Transcripts For CSPAN3 Military Officials Testify On The State Of The Armed Forces 20170210

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 both the executive and legislative branches for this state of affairs but now with a new administration and a new congress, we ves 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 advice 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 jat from tennessee for any comments he would like to make. Thank you, mr. Chairman. 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. I think we all realize that 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 its 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 in ending it sequestration. Thank you will, 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 flous sbous general daniel al then advice chief of staff of the arm, william moran, advice chief of operations. And general glen walters assist isnt command dant of the marine corps. Thank you all for being here. We would be interested in any opening comments each of you would like to make. Well start with you, general allyn. 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 demonstrated 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 union i polar moment is over and replacing it is a multipolar world characterized by competition and uncertainty. Today, the army is globally engaged with more than 18 thousand 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. Its 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 already return in fy18. Forcing the army tore once again draw down our end strength, reduce funding for redsiness and increase the risk of sending kund trained 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 s. T. E. M. 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 fy17ndaa authorized force. Unless this is done, additional top line and oko funding though nice in the short term will prove unsustainable rendering all your hard work for naught. And this uncertain environment, 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. Admiral. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Good morning and good morning to the members of the committee. As the a privilege to be here with my fellow advice chiefs to talk about the readiness of our military. Its easier 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. Of supply is best summed up in one fact. Your navy today is the smallest its been in 99 years. That have said, we are where we are. Which makes it urgent to adequately fund, fix and maintain the fleet that we do have. And by the way, we have never been busier. A quick snapshot around the globe and youll see the navy is the nations primary deterrence policy in places like the mediterranean and South China Seas. This call for deterrence and to be ready to take action has grown. Of 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, its 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. Haiti to striking hostile sites in yemening to navy seals 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. And every year, weve 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 weve all learned to live with less and less. We have certainly learned to execute our budget inefficiently with nine consecutive continuing resolutions. But has forced us to repeatedly take money from cash accounts that are the life blood of building longterm readiness in our navy. Its money for young lieutenants to fly high and fast. And who need air under their seats to perfect their skills in the future. Its money for spare parts so sailors can fix the gear that they have, and its money for salers 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 there. It starts by strengthening our foundation. Lets insure 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 shortfalls in 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 this dynamic and changing world. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to be here and i look forward to your questions. General wilson . Thank you, chairman 0 thornberry, congressman cooper and distinguished members of the committee, on behalf of the secretary of the air force and chief of staff its an honor to be with you today to talk to you about the state of our air force and readiness. You american airmen are proud to be part of the most powerful war fighting team in our history. We 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 of us attainable solution in both crisis and conflict underwriting every other struxt power. We provide the nation with unrelenienting global vigilance, reach and 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 striking in sirte libya, killing over 100 violent extremists. This was a textbook multidomain multifunction mission. Air force space, cyber and isr warriors provided precision navigation and timing while monitoring enemy communication and movement. Simultaneously, two b2 bombers took off from missouri, flew 17 hours one way, refuelled with numerous tank hes and teamed with two mg9s to deploy precision munitions. They then flew another 17 hours home and landed safely back in the United States. Meanwhile, airmen operate 60 persistent remote lit piloted aircraft controls 24 7, 365. The unblinking eye for combatant command dperpz they remotely fly missions from the continent will United States teeming with nearly 20,000 Forward Deployed airmen to be support operations like the recent events in raqqa and mosul where our rpa fighters and bombers have conducted 92 of the strikes against isis. We did this all while simultaneously ensuring twothirds of our Nuclear Triad and 75 of our Nuclear Command and control remain robust, reliable, flexible and survivable options for the nations. During the allotted time of this hearing an average of 65 moebltd aircraft will take off, 4g 30,000 cyber connections will be blocked, 5 Homeland Defense missions will fly and three strikes against isis will occur. Each of these actions are enableal by airmen providing are timing while also providing gps capability to the worlds 3 billion users. The capabilities of our airmen provide to our nation or allies have never been more 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 vorld. Offer, we are out of balance. The demand for our mission and our people exceed the 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 the highest risk to National Security. This were nonstop combat paired with the budget instability and lower than plan to lines has made the United States air force the smallest, oldest equipped and least ready in our history. Weve attempted to balance risk across the force to maintain readiness but forced to make unacceptable trades between readiness, forestructure and modernization. Todays global challenges require an air force ready not only to defeat violent extremism but prepared to of mobilize for any threat the nation may face. Ill quote general Douglas Macarthur as he escaped the philippines in 19427 he said the history of failure in war can be summed up in two words. Too late. Too late in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy, too late in realizing the mortal 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 and provide stable, predictable funding. Its critical to rebuilding our militarys 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 the air force, and the 660,000 active guard reserve and civilian airmen who serve our nation, thank you for your tireless support for us. I look forward to your questions. General walters. Ing. And 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 makes dedicated to our essential role as our nations Expeditionary Force and readiness. We focused investment on ensuring 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 iraq and afghanistan. Our continued focus on deployed combined with the fiscal uncertainty and funding reductions leave your corps facing substantial challenges. Your marine corps is insufficiently manned trained and equip the across the depth of the force to operate in an operational environment. Due to years of fiscal constraints, the corpss fundamentally optimized for the past and sacrificed modernization and infrastructure to sustain our current readiness posture. In addition to increased resources, we require your support in three key areas to regain the levels our nation requires of us. Over the past 18 months, we have identified various end strengths and associated capabilities and modernization required to operate in the threat environment characterized by complex terrain, information warfare, electromagnetic signatures and a could be tested maritime domain. We need to etch increase our end strength. We are confident an increase of 3,000 marines pore year maintains a rate of growth consistent while maintaining our high standards. Our bases, stations and installations the platforms where we train and generate our readiness. The continued underfunding of facilities sustainment, restoration and modernization in 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 our infrastructure. We require up to date Training Systems ranges and Facilities Support the fueling of new yimt and Simulation Systems that facilitate improved training in standards 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 reduced defense spending for significant delays in our modernization efforts. There is significant cost associated with maintaining and sustaining any legacy system without a proportional capability increase associated with that investment. Of as we continue to spend limited fiscal resources to sustain the legacy you systems developed for threats of 20 years ago, we risk steadily losing our competitive advantage against potential adversearss. We need to modernize our aircraft and vehicle fleets soonest, installing amphibious ships. If forced to continue to pursue the path of investing in legacy systems in lieu of modernizing our force, we will find our marine corps optimized for the past and increasingly at risk to deter and defeat potential adversaries. On behalf of all of your marines, sayers and civilians that support their service, we thank the congress and committee for the opportunity to discuss the challenges your corps faces. While much work needs to be done, the authorizations within coupled with the sufficient funding and repeal of the budget control act will but put us on a path to build and sustain our 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 in yalls written testimony but also some press report and ill just go down the line. General al lin, in if your written testimony, it says only about onethird of the brigade combat teams 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 upon 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 called upon to fight tonight. Is that right . Thats accurate, chairman. And it reflects the realities of bowing the tempo and the rec recurring demand that our forces face. When we say fight tonight, that means that unit needs no additional people no, additional training, and nonadditional equipment. And three is where were at today. And those that we say are ready, the onethird actually just higher than that, of our forces that are ready require somewhere in the range of 30 days to insure that they have everything they need to meet the demands of immediate combat. You kind of hope 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 talking about equipment. And say, today, we are outraged, outgunned and outdated. And then and your testimony, you also say so if you put all this together, the army can only accomplish defense Planning Guidance requirements at high military risk. Now, general mille has kind cuff talked about this. But explain what that means to us. My lehmans ears seem to hear that we can only do what the country asks us to do with a pretty darn good chance that we wont be successful. Am i right . Chairman, basically, what it comes down to is a term that you heard general wilson use from general macarthur. We will be too late to need. Our soldiers will arrive too late, our units will require too much time to close the equipping and manning and training gaps, and as you highlighted hope is not a method and we cannot count on the enemy providing us that woichb opportunity to close those gaps. The end result is excessive casualties both to innocent civilians and to our forces that are already forward stationed to have close the rest of the force required tore 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 99 years. But i want to ask you about a story that came out yesterday that you dont mention in your testimony that says according to the navy, 53 of all Navy Aircraft cannot fly. And that is about twice the historic norm. If you go to f a18s, 62 are out of service. 27 in major depot work and 35 simply awaiting maintenance or parts. This is a press story from yesterday and defense news. Are those sticks accurate. Yes, sir, they are. Im its a little hard for me to know what question to ask next. 53 of all Navy Aircraft cant fly and 62 of our strike f a18s cant fly today . Thats our status. Yes, sir. When it comes to the Strike Fighter community, thats our legacy hornets, a through ds and our Super Hornets e and f versions, our legacy hornets which we in the marine corps operate today are well beyond design life let alone their service life. They were designed for 6,000 hours. Were extending the life on the hornets into the ,000 to 9,000 hour range. Theyve been around as long as general walters and i have been serving for the most part. Theyre pretty old. It takes about twice the amount of manhours to fix one of those jets as it was designed to take. Which gives a pretty good indication how old they are and the capacity in our depots has been diminished since sequestration and furloughs back in 13. Were trying to rebuild that capacity today to try to get those jets turned around. So on a typical day in the navy, 23w5r7 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 twice that amount or twothirds today is a reflection of how hard weve thrown these zwrets over the last 15 years and the fact that we have not recapped those jets, in other words we have not bought enough new ones to replace them and weve been waiting for quite some time for the f35 to deliver which we were counting on seven, eight years ago to start filling in those holes all of that adds up to the numbers you reflected. Well, it is true, is it not, that a fair number of the strikes against al qaeda and isis over the years have been carried out by these navy jets . Yes, sir. We can and we do put we put ready airplanes and ready crews forward on deployment. Yeah. 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 its consistent with what general allen just described in the army. We will be late to get there if we want to have fullup equipment to get to the fight in the future. And turn together 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 where at 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 15 were short 1500 pilots, 3400 maintainers in the Smallest Air Force weve ever had. Certainly that translates, does it not, 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 our active force, with 55 fighter squadrons. You mentioned the Pilot Shortage. Of those numbers we very 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 owed equipment 27 years old as an average, and youre short on maintainers to fix those airplanes and to talk to the advice chief advice c o, talked about the depos as they find things theyve never found before and it takes real craftsmen and artisans to fix those airplanes and it takes longer, were flying less. Again, as a matter of context, at the very bottom in the late 70s of what we called the hollow force, Fighter Pilots were flying about 15 sortees a month and about 20 hours. Today, were flying less hours and less sortees than we were in the late 70s. Now, the we didnt get there overnight in the 70s and we found a way out of that. Theres a way out of this. The way out of this starts first with manpower. We need more manpower to be able to plus up our force. We need to get the right training, with the right training we can bring in the right Weapon System support. We can increase account flying hours, with the flying hours we reduce we need time. Over time, we will increase our readiness. We think it will take six to eight years to bring our Readiness Level back where it needs to be. But it starts first with people. Six to eight years under a favorable scenario, i assume. Yes, chairman. Yeah. Well, i dont want to toot own honor but thank goodness we tried to stop the shrinkage in last years ndaa. Hopefully we kept it from getting worse. General walters, one of the things that just stuck out to me in your written testimony was the statement that flight hour averages per crew per month are below the minimum standards required tore 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 have even in the hollow force of the 70s or that was what he said. You say below the minimum standards to 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, chairman. And thank you to this committee for trying to get us back on our rba recovering last two years. We have made some improvement. To your question about flying hours and what it means, each type model series has a minimum requirement. Its important to understand what that is. And somewhere its somewhere between 16 and 1 hour per pilot per month. Theres an outlier there on c130s which is about 23 hours what that does is keeps them current in their current capabilities. It does not guarantee they would be proficient or be the a team to get an enemy in a near peer fight. If youre looking for a number, the last time i saw us that good was when the pilots were getting about 25 hour 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 well send a lot of pilots that dont have the adequate training and theres historical example after historical example when flight time required is not produced and the results in an air fight, both air to ground and air to air. Okay. So you said 16 to 1 hours per month is the minimum. Thats the minimum and what were getting now is between 12 and 14. So thats the minimum to maintain your currency. But currency is notner vanna for a war fight. Proficient pilots is what were aimed for. And thats across every capability we have. There are certain tackles 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 its kind of like getting ready to play in the super bowl but not evening able to practice. Thats a very good analogy, sir snore mr. Cooper. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And i thank each of the advice coo chiefs for their excellent testimony. Each one of you has revealed critical gasp in our readiness. I hope that all the members of this committee are listening closely. I want to focus particularly on what this committee and this congress can doing to solve some of these problems because i think you gentlemen have highlighted the problems very well. General ally nsaid it in plain english. Let me foot stomp his testimony. Im going to quote here. 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 fy17ndaa authorized force. Let me family size again, immediately repeal the 2011 budget control act. The gem goes on to say unless this is done, additional top line and oko funding, something that congress has traditionally done, though nice in the short term will prove unsustainable rendering all your hard work for naught. Could there be a clearer more dire warning to this committee . So i thank you, general, for offering that clearcut plain english testimony. Its not your problem. Its our problem. Another of the witnesses emphasized weve had nine consecutive continuing resolutions. How can anyone even the ablest manager in the world manage that . Nine consecutive ones. So my main message today is for the newer members of our committee haute perhaps havent learned all the bad habits that some of the older members of the committee have unfortunately gotten used to. This is the chance for a new day. A new approach. To have have a stronger military that is more ready for all the threats 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 our affairs responsibly. Because another way to put this is the worst enemy we face is ourselves. Our bca act of 2011 probably poses a greater threat to our military than any foreign adversary. So why do we hurt ourselves . There is no good rope for this and general ally nsaid it better than i could say it. If you would like to elaborate, general, youre welcome to. Again, the problem is ours. Its not yours. We should solve this equestration problem. I know to reinforce your point, i was in the Operational Force when the bca took effect and caused to us cancel seven combat Training Center rotations. And that is a generation of leaders that can never get that he 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 the bca impact when it was impacted midyear. So i my belief is if we can do away with bca, if we can fund our services to the authorized end strength in 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, general. Let me end by just saying all members of this committee should be asking leadership in our respective parties why we cant repeal bca now as the general suggests. Yao get all sorts of excuses, all sorts of half reasons. But none of them are good enough. Now is the time to take action on this. And any delay is inexcusable. Thank you, mr. Chairman. At the end of last weeks hearing, there were three members who sat through the hearing but still did not get a chance to ask questions. So i promised them they cogo first today. And then we will go back to regular order as we usually do. First up is the gentleman from mississippi, mr. Kelly. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And first of all, i just want to say to the panel, you guys are warriors and here res not only in our eyes but in the eyes of all americans and i know that truly you put the interests of there nation first and i thank you for that. That being said, i read your testimony and i notice you use a lot of military jargon and i understand all the army stuff. I dont necessarily and most of the marine stuff but i dont understand the air and the naval. So today, you know, a lot of people are watching this on fox news and other places. I ask as much as you can speak like a civilian or speak like someone who is not in the military because acronyms have a tendency of them not understanding what it is. First i want to start with the air. Something im unfamiliar with, general wilson. But i have Columbus Air Force base, the home of the 14th flying Training Wing locked in my district. And these men and women trying on all of our plat fors in the air force are right there. Flies more sorties than any place else in the world on the air force base. But im concerned when they leave Columbus Air Force base that they arent getting the hours on the platform not the trainer but on the actual platform that theyre going to be trying to flight adequate number of hours to be ready and to make sure that we save lives because thats what it comes down to is saving lives because unprepared pilot cant do the job. Tell me, how many hours were getting today and how that impacts your readiness to do our mission on the battlefield. Thanks for the question. As you know, as we talked before, i commanded the 14th line Training Wing in columbus. It is tbusiest air force base i our air force. Does a fantastic job producing pilots for our air force. Todays pilots were not flying enough hours or sorties. So as ive mentioned earlier, todays combat Fighter Pilots are flying less hours and less sorties than they were flying in the late 70s. Theyre averaging about ten sorties a month and about 14 hours a month and thats too few for the missions that we need to be able to fly. Today, when we talking about high spectrum or high end readiness, we need to be prepared to fight any add ser sear. Our adversaries around the globe are look at how we fight and training and modernizing their forces. They have efficient capability of Fighter Airplanes like ours and are also develop wlag we call fifth generation stealth type fighters both in china and russia. Again, theyve watched our fighting and theyre preparing their forces. We need to prepare to fight any adversary. Were extremely good today and are ready to fight in the middle east against violent extremist buds we need to be ready to fight against any adversary. We need more flying hours but to get more, 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 fellow to 321,000 people here in the next coming year. If we do that, that brings to us about 90 manning. But as anybody knows, 90 manning effective manning because you always have people that are employed or cant do the job or in training leaves you about 75 effect manning. Let me stop because had i another question with when we talk about bcts or mews or Fighter Wings or the number of ships or carrier groups, those things are important and i think a lot of america doesnt understand, were rotating the fresh equipment out of units to make combat ready units and that by doing that, it decreases the readiness of the future deployments and so have you guys in writing, i would ask that each of you let me nope how many bcts you need and what the personnel end strength that the army needs and not only that, but the number of m1 new m1 systems so that were not rotating equipment. They used to wouldnt let us hot bed when i was in the army. They wanted a crew on his tank because you get a familiarity with that piece of equipment. Were having to hot bed everything that we have in the military today. A crew uses another crews equipment because its up to date. What end strength do you think we need to be to meet todays missions and also the number of equipment both in modernization and replacing the old stuff. If you could address that. Ill start with you, general walters. Yes, sir. The number of marines we need in my written statement, i think we need a minimum of 194. But its also interesting, youve hit on the point. So why are we hot racking the equipment . Were are we moving the equipment around . Because for eight or ten years, we have modernization programs in place to replace our old equipment but theyre delivering over a 30year time frame. Were buying them at a minimum level. The example for us, the prime example is we have a 40yearold amphibious vehicle and were going to put a were putting a survivable upgrade on a third of them because we wont deliver the other ones. The new ones yet. Jail tv i have all kinds of needs for light tactical vehicles around for 20 years. Were buying the joint tactical vehicle at a shallow rate. It will take us 20 years to get there. Probably the poster child for us is i have a light Armored Vehicle 34 years old. Because of the strengths weve been under, we never thought about replacing it. We have an Obsolescence Program on there. Its not the best use of our money and the marines deserve new equipment for the threat. Chairman, i thank you, but just to mention, oko does not allow them to modern nice like 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. Weve got to stay reasonably on time as mr. Cooper said. Weve got lots of folks on this committee. Plif carbajal. Thank you, charm thornberry and all our witnesses and in particular, thank you for your service to our country. As a former marine, im very honored to be able to be part of this committee and to address you today. It is quite clear from your testimonies today and from our previous hearings that our mirpt faces incredibly diversity threats. Some of which are well prepared for and some of which remain to be a work in progress. There is no question we must continue to maintain a Strong Military force and Congress Must do its part to provide the necessary resources to ensure readiness. However, as all after you will probably grecian 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 the number one risk to readiness is sequestration. I believe the question we must ask ourselves is, what are retrying 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 a hollow nation with nothing more for the most superior armed forces to protect. I believe in order to develop an effective strategy, we must decide what our desired end state is for each of the threats and priorities our military leaders identify. And then look at what resources are needed to meet these desired 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. To this end, my question to after you you is what steps has each service taken in order to increase oversight and accountability to its 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. Id like to hear from each one of you, if possible. Thank you, congressman, and thank you for your service is seven per fidel lis. We love the United States marine corps too even in the United States army. So we appreciate your service. I would first highlight the fact that you spoke of two 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 pursuing 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. Continuing 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 aappropriations 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 you provide. We have a strategic portfolio review process that looks at all of our acquisition programs across all domains. And identifies the highest Priority Programs and ensures that were moving money away from those that are less important and funding those that we must deliver as fast as possible to be ensure that we can equip our forces in the future. The second thing is to ensure we an weave auditability which is a critical requirement that we must deliver to the nation. And that is, as well under way. We have made progress year over year. We will estimate we will probably still have work to do at the end of this year to goat full add ditability, but we are progressing as rapidly as we can. One of the programs that allows to us do that is our gfebs Software Program that enables us to see ourselves accurately across all our funding systems. We need to upgrade that Program Based on the findings of prior year audits. We cannot do that in a continuing resolution environment. So again, a couple of points to your very accurate questions. And i hope the gentleman will work with us on our acquisition Reform Efforts of the last two years. They will continue. Mr. Chaun na. Thank you for your graciousness in allowing junior members a chance to participate and your 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 concerns Cyber Security. One of the things that i often hear from companies is the burden that they actually have to have cybersecurity. And you never would expect our companies to have private Defense Forces against conventional attack buzz a large portion of their bugs are going to defend against cyber attacks. And we know that there are about 240,000 Cyber Security jobs that are unfilled because folks dont have the skills, many people in the private sector will say the best folks are those who have been trained either by the military or the government and theyre just not enough of them for them to come into the private sector. So my question for all the branches and i dont know whichever one is most relevant is, what can we in congress do to help you better prepare in training folks equipped in cybersecurity, what do you need for the military and what do you think you can do to help get more trained folks who can then go into the private sector . Ill start, congressman and thank you for that question incredibly important area for all of us operating in the cyber domain each and every day. I would offer that one very important authorization that you could provide to us is increased flexibility in Cyber Program funding. The adversary is moving at light speed in their attacks of our infrastructure and our capabilities and we have to be able to develop counters and offensive capabilities at the speed of light and our current systems are not designed that way. So authorizing some funding flexibility specifically for our Cyber Program so that we can it be more agile, responsive, and capable both on offense and defense would be critical. Sir, i would add to those very important points 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 force cyber professionals and the draw that it takes off of the service whos do produce incredible tal talented folkses in this world is there. And so we are looking at every opportunity to allow for our sailor who are trained and experienced in this to have opportunities to work inside and outside the navy and the flexibility to draw between the active and the are and the 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 the way were organized is increasing significantly. All of the services have invested substantial amount of money in the last several years. But cyber is a warfare area that is also like Everything Else we do subject to readiness cuts. Those cuts come in the form of being able to upgrade from windows x to windows y. We have to take some cuts to those readiness accounts as well as all the other ones as we see a reduced top line. Thanks for the question. Yeah. I would just add, weve shifted in the air force from a communication centered focused to a cyber Space Operations focus. Id highlight exactly what was mentioned earlier. Theres some acquisition reforms that can help to us keep up with that speed that the industry is going with. As well as weve made great progress on our civilian hiring and how we can do that. I this i theres more work to be done there. Were in a 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 theres still work to be done and how we bring on civilians in into our workforce. Sir, im with all my colleagues here. We need to recruit, train and maintain that workforce and we are short and i think were short globally. I think its a problem thats not just its replicated in the military but its really for the entire country. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Wilson. Thank you, chairman thornberry and 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 advice chiefs too to work on the issue of readiness. Its very important to me. Im grateful to be the chairman of the readiness subcommittee. Gives me the opportunity to work with Ranking Member madeleine bordallo. Well be there to back you up 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 joint base charleston, Mcintyre Joint National Guard base and north auxiliary field. Comments of concern have been raised by prior persons serving in the military, secretary Debra Lee James stated less than half of our combat forces ready for a high end fight. And also air force chief of staff general david goal fine stated combat operations and reductions in our 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 for american families. Two questions. General, have these shortfalls affected the air forces ability to generate the necessary forces 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. The short answer is yes, these still exist. Today we find ourselves less than 50 ready across our air force and we have pocks that are below that. In particular, that. In particular, some bases as you mentioned in South Carolina we find not flying enough with enough hours. We know how to fix this. We did this in the late 70s. We can do this again. It starts with as we talked before stable predictable funding that we believe we need to increase manpower to 350,000. That mans 100 of the positions on our books today. And we do that over the next five to seven years. While we bring on the manpower and make sure we have all the training behind that for the manpower. Then we can increase our Weapons Systems support. All of our support to parts and supply. On top of that we can increase flying hours and then we can bring down our uptempo and get our readiness back. We also have to modernize the force. We are bringing on f35s and bringing on b21s we need to keep those programs on track. Today we have 75 less f35s than we plan to have in 2012. We have 95 less mq 9s because of sequestration. So todays modernization has a readiness impact in the future. Todays modernization is tomorrows readiness. We need to focus on that Going Forward in the future. What those steps we can dig out of our Readiness Challenges we have today and bring it up to full Spectrum Readiness of about 80 . Thank you for your commitment. General walters, im really grateful South Carolina has paris island. We are very grateful for such extraordinary facilities giving young people extraordinary opportunity to serve our country and achieve to their highest ability. I am concerned that it was reported last year that we have had only 141 flyable tactical aircraft. We have had accidents that have just been unprecedented and from that situation of danger to our pilots and communities what is the current state of Marine Aviation . Is there a correlation between aviation mishaps and the ability of ready basic aircraft . How do you plan to address this . We are addressing the aircraft issue. We have been doing it for two years. We need to get to aircraft that just gives us enough to train with. We are not there yet. We are at 439. But were 50 more than we were two years ago. Thats positive. Your last question about correlation to accidents there is no direct correlation because i have reviewed every action we have had in the last two years. Those pilots have had the adequate time, but i think it is an overall systemic short fall in our aviation units. Thank you all for your service. We appreciate it so much. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman and thank you to all the witnesses for being here today. I appreciate the opportunity to continue to highlight the very serious challenges we face. We brought ourselves to this point while deferring investments in our people, our equipment and our facilities. This has been further strained by selfimposed fiscal constraints and our National Security apparatus will continue to be hampered without an end to across the board sequestration. We must continue to focus our resources on individual operations and maintenance accounts. I have a question for you. As we discussed yesterday in my office there are significant readiness needs facing the navy and our ship maintenance infrastructure has limited capacity. Now, the recent unfunded priorities list indicates as much with ship maintenance at the top however that conflicts with the administration that has indicated a desire to focus instead of construction. In an ideal world the navy would be able to modernize while shrinking the readiness deficit. The reality is that we do not have a blank check. My question to you, admiral, is how does the navy intend to prioritize these competing needs . In other words, with Additional Resources, will it focus on immediate actions such as addressing deferred ship maintenance or aviation depo throughout or instead on building new vessels . Thank you for the question. If Additional Resources come available in fiscal year 17 we absolutely will put that money towards ship depo maintenance, aircraft maintenance, Cyber Security. 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 is 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 we will absolutely put them in the readiness accounts. Thank you very much. And my second question is open for any of the witnesses. The department of defense has been asking for authority to have another round for years citing manpower and excessive infrastructure are a drain on operations and maintenance budgets and ultimately affecting rednies. Do you believe the Department Needs another brak. And if a new round were authorized how would you reallocate the resources being used to maintain excess capacity . Any one of you, i just need one answer. My time is running out. We think we have about 25 excess capacity at our bases. We think that in todays budget environment it makes sense to invest wisely. If it could help us do smart investment on the bases preparing for the future and take money spending on excess infrastructure and put it back into solving some of our fiscal problems. In other words, you are supporting closures . Yes, maam. Anybody else have a different 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 back log that we have for the army it is 11 billion in deferred infrastructure sustainment, restoration and modernization. For the air force that number is 25 billion of money that we need to put back into our bases of deferred maintenance. General . We think we are about right but will participate to see if there is any savings with our partners. Thank you very much. And i submit the rest of my time to the chairman. Chairman appreciates it. Thank you, maam. All of you have an aviation component to your branch of service. There is a growing concern about power shortage in the United States military. I think that is also reflected in the fact that we have a growing demand in Civil Aviation for pilots. So what is your approach if you can reflect on your approaches in terms of how to deal with that issue whether it is a Retention Bonus structure, enhancement of some sort but also the fact is that we have experienced pilots in the United States military. We probably still like to affiliate in some way. So then the question is should we shift, then, some of those flying bullets from the active duty to guard and reserve . Maybe we will starts with United States army and work our way down, up, maybe. We are not having a problem retaining helicopter pilots. I will defer to the other services. We would like some of your helicopter pilots. Sir, it is a great question and one we do focus on a lot as we manage our force. I would tell you that the thing that keeps pilots in our services speak for the navy but im sure general wilson will agree because they have both flown too fly. If we dont have adequate resources of planes and money that dissatisfaction will not enough airplanes, we are not fixing them fast enough. We dont have spare parts that we need. Young men and women are not flying nearly enough to keep the Job Satisfaction at a level based on ability . It absolutely is a moral issue. We find ourselves producing about 1,200 pilots a year. If i add navy and marines we produce about 2,000 piemts a year. The airlines are hiring about 4,000 pilots a year. I think this is bigger than a service problem. This is a National Problem that we have to get at and work with industry on how to do that. The guard and reserves are a big part of this. Certainly, the whole team on how we go forward we can recruit lots of people to fly. We dont have a problem there. We retaining them is a problem. Today for the last five years our retention of pilots has declined. We need to keep about 65 after the ten year point. Today we are doing less than half of that. So id say it is a quality of life and quality of service. So as the admiral said we are doing everything we can to reduce additional duties. All of the other burdens on the pilots and let them do their job and to build a culture that most military pilots that you see that will keep people in the service but there is certainly a cultural aspect to this but also to reduce the quality improve the quality of life and reduce administrative burdens on crews and let them fly. This is a National Problem not just a service problem. The guard and reserve have pilots who served on active duty and transferred in and are flying civilian airlines. Are you looking at all at restructuring . Absolutely. We are engaging with all the Corporate Airline leaders on how to do this together and do this smarter. Right now we have a math problem that doesnt close. We produce 2,000 the nation needs about 4,000. General walters. We have a meeting tomorrow to discuss this particular issue. Reserves, how we keep them once we get them. How long do we sign them up for when we sign them up. All of those would be part of it and we might end up having to pay a bonus to keep them around and make it so we can get them a draw. In the end its the willingness to serve and the value that they put on service that i think will be the biggest magnet. I dont think we can dump enough money on them to keep them there just with the money. I yield back. Thank you to all the witnesses for your excellent testimony this morning. I would like to again go back to your very frank advice that we really need to focus on maintenance and repair in terms of just getting to meet the operational demands. Ship building which i think will be an exciting year but having said that its a long game and we are not going to see the fruits of that for 2017 action for years to come. So your description about the fact that there is this back log building up of work that is not getting i was wondering if you can be a little more descriptive about how that works in terms of carriers, what is happening in terms of that back log that is building up . Thanks for the question. First of all, in 17 alone if we do not see some kind of supplemental for this fiscal year without cr, within a month we will have to shut down and defer maintenance on evl is availabilities for surface ships and submarine maintenance facilities. We are flatout out of money to be able to do that. I think everyone knows in 17 the navy took a 5 billion cut in the top line. If that comes to fruition that is 2 billion of readiness cuts we have to take which is immediately applied to the things like ship avails. We have had case in the case year where we have had to decertify a submarine from being able to dive because we cannot get it into Nuclear Maintenance that is needed. The crew on the uss albany went over 48 months before getting out of the yard because several delays, at least four different delays because of other priorities. Those other priorities start with our ssbn force which is our nuclear Strategic Submarine Force and then ssn. If any of those get disrupted, a carrier goes along in any of our public yards then we are going to bump things like ssns. So that crew of albany the co took over at the start of that maintenance avail, gave up command before the end of that and the crew, the entire crew did not deploy. To someones point here earlier you cannot buy back that experience. So those are the kinds of real impacts we are seeing in the yards because of the shortage of resources and the continuing rating of the readiness accounts in order to keep the rest of the navy whole. That story about the albany really resonates in this room because we have heard from admiral harris. They need more submarines now and to the extent that we are not going to build a virginia class now because it takes five years, but if we can get the albany and boise and others out and underway then we can respond to those combattant commanders. Lets assume we fully fund we deal with the resource issue and 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 your testimony your said for a variety of reasons ship yards are struggling to get ships through maintenance periods on time. So, again, lets assume that we take care of resource questions. How can we, you know, deal with that . Can we call on the private yards to help take on some of the work and can Congress Help with that process . Yes, sir. Youre absolutely correct. Obviously, we try to maximize our public yard work load but we try to smooth out those god awful charts we are used to staring at to try to smooth out the work across those yards. Where we need the extra capacity we use private yards to do it. Montpelier is a good example. We will continue to look at those. The problem is the very late determination that we no longer have the capacity in the public yards when we turn to private yards at that moment it becomes a very expensive proposition so the degree to which we can take advantage of your support and working with our private yards to try to drive down the cost, it makes it easier for us to have to surge to those private yards when public yards become the capacity or the work exceeds the capacity because of delays that are already there, if that makes sense. Thank you. I think it is described as one ship yard should be our philosophy. Thank you. Yield back. Story about the albany is amazing. Mr. Franks. Thank you, mr. Chairman and thank all of the witnesses for your Noble Service to america. Mr. Chairman, i have what is probably somewhat of a redundant question but it seems important to emphasize. On march 22 of last year chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said, quote, absorbing significant cuts of the last five years has resulted in our under investing in critical capabilities. And unless we reverse sequestration we will be unable to execute the current Defense Strategy, closed quote. So general walters might ask a followup by general allen if you keep 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 definition of strategy is doing two things simultaneously, the answer is no. If the United States army as general millie has testified before this committee only at high risk. So maybe to give you a real world example when you talked about two scenarios, in your professional military opinion as its current force level, would your service i begin with the army again, would your service be capable of executing a korea scenario while maintaining your current commitments around the world . Sir, we would be able to execute a korea scenario but draw from other commitments to make it on the timeline required. And likewise for the United States army we would both draw from draw down committed forces elsewhere as well as have forces arriving late to need based on current Readiness Levels as we talked about at the outset with the chairman. Ill broaden it to the committee, whoever would like to take a shot at it. With your current planned levels can you meet construct outlined in the 2014 defense review to, quote, defeat a regional adversary and deny another aggressor in another region . My answer would be consistent with my brothers here and that is we will be able to employ our force but at great risk to being there late and at higher casualties than we would expect. I would second that. And no disagreement on the panel. So final question, mr. Chairman. And i address it to all of you. In your professional military opinions, is your Respective Services too small given current and emerging Mission Requirements . Yes, we are, for the current defense Planning Guidance. Now, the secretary of defense has directed a new straej review that could result in a revised construct environment but we will undergo that process and provide our recommendations on what the size of the army must be but today it is too small. I agree with general allen for the navy, as well. Same for the air force. Same for the marine corps, sir. They say sometimes there is nothing more encouraging than to hear your own convictions fall from anothers lips, but in this case i think im more alarmed by that than anything else. Yet it does seem to be a consistent circumstance. I hope the committee and the country and the new administration is considering the responses of these gentlemen carefully. With that i would yield back. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman and thank you all for being here today as we have this very important discussion. Last week and this has been in the context of the number of hearings we have had discussing the 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 general petraeus and john mclaugh lnwit some of the pressing threats and challenges facing our nation. In their testimony i was struck by balance of power and need for United States to maintain tech logical superiority in relation to russia and china. Last week the New York Times reported on chinese advances in Computer Science and engineering in relation to declining u. S. Investments in these areas. Historically our Nations National labs and ffrdcs 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. So they see a dual benefit to it. And robotics and Artificial Intelligence are just two examples of where the private sector has been increasingly successful. So as we are talking today about the many challenges we face and much of the emphasis is on strength and need for more people it seems to me as we are thinking about how we maintain our competitive advantage that its not just about in strength but about how we use cutting Edge Technologies 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 have done such great work. What is the air force doing to modernize its labs and defense focus ffrdcs to make sure that we are able to keep the air force at the cutting edge of technology . How much of a priority is it for you given the many competing demands for investment . We have investments going into mit labs to help improve the infrastructure there. I went out to visit them and i can tell you they are absolutely world class. There are some technologies that they are working on. You mentioned a. I. And robotics and direct energy, some things that can truly change the game. So thats an important focus of our air force. As we modernize our force we need to modernize smartly across specific areas. As you mentioned industry is leading us in that way. So we are collaborating with industry whether we work with folks Like Air Force research lab, what strategic capabilities office, all of the ffrdcs and National Labs that are reaching out with all the private sector to make sure that we can stay up to date with them. I look at this as almost like the ffrd the ffr, we have to invest so much today in our technology that is going to get us tomorrow. Right now our rnd is about 2 . We need to keep it at that or grow that because otherwise our adversaries will outpace us. We have a great collaboration with National Labs. They are truly National Treasures. We need to leverage those to help us stay ahead of adversaries. Those National Treasures dont remain without significant investment that needs to be made in them. I know given the constrained resources i just want to be reassured that we arent short sighted and that we in making those tough choices are not putting what we need to because technology is a long timeline and can move very quickly. We dont want to be behind the 8 ball because we have been too short sighted. To that end, also general allen i wanted to ask you how youre prioritizing your investments. Massachusetts has a great facility that really focuses on the soldier and how to best protect the soldier to make them as ready as possible. Again, fully equipped in thinking thoughtfully what kind of investment is the army making . Thank you. Im sorry you are missing the championship parade in boston this morning. I am very sorry myself. That is a great sacrifice on your part. But we, likewise, fully leverage not only labs but mit lincoln labs. I had been there in the past two months on several programs that are critical for us to continue to dominate in the multi domain environment of the future. We will continue to leverage both the great soldier enhancement initiatives that come as well as technology that is critical. You highlighted the importance of technology to readiness. It is the right balance of capability and capacity that makes a ready force in all are trying to ensure that we maintain that balance as we move forward. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you gentlemen for being here today for this very important hearing. Pretty sobering testimony but i think we all need to hear it. And general wilson, i appreciate your highlighting the recent mission that went over to libya. We are so proud of them. Your testimony goes right along with the question i wanted to ask where you talk about where you feel that training makes us capability for middle eastern conflict, but we need to have peer adversary training. I know with your 35 years flying and your participation in red flag over the years, i wanted to ask you about the capability of that 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 high end threat like china and russia . What i mean by this is, are you confident in the air forces ability to accurately train against a near peer adversary. Can you give a glimpse of what it would look like . Can you prepare them and put their familys minds at ease such that a flare up yt South China Sea would look routine . We are putting significant investment into our infrastructure in places. The red flag that i started flying with in the 80s as we have changed it considerably in how we incorporate space and cyber. The range infrastructure and threats hasnt improved to a significant degree until recently. We put significant investments into the infrastructure to give us the right threat emitters and give us an environment with high end threats and allow crews to train in that. We just started that investment to improve our infrastructure. That will be critical Going Forward. It is critical that we invest in live virtual constructive training. In the future i will not have the flying hours or money to be able to train an f35 pilot and give them all the training outdoors and in the live environment. I will have to do some of that in the virtual or constructive environment. We are putting money into that so that our focus can be home station and we can replicate a red flag like environment or high end training scenario to give the most realistic training possible. It is important that we continue that investment of infrastructure and our live virtual constructive environments Going Forward. So if 100 was the number for feeling very, very confident they should be able to go up against training adequate. What would be the number where you feel like that we would be able to go up against adversary. If you go to one of our red flag exercises its absolutely fantastic training. The problem is not enough people get to go to it and we dont do those frequently enough. So the average crew is 50 ready against a high end threat in certain parts of our air force that number is considerably below that. It takes all those resources we talked about. We have the people, training, flying hours. I have to be in time to do that to build up that readiness. Today we are at 50 . Look forward to work with you to help get that up to 100 so everyone can meet the threats that we are facing. I yield back. Thank you, mr. Chairman and gentlemen thank you for your service. I dont know how many of these hearings we have gone to and always comes down to more money and then somebody mentions sequestration. It seems to me that with the unified control of congress and the administration that if sequestration is a problem then perhaps it could be solved quickly. None theless the money problem is likely to persist. A couple of questions just to follow up on the question about the airman and the pilots that are necessary. I understand that the air force is now moving to provide or to allow pilots that are not officers to fly certain missions. General wilson, if you can comment on that briefly and will it help solve this problem . Congressman, we think so. We have the initial group of aviators into rq 4 global hawk program. We think over the next few years we will be able to grow it to where majority of pilots will be enlist enlisted. We will learn from that and see if we can take that example and do it in other areas like mq 9s. That is to be determined. We think that will help alleviate some of the shortages right now. Its in the first stages. We have the second class of training. We only have a handful of enlisted operators going through that Training Program right now. I think the question comes to this committee in whether we are this committee whether we are going to 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 with i guess we want to have everything and we want to have everything now. Long discussion ensued about the aircraft and about the personnel. Not much discussion about the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent and the multibillions spent on that. And the question arises in my mind and i hope in this committees mind about the necessity of rebuilding the entire nuclear mission, all of the bombs, all of the Delivery Systems from naval to air force and general if you could comment on this issue. Can we afford all of it . I think we can. If you look at the investment across the Nuclear Enterprise Going Forward on all the modernization programs it will peak at about 5. 5 . Foundationally what our nation is provided is incalculbl. It provided 70 plus years of noconflict between major powers. As i look across the globe and the landscape that you talk about changing as we see what our adversaries are doing we have no option other than to modernize. Our forces were built many of them in the 60s, modernized early in the 70s that we are still maintaining today. There comes a time where we have to modernize. We have delayed the modernization for far too long specifically Ground Based Strategic Deterrent. If we look at those put into the ground with parts the date designed in the 50s mpt we are now having 50year life cycles of these missiles. The strategic stability that they afford our nation is well worth the cost of investment Going Forward. We welcome that discussion about the importance of the Nuclear Triad. I certainly think we need to have that discussion. We need have that discussion in detail. It is not just about the icbms in the ground whether they need to be renewed. It is about the naval and new bombs that go with the new missiles as well as the new f21 Long Range Bomber and the cruise missiles. And the question for all of us is the trillion dollar question over the next 25 years with the wave occurring within 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 new submarines and another 55 ships on top of what you already have. And where is the money . And the president is suggesting a tax cut of more than a trillion dollars. So we better have a big credit card. I think that is called the deficit. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I yield back. Thank you. General walters. Georgia hit hard with storms. I will be there this coming friday. I live about 30 minutes away from that base. 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 . How and why is that particular base critical to the marine corps . Thanks for the question. We are tracking that daily. I know what damage has been done to the infrastructure. We think by the end of this week we will have all of that collapsed building and wareho e warehouses off so we can take a look and analyze what damage was done to equipment inside of it so i can understand the full cost in our ongoing efforts in 2017 with identifying at least the first cost of that. Your second question is when are we going to get it back . They are operating at a minimal capacity now in areas that werent affected. But it is critical. That is where our tanks, our vehicles, light armor vehicles and artillery go through depot. I dont have an estimate for you now on when that is going to start up again. We do other components. We only have two depots one on east coast and one on west coast. It is good that we have two because if it is going to be a long period of time when we have to make a decision on what we do and what we dont do to take the critical things and move them out there. My preference would be to get albany back up running at 100 . Would you agree that from a deployment standpoint it is important that we be able to deploy from both east coast and west coast . Absolutely, sir. We are a global nation. Yes, sir. General wilson, in february 25 years of continuous combat operations and reductions to total force coupled with budget instability resulted in smallest, oldest and least ready forces across full spectrum of operations in our history. Your testimony was pretty close to that. General welsh who i think is just a wonderful leader prior to 1992 the air force procured average of 200 Fighter Aircraft per year curtailed modernization resulted in procurement of less than average of 25 yearly. The technology and capability gaps are closing dangerously fast. General wilson, its clear there are not enough Fighter Aircraft to sustain readiness through pilot flight hours yet air force is contemplating reducing workforce. Can you explain how this squares up . I dont believe we are planning on reducing depoes. Depoes are critical to Going Forward in the future. I will also agree is a remarkable airman. Real visionary what he did with our force. Chief 21 outlined the problem we have. We used to procure about 200 Fighter Airplanes a year. Today we are producing less than 20. That is why 21 of 39 fleets of airplane are older than 27 years old. To maintain those 27 year old airplanes take as lot of work. It takes hard work efforts and takes our depoes. We have to actually get more out of our depoes because each time we bring in an old airplane today they are finding things they never found before whether f16, b1 they are fighting things they have never seen. They are real artisans on how they fix these airplanes. It will be critical to success Going Forward. One last question. A lot of those men and women work at robins. As you said they are very skilled, talented and without them our planes wouldnt be able to fly today. When can we expect guidance issued down to the base level on the workforce . We hope guidance will come out this week of what is exempted in categories to allow our workforce to continue. As you know we are still just digging out of sequestration and the effects of that had furloughing our civilians. It is critical whether maintaining planes, sustaining them, operations across the air force any reductions of that skilled workforce, 96 of our civilians work outside of washington, d. C. They work in our flight lines so we have to be able to sustain those and grow our civilian workforce. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you for your service. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you to each of the vice chiefs for your service, your leadership and your testimony today. And i also really appreciate the guidance that you have Given Congress so far in repealing the budget control act, ending the threat of sequestration, having budgets that are funded and predictable and consistent instead of having continuing 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 going to be most effective for our Service Members and our missions. So on each of those i would like to be part of working with my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to get these things done. You made a very good case for why we need to do it and why we need to do it now. For general allen, the 3 of 58 brigade combat teams ready to fight tonight, one, it says something about our form of government that we would say that publically 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. I hope that your comments spur us to take the necessary actions to reverse this trend and make sure that we are where we need to be. Im guessing that whatever analogous body to hack that exists in russia is not talking about this in a public way but can you tell us how we compare, if you can in a setting like this one . I got to be honest with you, congressman, i dont have access to their reporting. I do get ours every month and so i have a finger tip feel for where we stand in the United States army and on behalf of the congress it is our responsibility to deliver the best readiness that we can at the funding levels that we have. Every commander in the field is getting after that 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. 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 combattant 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 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 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 high end destroyer is well beyond. 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 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 was 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. 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 nevadaens 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. 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 plusuit 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 can 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 nends is. 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. 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 two year 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. 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 issues. 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 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. 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 goegto 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 you 46 and now moved on to p 8s. 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 two for. The Strike Fighter community is definitely the focus of our energy right now. Did you want to comment on that . It is our focus and i would throw in 53 k and v 22s. Those are all three priorities for us. Issue regarding growlers. Can you understand that physiological is investigating solutions for the issue. 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 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 where you are. 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 deploy 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 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 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 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. 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 to 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. 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 greems . 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 short fall 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