[Senate Hearing 117-]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


 
       DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2022

                              ----------                              


                        THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 2021

                                       U.S. Senate,
           Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., in room SD-192, Dirksen 
Senate Office Building, Hon. Jon Tester (chairman) presiding.
    Present: Senators Tester, Murray, Schatz, Baldwin, Shelby, 
Collins, Blunt, and Moran.

                         DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

                         Department of the Navy

                        Office of the Secretary

STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS W. HARKER, ACTING SECRETARY


                opening statement of senator jon tester


    Senator Tester. I want to call this subcommittee meeting to 
order.
    Let me begin by welcoming our witnesses. Acting Secretary 
Harker, this is your first appearance before the Senate 
Appropriations Committee and I welcome you.
    Admiral Gilday and General Berger, you were both here last 
year for the last live hearing before the pandemic, so welcome 
back. It is good to host you in person.
    I think we can all agree that China is a current-pacing 
threat and that the pace is a run, if not a full-out sprint.
    So, how are we keeping up? The Navy and Marine Corps are 
facing the current challenges with different approaches. On one 
hand, the Marine Corps has taken major steps to reshape its 
force for the future based on General Berger's strategy to 
self-fund the reforms.
    On the other hand, the Navy is faced with the balancing act 
between the substantial cost of maintaining a fleet of nearly 
300 ships and the additional cost of modernizing to meet the 
threats of the future.
    The Navy's 2022 budget protects readiness in order to 
deliver a combat-credible force. As for the future, the path is 
less clear. Secretary Harker has reportedly found that plans to 
design new destroyer submarines and jets all at the same time 
are unaffordable.
    So, how do we increase our pace to keep up with the threat? 
For the Navy, I understand there are ongoing reviews on what 
the fleet of tomorrow should look like. I would add that, no 
matter what you find in those studies, holding people 
accountable, whether it is government or civilian, for delays 
in ship deliveries or increase in weapons costs has to be part 
of that solution.
    The committee is eager to work with you to find the right 
balance between modernization, or between modernizing and 
maintaining the force and fleet that we have.
    Once again, I want to thank the witnesses for their 
testimony that they are about to give today and look forward to 
hearing from each one of them.
    With that, I will turn it over to you, Senator Shelby.


                 statement of senator richard c. shelby


    Senator Shelby. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will try to be 
brief.
    Welcome. I welcome you, too, Mr. Secretary, Admiral, and 
General Berger. Thank you for being here.
    We all look forward to hearing about the Navy and the 
Marine Corps' budget proposal for 2022. This discussion is 
particularly important, I believe, because the Navy's budget 
proposal reflects a meager 1.8 percent increase from fiscal 
year 2021 while reducing the end strength in procurement 
investments. The reductions are proposed despite the need to 
maintain readiness and make progress on key modernization 
priorities, like the Navy's leg of the nuclear triad and the 
introduction of a new weapons system.
    In addition to other deficiencies in the Navy's budget 
proposal, I believe this budget fails to include funding to 
support the multi-year procurement contract for the DDG-51, 
which reflects poorly, I believe, on the Department's view of 
its commitments to Congress and its long-term ship- building 
plans.
    It also calls into question the seriousness with which this 
Administration approaches defense-related funding decisions 
given that the DDG-51 appears as the Navy's top priority on its 
unfunded requirements list.
    You are all very well aware that our adversaries, including 
China and Russia, pose new and increasing threats, and they 
will grow. They are making unprecedented investments in their 
capability and capacity, investments that this budget does not 
even come close to matching.
    I believe that this budget, which fails to even keep pace 
with inflation, sends the wrong message to our allies and our 
adversaries. I am interested in hearing how the 2022 budget 
request fully meets, if it does, the needs of the Navy and 
Marine Corps while maintaining our advantage over our 
adversaries. It will be an interesting discussion.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Tester. Thank you, Senator Shelby.
    We will start out with you, Secretary Harker.


               summary statement of hon. thomas w. harker


    Secretary Harker. Chairman Tester, Vice Chairman Shelby, 
distinguished members of the committee, thank you for your 
bipartisan support on behalf of our sailors, marines, and 
civilians. I am honored to be here with General Berger and 
Admiral Gilday. I support their efforts to build a more 
integrated, all-domain naval force through the NAVPLAN and the 
Force Design 2030.
    In order to move these plans forward within existing 
resources, we have had to make some very hard choices in this 
budget, but that is exactly what the American people expect us 
to do. Every dollar is a strategic asset that must be maximized 
to stay ahead of the pacing threat of China and the many other 
challenges facing our fleet and our Nation.
    Every investment must be done in a balanced and sustainable 
manner to ensure we maintain the readiness of our current 
fleet, while building the capacity and the capability we will 
need in the future. The cost of readiness is increasing. 
Personnel and maintenance costs have grown at a rate that is 
well above inflation. This growth squeezes the rest of our 
budget.
    In order to maintain our readiness, we have had to delay 
some of our planned ship purchases to future years. In order to 
invest in a superior future force, we have had to divest of 
less-capable assets. These were not easy choices, but we cannot 
create a hollow force that does not train our sailors or 
Marines, or which leaves holes in units, or does not provide 
for sufficient crew rest. We have learned those lessons through 
the tragic mishaps that have occurred over the last 5 years.
    In order to ensure future availability and readiness of our 
fleet, we are prioritizing investments in our physical 
infrastructure, including full commitment to the Shipyard 
Infrastructure Optimization Program.
    I have visited all four of our public Navy shipyards, as 
well as most of the private shipyards, and other commercial 
facilities. It has been an inspiration to shake the hands of 
the men and women who are building and maintaining our fleet.
    I have had the opportunity to speak with every level of 
labor and management about the issues they face, and the need 
for consistency in funding and demand. That is why we are 
increasing the capability and resiliency of these century-old 
installations, increasing the size and capability of our dry 
docks, and equipping our 40,000-person workforce with the tools 
they need to maintain our new, more lethal assets.
    To ensure our resources reach the warfighters who need 
them, we are demanding rigorous self-assessment and responsive 
accountability in every part of our enterprise through the 
Performance to Plan initiative. This effort has improved our 
readiness of our strike fighters and is being rolled out 
successfully across the fleet in other areas.
    As good stewards, we are on the right path towards 
obtaining an audit opinion for the Navy and Marine Corps 
General Funds and the Department's Working Capital Fund. We are 
the only military department that has eliminated audit material 
weaknesses--three in the Navy, one in the Marine Corps--and are 
leading the way on this critical effort.
    This has enabled us to improve cybersecurity in our 
business systems. Since 2017, the Marine Corps has closed 41 
out of 110 IT findings, 17 of which were cybersecurity related.
    We are also increasing investment in the Department's 
oversight functions, while maximizing the return on our 
investment in the performance audit process.
    Effective use and management of data is key to our digital 
transformation and will change how we will fight and win at 
every level. This requires the modernization of our information 
technology infrastructure, which is a critical war-fighting 
priority for our department.
    We are also prioritizing the mental health of our force, 
speaking out at the senior level about the benefits of 
counseling and ensuring the availability of counselors, 
chaplains, and other professionals. We appreciate the 
committee's attention to this vital issue and your support in 
providing additional mental health support to our sailors and 
Marines and our forward operational units.
    We are fighting the scourge of sexual harassment and sexual 
assault through efforts like the Watch List, a tool that uses 
Navy and Marine Corps data to alert commanders to conditions in 
their units that may lead to these toxic behaviors. We are 
increasing investment in this area, focusing on the prevention 
of and response to sexual harassment and assault.
    In this fiscal year 2022 budget, we have added over 200 
personnel across the Navy and Marine Corps focused on 
prevention. The majority of these personnel will be placed at 
Navy and Marine Corps installations, working with sailors and 
Marines.
    We are also adding an additional 80 sexual assault response 
coordinators for the Marine Corps, as well as 18 Navy criminal 
investigative service personnel dedicated to a sexual assault 
prevention and response.
    Secretary Austin's 90-Day Independent Review Commission has 
completed its work, and we look forward to implementing the 
Secretary's forthcoming recommendations to make meaningful and 
lasting progress in this area.
    Around the world and around the clock, the sailors, 
Marines, and civilians of our integrated naval force stand the 
watch and execute the mission. On behalf of each of them and 
their families, I thank you for your time, oversight, and 
appropriations. I look forward to your questions.
    [The statement follows:]
                Prepared Statement of Hon. Thomas Harker
    Chairman Tester, Vice Chairman Shelby, distinguished Members of the 
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the posture of the 
Department of the Navy (DON). I appreciate the hard work of the Members 
and Staff of this Committee to ensure funding stability and principled 
oversight for every Sailor and Marine now standing watch around the 
world.
    The reemergence of long-term strategic competition from China and 
Russia is spurring a period of rapid transformation in the global 
security environment. The disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic 
underscore the need for agility and distributed readiness. Climate 
change is accelerating, and its impact on both our planet and force 
will continue to grow as significant weather events threaten our 
infrastructure, and the arctic opens to unprecedented activity.
    In a world more interconnected and interdependent than ever before, 
a fully integrated and forward maneuverable Navy-Marine Corps Team has 
never been more important to the security of our Nation and the 
preservation of the rules-based international order. We must protect 
our nation, our allies and partners, and our global interests, while 
also leading on the urgent issues facing our personnel and planet, from 
the mental and physical health care needs of our people, to the scourge 
of sexual assault and harassment, to the need for diversity and 
inclusion at every echelon, to the ongoing threat of climate change.
    General Berger, Admiral Gilday, and I stand united in our resolve 
to ensure your DON will be ready for the global challenges before us 
with the personnel, platforms, and technology to secure vital sea 
lanes, stand together with our allies, and protect the United States of 
America.
                           defend the nation
    The President's Budget submission for FY 2022 (PB22) reflects hard 
choices to divest of less capable platforms and systems to invest in a 
powerful and superior future force. Throughout the budget process and 
in all aspects of capability acquisition, design, construction, and 
deployment, we must balance the urgent readiness needs of our force 
today with investments in the future force and effective business 
process reforms in order to ensure our Sailors and Marines are always 
ready to fight and win in any clime or place.
Force Posture
    The presence and availability of naval forces must always reflect 
the strategic needs of the Nation, providing effective options for the 
President and Secretary of Defense to counter every challenge. To 
ensure preparedness, the DON provides maximum operational flexibility 
through warfighting concepts including Distributed Maritime Operations, 
Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment, and Expeditionary 
Advanced Base Operations, ensuring continual overmatch and flexibility 
in the battle space.
    Secretary Austin has identified China as the pacing threat for our 
military forces, and we will continue to position our integrated global 
maritime force to lead in the Indo-Pacific. But ours is a global force 
with global responsibilities, including increased Russian presence in 
the Atlantic, terrorism and instability in the Arabian Gulf, an 
increasingly blue arctic, a global need for agile and ready Marine 
forces to respond to the unexpected in every domain, and the constant 
threat of cyberattacks to our force, support infrastructure, industrial 
base, and supply chain.
    The DON FY22 budget request delivers ready maritime forces through 
sustained investment and performance improvement, developing more 
lethal, networked capabilities and concepts, closely integrated between 
the services and with our joint force and government partners. Within 
limited resources, we will field the right platforms and capability to 
maintain freedom of the seas, support international law, and stand by 
our allies as we continue to fly, sail and operate wherever 
international law allows.
    That spirit is reflected in the guidance put forth by our services. 
I support Admiral Gilday's Navigation Plan, which refocuses our 
integrated all-domain naval power on the core functions of sea control 
and power projection we need to compete and win. It places a high 
priority on a more lethal and better connected fleet to project power 
from blue water, to the littorals, to the shoreline and beyond.
    The guidance centers on four lines of effort:
  --Deliver a More Ready Fleet. Deliver a Navy that is organized, 
        trained, and equipped to deploy forward and win in day-to-day 
        competition, in crisis, and in conflict.
  --Deliver a More Lethal, Better-Connected Fleet. Deliver a Navy 
        capable of projecting synchronized lethal and non-lethal 
        effects across all domains.
  --Deliver a Larger, Hybrid Fleet. Grow a larger, hybrid fleet of 
        manned and unmanned platforms--under, on, and above the sea--
        that meets the strategic and operational demands of our force.
  --Develop a Seasoned Team of Naval Warriors. Develop a dominant naval 
        force that can outthink and outfight any adversary.
    To meet the forward maneuverable force requirements of the Joint 
Force long into the future, the Marine Corps has put into motion an 
aggressive modernization of the Service. I support General Berger's 
Force Design 2030, which is not simply an improvement on its existing 
form and function. It is a transformational effort rooted in the 
anticipated challenges of the future operating environment. Building on 
the cooperative efforts of all of our sea services, the Marine Corps is 
reinvigorating the Fleet Marine Forces within existing resource 
constraints as an indispensable element to global maritime operations.
    The goal of Force Design 2030 is to provide a Marine expeditionary 
assets that will:
  --Successfully compete with peer adversaries in the maritime gray 
        zone
  --Deter, and if required, fight and win in support of naval campaigns
  --Facilitate sea denial and sea control
  --Win the reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance competition
  --Persist inside actively contested spaces
  --Be capable of ``rapidly sensing, making sense of, and acting upon 
        information'' inside an adversary's weapon engagement zone.
    Across both services and throughout the DON, we are executing force 
designs centered on Naval Expeditionary force deployment, giving us a 
sustainable edge and a resilient capability to deliver the integrated 
all-domain naval power required by the Joint Force. We are investing in 
the readiness of the integration-ready platforms to ensure continued 
freedom of action throughout the maritime domain, from amphibious and 
ground element equipment, to agile warships and submarines, to dominant 
aircraft carriers and air wings. Successful implementation of the 
concepts within the Navigation Plan and Force Design 2030 will be 
pursued through a unified, integrated effort at every echelon.
Maintain the Edge
    We greatly appreciate the Committee's efforts to ensure funding 
stability and predictability over the past several years. This has 
given our force the agility and flexibility needed to address emerging 
threats, to invest in critical future capabilities for our integrated 
naval force, while shifting away from less beneficial spending.
    The DON is building on this foundation by aggressively pursuing 
better readiness, lethality, and capabilities in those areas of 
warfighting technology showing the greatest promise of delivering non-
linear warfighting advantages. From artificial intelligence and cyber 
weapons to unmanned platforms and directed energy, we are on the cusp 
of technological breakthroughs that will define future conflict. Our 
future force will be defined by our decisions today.
    We will continue to invest in key naval capabilities to control the 
seas and project power in every domain. We will field a resilient, 
networked, and dispersed fleet, connected through the Naval Operational 
Architecture to provide decision advantage in contested environments. 
We will continue to invest in advanced technologies such as long range 
hypersonic and directed energy capabilities to ensure maximum reach, 
survivability and decision space for our forces.
    Our number one shipbuilding priority remains resourcing COLUMBIA 
SSBN for on-track delivery in order to ensure the future strength of 
the most survivable leg of our Nation's nuclear triad. We are also 
advancing our asymmetric undersea attack advantage through the Tactical 
Submarine Evolution Plan, including follow-on Blocks VI and VII of the 
VIRGINIA Class, and the SSN(X) program. We are advancing battle force 
shipbuilding programs such as the CONSTELLATION class frigate and the 
GERALD R. FORD class carriers, as well as enhancing our fleet 
capabilities through additional battle force ships.
    We are also extending the reach of our warriors from the sea with 
the addition of sea-based platforms such as USS MIGUEL KEITH, our third 
Expeditionary Sea Base, which was commissioned on May 8th. To ensure 
our Marines maintain their edge, we will continue to invest in key 
Marine Corps development programs that support the Marine Corps Force 
Design concept, such as the Ground Based Anti-Ship Missile, Ground 
Based Air Defense, Medium Altitude-Long Endurance Unmanned Aerial 
System, Long Range Unmanned Surface Vessel, and the Light Amphibious 
Warship. These enhance the ability of Marines to maneuver and deter 
competitors within range of enemy weapon systems.
    Targeted investments in key emerging technologies and capabilities 
will enhance and sustain amphibious battlefield maneuverability ashore 
and superiority at sea, with the support of properly resourced 
facilities, infrastructure, and systems to sustain our frontline 
forces.
Continual Readiness
    Hard experience has shown long term readiness cannot be sustainably 
achieved through ``can do'' and ``make do'' improvisation. Our front 
line personnel may be determined, adaptive, and skillful enough to get 
the job done in the face of equipment shortfalls and intense battle 
rhythms, butrelying on their adaptability is no substitute for genuine 
fleet readiness. We owe it to the Sailors and Marines out in the fleet 
to make sure they always have the tools they need to do the dangerous 
jobs we ask of them.
    The changes generated from the Readiness Reform and Oversight 
Council (RROC) and other introspective efforts have enabled us to 
improve readiness, training, and maintenance processes at every level. 
For example, we've implemented a uniform readiness assessment and 
certification process that must be followed before a ship can be 
certified to return to the fleet. We have also increased opportunities 
for shipboard certification and skills enhancement, while adjusting 
manning schedules to maximize safety and improve quality of life and 
professional effectiveness for our personnel while underway. These and 
many other changes will result in a better prepared and equipped force.
    We continue to build on our efforts to increase availability, 
improve maintenance, and maximize throughput, by making targeted shore 
investments designed to increase fleet readiness. The Navy's four 
public shipyards--Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, 
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, and 
Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility--are 
critical infrastructure elements of America's national defense. In 
order to improve naval maintenance production capacity at these 
facilities, the DON is fully committed to the Shipyard Infrastructure 
Optimization Program (SIOP), comprising three primary focus areas: dry 
dock recapitalization, facility layout and optimization, and capital 
equipment and modernization. The DON is dedicating the resources and 
oversight necessary to ensure the required maintenance is completed 
across all shipyards as quickly as possible, and has established a 
Program Office (PMS-555) to ensure integration of all elements of the 
plan.
    Building on the successful Naval Aviation Enterprise efforts to 
meet Strike Fighter aircraft availability goals for both the Navy and 
Marine Corps, we are targeting greater aviation readiness across the 
force, incorporating commercial best practices to improve performance. 
Through the Performance to Plan initiative we're using data driven 
decision making to enable to remove the root causes of maintenance 
delays as well as operational mishaps. This data-driven approach is 
based on a ``Get Real, Get Better'' approach, demanding rigorous self-
assessment, strong characterization of current performance, and 
detailed analysis backed by accountability and the opportunity to 
implement needed improvements.
    We appreciate the Committee's interest in ensuring our Naval forces 
have the right facilities to train, fight, and win, even as various 
demands on the land, sea, and air reduce the available area for 
military training. Specifically, we are grateful for the Committee's 
continued attention to the urgent need to expand the Fallon Training 
Range Complex, which is necessary to the readiness of every Naval 
Aviator and Navy SEAL. We are listening to the interests of Tribal 
governments, environmental organizations, and the local community, as 
well as our counterparts across the Federal Government, and are 
committed to finding a favorable solution for everyone involved.
Combat Climate Change
    The United States Navy and Marine Corps recognize the reality of 
global climate change, our responsibility to mitigate our contribution 
to it, and our need to prepare for its short and long term effects. As 
we grapple with the effects of climate change on maritime operations 
around the globe, the DON must continue to lead and find ways to go 
farther, both in substantially reducing our impact on climate change 
and building a force that is resilient to its potential effects.
    We must adapt our infrastructure for the coming changes with 
initiative and problem solving throughout the DON. In the past few 
months I have visited and recognized several Marine Corps and Navy 
installations that have demonstrated leadership in climate resiliency, 
environmental stewardship, and sustainable development. These 
facilities include Parris Island, Naval Base San Diego, Marine Corps 
Air Base Camp Pendleton, and Naval Base Point Loma. We will continue to 
invest in vehicles, infrastructure, and technology that increase our 
resiliency and efficiency, as we pursue the use and availability of 
alternative fuels. The DON is determined to lead from the front against 
the threat of climate change.
                        take care of our people
    The greatest source of readiness and strength for our force will 
always be the people who wear the uniform and comprise our civilian 
workforce, as well as the families that serve alongside them. We are 
committed to ensuring our Sailors, Marines, and Civilians are trained 
and equipped to execute the mission and return home safely, and that 
their families are provided with the housing, medical attention, and 
education they deserve.
Building the Future Force
    To maintain a Fleet prepared to fight and win in long term 
strategic competition, we continue to evaluate and improve our 
capability to attract, retain, and develop a talented and diverse 
workforce. In the context of an intense competition for talent in our 
country, and in light of the rapidly evolving tactical and technical 
landscape, we are modernizing and enhancing our entire talent 
management approach to succeed.
    We are continuously identifying opportunities for personnel to 
develop their leadership skills throughout the ranks, promoting equal 
opportunity in every aspect of our force. The DON is investing in the 
training, education, and professional development of our officers, 
enlisted personnel, and civilian teammates with special emphasis on 
partnerships with civilian institutions to enhance educational 
opportunities for our junior Sailors and Marines.
Eliminate Toxic Behaviors
    It is a personal priority for all three of us to build a climate of 
trust, respect and inclusion throughout our force. A major focus of 
that effort must be on recognizing and stopping destructive behaviors 
early and consistently, so leaders at every level can take appropriate 
and effective actions.
    We remain determined to eliminate sexual assault, sexual 
harassment, and gender discrimination from every part of our force. 
These behaviors are a betrayal of those who have stepped forward to 
serve in uniform. We will continue to work with this Committee to share 
best practices and ideas, relentlessly pursuing a future where no 
Sailor, Marine, or civilian teammate ever has to fear for their own 
safety while protecting us all.
    To assist leaders in this effort, we have developed The Watch List: 
Top Five Signals of Risk for Sexual Assault, a research-driven tool 
that used Navy and Marine Corps data to identify five of the key 
destructive behaviors that increase risk for sexual assault. These 
include sexual harassment, gender discrimination, lack of 
responsibility and intervention, lack of respect and cohesion, and 
workplace hostility behaviors. We have promulgated The Watch List 
throughout the Navy and Marine Corps and are actively working to 
develop tools that will provide operational commanders data on their 
units so they can take action to prevent incidents.
    We are actively engaged in rooting out extremism throughout our 
force. In coordination with efforts across the joint force, the DON has 
conducted ``Extremism Stand Downs'' at every echelon. This process 
sparked important conversations and made the position of our leadership 
and force clear to every Sailor, Marine, and Civilian in the DON, and 
we will continue to build on these efforts.
    Trust is at the heart of all our warriors do. Extremist ideologies 
are a strategic threat to that trust and have no place within the Navy 
and Marine Corps. We will persistently focus on this problem, and 
appreciate this Committee's partnership and involvement in this 
critical effort.
    As leaders we must do all in our power to ensure that our people 
feel respected and valued. We cannot and will not tolerate 
discrimination or racism of any kind. Our core values and oath demand 
that we critically examine all of our policies and practices to remove 
inequity and unconscious bias.
Promote Mental Health
    Mental health is a critical aspect of our readiness as a force--and 
our responsibility to our warriors and their families. We have made it 
a priority to ensure the ready availability of mental health 
professionals, chaplains, family counselors and other support 
professionals when our people are in need--or when they see the need in 
others.
    I know from personal experience how helpful counseling can be 
during both personal and professional struggles. That's why as part of 
our recognition of May as Mental Health Awareness Month, I launched a 
series of videos encouraging leaders throughout the DON to share their 
personal stories of seeking and receiving counseling and help. I also 
emphasized this point to our newest officers at the US Naval Academy 
Commissioning Ceremony, and will continue promoting mental health care 
throughout the force. We have to remove the stigma and start the 
conversation, particularly as our warriors and their families contend 
with the added stressors related to COVID-19.
    The DON is committed to ensuring the health, safety, and well-being 
for all members within our military community. The loss of any Sailor, 
Marine or civilian to suicide is one too many. The DON offers a variety 
of suicide prevention efforts, encouraging positive help-seeking 
behaviors, eliminating stigma, and increasing visibility and access to 
critical resources. We are constantly revisiting and revising the 
portfolio to meet the needs of our people, and have increased our 
investment in this area.
Take Care of Our People
    We are reforming operating procedures and promotion practices to 
reward initiative, applied problem solving, and innovative thinking at 
every level. A top priority as we evaluate personnel practices are the 
needs and challenges of military families, particularly dual service 
families. Senior leaders are also taking a personal and hands-on 
approach to ensure enduring excellence in housing, dependent education, 
and other quality of life concerns for our military families.
    Through a combination of non-monetary, quality of life, and 
customer service programs, we are increasing our responsiveness to the 
needs of the individual warfighters and their families, making 
continued service a viable and attractive option. We are expanding 
opportunities for civilians with prior service through the Targeted 
Reentry Program. We are also expanding avenues for personnel to learn, 
operate, and innovate with partners from the private sector, across the 
joint force, and alongside our allies.
Defeat COVID-19
    With consistent personal and fleet discipline and continued 
refinement of best practices, we have ensured a robust, proactive, and 
coordinated COVID-19 response across the DON. We are preventing and 
containing outbreaks with minimal impact on fleet readiness, and are 
doing everything in our power to get the vaccine out to our Sailors, 
Marines and Civilians as quickly and effectively as possible.
    The DON is also working with the Federal Emergency Management 
Agency to assist local, state, and tribal governments in the overall 
vaccination effort of the Nation, building on the proactive 
contributions to the urgent medical and security needs of the American 
civilian population, including the deployment of COMFORT and MERCY to 
our Nation's two most populous cities, and the deployment of medical 
personnel to facilities in communities across the country.
    Like all Americans, the Navy and Marine Corps have adjusted to this 
global pandemic, from addressing outbreaks aboard ships, to changes in 
recruitment and training, to supporting our military families through 
extended deployments and virtual leaning. We have invested significant 
resources to upgrade the Navy and Marine Corps intranet to improve 
functionality and to enable telework for our military and civilian 
workforce.
    The Navy and Marine Corps continue to operate under Force Health 
Protection measures to protect Marines, Sailors, civilians, 
contractors, and our military families. Across the DON, we've 
implemented flexibilities to help minimize risk to military personnel 
and their families, respond to evolving situations, and ensure the 
readiness of our force. We continue to use active testing protocols to 
detect asymptomatic COVID-19 positive personnel, contain outbreaks 
aboard vessels, and conduct surveillance to detect and treat the 
disease as early as possible.
    We will not relent in these critical measures. We are well 
positioned to emerge stronger than ever, as the pandemic has forced us 
to rethink and refine our recruitment, training, and personnel 
movements across the DON, as well as our shipyard operations, 
deployments, and maintenance schedules, with efficiencies and 
applications of technology that can continue to benefit our operations 
and throughput long after COVID-19 is in our wake.
                        succeed through teamwork
    A dominant naval force is central to the effective execution of our 
strategic goals. We must be ready at all times to execute as one 
integrated naval force--Navy and Marine Corps seamlessly linked at 
every level--with common logistics, infrastructure, practices and 
support networks--executing a fleet-wide emphasis on resilient and 
combat ready forces. These integrated connections must extend beyond 
the DON as well, encompassing our vital partners across the joint force 
and the whole of government, as well as our industry partners, 
shipyards, and allies and partners around the world.
Trust and Collaboration
    Leaders throughout the DON are actively engaged with the joint 
force and the whole of government to meet the maritime challenges that 
face our nation. One key initiative of this collaboration is the Tri-
Service Maritime Strategy, Advantage at Sea. This is was truly 
collaborative maritime strategic planning effort led jointly by all 
three of our Nation's sea services--Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast 
Guard. In order to execute these goals, Admiral Gilday, General Berger, 
Admiral Schultz and I are working together in order to promote 
integration, communication, and collaboration as a warfighting 
priority. There can be no daylight between us as we strengthen the 
integrated all-domain Naval power of the United States.
Operationalizing the Audit
    In my previous roles as Assistant Secretary of the Navy for 
Financial Management and Comptroller, and while Performing the Duties 
of Comptroller for the Department of Defense, I saw first-hand the 
importance of effective, transparent examination and oversight, and I 
witnessed the direct relationship of accountable financial controls to 
our frontline strength. In my current role as Acting Secretary of the 
Navy, I am determined to strengthen this process in order to provide 
our Congressional oversight partners with complete visibility and 
accountability for every dime.
    Central to this effort is building on the findings of our financial 
statement audit process, and improving that process moving forward. As 
I've emphasized to senior leaders across the Navy and Marine Corps, the 
audit is Commander's business. Accurate inventory, proper resource 
allocation, redundancy elimination are all directly connected to our 
end strength.
    We are on the right path towards obtaining an audit opinion for the 
Navy and Marine Corps general funds, and the DON working capital fund. 
We have a detailed roadmap that will guide our effort, placing a strong 
emphasis on budgetary reform, including receipt, distribution, 
execution, and monitoring.
    PB22 increases investment in DON oversight functions. In addition 
to our work on the financial statement audit, we are looking at ways to 
increase effective oversight going forward, removing redundancy and 
duplication of effort in every part of our enterprise through the 
performance audit process. I have met with leaders across the 
government and the DOD to discuss audit planning and understand areas 
of high risk, and am incorporating that feedback into the FY22 audit 
priorities direction provided to the Naval Audit Service and our 
internal control program under the Federal Managers Financial Integrity 
Act and OMB Circular A-123. Our top priority is to ensure that our 
oversight capabilities and capacity is as efficient and effective as 
possible in order to keep our promise to the American taxpayer and the 
warriors on the frontline.
Sustaining Maritime Information Superiority
    Leaders in every functional unit and discipline have been directed 
to set business systems modernization on an integrated path that is 
sufficiently resourced and supported across the DON. We are using data 
driven decision-making to achieve tangible savings while consistently 
working to become more effective and more efficient.
    Modernization of our information technology infrastructure is a 
critical warfighting priority for the DON. Effective use and management 
of data is key to our digital transformation, and will change how we 
will fight and win at every level. We are consolidating legacy systems 
and will have moved from ten financial systems to three by the end of 
this fiscal year. I have established top-down performance management 
efforts, driven by data, to ensure the cyber resilience and strength of 
our defense business and warfighting networks.
    As an information age naval force, every DON warfighting function 
and mission area is dependent on data and information to rapidly inform 
decision-making throughout the entire competition to conflict 
continuum. The dependency on secure and reliable IT has grown 
exponentially over the last decade and is critical to maintaining a 
competitive warfighting advantage. Simply put, information is combat 
power.
    In order to generate and sustain that power, the DON is building on 
the findings of our Cybersecurity Readiness Review with an Information 
Superiority Vision, detailing how the Navy and Marine Corps will:
  --Modernize our infrastructure to bring the DON to parity with 
        industry, move data and information from anywhere to anywhere 
        securely.
  --Innovate and leverage emerging technology including 5G and 
        Artificial Intelligence to drive capability outcomes for 
        competitive advantage at speed.
  --Defend forward with robust information protection regardless of 
        where data resides.
    Through Operation FLANK SPEED, the DON is shifting enterprise 
collaboration and productivity services to an enduring cloud-based 
Microsoft Office 365 solution which will provide world-class security 
and collaboration tools to improve productivity across our distributed 
workforce.
    This initiative will modernize our infrastructure to a more cloud-
enabled, performant, and defendable network allowing data and 
information to move from anywhere to anywhere securely. It will also 
improve our overall cyber readiness posture by implementing key Zero- 
Trust-Architecture principles; securing devices and endpoints, 
establishing identity and user privileges, and introducing content and 
data rights management.
    The Marine Corps has now completed the transition of all users to 
Microsoft Office 365, and I have directed the transition of over 
470,000 users in the Navy no later than December 31, 2021. Flank Speed 
will create the capabilities needed to increase Naval lethality and our 
ability to fight and win.
    Failure to invest now will result in this effort now would further 
delay much needed improvements to our core technology infrastructure 
and leave the workforce without a sustained follow-on capability once 
the DOD-provided Commercial Virtual Remote capability is sunset in June 
2021, extending our reliance on outdated, duplicative and less secure 
legacy IT systems that cost more and deliver less, further eroding 
DON's competitive warfighting advantage.
Strengthen Relationships with Stakeholders
    Working alongside our vital industry partners, we are aligning our 
efforts to produce the right platforms and capabilities for the 
warfighter, and ensure maximum availability and throughput from design 
to production to maintenance.
    We're working closely with our partners and suppliers in the 
defense industrial base to ensure the continued viability of the 
crucial businesses and infrastructure needed to ensure our ships, 
aircraft, and ground equipment are available when needed for the 
defense of our nation, both during the current COVID-19 challenge and 
long into the future. A robust, resilient, and nimble industrial base 
and supply chain is critical to the long term strength of our Navy and 
Marine Corps. Funding predictability and long term planning are key 
elements in ensuring the efficiency of our acquisitions and maintenance 
processes in partnership with a supply chain calibrated to deliver 
maximum value to the taxpayer and warfighter.
    At our public shipyards, the DON took aggressive steps at the start 
of the COVID-19 pandemic to implement and require safety measures to 
protect the personnel, civilians, contractors, and families. These 
steps have included maximum telework opportunities for shipyard 
employees, administrative leave for high-risk individuals unable to 
telework, altered shifts to maximize social distancing, sanitization 
and hand-washing stations throughout the shipyard, cloth face coverings 
and face shields for the workforce, and screening checks at all 
workplace entry points.
Global Engagement
    We cannot meet the global challenges our Nation faces alone. 
Readiness requires presence and rapid capabilities in every part of the 
world, as well as specialized and localized knowledge to handle 
evolving and challenging situations. The strategic maritime defense 
partnerships we maintain today with our partners and allies extend the 
reach and power of our force. They underscore the importance of 
cooperation and coordination in maintaining the rules-based 
international order that enables so much of our global prosperity and 
security.
    Our personnel regularly train and operate alongside their foreign 
counterparts, test the interoperability of our systems, and build our 
collective readiness on the front lines of great power competition. 
Operational exercises, international port calls, joint Marine force 
training, and other interactions generate the personal contact that 
builds understanding, respect, and trust across national and functional 
lines. Our Sailors, Marines and civilian personnel know that through 
their service they are front-line diplomats for our nation. Their 
professionalism and dedication promotes the connections that strengthen 
our collective security and cultivate shared ideals that send the 
message that the United States is a friend worth having.
                               conclusion
    Our Sailors, Marines, and civilian teammates will always be our 
greatest source of strength in a challenging and changing world. On 
behalf of each of these brave patriots and the families that serve at 
their side, I once again thank the leadership and membership of this 
Committee for your attention, interest, and ongoing commitment to the 
defense of the United States of America. It is an honor to work with 
each of you, and I look forward to your questions.

    Senator Tester. Secretary Harker, thank you for your 
statement. Now we will go to Admiral Gilday.
STATEMENT OF ADMIRAL MICHAEL GILDAY, CHIEF OF NAVAL 
            OPERATIONS, UNITED STATES NAVY
    Admiral Gilday. Chairman Tester, Vice Chairman Shelby, 
distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the 
opportunity to testify today along with Secretary Harker and 
General Berger. I am thankful for the enduring support that 
this subcommittee provides the United States Navy.
    I believe that this hearing comes at a critical time in our 
Country. The competition at sea is intensifying. China and 
Russia are rapidly mobilizing their militaries. They are 
attempting to undermine our alliances and degrade the free and 
open order.
    The Chinese battle force is the largest in the world, and 
it is growing. Backed by a robust industrial base and the 
biggest shipbuilding infrastructure in the world, they command 
a modern fleet of surface combatants, submarines, aircraft 
carriers, amphibious assault ships, and next-generation 
fighters.
    Furthermore, they are strengthening their space 
capabilities and stockpiling an arsenal of long-range missiles 
to hold us and our allies and partners at risk.
    China is deliberately modernizing for the twenty-first 
century, building all domain capabilities that rival our own. 
Make no mistake. Our fleet, your fleet, can control the seas in 
conflict and project power is sure today, but we will be 
increasingly challenged to do so in the future, unless 
difficult choices continue to be made.
    The results of analysis over the past 5 years inside and 
outside the Pentagon have been consistent, and they have been 
clear. America needs a larger, more capable fleet. Importantly, 
our latest study gave us the headlights not only for the size, 
but also for the composition of that force.
    We need to transition away from older, less capable 
platforms and deliver the platforms, weapons, and systems that 
provide overmatch. At the same time, I think that we need to 
grow. However, the Navy currently faces a task of 
recapitalizing our strategic nuclear deterrent, something we 
have not done in four decades, making a once-in-a-century 
investment in our public shipyards and preserving the current 
readiness so that our fleet can confidently operate forward and 
be relevant.
    Nearly 70 percent of the ships that we have today we will 
have a decade from now. We have to take care of the ships that 
we own, but the price tag on that readiness is rising. Over the 
last 20 years, manpower operations and maintenance costs, which 
make up over 60 percent of our budget, have grown at a rate 2.4 
percent above inflation.
    Meanwhile, our buying power is less than it was in 2010. 
Back then, we had 288 ships. Today, we have 296. Given these 
factors, if the Navy's topline remains flat or goes down, the 
size of our fleet will shrink.
    Nevertheless, we are determined to deliver the most ready, 
the most capable, and the most lethal Navy we can with the 
budget that we are given. To do this, we are improving 
maintenance in our shipyards and aviation depots.
    We are ensuring our ships are properly manned, our 
magazines are filled with ammunition, spare parts are in our 
storerooms, and our sailors are getting their steaming days and 
the flying hours they need to hone their skills.
    We are working hard on a more robust, resilient network 
infrastructure as part of JADC2 (Joint All Domain Command and 
Control).
    We are investing in long-range precision firers, like 
hypersonics and tactical Tomahawk, and we are developing 
directed energy systems, lasers, to improve fleet 
survivability.
    Our eye is on the larger, hybrid fleet. We are determined 
to build affordable capacity, including a deliberate approach 
to uncrude vessels.
    And, we are making sure every sailor can outthink and 
outfight any adversary by scaling our twenty-first century 
training framework, Ready Relevant Learning, as well as our 
investment in live, virtual constructive training.
    Senators, the average age of the Chinese fleet is 11 years. 
Ours is 21. It is time to move decisively and build a future 
Navy. We must modernize now, in this decade, or risk falling 
behind while we maintain a forward posture that keeps America 
safe and prosperous.
    I am extremely proud of our sailors, our Navy civilians, 
and our families, who have endured sustained, historic high 
optempo in the midst of this pandemic. They are the source of 
our strength, as are the patriots in our shipyards and our 
aircraft depots, and our partners in industry, companies large 
and small, who keep the production lines moving.
    Again, I am grateful for this subcommittee's support to our 
Navy and Marine Corps team, and I look forward to answering 
your questions. Thank you.
    [The statement follows:]
            Prepared Statement of Admiral Michael M. Gilday
    Chairman Tester, Vice Chairman Shelby, distinguished members of the 
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on the 
posture of the United States Navy. Moreover, on behalf of all our 
Sailors, Navy civilians, and their families, thank you for your 
continued leadership and support. With the funding provided by Congress 
these last several years, we are building back our readiness, 
strengthening our advantages at sea, and keeping our fleet deployed 
forward where it matters.
    This hearing comes at a critical time for our country. Multiple 
nations are working to undermine the free and open rules-based 
international system that has benefited so many for so long. Our rivals 
are rapidly modernizing their militaries to erode our advantages. The 
COVID-19 pandemic threatens the health and livelihood of our people. 
Climate change puts our coast lines at risk with rising seas levels and 
more severe weather. And the maritime environment--a vital source of 
our nation's prosperity and protection--has become increasingly 
contested. America's Navy is ready to meet these challenges. As we have 
done since our founding, we will set sail to defend our Nation, take 
care of our people, and succeed through teamwork.
    The President has made it clear--America stands at an inflection 
point. The choices we make today will have a dramatic impact on the 
future of our nation. The very nature of the free and open 
international system is threatened. To defend our nation, safeguard 
economic opportunity, and secure the blessings of liberty for years to 
come, we must renew our enduring advantages and work in concert with 
our allies and partners to secure the rules-based order at sea.
 america is a maritime nation--our people depend on the freedom of the 
                                  seas
    The United States Navy--alongside the Marine Corps and Coast 
Guard--provides a unique, enduring advantage to the American people. 
Since our nation was founded, Americans have relied on the seas for 
prosperity and protection. For 245 years, our Navy has deployed forward 
to ensure safe passage for our commerce and to keep fights far from our 
shores. Since the end of World War II, we have sailed with like-minded 
navies to build and sustain the open, rules-based international system 
at sea. Together, we have provided stability, deterred great power war, 
and ushered in prosperity for billions across the world.
    Over time, our reliance on the seas has only grown. Today, 90 
percent of global trade by volume travels by sea, facilitating $3.7 
trillion in U.S. commerce annually and supporting 31 million American 
jobs. 95 percent of global internet traffic travels along undersea 
cables, fueling our digital economy and accounting for $10 trillion of 
financial transactions every day. The free flow of commerce--both 
physical and digital--cannot be taken for granted. It relies on the 
rules-based international system at sea and unimpeded access to markets 
through open waterways. Even minor disruptions can have extraordinary 
impacts. The recent grounding of the container ship Ever Given in the 
Suez Canal, which delayed hundreds of ships and cost the global economy 
an estimated $9.6 billion per day, highlights the importance of 
predictable passage through the world's strategic waterways. If a rival 
nation attempted to control passage through the South China Sea--a 
strategic location where $208 billion of U.S. commerce flows annually--
the impact to the global economy would be extremely costly.


    Meanwhile, the competition for offshore resources such as 
aquaculture, energy, and rare-earth minerals is increasing across the 
globe. Currently, 93 percent of the world's fishing stocks are 
overexploited, threatening a major protein source for 3.3 billion 
people. Several nations have deployed distant water fishing fleets and 
expanded the use of maritime militias in their quest to maintain their 
lucrative fishing industries. Additionally, many nations are 
increasingly looking to maritime sources of energy and mineral wealth. 
The global oil and gas industry, which generates an estimated $3.3 
trillion in annual revenue, is turning toward energy exploration along 
the seafloor to extract untapped reserves. With trillions of dollars in 
raw resources awaiting discovery on the unmapped ocean floor, states 
and multinational companies are racing to develop capabilities for 
deep-sea mining.
    The world's oceans have always been a wellspring of wealth and 
prosperity. Today, and in the years ahead, they pose an increased risk 
of competition turning into conflict.
 the growing challenge to the united states and the open international 
                                 system
    Despite benefiting from free and open seas for decades, the 
People's Republic of China (PRC) and Russia are currently working to 
undermine the rules-based international system at sea. Both are 
attempting to control access to key waters and the resources that lie 
within these waters, inhibiting freedom of the seas and overflight. 
Both are intimidating their neighbors and attempting to enforce 
unlawful claims with the threat of force. Both are expanding 
sophisticated networks of sensors and long-range weapons to hold 
important waterways at risk. Both are leveraging offensive cyber 
tactics to advance their competitive advantage, illegitimately 
obtaining U.S. intellectual property to close research and development 
gaps and disrupt our industrial base And both are attempting to replace 
the free and open international system with a more unilateral and self-
serving one by turning incremental gains from their malign actions into 
long-term advantages--such as militarizing contested features in the 
South China Sea or illegally annexing the Crimean peninsula.
    The PRC's and Russia's revisionist approaches at sea threaten U.S. 
interests, undermine alliances and partnerships, and degrade the free 
and open international order. Moreover, the PRC's and Russia's 
aggressive naval growth and modernization are eroding U.S. military 
advantages. Unchecked, these trends will leave the Navy unprepared to 
ensure our advantage at sea and protect national interests within the 
next decade.


    The PRC--our pacing challenge--is carrying out a strategy aimed at 
the heart of America's maritime power. They are deliberately working to 
erode maritime governance, inhibit freedom of the seas and overflight, 
deter our engagement in regional disputes, and displace the United 
States as the partner of choice across the world. To achieve its 
strategic goals, the PRC has rapidly grown its Navy from 262 to 350 
ships. Today, their fleet includes modern surface combatants, 
submarines, aircraft carriers, amphibious assault ships, and polar 
icebreakers. Expanding their robust naval force with a hundreds of 
Coast Guard and maritime militia vessels, they routinely harass 
neighbors to exert pressure at a level below traditional armed 
conflict. They have built the world's largest missile force to target 
regional waters in an attempt to intimidate others. They have 
strengthened all dimensions of military power to contest the United 
States from the seafloor to space and in the information domain. Under 
the One Belt, One Road Initiative, they are extending their maritime 
infrastructure across the globe through aggressive investments, 
particularly in ports, to control access to critical waterways.


    As our U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander recently stated, the greatest 
danger for America and our allies is the erosion of our conventional 
deterrence with respect to the PRC. Absent a convincing conventional 
deterrent, the PRC will continue to take action to undermine the free 
and open conditions at sea upon which our citizens rely. While the PRC 
is expanding its influence across the globe, this challenge is most 
acutely present in the Indo-Pacific, including the East and South China 
Seas and increasingly in the Indian Ocean. History shows that a strong 
U.S. Navy provides a stabilizing influence across the world, assists in 
peaceful maritime dispute resolution, and expands economic 
opportunities for the American people. The future will prove no 
different.
   u.s. navy--deployed forward to defend america and our allies and 
                    protect the freedom of the seas
    The U.S. Navy is responding to the challenges to our free and open 
international system by demonstrating our global reach, enforcing 
common principles, sustaining the conditions that enable shared 
prosperity, strengthening our alliances and partnerships, and 
modernizing our fleet to control the seas in conflict and project power 
in contested environments. Today, over 42,000 Sailors are deployed on 
111 ships and submarines to preserve freedom of the seas, deter 
conflict, and keep America and our allies safe. Together with the 
Marine Corps and Coast Guard, our Navy is delivering integrated all-
domain naval power across the globe. And we are doing this in the midst 
of a global pandemic.


    Even with many parts of the world shut down in response to COVID-
19, the worldwide demand for naval forces required us to maintain a 
high operational tempo, which included eight major Carrier Strike Group 
and Expeditionary Strike Group deployments in FY-20. Since I appeared 
before you last year, the Navy has continued to steam and fly from the 
Arctic Circle to the Cape of Good Hope and from the Caribbean to the 
South China Sea. Our hospital ships provided relief to American 
communities; we executed underway training events for deployment 
certification; and we conducted exercises as part of the Joint Force 
and alongside our allies and partners. Our ability to sustain a forward 
posture rests on the individual commitments of over 600,000 Sailors and 
Navy civilians and their families. Their adaptive spirit and commitment 
to COVID-19 protocols kept the force healthy and our ships at sea.
    The pandemic taught us a great deal about operating in a 
challenging environment. Our entire force learned how to adapt as we 
iterated and honed our COVID-19 Standardized Operational Guidance. Our 
logistics teams learned what it means to sustain our fleet with limited 
means. Our information technology workforce quickly scaled virtual 
private network licenses and supported the roll-out of virtual and 
remote environments to keep us connected. Our dedicated, patriotic 
shipyard and aviation depot workforce adapted to our COVID-19 
protocols, came to work, and got our ships and aircraft back to sea. 
And we learned how brittle portions of our defense industrial base 
could be if not postured appropriately. We took every opportunity to 
learn throughout this dynamic year--and shared those lessons with our 
allies and partners--to improve the resiliency of our Navy in the years 
ahead.
    We certainly did not address the challenges of continued maritime 
operations during this pandemic alone. Our broader Navy team--which 
includes Congress, industry, research institutions and laboratories, 
and our international allies and partners--overcame so much to design, 
build, and sustain our fleet through this pandemic. We cannot thank all 
of you enough. As our nation--and the world--emerges from this 
pandemic, we will continue to face the daunting challenge posed by 
long-term competition with the PRC and Russia. And we will need your 
support, now more than ever, as we modernize and recapitalize the Navy 
to sustain our enduring advantage at sea.
           timeless roles of sea control and power projection
    American security and prosperity is underpinned by the U.S. Navy's 
ability to control the seas and project power ashore in conflict. The 
world would be a less prosperous, more dangerous place if the seas were 
not open and free for the benefit of all. Every day, combat-credible 
naval forces operate forward to reassure our allies and partners, 
confront malign behavior, and deter potential adversaries from 
escalating into conflict. We preserve a stable and secure global 
maritime environment and advance prosperity through transit, trade, and 
the lawful pursuit of natural resources. Our ability to carry out these 
essential functions comes from our ability to credibly control the seas 
and project power ashore in conflict. These missions are timeless.
    Controlling the seas protects friendly shipping, provides the Joint 
Force and our allies freedom to maneuver, and denies the use of the 
seas to our adversaries. In the past, sea control required us to fight 
our adversaries on, under, and above the sea. Now, in our digital age, 
it requires us to also fight in space, cyberspace, and across the 
electromagnetic spectrum. In short, modern sea control demands the all-
domain power of our Navy and Joint Force.
    America also needs a Navy that can influence events ashore. This 
starts with deterring nuclear attack against our nation with our 
ballistic missile submarines--the most survivable leg of the nuclear 
triad. Projecting power and influence from the seas is vital to 
deterring aggression and resolving crises on acceptable terms to the 
United States. Our Navy must field capabilities in all domains--
employing information warfare, cyber capabilities, special operations, 
and a host of conventional weapons launched from on, under, and above 
the sea--to convince our rivals they have no viable means of achieving 
their objectives through force. Our sea control and power projection 
capabilities, alongside our strategic deterrent, provide America and 
our allies their surest guarantee of peace. If the Navy fails to 
deliver a fleet that can control the seas and project power, our nation 
will lack the conventional deterrent needed to protect America and our 
allies and expand economic opportunities for the American people.
    While America's need for sea control and power projection 
capabilities has not changed over time, how we operate and what we 
operate with is changing. Emerging technologies have expanded modern 
fights at sea into all domains. Ubiquitous and persistent sensors, 
advanced battle networks, and long range weapons have made contested 
spaces more lethal. Advances in artificial intelligence have increased 
the importance of achieving decision superiority in combat. 
Additionally, autonomous systems have shown promise for an effective 
and affordable way for us to fight and win in contested spaces. These 
technologies offer clear advantages to the militaries that integrate 
them first. America cannot afford to fall behind.
    Meanwhile, our fleet is adapting to operate in new ways. To 
preserve and promote the rules- based order, we are taking a more 
assertive posture in daily operations. We are challenging excessive 
maritime claims by sailing and flying wherever international law allows 
and expanding our decision advantage by persistently monitoring 
activities at sea to expose malign behavior that undermines the rules-
based order. Our cyber teams are actively defending our networks and 
projecting power in the cyber domain to maintain a tactical advantage 
against our rivals. Furthermore, we are dynamically deploying our 
forces forward to deter our rivals from making incremental gains and to 
work alongside our allies and partners to keep the seas free and open.
    Should deterrence fail, our Navy stands ready to confront 
aggression and decisively win a fight. Using concepts such as the Joint 
Warfighting Concept and Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), we will 
mass sea- and shore-based fires from distributed forces. By maneuvering 
distributed forces across all domains, we will complicate adversary 
targeting, exploit uncertainty, and achieve surprise. Controlling the 
seas by constraining or destroying adversary fleets will enable freedom 
of movement at sea and power projection ashore. Working with the Joint 
Force and our allies and partners, Navy submarines, aircraft, and 
surface ships will launch massed volleys of networked weapons to 
overwhelm adversary defenses and compel a termination of conflict on 
favorable terms. Delivering an all-domain fleet that is capable of 
effectively executing these concepts is vital to maintaining a credible 
conventional deterrent with respect to the PRC and Russia.
                   delivering all-domain naval power
    To deliver the all-domain naval power America needs, our Navy must 
evolve our capabilities and grow our capacity. The Navy--working in 
close collaboration with the Joint Force--has studied, identified, and 
prioritized the future capabilities we need to execute our evolving 
warfighting concepts and maintain a credible deterrent with respect to 
the PRC. The PRC has invested heavily in anti-access capabilities. In 
conflict, they will seek to contest all domains and hold our forces at 
risk with sophisticated networks of sensors and a large number of long-
range, precision weapons. To effectively deter the PRC as part of the 
Joint Force, our fleet must be imbued with distributed weapons of 
increasing range and speed, more magazine depth, more mobility, more 
stealth and deception, and more sustainability. This requires a 
deliberate adjustment to our naval force structure.
    Based upon multiple rigorous, threat informed assessments conducted 
over the past five years--both inside and outside the Navy--it is my 
best military advice that America needs a larger Navy to counter the 
People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) that is growing in both capability 
and capacity. To fill critical Joint Force demands, the Navy requires 
greater numbers of submarines, smaller and more numerous surface 
combatants, more lethal offensive capabilities, a host of integrated 
unmanned platforms--under, on, and above the seas--and a modern 
strategic deterrent. We also need a robust network infrastructure to 
link our distributed forces together and resilient logistics to sustain 
them. In short, a balanced, hybrid fleet of manned and unmanned 
platforms is the most effective and affordable way to meet the security 
demands of our nation.
    Analysis has also confirmed that numbers are not the only factor--
the composition and combat effectiveness of our fleet matters more. 
Naval power is not a function of ship numbers alone, nor is it simply a 
result of the lethal systems employed from those ships. It comes from 
the concepts that shape how we fight and the means to maintain, train, 
and equip our forces to win in combat. And it fundamentally comes from 
developing Sailors--the true source of our naval power--who can 
outthink and outfight and adversary.
    Within the scope of the President's FY-22 Budget request (PB-22), 
we are maximizing our Navy's contribution to the Joint Force. We are 
prioritizing a fleet that is ready for combat over a larger fleet that 
is not ready to fight. We are divesting of legacy assets that do not 
bring sufficient lethality to the fight and investing in next-
generation platforms and systems that close critical Joint capability 
gaps. Meanwhile, we are prioritizing the training and education needed 
to prepare our Sailors to outthink and outfight any adversary. And we 
are using every dollar we can to sustainably grow the fleet. As we 
prepare our fleet for long-term competition with the PRC, we are 
focused on key objectives in the following areas--readiness, 
capabilities, capacity, and our Sailors.
Readiness
    To sustain America's advantage at sea, we must deliver combat-ready 
forces to deter aggression and keep the seas free and open. Deploying 
battle-ready ships, submarines, and squadrons around the world--from 
the South China Sea to the Arctic--deters aggression, reaffirms our 
commitment to allies and partners, and keeps the seas open and free. 
Readiness underpins our forward-engaged posture and touches all 
elements of the Navy, from our shipyards and aviation depots to the 
steaming and flying hours our Sailors use to hone their skills. With 
nearly 70 percent of the fleet we will have in 2030 already in service 
today, affordably sustaining our ships and aircraft is vital to meeting 
future demands. This is why PB-22 places such an emphasis on critical 
components of our Navy's readiness.
    Our force is in a higher state of readiness today than prior to 
2017 with a healthier surge force, improved shipboard manning, better 
training for our crews, and improved parts availability. Increased 
funding, combined with cultural reforms throughout the fleet, have 
arrested the decline in our readiness and put us on a path to recovery. 
Still, we have much work to do.
    Deploying combat-ready forces starts with taking expert care of our 
platforms. To this end, we are using data-driven reforms to improve 
maintenance processes, increase operational availability, and save 
taxpayer dollars. We have seen tremendous success with these methods in 
our aviation community. For years our F/A-18 aircraft were stuck at a 
55 percent mission capable rate. At the time, we assumed only an 
increase in inputs--aircraft, manpower, or parts--could raise the 
number of ready jets available to our pilots. However, in FY-19 we 
shifted our focus to cultural reform and used the power of data-
analytics to raise our F/A-18E/F mission capable rate to 80 percent--a 
rate we have continued to maintain throughout all of FY-20 and into FY-
21. With higher numbers of aircraft available, our aircrew are more 
ready to fly and fight than at any point over the last decade.
    We are now applying a similar approach to improving ship 
maintenance. On-time private shipyard surface ship availability 
completion rates rose from 37 percent in FY-19 to 67 percent in FY-20. 
Meanwhile, public shipyards reduced maintenance delay days by over 75 
percent from FY-19 to FY-20. To generate these gains, we modified 
contracting strategies, increased dry dock capacity, and optimized 
facility and pier layouts. We improved planning and adjusted 
maintenance durations to better align workload with shipyard capacity. 
We also leveraged authorities provided by Congress, such as the three 
year ``Other Procurement, Navy'' pilot program, to increase flexibility 
and stabilize demand for our shipyard workforces.
    Unfortunately, COVID-19 impacted our recent ship depot maintenance 
gains--as the need to protect our people caused delays in on-time 
completion of ship maintenance. Half of our maintenance availabilities 
in both public and private shipyards are trending late due to workforce 
capacity reductions. To mitigate further impacts in our private 
shipyards, we accelerated awards of contract options and improved the 
cash positions of the industrial base. For our public shipyards, we 
mobilized over 1,300 skilled Navy Reserve Sailors, increased overtime 
usage, and rebalanced future workloads to address these delays. These 
efforts have stemmed the disruption COVID-19 caused to our shipyard 
maintenance and will mitigate work spilling over into FY-22. We are 
methodically and safely returning to normal operating conditions. 
Though some delays will continue to persist until the shipyards return 
to full strength, the production workforce in both public and private 
shipyards is returning to pre-pandemic levels.
    Sustaining our advantage at sea requires us to make targeted 
investments in critical infrastructure. This includes ensuring our 
worldwide constellation of bases are postured to sustain and support 
our fleet at sea. Of particular importance are critical elements of our 
national defense industrial base such as our public shipyards and 
aviation depots. Our Shipyard Infrastructure and Optimization Program 
(SIOP) provides a strategic roadmap for necessary investments in dry-
docks, capital equipment, and optimizing the layout of these vital 
national assets. We have already broken ground on a perimeter floodwall 
at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, and are building a new lock system at 
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard with many more projects on the horizon. We 
are also recapitalizing our aviation depot infrastructure. Through our 
Naval Aviation Fleet Infrastructure Optimization Plan (FIOP), we are 
developing a 10-year Master Plan that provides our aviation depots the 
capacity to sustain and modernize our aircraft, engines, components, 
and support equipment. Meanwhile, we are also transforming our Navy 
enterprise shore network infrastructure into a secure, resilient 
digital platform.
    Sustaining our advantage also requires us to master all-domain 
fleet operations. To credibly deter aggression, we must integrate the 
all-domain power of the Navy with the Joint Force and our allies and 
partners. This starts with providing our Sailors adequate ranges to 
train for the high-end fight. The speed and scale of a potential fight 
for control of the seas has changed. The size of our premier Carrier 
Air Wing and SEAL training center--the Fallon Range Training Complex 
(FRTC)--is no longer sufficient. Within existing capacity, our Sailors 
cannot sufficiently train with longer-range weapons or practice the 
tactics and techniques they will need to employ against a near-peer 
threat. We will continue to work with Congress, tribal leadership, 
local communities, and key stakeholders in the year ahead to modernize 
the FRTC and ensure our Sailors have the infrastructure they need to 
train to win in combat.
    Mastering all-domain fleet operations also requires a rigorous 
learning campaign. We are conducting a series of fleet battle problems, 
wargames, and exercises to refine our concepts and capabilities. For 
example, we recently conducted our most complex exercise to date 
involving unmanned systems, which brought unmanned surface vessels and 
aircraft under the control of a Zumwalt-class destroyer--the USS 
Michael Monsoor (DDG-1001). This summer we will conduct Large Scale 
Exercise 2021--bringing together our fleets from across the globe to 
test out key components of our DMO concept. Overall, our campaign of 
experimentation and learning prepares our Sailors for high-end 
warfighting and drives updated joint concepts, fleet requirements, and 
future naval capabilities.
    Sustaining our advantage at sea depends on developing, training, 
and fielding battle ready surface force crews. As of the end of 2020, 
we have fully implemented all 111 Comprehensive Review/Strategic 
Readiness Review recommendations. Over 1,700 junior officers have now 
graduated from our new Junior Officer of the Deck course with training 
aligned to International Maritime Organization's standards. We are 
broadening the use of instructor-led virtual reality training through 
the construction of two Mariner Skills Training Centers and the 
modernization of our Integrated Navigation Seamanship and Ship handling 
Trainers. With the support of Congress, we are investing in and 
employing meaningful reforms in how we man our surface fleet, train our 
crews, schedule and execute workups and deployments, and how we equip 
and maintain the surface force.
    We will continue to invest in these key priorities and drive 
maximum efficiency from every dollar to deliver the naval power America 
needs. We are currently meeting operational demands while adapting to 
protect our Sailors and their families. But readiness recovery remains 
a long game and will require sustained funding over time to fully 
recover.
Capabilities
    To sustain America's advantage at sea, we must deliver a more 
lethal and better connected fleet. The fight at sea is evolving 
rapidly. Emerging technologies have expanded into all domains and made 
contested spaces more lethal. Artificial intelligence and machine 
learning, autonomy, quantum computing, additive manufacturing, and new 
communications technologies are transforming the maritime environment. 
These changes emphasize the need for the Navy to develop sea control 
and power projection capabilities at speed and scale. That means more 
lethality, more survivability, better combat logistics, and a resilient 
network that connects command and control nodes, platforms, weapons, 
and sensors all together.
    PB-22 prioritizes capabilities that amplify the fleet's ability to 
disperse and project synchronized lethal and non-lethal effects from 
multiple axes and in all domains. To achieve this vision, we are 
developing a Naval Operational Architecture (NOA) that integrates with 
Joint All-Domain Command and Control. The NOA is a collection of 
networks, infrastructure, data, and analytic tools that connects our 
distributed forces and provides decision advantage. Beyond 
recapitalization of our undersea nuclear deterrent, there is no higher 
development priority. We launched Task Force Overmatch this past 
October to align resources and expertise from across our force to field 
the NOA by the middle of this decade.
    Developing longer-range, higher-speed weapons--such as hypersonic 
missiles--will give our warfighters the competitive advantage they 
need. Hypersonic missiles change the risk calculus for our rivals by 
providing a non-nuclear sea-based prompt, global strike capability. We 
are working in close partnership with the Army to deliver a truly-
joint, conventional hypersonic weapon across land and sea-based 
platforms. We conducted a successful test of our common hypersonic 
glide body in March 2020, which keeps our Conventional Prompt Strike 
program on- track to field this game changing capability by the mid-to-
late 2020s. PB-22 signals our strong support for developing this vital 
joint capability.
    Our adversaries are attempting to deter us with massive numbers of 
sea- and shore-based missiles. To complicate their ability to 
understand the potential battlespace, we are investing in Counter-
Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, 
Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Targeting systems. Our response also 
includes fielding an inexhaustible directed-energy system that 
accurately and reliably defeats anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCM). The 
High Energy Laser Counter ASCM Project is expediting the development of 
critical technologies to protect our ships from the cruise missile 
threat. At the same time, we are pursuing other directed energy 
initiatives in parallel--such as the 150 kilowatt class laser weapon 
system--to accelerate learning and fielding of this critical 
capability. The recent demonstration onboard USS Portland showed how we 
can disable an unmanned aerial vehicle using directed energy. We will 
continue to invest in laser technology and non-kinetic defensive 
systems to increase fleet survivability while maintaining free magazine 
space for our offensive weapons.
    Our logistics enterprise and strategic sealift capacity are also 
vital to sustaining our advantage at sea and keeping the Joint Force 
operating forward. Accordingly, we are modernizing networks and 
communication and navigation systems of our Combat Logistics Force to 
best posture this aging fleet to operate in a contested environment. We 
are also investing in increased fuel distribution capacity as well as 
improvements in our expeditionary rearm capabilities and resuscitative 
care surgery systems. Specific to the Sealift Fleet, which provides 
inter-theater lift capability to the Joint Force, we have accelerated 
recapitalization, leveraging a ``buy used'' strategy to replace our 
least ready vessels, and invested in service life extension for the net 
effect of increased readiness. We are grateful for Congress's 
authorization to affordably revitalize our Sealift Fleet with used 
vessels. We are moving ahead with purchasing two used ships in 2021 and 
five used vessels in PB-22, signaling our continued support for this 
approach. We will continue to work with Congress to efficiently 
recapitalize this critical capability in the years ahead and request 
that Congress remove remaining obstacles to used ship procurement. Our 
longer-term plan is to construct new vessels to replace prepositioned 
vessels in the Maritime Prepositioning Force as those ships begin to 
reach expected service life at the end of this decade.
    Pivoting toward the future and resourcing needed capabilities--
especially in the Indo-Pacific region--requires tough choices. To 
invest in the next-generation capabilities we need to meet the 
challenge of near-peer competitors, we need to divest of our legacy 
capabilities that no longer bring sufficient lethality to the fight. We 
will work transparently with Congress to make these critical divestment 
decisions and free up resources to modernize the fleet.
Capacity
    To sustain America's advantage at sea, we must field a larger, 
hybrid fleet that is designed for sea control and power projection. To 
provide a credible conventional deterrent in peace and win in war, we 
need to sustainably generate cost-effective platforms and mature 
unmanned systems. This transition will increase the capacity of the 
fleet, expand our ability to distribute our forces, and rebalance the 
fleet away from exquisite, manpower-intensive platforms and toward 
smaller, less-expensive ones. By growing a hybrid fleet--on, above, and 
below the seas--we will ensure our success across the continuum of day-
to-day competition, crisis, and conflict.
    As we design and build a larger, hybrid-fleet, our number one 
acquisition priority remains delivering the Columbia-class ballistic 
missile submarine on time. No mission is more important to our nation 
than providing a secure and reliable strategic nuclear deterrent. Our 
ballistic missile submarines are the most survivable portion of our 
nuclear triad and provide an assured response to any strategic nuclear 
attack on the United States. With our Ohio-class submarines nearing the 
end of their service life, we cannot afford to get behind in delivering 
on the Columbia program. The first submarine is starting construction 
this year with the second boat on-track for procurement in FY-24. We 
will continue to drive affordability, technology development, and 
integration efforts to ensure the program remains on schedule and our 
ballistic missile submarines remain on patrol in the decades ahead.
    Meanwhile, our future fleet places a premium on expanding our 
undersea advantage. During conflict, sea control and sea denial from 
beneath the waves are among our Navy's core advantages--we cannot 
afford to yield any ground to our competitors. We are now planning to 
construct the tenth Block V Virginia-class submarine with a Virginia 
Payload Module (VPM). PB-22 underscores our sustained support for 
procuring two Virginia-class submarines per year. Sustainable 
production of the Virginia-class submarine, in addition to the 
development of a follow-on attack submarine program, is key to 
sustaining our undersea advantage in the years ahead.
    As we shift our focus toward smaller platforms that can operate in 
a more dispersed manner, there is a clear need to rapidly incorporate 
unmanned systems into our fleet architecture. They expand our 
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance advantage, add depth to 
our missile magazines, enhance fleet survivability, and provide more 
risk-worthy vessels to operate inside the weapons engagement zone of 
any adversary. In other words, they give our operational commanders 
flexible and effective options to maneuver within a contested 
environment. The Navy is taking a deliberate approach to developing 
unmanned systems through our Unmanned Campaign Framework. Our framework 
lays out an overarching vision on how we intend to produce tested and 
proven systems at scale, as well as develop the core technologies 
required to successfully integrate unmanned systems on, below, and 
above the sea. By the end of this decade, our Sailors must have a high 
degree of confidence and skill operating alongside proven unmanned 
platforms. The combined capability of manned and unmanned systems will 
provide our operational forces the advantage we need in a future fight.
    Nuclear powered aircraft carriers are the most survivable and 
versatile airfields in the world. For decades to come, they will remain 
a cornerstone of the Navy's forward presence, sea control, and power 
projection capabilities. USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) represents a 
generational leap in the aircraft carrier's capacity to project power. 
Over the past year, Ford has been underway, executing over 7,100 total 
launches and recoveries with the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System 
and Advanced Arresting Gear. Additionally, over 30,000 pounds of 
ordnance has been moved, loaded and expended by embarked F/A-18 
aircraft using Advanced Weapons Elevators (AWEs). Seven of Ford's AWEs 
have completed certification and the remaining four are on track to 
certify by this summer. We expect Ford to be cleared for blue water 
operations later this year and ready for employment in 2022.
    The striking power of our Carrier Air Wing is vital to controlling 
the seas and projecting power in a high-end fight, and the adaptability 
of the air wing keeps our carriers relevant for 50-plus years of life. 
The air wing of today is currently transforming with the addition of 
the F-35C, the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye, and the CMV-22B Osprey. PB-22 
increases our F-35 inventory to get the fleet closer to a fourth 
generation and fifth generation fighter mix. Carrier Air Wing TWO--
which includes the first operational F-35C squadron--is currently 
undergoing pre-deployment training and will deploy later this year. 
Meanwhile, we are rapidly developing the MQ-25 Stingray--the Air Wing's 
first unmanned platform--to extend the striking range of our fleet. And 
we are laying the groundwork for the highly networked air wing of the 
future--a 6th generation family of systems that leverages manned-
unmanned teaming--which will deliver overwhelming firepower in 
contested spaces in the years ahead. Delivering a 6th generation family 
of systems is vital to keeping pace with PRC fighter development and 
sustaining our advantage over the seas. America cannot afford to fall 
behind.
    We are also going through a surface combatant reset on ship design 
and construction to provide the next enduring hull forms for small and 
large surface combatants. Our surface combatant inventory is aging with 
limited options for future upgrades. At the same time, our future fleet 
design places an emphasis on greater numbers of small surface 
combatants. The Constellation-class frigate is a versatile, multi-
mission platform capable of supporting day-to-day operations and the 
high-end fight. We began cutting steel on Constellation this year, and 
we are excited to incorporate this ship into the fleet in 2026. 
Meanwhile, the future large surface combatant (DDG(X)) will bring the 
space, weight, and power needed to incorporate future capabilities for 
the high-end fight such as high power lasers, long-range strike, and 
sensor growth. Together, both ship classes will bring more lethality, 
more survivability, more endurance, and more self-sufficiency to the 
fleet.
    We are not just building better ships--we are building ships 
better. The Navy is mindful of past shipbuilding efforts that did not 
perform to plan, which is why we are moving ahead in ways that 
deliberately reduce risk. Early and sustained industry involvement, 
robust land based testing, and focused design maturity are foundational 
to our shipbuilding approach. We appreciate the strong support from 
Congress in FY-21. Delivering ships on time, on budget, and within 
performance targets is our priority.
Sailors
    To sustain America's advantage at sea, we must recruit, develop, 
and retain a seasoned team of naval warriors. The strength of our naval 
power depends on the strength of our Sailors--active and reserve, 
uniformed and civilian. In the long-term strategic competition we face 
today, every Sailor must be able to outthink and outfight any 
adversary. Our Navy must remain the best trained, finest educated, and 
most ready maritime force in the world. We recognize the strength we 
gain from a diverse force and our actively pursuing combat-minded 
Sailors with varied backgrounds, experiences, and thought to build up 
our readiness and resilience. As we take care of our Sailors, we will 
accelerate their development and harness their talents to keep America 
safe and prosperous.
    As we modernize our fleet, we are modernizing our talent management 
systems to better recruit, train, retain, and support our Sailors. We 
achieved our accession goal of 39,600 new active duty Sailors in FY-20 
to further improve afloat manning and filled operational billets to 
their highest point in six years. PB-22 makes a slight reduction in our 
end-strength with the divestment of legacy ships. However, the demand 
for a highly trained, diverse force has not abated. We are grateful to 
Congress for the generous pay raises and personnel reforms. The Navy is 
leveraging both--alongside our talent management initiatives--to better 
recruit and retain our incredibly talented force. Meanwhile, we 
continue to transform our MyNavyHR infrastructure to rapidly deliver 
services to our Sailors and families at a reduced cost. This includes 
the DOD-leading mobile applications that help with the challenge of 
military moves and finding childcare or housing and the MyNavy Career 
Centers which proved vital during the COVID-19 pandemic.
    We are continuing to cultivate a culture of excellence across the 
fleet, which builds resilience and strengthens our Navy's enduring 
standards of professional competence and personal character. Over the 
past year, our culture of excellence campaign has strengthened the 
signature behaviors that define our service to prevent the occurrence 
of destructive behaviors--such as sexual harassment or discrimination. 
At the same time, we have maintained a resolute focus on preventing the 
scourge of sexual assault within our ranks. PB-22 increases our 
civilian Sexual Assault Prevention and Response workforce to provide 
greater support for our Sailors and drive down investigation timelines. 
Overall, we are providing more training, more tools, and more resources 
so every Sailor receives the support they need.
    We are also actively building a workforce that represents the full 
diversity of America and the strength it brings. Task Force One Navy 
(TF1N) was launched last year to analyze and evaluate issues in our 
military that detract from Navy cohesiveness and readiness. The task 
force released their report in January 2021 and highlighted 56 
recommendations that will elevate a culture of diversity, equity, and 
inclusion throughout the fleet. Respect and the promise of opportunity 
are core to our Navy, and we are committed to implementing TF1N reforms 
and ridding discrimination, sexism, and other forms of structural 
biases from our ranks.
    Without a doubt, the vast majority of Sailors in the U.S. Navy 
serve every day with honor, character, and integrity. However, we 
cannot be under any illusions that extremist behaviors do not exist in 
our Navy. As directed by the Secretary of Defense, each command across 
the fleet conducted a stand down to address extremism within our ranks. 
Racism, injustice, indignity, and disrespect keeps us from reaching our 
potential--an inclusive, respectful, professional fighting force that 
answers the Nation's call with unparalleled readiness and lethality. 
The stand down was only a starting point; this will be an ongoing 
fight. We are committed to eliminating extremist behavior and all of 
its corrosive effects on our fighting force.
    The intellectual investments we make in each Sailor provide a key 
advantage over our rivals. To strengthen our advantage in this area, we 
are aligning the curriculum and research of the Navy's education 
enterprise to deliver warfighting advantage in our operations at sea 
and in how we design, deliver, and generate our forces. Additionally, 
the Naval Community College is on track to provide our Sailors 
opportunities for education in fields that strengthen the service. 
Maintaining educational relationships with our international partners 
through exchanges and scholarships remains a priority for us to deepen 
enduring relationships and broaden understanding between likeminded 
navies.
    To ensure our Sailors are ready for any challenge on the horizon, 
we are scaling Ready Relevant Learning (RRL) and Live, Virtual, 
Constructive (LVC) training. RRL provides the right training, at the 
right time, in the right way for our Sailors. It replaces ``one-and-
done'' classroom training events with career-long learning continuums 
through a mix of in-classroom instruction and modern training methods. 
LVC technology blends the intensity of underway operation with high-
fidelity synthetic training, allowing our Sailors to master high-end 
tactics in secure and controllable conditions. Our force will always 
fall back to their baseline under the stress of combat--RRL and LVC 
will raise their baseline.
                               conclusion
    Let there be no doubt--America is a maritime nation. Our security 
and prosperity are inextricably linked to the seas. For 245 years--in 
both calm and rough waters--your Navy has stood the watch to protect 
our homeland, preserve the freedom of the seas, and defend our way of 
life. For generations, we have provided a bulwark against aggression 
and have underwritten the international order that led to an 
unprecedented era of peace and prosperity. Now that order is under 
threat.
    As the President stated, we are at an inflection point. The PRC's 
rapid military growth and aggressive behavior at sea has put it on a 
trajectory that will challenge our maritime advantage in the years 
ahead. Our naval forces--and the American people--must maintain a 
clear-eyed resolve to compete, deter, and--if necessary--defeat our 
rivals, while accelerating the development of a larger and more lethal 
future fleet. We must do so while integrating more closely with the 
Marine Corps and Coast Guard to generate integrated all-domain naval 
Power. Only by working as a team and taking care of our people will we 
be able to defend the nation in the years ahead. We must move 
deliberately, but also with speed. Our actions this decade will shape 
the maritime balance of power for the rest of this century.
    On behalf of more than 600,000 active and reserve Sailors and Navy 
Civilians, thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify today. I 
am grateful to this committee, and to all of your colleagues in 
Congress, for your steadfast commitment to the Navy. We look forward to 
sailing alongside you to sustain our advantage at sea.

    Senator Tester. Thank you, Admiral Gilday.
    Next up, it is you, General Berger.
STATEMENT OF GENERAL DAVID H. BERGER, COMMANDANT, 
            UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS
    General Berger. Chairman Tester, Ranking Member Shelby, and 
distinguished members of this committee, thank you for the 
opportunity to testify on the posture of your Marine Corps this 
morning, our priorities, and the resources required to fund it 
all.
    Over the past 2 years, since becoming Commandant, I have 
come to better understand and appreciate the bipartisan support 
of this committee, which I think is critical to creating and 
sustaining the force we have today, but also the force we are 
going to need for the future. I realize there are competing 
national priorities you must wrestle with, and that is going to 
put pressure on Defense budgets. But, I am also confident that 
you appreciate the severity of the security environment today.
    The global competition, which the Chairman and Ranking both 
mentioned, with China and Russia is accelerating. Your military 
is going to need more advanced capabilities to effectively 
compete, to reassure our allies and partners, and to deter war.
    Force Design 2030 is the Marine Corps' answer to creating 
the cutting-edge capabilities that will better enable the fleet 
and the joint force to deter, to compete, and to respond with 
ready forces to any crisis anywhere on the globe.
    We are roughly 2 years into our Force Design effort. And 
while I am encouraged by our progress, I am not satisfied by 
the pace of change. We must move faster. To accelerate our 
modernization, we, as a service, need to do a better job of 
explaining the details of Force Design 2030 to yourselves and 
to your staff, and that is my responsibility as your 
Commandant.
    It is important that this committee understands that the 
capabilities we seek are not the stuff of science fiction. They 
are already programs of record based on proven technology. And, 
while we do not have sufficient time this morning to address 
the full scope of our Force Design effort, I do want to 
highlight three key capabilities.
    First is long-range precision fires for sea denial and sea 
control. Over the past several years, we have proven that our 
existing HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) 
vehicles can hold naval vessels at risk with ground-based, 
anti-ship missiles. Through aggressive experimentation, we 
can--we have further enhanced that capability.
    This year, we successfully launched a naval strike missile 
from a modified, unmanned, joint light tactical vehicle, 
hitting a target at sea underway. This system, which we call 
the Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System, or 
NMESIS, is exactly the type of capability that Combatant 
Commanders are calling for to enhance their deterrent posture.
    Second is unmanned ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, 
Reconnaissance). In 2020, we began a transition to a mixed 
capability of long-range ship and ground-based, unmanned aerial 
systems, to include the MQ-9 Reaper. The Reaper has a proven 
capability that will significantly expand our organic ISR and 
enable us to better support fleet and joint operations, 
including anti-submarine operations.
    We have also initiated a partnership with industry to 
develop a future autonomous, long-range, unmanned surface 
vessel. That is going to significantly improve the 
reconnaissance capability of our Marine Expeditionary Units, or 
MEUs.
    Third, we are investing in loitering munitions. These 
swarming aerial munitions, which employ automatic target 
recognition, have proven exceptionally lethal in recent global 
conflicts, most recently in Europe. Our own tests have also 
demonstrated this technology to be effective with five of five 
successful shots during testing.
    We plan to equip our infantry and reconnaissance Marines 
with this loitering capability. Mounting those munitions on 
both ground vehicles and long-range unmanned surface vessels--
the one I mentioned earlier--and we will make a final decision 
on vendors this year.
    With that brief update in mind, a fair question I think 
might be to ask, How do you plan to pay for all these new 
capabilities and other force design investments? Recognizing 
today's budget environment, the Marine Corps has, for the past 
2 years, and we will continue, pursuing a cost-neutral approach 
to force design. We will self-fund our modernization. To ensure 
the success of this approach, I will ask for your support in 
reducing the total procurement of some platforms, commensurate 
with the recent reductions in our end strength.
    The fact is, today's Marine Corps is significantly smaller 
than it was a decade ago--about 24,000 Marines smaller. That 
means we will not need as many ground vehicles. We will not 
need as many aircraft as we thought we did when initial 
procurement decisions were made decades ago. It is just simple 
math.
    With the reductions outlined in our force design report, I 
believe we will have sufficient resources to create the modern 
capabilities required for competition, deterrence, and crisis 
response without a further reduction in our end strength.
    That approach, however, relies 100 percent on this 
committee's confidence in allowing the Marine Corps to retain 
and reallocate the internal resources we generate through end 
strength reductions, cutting legacy platforms, and right-sizing 
previously set programs of record for new capabilities, like 
the F-35, CH-53K, and the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.
    My promise to you as Commandant is to remain the very best 
steward of taxpayer dollars, and I ask for your continued 
support to ensure your Marines, which are the Nation's force in 
readiness, remain ready to respond to any crisis, anywhere in 
the world, today, and into the future.
    Like the Acting Secretary mentioned, I welcome the 
opportunity to work with this committee, and I look forward to 
your questions, both in this hearing and in the weeks to come.
    [The statement follows:]
             Prepared Statement of General David H. Berger
    Chairman Tester, Vice Chairman Shelby, and distinguished members of 
this committee, thank you for this opportunity to present the annual 
report on the Marine Corps. More importantly, thank you for your 
continued support and leadership over this challenging year. I believe 
strongly that major change in existing force structure and ways of 
doing business are needed in this era of renewed great power 
competition. The strategic environment the Marine Corps and joint force 
operate in has changed, as has the domestic context as a result of the 
ongoing COVID-19 and related relief measures. We must therefore make 
appropriate adjustments to our investment plans to ensure a proper 
return on the taxpayers' investment. The promotion and sustainment of 
the Marine Corps that our nation and fleets will need in 2030 and 
beyond requires your continued active support.
    Since testifying last year, our nation has engaged in a long 
overdue conversation on race and social justice sparked by several 
visible incidents of institutional racism, and perhaps more 
importantly--how to remedy the inequities of the present. As with all 
other Americans, I--and every other Marine--have acknowledged these 
challenges, and will continue to do our part to overcome them once and 
for all. While confronting issues of inequality, we have simultaneously 
endured the adverse consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like 
millions of others, Marines and their families across the country and 
globe suffered the consequences of isolation, closure of our public 
schools, and increased childcare demands; and like those millions of 
other Americans, Marines made the necessary sacrifices to stop the 
spread. I am proud of every one of those Marines with their collective 
leadership and of their ability to rapidly adapt and lead by example.
    Our nation witnessed a small but violent minority attempt to 
subvert the rule of law through an overt act of violent coercion on 
January 6, 2021. Like most every other American, I was shocked by this 
attack on our democracy. I was even more dismayed to learn that some of 
those engaged in that attack had previously served in the military--to 
include the United States Marine Corps. Thankfully, we as a nation and 
military have done as we always do--learned, endured, and grown 
stronger. We have and will continue to actively work to identify 
recruits and Marines who hold extremist views and we look forward to 
participating in the Secretary of Defense's new Countering Extremism 
Working Group to develop additional methods of keeping extremists from 
within our ranks.
    Over the past year, I have continued to communicate my 
understanding of the future demands of naval expeditionary warfare and 
maritime gray zone competition. Related to the future of naval 
campaigns, I have articulated a case for change to reinforce and expand 
existing naval warfighting advantages and create future strategic 
advantages. It is abundantly clear that a future operating environment 
characterized by a maturing and proliferating precision strike regime 
will place heavy demands on our Nation's Naval Services. We are not yet 
organized, trained, equipped, or postured to meet those demands and 
support fleet operations. This is no longer a controversial assertion 
as it was when my predecessor first uttered it. The vast majority of 
defense professionals--including the Members of the bipartisan Future 
of Defense Task Force--perceive the same challenges I do in the 
emerging operating environment, as well as the urgent need for real 
innovation and rapid change in response. Although there is an ongoing, 
healthy debate about how and what we should change across the Armed 
Services, there are very few lining up to defend the status quo. We 
must continue to discuss these changes, but defense professionals have 
almost unanimously acknowledged that real change is required--and soon.
    Though some things require substantial change, we should be clear 
to acknowledge those foundational tenets which remain as relevant and 
operationally suitable today as they have been over the previous 70 
years. In 1952, Members of Congress noted the Marine Corps ``can 
prevent the growth of potentially large conflagrations by prompt and 
vigorous action during their incipient stages. The nation's shock 
troops must be the most ready when the nation is least ready...to 
provide a balanced force-in-readiness for a naval campaign and, at the 
same time, a ground and air striking force ready to suppress or contain 
international disturbances short of large-scale war...'' This role as 
the nation's force-in-readiness, prepared to create strategic advantage 
via its ability to be quickest to respond to either crisis or conflict, 
and prepared to both prevent and contain conflict below the threshold 
of traditional armed conflict remains as valid today as it was when 
first articulated.
                    personnel and talent management
    None of our Force Design 2030 aspirations are possible without 
addressing the people within our ranks. As Secretary Austin 
highlighted, ``our most critical asset...is our people.'' I believe 
this is even more relevant within the Marine Corps. Marines are the 
heart and soul of the Corps. Almost all of your 225,000 Marines serve 
honorably every day, representing the very best of our country and your 
constituencies. No institution, however, is without flaws. As I noted 
last year, malignant individuals and small malignant subcultures 
continue to exist within your Marine Corps. In this era of profound 
ideological division within our nation, some individual Marines 
regrettably bring with them, or fall victim to while in service, 
misogynistic, racist, and homophobic/transphobic ideologies driven by 
hate, fear, and ignorance. While I have instituted even more rigorous 
policies than previously existed to ensure we identify such individuals 
during enlistment and accession screening, I remain committed to 
identifying and holding accountable any Marine unable to uphold our 
core values and to adhere to our unapologetically high standards. This 
is what you should expect from me, and you will get it.
    Within the context of the larger national conversation on race, 
social justice, and equality, it became clear to me early in my 
Commandancy that there were symbols and behaviors within our Corps that 
challenged the cohesion and unity essential to military effectiveness. 
The Confederate Battle flag stood out as one such symbol. I am not a 
historian and do not take a position as to the true meaning of this 
ancient banner, but some in today's world have rallied around the 
colors of that defeated rebellion to foster division and hate. As a 
result, I prohibited its display aboard all Marine Corps installations 
beginning last spring. My primary responsibility is to prepare Marines 
to fight and win in combat, and we cannot tolerate artificial division 
driving wedges among your Marines--especially ones so easy to identify 
and remove. I will do everything within my authority to remove any 
obstacle preventing equality and cohesion. Signs or symbols that 
support or endorse hatred, ignorance, or injustice have no place in our 
Corps.
    While these acknowledgements of past prejudice are good first 
steps, we must do more than simply look over our shoulders at the past. 
We must acknowledge the real bias and obstacles in the system today. We 
must promote and retain the very best Marines; however, it is clear to 
me that a degree of structural racism and sexism exists within our 
current system. We must create a system of structural equality that 
ensures all Marines--of all backgrounds--are able to use their best 
talents to solve the problems we soon will face. The diversity of 
thought and actions each Marine brings will help us find more creative 
and innovative solutions to these future challenges. We must actively 
work to retain and grow this diversity of thought through a more 
diverse group of talented individuals, while at the same time 
protecting against extremism.
    Over the past decade and in close coordination with Congress, we've 
prioritized the prevention of sexual harassment and sexual assault as 
well as dedicated tremendous effort into providing the appropriate 
response to these criminal acts. I am convinced of the linkage between 
sexual harassment and sexual assault, thus we will continue to make 
every effort to eliminate both from our ranks with your continued 
assistance. We have increased the number of Victim Legal Counselors 
dedicated to supporting sexual assault victims over the past 12 months. 
However, all of these efforts are dedicated to the response after a 
tragic event has occurred. We must do better at the prevention in order 
to stop sexual assault and sexual harassment before they occur. 
Although we conduct regular training aimed at preventing this from 
happening, we are still working to overcome unhealthy attitudes and 
behaviors recruits arrive with to Recruit Training. We must develop 
practices that identify those negative behaviors before they turn into 
heinous acts and prevent such behaviors from occurring in the first 
place.
    Improving the capabilities and proficiencies of the individual 
Marine necessitates we must also have the very best senior leaders for 
those Marines. I am humbled to serve alongside the General Officers and 
Flag Officers within the Department of the Navy. But even one instance 
of misconduct or misbehavior within our General Officer ranks is too 
many. Over the past decade, the Marine Corps has selected several 
officers for promotion to brigadier general who subsequently failed to 
be confirmed by the Senate. This is unacceptable. Over the coming 
months, I will announce several major policy changes related to talent 
management to include how we screen and select our commanders and most 
senior leaders. We are currently reviewing the efficacy of implementing 
a 360-degree review for all lieutenant colonels and colonels eligible 
for command selection and all colonels eligible for selection to 
brigadier general, to help ensure we identify the absolute best who 
have earned the trust and respect of juniors, peers, and seniors alike. 
In addition to these issues related to screening, I remain concerned at 
the absence of Black officers within the senior ranks of our aviation 
enterprise and specifically within the ranks of our fixed-wing pilots, 
as well as the paucity of female general officers. We are currently 
studying both issues, and will share the results of those studies once 
completed.
    As you are aware, we cannot create new senior leaders in a day. If 
we are to correct our gap in diversity at the senior ranks, we must 
also address diversity at accessions. The largest single source of 
commissioning within the Marine Corps is the U. S. Naval Academy, 
accounting for nearly 20% of officer commissions each year. A recently 
released study identified that almost 75% of the nominations to our 
service academies were given to white students. The diversity of this 
population has a direct impact on what leaders are available for 
selection to our senior ranks.
    It is not enough that we recruit and train the very best. Once 
Marines have joined our ranks, we must nurture and incentivize them 
along their individual journeys through a modern talent management 
system flexible enough to account for changing career interests and 
common life choices over time. Without such a system, we will 
increasingly struggle to retain the very best people in an ever more 
competitive marketplace. Our one-size-fits-all, industrial-era approach 
that treats individuals as interchangeable cogs within a larger machine 
does not appropriately incentivize the most talented individuals to 
remain in service. We are currently reviewing policy options that will 
offer Marines greater flexibility when it comes to tour lengths based 
on an individual's circumstances--most notably when a Marine has a 
child entering or completing high school. Our Marines must not be 
forced to choose between being good parents or being good Marines. 
Those sterling goals must be compatible. I remain committed to 
improving the lives of our Marines as they become parents and we are 
looking into ways that would prevent them from having to choose between 
the newborn and continued service as a Marine. I truly desire a Marine 
Corps known for being the best within the joint force for our treatment 
of new parents and families--and not just our warfighting prowess.
    It is a well-known issue that the Marine Corps is struggling to 
recruit and retain Americans possessing the crucial science, 
technology, engineering, and mathematical skills and competencies 
required for the future. Technology companies present exciting and 
challenging opportunities for software developers, cyber professionals, 
and engineers. We must offer opportunities that allow someone to choose 
both service and professional reward. In addition, we must do a better 
job targeting the application of our NROTC scholarships to these 
individuals, as well as explore new possibilities with Historically 
Black Colleges and Universities to satisfy these shortfalls.
    The military services--including your Marine Corps--continue to 
lose the competition with the civilian airline industry for pilots and 
maintainers, even with the adverse impacts of COVID-19 on the airline 
industry. We are not maintaining sufficient numbers of naval aviators 
and F-35 maintainers to sustain either our existing inventory of 
aircraft or aircraft programmed for the years to come. Within our F-35 
community, we have a shortfall of both pilots and maintainers. I am 
concerned that if we do not remedy these shortfalls in the very near 
future, we may be in a situation in which we are directed by Congress 
to procure aircraft for which we have insufficient pilots and 
maintainers.
                         training and education
    A key element of our larger force design transformation is our need 
to adopt an information age approach to training and education that 
produces better leaders and warfighters more effectively and 
efficiently. The essence of this approach is to focus on identifying, 
developing, and sustaining the unique talents of individual Marines, 
not turning out MOS-shaped cogs to fit MOS-shaped slots in a machine. 
Better warfighters in an era of exponential change means adaptive, 
critical thinkers who are also tactical and operational masters of 
their profession.
    Among many implications of this shift will be higher expectations 
and intellectual standards for Marines, especially commissioned 
officers, at every stage of their selection for and attendance at 
formal schools. We still need standardized training and education to 
set a baseline and inculcate our core Service values and ethos, but 
there are significant aspects of entry-level training that must be 
adapted. Much of our current understanding of future warfighting 
requirements, associated concepts, and force design point to a more 
highly trained force from the entry-level onward. We need to change how 
we train and educate as well. We have known for a long time that rote 
repetition and even ``perfect practice'' against static, unresisting 
targets is only the barest beginning of mastery. Consistent 
opportunities to make tactical and operational decisions against a 
thinking enemy must be a critical part of our curricula at all levels. 
This kind of force- on-force wargaming and training must stand on a 
solid foundation of military history and theory-games, simulations, and 
exercises are necessary, but not sufficient. We will develop that 
foundation in school, but sustain it by rigorous, accountable, self-
directed effort. We must address the question of ``standards'' 
transparently and head-on to create the force we desire, and to create 
the force we advertise. In an initial step to creating a philosophy and 
culture of a learning organization, last year I signed the first all-
new service doctrine since 1998; MCDP 7 Learning was released in 
February and MCDP 1-4 Competing in December. In addition to releasing 
new doctrine, we have elevated command of our Training and Education 
Command to a three-star general, equal to all other Deputy Commandants, 
and are in the process of re-establishing a robust Futures Directorate.
    Achieving diversity of thought requires fixing our entry-level 
instruction to allow every new recruit and officer candidate the same 
opportunity to master these skills without it impeding their future 
career opportunities. Not every young man or woman who joins our ranks 
grew up participating in activities relevant to individual battlefield 
skills such as marksmanship, orienteering, water survival, or technical 
skills. As a matter of longstanding practice, however, we continue to 
assess potential at the very earliest stages of our recruit and officer 
training programs based on performance in precisely those skills. There 
is no doubt of the continuing importance of these military basics, but 
we cannot expect every new Marine to master those individual skills 
with the same amount of in-service instruction, regardless of previous 
experience. A new recruit who has never touched a rifle cannot be 
expected to master marksmanship in the same amount of time as a recruit 
who grew up handling rifles regularly, and a Marine who never learned 
to swim should not compete unaided for job placement with a Marine who 
grew up as a competitive swimmer. In effect, we penalize Marines who 
fail to master these basic skills because they did not start with the 
same knowledge or skill base. While holding the line on the standard of 
basic competencies that define a Marine, our entry-level training must 
provide the instruction necessary for every recruit and officer 
candidate to achieve mastery in basic skills, regardless of how much 
time it takes.
    The COVID-19 pandemic brought new challenges and opportunities to 
your Marine Corps. During the entire time, your force-in-readiness 
continued recruiting, training, operating, and deploying around the 
globe. Although we did not stop any of our activities, we did learn 
many lessons from the pandemic that we can continue to use going 
forward to make a more resilient and capable force. We devised new 
methods of virtually connecting with potential recruits and with our 
force, internally. For entry-level training, we spread out recruits 
while they slept and installed more handwashing stations, which has 
virtually eliminated the inevitable illness that the new recruits will 
pass around as they come in from all over the country. A key factor in 
this success has been the level of discipline instilled by small unit 
leaders which prevented any significant outbreaks and kept Marines 
healthy. Your Marines continue to serve their communities by 
establishing federal COVID-19 vaccine sites in local communities in 
support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As President Biden 
highlighted, we don't have enough people to provide vaccination shots--
put the shots in people's arms--so Marines are filling in this 
immediate shortfall.
                       gender integrated training
    The FY 2020 NDAA directed the Marine Corps to integrate training at 
both Marine Corps Recruit Depots Parris Island and San Diego. Since the 
signing of the law, we have trained multiple integrated companies at 
MCRD Parris Island. In February, the recruits of Lima Company were the 
first gender-integrated company at MCRD San Diego in the installation's 
100-year existence. To train the first females at MCRD San Diego, we 
graduated the first gender-integrated class at Drill Instructor School 
in San Diego in December and relocated female drill instructors from 
MCRD Parris Island. We will take the lessons learned from this company 
as well as a concurrent study to identify the requirements needed to 
fulfill the 2020 NDAA within the prescribed timelines. However, as I 
have publicly stated several times, we will prioritize options that 
provide the best training and most efficient use of resources to ensure 
Marines graduating from boot camp are ready for the rigors of service 
in an elite organization during challenging times.
                              force design
    Shortly after I testified before this Committee in the spring of 
2020, I published the Force Design 2030 report. Force Design 2030 is 
how your Marine Corps is changing its trajectory to create advantage 
for the fleets and joint force in both maritime gray zone competition 
and more traditional conflict. Although we need new capabilities to 
deter adversaries, we must fundamentally change how we think about 
armed conflict. We can no longer view warfare through the binary lens 
of war and peace, but should recognize the existence of a cyclical 
continuum of competition that occurs every day and involves all 
elements of national power. Historically, the military viewed 
maintaining the peace as deterring war through denial or by punishment. 
Force Design 2030 offers a third option in addition to those two that 
will counter strategies below the threshold of armed-conflict by 
winning the reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance competition and 
facilitating deterrence by detection.
    At its core, Force Design 2030 is a campaign of learning. Through 
wargames, analysis, and limited experimentation, it has become clear 
the joint force needs a capability that operates persistently and with 
maximum organic mobility and dispersion to compete and deter in the 
contact and blunt layers. The vulnerability of large fixed bases and 
shore-based infrastructure to long-range precision strike, combined 
with the impracticality of defending such infrastructure from the 
pacing threat's emerging capabilities at any politically-feasible level 
of resourcing and regional posture, necessitates that the stand-in 
force be able to perform these functions from a strictly expeditionary 
and highly mobile and resilient naval posture. This refined analysis 
and understanding is what is driving our Force Design 2030 to support 
concepts like Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO), as well as 
informing the recently released Tentative Manual on Expeditionary 
Advanced Based Operations. We will continue to refine and update the 
Tentative Manual with the lessons learned from our FMF experimentation. 
In the near future, we will release our latest concept--Stand-In 
Forces.
    Much as our 29th Commandant codified maneuver warfare in our 
principal doctrine MCDP-1 Warfighting to instill a maneuver warfare 
mindset into every Marine, I felt it necessary to codify how we compete 
every day around the globe. We recently released a doctrinal 
publication entitled Competing to instill a competitive mindset into 
every Marine, whether above or below the threshold of armed conflict. 
Marines--and the military as a whole--must be aware that every action 
or inaction has an effect on reassuring our partners and allies and 
deterring our competitors. All that we do, from our force laydown, to 
the activity at each location, to the equipment we buy, signals our 
commitment to reassure and deter. In a globally connected operating 
environment, we no longer have the luxury of maintaining a binary 
combat or garrison mindset; our posture and mindset must be one of 
continuous competition.
                  naval expeditionary stand-in forces
    Expeditionary advanced bases are a platform for small, mission-
tailored groups of Marines to distribute and hide in plain sight with 
the assistance of advanced camouflage, cover, concealment, detection, 
and deception (C3D2) capabilities against a competitor who is seeking 
to locate our forces. Expeditionary advanced bases will enable the 
convergence of capabilities from multiple domains and create the 
virtues of mass without concentration. The Marine Littoral Regiment 
(MLR)--the base unit for our future force--will provide fleet and joint 
force commanders with persistent, survivable forces that will enable 
the generation of effects within areas that our adversaries hope to 
deny to us through their integrated systems of anti-access and area-
denial capabilities. In terms of hardware, Marine capabilities will 
include anti-ship Naval Strike Missiles (NSM) loaded on the unmanned 
Remotely Operated Ground Unit Expeditionary (ROGUE) Fires; self-
sustainment and mobility with the Light Amphibious Warship (LAW); and, 
long-loiter aerial reconnaissance in an expeditionary environment with 
the Medium Altitude, Long Endurance (MALE) Group 5 unmanned aerial 
systems (UAS). Future infantry units operating within the MLR construct 
will be equipped with organic precision fires to include loitering 
munitions. The MLRs will be networked with our F-35 capabilities, 
providing a further layer of combat credibility and sensing. In the 
future, these forces could employ more advanced munitions such as 
Tomahawk Land Attack Munitions (TLAM), Maritime Strike Tomahawks (MST), 
SM-6 containerized anti-ship missiles; and a wide array of unmanned or 
optionally manned systems to enhance deterrence. Without these long-
range precision fires, the MLRs will not be suitable to support the 
fleets and will lack the ability to influence the vast maritime area 
your Marine Corps must do.
    In the even more critical human domain, these capabilities will 
encompass the necessary training and education to produce leaders who 
understand how to deter competitors and provide civilian leadership 
strategic options across a wider spectrum. The MLRs will offer 
deterrence by detection through constant surveillance of the 
competitor, complicating their decision-making calculus if they attempt 
fait accompli gambits, and doing so while networked into the larger 
architecture of naval and joint command, control, computers, 
communications, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and 
tracking (C5ISR-T) articulated in the Joint All-Domain Command and 
Control (JADC2) concept and previous discussions on Mosaic Warfare.
    With global sensors becoming ubiquitous, the value of 
reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance or scouting and counter-
scouting will increase. Force Design 2030 offers civilian leaders 
strategic options to identify, deter, and hold accountable competitors 
challenging U.S. interests or infringing on international norms at any 
point on the globe. It creates advantage by providing uniformed and 
civilian leadership with a force capable of denying key maritime 
terrain to an adversary or to force a change in decision calculus and 
facilitate de-escalation. Those naval expeditionary forces will also be 
capable of rapidly sensing, making sense, and acting upon information 
from inside the enemy's weapon engagement zone (WEZ) in support of the 
fleet and larger joint force, further complicating adversary decision 
calculus. These stand-in forces will be able to support anti-submarine 
warfare (ASW) efforts and help sanitize key maritime straits, thus 
expanding our strategic undersea warfare advantage. Your Marine Corps 
is transforming into a force capable of competing and winning the 
hider/finder competition by proliferating sensors to detect adversary 
presence, employing advanced C3D2 for resilience, and maintaining a 
lethal array of long-range precision fires to prosecute targets at a 
time and place of our choosing--whether ashore or afloat or in the air. 
Stand-in forces will simultaneously satisfy traditional requirements 
from the fleet and combatant commanders for a modern, resilient crisis 
response force capable of responding across the range of military 
operations. And, as noted in the most recent testimony by the 
Commander, USINDOPACOM, these stand-in expeditionary forces are further 
required as the forward leading-edge to any strategic defense in the 
Indo-Pacific and any maritime defense-in-depth.
    From our continued wargaming and experimentation, we have learned 
much about the utility of multi-domain reconnaissance. As a result, 
over the coming months a new Marine reconnaissance enterprise will 
consolidate disparate elements of existing organizations within a 
structure capable of generating a coherent, persistent, forward-
presence focused on key maritime terrain that is vital to U.S. national 
security interests. The next step will be the development of our Mobile 
Reconnaissance framework which will deliver expanded all-domain 
capabilities to our naval expeditionary forces and fleets via a 
combination of Marine Commandos, manned and unmanned surface platforms 
to include the Long-Range, Unmanned Surface Vessels (LRUSV) and small 
boats, manned and unmanned ground Ultra-Light Tactical Vehicles (ULTV), 
unmanned aerial systems, and unmanned subsurface vehicles. As with 
other force design efforts, these forces will be fully capable of 
networking with our 5th generation F-35 capabilities as well as 
connecting with the larger joint architecture.
    In addition to offering continuous surveillance in the contact 
layer, the MLR increases lethality, disbursement, mobility, and 
survivability in a way that our current stable of large, expensive, 
high-signature platforms cannot match to deter and counter aggression 
in critical regions. The MLRs will provide a unique expeditionary 
advanced base capability, but they will not be the sole definition of 
the FMF as our Marine Expeditionary Units will remain our ``crown 
jewel.'' Your Marine Corps can compete, deter, and win as part of a 
naval expeditionary force operating in international waters and with 
light footprints ashore on the territory of local allies and partners. 
It does not require the sustained presence of heavy ground forces or 
the regular deployment of large, land-based aviation elements. These 
unique capabilities make the Marine Corps the ideal choice for a force-
in-readiness that serves as the backbone of the contact layer because 
our forces can cooperate with allied and partnered nations without 
burdening their local infrastructure, whether for steady-state 
operations or disaster response operations. Additionally, the sensing 
elements of the FMF coupled with lethality are key attributes in 
preventing conflict.
                                posture
    21st century strategic competition requires a new posture to deter 
modern threats. Our current force posture is strikingly similar to the 
one designed coming out of the Korean War. That posture was designed to 
deter and confront a Soviet threat that consisted of strategic bombers 
and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. Over the last two decades, our 
strategic competitors took note of our strengths and designed forces 
specifically to counter them. We must now adjust our posture against 
the pacing threat of China due to its ability to hold our fleet at 
stand-off ranges and prevent significant force projections. This does 
not mean abandoning our forward position of advantage, but rather 
adopting a more robust and resilient forward-deployed posture as 
described in testimony by Admiral Davidson as part of a larger defense-
in-depth.
    Marine forces working with Navy ships must occupy space within the 
contested first and second island chains in the Indo-Pacific with the 
ability to effectively operate in all domains. Guam remains one of our 
most important strategic locations as it is US territory located 
closest to contested maritime regions. In order to effectively deter by 
detection, our forces must be within sensor and striking range to 
impose cost on the adversary through their allocation of limited C5ISR-
T assets or determining that the cost is too high to attempt anything 
that would cross the line of established international laws and norms. 
However, while Guam remains a strategically important location within 
our larger defense-in-depth, we must not ignore the potential impacts 
to it due to the adverse effects of climate change. We must take the 
necessary steps to protect Guam and the strategic advantage it 
provides.
    Our posture includes more than the laydown of our forces around the 
world, it also must include what our forces are doing in those 
locations. As Secretary Austin has told us, ``our success will depend 
on how closely we work with our friends around the world to secure our 
common interests and promote our shared values.'' Marines regularly 
conduct training with allies and partners globally. This training is 
beneficial to building trusting relationships and interoperability. 
These relationships are not--and should not be--one way, in that US 
Forces tell partners and allies how to operate. We can learn from other 
nations as much as we can teach.
    For example, the Japanese Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade may 
have used the U. S. Marine Corps as an example in its development, but 
we have much to learn from them based on how quickly they designed, 
assembled, tested, and operationalized the brigade. Our commitment to 
working with allies and partners creates a mutually beneficial 
relationship for our military organizations while simultaneously 
signaling our resolve to competitors. Initiatives like the Pacific 
Deterrence and the European Deterrence are so important in supporting 
our posture.
                          competition and risk
    Some critics of our Force Design 2030 suggest that non-stealthy 
platforms such as the LAW, LPD-17 class amphibious ship, and the 
current Group 5 UAS are operationally unsuitable for high-end 
warfighting. This critique's foundational assumption is that our 
decades-old stealth technology or military-standard naval architecture 
will be overcome with technological countermeasures and that stealth 
technologies will become affordable enough to proliferate the operating 
environment in large quantities. Survivability under such conditions is 
likely to prove far more a matter of quantity, dispersion, signature 
management, and distributed lethality than of being able to avoid 
technical detection or defend against all threats. We must view 
survivability in terms of the entire system--the entire system must be 
able to survive long enough to accomplish the mission vice an 
individual platform. The expeditionary system of platforms our Marines 
employ--and the networks they operate on--must be capable of competing 
and deterring below the level of armed conflict as well as fight at the 
high-end to reassure our partners and allies as well as demonstrate a 
credible capability to a would-be adversary. For example, while not a 
part of the currently envisioned program, LAWs operating in plain sight 
with containerized missiles could effectively compete and deter. Such a 
reimagining of the program could involve greater costs, so we will have 
to study the benefits and make resource informed decisions about 
tradeoffs in capabilities and capacity. Traditional amphibious ships, 
such as the LPD-17s, possessing tactical advantages derived from well-
decks will confound adversaries and force them to consume resources 
attempting to positively identify those capabilities loaded inside--
whether unmanned surface vessels, unmanned underwater vessels, or more 
traditional capabilities. Long-endurance Group 5 UAS, like the MQ-9, 
also provides the persistent presence necessary to win the hider/finder 
competition for the fleet. Additionally, a proven platform like the MQ-
9 supports quickly learning the platform through the experience of the 
US Air Force while continuing adaptation and innovation over time as we 
procure the future system.
    If competition expands from opening volleys or punishment strikes 
to large-scale conflict, the Fleet Marine Force offers the Joint Force 
Commander a persistent stand-in force capable of conducting 
reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance, and targeting in the blunt 
layer. A stand-in force with the ability to support allies and partners 
while striking the adversary with long range precision fires, 5th 
generation short take-off and vertical landing aircraft, and a host of 
electronic warfare options combined with the mobility of the Amphibious 
Combat Vehicle (ACV), LAW, and unmanned surface and undersea vehicles 
provides a survivable option to buy time for the remainder of the joint 
force to bring war-winning capabilities.
                        logistics and resilience
    Sustaining the force we are developing now becomes even more 
critical in the years ahead. The relative ease with which we have been 
able to project power into the Middle East over the last few decades 
has lulled us into a false sense of security. As a result, we have 
optimized service logistics efforts to support requirements without 
regard to the threat actions that could disrupt them. My predecessor 
said ``we are going to have to fight to get to the fight.'' I will take 
that a step further by saying we will have to fight to sustain our 
warfighting efforts over time. The Joint Logistics Enterprise must 
connect our emerging operational concepts at the tactical edge all the 
way back to the defense industrial base. We have been an end user of 
the system, but that needs to change. We must develop new methods for 
the Naval Force to enable broader joint force sustainment efforts. On a 
day-to-day basis, today's distributed force strains our systems to the 
limits. This will only get more challenging considering the dynamic, 
evolving threats that competitors can apply against our supply chains, 
manufacturing bases, and global sustainment network.
    Based on anticipated funding levels and the additional budget 
uncertainty that has been introduced by the COVID-19 response, we must 
clearly consider risk as we move forward. Our force design efforts for 
the future will provide the context necessary to make the difficult 
choices for our installations and logistics enterprise. We can no 
longer accept the inefficiencies inherent in legacy bureaucratic 
processes nor accept incremental improvements. In order for our 
installations and logistics organizations to change effectively, we 
must better understand the implications that Force Design 2030 will 
have on the FMF across multiple time horizons so we can resource our 
installations and logistics enterprise appropriately. In coordination 
with partners both inside and outside the service, we will evolve our 
organization to meet the future FMF's operational requirements in the 
air, on land, and at sea while continuing to provide world-class 
support to the force today. This may require a change in the existing 
command relationships between the bases and stations and the forces 
they support. I will keep the committee fully informed of any such 
changes as our understanding evolves. Finally, in an effort to 
modernize our bases and stations in a manner commensurate with our 
overall force design, we are experimenting with advanced force 
protection systems enabled by artificial intelligence at several of our 
installations. This capability is promising and may provide the service 
an opportunity to greatly enhance the protection of our installations 
while drastically cutting personnel costs.
                   major defense acquisition programs
    I have always operated under the assumption that evidence, wargame 
findings, modeling and simulations, and my own best military advice as 
Commandant would persuade people across the defense enterprise and 
within Congress that we need change now. While I remain convinced that 
this assumption remains valid and look forward to a continued dialogue 
with the Committee, we have more work to do to persuade key audiences 
of the merits of our desired changes. Congressional support for Ground 
Based Anti-Ship Missiles (GBASM); LRUSV; Medium Altitude, Long 
Endurance UAS; and I believe that Light Amphibious Warship (LAW) will 
be essential to our modernization efforts. We will continue to work 
with the Congress to demonstrate the importance of a rapid acquisition 
of these critical capabilities. I have repeatedly asked for 
Congressional support to change legacy programs that are no longer 
operationally relevant or have become cost prohibitive, as well as 
support for new initiatives that create a relative warfighting 
advantage. This is the kind of agility we will need going forward in 
order to sustain that warfighting advantage.
    Based on my understanding of the strategic challenges before us and 
my desire to remain the best steward of taxpayer dollars, I am 
convinced that we must be willing to critically assess the scope of 
current Programs of Record for our Major Defense Acquisition Programs 
(MDAP). As we reduce the end strength of the Marine Corps in order to 
internally fund our modernization, each MDAP must be reevaluated for 
capacity and sustainability. We will need the continued support of 
Congress to re-scope any program that exceeds our requirement or is 
unaffordable to procure, man, and sustain.
    In addition, we should acknowledge that up to three quarters of a 
weapon system's cost occurs in sustainment--the operational and 
maintenance upkeep after the initial acquisition. With the new 
procurement of large weapon systems like the F-35B/C, CH-53K, MV-22, 
JLTV, and ACV--to name but a few--we should be prepared to modify 
programs of records to ensure affordability and viability throughout 
the entire lifecycle of each program. Prioritizing high-end platforms 
without resourcing the supplies and infrastructure needed to sustain 
its operational capability is fundamentally irresponsible; the result 
would be a hollow force.
    With every dollar we expend to upgrade a legacy platform that is no 
longer survivable against a peer competitor, we are slowing our rate of 
transformation. Our competitors no longer wait to see what America does 
and follow suit; they have embarked on their own trajectory, which 
currently outpaces ours. Our Force Design 2030 addresses this problem 
by forcing the competitor to adapt to us through the tactical, 
operational, and strategic challenges a truly modern force presents. 
This does create domestic dilemmas as we are forced to transition from 
legacy platforms built in certain districts to modern and relevant 
equipment that may be built elsewhere. However, if we are to succeed in 
this great power competition, we must make those difficult choices. I 
remain confident that this can occur in a responsible and balanced way, 
without creating winners and losers, and look forward to discussions 
with each of you on a way ahead that satisfies shared interests.
    The Marine Corps remains constrained by an acquisition process that 
tries to eliminate risk--risk poorly defined as uncertainty. We must 
recognize that incrementally better versions of the current Marine 
Corps is not going to be enough for real great power competition. As 
noted in the House Armed Services Committee's Future of Defense Task 
Force Report 2020, our acquisition process is too sluggish to work 
effectively at scale with many technology companies, as they need to 
innovate and compete daily to survive in their dynamic industry. With 
the rapid transition we need to make over the next decade, we must be 
willing to incur some short-term risk to better prepare and compete in 
the future. The ability to prototype new technologies, then 
aggressively experiment and exercise with prototype equipment to 
understand its full capability on the battlefield is paramount. Lastly, 
I agree with the Report's recommendation that we need a process that 
better bridges the ``valley of death'' to transition critical prototype 
equipment into full-scale fielding without taking years through the 
traditional planning, programming, budgeting, and execution process.
                   readiness and strategic advantage
    As we build a more capable and lethal force, we must also take into 
consideration the readiness of that force. Since 2017, the Marine Corps 
has significantly increased the availability of forces to Combatant 
Commanders based on the generous funding of Congress. As Marines deploy 
forward in support of operational requirements, they buy down today's 
risk by deterring competitors from violating international norms while 
assuring allies and partners of the strength of our commitments. 
However, the mere availability of those Marines does not equal 
readiness to compete in the maritime gray zone, nor does it create 
strategic advantage to deter or defeat rapidly evolving threats. It is 
time for us to embrace a more sophisticated and balanced understanding 
of military readiness and cease using availability as the primary 
metric in our readiness evaluations. This antiquated model is hugely 
consumptive and forces us to spend limited resources ensuring the 
availability of platforms designated for retirement and replacement. 
This also applies to equipment that we are attempting to transition to 
more modern capabilities. For example, every dollar spent to make a 4th 
generation aircraft that has exceeded its intended service life is a 
dollar that cannot be spent to accelerate the fielding of 5th 
generation very low-observable aircraft and advanced UAS. We must 
invest in future capabilities that create, maintain, and expand 
warfighting advantage to ensure a ready force tomorrow that maintains 
its ability to compete and deter.
    During the most recent conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, 
Armenian ground forces that we would have labeled ready based on 
availability, were easily targeted and destroyed by Azerbaijani forces 
employing elements of a precision strike regime to include swarms of 
loitering munitions and lethal unmanned systems. While Armenia's tanks 
and infantry fighting vehicles were available, they were not 
operationally suitable, thus not ready for the conflict. As our 
competitors continue to expand their capabilities, we will soon find 
ourselves outmatched unless we change our readiness framework. To do 
so, we should embrace a new readiness paradigm in which availability 
ranks behind generating a relative warfighting advantage. A ready 
capability in the future must be one that is both available when we 
need it and creates a strategic warfighting advantage against a 
specific threat in great power competition and conflict.
    A ready force that creates a strategic advantage over the pacing 
threat must be organized to generate faster decision cycles against the 
enemy. A large part of our Force Design 2030 efforts is aimed at 
developing the right capabilities for the future force, but just as 
important is devising the correct organizational model to employ those 
capabilities. I do not support creating more or larger headquarters 
organizations to accommodate the larger quantities of data coming in as 
I feel this will only slow the decision-making process. I'm also not 
committed to organizations that we have employed in the past if they 
don't work to fulfill our future requirements. In addition to right-
sizing our FMF, I've also directed an ongoing assessment to reduce 15% 
of our personnel across Headquarters Marine Corps to generate savings 
that we can reinvest into our warfighting capabilities without losing 
the institutional processes necessary to support an adaptable force.
    Your Marine Corps, and the Naval Service as a whole, have a proven 
record when it comes to driving change. Both the People's Republic of 
China and Russia modernized their militaries over the past decade based 
on what they assessed as our strengths and our competitive warfighting 
advantages. They adapted their operational and strategic approaches to 
counter us and now we must modernize in order to remedy shortfalls and 
drive the next cycle of change. Simply making our legacy platforms 
better or more of them available will not force our competitors to 
change course, nor will it create the strategic advantage required. I 
concur with the Air Force Chief of Staff General CQ Brown: we must 
accelerate change or lose.
    One way we can accelerate change is by seeking a more nuanced 
understanding of readiness as it applies to each service or even common 
force elements within each service, and to ask--how many forces-in-
readiness can we collectively afford? A critical factor of 
understanding readiness is identifying when a joint force will need a 
capability in accordance with a detailed mobilization plan. The Marine 
Corps--as well as other critical elements of the joint force--will 
always be at the front of the timelines because we are the force who is 
present before conflict and deters an adversary's early escalation. 
Serving as the foundational element of our persistent contact layer 
allows time for the joint force to mobilize and surge the war winning 
capabilities of the other services. However, without your Marines 
forward deployed to tamp back the aggressor and create decision space, 
the joint force will not have the time and opportunity to deploy.
                   fleet design and naval integration
    Thus far, my comments have focused on issues germane to my role as 
Commandant of the Marine Corps--to organize, train, and equip Marine 
Corps forces in support of the Fleets and Combatant Commanders. Please 
now allow me to share a few thoughts with you as one of the three 
senior naval officials testifying before you and also as a member of 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff. My experience and role as a senior Naval 
officer requires that I share my best military advice in the ongoing 
fleet design conversation. One thing is clear: serious naval 
professionals both in and out of service agree that the status quo 
fleet will not provide the strategic advantages required in an era of 
great power competition, and must change.
    I would like to state for the record my thanks to the CNO and his 
OPNAV staff for their continued support redesigning the fleet and the 
amphibious/naval expeditionary portion of it without reservation or 
hesitation in support of our shared understanding of the operational 
dilemmas created by peer adversaries. The CNO is leading a major change 
in future fleet design and I wish to acknowledge that for the record, 
and formally communicate my support. I agree with the CNO that the Navy 
does not need to be ``reimagined'' or ``reinvented,'' and neither does 
the Marine Corps for that matter. However, as the CNO has noted, how we 
perform our core roles and functions of deterrence, maritime security, 
power projection, and sea control must change--just as it has many 
times in the past.
    Being physically present within the area of responsibility is no 
longer evidence of success, and we should no longer think presence 
somehow produces deterrence in and of itself. For naval presence to 
deter competitors, physical positioning must create real strategic 
advantage. The specific capabilities present must provide a competitive 
warfighting advantage against specific peer threats and do so in a 
resource neutral manner. Dispersing large numbers of militarized 
fishing vessels with a nuclear aircraft carrier may result in the 
temporary absence of those adversary vessels in key maritime terrain, 
but it comes at a fiscally prohibitive cost, not to mention the 
operational cost of not having that warfighting capability postured to 
project power via its carrier air wing. However, having a robust 
inventory of submarines, frigates, light amphibious warships, and 
networked unmanned or optionally manned surface vessels--or even T-AGOS 
and military sealift vessels--operating in the same region would 
provide a competitive warfighting advantage without resource 
prohibitive operating costs. Such a fleet would further reinforce our 
strategic advantages in undersea warfare through their modern ASW 
capabilities and our advantages in naval expeditionary warfare. The 
process of redesigning the fleet will not be an easy or inexpensive, 
nor will it be accomplished quickly, but it can be done with your 
continued oversight and support. I wish to thank the Secretary, the 
CNO, and the members of this committee for their continued commitment 
to the construction and sustainment of our ships necessary to support 
amphibious operations.
    Not that long ago, the Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) that comprised 
the Navy ships for the Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) consisted of 
five ships with a combined gross tonnage of approximately 73,000 
tonnes. Today, our standard three ship ARG/MEUs operate in a 
distributed manner from platforms with a combined gross tonnage of 
approximately 86,000 tonnes. As with many other systems and 
capabilities across the joint force, our ARG/MEU has become smaller yet 
heavier, while simultaneously being asked to be more agile. Distributed 
Maritime Operations is not only the future of naval operations, but in 
reality--the present. As we modernize our Marine forces as part of our 
force design efforts, we must also modernize the ARG/MEU. We have seen 
the great value of disaggregating the ARG/MEU with each individual ship 
conducting its own mission within the same Area of Operational 
Responsibility for a Combatant Commander. Greater numbers of smaller 
ships would allow us to disaggregate for a greater number of mission 
sets while maintaining the ability to reassemble into a large force 
with expansive mission sets. Defining our future operational concept 
will also help drive us to better understand what we need from LXX--or 
the next class of amphibious ships. We know they will need to be 
smaller, faster, more lethal, and better networked, but we don't yet 
know to what degree we need these characteristics. As we continue our 
analysis with the Navy, we know that they must be affordable so that we 
can purchase and maintain the number of ships we need to operate 
globally. Therefore, our requirements will be matched to a program that 
is affordable and sustainable over the long-term.
    Finally, I wish to state my support for the observations, 
positions, and conclusions articulated by Admiral Davidson in his most 
recent testimony. The vision he articulated for a strategic defense to 
include a defense-in-depth with naval expeditionary forces postured 
forward and west of the international dateline is one I share, and have 
attempted to communicate as often as possible over the previous 22 
months. I share his conclusion that highly lethal and distributable 
expeditionary forces than can generate the effects of mass without the 
liabilities of concentration are of the highest utility, and am doing 
everything possible to create such forces via my force design efforts 
with the Marine Littoral Regiment.
                               conclusion
    The American people expect us to be our own toughest critics, and 
we are. We have significant strides to make in the near future, but I 
know the leadership and support of this Congress will help us to 
revolutionize our approach to competition and conflict. I pledge to 
keep you informed and involved in the transformation of your Marine 
Corps. The American people are counting on their Marines, Navy, and 
joint force to maintain our ideals and way of life now and into the 
future. The dustbin of history is crammed with once successful 
militaries, businesses, and organizations that recognized the world was 
changing and attempted to meet that change through merely incremental 
improvements in existing ways of doing business. Despite their previous 
successes, these institutions failed in the new environment because 
they could not make the fundamental changes necessary to remain on top. 
We are now in the midst of just such a period of change, and we will 
need all the help and support of this Congress to ensure we continue 
our long history of successful innovation and adaptation.
    While our aspirations and expectations are great, I am certain that 
you expect nothing less from your Marine Corps. With your continued 
support, we shall succeed. We will achieve our goals of transformation, 
both in our culture and warfighting capability, to best support the 
naval campaign and the joint force.

    Senator Tester. Thank you, General Berger. And I appreciate 
all three of your statements. I think it is critically 
important that you continue to communicate with this committee 
so that you are prepared to fight the next conflict, not the 
last one. So, thank you all very much for your statements.
    General Berger, your top priority has been the 
implementation of Force Design 2030. You talked about it in 
your opening statement. It is a plan to modernize the Marine 
Corps and ensure it remains the world's most effective naval 
expeditionary force.
    When we consider what it will take to serve as a credible 
deterrent to China and, if necessary, fight and win future 
wars, it is essential that our Marine Corps can successfully 
modernize and meet the challenge.
    This subcommittee is strongly supportive of the strategic 
concepts associated with force design. We must ensure that 
force design priority programs stay on schedule and responsibly 
use taxpayer dollars.
    So, here is my question, General Berger. Your unfunded 
priorities list contains several items that would accelerate 
the Marine Corps' long-range fires program, increase troop 
mobility, improve command and control capabilities. Where does 
the unfunded priorities list provide us opportunity to 
accelerate force design implementation?
    General Berger. Part of the challenge, Chairman, and as you 
all are well aware, is that in a pacing threat environment, 
like we are at right now, both of us are moving. Add to that 
the speed at which technology is developing.
    So, the items on our unfunded priority list, as you 
mentioned, Chairman that is what we need to ensure we stay in 
front. We are very ready today, but those items will allow us 
to be ready in the future, in front of our adversary, with some 
margin of error, which I believe we must have.
    So, things like ground-based, anti-ship missiles, the G/
ATOR Radar, the CH-53K, those--the MQ-9 Reaper, those will 
allow your forward force, your stand-in force, to deter 
effectively forward, in the future, as well.
    Senator Tester. Are you confident the programs you are 
requesting funding for in fiscal year 2022 can deliver results 
quickly?
    General Berger. Absolutely, yes.
    Senator Tester. Okay. And how are you balancing the need to 
move quickly on strategic concepts while keeping those costs 
affordable?
    General Berger. We are small enough that we could not set 
aside an experimentation force in the Marine Corps. So, for 
example, Chairman, what we did is we have three Marine 
divisions in the Marine Corps. You pick one battalion in each 
division, outfit it differently, organize differently, equip 
differently, and train differently. And for the next 18, 24 
months, we will experiment with all three. And the rationale 
behind that is that is how we are going to learn faster. That 
is how we are going to introduce the results of experimentation 
in war gaming into our force design process at speed.
    Senator Tester. Thank you.
    Admiral Gilday, recent media articles suggest that the Navy 
is expecting to face a challenge in next year's budget request 
and will have to make some difficult funding decisions on how 
to proceed with the Navy's modernization act. These funding 
decisions will only become more difficult in the future as the 
Navy continues to modernize and introduces new weapon systems 
and programs, like next-generation submarines, surface 
combatants, and aircraft.
    So, Admiral Gilday, we never are going to have enough money 
to do everything that we would like to do. That is a fact. 
Which generation systems and programs should be prioritized in 
the upcoming budget request?
    Admiral Gilday. Sir, thank you. So, big picture, what my 
intention, or our intention to do with our investment strategy, 
is to field the most capable, most lethal, most ready force 
that we can, given the topline that we have. And, so, we have 
not come off of our priority to continue to invest heavily in 
readiness and training of the force that we have today because 
that force needs to be forward to be relevant.
    With respect to modernization, key programs include 
hypersonics. We have doubled our investment in hypersonics and 
R and D. I think that is a very reasonable investment strategy 
based on the fact that we are ahead or on track with every 
milestone in that program, including a very successful multi-
thousand-mile test last year and a successful new generation 
engine burn just a month ago, working very closely with both 
the Army and the Air Force on that particular project.
    Likewise, on the defensive side, directed energy is an 
important investment for us with respect to fleet 
survivability. I mentioned up front in my opening statement 
that the major investments by the Chinese are in space and 
missiles. We have to have a way to defeat those missiles, and I 
think an afford--the most affordable way to do that is the 
defense-in-depth type of framework that includes laser energy. 
We have those systems now at sea and are fielding.
    Senator Tester. So, I just want to flesh this out just a 
little bit more. All four defense committees are going to be 
making decisions soon on what changes we are going to make to 
the 2022 budget requests. What views do you wish to share about 
your investment priorities today so that we might avoid 
disagreements on what systems deserve more funding?
    Admiral Gilday. Yes, sir. So, if I start in the undersea, 
that is our most survivable strike platform in the United 
States Navy, and arguably in the U.S. military. Our underwater 
superiority over the Chinese, we must maintain that overmatch.
    With respect to surface, continue investment in new ships. 
We know that our cruisers are nearing 35 years old. We need to 
replace those. We are going with a smaller, more distributed 
force.
    The frigate investment is really important, as are the 
long-range weapons we are investing to put at sea, and 
hypersonics on our first--on our Zumwalt-class ships by 2025.
    If it needs to be balanced across the three domains, sir--
under the sea, on the sea, in the air. The fourth- and fifth-
generation mix of aircraft that we are fielding by--we are 
fielding now, this summer, with our first deployment. But, by 
2025, we will have five to six squadrons. And, by the end of 
the decade, we will have all nine squadrons that have that mix 
of fourth and fifth. We want to keep that on track, as well.
    Senator Tester. Thanks, Admiral.
    Senator Shelby.
    Senator Shelby. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Secretary Harker, the Administration's budget proposal 
includes a request for new language to authorize multi-year 
procurement contracts for multiple ship classes, including the 
destroyer, while at the same time breaking the current multi-
year contract for the destroyer.
    My question is this. How does the Navy, sir, plan to 
measure the impact of its proposal to breach the current 
destroyer multi-year contract on the cost of future multi-year 
procurements? In other words, how can Congress and the 
industrial base trust the Navy to fulfill its commitments to 
multi-year contracts, which I think are important?
    Secretary Harker. Thank you, sir. Yes, multi-year contracts 
are very important to us. We do intend to sign another multi-
year for DDGs starting in 2023 through 2027 and continue that 
procurement into the foreseeable future.
    DDG-51 is a very valuable asset for us. We really struggled 
with the decision to take that out of this year's budget. It 
was the hardest decision we made, and we would love to have 
been able to include it.
    Going into this next year, we are committed to multi-years 
for both submarines and for DDGs. Over the last multi-year 
period, it was a 10-ship, multi-year over a 5-year period. With 
the assistance of the committees and the Congress, we were able 
to purchase 10 ships, so the one that is in our budget this 
year will be an eleventh ship. That gave us the ability to not 
buy the DDG this year, but it was a very difficult decision for 
us, sir.
    Senator Shelby. Sir, do you believe that it is very 
important for the industrial base to believe that the Navy is 
going to fulfill their contracts?
    Secretary Harker. Yes, sir, I do. Very much so. It is 
critical for our industrial base.
    Senator Shelby. Okay.
    Secretary Harker. And we believe that we have a strong 
working relationship with them.
    Senator Shelby. Sir, in the final year of a 5-year multi-
year procurement contract for Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, 
this subject--despite the multi-year contract, in--the 2022 
budget request includes only one destroyer rather than the 
contracted two. This is perplexing because of the Navy's number 
one unfunded requirement is $1.7 billion for the second 
destroyer. Seems like a contradiction.
    Admiral Gilday, why did the Navy remove one destroyer from 
its 2022 budget proposal? Is it no longer needed or is that 
just playing with the budget, the numbers?
    Admiral Gilday. No, sir, it was not playing with the 
numbers. So, I go back to the thesis of our budget proposal, 
which is to field the best, most capable, most lethal fleet 
that we get--we can, that is 296 ships, and make it the best 
that we can, including a modernization plan that gives us 
increased capabilities, and then growing the Navy at an 
affordable rate.
    And, so, it was a balance across those three areas, sir. 
And as the secretary said in his opening statement, based on 
incidents like the collisions in 2017, we are unwilling--at 
least my best advice, sir, is to continue to prioritize 
training and readiness as our job priority.
    Senator Shelby. I think it is a given by this Committee on 
Appropriations, Defense to--not to shortchange the Navy, not to 
shortchange readiness, and also future weapons. And, if we do 
it, we do it at the peril of this Country; would we not?
    Admiral Gilday. Yes, sir, I believe so.
    Senator Shelby. General Berger, I will direct this to you, 
sir. In 2019, the U.S. Marine Corps' unfunded requirements list 
totaled $235.9 million. In 2020, it was $2 billion. In 2021, it 
is $769.8 million. This year's unfunded requirements list from 
the Marine Corps is as much as all 3 years' lists combined, 
totaling nearly $3 billion, according to our committee.
    General Berger, has the Marine Corps been resourced 
adequately to support your force redesign and maintain pace on 
modernization priorities and readiness? In other words, sir, 
what is the impact of such a significant unfunded requirements 
list to the Marine Corps if left unfunded?
    General Berger. If left unfunded, I think for all of our 
unfunded requirements list, it equals risk. That is probably 
the simplest way to categorize it. We are learning as we go 
with force design. We did not know 2 years ago exactly what the 
Marine Corps would need to look like a decade out. We have a 
much clearer picture now.
    So, in order to give the committees a larger menu to select 
from with a clear picture of where the Marine Corps is going, 
we added to the unfunded priorities list. But, those things 
near the top that are not funded equal risk, equal strategic 
risk.
    Senator Shelby. And I will direct this, my last question, 
to you, Admiral Gilday. The submarine industrial base, 
construction of the new Columbia-class submarine is now 
underway at shipyards that are already working on the Virginia-
class submarine. You know all of this.
    The schedule for the Virginia boats has fallen off of the 
2-year per year delivery cadence of the Block III boats, and 
current ships under construction are as much as 2 years behind 
delivery, is our understanding.
    Admiral, what is the Navy doing to get the delivery cadence 
of the Virginia back on track as work on the Columbia begins to 
pick up? And, how is this investment in the so-called 
integrated enterprise plan paying off in terms of industrial-
based readiness and cost reduction to our submarine program?
    Admiral Gilday. Sir, in terms of capacity, I think it is 
fair to say that our submarine industrial base has probably 
never been as busy as they are today. We have 12 boats under 
construction right now. We are going to deliver two this year. 
I think we will christen Rickover by the end of July.
    Right now, we are moving at a pretty good pace to put--to 
build two per year in terms of subcomponents. That then needs 
to go to the larger components and they need to be able to 
build at the rate of two submarines a year, as well.
    The investments that the private yards are making include 
hiring more people, the training that is associated with that. 
The advanced funding that the Congress has given us, that has 
allowed us to buy spare parts and materials to help neck down 
or reduce that delay in those submarine builds.
    We are watching the Block IV Virginia class very closely. 
Those delivery dates are not where they need to be, but they 
are moving in the right direction to the left.
    Senator Shelby. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Tester. Thank you, Senator Shelby.
    Senator Schatz.
    Senator Schatz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for 
your service. Good to see you all.
    I am going to start with General Berger and talk a little 
bit about Marines in the Pacific as part of the Defense Policy 
Review Initiative.
    The plan to realign Marines began with a series of 
conversations between the U.S. and Japanese governments in 
2002. It became official in 2006. There were some changes in 
2012. And, stipulating to the fact that, as Senator Mike 
Mansfield says--said, excuse me that the bilateral relationship 
between the United States and Japan is the most important 
bilateral relationship that we have, bar none, and that we 
should keep our commitments to our greatest ally in the region.
    It still seems to me that whether it is lift, whether it is 
the difficulty in finding a replacement facility, whether it is 
the challenge of construction on Guam, whether it is beddowns 
on Oahu, that--and maybe more importantly, that the whole 
region has changed.
    I would like to be reassured that we are striking the right 
balance between maintaining our ironclad commitment to the 
Japanese government and still maintaining the flexibility to 
make sure this thing makes any sense at all.
    General Berger. I think, Senator, your characterization--I 
would see it exactly the same way. That agreement that was made 
9 years ago did not account for, to your point, where the world 
is right now. I think this is the driving force behind the 
Secretary's effort right now to do a global posture review 
because it is not set right for the future. I think he senses 
that, and he has driven us to undertake a global posture 
review.
    Within the Pacific, I think the view from Japan, to your 
point, and the view from the U.S. is the threat from PRC 
(People's Republic of China), from the PLAN, their military, is 
significantly different than it was in 2012. We have to have 
forces stationed forward and deployed forces if we are going to 
have a best chance of preventing the next conflict.
    But, the laydown of DPRI (Defense Policy Review Initiative) 
is worth revising, it is worth looking at, because it was set 
under different conditions. This is going to be led, as you 
know better than me, by diplomacy, by an effort with the State 
Department to work with Japan on what is the best way forward.
    Senator Schatz. Thank you very much.
    Secretary Harker, the Navy's reliance on fossil fuels 
contributes to a vulnerability. The President issued an 
executive order to all Federal agencies, including the DOD 
(Department of Defense), to use their procurement authority to 
move the Country towards carbon-free electricity by 2035.
    So, can you talk about the new things that the Navy is 
doing pursuant to that? And, as you probably know, I have been 
tracking this issue for a while, so I am not as interested in 
pilot projects or separate programs related to clean energy, 
but more importantly, how we are integrating the President's EO 
in all aspects of bases, installations, fuel, forward 
deployments, the smart grid, all of that.
    And, I think it is really important that we do not silo 
clean energy into some space called pilot projects and 
environmental initiatives and bases and installations and 
environment, but, rather, to understand this as core to the 
mission, and therefore core to the way we do our procurement. I 
am wondering if you can comment on that.
    Secretary Harker. Yes, Senator, definitely. I have looked 
into this since taking this job, and I have been to several of 
our bases where we have done a lot to improve our ability to 
provide a carbon-free energy footprint and to take more 
advantage of things like solar and wind generation.
    I was down at Parris Island on a trip there. They have a 
huge solar energy capability there that they have built on some 
old abandoned runways. We have other bases that have been doing 
that, and it is something that we are focused, where each 
installation has a climate installation plan focus to try to 
improve how we are doing in this area.
    Senator Schatz. And are you integrating that into your 
requirements when you do the procurements of energy more 
generally? Again, establishing like a climate person at each 
base and installation, that is great, but what matters is your 
RFIs, your RFQs, your RFPs.
    Secretary Harker. Yes, sir. I know there is projects that 
focus on this on the R and D side, and we are including it in 
future requirements.
    Senator Schatz. Okay. And final question. I want to talk to 
you about operational energy. What are we doing to make ship 
hulls more hydrodynamic and our combat aircraft more fuel-
efficient?
    Secretary Harker. So, I am going to ask the CNO (Chief of 
Naval Operations) to help me on that.
    Admiral Gilday. So, our--right now, we are collaborating 
with industry in a new design for DDG(X), and that will include 
taking a look at the latest industry best practices with 
respect to improved hull forms. It is the same thing as we look 
at a new class of submarine we call SSN(X). The initial R and D 
that we are putting against that project, again, collaborating 
very closely with industry, is to look for a submarine that 
will travel higher speeds, and part of that is based on the 
shape of the hull.
    Senator Schatz. Thank you.
    Senator Tester. Thank you, Senator Schatz.
    Senator Collins.
    Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Secretary Harker, Admiral Gilday, let me start by thanking 
you both for coming to the great State of Maine to visit Bath 
Ironworks and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. I know that you 
saw that they are outstanding assets that are critical to the 
Navy and our industrial base.
    Nevertheless, let me be blunt in my assessment of this 
budget. It is not close to adequate to meet the challenges that 
we are facing around the globe. It does nothing to help us 
counter the increase in the Chinese fleet. In fact, it goes in 
the opposite direction, and the disparity will be even greater.
    And, third, it jeopardizes our industrial base where we 
have only two yards building large surface combatants. And the 
information I have is that, if this budget is enacted, that 500 
skilled jobs will be lost next year at one of those yards, and 
even more in subsequent years.
    So, my question to you is also blunt, and that is, was the 
DDG excluded from the budget simply because you were given an 
inadequate top line that you had to meet? Secretary Harker, we 
will start with you, and then Admiral Gilday.
    Secretary Harker. Thanks, Senator. I really appreciated the 
opportunity to tour both Bath Ironworks and the Portsmouth 
Naval Shipyard with you. The workers there were outstanding, 
and the integration between labor and management at Bath 
Ironworks and at the shipyard was just a model for all of our 
shipbuilding and ship maintenance facilities, and that is 
something that we definitely want to keep and invest in.
    We were unable to procure the DDG because of funding 
challenges. We did not have sufficient funds in the budget for 
us to be able to meet the balanced needs of providing a ready 
force today, the capability that each of the ships needed, and 
then the capacity of adding that additional destroyer. So, as 
we went through and we balanced things out to provide the best 
budget we could, we did not have room for that destroyer in the 
budget.
    Senator Collins. Admiral Gilday, do you have anything to 
add to that?
    Admiral Gilday. Yes, ma'am. It was absolutely an 
affordability issue. We fought for that hull right to the 
bitter end. And, if you take a look at where the money would 
come from to pay for that additional destroyer, we are 
decomming--or our proposal is to decommission 15 ships, old 
cruisers primarily. We would be taking money out of manpower, 
out of spare parts, out of ammunition, and we have learned 
those lessons in the past, that that is a bad place to take 
that money from.
    And, so, it really did come down to priorities. As 
difficult as it was to break the multi-year and to send mixed 
signals to industry, it really did come down to prioritizing 
the investments that we had to make right now in the fleet that 
we have today.
    Senator Collins. And our job, I would suggest to the 
Chairman and Vice Chairman, is going to be to look across the 
entire government and every department's budget as a full 
committee. Because when you see the double digit increases for 
all of the civilian agencies, and then you get to the 
Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security 
and essentially see a cut, in real terms, is just our 
priorities are out of whack here. And, I hope that we can 
remedy that.
    I just, Admiral Gilday, want to quickly touch on the 
Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan. That includes 250 
million for the second increment of the Portsmouth Naval 
Shipyard's multi-mission dry dock number one project, and that 
is really important, as well. Could you explain to the 
committee what will happen if we do not provide that funding in 
terms of the ability to return submarines and sailors to the 
fleet?
    Admiral Gilday. Yes, ma'am. It is my judgment that if we do 
not fund that, if we do not fund that project in 2022 
adequately, it will put at risk the ability to do our first 
availabilities on Virginia class submarines beginning in fiscal 
year 2026.
    The project up there in Kittery, at Portsmouth, is 
absolutely critical for us to have that East Coast capability. 
We are simply not going to have it. We do not have dry docks 
large enough to put those ships, to put those hulls in, to do 
the maintenance on them that is required.
    Senator Collins. Thank you.
    Admiral Gilday. Yes, ma'am.
    Senator Tester. Thank you, Senator Collins.
    Senator Murray.
    Senator Murray. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank 
you to all of you for being here today.
    Secretary Harker, let me just start with saying--by saying 
that I was really pleased that the Navy decided to base the 
first new Constellation-class frigates at Naval Station 
Everett. As you well know, Everett is a really important base 
for the Navy, and we have to continue investing in that base 
and the community for the long term.
    I wanted to ask you today what additional investments at 
Everett are going to be necessary to accommodate those new 
ships or additional sailors and their families?
    Secretary Harker. I do not have that information with me, 
ma'am, but I know we are committed to making sure that we do 
not send our ships out there without the additional crew 
facilities necessary for both the crew and the families and so 
on. The CNO may have additional points.
    Admiral Gilday. Yes, absolutely. So, that work is ongoing 
right now. The hulls go in the water in--the first hull will be 
delivered in 2026, ma'am. So, in addition to things like 
housing, childcare, training facilities that we will need for 
those crews, as well. So, we will look at it holistically so 
that we do not cut those crews and their families short.
    Senator Murray. Good. All right. Well, I look forward to 
working with you on that as it continues.
    General Berger, I did want to ask you. You are proposing 
the boldest rethinking of the Marine Corps role and structure 
in decades. And, as part of that, you are proposing to cut end 
strength and have smaller units operating from inside the area 
our adversaries can strike.
    How will training need to change to prepare our Marines for 
those missions?
    General Berger. Training will have to, one, take the 
individual Marine to a higher level than they are right now. 
From recruitment, in other words, through their entry-level 
training, to their first unit, we have to raise the bar because 
we are going to expect non-commissioned officers and junior 
officers to make decisions than two levels up than they make 
today.
    When we are more distributed, when we are more spread out, 
then junior leaders are going to make the calls, especially if 
you are in a high-threat environment where they are kind of 
challenging your communications. They are going to make their 
decisions independent of probably great communications with 
their higher headquarters. So, our training for them has to get 
higher.
    We are lengthening, for example, infantry training right 
now by 50 percent this year. It has to be longer. It has to get 
them to another level. The same individual that now maybe three 
people have three different skill sets, we have to make sure 
one person has three skills sets, if you follow me.
    Senator Murray. Yes.
    General Berger. So that one person is not a corpsman and 
one person is not a machine gunner and the next person is a 
sniper. We have to have people with multiple skills. So, I 
think we will raise the bar in training to make sure that we 
can empower and train them to a level where they can make the 
decisions on the spot.
    Senator Murray. How do you expect this to increase the 
operational tempo? And how are you going to support Marines' 
families during more frequent or longer deployments that you 
envision?
    General Berger. Separate issue on the frequency of 
deployments, and that is really driven by what the Nation needs 
year to year to year.
    But, the difference in force design, ma'am, is from the 
beginning. Our premise was, we are going to build a force that 
is manned at 100 percent in the Fleet Marine Force. That is not 
the case right now. We take risks. In other words, we man them 
at less than a hundred. But, we are buying--we are building the 
Marine Corps manned at 100 percent. When you do that, then you 
can accept an increase of surge for periods of time.
    But, your point on the stress on the families, absolutely 
so. When we deploy forces like we have right now onboard naval 
ships and it is a planned 6- or 7-month deployment, you know, 
that is tough. When it is extended, it is to a whole other 
level because then you are into unpredictable land for them. 
All of which is manageable, but we need to run the machine at a 
pace we can sustain, which I think you are highlighting, ma'am.
    Senator Murray. Okay. Thank you.
    And, finally, a vote has been called, so let me just say 
this, Secretary Harker. The Department of the Navy has been 
pursuing a number of actions that are--I am concerned are very 
harmful to workers in my home State of Washington and which 
jeopardize the stability of the industrial base, and those 
include proposals to divest UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) and 
virtually brand new patrol boats, changing shipbuilding 
specifications to circumvent Buy American requirements in 
appropriations law, and a lack of clarity on the disposition of 
a dry dock.
    I have not gotten satisfactory answers on that. There is 
not time right now. But, I want to know if there--what 
reasonable alternatives are considered, and I would like to 
follow up with you and my staff on that.
    Secretary Harker. Yes, ma'am, definitely. I will follow up 
with you on that. I know I have been out to the dry dock there 
over in Bremerton. And I have talked with the shipyard 
commander there, and I am fully committed to the shipyard 
infrastructure optimization effort to renew or replace that dry 
dock and part of our effort to modernize that. And then the 
other areas, we will definitely get back with you, ma'am.
    Senator Murray. Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you.
    Senator Tester. Thanks, Senator Murray.
    Senator Baldwin.
    Senator Baldwin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are very 
excited to be building the new frigate in the State of 
Wisconsin. However, even though this ship is based on proven 
hull design, new ship classes often experience challenges 
related to technical concurrency, cost overruns, or schedule 
slips.
    As you know, it is important that our acquisition programs 
account for these challenges, which means requiring things like 
technology maturation, systems integration, and full-ship tech 
data.
    I believe these milestones should be achieved prior to 
bringing on any additional shipyards should the Navy want to 
increase their buy down the road. Similarly, to avoid affecting 
the production ramp up, we must avoid any gap- year funding for 
the frigate.
    So, can you--this is to Secretary Harker and Admiral 
Gilday. Can you commit to requiring these technical milestones 
are met prior to bringing on a second shipyard? And, can you 
also commit to avoiding gap years in the procurement profile?
    Secretary Harker. Yes, ma'am. So, first, I have been out to 
Marinette and have been working with that shipyard for probably 
20 years, since I was back in the Coast Guard as the business 
manager for the buoy tender acquisition project. So, I have got 
a lot of great experience, a lot of respect for the people that 
work at that shipyard.
    As we go forward, it is definitely something that we want 
to do is make sure that we do not make mistakes by delivering 
ships that are not fully mature and proceeding down that road. 
So, I think there is definitely a need to make sure we get the 
technology mature, and that is something that I believe the CNO 
has some thoughts on, as well.
    Admiral Gilday. Yes, ma'am. So, we are--with respect to 
risk in building that ship, I was just on a FREMM class over in 
Europe three weeks ago. Really impressive. Really impressive 
hull. So, we have done this before to minimize risk, where we 
have taken an existing hull and put a known combat system, a 
weapon system, on it. We did this back in the '80s and it 
worked out really well between the Ticonderoga-class cruisers 
and the Arleigh Burke DDGs.
    It is the same type of approach that we have up in 
Marinette. I went to Marinette myself. That was a--you know, it 
was a great trip, number one, to get to talk to the ship 
workers. But, I will say that that risk is something that we 
are carefully trying to manage. We are not introducing new 
systems, trying to create success or miracles that have to all 
line up before the ship delivers in 2026.
    So, I am highly confident that both the Navy and the 
shipyard are working very closely together to make sure we are 
not introducing any additional risk into that build.
    With respect to moving to a second yard, I am taking a very 
conservative approach myself with respect to anything that we 
would do in that regard. I understand the benefits of the 
industrial base, but we have to get that right and we have to 
leverage what we have learned from other builds, like the LCS, 
to make sure that we get that right.
    The last thing I would say is that predictability with 
respect to budgets, especially shipbuilding, are really 
important for industry, and I recognize that. One of the things 
that struck me at Marinette was the amount of infrastructure 
that they are building to support the Constellation-class 
frigate. So, if we change those numbers, that--those 
investments are going to be a waste. I recognize that, ma'am. 
And again, I take the formulation of the budget very seriously 
in terms of how we prioritize and the message that we send to 
industry.
    Senator Baldwin. Thank you. I appreciate that focus on the 
industrial base.
    And I think we have observed that the shipbuilding 
industrial base has become more fragile over the last 25 years. 
Congress has invested significant additional funding to support 
submarine- and ship-specific workforce and supplier expansion 
programs, which has really paid off for programs like Columbia, 
Virginia, and DDG-51. The same rationale for those industrial-
based programs holds true for the frigate.
    So, do you believe that these types of congressional 
investments have benefitted the Navy fleet, our industrial 
base, and our national security? And, if so, do you agree that 
similar investments into the frigate industrial base and 
workforce will have the same positive results? And, again, to 
you, Secretary Harker and Admiral Gilday.
    Secretary Harker. So, yes, definitely. Investing in our 
industrial base is something that is critical for us. We used 
funds from the Defense Production Act Authority to invest $50 
million. And, also, we have invested money in other places, and 
we have worked with the shipyards and other sources of funding 
to continue to invest in the industrial base. We believe in a 
strong industrial base, and that is critical to our needs.
    Admiral Gilday. Ma'am, as I answer this question, I am 
going to speak more generally and not to Marinette in 
particular. I do think that those investments are important. 
However, I also think it is important to set expectations.
    So, you mentioned, let's say, the Columbia class, which we 
will be building out to 2035, or Virginia class, which we are 
going to be building out to the late 2020s. So, when you have--
when industry has that kind of set of headlights, as does 
Congress with respect to a commitment to building that many 
ships in a class for that long a period, I think it then 
becomes easier to justify those investments in private yard 
infrastructure.
    And, so, I think that they should be tied together so we 
should not kid ourselves in terms of putting money down that we 
are not going to reap the benefits of.
    Senator Baldwin. Thank you.
    Senator Tester. Thank you, Senator Baldwin.
    Senator Moran.
    Senator Moran. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
    General Berger, as you look to shift the Marine Corps' 
focus from counterinsurgency efforts to its original mission of 
naval expeditionary force, logistics will play a major role in 
the force structure. Your current CH-53E fleet continues to 
struggle with readiness issues, so I want to be certain the 
Marine Corps is prepared for a near-pier fight. Can you 
describe the new CH-53K heavy lift helicopter's contribution to 
your force structure redesign, particularly as it pertains to 
distributed maritime logistics in a contested environment?
    General Berger. I can, Senator. It is a phenomenal 
aircraft. I flew on that aircraft maybe 3 months ago, this past 
spring, down in North Carolina. Because growing up in 53Ds and 
53Es, you kind of knew what that platform was like. I had not 
been on a 53K, other than in a simulator. Simulator does not do 
it justice. It is an incredible aircraft. Speed, lift 
capability, reliability, its fly-by-wire. He hovered and picked 
up a weight, hands off. I mean, it is that kind of technology. 
It is a glass cockpit. Now we just have to right-size it for 
what we need.
    But, distributing the force the way the CNO and I have in 
mind, we are going to need the 53K. We are going to need the 
Light Amphibious Warship in order to move the troops and 
supplies and lethal aspects around. Critical.
    Senator Moran. How is this helicopter currently performing 
in preparation for the initial operation test and evaluation in 
July?
    General Berger. Probably like most programs, in the areas 
we look closest at, its performance, it is meeting the 
requirements. There are some areas where flight crews have 
suggestions on how to improve it, as you would expect. But, so 
far, on track, sir.
    Senator Moran. Great. Thank you for your answer.
    General Berger. Yes, sir.
    Senator Moran. Thank you for your service, all of you.
    Senator Tester. Thank you, Senator Moran.
    We appreciate all of your testimony here today and the 
answers to the questions.

                     ADDITIONAL COMMITTEE QUESTIONS

    Senators may submit additional written questions, and we 
ask you to respond to them within a reasonable amount of time.
    [The following questions were not asked at the hearing, but 
were submitted to the Department for response subsequent to the 
hearing:]
              Questions Submitted to Hon. Thomas W. Harker
            Questions Submitted by Senator Richard J. Durbin
    Question. Russia has built numerous Arctic bases and seems poised 
to bring very provocative nuclear weapons capable armaments--notably 
the Poseidon 2M39 torpedo-into the region that threaten us and our 
allies. Secretary of State Blinken recently raised the importance of 
keeping the Arctic a peaceful zone with his Russian counterpart and the 
Department of Defense says it reserves the right to conduct freedom of 
navigation exercises in the Arctic. But I remain concerned about 
Russia's aggressive moves in the region, particularly as the ice melts 
from climate change.
    Please comment on the growing Russia presence and challenge in the 
Arctic.
    Answer. The Arctic is a top priority for Russia as outlined in 
multiple Russian strategy documents. Russia is investing heavily to 
enhance its Arctic defense and economic sectors towards its northern 
flank. About 20 percent of Russia's land mass is north of the Arctic 
Circle. Russia aims to improve command and control, infrastructure, and 
joint force employment to project power and defend its northern 
approaches through modernized military capabilities and posture. The 
escalatory and non-transparent nature of Russia's military activity and 
unlawful regulation of maritime traffic along the Northern Sea Route 
undermines global interests, promotes instability, and ultimately 
degrades security in the region. Our strong relationships with Arctic 
allies and partners, further strengthened through exercises and U.S. 
presence in the High North and Arctic region, are our greatest 
strategic advantage strengthening our collective deterrent against 
these strategic challenges.
    The Department of the Navy will work closely with interagency, 
international, and joint partners-especially the U.S. Coast Guard-while 
building new partnerships to protect the homeland, keep Arctic seas 
free and open, and deter coercive behavior and conventional aggression. 
Regional cooperation, built on a bedrock of internationally recognized 
principles like national sovereignty, is in the United States' interest 
and contributes to a secure and stable Arctic.
                                 ______
                                 
              Questions Submitted by Senator Richard Leahy
    Question. Given the administration's priority of taking care of our 
people, and the important role that unit cohesion plays in improving 
readiness, it is crucial that the Navy take a fresh look at policies 
and practices that may not support all servicemembers. To that end, 
please outline what changes, if any, the Navy has made, is making, and 
plans to make, or is considering in order to:
    Improve diversity in leadership positions;
    Answer. Improving diversity in leadership positions compels the 
Department of the Navy (DON) to focus on diversity at all levels. 
Admiral Gilday meets routinely with his 17 Navy Community Leaders to 
discuss various community challenges to include the diversity 
demographics of each community, initiatives to support the recruiting 
and retention of under-represented groups, the prevalence of 
destructive behaviors, and efforts to develop and retain future 
leaders.
    Additionally, the Navy Junior Officer Counsel (NJOC) provides a 
formal link between Junior Officers and Senior Navy Leadership to 
provide feedback, ensuring we are doing everything we can to make our 
Junior Officers feel connected and included. The DON Diversity, Equity, 
and Inclusion (DE&I) lead will leverage feedback mechanisms and 
advisory groups similar to the NJOC to help advance DE&I initiatives.
    The Marine Corps is focusing on areas where potential bias and 
discrimination could occur before a qualified officer reaches the 
selection or assignment board process. The assignment process and the 
performance evaluation system are areas where evaluation and selection 
are based on subjective analysis and where intentional or unintentional 
bias could occur. The Fitness Report Bias Study is an analysis that 
examines objectivity of the current performance appraisal process. The 
Basic School Military Occupational Specialty Assignment Study examines 
historical performance data, based on demographics, to evaluate the 
impact of performance on MOS assignment. The Marine Corps is also 
funding an independent study to identify and understand any barriers to 
advancement and retention of women and minorities in the Marine Corps.
    Question. Improve diversity retention at all levels;
    Answer. The Navy and Marine Corps are in line with the Office of 
the Secretary of Defense and the other Services in accomplishing the 
recommendations set out in the Secretary's Diversity and Inclusion 
Board Final Report.
    Specifically, the Navy is currently implementing 56 recommendations 
from the Task Force One Navy (TFlN) final report. TFlN identified and 
made recommendations to dismantle barriers to equality while creating 
sustainable opportunities, ultimately achieving our desired end-state 
of warfighting excellence. In accordance with Secretary of Defense 
guidance, the Navy removed photographs during all Officer Selection and 
Command/Milestone Boards. Additionally, the Navy requires diverse 
representation on all boards and provides bias training to board 
members to be aware of their potential conscious and unconscious bias 
and ensure board fairness.
    The Marine Corps DEI Strategic Plan will focus on recruiting and 
accessions, talent management, education, training, and commandership 
over the next 5 years. Independent studies are currently underway to 
better understand diversity and inclusion challenges and make 
improvements. The Marine Corps Outreach Program budget has increased 
from $150,000 in fiscal year 2014 to $1M in fiscal year 2021. The 
program provides opportunities for professional development, mentoring, 
and networking experiences by fully funding approximately 500 Marines 
to attend 19 national/regional conferences hosted by non-Federal entity 
affinity groups events throughout the year.
    The various TFlN recommendations and initiatives found in the USMC 
DEI Strategic plan will be integrated into the DON DEI Implementation 
strategy to ensure ongoing efforts are sustained, measurable, possible 
to achieve, and specific enough to assess progress.
    Question. Improve trainings, including sexual assault prevention, 
with input from women, LGBTQ servicemembers, BIPOC servicemembers, and 
sexual assault survivors;
    Answer. The DON is committed to a culture of trust, respect, and 
inclusion that strengthens and promotes the resiliency and readiness of 
our force, our families, and our DON civilian workforce. Our DON DEI 
Team is working closely with the Services and stakeholders to update 
training and DEI competencies to incorporate the Navy's Culture of 
Excellence, USMC training frameworks and associated Signature Behaviors 
with input from DON and Service sexual assault prevention and response 
(SAPR) experts. The training uses adult learning theory best practices 
concerning small group-facilitated discussions. Once the training is in 
the pilot phase, we intend to solicit input from different populations 
of Sailors that may include specific groups such as women; LGBTQ+; 
black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC); and sexual assault 
survivors.
    The Marine Corps actively uses collaboration to address SAPR. They 
have collaborated with sexual assault survivors, members of the LGBTQ+ 
community, SAPR personnel, women, and BIPOC Service Members to improve 
SAPR training. The SAPR program works together with the other Services, 
DON and Department of Defense (DoD) SAPR Offices, and outside entities 
to enhance the ability to prevent and respond to sexual assault, 
identify best practices, and leverage resources. Training is tailored 
to specific levels of leadership. The Commander's Course better 
prepares senior leadership to prevent sexual assault once they assume 
command. Likewise, the First Sergeant's Course includes actionable 
recommendations for sexual assault prevention, information on responses 
to trauma, and actions to take if a Marine is sexually assaulted.
    In fiscal year 2021, the DON Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, and 
Suicide Prevention & Response Office led a robust revision of civilian 
training for DON, Marine Corps, and Navy personnel. Key revisions 
include a focus on early negative behaviors that increase risk for 
sexual assault (i.e., gender harassment, sexual harassment), skill-
building to recognize negative behaviors and intervene, and the 
promotion of relevant response resources and programs (i.e., SAPR, 
Equal Opportunity, Employee Assistance Programs, etc.).
    Revisions also include additional terminal learning objectives that 
focus on prevention, response, and supervisory skills related to the 
protection of populations at increased risk for harm. To protect 
civilians and Service member survivors or those who identify as LGBTQ+ 
and/or BIPOC, these objectives reinforce key concepts and skills.
    Additional efforts to ensure culturally responsive trainings 
include Navy and Marine Corps Recruit Training updates that emphasize 
the knowledge and skills needed for healthy professional and personal 
relationships (i.e., trust, respect, inclusion, teamwork) and 
professional development webinars on the intersections between gender, 
race, sexual orientation, and sexual violence.
    Question. Increase availability and accessibility of mental health 
support services for servicemembers and their families, including 
services tailored specifically toward minority servicemembers;
    Answer. The Navy remains committed to promoting, maintaining and 
advancing a healthcare environment that adheres to the principles of 
community and equity by fostering principles that support: Care with 
Request; Excellence with Equity; Mindful Actions with Transparency, 
Responsibility, and Accountability; and Diversity with Inclusion.
    Specific to mental health support services, the Navy and Marine 
Corps ascribes to a ``no wrong door'' policy to assist Marines, 
Sailors, and family members in getting help and support. This policy 
helps to facilitate access and decrease stigma in seeking mental health 
and substance misuse services. Services are available worldwide, 
including in specialty clinics, within primary care, at Navy and Marine 
Corps installation counseling centers, on the waterfront, and embedded 
within the fleet. Sailors and their families can also get mental health 
support, to include chaplains, Military and Family Life Counseling, 
Fleet and Family Support Centers, Marine Corps Community Services, and 
Military OneSource.
    Within Navy Medicine, efforts are underway develop more formal 
structures for addressing and integrating health equity/disparities 
within the context of the Navy's Diversity and Inclusion framework. 
This work includes collaboration with the Defense Health Agency and the 
other Services to advance access, equity, and opportunity among the 
healthcare staff, as well as to develop programs to ensure equitable 
care and treatment for all Service Members and families.
    The Marine Corps' focus is to treat all Service Members and their 
families with equality while recognizing and embracing diversity. 
Accessibility of nonmedical support services expanded in May 2020 to 
telephonic and virtual platforms.
    Two significant support programs are the Unit Marine Awareness and 
Prevention Integrated Training for Marines (UMAPIT) and our Operational 
Stress Control and Readiness (OSCAR) programs. UMAPIT is a training and 
education calendar year requirement for all Marines and provides 
specific information and actions Marines can employ to access mental 
health resources. OSCAR is a Marine-trained team of Marines within 
Marine Corps units who help recognize and respond to stress. If a 
Marine believes their stress-level is negatively affecting their unit, 
an OSCAR member is there to talk and to connect the Marine with other 
resources.
    Question. Improve outreach to and support for minority 
servicemembers facing discrimination from within their units;
    Answer. DON policy is that each member of the team is entitled to 
be treated fairly, with dignity and respect, and must be allowed to 
work in an environment free of unlawful discrimination. The DON is 
committed to maintaining an inclusive work environment free from 
unlawful discriminatory practices and inappropriate behavior.
    The Navy ensures all personnel are aware of the command and shore-
based assistance available to those who need help in processing 
harassment or unlawful discrimination reports. In addition, the Navy 
identifies available counseling support or referral services for all 
personnel involved in incidents of harassment or unlawful 
discrimination. Follow-up debriefs are conducted with complainants no 
later than 45 days following the determination or resolution of 
harassment or unlawful discrimination report to determine the 
complainant's satisfaction with the effectiveness of the corrective 
action, timeliness, present command climate, and to ensure retaliation 
did not occur.
    The Marine Corps takes a comprehensive approach to support minority 
Service Members facing discrimination within units. Combatting such 
behavior is a team effort that requires the commander to set the 
correct climate denouncing Prohibited Activities and Conduct (PAC) 
violations, Equal Opportunity Advisors/Equal Opportunity 
Representatives (EOAs/EORS) to educate and support the command and its 
unit members, and each unit member to be held accountable for their 
actions. The Marine Corps' support for minority Service Members facing 
discrimination within their units is rooted in the DoD's Strategic 
Elements of prevention, reporting, advocacy, education/training, and 
accountability; with MCO 5354.IF, ``Prohibited Activities and Conduct 
Prevention and Response Policy.'' Marines complete PAC training every 
year, and commands can use their EOAs/EORs to conduct additional PAC 
training or focus groups, at any time, in order to combat PAC 
behavioral trends. The PAC order stipulates commanders must ensure 
Service Members have access to support services such as mental health 
counseling, medical, EOA, Victim and Witness Assistance Personnel, and 
Victim Legal Counsel.
    Question. Improve medical care for transgender servicemembers, 
women, and Black parents, particularly for transition care, pregnancy, 
and post-partum care;
    Answer. Navy Medicine is committed to ensuring all Sailors and 
Marines are treated with dignity and respect and have access to the 
highest quality healthcare in accordance with current evidence-based 
practice guidelines. We currently have two Navy Medicine 
interdisciplinary expert Regional Transgender Care Teams in place to 
support and improve the health and lives of transgender and gender non-
binary Sailors and Marines. Our experts work closely with our Defense 
Health Agency, Army, and Air Force colleagues to ensure the 
incorporation of best clinical practices to support the medical 
readiness of our transgender and gender non-binary Sailors and Marines.
    Navy Medicine continues to recognize and emphasize the importance 
of innovative pregnancy and postpartum care, resources, and educational 
materials for our Sailors and Marines to facilitate their return to 
duty. To recover in a healthy manner prior to being required to meet 
fitness and body composition standard, our updated Physical Readiness 
Program policies provide postpartum Sailors and Marines more time 
(i.e., 12 months vice nine months). We are also prioritizing the 
importance of ensuring our pregnant and postpartum Sailors and Marines 
have access to the support they need from a headquarters and a front 
line approach. Navy Medicine has developed a Postpartum Return to Duty 
Resource to provide Sailors and Marines with critical education on 
physical fitness, mental health, support services, and Navy and Marine 
Corps policies related to the postpartum transition to full duty. 
Within the military health system, our Navy Medicine women's health 
experts participate with the Defense Health Agency and the other 
Services. The focus is on women's health, perinatal practices, 
newborns, and infants, as well as a review of data and issues related 
to maternal and infant health care disparities, health equity, and 
social determinants of health, potentially impacted by race/ethnicity.
                                 ______
                                 
            Questions Submitted by Senator Dianne Feinstein
    Question. Secretary Harker, the 2017 Navy force structure 
assessment identified the need for three additional Expeditionary Sea 
Base ships. Congress included $73 million in advance procurement 
funding for the eighth ship in fiscal year 2021. However, that eighth 
ESB ship was not in your latest long-range plan, and no additional 
funding is in your budget request. I am concerned that not building the 
eighth ESB will break critical supply chains for the main shipbuilder 
on the West Coast.
    What operational risks are you accepting by not requesting ESB 8?
    Answer. The current laydown plan will assign ESBs to the EUCOM/
AFRICOM, CENTCOM, SOUTHCOM, and PACOM Areas of Responsibility. We 
assess minimal operational risk as five ESBs can provide presence in 
each of these theaters and can be re-allocated across theaters if 
necessary.
                                 ______
                                 
            Questions Submitted by Senator Susan M. Collins
    Question. I authored an amendment included as Section 121 in last 
year's NDAA, which required certifications and reports from the Navy if 
it intended to deviate below the Large Surface Combatants called for in 
the Navy's 2016 Force Structure Assessment. The fiscal year 2022 
shipbuilding plan submitted to Congress proposes a significantly lower 
range of large surface combatants--between 63 and 65 ships. However, in 
the Navy's report required by the NDAA, which the Committee received 
just 2 months ago, the Navy identified 78 large surface combatants as 
the best performing mix based on a 2019 analysis of alternatives. The 
Navy certified that a reduction of large surface combatants down from 
104 could be mitigated due to having a reduced number of the Flight 
Ill's with the advanced AN/SPY-6 radar. The Navy also stated in its 
report that it did not expect any detrimental impacts to the industrial 
base based on current workload. But as we can see with the cut to the 
DDG-51 in this proposed budget, that workload seems anything but 
certain.
    It seems that the Navy's report required by the NDAA was based on 
some incorrect or outdated assumptions regarding the number of large 
surface combatants the Navy planned to procure as well as the impact of 
this limited procurement on the industrial base. Will the Navy revisit 
this report?
    Answer. To compete and win in an era of peer military competition, 
the United States needs a balanced naval force capable of striking 
targets in all domains. The force design must emphasize distributed 
awareness, lethality, and survivability in high-intensity conflict. The 
force must be adaptable, demonstrate presence, achieve sea control, and 
be capable of projecting power by delivering precision effects at long 
ranges. The Navy, working closely with the Office of the Secretary of 
Defense Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, continues 
to develop comparative assessments of naval force structure options 
consistent with Interim National Security Strategic Guidance and 
designed to maximize the maritime contribution to the joint force. The 
results of these efforts and ongoing experimentation and prototyping 
will be reflected in the fiscal year 2023 shipbuilding plan.
    The Department is conducting analysis to refine understanding of 
the readiness and performance of the fleet against a future near-peer 
competitor capable of global operations. Furthermore, the Navy 
continues to evaluate the industrial base pivot points required to 
support future platform development and the industrial base development 
needed for these future planned platforms, such as the next generation 
attack submarine and the future large surface combatant, including 
land-based testing to enable success in these future programs. A 
complete 30-year shipbuilding plan will be submitted with the 
President's Budget for fiscal year 2023. The Navy does not plan to 
submit a separate Report to Congress on Large Surface Combatants and 
AN/SPY-6 in fiscal year 2023.
                                 ______
                                 
             Questions Submitted by Senator Lisa Murkowski
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance osr in the arctic region
    Question. Fonner Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Zukunft, a fellow 
maritime service chief relayed an alarming anecdote last fall saying, 
``We have significant domain awareness challenges, and that really 
begins in the high latitudes,'' Things start to get pretty dark once 
you get up higher than 72 degrees north.'' He went on to discuss the 
Coast Guard stumbling upon a joint Chinese and Russian exercise in the 
region without any prior knowledge from our intelligence assets.
    And, just last August, a Russian military exercise in our own 
Exclusive Economic Zone, just off the coast of Alaska, spooked a fleet 
of our own fishennan out of our own waters--waters that they have every 
right to be in and cost them millions of dollars in lost catch and 
equipment.
    Secretary Harker, does this budget include capabilities for our 
naval services that will increase our domain awareness in the Arctic?
    Does this budget provide you the ability to operate in the High 
North whenever called upon and with the proper resources to be 
effective?
    Answer. While the budget does not include investments on ISR 
specifically focused on the Arctic, it does continue the pattern of 
equipping our Navy's globally deployable ships, submarines, and 
aircraft with the ISR capabilities needed to contribute to domain 
awareness whenever and wherever we operate. It also positions our Naval 
Forces, through its acquisition programs and Naval Intelligence arm, to 
maintain strong relationships with the IC. That long-standing 
relationship sets conditions for us to not only influence the 
development of IC capabilities but to secure the advantages that come 
from being able to access those capabilities to advance our worldwide 
military mission in this era of renewed strategic competition at sea.
                            arctic strategy
    Question. As an Alaskan, I am well aware and proud of our nation's 
history in the Arctic, but, frankly, I'm focused on the now. With that 
in mind, your strategy, ``Blue Arctic'' specifically states ``The 
[Navy] will be postured to deter aggressive and malign behavior, keep 
the seas free and open, and assure allies and partners of our long-term 
commitment to preserving peace and advancing shared interests.'' It 
also emphasizes the need for ``credible naval forces [to] ensure the 
ability to deter competitors and rapidly respond to crises in the 
region.
    Secretary Harker are we postured right now, at this very moment, to 
deter aggressive and malign behavior in the Arctic? Having the Russians 
chase off an American fishing fleet or stumbling upon a joint Chinese/
Russia exercise doesn't sound like we're quite there yet.
    Can you discuss how in your proposed budget you are acquiring the 
means to do so in the future?
    Answer. The Arctic is a top priority for Russia as outlined in 
multiple Russian strategy documents. Russia is investing heavily to 
enhance its Arctic defense and economic sectors towards its northern 
flank. About 20 percent of Russia's and mass is north of the Arctic 
Circle. Russia aims to improve command and control, infrastructure, and 
joint force employment to project power and defend its northern 
approaches through modernized military capabilities and posture. The 
escalatory and non-transparent nature of Russia's military activity and 
unlawful regulation of maritime traffic along the Northern Sea Route 
undermines global interests, promotes instability, and ultimately 
degrades security in the region. Our strong relationships with Arctic 
allies and partners, further strengthened through exercises and U.S. 
presence in the High North and Arctic region, are our greatest 
strategic advantage strengthening our collective deterrent against 
these strategic challenges.
    The Department of the Navy will work closely with interagency, 
international, and joint partners-especially the U.S. Coast Guard--
while building new partnerships to protect the homeland, keep Arctic 
seas free and open, and deter coercive behavior and conventional 
aggression. Regional cooperation, built on a bedrock of internationally 
recognized principles like national sovereignty, is in the United 
States' interest and contributes to a secure and stable Arctic.
                              icebreakers
    Question. I have a growing concern with the lack of icebreakers and 
even ice-hardened surface ships in our fleet to carry out the strategic 
deterrence that you have identified as necessary in the Navy's strategy 
and the use of icebreakers for other purposes. I have long advocated 
for the procurement of icebreakers and I'm glad we're making some 
progress in building some for the Coast Guard, but those are still a 
long ways away from being sea ready. As it pertains to icebreakers, my 
number one priority is building them here. My second priority is 
getting this capability in our hands as soon as possible.
    The previous administrations was in discussions about leasing 
icebreakers through the Navy. To be clear, I am not advocating for 
leasing instead of building our own, but being cognizant of the fact 
that we need this capability now, are you doing anything to acquire ice 
breaking capabilities to bridge the gap between now and when we field 
new ones ourselves? As your strategy, ``Blue Arctic'' mentions six 
times, how the Navy will address issues in the ``decades ahead,'' but 
current events illustrate they are needed now. If not icebreakers, are 
other mechanisms being put in place to overcome this shortfall?
    Answer. Icebreaking remains a core U.S. Coast Guard mission. The 
Navy continues to provide acquisition assistance to the Coast Guard to 
ensure the Polar Security Cutter meets the demands of the Nation.
    Question. Mr. Secretary, your Arctic strategy also states, ``Naval 
forces will work in concert with interagency efforts and ensure our 
planning efforts are integrated with local, state, Federal, and 
indigenous communities. Native Alaskan tribes have a long and honorable 
history of military service that blend seamlessly with such efforts.'' 
Can you discuss these efforts to date, or are they forthcoming? Do you 
have a timeline or plan for when this coordination will begin? Who in 
your department has been given the lead for these efforts?
    Answer. While the Arctic largely remains a region of cooperation, 
continuing changes in the physical environment, increased military 
activity, and efforts by non-Arctic nations to restructure Arctic 
governance require continual assessment of the region. The Department 
of the Navy's (DON) priorities in the Arctic Blueprint include working 
closely with our partners and allies as well as with interagency 
partners. As we look to strengthen interagency efforts, the DON is 
developing its implementation approach to ensure alignment with the 
2022 National Defense Strategy and the Secretary of the Navy's 
strategic vision. In addition to preserving economic prosperity and 
keeping the seas open and free, the DON remains fully committed to 
safeguarding the homeland and protecting our national security. While 
the DON requires more time to consider specific details of 
implementation and coordination, the Arctic region remains of 
significant importance to the DON mission. The Implementation Plan will 
be tailored to meet the demands of the Arctic region, to include the 
integration of planning efforts with local, state, and Federal 
entities, and with indigenous communities. Additionally, we will have 
an opportunity to better align the DON's objectives with the impending 
release of the National Security Council's National Arctic Strategy.
                united nations convention law of the sea
    Question. At a recent budget-hearing for the State Department, 
Secretary Blinken told me that, by his own determination, and I quote: 
``the United States would be extremely well served by ratifying the Law 
of the Sea Treaty.'' He even went as far as to say that this is not 
only his opinion, but ``it's been the judgement across the board by our 
military leadership, uniform and civilian for many years.'' Secretary 
Blinken is the latest in a long line of department secretaries to agree 
on this point. I believe that ratifying the Law of the Sea is in the 
best interest of the United States. Along with Senator Hirono, I put 
forward legislation urging the Senate to ratify Law of Sea.
    Mr. Secretary, do you believe the Senate should ratify the Law of 
Sea?
    Answer. The Convention reflects customary international law on 
which the United States has long relied for its freedoms of navigation 
and overflight around the world. Acceding to the Convention would 
reinforce these rights and freedoms and could place the United States 
in a stronger position when challenging violations of international law 
by our adversaries.
    Question. What benefit will it provide to the United States? Would 
we be in a stronger military position if we were to ratify the Law of 
the Sea?
    Answer. The Convention sets forth navigational rights and freedoms 
across the globe for civilian and military ships and aircraft that are 
vital to our national security, including innocent passage through 
territorial seas and transit passage through, under, and over 
international straits. The United States must currently rely on 
customary international law as the legal authority for these and other 
provisions, which does not adequately protect U.S. maritime security 
interests over the long term. Becoming a party to the Convention would 
solidify these and other rights and freedoms in a manner beneficial to 
naval operation, facilitate closer cooperation with our allies and 
partners, and silence the claims of some nations that say only member 
states may enjoy the freedoms the Convention provides. In other words, 
joining the Convention is the best means of placing our rights and 
freedoms on a secure footing and maximizing the ability of our armed 
forces to move through and over the world's ocean waters.
    In addition, the Navy's maritime strategy and daily operations are 
heavily based on the navigational rights enumerated in the Convention. 
Both current and future operations contemplate operating with allies 
and partners--all of whom are parties to the Convention. Acceding to 
the Convention enables U.S. leadership and influence in the shaping of 
global maritime law and policy in ways that facilitate U.S. interests, 
lends legitimacy to U.S. maritime activities, and demonstrates U.S. 
commitment to the rule of law in the conduct of its operations.
    Question. And what would you say to those that want to be tough on 
China and Russia, but are still against the ratification of the treaty?
    Answer. The law of the sea is continuously being interpreted, 
applied, and developed. Accession to the Convention would give the 
United States a seat at the table to set the course for future law of 
the sea discussions on a co-equal level with China and Russia, who are 
member states. China portrays an increasingly aggressive posture in the 
South China Sea, attacking the international rules-based order embodied 
by the Convention through gray zone activities that seek to erode its 
provisions. As a party, U.S. objections to these violations would have 
significantly more force and credibility.
                                 ______
                                 
                Questions Submitted by Senator Roy Blunt
     no fiscal year 2022 funding for f/a-18 super hornet production
    Question. Secretary Harker, I acknowledge that in this tough budget 
cycle, difficult choices must be made. I appreciate your efforts toward 
finding efficiencies, for reducing our reliance on legacy systems and 
for placing an emphasis both on our people first and on critical 
efforts to modernize for the future fight. However, I think we need to 
be mindful of building a sound bridge to future capabilities that also 
maintains and safeguards our readiness for today's fight.
    The F/A-18 is presently the backbone of the Navy's carrier air 
wing. While I appreciate a forward-looking focus with the Next 
Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, as I understand it, NGAD will 
not provide a successor to the Super Hornet until 2030, at the very 
earliest. I'm concerned that if we end Super Hornet production 
prematurely, simply relying upon Service Life Modification (SLM) 
upgrades to get our fleet to Block III-capable is not a sound bridging 
solution, particularly when the SLM process is already falling behind 
schedule.
    When the Block III program began in 2018-2019, the Navy planned to 
have 20 Block III-capable Super Hornet squadrons by 2027. But 
currently, 67 Block II aircraft that were meant to be upgraded between 
2018 and 2023 are already pushed back to at least 2024.
    If we combine this SLM slow down with no funding for additional 
Super Hornets this year or next, the Navy is ultimately short 103 Block 
III-capable Super Hornets that you initially planned to have by 2027. 
We then have three more years, at a minimum, before the Next Generation 
Air Dominance Program produces results that we can operationally 
employ.
    My question for you, Secretary Harker, is can you help me 
understand this modified bridging strategy to the next generation of 
our carrier's air wing? Would it not make more sense to continue with 
the original Super Hornet transition plan--to continue the production 
line for several more years while working Block III modifications--to 
achieve the necessary inventory levels of the most capable tactical 
fighter in the Navy's current inventory until a successor is ready?
    Answer. To ensure the Navy has the advanced capabilities required 
to compete with peer adversaries in the 2020s and 2030s, continued 
investments in the procurement of new F-35C and the Next Generation Air 
Dominance Family of Systems (NGAD FoS) are necessary. Given the ongoing 
delivery of new procurement Block III F/A-18E/F, new procurement F-35C, 
and Service Life Modification (SLM) to extend the life and capability 
of existing F/A-18E/F Block II aircraft, strike-fighter shortfall 
(SFSF) is projected to be eliminated by 2025. Additional procurement of 
new F/A-18E/F Block III aircraft beyond fiscal year 2021 is not 
required to mitigate near- or long-term SFSF risk. The Navy assesses 
that new F/A-18E/F procurement beyond fiscal year 2021 would arrive 
late-to-need to address near-term SFSF challenges--which are actively 
being managed- and excess-to-need for fourth generation aircraft 
capacity to meet the demands of the National Defense Strategy.
    NAVPLAN 2021 prioritizes development of capabilities to enable a 
more lethal and better connected fleet that can outpace the growing 
Chinese threat. New F/A-18E/Fs delivered in fiscal year 2026 will have 
the service life (10K Flight Hours) to operate well into the 2050s. 
Current analysis shows the F/A-18E/F is insufficient to meet the Long 
Range Fires requirement against peer threats in the 2030s, even when 
partnered with F-35C. Engineering Change Proposals (ECPs) for BLKIII 
that were anticipated to increase range never srune to fruition. The 
remaining ECPs do increase capability as a stop-gap in the short-term, 
however further procurement of F/A-18E/F at the expense of future 
capability will directly inhibit the Navy's ability to fight and win in 
the Great Power Competition. Procurement of F-35C and SLM remain our 
best levers to manage Strike Fighter capacity until NGAD FoS comes 
online.
    The Navy is on track to meet the Super Hornet Block III supply 
requirements demanded by the Master Aviation Plan 20-02 (MAP 20-02). 
Block III capacity is being delivered through new procurement and 
upgrading Block II aircraft to Block III capabilities through SLM 
beginning in Quarter 4 (Q4) fiscal year 2022. Through 2027, Boeing will 
deliver 78 new Block III aircraft (fiscal year 2021 through fiscal year 
2025), and 119 SLM Block III aircraft to meet our Carrier Air Wing 
requirements.
    Today we have 436 BLK II aircraft. Due to fiscal constraints, we 
are not currently maximizing Boeing's advertised SLM conversion 
capacity. We have the inventory and capacity to meter SLM output as 
required in the future.
    The flyaway cost for a new Block III F/A-18E/F is $69 million in 
calendar year 2020. Block III modifications required to convert a Block 
II aircraft is currently estimated at $9 million. Adding Block III 
modification costs to SLM establishes an estimated cost of $18-$23 
million per aircraft. A cost range was required due to multiple 
aircraft configurations of the F/A-1BE/F fleet, all of which require 
different configurations and modifications. Current estimates show that 
three SLM aircraft can be upgraded to Block III configuration for the 
srune cost as one brand new aircraft, without impacting Strike Fighter 
Inventory Management (SFIM).
    Though there have been unanticipated delays in the early phase of 
SLM, Boeing is confident it can meet the projected SLM turnaround and 
delivery times for Block III aircraft. While there is risk inherent in 
the analysis and projections, there are currently several risk 
mitigation actions underway-by both Boeing and the Navy to ensure the 
Carrier Air Wings will have enough Block III aircraft to meet 
operational requirements.
    SLM has two phases of execution. Phase 1 is the planned 'crawl and 
'walk' phases of SLM which is only a flight hour extension of Block II 
aircraft from 6000 to 7500 flight hours and does not include Block III 
capabilities. Phase 1 has experienced unanticipated challenges with the 
material condition of early aircraft inductions, which has driven a 
significant increase to SLM workload, staffing gaps, slower learning, 
significant cost overruns, and schedule delay. In response to these 
challenges, both Boeing and the Navy have implemented mitigation 
strategies. Boeing has surged staff at both SLM locations (St Louis, 
MO, and San Antonio, TX) and has initiated early detection teams for 
common material condition cost/schedule drivers with a feedback loop to 
Navy fleet. The Navy has commenced pre-SLM grooming to address known 
material condition prior to SLM induction and established improved 
corrosion prevention practices. A total of 49 aircraft will receive SLM 
phase 1 and will complete in Q4 fiscal year 2022.
    SLM Phase 2 is the full Block Ill upgrade to 10,000 flight hours 
and the same capabilities as new production aircraft. Phase 2 is 
expected to commence in Q4 fiscal year 2022 with Boeing advertised 
turnaround time (TAT) per aircraft inducted of 12 months. The SLM 
program has seen steady improvement to cost and schedule since 
mitigations were implemented, and Boeing is confident they can achieve 
the 12-month TAT for SLM phase 2. As part of the Navy's SFIM planning, 
the Navy has determined that the MAP 20-02 demand can be met with up to 
an 18-month TAT. Even if some of the SLM phase 1 complications were to 
continue into phase 2, there will be minimal to no effect to the Block 
III capacity to meet the MAP20-02 demand.
    The SLM of existing F/A-18E/F aircraft, combined with an active F-
35C production line, are the two risk mitigations in place for the Navy 
to manage total strike-fighter inventory. The total number of SLM 
aircraft conversions will depend on the timeline for the NGAD FoS 
initial operational capability and full operational capability in the 
2030s. The Navy will continue to SLM aircraft at a rate commensurate 
with capacity requirements, with an option to SLM all current Block II 
FIA-18E/F aircraft if deemed necessary.
                                 ______
                                 
               Questions Submitted by Senator John Hoeven
    Question. I am a strong supporter of our nuclear deterrent, not 
only the two legs of the triad located at Minot Air Force Base with our 
B-52s and the Minuteman III ICBMs, but also the submarine based leg of 
the triad. You've stated that the Columbia-class submarine, which will 
replace the aging Ohio class, is the Navy's top procurement priority, 
but of course, you also have to ensure that the D5 Trident, which is 
the ballistic missile carried by our boomers, is ready and reliable 
when the Columbia-class boats enter the fleet.
    Could you describe the basic plan to modernize the Trident missiles 
and whether there is any coordination with the Air Force's effort to 
modernize our land-based ICBMs?
    Answer. The Navy is committed to ensuring that the transition 
between Ohio-class and Columbia-class submarines stays on schedule. 
This includes a seamless transition of the current TRIDENT II D5 Life 
Extension (D5LE) weapon system and missile inventory on to the new 
Columbia-class. To be clear, the D5LE weapon system currently deployed 
on Ohio-class will be the same weapon system deployed on the first 
eight hulls of the Columbia-class. To ensure the Navy has missiles for 
Columbia Hull 9 and able to replace the missiles on the first eight 
hulls when the missiles' safety-related components expire, it is 
imperative that we start the work on a future missile and corresponding 
weapons system now. This next generation of the current OSLE missile--a 
missile in service since 1989 and boasting a remarkable history of 182 
successful flight tests--is called D5 Life Extension 2 (D5LE2). Several 
areas of the industrial base will have to be reconstituted as suppliers 
of critical obsolete components have gone out of business or shifted 
production to other fields. D5LE2 will primarily safely extend the D5 
strategic weapons system, but this industrial base reconstitution 
coupled with improved manufacturing processes also provides the 
opportunity to build in flexibility that will ensure that TRIDENT 
remains credible in the face of a dynamic threat environment throughout 
the Columbia-class service life. D5LE2 must be developed, tested, and 
produced with the lead-time sufficient to deploy 16 missiles on 
Columbia Hull 9 in fiscal year 2039.
    The Navy works closely with the Air Force and Missile Defense 
Agency (MDA) through a Flag Level 2018 Memorandum of Understanding 
(MOU) that governs the collaboration of strategic ballistic missile 
systems. The efforts established by this MOU enable affordability by 
avoiding redundant efforts (e.g., Radiation Hardened Electronics 
Testing and Flight Testing Instrumentation), advance capability by 
sharing and leap frogging technology (e.g., Strategic Grade Inertial 
Measuring Units), and reduce risks across programs via industrial base 
collaboration (e.g., Solid Rocket Motor Production). With similar 
technical challenges and a joint industrial base, the Navy fully 
recognizes the importance of collaborating with both the Air Force and 
MDA while simultaneously sustaining and modernizing our strategic 
ballistic missile systems.
                                 ______
                                 
             Questions Submitted to Admiral Michael Gilday
              Questions Submitted by Senator Patrick Leahy
    Question. Given the administration's priority of taking care of our 
people, and the important role that unit cohesion plays in improving 
readiness, it's crucial that the Navy take a fresh look at policies and 
practices that may not support all servicemembers. To that end, please 
outline what changes, if any, the Navy has made, is making, plans to 
make, or is considering in order to:
    Improve diversity in leadership positions;
    Answer. Navy has implemented numerous initiatives to improve 
diverse representation in leadership positions and is currently 
implementing recommendations from the Task Force One Navy (TF1N) final 
report. TF1N was established to identify and make recommendations to 
dismantle barriers to equality while creating sustainable 
opportunities, ultimately achieving our desired end-state of 
warfighting excellence. Following the TF1N final report, Navy removed 
photographs during all Officer Selection and Command/Milestone Boards. 
Additionally, Navy requires diverse representation on all boards and 
provides bias training to board members to be aware of their potential 
conscious and unconscious bias and ensure board fairness.
    Question. Improve diversity retention at all levels;
    Answer. To improve diversity retention, I meet routinely with our 
17 Navy Community Leaders, all flag officers, to discuss various 
community challenges to include the diversity demographics of each 
community, initiatives to support the recruiting and retention of 
under-represented groups, the prevalence of destructive behaviors, and 
efforts to develop and retain future leaders. We conduct listening 
sessions around the Fleet to ensure all voices are heard and that 
Sailors and civilian employees understand their opinions matter and are 
taken into account by command leadership. Additionally, the Navy Junior 
Officer Counsel formed a formal link between Junior Officers and Senior 
Navy Leadership to provide feedback, ensuring we are doing everything 
we can to make our Junior Officers feel connected and included. Though 
Navy has more work to do to reduce and eliminate barriers to upward 
career trajectory based on race, gender, ethnicity, or socio-cultural 
background, we are encouraged by our team's progress.
    Question. Improve trainings, including sexual assault prevention, 
with input from women, LGBTQ servicemembers, BIPOC servicemembers, and 
sexual assault survivors;
    Answer. Our training is being updated to incorporate the Navy's 
Culture of Excellence and associated Signature Behaviors with input 
from our sexual assault prevention and response team. Adult learning 
theory best practices concerning small-group, facilitated discussions 
will be also be used throughout the training. Once the training is in 
the pilot phase, we intend to solicit input from different populations 
of Sailors that may include specific groups such as women, LGBTQ, 
BIPOC, and sexual assault survivors.
    Question. Increase availability and accessibility of mental health 
support services for servicemembers and their families, including 
services tailored specifically toward minority servicemembers;
    Answer. Senator Leahy, I want to assure you that the Navy remains 
committed to promoting, maintaining and advancing a healthcare 
environment which adheres to the principles of community and equity by 
fostering principles that support: Care with Request; Excellence with 
Equity; Mindful Actions with Transparency, Responsibility and 
Accountability; and Diversity with Inclusion.
    Specific to mental health support services, Navy ascribes to a ``no 
wrong door'' policy to assist Sailors and family members in getting 
help and support. This policy helps to facilitate access and decrease 
stigma in seeking mental health and substance misuse services. Services 
are available worldwide, including in specialty clinics, within primary 
care, at Navy installation counseling centers, on the waterfront, and 
embedded within the Fleet. Sailors and their families can also get 
mental health support, to include chaplains, Military and Family Life 
Counseling, Fleet and Family Support Centers, and Military OneSource.
    Within Navy Medicine efforts are underway develop more formal 
structures for addressing and integrating health equity/disparities 
within the context of the Navy's Diversity and Inclusion Framework. 
This work includes collaboration with the Defense Health Agency and the 
other Services to advance access, equity and opportunity amongst the 
healthcare staff as well as develop programs to ensure equitable care 
and treatment for all service members and families.
    Question. Improve outreach to and support for minority 
servicemembers facing discrimination from within their units;
    Answer. Navy ensures all personnel are aware of the command and 
shore-based assistance available to those who need help in processing 
harassment or unlawful discrimination reports. In addition, Navy 
identifies available counseling support or referral services for all 
personnel involved in incidents of harassment or unlawful 
discrimination.
    Follow-up debriefs are conducted with complainants no later than 45 
days following the determination or resolution of harassment or 
unlawful discrimination report to determine the complainant's 
satisfaction with the effectiveness of the corrective action, 
timeliness, present command climate, and to ensure retaliation did not 
occur.
    Question. Improve medical care for transgender servicemembers, 
women, and Black parents, particularly for transition care, pregnancy, 
and post-partum care;
    Answer. Navy is committed to ensuring all Sailors are treated with 
dignity and respect and have access to the highest quality healthcare 
in accordance with current evidence-based practice guidelines. We 
currently have two Navy Medicine interdisciplinary expert Regional 
Transgender Care Teams in place to support and improve the health and 
lives of transgender and gender non-binary Sailors. Our experts work 
closely with Defense Health Agency and our Army and Air Force 
colleagues to ensure we incorporate best clinical practices in support 
of the medical readiness of our transgender and gender non-binary 
Sailors.
    We continue to recognize and emphasize the importance of innovative 
pregnancy and postpartum care, resources, and educational materials for 
our Sailors to facilitate their return to duty. Our updated Physical 
Readiness Program policy provides postpartum Sailors more time, 12 
months vice 9 months, to fully recover in a healthy manner prior to 
being required to meet fitness and body composition standards. We are 
also prioritizing the importance of ensuring our pregnant and 
postpartum Sailors have access to the support they need. Navy Medicine 
has developed a Postpartum Return to Duty Resource to provide Sailors 
with critical education on physical fitness, mental health, support 
services, and Navy and Marine Corps policies related to the postpartum 
transition to full duty. Within the Military Health System, our Navy 
Medicine women's health experts participate with the Defense Health 
Agency and the other Services on lines of efforts focused on women's 
health, perinatal practices, newborn and infants as well as review of 
data and issues related to maternal and infant healthcare disparities, 
health equity, and social determinants of health which may be impacted 
by race/ethnicity.
                                 ______
                                 
             Questions Submitted to General David H. Berger
              Questions Submitted by Senator Patrick Leahy
    Question. Given the administration's priority of taking care of our 
people, and the important role that unit cohesion plays in improving 
readiness, it's crucial that the Marine Corps take a fresh look at 
policies and practices that may not support all service members. To 
that end, please outline what changes, if any, the Marine Corps has 
made, is making, plans to make, or is considering in order to:
    Improve diversity in leadership positions;
    Answer. Diversity and inclusion are force multipliers and take 
advantage of the wide array of experiences and perspectives necessary 
to maintain our current and future warfighting excellence. We are 
committed to capitalizing on the knowledge, skills, abilities, 
performance, and potential of every Marine.
    Diversity in the Marine Corps is increasing. Since 2009, diverse 
enlisted accessions have increased from 34 percent to 43 percent, and 
diverse officer accessions have increased from 16 percent to 35 
percent. Women officer accessions have increased from 8 percent to 13.8 
percent during this same time period. Women represented in previously 
restricted military occupational specialties (MOS's) are also on the 
rise. Last year, 737 women were in previously restricted units; that 
number is now 1,101. Similarly, 283 women were serving in previously 
restricted MOS's; today that number is 415, including the first woman 
Reconnaissance Marine.
    This year, the Marine Corps reached the level of 21 percent in 
diversity for Brigadier Generals and Brigadier General-selects, the 
highest level of diverse representation at that rank in Marine Corps 
history. And by the end of July of this year, two minority officers 
from that cohort will promote to Major General. We look forward to 
seeing this trend continue.
    The Marine Corps is a full partner with the Office of the Secretary 
of Defense and the other Services in accomplishing the recommendations 
set out in the Secretary's Diversity and Inclusion Board Final Report. 
However, the Marine Corps is also taking its own initiative to both 
study and make changes to continue to improve diversity and inclusion.
    First, our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategic Plan will 
guide our actions over the next 5 years in the areas of recruiting and 
accessions, talent management, education, training, and commandership. 
It provides a framework to align a number of efforts, identify new 
initiatives, and provide oversight across the Corps for implementation 
by commanders at every level. One of our first actions to implement our 
plan was the appointment of a general officer as the Service's Chief 
Diversity and Inclusion Officer. This position will communicate program 
goals, develop policy, and action per the aforementioned strategic 
plan. Concurrently, the Marine Corps bolstered the Diversity, Equity, 
and Inclusion Review Board (DRB). The DRB serves as the action arm of 
the Marine Corps Diversity and Inclusion Management Program to address 
diversity, inclusion, and command climate issues that may affect the 
Marine Corps.
    Second, a host of independent studies are currently underway to 
better understand diversity and inclusion challenges and make 
improvements. Our Fitness Report Bias Study is an analysis which is 
examining the objectivity of the current performance appraisal process. 
The Basic School Military Occupational Specialty Assignment Study which 
will examine historical performance data, based on demographics, to 
evaluate the impact of performance on MOS assignment. We are also 
funding an independent study to identify and understand any barriers to 
advancement and retention of women and minorities in the Marine Corps. 
Finally, our Exit & Milestone Longitudinal Survey provides feedback to 
better understand personnel satisfaction regarding career 
opportunities, leadership, performance management, diversity, and work-
life programs.
    Outreach and external engagement are an important facet of our 
holistic approach to diversity and inclusion. We have steadily 
increased our Outreach Program budget from $150,000 in fiscal year 2014 
to $1 million in fiscal year 2021. This Program provides opportunities 
for professional development, mentoring, and networking experiences by 
fully funding approximately 500 Marines to attend 19 national/regional 
conferences hosted by non-Federal entity affinity groups events 
throughout the year.
    The Marine Corps is working collaboratively with our training 
command to incorporate unconscious bias training at every rank 
throughout the training continuum. Diversity of thought and experience 
that each Marine brings will help us find more creative and innovative 
solutions to these future challenges.
    Diversity and inclusion are, more than anything, a leadership 
issue. Marine leaders must not just talk about changing culture--they 
must be the example of how to treat fellow Marines and all individuals 
with dignity, respect, empathy and compassion.
    Question. Improve diversity retention at all levels;
    Answer. See response to 1a above.
    Question. Improve trainings, including sexual assault prevention, 
with input from women, LGBTQ servicemembers, BIPOC servicemembers, and 
sexual assault survivors;
    Answer. Collaboration is key in addressing sexual assault 
prevention and response. We have collaborated with sexual assault 
survivors, members of the LGBTQ+ community, SAPR personnel, women, and 
BIPOC servicemembers to improve our SAPR training; we will continue to 
do so. Our SAPR program works together with the other Services, 
Department of the Navy and Department of Defense Sexual Assault 
Prevention and Response Offices, and outside entities to enhance our 
ability to prevent and respond to sexual assault, identify best 
practices, and leverage resources.
    Our continued focus on prevention seeks to tailor training to 
specific levels of leadership. This enables a multi-layered approach to 
prevention to fit Marines of every age, rank, and billet. For example, 
our updated SAPR annual training for Staff Non-Commissioned Officers 
(SNCO) provides more focus at the small unit level. This training's 
goal is to help increase SNCO knowledge about sexual assault, 
reporting, resources, rank-specific roles and responsibilities, and to 
build skills consistent with primary prevention.
    We also updated the SAPR training for the Commander's Course to 
better prepare senior leadership to prevent sexual assault once they 
assume command. This includes information focused on actionable 
recommendations for pre-command leaders and small group discussions 
facilitated by Marine Corps mentors and SAPR experts. Commanders set 
the tone of their unit--we know how important it is to ensure they are 
equipped before they assume command to establish the right command 
climate--a climate that encourages Marines to look out for one another 
and report destructive behaviors and crimes, and that mandates 
accountability for perpetrators and enablers. Likewise, we updated 
First Sergeant's Course to include actionable recommendations for 
sexual assault prevention, information on responses to trauma, and 
actions to take if one of their Marines is sexually assaulted, 
appropriate to their new positions.
    While we highlight our prevention efforts, we acknowledge that we 
are not where we need to be; we still have incidents of sexual 
harassment and assault and so we must ensure we provide the best 
support possible to victims. A revised SAPR Victim Advocate (VA) 
training was released in October 2019 and has been fully implemented. 
The revised 40-hour curriculum focuses on building and refining 
advocacy skills and includes cultural competency and prevention 
training. We are currently revising Sexual Assault Response Coordinator 
(SARC) Initial Training to build on advocacy and cultural competency 
skills taught in the 40-hour training and prepare SARCs to oversee 
their SAPR program.
    The Marine Corps continually evaluates SAPR initiatives for 
effectiveness by conducting needs assessments, surveys, and staffing 
analysis. SARC and VA training curriculum development has been 
standardized which better ensures that Marines understand reporting 
options, SARCs and VAs are prepared to support victims, and all 
understand their role in sexual assault prevention.
    We want to leverage technological developments too. We are 
implementing online evaluation tools for select SAPR annual training, 
Victim Advocate training, and Sexual Assault Response Coordinators 
initial training. The evaluation tools measure changes in knowledge, 
attitudes, and intentions, as well as training satisfaction, 
consistency of instruction, and quality of instruction. These 
evaluation results will inform local SAPR personnel, as well as HQMC 
personnel, on the effectiveness of the trainings.
    Question. Increase availability and accessibility of mental health 
support services for servicemembers and their families, including 
services tailored specifically toward minority servicemembers;
    Answer. Marine Corps' focus is to treat all Service member and 
their families with equality while recognizing and embracing diversity. 
Accessibility of nonmedical support services was expanded in May 2020 
to telephonic and virtual platforms. Traditional knee-cap to knee-cap 
counseling remained intact whenever possible as well. Although each 
installation across the Marine Corps provides published service hours, 
standard practice from the field staff in the behavioral health 
programs is to accommodate alternate hours upon request.
    Two significant support programs are the Unit Marine Awareness and 
Prevention Integrated Training for Marines (UMAPIT) and our Operational 
Stress Control and Readiness (OSCAR) programs. UMAPIT is a training and 
education calendar year requirement for all Marines, and provides 
specific information and actions Marines can employ to access mental 
health resources. OSCAR is a Marine-trained team of Marines within 
Marine Corps units who help recognize and respond to stress. If a 
Marine believes their stress-level is negatively impacting their unit, 
an OSCAR member is there to talk and to connect the Marine with other 
resources. These and other programs are specifically geared to 
nonmedical mental health support.
    The Marine Corps remains committed to promoting, maintaining, and 
advancing a healthcare environment that adheres to the principles of 
community and equity by fostering principles that support: Care with 
Request; Excellence with Equity; Mindful Actions with Transparency, 
Responsibility and Accountability; and Diversity with Inclusion.
    Specific to mental health support services, the Marine Corps 
ascribes to a ``no wrong door'' policy to assist Marines and family 
members in getting help and support. This policy helps to facilitate 
access and decrease stigma in seeking mental health and substance 
misuse services. These services are available worldwide, including in 
specialty clinics, within primary care, at Marine Corps installation 
counseling centers, and embedded within the Fleet Marine Force.
    Marines and their families can also get mental health support, to 
include chaplains, Military and Family Life Counseling, Marine & Family 
Programs, and Military OneSource.
    Within Navy Medicine, efforts are underway to develop more formal 
structures for addressing and integrating health equity/disparities 
within the context of the Department of the Navy's Diversity and 
Inclusion Strategic Framework. This work includes collaboration with 
the Defense Health Agency and the other Services to advance access, 
equity, and opportunity amongst the healthcare staff; as well as 
develop programs to ensure equitable care and treatment for all service 
members and families.
    Question. Improve outreach to and support for minority 
servicemembers facing discrimination from within their units;
    Answer. The Marine Corps' support for minority service members 
facing discrimination within their units is rooted in the DoD's 
Strategic Elements of prevention, reporting, advocacy, education/
training, and accountability; with Marine Corps Order (MCO) 5354.1F, 
``Prohibited Activities and Conduct (PAC) Prevention and Response 
Policy,'' encompassing all of the aforementioned elements of support.
    Our PAC order defines that any conduct discriminating an individual 
or a group based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex 
(including pregnancy), gender identity, or sexual orientation is 
prohibited by all personnel. The order describes how qualitative and 
quantitative data collection from Command Climate Assessments (CCAs) 
allows commands to best leverage command-level Equal Opportunity 
Advisors/Equal Opportunity Representatives (EOAs/EORs) to facilitate 
focus groups and tailor annual PAC training to include additional 
topics, as part of a comprehensive prevention strategy.
    Not only do all Marines complete PAC training every year, commands 
can use their EOAs/EORs to conduct additional PAC training or focus 
groups, at any time, in order to combat PAC behavioral trends.
    As an additional part of CCAs, any areas falling below the average 
require a corrective action plan by the commander. The plan is 
implemented and evaluated during all Comprehensive Command Inspections, 
Independent Command Inspections, and the Commanding General's 
Inspection Program Inspections as an additional level of validation by 
external command entities. The commander is appropriately held further 
accountable on his/her annual fitness report by a statement identifying 
a commander's failure, if any, to conduct required CCAs.
    Annual PAC training also informs unit members that any complaints 
of violating behaviors they witness can be reported for command 
resolution. The complaint will then be resolved through informal or 
formal resolution. All unit members have access to full-time EOAs and 
collateral-duty EORs, who provide advice and guidance to complainants 
on matters related to PAC. Typically, EOAs/EORs provide the annual 
training and conduct focus groups, so unit members know who these 
appointed personnel are, but each command also posts fliers identifying 
these personnel in an effort to ensure service members have this 
information at all times.
    Additionally, the PAC order stipulates commanders must ensure 
Service members have access to support services, such as mental health 
counseling, medical, EOA, Victim and Witness Assistance Personnel, and 
Victim Legal Counsel.
    The Marine Corps takes a comprehensive approach to support minority 
service members facing discrimination within units. Combatting such 
behavior is a team effort that requires the commander to set the 
correct climate denouncing PAC violations, EOAs/EORs educate and 
support the command and its unit members, and each unit member being 
held appropriately accountable for their actions.
    Question. Improve medical care for transgender servicemembers, 
women, and Black parents, particularly for transition care, pregnancy, 
and post-partum care;
    Answer. The Marine Corps is committed to ensuring all Marines are 
treated with dignity and respect, along with access to the highest 
quality healthcare in accordance with current evidence-based practice 
guidelines. There are currently two Navy Medicine interdisciplinary 
expert Regional Transgender Care Teams in place to support and improve 
the health and lives of transgender and gender non-binary Marines. 
These experts work closely with the Defense Health Agency, as well as 
Army and Air Force colleagues, to ensure the best clinical practices 
are incorporated in support of the medical readiness of our transgender 
and gender non-binary Marines.
    We continue to recognize and emphasize the importance of innovative 
pregnancy and postpartum care, resources, and educational materials for 
our Marines to facilitate their return to duty. Our physical readiness 
program is focused on providing postpartum Marines time to fully 
recover in a healthy manner prior to being required to meet fitness and 
body composition standards. We also recognize the importance of 
ensuring our pregnant and postpartum Marines have access to the support 
they need. Navy Medicine has developed a Postpartum Return to Duty 
Resource to provide Marines with critical education on physical 
fitness, mental health, support services, as well as Navy and Marine 
Corps guidance related to the postpartum transition to full duty. 
Within the Military Health System, Navy Medicine women's health experts 
participate with the Defense Health Agency and the other Services on 
lines of effort focused on women's health, perinatal practices, newborn 
and infants; as well as review of data and issues related to maternal 
and infant healthcare disparities, health equity, and social 
determinants of health that may be impacted by race/ethnicity.
                                 ______
                                 
            Questions Submitted by Senator Dianne Feinstein
    Question. General Berger, last year we lost 8 Marines and 1 Sailor 
during a terrible training accident involving an Amphibious Assault 
Vehicle off the coast of California. The investigation report 
highlighted several training and equipment deficiencies.
    How is the Marine Corps working to prevent a recurrence of future 
amphibious vehicle accidents, and has the Marine Corps requested enough 
funding in the budget to adequately maintain these vehicles and procure 
the replacement vehicles?
    Answer. The Marine Corps is committed to identifying the issues 
that led to this tragedy and to preventing future occurrences. We have 
concluded a safety investigation and a command investigation into the 
facts and circumstances surrounding the sinking of 15th Marine 
Expeditionary Unit's (MEU) amphibious assault vehicle (AAV) and the 
resulting loss of life. An investigation into the formation of the 15th 
MEU is pending endorsement. Finally, a Blue Ribbon Panel of senior 
Marine Corps and Navy personnel has formed and is currently conducting 
a strategic review of amphibious operations.
    We are confident the safety and command investigations identified 
contributing and causal factors. As a result of these investigations, 
the Marine Corps has directed 23 institutional actions to ensure the 
safe execution of AAV waterborne operations. These actions fall into 
one of three categories: equipment, procedures, and training. Equipment 
actions include a combination of equipment advances and additional 
inspections such as: procurement and sustainment of a Waterborne Egress 
Capability program; electronic tablets for crewmembers to manage 
associated technical and procedural manuals; and new criteria for hull 
watertight integrity, bilge pump function, communications systems, and 
emergency egress lighting systems. To address procedural actions, the 
Marine Corps has administered many publication and policy reviews to 
operating procedures, technical manuals, and safety structure 
requirements during training. These include updates to: training and 
qualification prerequisites; authority and decisionmaking procedures; 
and safety boat requirements. Finally, training actions include 
implementing additional standards for water survival, underwater egress 
training for both crew members and embarked personnel, and standardized 
knowledge tests for crew members. These last two tasks, plus oversight 
of mechanical and procedural inspections, have to be completed by 
operational level units and certified by the first general officer in 
the chain of command in order for them to gain authority to perform 
waterborne operations.
    We have fully funded the AAV program to implement the institutional 
actions related to the safety and command investigations as well as 
routine maintenance requirements.
    We are confident the directed service level actions will rectify 
any issues that contributed to this terrible tragedy with the goal of 
ensuring no similar incident occurs again.
                                 ______
                                 
             Questions Submitted by Senator Lisa Murkowski
    Question. The Navy and Marine Corps Arctic strategy document, 
``Blue Arctic'' specifically states the ``The [Naval Services] will be 
postured to deter aggressive and malign behavior, keep the seas free 
and open, and assure allies and partners of our long-term commitment to 
preserving peace and advancing shared interests.'' It also emphasizes 
the need for ``credible naval forces [to] ensure the ability to deter 
competitors and rapidly respond to crises in the region.''
    Do you see any lessons learned in the Marine Corps' Expeditionary 
Advanced Based Operations (EABO) concept that can be applied to a 
homeland archipelago, such as the Aleutians, for a deterrence model?
    Answer. Yes, the capabilities used to conduct Expeditionary 
Advanced Base Operations (EABO) would be especially useful in a complex 
homeland archipelago such as the Aleutians. EABO is a form of 
expeditionary warfare that involves the employment of mobile, low-
signature, persistent, and relatively easy to maintain and sustain 
naval expeditionary forces from a series of austere, temporary 
locations ashore or inshore within a contested or potentially contested 
maritime area in order to conduct sea denial, support sea control, or 
enable fleet sustainment. The capabilities we are developing to conduct 
EABO--to include various combinations of manned and unmanned sensors 
and long-range precision fires--are absolutely applicable to detecting 
and countering malign behavior, contributing to integrated deterrence 
and, if necessary, conducting sea denial to maintain the sovereign 
integrity of our own waters.
    Through an iterative campaign of experimentation and exercises, the 
Marine Corps will continue to refine and update the capabilities and 
force structure required to conduct EABO over the coming years.
    Question. At a recent budget hearing for the State Department, 
Secretary Blinken told me that, by his own determination, and I quote: 
``the United States would be extremely well served by ratifying the Law 
of the Sea Treaty.'' He even went as far as to say that this is not 
only his opinion, but ``it's been the judgement across the board by our 
military leadership, uniform and civilian for many years.'' Secretary 
Blinken is the latest in a long line of department secretaries to agree 
on this point. I believe that ratifying the Law of the Sea is in the 
best interest of the United States. Along with Senator Hirono, I put 
forward legislation urging the Senate to ratify Law of Sea.
    General Berger, would you expect Marines to be required for 
missions to uphold UNCLOS norms?
    Answer. Yes. Our Marines are expected and trained to uphold our 
international legal obligations in all military operations.
    Question. As a naval service chief, do you believe the Senate 
should ratify the Law of Sea?
    Answer. Consistent with past Commandants, I believe acceding to the 
Convention could strengthen our position when challenging violations of 
international law by our adversaries.
    While the Convention reflects customary international law on which 
the United States has long relied for its freedoms of navigation and 
overflight around the world, acceding to the Convention would reinforce 
these rights and freedoms.
    Question. What benefit will it provide to the United States? Would 
we be in a stronger military position if we were to ratify the Law of 
the Sea?
    Answer. The Convention reflects the traditional uses of the oceans 
such as navigation and overflight rights and freedoms across the globe 
for our civilian and military ships and aircraft. These traditional 
uses, including innocent passage through other nations' territorial 
seas and transit passage through, under, and over international 
straits, are vital to our national security interests. To date, the 
United States has relied on customary international law as the legal 
basis for these rights and freedoms, but customary international law 
will not adequately protect U.S. maritime security interests over the 
long term. For instance, a number of our adversaries claim that only 
States that are party to the Convention enjoy the rights and freedoms 
that the Convention provides. Acceding to the Convention would solidify 
these and other rights and freedoms in a manner beneficial to naval 
operations, facilitate closer cooperation with our allies and partners, 
and disarm our adversaries of these claims. Joining the Convention is 
the best means of securing U.S. rights and freedoms, and maximizing the 
ability of our armed forces to move through and over the world's ocean 
waters.
    The Marine Corps is a naval expeditionary force-in-readiness 
prepared to operate inside actively contested maritime spaces in 
support of fleet operations that are largely dependent upon the 
navigational rights enumerated in the Convention. Moreover, the United 
States conducts its operations in coalitions with allies and partners--
most of whom are parties to the Convention. Acceding to the Convention 
will reinforce U.S. leadership and influence in the shaping of global 
maritime law and policy in ways that serve U.S. interests, validate 
U.S. maritime activities under international law, and demonstrate U.S. 
commitment to the rule of law in the conduct of its operations.
    Question. And what would you say to those that want to be tough on 
China and Russia, but are still against the ratification of the treaty?
    Answer. Accession to the Convention would allow the United States 
to participate in future law of the sea discussions on a coequal level 
with China and Russia, who are member States. In 1983, President Reagan 
set forth the U.S. Oceans Policy, which stated that the United States 
will not ``acquiesce in unilateral acts of other States designed to 
restrict the rights and freedoms of the international community in 
navigation and overflight and other related high seas uses.'' China's 
increasingly aggressive posture in the South China Sea is a direct 
attack on the international rules-based order embodied by the 
Convention. Its conduct of gray zone activities seeks to erode its 
provisions. As a party to the Convention, U.S. objections to these 
violations would have significantly more force and credibility. The 
United States would also be better positioned to contest excessive 
maritime claims and other unlawful activities by China and others, such 
as Russia and Iran, who continuously attempt to restrict the 
Convention's navigational rights and freedoms.
                                 ______
                                 
               Questions Submitted by Senator John Hoeven
    Question. You mentioned in your written statement that you expect 
to make use of medium altitude, long endurance unmanned aircraft like 
the MQ-9 even when Marines are deployed in close proximity to our 
adversaries. Additionally, your fiscal year 2022 budget request 
includes a substantial investment in the MQ-9A extended range aircraft.
    Could you describe the role you expect unmanned aircraft to play 
for Marines deployed near China or Russia?
    Answer. The MQ-9A Extended Range will fulfill a primary mission of 
communication and data relay with an additional airborne early warning 
capability. This will provide deployed Marine Corps and Joint Force 
units with persistent tactical maritime Intelligence, Surveillance, and 
Reconnaissance (ISR) and command and control gateways. The MQ-9A 
Extended Range is also a critical enabler to the Naval force in 
building an alternate Precision, Navigation, and Timing network.
    The Marine Corps seeks to procure six MQ-9A Extended Range systems 
in fiscal year 2022, and a total of 18 systems over the next several 
years, to form three Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) squadrons. The 
Marine Corps will leverage an existing Air Force system and two current 
Marine Corps assets in USCENTCOM to reduce risk, while providing 
advanced capabilities to the Marine Corps and overall joint warfighting 
enterprise.
    Additionally, the Marine Corps continues to develop and experiment 
a family of UAS with a variety of plug-and-play payloads. These systems 
will give ground combat units organic Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and 
Target Acquisition (RSTA) assets capable of supporting long-range 
precision kinetic and non-kinetic fires, both afloat and ashore. This 
includes conducting extended user evaluations with industry leading 
systems to include the UAV V-BAT and the Stalker UAS to inform 
requirements for the Ground Combat Element.
                                 ______
                                 
              Questions Submitted by Senator John Boozman
    Question. General Berger, the budget request includes a significant 
increase for the Ground Based Anti-Ship Missile program. I understand 
this program is vital to your future force design. Given the tough 
budget decisions facing this committee:
    Why is this program so important to the Marine Corps and what 
progress was made on the development of this program since last year?
    Answer. Ground Based Anti-Ship Missile (GBASM) is the Marine Corps' 
top modernization priority and is the key lethality component for the 
Marine Corps to facilitate sea denial in support of naval and joint 
operations. The capability creates cost impositions for an adversary by 
introducing a new and highly credible threat into their decisionmaking, 
while providing us with a relatively low cost and highly effective 
capability.
    The initial materiel solution for GBASM is the Navy-Marine 
Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) which consists of two 
Naval Strike Missiles mounted on a remotely operated Joint Light 
Tactical Vehicle (JLTV)-based chassis. By combining existing 
technologies in the missile and the platform, the Marine Corps has 
reduced programmatic risks through the use of proven capabilities, 
which enables us to move faster. The Marine Corps successfully tested 
this system against a ship target in November 2020, and in our fiscal 
year 2022 budget request, we are seeking funding for 10 production 
representative models (PRMs) for further developmental and operational 
testing. With the ability to strike enemy ships at ranges of 100 
nautical miles and beyond, we believe it will be a ``game changer'' for 
the Marine Corps, the Naval Fleet Commander, and Combatant Commanders.
    Additionally, the Marine Corps is developing a longer-range 
capability, which we call ``Long Range Fires.'' The Marine Corps 
successfully tested this program in March 2021.
    Question. How will the Unfunded Request for additional missiles 
support your fielding of this capability?
    Answer. Naval Strike Missiles are the munition component of the 
Navy/Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) which is 
the Marine Corps' first iteration of the GBASM capability. These 
additional missiles in the Unfunded Priority List (UPL) would provide 
greater magazine depth for the units that will employ them in the Indo-
Pacific.
    As the pacing threat moves with us and technology develops at a 
speed faster than the budget, funding the entirety of our UPL request 
provides us the opportunity to capitalize on successful technological 
developments. This will accelerate additional capability to the 
Combatant
    Commanders, specifically in the Indo-Pacific, buying down strategic 
risk for them and our forward deployed forces, and deterring conflict 
sooner.
    Question. General Berger, I want to expand on 2030 Force Design. 
Secretary Austin recently testified in this committee that China is the 
#1 pacing threat. How will the different elements of your Force Design 
support the Joint Force within the INDOPACOM area of responsibility and 
how does the Pacific Deterrent Initiative support your efforts within 
the Joint Force?
    Answer. A new type of unit, the Marine Littoral Regiment (MLR), is 
a vital element of the Marine Corps' Force Design transformation. These 
new units will be task-organized and dispersed across key maritime 
terrain in the Indo-Pacific region to support the Naval and Joint 
Force. The MLR capabilities will augment and reinforce a host nation's 
ability to monitor, expose, and challenge malign behavior, but the MLRs 
will also be fully capable of operating without host-nation support if 
required. Additionally, the MLRs will be highly mobile, constantly 
changing their positioning and posture to increase ambiguity and 
increase the adversary's challenge of monitoring and targeting MLR 
units. In order to provide lethality when needed, the MLRs will possess 
complementary capabilities of sensing, communication, maneuverability, 
and precision fires. These characteristics and capabilities will reduce 
an adversary's confidence and encourage off-ramps from conflict.
    Marine Corps investments in new capabilities and current operations 
are in direct alignment with and supported by the Pacific Deterrence 
Initiative (PDI). Namely, PDI supports the Commandant's Force Design 
2030 initiative to build a force able to operate in actively contested 
spaces in support of the Joint Force, providing the Combatant Commander 
with ready, relevant crisis response forces and a capability to work 
effectively with allies and partners.
    As part of the Naval Expeditionary Force resiliency, investments 
allow Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) elements to maneuver, 
communicate, and conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance 
within contested maritime environments. Air defense is provided through 
investments which will identify, track, and defeat enemy Unmanned 
Aerial Systems. Funding is also provided for effective Aviation Command 
and Control, to foster resiliency in logistics lines of communication, 
deter and defeat threats in the electromagnetic spectrum, and provide 
precision strike fire support in support of distributed operations. 
Investments in these capabilities allow our forward deployed Stand-in 
Force to support Joint operations inside the enemy's weapon engagement 
zone (WEZ) and to compete and deter in the contact and blunt layers.
    Additionally, PDI investments in security cooperation programs will 
strengthen relationships with our allies and partners in the Indo-
Pacific region, and these investments directly support the Marine 
Forces Pacific Afloat Prepositioning Training and Exercise Employment 
Plan through the funding of exercises FREEDOM BANNER, BALIKATAN, and 
COBRA GOLD.

                          SUBCOMMITTEE RECESS

    Senator Tester. This committee stands in recess.
    [Whereupon, at 11:02 a.m., Thursday, June 24, the 
subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene subject to the call of 
the Chair.]