[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
.
[H.A.S.C. No. 118-86]
THE FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
OF THE COMMISSION ON THE
NATIONAL DEFENSE STRATEGY
__________
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
SEPTEMBER 18, 2024
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
58-094 WASHINGTON : 2026
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COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Eighteenth Congress
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama, Chairman
JOE WILSON, South Carolina ADAM SMITH, Washington
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado JOHN GARAMENDI, California
ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia, Vice DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey
Chair RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona
AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts
SAM GRAVES, Missouri SALUD O. CARBAJAL, California
ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York RO KHANNA, California
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee WILLIAM R. KEATING, Massachusetts
TRENT KELLY, Mississippi ANDY KIM, New Jersey
MATT GAETZ, Florida CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania
DON BACON, Nebraska ELISSA SLOTKIN, Michigan
JIM BANKS, Indiana MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey
JACK BERGMAN, Michigan VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida JARED F. GOLDEN, Maine
LISA C. McCLAIN, Michigan SARA JACOBS, California
RONNY JACKSON, Texas MARILYN STRICKLAND, Washington
PAT FALLON, Texas PATRICK RYAN, New York
CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida JEFF JACKSON, North Carolina
NANCY MACE, South Carolina GABE VASQUEZ, New Mexico
BRAD FINSTAD, Minnesota CHRISTOPHER R. DELUZIO,
DALE W. STRONG, Alabama Pennsylvania
MORGAN LUTTRELL, Texas JILL N. TOKUDA, Hawaii
JENNIFER A. KIGGANS, Virginia DONALD G. DAVIS, North Carolina
NICK LaLOTA, New York JENNIFER L. McCLELLAN, Virginia
JAMES C. MOYLAN, Guam TERRI A. SEWELL, Alabama
MARK ALFORD, Missouri STEVEN HORSFORD, Nevada
CORY MILLS, Florida JIMMY PANETTA, California
RICHARD McCORMICK, Georgia MARC VEASEY, Texas
LANCE GOODEN, Texas
CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana
Chris Vieson, Staff Director
Mark Morehouse, Professional Staff Member
Spencer Johnson, Professional Staff Member
Logan Whelchel, Research Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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Page
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Rogers, Hon. Mike, a Representative from Alabama, Chairman,
Committee on Armed Services.................................... 1
Smith, Hon. Adam, a Representative from Washington, Ranking
Member, Committee on Armed Services............................ 2
WITNESSES
Edelman, Eric, Vice Chair, Commission on National Defense
Strategy....................................................... 6
Harman, Congresswoman Jane, Chair, Commission on National Defense
Strategy....................................................... 5
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Joint statement of Congresswoman Jane Harman and Eric Edelman 51
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mr. Davis.................................................... 63
THE FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSION ON THE NATIONAL
DEFENSE STRATEGY
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, September 18, 2024.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in room
2322, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mike Rogers [Chairman
of the Committee] presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MIKE ROGERS, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
ALABAMA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
The Chairman. The committee will come to order.
Today we are meeting to receive the findings and
recommendations of the Commission on the National Defense
Strategy.
I want to thank our witnesses for being here. I also want
to thank you both for agreeing to take on this role and
continuing to find ways to serve our nation.
I also want to welcome two of our fellow commissioners,
Roger Zakheim and Mariah Sixkiller. Thank you both for being
here and for your service on this commission as well.
The commission's report is a sobering reality check for our
nation. The first lines of the report lay it out pretty clear:
quote, ``The threats the United States faces are the most
serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since
1945 and include the potential for near-term major war. The
nation was last prepared for such a fight during the Cold War,
which ended 35 years ago. It is not prepared today,'' close
quote.
The Commission is absolutely correct. We are not prepared
today. The Commission finds that the current National Defense
Strategy completed just two years ago does not adequately
address the threat environment we currently face.
Specifically, the Commission highlights the growing
alliance between our four largest adversaries: China, Russia,
Iran, and North Korea. They find that the United States is not
properly positioned or resourced to counter this combined
threat.
The Commission also confirms that we have been--what we
have been hearing for years from our combatant commanders, that
China is outpacing us on many fronts.
They find that through two decades of focused investment in
military modernization China has, largely, negated our military
advantage in the Western Pacific.
To restore our advantage they urge a change in culture at
the Department of Defense (DOD) to move past bureaucratic risk
aversion and adopt an acquisition system that speeds the
delivery of innovation.
We heard a lot about that at our field hearing on Monday in
Silicon Valley and I look forward to working with my colleagues
to address that very concern.
The Commission rejects the current force sizing construct
because it does not meet the threat. Instead, they recommend a
new construct where the U.S. leads coalitions capable of
simultaneously defeating Russia and China while also deterring
adversaries.
To achieve that they call for a larger, more integrated
military as well as a further strengthening of our allies and
partners so they fight along with us.
To find that our Defense Industrial Base has atrophied--
they find that our industrial base has atrophied to the point
that it can no longer meet the military needs. They call for
increased industrial capacity, more competition and
partnerships with our allies to share this burden.
They recommend a whole of government approach to leverage
not only military might but also our diplomatic and economic
power to expand the field of allies and partners.
I think most of us here today wholeheartedly agree with
these and other important recommendations by this Commission.
But as the Commission points out, all of this will cost more
than we are currently spending.
The Commission urges congress to immediately pass the
fiscal year '24 defense supplemental to begin a multi-year
investment in revitalizing the Defense Industrial Base and
delivering innovation to the warfighter.
Then they call for sustained growth in the out years of at
least 3 to 5 percent above inflation to ensure the military is
properly resourced to deter the very real threats we face.
I agree with them and I know many of my colleagues do as
well. But as the Commission notes, it is incumbent on Congress
and the administration to make the case to the American people.
As such, I urge my colleagues to share the Commission's
report with their constituents and with members who don't serve
on House Armed Services Committee (HASC).
Everyone needs to understand that sustaining American
deterrence against our adversaries, especially against China,
Russia, Iran, and North Korea, will be very expensive. But they
also need to understand that if we fail the price will be
catastrophic.
I want to thank the commissioners for their service and for
providing us with some very thoughtful recommendations, and
with that, I yield to my friend the Ranking Member for any
opening statement he may have.
STATEMENT OF HON. ADAM SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM WASHINGTON,
RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it, and
thanks to our witnesses and thanks, most importantly, to the
panel that did this study about our National Defense Strategy.
Incredibly helpful to analyze where we're going.
I think the Chairman outlined very well the challenges that
we face and, certainly, one of the top line issues whenever you
look at a National Defense Strategy is how much should we spend
on the Department of Defense (DOD) budget, and the two
arguments that I think are really strong that we need to spend
more is, number one, we face an incredibly complex threat
environment between China, Russia, and then Iran, North Korea,
but also we have what we would have thought of as small sort of
nuisance groups like the Houthis causing us significant
challenges.
So the threats are, you know, probably more complicated
than they've ever been in the history of this country.
Second, it is absolutely true that we have the lowest
defense budget that we have had since the end of World War II
as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But we also
have to face the reality that we have never had a debt that
was, I think, a little over $33 trillion.
Where is Representative Massie with his clock when I need
him? It's a very big number. Let's just put it that way.
Number two, there's no way that we can spend enough money
so that we can meet all of those threats on their own. It's
simply impossible.
It boggles the mind to think what the defense budget would
have to be if you imagined how do we have a National Defense
Strategy and military large enough to beat Russia, China, Iran,
North Korea, and all these terrorist groups at the same time.
Can't be done. So, therefore, one of the things that I look
forward to talking to you--and I know this is addressed in the
report--is how can we get more out of the money we spend,
because one sad reality, while certainly our defense budget is,
again, the lowest since World War II, we have also spent a lot
of money on things that just haven't worked out very well and
just a partial list--I'll go back a ways for the first one.
Future combat systems--you know, billions of dollars down
the toilet--the expeditionary fighting vehicle, which I think
is a particularly good example, because long before it was
built you could conclude that it was going to end exactly the
way that it ended, which is in the era of missiles being as
capable as they are you are no longer going to be able to do a
landing in a contested environment. And, yet, we spent $8
billion answering a question that we should have answered, you
know, like the day after it was asked for.
The tanker is way behind. The F-35 Ford-class carrier. So
if we're going to make this work we got to stop wasting so much
money.
So I hope everyone has a really good conversation about how
that happens and how we can fix it, and I think the answer lies
in something the Chairman said, something that we talked a lot
about at our field hearing two days ago now, I guess, in
Silicon Valley, is instead of having a requirements-based
budgeting process let's have a problems-based budgeting
process.
We walk through all of these requirements. We expand them,
expand them, expand them, expand them to the point where you
can't possibly ever do even what those requirements ask for and
it doesn't solve an actual problem that you face.
You know, I have joked before that I'd like to be like
Thanos in the Marvel cinematic universe and snap my fingers and
make half of all the regulations go away, and I don't care
which half, okay. Just to get us to a better process on that
front.
Last note on the budget, which is particularly important
today, we need to pass an appropriations bill. Yes, you can
argue about what that number should be but not having it is a
huge problem, and for all of us on this committee and all of us
in the House today we're going to be asked to vote in favor of
a six-month Continuing Resolution (CR), which would be
devastating to the Defense Department.
That's basically saying we're not going to increase the
budget by a penny for six months; we're going to tie their
hands so that they have to keep spending money on what they
spent it on last year and they can't spend money on new
programs.
Anyone who cares about national security should vote
against the CR today and I really want to emphasize that. So
bottom line is we got to get more out of the dollars we spend--
it's a matter of innovation--and then also to understand how
warfare has changed.
There's a whole bunch that we said about this but, you
know, we have got the problem of shooting down a $10,000 drone
with a $2 million missile--not a sustainable long-term
situation.
It's really all about secure communication, secure
information, drones, counter drones, missiles, and missile
defense. What are we building now that doesn't fit that picture
and let's stop building that and start spending the money where
we need to spend it. That's all about innovation, which I want
to hear more about.
Lastly, partners and allies, absolutely crucial, and, by
the way, a great strength. Let's not underestimate that. Fifty-
four nations have come together to help Ukraine defend itself
against Russia.
All right. That is an incredible coalition of partners. In
Asia we are seeing Japan step up. South Korea, Australia. We
are now building partnerships with the Philippines and Vietnam.
We're working on our partnerships with India. We have the
partners and allies. Let's build and strengthen those
relationships.
With that, I look forward to the testimony of our
witnesses. Again, I thank them for doing this process and
giving us this report, and I yield back.
The Chairman. I couldn't agree more with everything the
ranking member just said.
Now I'm happy to introduce our very impressive witnesses.
We have the Honorable Jane Harman. As the chair of the National
Defense Strategy (NDS) Commission she served alongside many of
us on HASC for several years representing Los Angeles. Also had
the honor of serving with you on Homeland Security, too. Very
impressive there as well.
The Honorable Eric Edelman is the Commission's vice chair.
He served as ambassador to Finland and Turkey and in numerous
senior roles in the DOD including the Undersecretary of Policy
for the George W. Bush administration.
With that, Representative Harman, we recognize you first.
STATEMENT OF CONGRESSWOMAN JANE HARMAN, CHAIR, COMMISSION ON
NATIONAL DEFENSE STRATEGY
Ms. Harman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Ranking Member
Smith and members of the committee on HASC. I served here, as
you heard, from 1993 to 1999 in the lowest--starting in the
lowest seat, I guess, on this side. I can't really remember.
But it was an awesome experience to be on this committee
and then on Homeland and then on Intelligence and to work on
the security problems we face.
Let me start by saying I'm in violent agreement with both
of your opening statements and the bipartisan spirit in which
you offer them. A lot of the things you say are in our report
which, as I think you all know, was supported on a bipartisan
unanimous basis by the members of our Commission, four
Democrats and four Republicans.
Behind us, as you have said, are two more Commission
members--two more out of the eight of us--Mariah Sixkiller and
Roger Zakheim--and the whole crowd is around in Washington
today and we are appearing in many places hoping to get the
message out.
And thank you for doing this hearing today because you are
getting the message out and one of our strong recommendations
is the public has to understand what emergency we face and step
up to the problems.
And another point, Ranking Member Smith, is that we don't
recommend printing money. We recommend raising revenue to pay
for the increase that we need for the defense budget that we
must have.
So, as you know, Congress created our Commission to review
the 2022 National Defense Strategy, or NDS, and to offer a
clear-eyed independent view.
It's been a pleasure to serve with the members of our
Commission and we believe unanimously that the National Defense
Strategy is woefully out of date. It was written in early 2022
before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China and Russia's
strategic partnership, and Hamas' horrific attack on Israel
last October 7.
As Ambassador Edelman will detail, the threats to our
national security have been mounting for two decades and are
greater now than at any time since the height of the Cold War
and, most of us believe, since World War II.
Our message is basically this. Significant and urgent
action is needed but for years our government has failed to
keep up. Our entire system, and the Pentagon in particular, are
risk averse and slow to act.
You highlighted this problem earlier this week, as you
mentioned, in your hearing in California in Silicon Valley on
the shortcomings of DOD on technological innovation.
We enthusiastically agree with you and, in my opinion, the
change will only happen through the bold bipartisan leadership
of this committee and your Senate counterpart.
Our report includes actionable recommendations including
one that you are implementing with today's hearing, as I just
mentioned, which is informing the public on the dire situation
we face.
Unfortunately, another one of our recommendations and the
single top request from the Department of Defense will not be
implemented because of the unfortunate delay in appropriations
bills, and we understand there's another vote today on a six-
month CR.
We understand that some of you are opposed to that and we
understand why you're opposed to that. It hurts our readiness
to continue funding the last budget and not the new starts and
innovation that we need.
And so we note that, and I failed to introduce who was--I
know he's going to speak next, but our Vice Chairman Eric
Edelman whom you introduced it has been an absolute pleasure to
work with Eric, who has served on many of the prior commissions
and to learn from Eric.
So I yield back my time.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Harman and Mr. Edelman can
be found in the Appendix on page 51.]
The Chairman. Ambassador Edelman, you're recognized. Your
microphone.
STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR ERIC EDELMAN, VICE CHAIR, COMMISSION ON
THE NATIONAL DEFENSE STRATEGY
Mr. Edelman. There we go. Sorry.
Chairman Rogers, Representative Smith, members of the
committee, it's a pleasure to be here as.
As Representative Harman said, I am a recidivist. You all
have chartered four of these commissions--2010, 2014, 2018, and
now the 2022 Commission. I've served on all four, and several
of our commissioners actually have served on previous
commissions.
I think just reviewing the work of those commissions, I
think, is instructive. In 2010 when we reviewed the then
Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) we argued that we were
potentially facing a train wreck because the resources for
defense were declining but threats appeared to be gathering.
In 2014 we concluded that the Budget Control Act had been a
strategic misstep that wrong footed us vis-a-vis our
competitors and in 2018 we warned that the U.S. was potentially
losing its decisive military edge.
Six years later when we convened as a group I think all of
us were persuaded that the threats are more serious than they
were before and we have failed to keep pace as a nation.
There is real potential for a near-term war which would
hard to be--hard to imagine would not be a global war and there
is a chance we could lose such a conflict.
The partnership between China, Russia, Iran, and North
Korea represents a major shift in the strategic environment. It
makes each of those countries stronger militarily, economically
and diplomatically, and it weakens our tools to deal with them,
and it makes it much likelier that a conflict which erupts in
one theater would spread to others.
The force construct that the--both the 2018 and 2022 NDS
has proposed to meet the challenge, essentially a one-theater
military with additional reserves to deter elsewhere, we
believe is inadequate.
There are currently wars in two of the priority theaters
going on already and the substantial threat of a third in the
Indo-Pacific. The 2022 strategy identified China as the pacing
challenge but we believe that, based on production rates and
other indicia, China is outpacing the U.S.
The U.S. still has the world's strongest military with the
furthest global reach but when we get within a thousand miles
of China's shore we start to lose our military dominance and
could find ourselves on the losing end of a conflict.
In addition to its growing and modernized conventional
strategic forces China has infiltrated U.S. critical
infrastructure networks to prevent or deter us from engaging
against it and it is likely to contest our logistics, disrupt
power and water at home, and otherwise remove the sanctuary of
the U.S. homeland that we have long enjoyed if we were to find
ourselves in conflict.
The public, we believe, is not aware of the potential
consequences of this kind of attack at home and the U.S.
government is not at present organized sufficiently to prepare
to stop it.
Our report also describes the threats posed by a
reconstituted Russia and what Vladimir Putin may seek to do
beyond Ukraine, and the threats from emboldened leaders in
Iran, North Korea, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and
its affiliates, along with other terrorist groups who remain a
potent and increasing threat capable of launching large-scale
external attacks.
We share the goal unanimously as a Commission of the NDS of
deterring major war and I want to really emphasize that. This
is not about trying to get ready for the U.S. to fight a war.
This is about deterring war because it's always much less
expensive to deter than it is to fight a major conflict.
But we have serious doubts whether the smallest force in
decades and an insufficient industrial base, as you mentioned,
Mr. Chairman, can deter increasingly capable and cooperating
allies among our adversaries.
We recommend a multi-theater force construct, better use of
commercial technology, as you and your colleagues were arguing
recently, and strategic investments to restore the U.S.
qualitative military edge.
Ms. Harman. Mr. Chairman, if I may close.
Rather than reading into the record our findings and
recommendations let me return briefly to an earlier comment.
This committee, as well as your Senate counterpart, is
critical to reversing the trends that Vice Chairman Edelman
just described. Let me give you a few examples.
As you know, the executive branch is severely stovepiped.
The National Defense Strategy itself is by law authored by the
Secretary of Defense and focuses internally on DOD. A thought
experiment--maybe your committee can help change that.
We credit Secretary of Defense Austin in prioritizing
integrated deterrence in the 2022 NDS but DOD simply can't make
the rest of the bureaucracy focus on great power competition.
Congress is stovepiped as well, but you all sit on other
committees and can work across the House in support of an
integrated National Security Strategy across government and
with the private sector, and the innovation that you saw in
Silicon Valley in my home state of California is innovation we
need to protect the security of the United States.
Stovepiping also happens on Appropriations, and I know some
of you are--I believe some of you serve on the Appropriations
(Approps) Committee. We can't keep pitting defense spending
against nondefense spending as if the Department of State,
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Treasury, and even
Education and Labor don't contribute to our national defense.
The Commission recommends a broader view of national
security and adequate spending across all these accounts. We
unanimously recommend returning to the levels of spending as
Vice Chairman Edelman just said and all of you, I think, agree
on the levels of spending on national defense proportionally as
we did in the Cold War.
We also call for paying for it through increases in revenue
and reforms to entitlements and other nondiscretionary
spending.
I know it is easier for us to say that than for you to do
it, but if we're going to get serious about deterring and
winning wars on the scale of the Cold War it's necessary.
We also implore the 59 members of this committee to work
with your colleagues to stop relying on Continuing Resolutions.
These CRs do real harm, especially on procurement, and weaken
our hand against our adversaries.
Finally, from your oversight you know full well that
getting things done quickly at DOD is almost impossible. We
support programs like the Defense Innovation Unit--DIU--the
Office of Strategic Capital, and Replicator but these are
specifically designated as end runs around the normal Pentagon
model.
The culture of the regulations at the Pentagon, as Ranking
Member Smith said, are a major impediment to readiness and war
fighting. You need to drive change.
Ukraine and Russia are innovating on the battlefield on the
scale of weeks, not years. I was in Kyiv last week and prior to
that in April and saw this for myself. If DOD can't move at
this speed and scale it will lose.
This isn't the culture there and this committee needs to
help the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of DOD address it.
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Smith, and members of the
committee, thank you again for your role in establishing our
Commission and inviting us to share our report with you.
The Chairman. Thank you. Thank you very much for your
service and for being here, and I now recognize myself for
questions.
I would like to hear a little bit more about this new axis
of evil that's fashioned this. How concerned should Americans
be about this new alliance between China, Russia, North Korea,
and--well, that's it, that coalition. Tell us about what it
could mean for us.
Mr. Edelman. Chairman Rogers, what we're seeing is Russia
right now waging the largest land war in Europe since 1945 but
only able to do that in the face of U.S. and other
international sanctions and export controls through the
financing of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the
provision by the PRC of precision machining equipment that has
allowed the Russian defense industrial base to go on a three
shift a day 24/7 footing that is enabling them to rain death
and destruction on civilians in Ukraine with missiles, with
drones that first they were provided by Iran but now coming
from a factory in Russia built by Iran, and with 152
ammunition--millions of rounds of 152 ammunition provided by
North Korea.
What's going back from Russia to these other countries? We
don't know the full scope yet, but it may include assistance,
for instance, for China in submarine technology, in other kinds
of technology that will, again, erode some of our long-standing
traditional comparative advantages vis-a-vis China, one of
which, as you all know, is undersea warfare.
So there's a growing collaboration among these four bad
actors and it's hard to imagine, as I said in my testimony,
that if we were in a conflict, say, in the Indo-Pacific over
Taiwan or South China Sea that North Korea wouldn't try and
take advantage of that at the same time on the Korean Peninsula
or that Russia wouldn't take advantage of it to, you know, do
something in the Baltic or in the Black Sea region.
The Chairman. Yeah. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea
are cooperating and we just have to accept that and what it
means for us. Back when Representative Harman was on this
committee and when I first came on this committee, up until
about 10 or 12 years ago the Defense Department had a construct
where it was structured to fight two wars successfully
simultaneously and defend the homeland, and I remember General
Dempsey when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs testifying
before us the Defense Department can no longer do that--that at
best we could fight one war successfully and defend the
homeland, and I'm not sure that we still have that status
today. That's unacceptable.
Can you talk to us about--we just described four major
threats that are all building. What does it mean for us to see
our percentage of defense spending at the level--as a
percentage of GDP fall to the level it is now?
What do the American people need to understand about the
implications of that level of spending, given that spread of
threat that you just talked about?
Ms. Harman. Mr. Chairman, it's not just the level of
spending. It's what we spend it on. We continue to fund legacy
systems. I know something about this.
I represented an aerospace-dependent district in Los
Angeles and fought to the death to keep some programs that
could have been, it seems to me, transitioned to more modern
programs.
But I was worried about what would happen to the workforce,
something we can discuss. We all think that we can generate a
workforce for a much more modern military so there won't be
unemployment problems in districts. It's just a question of
making decisions--smart decisions--about what to spend the
money on.
Our view is spend more but spend smarter and pay for it. So
on this one-war concept I was surprised--I no longer was here
when we downscaled the two-war concept to the one-war concept.
Our committee--our Commission feels on a unanimous basis
that that's not even adequate, that we need a multiple theater
construct. And that doesn't mean we're fighting two wars or
three wars or X wars with boots on the ground but we're
fighting.
I mean, think what's going on in the Middle East and think
of the assets we have repositioned there because of what can
happen, and also think, as we haven't pointed out yet but it's
sobering, that all the four members of this axis of evil have
or are about to have nuclear weapons and we don't have any
nuclear regime that's sufficient to cover all this.
So our recommendation is a multiple theater concept. We can
go into more detail but I'm mindful that my time, I think, is
up here.
The Chairman. I thank you very much.
I yield to the Ranking Member.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. One aspect of that, as we try to, you
know, be prepared to deal with all these threats is our
production capacity in certain key items and really it's--
missile defense is a big part of it and then ammo, as we're
seeing in Ukraine.
And I think, you know, we have made some improvements
domestically and then also, crucially, with partners. We're
starting to make Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS)
in Australia. We're partnering with Turkey on some 155 rounds.
We're working with different folks.
But the scale that we're going to need to be prepared for,
given the threats that we face, is great--not just us, but all
of our partners.
So what can you tell us about what we need to do to be able
to increase production capacity of those key munitions?
Mr. Edelman. Representative Smith, there are a couple of
different things I think we need to think about and you've
touched on many of them, and just to start, you know, at home,
we need--one of the reasons we, you know, call for an increase
in spending but also for multi-year procurement and not just
the authority but also the appropriations to back those multi-
year procurements up is to send a signal to industry to be able
to make the investments they need to make in both floor space--
you know, increasing their floor space for production of
munitions but also for taking on the highly skilled workforce
and the overhead that that incurs over the long term.
It's not just going to be a blip, a one- or two-year, you
know, appropriation that they'll be able to amortize this over
a long period of years.
Mr. Smith. Can I ask you one question about that? This came
up at the hearing.
So we hear all the time about the demand signal. That's
what industry wants. Now, I have a sarcastic way of looking at
one aspect of that.
I mean, the demand signal, basically, is promise us that
you're going to pay us for 30 years no matter what happens,
what we're going to build. Guarantee us a return no matter
what, and I'm sure we would all like that.
But the second part of the problem, as we have discovered,
things are changing rapidly, particularly when you're talking
about software and some of the smaller parts of this.
So if you make a 30-year commitment to all of these
things--sorry, 30, that's an exaggeration--but 10, you know,
and then things change how do you pivot?
Now, I think that we can build flexibility into those
contracts and one of the things that I hope all of you will
consider is something that one of our witnesses said on Monday
which was it's not so much we need a long-term demand signal.
As it is, we need to know that you're going to give us the
opportunity to buy so that you're not going to lock our
competitor in forever and then we just can't compete.
So I think we have to be careful about the demand signal
thing and I think of the space launch as being one of the best
examples. United Launch Alliance (ULA) was the only game in
town so we kept giving them 10-year contracts.
Competition showed up and the competition couldn't do
anything because they had a better product now but the
competitor that didn't had a 10-year contract.
So how would you balance those two things?
Mr. Edelman. You're right. There has to be, you know,
balance in this. I don't--I don't disagree with that. I mean,
some of this has to do also with changing the way we think
about platforms and munitions.
I mean, we're really now operating in a world, and we see
this as a--you know, there's a laboratory in front of our faces
in Ukraine and in the Middle East. We're in a world now of
autonomy, of artificial intelligence, of smart munitions,
loitering munitions, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Mr. Smith. Also, of all of those things you just mentioned
being jammed and rendered ineffective unless we can figure out
a way around it.
Mr. Edelman. Right. And so what you need is to have these
systems developed so that they are upgradable, reprogrammable,
so that the software side of this can, you know, move inside
the observe, orient, decide, act (OODA) loop of the adversary
and defeat things like the electronic warfare we have seen the
Russians use against some of the commercially presided things
we have given the Ukrainians.
So I agree with you.
Ms. Harman. If I might just add to that.
Future systems will be much more software and much less
hardware. C.Q. Brown was at the Aspen Security Forum where we
testified on our recommendations and he said the Defense
Department is not a hardware store.
Well, I would say it is too much of a hardware store, and
the reason we are recommending lashing up closely with the tech
sector and, hopefully, adapting some of the business model of
the tech sector which is not risk averse, which is not
stovepiped, which is not bureaucratic, is that we will produce
things that we can iterate and upgrade quickly that are much
less expensive and much more effective.
Mr. Smith. Sounds good. I'm out of time.
Mr. Edelman. Just briefly, Mr. Smith.
Also, you're completely right that we have to work with
allies and this is one reason why we stressed that we need to
use all elements of national power. It's just not the
Department of Defense, the Department of State, with its
International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) regulations is
important here.
Mr. Smith. I'll say quickly as my time runs out, figuring
out how to rework the requirements process is crucial to all of
this. It gets locked in over this extended period of time. So
just a homework assignment for all of us that we're going to
try to work on going forward.
I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. The gentleman from Ohio Mr. Turner is
recognized.
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank the Commission and, certainly, our two
panelists today. Ambassador and Jane, it's great to see you. I
appreciate what you're bringing forward to us as part of our
debate and really our to-do list.
Ambassador, I appreciate your reference to Ukraine. I've
been in and out of Ukraine with other members of Congress and
when I take them there they're struck by that you don't have
soldiers fighting; you have operators of drones that are not
necessarily soldiers.
You have--your whole acquisition structure is completely
changed so that you can move forward innovation to the
battlefield. We're not--we're not set up for that, and I
appreciate you guys in both the Commission's report and in this
testimony highlighting that.
But there's also something that I think is an incredible
point that you've made that is a larger to-do list item and
that is that the U.S. public is, largely, unaware of the
dangers that the United States faces, and the fact that you
guys have raised this issue--in fact, you go on to say that
they do not appreciate the strength of China and its
partnerships or the ramifications of daily life.
If a conflict were to erupt they are not anticipating
disruptions to their power, water, or access to all goods in
which they rely.
You go on to say, of course, the next Pearl Harbor could
occur with the American public being completely unaware. So I'm
just going to list a couple of things that the American public
are not aware of that I think there's a huge gap between what
we deal with every day and what we need to communicate.
And the first one, of course, goes directly to what you
guys just said. Our adversaries look at civil society as a
valid military target. If there is a conflict with China this
is not going to be a regional conflict or a military conflict.
It is going to be a civil society disruption. There will be
harm that China will seek to do to the American public in
disruptions in both our economic and our social structure.
You guys identify water, power. All of these things, of
course, are crucial for civil society.
But also on this side, and the Ranking Member mentioned
missile defense, I was just meeting with fellow native
Parliamentary Assembly members who are from Europe and they
were all acknowledging that their public and our public
actually incorrectly believe that we have a working missile
defense system to protect us in case there is a nuclear attack.
Europe has nothing. We, of course, do have some ground-
based missile defenses that are fielded. But we have an East
Coast missile defense site that has been statutorily approved,
unbuilt. We have not had administrations risen to the level of
saying we're going to--we're going to put these in place.
We already mentioned cyber, but even in space China and
Russia are doing anti-satellite programs and, of course, now we
have been openly discussing the fact that Russia is developing
an anti-satellite nuclear weapon to be put into space.
We know that China is tripling its nuclear weapons program.
The United States is barely able to modernize, meaning
refurbish and keep what we have. Both China and Russia have
fielded hypersonics. We do not even have a fully developed
hypersonic program.
I'm concerned that, in part, we don't highlight these
things minorly so that we don't alarm the public but also that
the public doesn't hear of the inaction.
I think administrations don't inform the public because
they don't want the difference between what they should be
doing and what is going to--what they are actually doing.
I'd love to get your thoughts on--Jane, how do we address
this gap?
Ms. Harman. Well, Mr. Turner, I want to commend you for
your leadership on a bipartisan basis of the House Intelligence
Committee where I also spent a lot of time. It matters that
these committees be bipartisan because, after all, the bad guys
are not going to check our party registration before they harm
us.
First of all, let me say that one of the things we were
briefed on--and we had 92 separate meetings with various people
including Chairman Rogers--was the possibility that China would
engage in a massive cyber attack on our critical infrastructure
either in advance of or congruent with doing something--
annexing Taiwan or advancing into Taiwan.
And I don't think Americans understand at all how they
would feel if all of a sudden their communications go dead, our
ports close, et cetera, and transportation nodes are down.
I was here and many of you were here on 9/11 when Congress
was unprepared for that attack despite the fact that three
major commissions, one of which I served on, had recommended
that we pay attention to a possibility of a major attack on
U.S. soil.
We were milling around in front of the Capitol. We closed
the House and Senate offices. The fourth plane, which went down
in Pennsylvania was, most people think, intended to hit the
dome of the Capitol and we would have had a continuity of
government crisis in America.
It still was a crisis--I don't want to minimize what
happened--but I think it would be a crisis on steroids if we
don't prepare the American public for what could happen now.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Connecticut Mr.
Courtney.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the
witnesses for your hard work, particularly in--I mean, this
report obviously took a while and a lot of effort.
On Sunday we celebrated the third anniversary of AUKUS when
it was unveiled and in some ways I think it's almost a poster
child of really, you know, sort of collaborative
recommendations that you're making in terms of how we uplift
our industrial base as well as maximize, you know, some of the
great work that our allies are doing.
This committee authorized the pathways--legal pathways for
AUKUS to move forward. It was signed into law last December.
Permits the U.S. to sell three nuclear-powered submarines to
Australia, the first time that's ever happened, as part of
pillar one.
But in pillar two it also knocked down the defense export
controls in ITAR in really just an unprecedented way so that,
again, the three countries can integrate, you know, really
high-end technologies and quantum computing, hypersonics,
cyber, and the State Department actually issued the rules in
record time also so that there now is a fast lane for the three
countries to work together in terms of, you know, raising the
bar in terms of deterrence.
We are already seeing classes of Australian enlisted
sailors and officers graduating from sub school both in South
Carolina in my district up in Groton, Connecticut, and they're
top in the class, by the way, in terms of--which shows a lot
about their commitment to this.
The USS Hawaii landed or was docked in Perth a couple days
ago and an Australian officer actually was at the helm and
drove that Virginia-class submarine into port.
So, you know, again, we're really seeing this. It's not
just a document. It's not just paperwork. I mean, this thing is
really happening tangibly and quickly in terms of implementing
it.
And last night when the three countries issued their
statements they already indicated that New Zealand, Canada, and
South Korea are now in open negotiations about possibly being
included in the pillar two realm and Japan also.
I mean, it's sort of like AUKUS envy, you know, that people
want to get into this sort of approach. So, you know, again, in
terms of, you know, the vision that this document lays out
maybe you could talk about that, both of you, in terms of just
how, you know, AUKUS--and also the speed with which Congress
moved to make this real is really what is needed right now.
Mr. Edelman. Well, Mr. Courtney, I completely agree with
you that this kind of partnership among allies is something
that's important and needed and AUKUS was an important, I
think, innovation and I certainly applaud the Congress for what
it's done.
I will tell you that although there's been a lot of
progress--and I know Jim Miller, who succeeded me a couple of
times removed as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, has
been working very hard to try to overcome some of these
differences.
When we talked with our United Kingdom (U.K.) and
Australian colleagues they don't think we're completely there
yet. There's still work that needs to be done on that.
But you're correct. This is, I think, the wave of the
future. I mean, in addition to the other partnerships you
mentioned at the time of the NATO summit there was the U.S.-
Canada-Finland icebreaker agreement that was announced.
So this is the wave of the future. We're going to have to
work by, with, and through allies to accomplish a lot of this.
Mr. Courtney. The only thing I would note in terms of any
of the, you know, concerns people have, it took 13 years for
the U.S. to authorize nuclear technology transfer to the U.K.
after World War II. This took literally--
Mr. Edelman. I'm well aware.
Mr. Courtney. --seven months--
Mr. Edelman. I am well aware.
Mr. Courtney. --when the proposal came over from Congress.
I'd just--one other point I just would like to make is that
Secretary Austin sent over a list of the damage that would be
done if the six-month CR went into effect.
In terms of the undersea domain which you mentioned, Mr.
Edelman, the Columbia-class program in 2025 was slated to get
about a $4 billion increase so that the USS Wisconsin, which is
the second Columbia, can actually get into full production.
There's about an additional $1.3 billion or $4 billion in
terms of submarine industrial base funding which goes into
workforce supply chain facility. Again, all of that would be
put on hold and we don't have the time to really afford in
terms of that happening.
Hopefully, all of us will vote that CR down later today and
move on to a short-term--very short-term CR so we can get a
final budget.
With that, I yield back.
The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Colorado Mr.
Lamborn.
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to also thank you both for your work and the other
Commission members who are here as well.
Representative Harman, I overlapped with you for a time
when you were still in Congress. You and Senator Wayne Allard
started the Space Power Caucus and after you left I picked it
up and continued that work and have furthered it. So I
appreciate what you started there.
I noticed that your conclusions of the Commission, largely,
did not replicate but, rather, complement the findings of your
colleagues on the Strategic Posture Commission, which was
submitted last year, and there's a specific conclusion they
have--I want to see if you concur with it--and that is
especially in light of the Chinese nuclear breakout our current
nuclear modernization program of record is, quote, ``necessary
but not sufficient,'' unquote, to effectively deter two nuclear
peers.
Would you agree with that statement of that commission?
Ms. Harman. Well, if I might say something about the last
discussion, the last time Congress passed an National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA) on time was 2011 which is the year I
left Congress. So, of course, my view is that it was a perfect
place until I left.
But more seriously, these CRs are really hurtful. They fund
our past budgets, not the budgets we need, and obviously we
need a bigger budget and we need to pay for a bigger budget.
But I just wanted to put that out there.
We--because there was a different commission and a very
good friend, I'm sure, of all of you too, former Senator Kyl
was involved with it. We kind of operated in parallel.
But certainly I would agree, and I know that Congressman
Turner wrote a big op-ed recently about this, that we're behind
and I would agree with you that we do need to do more.
Maybe Ambassador Edelman wants to add to that.
Mr. Edelman. Representative Lamborn, we're facing an
unprecedented situation which is that as China moves towards
being a nuclear peer we have never had to deter two nuclear
peers at the same time, and although I agree with members of
the Commission on strategic posture who said we don't need to
match Russia and China platform for platform, it is almost
certainly going to be the case that when New START expires we
will not be in a position to--with the force in being to deter.
So some alterations will probably, you know, be necessary.
But the modernization program is absolutely crucial, going
forward. We have to have both Columbia-class, B-21 and the
Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) Sentinel.
Mr. Lamborn. Okay. Representative Harman, I noticed you
were nodding your head yes when he was making that comment.
When it comes to the nuclear modernization of the three legs of
the triad would multi-year modernization--multi-year investment
by Congress in that program be helpful?
Ms. Harman. Absolutely. Multi-year investment in many
programs would be helpful. Multi-year procurement and procuring
things that will deter or win the next war rather than legacy
systems would also be helpful.
Sadly, the appropriations process--and I don't want to
offend anyone here who may serve on the Appropriations
Committee--doesn't work and Congress plays a very dangerous
political game with CRs and the debt ceiling and so forth, and
it would be enormously helpful to U.S. security if that
stopped.
And I do understand why many here, it sounds like, are
going to vote against the CR today, to make a point that this
is not the way to be responsible.
Mr. Lamborn. And, for the record, I want to say the House
has sent NDAA and defense appropriation over to the Senate
where they're just sitting on it. So there's no reason that a
CR has to include defense.
When it comes to AUKUS we had a good discussion about that.
My colleague from Connecticut mentioned AUKUS, and so progress
has been made in export controls with close allies and working
through that.
But, Ambassador, you said more could be done. So progress
has been made but more could be done. What specifically could
be done better?
Mr. Edelman. When you talk to, you know, our partners they
will tell you that we are very difficult to do business with
because the delays in issuing licenses under ITAR are extensive
and complicating and there are other competitors in the
marketplace who don't subject them to the same kinds of, you
know, rules and regulations that we do.
So we have got to find a way to simplify this process to
make it easier to do business with us so we can, you know,
partner with our allies and not just allies but other partners.
I mean, if you look at the Middle East you've got a country
with which we are closely tied, Israel, that has significant
innovative capabilities, some of which were just demonstrated
and you've also got Gulf partners who have a lot of money, and
there's an obvious synergy there that we ought to be building
on because to the point earlier that Chairman Rogers raised,
you know, we can't take on this alliance of adversaries alone.
We have to do it with partners. And that's not just in
terms of access to territory and bases but it's also going to
be industrial production.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired.
I didn't warn the witnesses I will adhere to the five
minutes, going forward. I didn't want you to let--I didn't want
that thought to get away from you. That's why I let you go on.
But if you'll watch the clock at five minutes we'll be ending
it.
But I now turn to my friend from California Mr. Garamendi.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Excellent piece of work done by the Commission. Thank you
so very much for the work and for the advice and counsel, most
of which we will ignore, starting with the CR.
But we'll--be interesting to see where the votes are after
your admonition that we ought to pay attention. 2011--well
done, Jane.
Allies, critically important. I do note that we have had
significant success in the Pacific building our allies, and as
mentioned by the ranking member, 50 some nations supporting
Ukraine along with us.
All of government--good luck. Whether we increase the
defense budget or not we have seen the State Department
radically reduced and its budget probably maybe 40 percent
reduction over the last few years. Treasury, Commerce, all of
it.
So all of government does require investment. It also
requires coordination. Industrial base--I was looking at some
issues yesterday. Fortunately, Europe is providing munitions
for Ukraine that we apparently cannot provide ourselves and so
the industrial base becomes extremely important.
That requires investment. You've mentioned this. I'm going
to go through just a list here. There's also a problem that we
don't often discuss and that is the consolidation of the
Defense Industrial Base. I think we're down to maybe five.
If you want innovation that's not how you get it, and I'm
not sure you mentioned this in your report but it's something
that is of utmost importance. There are some of us that are
concerned about this and pushing forward to try to stop the
continuation of the consolidation.
And, finally, I had expected lightning, thunder, and the
collapse of this building when you mentioned tax increases. So
if you'd like to go through any one of those pick and choose
which one you'd like to comment on in the next two and a half
minutes and we'll pick it up.
Ms. Harman. Well, where to start? I'll start with the
consolidation of the industrial base. I was here in the '90s
when we downsized the intelligence and defense procurement
budgets because we won the Cold War and everyone else lost and
they all wanted to be us. So why did we need to spend all this
money?
And the result, of course, was that a huge number of the
rocket scientists who won the Cold War were out of work, and so
when Bill Perry was Secretary of Defense he held what was
called the Last Supper. It's an artistic or, I don't know what
you would say to--maybe it's a religious term.
But at any rate, the defense firms came in and were told to
consolidate and they did consolidate, and there are fewer
primes than there were then and that is a problem. But I would
suggest that rather than build more primes we need to have a
much more diverse industrial base, which is not just defense
but also technology, and that's what we're urging, and not only
the better--a better system to include software made by the
private sector and investments made by the private sector but
to include the--to adapt the business models of the private
sector which are risk ready and innovative and very different
from the business model of the Pentagon.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you.
Ambassador, do you want to pick one or another of those up?
Mr. Edelman. I would just, to stick with what our chair was
just talking about that the challenge we observed in which your
committee at its field hearing also, I think, uncovered is that
during the Cold War essentially the Department of Defense was
funding most of the basic research in this country and a lot of
development of the commercial economy was built on the back of
what the Department of Defense did.
But we have a completely different economy now which--in
which the department is going to be dependent on developments
in the commercial sector of the economy and particularly in the
information technology (IT) area, as we were discussing
earlier, with software becoming more important, really, in the
end of the day, than the hardware, and the hardware becoming
more attritable and cheaper.
What we found is that the department is not optimized to
deal with that. It's optimized to build big, expensive,
vulnerable, you know, platforms that we can't afford to lose
and we have got to move away from that model.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for your congressional delegation
(CODEL)--
The Chairman. Yes, sir.
Mr. Garamendi. --and the efforts that you made to enlighten
us on change.
The Chairman. Thank you.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Virginia Mr.
Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to thank our witnesses for joining us today.
Thanks so much too for your in-depth assessment about where we
stand today as a nation in relation to, Chairman Harman, as you
put the growing axes of evil. I'm in 100 percent agreement with
you. We are at that point.
The challenge for us is to get the Pentagon to become an
agile organization--that is a tall, tall order--and to operate
at the speed of relevance. I'd love to get your perspective.
As we look at modernizing, as we look at needing an and
strategy--not an or strategy, an and including exquisite
platforms, things like aircraft carriers and submarines, things
that give us an advantage in many different ways--but also
putting into the inventory quickly attritable platforms and
expendable platforms and the technology there is incredible.
The laboratory for how that's occurring is happening right
now in Ukraine. So how do you see the enterprise and the
Pentagon to be able to get that new technology operationalized
quickly?
The good thing about attritable platforms and expendable
platforms is we can build a lot of them. We can build them
really fast, which I believe is that gap closer between the
United States and our adversaries.
Ms. Harman. Well, let me just offer part of the answer
because Ambassador Edelman is very informed about this.
I would just say that the Pentagon on present facts can't
get there. They do have innovative programs that Defense
Innovation Unit--DIU, which was DIUx, which was set up by the
late Secretary Ash Carter--is one of those programs.
It is funded. Its budget is $1 billion out of $850 billion.
That's a rounding error. And Doug Beck, the very able guy who
heads it who has a long career in the private sector, says he
can leverage that to $50 billion. It's still a rounding error.
So programs that are there, Replicator and others, are not
at scale and it is certainly my opinion--I think it was all of
our opinion--that the Pentagon is not going to get there on its
own.
One of the things that Congress could change is the
instructions for how to write these National Defense
Strategies. If the orders are given differently the Pentagon
might be able to take a broader view and might be able to drive
change through a very bureaucratic morass that exists there
now.
Mr. Edelman. Mr. Wittman, I'm a former constituent because
until Stafford County got moved to the Seventh--
Mr. Wittman. Yes.
Mr. Edelman. --so I'm pleased to be able to try and answer
your question.
You know, it's very striking--it was very striking to all
of us that when you think about the efforts to make the
department more innovative, whether it's DIUx, DIU now, the
Strategic Capabilities Office--the SCO--the Strategic
Investment Office, or some of the things you all have imposed
on the department like the European Deterrence Initiative or
the Pacific Security Initiative, these are all things that work
around the system that we have actually created to stifle and
prevent innovation which is the bulk of the bureaucracy of the
department.
And I think while all of us believe that the top line has
to go up, that we need to spend more money, as Chairman Rogers
said, we also very strongly believe what you said, which is
that it can't just be all poured into the program of record.
I don't mean to knock those platforms. As you say, we need
them. But what we need to have on those platforms is going to
be even more important, and while Replicator is a great example
of an initiative, first of all, you can't have the Secretary
and the Deputy Secretary personally, you know, drive all these
things because they don't have enough time in the day to be
able to do it.
It's got to be a broader, you know, department wide
approach, and even Replicator is going to, you know, produce, I
don't know, 10,000 attritable systems.
We're watching Russia and Ukraine deploy millions of these
systems on the battlefield and if we get into a high-end
conflict in the Indo-Pacific the consumption of munitions is
going to be astronomical. It's going to, you know, be eye
watering to the American public.
So it gets back to we need to really, I think, go from the
bottom up and redo the way, you know, we do these things. And
I'd like to go back to something Mr. Smith said because I agree
with it violently, which is we have to move from a requirements
system where the requirements--you know, everybody can add a
requirement in the Pentagon to a new system. No one can take
one off. And we need to be solving problems rather than
requirements.
Mr. Wittman. Yeah. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield
back.
The Chairman. Yeah. I hope everybody took note of what
Representative Harman said in response to that suggested
change. Quote, ``The Department can't get there on their own.
It is going to require Congress to force this change.''
With that, I recognize my friend from New Jersey Mr.
Norcross.
Mr. Norcross. Thank you, Chairman.
I just want to echo the comments by my colleagues on how
important of a discussion this is. It's rare that we are able
to sit down and have the overall view.
The good news is we are having it. The bad news is it's
massive and it's complex and certainly something that we have
talked about for a long time.
But I want to first draw into a comment that Ms. Harman
made early on. We know we need the best equipment, the
personnel, all those issues, but how can we deal with that
sensitive issue that very few people will have the discussion
of the hometown favorite--the parochial interest?
They're in my backyard. It goes to the heart of the
conversation both Ranking Member and the Chairman had is we
have to spend it better.
Now, just for the record, nobody in this room does that.
It's the other guys. Talk about how we can actually have a
realistic discussion on that issue.
Ms. Harman. It's a difficult question.
Mr. Norcross. You brought it up.
Ms. Harman. I know. I brought it up and I lived it. I
represented a defense dependent district in Los Angeles and
when bases were going to close or programs were going to shift
I fought like heck to save the jobs in my district and
sometimes to save the programs.
But there is a way out of this. These new programs that we
need--tech-centered programs, many of them software programs--
also build jobs and one of the things we need to do is to
transition workers who are working on programs that have much
less relevance to deterring and winning wars now than they did,
transition those workers with the skills needed for the new
jobs.
Something that I discovered as a member of this Commission
and did not know is that Pell Grants are available for
vocational training.
We can use a program that is enormously popular and, I
think, still well-funded to train the workforce that we need
and when we do that it seems to me we end up with a win-win.
Better jobs and better programs.
Mr. Norcross. Well, that literally takes me into the next
question. When we talk about building the industrial base and
we have the capacity it's well known how we got to where we
are.
We have all shorted things for years. We have downsized. We
have spent less. We understand that.
In terms of building up one of--the number-one focus is,
particularly when we're dealing with the submarine base, is the
longest lead item which is called a human asset, those who will
go to work with their hands and build these things.
The pandemic taught us that it's great, let's sit home and
do it on Zoom. You can't build the F-35 from home. You can't
build submarines.
Talk about how we can build that long-term item of workers
that can put this together.
Mr. Edelman. Mr. Norcross, this is one of the reasons why
in our report we talk about using all elements of national
power.
It can't all just be on the Department of Defense because,
as you rightly say and as I was commenting with Representative
Smith, you know, if you talk to folks in the Defense Industrial
Base they'll tell you that it's--a skilled workforce is the
long pole in the tent for, you know, everything they want to do
in terms of expansion.
And, you know, with--if Mr. Lamborn were still here I
would, you know, say, if you want to know, for instance, why
the ground-based strategic deterrent Sentinel is a Nunn-McCurdy
breach and is over budget and, you know, behind schedule it's
not because the contractor Northrop Grumman doesn't know how to
make a--you know, an intercontinental ballistic missile on time
and on schedule.
It's because the workforce--we, you know, lack the
workforce to pour the kind of specialized, reinforced concrete
that you need for new silos and new control rooms.
I mean, there's also problems with environmental
regulations but we don't have enough welders. We don't have
enough electricians. It goes to Representative Harman's point
about Pell Grants for apprenticeships not just for college
education.
But this is an important issue and it's one that--it's not
really in the remit of the Department of Defense but it's
absolutely crucial to the success of our National Defense
Strategy.
Mr. Norcross. Thank you. The recruitment of the service
members who put on the uniform extremely important, but the
industrial base, those who build the equipment, is also equally
important.
And with that, I yield back.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
The chair now recognizes Dr. DesJarlais of Tennessee.
Dr. DesJarlais. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you both for
your great work and for being here today.
This is for both of you. The military recruitment crisis is
a frequent topic of discussion in this committee. Your report
notably highlights the Marine Corps' success in meeting
recruiting goals without lowering standards.
What factors contribute to their success and what lesson
can other branches take from their approach?
Ms. Harman. It's interesting that only the Marines are a
success at the moment. I don't know what services all of you
served in and I don't want to denigrate others but General--
retired General Jack Keane is a member of our group and he was
all over this issue, and part of what he thought was that the
messages we send are way outmoded. The people who recruit are
lower down in the totem pole than should be the people
recruiting.
We should have our highest level generals and others doing
the recruitment, and also the terms of service need to be
adjusted. Moving every two years is bad for families, it's bad
for a working spouse and--which happens more and more often,
and those terms could be adjusted, too.
So it was--those were the things that we thought about, and
we wanted to address that issue and we wanted to address
education because that's a huge part of our problem, too.
We can't recruit and retain the talent that we need, and
the numbers in the military are going down and that is just a
tragedy in terms of the threats to the country.
Mr. Edelman. I know in talking to the service secretaries
and service chiefs of the Army, Air Force, and the Navy all of
them are struggling with this issue and working very hard to
try and, you know, overcome some of this.
Again, some of this is a broader kind of national social
issue. I mean, we have a declining percentage of 18- and 19-
year-olds who can meet the physical standards and, you know,
that goes to, you know, broader, you know, social issues that
we have to address--obesity and other issues which you, I'm
sure, appreciate.
We also have some antiquated health standards that have
gotten in the way. You know, is it really the case that if you
had childhood asthma that, you know, you shouldn't be able to
serve.
So we have got to adjust some of these standards to help
the services meet the recruitment goals that they've set for
themselves.
Dr. DesJarlais. Thank you.
Congressman Harman, you have often criticized Congress'
addiction to legacy platforms and stressed the need to shift
investments towards emerging technologies.
Could you elaborate on this point and, if comfortable,
provide some specific examples of systems you believe we should
move away from?
Ms. Harman. Well, my general proposition is we need less
hardware and more software. Not only is that cheaper but it is
more attuned to the fights we will face--deter or face in the
future, and there are new domains, obviously, that everyone
knows about--space, cyber, artificial intelligence (AI)--and
all of that has to be thought about in terms of the systems to
deter or fight the next war.
In order to pay for that we can't just print money. That's
something we--a point we keep making, which is why we think we
have to raise revenues and reform entitlements.
But we also can't keep funding things that are demonstrated
not to have as high value as these new software iterative
platforms.
And we were just asked about what Ukraine can teach us.
That's what Ukraine can teach us. Ukraine can teach us that it
is--you can build a drone for $350. My comment is you can't get
a cup of coffee in the Pentagon for $350, and that's our
future.
So I don't really want to list legacy programs. Maybe
Ambassador Edelman is more fearless than I am. But I can tell
you that some of these hardware programs that I'm sure were
built in my congressional district in Los Angeles or used to be
built there would be better replaced by more software centric,
tech-based, and--based programs.
Mr. Edelman. Rather than name programs I would just provide
as a kind of rule of thumb if it's something that we can hang
something that can be modularized, that can be upgraded, that
can be turned around very quickly and used on the battlefield
by the war fighter by all means keep it. If not, probably a
good candidate to get rid of it.
Dr. DesJarlais. Thank you. I yield back.
The Chairman. The gentleman from California Mr. Carbajal.
Mr. Carbajal. Thank you. Thank you to both of you for being
here. Thank you for your leadership and your service. You bring
a wealth of experience to the table.
Congresswoman Harman, I appreciate your former service
because I think you know the reality we all face when
announcements are made of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC)
and different types of legacy systems that are going to be
changed.
But I think it's important that when we announce those
things that we consider the impact to the economy, we consider
the impact to the workforce, and that has to be part of any
transition, any plan we put out there, because it allows us to
give our constituents the confidence that we're going to do
everything to mitigate the negative impacts that will result
from those changes.
So I think your service and experience is extremely helpful
in helping us as we do and go through these exercises in the
future. And, for the record, I'm a Marine so thank you for
saying great things of the Marine Corps.
The findings of this report add additional context to and
further confirm what many of us in Congress have already known,
that we are not ready for another war.
I have to say, reading through this report I agree with
many of the findings but I have a hard time understanding why
the department was not working on some of these important
issues already.
Congresswoman Harman and Ambassador Edelman, why do you
think we have been caught flatfooted on being prepared for a
multi-theater war? You've touched on this already but if you
could just reiterate some things.
Ms. Harman. Well, let me talk to a fellow Californian and
admit that you are right that BRAC and some of those issues are
very hard for a sitting member of Congress to deal with.
I remember fighting to preserve what was then called the
Los Angeles Air Force Base in my district adjacent to the
Aerospace Corporation, and I was successful with a lot of help
from others.
And why did I want to preserve it? Because the educational
base and the workforce in this area were dependent on the jobs
that it would generate.
So it does go back to jobs and it does go back to needing
to find new and better jobs for our constituents before we
cancel programs or move things around.
So I agree with that. I don't know--I don't know what
wisdom I can offer other than to say we carefully went through
an inventory of what we would need to deter and win the next
war.
Ambassador Edelman says all the time--I don't want to steal
his thunder--that the goal is not to fight wars. The goal is to
deter wars and we're just not there, and a big problem is
public--lack of public awareness.
People have to understand why we need to spend more and
what we need to spend it on and this hearing is a good example
of public education.
And we would hope that the next president would be--would
put this issue much more at the forefront than prior presidents
have and make sure that the public is more aware ahead of the
next catastrophe than we have been in recent years.
Mr. Edelman. I think part of the problem is that for good
and sufficient reason the department since 9/11 has been
focused very much on the wars that followed against various
terrorist groups and that affected the program of record.
It affected how people thought about the future of warfare,
and I think there's also--and I would say this in a bipartisan
way--I think administrations of both parties tended to look the
other way about the developments in terms of China's military
power as well as Russia, hoping that things would just get
better or not get worse, and we have now found ourselves in the
situation that we do.
Mr. Carbajal. Thank you.
I have some limited time here, but in the report you point
out that the department's research and development (R&D) and
procurement systems are overly complex and the department is
reliant on antiquated military hardware.
An example you provide of the DOD's breaking this norm is
the Space Force because of their ability to move quickly, like,
with the Space Development Agency.
What do you think the biggest barrier has been to
implementing faster, more efficient R&D and procurement systems
across the department? Is it unwillingness from our senior
leaders or the department--or has the department explored new
systems and not found a better alternative?
Mr. Edelman. Just briefly, I would go back to some of the
earlier comments we have. I mean, we have got this very massive
requirements system that is biased in the direction of certain
kinds of systems and makes it harder to get these
nontraditional software oriented systems that my colleague has
been discussing kind of front and center.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Florida Mr.
Gaetz.
Mr. Gaetz. Chair Harman, you've testified that we need more
software and less hardware. I agree. So list the things we need
less of.
Ms. Harman. I think we need a careful inventory of what
hardware platforms are resilient and can be adapted with
additional software to deter and fight future wars. I don't
have a list--
Mr. Gaetz. Perfect answer, just not to the question I
asked. Name a system--
Ms. Harman. You asked--
Mr. Gaetz. --that we need less of. Name the program.
Mr. Edelman. I would offer up the--
Mr. Gaetz. Hold on. I didn't ask you the question. I asked
the chair. Name one.
Ms. Harman. Again, I come back to what I said, which is an
inventory of which systems would be useful to fight future
wars. I don't think we felt it was our job to list a number of
systems that need to be canceled but it was a job that--
Mr. Gaetz. Why? Why didn't you think that was your--if the
core thesis of the report, which I agree with, by the way, is
we need more software, less hardware, does it not seem
frivolous to then list the things we need less of?
Ms. Harman. Well, the report was a clear-eyed critique of
the National Defense Strategy of 2022, which didn't list
hardware and software systems. The approach that we took was
that we would look at the methodology of the report and assess
whether it was valid.
We assessed it wasn't and we then made recommendations for
how to adapt it to be more successful.
Mr. Gaetz. Right. But doesn't it seem frivolous--doesn't it
seem frivolous to say we need less hardware and then I say,
okay, name one thing we should buy one less of and the answer
is some sort of like Washington speak?
Like, let's go to the F-35. That's an expensive piece of
hardware. We have received testimony in this committee that 29
percent of the F-35s are fully operationally capable and so we
fenced 10 of them, and then the appropriators went and restored
the 10 we fenced and then added 10 more.
So how does it serve the National Defense Strategy to
continually buy $100 million paperweights?
Ms. Harman. Well, let me agree with you on that. I do agree
with you, and I think this committee has tried to make good
decisions and I remember when I served on it we tried to make
good decisions and we got overruled often, not always. It
takes--you know, it takes a lot of work in this building to get
things to happen.
Mr. Gaetz. Well, it's just corrupt. It's corrupt because--
Ms. Harman. But I think you're right. I think--
Mr. Gaetz. It's corrupt because we're buying stuff we know
doesn't work and then what the appropriators did was they took
that money out of what this committee prioritized, which was
childcare for our military families.
Ms. Harman. All right.
Mr. Gaetz. And so, like--but it does not advance our case
when the people who are sent to critique it then don't come
back and say, yeah, here's our assessment. The F-35 doesn't
work. We buy too much of them and that should go into tech,
into the tech that's going to help us in wars.
Ms. Harman. Well, I--and I think that's your call and I'm
glad that you made it. I don't think that was our call as the
writers of this Commission report. I think our call was to
critique a document prepared in the old-fashioned way that we
think should change.
Mr. Gaetz. Yeah. Yet, if we don't critique the systems by
name it's just--it just sort of--it blends into the ether.
Another question about the National Defense Strategy. So we
heard on Monday of this week that there are billions of dollars
of materiel--U.S. materiel sitting around in Ukraine that will
never be used, that the Ukrainians will not deploy in the
fight.
We heard that from the contractor that we curated to come
give us testimony in California, and we also know from
testimony given before this committee that the inspector
general cannot attest to end use monitoring of that very
equipment.
So you've got a combination of billions of dollars of
equipment and then nonlegally compliant end use monitoring.
Does the combination of those factors necessitate us
contemplating the risk of a lot of these weapons making their
way to the black market and having a National Defense Strategy
that will respond to it?
Ms. Harman. Well, I think it's very important to track the
materiel that's sent into Ukraine or any other war theater
funded by the United States.
I would note that most of the expenditure for equipment
goes to U.S. manufacturers. I think you would agree with that.
Mr. Gaetz. Yeah, but I don't really--okay, this is just one
of the craziest arguments. Well, we got billions of dollars
sitting over there. We're not monitoring it correctly.
Ukrainians aren't using it in the fight but be proud that we're
making it here at home?
Ms. Harman. Well, that's a problem. I'm not going to argue
that. I'm also, having been to Ukraine twice this year
including last week, very impressed with what the Ukrainians
are able to do on their own and the equipment that they're able
to produce which--well, it shows us up.
Mr. Gaetz. Yeah. No, I'd love them to do a little more on
their own, frankly.
Final question. Do you contemplate in your critique of the
National Defense Strategy the risk of the fact that China can
hit a moving target with a hypersonic weapon and we can't? How
do you assess that?
Mr. Edelman. Yes, we agree that that's a huge problem, and
at the beginning of the hearing Chairman Rogers mentioned that
and we are behind in hypersonics, Mr. Gaetz. That's just a
fact.
Mr. Gaetz. Yeah, tragic. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield
back.
The Chairman. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from
Massachusetts Mr. Keating.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It's great to see my former colleague, Representative
Harman. Thank you, Ambassador Edelman, for your work together.
I'd like you to just address the American people maybe with
your comments because Ambassador Edelman just addressed
something that I think is important to the whole discussion and
that's for years we have felt in this country that the home
base--the homeland is safe, and I think that informs a lot of
people--citizens, rightfully so--to say why should we be
engaged in so many other things around the world.
But you also said that there's now a threat to that home
base. Can you be specific and tell the American public what
threat to the homeland you were referring to?
Mr. Edelman. Mr. Keating, in the report we talk about the
fact that--and this has been, you know, I think, attested to by
FBI Director Wray in open testimony--that the Chinese are
sitting even today on our critical infrastructure in cyber and
that they are prepared, as Mr. Turner was saying earlier in the
hearing, to turn off your ATM, to turn off your water, turn off
your heat, et cetera.
And so the potential for disruption in the homeland if we
get into a conflict is very, very severe, and I don't think the
American public is quite ready for that.
I think the hope that we have on this panel unanimously is
that, you know, typically, historically in our country we have
only responded to a catastrophe, whether it was Pearl Harbor or
Task Force Smith in the Korean War or 9/11, and what we hope is
that the current crisis--the war in Ukraine, the war in the
Middle East--will be sufficient for you to be able to educate--
Mr. Keating. I think that, you know, cyber threats but, you
know, people will be inconvenienced with the ATM. But as a
former member of the Homeland Security Committee are there
graver threats at home potentially that are in play here in the
U.S.?
Representative Harman?
Ms. Harman. I didn't hear the last part of your sentence.
Mr. Keating. Are there greater threats than the ATM being
shut off or some of the things that Ambassador Edelman--
Ms. Harman. Well, I mean--
Mr. Keating. --to our homeland--
Ms. Harman. Yeah, I think there are.
Mr. Keating. --here in the United States? Because I think
they're looking--so many people are looking at the fact that--
and this really falls with the isolationist kind of national
debate that's going on, not so much in this committee but even
with members of Congress, that, you know, these threats aren't
important. We can go it alone. The home base is not threatened
here in the--
Ms. Harman. Well, I sense you don't agree with that
argument either, Mr. Keating, but I would say that--for
example, the Port of Los Angeles was in my old congressional
district.
Fifty percent of our container traffic goes in through the
Ports of L.A. and Long Beach and the supply chain that feeds
made in America manufacturing comes through those ports and if
those ports close, let's understand that most of the cranes in
our ports are made by the Chinese.
Mr. Keating. That's great--
Ms. Harman. --and they're very, very vulnerable.
Mr. Keating. My time is running out.
Because this is important too right now. There are people
out there that are saying, you know, Ukraine falls into that
category. It's not that important to us. You know, it's
unfortunate what happened but it's not a threat here and this
is part of the national debate right now.
Whether it's money, in which maybe you can comment on
briefly, if we have to deploy troops in North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) if that's the case, you know, the idea of
the joint force part of your report or what the threats are
specifically to us with Ukraine.
If you could just talk to the American people in the 1:10
that's left.
Ms. Harman. Could I just add one thing? And I think
Ambassador Edelman will also expand.
This is the public education problem we have. People don't
understand that freedom is on the line in Ukraine and that
pushing back the Russian illegal aggression is crucial to
keeping Russia out of Europe and forcing us to invoke Article
5.
Mr. Keating. Would it cost us more--I'm down to 45 seconds.
I'm sorry.
Will it cost us more if, indeed, Putin is successful in the
Baltic threat that you mention?
Ms. Harman. Yes, it will cost us more.
Mr. Keating. That's much more expensive, isn't it?
Mr. Edelman. Exactly, Mr. Keating. Conflict is always more
expensive than deterrence. That's a lesson we have learned over
and over again from history.
So preparedness--you know, the Roman General Vegetius said
if you want peace prepare for war and that, you know, remains,
I think, a maxim that, you know, would serve us well.
Mr. Keating. And I hope that part of the report that you
did it really represents the importance of joint forces, a
transatlantic alliance in particular. I hope people understand
the value of that in terms of their tax dollars, in terms of
their security.
I yield back.
The Chairman. It's an excellent point. The money we have
spent so far will be nothing compared to what it will cost this
nation if we have to go in to Eastern Europe to deal with the
problem that results from Russia's success in Ukraine.
The chair recognizes the gentlelady from South Carolina Ms.
Mace.
Ms. Mace. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to begin by thanking both of you and the entire
Commission on the National Defense Strategy for your work and
being here with us this morning, and I agree that Congress must
ensure America is prepared to meet the challenges of the
complex and increasingly dangerous world that we live in, as
you all have testified today so far.
I do have a couple questions. You said earlier freedom is
on the line in Ukraine. Do you think it's a problem that we
have sent billions of dollars over to Ukraine in equipment that
we learned this week in our field hearing in California in
Silicon Valley that oftentimes isn't working and doesn't work
and so the Ukraine military isn't using U.S. equipment? I mean,
how big of a problem is this? What does that tell us about
where we are today?
Ms. Harman. I think it is a problem and I think what we
send ought to work and I think they ought to be well trained to
use it.
I do think that most of the appropriations that we have
made, that you have made, for equipment going to Ukraine has
been spent in the United States and I think that's a good
thing. Our industrial base needs a huge--
Ms. Mace. But if it doesn't work and we have just all this
money--yeah.
Ms. Harman. I'm agreeing, and I do think there needs to be
more review of what is going and how it is working, and we're
not putting boots on the ground but as someone said--I was in
Ukraine last week--we need more sneakers on the ground to make
sure that what they are getting works and if it doesn't work
that we're not sending it.
Mr. Edelman. Representative Mace, if I might just add to
what my colleague said.
As far as I know, a lot of what you're talking about is a
function of how good Russian electronic warfare is and how much
we over the years have neglected the electromagnetic spectrum
as a domain of warfare.
So, you know, it's unfortunate. You're correct that this is
what's happening. But it's also a lesson for us to learn which
we can use, I think, as we prepare ourselves for developing
some of these kinds of systems that are software based that we
have been talking about this morning.
Ms. Mace. Right. And we clearly haven't learned that lesson
because of the way that we are appropriating, the way that we
have created DOD to be this gigantic slow-moving bureaucracy.
But we have learned from the lesson of modern day warfare
and Russia's invasion of Ukraine is that things in technology
have moved so fast and, yet, we're the greatest fighting force
in the world we can't keep up with the technology.
Like, how do we fix this problem? We know there's an
acquisition problem but how do we fix this? I mean, there's so
much happening that we need to have--our forces need to have
but we're not prioritizing.
Ms. Harman. We agree with you, and Ukraine is a laboratory
to experiment. There are a lot of new things that our tech
sector is developing that could be tested in Ukraine.
We, unfortunately, have a procurement system built for the
1800s where we--as we were saying earlier we build to
requirements. We don't build to solve problems.
We have a industrial base or we have a business model in
the Pentagon which is risk averse, in contrast to the business
model of the tech sector, and our recommendations are all about
lashing the bureaucratic Pentagon model to a vibrant,
innovative tech sector and leveraging the vibrant innovation in
contrast to the old systems.
Ms. Mace. If you could do one thing what is the small part
that can make a big difference in this process? Given the
environment that we have today, the acquisition process that we
have today, if there was just one small thing you could change
that would make the biggest difference in this to continue our
being the best fighting force in the world, to stay ahead of
China, to be able to demolish Russia, to be able to potentially
demolish Iran if it comes to that in the future, what's the one
thing you would do today if you possibly could? Both of you?
Ms. Harman. In answer I would give you that is achievable
is fund the innovative parts of the Pentagon at scale and
reduce funding for the bureaucratic parts.
Ms. Mace. And how much would that--what would that be, the
amount of that?
Ms. Harman. Well, we have called for an increase in the
defense budget. I think you heard that.
Ms. Mace. On the innovation side.
Ms. Harman. Not just more but smarter. How much would that
be? I mentioned that the budget for DIU--the Defense Innovation
Unit--is $1 billion out of $850 billion. I can imagine that
being 10 times, 20 times that with a reduction in other parts
of the budget.
Ms. Mace. If you had--if we could make that $10 billion
tomorrow what would you swap out for it? What would we reduce
or exchange for that?
Mr. Edelman. I would put the money into accelerating our
work on directed energy, high-powered microwaves lasers for
missile defense because, to the Chairman's point earlier, we
can't be in the situation where we're firing $2 million
missiles at $60,000 drones in order to keep the Houthis from
shutting the Red Sea down.
Ms. Mace. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
The Chairman. I thank the gentlelady.
The reference the gentlelady from South Carolina made to
materials aren't being used I want to put that in perspective.
It was a witness who was a drone manufacturer making reference
to drones that have been sent over there that aren't being
used, which does go to the electronic warfare (EW) issue, and I
have asked for an accounting of what's not being used.
But I want to make it very clear. The 155s, the Javelins,
the Stingers, the ATACMS--the weapon systems we're sending over
there are being used and are working.
With that, I now recognize the gentlelady from--she swapped
seats on me--Ms. Houlahan from Pennsylvania.
Ms. Houlahan. I did because that microphone has always been
a difficult thing for me.
Hello, and thank you very much for coming. Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
I had the pleasure to serve as the ranking member on the
Quality of Life Committee, or working group, with
Representative Bacon and we looked into a lot of different ways
that we could help our service members to have better lives
both on and off duty.
We made 31 recommendations--child care issues, pay, health
care issues, housing issues, spousal employment, as you
mentioned, and other benefits, and as you are aware and have
said and some of my colleagues have too there is no way to have
an effective military unless we have an effective people in
uniform.
And so I very much believe that those 31 recommendations of
the Quality of Life Panel ought to be funded and appropriated
and passed both--we already did that on the House side and I'm
very much urging the Senate to do that as well as the President
to support that.
So this question is for the both of you. How would you
prioritize, given all the work that you've done, the quality of
life and the obvious expenditures that that will require for
all of those things that I've just named against this
innovation that we're talking about, the munitions that we know
are necessary, and other costly programs in the DOD?
Ms. Harman. I don't think it should be a choice. I think we
need both. We need the right systems and we need the right
workplace environment to recruit the people we need.
Recruitment is down across the military. I'm not sure if
it's down in terms of nonmilitary jobs in the Pentagon but it
might be, but military billets are very difficult for families
and everyone is talking about that, and if we want the best
people to serve we have to change the system.
So I think it's great that you have this committee and
you've made these recommendations and, frankly, I think to
build--again, we have had this long discussion about hardware
versus software, bureaucracy versus a much more flexible and
adaptable business model.
We can't get there without better people and a better
environment for them to serve.
Mr. Edelman. Representative Houlahan, I think it's hard to,
I think, overestimate how much the all-volunteer force has been
a huge comparative strategic advantage for the United States.
Having the kind of professional military force that we have
had for the last 50 years has, I think, proven itself over and
over in terms of what it is capable of doing and the advantage
potentially it gives us over poorly trained, poorly motivated
conscript forces that our adversaries have.
So I think it's important to maintain that force but we are
facing, you know, some really severe challenges. Quality of
life for the forces, as you say, is one of them, although I
would note that retention remains high despite our recruiting
difficulties.
So I'm more focused, I think, and I think we have been more
focused on the question of recruitment and, you know, getting
the--keeping the all-volunteer force healthy because we really
need it, you know, for the future.
Ms. Houlahan. Yeah. I mean, this is an incredibly important
conversation to have and I think the problem is is it's really
hard to talk to people in my community which, you know, I come
from a military family.
I grew up as a traveling child. Every year my parents
moved. My mother was a trailing spouse. My grandmother, too,
and I was active duty in the Air Force, and we really do need
to do a better job of treating our men and women in uniform and
I really do think we need to appropriate and fund resources for
them.
And there will have to be some choices likely, to be
honest, and I would emphasize that I think that when you have a
broader view of, you know, national security you include our
men and women in uniform.
Ms. Harman. If I might just add, the fact that members of
Congress now--many have military service in their backgrounds--
makes Congress a better place. I mean, again, in another
century when I was first elected there were very few members
who had any military service.
Ms. Houlahan. I 100 percent agree, and, in fact, you
mentioned that procurement is from the 1800s. I was in
procurement as a procurement officer. My job was as a project
engineer and program manager in the Air Force and procurement
of the 1900s is now the procurement of the 2000s, and with
what's left of my time I would just like to know if you think
that models like Replicator and DIU can be the new standard.
You alluded to that a little bit as being problematic.
With what's left of my time, Ambassador, do you have any
comments on that?
Mr. Edelman. No. I think those are great initiatives but
the problem is that they are not able to, as my colleague said,
develop programs at scale and so we need to figure out a way
to, you know, take these sort of little pockets of innovation
and make it representative of the entire procurement system as
opposed to ways to work around it.
Ms. Houlahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield.
The Chairman. I thank the gentlelady.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Indiana Mr.
Banks.
Mr. Banks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to both of you
for being here.
In your testimony you say, quote, ``We unanimously
recommend returning to the levels of spending on national
defense proportionally as we did in the Cold War,'' and I
wonder, just simply put, is the world and the threats to
America more severe and dangerous today than it was during the
Cold War? Just a simple question, Ambassador.
Mr. Edelman. Let me try and frame that, Mr. Banks, this
way, which is that the Cold War was very dangerous and very
serious because of the huge inventories of nuclear weapons on
both sides.
Thankfully, the numbers of weapons are lower today but
still at very high levels with the United States and Russia and
increasingly with China.
What's different about this from the Cold War is we in the
Cold War had one adversary who was, largely, an autarchical
economy not connected to the global economy and, therefore, had
some limits on what it could do economically to compete with us
and ultimately to compete with us militarily.
We're now dealing with a multiplicity of threats including
one in China that has enormous productive capacity and is
deeply tied to the international community and economy and is
ramified throughout even our own supply chain.
And so I think the complexity of the challenge is greater
and the dangers are potentially greater because of that.
Mr. Banks. I agree with you.
Ms. Harman, do you have anything to add to that?
Ms. Harman. Yeah, I would--I do agree with that. I also
would add the fact that in this axis of evil or axis of
challenge all countries either have or are acquiring nuclear
weapons and we don't have any really satisfactory regime for
nonproliferation anymore, and the fact that they will all have
weapons and then the--pick the Middle East--other countries
will also buy or develop nuclear weapons. It makes the world
exponentially more dangerous.
Mr. Banks. I served in Afghanistan. I understand that we no
longer have troops in Afghanistan but do we still have troops
in combat zones around the world?
Mr. Edelman. As you know, Mr. Banks, we still have some
troops in Syria, some troops in Iraq, and we have other people,
obviously, serving in the Middle East both at air bases and at
sea who are in areas where active combat is underway.
Mr. Banks. I just want to confirm that because last week
Kamala Harris said before the American people that, quote,
``Today there is not one member of the U.S. military who is in
active duty in a combat zone,'' and I wonder, to either one of
you, why would she say that? Obviously, there are troops in--
you just said Syria, Iraq. They receive combat pay. They are
serving in a combat zone.
Either one of you, why would she say that?
Ms. Harman. Well, she might be thinking about the fact that
we ended the wars, for better or worse, in Afghanistan and Iraq
and that so there are no active wars engaging the United
States. Are there members of the military at risk? I would say
there are.
Mr. Banks. Yeah, absolutely.
Ambassador, you would agree?
Ms. Harman. I agree with my colleague.
Mr. Banks. Yeah. Obviously, either misguided or a very
untrue statement.
You both talk about recruitment. It's very important to me.
I chair the Military Personnel Subcommittee and the Navy
recently claimed that it will meet its recruitment goal in
fiscal year 2024 but only after the Navy significantly lowered
its recruiting standards and I wonder if you could give us your
take on that.
Does lowering our standards--our recruitment standards--
make us more or less prepared to compete with China?
Mr. Edelman. Mr. Banks, I think it depends on what standard
you're talking about. I think before you joined the hearing I
mentioned that we have some health standards, for instance,
that now go back to people's childhood asthma, for instance,
and whether that ought to be a block to service or not I think
is a legitimate issue and there are, you know, other issues
like that which I think, you know, can be relaxed without
damaging readiness.
But, obviously, you never would like to, you know, lower
standards if you don't have to. But we are facing a recruitment
crisis and I think we have to think creatively about it and
make sure that the standards we do have really are appropriate
to service and not blocking people who would like otherwise to
serve from doing it.
Mr. Banks. I agree. My time has expired. Thank you.
Mrs. Kiggans [presiding]. The chair now recognizes Mr.
Deluzio for five minutes.
Mr. Deluzio. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good morning. Thank you for being here. I appreciate your
time and insights.
I want to focus in on Chapter 7, which is about the defense
industrial base and defense production, and I know Mr.
Garamendi had some questions and others as well.
The opening quote here, I thought, was telling. Quote,
``U.S. industrial production is grossly inadequate to provide
the equipment, technology, munitions needed today, let alone
given the demands of great power conflict.''
One of the pieces I'll get into, and you can see it here,
is on R&D and I thought there was an important finding here,
mentioning the triple decline of defense R&D as a share of
federal R&D and then federal R&D as a share of total U.S. R&D
and U.S. R&D as a share of global R&D.
And my concern, and I guess I will tee up on this
consolidation question, is more spending isn't leading to more
R&D investment. We're seeing while R&D might decline as a share
the defense industrial base is spending more on dividends and
stock buy backs.
And so my fundamental question and to me, I think, part of
this is around consolidation and competition is what are the
things that we can do to increase R&D spending without just
handing over more dollars?
Ms. Harman. One of the things we talked about was the need
to lash together the tech industrial base and the defense
industrial base because there are huge benefits from that.
The tech industrial base has a better business model. It is
risk ready. It is more flexible and innovative. It focuses on
software. It's less expensive in that sense. Not to say we
don't need hardware but we need more software and iterative
platforms.
And so as we see it--we talked about this--the budget--the
federal budget we're spending should be viewed as broader
across government agencies and investments by the private
sector and I think if we did that the percentage of R&D viewed
across all of this would not be lower. It would be higher.
Mr. Deluzio. Ambassador, anything you want to add to that?
Mr. Edelman. I think the point you began with, which is the
need for more competition, is the key and I think one of the
things we found in our own deliberations and met with a number
of the nontraditional companies is that we need to figure out
how to pull them across the so-called valley of death so that
there is more competition.
Many of those startups are actually doing a lot of
independent research and development (IRAD). They're using
their own funds to do investment before having gotten a
government contract and they are solving some of the problems
or trying to solve some of the problems that the department has
but is wedded to this requirements-based system we have been
talking about this morning.
Mr. Deluzio. So in the two minutes that I have left--and to
be clear your report talks about this problem and the causes of
the weak defense industrial base, noting consolidation and
reduced competition in the defense industry.
So in the time that's left I'll open it up to both of you.
What concrete things can we be doing to foster that
competition, to break the hold of so few to get that
competition that we need across, I think, the whole defense
industrial base and the economy as a whole?
Ms. Harman. Well, one of the things we have been saying is
the procurement process is broken and it is rigid and it is
requirements based. It doesn't solve problems. It adds layers
to the requirements for systems which makes them more expensive
and sets them up for failure both in terms of production and
performance.
So you could change that. This committee has tried to do
that over time. I was here back in the day when we tried to get
smaller firms involved in the process because we thought that
would drive innovation. It probably does. We have fewer primes.
There has been consolidation. We talked about that.
But I'm not positive--this is maybe my personal opinion--
that more primes are the answer. A more robust defense and
technology industrial base is the answer.
Mr. Edelman. I'm not sure I have anything to add to that.
Mr. Deluzio. Okay. Very good. With that, I'll yield back.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mrs. Kiggans. Thank you. The chair now recognizes Mr.
Strong for five minutes.
Mr. Strong. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Ambassador Edelman, in the report the Commission stated
that the United States needs to, I quote, ``enhance missile
defense for the homeland and that the DOD must counter new and
emerging threats to the homeland,'' end quote.
You also offered concurrence to the findings from the 2023
report by the congressional Commission on Strategic Posture of
the United States.
Do you also share the view that the Strategic Posture
Commission report outlined in further detail that the U.S.
should assess the feasibility of adapting homeland missile
defense to be capable of countering coercion threats
specifically from China and Russia?
If yes, what steps would you recommend this committee
consider to adopting homeland missile defense for the future?
Mr. Edelman. I do agree with the Strategic Posture
Commission and I think some of what they had in mind was the
potential of cruise missile attacks.
I mean, you know, obviously we're seeing a war of missiles
going on both in Ukraine and in the Middle East, and I would go
back, Mr. Strong, to what I said earlier.
We cannot allow ourselves to be on the wrong side of the
cost imposition curve, developing extremely expensive missile
defense systems to intercept either cruise missiles or UAVs.
We have to be moving towards systems that both are software
based like the Israelis with Iron Dome and David's Sling where
they've been able to develop algorithms that allow them to
reduce the cost per shot of missile defense but also
microwaves--high-power microwaves and lasers.
Mr. Strong. I agree. In recent months we have heard calls
for an Iron Dome over the United States. This is, largely, in
response to Israel's Iron Dome defense system which has
successfully defeated countless short-range rockets and
artillery since it's been deployed, much thanks to the
engineers out of Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.
Because of the United States' geographical position and
size we're, thankfully, unlikely to face short-range rockets
and artillery threats like Israel is facing today.
However, the sentiment of protecting the homeland from
missile attack remains valid. Fortunately, the U.S. is on track
to deliver the next-generation interceptor for a ground-based
midcourse defense system in 2028 which will protect the
homeland from long-range ballistic missile threats.
Does this Commission support the next-generation
interceptor (NGI) program, given its critical role in defending
the U.S.?
Mr. Edelman. You know, Mr. Strong, we were not briefed on
NGI and have not had a chance to consider it. So it's just not
something we were, you know, able to look at.
Mr. Strong. Thank you. As the Commission highlights in your
report, the U.S. defense industrial base is fragile. What
investments can the U.S. make specifically as it relates to
bolstering our ability to support homeland missile defense
growth to ensure we are prepared for defending against the
growing threats around the world?
Mr. Edelman. Sorry. Could you say that again? I missed the
last part.
Mr. Strong. How can we prepare for defending against the
growing threats around the world the ability to support
homeland missile defense growth?
Mr. Edelman. I think that President Putin really has done
us a favor because one of the things he's highlighted is not
only the fragility of our defense industrial base but in
specific the fact that we can only produce so many, for
instance, PAC-3 interceptors a year.
It's shown the limitations. We clearly have to expand that
production, you know, capability and a lot of that goes to
issues we have already discussed this morning--funding for
additional PAC-3 but also long-term investment that will lead
the contractors to produce more.
Mr. Strong. I was troubled to learn a federal permitting
agency this week testified in Science, Space and Technology
that their agency's employees are only working two or three
days a week in office.
Are you aware of any study that you're aware of that shows
concern of federal workers not working in person and the lack
of productivity that is--that this management practice creates?
I was very concerned to learn that and I think that that might
be part of our industrial base.
We have got to be sure that federal workers are at work.
Have you all had any encounters with this?
Ms. Harman. We didn't study the issue but I would certainly
say that, speaking for me, I'm very concerned about that and I
think it lowers productivity and it lowers the ability to learn
and be flexible and innovative if workers are not together.
It doesn't mean every minute and there certainly have been
challenges across the country after COVID but, nonetheless, the
lack of showing up for work is a huge--I think, a huge problem
of our readiness.
Mr. Strong. I concur. It's very concerning to me.
Mrs. Kiggans. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Strong. Mr. Chairman--
Mrs. Kiggans. The chair now recognizes Ms. Tokuda for five
minutes.
Ms. Tokuda. Thank you, Madam Chair.
First, I want to thank Ms. Harman, Ambassador Edelman, and
all of the members of the Commission for their hard work and
service in putting this important report together.
You know, you've laid out the challenges and the urgency of
action needed here in Congress and the executive branch and,
quite frankly, across American society as a whole. So thank you
for your work.
And, of course, I also want to echo the sentiments of many
of my colleagues and our leadership on the committee today in
terms of avoiding a long-term CR that, quite frankly, would be
detrimental to our readiness posture. It sends a negative
message to both our allies and our adversaries and we need to
do better.
So while the Commission's report covered a broad range of
issues that we have discussed today I noticed that it did not
discuss in detail issues of military installation
infrastructure, sustainment, and resiliency.
This is particularly important for me and this committee.
Given that we are facing aging infrastructure across the
Department of Defense facilities and installations with
significant negative impacts on our ability to maintain even
basic operational readiness for both our platforms and people,
I am concerned that this is not raised in the Commission's
report, and this problem is particularly, you know, of issue
and evident in Hawaii, which is on the front lines of the Indo-
Pacific, as you know.
One small example is Schofield Barracks, a critical Army
base on our island in my district that regularly faces power
outages almost weekly due to a lack of resiliency in its
electrical grid and that's a problem that's going to cost us at
least $202 million to address over the next few years.
Since the Commission's report did not discuss these in
detail would either of you like to share additional views or
information regarding infrastructure sustainment and resiliency
for the committee's consideration and, perhaps, also elaborate.
The Commission calls, as we have talked about today, for
significant increases in defense spending to meet its needs and
should these increases also include investments in defense
infrastructure and installation resilience?
Mr. Edelman. Well, on the latter point, I mean, yes. I
mean, obviously we need to have functional infrastructure for
our forces, you know, wherever they are, and certainly
investment in those facilities is important.
We did not really deal with those issues, ma'am, because we
really were focused on the strategy and we did not get into,
for instance, the issue of base realignment and excess
capacity, which the department complains it has to bear.
And there's a long history--everyone on the committee is
aware of it--of previous base realignments that were not
completely satisfactory, which is, you know, an understandable
reason.
But I do think we probably need to take a look to make sure
we're using all of our facilities efficiently across the entire
enterprise. That's something I'm not sure we have done, really.
Ms. Harman. And to add to that, we did have a discussion of
base realignment and closure (BRAC)--a sort of cursory
discussion of BRAC, which is so far as I know not been
reauthorized after it expired. It was a very difficult thing
politically for members of Congress, including me, to deal
with.
But you raise something that matters and, certainly, the
renovation and rehabilitation and--of facilities is crucial,
and some of the--in answer to your question about should some
of the new funds be spent on that, absolutely yes.
Ms. Tokuda. And I think, you know--perhaps I did not state
my point as clearly--not so much BRAC but the fact that if we
want to talk about our strategy, going forward, right now it's
based upon, literally, a crumbling foundation when you take a
look at the infrastructure that has to house our men, to be
able to have to launch off ships or aircraft. Literally, we are
looking at billions of dollars in backlog in many particular
cases.
So I think we have to focus, yes, on strategy but also the
current state of being which, to me, is woefully inadequate and
that has to be part of how we even get to ground because right
now we're not even at ground in our ability to truly be able to
reflect a strong readiness posture whether it's the Pacific or
any other theater, and we're talking about multiple theaters.
I did want to touch briefly also about a little bit we have
talked about military recruiting and the fact that we need to
attract and reinvest in the civilian workforce as well.
As you know, the House version of the fiscal year '25
defense appropriation bill cuts over $916 million from the
President's budget request for civilian workforce.
The President's budget also departs from the long-standing
practice to mean parity between military service members and
federal employees. And I do worry--I know my time is running
out--that if enacted it's going to push us in the wrong
direction in terms of truly recruiting and retaining the very
best.
But I will ask one question. As part of this whole of
government approach you've said we have had to include
education. We have members of this committee and the Congress
who've suggested we eliminate the Department of Education. Do
you think this would be detrimental to national security, yes
or no?
Ms. Harman. I think the Department of Education, which was
set up when I was working in the--I think the Carter
administration does valuable work.
Ms. Tokuda. Okay. Ambassador?
Mr. Edelman. I concur.
Ms. Tokuda. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Chairman [presiding]. The gentlelady's time has
expired.
The chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Alabama Ms.
Sewell for questions.
Ms. Sewell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank
the congresswoman and the ambassador and your colleagues for
the hard work that the Commission did.
Now more than ever we must ensure that our policies and our
practices and our spending are strategic and they--
strategically aligned to keep us ahead of our adversaries as
well as to keep us safe.
My question has to do with the role of space in our defense
strategy. Space is already playing a big role in national
security and it will only continue to do so.
The Commission credited the DOD with moving rapidly and
standing up our Space Force and you also mentioned that we need
to do a better job of incorporating new cyber and space
technologies at scale.
How can we use lessons learned in deploying Space Force to
ensure that we're making efficient decisions and investments in
space technology to combat the future?
Ms. Harman. Well, I'm sure Ambassador Edelman wants to
answer this too, but space is a critical domain. Most of our
communications that power our military are space based and the
U.S. is more dependent on space militarily, I think, and more
vulnerable in space militarily than any other country. So we
have to get it right.
The interesting thing about Space Force--and I know there
was some fight in setting it up and a lot of resistance--
Ms. Sewell. Just a little bit.
Ms. Harman. --is that it's new and so it didn't--it hasn't
grown the barnacles that other parts of the Pentagon have and
it is more innovative, and I think a challenge will be to keep
it that way and have it not revert to the--you know, the age-
old bureaucratic practices.
And I just would say from the meetings that we had that the
work done by Space Force and the role that it will play in the
future are absolutely crucial.
Ms. Sewell. Ambassador?
Mr. Edelman. I would--no, I would just add that I think in
our meetings with Space Force and Space Command I think we were
extremely impressed with the rapidity with which they've stood
up and the good work they're doing for all the reasons my
colleague specified, and I think that's a tribute to many of
the folks on this committee who worked so hard to make this
happen.
Ms. Sewell. Great. One important takeaway from the
Commission is Congress and DEO's--the Defense Department's role
in shifting risk adverse culture into one that is agile and
responsive.
The Commission's summary states that the U.S. must build
the future force, not perpetuate the existing one. What is your
top recommendation to Congress that will help DOD make that
shift more swiftly?
In some ways I'm asking how can we create a culture of risk
tolerance?
Ms. Harman. We talked about this earlier in this hearing
and talked about the industrial base or the business model of
the tech community, which is much better suited to the future
challenges in meeting security needs.
It's risk ready. It is innovative. It is software based. It
is much more flexible, in contrast to the Pentagon, and the
goal would be to introduce at scale more innovative programs in
the Pentagon and to lash the Pentagon up closely with the tech
sector, and that's why we talk about all elements of national
power.
Power is not just DOD. It is DOD plus other agencies of
government plus the tech sector plus allies and partners.
Mr. Edelman. I think particularly in a time of rapidly
evolving technologies we have to have a little bit more
tolerance for failure and that's a hard thing because, you
know, when there's a failure it lands on your desk and your
constituents expect you to call the people who failed in front
of you, et cetera.
And oversight is important. I don't mean to in any way
diminish that. But there also has to be a recognition that from
time to time we're going to make efforts that are going to fail
and that's part of the learning process and that we--you know,
we'll move on from that to, hopefully, something that will
succeed.
But if we, you know, continually penalize everybody who
takes a risk you're not going to get many risk takers.
Ms. Sewell. Yes. A point of personal privilege before I
yield back my time.
I just wanted to say to Congresswoman Harman as one of the
first black women to be on the Intelligence Committee your
precedent--the precedent you set of excellence is something
that I just want to commend you on and to thank you for future
women that serve on the Intel Committee.
Thank you.
The Chairman. The gentlelady yields back.
And I can assure you that when it comes to bureaucratic
creep getting into the Space Force I'm on a mission from God to
keep that from happening.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from
Texas Mr. Fallon.
Mr. Fallon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, in the findings--and I want to thank you all both
for your service and your contributions here to--for our
republic--I do agree that we need a larger military budget, of
course.
We need more innovation. We need to reform and streamline
our acquisitions process, and I'd also add probably with the
DOD selling and exporting the appropriate weaponry--more
appropriate weaponry and technology to our allies would be
something when we're talking about budgets that would be a good
way to mitigate to some degree.
But I want to share a quote that I just love from Secretary
of Defense--former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and he
said, I quote, ``When it comes to predicting the nature and
location of our next military engagements since Vietnam our
record has been perfect. We have got it wrong every time.''
And when you when you look at it--and I'm concerned, of
course, what our military and Congress what we're not
anticipating, what we're not seeing. I think Ukraine has been--
opened our eyes over the last two and a half years.
The safest place you could be 20 years ago on the
battlefield was a main battle tank and now that's probably the
last place you'd want to be if you had your choice.
And, of course, we need to deter the Chinese Communist
Party and if futures--if history is any indicator we're going
to be preparing and deterring that and the next conflict won't
be in that theater. So we have to kind of almost prepare for
the unpredictable.
And there's no doubt that China's aggressive actions in the
South China Sea and around the world deserve an immense amount
of attention from us and I think they're getting it because we
want to deter that conflict. It's always better to prevent
something rather than having to react to it.
But, nevertheless, we have to examine the globe as a whole
and when you look at US Central Command (CENTCOM) and what Iran
is doing, unfortunately, this administration wasn't enforcing
the sanctions up to par that it could have and you see them
grow their oil exports by $35 billion, and you can export a lot
more mischief and mayhem with that kind of money--with that
additional kind of funds.
And so I'd argue as well in Afghanistan and that disastrous
pullout when we left billions of dollars there that certainly
opened up and greenlighted Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
(ISIS) and other terrorist organizations as well.
So what I wanted to ask you both, and if you want to go
ladies first to Representative Harman, where are we not
properly resourced and focused, in your opinion, in the world
to deter conflict and what are our blind spots?
Ms. Harman. It's probably a more complicated answer but I
would say we're not adequately focused on Africa and Latin
America. We met with the heads of US Africa Command (AFRICOM)
and Southern Command, both of whom talked about the expanding
presence of China in particular in both continents, and I
remember that the commander of Southern Command said that at
least five countries in Latin America have no confirmed
ambassadors and that they view this as an insult.
But it is, obviously, more complicated. We need to have
military installations as well as, you know, economic
relationships with these countries and we need not to think
about what we sometimes call the Global South, which is an
insult, as they see it, as an afterthought.
And I do think this administration has made some efforts,
as did the Bush administration, with the Millennium Challenge
grants in Africa and so forth to reach for Africa.
I think Latin America may be but, you know, you look at
things like Venezuela and there's some huge backward motion in
some of these countries which could develop into threats
against us and we really have to be, I think, much more
sensitive to the fact that a huge part of the world is not our
first thought when we think about the security of the world.
Mr. Fallon. Thank you. You are right, too. Just being on
CODELs, when countries don't have an ambassador they do--they
want an ambassador of the United States there.
Ambassador?
Mr. Edelman. I very much agree with what our chairman has
just said about what we heard from SOUTHCOM and AFRICOM and the
neglect.
I would say two things that I think, one of which you've
already adverted to, which is Iran. I do think that whoever
wins the election in November one of the first issues on their
plate is going to be an Iran that is approaching the nuclear
threshold very quickly and this is something that presidents of
both parties going back 35 years have said we will not let
happen and we need to really, I think, determine whether we're
going to let it happen or not and what that entails.
The other thing I would say that we may not be looking at
enough is some threats that President Putin has made about
putting weapons near the United States in countries that may
not wish us well, whether that's Venezuela or somewhere else
and, you know, I think we live in a kind of post Cuban missile
crisis world where we don't think about this happening again.
But I don't rule out that it could happen again.
Mr. Fallon. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I yield
back.
The Chairman. Mr. McCormick of Georgia is recognized.
Dr. McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to split this evenly between the two of you
because I have germane questions for both.
We just returned from an amazing field hearing in
California that relates back to this question and I'll address
this to you, Ambassador.
The Commission's report recently described how insufficient
our Defense Industrial Base capacity is for meeting the large-
scale requirements we have in conflict. This has, obviously,
been exposed by what we're facing in Ukraine but also in our
inability to deliver for AUKUS agreements, our inability to
supply for paid for items from both Taiwan and Israel.
So basically all the conflicts we could possibly face we're
under supplying for and I find it especially concerning that
I'm seeing foreign countries who have the exact same challenges
we do reacting far more nimbly than we are.
How did we, the United States of America, fall so far
behind in our ability to ramp up when we are known historically
for being the best at that?
I would suggest maybe our regulation and our government
burdensome tactics that we go after contracting and production,
or maybe a mistrust of the industry to the government in the
way we buy.
But can you tell me what you think is the reason that we
are so slow in responding to essentially a wartime need?
Mr. Edelman. Representative McCormick, we have discussed
some of this earlier before you were able to join and a lot of
this, I think, has to do with the shrinkage of the Defense
Industrial Base after the end of the Cold War, so a lack of
competition.
It's also, I think--I mean, it's a very complex issue
because I think it also goes to changes in the way industry
operates in a move to just in time inventories, reliance on
supply chains that, you know, the primes sometimes don't even
know where their weaknesses are in the supply chain.
So there are a raft of different issues. I'm sure
regulation is part of it. But in particular what we have been
discussing this morning is the requirements heavy system that
the Pentagon has for procurement which, as we were saying
earlier, allows people to levy more and more requirements and
no one can take them off, and it makes for a not very agile,
not very flexible--
Dr. McCormick. So that's the difference between us and
other nations. Is that correct?
Mr. Edelman. It's one of them.
Dr. McCormick. Okay. Yeah. So I--
Mr. Edelman. We're not a command economy as the other. I
mean, the government can't force industry to do certain things
so you don't have, for instance, what the Chinese have with so-
called civil-military fusion.
Dr. McCormick. I'm referring more to countries more like-
minded to us--Finland, even Ukraine--that have somehow or
another turned the corner. Now, granted, maybe they have a
little--
Ms. Harman. Ukraine is a great example of a country coping
with an existential crisis very effectively and producing
weapons at scale for them that are much less--much more
effective and less expensive than anything we can produce.
Dr. McCormick. And I suggest that when there's a will
there's a way. We just need to find our will.
And a segue to you. Thank you for being here, by the way. I
really appreciate it.
The Commission also reported that we're ``falling short,''
quote/unquote, of exercising what the National Defense Strategy
calls integrated deterrence, when all elements of our national
power work together towards a national security objective.
And I happen to be very good friends with AFRICOM's
commanding officer or commanding - CINC (Commander-in-Chief)
commander, if you will, General Langley, and one thing he talks
about is US aid and how it affects the overall projected power,
how we have--obviously, we have tens of thousands of people
deployed throughout the world but I'm especially concerned with
the way that we're not maybe working together with the State
Department and the DOD in an integrated fashion to accomplish
our mission, which is really essential, especially in areas
like that where we're undermanned.
Ms. Harman. We totally agree with you and that's why our
recommendation is we have to move away from a defense-centric
model focused on security to an all aspects of national
security model which includes the State Department, AID (US
Agency for International Development), other government
agencies--lots of other government agencies like the Commerce
Department and the Treasury Department--lashed up with the tech
sector, lashed up with partners and allies.
That's what China does against us. I mean, they have a
whole of world strategy and Belt and Road is part of their
strategy.
By the way, I don't know when I will remember to do this
but I do want to commend the other members of our Commission.
Two of them are sitting right here, Mariah Sixkiller and Roger.
Dr. McCormick. I'm about to lose my time.
Ms. Harman. Okay.
Dr. McCormick. So I'll let you do your thank you at the
conclusion. But the--what I would suggest is that we do have
more comprehensive--we used to and we have been replaced by
China and their--
Ms. Harman. But we thought we were the sole superpower
after the Cold War ended and we weren't, and Roger Zackheim and
Mariah are enormous contributors to the Commission as are the
other four commissioners who are not here and who made a
valuable contribution.
Dr. McCormick. Thank you. With that, I yield.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman Mr. Higgins from
Louisiana.
Mr. Higgins. I thank the chairman and Ranking Member Smith.
It's an honor to be able to sit with you here today as the
newest member the House Armed Services Committee and it's a
great honor to yield a moment to Congresswoman Harman.
Representative Harman, go ahead and introduce your people
that are here from the Commission that have not been
recognized.
Ms. Harman. Well, it's very nice of you, sir. I sat in the
bottom row for a while when I was a new member of the
committee. So it's an opportunity. You're closer to the witness
table.
But Mariah Sixkiller served for years here as the security
advisor to Steny Hoyer, which is when I got to know her, and
Roger Zakheim runs the Reagan Institute and also served here, I
think, on this committee as a staffer, I guess, back in the
good old days. I'm not sure exactly what years.
And we should mention that there are two staffers here too.
David Grannis is our staff director. He originally worked for
me--imagine that--but ultimately was chief of staff to the late
great Dianne Feinstein, and Rafi Cohen is at RAND and you
worked here, too?
No, he never worked here. He's the only one, unfortunately,
who didn't have the privilege of working here.
Mr. Higgins. Yes, ma'am. I'm grateful you gave me the
opportunity for you to be allowed to recognize those folks. We
thank you for your work.
Let me jump into some of the work that you did,
Representative Harman. You mentioned a couple of things
reflective of the culture of the military--I'm an Army
veteran--that has impacted recruiting.
And I'm 63 years old. I joined the Army in '89 so from a
little bit different era. But you mentioned the absence of
civics education, an absence of an understanding of what
patriotism is in our institutions.
You said, quote, ``Sometimes our worst enemy is us.'' I
have, in research from other committees, the Oversight
Committee particularly--my research showed that historically
the southern states have regularly provided--eight of the
southern states have regularly provided about 70 percent of
enlisted personnel to our military and the challenges we're
facing currently for recruiting specifically in the Army, which
I can relate to, seem to reflect the change of the direction of
training as it relates to cultural--sort of the cultural
narrative of the country being pushed into training within the
confines of DOD.
These soldiers were referred to by one scholar as Bible
Belt soldiers or traditional American family values families
and those families have begun encouraging their children to
refrain from joining.
So how did your Commission get your head wrapped around
that dynamic and what would your comments be on that?
Ms. Harman. It's a tough issue and it doesn't just apply to
military recruiting. It applies to American society writ large
and our schools around the country.
I think the lack of civic education--this is something we
did talk about, and we also talked about whether national
service might be a good antidote to this--but the lack of civic
education, the lack of understanding the underpinnings of our
country are causing, you know, amazing amounts of
disillusionment and anger across our society.
And when we said, you know, one of the enemies is us it's
true. It's playing out that way and it hurts. It certainly
hurts me as someone who grew up in a different America but it
also hurts America's standing in the world.
I mean, I was just in Iraq last week with a number of
leaders of a variety of countries and places, all of whom are
asking, what's going on in America--what's wrong with you? And
that is a really dangerous situation to be in in terms of
readiness and security.
Mr. Higgins. Ambassador, should the Pentagon back up from
trying to raise cultural warriors and focus on raising the most
training and the most lethal Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine
Corps that we can?
Mr. Edelman. Obviously, I think that's what the core of
military training needs to be about. I think the declining
propensity to serve is a very complex issue.
I mean, I think some of the cultural issues you raise, you
know, may well play a role in it but I think there's been a
larger depiction of, you know, recent veterans and their
struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other
issues that have combined to create an atmosphere in which
people are less likely, as you say, to recommend service to
people they know, people who are influential in the community,
less likely to recommend it to young people that they may be
mentoring, and I think that's a huge challenge we have to deal
with.
Mr. Higgins. Well, thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for
your insight.
Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. I yield, and thank you
for allowing me to serve on your committee.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Higgins. We are honored to
have you here.
And I just want you to know this has been a very impressive
panel. This is a very powerful report that you all have put
together, and as we go into next year, you know, we have got
some work, as you all have made reference to, to wrap this year
up.
But the report that you all have yielded is going to be a
point of reference that we will be using for the next year to
try to get us on the path to a more responsible level of
activity in this country to defend ourselves.
So thank you very much for your service. We are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:19 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
September 18, 2024
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
September 18, 2024
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[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
September 18, 2024
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RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. DAVIS
Mr. Davis. In general, do you agree that divesting aircraft and
other weapon systems without having newer, upgraded ones ready to go in
advance creates a potential national security vulnerability?
Ms. Harman. We recognize that there is a tradeoff between divesting
existing military programs, which may contribute to a short-term
reduction in available platforms and other equipment, and the longer-
term need to re-allocate funds to modernize the Joint Force. In
general, we recommend a broader distribution of weapons systems that
includes the high-end, exquisite capabilities that the Department and
Congress prioritize today, but that also includes much greater
development and use of less-costly, more numerous systems that reflect
the needs of near-peer competitors and protracted conflict.
The Commission's report makes several recommendations to spend
taxpayer dollars more effectively and efficiently through reforms to
budgeting, R&D, technology adaptation, and acquisition systems but also
on buying a different set of capabilities. Reducing spending on systems
no longer relevant for the strategic environment is necessary to afford
the other investments needed. Ultimately, we believe that spending
smarter will have to be accompanied by spending more to acquire the
numbers and types of weapon systems required to deter and, if
necessary, prevail in combat.
Mr. Davis. Considering often budgetary constraints, what should be
the long-term factors driving divestment decisions?
Ms. Harman. Ultimately, the long-term factors include what programs
and equipment will be best suited to warfighting needs given the
strategic environment we face. Our Commission believes that the days of
uncontested military dominance are over and that the Joint Force will
need large numbers of systems, making better use of software updates,
working jointly across services and with our allies. Programs that do
not meet those needs, or that remain vulnerable to destruction or
disruption despite large costs, should be divested.
The Commission also recognizes that the Department of Defense and
Congress face disincentives to divesting from existing programs. We
recommend that where possible, ending existing programs be paired with
creating or expanding other opportunities, to include workforce
education and other traditional or non-traditional national security
procurement.
Mr. Davis. How might Congress collaborate with communities to
address workforce needs, especially with the essential industries
connected to our national security?
Ms. Harman. As described in our final report, we found that there
are significant and serious needs in the national security workforces
across the U.S. military, the civilian parts of government, and in the
defense industrial base. These shortcomings have many causes, but we
recommend the following measures:
Improved education and fitness. According to a 2020 Department of
Defense, only 23% of U.S. youth meet the eligibility requirements for
military service (roughly half of that eligible group were enrolled in
college). While the Services have had notable successes with short-term
programs to help interested young men and women meet eligibility
standards and subsequently enlist, these figures are an indictment of
our education and public health system.
Promoting service. We believe that Congress can and should play a
larger role in promoting national security service, whether military or
civilian, including in defense-related industries. This includes better
informing the public of the threats to our national interests and
importance of service as well as policies and laws that encourage and
enable such service.
Training. We heard from Defense and private sector representatives
that the defense industrial base needs both personnel with advanced
degrees as well as training in trade work, but there is a shortage in
the latter. For decades, U.S. society has promoted college education
and diminished the value of skilled trade labor. We recommend that
Congress review ways to promote such training, including through
grants, contributing to pay for necessary work in certain locations
(e.g., necessary trades work in the Sentinel program), and perhaps
considering naturalization pathways for work in the defense industry as
is available following service in the military.
Mr. Davis. Can you speak to how the supplemental assistance
Congress provided earlier this year to Ukraine, Israel, and our other
allies, helps address our industrial base shortfalls here at home?
Ms. Harman. The April 2024 supplemental appropriations bill
provided critical funding for the security of U.S. allies and partners
Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan and made a necessary though not sufficient
investment of $3 billion to expand the capacity of the U.S. submarine
industrial base. A majority of the supplemental funding for military
weapons and equipment will be spent in the United States in ways that
strengthen our defense industrial base, either by funding production of
new equipment going to our allies or to produce new equipment to
backfill U.S. stocks sent overseas.
We devote an entire chapter of our final report to the shortcomings
and recommendations for the U.S. defense industrial base, which is not
presently capable of producing the weapons, platforms, equipment, and
software needed to prepare for the multiple challenges we face. (We
separately discuss the need to broaden our production from the
traditional DIB to a broader segment of the U.S. private sector,
including the highly innovate tech sector.) The April 2024 supplemental
meets several of our Commission's recommendations, including by
providing stable funding for companies, investing in additional
production infrastructure, and modernizing U.S. stocks of defense
goods.
Mr. Davis. How might Congress collaborate with communities to
address workforce needs, especially with the essential industries
connected to our national security?
Mr. Edelman. As described in our final report, we found that there
are significant and serious needs in the national security workforces
across the U.S. military, the civilian parts of government, and in the
defense industrial base. These shortcomings have many causes, but we
recommend the following measures:
Improved education and fitness. According to a 2020 Department of
Defense, only 23% of U.S. youth meet the eligibility requirements for
military service (roughly half of that eligible group were enrolled in
college). While the Services have had notable successes with short-term
programs to help interested young men and women meet eligibility
standards and subsequently enlist, these figures are an indictment of
our education and public health system.
Promoting service. We believe that Congress can and should play a
larger role in promoting national security service, whether military or
civilian, including in defense-related industries. This includes better
informing the public of the threats to our national interests and
importance of service as well as policies and laws that encourage and
enable such service.
Training. We heard from Defense and private sector representatives
that the defense industrial base needs both personnel with advanced
degrees as well as training in trade work, but there is a shortage in
the latter. For decades, U.S. society has promoted college education
and diminished the value of skilled trade labor. We recommend that
Congress review ways to promote such training, including through
grants, contributing to pay for necessary work in certain locations
(e.g., necessary trades work in the Sentinel program), and perhaps
considering naturalization pathways for work in the defense industry as
is available following service in the military.
[all]