[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 113-57]
PLANNING FOR SEQUESTRATION IN FISCAL YEAR 2014 AND PERSPECTIVES
OF THE MILITARY SERVICES ON THE STRATEGIC CHOICES AND
MANAGEMENT REVIEW
__________
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
SEPTEMBER 18, 2013
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]
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COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Thirteenth Congress
HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' McKEON, California, Chairman
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas ADAM SMITH, Washington
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
JEFF MILLER, Florida ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
JOE WILSON, South Carolina ROBERT E. ANDREWS, New Jersey
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
ROB BISHOP, Utah JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio RICK LARSEN, Washington
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota JIM COOPER, Tennessee
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa
K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts
DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado JOHN GARAMENDI, California
ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr.,
DUNCAN HUNTER, California Georgia
JOHN FLEMING, Louisiana COLLEEN W. HANABUSA, Hawaii
MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado JACKIE SPEIER, California
E. SCOTT RIGELL, Virginia RON BARBER, Arizona
CHRISTOPHER P. GIBSON, New York ANDRE CARSON, Indiana
VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire
JOSEPH J. HECK, Nevada DANIEL B. MAFFEI, New York
JON RUNYAN, New Jersey DEREK KILMER, Washington
AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
MARTHA ROBY, Alabama SCOTT H. PETERS, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama WILLIAM L. ENYART, Illinois
RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida PETE P. GALLEGO, Texas
KRISTI L. NOEM, South Dakota MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
PAUL COOK, California
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma
BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio
JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana
Robert L. Simmons II, Staff Director
Jack Schuler, Professional Staff Member
Spencer Johnson, Counsel
Aaron Falk, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
----------
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2013
Page
Hearing:
Wednesday, September 18, 2013, Planning for Sequestration in
Fiscal Year 2014 and Perspectives of the Military Services on
the Strategic Choices and Management Review.................... 1
Appendix:
Wednesday, September 18, 2013.................................... 51
----------
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2013
PLANNING FOR SEQUESTRATION IN FISCAL YEAR 2014 AND PERSPECTIVES OF THE
MILITARY SERVICES ON THE STRATEGIC CHOICES AND MANAGEMENT REVIEW
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck,'' a Representative from
California, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services.............. 1
Smith, Hon. Adam, a Representative from Washington, Ranking
Member, Committee on Armed Services............................ 3
WITNESSES
Amos, Gen James F., USMC, Commandant of the Marine Corps, U.S.
Marine Corps................................................... 10
Greenert, ADM Jonathan W., USN, Chief of Naval Operations, U.S.
Navy........................................................... 6
Odierno, GEN Raymond T., USA, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army.......... 4
Welsh, Gen Mark A., III, USAF, Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force.... 9
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Amos, Gen James F............................................ 97
Greenert, ADM Jonathan W..................................... 69
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck''.............................. 55
Odierno, GEN Raymond T....................................... 59
Smith, Hon. Adam............................................. 57
Welsh, Gen Mark A., III...................................... 84
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[The information was not available at the time of printing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mr. Barber................................................... 116
Ms. Bordallo................................................. 110
Ms. Duckworth................................................ 117
Mr. Lamborn.................................................. 116
Mr. Langevin................................................. 109
Mr. Runyan................................................... 117
Mr. Shuster.................................................. 116
PLANNING FOR SEQUESTRATION IN FISCAL YEAR 2014 AND PERSPECTIVES OF THE
MILITARY SERVICES ON THE STRATEGIC CHOICES AND MANAGEMENT REVIEW
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, September 18, 2013.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in room
2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck''
McKeon (chairman of the committee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' MCKEON, A
REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED
SERVICES
The Chairman. The committee will come to order.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. The House Armed
Services Committee meets today to receive testimony on
``Planning for Sequestration in Fiscal Year 2014 and
Perspectives of the Military Services on the Strategic Choices
and Management Review.''
I would like to begin by expressing the committee's shock
and sadness about this week's tragic shooting at the Washington
Navy Yard. The victims and their families continue to be in our
thoughts and prayers. At this time, I request the committee
hold a moment of silence to honor those patriots who lost their
lives.
[Moment of silence observed.]
The Chairman. Thank you.
Admiral Greenert, I hope you will convey the committee's
deepest sympathies for all those who were affected under your
command.
I spoke yesterday to the Secretary and asked him to express
our thoughts also to every member of the Naval family that he
comes in contact with.
The Nation is grieving with you.
Admiral Greenert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate it.
The Chairman. As you are all aware, this committee has held
numerous hearings on the impact of sequestration to our
national security since 2011.
While many of us have warned about the catastrophic impact
these cuts have had to our military readiness and offered
specific legislation to fix them, we have nonetheless
encouraged the Department of Defense to fully plan for
sequestration. Our attitude has been work for the best, but
prepare for the worst. With that said, we welcome this review
in the hopes that it would answer some of the many unanswered
questions we have about how the Department will operate in a
post-sequestration budget environment.
While I appreciate the intent of this review as an
assessment, frankly, I was disappointed and troubled by the
lack of specificity it offered. The review contained little in
the way of new information, leaving us only marginally more
informed than we were 2 years ago.
Last month, Secretary Hagel directed each service to
develop two separate Future Years Defense Programs for fiscal
year 2015, one at the President's budget level and an alternate
accounting for full sequestration. While we all would agree
that the higher budget level would be preferable, our focus
today is on the alternate program under development.
Earlier this month, I wrote to Secretary Hagel, urging him
to authorize each of you to discuss the specific impacts you
have identified in the preparation of your alternate program,
including the reductions in size of the force, the
modernization programs that will be canceled or curtailed,
bases that will have to be closed, capabilities that no longer
can be sustained, and training that will be limited.
In your testimony today, I hope you will be frank about the
deviations that will have to occur to the President's fiscal
year 2015 budget request as a result of sequestration and how
those decisions will impact the execution plans for fiscal year
2014.
Gentlemen, for 2 years, you or your predecessors have come
to this committee describing the consequences of sequestration
in generalities and percentages. The Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs told us you can't be cut one more dollar without
changing the defense strategy, but when you're cut,
administration downplays the impacts. Your credibility with
this committee and with me is on the line this morning.
I respect each of you deeply. But now is the time for you
to act. Each of you carries the responsibility to give Congress
your best and unbiased military advice. Each of you has a
higher obligation to provide security for the American people.
Today I expect to hear in very clear terms what elements of
that security you will no longer be in a position to provide
should sequestration continue.
I expect to hear what risk you will have to assume in order
to provide it.
Last week we had a hearing with Secretary Kerry, Secretary
Hagel and General Dempsey. I have been talking for the last
couple of weeks against going into Syria or going anywhere else
with this military until the sequestration problem is fixed,
until we have back-loaded the money that has been taken from
defense over and above the $487 billion, which all of you said
you could live with but not a dollar more. But they each
pointed out in their testimony that I was probably focused too
much on just money; when things evolve, develop, occur about
our national security, we would find the money. There is no
question we will find the money. But it comes out of something
else, something else that is very important. I would like to
hear from you today what that would be.
I look forward to hearing your testimony. I thank all of
you for your witnesses for being here, for your service to this
Nation.
And now I recognize Ranking Member Smith for his statement.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McKeon can be found in the
Appendix on page 55.]
STATEMENT OF HON. ADAM SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM WASHINGTON,
RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, I join the chairman expressing my condolences
to Admiral Greenert and the Navy and to our entire military
family for the tragic and horrific incident this week. Our
thoughts and prayers are with you. Whatever we can do to help,
please let us know.
Admiral Greenert. Thank you, Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith. I thank the chairman for his leadership on that.
And I also thank the chairman for the consistent hearings
that we have had on sequestration. This is a significant
challenge, and I don't think anybody in this Congress has been
more out front than Chairman McKeon and early explaining to us
what was coming and the challenges in trying to sound the
alarms, so that hopefully we could do something about it. And I
appreciate those hearings and those discussions.
I would hope today that we would skip the normal partisan
arguments about whose fault it is. We have, gosh, done that
back and forth throughout so many times that I think just about
everybody in this room could probably repeat what I would say
and then what others would say, and so we know all that. We
don't need to have that argument. We need to figure out where
we are going to go and how are we going to deal with this. And
it is a multifaceted problem.
Certainly sequestration, which is set to go on for another
9 and a half years, and we have only been dealing with it now
since March. Doing the math in my head, but I think that is
roughly 6 months. Those 6 months have been bad, the choices
that have had to be made. Members in their individual
districts, if you have military bases there, you see the impact
on the military; you certainly see the impact on the
contractors. But that is 6 months, we have got 9 and a half
more years to go of sequestration if we don't do something
about it.
In addition, here we go again in terms of another threat of
government shutdown as we come up to September 30th. And it is
to the point where there is virtually no hope of getting an
appropriations bill. We are hoping that we can get a CR
[continuing resolution]. And a CR is, in many ways, depending
on who you are, as bad as sequestration in terms of how it
impacts what money can be spent by the various departments
within DOD [Department of Defense]. Then, of course, shortly
thereafter, we have the debt ceiling and the debate over
whether or not to raise that.
I will just say that you don't have the debate with your
credit card once you have incurred the charges; you pay the
bill. Then you can have a discussion about whether or not you
want to continue to rack up bills that are that high. But if
you are the United States Government, I don't think you have
the option of not paying your bills. But we will face that as
well.
On all of those fronts, we need to figure out what money we
have. I would hope that Congress will continue to work to solve
sequestration, to pass appropriations bills, to get past the
debt ceiling. I know that is going to be a challenge, but it is
not something that we can throw up our hands on and say, No, we
are not going to get there. We have to keep trying to get
there. And in the meantime, you gentlemen have to try and
figure out whether or not we are going to get there or how
short of there we are going to wind up and try to figure out
how we are going to spend the money.
And I take the chairman's point about, you know, we would
like more specifics, but part of the challenge that I do want
to remind the committee is you are not free at DOD to simply
make the decisions that you want to make. You are, to some
degree, reliant on us for a number of those decisions.
Personnel costs are an enormous part of what we face. But if
you want to do anything with retirement or anything with health
care, you have to come through us.
And about the only clear message that Congress has sent you
is, Don't cut that. That has been a lot of different things,
from the Guard to the retirement of certain ships, and on and
on and on. But you are limited by what we allow you to do in
many instances, and then you have to sort of backfill from
there.
So, as we have this discussion, I hope Members will
approach it in that cooperative spirit, not just say What are
you going to do but, more accurately, look at it and say, What
can we realistically do together? Because I agree with the
chairman, with the cuts we are facing, we are going to have a
fundamental change in strategy. But to get to that change in
strategy, it is the nature of our system, no one person is in
charge of it. The executive branch and the legislative branch
have to work together to come up with whatever that new system
is. And right now, we are not.
So I guess if I have one hope for this hearing, it is that
we can sort of have that cooperative spirit. And if you
gentleman tell us, hey, look, here is where we need to cut and
if any member of this committee says, no, we can't do that,
well, then, where do you want to cut? What advice do we have
for you on what would be acceptable to us on how we restructure
our military strategy, given the fiscal realities that we have
all talked about. So I hope we can have that discussion.
Again, I thank the chairman for his leadership on focusing
on this issue. And I would say I look forward to your testimony
and the questions, but honestly, I really don't, because this
is not an easy subject, and there is no good way out of it. We
will deal with it as best we can.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith can be found in the
Appendix on page 57.]
The Chairman. Thank you.
Let's start with General Odierno and go right down the line
please.
General.
STATEMENT OF GEN RAYMOND T. ODIERNO, USA, CHIEF OF STAFF, U.S.
ARMY
General Odierno. Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Smith and
other distinguished members of this committee, thank you for
the opportunity to speak with you about sequestration in fiscal
year 2014 and the strategic choices facing the Army.
The United States has drawn down military forces at the
close of every war, and today is no different. This time,
however, we are drawing down our Army before a war is over and
at a time when there is grave uncertainty in the international
security environment that we witness every single day.
Today, the total Army, the Active Army, the Army National
Guard, and the U.S. Army Reserves remains heavily committed in
operations overseas and at home. More than 70,000 soldiers are
deployed as we sit here today, including 50,000 soldiers in
Afghanistan and nearly 88,000 soldiers are forward-stationed
across the globe.
During my more than 37 years of service, the U.S. Army has
deployed soldiers to fight in more than 10 conflicts, including
the longest war in our Nation's history, in Afghanistan. No one
can predict where the next contingency will arise that will
require the employment of ground forces. We only know the
lessons of the past. In every decade since World War II, the
United States has deployed U.S. Army soldiers to defend our
national security interests. There are some who have suggested
there will be no land wars in the future. While I wish that
were true, unfortunately, there is little to convince me that
we will not ask our soldiers to deploy again in the future.
We have also learned from previous drawdowns that the full
burden of an unprepared and hollow force will fall directly on
the shoulders of our men and women in uniform. We have
experienced this too many times in our Nation's history to
repeat this egregious error again.
As Chief of Staff, it is my responsibility to provide my
best military advice in order to ensure that we have an Army
that will meet our national security needs in the complex,
uncertain environment of the future. It is imperative that we
reserve the full range of strategic options for the Commander
in Chief, the Secretary of Defense and the Congress. Together,
we must ensure our Army can deliver a trained and ready force
that deters conflict but, when necessary, has the capability
and capacity to execute a sustained, successful major combat
operation.
The Budget Control Act [BCA] with sequestration simply does
not allow us to do this. If Congress does not act to mitigate
the magnitude and speed of the reductions under the BCA with
sequestration, the Army will not be able to fully execute the
requirements of the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance. By the end
of FY14 [fiscal year 2014], we will have significantly degraded
readiness in which 85 percent of our Active and Reserve brigade
combat teams will not be prepared for contingency requirements.
From fiscal year 2014 to fiscal year 2017, as we continue
to draw down and restructure the Army into a smaller force, the
Army will continue to have degraded readiness and extensive
modernization program shortfalls. We will be required to end,
restructure or delay over 100 acquisition programs, putting at
risk the Ground Combat Vehicle Program, the Armed Aerial Scout,
the production and modernization of our other aviation
programs, system upgrades for unmanned aerial vehicles and the
modernization of our air defense command and control systems,
just to name a few.
Only in fiscal year 2018 to fiscal year 2023 will we begin
to rebalance readiness and modernization. But this will come at
the expense of significant reductions in end strength and force
structure. The Army will be faced to take further end strength
cuts from a wartime high of 570,000 in the Active Army, 358,000
in the Army National Guard, and 205,000 in the U.S. Army
Reserves to no more than 420,000 in the Active Army, 315,000 in
the Army National Guard and 185,000 in the U.S. Army Reserves.
This will represent a total Army end strength reduction of
more than 18 percent over 7 years, a 26 percent reduction in
the Army, in the Active Army, a 12 percent reduction in the
Army National Guard, and a 9 percent reduction in the U.S. Army
Reserves.
Additionally, this will result in a 45 percent reduction in
Active Army brigade combat teams. In my view, these reductions
will put at substantial risk our ability to conduct even one
sustained major combat operation.
Ultimately, the size of the Army will be determined by the
guidance and funding provided by Congress. It is imperative
that Congress not implement the tool of sequestration. I do not
consider myself an alarmist. I consider myself a realist.
Today's international environment and its emerging threats
require a joint force with a ground component that has the
capability and the capacity to deter and compel our adversaries
who threaten our national security interests.
The Budget Control Act and sequestration severely threaten
our ability to do this.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you
today, and I look forward to your questions to expand on the
comments that I made. Thank you very much, Chairman.
[The prepared statement of General Odierno can be found in
the Appendix on page 59.]
The Chairman. Thank you.
Admiral.
STATEMENT OF ADM JONATHAN W. GREENERT, USN, CHIEF OF NAVAL
OPERATIONS, U.S. NAVY
Admiral Greenert. Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Smith,
and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify about the Navy situation in fiscal year
2014 and our perspective on the recent Strategic Choices and
Management Review.
But Chairman, before I address that and this statement of
mine, please indulge me.
I would like to extend my deep condolences to the families,
the friends, and the coworkers of the victims of Monday's
events at the Washington Navy Yard.
Chairman, we lost shipmates on Monday. The Secretary of the
Navy and I and our leadership have our full attention on
ensuring that the victims' families and their coworkers are
provided with the care and the support that they need and that
they deserve during this difficult time.
We are grateful for the teamwork and the heroism which the
first responders showed when they reacted, and we are working
closely with the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] and
other law enforcement authorities to conclude this
investigation.
Now, as directed yesterday by the Secretary of Defense, the
Secretary of the Navy and me, we are reviewing the security
procedures and the access control for all our Navy
installations around the world. I expect to have a rapid review
completed within 2 weeks, which, of course, we will share with
you. Nothing matters more to us than the safety and security of
our people.
I know you are aware of the DOD, the Department of Defense
IG [Inspector General] report released yesterday that cites
cost-control measures as a potential cause for vulnerabilities
in contractor access procedures for our bases.
Chairman, I have read the report. We are reviewing it right
now. And to the degree we have vulnerabilities, we will correct
them, and we will do it expeditiously. We are grateful to the
DOD IG for working with us on this, and I can assure you,
however, that the cost-control measures that were mentioned in
this report have nothing to do with budget shortfalls or
sequestration itself.
We don't cut budgetary corners for security, Chairman. The
two are unrelated.
Now if something needs added or changed, we will fix it
right away. Further, we will continue to work closely with the
Department of Defense IG staff, and we will reconcile all these
recommendations in this report I just held in my hand.
Again, nothing is more important to me, Chairman.
Now I would like to address with the time remaining two
more points, our budget situation and our plan in fiscal year
2014 and the long-term impacts of sequestration.
Mr. Chairman, presence remains the mandate for the Navy. We
have to operate forward where it matters, and we got to be
ready when it matters. Recent events have clearly demonstrated
our ability to do that. Quickly, we positioned ourselves, and
we offered options to the President in this past month. This
ability also reassures our allies, and it ensures that U.S.
interests around the world are properly served.
Now, as we prepare for 2014, sequestration is going to
further reduce our readiness. The impacts of sequestration will
be realized in two main categories, operations and maintenance,
and our investments. There are several operational impacts, but
the most concerning to me is that reductions in operation and
maintenance accounts are going to result in having only one
nondeployed carrier strike group and one amphibious ready group
trained and ready for surge operations. We will be forced to
cancel maintenance. This will inevitably lead to reduced life
for our ships and for our aircraft; assure we will only conduct
safety-essential renovation of facilities; and it will further
increase the backlog in this area. We will probably be
compelled to keep the hiring freeze in place for most of our
civilian positions, and that will, of course, effect the
spectrum and the balance of our civilian force.
We will not be able to use prior year funds to mitigate
sequestration cuts in our investment accounts like we could in
fiscal year 2013. So, without congressional action, we will
lose at least a Virginia-class submarine, a littoral combat
ship and a float-forward staging base. And we will be forced to
delay the delivery of the next aircraft carrier, the Ford, and
we will delay the mid-life overhaul of the George Washington
aircraft carrier. Also, we will cancel procurement of 11
tactical aircraft.
The key to a balanced portfolio, Chairman, is a spending
bill and the ability to transfer money. We need to transfer I
think about $1 billion into the operations and maintenance
account and about $1 billion into our procurement accounts post
sequestration, mostly so we can get shipbuilding back on track
and to meet our essential needs. We will need to do this by
January.
Other program deliveries of programs and weapons systems
may be delayed regardless, depending on the authority that we
are granted to reapportion funds between accounts.
Now when it comes to the Strategic Choices and Management
Review, it is complete. And the Navy's focus now is on crafting
a balanced portfolio of programs within the fiscal guidance
that we were provided. More details of what we are doing there
are outlined in my written statement, which I request be
entered for the record.
In summary, we will maintain a credible and modern sea-
based strategic deterrence. That is our number one program. We
will maximize forward presence, as I passed to you before. That
is what we need to do. And we will use ready deployed forces to
do that. And we will continue investing in asymmetric
capabilities while, with this committee's help, we will do our
best to sustain a relevant industrial base.
However, in a given fiscal scenario, within the Budget
Control Act cost caps, there are numerous missions that are in
the Defense Strategic Guidance passed that we signed up to a
few years ago we can't perform. These are laid out in great
detail in my written statement, and I will save you going
through each and every one of these in my oral statement here.
But applying one fiscal and programmatic scenario, we would
result in a fleet inventory of about 255 ships in 2020. That is
our benchmark year for the Defense Strategic Guidance. That is
about 30 less than today. It is about 40 less than was in our
Pres bud [President's budget] submission, and it is 51 less
than our force structure assessment of 306 ships.
So, Mr. Chairman, I understand the pressing need for the
Nation to get its fiscal house in order. And I am on board with
that, but I think we need to do it--I think it is imperative
that we do it in a thoughtful manner to ensure that we sustain
appropriate warfighting capability, that we have proper forward
presence and readiness. Those are the attributes we depend on
from our Navy--from your Navy.
I look forward to working with the Congress to find
solutions that will ensure our Navy retains the ability to
organize, to train, and to equip the great sailors in defense
of our Nation who operate in concert with the Marine Corps.
My thanks to you and this committee for the support and
care you have shown our Navy during this difficult time and in
many other times. Clearly, you continue to have our best
interests at heart. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Greenert can be found in
the Appendix on page 69.]
The Chairman. Thank you.
General.
STATEMENT OF GEN MARK A. WELSH III, USAF, CHIEF OF STAFF, U.S.
AIR FORCE
General Welsh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Smith, and distinguished members of the committee.
It is always an honor to appear before you. I thank you for
your continued support of airmen and their families. The
results of the SCMR [Strategic Choices and Management Review]
were sobering, I think, to all of us, and if sequestration
remains in place for fiscal year 2014, the Air Force will be
forced to cut flying hours by up to 15 percent. And within 3 to
4 months, many of our flying units will not be able to maintain
mission readiness; will cancel or significantly curtail major
exercises again; and will reduce our initial pilot production
targets, which we were able to avoid in fiscal year 2013.
Over the long term, of course, it will significantly impact
our force structure, readiness and modernization. For force
structure, over the next 5 years, we could be forced to cut up
to 25,000 total force airmen, which is about 4 percent of our
people. We also will probably have to cut up to 550 aircraft,
about 9 percent of our inventory. And to achieve the necessary
savings in aircraft force structure, we will be forced to
divest entire fleets of aircraft. We can't do it by cutting a
few aircraft from each fleet.
As we look at which force structure we need to maintain, we
will prioritize global, long-range capabilities and multirole
platforms required to operate in a highly contested
environment. Other platforms will be at risk.
We plan to protect readiness to the maximum extent
possible. We also plan to prioritize full spectrum training
because if we are not ready for all possible scenarios, we will
be forced to accept what I believe is unnecessary risk, which
means we may not get there in time; it may take the joint team
longer to win; and our people will be placed at greater risk.
If sequestration continues, our modernization
recapitalization forecasts are bleak. It will impact every one
of our programs.
These disruptions will, over time, cost more money to
rectify contract breaches, raise unit costs and delay delivery
of critical equipment. We are looking at cutting as many as 50
percent of our modernization programs if the ALTPOM
[Alternative Program Objectives Memorandum] is actually the way
we go.
We will favor recapitalization over modernization whenever
that decision is required. That is why our top three
acquisition priorities will remain the KC-46, F-35 and the Long
Range Strike Bomber.
The United States Air Force is the best in the world and is
a vital piece of the world's best military team. That won't
change even if sequester persists. And when called, we will
answer, and we will win, but the impacts are going to be
significant, and the risk occurs from readiness in the ways
that impacts our airmen.
Thank you for your efforts to pass a funding bill that
gives us some stability and predictability over time, which is
the thing we need most.
I look forward to your specific questions.
[The prepared statement of General Welsh can be found in
the Appendix on page 84.]
The Chairman. Thank you. General.
STATEMENT OF GEN JAMES F. AMOS, USMC, COMMANDANT OF THE MARINE
CORPS, U.S. MARINE CORPS
General Amos. Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Smith,
committee members, thank you again for the opportunity to speak
to you regarding sequestration and the Strategic Choices
Management Review. Sequestration by its scale and inflexibility
will significantly stress our force, degrade readiness and
create a significant risk to our national security, all at a
time of strategic rebalancing, all done on a world stage that
is chaotic and volatile.
I urge this committee and the Members of Congress to
consider the full range of risks across the joint force, not
just for my service but for all of us, and ask for your
continued assistance in mitigating the effects of
sequestration.
Our Nation expects a force capable of responding to a
crisis anywhere around the globe at a moment's notice.
Readiness is the critical measure of our ability to be able to
do that. This is our Nation's strategic hedge against
uncertainty.
In times of crisis, forward-deployed naval forces provide
decisionmakers with immediate options that can control
escalation, buy time, create decision space for our national
leaders and enable joint follow-on forces. The Marine Corps'
high readiness levels mitigate the risks inherent in an
uncertain world by responding to a wide range of capabilities
across real-world scenarios.
Your Marines remain a constant, effective hedge against the
unexpected and provide the American people a national insurance
policy.
Our world is a dangerous place, and America must always be
ready to meet emerging crises that threaten our national
security interests.
As a member of the Joint Chiefs, I am particularly
concerned about the long-lasting and devastating impacts of
sequestration. The very nature of sequestration erodes both
Marine Corps readiness and that of the joint force.
Scheduled tiered readiness is not an option for the United
States Marine Corps. We must be prepared when a crisis erupts.
Over the last year, we have maintained our equipment readiness
to the maximum extent possible. Maintenance costs are
increasing, and our Marines are working longer hours to keep
aging equipment running. We have maintained the near-term
readiness of our forward-deployed forces and our next-to-deploy
forces at the expense of infrastructure and sustainment and
modernization programs.
This can't continue over the long haul. We are in a Catch-
22. If we are to succeed on future battlefields, we must
modernize, and we must care for our infrastructure and our
training facilities.
Sequestration has already started to degrade our
infrastructure. We have been forced to reprioritize
infrastructure maintenance and recapitalization efforts on our
facilities to be able to sustain a ready force. Soon, there
will be little left within these accounts to offset our
readiness requirements.
Over my 43-year career as a United States Marine, I have
seen the effects of strategic miscalculations resulting from
declining resources and budget-driven strategies that resulted
in wholesale force cuts. We only need to look back to the
1990s, when our Nation executed the first drawdown of the All-
Volunteer Force.
Following the Gulf War, we saw firsthand how deep cuts in
our military produced unintended consequences and increased
risk to our Nation. During the mid to late 1990s, we were
challenged by a host of limited conflicts in Liberia, Somalia,
Kosovo, along with the bombing of our East African embassies.
By the end of the decade, the U.S. military had reduced its
Active Duty force by 25 percent. Operations and maintenance
funds were slashed. Peacetime deployment tempo increased,
wearing down the force and wearing down our families. For this
very reason, Congress began to require the services to track
and to report our deployment tempo. The force was overly
stressed, and we considered this to be peacetime.
We see these same problems today. In order to meet the
requirements of the Defense Strategic Guidance, I need a Marine
Corps of 186,800 Active Duty Marines. A force of 186.8 allows
us to meet our steady-state requirements as well as be able to
go to war. It preserves a 1:3 dwell for our Marines. Our share
of the 2011 Budget Control Act's $487 billion reduction cut our
end strength to 182,000. Based on sequestration, I simply
cannot afford a force that size. Sequestration will force us to
plow through scarce resources, funding our old equipment and
weapons systems in an attempt to keep them alive and
functional. We will be forced to reduce or cancel modernization
programs and infrastructure investments in order to maintain
readiness for those deployed and next-to-deploy units. Money
that should be available for procuring new equipment will be
rerouted into maintenance and spare accounts for our legacy
equipment. This includes our 42-year-old Nixon-era amphibious
assault vehicle.
In February, we initiated a parallel study to the
Department of Defense's Strategic Choices Management Review.
Our internal review redesigned the Marine Corps to a force that
I could simply afford under sequestration. This was not a
strategy-driven effort. This was a budget-driven effort. Our
exhaustive research backed by independent analysis determined
that a force of 174,000 Marines is the smallest force that can
meet mission requirements. This is a force with levels of risk
that are minimally acceptable. For instance, assuming that
global requirements for Marine forces remain the same over the
foreseeable future, a force of 174,000 will drive the Marine
Corps to a 1:2 dwell for virtually all Marine units; gone 6
months, home 12 months, gone 6 months. Furthermore, the 174K
force accepts risk when our Nation commits itself to its next
major theater war.
In plain terms, we will have 11 fewer combat arms
battalions, 14 fewer aircraft squadrons to swiftly defeat our
adversary. This is a single major contingency operation force
that would deploy and fight until the war's end. In other
words, we would come home when the war was over.
Marines who joined the corps during that period would
likely go from drill field to battlefield. Across the joint
force, America will begin to see shortfalls in the military's
ability to accomplish its national strategy.
Today we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg. Tomorrow's
Marines will face violent extremism, battles for influence and
natural disasters. Developing states and non-state actors will
require new technology and advanced conventional weapons that
will challenge our ability to project power and gain access.
In order to be effective in this new environment, we must
maintain our forward influence, our strategic mobility, power
projection and rapid response capabilities that Marines are
known for today.
We will balance an increasing focus on the Asia-Pacific
region with a sustainable emphasis in the Middle East and
Africa littorals. I will continue to work with the members of
this committee to fix the problems we are faced with today. I
thank you for this opportunity to appear before you, and I am
prepared to take your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Amos can be found in the
Appendix on page 97.]
The Chairman. Thank you very much again for your service
and for your testimonies.
I'm going to yield my time this morning to the gentlelady
from South Dakota, Kristi Noem.
Mrs. Noem. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding, and I
want to thank all of our service chiefs for being here today
and for your service to this great country.
Admiral, my thoughts and prayers are with you and the Navy
during this difficult time. We appreciate your service.
We are again confronting the difficult choices and
tradeoffs that we have in the face of sequestration. Like you,
I have heard from service members about their concerns with
sequestration. I have found that their personal impact is
secondary to their concerns about continuing to defend this
great country.
As you mentioned, General Welsh, we have had our B-1 bomber
squadrons grounded, which is eroding our readiness and costing
more in the long run. Our National Guard military technicians
were furloughed. While many of the technicians that I talked
with were extremely concerned about the inconvenience for them
and how hard it was on their personal budgets, they also
mentioned that if we continue to break faith with them in the
coming year and beyond, they have told me that they will find
the need to start looking for another line of work. The thought
of losing such highly trained individuals, service men and
women, is very troubling to me and I am sure that it is with
you as well.
Clearly, the options that are presented in the SCMR are not
pleasant ones. I hope we can rally around what is our most
important duty, and that is to provide for the common defense
and to protect our national security.
General Welsh, my first question will go to you. As you
know, Ellsworth Air Force Base is located in South Dakota. It
is home to part of the B-1 bomber fleet. The SCMR contemplated
all of the B-1s being retired. Given the B-1's strong track
record and our operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere, I
believe it would be very shortsighted.
Are there foreseeable missions that would go unsupported if
this aircraft is, in fact, retired? And how would you mitigate
that loss of the aircraft group in this overall strategy?
General Welsh. Yes, ma'am. We have a problem with
mitigating losses in the bomber fleet, as you know, especially
over time. Were we to make a major reduction to the bomber
fleet, we would have extreme difficulty meeting some of the
guidance in the Defense Strategic Guidance, and as a result, I
don't think there is major discussions inside the Air Force on
that being a fleet that we would eliminate.
Mrs. Noem. In your testimony, you talked about, in fact you
quoted that we cannot continue to bandage, in your written
testimony, old airplanes as potential adversaries roll new ones
off the assembly line. Then you go on to mention that the B-52
is as old as you are, which I won't speculate on that today,
but why then would you consider retiring the B-1 bombers that
are about half the age of the B-52s?
General Welsh. Ma'am, right now, we cannot retire a major
portion of the bomber fleet at all and meet the Defense
Strategic Guidance. I think when we look at what we can do over
time, we have to look at every platform, and we are looking at
every platform, every upgraded program to those platforms and
the impact of divesting an entire fleet. And what we will need
to do is balance the requirement to conduct an operation
globally, which is something the entire bomber fleet is engaged
in, the requirement to conduct that operation over time if, God
forbid, we were in a major conflict requiring that fleet to be
operated that way versus the short-term risk to readiness and
modernization the sequestration has presented us with. Those
are the only two places we can go to to have an impact on this
right now and to take money to pay for the bill over the first
couple of years. So that is why we are having the discussion,
not because we think strategically it is a good idea.
Mrs. Noem. I was glad to see within your testimony that you
talked about the long-range bombers being a priority and
something that you have identified as well, although I did have
concerns with some of the ideas that were laid out within the
SCMR as it was portrayed to us. So I will open up the
questioning to anyone else or who whoever would wish to answer
this question.
We understand that prior year funds can be used to reduce
the impact of sequestration on current year accounts. However,
many available prior year funds have already been utilized to
buy down fiscal year 2013 sequestration. To what magnitude does
the lack of available prior year funds impact fiscal year 2014?
I will open it up to General Amos, first, if he would like to
speculate on that.
General Amos. Congresswoman, we have been successful in
doing that in the past. And as you implied in your statement,
as we move into fully sequester budget, that flexibility is not
there. As we move into procurement, and even in some cases,
military construction accounts, there are opportunities to be
able to realign moneys and be able to reach and move moneys
across what might be a boundary, a rule boundary.
All I would like to see in the future, especially as we go
into a sequester budget, would be the ability to be able to
take a look at how we are doing in execution. And as things, it
becomes apparent that you can't do things, I would like the
opportunity and the flexibility to be able to move that.
Mrs. Noem. And that flexibility does erode as we get deeper
and deeper into sequestration, is that correct?
General Amos. Yes. Yes.
Mrs. Noem. Thank you.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ranking Member Smith.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, just one question, two
parts. I know we are supposed to be talking about
sequestration, and I know we will continue to do that. But
could you give us just a little bit of a flavor of the impact
of having to live with a CR, assuming we can get one before the
end of the year, and then also the impact of the threat of what
if we don't raise the debt ceiling? How do those two things
impact all of what we are talking about here today? And I will
throw that open, whoever wants to dive in.
Admiral Greenert. Well, as we talked in this room before,
Mr. Smith, the issue with the continuing resolution is you
can't get any new starts going. And so, every year, we would
like to do new projects, from repair barracks to runways to get
shipbuilding started to even overhaul an aircraft carrier. That
is a new start. Under a continuing resolution, you can't do any
of that.
You are also limited to the prior year funding. And when
you are limited to a prior year funding level, well, when it
comes to maintenance and operations, they are not consistent.
And so, to the extent they are greater, we are out of luck. We
just don't have that money because we are spending that, the
previous year's level.
When it comes to personnel, in order to shape our force and
do the things we need to do for our people, those are new
starts, too. So that can be anywhere from bonuses to changing
re-enlistment factors, if you will; somebody gets more than
less. And it is about shaping the force. And you lose a lot of
flexibility and the ability to operate the force.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
General.
General Odierno. Congressman, as you know, it depends on
how long the CR is. Then all of a sudden you have a CR plus
sequestration, which will pile on to what occurred in 2013. And
we have already pushed $400 million worth of problems from 2013
to 2014 in our depots; $100 million of problems in our
maintenance accounts to 2014. We pushed over $100 million of
training readiness to 2014. And now you get a continuing
resolution, and now you get continued sequestration, and so it
starts to build and build and build. And it gets to a point, as
I mentioned, by the end of fiscal year 2014, if that occurs, 85
percent of our Army brigade combat teams are now unready
because of this continued pressure on our budget.
And the reason that is the case for the Army is I can't
take the end strength down fast enough. And the way the budget
has been written, any end strength above 490 is in OCO
[Overseas Contingency Operations], and so I gain nothing in our
base budget, even though we continue to reduce the size of our
Army over the next several years.
So, for us, it is a huge problem, and that is one of the
real issues that we face. And we are planning for that because,
frankly, that is the worst-case scenario, and so that is what
we are planning for this year. So I am looking for, right now,
a significant degradation.
My biggest fear--I have been asked what keeps me up at
night--is I have to, I am asked to deploy soldiers on some
unknown contingency, and they are not ready. And so we are
going to have to severely tier our readiness to say I am going
to have--we are going to now--maybe I can get seven brigades
trained, so if we have to go, at least I have seven brigades
that are highly trained, ready to go. And if we have to go more
than that, we now have a significant problem. So that is the
impact on us.
General Welsh. If I could add one of the things that
affects all of us is the longer the CR goes, the greater the
impact. And so the length of that period makes a major
difference.
The prior year unobligated funds question that was asked a
moment ago is significant. We paid a full 25 percent of our
fiscal year 2013 sequestration bill with prior year unobligated
funds, which are now not available.
The other thing that the CR does to us is we have all
deferred infrastructure maintenance sustainment, and we are
down to only doing critical infrastructure sustainment. The CR
keeps us from doing that as well, which adds in to greater
costs in the future and adds to the buy wave that we
experienced last year.
General Amos. Congressman, one last, I am in sync with all
my colleagues here. Just a point of reference, from just last
year's CR effort, as we finally got that fixed in the H.R. 933,
because there are no new starts, last year I had $850 million
worth of military construction that was in jeopardy because I
couldn't execute it. H.R. 933 helped me.
This year, because of the way the budget is written under
sequestration, I dropped my military construction by 40
percent. So if we get CR and I can't execute those military
construction contracts, I have gone from 60 percent of the
requirement to, perhaps, nothing. And in many cases, I can't
roll that in--in fact, I can't. We will just have to restart it
again the next year, and it will pile on those requirements.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, gentlemen.
I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Jones.
Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Amos, the Marine Corps has recently issued
correspondence to the families of Marines who died in the MV-22
crash in Marana, Arizona, in April of 2000. The correspondence
seems to acknowledge for the first time that problems with the
MV-22 program may have contributed to this tragic mishap.
Can you please comment on that statement by me?
General Amos. Congressman Jones, you are absolutely
correct. The letter was sent to the families of both those
great pioneers that lost their lives in that airplane in
Marana. It acknowledged a series, a complex series of
programmatic program execution, monetary, unsubstantial
monetary support in--there is just a series of things that were
all happening during the V-22 program during the summer of
2000, the springtime and summer of 2000. That is what the
letter acknowledged.
There was also challenges aerodynamically with the airplane
because the test program had been cut back in some areas to the
point where it was on bare minimum. Those pilots were the
pilots who were flying that airplane using the data that they
had at the time. So it is an acknowledgment of that.
Congressman, as I have said to you in private, I am going
back through all of that right now. I mean, it was a
complicated period of time; and interesting, because we are
talking about budgets and we are talking sequestration and
reducing costs, that program was about as anemic as any program
that I have ever seen for a major acquisition program. And that
is part of how we ended up getting where we were, not only
during the March timeframe but as we went through the summer
and the fall.
So, Congressman, I am going back in there again and not
only the aerodynamics but the programmatics and the reality of
what was taking place with that period of time, and I intend to
come back to you in this House with my final resolution on
that.
Mr. Jones. Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the
Commandant.
One of the wives lives in my district, Connie Gruber, and
her husband was the co-pilot. The co-pilot's wife, Connie
Gruber lives in my district. The pilot's wife lives in Steny
Hoyer's district. And I want to thank the Commandant publicly
for making this statement and taking this position because I
have always believed that the dead cannot speak for themselves.
And for the Commandant to take this position, I want to thank
you on behalf of the two wives, the 17 Marine families who were
sitting in the back of that plane who were burned to death.
And sir, this shows that you are a man of integrity, who
seeks the honesty into what happened, and I want to say that I
have great respect for you for making the statement that you
just made to the committee.
Thank you so much, sir.
General Amos. Thank you, Congressman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I certainly want to thank you all for being here, and I
especially want to thank you for continuing to sound the alarm.
Because I think that we hear what you are saying, we know that
readiness is at risk, and yet I do sincerely worry that we are
not acting on that, on what we are hearing, and this is really
getting serious.
I wonder if you could talk about some of the decisionmaking
that goes on when you are dealing with capacity and capability
at the same time.
And I know that, Admiral Greenert, you particularly
mentioned the need for cyber operators, and yet we also have
fleet maintenance. We also have a whole number of other areas
that you have to focus on. So I think just trying to, the short
term and the long term, what else do we need to know to be able
to act on what you are telling us?
Admiral Greenert. Well, you have to prioritize,
Congresswoman. I mean, that is obvious. So, as I said, we have,
my job is to provide strategic nuclear deterrent, safe and
credible, number one. Right behind that is cyber, and we have
talked in this room quite a bit about the importance.
We are staying the course on our cyber warrior plan that we
briefed in here. Through any budget scenario that I see out
there, we have got to maintain that. That is critical.
Number three, as I have mentioned before, I have got to be
where it matters when it matters, and we do everything we can
using whatever innovative means we can to be forward, but we
have got to be ready. So whatever we have forward has to be
ready.
Then, you say, what about the rest of it? The rest of it
becomes that surge issue I talked about. What do we have to
surge? And it is getting less and less. And I am very concerned
about it.
Today, one carrier strike group, one amphibious ready group
is ready to surge with their organized, trained, and equipped.
Normally, ma'am, we have three. So you can see that. In the
future, I am not sure. I have to look at those scenarios, and
that is an important attribute.
The undersea domain is critically important. We have to own
that. We do today. We have to do that in the future. So it is
about prioritizing and then deciding within, you know, you have
to have a certain capacity to have a capability, but then once
you have the capability, how much of it can you, can we afford
to have, and that is the conundrum that we are dealing with
today.
Mrs. Davis. General Odierno.
General Odierno. So part of it is the process of the budget
that you have to put the puzzle together properly. And so, for
the Army, as we face just the reductions from the $487 billion,
which, by the way, we are still implementing, as we implement
that, we have to, in order to get our end strength down to the
levels of 490 from 570, which is just the first increment,
based on potential decisions that we have in the budget, we
have to take risk and readiness in modernization because, until
we get at the 490, we don't gain any savings from that in the
budget process. So, as we get continued cuts, all of our cuts
for the next 3 years almost all come out of readiness and
modernization, until I can reduce end strength further.
And then what happens is we are going to get our end
strength reduced to a level that I believe makes our Army too
small, in order to get it in line with the readiness and
modernization efforts that we have.
The other thing is, there are fixed costs to operating a
service that we tend to overlook. Just the fact of how we
recruit, how we initially train, how we educate. There is a
huge fixed cost within our service that we have to fund first
because if we don't do that, we fundamentally lose our ability
to develop an Army.
So then you have got to take what is left. And all the cuts
have to come out of that area. And that is the problems we are
facing as we move forward.
Mrs. Davis. And General Amos, I know that 174,000 is a
figure that sounds like, not a figure that people feel good
about, but I am wondering, how much lower do you think that can
go?
General Amos. Congresswoman, at the end of the day, we will
go as low as Congress is willing to, I guess, pay for.
The 174 force is the floor, as far as I am concerned, in
several ways. First of all, it does meet a major theater war.
History has proven that over time, we will probably commit our
Nation again, even though it is hard to imagine right now, but
we will probably do that again. And when that happens, that
force is the minimum size force to go off to war.
And as I said in my opening statement, they will go to war,
and they will come home when it is over.
But even greater than that, the day-to-day steady-state
operations, the requirements around the world require a force
that is no lower than 174,000.
That is the stuff that is happening in the--off the African
littorals right now. That is what is happening aboard our ships
with the Navy. That is what is happening in Afghanistan. That
is what was happening in the Far East and the Pacific down in
Australia. That is the steady-state requirements.
Inside that 174 force, which I think is an alarm bell, is
that is designed to be a 1:2 dwell force. I referred to that in
my opening statement. That is a critical point because, as the
assistant commandant, I testified we want to build a force
post-Afghanistan that is at least 1:3 so that you give the
force the opportunity to come back and reset; you give families
the opportunity to come back and reset with their loved ones.
This force is 1:2. That is unprecedented, unless in a time of
peace.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Forbes.
Mr. Forbes. Gentlemen, thank you for being here. And not
just to flatter you, but any one of the four of you have more
experience defending this country than any other member sitting
on this committee. And if we took the four of you collectively,
you have more knowledge right now of what we need to defend the
country and the resources that we have than this entire
committee together.
Most of us on the committee, some of us will disagree on
how we got to sequestration. We disagree on a way forward, but
we are at least unified in the fact that we need to do away
with sequestration.
Unfortunately, that is not true for all the leadership in
Congress. It is not true for every Member outside of this
committee. And part of that reason is because our message has
not always been spoken with clarity. When we had these cuts
that we can argue whether it is $487 or $778 billion, which our
staff believes it to be, we weren't real clear from this
committee; we weren't real clear from the Pentagon.
But we are where we are today, and that is why I want to
ask you this question so we can speak with clarity to those who
may think sequestration is good to go forward. The Defense
Strategic Guidance, General, that you talked about in 2012,
before that, we had a win-win situation as our defense
strategy. And because of cuts that we made, we basically felt
we needed to go to the new Defense Strategic Guidance, which
was really somewhat of a minimalist approach where we said we
would win one encounter and hold another one.
My question to each of the four of you in as close to a yes
or no answer, not to box you in, but just so we can be clear in
communicating this, if sequestration goes forward, can you meet
the requirements necessary that you have to meet to comply with
that minimal Defense Strategic Guidance of 2012?
And General, if you would give us your assessment first.
General Odierno. Congressman, I mentioned it in my opening
statement--I will just repeat it--is that I believe at full
sequestration, we cannot meet the Defense Strategic Guidance.
In fact, it is my opinion that we would struggle to even meet
one major contingency operation. It depends on assumptions, and
I believe some of the assumptions that were made are not good
assumptions. They are very unrealistic and very positive
assumptions. And for that, they would all have to come true for
us to even come close to being able to meet that.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, General.
Admiral, I know you have looked at this. You have agonized
over it. It has kept you up at night. Can the Navy meet the
requirements necessary if sequestration continues?
Admiral Greenert. No, sir. We cannot. And, in fact, I am
concerned in sequestration in 2014 about that. I am very
concerned, particularly about our strategic nuclear, our
SSBN(X) [ballistic missile submarine] replacement. If that
program is sequestered, it falls behind. It cannot fall behind.
And so I am concerned about 2014 as well.
Mr. Forbes. And General, same thing with the Air Force.
Can you meet the requirements if we continue sequestration
the way it is going forward?
General Welsh. No, Congressman, we cannot. I believe any
executable strategy will always be resource-constrained or at
least informed. If the resources change significantly, you have
to relook at strategy.
Mr. Forbes. And General Amos, what about the Marines? Can
we meet the requirements necessary, the minimal requirements
for the Defense Strategic Guidance of 2012 if sequestration
continues forward?
General Amos. Congressman, we can't--I came from a one MCO
[major contingency operation] perspective, but if it is a one
MCO and do something else somewhere else, I cannot. I simply
don't have the depth on the bench. We are going to continue
with the rebalancing in the Pacific. That comes at the price of
readiness back home. So, over time, our readiness back home
will become unacceptable. So the answer in both cases is no.
Mr. Forbes. Yeah.
Mr. Chairman, I would just state that if nothing else, that
message ought to be communicated and we ought to have a
commitment, as I know we all do in this committee, to make sure
that we are doing whatever we can in Congress to get this
foolish thing stopped so we can meet those requirements. And
with that, I yield back.
The Chairman. You know, I think some of us last week met
with Mr. Luntz, who had just gone into the field with a poll
asking the American people if they felt like they would be more
safe or less safe in the next 10 years, and they said 83
percent felt like they would be less safe 10 years from now
than they are now, and that was before they heard this
testimony. You can see, if the American people are tuned in, if
they are listening to this, that probably will go up to 95 to
100 percent, and with great reason.
Mr. Cooper.
Mr. Cooper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I admire you gentlemen for your service to the Nation, and
I admire your work, particularly since you are having to
operate in an irrational budget environment. And almost none of
your predecessors have ever had to do that. There were
drawdowns, there were cutbacks, but seldom has it been this
completely arbitrary as sequestration is forcing you to
operate.
I really think that you gentlemen should be questioning us,
because we are the parties at fault here. Congress is failing
to adequately fund our military in a responsible and reliable
fashion, and that is a significant charge. Past generations
have done a better job of funding our military needs. We are
failing, and this Congress and both parties and both Houses of
Congress need to get their acts together so we do a better job
and do a better job quickly.
The challenge is great when we have a House of
Representatives that refuses to even open discussions with the
Senate on a budget for America. In our degraded media
environment, many folks back home are unaware of this. They are
mad at Congress in general and they don't understand that one
House of Congress is unwilling to talk to the other House of
Congress about having a budget for America. Somehow we have
gotten into our heads, especially the younger Members, that it
is okay for the House to have a budget and for the Senate a
separate budget and never the two shall meet. Well, we are
supposed to have a budget for America.
This committee in markup, it was my amendment, voted
overwhelmingly by voice to give the Pentagon flexibility so
that it could address its most pressing defense needs, but when
a recorded vote was asked for people put on their partisan
jerseys and the same vote failed. This is the largest committee
in the House of Representatives. Presumably we have some
influence, if only by Members, on our colleagues, and yet we
are somehow unable to behave responsibly ourselves, much less
encourage our colleagues in the House to behave responsibly.
We have the end of the fiscal year coming up. Many of the
pundits are predicting that there will be at least a government
shutdown, perhaps a default on our national credit, all because
of political bickering. And you gentlemen, and most of all the
men and women in uniform, should not have to suffer as a result
of this fighting. So why aren't the compromises more
forthcoming on this side of the aisle? You gentlemen have to
resolve your differences in the tank. You gentlemen have to
make very important life-and-death decisions almost every day.
But we on this side of the dais are unwilling to even come up
with a budget for America. We saw near default on American
credit in 2011, we lost our AAA credit rating, and that looks
to be happening again.
The best case circumstance for you is you get a short-term
CR, so as you gentlemen have testified, you are not able to
start any new projects, you are having to operate in an
incredibly irrational and constrained budget environment for,
what, 2, 3 months at a time, in addition to having to probably
furlough again all your civilian military employees.
So the message of this hearing really should be to take the
valuable information you have given us, for us on this side to
resolve to do better, to come up with bipartisan and bicameral
compromises that get budgets for America, budgets for our
military, budgets for the national defense, because as I said
in my committee markup amendment, if sequestration were foisted
on us by a foreign enemy, we would declare it an act of war,
and yet we have done it to ourselves, because the super
committee was unable to come up with a bipartisan agreement,
because we have been unable to unravel that knot since, even
though we have had some of our generals testify to us that
their Departments are in chaos. This should not be happening in
America.
So I am hopeful that this committee with its large
membership will take this message to heart ourselves and to
other Members so that we can do better, can get a budget for
America before the end of the fiscal year, can get the proper
appropriations bills passed, can have a sensible HASC [House
Armed Services Committee] markup that actually provides you
gentlemen with the resources that you need to do the job you
need to defend our country.
So I thank the chairman for his indulgence. I see my time
has expired. I hope for better things for our country.
The Chairman. I have the greatest respect for the
gentleman, but there are just a couple of things I would like
to clarify for the record. One is there is another body, and
while we haven't worked together to resolve our budget, they
didn't pass one for about 3 or 4 years. And this time the one
they passed, they have $91 billion more in their budget than we
have in ours. And we followed the Budget Control Act, which
gave us a number that we had to work with. So I agree that we
haven't done the type of job that we should, and we need to dig
in and really work hard on this problem. And it is not any of
your fault. It is us, and we need to work together on it.
The other thing for the record was the voice vote on the
gentleman's amendment, he is correct, but it was not, when we
did a roll call vote, it was not a partisan vote, it was
something we all worked together on and did change for several
reasons.
So next we have Mr. Bishop.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, I appreciate you being here. I have empathy for
the job you have, but I am grateful that you are having that
job at this time. I hope you find it a challenging and
enjoyable situation, or at least challenging situation,
especially in an era, as the chairman and the other member
recently said, when the military has gone through three cuts in
its budget. You have had to manage through all of those. Had we
not had the two prior cuts, then the third one, which we call
sequestration, may not have caused the cup to overflow, causing
some of the problems that we are facing. So I recognize you
have to realize and manage all three of those cuts, and you
have done it well.
I happen to be very proud of the House. At least in our
budget and our defense authorization bill from this committee,
as well as the defense appropriation bill, recognized that
situation and staying within the sequestration number
reprioritized the military up to where it needs to be. And I
would hope that the Senate would actually pass that
appropriation bill so that we could move forward with it.
I have, General Welsh, three rather parochial questions I
would like to add on you, and then one for Admiral Greenert.
Let me see if I can actually get through those in a relatively
quick fashion.
General Welsh, first of all, I had the opportunity of
hearing from Generals Wolfenbarger, Moore, and Litchfield this
morning. You have a good team under you. I am very proud of
what they are doing. And I asked some of these questions of
them as well, but, as you know, in the last sequestration
issue, there was an issue with the FAA [Federal Aviation
Administration] and contract towers that were critical to some
of the bases within the Air Force. There was not a good
communication between them until we told the FAA they could do
what they always could have been done anyway had they not been
told to do it.
Are you either having a new updated list or are going to
engage earlier with the FAA on dealing with those towers that
have an impact on the military bases we have in the Air Force?
General Welsh. Yes, Congressman, we are. After our last
discussion on this topic, actually we have established a
process with the FAA where as soon as they come up with a list
of contract towers it comes to the Department. The Air Force
takes the lead on that, just because we are connected to them.
We share it with all the other services who do aviation work.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you.
General Welsh. And we will continue that cycle.
Mr. Bishop. Appreciate that. Let me also talk about the
record of decision for OPS 1 location for the F-35, which has
been postponed again. My concern is obviously that every delay
you have in signing that record of decision causes problems in
financing the capital improvements that need to go along with
it. I understood that now the idea is to wait until there is a
new Secretary before you are actually signing that. Is there
some way we could actually speed up that process? Are you
looking at that still as the timetable, that when the next
Secretary comes in it will be signed?
General Welsh. Congressman, we are not waiting on the next
Secretary. The timetable to get the data put together to
complete the EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] report and
findings with the updated census data just is after the new
Secretary hopefully will be confirmed, if that goes well. If
not, we will not delay the decision waiting on the new
Secretary.
Mr. Bishop. Pending a Secretary.
General Welsh. I have not heard that intent expressed, and
it certainly wasn't a discussion between the Acting Secretary
and myself.
Mr. Bishop. That is good news, and I am looking anxiously
for that actually to be decided so we can move forward in that.
It is a wonderful thing that will help the Air Force.
In the appropriations act, we went through great statements
to restate what I think is still Federal law in Title 10,
Section 2742 that deals with the working-capital fund. If
indeed we have a problem going forward in the next and we do
not actually have the Senate passing our appropriation bill,
are you looking towards once again using furloughs, especially
in that working-capital fund, in which I still think is being
prohibited by the section I just mentioned?
General Welsh. Sir, we are not planning to do furloughs at
all in fiscal year 2014. If the CR is 6 months or less, if
there is one, then I think it is completely avoidable.
Mr. Bishop. That is a better answer than I would have hoped
for.
Let me go to Admiral Greenert. Representative Forbes, I
thought, did great questions in presenting as to what the
concept could be. Our policy has always been to be able to
deter and defeat any adversary in any area. In your written
testimony you stated we would not be able to conduct one large-
scale operation and also counter aggression by an opportunistic
aggressor in a second theater. Are you stating before this
committee that under sequestration you would not be able to
deter and defeat aggression specifically in one theater if our
forces were committed to a large-scale operation elsewhere?
Admiral Greenert. Yes, sir, I am. And let me clarify, if I
may. The Defense Strategic Guidance says just what you stated.
The reduced surge that I described, the readiness of those
carrier strike groups, amphibious strike groups, et cetera, I
believe can react to one major contingency operation or can in
each theater, the two major theaters, deny. So that is an
``or'' statement--deny in two theaters or respond to one. That
is what I have concluded based on what I know right now.
Mr. Bishop. Are you using deny and defeat interchangeably?
Admiral Greenert. No, I am not. Deny would be the alleged
aggressor would look and say, I don't think this would work out
very well, there seem to be good forces here. And I am not
saying deter. That is a tough one. Deter, deny. I don't do very
well trying to pull those together. But the point is you
preclude in each theater, you know, small contingencies, or you
come together and roll into one and do a major contingency
operation.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you. I appreciate your answers very much.
And, General Welsh, I appreciate your leadership. I have an Air
Force base in my district. We appreciate very much what you are
doing up there for us. Thank you, sir.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Courtney.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Again, I just want to at the outset express again my
condolences and outrage actually in terms of what happened on
Monday at Sea Systems Command. I have had a chance up close to
deal with Admiral Hilarides and his predecessor, Admiral McCoy,
and the great team that is over there.
We talk a lot in this committee about protecting the
industrial base. That is what they do every single day. And a
lot of them don't wear uniforms. They are civilian employees
who took a hit with sequester and furloughs already. And,
again, I just have the highest regard and admiration for all of
them, and it was just incredible to see, you know, the events
unfold on Monday.
So please convey, I am sure from the whole committee and
myself, again, our thoughts and prayers are with that great
group of individuals.
Admiral Greenert. Yeah. I will do that, Congressman. And I
know you are a good friend of NAVSEA [Naval Sea Systems
Command]. You go there often. These are our shipmates, and I
appreciate that and I will pass it along.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you.
And, again, I am pleased to hear that the IG's report is
something that the Navy is going to incorporate. Frankly, and
this is sort of just me speaking, coming from Connecticut, it
has been 9 months since Sandy Hook. There are too many mentally
ill people getting too easy access to weapons, and it is time
for this Congress to pass a background check bill, which would
help, frankly, all installations in terms of trying to make
sure these incidents don't ever happen again. And hopefully
people are going to respond in this Congress to something that
is perfectly constitutional and obviously necessary.
Admiral, in your testimony, again, I just want to say, as
far as I am concerned, you have been very explicit and specific
in terms of what the impact of CR and sequestration has been
and will be. We had 85 shipyard workers on Monday who received
layoff notices because of the cancellation of the Miami
repairs. And, again, I think, you know, we spend a lot of time
talking about shipbuilding and platforms, but the fact is that
the repair and maintenance end of your Department is obviously
another critical piece to the industrial base.
Your testimony indicated that you are going to be
cancelling 34 of 54 planned maintenance availabilities. Can you
describe what that means in terms of, again, protecting
critical skills, particularly in some of the private shipyards?
Admiral Greenert. Well, if I were to quantify it,
Congressman, it is about 8,000 jobs. That is our best estimate.
And our big areas are the Hampton Roads area and the San Diego
area. That is where the big shipyards are. But it is up and
down the coast, to your point earlier. And so those
individuals, those presidents of those companies, they can't
plan.
So as I mentioned, I really want to be able to do a
reprogramming or give me an appropriation bill, and we can
preclude many of those 34. Half would be my plan. If I get that
billion dollars I was mentioning in my oral statement, we could
preclude at least half. We would then take to repair the ships
that are going to deploy next year or the year after, or the
ones that absolutely have to do a life upgrade because it is
necessary. In other words, we have a priority and a scheme.
Then we can converse with the shipyard, we can make plans and
we can recover.
Subject to that, that is where I am, Congressman, and it is
really about balance. You know, the CR stops, it puts me at
last year, no new starts, sequestration takes everybody down,
we go where the money is and we got to operate forward and meet
the commitments of today, number one.
Mr. Courtney. And the repair and maintenance work is also,
I think, a mechanism that you have employed to, again, protect
critical skills, again. So if there is, you know, the six or
seven shipyards around the country, you can actually, again,
protect welders, carpenters, machinists, et cetera, if there is
maybe a downtick in one of the shipyards. And so losing that, I
think, is really, again, going to hit muscle and bone, is that
right, in terms of our base?
Admiral Greenert. Yes, sir, that is correct. You are
referring to what we call the ``One Shipyard'' concept, where
we will move workers to another area of the country and they
will assist. And there is good cooperation between our public
shipyards. Some of the private shipyards are adopting it as
well.
Mr. Courtney. Right. And, you know, in terms of the
operational force, you know, if CR minus sequester goes
through, again, we have a 6-month delay on the Truman, a number
of other deployments. Again, what do you see in 2014 and 2015
for the operational force?
Admiral Greenert. What I see is we would be able to
maintain one carrier on deployment and one in surge. And then
the George Washington is in the forward-deployed naval force,
so she is in Japan. So at any given time you have one carrier
in the western Pacific and one carrier in the Arabian Gulf and
one carrier strike group that can respond. The others are
waiting to get into maintenance, because I just don't have the
capacity to move them into maintenance, or they are in
maintenance.
Now, key and critical part are the air wings. So when
carriers come back, instead of keeping them at a proficiency
level able to respond, we will let them gracefully decline and
they will shut down for a period of about 3 months, and then we
will take them what we call tactical hard deck. That is just a
level of flying statistically determined to be safe. It is sort
of like driving your car occasionally so that when the time
comes you could get in and, you know, practice and maybe become
a delivery person or whatever, and that is when these air wings
would go into work up.
So we would have on any given time three air wings, a
tactical hard deck, two shutdown, and then three getting ready
to, well, deploy or on deployment. This is a situation we
haven't been in before and it is not our covenant with the
combatant commanders.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Turner.
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for the clarity that you are
providing. I appreciated your very strong answer to Randy
Forbes' question as to the effects of a second year of
sequestration. The President's sequestration was intended to be
a process by which the President would seek, with Congress,
alternative offsets so that defense would not bear the brunt of
these cuts. The President now, not bringing forth any other
offsets, but calling on Congress to repeal it, has placed this
stasis, this gridlock that we have.
I opposed this from the beginning because I feared that we
would be right here where we are, where the President is not
coming to the table with any recommendations for us to be able
to find those offsets. But with the clarity that you are
providing, this is important, because it is going to help us
frame the discussion of how important it is that this process
be stopped.
Dr. Miller was before Congress when he was discussing
Syria, and he said that the administration is very well aware
of the message that you provided today, but we need it out in
the public, we need the message of clarity that you are
sounding the alarm that one more year of sequestration would be
absolutely devastating to our military.
I want to go to Hagel's Strategic Choices and Management
Review--this is known as the SCMR analysis--which appeared to
be largely sequestration driven. And I would like to focus with
General Odierno and General Welsh on the effects of the
conclusions of the SCMR analysis.
And so, General Odierno, you had said that they had some
rosy assumptions. It is my understanding that a number of
assumptions underpin the sequester-driven SCMR analysis, such
as a 6-month duration for wars, no follow-up for stability and
support operations, and a 90-day mobilization for Reserve
Component formations. And as you are saying, you know, their
readiness is actually declining, not remaining stable.
General Welsh, I am certain you have some concerns as to
how it affects Air Force squadrons. And if the two of you might
speak of whether or not you also have similar concerns the SCMR
analysis conclusions may affect our ability for readiness.
General Odierno.
General Odierno. Congressman, you had it just right. I have
some concerns. I mentioned that I think some of them are
somewhat rosy assumptions that I think can be somewhat
dangerous. As you mentioned, conflicts 6 months in duration, no
casualties in these conflicts, the fact that we would fully
disengage from everything else we are doing. My problem with
that is we just got done fighting two wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. We never disengaged from Korea, we didn't
disengage from the Sinai, we didn't disengage from Kosovo, so
why is there belief that we will disengage in the future when
we haven't done it when we got done fighting two wars at the
same time?
There is no mission for weapons of mass destruction, that
was not considered, which is a significant scenario in many of
the scenarios that we have to address.
So all of those are my concerns, that were really put in
there so we could say we need a smaller Army, and that is
concerning to me. And I have raised those issues very privately
in all of our discussions that we have had during the SCMR
process.
Mr. Turner. Thank you. I think it is important for us to
know that as part of the discussion, that those conclusions
should not just be merely accepted.
General Welsh.
General Welsh. Congressman, I think the SCMR process made
some things very clear to me. First is that what sequestration
does, the topline reductions over time related to sequestration
actually creates a capacity-versus-capability discussion that
Admiral Greenert referred to previously. That is a longer-term
issue that you can deal with in some kind of methodical and
well-planned approach.
What the mechanism of sequestration does--and the SCMR
analysis made this very clear--is that it creates a ready force
today versus modern force tomorrow dilemma. And that has
defined the decisions that the Air Force is making right now,
the ones we made last year, and the ones we will make for the
next couple of years. The mechanism, the abrupt arbitrary
nature, especially over the first couple of years, prevents you
from making wise, long-range planning choices and drives you
into this discussion of do you want to be modern in the future
or do you want to be ready today. That is a terrible debate to
be having.
The other thing that came out of the SCMR analysis that was
significant to me is that the cost of having a ready force,
whatever the size of that force, the cost of making it ready is
marginal compared to the cost of the force structure itself. I
see the Air Force as an asymmetric advantage for our country.
And by the way, the other services, I think, are the same. But
we provide things quickly. We provide mobility rapidly. We
provide ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance]
support tonight, not in 3 or 4 weeks. And we provide global
strike capability right now. That requires a readiness level
that is not sometime in the future we will be ready to go. And
to me that was a significant takeaway from SCMR. The cost of
that is marginal compared to the cost of actually having the
force structure.
Mr. Turner. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Tsongas.
Ms. Tsongas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you all for being here.
As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I have been
here almost 6 years. I can recall when I was appointed, I
didn't realize that it was and does have a proud tradition of
being very bipartisan in its thinking, its commitment to
producing a bill, bringing that bill to the floor, passing it
out of the House, and then going to conference after the Senate
similarly passes a bill. And it is in that conference where we
resolve our differences, swallow some of them, proudly proclaim
success in others, and then move on, because we understand how
important it is to the defense of our country.
And I think Chairman McKeon has honored that tradition, and
I am suggesting maybe he should become head of the House Budget
Committee, because we know the House has passed a budget, the
Senate has passed a budget. There is a process, and it is
called conference committee. It is a process that we honor and
engage in every year.
But back to sequester, I am dismayed that we had many, many
hearings in which we talked about the damages of sequester, and
now we are really talking about how to weather them. And I
commend you all. I for one do think there is room for
additional cuts. I am ranking member of Oversight and
Investigations. We have had a hearing about the growth in the
Office of the Secretary of Defense, that there is growth in the
overhead. There are areas where we can look carefully and bring
about savings in order to put more funds into things that
really count. But sequestration obviously is not the way
forward, because of the kind of across-the-board lack of
discretion that you all confront.
And General Odierno, when I hear you talk about readiness
and I see the extraordinary bravery of those who serve in our
behalf, the wounds they have to absorb, the life-changing
nature of being in war, to think that we would ever compromise
their readiness, I think, and put them in harm's way, knowing
they are not adequately trained, and I know you would not do
that, you would find a way to avoid it. But I think it is a way
of bringing home to the American people what sequestration
means. It is an All-Volunteer Force, it is not one in which we
call upon all Americans to think about our young people coming
to serve. And we would never want to send our young people to
war without knowing that they were trained.
I think the other way in which sequestration has become so
hard is it is such a big term, the dollar amounts are so large,
but you hear about it, we hear about it in our districts, we
hear about it through the furloughing of people. And one of the
places in which I have heard about it in my district, it is
home to Natick Soldier Systems Center. It is a center that
really invests in research and development, science and
technology with a focus to, again, protect our soldiers and
find new ways forward to protect them as they engage in war. I
have seen some great work done there around lightening the load
of body armor, developing body armor tailored to women, making
uniforms fire retardant, the ways in which to conserve energy
and recycle water out so that our soldiers don't have to put
themselves in harm's way.
But I have also learned that there has been a real bleeding
of that workforce. It is my understanding that there they have
sustained a workforce attrition of 52 personnel in this fiscal
year, more than double the annual average, and including a
number of Ph.D.s. So for an installation that develops this
life-saving equipment, we know Ph.D.s are the heart and soul of
research and development, and technology and science are key,
key. We cannot develop those new cost-saving, life-protecting
measures without all the tremendous investment.
So we are not going to be repealing sequestration any time
soon. How do you, General Odierno, protect that investment in
this important work so that we know we are always on the
cutting edge protecting our soldiers?
General Odierno. First, Congresswoman, thank you very much
for your question. And I would just say number one priority is
our soldier systems, as you mentioned, getting them the best
equipment possible for them to be able to conduct the operation
we want them to do, whether it is lightening the load, all the
things you mentioned, to include many, many others.
The problem is, is that, you know, because we have had to
go into a hiring freeze, because of furloughs, because of
incidents like this, we are starting to lose some of our very
important workforce, because they are uncertain about the
future that they have working with us. So we have to make sure
that we maintain a balanced force that allows us to continue in
our highest priority, which is what you just talked about. So
for us it is very concerning.
We will--I will--take a look at programs that will allow us
to keep the best, because we need our scientists, we need our
engineers, we need our Ph.D.s to help us to come up with the
new ideas and technologies for us to take care of our young men
and women in uniform.
Ms. Tsongas. I urge you to do that, despite all these
financial challenges. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Mr. Rogers.
Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, General Odierno, I will focus my questions towards
you.
You all, all four of you did a great job in the outset in
describing the impact of sequestration and how wrong-headed it
is for the country, but particularly for your respective
service branches. And I appreciate your candor on that, because
the American people need to hear it. A lot of Members of
Congress who aren't on this committee need to hear it. I think
most of us on the committee already understood the impact, but
we appreciate your candor.
General Odierno, the disruption and uncertainty that
sequestration is causing the civilian workforce and its impact
on our readiness, I think, is the wrong way for us to budget
for our military. But, sir, in year two, what current
maintenance and overhaul programs are you looking to preserve?
General Odierno. Well, first off, our problem is we want to
sustain our reset program, which is resetting our equipment
that is coming back from war, and right now we don't have the
dollars to completely do that. And so I want to preserve all of
that. I need that equipment in order to feed back to all of our
units. And right now we are looking at, because of
sequestration, having to lay off 2,400 people in our depots who
do that very important work for us, and then another 1,400
because of lack of workload; not because we don't have the
workload, but because we don't have the dollars to support the
workload over the next 2 to 3 years. So I need that, because
what that means, it will delay the reset of our trucks, our
soldier systems, our mortar systems, our individual weapons,
and that causes us to reduce readiness down the road if this
continues.
Mr. Rogers. How do the possible reductions that you just
described, those reductions in the force, impact the equipment
mix and the workload of our depots and arsenals?
General Odierno. So obviously as we reduce the force over
time and reduce the number of brigade combat teams, that
reduces the amount of equipment that we have to sustain our
readiness. So I mentioned earlier that if we go to full
sequestration, just in the Active Component, we are looking at
a potentially 45 percent reduction in our brigade combat teams.
That means less tanks, less Bradleys, less trucks, less M-16s,
less mortars, less artillery systems. So it impacts all of our
workload, because we are getting smaller. And, again, as I have
stated, I think that is a bit too small, but it is going to
have a significant impact on our civilian workforce as we move
through this process.
Mr. Rogers. Well, again, thank you. I think everybody in
this room would agree that the sequestration maneuver was a
tactical error made by the Congress in the Budget Control Act
that blew up in our face, and we need to acknowledge it was a
stupid mistake and correct it. And I pledge to you all, I
intend to become a very aggressive Member in trying to bring
this to a quick and immediate halt. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Garamendi.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, gentlemen, thank you very much for your service and
the good work and tough situations that you face.
General Welsh, I think you are aware I am going to ask a
question about the KC-10. It has been quoted in the newspaper
that a decision is in process to eliminate the entire fleet of
the KC-10s, obviously a major impact, particularly on Travis
Air Force Base, which houses half of that fleet, at a time when
we are going to reposition ourselves to the Pacific. Can you
explain in detail, and I guess as briefly as possible, why you
are suggesting the elimination of the KC-10s at this time? I
understand it is for the 2015 budget proposal.
General Welsh. Yes, sir. First of all, anything that was in
the paper is not a decision yet. We are considering divestiture
of the KC-10 fleet, along with divestiture of lots of other
things.
One of the things that we got into as we looked at the
ALTPOM, the sequestered POM, especially for 2015, is that $1
trillion-plus out of the Department of Defense is going to
leave a bruise. It is going to be significant and it is going
to impact many, many things across the Air Force.
We looked at the refueling fleet, we looked at our
permissive ISR fleet, we looked at everything we do in the
MILCON [military construction], facilities sustainment arena.
We still haven't been able to get at facilities and
infrastructure or personnel costs, which are significant to us,
and so we are back to modernization or readiness. Those are our
choices.
And so as we looked at modernization, recapitalization, we
looked at fleets of airplanes to see where we could save big
amounts of money as opposed to a whole bunch of little amounts
of money, which don't make savings over time. That is why the
KC-10 fleet was examined, as part of that effort.
Mr. Garamendi. Rather than the KC-135s, which are older?
General Welsh. Sir, you can't eliminate the KC-135 fleet
and still do the job that we do for the Department of Defense
worldwide. It is too large. There is nothing good about
divesting any aircraft fleet right now. What we are looking at
is where can we take savings and not completely stop our
ability to do our job.
Mr. Garamendi. We have very little time here, and I will
not go further at this moment, but I am definitely going to go
into this in far more detail with you and your staff.
General Welsh. Yes, sir.
Mr. Garamendi. I will look forward to that.
General Welsh. We expect to do that. I look forward to the
conversation.
Mr. Garamendi. Did you take a look at the triad? And this
is, I guess, for Admiral, as well as for you, General. There is
no mention of the triad here, where billions upon billions are
spent in modernization of our nuclear force and the nuclear
bombs, yet there is no mention of any of that in this
testimony. Did you consider that? I will start with you,
Admiral Greenert.
Admiral Greenert. Sir, my number one statement is my top
program is the SSBN(X) and the sea-based strategic nuclear
program, and that is number one. I will fund that above all
else in any ALTPOM, if you will, scenario. However, sir, it is
not exempt from sequestration, that program, and so I am very
concerned. It got sequestered in 2013. We were able to
reprogram. It gets sequestered again in 2014. These delays,
months and months and months, add up to years. This program is
very tight.
Mr. Garamendi. General Welsh, on triad.
General Welsh. Congressman, as I mentioned before, we have
looked at every modernization program we have in our portfolio.
We are looking at everything.
Mr. Garamendi. There is no specificity about the triad,
about the land-based ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic
missiles]?
General Welsh. Well, first of all, the land-based ICBM, the
cost of maintaining and operating that day to day is not
significant. It is very, very low compared to the cost of other
things. The modernization part of this over time is what we are
discussing and where can you make savings, where can we work
together with the Navy on pieces of the--whether it is weapons
development, warhead development, infrastructure, to make sure
that we are saving costs there, command and control, those
areas. But we are looking at all of that, Congressman. It is
all on the table.
Mr. Garamendi. Okay. I would expect to have you develop
that detailed information and present it to the committee, or
at least to me. I would appreciate if you would do that.
[The information referred to was not available at the time
of printing.]
Mr. Garamendi. Also, Admiral, very quickly, you are going
to build a new base at what I call Camp Malibu, otherwise known
as Hueneme, in Ventura County, for your BAM [Broad Area
Maritime] System. Why are you not using the existing facilities
at Beale?
Admiral Greenert. Well, it is really about space. And if we
had the space at Beale, I think we might consider it.
Mr. Garamendi. You do have the space at Beale.
Admiral Greenert. Well, I will tell you what I will do
then, Congressman. I will regroup and we will come and show you
why we decided to do what we decided to do, rather than use all
the rest of your time. Is that okay? We will come and lay it
out.
Mr. Garamendi. Yes. I would appreciate that, sir.
Admiral Greenert. You bet.
[The information referred to was not available at the time
of printing.]
Mr. Garamendi. I will yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you so much again for joining us. Thanks
again for your service to our Nation.
Admiral Greenert, please again pass on my condolences and
prayers to the entire Navy family, especially those at the Navy
Yard and to the families of the victims of that terrible
tragedy. I know it is a very tough time for the Navy family,
and please let them know we are thinking about them and praying
for them.
Admiral Greenert. Thank you, Mr. Wittman. I will pass your
feelings along.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you.
Admiral Greenert, I want to go back to the submitted
statement that you had, and you spoke about both the CR
combined with sequestration for 2014 and what the effects of
that would be. And you say that most concerning, however, is we
will have two-thirds less surge capacity in fiscal year 2014.
And let me get you to elaborate on that a little bit, because I
think sometimes people think of surge as extra or excess. Can
you give us some real examples of where recently you have
needed that surge capacity and how it is used? And then give us
a focus, too, on what diminished surge capacity means. And that
is, if our Nation is challenged, does it mean we deploy
nonready forces or do we just refuse actual deployments, or in
those situations say, listen, we can't respond? So if you could
give us that perspective.
Admiral Greenert. Yes, sir. I will go backward. I think
that might work. Today we have the Nimitz in the Red Sea and we
have the Truman in the North Arabian Sea of the Arabian Gulf.
So the Nimitz is a surge carrier strike group. She was on her
way home. As soon as she goes off station, whomever the strike
group is, they become the surge. And had she gone back to her
home port, she would be on call, if you will, until further
notice. Well, she was called. So she is that one that I spoke
of. If this situation continues, there will come a time when it
is time for Nimitz to go home. We will call on one other
carrier strike group. So that is how that works.
Now, if there is more than one, well, we have a problem,
because we don't have a carrier strike group ready. The carrier
is nuclear powered. That is not the issue. It is the air wing.
They are not organized, trained, equipped, proficient. The
destroyer is organized, trained, equipped, proficient and
certified for a whole host of missions. For example, the
destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean, they are there for
ballistic missile defense, the European Phased Adaptive
Approach. They happen to be multimission, so they could do, if
called upon, other missions, which we are pretty well aware of.
So back to the Red Sea. Those destroyers that are there,
they are out about 9 months now, 10, 11. When the time comes
that we send them home and say we need to sustain this, we will
need to reach for destroyers coming out of the west coast
probably, and they are not ready yet. So we will have to now
tailor and be very clear on what they are certified to do. We
have never had to do that before, Congressman. So we could be
very soon in that kind of an arena.
To summarize, we have a covenant with the global combatant
commanders and the National Command Authority. We provide
carrier strike groups forward ready on deployment, and that is
generally two. We have two to three, generally three ready to
respond within about 14 days. And then we have about three
within 60 to 90 days. That is what we have signed up to. That
is called the Fleet Response Plan. That has to change now.
Mr. Wittman. Got you. Let me ask you, I think those are
very great points. Give me your perspective. When we have a
strike group like Nimitz that now is on deployment now
approaching 11 months, what does that operational tempo mean
for sailors? But tell me, too, what does that mean when you are
looking at maintenance availabilities? And we all know that
those kind of get stacked up, too. What happens if maintenance
availabilities have to be cancelled, and then you are talking
about not maintaining ships? What does that do to affect,
again, your capacity to respond and then the life expectancy of
those ships? So give me your perspective on personnel and
equipment.
Admiral Greenert. Personnel, we tell our sailors and we
shoot for, as the Commandant said, you know, he talked about
dwell and he talked about turnaround ratio and rotation. We
tell our sailors you should expect about a 7, 7\1/2\
deployment. When you get up to 11, they say, okay, you know,
11-month deployment. Then they come home and then they are
turning around within about a year. So you are getting close to
1 to 1.2, 1.3 when you do that by the time that particular
carrier turns around.
We are at a point in our economy, things are changing, so I
am concerned about the debilitating effects of that. Take that
kind of carrier strike group and its air wing with the ones
that are sitting there at hard deck. These are shut down. So I
have got pilots looking out the windows saying, gee, I wish I
could fly. I have got others saying, I am flying so much and
deploying so much, I can't even get a will done to do that. And
so we have got imbalance here, sir.
Deployment-wise, the carriers are heel-to-toe in our
nuclear repair shipyards. If somebody is delayed, that is a
problem and now they are stuck in there, and that means they
are not ready to deploy eventually.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Barber.
Mr. Barber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And before I begin my questions, Admiral, I just want to,
along with my colleagues, extend my condolences to you and the
entire Navy family. The whole country, I think, is heartbroken
over what happened on Monday. I spoke yesterday with Secretary
Mabus and offered my personal assistance as well as
condolences. Having been a survivor of a mass shooting myself,
I have a sense of what is going on with the families, those who
lost loved ones and those who survived. And I just want to say
that personally I am available any time for any purpose that
would be helpful to those families, and please feel free to
call me for that purpose.
Admiral Greenert. Thank you, sir. I think we will seek your
counsel on how to deal with this since you have that
experience. I appreciate it very much.
Mr. Barber. Well, let me turn to the questions at hand. We
have had this discussion so many times. But I just want to say
at the outset that sequestration was a bad idea and I have
opposed it since I got here a little over a year ago.
General Welsh, I just want to ask a question specific to a
fleet of aircraft that are stationed in my community at Davis-
Monthan Air Force Base. There have been recent reports that, as
we have discussed here this morning with other potential
decisions, of getting rid of the A-10 in the future. And some
people have made the argument that the A-10 just doesn't fit
the Air Force's future because it isn't a multirole fighter.
And in my view, this is a very shortsighted and potentially
dangerous idea.
As you know, General, the A-10 is unsurpassed in its
ability to provide close air combat support. And I know fully,
as you do, the A-10's role in combat, search and rescue
operations, finding service members behind enemy lines,
relaying information, escorting helicopters and assets in and
out of combat zones. And the A-10s based in my district and
across the country have been retrofitted with new airframes,
airframe wings, and electronics packages that now have given
them a life span of till 2028.
General, as you know, the SCMR is built on four guiding
principles, and I want to just quote a couple of them. The
first is that we must remain ready for the full spectrum of
military operations. And another is that we will remain
strategy driven based upon the Defense Strategic Guidance and
our ability to execute our five core missions against the full
spectrum of high-end threats. Given what we know about the A-10
and the potential of future need for the A-10, General, can you
tell me why it is that we would even consider retiring an
entire fleet of this very valuable aircraft when there is no
other alternative in place?
General Welsh. Yes, sir. Because we have been handed a bill
within the Department of Defense of $1 trillion-plus that we
have to pay over the next 9\1/2\ years.
A-10 was my first fighter, Congressman. I love the
airplane. I have 1,000 hours flying it. It is the best airplane
in the world at what it does. It is not the best at a lot of
other things. It is capable in many areas. If we are going to
look at what we must divest, not what we want to divest, but
what we must divest, we have to be very honest with ourselves
inside the Air Force about how much we can afford. And if we
have platforms that can do multiple missions well and maybe not
do one as well as another airplane, but the airplane that is
limited to a specific type of mission area becomes the one most
at risk, I think there is some logic to this that is hard for
us to avoid no matter how much I happen to love the airplane.
Mr. Barber. But how is it possible, General, that we could
support General Odierno's ground troops should they ever be
deployed again with another aircraft if the A-10 is not
available?
General Welsh. Congressman, people seem to assume that 100
percent of the close air support being done in Afghanistan
today is being done by the A-10. That is not even close to the
truth. It is actually a small percentage of the close air
support that is being done by many, many other platforms. We
have got to provide the United States Army, the United States
Marine Corps, United States naval forces and our coalition
partners close air support. We do it every day with a number of
platforms, and we will continue to do that.
Mr. Barber. Talking to Army personnel who have been
deployed, they tell me when those Warthogs show up, they are
much happier than anything else. So I just want to say that
that is an important area.
Let me just turn quickly, General Odierno, with the
remaining time. I am concerned about the future of our ability
to do cyber and intelligence work. As you know, Fort Huachuca
is a major area of this. How do you see sequestration affecting
that? And obviously that is important to our warfighters today
and tomorrow.
General Odierno. So in terms of cyber, as was stated by the
other chiefs of services, is that we are going to increase our
investment in cyber. Even though we are decreasing our budget,
we are increasing our investment in cyber. We are going to
increase the force by at least 1,800 people right now. So that
is part of what we are doing.
In terms of intel, as you know, we provide not only intel
for the Army, but intel for the broader strategic and
operational force, which is key to the combatant commanders. We
are reviewing how we do that, but the primacy of what we do in
our Intelligence Community will not change and the requirements
that we have in our Intelligence Community will continue to be
a key piece of our strategy as we move forward. So we are
looking at very carefully how we gain some efficiencies without
losing the depth and capabilities that we have to support a
strategic operational and tactical level.
Mr. Barber. Thank you, General.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Franks.
Mr. Franks. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And as always, thank all of you for coming. You know, it is
days like this, I suppose, that we are all a little more
cognizant of the sacrifice that you all personify here today.
And, Admiral Greenert, I suppose that it is impossible for us
to be as aware as we are today all of the time of the
importance of people being willing to sacrifice all of their
tomorrows so that we could have freedom today. And I certainly
hold you all in great respect and appreciation.
General Welsh, I will start with you, if you don't mind,
sir. Yesterday you gave a brief at the AFA [Air Force
Association] convention, and you started your speech with a
thought about partnership and how during times of fiscal
austerity, if that is what we can call this, rather than
backing away from or defunding our training opportunities, we
should, quote, ``hold our partners close.'' And I would like
for perhaps all of you to elaborate to a degree on how
important military exercises are with our allies, especially in
those regions of great instability, and how sequestration might
affect these opportunities, specifically with allies like
Israel. And what does it tell our allies and our foes when we
choose, in my mind, to spend our money wisely on exercises like
these?
So, General Welsh.
General Welsh. Sir, I think it just increases the trust, it
increases their belief in our willing to partner with them even
when it is not convenient. And I think if we assume that the
future is about coalition engagement, which I assume that that
is the best way for the Nation to go whenever possible, we have
to have the ability to engage as a coalition, and that requires
training. It is a very practical problem for the military. It
is helpful for us, it benefits us in term of time and cost in
the future, and it creates capability that is meaningful and it
can be brought together very, very quickly as opposed to
spending months trying to train together before conducting an
activity, whether it is a humanitarian relief or it is a
contingency operation.
Mr. Franks. Any other thoughts?
General Odierno. Congressman, it is key. I mean, I just
returned from the Pacific Army Commanders Conference, and the
whole point of the conference was about multilateral
engagements, multilateral exercises, sharing of information,
interoperability. That is the key as we move forward. I am
going next week to the European Commanders Conference. Why is
that important? Because NATO [North Atlantic Treaty
Organization] and our close allies are helping us as we work
issues in other parts of the world. So the interoperability
piece, it is all very important to them. And so to me it is
key. In the future, we are going to have to operate in a joint
interagency, multinational environment. We know that. And we
have to do that the best we can.
My only last point would be is our partners are also
significantly reducing their investments in their militaries,
so we have to be very careful about our assumptions about what
we think they will do for us, because they are reducing as
well. So it is a combination of all of those things we have to
consider as we move forward.
Mr. Franks. Please.
Admiral Greenert. If I may. Partners, allies very
important. We need to look beyond it. And I would say I just
had the opportunity last week to sit down with my counterpart
in the People's Liberation Army Navy, Admiral Wu Shengli, and
negotiate eight opportunities for further engagement and
partnership potentials at sea. So this goes, as my colleague
said, it is clearly important for us and allies, but it goes
beyond that.
Mr. Franks. Yeah. Well, General Odierno, I might ask you
one more question. You know, I had the privilege, I guess you
would call that, of being in a helicopter 150 feet off the
ground and 150 miles an hour pitch black going over Iraq, and
you were one cool customer, might I add. You had a lot of faith
in that helicopter pilot. But would you agree that relying more
on operational Guard and Reserve will help mitigate the rising
personnel expenditures and knowing that, you know, these men
and women, obviously they are paid only when they are trained
or mobilized, but also recognizing that they have a proven
combat capability and we would maintain a strong protection for
our country?
General Odierno. We have to have the right combination,
Congressman. So it is not Guard versus Active. I have got to
have the right number of Active and I have got to have the
right depth that is provided by the National Guard and U.S.
Army Reserve. It is not one or the other. And you can't compare
costs, because they provide different capabilities based on the
dollars that they are given obviously and the time that they
have to train and the time they have. So it is gaining that
right synergy between the two.
So as I have developed, and as I testified, we are taking a
26 percent reduction in the Active Component and only a 12
percent reduction in the National Guard, so I have taken that
into consideration. But to go further than that is very
dangerous because you lose the immediate readiness that you
have with the Active Component. We need both, and I am an
advocate of having both.
Mr. Franks. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank all of you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Kilmer.
Mr. Kilmer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As presented in the
report, under sequestration the cuts will be either in
capability or in capacity. And, Admiral Greenert, I was hoping
to ask you if you could describe those tradeoffs when
discussing the submarine fleet.
Admiral Greenert. We need to have an adequate submarine
fleet to distribute in a proper way what the combatant
commanders need and what we need to respond to around the world
for the missions. So that is a capacity piece. But you can't
cover all the oceans of the world with submarines. So it gets
to what capabilities do we need to have an undersea network of
submarines, fixed and unmanned systems under the ocean. So we
have got to develop those capabilities.
And then aircraft, the P-8 aircraft and the Broad Area
Maritime Surveillance. That is a Global Hawk kind of tricked-
out for maritime operations. It is a combination of that
network. And, number one, you have to have all of the
capability of that network. Then number two, the capacity to
broaden it. But I think step one, we need to bring in that
capability. So that is the priority that I put in that when I
talk undersea domain.
Mr. Kilmer. Thank you.
I know the focus of this hearing is on sequestration, which
I think I have concluded is a Latin word for stupid, but now we
are also facing a potential government shutdown. And certainly
in my neck of the woods, where we have Naval Base Kitsap and
then Joint Base Lewis-McChord, a lot of the focus has been on
the potential kind of parochial economic impact of seeing a lot
of civilian workers not receiving a paycheck. I was hoping you
all could speak instead, though, to the national security
impacts of a potential shutdown.
General Odierno. First, I would like to talk a little bit
about the impacts on the individuals. You know, we furloughed
this year. It was horrible, you know. And it kind of comes to
roost when you look at what happened this week. You had these
dedicated civilians who dedicate their lives to our military,
and because of these reductions we are furloughing people who
have given their lives to us, and yet we are forced to do these
kind of things. So for me it is unconscionable that we have to
do this. And if we can ever avoid it, we will never do it
again.
But the national security impacts of reducing the size of
our civilian workforce, it was mentioned earlier, the Ph.D.s,
the scientists, the engineers, the logisticians that support
us, we are going to lose that capability. And once you lose it,
it is very difficult to get it back. And that becomes a real
concern for us, that in a time of need, if people think we can
automatically regenerate this capability, you can't. And so we
now have a problem. And so for me, that is the real strategic
impact of those reductions.
Admiral Greenert. If you go up to Fort Meade and you look
in the parking lot, I mean, those are our civilian, to me,
sailors and airmen and marines and soldiers. And so I think the
national security implications are obvious. You go to Offutt
Air Force Base, it is Strategic Command. And then you go to,
you know, what you and I are familiar with, our public
shipyards, our naval shipyards, hey, we are heel-to-toe in
there, and so we have got to get that work done. It starts
falling behind, we have aircraft carriers that are not ready to
go out and go out in the world, and so whoever is out there is
stuck, and that is untenable.
General Welsh. Just from a corporate perspective, if you
just forget the personal impact, which is dramatic, 8 million
man-hours lost for the Air Force with 6 days of sequestration
this year. That is an awful lot of work that is not getting
done on behalf of the Nation.
Mr. Kilmer. I had another question, but I don't think time
will permit, so I will just end by echoing the condolences
extended, Admiral Greenert, to you and to your team.
Admiral Greenert. Thanks, Congressman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mrs. Roby.
Mrs. Roby. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, again, to all of you. And, Admiral, on behalf of
my family, we certainly are thinking of you and the Navy and
all of the families and personnel that are affected by this.
And to each of you, I always want to take the opportunity
to thank you for your service to our country, but also to
extend that thank you to your families, to your spouses and
your children and all the sacrifices that they make.
General Odierno, first and foremost, I appreciate the
Army's execution of the ITEP, the Improved Turbine Engine
Program, and its acquisition strategy of maintaining
competition to milestone B. And as you know, Congress continues
to support this important program, as evidenced in our defense
bills, for the increased capability it provides and because it
is in compliance with best practices and acquisition reform
measures to reduce risks early on in a program. And so I
believe that maintaining competition and schedule reduces the
risk considerably for the Army and the taxpayer. Can you please
just comment on the Army's commitment to competition in support
of the ITEP program?
General Odierno. No, you have hit the points. We agree. It
is about the best engine for the best price while preserving
competition to minimize our risk, and that is what this does.
And so for us, we are totally committed to it. You know, we are
going to wait for the analysis on alternatives as we decide for
our future investment in this. And it becomes even more
important, because sequestration actually makes it more
difficult to pursue robust R&D [research and development]
efforts. We have got to do this the best way we can, programs
like this. And so for me this is kind of our model going
forward, and so we are very pleased with this program and we
are obviously going to continue to support it as we move
forward.
Mrs. Roby. Thank you.
General Welsh, you know, I feel very strongly that
education and training is the cornerstone of our modern day Air
Force, and I am very sure that you feel the same way. And so I
would like if you would please talk about the Air Force's
commitment to ensuring that that cornerstone remains strong and
what transformations you anticipate for Air University's
officer and enlisted professional military education [PME], and
particularly in light of all of the things that we have
discussed here today, not just sequester, but the potential to
operate under a continuing resolution, as well as issues
surrounding the debt ceiling debate.
General Welsh. Thank you, Congresswoman. I do share your
view on education and training being foundational to our Air
Force. I spent time 2 weeks ago, 3 weeks ago, I guess, down in
Montgomery talking to the leadership at Air University, last
week down in San Antonio talking to the leadership of Air
Education and Training Command. We discussed the enlisted PME
program that is under development to turn it into a continuum
of learning, using both distance learning and residence
courses.
Same thing on the officer side of the house, what can we
afford to do, and what we cannot afford to do is stop educating
our professional force and stop training it better than anyone
else trains their airmen. We are committed to this. We will
remain committed to it. Everything is affected by
sequestration, but this is not something that would be a wise
long-term move to take a whole lot of capability out of our
ability to educate and train these great airmen we are lucky
enough to have come into our Air Force.
Mrs. Roby. Well, I appreciate that continued commitment.
And again, to each of you, thank you for all that you do.
We appreciate your candor here with us today in light of these
very difficult decisions that we have ahead, and we appreciate
your continual efforts to educate us so that we are better
prepared as we move into that.
So, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Enyart.
Mr. Enyart. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Welsh, I had a couple of questions specifically for
you. Yesterday afternoon, I had an Air Force Reserve wing
commander in my office. And he was talking to me about the
sequester and the effects of sequestration on his role. And he
particularly expressed to me concern about the way the
furloughs had been handled, that is going from 22 days to 11
days to 6 days over a period of time, and because of the impact
that it had on those people.
There are now serious trust issues between his Air Reserve
technicians, his civilian workforce, and the Air Force and DOD.
And as the wing commander, he feels that tension and those
trust issues.
General, I am sure that those trust issues extend
throughout the entire DOD civilian workforce. And now, earlier
this morning, you testified that the Air Force is not planning
for any furloughs for fiscal year 2014. So with Scott Air Force
Base sitting in my district, am I able to go back to my
district and assure my rather anxious constituents, as well as
that Air Force Reserve commander, am I able to assure to them
that the Air Force is not planning any furloughs for 2014?
General Welsh. Sir, I meant exactly what I said: We have no
plans to furlough in fiscal year 2014. I will add this, we had
no plans or even concept of furloughing in fiscal year 2013. I
had never heard of it before. We have got to resolve whatever
we call this thing, sequestration, fiscal crisis whatever it
is; we have got to fix it. We are doing things that are
unprecedented as far as decisions being made inside services,
including furloughs.
It was a breach of faith with our civilian workforce. I
tell everybody in the Air Force that. I sent a letter to every
civilian in Air Force saying that. I understand why the
decision had to be made. I understand why we didn't have the
transfer authority to take money from other places to put in
the civilian pay accounts, but we as a government have got to
do better on this one.
Mr. Enyart. General, I couldn't agree with you more. And I
think that it has been clearly expressed here today. But
sequestration was a bad idea to begin with, and it is a worse
idea as we go forward, particularly when we are dealing with
CRs and all of the problems that that impacts on your budgets
and the budgets of everyone, frankly.
General, I did have one other question for you and that is
that if sequestration continues, will the Air Force have to
reconsider its KC-46 alpha basing decisions?
General Welsh. I don't believe there is any reason to
reconsider the basing decision as a result of sequester, no,
sir.
Mr. Enyart. Thank you.
Admiral, as the son of a Navy firefighter and even though I
chose the path of ``Go Army, Beat Navy,'' I would like to
express my condolences to the entire Navy family.
Admiral Greenert. Thank you, Congressman.
I know it comes from the heart. I appreciate it.
Mr. Enyart. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Nugent.
Mr. Nugent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to thank all of our service chiefs for all that
you do, and obviously, you care immensely about this Nation,
but more importantly, I believe you care about those that serve
under you and that carry the task out on a daily basis.
So, General Odierno, I really do appreciate your comment in
regards to soldiers have got to be number one. They have got to
be the number one priority. And I worry, and I am new to this
committee as of at least January, I worry that through
sequestration and through the political gyrations that got us
there, it doesn't matter how we got here, but we got here, the
damage that we are doing to our services--and I think you hit
it on the head when you said that we really don't do a very
good job of identifying future threats. I think major threats,
strategic threats, probably so, but I don't think anybody saw
Afghanistan or Iraq coming up on the horizon.
And now we are bringing our force structure, I agree with
you, dangerously low, and the lack of readiness across the
whole mission area should concern everyone. And I am concerned.
And I am concerned about the readiness of our troops, in
particular across all the services, but obviously, in the Army,
just because of the large nature of it and the, in the Marine
Corps, the personal nature of that type of combat that you have
to engage in puts people at extreme risk on a very close basis.
How do we continue to keep a force that is all volunteer?
How do we continue to keep them in place when we hear from, in
the SCMR, in particular, was talking about benefits for those
that are going to serve us and have volunteered to serve us and
put themselves at risk?
General Odierno. Thank you for that question because it is
a very important question as we look to the future. And there
is no doubt in my mind, I think it is absolutely essential we
keep an All-Volunteer Force for a lot of different reasons. I
won't talk about that.
Let me talk a little bit about compensation. We have very
generous and appropriate benefits packages today for our
soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in my opinion. But what I
think, as I go around and talk to our soldiers, they understand
the fact that we are not going to, our thoughts at least on pay
and benefits is not to decrease them but decrease the rate of
increase. And if we do that, we can save enough money that
allows us to appropriately continue to have an All-Volunteer
Force. And they understand that.
So I think we have to work together with Congress on this
because I know how much you care about taking care of our men
and women in uniform. That is very clear. But we have to come
together to decide there are ways to do this in such a way that
we don't reduce their pay but reduce the increases that we have
projected, which saves lots of money. And that will enable us,
I think in the long run, to maintain an All-Volunteer Force.
Mr. Nugent. I faced the same issues when I was sheriff in
regards to budgeting and looking at the increases as it
forecast down the road, so I get that. But I also hear it
relates to, it is not just pay, and you hit it on the head. And
I had the same thing in the civilian world, but it is about
training in particular about, you know, are men and women
having the ability to fly, are men and women having the ability
to go to advanced training?
Yes, sir, Admiral.
Admiral Greenert. Well, in the Navy, we talk about a
formula, the quality of the service, of the sailor, equates to
their quality of life--and that is the stuff we were talking
about, their pay, their housing, their entitlements and all
that--and the quality of their work. And that is what you just
hit the nail on the head Congressman.
Do I have spare parts? Do I have a boss that cares for me?
Do I have a boss? Am I training? Do I feel like I am doing
something worthwhile? And is my schedule predictable? What is
their work environment?
In our world, when they leave the pier, walk across the
road and get in their car and drive off, their quality of life
is pretty good and General Odierno relayed that.
When they go back down the pier, get on the ship and go out
to do that, we have work to do there, and I am concerned that
we focus so much on the quality of life, and the quality of
work vector is going down a lot. And we need to balance that,
in my opinion.
Mr. Nugent. I agree. And just one last statement, it is not
a question to you, because you don't have the answer on this
one, but I really do call upon the Commander in Chief to take a
more active role in regards to working with this Congress,
particularly with the Senate, to move issues as it relates
directly to our security here in this country and having the
ability to project force but also to protect the forces that we
are projecting.
And I think the Commander in Chief owes that to those that
he commands and has that overall responsibility.
And I yield back. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Gallego.
Mr. Gallego. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral, I will confess to you that there is not a lot of
water where I live. But I will also tell you that every single
resident of that congressional district, the 23rd in Texas,
feels your pain. And on behalf of the constituency that I
represent, I want you to know that our prayers are with you,
with your fellow members of the service, and certainly with all
of the families who have lost someone over the course of the
last few days.
Admiral Greenert. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Gallego. I have the privilege of representing several
military facilities, Joint Base San Antonio, which includes
multiple Air Force and Army components, Laughlin Air Force
Base, and in El Paso County, there is Fort Bliss. They are all
very dedicated public servants, both in the uniform side and
the nonuniform side. And my own view is they deserve better
than what they are getting from our government, certainly from
the Congress.
As I have listened to the testimony, it seems to me that,
in some instances, Congress is a very difficult partner because
we make our life harder, instead of easier, and you can't say
that, but I can, especially since I just got here in January.
So when I listen to the idea, for example, that having to
reduce pilot production, potentially reducing 25,000 airmen or
a 9 percent cut in aircraft or choosing between readiness today
and a modern Air Force tomorrow, or when I listen to the
testimony about how it is unconscionable to do the furloughs, I
understand that all of that is not in your control. It is in
the control of the members of this institution. ``Institution''
is a very interesting word for this place.
I would like to talk, General Odierno, you and General
Walsh, about the impact of one of the disconnects I think there
is, is many people don't understand the importance of the
civilian side with respect to the uniform side. And so when you
look at Joint Base San Antonio or when you look at Laughlin,
people don't understand--or Fort Bliss--the importance of the
contribution of the civilian side.
Can you talk a little bit about that and how that spillover
affects the uniform side? And how they work in tandem? And if
you have specific examples about, at some point, I would also
like specific information offline about the bases that I
represent and how they would be impacted.
General.
General Odierno. So, for us, you know, we have three major
commands, actually four major commands, in San Antonio. We have
Medical Command. We have Installation Management Command. We
have U.S. Army North and U.S. Army South, all in San Antonio.
They are three, four key components to what we do in the Army.
And medical, obviously, a huge responsibility of providing
support to our soldiers, both in combat and our families and
not in combat, and our civilians there play a huge role in that
command. Installation, they manage all of our installations,
both in the United States and outside the United States, a huge
role. And then Army North is one who is really the Army
component to provide homeland defense, homeland security for
our Nation. These are all key components. They all have key
civilian workforce that is essential for them to accomplish
their mission.
In fact, at SAMMC [San Antonio Military Medical Center],
the hospital in San Antonio there, we have some concern. We are
losing some of our critical civilian employees because of the
furlough because they would rather go work now for VA [Veterans
Affairs] or other opportunities because now they have lost, as
has been mentioned, there some faith and trust in the fact that
they will have some consistent employment with the Department
of Defense, so those things that I will tell you are so
important to us.
Mr. Gallego. General.
General Welsh. Sir, I will give you an example, the
maintenance group at Randolph Air Force Base. I was down
visiting with the maintenance group director, who is a
civilian, the entire maintenance group at Randolph Air Force
Base to support the training that goes on at that base, the
flying training, is civilian, all Air Force civilians.
Because of the furlough this last year, we actually lost
enough of those 8 million man-hours I mentioned that weren't
being done, a percentage of those were at Randolph, a large
enough percentage that we lost the ability to support a number
of flying hours equal to an entire pilot training's class worth
of work, which is why I said in my opening statement, we will
look at changing our initial pilot production numbers next year
because we learned here we are going to have to cut a class,
whether we want to or not, just as a result of lost production
and from the impact on our civilian workforce and on our
depots.
The other place it affects us is when you take 8 million
man-hours off the books, there are tasks that would have been
done during these 8 million man-hours that can't wait because
of the operational activities that they support. So the uniform
workforce that is there will pick those up as an additional
duty. The civilians would have done it and just worked a longer
day before they took their furlough, but we are not letting
them, so we can limit the number of hours we have to put
against furlough, and we are not letting them work overtime. So
everybody is frustrated because they like to do their job, not
just because they are losing 20 percent of their pay during
that period.
Mr. Gallego. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Palazzo.
Mr. Palazzo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank the gentlemen here today for your testimony and
the answers to our questions. I think we are, there has been a
lot of talk about sequestration. I don't think anybody in their
hearts voted for sequestration. I think it was just something
that was a part of a bad bill that was put together, and we
were never meant to get here, and I think everybody has pretty
much said that in different ways.
But if we go back to Admiral Mullen, he basically, where
you are, said the greatest threat to our national security is
our national debt. We are $17 trillion in debt, and there seems
to be no turning that around.
We have had record deficits. We have had record
unemployment for the past 4 years. And there seems to be no
solution to it. And so that is why we are having these
arguments, these fights, not just inside each party and also
with other, you know, outside the party; it is because we are
fighting over shrinking discretionary budgets.
And while we do nothing to address the number one driver of
our deficits and our debt, and that is the mandatory out-of-
control entitlement spending. And I hate this because I feel
like this is going to be Groundhog Day over and over as long as
we are in Congress. It is just deja vu. We are going to keep
having these conversations.
But until we put people and policy ahead of politics, we
are going to have to keep having these squabbles amongst one
another. And we can get there. We can fix our economy. It is
simple. We just have to listen to the American people, and I
think they want to see our spending cut, but they want to see
it done responsibly.
I think they want to see a balanced budget. All 50 States
have a balanced budget. Why is the Federal Government
different? Is it somehow more special? And they want to see us
grow the economy. What people are talking about in my district
when they are not being distracted with Syria or Obamacare or
something else, they are talking about jobs. They are starving
for jobs. They want to see this economy get back on track. And
you know, there are some of us that know how to create jobs in
Congress. And I think we need to elevate their voices. And we
do that through less taxes, less regulation. We don't need to
have throwing up obstacles because there is a lot of money
sitting on the sidelines, but people are uncertain. They don't
know what is going to happen tomorrow. So they are very much
reserved.
I would just like to say a few comments. I hope that the
Guard and the Reserves does not go back to being a strategic
Reserve. I hope they maintain an operational force presence. I
think it is extremely important. I think they have earned their
place in our military. They cost one-third of what an Active
Component would. But also, I think there are multiple missions
they can engage in. I know they have some border enforcement
opportunities in the past. I think we can--instead of adding
40,000 more Border Patrol agents, we ought to see how we could
surge the Guard to the border; maybe other homeland security
means, too.
Also, with our, Admiral Greenert, with our pivot to the
Pacific, I know we are going to need ships, we are going to
need destroyers, we are going to need amphibs. And I know with
the multiyear ship procurement and being able to plan in
advance that is a benefit, and I hope this Congress continues
to do that to give you the ability to go drive down costs and
get the best quality product for our taxpayer.
General Welsh, I can't thank the Air Force enough for
delaying the transfer of the C-130J's. I have been kind of on
that for a long time. I know because there is so much
uncertainty. We don't know what the force is going to look like
tomorrow. And I tell you the community, the Mississippi
community is very appreciative because after winning the
Commander in Chief's Installation Excellence Award out of all
the bases in the military, we hope you take a hard look moving
forward. And hopefully, you will determine that they need to
stay there.
I do have one question. This question will be for General
Amos. As sequestration settles on the force, we hear often that
services will be forced to do less with less. In your
unvarnished opinion, what are the risks to major contingency
operations, as well as steady-state ops, if they continue and
these cuts are realized?
General Amos. Congressman, thanks for the opportunity to be
able to speak frankly about that. I don't see any slacking in
the requirements for all of our services for the next decade. I
read the same pundits. I read what they say. I listen to them,
and they talk about a peace dividend coming out of Afghanistan.
And I think that is overly optimistic at best. I don't see the
requirements changing. In fact, I would say the world is
probably more dangerous today than it was prior to 9/11.
Folks have said, and I began to, as we shape the Marine
Corps down to this 174 force--and as I said in my opening
statement, it was a budget-driven effort; it wasn't a
strategic-driven effort--I started with, well, okay, we will do
less with less, but what we will do we will do very well.
I don't believe that. I think we are going to do the same
with less, and we are going to do that very well. We are going
to work real hard to do that. But I don't see any slacking of
it, Congressman, if that answers your question. I think we are
going to be doing the same with less.
General Odierno. I know we are out of time. If I could just
add, the issue is let's take 2013; 2013, we were under
continuing resolution with sequestration. And if you asked each
one of us, we would tell you our requirements went up in 2013.
That is the concern. So budget went down, forced by
sequestration, and our requirements increased as the year went
on.
That is the conundrum that we are in right now, and that is
my concern as we continue down this road.
So, thank you, sir.
Mr. Palazzo. And it is ours as well.
Thank you, gentlemen.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Shea-Porter.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Thank you.
And I, too, would like to offer my condolences from the
people of New Hampshire's First District. And I would like to
say that while the sequester is absolutely devastating, I have
concerns about what we are saying openly and letting people
know, and I am amazed that probably more people abroad and our
enemies know the impact more than the Members of Congress. And
that is absolutely shameful.
There is a bill that could cancel the sequester today if it
would only come to the floor. But I am very, very concerned, as
we all are, but the message doesn't seem to be leaving this
chamber right now.
So, while we are dealing with this, I would like to talk to
all of you about the impact on the civilians, the impact on the
members of the services and what appears to be the lack of
impact on contractors right now. I know that, for the
headquarter budgets, they are talking about 20 percent cuts for
the civilians who work for the government and also seeing it in
the budget. But I haven't heard that talk about contractors.
So could each of you address that? I actually saw something
that said contractors numbers or their profits hadn't seemed to
drop along with the pay that dropped for some of the people who
are serving our country.
So I would like to address that, please.
General Odierno. Thank you for the question. As part of the
guidance the Secretary of the Army and I gave, as we were
looking at the Army, the Army is looking actually at a 25
percent reduction in headquarters because we are trying to gain
as much space.
The first place to look, the guidance we gave, was with
contractors, knowledge-based contractors we call them who do
studies and other things, as well as other types of contractors
that we have. Because we want to try to keep as much of the
civilian force and our military force as possible.
So we are absolutely looking at that as we move forward.
That is one of the key pieces. And we have a study group that
is coming back to us with recommendations that we expect will
happen within the next several months.
Ms. Shea-Porter. Do you expect that will help you save
money? Because I know when they were asked, the contractors
cost an average of about 2 and a half times more than a
government employee.
General Odierno. They do. The balance is they give a short-
term capability. But, yes, it will save us money and allow us
to invest in other places or not take cuts in other places.
Ms. Shea-Porter. I am encouraged to hear that.
Admiral.
Admiral Greenert. Yes, ma'am. As I look out at the 2015 to
2022 timeframe, that SCMR piece, and we addressed this in our
ALTPOM, we are looking at about a one-third reduction in
overhead and that includes contractors. We have methodically,
in partnership with our research development acquisition
executive, Mr. Stackley, gone through and reduced support
contracts.
This has been quite a drill to go in there and peel apart
where the money goes precisely. But that is $20 billion of a
$60 billion that we are targeting. Now that is across a FYDP
[Future Years Defense Plan], a 5-year plan.
Overhead-wise, like Ray says, we are about the 28 percent
on reduction of headquarters. That is not contractors, but it
is overhead and headquarters reduction.
General Welsh. Exactly the same ma'am. Contractor
reductions will be at least the same if not greater than
reductions in our civilian workforce.
Ms. Shea-Porter. So you are targeting that.
General Amos. Congresswoman I think we are all in sync on
that. We are all reducing both civilian personnel in the long
run as we go through the ALTPOM. In my service, we are reducing
28,000 Active Duty Marines, so there will be a commensurate
civilian reduction. We don't know what that is going to be yet.
But we are looking very seriously at our contractors.
I would just like to make an anecdotal comment on
civilians; as we have talked a lot about furloughs here today,
we have talked about in essence keeping the faith. I think we
are in danger of losing those wonderful, highly skilled
professionals that my colleagues have talked about here today
because of the furlough and then the anticipation of a
government shutdown. And they will reach a point where they are
going to look for employment elsewhere, whether it be in San
Antonio; you are medical professional, whether you are a Ph.D.
It became a point of faith in the United States Marine
Corps as I looked at our civilian Marines, and I think we are
in danger of losing an awful lot of talent if we continue to
abuse them.
Ms. Shea-Porter. I do, too. I thank you for saying that. We
have the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in our district, and the men
and women who go there and serve this country every day deserve
better than what they are seeing.
We also have a National Guard. They deserve better. And so,
across the whole spectrum, the men and women who serve this
country deserve to know their paycheck will be there and they
can count on us. And so far we have failed them.
Thank you, and I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Duckworth.
Ms. Duckworth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral Greenert, I, too, join my colleagues in giving my
condolences. And I will tell you I was very impressed by the
actions of your personnel in helping one another survive that
tragic situation.
Admiral Greenert. Thank you, ma'am. I appreciate it. I know
it is from the heart.
Ms. Duckworth. Thank you.
General Odierno, you and I have had this conversation
before, and I just sort of would love for you to expand a
little bit on the role of the Guard and Reserve. You have been
very clear, and I appreciate it, in terms of defining a role
for the Guard and Reserve, not only in a new strategic
environment but as an operational force and also in the current
budget climate. I don't have any military bases in my district,
but I certainly have a lot of National Guardsmen and
Reservists, and I also have a lot of military technicians
suffering from the furloughs trying to keep those helicopters
and those aircraft functional.
And as we see in Colorado right now, the National Guard has
really stepped up with those efforts.
Could you speak a little bit, General, given the lower life
cost of the Guardsmen and Reserve Components compared to Active
Duty, could you speak a little bit to what extent or ratio you
would like to see a reduction of the Active Component be in the
relation to the Guard and Reserve?
General Odierno. Sure thank you. So as I have testified, if
we have to go to the full sequestration, there will be a 26
percent reduction in the Active Component, a 12 percent
reduction in the National Guard, and an 8 percent, 9 percent
reduction in U.S. Army Reserves.
Now I want to go back to somewhat the question that Mr.
Palazzo asked, the real reason is if I keep their structure, I
am not going to be able to fund them as an operational Reserve.
I can't afford the training to keep them as operational
Reserve, which is what I want.
So I have got to reduce their structure a little bit but
not as much as the Active Component because I don't get as much
savings.
Now, the overall balance, though, I have to maintain is,
obviously, they cost 33 percent of the Active Force, but their
readiness is less than the Active Force so I got to keep that
right balance. So I need the right amount of Guard. I need the
right amount of Active Component, and I am very conscious of
that as I work my way through this.
So I have, in fact, taken more out of the Active Component
because of that cost factor, but I have to take a little bit
out of the Guard so I can continue to keep them and fund them
as an operational Reserve.
And so that is the balance that I am trying to achieve.
There are some that say we should increase the Guard and
further reduce the Active. To me, that is out of balance, and
then we will not have the capability to respond the way we need
to for contingency operations. So I am trying to find that
right balance.
Ms. Duckworth. Thank you. General Welsh, could you address
that as well?
General Welsh. Yes, ma'am. The cost is different, and you
can save more capacity and force structure by putting into the
Reserve Component over time, you just have to balance how far
you can go in each mission areas, and we are looking at it by
type aircraft even within those mission areas because you do
hit a point where your operational capability or your ability
to respond quickly are impacted.
It is different in every mission from space to mobility to
fighters; they are all different. And we are looking at each
one.
The other thing I think that is important for us to
consider is the real benefit of a Reserve Component to the
Nation is that you have this very experienced force over time
that is available to respond quickly in any type of
contingency, small or large.
One of the most troubling things we are seeing right now
is, over the last couple of years, a much diminished desire by
people leaving the Active Air Force to go into the Reserve
Component. Only 15 percent of those eligible are doing so over
the last 2 years. That is much lower than traditionally.
And if we get to the point where our Reserve Components are
inexperienced, while they may be cheaper, they will not provide
the operational Reserve that you need to be a valid fighting
force as an entire total force.
And so we have got to make sure we aren't doing things in
the Active Component that keep people from becoming members of
the Reserve Component.
So we are looking at all that right now. We have actually
got a very robust discussion going. The biggest issue is still
exactly what are the cost factors in each of these areas. We
decided on a model we are using for planning, but that model
probably still needs to be refined a little.
Ms. Duckworth. Can you speak a little bit to the role of
military technicians in your Reserves and then also to the
Guard?
General Welsh. Yes, ma'am, they are essential. They are
essentially, 4 days a week, a civilian member of the Air Force.
Our civilian workforce is essential. We can't do our job
without them. They are in virtually every mission area, and in
some mission areas, they are the entire mission area, like the
maintenance group I mentioned before in our training command.
The same thing is true at Guard and Reserve units. That is what
the dual status technicians do. They are fantastic.
Ms. Duckworth. Thank you. We could end sequestration. We
should end sequestration. And I don't think people realize that
those military technicians are soldiers, airmen, folks who do
both jobs, and if you are going to ask them to give up their
jobs on the full-time side, they are not going to be there on
the M-day side. I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Castro.
Mr. Castro. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony.
Admiral, my condolences for the tragedy in the Navy Yard,
along with the other members.
I represent San Antonio, Texas, of course, very important
in the military, and I have a few questions about some of the
operations there.
The first one is, do we know what impact will another round
of sequestration cuts have on the services provided at Wilford
Hall Ambulatory Center? And can you address whether medical
research performed at Wilford Hall will be impacted?
General Welsh. Congressman, I can't give you an answer on
the specific impact of sequestration at Wilford Hall, but I
will get it to you. I am sorry, I just don't know the details
of that.
[The information referred to was not available at the time
of printing.]
Mr. Castro. No problem. The second one that, of course,
concerns San Antonio, in my district, I have Lackland Air Force
Base, is will sequestration affect any of the programs related
to combating sexual assault in the military?
General Welsh. No, sir.
Mr. Castro. So those will be protected?
General Welsh. We actually protected our civilian workforce
involved in sexual assault, sexual assault response
coordinators, a few victims advocates, et cetera, from furlough
to prevent that from occurring and will continue to put that
kind of emphasis on those programs.
Mr. Castro. Those are my two questions.
Thank you very much.
I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you for your testimony, for your work
and for the continued efforts that you make to live with these
very restrictive budgetary problems that you are dealing with.
I know that this is going to be an interesting week for us. We
have to get a CR passed. We have to shortly get a debt ceiling
limit increase. And I think every Member of Congress is taking
these issues seriously, but there is 435, 434, maybe 433
Members now, and they come at it from, every one of those come
from different directions.
I know that the Armed Services Committee is keenly aware of
the points that you bring up and I think very supportive of the
military, and we are the largest committee in Congress, and
maybe we can have some sway in some of these discussions. We
haven't done so well so far. But maybe, going forward, we can.
Again, thank you for your service. Please let the men and
women you serve with know that we appreciate greatly their
efforts and the things that they do.
With that, this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:40 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
September 18, 2013
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
September 18, 2013
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
September 18, 2013
=======================================================================
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LANGEVIN
Mr. Langevin. As DOD implements the Secretary's planned 20% cuts to
headquarters, how will the Department balance these cuts among
contractor, military, and civilian employees? Does the Department have
sufficient visibility into the size and cost of the contractor
workforce in headquarters roles?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Langevin. As you are all aware, defending investments in
research and development can be very difficult since the investments,
while crucial to future capabilities, are necessarily speculative in
nature, and don't have much of the bureaucratic support or immediate
impact of, say, an increase or decrease in an active procurement
program. Can each of you speak to the ways in which the services and
the Department have valued R&D and STEM investments in your budgetary
deliberations, as well as the pressures that sequestration's budgetary
bottom lines and across-the-board nature have placed on those
activities? How has the Department weighed the risk factors of
decreasing or increasing R&D and STEM relative to other investments,
particularly given the hard budgetary futures that you are examining?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Langevin. Can each of you address the effects of continued
sequestration on cyberspace activities and how you intend to manage the
fiscal pressures given increasing demands in this regime, particularly
in light of the reports of CYBERCOM's plan to grow the number of cyber
operators?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Langevin. Admiral, I appreciate the emphasis you placed in your
testimony on the critical importance in any budget scenario of our
undersea capabilities--Virginia-class subs, the Virginia Payload
Module, and the Ohio Replacement. Since, as you know, I strongly agree
with that sentiment, it was all the more jarring when you stated on
September 5th that ``shipbuilding will drop in fiscal 2014,'' and
specifically that you envisioned ``the loss of a littoral combat ship,
an afloat-forward staging base and advanced procurement for a Virginia-
class submarine and a carrier overhaul.''
I'm assuming that the reference there was to a FY15 boat per your
testimony, but could you speak to how would this affect the proposed
block buy? Is this an effect of the need for an NDAA and an
appropriations bill, of the reduced spending levels associated with
sequestration, or of both, and could incremental funding or some other
mechanism be used to mitigate?
Admiral Greenert. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Langevin. I'm also deeply concerned about the reference in your
testimony to a delay in the procurement of the first SSBN(X) by a year.
As we've heard over and over, these boats are not just a critical Navy
need, but a national strategic requirement as the most survivable part
of our deterrent. Can you elaborate as to the effects of any further
delay in the program, and what mitigating steps would, at a minimum, be
needed?
Admiral Greenert. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Langevin. As DOD implements the Secretary's planned 20% cuts to
headquarters, how will the Department balance these cuts among
contractor, military, and civilian employees? Does the Department have
sufficient visibility into the size and cost of the contractor
workforce in headquarters roles?
Admiral Greenert. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Langevin. As you are all aware, defending investments in
research and development can be very difficult since the investments,
while crucial to future capabilities, are necessarily speculative in
nature, and don't have much of the bureaucratic support or immediate
impact of, say, an increase or decrease in an active procurement
program. Can each of you speak to the ways in which the services and
the Department have valued R&D and STEM investments in your budgetary
deliberations, as well as the pressures that sequestration's budgetary
bottom lines and across-the-board nature have placed on those
activities? How has the Department weighed the risk factors of
decreasing or increasing R&D and STEM relative to other investments,
particularly given the hard budgetary futures that you are examining?
Admiral Greenert. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Langevin. Can each of you address the effects of continued
sequestration on cyberspace activities and how you intend to manage the
fiscal pressures given increasing demands in this regime, particularly
in light of the reports of CYBERCOM's plan to grow the number of cyber
operators?
Admiral Greenert. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Langevin. As DOD implements the Secretary's planned 20% cuts to
headquarters, how will the Department balance these cuts among
contractor, military, and civilian employees? Does the Department have
sufficient visibility into the size and cost of the contractor
workforce in headquarters roles?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Langevin. As you are all aware, defending investments in
research and development can be very difficult since the investments,
while crucial to future capabilities, are necessarily speculative in
nature, and don't have much of the bureaucratic support or immediate
impact of, say, an increase or decrease in an active procurement
program. Can each of you speak to the ways in which the services and
the Department have valued R&D and STEM investments in your budgetary
deliberations, as well as the pressures that sequestration's budgetary
bottom lines and across-the-board nature have placed on those
activities? How has the Department weighed the risk factors of
decreasing or increasing R&D and STEM relative to other investments,
particularly given the hard budgetary futures that you are examining?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Langevin. Can each of you address the effects of continued
sequestration on cyberspace activities and how you intend to manage the
fiscal pressures given increasing demands in this regime, particularly
in light of the reports of CYBERCOM's plan to grow the number of cyber
operators?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Langevin. As DOD implements the Secretary's planned 20% cuts to
headquarters, how will the Department balance these cuts among
contractor, military, and civilian employees? Does the Department have
sufficient visibility into the size and cost of the contractor
workforce in headquarters roles?
General Amos. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Langevin. As you are all aware, defending investments in
research and development can be very difficult since the investments,
while crucial to future capabilities, are necessarily speculative in
nature, and don't have much of the bureaucratic support or immediate
impact of, say, an increase or decrease in an active procurement
program. Can each of you speak to the ways in which the services and
the Department have valued R&D and STEM investments in your budgetary
deliberations, as well as the pressures that sequestration's budgetary
bottom lines and across-the-board nature have placed on those
activities? How has the Department weighed the risk factors of
decreasing or increasing R&D and STEM relative to other investments,
particularly given the hard budgetary futures that you are examining?
General Amos. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Langevin. Can each of you address the effects of continued
sequestration on cyberspace activities and how you intend to manage the
fiscal pressures given increasing demands in this regime, particularly
in light of the reports of CYBERCOM's plan to grow the number of cyber
operators?
General Amos. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. BORDALLO
Ms. Bordallo. I would like to know more about SCMR results with
respect to the Asia-Pacific rebalance. Can you please elaborate on the
impacts of competing resources with respect to our commitment to the
Pacific region? I am concerned that our commitment may appear to be
nothing more than rhetoric to our allies in the region. I have had
numerous meetings with senior officials from Asia-Pacific region that
have valid concerns. I want to know that we will begin to see tangible
actions that support our statements emphasizing our support in the
region.
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. I supported an Andrews amendment to the FY14 NDAA at
the House markup to extend a cap on service contracting by two
additional years. I understand that GAO staff briefed Congressional
staff last week, and they reported that the Department spent at least
$1.34 billion more than allowed under law for service contracts and
that there is little evidence that the Department is making the
specific cuts in service contract spending required by the law. Worse,
it has been speculated that elimination of the caps' loopholes would
result in even more overspending. Perhaps most concerning is that DOD
officials acknowledged to GAO a lack of fiscal controls that would
allow them to satisfactorily comply with the cap. How can we achieve
greater transparency over service contract costs so that we can impose
and actually enforce caps and cuts in service contract spending? Given
this GAO report, is there any reason to think that DOD will actually
cut service contract spending as the Department downsizes, as opposed
to disproportionately cutting spending on civilians and military?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. In recent correspondence, House Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Young expressed concern to
Secretary Hagel that the Pentagon's planned cuts for headquarters were
focused disproportionately on the civilians and the military, but not
on the contractors. That doesn't make any sense. In June, Comptroller
Hale conceded in Senate testimony that contractors cost two to three
times civilians. What assurance can you provide that the headquarters
cuts and cuts generally undertaken by the Department will take into
account contractors as well as civilians and military? The Department
was required in 2007 to establish an inventory of service contracts in
order to better understand the cost and size of the contractor
workforce. When will that inventory be complete and how is it being
used to inform the Pentagon's budget-cutting efforts? For example, how
many contractors work in headquarters and how much do they cost?
Presumably, the Pentagon wants to cut the contractor workforce by the
same 20% as it intends to cut the civilian and military workforces?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. The size and cost of military and civilian personnel
in your component's management headquarters workforce are known. How
many contractor employees are included in your component's management
headquarters workforce, what is their total cost, and what is the
average cost of a contractor employee in your component's management
headquarters workforce? Will your component's answers be based on the
inventory of contract services? Are your component's answers to those
questions regarding the size and cost of service contractors reliable,
comprehensive, and well-informed? If not, how can your component
properly determine the extent to which your component should reduce its
reliance on contractor personnel?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. Both the Congress and the Administration have
identified instances in which contractor personnel are inappropriately
performing functions that are inherently governmental, closely
associated with inherently governmental, and critical. Will your
component take into account instances in which contractor personnel in
the management headquarters workforce should be reduced because they
are performing inappropriate functions?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. In recent testimony before the Senate Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee, the Secretary and the Comptroller agreed
that contractors are significantly more expensive than civilian
personnel, particularly for the provision of long-term services. To
what extent will your component generate savings in management
headquarters workforce spending through insourcing, consistent with 10
USC 2463?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. Are non-civilian personnel involved in making
recommendations for reductions in total headquarters budgets? If so,
how have the inevitable conflicts of interests been addressed?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. To what extent does your component have a policy of
reviewing service contracts for savings when confronted with a
requirement to furlough civilian personnel with the objective of using
savings from service contracts (e.g., cancelling low-priority contracts
or imposing deductive changes on such contracts) to offset the need to
impose furloughs? If your component engaged in such efforts in FY13,
when did such reviews occur, and what were the results of those
reviews?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. The Army's historic leadership on the inventory of
contract services does the Army great credit. Taxpayers have a
significant interest in the inventory finally being implemented. Is the
Army continuing to fulfill its commitment to assist OSD in leveraging
the Contract Manpower Reporting Allocation for implementation across
the Department? And is OSD continuing to facilitate this effort? Is the
Army using the significant cost data it has collected already to inform
its performance decisions, consistent with the DOD Instruction 7041.04?
And is the Army using the cost data and the Plan for Documentation of
Contractors for budget projections?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. Section 808 of the FY12 National Defense
Authorization Act imposed a cap on the amount of money that could be
spent on service contracts in FY12 and FY13. To what extent in FY12 did
the Army over-execute spending on service contracts and under-execute
spending on civilian personnel? Will the Army be able to improve upon
that performance in FY13?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. In an April 1 letter to the American Federation of
Government Employees, Secretary McHugh wrote: ``. . . I have
temporarily adjusted certain of the Army's restrictions on the use of
(Borrowed Military Manpower, BMM) . . . Please be assured that my
action is intended only as a short-term solution--the temporary
modification of the Army's BMM policy to address emergency requirements
associated with the current budgetary situation does not contemplate
the permanent conversion to military performance of work presently
allocated to civilian employees. Further, Army prerequisites to the use
of BMM remain compliant with the 2012 Under Secretary of Defense for
Personnel and Readiness policy.'' Will the Army continue to use BMM
consistent with the commitments Secretary McHugh made in his
correspondence--principally, that any use of BMM will be temporary
because of emergency budget requirements and that Army policy will be
compliant with the 2012 OSD policy?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. According to the DOD Deputy Secretary's July 31
memorandum, the OSD Organizational Review is intended to achieve a 20%
cut in ``total headquarters budgets.'' However, in the Army's
memorandum of August 14, you and Secretary McHugh write that it is
necessary ``to determine how to reduce Army headquarters (both
institutional and operational, at the 2-star and above levels) in the
aggregate by 25%.'' The 20% cut called for by the Deputy Secretary is
completely arbitrary, of course, but what analysis supports even
greater cuts in the Army than in the other components?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. Your August 14 memorandum directs the establishment
of ``specific targets for each focus area in dollars and full-time
equivalents (FTE) . . .'' However, your memorandum never uses the word
``contractor.'' Even the Deputy Secretary's July 31 memorandum
acknowledges that reductions must include service contractor personnel:
``Total headquarters budgets include government civilian personnel who
work at headquarters and associated costs including contract services .
. .'' How will the Army be taking into account the size and cost of
contractor personnel in the management headquarters workforce in the
development of recommendations?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. I would like to know more about SCMR results with
respect to the Asia-Pacific rebalance. Can you please elaborate on the
impacts of competing resources with respect to our commitment to the
Pacific region? I am concerned that our commitment may appear to be
nothing more than rhetoric to our allies in the region. I have had
numerous meetings with senior officials from Asia-Pacific region that
have valid concerns. I want to know that we will begin to see tangible
actions that support our statements emphasizing our support in the
region.
Ms. Bordallo. I would like to know more about SCMR results with
respect to the Asia-Pacific rebalance. Can you please elaborate on the
impacts of competing resources with respect to our commitment to the
Pacific region? I am concerned that our commitment may appear to be
nothing more than rhetoric to our allies in the region. I have had
numerous meetings with senior officials from Asia-Pacific region that
have valid concerns. I want to know that we will begin to see tangible
actions that support our statements emphasizing our support in the
region.
Admiral Greenert. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. I supported an Andrews amendment to the FY14 NDAA at
the House markup to extend a cap on service contracting by two
additional years. I understand that GAO staff briefed Congressional
staff last week, and they reported that the Department spent at least
$1.34 billion more than allowed under law for service contracts and
that there is little evidence that the Department is making the
specific cuts in service contract spending required by the law. Worse,
it has been speculated that elimination of the caps' loopholes would
result in even more overspending. Perhaps most concerning is that DOD
officials acknowledged to GAO a lack of fiscal controls that would
allow them to satisfactorily comply with the cap. How can we achieve
greater transparency over service contract costs so that we can impose
and actually enforce caps and cuts in service contract spending? Given
this GAO report, is there any reason to think that DOD will actually
cut service contract spending as the Department downsizes, as opposed
to disproportionately cutting spending on civilians and military?
Admiral Greenert. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. In recent correspondence, House Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Young expressed concern to
Secretary Hagel that the Pentagon's planned cuts for headquarters were
focused disproportionately on the civilians and the military, but not
on the contractors. That doesn't make any sense. In June, Comptroller
Hale conceded in Senate testimony that contractors cost two to three
times civilians. What assurance can you provide that the headquarters
cuts and cuts generally undertaken by the Department will take into
account contractors as well as civilians and military? The Department
was required in 2007 to establish an inventory of service contracts in
order to better understand the cost and size of the contractor
workforce. When will that inventory be complete and how is it being
used to inform the Pentagon's budget-cutting efforts? For example, how
many contractors work in headquarters and how much do they cost?
Presumably, the Pentagon wants to cut the contractor workforce by the
same 20% as it intends to cut the civilian and military workforces?
Admiral Greenert. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. The size and cost of military and civilian personnel
in your component's management headquarters workforce are known. How
many contractor employees are included in your component's management
headquarters workforce, what is their total cost, and what is the
average cost of a contractor employee in your component's management
headquarters workforce? Will your component's answers be based on the
inventory of contract services? Are your component's answers to those
questions regarding the size and cost of service contractors reliable,
comprehensive, and well-informed? If not, how can your component
properly determine the extent to which your component should reduce its
reliance on contractor personnel?
Admiral Greenert. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. Both the Congress and the Administration have
identified instances in which contractor personnel are inappropriately
performing functions that are inherently governmental, closely
associated with inherently governmental, and critical. Will your
component take into account instances in which contractor personnel in
the management headquarters workforce should be reduced because they
are performing inappropriate functions?
Admiral Greenert. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. In recent testimony before the Senate Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee, the Secretary and the Comptroller agreed
that contractors are significantly more expensive than civilian
personnel, particularly for the provision of long-term services. To
what extent will your component generate savings in management
headquarters workforce spending through insourcing, consistent with 10
USC 2463?
Admiral Greenert. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. Are non-civilian personnel involved in making
recommendations for reductions in total headquarters budgets? If so,
how have the inevitable conflicts of interests been addressed?
Admiral Greenert. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. To what extent does your component have a policy of
reviewing service contracts for savings when confronted with a
requirement to furlough civilian personnel with the objective of using
savings from service contracts (e.g., cancelling low-priority contracts
or imposing deductive changes on such contracts) to offset the need to
impose furloughs? If your component engaged in such efforts in FY13,
when did such reviews occur, and what were the results of those
reviews?
Admiral Greenert. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. I know the Air Force has been challenged with
modernization needs. Recent world events, and the desire to minimize
boots on the ground, highlight the need for a Long Range Strike
capability. As a co-chair of the House Long Range Strike Caucus, I want
to know how you intend to protect funding for the NextGen bomber? Can
you elaborate on the importance of this program to the future of the
Air Force?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. I supported an Andrews amendment to the FY14 NDAA at
the House markup to extend a cap on service contracting by two
additional years. I understand that GAO staff briefed Congressional
staff last week, and they reported that the Department spent at least
$1.34 billion more than allowed under law for service contracts and
that there is little evidence that the Department is making the
specific cuts in service contract spending required by the law. Worse,
it has been speculated that elimination of the caps' loopholes would
result in even more overspending. Perhaps most concerning is that DOD
officials acknowledged to GAO a lack of fiscal controls that would
allow them to satisfactorily comply with the cap. How can we achieve
greater transparency over service contract costs so that we can impose
and actually enforce caps and cuts in service contract spending? Given
this GAO report, is there any reason to think that DOD will actually
cut service contract spending as the Department downsizes, as opposed
to disproportionately cutting spending on civilians and military?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. In recent correspondence, House Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Young expressed concern to
Secretary Hagel that the Pentagon's planned cuts for headquarters were
focused disproportionately on the civilians and the military, but not
on the contractors. That doesn't make any sense. In June, Comptroller
Hale conceded in Senate testimony that contractors cost two to three
times civilians. What assurance can you provide that the headquarters
cuts and cuts generally undertaken by the Department will take into
account contractors as well as civilians and military? The Department
was required in 2007 to establish an inventory of service contracts in
order to better understand the cost and size of the contractor
workforce. When will that inventory be complete and how is it being
used to inform the Pentagon's budget-cutting efforts? For example, how
many contractors work in headquarters and how much do they cost?
Presumably, the Pentagon wants to cut the contractor workforce by the
same 20% as it intends to cut the civilian and military workforces?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. The size and cost of military and civilian personnel
in your component's management headquarters workforce are known. How
many contractor employees are included in your component's management
headquarters workforce, what is their total cost, and what is the
average cost of a contractor employee in your component's management
headquarters workforce? Will your component's answers be based on the
inventory of contract services? Are your component's answers to those
questions regarding the size and cost of service contractors reliable,
comprehensive, and well-informed? If not, how can your component
properly determine the extent to which your component should reduce its
reliance on contractor personnel?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. Both the Congress and the Administration have
identified instances in which contractor personnel are inappropriately
performing functions that are inherently governmental, closely
associated with inherently governmental, and critical. Will your
component take into account instances in which contractor personnel in
the management headquarters workforce should be reduced because they
are performing inappropriate functions?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. In recent testimony before the Senate Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee, the Secretary and the Comptroller agreed
that contractors are significantly more expensive than civilian
personnel, particularly for the provision of long-term services. To
what extent will your component generate savings in management
headquarters workforce spending through insourcing, consistent with 10
USC 2463?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. Are non-civilian personnel involved in making
recommendations for reductions in total headquarters budgets? If so,
how have the inevitable conflicts of interests been addressed?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. To what extent does your component have a policy of
reviewing service contracts for savings when confronted with a
requirement to furlough civilian personnel with the objective of using
savings from service contracts (e.g., cancelling low-priority contracts
or imposing deductive changes on such contracts) to offset the need to
impose furloughs? If your component engaged in such efforts in FY13,
when did such reviews occur, and what were the results of those
reviews?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. I would like to know more about SCMR results with
respect to the Asia-Pacific rebalance. Can you please elaborate on the
impacts of competing resources with respect to our commitment to the
Pacific region? I am concerned that our commitment may appear to be
nothing more than rhetoric to our allies in the region. I have had
numerous meetings with senior officials from Asia-Pacific region that
have valid concerns. I want to know that we will begin to see tangible
actions that support our statements emphasizing our support in the
region.
General Amos. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. I supported an Andrews amendment to the FY14 NDAA at
the House markup to extend a cap on service contracting by two
additional years. I understand that GAO staff briefed Congressional
staff last week, and they reported that the Department spent at least
$1.34 billion more than allowed under law for service contracts and
that there is little evidence that the Department is making the
specific cuts in service contract spending required by the law. Worse,
it has been speculated that elimination of the caps' loopholes would
result in even more overspending. Perhaps most concerning is that DOD
officials acknowledged to GAO a lack of fiscal controls that would
allow them to satisfactorily comply with the cap. How can we achieve
greater transparency over service contract costs so that we can impose
and actually enforce caps and cuts in service contract spending? Given
this GAO report, is there any reason to think that DOD will actually
cut service contract spending as the Department downsizes, as opposed
to disproportionately cutting spending on civilians and military?
General Amos. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. In recent correspondence, House Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Young expressed concern to
Secretary Hagel that the Pentagon's planned cuts for headquarters were
focused disproportionately on the civilians and the military, but not
on the contractors. That doesn't make any sense. In June, Comptroller
Hale conceded in Senate testimony that contractors cost two to three
times civilians. What assurance can you provide that the headquarters
cuts and cuts generally undertaken by the Department will take into
account contractors as well as civilians and military? The Department
was required in 2007 to establish an inventory of service contracts in
order to better understand the cost and size of the contractor
workforce. When will that inventory be complete and how is it being
used to inform the Pentagon's budget-cutting efforts? For example, how
many contractors work in headquarters and how much do they cost?
Presumably, the Pentagon wants to cut the contractor workforce by the
same 20% as it intends to cut the civilian and military workforces?
General Amos. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. The size and cost of military and civilian personnel
in your component's management headquarters workforce are known. How
many contractor employees are included in your component's management
headquarters workforce, what is their total cost, and what is the
average cost of a contractor employee in your component's management
headquarters workforce? Will your component's answers be based on the
inventory of contract services? Are your component's answers to those
questions regarding the size and cost of service contractors reliable,
comprehensive, and well-informed? If not, how can your component
properly determine the extent to which your component should reduce its
reliance on contractor personnel?
General Amos. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. Both the Congress and the Administration have
identified instances in which contractor personnel are inappropriately
performing functions that are inherently governmental, closely
associated with inherently governmental, and critical. Will your
component take into account instances in which contractor personnel in
the management headquarters workforce should be reduced because they
are performing inappropriate functions?
General Amos. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. In recent testimony before the Senate Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee, the Secretary and the Comptroller agreed
that contractors are significantly more expensive than civilian
personnel, particularly for the provision of long-term services. To
what extent will your component generate savings in management
headquarters workforce spending through insourcing, consistent with 10
USC 2463?
General Amos. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. Are non-civilian personnel involved in making
recommendations for reductions in total headquarters budgets? If so,
how have the inevitable conflicts of interests been addressed?
General Amos. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. To what extent does your component have a policy of
reviewing service contracts for savings when confronted with a
requirement to furlough civilian personnel with the objective of using
savings from service contracts (e.g., cancelling low-priority contracts
or imposing deductive changes on such contracts) to offset the need to
impose furloughs? If your component engaged in such efforts in FY13,
when did such reviews occur, and what were the results of those
reviews?
General Amos. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. SHUSTER
Mr. Shuster. Why is the Army terminating the Modernization Thru
Spare Program (PAC-2 convergence to GEM-T) in FY13 when the Average Per
Unit Cost (APU) is $560K to upgrade an existing asset to GEM-T
Configuration compared to a new PAC-3 Procurement at $3.3M+ during
these times of great fiscal austerity?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Shuster. Sequestration resulted in 6 days of unpaid furlough
for DOD civilians. Even though this was not as harsh as the original
predicted 22 days, these civilians lost faith and trust in our
leadership leaving morale at an all-time low. What is being done to
blunt the effects of possible future furloughs as the highest quality
personnel of our civilian workforce are already seeking employment in
the private sector? More specifically, how are we going to preserve the
competent, skilled workforce who will be needed to reset, maintain and
modernize an ever-growing backlog at our depots and arsenals?
General Odierno. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Shuster. Sequestration resulted in 6 days of unpaid furlough
for DOD civilians. Even though this was not as harsh as the original
predicted 22 days, these civilians lost faith and trust in our
leadership leaving morale at an all-time low. What is being done to
blunt the effects of possible future furloughs as the highest quality
personnel of our civilian workforce are already seeking employment in
the private sector? More specifically, how are we going to preserve the
competent, skilled workforce who will be needed to reset, maintain and
modernize an ever-growing backlog at our depots and arsenals?
Admiral Greenert. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Shuster. Sequestration resulted in 6 days of unpaid furlough
for DOD civilians. Even though this was not as harsh as the original
predicted 22 days, these civilians lost faith and trust in our
leadership leaving morale at an all-time low. What is being done to
blunt the effects of possible future furloughs as the highest quality
personnel of our civilian workforce are already seeking employment in
the private sector? More specifically, how are we going to preserve the
competent, skilled workforce who will be needed to reset, maintain and
modernize an ever-growing backlog at our depots and arsenals?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Shuster. Sequestration resulted in 6 days of unpaid furlough
for DOD civilians. Even though this was not as harsh as the original
predicted 22 days, these civilians lost faith and trust in our
leadership leaving morale at an all-time low. What is being done to
blunt the effects of possible future furloughs as the highest quality
personnel of our civilian workforce are already seeking employment in
the private sector? More specifically, how are we going to preserve the
competent, skilled workforce who will be needed to reset, maintain and
modernize an ever-growing backlog at our depots and arsenals?
General Amos. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LAMBORN
Mr. Lamborn. General Welsh, some recent internal Pentagon reviews
have discussed delaying the next procurement of Space Based Infrared
Systems and Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellites. With long
development timelines, and aging on-orbit constellations, how do you
ensure you will continue to provide these critical capabilities to the
warfighter? What is the risk if you are unable to provide missile
warning and secure communication capabilities?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. BARBER
Mr. Barber. General Welsh, can you please provide data on the
number of close air support missions conducted by airframe for
Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. Include data of missions
by airframe that were ``danger close'' in support of ``troops in
contact.'' Where the data exist, include the type of control used to
execute the close air support mission.
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Barber. General Welsh, in public, Army and Marine commanders
have advocated for maintaining close air support capability,
specifically the A-10, within the Air Force. In proposing to divest the
Air Force of the entire fleet of A-10s, have the sister service chiefs
been officially sought for comment on the proposed divestiture and loss
of capability? If so, what have their responses been?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Barber. General Welsh, has the Air Force conducted relevant
simulations to ensure the F-35 can appropriately replace the A-10's
role in close air support, combat search and rescue (CSAR) support,
strike coordination and recon (SCAR), and as a forward air controller
(airborne)?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Barber. General Welsh, in recent months, it has been brought to
my attention that the Air Force is considering transferring the Combat
Search and Rescue (CSAR) mission from the Air Combat Command (ACC) to
Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). The transition would also
change the primary CSAR aircraft from the HH-60 to the CV-22 Osprey.
Members within the CSAR community have expressed concern that the CV-22
Osprey is wholly unsuited for the CSAR mission given the tremendous
downdraft created by the airframe in hover mode. Has the Air Force
conducted appropriate, comparative simulations and testing to ensure
the CV-22 is the best airframe to conduct the CSAR mission? Please
provide the results of the simulation and testing.
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
______
QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MS. DUCKWORTH
Ms. Duckworth. Due to sequestration, the Air Force recently
cancelled its SpaceFence program with no indication of when or if at
all it will resume the program or if it will begin to build the next-
generation program. Can you address the strategic significance of a
loss of this kind?
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. RUNYAN
Mr. Runyan. General Welsh, no one needs to remind you of the
importance of our space systems to the warfighter. In light of the
criticality of these systems, can you describe the importance of space
situational awareness? And also, please describe how the future Space
Fence will contribute to that mission, and how that program is affected
by the Strategic Choices and Management Review.
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Runyan. General Welsh, if we know the warfighter needs the
Space Fence, why are is the Department delaying the acquisition of a
critical capability? It would seem that we need to find the money
elsewhere, rather than delay this important program.
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mr. Runyan. General Welsh, I have been hearing rumblings that one
of the platforms you are looking at cutting completely is the KC-10
tanker. This was also included as part of an Air Force Times article
earlier this week: ``AF Considers Scrapping A-10s, KC-10s, F-15Cs, CSAR
Helos.'' The KC-10 platform has more than proved itself a workhorse in
support of air refueling in Iraq, Afghanistan, homeland defense and
other missions as called upon. It can refuel Air Force, Navy, and
international military aircraft with its dual boom and hose-and-drogue
systems. I am proud to have Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst (JB MDL)
in my District, which as you know is home to the KC-10, supporting the
Northeast Tanker Corridor and various overseas deployments.
With the new tanker coming online slower than expected, and the
fact that there is no decrease in refueling demand, for the record what
are your plans for this critical platform? Is there programmed funding
in FY15 in support of this vital refueling asset? I would like to meet
with you personally on this issue in the near future.
General Welsh. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]