[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                         [H.A.S.C. No. 117-13]

          LEARNING FROM AND PREVENTING FUTURE TRAINING MISHAPS

                               __________

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                       SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

                                 OF THE

                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION
                               __________

                              HEARING HELD

                             MARCH 23, 2021


                                     
                  [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                     
                                ___________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
48-484                     WASHINGTON : 2022   



                       SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

                  JOHN GARAMENDI, California, Chairman

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut            DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
JACKIE SPEIER, California            JOE WILSON, South Carolina
JASON CROW, Colorado                 AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia
ELISSA SLOTKIN, Michigan, Vice       JACK BERGMAN, Michigan
    Chair                            MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana
JARED F. GOLDEN, Maine               MARK E. GREEN, Tennessee
ELAINE G. LURIA, Virginia            LISA C. McCLAIN, Michigan
KAIALI'I KAHELE, Hawaii              BLAKE D. MOORE, Utah
MARILYN STRICKLAND, Washington

               Melanie Harris, Professional Staff Member
                 Ian Bennitt, Professional Staff Member
                           Sean Falvey, Clerk


                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

              STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Garamendi, Hon. John, a Representative from California, Chairman, 
  Subcommittee on Readiness......................................     1
Lamborn, Hon. Doug, a Representative from Colorado, Ranking 
  Member, Subcommittee on Readiness..............................     3

                               WITNESSES

Allvin, Gen David W., USAF, Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force..     7
Lescher, ADM William K., USN, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, 
  U.S. Navy......................................................     6
Martin, GEN Joseph M., USA, Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Army.......     4
Thomas, Gen Gary L., USMC, Assistant Commandant of the Marine 
  Corps, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps.........................     8

                                APPENDIX

Prepared Statements:

    Allvin, Gen David W..........................................    65
    Lescher, ADM William K.......................................    54
    Martin, GEN Joseph M.........................................    43
    Thomas, Gen Gary L...........................................    79

Documents Submitted for the Record:

    [There were no Documents submitted.]

Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:

    Ms. Strickland...............................................    91

Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:

    [There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]


 
           
          LEARNING FROM AND PREVENTING FUTURE TRAINING MISHAPS

                              ----------                              

                  House of Representatives,
                       Committee on Armed Services,
                                 Subcommittee on Readiness,
                           Washington, DC, Tuesday, March 23, 2021.
    The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:58 p.m., via 
Webex, Hon. John Garamendi (chairman of the subcommittee) 
presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN GARAMENDI, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM 
        CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

    Mr. Garamendi. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I call 
to order this hearing of the Readiness Subcommittee of the 
Armed Services Committee.
    First, some administrative and technical notes.
    Members are reminded that they must be visible onscreen 
within the software platform for the purposes of identity 
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If you are experiencing such technical difficulties, please 
contact the committee staff for assistance.
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to mute unrecognized members' microphones, if necessary.
    Please use the platform's chat feature to communicate with 
staff regarding technical and logistical issues.
    Finally, there is a 5-minute countdown clock on the 
software platform's display, but if necessary, I will remind 
you when your time is up.
    Next, I seek unanimous consent to permit a noncommittee 
member to participate in this hearing after all committee 
members have had an opportunity to ask questions.
    Is there objection?
    Seeing and hearing none, so ordered.
    And that noncommittee member will also have the normal 5-
minute period.
    Now, with that out of the way, a few opening remarks.
    First, I welcome my guests. I will introduce you at the end 
of my short presentation.
    While the Pentagon spends billions of taxpayer dollars on 
planes, ships, missiles, and other sophisticated weapon 
systems, more troops are dying in training than in combat, 
often in aging and poorly maintained war machines.
    Between 2006 and 2018, 32 percent of Active Duty military 
deaths were the result of accidents, while 16 percent of 
service members who died during that time were killed in 
action.
    Even as combat operations overseas have decreased, 
noncombat deaths have exceeded the number of military members 
killed in action every year since 2015.
    The toll is staggering.
    The National Commission on Military Aviation Safety, whose 
findings we will be discussing today, found more than 6,000 
aviation mishaps between 2013 and 2019, killing 224 pilots and 
air crew.
    The Government Accountability Office [GAO] is nearing 
completion of their review of 4,000 tactical vehicle accidents 
over the past 10 years that have led to the loss of 120 
soldiers and Marines.
    Of course, we continue to remember the 17 sailors lost in 
the Surface Navy collision of 2017 and another 9 who recently 
lost their life off San Clemente Island in California.
    Let me be clear. Whether the trends are rising, falling, or 
facility unpredictably, any preventable loss of life is 
unacceptable. It is shameful that the nation with the most 
powerful military in the world loses more service members in 
noncombat settings than in war.
    While the services focus on the conduct and the results of 
individual accident investigations, I fear that we are missing 
the bigger picture. These mishaps reveal that the basic 
elements of manning, training, and equipping are challenged 
across the force.
    In addition to causing loss of life, this neglect is 
diminishing the readiness and effectiveness of our military.
    We have seen in recent years that in order to pursue 
modernization initiatives, the services have shortchanged unit 
manning, flying and training hours, depot maintenance, and 
spare parts.
    This leaves our operators insufficiently trained and 
equipped and too often unavailable for use with poor materiel 
and condition.
    This assumption of risk is not a foregone conclusion. The 
services can and should choose to shift their priorities to 
elevate manning, elevate training, and elevate safety and 
sustainment.
    This may mean buying fewer new ships and planes. It also 
means taking seriously the cultural factors that the Navy, the 
GAO, and the Aviation Commission have all identified--
specifically, a widespread complacency towards safety standards 
and a casual disregard for basic risk management practices.
    And, finally, it should also mean taking meaningful steps 
to curb the combatant commanders' insatiable demand for the use 
of the force.
    I know these are hard choices, but they are the right 
choices to avoid creating a force that is not only hollow, but 
vulnerable.
    Now, with that, I yield to Ranking Member Lamborn for his 
opening comments.
    Mr. Lamborn.

STATEMENT OF HON. DOUG LAMBORN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM COLORADO, 
           RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

    Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, Chairman Garamendi.
    Today we will hear testimony from the Vice Chiefs of the 
Navy, Army, and Air Force, as well as the Vice Commandant of 
the Marine Corps, about their efforts to learn from and prevent 
noncombat mishaps.
    I want to thank all our witnesses for their time and 
service to our country. I also want to welcome my friend and 
colleague, Representative Vern Buchanan, of Florida, to this 
hearing.
    We owe it to our service men and women to eliminate 
preventable accidents, period. Readiness is not just having 
enough spare parts on the shelves or enough aircraft to fly. 
Readiness is also ensuring our service members are proficient 
in their jobs and prepared to perform their duties that our 
Nation assigns them. This requires lots of time spent in tough, 
realistic training conducted in a controlled and safe 
environment.
    Unfortunately, this is not always in ready supply, 
particularly when there is unpredictability in the defense 
budget process and an insufficient top line that forces leaders 
to choose between executing the mission today or preparing for 
the future fight. This is something we in Congress have the 
power to fix.
    Over the past several years, our subcommittee has held 
several hearings and briefings focused on military aviation 
safety, the state of Surface Navy readiness, and ground vehicle 
mishaps.
    Mr. Chairman, I am going to ask that you mute at your end.
    The services and the GAO have also engaged with their own 
analysis, studies, and programs. In 2019, this subcommittee 
directed the GAO to conduct a review of the relationship 
between tactical vehicle mishaps and training vehicle safety 
and training range conditions.
    While that review is not yet complete, we expect it will 
provide insights into the factors contributing to nearly 4,000 
tactical vehicle mishaps over the past 10 years, leading to the 
loss of 120 service members. When the report is available, I 
expect the recommendations to be implemented.
    We continue to see a trend in deadly aviation accidents. 
The fiscal year 2019 NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] 
created the National Commission on Military Aviation Safety to 
assess the causes contributing to military aviation mishaps.
    Results of that effort indicated that insufficient training 
and experience, sustainment issues, funding, OPTEMPO 
[operations tempo], and workforce attrition were all 
contributing factors.
    I expect to hear today what the services are doing to 
address this.
    Since significant incidents and collisions in 2017, the 
Navy has conducted two primary reviews. Five years later, it is 
not clear that the reforms instituted are enough to protect our 
sailors and Marines. Quite simply, we need to do better for our 
service members.
    Today, our witnesses will discuss these important efforts 
to address underlying issues driving accident trends and share 
the extent to which each military branch has taken steps to 
implement concrete recommendations to mitigate and prevent 
accidents.
    Finally, I would like to mention trends.
    While trends are important indicators of success and 
failure, we must not be complacent when trends are looking 
good. One Class A mishap or loss of life is one too many.
    I am particularly interested in how the services are 
looking at Class B and C mishaps, as well as near misses, to 
examine root causes that may inform proactive solutions to more 
serious issues.
    I want to thank the witnesses for your engagement today on 
this important topic. I look forward to hearing to how your 
service is taking actions to prevent today's accidents while we 
all work to ensure that service members have the time, tools, 
and training to be successful in the future.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
    Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Lamborn, I will unmute, and you can 
mute. Good lesson for all of us.
    I am going to introduce each of the participants 
separately. I am going to start with General Joseph Martin, 
Vice Chief of Staff of the Army.
    I was running through your resume, and you have covered 
almost every possible place and commanded or otherwise been in 
charge of something in every possible place where there could 
have been an accident. So, I suspect you are well versed on 
this entire set of issues.
    General Martin, you have got 5 minutes, and your written 
testimony will be placed into the record. Without objection, so 
ordered.
    General Martin, please.

 STATEMENT OF GEN JOSEPH M. MARTIN, USA, VICE CHIEF OF STAFF, 
                           U.S. ARMY

    General Martin. Chairman Garamendi, Ranking Member Lamborn, 
and distinguished members of the Subcommittee on Readiness, on 
behalf of the Acting Secretary of the Army, the Honorable John 
Whitley, and the Chief of Staff of the Army, General James 
McConville, thank you for this opportunity to discuss how the 
Army learns from training mishaps and how we are preventing 
future mishaps.
    Also, thank you for your steadfast support to our soldiers, 
our civilians, and our family members. It is clear you have the 
best interests of our brave men and women at heart, and I 
appreciate your shared concern for their safety and well-being.
    As you know, the Army is a people business. Our people are 
our number one priority. We know they are on loan from their 
families and the American people and are our greatest strength.
    It is our responsibility to create a safe work environment 
where our soldiers are able to learn, to grow, and to achieve 
the results that they need to in those goals.
    We are working hard to create an environment free of 
harmful behaviors like sexual harassment, sexual assault, 
racism, extremism, and suicide.
    But it doesn't stop there. Placing our people first also 
includes creating an environment that is conducive to the 
conduct of safe and effective training at the individual and 
crew level where mishaps tend to occur.
    We have made some progress over the past few years. For 
fiscal year 2020, Army aviation mishaps dropped to a 10-year 
low.
    This was not at the expense of readiness or flying hours. 
Over the same period, our combat aviation brigades reported the 
highest overall readiness levels, and our Active Duty 
operational readiness rate remained above 80 percent.
    For ground vehicle mishaps, over the last 5 years our 
average is the lowest since the Army began to keep records in 
1972.
    That doesn't mean that we are satisfied. This fiscal year, 
we have lost 11 soldiers to Class A aviation mishaps and 2 
soldiers to Class A tactical vehicle mishaps.
    That is 13 soldiers who won't be returning to their 
families. That is 12 families who will never see their father, 
their mother, their son, or their daughter again.
    This is completely unacceptable, and we won't be satisfied 
until all of our soldiers return home safely from their 
training events or deployments.
    Our Army is a learning organization. We conduct 
professional in-depth investigations into each and every 
mishap. The United States Army Combat Readiness Center ensures 
we understand not only the causes of mishaps, but also formally 
staffs and tracks recommendations.
    Our process gives us a good understanding of the ``why.'' 
Most of our mishaps result from the failure to follow the 
appropriate standard or the failure to respond appropriately to 
the conditions of the environment surrounding that particular 
soldier or weapon system.
    Training and disciplined risk management is the key to our 
success. But our focus on training and repetition at the lowest 
level will increase the proficiency of our soldiers in our 
formation, and we intend to decrease the number of mishaps 
across the board.
    I look forward to this discussion and your questions. Thank 
you for your time.
    [The prepared statement of General Martin can be found in 
the Appendix on page 43.]
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you very much, General.
    I will now turn to Admiral William Lescher.
    Again, just running through your resume, you have seen 
almost every possible place where somebody could have an 
accident. And so please speak to us.
    And, again, 5 minutes, and your testimony will be in the 
formal record. Without objection, so ordered.
    Admiral Lescher.

 STATEMENT OF ADM WILLIAM K. LESCHER, USN, VICE CHIEF OF NAVAL 
                     OPERATIONS, U.S. NAVY

    Admiral Lescher. Thank you, and good afternoon, Chairman 
Garamendi, Ranking Member Lamborn, and the distinguished 
members of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness.
    On behalf of the sailors, civilians, and families of the 
United States Navy, I thank you for the opportunity to testify 
today on this important topic of service mishaps and the impact 
of these mishaps on our people and our readiness.
    Our Nation depends on a Navy that maintains their advantage 
at sea. To provide that Navy, we must effectively learn from 
mishaps and must share that learning to accelerate insights and 
best practices, and we must institutionalize that learning to 
drive sustained change to behavior.
    Today, we also see a strong opportunity to accelerate a 
number of emerging initiatives to mitigate risk before the 
mishaps occur. We are increasingly using data-driven 
prioritization of risk countermeasures and data-driven 
understanding of root cause to complement and eventually reduce 
reactive mishap-driven understanding of risk.
    Examples of this approach span all of our major warfare 
communities and have been contributing to an overall Navy trend 
of reduced mishap rates.
    As was mentioned earlier, the tragic 2017 collisions 
involving the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain were a 
wakeup call and a strong impetus for today's progress.
    The surface fleet aggressively engaged in broad reform, 
implemented safety teams focused on human factors and risk 
analysis, and developed comprehensive crew endurance management 
policies that are producing a cultural shift within the surface 
fleet.
    A lower threshold as well for sharing concerns and 
insights, and increased reporting of lower level events and 
near misses, has also served to strengthen the surface 
community's safety culture and lower mishap rates.
    The overall trend in our surface fleet is positive, but a 
significant area of sustained poor performance remains.
    The Bonhomme Richard fire last July marked the 15th 
significant fire, shipboard fire, in the past 12 years, and it 
has demonstrated that previous leadership interventions of the 
type the fleet commanders aggressively instituted this past 
July and October have not resolved the shipboard fire root 
causes sufficiently to drive enduring change in the frequency 
of these mishaps.
    Early this year, I directed a separate, broader deep dive 
review to eliminate systemic issues with regard to standards, 
culture, and environment driving the daily discipline in 
shipboard stowage, cleanliness, and readiness, and to recommend 
necessary actions to establish enduring change in fire safety 
culture and practices.
    In 2019, Naval Aviation Class A to B mishaps declined for 
the first time in a decade, and in 2020 the declining A to B 
mishap trend continued with zero Class A fatalities achieved 
for the first time in a century. However, we also saw the Class 
A mishap number increase slightly and Class C Aviation Ground 
Mishaps increase.
    To accelerate learning here, Naval Aviation has increased 
the use of flight line spot checks, employed predictive 
analytics, which I would love to talk more about in the 
hearing, and leveraged lessons from the surface and the 
submarine communities.
    We have also pursued a more effective approach to training, 
requiring aviators to earn the right to fly, to demonstrate a 
proficiency in both fundamentals and tactics in a range of 
simulators. These actions have put us in a solid vector to 
continue reducing aviation mishaps and improve safety outcomes.
    Our submarine force had zero groundings or collisions in 
2020. This is the result of leaders driving outcomes with a 
strong analytic tool, OBIEE, and it highlights units at 
increased risk of adverse safety or operational outcomes; also 
used the increased use of near-miss reporting and analytics, 
and strong discipline in implementing lessons learned from 
prior near misses.
    The submarine fleet has been contributing well and overall 
to Navy improved safety and performance by broadly sharing a 
number of best practices with our surface and aviation 
enterprise as well as the Naval Safety Center.
    Of course, all of these warfare communities are focuses on 
ensuring that we are setting our sailors up to succeed in 
executing their missions with the right training, the right 
tools, and policies underpinning a strong, well-functioning 
safety culture.
    I look forward, Chairman, to exploring these topics further 
with the committee today, and I thank the committee for your 
leadership and your partnership in sustaining focus on the 
critical issue of safety performance.
    [The prepared statement of Admiral Lescher can be found in 
the Appendix on page 54.]
    Mr. Garamendi. Admiral Lescher, thank you very much for 
your testimony. Again, we will look at your written testimony. 
And yes, we will get back to predictive analytics somewhere 
during the course of this hearing.
    Our next presenter is General David Allvin, United States 
Air Force.
    General.

 STATEMENT OF GEN DAVID W. ALLVIN, USAF, VICE CHIEF OF STAFF, 
                         U.S. AIR FORCE

    General Allvin. Chairman Garamendi, Ranking Member Lamborn, 
and distinguished members of the subcommittee, on behalf of the 
Acting Secretary of the Air Force, John Roth, and the Chief of 
Staff of the United States Air Force, General C.Q. Brown, Jr., 
thank you for the opportunity to provide an update on this 
important issue and for your continued support and advocacy of 
our most important resource, our airmen.
    Safely executing the high-end training required to preserve 
the readiness during this era of renewed peer competition is 
incredibly important. Your Air Force remains committed to 
building a culture of safety that preserves the considerable 
investment that the American taxpayer has made in our service, 
and more importantly, safeguards the sons and daughters placed 
in our care.
    Our focus remains on preventing mishaps before they occur. 
We have strong programs that proactively identify risk and are 
consistently looking for ways to make our operations more 
effective and safe.
    And when the mishaps do occur, we are committed to learning 
from them through data-driven analytics and a continued focus 
on a readiness culture so that we can prevent similar 
occurrences in the future.
    While our overall Class A, B, and C mishap rates have all 
declined since we formally briefed this subcommittee on the 
subject in 2018, we continue to have unacceptably high rates of 
training mishaps, including seven that cost the lives of airmen 
last year alone.
    Like you said, Mr. Chairman, one avoidable mishap remains 
too many. We are all committed to doing all the things we can 
to bring down those risks.
    Our internal analysis, recently bolstered by the December 
2020 release of the National Commission on Military Aviation 
Safety report, highlights several key areas that can help 
contribute to safe and effective training in an operational 
environment for our airmen.
    These include sustaining investments in our flying hour 
program, reinforcing the aviation supply and maintenance 
system, a culture of transparent communication and 
accountability, returning bandwidth to our line units for 
reinvesting in training, expanding access to high-quality 
simulators and training devices, and retaining the seasoned 
operators to build the next generation of airmen.
    We look forward to partnering with the Office of the 
Secretary of Defense, our joint partners, and this subcommittee 
to fully capitalize on the commission's insights to deliver the 
safe and effective training environment that our airmen and our 
Nation deserve.
    Thank you again for your interest in safety, your advocacy 
for the same, and for your continued support to fund these 
activities to keep our airmen safe. I look forward to the 
questions. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of General Allvin can be found in 
the Appendix on page 65.]
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, General Allvin.
    We will now move to our final presenter, General Thomas of 
the U.S. Marine Corps.
    General Thomas.

STATEMENT OF GEN GARY L. THOMAS, USMC, ASSISTANT COMMANDANT OF 
       THE MARINE CORPS, HEADQUARTERS, U.S. MARINE CORPS

    General Thomas. Chairman Garamendi, Ranking Member Lamborn, 
and distinguished members of this subcommittee, thank you for 
the opportunity to testify on the issue of learning from and 
preventing future training mishaps.
    As the Commandant stated in his planning guidance, the 
Marine Corps is a naval expeditionary force-in-readiness, and 
that readiness is a strategic warfighting advantage for the 
Nation.
    In order to maintain that strategic advantage, we must be 
able to train to and operate in austere environments at sea, in 
the air, and ashore without unnecessary sacrifices of personnel 
and equipment.
    Over the past several years, the Marine Corps has 
diligently worked to reduce training mishaps. We have taken an 
institutional approach to improving safety performance, 
including a new standards-focused safety management system, 
better reporting and information-sharing tools, and service-
wide changes based on investigation findings.
    While we have made significant improvements, there is still 
much work to do. Ensuring institutional change occurs and lasts 
is my personal priority.
    Leadership remains the bedrock of Marine Corps initiatives 
to improve safety culture, reduce mishaps, and increase 
readiness.
    The institutional changes I just mentioned, among others, 
are empowering our leaders to encourage greater hazard and 
mishap reporting, incorporate lessons learned, and make better 
decisions.
    Active leadership, enabled by resources, will help us to 
continue to reduce mishaps and generate readiness.
    The Marine Corps remains committed to ensuring the safety 
of our Marines, sailors, and civilians as we train to be the 
most ready when the Nation is least ready.
    As of today, we have had zero fatalities in aviation and 
ground training mishaps this fiscal year. We are working very 
hard to maintain this as our standard.
    We appreciate your support and oversight as we continue to 
improve our safety performance and advance the lethality of the 
Nation's naval expeditionary force-in-readiness.
    I look forward to answering your questions.
    [The prepared statement of General Thomas can be found in 
the Appendix on page 79.]
    Mr. Garamendi. General Thomas, thank you very much.
    We will now go to the question and response part. Before I 
ask my opening questions, I am going to read the gavel order so 
that everyone has an opportunity to know who they will follow.
    As is the tradition, I will open, Mr. Lamborn, then 
Courtney, followed by Wilson, followed by Speier, Moore, 
Strickland, Scott, Slotkin, Kahele, and Buchanan. We will go in 
that order.
    So let me go ahead and begin here.
    The National Commission on Military Aviation Safety 
concluded the high rate of aviation mishaps can be attributed 
to numerous factors, including inadequate pilot training, 
maintainer training and experience, insufficient maintenance, 
unpredictable funding--I think that is our problem, and 
hopefully we will address it--and then a high operational tempo 
that causes fatigue and burnout.
    And so to all of the witnesses, I will go at this in the 
same order. We will start with the U.S. Army. We are talking 
aviation here specifically.
    General Martin.
    General Martin. Chairman, thank you.
    So we have been thoroughly briefed, and I have read cover 
to cover the National Commission for Military Aviation Safety, 
its findings and its recommendations, and we are tracking that 
17 out of 25 of them are applicable to the Army. We have 
already implemented 4 out of those 17, specifically maintenance 
proficiency badges, PERSTEMPO [personnel tempo] tracking, 
tuition assistance for our airframe and power plant service 
members in their credentialing, and then restoring the home 
station flying program by supplementing it this year with OMA 
[Operation and Maintenance, Army] dollars to bring up the 
proficiency level training of our aviators.
    There are several other efforts that we are doing to get 
after some of the recommendations within there, but of 
significant import to the Army is the insufficient flying 
hours, and we have addressed that with the flying hour program 
supplement.
    And then decreasing proficiency. I have signed out a memo--
actually three memos--to the force to direct them to focus on 
the proficiency levels and also isolate the mechanics, so that 
the mechanics focus on maintaining the aircraft and they are 
not distracted by other activities.
    And then last one I will talk that is of importance is the 
relentless OPTEMPO. And we have attacked that by telling our 
commanders and assisting them with this to decrease the number 
of CTC [Combat Training Center] rotations that our aviation 
brigades are participating in.
    They are still participating in every rotation, but it is 
not a combat aviation brigade per rotation. That has had a 
significant impact on decreasing the OPTEMPO in our formations.
    And so there are a couple examples of some of the things we 
are doing to get after the findings.
    Mr. Garamendi. Yes. I need to unmute.
    Admiral Lescher. You are next, Admiral.
    Admiral Lescher. Thank you, Chairman.
    Yeah. Very quickly, across that appropriate list of things 
for us to be focused on.
    Pilot training. I touched on it briefly in the opening 
comment. What we have seen since the National Commission on 
Military Aviation Safety, which had many findings that were 
very much on the mark, one specific context element that 
changed from when they visited Lemoore, when they visited and 
talked to Navy is the journey we have had in driving mission-
capable aircraft up.
    So they were at a point where we were at 55 percent mission 
capable. Today, we are sustaining 80 percent with an important 
journey that is beyond the scope of this conversation.
    That, in terms of pilot training, both the use of more 
available aircraft and mission-capable aircraft is helping, and 
also the sims [simulators] I talked about, where we have, I 
think, one of the areas where the commission said, hey, are we 
using too many sims?
    We are using sims in a way I think that is powerful, and we 
are seeing in terms of outcomes things change. The standard 
scores of pilots through training are increasing with the use 
of the sims, the time to training is decreasing, and the same 
number of flights are being flown, in terms of the actual 
events. So the sims are very complementary, and they are 
creating a better output.
    In pilot training, for sure one thing we are keeping a 
close eye on is recovering from the time when the T-45 in our 
advanced strike training, engine suppressed throughput at the 
same time as we were also recovering from physiological 
episodes. And so we worked hard to get back to the capacity of 
the training pipelines, pilot training.
    Continuing. Maintenance training. Happy to talk at length. 
I think we have a strong program here, and we are evolving it 
from our current A School sequenced construct to Ready, 
Relevant Learning and distributed learning.
    Insufficient maintenance is an interesting observation. I 
think, as we talked about briefly yesterday, Chairman, the 
insufficient maintenance is not the issue. We have learned 
through two deep dives in fiscal year 2018 [inaudible] that is 
actually a maintenance program reset to update the maintenance 
program, the current configuration, the current components, 
that is indicated that we are doing maintenance at a period 
[inaudible] required, in some cases maintenance not required 
from an engineering-driven perspective and having our SYSCOM 
[systems commands] doing the analysis. So I think that is an 
important element for us to look at.
    Unpredictable funding. I appreciate working with the 
committee to help us here. I would highlight two instances. 
OPN-8 [Other Procurement, Navy, Budget Activity 8] spares have 
an impact on readiness. We, unfortunately, in the Navy trained 
the committees to mark that account with poor execution 2 to 3 
years ago, but in both OPN-8 spares and the flying hour program 
we are executing those programs strongly, and we would like to 
work in partnership with the Readiness Committee to bring those 
across the line in the defense appropriations bill.
    Finally, OPTEMPO. The fleet is stressed for sure. We are 
looking to strongly control OPTEMPO. We are looking to control 
scheduled churn within that high OPTEMPO.
    The response there is to have strong programs in place to 
assess and assist our people and strong leadership as we work 
through the world getting the vote and the strong OPTEMPO.
    Back to you, Chairman.
    Mr. Garamendi. General Allvin.
    General Allvin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And I will repeat what my colleague said. These are four 
very meaty issues that I think are definitely worth a deep 
dive, and we have given it one.
    I would say that coincidentally, the same year that--about 
when this commission started its work, we had our operational 
safety review, and we found many of the same issues. So we have 
been able to move out with some things. So I will go down the 
list as well.
    With respect to pilot training, as you know, Mr. Chairman, 
we have a bit of a throughput problem, and we have a long-term 
pipeline problem with the pilots.
    And so we have undertaken a new way, looking at the next 
pilot training approach, to make sure we have more immersive 
training, to make sure it is something that is more amenable to 
individualized training for each of the UPT students, 
undergraduate pilot training students.
    But I will repeat what Admiral Lescher said about aircraft 
availability. You know, with our T-6s, we tackled, along with 
the Navy, some of these physiological event issues, and that 
impacted the availability of the aircraft as well as the safety 
while in flight.
    And so through some great work through our physiological 
event action team and working with the Navy as well, we have 
seen a fivefold decrease in those physiological events, which 
not only is more safe operation in and of itself, but it 
actually increases our confidence in that particular training 
platform.
    But a renaissance in the way that we train pilots to make 
sure that it is consistent with 21st century education and 
training techniques is key to our way forward there.
    With respect to maintainers, we saw the very same thing, 
that the idea is really about the experience of the 
maintainers. And part of this is they are so interlinked with 
some of the other challenges we have.
    Part of our transition into the modernization was to 
leverage some of our maintainers and have them be maintainers 
in the new fleet. But as we continue to struggle with being 
able to divest the legacy fleet, we find that we are stretching 
our maintainers thin.
    So we since 2017 have added 4,000 maintainers to the fleet. 
So that is a good start. But obviously, if you add 4,000 new 
maintainers, then the relative experience of your entire 
maintenance fleet drops down. So we need to help season those 
maintainers.
    And through the things like credentialing and other things, 
we are looking at incentivization to keep those maintainers in 
their career field, but also keep them doing the maintaining, 
which is something that the commission also pointed out, have 
pilots fly, have maintainers maintain.
    So we also cut back in 1,800 additional administrative 
assistants to do the admin work that some of our pilots and 
maintainers were having to do. So we slid some of that back 
because we found, as a product of what we had done almost a 
decade ago of trying to cut as much manpower as we could to 
save money, that we had people doing more than just their core 
competency.
    So we reversed that. We also did a scrub and reduced 46 
additional duties that just weren't adding value and 
consolidated another 15.
    But the idea of keeping maintainers on the track and 
getting them more experience, we are moving hard on that one as 
well. The funding, Mr. Chairman, would be greatly appreciated.
    And the high tempo, we really are managing risk. And we 
look at the demands that come to us from the joint force, and 
as they come to our service, we manage risk and look at the 
readiness of the force and the availability to do that, and we 
do our very best to meet the demands as they are given to us.
    But we have a keen eye on the relative risk over time that 
is becoming an increasing burden. Buying down today's risk at 
the expense of tomorrow's, that is one thing our Chief and 
Secretary are looking more and more at because we don't want to 
be the force that 20 years from now they look back and said, 
you were the guys who left us unable to compete against China, 
for example.
    Mr. Garamendi. General, thank you very much.
    We are now looking to the final person to speak to this 
issue.
    General Thomas, if you will bring us up to date on the 
Marine Corps with regard to this oversight by the commission.
    General Thomas. Thank you, Chairman.
    The Marine Corps agrees with the commission's findings, and 
we are taking a deliberate look at all of the recommendations. 
But we particularly agree with the observation on the power of 
consistent funding, and we thank this committee for their 
support in that regard.
    Many of our ongoing initiatives are aligned with the 
commission's recommendations. For example, reducing OPTEMPO of 
our operational forces is a key aspect of that, and we have 
been able to reduce the demand signal on many of our units over 
the past few years.
    Improved qualification tracking, of course, improving 
materiel readiness, and ensuring that our air crew get adequate 
flight hours, in all of these areas we have seen improvement.
    As my teammates mentioned, with regard to pilot training, 
we also have in some ways a throughput challenge. We are 
working closely with our Navy teammates to do simple things in 
terms of increasing the number of instructors and standing up a 
second fleet replacement squadron for F-35 as we begin to 
scale.
    Those initiatives, along with some of the 21st century 
learning approaches that Admiral Lescher highlighted, are going 
to, we believe, greatly improve our posture.
    In terms of maintenance personnel, it is primarily a 
function for us of maintaining our experience base. It is 
largely a retention issue. And we are getting after that with 
reenlistment bonuses of $20,000 for very experienced 
maintainers. And we have noticed that over the past few years 
2,100 Marines have taken us up on that incentive.
    We appreciate the opportunity to use the report to also 
help us improve our safety record as we go forward.
    Mr. Garamendi. General, thank you very much.
    A lot more to be discussed on each of those issues, and I 
suspect my colleagues will tease out other details along the 
way.
    Mr. Lamborn, it is your turn.
    Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I know that the services are focused on identifying 
contributing factors to Class A accidents that involve high 
dollar amounts and permanent disability or death. But the near 
misses, the Class C mishaps, and the present but not 
contributing factors in Class A mishaps can reveal the canaries 
in the coal mine that could cause the next accident.
    And along the same lines, in August 2018 GAO found gaps in 
DOD's [Department of Defense's] approach for collecting, 
reporting, and analyzing the data from mishaps in general.
    So a two-part question for each of you. What are you doing 
to act on the problems that lower level mishap incidents 
reveal? And what steps are you taking to improve the reporting 
of data on all of these mishaps?
    In no particular order. Let's go in the same order that you 
testified earlier.
    General Martin. Congressman, there are two things I would 
like to talk about very quickly.
    So born at our Combat Training Centers, where we have got 
probably the highest fidelity and clearly the most dangerous 
conditions where we train in a live training environment, born 
out of the CTCs is this what we call the mishap pyramid.
    It is based on a German--Bird and Germain theory that if 
you have so many near misses, they will equate eventually over 
time to so many Class D accidents, so many Class C accidents, 
so many Class B accidents, and in the end, you are going to 
have a catastrophic outcome and a Class A mishap.
    And so, literally, at our Combat Training Centers, they 
count the number of accidents. The observers, coaches, and 
trainers, they tell on--they report on all the accidents. The 
unit is required to report. So there are summary reports, and 
literally you watch the volume of accidents come in, and it 
allows the leadership to see in each of the after-action 
reviews, hey, we have had so many of these types of accidents, 
we are on our way to a more severe outcome.
    That has proved out pretty beneficial, and it has changed 
the culture in our home station training environments as a 
result of that. And so that Bird and Germain theory that was 
born out at NTC [National Training Center] is applied to the 
rest of the Army.
    And that is how we look at lower mishaps, because, you will 
remember, especially when you are talking aviation, the 
difference between a near miss and a Class A accident in some 
cases is fractions of a second. And so we have got to be 
mindful of near misses.
    And then the second point I would like to bring up is in 
October of last year, we launched the Army Safety Management 
Information System [ASMIS] where we replaced a clunky, 
Industrial Age process of accident reporting where you had to 
fill out the same form no matter if it was a cut on a finger or 
an aircraft hit the ground. It was the same accident form. It 
was very laborious, and it was somewhat daunting.
    Well, with this new system we can see a lot more accidents. 
In fact, we have 97 percent better compliance rate and 
timeliness rate of turning in accident reports because if it is 
a Class D or a near miss, it is something that can be reported 
very quickly.
    And it also includes a non-attributional, anonymous feature 
where you can report an accident and no one will know you 
reported an accident.
    And so we think that ASMIS, the Army Safety Management 
Information System, is going to help us better see that data on 
those lower severe outcome accidents to inform changes to our 
processes and our procedures in the United States Army.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Lamborn. Okay. I would like to hear from the Navy next.
    Navy, are you there? Admiral.
    Admiral Lescher. I am struggling with the mute/unmute. I 
think I am up now.
    So I will build on what General Martin said in a couple 
ways.
    For sure, the side picture is correct that Class C's and 
near misses are a fundamental driver of us learning, 
understanding, and taking action on them. We have been looking 
at Class C's, I think, in a number of interesting ways.
    One element I will start with that is not a success yet is 
convergence training, If you look to the airlines in aviation 
and look at fundamental training of elements that are often the 
root cause of aircraft move accidents and the type of accidents 
we see that generate Class C mishaps. And what we have seen 
after 18 months or so of that is that it is not moving the 
needle.
    So, again, we are very focused on understanding where we 
are just seeing activity and where we are seeing outcomes that 
are fundamentally addressing the root causes.
    And so what we have learned with convergence training, 
which was fundamentally pre-, post-move alignment on a quick 
run-through of operational risk management, it wasn't moving 
the needle.
    Two things going forward that I think are high potential. 
We have 2 years now of experience using an aviation experience 
metric that correlates with readiness, that lets us really 
understand and allocate our people in a way that maximizes 
readiness. We call this the aviation and maintenance experience 
metric that looks at type/ model/series experience, that looks 
at qualifications, such as quality assurance qualifications. 
And we can use it very effectively.
    We are doing an offshoot of that to look at aviation 
boatswain's mates, which are the people on our flight decks, on 
our big deck amphibs, on our aircraft carriers who are doing so 
much of the activity that is at risk of being a Class C when 
you bump an aircraft in a move, et cetera.
    And we see that there is initially from the data already 
that we could be much more informed about understanding with 
this analytic approach the experience of an aviation 
boatswain's mate in terms of familiar with that type of ship, 
in terms of number of deployments, in terms of other 
fundamental quals [qualifications], and use that to allocate 
that and make sure, for example, on specific ships or specific 
moves, that we have a properly experienced supervisor driving 
the evolution. So I would highlight that as one element.
    Another element that is going forward, we have some 
experience working with industry on specific [inaudible] risk 
and problem-solving process which is basically a deep dive 
effort and a very disciplined way to find root causes. And we 
had an opportunity to do three of these pilots, and one of them 
is in fact [inaudible].
    So I will pause there in the interest of time, but the same 
type picture.
    I guess--I am sorry--the second question was on data, do we 
feel we are getting the data.
    I think you are tracking, sir, that we are using and have 
joined now the same risk management information database and 
approach as the Air Force and the Marines. And so standardized 
data sets.
    And while it is a moving target, we are 98 percent complete 
in terms of the current target in terms of data completeness. 
So our sense is that we are on a strong vector to make sure we 
have standardized, complete data to help drive these insights.
    Over.
    Mr. Lamborn. And briefly, the Marines and Air Force.
    General Allvin. I am sorry. Go ahead, Gary.
    General Thomas. Thank you, General Allvin.
    Just, Congressman, in terms of how we are acting on the 
problems that these lower level mishaps reveal, we are looking 
at it through two lenses. First, hazard reporting, followed by 
information sharing.
    And this is something that General Martin spoke to, but I 
would also like to emphasize is that we have introduced new 
tools that not only makes the reporting of hazards that Marines 
see much easier, we have also made it where they are anonymous.
    And, again, it just encourages Marines down at the deck 
plate to identify those things that they may see every single 
day. And then we are able to aggregate those and look at it 
across the entire institution.
    And then in terms of information sharing in the Department 
of the Navy, of course, we have this Streamlined Incident 
Reporting System, as well as a mishap lesson learned website. 
Again, that makes the lessons learned that have been cataloged 
over a number of years readily available to commanders, O-5 
commanders, on a daily basis.
    In terms of the data collection, again, I would like to 
emphasize something that Admiral Lescher said, that we are 
completely aligned with the Navy in fielding this Streamlined 
Incident Reporting System. It is a Department of the Navy 
initiative that is based on a very successful and mature Air 
Force system.
    He mentioned that we have standardized data. I would just 
add to that that we actually use the same data collection 
fields. And as he said, I think we are 98 percent common in 
terms of our approach. And we look forward to continue 
supporting ongoing standardization efforts to improve data 
collection across all the services.
    Mr. Lamborn. Thank you.
    And very briefly for the sake of time, Air Force.
    General Allvin. Yes, sir. I will be brief because most of 
the things I would say have already been said.
    We also have a very robust--we investigate every Class C 
mishap that happens at each wing. Those get elevated all the 
way up to the four-star level, and the results of those are 
reviewed on a semiannual basis. And every one of the findings 
of every one of Class C, Class B, Class A mishaps are tracked 
to closure at the four-star level, and that allows us to see 
not only individual incidents but across incidents for trends.
    With respect to the data, we have all of those same things. 
The database is getting better. The fields are consistent so we 
can start reading each other's data, learning across service as 
well. And we also have the identity-protected inputs that allow 
our airmen to be able to identify hazards and identify culture 
and climate issues with respect to safety that they may not 
otherwise be able to do.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Lamborn. Okay. Thank you.
    Mr. Chairman, back to you.
    Mr. Garamendi. A good set of questions, great answers.
    I am going to give the gavel order once again. Courtney, 
Wilson, Speier, Moore, the next four up.
    Mr. Courtney.
    Mr. Courtney. Great.
    Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you, Ranking Member 
Lamborn, for holding this hearing, and to the witnesses for 
their testimony.
    Admiral Lescher, on page 3 and 4 of your testimony you 
talked about the sort of post Fitzgerald and McCain reforms. 
Again, there was the comprehensive review which we went through 
on the subcommittee back in 2017 and 2018 with the 111 
recommendations. Many of those were actually codified in the 
NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] that year.
    And I was noticing where you kind of updated the fact that 
the readiness certification of the crews has now reached a 100 
percent certification process, which is actually a pretty 
shocking improvement.
    When GAO did the report back in 2017 the certifications 
were really actually kind of frightening in terms of how low 
many of the sailors and the crew were.
    So I want to just see if you could sort of explain, was it 
giving the type commanders more power, because that obviously 
was identified as a problem in terms of the tug of war between 
the type commands and the operational commands?
    I mean, is their ability, maybe, to sort of, pull the 
safety brake, as Admiral Richardson said back in those hearings 
that we held, forcing the issue, where we make sure that 
everyone is certified before a ship goes underway? Is that what 
is happening?
    Admiral Lescher. Yes, sir. It is good to see you again.
    And that is exactly what is happening. I mean, your 
instinct is exactly on the mark. So Roy Kitchener at SURFOR 
[Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet] and Brendan McLane 
now at SURFLANT [Naval Surface Force, Atlantic] have--we put 
the firebreaks in, which was a fundamental diagnosis, that we 
had lost the firebreaks between the maintenance, the training, 
and then the deploy phase.
    And so in terms of a culture change, which I hinted at a 
bit, there is a fundamental culture change of ending this idea 
of waivers. There have been no waivers. They require four-star 
level now. And there is multiple examples of where from a man, 
train, or equip perspective the type com [commander] has said 
to our fleet commanders, ``Hey, I have got to change this 
engine, I have got to redo this exercise, I have got to have 
the time to do this right,'' and they are supported.
    So your diagnosis there is correct, sir.
    Mr. Courtney. Well, it is really encouraging to see that, 
again, people got their heads together and identified what the 
problem was and solved it without--again, it really didn't 
require necessarily infusions of big amounts of money or 
resources. It was just really trying to change or put in 
safeguards. Congratulations to the Navy for making that happen.
    General Thomas, your report and your testimony at the end 
talked about the AAV [assault amphibious vehicle] accident that 
took place in San Clemente, the tragic accident.
    So it is my understanding that a report is imminent in 
terms of describing, I guess, what the Navy--the Marine Corps 
investigation produced.
    And one question in addition to just that is, was the use 
of those AAVs paused in the wake of the accident? And has there 
been any modifications made to those platforms during that 
pause?
    General Thomas. Thank you, Congressman.
    Just in terms of the investigation, the investigation is 
complete. We are informing the families of the investigation 
findings this week. Making sure the families are informed and 
answering their questions is a priority for us. And we look 
forward to releasing the results of that investigation near 
simultaneously to the committee once those family notifications 
are complete.
    In terms of the actual waterborne operations, they were 
suspended to complete a review of our equipment, our 
procedures, and training. With a couple of exceptions, the 
first three-star in the chain of command has the ability to 
waiver that in reasons of operational assessing.
    For example, we are conducting limited water operations to 
complete entry-level training requirements, and we are 
committed to ensuring a safe return to water ops as soon as we 
can.
    And to your question in terms of the vehicles, when we 
suspended water operations we did a thorough inspection of all 
vehicles, whether related to any concerns about this particular 
mishap or not, and reported that and made some just maintenance 
effort to ensure that all of those vehicles were within 
standards.
    Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you, General. I appreciate it. 
And I am sure once the report is out, we will continue this 
dialogue.
    I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Courtney.
    There is a great deal of interest among the committee 
members on that particular issue. The timing didn't work out 
well. We will probably do a briefing. And any of the members of 
the committee and any others that want to involve themselves 
either next week or the following week, probably the following 
week. We will see what happens here.
    And, General Thomas, we will invite you back for about an 
hour to discuss that particular incident.
    Very good.
    Okay. We are now going to turn to Mr. Wilson.
    Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member 
Lamborn. We appreciate the dedicated panel participating today, 
extraordinary individuals on behalf of our country. We 
appreciate it.
    Admiral Lescher, to further the excellent review by 
Congressman Courtney, I was grateful to visit the USS 
Fitzgerald in Japan several years ago and saw where our sailors 
were tragically killed, and appreciate your efforts to make 
sure an accident never occurs again.
    The Navy concluded that fatigue was a contributing factor 
to both the McCain and Fitzgerald collisions. The substantial 
body of research indicates that the fatigue causes impaired 
judgment, decreased concentration and reaction times, and 
contributes to poor mental and physical health.
    This issue is not isolated to the Navy, but how has your 
service made progress on changing the culture of sleep 
deprivation on ships and submarines? What lessons learned can 
you pass along to your teammates?
    Admiral Lescher. Thank you, sir, for the question, and I 
appreciate you getting on site as well.
    There has been a comprehensive culture change, most starkly 
in the surface community. So my background, I grew up as a helo 
[helicopter] pilot that deployed on our surface ships, our 
small surface ships as an HSL [Helicopter Anti-Submarine 
Squadron, Light] pilot. So, I consider myself a student of the 
surface warfare culture.
    And there was a stark difference. I, as an aviator, would 
get up and I would have my crew rest, and I would ensure I had 
a circadian rhythm before I would fly. And my teammates across 
the passageway did not have that same discipline, and there was 
an element at times of the SWO [Surface Warfare Officer] 
culture where it was a point of pride to operate sleep-
deprived.
    That has fundamentally changed, and it fundamentally 
changed with Roy Kitchener, our surface three-star SWO boss, 
implementing an instruction this year, the Comprehensive Crew 
Endurance Management Policy.
    And the community had been thinking about this idea of 
setting their watches to preserve circadian rhythm, to preserve 
crew rest, to preserve sleep, but it had been dabbled in. Roy 
made it a requirement, a policy.
    And when you go aboard our ships now and you talk to the 
sailors and ask them to talk about how they stand their 
watches, you will see that that has been made a requirement and 
it is a part of the fundamental culture.
    The other element that is interesting is there is quite a 
bit of ongoing work on all the elements you talked about, 
fatigue, sleep deprivation, with Naval Postgraduate School 
[NPS]. So the surface community has worked closely with them.
    One other element I would highlight of the surface 
community is there are experiments going on right now, a pilot 
going on right now as we speak aboard Essex with 300 sailors 
using a wearable device. So they are reporting. You know, you 
have seen these commercially [inaudible]. Athletes use them. 
And the sailors are having these assessments of how they slept, 
et cetera, available to be brought into a watch bill software 
to optimize that as well.
    And it is not just the surface force. Again, in the 
interest of brevity, I will go fairly quickly.
    The submarine force, I think you know a couple of years ago 
they shifted from 6- to 8-hour watches. They are doing a lot of 
ongoing work as well with the medical community and NPS on 
lighting, on meal schedules, on training schedules, and in 
aviation.
    Notwithstanding that we have had strong fatigue management 
in the air crew, what is new starting in 2018 is our 3710 
instruction, our general NATOPS [Naval Air Training and 
Operating Procedures Standardization] instruction mandates that 
we apply that to the maintenance professionals and the admin 
folks as well.
    So now it is not just air crew. It is wanting the full 
team, maintenance as well as air crew, being focused on being 
properly rested and properly prepared to do the mission.
    Over.
    Mr. Wilson. Well, as a Fitbit fan myself, I know how you 
can maintain a person's sleep habits. And so that is very, very 
helpful.
    And, General Martin, I am really grateful to represent Fort 
Jackson. And in the NDAA there was included an amendment that 
requires DOD to examine emergency response capabilities and 
services in the military installations, to explore the benefits 
of requiring medevac helicopters and a fully stocked military 
ambulance to be more readily on hand to respond to training 
accidents.
    What progress has the Army made to adopting these 
requirements?
    General Martin. Congressman, thank you. It is good to see 
you again.
    We are aware of the amendment. I have actually read the 
amendment itself. And OSD has not tasked that out yet. We 
anticipate it will be forthcoming. And we look forward to 
supporting the study that is in the amendment to take a look at 
it.
    That being said, as a former senior commander of two 
installations in the United States Army, I can't tell you how 
important it is to have appropriately equipped and rehearsed 
medical capability that is responsive at each and every one of 
your installations. I couldn't agree more.
    Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much. As an Army dad and also a 
Navy dad, I am really proud of what you are doing.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Wilson.
    Ms. Speier, you are up next.
    Ms. Speier. Mr. Chairman, I want to forgo my turn for about 
10 minutes so I can get to my destination and ask my question 
when I am not in a car.
    Mr. Garamendi. We will be watching you, and when we see you 
settle down and stop bouncing around, we will call on you. 
Thank you.
    We will skip then to--I suppose we need to go to a 
Democrat. So that would be, Ms. Strickland, you are up. And 
then we are going to go to Mr. Moore.
    Ms. Strickland, we jumped ahead and didn't give you much 
warning.
    Mr. Moore then, you are up, and then we will get back on 
track.
    Mr. Moore. Excellent. Thank you, Chairman.
    Generals and Admiral, thank you for being here.
    My district hosts the Command Mission and Control Center 
for the Utah Test and Training Range [TTR]. And this is a top 
priority for them. They have a great track record. They make 
this very much a priority. So thank you for the work you are 
doing to get here.
    And I would actually just like to call out the commission. 
As I have gone over the summary here, this is very poignant and 
provides really good information, and I encourage my colleagues 
to really dive into this.
    But insufficient experience, high OPSTEMPO, and workforce 
attrition, those are real issues that can directly go towards 
training mishaps. And the solutions that are provided are 
flying hours and retention bonuses. I welcome comments on that.
    Let me ask my first question, though, to General Allvin.
    Also, the commission referenced sustainment challenges and 
unpredictable funding as contributing factors to training 
mishaps.
    Could modernization and optimization efforts, specifically 
at test and training ranges, are these going to help mitigate 
some of these challenges?
    General Allvin. Congressman, thank you for the question.
    I definitely think that there is a link to that. The 
quality of the ranges and the ability to get the type of 
training which, moving forward, trying to replicate what is an 
advanced threat and not having the right sensors, the right 
support equipment, all of that, will force us to try and train 
a different way.
    And any time we train a little bit differently than how we 
fight, it has two impacts. One of those is we have less 
confidence in our ability to actually prosecute the targets we 
need to or penetrate the airspace we need to, et cetera.
    But the other part is it actually, once you start 
detracting from that, you start going off script, and there are 
safety impacts to that.
    So I do believe that there is a linkage there, and I 
believe that as we move into a more modern range structure and 
support, our big challenge is going to be in the transition.
    I mean, if we could fast-forward and look into the future 
and have everything modernized and all of the flight support 
equipment, all of the platforms at the same level of technology 
advancement, we will be in good shape.
    But trying to bring legacy systems in the same environment 
as the new systems is going to be increasingly challenging. And 
I think there is not only a readiness risk, but there are 
training efficiency risks. And when you have training 
efficiency risks, safety often comes along with that.
    So I would agree with that statement.
    Mr. Moore. Thank you.
    And as I have interacted with commanders at our Air Force 
base here in Utah, they know their airmen best. I feel like 
there is a great relationship that they have.
    And as we talk about the fact that retention bonuses 
haven't necessarily worked, even though it is part of the 
solution, they haven't necessarily worked in keeping them from 
going to commercial aviation, do you feel that squadron 
commanders have the adequate authority to be honest brokers 
when negotiating aviation bonus contracts?
    General Allvin. I think squadron commanders, I think they 
do have the authorities. What we need to do is ensure that the 
analysis that we do gets communicated and transferred to them 
so they can best advise.
    Because you make the exact point, Congressman. They are the 
ones who interface with the aviators, and they are the ones who 
understand what the value proposition is for those aviators, 
whether an extra X thousand dollars is really what is going to 
seal the deal for a longer commitment or if there are other 
levers that the Air Force should be pulling.
    So we have air crew summits very frequently that discuss 
this. What do we think the sweet spot is? And, of course, that 
varies with the economy, as we know.
    But the economy is just one variable. We have to do the 
best job of understanding what that pull is, but also 
understanding how to better communicate the value proposition 
of what the Air Force offers and working on all those other 
issues that are quality of life, quality of force, that will 
keep them there beyond just the dollar values.
    Because if we try to go one for one with the airline, as 
the economy picks back up again, it will be a losing 
proposition. We have seen that, a couple iterations over the 
last decade.
    Mr. Moore. You just answered my next question, because I 
was going to ask to what extent is OPSTEMPO a part of that, but 
you have addressed that with quality of life.
    OPSTEMPO, the need for the mission, that got them in that 
seat in the first place, and encouraging them to do that.
    I will leverage the last few seconds with continue to talk 
about workforce attrition. They leave critical vacancies in the 
organic industrial base.
    Do you believe that DOD has adequate hiring authorities to 
address workforce attrition and the growing competition?
    General Allvin. In the very brief time I have, I would say 
that those are, indeed, challenges. We see not only diminishing 
manufacturing sources for equipment and supplies, but also to 
get the right labor market in to be able to do the rapid 
innovation that we need to keep up. That is going to be 
critical. I would love to talk more on that as well.
    Mr. Moore. Yeah. We have been focused on airmen, but, 
obviously, there are so many more job opportunities that we can 
maintain that talent.
    I yield back. Thank you, Chairman.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Moore.
    And thank all of our committee for being very attentive to 
the time as well as the witnesses. Appreciate that.
    I see Ms. Speier is still in her car, so we will skip back 
to Ms. Strickland.
    If you are with us, it is your turn.
    Ms. Strickland. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
    Service members put their lives on the line to serve our 
country, and, obviously, we have to do everything we can to 
ensure their safety.
    I am concerned, however, that Congress has found itself 
having to create commissions, and some of these services have 
had to launch comprehensive reviews after the series of 
incidents.
    And these actions make it seem as though the safety offices 
may not be properly resourced or connected to these accidents.
    And so I have a few questions.
    Do safety offices have the capacity, the ability, and the 
authority to identify and investigate the root causes of 
training accidents?
    And I would like to direct that toward General Martin and 
also General Allvin.
    General Martin. Congresswoman, thank you. Appreciate the 
question.
    First and foremost, what I would really like to do is I 
would like to personally invite you and any other members of 
the committee for a visit down to the Combat Readiness Center 
at Fort Rucker, Alabama, so you can see the exquisite 
capability we have there that we use not only to identify the 
root cause, the causation of each accident, but also to manage 
the data that comes in from the various accidents that are 
reported across the board.
    As it pertains to the capabilities within each formation to 
ensure that we mitigate risk, in the United States Army risk 
mitigation is a commander's program.
    It is enabled by safety professionals. And those safety 
professionals are placed throughout our ranks and our 
formation, and we use them to help us as subject matter experts 
and also conduits to the rest of the enterprise, since they 
talk to each other about different things, to help commanders 
promulgate safety programs.
    But, that being said, we have recently done a study, based 
on some information from a GAO audit, to take a look at our 
manpower.
    And we are looking at increasing the number of safety 
professionals we have at certain locations in our formations to 
get after some more of that additional subject matter expertise 
that we need to make sure we enable that commander's program to 
happen.
    Thank you.
    Ms. Strickland. Thank you.
    General Allvin. Congresswoman, thank you for the question. 
I think it is a very important question too.
    I believe that one of the most important parts of our 
safety program is sort of the independence that the safety 
apparatus has, per se.
    I think the idea that at the squadron level, if there are 
levels of mishaps that are the lower level, that is well 
handled within the squadron. But once the cost of lives or 
resources elevates that, then that comes outside of the chain 
of command.
    And so the idea that they have the authority, that without 
influence, you know, within the particular command, to be able 
to have access to the resources, we immediately, when an 
accident happens, we immediately sort of sequester that and 
make sure we hold the evidence, if you will.
    And then we bring in, if the accident is serious enough, we 
bring in external, so they will have free rein to have all the 
information they need and the reporting chain that comes all 
the way up here to the headquarters.
    I think we could always--and I will agree with my Army 
colleague Joe there--we could always deal with having a greater 
number of people to be in there observing and have more safety 
professionals. But I do have confidence in the independence of 
our entire safety system to have access all the way up to the 
Chief of Staff.
    Ms. Strickland. Okay. And then one more question.
    Can you tell me what percentage of training accidents occur 
between Active Duty, National Guard, and Reserves? And, again, 
back to our Army and Air Force leaders, because I am 
responsible for JBLM [Joint Base Lewis-McChord].
    General Allvin. Congresswoman, I am going to jump in real 
quick so we can get back to General Martin.
    I do not have the specifics. We have them broken out by 
aviation and ground. But I can give you very detailed, if I can 
take that for the record, we can have that back to you 
posthaste, because we do have those broken out, but they are 
separately between aviation and ground incidents.
    And I understand. Thank you for JBLM. I was stationed there 
at one point.
    [The information referred to can be found in the Appendix 
on page 91.]
    Ms. Strickland. All right. Thank you.
    General Martin. Congresswoman, I need to take that for the 
record as well, if I could, please.
    [The information referred to was not available at the time 
of printing.]
    Ms. Strickland. All right. Thank you for your answers. And, 
again, thank you for your service.
    I yield my time.
    Mr. Garamendi. Ms. Strickland, that was a very interesting 
question. It had not occurred to me that we really need to look 
at the three different pieces that make up a full unit, and 
maybe there is a significant differential. I will be interested 
in having that information.
    Ms. Strickland. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Garamendi. I notice Ms. Speier is no longer bouncing 
around.
    Would you like to have your 5 minutes?
    Ms. Speier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Garamendi. Go for it.
    Ms. Speier. Let me start off by saying to this 
distinguished panel before us, in my recent visits to some of 
our installations, in terms of evaluating the culture and the 
status of our service members, it is amazing how forthright 
spouses are.
    And at a recent visit to Fort Hood, one of the spouses said 
to me in an open gathering of spouses that the concern of the 
OPTEMPO was so great that she would come home at night and was 
always afraid that she was going to find her husband in the 
shower hanging.
    So I encourage you to create opportunities to meet with the 
spouses.
    I would like to go back to the AAV incident, the tragedy 
that happened last summer that Congressman Courtney had spoken 
about earlier. Only 7 of the 16 Marines survived. And I 
understand that part of the problem was the escape hatch and 
their inability to open the escape hatch.
    Has that issue been resolved? This is for General Thomas.
    General Thomas. Thank you, Congresswoman.
    What I would say is, you know, while the investigation is 
complete, we are about halfway through notifying the families 
of the investigation findings, and that will occur during this 
week. As you know, making sure the families are fully informed 
and answering their questions is our first priority.
    We are happy to come back to the committee and discuss 
questions about the material readiness, specifically to your 
question, on the escape hatch.
    Ms. Speier. All right. It sounds like you are not going to 
answer the question right now, and I don't have a lot of time. 
So I want to move on to another issue.
    The ACVs [amphibious combat vehicles] are now, I guess, in 
production, and they have wheels instead of tracks. They are 
similar, I understand, to the LAV-25s [light armored vehicles] 
and can operate at 60 miles per hour and climb a 60-degree 
angle and in many respects very similar to the LAV.
    An Orange County Register article recently indicated that 
Marines were very concerned about this new vehicle. They were 
concerned about the turning radius and the potential for 
rollovers.
    So I guess my first question is, will the ACV training be 
more rigorous? And how are we going to protect against 
rollovers?
    General Thomas. Congresswoman, rollovers for any armored 
vehicle is always a concern. In 2019 we had seven rollovers and 
the tragic loss of several Marines. In 2020, we had two. And in 
2021, thus far we have had zero.
    We have to, for all of our vehicles, including ACV, we have 
to improve our training to avoid these types of mishaps. One of 
the things that we are doing is we are increasing the number of 
driving events or training events for all the crews going 
through that particular syllabus.
    And one of the things that we are doing with our new Safety 
Management System is for commanders of all these units to 
characterize the risk that they face in their particular 
location and their mission, and then to ensure that they are 
providing adequate supervision, detailed planning, and detailed 
debriefs for all of these missions that involve these vehicles.
    Ms. Speier. All right.
    So in terms of more rigorous training that is being 
contemplated, how do we guard against rollovers if they are a 
risk that we frequently encounter?
    General Thomas. Congresswoman, what I would say is this. 
The best way to do that--there are several areas that we have 
identified that are causal factors to rollovers. As I 
mentioned, one of the things we have to do is increase the 
number of driver training events.
    We also have to make sure that our ranges are very well 
understood and all hazard areas are very well marked.
    And then it gets back to detailed planning with the crews, 
with supervision of commanders. And that is the way that we are 
going to prevent those rollovers.
    Ms. Speier. Are there simulators that are available in the 
marketplace to practice potential responses to rollovers?
    General Thomas. We have simulators as a part of our 
training system which have very good capabilities, but the 
Marines have to do actual training in the vehicle itself--in 
rough terrain--that takes into account all the other factors 
that I just described.
    Ms. Speier. All right. My time is expired. Thank you.
    And thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member.
    Mr. Garamendi. Ms. Speier, while you are still available, 
the issue of the AAV off the coast of California [inaudible] 
did come up [inaudible] late next week, once the Marine Corps 
has finished [inaudible] the families. And we will let 
everybody have a few days' advance notice. That will be a 
telephone briefing. Okay?
    Ms. Speier. All right. Thank you.
    Mr. Garamendi. Very good. Thank you.
    The gavel order remains Scott, Slotkin, Kahele, and 
Buchanan.
    So, Austin.
    Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    One of the reasons we have fewer combat incidents that lead 
to death is because of how hard we train inside the United 
States. And while I do agree that we need to certainly limit 
[inaudible] as best we can, but the rigorous training is the 
reason that we don't lose more men and women in combat than we 
do.
    And so we can't cut all of the risk out, especially with 
regard to EOD [explosive ordnance disposal] training and high-
risk training, and expect that our men and women are going to 
be prepared for combat when that situation and the need for 
their expertise arises.
    So, with that said, General Allvin, one of the things I was 
very impressed with is when the Yanky 72 accident occurred, is 
how good the investigation was with regard to narrowing down 
exactly what led to the accident, and then how fast the Air 
Force responded to changing the processes with regard to the 
propellers.
    So I want to just tell you, the loss of life in Yanky 72, 
we obviously mourn those soldiers and the sailor that we lost, 
but I was pretty impressed with the investigation that came 
about.
    In your testimony, you talk about maintenance effectiveness 
and how maintenance effectiveness drives higher aircraft 
availability rates, and then the availability rates leads to 
obviously the amount of training that we are able to do and, 
hopefully, that leads to fewer accidents.
    The advanced manufacturing technologies, like 3D printing, 
robotics, and artificial intelligence that the Air Force is now 
using to improve maintenance timelines, can you describe some 
of the sustainment challenges and the remedies of those 
challenges that are driving low aircraft availability and fewer 
available training hours and how we use these advanced methods 
to fix that?
    General Allvin. Yeah, Congressman, I am happy to do so, 
because I have got to tell you, this is one of the more 
exciting areas that I think we can really make some progress 
in. And it starts with the data. It starts with being able to 
have an analytic baseline to do this.
    And I think a couple of things that are going on. The 
condition-based maintenance, which is not something we invented 
in the Air Force, the airlines have been doing it for a while, 
but the idea of theory of constraints and taking sensor-based 
analysis, putting sensors on particular parts of the aircraft 
and testing them and monitoring the heat, the vibration, et 
cetera, et cetera, is really going to help.
    I would like it to go faster. I would think one of the 
reasons why the airlines have really advanced theirs as much, 
because, as you know, Congressman, one of the things about 
being able to do AI [artificial intelligence] and machine 
learning, you need lots of data. You need massive computing 
power, which we have. But you need lots of data.
    And so the airlines have been able to take lots of data for 
like type aircraft and move that forward.
    Ours, we have a little bit less of a homogeneous fleet and 
mission, but we are moving out on that and trying to find those 
things through the theory of constraints and look at those long 
lead items.
    And understanding we also have to have an aggressive 
diminishing manufacturing sources and material solutions 
program to be able to understand not only what are the parts 
that are going to be the critical path that are going to need 
to be maybe proactively replaced.
    But also, when you have got diminishing manufacturing 
sources, to your point, on some of these additive manufacturing 
techniques, we may be able to generate those parts without 
having to go and be sort of vendor locked or have single-source 
suppliers.
    So those are just a couple of the areas. I think it is just 
a broad, broad area that we can really look into a new way of 
extending and making sure aircraft availability is at its peak.
    Mr. Scott. Thank you, General.
    And just for the committee's sake, I mean, if we want to 
increase the level of flying hours, then we have to increase 
the aircraft availability. And that gets back to, I think, the 
predictive maintenance and some of the other things that we are 
doing that make more planes available for our pilots.
    So, again, I have been impressed with the ability to find 
out exactly what caused an accident, the ability to remedy that 
so that it does not happen again.
    And thank you all for your service.
    And, again, we have got to train hard because we fight 
hard. And the reason we are as successful in combat as we are 
is because we push the limits inside the United States when we 
are training.
    With that, I yield.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you very much, Austin.
    And also, General Allvin, you touched on a couple of things 
we have discussed before. The condition-based maintenance is 
one. And then Austin just used the other word, which is 
``predictive.'' These two things, this committee is way into 
this.
    And then the [inaudible] analytical [inaudible]. So the 
gathering of information from ancient, I guess, clipboards that 
are sitting in some file someplace on a C-130 that is 40 years 
old. So we want to gather up all that information.
    We are going to push this really hard, because it does deal 
with the safety issue as well as the flying hours and all the 
things that we have talked about here.
    And I have got all of you gentlemen up here. I had an 
earlier meeting this morning. I am going to go to Ms. Slotkin 
in just a moment.
    But we had an earlier meeting this morning about a company 
that is able to produce things that are not available anywhere, 
that broken piece that you absolutely have that you can no 
longer cannibalize from some piece of airframe somewhere.
    I am thinking that we might have a virtual session and 
invite into that session any and anybody that thinks that they 
can meet this particular problem, a very acute problem of parts 
and pieces that are no longer available and no longer can be 
cannibalized, and then get the appropriate people on and let 
them strut their stuff and you guys can go from there.
    Okay, enough for me. Ms. Slotkin, you are up.
    Elissa. Hello. Elissa, if you are out there, we will come 
back to you.
    I am going to stay with--then that would be Mr. Kahele.
    Given that it is still 3 hours earlier in Hawaii, Kai, if 
you are available. One more call to Kai. Kai, if you are out 
there, it is your turn.
    All right. We now turn to Mr. Buchanan, not a member of the 
committee, but we have run through the committee members. I 
believe we are going to have a couple of committee members that 
will return after you finish.
    Mr. Buchanan, your question.
    Mr. Buchanan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank 
Ranking Member Lamborn for this opportunity today.
    I am from the Tampa Bay area in Florida. I called on the 
committee to hold a public hearing on military training 
accidents last August, so I want to thank you for that 
opportunity.
    Can you hear me all right?
    Mr. Garamendi. Yes, we can.
    Mr. Buchanan. Okay.
    I became involved with this issue after being contacted by 
one of my constituents, Kimberly Weaver, and learning of the 
heartbreaking and preventable death of her son, Army Specialist 
Nick Panipinto. He is a 20-year-old.
    Nick died in a training accident at Camp Humphreys in South 
Korea in 2019. A tragic series of errors and training failures 
contributed to Nick's death, including a lack of medical 
services on the base and significant delays in a medical 
response to the scene of the accident. Nick eventually arrived 
at the hospital 2 hours after the accident and died from his 
injuries later that day.
    That is why I offered an amendment last year to the NDAA 
which has since become law, requiring the Pentagon to examine 
emergency medical services and capability at U.S. military 
bases around the world and outside, ideally even in the U.S., 
but outside the U.S., and report back to Congress.
    Gentlemen, I want to thank all of our witnesses here today. 
Thanks to your leadership, we have got the best military on the 
planet, but we can always, as someone said, do better.
    And I guess one of the things when we started looking at 
the facts of this is that in 2017, just 1 year, that they had 
20 killed in combat and 80 killed in training. And then as we 
looked at it, there's many times where there's quite a few more 
killed in training than in combat.
    So, General Martin, I would like to get your thoughts on 
where you see--what is acceptable. I mean, we don't want to 
lose one airman or one person in the Army, but I would like to 
get your thoughts in terms of when we see these numbers, so 
many more are getting killed in training than in combat. How do 
you respond to that?
    General Martin. Congressman, first and foremost, my 
thoughts and prayers go out to that family. My son is a soldier 
in the United States Army, and I can tell you I can't imagine a 
day without him. And it has just got to be--I can't imagine it.
    And, as a former commander of two installations and 
commanders of formations across the board in and out of combat, 
I will tell you that every single one of the accidents that I 
have seen happen are preventable. They are all preventable.
    And so, with that in mind, we can never ever stop our 
relentless efforts to get after mitigating risk in our 
formations.
    What we do is very, very difficult. We ask our soldiers and 
our formations to do a lot. And in order for them to be able to 
do the mission that they do there is a lot of dangerous 
activity.
    So commanders at echelon are required to mitigate the risk 
to their formation. They are required to certify the soldiers 
on their equipment. They are required to ensure that as those 
soldiers operate that equipment independently, they do it under 
safe conditions; a risk assessment, identifying all the hazards 
and mitigating those risks, is done in concert with that.
    And if they are operating in a tactical environment, 
commanders are responsible for their operating environment, the 
soldiers beneath them, to identify the hazards that are in that 
environment and mitigate those risks.
    And on that day----
    Mr. Buchanan. General, let me ask you, because we just have 
a certain amount of time. Why didn't they have in the case--you 
might not know exactly, but in Korea here at the base they were 
training--medevac helicopters and fully stocked ambulance?
    Overseas it seems like we don't have as much capability 
immediately to help these young men and young women ideally. I 
am sure some places are better than others, but that is the 
sense of what we came up with, in terms of Korea, on this base.
    General Martin. Congressman, I have read that accident 
investigation cover to cover. And based on my experience, I 
would call what happened in Korea an anomaly and a very 
unfortunate anomaly.
    And so I understand the amendment that you have introduced 
that has become law, and I understand that we are to conduct 
and explore a study into exactly what the capability is across 
all of our installations in the Army.
    I can tell you the two that I served at most recently, both 
installations that was the standard. But we need to make sure. 
And so we are committed to support the efforts of this study.
    And, again, I am so sorry for the loss of your 
constituent's son.
    Mr. Buchanan. And let me mention, General, I was very 
disturbed when I learned from Nick's mother that he didn't have 
a license to operate the vehicle. And I don't know, but it 
sounds like a serious vehicle. You would know. M2A3, a Bradley 
Fighting Vehicle. Sounds like a serious vehicle.
    But it seems like there is no requirement for training, no 
classroom instruction before you start to road test these. In 
fact, according to a sworn statement from his unit master 
driver, his comments were their unit driving training program 
is nonexistent.
    We have the greatest military in the world, the greatest 
leaders, including yourselves. How can something like this 
happen if that is the case? Again, a serious vehicle, no 
training, he is out driving it. It doesn't even seem possible 
to me.
    But I will let you respond to that if you have any sense of 
it.
    General Martin. Congressman, that is the classic example of 
a deviation from an existing standard. Army Regulation 600-55 
in its current state and the state that it was back then 
required all drivers to be trained and certified. It is a 
three-phase program. That hasn't changed. The rigor of that 
program has changed with the changes in the regulation.
    But he should have been. And he shouldn't have been able to 
operate the vehicle without a license. And because of that, in 
the administrative investigation that resulted from that there 
was negligence that was identified at multiple echelons in the 
command, and the chain of command took appropriate action 
against those individuals who failed that soldier on that day.
    Mr. Buchanan. And I will just tell you, the family, Nick's 
family would appreciate assurances that steps will be taken 
going forward so that parents don't have to go through this 
again. And I think that is the reason I got involved and active 
in making sure we passed this bill.
    But also they just want the assurance from the Army and 
from you that we are going to do everything we can to make sure 
something like this doesn't happen again.
    General Martin. To his family, my condolences. I am 
committed to making sure that doesn't happen again.
    Mr. Buchanan. Thank you, General. And thanks for your 
leadership.
    And, again, we have got the best military on the planet. I 
know things happen. But, again, this I am sure will provide a 
lot of reassurance to Nick's family.
    Thank you and God bless.
    Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Buchanan, the hearing record will be 
available, and you could pass that on to the family, you just 
heard from the vice chair where the U.S. Army is on that 
question.
    Mr. Buchanan. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the 
opportunity to visit today, okay? Thank you.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you.
    Before we start the second round, we have got about another 
25 minutes before we are scheduled to terminate.
    Dr. Green. Mr. Chairman, if I could, this is Congressman 
Green. I haven't had a chance to go yet. I am in the queue, I 
think.
    Mr. Garamendi. Actually, you are not, but you certainly did 
the right thing. You are now.
    Dr. Green. Well, thank you.
    Mr. Garamendi. Your turn, Dr. Green. Go for it.
    Dr. Green. Thank you very much, Chairman. I appreciate 
that.
    Ranking Member Lamborn, thank you, too, for holding this 
hearing.
    I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today 
and for their life of service to this great country.
    And, General Martin, it is a pleasure to see you leading at 
this level. My family, with a young infantry officer serving in 
the 101st Airborne Division, sleeps a little better knowing 
that you are the Vice Chief of the Army.
    For the rest of the members on the committee, I served as a 
flight surgeon and took part in numerous investigations of 
accidents. The impact of these on families and on the unit and 
even the entire service is profound. And we just heard as one 
of our members questioned about a death of a constituent, it is 
horrific.
    And we need to ensure we are giving these leaders the 
resources they need to train and train for war in a safe way. 
You can't zero risk, but the better resourced the services are, 
the less likely accidents are to occur.
    It was stated earlier in testimony that training impacts 
accidents. If you train less, the potential for accidents 
increases. And I recall from my days in the Army that the Army 
had a minimum number of flight hours for each aircraft type 
below which they expected accidents to increase.
    And I wondered from our Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy 
witnesses today, do you guys have a set number of flight hours 
per aircraft below which you expect accidents to increase?
    General Allvin. Congressman, you said Air Force first. I 
will go ahead and lead out with that.
    We actually in the Air Force, we don't have a predictive 
measure that just has number per aircraft. It really is on an 
individual basis, and sometimes individuals fly multiple 
aircraft.
    There is a window that we do watch, and that happens down 
all the way at the squadron commander level. And let's say for 
a multi-crew aircraft, there is a certain amount of hours when 
we look.
    And perhaps an aircraft commander, once they achieve maybe 
over 100 hours as an aircraft commander until they get to an 
instructor level, there is a certain threshold in which they 
are a little bit more likely, because they feel very confident 
and they haven't had their refresh.
    So there are periods of vulnerability.
    Dr. Green. Yeah. I remember that in the Army. The Army had 
that too where over the course of a pilot's career, there was 
that point where they got a little overconfident and then a 
point where that sort of went away.
    But I meant do you have a measurable--it sounds like you 
don't.
    Perhaps Navy, Marine Corps, just yes, no, do you all have a 
set number per month you got to hit or you expect accidents to 
increase?
    Admiral Lescher. Congressman, Bill Lescher here quickly 
from the Navy.
    We do have our number we use. It is called tactical hard 
deck, and it varies by the type/model/series. But it is 
something we track closely to keep our units above the tactical 
hard deck. It does have that feature you talked about where 
they are seen as a knee in the curve for propensity for 
mishaps.
    Over.
    Dr. Green. Could you get that number to my office? I would 
really appreciate that.
    And our Marine, General Thomas, do you guys have that 
number?
    General Thomas. Congressman, we do. We are aligned with the 
Navy on the tactical hard deck. It does vary per type/model/
series, but nominally, 15 hours from a programming perspective 
is what we shoot for.
    Dr. Green. Obviously, dollars in the DOD budget determines 
flight hours, whether it is maintenance dollars or fuel cost.
    Could I ask each of you, if the DOD budget is cut 10 
percent, will the flight hours decrease per month? And, if so, 
if we cut this budget like some people are suggesting, can we 
expect more accidents if those training hours go down below 
that hard deck?
    General Martin. Congressman, I will answer first from the 
Army. It is good to see you as well. I hope you are well.
    You know, regardless, you have got to train our formations 
and you have got to have the courage to never quit. And if you 
do that, you will be able to see the mission through. [It is] 
10.6 hours, for our Active Component, it is 10.6 hours per crew 
per month. It is 6.5 hours for Army National Guard. And it is 
5.7 hours for the United States Army Reserve.
    And just to answer a potential follow-up question, the 
reason why they are different is because we work 5-year cycle 
for Guard and Reserve for training, where Active Component it 
is less than the 1:5 ratio. It is a 1:2 ratio in terms of 
deployment to dwell. And so that is why those numbers are 
different.
    But if the dollars go down, our home station flying 
programs could be impacted. I couldn't guarantee that, because 
it depends on where we prioritize that in reference to all of 
our other operational and maintenance requirements across the 
Army. But it is something that we are going to have to watch 
very closely, and sufficient funding is critical to our 
aviation training program.
    Dr. Green. One quick question for you, General Martin. If 
you could talk a little bit about how the Army is doing risk 
management training for the company grade level. I know I have 
seen some of the senior grade brigade commander-level stuff. 
Could you talk about what needs to be improved and sustained in 
the company grade level? And that will be my last question, 
Chairman.
    General Martin. Congressman, I will answer it mindful of 
your time. I will be very quick on this.
    We train it in all of our professional military education 
courses, but we also train it in our pre-command courses. But 
really where the training happens is at our Combat Training 
Centers and what has happened at home stations as a result of 
that. It is something we ram home often as we continue to train 
in a very dangerous collective training environment.
    Dr. Green. Thank you.
    Thank you, Chairman.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Dr. Green.
    One of the fortunate things is this committee has members 
who really have a lot of experience in specific areas. And you 
were drilling into an area, Mr. Green, that I am going ``hmm.'' 
I want you to continue to drill down on those things that you 
are interested in.
    Dr. Green. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Garamendi. We are going into a second round of 
questions here. I would start with myself, but I have had the 
opportunity to talk to all of these gentlemen prior to this 
hearing, so I won't add at this point other than to make--well, 
I will make my closing comment.
    And then, Mr. Lamborn, if you want to come up with any 
second round of questions.
    Before you do, Mr. Lamborn, there are a couple of members 
of the committee that may have returned that we skipped over.
    Mrs. Luria, if you are here, it is your turn.
    Mrs. Luria. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    It is good to be able to be part of this conversation.
    And I will just focus specifically on the Navy. And I know 
that we had these two tragic incidents in 2017 with the USS 
Fitzgerald, the USS John S. McCain.
    And, Admiral Lescher, in your testimony I was very 
interested in that section. You specifically outlined the 111 
recommendations that were made in the follow-on report.
    And in your testimony, at the bottom of page 3, I just 
wanted to see if you could provide some more clarity on this 
statement: ``Improvements have been made in Surface Warfare 
Officer training.'' Then you list some other items.
    So do you have specific metrics you can cite to say what 
improvements have been made and how you have been able to 
measure this over time since 2017?
    Admiral Lescher. Yes, ma'am.
    So I know you are quite familiar with the Readiness and 
Reform Oversight Council. So some of the metrics would be in 
the training itself.
    Again, I know you are familiar with in terms of the Basic 
Division Officer course, the JOOD [Junior Officer of the Deck] 
course, the certifications, the assessments that come out of 
that. So those are certainly tracked as well as the go/no-go 
process on those elements.
    Some of the other metrics in terms of manning. We for sure 
keep track on fit/fill and TYCOM [U.S. Navy Type Command] 
manning actions, critical NEC [Navy Enlisted Classification] 
shortfalls.
    In terms of training metrics, the milestone assessment 
performance I talked about in the SWO manned progression. 
Looking at the logbook data. Again, I believe you are familiar 
with that analysis.
    SWO qualification timelines is a metric that is important. 
Tier one, Tier two certifications course.
    But then equip again. SEANAV [Naval Sea Systems Command] 
figure of merit, INSURV [Board of Inspection and Survey] 
performance, deferred maintenance.
    Other metrics would include near-miss reporting trends. And 
I think I highlighted in my written testimony we are seeing as 
part of the strong culture change that Roy Kitchener is driving 
a strong increase in the reporting of near-miss and HAZREPs 
[hazard reports] as well.
    So I would highlight those as some of the metrics that we 
use to keep a close eye on the implementation of the RROC 
[Readiness and Reform Oversight Council].
    Mrs. Luria. Well, thank you. And it sounds like you have 
developed quite a few metrics.
    Are there any problem areas within that data or negative 
trends that you have identified over the course of the last 4 
years and since implementing these?
    And I also noticed that you mentioned that you have 
improved in combined integrated air and missile defense and 
anti-submarine warfare training as well. Are there any 
particular areas within that that are of concern?
    Admiral Lescher. I would highlight, ma'am, as probably at 
the top of the list of concern right now is [inaudible] 
material condition.
    I think you were offline earlier when Congressman Courtney 
asked about how we were driving some of this change. And 
really, by bringing alive the power of the TYCOMs, and the 
TYCOMs to have a strong voice: Hey, do not progress. I have to 
replace this engine. I have to redo this exercise. My fleet 
commander is listening.
    But in terms of other--so I think that is a strong element. 
In terms of where we can do better, as we look at INSURV 
performance, I look at PMS [planned maintenance system]. I look 
at the ability. Do we have the proper manning to do the 
maintenance?
    And so this is leading to some thoughtful conversations 
about things such as--it was touched on by the chairman 
earlier--some of the condition-based maintenance pilots we have 
on Detroit--we have one on a DDG, one on an [inaudible]--as 
well as bringing in some of the lessons we have learned from 
aviation journey, where we went from 255 up jets for 10 years 
to today's 341.
    And part of that journey was controlling maintenance demand 
signal. This was a really interesting journey where we saw, for 
example, when we had the Naval Aviation Systems Command to do a 
deep dive on the F-18 and then the E-2 maintenance program, we 
were doing maintenance at a periodicity beyond what was 
demanded from an engineering perspective and in some cases 
simply hadn't been updated.
    So I know Roy is looking at this. So both condition-based 
maintenance and maintenance reset, to properly scope the PMS to 
get after some of these INSURV trends.
    Mrs. Luria. Well, thank you. And I know that it has been a 
recent topic of discussion amongst several members of this 
committee and Seapower that the current law does not continue 
to require the Navy to report INSURV findings to Congress.
    But I hope you would agree that it is a both a useful 
process and inspection and very useful dialogue for those 
Members of Congress to understand the readiness of our ships. 
And we look to include language that will continue those 
reports, because I think they are very meaningful.
    So thank you again for your testimony today.
    And I yield back.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you very much, Mrs. Luria.
    We will begin a short second round. We have got about 10 
minutes.
    Mr. Lamborn.
    Mr. Lamborn. Okay, thank you.
    I would like to just quickly touch on technology as a tool 
to improve safety.
    For any one of you, what technologies might be useful to 
make operating on training ranges safer while still maintaining 
the tactical feel of operations?
    And whether it is currently in operation or in the 
development stage that you are aware of, are any of you able to 
answer that question?
    General Martin. Congressman, I will go ahead and start. I 
will be quick so my colleagues have an opportunity to talk too.
    I think that the one word that comes to mind is autonomy. I 
want to make sure you understand exactly what I mean. I don't 
mean the aircraft flying by itself, the vehicle driving by 
itself, but pilots and drivers enabled by autonomy that allows 
them to take some of the tasks that would be demanding their 
time and their thought and let a machine do that so that they 
can focus on the most important tasks.
    In the training environment, that is good. That will 
actually mitigate risk, because more focus on the most 
important or higher risk tasks that pilots or drivers have to 
do.
    But in combat, it is huge, because you want to focus on the 
enemy. Anything you are doing to not focus on the enemy takes 
you away from focusing on the enemy.
    And so autonomy is probably the single most important 
thing. But folks want to say that, okay, let the aircraft just 
fly itself and we will have people. It is not that simple. 
Humans have to be part of the loop for a whole host of reasons 
that I don't have time to talk about.
    But that is my thoughts from the Army.
    Admiral Lescher. Sir, Bill Lescher from the Navy, very, 
very quickly.
    I would offer Live, Virtual, Constructive training is a 
core area that in complementary with flying on the range is a 
powerful improvement to the quality of training. And I believe 
as well it will be nondiscretionary, in the sense that it is a 
way for to us train high-end capability and high-end tactics, 
techniques, and procedures that we don't want to reveal more 
broadly to anybody who might be watching.
    But a strong push, for any number of reasons, to get after 
Live, Virtual, Constructive technology.
    The other thing I would highlight, the Navy is--there is so 
much of our high-end aviation training at Fallon, Nevada.
    And we are quite constrained by what we see we need to 
operate to get the proper ranges of weapons, et cetera. And, 
again, we can work together as we work to broaden the range, 
also to bring the best type of technology on board.
    Over.
    Mr. Lamborn. Admiral, on that point, let me say that we 
made a push in this committee to expand Fallon last year, and 
we ran into some resistance in the Natural Resources Committee.
    I think we need to make another push there and not give up 
on that, so that your naval aviators have the facilities they 
need to do proper training, especially in this new day and age.
    Admiral Lescher. Yes, sir. It is our top legislative 
priority for our leadership, clearly for our aviators. And I 
look forward to working with the committee and continuing to 
get after that this year.
    Mr. Lamborn. Maybe I will just turn it back to the 
chairman, for the sake of time.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Lamborn.
    If any of the committee members have a quick question that 
absolutely has to be asked, raise your hand and go for it.
    Mr. Green.
    Dr. Green. Mr. Chairman, can you hear me okay?
    Mr. Garamendi. Yes.
    Dr. Green. Just a quick question for any of the witnesses 
today.
    Are there resources that we could authorize besides money? 
You know, is it a training system or more virtual training 
before they get in the cockpit that would enhance or decrease 
accidents?
    I am thinking about what we can do. I know you all know 
what you have to do to keep accidents from happening. What do 
we need to do to support you in addition to just dollars?
    General Allvin. I will take a crack at that, Congressman.
    I think we are all entering this journey together, and we 
have touched on a lot, with the advent of technology and 
bringing on new systems, bringing on the things that my 
colleagues were talking about--Live, Virtual, Constructive 
system.
    But, I think, fundamentally, where we could continue to use 
your help in moving forward on this journey together, is the 
manner in which we are going to mature these is different from 
traditional acquisition programs.
    And so sometimes, if we are going to innovate fast, we need 
to be able to fail fast and have a new way, but still have you 
preserve your oversight. We know that is important.
    So, we are going to be moving into areas where we are going 
to be investigating technologies with respect to command and 
control and leveraging these in ways that don't look like a 
traditional acquisition profile, with milestone A, milestone B, 
and then it ends up with a shiny object over at the end.
    But the idea that we can work together as a joint force and 
investigate these new technologies, fail fast and fail cheap, 
while at the same time giving you the confidence that you have 
the oversight so we can continue this trust relationship.
    And once we do that and we can transition into this new way 
of developing capabilities in a way that has the proper 
congressional oversight and trust that the funding is going to 
the right spot, I think that is going to be so important to 
allow us to accelerate.
    It will be better warfighting. It will be better training. 
It will just be a better approach. Because there is a new way 
that we have to be able to develop and field capabilities that 
is different from the 20th century things that sometimes we are 
still shackled with.
    That would be my input.
    Dr. Green. Yeah, I want to see organizations that learn in 
real time, and I know you do too. And I just want to make sure 
you are resourced to have real-time performance improvement, 
process improvement happening across the formations, and if 
there is anything we need to do, to make sure you have got it. 
That is what I am asking.
    So thank you for that.
    Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Green, we are going to let it go at 
that.
    Dr. Green. Okay.
    Mr. Garamendi. I think Mr. Moore had a question that he 
wanted to ask.
    Mr. Moore. No, nothing from the [inaudible], Chairman. We 
are good.
    Mr. Garamendi. Good.
    Elaine.
    Mrs. Luria. No, I am fine. Thank you.
    Mr. Garamendi. Well, we could let the other three witnesses 
answer Mr. Moore's question if you would like to, and then I am 
going to shut this thing down.
    Admiral Lescher. Mr. Chairman, Bill Lescher here. I will 
take a stab at the question as well to build on what General 
Allvin said.
    One thing I think the committee can do--and it is probably 
self-evident since I know the committee already is working hard 
at it--is to continue to be an advocate in the broader Congress 
for readiness.
    You know, periodically you hear the self-talk in the 
building here about there are strong constituents and even 
policy advocates for certain pieces of hardware, but where is 
the advocacy for readiness? And I always educate them, we have 
those advocates in these readiness committees.
    And I think it is important for us to educate more broadly 
even outside the defense oversight committees on the importance 
of readiness. And so I again am looking forward to working in 
partnership with the committee on that message.
    You know, the Congressman asked a question earlier that we 
didn't broadly answer about, hey, what happens if top line 
comes down? My picture of that is we are not going to accept a 
hollow force. And so we are not going to accept increased risk.
    But we will for sure have a smaller and less lethal Navy as 
we adapt to that smaller top line and do it in the responsible 
way, by not having a hollow force. And so I think that is part 
of the message as well.
    Over.
    Mr. Garamendi. General Martin, do you want to add?
    Or, General Thomas, you can add if you like.
    General Martin. Congressman, I am going to give the 
straight answer of I endorse what both the Navy and the Air 
Force recommended. Both of those areas are important, 
especially the advocacy for OMA dollars and readiness resources 
for our formations. It is huge.
    General Thomas. And, Chairman, I would add to all of my 
colleagues' points that your advocacy for readiness is key. As 
Admiral Lescher said, if we see a reduction in top line, we are 
going to maintain our readiness, but it will force us to be a 
smaller force.
    And then I would just say that, from a technology 
standpoint, I think that we are moving in the right direction.
    But I would also support General Allvin's comments that 
supporting what I would call acquisition agility from the 
committee is going to continue to be important while at the 
same time preserving the oversight of the Congress.
    Mr. Garamendi. I have got about another hour, maybe 2 hours 
of questions I would love to get to all four of you, and some 
of them are slightly off the subject matter.
    With regard to acquisitions in the Air Force, we had a GAO 
report to us yesterday about satellite systems and GPS [Global 
Positioning System] systems. Rather concerning. And that is an 
issue we take up with General Allvin and your colleagues a 
little later.
    But, clearly, there is an acquisition issue that goes 
across really all of the platforms, particularly the new 
technologies that all of you talked about.
    With regard to the readiness, we have had many discussions 
about maintaining the equipment. Looking this morning at the 
Early Bird Brief, and I noticed that I have become an advocate 
of not going to buy anything new until we maintain what is old. 
And I mean it. I suspect I may lose that battle, but I am not 
going to go down easy.
    So we are way into maintaining the equipment that we have, 
and you gentlemen have heard me on this before. And I really, 
really mean it.
    So the other part, this hearing was specifically on the 
safety and accidents, but it cuts across to the other things 
that this committee has been working on, maintenance and 
availability of equipment so that you have the chance to 
practice. So we will continue on those.
    For our presenters, I really appreciate the hearing today. 
You were forthcoming. You answered the questions of the 
committee in a way that was as complete as possible in the time 
allowed.
    To my committee members and staff that are on, most every 
question leads to another question. And so if you have that 
follow-up question, let us know. And maybe it will be a 
written, maybe it will be a briefing, formal or informal.
    So follow up to all of the committee members, and 
particularly to Mr. Lamborn, who has a specific task on the 
minority side.
    I look forward to working with all of the witnesses, 
General Thomas, General Martin, General Allvin, and Admiral 
Lescher. We have got things to do together. We will be doing a 
new NDAA and we are beginning that process now. Some ideas have 
come from this hearing and from the other hearings.
    Let it be known, anybody that wants to listen, we are going 
to drive the readiness issue across the board. Things that we 
didn't talk about here, other things that we will talk about. 
And along the way, hopefully it will turn out better in the 
future.
    Thank you so very, very much to everybody that has been 
participating on this. A big shout-out to the staff. The 
minority staff, the majority staff did great work lining it up 
to the witnesses. Thank you.
    Have a good afternoon, evening, and we will look forward to 
our next opportunity to talk.
    Thank you all very much.
    This hearing is formally adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 5:05 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]


      
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                            A P P E N D I X

                             March 23, 2021

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              PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

                             March 23, 2021

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[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

      
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              WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING

                              THE HEARING

                             March 23, 2021

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            RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MS. STRICKLAND

    General Allvin. During the timeframe FY2015-2020, 8% of Air Force 
aviation training Class A mishaps involved the Air National Guard and 
5% involved the Air Force Reserve Command, with the remaining 87% of 
mishaps involving Active Duty organizations. Neither the Air National 
Guard or Air Force Reserve Command were involved in any ground Class A 
training mishaps during this period, with 100% of the mishaps involving 
Active Duty organizations.
    The Air National Guard was involved in 11% of aviation Class B 
mishaps, 13% of ground Class B mishaps, 13% of aviation Class C 
mishaps, and 11% of ground Class C mishaps.
    The Air Force Reserve Command was involved in 2% of aviation Class 
B mishaps, 5% of ground Class B mishaps, 6% of aviation Class C 
mishaps, and 6% of ground Class C mishaps.
    Active Duty organizations were involved in 87% of aviation Class B 
mishaps, 82% of ground Class B mishaps, 81% of aviation Class C 
mishaps, and 83% of ground Class C mishaps.   [See page 24.]

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