[House Prints 112-3]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



   112th Congress  
     1st Session            COMMITTEE PRINT             No. 3
_______________________________________________________________________


                    THE FUTURE OF THE U.S. MILITARY
                        TEN YEARS AFTER 9/11 AND
                          THE CONSEQUENCES OF
                         DEFENSE SEQUESTRATION


                               ----------                              


                      prepared for the use of the

                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

                                 of the

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES


                              ----------                              




                             NOVEMBER 2011


                Printed for the use of the Committee on
             Armed Services of the House of Representatives




112th Congress 
 1st Session                COMMITTEE PRINT                       No. 3
_______________________________________________________________________


                    THE FUTURE OF THE U.S. MILITARY
                        TEN YEARS AFTER 9/11 AND
                          THE CONSEQUENCES OF
                         DEFENSE SEQUESTRATION


                               __________


                      prepared for the use of the

                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

                                 of the

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES


                               __________

                                     




                                     

                             NOVEMBER 2011


                Printed for the use of the Committee on
             Armed Services of the House of Representatives












                   HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
                      One Hundred Twelfth Congress

    HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' McKEON, 
       California, Chairman
ADAM SMITH, Washington               ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas               MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California          WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina        W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania        J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey           JEFF MILLER, Florida
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California           JOE WILSON, South Carolina
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island      FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
RICK LARSEN, Washington              MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio
JIM COOPER, Tennessee                JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam          MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut            TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
DAVE LOEBSACK, Iowa                  BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona          K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts          DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine               ROB WITTMAN, Virginia
LARRY KISSELL, North Carolina        DUNCAN HUNTER, California
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico          JOHN C. FLEMING, M.D., Louisiana
BILL OWENS, New York                 MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado
JOHN R. GARAMENDI, California        TOM ROONEY, Florida
MARK S. CRITZ, Pennsylvania          TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
TIM RYAN, Ohio                       SCOTT RIGELL, Virginia
C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland   CHRIS GIBSON, New York
HANK JOHNSON, Georgia                VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri
BETTY SUTTON, Ohio                   JOE HECK, Nevada
COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii             BOBBY SCHILLING, Illinois
KATHLEEN C. HOCHUL, New York         JON RUNYAN, New Jersey
                                     AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia
                                     TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas
                                     STEVEN PALAZZO, Mississippi
                                     ALLEN B. WEST, Florida
                                     MARTHA ROBY, Alabama
                                     MO BROOKS, Alabama
                                     TODD YOUNG, Indiana
   Robert L. Simmons II, Staff 
             Director
                                     



                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

Note from the Chairman...........................................     v

The Future of National Defense and the U.S. Military Ten Years 
  After 9/11: Perspectives from Former Chairmen of the Joint 
  Chiefs of Staff, September 8, 2011.............................     1

    1General Richard B. Myers, USAF, Retired, 15th 
      Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff deg........................     5
    General Peter Pace, USMC, Retired, 16th Chairman, 
      Joint Chiefs of Staff deg..................................     7
    Admiral Edmund P. Giambastiani, Jr., USN, Retired, 
      7th Vice Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff deg.............     9

The Future of National Defense and the U.S. Military Ten Years 
  After 9/11: Perspectives from Outside Experts, September 13, 
  2011...........................................................    15

    Mr. Jim Thomas, Vice President and Director of 
      Studies, Center for Strategic and Budgetary 
      Assessments deg............................................    19
    Dr. Michael E. O'Hanlon, Director of Research and 
      Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution deg...............    28
    Mr. Thomas Donnelly, Director, Center for Defense 
      Studies, American Enterprise Institute deg.................    33
    Mr. Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in 
      National Security Studies, Council on Foreign 
      Relations deg..............................................    39

The Future of National Defense and the U.S. Military Ten Years 
  After 9/11: Perspectives from Former Service Chiefs and Vice 
  Chiefs, October 4, 2011........................................    45

    General John P. Jumper, USAF, Retired, 17th Chief of 
      Staff, United States Air Force deg.........................    49
    General Richard A. Cody, USA, Retired, 31st Vice 
      Chief of Staff, United States Army deg.....................    52
    Lieutenant General H. Steven Blum, USA, Retired, 
      25th Chief, National Guard Bureau deg......................    54

The Future of National Defense and the U.S. Military Ten Years 
  After 9/11: Perspectives of Former Chairmen of the Committees 
  on Armed Services, October 12, 2011............................    57

    The Honorable John W. Warner, Chairman, Senate 
      Committee on Armed Services (1999-2001, 2003-2007) deg.....    61
    The Honorable Duncan L. Hunter, Chairman, House 
      Committee on Armed Services (2002-2006) deg................    63
    The Honorable Ike Skelton, Chairman, House Committee 
      on Armed Services (2007-2010) deg..........................    66

The Future of National Defense and the U.S. Military Ten Years 
  After 9/11: Perspectives of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta 
  and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin 
  Dempsey, October 13, 2011......................................    69

    The Honorable Leon E. Panetta,23rd Secretary of 
      Defense deg................................................    73
    General Martin E. Dempsey, USA, 18th Chairman, Joint 
      Chiefs of Staff deg........................................    76

Economic Consequences of Defense Sequestration, October 26, 2011.    79

    Dr. Martin Feldstein, George F. Baker Professor of 
      Economics, Harvard University deg..........................    83
    Dr. Stephen Fuller, Director, Center for Regional 
      Analysis, School of Public Policy, George Mason 
      University deg.............................................    87
    Dr. Peter Morici, Professor of International 
      Business, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of 
      Maryland deg...............................................    92

The Future of the Military Services and Consequences of Defense 
  Sequestration, November 2, 2011................................    99

    General Raymond T. Odierno, USA, 38th Chief of 
      Staff, United States Army deg..............................   103
    Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, USN, 30th Chief of 
      Naval Operations deg.......................................   105
    General Norton A. Schwartz, USAF, 19th Chief of 
      Staff, United States Air Force deg.........................   108
    General James F. Amos, USMC, 35th Commandant of the 
      Marine Corps deg...........................................   111

Additional Views.................................................   121

    Additional Views.............................................   123
    Additional Views of Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett........   125
    Additional Views of Representative Robert E. Andrews.........   128
    Additional Views of Representative Niki Tsongas..............   130
    Additional Views of Representative John R. Garamendi.........   132
    Additional Views of Representative Hank Johnson..............   159

List of Acronyms and Abbreviations...............................   161
      

                         NOTE FROM THE CHAIRMAN

                              ----------                              



    As our Nation marked the 10-year anniversary of the 
September 11, 2001, attacks on our country, the Committee on 
Armed Services embarked on a series of hearings to commemorate 
that day and reflect on the lessons learned from this 
generational struggle. We sought to remember the lives lost and 
to honor the sacrifices made every day by our military and 
their families--as our Armed Forces have taken the fight to the 
enemy to ensure our continued safety at home.
    Yet, we were also keenly aware that the current debate in 
Congress regarding the national deficit has significant 
implications for the military. As our service men and women 
return home from multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, they 
find a military with an uncertain future: Will our country 
sustain a force that continues to project power, deter 
aggression, defend the homeland and will we keep faith with 
veterans? These are questions that came into high relief when 
the President proposed $400 billion in cuts to national defense 
in April 2011 and Congress passed the Budget Control Act of 
2011 (BCA) on August 2, 2011. Therefore, the committee also 
sought to examine the future of the U.S. military, the 
consequences of further cuts in defense spending, and the 
enduring strategic implications of decisions political leaders 
will soon make about the future of our force and the strategic 
direction of the Nation's defense.
    At the decade mark, our Nation finds itself at a strategic 
juncture--Osama bin Laden is dead; Al Qaeda is severely 
weakened as a global terror network, far less capable, but 
still functioning; the Taliban has lost strategic momentum in 
Afghanistan; key Al Qaeda propagandist Anwar Al-Awlaki has been 
killed in Yemen; and Iraq is an emerging democracy. We are 
winning this war; but just when our strategic goals are within 
reach, some would choose to cut military capabilities vital to 
this critical fight. Unfortunately, with our hard-won tactical 
success comes the danger of complacency. Faced with serious 
economic challenges, too many Americans are slipping back into 
the September 10th, 2001, mentality that presumes a solid 
defense can be dictated by budget choices, not the hard reality 
of our vital national interests and national security strategy. 
As Members of Congress, we will each be responsible for the 
votes we cast to balance the Federal budget and rein in the 
Federal deficit. Hard choices will have to be made among many 
Federal programs and priorities. But as Chairman of the 
Committee on Armed Services, I fervently believe that the 
committee's duty is to ensure that Members of Congress and the 
American public are informed about the threats our country 
faces and the cost to our Nation if we fail to provide the 
resources for a robust national defense.
    As pressure mounted in the summer of 2011 to pass 
legislation to raise the debt ceiling, many argued that Federal 
spending should be reduced across the board and that defense 
cuts should ``be on the table.'' I agree that the military 
cannot be exempt from fiscal belt-tightening; in point of fact, 
defense has contributed more than half of the deficit reduction 
measures taken to date. The BCA cut nearly half a trillion 
dollars from the projected defense budget through 2021. In 
addition, title III of the BCA established a trigger mechanism 
that implements additional defense cuts, known as 
sequestration, should Congress fail to pass an additional $1.2 
trillion in savings by December 23, 2011. In the worst-case 
scenario, national defense would be cut by $1.029 trillion from 
fiscal years 2013-2021, should sequestration take effect. This 
represents not simply a cut to growth, but the lowest levels of 
defense funding, as a share of Federal budget authority, since 
before the Second World War.
    While the future budget picture remains uncertain, we are 
confident that further cuts are detrimental to our current and 
future national security capabilities. As the committee is well 
aware, the United States has sought a ``peace dividend'' 
following every major conflict our Nation has faced in the last 
century. In every instance, the prevailing wisdom has assumed 
that the threat environment was low and our enemies were 
contained. History tells us that it is difficult to predict 
where the next threat will originate, but that it will. We 
predictably fail to anticipate contingencies, leading to loss 
of blood and treasure. This is why we must remain vigilant and 
ready.
    The committee sought to better understand the tangible 
consequences of these cuts. Over the course of 2 months, the 
committee held six hearings to evaluate the lessons learned 
from the last 10 years of operations against violent extremists 
and apply those lessons learned to determine the impacts to our 
national security should sequestration occur. We received 
perspectives of former chairmen and vice-chairmen of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps; 
former service chiefs, vice chiefs, and commanders of the 
National Guard Bureau; former chairmen of the Senate and House 
Armed Services Committees; outside experts; the current 
Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; 
and the four current service chiefs. The committee also held 
one hearing with a panel of economists to examine the economic 
consequences of defense sequestration, because although we do 
not invest in defense to create jobs, there will be significant 
impacts to the economy if the budget of the Nation's largest 
employer is cut by nearly 20 percent.
    This committee print is a lasting record of what we 
learned. It contains the prepared statements of each of our 22 
witnesses. Although much more was discussed during the 
hearings, these statements capture the sentiment shared by all 
who testified before us--further cuts to the Department of 
Defense (DOD) would create irrevocable harm to our military and 
be disastrous for our national security. Secretary of Defense 
Leon Panetta has stated that sequestration would lead to the 
smallest ground force since 1940, the smallest number of ships 
since 1915, the smallest Air Force in its history, and the 
smallest DOD civilian workforce ever. Every procurement and 
sustainment program would be affected, including our fighters, 
nuclear deterrent, space assets, rotorcraft, and ships.
    Our military has proven that the enemy cannot defeat us on 
the field of battle. But budgetary cuts of this magnitude could 
do what no army in history has been able to accomplish--break 
the U.S. military. We cannot forget that our military remains 
at war. As members of this committee travel throughout the 
country speaking to military families, we are often asked 
questions such as, ``How can you consider cutting our benefits 
after we have sacrificed so much?'' ``How could you vote to 
shrink the equipment, leadership, and training that keep our 
spouses alive?'' Or ``Are our retirement and health benefits 
we've earned in danger of being eliminated?''
    We must keep the human side of national defense in mind as 
we slog our way through this budget debate. It seems like 
whenever the Nation has our back against the wall, whenever we 
are cornered, and whenever we look to be down for the count, a 
special class of citizens frees us from uncertainty and doubt. 
It happened during the Revolution. It happened during the Civil 
War and World War II, and it is happening today. The 9/11 
Generation is this Nation's great hope. They will lead the 
Nation forward--their energy and optimism are our salvation 
from the fatigue of war and our economic woes. As they hang up 
their uniforms, they will go into business, government, and 
other professions, bringing their selflessness, commitment to 
service, ingenuity, and integrity with them. We must not 
dishonor their service and sacrifice with further reductions to 
the training, tools, benefits and care they need to succeed in 
the great Nation they helped to defend.
    It must be noted, that balancing the books on the back of 
the military does not decrease the security challenges we face. 
In a networked and globalized world, the Atlantic and Pacific 
Oceans are no longer adequate deterrents to keep America safe. 
September 11, 2001, taught us that. But, the converse is also 
true. Military atrophy comes with an economic cost, as programs 
are eliminated and service members are involuntarily separated 
from duty. Currently, the unemployment rate for young veterans 
is over 20%. While it is true that our military power is 
derived from our economic power, we must recognize that this 
relationship is a symbiotic one. It is the military that 
protects the global commons, ensures free trade, and stabilizes 
every corner of the economy.
    Finally, paraphrasing one of our witnesses, Congress must 
answer the following fundamental questions before cutting 
defense further:

    1. LIsn't our primary constitutional duty to defend our 
Nation?
    2. LIs the world suddenly safer today?
    3. LIs the war against terrorism over?
    4. LHave our vital national interests changed?

    The U.S. military is the modern era's greatest champion of 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is time we seek 
solutions to our fiscal woes from the driver of the debt, 
instead of the protector of our prosperity.
    It is with heartfelt gratitude that on behalf of the House 
of Representatives Committee on Armed Services, I thank our 
witnesses for participating in this hearing series. May God 
continue to bless the United States of America.

                         Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon,
                     Chairman, Committee on Armed Services,
                                     U.S. House of Representatives.




                   THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL DEFENSE AND
                THE U.S. MILITARY TEN YEARS AFTER 9/11:
                   PERSPECTIVES FROM FORMER CHAIRMEN
                      OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF

                              ----------                              




                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES



                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                      ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                              ----------                              


                              HEARING HELD

                           SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

                              ----------                              


                               WITNESSES

General Richard B. Myers, USAF, Retired

15th Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

General Peter Pace, USMC, Retired

16th Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

Admiral Edmund P. Giambastiani, Jr., USN, Retired

7th Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
?

      
=======================================================================


               PREPARED STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY WITNESSES

                           September 8, 2011

=======================================================================

      
 STATEMENT OF GENERAL RICHARD B. MYERS, USAF, RETIRED, 15TH CHAIRMAN, 
                         JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF

    Thank you Mr. Chairman and committee members for the 
opportunity to appear before you today. First, I would like to 
thank you for your unwavering support of our service men and 
women as they dedicate their lives to our freedom.
    This country has been at war for the last ten years. The 
burden of our conflicts and engagement around the world has 
fallen predominately upon the shoulders of our U.S. Military 
and their families. The resilience of our active duty and 
reserve troops has been remarkable; however, as our efforts in 
Iraq and Afghanistan wind down and it presents the opportunity 
for fewer people forward deployed, now is not the time to 
lessen the support for our fighting force. The best thing we 
can do for our men and women in uniform as they strive to 
protect us is to provide them with good leadership, robust 
training, and world class equipment. For the last ten years 
we've done this. Given our fiscal concerns the question is, 
``what support is America willing to provide going forward?''
    Even though our forward deployed troops are predicted to be 
fewer in number in the near future, the threats to our security 
are still very great. Let me mention just three of these 
concerns. I believe that violent extremism continues to 
represent the biggest threat to our way of life. While al Qaida 
is badly wounded, they and their ilk are not finished in their 
quest for a different world--a world dominated by their extreme 
brand of Islam and little tolerance. Living as we do in a free 
society, we will always be at risk to those who wish us ill, 
who are willing to die for their cause, and who consider 
innocent men, women and children legitimate targets in their 
fight. The actions of the last ten years have made us safer 
than we were on 9/11, but we are not free from this scourge. It 
will take many years, a comprehensive multinational strategy, 
and the focus of all instruments of national power (including 
our military) to make this world safe from this threat.
    The nexus between violent extremism and the proliferation 
of weapons of mass destruction is another concern for our 
security. There is no question that if terrorists could obtain 
WMD, they would use them to maximum advantage for their cause. 
In this regard, Iran is particularly troubling. Iran's quest 
for nuclear weapon capability is disturbing for several 
reasons. Chief among those is the proliferation threat from 
Iran's newly acquired nuclear capability. If fissile material 
or a nuclear weapon were to fall into the hands of a terrorist 
group the impact could be much greater than the tragedy of 9/
11. The fact that we have little apparent leverage over Iran's 
actions makes this threat all the more concerning. And if Iran 
does develop a nuclear weapons capability, that would 
dramatically increase the potential for the development of 
nuclear weapons in the region. Obviously this would be 
destabilizing. Regardless of the solution to the Iranian 
problem, a strong military will be necessary for any successful 
outcome.
    Finally, the Asia-Pacific region has experienced 
unprecedented economic prosperity over the last several 
decades. As a Pacific nation, we must realize and remind 
ourselves that the prosperity of the Asia-Pacific nations 
contributes significantly to our prosperity. The U.S. military 
has played an important role in helping ensure the security and 
stability of this area. The forward stationing of our land, 
sea, and air forces has served us well, but our influence in 
the region is now being challenged by China. We will need 
highly capable sea, land, air, and space forces to deal with 
China's anti-access and area denial efforts in this region 
that's so vital to our security and economic well being.
    In addition to these and many other security concerns, we 
must realize the impact that reductions in defense spending 
will have on our force structure. History tells us that during 
reductions in defense spending, despite our best intentions, 
the procurement and research and development accounts take a 
disproportional share of the cuts. This leaves our services 
without the modern equipment they need to replace old, 
outdated, and worn out equipment. As a nation we've always 
taken great pride in the fact that our military is the best 
equipped in the world. Deep budget cuts to defense would bring 
that fact into question.
    And finally, we must be able to provide world class care to 
those who have been wounded in our current conflicts. As you 
know well, some of these wounds are visible and some can't be 
seen. Nevertheless, our obligation is to provide the best 
health care we can to those who have put their lives on the 
line for us. Health care is not cheap, but any reduction in 
health care resources would be breaking faith with those who 
willingly go in harm's way.
    In my view, the world is a more dangerous and uncertain 
place today than it has been for decades. The three security 
concerns issues I've outlined above are all different in 
nature. However, they all will require a strong military to 
deal with them. Our historic lack of ability to predict where 
and when the next big threat to our security is coming from is 
well known, but we can be certain that a security surprise is 
in our future. What stands between these threats and our 
freedom is the U.S. military.
    Our fiscal difficulties are serious indeed. So are the 
potential security challenges facing us. We don't need to be 
the world's policeman, but we do need to provide leadership in 
this uncertain world. Our military must remain strong with the 
best leadership, superior training, and the best equipment. In 
doing so our men and women in uniform will help keep us free 
and provide the stability that ensures our prosperity.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to the committee's 
questions.

 STATEMENT OF GENERAL PETER PACE, USMC, RETIRED, 16TH CHAIRMAN, JOINT 
                            CHIEFS OF STAFF

    Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for this 
opportunity.
    I have appeared before this committee many times before, 
but every time in uniform. This is my first opportunity to be 
here as a private citizen. It is a uniquely different 
perspective, and I appreciate the opportunity.
    Although I don't have the privilege of representing the 
incredible men and women who serve in our Armed Forces anymore, 
I do take pride and privilege in joining you in thanking them 
and their families for the sacrifice they have made in keeping 
us free. It has been a long 10 years, and they have really been 
taking good care of us.
    As you know, the economy and defense are two sides of the 
same coin. To the extent that you strengthen one, you 
strengthen the other. To the extent that you weaken one, you 
weaken the other. But I think we need to be very careful when 
we get into the budget discussions, which are necessary, that 
we do not look at defense from a dollar and cents perspective. 
It is a unique entity of what our government provides to its 
citizens, which is security. It should be strategy-based. What 
do you want your military to do for your country? Is it what we 
are doing today plus one other thing? What is it?
    If we know what the strategy is that we want our military 
to execute, then the folks across the river in the Pentagon who 
do this for a living can tell you how many planes, how many 
ships, how many troops they need to execute the combatant 
commander's war plans. You can then apply budget numbers to 
that, and you will most likely come up with numbers that are 
bigger than we can afford. Fair enough.
    But once we have the strategy and we know what it would 
cost to implement that strategy, then we can talk about 
additional risk by spending a little bit less here, a little 
bit less there. So I would simply urge this committee to please 
insist on a strategy-based approach to how you fund your 
military.
    Next, there has been an incredible strain on our force. 
Less than 1 percent of the Nation has been defending the other 
99 percent for 10 years. There are volunteers to do it. God 
bless them. They are doing extremely well. They are not 
complaining. But we have got troops and their families who have 
sustained 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, or more deployments in the last 10 
years. We have moms and dads who are deploying away from their 
families every year or every other year. As we look at how to 
balance the budget, the message that Congress sends to the 
military and how you determine pay, benefits and retirement 
will have significant impacts on the men and women who serve 
today.
    Even today, as I walk through and I see active duty folks, 
the question they ask me, as they did when I was on active 
duty, is: are the American people behind us? And it has been 
the absolute belief that even though some of our fellow 
citizens prefer that we not be fighting where we are, almost 
all appreciate the fact that we have warriors who are willing 
to put themselves in harm's way. That message has come across 
loud and clear, both from our fellow citizens in the way they 
have treated our returning soldiers and service members in 
airports around the country, and in the way that Congress has 
allocated resources.
    We need to be careful not to be premature in cutting back 
on the resources that we are allocating to our Armed Forces. 
This is 10 years into a war where, unfortunately, our enemies 
have a war plan that calls for a 100-year war. That does not 
mean we need to be in Afghanistan or Iraq or doing that size 
operation for 100 years, but it does mean that we have a 
tenacious enemy. And even though we have had great success, it 
can quickly be overturned if we are not vigilant. So the 
allocation of resources will be very important, not only to the 
standpoint of our troops and their families and their ability 
to fight, but also in how our industrial base is able to raise 
to the challenge.
    We don't know where the next challenge is coming from, but 
we have always had the ability to bring all of our strength to 
bear, which includes our industrial base. As we start 
allocating fewer resources, the impact on our industrial base 
must be looked at very carefully. We are very, very thin as a 
Nation in some of our capabilities, some of which could 
literally disappear overnight if we are not careful.
    Lastly, the challenge of which I am most concerned is not 
one of another nation, where we might have to deploy forces. 
You can go around the globe and talk about all the hot spots, 
and I know that our military today, if told to go do something, 
is capable of doing it. It is simply a matter of deciding 
whether or not we want to apply what we know how to do, except 
in one area, and that area is cyber attack and cyber defense.
    The more anything is dependent on computers, the more 
vulnerable it is. And I know what we can do as a Nation as the 
attacker in cyber, and I know that we cannot defend against 
what we can do as a Nation. And therefore, as a military man, I 
have to presume that my enemies can either do the same thing, 
or they will be able to soon, or they may very well have 
something that we haven't thought of yet.
    So as we look at the budget and we look at strategic places 
to apply it, certainly the growing concern of cyber must be 
taken into account. Cyber is having and will continue to have 
an impact on the relations between nations similar to that of 
the advent of nuclear weapons, the difference being that 
nuclear weapons have been used and thank God have not been used 
again. Cyber weapons are being used thousands of times a day 
every day, and we are uniquely vulnerable.
    Mr. Chairman, thank you for listening, and I look forward 
to your questions.

  STATEMENT OF ADMIRAL EDMUND P. GIAMBASTIANI, JR., USN, RETIRED, 7TH 
               VICE CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF

    Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Smith, and Members of the 
committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today. I would 
like to compliment you for holding these hearings.
    Not only are we here to remember the event that led to a 
pivotal change in our national security strategy ten years ago, 
we are here to undertake an important discussion of where we go 
from here. This discussion of our national security strategy is 
urgently needed--and has been sorely lacking in the recent 
debate about the greatest economic crisis our country has faced 
in the past eight decades. Our national security and economic 
health are inextricably linked and interdependent. They must be 
considered together and addressed as an integral whole.
    As you know, there are those who believe that drastic cuts 
should be made to our defense spending to help offset our 
nation's debt. If the new Joint Select Committee on Deficit 
Reduction does not reach its targeted level of cuts, 
unprecedented automatic cuts to defense will be triggered. Huge 
cuts to defense spending, combined with little to no analysis 
of their impact to our overall national security, would have 
devastating consequences--something akin to performing brain 
surgery with a chainsaw. Further, I would characterize this 
debate as nothing less than determinative of what our role in 
the world will be in the future--will we continue to be a 
global superpower and force for good? Or will we allow 
ourselves to become one amongst many, forfeiting both the 
freedom of action and leadership role in the world which has 
done so much for our citizens and for free people everywhere?
    Providing for the national defense is the most fundamental 
responsibility of our federal government. There are certainly 
ways to be more cost effective and it is unrealistic that the 
Department of Defense will be spared from shared sacrifices, 
but it is critical that we analyze our spending levels in the 
proper context. Our national security is the one area for which 
our federal government is solely responsible. There is little 
room for error.
    Our national security strategy must drive any debate over 
the level of resources that the nation should devote to 
national defense. And the ability of the American economy to 
generate these resources must inform our strategic thinking. A 
failure to do either is likely to cost the United States more 
in the long run, in both dollars and lives. A lack of 
discussion and agreement about strategy will ensure that any 
cuts in our security budgets will be driven by at best 
arbitrary budget targets rather than reasoned strategic goals, 
rational operational concepts, and executable investment plans.

                     Objectives and Threats to Them

    Before discussing our strategy--that is, how we achieve our 
national objectives--we need to understand what those aims are. 
I also believe that in thinking about the future, we must study 
and learn from the past. For the better part of a century, the 
United States has pursued a consistent set of aims. These 
include protecting U.S. territory from attack, defending our 
allies against aggression, and preventing a single power from 
becoming so strong that it threatens to dominate the Eurasian 
continent. Beyond these core interests, the United States has 
repeatedly used force in the service of the common good, 
whether to alleviate suffering, provide relief from natural 
disasters or guarantee global public goods such as unfettered 
freedom of navigation on the high seas.
    For the foreseeable future, I believe we will face three 
primary challenges. The first is the ongoing war with Al Qaeda 
and its affiliates: a protracted conflict with irregular 
adversaries using unconventional means that spans the globe. 
The second is the threat that the proliferation of weapons of 
mass destruction--and especially nuclear weapons and associated 
delivery systems--by hostile regimes, such as North Korea today 
and prospectively Iran in the future, pose to the U.S., our 
allies and the stability of key regions. The third, and 
potentially the most consequential, challenge is the rise of 
China. Chinese military modernization, financed by a burgeoning 
Chinese economy, promises to reshape the balance of power in 
Asia. As that occurs, we need to ensure our ability to defend 
our territory, assure our allies, and maintain full and free 
access to the Western Pacific.
    Although each of these challenges is very different, 
meeting each successfully will require the United States to 
formulate and implement a long-term strategy. Further, each 
demands a comprehensive response. Military capabilities have a 
role to play in meeting each challenge, but so too do other 
instruments of statecraft and elements of national power. Nor 
should the United States meet these challenges alone. America's 
allies, partners and friends can and should play an important 
role as well.
    In addition to these long-term challenges, the United 
States must be prepared to respond to any number of disruptive 
events that could destabilize the international system, ranging 
from the outbreak of a virulent pandemic, to the collapse of a 
strategic state, to the use of nuclear weapons.
    While successive administrations have framed these 
challenges differently or have ranked them differently in terms 
of likelihood and impact, I believe that there is a consensus 
spanning administrations that these are the challenges that we 
face today and are likely to face in the future. The adequacy 
of our forces needs to be measured against our ability to meet 
these challenges--specifically, to assure our allies and 
dissuade, deter and, if necessary, defeat our adversaries.

                        Matching Ends and Means

    Each administration attempts to match ends and means within 
economic constraints. I have been involved in every such 
effort, at increasing levels of responsibility, since the fall 
of the Berlin Wall in 1989 until the 2006 Quadrennial Defense 
Review (QDR). The 2010 QDR represents the most recent 
administration's attempt to match ends and means. As a 
complement to this QDR, the 2010 QDR Independent Panel, 
commissioned by Congress and co-chaired by former Secretary of 
Defense Bill Perry and former National Security Advisor Steve 
Hadley, identified a number of shortfalls in the ability of the 
United States to protect its interest against the threats that 
I have outlined. These included the need to counter anti-access 
capabilities, defend the homeland, and bolster our cyber 
capabilities.
    It is worth noting that neither the 2010 QDR nor the 2010 
QDR Independent Panel anticipated the current budgetary 
environment. Both counted on real budget growth to be able to 
bridge the gap between our commitments and our capabilities. 
Yet, the current situation is such that the debate is not about 
how much growth there will be in security budgets, but rather 
how extreme the cuts will be to those budgets.
    Defense cuts, if too deep or too hasty, will open up 
further and perhaps unbridgeable gaps between our commitments 
and our capabilities. In this situation, the United States 
will, in theory, face two broad alternatives: either to reduce 
our commitments or accept greater risk. Such a choice is 
largely academic, however, because neither the President nor 
the Congress can determine U.S. commitments on their own in our 
ever more interconnected world. Moreover, reducing commitments 
is something that is easier said than done. In my view, for 
example, it would be extremely unwise to skimp on defending 
U.S. territory or maintaining the fundamentals of nuclear 
deterrence. It is also difficult for me to imagine, let alone 
recommend, that the United States abrogate any of our mutual 
defense treaties that commit us to the defense of allies across 
the globe.
    As a result, defense cuts will force us to accept greater 
risk. In concrete terms, that means a reduced readiness to wage 
war and, should we go to war, in conflicts that will go on 
longer and cost more American lives than would have been the 
case if we were better prepared. As terrible as the loss of any 
life is, our men and women in uniform face the lowest casualty 
rates in our nation's--or the world's--history. This is largely 
due to investments that have been made in precision weapons; 
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; personal and 
vehicle protection; strategic airlift; and military medicine. 
Should Congress or the Defense Department make major cuts 
without thinking them through, I fear that we will face far 
higher casualties in the future.
    Reducing readiness and increasing risk applies to times of 
peace as well as war. It also amounts to a decreased ability to 
reassure allies, partners and friends and deter competitors. 
Our day-to-day military posture and global presence are 
responsible for more of our security and freedom than we know 
or consciously appreciate. When, beginning with the 2006 QDR, 
we began to portray seriously the demands of day-to-day 
operations on our forces, we realized that the demands of 
presence, engagement and responding to small scale contingency 
operations require considerable forces. This is a demand that 
will continue even as we draw down in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
Cutting back on our engagement with our allies, partners and 
friends threatens to undermine their confidence in us, and 
reducing our presence in key regions could tempt potential 
adversaries.
    In addition, we cannot always determine when and where we 
will be required to fight, and recent experience shows us that 
it is difficult to fix capability shortfalls rapidly. We all 
know the difficulties the Defense Department experienced in 
fielding up-armored Humvees and later MRAPs. In fact, the only 
armored Humvees that we had in the U.S. force posture ten years 
ago were few in number and were procured for example to protect 
our nuclear ballistic missile submarines and their nuclear 
weapons.
    The Defense Department and American industry cannot 
generate capabilities overnight. This is particularly true of 
naval and aerospace platforms, which often take more than a 
decade to field and are expected to last for decades. In these 
areas, stability in programs is extraordinarily important. 
Requirements need to be realistic, reasonable and stable over 
time to allow for effective acquisition strategies. And 
investment budgets must be stable and consistent. Swings in 
funding cause problems and often yield systems that take longer 
to acquire, cost more, and underperform. Even worse, 
instabilities in requirements, acquisition programs or 
procurement funds can lead to billions of dollars wasted on 
programs that never deliver any capabilities to our men and 
women in uniform.
    Generations to come will inherit the force structure that 
results from your deliberations, just as we inherited decisions 
made by those who came before us. It is worth remembering that 
many of the weapon systems that our men and women in uniform 
are using to fight today's wars were the product of the defense 
buildup of the 1980s. Many of these platforms are rapidly 
approaching the end of their lifespan, and failure to modernize 
the force will lead to significant shortfalls in the U.S. force 
posture. Our industrial base has been drawn down to such an 
extent that in a number of areas, such as shipbuilding, solid 
rocket motors and naval nuclear propulsion, we are down to the 
bare bones; marginal cuts may very well eliminate an entire 
defense industrial sector. As a result, any cuts need to be 
thought through very carefully indeed.
    Let me offer an anecdote to illustrate the need for patient 
long term investment to generate needed capabilities. In 
September 2002, the senior civilian and military leadership 
identified as a top priority making the Defense Department an 
organization capable of tracking down and capturing or killing 
Al Qaeda leaders. This began a process of developing 
capabilities, some of them quite sensitive, which allowed us 
earlier this year to find and kill Usama Bin Laden. It didn't 
happen overnight; it took time and required a lot of work. But 
it did have a big impact.
    In this regard, I would like to comment on a trend that I 
find particularly worrisome. The United States invests 
considerable sums in highly sensitive capabilities. In recent 
years, it has become all too common to reveal, for a variety of 
reasons whether advertent or inadvertent, some of these 
sensitive capabilities. As a submariner, I learned at an early 
age that exposure of sensitive U.S. operational capabilities 
squanders painstaking and often expensive work and jeopardizes 
American lives.
    The Department of Defense should be credited with beginning 
the process of seeking greater efficiencies, and I believe that 
process can and should continue. Underperforming or unrealistic 
programs should be terminated. Excess infrastructure should be 
shed. Needless bureaucratic layers in the Pentagon and other 
defense organizations should be eliminated. I also believe that 
it is worthwhile to look at the area of military benefits, 
including retirement. Any such review should be conducted in a 
very careful, systematic and fair manner; one which recognizes 
the gratitude our Nation owes to those who sacrificed their 
lives or well-being in our defense.
    Before I end, I would like to re-emphasize what I said in 
the beginning, and that is that it is both urgent and vitally 
important to the nation that a discussion of strategy precede 
any attempt to institute major cuts in the defense budget. 
Accordingly, I would like to offer the following 
recommendations.
    First, that the Congress, working with the Administration, 
commission an independent, bipartisan panel of experts to 
examine our strategy, explore alternatives, and make 
recommendations for future strategic options. This panel could 
be modeled on the 2010 QDR Independent Panel or the 1997 
National Defense Panel.
    Second, I believe that Congress, working with the 
Administration, should stand up a panel to carefully examine 
military benefits, to include compensation, health care and 
retirement. As I noted previously, I believe that there is room 
to examine benefits. Such an examination should be 
comprehensive, thoughtful and employ significant grandfathering 
of provisions with the ultimate aim being to preserve the 
vitality and sustainability of the All Volunteer Force, a key 
American asymmetric advantage. As one who served both during 
the draft era and the All Volunteer Force, our military today 
is by far the best we've ever fielded.
    Third, I believe that any cuts to defense must preserve our 
ability to recapitalize our forces. We must make sure that we 
bequeath to future generations the world's most capable, most 
effective military. Only that will allow us to ensure that we 
can protect our interests against threats we cannot even 
imagine today.
    Thank you again for giving me the opportunity to testify 
before you today. I will be happy to take your questions.
      



                   THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL DEFENSE AND
                THE U.S. MILITARY TEN YEARS AFTER 9/11:
                   PERSPECTIVES FROM OUTSIDE EXPERTS

                              ----------                              




                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES



                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                      ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                              ----------                              


                              HEARING HELD

                           SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

                              ----------                              


                               WITNESSES

Mr. Jim Thomas

Vice President and Director of Studies
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments

Dr. Michael E. O'Hanlon

Director of Research and Senior Fellow
The Brookings Institution

Mr. Thomas Donnelly

Director, Center for Defense Studies
American Enterprise Institute

Mr. Max Boot

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies
Council on Foreign Relations
?

      
=======================================================================


               PREPARED STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY WITNESSES

                           September 13, 2011

=======================================================================

      
 STATEMENT OF MR. JIM THOMAS, VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF STUDIES, 
             CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS

    Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Smith, and Members of the 
Committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today. On 
September 11, 2001, I was working in the Pentagon as part of a 
small team drafting the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. The 9/
11 attacks were a watershed event for me personally and for the 
Department of Defense. The attacks immediately reduced the 
peacetime bureaucratic processes of the day, including the QDR, 
to trivialities, as the Department--and the Nation--unified in 
their intent to vanquish the Islamist terrorists who 
perpetrated the attacks and to prevent future attacks on the 
United States.
    This week, it is appropriate that we remember those who 
were murdered by al Qaeda on that sunny Tuesday morning in New 
York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. We also remember those who 
serve in our intelligence and military services, and their 
families, and have made such extraordinary sacrifices in Iraq, 
Afghanistan, and other operations around the world. We honor 
especially the more than six thousand American Service Members 
who have died and more than 45,000 who have been wounded while 
fighting since 9/11. While we are thankful that in a decade's 
time al Qaeda has never succeeded in conducting another major 
terrorist attack on American soil, we also remember that 
America is not alone in facing al Qaeda and its affiliates' 
indiscriminate acts of terror. Allies and friends around the 
world--nowhere more so than in the Muslim world--have also lost 
countless lives to al Qaeda's acts of barbarity.
    In my testimony today, I will outline some of the pertinent 
lessons to be drawn from the past decade, the security and 
fiscal challenges we face looking ahead, and how we might 
reconcile them in the years ahead.

                       Lessons Learned Since 9/11

    Looking ahead, it is important to draw the right lessons 
from our experiences over the past decade:
    First, we criticized ourselves in the aftermath of the 9/11 
attacks for ``failing to connect the dots.'' Although we have 
made significant improvements in our intelligence enterprise to 
prevent future attacks, we should not kid ourselves: Despite 
our best efforts to anticipate and prevent strategic surprises, 
we must also be prepared for future shocks and inevitable 
surprises. We must develop the resiliency to minimize them and 
the agility to adapt rapidly and respond appropriately. We 
should avoid the mistake of the 1990s, where we over-optimized 
U.S. general purpose forces for the wars we preferred to fight 
that resembled OPERATION DESERT STORM. Instead, we must ensure 
our future forces organize, train, and equip themselves to 
fight in ways that defy our preferences: when our satellite 
communications are jammed; regional airfields are bombarded 
with rockets and missiles; ports are mined so that transport 
ships cannot enter their harbors; and anti-ship missiles force 
naval and amphibious forces to operate from greater distances.
    Second, over the past decade the U.S. military has come to 
embrace a modern version of what B.H. Liddell Hart called the 
strategy of the indirect approach. By enabling and working with 
and through allies and partner security forces in Iraq, 
Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the world, the United States has 
been far more effective in defeating al Qaeda and other 
irregular forces than if we had fought them unilaterally. As we 
look ahead, the United States should continue to employ 
indirect approaches that leverage the advantages of others with 
whom we share common security interests. Especially in an age 
of austerity, we will need to encourage and enable our allies 
and friends around the world to do more for their own defense, 
while the United States maintains principal responsibility for 
securing the Global Commons of the high seas, the skies above, 
space, and cyberspace.
    Third, we have seen the enormous costs that a non-state 
adversary with limited means has been able to impose on the 
United States. For less than a million dollars, al Qaeda 
organized and executed the 9/11 attacks. Conservative estimates 
reckon the financial impact of the attacks and America's 
response to be more than $1 trillion. As we enter an age of 
austerity we must not only think about how we can save money 
and where we can take risk; we must also think more about how 
we adopt cost-imposing strategies to turn the tables on those 
who would pose threats to our security. Especially when 
resources are limited, we must think harder about increasing 
our competitors' costs while minimizing our own.
    At the same time, we must avoid drawing the wrong lessons 
from the past decade. While it would be a mistake for the 
United States to turn its back on irregular warfare and all 
that we have re-learned about counter-insurgency in the past 
decade, future wars may look very different. For example, we 
have seen the incredible impact that unmanned aerial vehicles 
have had in locating and targeting terrorists and insurgents 
and we have greatly expanded our fleets of non-stealthy 
Predator, Reaper, Shadow, FireScout, and Global Hawk UAVs. 
Future adversaries, however, may possess air defenses that 
limit the use of high-signature aircraft. Simply acquiring 
future capabilities based on their effectiveness in the past 
decade could leave U.S. forces less prepared and more 
vulnerable as they encounter more capable adversaries.

                  Principal Security Challenges Ahead

    Ten years on from the 9/11 attacks, America finds its 
military forces still engaged in Iraq, Afghanistan, and 
conducting other combat and non-combat operations around the 
world. While al Qaeda has been greatly weakened over the decade 
and the United States has been successful in hunting down its 
leadership and keeping it on the run, it remains determined to 
visit violence on the United States, its friends, and allies. 
Consequently, the United States must remain vigilant.
    At the same time, the United States simply does not have 
the luxury to focus only on the clear and present danger posed 
by al Qaeda. As a global power, and indeed as the free world's 
security partner of choice, the United States faces a range of 
foreign threats. Even while we have checked the evil of al 
Qaeda, other dangers are growing. Three challenges in 
particular will require greater attention over the next several 
decades, and preparing for them represents the most prudent 
course of action to ensure the appropriate portfolio of 
military forces and capabilities to confer the flexibility and 
fungibility needed to deal with the widest range of inevitable 
surprises and unforeseen contingencies:
    The Rise of China. It is instructive that the United States 
planned for war with Great Britain up to the eve of World War 
II. The United States did not see Great Britain as the most 
likely threat, but the potential danger posed by the Royal Navy 
to hemispheric defense was the most consequential. Similarly, 
China today has the greatest potential to compete with the 
United States militarily. China is not an enemy, but the course 
that it will chart in the next several decades is far from 
clear. China's spectacular economic growth over the past 
several decades has contributed positively to the global 
economy. Its thirst for overseas commodities and unsettled 
maritime claims, however, are cause for concern. Even more 
worrisome has been its sustained military build-up, including 
the development and fielding of so-called anti-access and area-
denial capabilities that appear intended to take on the 
American military's traditional approaches to transoceanic 
power projection and forward presence in distant geographic 
theaters. China's A2/AD network includes growing inventories of 
medium- and intermediate-range missiles; state-of-the-art 
integrated air defenses; submarine forces; anti-satellite 
systems; and computer network attack capabilities.
    Regional Nuclear Powers. Nuclear threats are not new; the 
United States has lived with the threat of nuclear weapons in 
the hands of hostile powers since the Soviet Union tested its 
first nuclear weapon in 1949. New nuclear powers, however, are 
emerging and threatening regional military balances. North 
Korea has not only tested its own nuclear weapon, but has 
proliferated nuclear and missile technology. It has brandished 
its nuclear capabilities vis-a-vis South Korea and Japan, and 
in the event of an internal power struggle following the death 
of Kim Jong Il, its nuclear capabilities could be up for grabs. 
The most likely nuclear exchange scenario, however, may involve 
Pakistan and India. Should Islamist terrorists repeat a Mumbai-
like attack against India, or if tensions should escalate 
resulting in the conventionally superior Indian Army making 
incursions into Pakistan, Pakistan could resort to the use of 
nuclear weapons. Increasing instability in Pakistan, moreover, 
holds the possibility of the army losing control over its 
dozens of distributed nuclear weapons and specter of them 
falling into the hands of Islamist terrorists. Finally, and 
perhaps most consequentially for the United States and its 
friends in the Middle East, Iran is continuing efforts to 
acquire nuclear weapons. Should Iran acquire nuclear weapons, 
instability would characterize the strategic balance between 
Iran and Israel, with both sides potentially having incentives 
to pre-emptively attack the other. Iran's possession of nuclear 
weapons would also likely compel other regional states, 
including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey, to acquire their own 
nuclear capabilities, further destabilizing an already unstable 
critical region of the world.
    Transnational Non-State Actors. Even after the killing of 
Osama Bin Laden by U.S. SEALs, al Qaeda and other non-state 
groups may continue to threaten U.S. security interests. While 
al Qaeda has weakened over the past several decades, affiliated 
groups have emerged in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and 
Southeast Asia. Other non-state actors including insurgent, 
terrorist, and criminal groups are continuing their attempts to 
destabilize fragile strategic states around the world. The 
lethality of violent extremist groups would increase 
dramatically should they acquire nuclear or biological weapons. 
Within our own hemisphere, narco-cartels continue to threaten 
the stability of key partners such as Mexico and Colombia. In 
the future, transnational non-state actors may grow in 
importance. The threats they pose will increase as great powers 
arm them with more sophisticated weaponry and employ them as 
proxies in peripheral contests to impose costs on their state 
rivals and bleed them, rather than opposing other great powers 
more directly.
    Cumulatively, these challenges suggest a more dangerous 
world--one in which traditional forms of American power 
projection will become prohibitively costly; nuclear dangers 
will become more common in distant theaters and as threats at 
home; and irregular warfare will remain an enduring feature of 
the security environment.
    The geographic nexus of these challenges is the Indo-
Pacific region, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Strait 
of Malacca and up to the Sea of Japan. Although the U.S. 
military does not have the luxury of focusing on a single 
theater, the greatest tests our armed forces will face in the 
coming decades are likely to emanate from this region. Just as 
military planners focused their attention upon Europe and 
Northeast Asia as principal theaters during the Cold War, it is 
the Indo-Pacific region that will dominate the attention of 
planners over the next several decades as they wrestle with 
these challenges.
    In confronting these security challenges, the United States 
is also likely to face multi-dimensional access and operational 
problems. Future adversaries may:

     1. LDeny the United States the ability to generate sorties 
from theater bases and aircraft carriers within range of their 
missiles, necessitating both carrier- and land-based air 
operations from far greater ranges;
     2. LPossess more sophisticated air defense than recent 
adversaries in Libya, Iraq and Kosovo with mobile passive 
target acquisition radars that are more difficult to locate and 
longer-range surface-to-air missiles, resulting in the 
increased vulnerability of non-stealthy manned and unmanned 
aircraft;
     3. LEmploy systems to jam GPS signals and deny 
communications links to aircraft, requiring the United States 
to develop alternatives to GPS for positioning, navigation and 
timing, as well as local communications schemes such as 
airborne line-of-sight relays if satellite communications are 
unavailable;
     4. LDevelop their own fifth generation fighter aircraft, 
challenging U.S. localized air superiority;
     5. LEmploy over-the-horizon maritime ISR, long-range anti-
ship missiles, supercavitating torpedoes, and mines to hold off 
U.S. naval surface and amphibious ships;
     6. LThreaten regional air and sea ports of debarkation 
with conventional, chemical, biological, or nuclear attacks to 
impede the insertion and staging of large ground forces in 
neighboring countries;
     7. LAttack U.S. ISR, communications, or GPS satellites 
using radio-frequency interference, direct ascent anti-
satellite missiles, co-orbital anti-satellite weapons, or 
directed energy systems;
     8. LAttack U.S. and allied military computer networks used 
for command and control, logistics and mission control, or 
civilian networks related to critical infrastructure;
     9. LTarget civilian populations in the United States or 
allied cities; and
    10. LExploit civilian populations to provide sanctuary from 
attacks.

    Overcoming these problems will require forces and 
capabilities that can respond to threats on a global basis 
rapidly; operate from range; carry sufficient payloads; evade 
detection, penetrate into denied areas and persist to strike 
elusive targets; operate in small, highly distributed 
formations autonomously; and survive and operate effectively in 
extreme WMD environments.

                      America's Fiscal Predicament

    Compounding these dangers, Admiral Michael Mullen, the 
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has justifiably 
characterized America's fiscal predicament as a national 
security threat. Unlike previous periods in our history when 
the United States ran large deficits and increased its debt, it 
is unlikely simply to ``grow'' its way out of debt this time 
around. The rate of increase in the national debt is projected 
to exceed by a wide margin even the most optimistic estimates 
of U.S. economic growth rates.
    Given this reality, Congress faces difficult choices about 
raising taxes, curbing growth in entitlement programs, and/or 
cutting discretionary Federal spending, including National 
Defense. Should the Joint Committee fail to reach agreement on 
a deficit reduction plan as directed by the Budget Control Act, 
the sequestration trigger could result in an additional $500 
billion reduction in defense spending beyond the $350 billion 
already envisaged over the next ten years. Such draconian cuts, 
especially if level-loaded across the ten-year period, would 
compel Defense programmers and budgeteers to identify ``quick 
cuts'' rather than ``smart cuts,'' thereby stretching 
procurement programs and reducing operations and maintenance 
spending to generate immediate savings.
    Some believe that it would be relatively easy and painless 
to cut $500-800 billion from defense over the next decade. Many 
cite the defense build-up since 9/11 and suggest that with the 
drawdowns of forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, we can reduce 
defense spending as we have after other major buildups in 
history. It is true that defense spending, including war costs, 
increased from slightly less than $400 billion in FY01 to 
around $700 billion in FY11 (in constant FY12 dollars). This 
build-up, however, is markedly different from defense build-ups 
of the past. In the aftermath of previous build-ups, budget 
cutters could count on reducing end-strength and paring back 
procurement. In the post-9/11 build-up, though, end-strength 
changed very little; Active Component end-strength has hovered 
around one-and-a-half million, while recapitalization and 
modernization plans for large parts of the forces were largely 
deferred, continuing the so-called ``procurement holiday'' of 
the previous decade.
    America cannot afford to balance the budget on the back of 
defense. Reductions beyond the $350 billion in cuts over ten 
years already anticipated will be difficult for the Department 
of Defense to make, especially while U.S. forces are still 
engaged in wars overseas. If the sequestration trigger were 
pulled, it could result in even more drastic reductions placing 
the United States at great peril. At the same time, it is 
increasingly unlikely that Defense will be spared from some 
reductions in the years ahead. The challenge will be in making 
adjustments to DoD to develop and maintain those forces and 
capabilities that are most relevant to the security challenges 
ahead and capable of operating in non-permissive conditions, 
while finding efficiencies and reducing those forces and 
capabilities that are least relevant and most dependent on 
relatively benign operating conditions.

   Making Changes to Meet Security Challenges in an Age of Austerity

    The security challenges we face in the decade ahead are 
greater than they have been at any time since the Cold War, 
while the resources to deal with them are becoming more 
constrained. Together, the dual imperatives of preparing for 
new security challenges and reducing defense spending are 
likely to drive changes in the military over the coming decade. 
Ideally, DoD should revise the Defense Strategy to explain how 
it will reconcile the changing security environment with 
reductions in defense spending.
    Akin to the Nixon Doctrine in 1969, a revised Defense 
Strategy might call on allies and partners to do more in their 
own defense, with the United States serving as a global enabler 
rather than a ``first responder'' for regional crises. As part 
of a new bargain with its allies and close partners around the 
world, the United States might redouble its efforts to police 
the Global Commons--the high seas, air, space and cyberspace--
beyond the sovereign control of other states for the benefit of 
all, while expecting its allies to do more at home. Just as the 
United States may find it more difficult to project power in 
the future, it might once again serve as an ``Arsenal of 
Democracy'' to arm allies and friendly states with their own 
anti-access and area-denial capabilities to defend their own 
sovereignty from regional hegemonic aspirants.
    Emulating President Eisenhower's New Look strategy, a 
revised strategy might place emphasis on particular elements of 
the U.S. military to foster deterrence. Just as the New Look 
emphasized nuclear weapons to deter aggression, the United 
States today might emphasize special operations forces and 
global strike capabilities--including cyber, conventional and 
nuclear--to deter aggression or coercion. In its divisions of 
labor with allies and friendly states around the world, special 
operations, and global surveillance and strike capabilities 
represent unique American military advantages that are beyond 
the means of most states and are thus complementary rather than 
duplicative. Special operations and global surveillance and 
strike capabilities, moreover, are among the most fungible 
capabilities in the U.S. arsenal as they can be applied across 
a range of theaters in a variety of military operations. Such 
capabilities may also be among the least vulnerable to anti-
access/area denial threats.
    DoD should revise its force planning construct to move away 
from preparing to conduct concurrent large-scale land combat 
campaigns focused on conducting or repelling invasions. It 
should consider a wider range of contingencies, including the 
elimination of a hostile power's WMD capabilities. At the same 
time, it should assume that the United States would conduct no 
more than one large-scale land combat campaign at any given 
time. To deal with opportunistic aggression by a third party if 
the United States is engaged in war, the United States should 
maintain sufficient global strike capabilities, including a 
deep magazine of precision-guided weapons, to halt invading 
forces and conduct heavy punitive attacks over extended periods 
of time.
    DoD should also reconsider military roles and missions. It 
should reduce duplication across the services, including in 
combat aircraft, armored forces, and cyber capabilities. Rather 
than having all Services equally prepared for all contingencies 
across the spectrum of conflict, it should explore greater 
differentiation between the Services. For example:

    1. LThe Marine Corps might reinvigorate its role providing 
forward presence and optimize itself as the Nation's premiere 
on-call crisis response force on a day-to-day basis. In a state 
of general war, the Marine Corps might perform two main roles: 
first, small teams of highly distributed/highly mobile Marines 
could conduct low-signature amphibious landings and designate 
targets ashore for bombers and submarines as a vanguard force 
in the early stages of a blinding campaign; and second, Marines 
could play an instrumental role seizing key bases and maritime 
chokepoints, particularly in peripheral theaters, to enable 
follow-on operations of the joint force.
    2. LThe Army might focus on security force assistance to 
foreign security forces steady-state. In a general state of 
war, it should be prepared with a Corps-sized capability to 
conduct a large-scale WMD elimination campaign as its most 
stressing case.
    3. LAs the Army and Marine Corps expand their capacity for 
security force assistance and foreign internal defense in semi-
permissive environments, special operations forces could shift 
their emphasis toward unconventional warfare, foreign internal 
defense, counterterrorism, special reconnaissance, direct 
action, and special WMD elimination in denied environments.
    4. LThe Air Force and Navy might reduce their forward 
presence while focusing more on delivering globally available 
capabilities to penetrate enemy anti-access/area-denial 
networks, providing persistent broad area surveillance and 
attack as well as mutually assured air and sea denial in 
contested zones, while maintaining control of the Global 
Commons.

    Beyond changes in the strategy and design of forces, we 
should explore ways to gain efficiencies in the institutional 
functions of the Department and reduce headquarters staffs. 
Over the past several decades almost all headquarters units in 
the Department have grown significantly while operating forces 
have remained level or declined. Large headquarters staffs, 
including the staff in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, 
do not improve military effectiveness and, arguably, reduce the 
Department's agility to deal with lean adversaries such as al 
Qaeda. Congress might consider reducing legislative reporting 
requirements to facilitate staff reductions.
    We must also act to arrest personnel cost growth lest DoD 
follow the path of large American corporations that have run 
into trouble in recent years as their healthcare and pension 
costs have made them less competitive. U.S. military pay 
raises--in excess of the employment cost index (ECI)--and added 
or expanded benefits have increased the cost of military 
personnel on a per person basis by 46 percent in real terms 
since 9/11. Military healthcare is another significant 
contributor to the growth in personnel costs, having risen by 
85 percent in real terms over the past decade. Congress should 
consider an overhaul of military compensation, healthcare, and 
retirement pensions to bring them more in line with private 
sector best practices.
    DoD should develop new operational concepts such as AirSea 
Battle that address the types of security challenges outlined 
earlier. Such concepts serve a vital function as the connective 
tissue between strategic objectives and the types of forces and 
capability investments that are needed. DoD should evaluate its 
R&D and procurement programs and prioritize them in light of 
its operational concepts. Capabilities that are fungible across 
theaters and combine multiple attributes described earlier--
global responsiveness and range; payload; survivability; 
endurance; autonomy; and counter-WMD--should receive high 
priority. Those that lack such attributes or make only niche 
contributions should he accorded lower priority.
    Finally, DoD should draw a lesson from the past. Between 
the First and Second World Wars, the War and Navy Departments 
faced far graver budgetary austerity than anything currently 
being contemplated. Their forces were dramatically reduced 
following demobilization after World War I. Field-grade 
officers such as Dwight Eisenhower had trouble making ends meet 
and considered leaving the Service. But despite terrible 
funding conditions, the Army, Navy and Marine Corps protected 
their intellectual capital. They used their limited resources 
to experiment with new capabilities like the airplane, aircraft 
carrier, and the tank. They conducted a series of wargames, 
developed a wide range of Color Plans, and they developed 
operational concepts like Amphibious Warfare that would prove 
so crucial in the Second World War. Likewise, it would be 
prudent to protect DoD's intellectual capital in the current 
environment.

                               Conclusion

    Despite the conventional wisdom that America is in decline, 
the United States continues to enjoy unrivalled strategic 
advantages. We are blessed with insular geography and friendly 
neighbors. America is rich in natural resources and fertile 
land. It enjoys deep and enduring alliances and access to a 
global portfolio of bases. It has a culture of assimilating 
immigrants and promoting innovation. The United States enjoys 
the most favorable position relative to all of the other great 
powers. With ample political will and shared sacrifice, I am 
confident the United States can get its economic house back in 
order, while safeguarding the country from those who would harm 
us.

 STATEMENT OF DR. MICHAEL E. O'HANLON, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AND SENIOR 
                   FELLOW, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION

    In a stunning change in American policy and politics, it 
now appears possible that the military budget may be cut by up 
to a trillion dollars over a decade. This would be far more 
than the $400 billion in 12-year savings that President Obama 
had proposed in his April 13, 2011 speech that signaled the 
White House's full engagement on the deficit issue. That is 
above and beyond savings that will result naturally, and indeed 
are already resulting, from troop drawdowns in Iraq and 
Afghanistan.
    And these will be real cuts. The administration's earlier 
plan, as seen in President Obama's February 2011 budget 
proposal to Congress for Fiscal Year 2012, had already taken 
away most of the growth in the longer-term military budget, 
reducing it to around 1 percent a year in inflation-adjusted 
terms. But most military costs rise about 2 percent a year 
above inflation. That is a well-established historical tendency 
due to the fact that many areas of defense activity--health 
care, environmental restoration, weapons purchases, pay for 
troops and full-time civilians--do tend to rise in cost 
slightly faster than the inflation rate. So it will be 
necessary [to] cut forces, weapons, and operations.
    Defense cuts are appropriate, even above and beyond the 
$150 billion or so in annual spending that will naturally go 
away as forces come home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Our nation 
is in economic crisis, exacerbated to a large degree by a huge 
budget deficit and unhealthy level of accumulated debt. This 
dilemma also constitutes a national security challenge for the 
United States; no great power can remain great if the economic 
underpinnings of its strength erode, as history and common 
sense both counsel us. And to attack the deficit in a serious 
way, defense must be on the table--just as all other major 
elements of federal spending, as well as the tax code, must be.
    But before we ask the Pentagon to provide a 
disproportionate share of spending reductions, as some would 
counsel, we need to sit back and think. Issues of war and peace 
are too fundamental to our nation's well-being to be guided by 
emotional reactions to an economic downturn that, however 
important, is nonetheless still a temporary phenomenon. We have 
spent decades building up the best military in the history of 
the planet and also helping establish an international system 
of alliances and other security relationships that has 
prevented another major power war for almost 70 years. Care is 
required in changing it. Yes the defense budget is huge--at 
nearly $700 billion it is one-fifth of all government spending, 
and nearly the equal of all military spending by all other 
countries on Earth combined. But it is not particularly huge in 
historic terms as a percent of our economy; it clocks it at 
about 4.5 percent of gross domestic product, in contrast to 
levels of 6 percent under President Reagan and 8 to 10 percent 
under Johnson, Kennedy, and Eisenhower. Nor is America 
currently a militarized society that needs to reorient its 
economy or culture. Even if one counts the National Guard and 
Reserves, only 1 percent of the population is in uniform, 
compared with more like 2 percent in the latter decades of the 
Cold War and even higher figures before that. Modern America is 
more notable for the distance between the average citizen and 
its all-volunteer armed forces than by any overmilitarization 
of its society. And the defense budget is a bargain if the 
alternative is a higher risk of war.
    Making national budgetary decisions with huge strategic 
impact cannot be done as an arithmetic exercise, or as part of 
a grand deficit bargain in which some parties trade away 
several chips' worth of defense spending in exchange for so 
many tax cuts or entitlement cuts like bargaining chips in a 
poker game. While it is reasonable, and right, to rethink 
defense spending in light of our economic straits, we must also 
ask what is our military for, and what role do we as Americans 
want to play in the world of the 21st century?
    My bottom line is conditionally supportive of the idea of 
cutting $350 billion over the next decade--as has already been 
agreed in the first round of the August, 2011 debt deal between 
President Obama and the Congress. Cumulative reductions of $350 
billion to perhaps $500 billion over that ten-year window can 
probably be achieved. Some can be found by eliminating pure 
waste. Some can be found by steps like asking non-deployed 
military personnel and non-wounded veterans to pay health care 
insurance premiums more in line with what the rest of the 
country considers standard, and to accept a new retirement 
system. The bulk of it will, however, have to be found by 
cutting real military capability and as a result accepting real 
additional risk to the country's security. I detail my 
calculations in the long Brookings paper noted above (at 
www.brookings.edu) and will develop the arguments further in a 
forthcoming book.
    Some cuts are eminently reasonable, even on narrow national 
security grounds, given how much the deficit has become a risk 
to the nation's long-term economic and military strength. But 
to argue that cuts of this magnitude can be made risk-free, as 
some purport, is not consistent with the realities of the 
situation. And to cut more than half a trillion dollars, 
relative to the earlier plan laid out by the President in his 
February 2011 plan, would be unwise. Unfortunately, there are 
budget plans that would do so. Most worrisome is the default 
plan. As part of the August deficit and debt deal, the new 
Fiscal ``Supercommittee'' is due to present a plan before 
Thanksgiving for an up-or-down vote by Congress before 
Christmas. If such a plan is not approved, defense and national 
security will automatically suffer another $500 billion or so 
in ten-year cuts, making for a grand total of about $900 
billion. Such draconian cuts would jeopardize irreducible 
requirements in American defense policy--winding down current 
wars responsibly, deterring Iran, hedging against a rising 
China, protecting global sea lanes vital for commerce, 
attacking terrorists and checking state sponsors of terror, and 
ensuring a strong all-volunteer military as well as a world-
class defense scientific and industrial base.
    Behind these specific recommendations is a broader premise. 
Not only the United States, but the world in general, benefits 
from the current international order in which America is the 
strongest power and helps lead a broader alliance system 
involving most of the world's other major powers. World peace 
would not be served by U.S. disarmament or even a trend towards 
the emergence of multiple, comparable power centers. I do not 
mean Americans should want to dominate others. Nor should the 
United States do other countries' fighting for them. But if the 
United States were to stop playing a global leadership role, 
competition and conflict would be the likely result. In such a 
``multipolar'' world, countries would often be less confident 
of their own security, and sometimes inclined to take matters 
into their own hands by engaging in arms races, building 
nuclear weapons, or even attacking their neighbors.
    We Americans get lots of things wrong, but we usually get 
around to the right policy after trying all others as Churchill 
famously remarked. In the end most peaceful democratic states 
do not fear us and want to ally with us. As such our power is 
stabilizing, and desirable. Perhaps someday a world made up 
just of democracies will, as ``democratic peace theory'' would 
predict, be inherently stable on its own, without a strong 
leader.\1\ But the world is not there yet.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ For a good discussion of democratic peace theory, see John M. 
Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University 
Press, 1997).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Put differently, we have to be careful about cutting 
defense so much that we have to give up some current overseas 
missions and responsibilities. It would be nice if some parts 
of the world had become less important, some missions that were 
previously very important obsolescent, some allies that had 
previously been too weak to carry much of the burden of 
maintaining international stability much stronger and more 
inclined to use their power in productive ways. But the world 
does not offer many such easy options. One place might be 
Russia; despite Moscow's prickliness on many issues, it has 
become more security partner than adversary of the United 
States, and any threats it might pose to NATO are minimal. 
However, our force planning already downplays the possibility 
of scenarios involving Russia, as it should, so there are no 
big further savings to reap. Some might think that Korea would 
offer a more promising case where American security commitments 
could be reduced. And it is true that South Korea's military is 
stronger than before, North Korea's less strong. But the last 
time we tried to ignore the Korean threat, back in 1949 when 
Secretary of State Dean Acheson infamously declared it beyond 
America's security perimeter of key overseas interests, what we 
got was an emboldened North Korea and a full-fledged war. 
Today, North Korea is ruled by the same fanatical regime as 
before, and while the conventional military balance on the 
peninsula now strongly favors the Republic of Korea and United 
States, North Korea now has nuclear weapons.
    For reasons I develop further in the pages that follow, we 
would be unwise to draw back from the world or take a big 
gamble on simply deciding to forgo certain types of military 
responsibilities. To be sure, we may choose not to carry out 
the next ``war of choice.'' But we may not always have a choice 
about when and where to fight; in a world with proliferating 
nuclear arsenals, transnational terrorists, and other threats 
that can reach out and touch us even from far away, what 
happens in other regions can affect Americans much more 
directly than we might prefer. In his retirement ceremony 
speech of August 31, 2011, the greatest general of his 
generation, David Petraeus, warned us that as a nation we do 
not always get to choose the wars we fight, and it was good 
advice. Rather than retrench, our primary focus in cutting the 
defense budget should be to look for ways to be more 
innovative, cost-effective, and brutally efficient in how we 
prepare for most possible contingencies and maintain existing 
obligations. It is not the time for America to come home from 
the world.
    Military budget cuts should not be, and cannot be, our main 
means to reducing the deficit. Cutting $350 billion over 10 
years, or perhaps up to $500 billion, would entail some risk to 
America's global interests. As such, it can only be justified 
on national security grounds if the nation's economy is 
strengthened substantially in the process. Nations with hollow 
economies cannot be secure indefinitely, so it is legitimate to 
view the debt as a national security threat, and economic 
renewal as a national security imperative. However, this idea 
only works if projected deficits are reduced enough to make a 
notable difference in America's economic prognosis. And that is 
only possible if broad-based deficit reduction occurs. As big 
as the defense budget is, moreover, it is only one of five big 
components of the federal budget of roughly comparable size--
the others being Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the 
sum total of other domestic programs ranging from science 
research to infrastructure development to federal support for 
education. In short, big defense cuts are only sound policy if 
they are accompanied by entitlement revisions and tax reforms 
that reduces spending and increases revenue.
    There is no exact point at which defense cuts become 
excessive and unwise. But make no mistake about it: we will 
have to cut into muscle, and not just fat or waste, to achieve 
even the $350 billion to $500 billion ten-year cuts that are 
now being taken as a given. Such reductions would constitute 
almost 10 percent of planned spending, above and beyond 
reductions that will occur as the wars end. This book attempts 
to develop a plan for accomplishing such reductions without 
jeopardizing the country's security interests. But I hope to 
show that even cuts of this size would be risky, and that 
deeper cuts would be too much. I reach this conclusion not as 
some superhawk or member of the ``military-industrial complex'' 
that Eisenhower warned us about, but as a Democrat, former 
Peace Corps volunteer, scientist by training, budget specialist 
by background, and independent scholar. And I agree with 
deficit hawks that we must look hard, in uncomfortable ways, 
for means of scaling back. But it is equally important not to 
be reckless in the effort. This book's argument is equally 
passionate about two points--that the military budget must play 
a major role in deficit reduction, but also that the process 
must not go too far and must be grounded in a sound national 
security strategy for the United States.
    There will be pain enough in carrying out the defense cuts 
already now mandated. My estimates are that the following kinds 
of changes would be needed:

    1. LA return of the size of the ground forces to Clinton-
era levels;
    2. LFurther reductions in some parts of the Navy and Air 
Force force structure, winding up for example with a Navy of 
about 250 ships (but making greater use of crew rotations by 
airplane to keep ships on forward deployment longer and more 
efficiently);
    3. LNo large-scale replacement for the Army's Future Combat 
System and a reduction in the size of the planned F-35 program 
by at least 40 percent;
    4. LSerious consideration of eliminating one leg of the 
nuclear triad and taking one nuclear weapons lab out of that 
business; and
    5. LFundamental redesign of the military retirement system 
broadly in line with the recent suggestions of the Defense 
Business Board and perhaps an increase in Tricare premiums for 
middle-age retirees as well as serious consideration of the end 
of military commissaries and exchanges.

    Such changes will hurt. And they will pose certain 
strategic risks. They are in my judgment acceptable nonetheless 
given the nation's economic plight, if done as part of broader 
federal deficit reduction and tax reform. But deeper cuts would 
not be.

STATEMENT OF MR. THOMAS DONNELLY, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR DEFENSE STUDIES, 
                     AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Smith, for the opportunity 
to testify today. I know we ``outside experts'' are an 
imperfect substitute for the former secretaries of defense who 
you had planned to hear from today, but given the gravity of 
the moment--I believe that the future health of the U.S. armed 
forces and the security of the United States may well be in the 
hands of the members of the ``Super Committee'' and, generally, 
in the consideration of our government's finances.
    That is not to say that I concur with Admiral Mike Mullen's 
view that our deficits and debts are the greatest security 
challenge we face. Quite the opposite: I am worried that our 
future prosperity depends first and foremost on our future 
security. I cannot imagine that today's global economy, itself 
a manifestation of American power and international leadership, 
will be nearly so fruitful absent the guarantees we provide. 
The fiscal problems of the federal government are neither the 
result of military spending, nor can they be cured by cutting 
military spending. And, of course, as a percentage of American 
wealth and federal spending, Pentagon budgets have been 
constantly cut since the 1980s. And during this administration, 
the Department of Defense has been the bill-payer of first and 
almost only choice, coughing up hundreds of billions of dollars 
while other agencies have been fed a diet rich in ``stimulus.''
    But rather than focus on the finances or even the 
programmatic consequences of the cuts in prospect--which are 
severe and, should Super-Committee ``sequestration'' or the 
equivalent come to pass, debilitating to our armed forces--I 
would like to talk a bit about the likely strategic 
consequences. It has become fashionable to talk about American 
``decline'' in the abstract, or to describe ``strategic risk'' 
in an anodyne fashion. And so I will take a quick tour of the 
strategic horizon, looking at particular global and regional 
balances of power that can only become more volatile with the 
diminished presence of American forces or the diminished 
capabilities that they may bring to bear.
    I derive the framework of this tour from the work of the 
Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel, the bipartisan--
nay, ``nonpartisan''--effort that was essentially the creation 
of this committee. The panel quickly discovered that the formal 
process of defense strategy-making in the QDR had become 
bankrupt, and thus was thrown back upon its own long experience 
and knowledge about the persistent patterns and habits of U.S. 
security strategy; that is, not what we have said we would do, 
but what we actually have done in the course of the post-World 
War II decades, during the time where America has come to its 
position of global leadership. This I offer also as the most 
reliable benchmark about what would be different about the 
world to come, the world without American leadership.
    The panel deduced four consistent U.S. national security 
interests:

    1. LThe defense of the American homeland;
    2. LAssured access to the ``commons'' on the seas, in the 
air, in space and in ``cyberspace'';
    3. LThe preservation of a favorable balance of power across 
Eurasia that prevents authoritarian domination of that region; 
and
    4. LProviding for the global ``common good'' through such 
actions as humanitarian aid, development assistance, and 
disaster relief.

    Carrying out the missions associated with securing these 
four fundamental interests have been the raison d'etre of U.S. 
military forces under presidents of both parties in times of 
conflict, of Cold-War competition, and in moments [of] relative 
stability and peace. Taken together, they define America's role 
in the world. I will consider how each might be affected by a 
loss of American military power.

                    Defense of the American Homeland

    The tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, if 
nothing else, provided a reminder of the primacy of the mission 
of defending the American homeland. That there has been no 
repeat of those terrifying attacks is both a surprise--
certainly I anticipated that there might be more to come--and a 
testament to the efforts made. The al Qaeda organization which 
conducted those attacks has been badly punished and our 
defenses vastly improved, indeed to the point where 
complacency, not ``overreaction,'' is as big a concern. The 
role of the Department of Defense has often been a supporting 
and secondary element in the immediate defense of the United 
States proper, but it nonetheless has brought immense 
capabilities to bear in that support; the military's 
intelligence-gathering contributions amount to tens of billions 
of dollars annually.
    Second, the distinction between homeland defense and 
foreign operations is very slim in the case of international 
terrorist groups. Homeland defense must not begin at the 
borders, and, if it is to continue to be effective, must be 
tactically and operationally offensive, preventing and 
disrupting attacks, not merely responding to them. September 11 
shattered our belief in ``strategic depth,'' that physical 
distance was sufficient to protect us against otherwise weak 
enemies.
    Lastly, we should not forget the full meaning of America's 
``homeland.'' The term traditionally is meant to incorporate 
all North America and the Caribbean Basin; it is something we 
share with our neighbors. Over the past decade, our 
neighborhood has become more dangerous, particularly to the 
south, where criminal gangs and criminal regimes are 
increasingly enveloped in a kind of syndicate--one that can 
include terrorist groups--that preys upon fragile democracies 
and which makes for violent acts even within the United States.
    One measure of the consequences of defense cuts is likely 
to be that the Defense Department's ``homeland commands''--
Northern and Southern commands--are prime targets for 
reductions, consolidation, even elimination under various 
``reform'' proposals that treat these headquarters, which are 
truly combatant commands, as ``overhead.'' But NORTHCOM is 
still in its infancy while SOUTHCOM has constantly been a 
neglected child and a source of ``savings'' in the post-Cold-
War years. Yet these two commands reflect our oldest and most 
critical security interests.
Access to the ``Commons''
    Describing the maritime, air, space and cyberspace 
``realms'' as ``international commons'' is an imprecise term--
there are, for example, sovereign waters and air space--but 
nonetheless these domains are critical components of 
international security and also commerce. And assured access, 
and in terms of war, dominance and supremacy, to these realms 
is a critical element of U.S. national security strategy.
    To observe that Americans are seafaring people or to 
describe the United States as a ``maritime power'' is hardly a 
controversial point. Even the most isolationist elements of the 
domestic political spectrum will support the power-projection 
posture of the U.S. Navy, despite its British imperial 
overtones. And the importance of secure sea lines of 
communication--particularly the shipping route that stretches 
from the Persian Gulf through the Red Sea, Indian Ocean to the 
Malacca Straits and South China Sea to Northeast Asia, which 
carries an immense and growing volume of the world's trade--
remains critical to international security. But a smaller Navy, 
even one with more-capable ships but fewer overseas bases, is 
less frequently present in places such as the South China Sea, 
where who ``rules the waves'' is open to doubt and a matter of 
potential conflict. Likewise, new technologies are allowing 
China and others to develop a range of ``anti-access'' and 
``area-denial'' capabilities that are shifting the naval 
balance. The U.S. Navy is as small as it has been since World 
War I; force reductions would both encourage adversaries and 
discourage allies or would-be strategic partners.
    But the cardinal virtue of U.S. military power--and, in the 
age of the aircraft carrier, even of naval power--has been the 
quality of American air power. Two decades ago, in the 
aftermath of the first Gulf War, U.S. air supremacy reached its 
zenith, fabled not only for its firepower but its unprecedented 
precision; war from the air was a uniquely American way of war. 
At the core of this mystique was the ability to mass and 
synchronize large swarms of tactical aircraft. This method of 
operations built a mountain of effects out of a molehill of 
airplanes, relying on access to bases in the theater of 
operations. The same technologies that threaten surface ships 
now hold these air bases at risk--but also, the swarms of 
``fourth generation'' F-15s, F-16s and F/A-18s are aging and 
their numbers are shrinking. The cuts in view could result in a 
fighter force half the size of the ``Desert Storm''-era armada. 
And the generation-long failure to modernize is felt most 
directly in the tactical air forces: the F-22 program was 
stopped at 187 Raptors when 750 were once planned, and the F-35 
would certainly be the prime target of future cuts.
    Access to space--which has long been ``militarized'' much 
to the advantage of the United States--is no longer a sure 
thing. And even where access might be retained, military 
dominance and supremacy are uncertain. This is a critical 
vulnerability for U.S. forces, whose weapons, operations, 
communications and more depend [on] it. As observed above, 
intelligence satellites are essential in even the smallest, 
most irregular operations against the tiniest terrorist groups, 
but the loss of larger networks in a conflict against a more 
sophisticated foe--and China is at the forefront in developing 
and recently testing anti-satellite systems--would be 
catastrophic.
    Strategic and operational thinking about ``cyberspace'' is 
still being developed, but the best analogies and precedents 
are to be found in regarding this realm as similar to the 
maritime domain. The Internet is indeed much more a venue for 
commerce and civilian communication than a military asset, 
though it is that; sharing information has been a key to the 
process of ``transformation.'' It has already been a domain for 
private ``pirates'' and used, notably by Russia, as a 
battlefield. No one is quite sure what it means to ``secure'' 
cyberspace, but suffice it to observe that the failure to do so 
in a significant way would be a critical test of international 
politics and an easily imaginable provocation to war.
    In sum, even as the ``common'' realms where commerce, 
communication and security intersect are expanding and the 
burdens of ``securing the commons'' or ``assuring free access'' 
to them appear to be growing, the U.S. military is already at 
full stretch. A fading of American power would inevitably 
result in a contest to control these commons.

                          Continental Balances

    The corollary of the commonplace observation that America 
is a ``maritime power'' is that U.S. strategic posture has 
been--and should return to--that of an ``offshore balancer,'' 
intervening only in conflicts across the Eurasian landmass to 
prevent a ``hostile hegemon'' from dominating Europe or the 
Middle East or East Asia. But, as quickly became clear to the 
members of the QDR Independent Panel, close attention to these 
continental balances has been the core of American strategy-
making for decades.
    The most obvious example and most obvious success is to be 
found in Europe--a continent that has been intertwined with the 
American security since the discovery of the ``New World.'' The 
pursuit of a ``Europe whole and free'' was the central goal of 
the Cold War, but even that was a recognition that World War II 
left the situation across the continent dangerous and unstable. 
Conversely, the end of the Cold War appears to have put a 
punctuation mark on centuries of conflict; it is hard to 
imagine a large-scale war in Europe, and that is a direct 
result not only of American ``offshore balancing'' but American 
presence and alliance-building since 1945. U.S. military 
presence in Europe is a shadow of its former self, though it 
remains critical as a ``lily pad'' for deployments elsewhere--
Libya is the most recent example but all the recent operations 
in the Middle East were enabled by Europe-based forces. And the 
unprecedented peace of Europe is itself a great blessing that 
comes at low cost.
    Likewise, the American commitment to the ``Middle East''--a 
very loose term--has grown even as we have been able to draw 
down in Europe. In 1979, U.S. Central Command did not even 
exist; the Carter Administration cobbled together a ``Rapid 
Deployment Joint Task Force'' in the aftermath of the Soviet 
invasion of Afghanistan that could neither deploy very rapidly 
nor bring much force to bear. Every president since then has 
found reason to take a larger hand in a very volatile but 
important region, from the 1987 reflagging of oil tankers to 
Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. In particular, we have come to see 
the region as many theaters in one. The focus of most efforts 
of the last generation has been on the Arab world, but it is 
increasingly clear that South Asia is a problem unto itself; we 
walk away from Pakistan only at extreme peril.
    Finally, our engagement in East Asia, north and south, on 
Pacific islands and ashore, is as long-lasting and, over time, 
as large as that in Europe. But no event is of greater 
geopolitical import than the rise of China; how we respond to 
that--and the course of China itself--is the salient issue of 
the moment and for the future. We have treaty allies in Japan, 
South Korea and elsewhere, whose safety, prosperity and--
perhaps surprisingly but assuredly--democracy depend upon our 
regional posture and our military power. What is not surprising 
is that China is lately making the most mischief in the South 
China Sea and Southeast Asia, where we were once constantly 
present and supremely powerful. Ironically, the one nation to 
resist U.S. force, Vietnam, is leading the call for [America] 
to return to the scene.
The Global Good
    One of the supreme reasons why the American exercise of 
military power attracts even former adversaries is that, at 
least in contrast to others, we can and do use our forces not 
only to deter, punish and defeat but to relieve, aid and 
develop. Be it a response to a humanitarian crisis--a tsunami, 
a nuclear meltdown or a combination of the two--or an uncertain 
and open-ended attempt to replace what John Quincy Adams called 
``derelict'' states with legitimate government, contributing to 
a common good beyond the strict national interest has been and 
ought to remain an important mission for the U.S. military.
    To protest that, especially in tough times, we must 
conserve our strength only for those occasions that demand 
``warfighting'' capabilities or the kind of sophisticated 
operations and high technologies only possessed by our armed 
forces is, if experience counts for anything, to expect too 
much--or too little. Given the character of our political 
principles and the extent of our power, the kind of hard-nosed 
``realism'' of the international relations professoriat is a 
theory that American strategic practice is unlikely to fulfill. 
It is not realistic to expect the United States to be like 
Bismarck's Prussia.
    Moreover, the failure to act in pursuit of a global and 
common good would make the practice of harder power more 
difficult. The rest of the world sees how we behave--indeed, 
they spend most of their own strategy-making energy in first 
trying to figure out what we will do--and behaves accordingly. 
If the United States falters in its attempts at making the 
world a better place, if we think we can ``lead from behind,'' 
we will find it harder to make it a very safe place.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to the committee's 
questions.

   STATEMENT OF MR. MAX BOOT, JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK SENIOR FELLOW IN 
        NATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

    Chairman McKeon, Congressman Smith, members of the 
Committee:
    Thank you for inviting me here to talk about the future of 
the American armed services. That future is very much in doubt 
at the moment. The armed forces face the most formidable 
enemies they have encountered in decades. These enemies do not 
carry guns and they do not plant IEDs. Rather they wear green 
eyeshades and wield complex spreadsheets. But make no mistake: 
the impact of budget cuts has the potential to devastate our 
armed forces. It will, in fact, do more damage to their 
fighting capacity than the Taliban, Al Qaeda, or any other 
external foe could possibly inflict.
    Already this year the budget has been cut by approximately 
$478 billion--$78 billion in cuts announced in January by the 
administration, and another $400 billion under the Budget 
Control Act this summer. Now we face the prospect of 
sequestration this fall--which could mean another $600 billion 
in cuts, or more, over the next decade. Hundreds of billions 
more will be lost assuming the disappearance of funding for 
Overseas Contingency Operations as we wind down operations in 
Iraq and Afghanistan. Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic 
and Budgetary Assessments estimates that in all the defense 
budget could decline by 31 percent over the next decade. That 
compares with cuts of 53 percent after the Korean War, 26 
percent after the Vietnam War, and 34 percent after the end of 
the Cold War.
    Some might argue that there is nothing wrong with this--
that we always downsize our military after the conclusion of 
hostilities. Leave aside the fact that hostilities have not yet 
ended--our troops are still in combat every day in Afghanistan 
and they still face the constant prospect of attack in Iraq. 
Moreover they continue to conduct military operations against 
Somalian pirates and Al Qaeda terrorists which put them in 
harm's way on a regular basis. It is beyond bizarre that we are 
rushing to spend the peace dividend at a time when we are not 
actually at peace. But, again, leave that aside for a moment, 
and simply consider the consequences of past drawdowns (as I 
laid out in the Washington Post last year).
    After the American Revolution, our armed forces shrank from 
35,000 men in 1778 (plus tens of thousands of militiamen) to 
just 10,000 by 1800. The result was that we were ill-prepared 
to fight the Whiskey Rebellion, the quasi-war with France, the 
Barbary wars and the War of 1812--all of which might have been 
averted if the new republic had had an army and a navy that 
commanded the respect of prospective enemies, foreign and 
domestic.
    After the Civil War, our armed forces shrank from more than 
a million men in 1865 to just 50,000 in 1870. This made the 
failure of Reconstruction inevitable--there were simply too few 
federal troops left to enforce the rule of law in the South and 
to overcome the ruthless terrorist campaign waged by the Ku 
Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups. Segregation would 
remain a blot on U.S. history for another century.
    After World War I, our armed forces shrank from 2.9 million 
men in 1918 to 250,000 in 1928. The result? World War II became 
more likely and its early battles more costly. Imagine how 
Hitler might have acted in 1939 had several hundred thousand 
American troops been stationed in France and Poland. Under such 
circumstances, it is doubtful he would ever have launched his 
blitzkrieg. Likewise, Japanese leaders might have thought twice 
about attacking Pearl Harbor if their homeland had been in 
imminent danger of being pulverized by thousands of American 
bombers and their fleet sunk by dozens of American aircraft 
carriers.
    After World War II, our armed forces shrank from 12 million 
men in 1945 to 1.4 million in 1950. (The Army went from 8.3 
million soldiers to 593,000.) The result was that ill-trained, 
ill-armed draftees were almost pushed off the Korean Peninsula 
by the North Korean invasion. The very first American ground 
force to encounter the invaders--Task Force Smith--was routed 
and decimated because it did not have enough ammunition to stop 
North Korean tanks. Kim Il Sung was probably emboldened to 
aggression in the first place by the rapid dissolution of 
America's wartime strength and indications from parsimonious 
policymakers that South Korea was outside our ``defense 
perimeter.''
    After the Korean War, our armed forces as a whole underwent 
a smaller decline--from 3.6 million men in 1952 to 2.5 million 
in 1959--but the Army lost almost half its active-duty strength 
in those years. President Dwight Eisenhower's New Look relied 
on relatively inexpensive nuclear weapons to deter the Soviet 
Union and its allies, rather than a large, costly standing 
army. As a result the Army that was sent to Vietnam was not 
prepared to fight guerrillas--an enemy that could not be 
defeated with a hand-held Davy Crockett nuclear launcher.
    After the Vietnam War, our armed forces shrank from 3.5 
million personnel in 1969 to 2 million in 1979. This was the 
era of the ``hollow army,'' notorious for its inadequate 
equipment, discipline, training and morale. Our enemies were 
emboldened to aggression, ranging from the anti-American 
revolutions in Nicaragua and Iran to the Soviet invasion of 
Afghanistan. We are still paying a heavy price for the Iranian 
Revolution, with Iran on the verge of going nuclear.
    After the end of the Cold War and the Persian Gulf War, our 
armed forces shrank from 2.1 million personnel in 1989 to 1.3 
million in 1999; the Army went from 769,000 soldiers to 
479,000. The result: an Army desperately overstretched by its 
subsequent deployments. Part of the reason too few troops were 
sent to stabilize Iraq in 2003 was that senior officials 
thought there simply weren't enough to go round.
    We are still suffering the consequences of the post-Cold 
War drawdown. The Navy, down from 546 ships in 1990 to 284 
today (the lowest level since 1930), is finding it hard to 
fight Somali pirates, police the Persian Gulf and deter Chinese 
expansionism in the Western Pacific. The Army and Marine Corps 
are forced to maintain a punishing operational tempo that 
drives out too many bright young officers and NCOs. The Air 
Force, which has been reduced from 82 fighter squadrons in 1990 
to 39 today, has to fly decades-old aircraft until they are 
falling apart. The average age of our tanker aircraft is 47 
years, of strategic bombers 34 years, and some older fighter 
aircraft are literally falling out of the sky.
    The bipartisan Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel 
led by Stephen Hadley and William Perry found last year ``a 
growing gap between our interests and our military capability 
to protect those interests in the face of a complex and 
challenging security environment.'' The panel further noted:
    ``There is increased operational tempo for a force that is 
much smaller than it was during the years of the Cold War. In 
addition, the age of major military systems has increased 
within all the services, and that age has been magnified by 
wear and tear through intensified use. . . . The Department of 
Defense now faces the urgent need to recapitalize large parts 
of the force. Although this is a long-standing problem, we 
believe the Department needs to come to grips with this 
requirement. The general trend has been to replace more with 
fewer more-capable systems. We are concerned that, beyond a 
certain point, quality cannot substitute for quantity.''
    The Hadley-Perry commission recommended that ``as the force 
modernizes, we will need to replace inventory on at least a 
one-for-one basis, with an upward adjustment in the number of 
naval vessels and certain air and space assets.'' It also 
recommended maintaining the size of our current ground forces 
because ``the increased capability of our ground forces has not 
reduced the need for boots on the ground in combat zones.''
    Both of those recommendations are absolutely right. And 
both are increasingly difficult to carry out given the 
magnitude of defense cuts already agreed upon. They will become 
an utter impossibility if sequestration occurs. You have heard 
the services say that they can deal with the current level of 
cuts but that's only because they're being good soldiers. In 
reality even the current cutbacks are already cutting into 
muscle; sequestration, if it were to occur, would be akin to 
lopping off entire limbs. In either case American power will 
not survive in its present form.
    Those who argue in favor of cuts point out that defense 
spending has doubled in real terms since 9/11. That's true but 
much of the spending has gone to current operations, personnel 
costs, ballooning health care costs, and other necessities--it 
has not been used to recapitalize our aging inventory of 
weapons systems or to substantially expand a ground force that 
was cut by a third since the Cold War.
    Instead, even as we continue to fight in Afghanistan and 
Iraq, the Defense Department has been eliminating or reducing 
one system [after] another. Defense Secretary Bob Gates closed 
headquarters, eliminated general-officer slots, and even shut 
down the whole U.S. Joint Forces Command. He cancelled or 
capped 30 procurement programs that, if taken to completion, 
would have cost more than $300 billion. The cancellations 
included the Army's Future Combat System, the Marines' 
Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, the VH-71 presidential 
helicopter, the Navy's CG(X) next-generation cruiser, the Air 
Force's F-22 fighter and C-17 cargo plane, and the Airborne 
Laser. Other programs, such as the Navy's new aircraft carrier, 
were delayed, while the planned buy of F-35 fighters, Littoral 
Combat Ships, and other systems was reduced.
    And it's not just weapons systems, we're losing--it's 
personnel. Before leaving office, Gates announced that he was 
whittling down Army and Marine end-strength by 47,000 
personnel, reversing the increase in the size of the ground 
force that he had pushed through to deal with the wars in 
Afghanistan and Iraq. Further cuts in end-strength are 
undoubtedly coming as a result of greater budget cuts, thus 
throwing out of work--at a time of already high unemployment--
tens of thousands of men and women who have signed up to serve 
their country.
    That may make sense if you assume we will have no need of 
large numbers of ground combat forces in the future, but as 
Gates himself said earlier this year: ``When it comes to 
predicting the nature and location of our next military 
engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. We 
have never once gotten it right, from the Mayaguez to Grenada, 
Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kuwait, Iraq, and more--we 
had no idea a year before any of these missions that we would 
be so engaged.'' That's absolutely correct, and because the 
world is such an uncertain, dangerous place we need the 
deterrence and flexibility provided by a large ground force. 
But maintaining soldiers in an all-volunteer force is 
expensive, and you can bet that they will be sacrificed to 
achieve arbitrary budget targets.
    This points to a larger issue: What strategy are we 
following here? Is there any strategy at all? None is apparent 
from the outside--or, from what my friends in the Pentagon tell 
me, from the inside either. It has been said this is a budget 
in search of a strategy, but we will be hard-put to achieve 
all, or even most, of our strategic objectives with a third-
less money. The Hadley-Perry commission identified four 
enduring security interests for the United States: ``The 
defense of the American homeland; assured access to the sea, 
air, space, and cyberspace; the preservation of a favorable 
balance of power across Eurasia that prevents authoritarian 
domination of that region; providing for the global common good 
through such actions as humanitarian aid, development 
assistance, and disaster relief.'' None of those interests will 
change no matter what budget decisions are made in Washington; 
all that will change will be our ability to defend those 
interests.
    Certainly there has not been--nor is there likely to be--a 
decreased demand for the armed forces. They are constantly 
having new missions thrown their way, from defending our 
nation's computer networks to deposing a dictator in Libya and 
providing relief to Japanese tsunami survivors. Those who call 
for austerity in our defense budget do not suggest which 
missions, which specific operations, they will willingly 
forego. And when they do the suggestions are usually 
insufficient to achieve serious savings. For instance I have 
heard it suggested that we could save a lot of money by pulling 
our forces (currently 80,000 strong) out of Europe. But in 
fact, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld discovered, that 
is simply a prescription for incurring higher short-term costs 
because we have to recreate in the United States the base 
infrastructure that already exists in Europe. And of course 
troops based in the U.S. will be farther away from where they 
are likely to deploy: the Middle East, Africa, and Central 
Asia. By not having them forward-deployed, we will lose 
significant strategic flexibility, political influence, and 
deterrence capacity.
    Don't get me wrong. It is impossible to deny that there is 
waste, fraud and abuse in the defense budget. The problem is 
that, as you know, there is no line item for waste, fraud, and 
abuse, and hence no way to pare only wasteful spending. Indeed 
it is hard to agree about what constitutes wasteful spending 
since every defense program has its passionate defenders, 
especially here on the Hill, and it is possible to make 
compelling arguments in favor of them all. We all know that the 
procurement process is bloated, but I have never [heard] anyone 
suggest in a compelling or realistic way how to reform the 
procurement process so that we can buy substantially more with 
less. Indeed as we pare back our programs we increase unit 
costs and only heighten complaints about runaway acquisitions 
programs. At the end of the day, less money results in less 
capability.
    And less capability is something we cannot afford at a time 
when we face so many actual or potential threats: threats from 
a rising China, a nuclear North Korea, an Iran on the verge of 
going nuclear, a Pakistan that is threatened as never before by 
jihadists, and by numerous terrorist groups, ranging from the 
Afghan and Pakistani Taliban to the Shabab in Somalia and Al 
Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, all of whom continue to pose a 
significant threat despite Osama bin Laden's demise. These 
groups threaten not only vital U.S. interests abroad but also 
increasingly the American homeland itself, as seen from AQAP's 
attempt to mail parcel bombs to the U.S. and from the Pakistani 
Taliban's sponsorship of an attempt to set off a car bomb in 
Times Square. Both of those attempts are recent--they occurred 
last year. As the more recent frenzy over a possible terrorist 
attack on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 makes clear, such 
threats are not going away, despite all of the counter-
terrorism success we have enjoyed.
    China presents a particularly worrisome long-threat: It is 
in the midst of a rapid defense buildup which has allowed it to 
field a stealth fighter, an aircraft carrier, diesel 
submarines, cyberweapons, ``carrier-killer'' and satellite-
killer ballistic missiles and numerous other missiles. Even as 
things stand China is increasingly able to contest the US 
Navy's freedom of movement in the Western Pacific. As long ago 
as 2008, Rand predicted that by 2020 the U.S. would not be able 
to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack, and that was before the 
surprise unveiling of China's J-20 Stealth fighter or its new 
aircraft carrier; the timeline for American dominance being 
threatened is only accelerating. The safety of U.S. bases in 
Okinawa, Guam, and elsewhere in the region can no longer be 
assured, creating the potential for a 21st century Pearl 
Harbor. That trend will be exacerbated--leading to a 
potentially dangerous shift in the balance of power--unless we 
build up our shrinking fleet. But given the budget cuts being 
discussed here we will have trouble maintaining the current 
size of our fleet much less expanding it.
    We have already cancelled the F-22 and cut back the 
procurement of the F-35. Is the F-35 to be cancelled altogether 
or cut back to such an extent that we will have no answer to 
the fifth-generation fighters emanating from Russia and China? 
If that were to come to pass, it would signal the death knell 
for American power in the Pacific. If our power wanes, our 
allies will have to do what they need to do to ensure their own 
security. It's easy to imagine, under such a scenario, states 
such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan acquiring their own 
nuclear weapons, thus setting off a dangerous and destabilizing 
nuclear arms race with China.
    Even given the dire consequences, it might still make sense 
to cut the defense budget--if it were bankrupting us and 
undermining our economic well-being which, we would all agree, 
is the foundation of our national security. But that's not the 
case. Defense spending, including supplemental appropriations, 
is less than 5 percent of gross domestic product and less than 
20 percent of the federal budget. Both figures are much lower 
than the historic norm. That means our armed forces are much 
less costly in relative terms than they were throughout much of 
the 20th century. Even at roughly $550 billion, our core 
defense budget is eminently affordable. It is, in fact, a 
bargain considering the historic consequences of letting our 
guard down.
    The United States armed forces have been the greatest force 
for good the world has seen during the past century. They 
defeated Nazism and Japanese imperialism, deterred and defeated 
Communism, and stopped numerous lesser evils--from Slobodan 
Milosevic's ethnic cleansing to the oppression perpetrated by 
Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I cannot 
imagine a world in which America is not the leading military 
power. It would be a brutal, Hobbesian place in which 
aggressors rule and the rule of law is trampled on. And yet 
Congress will be helping to usher in such a New World Disorder 
if it continues to slash defense spending at the currently 
contemplated rate.
      



                   THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL DEFENSE AND
               THE U.S. MILITARY TEN YEARS AFTER 9/11:
                        PERSPECTIVES FROM FORMER
                     SERVICE CHIEFS AND VICE CHIEFS

                              ----------                              




                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES



                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                      ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                              ----------                              


                              HEARING HELD

                            OCTOBER 4, 2011

                              ----------                              


                               WITNESSES

General John P. Jumper, USAF, Retired

17th Chief of Staff, United States Air Force

General Richard A. Cody, USA, Retired

31st Vice Chief of Staff, United States Army

Lieutenant General H. Steven Blum, USA, Retired

25th Chief, National Guard Bureau
?

      
=======================================================================


               PREPARED STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY WITNESSES

                            October 4, 2011

=======================================================================

      
   STATEMENT OF GENERAL JOHN P. JUMPER, USAF, RETIRED, 17TH CHIEF OF 
                     STAFF, UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

    What threats to our homeland can we anticipate as we look 
forward?
    As we attempt to anticipate future threats it's important 
to remember our track record on successful predictions. Any 
objective assessment must begin with the fact that we are lousy 
predictors. Before the first Gulf war (Desert Shield, Desert 
Storm) we had no idea how the likes of Saddam Hussein, Slobodan 
Milosevic, or Osama bin Laden, would perpetrate aggressions and 
atrocities that dominated US policy and shaped military actions 
for the next 20 years.
    We are safe in assuming two things.

    1. LThe terrorist threat will continue to pose the greatest 
threat inside our borders and to US forces and interests 
overseas. This danger becomes more serious as we consider that 
nuclear weapons get ever closer to the hands of irresponsible, 
rogue leaders throughout the world.
    2. LWe must be prepared for more than counterinsurgencies. 
As nations gain the power to resist US policy in ways that 
could include aggressive action, our ability to deter and then 
react rapidly with substantive capabilities is as important as 
ever.

    The argument is not whether aggressive foreign nations 
harbor ambitions of invading the US. I believe it's more a 
matter of reacting to, or being dragged into, conflicts 
perpetrated by frictions or atrocities that compel us to react. 
In Bosnia and Kosovo we led a NATO force that reacted to 
ongoing genocide. What should we be prepared for if frictions 
arise that involve allies in Asia or South America?
    We have been able to react to the spectrum of conventional 
warfare (Iraq, Serbia) as well as counterinsurgency operations 
in Afghanistan because the US military forces were equipped 
with needed capabilities, were able to modify or adapt existing 
technology, or were able to rapidly field necessary 
capabilities quickly. All the while we have maintained a 
nuclear deterrent and kept a watchful eye on nuclear 
proliferation and must continue to do so with focused attention 
on nuclear safety, reliability and security.

    What are appropriate roles and missions for the US 
Military?
    The roles and missions carved out for the military are time 
tested and well understood. I believe that a certain amount of 
overlap and redundancy is necessary for absolutely critical 
functions. In the field, you find the military services falling 
all over themselves to do what it takes to get the mission 
accomplished. Joint-minded operations are being carried out 
every day. Behind the scenes of any major military operation 
you will find that very little is done by one service alone.
    We could do much more to allow the services to better 
define the limits of necessary overlap and to further 
interdependence on one another's capabilities. There is 
absolutely no doubt that this could best be done by development 
of Joint Concepts of Operation that requires services to think 
through how we plan to deploy and fight in various situations, 
and to define and limit the areas of necessary overlap. This 
process would force new ways of deriving requirements and 
reshape the acquisition process by demanding that we describe 
how we are going to fight before we decide what we will buy to 
fight with.
    The lessons we are learning in this new age of warfare must 
be applied with due respect for lessons of the past. The key 
word is balance. As we build capabilities in counterinsurgency 
we must be respectful of the very traditional and conventional 
capabilities that are emerging from potential adversaries who 
have watched and learned from US military successes over the 
past 20 years. The common understanding of asymmetrical 
advantage is the use of low technology to defeat high 
technology. We easily forget that the asymmetrical advantage of 
the United States is our technology multiplied many-fold by the 
ingenuity of our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines to 
rapidly shape our technological advantage in the course of 
battle.
    The military also has a role as responsible stewards of 
nuclear weapons. As we reduce our nuclear posture it must be 
with the full support of Congress to maintain funding for the 
safety, reliability and security of the weapons that remain; to 
include relentless attention to counter proliferation.
    As we enter the cyber age it will be necessary to do much 
more than to defend networks and data sources. We will need to 
develop the necessary weapons to fight back in a cyber-
engagement. As the services and agencies develop the doctrine 
of cyber intelligence preparation; forensic and predictive 
analysis; and, doctrine of defense and offense, Congressional 
support for the weapons and tools of this new type of warfare 
will be critical.

    What are the consequences of further cuts to the military 
over the next decade and what choices do we have to make?
    It will be extremely difficult for the services to 
implement even the currently projected cuts. If the Joint 
Select Committee fails to reach consensus the resulting 
additional cuts to the defense budget would lead to dramatic 
loss of capability and the adverse impact on morale of a force 
that has served the nation so well for the decade of the war on 
terror.
    It is unfortunate that when the services are faced with 
large budget cuts the easiest targets are, in many ways, the 
most damaging. We tend to hit training, readiness and research 
& development first as we attempt to save force structure. If 
all of the projected cuts are implemented, all of these budget 
categories will be impacted. Thus, our ability to repair and 
reset the force; to recapitalize the force; to recover lost 
training; to have the spare parts to keep current systems 
operating; and, to retain our technology advantage through 
Research and Development would be simultaneously and severely 
impacted.
    Indeed there is much that can be done to realize greater 
efficiency with current resources. If significant force 
reductions eventuate, they must be done with proper balance 
between Active Duty, National Guard and Reserve forces. All 
must share in eventual drawdowns and all must share 
responsibility for all assigned missions and the operational 
tempo demanded by these missions. This cannot be done without 
the support of the Congress as our military leadership makes 
difficult recommendations.
    I also believe that enormous savings are available in the 
logistics functions if the full power of best business 
practices and competition can be brought to bear. Again, the 
Congress must stand behind our military leaders as they 
struggle to find solutions.
    In any case our Nation's Military Leadership will be asked 
to recommend reductions more severe than any I have seen in my 
career. They cannot do so alone.

    What are the impacts of reducing force structure and end 
strength?
    Reductions in end strength and force structure must be tied 
to a realistic strategy and deliberate policy decisions that 
can still be supported in the face of cuts. Our current 
policies of support to alliances, forward presence and 
stationing, rapid global response, credible deterrence and the 
ability to sustain operations will all be called into question.
    In many cases a proper balance for the United States may 
call for the redefinition of our alliances and reconsideration 
of our fair share of defense relationships. These decisions may 
permit prudent reductions in permanent commitments overseas. 
However, as an American and a former member of the world's 
greatest military I believe it is our obligation to maintain a 
force able to react with authority to instabilities and 
atrocities in the world when so directed, and to be able to do 
so rapidly and effectively.

    What are the implications of changes in global force 
posture/increasing US isolationism?
    In a world that is on a slippery slope of instability, 
ungoverned pockets of terrorist growth, rogue leaders in 
control of nuclear weapons and growing disparity between the 
world's richest and poorest, it is unreasonable that the 
world's only great benign superpower should drift into 
isolationism.
    As stated earlier, the time is appropriate to reassess our 
alliances and our commitments to them, however, it does not 
seem reasonable to back away from nations who struggle to 
implement political structures that support self-determination 
and the liberties promoted by our own policies.
    There is no doubt that US military basing and presence has 
been a force for stability in the world. Even if redefined and 
deliberately reduced our forward partnerships are important 
pillars of our credibility and visible signs of our commitment 
and should not be abandoned.

STATEMENT OF GENERAL RICHARD A. CODY, USA, RETIRED, 31ST VICE CHIEF OF 
                       STAFF, UNITED STATES ARMY

    On 8 April 2008 I testified before this Committee as the 
Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. Then, I was honored to 
represent the Nation's one million plus Soldiers, nearly 
600,000 of whom were serving on Active Duty and over 250,000 of 
whom were deployed worldwide, most on 15 month combat tours, as 
I testified on issues critical to the current and long term 
readiness of the U.S. Army. Today, I am again honored to 
testify before you as a private citizen, a retired Soldier, but 
one who continues to do what I can to support our outstanding 
Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen.
    Many things have changed since April 2008. The surge in 
Iraq has ended and the Army is on course to withdraw the 
remaining 45,000 Soldiers by the end of the year; we have 
surged more forces into Afghanistan. The end strength growth of 
65,000 additional Soldiers that we started in 2004 is complete, 
though now there is movement to reduce the Army's active duty 
strength by significant numbers. The Army has completed the 
restructuring of the force and just finished the largest BRAC, 
MILCON and global repositioning of our Army since World War II; 
all while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today our U.S. 
economy is in crisis mode, and probably most importantly, we 
have now been at war for over 10 years.
    That said, many things have not changed. In 2008 I reported 
to you that the world we live in is exceedingly dangerous. 
Recent events in Southwest Asia, the Pacific, and the Arab 
Spring only highlight this fact, in spite of courageous efforts 
of our service men and women. I also reported that our Army was 
out of balance, that repeated tours of 12 months in combat with 
only 13 months back before deploying again was putting 
tremendous stress on the All Volunteer Army and their Families. 
Today that stress is still there as the Army continues to 
deploy Soldiers on 12 month combat tours with less than 24 
months between tours. I testified then that we were consuming 
our strategic readiness, people and equipment, with repeated 
tours in the harshest environments we have ever fought in. And 
most importantly, that our ability to man, equip and train for 
full spectrum operations somewhere else in the world, while 
fighting the current battles in Iraq and Afghanistan, was not 
possible.
    In 2008 I reported that the cumulative impact of 6 years of 
Continuing Resolutions was causing significant problems within 
the Services' ability to run their programs, prepare our 
Soldiers for their next rotation and to reset the equipment; 
equipment that has been in combat for over 6 years. Today we 
enter another Fiscal Year with a CR while at war. It is one 
thing to have to deal with the uncertainty of our enemies and 
what new threat to prepare for. But it is entirely another to 
have to deal with uncertainty of year to year budgets and what 
resources will be available to sustain today's fight and reset 
an Army that has been at war for over 10 years for the next 
fight.
    As Congress, the Pentagon and the Executive Branch wrestle 
with the budget reduction required by the Budget Control Act, 
the real questions with regard to the Services' budget is 
simple: What missions do you want our military to continue to 
perform? What threats do you want our military to counter? What 
level of readiness do you want the military to sustain? History 
has taught us that we have not been very good at predicting 
where, when and against whom, the U.S. military will have to 
fight to protect the national interest and the security of this 
nation and its 315 million citizens. Simply put, when we size, 
scope and resource our military for the peaceful and U.S. 
friendly world we hope for, and not the dangerous, hostile and 
unpredictable world we live in, it is the American service men 
and women, and our nation, that we put at risk.
    During my six years in the Pentagon as the Army's G-3 and 
as Vice Chief, the Congress has always responded to the 
critical needs of our force, especially during the early years 
of operation Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. It is well 
documented that we entered this Global War on terrorism 
woefully short of equipment, resulting from the defense budget 
cuts in the late 90's after the first Gulf War, especially for 
our Guard and Reserve forces, and Congress responded. That 
spirit of support by this Congress is still needed today.
    Thank you and I look forward to answering your questions.

  STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL H. STEVEN BLUM, USA, RETIRED, 25TH 
                      CHIEF, NATIONAL GUARD BUREAU

    Thank you for the opportunity to testify today before the 
House Armed Services Committee on the Future of National 
Defense and the U.S. Military Ten Years After 9/11. Throughout 
my 42 years of service in uniform to this nation, I have found 
that the House Armed Services Committee has always been able to 
provide outstanding non-partisan support. It has taken the 
often difficult, but always necessary, actions to ensure that 
our men and women in uniform have the resources and policies 
that make it possible for them to accomplish their myriad 
missions.
    Today, we face a security environment that may be the most 
complex and dangerous in our nation's history. The 
international security landscape shifts literally every day. As 
a result, our nation requires more than ever of its armed 
forces. At the same time, fiscal realities force constraints on 
current and future defense budgets. To state the obvious and 
this challenge faces not just the military but every sector of 
our society--we must find ways to do more with less. To do this 
job right, we should establish the National Security Strategy 
independently of budget constraints. Strategy must come first. 
Only then can we make meaningful decisions, based on informed 
dialogue, to determine how best to accomplish our strategy 
within existing fiscal constraints.
    Let us recognize that today we have the most experienced, 
professional and capable military force ever to serve our 
nation. We must maintain this peerless military readiness and 
capacity to protect our nation against often uncertain and 
sometimes unpredicted threats. We also must avoid repeating 
past mistakes when numbers and parochial interests, rather than 
geopolitical realities, drove decisions and produced unexpected 
and undesirable second and third order effects.
    As this committee considers and deliberates the tough 
choices our nation faces, I ask you to consider the strategic 
approach being embraced today by many of the most successful 
for-profit corporations around the world. They are responding 
to difficult market conditions by sizing their fulltime 
professional work force to handle the lowest expected level of 
business activity. At the same time, they are building a part-
time workforce designed to handle the largest expected surge 
requirements. With this strategy, these excellence-focused 
companies can focus deployment of capital on cost-effective 
modernization, profit-enhancing expansion, and research and 
development. They avoid committing themselves to pay, benefits 
and entitlements commitments that inexorably diminish 
performance now and in the future.
    Does not this enlightened strategy argue for increased 
reliance on the National Guard and Reserves? History would 
suggest that this task will fall to this body. When it 
inevitably does, remember this.
    The performance of the National Guard and Reserves in the 
decade following 9/11 has been nothing short of stellar. They 
have consistently met and exceeded all mission requirements 
both overseas and at home. Their truly exceptional service and 
sacrifice argues forcefully for consideration of an expansion 
of their role and significance in our National Security 
Strategy. I respectfully commend to the members of this 
committee a white paper entitled ``The National Guard: A Great 
Value Today and In the Future'' by General Craig R. McKinley, 
current Chief of the National Guard Bureau, published March 31, 
2011. It is a work worthy of your time when considering cost 
versus force structure options. It is a fact that when you call 
out the Guard and Reserves, you indeed call out America. The 
value of such a powerful national capability? Priceless!
    Thank you for what you do for our nation, and for the 
opportunity to appear before this committee and hopefully 
contribute to resolving the very serious issues at hand.
      



                   THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL DEFENSE AND
               THE U.S. MILITARY TEN YEARS AFTER 9/11:
                   PERSPECTIVES OF FORMER CHAIRMEN OF
                    THE COMMITTEES ON ARMED SERVICES

                              ----------                              




                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES


 
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                      ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                              ----------                              


                              HEARING HELD

                            OCTOBER 12, 2011

                              ----------                              


                               WITNESSES

The Honorable John W. Warner

Chairman, Senate Committee on Armed Services (1999-2001,
  2003-2007)

The Honorable Duncan L. Hunter

Chairman, House Committee on Armed Services (2002-2006)

The Honorable Ike Skelton

Chairman, House Committee on Armed Services (2007-2010)
?

      
=======================================================================


               PREPARED STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY WITNESSES

                            October 12, 2011

=======================================================================

      
 STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN W. WARNER, CHAIRMAN, SENATE COMMITTEE 
                ON ARMED SERVICES (1999-2001, 2003-2007)

    I am deeply privileged to accept the Committee's invitation 
to testify in this very important series of hearings regarding 
the future of our nation's defense posture.
    I am joined today by two highly valued colleagues Duncan 
Hunter and Ike Skelton. It's interesting to note that each of 
us had a very long period of service on our respective Armed 
Services Committees and each served, at various times, as a 
Chairman and as a Ranking Member. Likewise, we alternated over 
many years being the Chair of the House-Senate Conference 
Committees and never failed in getting an authorization bill--
on behalf of the men and women of the armed forces--to be 
signed into law by a sequence of Presidents.
    Working with our Committee colleagues during our tenure, we 
strengthened the foundation of laws that today supports our 
nation's defense posture and provides for the needs of our 
brave uniformed personnel and their families.
    Today, the citizens of our nation rank members of the armed 
forces at the very top of public esteem.
    That leads me to the first of several points I will offer 
today.
    The concept of an all-volunteer force had its origins 
during the period--1969 to 1974--when I was privileged to serve 
as Undersecretary, then Secretary of the U.S. Navy. A very 
serious, costly war was in progress to preserve freedom for the 
people of South Vietnam. There was substantial controversy 
among elements of our population; and, month by month, the 
controversy became more intense. I well remember appearing to 
testify, time and time again, before the Committees of 
Congress.
    This history you know well but out of this cauldron emerged 
the law, regarded by many, upon passage, a big ``gamble'' which 
Congress thrust onto the military.
    As you know well, the concept has worked exceptionally 
well; indeed well beyond any expectations.
    The challenge facing Congress today, is not just to 
preserve what we have, but make it even stronger.
    I say most respectfully, every action the Committee takes 
must keep that challenge in mind.
    My next concerns are the proliferation of weapons of mass 
destruction and how rogue elements, and persons participating 
in violent extremism, can interact to threaten our way of life 
and that of other nations.
    As you make your programs and other budget decisions, place 
emphasis on how we can increase and support new ideas in the 
fields of intelligence and surveillance. In these areas spend 
wisely; and, accept a level of risk with new innovations. Our 
military will always do their best, at whatever sacrifice; but 
every citizen must help in their own way.
    As you look to future programs I urge your support for 
innovations to come in the unmanned systems. About a decade, or 
more, ago I introduced legislation directing each of the 
services to place greater emphasis on such programs, with 
specific benchmarks and dates for each service to meet. There 
was strong opposition from all Department of Defense; but, with 
the strong support of the two House leaders sitting with me 
today the language survived in Conference and became law. 
Within but a few years thereafter each of the Services needed 
no inducement to move out way ahead of the benchmarks with the 
many systems operational today. Now it's an international race 
and we must stay well ahead.
    As I closed out my 30 years in the Senate I worked again 
with the bipartisan team to write a new G.I. Bill. Again, the 
Authorizing Committees did it; and, wherever I go service 
persons step forward to thank us for including as beneficiaries 
families as alternates for the educational benefits earned by 
the uniformed member.
    May I share a personal story? I was privileged to speak 
just months ago at the Navy Post Graduate School at Monterey, 
California. As guests were filing past me to say good-bye a 
proud husband and wife stopped to say we are soon to be blessed 
with our first child, whereupon her hands dropped, and she said 
``you made it possible for this child to have my husband's G.I. 
Bill.'' Having advanced my career largely because of the old 
G.I. Bill, I shall always remember this young happy family.
    All of us who have had the good fortune to serve in 
Congress must remain ever mindful of the needs and hopes of 
others.
    I thank you for this opportunity.

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DUNCAN L. HUNTER, CHAIRMAN, HOUSE COMMITTEE 
                     ON ARMED SERVICES (2002-2006)

    Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, good morning. 
Thanks for allowing me to give my views on America's security 
challenges and the adequacy of our present force structure, as 
well as that which is projected under the massive automatic 
cuts that would occur should the Joint Committee on Deficit 
Reduction deadlock or should the contingency plan requested of 
DOD by OMB, which requires 10% cuts, be carried out.
    Bluntly, these massive cuts disserve: 1) the present war 
against terrorists; 2) the difficult build-up of the Army and 
Marine Corps in which this committee has played such a 
significant role; and
3) the constitutional obligation of this government to defend 
its citizens.
    In the last century, World War I, considered to be the 
``war to end all wars'' was followed by a period of neglect for 
America's defense apparatus. In 1941, jolted by the Axis Powers 
and particularly the attack on Pearl Harbor, we mobilized 
massively, aided by a robust industrial base and a secure 
homeland, and saved the world. Only a few years after World War 
II, America stacked arms to such a degree that a third-rate 
military power drove our defenders down the Korean Peninsula 
and almost into the ocean before we managed to hold the Pusan 
perimeter and push north, weathering a Chinese intervention and 
stalemating the communists into a divided Korea that continues 
to this day.
    After Vietnam, America's defenses declined precipitously, 
resulting in the so-called ``hollow army'' of the late 1970's, 
a period in which fewer than 50% of our tactical fighters were 
fully combat mission-capable and a time when more than 1,000 
petty officers a month were leaving the Navy due to inadequate 
pay and support.
    In 1981 we commenced to rebuild defense, with President 
Ronald Reagan partnering with this committee to enhance our 
ground forces, build the Navy toward a goal of 600 ships, 
initiate a missile defense program, and increase airlift, 
sealift, and sustainability.
    With this new muscle we stood up to the Soviet Union, 
which, disassembled by American strength, released hundreds of 
millions of its people from its tyranny into the sunlight of 
freedom.
    The 1990s found the U.S. dominating the First Gulf War with 
an array of conventional weapons from the build-up of the 
1980s. Then, in the mid-1990s defense was cut substantially. 
The Army was reduced from 18 to 10 divisions and only about 
fifty percent of our aging weapons systems were adequately 
replaced. Administration budget cutters went after defense. 
This committee lead the Congress in adding back over 40 billion 
dollars during this period. It wasn't enough.
    In 2001, spurred by the 9/11 terrorist attack, our nation 
went into a period of rebuilding aging systems, increasing end 
strength and moving ahead on missile defenses. While the build-
up was not as robust as that of the Reagan years, we did fill 
many of the short-falls of the 1990s.
    Today the Iraq War is won, with Iraq's elected government 
enduring and the military that we built from the ground-up 
holding. Iraq is now an ally thanks to the one million American 
volunteers who served in uniform in that war. The Afghanistan 
mission continues, complex, but winnable.
    China is emerging as a military super-power, stepping into 
the shoes of the former Soviet Union, developing high 
performance missiles, aircraft and ships, outproducing the U.S. 
in key areas such as attack submarines (5 to 1), and ballistic 
missiles.
    Iran, having failed to defeat America with its interference 
in the Iraq War, is continuing apace with its program aimed at 
producing a nuclear weapon. Its path over the past five years 
is littered with failed sanctions, imposed by the allies and 
blunted by China and Russia. Iran is following the model of its 
fellow nuclear weapons aspirant, North Korea which talked, 
wrangled and lied until it had produced a nuclear device.
    Russia, shorn of its captive nations, retains an immense 
strategic strike capability.
    This, Mr. Chairman, is the state of the world, the backdrop 
against which America is poised to massively cut defense.
    To assess the huge cuts that are projected, I use the 
committee's calculation on the numbers: 1 trillion dollars cut 
from the Presidents FY 2012 FYDP, counting 465 billion dollars 
in cuts already enacted.
    The enormity of these cuts will almost certainly result in 
large reductions in the size of the Army and Marine Corps.
    A few years ago, we began correcting the downsizing of our 
land forces. Remember that we cut the Army almost in half 
during the 1990s.
    During the height of the Iraq war our troops felt the pain 
of the downsizing as multiple deployments and 15 month tours 
stressed the force. We stressed the force. We policy makers 
swore ``never again'' and increased the Army to 569,400 and the 
USMC to 202,000.
    Now we are poised to repeat the mistake of the 1990's 
downsizing.
    People costs are ``right now'' expenditures the projected 
cuts cannot be carried out without slashing end strength.
    The cuts will also disserve the Navy in multiple ways. The 
288 ships will face an unprecedented threat in the near future.
    China has clearly moved to implement a new strategy to 
handle the U.S. Navy in a ``Taiwan scenario.'' They are 
building the capability to destroy American warships. Including 
carriers, at long ranges, before U.S. Naval projection can 
reach the straits.
    China's ship killers are ballistic missiles, tipped with 
anti-ship precisely targetable warheads.
    Never before has the US Navy had such an immense 
survivability challenge.
    The projected budget cuts will preclude the Navy from 
fielding missile defense systems of necessary robustness to 
defend against sustained anti-ship ballistic missile attacks.
    Also, the Navy's ``leverage weapon,'' its fleet of attack 
submarines, will be reduced substantially. Meanwhile, China's 
submarine program accelerates.
    Our heavy bomber force is already at its historical low 
point of 135. A two war contingency involving heavy Armed 
Forces will require a ``swinging'' of bombers from one war to 
the other, with a risk that substantial casualties will be 
taken without the fist of immediate air power.
    Today, the U.S. has less than 70% of the airfields 
available worldwide that we had in the 1960's. Yet our 
strategic and tactical airlift is comprised of only 651 
aircraft.
    In this age of quick flare contingencies, tactical aircraft 
are high leverage. Today the Air Force has only 1990 fighters, 
half of what we had at the end of the Cold War.
    The questions this committee must ask the President and 
your colleagues are these:

    1. LIs the world suddenly safer to the degree that we can 
let our guard down and cancel the insurance policy that a 
strong defense has given the U.S.?
    2. LIs the war against terrorism over?
    3. LDo we want to ``unlearn'' the lesser of the ``too 
small'' Army and Marine Corps, and reduce them again?
    4. LShould we concede space competition to our potential 
adversaries?
    5. LDoes it still make sense to stop incoming missiles?
    6. LDo we want our Navy to have fewer than 250 ships?
    7. LDo we want to cede military dominance in this century 
to communist China? All these questions stage this greater 
question for every Member of Congress:
    8. LIsn't our primary duty to defend our nation?

    The defense cuts already made should be restored and any 
new reductions soundly rejected.
    These cuts, should they be attended, along with China's 
military ascendance and growing industrial base, guarantee that 
China will become the world's dominant military power in this 
century.
    Thank you Mr. Chairman.

 STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE IKE SKELTON, CHAIRMAN, HOUSE COMMITTEE ON 
                       ARMED SERVICES (2007-2010)

    Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Smith, members of the Armed 
Services Committee, it is a signal honor to return to this 
chamber where I served three decades in support of our men and 
women in uniform to discuss a matter of great importance: 
whether the United States will continue to have the finest 
military force in history. I am deeply concerned with the 
prospect of cuts to our defense budget while our sons and 
daughters are still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan and still 
fighting Al Qaeda around the globe. Our pilots are often 
younger than the planes they fly, and our Navy is not growing 
even as China builds a fleet that may threaten our ability to 
preserve freedom of navigation in the Western Pacific. And yet 
significant cuts are being contemplated to our defense budget.
    In fact, the Budget Control Act could lead to defense cuts 
that would be downright devastating. I concur with the past 
statements of Admiral Mullen and Secretary Panetta that the 
cuts to the defense budget that could occur under sequestration 
would imperil our nation. Should sequestration cuts happen, in 
10 years our country will be relegated to the sidelines of 
history.
    The Congress has the sole power to raise and maintain our 
military under Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution. Thus, 
my message to the Congress is: don't scuttle the American armed 
forces. Our military is the best ever. I implore the Congress 
to pursue cuts to the defense budget with the utmost care. I 
recommend to the committee the report ``Hard Choices'' released 
by the Center for a New American Security (or CNAS), where I 
serve on the Board of Advisors. CNAS's report outlines some of 
the significant consequences of cuts on American combat 
capabilities. I echo the warning of this report that budget 
cuts beyond the $480 billion dollars already designated will 
endanger our national security.
    Cuts of this magnitude will jeopardize our ability to 
uphold our vital interests. Our future military must have the 
capacity to deter potential aggressors and quickly and 
decisively defeat any direct threats. This means maintaining a 
strong ground force that can defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan 
and then transfer security responsibility to our Afghan 
partners. Yet any responsible defense budget must also 
prioritize the Navy and the Air Force. This is especially 
important in South and East Asia where rising powers such as 
China and India increasingly serve as fulcrums of global 
economic and political power. They could serve to bolster, or 
challenge, the security of the global commons.
    For this reason the United States cannot degrade our naval 
and air capabilities. Cuts to the Navy and Air Force will limit 
our power projection capability, make our allies and partners 
question our commitments to them, and give China a free hand in 
the Western Pacific. The Army and Marines are also critical for 
this theater. The ground forces must support our Asian allies, 
improving American ties with those countries and discouraging 
China from bullying them.
    The new strategic situation means that in the spirit of 
Goldwater-Nichols, which had its genesis in this Committee, we 
must embrace a joint vision for our future military. An 
interdependent military will more effectively protect our 
national interests through greater cooperation, thereby making 
more intelligent battlefield decisions. Already we have seen 
our past attempts at this policy bear fruit: the Navy and the 
Air Force have made major strides through their evolving ``Air-
Sea'' Battle concept. Any future strategic concept must 
envision how a combined arms approach on Air, Sea, and Land 
will deter threats, and defeat them if deterrence fails.
    Significant defense cuts could also endanger the vitality 
of our services by compromising our ability to keep and train 
excellent officers, especially if personnel cuts degrade our 
officer training institutions. The strength of the U.S. 
military flows from the dedication and skill of our All-
Volunteer Force. Indeed, the new defense budget must maintain 
our nation's security by keeping the ``Profession of Arms'' 
professional. The American military's most important edge over 
our adversaries comes from the unparalleled professionalism and 
training of our men and women.
    However, this edge is fragile: when just over fifty percent 
of service academy graduates remain in service after ten years, 
our military loses its best and brightest. We must combat this 
by incentivizing retention of officers in the military. The 
Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel last year 
recommended new bonuses for high-caliber soldiers, regardless 
of rank, and reforming the up-or-out system. By completing 
these imperative reforms, we will significantly improve the 
quality of our officer corps.
    We must complement these reforms by continuing our 
commitment to our professional military education; in the words 
of Admiral James Stavridis, we will prevail by ``out-thinking 
the enemy.'' Our military's service academies and ROTC programs 
are the best in the world, yet learning must continue as 
soldiers remain in the service. Warriors matching the strength 
of a Spartan hoplite, the flexibility of a Roman legionnaire, 
and the brilliant tactical mind of a Hannibal or Scipio are 
commissioned every year. As we face new domains of warfare in 
space and in cyberspace, officers who understand the past and 
anticipate the future will be well prepared to adapt the 
world's finest military to new ways of war.
    Deep defense cuts could endanger Professional Military 
Education programs needed to prepare our officers and enlisted 
personnel for this future. Indeed, if the military hopes to 
adapt to the ever-changing nature of warfare, we must commit to 
fully funding Professional Military Education and providing 
scholarships and support to those individuals pursuing higher 
education. Doing so will broaden the expertise of soldiers and 
prepare our men and women for the threats of the future. Doing 
otherwise will turn our military into a profoundly moribund 
organization.
    Any defense budget must also not break faith with the men, 
women, and families who comprise our All-Volunteer Force. We 
must honor the sacrifices of our soldiers and their families by 
preserving their hard-earned medical, pay, and retirement 
benefits. We also must ensure that we provide the resources to 
confront a lethal crisis affecting our military: suicide. In 
light of rising suicides since 2001, especially amongst the 
Army and the Marines who have served so faithfully in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, we must continue to pursue innovative ways to 
ensure mental wellness in the armed services.
    I would like to conclude by emphasizing how important it is 
to get this right. It is no longer question of if, but when, 
the cuts will fall: already the Defense Department is looking 
at cuts of about $489 billion over the next ten years. Our 
future force must be able to quickly defeat threats all over 
the world and to respond properly to the growing importance of 
Asia. Our Congress must remain vigilant that budget cuts do not 
irreparably damage our military forces. It must fight to 
preserve the education, training, and health care that make our 
military the best in the world. We must not break faith with 
those who have sacrificed so much over the past decade.
    Thank you again for this opportunity to address this 
committee, Chairman McKeon.
      



                   THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL DEFENSE AND
                THE U.S. MILITARY TEN YEARS AFTER 9/11:
                  PERSPECTIVES OF SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
                      LEON PANETTA AND CHAIRMAN OF
                       THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF,
                         GENERAL MARTIN DEMPSEY

                              ----------                              




                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES



                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                      ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                              ----------                              


                              HEARING HELD

                            OCTOBER 13, 2011

                              ----------                              


                               WITNESSES

The Honorable Leon E. Panetta

23rd Secretary of Defense

General Martin E. Dempsey, USA

18th Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
?

      
=======================================================================


               PREPARED STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY WITNESSES

                            October 13, 2011

=======================================================================

      
 STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE LEON E. PANETTA, 23RD SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

    Chairman McKeon, Congressman Smith, members of this 
committee, it is an honor for me to appear before you for the 
first time as Secretary of Defense. I'd also like to join you 
in recognizing General Dempsey, a brilliant soldier and leader 
who I'm delighted to have alongside me in his new capacity as 
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
    On behalf of the men and women of the Department of 
Defense, I want to thank the members of this committee for your 
determination to join me in doing everything possible to ensure 
that they succeed in their mission of protecting America. I 
really do believe that Congress must be a full partner in our 
efforts to protect the country. In that spirit, I've had the 
opportunity to consult with many of you about the challenges 
that the Department faces, and I will continue to do so.
    I'd also like to thank you for convening this series of 
hearings on ``The Future of National Defense and the U.S. 
Military Ten Years After 9/11,'' and for giving me the 
opportunity to be here today to add my perspective to this 
discussion.
    September 11th was a defining moment for our country, and 
for the military. We have been at war for ten years, putting a 
heavy burden on our men and women in uniform to defend our 
nation and our interests. More than 6,200 have given their 
lives, and more than 46,000 have been wounded, in the wars 
since 9/11. The conflicts have brought untold stresses and 
strains on our service members, and on their families. But 
despite it all, we have built the finest, most-experienced, 
battle-hardened all-volunteer force in our nation's history.
    These ten years of conflict have transformed the military, 
with our men and women in uniform showing their adaptability 
and versatility in the face of a new combination of threats and 
operating environments. Our forces have become more lethal, and 
more capable of conducting effective counterterrorism and 
counterinsurgency operations. New or enhanced capabilities, 
including the growth of special operations forces, unmanned 
aerial systems, counter-IED technologies, and the extraordinary 
fusion between military and intelligence, have provided the key 
tools we need to succeed on these 21st century battlefields. 
And make no mistake, we are succeeding. Ten years after 9/11, 
we have significantly rolled back al-Qaeda and are closer than 
ever to achieving our strategic objectives in Afghanistan and 
Iraq, although significant challenges remain to ensuring 
stability and security in these conflict zones.
    These conflicts are nearing a turning point--and so too is 
the military as a whole. As the current mission in Iraq ends, 
as we continue to transition security responsibility in 
Afghanistan, and as we near our goal of dismantling al-Qaeda, 
the Department is also facing a new fiscal reality at home. As 
part of the debt ceiling agreement reached in August, the 
Department must find more than $450 billion in savings over the 
next decade. Our challenge is taking a force that has been 
involved in a decade of war, and ensuring that we build the 
military we need to defend our country for the next decade even 
at a time of fiscal austerity.
    We have a strong military, but one that has been stressed 
by a decade of fighting, squeezed by rising personnel costs, 
and is in need of modernization given the focus the past decade 
on capabilities for the current wars. Meanwhile, we face an 
international security environment that is growing in 
complexity and uncertainty. We continue to deal with the threat 
of violent extremism. States like Iran and North Korea continue 
to pursue nuclear capabilities. Rising powers are rapidly 
modernizing their militaries and investing in capabilities to 
deny our forces freedom of action in vital regions such as the 
Asia-Pacific. We also face the prospect of cyber attackers who 
could inflict great damage on our nation's infrastructure while 
operating with relative anonymity and distance.
    We need to build a force that can confront this growing 
array of threats even as we meet our fiscal responsibilities. 
We should also recognize, however, that the military has to 
constantly adapt to meet changing security demands and 
threats--and that is what we will continue to do even in the 
face of serious budget constraints. That will require setting 
clear strategic priorities, and making tough decisions. Working 
closely with the Service Chiefs, Service Secretaries and 
Combatant Commanders, I intend to make these decisions based on 
the following guidelines.
    First, we must maintain the very best military in the 
world--a force capable of deterring conflict, projecting power, 
and winning wars. After all, America has a special role in the 
world--we are looked to for our leadership, values and 
strength.
    Second, we must avoid a hollow force and maintain a 
military that, even if smaller, will be ready, agile and 
deployable.
    Third, we must take a balanced approach and look to all 
areas of the budget for potential savings--from efficiencies 
that trim duplication and bureaucratic overhead, to improving 
competition and management in operating and investment 
programs, to tightening personnel costs, and re-evaluating 
modernization efforts.
    Finally, we cannot break faith with our men and women in 
uniform--the all volunteer force is central to a strong 
military and central to our nation's future.
    If we follow these four principles, I'm confident that we 
can meet our national security responsibilities and do our part 
to help this country get its fiscal house in order. This will 
not be achieved without making difficult choices, but those 
choices are essential if we are not to hollow out the force and 
meet the threats we confront.
    To achieve the required budget savings, the Department also 
must work even harder to overhaul the way it does business, and 
an essential part of this effort will be improving the quality 
of financial information and moving towards auditable financial 
statements. Today DoD is one of only two major agencies that 
has never had a clean audit opinion on its financial 
statements. While the Department's systems do tell us where we 
are spending taxpayer funds, we do not yet have the details and 
controls necessary to pass an audit. This is inexcusable and 
must change. In order to achieve fiscal discipline, we need to 
have the strongest possible financial controls in place.
    The Department has made significant progress toward meeting 
the Congressional deadline for audit ready financial statements 
by 2017, with a focus on first improving the categories of 
information that are most relevant to managing the budget. But 
I want us to do better--and we will.
    Today I am announcing that I have directed the Department 
to cut in half the time it will take to achieve audit readiness 
for the Statement of Budgetary Resources, so that in 2014 we 
will have the ability to conduct a full budget audit. This 
focused approach prioritizes the information that we use in 
managing the Department, and will give our financial managers 
the key tools they need to track spending, identify waste, and 
improve the way the Pentagon does business as soon as possible.
    I have also directed increased emphasis on accountability 
and a full review of the Department's financial controls, with 
improvements put in place where needed. I have directed the DoD 
Comptroller to revise the current plan within 60 days to meet 
these new goals, and still achieve the requirement of overall 
audit readiness by 2017. We owe it to the taxpayers to be 
transparent and accountable for how we spend their dollars, and 
under this plan we will move closer to fulfilling that 
responsibility.
    The Department is changing the way it does business and 
taking on a significant share of our country's efforts to 
achieve fiscal discipline. We will do so while building the 
agile, deployable force we need to confront the wide range of 
threats we face. But I want to close by cautioning strongly 
against further cuts to defense, particularly with the 
mechanism that's been built into the debt ceiling agreement 
called sequester. This mechanism would force additional cuts to 
defense of about $500 billion, or roughly $1 trillion in 
total--cuts that in my view would do catastrophic damage to our 
military, hollowing out the force and degrading its ability to 
protect the country. I know you share my concern about both the 
extent of such cuts and the process of sequester. It is a blind 
formula that makes cuts across the board, hampers our ability 
to align resources with strategy, and risks hollowing out the 
force.
    I do not believe we have to make a choice between fiscal 
security and national security. But in order to succeed in this 
effort, I am going to need your support--to do everything 
possible to prevent further damaging cuts, and to help us 
implement a coherent strategy-driven program and budget that we 
will identify in the months ahead as critical to preserving the 
best military in the world. I pledge to continue to work with 
you closely as we confront these challenges and thank you once 
again for your tireless efforts to build a stronger military 
for our country.

   STATEMENT OF GENERAL MARTIN E. DEMPSEY, USA, 18TH CHAIRMAN, JOINT 
                            CHIEFS OF STAFF

    Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Smith, members of the 
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the 
future of national defense and the U.S. military ten years 
after the attacks of September 11th. As this is my first time 
testifying before this committee in my new position as Chairman 
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I want to note that I look 
forward to continued cooperation with you. I take seriously our 
shared responsibility of maintaining a military that provides 
our leaders with a wide range of options to counter the threats 
and crises we face and that preserves the trust placed in us by 
our citizens. I believe we can sustain this trust while also 
being good stewards of our nation's resources. In that spirit, 
I thank the Committee for engaging in this important discussion 
of the future of our national defense.
    Last month marked the tenth anniversary of the September 
11th attacks. It is appropriate to reflect on what we have 
achieved, what we have learned, and where we see ourselves 
going forward.
    In the past decade, over two million men and women have 
deployed overseas in support of operations in Afghanistan, 
Iraq, and elsewhere. Our Joint Force, along with our 
interagency and international partners, has remained resolute 
and resilient throughout a decade of hard combat in hard 
places. We have demonstrated initiative, we have demonstrated 
strength, and we have demonstrated resolve. We have met our 
sacred obligation to protect our nation and our fellow 
citizens.
    There remains work to be done in achieving our objectives 
in the conflicts in which we are currently engaged and against 
the threats we currently face, and we will get it done.
    Our military has learned and adapted to a shifting security 
landscape. Among the many lessons we have learned, a few stand 
out.
    First, we live in an increasingly competitive security 
environment. Military capabilities proliferate more quickly and 
are no longer the monopoly of nation states. The distinction 
between low and high intensity conflict is blurred. This 
requires us to prevail in the competitive learning 
environment--we must learn faster, understand more deeply, and 
adapt more quickly than our adversaries. Our systems and 
processes must be far more effective, efficient, and agile if 
we are to keep pace in this environment.
    Second, we must continue to value allies and partners. 
Coalitions and partnerships--with other countries and with 
other government agencies--add capability, capacity, and 
credibility to what are shared security responsibilities. As 
fiscal constraints become more binding, the importance of 
partnering will only grow. As a consequence, we are committed 
to expanding the envelope of cooperation at home and abroad.
    Third, we must continue to value joint interdependence. Our 
Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard combine to 
field an unmatched team. We still need our Services to be 
masters of their core competencies and stewards of their 
cultures. But, modern conflict is fought across multiple 
domains. Operating as a single, cohesive team is the 
imperative. Therefore, we must continue to advance the 
interoperability of people and equipment.
    Fourth, we must value innovation even more than we have in 
the past. Our forces have expanded many of our previously low-
density capabilities and fielded many new technologies. We have 
found ways to expand our special operations forces, our 
intelligence systems, and our cyber capabilities. And, our 
units have combined these capabilities in innovative ways to 
the great benefit of the mission, our troops, and non-
combatants on the battlefield.
    Finally, we must always value leadership above all else. 
Leadership is the core of our military profession. It has been 
the key to our ability to learn, adapt, and achieve results 
over the past decade. Modern counter-insurgency and counter-
terrorist operations drive us to push combat power and decision 
making to the edge of the battlefield. Continued development of 
adaptive leaders will be our nation's decisive advantage in a 
competitive security environment.
    Even as we successfully transition today's conflicts, we 
are preparing for tomorrow's. The way we recover from combat 
and reconstitute our capabilities will shape our future 
military. We are building today the Joint Force we will have in 
2020. Joint Force 2020 must be powerful, responsive, resilient, 
versatile, and admired. It must have the capability and 
capacity to provide options to our national leadership. It must 
account for the capabilities we have now to include the 
relatively new capabilities we have grown. And, it must 
preserve our human capital. Above all, we must get the 
``people'' right and keep faith with our Military Family.
    Developing the Joint Force our nation needs is complicated 
by known and potential fiscal constraints. Be assured, we 
understand that our nation needs us to be more affordable. We 
are fully committed to reducing costs without compromising the 
capabilities our nation also needs. But, becoming lean and 
efficient will only get us so far. We will have to make hard 
choices that balance risk across our global commitments and 
across time. We will have to consider reforming pay and 
benefits as well as reducing end strength. If we fail to put 
everything on the table, we risk hollowing the force by gutting 
modernization and readiness. Most importantly, we need to be 
precise. Indiscriminate, across the board cuts would wreak 
havoc on our plans and programs. Together, we need to avoid 
self-inflicted wounds to our nation's security.
    I look forward to cooperating with the members of this 
Committee and the rest of Congress. We will need your help in 
making the tough choices and in supporting the service members 
we send into harm's way. They deserve the future they 
sacrificed to secure.
      



                        ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF



                         DEFENSE SEQUESTRATION

                              ----------                              




                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES



                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                      ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                              ----------                              


                              HEARING HELD

                            OCTOBER 26, 2011

                              ----------                              


                               WITNESSES

Dr. Martin Feldstein

George F. Baker Professor of Economics
Harvard University

Dr. Stephen Fuller

Director, Center for Regional Analysis
School of Public Policy
George Mason University

Dr. Peter Morici

Professor of International Business
Robert H. Smith School of Business
University of Maryland
?

      
=======================================================================


               PREPARED STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY WITNESSES

                            October 26, 2011

=======================================================================

      
    STATEMENT OF DR. MARTIN FELDSTEIN, GEORGE F. BAKER PROFESSOR OF 
                     ECONOMICS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am very pleased to have the 
opportunity to testify to this Committee. Although I have 
testified to Congressional committees for more than 30 years, 
this is the first time that I have appeared before this 
important committee.
    In your invitation you asked me to comment on the effect 
that reductions in defense outlays will have on total economic 
activity, i.e., on the GDP of the United States. I am happy to 
do that but I want to begin with a few words about the larger 
subject of the national security consequences of reductions in 
defense spending.

                 Defense Spending and National Security

    In considering the appropriate size of the defense budget, 
it is of course important to recognize the immediate threats to 
the United States and to our allies from Iran, from North 
Korea, from rogue states and from various terrorist groups. 
There is also the current challenge in cyberspace from 
espionage directed at industrial and national security targets 
and from the risk of cyber attacks on our basic infrastructure.
    But defense spending today must also relate to the more 
distant risk from China's future military policy. China is now 
a poor country with per capita income less than one-fifth of 
our own. But since China has more than four times the U.S. 
population, China's total GDP will equal that of the United 
States when its per capita income reaches only one-fourth of 
the U.S. level. Even if China's growth rate slows significantly 
from its current level, its total GDP will exceed ours in less 
than 15 years.
    A country's total GDP determines its potential military 
budget. The current Chinese political leadership is 
concentrating on promoting economic growth to raise the 
standard of living of its people and to deal with the very 
large inequality that exists between different groups within 
China. But China is also developing every aspect of its 
military capability.
    The quality of China's military force is not currently up 
to U.S. standards. But China's defense budget will grow with 
its GDP. It is important for the United States to recognize 
that future generations of Chinese leaders could use its larger 
GDP to pursue more aggressive policies.
    America's defense policy and our defense budget should 
therefore focus on the future generations of Chinese civilian 
and military leaders and should recognize the virtual certainty 
of China's growing economic power. The United States should 
maintain a military capability such that no future generation 
of Chinese leaders will consider a military challenge to the 
United States or consider using military force to intimidate 
the United States or our allies.
    China's future military spending and its weapons 
development will depend on China's perception of what the 
United States is doing now and what we will do in the future. 
If we show a determination to remain invincible, China will not 
waste resources on trying to challenge us in an arms race. But 
if we keep cutting defense budgets, the Chinese will see this 
as an indication of U.S. weakness now and in the future.
    China is in many ways a resource-poor country that depends 
on imports of oil, iron, and other raw materials as well as on 
imports of food to feed its people. That is not likely to 
change. China is therefore now buying oil in the ground around 
the world and arable land in Africa to grow food for the 
Chinese people. Some countries in the past have used military 
force to gain secure access to such materials. China's future 
leaders should not be tempted to follow that path.
    It is important that our allies and friends like Japan and 
Korea and Singapore and Australia see the commitment of the 
United States to remain strong and to remain present in Asia. 
Their relations with China and with us depend on what they can 
expect of America's future military strength.
    The Navy has a particularly important role to play in this, 
including the Navy's presence in international waters to 
enforce freedom of the seas, naval visits to Asian ports, and 
joint exercises with the navies of other governments.
    We cannot postpone implementing a policy of future military 
superiority until some future year. We have to work now to 
develop the weapon systems of the future. We have to maintain 
the industrial and technological capacity to produce those 
weapon systems. We have to make it clear by our budgets and by 
our actions that we are the global force now and will continue 
to be that in the future.
    While reducing fiscal deficits is very important, that task 
should not prevent the federal government from achieving its 
primary responsibility of defending this country and our global 
interests, both now and in the future.

                        Defense Spending and GDP

    I will turn now to the narrower economic question of how 
cuts in defense spending affect U.S. GDP.
    Since government spending on defense is a component of GDP, 
the immediate direct effect of a one billion dollar reduction 
in domestic defense spending is to reduce our GDP by one 
billion dollars. The resulting reduction in pay to military 
personnel and in compensation to the employees of defense 
suppliers then cause their spending as consumers to decline. If 
defense suppliers expect the reduced level of defense spending 
to be sustained, the defense suppliers will also cut their 
demand for equipment. The total effect of the one billion 
dollar reduction in defense spending is to reduce GDP by more 
than a billion dollars, perhaps about two billion dollars.
    I based this calculation on a reduction in domestic defense 
spending. To the extent that some of the reduced defense 
spending is overseas and on locally purchased goods and 
services, the impact on U.S. GDP will be proportionately less. 
But since about 90 percent of defense spending is domestic, the 
calculation of a two dollar reduction in U.S. GDP for every 
dollar reduction in defense spending is probably a good 
estimate.
    Any reduction in future budget deficits and in the 
resulting level of the national debt will also raise the 
confidence of businesses and households, leading to increased 
consumer spending and business investment, thus raising current 
GDP. Since a similar effect would result from legislated 
reductions in future deficits achieved by cutting any form of 
government spending or by raising revenue, we can ignore this 
``confidence effect'' in comparing the impact of reductions in 
defense spending with the effect of other spending cuts or tax 
increases that have the same effect on future deficits.
    The direct effect on GDP of changes in defense spending is 
larger than the corresponding effect of most other potential 
changes in government outlays. For example, outlays for 
unemployment benefits are not in themselves a component of GDP. 
They lead to increased GDP only by raising the consumer 
spending of the individuals who receive those benefits. While a 
high percentage of those cash benefits will be spent, it will 
certainly be less than a dollar of spending for every extra 
dollar of unemployment benefits. Some of the consumption 
purchased with the unemployment benefits would otherwise have 
been paid for out of reductions in household savings. And of 
course some of the consumer spending would be on imports, 
further reducing its effect on GDP.
    A change in unemployment benefits also affects GDP by 
altering the incentive to remain unemployed. Reducing the 
maximum number of weeks of unemployment benefits will induce 
some individuals to find work sooner, thereby raising GDP. The 
resulting increase in total employment is difficult to estimate 
at a time when total employment is limited by the weakness of 
aggregate demand. Some of those who are induced to find work 
because of reduced UI benefits may just prevent others from 
finding work. The overall effect on GDP of reducing UI benefits 
will be the net effect of the reduction in consumer spending 
and the increase in weeks worked. The direct impact on GDP of a 
one billion dollar reduction in unemployment benefits will 
certainly be less than the direct effect of a one billion 
dollar reduction in defense outlays.
    Transfers from the federal government to state and local 
governments are also not a component of GDP. Reducing such 
transfers only alters GDP to the extent that doing so causes 
those governments to reduce their spending or raise their 
taxes. If cutting a billion dollars in transfers to state 
governments causes them to cut their domestic spending by one 
billion dollars, the immediate effect on GDP would be the same 
as cutting one billion dollars of defense spending. But if the 
state governments offset some of the reduction in funds from 
Washington by using their ``rainy day'' funds or temporarily 
running a deficit, the effect on GDP would be less. Similarly, 
if the states raise taxes to pay for some of the outlays that 
had previously been financed by transfers from Washington, the 
effect on GDP would be smaller.
    My comments this morning about the effect on GDP of changes 
in defense spending and other forms of government outlays focus 
on the direct effects on demand for U.S. goods and services as 
measured by GDP. That is the appropriate focus in the short run 
at a time when unemployment rates are high and we are far from 
full employment. Over time, the American economy will return to 
full employment, or, more technically, to the level of 
unemployment that can persist without causing a higher rate of 
inflation. Changes in defense spending in the context of full 
employment must be balanced by changes in other components of 
GDP.
    I hope that these remarks are helpful to you and your 
colleagues as you consider the important tasks of deficit 
reduction and of protecting our national security.

    STATEMENT OF DR. STEPHEN FULLER, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR REGIONAL 
       ANALYSIS, SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

    Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Smith, members of the 
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the 
potential economic consequences of reductions in Department of 
Defense spending as these impacts would affect the economies of 
states and regions across the United States. I have conducted 
research relating to this issue for the Commonwealth of 
Virginia that examined the economic and fiscal impacts of DOD 
spending. This research was undertaken in 2009 in response to 
early concerns regarding the Commonwealth's economic 
vulnerability to changing DOD spending policies. More recently, 
I was asked by the Aerospace Industries Association to 
calculate the economic impacts of reductions in DOD outlays for 
military equipment on the U.S. economy and the states that 
represent the home base for major aerospace and military 
equipment manufacturers and suppliers. I am submitting both 
reports for the record as they contain findings relevant to 
your deliberations on this important topic.
    The economic impacts that occur at the state and regional 
levels are similar to those that have been reported at the 
national level and are evident in changes in economic 
activity--gross regional product (GRP), changes in employment, 
and changes in personal earnings. Collateral impacts also will 
occur in the local business base as the loss of sales for 
single-market businesses could result in the failure of these 
business establishments--the nature of their business (size and 
product line) may make these firms more vulnerable to changes 
in sales due to DOD spending reductions or reductions in 
civilian or uniform personnel. These latter effects are 
particularly evident around military installations as witnessed 
recently here in the District of Columbia among the retail and 
other commercial businesses having previous served the staff of 
and visitors to Walter Reed prior to its closing in September. 
These ``BRAC effects,'' where installations have closed or 
substantially downsized, provide a good measure of the 
potential ranges of economic impacts that may result from 
reductions in DOD spending. All too often these local effects 
are lost in the impersonal numbers that are used to measure the 
economic impacts of changes in public spending patterns.

              State-Level Economic Impacts of DOD Spending

    One approach to understanding the potential impacts of DOD 
spending reductions is to examine the importance of DOD 
spending to a local economy. An examination of DOD spending on 
the Commonwealth of Virginia economy provides a good measure of 
what could be the impact of reductions in these spending 
levels.
    Spending by the Department of Defense in support of its 
activities--defense installations, uniform and civilian 
personnel, retirees, and federal contractors--represents a 
major source of jobs and income within the Commonwealth of 
Virginia and generates significant direct and indirect economic 
activities throughout all sectors of the State's economy. 
Additionally, DOD spending and the jobs and payroll this 
spending supports generate a significant surplus of state-level 
revenues relative to the demands placed on state-funded 
services. These economic and fiscal impacts are summarized as 
follows.

    1. LIn FY 2008 DOD spending in the Commonwealth of Virginia 
contributed $57.4 billion to the State's economy accounting for 
15.6 percent of the total value of the goods and services 
produced in the State--its gross state product;
    2. LDOD spending and its re-spending within the State's 
economy supported a total of 902,985 jobs (both directly funded 
and supported indirectly by the re-spending of DOD funds within 
the State) representing 18.9 percent of the state's total job 
base;
    3. LDOD spending generated $44.4 billion in personal 
earnings accounting for 17.4 percent of the total personal 
earnings of all workers residing within the State;
    4. LThe fiscal impacts of DOD spending and the workers it 
supported generated a significant net revenue benefit for the 
State in FY 2008. On average, for each job associated with DOD 
spending, the revenues generated exceeded the expenditure 
demand placed on the State's budget by $1,848.52; that is, for 
each $1 in expenditure demand, $2.85 in state revenues were 
collected for each employee (including military retirees) and 
these employees related business spending.
    5. LThe total fiscal benefit accruing to the State from 
DOD-supported economic activities in the State in FY 2008 was 
$1.1 billion.
    6. LDOD spending in the Commonwealth totaled $54.5 billion 
in FY 2008 and ranked first among all states on a per capita 
basis ($6,713.06) representing a funding advantage of $4.26 to 
$1.00 compared to the U.S. average.

    This DOD spending is an important source of economic 
activities, personal earnings, jobs and fiscal benefits for the 
State. In the absence of this spending, the economy would be 
15.6 percent smaller, support 18.9 percent fewer jobs and face 
a budget gap of $1.1 billion.

                                     Summary of Economic and Fiscal Impacts
                              DOD Spending in the Commonwealth of Virginia, FY 2008
                                            (in billions of 2008 $s)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                                  Personal
                          Source                                 GSP(1)          Earnings(2)         Jobs(3)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Economic Impacts
  Direct Payroll                                                 $22.4              $19.3            339,941
  Contracting                                                     33.6               23.9            537,258
  Construction                                                     1.4                1.1             25,786
Totals*                                                          $57.4              $44.4            902,985
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sources: EMSI, GMU Center for Regional Analysis
*sum of the individual values may not add to the totals due to rounding; $118 million in DOD grants were not
  included in this analysis.
(1) Contribution to gross state product; (2) income accruing to workers residing in Virginia; (3) total direct
  and indirect jobs supported by type of DOD spending in the State;

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                       Fiscal Impact                            Revenues        Expenditures       Net Benefit
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Per Job (Actual $s)                                            $2,849.22         $1,000.70         $1,848.52
Totals ($s in millions)                                        $1,689.38           $593.34         $1,096.04
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sources: Urban Analytics, Inc.; GMU Center for Regional Analysis


  Economic Impacts of DOD Spending Reductions for Military Equipment 
                              Acquisition

    An analysis of DOD spending reductions for the acquisition 
of military equipment that has already been approved (BCA 1) 
totaling $19.324 billion for FY 2013 and the potential 
additional reduction of $25.686 billion in procurement of 
military equipment, also impacting FY 2013, illustrate the 
breadth of these effects on jobs, payroll and GDP as these 
effects cycle through the economy at the local level. This 
total reduction of $45.01 in DOD spending for the acquisition 
of military equipment in FY 2013 would have the following 
economic impacts:

    1. LLost sales throughout the supply chain and induce sales 
losses through the broader economy would total 
$164,059,027,945; that is, for each $1 in DOD spending 
reductions for military equipment, an additional $2.64 in sales 
losses will be experienced by other businesses;
    2. L71% of these lost sales would occur as a result of 
decreased consumer spending by workers directly and indirectly 
affected by these DOD spending reductions--workers having lost 
their jobs and/or experienced salary reductions--affecting 
local businesses serving local demand;
    3. LThe loss of 1,006,315 full-time, year-round equivalent 
jobs with only 124,428 of these jobs being lost directly or 
indirectly from the prime DOD contractors for this equipment 
and their suppliers while 881,887 jobs or 87.6% of all job 
losses would come from the induced spending effects across all 
sectors of the economy as a result of changes in payroll 
spending within the aerospace and military equipment industry;
    4. LThis total job loss would add 0.6 percentage points to 
the current U.S. unemployment rate (raising today's 9.1% rate 
to 9.7%);
    5. LWage and salary would decrease by a total of $59.4 
billion with $48.4 billion of these losses occurring among 
workers working in businesses outside of the military equipment 
manufacturing supply chain--retail, construction, professional 
and business services, health and education, leisure and 
hospitality construction, financial services and others;
    6. LLost non-wage income--spending for operations, capital 
investment, retained earnings, profits--would decline by $27.05 
billion with 63.4% of this lost income being experienced by 
non-DOD prime contractors and their suppliers; and,
    7. LReduced U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 
$86.456 billion representing an amount equal to 25% of the 
projected annual increase in GDP for 2013; this loss would 
reduce currently projected growth for 2013 from 2.3% to 1.7% 
(IHS Global Insight September 2011 forecast).

           The State Level Impacts of DOD Spending Reductions

    While the economic impacts of DOD spending reductions would 
affect all 50 states, ten states would account for 58.5 percent 
of the job and income losses projected to occur in 2013 as a 
result from a $45.01 billion reduction in military equipment 
acquisitions. In total, these spending reductions would result 
in employment decreases of 588,700 jobs in these ten states and 
generate losses of $34.7 billion in personal income. These 
decreases in economic activity would reduce these states' gross 
state product by a total of $50.6 billion in 2013. One-third of 
these impacts would occur in California, Virginia and Texas.

                                   Economic Impacts of DOD Spending Reductions
                                for Military Equipment in FY 2013: Top Ten States
                                 (jobs in thousands, GSP in billions of 2013 $s)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                           State                               Job Losses       Lost Earnings     Decrease GSP*
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
California                                                       125.8              $7.4             $10.8
Virginia                                                         122.8              $7.3             $10.5
Texas                                                             91.6              $5.4              $7.9
Florida                                                           39.2              $2.3              $3.4
Massachusetts                                                     38.2              $2.3              $3.3
Maryland                                                          36.2              $2.1              $3.1
Pennsylvania                                                      36.2              $2.1              $3.1
Connecticut                                                       34.2              $2.0              $2.9
Arizona                                                           33.2              $2.0              $2.9
Missouri                                                          31.2              $1.8              $2.7
Totals-Top Ten                                                   588.7             $34.7             $50.6
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sources: GMU Center for Regional Analysis, EMSI
*gross state product


                          Summary of Findings

    Reductions in DOD spending, whether it involves uniform or 
civilian personnel, the operations of military installations, 
the maintenance or acquisition of military equipment or goods 
and services provided by private contractors, will have 
widespread impacts extending well beyond prime contractors and 
their direct and indirect suppliers. Each of these prime 
contractors and their suppliers (direct or indirect) employ 
large numbers of workers and also make substantial purchases of 
goods and services from suppliers to support their business 
operations and the loss of this payroll and business purchases 
(largely non-manufacturing suppliers) will spread the economic 
pain of these cutbacks to a far larger population and business 
base than generally appreciated.
    Each $1 decrease in DOD equipment purchases will generate 
an additional $2.64 in lost sales elsewhere in the economy with 
71 percent of these losses resulting from decreased spending by 
workers having lost their jobs. The employment effect is even 
greater, with job losses associated with only a $45.01 billion 
reduction in DOD spending for military equipment acquisition 
generating a total loss of 1 million jobs of which 88 percent 
would be on ``Main Street'' and only 12 percent directly within 
the aerospace and military equipment industry. This job loss 
would add 0.6 percentage points to the U.S. unemployment rate. 
Beyond the loss of jobs there is the loss of earnings and 
spending that further would undermine state and local tax 
bases.
    Spending reductions have consequences and these 
consequences disproportionally impact workers and businesses 
that appear to have little connection to the target of the 
spending reduction. The breadth and reach of this collateral 
economic damage should be fully measured and assessed as 
decisions to reduce DOD spending are debated. Besides the 
impacts on the nation's military readiness and ability to 
respond to international crises, the impacts of any proposed 
DOD spending reductions on local economies, their workers, 
their incomes, and on local businesses need to be fully 
assessed and their consequences understood and minimized or 
mitigated.
    Thank you.

  STATEMENT OF DR. PETER MORICI, PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS, 
       ROBERT H. SMITH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

    My name is Peter Morici, and I am an economist and 
professor of international business at the University of 
Maryland. Prior, I served as Director of Economics at the 
United States International Trade Commission. I thank you for 
this opportunity to testify on Economic Consequences of Defense 
Sequestration.
    Today, I would like to discuss with you the broader 
economic consequences of further cuts in U.S. defense spending, 
as opposed to specific industry or regional impacts. These are 
largely systemic.
    Should the United States fail to maintain military strength 
necessary to meet its international security responsibilities, 
as well as those that may be posed by a surging Chinese 
presence in the Pacific, the international economic 
institutions that define the rules of the game very likely will 
change in ways more hostile to American economic institutions, 
political culture and values, diminishing prospects for U.S. 
economic success and independence.
    The United States offers the world a clear prescription for 
economic prosperity and the protection of human rights--free 
markets and democracy. Yet, with the U.S. economy withering and 
the U.S. ability to project power prospectively diminished, 
U.S. prescriptions appear increasingly less efficacious abroad.
    China offers the world a very different model for economic 
development and personal security. Its autocratic government 
intervenes considerably in economic decisions to promote wide 
ranging development goals, and it limits personal freedoms to 
ensure domestic order and stability. ``Occupy Wall Street'' 
would almost certainly not be tolerated in China and would 
likely not be permitted to emerge with Beijing's tight 
censorship of internal communications. Suppression of such 
movements supports its strategy for tight economic management, 
quite in addition to maintaining the Communist Party's grip on 
political power.
    China openly flaunts the letter and spirit of international 
economic rules intended to foster free and open markets, and 
severely limits intellectual dissent. With its state-directed 
economy growing at breakneck speed and America struggling, a 
U.S. failure to maintain a military adequate to meet China in 
the Pacific will almost assuredly result in other emerging 
nations embracing, albeit reluctantly or enthusiastically and 
in varying measure, China's model for economic development and 
governance.
    International institutions--like the WTO--are consensual, 
and interpret and make new rules by consensus. Perforce, those 
rules will follow the tide of sentiment among more successful 
nations, and the United States and its Atlantic allies will 
become more isolated and somewhat marginalized. History teaches 
power balances do change, and often losers are preoccupied with 
internal squabbling and chaotic dysfunction, and ultimately 
surprised.
    Without a strong economy and military capable of meeting 
the emerging challenge posed by China in the Pacific, American 
values and the U.S. economy cannot succeed.

                      Origins of Budget Challenges

    During the closing days of World War II the United States--
in partnership with Britain, Canada and others--crafted an 
international economic system intended to promote democracy and 
economic globalization. The premise was clear--democracies, 
integrated by trade and investment, would be much less inclined 
to war. Military competition would be replaced by economic 
competition.
    On the economic side, the United States encouraged the 
formation of the European Community, which grew into the 
European Union, and promoted globalization through the WTO, 
IMF, World Bank, and regional and bilateral trade and 
investment agreements. The West--as defined by the OECD 
economies--is so intensely integrated today that the notion of 
armed conflict among those nations is absolutely absurd.
    On the political/security side, the United States became 
the de facto global defender of free markets and democracy by 
forcing the permanent disarmament of the third and fourth 
largest economies--Japan and Germany--leaving only stalwart 
foes--China and Russia--as potential challengers on the global 
stage.
    Victory in the Cold War--without comparable contributions 
from the Japanese and German economies--came at a heavy price. 
And now, dealing with global terrorism and a more muscular 
China poses new perils and costs that Americans, weary of 
leadership, seem unwilling and perhaps unable to bear.
    Successive rounds of GATT/WTO negotiations substantially 
liberalized trade among the OECD nations, and granted 
preferential market access in advanced industrialized countries 
to developing regions. Through special and differential 
treatment the latter economies have generally obtained open 
access to the United States, Canada and EU but are permitted to 
maintain high tariffs and administrative barriers to western 
exports, and subsidize domestic industries in endlessly 
imaginative ways.
    Through the 1990s, the North American and European 
economies were so much larger and stronger that they could 
afford to give away industrial activities and jobs, even when 
the dictates of sound economics and comparative advantage would 
indicate wiser choices, to promote development in less 
fortunate areas of the world. However, the emergence of China, 
and to a lesser extent India, Russia and Brazil, has changed 
all that. By virtue of China's size and ambitions to exert 
greater influence in the Pacific and to change the rules of 
international competition, this calculation about the 
relationship between western and developing nations becomes 
patently false and foolish.
    China abuses the WTO system and flaunts free-market 
principles with high tariffs and domestic institutions that 
systematically block U.S. and EU exports, aggressive subsidizes 
for domestic industries, intervention in currency market to 
ensure an undervalued yuan and artificial cost advantages for 
its goods, and unfair rules for foreign firms that establish 
production in China to sell there.
    All of this has imposed a large and growing bilateral trade 
imbalance that destroys millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs, 
transfers valuable U.S. technology cheaply to China, greatly 
diminishes U.S. R&D, educational attainment and potential 
growth, and makes the United States less capable of maintaining 
defense capabilities necessary to meeting its security 
obligations and accomplishes its legitimate security goals.
    Successive Administrations have tried diplomacy to open 
Chinese markets and end currency manipulation and mercantilism 
more generally, but when rebuffed, they have cautioned Congress 
against concrete action, and pursued more ill-fated diplomacy.
    Large American multinationals, which have invested in China 
to serve the market, have become clients of Beijing's 
protectionism. Invested in Middle Kingdom mercantilism, they 
council Presidents and Congressional leaders against taking 
concrete measures to counter China's unfair practices--to the 
point of even denying members of Congress the opportunity to 
vote on such measures. Those actions of self-directed 
capitalism have broad consequences for the health and vitality 
of the U.S. economy and ultimately national security.
    On the global stage, failure to meaningfully confront 
Chinese mercantilism, after diplomacy has failed over and over 
again, makes the United States appear foolish, weak and inept, 
a civilization overtaken by one with a better economic model 
and a more competent government.
    Domestically, the United States has needlessly increased 
its dependence on expensive foreign oil by failing to develop 
abundant domestic resources and implement more effective 
conservation measures. Failure to develop domestic energy 
creates no environmental benefits. It merely shifts the 
drilling to the Persian Gulf and other unfriendly venues where 
environmental risks are no better managed, and helps finance 
global terrorism. It is a fool's journey into the darkness.
    Economists agree: the U.S. economy can't get out of its 
funk and grow robustly, not because Americans can't make things 
cost effectively and well, but because demand for what they 
make is inadequate.
    There is no mystery about it. The trade deficit with China 
and on oil account for nearly the entire $550 billion U.S. 
trade deficit, this deficit poses a significant drain on the 
demand for U.S. products and is the single largest barrier to 
economic recovery.
    President Obama has said on more than one occasion China's 
currency policy hurts the U.S. economy and slows its recovery. 
The reasoning is simple. Every dollar that goes abroad to 
purchase Chinese consumer goods that does not return here is 
lost purchasing power that could be creating jobs. The same 
applies to high priced oil.
    Cutting the trade deficit in half would jump start the U.S. 
economy, create up to 5 million jobs and lower the unemployment 
rate to about 6 percent. Without confronting Chinese currency 
manipulation and broader protectionism with concrete actions 
and without raising domestic oil production from less than 6 
million barrels a day to 10, the U.S. economy won't grow fast 
enough, and taxes will be inadequate to finance an adequate 
defense and vital domestic services.
    Simply, the trade deficit--China and oil--is as much 
responsible for the U.S. budget crisis--through slow growth--as 
overspending and other cost issues.

              Cost Issues, Overspending and Popular Myths

    The U.S. economy and government faces cost issues too. The 
U.S. health care system is more expensive and provides less 
favorable outcomes than more cost effective private systems 
abroad, for example in Holland and Germany. Much the same may 
be said for U.S. education.
    Health care and education are hugely uncompetitive by 
global standards, and account for huge portions of combined 
U.S. federal, state and local spending. Most recently rising 
health care costs, coupled with a shrinking private sector and 
tax base, is now crowding out education spending.
    Together with rising Social Security outlays, mandated by 
an unrealistic retirement age fixed at 66, the outsized cost of 
health care and education have required curtailing basic 
government activities and targeting for cuts spending 
categories the United States simply must undertake to compete.
    Funds are lacking to adequately maintain roads, bridges and 
waterways, and to replace National Weather Service satellites 
essential to monitoring and forecasting severe weather. And, 
the United States has ceded manned space flight to China and 
Russia.
    Advocates of the burdensomely inefficient health care and 
educations systems have perpetuated the myth that too much 
defense spending is the problem--that is simply not the case.
    In 2007, with two wars raging and the Bush tax cuts in 
place, the deficit stood at $161 billion, while in 2011, it 
will be about 1.3 trillion. Total government outlays are up 
about $847 billion, when no more than $62 billion are necessary 
to accommodate inflation. How can defense spending--with a 
baseline budget of $553 billion in 2011--be responsible? It 
only accounted for about 11 percent of the $847 billion 
increase.
    Moreover, if Congress would simply cut by half the 
additional spending since 2007, it would accomplish a total of 
more than $4 trillion in budget reductions over ten years.
    The myth also persists that the United States spends too 
much on defense and winding down the wars in Iraq and 
Afghanistan will create great dividends. It won't. Congress may 
have appropriated funds for those wars, but it is clear those 
wars, as well as other conflicts, have been even more expensive 
than those budget outlays indicated.
    U.S. defense systems are aging and becoming less functional 
and effective. Examples have been cited of sons manning 
fighters once flown by their fathers. Ask yourself how 
effective your staffs would be with 15 year old computers and 
if you would want to fight a cyber attack with such antiquated 
hardware.
    And defense capabilities are thinner. The number of USAF 
fighters is down from 3602 in 2000 to 1990 today, and will be 
reduced to 1739 at current funding levels. Navy ships are down 
from 316 to 288, and will have to be reduced to 263 at current 
funding levels. Sequestration would require cutting these 
figures even further and reducing the number of Army maneuver 
battalions by 30 or 40 percent.
    Changes in the nature of threats and the global economic 
power balance--who will have economic power--will require more 
not fewer resources to protect U.S. strategic interests and 
preserve the influence of U.S. values--democracy and free 
markets--in the world.
    Cyber warfare and arming China, which is building a blue 
water navy to challenge the United States in the Pacific, do 
not shift U.S. security challenges from one venue to another 
but rather add to those challenges. For example, U.S. and 
allied dependence on Middle East oil will continue for at least 
another generation--even with best efforts to develop domestic 
fossil fuels and alternative energy resources--and U.S. naval 
assets cannot be depleted in the Gulf Region to counter a 
Chinese buildup in the Pacific. Moreover, economic and 
political upheavals in Europe and North Africa will make the 
U.S. naval presence in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic 
even more vital.
    The myth persists that China will not be able to challenge 
the United States anytime soon. After all China's reported 
military expenditures--at current exchange rates--is only about 
17 percent of U.S. baseline outlays, but China does not have 
troops, aircraft and naval assets tied up around the world with 
established commitments. Moreover, China's currency is widely 
acknowledged to be undervalued, making comparisons of spending 
at current exchange rates deceptive.
    Using IMF Purchasing Power Parity exchange rates, China's 
reported military spending in 2011 becomes $148 billion or 27 
percent of the U.S. base budget. Based on the growth of 
spending over the past two years, with sequestration, China's 
military spending would be 37 and 43 percent of U.S. levels in 
2013 and 2015, and 66 percent in 2021. Without sequestration, 
it would still be 60 percent of U.S. levels in 2011 and could 
effectively match U.S. spending in the late 2020s.
    Also U.S. budget problems are much worse than Congress 
anticipates. The President's February budget assumed economic 
growth in the range of 4 percent for 2011 to 2016. Even in the 
more euphoric days of 2010, private sector economists were not 
assuming those kinds of figures.
    Even if the Joint Select Committee reaches a consensus on 
budget cuts acceptable to both chambers, slow growth will 
compel another budget crisis after the 2012 election and then 
others further down the road.

                             Hard Realities

    America must address the world as it finds it, not as 
intellectuals and advocates tell us it should be.
    Hard reality number one is the interactions between the 
health of the U.S. economy and these budget discussions are 
disquieting.
    The United States is not in a Greek spiral--at least not 
yet--but cuts in defense and nondefense spending will slow 
growth at a time when demand for what the private economy 
produces is weak and a second recession that could thrust 
unemployment into the teens threatens. Most certainly, budget 
cuts will breed slower growth, lower tax revenues and the need 
for more cuts, until Washington finds ways to get the private 
economy growing.
    If Washington can't find a way to instigate private sector 
growth--specifically, if it can't muster to challenge Chinese 
mercantilism and unleash development of domestic energy 
resources--and the nation continues on the assumption that 
budget deficits can be tamed with large contributions from 
defense, real effective Chinese defense spending will surpass 
U.S. defense spending in the next decade.
    The United States has many established assets--ships, 
planes and such built in the past--that will continue numerical 
superiority in the ability to project power, but those will be 
increasingly old assets or the numerical superiority will 
decline more rapidly from retirements of assets. China's assets 
will be newer and growing in number.
    The myth persists that China's military will be 
technologically inferior for a long time. Don't bet on that if 
the U.S. industry and R&D keeps moving to China through 
investments by GE and others, and the U.S. hollows out its 
defense industrial base through program cuts to meet 
unrealistic budget targets.
    Slashing defense spending because the Congress can't agree 
to confront Chinese mercantilism and develop domestic energy to 
rekindle economic growth, and to cut and reform the domestic 
spending that has built up over the last four years, and the 
tables will turn in the Pacific sooner than you think.
    Then, China's violation of the norms and rules of the 
economic system put in place by the United States and western 
powers after World War II will spread like an epidemic through 
the developing world, troubled places in Southern Europe, and 
so forth.
    China's mercantilism, anti-democratic values and soft 
approach to civil and human rights making will be seen an 
attractive comprehensive package, necessary for ensuring 
economic prosperity and personal security. The rules of the 
game, as defined by international institutions, will follow 
those broader sentiments, and Americans and their values and 
institutions will become isolated and unable to compete.
    America will be more isolated and dramatically weakened. 
Marginalized, it will resemble Italy or Greece. Charming and 
quaint but hardly able to independently sustain its standard of 
living or ensure its own security, or worse bankrupt and at 
China's doorstep for a bail out.
      



                       THE FUTURE OF THE MILITARY
                      SERVICES AND CONSEQUENCES OF
                         DEFENSE SEQUESTRATION

                              ----------                              




                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES



                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                      ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                              ----------                              


                              HEARING HELD

                            NOVEMBER 2, 2011

                              ----------                              


                               WITNESSES

General Raymond T. Odierno, USA

38th Chief of Staff, United States Army

Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, USN

30th Chief of Naval Operations

General Norton A. Schwartz, USAF

19th Chief of Staff, United States Air Force

General James F. Amos, USMC

35th Commandant of the Marine Corps


      
=======================================================================


               PREPARED STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY WITNESSES

                            November 2, 2011

=======================================================================

      
  STATEMENT OF GENERAL RAYMOND T. ODIERNO, USA, 38TH CHIEF OF STAFF, 
                           UNITED STATES ARMY

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Smith, and members of 
the committee.
    Since this is my first time to appear before you as the 
Chief of Staff of the Army, I want to start by telling you how 
much I appreciate your unwavering commitment to the Army and 
the Joint Force. I look forward to discussing the future of the 
Army and the potential impact of budget cuts on our future 
capabilities, readiness, and depth. Because of the sustained 
support of Congress and this committee, we are the best 
trained, best equipped, and best led land force in the world 
today. As we face an uncertain security environment and fiscal 
challenges, we know we will get smaller, but we must maintain 
our capabilities to be a decisive force--a force trusted by the 
American people to meet our future security needs.
    Over the past 10 years our Army--Active, Guard, and 
Reserve--has deployed over 1.1 million Soldiers to combat. Over 
4,500 Soldiers have made the ultimate sacrifice. Over 32,000 
Soldiers have been wounded--9,000 requiring long term care. In 
that time, our Soldiers have earned over 14,000 awards for 
valor to include 6 Medals of Honor and 22 Distinguished Service 
Crosses.
    Our Army is and always will be about Soldiers and Families. 
Throughout it all, our Soldiers and leaders have displayed 
unparalleled ingenuity, mental and physical toughness, and 
courage under fire. I am proud to be part of this Army--to lead 
our Nation's most precious treasure--our magnificent men and 
women.
    Today we face an estimated $450 billion plus in DOD budget 
cuts. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of previous 
reductions. I respectfully suggest that we make these decisions 
strategically, keeping in mind the realities of the risk they 
pose, and that we make these decisions together, unified, to 
ensure that when the plan is finally decided upon, all effort 
has been made to provide the Nation the best level of security 
and safety.
    Our Army must remain a key enabler in the Joint Force 
across a broad range of missions, responsive to the Combatant 
Commanders, and maintain trust with the American People. It is 
my challenge to balance the fundamental tension between 
maintaining security in an increasingly complicated and 
unpredictable world, and the requirements of a fiscally austere 
environment. The U.S. Army is committed to being a part of the 
solution in this very important effort.
    Accordingly, we must balance our force structure with 
appropriate modernization and sufficient readiness to sustain a 
smaller, but ready force.
    We will apply the lessons of ten years of war to ensure we 
have the right mix of forces. The right mix of heavy, medium, 
light, and Airborne forces; the right mix between the Active 
and Reserve Components; the right mix of combat, combat 
support, and combat service support forces; the right mix of 
operating and generating forces; and the right mix of Soldiers, 
Civilians, and contractors. We must ensure that the forces we 
employ to meet our operational commitments are maintained, 
trained, and equipped to the appropriate level of readiness.
    As the Army gets smaller, it is the ``How we reduce'' that 
will be critical. While we downsize, we must do it at a pace 
that allows us to retain a high quality All-Volunteer Force 
that is lethal, agile, adaptable, versatile, and ready to 
deploy with the ability to expand as required. I am committed 
to this, as I am also committed to fostering continued 
commitment to the Army Profession, and adapting leader 
development to meet future challenges.
    Although Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding will 
be reduced, I cannot overstate how critical it is in ensuring 
our Soldiers have what they need while serving in harm's way, 
as well as the vital role OCO funding plays in resetting our 
formations and equipment, a key aspect of our current and 
future readiness. Failing to sufficiently reset now would 
certainly incur higher future costs, potentially in lives.
    Along with the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of 
the Army, I share concern about the potential of sequestration, 
which would bring a total reduction of over a trillion dollars 
for DOD. Cuts of this magnitude would be catastrophic to the 
military and--in the case of the Army--would significantly 
reduce our capability and capacity to assure our partners 
abroad, respond to crises, and deter our potential adversaries, 
while threatening the readiness of our All-Volunteer Force.
    Sequestration would cause significant reductions in both 
Active and Reserve Component end strengths, impact the 
industrial base, and almost eliminate our modernization 
programs, denying the military superiority our Nation requires 
in today and tomorrow's uncertain and challenging security 
environment. We would have to consider additional 
infrastructure efficiencies, including consolidations and 
closures, commensurate with force structure reductions, to 
maintain the Army's critical capacity to train Soldiers and 
units, maintain equipment, and prepare the force to meet 
Combatant Commander requirements now and into the future.
    It would require us to completely revamp our National 
Security Strategy and reassess our ability to shape the global 
environment in order to protect the United States.
    With sequestration, my assessment is that the Nation would 
incur an unacceptable level of strategic and operational risk.
    Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I thank you again 
for allowing me the opportunity to appear before you. I also 
thank you for the support that you provide each and every day 
to our outstanding men and women of the United States Army, our 
Army Civilians and their Families. The strength of our Nation 
is our Army. The strength of our Army is our Soldiers. The 
strength of our Soldiers is our Families. This is what makes us 
Army Strong. I look forward to your questions.

  STATEMENT OF ADMIRAL JONATHAN W. GREENERT, USN, 30TH CHIEF OF NAVAL 
                               OPERATIONS

    Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Smith, and members of the 
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the 
future of the military services and consequences of defense 
sequestration. This is my first time testifying before you as 
Chief of Naval Operations, and I am proud to represent more 
than 625,000 Sailors and Civilians serving their country in the 
United States Navy. It is through their courage and commitment 
to country that the Navy continues to be at the front line of 
our nation's efforts in war and peace. I look forward to 
working with you to ensure our Navy remains the world's 
preeminent maritime force--providing America offshore options 
to advance our national interests in an era of uncertainty. 
Through innovation, adaptation and judiciousness, I believe we 
can sustain our contribution to defense and be good stewards of 
our nation's resources.
    As it has for more than 200 years, our Navy continues to 
deliver credible capability for deterrence, sea control and 
power projection to contain conflict and to fight and win our 
nation's wars. We remain forward at the maritime crossroads to 
protect the interconnected systems of trade, information and 
security that enable our nation's economic prosperity while 
ensuring operational access for the Joint force to the maritime 
domain and the littorals.
    Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Navy 
has been an integral part of our nation's combat, counter-
terrorism and crisis response operations. Currently, Navy's 
aircraft carriers and air wings account for about 30 percent of 
the close air support for our troops on the ground in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, and an even larger share of the electronic support 
missions that ensure the safety of our troops against IED 
attack. Navy SEALs led a joint force to capture Osama bin Laden 
and also rescued the M/V ALABAMA's crew. USS FLORIDA, a guided 
missile submarine, and the USS SCRANTON and USS PROVIDENCE, two 
attack submarines, launched over 100 Tomahawk land attack 
missiles at military targets in Libya at the outset of 
Operation ODYSSEY DAWN. Earlier this year, our aircraft carrier 
USS GEORGE WASHINGTON and several of our cruisers and 
destroyers aided the Japanese after a Tsunami decimated 
portions of Honshu Island. To conduct warfighting and be ready 
to respond to such crises, on any given day more than 40,000 
sailors are at sea and about 40 percent of our ships are 
deployed away from home.
    Over the past 10 years we stretched our ships, aircraft and 
people to meet the growing needs of Combatant Commanders for 
Navy forces with a smaller Fleet. Since 2000, the number of 
ships in the Fleet decreased by about 10 percent. Yet, in the 
last four years alone, demand for carrier strike groups 
doubled, and requests for amphibious ready groups grew by 70 
percent. As a result, each ship is underway about 15 percent 
more per year than in 2000, lengthening deployments and making 
deployments more frequent. Because deployments now cut into the 
time available to conduct maintenance on ships and aircraft and 
to train our crews, we have to tailor the readiness of some 
units to only those missions they will likely be tasked to do 
instead of the whole (design) range of missions they might be 
tasked to do. Less time for maintenance decreases the service 
lives of our ships and aircraft and makes maintenance more 
expensive because it is now less efficient and more emergent. 
In turn, growing maintenance costs offset the funds available 
for procurement and modernization, making it that much more 
difficult to recapitalize the Fleet.
    Going forward, I expect the importance of Navy forces will 
grow as compared to today as we draw down ground forces in the 
Middle East and reset them. Nations like Iran and North Korea 
continue to pursue nuclear capabilities, while rising powers 
are rapidly modernizing their militaries and investing in 
capabilities to deny our forces freedom of action in vital 
regions such as the Asia-Pacific. To ensure we are prepared to 
meet our missions, I will continue to focus on my three 
priorities: 1) Be ready to fight and win today; 2) Build the 
future force to fight and win tomorrow; and 3) Take care of our 
people and create a motivated, relevant and diverse force. Most 
importantly, I will work to ensure we do not create a ``hollow 
force'' that is unable to do the mission due to shortfalls in 
maintenance, personnel, enablers or training. We will not erode 
the support we provide to our Sailors, Civilians, and their 
families that sustains our all-volunteer force.
    To pursue these priorities in a constrained fiscal 
environment, we will have to be effective and efficient. We 
will maintain our warfighting advantage against new threats 
using new technologies and operating concepts. We will use 
innovative ways to affordably operate forward, where we are 
most effective and can provide our nation options for influence 
and response. Additionally, we will be judicious with our 
resources (people, money and time) by more efficiently 
scheduling maintenance and adapting our Fleet Response Plan.
    We must remain the world's preeminent maritime fighting 
force. In particular, our Navy will continue to dominate the 
undersea domain with sustained investment and effort in a 
network of platforms and sensors. The Joint force relies on us 
for assured access to deter conflict, fight wars, protect our 
allies and partners and advance our interests. We will sustain 
access below, on and above the water with new maritime and 
joint operational concepts such as Air-Sea Battle, and by 
operationalizing the electromagnetic spectrum and cyber domain.
    The budget reductions we are currently addressing as part 
of the 2011 Budget Control Act will introduce additional risk 
in our ability to meet the future needs of Combatant 
Commanders, but we believe this risk is manageable. Some 
strategic changes will be required in the Department of Defense 
to posture our forces, prepare for conflicts, and conduct 
combat and stability operations. We are currently working 
through an emerging strategy as we complete the fiscal year 13 
budget submission.
    However, if the efforts of the Joint Select Committee on 
Deficit Reduction do not result in agreement and sequestration 
occurs, the Department of Defense and the Navy will have to 
rethink some fundamental aspects of what our military does. The 
current law does not allow the military to manage these 
reductions, but rather applies the cuts uniformly to each 
program, project and activity. Our readiness and procurement 
accounts would face a reduction of about 18 percent, rising to 
approximately 25 percent in the event military personnel 
funding is exempted from full sequestration. The size of these 
cuts would substantially impact our ability to resource the 
Combatant Commander's operational plans and maintain our 
forward presence around the globe.
    Some of the actions we would need to take under 
sequestration could have a severe and irreversible impact on 
the Navy's future. For instance, we may need to end procurement 
programs and begin laying off civilian personnel in fiscal year 
2012 to ensure we are within control levels for January of 
2013. As a capital-intensive force, we depend on consistent and 
reliable production from the shipbuilding and aviation 
industries to sustain our fleet capacity. If we end programs 
abruptly and some of these companies shut down, we will be 
hard-pressed to reconstitute them. And each ship we don't build 
impacts the fleet for 20-50 years.
    I look forward to working in partnership with the Committee 
to ensure our Navy will remain able to deter aggression by 
operating forward and being ready to fight and win our nation's 
wars. By maintaining our current course and judiciously 
applying our resources, I am confident we can come through this 
challenge and remain the world's most lethal, flexible and 
capable maritime force. Thank you for this opportunity to speak 
with you on the Navy's behalf.

  STATEMENT OF GENERAL NORTON A. SCHWARTZ, USAF, 19TH CHIEF OF STAFF, 
                        UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

    Ten years after 9/11, Airmen and their Army, Navy, Marine, 
and Coast Guard teammates continue to serve the Nation with 
distinction, performing admirably across a broad spectrum of 
operations. In particular, our service members have honed their 
skills to a fine edge after more than a decade of effectively 
conducting counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations.
    As we evaluate our strategy for the future, we must protect 
the progress that we have made by addressing the undeniable 
stresses and strains on our service members and their families, 
as well as the tremendous toll on our battle-worn equipment, 
resulting from more than a decade of sustained global 
operations. This is particularly true for the Air Force, which 
has been in sustained combat operations for more than two 
decades, dating back to Operation DESERT STORM.
    We also must recognize and prepare for the ongoing 
evolution of a highly dynamic, increasingly complex 
geostrategic environment in which the proliferation of 
technology is allowing more and more actors to exert influence 
and effect desired outcomes. In order to attain a full-spectrum 
portfolio of capabilities that is prepared to address wide-
ranging security threats, we must internalize the hard-fought, 
hard-learned lessons of the past decade of operations against 
primarily terrorist and insurgent elements, as we judiciously 
prepare for the possibility of future higher-end contingencies 
involving potential near-peer actors.
    Because our Nation's debt crisis has a direct bearing on 
our national security, the U.S. military will also tighten its 
fiscal belt, and be a part of the solution to find our way back 
to a vibrant national economy. To this end, the Department of 
Defense began by identifying more than $100 billion in 
efficiencies, shifting the savings from overhead to operational 
and modernization requirements. In the Air Force alone, nearly 
$33 billion were reallocated to support required capabilities 
more directly. Moreover, we found an additional $10 billion in 
savings to contribute to deficit reduction as we completed work 
on the 2012 budget. The Air Force continues to review all areas 
of the budget--including force structure, operations and 
investment, and personnel--for further savings.
    But to sustain the military's ability to protect the Nation 
against wide-ranging threats in a very dynamic strategic and 
fiscal environment, we will have to make extremely difficult 
decisions--for example, reducing investment in many areas, but 
also enhancing capabilities in others in order to compensate. 
These choices must be based on strategic considerations, not 
compelled solely by budget targets. A non-strategy-based 
approach that proposes cuts without correlation to national 
security priorities or core defense capabilities will lead to a 
hollowed-out force, similar to those that followed every major 
conflict since World War I--a U.S. military with aging 
equipment, extremely stressed human resources, less-than-
adequate training, and ultimately, declining readiness and 
effectiveness. We must avoid repeating this scenario by 
steering clear of ill-conceived, across-the-board cuts, which 
do not allow us to deliberately accept risks, to devise 
strategies to mitigate those risks, and to maintain a capable, 
if smaller, effective force. Instead, sweeping cuts of the sort 
in the Budget Control Act's sequester provision would slash our 
investment accounts; raid our operations and maintenance 
accounts, forcing the curtailment of important daily operations 
and sustainment efforts; and inflict real damage to the 
effectiveness and well-being of our Airmen and their families. 
Ultimately, such a scenario gravely undermines our ability to 
protect the Nation.
    But beyond the manner in which potential budget cuts are 
executed, even the most thoroughly-deliberated strategy may not 
be able to overcome dire consequences if cuts go far beyond the 
$450 billion-plus in anticipated national security budget 
reductions over the next 10 years. This is true whether the 
cuts are directed by sequestration or by Joint Select Committee 
proposal, and whether they are deliberately targeted or across-
the-board. From the ongoing budget review, the Department is 
confident that further spending reductions beyond the more than 
$450 billion that are needed to comply with the Budget Control 
Act's first round of cuts cannot be done without damaging our 
core military capabilities and therefore our national security.
    From the perspective of the Air Force, whose ``real'' total 
obligation authority is already only 20 percent of the 
Department of Defense top-line--the lowest of any military 
service since World War II--further cuts will amount to:

    1. LFurther reductions to our end strength, both civilian 
and military, despite the fact that the Air Force already is 
substantially smaller than it was ten years ago;
    2. LContinued aging and reductions in the Air Force's fleet 
of fighters, strategic bombers, airlifters, and tankers, as 
well as to associated bases and infrastructure;
    3. LAdverse effects on training and readiness, which has 
seen a decline since 2003; and
    4. LDiminished capacity to execute concurrent missions 
across the spectrum of operations and over vast distances on 
the globe.

    A smaller Air Force, as a result of anticipated budget 
cuts, still will remain an unmatched, superbly capable force, 
but as a matter of simple physical limitations, it will be able 
to accomplish fewer tasks in fewer places in any given period 
of time. Therefore, while the Nation has become accustomed to 
effective execution of wide-ranging operations in rapid 
succession or even simultaneously--for example, the Air Force's 
concurrent response to crisis situations in Japan and Libya, 
which ranged more than 5,500 miles in distance and the 
operational spectrum from humanitarian relief to combat 
airpower, all the while maintaining operations in Afghanistan 
and Iraq--it will have to accept reduced coverage in future 
similar, concurrent scenarios if further large cuts to the 
national security budget are allowed to take effect. Also, our 
Airmen and their families, throughout the Total Force, would 
face intensified deployment schedules, and our equipment would 
become aged and worn more quickly, because fewer resources 
would be available to commit to the Nation's emerging needs.
    As part of our strategy to mitigate the effects of 
decreased capacity, we will continue to strengthen our 
international partnerships, especially where common interests 
and shared security responsibilities are involved. More 
importantly, we will continue to promote efforts toward 
advancing Joint interdependence, as the Chairman of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff testified before this committee last week. This 
will require each military service ``to maintain and be the 
masters of their core competencies and their unique service 
cultures, but . . . [to] operate as a single cohesive team.'' 
To meet the Chairman's intent, the Air Force will continue to 
make vital contributions to the Joint team's portfolio, 
integrating airpower's four unique, enduring qualities: (1) 
domain control; (2) intelligence, surveillance, and 
reconnaissance; (3) air mobility; and (4) global strike. These 
four core contributions--plus our unparalleled ability to 
command and control air, space, and cyber systems--will sustain 
the Joint team's advantage, and inform our analysis as we 
prioritize our efforts in each of the most critical dimensions: 
materiel, personnel, training, and readiness.
    Reducing any of these core contributions, in addition to 
potential diminished capacities as discussed earlier, will 
fundamentally alter the complexion of your Air Force. We 
therefore are focused on sustaining and strengthening these 
core functions. Moreover, specific systems such as the F-35A, 
the centerpiece of our future tactical air combat capability; 
KC-46A, the backbone of our worldwide power projection 
capability and thus our Nation's global expeditionary posture; 
and the Long-Range Strike ``family of systems,'' all represent 
substantial elements of our overall suite of capabilities and 
thus must all be pursued through disciplined--and certainly 
efficient--modernization efforts. Even though we are 
responsibly drawing down in Afghanistan and Iraq, we know that 
historically, as U.S. forces withdraw from active combat, the 
relative requirement for airpower typically increases. By 
focusing on our core contributions, we are preserving the 
character of your Air Force--ready to continue responding 
effectively to the Nation's airpower and global power 
projection needs.
    In short, Airmen remain fully committed to executing 
current missions effectively while building a future force 
according to operational risk, capability and capacity 
requirements, personnel and materiel needs, and prudent, if 
frugal, strategies for investment in modernization, 
recapitalization, and readiness. We do not have to forsake 
national security to achieve fiscal stability. If we undertake 
a strategy-based approach to necessary budget cuts, and keep 
those cuts to a reasonable level, we can assure our full-
spectrum preparedness in providing our unique capabilities, 
affording a wider range of options for rapid, tailorable, and 
flexible power projection--Global Vigilance, Reach, and Power--
on which our Nation's security and strategic interests rely.

STATEMENT OF GENERAL JAMES F. AMOS, USMC, 35TH COMMANDANT OF THE MARINE 
                                 CORPS

    In an increasingly dangerous and uncertain world, the 
Marine Corps continues to provide capabilities our Nation needs 
to retain its status as the only credible remaining superpower. 
As we face inevitable difficult resource decisions, we must 
also consider how we can best mitigate the inherent risk of a 
reduced defense capacity. Like an affordable insurance policy, 
the Marine Corps and the Navy's amphibious forces represent a 
very efficient and effective hedge against the Nation's most 
likely risks.
    The current fight. We will continue to provide the best 
trained and equipped Marine units to Afghanistan. This will not 
change. This will remain the top priority for as long as we 
have Marines in harm's way. We have made great progress in 
Afghanistan; our fellow citizens expect no less of us for the 
duration of the war. We remain committed to achieving success. 
We will ensure that we draw down in Afghanistan in a way that 
responsibly transfers authority to our Afghan partners, and 
maintains pressure on the enemy. Our forward-deployed Marines 
have all that they need with regard to training, equipment, and 
leadership to accomplish the mission. The cost of ensuring that 
they have all that they need has been felt by those units back 
at home station. This fact impacts our ability to deal with 
another large scale contingency.
    Future Security Environment. Our Nation and world face an 
uncertain future; we cannot predict where and when events may 
occur that might require us to respond on short notice to 
protect our citizens and our interests. In the past, there have 
always been times when events have compelled the United States 
to become involved, even when such involvement wasn't desired; 
there is no doubt that we will have do this again as we face an 
uncertain future. As we look ahead, we see a world of 
increasing instability and conflict, characterized by poverty, 
competition for resources, urbanization, overpopulation and 
extremism. Failed states, or those that cannot adequately 
govern their own territory can become safe havens for 
terrorist, insurgent and criminal groups that threaten the U.S. 
and our allies.
    Already pressurized by a lack of education and job 
opportunities, the marked increase of young men in 
underdeveloped countries are swelling the ranks of disaffected 
groups, providing a more pronounced distinction between the 
``haves'' and ``have-nots.'' Over the last year we watched as 
the momentum of the Arab Spring toppled long-established 
governments, and re-shaped the political and military dynamics 
of an already troubled region.
    Increasing competition for scarce natural resources like 
fossil fuels, food and clean water continue to lead to tension, 
crisis and conflict. The rise of new powers and shifting 
geopolitical relationships will create greater potential for 
competition and friction. The rapid proliferation of new 
technologies, cyber warfare and advanced precision weaponry 
will amplify the risks, thus empowering state and non-state 
actors as never before. These trends will exert a significant 
influence on the future security environment and, in turn, the 
ever-changing character of warfare. In the words of one of our 
former general officers, ``two parallel worlds exist on this 
planet--a stable progressively growing, developing world and an 
unstable, disintegrating chaotic world. The two worlds are 
colliding.'' This is the world in which your Marine Corps must 
operate. If we are to do our part to forestall future wars and 
conflicts we must remain engaged and involved.
    Crisis response. Like it or not, America must maintain the 
ability to respond to crises--especially in unexpected places 
at unexpected times. History has shown that crises usually come 
with little or no warning, and often in conditions of 
uncertainty, complexity, and chaos. A full understanding of 
what is occurring, and what the best response should be, takes 
time. There remains an imperative for a force that can respond 
to crisis situations immediately and create options and 
decision space for our Nation's leaders. An on-scene force that 
can respond immediately reduces the risk that a situation will 
spin out of control as our nation's leaders attempt to 
determine a way ahead. America's ability to respond in the 
manner required is increasingly complicated by the fact that 
since the 1990s our nation has significantly reduced the number 
and size of our bases and stations around the world.
    Crisis response must sometimes be measured in hours, if not 
minutes. When Marine forces rescued the downed Air Force F-15 
pilot in Libya earlier this year, they did so from amphibious 
shipping in the Mediterranean, arriving and completing the 
rescue within 90 minutes of notification. Imagine how the 
dynamic in Libya might have changed if Quadafi had captured a 
US air crew. Within 20 hours of notification forward deployed 
Marine forces arrived in tsunami-devastated Japan and began to 
conduct search and rescue and humanitarian assistance and 
disaster relief missions--at times within the radioactive 
plume. Crisis response can't be done from the United States. It 
takes too much time to get there. Even if adequate 
infrastructure is available near the crisis site to support 
deployment of a crisis response force by air, maintaining and 
sustaining such a force by air is extraordinarily difficult.
    It is imperative that our Nation retain a credible means of 
mitigating risk while we draw down both the capabilities and 
capacities of our forces. This is best done by forward deployed 
and positioned forces, trained to a high state of readiness, 
and on the scene. The Marine Corps was specifically directed by 
the 82nd Congress as the force intended to be ``the most ready 
when the Nation is least ready.'' This expectation exists 
because of the costly lessons our nation learned during the 
Korean War when a lack of preparedness in the beginning stages 
of the conflict very nearly resulted in defeat. Because our 
Nation cannot afford to hold the entire joint force at such a 
high state of readiness, it has chosen to keep the Marines 
ready, and has often used them to plug the gaps during 
international crises, to respond when no other options were 
available.
    Forward presence. Although the world is continuing to 
change and budgets continue to fluctuate, America's requirement 
to maintain a forward based force-in-readiness remains. 
Physical presence matters. It shows our economic and our 
military commitment to a particular region. It deters potential 
adversaries. It assures our friends. It permits response in a 
timely manner to crises.
    Our nation has already significantly reduced the number and 
size of our force presence, our bases and stations around the 
world. U.S. Forces based in the continental United States are 
challenged to respond quickly due to the tyranny of distance. 
The national blessing of being located between two great oceans 
bears the expense of having to traverse those oceans in order 
to respond to crisis in other parts of the world. If we are to 
maintain our status as a global power, we have a responsibility 
to respond to crises quickly.
    Speed enables swift and certain projection of power and 
influence. When we respond from a forward posture, our response 
time is almost immediate--often before an adversary can 
position its forces optimally, or accomplish his objectives. 
Only when we are positioned forward can we provide the backing 
to diplomatic efforts that give our nation's leaders time to 
develop options and build coalitions. Often, U.S. citizens in 
other lands are put at risk if we are slow to respond or to 
evacuate them.
    Maintaining a presence helps provide stability to areas of 
strategic importance. We can build partner capacity through 
direct contact; increase our own awareness of dynamic 
developments and potential response options; control key 
objectives like ports, airfields, and chokepoints to ensure 
their safe and continued use should they become threatened; 
demonstrate resolve; assure our allies and partners; and 
provide relief and assistance quickly in the case of natural or 
man-made disasters.
    Your Marine Corps remains forward deployed--particularly in 
the critical Pacific region. It is widely acknowledged that the 
Pacific is the future of our country from both an economic and 
a military perspective. We also recognize that for many years 
to come we will have security challenges in the Central Command 
area of operations. But even as we agree on the importance of 
these two critical regions, we can't ignore the rest of the 
world. History has shown that crises, conflicts, and challenges 
never occur where we want them to . . . we're not very good at 
predicting the future. Right now, Marines are engaged in 
multiple regions around the world such as Eastern Europe, Latin 
and South America, Africa and the Pacific Rim, conducting 
theater security cooperation activities and building partner 
capacity with our allies and partners. The goal of our 
engagement activities is to minimize the conditions for 
conflict and enable host nation forces to effectively address 
instability as it occurs. Engagement activities also provide 
our Nation with a stance for crisis response and quick footing 
for action when the need arises. As we look ahead to times of 
reduced manning and restricted access to overseas basing, 
Marines must be forward deployed and engaged on a day-to-day 
basis, working closely with our joint and allied partners. When 
crises arise, these same Marines will respond--locally, 
regionally or globally--to accomplish whatever mission our 
Nation asks of us.
    Our maritime role and amphibious and expeditionary 
operations. As we consider the future, we do so with the sure 
knowledge that America is first and foremost a maritime nation. 
Like so much of the world, we rely on the maritime commons for 
the exchange of commerce and ideas. The sea dominates the 
surface of our globe (70% of earth's surface). 95% of the 
world's commerce travels by ship. 49% of the world's oil 
travels through six major choke points; on any given day 23,000 
ships are underway around the world.
    Many depend on us to maintain freedom of movement on those 
commons; we continue to take that responsibility seriously. The 
world's littoral regions--where the land and sea (and air) 
meet--are equally critical when securing freedom of movement. 
The littorals are where seaborne trade originates and enters 
its markets. The littorals include straits, most of the world's 
population centers, and the areas of maximum growth.
    The Navy and Marine Corps team remain the solution set to 
fulfilling our global maritime responsibilities in these 
critical areas. Naval forces are not reliant on host nation 
support or permission; in the conduct of operations, they step 
lightly on our allies and host countries. With the increasing 
concentration of the world's population in littoral areas, the 
ability to operate simultaneously on the sea, ashore, in the 
air, and to move seamlessly between these three domains is 
critical. The Marine Corps' requirement to deploy and respond 
globally, engage regionally, and train locally necessitates 
that we leverage every form of strategic mobility--a 
combination of amphibious ships, high speed vessels, maritime 
preposition shipping, organic tactical aviation and strategic 
airlift.
    Amphibious forces, a combination of Marine air ground task 
forces and Navy amphibious ships, remain a uniquely critical 
and capable component of both crisis response and meeting our 
maritime responsibilities. Operating as a team, amphibious 
forces provide operational reach and agility, they ``buy time'' 
and decision space for our national leaders in time of crisis. 
They bolster diplomatic initiatives by means of their credible 
forward presence. Amphibious forces also provide the Nation 
with assured access for the joint force in a major contingency 
operation. That same force can quickly be reinforced to assure 
access anywhere in the world in the event of a major 
contingency; it can be dialed up or down like a rheostat to be 
relevant across the range of military operations. No other 
force possesses the flexibility to provide these capabilities 
and yet sustain itself logistically for significant periods of 
time, at a time and place of its choosing. There is a reason 
why every Combatant Commander wants the presence of forward 
deployed amphibious forces on a routine basis, and each of them 
ask for that. They know that such forces mitigate risk, and 
give them the capability to deal with the unknown.
    The inherent usefulness, capability, and flexibility of 
amphibious forces is not widely understood, as evidenced by the 
frequent, and incorrect, assumption that forcible entry 
capabilities alone define the requirement for amphibious 
forces. The same capabilities that allow an amphibious task 
force to deliver and support a landing force on a hostile shore 
enable it to support forward engagement and crisis response. In 
fact, the most frequent employment of amphibious forces is for 
engagement and crisis response. The geographic Combatant 
Commanders have increased their demand for forward-postured 
amphibious forces capable of conducting security cooperation, 
regional deterrence and crisis response. In an era of declining 
access, this trend will likely markedly increase. Over the past 
year, amphibious forces have conducted humanitarian assistance 
and disaster relief efforts in Pakistan, they have supported 
combat operations in Afghanistan with ground forces and fixed 
wing aviation, they have responded to the piracy crisis on M.V. 
Magellan Star, they have supported operations in Libya, and 
assisted our allies in the Philippines and Japan. Modern 
amphibious assaults, when necessary, seek to avoid enemy 
strengths by exploiting gaps and weaknesses. An example is the 
TF-58 assault that seized key terrain south of Kandahar 450 
miles inland in 2001 shortly after the 9/11 attacks.
    The Marine Corps defines itself as an ``expeditionary'' 
force. ``Expeditionary'' means that we're capable of operating 
in austere environments. When we deploy we bring the water, the 
fuel, the supplies that our Marines and sailors need to 
accomplish the mission. ``Expeditionary'' is not a bumper 
sticker to us, or a concept, it is a state of conditioning that 
Marines work hard to maintain.
    Right-sizing in the face of new fiscal realities. The 
Marine Corps is fully aware of the fiscal challenges facing our 
Nation, and stands ready to further critically examine and 
streamline its force needs for the future. We continually 
strive to be good stewards of the public trust by maintaining 
the very best financial management practices. The Marine Corps 
remains the first and only military service whose financial 
statements have been deemed audit-ready. We are proud of our 
reputation for frugality, and we remain one of the best values 
for the defense dollar. During these times of constrained 
resources, we remain committed to refining operations, 
identifying efficiencies, and reinvesting savings to conserve 
scarce public funds. When the Nation pays the ``sticker price'' 
for its Marines, it buys the ability to remain forward deployed 
and forward engaged, to assure our partners, reinforce 
alliances, and build partner capacity. For 7.8% of the total 
DoD budget, our Nation gains the ability to respond to 
unexpected crises, from humanitarian disaster relief efforts, 
to non-combatant evacuation operations, to conduct counter-
piracy operations, or full scale combat.
    As Congress, and this Committee, work hard to account for 
every dollar, the Marine Corps is working to make sure that 
every dollar is well spent. In the end we know we're going to 
have to make cuts. As we provide our input we need to address 
three critical considerations--strategy, balance, and keeping 
faith.
    In an effort to ensure the Marine Corps was best organized 
for a challenging and dangerous future security environment, 
last fall we conducted a comprehensive and detailed force 
structure review to identify all dimensions of rebalance and 
posture for the future. The results of this effort have been 
shared with this Committee in the past. This effort 
incorporated the lessons learned from ten years of combat. We 
affirm the results of that strategy-driven initial effort, but 
we have also begun to readjust certain parameters of it based 
on the realities of spending cuts outlined in the Budget 
Control Act of 2011.
    When we went through the force structure review effort, we 
built a force that can respond to only one major contingency at 
a time. It has been opined that one effect of sequestration 
might be to put a Marine Corps below the end strength level 
that's necessary to support even one major contingency. At the 
potential end strength level resulting from the sequestration, 
we're going to have to make some tough decisions and assume 
significantly more risk. We will not be able to do the things 
the Nation needs us to do to mitigate risk, or to meet the 
requirements of the Combatant Commanders. We won't be there to 
reassure our potential friends, or to assure our allies. And we 
certainly won't be there to contain small crises before they 
become major conflagrations. A Marine Corps end strength level 
that could result from the sequestration presents significant 
risk institutionally and for the Nation. Responsiveness to 
Combatant Commander requirements such as contingencies and 
crisis response will be significantly degraded.
    With regard to strategy, the Marine Corps is participating 
in the ongoing rewrite of national security strategy. Once this 
effort is concluded, we'll evaluate the resources available 
against the mission, then build the most capable force 
possible. We'll use what we learned during the force structure 
review effort as our point of departure, and make 
recommendations on how to best reshape the Marine Corps.
    We cannot make cuts in a manner that would ``hollow'' the 
force. We have learned this lesson before during previous draw 
downs. The term ``hollow force'' refers primarily to the lack 
of readiness of U.S. forces to accomplish their missions. 
Readiness is the aggregate of the investment in personnel, 
training, and equipment to ensure that units are prepared to 
perform missions at any given time. The Services have varying 
approaches to readiness. In order to manage investment and O&M 
costs, some Services judiciously reduce the readiness status of 
selected units during interim periods between scheduled 
deployments. This concept is referred to as ``tiered 
readiness.'' In this concept, resources are limited and non-
deployed units pay the costs to ensure that deployed and next-
to-deploy units have sufficient personnel, equipment, and 
training. Over time, non-deploying, or rarely-deploying units, 
may be held at reduced readiness levels for indeterminate 
periods of time. Given our mission to be America's 
Expeditionary Force in Readiness, a tiered readiness concept is 
not compatible with the Marine Corps' missions because its non-
deployed units are often called upon to respond to 
unanticipated and varied crises on a moment's notice.
    The Marine Corps strives to maintain a high state of unit 
readiness and logistical self-sustainment capability. Even when 
not deployed, Marine units maintain higher levels of readiness, 
so they can deploy on short notice. This readiness posture 
allows the Corps to:

    1. LMaintain most of its operating force ready to respond 
quickly to crises and contingencies;
    2. LCycle battalions, squadrons and other units through 
rotations rapidly;
    3. LRoutinely build and deploy coherent, effective task 
forces without extensive work-ups; and,
    4. LMaintain significant amounts of equipment in theater 
vice rotating most of it with each unit, thus reducing the 
costs of doing our Nation's bidding.

    Organic logistics capabilities are vital to this practice. 
Too often, service logistics units fall prey to cuts that 
forfeit their ability to respond to crises. Naval forces--in 
particular, amphibious ships--are also essential to readiness. 
We must continue to invest in this highly utilized capability.
    Finally, lower budget levels, end strength, and investment 
accounts will significantly affect contingency plans over time. 
Many of these plans depend on concurrent and/or sequential 
operations. Less capacity removes the capability for such 
operations. Operational plans, will necessarily be adjusted to 
accommodate the longer timelines required to achieve desired 
objectives. Longer time to accomplish objectives in war can 
easily translate into increased loss of personnel and materiel, 
and ultimately places mission accomplishment at risk.
    My promise to this Committee is that at the end of the day, 
we will build ``the best Marine Corps'' that our Nation is 
willing to afford. I intend to ``keep faith'' with our people. 
This term has deep meaning to the leadership of the Marine 
Corps. We expect much from those we recruit, and we remind them 
constantly of their obligations of honorable and faithful 
service. In return we must be faithful to the obligations we 
make to those who serve honorably. We must not break the chain 
of trust that exists. Precipitous personnel reductions are 
among the worst measures that can be employed to save money. 
Our all-volunteer system is built upon a reasonable opportunity 
for retention and advancement; wholesale cuts undermine the 
faith and confidence in service leadership and create long-term 
experience deficits with negative operational impacts. Such an 
approach cannot be quickly recovered from.
    Redundancy. In the interest of austerity, there are many 
who try to argue that the Marines provide capabilities that are 
redundant when compared with other Services. This is not the 
case. ``Redundant'' means that no replacement is required if 
something is discarded. This is not true of the Marine Corps 
capabilities sets or of the way we have adapted to the future 
security environment and modern warfare. If the Nation lost its 
amphibious capability, it would have to pay for another Service 
to provide it. In short order the Nation would require a 
sustainable air-ground force able to operate from the sea--to 
respond to crises and contingencies. A force that comes from 
the sea requires specialized equipment and training. No savings 
would be gained because there is no redundancy. The nation 
would have to pay--and likely pay a higher price--to gain back 
what had been given away.
    In any future defense strategy, the Marine Corps will fill 
a unique lane in the capability range of America's armed 
forces. A Middleweight Force, we are lighter than the Army, and 
heavier than SOF. The Corps is not a second land army. The Army 
is purpose-built for land campaigns and carries a heavier punch 
when it arrives, whereas the Marine Corps is an expeditionary 
force focused on coming from the sea with integrated aviation 
and logistics capabilities. The Marine Corps maintains the 
ability to contribute to land campaigns by leveraging or 
rapidly aggregating its capabilities and capacities. Similarly, 
Marine Corps and SOF roles are complementary, rather than 
redundant. Special Operation Forces contribute to the counter-
insurgency and counter-terrorism efforts of the Combatant 
Commanders in numerous and specialized ways, but they are not a 
substitute for conventional forces with a broader range of 
capability and sustainability.
    Marine air is similarly not redundant. The US Air Force 
cannot come from the sea; nor are most of its aircraft suitable 
for expeditionary missions. The Navy currently does not invest 
in sufficient capability to operate their aircraft ashore once 
deployed--a requirement that has risen often in the past in 
support of both naval and land campaigns. If Navy aviation were 
to buy the capability to deploy effectively to austere ashore 
bases from their ships, they would find it would cost as much, 
or more, than it costs them currently to do so on behalf of the 
Marine Corps.
    Reset and modernization. Reset is distinguishable from 
modernization. There will be a cost when the Marine Corps comes 
out of Afghanistan. It is necessary to reset the force by 
addressing equipment shortfalls, and to refresh equipment worn 
out or degraded by years of combat. We currently estimate that 
bill to be about $3 billion. A few years ago that bill was in 
excess of $15 billion. With the help of Congress we have been 
able to reset the force for some years now, even as we 
continued to support operations both in Iraq, and Afghanistan. 
As we look to the future, we must address our deficiencies and 
replace the equipment that is worn out from operations in 
Afghanistan. Secondly, we must continue to modernize to keep 
pace with the evolving world.
    The Marine Corps is currently undertaking several 
initiatives to modernize the Total Force. The programmatic 
priority for our ground forces is the seamless transition of 
Marines from the sea to conduct sustained operations ashore 
whether for training, humanitarian assistance, or for combat. 
Our ground combat and tactical vehicle strategy is focused on 
the right mix of assets, balancing performance, payload, 
survivability, fuel efficiency, transportability and cost. In 
particular, the Amphibious Combat Vehicle is important to our 
ability to conduct surface littoral maneuver and seamlessly 
project Marine units from sea to land in permissive, uncertain 
and hostile environments. We remain firmly partnered with the 
U.S. Army in fielding a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle that lives 
up to its name while also being affordable.
    Marine Corps Aviation, which is on the cusp of its 
centennial of service to our Nation, continues its 
modernization that began over a decade ago. The continued 
development and fielding of the short take-off and vertical 
landing (STOVL) F-35B Joint Strike Fighter remains the 
centerpiece of this effort. The capability inherent in a STOVL 
jet allows the Marine Corps to operate in harsh conditions and 
from remote locations where there often are few airfields 
available for conventional aircraft. It is also specifically 
designed to operate from amphibious ships--a capability that no 
other tactical aircraft possesses. The ability to employ a 
fifth-generation aircraft from amphibious shipping doubles the 
number of ``carrier'' platforms from which the United States 
can employ fixed wing aviation. Once fully fielded, the F-35B 
replaces three legacy aircraft--F/A-18, EA-6B and AV-8B--saving 
the DoD approximately $1 billion per year in operations and 
maintenance costs.
    This program has been performing notably since January with 
more than 260 vertical landings completed and 98% of its key 
performance parameters met. It is ahead of schedule in most 
areas. The F-35B also recently completed a highly successful 
three-week, sea trial period aboard the amphibious assault 
warship USS Wasp (LHD-1). DoD has already purchased 32 of these 
aircraft. Delivery is on track, and we look forward to 
receiving them at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma just ten months 
from now.
    The MV-22B Osprey continues to be a success story for the 
Marine Corps and the Joint Force. To date, this revolutionary 
tilt-rotor aircraft has changed the way Marines operate on the 
battlefield, giving American and Coalition forces the maneuver 
advantage and operational reach unmatched by any other tactical 
aircraft. Over the past four years since achieving Initial 
Operational Capability, the MV-22B has flown more than 18,000 
hours in combat, carried more than 129,000 personnel, and 5.7 
million pounds of cargo. The MV-22B has made multiple 
deployments to Iraq, four with MEUs at sea, and it is currently 
on its fourth deployment to Afghanistan. The unprecedented 
operational reach of an MV-22B, embarked aboard amphibious 
shipping in the Mediterranean, was the sole reason for the 
rescue of a downed American aviator in Libya. Our squadron 
fielding plan is well under way as we continue to replace our 
44 year old, Vietnam-era CH-46 helicopters. We must procure all 
required quantities of the MV-22B in accordance with the 
program of record. Calls by some to reduce MV-22B procurement 
as a DoD cost savings measure are puzzling. Their arguments are 
ill-informed and rooted in anachronisms when measured against 
the proven record of performance and safety this force 
multiplier brings to today's battlefields in support of Marines 
and the Joint Force.
    Conclusions. The American people continue to believe that 
when a crisis emerges Marines will be present and ``invariably 
turn in a performance that is dramatically and decisively 
successful--not most of the time, but always.'' They possess a 
heart-felt belief that the Marine Corps is good for the young 
men and women of our country. In their view, the Marines are 
extraordinarily adept at converting ``un-oriented youths into 
proud, self-reliant stable citizens--citizens into whose hands 
the nation's affairs may be safely entrusted.'' An investment 
in the Marine Corps continues to be an investment in the 
character of the young people of our country.
    The Marine Corps will only ask for what it needs, not what 
it wants. As Congress and DoD move forward with tough decisions 
on the future of our Armed Forces relative to the Budget 
Control Act of 2011, the crisis response capabilities the 
Marine Corps affords our Nation must serve as the compass in 
determining its ultimate end strength, equipping and training 
needs. Through it all, the Marine Corps will make the hard 
decisions and redouble its commitment to its traditional 
culture of frugality.
    The Marine Corps has evolved over many years, many 
conflicts, and at a significant price in terms of both blood 
and treasure; we have served the Nation well time and time 
again. For a comparably small investment, the Marine Corps 
continues to provide the protection our Nation needs in an 
increasingly dangerous and uncertain world, and to preserve our 
Nation's ability to do what we must as the world's only 
credible remaining superpower.
?

      
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                     ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF MEMBERS OF

                    THE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

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       deg.
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                            ADDITIONAL VIEWS

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                            ADDITIONAL VIEWS

    Over the past several months, the House Armed Services 
Committee embarked on a series of hearings designed to examine 
the future of the defense budget in light of our nation's 
fiscal reality. We believe this action to have been fully 
appropriate--our committee members should understand the impact 
of the budget cuts contained in the Budget Control Act (BCA), 
particularly in light of the changing threat environment. As 
part of that discussion, we found these hearings useful.
    We also agree with the Chairman that sequestration would 
clearly and unquestionably threaten our ability to meet our 
current national security needs. Congress, through the BCA, has 
imposed spending caps on security spending that will force the 
Department to reduce its current budget plans by more than $450 
Billion over ten years. These already-enacted cuts to planned 
spending present a significant challenge for the Department to 
implement, and further large, indiscriminate cuts, such as 
those that would be imposed by sequestration, would be nearly 
impossible for the Department to absorb without real and 
serious damage to our ability to protect our national security. 
This hearing series was helpful in building this case as well.
    National security is, however, defined by more than just 
the level of funding provided to the Department of Defense. 
Deficits matter. Our national debt matters. Over time, these 
have real and negative impacts on our national well-being. 
While Secretary Panetta and some of the other Administration 
witnesses discussed possible areas of savings, this extensive 
series of hearings offered little discussion on how to better 
spend defense dollars or how to spend less. As members of the 
House Armed Services Committee, and Congress, our 
responsibility is not to ensure that the Department of Defense 
spends as much money as possible, but rather to ensure that 
enough funds are provided for our national defense and that 
they are spent wisely and well.
    We were pleased to see the hearings provide a forum for the 
Committee to express its broadly-held concerns about 
sequestration. Unfortunately however, the Committee did not 
follow this expression with suggestions of how to responsibly 
cut the deficit sufficiently to avoid sequestration. Some 
members did take the opportunity to express their views on this 
subject--many of the signers of this document, for example, 
have expressed the belief that increased revenues have to be 
part of the solution. We were disappointed that our majority 
colleagues did not agree to put this on the table as a position 
of the Committee to avoid defense sequestration.
    Again, we found this hearing series to be useful in many 
ways. Ultimately however, the situation remains the same at the 
end of the series that it was at the beginning--we simply must 
find savings in our national budgets, we must ensure that 
defense and non-defense dollars are spent well, and we must 
have a budget that makes sense by broadly balancing revenues 
with spending. Simply put, as members of the House Armed 
Services Committee, we must remember that our responsibility to 
national security is more than just our responsibility to the 
defense budget.

                                   Adam Smith.
                                   Silvestre Reyes.
                                   Loretta Sanchez.
                                   Robert A. Brady.
                                   Susan A. Davis.
                                   Rick Larsen.
                                   Madeleine Z. Bordallo.
                                   Joe Courtney.
                                   David Loebsack.
                                   William Owens.
                                   Mark S. Critz.
                                   Hank Johnson.

         ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF REPRESENTATIVE ROSCOE G. BARTLETT

    There are those who argue that with our current national 
strategy, additional deep cuts to our military, as would occur 
under sequester, would be catastrophic. We agree. But it seems 
clear to most that our financial plight and the realities of 
the world we live in require a new national strategy. Until we 
have completed that exercise we have no way of knowing how much 
more might be cut without risk to our national security. The 
thoughts contained herein address that decision making process. 
I am on the House Armed Services Committee and am deeply 
concerned that we continue to support a military adequate to 
the security needs of our country. But there must be a 
rationalization between the magnitude of our military might and 
the necessity to develop a financial policy that avoids 
bankruptcy of our country. With a debt that grows another $1 
billion every six hours with no plateau in sight, this is a 
daunting challenge. These two demands, an adequate military and 
the avoidance of national bankruptcy, must share risks 
equitably.
    Our deficit is hundreds of billions of dollars larger than 
all of our discretionary spending. Thus, if we had no 
Department of Defense, no Department of Homeland Security, no 
CIA or FBI or any of the other myriads of government agencies 
and programs, we would still have a deficit of hundreds of 
billions of dollars.
    Defense is more than half of all discretionary spending. 
These numbers reflect two fundamental realities: First, we 
cannot balance our budget without controlling the explosive 
growth of entitlement programs. Second, if we're ever going to 
balance the budget, we need to cut all discretionary spending 
programs including defense.
    But how can we cut further the defense budget without 
putting our nation at risk?
    In large measure, the factors that ultimately determine the 
size of the defense budget are beyond the practical control of 
the congressional defense committees and our military. Our 
foreign policy has our troops in more than 100 countries, 
driving up defense costs. Wars, and especially protracted wars 
like Iraq and Afghanistan, drive up the cost of defense. 
Nation-building projects--in which we depend on our troops to 
carry out functions related to the economic, social and 
political development of Afghanistan and Iraq that fall far 
outside of our military's core mission--drive up defense costs.
    In addition, defense costs are driven skyward because there 
really is what President Eisenhower termed a ``military-
industrial complex'' comprising a powerful trifecta--the 
military, the defense industry, and Congress. Congress supports 
increased spending because the defense industry intentionally 
spreads its industrial base over as many states as possible, in 
part to build a political machine for procuring defense 
dollars, in partnership with the Congress. If all politics are 
local, then it is understandable that Congressmen and Senators 
will vote their districts interests, and convince themselves 
that they are voting for the national interest. And so the 
defense budget grows.
    Now that the Cold War is long over, is it really necessary 
for the United States to maintain a military presence in so 
many nations, and so many far-flung military bases over the 
globe, in order to support its role as ``world policeman''? The 
U.S. spends almost as much money on defense as all the rest of 
the world. We spend more on defense than the next eleven 
countries combined, and nine of those countries are allies of 
ours. Surely our national interest would be better served by 
policies that encourage our allies to bear the burden of their 
own defense so that they have the military capability to police 
their own neighborhoods. We are the first ``empire'' in history 
where imperialism operates in reverse--all of the economic 
benefits flow to our allies, or to nations we have defeated, 
emptying our coffers.
    We must learn to be more parsimonious with our wars, 
reserving military force as a last resort, and undertaking 
grave consideration of the human and financial costs that will 
be incurred before we begin the effort. We must recognize that 
the cost of wars does not end when the shooting stops. Recent 
history has shown that extraordinary costs continue at home 
with veteran services, and these expenses continue to empty our 
national treasuries long into the future.
    There are also cost savings to be found in baseline 
Department of Defense budgeting. Is it really necessary for the 
United States to procure costly new generations of weapons 
systems, mostly legacies from the Cold War, when existing 
weapons will suffice for the conflicts of today? Rather, our 
precious defense dollars should be invested in research and 
development so that America is ready to face modern threats. 
For example, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) or cyber-attack 
could collapse the critical infrastructures that sustain the 
lives of millions of Americans. The Department of Defense 
should work cooperatively with the Department of Homeland 
Security to be ready for these kinds of unconventional threats.
    We also must recognize that some of the most fundamental 
dangers to our national security may fall beyond traditional 
military threats. Our dependence on fossil fuels makes us 
tremendously vulnerable. The worldwide demand for oil is 
increasing at such a rapid rate that it will eventually pass 
available oil production, resulting in sharp price spikes. From 
a national security perspective, it is time to cut our 
addiction to foreign oil, and to transition to domestic, 
cleaner and renewable energy sources. Some of the resources 
currently devoted to protecting the supply of oil must be 
redirected to advancing renewable and clean energy.
    The decline of America's industrial base also undermines 
our national security. We must have national policies that 
create a ``Make it in America'' economy, producing state of the 
art transportation and clean energy systems. We have known for 
decades that the strongest manufacturing sector is the key to 
economic and military security. To keep our country safe and 
prosperous, we need to remain on the cutting edge of 
technological innovation and production, ensuring our 
leadership in the global economy.
    With the right national strategy for the use of our 
military, we might significantly cut the defense budget without 
putting our nation at risk. Indeed, it is long overdue that we 
re-think some of the fundamentals driving our defense budget. 
We might find that we can significantly cut the defense budget 
and improve our national security with an appropriate national 
strategy for use of our military in the defense of our country.
                                   Roscoe G. Bartlett.

          ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF REPRESENTATIVE ROBERT E. ANDREWS

    This committee print is the product of a months-long 
investigation by the committee into the future of the United 
States Military, ten years after the terrorist attacks of 
September 11th. We live in a far different world today, and I 
thank Chairman McKeon and Ranking Member Smith for holding 
these hearings.
    In his note, Chairman McKeon rightly acknowledges the 
pivotal strategic moment. 2011 alone has seen US forces kill 
Osama bin Laden and Anwar Al-Awlaki, greatly weakening Al 
Qaeda. In Afghanistan, the efforts and sacrifices of US and 
coalition forces have the Taliban on the run, and the Afghan 
people are beginning to stand up and defend themselves. And in 
Iraq, the country has been stabilized, and we are preparing to 
honor our commitment by withdrawing all troops by the end of 
calendar 2011.
    Admiral Mullen and others have correctly recognized the 
debt as our greatest threat to national security. Already, 
Congress has cut over $300 billion from the base defense budget 
over the next decade. Some have said that this is enough. 
Respectfully, I disagree. The entire Federal government should 
be forced to demonstrate that tax dollars with which it is 
entrusted are spent responsibly, and the DOD should not be 
exempted.
    Cuts should be made on the basis of what is needed to 
provide our brave men and women with the tools and training to 
do the job and get home safely. We should be focused on our 
strategic goals, not on arbitrary levels. I believe a targeted 
DOD cut of $600 billion over 10 years can be achieved without 
jeopardizing America's military might. Baseline military 
spending, not accounting for war costs, has nearly doubled over 
the past decade. It is time to reverse this trend.
    Accelerated withdrawal from Afghanistan can provide massive 
savings. With the death of Osama bin Laden, I believe we can 
depart Afghanistan by June 2013, consolidating our gains in the 
region and saving hundreds of billions of dollars. We should 
also close overseas military bases which once served to deter 
the Soviet Union, focusing instead on our current and future 
threats.
    Further savings can be found by ending the purchase of 
costly unnecessary weapons systems. One such example is MEADS, 
the Medium Extended Air Defense System, which costs billions 
and is redundant. The highly successful Patriots fill the same 
strategic role, and have been used by America and its allies 
since 1995.
    Cost overruns from repetitive R&D also cost the taxpayers 
billions. Incentivizing contractors to meet budget and testing 
requirements on time is a common-sense, market-based solution 
which will provide competition and produce dramatic savings. 
Lastly, I also believe the DOD can look at stateside bases for 
additional savings. Although BRAC has reduced the domestic 
footprint of the DOD, facilities maintenance costs have not 
declined concurrently. Indeed, on a square footage basis, these 
costs have increased almost 20% over the past decade.
    I am confident that these and other common sense cuts to 
the defense budget can be made without harm to our national 
security and will produce a leaner, more efficient military. 
However, we cannot put our fiscal house in order solely with 
cuts to defense. All policy options must be considered, 
including increased revenue. We were elected to make difficult 
decisions. With the country at a budgetary and strategic 
crossroads, cutting the defense budget by prioritizing our 
actual needs is one such decision we can and should make.

                                   Robert E. Andrews.

            ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF REPRESENTATIVE NIKI TSONGAS

    I want to thank Chairman McKeon and Ranking Member Smith 
for holding a series of hearings this fall that have allowed 
the Committee to reflect upon the challenges our nation has 
faced since the terrible attacks of September 11, 2001 and to 
confront the challenges we face moving forward.
    Testimony before this panel has rightly noted that our 
nation's fiscal crisis represents a threat to our national 
security. As discussed during these hearings and as I stated 
earlier this year in a letter to the Joint Committee on Deficit 
Reduction, making the additional and severe cuts required by 
the Budget Control Act sequester has the potential to undermine 
our military in an uncertain world. In my letter I reaffirmed 
my support for the initial round of deep cuts made in the BCA 
to both defense and non-defense spending because I recognize 
the need to phase in cuts over the next ten years, but stated 
that ``allowing the sequester to make far deeper cuts on top of 
those already enacted risks putting our economy and our people 
at great harm.'' I believe this to be true but I also recognize 
that recent proposals to repeal the sequester and do nothing in 
its place to address our national debt are just as dangerous to 
our long-term survival. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 
and former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates both noted last year, 
our rising debt has implications for both our influence around 
the world and our ability to project strength.
    In the words of one expert witness before this Committee, 
our nation cannot afford to ``balance the budget on the back of 
defense'' while we face ongoing threats from international 
terrorists and dangerous foreign regimes. But neither can we 
continue on the unsustainable path of responding to those 
threats without paying for our defense. The threats outlined by 
this Committee are very real, but for the last decade--and for 
the first time in our nation's history--we have responded by 
cutting taxes on the wealthiest few and allowing multi-billion 
dollar corporations to shirk their social responsibilities even 
as they benefit from the global security our nation provides.
    Last August, this Congress made a commitment to the 
American people to reduce our annual deficits by an additional 
$1.2 trillion over ten years. Stepping away from that 
commitment risks a costly downgrade of our nation's credit and 
undermines our ability to deter would-be aggressors. To protect 
our national security, we must use this next year to agree on a 
balanced deficit reduction plan that makes a real down payment 
on our national debt, prevents deep cuts from undermining our 
fragile economic recovery and harming our national security, 
incorporates broadly shared sacrifices, and protects the 
guarantees of Social Security, Medicare, and veterans' 
benefits. This is both just and pragmatic. To return our 
deficits to the surpluses we ran in the late 1990s and pay down 
our long-term debt will require a sustained commitment from the 
entire nation, a commitment that will only come if a deal is 
seen as fair. Finally, a balanced plan will ensure that we are 
all contributing to our nation's defense.
    I look forward to working with the Committee on these 
issues in the year ahead.

                                   Niki Tsongas.

          ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF REPRESENTATIVE JOHN R. GARAMENDI

    The House Armed Services Committee rarely produces 
committee reports other than those accompanying the National 
Defense Authorization Act or other such legislation. The 
majority provided little advance notice to the members of the 
intent to produce this report. Furthermore, the report was not 
subjected to a markup. If this report were simply a compilation 
of the testimony provided by the witnesses, the only objection 
to widely distributing a hard-copy printing of information 
already available on the committee's website would be the 
unnecessary cost in times of limited budgets. Unfortunately, 
the Chairman has elected to place a partisan and often 
hyperbolic statement from him at the beginning of the report, 
only including statements of other members as ``additional or 
dissenting views'' at the back of the report and making it 
appear as if the committee as a whole has endorsed his message. 
We have not.
    A primary responsibility of the House Armed Services 
Committee is to engage in serious analysis and debates about 
defense-related decisions that will impact our financial 
stability and our national security for decades to come. Viable 
alternatives for assuring our nation's security and careful 
consideration of the costs of comparative strategies should be 
considered. Unfortunately, the series of hearings presented 
over the past months, which are reported in this document, have 
largely served to silence rather than stimulate debate about 
the critical challenges we face. Dissenting views were not 
genuinely considered and alternative options were not laid on 
the table. The result is the artificial ``consensus'' presented 
in this report, reflecting not bipartisan agreement, but rather 
a pre-ordained conclusion that nothing dare be touched in 
defense spending lest the safety and security of the American 
people be placed in peril.
    Yet, our nation faces serious financial challenges which 
also threaten our security, as indicated by several defense 
experts. Like it or not, spending for national defense will be 
reduced. It has to happen, and it can be done without reducing 
our security. This committee should have spent this time 
examining the options and developing strategies to do more with 
less. We ask that of all other levels of and components of 
government, and the same standard must also apply to defense.
    It is important to put the issue of defense budget in 
perspective. The Department of Defense baseline budget, 
excluding funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has 
increased by 48.5% in real numbers over the past decade, rising 
from $361 billion in FY2001 to $536 billion in FY2011. War 
spending, paid for largely through supplemental budgets, has 
added an additional $1.2 trillion to these costs, resulting in 
a more than doubling of annual total defense spending over the 
last ten years. Even excluding war funding, defense spending 
has contributed more than twice as much to the deficit as non-
defense discretionary spending over the past decade. While 
expenses have skyrocketed, revenues have fallen. The Bush tax 
cuts for the rich have allowed millionaires to avoid paying 
their share, meaning that rising defense budgets have been paid 
for with borrowed dollars.
    In the face of rising defense costs and pressures to reduce 
the federal budget deficit, some Members of Congress and 
defense budget experts have engaged in critical analysis to 
determine how to reduce defense expenditures while ensuring 
America's national security and economic vitality. I asked my 
staff to prepare a matrix comparing six such defense savings 
plans, prepared by think-tanks, Members of Congress, and other 
entities whose positions span the political spectrum. The 
matrix identifies areas of consensus among the left, right and 
center, and it serves as a starting point for well-informed 
analysis and debate leading to reasonable policies. I also 
continue to advocate for an approach to defense savings that is 
grounded in a forward-thinking strategy, such as that outlined 
in A National Strategic Narrative, prepared by respected 
members of our military. This document offers a nonpartisan 
blueprint for ensuring America's security and prosperity in the 
unique environment of the 21st century.
    This kind of critical thinking was not represented in HASC 
hearings on defense cuts. On the contrary, in many cases the 
witnesses testifying before the committee had large, and 
undisclosed, conflicts of interest. Almost all of the retired 
military officers the committee heard from are employed by 
major defense companies, hedge funds, or holding companies with 
significant amounts of defense industry investment. Other non-
military witnesses work for think tanks, lobbying groups, and 
other organizations whose major funding sources or clients are 
also major US defense companies. The witnesses quoted here have 
a direct financial interest in seeing defense budgets 
maintained at current levels or increase.
    These undisclosed conflicts of interest reveal the close 
links between incomes of former members of the national 
security establishment and the current Department of Defense 
budget, a concern that President Eisenhower raised in his 1960 
speech:

        In the councils of government, we must guard against 
        the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether 
        sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. 
        The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced 
        power exists and will persist. We must never let the 
        weight of this combination endanger our liberties or 
        democratic processes. We should take nothing for 
        granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can 
        compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and 
        military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods 
        and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper 
        together.

    America's security is not limited to deterring and 
defeating military threats. The vitality of our economy, the 
solvency of our financial system, the health and education of 
our population, and the sustainability of our resources are all 
critical components for keeping America safe now and into the 
future. In determining how to decrease our budget deficit, we 
must adopt a whole of government approach to security, 
recognizing the interdependency of each of our federal agencies 
and the functions they serve.
    As we make difficult choices about how to prioritize our 
spending, another quote by President Eisenhower reminds us of 
the tradeoffs we face:

        Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every 
        rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft 
        from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are 
        cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not 
        spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its 
        laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of 
        its children. This is not a way of life at all in any 
        true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is 
        humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

    As Chairman McKeon rightly notes, we find ourselves at a 
``strategic juncture'' and we are responsible for the votes we 
cast. We are also responsible for engaging in the careful 
research, critical analysis, and open debate that will help us 
to make the best decisions for our nation. The series of 
hearings included in this report and the nontransparent and 
biased way in which the report was prepared hinder rather than 
help this deliberative process. I remain hopeful that as 
Members of Congress--and as Members of the Armed Services 
Committee in particular--we will fulfill our duty of engaging 
in meaningful, well-informed discussions about how to best 
utilize scarce resources to ensure America's security. Our 
continued failure to do so would indeed be ``disastrous.''

                                   John R. Garamendi.
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            ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF REPRESENTATIVE HANK JOHNSON

    This committee report includes testimony from seven 
hearings over the last several months. These hearings were 
convened to consider the potential impacts of large budget cuts 
on the ability of the U.S. military to meet the national 
security challenges faced by our nation.
    I agree with Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Smith, 
Secretary Panetta, and many of the witnesses at recent hearings 
that the approximately $1 trillion in cuts to defense spending 
over nine fiscal years (2013-2021) imposed by the Budget 
Control Act could threaten U.S. national security.
    To contextualize these possible cuts, it is worth noting 
that the Department of Defense's budget has grown from 
approximately $316 billion in 2001 to more than $680 billion in 
2011 (of which roughly $159 billion are for Overseas 
Contingency Operations). Even if the full measure of 
sequestration is imposed through 2021, the Department of 
Defense's annual base budget would remain larger than it was a 
decade ago.
    However, Secretary Panetta and others have expressed 
serious concerns regarding the potential impact of $1 trillion 
in cuts to the defense budget for fiscal years 2013 through 
2021, and I share those concerns. We face an array of demands 
and challenges that require us to sustain serious investment in 
our armed forces: a worldwide counterterrorism mission, our 
obligations to service members, evolving security challenges in 
the Asia Pacific region and the Arctic, instability in the 
Middle East, the need to reset equipment after more than a 
decade of combat in harsh environments, the need to modernize 
our military and expand our naval and air forces, and a host of 
emerging threats.
    I cannot agree, however, with those who argue that there is 
no room in the budget of the Department of Defense for 
additional reductions over the next ten years, particularly as 
we complete our withdrawal from Iraq and draw down forces in 
Afghanistan. It will be the task of the department's leadership 
and Congress to find additional savings by making hard choices 
with regard to military programs, eliminating waste, and making 
acquisition affordable. With or without cuts to the defense 
budget, the catastrophically flawed acquisition system at the 
Department of Defense is a strategic vulnerability and a key 
cause of waste.
    I fully agree with Ranking Member Smith when he states in 
his contribution to this volume, which I have co-signed, that 
``[a]s members of the House Armed Services Committee, and 
Congress, our responsibility is not to ensure that the 
Department of Defense spends as much money as possible, but 
rather to ensure that enough funds are provided for our 
national defense and that they are spent wisely and well.'' I 
further agree with his contention that any serious effort to 
address long-run fiscal imbalances without unwise cuts to 
defense requires a budget that sensibly balances revenues and 
spending.
    Finally, in response to Chairman McKeon's preface to this 
volume, I will dissent from his characterization of the last 
ten years of military operations.
    The decade since September 11, 2001, has been marked not by 
a highly effective and strategically prudent application of the 
U.S. armed forces to defend the United States against violent 
extremists, as Chairman McKeon argues. The use of force in Iraq 
did not reduce the threat of terrorism and was a strategic 
error. Our campaign in Afghanistan--a war of self-defense--was 
deprived of resources while we focused on an elective 
expeditionary mission in Iraq. The result of this mismanagement 
was deteriorated Afghan security that threatened regional 
stability and jeopardized victory.
    In Iraq, our men and women in uniform performed their 
duties with characteristic professionalism and courage. Their 
effectiveness in the latter half of the decade has enabled us 
to bring our forces home. But the fact remains--and future 
generations of Americans will likely assess--that the Iraq War 
needlessly depleted our forces and was a distraction from the 
global counterterrorism mission and the mission in Afghanistan.
    In Afghanistan, not until President Obama's inauguration in 
2009 did our effort receive the focus and attention necessary 
for victory in one of the least forgiving environments on 
earth. President Obama, former Secretary Gates, Secretary 
Panetta and their team have subsequently laid the foundations 
for gradual transfer of responsibility for security to Afghan 
National Security Forces and a responsible drawdown of the 
International Security Assistance Force scheduled to be 
completed by the end of 2014.
    Although this historical record is not the focus of this 
report or of recent hearings, in a document purporting to 
represent the views of the House Armed Services Committee I am 
compelled to present a more accurate account of recent history 
than that presented by Chairman McKeon in his preface.

                                   Hank Johnson.
                   LIST OF ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

A2/AD                        Anti-access/area denial
AQAP                         Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
BRAC                         Base closure and realignment
CR                           Continuing resolution
EU                           European Union
FYDP                         Future Years Defense Program
GATT                         General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GDP                          Gross domestic product
GPS                          Global Positioning System
IED                          Improvised explosive device
IMF                          International Monetary Fund
ISR                          Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
MEU                          Marine Expeditionary Unit
M/V                          Merchant vessel
MILCON                       Military construction
MRAP                         Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle
NATO                         North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NCO                          Noncommissioned officer
NORTHCOM                     U.S. Northern Command
O&M                          Operation and maintenance
OECD                         Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OMB                          Office of Management and Budget
QDR                          Quadrennial Defense Review
R&D                          Research and development
ROTC                         Reserve Officers' Training Corps
SEALs                        U.S. Navy Sea, Air and Land teams
SOF                          Special Operations Forces
SOUTHCOM                     U.S. Southern Command
UAV                          Unmanned aerial vehicle
USA                          United States Army
USAF                         United States Air Force
USMC                         United States Marine Corps
USN                          United States Navy
WMD                          Weapon of mass destruction
WTO                          World Trade Organization
                                  
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