Congressional Record, Volume 144 Issue 25 (Wednesday, March 11, 1998)

[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 25 (Wednesday, March 11, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H1098-H1103]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

NATIONAL SECURITY AND MILITARY READINESS

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. HUNTER. While the Speaker is there in the Speaker's chair, I want
to thank the gentleman for what he has done to help bring our military
forces at least to the state of readiness they are at today. As a
friend on the Committee on National Security, the gentleman has worked
long and hard to see to it that we have sufficient airlift to move our
forces around the world.
I am here, Mr. Speaker, to speak about national security. We are in
this great Chamber, the Chamber where, according to Alexander Hamilton,
the people rule, and our first constitutional duty to our people, to
our country, is to defend them. And yet, Mr. Speaker, over the last
several years, under the leadership, if we can call it that, of the
Clinton Administration, we have been abandoning our first duty to the
people of the United States in that our military forces are much
smaller than they were 6 years ago, and they are not ready, Mr.
Speaker, to fight and win two regional conflicts. And that is the
standard that we set for our armed forces.

Now 5 years ago when we fought Desert Storm we had 18 army divisions.
Today we only have 10. We had 24 fighter air wings. Today we only have
13. The Clinton Administration has cut our air power almost in half.
And in those days we had 546 naval ships. Today we only have about 333
ships in the U.S. Navy, so they have cut the Navy by about 40 percent.
Now, Mr. Speaker, we in the Congress obviously produce the defense
authorization bill, and if we do not produce a bill that is signed by
the President this year, that puts enough money in spare parts,
ammunition, fuel, training and other aspects of readiness, as well as
in modernization, and that means buying new equipment to replace the
old equipment, then we are doing a great disservice to every young man
and young woman who goes down to a recruiter and signs up to be in the
U.S. military.
We have been having hearings around the country. The other day my
great colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Duke Cunningham),
who has also a seat made in San Diego, and I and a number of other
Members, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. McHale), and of course
the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Herb Bateman), who is the chairman of
the Subcommittee on Military Readiness, the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Solomon Ortiz), the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Robert Underwood), and the
gentleman from Utah (Mr. Jim Hansen) all participated in a readiness
hearing. We had that hearing on the Constellation, the United States
aircraft carrier stationed in San Diego.
The testimony that came back from not only the leadership in the
Navy, the people that wear the stars on their shoulders, the admirals,
but also the enlisted people, was very disturbing, and I want to give
my colleagues some of that testimony today, Mr. Speaker.
First, let us hear from Archie Clemmins, Admiral Archie Clemmins, who
is the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Pacific Fleet. And he
said this: After decades of requirement driven operations, we are now
asset limited. In the past, decisions to commit forces were guided by
requirements. Now we determine the level of peacetime commitment based
upon forces available. Instead of meeting all requirements, we must
prioritize missions and then assign increasingly scarce resources. This
is becoming more difficult as U.S. leadership and interests dictate an
increase rather than a decrease in forward deployed naval forces.
And he closed with these words in his statement: The net effect is
that we are stretching our forces to the limit. He said further: In the
past 4 years, we have reduced our personnel force size by over 22
percent while maintaining recruiting standards and keeping faith with
the career force. Although we have been manning our deploying ships at
adequate level, we are experiencing manning shortfalls that have grown
into readiness concerns.
Now that means, Mr. Speaker, that these 333 ships in a Navy that used
to be 546 ships are having to operate at an increased OPTEMPO. That
means that they are on deployment more often than they were 5 or 10 or
15 years ago, even during the Cold War. And that means that a young
sailor who goes off on a 6-month cruise, or a young marine who goes off
on a long deployment to Bosnia, or in days past Somalia or Haiti, now
comes home and before he can spend time with his family, he is told
that he has to leave again on another deployment; or he has to go with
his ship while it is being repaired, given an emergency overhaul at
some other port, and he is home just in time, has just enough time
basically to hug his family, kiss his wife good-bye and leave.
After a period of time, Mr. Speaker, the American personnel who are
serving in the uniform say, that is it, I have had it and I am leaving
the service. Even today, and this was testimony throughout our
hearings, pilots, who are a very, very critical component of our
military forces, are in declining number. It is tougher to retain them.
They are leaving and going other places.
Now, there are a lot of reasons given for that. Some of the reasons,
theoretically, are monetary reasons. They can fly for airlines. It is a
little easier job than being deployed for 6 months at a time on an
aircraft carrier. But morale is low. And morale is low partly because
of that OPTEMPO, because we have this fleet with decreasing resources.
And this budget that President Clinton has given to us is $100
billion less than the budget that Ronald Reagan gave to us in the mid-
1980s, using real dollars. So it could be dollar driven, but it is also
morale driven in the sense that these people are seeing that we do not
have the spare parts that we need. And that means that when a petty
officer, and this was testified to us, when

[[Page H1099]]

a petty officer goes to a shelf and reaches for a component now for a
part, he cannot find that part. It is not there because we did not buy
it for him.
So now he has to go to one of the airplanes that we have in the fleet
that is stationed on deck and he has to take that part out of the
airplane. That is called cannibalization. Eating your own. It is like a
farmer who has two hay bailers and he robs parts off one hay bailer so
he can make the other one work. The problem with that, of course, is
that you get to the point of no return with the first airplane just
like you get to the point of no return with the first hay bailer and it
becomes just a parts machine. All it is good for now is taking parts
off of it. And if we do try to restore it, now we have to spend the
manpower getting the extra part that was robbed off it to make the
other plane work and you have to spend a lot of time putting that part
back into the plane that was robbed.
So we are taking readiness dollars in several ways. We are taking a
lot of manpower dollars.
Now, let me go to a statement by General David A. Bramlett, commander
of the United States Army Forces Command. He said: Today our biggest
concern is resource. The bottom line is that for fiscal year 1998,
FORCECOM has fewer dollars than last year in operation and maintenance
funding, roughly a 9 percent decrease in constant dollars. In sum, it
is and will continue to be increasingly difficult to balance the
requirements of go-to-war readiness, infrastructure and quality of life
at current and anticipated levels of funding.
What that means is they leave old barracks and old houses for our
military families. A corporal and his wife and couple of kids may be
asked to live in a home that he can be absolutely ashamed of because
Uncle Sam does not have the dollars to fix that home or to give him a
better one because of the fact he has had to take that money and use it
for fuel or spare parts to keep part of our military operating.

{time} 1730

Now, let me refer to another gentleman who testified. This is
commander Terry Kraft, United States Navy, Commanding Officer Tactical
Electronic Warfare, Squadron 131. Commander Kraft said, ``Another
example of one of the frustrations present in our current situation is
part support. Available parts go first to deployed squadrons, as they
should. The challenge lies in obtaining parts for the jets needed to
train when not deployed. Cannibalization has become routine for my
squadron.''
Mr. Speaker, we live in a time when our economy is extremely robust.
We have lots of money circulating in this economy, lots of government
revenue. We are supposed not to have any deficit this year. And yet, we
have a military that has to cannibalize some of its airplanes so that
the other airplanes can fly.
One other important area, Mr. Speaker, is ammunition. I asked the
Marine Corps and the Army and the Navy to tell me if they had enough
ammo, and if they did not, how short they were. The Marine Corps is
$193 million short of the basic ammunition supply that it needs under
its definition of a two MRC. That means two-conflict scenario.
Incidentally, a two MRC scenario presumes that we might have to fight
Desert Storm again in the Middle East, and we might have to fight
almost at the same time as a conflict in Korea.
Well, the United States Marine Corps, which is our 911 force, those
are the guys that go in first and sometimes they take enormous
casualties. They are $193 million short of their basic ammo supply. We
ought to be ashamed of that, Mr. Speaker. The Army is $1.7 billion
short of its basic ammunition supply. And the Navy is over $300 million
short of its basic ammunition supply.
So Mr. Speaker, we are disserving the American people. And the
American people may not think a lot about national defense right now,
now that the crises with Saddam Hussein seems to be momentarily past
us. But there is going to be a time when we have another conflict,
another war, and the American people are going to turn to us and say,
``Why did you follow the Clinton administration when it slashed
national defense?''
Mr. Speaker, I hope that in this cycle, in this funding cycle, we
restore the massive cuts that have been made in our readiness so that
we do not have to stand there before the American people after a lot of
casualties have been taken on the Korean Peninsula or in the Middle
East with no answers for the American people who are asking that
question after their sons and daughters have gone off to fight a war
that we did not have them prepared for.
So Mr. Speaker, I see over here I have my good friend, the gentleman
from North Carolina (Mr. Jones), who is an outstanding member of the
Committee on National Security, along with you, Mr. Speaker; and I
would like to yield to my colleague.
Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California very
much for yielding.
I really wanted to make a brief statement. Then I have got a couple
questions I would like to ask him. I first want to thank him for the
leadership he, as well as the Speaker and other Members, provide on the
Committee on National Security. It is because of his experience and his
knowledge, he is a former veteran himself, that he is able to help
those of us who are new on the committee understand the threat and
importance of trying to rebuild our military, which I think has taken
unbelievable cuts over the last several years. And before I ask the
question, I wanted to make the statement, because I know of also his
interest in our retirees, those who have served this Nation both in
wartime and peacetime.
I believe I read recently, and correct me if I am wrong, that the
President has recommended approximately a $300 million cut in veterans
health care benefits and at the same time asking for a 38 percent
increase in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and some of
his other social programs. To me, that is a tragedy when we turn our
back on those who have served our Nation again, whether it be peacetime
or wartime.
My colleague touched on deployments earlier. Would the gentleman
please verify for me and expand if he can. Is it true that since
President Clinton has been our President that we have been on 25
deployments? And if that is true, could you approximate the cost of
that and where those monies come from.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, yes. In fact, our good
colleague, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), who is
chairman of the Subcommittee on Research and Development, has developed
these facts. In the last 5 years or so, we have deployed over 25 times.
And that corresponds or can be compared to about 10 deployments, major
deployments, in the previous 10 years.
So the ironic facts are that, while Ronald Reagan and George Bush
stood up to the Soviet Union and brought down the Soviet Union with the
policy of peace through strength, this President has cut defense almost
in half and yet, with a series of operations, so-called peacekeeping
operations, in Somalia and Haiti and Bosnia and other places, has
stretched our forces to the limit. And the price tag that I have seen
on the total of all these deployments is in excess of $13 billion. That
is the information that I have on it. And, yes, there have been 25
major deployments.
The other thing that the gentleman needs to know is this: We put
together a defense budget that was based on what it would take for us
to maintain our Armed Forces and we did not count the deployments. So
it is like having a family put together their yearly budget and they
say, okay, we are going to spend so much for our house mortgage, so
much for our car payments, so much for gas, and we are going to eat at
home, so, so much for groceries each month; and then they have a death
in the family or sickness in the family and they have to travel halfway
across the country and they have got to stay at grandma's, and they
have got to help somebody out on a trip that takes 5 weeks or 2 months.
They will notice that their family budget goes far beyond what they had
programmed it for because they have an emergency or a contingency they
did not plan for.
All of those 25 deployments that the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr.
Weldon) talks about and that the

[[Page H1100]]

chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, Committee on National
Security Committee, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), our
great chairman, talks about, all of those deployments were taken out of
our budget. We were not given any extra money to do that.
So what happened? We said, okay, the President says we are going to
go to Bosnia. He says, ``You go find the money,'' to the military
leadership. So they go to the aircraft repair commands. ``You guys
cannot repair as many aircraft as you thought you were going to have to
repair.'' And the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Fowler) brought this
up today. We have over 100 aircraft awaiting repair. We have over 100
engines that are in repair that are backlogged on depot level
maintenance.
So the President's military leadership goes and says stop repairing
those planes. We need the money to pay for fuel and to pay for the
other necessities to take our forces halfway around the world to
Bosnia, and we are going to take it out of your repair budget.
Then they go to the Marines, perhaps; and they say, hold up. Do not
buy that ammunition you were going to buy with the money that Congress
gave you. We are going to use that money to fly you across the world to
Somalia. You are going to run an operation there or to Bosnia. So what
happens is, that money is taken out of our hide. It is taken out of the
military forces accounts that they were going to use to modernize.

So we now have what is known as a supplemental coming up. That means,
when you have an emergency, you try to pay for it. We cannot afford to
take that out of the military's own hide right now, because they
already have a shortage of spare parts. They have got a shortage of
ammunition. They have got a shortage of personnel incentives to keep
those pilots in the service.
If we rob them of this money to pay for this commitment in Bosnia
that they did not ask for, but we placed on them, then we are
disservicing those people.
Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, let me tell the gentleman as chairman of the
Subcommittee on Military Procurement, I say that respectfully for those
who might be watching, the gentleman from Texas does such an
outstanding job.
I have three bases in my district. I have Seymour Johnson Air Force
Base, I have Camp Lejeune Marine Base in Jacksonville, North Carolina,
and I have Cherry Point Marine Air Station in Havelock, North Carolina.
During the Christmas break, I had the occasion to meet with two
pilots from Cherry Point off base, out of uniform. I was distressd with
what they told me. These are young men in their early thirties, mid
thirties and wanting to make a career out of the Marine Corps.
Again, they are telling me how they are being restricted as it
relates to their flying time, to their combat practices. When you are
making all these comments, I want the people that might be watching
tonight, the American people, to know that we are talking about
readiness.
We are telling our pilots, as you were saying, we do not have enough
money for you to get up there and do what you need to do to be at a
razor sharp edge so that you can defend this Nation. You can take care
of yourself. You can take care of that plane.
I get a little frustrated, and I guess that is why I am kind of
fumbling, to see, as the gentleman made mention in his comments, these
fine young men and women that are dedicated to this Nation.
I am afraid that, too many times, all of us as American citizens take
our military for granted. We do not think about what they need, what we
need to do to have a strong military until they are called upon.
I want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) and the
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton) who is now on the floor. I am
sure he wants to engage in some discussion in just a moment.
But I think that the gentleman from California talks about the
deployment and what it has cost, and I want to ask him a question
because of his experience and expertise being in the position he is in.
We talk about China. We talk about Iran. We talk about Iraq. Can you
tell me how, let us take China for an example, how they are building
their military. Are they somewhat stagnated, or are they spending money
to build a strong military?
Mr. HUNTER. I thank my good friend, the gentleman from North Carolina
for the question. I want to say, also, that the gentleman from South
Carolina is one of the finest members of our committee. We really
appreciate him and all the hard work that he does on the subcommittee.
He is always there and stays late. He is usually there with the other
gentleman who is here right now, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr.
Saxton).
Mr. JONES. I must tell the gentleman, he said South Carolina. I know
he meant North Carolina.
Mr. HUNTER. I meant North Carolina.
Mr. JONES. You have been in that campaign. I want you to come back.
Mr. HUNTER. I am from southern California, so I think everything is
the south. But I thank my friend for correcting me.
With respect to China, China is trying to step into the superpower
shoes that were left by the Soviet Union, and I think their intent
toward the United States is best manifested by the fact that their most
recent purchases from Russia have been antiship missile cruisers. Now,
those are ships that were built by Russia with one goal in mind, and
that is of destroying American aircraft carriers.
You may recall that we embarrassed China with respect to the Taiwan
crisis. We moved the fleet in, and we backed them down. They were
throwing missiles over the bow as the Taiwanese were trying to hold
their elections. They were embarrassed by that, and I am sure their
military vowed to never have it happen again.
So they have been going about the task of acquiring a lot of missile
capability, some of it supersonic, some of it with the ability to zig
and zag so that our antimissile shipboard defense systems will not be
able to hit them. They are doing that for one reason. They want to be
able to sink our ships and destroy the young men and women that operate
those ships.
China is becoming very aggressive. They have made very aggressive
statements about us. During the Taiwan crisis, one of the diplomats
said we hope the people of America care more about Los Angeles than
they do about Taiwan. That is a very naked threat to use nuclear
weapons on an American city, something you would never get from the
Soviet Union.
We thought the Soviet Union was bellicose and threatening, but the
Chinese have been building a lot of military capability. They are
buying a lot of high-tech capability from the Russians and from other
countries that have technology, some of them western countries,
unfortunately.
They have got about 42 supercomputers that they bootlegged out of the
United States and that they got past an acquiescent Clinton
administration review. The Clinton administration has not done a good
job of keeping the supercomputers out of the hands of the people that
are now using them, some of them in their military nuclear complex,
building nuclear systems that are to be targeted at American cities.
But you mentioned one thing I want to bring back to your district in
North Carolina. You mentioned sitting down with your pilots and talking
with them and their concern about lack of spare parts. Let me give you
the mirror of that discussion that you have had in informal
discussions.
We had this hearing on the carrier, the USS Constellation, in San
Diego last week. This is what one of our people said, Commander John
Hults, Commanding Officer of the Strike Fighter Squadron 113. This is
what Commander Hults said.

{time} 1945

He said, ``Very simply stated, my job is to get all of my pilots into
the cockpit enough to make them proficient in all of our primary
mission areas.'' That sounds logical. ``In order to achieve that, the
training and readiness matrix that we use to report our level of
readiness requires that each Hornet pilot,'' that is an F-18, ``fly
32.8 flight hours per month.''
Here he says it. ``The reality is that we don't have the necessary
resources available to us to attain or maintain

[[Page H1101]]

that level of readiness.'' That means that those young pilots in
Commander Hults's squadron, if they have to enter into a combat
situation in the Middle East or in Korea in the near future, will not
have the training that we said they needed to have to make them
proficient. The reason they did not have the training is because this
government in Washington, D.C., while they felt we had plenty of money
to spend on the National Endowment for the Arts and a lot of other
things that have at least what I would call marginal value added to
this country, we did not see clear, our government, to give the
resources to our pilots and to pilot training.
He goes on and he says this. ``The number one resource challenge that
we face is low aircraft availability. The primary reason is that we
don't have enough spare parts in the F/A-18 community. This lack of
spare parts is the cause of a snowball effect that can be felt
throughout the squadron. The fewer parts we have, the more
cannibalization we have to do.''
He brings up that word again, robbing one airplane so that another
one can fly, ``The more cannibalization we have to do, the more
maintenance man-hours required; the more man-hours required, the longer
the workday, which affects morale and leads to retention problems.''
So he has brought this back to why people are leaving these critical
positions in the armed forces right now. Low morale.
One thing Ronald Reagan did when he came in in 1980 was put in enough
increases in our military budget to put those spare parts on the shelf
and to pay our people adequate pay, and to carry that flag high, to
establish a policy in this country that we would achieve peace with our
allies and our adversaries through American strength.
Commander Hults goes on. He says, ``Our noncombat expenditure
allowance, which is the ordnance we are given for training, doesn't
allow us to practice with the weapons we will realistically use in
combat. Among our modern-day weapons of choice for combat are the
various laser-guided bombs that provide pinpoint delivery accuracy and,
therefore, minimum collateral damage and minimum numbers of aircraft
required to send into harm's way.'' We all remember that.
Americans who watched CNN and watched the war in the Gulf remember
perhaps the world's luckiest taxicab driver; it was that taxicab that
was going across the Iraqi bridge. The American airplane came in and
instead of delivering as we did in the old days in World War II, in
Vietnam and Korea literally a blanket of hundreds and hundreds of
bombs, hoping that one of them or two of them would hit the bridge at a
key point and knock it out, we delivered one bomb into that bridge and
we set it right into a strategically placed strut on that bridge and
just as the taxicab driver got to the end of the bridge and got safely
off of it, that bomb hit. One single bomb, that is the precision-guided
munition that Commander Hults is talking about. But he says we need to
train with those bombs.
Then he goes on to say this. He says, ``Unfortunately, we don't get
any of those in our noncombat expenditure allowance, and I currently
have only one pilot in my squadron that has ever carried and delivered
one.'' That means that if Commander Hults is in a combat situation over
Iraq in the next several months and he says, ``I have two bridges I
have to knock out. Has anybody ever dropped one of these laser-guided
bombs?'' he will have one man who says, ``I've used them before,
Commander,'' but he will not have anybody else. So he will have to
either take a chance that a brand-new rookie with that piece of
equipment can learn enough to do the job, or he is going to have to
send that same pilot that knocks out the first bridge, the only guy he
has got in the squadron who is qualified, to do the second bridge.
It is just one of thousands of examples, but it is an example of how
the policies that we set here and the inadequacy of military spending
that we have established as a policy here have a harmful effect on two
things, our ability to defeat the enemy in combat, and secondly, the
disservice that we do to our young men and women who put on the uniform
expecting to get the very best in equipment and training, who are
shortchanged as a result of that.
I thank the gentleman for letting me give that lengthy explanation,
and I yield to him for any other questions.
Mr. JONES. I just want to thank the gentleman for being on the floor
tonight. I know the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton) is going to
join him. I thank the gentleman for letting me be a small part of this
tonight.
I want to thank the gentleman from California and the gentleman from
New Jersey because they are the leaders in the Republican Party; in the
House, they are the people that many of us look to for guidance as it
relates to helping our military remain the power that it needs to be to
protect the freedoms of this country.
I must say to the gentleman from California and to the gentleman from
New Jersey that what they are doing tonight is extremely helpful,
because every civic club I speak to back in my district, I always close
with comments about the needs of our military to protect the freedoms
of this country. That is really what it comes down to.
I always close by telling the people that if you have not read the
book by Caspar Weinberger called The Next War, you need to read it,
because there is a lot of good information as to what is out there that
threatens our security and our freedoms.
Again, I thank the gentleman for letting me be a small part of this.
Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman. He has done a lot to help this
committee.
I want to recognize the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), an
expert in lots of military areas who really has great expertise,
especially in airlift.
Mr. SAXTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Before the gentleman
from North Carolina leaves the floor, I just want to thank him for
being here tonight and making the contribution that he did. I know how
deeply and earnestly he feels about the issues that he was talking
about relative to our national defense. We value the leadership of the
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones) on these issues. We were
delighted he was able to be here with us tonight.
First, let me say how much I enjoy serving on the gentleman's
subcommittee, the Procurement Subcommittee. There are darned few things
that we have to be thankful for, that is, those of us who disagree with
the Clinton administration on our level of military commitment in these
days, but one of the things that we do have to be thankful for is that
the gentleman is where he is. I watched, actually I helped, I was there
by his side last year on the Procurement Subcommittee as we tried to
sort out and make those difficult decisions about how to best allocate
the very limited resources, relatively limited resources that we have
to make use of relative to our national security. It always made me
feel good at the end of the day that the gentleman was there holding
the reins to make sure that we were guided correctly through that maze
of decisions that we had to make.

Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman will hold on for just a second, I
appreciate his kind words. I just wanted to remind him and remind my
colleagues that the reason I am the chairman of that Procurement
Subcommittee is because one of my dearest friends in the world that I
know, the gentleman thinks highly of him too, the gentleman from South
Carolina (Mr. Spence), the chairman of the Committee on National
Security, appointed me and appointed the other members who are chairmen
of the subcommittees.
He basically gave us the ball in all of our respective areas. I have
Military Procurement, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) has
Research and Development, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Bateman) has
Readiness, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) has Military
Construction and on down the line. The gentleman from Indiana (Mr.
Buyer) has Personnel. He has let us run with the ball.
When we have had a fight with the Clinton administration, he has
always stood behind us.
I accept the gentleman's thanks. It is a two-way street because the
gentleman from New Jersey is a real hero in my book. But I want to let
him

[[Page H1102]]

know, too, that it is our leader, the gentleman from South Carolina
(Mr. Spence) who has really bucked this administration and bucked the
numbers that we are forced to live with.
Mr. SAXTON. I could not agree more with regard to the gentleman from
South Carolina (Mr. Spence), as well. One of the really productive
things I believe about the style of leadership that the gentleman from
South Carolina provides is that he recognizes that in each committee
member there is a little bit different area of expertise, whether it
happens to be shipbuilding, and I think of the gentleman from Virginia
(Mr. Bateman), or whether it happens to be munitions and I think of the
gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), or whether it happens to be
some other area, there are many members of our committee, and I might
say on both sides of the aisle, to which the gentleman from South
Carolina (Mr. Spence) is willing to hand the ball at any given time to
carry it through his or her area of expertise. I think that is the mark
of a real leader, to be able to dispense the job the way the gentleman
from South Carolina has been able to.
I wanted to bring up a bit of history, and fairly recent history,
actually when I heard the gentleman's opening statement at the
beginning of this hour about how we had built down for the last number
of years, I believe since 1985 actually was when the builddown in
defense spending started. I think back to those days, I think of the
speeches that Ronald Reagan gave about how we would make our country
proud again and how we would make our country, the country's national
security worthy of the respect of the American people again, and how in
1980 and 1981 he began that buildup.
But I also remember another person who served at the end of the
decade of the 1980s and the beginning of the decade of the 1990s, the
Secretary of Defense, our friend Dick Cheney, who at the time was
Secretary Cheney. I remember one speech that he gave in particular
which is most, I believe, noteworthy today in the context of where we
find ourselves. That occurred over in the then-Armed Services Committee
room.
I believe it was in September of 1990. Saddam had invaded Kuwait.
Secretary Cheney came before the Armed Services Committee and he said
words that were almost identical to this, one of those phrases or one
of those few sentences that I will always remember. He said, ``The Cold
War is over, and I am here on the brink of our going to war with Iraq
to explain to you why I think we need a smaller defense.'' He was very
determined to make sure he got the right message across.
He continued, ``But,'' he said, ``I want to make sure everyone
understands that unlike after every other conflict,'' he was saying
every other conflict prior to the end of the Cold War, ``unlike at the
end of every other conflict, this time,'' he said, ``we're going to do
it smart.''
Well, I wish he were still in that chair, because we probably would
have done it smart. But I am afraid in the meantime perhaps we have not
been so smart. Maybe the builddown has gone too fast.
I do not think he had in mind the speeches we have to give like the
one we are giving tonight about cannibalization, OPTEMPO, lack of
readiness, modernization problems that we have, making decisions about
how we are going to best use the limited resources. That is not what
Dick Cheney had in mind, I am sure.
Then after he fully discussed that with us, he said, ``And remember
something else, too.'' He said, ``The Soviet threat has diminished. The
Soviet Union is on the verge of breaking up.'' He said, ``But remember
this. The threat will not go away. It will only change.'' Words to
remember.
Earlier I heard the gentleman discussing the situation relative to
China. We know the situation relative to South Korea and North Korea.
We know that we were on the brink of another conflict in the Middle
East just a few weeks ago.
We have got, what is it, 25,000 troops ongoing in Bosnia, give or
take a platoon or two? And so the threat has changed. As the gentleman
knows, it is not just a conventional threat that we face today, it is
new threats that perhaps existed in the past but are even more
prevalent today than they were during the Cold War.
The acronym WMD is spoken in these halls quite frequently,
particularly in our committee, weapons of mass destruction, WMD, and
the technology that we are in the process of developing to deal with
the problems involved in weapons of mass destruction. That is what this
entire flap over Iraq was about, how to deal with this issue and all of
these kinds of threats, I am afraid, are what Dick Cheney was talking
about when he said, ``And don't ever forget, the threat may change, but
there will be a threat.''

{time} 2000

And so today, more than ever, I think it is important that Members of
this House and Members of the other House and Members of the American
public and people that work over in the Pentagon recognize the need to
face today's threat, because it is different, but it has not gone away.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman has made a great and eloquent
statement, as usual.
Let me ask the gentleman, who specializes, and incidentally, we
really value the gentleman's membership on the Committee on National
Security, and especially the work that he has done in terms of the task
force on terrorism and the fact that the gentleman recognizes, perhaps
more than any other Members, although Sonny Bono, our good buddy, was
one of the people that recognized that we were entering this era of
terrorists with high technology.
Let me ask the gentleman, though, about airlift capability. Where are
we going with airlift, and what kind of job is the C-17 doing, for
example, the newest addition to our airlift fleet, and how much more
work do we have to do?
Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Speaker, we have a ways to go. Our strategic airlift,
that is the lift that we use to get to far places around the world,
over the last several decades has been carried out in basically 3
fashions. We have the C-141s that started to come on line in 1962; we
have C-5s, a great fleet of C-5s, although they are old too. They also
came on line in the 1960s. We also have a fleet of aircraft which we in
effect rent from the airlines which are called the craft fleet, and
they are pressed into service in time of surge when we need to get
someplace in a hurry. They are regular commercial aircraft, freight
carriers that we use, for the most part, and also passenger carriers,
but freight carriers for the most part that we use in conjunction with
the C-141s and C-5s.
The C-141s are worn out and absolutely will be out of service, for
the most part, with the exception of one wing, that I am aware of, that
will be flying out of McGuire Air Force base up in New Jersey, and a
few C-141s by aught 3 that will be used by the Reserves. Other than
that, the C-141s are going away.
The C-17 buy that we have put in place to replace in effect the worn
out C-141s are in the process of coming on line. We are ramping up so
that we can produce and bring on line 15 a year. We are currently, I
believe, at 10 a year, and we currently have a wing of them down in
Charleston, another wing going out at McChord Air Force base on the
West Coast, and so between now and aught 3, aught 4, aught 5, that buy
will be completed.
In talking with the Air Force leadership just the other day, we have
the need, they believe, for about 15 or 20 additional, in addition to
the 120 that we have already committed to buy, and that request will be
formally made in the 5-year plan as it begins to unfold.
The C-5 fleet is also worn out, and this is a big problem, because
there is a debate currently going on in the Air Force. In fact, I am
going out to Travis Air Force base in the next few weeks to look at the
possibility, a proposal that the Air Force is making on modernization
of the C-5 fleet. They need new hydraulics, new engines and new
aeronautical devices to bring them up to speed so that they can fly in
today's modern world. The problem with the C-5 is that today, because
they are old and worn out, they have the ability to take off, on
average, only 7 out of 8 times they try.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I hope that
that same average does not apply to landings.
Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Speaker, I hope not, too. Obviously it does not, but
for one reason or another, one time out of

[[Page H1103]]

every 8 they take off, they cannot take off, so this creates a very big
problem if one flies from this country overseas and makes a few
landings there, by the time you get back around the loop, if you have
landed 6 or 7 or 8 times, and you figure you are not going to take off
one of those times, which is very bad. So this modernization proposal
that they have is a very good proposal. Actually, the airframe has 80
percent of its life left in it, but the hydraulics and engines and
aeronautics all have to be replaced.
So, Mr. Speaker, that is essentially where we are. The craft fleet
will remain very important, but basically, our military airlifters are
either in need of replacement or very extensive modernization programs.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Once again, I thank
him for his great expertise on the Committee on National Security, and
we have a bunch of great Members who have really contributed in these
very difficult times. Our motto is that we are going to keep working
and we are going to try to build that budget back up to where it should
be so that we do a service rather than a disservice to the folks in
uniform.

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