[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 12 (Wednesday, February 9, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 9, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      THE HOLLOWING OF U.S. FORCES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hinchey). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Talent] is recognized for 60 
minutes.
  Mr. TALENT. Mr. Speaker, I have risen on the House floor on several 
other occasions as a representative of an ad hoc committee of members 
on the hollowing out of America's Armed Forces. Tonight I am going to 
discuss another aspect of the hollowing out of the forces. Before I do 
that, let me again remind the House what this committee is and what its 
function is.
  I can do that best by defining what ``hollowing forces'' are. Here is 
a good analogy. Take a house that on the outside looks good. Maybe it 
has a nice coat of paint on the outside and it looks like it can do 
what a house is supposed to do. But when you go on the inside, you find 
it has no furniture. You find that the wallpaper is peeling. Maybe you 
find that there is not any plumbing in it. You find that it is 
unlivable, even though it looks like a good house. It should be a good 
house. When you actually look on the inside, it is not any good. It is 
hollowed out from the inside.
  That is what is happening to our Armed Forces today. Because on the 
outside, Mr. Speaker, they may look good. On the outside the number of 
troops we have may look adequate to perform the mission that has been 
assigned to them. In fact, I think you will find, after investigation, 
that the total end strength of the Armed Forces is not adequate to 
perform the mission that has been assigned to them, even if we were 
funding their training and supplies adequately. But I will not address 
that tonight. I want to address the systematic underfunding of the 
troops we do have which is resulting in the hollowing of the force.
  The little things are going away. The troops are not training enough. 
They cannot replace their equipment fast enough. They may not be able 
to recruit as high quality new recruits as they have been able to do in 
the past. Pretty soon you find that they cannot do what they were 
supposed to do, or they cannot do it as well. Or what is even more 
crucial, they cannot do it with the minimum loss of life.
  That is what is happening gradually to the armed services. Tonight I 
will talk about a particular aspect of it. It has to do with supplies. 
It is ammunition.
  Mr. Speaker, we have a terrible shortfall in ammunition in the armed 
services. Why is ammunition important? It is part of the quality of the 
forces that allows them to perform the missions which the political 
authorities have given them with the most minimal possible cost of 
life.
  If you have the best quality ammunition with the best quality range 
and penetration, it means that, for example, you can engage the enemy 
at the maximum possible range, perhaps outside the range in which they 
can engage you. You can often shoot at them in a situation where they 
cannot shoot back, if you have the best quality ammunition.
  You can penetrate the enemy's armored vehicles, which, of course, 
reduces the threat to which your infantry is exposed. So ammunition is 
absolutely crucial, not as part of some game, but because it is crucial 
to the lives of our soldiers and sailors and to the effectiveness and 
success of their missions.
  Mr. Speaker, if you look at the ammunition stockpile that we have 
today and the ammunition industrial base you find this: Our armed 
services are supposed to be able to fight at any given time two major 
regional contingencies like Desert Storm. And moreover, it is the 
official policy of the Department of Defense that they should be able 
to go to war with the ammunition they have stockpiled. In other words, 
the official policy is that they can fight two Desert Storms at the 
same time with the ammunition that we have stockpiled, without counting 
on any additional production.

  But if you look at what has happened, with the underfunding of the 
ammunition accounts not only can the armed services not fight two major 
regional contingencies at the same time, they probably cannot even 
fight one. Moreover, the systematic underfunding of that account has 
resulted in the gradual degradation of the industrial base for the 
production of ammunition to the point where this situation is not going 
to be easy to change, because we simply do not have and in the future 
will increasingly not have the facilities out there which can produce 
high-quality ammunition quickly for the use of America's military.
  That is basically the message of my address to the House tonight, Mr. 
Speaker, I want now to go into the details of it. Let us look first at 
what has happened to the budget for ammunition acquisition over the 
last approximately 8 years.
  What you can see very clearly from this graph is that there has been 
a total decline in Department of Defense funding of 34 percent since 
1985 and a total procurement decline of 64 percent. But ammunition 
procurement has gone down almost 80 percent. So ammunition procurement 
has gone down more than twice the decline in the spending on the 
defense budget as a whole. Moreover, of course, as public spending has 
dropped, the private spending of the industrial base in this area has 
dropped as well.
  For example, research and development for new kinds of ammunition is 
off by 80 percent, similar to the decline in public funding.
  What has that done, Mr. Speaker, to the all important ammunition 
stockpile? The next graph shows that pretty clearly. That stockpile has 
been degraded to the point where it is not adequate. I will be 
repeating this theme several times. The stockpile is not adequate for 
us to fight even one Desert Storm, much less two.
  Mr. Speaker, when we prepared to fight Desert Storm, the Department 
of Defense determined that we needed about 450 tons of high-quality 
ammunition to fight the kind of war that they anticipated under Desert 
Storm.

                              {time}  1720

  Our total ammunition stockpile is about 2 million tons, but very 
little of that is the high-quality kind of ammunition we are going to 
need in the event of war. Let me describe the different kinds we have.
  Going from the least valuable to the most valuable, first of all, 
about 5 percent of the stockpile is excess ammunition. This is, in the 
lexicon of the Armed Forces, the moldy bullets, Mr. Speaker. Nobody 
even knows whether any of them would work, they are completely useless.
  About 30 percent of the stockpile has been given to the allies over a 
period of time. We do not know exactly what that consists of. We do not 
know where the allies have it stockpiled. We do not know whether they 
would give it to us if we needed it. We do not know how high quality it 
is. Probably it is not that high quality, or we would not have given it 
to them in the first place. The experts say that is not usable either.
  Then about 25 percent of the stockpile is usable for training. This 
is poor quality, less modern ammunition. It is also less reliable. It 
may misfire or not fire up to 20 percent of the time. It fits in the 
guns, it is OK to use for training, it is better than nothing for 
training, but nobody claims that you can use it in the event of a war.
  Then there is about 25 percent of the stockpile which is called 
discretionary, which means that in theory the commanders in the field 
would have the discretion to use that in the event of an actual major 
regional contingency. However, actually, Mr. Speaker, they exercised 
their discretion in Desert Storm against using that ammunition. The 
commanders refused to use it, and instead wanted new high-quality 
ammunition that was produced by the industrial base.
  There is a reason for that. This is ammunition that will fire, it is 
reasonably reliable, but it is not the most modern. It does not have, 
in many cases, the range of the most modern ammunition.
  For example, there is tank ammunition in the discretionary stockpile 
that does not have the range of the most modern kinds of ammunition 
that can be bought from the French, for example. So if the tank 
commanders used that they might possibly be engaging an enemy where the 
enemy would have a higher range, longer range ammunition, and could 
engage them at longer ranges when they could not shoot back.
  What that would mean would be the death of more American servicemen 
in tanks, in battles where they would simply not have an equal chance, 
because they would not have the kind of ammunition they need.
  Another example, the U.S. Air Force's stockpile of cluster bombs in 
the discretionary category contains 20-to-30-year-old armaments that 
require low-speed and medium-altitude delivery. Obviously, if you have 
to fly lower and you have to fly slower in order to deliver bombs, you 
are going to be more vulnerable.
  Therefore, for all kinds of reasons the discretionary ammunition, 
although, of course, it could be used if absolutely necessary, has not 
been used in the past, and should not be considered as available if 
what we want our troops to have is the best quality equipment so they 
can do their jobs.
  Here it is important to repeat the official vision for our Armed 
Forces. Yes, the experts say, we are going to have to shrink them. Yes; 
they are going to have to go down. Yes; we are not going to have as 
many, but they are going to have to have more firepower. They are going 
to have to have the best equipment. They can inflict casualties at a 
rate of 5 to 10 times the casualties that they suffer. That is the 
whole theory behind the administration's policy; and it is simply 
inconsistent with that vision to require that our men use second-rate 
ammunition.

  Mr. Speaker, that leaves the ready-for-war ammunition, which is 15 
percent of the stockpile, less than 350,000 tons, or not enough to 
fight even one Desert Storm as envisioned by the Department of Defense 
when it was preparing for Desert Storm. Not enough to fight even one, 
when the official policy is that we will have enough ammunition, high-
quality ammunition stockpiled, so that our men and women in the Armed 
Forces can fight two of those contingencies at the same time without 
being at a disadvantage, as compared to the forces that we would be 
opposing. That is what has happened to the ammunition stockpile. It is 
simply not ready for war.
  What effect has that had on the industrial base? Mr. Speaker, this 
chart shows that very clearly. As of the time of Desert Storm, most of 
the categories of the necessary ammunition, and there are 18 of them 
here, 18 different categories of ammunition necessary for the Armed 
Forces, in most of them we had adequate stockpiles to fight Desert 
Storm. In four categories we did not have adequate stockpiles, but we 
were able to replenish the stockpiles with additional production 
relatively quickly, within 6 to 12 months, and we were lucky, because 
Saddam Hussein gave us nine months in order to build up our forces.
  As the House can see, the available stockpile has declined since 
then. We are now in a situation where 11 of the 18 major categories of 
ammunition are in the red zone, which means first of all that the 
stockpiles are not adequate to fight a war, and second of all, and this 
is the most shocking thing, that it would require more than 12 months 
of production, given the existing industrial base, to bring the 
stockpiles in those crucial areas up to the point where they would be 
adequate to fight one Desert Storm.
  We are supposed to have stockpiled enough ammunition to fight two 
major regional contingencies at the same time, and actually in 11 of 18 
critical categories, we are so short that it would take more than 12 
months of production, given the existing industrial base, to bring us 
up to the level necessary to fight one.
  Here are some examples. We currently do not have sufficient 
quantities in go-to-war stocks, high-quality stocks, of 25 millimeter 
ammunition. That is the ammunition that goes in the Bradley fighting 
vehicle, which is the basic armored vehicle of the Army. It would take 
more than a year for the industrial base to meet the requirements for 
25 millimeter ammunition.
  We currently do not have sufficient go-to-war ammunition of .50 
caliber ammunition either. That is the basic ammunition that is used in 
the machine guns on our tanks, and the machine guns used by our 
infantry, a very basic requirement, obviously, for the Army, and we are 
12 months away from having an adequate stockpile.
  We currently do not have stocks of 30 millimeter ammunition that is 
used by the Apache helicopter, which is our most up-to-date, modern, 
and effective attack helicopter. It does not do any good to have 
helicopters and tanks and armored cars if you do not have ammunition. A 
tank without ammunition is like a sophisticated station wagon out in 
the battlefields. It does not do your soldiers any good.
  Again, to repeat, Mr. Speaker, and it is crucial that the House 
understands, the forces have gotten to the point where, while we are 
supposed to have stockpiled enough ammunition to fight two 
contingencies at the same time, actually we are more than a year away 
in 11 out of 18 crucial categories from being able to fight even one.

  What this means for the industrial base can be summed up very 
quickly. It is weak and it is getting weaker all that time.
  Of the country's 24 principal ammunition companies, only three are in 
good health. When I say that there are only three that are in good 
health, it does not mean that the others are necessary going completely 
out of business. It means they are going out of the ammunition business 
and they are going into something else.
  For example, the Harley-Davidson Co., which is back to making 
motorcycles successfully, and we are all glad about that, is the only 
manufacturer of bomb lugs, which is the metal part that attaches bombs 
to the undersides of aircraft wings. If you do not attach the bombs to 
the aircraft wings, you cannot get them up in the sky to drop them.
  Harley-Davidson, which is the only domestic manufacturer of bomb 
lugs, is getting out of the business, because given the procurement 
that they see in the future, and what they can do with their resources 
in other areas, it simply is not worth it to them to stay in the 
business.
  Mr. Speaker, I said that the Hollow Forces Committee would report 
periodically on what is happening in the armed forces. I will continue 
to do that. I have tried not to make political points in these 
discussions, at least apart from the important issues of policy, 
because this is not and should not be a political subject. A lot of 
these problems have originated and continued through two 
administrations, but it is time to correct them. We owe at least that 
much to the men and women of the armed forces whom we call upon to do 
difficult and dangerous jobs, and to the people of this country whose 
security ought to be our first interest.
  I will repeat what Senator McCain, who has spoken often on this 
subject, has said about the cost of a hollow force:

       It is not lawyers and accountants who pay the price of 
     hollowing out the armed forces, it is the men and women of 
     our military who go overseas and do not come back.

     

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