[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 117-13]
LEARNING FROM AND PREVENTING FUTURE TRAINING MISHAPS
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
MARCH 23, 2021
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
___________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
48-484 WASHINGTON : 2022
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
Melanie Harris, Professional Staff Member
Ian Bennitt, Professional Staff Member
Sean Falvey, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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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.............................. 3
WITNESSES
Allvin, Gen David W., USAF, Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force.. 7
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, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps......................... 8
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Allvin, Gen David W.......................................... 65
Lescher, ADM William K....................................... 54
Martin, GEN Joseph M......................................... 43
Thomas, Gen Gary L........................................... 79
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
Ms. Strickland............................................... 91
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
LEARNING FROM AND PREVENTING FUTURE TRAINING MISHAPS
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Readiness,
Washington, DC, Tuesday, March 23, 2021.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:58 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. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I call
to order this hearing of the Readiness Subcommittee of the
Armed Services Committee.
First, some administrative and technical notes.
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Please use the platform's chat feature to communicate with
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Finally, there is a 5-minute countdown clock on the
software platform's display, but if necessary, I will remind
you when your time is up.
Next, I seek unanimous consent to permit a noncommittee
member to participate in this hearing after all committee
members have had an opportunity to ask questions.
Is there objection?
Seeing and hearing none, so ordered.
And that noncommittee member will also have the normal 5-
minute period.
Now, with that out of the way, a few opening remarks.
First, I welcome my guests. I will introduce you at the end
of my short presentation.
While the Pentagon spends billions of taxpayer dollars on
planes, ships, missiles, and other sophisticated weapon
systems, more troops are dying in training than in combat,
often in aging and poorly maintained war machines.
Between 2006 and 2018, 32 percent of Active Duty military
deaths were the result of accidents, while 16 percent of
service members who died during that time were killed in
action.
Even as combat operations overseas have decreased,
noncombat deaths have exceeded the number of military members
killed in action every year since 2015.
The toll is staggering.
The National Commission on Military Aviation Safety, whose
findings we will be discussing today, found more than 6,000
aviation mishaps between 2013 and 2019, killing 224 pilots and
air crew.
The Government Accountability Office [GAO] is nearing
completion of their review of 4,000 tactical vehicle accidents
over the past 10 years that have led to the loss of 120
soldiers and Marines.
Of course, we continue to remember the 17 sailors lost in
the Surface Navy collision of 2017 and another 9 who recently
lost their life off San Clemente Island in California.
Let me be clear. Whether the trends are rising, falling, or
facility unpredictably, any preventable loss of life is
unacceptable. It is shameful that the nation with the most
powerful military in the world loses more service members in
noncombat settings than in war.
While the services focus on the conduct and the results of
individual accident investigations, I fear that we are missing
the bigger picture. These mishaps reveal that the basic
elements of manning, training, and equipping are challenged
across the force.
In addition to causing loss of life, this neglect is
diminishing the readiness and effectiveness of our military.
We have seen in recent years that in order to pursue
modernization initiatives, the services have shortchanged unit
manning, flying and training hours, depot maintenance, and
spare parts.
This leaves our operators insufficiently trained and
equipped and too often unavailable for use with poor materiel
and condition.
This assumption of risk is not a foregone conclusion. The
services can and should choose to shift their priorities to
elevate manning, elevate training, and elevate safety and
sustainment.
This may mean buying fewer new ships and planes. It also
means taking seriously the cultural factors that the Navy, the
GAO, and the Aviation Commission have all identified--
specifically, a widespread complacency towards safety standards
and a casual disregard for basic risk management practices.
And, finally, it should also mean taking meaningful steps
to curb the combatant commanders' insatiable demand for the use
of the force.
I know these are hard choices, but they are the right
choices to avoid creating a force that is not only hollow, but
vulnerable.
Now, with that, I yield to Ranking Member Lamborn for his
opening comments.
Mr. Lamborn.
STATEMENT OF HON. DOUG LAMBORN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM COLORADO,
RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, Chairman Garamendi.
Today we will hear testimony from the Vice Chiefs of the
Navy, Army, and Air Force, as well as the Vice Commandant of
the Marine Corps, about their efforts to learn from and prevent
noncombat mishaps.
I want to thank all our witnesses for their time and
service to our country. I also want to welcome my friend and
colleague, Representative Vern Buchanan, of Florida, to this
hearing.
We owe it to our service men and women to eliminate
preventable accidents, period. Readiness is not just having
enough spare parts on the shelves or enough aircraft to fly.
Readiness is also ensuring our service members are proficient
in their jobs and prepared to perform their duties that our
Nation assigns them. This requires lots of time spent in tough,
realistic training conducted in a controlled and safe
environment.
Unfortunately, this is not always in ready supply,
particularly when there is unpredictability in the defense
budget process and an insufficient top line that forces leaders
to choose between executing the mission today or preparing for
the future fight. This is something we in Congress have the
power to fix.
Over the past several years, our subcommittee has held
several hearings and briefings focused on military aviation
safety, the state of Surface Navy readiness, and ground vehicle
mishaps.
Mr. Chairman, I am going to ask that you mute at your end.
The services and the GAO have also engaged with their own
analysis, studies, and programs. In 2019, this subcommittee
directed the GAO to conduct a review of the relationship
between tactical vehicle mishaps and training vehicle safety
and training range conditions.
While that review is not yet complete, we expect it will
provide insights into the factors contributing to nearly 4,000
tactical vehicle mishaps over the past 10 years, leading to the
loss of 120 service members. When the report is available, I
expect the recommendations to be implemented.
We continue to see a trend in deadly aviation accidents.
The fiscal year 2019 NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act]
created the National Commission on Military Aviation Safety to
assess the causes contributing to military aviation mishaps.
Results of that effort indicated that insufficient training
and experience, sustainment issues, funding, OPTEMPO
[operations tempo], and workforce attrition were all
contributing factors.
I expect to hear today what the services are doing to
address this.
Since significant incidents and collisions in 2017, the
Navy has conducted two primary reviews. Five years later, it is
not clear that the reforms instituted are enough to protect our
sailors and Marines. Quite simply, we need to do better for our
service members.
Today, our witnesses will discuss these important efforts
to address underlying issues driving accident trends and share
the extent to which each military branch has taken steps to
implement concrete recommendations to mitigate and prevent
accidents.
Finally, I would like to mention trends.
While trends are important indicators of success and
failure, we must not be complacent when trends are looking
good. One Class A mishap or loss of life is one too many.
I am particularly interested in how the services are
looking at Class B and C mishaps, as well as near misses, to
examine root causes that may inform proactive solutions to more
serious issues.
I want to thank the witnesses for your engagement today on
this important topic. I look forward to hearing to how your
service is taking actions to prevent today's accidents while we
all work to ensure that service members have the time, tools,
and training to be successful in the future.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Lamborn, I will unmute, and you can
mute. Good lesson for all of us.
I am going to introduce each of the participants
separately. I am going to start with General Joseph Martin,
Vice Chief of Staff of the Army.
I was running through your resume, and you have covered
almost every possible place and commanded or otherwise been in
charge of something in every possible place where there could
have been an accident. So, I suspect you are well versed on
this entire set of issues.
General Martin, you have got 5 minutes, and your written
testimony will be placed into the record. Without objection, so
ordered.
General Martin, please.
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 Readiness, on
behalf of the Acting Secretary of the Army, the Honorable John
Whitley, and the Chief of Staff of the Army, General James
McConville, thank you for this opportunity to discuss how the
Army learns from training mishaps and how we are preventing
future mishaps.
Also, thank you for your steadfast support to our soldiers,
our civilians, and our family members. It is clear you have the
best interests of our brave men and women at heart, and I
appreciate your shared concern for their safety and well-being.
As you know, the Army is a people business. Our people are
our number one priority. We know they are on loan from their
families and the American people and are our greatest strength.
It is our responsibility to create a safe work environment
where our soldiers are able to learn, to grow, and to achieve
the results that they need to in those goals.
We are working hard to create an environment free of
harmful behaviors like sexual harassment, sexual assault,
racism, extremism, and suicide.
But it doesn't stop there. Placing our people first also
includes creating an environment that is conducive to the
conduct of safe and effective training at the individual and
crew level where mishaps tend to occur.
We have made some progress over the past few years. For
fiscal year 2020, Army aviation mishaps dropped to a 10-year
low.
This was not at the expense of readiness or flying hours.
Over the same period, our combat aviation brigades reported the
highest overall readiness levels, and our Active Duty
operational readiness rate remained above 80 percent.
For ground vehicle mishaps, over the last 5 years our
average is the lowest since the Army began to keep records in
1972.
That doesn't mean that we are satisfied. This fiscal year,
we have lost 11 soldiers to Class A aviation mishaps and 2
soldiers to Class A tactical vehicle mishaps.
That is 13 soldiers who won't be returning to their
families. That is 12 families who will never see their father,
their mother, their son, or their daughter again.
This is completely unacceptable, and we won't be satisfied
until all of our soldiers return home safely from their
training events or deployments.
Our Army is a learning organization. We conduct
professional in-depth investigations into each and every
mishap. The United States Army Combat Readiness Center ensures
we understand not only the causes of mishaps, but also formally
staffs and tracks recommendations.
Our process gives us a good understanding of the ``why.''
Most of our mishaps result from the failure to follow the
appropriate standard or the failure to respond appropriately to
the conditions of the environment surrounding that particular
soldier or weapon system.
Training and disciplined risk management is the key to our
success. But our focus on training and repetition at the lowest
level will increase the proficiency of our soldiers in our
formation, and we intend to decrease the number of mishaps
across the board.
I look forward to this discussion and your questions. Thank
you for your time.
[The prepared statement of General Martin can be found in
the Appendix on page 43.]
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you very much, General.
I will now turn to Admiral William Lescher.
Again, just running through your resume, you have seen
almost every possible place where somebody could have an
accident. And so please speak to us.
And, again, 5 minutes, and your testimony will be in the
formal record. Without objection, so ordered.
Admiral Lescher.
STATEMENT OF ADM WILLIAM K. LESCHER, USN, VICE CHIEF OF NAVAL
OPERATIONS, U.S. NAVY
Admiral Lescher. Thank you, and good afternoon, Chairman
Garamendi, Ranking Member Lamborn, and the distinguished
members of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness.
On behalf of the sailors, civilians, and families of the
United States Navy, I thank you for the opportunity to testify
today on this important topic of service mishaps and the impact
of these mishaps on our people and our readiness.
Our Nation depends on a Navy that maintains their advantage
at sea. To provide that Navy, we must effectively learn from
mishaps and must share that learning to accelerate insights and
best practices, and we must institutionalize that learning to
drive sustained change to behavior.
Today, we also see a strong opportunity to accelerate a
number of emerging initiatives to mitigate risk before the
mishaps occur. We are increasingly using data-driven
prioritization of risk countermeasures and data-driven
understanding of root cause to complement and eventually reduce
reactive mishap-driven understanding of risk.
Examples of this approach span all of our major warfare
communities and have been contributing to an overall Navy trend
of reduced mishap rates.
As was mentioned earlier, the tragic 2017 collisions
involving the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain were a
wakeup call and a strong impetus for today's progress.
The surface fleet aggressively engaged in broad reform,
implemented safety teams focused on human factors and risk
analysis, and developed comprehensive crew endurance management
policies that are producing a cultural shift within the surface
fleet.
A lower threshold as well for sharing concerns and
insights, and increased reporting of lower level events and
near misses, has also served to strengthen the surface
community's safety culture and lower mishap rates.
The overall trend in our surface fleet is positive, but a
significant area of sustained poor performance remains.
The Bonhomme Richard fire last July marked the 15th
significant fire, shipboard fire, in the past 12 years, and it
has demonstrated that previous leadership interventions of the
type the fleet commanders aggressively instituted this past
July and October have not resolved the shipboard fire root
causes sufficiently to drive enduring change in the frequency
of these mishaps.
Early this year, I directed a separate, broader deep dive
review to eliminate systemic issues with regard to standards,
culture, and environment driving the daily discipline in
shipboard stowage, cleanliness, and readiness, and to recommend
necessary actions to establish enduring change in fire safety
culture and practices.
In 2019, Naval Aviation Class A to B mishaps declined for
the first time in a decade, and in 2020 the declining A to B
mishap trend continued with zero Class A fatalities achieved
for the first time in a century. However, we also saw the Class
A mishap number increase slightly and Class C Aviation Ground
Mishaps increase.
To accelerate learning here, Naval Aviation has increased
the use of flight line spot checks, employed predictive
analytics, which I would love to talk more about in the
hearing, and leveraged lessons from the surface and the
submarine communities.
We have also pursued a more effective approach to training,
requiring aviators to earn the right to fly, to demonstrate a
proficiency in both fundamentals and tactics in a range of
simulators. These actions have put us in a solid vector to
continue reducing aviation mishaps and improve safety outcomes.
Our submarine force had zero groundings or collisions in
2020. This is the result of leaders driving outcomes with a
strong analytic tool, OBIEE, and it highlights units at
increased risk of adverse safety or operational outcomes; also
used the increased use of near-miss reporting and analytics,
and strong discipline in implementing lessons learned from
prior near misses.
The submarine fleet has been contributing well and overall
to Navy improved safety and performance by broadly sharing a
number of best practices with our surface and aviation
enterprise as well as the Naval Safety Center.
Of course, all of these warfare communities are focuses on
ensuring that we are setting our sailors up to succeed in
executing their missions with the right training, the right
tools, and policies underpinning a strong, well-functioning
safety culture.
I look forward, Chairman, to exploring these topics further
with the committee today, and I thank the committee for your
leadership and your partnership in sustaining focus on the
critical issue of safety performance.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Lescher can be found in
the Appendix on page 54.]
Mr. Garamendi. Admiral Lescher, thank you very much for
your testimony. Again, we will look at your written testimony.
And yes, we will get back to predictive analytics somewhere
during the course of this hearing.
Our next presenter is General David Allvin, United States
Air Force.
General.
STATEMENT OF GEN DAVID W. ALLVIN, USAF, VICE CHIEF OF STAFF,
U.S. AIR FORCE
General Allvin. Chairman Garamendi, Ranking Member Lamborn,
and distinguished members of the subcommittee, on behalf of the
Acting Secretary of the Air Force, John Roth, and the Chief of
Staff of the United States Air Force, General C.Q. Brown, Jr.,
thank you for the opportunity to provide an update on this
important issue and for your continued support and advocacy of
our most important resource, our airmen.
Safely executing the high-end training required to preserve
the readiness during this era of renewed peer competition is
incredibly important. Your Air Force remains committed to
building a culture of safety that preserves the considerable
investment that the American taxpayer has made in our service,
and more importantly, safeguards the sons and daughters placed
in our care.
Our focus remains on preventing mishaps before they occur.
We have strong programs that proactively identify risk and are
consistently looking for ways to make our operations more
effective and safe.
And when the mishaps do occur, we are committed to learning
from them through data-driven analytics and a continued focus
on a readiness culture so that we can prevent similar
occurrences in the future.
While our overall Class A, B, and C mishap rates have all
declined since we formally briefed this subcommittee on the
subject in 2018, we continue to have unacceptably high rates of
training mishaps, including seven that cost the lives of airmen
last year alone.
Like you said, Mr. Chairman, one avoidable mishap remains
too many. We are all committed to doing all the things we can
to bring down those risks.
Our internal analysis, recently bolstered by the December
2020 release of the National Commission on Military Aviation
Safety report, highlights several key areas that can help
contribute to safe and effective training in an operational
environment for our airmen.
These include sustaining investments in our flying hour
program, reinforcing the aviation supply and maintenance
system, a culture of transparent communication and
accountability, returning bandwidth to our line units for
reinvesting in training, expanding access to high-quality
simulators and training devices, and retaining the seasoned
operators to build the next generation of airmen.
We look forward to partnering with the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, our joint partners, and this subcommittee
to fully capitalize on the commission's insights to deliver the
safe and effective training environment that our airmen and our
Nation deserve.
Thank you again for your interest in safety, your advocacy
for the same, and for your continued support to fund these
activities to keep our airmen safe. I look forward to the
questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of General Allvin can be found in
the Appendix on page 65.]
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, General Allvin.
We will now move to our final presenter, General Thomas of
the U.S. Marine Corps.
General Thomas.
STATEMENT OF GEN GARY L. THOMAS, USMC, ASSISTANT COMMANDANT OF
THE MARINE CORPS, HEADQUARTERS, U.S. MARINE CORPS
General Thomas. Chairman Garamendi, Ranking Member Lamborn,
and distinguished members of this subcommittee, thank you for
the opportunity to testify on the issue of learning from and
preventing future training mishaps.
As the Commandant stated in his planning guidance, the
Marine Corps is a naval expeditionary force-in-readiness, and
that readiness is a strategic warfighting advantage for the
Nation.
In order to maintain that strategic advantage, we must be
able to train to and operate in austere environments at sea, in
the air, and ashore without unnecessary sacrifices of personnel
and equipment.
Over the past several years, the Marine Corps has
diligently worked to reduce training mishaps. We have taken an
institutional approach to improving safety performance,
including a new standards-focused safety management system,
better reporting and information-sharing tools, and service-
wide changes based on investigation findings.
While we have made significant improvements, there is still
much work to do. Ensuring institutional change occurs and lasts
is my personal priority.
Leadership remains the bedrock of Marine Corps initiatives
to improve safety culture, reduce mishaps, and increase
readiness.
The institutional changes I just mentioned, among others,
are empowering our leaders to encourage greater hazard and
mishap reporting, incorporate lessons learned, and make better
decisions.
Active leadership, enabled by resources, will help us to
continue to reduce mishaps and generate readiness.
The Marine Corps remains committed to ensuring the safety
of our Marines, sailors, and civilians as we train to be the
most ready when the Nation is least ready.
As of today, we have had zero fatalities in aviation and
ground training mishaps this fiscal year. We are working very
hard to maintain this as our standard.
We appreciate your support and oversight as we continue to
improve our safety performance and advance the lethality of 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 79.]
Mr. Garamendi. General Thomas, thank you very much.
We will now go to the question and response part. Before I
ask my opening questions, I am going to read the gavel order so
that everyone has an opportunity to know who they will follow.
As is the tradition, I will open, Mr. Lamborn, then
Courtney, followed by Wilson, followed by Speier, Moore,
Strickland, Scott, Slotkin, Kahele, and Buchanan. We will go in
that order.
So let me go ahead and begin here.
The National Commission on Military Aviation Safety
concluded the high rate of aviation mishaps can be attributed
to numerous factors, including inadequate pilot training,
maintainer training and experience, insufficient maintenance,
unpredictable funding--I think that is our problem, and
hopefully we will address it--and then a high operational tempo
that causes fatigue and burnout.
And so to all of the witnesses, I will go at this in the
same order. We will start with the U.S. Army. We are talking
aviation here specifically.
General Martin.
General Martin. Chairman, thank you.
So we have been thoroughly briefed, and I have read cover
to cover the National Commission for Military Aviation Safety,
its findings and its recommendations, and we are tracking that
17 out of 25 of them are applicable to the Army. We have
already implemented 4 out of those 17, specifically maintenance
proficiency badges, PERSTEMPO [personnel tempo] tracking,
tuition assistance for our airframe and power plant service
members in their credentialing, and then restoring the home
station flying program by supplementing it this year with OMA
[Operation and Maintenance, Army] dollars to bring up the
proficiency level training of our aviators.
There are several other efforts that we are doing to get
after some of the recommendations within there, but of
significant import to the Army is the insufficient flying
hours, and we have addressed that with the flying hour program
supplement.
And then decreasing proficiency. I have signed out a memo--
actually three memos--to the force to direct them to focus on
the proficiency levels and also isolate the mechanics, so that
the mechanics focus on maintaining the aircraft and they are
not distracted by other activities.
And then last one I will talk that is of importance is the
relentless OPTEMPO. And we have attacked that by telling our
commanders and assisting them with this to decrease the number
of CTC [Combat Training Center] rotations that our aviation
brigades are participating in.
They are still participating in every rotation, but it is
not a combat aviation brigade per rotation. That has had a
significant impact on decreasing the OPTEMPO in our formations.
And so there are a couple examples of some of the things we
are doing to get after the findings.
Mr. Garamendi. Yes. I need to unmute.
Admiral Lescher. You are next, Admiral.
Admiral Lescher. Thank you, Chairman.
Yeah. Very quickly, across that appropriate list of things
for us to be focused on.
Pilot training. I touched on it briefly in the opening
comment. What we have seen since the National Commission on
Military Aviation Safety, which had many findings that were
very much on the mark, one specific context element that
changed from when they visited Lemoore, when they visited and
talked to Navy is the journey we have had in driving mission-
capable aircraft up.
So they were at a point where we were at 55 percent mission
capable. Today, we are sustaining 80 percent with an important
journey that is beyond the scope of this conversation.
That, in terms of pilot training, both the use of more
available aircraft and mission-capable aircraft is helping, and
also the sims [simulators] I talked about, where we have, I
think, one of the areas where the commission said, hey, are we
using too many sims?
We are using sims in a way I think that is powerful, and we
are seeing in terms of outcomes things change. The standard
scores of pilots through training are increasing with the use
of the sims, the time to training is decreasing, and the same
number of flights are being flown, in terms of the actual
events. So the sims are very complementary, and they are
creating a better output.
In pilot training, for sure one thing we are keeping a
close eye on is recovering from the time when the T-45 in our
advanced strike training, engine suppressed throughput at the
same time as we were also recovering from physiological
episodes. And so we worked hard to get back to the capacity of
the training pipelines, pilot training.
Continuing. Maintenance training. Happy to talk at length.
I think we have a strong program here, and we are evolving it
from our current A School sequenced construct to Ready,
Relevant Learning and distributed learning.
Insufficient maintenance is an interesting observation. I
think, as we talked about briefly yesterday, Chairman, the
insufficient maintenance is not the issue. We have learned
through two deep dives in fiscal year 2018 [inaudible] that is
actually a maintenance program reset to update the maintenance
program, the current configuration, the current components,
that is indicated that we are doing maintenance at a period
[inaudible] required, in some cases maintenance not required
from an engineering-driven perspective and having our SYSCOM
[systems commands] doing the analysis. So I think that is an
important element for us to look at.
Unpredictable funding. I appreciate working with the
committee to help us here. I would highlight two instances.
OPN-8 [Other Procurement, Navy, Budget Activity 8] spares have
an impact on readiness. We, unfortunately, in the Navy trained
the committees to mark that account with poor execution 2 to 3
years ago, but in both OPN-8 spares and the flying hour program
we are executing those programs strongly, and we would like to
work in partnership with the Readiness Committee to bring those
across the line in the defense appropriations bill.
Finally, OPTEMPO. The fleet is stressed for sure. We are
looking to strongly control OPTEMPO. We are looking to control
scheduled churn within that high OPTEMPO.
The response there is to have strong programs in place to
assess and assist our people and strong leadership as we work
through the world getting the vote and the strong OPTEMPO.
Back to you, Chairman.
Mr. Garamendi. General Allvin.
General Allvin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I will repeat what my colleague said. These are four
very meaty issues that I think are definitely worth a deep
dive, and we have given it one.
I would say that coincidentally, the same year that--about
when this commission started its work, we had our operational
safety review, and we found many of the same issues. So we have
been able to move out with some things. So I will go down the
list as well.
With respect to pilot training, as you know, Mr. Chairman,
we have a bit of a throughput problem, and we have a long-term
pipeline problem with the pilots.
And so we have undertaken a new way, looking at the next
pilot training approach, to make sure we have more immersive
training, to make sure it is something that is more amenable to
individualized training for each of the UPT students,
undergraduate pilot training students.
But I will repeat what Admiral Lescher said about aircraft
availability. You know, with our T-6s, we tackled, along with
the Navy, some of these physiological event issues, and that
impacted the availability of the aircraft as well as the safety
while in flight.
And so through some great work through our physiological
event action team and working with the Navy as well, we have
seen a fivefold decrease in those physiological events, which
not only is more safe operation in and of itself, but it
actually increases our confidence in that particular training
platform.
But a renaissance in the way that we train pilots to make
sure that it is consistent with 21st century education and
training techniques is key to our way forward there.
With respect to maintainers, we saw the very same thing,
that the idea is really about the experience of the
maintainers. And part of this is they are so interlinked with
some of the other challenges we have.
Part of our transition into the modernization was to
leverage some of our maintainers and have them be maintainers
in the new fleet. But as we continue to struggle with being
able to divest the legacy fleet, we find that we are stretching
our maintainers thin.
So we since 2017 have added 4,000 maintainers to the fleet.
So that is a good start. But obviously, if you add 4,000 new
maintainers, then the relative experience of your entire
maintenance fleet drops down. So we need to help season those
maintainers.
And through the things like credentialing and other things,
we are looking at incentivization to keep those maintainers in
their career field, but also keep them doing the maintaining,
which is something that the commission also pointed out, have
pilots fly, have maintainers maintain.
So we also cut back in 1,800 additional administrative
assistants to do the admin work that some of our pilots and
maintainers were having to do. So we slid some of that back
because we found, as a product of what we had done almost a
decade ago of trying to cut as much manpower as we could to
save money, that we had people doing more than just their core
competency.
So we reversed that. We also did a scrub and reduced 46
additional duties that just weren't adding value and
consolidated another 15.
But the idea of keeping maintainers on the track and
getting them more experience, we are moving hard on that one as
well. The funding, Mr. Chairman, would be greatly appreciated.
And the high tempo, we really are managing risk. And we
look at the demands that come to us from the joint force, and
as they come to our service, we manage risk and look at the
readiness of the force and the availability to do that, and we
do our very best to meet the demands as they are given to us.
But we have a keen eye on the relative risk over time that
is becoming an increasing burden. Buying down today's risk at
the expense of tomorrow's, that is one thing our Chief and
Secretary are looking more and more at because we don't want to
be the force that 20 years from now they look back and said,
you were the guys who left us unable to compete against China,
for example.
Mr. Garamendi. General, thank you very much.
We are now looking to the final person to speak to this
issue.
General Thomas, if you will bring us up to date on the
Marine Corps with regard to this oversight by the commission.
General Thomas. Thank you, Chairman.
The Marine Corps agrees with the commission's findings, and
we are taking a deliberate look at all of the recommendations.
But we particularly agree with the observation on the power of
consistent funding, and we thank this committee for their
support in that regard.
Many of our ongoing initiatives are aligned with the
commission's recommendations. For example, reducing OPTEMPO of
our operational forces is a key aspect of that, and we have
been able to reduce the demand signal on many of our units over
the past few years.
Improved qualification tracking, of course, improving
materiel readiness, and ensuring that our air crew get adequate
flight hours, in all of these areas we have seen improvement.
As my teammates mentioned, with regard to pilot training,
we also have in some ways a throughput challenge. We are
working closely with our Navy teammates to do simple things in
terms of increasing the number of instructors and standing up a
second fleet replacement squadron for F-35 as we begin to
scale.
Those initiatives, along with some of the 21st century
learning approaches that Admiral Lescher highlighted, are going
to, we believe, greatly improve our posture.
In terms of maintenance personnel, it is primarily a
function for us of maintaining our experience base. It is
largely a retention issue. And we are getting after that with
reenlistment bonuses of $20,000 for very experienced
maintainers. And we have noticed that over the past few years
2,100 Marines have taken us up on that incentive.
We appreciate the opportunity to use the report to also
help us improve our safety record as we go forward.
Mr. Garamendi. General, thank you very much.
A lot more to be discussed on each of those issues, and I
suspect my colleagues will tease out other details along the
way.
Mr. Lamborn, it is your turn.
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I know that the services are focused on identifying
contributing factors to Class A accidents that involve high
dollar amounts and permanent disability or death. But the near
misses, the Class C mishaps, and the present but not
contributing factors in Class A mishaps can reveal the canaries
in the coal mine that could cause the next accident.
And along the same lines, in August 2018 GAO found gaps in
DOD's [Department of Defense's] approach for collecting,
reporting, and analyzing the data from mishaps in general.
So a two-part question for each of you. What are you doing
to act on the problems that lower level mishap incidents
reveal? And what steps are you taking to improve the reporting
of data on all of these mishaps?
In no particular order. Let's go in the same order that you
testified earlier.
General Martin. Congressman, there are two things I would
like to talk about very quickly.
So born at our Combat Training Centers, where we have got
probably the highest fidelity and clearly the most dangerous
conditions where we train in a live training environment, born
out of the CTCs is this what we call the mishap pyramid.
It is based on a German--Bird and Germain theory that if
you have so many near misses, they will equate eventually over
time to so many Class D accidents, so many Class C accidents,
so many Class B accidents, and in the end, you are going to
have a catastrophic outcome and a Class A mishap.
And so, literally, at our Combat Training Centers, they
count the number of accidents. The observers, coaches, and
trainers, they tell on--they report on all the accidents. The
unit is required to report. So there are summary reports, and
literally you watch the volume of accidents come in, and it
allows the leadership to see in each of the after-action
reviews, hey, we have had so many of these types of accidents,
we are on our way to a more severe outcome.
That has proved out pretty beneficial, and it has changed
the culture in our home station training environments as a
result of that. And so that Bird and Germain theory that was
born out at NTC [National Training Center] is applied to the
rest of the Army.
And that is how we look at lower mishaps, because, you will
remember, especially when you are talking aviation, the
difference between a near miss and a Class A accident in some
cases is fractions of a second. And so we have got to be
mindful of near misses.
And then the second point I would like to bring up is in
October of last year, we launched the Army Safety Management
Information System [ASMIS] where we replaced a clunky,
Industrial Age process of accident reporting where you had to
fill out the same form no matter if it was a cut on a finger or
an aircraft hit the ground. It was the same accident form. It
was very laborious, and it was somewhat daunting.
Well, with this new system we can see a lot more accidents.
In fact, we have 97 percent better compliance rate and
timeliness rate of turning in accident reports because if it is
a Class D or a near miss, it is something that can be reported
very quickly.
And it also includes a non-attributional, anonymous feature
where you can report an accident and no one will know you
reported an accident.
And so we think that ASMIS, the Army Safety Management
Information System, is going to help us better see that data on
those lower severe outcome accidents to inform changes to our
processes and our procedures in the United States Army.
Thank you.
Mr. Lamborn. Okay. I would like to hear from the Navy next.
Navy, are you there? Admiral.
Admiral Lescher. I am struggling with the mute/unmute. I
think I am up now.
So I will build on what General Martin said in a couple
ways.
For sure, the side picture is correct that Class C's and
near misses are a fundamental driver of us learning,
understanding, and taking action on them. We have been looking
at Class C's, I think, in a number of interesting ways.
One element I will start with that is not a success yet is
convergence training, If you look to the airlines in aviation
and look at fundamental training of elements that are often the
root cause of aircraft move accidents and the type of accidents
we see that generate Class C mishaps. And what we have seen
after 18 months or so of that is that it is not moving the
needle.
So, again, we are very focused on understanding where we
are just seeing activity and where we are seeing outcomes that
are fundamentally addressing the root causes.
And so what we have learned with convergence training,
which was fundamentally pre-, post-move alignment on a quick
run-through of operational risk management, it wasn't moving
the needle.
Two things going forward that I think are high potential.
We have 2 years now of experience using an aviation experience
metric that correlates with readiness, that lets us really
understand and allocate our people in a way that maximizes
readiness. We call this the aviation and maintenance experience
metric that looks at type/ model/series experience, that looks
at qualifications, such as quality assurance qualifications.
And we can use it very effectively.
We are doing an offshoot of that to look at aviation
boatswain's mates, which are the people on our flight decks, on
our big deck amphibs, on our aircraft carriers who are doing so
much of the activity that is at risk of being a Class C when
you bump an aircraft in a move, et cetera.
And we see that there is initially from the data already
that we could be much more informed about understanding with
this analytic approach the experience of an aviation
boatswain's mate in terms of familiar with that type of ship,
in terms of number of deployments, in terms of other
fundamental quals [qualifications], and use that to allocate
that and make sure, for example, on specific ships or specific
moves, that we have a properly experienced supervisor driving
the evolution. So I would highlight that as one element.
Another element that is going forward, we have some
experience working with industry on specific [inaudible] risk
and problem-solving process which is basically a deep dive
effort and a very disciplined way to find root causes. And we
had an opportunity to do three of these pilots, and one of them
is in fact [inaudible].
So I will pause there in the interest of time, but the same
type picture.
I guess--I am sorry--the second question was on data, do we
feel we are getting the data.
I think you are tracking, sir, that we are using and have
joined now the same risk management information database and
approach as the Air Force and the Marines. And so standardized
data sets.
And while it is a moving target, we are 98 percent complete
in terms of the current target in terms of data completeness.
So our sense is that we are on a strong vector to make sure we
have standardized, complete data to help drive these insights.
Over.
Mr. Lamborn. And briefly, the Marines and Air Force.
General Allvin. I am sorry. Go ahead, Gary.
General Thomas. Thank you, General Allvin.
Just, Congressman, in terms of how we are acting on the
problems that these lower level mishaps reveal, we are looking
at it through two lenses. First, hazard reporting, followed by
information sharing.
And this is something that General Martin spoke to, but I
would also like to emphasize is that we have introduced new
tools that not only makes the reporting of hazards that Marines
see much easier, we have also made it where they are anonymous.
And, again, it just encourages Marines down at the deck
plate to identify those things that they may see every single
day. And then we are able to aggregate those and look at it
across the entire institution.
And then in terms of information sharing in the Department
of the Navy, of course, we have this Streamlined Incident
Reporting System, as well as a mishap lesson learned website.
Again, that makes the lessons learned that have been cataloged
over a number of years readily available to commanders, O-5
commanders, on a daily basis.
In terms of the data collection, again, I would like to
emphasize something that Admiral Lescher said, that we are
completely aligned with the Navy in fielding this Streamlined
Incident Reporting System. It is a Department of the Navy
initiative that is based on a very successful and mature Air
Force system.
He mentioned that we have standardized data. I would just
add to that that we actually use the same data collection
fields. And as he said, I think we are 98 percent common in
terms of our approach. And we look forward to continue
supporting ongoing standardization efforts to improve data
collection across all the services.
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you.
And very briefly for the sake of time, Air Force.
General Allvin. Yes, sir. I will be brief because most of
the things I would say have already been said.
We also have a very robust--we investigate every Class C
mishap that happens at each wing. Those get elevated all the
way up to the four-star level, and the results of those are
reviewed on a semiannual basis. And every one of the findings
of every one of Class C, Class B, Class A mishaps are tracked
to closure at the four-star level, and that allows us to see
not only individual incidents but across incidents for trends.
With respect to the data, we have all of those same things.
The database is getting better. The fields are consistent so we
can start reading each other's data, learning across service as
well. And we also have the identity-protected inputs that allow
our airmen to be able to identify hazards and identify culture
and climate issues with respect to safety that they may not
otherwise be able to do.
Thank you.
Mr. Lamborn. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, back to you.
Mr. Garamendi. A good set of questions, great answers.
I am going to give the gavel order once again. Courtney,
Wilson, Speier, Moore, the next four up.
Mr. Courtney.
Mr. Courtney. Great.
Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you, Ranking Member
Lamborn, for holding this hearing, and to the witnesses for
their testimony.
Admiral Lescher, on page 3 and 4 of your testimony you
talked about the sort of post Fitzgerald and McCain reforms.
Again, there was the comprehensive review which we went through
on the subcommittee back in 2017 and 2018 with the 111
recommendations. Many of those were actually codified in the
NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] that year.
And I was noticing where you kind of updated the fact that
the readiness certification of the crews has now reached a 100
percent certification process, which is actually a pretty
shocking improvement.
When GAO did the report back in 2017 the certifications
were really actually kind of frightening in terms of how low
many of the sailors and the crew were.
So I want to just see if you could sort of explain, was it
giving the type commanders more power, because that obviously
was identified as a problem in terms of the tug of war between
the type commands and the operational commands?
I mean, is their ability, maybe, to sort of, pull the
safety brake, as Admiral Richardson said back in those hearings
that we held, forcing the issue, where we make sure that
everyone is certified before a ship goes underway? Is that what
is happening?
Admiral Lescher. Yes, sir. It is good to see you again.
And that is exactly what is happening. I mean, your
instinct is exactly on the mark. So Roy Kitchener at SURFOR
[Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet] and Brendan McLane
now at SURFLANT [Naval Surface Force, Atlantic] have--we put
the firebreaks in, which was a fundamental diagnosis, that we
had lost the firebreaks between the maintenance, the training,
and then the deploy phase.
And so in terms of a culture change, which I hinted at a
bit, there is a fundamental culture change of ending this idea
of waivers. There have been no waivers. They require four-star
level now. And there is multiple examples of where from a man,
train, or equip perspective the type com [commander] has said
to our fleet commanders, ``Hey, I have got to change this
engine, I have got to redo this exercise, I have got to have
the time to do this right,'' and they are supported.
So your diagnosis there is correct, sir.
Mr. Courtney. Well, it is really encouraging to see that,
again, people got their heads together and identified what the
problem was and solved it without--again, it really didn't
require necessarily infusions of big amounts of money or
resources. It was just really trying to change or put in
safeguards. Congratulations to the Navy for making that happen.
General Thomas, your report and your testimony at the end
talked about the AAV [assault amphibious vehicle] accident that
took place in San Clemente, the tragic accident.
So it is my understanding that a report is imminent in
terms of describing, I guess, what the Navy--the Marine Corps
investigation produced.
And one question in addition to just that is, was the use
of those AAVs paused in the wake of the accident? And has there
been any modifications made to those platforms during that
pause?
General Thomas. Thank you, Congressman.
Just in terms of the investigation, the investigation is
complete. We are informing the families of the investigation
findings this week. Making sure the families are informed and
answering their questions is a priority for us. And we look
forward to releasing the results of that investigation near
simultaneously to the committee once those family notifications
are complete.
In terms of the actual waterborne operations, they were
suspended to complete a review of our equipment, our
procedures, and training. With a couple of exceptions, the
first three-star in the chain of command has the ability to
waiver that in reasons of operational assessing.
For example, we are conducting limited water operations to
complete entry-level training requirements, and we are
committed to ensuring a safe return to water ops as soon as we
can.
And to your question in terms of the vehicles, when we
suspended water operations we did a thorough inspection of all
vehicles, whether related to any concerns about this particular
mishap or not, and reported that and made some just maintenance
effort to ensure that all of those vehicles were within
standards.
Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you, General. I appreciate it.
And I am sure once the report is out, we will continue this
dialogue.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Courtney.
There is a great deal of interest among the committee
members on that particular issue. The timing didn't work out
well. We will probably do a briefing. And any of the members of
the committee and any others that want to involve themselves
either next week or the following week, probably the following
week. We will see what happens here.
And, General Thomas, we will invite you back for about an
hour to discuss that particular incident.
Very good.
Okay. We are now going to turn to Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Lamborn. We appreciate the dedicated panel participating today,
extraordinary individuals on behalf of our country. We
appreciate it.
Admiral Lescher, to further the excellent review by
Congressman Courtney, I was grateful to visit the USS
Fitzgerald in Japan several years ago and saw where our sailors
were tragically killed, and appreciate your efforts to make
sure an accident never occurs again.
The Navy concluded that fatigue was a contributing factor
to both the McCain and Fitzgerald collisions. The substantial
body of research indicates that the fatigue causes impaired
judgment, decreased concentration and reaction times, and
contributes to poor mental and physical health.
This issue is not isolated to the Navy, but how has your
service made progress on changing the culture of sleep
deprivation on ships and submarines? What lessons learned can
you pass along to your teammates?
Admiral Lescher. Thank you, sir, for the question, and I
appreciate you getting on site as well.
There has been a comprehensive culture change, most starkly
in the surface community. So my background, I grew up as a helo
[helicopter] pilot that deployed on our surface ships, our
small surface ships as an HSL [Helicopter Anti-Submarine
Squadron, Light] pilot. So, I consider myself a student of the
surface warfare culture.
And there was a stark difference. I, as an aviator, would
get up and I would have my crew rest, and I would ensure I had
a circadian rhythm before I would fly. And my teammates across
the passageway did not have that same discipline, and there was
an element at times of the SWO [Surface Warfare Officer]
culture where it was a point of pride to operate sleep-
deprived.
That has fundamentally changed, and it fundamentally
changed with Roy Kitchener, our surface three-star SWO boss,
implementing an instruction this year, the Comprehensive Crew
Endurance Management Policy.
And the community had been thinking about this idea of
setting their watches to preserve circadian rhythm, to preserve
crew rest, to preserve sleep, but it had been dabbled in. Roy
made it a requirement, a policy.
And when you go aboard our ships now and you talk to the
sailors and ask them to talk about how they stand their
watches, you will see that that has been made a requirement and
it is a part of the fundamental culture.
The other element that is interesting is there is quite a
bit of ongoing work on all the elements you talked about,
fatigue, sleep deprivation, with Naval Postgraduate School
[NPS]. So the surface community has worked closely with them.
One other element I would highlight of the surface
community is there are experiments going on right now, a pilot
going on right now as we speak aboard Essex with 300 sailors
using a wearable device. So they are reporting. You know, you
have seen these commercially [inaudible]. Athletes use them.
And the sailors are having these assessments of how they slept,
et cetera, available to be brought into a watch bill software
to optimize that as well.
And it is not just the surface force. Again, in the
interest of brevity, I will go fairly quickly.
The submarine force, I think you know a couple of years ago
they shifted from 6- to 8-hour watches. They are doing a lot of
ongoing work as well with the medical community and NPS on
lighting, on meal schedules, on training schedules, and in
aviation.
Notwithstanding that we have had strong fatigue management
in the air crew, what is new starting in 2018 is our 3710
instruction, our general NATOPS [Naval Air Training and
Operating Procedures Standardization] instruction mandates that
we apply that to the maintenance professionals and the admin
folks as well.
So now it is not just air crew. It is wanting the full
team, maintenance as well as air crew, being focused on being
properly rested and properly prepared to do the mission.
Over.
Mr. Wilson. Well, as a Fitbit fan myself, I know how you
can maintain a person's sleep habits. And so that is very, very
helpful.
And, General Martin, I am really grateful to represent Fort
Jackson. And in the NDAA there was included an amendment that
requires DOD to examine emergency response capabilities and
services in the military installations, to explore the benefits
of requiring medevac helicopters and a fully stocked military
ambulance to be more readily on hand to respond to training
accidents.
What progress has the Army made to adopting these
requirements?
General Martin. Congressman, thank you. It is good to see
you again.
We are aware of the amendment. I have actually read the
amendment itself. And OSD has not tasked that out yet. We
anticipate it will be forthcoming. And we look forward to
supporting the study that is in the amendment to take a look at
it.
That being said, as a former senior commander of two
installations in the United States Army, I can't tell you how
important it is to have appropriately equipped and rehearsed
medical capability that is responsive at each and every one of
your installations. I couldn't agree more.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much. As an Army dad and also a
Navy dad, I am really proud of what you are doing.
I yield back.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Wilson.
Ms. Speier, you are up next.
Ms. Speier. Mr. Chairman, I want to forgo my turn for about
10 minutes so I can get to my destination and ask my question
when I am not in a car.
Mr. Garamendi. We will be watching you, and when we see you
settle down and stop bouncing around, we will call on you.
Thank you.
We will skip then to--I suppose we need to go to a
Democrat. So that would be, Ms. Strickland, you are up. And
then we are going to go to Mr. Moore.
Ms. Strickland, we jumped ahead and didn't give you much
warning.
Mr. Moore then, you are up, and then we will get back on
track.
Mr. Moore. Excellent. Thank you, Chairman.
Generals and Admiral, thank you for being here.
My district hosts the Command Mission and Control Center
for the Utah Test and Training Range [TTR]. And this is a top
priority for them. They have a great track record. They make
this very much a priority. So thank you for the work you are
doing to get here.
And I would actually just like to call out the commission.
As I have gone over the summary here, this is very poignant and
provides really good information, and I encourage my colleagues
to really dive into this.
But insufficient experience, high OPSTEMPO, and workforce
attrition, those are real issues that can directly go towards
training mishaps. And the solutions that are provided are
flying hours and retention bonuses. I welcome comments on that.
Let me ask my first question, though, to General Allvin.
Also, the commission referenced sustainment challenges and
unpredictable funding as contributing factors to training
mishaps.
Could modernization and optimization efforts, specifically
at test and training ranges, are these going to help mitigate
some of these challenges?
General Allvin. Congressman, thank you for the question.
I definitely think that there is a link to that. The
quality of the ranges and the ability to get the type of
training which, moving forward, trying to replicate what is an
advanced threat and not having the right sensors, the right
support equipment, all of that, will force us to try and train
a different way.
And any time we train a little bit differently than how we
fight, it has two impacts. One of those is we have less
confidence in our ability to actually prosecute the targets we
need to or penetrate the airspace we need to, et cetera.
But the other part is it actually, once you start
detracting from that, you start going off script, and there are
safety impacts to that.
So I do believe that there is a linkage there, and I
believe that as we move into a more modern range structure and
support, our big challenge is going to be in the transition.
I mean, if we could fast-forward and look into the future
and have everything modernized and all of the flight support
equipment, all of the platforms at the same level of technology
advancement, we will be in good shape.
But trying to bring legacy systems in the same environment
as the new systems is going to be increasingly challenging. And
I think there is not only a readiness risk, but there are
training efficiency risks. And when you have training
efficiency risks, safety often comes along with that.
So I would agree with that statement.
Mr. Moore. Thank you.
And as I have interacted with commanders at our Air Force
base here in Utah, they know their airmen best. I feel like
there is a great relationship that they have.
And as we talk about the fact that retention bonuses
haven't necessarily worked, even though it is part of the
solution, they haven't necessarily worked in keeping them from
going to commercial aviation, do you feel that squadron
commanders have the adequate authority to be honest brokers
when negotiating aviation bonus contracts?
General Allvin. I think squadron commanders, I think they
do have the authorities. What we need to do is ensure that the
analysis that we do gets communicated and transferred to them
so they can best advise.
Because you make the exact point, Congressman. They are the
ones who interface with the aviators, and they are the ones who
understand what the value proposition is for those aviators,
whether an extra X thousand dollars is really what is going to
seal the deal for a longer commitment or if there are other
levers that the Air Force should be pulling.
So we have air crew summits very frequently that discuss
this. What do we think the sweet spot is? And, of course, that
varies with the economy, as we know.
But the economy is just one variable. We have to do the
best job of understanding what that pull is, but also
understanding how to better communicate the value proposition
of what the Air Force offers and working on all those other
issues that are quality of life, quality of force, that will
keep them there beyond just the dollar values.
Because if we try to go one for one with the airline, as
the economy picks back up again, it will be a losing
proposition. We have seen that, a couple iterations over the
last decade.
Mr. Moore. You just answered my next question, because I
was going to ask to what extent is OPSTEMPO a part of that, but
you have addressed that with quality of life.
OPSTEMPO, the need for the mission, that got them in that
seat in the first place, and encouraging them to do that.
I will leverage the last few seconds with continue to talk
about workforce attrition. They leave critical vacancies in the
organic industrial base.
Do you believe that DOD has adequate hiring authorities to
address workforce attrition and the growing competition?
General Allvin. In the very brief time I have, I would say
that those are, indeed, challenges. We see not only diminishing
manufacturing sources for equipment and supplies, but also to
get the right labor market in to be able to do the rapid
innovation that we need to keep up. That is going to be
critical. I would love to talk more on that as well.
Mr. Moore. Yeah. We have been focused on airmen, but,
obviously, there are so many more job opportunities that we can
maintain that talent.
I yield back. Thank you, Chairman.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Moore.
And thank all of our committee for being very attentive to
the time as well as the witnesses. Appreciate that.
I see Ms. Speier is still in her car, so we will skip back
to Ms. Strickland.
If you are with us, it is your turn.
Ms. Strickland. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Service members put their lives on the line to serve our
country, and, obviously, we have to do everything we can to
ensure their safety.
I am concerned, however, that Congress has found itself
having to create commissions, and some of these services have
had to launch comprehensive reviews after the series of
incidents.
And these actions make it seem as though the safety offices
may not be properly resourced or connected to these accidents.
And so I have a few questions.
Do safety offices have the capacity, the ability, and the
authority to identify and investigate the root causes of
training accidents?
And I would like to direct that toward General Martin and
also General Allvin.
General Martin. Congresswoman, thank you. Appreciate the
question.
First and foremost, what I would really like to do is I
would like to personally invite you and any other members of
the committee for a visit down to the Combat Readiness Center
at Fort Rucker, Alabama, so you can see the exquisite
capability we have there that we use not only to identify the
root cause, the causation of each accident, but also to manage
the data that comes in from the various accidents that are
reported across the board.
As it pertains to the capabilities within each formation to
ensure that we mitigate risk, in the United States Army risk
mitigation is a commander's program.
It is enabled by safety professionals. And those safety
professionals are placed throughout our ranks and our
formation, and we use them to help us as subject matter experts
and also conduits to the rest of the enterprise, since they
talk to each other about different things, to help commanders
promulgate safety programs.
But, that being said, we have recently done a study, based
on some information from a GAO audit, to take a look at our
manpower.
And we are looking at increasing the number of safety
professionals we have at certain locations in our formations to
get after some more of that additional subject matter expertise
that we need to make sure we enable that commander's program to
happen.
Thank you.
Ms. Strickland. Thank you.
General Allvin. Congresswoman, thank you for the question.
I think it is a very important question too.
I believe that one of the most important parts of our
safety program is sort of the independence that the safety
apparatus has, per se.
I think the idea that at the squadron level, if there are
levels of mishaps that are the lower level, that is well
handled within the squadron. But once the cost of lives or
resources elevates that, then that comes outside of the chain
of command.
And so the idea that they have the authority, that without
influence, you know, within the particular command, to be able
to have access to the resources, we immediately, when an
accident happens, we immediately sort of sequester that and
make sure we hold the evidence, if you will.
And then we bring in, if the accident is serious enough, we
bring in external, so they will have free rein to have all the
information they need and the reporting chain that comes all
the way up here to the headquarters.
I think we could always--and I will agree with my Army
colleague Joe there--we could always deal with having a greater
number of people to be in there observing and have more safety
professionals. But I do have confidence in the independence of
our entire safety system to have access all the way up to the
Chief of Staff.
Ms. Strickland. Okay. And then one more question.
Can you tell me what percentage of training accidents occur
between Active Duty, National Guard, and Reserves? And, again,
back to our Army and Air Force leaders, because I am
responsible for JBLM [Joint Base Lewis-McChord].
General Allvin. Congresswoman, I am going to jump in real
quick so we can get back to General Martin.
I do not have the specifics. We have them broken out by
aviation and ground. But I can give you very detailed, if I can
take that for the record, we can have that back to you
posthaste, because we do have those broken out, but they are
separately between aviation and ground incidents.
And I understand. Thank you for JBLM. I was stationed there
at one point.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 91.]
Ms. Strickland. All right. Thank you.
General Martin. Congresswoman, I need to take that for the
record as well, if I could, please.
[The information referred to was not available at the time
of printing.]
Ms. Strickland. All right. Thank you for your answers. And,
again, thank you for your service.
I yield my time.
Mr. Garamendi. Ms. Strickland, that was a very interesting
question. It had not occurred to me that we really need to look
at the three different pieces that make up a full unit, and
maybe there is a significant differential. I will be interested
in having that information.
Ms. Strickland. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Garamendi. I notice Ms. Speier is no longer bouncing
around.
Would you like to have your 5 minutes?
Ms. Speier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Garamendi. Go for it.
Ms. Speier. Let me start off by saying to this
distinguished panel before us, in my recent visits to some of
our installations, in terms of evaluating the culture and the
status of our service members, it is amazing how forthright
spouses are.
And at a recent visit to Fort Hood, one of the spouses said
to me in an open gathering of spouses that the concern of the
OPTEMPO was so great that she would come home at night and was
always afraid that she was going to find her husband in the
shower hanging.
So I encourage you to create opportunities to meet with the
spouses.
I would like to go back to the AAV incident, the tragedy
that happened last summer that Congressman Courtney had spoken
about earlier. Only 7 of the 16 Marines survived. And I
understand that part of the problem was the escape hatch and
their inability to open the escape hatch.
Has that issue been resolved? This is for General Thomas.
General Thomas. Thank you, Congresswoman.
What I would say is, you know, while the investigation is
complete, we are about halfway through notifying the families
of the investigation findings, and that will occur during this
week. As you know, making sure the families are fully informed
and answering their questions is our first priority.
We are happy to come back to the committee and discuss
questions about the material readiness, specifically to your
question, on the escape hatch.
Ms. Speier. All right. It sounds like you are not going to
answer the question right now, and I don't have a lot of time.
So I want to move on to another issue.
The ACVs [amphibious combat vehicles] are now, I guess, in
production, and they have wheels instead of tracks. They are
similar, I understand, to the LAV-25s [light armored vehicles]
and can operate at 60 miles per hour and climb a 60-degree
angle and in many respects very similar to the LAV.
An Orange County Register article recently indicated that
Marines were very concerned about this new vehicle. They were
concerned about the turning radius and the potential for
rollovers.
So I guess my first question is, will the ACV training be
more rigorous? And how are we going to protect against
rollovers?
General Thomas. Congresswoman, rollovers for any armored
vehicle is always a concern. In 2019 we had seven rollovers and
the tragic loss of several Marines. In 2020, we had two. And in
2021, thus far we have had zero.
We have to, for all of our vehicles, including ACV, we have
to improve our training to avoid these types of mishaps. One of
the things that we are doing is we are increasing the number of
driving events or training events for all the crews going
through that particular syllabus.
And one of the things that we are doing with our new Safety
Management System is for commanders of all these units to
characterize the risk that they face in their particular
location and their mission, and then to ensure that they are
providing adequate supervision, detailed planning, and detailed
debriefs for all of these missions that involve these vehicles.
Ms. Speier. All right.
So in terms of more rigorous training that is being
contemplated, how do we guard against rollovers if they are a
risk that we frequently encounter?
General Thomas. Congresswoman, what I would say is this.
The best way to do that--there are several areas that we have
identified that are causal factors to rollovers. As I
mentioned, one of the things we have to do is increase the
number of driver training events.
We also have to make sure that our ranges are very well
understood and all hazard areas are very well marked.
And then it gets back to detailed planning with the crews,
with supervision of commanders. And that is the way that we are
going to prevent those rollovers.
Ms. Speier. Are there simulators that are available in the
marketplace to practice potential responses to rollovers?
General Thomas. We have simulators as a part of our
training system which have very good capabilities, but the
Marines have to do actual training in the vehicle itself--in
rough terrain--that takes into account all the other factors
that I just described.
Ms. Speier. All right. My time is expired. Thank you.
And thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member.
Mr. Garamendi. Ms. Speier, while you are still available,
the issue of the AAV off the coast of California [inaudible]
did come up [inaudible] late next week, once the Marine Corps
has finished [inaudible] the families. And we will let
everybody have a few days' advance notice. That will be a
telephone briefing. Okay?
Ms. Speier. All right. Thank you.
Mr. Garamendi. Very good. Thank you.
The gavel order remains Scott, Slotkin, Kahele, and
Buchanan.
So, Austin.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
One of the reasons we have fewer combat incidents that lead
to death is because of how hard we train inside the United
States. And while I do agree that we need to certainly limit
[inaudible] as best we can, but the rigorous training is the
reason that we don't lose more men and women in combat than we
do.
And so we can't cut all of the risk out, especially with
regard to EOD [explosive ordnance disposal] training and high-
risk training, and expect that our men and women are going to
be prepared for combat when that situation and the need for
their expertise arises.
So, with that said, General Allvin, one of the things I was
very impressed with is when the Yanky 72 accident occurred, is
how good the investigation was with regard to narrowing down
exactly what led to the accident, and then how fast the Air
Force responded to changing the processes with regard to the
propellers.
So I want to just tell you, the loss of life in Yanky 72,
we obviously mourn those soldiers and the sailor that we lost,
but I was pretty impressed with the investigation that came
about.
In your testimony, you talk about maintenance effectiveness
and how maintenance effectiveness drives higher aircraft
availability rates, and then the availability rates leads to
obviously the amount of training that we are able to do and,
hopefully, that leads to fewer accidents.
The advanced manufacturing technologies, like 3D printing,
robotics, and artificial intelligence that the Air Force is now
using to improve maintenance timelines, can you describe some
of the sustainment challenges and the remedies of those
challenges that are driving low aircraft availability and fewer
available training hours and how we use these advanced methods
to fix that?
General Allvin. Yeah, Congressman, I am happy to do so,
because I have got to tell you, this is one of the more
exciting areas that I think we can really make some progress
in. And it starts with the data. It starts with being able to
have an analytic baseline to do this.
And I think a couple of things that are going on. The
condition-based maintenance, which is not something we invented
in the Air Force, the airlines have been doing it for a while,
but the idea of theory of constraints and taking sensor-based
analysis, putting sensors on particular parts of the aircraft
and testing them and monitoring the heat, the vibration, et
cetera, et cetera, is really going to help.
I would like it to go faster. I would think one of the
reasons why the airlines have really advanced theirs as much,
because, as you know, Congressman, one of the things about
being able to do AI [artificial intelligence] and machine
learning, you need lots of data. You need massive computing
power, which we have. But you need lots of data.
And so the airlines have been able to take lots of data for
like type aircraft and move that forward.
Ours, we have a little bit less of a homogeneous fleet and
mission, but we are moving out on that and trying to find those
things through the theory of constraints and look at those long
lead items.
And understanding we also have to have an aggressive
diminishing manufacturing sources and material solutions
program to be able to understand not only what are the parts
that are going to be the critical path that are going to need
to be maybe proactively replaced.
But also, when you have got diminishing manufacturing
sources, to your point, on some of these additive manufacturing
techniques, we may be able to generate those parts without
having to go and be sort of vendor locked or have single-source
suppliers.
So those are just a couple of the areas. I think it is just
a broad, broad area that we can really look into a new way of
extending and making sure aircraft availability is at its peak.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, General.
And just for the committee's sake, I mean, if we want to
increase the level of flying hours, then we have to increase
the aircraft availability. And that gets back to, I think, the
predictive maintenance and some of the other things that we are
doing that make more planes available for our pilots.
So, again, I have been impressed with the ability to find
out exactly what caused an accident, the ability to remedy that
so that it does not happen again.
And thank you all for your service.
And, again, we have got to train hard because we fight
hard. And the reason we are as successful in combat as we are
is because we push the limits inside the United States when we
are training.
With that, I yield.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you very much, Austin.
And also, General Allvin, you touched on a couple of things
we have discussed before. The condition-based maintenance is
one. And then Austin just used the other word, which is
``predictive.'' These two things, this committee is way into
this.
And then the [inaudible] analytical [inaudible]. So the
gathering of information from ancient, I guess, clipboards that
are sitting in some file someplace on a C-130 that is 40 years
old. So we want to gather up all that information.
We are going to push this really hard, because it does deal
with the safety issue as well as the flying hours and all the
things that we have talked about here.
And I have got all of you gentlemen up here. I had an
earlier meeting this morning. I am going to go to Ms. Slotkin
in just a moment.
But we had an earlier meeting this morning about a company
that is able to produce things that are not available anywhere,
that broken piece that you absolutely have that you can no
longer cannibalize from some piece of airframe somewhere.
I am thinking that we might have a virtual session and
invite into that session any and anybody that thinks that they
can meet this particular problem, a very acute problem of parts
and pieces that are no longer available and no longer can be
cannibalized, and then get the appropriate people on and let
them strut their stuff and you guys can go from there.
Okay, enough for me. Ms. Slotkin, you are up.
Elissa. Hello. Elissa, if you are out there, we will come
back to you.
I am going to stay with--then that would be Mr. Kahele.
Given that it is still 3 hours earlier in Hawaii, Kai, if
you are available. One more call to Kai. Kai, if you are out
there, it is your turn.
All right. We now turn to Mr. Buchanan, not a member of the
committee, but we have run through the committee members. I
believe we are going to have a couple of committee members that
will return after you finish.
Mr. Buchanan, your question.
Mr. Buchanan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank
Ranking Member Lamborn for this opportunity today.
I am from the Tampa Bay area in Florida. I called on the
committee to hold a public hearing on military training
accidents last August, so I want to thank you for that
opportunity.
Can you hear me all right?
Mr. Garamendi. Yes, we can.
Mr. Buchanan. Okay.
I became involved with this issue after being contacted by
one of my constituents, Kimberly Weaver, and learning of the
heartbreaking and preventable death of her son, Army Specialist
Nick Panipinto. He is a 20-year-old.
Nick died in a training accident at Camp Humphreys in South
Korea in 2019. A tragic series of errors and training failures
contributed to Nick's death, including a lack of medical
services on the base and significant delays in a medical
response to the scene of the accident. Nick eventually arrived
at the hospital 2 hours after the accident and died from his
injuries later that day.
That is why I offered an amendment last year to the NDAA
which has since become law, requiring the Pentagon to examine
emergency medical services and capability at U.S. military
bases around the world and outside, ideally even in the U.S.,
but outside the U.S., and report back to Congress.
Gentlemen, I want to thank all of our witnesses here today.
Thanks to your leadership, we have got the best military on the
planet, but we can always, as someone said, do better.
And I guess one of the things when we started looking at
the facts of this is that in 2017, just 1 year, that they had
20 killed in combat and 80 killed in training. And then as we
looked at it, there's many times where there's quite a few more
killed in training than in combat.
So, General Martin, I would like to get your thoughts on
where you see--what is acceptable. I mean, we don't want to
lose one airman or one person in the Army, but I would like to
get your thoughts in terms of when we see these numbers, so
many more are getting killed in training than in combat. How do
you respond to that?
General Martin. Congressman, first and foremost, my
thoughts and prayers go out to that family. My son is a soldier
in the United States Army, and I can tell you I can't imagine a
day without him. And it has just got to be--I can't imagine it.
And, as a former commander of two installations and
commanders of formations across the board in and out of combat,
I will tell you that every single one of the accidents that I
have seen happen are preventable. They are all preventable.
And so, with that in mind, we can never ever stop our
relentless efforts to get after mitigating risk in our
formations.
What we do is very, very difficult. We ask our soldiers and
our formations to do a lot. And in order for them to be able to
do the mission that they do there is a lot of dangerous
activity.
So commanders at echelon are required to mitigate the risk
to their formation. They are required to certify the soldiers
on their equipment. They are required to ensure that as those
soldiers operate that equipment independently, they do it under
safe conditions; a risk assessment, identifying all the hazards
and mitigating those risks, is done in concert with that.
And if they are operating in a tactical environment,
commanders are responsible for their operating environment, the
soldiers beneath them, to identify the hazards that are in that
environment and mitigate those risks.
And on that day----
Mr. Buchanan. General, let me ask you, because we just have
a certain amount of time. Why didn't they have in the case--you
might not know exactly, but in Korea here at the base they were
training--medevac helicopters and fully stocked ambulance?
Overseas it seems like we don't have as much capability
immediately to help these young men and young women ideally. I
am sure some places are better than others, but that is the
sense of what we came up with, in terms of Korea, on this base.
General Martin. Congressman, I have read that accident
investigation cover to cover. And based on my experience, I
would call what happened in Korea an anomaly and a very
unfortunate anomaly.
And so I understand the amendment that you have introduced
that has become law, and I understand that we are to conduct
and explore a study into exactly what the capability is across
all of our installations in the Army.
I can tell you the two that I served at most recently, both
installations that was the standard. But we need to make sure.
And so we are committed to support the efforts of this study.
And, again, I am so sorry for the loss of your
constituent's son.
Mr. Buchanan. And let me mention, General, I was very
disturbed when I learned from Nick's mother that he didn't have
a license to operate the vehicle. And I don't know, but it
sounds like a serious vehicle. You would know. M2A3, a Bradley
Fighting Vehicle. Sounds like a serious vehicle.
But it seems like there is no requirement for training, no
classroom instruction before you start to road test these. In
fact, according to a sworn statement from his unit master
driver, his comments were their unit driving training program
is nonexistent.
We have the greatest military in the world, the greatest
leaders, including yourselves. How can something like this
happen if that is the case? Again, a serious vehicle, no
training, he is out driving it. It doesn't even seem possible
to me.
But I will let you respond to that if you have any sense of
it.
General Martin. Congressman, that is the classic example of
a deviation from an existing standard. Army Regulation 600-55
in its current state and the state that it was back then
required all drivers to be trained and certified. It is a
three-phase program. That hasn't changed. The rigor of that
program has changed with the changes in the regulation.
But he should have been. And he shouldn't have been able to
operate the vehicle without a license. And because of that, in
the administrative investigation that resulted from that there
was negligence that was identified at multiple echelons in the
command, and the chain of command took appropriate action
against those individuals who failed that soldier on that day.
Mr. Buchanan. And I will just tell you, the family, Nick's
family would appreciate assurances that steps will be taken
going forward so that parents don't have to go through this
again. And I think that is the reason I got involved and active
in making sure we passed this bill.
But also they just want the assurance from the Army and
from you that we are going to do everything we can to make sure
something like this doesn't happen again.
General Martin. To his family, my condolences. I am
committed to making sure that doesn't happen again.
Mr. Buchanan. Thank you, General. And thanks for your
leadership.
And, again, we have got the best military on the planet. I
know things happen. But, again, this I am sure will provide a
lot of reassurance to Nick's family.
Thank you and God bless.
Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Buchanan, the hearing record will be
available, and you could pass that on to the family, you just
heard from the vice chair where the U.S. Army is on that
question.
Mr. Buchanan. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the
opportunity to visit today, okay? Thank you.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you.
Before we start the second round, we have got about another
25 minutes before we are scheduled to terminate.
Dr. Green. Mr. Chairman, if I could, this is Congressman
Green. I haven't had a chance to go yet. I am in the queue, I
think.
Mr. Garamendi. Actually, you are not, but you certainly did
the right thing. You are now.
Dr. Green. Well, thank you.
Mr. Garamendi. Your turn, Dr. Green. Go for it.
Dr. Green. Thank you very much, Chairman. I appreciate
that.
Ranking Member Lamborn, thank you, too, for holding this
hearing.
I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today
and for their life of service to this great country.
And, General Martin, it is a pleasure to see you leading at
this level. My family, with a young infantry officer serving in
the 101st Airborne Division, sleeps a little better knowing
that you are the Vice Chief of the Army.
For the rest of the members on the committee, I served as a
flight surgeon and took part in numerous investigations of
accidents. The impact of these on families and on the unit and
even the entire service is profound. And we just heard as one
of our members questioned about a death of a constituent, it is
horrific.
And we need to ensure we are giving these leaders the
resources they need to train and train for war in a safe way.
You can't zero risk, but the better resourced the services are,
the less likely accidents are to occur.
It was stated earlier in testimony that training impacts
accidents. If you train less, the potential for accidents
increases. And I recall from my days in the Army that the Army
had a minimum number of flight hours for each aircraft type
below which they expected accidents to increase.
And I wondered from our Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy
witnesses today, do you guys have a set number of flight hours
per aircraft below which you expect accidents to increase?
General Allvin. Congressman, you said Air Force first. I
will go ahead and lead out with that.
We actually in the Air Force, we don't have a predictive
measure that just has number per aircraft. It really is on an
individual basis, and sometimes individuals fly multiple
aircraft.
There is a window that we do watch, and that happens down
all the way at the squadron commander level. And let's say for
a multi-crew aircraft, there is a certain amount of hours when
we look.
And perhaps an aircraft commander, once they achieve maybe
over 100 hours as an aircraft commander until they get to an
instructor level, there is a certain threshold in which they
are a little bit more likely, because they feel very confident
and they haven't had their refresh.
So there are periods of vulnerability.
Dr. Green. Yeah. I remember that in the Army. The Army had
that too where over the course of a pilot's career, there was
that point where they got a little overconfident and then a
point where that sort of went away.
But I meant do you have a measurable--it sounds like you
don't.
Perhaps Navy, Marine Corps, just yes, no, do you all have a
set number per month you got to hit or you expect accidents to
increase?
Admiral Lescher. Congressman, Bill Lescher here quickly
from the Navy.
We do have our number we use. It is called tactical hard
deck, and it varies by the type/model/series. But it is
something we track closely to keep our units above the tactical
hard deck. It does have that feature you talked about where
they are seen as a knee in the curve for propensity for
mishaps.
Over.
Dr. Green. Could you get that number to my office? I would
really appreciate that.
And our Marine, General Thomas, do you guys have that
number?
General Thomas. Congressman, we do. We are aligned with the
Navy on the tactical hard deck. It does vary per type/model/
series, but nominally, 15 hours from a programming perspective
is what we shoot for.
Dr. Green. Obviously, dollars in the DOD budget determines
flight hours, whether it is maintenance dollars or fuel cost.
Could I ask each of you, if the DOD budget is cut 10
percent, will the flight hours decrease per month? And, if so,
if we cut this budget like some people are suggesting, can we
expect more accidents if those training hours go down below
that hard deck?
General Martin. Congressman, I will answer first from the
Army. It is good to see you as well. I hope you are well.
You know, regardless, you have got to train our formations
and you have got to have the courage to never quit. And if you
do that, you will be able to see the mission through. [It is]
10.6 hours, for our Active Component, it is 10.6 hours per crew
per month. It is 6.5 hours for Army National Guard. And it is
5.7 hours for the United States Army Reserve.
And just to answer a potential follow-up question, the
reason why they are different is because we work 5-year cycle
for Guard and Reserve for training, where Active Component it
is less than the 1:5 ratio. It is a 1:2 ratio in terms of
deployment to dwell. And so that is why those numbers are
different.
But if the dollars go down, our home station flying
programs could be impacted. I couldn't guarantee that, because
it depends on where we prioritize that in reference to all of
our other operational and maintenance requirements across the
Army. But it is something that we are going to have to watch
very closely, and sufficient funding is critical to our
aviation training program.
Dr. Green. One quick question for you, General Martin. If
you could talk a little bit about how the Army is doing risk
management training for the company grade level. I know I have
seen some of the senior grade brigade commander-level stuff.
Could you talk about what needs to be improved and sustained in
the company grade level? And that will be my last question,
Chairman.
General Martin. Congressman, I will answer it mindful of
your time. I will be very quick on this.
We train it in all of our professional military education
courses, but we also train it in our pre-command courses. But
really where the training happens is at our Combat Training
Centers and what has happened at home stations as a result of
that. It is something we ram home often as we continue to train
in a very dangerous collective training environment.
Dr. Green. Thank you.
Thank you, Chairman.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Dr. Green.
One of the fortunate things is this committee has members
who really have a lot of experience in specific areas. And you
were drilling into an area, Mr. Green, that I am going ``hmm.''
I want you to continue to drill down on those things that you
are interested in.
Dr. Green. Yes, sir.
Mr. Garamendi. We are going into a second round of
questions here. I would start with myself, but I have had the
opportunity to talk to all of these gentlemen prior to this
hearing, so I won't add at this point other than to make--well,
I will make my closing comment.
And then, Mr. Lamborn, if you want to come up with any
second round of questions.
Before you do, Mr. Lamborn, there are a couple of members
of the committee that may have returned that we skipped over.
Mrs. Luria, if you are here, it is your turn.
Mrs. Luria. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It is good to be able to be part of this conversation.
And I will just focus specifically on the Navy. And I know
that we had these two tragic incidents in 2017 with the USS
Fitzgerald, the USS John S. McCain.
And, Admiral Lescher, in your testimony I was very
interested in that section. You specifically outlined the 111
recommendations that were made in the follow-on report.
And in your testimony, at the bottom of page 3, I just
wanted to see if you could provide some more clarity on this
statement: ``Improvements have been made in Surface Warfare
Officer training.'' Then you list some other items.
So do you have specific metrics you can cite to say what
improvements have been made and how you have been able to
measure this over time since 2017?
Admiral Lescher. Yes, ma'am.
So I know you are quite familiar with the Readiness and
Reform Oversight Council. So some of the metrics would be in
the training itself.
Again, I know you are familiar with in terms of the Basic
Division Officer course, the JOOD [Junior Officer of the Deck]
course, the certifications, the assessments that come out of
that. So those are certainly tracked as well as the go/no-go
process on those elements.
Some of the other metrics in terms of manning. We for sure
keep track on fit/fill and TYCOM [U.S. Navy Type Command]
manning actions, critical NEC [Navy Enlisted Classification]
shortfalls.
In terms of training metrics, the milestone assessment
performance I talked about in the SWO manned progression.
Looking at the logbook data. Again, I believe you are familiar
with that analysis.
SWO qualification timelines is a metric that is important.
Tier one, Tier two certifications course.
But then equip again. SEANAV [Naval Sea Systems Command]
figure of merit, INSURV [Board of Inspection and Survey]
performance, deferred maintenance.
Other metrics would include near-miss reporting trends. And
I think I highlighted in my written testimony we are seeing as
part of the strong culture change that Roy Kitchener is driving
a strong increase in the reporting of near-miss and HAZREPs
[hazard reports] as well.
So I would highlight those as some of the metrics that we
use to keep a close eye on the implementation of the RROC
[Readiness and Reform Oversight Council].
Mrs. Luria. Well, thank you. And it sounds like you have
developed quite a few metrics.
Are there any problem areas within that data or negative
trends that you have identified over the course of the last 4
years and since implementing these?
And I also noticed that you mentioned that you have
improved in combined integrated air and missile defense and
anti-submarine warfare training as well. Are there any
particular areas within that that are of concern?
Admiral Lescher. I would highlight, ma'am, as probably at
the top of the list of concern right now is [inaudible]
material condition.
I think you were offline earlier when Congressman Courtney
asked about how we were driving some of this change. And
really, by bringing alive the power of the TYCOMs, and the
TYCOMs to have a strong voice: Hey, do not progress. I have to
replace this engine. I have to redo this exercise. My fleet
commander is listening.
But in terms of other--so I think that is a strong element.
In terms of where we can do better, as we look at INSURV
performance, I look at PMS [planned maintenance system]. I look
at the ability. Do we have the proper manning to do the
maintenance?
And so this is leading to some thoughtful conversations
about things such as--it was touched on by the chairman
earlier--some of the condition-based maintenance pilots we have
on Detroit--we have one on a DDG, one on an [inaudible]--as
well as bringing in some of the lessons we have learned from
aviation journey, where we went from 255 up jets for 10 years
to today's 341.
And part of that journey was controlling maintenance demand
signal. This was a really interesting journey where we saw, for
example, when we had the Naval Aviation Systems Command to do a
deep dive on the F-18 and then the E-2 maintenance program, we
were doing maintenance at a periodicity beyond what was
demanded from an engineering perspective and in some cases
simply hadn't been updated.
So I know Roy is looking at this. So both condition-based
maintenance and maintenance reset, to properly scope the PMS to
get after some of these INSURV trends.
Mrs. Luria. Well, thank you. And I know that it has been a
recent topic of discussion amongst several members of this
committee and Seapower that the current law does not continue
to require the Navy to report INSURV findings to Congress.
But I hope you would agree that it is a both a useful
process and inspection and very useful dialogue for those
Members of Congress to understand the readiness of our ships.
And we look to include language that will continue those
reports, because I think they are very meaningful.
So thank you again for your testimony today.
And I yield back.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you very much, Mrs. Luria.
We will begin a short second round. We have got about 10
minutes.
Mr. Lamborn.
Mr. Lamborn. Okay, thank you.
I would like to just quickly touch on technology as a tool
to improve safety.
For any one of you, what technologies might be useful to
make operating on training ranges safer while still maintaining
the tactical feel of operations?
And whether it is currently in operation or in the
development stage that you are aware of, are any of you able to
answer that question?
General Martin. Congressman, I will go ahead and start. I
will be quick so my colleagues have an opportunity to talk too.
I think that the one word that comes to mind is autonomy. I
want to make sure you understand exactly what I mean. I don't
mean the aircraft flying by itself, the vehicle driving by
itself, but pilots and drivers enabled by autonomy that allows
them to take some of the tasks that would be demanding their
time and their thought and let a machine do that so that they
can focus on the most important tasks.
In the training environment, that is good. That will
actually mitigate risk, because more focus on the most
important or higher risk tasks that pilots or drivers have to
do.
But in combat, it is huge, because you want to focus on the
enemy. Anything you are doing to not focus on the enemy takes
you away from focusing on the enemy.
And so autonomy is probably the single most important
thing. But folks want to say that, okay, let the aircraft just
fly itself and we will have people. It is not that simple.
Humans have to be part of the loop for a whole host of reasons
that I don't have time to talk about.
But that is my thoughts from the Army.
Admiral Lescher. Sir, Bill Lescher from the Navy, very,
very quickly.
I would offer Live, Virtual, Constructive training is a
core area that in complementary with flying on the range is a
powerful improvement to the quality of training. And I believe
as well it will be nondiscretionary, in the sense that it is a
way for to us train high-end capability and high-end tactics,
techniques, and procedures that we don't want to reveal more
broadly to anybody who might be watching.
But a strong push, for any number of reasons, to get after
Live, Virtual, Constructive technology.
The other thing I would highlight, the Navy is--there is so
much of our high-end aviation training at Fallon, Nevada.
And we are quite constrained by what we see we need to
operate to get the proper ranges of weapons, et cetera. And,
again, we can work together as we work to broaden the range,
also to bring the best type of technology on board.
Over.
Mr. Lamborn. Admiral, on that point, let me say that we
made a push in this committee to expand Fallon last year, and
we ran into some resistance in the Natural Resources Committee.
I think we need to make another push there and not give up
on that, so that your naval aviators have the facilities they
need to do proper training, especially in this new day and age.
Admiral Lescher. Yes, sir. It is our top legislative
priority for our leadership, clearly for our aviators. And I
look forward to working with the committee and continuing to
get after that this year.
Mr. Lamborn. Maybe I will just turn it back to the
chairman, for the sake of time.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Lamborn.
If any of the committee members have a quick question that
absolutely has to be asked, raise your hand and go for it.
Mr. Green.
Dr. Green. Mr. Chairman, can you hear me okay?
Mr. Garamendi. Yes.
Dr. Green. Just a quick question for any of the witnesses
today.
Are there resources that we could authorize besides money?
You know, is it a training system or more virtual training
before they get in the cockpit that would enhance or decrease
accidents?
I am thinking about what we can do. I know you all know
what you have to do to keep accidents from happening. What do
we need to do to support you in addition to just dollars?
General Allvin. I will take a crack at that, Congressman.
I think we are all entering this journey together, and we
have touched on a lot, with the advent of technology and
bringing on new systems, bringing on the things that my
colleagues were talking about--Live, Virtual, Constructive
system.
But, I think, fundamentally, where we could continue to use
your help in moving forward on this journey together, is the
manner in which we are going to mature these is different from
traditional acquisition programs.
And so sometimes, if we are going to innovate fast, we need
to be able to fail fast and have a new way, but still have you
preserve your oversight. We know that is important.
So, we are going to be moving into areas where we are going
to be investigating technologies with respect to command and
control and leveraging these in ways that don't look like a
traditional acquisition profile, with milestone A, milestone B,
and then it ends up with a shiny object over at the end.
But the idea that we can work together as a joint force and
investigate these new technologies, fail fast and fail cheap,
while at the same time giving you the confidence that you have
the oversight so we can continue this trust relationship.
And once we do that and we can transition into this new way
of developing capabilities in a way that has the proper
congressional oversight and trust that the funding is going to
the right spot, I think that is going to be so important to
allow us to accelerate.
It will be better warfighting. It will be better training.
It will just be a better approach. Because there is a new way
that we have to be able to develop and field capabilities that
is different from the 20th century things that sometimes we are
still shackled with.
That would be my input.
Dr. Green. Yeah, I want to see organizations that learn in
real time, and I know you do too. And I just want to make sure
you are resourced to have real-time performance improvement,
process improvement happening across the formations, and if
there is anything we need to do, to make sure you have got it.
That is what I am asking.
So thank you for that.
Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Green, we are going to let it go at
that.
Dr. Green. Okay.
Mr. Garamendi. I think Mr. Moore had a question that he
wanted to ask.
Mr. Moore. No, nothing from the [inaudible], Chairman. We
are good.
Mr. Garamendi. Good.
Elaine.
Mrs. Luria. No, I am fine. Thank you.
Mr. Garamendi. Well, we could let the other three witnesses
answer Mr. Moore's question if you would like to, and then I am
going to shut this thing down.
Admiral Lescher. Mr. Chairman, Bill Lescher here. I will
take a stab at the question as well to build on what General
Allvin said.
One thing I think the committee can do--and it is probably
self-evident since I know the committee already is working hard
at it--is to continue to be an advocate in the broader Congress
for readiness.
You know, periodically you hear the self-talk in the
building here about there are strong constituents and even
policy advocates for certain pieces of hardware, but where is
the advocacy for readiness? And I always educate them, we have
those advocates in these readiness committees.
And I think it is important for us to educate more broadly
even outside the defense oversight committees on the importance
of readiness. And so I again am looking forward to working in
partnership with the committee on that message.
You know, the Congressman asked a question earlier that we
didn't broadly answer about, hey, what happens if top line
comes down? My picture of that is we are not going to accept a
hollow force. And so we are not going to accept increased risk.
But we will for sure have a smaller and less lethal Navy as
we adapt to that smaller top line and do it in the responsible
way, by not having a hollow force. And so I think that is part
of the message as well.
Over.
Mr. Garamendi. General Martin, do you want to add?
Or, General Thomas, you can add if you like.
General Martin. Congressman, I am going to give the
straight answer of I endorse what both the Navy and the Air
Force recommended. Both of those areas are important,
especially the advocacy for OMA dollars and readiness resources
for our formations. It is huge.
General Thomas. And, Chairman, I would add to all of my
colleagues' points that your advocacy for readiness is key. As
Admiral Lescher said, if we see a reduction in top line, we are
going to maintain our readiness, but it will force us to be a
smaller force.
And then I would just say that, from a technology
standpoint, I think that we are moving in the right direction.
But I would also support General Allvin's comments that
supporting what I would call acquisition agility from the
committee is going to continue to be important while at the
same time preserving the oversight of the Congress.
Mr. Garamendi. I have got about another hour, maybe 2 hours
of questions I would love to get to all four of you, and some
of them are slightly off the subject matter.
With regard to acquisitions in the Air Force, we had a GAO
report to us yesterday about satellite systems and GPS [Global
Positioning System] systems. Rather concerning. And that is an
issue we take up with General Allvin and your colleagues a
little later.
But, clearly, there is an acquisition issue that goes
across really all of the platforms, particularly the new
technologies that all of you talked about.
With regard to the readiness, we have had many discussions
about maintaining the equipment. Looking this morning at the
Early Bird Brief, and I noticed that I have become an advocate
of not going to buy anything new until we maintain what is old.
And I mean it. I suspect I may lose that battle, but I am not
going to go down easy.
So we are way into maintaining the equipment that we have,
and you gentlemen have heard me on this before. And I really,
really mean it.
So the other part, this hearing was specifically on the
safety and accidents, but it cuts across to the other things
that this committee has been working on, maintenance and
availability of equipment so that you have the chance to
practice. So we will continue on those.
For our presenters, I really appreciate the hearing today.
You were forthcoming. You answered the questions of the
committee in a way that was as complete as possible in the time
allowed.
To my committee members and staff that are on, most every
question leads to another question. And so if you have that
follow-up question, let us know. And maybe it will be a
written, maybe it will be a briefing, formal or informal.
So follow up to all of the committee members, and
particularly to Mr. Lamborn, who has a specific task on the
minority side.
I look forward to working with all of the witnesses,
General Thomas, General Martin, General Allvin, and Admiral
Lescher. We have got things to do together. We will be doing a
new NDAA and we are beginning that process now. Some ideas have
come from this hearing and from the other hearings.
Let it be known, anybody that wants to listen, we are going
to drive the readiness issue across the board. Things that we
didn't talk about here, other things that we will talk about.
And along the way, hopefully it will turn out better in the
future.
Thank you so very, very much to everybody that has been
participating on this. A big shout-out to the staff. The
minority staff, the majority staff did great work lining it up
to the witnesses. Thank you.
Have a good afternoon, evening, and we will look forward to
our next opportunity to talk.
Thank you all very much.
This hearing is formally adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:05 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
March 23, 2021
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
March 23, 2021
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[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING
THE HEARING
March 23, 2021
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RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MS. STRICKLAND
General Allvin. During the timeframe FY2015-2020, 8% of Air Force
aviation training Class A mishaps involved the Air National Guard and
5% involved the Air Force Reserve Command, with the remaining 87% of
mishaps involving Active Duty organizations. Neither the Air National
Guard or Air Force Reserve Command were involved in any ground Class A
training mishaps during this period, with 100% of the mishaps involving
Active Duty organizations.
The Air National Guard was involved in 11% of aviation Class B
mishaps, 13% of ground Class B mishaps, 13% of aviation Class C
mishaps, and 11% of ground Class C mishaps.
The Air Force Reserve Command was involved in 2% of aviation Class
B mishaps, 5% of ground Class B mishaps, 6% of aviation Class C
mishaps, and 6% of ground Class C mishaps.
Active Duty organizations were involved in 87% of aviation Class B
mishaps, 82% of ground Class B mishaps, 81% of aviation Class C
mishaps, and 83% of ground Class C mishaps. [See page 24.]
[all]