[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 116-18]
HEARING
ON
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2020
AND
OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES HEARING
ON
DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY FISCAL
YEAR 2020 BUDGET REQUEST FOR SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES
__________
HEARING HELD
MARCH 26, 2019
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
36-879 WASHINGTON : 2020
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES
JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut, Chairman
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia
JIM COOPER, Tennessee K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey MIKE GALLAGHER, Wisconsin
SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts JACK BERGMAN, Michigan
FILEMON VELA, Texas MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
GILBERT RAY CISNEROS, Jr., VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri
California PAUL COOK, California
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama
KATIE HILL, California TRENT KELLY, Mississippi
JARED F. GOLDEN, Maine
ELAINE G. LURIA, Virginia, Vice
Chair
Phil MacNaughton, Professional Staff Member
Dave Sienicki, Professional Staff Member
Megan Handal, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESSES
Geurts, Hon. James F., Assistant Secretary of the Navy for
Research, Development and Acquisition, Department of the Navy;
accompanied by VADM William R. Merz, USN, Deputy Chief of Naval
Operations for Warfare Systems (N9), Department of the Navy,
and LtGen David H. Berger, USMC, Commanding General, Marine
Corps Combat Development Command, and Deputy Commandant for
Combat Development and Integration, United States Marine Corps. 2
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Courtney, Hon. Joe, a Representative from Connecticut,
Chairman, Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces... 33
Geurts, Hon. James F., joint with VADM William R. Merz and
LtGen David H. Berger...................................... 37
Wittman, Hon. Robert J., a Representative from Virginia,
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection
Forces..................................................... 35
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
Mr. Gallagher................................................ 65
Mrs. Luria................................................... 65
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mr. Conaway.................................................. 69
Mrs. Luria................................................... 69
DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY FISCAL YEAR 2020 BUDGET REQUEST FOR SEAPOWER AND
PROJECTION FORCES
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces,
Washington, DC, Tuesday, March 26, 2019.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:44 p.m., in
room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Joe Courtney
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Courtney. I call the meeting to order.
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Seapower and
Projection Forces Subcommittee hearing on the Department of
Navy fiscal year 2020 budget request for seapower and
projection forces.
So, again, obviously, we are now--the fat is in the fire,
in terms of the budget that came out a couple weeks ago. And,
clearly, we have a compressed schedule in terms of the NDAA
[National Defense Authorization Act] markup as well as the
appropriations process.
So I appreciate all the witnesses for being here today--
Under Secretary Geurts, Admiral Merz, General Berger--to,
again, allow us to have an opportunity to have a dialogue about
the budget.
And members, I think, are making their way over after the
last vote series, but we just wanted to sort of get right into
it. So, you know, again, I have a prepared statement, but I am
going to actually have it just entered for the record so we can
just really get into your opening remarks and then Q&A.
And, with that, I will yield to the ranking member.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Courtney can be found in the
Appendix on page 33.]
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks again for your
leadership.
I want to thank our witnesses for being here today. Thank
you for the great job that you all are doing.
And I, too, am going to put my statement into the record so
we can get underway.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the
Appendix on page 35.]
Mr. Courtney. Great.
So it looks like you have a combined opening statement. So,
Mr. Geurts, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES F. GEURTS, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE
NAVY FOR RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND ACQUISITION, DEPARTMENT OF
THE NAVY; ACCOMPANIED BY VADM WILLIAM R. MERZ, USN, DEPUTY
CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS FOR WARFARE SYSTEMS (N9), DEPARTMENT
OF THE NAVY, AND LTGEN DAVID H. BERGER, USMC, COMMANDING
GENERAL, MARINE CORPS COMBAT DEVELOPMENT COMMAND, AND DEPUTY
COMMANDANT FOR COMBAT DEVELOPMENT AND INTEGRATION, UNITED
STATES MARINE CORPS
Secretary Geurts. Thank you, sir.
Chairman Courtney, Ranking Member Wittman, distinguished
members of the subcommittee, thanks for the opportunity to
appear before you today to address the Department of the Navy's
fiscal year 2020 budget request.
Joining me here today are Vice Admiral Bill Merz, Deputy
Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Systems, and Lieutenant
General Dave Berger, Deputy Commandant for Combat Development
and Integration.
With your permission, I intend to provide a few brief
remarks for the three of us and then submit our formal
statement for the record.
Mr. Courtney. Without objection.
Secretary Geurts. Thank you, sir.
I would like to start by thanking this subcommittee and all
of Congress for passing the fiscal year 2019 budget on time.
On-time receipt of the full budget allowed us to expedite the
delivery of lethality and readiness to our sailors and Marines
while achieving cost savings through more efficient
contracting. It also helped stabilize the industrial base and
the supplier base, both of which are keys to our success.
The 2019 budget allowed us to continue to build the naval
force the Nation needs. This year, we will commission 12 ships,
compared to an average of 5 ships per year over the last 20
years. By the end of the year, we will have 296 ships in our
battle force inventory. Not only are we building more ships,
but their quality and capability continue to increase with each
delivery.
We continue to improve our acquisition and contracting
strategies to maximize the output for every taxpayer dollar,
including saving more than $4 billion for the construction of
our third and fourth Ford-class carriers and over $700 million
for our next set of DDG 51 destroyers.
Our fiscal year 2020 request continues our commitment to
build a 355-ship Navy, as well as the other capabilities the
Navy and the Marine Corps require to meet the National Defense
Strategy.
Our request is the largest shipbuilding request in over 20
years and funds 12 battle force ships in fiscal year 2020,
reflecting the critical role the Navy and the Marine Corps team
plays in the National Defense Strategy. It funds 55 battle
force ships within the Future Year Defense Program [FYDP],
which results in a smooth, continuous ramp to achieving 355
ships in the year 2034, a 20-year acceleration over last year's
plan.
This year's shipbuilding plan continues to reinforce the
powerful combinations of a strong, stable industrial base and
predictable funding, as well as our initial estimates of the
enduring cost of sustaining a larger Navy.
Recognizing the effective and efficient sustainment of the
fleet is absolutely critical, we have also submitted the first-
ever long-range plan for the maintenance and modernization of
the fleet to complement the 30-year shipbuilding plan. It
outlines the growing maintenance requirements and the many
initiatives the Navy is executing to improve the on-time
completion of maintenance activities. It complements the many
other actions the Navy and the Marine Corps have taken to
improve the overall readiness of the force.
Finally, the Department of the Navy continues to place a
priority on fielding the new technology and capabilities needed
to compete and win in the future. These include a wide range of
unmanned capabilities in the air, on the sea, and below the
surface, as well as new capabilities enabled by directed
energy, hypersonics, artificial intelligence, and advanced
sensor system technologies.
Thank you for the strong support this subcommittee has
always provided to our sailors and Marines. And thank you for
the opportunity to appear before you today. We look forward to
answering your questions.
[The joint prepared statement of Secretary Geurts, Admiral
Merz, and General Berger can be found in the Appendix on page
37.]
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Geurts. And, again, I am going
to just have a couple questions, and then, again, we will, I am
sure, have lots more to follow.
One item that is in the budget, which, you know, there has
been actually about 3 years of back-and-forth or 4 years of
back-and-forth with this subcommittee, is the Virginia-class
program. You know, last year, again, we put out a mark and
there was a floor debate in terms of boosting the production to
three Virginia class a year, and that was unsuccessful. The
Department opposed that at the time. It was about 8 or 9 months
ago.
The budget that came over this year, I think a number of us
are pleased to see that it actually included funding for a
third submarine in the 2020 budget. And I am wondering if you
could, again, just sort of explain the thinking behind the
Department's position, both in terms of a strategic, you know,
aspect as well as industrial base.
Secretary Geurts. Certainly, sir. And I will start out, and
I will ask Admiral Merz to perhaps jump in from a requirements
and a warfighting concept.
You know, Virginia continues to be our most successful
acquisition program. As you know, we started out with an 84-
month span time on those ships. We have been able to bring that
down to 66-month span time, as well as get to two ships a year.
And so, you know, that has provided us some opportunities.
Our goal is still to continue to shrink that span time. We
have been a little bit challenged getting below the 66-month
span time. But we have been delivering those subs kind of on
that 66-month cycle.
So when we took a look at it, we identified opportunities
to add that third sub in. We are by far the shortest on
submarines compared to any of our other battle force ones, and
so we took, you know, a little more risk than we did last year
by adding that into the plan.
As you know, we funded that all in this first year, which
means it will deliver out a little bit differently than the
ships in the block-buy contract. But we are comfortable we can
include that and feather it in with deliveries to try and--you
know, our goal is to do everything we can to not get caught up
in the bathtub that is facing us. This is one of the components
of that strategy.
Mr. Courtney. Okay.
Admiral Merz. Yes, sir. The Virginia-class program--as a
matter of fact, the entire submarine production program is also
a great example of what happens when you walk away from your
acquisition profiles like we did in the 1990s. So we have been
fighting very hard to get that program back on track. And no
matter what we do, even with a third submarine in 2020, it is
still going to be the furthest away from its validated
requirement for the next 20 years.
So we have been motivated to fit that in. I think the great
work with Secretary Geurts, with you, with the shipyard, we
gained the confidence to invest in it. We believe it is
executable. We know it is going to execute over a longer period
of time, but based on the requirement gap, it was the right
thing to do.
Mr. Courtney. And just to touch on the requirement gap,
again, the force structure assessment that came out at the end
of 2016, can you just state for the record the requirement that
was identified?
Admiral Merz. Yes, sir. The requirement was 66 submarines
from the force structure assessment. And that was up 13
submarines from the prior assessment.
Mr. Courtney. And the fleet today is roughly at around 50
or 51. Is that right?
Admiral Merz. Fifty-one. Yes, sir.
Mr. Courtney. So, again, just to sort of underline the
point that you just made and Secretary Geurts made, is that
that sort of delta is actually the widest of any of the Navy's
platforms within its fleet. Is that correct?
Admiral Merz. Yes, sir. The SSNs [attack submarines] and
the CVNs [aircraft carriers] will take the longest to reach the
requirement.
Mr. Courtney. Right.
So one last question is, again, some of the reporting since
the budget came out--and, Mr. Geurts, you sort of touched on
this--is that the funding is a little different than in the
block contract model that has been, you know, successful,
certainly, you know, going back to the mid-2000s.
So the way this funding works is, again, we are going to
fund the full cost in this budget. Is that correct?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. Our request is for the full
funding.
Normally, if it was part of the block-buy, it would have
been included with the economic order quantity and with some
advance procurement. The challenge was, we have already set up
that economic order quantity for the 10-ship block-buy. And so
this one, by design, will have to be a little bit different, in
that we won't have the benefit of the economic order quantity
and we will fund it all together in one fiscal year.
Mr. Courtney. So the narrative that somehow that is going
to, you know, be not able to execute, because people are
looking at it in the lens of it is just all going to happen in
2020, I mean, the fact of the matter is the ship is really a
2023 ship. Is that correct?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. If you were to compare it that
way, again, it will be different by design, because we don't
have the normal economic order quantity and advance
procurement. And because of that, we put it all in one fiscal
year.
It will execute. I mean, the challenge for us is finding
the right spot in the production cycle. And our sense right
now, it will look about as a 2023 ship.
The other thing that is important--and, last year, when we
talked about it--is keeping in mind Columbia coming along and
making sure, you know, as we looked at it, by loading it now,
it gives us the most time to figure out how to use that
efficiently as a risk-reduction element for Columbia--i.e., we
can get some of the additional workforce trained up, get some
more of the supplier base, and get some of the supplier builds
out of the way before Columbia gets here.
So we are working to put all of those together. Our
analysis that year wasn't mature enough to commit to that. This
year, we felt more comfortable, recognizing both the state of
the program and the urgency of the requirement.
Mr. Courtney. And Admiral Merz, you are comfortable, again,
with the industrial base capacity?
Admiral Merz. Yes, sir.
Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you.
With that, I will yield to the ranking member, Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank the witnesses for joining us today.
Secretary Geurts, I want to begin with you. A couple weeks
ago, we were actually at Newport News Shipbuilding. We were on
board the USS Gerald R. Ford. What an amazing ship. What
absolutely fantastic capability. As you know, it is there for
maintenance availability, for post-shakedown work that needs to
be done.
As I talked to the shipyard workers there, they had
concerns about the timeframes regarding post-shakedown
availability. And we know that there is work going on
engineering systems and going on the advanced weapons
elevators.
So I wanted to get from your standpoint, where are we in
relation to scheduled time for the ship to be available to the
fleet?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. So, as you recall, we had that
schedule as of 12-month availability, where we were going to
both complete some nuclear propulsion work on a plant, do some
more of the ship alts, and then finish up the elevators. Right
now, my current estimate is that is going to be an October
delivery, vice July, so about a 3-month delay.
All three of those causal factors--making the adjustments
to the nuclear power plant we noted during sea trials, fitting
in all of the post-shakedown availability workload, and
finishing up the elevators--they are all trending about the
same time. And so October right now is our best estimate.
The fleet has been notified of that. They are working that
into their train-up cycle afterwards.
Mr. Wittman. Okay. So you are confident that you will meet
the October timeframe?
Secretary Geurts. With the information I have right now,
sir, that is where we are sitting right now.
Mr. Wittman. Gotcha.
Secretary Geurts. Obviously, we would have liked to have
gotten out in July.
Mr. Wittman. Yeah.
Secretary Geurts. That was with our plan. I am never happy
delivering a ship back to the fleet late.
Mr. Wittman. Yeah.
Secretary Geurts. And so we have all hands on deck working
on that. But that is where I see things right now.
Mr. Wittman. Okay. Very good.
Vice Admiral Merz, I am going to start with you. I am just
going to ask a series of questions. And I would just, in the
sake of time, because I want to make sure we get to our other
committee members, I would just ask you if you will just answer
with a yes or no. I want to culminate with trying to get a
little more deep dive on information.
But I want to ask you, can you confirm that the latest
force structure assessment requires 12 aircraft carriers?
Admiral Merz. The latest of 2016 force structure assessment
still is a 12-carrier requirement.
Mr. Wittman. Okay. Can you confirm that this force
structure requirement supports combatant commanders--or, excuse
me, additional carriers available during potential times of
conflict?
Admiral Merz. So the actual--those numbers are actually
sensitive.
Mr. Wittman. Gotcha. Gotcha.
Admiral Merz. So we can talk about that in a classified
forum. But, yes, that 12-carrier requirement is based on the
force generation model that is in place now.
Mr. Wittman. Gotcha.
And, finally, do you believe that the carrier today is more
survivable than it has been in the past 70 years since we began
to deploy aircraft carriers?
Admiral Merz. With absolutely no doubt.
Mr. Wittman. Gotcha.
Secretary Geurts, does the 2030 shipbuilding plan indicate
that we will have nine carriers in 2027?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir, it does.
Mr. Wittman. Okay. If the Navy force structure assessment
doesn't support this reduction in aircraft carriers and that
they are more survivable and lethal than they have been in
history, it seems to me to be a counter as to why we are
finding ourselves on a path to go to nine with early retirement
of the Truman, when it seems to be running counter to what our
combatant commanders say, what the force structure assessment
says we need, with the lethality and capability that that
platform provides to us.
And why, then, would we retire the Truman 25 years early in
relation to the demands that we see around us and with our
adversaries building carriers at a pretty brisk pace?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. I will start on that and ask
Admiral Merz if he wants to join in.
When we look at it, you know, we are all in on the Ford
carrier and moving to that carrier as fast as we can. It has
increased survivability. It has increased capability. It will
allow us to fly the air wing of the future. And so, you know,
the first thing you saw us do just prior to the budget release
was award that two-carrier buy to solidify that production
line, get that moving.
Then we looked at how are we going to provide--you know,
what are our options to provide fires and compete at that kind
of future conflict, which led to some tough choices. One of
those was to retire that ship early in favor for looking at
other technologies, other larger cost-imposing strategies as we
look at the competitive landscape.
Tough decision. We tried to do it early enough so that we
could have a robust discussion about it, given the weight of
that decision. And so, while it doesn't have a huge budget
swing in the 2020 budget, it does impact the out-year budgets,
where we are looking to transform the Navy and integrate some
of the newer capabilities into the Navy of the future.
Mr. Wittman. Very good.
Admiral Merz.
Admiral Merz. Yes, sir. So the Truman decision was not a
warfighting decision; it was more of an investment decision.
We know, the signals are clear, we have to move on to
alternate investments, distributed lethality, cost-imposing
measures. When we were directed to do the studies in the same
NDAA 2016 that the RFSA [Ready for Sea Assessments] supported,
it directed us to move out on future force architectures. And
every study since then has validated the need to move on to
these other capabilities.
The effect of Truman will be felt in about 2027 to 2029,
which it would have come out of the yard. So the initial
question on force generation, if we do nothing between now and
then, yes, it will affect the force generation model.
The way we have structured this, the investments we are
going after, we will continue to study it. We will continue to
experiment with it. We elected to make this bold decision
early. Every year counts. We could have waited. We decided that
we didn't want to lose that year to figure out which direction
we want to go with these alternate investments.
So this is about distributed lethality to complement the
force, not to replace the force.
Mr. Wittman. Uh-huh. Do these independent studies also
support a 12-carrier force structure?
Admiral Merz. These independent studies supported a larger
Navy. So, if you remember, we had RFSA plus the other 3, so
there was some degree between roughly 350 and 400 ships of
varying mixes. I don't recall if anyone went below 12.
Regardless, we went with our assessment of 12 carriers, and
that is still the requirement. And our commitment to that is
the Ford class.
Mr. Wittman. Very good.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you.
And now we will turn to Mrs. Luria, the vice chair.
Mrs. Luria. Well, thank you.
And I am going to continue along the same line of
questioning about the aircraft carrier. So you did acknowledge
that the current law requires us to have 11 operational
aircraft carriers. What we didn't touch on is the air wing. So
it requires us to maintain nine operational air wings through
October 1 of 2025. And then, after that point, we should
maintain 10.
Is that correct, Mr. Geurts?
Secretary Geurts. I believe so. Bill, any comment on that?
Admiral Merz. Yes, ma'am. There are actually a couple
legislation directions out there. One is the 9 now and then to
have 10 by 2025 or----
Mrs. Luria. Okay. So, I mean, I just still am really
baffled at how the Navy can submit a budget that decommissions
the Harry S. Truman halfway through their life cycle. And,
moreover, the 30-year shipbuilding plan from 2025 on has no
more than 10 operational carriers, and sometimes it only has 9.
And so I am really confused as to your choices in funding
in the budget, because I believe that any budget that the
executive branch submits has to start with the things that are
mandated by Congress to be fully funded. And it seems as
though, you know, you are coming before Congress and this could
be some sort of shell game, where, you know, you request to not
fund the Truman, but you are looking for unmanned surface
vessels?
I mean, I don't think that the President is going to turn
to the Secretary of Defense and say, ``Where are my unmanned
surface vessels?'' when a conflict breaks out in the world.
They are going to turn and ask, ``Where are my aircraft
carriers?''
And so we base this off of a force structure assessment
that tells us, you know, we need the 11 carriers. And if we
look back at what Captain Burke, the N43 [Director, Fleet
Readiness], said at a hearing like this several years ago, he
said, the cheapest ship we have out there is the ship we
already have. We just have to take care of that ship, make sure
it lasts for its full expected service life. And so that is
step number one.
So I just can't even comprehend the thought process that we
are, quote/unquote, saving money by decommissioning a ship
halfway through its life. If you look at the amortized cost of
this ship over 25 years versus 50 years, we have really sunk a
lot of taxpayer money into an asset that we are not going to
fully utilize.
So how do you explain that?
Admiral Merz. Yes, ma'am. So, certainly, in isolation,
divesting at 50 percent of the service life is a tough
comprehensive investment strategy. But when you put it in the
context of the threat factors, the evolution of the Navy, the
way we operate as a forward-deployed Navy, the need to be more
distributed----
Mrs. Luria. Well, I would stop there. Operate as a forward-
deployed Navy. So we go into the OFRP [Optimized Fleet Response
Plan], and now, instead of generating forces that are deployed
and on station, we are generating surge capability.
We have met with several combatant commanders recently. I
asked CENTCOM [U.S. Central Command] if he got his required
requested carrier presence. Although he didn't give me an exact
number, I know it is about one-fifth of what he requests. I
asked the commander of EUCOM [U.S. European Command] the same
thing. He said he gets less than half of what he requests.
So, you know, in an unclassified setting we can't get any
more into the numbers than that, but I can tell you that I
personally know that we are not meeting that forward-deployed
presence. So how can you justify further reducing the number of
carriers?
Admiral Merz. Yes, ma'am. So we are not meeting the
presence in a lot of ship lines. You can have the same
discussion with the destroyers, with the submarines, with the
aircraft carriers. So what we are compelled to do is to find
alternate investments to improve the lethality, to distribute
the nature in the way we operate, the survivability, the cost-
imposing effects, and if it comes to it, a more attritable
force.
Mrs. Luria. So do you attribute that to our choice to go to
the OFRP, the Optimized Fleet Response Plan?
Because, before, we were getting 6 out of roughly every 24
months deployed. We would go to 6 out of 36 months deployed.
That gets us 17 percent on-station time versus roughly 25
percent on-station time. If you do the math backwards and you
figure out how many ships we need, instead of 355, we would
need 251 if we were on station 25 percent of the time.
So, you know, the Navy came to Congress, they briefed this
OFRP plan, but there was really no price tag or operational
impact associated with that. So are you looking at whether that
is effectively generating the forces that we need?
Admiral Merz. Yes, ma'am. We look at that all the time.
So the OFRP is a supply-based model based on the force
structure that we have. The requirements are driven by the
OPLANs [operations plans] and the actual combat operations that
we are going to have to surge when we need them. So, you know,
there is a seeming disconnect between the peacetime rotation of
the forces versus what we can surge in combat, which drives the
actual requirement.
Mrs. Luria. So, you know, I had sat down with the CNO
[Chief of Naval Operations] recently to have this discussion,
and I am still very interested in and I will request again the
analysis as to how you have come up with the 355-ship Navy as
the appropriate size. Is it the most limiting OPLAN? Is it
based off combatant commander requirements?
So, you know, as part of this hearing, I would still like
to follow up and understand how you came to that calculation.
I yield my time.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 65.]
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Congresswoman.
And next up is Mr. Bergman.
Mr. Bergman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you all for being here today.
Numbers matters, but lethality matters more. And as we--I
know I am telling you what you already know, because we are
counting on you to be honest brokers when it comes to being
forward deployed as a Navy and Marine Corps but lethal in such
a way that, in a best-case scenario, any adversary would choose
not to fight us because they know it would be a bad outcome for
them.
So, you know, having said that, you know, I have several
questions here, but let's start with something, you know, near
and dear to my heart. We used to call it Gator Navy and Brown
Water Navy, and whatever we call it now, the bottom line is we
were Marines being hauled or not hauled, that sort of thing.
You know you are getting old when the ship you were deployed on
to Vietnam is now a diving reef off Hawaii.
But, anyway, having said that, General Berger, the
President's budget does not include a request for any large-
deck amphibs. Do you think that our legacy forces can operate
in a contested environment? Are there improvements that need to
be made? Does the Navy have sufficient capacity to support our
Marine Corps operations?
General Berger. Thank you, sir.
The two parts of that, as you outline, are capacity, the
number, and the capability of the ships themselves. Over the
FYDP in this budget, there are three amphibs that will be
procured. The requirement for the Navy for the Nation remains
38 based on the 2016 force structure assessment. Now, there is
an ongoing force structure assessment now that I think will be
done by the end of the year, which we will see how that plays
out; but right now it is 38.
And the second part of the 38 is not just the aggregate
number but the breakdown of the types of ships, centered on the
big-deck amphibs. The bottom line on more modern ships are, for
us, they give us the capability that the legacy older ships--
you can't retrofit back into them. And it begins with command
and control systems and the ability to defend the ship, and an
offensive arm as well.
So all of them, to a degree, you can put in the Wasps, you
can put in the Essex, but you really need the new ships in all
type/model/series that give us another level of capability.
Mr. Bergman. Okay. So you need the survivability of the new
capability the ships bring.
General Berger. Yes, sir, we do.
Mr. Bergman. I understand that the Marine Corps has also
done extensive studies and analysis on the expeditionary
advanced base operations [EABO]. This concept relies heavily on
the ability to seize, establish, and operate on widely
dispersed bases.
Since a critical function for the logistics network will be
to sustain these bases, do you feel that the CH-53 Kilo gives
you much more capacity and capability over the legacy CH-53
Echo or any other logistical system to support the EABO
concept?
General Berger. Sir, I do. I think to--and we are learning
about expeditionary advanced base operations as we go. This is
a large part of our exercises and experimentation. We are going
to need every bit of vertical lift and surface connector that
we have. Absolutely, the Kilo gives us range and payload that
the Echo does not. And it is going to give us a level of
reliability that you would expect in a new aircraft as well.
Mr. Bergman. So, as you talk about that, I mean, obviously,
you have commanded I MEF [I Marine Expeditionary Force], you
have commanded MARFORPAC [Marine Corps Forces, Pacific], any
additional insight on how the force struggles with the CH-53
Echo readiness, the availability now? Because you now only have
a force of, what, 142 53 Echos against the requirement for 200
to 220 53 Kilos. Any thoughts on where the mismatch is in here,
where the gap is?
General Berger. I think last, probably, spring or early
summertime, our aviation department looked into what got us to
where we are and made some significant changes in the 53E reset
program. And like all reset programs, it is not an overnight
venture, but over a 6-month period we are seeing a climb back
up in the 53 Echo readiness from reset program.
And a part of that was a really brilliant move to move
together not just the work that you would normally do in a
depot, but after the depot you would return it back to the
squadron, and then they would have to do more work on the work
that the depot wasn't--it wasn't depot-level work. So we merged
them together as part of the reset program, and it has really
benefited us.
Mr. Bergman. Okay. Well, thank you.
And I see my time has expired. Thank you very much to all
of you for your continued service.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Bergman.
Next up is Mr. Golden.
Mr. Golden. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for being here, gentlemen.
You know, I am pleased to see that the Navy is pursuing its
plan for a fleet of 355 ships, but I do want to note with
concern that the administration might not be investing
sufficient resources in our shipyards to support an expansion,
which will require sustained attention and support not only to
the fleet but to fleet maintenance over a period of many years.
I specifically want to note that the Navy 2020 shipbuilding
plan calls for aggressive growth and service select extensions
of current vessels. At the same time, in December, a GAO
[Government Accountability Office] report noted that the Navy
has been unable to complete ship and submarine maintenance on
time, resulting in continuing scheduling delays that reduce
time for training and operations--something we have talked
about quite a bit already in this Congress--and also creating
costly inefficiencies in a resource-constrained environment.
The report elaborated that facility and equipment
limitations at shipyards resulted in significant maintenance
delays and that shipyards would be unable to support an
estimated one-third of maintenance periods planned over the
next 23 years. I think this is particularly important given
your plan of getting to a Navy of 355 ships.
So I wanted to, for whichever of you you feel is most
appropriate to take the question, please describe what steps
you feel are necessary to ensure that our shipyards are
adequately resourced to provide the support and maintenance
that we need for a larger fleet but also to support an increase
in vessels undergoing service-life extensions.
Secretary Geurts. Yeah. Thank you, sir. I will start out
with that.
And as you appropriately note, you know, constructing ships
is important; maintaining them is critical and really leads to
our warfighting capability today. And so we are tackling that,
I would say, in two or three different lines of activity, and I
would be happy to sit down with you to go through those in some
more detail as time allows.
For the public yards, we have accelerated hiring of the
public shipyard workforce. We have done that a year early, so
we are now at our full strength there. We are now attacking the
infrastructure. I think the average age of our 1,300 buildings
in the shipyard is 62 years old. Particularly problematic are
the dry docks.
So, in the public yards, we are doing three things:
replacing and revitalizing the dry docks which are aging and
failing. We are now looking at restructuring the yard for
efficiency. We think we can get 65 percent improvement in cycle
time just by resequencing where the work is occurring on those
yards in terms of that. And then the third piece is
recapitalizing the equipment. That is on the public yard.
On the private yard, a whole host of initiatives, mostly
for the surface side, so that we can achieve that.
And, finally, we have documented that in the first years--
first time we have ever done a 30-year maintenance plan. And so
it is a generation-one product. We will continue to improve
that to ensure we are putting a focus on it.
Mr. Golden. Thank you. Clearly, this is really important
both for submarines and large surface combatant ships like the
DDG 51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, which I know is a big
part of your plan on how you are going to get to 355 sooner.
You know, I just want to make note for the record, you
know, having sat through our earlier full committee hearing and
not having had the opportunity to ask questions--this is not
directed to any of the three of you--that I want to reiterate
my concerns, shared by many of my colleagues here in the House
and the Senate, that funds that we have appropriated for our
shipyards for that maintenance upgrades and ensure that they
are able to do that work, expand this fleet, and do those
service-life extensions is potentially at risk and being raided
for purposes that have nothing to do with our naval
capabilities and ability to deal with growing threats from
China and Russia. Just noting my opposition and real concern
about that and to the health of our national security as a
result.
I also wanted to ask--seeing in your testimony that you
noted that the Flight III DDG 51 vessels are going to feature
enhanced integrated air and missile defense, which is going to
help the Navy meet the growing ballistic missile threat by
improving radar sensitivity and enabling longer-range detection
of increasingly complex threats.
To the extent that you can, whoever wants to take this
question, could you elaborate on how these systems on the
upcoming DDG 51s aid the surface fleet in addressing the
threats posed by improved ballistic missile capabilities with
China and Russia?
Admiral Merz. Yes, sir. If I may, I will kind of address
your previous question just for a second here. You mentioned
aggressive growth. So the SSN, third DDG, both those are
aggressive growth options. But the most important imperative in
any of this--and it gives me an opportunity to thank the
committee--is get that budget approved on time. And we saw the
magic of a detailed shipbuilding plan--long horizon, steady
funding, and the ability to plan, not just plan shipbuilding
but plan maintenance, the enablers, the recruiting, everything
that goes behind it.
As far as the DDG 51, I think you are referring to the
Flight III DDG. From where we sit, it is the most powerful
warship on the planet. It is going to have the best of
everything we have. We are even expanding the facilities to
make it an air warfare command ship. It will be dual role. I
can't get into all the details, but it will be able to do air
defense and ballistic missile defense at the same time. So a
very powerful addition to the ship.
They start entering the fleet at fiscal year 2023, and then
DDG Flight III is all the way through. We are very much looking
forward to getting that ship in the fleet.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Golden.
And next up is Mr. Gallagher.
Mr. Gallagher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Vice Admiral Merz, this time last year, I believe, you
testified before the subcommittee that the Navy would be taking
a fresh look at the December 2016 force structure assessment
due to changes that were coming out of the National Defense
Strategy. And you said at the time that, quote, ``We have to
move out aggressively as we go forward.''
Then in September you again announced that the Navy would
be conducting a new FSA along with an interim assessment that I
believe is due sometime in 2019.
Given the urgency that you rightly noted last March before
this committee, can you walk me through what progress has
happened on the new FSA between March and September of last
year?
Admiral Merz. Yes, sir. So this FSA that is coming up, it
turns out, has a lot more moving parts than the previous FSA.
Most notably, our shift in our employment of the force under
this distributed maritime operations, which really kind of gets
to one of your interest items on the distributed logistics that
have to support that type of force, which pulls in a lot of
capabilities into the smaller shipyards on what we are going to
be able to do going forward. So all this has to feed back into
the FSA.
We had some four-star and three-star turnovers that
influenced the OPLANs and the planning scenarios. All those
have to be accounted for into the FSA.
I think it is always important to remind everybody that the
FSA tends to service two, three, or four budget cycles. That is
typically reflective of, you know, just the ability of the
shipbuilding industry to respond to an FSA. It typically does
not tell us things like we don't need submarines anymore or we
don't need DDGs or frigates. It is more of a quantity-based
look at what we already have on how you would fight the
conflicts today.
We are expecting a pretty hard look at the mix of ships
this year. We know we are heavy on large surface combatants. We
would like to adjust that to a more appropriate mix, especially
with the lethality we are seeing coming along with the new
frigate. All shipyards have agreed that they can give us the
lethality we need.
I mentioned the distributed logistics. We also discussed,
if you recall, last year, the medical support to our fleet,
which is very limited by two hospital support ships when you
start talking about a distributed maritime operation.
All these requirements are still percolating along. So we
expect some growth in a lot of these areas, and that will all
be reflected on how this FSA actually views the force.
Mr. Gallagher. So do you anticipate that when the FSA is
signed and delivered that the fleet size requirement will
remain constant at 355?
Admiral Merz. I don't know if it will remain constant. I
would find it highly unlikely to come over the lower number,
based on the growing threat challenge.
Mr. Gallagher. Yeah. And given the anticipated shift or
sort of emphasizing things below the level of large surface
combatants, would you anticipate any change to the requirement
for small surface combatants at 52?
Admiral Merz. I would expect that number to change.
Mr. Gallagher. Interesting. Upward or downward? I would
assume upward, given what you said.
Admiral Merz. I suspect it would go up.
Mr. Gallagher. And, General Berger, I don't want the Marine
Corps to get off easy today. So I understand that the Marine
Corps is developing currently a long-range direct fires
capability that could provide the Marine Corps with a mobile
antiship capability.
What would that mean for the ability of the Navy and Marine
Corps team to counter maritime threats and implement the NDS
[National Defense Strategy], especially as it relates to the
expeditionary advanced base concept?
General Berger. Under the distributed maritime operations
construct on top and the Marine operating construct on top,
underneath that it is expeditionary advanced base operations
the way you described it, which is a very distributed way of
using the naval expeditionary forces.
Heretofore, the amphibious ships were largely protected by
surrounding ships around them. In a distributed manner, you
want as much lethality and survivability on every craft as you
can get. So, to your point, the ability to put longer-range, if
not organic then perhaps containerized weapon systems on an
amphib ship in an offensive manner just complements the rest of
the picture. Because in a sea control and sea denial sort of
scheme, you would like for the forces that are at expeditionary
advanced bases not just to refuel, rearm, but also to reach out
and pose a threat.
Mr. Gallagher. Uh-huh. Quickly, how much are you spending
on F-35B/C and the CH-53K versus amphibious ships?
General Berger. I don't have that number off the top of my
head, sir, but if I could take that for the record, I will make
sure I get the info to you.
Mr. Gallagher. Okay. I think the quick math looks like $94
billion on those two short-range expensive platforms versus $76
billion on ships. But, yeah, please take that for the record,
and would love to follow back up with you.
I am out of time.
General Berger. Sure.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 65.]
Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you, Mr. Gallagher.
Mr. Langevin.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, I want to thank you for your testimony and thank
you for your service to the country.
So I just want to express my appreciation to the Department
and recognize the critical need for the third Virginia-class
submarine in the fiscal year 2020 budget request.
And with regards to Columbia class, if I could just touch
on this, can you provide us with an update right now on the
common missile compartment project they are working on with the
United Kingdom [U.K.]? And how is this strategic partnership
being leveraged? And I would like to know what best practices
we are learning as you work with one of our closest allies.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. Obviously, our work with the
U.K., across the board but in particular in this mission area,
is critical and one of our most trusted and longest
relationships. And so we continue on Columbia and with their
associated project. I have a very close relationship. We are
using common hardware, where we are, you know, developing the
missile tubes, producing missile tubes, shipping them over, and
the compartment, to help them de-risk their initial builds
while they build up some similar capability.
We have an absolutely close technical relationship. And as
we work through some of the issues we have seen on early
missile tube builds on the welds, kept them closely informed so
they can look for the similar thing on any of their activities.
I would also say best practice has been, you know, this
really frank dialogue and then going after high-risk parts of a
program like the Columbia very early. And, yes, we found some
issues in those missile tubes. Even finding those issues and
doing a rework, we still have at least 7 months of margin to
schedule. And so that, I would say, best practice of finding
the most risky elements of a program, staging those well before
you get into actual construction is paying great dividends.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
On another topic, I am concerned about the resilience of
Navy and Marine Corps bases, in particular, due to the effects
of climate change and rising sea levels. We know that--and not
getting into the reasons why climate change is happening, but
let's just look at the fact that it is happening and it is
self-evident. Last year, Camp Lejeune was heavily damaged by a
major storm. And I am concerned that the Navy and Marine Corps
are not considering resiliency in their installation master
plans.
So I want to ask, you know, what are the investments that
you are making today in order to mitigate risk that we still
face in the short, medium, and the long term to our CONUS
[continental United States] and OCONUS [outside continental
United States] installations? And how are you evaluating those
risks as they evolve?
Secretary Geurts. Sir, maybe I will give a kind of brief
sense of it and then turn it over to the two gentlemen here for
the service-specific.
But I think your strategic view of how do we build
resiliency to climate, to cyber, to counter-UAS [unmanned
aerial system], to all the sorts of things is absolutely
critical, because protecting a garrison is part of protecting
the force. It is not a luxury we can just assume, that the
garrison will be, you know, immune to all the different types
of threats to it, you know, weather and climate being one of
them.
So I would say that is something, at the Department, we are
looking across the board, not just at the climate. But I will
turn it over to Admiral Merz and General Berger for any
thoughts they may have.
Admiral Merz. Yes, sir. So I certainly agree with Admiral
Davidson's testimony from INDOPACOM [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command]
of climate change and the effect it is having not just on land
but also at sea. And we are certainly seeing the effects of
that at home.
Unfortunately, I will tell you that most of our investment
is probably in repair and recovery from the damage. But that
has been the wake-up call as we recalculate our MILCON
[military construction] investments as we go forward.
General Berger. And, sir, I think it won't be any surprises
for the Marine Corps either. The damage to the buildings at
Camp Lejeune that you note, sir, were largely from the
buildings that were 40 to 50 years old. The newer buildings, in
the 2000s and 2010s, all fared very well. So part of it
certainly is the location; part of it is the design of the
buildings themselves.
But I don't think there are any misperceptions between the
Navy and Marine Corps about the need to address, whether it is
MILCON or the location of a base, the effects of climate change
and other factors. If you don't, then the risk, as you point
out, sir, is pretty high.
Mr. Langevin. We are just going to be throwing good money
after bad if we are repairing bases or building new bases and
not factoring in the changing weather patterns and seriousness
of climate change. So that has to be a forethought and primary
concern going forward. Again, we are going to be throwing good
money after bad.
So my time has expired. I have an additional question I
will ask for the record, but thank you for your testimony.
I yield back.
Mr. Courtney. All right. Thank you, Mr. Langevin.
Mr. Byrne.
Mr. Byrne. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, I was fascinated by the expenditure you proposed
on the medium and large unmanned vessels. I tried to do my
homework on this. This is a new thing for me. I do think it is
a good idea for the Navy to do this.
And I know before you go through the R&D [research and
development] it is hard to know a lot about the details of it,
but can you give me some sort of an understanding of what the
Navy's plan would be to transition from the R&D phase to actual
production?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. And, as you know, doing R&D and
figuring out exactly the capabilities we need is critical.
I would say what is a little bit different in these ships
versus a traditional ship is, largely, I think we can leverage
more traditional, conventional design versus having to redesign
a whole new ship. And so the real R&D is in a lot of the guts--
the autonomy, the decision making, how are we going to command
and control it, how we are going to do those things--and less
about what does the hull form look like. And, quite frankly, I
think we can build the ships at a reduced price because it
opens up a lot more shipyards to a lot more of designs they are
comfortable with right now.
And so we have, as you know, a lot of activity going on.
Our medium unmanned vessel did a transit to Pearl Harbor and
back autonomously. We learned a lot from that. We have a lot of
activity going on with the Special Capabilities Office. We have
done phase-one testing on the large unmanned surface vessel.
The really, I think, science we have to work out is the
level of autonomy, the level of command and control, the level
of protection we are going to need depending on the
capabilities we put on those ships.
As we work our way through that, I would anticipate going
in the future--right now we have all of those loaded in R&D
across the FYDP. My guess is we will probably in a future
budget year transition some of that to procurement as we
understand exactly when that cutover point is and where it
makes the most sense. I think we are still a couple years away
from that.
Mr. Byrne. And I can understand that. I just wanted to try
to get a little bit better understanding. I want to encourage
you in this. I think this is the future, in many respects, for
our Navy. I know there are some unknowns when you go into
something like this, but I think spending this money through
our R&D budget is a smart thing.
Admiral Merz, I want to talk to you about--I think I
understood what you were saying earlier. It looks like EPF 14
is going to be a medical transport ship. So do you see the Navy
going more in that direction with future production?
Admiral Merz. Yes, sir. So when we did the--we called it
the Common Adaptable Small Ship Study and we looked at all the
logistics--as a matter of fact, somewhere north of 11 different
mission sets we evaluated that would have to come online to
support the distributed maritime operations concept, medical
was a big piece of that.
We have funded to EPF 13. That will be the first emergency
medical transport. And then 14 is in the unfunded priority
list, ranking very high, you will notice, because we consider
that a warfighting capability, not just a medical support
capability.
So a preponderance of all those requirements were feeding
back into the FSA. We know we need to get out--like I said
earlier, the FSA doesn't really tell you what capabilities you
need. It kind of gives the efficacy of the ones that you have
projected forward.
We do the actual capability studies through, you know, a
very detailed process of analysis of alternatives, these
requirements and evaluation teams, and we come up with a
capability. We know we need this. How much of it we need long
term, the FSA will inform us on that, but we have to get
started. Very similar to the unmanned vessels that you cited
earlier.
I think while you were out we had the discussion about
every study we have done has told us we need to have these
capabilities. So we are shifting our investments, and we are
moving out on them.
Mr. Byrne. Good. Thank you.
And, finally, General Berger, some of the other members of
the committee have heard me say this before. I am not sure you
were here when I said it. I led the HASC [House Armed Services
Committee] CODEL [congressional delegation] out to RIMPAC [Rim
of the Pacific Exercise] last summer. It was a great trip. We
were supposed to go on one of our amphibs, but one of our
amphibs had a problem, so we went on an Australian amphib. It
was great. Loved being with the Aussies. They were great hosts.
But I was kind of disappointed we didn't go on one of ours.
So I just want to register my concern and echo General
Bergman. I want to make sure we have enough amphibs to meet the
mission requirements that we have placed upon you. And if there
is anything we need to do to help you get to that point, please
let me know. I would like to be supportive of that.
General Berger. Sir, I remember seeing you out there. It
was a pretty amazing show----
Mr. Byrne. Yeah.
General Berger [continuing]. And demonstration of kind of
all the capabilities in the Pacific.
I think to your point, sir, the capacity part of 30-A we
discussed earlier. But one lens that we use, perhaps useful to
look through.
In terms of how useful are amphibs in the world we live in
now and the world we are going into, I think you can boil it
down into three areas. One is the steady-state operations
around the world. That is deterrence and ability to react.
Second, a global cost imposition strategy if we are forced to
fight. And, third, the ability to project the force from the
sea and sustain that force from the sea if you are told to do
so. Nothing else does that that I have seen so far other than
an amphibious force.
Mr. Byrne. Thank you, gentlemen.
I yield back.
Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you, Mr. Byrne.
Next up is Mr. Cisneros.
Mr. Cisneros. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here this
afternoon.
Secretary Geurts, the Navy, I believe, currently has 289
ships, and we have a goal of getting to 355. Through testimony
we have had in earlier weeks about manning issues on Navy
ships, the Navy has a shortfall of 6,500 people. If we are
going to get to 355 ships, what are we doing to get more
sailors? Ships need sailors. How are we going to be able to man
these ships?
Secretary Geurts. Yeah, I will maybe start with that and
ask Admiral Merz to chime in.
One of the things you have noticed in the shipbuilding plan
over the last two cycles is broadening out from more than just
the construction of ships and starting to look at both the cost
to maintain them and the people to man them and be efficient in
there. And that is something we are going to have to
continually go after. You are seeing some manning changes in
this year's budget. We still have work to go.
Part of the other thing Admiral Merz and I worked on very
closely in this year's shipbuilding plan is smoothing the ramp.
Before, it was a little bit jumpy, and that makes a hard
manpower issue almost impossible to work, because you can't
work the transition between platforms.
And so we are doing all we can to be as efficient as we
can, to take manning into account as we transition to this 355
Navy. We still have work to go on overall manning.
And, Bill, if you want to add anything.
Admiral Merz. Yes, sir. Just real quickly, we are probably
as equally proud of smoothing that ramp than the acceleration
by 20 years, because it makes everything more executable.
Manpower is a funny thing. You touch the spigot; you have
to wait around a couple years to see if you got the desired
effect. This allows you to touch the spigot less frequently
when you have a--it literally is a continuous ramp to 355.
Last year's shipbuilding plan highlighted a lot of
historical examples of the damage of a boom-bust cycle of the
shipbuilding plan. We revisited that history a little more in
this shipbuilding plan, but we have already seen the effect of
continuous funding over the cycle starting to naturally smooth
out the ramps. And then with the service-life extensions, we
are able to create the macro ramp up to 355 gradually and
persistently. So the enabling accounts are going to be in a
much better predictive posture to support the 355.
Mr. Cisneros. And how exactly are we going to ramp that up?
I mean, is it just more recruiters? Bigger bonuses?
Admiral Merz. Sir, I would tell you and Admiral Burke would
tell you that we have already ramped up. Now it is just staying
on that ramp between now and the predictive approach to 355 in
2034.
Mr. Cisneros. Okay.
Second question. In testimony earlier today during a full
hearing, Secretary Shanahan mentioned the decision to retire
the Truman early could be revisited.
It was my understanding that retiring the Truman wasn't
something that the Navy wanted to do. And I know from earlier
testimony, as well, from some of the commanders that that is
not something they want. They want carriers out there. They
want to be able to have that show of force.
What would it take to revisit that and to basically change
that decision so that we keep the USS Truman?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. The Navy fully supports the
President's budget and the plan we brought over here. And,
again, as we talked about, some pretty hard decisions in terms
of trading off existing capability versus pivoting to some new
capability.
Having said that, the real effort to buy the long-lead
parts and all the things we need for the refueling wouldn't
start until next year. And so we have this year to continue
those analyses, continue the debate, and understand whether
that technological is going to have merit in terms of that
transition versus the capability we currently have with the
Truman.
Mr. Cisneros. All right.
I yield back my time.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Cisneros.
And now up is Mr. Moulton.
Mr. Moulton. Gentlemen, thank you very much for being here
today.
Admiral, I would like to ask you about the Navy FSA.
Keeping in mind that the Navy will complete another FSA
sometime this year, I will use the 355 number that has been
around for the last year or so.
Why have we not included USVs [unmanned surface vehicles]
and UUVs [unmanned underwater vehicles] in our force structure
analysis? In other words, why are we just looking at the
traditional ships of the United States Navy rather than
unmanned systems, which are clearly going to be such an
important part of future warfare?
Admiral Merz. Yes, sir. We discussed earlier about the
added complexity to this next FSA, and that is one of them. We
are going to account for these capabilities.
The threat vectors have already told us we need to do these
things. The FSA will give us more clarity on how many of them
ultimately we are going to need. And it is not just the FSA. We
have done, starting with the three directed studies by Congress
in the authorization act of 2016, and every study since then,
has identified these capabilities as being force enablers that
complement the battle force.
We have already rolled them into war games. We have done
some limited real-world operations with them, including the
fight to Hawaii of our unmanned surface vessel. So they are
very much a part of the calculus now in this upcoming FSA, and
you are going to see a requirement coming out for them.
Mr. Moulton. So what is the--I mean, obviously, this is a
new weapons system that is just coming online. What do you
anticipate to be the tradeoff between unmanned ships, whether
they be surface or underwater, and the traditional ships that
you have in the Navy?
Admiral Merz. Sir, one of the persistent questions are when
are these things going to start replacing battle force ships.
So this is where we have to be very pragmatic on our approach.
Yes, we are moving out very aggressively on developing the
capability. And, yes, we are probably pumping the brakes a
little bit on when these things are actually going to replace
ships until we get them out there, test them, and see what they
can do. Can they get through a typhoon? Is the policy going to
allow us to use them? Separating humans from weapons--a lot of
things have to come in line before we start counting them as
battle force ships.
So right now we are looking at them as enablers. As we
field them and use them and better insight on their true
capability they bring, very evidence-based like----
Mr. Moulton. That is a totally reasonable answer, and, I
mean, I don't disagree with it in principle. But, I mean, how
soon are the Chinese integrating these types of ships into
their Navy?
Admiral Merz. I can't really comment on that. That is an
intel assessment. I know they are working on it as well. But
whether we integrate them or use them as adjunct enablers, the
capability is still coming online.
Mr. Moulton. I mean, just as--you know, a RAND report on
Chinese drones released in 2017 found that Beijing is funding
at least 15 different university research programs into
unmanned undersea and surface vehicles, with a particular
emphasis on UUV projects. Russia has begun sea trials of the
long-range UUV capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. In
October 2016, the U.K. and France announced that they had
awarded a $164 million contract to a group of European defense
firms to develop a UUV for mine countermeasures.
This year's request for small and medium UUVs is $40
million. Explain how we are going to compete, with such an
incredibly small investment.
Admiral Merz. Well, this year's investment is actually
about $450 million, and we have $3.7 billion in the FYDP. So
this is kind of----
Mr. Moulton. Okay. So maybe I have the wrong number. It is
$450 million.
Admiral Merz. This is the essence of, you know, why we are
shifting to these investments and the diversity of these
investments. A huge shift for us in this particular budget.
Mr. Moulton. So if this is a huge shift, then why are we
still fixated on this 1980s vision of a 355-ship Navy? I mean,
why does that number even have any relevance today if some of
these things are going to be coming on in the next few years,
long past the lifetime of the ships that we are building to
meet this 355 number?
Admiral Merz. Yes, sir. So we think it is completely
relevant. And I would probably have to get with you and walk
you through the analysis of how we construct the FSA and how
these capabilities will both enable and----
Mr. Moulton. But, I mean, you would agree that using a sort
of 1980s type of measure for the strength of the Navy is not
really relevant if you have different capabilities today. I
mean, it is not like we are talking about, you know, how many,
you know, square-rigged frigates that we need in the Navy.
Admiral Merz. I would agree if that is what we did, but we
use a much more current assessment model and wargaming and
experimentation model to determine the composition of the
battle force.
Mr. Moulton. Okay.
Secretary Geurts. Sir, if I could just add?
Mr. Moulton. Yes, please.
Secretary Geurts. If I could just add, you know, I would
say it is similar to aviation. I don't know if I view it as an
either/or. It is going to be an either/and. And when we have
this working right, both capabilities will complement each
other versus----
Mr. Moulton. No, look, I totally--I love either/and, and
you won't meet a service chief who doesn't love either/and. But
sometimes in budgeting you have to do either/or. And, you know,
these tradeoffs are what we have to get to the heart of with
this discussion.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir.
Mr. Moulton. Thank you.
Secretary Geurts. I think you saw the Navy make that hard
tradeoff by decommissioning the Truman early. And that was a
hard tradeoff we made in this budget cycle.
Mr. Moulton. Well, I would not be quick to disagree.
Thanks.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Moulton.
So, now that we have no votes ahead of us, you can't leave.
Sorry. And we are going to, I think, do a second round and,
again, welcome all the subcommittee members to join in.
I just had a couple quick follow-ons just, you know, from
the first run-through which I just wanted to go through
quickly, which is, again, we haven't really talked much about
the Fast Frigate Program. I just wanted you to confirm for the
record that program and planned contract award is proceeding on
schedule. Is that----
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. We released our draft RFP
[request for proposal] a few months early, and we are on it or
ahead of our schedule for the full RFP in the competition.
Mr. Courtney. And so the RFP is sometime in this calendar
year, 2019?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. We originally planned to draft
the RFP in June. We released that in March. So we are taking
all the inputs from our potential competitors, and we intend to
put the RFP and start the competition out this summer, well
ahead of our plan by the end of the fiscal year. That will
position us well to make that award next year and award the
first frigate as proposed in the 2020 budget.
Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you.
And so the unfunded priorities list came over, and one item
that sort of jumped off the page to our subcommittee was the
funding for the Boise and Hartford avails [maintenance
availabilities] are on the unfunded list.
Again, you know, there has been a lot of talk about, you
know, them being kind of in the queue for an awful long time.
Could you just sort of explain why that is showing up on that
list?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. And, you know, obviously,
submarine maintenance--we have talked about the criticality of
submarines. Submarine maintenance is something we are really
working on hard. We do not have all the capacity in the public
yards or the private yards to get after that, so it is not--
again, not an either/or. We need both of those working well
against this.
We have seen improvement on the public yard in terms of
reducing idle time and buying back maintenance stays. Right
now, we have two--actually, now, three subs that are in idle
time, awaiting to get in, Boise one of them.
The challenge with Boise has been delays we have seen with
the other submarines in the private yard maintenance. And,
quite frankly, we just can't get Boise in until we get the
current submarines in the docks at Newport News out.
That slipped Boise into 2020. We had planned to do it this
year. That slipped it into 2020. That occurred after the 2020
budget was put together. That is why it showed up on the
unfunded list.
We have a burn-down plan, in terms of months of idle time,
that we are driving to reduce that backlog by 2023 so we have
no ships with any idle time. That is our goal. We have a burn-
down plan to get there.
We are better than we were, but we are not where we need to
be yet, in terms of having ships with idle time--i.e., not
certified, waiting to get into maintenance. We have a lot of
improvement on maintenance delays on the back end but still
have some work to go there, particularly with our private yard
partners.
Mr. Courtney. And the Hartford? The USS Hartford also was
on that list.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. And, again, that is more of a
shortfall of--we have talked about having that one, again, go
to the private yards. Our original plan was not to have that in
the private yards. And so, similarly, unfortunately, those are
private yard--if we don't have it funded properly when we do
the budget year as a private yard avail, then that causes us to
have an unfunded requirement that we have to deal with.
Mr. Courtney. Okay. Thank you.
And, lastly, you know, regarding the funding for the third
sub, which we discussed earlier, I mean, if those funds are
deferred as a part of any final budget result, you know, does
that sort of put that at risk in terms of, again, trying to
find that sweet spot in 2023 that you described earlier?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. I mean, this is somewhat of a
unique time, because we can fold it in. As we get later in the
2020s, you start to run up against Columbia, causing problems
as we grow to Columbia.
And if I can go maybe circle back to the other issue, we
have seen some overruns on the private yard maintenance. Some
of the dollar adjustments you see in Boise was we had to slip
the availability. Some of the lesser dollars were more that we
have had overruns in the current availability, which are
slipping into 2020.
Mr. Courtney. Right. Thank you.
Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Lieutenant General Berger, I wanted to touch base with you
on some issues involving our amphibious fleet. And thanks for
the great work you are doing there at Marine Corps Combat
Development and Integration. I know lots of challenges, looking
what the future force will be and what the needs are there.
I want to look at where we are today. We are at 33 ships
going into 2020, as far as the components of amphibious ships
within the fleet. The requirement is at 38.
If you take a little bit deeper look under the hood, you
heard Representative Byrne's comments about one of our
amphibious ships not being available, so the issues of
maintenance and the readiness state of our amphibious ships
also becomes an issue.
If you look at a 30-year shipbuilding plan, you see no
large-deck amphibs there, as far as time-wise, in order to meet
that component of the requirement and where we would need to
be. And this year's budget request, we see no amphibious ship
request, no amphibious connectors.
So there is some concern about, you know, where are we
going to be with the necessary capability within the Navy for
our Marine Corps operations. And I wanted to get your idea and
your best professional military judgment.
Do you believe the current track will impact the Marine
Corps' capability of doing amphibious expeditionary operations
in a contested environment?
That, I think, is going to be a significant capability that
is necessary there in the future no matter what scenario you
look at, manned versus unmanned. I know that you all look at
all these different scenarios.
But I wanted to get your best professional military
judgment about where we are on the current track with the total
composition of the amphibious fleet, the composition of large-
deck amphib, and the composition of what you believe you need
to prosecute the efforts that you will undertake if we find
ourselves having to do amphibious operations in a contested
environment.
General Berger. Thanks, sir.
The impact on the industrial base, I will ask if Mr. Geurts
has any comments there.
On the operational side, which was the point of your
question, under the hood, as you described, sir, under the 38
is 12 big-decks, then 13, and then 13.
And that type/model/series, that breakout is based on the
2016 force structure assessment. And I don't know how the 2019
will look. It could go north also, because 2016 was before the
National Defense Strategy, before the Defense Planning
Guidance, and before the National Military Strategy.
It was frustrating at Pearl Harbor watching that ship be
pierside when all the other countries pull out with their
ships. And that is a very capable ship. It was just really
frustrating. I know the Congressman was frustrated when he saw
it happen also.
But, frankly, sir, part of that is our fault. Part of that
is, when we rode the force hard and deferred maintenance and
did that again and again, it didn't just affect the condition
of the ships as you hit that; it also sent messages to the
industrial base where we were all over the map in terms of our
maintenance.
So just like our cars, if we don't change the oil on time,
we are going to pay a bigger price later. We have to do them on
time. We cannot defer maintenance. We took risk in that
consciously, deliberately, but now we cannot afford to do that.
Right now, based on the requirement, we have got to have
12, 13, and 13. And they have got to be ready to go, with the
right systems on board.
Mr. Wittman. Very good.
Let me ask you to elaborate a little bit. Of course, you
talk about how much risk is accepted. If we found ourselves
today having to operate doing amphibious operations in a
contested environment, would the Marine Corps be capable of
prosecuting that fight? And if so, how much risk are we taking
on?
Because you talk about the capabilities that do get limited
by maintenance availabilities, the ships that are on call,
available to go tonight.
General Berger. This morning, I looked at the availability
of the amphibs, as I am sure other folks do too. This morning,
I think it was 19, perhaps, out of 32 that were ready to go. I
think over time that will climb, just like aviation does, as we
reset the force that we--the maintenance that we deferred for a
decade and a half.
But the risk--probably two parts, real quickly, sir. One
is, the way we think we will need to fight--and we are talking
expeditionary advanced base operations and distributed maritime
operations--that is a vision for where we will need to go and
compete and win. The force we have this afternoon, while we are
sitting in here, will not do that to the degree we need it to.
So the risk, to your point, operationally, tactically, it
takes you longer. You don't have the capabilities that you need
for the commander to pull off the missions in the way that he
wants to do it, so his choices are constrained. And, lastly,
the reliability. When you need the availability of your ships,
you need to know what you have.
Mr. Wittman. Yeah. Thank you.
I wanted to thank you, too, for the great job you are doing
there at MCCDC [Marine Corps Combat Development Command] and
also for your family's legacy of service, with your dad, who we
all know well, also a Marine. So thank you so much for your
family's legacy of service.
Secretary Geurts, I just want to circle the square here
with all that we have heard. It is great to talk about 355
ships, building new ships. And we even talk about the manning
of those ships, having sailors. But one of the things, too,
that is critical, the Navy has just come out with this 30-year
ship maintenance program.
And I think, as we have seen this theme come up, with not
doing the RCOH, the refueling complex overhaul, on Truman, we
see the delays in maintenance on amphibs, we see what is
happening with the Boise, who is going to be tied up at the
pier for another year, we see the demand signal for subs, I
want to make sure that at the top of the list for the Navy is
that sustainment element of making sure that we are not
extending these maintenance availabilities, that maintenance
availabilities are kept.
The 30-year ship maintenance plan, I would argue, becomes
as important, if not more important--you are never going to get
to 355 if we don't maintain the ships that we have.
So I don't expect a comment back, but I just want to
emphasize how extraordinarily important that is. You know, it
is nice to talk about building new. It doesn't make the
headlines to talk about maintaining what we have. But if we are
going to have the capability necessary to counter our
adversaries--you have heard this theme among every class of
ship today--we don't get anywhere to where we need to be,
whether it is requirement in different ship classes or the
overall requirement, we do not get there if we do not really
ramp up our efforts on the ship maintenance side and make sure,
too, that we look at everybody, the public yards and the
private yards, as partners in that effort. Seeing some things
develop into adversarial relationships have not been good for
where we find ourselves today.
So I urge you to make sure that that is at as an important
a level as shipbuilding and the manning components of what we
have talked about today.
Secretary Geurts. Yes, sir. It is actually the number one
piece on my job right now.
As you say, we still have work to go on new construction.
We have a lot of work to go on this sustainment, getting at
affordable, getting at reliable, and getting at credible, so
fleet commanders have confidence that we will get ships in and
out when we say we are going to get them in and out, so that
they can go plan operations and be ready to go. It has my
number one attention.
The committee's adding sustainability to my job jar helped
emphasize your point greatly. And I take that very seriously.
Mr. Wittman. Right. In on time, out on time. Very good.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral Merz. Sir, if I may----
Mr. Wittman. Yes, please.
Admiral Merz [continuing]. Just kind of reinforce my Marine
brother at the end of the table here on Navy's commitment, as
well, to the amphib fleet.
We were very motivated to accelerate the LHA [large-deck
amphibious assault ship] for a lot of reasons, notwithstanding
that warfighting is number one, but also just the program on
where that ship is going to be piling up on other procurement
programs.
But the sustainment piece is big. I mean, all three of us
here, it drives our day. If you recall, the committee directed
us to comment on sustainment in this year's shipbuilding plan,
so we added an appendix to talk about the challenge of not just
today for a 300-ship Navy but what is it going to look like for
a 355-ship Navy.
So we are with you 100 percent on that and the maintenance
plan, which is the partner in that sustainment plan as we are
going forward.
Mr. Wittman. Very good. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Wittman.
Congresswoman Hill.
Ms. Hill. Hello, and thank you. My brother is a future
sailor who is going off to BUD/S [Basic Underwater Demolition/
SEAL] imminently. So thank you for your service, and I look
forward to being part of the Navy family.
I understand that the average age of the sealift fleet is
very old and it is not a large fleet. What investments do we to
need to make in order to make sure that our warfighters can
respond on time to a large-scale hypothetical crisis situation
in either the Korean Peninsula or the Baltic States?
Secretary Geurts. Yes, ma'am. I will start out with that,
and, again, either of my partners can jump in from a
warfighting capability.
So that is absolutely critical and, quite frankly, not
something we had paid as much attention to as we needed to in
the past, both keeping our current Ready Reserve Fleet modern
and ready to go as well as thinking about the challenges ahead.
For the current fleet, we are looking at kind of a three-
prong attack, using the authorities that Congress has given us
to procure some used ships as kind of an immediate stopgap. We
have one programmed in 2021 and then another one in 2022. And
then looking at a lot of service-life extensions to extend
wherever we can the service life. And then, finally, a new
procurement towards the end of the budget year.
That is kind of on the traditional side. I think maybe
Admiral Merz can talk about some of the nontraditional
logistics, kind of the distributed piece, because we not only
have to fix the long-haul big kind of moving the Navy and the
Marine Corps and the Army, quite frankly, around; it is also
kind of the tactical logistics in a very distributed manner
that is going to be a challenge.
Admiral Merz. Yes, ma'am. It turns out the actual lift
portion, the requirement is fairly stable. We just have to
recapitalize that fleet. It is literally decaying out from
underneath us. So, partnering with Secretary Geurts, we are
very committed to that three-pronged approach.
Where the requirement looks to be growing is, when you are
in a peer competition and you are a forward-deployed Navy, the
ability to push these logistics to the fighting force while
they are fighting is an area that we are looking at very
closely. And it is really just that distributed, lighter fast
force that we are going to see likely a requirement growth.
So, across the board, as we say, in the off season, this
has captured a lot of our attention to study our logistics,
because it is the sustaining factor for a forward-operating
Navy.
Ms. Hill. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you.
Well, Rob, last call?
Jared, you are all set?
Okay. Thank you.
So thank you all for being here.
You know, one comment I wanted to make regarding Mr.
Cisneros' question regarding the manning, and it sort of may be
relevant to Congresswoman Hill. During the break, I was out at
Great Lakes Naval Training Center and, you know, saw the work
that is being done there about, you know, creating the sailors
and officers that we need to man a larger Navy. And Admiral
Bernacchi is doing just an outstanding job. The, you know,
quality and enthusiasm was just--it was unbelievable, just sort
of seeing what is going--and the size of what is going on
there.
So, you know, to your point, Admiral Merz, that, you know,
really, the Navy is very much focused in terms of that whole
issue of manpower. It is real, I mean, and certainly, you know,
I had a chance to get a glimpse of it.
Anyway, well, thank you all for your testimony here today.
I am sure there will be some followup questions as we get
closer to the markup.
And, with that, I will close the hearing.
[Whereupon, at 4:01 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
March 26, 2019
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
March 26, 2019
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[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING
THE HEARING
March 26, 2019
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RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. GALLAGHER
General Berger. In the FY20 FYDP the Marine Corps plans to invest
$20.5B on F35 procurement and $11.5B on CH-53K procurement for a
planned five year investment of $32B in these two modern aviation
platforms. In the FY20 FYDP the Navy plans to invest $5.35B in
amphibious warfare ships to procure one LPD Flight II and one LHA. The
nation benefits from both aviation platforms in question. The F35 is a
5th Generation aircraft combining stealth, precision weapons and multi-
spectral sensors with the expeditionary responsiveness of a Short Take-
off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) fighter-attack platform. The CH-53K is
the most capable heavy lift cargo helicopter ever built with range,
speed and lift capacity to greatly enhance MAGTF vertical maneuver. The
new amphibious warfare ships in production will serve our fleet for
forty years or more. When postured forward as part of an Amphibious
Ready Group/Marine Expeditionary Unit (ARG/MEU) these platforms enable
sailors and Marines to carry out a broad spectrum of missions that
assure allies and partners while serving as a credible sea based
deterrent to aggressive threats. To face the challenges outlined in the
National Defense Strategy the Navy and Marine Corps team must invest in
modern aviation capability and procure modern amphibious warfare ships-
coupled with the other components of the expeditionary warfare team
they are the first line in our strategy to defend the forward edge of
freedom. [See page 14.]
______
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MRS. LURIA
Admiral Merz. The 2016 Force Structure Assessment (FSA) began by
collecting the Combatant Commander (CCDR) demands for Naval forces from
the Global Force Management (GFM) process. Then, using current/
projected fleet architecture (i.e.--where ships are homeported both
within the U.S. and overseas, the employment cycle for each type of
ship), the fleet size required to meet all these demands was
calculated--653 ships. From this point, the FSA became a risk
assessment process where CCDR demands were categorized according to the
risk associated by not conducting certain missions. The process--
informed by strategic guidance--started by taking risk in the provision
of forces in theaters with minimal or low risk of military conflict,
and progressively taking risk by providing fewer forces for missions in
theaters at higher risk of experiencing Major Combat Operations. The
warfighting risk was based on campaign analysis of OSD-approved Defense
Planning Scenarios and consistent with National, Defense and Navy
strategic and planning guidance. Future years Defense Planning
Scenarios, vice OPLANs, are used because the FSA must look as far into
the future as practicable to afford the defense industrial base the
time to deliver the right mix of capacity and capability for the Navy
to stay ahead of the continuously evolving threats. Using OPLANs, which
focus on existing and near-term forces and threats, would cause us to
continually react to changes in the threats and, because it takes years
to implement any required changes to force structure, result in Navy
constantly falling behind potential adversaries. Ultimately, Navy
leadership determined that, based on the National and Defense
strategies versus the growing capacity, capability and re-emergence of
threats in the future (post-2030), 355 battle force ships is sufficient
to achieve national tasking and objectives at acceptable levels of
risk. A more detailed discussion of the analysis supporting the 355
ship Navy would require a classified forum. [See page 9.]
?
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
March 26, 2019
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. CONAWAY
Mr. Conaway. What is the Navy doing to resolve the lack of carrier
strike group anti-submarine protection due to the Ship Surface Torpedo
Defense (SSTD) program being cancelled, and the reliability issues that
the primary sensor to detect enemy submarines suffers from? Who within
the Navy is taking ownership and leading the effort to remedy this gap?
What other options or technologies is the Navy exploring to bolster ASW
capabilities and protect our CSGs, including those in use by our allied
partner navies? What is the cost for upgrading our current ASW sensor
platform to ensure its reliable function?
Secretary Geurts and Admiral Merz. The Navy has not cancelled the
Surface Ship Torpedo Defense (SSTD) program. The SSTD program consists
of three major systems: Acoustic Device Countermeasures (ADC), AN/SLQ-
25 NIXIE towed acoustic countermeasures, and the Anti-Torpedo Torpedo
Defense System (ATTDS) hard-kill counter-torpedo and detection system.
A decision to sundown ATTDS was made in FY 2019 due to performance
issues, false alarm rates, and limited added value in context with the
demonstrated effectiveness of existing and evolving Anti-Submarine
Warfare (ASW) and Theater ASW capabilities. The AN/SLQ-25 NIXIE and
ADCs remain in use onboard surface platforms across the Carrier Strike
Group, including aircraft carriers, for anti-submarine protection. In
addition to SSTD portfolio investments, the Navy is heavily invested in
layered ASW efforts such as Virginia class submarines, AN/SQQ-89A(V)15
surface ship ASW combat systems, P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, and
advanced torpedoes, and does not rely on a single sensor for enemy
submarine detection. The Navy's ASW strategy, led by the CNO's Director
for Undersea Warfare (N97) and supported by Director, Surface Warfare
(N96), is to establish an offensive posture using long range detection,
prosecution, and engagement in order to keep threats outside their
engagement zone. Failing an offensive posture, close-in defense is
provided by the combination of ASW defensive platforms and the speed
and maneuver of aircraft carriers and other high-value units. The Navy
regularly evaluates domestic and allied technologies to identify
potential evolutionary torpedo defense capability improvements. Ongoing
Harvest ATTDS studies will help Navy identify opportunities to
incorporate algorithms developed with ATTDS into other Navy sensors.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MRS. LURIA
Mrs. Luria. Your budget request is $9.5B higher than last year.
Does your budget request generate additional deployed presence? Has the
presence generated under the OFRP model been adequate for combatant
commander's needs? In recent hearings, CENTCOM reported his carrier
presence was considerably less than requested, and I happen to know it
was 1/5th of requested and EUCOM was less than half. Are the combatant
commander's request unreasonable or just not able to be met with the
OFRP?
Secretary Geurts. The presence generated by the OFRP model is
sufficient to meet the demand adjudicated by the Joint Staff. For
Fiscal Year 2019, Navy is expected to meet 42 percent of COCOM demand.
In recent years through OFRP, Navy's ability to meet COCOM demand has
fluctuated between 40 percent and 45 percent of their requests for
naval forces.
Mrs. Luria. Under the Optimized Fleet Response Plan, the Navy's
goal was to provide more of push model than pull model on presence
generation. As part of that, the Navy would be able to generate more
ships in the sustainment phase for a longer period of time. Does your
budget fully fund the sustainment phase to allow all ships, submarines
and aircraft to maintain a C-2 rating during this phase?
Secretary Geurts. The Navy readiness accounts for ship operations
($5.6 billion), ship depot maintenance ($10.4 billion), flying hour
program ($5.7 billion) and air depot maintenance ($1.3 billion) are
funded and are focused on increasing operational availability of our
ships, submarines and aircraft and is expected to support the
sustainment phase of the Optimized Fleet Response Plan. In order to
reconstitute private submarine repair capability and to recover the
deferred maintenance backlog created in FY 2019, the Navy's unfunded
priorities list includes $814 million for ship depot maintenance--$653
million to move SSN maintenance to private shipyards due to public
shipyard capacity constraints and $110 million to recover deferred
maintenance backlog for surface ships. The remainder is for Naval
Shipyard/TYCOM material and RMC overhead. The Navy is working closely
with DOD on readiness and will continue to evaluate mitigation
strategies for ship depot maintenance. An above threshold reprogramming
may be one solution.
Mrs. Luria. Does your budget fully fund a carrier strike group
model of 2+3, meaning two deployed and three surge capable for the
entire fiscal year?
Secretary Geurts. No, the Navy is not able to sustain 2+3 Carrier
Strike Groups (CSG) in FY2020. Sustaining 2+3 CSG readiness depends on
several factors. While funding is one element, 2+3 CSG requires
adequate force structure as well as recovering readiness in personnel,
equipment, supply, training, ordnance, networks and installations. The
Navy is continuing aggressive efforts to recover readiness shortfalls
accrued from over a decade of wartime operational tempo, fiscal
constraints, and budget uncertainty. Readiness recovery requires
significant funding, but also time and stability. The FY2020 budget
funds the major readiness accounts to executable capacity, with
additional investments and efforts to increase future capacity and
improve performance and efficiency. Navy's current CSG readiness is
also limited by available platforms. To address this limitation, the
FY2020 budget balances investments in readiness, capacity and
capability to grow a bigger, better and more ready Navy the Nation
Needs. The Navy is also implementing the President's recent decision to
restore the refueling and complex overhaul (RCOH) for CVN 75 and retain
the carrier and air wing.