[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 31 (Wednesday, February 26, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E291-E293]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         DEFENSE TRANSFORMATION

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. MAC THORNBERRY

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 25, 2003

  Mr. THORNBERRY. Mr. Speaker, one of the most important challenges 
facing our Nation is to transform the most successful military in the 
world so that it is better able to meet the security needs to the years 
ahead. I would like to submit for the record and commend to my 
colleagues an outstanding speech entitled, ``Transforming the Defense 
Establishment,'' by Dr. Stephen A. Cambone, Department of Defense 
Director of Program Analysis and Evaluation, which was delivered before 
Bear Stearns and Company on January 27, 2003. In my view, Dr. Cambone's 
emphasis on changing the culture of organizations is particularly 
important.
  As we consider the President's 2004 defense budget request, we should 
give careful attention to the excellent insights offered by Dr. 
Cambone.

       In his September 1999 speech at the Citadel, then-candidate 
     George Bush declared that, if elected, he would seize on an 
     opportunity created by what he called a ``revolution in the 
     technology of war.'' As a result of that revolution, he said, 
     power ``is increasingly defined not by mass or size but by 
     mobility and swiftness. Influence is measured in information, 
     safety is gained in stealth, and force is projected on the 
     long arc of precision-guided weapons. This revolution 
     perfectly matches the strength of our country, the skill of 
     our people, and the superiority of our technology. The best 
     way to keep the peace,'' he said, ``is to redefine war on our 
     terms.''
       The President went on to sketch his vision of the armed 
     forces. He said, ``Our forces in the next century must be 
     agile, lethal, readily deployable, and require a minimum of 
     logistical support. We must be able to project our power over 
     long distances, in days and weeks, rather than months. Our 
     military must be able to identify targets by a variety of 
     means, from a Marine patrol on the ground to a satellite in 
     space, and then it must be able to destroy those targets 
     almost instantly with an array of weapons from the submarine-
     launched cruise missile to mobile long-range artillery.''
       ``Our land forces,'' he said, ``must be lighter, our light 
     forces must be more lethal, and all must be easier to deploy. 
     And, these forces must be organized in smaller, more agile 
     formations, than cumbersome divisions.'' ``On the seas, we 
     need to pursue promising ideas . . . to destroy targets from 
     great distances.'' ``In the air, we must be able to strike 
     from across the world with pinpoint accuracy with long-range 
     aircraft and perhaps with unmanned systems.'' ``In space, we 
     must be able to protect our network of satellites essential 
     to our flow of commerce and defense of our country.''
       As a way of underscoring his determination to bring about 
     the transformation of the military forces of the United 
     States, the President reminded the audience of another time 
     of what he called ``rapid change and momentous choices.'' 
     ``In the late 1930s, as Britain refused to adapt to the new 
     realities of war, Winston Churchill observed, `The era of 
     procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling 
     expedience, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we 
     are entering a period of consequences.' ''
       Well, that period of consequences arrived here in this city 
     just two years later, on September 11, 2001. The remainder of 
     this talk will focus on how we have answered the call laid 
     down by the President during his candidacy. Let me sum them 
     up: He asked us to do three things. He asked us to assure the 
     well-being of the men and women in uniform and the civilians 
     who work for the Department. He asked us to provide the means 
     to them to defeat today's threats. He asked us to take on the 
     transformation of the defense establishment to meet the 
     challenges of the future. Before I take on each in turn, that 
     is to say, what we've done for our people, how we've met 
     today's challenges, and what we are doing for the future, let 
     me take a moment to tell you what we think transformation is, 
     and what it is not.
       What it is, we think, is a continuing effort over time. It 
     is not a static objective in time. So, if you are looking to 
     judge this transformational process or the progress that we 
     have made, and you try to pin it to a certain place in a 
     certain time and use a static measure, you will be 
     disappointed and probably mislead yourself and others.
       Secondly, it is a change in culture. A change in culture 
     that is reflected in what we do, how we do it, and the means 
     we choose to accomplish our objectives. I can't stress enough 
     the importance of the change in culture that comes with the 
     transformation. Those of you who have watched various 
     companies merge and come apart over the last decade or so 
     will understand just how important changes in culture are to 
     a transformational effort.
       It's also about balancing risk. We have identified risk in 
     four categories. The first area of risk has to do, not 
     surprisingly, with our people. Are we keeping them in proper 
     trim, as it were? Do they have the means to do their 
     training; are they able to see their families; do they live 
     in decent housing? Second, are we able to conduct operations 
     today at a minimum of risk not, mind you, without risk, but 
     at a minimum of risk, by assuring that our people are well 
     positioned, well led, and have the proper means to conduct 
     operations? Third, have we made the investments that are 
     necessary to prepare for the future? and lastly, our business 
     practices; have we gone any way toward reforming them? It is 
     our belief that those four categories of risk need to be 
     properly balanced. We cannot over-invest in any one and 
     expect to succeed in all.
       Now, let me say a word about what we think transformation 
     is not. It is not change for its own sake. Nor is it measured 
     as a success or a failure on the basis of programs that have 
     been cancelled, programs that have been completed, or 
     programs that have begun. It is easy to keep score that way, 
     and we will, in a few minutes, talk about some of the 
     programs that we have cancelled and programs that we have 
     begun. But, again, that is not a very good scorecard of 
     the progress of this transformational effort.
       I call you back again to what transformation is. It's about 
     culture, about what we do, how we do it, and the means we 
     choose to accomplish those objectives. If you were going to 
     develop a checklist to measure transformation, I offer you 
     the following set of points. There are seven, and I'll give 
     them to you in fairly quick order.
       The first would be to look at the guidance that we have 
     given both to our civilian and military personnel. Some of 
     that guidance is available to you, for example, in the form 
     of the National Security Strategy that has been published by 
     the White House and the Quadrennial Defense Review that was 
     published by the Department of Defense. Others are not 
     available to you--except when they're leaked to the 
     newspapers--for example:
       The Nuclear Posture Review, which reconfigured our nuclear 
     forces, and allowed the President to take the steps to reduce 
     the size of our nuclear offensive arsenal and to incorporate 
     into our future strategic force conventional weapons as well 
     as nuclear weapons. The Contingency Planning Guidance, which 
     is given to our combatant commanders and signed out by the 
     President, and which directs combatant commanders to prepare 
     plans for contingencies now and into the future that reflect 
     the tenets of the strategy that was laid down in the National 
     Security Strategy and the Quadrennial Defense Review. But 
     guidance is fine going back to my point about culture, 
     however: Are we changing the culture? It is often changed by 
     changes in organizations. And I have to tell you, we have 
     changed organizations quite extensively within the 
     Department. We have done so with the aim of enabling what we 
     call joint operations, i.e., the ability of our land, sea, 
     air, and space forces to be combined under the control of a 
     single combatant commander and used in ways that are most 
     appropriate to achieving the objectives of the campaign that 
     he has laid out.
       We have changed the structure of our commands: We have 
     added a combatant command for the United States called 
     Northern Command. It ``stood up'' just recently. We have 
     merged our Space Command and the old Strategic Command into a 
     new command designed to make use of the new instruments of 
     strategic power. We have changed the mission of our Special 
     Operations Command. We have undertaken changes to our 
     organization in the office of the Secretary of Defense. The 
     Army, the Navy, the Air Force--each of them has restructured 
     their staffs and their functions.
       Third, I said we were interested in joint operations. Well, 
     it turns out the Department

[[Page E292]]

     of Defense does not have a joint concept to guide the conduct 
     of joint operations. What we have are concepts that have been 
     generated by each of the services about how they would prefer 
     to fight. We have, however, no overarching concept for the 
     employment of the joint force. So we have, indeed, set about 
     that task. I would expect by springtime, probably early 
     summer, that we will, indeed, have a joint operational 
     concept that will begin to frame for our services how they 
     ought to go about the task they have under Title X--to man, 
     train, and equip the armed forces of the United States.
       But the services--the fourth point of the seven--have not 
     been lagging behind. If, for example, you look at what the 
     Navy is proposing, what the Army is proposing, what the Air 
     Force and the Marines are proposing, you will see their 
     effort to begin transforming their own service and to make it 
     friendly to the joint operational environment. But it's not 
     enough to say we want to fight joint, we have to train joint, 
     so we have taken steps to put in place a substantial amount 
     of funding to enable joint training, and we will do it for 
     the most part in a virtual environment, but this will be an 
     enormous step in the direction toward joint operations.
       What about our investments? Investment is made up of a 
     combination of RDT&E--research, development, test and 
     evaluation--coupled to what we procure. We will talk in a few 
     minutes about that investment, but I do believe that, if you 
     look at it, you will begin to notice that it is favoring the 
     enabling of joint warfare. So, as we look through our choices 
     during the course of our just-completed program review, we 
     constantly came back to the same question: What will this 
     investment do for joint warfighting?
       Lastly, processes and practices within the Department of 
     Defense. Under Secretary Wynne and Dr. Zakheim, both of whom 
     have spoken to you, and others are working very hard to alter 
     the manner in which we do our business. This will be the most 
     transforming thing the Department of Defense can do. We can 
     spend a great deal of time on any of these seven points, but 
     let me ask you to bear in mind a summary point that arises 
     out of them: Because we do not know who our adversaries may 
     be either in the near term or the long term; or how they may 
     choose to fight; but because we do know that modern 
     technology is available to our adversaries or potential 
     adversaries, as readily as it is available to us; and because 
     we know that as a democratic society we are vulnerable to 
     attack: We decided to pursue our strategy for transformation 
     in a way that would provide our combatant commanders with 
     what we are calling a portfolio of capabilities. We have 
     tried to avoid the point solution to any particular 
     problem. We are looking to equip them with a portfolio of 
     capabilities with which that combatant commander can 
     conduct joint operations. The reason I mention this to you 
     is that, as you begin to review the budget programs and 
     think your way through what that means, you've got to keep 
     coming back to the question: Has the Department chosen the 
     right set of capabilities to support joint operations?
       Next, let me outline what those capabilities and joint 
     operations are intended to provide. Let me tick off a list of 
     six points for you that we think are the appropriate 
     characteristics by which to measure these capabilities. 
     First, does it permit the force to rapidly transition from 
     its steady state peacetime garrison its training its presence 
     mission does it allow it to transition rapidly into combat 
     operations? Second, do we have a set of capabilities that 
     will provide timely and wide-ranging effects applied to 
     targets throughout the full depth--the full depth--of an 
     adversary's battle space? Third, can we apply those effects 
     to both fixed and mobile targets? Fixed targets are a 
     delight; they sort of stay right where you always thought 
     they were. It's the ones that move around that vex us all, 
     and it's very, very difficult trying to track and attack 
     those targets. Fourth, does it provide us the kind of 
     persistent surveillance we're going to need especially for 
     the purposes of tracking mobile targets.
       Let me digress here for a moment. The difficulties we see 
     in the efforts to gain intelligence is a function of how hard 
     it is to gain that intelligence. If one has only a periodic 
     view of events, it is difficult to collect and stitch that 
     information together. To the extent that we are able to 
     provide a persistent level of surveillance for our combatant 
     commanders, they will be able to make their plans with a 
     great deal more knowledge and information than they have 
     today. We must continue to dominate the air, we need to learn 
     how to operate from sea bases, and we need to improve our 
     ground maneuverability. Fifth, the above capabilities need to 
     allow us, as well, to hold at risk an adversary's command and 
     control network as well as his weapons of mass destruction. 
     Sixth and last, but not least by any means, they are 
     capabilities that we must have in order to be able to force 
     any fight in which we find ourselves to a rapid conclusion.
       That concludes the top-level chapeau of what we're trying 
     to do and why. Let me turn to our program proposals. I'll 
     begin with the most important resource that we have, which is 
     our people. We have, since 2001, made a substantial effort to 
     increase the pay and benefits of our troops. We have, in 
     fact, gone farther than others might have thought. We have 
     gone to a targeted pay raise for our senior enlisted and mid-
     career officers to ensure that we keep the talent that we 
     need and develop the skill sets that a military 10 and 15 
     years from now is going to require. We have also managed to 
     reduce to near-elimination within two years the kinds of out-
     of-pocket expenses that our personnel have to pay for their 
     housing when they live on the economy. In terms of housing on 
     bases, we will have eliminated most of (the substandard) 
     housing by 2007, and we will have privatized a lot of that 
     housing, particularly with respect to the Navy and Army. And, 
     as I said, we have gone a long way toward providing the kind 
     of joint, national training that we think our people are 
     going to need in the years to come.
       In addition to our people, we need a firm foundation, a 
     solid foundation, in what we call our operations and support 
     activities and in the infrastructure that is part of the 
     Defense establishment. Toward that end, we have included in 
     the proposal that we sent to the President, and that he will 
     send on to Capitol Hill, a great deal of additional monies 
     over this program period designed to support our operations 
     and maintenance budgets. We did this for a very good and 
     sound reason. Over the years, what has happened is that funds 
     for operations and maintenance, the daily upkeep of the 
     force, has been systematically underfunded. The consequence 
     of systematically underfunding it has been that, in the 
     event, in any given year, when those bills begin to mount, 
     the services went looking for dollars. Where that money came 
     from traditionally has been out of the investment account, 
     that is, out of procurement and out of RDT&E. What we are 
     looking to do is to stabilize the investment programs by 
     funding the O&M accounts. That is a principled approach to 
     what we are trying to do. So, the hope is that over time, 
     those investments will be more stable than they have been in 
     the past.
       Investments. With respect to the investments, as I said, we 
     have both RDT&E and procurement in the account.That account 
     is up substantially, on average, over what was in the plan 
     that we found when we arrived at the beginning of 2001. What 
     is interesting about it is that, proportionally, we have 
     increased the RDT&E accounts a bit more than we have the 
     procurement accounts. There's a reason for that. One is that 
     it signifies a certain leaning by the Department toward 
     reducing the risks of having inappropriate forces and 
     equipment in future years.
       It also reflects an approach toward funding some of our 
     near-term efforts, particularly with respect to the Navy, 
     which will fund the first ship of four new classes of ships 
     that it intends to begin during the course of this program. 
     It will fund that first ship of each class out of its 
     RDT&E accounts because in fact those ships are, indeed, 
     experimental, from the point of view of the Navy. The 
     services, in trying to meet the demands of transformation, 
     have made some important decisions about shifting their 
     resources. You will discover, for example, when looking at 
     the Army's accounts, that: It will have moved roughly $20 
     billion out of programs it might have funded in its '02 
     program into different accounts. It has, since 2002, 
     terminated 24 systems, and it has reduced or restructured 
     another 24. It has done so for two reasons: first, in 
     order to be able to fund its highest priority for 
     modernization.
       Second, at the same time, the Army, over this coming 
     program period, will shift something on the order of $13-14 
     billion into the development of its Future Combat System. 
     That is, indeed, its transformational system. The Navy, from 
     the period of 2002 until the end of this program period: will 
     have retired 36 ships. Some of those ships could have been 
     modernized. Service life extension programs could have been 
     conducted for those ships. The Navy decided to retire them, 
     take the savings, and invest those savings into a number of 
     new classes of ships. Those ship classes include a new 
     littoral combat ship, a new cruiser, a new destroyer, a new 
     helicopter-deck ship, and a new prepositioning ship, and it 
     includes resources shifted to a new design for the next 
     generation of aircraft carrier. The Air Force, for its part, 
     has moved something on the order of $20 billion in its 
     budget. It has retired a number of older aircraft, it has 
     done some internal consolidations of its squadrons. It has 
     funded its highest priorities which are its readiness and 
     people and, importantly, it has made commitments to a number 
     of programs which I will discuss in a moment.
       So, there is a great deal of work going on inside the 
     Department in terms of reallocating resources. It's not 
     simply a matter of having been afforded more money by 
     Congress, but rather, we have taken steps to move dollars 
     inside the accounts in the Department. Now, when we're done, 
     what we think, is that that capabilities package that I 
     talked about will enable us to better perform what we think 
     are six of the most important operational goals for our 
     force. Let me give them to you: First, we have to defend what 
     we call our bases of operation, that is to say, the United 
     States, our people, our forces abroad, and our allies. We 
     have to protect them not only against the kinds of attacks 
     that occurred two years ago in New York and at the Pentagon, 
     but also against missile strikes and other forms of offensive 
     operations. We have to be able to project and sustain our 
     forces abroad. Recalling the President's words, we need to be 
     able to move quickly in order to bring the fight to a quick 
     conclusion. Third, we need to be able to deny sanctuary to 
     our adversary. This is where the issue of persistent 
     surveillance, for example, comes into play. If we're trying

[[Page E293]]

     to find terrorists hiding in remote places, we have to have 
     the ability to essentially sit on top of them and their 
     activities and watch them and follow them as they go about 
     their business. But having done that, we have to be able to 
     attack an adversary no matter where they are and no matter 
     how deep inside the land mass they may be or where they might 
     be on the oceans or in the air. Fourth; we have got to 
     enhance our space capabilities. We are highly dependent upon 
     space for both commercial and defense needs, and we will have 
     made a substantial investment in enhancing those 
     capabilities. Fifth, we need to do what is necessary to 
     leverage our information advantage Last, we need to ensure 
     that the information on the network is secure.
       So, in making our investment set, let me tick off for you 
     some of those which have probably gotten your attention for a 
     variety of reasons. The first is missile defense. The 
     President committed to bringing about a missile defense for 
     the United States. We have invested quite heavily in the 
     RDT&E program for missile defense. The President has decided 
     that, beginning in 2004, we will begin to deploy a small 
     number of interceptors inside a test bed arrangement that we 
     have developed for the testing of our land-based missile 
     defense capabilities. Those interceptors will give us a 
     modest capability against a small number of long-range 
     ballistic missile warheads launched at the United States. 
     That test bed is located on land, so the President has asked 
     us as well to see if we couldn't put some missile defense 
     interceptors aboard ship by about the 2004 time frame as 
     well, and we have committed to doing so.
       We have made a very large investment in transformational 
     communications. What do I mean by that? It has three parts. 
     We are committed to the development of a laser-based 
     communications satellite, which will allow us to communicate 
     by light via space. Today, we do it by radio-frequency waves, 
     both from ground to satellite and from satellite to 
     satellite. What we hope to be able to do is to do that by 
     light. Essentially, we hope to move fiber optics into space. 
     We have, as well, made a very large investment in expanding 
     what we call our global information grid which is, itself, a 
     fiber-optic net, which will be expanded substantially. We 
     have made major investments in command, control, 
     communications, and computing systems. We have made a similar 
     investment in assuring the information net will work within 
     that transformational communications system.
       In order to gain the persistence that I have talked about, 
     we have made investments in systems like Global Hawk, which 
     is an unmanned drone aircraft that is loaded with sensors. 
     You have read, I'm sure, of the exploits of Predator, a much 
     smaller drone that has been used extensively in Afghanistan. 
     But we have also invested in a space-based system, which is a 
     radar. The idea is that, if we are able, around 2012, to 
     put up a constellation of satellites, these radar 
     satellites would enable us to have the kind of persistent 
     surveillance that I talked about a few moments ago. If you 
     take the information that is available on the space-based 
     radar and other surveillance assets and imagine moving 
     them through a system that I described that is essentially 
     a fiber-optics system, you can understand how fast we can 
     move that information, how much information we can move, 
     and the fact that we can move it and deliver it in formats 
     that are useful to the receivers. If we can do that, and 
     we believe we can, we will be able to see, bear, talk, 
     act, and assess much more rapidly than any adversary we 
     could encounter. If we can do that, in near-real time, we 
     will have achieved what many might want to call 
     information superiority.
       Shipbuilding. Let me take a moment there. We have committed 
     to about seven ships a year if we can do it. That will enable 
     us to stabilize the shipbuilding base over the course of the 
     FYDP, but we also have made a major decision with respect to 
     the Navy's follow-on aircraft carrier, called CVN-21. The 
     Navy has taken many of the improvements that would have been 
     included in a ship that they had believed would begin 
     building in FY2011 and has moved many of those technologies 
     and changes in the organization and internal structure of the 
     ship and its equipment sets back to the carrier that is 
     slated to begin construction in FY2007. With respect to 
     combat air forces, we have studiously gone about the business 
     of attempting to create competition for the missions in this 
     area. As you know, we have the F-22, the F/A-18. They are the 
     main aircraft in production. The Joint Strike Fighter is 
     intended to follow on toward the end of this decade, but in 
     addition, we have made investments to improve our 
     capabilities with respect to unmanned combat aerial vehicles 
     (UCAVs), unmanned aerial vehicles like Global Hawk and 
     Predator, and their successors. We have made an investment in 
     a national aerospace initiative which will stress hypersonic 
     missile technology which will allow us to move at very rapid 
     speed. As the principal proponent of that program likes to 
     say, ``Speed kills.'' You can imagine that hitting a target 
     at 7 or 8 Mach will do real damage to that target. Lastly, we 
     have tried to look at whether or not we can revive a 
     conventional ballistic missile capability which would, as the 
     President said, allow us to strike around the world at a 
     moment's notice with pinpoint accuracy.
       The Army, for its part, is deep into its transformational 
     effort in keeping with the President's words about being more 
     lethal and quicker to move and not taking so long to build 
     up. The Army is attempting to do so with its objective force 
     and its so-called ``Future Combat System.'' They are hopeful 
     to come in this Spring with their proposals on how they 
     intend to proceed with this program, and as I said a moment 
     ago, they have invested near to $14 billion over the FYDP for 
     that program. Those are some of the highlights of the 
     investment strategy, and let me just tick off for you some of 
     those changes. When we started in 2001 on this process of 
     transforming our capabilities, we didn't have a missile 
     defense capability; by 2004, we hope to have a limited 
     capability. We were using conventional radio-frequency waves 
     for our satellite communications; we hope to move to laser-
     based communications. We didn't have a space-based radar 
     program; we do now, and we hope we can deploy it by 2012. We 
     had no submarines that could launch large numbers of 
     conventional cruise missiles. Well, we've taken four 
     submarines out of the strategic force, took the nuclear 
     weapons off them, and we intend to put conventional cruise 
     missiles on them and use them as strike platforms well into 
     the next decades. I've already mentioned the carriers. We 
     will have a CVN-21 beginning in FY-07. The surface fleet was 
     aging. It will shrink a bit in the coming years, only to 
     begin to increase its numbers as we go into the 2006-7-8 time 
     frame. We will have four new ship classes. We merged the 
     tactical air programs of the Navy and the Air Force. I've 
     mentioned the family of UAVs and the UCAVS, and I've 
     mentioned the housing and the facilities improvements. So, 
     let me conclude. We are a nation at war; we do not know how 
     long it will last, but it is unlikely to be short. We cannot 
     know where all of its battles will be fought.There are 
     multiple fronts in this war, and there is no single theater 
     of operations. We do know that we are all at risk, at home 
     and abroad, civilians and military alike. We do know that 
     battles and campaigns will be both conventional and 
     unconventional in their conduct. Some of those battles and 
     campaigns will be fought in the open, and others will be 
     fought in secret, where our victories will be known to only a 
     few. For the Department of Defense, it means that we now plan 
     and fight today's battles even as we prepare for that longer 
     campaign. In light of this, let me remind you of how the 
     President assesses his 1999 speech at the Citadel. Two years 
     later, in December of 2001, he returned to the Citadel and 
     said the following: ``The need for military transformation 
     was clear before the conflict in Afghanistan and before 
     September 11. At the Citadel in 1999, I spoke of keeping the 
     peace by redefining war on our terms. We have,'' he said, ``a 
     sense of urgency about this task, the need to build this 
     future force while fighting the present war is an urgent 
     need.'' And then he said, ``It's like overhauling an engine 
     when you're going 80 miles an hour, but we have no other 
     choice.'' So, mindful of the urgency to transform, as the 
     President expressed in his Citadel speech a year ago, I can 
     say that we will press this war to its conclusion. But even 
     as we do, we will plan and prepare for the future when that 
     war is won, and the world itself has been transformed. Thank 
     you very much.

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