[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 27 (Tuesday, February 26, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S866-S867]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            MARITIME DEFENSE

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in 
the Record the recent testimony of former Secretary of the Navy John 
Lehman before the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee of House 
Armed Services Committee. In my view, Secretary Lehman presents 
important testimony that highlights the need for maintaining a strong 
maritime defense capability in an increasingly uncertain international 
security environment.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       Testimony before the House Seapower and Projection Forces 
     Subcommittee by John Lehman, February 26th, 2013.
       Mr. Chairman it is a special honor for me to appear today 
     before this historic committee of Congress. In my six years 
     as SecNav I spent hundreds of hours testifying and consulting 
     with Chairman Charlie Bennet and the bi-partisan membership. 
     They were truly equal partners with the Reagan Administration 
     in building the 600 ship Navy and a rejuvenated Marine Corps.
       Perhaps the greatest among its many accomplishments was the 
     role of the Committee ( then a full committee titled The 
     Naval Affairs Committee) and its legendary chairman, Carl 
     Vinson, in first persuading and then partnering with 
     President Franklin Roosevelt in urgently rebuilding the US 
     Navy through the shipbuilding acts of 1934, 1936, 1938, and 
     1940. Those bills authorized every new capital ship that 
     fought to victory in WWII. Without that Robust leadership of 
     this committee, we could not have won the war.
       It is with that historic perspective that the Committee 
     should approach its current task.
       The current administration has called for a 300-ship Navy, 
     up from the current 286. It is their belief that such a 
     number at half the size of the Reagan Navy, is sufficient for 
     our security on the grounds that newer ships are better than 
     the ones they replace.
       While that is true in some cases, such as submarines, it is 
     not true for other ships such as the new LCS (littoral combat 
     ship), which does not have the capability of the older 
     frigates that they replace. Moreover, our potential 
     adversaries, from North Korea to the Iranian Navy, have 
     improved their technology as well.
       But most important, numbers still count: The seas are great 
     and our Navy is small. The administrations position that 
     ``the United States Navy will be everywhere in the world that 
     it has been, and it will be as much [present] as the 600-ship 
     navy'' is not persuasive.
       The size of the Navy in the Reagan administration (it 
     reached 594 ships in 1987) reflected a strategy to deter the 
     Soviet Union's world-wide naval force. Today we face no such 
     powerful naval adversary, but the world is just as large, and 
     there is now greater American dependence on global trade and 
     many more disturbers of the peace.
       While we do not need 600 ships today, no naval experts 
     believe a 300-ship Navy is large enough to guarantee freedom 
     of the seas for American and allied trade, for supporting 
     threatened allies, for deterring rogue states like Iran from 
     closing vital straits, and for maintaining stability in areas 
     like the western Pacific. For example, the bipartisan 
     Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel led by Stephen 
     Hadley and William Perry last year concluded that the Navy 
     should have at least 346 vessels.
       The more troubling problem is that the administration goal 
     of 300 is counting ships that won't be built at all. Last 
     year, the president's budget called for cuts of $487 billion 
     over the next decade. The President's proposal for the 
     sequester would mean an additional half-trillion dollars in 
     mandatory defense reductions over the next decade.
       Naval readiness is already highly fragile. In order to meet 
     current operational requirements, the shrunken fleet stays 
     deployed longer and gets repaired less. There is now a 
     serious shortage of Navy combat aircraft, and for the first 
     time since World War II there are essentially no combat 
     attrition reserves. But the biggest effects of budget cuts 
     will be on drastically curtailing naval operations now and 
     naval shipbuilding for the future.
       The Navy has cancelled the deployment of one carrier strike 
     group, halving our deterrence in the Mid-East, and the CNO 
     has testified that even more drastic cuts to deployments will 
     immediately result when sequester takes effect. This is the 
     correct policy by Navy leadership. The Navy cannot do more 
     with less, they can only do less with less.
       Currently the Navy has 286 ships. In order to pay for even 
     drastically reduced current

[[Page S867]]

     operations, the Administration will be retiring a score or 
     more of modern combat ships (cruisers and amphibious vessels 
     and frigates) well before their useful life. In order to 
     reach a 350-ship fleet in our lifetime, we would need to 
     increase shipbuilding to an average of 15 ships every year. 
     The latest budget the administration has advanced proposes 
     buying just 41 ships over five years. It is anything but 
     certain that the administration's budgets will sustain even 
     that rate of only eight ships per year, but even if they do, 
     the United States is headed for a Navy of 240-250 ships at 
     best.
       So how is the Obama administration getting to a 300-ship 
     Navy? It projects a huge increase in naval shipbuilding 
     beginning years down the road, most of which would come after 
     a second Obama term. In other words, the administration is 
     radically cutting the size and strength of the Navy now, 
     while trying to avoid accountability by assuming that a 
     future president will find the means to fix the problem in 
     the future.
       This compromises our national security. The Navy is the 
     foundation of America's economic and political presence in 
     the world. Other nations, like China, Russia, North Korea and 
     Iran, are watching what we do--and on the basis of the 
     evidence, they are undoubtedly concluding that America is 
     declining in power and resolution. Russia and China have each 
     embarked on ambitious and enormously expensive naval buildups 
     with weapons designed specifically against American carriers 
     and submarines.


                     WHAT SHOULD THE COMMITTEE DO?

       I urge the committee to step up to the challenge of the 
     current crisis just as its former leader Carl Vinson did. 
     That does not just mean adding money and ships to the 
     Administration's request. It means instead providing a new 
     framework of debate based on a sound and simple strategy just 
     as Vinson did. It means focusing the Debate on those key 
     issues where legislation can be determinant.
       The current fiscal crisis should be harnessed as a catalyst 
     to enable the undertaking of deep changes.
       The two highest priorities for the Committee should be 
     fundamentally changing the disastrous systemic dysfunction of 
     the DoD procurement process, and completely re-setting the 
     military compensation system.


                              PROCUREMENT

       The Department of Defense acquisition process is seriously 
     broken. Under the current system, it takes decades, not 
     years, to develop and field weapons systems. Even worse, an 
     increasing number of acquisition programs are plagued by cost 
     over runs, schedule slips and failures to perform. The many 
     horror stories like the F-35, the Air Force tanker scandal, 
     the Navy shipbuilding failures and the Army armor disasters 
     are only the visible tip of an iceberg. The major cause has 
     been unbridled bureaucratic bloat (e.g. 690,000 DoD 
     civilians, 250 uniformed Joint task forces) resulting in 
     complete loss of line authority and accountability. As the 
     House Armed Services Committee formally concluded:
       ``Simply put, the Department of Defense acquisition process 
     is broken. The ability of the Department to conduct the large 
     scale acquisitions required to ensure our future national 
     security is a concern of the committee. The rising costs and 
     lengthening schedules of major defense acquisition programs 
     lead to more expensive platforms fielded with fewer 
     numbers.''
       That is, of course, an understatement. We are really 
     engaged in a form of unilateral disarmament through runaway 
     costs. Unless the acquisition system is fixed it will soon be 
     impossible to maintain a military of sufficient size and 
     sophistication with which to secure our liberties and protect 
     the national interest. The solution is clear and achievable.


                         MILITARY COMPENSATION

       Just as entitlements are steadily squeezing out 
     discretionary spending in the Federal budget, personnel costs 
     in the Pentagon are squeezing out operations and 
     modernization. There has not been a comprehensive overhaul of 
     military compensation, retirement, and medical care since the 
     original Gates Commission during the Nixon Administration. It 
     is long overdue. Over the last several years the Pentagon has 
     done the difficult work through the Defense Business Board to 
     establish the hard facts necessary to undertake such an 
     effort. The Independent QDR panel two years ago recommended 
     the establishment of a bi-partisan commission to undertake 
     the task and report to Congress and the President. Now is the 
     time to act on that recommendation.


                                SUMMARY

       This committee has an historic constitutional 
     responsibility, and in the present fiscal crisis a unique 
     opportunity to put our Navy back on the proper course to 
     secure our future security. The Committee can't do everything 
     and must concentrate its efforts on the highest priorities 
     where its unique power can be decisive. I urge you to do so.

                          ____________________