That youre in. I guess the only other comment i. Would like for you to answer, because id like all my y colleagues to be able to have time to answer questions is the old line about those of us that ignore the lessons of history. General odierno, you made reference to it. When general shymire came beforell this community and said we had amembe hollow army, i know my friend ere senator reed remembers that also and we were able to recover hardwarewise and ships and airplanes and guns and but it took a lot longer than that to restore the readiness and the morale of members of our military and all four of you made reference to it. I would like you to elaborate a little bit on the personnel side br of this because it seems there is always the best and the. Brightest that leave first when ot youre a pilot that cant fly m and on a ship that doesnt leave br port and on so maybe each of you can give a brief comment about great the intangible that makes us the greatest military on earth. Ill begin with you, general odierno. Thank you, senator. The center of everything we do em is our soldiers. The army is our soldiers. And without them and their lt capabilities, our ability to do our job becomes very, very difficult and it is something n y that happens over time. Readines my concern is when youre ment o fundingf readiness, youre funding the development of our jung sole young soldiers and you cant do thatha episodically. You have to do in a sustained execute manner. It allows them to execute the oming most difficult and complex missions we face. In todays world, those missions icul are becoming more complex and. More difficult. That my concern is is as they see maybe were not going to invest in that, they start to lose ust faith and trust that we will give them the resources necessary for them to be successful in this incredibly complex world that we face. I think sometimes we take for granted the level of capability thei our soldiers bringr and the investment we have made into theis education and training which iscannot central to everything that we seques do. And we cant lose sight of that. And unfortunately with duce sequestration, we are going to four have to reduce that over the take next four to five years for sure because we cannot take in and strength out fast enough to get the right balance because of ourhave commitments we have. Therefore you have to look at readiness, training and modernization. Were losing cycles of this training that develops these young men and women to be the best at what they are the best ar of what they do. So for us we cant forget that. As chairman, i bring something to everybodys r attention. Iing when we hadto sequestration, we w say, we exempted personnel as if, hey, thats good. That means they got paid. But that doesnt mean that they l got thats their quality of th life and we gave them their housing allotment, thats good. Qua but the quality of their work, are which is what youre alluding to, when they go to work and what general was the general was alluding to theyre not proficient at what they do. And theyre not therefore ey theyre not confident. As a sailor youre out to sea, ot youre on your own, you need to be confident and know you can beyou proficient. You alluded to pilots. On you have a have and have not. If youre deployed youre if flying 60 hours a week sometimes. If youre not deployed, you may be flying ten hours a week and some may be in a simulator. Youre sitting around the classroom looking out the windowclas at your strike fire hornet it looks great but it is on the he tarmac. Thats not why youmac. Joined. Ou the same at sea. If youre a destroyman and in a u submarine, youre not operating. Havior that becomes behavioral problems eventually because the idle mindt. Is the devils workshop. Were out and about, our alcohol problems go up. I alluded to it i saw it in command, saw it as a jo. I this is what happens. Is then this gets to family o problems, it starts cascading. B you bring all that together. We t we have an all volunteer force lunt thatee wants to contribute and and they want to do things, they want to be professionally supported in that regard. Thank you. General welsh . Like chairman our civilian airmen felt we committed a breach of mplete faith with them. H they still have not recovered horrib completely from that. If it happened again it would be absolutely horrible. And i believe we would see the effect immediately in retention. I cant emphasize enough my agreement with what john just peo said about people not joining this business to sit around. Squadr pilots looking out at their hollow airplanes parked on the ramp it feel like a hollow force whethering t we define it that way or no same thing with the people who want to fix the airplanes load weapons on them, support them joined from the storage area all they they d want is to be the best in the is t world at whatever it is they do. All of our people are that way. T the if they dont think we will educate them and train them and equip them to do that, and to em fill that role, then they will are, p walk. Ey st theyre proud of who they are y repr proud ofes who they stand beside and proud of what they represent. And when they lose that pride, f t we lose them. W when we lose them, we lose everythings. A also, were going to have, asgnifi you made reference to, a significant draw from the airlines as the vietnam era pilots retire from the airlines. I think thats an additional issue that we are going to have g to face up to anyway without sequestration sequestration. We see it today, sir. Chairman, thank you. You alluded to the hollow force of the 1970s. I was on active duty during that time. I was a Lieutenant Commander where we had an organization of to the about 190,000 marines, we didnte have proper landing, didnt have proper training didnt have nizati proper equipment. Out where we saw the impact was in poor enlistments discipline rates. We were unable to maintain the quality people that we wanted to have and quite frankly i know to ma myself and manyin of my at counterparts at the time had a difficult decision to stay in the marine corps. My c and many of us only made the dec decision to stay once the marineand corps started to turn around in made the 1980s. Ay as you alluded to, it took five the 8 to seven years after we0s started it to make an investment for the morale to catch up. The thing i would add to what wo the other chiefs said is that i think most of us would be would not have been able to predict the quality of the all volu volunteer force and its ability to sustain now over 13 years at war. There is nothing that has allowed that force to sustain except for intangible factors. Is no it has not been how much we paid them. It is the sense of job satisfaction, sense of purpose, been sense of mission. As a lewdi alluded to, their sense of trust. None of us wantea to be a part of our last tour and active duty want to be part of returning llow back when we had a hollow force. I think were phoridfortunate were not tested at that time. Thank you very much, mr. Hank chairman. Thank you, generaler again for y and your testimony for your great nati service to the nation. Nce you have already reduced training. You already reduced maintenance. You already stretched out acquisition programs, et cetera. Whatever we do i think you willdo, manage and which presents the interesting problem is that we could be in a period of a steadye c accelerating, but invisible decline until a crisis. And then the reckoning will be near. I thinks l we have to take appropriate action now and the jus chairmans leadership is dividu critical in althat. Let me just go and ask you individually individually, with all the cuts you already made, with all the losses looking forward what are w the one or two capabilities thattw you will see leaving or lost if sequestration goes into effect. Ill ask each of you. General odierno . Night i often get asked the question what keep me up at night. And the number one thing that keeps me up at night is that if were asked to respond to an unknown contingency, ill send soldiers there not properly if trained and ready. As we simply are not used to do pr that. Eady. The American People and we doing expect our soldiers to be prepared. And that they had the ability to train, they understand their eo equipment, they have been able to integrateur and synchronize p their activities so theyre very th successful on the ground. Integr thats the one thing that i ccessf really worry about as we move tothe futu the future. The second thing is our ability to do simultaneous things. E what were coming to the point ngs now, well be able to do one thing. Well be able to do it pretty t t well. But thats it. Wre this world we have today is requiring us to do many, many things, maybe smaller, but many many things simultaneous. I worry about our ability to do nizati that. Admiral greenert, please. Were at a time of modernization. Our benchmark is the year 2020 and our ability to do the missions i refer to. And for the navy, a lot of those missions require joint access to areas around the world and, against an advanced adversary. I look at the futures, perhaps versar the y. Inability, well fall further behind in what i call maneuv electromagnetic maneuver er em warfare. It is an emerging issue. Electronic attack. The ability to jam, the ability ess to detect seekers radars of satellites and that business. And were slipping behind. Our advantage is shrinking very fast, senator. Ou also, antiair warfare. Our potential adversaries are advancing. Were losing that. And if we dont have that advantage, we dont get the job done in the 2020 time frame. The undersea domain we dominate in it today but we have to hold that advantage and that includesbu the ohio replacement, the sea based strategic return in on addition to toantisubmarine it warfare. It is aboucet access and the ability to get that access where we need. Cyber is also another one. One we talk about a lot. An lastly, i cant underestimate we the fact that were good and we will continue as joe dunford said, our forces we put forward,eady well put forward and theyll be the most ready. Were required to have a response force, a contingency force. We owe that to the combatant commanders. If were not therew todaye and well just never get there, if it we go to sequestration. N ti well remain at about one third neve of what we need to be. Thank thank you. Thank you, general. If you could be succinct. Infrastructure that gives youtraini longterm ngcapability, training ranges, Test Facilities we havent been investing, it will cost us the ability to operate in the future. Multiple simultaneous aneous o operations. Wewe s simply dont have the capacity anymore to conduct bilit that, particularly in areas like isr, refueling, et cetera. The capability gap is closing ash john mentioned between the c people trying to catch up with y the technologically and they have momentum. If we let the gap get too close, we wont be able to recover before they pass us. Space and Nuclear Business and in b space business, we cannot forgetat that that is one of the Fastest Growing and closing ahea technological gaps in the cyberarena if we dont try to get ahead in that particular as race, well be behind for the next 50 years as everybody else has been behind us in other areas. Those are my r biggest concerns. Thank you. Commandant. The two capability areas first would be our ability to come from ship to shore were in a vehicle now that is over 40 years old and replacing that is bility both a an issue of Operational Capability and safety. Also our air frames f18 are tiona both over 20 yearsl old, an issue of Operational Capability and safety. But i would say, senator, you alluded to it, my greatest m concern in addition to those twoumulati capability areas is the cumulative effect of the cuts we made to date and the cuts we make in the future. Every day im still finding out t second and third effects of the e to cuts made to dateda in the will sequestration that was put in effect in 2013. Thank you very much. Her further complicating your lives li and our livesve is that this is a focus today on the problem of defense, but the ramifications goon to government. Ple and the impacts will roll back on you. S one more obvious example is if n. The state department is subject to sequestration, they wont be able to assist you in the field and general mattis brilliant in his testimony said last march his t if you dont fund the full statethe department, i need to buy more ammunition. Thats one effect. There are even more subtle effects. We provide impact aids to the department of education. The department of education is t subject to sequestration. Of there will be an impact. Secretary of education duncan before the Appropriations Committee last year said the Independence School district in texas, 22,000 connected children to would lose an estimated 2. 6 million. So we have to take not only a view towards the department of defe defense, but across the whole al government. You all talked about retaining those troops. Rs when those young stole jers inoldiers in fort hood dont thinhek the not Education Opportunities are good as they should be, theyll vote with their feet. It will affect you in so many. Different ways, you will, as general dunford, will be waking hat i up, gettinsg complaints about how the schools are bad and im leaving and thats not title ten. So, general, thank you for the service and the testimony. Senator to wicker. There are Committee Members going back and forth today to the Budget Committee hearing. We have a debt problem in this country. General mattis spoke about it yesterday with another distinguished panel. No nation in history is maintained its military power, failed to keep its fiscal house e in in order. Were balancing the spending i problem we have in the government overall with really a frankly a lack of funds in the Defense Department that you talked about today. Or s general odierno you said in your 40 years or so of service this is the most uncertain time youve seen as a professional military person. And admiral greenert this is the fewest number of ships we had since world war i. Is that correct . Thats correct sir. General welsh, as an air hear force veteran myself, astonishing to hear this is the Smallest Air Force ever in the history of the United States. You did say that. Since we were informed in 1947, yes, sir. Right. And, general dunford, in talkingtalki about sequestration, you say it is the funding levels and also it is the rules of sequestration. So i thought i would start with you and theni go back up the panel there. If we were able a little more g easily or quickly to give you flexibility within the funding levels, and some relief from the rules to what extent would that help you in the short run . Or in the long run . On. Thanks senator for that question. Just the funding capsule on would reduce the overall budget by 4 billion to 5 billion a year from where we were in s present budget 12. Ercent. So thats for us about 18 to 20 . It would certainly be better if we didnt have the rules associated with sequestration and what i can guarantee you are senator is whatever amount of money the congress provides, the United States marine corps would build the best marine corps it can. But even at the budget control act levels, without sequestration, we will reduce the capacity to the point where well be challenged to meet the current strategy. Joe welsh, to what extent would flexibility within these very low levels be somewhat of a help . Senator, i think all of us understand that our services the department has to be part of the debt solution for the nation. We dont live in a mushroom farm and not believe that that has to be true. The things that we would need though, with any kind of levels of funding is we have been looking at is stability and predictability and funding over time. And then the ability to make the decisions that will let us shape r our services to operate at those funding levels are less than lity t predicted. For the air force, if you look what at the 12 budget where we came out of and said, okay, we can vels l execute this strategic news guidance, the 12 budget was 21 billion more per year than we strat will have at bca levels. 21 billion a year requires some very tough decisions to be made, bill some very hard and unpopular bca decisions to be made, but without the ability to make 21 those decisions, we will continue to be stuck not sure where were going in the future. The clock is tickingt away on ake that predictability, isnt it . Yes sir, it is. Wher e admiral . Tu myre colleagues have spoken to s tick the value the number that is the dollar value, but i would say if the verb sequestered as th you know thats an algorithm, sa we have been through this we know spend months reprogramming with your help up here on the hill e and we lose months, we lose th four, five, six months on a program like for us the ohio t Replacement Program where we dont have time. Ship building gets held up. Projects get held up. People arent hired. To h and that loses that trust with industry. So precludingts g getting sequestered is helpful. D and continuing resolution stop have a similar effect in that were not doing any new sequ projects and some of these are d in pretty critical as we go into the years and need to modernize. Senator the first comment i are make is over the last two years we have been giving money above the levelm of sequestration and it was still only 33 ready. Evel of and so, yes, flexibility will give us the ability to manage insufficient funds in our department. But thats all it does. It allows us to better manage. Ab today, we had to extend our ment b all ourut aviation programs so the cost for every apache has gone up. The cost for every ch 47 has gone up because we had to extend t the programs longer and longer and longer. Were paying more money per system. Were inefficient, even with the less dollars we have. Even exacerbates the readiness are problems even more. So flexibility would help, but it is not going to solve the problem we have, which is a s t problem of insufficient funds to sustain the right level of ibilit readiness. Thank you. Let me justolve t ask briefly there a was a decision we would pivot to asia pacific. To what extent do the joint chiefs of staff consulted on that. We have got we have got Eastern Europe russia still have the middle east and everything going on there. Doesnt seem to have calmed downnsult as some people thought. To what extent was this a pentagon decision that we could have even have a repivot to asia pacific . And afford it . That was part of our discussions. We had numerous discussions with the white house and within the pentagon when we did the defense strat