Transcripts For CSPAN3 Military Officials Testify On The State Of The Armed Forces 20170222

Services committee is chaired by texas congressman mack thornberry. Committee will come to order. Last week the Committee Held classified and unclassified sessions on the state of the world. Or more accurately the state of the world environment in which the American Military must operate and u. S. National security must be protected. I was struck by the essential point general petraeus made that we face many threats and can overcome any of them except perhaps what we do to ourselves. Today we turn to the state of the u. S. Military. I continue to be concerned and sometimes even disturbed by evidence that is accumulating on the damage inflicted upon our military in recent years and the stresses our forces are under. That damage comes from a variety of factors including budget cuts of 20 , continuing resolutions, the failure to recognize or at least admit and then address mounting readiness problems as well as the shrinking size of the force while keeping the tempo of operations high. There is certainly plenty of blame to go around between both parties and executive and legislative branches for this state of affairs. Now with a new administration and a new congress, we have an opportunity to begin the repairs. To do that, we need a clear understanding of the state of our military, and the immediate trends that challenge us. For that, we turn to the vice chiefs of each of our services, and we ask that each of you provide this committee your best professional military judgment in answering the questions we pose. As was emphasized last week, the world situation is dangerous and complex. This is no time to exaggerate or to underplay the challenges before us. Only by facing them squarely can we meet the obligations all of us have to the constitution, to the men and women who serve and to the american public. I would now yield to the distinguished acting Ranking Member, the gentleman from tennessee, for any comments he with like to make. I would like to ask unanimous consent that the Opening Statement of the real Ranking Member, mr. Smith, be inserted in the record. Without objection. Speaking on my own behalf, think we realize few subjects are more important for the future of the nation than the readiness of our military forces. And i hope that we all know that few things are more detrimental to that readiness than sequestration. So i share the chairmans hope and im not ready to be optimistic yet, but i hope that we can deal with sequestration this year. And end it, permanently. So it is going to be up to the folks on this committee, the largest committee in the house of representatives, to make sure that our impact is felt and ending sequestration. So thank you, mr. Chairman, i look forward to the testimony of the witnesses. Thank you, sir. Im pleased to welcome each of our witnesses today, and also to express, i know the committees appreciation for your service in this job and for each of your service to the country. Without objection, your complete written statements will be made part of the record, and let me just briefly introduce general daniel alan, vice chief of staff of the army, and general steven wilson, vice chief of staff of the air force, and general glen walters, assistant commandant of the marine corps. Thank you for being here. We would be interested in any opening comments each of you would like to make. Well start with you, general alan. Thank you, chairman thornberry and congressman cooper. Distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the state of your United States army. I appreciate your support and demonstrate a commitment to our soldiers, army civilians, families, and veterans. And look forward to discussing the strength of our army with you today. This is a challenging time for our nation. And certainly for our army. The unipolar moment is over, and replacing it is a multipolar world characterized by competition and uncertainty. Today the army is globally engaged with more than 182,000 soldiers supporting Combatant Commanders in over 140 worldwide locations. My recent travel, i visited our soldiers in 15 countries since veterans day, reinforces that the army is not about programs. It is all about people. Our people executing Security Missions all around the globe. The strength of the all volunteer force truly remains our soldiers. These young men and women are trained, ready, and inspired. And we must be similarly inspired to provide for them commensurate with their Extraordinary Service and sacrifice. To meet the demands of todays unstable Global Security environment and maintain the trust placed in us by the American People, the army requires sustained, longterm, and predictable funding. Absent additional legislation, the caps set by the budget control act of 2011 will return in fy 18, forcing the army to once again draw down our end strength, reduce funding for readiness, and increase the risk of sending undertrained and poorly equipped soldiers into harms way. A preventable risk our nation must not accept. We thank all of you for recognizing that plans to reduce the army to 980,000 soldiers would threaten our National Security and we appreciate all your work to stem the drawdown. Nevertheless, the most important actions you can take, steps that will have both positive and Lasting Impact, will be to immediately repeal the 2011 budget control act and ensure sufficient funding to train, man and equip the fy 17 ndaa authorized force. Unless this is done, additional top line and oko funding, though nice in the shortterm, will prove unsustainable, rendering all your hard work for naught. Readiness remains our number one priority. Sufficient and consistent funding is essential to build and sustain current readiness, to progress towards a more modern, capable force, sized to reduce risk for contingencies and to recruit and train the best talent within our ranks. Readiness remains paramount because the army does not have the luxury of taking a day off. We must stand ready at a moments notice to defend the United States and its interests. With your assistance, the army will continue to resource the best trained, best equipped, and best led fighting force in the world. We thank you for the steadfast support of our outstanding men and women in uniform, and please accept my written testimony for the record and i look forward to your questions. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you. Admiral . Thank you, mr. Chairman. Good morning. And good morning to the member of the committee. It is a privilege to be here with my fellow vice chiefs to talk about the readiness of our military. It is easiest for me to talk to you in terms of simple supply and demand. As many of you know, the ongoing demand for Naval Forces Far exceeds our longterm supply. And that need continues to grow with no end in sight. Supply is best summed up in one fact. Your navy today is as small as it has been in 99 years. That said, we are where we are. Which makes it urgent to add kw adequately fund, fix and maintain the fleet we do have. We have never been busier. A quick snapshot and youll see the navy is the nations primary deterrence policy in places like the arabian, mediterranean and South China Seas. Over the past five or six years, this call for deterrence and to be ready to take action has grown. Principally because of the Aggressive Growth from expanding naval competitors like russia and china. And when you add threats from iran, north korea, isis and others, it is a very, very busy time for your navy. Our sellers have always risen to the occasion, answering the call no matter the circumstances and no matter the resources. From providing food, water and medical assistance in haiti, to striking hostile sites in yemen, to navy s. E. A. L. S taking down terrorist leaders, were getting it done because thats who we are. And thats what makes us the best navy in the world. But the unrelenting pace, inadequate resources, and small size are taking their toll. Our testimony today may seem like a broken record. Our navy faces increased demand without the size and resources required to properly maintain and train for our future. Every year we had to make tough choices. Often choosing to sacrifice longterm readiness to make sure we can be ready to answer the call today. We are, in fact, putting our first team on the field, but we lack serious depth on the bench. This didnt happen overnight. Readiness declines tend to be insidious. From year to year we have all learned to live with less and less and we have certainly learned to execute our budget inefficiently with nine consecutive continuing resolutions, but this has forced us to repeatedly take money from cash accounts that are the life blood of building longterm readiness in our navy. It is money for young lieutenants to fly high and fast, and who need air under their seats to perfect their skills in the future. It is money for spare parts that sailers can fix the gear they have. And it is money for sailors to operate at sea in all kinds of conditions to build instincts that create the best war fighters in the world. With your help we have the opportunity to change this. It starts by strengthening our foundation. Lets ensure that the ships and aircraft that we do have are maintained and modernized so they provide the full measure of combat power. Then lets fill in the holes by eliminating the inventory short falls and ships, submarines and aircraft throughout the fleet. And together, by taking these steps, we can achieve the ultimate goal of sizing the navy to meet the strategic demands of the dynamic and changing world. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to be here and i look forward to your questions. Thank you. General wilson. Thank you, chairman thornberry, congressman cooper, distinguished members of the committee. On behalf of the secretary of the air force and chief of staff, it is an honor to be with you today and be with my fellow chase chiefs to talk to you about the state of our air force and readiness. Together we provide leaders with a broad range of options to protect our country and its interests both home and abroad. For the past 70 years, responsive, flexible and agile american air power has been our nations first and most sustainable solution in both crisis and conflict, underriding every other instrument of power. We provide the nation with unrelenting global vigilance, global reach, and global power, in short your air force is always in demand, and always there. Look no further than two weeks ago when your air force executed a precision strike in libya, killing over 100 violent extremists. This was a textbook transregional multidomain, multifunctional mission. Precision navigation and timing and monitoring enemy communication and movement. Simultaneously two b2 bombers took off from missouri, flew 17 hours one way, refueled with numerous tankers and teamed with two mq 9s within send seconds of their designated time over target. They then flew another 17 hours home, and landed safely back in the United States. Meanwhile, airmen operate 60 remotely piloted aircraft patrols, 24 7 365. They ply missions from the continental United States, teaming with nearly 20,000 Forward Deployed airmen to support operations like the recent events in raqqah and mosul. Rpa fighters, bombers, have conducted 92 of the strikes against isis. We did this all while simultaneously ensuring twothirds of our Nuclear Triad and the command and control remain robust, reliable, flexible, and survivable options for the nations. During the allotted time of the hearing, an average of 65 mobility aircraft will take off, 430,000 cyberconnections will be blocked, five Homeland Defense missions will fly, and three strikes against isis will occur. Each of these actions are enabled by airmen providing spacebased position, navigation and timing in communication for our military, also providing gps capability to the worlds 3 billion users. The capabilities are of our airmen provide to our nation and allies have never been more vital and the Global Demand for american air power will only grow in the future. American airmen remain professional, innovative, dedicated, and quite frankly the envy of the world. However, we are out of balance. The demand for our mission and our people exceed this supply. 26 years of continuous combat has limited our ability to prepare for the future, against advanced future threats. Scenarios with the lowest margin of error and highest risk to National Security. This nonstop combat, paired with the budget instability and lower end top lines has made the United States air force the smallest, oldest equipped and least ready in our history. We attempted to balance risk across the force to maintain readiness, and forced to make unacceptable trades between readiness, force structure and modernization. Todays global challenges require air force ready not only to defeat violent extremism, but an air force prepared to modernize for any threat the nation may face. Mr. Chairman, ill close by quoting general douglas mcarthur, he sent the following cable as he escaped he said, the history of failure and war can be summed up in to words. Too late. Too late in comprehending the deadly purpose after potential enemy. Too late if realizing the moral danger. Too late in preparedness. Distinguished members of the committee, preparedness or readiness cannot be overlooked. Your air force needs congressional support to repeal the budget control act. It provides stable predictable funding. Its critical to building the military full Spectrum Readiness which is the number one priority for the secretary of defense. We need to act now, before its too late. On behalf of the chief of staff and secretary of air force and 660,000 active airmen who serve our nation, thank you for your tireless support for us. I look forward to your questions. General walters . Distinguished members of the House Armed Services committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today and report on the readiness of your marine corps. The marine corps means dedicated to our essential role as the naval force of readiness. During 15 years of conflict we focused investment on insuring marines were prepared for the fight and they were. Today our operational tempo remains as high as it was during the peak of our operations in ir iraq and afghanistan. Our continues focus combined with the fiscal uncertainty and reductions leave your marine corps facing substantial rigorous challenges. Your marine corps is insufficiently equipped for the op yalgs environment. Due to years of fiscal constraint, optimized for past and sacrificing modernization and infrastructure for our current rate of posture. With increased resources and maintenance needed to improve readiness across our entire marine corps we require your support it three key areas our nation requires of us. Over the past 18 months we have identified various end strength and associate capabilities and modernization required to operate in the threaten viernment characterized by complex terrain, information warfare, electro magnetic signatures and contested maritime domain. We need to increase our component end strength. We are confident that increase of 3,000 marines per year maintains a rate of growth inconnist with the session while maintaining high standard. Our basis station in the platforms where we train and generate our readiness. The continued underfunding of facility sustainment restoration and modernization and military construction continues to cause progressive degradation of our infrastructure and creates increased longterm cost. We have a backlog of over 9 billion in deferred maintenance for instfrastructure. We require uptodate training systems, support fielding of new equipment and Simulation Systems that facility and improved training in standard and readiness. Supporting the joint force requirements of the past 15 years consumed much of the useful life of our legacy systems and fiscal uncertainty and reduce defense spending for significant delays in a modernization efforts. There is significant cost associated with maintaining and sustaining any legacy system without a proportional capability increase associated with that investment. As we continue to spend limited fiscal resources sustain legacy systems, developed threats of 20 years ago, we risk steadily losing competitive advances against potential adversaries. We need to modernize tactical fleets soonest. Amphibious ships is necessary to reach our war time requirement. To pursue the path of investing in legacy systems in lieu of modernizing our force we will find our marine corps optimized for past and increasingly at risk to defer and defeat our potential adversaries. On behalf of all of your marines, sailors and their family answers civilians that support their service, we thank the congress in this committee for the opportunity to discuss key challenges your marine corps faces. While much work needs to be done, authorizations within coupled with the sufficient funding and repeal of the budget control act will put us on a path to rebuild and sustain our ma reer corps for the 21st century. Thank you and i look forward to your questions. Thank you. I want to briefly touch on some of the facts, largely if yalls written testimony but also press report and ill just go down the line. General allen, in your written testimony it says about onethird of the brigade combat terms and onefourth of our combat aviation brigades and half of our Division Headquarters are ready. And then you say only three brigade combat teams could be called on to fight tonight in the event of a crisis. Now i think we have 58, right, brigade combat teams, and your testimony is that only three of them could be callinged upon it fight tonight. Is that right . It reflects the realities of both the tempo and the recurring demand that our forces face. When we say fight tonight that means, that unit needs no additional people, no additional training and no additional equipment. And three is where were at today. And those that we say are ready, the onethird is actually just higher than that. And of our forces that are ready, require somewhere in the range of 30 days to ensure that they have everything they need to meet the demands of immediate combat. You kind of home an enemy will be accommodating and give us the 30 days so that we can be ready. You then go on on the next page and talk about kbimt and say tod equipment and say today we are route ranged, outgunned and outdated. And your testimony also says, so if you put all this together, the army can only finish defense guidance performance at high military risk. Now general millie kind of talked about this but explain what that means us to. My laymans ears seem to hear that we can only do what country asks us to do with a pretty tarn good chance that we wont be successful. Am i right . Chairman, basically, what it comes down to is the term that you heard general wilson use from general mcarthur. We will be too late to need. Our soldiersing arrive too late. Our units will have too much time to close the manning and equipment gaps. As you highlight, hope is not a method and we cannot count on the enemy providing us that window of opportunity to close those gaps. The end result is excessive casualties, beth oth to innocen civilians and to forces already forward stationed, to close the rest of the force required to accomplish the mission. Admiral, i had several things i wanted to ask you about. You mentioned the navy is smaller than it has been in the last 9 the yearthe years9the y. But i want to ask you about a story that came out yesterday that you dont mention in your testimony. It says, according to the navy 53 of all Navy Aircraft cannot fly. And that is about twice the historic norm. If you go to f18s, 62 are out of service. 27 in major depot work and 35 simply waiting maintenance oor parts. Or parts. Roor parts. Parts. This is a press release from yesterday. Are those statistics rakt . Yes, sir, they are. It is hard for me to know what question to ask question. 53 of all aircraft cant fly and 62 of our strike f18s cant fly today . Thats our status . Yes, sir. When it comes to the Strike Fighter community, thats our legacy hornets, a through ds, and super hornets, e and f versions. Our legacy hornets which we in the marine corps operate today are well beyond their design life, let alone service life. They were designed for 6,000 hours. We are extending the life on the hornets into the 8,000 to 9,000hour range. They have been around as long as general walters and i have been serving for the most part. So they are pretty old. It takes about twice the amount of man hours to fix one of those jets as it was designed to take. Which gives you a good idea of how old they are. And the capacity of our depots have been diminished since s sequestering and furloughs in 2013 and we are trying to get that turned around. So on a typical day in the navy, about 25 to 30 of our jets and our airplanes are in some kind of depot maintenance or maintenance which does not allow them to fly. So your statistics of that amount, two thirds, is a reflection of how hard we have flown the jets over last 15 years. And the fact that we have not recapped those jets, in other words havent built new or bought enough new ones to replace them, and weve been waiting for quite sometime for the f35 to deliver, which we were counting on seven, eight years ago, to start filling in the holes. All that adds up to the numbers you reflected. Well, it is true, is it not, that a fair amount of friestrik over al qaeda has been done with these jets. Yes, sir. We put ready airplanes and ready crews forward on deployment. As i reflected in my Opening Statement, theres no depth on the bench to go behind them, though, if we had to surge forces. I think it is consistent with what general allen just described in the army. We will be late to get there if we want full up equipment to get to the fight in the future. And turning to the air force, general wilson, you testified in your written statement and i think you said this, the smallest and oldest air force weve ever had average aircraft age is 27 years old today. But you go on and talk about the Pilot Shortage whereat the end of fiscal year 16 we were 1,555 total pilots short and 3,400 aircraft maintainers short. What im struck by is we have were short 1500 pilots, 3 h 00 maintainers in the Smallest Air Force weve ever had. 4 h 00 maintainers in the Smallest Air Force weve ever had. H 00 maintainers in the Smallest Air Force weve ever had. 00 maintainers in the Smallest Air Force weve ever had. 00 maintainers in the Smallest Air Force weve ever had. Certainly that translates, doesnt it, into less military capability. Chairman, thats exactly right. As a context, in 1991 we went to desert storm. Our air force was 500,000 people and 134 fighter squadrons. Today we find ourselves at 317,000 total force. 317,000 force. 317,000 in active force. With 55 fighter squadrons. You mentioned the Pilot Shortage. Of those numbers, we have 723 short in our Fighter Pilots. We dont have a problem bringing people into the air force. Were doing our best to retain people. But when youre flying old equipment, 27 years old as an average, and youre short on maintainers to fix those airplanes, and to talk to the vice weve and you talked about the depots, as you break into the depots, find things theyve never found before and it takes real craftsmen and artisans to fix the airplanes and talks longer. We are flying less. As a matter of context, in the very bottom in late 70s of what we call the hollow force, Fighter Pilots flying about 15 sorties a month and about 20 hours. Today we are flying less hours and less sorties than in the late 70s. Now we didnt get there overnight in the 70s and we found a way out of that. There sway out of this. The way out of this starts first with manpower. We need more manpower to plus up our force. We need the right training p. With the right training we can bring in the right Weapon System support. With Weapon System support we can increase flying hours. With flying hours we can reduce tempo and we need time. Time will increase our readiness. We think itll take six to eight years to bring our Readiness Level to where it needs to be, but starts first with people. Six to eight years under favorable scenario, i assume . Yes, chairman. Well, i dont want to toot our own horn but thankfully last year we stopped the shrinkage and hopefully we kept it from getting worse. General walters, one of the things that stuck out to me in your written testimony is the statement that flight hour averages per crew per month are below the minimum standards required to achieve and maintain adequate flight time and training and Readiness Levels. So its similar i guess to what general wilson just said. We are flying less now than we had even in the hollow force of the 70s. That is what you say. He said minimal standards it achieve and maintain flight Time Training and Readiness Levels. My question to you, what are the consequences of that . What does it mean if you cant even meet the minimum level of flight hours . Thank you for the question. And thank you for the committee trying to get us back on the rba, recovering the last two years. We have made some improvement. To your question about flight hours and what it means, each type model series has a minimum requirement. It is important to understand what that minimum requirement is. And somewhere it is somewhere between 16 and 18 hours per pilot per month. Theres an outlier there on c130s, which is about 23 hours. What that does is keeps them turn the in their current capabilities. It does not and guarantee there be proficient or a team to defet an enemy in a near fight. If youre looking for a number, the last time i saw us that good is when the pilots were getting about 25 hours per month. And that would make them current and proficient. What it really means in the end, is that were sending a lot of these we will send in a major combat operation, we will send a lot of pilots that dont have the adequate training and there is historical example after historical example when flight time required is not produced and the results in an air fight, both air to ground and airtoair. Okay. So you said 16 to 18 hours per month is the minimum. Thats the minimum. And what were getting now is between 12 and 14. Thats minimum to maintain your currency. But currency is not nirvana in an air fight. There are certain tasks that you have to do them once, but doing them multiple reps and sets is what makes a world class military organization. You might say it is like getting ready to play in a super bowl but not able to practice. Very good analogy, sir. Mr. Cooper . Thank you, mr. Chairman. And i thank each of the vice chiefs for their excellent testimony. Each one of you have revealed critical gaps in our readiness. I hope that all of the members of this committee are listening closely. I want to focus particularly on why th what this committee can do and this congress can do to help solve some of the problems. I think have you highlighted prob problems very well. General allen said it in plain english and i will foot step his comment. Steps that have positive and Lasting Impact will be to immediately repeal the 2011 budget control act and ensure sufficient funding to train, man and equipment the fy 17 authorized force. Let me emphasize again. Immediately repeal the 2011 budget control act. The general goes on to say, unless this is done, additional top line and oco funding, something that congress has traditionally done, though nice in the short term will prove unsustainable rendering all your hard work for not. Could there be a clearer more dire warning to this committee . So i thank you, general, for offering that clear cut plain english testimony. Its not your problem, its our problem. Another of the witnesses emphasized that we have had nine consecutive continuing resolutions. How can anyone, even a plus manager in the world, manage this. So my message is for the newer members of our committee that perhaps havent learned the bad habits of older members of the committee have unfortunately gotten used to. This is the clahance for a new day. A new approach. Have a stronger military that is more ready for all the threat we face. And this is one of the most bipartisan committees in congress. It should be. These are issues we should all be able to agree on. Managing affairs responsibly. Because another way to put this is the worst enemy we face is ourselves. Our bca act of 2011 probably posees a greater threat to our military than any foreign adversary. So why do we hurt ourselves . There is no good reason for this. And general allen said it better than i could possibly say it. If would y like it elaborate general allen, youre welcome to. But again, the problem is ours, not yours. We should solve in sequestration problem. I know, to reinforce your point, i was if the Operational Force when the bca took effect and caused us to cancel seven could combat Training Center rotations. That is a generation of leaders that can never get that experience back. And we cannot go back there. We cannot do that to ourselves again. And it is, for most of our services, we are still climbing out of that abyss of bca impact. When it was impacted mid year. So i my belief is, if we can do away with bca, if we can fund our services to the authorized and strength and n this budget year and the next, you will do more good for the sustained readiness build of our services than you can begin to imagine. Thank you. All members should be asking leadership, and i respect parties, why we cant repeal bca now, as the general suggests. You will get all sorts of half reasons and excuses but none are good enough. Now is the time to takes action on this and any delay is inexcusable. Thank you, mr. Chairman. At the end of last weeks hearing, there were three members who set through the hearing but still did not get a chance to ask questions. So i promised them they could go force. First today. Then we will go back to regular order as we usually do. First up is gentleman from mississippi, mr. Kelly. Thank one mr. Chairman. First of all i want to say to the panel, you guys are warriors and heroes be not just in our eyes but the eyes of the nation and you put this country first, and i thank you for that. That being said, i read your testimony and i notice you use a lot of military jargon. I understand the army stuff and most of the marine stuff but i dont understand the naval and air. A lot of people are watching this on fox news and other places so i ask as much as can you to speak like a civilian or speak like someone not in the military. Because acronyms have a tendency of not understanding what it is. First i want it stato start wit air. Something im unfamiliar with. I have Columbus Air Force base, home to 14th straining flying wing located in my districts. And these men and women train on all of our plat forms in the air force or train right there in columbus, mississippi. Flies more sorites than anywhere else in the world to my knowledge right there on the columbus air base. Im concern whed when they leav Columbus Air Force base, that they dont have enough time on the plat farm to train the number of hours to be ready and make sure we save lives. Thats what it comes down to when they are not train said saving lives. An unprepared pilot cant do the job. Tell me, how many hours are we getting today and how that impacts readiness to do your mission on the battlefield. Congressman, kelly, thanks for the question. As you know, i commanded the 14th flying wing in columbus. It is the busiest base in our air force. Flying more sorites than anybody. Does a fantastic job producing pilots for air force. And todays pilots are not flying enough. Not flying enough hours or sorites. So as ive mentioned earlier, todays combat Fighter Pilots are flying less hours and less sorites than flying in the late 70s. Averaging about ten sorites a month and about 14 hours a month. Thats too few for the missions that we need to be able to fly. Today, we talk about high spectrum or highend readiness, we need to be prepared to night any adversary. Our adversaries around the globe look at how we flight and they are training and modernizing their forces. They have sufficient capability of Fighter Airplanes like ours and are developing what we call fifth generation stealth type fighters both in china and russia. Again, they have watched our fighting and they are preparing their forces. We need to prepare it fight any adversary. Were extremely good today. And are ready to fight in the middle east against violent extremists but we need to be ready to fight any against adversary. So we need more flying hours. But to get more flying hours we need more people. Today our air force we bottomed out at 311,000 people. Thanks to your help, were up to 317 at the end of this past fiscal year. We want to grow to 321,000 people here in the next coming year. If we do that, that brings us to about 90 manning. But as anybody knows, 90 manning, effective manning, because you have people that are employed or cant do the job or in training, leaves you about 75 effective manning. Let me stop, because i have another question. I really want to get to. When we talk about bcts or meus, or Fighter Wings or number of ships or carrier groups those things are important. I think a lot of america doesnt understand we are rotating fresh equipment out of unit to make combat ready units and by doing that decreases the readiness of future deployments. Have you guys in writing, i would ask that each of you, let me know how many bcts you need and what personnel instrength that army needs. Not only that but the number of new m1 systems so were not rotating equipment. They used to not let us hot bed in the army. They wanted a crew on his tanks because you get a familiarity with that piece of equipment. We have to hot bed everything that we have in the military today. A hot bed means a crew uses another crews equipment because it is newer and uptodate. So do you have an idea what your instrength you think we need to be to meet Todays Mission answers also the number of equipment both in modernization and just replacing old stuff. And if you could address that, and i will start with you, general walters. Yes, sir. The number of marines we need in my written statement i think we said we need a minimum of 194 but it is also interesting and you have hit on the point, why are we hot, why are we moving equipment around . Because for 8 or 10 years we have modernization programs in place to replace our old equipment. But they are delivering over 30year timeframe and buying them at a minimum level. The example for us, the prime example is we have a 40yearold amphibious vehicle and we will put a we are putting a survivability upgrade on a third of them because we wont deliver the other ones. Nut ones yet. I have all kind of needs for light tactical vehicles that have been around for 20 years or joint light tactical vehicle at very shallow rate. It will take us 20 years to get there. And probably the poster child for us is i have a light Armored Vehicle that is 34 years old and because of fiscal strength we nef even thought about replacing it. So we have an obsolete program on there. Not the best use of our money. And the marines deserve new equipment for the threat. Chairman, thank you. But just to mention, oco does not allow them to modernize top line funding. I yield back, mr. Chairman. And if others of you would like to respond in writing to mr. Kellys question, thats great. We got to stay reasonably on time as mr. Cooper said. Weve got lots of folks on this committee. Mr. Carbaugh . Thank you chairman and thank you to our witnesses. In particular, thank you for your service to our country. As a farmer marine, im honored to be part of this committee and address you today. It is quite clear from your testimony today and from our previous hearings that we are still a work in progress. We must continue to maintain a Strong Military force and Congress Must doi its part to provide the necessary resources to ensure readiness. However, as all of you will probably agree, sequestration is not the answer. It will neither balance our budgets nor improve our military readiness. Many, if not all of you, have indicated that number one risk to readiness is sequestration. I believe the question we must ask ourselves is, what are we trying to protect . As we continue to impose arbitrary cuts to our countrys education and Health Systems and not take steps to protect our environment. I believe we will be left with the hollow nation with nothing more for the most superior armed forces to protect. I believe to have a most protective strategy we must decide what the threats and priorities military leaders are identifying and see what is needed to meet these goals. Better oversight and accountability systems must be put in place to ensure not only an effective, but an efficient military. I believe it is a disservice to our to the American People for congress to be funding cost overruns. My question to all of you is what steps has each service taken in order to increase oversight and accountability toity various programs and operations in order to eliminate wasteful spending . Can you provide us with some examples of savings your service has identified . And i say this because its no surprise to you that on occasion there are many articles in the media that identify this wasteful spending. And yet we have so many priorities that we are being asked to consider. I would like to hear from each one you if possible. Thank you. We love the United States marine corps too, even in the United States army. We appreciate your service. I would like it highlight the fact you spoke two of significant challenges. First of all, the threats that we face in this uncertain environment that we operate. And the savings that we must continue to be serving as good stewards of the resources that you, the congress, provide to us. On the first piece, the other significant challenge to us in addition to sequestration is continuing resolutions. Continued resolutions deny us the opportunity to implement new programs, like the ability to upgrade our opposing force capability at our combat Training Centers as we identify capabilities our adversaries are using that we are likely to face. We must train against those. We must upgrade our capability to do that. We cannot do that under continuing resolution conditions. So we would also appreciate the passage of an appropriations bill, obviously in the very near future. In terms of savings a couple of critical initiatives, the United States army is under way with to continue to be good stewards of the resources that with you provide, we have a strategic portfolio review process that looks at all of our acquisition programs across all domains. And identifies the highest programs and ensures we are moving money away from those that are less important and funding those that we must deliver as fast as possible to ensure we can equipment our forces in the future. The second thing is to ensure we achieve autobility, which is a critical requirement we must deliver to the nation. And that is well under way. We have made progress year over year. We estimate we will probably still have work to do at the end of this year. To get to full auditability. But we are progressing as rapidly as we can. One of the programs that allows us to do that is our gfebs software that allows us to see ourselves accurately across our funding systems. We need to upgrade that Program Based on findings of prior year audits. We cannot do that in a continuing resolution environment. So again, a couple of point to your very accurate questions. And i hope the gentleman will work with us on our acquisition Reform Efforts of the last two years and they will continue. Under cotton . Thank with you be mr. Chairman. Thank you for your graciousness and allowing junior members a chance to participate and youre offering this opportunity. Thank you to the witnesses for your Extraordinary Service to our nation and the extraordinary sacrifices you have each made. My question is regarding cybersecurity. I hear from companies that the burden they have to have cybersecurity and would you never expect our companies to have private Defense Forces against conventional attacks but a large portion of their budget are going to defend against cyberattacks. We know there are about 240,000 jobs unfilled because folks dont have the skilled. Many people in the private sector say the best folks are those trained either by the military or government and there are just not enough of them for them to come into the private sector. So my question for all the branches, and i dont know which ever one is most relevant, what can we in congress do to help you bitter prepare in training folks, equipped in sieper security, what do you need for the military and what do you think can you do to help get more trained folks who can then go into the private sector . Ill start congressman. Thank you for that question. Incredibly important area for all of us operating in the cyber domain each and everyday. I would offer that one very important authorization that you could provide us to is increased flexibility in Cyber Program funding. The adversary is moving at light speed in their attacks of our infrastructure and capabilities and we have to be able to develop counters and offensive capabilities at the speed of life and our current systems are not designed that way. So authorizing some funding flexibility specifically for our Cyber Programs so that we can be more agile, responsive, and capable both on offense and defense would be critical. Sir, i would add to those very important point that flexibility is also needed in how we manage the people that we have. Your point about the number of vacancies in the civilian market for cyber professionals, and the draw that it takes off of the services, who do produce incredible talented folks in this world, is there. So we are looking at every opportunity to allow for our sailers who are trained and experience fled this to have opportunity to work inside and outside the navy and the flexibility to draw between the active and reserve and civilian and back. I think thats how the nation can solve this problem because we cant keep throwing money at people to try to keep them in. That said, our training and our we were organized and increased all services invested a substantial amount of money the last several years. But like Everything Else we know, cybersecurity is subject to cuts. That increases from windows x to windows y. We have to take cuts to those readiness accounts as well as all of the other ones as we see a reduced top line. Thanks for the question. Yeah. I just add that we have shifted air force from Communication Centers focus to cyber Space Operations focus and i highlight exactly what was mentioned earlier. There is acquisition reforms that can help us keep up with the speed that the industry is going with and we made great progress on civilian hiring but i think there is more work to be done there. We are in competition for talent. We need to bring in the best and brightest. We have fantastic Training Programs and we can help our nation moving forward but there is still work to be done and how we bring on civilians into our work force. Sir, im with all my colleagues here. We need to recruit, train and maintain that work force and we are short. And i think we are short globally. I think this is a problem thats not just replicated in the military, but really for the entire country. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Wilson . Thank you, chairman. Thank you for your work. Mr. Chairman, with president trump, secretary mattis, this issue has been raised and what a great team we have here with the vice chiefs too. To work on the issue of readiness. It is very important to me. Im very grateful to be chairman of the readiness subcommittee. Gives me the opportunity to work with Ranking Member and we will be there to back you up in every way we can to promote our troops, protect our country, protect military families. With that in mind, general wilson, i appreciate in South Carolina we have join base air force base, and airfield. We have prior persons serving in the military Deborah Lee James stating quote less military is ready for high end fight, end quote. And general goldstein stated combat operations and reducks in total force coupled with budgetary instability and lower than planned funding levels have resulted in the smallest oldest and least ready forces across the full spectrum of operations in our history. These are deeply troubling comments from american familyes. Two questions, general, have these shortfalls effected air force civility to meet Mission Requirements and secondly do these shortages still exist . And if so, how does the air force plan to address them . Thank you congressman, wilson. Short answer is yes they still exist. Today we find ourselves less than 50 ready across the air force. We have pockets below that. In particular some of the bases you menged in South Carolina, between mcintyre and others, we find again not flying enough sorites with enough hours. We know how to fix this. We did this in the late 70s as we dug out from there. We can do it again. Stable predictable funding that we can, in our case, we believe we need to increase manpower to 350,000 airmen. That mans a hundred percent of the positions on our books today. And we do that over the next five to seven years. Bring on manpower. Make sure we have training for the manpower. Then increase weapons system support for depots and parts and supply. On top of that, increase flying hours, and then bring down up tempo and get the readiness back. We at the same time have to modernize the force. We are doing so. As we bring on f35s, k c46, b21s. We need to keep them on track. Today we have 75 less f35s than we planned to have in 2012. 95 less mq9s because of sequestration. Today has a readiness impact on the future. Todays modernization is tomorrows readiness. We need to focus on that Going Forward in the future. With those steps we can dig out of our Readiness Challenges we had today and bring it up to full Spectrum Readiness of about 8 wi 80 . Thank you for your commitment. General walters, buford along with parris island, we are very grateful for such extraordinary facilities giving young people extraordinary opportunity to serve our country and achieve to their highest ability. But i am concerned that it was reported last year that weve had only 141 flyable tactical aircraft that additionally weve had accident that have just been unprecedented. And from that situation of danger, on pilots and communities, what is the current state of Marine Aviation . Is there a correlation between aviation mishaps and the ability of a ready basic aircraft and how do you plan to address this . Sir, were addressing ready basic aircraft issue. Ive been doing it for two years. We have turned. We need 589 ready base aircraft. That just gives us enough to train with. Were not there yet. We are at 439. We are a hundred and something short. But 50 more than two years ago. Thats positive. Your last question about correlation to accident and ready basic aircraft. There is no direct correlation. I have reviewed every accident we had in the last two years. Those pilots have had the adequate time. But i think it is an overall systemic shortfall in readiness in our aerativiation units. Thank pu you. Thank you, mr. Chairman and thank you to the witnesses here today. I appreciate the opportunity to continue to highlight the serious challenges that we face. We have brought ourselves to this point largely by fighting two decadelong wars, paid for with a credit card. While deferring investments in our people, our equipment, and our facilities. This has been further strained by selfimposed fiscal constraint and our National Security app rattaratus will coe to be across the board sequestration. In the meantime, we must continue to focus our resources on individual operations and maintenance accounts. I have a question for you, admiral morian. As we discussed yesterday in my office there are significant readiness needs facing the navy and our ship maintenance infrastrurk has limited capacity. The recent funded priorities list indicates as much which ship depot maintenance at the top. However that conflicts with the administration who decided to focus instead on construction. In an ideal world the navy would be able to modernize while shrinking readiness deficit but the reality is that we do not have a blank check. So my question to you, admiral, is how does the navy intend to pri prioritize kmeeti prioritize competing needs. Will it focus. Maam, thank you for the question. Maam, thank you fo question. If additional resourcis come in 2017 we will naught toward ship depot maintenance, aircraft maintenance, cybersecurity, the shortfalls we have talked about this morning. As i stated in my opening if we dont take care of the foundation of the navy which is 275 ships we have today, it doesnt do us much good to continue to buy new. So it somewhat of a false choice to choose between the future size of the navy and the current condition of the navy but to your point, the resources are where they are. And if additional funds come available in 2017 we will put them in readiness cuts. Thank you, admiral. The department of defense has been asking for the authority to have another brown of brak for years siting that manpower and excess infrastructure are a drain on operation answers maintenance budgets and ultimately effecting readiness. So do you believe the army needs another brak and how would you reallocate resources currently used to maintain excess capacity . Any one of you . I just need one answer. Congresswoman bordallo, we have capacity in the air force, about 25 excess ka pass knit bases. We think that were, in todays budget environment, it makes sense to invest wisely. Brak would help us to do smart investment on the basis preparing for the future. And we could take the money spending on the excess infrastructure and put that back into solving fiscal problems. You are supporting brak closures . Yes, maam. Anyone else have a different . I will pile on. We are in a similar situation. Depending on what size force you describe for 490,000 soldier active force, which is about 25,000 more than we are today, we have 21 excess facilities to need. We save year over year, annually, 1 billion from the 05 brak that took place. So it is real money that we really need to reinvest into the deferred maintenance and infrastructure backlog for armty. 11 billion in deferred infrastructure. Thank you. For the air force that number is 25 billion of money we need to put back into our bases of deferred maintenance. General . Maam, we think we are about right but we will participate in any brak to see if there is any savings with our partners. Thank you. I sub hmit the rest of my time the chairman. Chairman appreciates. Gentleman from colorado, mr. Kaufman. Thank you. All of you have aviation component to your branch of service. There is a growing concern about a Pilot Shortage. The United States military and i think that that is also reflected in the fact that we have a growing demand in Civil Aviation for pilots. What is your approach of how to deal with that issue, whether its a Retention Bonus structure, enhancement of some sort . But also the fact is, that weve got experienced pilots in the United States military leaving for jobs in civilian airlines. Who would probably still like to affiliate in some way. And so then the question is, should we shift then some of those flying from the active duty to reserve. So maybe start with United States army and work our way down. Up, maybe. Trs okay you got helicopter pilots. Okay. Were not having problem retaining helicopter pilots. I will defer to other services. Fantastic. We would like some of your helicopter pilots. Sir, thats a great question. That is something we focus on a lot as we manage our force. I would tell you the thing that keeps pilots in our services, speak for the navy, but im sure general wilson will agree because weve both flown, is to fly. If you dont have adequate resources of airplanes and money to resource flying hours, that dissatisfaction will show up with people walking out the door. We are all facing that shortage today. Not enough airplanes. Not fixing them fast enough. We dont have the spare parts we need. And young men and women are not flying nearly enough to keep the Job Satisfaction at a level that they would like. Chairman, your view is it is a morale issue based on the ability to get flying hours . It absolutely is a morale issue. General wilson . Today we find ourselves producing about 1200 pilots a year. If i add navy and marines together we have about 2,000 pilots year. Airlines hire 4,000 pilots a year. I think this is bigger than a service problem. I think this is a National Problem we have to get at and work with industry on how to do that. Guard and reserves are a big part of this. Certainly the whole team on how we go for on this. We can recruit lofts people to fly. We dont have a problem there. T fly. We dont have a problem there. Retaining them is a problem. For last five years the retention of pilots declined. We need to keep about 65 after tenyear point. Today we are doing less than half of that. So i would say it is quality of life and quality of service. As the admiral said, we are doing everything we can to improve, to reduce additional duties. All the other burdens, administrative on our pilots, and let them do their job. To build the culture that most military pilots, war fighting culture eejos you see in squad rooms that keep people in the service. But there is certainly a cultural aspect to this but also to reduce the quality, improve quality of life and reduce administrative burdens on the crews and let them fly. But this is a National Problem not just a service problem. Guard and reserve have pilots who served on active duty that transfer into the guard and reserve and that are flying in civilian airlines. So are you looking at all at restruck tooring . Absolutely. All part of how we look and we are engaging with Corporate Airline leaders on how do we do this together and smarter . Right now we have a math problem that doesnt close. We produce 2,000. The nation needs about 4,000. General walters . Sir, we have a meeting with tomorrow to discuss this particular issue and all of the levers you just described. Reserves, how we keep them once we get them. And i will add one more, is how long do we sign them up for when we sign them up. All of those will be part of it and we might end up having to pay a bonus tofor those select people to keep them around and make it to get them a draw. In the end, its their willingness to serve and their value that they put on service that i think is will be the biggest magnet. I dont think we can dump enough money on them to keep them there just with the money. Okay. Mr. Chairman, i yield back. Mr. Courtney. Thank one mr. Chairman. Thank you to the witnesses for your excellent testimony this morning. Admiral moran, i would like to again go back to your very frank advice that we need to focus on maintenance and repair in terms of just getting, to meet the operational demand. Ship building which i think is an exciting year with the fsa to come out but having said that, thats a long game and were not going to see the fruits of that for 2017 action for years to come. So you know, your description about the fact that there is this backlog building up of work thats not getting performed, i was wondering if you could be more descriptive in how that looks. In terms of carriers or surface ships or submarines, what is happening in terms of that backlog thats building up. Yes, sir. Congressman, thanks for the question. First of all, in 17 alone, if we do not see a supplemental come along for this fiscal year, without a cr, within a month we will have to shut down air wings. We have to defer maintenance on several facilities for maintenance facilities, we are just flat out out of money to be able to do that. I think everyone here knows that in 17 the navy took a 5 billion cut in its stop line. And if that comes to fruition, 2 billion of readiness cuts we have to take which is immediately applied to things like ship avails. We have had cases in the past year and recent past where weve had to decertify a submarine from being able to dive because we cannot get it in the Nuclear Maintenance that it is needed that is needed. The crew on the us sa albany for example, went over 48 months before getting out of the yard because several delays, at least four different delays because of other priorities and other priorities start with our ss bien force, which is the nuclear force, carriers and then to ssns. If any of those get disrupted, a carrier goes long in one of the public yard then we bump thing like the ssns. That crew of albany, the co that took over gave up comment before the end of that maintenance avail and the crew, entire crew, did not deploy. To someones pint here earlier, you cannot buy back that experience. Those are the kinds of impacts we see in the yard because of shortage of resources and continuing rating of the readiness accounts in order to keep the rest of the navy whole. Thank you. The story about the albany resonates. This this room we have heard from admiral harris, general scaparotti that they need more submarines, now. To the extent we wont build a virginia class now because it takes five years, but if we can get the albany and boise and others out and under way then we can respond to those Combatant Commanders. So lets assume we fully fund, we deal with the resource issue and we also deal with the funding certainty issue which your testimony pointed out is another big problem. There is still, i think, our issues though in terms of allocation of work and in the ship yards, in your testimony, you said a variety for a variety of reasons the shipyard are struggling to get our ships through maintenance periods on time. So the again, lets assume we take care of resource questions, how do we deal with that . Can we call on private yards to take on some of the work and can Congress Help with that process . Yes, sir. Youre absolutely correct. Obviously we try it maximize our public yard workload but we try to smooth out those god awful sand sharks we are used to staring at to try to smooth out the work across those yards. Where we need the extra capacity, we do use private yards to do it. Mount pillier is a good example thats in eb, for example. We will continue to look at those. The problem is, the very late determination we no longer have ka pass knit public yards when we turn to the private yards that moment it becomes a very expensive proposition. So the degree to which we can take advantage of your support and work with our private yards to try to drive down the cost, it makes it easier to surge to private yards when the kass paity or work exceeds the capacity because of delays that are already there. If that makes sense. Thank you. I think admiral mccoy described it as one shipyard. That should be our philosophy. Yes. The story about albany is amazing. Mr. Franks . Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you to the witnesses for your Noble Service to america. This is somewhat of a redundant question but is important to emphasize. On march 22 of last year chairman of the joint chiefs of staff joseph duns ford said quote, absorbing significant cuts of the last five years has resulted in our underinvesting in critical capabilities and unless we reverse sequestration, we will be unable to execute the current Defense Strategy, closed quote. So general walters and i might ask that you follow up by general allyn, that maybe keep the responses fairly concise. In your professional military opinion, is your service able to execute our current Defense Strategy with our current force levels . Sir, if your definition of strategy is to do two things simultaneously, the answer is no. If the United States army as general millie testified before this committee and as have i in prior years, only at high risk. So to maybe give you a real world example when you talk about two scenarios, in your professional military opinion atity current force level, would your service, and i begin with the army first, general walters, would you are service be capable of executing a korea scenario while continuing your commitments around the world . Sir, we would be able to execute a korea scenario but would have to draw from other commitments on the world to make it on the time line required. And like wise for the United States army. We would both draw from drou down committed forces elsewhere and as well as have forces arriving late to immediate based on Readiness Levels as we talked about on the outset with the chairman. And i will broaden it to the committee, whoever would like to take a shot at it, with your current planned instrength levels can you meet the construct outlined in the 2014 defense review to quote defeat a regional adversary and deny another aggressor in another region . And maybe add mirral moran maybe take a shot at it. My answer would be very consistent with my brothers here and that is that we will be able to employ our force but at great risk to being there late and higher casualties than we would expect. I would second that. No disagreement on the panel. So final question, mr. Chairman, and i address it to all of you in your professional military opinions, too small given a current merging Mission Requirements . Yes we are for the current defense Planning Guidance now the chair or second of defense has directed a new Strategic Review that could result in a revised force construct requirement but we will undergo that process and provide our our recommendations on what the army should be but for today it is too small. Ai gri agree for navy as wel. Same for the air force. Same for the marine corps. Sometimes there is nothing more encouraging than to hear your own con visions fall from anothers lips. But in this case i think im more alarmed by than than anything else and yet it does seem to be a consistent circumstance and i hope the committee and country and new administration is considering the responses of these gentlemen carefully and with that i yield back. Thank you all. Thank you. Ms. Tsagas . Thank you. Thank you for being here as we have this very important discussion. Last week in the context of number of hearings we have had to sort of discuss this global situation, that we have to deal with and deal with appropriately and successfully and last week this committee had the opportunity to hear from petraeus and mclaughlin about pressing threats and challenges facing our nation. And in their testimony i was struck by the focus they both placed on shifting global balance of power and need for the United States to maintain its technological superiority in relation to both russia and china. Just last week the New York Times reported on chinese advances and Computer Science and engineering in relation it declining u. S. Investments in these areas. Historically our nations Nation National labs have led the way in advancing new technology for our nations military but today private firms many located overseas are increasingly taking the lead making investments in those technologies that have both consumer and military applications. They see a dual benefit to it. And robotic answes and artifici intelligence are two examples of where the private sector has been increasingly successful. As we talk about the challenges we face and many on instrength and need more mofor more people seems as we maintain our competitive advantage that it is not just about instrength but about how to use Cutting Edge Technology to leverage fiscally thoughtful investments, whether in people or other areas. So to that end, general wilson, and this certainly comes as i am a representative from massachusetts, we have great labs and ffrdcs in our state that had done such great work. What is the air force doing to modernize its labs and defense foc foc focus frdcs to make sure by are at the cutting edge of technology and how much priority is it for you given the competing demand for investment . Yes, we have improvement of infrastructure there and i have been there and they are world class and there is technologies they are working on. You meng had ai and romantics and they are also working on directed energy, things that can truly change the game. We need to modernize smartly across specific areas and industry in many areas is leadingness that way. Trs we are collaborating in the industry whether we work with folks like darpa, research lab, dr. Rope ert and his team, all the ffrdcs and National Labs that also are reaching out with all the private sector to make sure that we can stay uptodate with them. I look at this as almost like the fsrm facilities. We have to invest so much today in our technology that will get us to tomorrow. Right now our r did is about 2 . D is about 2 . Is about 2 . We need to keep it that or grow that otherwise our adversaries will outpace us. We need to leverage those to help us stay ahead of our adversaries Going Forward. Those National Treasures arent named National Treasures without the significant investment that needs to be made in them. I know given the constrained resources, i just want to be reassured that we dont, we arent shortsided or that in making those tough choices were not putting what we need to because technology is a long time line and yet it also can move very quickly. We dont want to be behind the eight ball because we have just been too shortsided in some near term investment. To that end, general allyn, massachusetts has a great facility that really focuses on the soldier and thousand behow best protect the soldier and make them the best possible and thinking thoughtfully what kind of investments the army is making. Them the best possible a thinking thoughtfully what kind of investments the army is making. Thank you, congresswoman. Im sorry you are missing the boston parade. Im sorry. Also mit lincoln labs ive been there the last two months on several programs that are critical to us to be able to continue to dominate in the multidomain environment of the future. We will continue with the soldier enhancements that come from made ittnadic. You highlighted the technology to readiness. It is the right balance of capability and capacity that makes it a ready force and all of our trying to ensure that we maintain that balance as we move forward, man. Thank you, yield back. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here today for this very important hearing and pretty sobering testimony but i think we all need to hear it and general, listen, i appreciate your highlighting the recent mission that went over to libya. We are so proud of him. And your testimony goes along with the question i wanted to ask where you talk about how you feel like our training makes us capable for middle eastern conflict. But we need to have peer adversary training and i know with your 35 years in the air as a pilot and flying b1 and your participation in red flag over the years, i wanted to ask you about the capability of the Training Exercise to meet our near peer competitors that we are facing today. So is the air force training with a fight tonight mentality against a highend threat like china and russia . And what i mean by this, are you confident in the air forces ability to accurately train against a near peer adversary . Can you give our young men and woman a glimpse of what it would look like . Can you prepare them and put their families mind at east such a flairup in south chi china seas would look routine . Congresswoman rahtzler we are putting infrastructure in places like nellis air pours base. When i started flying in the 1980s we changed how we incorporate space and spieber to it but the way we replicate threat hasnt improved until a significant degree until recently. We changed that. We put significant investment into the infrastructure to give us the right threat emitters. To give us a like environment with highend threats and allow crews to train in that. Were not there yet, though. We just started that investment to improve range answers infrastructure. But that is critical Going Forward. It is also critical we invest in what we call live virtual training. I wont have a, flying hours or b, money it train. An f35 pilot and give them all the training outdoors. And in the live environment. I have to do some of that in the virtual or constructive environment. We put money into that constructive so that our folks can be at home station and we can replicate a red flag environment or highend training scenario to give them the most realistic training possible but it is important we continue that investment of our ranges or infrastructure and live virtual constructi constructive environments Going Forward. So if a hundred was the number for feeling very, very confident, that you be able to go up against the training was adequate for what would be the number where you feel like we could go up against fisgen adversary . If you good to one of our red flag exercises, it is fantastic training. The problem is not enough people get to go to it and we dont do those frequently enough. The average crew is 50 ready. That number is considerably below that in highend air. It takes all those resources we talk about. People, training, Weapon System support, training ranges, flying hours, and time to do that. To build up that highend readiness. Were not where we need to be. I would say 50 . All right. Look forward to working with you to get that up to a hundred so anyone can meet the threats we are facing. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you so much for your service. I dont know how many of these hearings we have gone to, where it is needing more money and then someone mentioned sequestration. It seems like with the administration that if sequestration is the problem then perhaps it could be solved. Quickly. Nonetheless, the money problem is likely to persist. A couple of questions just no follow up on the question about the airmen and pilots that are necessary. I understand that the air force is now moving to provide pilots that are not officers to fly certain missions. General wilson, if you could comment on that briefly, and is it going to help solve this problem . Congressman, we think so. When we tell you our efforts today, initial group of enlisted aviators into the global hawk program. We think over the next few years we can grow it so a majority of pilots and global hawk will be enlisted. We will learn with that and take that example and did that in other areas like mq9s and other areas. Thats to be determined. That will help asleevate shortages right now but it is in the first stages. Second class and training and only handful of operators going through the Training Program right now. I think that the question really comes to this committee and whether we are or this committee and senate, on whether we force this faster or not. Seems to me we ought to let this go in a way that is wise. Not necessarily slow. But at least thoughtfully done. The next question, if i might, general wilson, has to do i guess we want to have everything and we want to have everything now. A long discussion ensued about the aircraft and about the personnel. But not much discussion about the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent and billions spent on that and question aliesrises in mind and i hope the committees mind about necessity of rebuilding the entire nuclear mission. All of the bombs, all of the he Delivery Systems from naval to air force and general, if you could comment on this issue, can we afford all of it . Congressman, i think we can. If you look at this, look at the investment across the nuclear enterprise, Going Forward, on all of the modernization programs, itll peak at about 5. 5 of our Defense Budget. It is a matter of priorities. Foundationally, what our nation provide, Nuclear Deterrent provides our nation is incalculable. It provided 70 plus years of no conflict between major powers. As i look across the globe and landscape that you talked about change as we see what our adversaries are doing across their force we have no option other than to modernize. Our forces were built, many in the 60s. Modernized early 70s. Still maintaining today. There comes a time when we have to modernize and we have reached that. We have delayed it far too long. Specifically groundbased strategic deterrent. If we look at todays man 3s put in the ground and have minute man 1 parts on them, the date design in the 50s, put in place in early 60s, minute man 3s in early 70s, now 50year life cycle of these. It is well worth the cost in investment Going Forward. We welcome that discussion about the importance of the nuclear try yad. I think we need to have that discussion and need that discussion in detail. It is not just the icbms in the ground whether they need to be renewed. It is about the naval and new submarines and new bombs that go with the new missiles as well as new f21 longrange bomber and cruise missiles. The question for all of us is a trillion dollar question over the next 25 years or so and the bow wave over the next five to seven years. And the army needs more men and women, as does the marine corps and you need more Fighter Pilots and more aircraft and the navy needs no submarines. And another 55 ships on top of what you already have. And wheres the money . The president is suggesting a tax cut of more than a trillion dollars. So we better have a big credit card. I think thats called the deficit. I yield back. Thank you, chairman. You have been hit hard by storms and i will be there friday. Not technically my district but i live about 30 minutes from that base and it is certainly important to us. Could you give me any estimate of when that base will be back to fully operational status if that has not already occurred and how and why is this particular base critical to the marine corps . Congressman, thanks for the question. We are tracking that daily. I know what damage has been done to intrastructure. We think by the end of this week we will have all of that collapsed building and warehouses off so we can take a look and analyze what damage is done to equipment inside of it so i can understand the full cost in efforts in 2017 we have identified at least the first cost of that. Second question is when do we get them full up. But it is absolutely critical. Thats where our tanks are, amphibious, light armor, go through depot. I dont have an estimate of when it will start up again. We do other components. We only have two depots. One on the east coast and one on the west coast, in bar stow. It is good to have two. Stow. It is good to have two. We have to decide what to do at barstow and what not to do and what moves out there. I would suggest to get albany back up and running at a hundred percent. Would you agree from a deployment standpoint it is important we be able to deploy from both east coast and west coast . Absolutely, sir. Were a fwloeb global nation. Thank you, sir. General wilson, in web, i will quote him, 25 years of reducks total force coupled with budget instability and lower plant funding levels resulting in one of the smallest oldest and least ready forces across the full spectrum of our operations and history. Your testimony was pretty close to that. General well, who i i think is just a wonderful leader, prior to 1992 air force procured average of 200 Fighter Aircraft per year. Resulted in procurement of less than 25 fighters yearly. Capability gaps between military and adversaries closing dangerously fast. General wilson, it is clear there are not enough fighter airplane for readiness. Yet the air force is contemplating reducing work force to include depots. Can you explain how this squares up . Yeah, i dont believe we are planning on reducing depots. Depots are critical to Going Forward in the future. General welsh, chief 20, also agree as remarkable airman. Yes, sir. A real visionary in what we need to do with our force. Chief 21, as you talk about, outliepi outli outlining the problem, we used to procure about 200 airlines a year today less than 20. Thats why 21 of 39 needs of airplane are older than 27 years old. To maintain the 27yearold airplanes takes a lot of work. Takes a heroic efforts by lots of maintainers and our depots. We have to actually get more out of our depots because each time we bring in a new airplane or old airplane, today, they are finding things they have never found before. Whether an f16, b1, c5, finding things they have never seen. They are real artisans on how they fix the planes and our depots would be critical to success Going Forward. One last question. I represent Robins Air Force base, and a lot of the men and women work at robbins. As you said, they are very skilled and talented and without them our planes wouldnt be able to fly today. When can we expect guidance issue down to the base level on the work force . We hope that the guidance will come out this week. If whats exempted in categories to allow our work force to continue. As you know we are still just digging out of sequestration and the effects that had. Ourciville grab work force is critical in whether it is maintaining planes, is ysustain them, any reducks of that skilled work force and 9 of of civilians work outside of washington, d. C. 6 of of civilians work outside of washington, d. C. Of of civilians work outside of washington, d. C. F of civilians work outside of washington, d. C. of civilians work outside of washington, d. C. They work in depot answers fligs s and flight line. Thank you. Mr. Rorarke. Thank you. Thank you for your leadership and testimony today. I also really appreciate the guidance that you have given to congress so far in repealing the budget control act ending this sequestration. And in having continued resolutions and pointing out the real value in a base realignment and closure process to be able to direct and focus resources where they are most effective for our Service Members and our missions. So on each of those i would like to be part of working with our colleagues from both sides of the aisle to get these things done. I think youve made a very good case for what why we need to do it and why we need to do it now. For general allen, the 3 of 58 brigade comment teams ready to fight tonight, i think one, it says something about our form of government that we would say that publicly in a meeting like this. And advertise our state of preparedness or lack of preparedness to the rest of the world. But i understand we say these kind of things to make sure we are making fully informed decisions and i hope that your comments help help spur us to when ver reverse this trend and make sure by are where we need to be. Im guessing that whatever analogous body that is in russia is not talking about the preparedness in russia in a public way but generally speaking can you tell us how we compare, if you can, in a setting like this one . Are they at 3 of 58 will . I have to be honest. I dont have access to their unit status reporting. Will . I have to be honest. I dont have access to their unit status reporting. Ill . I have to be honest. I dont have access to their unit status reporting. Ll . I have to be honest. I dont have access to their unit status reporting. . I have to be honest. I dont have access to their unit status reporting. . I have to be honest. I dont have access to their unit status reporting. I do get ours everybody month so i have a fingertip feel of where we stand and it is our responsibility to deliver the best readiness that we can at the funding levels that we have and every commandener the field is getting after that, as you no he from fort bliss, texas. I will offer it is not all doom and gloom. One of the biggest impacts for us in terms of elevating our readiness above what it is today is personnel shortages. Its the first thing we are doing with increased authorization that you have given us this year is to fill the holes in our current formations so that they can be manned at a level to deploy ready to fight despite some of the medically nondeployable numbers that we have in our force. So we are absolutely committed to getting after that as our top priority. Let me ask you another question. What do you need above what was authorized in fy 17 ndaa to meet the gaps that you highlight today . What is the dollar amount that this committee should know about . Well, that work is going to happen next week. We got some initial guidance mid week this week from secretary of defense on how to approach this. As you know, from the memo being published publically the First Priority is that which can deliver readiness immediately in 17 and 18. Then it is achieving a better balanced force ie fill in the holes in our current formation. And then it is building the joint force that we need for the future. And we are aggressively working with osd staff to finalize exactly what that figure will look like and we will be getting that to you as quickly as we can. Last question, you may not have enough time to answer it, if not we will take it for the record, the tempo of the last 16 years of combat in afghanistan and iraq have really taken a toll certainly on our Service Members, on their units, on their families. I am really interested on where we are in moving to the Army Sustainable Readiness Model to replace the Army Force Generation model that has probably was appropriate for some of our needs at the time but long term i think is compromising readiness and unit cohesion. You only have 15 seconds left if you want to answer for the record. You are absolutely correct. It is a top priority. Army forces command is running a pilot now with units across the total force. Using this new model the goal is to be able to sustain readiness of our forces across time regardless of their deployment status and the goal is two thirds of our force ready to deploy at any moment in time. We are absolutely getting after that. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman and thank you for your service to our country and your time with us today. Admiral moran, the preponderance of our navy was constituted as a result of reagan era 600 ship navy. These ships were built throughout the 1980s and 90s. Many of them have reached or are beyond their original service life expectancy. In your best military judgment, are we building and are we capable of building given our ship yard capacity enough ships to not only maintain this already hazardly low navy but also increase it to the 355 ships called for in the latest assessment. Thanks for the question. You are absolutely right that for the last couple of decades we have been living off the fat, if you will, of the reagan era buildup. Back then we used to build up to five a year. Today we are forcing to get two to three a year. So when you look at the math it doesnt add up over time as that build up starts to decommission because they have reached the end of their life and we are not building at a rate to replace them. We have programmed in 17 and 18 as we are beginning that program look now to arrest the decline in our total numbers. That is why we have come down since 9 11 from 316 ships to 275 today. We just have not been replenishing them at the same rate as they have been going out. We have taken a hard look at whether there is industrial capacity to not only arrest the decline but to start to climb back out of it. There is industrial capacity to do it. We have vendors and subvendors in short supply to begin to have the conversation with. Once we get past this year and the immediate readiness needs we are going to take a hard look along with osd to determine what the strategy calls for and the size and shape and function of the force in the future. We are prepared and i think we can go to a higher ramp earlier than is currently programmed but the resourcing clearly is not there. What effect will this low level of ships have on our combatant commands to safe guard and secure economic shipping lanes and answer the call should a contingent operation arise . Today we satisfy about 40 of the request for naval forces. 40 . And that is why the size of the navy we have today is too small. It is also why that small navy is being driven at a higher up tempo year after year. And that higher up tempo is driving up maintenance requirements, delays in ship yards and our ability to get the force back at sea. So the ability to satisfy growing combat and commander requirements is not going to be satisfying to anyone in the near future unless we have a larger navy. Can you expand upon why the navy is unique compared to other services with regards to why the navy should invest current readiness funds into ship building and the impact that has on the future readiness of the navy . Yes, sir. Clearly it takes a long time to build a capital ship or any ship. So when we invest money in current year dollars or near year dollars it takes several years for that capability to deliver. So we are unique in that standpoint. The number of years it takes to deliver an Aircraft Carrier or ballistic submarine or highend destroyer is well beyond the fit in many cases. It has an impact over long term readiness we dont invest now. Let me just say in closing i was honored to go to the rimpac exercise in hawaii this past summer and not only to see our navy at work but to see other navys at work as there are 27 other nations that were participating with us. And i was struck by the sailors that i was with. I was struck by their commitment to the mission and i was struck by the fact that they are doing a lot more with a lot less. But i worry that there is a time coming when even the great sailors that weve got cannot continue to do more with dwelling number of resources that we are providing to them. I was struck by that quote that general wilson gave from general mcarthur. That really hit me very hard. I hope that we never, ever get to the point where we are there again where we literally have to say its too late. I dont think its too late but the clock is ticking and ticking on all of us. I hope that we will Work Together to rebuild all of our armed forces and i appreciate what each of you do. I yield back. Hs rosemhs rosenshs rosen. H . Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to thank all of you for being here today in your thoughtful and enlightening testimony and for your service to our nation. You know, i represent a district in nevada about a dozen miles from the air force base home to u. S. Air force workers center, the largest advanced combat Training Mission in the world. Our primary mission includes testing of the nations most advanced aircraft and weapons systems, advanced training on the range and the largest air and ground Space Available for peace Time Military operations and it looks very much like the middle east. So in the summer time we are not so lucky, happy about that, but it is good for the military. Even though we are a small state we have sixth most active Duty Air Force personnel in the country and one out of every 300 nevadens is active Duty Air Force. It is very important in our community. We have touched on a lot of issues today. But your testimony really seems to have put into place an emphasizing importance of passing a budget so that we can plan on your side and on the private side. So i would like to ask about uniform versus contractor. Are there responsibilities that contractors are doing now because you dont have the money in your budgets . And what are Service Members doing that contractors used to do because we dont have the funds on that side . We have contractors involved in all aspects of our organizations. So today, for example, one of our Pilot Training bases, its contract maintenance so they are doing all the flight line maintenance. So we have contracted that out and in our balancing of modernization capacity and readiness we didnt have the funds and that is how parts of that now being done by contractors. Used to be done by blue suit mapt nance. Maintenance. And that example would permeate across every unit. It is contractors involved in some aspects of how we do operations. Is it too much or too little . I guess i say it will depend. There are areas that we think should be more, in our case air force blue suit maintenance or blue suit operations, but we are having to rely on contractors because we dont have the people we once had. What resources do you need to increase the people pipeline . Because we have maintenance. We have equipment but without the people and the training to do it. What resources do you need to improve the pipeline on both ends . We have the infrastructure to be able to assess and train the right people. We need authorizations for the people and funding that goes with it to be able to do that. Thank you. I yield back my time. Mr. Whitman . Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks again for your service. I would like to begin with you and ask you to elaborate on the back log of maintenance that we are seeing within the navy. I will go right to our Aircraft Carriers. As you know the cno said he wants to stay on seven month deployment schedules and delays getting to the yard. When that happens it also has an impact on maintenance availabilities and therefore deployment schedules, training schedules and now we are seeing that reverberate down to ssns because all of the work on Nuclear Ships has to be done at public ship yards. Give me your perspective in several ways . We are seeing impacts with uss boise tied up at the dock, one of our active attack submarines tied up before maintenance will begin. That takes a while before she gets back to the fleet and another five getting ready to be tied up awaiting maintenance for the twoyear period before the first work gets done. You have that. You have carrier gaps now in the persian gulf. You are seeing that start to back up with carriers going to the yards and then not just maintenance availability backups but then that effects training schedules. I will ask you this. Are you going to change deployment schedules from seven months . Will training times get shortened . How are you going to deal with this to make sure that all of these ships get to the yard and get maintained and get back to the fleet . If we are going to get to 355 ships we have got to do all possible to maintain the ships that we have. Thanks for your question. It is a very complex answer. When we hit sequestration and furlough back in 13 we saw several of our civilian sailors in our yards leave who were eligible for retirement, eligible to move on just because they were tired of dealing with this kind of uncertainty. In the years since then when we have been able to hire back we have hired back in numbers that are fairly substantial. But they are young. They are inexperienced. So today in our ship yards roughly 50 of our civilian workforce there has less than five years experience. We are talking operating or maintaining Nuclear Capable ships. Thats not necessarily a good place to be. What happens with Something Like that is take bush for example. Bush just came out late. 141 days from its availability. 141 days which delayed ability to get on deployment to relieve the eisenhower. Cno has maintained and will try to maintain the best of our ability to seven month deployments and take risks by gapping in certain parts of the globe. Month deployments and take risks by gapping in certain parts of the globemonth deployments and take risks by gapping in certain parts of the globe. In order to get ike back here to get her started on her upkeep bush was late for a lot of reasons. One was the junior nature of the workforce. We had upwards of 70 of rework on bush throughout that 13month maintenance period. So until the workforce gains that experience we are going to continue to see work issuesrwoe there were training issues involved. We are starting to see nice turn around in the public yards along those lines. Until we see that workforce mature, performance continues to improve and then the timelines that we put our ships in maintenance begin to shrink back to what is planned and can be executed we are going to continue to see these problems. When a carrier gets delayed like bush for 141 days that bumps ssn and that workforce cannot go over and work on the boise. So the boise is delayed and delayed. Now she is two years delayed. I used the example of albany delayed for 48 months before she came out. An entire crew lost proficiency on that sub. We have the same concerns about boise. We are the same concerns about montpelier which we put in a public yard just to try to offload some work load. There are huge impacts to the place we are at on the maintenance front on the public yards we are trying to spread it with private as best we can. But its just going to take time and resources as highlighted here. Very quickly, what can you do to mitigate this back log . Because the back log is only going to grow. You cant gain back time and workforce experience able to accelerate that. You can hire up but you are hiring new people so proficiency will not be there. How do you gain that back . I can answer that for the record. Quickly, it is by sticking to the deployment links that we have so we dont wear out the commitment so much that when it gets back it has to go for longer periods of time. Thank you. You mentioned in your testimony about aviation readiness. I note that youre ccbo 46 and now moved on to p8s. They are relatively new. So what class of aviation in the navy is really a focus for readiness and maintenance . The focus right now is clearly with our partners in marine corps or legacy hornet fleet and the beginning bow wave of superhornets were flying harder and more often than we would have because of the issues in the legacy fleet. So its a twofor. The Strike Fighter community is definitely the focus of our energy right now. General, did you want to comment on that . It is our focus and i would throw in 53ks and v22s. Those are all three priorities for us. Issue regarding growlers. Can you understand that physiological is investigati solutions for the issue. Two things, can you update us on that where they are in second . Do you envision if there is a supplemental that money to further research will be part of that . Yes, sir, first of all on the growler issue that was a maintenance procedural issue. We have fixed that. We do not have a problem with growlers today. The physiological events you are referring to are both different. One for the legacy hornet fleet and one in the superhornet fleet. I am happy to pass you to where we are with that. We have not found the smoking gun. It is very complicated and we have taken a hornet and torn it down the parade rest. In other words, we have taken it all the way down to as if we are going to build from scratch to try to piece together to see where these events are coming from so we can more accurately put an Engineering Solution to it. In the meantime we have put a lot of mitigators out there in terms of how we have provided our pilots watches and slam sticks so we can verify and validate the events occurred and give a better indication of what we do about it and we put decompression chambers on our deployed carriers so if we have an event we dont take any added risks for our pilots going through any kind of physiological event. I dont want to get into details or contradict you too much but my understanding is that the pe rate on growlers is going down but we did see an upturn last year. Maybe we can send folks over and get that inconsistency settled would be great since we met. I will just pick one of the Services Rather than have all of you discuss it. Maybe air force on building and rebuilding the force. How are you this is really more on building the force and the area of cyber security. We are not rebuilding forces there. We are trying to build it up. How do you envision that balance between, say, active duty reserve or National Guard and use of private sector . We use all of that. I use the example we had a guardsman in california who went to cyber training for the air force. He happened to be a ceo of a cyber company. We need to tailor the continuum of training for the people. We see across both guard and reserves they have really skilled people in the cyber area. We need to they dont need to do cookie cutter training for somebody newly assessing. Do you have the flexibility and personnel systems in the air force to be able to do that . Or do you feel stuck at all . I wouldnt say it is perfect but we are working through that to be able to provide that flexibility across specifically cyber security. And as general allyn talked about today as we look at what is happening in the world of software and how fast it is moving we cant do acquisition speed to be able to we will have to change that whole paradigm as well as people and how we train them. We will next month we are having a session to talk through just this subject on the continuation of training and how we develop our corps and across all theory active guard reserve. For all the services i will follow up with all of you on the question of systems to address that. Thats a good question. Thank you all for being here today and answering our questions. This can be for whoever wants to take it, but how have readiness short falls impacted operations with allies . In other words, related to joint exercise, defense cooperation agreements and what our allies expect from our military on an International Stage . Ill start and give these guys a break. You have been wearing out the navy and the air force here the last few minutes. We have had incredible opportunities to assure our allies strength in the capability and capacity of our allies as well as increase the deterrent posture both in europe and in the pacific with exercise series that have been invaluable at a time when the capacity of each of these nations to be both a stable force in their own countries as well as contribute to Regional Solutions is part of how we deal with the threats there with a smaller military here in the United States and i will just highlight some of the work underway in Eastern Europe to strengthen that deterrent posture. We recently deployed division that will start our heel to toe rotations. They began offloading ships just about 30 days ago. Within 14 days they were on gunnery ranges and beginning to work with their polish counter parts in the zigone region of poland. Today elements of that unit are forward in astonia as a clear signature of commitment to Nato Alliance and ability to strengthen the capacity of the baltic nations to deal with the instability created with the aggression that russia has exercised here in the last several years. So those are critical commitments. We could not have done it without the increased eri funding that you provided us. That funding is going to be critical in 2018, as well. I guess that is good to hear. Are there any rumbles in terms of our allies having concerns of what we are hearing about our lack of readiness . Does that give them trepidation as far as our ability to step up and honor our agreements . I will say for the army whenever we send a unit they are trained and ready when they arrive. They are not seeing this. What we are trying to describe is the readiness impact for forces on the bench that should be ready to go for the unforeseen contingency. Lets talk a little bit about what may be the most important topic of today and that is our military men and women and what impact this readiness shortfall has on the personnel, emotionally. I think anyone who signs up for any of the branches of the military understand the sacrifices they are going to make. They know they will miss christmases, birthdays, anniversaries. Tball games, and i think they go in knowing that. With the force, what is the impact on our Staff Sergeant and morale of our troops . Ill start and pass to my marine brother. This is something we absolutely keep a pulse check on each and everyday. Sergeant major of the army travels across the army every week it assess exactly the morale of our force and ability to sustain this incredible allvolunteer force we have built in the United States. And it is inspiring to see the sustained our military has. One example, this building towards the authorized strength you have given us in this years nnda, we have to build about 28,000 additional soldiers in the total force. You know, within the first month of that effort, we had 2500 soldiers raise their hand and say, hey, i want to continue to serve. Because the best way we deliver this capability at best dollar is to retain those that have been trained and keep them in the force and they are stepping up and saying, i want to stay on this team. We find that to be very encouraging. Sir, i have just a little bit of time. We are watching exactly what you are asking about. We see no enlistments after that and we think we will make our goal. But for the first time this year, our challenge from getting that Staff Sergeant to reenlist right now, we are going to have to reenlist 87 of remaining cohort to make our goal and that might be challenging. So we are looking to that. That might be leading indicator of the phenomenon you were describing is that they are starting to feel a little stressed. I know i spoke for all of us here. Our gratitude and appreciation for all you do and all our service men and women do is immense and we grately appreciate it. So thank you. Ms. Murphy . Eately appreciate it. So thank you. Ms. Murphy . Gentlemen, thank you for being here and for your testimony today. I have two questions to ask you in successor then leave you with the remaining of my allotted time it answer it. Admiral moran, in 2016 the navy put out a document called a design for maintaining maritime superiority, which intend to guide the navys behavior and investments Going Forward. It is built around four lines of effort. War fighting, learning faster, strengthening the navy team and building partnerships. And within the war fighting line of effort, the dock ument notes the importance of developing concepts and capabilities to provide a range of options to National Leaders and then testing and refining those concepts through phoningused war gaming modeling and simulations. Also within the learning faster line of of effort there stated desire to expand the use of Learning Center technologies simulation and online gaming. I represent floridas seventh district which includes Naval Support activity lord which is home to a variety of government private sector and academic organizations many of which specialize in hightech r d, modeling and simulation and are known collectively as team orlando. Could you describe what investments the navy will be making in support of modeling and simulation and fiscal year 2018 budget request as well as in future budget questions and to the other services, could you describe how modeling and simulation fits into your Service Training and readiness strategy . And then, how do we ensure that military services are acquiring state of the art training equipment before that equipment because anything less than state of the art . Put another way, is there a mismatch between the time it takes it acquire this modeling and Simulation Technology and the rapid pace at which the technology is evolving . Then my second line of questioning, involves a recent article i read about an Associated Press examination into the effectiveness of dods program out of sentcom because of the propaganda of isil. The question is whether contractors are sufficiently skilled in arabic and adequately knowledgeable of islam to serve as counter weight it online recruiters seeking to radicalize young men and women throughout the arab and muslim world. Given the importance of this effort what can we do to improve this . Congresswoman, i will start, i will tackle the training piece here. I think i can speak for most everybody at the table. All of us are incredibly interested this this technology. Team orlando is army team, navy team, disney team, and the colle colleges and universities of that area. Its terrific. Ive been there a half dozen times. The maturing that is meeting its promises there and we are purposefully investing in that technology to try to take traditional paths of training out of schoolhouses, brick and mortar, and bring it to what we call the fleet, the pier, the flight line where sailors are working on their gear. Learning new gear and being able to turn around training faster on their schedule when they learn at the right time and thats what the technology really brings is an ability for this generation to learn on equipment that they are used to seeing as they are growing up. So we are the ones that have to mature our own Training Program. That is actively going on. You heard earlier general wilson talk about live virtual construct, thats a key component because all of our weapons systems, ranges in which we operate this gear is extended well beyond the reach of some of our ranges out there so the technology can bring that in closer so to give others time to talk, i would leave it with you there. Everybody, especially on our side, we are actively investing because it is going to save us money in the long haul. Thank you. I will just pile on given that he highlighted team work we have there in orlando, the modeling and simulation live virtual constructive is basically the practice time that we spend hitting the sled before we ever take the field, right, for collective training. It is absolutely critical. Particularly for our leaders so they get repetitions before you put the blood, sweat and tears of our soldiers at risk in a venue that they may not be fully rehearsed in. So it is absolutely critical. And ill site one example. We are pursuing an upgrade to the striker vehicle specifically to deal with the capability gap in Eastern Europe. And in stride with fielding that new hardware, the new weapons platform, we are also pursuing a simulation trainer to enable us to get the repetitions on that combat vehicle before we ever role it to the field. So its a its done in stride. You talked about our ability to keep up with the rapid pace of modernization and modeling and simulation. Ours is less a problem with the capacity to do it than it is the funding. Like Everything Else, weve todhad to stretch out those Program Portfolios beyond what any of us are comfortable with within the fun funding restraints that we have. Time is expired. Dr. Abraham . Thank you, gentlemen for being here and for the men and women behind you and for those that wear the uniform, thanks for letting us sleep soundly at night and raising our children and grandchildren in a safe environment. Mr. Chairman, this committee knows the value of the b52 bomber fleet. We in louisiana are fortunate to have barksdale fort polk joint air base at bell chase, community are very supportive. But this b52 is 60 years old. Expected to fly until 2050. And it has both nuclear and conventional missions that it is expected to fly. The air force, general wilson, is considering a proposal to replace the engines on the b52s and it is my understanding if we reengine these b52s that it will increase the range by 30 . Increase loitering time by 150 . Mr. Chairman, i do have slides i would ask to be presented in the record. But just for time by 50 . I have some slides i would ask be entered into the record. Objection. These major engine retoolings have what i have seen wonderful cost benefits, increases longevity, lowers maintenance costs. What is your take on this, general wilson, and in particular would you describe the proposal to pay for these engines with a thirdparty and whats your take on that . Thanks for the question. Intimately familiar with this proposal. I think it makes great sense. Operationally it makes sense in terms of it increases the range and loiter capability. From a Business Case it seems to make sense. Todays technology of engines gives you a 30 efficiency. Theres its more efficient in terms of it costs less to fly it and it costs less in terms of people because the Current Technology will put an engine on the wing and they wont take it off for 10,000 hours. Theres a lot of manpower and time savings in keeping those engines updated and upgraded. It makes sense. How do we pay for it . If we had it in the budget, wed buy it, but we dont so we looked at thirdparty financing to see if it makes a Business Case through a party to do it, but ultimately i say if we had the money wed do it. Does the air force support the thirdparty . I havent seen the specifics on what the exact how well do that. We have a team in the pentagon who are working that right now. With the thirdparty finance folks to see how we would bring that forward. Okay. One other question for you general wilson, i want to get your thoughts on the Service Life Extension of the f15. Where is that going . How is it being put out there. Is it going to work . We dont know. Were going to do some modernization to our fourth generation fighters. We have to, whether it be new radars or new equipment. The f15s will reach a point in the future where structurally its going to cost too much to maintain them. Were looking for option to maintain them or what are other options to ensure we have a capacity of a fourth generation fighter flight Going Forward. Im afraid if we dont do something we have this critical gap. As we know the active guard reserve, everybody depends on this f15 aircraft as a Strike Fighter. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you for your Extraordinary Service to our country, to each and every one of you. General petraeus was here last week and six months ago in the wall street journal he penned an op ed in which he said there is no crisis in military readiness. He says the Defense Budget of over 600 billion a year exceeds the cold war average. Assuming no return to se questation has occurred in 2013 the pentagon budget to buy equipment now exceeds 100 billion a year, a healthy and sustainable level. The holiday of the 90s and early 2000s is over. On the one hand youre making statements about readiness. I realize that general petraeus is no longer in service, but he suggests that we have enough money. What would be your comment to that, general . Thank you for the opportunity to answer a great question. I can only say the facts as they effect the United States army. Our modernization budget, which is how we build future readiness against the forces we will face in the future is 50 of what it was in 2009. In 2017 its 4. 8 billion. It was 45. 5 billion in 2009. We have significantly attrited the building of a future readiness against likely threats we will face. In terms of newterm readiness, there is a significant challenge in meeting not only the current operational tempo with training ready forces, but having sufficient forces ready to deploy in the event of an unforeseen event. So you dispute what general petraeus says . They dont match the facts as i see them effecting the United States armys readiness. All right. I think maybe more than one of you reference the basinatoe invy surplus of 20 . For each of you, would you tell us what that means in costs we are putting out for surplus bases . To today we maintain our facilities at a rate of 1. 5 recapitalization. Said another way it takes 129 years to recapitalize our bases. We have a 20 billion backlog of recapitalization to our bases. We could invest that money in future facilities. Today we only fund new mission or those that directly support the Combatant Commanders needs. We have lots of places, whether it be dorms or child care or education centers, gyms, that are not where they need to be in terms of facilities, but yet we maintain those facilities across too many bases and we think we can reduce am some of that. We have reduced infrastructure at about 5 . We think its worth looking to target investment to put elsewhere in these challenging budget conditions. I would like to work with you on this. No one wants to see bases closed, but we have a certain pot of money and were spending more money than china and Russia Combined on our military and i suggest theres got to be a smarter way to spend it. I would like forward to working with you on that. A question about women in combat positions. A three year study has opened about 213,000 positions to women in combat if they meet the standards. It appears or were hearing rumblings that the administration now through secretary mattis and chairman dunnford are talking about reviewing, revising or repealing this policy. Do you know about any efforts to do that and doesnt that kind of fly in the face of having the ready workforce we need if youre excluding women who are capable to engage in combat . Theres been no conversation in the pentagon about reviewing, revising the commitment thats been made to gender integration and were all achieving higher levels of readiness now that we are opening it up to 100 of the population of america to be able to contribute. If the rest of you could just respond for the record. Thank you. If the gentle lady from arizona will permit me, i wanted to give the other witnesses a chance to answer the first question and that is are we spending enough money compared to what were doing now than in 2009, but how would the other three of you respond to her question . I completely agree with how the general described his answer, which was the facts speak largely towards a navy that is too small and that size has caused us to be less ready because were driving the small force harder than we ever have and if that continues, were eventually going to spiral dont where we dont have enough ships to operate in the parts of the world where the nation expects us to be. We are on a clear path to not having enough capacity to answer the call anywhere in the world. Chairman, id say the same thing for the air force. Were too small for what the nation requires of our air force. Were fully ready and have shown repeatedly we can fight todays fight against a violent extremist organization, against a highend aenemy we lack the numbers to perform without significant risk. I would disagree with general petraeus and say were ready to do. And congresswoman, general petraeus is one of our best military minds. What i dont know is in the edit edit editorial, you threw two numbers out. I dont know what year the cold war was, but theres a few things that happened during the cold war. We went to an all volunteer force. Its true that we spend more money on our enlisted and officers now than we did in the cold war. I would have to dig through that. I cant make a comparison. If thats a gross level comparison, 100 billion in modernization, we used to modernize at 4 billion a year ago. We just crested the 1. 5 billion this year. I dont know any Large Organization that does not recapitalize its Capital Infrastructure at less than a 15 rate. Theres an apples and apples here somewhere, but i think the discussion is apples and oranges right now, maam. We dont know the context, but i thought everybody ought to have a chance to answer the general question. I appreciate the patience. Thank you. General wilson, your testimony in the discussion today about Pilot Shortage and readiness has been very important. I remember as a young officer making fun of our soviet counterparts who debate haidnte money to get the training hours so they were practicing on sticks. Now it seems like were in a situation where were not flying what we need to stay ready. Can you compare with what we know about how that compares to russia and china and what their pilots are getting . I cant specifically speak on what russia and china are doing. I would say that today in our combat air forces were flying less hours than we were at the bottom of the late 70s. Is it possible to hear back for the record what we know on the comparison . Thats obviously of deep concern to us. We will do that. Additionally, the fighter Pilot Shortage im very aware of. Theres push pull factors as you know, moramorale and mission fo. Are there Creative Solutions being discussed where its not a win lose, but a win win to include leaves of absence. I know many who left for the airlines and they would love to come back for two or three years and be part of the mission and be able to go back. What sort of Creative Solutions are you discussing so this isnt one small pie . Thats what were looking at. Were looking at any and all those options to make this a win win. As we mentioned earlier, the airlines are hiring 4,000 a year. Were producing about 2,000 a year. We have to find creative ways to do it differently whether people can take leave of absences or transition between active guard reserve, Civil Airlines and be able to do that. Were looking at all options. On the maintenance front we have 3500 short maintenance, but while you were downsizing you pushed maintenance guys out. Are we reaching back to them instead of having to train new people, bring back those who left at six years, ten years, 12 years, give them the option to come back in . Thats being looked at. The fort is in my district. A lot of discussion about the readiness of the force, but we have Electronic Warfare, intel and others. Can you talk about some of these areas that dont get the same amount of attention . Thank you, maam. They are getting a significant amount of attention from us. We recognize the capability gap that we have, particularly in Electronic Warfare and cyber and across the spectrum. We have a number of projects under way both to address the High Technology gaps that exist for the long term and fielding capabilities that enable us to operate more effectively both offensively and defensively, as well as operations at the brigade level and below, which is the most pressing current gap we have tactically. As you know, the russians employ this capability in an integrated manner inside very tactical sized units. We have historically kept that above division and so we are looking at how to better integrate this capability to enable us to dominate, if necessary, against competitors, where we know that we will face a very congested cyber space environment. Thanks. General wilson, back to you. Some other discussions ive had with those that are still active duty, the squadron i commanded had 24 assigned. Most are down to 18, but were deploying 12. Those that stay behind are getting a two turn too. Sorry to get so specific here. Looking at it from my experience, it seems like that be exacerbating some of the Readiness Challenges for some of the small packages left behind. Are you looking at upper to have a better balance . We are looking at how we get the right force presentation construct to go forward. The chief of staff has three big efforts under way. One is reinvigorating the squadron. Thats where the war fighting happens and the culture happens. Across the air force thats one of the main efforts. We have three efforts that are important. There will be a construct of should a squadron look like in the future . Great. If you need any hog drivers to come back and fly on the weekends, id be happy to volunteer. Thank you. I yield back. I want to thank our witnesses for your testimony today, most especially for your service to our nation and of course the men and women under your command for their service as well. So to all of our witnesses over the past year or so a persistent them within the Armed Services committee has been that of military readiness. Certainly weve discussed ways by which to increase support and resources for the department of defense, yet congress has not taken any lasting steps to reverse sequestration to meet these goals. It was stated to this Committee Last march, in fact, that the ability to do maintenance on our ships was severally effected. It occurred a readiness debt. I know this topic has been covered this morning so im going to move on to another question, but id like to echo my colleagues comments and note that sequestration must be repeal repealed. Im certainly looking for ways that we can do that. So let me move on to another topic, though, important to National Security. This is for all of our witnesses. Ensuring that the u. S. Military can operate effectively across all domains, including cyber space, this means training our men and women inside cyber space which can be costly and time consuming. But once weve trained these operators in cyber space, how do you ensure they continue on this career path within the military and how is each of your services recruiting and retaining the superior Cyber Warriors . Ill start and well roll down the table here as quickly as we can. Thanks for that question. Its been a focus for all ourselves is how do you ensure you have the flexible retention policies in place to sustain these great professionals once we have them trained up. I think you know it takes 18 to 24 months to train a fully trained multi domain Cyber Warrior and once we get them trained we have to be able to sustain their presence in our force to be effective in the future battlefield. One insight ill offer to you from a visit i had with some Cyber Warriors this past year, i asked exactly that question. What are we going to need to do to keep you in the force. The response of one of our Staff Sergeants was, sir, if i tried to do this on the outside, i would get arrested. The mission that we provide them, the opportunity they have to contribute in this domain to National Security is actually very very attractive for them, but we must continue to watch to ensure that we both continue to assess and retain them as we move forward. Thank you, general. I would say that the beauty of ourselves is that young men and women join because they want to serve. As long as we provide them that opportunity, whether its at the high end of things they wouldnt be allowed to do outside the service and continue to provide them with the right compensation, were going to be able to keep those that we need to keep. But were also looking at other ways to keep them interested by ensuring theyre having the most modern training and education they can get. Some of that involves allowing them to take time to go work in industries where these new technologies are being advanced and bring them back into the navy and other services and other ways are to be able to laterally bring people from the industry and the commercial sector who want to serve, an opportunity to move into the services and be able to go in and out. Some of the authorities weve asked for in legislation have been towards this end. The ability to move people freely between what the civilian market does and what we do for service. And on that point, ill mention that i authored the provision, along with the support of the chairman, that broke down those barriers that allowed us to bring up private sector talent for a period of time and allow the men and women of the uniform for a period of time to be in the private sector. So i agree with you on that. Thank you for that, sir. Were blessed that we get the best and brightest young people america has to offer to join ourselves. We start with the good people and get them the right education and training and experience and get them the training they need. We have those boxes to make sure were doing that smartly and rightly and how do we partner with our civilian partners to make sure that personally and professionally fulfilled to retain over time is important. Im with them, sir. Thank you, general. I just hope in closing that were also maintaining the career path for them to be able to advance in their careers to the next ranks and keeping them in this highly in demand field. Cyber is not going away any time soon. Thank you all and i yield back. Just piggy backing on that point about bringing in maintainers laterally or something, i trust you are all looking at these authorities for bringing in folks and also for their promotion, their career track, what happens then. Certainly its something that we are interested in assisting you with if some change in statute or some sort of authority and im going to trust you all as you look at it to let us know what you find, whether its cyber or these other areas. I just want to touch on a couple of things right quick. The admiral already answered the question what happens without a supplemental this year. He said they have to decommission air wings, et cetera. Have you looked at what you would have to do if there is no supplemental and funding is flat for the remaining of the fiscal year . Ill start. As weve looked at this, this puts us into sequestration type actions to make up a 1. 5 billion short fall right now. The only place we can go is our readiness accounts. We would have to go after flying hours and it would have a dramatic impact on us. Thats why its important that we get an appropriations bill. Sir, for us the the shining example is we would stop flying in about july. Completely . Yes, sir. The caveat by the guys forward will still fly. All the training would cease without the supplemental and that includes the parts money and the flying hour money. Thats what happened to us. Okay. And chairman, for the United States army, the increased authorization to an active force of 476,000, a total force of 1. 018 million, without the funding for that increase, we would set the conditions for a hollow force, which is absolutely unacceptable and it will be felt by those forces preparing to deploy because as with the marine corps, we will continue to train forces for the demands we have, but our bench will be repleadted and our equipment, training and personnel readiness will begin to suffer. Thank you. Admiral, we made brief reference, but we havent talked about carrier gap today. We talked about readiness, but theres the issue of whether we can be where we need to be when we need to be there. I dont know how much detail you can get into, but can you describe briefly the concern about not having a carrier in key theaters at some points . Sir, ill use one what i believe is a great example. A couple of years ago when you recall isis took a bunch of cities hostage on a hilltop in Northern Iraq and National Command authority wanted to be able to go push back that force. At the time, just based on agreements with partners in the region, the Aircraft Carrier and its Component Air wing and support ships was the only force that was able to provide that cover for about 64 consecutive days. The fact that we were there as part of a normal rotation allowed for that contingency. Every time you take a gap in areas where weve got troops on the ground. Weve got combat ongoing and you dont have that capability at sea, in the gulf, eastern med, South China Sea and something erupts, were not going to get there in time. The idea of our Global Presence is to be there when things do erupt and try to prevent things from happening in the first place. But it is true, is it not, that in recent years we have had what we call a carrier gap where we have not had a carrier, for example in the persian gulf or other key places around the world . That is true. In the last few months when bush was late getting out of the yards, we chose to bring ike back to we could get her back in the maintenance lineup. That was done with the joint staff, but clearly for that period of time there was no carrier in the gulf. Well, i want to thank you all. I am struck and i dont remember which one of you made this comment, but one of the Service Chiefs in a meeting with the Committee Last year said the price for a lack of readiness is higher casualties. One of you mentioned that earlier today. I made a reference to the super bowl about if you dont get to practice and you play the super bowl, the difference in this super bowl is there are lives at stake. I know you all are acutely aware of that. I think members of the committee are, but it just adds a sense of importance and urgency to our joint work to get these problems fixed that we have identified today. You all have been helpful. Thank you for being here. The hearing stands adjourned. Acknowledging the underlying myth of the black lives Matter Movement and the false