee on Readiness..............................     2

                               WITNESSES

Allvin, Gen David W., USAF, Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force..

Lescher, ADM William K., USN, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, 
  U.S. Navy......................................................     6
Martin, GEN Joseph M., USA, Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Army.......     4
Thomas, Gen Gary L., USMC, Assistant Commandant of the Marine 
  Corps, U.S. Marine Corps.......................................     5
Thompson, Gen David D., USSF, Vice Chief of Space Operations, 
  U.S. Space Force...............................................    10

                                APPENDIX

Prepared Statements:

    Allvin, Gen David W..........................................    78
    Garamendi, Hon. John.........................................    41
    Lescher, ADM William K.......................................    68
    Martin, GEN Joseph M.........................................    43
    Thomas, Gen Gary L...........................................    53
    Thompson, Gen David D........................................    88

Documents Submitted for the Record:

    [There were no Documents submitted.]

Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:

    [The information was not available at the time of printing.]

Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:

    Mr. Garamendi................................................    99
    Mr. Golden...................................................   101
    Mr. Lamborn..................................................    99
    Mrs. McClain.................................................   101
    Mr. Moore....................................................   102
    Ms. Strickland...............................................   105
         
         
         FISCAL YEAR 2022 BUDGET REQUEST FOR MILITARY READINESS

                              ----------                              

                  House of Representatives,
                       Committee on Armed Services,
                                 Subcommittee on Readiness,
                           Washington, DC, Wednesday, June 9, 2021.
    The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 3:00 p.m., via 
Webex, Hon. John Garamendi (chairman of the subcommittee) 
presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN GARAMENDI, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM 
        CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

    Mr. Garamendi. Ladies and gentlemen, I call to order this 
hearing of the Readiness Subcommittee of the House Armed 
Services Committee.
    Without objection, my prior remarks will be read into the 
record about how we have to operate. Now, the counsel is happy, 
or at least I am going to be able to debate with him.
    I am going to move directly to my opening statement. I 
don't see our ranking chairman on yet, but will be--hopefully 
will be by the time I finish my statement.
    With that, let's get us up and operating.
    Military readiness covers a vast breadth of topics, many of 
which we have covered in depth in other hearings. One of the 
through-lines of this committee's work is finding the right 
balance between sustainment of existing platforms and 
facilities and the modernization necessary to meet the threats 
of tomorrow.
    While it is important that we invest in systems and 
equipment that will put us at the cutting edge, we must never 
forget or ignore our current arsenal. Upgrading and updating 
these systems are a must if we are--if we hope to be successful 
in any near-term engagement. This balance is the very essence 
of readiness, and our preparations for near-peer competition 
require nothing less.
    The same can be said of our installations. A major theme of 
my work as chairman over these last couple of years has been 
prioritizing installation resiliency. For years, the services 
have taken considerable risk in the installation portfolio, 
deferring necessary maintenance and upgrades on existing 
buildings in order to fund new platforms and systems.
    Deferring maintenance is a chronic issue. We see this 
across the entire Readiness Subcommittee's jurisdiction. The 
services consistently fail to fund sustainment, and I look 
forward to hearing from each of the witnesses today if your 
budget request reflects the status quo or if the necessary 
investments are being made so that when the next Hurricane 
Michael or Hurricane Florence hits our installation--hits, our 
installations will remain more resilient.
    Another theme of the committee's work is to ensure that the 
military services continue to have the resources they need to 
effectively train our service men and women. Our personnel are 
the most important part of our Armed Forces, and it is 
imperative that they have the proper preparation for whatever 
future fight they may encounter. That includes the right 
investments in everything from basic training to flight hours 
and everything in between, as well as what happens on our 
Nation's ranges. As we look to the future, we know that the 
field of battle will change and will require the necessary 
training to ensure that our service members are ready.
    As this committee and the military addresses these three 
principal concerns, we must be aware and vigorously address an 
overarching challenge that addresses and dramatically affects 
all three of these principal areas. That challenge is the fact 
of a rapidly changing climate.
    The Department of Defense is the single largest consumer of 
carbon energy in America and quite possibly the world. 
Therefore, to meet the climate crisis, every service must seek 
to reduce energy consumption with conservation strategies and 
quickly move to noncarbon energy sources. This has been and 
will continue to be the central theme of this committee during 
my chairmanship.
    I would appreciate each witness sharing with this committee 
how they intend to address this challenge. As I scrutinize your 
budgets, I do not see the necessary commitment.
    And finally, along these lines, over the past year and a 
half the world has been forced to confront a challenge that it 
has not seen in over a century--the COVID-19 effect on every 
facet of our way of life, and it has killed over 600,000 
Americans. I look forward to hearing how each of the services 
have confronted this threat and weathered the global pandemic. 
More specifically, how did COVID-19 affect the readiness of our 
forces, both in a tactical and strategic sense?
    I see Mr. Lamborn has joined us.
    Doug, if you would like, I can read that all again or we 
can move directly to your statement.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Garamendi can be found in 
the Appendix on page 41.]

STATEMENT OF HON. DOUG LAMBORN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM COLORADO, 
           RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

    Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am prepared to make 
my statement, as you have just made yours, and thanks for 
having this hearing.
    Today, we will hear from the service vice chiefs of staff 
on the current state of military readiness and how the fiscal 
year 2022 budget request will support military training, weapon 
systems maintenance, and efforts to meet readiness requirements 
in alignment with the National Defense Strategy.
    As DOD [Department of Defense] continues to shift its 
primary focus from countering violent extremist organizations 
to great power competition, our subcommittee remains very 
interested in how we are balancing current readiness with 
modernization investments.
    Unfortunately, the budget request did not continue the 
progress made under the Trump administration to rebuild our 
military by requesting a 3 to 5 percent increase over the 
inflation-adjusted fiscal year 2021 enacted level. We cannot 
and should not ask our men and women in uniform to prepare to 
execute an array of missions and tasks and then fail to provide 
them with the resources necessary to accomplish those 
assignments.
    I strongly believe that we must continue to invest in our 
military as our adversaries grow, especially China. If we do 
nothing, over the next decade, China will fully modernize its 
military, potentially bringing it into parity with our own.
    I remain highly interested about the progress in standing 
up the new Space Force. This recognition of the importance of 
space as a warfighting domain is long overdue and is vital to 
the future readiness of the joint force.
    I am also looking forward to learning more about ways our 
newest service intends to increase the lethality and resiliency 
of our space assets, especially in light of increased 
competition and confrontation with Russia and China.
    In January of this year, the Air Force selected Huntsville, 
Alabama, as the preferred basing location for the Space Force. 
Since that time, both the GAO [Government Accountability 
Office] and the DOD IG [Inspector General] have begun reviews 
about the process by which that location was selected.
    As you know, I do believe that Colorado Springs was the 
best option, based on many factors ranging from location, 
civilian and military workforce, and the range of expertise in 
space warfare and operations, and the--specifically, the 
existing infrastructure and capabilities that are located 
there, in addition to quality of life for service members and 
their families.
    So I eagerly await those reviews as we work to support and 
stand up this new service and rapidly reestablish SPACECOM 
[U.S. Space Command] to confront the existing and growing 
threats in the space domain.
    I was happy to see that the fiscal year 2022 operations and 
maintenance for the Space Force did include an increase of 
almost $1 billion over fiscal year 2021 enacted levels. I look 
forward to hearing how the Department is contemplating and 
prioritizing readiness for its unique force design requirements 
as compared to the other services.
    I also look forward to hearing about any lingering or 
projected COVID-19 impacts to training and readiness of the 
service departments.
    COVID presented challenges to training with many exercises 
being canceled, despite reports that there has been no 
degradation in readiness and that readiness levels are at 
historic norms. So there seems to be a discrepancy there that I 
would like to explore.
    One of our key readiness enablers is the organic industrial 
base. Our depots provide the capability to maintain warfighting 
capabilities throughout their life cycles, but recapitalization 
plans will require significant investment over many years at a 
time when we continue to have a number of other major funding 
challenges.
    I am committed to working with the chairman and the rest of 
the subcommittee to ensure that depot recapitalization is 
prioritized.
    Finally, and as I mentioned last year during our posture 
hearings, I am concerned about people. Air Force pilot 
shortfall numbers have held constant over the last few years, 
unfortunately. The fighting--excuse me--the fighter community 
is experiencing the largest gap, both in Active and Reserve 
Components. It is unclear to me how we will reduce this backlog 
without robust funding, and I would like to hear more about 
that from the Air Force.
    So thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
    Mr. Garamendi. I thank you very much, Mr. Lamborn. I 
appreciate what you are saying. I particularly share your 
concerns about the location for Space Force. And certainly my 
view is that that entire process should be paused until we have 
those full reports from the two agencies.
    Now I would like to introduce our witnesses: General Joseph 
Martin, Army Vice Chief of Staff; Admiral William Lescher, Navy 
Vice Chief of Naval Operations; General Gary Thomas, Assistant 
Commandant of the Marine Corps; General David Allvin, Air Force 
Vice Chief of Staff; and General David D. Thompson, Space Force 
Vice Chief of Space Operations.
    With that, we will go through and hear the opening 
statement from each of the presenters. We will start with 
Martin--General Martin, and then we will go through the list as 
I just introduced them.
    General Martin, you are up.

 STATEMENT OF GEN JOSEPH M. MARTIN, USA, VICE CHIEF OF STAFF, 
                           U.S. ARMY

    General Martin. Chairman Garamendi, Ranking Member Lamborn, 
and distinguished members of the subcommittee, on behalf of the 
Secretary of the Army, the Honorable Christine Wormuth, and the 
Chief of Staff of the Army, General James McConville, thank you 
for the opportunity to discuss the Army's readiness. And thank 
you for your steadfast support of our soldiers, families, and 
veterans.
    The challenges of the past year highlight the importance of 
having a ready Army. Our soldier--our soldiers answered the 
Nation's call by distributing vaccines and medical supplies to 
combat COVID-19, also supported local authorities during the 
civil unrest, responded to natural disasters, and helped secure 
our southwest border.
    Abroad, the Army has 105,000 soldiers deployed in over 140 
countries as we speak, combatting transnational terrorism, 
deterring adversaries, and strengthening relationships with our 
allies and partners.
    The Army is busy, and our ability to meet these challenges 
demonstrates a high level of readiness we built over the past 
several years. We could not have done it without your steadfast 
support.
    However, readiness is fragile and relative to the 
challenges we face. Our adversaries are achieving significant 
military advancements and now threaten many of our long-held 
advantages. Technological progress is shifting the ground 
beneath our feet as we sit here and speak to each other. The 
world is changing, and the Army must change with it.
    To meet future challenges, the Army is undergoing the most 
significant transformation in the past 40 years. This 
transformation, the bedrock of future readiness, will enable 
the Army to support the joint force with credible land combat 
power necessary for deterrence and decisive victory.
    The next war will be an all-domain fight. History warns us 
not to rely on a single domain or any nuanced capability to win 
in combat. Victory in the future will require the application 
of combat power from all domains and the joint team.
    The size of the Army is equally important. The Army must 
maintain its end strength to meet the needs of the joint force. 
Even today, we are unable to meet all the global requirements 
asked of us. End-strength reductions will further reduce our 
ability to provide the combat power request of us and place 
excessive hardship on our soldiers and our families.
    I save the most important thing for last. People are our 
number one priority, and caring for them is a fundamental 
aspect of maintaining readiness. The harmful behaviors of 
sexual assault, sexual harassment, racism, extremism, and the 
factors leading to death by suicide directly affect readiness, 
and we must take them very seriously.
    We stood up the People First Task Force to take a whole-of-
Army approach to stamping out these harmful behaviors. We are 
on a solid path to build and maintain readiness now and in the 
future, but readiness gains and the Army's transformation 
require timely, adequate, predictable, and sustained funding to 
survive.
    Again, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I am 
looking forward to your questions and working with you to 
ensure that your Army remains ready to serve the American 
people.
    Thank you, Chairman.
    [The prepared statement of General Martin can be found in 
the Appendix on page 43.]
    Mr. Garamendi. I thank you very much, General Martin. And 
your full testimony will be into the record, as will the full 
testimony of the other witnesses.
    I now turn to--just plain lost my list here. Let's go to 
General Thomas, and then we will get back to the order on the 
list.

STATEMENT OF GEN GARY L. THOMAS, USMC, ASSISTANT COMMANDANT OF 
              THE MARINE CORPS, U.S. MARINE CORPS

    General Thomas. Chairman Garamendi, Ranking Member Lamborn, 
and distinguished members of this subcommittee, I am pleased to 
appear before you today to discuss Marine Corps readiness and 
the fiscal year 2022 budget.
    While common conceptions of military readiness often center 
on current availability of forces, we define readiness as the 
ability to create a warfighting advantage. The mere 
availability of Marines and equipment does not equal readiness 
to deter aggression or to defeat rapidly evolving threats. As 
such, our focus is not on simple and short-term metrics of 
availability, but instead, on a readiness to impose significant 
risks on our competitors and adversaries, both today and in the 
future. We must build a shared understanding of how we can best 
measure and achieve that readiness in order to prepare for the 
challenges ahead of us.
    We appreciate the support provided by this subcommittee as 
we made our initial force design changes and recovered 
readiness after years of steady combat deployments. Our fiscal 
year 2022 budget request supports our continued force design 
efforts to enable naval and joint campaigning across the 
competition continuum in all domains. This force will be able 
to persist forward within the range of an adversary's weapons 
systems while providing reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance, 
and long-range fires.
    While we have made much progress toward this goal, 
significant challenges remain in areas such as logistics 
sustainment, communications networks, and energy solutions. 
Through careful analysis and wargaming, we continue to 
implement the concepts, forces, and capabilities that will 
achieve forward presence, credible deterrence, and preserve our 
advantage at sea. Congressional support in these areas will 
further our progress toward our unique contribution to the 
joint force.
    Our modernization focus does not mean that we are 
neglecting the rest of our current equipment, facilities, and 
missions. Our fiscal year 2022 readiness accounts are fully 
funded, and we are committed to maintaining the combat 
credibility, safety, and overall readiness of the force while 
we modernize.
    Staying ready today and being ready for tomorrow will 
require consistent funding, prioritized and accelerated 
modernization, and the willingness to divest of capabilities 
that no longer serve our best defense interests. Your support 
and oversight of our readiness efforts will enhance and 
preserve the lethality of the Marine Corps as the Nation's 
naval expeditionary force in readiness.
    I look forward to answering your questions.
    [The prepared statement of General Thomas can be found in 
the Appendix on page 53.]
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you very much, General Thomas.
    I think all of the members of this committee are aware 
there is a very, very significant change in the U.S. Marine 
Corps posture going forward. We are going to be spending 
considerable time on working with the Marine Corps as they deal 
with a very different structure in the days ahead. I will come 
back to that.
    Admiral Lescher, I lost my place here, and you were the 
next up. So with my apologies, and with no offense to the 
Marine Corps, it is your turn, Admiral.

 STATEMENT OF ADM WILLIAM K. LESCHER, USN, VICE CHIEF OF NAVAL 
                     OPERATIONS, U.S. NAVY

    Admiral Lescher. Appreciate it, Chairman. Thank you.
    Good afternoon, Chairman Garamendi, Ranking Member Lamborn, 
and distinguished members of the House Armed Services 
Subcommittee on Readiness. On behalf of the sailors, the 
civilians, and the families to the United States Navy, thank 
you for the opportunity to testify today on this important 
topic of readiness.
    Our Navy depends [inaudible] its advantage at sea 
[inaudible] to sustain today's strong readiness posture, but 
also to build on recent learning the best practices to drive 
improved readiness, performance, and outcomes. We see a strong 
opportunity to accelerate learning the momentum across our 
major warfare communities to improve the transfer function 
between the critical inputs in people, dollars, and 
infrastructure, and our key readiness outcomes.
    As an example, I think the committee is well aware of our 
aviation enterprise has achieved and sustained 80 percent 
mission-capable rates in our squadrons across the majority of 
our aircraft models, scaling across naval aviation the key 
innovations, process changes, and leadership behaviors that we 
have learned while improving Super Hornet readiness from the 55 
percent baseline in 2018.
    We look forward to working with the defense committees to 
sustain and capitalize on these hard-earned gains, improving 
lethality in the high-end fight by balancing this increased 
mission-capable rates with the required increased flight hours 
for our pilots.
    In our afloat force, we also are leveraging this 
fundamental learning, the ``get real, get better'' tools 
embedded in Perform to Plan and Navy sustainment frameworks, to 
improve performance in our public and private shipyards and in 
how we man the force.
    Since 2019, the Navy has achieved positive trends in on-
time completion and reduced days of maintenance delay working 
through significant COVID impacts in 2020. Yet, clearly, our 
voyage to drive substantial shipyard maintenance performance 
improvement is at an early stage, and I see much opportunity 
and work to be done to close to the target of ships routinely 
completing maintenance on time and lifecycle maintenance plan 
design durations. We look forward to working closely with our 
private shipyard partners in this work to share systematic 
approaches for improving depot maintenance productivity.
    We are similarly focused on improving the manning of our 
surface ships. Since 2016, we have increased the billets 
assigned to surface ships by over 8,500, and have assigned 
3,000 additional sailors to operational sea duty. That increase 
in billets authorized drove a near-term decrease in the 
percentage of billets filled as we assessed, trained, and 
deployed sailors to fill the new requirement while conquering 
COVID-related pipeline friction.
    We are making strong progress. Today, we have the highest 
number of sailors on operational sea duty since 2014 and have 
reduced gaps at sea by over 4,100 since last October.
    It is not just about the inputs, however. Also 
complementary to this progress, we continue with implementation 
of condition-based maintenance with centers now aboard 
[inaudible] ships, circadian rhythm watch billets to counter 
fatigue, and service [inaudible] assignment policy, building on 
what we learned with aviation maintenance experience metric to 
help sailors and billets afloat do their jobs better and more 
safely.
    Overall, the Navy's fiscal year 2022 budget request funds 
our readiness accounts to an affordable level and builds on 
these recent gains, and it balances the need for future force 
readiness and modernization.
    I believe it is important to note, and we will talk today, 
about the consequence of the fiscal year 2022 request, which 
reflects a decrease in real terms in the 2021 [inaudible] a 
larger fleet. That is the context, along with our peer 
competitor, that drives many of the hard choices that you see 
in the request to maximize naval power.
    I am going to do a quick radio check. Did we drop offline?
    Mr. Garamendi. We heard all that you said. Please continue. 
You were off for a few seconds.
    Admiral Lescher. Okay.
    Just to wrap it up, the 2022 budget does include major 
aviation and ship readiness [inaudible] infrastructure 
[inaudible] airmen. The Fallon Range Training Complex in 
particular is a critical link that requires modernization to 
enable training to both our and our adversaries' newest 
capabilities. So we look forward to working with the committee 
and other stakeholders to ensure our team is able to maintain 
the competitive edge with that training range.
    We have funding of shipyard infrastructure optimization 
[inaudible] to revitalize those facilities and equipment, 
coordinate that in the fleet.
    And, finally, to highlight our most important asset, the 
700,000 sailors and civilians that provide our competitive 
edge. The request includes critical investments in training, to 
include ready relevant training, live, virtual, constructive 
training, as well as investments in increased toughness and 
cohesiveness of our force, and increases in mental health, 
sexual assault prevention, inclusion and diversity, and family 
care infrastructure to include fleet concentration area 
childcare.
    Overall, Chairman and Ranking Member and members of the 
committee, I look forward to discussing these topics with the 
committee today, and I thank the committee for your leadership 
and your partnership and sustained focus on the core issue of 
keeping the greatest maritime fighting force ever ready to 
fight and win at sea.
    [The prepared statement of Admiral Lescher can be found in 
the Appendix on page 68.]
    Mr. Garamendi. I thank you very much, Admiral Lescher. We 
appreciate your testimony. And your written testimony--full 
written testimony will be, without objection, in the record.
    Let me just do that for all of you. I forgot to ask 
permission from all of you.
    Without objection, written testimony will be entered into 
the record.
    So ordered.
    We now turn to General Allvin, Air Force Vice Chief of 
Staff.

 STATEMENT OF GEN DAVID W. ALLVIN, USAF, VICE CHIEF OF STAFF, 
                         U.S. AIR FORCE

    General Allvin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Garamendi, Ranking Member Lamborn, and 
distinguished members of the subcommittee, on behalf of Acting 
Secretary of the Air Force John Roth, and our Chief of Staff, 
General C.Q. Brown, Jr., thank you for the opportunity to 
testify on Air Force readiness and for your continued 
partnership and advocacy.
    Your Air Force mission is to fly, fight, and win, to 
deliver air power anytime, anywhere our Nation needs it. We 
remain committed to building the ready forces that can do just 
that, both to deter and respond to the threats of today and to 
address the even greater challenges of tomorrow.
    This year's Presidential budget request builds upon our 
last 4 years of effort to restore readiness. We are pleased to 
report that despite some of the early impacts from COVID, in 
many areas our readiness has largely been returned to pre-
pandemic levels.
    To maintain the momentum on the progress that you made 
possible, we are focused on several key readiness drivers, all 
very familiar to this committee. First and foremost, we are 
focused on readying our most important weapons system, our 
airmen. Tomorrow's airmen will serve in some of the most 
challenging environments witnessed in generations. To win, it 
is critical that we ensure that nothing prevents them from 
reaching their full potential.
    This year's budget request sustains the Air Force's strong 
commitment to our airmen and their families, expanding funding 
for advanced training, ensuring ready access to safe and 
reliable family housing, and investing more than an additional 
$7 million in combatting the deleterious behaviors, such as 
sexual assault, interpersonal violence, and self harm.
    As an Air Force, we must pay particular attention to the 
health of our aircrew manning, which continues to be at risk 
given the global aircrew manning shortages. This budget 
includes requests for continued retention measures, as well as 
several new initiatives to grow pilot production to the target 
of 1,500 aviators per year.
    At the same time, the PB-22 [President's budget for fiscal 
year 2022] budget request invests heavily in our training 
infrastructure to ensure that our airmen are prepared for peer-
level combat. This budget funds the flying hour program to the 
max executable level and upgrades several of our training 
ranges, including notably both the Nevada Test and Training 
Range and the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex.
    To ensure our airmen have ready equipment, we are 
continuing to invest in the weapons system sustainment with 
this year's investment on par with those made in fiscal year 
2021 at $15.4 billion. We must note, however, that this 
program's funding is not keeping pace with the escalating 
costs. The total fiscal year 2021 requirements grew by more 
than $800 million as we brought on new aircraft without 
retiring legacy platforms.
    This year's budget includes several recommendations to 
scale back our investments in that force structure which is no 
longer relevant to the future fight in order to affordably 
balance our weapons system sustainment accounts.
    Finally, we are making key--several key adjustments to our 
operational employment constructs to ensure our forces are 
optimally postured to build and sustain readiness for peer 
competition, including realigning the Air Force's force 
generation model back to the joint forces ``reset, ready, and 
commit'' [inaudible] standard. This preserves our ability to 
execute more robust, high-end training required for peer 
competition while also enabling support of dynamic force 
employment taskings as envisioned by the National Defense 
Strategy.
    Again, thank you for your support. We remain committed to 
accelerating the readiness recovery this committee makes 
possible and working together to secure the highest returns on 
the considerable investments you make in our Air Force.
    Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of General Allvin can be found in 
the Appendix on page 78.]
    Mr. Garamendi. I thank you very much, General.
    We will now turn to General Thompson, Space Force Vice 
Chief of Space Operations.

 STATEMENT OF GEN DAVID D. THOMPSON, USSF, VICE CHIEF OF SPACE 
                  OPERATIONS, U.S. SPACE FORCE

    General Thompson. Chairman Garamendi, Ranking Member 
Lamborn, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank 
you for the opportunity to testify today in my capacity as Vice 
Chief of Space Operations. On behalf of the Chief of Space 
Operations, General Jay Raymond, and our service secretary--our 
acting service secretary, the Honorable John Roth, and joined 
by those service chiefs--vice service chiefs, it is a pleasure 
to provide you details on readiness for the newest U.S. 
military service.
    I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude to 
Congress for its bipartisan support in establishing the U.S. 
Space Force on December 20, 2019, and for your leadership in 
addressing the threats and challenges the Nation faces in 
space.
    Year one of the Space Force's existence has been focused on 
standing up the new service. In collaboration with the services 
represented here, DOD staff, and Congress, the U.S. Space Force 
has made tremendous progress in this endeavor. This includes a 
mission-focused organizational structure, addressing force 
design and force generation models, new approaches to talent 
management, and the initial design and establishment of a field 
command solely focused on training and readiness, the Space 
Training and Readiness Command, colloquially known as STARCOM.
    Chief Raymond's direction to the U.S. Space Force in year 
two is fundamentally readiness-focused and includes integrating 
the Space Force into combatant commands and with allies and 
partners, and training and developing guardians as warfighters 
and effective joint force partners.
    In executing this guidance, the Space Force is doing the 
following. First, the Space Force is developing and refining 
operational models for presenting forces to combatant command. 
An important first step in this effort is U.S. Space Force's 
participation in U.S. Indo-Pacific Command's upcoming Pacific 
Sentry 2021 exercise, which will be the first major combatant 
command exercise with a Space Force service component.
    Second, the Space Force is in the process of standing up 
this new field command, STARCOM, which will have 
responsibilities to recruit, develop, train, and retain 
guardians to protect the high ground of space. STARCOM will be 
instrumental in inculcating a body of knowledge, expertise, and 
experience required of those guardians to conduct operations 
and protect U.S. interests in the high ground of space, a 
unique operational domain. This approach was first encapsulated 
in the inaugural doctrine publication, Spacepower, Spacepower 
for--or Doctrine for Space Forces, issued in August of 2020.
    Additional activities include more threat-focused unit 
training syllabi, programs to develop elite cadres of 
operators, cyberspace warriors, and intelligence and 
acquisition professionals; increasingly challenging and 
sophisticated training exercises like Space Flag; and a 
continuation of our Schriever Wargame series that has been a 
key element for allied and partner engagement for many years.
    Third, the Space Force is placing major emphasis on 
modernizing our infrastructure and space installation readiness 
and executing a Space Force-unique weapons system sustainment 
portfolio that ensures we maintain readiness of existing space 
capabilities even as we begin fielding the advanced 
capabilities required to meet the evolving needs of the joint 
force in the face of the growing threat. This approach also 
recognizes that our people, our guardians, are as vital as the 
space systems they employ to meeting current and future 
readiness needs.
    Without guardians standing at the ready, the Nation's space 
systems cannot operate in a manner required to effectively 
provide for our security. The guardian approach adopts new and 
innovative capital management and talent management methods for 
civilian and military members alike under the authorities 
granted by and with the assistance of Congress. And as 
documented in our vision for a digital service released earlier 
in May, it builds digital fluency into the workforce to ensure 
the Space Force is able to function effectively in the digital 
world of today and far into the future.
    Finally, I must uncategorically state that our success 
today could not have been possible without fully committed 
partners in the Departments of the Air Force and Defense. That 
begins with our closest and most committed partner, the United 
States Air Force, and extends to the sister services 
represented here today, who are currently and actively engaged 
in working with us to transfer functions and resources to 
fulfill critical missions and ensure we provide capabilities 
that they need for the joint fight.
    In this, we share a common goal; that is, to maintain 
mission execution and meet warfighter needs without adverse 
impact to any personnel or to the missions of the other 
services.
    On behalf of General Raymond and Secretary Roth, thank you 
again for the opportunity to appear before you, and I look 
forward to addressing your questions today.
    [The prepared statement of General Thompson can be found in 
the Appendix on page 88.]
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you very much, General Thompson, and 
we appreciate having what will be the first of an annual review 
of the work of the Space Force. And congratulations to you and 
the men and women of the force for standing it up and operating 
what is now almost a 2-year period of time. So we thank you for 
that.
    There are many, many questions that need to be asked. Many 
of those are probably answered in your--over in your lengthy 
written testimony. But just a couple of things come immediately 
to mind.
    I said earlier that the central theme of this Readiness 
Subcommittee last year and as we move into this year is that 
the military be prepared for the contingencies of the future. 
Certainly, that--one contingency is the possibility of conflict 
with an entity somewhere around the world. We talked about near 
peer, and that is important.
    But there is also a other--another contingency out there, 
and that is climate change. We have driven resiliency into much 
of what we hope you are doing with regard to your 
installations. And so I would like each of you--and we will go 
in reverse order here, because I am not sure General Thompson 
has a whole lot to do right now, but if he ever has a specific 
base, whether it is Colorado or Alabama or some other place, 
the resiliency issue will be on your shoulders, at least 
insofar as the bases.
    So let's go--let's talk about resiliency, how you are 
addressing that, and then, along the way, efforts that you are 
making to reduce the consumption of greenhouse gas along the 
way.
    General Thompson.
    General Thompson. Chairman Garamendi, thanks for that. And 
I will let you know there are, in fact, Space Force bases and 
installations under our charge today, on the order of a dozen. 
I won't go through the entire list. I will tell you they are 
our responsibility. But our partner, the United States Air 
Force, is joining with us, and they are operating those bases 
on our behalf, just as the Air Force civil engineers, security 
forces, personnel and others have for decades. But they are our 
responsibility.
    In terms of climate change, I will address a few things and 
save a few of those features for General Allvin to address. But 
first of all, as you noted, space bases are our power 
projection platforms. In fact, we operate space systems from 
those platforms. We do the command and control, the data 
dissemination. Data lands at those locations and is provided to 
the joint force. And so the resiliency of those bases is 
incredibly important to us.
    In conjunction with the Air Force, and especially as we 
look at lessons learned over the past several years, as we 
examine our infrastructure--primarily, in our case, our 
facilities and our power infrastructure, as we go through the 
modernization and sustainment activities, we look for means by 
which we can take those current facilities today and improve 
their energy and their installation resilience in the face of 
many of those climate issues. In the case of ours, it often is 
hurricanes on the Florida coast, earthquakes and other natural 
disasters, to include blizzards on the front range.
    And so as we upgrade and sustain those systems, we look for 
all of them, especially from the standpoint of power 
resiliency. We ensure that the power is clean, the power is 
conditioned, the power is sustainable across any sort of 
natural disaster. And, in fact, if in fact we have to sustain 
ourselves for a 24/7 mission, we build that into our plans.
    For our future capabilities, our future installations, from 
the design--from the beginning, we build energy resilience into 
those designs from the beginning, as well as new methods and 
new standards for energy efficiency and effectiveness.
    And let me stop there and allow the other service chiefs to 
join in.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, General. I agree that you not 
spend a lot of time talking about resiliency in space. I know 
that is an issue of the Strategic Forces Committee as well. I 
don't know that I want to get into Mr. Cooper's turf, but we 
might.
    Since you have focused on the Air Force, let's go to 
General Allvin, and you pick up the question from there if you 
would, please.
    Hit your mute button. Thank you.
    General Allvin. Sure. In the interest of time, I will 
really add to what General Thompson said and try not to repeat, 
specifically will narrow in on the area of climate change.
    As you know, two of our installations were--fell victim to 
natural disasters that were impacted from the climate, the 
hurricane that hit Tyndall, and then the massive flooding that 
was at Offutt. And so as we look at to learn from those, we are 
garnering the lessons learned in reevaluating our uniform 
facility criteria. So we are looking at adaptation and then the 
idea of resilience as well.
    But the adaptation to the effects of climate into the 
future, we are integrating into our--as we are rebuilding those 
installations, making sure that we understand not only what 
today's flood plain is, but the potential trend of those flood 
plains and ensure that we are building above those in the case 
of Offutt, looking at what the rising water levels may be in 
the case of Tyndall. And so those are the immediate lessons 
that we are learning to be able to put into the development of 
the installations of the future.
    But in the maintenance of our current installations, 
understanding that it is not only hurricanes and floods, but 
there are natural disasters--fire and high winds, et cetera--as 
we are looking at our sustainment requirements across all of 
our facilities, looking to harden our utilities area against 
wind, against fire, and that sort of thing.
    And so we are looking at that, at the adaptation of what 
the climate is doing to our current installations, but we need 
to build in and are looking at in our future design building 
digital models to fully understand how we might be able to 
build that into the installations that we are going to upgrade 
and update into the future.
    Mr. Garamendi. General, thank you very much. I noted that 
there was an evacuation at Beale Air Force Base yesterday 
because of a fire. So you don't need to talk about that in 
detail, but it is an example of the problem that you are facing 
perhaps around the world but certainly here in the West.
    Okay. Let's turn now to General Thomas, the Marine Corps. 
Resiliency, we can go into some detail about--about this issue. 
If you could talk to us about this, and also about the 
survivability of some of your bases if you could. Specifically, 
I would like to hear how both Camp Lejeune and your induction 
center nearby can survive in the face of climate change and 
existing hurricanes.
    General Thomas. Thank you, Chairman. Let me begin with some 
of the resiliency initiatives that we have undertaken, 
including making Marine Corps Logistics Albany, for example, 
our first net-zero installation, which produces as much 
electricity from renewable energy now as it consumes from 
utility providers.
    We have also installed two smart grids at Marine Corps 
Recruit Depot, San Diego, and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, 
which enables continuity of critical infrastructure functions 
in the event of a power outage. And, of course, all of our new 
MILCON [military construction] projects will be in accordance 
with new code, which takes all of these into account.
    You mentioned, Chairman, you know, Parris Island. In 
October of last year, we completed the Marine Corps first 
climate change adaptation and resilience plan that addresses 
sea level rise and climate change. We are going to take that 
same approach and apply it to some of our other installations, 
including Camp Lejeune.
    Mr. Garamendi. I am going to drive a little bit deeper on 
this, General. In discussions I have had actually 3 years ago 
now, it appeared as though Parris Island could not survive a 
Category 3 hurricane, and I, therefore, raised the question 
about, so where is the next induction center when that one gets 
wiped out? It won't get wiped out once; it will be a continued 
problem with sea level rise.
    Have you--has the Marine Corps thought about how to--what 
to do about Parris Island, either a different location, or what 
might be done given the fact that--I will say fact that Parris 
Island is in jeopardy?
    General Thomas. Chairman, you know, based on, you know, the 
climate challenges the chief articulated, in addition to the 
steps forward that we are taking with integration of recruit 
training, we are, you know, evaluating our facility 
requirements for recruit training across the board for the 
reasons you just articulated. We have not yet made any 
decisions related to, you know, recruit training facilities or 
particular locations.
    Mr. Garamendi. Very good. I raise this question as a heads-
up not only to you, General, but also to the committee that 
this issue is going to be before us in the months ahead, 
perhaps this year, but probably maybe--certainly the following 
year. And we will be dealing with this issue. Hopefully and 
prayerfully, there will not be a hurricane that will make this 
a more immediate issue. I thank you very much, General.
    There is a whole series of questions that I mentioned 
before having to do with the Marine Corps of the future, and we 
will want to get into those in detail in the days ahead.
    Admiral Lescher, same set of questions. Climate change, are 
you going to issue waders for Norfolk?
    Admiral Lescher. Sir, yeah. Thank you for the question. The 
focus that we are bringing, very similar to the other services, 
I would highlight, first of all, of course, is safety of the 
workforce, resilience of the mission, the ability to execute 
the mission operationally, and then to preserve our natural 
resources. And as you highlighted with Norfolk, now is where we 
are laser focused on sea rise as well as the severe weather, 
and a classic or recent example being Hurricane Sally, which 
impacted Pensacola, Whiting Field, Panama City.
    The tools we bring to this work, I think in some respects 
are mature and in some respects are reflecting the 2020 NDAA 
[National Defense Authorization Act] language, bringing them 
into installation master plans. We have, across our seven major 
installations, been using the mission assurance assessments 
which comprehensively look at all hazard threats, to include 
cyber, floods, earthquake, damaging winds, those type of 
elements, analyze the probability of impact and then proposes 
mitigation based on that.
    And then in compliance with the 2020 NDAA, this year we 
will have completed five installation development plans that 
have incorporated those mission assurance assessments, and we 
think we will be on a vector to complete all of them by the end 
of 2022.
    So that is really the overarching look at how we are 
looking at the assessment of the planning and the development 
of plans and then use that to drive choices on mitigating.
    You also asked about other elements of energy efficiency, 
and there is many of that. San Diego is a classic example of 
the tremendous amount of solar power that has been put in 
place. And then operationally as well, we have initiatives on 
advanced battery development, propulsion efficiency, energy-
efficient engines for our autos and other elements of--I can 
certainly highlight in more detail with the staff.
    Mr. Garamendi. Good. Admiral, thank you very much. I would 
suspect one of my colleagues will pick up the issue of the 
shipyards and questions around the shipyards. So I see Mr. 
Golden there looking at a quarter of a billion dollars.
    General Martin.
    General Martin. Thank you, Chairman. So, over the past 2 
years, the Army evaluated all 116 installations using what we 
call the Army Climate Assessment Tool. We are on glide path to 
evaluate all Army installations and complete the installation 
energy and water use plan in accordance with the NDAA by 2022 
for all of our installations, so no issue there.
    Last year was the fifth year in a row we continued to grow 
our renewable capabilities on our installation. As I speak to 
you, 7.7 percent of the Army's energy is generated by 
renewables.
    But resilience is really important. A great--I have got to 
talk about the Fort Hood example, where they had that ice storm 
last winter, and a good part of mid to north Texas is relying 
upon a mixture of renewables and natural gas-generated power. 
And when that ice storm came, that--there was power, but it 
came at a very high premium because they could not rely upon 
the renewables for about--about a week.
    And so we have thought through that, and understanding that 
you can't rely just 100 percent on renewables, but they need to 
be a part of your power generation to be responsible in your 
power generation and your power requirements.
    Since 2007, the Army has decreased its use of water by 28.2 
percent. We are in the process--it is not something that is in 
the program yet, but we are actively planning the grid that we 
will need, the infrastructure we will need to be able to host 
what we anticipate to be a 100 percent GSA [U.S. General 
Services Administration] electrified fleet if that happens so 
that we are not--you know, we have got the cars, but we can't 
charge them.
    And we just approved about a month ago an effort to 
electrify--it is really--it is a hybrid, but it is the third--
it is the third and it is the most--it is the best form of a 
hybrid--the JLTV, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. And so we 
are looking at that. That is the first big vehicle that we have 
taken a look at dealing with that. But those are some of the 
efforts that we are doing to decrease our reliance on carbon 
fuels.
    Mr. Garamendi. General, thank you very much.
    I just remembered a conversation with a major--Marine Corps 
major, a tanker. We were talking about hybrid vehicles, and he 
said, If I could have a hybrid tank, you know what it would 
mean to me?
    And I said, No, what are you talking about?
    He said, Well, most of the time, we sit around. We have got 
the air conditioner going. We have got the communications 
going. And the turbines are going too. He said, If that was a 
hybrid, it would probably be another 15 minutes of fuel, and 
that means I live.
    So, food for thought. And thank you for the comment on the 
GSA hybrids and electric vehicles. We are moving--we would like 
that to take place. You raised an important question, and that 
is, okay, what do you plug them into? And so thank you for your 
work on that.
    I have gone through a series of questions having to do with 
installations, the work that we have been doing over the last 
couple of years, and I am going to now turn to my colleague, my 
ranking member. He has on his screen Dale Anderson, who I think 
must be one of his staff.
    Mr. Lamborn, you are up.
    Mr. Lamborn. That is right. We have had some technical 
difficulties, Mr. Chairman, so I had to switch over to the 
screen of one of my staffers, like you just said, my chief of 
staff, to be precise.
    And thank you for having this hearing.
    General Thompson, I have a question for you on Space Force. 
Can you describe to us the need for and the advantages of a 
Reserve Component for Space Force and what that would do for 
readiness?
    General Thompson. So, Representative Lamborn, thanks so 
much for that. I will tell you--let me start by saying today 
that the National Guard and the Reserves are a vital part of 
our space missions today. We couldn't execute the missions we 
do every single day without them. They bring, as you noted, 
vital surge-to-war support and other sorts of support that have 
served the entire Armed Forces well over the years.
    At the same time, we have got an opportunity to look as a 
21st century at what a 21st Regular, Reserve, and Guard 
construct might look like for a brand-new service, and we have 
done exactly that. We have spent about a year now inside of the 
U.S. Space Force with our counterparts in the Air Guard and the 
Air Reserve and with OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense], 
and I think we have developed a proposal that we believe will 
serve our needs in the future, but also take advantage of the 
most important features of the current Guard and Reserve.
    We owe a report [to] Congress [on] that through the 
Secretary of Defense. It is in its final stages of approval, 
and we expect it to be submitted soon.
    And as I said, I can't share details until approved by the 
Secretary of Defense, but what I will tell you is we think it 
is an innovative approach that preserves some of the 
outstanding features of the Guard and Reserve but still looks 
at it through a 21st century lens.
    We look forward to delivering that report and then working 
with you on and Congress on the features related to it and the 
changes that may be required to implement it.
    Mr. Lamborn. Okay. Thank you, General. I look forward to 
seeing that report and helping to make sure that we do enter 
the next--this century and into the future with the best 
Reserve and Guard Component possible.
    General Martin, we were talking the other day, and you 
mentioned that in the--with the potential, you know, God 
forbid, but the potential of great power competition concerning 
the Army--and this is for General Martin--that there would 
still be a role for the Army, even in, like, at the Indo-
Pacific theater. Could you explain a little bit what you--
elaborate on what you meant by that?
    General Martin. Congressman, thank you. So, as I said in my 
statement, we--to prevail on the future, to be able to respond 
to crisis, to win in competition and prevail in a conflict, you 
are going to need an all-domain capability to do that. You are 
going to need an entire joint force. It is not going to be one 
single service. It is not going to be a couple of services. You 
are going to need everything from the space to the information 
environment, to the cyber environment, to the air, to the sea, 
below the sea, and on the land. You are going to need all those 
capabilities combined.
    And so as it pertains to the land domain, most of the 
partners--the potential partners--and you need a partnership to 
be able to prevail against a threat like China--most of the 
partners there live on land, and most of the partner nations 
there, their largest component of a security apparatus is land 
forces.
    And so to build relationships with those land forces 
matters in a future fight, because we don't want to do that in 
a crisis or, God forbid, in a conflict, and so it takes time to 
do that. And so that is where the Army, with its security force 
assistance brigades and its various units and their exercises, 
can build upon those relationships that will allow us to 
achieve access, presence--temporary episodic presence, but also 
influence on the development of the military forces, making 
them better than they were before, and increasing opportunities 
for not only for the Army to posture capability there to deter, 
but also for our partners in the joint force to posture 
capability--dynamically employed capability to those countries 
that we continue to build relationships with.
    So the land domain matters, and the Army is at the center 
of building multinational partnerships there, and we believe we 
are a valid component of that as we look to the future both in 
the Indo-Pacific and also Europe.
    Mr. Lamborn. Okay. Thank you. That does help elaborate on 
what we were talking about and what you were referring to.
    Admiral Lescher, you have touched on and we have had 
certainly a lot of questions in previous hearings about the 
recapitalization of the Navy shipyards. Could you elaborate on 
where we stand currently with the recapitalization plan and 
where that stands in terms of the years needed to do that and 
what we are going to need each year in the budget, and is that 
included in this year's budget to achieve that goal?
    Admiral Lescher. Yes, sir. Thanks for the question. It is 
included in this budget and, as well, a 5-year plan and a 20-
year plan. And [inaudible] chairman's question as well about 
let's have some prespecificity with that. In this budget, there 
is $830 million to specifically focus on shipyard 
infrastructure optimization, and that is really focused on two 
specific dry-dock improvements, one at Portsmouth and one in 
Norfolk.
    And as well, there is ongoing work in terms of doing 
digital twin modeling of each of our four public shipyards, an 
area of master plan development. The digital twin models are 
forecast to be complete across all four of the shipyards by 
fiscal year 2022. And the digital twin models are core to being 
able to do the optimization piece.
    In the 5-year plan, I would say what is most consequential 
is immediate work on six dry docks, so basically given after 
that element is important upfront. There is also capital 
equipment investment as well as FSRM [facilities sustainment, 
restoration, and modernization] as well.
    The overall level of investments I would expect to be north 
of $4 billion for the 5-year plan, and certainly that is work 
that needs to be done. There is some learning taking place on 
this.
    I had a chance to chat with the professional staff about a 
bid that came in well above what we expected for the Portsmouth 
dry dock, project 381. And there is some strong learning for us 
in that, both in terms of current market conditions driving 
volatility in raw materials, the complexity of these projects, 
because a pacing element is not just funding, it is the ability 
to also preserve and do maintenance while we are recapitalizing 
these shipyards.
    And we also saw that we didn't have the competition that we 
would have expected, and it is a well-proven unhappy fact when 
you come down to a single bidder for these type of projects, 
there is a price premium applied. So I have asked our naval 
facilities team to take a very hard look at that, this being a 
learning organization.
    This project is still in negotiation, but then we have to 
bring that insight into how--what that means for our 5-year 
plan as well and adjust and adapt. We still want to bring a 
sense of urgency to this. We want to a bring a clear sense of 
prioritization to this. So that, in a nutshell, is what is 
taking place in the 5-year plan.
    The 20-year plan will really reflect that learning from the 
digital twin modeling, the optimization approach that we see, 
as well as continue to prioritize recapitalization of specific 
infrastructures.
    Mr. Lamborn. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that.
    And, General Allvin, this is my last question. And you 
already have talked about this in your opening statement, but 
when it comes to the fighter pilot shortage, you gave some good 
and specific measures, like I believe retention bonuses and so 
on, and those are good steps.
    Is it too early to tell whether this is being successful or 
not and driving some higher numbers, or is it still prospective 
in the future and we are waiting to see how it comes out?
    General Allvin. Thank you, Representative Lamborn. I would 
say more the former than the latter, and I--the reason why I 
would say this is, is we are looking at six specific 
initiatives.
    So, first of all, we will talk about the retention. The 
retention is great because, right now, we are at a current 
pilot shortage of 1,925 pilots, give or take, of what we think 
we need. So we targeted 1,500 pilots a year production to be 
able to get there. Unfortunately, we haven't met that in the 
last couple years. We expected actually it to be a little bit 
worse through 2019 because of COVID. And as it turned out, we 
only produced--or in 2020, we only produced 13 less than the 
year before. Still not satisfactory, because we hadn't hit 
1,300 yet. So it says that the bathtub didn't get worse, but 
that was the only real good news.
    So the initiative--the six separate initiatives that we are 
looking to increase pilot throughput to get more production in 
there are all--each one of them could provide a significant 
uplift. And I will go over them very quickly.
    First is there is--we are understanding that you do not 
have to put everyone through the same pipeline. We are learning 
more about the capabilities outside of the Air Force and how to 
do proper risk management in assessing for potential pilot 
candidates.
    So on the Accelerated Path to Wings, we are doing a small 
pilot group and evaluating them and taking them just through 
the T-1 only program, and then assessing them as they go 
through the first few years in their follow-on actual weapons 
system.
    So to your point of do we know if we have actually got the 
right solutions yet, I think we will gain confidence every year 
as we see them perform down the line, because the most 
important thing--we can put quantity through, but we can never 
sacrifice quality.
    So we evaluate each of those, these increased pilot 
production through the T-1 Path to Wings. We are going back to 
just sending potential aviators right to helicopter training. 
We did that in years past, then we started putting them through 
fixed wing. We are going back to the future. We are evaluating 
their performance. As you can see, that is less time in the 
training pipeline, that is more pilots on the line.
    We are also looking at ensuring we can put instructor 
pilots on the line doing instruction, flying instruction. We 
are doing that through some increased civilian--incentives for 
civilians doing simulation, doing the simulators, overseeing 
the simulator instruction, and also maybe incentivizing remote 
simulator instruction, because some of the places are hard to 
attract some of the civilian workforce talent, to ensure we can 
fully man the simulators with civilians so we can put the 
instructor pilots back on the line so we can move more pilots 
through the pipeline. So both of those are ways that we are 
looking at increasing production.
    Also looking at, through civilian Path to Wings, assessing 
people early on and looking at their civilian experience and 
see if what--we might be able to shorten their pilot training 
experience.
    In the past, it didn't matter. It didn't matter if you were 
an experienced pilot or brand new. You went through the same 
pipeline. Didn't really make sense.
    As we are looking at each of those, they offer the 
opportunity, when you put them all together, to really produce 
about one additional base's worth of pilot production per year, 
and our target for knowing that will be about fiscal year 2024.
    But we want to make sure we are assessing each of these and 
figuring out where we might want to put more emphasis. And as 
we do that, we will put more pilots through the pipeline, but 
then we also have to manage them throughout their career to 
make sure the bathtub doesn't move just from company grade 
officers to field grade officers. So we need to manage them 
through their entire life cycle, and that will be a challenge 
going forward. But we have several irons in the fire that are 
starting to produce some outputs. We are going to evaluate to 
see which ones are the most lucrative of an investment.
    Mr. Lamborn. Okay. These sound like good plans, and the 
whole committee would love to see the results as you go 
forward. It is somewhat tentative, so I am, you know, not 
convinced yet that this is going to succeed, but I am hopeful 
that it will. And I appreciate your keeping us abreast of this 
as we go forward.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back to you.
    Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Lamborn, thank you very much for your 
questions.
    The next two on the gavel list are Mr. Courtney, followed 
by Mr. Wilson. On the completion of Mr. Courtney, I will give 
the following two after that.
    So go ahead, Mr. Courtney. You are up.
    Mr. Courtney. Great. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And thank you to all the witnesses.
    Admiral Lescher, as I think you know, before the budget 
came out, this subcommittee had a hearing on the backlog in 
ship repairs for both submarines and surface ships. And, you 
know, your update regarding the funding for the public shipyard 
improvements, you know, I think it shows real effort. But, on 
the other hand, it certainly shows it is still going to be a 
long game. And we obviously still have to deal with what is 
happening in the immediate present as far as particularly the 
Los Angeles-class submarines, who as we heard previously is 
sort of at the end of the buffet line in terms of getting help.
    So I did notice on page 3 of your testimony that Boise is 
now fully funded to go into Newport News and the Hartford is 
fully funded to go into Groton, which is good. I guess, if 
maybe you could just talk for a second about whether or not 
hopefully we will figure out ways to not only get them in but 
also to get them out faster. And I know the ``Smart Start'' 
approach, which is to try and get some of the public yards and 
the private yards sort of talking to each other and working 
together about getting materials and design plans to move the 
process along, is that hopefully, you know, going to get these 
boats turned around faster than we have seen in the past?
    Admiral Lescher. Sir, it is a superb question, and it has 
to. And it is not just those elements, you know, the Smart 
Start and the other elements. We are going to put a strong 
premium on sharing the lessons of learning, the body of 
knowledge that we are bringing into the public shipyards with 
our private shipyard partners as well. And I see elements when 
I point to the private shipyard leadership that leads me to 
believe we need to have a stronger conversation on this 
dimension. For example, when I see their assessment of the 
percents of new work or growth work, it is substantially 
different than what we see in our public shipyards doing the 
same maintenance availabilities which I can [inaudible]. We 
need to come to a common site picture on that planning and have 
more of that in the contract [inaudible] as new or growth work.
    Our four shipyard [inaudible] are under the leadership of 
NAVSEA [Naval Sea Systems Command] Bill Galinis and his 
Executive Director Giao Phan. They are on a strong path with 
what we call Naval Sustainment System-Shipyards to drive 
productivity increases in ways that I think are [inaudible] and 
ought to be brought into both the surface ship private 
shipyards and our private shipyards [inaudible] to look at 
everything from production control as well we see the first and 
second line supervisors that they are an opportunity to have 
them more involved in and [inaudible].
    So I will hold there, but I have the same site picture that 
you do, which is we need to strengthen that conversation, 
strengthen the learning together, and get after bringing these 
private shipyards nuclear submarines prepared [inaudible].
    Mr. Courtney. I mean, clearly like I said, I think there is 
strong support across the board for boosting the public yards. 
But I think, in the meantime, you know, the handwriting is on 
the wall. We are still going to have to use the one shipyard 
approach for the private and public sector.
    General Thomas, last time you were with us, we talked about 
the devastating AAV [assault amphibious vehicle] accident out 
in San Clemente. And I was just wondering whether you could 
sort of talk a little bit about whether what is in the budget 
is going to address in terms of training or the equipment in 
terms of lessons learned from that accident.
    General Thomas. Thank you, Congressman.
    There were a couple of key aspects of that that are in the 
fiscal year 2022's budget. First, of course, is the sustainment 
of the vehicle, which will be fully funded through the end of 
the service life in 2025 or 2026. But it also includes some key 
investments for systems that did not perform well, you know, 
communications and some of the lighting on board for example.
    And then also significant investment in training; we are 
adding some egress training, as well as the underwater egress 
training to ensure that our Marines and sailors are fully 
prepared should they find themselves in an emergency.
    Mr. Courtney. You know, again, thank you. I know both of 
these issues which I have raised are something that are going 
to be an ongoing, enduring issue for the subcommittee. And 
certainly I am glad that there is space in this budget to 
follow up with, again, a lot of the comments, particularly 
addressed to the families after that accident.
    With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Courtney.
    Mr. Wilson, you will be up next, followed by Golden and 
Scott.
    Mr. Wilson.
    Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Chair Garamendi and Ranking Member 
Doug Lamborn for your leadership.
    And we are all inspired by the witnesses today, their 
commitment, their service on behalf of the American families, 
defending American families. And it will be bipartisan working 
together to back you up in every way that we can. Along with 
that, I am really grateful that I represent Fort Jackson, South 
Carolina, where Brigadier General Milford Beagle and his team 
has been masterful in adapting and overcoming the challenges of 
the Wuhan virus. Fort Jackson trains more than 50 percent of 
the Army's new warriors. And I commend the Army on maintaining 
100 percent capacity of its training capabilities despite the 
pandemic.
    My concern is the impact on readiness, and this is for 
General Martin. With above the tactical level, the pandemic 
caused the cancelation of numerous partnered exercises, 
including exercise Maple Resolve, Panama 2021, Command Post 
Exercise CPX, and the Allied Spirit 12. Does the fiscal year 
2022 budget general request provide for sufficient funding to 
reschedule the training events and to regain the 
interoperability readiness?
    General Martin. Congressman, thank you for the question. 
And so it was very unfortunate with COVID and the impacts on 
our ability to be able to train with our multinational 
partners. That being said, we did do Defender Europe, and we 
did a smaller Defender Pacific. Both exercises, smaller scale. 
And the training with our partners in those various exercises 
was a direct byproduct of what they were allowed to do and what 
we were allowed to do given protecting our soldiers and 
protecting their soldiers during the conduct of those 
exercises.
    We've learned a lot through the course of this year. The 
2022 budget has many multinational training opportunities in 
it. In fact, in 2022, we have got Project Convergence 2022. 
This year, as you well know, is going to be a joint campaign of 
learning, where all of our joint partners are going to 
participate. We have got multinational partners that are 
actually going to come and watch and discuss what they see as 
far as the developments in Project Convergence this year. And 
then, next year, it is going to be in 2022, it is going to be a 
multinational event working on the mission partner environment 
and the multinational interoperability capabilities. So we have 
got lots of exercises programmed in 2022, ready to go. And 
anticipating that, you know, we will be well beyond the herd 
immunity for COVID and our partners will have made progress. We 
shouldn't have any problems with that. So we look forward to 
those opportunities.
    And I will tell you, I talk to our partners often, and they 
miss those opportunities, and they miss the progress that we 
missed because we had to protect our soldiers. But we have 
learned, and we are moving forward, and the program includes a 
robust multinational experimentation and exercising schedule 
for your Army.
    Mr. Wilson. And I will share your appreciation. I have 
traveled with Chairman Garamendi throughout Central and Eastern 
Europe. And to see our allies, our near allies there, how much 
they appreciate Novo Selo, MK, to be working together. And so I 
am grateful this will proceed.
    General Allvin, in your written testimony, I appreciate 
your recognition of the importance of our nuclear 
recapitalization efforts to the credibility of our nuclear 
deterrence. In the fiscal year 2021 National Defense 
Authorization Act, this committee recommended a two-site 
plutonium pit production plan to recapture our Nation's ability 
to build and maintain nuclear weapons to provide deterrence for 
peace. What is the Air Force doing to modernize its leg of a 
nuclear triad? And, specifically, what are the cost 
implications of another potential Minuteman life extension?
    General Allvin. Sir, thank you very much for the question. 
I think fundamentally we really believe that the cost of the 
recapitalization of the nuclear fleet is actually something--it 
is an imperative. We are trying to drive down costs, but we go 
against what we believe the threat is. This, our nuclear triad, 
has been the foundation of strategic deterrence for well over 
half a century. And so, the recapitalization is something that 
is necessary.
    There have been several independent assessments on the cost 
of doing anything other than that. And to your point about the 
cost of another recapitalization of Minuteman III, there are 
several studies that show that it becomes increasingly 
expensive to the point of the diminishing parts and the 
capability would almost require building a brand new Minuteman 
III. And the idea is, if you are building capability to provide 
a credible deterrent, you would want to have that deterrent to 
be against the threat that you see coming.
    And so, therefore, our GBSD [Ground Based Strategic 
Deterrent], which is--it is not inexpensive, but it is one of 
our programs that through our new digital acquisition approach 
and our way of doing our modeling and baking in sort of long-
term sustainment costs and all those things into it and holding 
the requirements for them, it is actually meeting schedule and 
cost in a way that very few programs have ever in the history. 
So it is not inexpensive, but it is unaffordable not to have 
that sort of a nuclear deterrent in the world that we find 
ourselves now and into the future.
    Mr. Wilson. Thank you for your input.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Wilson.
    This last subject will be debated going forward.
    Let's see, we have--Mr. Golden, you are up next.
    Mr. Golden. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Admiral Lescher, I would like to talk about the readiness 
impact of the Navy fiscal year 2022 budget request. I am 
concerned that, despite making clear to this committee that it 
requires additional anti-air and ballistic missile capability 
in order to operate in a contested security environment, 
particularly in the Indo-Pacific region, that the current 
request before the committee cuts a Flight III DDG-51 [guided-
missile] destroyer in contravention of not only the Navy's 
stated shipbuilding planning guidance but also the current DDG-
51 multiyear procurement contract. And I am, of course, 
concerned that this proposed cut in DDG-51 production, which is 
the backbone of our Nation's frontline surface combatants, is 
occurring at a time when our Navy requires more and not less 
capabilities, particularly anti-air and ballistic missile 
defense capabilities to address the increasingly lethal 
capabilities, including advanced anti-access/area denial 
capabilities of our potential adversaries, most prominently 
China.
    The Flight III DDG's unique capabilities, including 
strategic land strike, anti-aircraft, anti-surface ship, and 
anti-submarine warfare are crucial for keeping pace with 
China's evolving military capabilities in the Indo-Pacific 
region. I would say, in particular, the Flight III's SPY-6 
radar system is crucial for addressing the China anti-access/
area denial ballistic missile threat to our forces in the 
Pacific. And the current ballistic missile threat, as well as 
the proposed retirement of seven Ticonderoga-class guided-
missile destroyers, makes the potential air and ballistic 
missile defense impact of a cut in the DDG program even more 
concerning.
    These proposed cuts impact not only the readiness of our 
current naval force structure and capabilities but also the 
readiness of our sailors to gain necessary experience in 
addressing air defense command vessels, as these cuts would 
eliminate potential air defense command opportunities with no 
foreseeable alternatives. I believe these ships are vital in 
providing necessary command opportunities for naval career 
officers.
    So could you please describe both the impact of these cuts 
on the Navy's anti-air and ballistic missile capabilities, 
particularly our ability to be ready to operate in a contested 
environment in the Indo-Pacific, but also, what is the Navy's 
plan for maintaining large surface combatant command 
opportunities?
    Admiral Lescher. I appreciate the question, Representative.
    I think it for sure is worthy of strong and ongoing 
conversation. I would highlight as a couple of elements of 
context and then get into some details behind that as time 
permits.
    CNO and the Secretary of the Navy have been very clear with 
this budget that the first principle that drove many of these 
hard decisions--and as you well appreciate, this isn't the only 
difficult decision in this balance--the first principle is to 
provide the most ready and lethal Navy that is achievable 
within the resources provided. And this was a very deliberate 
decision and very analytically founded. When we briefed the 
committees on elements of that analysis in the Future Naval 
Force Study and the Integrated Naval Force Structure Assessment 
and related analysis, mission-level analysis. Within that first 
principle, provide the most ready and lethal Navy within the 
resources provided, the fiscal context is relevant. I 
highlighted it briefly in my opening verbal statement.
    I will just highlight as another element the context. In 
fiscal year 2018, we had a budget that supported a fleet of 286 
ships; in fiscal year 2022, we are submitting a budget that 
supports a fleet of 296 ships. And it is essentially the same 
level budget in real terms in constant dollars [inaudible]. 
That is not a [inaudible] to continue to grow the Navy, and it 
requires these types of hard decisions.
    So the fundamental question on the second DDG in fiscal 
year 2022 is not, is this a valuable ship? The question is, 
what would come out of the balance we have that we would say 
would--to resource the second ship? And I will just highlight 
for you how that conversation would go. We would have to look 
across other elements of both procurement and readiness to get 
after this urgent need.
    Now I will just say it is a high regret aspect of this 
budget--is example why it is the number one item on the CNO's 
unfunded priority list. But as we look across personnel, would 
we reduce that? No. Of course, we need to get after and close 
our gaps in manning.
    What about ship depot maintenance? We want to [inaudible] 
and are committed to not having a hollow force. What about 
spares and ordnance? Again, our choice is to not pull parts off 
the shelf or put ordnance out of the magazines to buy the 
capacity that can't be fully balance resourced from a readiness 
perspective. In terms of networks, in terms of infrastructure, 
the same sorts of things apply, including the imperative of the 
investments in shipyard infrastructure.
    And then there is modernization as well we could look at. 
And our site picture there is across a DDG(X), SSN(X), Next-
Generation Air Dominance. All of those elements are critical in 
this budget. So I am sketching for you just an awareness of the 
hard choices, but the very deliberate choices, the very 
analytically based choices that led to the balance you see 
there. So hopefully that is helpful to answer that question.
    Mr. Golden. I am out of time. So, Mr. Chair, I am certainly 
ceding back. I appreciate the response and look forward to 
continuing this conversation in future hearings.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Golden. And I appreciate your 
awareness of time.
    Mr. Scott.
    Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And at the end of my questions I am going to have to step 
off for another Armed Services meeting. I do want to mention 
just briefly, and I know the admiral brought up bids coming in 
higher than expected. I do think that--and I would be 
interested in written responses, but will not have time for 
responses orally here.
    The supply chain disruptions that we are seeing throughout 
the world, the increased cost of steel, the other things along 
those lines that are going to create constraints with regard to 
procuring new equipment and repairing old equipment. I mean, 
even down to the cost of wire today being significantly higher 
than it was just a few months ago. I am interested in any 
comments that you may have on that, time permitting or in 
writing, if you so see fit, but not necessary. But I just want 
to make sure we are paying attention to that as we push 
forward.
    General Allvin, I want to focus on the Advanced Battle 
Management System with my first question. It is obviously 
critical to the readiness of the force in the future to defeat 
our peer competitors. Can you explain ABMS in a concise and 
simple way and just describe how it is central to our future 
force design?
    General Allvin. Thank you very much, Congressman Scott, for 
that. I believe I can. I think sometimes the terms become very 
complex, but the idea is very simple. It is command and 
control. It is as old as warfare. There has always been the 
need for senior leadership in the execution of a battle to have 
better situational awareness than the adversary to understand 
what the adversary is doing. So, in ancient warfare, they sent 
out scouts, and they would run, and the fastest scout would 
find out and get the information. And they would send them in 
different directions. And they would come back, and they would 
aggregate that information to help the commander make the 
decisions about battle. You go through warfare, and then it was 
on horseback, and it was carrier pigeons. But the idea was you 
wanted to be able to connect and be able to have the 
information aggregated in a way that paints a picture for you 
that advantages you in that battle.
    And in its essence, it is really not that much different 
when you think about the Advanced Battle Management System and 
how it feeds into Joint All-Domain C2 [command and control], is 
that now there are many sensors everywhere. So the important 
part is to be able to bring these sensors together, that all 
these sensors and platforms that were designed as individual 
platforms and not designed to be as part of a network, we need 
to spend the time, the money, and the effort to connect them, 
to put them together with the massive computer processing power 
in order to take that sensor information, turn it into 
decision-quality information, and then use that across all 
domains to help the commanders decide where we should prosecute 
the fight. What we need to defend, what we need to attack. The 
things that we are going after, are they going to be there in 5 
minutes, in 2 minutes, in 1 minute? And so, it is that speed, 
that Advanced Battle Management System connects all of the 
sensors together, connects them and makes sense of the 
environment, and provides the commander with the information he 
or she may need to prosecute the battle. And that is as simple, 
as concise as I can make it.
    Mr. Scott. General, one of the big debates right now and 
the decisions that Congress and the leadership in the military 
is having to make decisions on is the maintenance of legacy 
systems versus new technology, and I have been a little taken 
aback at what we pay to maintain some of the legacy fleets for 
what are pretty simple parts, just not readily available.
    The Air Force has an Advanced Technology and Training 
Center in Warner Robins, Georgia. It is using new technologies 
like 3-D printing. What are investments in these new 
technologies like 3-D printing and robotics and artificial 
intelligence that you have included in the fiscal year 2022 
budget? What are they helping us do to maintain the Air Force's 
commitment to those legacy fleets? And does the Air Force 
maintain the three-depot strategy?
    General Allvin. Congressman, I will answer the last 
question first since it is the easiest one. Yes. We are 
committed, and the 2022 budget reflects that commitment to a 
three-depot strategy.
    I like that you brought up the idea of some of these new 
and exciting technologies in advanced manufacturing, 3-D 
printing, and the like, because they are offering opportunities 
for us, as we transition to the force that we need in the 
future to be able to make that more of a graceful transition 
because we understand that the capabilities we have today are 
things that combatant commanders are asking for today. But if 
we solely focus on just servicing that need, then we will have 
a perfectly ready force today, and we will be broken tomorrow, 
and we can't give that to the next generation. So those sorts 
of technologies and capabilities allow us to sort of gracefully 
move as we can to provide resources to invest in the new while 
we are sort of gracefully aging out the old.
    And I would say, in fiscal year 2022, we have in the 
manufacturing science and technology, we have got an initial 
$12 million and another $91 million looking at some of these 
product applications and how we characterize materials and 
things. So we have got over $100 million just in that 
particular space because we see that as critical on our path to 
transition to the force we need to be ready in the future as 
well, sir.
    Mr. Scott. Thank you, General. Ultimately, I think it saves 
us a lot of money.
    My time has expired, and I have to step off to talk about 
what we are going to name General Martin's bases.
    Mr. Garamendi. Well, before you go, it may be useful for 
this committee to ask the services to have an advanced 
manufacturing seminar at one of the depots and invite all of 
the folks out there that have new ideas about how to do 
manufacturing to come and strut their stuff because I know I 
hear, and I suspect all of you do also, different concepts, 
different ideas about how you can make something that is no 
longer available on the market.
    General Allvin. Chairman, we would love to have you at 
Robins Air Force Base. We volunteer.
    Mr. Garamendi. Well, we are going to take bids, and we will 
see who provides the best ice cream.
    Moving on here. Who is next? Better get this computer up. 
Mrs. Elaine Luria, followed by Mr. Green.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you.
    Admiral Lescher, I will start out by saying I am very 
disappointed by the Navy budget submission, and I assume you 
are too. Firstly, I want to say this is not yours or Admiral 
Gilday's fault because, honestly, you have been handed a bag of 
you-know-what from your predecessors going back 20 years.
    There are lots of things wrong with the budget. I don't 
have time to cover them all. So I just wanted to start with the 
divest-to-invest strategy, noting that in the 2007 budget we 
also used the divest-to-invest words in order to build the LCS, 
the DDG-1000, and the Ford. And I hope that we are not heading 
toward the same mistakes today.
    I noted in this budget that you cut weapons procurement, 
you cut aircraft procurement, ship procurement, and education. 
But increased R&D [research and development] by 12.4 percent, 
including continued R&D for the Ford 25 years after the CVN-21 
program office was established.
    Looking back in fiscal year 2019, you said that you would 
build 11 ships in fiscal year 2022. Then, in fiscal year 2020, 
you dropped that to nine ships in 2022. And in fiscal year 
2021, you had dropped that to seven, but with an ending overall 
fleet size of 306. Today, you have a present budget that cuts 1 
DDG, decoms [decommissions] 7 cruisers, and results in a fleet 
size of 296. That is a change of 10 from just last year.
    When I was a kid, I used to love to watch that cartoon 
``Popeye.'' And honestly this budget reminds me of the 
character Wimpy who says, ``I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a 
hamburger today.'' So what I would say is this budget does not 
advance our near-term realities of China. And I have heard many 
Navy leaders saying: Well, just wait for our fiscal year 2023 
submission.
    And, yet, we see a memo yesterday from Acting Secretary 
Harker saying that you are only going to get to pick one major 
program. And we know that the priority maintains the Columbia.
    So I wanted to focus on something that you gave in your 
testimony. You said that the Navy steamed 23,000 days last 
year. At first, that sounded like a lot. And I started 
thinking: 23,000 divided by 365 days, that equals 63 ships per 
day on average across the year underway, so 21 percent of the 
fleet.
    In the budget book you submitted, it says that average 
daily deployed ships was 110 in fiscal year 2021. That is about 
a difference of about 50 ships. And what is getting masked in 
there is that there is a very small number of ships doing the 
lion's share of the work and many others that can't deploy. So 
I would like you to comment on the delta between that number of 
the 23,000 days steamed and the budget book that says 110 
underway per day.
    Admiral Lescher. Okay. Thank you for the questions. And 
there are many elements there for me to respond to so I will 
just work through the order. I am confident that this is the 
strongest balance in alignment with the strategic guidance for 
facing threats with the resources we have. Like I said, it is 
very deliberate choices, very [inaudible] derived, and eager to 
continue to work with the committees to show that underpinning 
in that balance.
    You highlighted the POM 23 [fiscal year 2023 program 
objective memorandum] memo from the Secretary. I will just 
highlight that that is obviously very early in the POM 23 
process. But to this point that we have to make choices about 
phasing SSN(X), DDG(X), Next-Generation Air Dominance, that is 
not a new concept. And I have seen some of the media 
interpretation that, hey, it is pick one. I believe the 
Secretary said: Pick one to prioritize. But fundamentally it is 
the conversation that we had both in this budget cycle and will 
continue to have, which is we have to prioritize within 
affordable levels how to create not only current readiness but 
future overmatch. And that is for sure the lens that is being 
brought [inaudible]. And then that balance of how much 
[inaudible] readiness [inaudible] ready to fight tonight, and 
your Navy is absolutely ready and lethal to fight tonight, 
versus how much we continue to advance capability for advantage 
in the future is essentially the [inaudible] you see in this 
budget. That is why you see the R&D in the proportion that you 
observe. And I think that is the right element.
    In terms of the figure in the budget book versus my 
testimony, I will happily take that for the record and 
reconcile the differences that you note.
    [The information referred to was not available at the time 
of printing.]
    Mrs. Luria. Okay. Well, thank you. And I would look forward 
to knowing that and having further conversations about this 
balance. But something we did talk about in our conversation 
yesterday that I found very encouraging: You mentioned 
something called Task Force Greyhound. It is something I had 
been talking about in reference to the OFRP, the Optimized 
Fleet Response Plan, potentially using more of an FDNF [forward 
deployed naval forces] model for some of our forces based in 
CONUS [continental United States]. So I was wondering if you 
could elaborate a little bit on that and how this budget would 
support that.
    Admiral Lescher. Sure. First, I will observe from a 
budgetary perspective, it is essentially neutral to have some 
slight increased costs over--outside the current budget year. 
The concept that you talked about is to respond to an 
operational need for increased readiness in our [inaudible] 
ships out of Norfolk to [inaudible] with a small pilot that 
will be four DDGs to field the two additional ready DDGs. To 
your point, with an excursion from the Optimized Fleet Response 
Plan, more FDNF-like, which would say more frequent, smaller 
availability. So incremental availabilities and continuous 
maintenance availability to the [inaudible] as you are well 
aware of.
    And so we will move forward to do this tailored 
maintenance, to do this, again, this excursion from [inaudible] 
both to generate some increased [inaudible] operational 
availability [inaudible] and then to learn and to see, because 
as I told you in our conversation, it is not a complete no-
brainer. There is some learning to be involved in terms of what 
does it mean, in terms of the executability of the maintenance, 
but we think it is a strong approach, and it reflects, to your 
point, much of the conversation that you had about other 
excursions off the OFRP baseline.
    Mrs. Luria. Well, thank you. And I just wanted to note that 
I think it does, like you said, increase operational 
availability, which in effect can increase the effective size 
of the fleet. So, in fact, if we can get more out of the ships 
we have and use them more efficiently, it is as though we have 
a larger fleet. So I am very encouraged by this idea.
    And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the remainder of my time.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mrs. Luria.
    We now turn to Mr. Green.
    Dr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really appreciate 
your leadership, and, to the ranking member, your leadership, 
and putting this together.
    And I want to thank all of our witnesses today. It is great 
to get this chance to hear their perspectives.
    My question is going to start with the oldest of services. 
General Martin, I will start with you, if that is okay. I 
represent Fort Campbell, Kentucky, which happens to be about 85 
percent in Tennessee. I guess a Senator at the time had a 
little more power, and the flagpole went to Kentucky, but most 
of those individuals, a good portion of them live in my 
district, and it is important to me, the 101st Airborne 
Division, the 160th SOAR [Special Operations Aviation 
Regiment], and 5th Special Forces Group.
    As I look at the budget, it doesn't appear to me that there 
are any significant cuts to those units and to that 
installation. I just want it confirm from you that, in this 
budget, there aren't significant cuts to Fort Campbell.
    General Martin. Congressman, there are no significant cuts 
to Fort Campbell that I am aware of.
    Dr. Green. Thank you for that. And I really appreciate I 
think Fort Campbell's strategic footprint, particularly with 
its airfield, the size of its airfield, and its deployability 
because of that. I really appreciate the wisdom there.
    You know, we have got some significant problems with our 
barracks in the 1st Brigade. Mold. They moved the troops out. 
They cleaned it up. They put them back in. Mold reappears. It 
is really time for those barracks to go. We keep pushing it to 
the top of the list. DOD keeps pushing it to the bottom of the 
list. I would like to ask if you would just take a personal 
interest in that for me, that would be important. We have got 
to get those barracks replaced.
    My next question--obviously our brigade combat teams are 
the fighting force of the United States Army and the 101st here 
with three infantry brigade combat teams and then aviation 
assets, et cetera. Can you kind of describe for me how the 
ReARMM [Regionally Aligned Readiness and Modernization Model] 
program is going to work to make sure they are ready to fight 
and fight a near peer?
    General Martin. Thank you for the question, Congressman.
    What ReARMM is going to do for the Army is it is going to 
allow us to create an environment of predictability while we--
to maintain a ready Army now, regionally align our various 
units with regions of world, unless, of course, they are part 
of the Global Response Force. And we can't talk about that on 
this particular network as to who is who. But it will provide 
each of our units purposeful direction, purposeful timing. And 
it will allow them to train for future deployment requirements, 
be ready to deploy when [inaudible] requirements.
    But unlike the ARFORGEN [Army Force Generation model], 
which we all knew from the past, where in ARFORGEN, if you were 
going to modernize, you had to do that simultaneously and it 
had to compete with your time for training and when you are 
resetting the unit after coming back from combat; well, in this 
particular case, in these 8-month blocks that we are going to 
allocate for modernization, that is all you are going to do. 
You are going to divest old equipment, and you are going to 
draw new equipment, and the Army is synchronizing all of its 
activities in terms of modernization and the activities of our 
operational units to synchronize to a level that we have never 
seen before. And it is going to literally drive activity. We 
will make decision based on who we want to have what when and 
so that our units will--that are more likely to have to deploy 
next will be the most modernized units in the Army. So we 
really look forward to it.
    I appreciate the question because it is something we have 
been working on really hard. It will be a full operating 
capability by 2022.
    And I know you wanted to move on to the question, but I do 
commit to taking a look at Fort Campbell to see what we can do 
to help with the infrastructure there as we continue to make 
our investments with our facilities infrastructure investment 
plan.
    Dr. Green. Well, thanks for that. And one last question 
because it looks like I am running out of time, and I will ask 
it very quickly. It looks like the INDOPACOM [U.S. Indo-Pacific 
Command] commander is really demanding a lot from the Army. Can 
you tell me how those assets are being utilized? And is it on a 
rotational basis? Is it going to be--and then what is the 
downstream effect to the Army as a whole?
    General Martin. Congressman, there are units that rotate on 
a predictable cycle. And there are units that rotate there as 
they exercise. And then, with this dynamic force employment, we 
are actually deploying units there to practice our emergency 
deployment readiness exercises and what have you. And so there 
is a multitude of different ways that the combatant command 
asks for and we support with our forces there. I am told that 
we make up about 58 percent of his joint requests during the 
course of any given year with the rotational exercise and other 
like joint requirements requested by the combatant command.
    Dr. Green. My time has expired. I will submit a couple of 
other questions in writing. And I appreciate everyone being 
here and the testimony.
    Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Green, thank you very much. Also, you 
proved what I know is a truism, and that is all politics are 
local. Every one of us have mentioned our own districts. You 
did mention something that applies to all of us, I believe, and 
that is the barracks situation. We are investigating the 
possibility of a public-private partnership, a significant 
improvement on the base housing program in which a barracks 
could be built as a modern apartment building, might be built 
by an apartment developer. We are looking at that. The Army did 
this some time ago, probably maybe a decade or so ago. We are 
looking at that as a possibility. And it would probably be 
across all the services that are here. It might solve this 
funding problem. It does provide a specific, a known and 
presumably a well-behaved tenant.
    So we will move on here. I believe we have, Ms. Speier, you 
are next.
    Ms. Speier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member.
    I am going to ask three questions at the outset and then 
ask Admiral Lescher, General Allvin, and General Martin to 
respond.
    Admiral Lescher, my question to you is: The Navy has seen 
failed acquisitions, cost overruns in major products, chronic 
delays in routine maintenance. And I am finding it hard to 
understand why the Navy has already started reassigning 200 
employees of the Navy Audit Service to nonaudit jobs as it 
reduces head count to 85 auditors when you compare it to the 
Army Audit Agency of 458 and the Air Force at 531. So my 
question to you is why is the Army decimating its internal 
audit function without consulting Congress?
    To General Allvin, we all know the flight hours are very 
important to pilots. However, the cost to operate the F-35A is 
much higher than expected. It is more like $7 million per tail, 
as compared to about $4 million, as it was originally planned. 
The Navy and Marine variants are also more expensive to 
operate. But the difference between actual and projected costs 
is far greater in the Air Force. What explains the 
extraordinary overruns in the cost of the F-35 to run?
    And, finally, General Martin, what we found at Fort Hood 
was a toxic command climate that went through every aspect of 
the installation and a damning report that followed. You 
reference high-risk formations. I don't think Fort Hood is the 
only one. And I would like to know what you are doing to ensure 
command climate data is taken seriously and the commanders are 
held accountable for fixing the situation.
    To you, Admiral Lescher.
    Admiral Lescher. Thanks for the question. I will start by 
highlighting that the Navy strongly believes in spotlighting 
issues and transparently having conversations, taking action to 
correct. And this is more than happy thought. It is essential 
to much of the trajectory we have seen in improved performance 
over the past 3 years. I touched on it briefly in my opening 
statement when I talked about the get real, get better. So 
audit function in aggregate is core or get real, understand 
what our baseline performance is, then use that to understand 
how to [inaudible].
    But there is a case of the Audit Service, the [inaudible] 
and when the Acting SECNAV [Secretary of the Navy], who was 
also the Assistant Secretary for the Comptroller, he very 
promptly looked at the scope of work that is being done to 
illuminate these elements of oversight, monitoring, and 
remediation and looked at the scope of the work across Navy IG, 
DOD IG, NCIS [Naval Criminal Investigative Service], the 
independent public auditor management internal [inaudible] 
program. What we see when we look at that and fundamentally the 
drive here is to get this in the best aggregate place to drive 
outcomes. The first thing I observed----
    Ms. Speier. Admiral, I am going to have to cut you off 
because I want to make sure those other two questions get--I 
just want you to know that I am going to be watching because I 
think that what is happening with this audit function is very 
disconcerting.
    And I will now move to General Allvin, please.
    General Allvin. Yes, ma'am. On the question of the 
difference in the cost per tail per year I think is what you 
are referring to, the $4 million versus the $7 million, because 
as it turns out, the cost per flying hour actually our 
projections are very close to what the other services are, and 
they are bearing out actually a little bit less. But I 
understand your point about up to $7.1 million just overall 
cost of ownership per tail per year. And that, frankly, was an 
underestimation we made a long time ago when we early on were 
looking at the comparison. We thought we had a good reference 
model--this is 10, 15 years ago--with the F-16. And the F-16 
was single-engine, multirole, et cetera. And so we, frankly, 
underestimated what the overall cost per tail per year was.
    As the years went on, we continued to look at how we can 
drive down sustainment and O&M [operation and maintenance] 
costs. And that is again another story that has a lot of 
details to it. We have not been able to bring down those costs 
as we look at that. And so, as we try and come up with the new 
estimate for the cost per tail per year, as we are finalizing 
that, we are going to readjust that because that was just a 
poor underestimation early on in the program. And that is 
really one of reasons why, when we look at that, as we look at 
the overall tactical air study and the future of the fighter 
force, we are looking at what the real-world costs are and how 
that is going to affect our overall fighter force of the 
future. But it was an underestimation early on in the program, 
ma'am.
    Ms. Speier. General Martin.
    General Martin. Congresswoman, I will start because I know 
the time is short that I will offer the opportunity for myself 
or my staff to come brief your staff or you on everything that 
we are doing. But we took what happened at Fort Hood as a 
wakeup call. I can tell you commanders across the board didn't 
say: Whew, that wasn't me. They said: Hey, this could be us; 
let's take a look at ourselves.
    As you probably already know, OSD has launched a new 
command climate survey, and there is that instrument and many 
other instruments that we have in the Army that we have 
combined into a data set that we are developing because we 
believe that Big Data is going to allow us to be able to see 
formations and potential problems in advance in terms of 
harmful behaviors or counterproductive climates and cultures in 
those organizations. I have got a lot to say on this and not 
much time to do it. I would love to come talk to you about this 
because I think we are making a lot of headway.
    Ms. Speier. Thank you. Let's do it.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Mr. Garamendi. Before you leave, Ms. Speier, an issue that 
came up at a joint hearing with you a month and a half ago was 
the tragedy of the AAV. And I am going to turn to General 
Thomas. I thought that--I was waiting to do this until you 
came. There has been an additional decision made by the Marine 
Corps concerning that accident. And, General Thomas, if you 
could brief us on it. And that brings us not to a conclusion of 
that earlier hearing but to one of the issues that was raised 
at that hearing regarding command responsibility.
    General Thomas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    You are referring to senior leader accountability. I would 
note that the investigation is still under review, but the 
bottom line is that the Commandant has determined he has enough 
information to hold Major General Castellvi accountable. Now 
those actions are ongoing and will end up with final 
adjudication with the Secretary of the Navy. The specifics of 
that we will share with this committee once that process is 
complete.
    Ms. Speier. Mr. Chairman, can I just make a comment?
    Mr. Garamendi. Yes. I am doing this out of order here.
    Mr. Moore, you will be next, but this was the subject of a 
major hearing, and this was one of the elements that was left 
open, and we are moving towards a closure of this element.
    Ms. Speier, please go ahead.
    Ms. Speier. Thank you. I guess my only comment would be 
what we need to get to the bottom of was why this senior leader 
was elevated to an inspector general position after he did such 
a horrific job in allowing those AAVs with sailors and I guess 
a soldier that was ill-prepared to make it. So the real 
question becomes, why was he elevated? I think we are all in 
agreement that he shouldn't be serving in that capacity, and 
that there was a real loss of leadership there, but I continue 
to have that question.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you. We will pick this issue up again 
at a future hearing. And all of the committee will be notified 
of the specific situation. I understand that there was a 3 
p.m., I assume East Coast time, a release of information, which 
I believe General Thomas summarized that an action is being 
taken against General Castellvi. As to exactly what it is, it's 
unknown. Is that correct, General?
    General Thomas. That is correct. It is just from a due 
process standpoint, Chairman, it still has to go up through the 
Secretary of the Navy. I am happy to address either now or 
later date Congresswoman Speier's concerns and be happy to come 
talk with her or any form that you desire.
    Mr. Garamendi. Please inform the entire committee, and 
certainly Ms. Speier's committee on the personnel side of it 
has a specific interest, as do we. Thank you.
    Mr. Moore, we appreciate you standing by for a few minutes. 
It is your turn.
    Mr. Moore. No worries, Chairman. Chairman, I have a 
particularly loud HVAC [heating, ventilation, and air 
conditioning] unit behind me. Can you hear me okay?
    Mr. Garamendi. Speak as loud as you can. Keep going.
    Mr. Moore. Thank you. Let me continue on with the trend of 
talking about our districts and making politics as local as 
possible. I also welcome the depot work in doing something of 
that nature. I am co-chairing the Depot Caucus. And so just a 
quick non-shameless plug because it is a topic of utmost 
importance and would welcome that.
    I have spent a lot of time this district work period 
actually visiting a lot of advanced manufacturing in our area 
near Hill Air Force Base. And there is an amazing amount of 
expertise and efficiencies that these individuals, these 
companies are finding. So I welcome that.
    And I also look to that as a productive way to talk about 
the F-35 and what we need to do there. I have equally pushed on 
as many different angles as possible to get into what we need 
to do to reduce that cost per flight hour. I appreciated the 
Air Force and every airman and every pilot I have spoken with 
about this. And I know there is the right effort and awareness 
that is going on. And I welcome that opportunity to continue to 
dive into that. I have found it to be very productive 
individuals that are willing to dig in. And my office is also 
at the ready to help bolster that and be a part of the solution 
instead of just talking about the problem.
    So I open up to--I just again highlight that need for depot 
work. There is a lot of solutions in that side of things. And 
will continue to push that.
    A few of my questions today will be mostly for General 
Allvin. I want to talk just workforce briefly again. The 
question is, do you feel or does the Air Force lack qualified 
candidates for the ability to hire what they need? And let me 
lead the witness a little bit, if you don't mind, that really 
good, you know, we have had some success in the maintenance 
community, but there does remain a gap in experience. And in 
order to get to a journeyman role, it takes sometimes upwards 
to 3 years. And I am concerned about some of the replacement 
deficiency gap. Could you speak to that just as far as general 
workforce and hiring what you need?
    General Allvin. Thank you for the question, Congressman. It 
certainly is a challenge in this particular environment. It is 
a competitive environment. We are making headway on that. It 
continues to be a challenge, as I said. But the idea that it is 
not only just the skill set that we need, but we are working on 
our outreach programs to find areas in which those for a 
propensity to serve--and by serve, it doesn't necessarily mean 
in uniform. It means to serve our Nation and serve our Air 
Force in these capacities. So we are reaching out looking for 
those maybe the nontraditional areas also on our path to 
increase the diversity of our workforce. There may be talent 
out there that we haven't accessed through the traditional sort 
of pipelines through which we get a workforce. So I would 
commend you to the fact that it is not only just our STEM 
[science, technology, engineering, and math] outreach and that 
sort of efforts that we are doing, to reach a nontraditional--
in community colleges and areas where we have direct access to 
where they can see and be a part of the Air Force early on. And 
then, once they can see what they are part of, they are hooked, 
in many cases. And so we are reaching out through those sort of 
apprenticeships as well, but also in many of the underserved 
colleges, the historically Black colleges and universities, and 
some of the other diverse parts of our Nation where we haven't 
traditionally looked before.
    It is a competitive environment because technology is doing 
nothing but increase, and that is where this is more. It is not 
your traditional engineer, as you know, sir. So we are reaching 
out with a lot more outreach to be able to do that. We think it 
is a challenge. We think the Air Force has a lot to offer. And 
so we are being a little bit more creative about where we go.
    Mr. Moore. Excellent. Thank you. Some of the statistics 
that I will throw out quickly, and to the extent that the Air 
Force is using these measures or these statistics to adequately 
plan, I think it is very important. And I would love any 
thoughts you had on that. But by 2023, 30 percent of the Air 
Force sustainment center Federal wage grade employees will be 
eligible to retire. And by 2028, that will be well over--that 
will be over 50 percent. Is that all being taken into 
consideration with regards to replacing that workforce?
    General Allvin. It is. And those, as you mention them 
there, those are sobering statistics because much like we have 
had issues in areas such as aircraft maintenance in the past, 
and we got a significant uplift in order to recruit new 
maintainers. But how long does it take to train a 7-year 
mechanic? Seven years. So the idea of being able to also look 
at not just ingesting from the very youngest level but be able 
to attract those in industry. As we see, industry is so much 
more mobile these days, the opportunity to serve. And we are 
looking at the permeability of our force, the opportunity to be 
able to serve for periods of time. And that is a little bit 
more accessible in the civilian communities. So we are looking 
at those opportunities to take in midcareer-level folks and be 
able to have that level of expertise so we don't just take out 
the old and have a huge experience bathtub with brand-new young 
and energetic but less-than-experienced technicians on that. So 
we are looking at sort of midcareer and the permeability of 
inviting them into the force as well.
    Mr. Moore. Thank you, General.
    My time is up. I will submit a question to General Thompson 
to flag for you. Your thoughts on Space Force and a National 
Guard Component, Reserve Component for that type of work. Great 
topic. Would love to get into it. Maybe the next time we have 
an opportunity, but we will submit it for the record.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Moore. One of our colleagues 
raised that question early on. I think it was Mr. Lamborn. And 
we will share that response with you in more detail.
    We have now completed, as far as I know, looking at the 
screen and from the staff, the first round of questions. I am 
going to forgo another round of questions because I might have 
to leave at any moment to go off and vote on the T&I 
[Transportation and Infrastructure] surface transportation 
bill. But I am going to be here for a while. So I am going to 
forgo questions.
    Mr. Lamborn, do you have another round of questions?
    Mr. Lamborn. No, Mr. Chairman. I do not.
    Mr. Garamendi. That is either a ``no'' or you are shaking 
off a fly or mosquito.
    Moving on here. Let's see. Mrs. Luria, you are still there. 
Would you like to follow up.
    Mrs. Luria. Mr. Chairman, I will pass.
    Mr. Garamendi. Well, the way this is working out, let's 
see, the only other person on the screen that I can see is Mr. 
Courtney, who is not there at the moment. So I will go to Ms. 
Speier.
    Ms. Speier. Mr. Chairman, I think my questions can be 
answered in private meetings with the various leaders.
    Mr. Garamendi. All right, then.
    Mr. Courtney is back.
    Mr. Courtney. Sorry. Are you asking if I need to have any 
other questions, John? A second round?
    Mr. Garamendi. That is correct.
    Mr. Courtney. Yeah, I am good. Thank you. I will pass.
    Mr. Garamendi. That brings us back to Mr. Moore, where we 
started this.
    Mr. Moore. Knowing that the Reserve question was 
highlighted in Lamborn's, I was in the middle of traffic at the 
time, I can look for that and work with my team on it. I think 
it is a great topic and appreciate that it has already been 
asked. So I am good and will pass for any further questions. 
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Garamendi. Well, then, I am going to do two things. 
First of all, I want to compliment Wendell White. I don't see 
his face on the screen, but if he wants to pull up his face or 
turn on his television, if he can. He is new to our 
professional staff. This is the first full committee in which 
he's taken the responsibility.
    And, Wendell, you did a great job. I will applaud you, and 
the rest of us will recognize the good work that you have done, 
and we thank you so very, very much.
    Also, there are ongoing questions, many of which were not 
raised in this hearing. We will come back on those sets of 
questions.
    I want to thank the presenters: General Thompson, General 
Thomas, General Martin, General Allvin, and Admiral Lescher. I 
thank you very much not only for this but also for the 
individual meetings that you have taken a great deal of time to 
do with members of the committee. It is most helpful. We know 
that we will be working together to deal with the national 
security issues. We may or may not see things the same way you 
do, but you have really an opportunity and in fact a 
requirement to persuade us that the view of the world that you 
have is the correct one, and I suppose we have the same 
opportunity and responsibility. And so the discussions go on 
and on.
    I really appreciate working with all of you. I look forward 
to a continuation of our work.
    And, with that, this Readiness Subcommittee is adjourned. 
Thank you all very much.
    [Whereupon, at 4:58 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
    
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                            A P P E N D I X

                              June 9, 2021

      
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              PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

                              June 9, 2021

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[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
      
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              QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING

                              June 9, 2021

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                  QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. GARAMENDI

    Mr. Garamendi. General Gamble (Army G-4) recently testified before 
this committee that the Army's Working Capital Fund has a projected 
shortfall of $600M-900M this year. I understand that Army is curtailing 
orders as a cash saving measure, and I see that you have a request in 
this year's budget request for $323M to maintain Working Capital Fund 
solvency. What additional actions are you taking, or do you plan to 
take, to address Working Capital Fund solvency? What is the downstream 
readiness impact from these actions? What is the impact to your 
suppliers, especially sub-primes?
    General Martin. [No answer was available at the time of printing.]
    Mr. Garamendi. Admiral Lescher, what is the status of your Working 
Capital Funds? What actions are you taking or do you plan to take to 
address potential solvency issues? What is the downstream readiness 
impact from these actions? What is the impact to your suppliers, 
especially sub-primes?
    Admiral Lescher. [No answer was available at the time of printing.]
    Mr. Garamendi. General Allvin, what is the status of your Working 
Capital Funds? What actions are you taking or do you plan to take to 
address potential solvency issues? What is the downstream readiness 
impact from these actions? What is the impact to your suppliers, 
especially sub-primes?
    General Allvin. Unless catastrophic unforeseen events occur, the 
Air Force Working Capital Fund does not intend to request a 
reprogramming action in FY 2021. The external assistance from Congress 
coupled with the AF mitigating actions from FY 2019-FY 2021 which 
include constraining contract authority, prior year upward adjustments, 
and increased customer prices in the FY 2021 President's Budget 
specifically to rebuild cash balances, have been successful. FY 2021 
execution is currently slightly exceeding Department of the Air Force 
expectations and may benefit future customer prices. To ensure the Air 
Force Working Capital Fund sustains the required cash balance within 
the established lower and upper limits for FY 2022, we will continue to 
release the contract authority incrementally based on the revenue 
earned.
                                 ______
                                 
                   QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LAMBORN
    Mr. Lamborn. Which capability on your Unfunded Priority List would 
have the most negative impact on your service's ability to execute the 
National Defense Strategy if Congress fails to fund it?
    General Thomas. Not funding the (35) Naval Strike Missiles (PMC 
$57.8M) at the top of the Marine Corps Unfunded Priority List (UPL) 
would have the greatest negative impact on the Marine Corps' ability to 
compete, deter, and win in the future.
    Naval Strike Missiles are the munition component of the Navy Marine 
Corps Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) which is the 
Marine Corps' first iteration of the Ground Based Anti-Ship Missile 
(GBASM) capability. NMESIS was successfully tested in the fall of 2020 
against a ship target. This capability will enable the Marine Corps to 
contribute to the Naval Expeditionary Force's anti-surface warfare 
campaign, and these additional missiles in the UPL would provide 
greater magazine depth for the units that will employ them in the Indo-
Pacific as early as fiscal year 2023.
    Naval Strike Missiles, specifically, cost approximately $1.7 
million each. Such a missile deployed in close proximity to adversary 
sea lanes will threaten multi-billion dollar ships, creating cost 
impositions for the adversary and changing the calculus of their 
maritime campaigns. Moreover, it will support and reassure our allies 
and partners.
    Of note, our third priority is (48) Tactical Tomahawks (PMC $96M) 
to support Long Range Fires. This capability was successfully tested 
this year and will provide complementary GBASM capability to NMESIS.
    As the pacing threat moves with us and technology develops at a 
speed faster than the budget, funding the entirety of our UPL request 
provides us the opportunity to capitalize on successful technological 
developments. This will accelerate additional capability to the 
Combatant Commanders, specifically in the Indo-Pacific, buying down 
strategic risk for them and our forward deployed forces, and deterring 
conflict sooner.
    A Naval Strike Missile takes approximately 24 months to build, thus 
failure to fund it now will have a very long-term negative impact.
    Mr. Lamborn. Which capability on your Unfunded Priority List would 
have the most negative impact on your service's ability to execute the 
National Defense Strategy if Congress fails to fund it?
    Admiral Lescher. [No answer was available at the time of printing.]
    Mr. Lamborn. Which capability on your Unfunded Priority List would 
have the most negative impact on your service's ability to execute the 
National Defense Strategy if Congress fails to fund it?
    General Allvin. As the achievement of Air Superiority is one of the 
Air Force's most important tasks when contributing to the Joint Force, 
the inability to procure additional F-15EXs would most negatively 
impact our ability to execute the National Defense Strategy.
    Mr. Lamborn. There are reports that renovating Space Command's 
current location for long term use, rather than moving the command and 
authorizing a MILCON, will save taxpayers $1.2 billion and achieve full 
mission capability 7 years faster. Having spent $27 million to upgrade 
command facilities at Peterson, Space Command is even more entrenched 
there, yet the Department of the Air Force process did not even 
consider keeping the headquarters in Building 1. How are the mission 
and goals of Space Force enhanced by moving Space Command out of 
Building 1, delaying full mission capability by several years, and 
geographically separating the Command from critical components such as 
JTF-Space Defense and Space Operations Command?
    General Thompson. Since I am not assigned to U.S. Space Command I 
cannot speak authoritatively about impacts of the Headquarters U.S. 
Space Command relocation to its mission capability. I can say, however, 
that the U.S. Space Force role of organizing, training, equipping and 
presenting space forces to U.S. Space Command will not be impacted by 
the relocation. I can also say that as part of the process to determine 
a permanent location for USSPACECOM Headquarters, the Department of the 
Air Force (DAF) assessed 21 criteria across four factors: mission, 
infrastructure capacity, community support, and costs to the Department 
of Defense (DOD). These criteria were developed in close coordination 
with the stakeholders, including USSPACECOM leadership. Co-locating 
USSPACECOM HQ with Joint Task Force-Space Defense (JTF-SD) or Space 
Operations Command (SPoC) was not identified as a criteria during that 
process.
    Mr. Lamborn. For the first time, the Space Force is executing 
weapons system sustainment separate from the Air Force. In your 
testimony, you state that you anticipate sustainment requirements will 
continue to increase due to costs associated with maintaining aging 
weapon systems, while simultaneously fielding and sustaining new 
systems. This committee has been focused on this balance of maintaining 
our older systems while fielding new ones. In this year's budget, the 
Weapons System Sustainment account is only funded to 79% of the 
requirement.
    Is this your maximum executable rate?
    General Thompson. No. WSS was funded at 86 percent in Fiscal Year 
(FY) 2020 and at 81 percent in FY21. Space WSS can execute at least at 
90 percent depending upon appropriation timing, various contractual 
actions, and ``fact-of-life'' circumstances. The Space Force FY22 WSS 
request of 79% balances risk in the WSS account with other critical 
needs. The FY22 Unfunded Priority List (UPL) ($122.2M) submission, 
which, if approved, funds the portfolio to 83 percent and further 
improves the sustainment of critical programs, such as missile warning/
missile defense; space domain awareness; military satellite 
communications, counterspace operations; and Space Based Infrared 
Systems.
    Mr. Lamborn. If so, what barriers are in the way that prevent you 
from executing to 100% of the requirement, especially considering costs 
are only anticipated to grow?
    General Thompson. The Space Force will continue to use Air Force 
WSS processes until the Space Force Service standup is completed and 
has similar barriers to execution as the Air Force. The Air Force does 
not fund WSS to 100 percent due to the time required to posture the 
sustainment enterprise to execute programmed WSS resources; fact-of-
life changes during the year of execution (contract or supply issues, 
or real-world contingency events); re-programming limitations between 
budget sub-activity groups (SAGs); and to balance risk across its 
accounts and mission areas.
    Mr. Lamborn. Will funding to 79% of the requirement translate into 
decreased readiness?
    General Thompson. The Space Force budget request increases WSS by 
$68 Million which reflects a balance between readiness and requirements 
to protect and defend space assets, field resilient architectures, 
protect the joint force from adversary use of space, and build a combat 
effective service.
    Mr. Lamborn. Which capability on your Unfunded Priority List would 
have the most negative impact on your service's ability to execute the 
National Defense Strategy if Congress fails to fund it?
    General Thompson. The Space Force's Unfunded Priorities List does 
not resolve budget shortfalls, nor would the lack of any single option 
prevent the Space Force from the achieving the National Defense 
Strategy today.
    The Chief of Space Operations prioritized options that would allow 
the Space Force to sustain what we have today and accelerate new 
capabilities. First, the Space Force must improve sustainment today 
through the Weapons Systems Sustainment (WSS) and Facility Sustainment, 
Restoration, and Modernization (FSRM) options until the Space Force can 
field its next-generation capabilities to replace them. This includes: 
(1) an additional $122M toward the Space Force WSS portfolio for depot 
maintenance, contract logistics support, sustaining engineering, and 
technical order costs to sustain over 40 weapon systems. (UPL requests 
$122M); and (2) an additional $66M for FSRM investments in 
infrastructure that will effectively deliver capability to support the 
current and emerging contested space domain. (UPL requests $66M). 
Second, Space Force test range and training options accelerate the 
infrastructure necessary to ensure Space Force's newly fielded 
capabilities are resilient and can operate in a realistic threat 
environment (UPL requests $50M). Finally, the data-masked options 
accelerate capabilities for achieving space superiority (UPL requests 
$279M).
                                 ______
                                 
                   QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. GOLDEN
    Mr. Golden. Admiral Lescher, you mentioned that the FY22 budget was 
created by weighing current versus future readiness.
    In an ongoing Navy-encouraged effort to recover schedule, 
counteract historically high attrition rates due to retirements and 
reach a two-ship per year build rate (which will be achieved in 2022), 
both shipyards are in the process of hiring thousands of shipbuilders 
to execute the Navy's previously reported shipbuilding plan.
    However, the FY22 budget request unexpectedly cut one DDG-51, 
breaking the current multi-year procurement contract (which runs 
through FY22) at a cost of $33 million and sending a terrible message 
to a shipbuilding industrial base that relies on predictable, 
consistent funding for planning and executing work. One DDG-51 equals 
roughly 500 jobs a year for 5 years--without restoration of at least 
one DDG-51, one of the shipbuilders will be forced to reduce 500 
employees before the end of 2022 and 500 per year after that. These 
layoffs will affect the youngest shipbuilders in the workforce, thereby 
depleting the same workforce the Navy hopes to use in the future to 
build the DDG(X).
    I have stated in the past that the Navy needs to recognize that the 
shipbuilding workforce is not a tap that can be shut off or turned on 
at will. Procurement of the Flight III DDG-51s is vital to ensuring a 
stable shipyard workforce exists when the Navy begins to transition to 
the DDG(X).
    How does the Navy plan on sustaining a stable shipyard workforce 
while cutting procurement of contracted ships?
    Admiral Lescher. [No answer was available at the time of printing.]
                                 ______
                                 
                  QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MRS. McCLAIN
    Mrs. McClain. In FY21, the Air Force requested and Congress fully 
authorized and appropriated $100M for the purchase of an additional 24 
wing sets while simultaneously seeking a fleet reduction to 218 
aircraft, which Congress prohibited. So far only purchased 2 wing sets 
with this funding and may be seeking a reprogramming for the balance. 
This is contrary to testimony from Air Force Chief of Staff General 
C.Q. Brown on May 7 in which he committed to executing 55% of remaining 
FY21 funding by the end of the fiscal year. When Congress authorized 
and appropriated this funding, the expectation was that the Air Force 
would quickly execute this funding, within the fiscal year, and place 
another 24 wing sets on contract. General Brown also indicated in his 
testimony that the FY22 budget request would include further funding 
for new wings, which it effectively does not. I would note that the 
FY21 request indicated a need for $100M in FY22 for an additional 24 
wing sets. The FY22 request proposes a fleet reduction from 281 
aircraft to 239. I understand that the Air Force is currently on 
contract for enough wing sets to support a fleet of 218 aircraft.
    How does the Air Force propose to support a fleet of 239 aircraft 
into the 2030s without the purchase of additional replacement wings?
    General Allvin. The Air Force fighter force structure plan 
established a requirement for 218 A-10s into the 2030s. In order to 
reach 218 in a timely and efficient manner, A-10 Total Aircraft 
Inventory (TAI) will be reduced to 239 in FY22 and then to 218 in FY23. 
Accordingly, the program office purchased 218 wing sets.
    Mrs. McClain. Does the remaining FY21 funding provide for the 
purchase of enough additional wing sets to keep a fleet of 239 aircraft 
flying into the 2030s? If not, how much additional funding is required 
to support 239 aircraft?
    General Allvin. No, Air Force plan calls for 218 A-10s into the 
2030s. If the AF is required to maintain a 239 TAI fleet into the 
2030s, it would require an additional $129M in FY22 or FY23 APAF 
funding to buy 21 wings no later than 2QFY23. It would also require an 
additional $83M in FY25 APAF funding to transport and install these 
wings.
    Mrs. McClain. How much additional funding is required, in addition 
to the remaining FY 21 wing replacement funding, to purchase the 63 
additional wing sets required to support a fleet of 281 aircraft into 
the 2030s?
    General Allvin. If the AF is required to maintain a 281 TAI fleet 
into the 2030s, it will require an additional $615.1M in FY23-26 APAF 
funding. However, the modernization cost to the AF is $2.2B in the FYDP 
and would exceed $3.7B into the early 2030s. This money spent on 
keeping the oldest 63 A-10s could be better used to purchase roughly 2 
new squadrons of F-35s. Furthermore, the manpower positions for those 
additional 63 aircraft would cause the Air Force to revisit F-35 basing 
decisions potentially impacting each base slated to receive new F-35s 
in coming years. Additionally, no further modernization of the A-10 
fleet will happen. Upgrades which will no longer be completed include: 
Helmet Mounted Cueing System (HMCS), Small Diameter Bomb (SDB-I) Mod, 
advanced radios, Onboard Oxygen Generation System (OBOGS), High 
Resolution Display System (HRDS), and 2 Gigabit Ethernet Switch (2GES).
    Mrs. McClain. When does the Air Force need to place additional wing 
set replacement orders so that they can be bundled with the two wing 
sets purchased in December 2020 and thus achieve a lower cost to the 
taxpayer?
    General Allvin. There will be a purchase in Aug 2021 of 4 spare 
wing sets which will leverage FY21 (existing) funds. If the Air Force 
does not divest to a fleet of 218 in FY23, then additional wing sets 
would need to be purchased. Funding will be needed by early August 2021 
in order to maintain the same unit cost as the 2 wings purchased in 
December 2020. If the wing sets are not placed on contract in Aug 2021, 
the unit cost will increase.
                                 ______
                                 
                    QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. MOORE
    Mr. Moore. The National Security Commission on Artificial 
Intelligence has criticized the practice of not allowing substitution 
of experience for education credentials when determining compensation 
for a new hire into the digital workforce competing with the private 
sector. They have also acknowledged that the government's hiring 
system's problems are well known. These challenges are not caused by a 
lack of hiring authorities or an inherently slow process. The 
Commission has been unable to identify a gap in hiring authorities for 
the digital workforce. What is the Department doing to identify and 
eliminate barriers to competition that it has created through its own 
business practices and which some have argued do not require any 
special authority from Congress to address?
    General Martin. [No answer was available at the time of printing.]
    Mr. Moore. The National Security Commission on Artificial 
Intelligence has criticized the practice of not allowing substitution 
of experience for education credentials when determining compensation 
for a new hire into the digital workforce competing with the private 
sector. They have also acknowledged that the government's hiring 
system's problems are well known. These challenges are not caused by a 
lack of hiring authorities or an inherently slow process. The 
Commission has been unable to identify a gap in hiring authorities for 
the digital workforce. What is the Department doing to identify and 
eliminate barriers to competition that it has created through its own 
business practices and which some have argued do not require any 
special authority from Congress to address?
    General Thomas. This is a policy matter under the cognizance of the 
Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The OPM Qualification Standards 
are specific to a job series and Artificial Intelligence positions do 
not fall within a specific job series nor is there an education 
requirement to qualify for Artificial Intelligence positions. The 
flexibility to hire a candidate who does not meet the requirements in 
the OPM qualifications standards does not exist. The authority to 
change this requirement is outside of Marine Corps' purview, but the 
Marine Corps supports any efforts that may lead to a change in hiring 
flexibilities.
    Executive Order (EO) 13932 requires the Director of OPM, in 
consultation with the Office of Management and Budget, to review and 
revise all job classification and qualification standards for positions 
in the competitive service as necessary to give agencies flexibility to 
qualify candidates for employment with an adequate combination of 
education and experience. The Department should continue to partner 
with OPM on this effort.
    Mr. Moore. The National Security Commission on Artificial 
Intelligence has criticized the practice of not allowing substitution 
of experience for education credentials when determining compensation 
for a new hire into the digital workforce competing with the private 
sector. They have also acknowledged that the government's hiring 
system's problems are well known. These challenges are not caused by a 
lack of hiring authorities or an inherently slow process. The 
Commission has been unable to identify a gap in hiring authorities for 
the digital workforce. What is the Department doing to identify and 
eliminate barriers to competition that it has created through its own 
business practices and which some have argued do not require any 
special authority from Congress to address?
    Admiral Lescher. [No answer was available at the time of printing.]
    Mr. Moore. The National Security Commission on Artificial 
Intelligence has criticized the practice of not allowing substitution 
of experience for education credentials when determining compensation 
for a new hire into the digital workforce competing with the private 
sector. They have also acknowledged that the government's hiring 
system's problems are well known. These challenges are not caused by a 
lack of hiring authorities or an inherently slow process. The 
Commission has been unable to identify a gap in hiring authorities for 
the digital workforce. What is the Department doing to identify and 
eliminate barriers to competition that it has created through its own 
business practices and which some have argued do not require any 
special authority from Congress to address?
    General Allvin. Per OPM standards, because the 2210 series is not a 
professional series, a college degree is not required. From a Cyber/
Communications and Information Career Field perspective, we average 1K 
vacancies per month across all grades. We are continuously encouraging 
the use of hiring authorities such as Direct Hire Authorities (DHAs) to 
assist with attracting digital talent as well as reducing time-to-hire. 
Additionally, the DAF is performing a thorough barrier analysis from a 
development perspective and I expect to have those results toward 
year's end. Further, we have established career field policy on the 
makeup and execution of hiring panels. We're also taking a closer look 
at diversity and inclusion to assist with the elimination of potential 
barriers within the hiring process. The DAF acknowledges a digital 
skillset gap that includes AI, machine learning, cloud, cyber, 
programming, and some other related disciplines and the Cyber/C&I 
Career Field is finalizing a talent management strategy to attract, 
develop, and retain this critical talent.
    Mr. Moore. I would like to better understand the Air Force's 
sustainment and modernization plans for the A-10. I cannot be more 
proud that the women and men at Hill Air Force Base have been selected 
to fit new wings to the A-10. In FY21, the Air Force requested and 
Congress fully authorized and appropriated $100M for the purchase of an 
additional 24 wing sets. I understand the Air Force has so far only 
purchased 2 wing sets with this funding and may be seeking a 
reprogramming for the balance. My question is how much additional 
funding is required, in addition to the remaining FY21 wing replacement 
funding, to purchase the 66 additional wing sets required to support a 
fleet of 281 aircraft into the 2030s? Furthermore, when does the Air 
Force need to place additional wing set replacement orders so that they 
can be bundled with the 2 wing sets purchased in December 2020 and thus 
achieve a lower cost to the taxpayer?
    General Allvin. As of 12 July 2021, 2 wing sets have been purchased 
with the $100M of FY21 appropriated funds. With this purchase the Air 
Force will have purchased enough wings sets to rewing the FY23 force 
structure Total Aircraft Inventory of 218. An additional 4 wing sets 
will be purchased in August 2021 with FY21 funds, which will be used 
for spares. At this time there are no other wing set purchases planned 
for the A-10 Rewinging program.
    If we are unable to divest, an additional 63 wing sets will need to 
be purchased, due to 3 of the 4 spares being used as operational 
assets. In order to receive the same cost as those purchased in 
December 2020, approximately $340M will be required to purchase the 63 
wing sets by early August 2021. If funds are not placed on contract 
until after August, the total costs for the 63 wing sets will increase 
to $343M.
    Additionally, the Air Force is not seeking to reprogram funds away 
from the Rewing Program, as stated by the Chief of Staff of the Air 
Force during his testimony from 17 June 2021 at the Armed Services 
Committee SASC.
    Mr. Moore. How does the Air Force propose to support a fleet of 239 
aircraft into the 2030s without the purchase of additional replacement 
wings?
    General Allvin. The Air Force fighter force structure plan 
established a requirement for 218 A-10s into the 2030s. In order to 
reach 218 in a timely and efficient manner, A-10 Total Aircraft 
Inventory (TAI) will be reduced to 239 in FY22 and then to 218 in FY23.
    Accordingly, the program office purchased 218 wing sets.
    Mr. Moore. Does the remaining FY21 funding provide for the purchase 
of enough additional wing sets to keep a fleet of 239 aircraft flying 
into the 2030s? If not, how much additional funding is required to 
support 239 aircraft?
    General Allvin. No, Air Force plan calls for 218 A-10s into the 
2030s. If the AF is required to maintain a 239 TAI fleet into the 
2030s, it would require an additional $129M in FY22 or FY23 APAF 
funding to buy 21 wings no later than 2QFY23. It would also require an 
additional $83M in FY25 APAF funding to transport and install these 
wings.
    Mr. Moore. How much additional funding is required, in addition to 
the remaining FY21 wing replacement funding, to purchase the 63 
additional wing sets required to support a fleet of 281 aircraft into 
the 2030s?
    General Allvin. If the AF is required to maintain a 281 TAI fleet 
into the 2030s, it will require an additional $615.1M in FY23-26 APAF 
funding. However, the modernization cost to the AF is $2.2B in the FYDP 
and would exceed $3.7B into the early 2030s. This money spent on 
keeping the oldest 63 A-10s could be better used to purchase roughly 2 
new squadrons of F-35s. Furthermore, the manpower positions for those 
additional 63 aircraft would cause the Air Force to revisit F-35 basing 
decisions potentially impacting each base slated to receive new F-35s 
in coming years. Additionally, no further modernization of the A-10 
fleet will happen. Upgrades which will no longer be completed include: 
Helmet Mounted Cueing System (HMCS), Small Diameter Bomb (SDB-I) Mod, 
advanced radios, Onboard Oxygen Generation System (OBOGS), High 
Resolution Display System (HRDS), and 2 Gigabit Ethernet Switch (2GES).
    Mr. Moore. When does the Air Force need to place additional wing 
set replacement orders so that they can be bundled with the 2 wing sets 
purchased in December 2020 and thus achieve a lower cost to the 
taxpayer?
    General Allvin. There will be a purchase in Aug 2021 of 4 spare 
wing sets which will leverage FY21 (existing) funds. If the Air Force 
does not divest to a fleet of 218 in FY23, then additional wing sets 
would need to be purchased. Funding will be needed by early August 2021 
in order to maintain the same unit cost as the 2 wings purchased in 
December 2020. If the wing sets are not placed on contract in Aug 2021, 
the unit cost will increase.
    Mr. Moore. The National Security Commission on Artificial 
Intelligence has criticized the practice of not allowing substitution 
of experience for education credentials when determining compensation 
for a new hire into the digital workforce competing with the private 
sector. They have also acknowledged that the government's hiring 
system's problems are well known. These challenges are not caused by a 
lack of hiring authorities or an inherently slow process. The 
Commission has been unable to identify a gap in hiring authorities for 
the digital workforce. What is the Department doing to identify and 
eliminate barriers to competition that it has created through its own 
business practices and which some have argued do not require any 
special authority from Congress to address?
    General Thompson. We agree that the ability to recruit a highly 
qualified digital workforce is limited by the inability to meaningfully 
account for an applicant's real world expertise and/or experience when 
determining qualification and/or compensation for a position, even when 
such expertise or experience maybe more desirable than the degree 
requirement. Some of the hiring limitations are included both the 
Office of Personnel Management policy and 5 USC Chapter 51.
    The Space Force will work towards increasing hiring flexibility by 
maximizing the use of existing authorities, evaluating the 
effectiveness of those authorities in recruiting and retaining a high 
caliber digital workforce, and exploring/proposing legislative and 
policy changes that may be needed in the future.
                                 ______
                                 
                 QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. STRICKLAND
    Ms. Strickland. General Martin, the City of Lakewood and U.S. Army 
Contracting Command, Mission and Installation Contracting Command 
(MICC) entered into a cooperative agreement (CA) on September 26, 2019 
to resolve encroachment issues at Joint Base Lewis-McChord's North 
Clear Zone (NCZ). Resolving this issue is vitally important to reducing 
risk not only to public safety but also operational flight risks. There 
are over 20 transactions within the NCZ that need to be facilitated but 
after 18 months no transactions have occurred due to Army Compatible 
Use Buffer program (ACUB) limitations. All parties have acknowledged 
that this is a very unique project. Resolving encroachment in the NCZ 
is a multi-decade project requiring vigilance and ACUB flexibility. 
Will the Army recommit to working with the City of Lakewood to resolve 
this issue and ensure the safety of the public and service members?
    General Martin. [No answer was available at the time of printing.]
    Ms. Strickland. General Martin, there are several ongoing 
infrastructure concerns within and around Joint Base Lewis-McChord 
including the gate access road on Washington Boulevard in Lakewood as 
well as issues with the main gate exit off I-5. Additionally, the 
planned high-speed rail crossing at the main gate will become public 
safety concern for military personnel and civilians accessing the 
installation. I know that the City of Lakewood and JBLM have begun 
assessing the need to build an overpass between the two sides of JBLM. 
Access to JBLM is a critical readiness issue. When assessing future 
MILCON how does the Army consider the importance of readiness 
priorities such as base access?
    General Martin. [No answer was available at the time of printing.]

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