[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 62 (Monday, May 3, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4570-S4571]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 GENERAL HAWLEY'S COMMENTS ON READINESS

  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, last week the Air Force General in charge 
of the Air Combat Command provided some valuable observations for the 
Senate to consider as we contemplate funding another protracted 
military operation.
  General Richard Hawley observed that the current build up in Europe 
has weakened our ability to meet our other global commitments. General 
Hawley added that the air operation in Kosovo would require a 
reconstitution period of up to five months.
  The General will be retiring in June, and has spoken out on how this 
war in Kosovo will weaken the readiness of the Air Force. I hope 
Senators will consider his concerns, and I ask unanimous consent that 
the General's remarks on military readiness reported in the April 30th 
Washington Post be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the remarks were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 30, 1999]

                 General Says U.S. Readiness Is Ailing

                          (By Bradley Graham)

       The general who oversees U.S. combat aircraft said 
     yesterday the Air Force has been sorely strained by the 
     Kosovo conflict and would be hard-pressed to handle a second 
     war in the Middle East or Korea.
       Gen. Richard Hawley, who heads the Air Combat Command, told 
     reporters that five weeks of bombing Yugoslavia have left 
     U.S. munition stocks critically short, not just of air-
     launched cruise missiles as previously reported, but also of 
     another precision weapon, the Joint Direct Attack Munition 
     (JDAM) dropped by B-2 bombers. So low is the inventory of the 
     new satellite-guided weapons, Hawley said, that as the 
     bombing campaign accelerates, the Air Force risks exhausting 
     its prewar supply of more than 900 JDAMs before the next 
     scheduled delivery in May.
       ``It's going to be really touch-and-go as to whether we'll 
     go Winchester on JDAMs,'' the four-star general said, using a 
     pilot's term for running out of bullets.
       On a day the Pentagon announced deployment of an additional 
     10 giant B-52 bombers to NATO's air battle, Hawley said the 
     continuing buildup of U.S. aircraft means more

[[Page S4571]]

     air crew shortages in the United States. And because the Air 
     Force tends to send its most experienced crews, Hawley said, 
     the experience level of units left behind also is falling. 
     With NATO's latest request for another 300 U.S. aircraft--on 
     top of 600 already committed--Hawley said the readiness 
     rating of the remaining fleet will drop quickly and 
     significantly.
       His grim assessment underscored questions about the U.S. 
     military's ability to manage a conflict such as the assault 
     on Yugoslavia after reducing and reshaping forces since the 
     Cold War. U.S. military strategy no longer calls for battling 
     another superpower, but it does require the Pentagon to be 
     prepared to fight two major regional wars at about the same 
     time.
       As the number of U.S. planes involved in the conflict over 
     Kosovo approaches the level of a major regional war, the 
     operation is exposing weaknesses in the availability and 
     structure of Air Force as well as Army units, engendering 
     fresh doubts about the military's overall preparedness for 
     the world it now confronts. If another military crisis were 
     to erupt in the Middle East or Asia, Hawley said 
     reinforcements are still available, but he added: ``I'd be 
     hard-pressed to give them everything that they would probably 
     ask for. There would be some compromises made.''
       The Army's ability to respond nimbly to foreign hot spots 
     also has been put in question by the month it has taken to 
     deploy two dozen AH-64A Apache helicopters to Albania. While 
     Army officials insist the helicopter taskforce moved faster 
     than any other country could have managed, the experience 
     appeared to highlight a gap between the Pentagon's talk about 
     becoming a more expeditionary force and the reality of 
     deploying soldiers.
       Massing forces for a ground invasion of Yugoslavia, 
     officials said, would require two or three months. Because 
     U.S. military planners never figured on fighting a ground war 
     in Europe following the Soviet Union's demise, little Army 
     heavy equipment is prepositioned near the Balkans. Nor are 
     there Army units that would seem especially designed for the 
     job of getting to the Balkans quickly with enough firepower 
     and armor to attack dug-in Yugoslav forces over mountainous 
     terrain.
       ``What we need is something between our light and heavy 
     forces, that can get somewhere fast but with more punch,'' a 
     senior Army official said.
       Yugoslav forces have shown themselves more of a match for 
     U.S. and allied air power than NATO commanders had 
     anticipated. The Serb-led Yugoslav army has adopted a duck-
     and-hide strategy, husbanding air defense radars and 
     squirreling away tanks, confounding NATO's attempts to 
     gain the freedom for low-level attacks to whittle down 
     field units. Yugoslav units also have shown considerable 
     resourcefulness, reconstituting damaged communication 
     links and finding alternative routes around destroyed 
     bridges, roads and rail links.
       ``They've employed a rope-a-dope strategy,'' said Barry 
     Posen, a political science professor at the Massachusetts 
     Institute of Technology. ``Conserve assets, hang back, take 
     the punches and hope over time that NATO makes some kind of 
     mistake that can be exploited.''
       Hawley disputed suggestions that the assault on Yugoslavia 
     has represented an air power failure, saying the full 
     potential of airstrikes has been constrained by political 
     limits on targeting.
       ``In our Air Force doctrine, air power works best when it 
     is used decisively,'' the general said. ``Clearly, because of 
     the constraints, we haven't been able to see that at this 
     point.''
       NATO's decision not to employ ground forces, he added, also 
     has served to undercut the air campaign. He noted that combat 
     planes such as the A-10 Warthog tank killer often rely on 
     forward ground controllers to call in strikes.
       ``When you don't have that synergy, things take longer and 
     they're harder, and that's what you're seeing in this 
     conflict,'' the general said.
       At the same time, Hawley, who is due to retire in June, 
     insisted the course of the battle so far has not prompted any 
     rethinking about U.S. military doctrine or tactics, nor has 
     it caused any second thoughts about plans for the costly 
     development of two new fighter jets, the F-22 and Joint 
     Strike Fighter. Despite the apparent success U.S. planes have 
     demonstrated in overcoming Yugoslavia's air defense network, 
     Hawley said the next generation of warplanes is necessary 
     because future adversaries would be equipped with more 
     advanced anti-aircraft missiles and combat aircraft than the 
     Yugoslavs.
       If the air operation has highlighted any weaknesses in U.S. 
     combat strength, Hawley said, it has been in what he termed a 
     desperate shortage of aircraft for intelligence-gathering, 
     radar suppression and search-and-rescue missions. While 
     additional planes and unmanned aircraft to meet this 
     shortfall are on order or under development, Hawley said it 
     will take ``a long time'' to field them.
       In the meantime, he argued, the United States must start 
     reducing overseas military commitments. He suggested some 
     foreign operations have been allowed to go on too long, 
     noting that the U.S. military presence in Korea has lasted 
     more than 50 years, and U.S. warplanes have remained 
     stationed in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, flying patrols over 
     Iraq, for more than eight years.
       ``I would argue we cannot continue to accumulate 
     contingencies,'' he said.'' At some point you've got to 
     figure out how to get out of something.''
       The Air Force blames a four-fold jump in overseas 
     operations this decade, coming after years of budget cuts and 
     troop reductions, for contributing to an erosion of military 
     morale, equipment and training. The Air Force has tried 
     various fixes in recent years to stanch an exodus of pilots 
     and other airmen in some critical specialties.
       It has boosted bonuses, cut back on time-consuming training 
     exercises and tried to limit deployment periods. It also has 
     requested and received hundreds of millions of dollars in 
     extra funds for spare parts.
       Additionally, it announced plans last August to reorganize 
     more than 2,000 warplanes and support aircraft into 10 
     ``expeditionary'' groups that would rotate responsibility for 
     deployments to such longstanding trouble zones as Iraq and 
     Bosnia.
       But Hawley's remarks suggested that the growing scale and 
     uncertain duration of the air operation against Yugoslavia 
     threaten to undo whatever progress the Air Force has made in 
     shoring up readiness. Whenever the airstrikes end, he said, 
     the Air Force will require ``a reconstitution period'' to put 
     many of its units back in order.
       ``We are going to be in desperate need, in my command, of a 
     significant retrenchment in commitments for a significant 
     period of time,'' he said. ``I think we have a real problem 
     facing us three, four, five months down the road in the 
     readiness of the stateside units.''

                          ____________________