[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-34]
FUTURE ROLES AND MISSIONS OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY AND MARINE CORPS
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SEAPOWER AND EXPEDITIONARY FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
MARCH 26, 2009
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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
Heath Bope, Professional Staff Member
Jenness Simler, Professional Staff Member
Elizabeth Drummond, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2009
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, March 26, 2009, Future Roles and Missions of the United
States Navy and Marine Corps................................... 1
Appendix:
Thursday, March 26, 2009......................................... 31
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 2009
FUTURE ROLES AND MISSIONS OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY AND MARINE CORPS
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Akin, Hon. W. Todd, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking
Member, Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee......... 2
Taylor, Hon. Gene, a Representative from Mississippi, Chairman,
Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee................. 1
WITNESSES
Barnett, Dr. Thomas P.M., Senior Managing Director, Enterra
Solutions, LLC................................................. 8
Houley, Rear Adm. William P., USN (Ret.)......................... 4
O'Rourke, Ronald, Specialist in Naval Affairs, Congressional
Research Service............................................... 12
Thompson, Dr. Loren B., Chief Operating Officer, Lexington
Institute...................................................... 10
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Akin, Hon. W. Todd........................................... 37
Barnett, Dr. Thomas P.M...................................... 50
Houley, Rear Adm. William P.................................. 39
O'Rourke, Ronald............................................. 77
Taylor, Hon. Gene............................................ 35
Thompson, Dr. Loren B........................................ 65
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.]
FUTURE ROLES AND MISSIONS OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY AND MARINE CORPS
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Thursday, March 26, 2009.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:02 a.m., in
room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Gene Taylor
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GENE TAYLOR, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
MISSISSIPPI, CHAIRMAN, SEAPOWER AND EXPEDITIONARY FORCES
SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Taylor. The hearing will come to order. Today the
subcommittee meets in open session to explore future naval
capabilities and force structure.
Today's hearing is unique for this subcommittee. We are
typically addressing the budget directly or conducting
oversight on troubled programs. Today, we have the opportunity
to discuss alternative visions of roles and missions for the
United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps with a
very distinguished panel of witnesses.
Today's witnesses have not been handpicked to present any
particular position of force structure requirements. The
subcommittee has been particularly careful not to guide or
steer our witnesses' testimony.
Our panel was selected by their expertise and strategic
analysis along with widespread admiration for their previous
published work. In fact, until I read their prepared testimony,
prior to this hearing, I had no idea what any of them might
say. That is exactly the type of hearing that the ranking
member and I wanted to have.
Sometimes the field will get too focused here in Congress
on budget requests and specific acquisition programs and fail
to stand back and look at the big picture, to verify the
overall strategy of the Navy and our Nation's needs.
Our Navy has evolved over the years to complement the
national strategy. This was true long before we used terms like
``national strategy.'' Our first Navy was a commerce protection
force, not a global power. President Teddy Roosevelt and the
Great White Fleet brought our Nation into preeminence on the
world stage as a naval power, a power that was centered on
battleships.
The Second World War changed the view of seapower to a
carrier battle group and the dominance of air power. Who knows
what the next 30 years will bring? I hope that our witnesses
will share their views on the future force and the challenges
that that force may face.
The fact of the matter is, however, that within a few
weeks, the Department of Defense will send over a budget
request with a detailed plan for the construction of naval
vessels and aircraft. This subcommittee will need to analyze
that request in a very short period of time and make
recommendations to our full committee and into the full House
for acceptance or modification.
That is why a hearing such as today is so useful. Listening
to varying opinions always helps the final decision process. We
have an extremely distinguished panel with us today.
Mr. O'Rourke is no stranger to the subcommittee. We have
routinely relied on his counsel during our yearly budget
deliberations. Dr. Thompson, from the Lexington Institute, is
widely regarded as an expert in naval affairs and has published
extensively on maritime subjects.
Rear Admiral Houley is a retired submarine officer who has
commanded at the ship, squadron, and group level with tours at
the Pentagon crafting naval strategy. I recommend his recent
article in the United States Navy Institute Proceedings
Magazine for a detailed analysis of naval roles and missions.
Dr. Barnett is a widely published author and speaker who
has led a transformation in Pentagon thinking with his first
book, ``The Pentagon's New Map--War and Peace in the 21st
Century.''
I would like to thank all of our witnesses for appearing
with a special thanks to Dr. Barnett for coming from out of
town. We look forward to their discussion today.
Without objection, it is the chair's opinion that due to
the broad topic today, and the probability that the witnesses
would have slightly different viewpoints, the subcommittee will
relax the normal rules for questioning and allow dialogue
between members and follow-up questions without the loss of
time.
I would now like to recognize our friend from Missouri, the
ranking member, Congressman Todd Akin.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Taylor can be found in the
Appendix on page 35.]
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 must say that I
have been looking forward to our hearing this morning with some
considerable anticipation because of your reputations that
proceed you. And as a new ranking member on this committee, I
am in a sense the new guy. And so I have a lot of questions and
that makes it even more interesting.
And I do understand that without a clear understanding of
the world in which the Navy will operate in the coming years
and the missions the Navy will likely be called upon to
perform, we cannot possibly put any procurement or research
program into context.
Therefore, it is useful to seek the Navy's opinion on these
matters. I had the opportunity to discuss some of these ideas
at length with the Chief of Naval Operations this week,
actually about a 10-hour meeting with him in an airplane where
he was cooped up and couldn't escape.
I am confident that the Navy is actively attempting to
adapt to changing threats, the diversity of threats and to meet
the challenges of their latest maritime strategy. But any large
institution has difficulty responding rapidly to changing
threats and strategic objectives.
Sadly, such was the case with the Navy in 1941. The service
and the Nation had to come to grips with the power of the
airplane as a naval weapon the hard way. I believe that a
similar paradigm shift may be underway, and we should do our
best not to be taken by surprise.
This is why it is also important for the subcommittee to
hear from independent observers, such as yourselves, to seek
your assessment of the significant changes to the external
environment in which our sea services operate.
We also seek your guidance as to the tough choices the
services will have to make going forward. I hope this hearing
will be a way for us to explore the constraint and assumptions
that should frame any reasonable discussion about future force
structure alternatives as well as possible force size.
I hope that you can offer suggestions about how we should
evaluate recommendations that come to us via the fiscal year
2010 budget, the naval operating concept and the quadrennial
defense review. For example, does Navy remain more or less
relevant over the next 25 years given the United States
strategic objectives, anticipated global threats and balance of
power?
What is the role of our current weapons systems in the
future? What is the role of emerging technology such as
directed energy and unmanned vehicles in the future force
structure? How important is the role of information in the
future, and how should the Navy position itself to connect,
analyze, disseminate and deny its adversaries access to
information?
Given the cost of shipbuilding, how does the Navy maintain
a global presence, incise itself for peacetime operations? Is
it through ships or should it be through other platforms?
With these questions in mind, Mr. Chairman, I will
conclude. I have slightly longer statement that I would ask be
entered for the record. Thank you again for holding this
hearing today.
To our witnesses, I appreciate you being with us and truly
look forward to our discussion. Thank you.
Mr. Taylor. Without objection, the gentleman's full
statement will be entered for the record.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Akin can be found in the
Appendix on page 37.]
Mr. Taylor. I am told that Dr. Barnett is tied up in
traffic. So if we don't mind, we are going to begin with
Admiral Houley.
Admiral, normally in this committee, we ask our witnesses
to speak for five minutes. Given the good fortune that we have
to have all of our witnesses here today, we are going to
deviate. So please, if you can, try to keep it under 10.
STATEMENT OF REAR ADM. WILLIAM P. HOULEY, USN (RET.)
Admiral Houley. I am very proud to be here this morning.
And I am also very appreciative that you and your committee
would take the time to have this kind of a conversation along
the way, because even if we only have the slightest opportunity
to influence the deliberations that are going on right now, I
know that we are very, very appreciative.
Everybody thinks their own point of view is absolutely the
right one. I am certainly no exception to that, and I find as I
get older, I become even more and more certain of my position,
even though the total number of facts I have to support it
seems to go down with my age.
I am honored, Mr. Chairman, to be asked to join this
discussion, and I am well aware that most of you in this room
have been considering force structure issues for many, many
years. I also know it is easy to criticize any end result.
I certainly have done so over my years of service. Let me
first frame my remarks as follows: I respect the fact that
those in a position of active Navy leadership are better
informed than myself. I hope that none of my comments are
interpreted as a challenge to the Navy's budget request.
I appreciate that every new year brings special
circumstances, and obviously this year, in particular, is no
exception. And the remarkable economic situation makes your
decisions all the more important to our future.
While I know that a discussion of background material is
extraneous here, and I have no desire to insult the wisdom of
this committee, I must apologize beforehand for repeating some
obvious facts in this statement.
The first is that the Navy's existing force level can be
argued to be inadequate or barely adequate, but the oceans are
vast. Our position of leadership in the free world is clear.
And the number of ships we have cannot logically be argued to
be excessive.
Second, since ship lifetimes can only be extended so far,
we cannot solve our problems by painting over rust. Third, the
mix of our ships can only be changed very gradually, and any
war or conflict will have to be faced with a come-as-you-are
force. That remains true even if we were suddenly to find
ourselves in complete agreement about the kind of Navy that we
need for tomorrow.
No matter what the arguments may be concerning how to
prioritize future threats, we cannot delay augmentation of our
current fleet numbers or allow continuing deterioration of
those numbers through inaction. Ship construction and
modernization is but one of many issues. This committee knows
there is no magic out there, and I have none to offer. But some
aspects of the Navy's challenges, as I see it, are quite clear.
I have mentioned one: We have too few ships. Replacements
are being built and commissioned at a slower rate than existing
ships are being retired. Since nothing is cheap, what can be
done?
First, let's go back to those obvious facts that I
mentioned. CVNs, that is nuclear powered aircraft carriers, are
more than the backbone and heart of the Navy. They forestall
the need for access that can be denied us in many parts of the
world for many of the scenarios we will continue to face.
They are not only the first asset a President considers
when faced with a military challenge. They are one of the few
unquestioned resources our Nation will require in the future.
These ships are enormously expensive and take a long time to
build, but they are the essence of force projection, the
ultimate expeditionary force. And any math required for the
Navy budget should begin with CVNs.
I would spend my full time on this point, but it would be
an insult to your intelligence. I have to say, I am very
concerned about this topic. Carriers may be unassailable to
budget cuts in my mind, but they are very expensive, and there
are a lot of very important people who are desperately looking
for money to fund urgent priorities.
This subcommittee has a better chance of protecting
carriers than almost any entity. Stand firm in protecting this
priority.
Moving on, as a lifetime submariner, I can only thank the
Congress for its wisdom in permitting multi-year procurement of
Fast Attack Submarines (SSNs), perhaps the one step that will
permit this Nation to maintain a force level to execute their
many missions with which this committee has first-hand
familiarity.
The retirement rate of these ships is frightening, and you
have already taken action to allow the Navy to do the right
thing. Our submariners will always take care of these versatile
ships. Unfortunately, addressing naval challenges through new
classes of ships carries a heavy price.
Not only do they always cost more than predicted, no matter
where the fault finger is pointed after the bill is added up,
the money cannot be recaptured until we climb a long distance
up a lessons-learned curve.
We must augment, not decrement, fleet size. Therefore, I
would emphasize these points: First, I recommend against
additional DDG-1000s (Zumwalt class destroyers), not because it
will not be a fine ship, but it is too expensive. It takes too
long to build and will inevitably lead to a lower total number
of ships in the fleet. The one outcome we cannot permit.
I recommend as many improved DDG-51s (Arleigh-Burke class
destroyers) as we can afford. We know how to build them. The
value for cost is high. The maintenance is affordable. And we
know how and when to make improvements in them.
Now how about the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)? I used to
have a nifty set of remarks appropriate only among retired
admirals about how dumb an idea this was. It was not helpful,
but guess what? After everyone is done beating everyone else up
over the excessive cost, the lousy contractor performance, the
poor coordination that was demonstrated, requirements creep and
so on, we finally got two hulls built.
LCSs will move toward a reasonable unit cost much faster
than the next idea that comes down the chute. Essentially,
everyone agrees that part of the Navy mix must include a lower-
end ship, not too many I hope. Once we get these ships running
right, the Navy will converge on the right combination of war-
fighting modules.
And these ships will become workhorses that we can move
around the world and address some of the U.S. naval presence
requirements that do not require battle groups. I am beginning
to wish I had thought up this idea.
In a recent article in Naval Institute Proceedings, to
which the chairman referred, written in collaboration with Rear
Admiral Jim Stark, we made two points I would repeat here.
The first dealt with the ship's requirement process where
we talked about doing a better job of controlling the number of
good ideas we would like to include in new ships. This, by the
way, bears directly on the acquisition reform question.
Adding promising technologies, more robust combat, and
command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence
(C4I) systems is tempting for obvious reasons, especially given
the range of solutions, range of scenarios that these ships may
face.
But at some point, it is counterproductive to augmenting
the number of ships in the Navy. Scrubbing the requirements
process is easier said than done, but the key is that once we
reach our decision at the outset, we must have absolute control
over subsequent changes to those requirements.
In our opinion, the authority to approve such changes
should be limited to the Secretary of the Navy. But the
important point here is to limit the number of requirements-
driven change orders that have such a big impact on ship
construction costs.
The second point deals with Marine Corps support. This
mission is fundamental and none of the variety of military
challenges of the last few years has changed that. The number
and mix of vessels needed to provide the requisite lift for the
Marines has changed over the past two decades.
These ships have become larger, more expensive and more
capable, while at the same time, the number required has
declined. Because amphibious ships are employed in combination,
they should be judged on the capability of the expeditionary
strike group or amphibious ready group as a whole, rather than
on the size and the cost of individual units. This should be a
less controversial aspect of the fleet numbers and mix issue
than some others.
On the subject of acquisition reform, I know we all agree
it is important, and we would like to address the problems and
prescribe the right cures. I listened with fascination the
other night when the President addressed this issue. And, of
course, nobody knows better than the people in this room, you
can go and ask anybody if we ought to have acquisition reform,
and it is impossible to have any answer other than yes.
The problem, of course, the devil is in the details. I hope
before we enact new layers of directives in legislation that
the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the Congress, and
others will talk to folks who have demonstrated real expertise
in buying expensive, complicated products from major defense
contractors. Expertise is established by records of personal
accomplishment not by the title on office doors.
We cannot address acquisition reform by adding more rules
and regulations. That is how we got to where we are.
Ostensibly, the idea of adding more rules and regulations has
appeal because it precludes repetition of past problems.
Mr. Taylor. Admiral.
Admiral Houley. Sir,
Mr. Taylor. Before you go any further, I want a recommended
list from you of the five people that you think are the best at
that.
Admiral Houley. I would be delighted to----
Mr. Taylor. Thank you very much, sir.
Admiral Houley [continuing]. Provide that, sir.
Mr. Taylor. Please proceed.
Admiral Houley. Current regulations are excessive in number
and in complication, and we are one of the sources of our own
problems rather than part of the solution. We must avoid
walking around the real problems and further complicating an
already overly complex process.
There are a lot of serious-minded men and women who have
proved themselves in acquisition and business. Making the
system work should be their challenge to address.
And I might add parenthetically, since the chairman has
given me this invitation to provide some names, one of my past
experiences was the defense reform principal for the Secretary
of Defense when Secretary Cohen was in his position.
I should have known before I went there that naive men and
women should not walk into a job that is titled, ``Defense
Reform,'' because it--it sounds like a really good idea, but
unsurprisingly, it is rather difficult to do, and one of the
difficulties, and I believe everybody in this room knows it, is
everybody is in favor of reform. Everybody is in favor of
fixing things until it affects their job description, and then
suddenly, their interest and enthusiasm seems to diminish very
quickly.
You ladies and gentlemen are all students of history. So
many of our Nation's predecessors in friendly and not-so-
friendly countries have encountered financial pressures akin to
our own today. Slowly, they saved money by agreeing to fewer
and fewer ships with less and less capability.
Without apparently realizing when they were doing so, these
nations eventually gave up their ability to project power in a
meaningful manner. Even when the lights go on and the
circumstances make it obvious that this has happened, they
discover that to regain strength of this kind requires a
reversal of policies that, in the best of circumstances, would
take many years and be prohibitively expensive.
I guess one of the concerns that we all share is that, over
a period of years, we keep chipping away at the size and
strength of the Navy and no particular decision is fatal. No
particular decision has enormous impact on the future, but the
net result of coming up with a smaller and less capable Navy
over a period of time, unfortunately, does not change the
number of challenges that Navy is expected to face.
We cannot afford to make this mistake. Our responsibilities
are too great, and there is no backup plan. This is why I
believe that while your challenge is of great importance, it is
not incredibly complex.
We need to augment our fleet in numbers and in capability
and limit the introduction of new ship classes and big changes
to the maximum degree possible. That is why I feel that,
although, every year you are obviously faced with important
decisions to make and important issues to be addressed, one of
which is always, what kind of a Navy do we need? What sort of
threat are we building the Navy for?
Those are important, useful questions, and I support
exploring them to whatever degree you can. But I will say that
what we end up doing has marginal impact on the long range, and
if we don't get out of the business of building new classes of
ships, for a while at least, we are in a world of trouble.
And if we don't get on with the business of building more
ships, we are in a world of trouble. So I am much more
interested in trying to improve our progress in shipbuilding.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Houley can be found in
the Appendix on page 39.]
Mr. Taylor. Admiral, thank you very much. We have now been
joined by Dr. Barnett.
Dr. Barnett. We are going to waive the normal 5-minute rule
for our witnesses, but if you could keep it under 10, we would
greatly appreciate it in fairness to the other witnesses.
STATEMENT OF DR. THOMAS P.M. BARNETT, SENIOR MANAGING DIRECTOR,
ENTERRA SOLUTIONS, LLC
Dr. Barnett. Having spent the last decade arguing that
America's grand strategy should center on fostering
globalization's advance, I welcomed the Department of Navy's
2007 Maritime Strategic Concept that stated, ``As our security
and prosperity are inextricably linked with those of others,
U.S. maritime forces will be deployed to protect and sustain
the peaceful global system comprised of interdependent networks
of trade, finance, information, law, people and governance.''
In my mind, rather than simply chasing after today's ever-
changing lineup of relatively minor and manageable maritime
security threats, the Department of Navy logically locates its
long-term operational center of gravity amidst globalization's
tumultuous advance.
For it is primarily, overwhelmingly, in these frontier-like
regions that we locate virtually all of the mass violence, all
of the terrorism, and all of the instability in the system, all
the failed states.
Moreover, this strategic bias towards globalization's
frontier regions, especially the Arabian Gulf and the Indian
Ocean, makes eminent sense in a time horizon likely to witness
the disappearance of the three major war scenarios that
currently justify our Nation's continued funding of our big-war
force.
Namely, a Taiwan that integrates economically with mainland
China; an Iran, whose successful pursuit of a nuclear capacity
will soon rule out any potential major U.S. intervention; and a
North Korea, whose inevitable collapse presents no significant
possibility of triggering major war among intervening great
powers.
As our leviathan's primary war-fighting rationales fade
with time, its proponents will seek to sell both this body and
the American public on the notion of coming resource wars with
other great powers. This logic, in my opinion, is an artifact
from the Cold War era, during which the notion of zero-sum
competition for Third World resources held significant
plausibility, primarily because economic connectivity between
the capitalist West and the socialist East was severely
limited.
But as the recent financial contagion proved, that
trifurcated global economy no longer exists. The level of
financial interdependence among and across globalization's
major markets in addition to supply chain networks renders moot
the specter of zero-sum resource competition among the world's
great powers.
If anything, global warming's long-term effects on
agricultural production around the planet will dramatically
increase both East-West and North-South interdependency as a
result of the emerging global middle class's burgeoning demand
for more resource-intensive foods.
To the extent that rising demand goes unmet or developing
region suffers significant resource shortages in the future, we
are exceedingly unlikely to see resumed great power conflict as
a result. Rather, we will witness even more destabilizing civil
strife in many fragile states.
As such, I see a future in which the small-wars force, more
Army and Marines, experiences continued significant growth in
its global workload, while the big-war force, more Navy and Air
Force, experiences the opposite.
As a result, I predict the Department of Navy's blue-water
fleet will shrink significantly over the next couple decades,
while its green/brown-water fleet will expand dramatically
along with associated personnel requirements, notably with the
Marines.
As our current naval leviathan force enjoys a significant,
as in several times over, combat advantage over any other force
out there today, and I would cite Bob Work's analysis on that,
our decisions regarding new capital ship development should
center largely on the issue of preserving industrial base.
My advice in this regard is that America should go as slow
and as low as possible in the production of such supremely
expensive platforms, meaning we accept that our low number of
buys per design class will be quite costly. But I like
maintaining that technological hedge.
To the extent the fleet numbers are kept up, such
procurement should largely benefit the small-war force's need
for many cheap and small boats, preferably of the sort that can
be utilized by our forces for some period of time and then
given away to developing country navies to boost their maritime
governance capacity, a key goal going forward.
Along these lines, I firmly support the Navy's Global
Maritime Partnerships Initiative, especially when our naval
forces expand cooperation with rising great powers like China
and India, two countries whose militaries remain far too
myopically structured around border-conflict scenarios for
China, Taiwan, for India, Kashmir.
America must dramatically widen its definition of strategic
allies going forward, as the combination of an overleveraged
United States and a demographically moribund Europe and Japan
no longer constitutes a quorum of great powers sufficient to
address today's global security agenda.
In short, I want allies with million man armies who are
having lots of babies, rising defense budgets and are willing
to go places and kill people in defense of their interests.
To conclude, given America's ongoing ground operations, our
Navy faces severe budgetary pressures on future shipbuilding.
Those pressures will only grow with the current global economic
crisis, which fortunately generates similar pressures on navies
around the world.
Considering these trends as a whole, I would rather abuse
the Navy fleetwise before doing the same to either the Marine
Corps or the Coast Guard. Why? Our national security community
currently accepts far too much risk and casualties and
instability on the low end of the conflict spectrum while
continuing to spend far too much money on building up combat
capabilities for fantastic war-fighting scenarios.
In effect, we stuff our big-war force while starving our
small-wars force, accepting far too many avoidable real-time
casualties in the latter while hedging excessively against
theoretical future casualties in the former. I consider this
risk-management approach to be both strategically and morally
unsound.
As Congress proceeds to judge the naval services long-range
plans, my suggested standard is simple: Give America's naval
forces fewer big ships with fewer personnel on them and many
more smaller ships with far more personnel on them.
In my professional opinion, the Department of Navy is
moving aggressively and logically toward engaging the world's
security environment as it truly is versus myopically obsessing
over China's potential as some long-term, near-peer competitor.
I suggest that Congress not stand in the way of this much-
needed and long-delayed evolution, even as it considers with
great deliberation the requirements of preserving industrial
base.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Barnett can be found in the
Appendix on page 50.]
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman.
The chair now recognizes Dr. Thompson. If you would, try to
keep it under 10 minutes, doctor.
STATEMENT OF DR. LOREN B. THOMPSON, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER,
LEXINGTON INSTITUTE
Dr. Thompson. I am going to try to keep it under five. I
don't have a vote on the subcommittee, but I would like to
second the chair's endorsement of Admiral Houley's article in
the January Proceedings. I thought it was very well done and
one of the largest concentrations of common sense I have seen
in a long time.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I would
like to briefly review the military and economic challenges our
Nation faces and then draw some conclusions about the outlook
for naval ship construction.
The security challenges we face today are not worse than
what we faced 20 years ago. I mean, what could be worse than
having 10,000 nuclear warheads aimed at your country? However,
the challenges are more diverse. Many of the challenges that
trouble us most today, such as failed states, Islamic
terrorism, nuclear proliferation, barely affected our military
plans at all during the Cold War.
But that world is now long gone, replaced by a landscape of
dangers that are at once ambiguous and ubiquitous thanks to the
information revolution. In this new world, the joint force must
be all things to all people, because we simply can't predict
how the threat is going to change from year to year.
The sea services now spend much of their time engaged in
nontraditional missions, and those missions often must be
carried out even farther from home than in the past. To take
just one example of this, Strait of Hormuz, where two of our
warships collided last week, is literally on the opposite side
of the world from San Diego.
So changes in the character and location of the security
challenges we face by themselves would be enough to warrant a
rethink of what kind of Navy we need. However, that will not be
the biggest concern we have in the decade ahead.
The biggest concern we will have is that our economy is in
decline, and the federal government is out of money. How broke
is the federal government? The federal government is so broke,
that during the 2 hours we will be meeting here this morning,
it will spend $400 million that it does not have.
It is so broke, that the federal debt has doubled to $11
trillion in just 8 years, and according to the Congressional
Budget Office (CBO), it threatens to double again in the next 8
years. The federal government is so broke, that we are
sustaining our defense posture, in part, by borrowing money
from the country we say we are getting ready to fight.
Now, how crazy is that? There is no time in living memory
when U.S. finances have been in such bad shape, and therefore,
all the things we thought we knew about the future availability
of funding for the joint force are now suspect.
I have attached to the remarks I gave the subcommittee my
cover story from the current issue of Armed Forces Journal
about the impact of our economic decline on military
preparedness. Suffice it to say that the days when 5 percent of
the world's population, us, could sustain nearly 50 percent of
the world's military spending are coming to an end.
What that means for naval ship construction is that current
Navy plans are not affordable. If we build the kind of
networked, interoperable national fleet envisioned in the Joint
Maritime Strategy, then we can get very good results from the
warships we do buy.
But we cannot get Navy ship numbers above 300 any time
again unless we purchase smaller, cheaper warships.
Unfortunately, that approach will not work with aircraft
carriers or submarines where we are locked into costs and
construction rates that can only be cut by substantially
reducing our global presence and war-fighting capability.
We must sustain production of the Ford class of future
aircraft carriers at the rate of one every four years.
Otherwise, the number of flattops in the fleet will not get
back to the number of 12 that is required. And we must build a
Virginia class of attack submarines at the rate of two per year
for the foreseeable future if we are to avoid huge gaps in
undersea warfare and in intelligence gathering capabilities,
intelligence gathering being their single most important
function today.
Thus, the savings that are needed to bring naval ship
construction into alignment with likely resources will have to
be found mainly in surface combatants and vessels associated
with amphibious warfare. The Navy has already begun the
necessary adjustments by proposing to cancel the DDG-1000
destroyer, which is too costly and ill-suited to the emerging
threat environment.
Terminating production at three vessels, and preferably at
two, while continuing construction of versatile Aegis
destroyers, is the only sensible response to military and
fiscal realities.
With regard to smaller surface combatants, the Navy needs
to make a choice between the two versions of Littoral Combat
Ship and consider supplementing LCS with the more conventional
National Security Cutter being built by the Coast Guard.
Now, I don't mean we need to choose between the two
versions of LCS today. We need to give them both a fair chance
to show themselves in operational environments. But eventually,
we have to choose.
It is much too early to call LCS a failed program. The lead
ship was delivered to the fleet in half the usual time, and it
had a very successful inspection. But the warships will cost
more than expected, and more importantly, there are
uncertainties surrounding the concept of operations.
While the National Security Cutter is slower, and it
requires deeper water to operate, it has similar onboard
equipment, and longer endurance make it potentially applicable
to many, many missions.
The amphibious fleet presents a bigger puzzle, because it
appears that the stated requirement for 33 warships is too
small given the need to establish global fleet stations and the
fact that all of our up-armored equipment is heavier and
bulkier than what we were planning to put on the ships.
Now, the decision to use the LPD-17 (Amphibious Transport
Dock ship) hull as a replacement for aging LSD vessels is a
step toward greater affordability. It reduces design costs and
extends serial production of a known hull. However, there are
real doubts about the affordability of the future maritime
prepositioning force, and I guess one signal of that is the
fact that when the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sent
their 2010 revised guidance to the Pentagon on January 29th for
preparation of the next budget, they actually suggested
canceling the Maritime Prepositioning Ships for the future.
I would be pleased to elaborate on my views concerning all
these programs during the question and answer period and also
any additional programs concerning aircraft that you are
interested in bringing up or networks.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Thompson can be found in the
Appendix on page 65.]
Mr. Taylor. Thank you very much, sir.
The chair now recognizes Mr. Ron O'Rourke.
STATEMENT OF RONALD O'ROURKE, SPECIALIST IN NAVAL AFFAIRS,
CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE
Mr. O'Rourke. Chairman Taylor, Congressman Akin,
distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to speak today on the future of the Navy. With your
permission, I would like to submit my statement for the record
and summarize it briefly here.
Mr. Taylor. Without objection.
Mr. O'Rourke. The future of the Navy is a topic with a lot
of dimensions. So I tried to focus on some aspects that may be
of particular interest to the subcommittee. An initial point is
that, given the long lives of Navy ships, many ships currently
in service will still be in service 10 to 20 years from now.
And so, in this sense, a part of the future Navy is already
with us today.
A second point is that the relatively low shipbuilding rate
in recent years has increased the challenge of achieving and
maintaining a 313-ship fleet. The shipbuilding rate has
averaged about 5.4 ships per year for the last 17 years.
You can't build ships at that kind of rate for that many
years without getting behind the eight ball for achieving and
maintaining a 313-ship Navy. Something like 12 ships per year
will now be needed in coming years for a 313-ship fleet.
A third point is that current technical trends in Navy
acquisitions suggest that the future Navy will likely feature
an increasing use of unmanned vehicles, networking capabilities
and open architecture computers and software, as well as ships
with reduced crew sizes, integrated electric drive, common hull
designs and components and increased modularity.
The future Navy will also likely feature a continued
necking down in aircraft types, models and series and possibly
new types of weapons such as directed-energy weapons.
Some think tanks have recently published proposals for
future Navy ship force structure, and what is notable about
these proposals is how they would take the Navy in different
directions. What these proposals illustrate is how the Navy
currently is at a decision point in terms of future mission
priorities, and how choices about those mission priorities can
lead to differing versions of the future Navy.
To examine this issue, I organized potential future Navy
operations into four general categories using a scheme similar
to one that I have presented at the Naval War College and the
Center for Naval Analyses.
One of these categories includes things like engagement and
partnership-building operations, humanitarian assistance and
disaster relief operations and maritime security operations.
Another category includes counterterrorism and irregular
warfare. A third concerns operations relating to larger scale
conventional conflicts on the continental landmass, and the
fourth category relates to countering improved Chinese naval
forces.
My testimony discusses how putting a planning emphasis on a
given category can lead to investments in certain platforms and
capabilities. Policymakers can choose to emphasize any or all
of these categories. In theory, these choices should reflect
broader decisions about U.S. security strategy, and given
resource constraints, the decision to place more emphasis on
one category could require putting less emphasis on others.
My statement also discusses some additional planning
considerations including the importance of forward deployed
presence as a planning metric. Maintaining forward deployments
can be important or even critical to performing operations in
all four categories. And maintaining such deployments can
sometimes require having more ships in inventory than might be
required solely for combat operations.
Finally, my statement discusses a number of shipbuilding
issues relating to the future Navy. One of these concerns how
potential changes in the aircraft carrier force level goal
might affect the schedule for procuring future carriers. A
second issue concerns reported potential out-year reductions in
attack submarine procurement.
A third issue concerns the potential viability of a CG(X)
(cruiser) program of eight ships procured at a rate of one ship
every three years, which is an option the Navy reportedly has
considered. A fourth issue concerns the future procurement of
destroyers where OSD's position of ambiguity from last year has
recently changed to a position that might be called modified
ambiguity.
And a fifth issue concerns whether procurement of LCSs
should be supplemented with procurement of other smaller
surface combatants. My statement also discusses shipbuilding
issues such as amphibious and maritime prepositioning ships and
the possibility of building ships with extensive growth margins
so that they might be easily backfitted later on with
significant amounts of additional weapons and sensors.
The main point I want to leave you with is that the Navy in
coming years can go in various directions depending on choices
that are made about how much emphasis to place on preparing for
various kinds of operations. An absence of clear decisions on
planning priorities could result in a Navy that muddles along
with no clear focus and potentially inadequate capabilities for
performing certain desired missions.
Without a clear sense of priorities, program decisions
might be made more by budget drills and Navy plans and programs
could be subject to repeated shifts as successive Navy leaders
link their own interpretations to an unclear list of
operational priorities.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my opening remarks, and I will
be happy to answer any questions the subcommittee may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. O'Rourke can be found in the
Appendix on page 77.]
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman.
We now recognize our ranking member, Mr. Akin, for five
minutes. I am sorry, Mr. Akin, unlimited time for the ranking
member.
Mr. Akin. I will try to take that in advisement. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
The first question I have, I guess, is a really basic one.
I asked it to another panel of witnesses, and they didn't
really answer the question. So I thought I would try it on you,
and that is, particularly, this was in light of the DDG
situation, but is the purchasing strategy, which I just
recently found out was pretty much dictated by Goldwater-
Nichols, where the Navy sets the requirements and then
different people in acquisition basically work with a
contractor to build something.
Is that a good way overall to be acquiring ships, or is
that process mechanically somewhat structurally not as good as
it should be? And I am asking the question coming as an
outsider but many years ago working for IBM, and we used to
manage projects.
And one of the very single first rule is, if you have got a
project that is a priority, you put one person in charge of it,
and you put your finger in their belly button and say, ``Look,
here is the deal, you are going to have this much money and
this is what the product is going to have to look like, and we
are going to hold you accountable for making that work.''
What I saw here on the DDG was that it looked like somebody
had shot a rudder out from under a ship and it was kind of
wandering around. So my question to you is, structurally, is
that process in need of repair, first question.
Dr. Thompson. I would like to respond first by making two
points: First of all, my recollection is that when the
Goldwater-Nichols legislation was passed, we had a handful of
programs that had major cost overruns, schedule problems, or
technical hurdles. Near as I can tell, they almost all do now.
So I would have to conclude that if the purpose was to
reform and make more efficient the acquisition process, it has
failed. It certainly has managed to increase the number of
parking spaces at the Pentagon, but whether it has increased
the number of weapons systems or the efficiency with which they
are fielded, I think is extremely doubtful.
The second point I would like to make is, you know, I
normally don't focus on Navy. I normally focus on aerospace and
networks. What I have noticed though is that across all the
war-fighting communities and across all the services, we have a
system where there are simply too many players.
It starts at the requirements level, and it ends up at the
user level, but so many people at each stage in the process are
participating in the concept of operations, the selection of
the contractor, the definition of the operational requirements
that it is impossible to field anything that is cheap.
It doesn't matter how simple the original concept is,
whether it is boots or bullets. It is going to end up more
expensive than if IBM had built it.
Mr. Akin. Excuse me, I made a little Freudian slip here. I
was talking about LCS and not DDG. I am sorry.
Dr. Thompson. Well, I can be more specific on that. In the
case of the Littoral Combat Ship, what we have here is a very
exciting idea, but it was an idea that was generated by the
Navy under pressure from the Office of the Secretary of Defense
to come up with neat ideas. They are known as transformational
ideas.
It may be a real breakthrough in naval warfare, but the way
they tried to do it, the business plan, the going to the
second-tier yards, the definition of all sorts of capabilities
not previously resident on frigates or other small warships,
guaranteed there would be problems.
Now, I actually think the program is not going that badly.
But let's face it, it is not going to come in at $220 million a
copy, and I think the larger problem, which nobody has focused
on yet, is that this is still a neat idea. We don't know how it
is going to do out in the Indian Ocean with four crews for
every three ships, with 40-knot fuel costs, you know, and all
those other things that are associated like the modular mission
packages.
The jury is still out on whether the concept will work. The
boats aren't bad for what we are trying to do, but whether they
actually fit in well with our naval force structure and concept
of operations, we won't know that for a while.
Admiral Houley. First of all, the thesis of your question
compares IBM to the defense system, and for the very reason you
pointed out. The direct answer to your question is the system
that we have is lousy, and it has not worked very well, though
well intended.
And the reason that it can't work very well is because
there are too many cooks, and therein we are back to our
acquisition reform. And I know you don't want to spend the
morning on this question, but the reason that it doesn't work
is not only because there are too many players, but because we
are always trying to accomplish so many things at the same
time.
You will recall that Goldwater-Nichols was not terribly
well received by the military services. We have since learned
our manners as well as learned all of the good things that came
from that rationale. But when we were back in the process that
we are in right now, the military kind of shut itself out of
the debate and had to live with the results without being able
to influence them.
And every time you add somebody, even if it is somebody who
is terribly well respected who can play with the, in this case,
the requirements process, you are bound to be going in the
wrong direction. One of the points that Dr. Thompson made that
is particularly important to remember is, as I said in my
statement, there is lots of blame to go around about LCS, and
that is a process that you all have probably spent a lot of
time on already.
But one of the things that was central to all of that is
that the Navy saw that they had to do something. And so they
went ahead and did something rather than determining what
needed to be done and coming to you and to all of the other
people in the process with an answer.
So it kind of stunk, and it began there, and it just kept
on going and unraveling, and it has not helped with more
people. So I am back to the same thing. The direct answer to
your question is, it is not helpful, and it is not good,
although the intentions were honorable and indeed have probably
given us many benefits.
Mr. Akin. Well, I appreciate what you are saying, because I
am of the opinion that you could take good people and put them
in a bad system and you get bad results. And that can happen
very easily. That is why I am asking the very specific question
about the structure of how we approach this.
And I don't think we should zing people for being future-
thinking and saying, let's get moving and let's drive this
process more rapidly. But we have to know how we are doing
that. But thank you, I was going to--Mr. O'Rourke.
Mr. O'Rourke. Just a few additional points. It is worth
remembering that the LCS program was pursued deliberately as
one that would be done differently from the normal shipbuilding
process. And so if there are problems in that program, they are
not necessarily representative of problems in the larger
process.
In particular, the LCS program, I think, as just been
alluded to, was pursued with a strong focus on reducing
acquisition cycle time, and so they were very interested in
doing things very quickly, and that got them into a situation
of concurrency between design and construction, which is one of
the oldest no-no's in defense acquisition. And it led to a
situation of haste makes waste.
So there were problems in that program, but whether that
says something necessarily about the default process for
shipbuilding is less clear, because the LCS started off trying
to do something different in the first place. In terms of that
general process, there is a couple points I can mention, and
one has to do with requirements control, requirements
discipline.
And there was a period in the 1990s when the requirements
police, as it were in the Navy, which was a body called the
Ship Characteristics Board or the Ship Characteristics
Improvement Board, or the SCIB, was weakened or disestablished.
And during that period of time, they were not there to
police the requirements process for Navy ship designs, and
there is at least one ship that was designed during that
period, which some people have said suffered requirements
growth because of the weakening or the disestablishment of the
SCIB during that period.
The Navy since that time has taken steps to reestablish
that requirements police force under a different name and to
apply it not only to shipbuilding but to aircraft and other
acquisition as well. You raised the question of whether there
should be stronger centralized control, and I think that is a
fair question.
Because other observers have raised this issue as well, and
when they do, they point to other examples of where the Navy
has successfully pursued very complex and technical acquisition
efforts because there was centralized control. And the examples
that are usually raised are the setup that we have for naval
nuclear propulsion, the Naval Reactors Office, the Special
Systems Project Office, or SSP, that brought ballistic missiles
into the Navy.
And a third example that is sometimes raised is the rather
centralized control for the Aegis development program during
the 1970s and 1980s and into more recent years. Those setups
are all somewhat different from one another, but they all
featured strong control with ultimately direct accountability
by one person at the top.
But there is one other issue that I think is important in
shipbuilding, which is that shipbuilding is a long-term
process. It takes many years for a program to pan out. And so
there is a long time between when somebody might make a promise
about a shipbuilding program and when the results start coming
in.
And that raises the question of whether there should be
some steps taken to make it more possible for somebody who
makes a promise at the front end of the process to still be
around at the back end of the process to be held accountable
for it.
And one option to do that would be to set up a director of
shipbuilding with a very long tenure somewhat similar to what
you have, for example, with the director of naval reactors
(DONR). Now, there is pluses and minuses to the option of
establishing offices with long tenures, and you would have to
carefully think about that.
But that is one option for getting at the issue of possibly
making sure that if a promise is made about a shipbuilding
program in year (A) that that same person will still be there
to be held accountable for that process years down the road
when the return data starts to come in.
Mr. Akin. Thank you very much.
Dr. Barnett. If I could----
Mr. Akin. Do you want to do a fourth response, Mr.
Chairman?
Dr. Barnett. If I could just follow quickly with a
historical note. I worked with Art Sybrowsky at the Naval War
College during the time period where he dreamed up the LCS, and
then I worked as an assistant with him in the Office of Force
Transformation during the first two years of operation.
I will tell you just as an historical note, which is
important, I think, that what they were trying to do with LCS
was to kind of break this mentality within the Navy that its
ships were, in effect, sort of a glass jaw that if we lost one,
it was catastrophic.
Okay? So he was trying to introduce a fighter pilot
mentality toward accepting more risks within the fleet. That is
why they went for a small ship that would be close and operate
in the littoral, accept much higher levels of risk, and some of
the original designs really focused on things like almost a
command module that could eject like a fighter pilot ejects out
of a plane.
Okay? So the dream was to bring a much higher tolerance of
risk, get much closer to the actual land security environment.
What happened with that dream was that it was subjected to a
system that purposely tries to drain all risk out of ship
design. So it junked it up. It put all sorts of bells and
whistles. The modularity was lost. All sorts of defensive
measures and things that, kind of, codified the design made it
stagnant and static were introduced over time.
And my perception of that process, it is right out of Allen
Drury's novel, ``The Pentagon,'' which was about the creation
of a landing craft air cushion (LCAC) during a crisis situation
where the Navy wanted to dream up this new landing craft
vehicle to deal with this crisis that was developing.
And because the military kept adding all these bells and
whistles, the machinery was never delivered. The war never
happened, and the whole system kind of ground to a pointless
halt. I saw that problem with the LCS. I thought it was a good
attempt to move the Navy towards a different risk tolerance,
and it failed because the system simply does not allow any sort
of risk.
Mr. Akin. Thank you very much, gentlemen. It has been very
helpful.
Mr. Taylor. I very much appreciate the gentleman's
comments. I would also remind the gentleman that one thing that
we, as both congressmen and parents, can never tolerate is the
thought of a disposable ship, because a disposable ship could
lead to a disposable crew, and we are not going to have that.
Dr. Barnett. Well, my argument, you know, it is similar to
what the Army's moved towards in terms of counterinsurgency.
You accept more tactical risk to garner more strategic gain.
And Sybrowsky's concern in that regard was that the Navy was,
in effect, pricing or risking itself out of utility or
relevance, which is worse.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Barnett.
The chair now recognizes the chairman of the Readiness
Committee, Mr. Ortiz.
Mr. Ortiz. Thank you so much for appearing before our
committee this morning. I think we have had some wonderful
testimony this morning. You know, yesterday, I had a hearing
with Navy officials to discuss the shortfalls in Navy
operations and maintenance (O&M) on the accounts for ship
maintenance.
And the impact of underfunding ship maintenance means a
decreased platform, life expectancy and decreased fleet
readiness. Since each service is facing budget constraints, in
your opinion, how can the Navy balance sustainment and
maintenance cost with the acquisition of future platforms?
Do you think acquisition reform is the answer to some of
these problems that we have? Anybody that would like to.
Dr. Thompson. Well, one of the things you can do,
Congressman Ortiz, that we have not done well in the past is to
build reliability and maintainability into the war-fighting
system. Just to take a simple example, the way that we have
designed the Virginia class attack submarines, there is no
midlife refueling. It has got a life of the ship core.
Because there is no midlife refueling, you have managed to
keep it in service longer and save a lot of money that our
other nuclear systems have to expend in order to stay
operational for their full service life. So that would be a
fairly large but kind of obvious example of how you can save
money.
The Littoral Combat Ship was actually designed with the
notion of maintainability and readiness in mind. That is one of
the reasons why there are actually four crews associated with
each of the three ships. It allows you to turn the ship around
faster. It allows you to get more productivity out of the
vessel. So there is a lot of different ideas for doing that.
But as Mr. O'Rourke said up front, it takes so long to
implement these programs that, a lot of the time, the great
ideas go off the track before we come to fruition. And in that
regard, I would just like to go back to one thing I said in my
opening remarks.
The Littoral Combat Ship is not a failed program. We
haven't had enough time. It has only run half the length of a
normal development program for a warship. So calling it failed
now is really a prescription for wasting a ton of money and
starting over with nothing to show for it.
Mr. Ortiz. Yes, sir.
Mr. O'Rourke. Just very quickly, the issue you are raising
has been termed by others sometimes as the tension between
current readiness and future readiness, current readiness being
promoted through the maintenance of ships that you have; future
readiness being prepared for by the ships that you are building
for the future. And that is an ongoing tension within the
Navy's budget right now.
My sense is that the Navy believes that they must pay a
certain amount of priority to maintaining the ships that they
have, especially since we are in the midst of two wars right
now, and that can come at the expense of the shipbuilding
budget, which supports future readiness.
And there is one other tension as well: One way that you
can help to reduce the competition between these two things is
to build future ships, as Loren mentioned, so that they require
less maintenance during their life cycles. And that can mean
building the ships with higher quality materials or more
ruggedness in their structure.
And the irony there is that taking steps to do that in a
ship's design can actually make it more expensive to procure.
So as we look at the idea of trying to reduce the cost of
shipbuilding, we need to remember that there can be a cost down
the road for reducing a ship's procurement cost, because it can
have the effect of increasing the amount of maintenance that
that ship might need to receive over its life cycle. And that
would add to this continuing tension between current and future
readiness.
Admiral Houley. One comment that I would add to this
discussion, and I agree with what has been said thus far, is
the area that you are looking into or were discussing
yesterday, I dare say will never disappear from the agenda over
the next 500 years.
But I think it is fair to say that the issue of apparent
underfunding of operation and maintenance, which always seems
to show up during the year as we run into successive problems
that may or may not have been foreseen. Our ability to deal
with those problems and the number that we have that should
have been anticipated, I think has actually gotten better over
the years.
And if we can certainly not ignore that problem because
nobody knows better than you the number of dollars that are
involved here. It is huge. So it is a lucrative and important
target to spend time on, but I think that the abuses and the
problems are the ones that have gotten heavy emphasis here
already this morning, acquisition reform, requirements reform,
better discipline and accountability so that we have as much
confidence as we can, given that we are dealing with human
beings as well as ships, that we are policing or managing our
meager resources as well as we reasonably can.
My hats are off to the Navy. I think they are doing a
better job since I left than they were when I was there.
Mr. Ortiz. Just one short question. You know, we talked
about a new ship comes out, either we put too much technology,
too much equipment or we don't put enough, and it goes back to
that $1 billion ship that run aground and hit a coral reef. Did
we have the right equipment?
I mean, I just cannot understand. I was in the Army. I was
not in the Navy, so I don't understand much of the Navy. I am
learning with my chairman here. But I would think that when you
build a ship that is going to cost taxpayers $1 billion, that
you would have the right technology so you won't run aground or
hit a coral reef.
I mean----
Admiral Houley. You know, no one knows better than us that
have done this that no matter how good your training is and how
good your selection is of people, and you know what wonderful
people we have. I mean, they are not just dedicated; they are
really, really smart people. But periodically, and once again,
this committee gets lots of focus on this, periodically,
somebody goes out there and does something that you just can't
believe how bad it was.
I mean, sometimes when you unravel all the facts, you tend
to find some extenuating circumstances, but more often, the
more careful you look, you wonder where did we go wrong? Not
where did the captain go wrong, but where did we go wrong? And
I am afraid it is human nature.
What you get out of this is exactly what you put into it,
and that is a series of fleet commanders and Chiefs of Naval
Operations (CNOs) who always emphasize the enormous and
importance of investment and the training side of what we do to
limit those kinds of things. Whether it is the loss of an F-22
or wrecking, as you say, a multi-billion dollar warship, those
things happen.
And we can't legislate against them. We can just very
carefully examine what the lessons are to be learned. I am very
proud of my association with the nuclear program, and one of
the things that I am proudest of is Admiral Rickover's
insistence on the importance of training to the point of
tediousness and certainly aggravation in the interest of making
sure that we don't make mistakes in the areas we can.
So I don't think there is a good answer to your very, very
good question that it is going to make you feel better.
Mr. Ortiz. Thank you so much.
Dr. Barnett. I would add--there is an inherent tension
between the Navy's desire to maintain its utility and to
promote its utility as a node within a network force that
projects combat power. So there is the desire to put a lot of
technology on these platforms. There is tension between that
and the Navy's more prosaic role as a networker with other
navies and other coast guards around the world.
And so it has a lot to do with your definition of the
maritime security threat. Do you want to emphasize the very
high technology, the possibilities of very high technology,
high-end combat scenarios, or do you see more of the problem
being kind of basic maritime governance?
And when you junk up those forces, those platforms to the
point where we have a hard time even talking to some of these
other navies around the world, because the disparity between
our levels of technology and theirs are vast.
You know, then I think, you know, we go too much in the
role of preserving sort of our big scary leviathan force, and
we kind of take us out of the role of that all important
networking force where you see a world that really needs a lot
of mentoring in terms of small navies that have very little
governance capacity off their coast, and where there is a lot
of environmental damage and piracy and illegal movements of
goods and so forth.
So it is a tough tradeoff, but I think we have to see the
Navy move more in the direction of administering to the system
rather than kind of slavishly make any effort to remain
relevant in high-end war-fighting scenarios.
Mr. Ortiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman.
Admiral Houley. One of our continual frustrations, since
the number of you who have touched on the LCS program, and I am
calling on your expertise here, what I think I see are the
people that the superintendent of shipbuilding will look at a
set of plans, will go on that vessel and basically, just make
sure that the plans are followed.
What I don't see, and I wish I saw, and that is why I am
asking for your advice here, is someone in the superintendent
of shipbuilding's office who looks at that as it is being built
and turns to the shipbuilder and says, ``There is a better way
to do this; there is a better machine out there,'' where we can
get more ships for our dollars.
I mean, we have right off the bat an inherent conflict. The
shipbuilder wants to make the most money per ship. We want to
get the most ships we can get for the money we have, and what I
don't see the superintendent of shipbuilding is that person who
is prodding the builder to get better at what he does.
I am going to ask you for another list of people who could
inform this committee how we can best accomplish that goal,
because having got rid of the lead systems integrators, we are
going to have to bring that back in-house, and we want to
empower the people who have that job working for our Nation to
get the most ships per dollar.
We want to find those people, and I want you to help me
find them.
With that, the chair recognizes the gentleman from
Virginia, Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you
so much for joining us today. We appreciate you bringing your
expertise to us and allowing us to ask you some questions. We
really appreciate that.
I want to refer in general back to January 2009, when the
Navy announced a decision to home-port a nuclear carrier at
Mayport Naval Station in Florida. And Mayport's never home-
ported a nuclear-powered carrier, and we are told that the
military construction price tag will be $456 million plus a
one-time maintenance cost of $85 million and a $24 million cost
in personnel change of station. That is $565 million total.
Additionally, the Navy estimates that it will cost $25.5
million in annual recurring costs compared to keeping a carrier
in Norfolk. This is due to the recurring cost of base operating
support, sustainment, restoration, modernization costs, travel
and per diem for transient maintenance labor.
And I am just trying to understand all this in context and
want to get your thoughts on this. If you could help me maybe
understand how maintenance and readiness might be conducted on
an aircraft carrier should one move to Florida as an element of
the fourth fleet.
And in your knowledge of this decision making, do you think
the right people were consulted on the maintenance impacts of
this arrangement during the Navy's decision-making process? And
will the Navy be able to do or perform all the required
maintenance work in Mayport, or will a Mayport home-ported
carrier still need to travel to Norfolk for certain maintenance
work?
Admiral Houley. I think that question, I would be much more
comfortable addressing in the Officer's Club than I am in a
hearing in this building. No one appreciates better than a
congressman that the question you just asked is a business
question, a military question, and a political question.
And the answer, clearly, changes depending on what your
focus is. If my major concern were jobs in Florida, then
obviously, my answer would be significantly different than as a
former naval officer responsible for being able to add and
subtract over whatever accounts I was responsible for at the
time, the answer is pretty simple, you stay in Norfolk and
don't complicate the problem, especially with the nuclear
propulsion plant issues that are quickly raised.
But I don't think that I am qualified to answer, or to
address maybe is a better way to put it, the question, because
I am not in full possession of all of the considerations. The
simple, easy naval answer from a blue suiter, I think, more
often than not, would be to please you at the expense of Mr.
Florida.
But I don't presume to be able to balance all of these
pressures.
Dr. Thompson. You know, I think it is not a hard tradeoff
to make. I can't imagine any set of circumstances in which it
would be cost effective to move a nuclear aircraft carrier back
to Mayport, or to Mayport. I can't imagine any set of
circumstances, unless our working assumption is that Norfolk
won't be there in 10 years. Other than that, it makes no
economic sense.
Mr. Wittman. Mr. O'Rourke.
Mr. O'Rourke. As you know, I maintain a Congressional
Research Service (CRS) report on this issue, and it presents
both sides without making a recommendation since CRS reports
don't do that. But to answer your narrower question of where
will the maintenance take place, as you know, the military
construction (MILCON) for that proposed move includes the
construction of a nuclear maintenance facility.
So some forms of maintenance on the ship, up to a certain
level, would be conducted in the Mayport home port. But if the
ship were to need depot-level maintenance, if it needed to go
into a shipyard for higher levels of maintenance, then the
ship, presumably, would travel back to Virginia for that.
Mr. Wittman. Just to put in perspective to the whole issue
about maintenance. You know, the Navy has recently suspended
their ship maintenance due to funding shortfalls, and it is
unfunded budget requirements of 2009 are at 4.6 billion, and
the sea service has a backlog of nearly 800 million in unfunded
modernization and restoration projects at its four nuclear-
capable shipyards.
And, you know, putting in perspective, again, I am going to
ask this not from a political standpoint but purely from an
analytical standpoint. Given these funding requirements, it
would appear that spending more money to duplicate a
maintenance capability there in Mayport, would only exacerbate
the woes that exist right now.
And do you feel that this is actually a good decision in
light of those current conditions that we are having to deal
with? Or do you believe that there might be a better way to
pursue this to make sure the capability exists? But also, when
we are looking at porting decisions, should those elements be
kept in mind with that current backlog?
Dr. Thompson. If I could offer a pointed albeit academic
response to that, in preparing my opening remarks, I looked at
the CBO study of how much money we are going to be spending
this year. It is $1.85 trillion above and beyond what we are
going to be taking in. That works out to $5 billion a day in
deficit, or as I said, about $400 million during the time that
we are having this hearing.
In those sorts of circumstances, to waste money, which is
what this is, waste money on something that is not germane to
the Navy's war-fighting capability simply guarantees that the
size of the fleet and its capabilities will diminish at a
faster pace in the future.
Mr. Wittman. Mr. O'Rourke.
Mr. O'Rourke. In my report, I do get at this issue, which
is sort of the bottom-line issue. It concerns the strategic
benefit that might accrue from moving the carrier down to
Mayport and how that measures up against other strategic
benefits that might be produced by spending that money in other
ways.
For policymakers, I think that is the bottom-line question.
You can spend the money to move the carrier down to Mayport,
and the Navy will tell you that that generates certain
strategic advantages as they see it in terms of dispersing the
home-porting arrangements for carriers on the East Coast. And
then it would become an issue of coming to a judgment on what
is the value of that strategic dispersion as the Navy presents
it versus the potential value of spending that money in other
ways.
And that is the question for policymakers.
Mr. Taylor. Chair thanks the gentleman from Virginia.
We now recognize the gentleman from Connecticut, Mr.
Courtney, for five minutes.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and as you said in
your opening remarks, and obviously, we have got a budget that
is coming out in May, which the content of this hearing is
going to be very helpful. In addition to that, we are also
looking at another quadrennial defense review that is beginning
the process right now.
In the last review, the number of attack submarines that
was pegged was 48, and I just was wondering whether the
witnesses had any opinions about whether or not that number
should change, stay the same? Mr. O'Rourke's report mentioned
that there is some discussion about reducing the fleet size
down to 40.
So obviously, this issue is going to be swirling around out
there, and maybe starting with you, Mr. Thompson, and going
across.
Dr. Thompson. Congressman, I believe that on that on the
glide path we are on, we are actually headed for not more than
about 41 circa 2028. Electric Boat built those Los Angeles
class attack subs so efficiently back in the 1970s and 1980s
that they all retire very quickly going into the next two
decades, and that has the consequence of reducing our attack
sub numbers well below 48.
You know, we skipped six years in the 1990s with no
construction. I guess that was the switch over from Seawolf to
what we now call the Virginia class, and then we delayed
ramping up the construction of the Virginia class. It is not
until 2011 that we get to two a year. I am not sure we are ever
going to build them at three a year.
So, although the lowest number I have heard the Joint Staff
say was prudent was 48, we are actually headed for a
considerably lower number. At the very least, we have to
produce two a year, but anybody who suggests doing anything
less than that is really putting our intelligence gathering
capabilities and our undersea warfare capabilities at risk.
Admiral Houley. When I retired from active duty, the number
was 75, plus or minus a couple. That is still my favorite
number. So you can take that one and put it wherever it
deserves to be. I said in my opening remarks that to me the
most important thing is what has already been accomplished, and
that is the multi-year capability.
We all know those submarines are terribly expensive. They
too take a lot of time to build. And with that multi-year
procurement and a level of two a year, you never get to a
number a submariner likes or even a strategic thinker likes.
But all of these things have to be considered in the same light
that you all look at them.
There is a whole Navy here, not just a submarine Navy. You
are all more than well aware of the issues involved with
procurement if the numbers drop too low. Not only do you start
paying way too much money for things, but in some cases, you
have problems getting them at all. And given that all of our
nuclear shipbuilding is wrapped up in two classes of ships, the
amount of business that we do is pretty limited.
So I think that it is good to have a number, and it is good
for these studies to continue and they never stop. They are
done by friends; they are done by foes depending on what your
definition of either is. And they do illuminate the issues and
bring them up to date. But I think we kind of are where we are.
And if we have the ability to sustain two a year, then we
can argue about a lot of other things. We have got a new class
of ships we are going to have to eventually build. That is
going to be another big challenge for you all as well as for
the Navy and strategic thinkers. It is just going to get
tougher and tougher.
And, to me, I like where we are not because it gets us to
the right number of submarines, but it provides a line of
defense for the moment, at least, which I am sure will be
reviewed.
Dr. Barnett. I am generally comfortable with the glide path
that we are currently on. I don't have a real problem with us
going from 48 to the low 40s. Two things I like to cite, you
know, historically, the utility of submarines in my mind has
decreased fairly dramatically over the last six decades.
There hasn't been a major submarine battle since the Second
World War. There has been five torpedoes fired in two
incidences in the last six plus decades. Yes, we are seeing
certain countries in an anti-access strategy reach for cheap
asymmetrical capabilities in terms of diesel submarines. You
know, if we are really worried about that, my answer is not to
come up with a highly technological answer for that.
My answer is simply to symmetricize the situation. I mean,
for us to get in the business of building simple, cheap diesel
submarines and meeting that threat head-on if we really
seriously consider that a big threat. And whenever I hear
surveillance issues, underwater capabilities of submarines, I
tend to think that is overvalued. I don't see that much utility
in building submarines for surveillance reasons.
Dr. Thompson. Could I comment on that? I think the problem
the undersea warfare community has is that much of what it does
is not in the public domain. And so we are left guessing about
precisely how the submarines are being used. The fact of the
matter is that most of the mission days are spent on
intelligence gathering.
And that doesn't necessarily mean looking for submarines.
It also means doing signals intelligence collection for long
periods of time, covertly, off the coast of places like Syria,
China, Iran and so on. Now, the Navy's never going to talk
about that in public. But to suggest that the reason why we can
safely go to the low 40s is because we don't use a lot of
torpedoes anymore is kind of missing the point about why we buy
submarines in the first place.
Dr. Barnett. Again, my follow would be that there is a
tendency to sell the secrecy argument and the value of what we
get from that intelligence gathering. I think the question has
to be asked whether we need $2 billion undersea platforms to
gather that intelligence. Or whether there are other means that
are equally applicable that give us a large array of
capabilities over the long term.
Dr. Thompson. I guess the next step is to cut the number of
imagery satellites and signals intelligence satellites too
since those are secret also.
Dr. Barnett. No, no. It is a question of bouncing between
those two. I would much rather see my money go into that kind
of capability than----
Mr. Taylor. Gentlemen----
Dr. Barnett [continuing]. Buying submarines.
Mr. Taylor. We gave the chairman of Readiness, out of
respect, a bit more than five minutes, but you are fairly new
here, we can't do that.
The gentleman from California, Mr. Hunter. Five minutes.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This has been a
fantastic panel. First of all, I would like to comment on Dr.
Barnett's comments on the Navy's risk and relevance. I think
when you see boxers going at it, each boxer stays out of
distance, out of reach until he wants to strike, and then he
moves in.
I think in order to stay relevant, I am Marines, this is
easy to say, but you have to be willing to close with the enemy
and take them on. That is why I think the LCSs are important,
and being able to move them.
What I would like to hear your opinion on is on our over-
the-horizon capability with the Marine Corps and our ability to
breach a country, basically, breach a country, build a
beachhead and invade if we had to with something such as the
expeditionary fighting vehicle. Do you see a need for that in
the future?
Dr. Barnett. In general, I don't see a rising requirement
for forcible entry amphibious from the sea.
Mr. Hunter. You didn't call me general; you are saying in
general?
Dr. Barnett. I said in general.
Mr. Hunter. Oh, good. I thought you--I am a captain. Okay,
good.
Dr. Barnett. Well, my role is to call everybody general or
admiral, because it usually flatters. But I don't see a rising
requirement there. You know, in general, I think most of the
places we are going to access are going to be permissive in
terms of entry. And most of our problems are going to be
encountered once we get there.
So I am more interested in fortifying the Marines on an
individual basis than I am seeking the technological solutions
for how they enter in any situation.
Dr. Thompson. You know, I remember in August of 2001, a
reporter asked me whether we would be in a land war in Asia any
time in the next 10 years, and I said, ``No, we are not going
to be in a land war in Asia any time in the next 10 years.''
And sure enough, I was right. We were in two land wars in Asia
within three years.
It is not possible to know the future. And, you know, you
get into problems like DDG-1000 or into questions about LCS if
you key your capability too closely to the threat that is
preoccupying you at a particular time. You really have to build
multi-mission capabilities that are flexible, versatile because
the threats change, especially now.
Given that, the notion that the Marine Corps is going to
spend the next 10 or 20 or 30 years trying to get ashore in
vehicles like the Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV) is really a
pretty tenuous war-fighting concept. Now, I understand that the
view today is that we are going to use rotorcraft for the most
part to go over the beach, but you still need a vehicle that
can get ashore.
And while the cost of the expeditionary fighting vehicle
has gone up considerably, the program is actually doing quite
well since it was restructured. I always ask people when they
say, ``Should we kill it,'' is ``Well, what is your
alternative?'' I don't see any alternative.
Mr. O'Rourke. I think it is also worth noting that
independent of the idea of doing forcible entry, amphibious
ships are increasingly recognized as having value and
performing many of the other kinds of operations that I
mentioned in my testimony earlier including humanitarian
assistance and disaster relief, engagement and partnership
building and maritime security operations.
So, even if you were to discount the idea of doing large
landings ashore in a nonbenign setting, you might still wind up
deciding that you need a significant number of amphibious ships
for these other kinds of missions.
Admiral Houley. I strongly agree with Mr. O'Rourke's
comment there. And while as a submariner my testimony about
vehicles is worthless, the one thing that ties most of what we
have talked about today together is the fact that no matter
what you believe in terms of the ordering of threats in the
future, the fact that they will be all over the globe is not up
for debate.
And the fact that whether you are looking at aircraft
carriers or whether you are looking at amphibious ready groups
or whether you are looking at the helicopters that were briefly
mentioned here, all of those things are part of what the Navy
does.
And our case for ourselves may change in terms of the
importance of this, that, or the other thing, but the
importance of the Marine capability to be moved to deal with
whatever it is that we are trying to deal with, that case will
not be subject to much criticism or question.
So it is perfectly worth having discussions about vehicles,
which unfortunately, I can't help with. But I am really
enamored with the fact that the cases for expeditionary forces
seem to be increasing rapidly rather than decreasing, even
though the scenarios may be something to have a debate about.
Dr. Barnett. I also agree with the notion that amphibious
ships are highly useful for that kind of lower end, less
forcible entry kind of situations, which I think will
proliferate, and I see other powers reaching for that kind of
tool kit as well. So I see them responding to the environment,
and I see us responding to the environment by maintaining
certain numbers in that regard.
I don't advocate worrying too much about the forcible
aspect of it, but I do see a lot----
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, doctor.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman.
We have been called to the floor for what is probably going
to be seven votes. Another committee has scheduled this room
starting shortly after 12. So we are going to recognize Ms.
Pingree for the last set of questions.
I would ask that our panel, and again, I very much
appreciate you being here. I hope you appreciate for a change
that this was actually a hearing. You all did most of the
talking. And I think that was a welcome change from what often
happens in this room.
So we are going to recognize Ms. Pingree. We are going to
encourage each of the members who did not get a chance to
submit questions for the record.
The chair now recognizes Ms. Pingree for five minutes.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I appreciate the
fact that you don't have a lot of time to answer our questions,
and my colleagues want to get to a vote. And so I will try to
be brief here on something that clearly is complicated issue.
As you can see, I am down here in the row with the
freshman. And so I am a newly elected member from a district
where shipbuilding is of critical importance, and we have had a
longstanding relationship with the decisions that are made by
the Navy.
So my two questions, which are kind of broad, and you may
say that you want to get back to me or talk to me at a future
moment. One, I think, is for Mr. O'Rourke. You know, it would
be very helpful to me, and perhaps this is an entire separate
hearing, but to really understand factually what the
differences are between the DDG-1000 and the 51.
You know, that comes up even though that is not what the
topic of the hearing is today, many of you have made
recommendations around this. This is clearly a change here in
the direction that the Navy is taking.
And I think I need a better understanding of whether this
is all about the budget and the concerns that are being raised
around that or how that will substantially change what we are
going about doing.
Maybe kind of blended together here, and again, I
understand these are broad, complex topics. But for Rear
Admiral Houley, and you discussed this a little bit, but, you
know, it is very hard to understand as a newcomer to this
process why the major shifts happen in the Navy strategy around
their ability to sort of plan for the future of what is best to
build for the Navy, how we could have come to this point of
making such a dramatic shift after going down one path.
And again, I understand that we are all dealing with budget
constraints that we have to be honest in our assessment of what
it really costs in the future, but why does the Navy seem to be
incapable of planning for future budgeting and unable to
understand or at least face what future costs are going to be
when they are making these major decisions about what we are
going to be building?
I know a couple of you mentioned at some point, the
importance of preserving an industrial base, and for me,
looking at this, not just someone who is deeply concerned about
the workers in our district but also someone who wants to make
sure that, in the future, we have good shipbuilders who are
ready to go and good yards with the capacity to build them.
It seems increasingly difficult to make these kinds of
changes, and you know, why does that happen?
Admiral Houley. Let me be mercifully brief, mercifully
simplistic and, therefore, give you a really lousy but very
straightforward answer. There is an analogy here between the
Seawolf submarine and the submarines that we are now building,
the Virginia class.
The overall criticism was that we were building in Seawolf,
a ship that was overly complex, overly capable and, therefore,
by definition, overly expensive for the threat as projected by
anybody.
Everybody thinks DDG-1000 would be a marvelous ship and a
great credit to the Navy, but we would only be able to build a
few of them. We would have to go through a nightmare of lessons
to be learned before we ever got to that point, and in the end,
the number of ships that we would add to the Navy would be
continually smaller than the number we are taking out in old
age.
We can't afford it. Now, I am not going to even touch the
comment about why is the Navy incapable, because I don't agree
with the premise of the question. These things are not simple,
and sometimes, naval leadership has to do what the country or
the Congress expects them to do. Sometimes we even have to do
things we don't agree with. But that is part of what we do for
a living.
I am not trying to suggest here that I think the CNO has
been told, ``You can't ask for the DDG-1000.'' I don't think
that is the case, but I think that it is his measured wisdom
that that is not in the best interest of the Navy given the
overall shipbuilding situation, which we have tried to address
here.
Now, that is not a complete answer to your question, which
as you said, it is a 45-day question, and----
Mr. Taylor. Ms. Pingree? We are down to two minutes before
we vote. So----
Mr. O'Rourke. Congresswoman, just very quickly----
Mr. Taylor. Mr. O'Rourke. I have really got to gavel you,
but if you want to carry on this conversation privately, I
would appreciate that.
Thank you very much, Ms. Pingree.
[Whereupon, at 11:35 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
March 26, 2009
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