|
| For
Immediate Release: March 31, 2004 |
Contact: |
Harald Stavenas |
Statement of
Chairman Joel Hefley
Hearing on Logistics: Lessons from
Operation Iraqi Freedom and Logistics
Transformation
Good afternoon. Welcome to the Readiness Subcommittee's hearing on logistics support during Operation Iraqi Freedom. I have asked witnesses to meet with us today to provide testimony on the logistics challenges and issues during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and to hear testimony on the proposed solutions to these logistics challenges and issues.
Let me read to you various excerpts from a speech given by the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology & Logistics) on the future battlefield and the importance of logistics. He said:
The role of logistics has grown more crucial as modern warfare has increased in technological sophistication, cost, speed, and complexity . . .
Today, America has precision strike capability . . . We need a complementary vision for the logistics concepts that will support [this] style of the warfare . . .
The Department's logistics systems are complex and different for each service . . . A major system integration effort is needed . . .
Battlefield awareness is much more than knowing the static location of forces. [It includes] knowing the logistics posture of friendly and enemy forces as well as having a prediction of the re-supply needs of each force element. To complete the logistics picture, available support and the need for future support must be propagated from each force element in the field through the whole support system. This is total asset visibility.
Today I will lay out the grand vision-one with logistics integrated into the overall war fighting framework. . . .
We are at a unique time where there is a confluence of several events to make realization of this vision possible.
This speech was given by Dr. Paul Kaminski in 1995. The Department has spent billions of dollars trying to improve the logistics systems since the first Persian Gulf War. Much has improved, but too much of the 1995 speech is still true today. The services have stove piped systems; the systems need to be integrated; and there is a need for total asset visibility. I would like to hear from the witnesses today to what extent the words from Dr. Kaminiski almost ten years ago are still true today. I also need the witnesses to diminish my skepticism that despite the best of intentions, we will not in ten years be asking why the services still have stove piped systems and the combatant commander is still in search of total asset visibility.
Finally, let me add that I believe it is inaccurate to compare the Department of Defense logistics process to a Wal-Mart store. When fighting a battle, the soldier does not return to a brick and mortar facility, pick out what he wants, pay for it, and then drive back to battle. Rather, he needs a communication system that he can rely upon to tell those soldiers far behind what he needs, followed by a quick delivery to a place yet unknown, because he is not necessarily standing still. I recognize logistics is hard, but I am not prepared to provide the Department with billions of operation and maintenance funds on systems, processes or ideas that do not move the Department forward.
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