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| For
Immediate Release: March 24, 2004 |
Contact: |
Harald Stavenas |
Statement of
Chairman Joel Hefley
Hearing on Prepositioned Equipment Programs of
the United States Army and United States
Marine Corps
Good afternoon, welcome to the subcommittee hearing on the Prepositioned Equipment Programs of the United States Army and United States Marine Corps.
The U.S. military stores, or prepositions, military equipment and supplies near potential conflict areas to ensure that the material is quickly available to forces in the event of a crisis. During a crisis, prepositioning speeds U.S. response times because it decreases the amount of equipment required to be transported by air or sea. While this concept is not new, it has gained importance due to the nature and frequency of military operations during the last decade and most recently in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Today, we will hear from representatives of the United States Army, the United States Marine Corps, the General Accounting Office and the RAND corporation. The principle objective of this hearing is to receive testimony on the Army and Marine Corps prepositioned programs.
We are interested in recent performance of the prepositioned equipment in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom as well as the initial lessons learned from these ongoing operations.
We understand that a majority of this equipment has been used to support our troops in battle. We have been told that it will take several years to reconstitute all the prepositioned equipment and supplies used. We also have heard that in order to properly reconstitute the preposition equipment used in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the bill will run into the billions of dollars. Currently, the majority of this bill is not funded in either the FY 2004 Supplemental or the FY 2005 President's Budget request. We would welcome the observations from our panel today on how to address this shortfall.
Finally, we look forward to hearing testimony today on the future strategies and plans for prepositioned equipment. Both the Army and Marine Corps have identified changes to their programs in order to improve not only their capability, but also the response time in the event of a crisis.
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