[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-9]
U.S. TRANSPORTATION COMMAND'S
(USTRANSCOM) AIRLIFT, SEALIFT, AND
SURFACE LIFT PROGRAMS
__________
JOINT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SEAPOWER AND EXPEDITIONARY FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE
MEETING JOINTLY WITH
AIR AND LAND FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
FEBRUARY 25, 2009
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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SEAPOWER AND EXPEDITIONARY FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi, Chairman
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island ROB WITTMAN, Virginia
RICK LARSEN, Washington ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut DUNCAN HUNTER, California
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado
GLENN NYE, Virginia THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
ERIC J.J. MASSA, New York
Will Ebbs, Professional Staff Member
Jenness Simler, Professional Staff Member
Elizabeth Drummond, Staff Assistant
------
AIR AND LAND FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
ADAM SMITH, Washington MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina DUNCAN HUNTER, California
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California JOHN C. FLEMING, Louisiana
ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado
JIM COOPER, Tennessee HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' McKEON,
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia California
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona JEFF MILLER, Florida
NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts JOE WILSON, South Carolina
LARRY KISSELL, North Carolina FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
FRANK M. KRATOVIL, Jr., Maryland ROB BISHOP, Utah
ERIC J.J. MASSA, New York MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio
BOBBY BRIGHT, Alabama
John Sullivan, Professional Staff Member
Heath Bope, Professional Staff Member
John Wason, Professional Staff Member
Benjamin Glerum, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2009
Page
Hearing:
Wednesday, February 25, 2009, U.S. Transportation Command's
(USTRANSCOM) Airlift, Sealift, and Surface Lift Programs....... 1
Appendix:
Wednesday, February 25, 2009..................................... 31
----------
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2009
U.S. TRANSPORTATION COMMAND'S (USTRANSCOM) AIRLIFT, SEALIFT, AND
SURFACE LIFT PROGRAMS
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Abercrombie, Hon. Neil, a Representative from Hawaii, Chairman,
Air and Land Forces Subcommittee............................... 2
Akin, Hon. W. Todd, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking
Member, Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee......... 19
Bartlett, Hon. Roscoe G., a Representative from Maryland, Ranking
Member, Air and Land Forces Subcommittee....................... 2
Taylor, Hon. Gene, a Representative from Mississippi, Chairman,
Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee................. 1
WITNESSES
McNabb, Gen. Duncan J., USAF, Commander, U.S. Transportation
Command........................................................ 3
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
McNabb, Gen. Duncan J........................................ 37
Taylor, Hon. Gene............................................ 35
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
U.S. TRANSPORTATION COMMAND'S (USTRANSCOM) AIRLIFT, SEALIFT, AND
SURFACE LIFT PROGRAMS
----------
House of Representatives, Committee on Armed
Services, Seapower and Expeditionary Forces
Subcommittee, Meeting Jointly with Air and Land
Forces Subcommittee, Washington, DC, Wednesday,
February 25, 2009.
The subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 10:07 a.m., in
room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Gene Taylor
(chairman of the Seapower and Expeditionary Forces
subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GENE TAYLOR, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
MISSISSIPPI, CHAIRMAN, SEAPOWER AND EXPEDITIONARY FORCES
SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Taylor. The subcommittee will come to order. Today, the
Seapower and Expeditionary Forces and the Air and Land Forces
Subcommittees will meet to receive testimony from the commander
of the United States Transportation Command (USTC), General
Duncan McNabb of the United States Air Force.
General McNabb is uniquely suited to this challenging
assignment. He is a graduate of the United States Air Force
Academy class of 1974. He has significant experience as a
command pilot in both transportation and rotary wing aircraft.
General McNabb has commanded at every level, including
commander of the 41st Airlift Squadron during Operation Desert
Storm, the 89th Operations Group, which has responsibility for
transporting the President on Air Force One.
Prior to his current duties as commander of the United
States Transportation Command, General McNabb served as the
Commander of the Air Force Joint Military Command as Vice Chief
of Staff of the Air Force.
Thank you, General, for being with us today to discuss the
challenges you face in supplying our troops around the world
with the equipment and the supplies they need.
The United States Transportation Command is the largest
shipper of goods and material in the world. On an average day,
Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) is moving 100 railcar
shipments, has 44 ships loading, offloading or underway, has
1,000 trucks moving with cargo, and executes 480 airlift
missions.
There is a staggering amount of transportation occurring on
each and every day.
To accomplish this mission, TRANSCOM relies on the Army
Surface Deployment and Distribution Command, the Navy's
Military Sealift Command, and the Air Force Air Mobility
Command, along with commercial partners in rail, trucking and
sea transportation.
In addition to other issues that the general would care to
discuss with us today, he has been requested to update the
joint subcommittee on TRANSCOM's current and future force
structure needs, the current capability to accomplish all the
assigned missions, and, particularly, the issue of sustainment
of our forces in Afghanistan.
As I am sure you are all aware, recently, the overland
supply routes to Afghanistan by way of Pakistan have been
targeted by insurgents. Lacking a different delivery route, the
Pakistani overland supply routes are critical to resupplying
our troops.
I look forward to the general discussion the issues
associated with the Pakistani routes and with alternative
routes from the north that I know he and others have been
working on.
Again, General, thank you for being with us today.
I now call on my good friend from Hawaii, the Chairman of
the Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, Mr. Abercrombie.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Taylor can be found in the
Appendix on page 35.]
STATEMENT OF HON. NEIL ABERCROMBIE, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
HAWAII, CHAIRMAN, AIR AND LAND FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Abercrombie. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No comments at
this time.
Mr. Taylor. Mr. Bartlett.
STATEMENT OF HON. ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
MARYLAND, RANKING MEMBER, AIR AND LAND FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General McNabb, thank you for joining us today. It is a
true privilege to have you before the committee today and I
look forward to our discussion.
We are all very aware that this Nation is in the midst of
some difficult economic times. There is no doubt that tough
decisions must be made if we are to continue to provide and
maintain a military force that adequately supports our National
Military Strategy.
In making those decisions, it is critical that this body
understand the equipping needs of our military in the context
of joint requirements and integrated capabilities.
In my 17 years of service on this committee, I have always
found it very difficult to determine the Nation's procurement
priorities when we are given a budget that reflects the
individual services' procurement priorities.
We are told that the new tanker is the Air Force's number
one priority and that Future Combat Systems is the Army's
number one priority. But no one seems to be able to tell us how
those priorities stack up against each other.
As an example, no one can tell us if the Air Force's need
for a new combat search-and-rescue-X helicopter outweighs the
Army's need for a new Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter and they
certainly can't tell us whether either of those helicopter
programs stack up--how they stack up compared to the Navy's
need for the Littoral Combat Ship.
I am particularly pleased to have you with us today,
General McNabb, because I believe you can shed some light on
several recapitalization and modernization programs and help us
understand their value, from their standpoint.
Although we do not expect you to be able to address the
fiscal year 2010 budget request, I do believe that you should
address your requirements and priorities as a combatant
commander.
As the commander of U.S. Transportation Command, you
provide critical transportation services, air refueling support
and terminal management, so that our frontline forces can
successfully execute their mission.
However, you cannot do your job unless your service
components, the Army, Navy, and Air Force, are properly
equipped and resourced to meet your requirements.
Efforts to grow the Army and Marine Corps, theater
requirements for heavily armored vehicles and increased demand
for intra-theater aircraft due to roadside bombs and impassible
terrain are just a few of the challenges that shape your
requirements.
If we don't understand these requirements from a joint
perspective, we will continue to have a military with
capability gaps in some areas and duplication in others.
This results in the inefficient allocation of our Nation's
precious resources at a time when we simply cannot afford it.
For that, Mr. Chairman, I am thankful to you for holding
this very important and very timely hearing.
General McNabb, I look forward to your testimony.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Bartlett.
General, you are now recognized.
STATEMENT OF GEN. DUNCAN J. MCNABB, USAF, COMMANDER, UNITED
STATES TRANSPORTATION COMMAND
General McNabb. Chairman Taylor, Chairman Abercrombie,
Congressman Bartlett, Congressman Akin, and distinguished
members of the committees, it is indeed my privilege to be with
you today representing the men and women of U.S. Transportation
Command, more than 136,000 of the world's finest logistics
professionals.
I am pleased to have this opportunity to highlight the
state of our command and the strategic capabilities this team
gives to our Nation.
USTRANSCOM provides strategic lift, deployment and
integrated end-to-end sustainment and distribution capabilities
unmatched by any other nation. This total force team of active
duty, Guard, Reserve, civilian, contractors and commercial
partners delivers logistics solutions which enable the
combatant commanders to succeed anywhere in the world.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen,
visited TRANSCOM last week and described logistics capabilities
at TRANSCOM as like oxygen--you take it for granted unless you
don't have it, because when you don't have it, you die.
We know the Nation and our war fighters depend upon us and
we are honored to deliver. And this committee is well aware
that it is our great people that get it done. It is our total
force, air crews flying combat approaches at night on night
vision goggles, or airdropping supplies to sustain our troops
in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the globe.
It is our refueling crews that deliver five million pounds
of fuel every day, at night and in the weather, extending the
reach of our joint force and coalition partners.
On any given day, our military and commercial crews, with
maintenance teams and aerial porters behind them, execute more
than 900 sorties. That is a takeoff and landing every 90
seconds, sometimes in the most austere places on the globe,
like Antarctica, or the most dangerous, like a forward
operating base under fire in Afghanistan.
It is our merchant mariners and military and civilian port
operators who are loading, offloading or sailing 35 to 45 ships
every day to support the war fighter, carrying cargo, like
hundreds of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAPs), life-
saving vehicles for the men and women who put their lives on
the line.
It is our terminal operators executing hundreds of
containers, domestic freight and railcar shipments, pushing
units and their vital supplies to the fight and ultimately
bringing home to the outstretched arms of a family and friends.
It is our contingency response groups, a joint task force,
port opening experts who arrive first to open up the flow in
contingency or disaster relief operations.
It is our commercial airlift and sealift partners standing
with us side-by-side, enduring relationships that allow us to
open up new avenues of supply, for instance, from the north
into Afghanistan, or support the Nation during times of surge.
It is our medical crews and critical care teams tending to
our wounded warriors, rapidly delivering them from the
battlefield to the finest world class care on the planet,
saving lives and families at the same time.
And it is our crews bringing back fallen comrades,
transporting heroes dressed in our Nation's colors, Americans
returning with dignity to our country, which owes them so much.
It is this logistics team that gives our Nation unrivaled
global reach, committed to serving our Nation's war fighters by
delivering the right stuff to the right place at the right time
and at the best value.
Whether it is sustaining the fight, providing disaster
relief to friends in need or moving six brigades
simultaneously, we are there. Whether at home or abroad, this
championship team succeeds by giving the combatant commanders
what they need.
And the support of these committees has been instrumental
in providing the resources our team needs to win, and I thank
you.
Chairman Taylor and Chairman Abercrombie, we have learned
many lessons as a Nation at war and your support on key
programs has allowed us to take global mobility to new heights.
You have given us the large, medium-speed, roll-on/roll-off
ships and supported upgrades to the ready reserve fleet, all of
which have been tremendously successful over the last seven
years, and the new Joint High-Speed Vessels will give us even
greater flexibility.
The C-130J and the C-17 have come of age since 9/11 and
have allowed us to change how we support the combatant
commanders by air. The current C-5, C-130 and KC-10
modernization programs will also make an enormous difference in
our capability and reliability in support of the war fighter.
And my top priority remains the recapitalization of our
aging tanker fleet. The KC-X will be a game-changer. Its value
as a tanker will be tremendous. Its value as a multirole
platform to the mobility enterprise will be incomparable.
It will do for the whole mobility world what the C-17 did
for the theater and strategic airlift. It will be an ultimate
mobility force multiplier.
Chairman Taylor and Chairman Abercrombie, I am grateful to
you and the committees for inviting me to appear before you
today to discuss our TRANSCOM and distribution process teams,
the critically important work we do, and the challenges and
issues we face.
I respectfully request my written testimony be submitted
for the record, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of General McNabb can be found in
the Appendix on page 37.]
Mr. Taylor. Without objection.
General, again, thank you for being with us. And I know
there are a number of members that have their questions, but I
would like to start off and, one, I want to compliment you for
the job you are doing and I realize how difficult it is.
You probably could not pick a worse place on earth to be
involved in a conflict than Afghanistan. All one has to do is
look at a map and realize there is just no easy way to get
things there.
So I do want to compliment you on the job you are doing
thus far.
I also have become aware that in the past year or so, about
130 drivers for the contactor to Maersk have been murdered just
transiting Pakistan. I am aware of the attacks on the convoys
in Pakistan, the hijackings of trucks in Pakistan.
And I have heard you talk about the different options,
other than Pakistan, for getting things there, the 50-day
overland route from the north, going through China, going
through Russia.
None of them appear to be very good ideas. And I realize
that, again, we could not have picked a worse place to be in a
conflict, in my opinion, as far as resupply.
What I am curious is when you fly over Pakistan,
particularly toward the Iranian border, you fly for hours and
see virtually nothing. Virtually nothing. It is a very
uninhabited area.
Has any thought been given to using a port other than
Karachi and using those roads closer to the Iranian border as
an alternate route for getting into Pakistan, with the idea
being that I would think it would be easier to defend a road
where there are fewer people rather than more people? And that
if someone is out there in that desert, they are most likely
out there to cause you harm rather than, again, transiting
these routes where, traditionally, I believe, the towns in
Pakistan are one day's walk apart from each other. Which means
there are a lot of them that these trucks have to transit, and
you have got several hundred trucks a day transiting a
dangerous area before they even get to Afghanistan.
So I am curious. Again, I know you are at the Russian
option, you are looking at the Chinese option, you are looking
at the Turkish, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan option.
But it would seem that it would at least be worth exploring
an alternative route through Pakistan to resupply our troops.
And again, maybe the Pakistan government is saying that is all
out of the question.
But I am curious if you have even looked into that.
General McNabb. Chairman, in fact, we got that question and
I think it was probably one of the visits that we had up here
on the Hill, I think you either your or Chairman Abercrombie
asked us to take a look at----
Mr. Abercrombie. Would you move just a touch closer to your
mike, please? Thank you.
General McNabb. Yes, sir.
You or Chairman Abercrombie had asked about that and one of
the places that they looked at, something that General Petraeus
had actually asked us to examine.
I think the big part there is that it is really the
infrastructure after you get into the ports. It is what is the
road like. As we look for connecting roads, large enough
connecting roads, they estimate that it will take 5 years to
build a road that would go up north and kind of join up with
the rest of the lines of communications, and they are thinking
even 10 years for a railroad, which eventually is probably good
stuff to do that would probably be in Pakistan's interest to do
anyway.
But I would just say that at this point, we would have to
build that road, as well. So right now, your road network, if
you came into that port, would still go back to the east to get
up into those major highways.
When you talk about lines of communication, you are looking
at the whole types of networks, like your road and rail, to see
what you can do for throughput.
So when you go through mountains or you go through
different areas, it is harder, obviously, if it is mountainous.
And you have it exactly right. When you think about
Afghanistan, you really are talking about different terrain
than what we are used to, much different than Iraq.
And so when you look at the number of ways and passes that
you can get into in Afghanistan, they actually are fairly
limited.
I know that last week, Admiral Harnitchek showed you that
there are five major ways to get into Afghanistan and that is
from historic times. It is just tough to get through those
very, very high mountains in a reasonable way, which is one of
the reasons we have looked to the northern side today can we
bring in things from the north.
Whenever I think about a ground network, I would like to
have lots of options. If you have one, you kind of are at risk.
So as a logistician, you are always saying, ``Well, I want to
have multiple options. So that whatever way you go, I can go a
different way if I end up having some trouble.''
The success on the northern distribution network--and we
call it a network because it is not one line, it is a number of
lines and what you want to do is use normal commercial routes
that already have rail, the road infrastructure is already
built, because anything that you have to go in and build,
obviously, will be much harder, especially in another country
where you go if you expected them to build that for you.
So that is kind of where we are headed on looking at the
lines of communication. I totally agree with you that
Afghanistan is much harder. You couldn't choose a harder place.
Mr. Taylor. What is the--I am sure you measure your
instantaneous rate of change as far as the security of those
vehicles transiting Pakistan.
General McNabb. Right.
Mr. Taylor. Is it getting better or is it getting worse?
General McNabb. What I would say is it has--over the last
two or three months, we saw, in December, quite a few attacks.
It actually has gone down on the number of vehicles that
actually have been attacked.
But again, it is something that gives us great concern. In
fact, that is one of the reasons that we went to the north to
say, ``Hey, can we have some alternative ways of coming in.''
When you get into Afghanistan itself, when you talk about
the ring road, same thing applies. Something that General
Petraeus and I talked about is that we are going to have to
figure out as we go in there, as we increase the troop presence
there, we will have to look at which areas will you secure,
which areas will you convoy through, and which areas will you
have to jump over, in other words, go by vertical lift, much
like we did in Iraq between al Asad and al Taquaddum.
It was a very dangerous road, so we went above it, took C-
130s and C-17s and basically took all air eligible cargo for
the Marines and took it over the place where they were under
attack, and I think that we will look at the same way in
Afghanistan.
Mr. Taylor. Mr. Abercrombie.
Mr. Abercrombie. General, I am a little disappointed in the
testimony here with regard to what the chairman was just
speaking about.
There is no significant--at least I don't have in front of
me any significant maps or topography or any testimony that I
can see with regard to where you get the idea that it would
take 5 years to build a road or 10 years to build a railroad.
You say in your testimony that you have made significant
progress in partnership with the Department of State about
establishing new routes, but there is nothing here, at least in
the testimony to me, about anything--of consultations with the
Pakistan government, about whether or not to have, say, a
cooperative venture coming out of the Arabian Sea, moving
toward southern Afghanistan.
I mean, I suppose we can do this all on our own, but that
is what I thought you were going to be talking about today.
What is the origin of your idea 5 years for a road and 10
years for a railroad?
General McNabb. Chairman, that was in discussion with the
theater, talking to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and talking
to Pakistan, taking a look at what those roads look like, using
our intelligence (INTEL) sources.
I would also say I am open to continuing to work that. I
think that any alternative that we can do is useful, Chairman.
Please don't get me wrong.
Mr. Abercrombie. And in your testimony, you say, for
example, that you had to fly. You were apparently able to put
something together pretty quick here, Georgian troops serving
in Iraq back to Georgia in less than 92 hours.
You flew 14 C-17 missions to get 1,700 Georgian troops back
to Georgia. You had humanitarian rations that went.
In other words, if it is a priority, one would think that
the United States could move a hell of a lot faster than 5
years or 10 years. In other words, an alternative route to this
northern--various northern distribution routes, which includes,
for example, going through Georgia, is not a priority.
Can we conclude that?
General McNabb. Chairman, please don't conclude that. What
we have done is gone every place we can to see what kind of
network we can come in by.
I would tell you that the lines of communication are very
different than, obviously, our ability to do air, and air is
kind of your ultimate flexibility. And in fact, if we had to do
everything by air into Afghanistan, that is what we would do.
You would see like a Berlin----
Mr. Abercrombie. I understand that. I am talking about
whether our sense of priority comes in.
Let me ask you, then. Set aside the politics of it for the
moment and consider, for our conversation's sake, that we were
making this a priority, moving in from the Arabian Sea, as
directly north as possible out of port on the Arabian Sea near
the Iranian border or west of Karachi, going into southern
Pakistan.
Now, I am presuming that if you know--if you even have a
number of years attached to road and rail, that this has been
looked at in some detail.
What would it take to do it? Set aside the politics and set
aside the rest of it. What would it take?
General McNabb. Chairman, I would have to take that for the
record and come back to you, because if you are talking about
building a new road network or a new rail network going through
Pakistan on the west side, which is what I think you are
referring to, we would have to go--we have looked at the
initial portion.
I would say that is right now what we understand the
Pakistanis plan to do. As we look at that, we would have to
come back to you and say, ``Here is what we could do to help.''
Obviously, there are very heavy political issues at bay there
and, obviously, it goes kind of beyond----
Mr. Abercrombie. Wait. The heavy political issues. You are
talking about Pakistan, ostensibly an ally, whom you say wants
to do this, so that it would just be Pakistan and ourselves on
a project that both want to get done or could get--one wants to
do and the other could be of assistance in doing, that we could
control, that we could monitor, as opposed to coming through
China, coming through Russia, coming through God knows how many
multiple political and regional issues elsewhere, along
commercial routes that are impossible to monitor and to guard,
let alone taking into account military cargo that has to go
through.
Commercial cargo is tough enough as it is. Forgive me, but
taking it for the record, why isn't that available right now?
The reason that that is so important is I can't even begin
to figure out how many years we intend to stay in Afghanistan,
let alone what we are going to do when we get there.
Your own testimony this morning says you don't have a clear
idea of where troops are going, what they are going to do. You
even talk about having to leapfrog different areas.
You could be dealing with hundreds-of-thousands of troops
before this is over. We are stumbling on into--well, I won't
get into the political side of it. You needn't answer anything
about that.
But my point here is if we are going to stumble into
Afghanistan the same way we stumbled into Iraq, which is, from
what I can see, exactly what we are going to do, you have to
have at least as much logistical control as possible.
I sympathize and empathize with what you have to accomplish
in the Transportation Command. This is one of these unified
commands here. Believe me, I totally empathize with what you
are trying to accomplish.
I live in an area 2,500 miles from everything else. I
understand the whole question of transportation, believe me,
from supplies of everything, from food, from oil, from
everything else that we have to get. I understand that. That is
crystal clear what we have to accomplish just to get to Hawaii.
But in this instance, I cannot understand how, if the
Pakistan government wants to do this and we, at a minimum, have
a logistical interest in trying to accomplish it, why this
isn't a higher priority.
General McNabb. Chairman, if I could, maybe I could answer
it this way.
When you look at the requirement that we have to do to make
sure that we sustain our forces and take the unit equipment
through, it ends up being about 78 to 80 containers a day. That
is what it takes.
We are trying right now--and the capacity to go through the
Pak Lines of Communication (LOC) is probably three times that.
So the current Pakistan LOC, that is what it takes.
We are trying to open up, also, from the north, an ability
to do 100 to 200 containers a day so that we have another
option to be able to make sure that we can do that.
We are looking to the south, making sure that we can go
with that, as well. We are making sure that we can go into
Afghanistan by air, if, in fact, we have to do all of that.
All of that is set in place. I will look for any way and we
will--Chairman, we will look at that and we have been looking
at that and I will say that if that ends up making sense
overall, we will be glad to pursue it.
And I will be glad to come back and say ``Here is a way we
could get that done.'' Right now, building that road, given
that you already have an existing infrastructure, it just
becomes a--going through those mountains will not be easy.
Mr. Abercrombie. It all depends on how important it is.
Let me ask you--just indulge me a moment more. Now, there
is talk of sending more troops. Where they are going to be
sent, nobody knows. It is just we are talking numbers now, as
if numbers will do it.
When you did the original report, you are having to do this
as you go along, because the report that we have available to
us from 2005 and the updates and the one that you apparently
are not going to be able to get to us until next month, right?
The update report that we ordered you to do last year.
When we get all these reports, they didn't take into
account--the 2005 couldn't take into account the increase in
the end strength, those kinds of things.
So whether we are talking about Afghanistan or elsewhere,
you have lots more on your plate right now than you did when
that baseline report of 2005 was given to us.
Is that correct?
General McNabb. Chairman, that is true. The mobility
capability study, the things that have changed will be in the
new report, the mobility, capability and requirements study
2016.
So we have taken into account that we are fighting a little
bit differently, the way we are using assets, the growth of the
Army and Marines, and the Future Combat System as the types of
things that they are taking a look at, as well as updated
scenarios.
Mr. Abercrombie. Let me just conclude then. I have gone
over my time.
Do you have then actively under consideration this what I
will call a southern route?
General McNabb. Chairman, we look at every option. It is a
network and I will look--I mean, we ended in Iraq, we built a
route now that goes through Jordan to the port in Aqaba.
We look at every way we could do that would make sense and
this one we will look at, Chairman. And I would say that the
more routes I have, as a logistician, the happier I am.
If I have got four or five routes rather than one, we win.
And what it allows me to do is to tell General Petraeus, ``You
do not need to worry about this.'' We will figure out a way to
get the stuff in so that our forces don't need to worry about
that.
Mr. Abercrombie. Excuse me. Did you say Aqaba? I want to
make sure I understood. Did you say you are considering
utilizing Aqaba?
General McNabb. Chairman, right now, as you think about the
Jordan route, we go all the way to the sea.
Mr. Abercrombie. That is to go into Iraq.
General McNabb. Yes, sir. I am just saying that we have
developed routes that are completely different than when we
started, if we can figure out a way to make that make sense. We
work with everybody involved.
Mr. Abercrombie. If you are using Aqaba, you are certainly
talking about tough conditions, as well, are you not?
General McNabb. Yes, sir.
Mr. Abercrombie. You don't have to see ``Lawrence of
Arabia'' for the 16th time to understand that.
General McNabb. And when you look at the ports in Iraq,
when you think about where we started, coming directly up from
Kuwait, if you look at today, we use Umm Kasar, we use the
Jordan route. We have worked with Turkey to use them, as well.
What we do is we constantly work it to say any way
possible.
Mr. Abercrombie. I would like to be--I, certainly, Mr.
Chairman, request, I would like to be briefed by your command
with regard to what kind of activity has taken place in either
your command or the Pentagon or both with regard to a serious--
I am presuming a serious look at coming out of the Arabian Sea
into Afghanistan.
If we are going to be involved in Afghanistan, we have to
have a supply route that we can control as much as humanly
possible and the fact that there may be logistical or monetary
or political difficulties, to me, is entirely beside the point,
particularly in the context of what the President said last
night with regard to what he considers important or central or
crucial to the question of terrorism.
General McNabb. Chairman, and you all have always been very
supportive. If we can come up with a way, you all have helped
us.
Mr. Abercrombie. Thank you.
General McNabb. And that has not changed and I appreciate
that.
Mr. Taylor. Thank the gentleman.
General, for the record, we have approximately 30,000
troops in Afghanistan now and you are saying it takes about 70
twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) a day to resupply them.
General McNabb. Seventy-eight for the stuff that we use by
ground.
Mr. Taylor. So if the force is increased by 17,000, you
would expect half, again, as many TEUs would be necessary.
General McNabb. Yes, Chairman. And then, obviously, as we
move the forces in, obviously, the movement of those forces
would--the unit equipment will be higher until we get them
moved in and stabilized.
So that is kind of what we are thinking along the lines of.
That will be the requirement. Obviously, everything that we
take that is sensitive we take in by air now and that is what
we will continue to do.
So what we are talking about is the stuff like construction
material, food. That is what we bring in by surface.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, sir.
The chair recognizes the gentleman from Maryland, Mr.
Bartlett.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you very much.
General McNabb, I have in front of me a Congressional
Research Service article, October 10, 2008, entitled ``Military
Airlift: The Joint Cargo Aircraft Program.''
It is a very interesting story of the rather tortured
history of developing intra-theater lift.
I would gather that in Iraq and Afghanistan, that is quite
important. And my question is: what are your thoughts on the
value of the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) to the Air Force and,
in particular, to TRANSCOM?
General McNabb. Certainly, Congressman Bartlett. I have
supported the Joint Cargo Aircraft both for the Air Force and
Army as part of our intra-theater airlift capability that I
think will bring great value to the fight.
Today, we do intra-theater airlift primarily with C-17s and
C-130s, C-130 being the workhorse, but C-17 as we need them,
and that is actually paid great dividends for us both in Iraq
and in Afghanistan.
And I know many of the members of the committee, if not
all, have flown on both C-17s and 130s into both Iraq and
Afghanistan.
The JCA is smaller than a 130 and would allow us to--it
kind of fills a very nice niche of the direct support to the
Army. That is where they are planning to use it.
They were finding that they were burning up CH-47 blades.
So when you look at it from an enterprise standpoint, it would
make sense that you could reduce the wear and tear on them.
You still will have to do helicopter lift, but that allows
you to only do it when you need to do the vertical lift using
helicopters.
The Special Operations Forces (SOF) also have a need. So
you put those two in and, from our standpoint, sometimes tails
are more important than capacity, especially when you talk
about a dispersed operation, where we anticipate we will have
in Afghanistan, where you have these smaller forward operating
bases where you need to get one or two pallets in, you don't
need six or eight pallets.
So the JCA will allow us to more optimize the 130s and the
C-17s. And so it kind of fills a very nice niche in there,
especially when you talk about unconventional warfare or being
able to resupply a dispersed force. That is what we see.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you very much.
I have a question about heavier lift, the C-5 and the C-17.
The early assessment indicated that we needed 111 re-engined
and modernized C-5s. The cost went up and so our need, in
quotation marks, kind of ``went down.'' We now have 52.
And my question is: Is 52 enough? If it is not enough, what
is the way forward, to look at the other 59 or look at the C-
17?
General McNabb. Congressman Bartlett, you and I and this
committee, we have talked a lot about this over the years
before as the Air Mobility Command commander.
As Chairman Abercrombie talked about, the mobility/
capability study was kind of at the forefront and it said, at
the end of that, we need about 300, it is 292 to 383, but we
need about 300 strategic lifters and, at that point, we said
that would be 180 C-17s and 111 C-5s, 112, at that point,
modernized, so re-engined.
But like anything, that was based on price and as the cost
on the re-engining of the C-5 went up, then you have to make
tradeoffs and decide what do we do about that increased cost of
the C-5 re-engining program.
The Nunn-McCurdy breach, which we came back to the Congress
with, had everybody involved, to include the requirements side
under the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC), got all
the services, got TRANSCOM, and said, ``Okay, what are we going
to do about this and what is the best way forward given that
cost increase, what should we do.''
And out of that Nunn-McCurdy, we decided that the 205 C-17s
that we have now, if you modernize the 52, as you mentioned,
and then do an avionics modernization program on the remaining
C-5s, we actually grow the force structure a little bit, but we
still meet the requirements of 33.95 million ton miles that we
must have in our organic fleet.
So that is where it sits right now. The Nunn-McCurdy was
very well vetted. Everybody played in that and that is kind of
what we did to make up for the fact that the re-engining
program became too costly to do on the C-5As.
I would say that if that cost comes down, in other words,
our first one has been delivered, we will see how it does. The
test has gone well. The reliability has gone well. We are very
hopeful and that does give us an option that if, in fact, that
cost comes down or other events, like the outcome of the new
study dictates, we can take another look to see if we want to
do more of those.
But it does give us a little bit of an insurance policy,
if, in fact, we want to do that. But again, it will really be
on cost and that is tended to be the big issue that has always
come up on this.
As with any acquisition program, competition really does
work and, in fact, that you have other options, it allows you
to say, ``Okay, what are we going to do best now if that is
going to be a cost overrun.''
Mr. Bartlett. I understand that competition in this program
is a little difficult since we don't own the technical data
which we paid for.
Are we going to stop this kind of contracting so that we
can, as you indicated, achieve the advantages of competition in
the future?
General McNabb. Congressman Bartlett, I would have to defer
to the services on that, but I would say that anything that
makes our acquisition process better, obviously, all of us are
for.
And I would say that the fact that when you really bring
competition and you make it full in every way you can, it
really does pay big dividends for us and certainly does for me
as the TRANSCOM commander.
Mr. Bartlett. But isn't it true on this program that we
really can't compete it because we don't own the data?
General McNabb. Well, the competition, obviously, has been
whether or not you do additional C-17s. That has been the
competition against the re-engining program.
Mr. Bartlett. I am talking about the C-5 program. We really
cannot compete that one, can we, because we do not own the
data?
General McNabb. You mean within the C--you mean have
somebody else do the C-5, the upgrade.
Mr. Bartlett. Yes. My understanding is we do not own that
data, so we cannot compete it.
General McNabb. Congressman, that would be my
understanding, as well, but I would have to come back for the
record.
Mr. Bartlett. This has happened a number of times and I
think, as a committee, we are concerned that we ought not
contract this way.
The taxpayer is paying for it. The taxpayer ought to own
it. And we find that the contracts are written such that, at
the end of the day, we pay for it, but somebody else owns it,
so that we have a noncompetitive situation.
This is not in the best interest of either the taxpayer or
our services and I would hope that we would end this kind of
contracting.
General McNabb. Congressman Bartlett, that certainly makes
sense to me and we will certainly pass that back to the
services, because I do think they are looking at all of those
things to make sure that they enhance that.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Bartlett. You have raised an
excellent point.
I am going to ask Captain Ebbs to see if that is the law of
the land now and if it is not, we will certainly welcome a
Bartlett amendment to the Seapower markup this year that says
that from now on, whenever we purchase something, we get
technical rights.
The chair now recognizes, in the order that people were
here, by seniority, that were here at the gavel, the gentleman
from Texas, Mr. Ortiz.
Mr. Ortiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General, thank you so much for your service and for
testifying before this committee today.
The mobility capability study didn't account for 159
percent utilization rate of the current fleet of C-17 aircraft
and, as Chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee, I am very
concerned that the continued utilization rate of our strategic
airlifters will affect our long-term readiness.
What steps are being taken to reduce utilization rates to
avoid the unnecessary aging of the aircraft?
And I just came from another part of the world, some of us,
as you know, Okinawa and Guam and Korea, and we have another
serious problem with North Korea.
And I know that for you to be able to move some of the
equipment or personnel, maybe it takes tankers to refuel them
and I know it probably takes so many tankers to refuel so many
jet fighters or so many Airborne Warning and Control System
(AWACS).
As far as equipment, for you to be able to do the job that
you will have to do, do you feel that you have adequate
equipment to do that now?
General McNabb. Congressman Ortiz, I do and I think
especially with the modernization programs that we have on the
books and the great support of both these committees, when I
look at the airlift and sealift accounts, you all have been
very good about helping us make sure we have the resources that
we need.
Obviously, that never stops. You have got to constantly
continue resourcing that, recapitalizing and modernizing the
fleet.
As you know, we use our commercial partners to a great
degree, our civil reserve air fleet, on the air side, our visa
program on the sea side, and when you think about what that
brings, those fleets are being constantly upgraded and I would
say that that really has paid big dividends for us.
Our merchant mariners, their ability to man that, we have
got that all worked out. So whenever we have to surge, they are
all set. And I think those programs have really shown their
value, especially over the last seven years.
And I think that one of the things that we are watching
very closely, especially with the downturn in the economy, is
to make sure that if there is excess capacity out there, that
we upgrade both our sealift fleet and our air fleet on the
commercial side with the newer, more modern types of vessels
and aircraft.
And it is an opportunity and I have talked to all the
carriers about that, and I think that that is the way we stay
at this. We just constantly make sure that we are getting the
best value out of the ships that we hold and I do think that is
working.
Mr. Ortiz. Have you had problems getting the equipment to
the areas? I know that drivers have been killed and we are
talking about moving so many containers and stuff like that.
Are we losing any of the equipment?
Chairman Abercrombie raised a question. If we bring in
30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and if we are having problems
equipping them now because of the violence and because they are
attacking our convoys, can we do that in a way where we don't
put our troops in harm's way?
General McNabb. Congressman Ortiz, I believe so and one of
the things that I--with the tools that you all have given us,
again, we have lots of options to make sure that we get the
equipment that they need in.
As we were talking before about the 78 containers a day
that we need to kind of hold even, make sure that we get the
stuff in to the theater that they need, again, that is stuff
that comes in by ground, if you think about it, that is stuff
that if, in fact, you don't get it, we can get it in the next
day, it is stuff like construction materials, cement.
It is food, it is water. It is things that as long as we
get more in than that 78, we are okay. And we watch our 7-day
average. Our 7-day average this week was--if you look at how
much we have been getting in, it is about 140 containers a day.
I watch that every day to make sure that we can get that
through. As we do the surge of the--as we increase the number
of troops in Afghanistan, there will be a new number that we
want to make sure that we can get in.
As Chairman Abercrombie and I were discussing, we will look
at every avenue that we can get in and try to figure out the
cheapest and best way and if that cheapest and best way doesn't
work, we will figure out another way.
Sometimes it is more expensive and I will say, ultimately,
if we have to bring it in by air, obviously, that is much more
expensive, but we can do that. And that is how we said it for
General Petraeus to say however you need--my job is to make
sure that we can get that stuff through no matter what the
threat will be.
You bring up a great point. If you ask me what I worry
about at night, it is the fact that our supply chain is always
under attack. My job, I think, that you have given to us is to
make sure that we get that through regardless of the attacks on
it, because you don't want to make this a vulnerability. You
don't want to have people think that it is a vulnerability, and
I, quite, frankly, do not think it is.
I think we will get the stuff through. That is the part
that I would play in.
Mr. Ortiz. And the reason I ask you, General, is because I
know that there have been thousands of weapons missing that we
cannot account for, into the hundreds of thousands of guns and
weapons, even though we know that most of the lethal weapons
are airlifted, not sent on convoys.
But still, I just hope that whatever we send to our troops
get to our troops, because we hate to see these types of lethal
weapons be used against our troops. So that is another concern
that I have.
General McNabb. Chairman, that is an absolutely excellent
concern and that is why when we say any sensitive, any kinetic
kinds of material for our forces we bring in by air.
Right now, all the MRAPs come in by air into Afghanistan,
Strykers, all of that stuff will be moved by air because of the
sensitivity. We will not send that through the ground line of
communication because of the attacks.
But when I think about the ground lines being under attack,
I think about piracy, I think about shooting at our aircraft.
Obviously, again, with the support of these two committees in
support of our defensive systems that go on our aircraft, all
of that plays to allow us to make sure that we get the stuff
through and that is our job and that is what we will do.
The fourth area that we, quite frankly, get attacked at is
our cyber and we have people looking every day, because if you
can figure out what people are doing logistically, you many
times can figure out what they are doing.
And we know that, but the nature of our job, we end up
saying, ``Here is how we will do that.''
Mr. Ortiz. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you.
The chair recognizes the gentleman from Connecticut, Mr.
Courtney, for five minutes.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Actually, I just have a quick follow up to Mr. Bartlett's
questions regarding the Joint Cargo Aircraft.
General, as you know, the issue of where the home is for
that program has been kind of a punching bag up here for the
last couple of years.
The quadrennial roles and missions review report that was
issued last month stated that the Department found that the
option that provided the most value to the joint force was to
assign the C-27 to the Air Force and the Army, which would be a
very good outcome as far as Air National Guards are concerned.
And I just want to ask you, for the record, do you agree
with that conclusion?
General McNabb. Yes, Congressman. What I would say is as
long as we have common standards and that when you bring it
forward, it fits into our existing system, which everybody has
agreed it will do, whether it is Army, whether it is Air Force,
whether it is Air National Guard, Army National Guard, and
everybody has agreed to that.
And that has to do with not only the direct support to the
forces on the ground providing that capability, but it is also
the ability that if you have got those excess, that they fall
into the common user pool so that we can use them.
All of that movement, especially as a distribution process
owner, I care about all of that stuff, so as long as it fits in
there. And right now, everybody has agreed that it will.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Courtney.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr.
Marshall.
Mr. Marshall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I guess I will start by following up on JCA issues, as
well.
The program, as originally envisioned, contemplated a lot
more platforms and now I think both services have greatly
reduced what they anticipated taking advantage of.
Where are we as far as making decisions concerning long-
term sustainment, modernization, maintenance is concerned?
There was a split of view between the Army and the Air
Force. The Army doesn't really have the depot capacity that
must be maintained for the good of the country over a long
period of time and, consequently, filled with work. So the Army
was heading towards Contractor Logistics Support (CLS),
contractor maintenance.
And the Air Force, of course, was pretty anxious to get
data rights and to have an understanding with the contractor
concerning the transfer of responsibility to a depot in the
original acquisition agreements, both by the Army and the Air
Force.
Where are we on that, do you know?
General McNabb. Congressman, I would have to go back and
take that for the record. But in general, I think they are
still have the discussion, especially as they are working
through the Special Operations Force buy, as well, to make sure
that as you look at all--because you will have SOF, Army and
Air Force--how do we best look at it as an enterprise and how
we will best do that.
I know there are a lot of discussions that are going on and
I know that in the Pentagon, it doesn't come under me as
TRANSCOM. So I would have to make sure that folks got an answer
back to you on that.
Mr. Marshall. I think it is widely conceded at this point
that the C-17 acquisition process was flawed because we simply
didn't take into account, appropriately take into account the
need for a gradual transition to depot maintenance, sustainment
and modernization.
And so we are just sort of struggling back and forth with
Boeing on how we are actually going to accomplish that, and I
am sure it is costing us a lot more money than it should have
had we properly planned for this in advance.
So whatever influence you and TRANSCOM can have on the
acquisition teams to get this done right. There is an
additional challenge, obviously, and that is you have got two
branches, not just one, that are detailed with the
responsibility to somehow come together and make this happen
appropriately.
Are we in the process now of stockpiling, trying to
stockpile critical commodities now that commodity prices are
lower?
Some of the dramatic cost increases, whether it is
modernization or it is initial development, some of the
dramatic cost increases have been associated with the
contractor referencing huge, extraordinary increase in
commodity prices for critical components.
Are we taking advantage right now of very low commodity
prices to go ahead and stockpile?
General McNabb. Chairman, I would have to check the
specifics, but it is kind of the same issue we were talking
about on our sealift and airlift fleet. You want to take
advantage of the market when it is like this, to make sure that
you don't miss an opportunity, and I will definitely take that
back and ask that question.
Obviously, it is an acquisition and a service question, but
I will go back and ask it. I couldn't agree with you more.
Mr. Marshall. Well, thank you. Ultimately, it is going to
wind up affecting your mission to the extent you are not able
to acquire the assets that you need to accomplish the mission,
because it is just too costly.
There has been this back-and-forth concerning whether or
not to Reliability Enhancement and Re-engining Program (RERP)
the C-5As and we have got the C-5A which has been RERP'd and
Avionics Modernization Program (AMP)'d and is now being tested.
We have had various estimates concerning the appropriate
number, the total number of C-17s that we are going to need and
what the size of our fleet, C-17/C-5, should be.
If I recall correctly, in the Mobility Capabilities Study
(MCS), they were contemplating that the C-5As would all be
RERP'd and AMP'd.
General McNabb. Right.
Mr. Marshall. Does that say that the MCS really--the figure
adopted by the MCS, which is a flawed study and I think we all
concede that it is a flawed study at this point, that figure
should be higher, assuming that we don't RERP the C-5A.
General McNabb. Right, yes. In fact, when you look at the
fact that right now our program is to have 350, that is what
came out of the--315, which came out of the Nunn-McCurdy,
before we were at the 292 and then to 300 level, it was to make
up for that lost capacity on not re-engining the C-5As.
Again, I think that is one that, as we get more tests on
the C-5s--as you mentioned, we have got three flying, one
delivered, that we are going to start taking a good, hard look
at and if the reliability and the cost stays down, I think that
gives us--that will be one thing that we will consider.
I tell all of the major suppliers that what I am looking
for is the perfect airplane for free and then we can negotiate
from there. Obviously, if they can get that cost down, it
changes the dynamics and then things that may not have made
sense before make sense now.
And I think that now that the C-5 is starting to move, that
re-engining program, I think it could sell itself and I think
that is a good incentive for them.
Mr. Marshall. I appreciate the realism of your approach.
Would you like to take over Wall Street for us?
Thank you, sir.
Mr. Taylor. The chair recognizes Mr. Akin and then we will
take a recess. There are three votes on the floor and I think
it is about eight minutes until we have to be on the floor.
Mr. Akin.
STATEMENT OF HON. W. TODD AKIN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI,
RANKING MEMBER, SEAPOWER AND EXPEDITIONARY FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Akin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I had really--you did a great job in a private meeting
a couple of weeks ago answering a lot of my questions.
Just one quick one. The maps you have given us are not
scaled. What is the distance across Pakistan there if you go--
assume that you have got containers ships or whatever it is in
the Arabian Sea. You want to go across Pakistan into
Afghanistan.
How many miles is that really before you hit the
Afghanistan border?
General McNabb. Depending on where you go, I think it is in
the neighborhood of 400 to 500. That is what hits me, but I
will----
Mr. Akin. Four to 500.
General McNabb. That is what I would say.
Mr. Akin. So you are still talking about a hike and a lot
of mountains in the process, right?
General McNabb. Right.
Mr. Akin. Yes, okay. Thank you very much. That is all I
had.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Taylor. General, we are going to take about a 20-minute
break for those three votes.
We have got a rather large map of Pakistan and Afghanistan
and I do think it would be worthwhile for the committee members
if you could give us the visual of where the ships land in
Karachi--it is my understanding it is about a five-day truck
route just to transit Pakistan--and for the committee to get a
full understanding of the challenges that you face and thus far
have done a very good job of overcoming.
General McNabb. Absolutely.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you.
[Recess.]
Mr. Taylor. General, thanks again for being with us and I
apologize for the delay. There will be votes again in about 20
minutes. I regret that none of my Republican colleagues have
made it back yet, but I hope they will forgive us if we
continue.
During the break--we had asked the General prior to the
break if he would explain the route through Pakistan, how the
ships are unloaded at the port of Karachi, and he made, during
the break, a very good point that we have already lost about
130 contract drivers transiting Pakistan.
We don't really need to tip our hand to our foes and
potential foes any further.
So I would hope that you would make yourself available to
any member of the committee that would like this information,
but I very much respect your point that we just don't need to
tip our hand any further to our foes.
Having said that, the chair now recognizes the gentleman
from Arkansas, Dr. Snyder.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for letting
me participate in your hearing, even though I am not a member
of this subcommittee.
One of the reasons, General McNabb, I wanted to attend
today is I think what you do is one of the most complicated
things that is done in the military, how to figure out how to
keep things moving around in a timely way, both on an ongoing
basis, but then, also, on an emergent basis.
And I had two questions I wanted to ask about. One is very
specific about the C-130 and then a more general question.
My C-130 question is: On page 8 of your written statement,
you say, ``The Air Force also needs the flexibility to retire
and replace aircraft at the end of their service life,'' and I
think you are talking about the C-130E models there.
I have C-130s in my district, but I don't find there is any
value in keeping planes that you don't want, that don't fly or
we don't think are reliable.
I don't understand the issue. Mr. Saxton and I, before he
retired, we kept pushing to give you all the flexibility that
you want. On the Senate side, there is resistance to that.
Would you explain to me where the breakdown is, because it
is not as simple as just members want to have tails in their
district? I think it is more complicated than that.
Why are we having the problem that we are having and have
we made any improvement in the last year or two on the language
in the defense bill?
General McNabb. Thanks, Congressman Snyder, and great to
see you again, sir.
We have asked the committees on a number of occasions, that
is, you bring in new airplanes like ``Js'', we would like to
get rid of the older stuff because our requirements are--we
roughly need 400 C-130s, equivalents, and right now our plan is
to make that up of C-130Js and C-130Hs through H1, 2 and 2.5
and 3s.
And our plan is to do avionics modernization program
upgrades on the ``Hs'' so that they are a common fleet. Right
now, 222 is what we plan to do on that.
You put the ``Js'' in there and then we have the ``H''
model 130s that we are taking a good look at, at whether or not
it is better to put the avionics modernization program in there
or replace them with the ``Js'' as they become available.
The older airplanes, like the ``E'' models, obviously,
having opportunities that if, in fact, we wanted to take one of
those and put a center wing box and do all the upgrades to
them.
I think there are airplanes like the C-130Es, they don't
have the -15 engines, so it really doesn't make sense for us to
put any kind of additional investment into the C-130Es. So
basically, we are ready to retire those as we get the ``Js.''
Where we stand now, you all have been very supportive of
that and we have been able to start clearing those 130Es off
the ramps. The same thing we can say about the KC-135Es.
Dr. Snyder. You still have legal restrictions, though, do
you not, on the ability of you all to manage the ``E'' model
fleet?
General McNabb. We have type 1000 storage that says we want
to be able to get to them if we need to. I think that once we
get the airplanes in place, the crews are all trained up,
again, we would come back to the committee and say, ``We really
would like to be able to just kind of get away from the type
1000 storage and so forth,'' because we would like to use some
of those parts.
The other one that I would mention for the committee is
some of these airplanes we probably could put into foreign
military sales. If you put a center wing box, they may not need
the avionics upgrades, depending on where the countries are.
And there is some resale value of that equipment that,
while it wouldn't be pertinent perhaps to what we are doing in
Afghanistan or other places, there are other countries that
perhaps could put a little investment in there and be able to
have a pretty good 130.
Dr. Snyder. There also is the cost of putting them in the
type 1000 storage, is there not?
General McNabb. Right.
Dr. Snyder. Which you are all are being required to do and
you would prefer not to do and yet it is millions-of-dollars
that are going to maintain these planes in a status that you
would just as soon not have them in.
General McNabb. Absolutely.
Dr. Snyder. Would you provide me and the committee with the
language that you would think would be helpful?
General McNabb. Absolutely.
Dr. Snyder. I don't think a light ever went on, Mr.
Chairman, but I wanted to ask just one final question.
How do you test whether or not a product or commodity, a
part, goes from A to B in a timely way? What kind of test do
you run that tells you that something that is on a shelf at a
depot somewhere in the Continental United States (CONUS)
actually ends up in the hands of the mechanic that wants to put
the fan belt in the vehicle?
General McNabb. Last year was our year of metrics and one
of the big things you have to do on an enterprise like this is
to be able to watch the stuff and be able to say--and track it
en route, if you can.
I would tell you that is one of the big improvements that
have been made. I would talk even on the Pak LOC. Our ability
to do in-transit visibility on the containers has made a big
difference on knowing where things are in that supply chain,
all the way to the point of being able to say we need to
reprioritize the flow because the pipeline--we have had the
bridge go down, so we have got to reprioritize how we get the
flow in.
Dr. Snyder. Now, when you say that last year was the year
of the metrics, are we saying the first five or six years of
this was not a year of measuring how things go?
General McNabb. No, sir. I would say that we have been
doing the metrics, but we have said that we are getting to the
point where, as the distribution process ownership, with my
other hat, our ability to watch all this and measure it and
say, ``Here is how that flow goes from beginning to end,''
shortening that supply chain, just like industry, you save lots
of dollars.
If you can build trust into the system, basically, people
don't order stuff two and three times. I use FedEx and UPS as
an example. They changed the culture, because you really did
trust that they would get it there, and you also knew you could
go check on it if you had to.
Most of us don't check. If somebody says they FedEx'd it,
we don't check it unless it didn't make it there. But we trust
that it will get there.
It is the same thing here. It also allows us to make
decisions on multimodal. In some cases, it is faster to do a
combination of surface and air rather than trying to do it all
by air.
That is what TRANSCOM is doing, as the distribution process
owner, is taking a look at all of those and saying, ``Okay,
what is the best way we can do this.''
Some of our earlier discussion, the more options we have
means that we can do this a lot of different ways. In many
cases, using normal commercial practices, using normal
commercial routes and letting our commercial carriers take care
of this is a much better way than if we put a military solution
in there, and you all have seen where we have done that and
what a difference it is made.
Dr. Snyder. Part of that commercial practice is how you
order, too. You don't necessarily need to order one fan belt to
be delivered. You all would probably do better if you delivered
a box of fan belts so you only had to do it one time.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your courtesy.
Mr. Taylor. The chair recognizes the gentleman from
California, Mr. Hunter.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General, thank you.
Could you tell me about your involvement with ARCENT, Army
Central Command, at Camp Arifjan and how you are going to be
working with them for the Iraq exfiltration?
General McNabb. Sure. Congressman Hunter, great to see you.
In fact, I was just down seeing General Lovelace, about two
months ago, went by and saw them, talked about as they look at
what they need to do across the theater, but certainly in Iraq,
as to how do we make sure that we have got the flow right.
In fact, we did have discussions about the different
avenues by which we can have stuff go in and come out of that
theater, especially Iraq.
One of the big discussions was, for instance, the port at
Umm Kasar. The other one was that line of communication through
Jordan and talking about how we can look at the types of things
that we need to have come out and then what is the best route
to do that by; also, discussion about what we need to do by
air, by surface, to make sure that we sort that out.
So I think that the discussion that CENTCOM is having, in
general, we have been in the middle of and, certainly, General
Lovelace and that--with the Coalition Forces Land Component
Commander (CFLCC), that is obviously one that will be big-time
on how we do that with them.
Mr. Hunter. Got you. I was there about five days ago
talking to him, the general there at Camp Arifjan, and they
were not too--they didn't know when exactly we were going to
have our expel at that point. That was last week. We now know,
seeing the paper, it might be August of next year.
Their timeline, from what they were saying, that timeline
would be extremely difficult to meet to leave properly in a
``non-dirty'' way, because that is about 18 months out. That is
about the bare minimum that they would need to get everything
out.
Are you guys involved with them to speed that up and make
that a non-dirty move from Iraq out?
General McNabb. Congressman, what we have done is looked at
what will they need us to do and I would say that the strategic
lift portion of this is not the showstopper. So we have more
than enough to be able to handle their needs, if they need to
accelerate it, but that is not the chokepoint.
Obviously, they are working with that. What we have made
sure is that we have ship availability and aircraft
availability to be able to make sure that we can handle that,
whatever service requirement they have.
Mr. Hunter. Are there things you can do that they aren't
asking for?
General McNabb. From my end, we have plenty and they know
it. So it is just not that kind of an issue.
One thing we have said is, ``We will work with you,
whatever you all need,'' to be able to make sure that we can
open up that pipeline to whatever they need.
As you say, it is really the issue of how much time they
need to prepare the equipment to move it as we bring it back.
Mr. Hunter. True, yes. That is a big chokepoint, with the
wash rags and the Agriculture Department (AG) check and
everything else.
General McNabb. You bet.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, General.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Taylor. Are you through, Mr. Hunter?
Mr. Hunter. Yes, Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you very much.
The chair recognizes the gentleman from Virginia, Mr.
Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General McNabb, thank you for joining us today, appreciate
your great work there in moving our folks and all their
supplies around. So we really appreciate that.
One question. When I was most recently in Afghanistan,
there was some discussion about the movement of supplies from
Pakistan into Afghanistan and some interruption in those supply
chains, and then I know, as we previously talked about, about
air transport and the number of C-17s available.
Can you shed a little more light on the current status of
movement of supplies into Afghanistan, what the challenges are,
what your contingencies are to deal with interruptions there?
And I know there was some talk there, Chairman Taylor and
myself had some discussions about airlift capacity, what
capacity is there, and what are the contingencies to deal with
the things we are facing, the interruption of supply chain.
General McNabb. Thank you, Congressman.
As we look at that theater, what we are trying to do is
make sure we have as many options as we have, especially on the
ground kinds of transportation.
Obviously, getting into Afghanistan, being a landlocked
country, there is not a whole bunch of ways to come in and
basically there are five major gates, if you will, that allow
us to come in.
And from the south, we use the Torkham gate and the Chaman
gate. There are also three from the north, Termez being the
major one that goes that.
What we try to do is make sure that we can--by having
multiple options, you also have competition between these
different ways and we try to make sure that we are not taking
sensitive--everything that is sensitive/kinetic we take by air.
The things that we are talking about are like food, like
water, like fuel, like construction material, those kinds of
things, APs and foreign military sales.
What we are trying to do is make sure we have lots of ways
to be able to increase that flow if we need to, especially as
we increase forces in Afghanistan, and that if, in fact, one
way is shut down, for whatever reason, we have other ways to be
able to surge so that it doesn't impact the war fighter.
Today, I use a measure of 78 containers a day. It kind of
keeps us even with the forces that we have and kind of keeps
everything flowing. That, obviously, will increase a little
bit. And what I do is try to make sure that we are always
beating 78 on the average, of which we do. Our average is about
138 for this week, to give you an example, and we have averaged
about 90 since the beginning of January.
So we have kind of stayed ahead of the flow. The second
part to that is we know that, again, if you have multiple
options, if we end up having to do some of the stuff by air, we
will do that, and we have promised the folks on the ground that
``If you have something that was supposed to get to you on a
surface and, for some reason, it doesn't make it through, you
let us know and we will bring that in by air.''
I have not had to do that. So that is kind of the ultimate
guarantee, if you will.
The other portion to that is we have worked with the folks
in Afghanistan, along with CENTCOM, to look at all of the
airfields and the ports going in there to see how we can
streamline that so you can make the pipe larger.
Termez would be an example that we would like to be able to
increase the throughput through there. The airfields in Bagram,
Kandahar and Bastian are the three major places that we will be
going into, and we have increased our throughput into those all
the way from an extra--increasing by 50 percent all the way up
to increasing by four times.
That is what we have done, again, in conjunction with the
folks in theater to make sure that we have that option. We
haven't had to use it, but I would say that we want to make
sure that if we do need it, we have it there for General
Petraeus, so that nothing will stop this.
So that is kind of where we are.
Mr. Wittman. One other question. How are our relationships
with the Pakistani groups that are working with us to do the
transport?
I know at some time, there was discussion about how that
dynamic existed between us, as contractors, and them, as
providers.
General McNabb. Absolutely. That is one that is probably
Pakistan--we do normal commercial carriers that will go through
there. A lot of discussion about how the Pakistanis can secure
their routes.
A lot of that is done as the contractors work with the
different trucking companies that they do. They have different
ways of doing that.
In fact, that is exactly what we are going to do in the
north, as well. It is going to be completely commercial. It is
their relationships they already do and it is the movement of
normal commercial cargo.
Lots of discussion that they like to hide in the open,
meaning that you don't want to have this designated that people
would know that it is a shipment by us, and that seems to work
very well, because, obviously, it is part of the normal
commerce that goes through there and it brings capital to that
region.
We keep working with them to make sure that we have
different ways of watching this. One thing that we do have
almost completely on the Pak LOC is satellite trackers so we
can see if something has slowed down, maybe pilferage, maybe
attacked, and we can basically know that very quickly. So if we
have got to supplement, we can do that.
It also allows us, quite frankly, when you have a major
disruption, let's say, a bridge, it allows you to reprioritize
the flow en route and say, ``Okay, now, the unit equipment that
was in the back that is en route, it now needs to go to the
front.''
We are doing that. That is the folks, to be honest with
you, the folks in CENTCOM and our surface deployment and
distribution folks, and they make magic happen and I am still
going, ``Man, it is amazing you can do that,'' but that is what
they are doing and that is why you are not hearing the--when
you hear a bridge go down, we are working through coming
different ways.
So that I want everybody to know we will get the stuff
through. We have other options. Don't ever think that we
totally depend on you and that actually helps the whole system.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield the balance
of my time.
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Hawaii, Mr.
Abercrombie.
Mr. Abercrombie. General McNabb, has the issue between the
Army and your command been resolved with regard to the C-130
and the man-ground vehicle or the future combat system?
General McNabb. Chairman, I think that they have decided
that the future combat system, we would put that on a C-17. I
think they have come to us and said, ``Yes, given the size of
it, we will need to be dependent on the C-17 to move that.''
Is that the question you were asking about?
Mr. Abercrombie. Yes.
General McNabb. Yes, sir.
Mr. Abercrombie. That is if it moves forward.
What about the utilization rate then of the C-17? You
weren't able to anticipate that it is much higher.
Do you need more replacements, what? What is the answer
there?
General McNabb. Chairman, you all have been--if I go back 2
years, the 10 airplanes that you added took us from 180 to 190.
That was really because of the wear and tear on the fleet, as
you have said, basically, the flying hours that we have used
up.
But a lot of it is the type of flying hours that we are
doing in theater. You all have been great about making sure
that our fleet-wide--we are staying about even with the wear
and tear on that fleet.
The additional 15 airplanes, what it will allow us to do is
take the newer airplanes, put them into places where we are
going to do a higher utilization rate and be able to transfer
some of the older airplanes and fly less hours on them.
Mr. Abercrombie. Is there discussion of having more in the
upcoming budget?
General McNabb. Chairman, I know that at the highest levels
in the Pentagon, that is one of the issues that we know we need
to come back to you, and I know that they are discussing that.
Mr. Abercrombie. Part of your testimony--sorry to keep
rolling, but we have to go back and vote again.
Part of your testimony, on page 3, ``U.S. Africa Command
grows and expands its mission,'' one of the scariest sentences
that I have seen, I mean this, one of the scariest sentences
that I have seen in any testimony, ``as the U.S. Africa Command
grows and expands its mission.''
What is its mission, as you understand it?
General McNabb. Well, obviously, I would defer to General
Ward on that, but what I would say is that I know that given
what that continent looks like, the kinds of things that he is
talking about and the kinds of infrastructure they have, I know
that he will be dependent on what TRANSCOM can bring him to
whatever he is asked to do.
Mr. Abercrombie. You say you are going to leverage your
resources and expertise to support this new command. You must
have some idea, then. What is their intention? What have you
been told the Africa Command is supposed to be doing in Africa?
General McNabb. I think it is partnering with the other
countries. It is disaster assistance. It is the kinds of things
that, as you look at U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and you look
at the Africa continent, it is the kinds of things that we did
in Rwanda.
It is kind of the things that we have done on----
Mr. Abercrombie. Are you preparing?
General McNabb [continuing]. Evacuation operations.
Mr. Abercrombie. Are you now engaged in scenarios and
preparing budgets and materiel and personnel for these
scenarios?
General McNabb. Chairman, one thing that they are doing,
they do a number of scenarios that we used to take a look at
what kind of force we need. That is done by the Office of the
Secretary of Defense (OSD). They set different criteria.
Mr. Abercrombie. Were you brought into it?
General McNabb. Yes.
Mr. Abercrombie. Are you currently engaged in gaming
scenarios with regard to the United States, through its Africa
Command, going into Africa?
General McNabb. I would say that we have an illustrative
scenario that would--like Africa and other places in the world
which we know that we may be asked to do, and, yes, we do game
those kinds of scenarios.
Mr. Abercrombie. The Nigerian delta?
General McNabb. Chairman, I think I would rather talk about
that on a closed session.
Mr. Abercrombie. I think we ought to have a closed session.
I think we are, once again, in a situation where we are getting
into--this goes way beyond mission creep.
We have got an African Command. Nobody knows anything about
it. We haven't the slightest clue as to what is involved in
commitments that we may or may not find ourselves in and with
whom.
And so far as I know, there is nothing coming forward in
terms of budget from you--budget implications. Don't you think
that that is something that this committee ought to have a very
clear handle on in the upcoming 2010 fiscal year?
General McNabb. Chairman, I believe this committee
absolutely should be aware of those kinds of discussions,
absolutely.
Mr. Abercrombie. If you had to summarize what you have been
told to this point as to what the mission of the African
Command is, could you summarize that for me?
General McNabb. Chairman, my----
Mr. Abercrombie. In terms of what TRANSCOM is expected to
do.
General McNabb. I think given the distances and the kinds
of scenarios where we have had to do courses of action in
Africa, those are the kinds of things that I would expect that
General Ward would come to me and ask me, ``I need your help to
do these things'' and to be ready to do this if called upon.
When it was under the U.S. European Command (EUCOM), when
Africa responsibilities sat under EUCOM, it was the same. In
other words, EUCOM had responsibilities to Africa and they made
sure that we were ready to support them, if called upon, and
that is kind of where we have been.
Mr. Abercrombie. And it is astounding that we are having
this conversation. Africa is a continent. So we now have a
command--we are now taking an imperial power orientation toward
the entire continent of Africa.
General McNabb. Chairman, I certainly don't believe that to
be true.
Mr. Abercrombie. So you have limited scenarios.
General McNabb. Chairman, when I think about what you--this
country may ask TRANSCOM to do, it may be anywhere in the
world. That could include Africa, that could include South
America.
We do humanitarian assistance and disaster relief to all
parts of the globe. What I try to do is make sure that wherever
you ask us to go, we have the flexibility to deliver to the
combatant commander.
Mr. Abercrombie. I am concerned. I am concerned, General,
that we won't be asking you to do it, that we are going to find
ourselves involved in something again or multiple situations in
Africa that are an extension of foreign policy that may not
have been vetted at all in the United States Congress.
But for purposes of the committee, I think perhaps, then,
Mr. Chairman, we might need to have--even at full committee
level and I think we need to bring it to Chairman Skelton's
attention that we have got to have a thorough vetting of what
is expected of General McNabb and his unified command with
respect to the continent of Africa.
Thank you, General.
General McNabb. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Taylor. General, again, I, on behalf of the committee,
want to thank you for what I consider to be a magnificent job
the men and women in your command do resupplying our troops in
Afghanistan and Iraq, extremely dangerous places for all
involved, and, to the absolute best of my knowledge, you all
have done a magnificent job.
We have asked some questions showing our concerns about
what might happen in Pakistan and I think it is smart for us to
be asking these questions upfront rather than get hit
blindsided should the Pakistani government, either by omission
or commission, decide that they are not going to let us use
that as a route to resupply our troops.
The last thing I would ask you is--and I know that the
President only made these remarks last night, with the
President's announced desire to have American combat troops out
of Iraq by August of 2010.
To what extent have you been involved in the discussions as
to what stays in Iraq, what comes back, because, obviously, it
is going to have enormous budgetary implications for the
Defense Department if an extraordinary amount of equipment is
left behind?
And I only raise this question because I remember the
enormous amount of material that was left behind in Panama and
I thought that was terribly wasteful. For the failure to budget
the necessary resources to bring things home, we left hundreds
of millions of dollars of things that the American taxpayer
paid for, that had to be replaced someplace else.
And I would certainly hope that you will keep the committee
informed of what the plan is, what is going to be left behind,
what do we bring with us, and I would certainly hope that
nothing is left behind that is of value because of the failure
to appropriate the necessary funds to get it home.
General McNabb. Chairman, I would say that in my
discussions, for instance, with General Lovelace, my
discussions with General Odierno, my discussions with Ann
Dunwoody, for instance, the commander of the Army Materiel
Command, they are focused on that to make sure that we have
thought through that and made sure that we have done that as
smartly as possible.
I have been given gross numbers that said this is about the
amount of stuff that we need to move. That is kind of what I
need in scheduling ships and aircraft.
But I do know that they are taking that seriously along the
lines of exactly what you say, to make sure that we are doing
this as smart as possible.
Those discussions, I could tell you, I know that they are
having. I know that we are working through what exactly we
would bring back, what we may end up leaving there.
But I would just say that that is what I have heard so far.
I do know that we have plenty of lift to be able to handle any
requirements they have. So I know that I am not the long pole
in the tent and I just try to make sure that I never am.
So that is kind of where we go.
Mr. Taylor. So what is your target date for that plan to be
in place?
General McNabb. On this one, given that the President
talked about that last night, they are working those final
options now. I would expect that--I mean, we have been--we, the
Department of Defense (DOD), have collectively been working
that to say, hey, depending on what orders he gives, we want to
make sure that we can respond as quickly as possible.
So I know they are into that final phase now.
Mr. Taylor. General, I want to be fair with you, but I also
think it is important for Congress to have some idea of what
you intend to leave behind, some idea of what you intend to
leave behind, some idea of what you intend to either bring back
to the continental United States or transport to Afghanistan.
So what would be a reasonable amount of time to give you in
order for you to get back to us as to what that plan is?
General McNabb. Let me take that for action and I will get
with CENTCOM and be able to come back, and with OSD and the
department, and let them provide that answer back to you, but
say that we have got to do that in a quick manner.
Mr. Taylor. Is 120 days a fair amount of time?
General McNabb. We can start with 120 and then we can--but
it really isn't part of what I would be in the middle of.
Mr. Taylor. Because that was a real-life scenario that
ended up, I believe, on ``60 Minutes'' or ``20/20,'' for the
lack of spending $3,000 or $4,000 to transport something, we
left behind a $0.5 million piece of equipment here, generator
there.
All of those things could certainly have been used if not
by our Federal Government, by the local and state governments,
who would have welcomed those things, and I just don't want to
see that happen again.
General McNabb. Chairman Taylor, I couldn't agree with you
more. I mean, that is exactly right. It is exactly the way we
should do it.
Mr. Taylor. Again, thank you for the great job that the men
and women in your command do.
We are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the subcommittees were
adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
February 25, 2009
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
February 25, 2009
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