[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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