Ms. Lord so senator, this is a key area of focus for the department. Fact, every monday, senior leadership, military, and together for a National Defense strategy implementation meeting. Topics we are focusing on here in the near logistics forsted reason. Y employment. This becomes much more of a challenge. One would say the number issue is planning to understand do. Were going to and we need to look at our make sure we to are there in a time of need. We have warfare plans. Detailed logistical plans to go along with that. Just as were sending aircraft little notice th and perhaps surprising some. Places, ding aircraft surprising others. We have a lot of work going on n logistics that we dont talk about. But to be there for the very reason you state to support the war fighter wherever they might be. Senator duckworth are there any should ar procedures we be considering to address these challenges . You,tary lord i will tell very important question and offer. Id like to take that for the record and come back to in the next couple weeks because we are actually conving some very this topic,tings on literally, in the next week or two. Wonderful. Kworth id love to be read in on the followon to those meetings, please. Lord very good. L senator duckworth thank you. I know the department nderstands the risk of our supply chain posed by competitive nation and adversaries. Pleased the department has been able to shore up the supply chain. Key domestic products. Reducing International Working with o allies and friendly partners to supply the risk to the chain. These and other efforts will foresight. Od however, im concerned about delivering sustainment to our troops in a peer conflict. Indopacific region poses some particular challenges, i believe our enterprise needs to be on a contested environment on a global scale. Prepared to deliver necessary weapons of forward base troops around the world contested environment . And how does our supply chain eed to evolve to meet these challenges . Secretary lord we are developing those plans right now and perhaps in a different in a classified level, we can talk about that a little bit more. Senator duckworth thank you. Mr. Chairman, i would love to have that hearing if you would it. Ider senator sullivan i think thats growing consensus, senator duckworth, on this hearing that we will do that. So thanks for weighing in on that. To i have senator duckworth . Senator sullivan i have one more just quick set of questions. One more senators trying to jump in. If we get him on time well do that. And then otherwise well wrap up this hearing. Again, madam secretary, your hard work on a lot of these issues. Of theto talk about kind more directly related to the how were ovid and trying to get through this role ic and the important that b. L. A. And others are this regard. Let me ask two questions. Ne and i dont know if you thought about it. One of the things i heard back with regard to testing is these kind of continued reagent s with the supply. Any focus on you r others taking on more ggressive approach with regard to the Industrial Production of testing . Ical aspect of thats one question. The second, with regard to the possibility that hundreds of millions of vaccines will be eeded to be distributed to the u. S. Population in the coming next year, our government is going to need a massive coordinated distribution get vaccines from Assembly Lines to american citizens. Is d. O. D. Doing to ensure hey can help distribute vaccines and hopefully well see and soon that are safe ready that are likely to be logistically, we have a big country, what are you doing on that . Department of defense can play an Important Role in that regard. Reagent, vaccine work are my two questions. Secretary lord testing reagents that we are working industry, on expansion, and throughput. Act moneyesting cares the input from a team that we are sitting with at prioritize. Doctor with asper, the at h. H. S. , and we place those industry th for expansion as well as the assisted acquisition for the production of those. Take a question for the record and get back to you with some specifics around that. There is a lot of momentum area and quiteat a few awards being made. In terms ond question of distribution on vaccine, we working on operation warp speed thats looking at that distribution. We have many military ndividuals detailed to that effort. So operation warp speed is leveraging our military knowhow infrastructure. The white house right now is exactly how that Distribution Plan will work, but we stand ready to support that. Thank you. Livan i believe senator jones is on the line. Senator jones. Senator jones thank you, mr. Chairman. Appreciate the opportunity here. Thank you for being here. Secretary lord, the chinese strategy thats known as the military civil usion, harnesses output of chinas civilian economy for the benefit of defense. Concerns that he chinese are attempting to infiltrate u. S. Companies throughout the supply chain, both with employees and seen any and have we instances of that within our defenserelated companies . Lord i am absolutely concerned about chinese sector of n at every the u. S. Economy. Spend a lot of our time dealing with in large part due to china. Hats why we just rolled out our cmmc certification. Cyber why we look at hardening of our weapons all the time. We look very close at the to make ndustrial base sure they understand the threats. N. S. A. And ith cybercomm and with our to inform them of threats. Theres everyday partnership there. Will say theres extremely close collaboration, and were only playing defense as we used to here, were playing a bit of offense as well. This is only getting more aggressive. E work closely at d. O. D. With the inner agency, with authorities like iepa and others. Are making sure that we either have technology compromised nor we have humans thats exfiltrating Critical National security data. Senator jones thank you very much. Have any specific i really appreciate that answer, really ay, and i appreciate whats being done at your level and across the executive branch. Do you have specific recommendations where congress an assist in any of those efforts . Secretary lord let me get back to you with specifics. Believe there may well be. Frankly is not continuing to engage with these companies on sensitive in turn developing industrial bases here that makes reliant on that back and forth. Theres quite a bit of of ussion with the agency constrange chinese involvement from everything from investments commodities. I think one of the areas where we can have impact broadly is microelectronics. My team is working very closely d. O. D. As well as the inner agency to come up with a recommendation for partnershipsrivate in order to develop the domestically. E we at d. O. D. Is 1 of the market. Microelectronics however, we have some critical and we have the technical cumen, if you will, as well as perhaps the authorities in the ppropriations to overcome that Activation Energy to have some trusted boundaries here and then work with other astical Market Segments such industrial controls, automotive, just industry sustain those facilities. I think, you know, playing versus playing defense is the way we need to proceed here. Senator jones great. That. Eciate i agree. We stand ready to help you in that regard. Question. You another you said in a press conference on september 9 that it might long as six months for he Defense Industrial base companies to receive aid that was authorized in the cares act. Itsou kind of explain why taking so long to receive these and what d. O. D. Is doing to expedite that process . Secretary lord we have a out withhere we can go requests for proposals, get all costs in and e then adjudicate what we can reimburse. Is right now, although we have all the authorities, we do no appropriations to that. So if we move forward right now, taking dollars irectly out of programs which would instantaneously affect readiness and then shortly modernization. So what we are very much hoping for and what weve submitted for is an on appropriation to take care of issues between march 15 and september, the end of eptember, whatever the Accounting Period would be for different companies, but right break are going to programs and affect national we do those reimbursements out of programs. Senator jones well, thank you, lord. Ary id note for the record that we just passed a continuing knowution yesterday, and i that has a negative impact on the department of defense and our military. Take that as o part of that answer as well, that we should not be kicking the road. Wn mr. Chairman, thank you. Id like to associate myself of senator shaheens comments about the concern about and will be submitting the c. F. R. On that point. Thank you, mr. Chairman, for in. Wing me to come senator sullivan thank you, senator jones. I think were going to wrap up here. Few comments. Senator kaine, would you like to take a few . These kaine and comments are really more for the committee. Mademony of secretary lord me think of that. Trifold you gave about ak which significance process. Acquisition process. Ne is empowering program managers. As you talk about university raining of program managers, acquisition professionals, you said rather than lecture them or two weeks about policy, we try to be problem solvers. You know, one of the things, mr. Chair, i guess having been on a while, that or i dont yet feel like i have confidence in my being up to this is, you know, what lessons are we learning from failures or successes . Very beginninghe in the competition there were all kinds of challenges. To jail for one of the bidders way back when. It got canceled. Got rebid. Was big fighting about it. What lessons have been learned from that . Been lessons sons the air force learned . The he share it across d. O. D. Did they share it family . He d. O. D. F35, very good idea. Lets have a platform that can be used by multiple services. Allies too . Because interoperability is a good thing and cost sharing is a good thing. Yet, making that platform available and seeking investment allies led to security vulnerabilities and situation. So its upsetting with turkey right now, is going to cost a and impose security risk. The ford class carrier. If youre going to do a new carrier, do you make everything at once . And the the haul elevator and the arresting gear and catapults, do you do it all new . You do some of it new . Wince you got once you got down you add in subsequent ships in class some of the other innovations . Theres positives. Subs. Ia class he coop kind of leads to a spirit of competition between these two Companies Even though participatingtely in the same program. But that has driven some efficiencies. But i dont know, you know, have about the value of that just within the navy . Is or is that lesson the army to t understand too . Its something to have the greatest hits and greatest recent acquisition rograms and try the d. O. D. To say what lessons have been learned and, b, are the lessons the Service Across branches and if so, show us examples how weve achieved some motion because of the lessons that have been learned. I dont really have confidence that were necessarily learning applying them. We may be and im just not aware of it. That may be something for the committee at some point. Well, i reallyn appreciate that comment. Agree fully with senator kaine. Madam secretary, i think youre in a really good position to work. S do that given your background. Both in the private sector and important position. So i think thats something we should be taking on because, our acquisition system is i of the one of the think biggest vulnerabilities we have, you know. There is a bit of a joke that committee. H this somebody once mentioned to me, acquisition e our regulations, stamp them top secret even though theyre not, them in front of the Chinese Embassy and hope that the hinese take on our Acquisition Program because and let them bad the bad way the things we do here. Its not helping us. Its hurting us. A lot of at theres Lessons Learned that we can do, for hen you look at r. F. P. Next generation handgun, pistol, 450 pages, yous know, something is wrong with acquisition system. So i think it would be great to be able to do that. Would be an outstanding point person with to do it, Lessons Learned, good and bad. And then how do we implement them . Would require changes to the law. In my view, getting rid of entire levels of bureaucracy at pentagon, which, you know, causes a lot of these problems. Wellintentioned people, though, who are in a system thats not our nation act nimbly and quickly. As we have to address the great power competition. So i do want to just thank you, again. Think with the issues youre seeing here, this is very bipartisan. Supply e issue of chains, the rise of china, weid, it is our rageous that are out rarageous we are so eliant on the chinese right now. Th to r calculated attempts keep supply chains dependent on them has to stop. Think you are in a perfect that. On to do i think theres strong bipartisan support and resolve help the department of defense do that. Chains thate supply not just secure our National Security but help american workers. These are all great jobs. Mining the Mining Sector in state has an average wage of 100,000 per worker. Are great jobs. We do it better than anybody else. Ith high environmental standards. Clearly than the chinese who when their environment they mine. We dont. So we should bring that home. I think we have a great here. Unity so, again, i want to thank you colleagues e my interest in this hearing. I do think in short order we probably be redoing this at a classified setting. To mention anynt questions for the record that will be coming your way, we that you ly request try to get back to the committee with answers within two weeks. Open for thatl be amount of time for additional questions. I want to thank the secretary, again, for her testimony and her service to our nation. This hearing is adjourned. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] youre watching cspan, your government. Iew of created by americas Cable Television company as a public and brought to you today by your television provider. House is coming back in shortly. We do expect to see debate on a coronavirus economic aid package later today. The house will also work on a easure to protect amateur athletes from abuse. Watch live house coverage here on cspan. Twitter, you can also find us n cspanwj. You can start calling and now as we take you through a few of the headlines about tuesdays debate. From this mornings Major National papers, here is usa today. There lead editorial, debate divines democracy downward. Also from u. S. A. Today, once was enough, make it stop. This from the washington post, the spectacle that nears ealed the Nations Commission on president ial debates, a president ial debate with a straight up mma cage matches what they write