[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 108 (Wednesday, June 26, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4562-S4563]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, the men and women who serve in our
military are incredible patriots, and the National Defense
Authorization Act, NDAA, is a vitally important bill the Senate passes
every year to ensure our servicemembers are trained, equipped, and
ready for the global threats our Nation faces. To this end, investing
in our ready and all-volunteer force to ensure we maintain a military
competitive advantage is crucial. I would like to highlight three
amendments that I have introduced to enhance the fiscal year 2020 NDAA.
My first amendment addresses an increasing concern regarding deaths
and injuries related to military training. Our men and women in uniform
volunteer to serve in a profession that carries a great deal of
inherent risk and can demand great sacrifice. Many have paid the
ultimate sacrifice with their lives upon the fields of battle.
Unfortunately, many have also died while training for battle. To ensure
that our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are the best fighting
force in the world, our military necessarily exercises them in
demanding and realistic training. Effective military training builds
readiness, tactical proficiency. and competence, and increases the
confidence of our military force to win wars. I am concerned, however,
that, under the guise of ``realistic training,'' the military is
assuming unnecessary risk that has resulted in an alarming increase in
servicemembers' training-related deaths.
In the past 9 weeks alone, six soldiers and marines have been killed
in military vehicle rollover accidents during training; an additional
34 service members have been injured. One of those killed on May 9,
2019, was my constituent from Chestertown, MD, 24-year-old Marine 1LT,
Hugh Conor McDowell, when his light armored vehicle rolled over during
a military training event at Camp Pendleton, CA.
Since 2015, noncombat deaths have exceeded the number of military
members killed in action every year. A 2018 House Armed Services
Committee Report stated, ``In 2017, nearly four times as many members
of the military died in training accidents as were killed in combat. In
all, 21 Service members died in combat while 80 died as a result of
non-combat training-related accidents.'' Training accidents are
occurring across the spectrum of military platforms, military aviation
incidents rose nearly 40 percent from 2013 to 2017. resulting in 133
military deaths; in 2017, 17 sailors were killed in two separate naval
ship collisions. Three of those who died were also Maryland residents.
Something needs to change in the military's current culture of
training safety, and the most recent losses of life reflect that the
current culture is increasing risk, not reducing it. When military
training yields nearly four times the casualties compared to combat,
training is no longer realistic, it is unsafe. These training accidents
are resulting in the unnecessary death and injury of our servicmembers
and are severely degrading our military readiness. No justifiable
reason exists for training that assumes unnecessary risk and disregards
the safety of our men and women in uniform. This worrisome trendline
since 2015 demands a serious examination of military training safety
and implementation of associated corrective actions across the entire
Department of Defense.
I have filed an amendment to the NDAA, which I hope the Senate will
consider, that would require the Department of Defense to conduct a
study that analyzes the recent training deaths of servicemembers;
provides an assessment of the associated trends, including vehicle
rollovers; and demands recommendations for actions to prevent or
minimize such deaths and injuries in the future. This report would be
due to Congress no later than 180 days after the enactment of the NDAA.
We owe it to the individuals who volunteer to serve, and their
families, to improve the military's culture of training safety and
prevent unnecessary deaths and injuries from occurring in training
environments.
Another important aspect of the NDAA is to ensure that our military
is investing in modernization and innovation to preserve our strategic
competitive advantage against our adversaries. I was pleased that
Senators Inhofe and Reed have included two of my amendments in division
E, the so-called managers' package of amendments to the substitute
amendment to the underlying bill. My two amendments focus on preserving
and bolstering modernization and innovation.
One of these amendments seeks to maintain the Nation's technological
superiority in energetics research and development. Energetics plays a
critical role in our national security in enhancing propulsion and
ordnance systems' effectiveness in terms ofreach, accuracy, and
lethality. Other nations, such as China and Russia, continue to make
strides in energetic material development, and the U.S. cannot afford
to fall behind. My amendment would require the Department of Defense to
develop an energetics research and development plan to ensure a long-
term, multidomain research, development, prototyping, and
experimentations effort, which will have the additional benefit of
maintaining a robust defense industrial base and trained workforce. It
also requires the Secretary to work in conjunction with DOD Research
Labs, labs such as the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Indian Head, MD.
Indian Head is one of the premier research and development facilities
for energetics. The DOD would be required to brief the relevant
congressional Defense committees on this plan within a year of the
NDAA's enactment into law.
My other amendment seeks to preserve funding and staffing of Army
medical research and development efforts. The Department of Defense and
the Army's medical research and development efforts are critical to
increase warfighter readiness through improving health protection and
resilience, improving health delivery in deployed areas, and enhancing
the recovery and rehabilitation of our wounded servicemembers.
The Army's medical research and development has played a key role for
the Department of Defense, executing over 78 percent of DO D's medical
research, development, testing, and evaluation funding. I am proud to
say that the majority of this work runs through Ft. Detrick, MD, often
in partnership with the medical research programs at John's Hopkins,
the University of Maryland, and the Kennedy Krieger Institute. The
Army's medical research efforts have addressed medical issues unique to
the military, which private industry and academia have lacked interest
in conducting. Some examples include blast injuries, brain trauma, and
endemic diseases across the globe that our military has mobilized to
address, such as the Ebola outbreak in
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Liberia. We need to ensure that in addition to investing in next
generation weapons to deter or destroy our adversaries, the Department
of Defense is preserving research and development resourcing for next
generation medical solutions that protect and save the lives of our
servicemen and women.
Readiness, modernization, and innovation are key pillars of the;
fiscal year 2020 NDAA; my three amendments strengthen those focus areas
by ensuring our servicemembers are receiving realistic but safe
training, are supported by weapons that are enhanced by energetic
materials, and are protected and treated by world-class military
medical solutions during their training and deployments. Our
servicemembers deserve the best, and our national security requires
that we maintain our competitive advantage. Let us ensure the fiscal
year 2020 NDAA incorporates the training safety, technological
innovation, and continued development of medical solutions required to
do so.
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at its next
printing, the name of the Senator from Texas, Mr. Cruz, be added as
cosponsor to S. 663 to S. 1790, to authorize appropriations for fiscal
year 2020 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for
military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of
Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year,
and for other purposes.
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