[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-154]
SUPPORTING THE RESERVE COMPONENTS AS AN OPERATIONAL RESERVE AND KEY
RESERVE PERSONNEL LEGISLATIVE INITIATIVES
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
APRIL 15, 2010
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MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California, Chairwoman
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas JOE WILSON, South Carolina
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
PATRICK J. MURPHY, Pennsylvania THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida
HANK JOHNSON, Georgia MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire JOHN C. FLEMING, Louisiana
DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa
NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts
Craig Greene, Professional Staff Member
John Chapla, Professional Staff Member
James Weiss, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2010
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, April 15, 2010, Supporting the Reserve Components as an
Operational Reserve and Key Reserve Personnel Legislative
Initiatives.................................................... 1
Appendix:
Thursday, April 15, 2010......................................... 33
----------
THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 2010
SUPPORTING THE RESERVE COMPONENTS AS AN OPERATIONAL RESERVE AND KEY
RESERVE PERSONNEL LEGISLATIVE INITIATIVES
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Davis, Hon. Susan A., a Representative from California,
Chairwoman, Military Personnel Subcommittee.................... 1
Wilson, Hon. Joe, a Representative from South Carolina, Ranking
Member, Military Personnel Subcommittee........................ 2
WITNESSES
Carpenter, Maj. Gen. Raymond W., USA, Acting Director, Army
National Guard................................................. 9
Debbink, Vice Adm. Dirk J., USN, Chief, Navy Reserve............. 5
Kelly, Lt. Gen. John F., USMC, Commander, Marine Forces Reserve.. 6
McCarthy, Hon. Dennis M., Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Reserve Affairs................................................ 3
Stenner, Lt. Gen. Charles E., Jr., USAF, Chief, Air Force Reserve 7
Stultz, Lt. Gen. Jack, USA, Chief, Army Reserve.................. 4
Wyatt, Lt. Gen. Harry M., III, USAF, Director, Air National Guard 8
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Carpenter, Maj. Gen. Raymond W............................... 142
Davis, Hon. Susan A.......................................... 37
Debbink, Vice Adm. Dirk J.................................... 79
Kelly, Lt. Gen. John F....................................... 101
McCarthy, Hon. Dennis M...................................... 41
Stenner, Lt. Gen. Charles E., Jr............................. 121
Stultz, Lt. Gen. Jack........................................ 64
Wilson, Hon. Joe............................................. 39
Wyatt, Lt. Gen. Harry M., III................................ 135
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:
Mr. Hare..................................................... 167
Ms. Tsongas.................................................. 167
SUPPORTING THE RESERVE COMPONENTS AS AN OPERATIONAL RESERVE AND KEY
RESERVE PERSONNEL LEGISLATIVE INITIATIVES
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Military Personnel Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Thursday, April 15, 2010.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:10 p.m., in
room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Susan A. Davis
(chairwoman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. SUSAN A. DAVIS, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
CALIFORNIA, CHAIRWOMAN, MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE
Mrs. Davis. Good afternoon. The meeting will come to order.
Today this subcommittee will turn its attention to the
important issue of what it means to be an Operational Reserve
Force and to examine what policies, laws and practices may need
to be adjusted to ensure a sustainable Reserve Force.
The attacks on September 11, 2001 set in motion the
sustained increased use and heavier reliance on the Reserves
with over 761,000 reservists and guardsmen mobilized to date,
one-third of whom have been activated two times or more. The
Department of Defense (DOD) and the services have begun a
transformation of the Guard and Reserve to an operational force
with greater strategic capability and depth. This includes an
equipping strategy to ensure the Reserve Components have the
same equipment as their respective active component and
effective force management strategy to ensure the Reserves are
not over-utilized.
In response to the continuing reliance on the Reserves,
Congress took some key steps to address the concerns that
emerged:
First, it established the Commission on the National Guard
and Reserves to provide a comprehensive, independent assessment
of the Guard and Reserves and its potential future roles.
Secondly, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act
of 2008, Congress, one, elevated the Chief of the National
Guard Bureau to the grade of four-star general; two, made the
National Guard Bureau a joint organization; and three, required
specific actions with regard to equipping the Guard and
Reserves.
Congress also mandated the establishment of the Yellow
Ribbon Reintegration Program to assist Guard and Reserve
members and their families' transition back to communities
after deployment.
Some of the issues of interest to the subcommittee we hope
to discuss today, in today's hearing, would include the status
of the remaining 53 recommendations of the Commission to the
Department of Defense, the status of the Reserve retirement;
the Continuum of Service objective; the promotion system and
the integrated pay and personnel systems; the status of
individual readiness, medical readiness, and force structure
decisions; and the status of support to families and support to
employers.
We have an excellent panel consisting of the Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs and the Chiefs of the
Reserve Components who will help us explore these issues. I
will request that all witnesses keep their oral statements as
close as you can to three minutes. And, without objection, all
written statements will be entered into the record.
[The prepared statement of Mrs. Davis can be found in the
Appendix on page 37.]
Mrs. Davis. I ask for unanimous consent to allow
Congressman Phil Hare to submit a question for the record.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 167.]
Mrs. Davis. Mr. Wilson, do you have opening remarks?
STATEMENT OF HON. JOE WILSON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM SOUTH
CAROLINA, RANKING MEMBER, MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Wilson. Chairwoman Davis, I join you in welcoming our
witnesses, the key civilian and military leaders of this
nation's Reserve Components. Our country is so fortunate to
have such dedicated military leaders who truly look out for
their troops and military families. I thank them all for their
service to the nation.
We also want to thank you for having this hearing. In my
view, we are in a period of transition, trying to incorporate
the lessons learned from strong active and Reserve Component
integration and interdependence during the past eight years of
war, while moving towards a future where potential requirements
for building and sustaining the Reserve Components as an
Operational Reserve may soon outstrip the resources available.
To illustrate my concern, let me highlight a point made in
Secretary McCarthy's written statement. Quote: The fiscal year
2011 budget provides for about $50 billion to pay for training,
equipping, and facilities to support the Reserve Components.
The funds provide about 43 percent of the total military end
strength, for 9 percent of the total base budget.
That statement reiterates an historical fact. The Reserve
Components have always been remarkably cost-effective. The
statement does not address, however, whether the $50 billion
adequately meets the requirements for today's and tomorrow's
Reserve Components, nor does it address the resourcing
legislative and policy changes that would be required to ensure
that the Reserve Components continue to be in an Operational
Reserve and do not slip back into the former resource-dictated
roles of being only a Strategic Reserve.
Our witnesses, as military leaders, know during a time of
battle that periods of transition, a passage of lines, a relief
in place to shift from offense to defense are periods of risk.
From my perspective during this period of transition, this
period of risk, we must hear clearly and distinctly from each
of the military services and from the Department of Defense how
they intend to go forward to ensure the Reserve Components
remain and grow as an Operational Reserve.
I especially appreciate our Reserves, as a 31-year veteran
of the Reserves and National Guard myself, with four sons
currently serving in the military, with two having service in
Iraq and three currently in the National Guard. For that reason
I look forward today to the testimony of our witnesses with
regard to how each of them is moving in both the short and long
term to make the Reserve Components fully effective as an
Operational Reserve.
I yield the balance of my time.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wilson can be found in the
Appendix on page 39.]
Mrs. Davis. I would now like to introduce our panel. The
Honorable Dennis M. McCarthy, Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Reserve Affairs; Lieutenant General Jack Stultz, Chief,
Army Reserve; Vice Admiral Dirk Debbink, Chief of Naval
Reserve; Lieutenant General John F. Kelly, Commander of Marine
Forces Reserve; Lieutenant General Charles Stenner, Chief of
the Air Force Reserve; Lieutenant General Harry Wyatt, Director
of the Air National Guard; and Major General Raymond Carpenter,
Acting Director, Army National Guard. Thank you so much for
being here.
And I understand, Secretary McCarthy, that this is your
first time testifying for us in this position, and we certainly
want to welcome you, look forward to all of your statements.
Mrs. Davis. And would you please begin, Mr. Secretary.
STATEMENT OF HON. DENNIS M. MCCARTHY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE FOR RESERVE AFFAIRS
Secretary McCarthy. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, Ranking
Member Wilson, and members of the subcommittee for the
opportunity to be with you today. It is always an honor to
testify before the Congress of the United States, and it is a
privilege to appear and to represent the over 1.1 million men
and women who serve in the National Guard and Reserve.
One of the President's key goals, adopted and fully
supported by Secretary Gates and all of the leaders of the
Department of the Defense, is to sustain the all-volunteer
force. We decided as a nation in the early 1970s that we wanted
all of our military services to be made up exclusively of
volunteers. We have learned since that time, and, as you point
out, most specifically since September of 2001, that our all-
volunteer force can never be large enough to fight a sustained
conflict or to remain decisively engaged in a global struggle
without augmentation and reinforcement.
We can get that augmentation from either one of two
sources. We can either return to conscription or we can have a
strong and effective Reserve Component. To me, it is clear that
the latter course of a seamlessly integrated force made up of
both active and Reserve members is the preferable one.
So it is incumbent on the leaders sitting before you this
afternoon to ensure that, with the support of Congress, we
train, equip, and sustain the Reserve Component of that
equation.
There are three main themes that I believe we must all
understand. First is that every man and woman serving in the
Reserve Components in uniform today has made a conscious choice
to serve. They have either enlisted or reenlisted since 9/11
with the full understanding of what their decision means to
them and to their families. They realize that service in the
armed forces at this point in history means service in combat.
They realize that service means repeated deployments that are
challenging not just for the service members but for their
families. And for those in the Reserve and Guard, they know
that the challenges inherent in their decision affect their
employers as well.
The second point is that, as you point out, since 9/11 over
750,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, coastguardians, and Marines
of the Reserve Component have been mobilized. Since I have been
in office the last few months, the daily average of those
mobilized has been about 140,000. And that number does not take
into account the number of reservists who serve on active duty
and other types and in other statuses around the world every
day. We can't sustain this effort without the continued support
of our families and our employers.
Lastly, even after the demand for high numbers of forces in
both Iraq and Afghanistan come down, we should continue to
utilize our Reserve Components on a rotational basis. The
nation has made a significant effort and a significant
investment in the readiness and capability of this force, so it
makes good sense from an economic standpoint to continue to get
return on that investment.
Even more importantly, the men and women of our Reserve
Component continue to tell their leaders that this is how they
want to be used. They do not want to go back to the old one
weekend a month and one week in the summer paradigm.
I will turn now to my colleagues who still get to wear
their uniforms, but I am anxious to respond to any questions
that the subcommittee may have.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Secretary McCarthy can be found
in the Appendix on page 41.]
Mrs. Davis. Go ahead, sir.
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. JACK STULTZ, USA, CHIEF, ARMY RESERVE
General Stultz. Chairwoman Davis, other distinguished
members, first it is an honor to be here representing 208,000
great heroes, the men and women that I have in uniform in the
Army Reserve. And I can tell you that your Army Reserve is in
good spirit. I am authorized 205,000, I mentioned I have got
208,000. And as Secretary McCarthy indicated, all of those
soldiers have either enlisted or reenlisted since 9/11. Morale
is high.
Since January I have been in nine or ten countries now,
because I just came back from Haiti, visiting Army Reserve
soldiers on duty around the world doing great things for this
nation and great things for other nations, with wonderful
skills that they have from their military, but also wonderful
skills they bring from their civilian life and their civilian
employment.
To maintain this Operational Reserve my focus is really on
three priorities: One, the soldiers. I have got to have the
best-trained, best-equipped, best-led soldiers. Two, the
families. We have got to have the support of our families, we
have got to support them because they are making sacrifices
just like our soldiers are. And three, the employers. Without
the support of the employers we cannot maintain this
Operational Reserve. Without the support of the employers, we
cannot maintain, because one-weekend-a-month pay does not pay
the mortgage, it does not send the kids to college. They depend
on their employers. And their employers depend on us to provide
them predictability, to provide them some kind of support and
compensation, just like the families depend on us.
But I can tell you morale is high, soldiers appreciate what
they are doing. Just as Secretary McCarthy indicated, they
didn't sign up for one weekend a month, two weekends in the
summer, they signed up to go somewhere to do something for
their nation, and we have a national treasure that we cannot
afford to lose.
Thanks for Congress's support for all you have done for our
soldiers and our families, and I look forward to your
questions, ma'am.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of General Stultz can be found in
the Appendix on page 64.]
STATEMENT OF VICE ADM. DIRK J. DEBBINK, USN, CHIEF, NAVY
RESERVE
Admiral Debbink. Chairwoman Davis, Ranking Member Wilson,
and distinguished members of the Military Personnel
Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss our
vision of how we can best support the operational elements of
our Navy Reserve.
I would like to begin by thanking you for your terrific
support for the 65,551 sailors and their families in our Navy
Reserve. As the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead
has said, we are one Navy with an active component and Reserve
Component. And as I testify this afternoon, Navy Reserve
sailors are operating in every corner of the world, shoulder to
shoulder with sailors, soldiers, airmen, Marines,
coastguardsmen, and I think, most importantly perhaps
sometimes, the interagency as well. On any given day more than
30 percent of the Navy Reserve is providing support to
Department of Defense operations.
The Navy Reserve is ready now anytime, anywhere, as our
motto and our sailors proudly claim. Just as the Quadrennial
Defense Review reflects the Department of Defense priorities of
both prevailing in today's wars while preventing and deterring
future conflict, we believe our Reserve Components have both an
operational mission to provide accessible, ready, and
innovative forces for today's Joint Force requirements and also
a core strategic role in our National Defense Strategy.
To best accomplish these dual missions, we are
concentrating our efforts on three strategic focus areas:
First, enabling a true continuum of service. Secondly,
delivering a ready and accessible force. And finally, providing
valued capabilities to the Navy and Marine Corps team and Joint
Forces. Continuous service initiatives provide for a seamless
movement between the active component, Reserve Component, and
civilian service, offering full access to the Navy total force,
while delivering operational flexibility and strategic depth at
the best value for the Navy. Delivering a ready and accessible
force sustains that reliable inventory of on-demand expertise
delivered by available trained and equipped individuals in
units. And providing value capabilities advances the long-term
course set forth in the Quadrennial Defense Review and the
priorities of the Chief of Naval Operations by identifying and
excelling in those missions of the Joint Force that are best
accomplished by the Navy Reserve.
Success in these operations, of course, is no accident. It
is as a result of your sailors' can-do spirit, combined with
the support of chain of command, support of families, and
support of employers, and the proactive work of this Congress
in helping us in all its endeavors is greatly appreciated.
Together we seek to provide our sailors with the training, the
equipment and the support that will ensure their success.
It is a privilege to serve during these important and
meaningful times in our nation's defense, especially as a Navy
Reservist. I thank you for your continued support, your
dedicated commitment to both the Navy Reserve and our Navy, and
I look forward to your questions. Thank you, ma'am.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Debbink can be found in
the Appendix on page 79.]
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. JOHN F. KELLY, USMC, COMMANDER, MARINE
FORCES RESERVE
General Kelly. Congresswoman Davis, Congressman Wilson,
distinguished members of the committee, I am certainly happy to
be here today. This is my first opportunity to testify before
the committee.
I will open by simply saying I am an active duty general. I
have known the Reserves for almost 40 years, but more as a user
and abuser of Marine Corps Reserves than as someone who knew
the intricacies of the other 90 percent of how they spend their
lives.
I will cut to the quick. The Marine Corps Reserve today is
probably as experienced and is combat-ready like no other time
since the early 1950s. I had never heard the term ``Operational
Reserve'' before I came to this job. The Marine Corps Reserve
is in fact, and has been since 9/11, a fully functioning
Operational Reserve. It is very strong, it is very combat-
effective.
As a total force we share all of the difficulties and
successes of equipment, fielding shortages that the active
component--we are equal in the way that we receive equipment.
Those going to the fight get the equipment and the best
equipment first. It doesn't matter if they are reservists or
active duty. So as I say, we have very definitely been an
Operational Reserve now for almost 10 years.
What is very very interesting to me as I get around and
talk to reservists, in the last six months that I have had the
command--and this has been mentioned before--the two things
they want to do is get back into the fight. Most of them, the
vast majority of them, have served in the conflict, either in
Afghanistan or Iraq, at least once, many of them two and three
times, and they volunteer to do that. They also don't want to
be put back on the shelf. Even if this war were to end
tomorrow, they still want to stay in the fight, so to speak,
doing these state-of-cooperation missions that all of the
combatant commanders (COCOMs) scream for every day. And
indication of this, frankly, is that our recruiting is good,
our retention is good, and the families are happy.
And certainly, as I say, it is an honor to be here, and I
look forward to your questions.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of General Kelly can be found in
the Appendix on page 101.]
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. CHARLES E. STENNER, JR., USAF, CHIEF, AIR
FORCE RESERVE
General Stenner. Chairwoman Davis, Congressman Wilson,
members of the committee, I am very pleased and proud to be
here today to answer some questions and give you some
perspective on what is happening with our Air Force Reserve. I
brought with me Chief Master Sergeant Dwight Badgett, and he
was our Command Chief Master Sergeant and helps me with the
sustainment and maintenance of our strong component force.
I believe as you opened, Chairwoman Davis, on the
discussion on sustaining the Strategic Reserve and the
operational force, my perspective is we are first and foremost
a Strategic Reserve. I believe we leverage that on a daily
basis to provide that operational force that we send around the
world on a rotational basis, maintaining and sustaining each
and every mission set that our Air Force has. And we work
together as a three-component Air Force to do that, and we are
integrated seamlessly. We train to the same standards and we go
wherever and whenever called in this nation's defense.
So sustaining that Strategic Reserve keeps the basis of
that operational force strong. I think we need to do that, even
more so in this world, where we are adding new mission sets,
where we have to rebalance our force to do that, and we have to
remember first and foremost that we do all of what we do with
that citizen airman, that citizen warrior, that person that has
three parts to their life. And they have to balance that life
such that they can sustain and maintain their civilian career,
which I do not want to impact.
Their employer is a big piece of that. I need to work with
that employer to make sure that that happens. I want to make
sure that their families are sustained and maintained as well.
And then I want to make sure that they have a military career
that they can grow and broaden in as well.
That then takes me to how to create the senior leadership
for tomorrow, because we aren't the same Reserve as we were in
the past. The senior leadership has got to understand the kinds
of things we do as a joint team, the kinds of things we do as a
seamlessly integrated Air Force. In order to do that, we have
got to get them outside of the standard stovepipes and the
career paths they have been in. That manpower, that personnel,
that citizen warrior that is balancing those three parts of
their lives, has got to be able to volunteer and go when they
need to go and when they can go. I need to sustain that so that
they are going to stick with us, I need to watch and monitor
the dwell, and I want to do that with our active component and
our Guard compatriots as well.
The pressures are not going to lessen, the realities are
there, the budgets are going to be tough, and in those tough
times I want to preserve that capability and that strategic
force. And I believe that our Guard counterparts here would
join me in saying that in order to do that we need all the help
that you can give us and that we can sustain and maintain this
Reserve Component as the nation needs.
Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of General Stenner can be found in
the Appendix on page 121.]
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. HARRY M. WYATT III, USAF, DIRECTOR, AIR
NATIONAL GUARD
General Wyatt. Chairwoman Davis, Ranking Member Wilson and
distinguished members of the committee, thank you very much for
the opportunity to discuss issues of vital importance that
impact the well-being, the lives of our 108,396, as I count
them today, Air National Guardsmen, their families, and their
employers.
Seated behind me is Chief Master Sergeant Chris Muncy. He
is the Command Chief of the Air National Guard, representing
over 90,000-plus enlisted members of the Air National Guard.
Air National Guard airmen are volunteering at unprecedented
rates, risking their lives daily because they strongly believe
in what they are doing for our country and our communities.
Since 9/11, 146,000 Air National Guard members have
deployed overseas, many of them on second and third rotations;
75 percent of those in combat zones as volunteers. In the past
year alone, we have deployed 18,366 service members to 62
countries and every continent, including Antarctica.
The Air National Guard proves day in and day out that we
are available and that we are accessible, we are there for the
federal fight and for our communities also. In the past year,
Air National Guard members have helped their fellow citizens
battle floods, mitigate the aftermath of ice storms, fight
wildfires, and provide relief from the devastating effects of a
tsunami.
Earlier in the year, Guard members from Kentucky, Arizona,
and Missouri responded to debilitating ice storms which
resulted in the largest National Guard call-up in Kentucky's
history.
Last spring, North Dakota, South Dakota, and the Minnesota
Air National Guard members provided rescue relief and manpower
in response to Midwest flooding.
In September the Hawaii Air National Guard sent personnel
from their Chemical, Biological, Radiological High-Yield
Explosives Enhanced Response Force Package (CERFP), a command
and control element, and a mortuary affairs team to American
Samoa in response to an 8.4 magnitude earthquake-generated
tsunami.
These are just a few of the examples of how Air National
Guard members provide exceptional expertise, experience, and
capabilities to mitigate disasters and their consequences.
Without the stewardship of your committee, our airmen would
have an incredibly difficult time doing their jobs and taking
care of their families and their employers taking care of them.
We are thankful for everything you have done and continue to do
for our members, and we know that America cares about them and
is grateful for their sacrifices.
In conclusion, Madam Chairwoman, and to the committee,
thanks again for inviting me to speak on behalf of our military
and civilian members, their families, and our employers. I look
forward to your questions. Thank you.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of General Wyatt can be found in
the Appendix on page 135.]
STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. RAYMOND W. CARPENTER, USA, ACTING
DIRECTOR, ARMY NATIONAL GUARD
General Carpenter. Chairwoman Davis, Ranking Member Wilson,
distinguished members of the subcommittee, I am honored to
represent more than 361,000 citizen soldiers in the Army
National Guard. As I speak, 52,355 of those soldiers are
mobilized, deployed, and on point for this nation. These
soldiers joined our force knowing that they would deploy. They
are willing to make a difference in the world and defend our
country. Army National Guard soldiers are part of the
Operational Reserve. Your Army National Guard is accessible and
it is important that we fully resource those formations and
ensure that they maintain the highest levels of readiness. The
sacrifice of those soldiers, their families, and employers is
something we must not only acknowledge but fully appreciate.
The National Guard today is dramatically different from the
one I joined over four decades ago. The last eight years have
seen the Guard transform from a Strategic Reserve to an
operational force, and the enablers of the Army National Guard
have been provided and sustained by congressional initiatives,
and we thank you for your continued support.
I want to specifically mention our request for increase in
non-dual status technicians from 1,600 to 2,520. Non-dual
status technicians work primarily in personnel administration,
contract management, information technology, and similar
support functions. With the Army National Guard's frequent
mobilizations, we find that we need these non-deploying
civilian technicians to fill critical positions in our
generating force. Filling these positions with dual-status
military members who deploy creates a disruptive work flow.
As we talk about the Operational Reserve, among the
questions we get is, What is a soldier's perspective? The
answer for us can be found in our experience over the last
eight years. After 9/11 we mobilized the first wave in the Army
National Guard, and they went to war and they did a great job.
When they came back, some of them realized that that wasn't
what they signed up for, and they talked to their employers,
they talked to their families, and they looked at the outlook
and they decided that they would not stay with us because it
didn't fit into their future plans. And so we saw our end
strength go from 350,000 to 330,000.
We changed our recruiting processes, we directed our
efforts at a segment of the population who wanted to serve
their country and go do their patriotic duty. We turned that
trend around to where we had 368,000 soldiers inside of our
formations, a high point in February of 2009, and we have since
come back to around 358,000. We are exceeding our recruiting
goals, we are above our end strength of 358,000, not below it
as of today. Our retention rate is over 110 percent. And this
would not be true if the soldiers did not want to be part of an
operational National Guard.
General Campbell, the force's command commander responsible
for training and deploying the Army Guard, has said the
Operational Reserve is a national treasure, a treasure which we
abandon at our own peril.
Again, I want to thank you for your support for our
operational National Guard today, and I look forward to your
questions.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of General Carpenter can be found
in the Appendix on page 142.]
Mrs. Davis. Thank you to all of you, and for keeping in
such a short time frame. We appreciate that. And we know that
you have a great deal to say, but this way perhaps we can talk
through the questions. And I would certainly encourage you--if
you feel at the end that we haven't addressed something that is
really important and critical to you, I will try and get back
and ask that question. But if I don't, then please bring it up
so we can have that on the record, because we know there is a
lot that you have been working with.
I wonder, Secretary McCarthy, if you might just speak for a
few minutes about the recommendations. The Commission on the
National Guard and Reserves, as you know, released its final
report on January 31, 2008 with 95 recommendations. And the
Secretary of Defense determined that there were 82 of the 95
that the Department was required to take action on or continue
action that had already begun. And he further directed the
appropriate services commands and agencies to develop an
implementation plan for 53 of those recommendations.
I am not going to ask you to go through all 53 of them. But
of those--and I think there were a few that you called out in
your statement as well. If you could kind of give us a general
assessment and what concerns you the most of those
recommendations and the ability to really drill down and to
make sure that they are accomplished, or are there some that
you think quite honestly weren't quite realistic in what they
were asking?
Secretary McCarthy. Madam Chairwoman, as you say, the
Secretary approved the vast majority of the Commission's
recommendations. Some, he felt at the time, and we feel, were
already accomplished. But there is a long list that needs to be
accomplished. And quite frankly, I don't think we have moved as
fast on implementing them as I would like, as I suspect some of
my colleagues here would like. But we have made some
substantial progress on some of the more important ones.
In the opening, both you and Congressman Wilson mentioned
equipment. And two of the recommendations, number 42 and 43,
dealt with the transparency and accountability of Reserve
equipment. And I think we have made tremendous progress in both
of those areas. We are not all the way there yet, by any
stretch of the imagination, but we have a much better handle on
what Reserve equipment is, where it is, what is needed; and,
where there is exchange of equipment between the active
component and the Reserve Component, tracking and tracing that
and replacing it where necessary. So I think that is a sign of
real solid progress.
We have made good progress on the Yellow Ribbon Program.
Again, we are not done yet, but we have made substantial
progress. One of the Commission's recommendations that
languished for a long time but has now been fully implemented
is the creation of the Governors Council. The President
appointed ten Governors who have already had their first
meeting with Secretary Gates and Secretary Napolitano, and that
is going to be a continuing dialogue between ten Governors
drawn from the National Governors Association and the
Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security.
Others are in process. They are in stages. And a lot of them
are complex things, personnel kind of issues that are not going
to be solved overnight. But I do think we are moving forward.
And we certainly have that on our plate. We know what we need
to do and we are not going to stop until we get to the end of
that.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. I appreciate your response.
I wanted to just go back to the equipment for a second,
because I know that that was certainly a great concern, because
the requirements are such that we are dealing both for training
in theater, bringing back, and then also in the communities and
for homeland security as well.
Would any of you like to comment on that in terms of just
some direction to us, because through the appropriations
process we know this is being addressed, but it is that balance
that has been so critical? And I wonder if you have had some
experiences that have thrown up some alarms and you want to be
sure that we are aware of them.
General Stultz. I will chime in first from the Army Reserve
perspective. As Secretary McCarthy said, we have made great
progress. We have come up approximately 10 percent or better in
overall equipment in the Army Reserve, somewhere to the range
of about 80 percent of equipped, which is the best we have been
in years.
The concern I have got is twofold. One is we are still only
about 65 percent modernized. A lot of the equipment we have,
while we have it on hand, is not the modern equipment, it is
still old equipment. And so there is still a lot of work to be
done in that capacity.
Secondly, as we have transformed the Army Reserve from the
old strategic to an operational force, we are transforming
structure inside the Army Reserve. And we are building more
capability that the Army and the nation has identified they
need to fight the future wars; such things as military police,
engineers, civil affairs, logistics, medical, those types of
capabilities. That comes with a bill, because those units are
new equipment bills that are still out there.
I could tell you, to get to where we are going to be in
fiscal year 2016, the unfunded equipment requirement that we
still have out there to meet the new requirements and to
modernize the equipment we have got on hand right now is about
$11.3 billion. So it is significant. But thanks to your support
and thanks to the support of Congress, we have made great
strides. We are critically dependent upon the National Guard
and Reserve Equipping Account, the NGREA, because those dollars
give us the flexibility to prioritize within our force what
equipment we think we need immediately; whereas, with the
regular appropriations, that falls within the Army's program
and it gets lumped in with theirs. Even though, as Secretary
McCarthy said, we have made great progress in terms of
transparency, the NGREA really gives us the flexibility to meet
immediate needs that we can prioritize ourselves, so we
appreciate all the support that we get on that account.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. My time is essentially up. We are
going to try and stick to the five minutes, but would anybody
like to make a comment specifically on this?
General Kelly. If I could, on the equipment. As a part of
the total force we are--as I mentioned in my opening
statement--given the equipment first if we are going next to
the fight, and if not we wait, but not at the end of the line,
after all of the active duty people are provided equipment. At
home station we leave our equipment behind as we go forward,
and so we are in good shape. It is called a training allowance.
We have just enough to train the Marines with and the sailors
that serve with us. So we have no problem in that regard.
But overall, the Marine Corps Commandant has talked in
terms of about $13 billion required right now to reset the
total force, and that would include the Marine Corps Reserve.
So that is a number I would throw out for total force reset,
$13 billion and some change. Thank you.
Admiral Debbink. And, if I may, I just wanted to emphasize
one of the points that General Stultz made, in that I think it
relates to the subject of this hearing as we seek to figure out
the roles between the active component, the Reserve Component,
and the balance thereof, our goal is that we look to
complement, not mirror. And one of the advantages we believe
the Reserve Component brings to our nation is agility and
innovation, because our active components need to be locked
into what they are doing for the defense of our nation.
And so if we are going to be innovative and agile, this
National Guard and Reserve Equipment Account is very important,
because in the year of execution, then, we can direct those
dollars to where our nation needs them most.
General Carpenter. Chairwoman Davis, as you know, the Army
National Guard is one of the first responders in terms of
emergencies and disasters in our responsibility as a dual
mission and in support of the Governors. And in the last five
years the investments that you all have supported in terms of
$32 billion worth of equipment into the Army National Guard, $5
billion of which came from the NGREA account, has raised our
equipment fill for what we call critical dual-use equipment--
that being equipment that can be used in emergencies and
disasters as well as that equipment that is deployed into
theater--has gone from a percentage of around 40 percent to
where it is currently at 83 percent across the nation. And so
it has turned a dramatic turn to the positive, courtesy of what
you all have done.
General Stenner. Madam Chairwoman, if I could just make a
very small nuance to the National Guard and Reserve Equipment
Account not buying anything new, but when we have the three
component Air Force buying anything, we outfit the entire Air
Force three components. But the NGREA is very, very critical in
accelerating some of that where we have excess capacity.
Marrying that up within our association, as we do in the Air
Force, get our stuff and our people into the fight much
quicker. So it accelerates some of the current existing as
well.
General Wyatt. I will be very brief. To add onto what
General Stenner said regarding the NGREA account, but shifting
the focus to equipment acquisition in the total Air Force, we
are fortunate in that the Air Force utilizes all three of its
components as a total force, and we are included in looking at
the new weapons systems. The Air Force shares with the Air
National Guard and the Air Force Reserve the situation that we
have a lot of aging equipment and we are trying to
recapitalize. And I think it is essential if we are going to
keep the Reserve Component, Air Force Reserve and Air National
Guard, as operational that we consider opportunities for
concurrent fielding of those new capabilities, those new
systems across all three components.
That is the way we fight. And in order for us to be able to
continue fighting and provide that ops tempo relief to our
active duty component brothers and sisters, we need to fly the
same equipment, train at the same levels, which we do now, and
be fielded new equipment at the same time.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Chairwoman Davis. And again, I want
to thank all of you for your service.
It is my view that by providing young people the
opportunity to serve in the Guard and Reserve, you are
providing them extraordinary opportunities. It is very
fulfilling for the young people, the networking of friends,
lifelong friends, that they will make. And it is wonderful for
me to hear the success of recruiting and retention, because you
are making a difference in people's lives and protecting our
country simultaneously. And I have really enjoyed the
references to this is no longer the one weekend and two weeks
in the summer Guard and Reserve.
And General Carpenter, it is an understatement that what I
served in is different. But I saw the difference start with the
extraordinary service of the Army National Guard and other
Guard and Reserve Forces to recover from Hurricane Hugo in
South Carolina in 1989. Then came the Persian Gulf service.
That was extraordinary.
And then I know from our own family service in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and so many of my colleagues that I recruited,
they are so proud of their service and they do want to be
operational.
With that, another fact, Secretary McCarthy, is that it is
so difficult to distinguish between Guard, Reserve, active
duty, except on the issue of retirement. And so I certainly
hope that we can make some changes. And in particular, current
law allows the mobilized Reserve Component member to earn three
months credit toward early retirement for every 90 days of
aggregate service on active duty. Congress intended for those
to be active duty to be counted, regardless of whether the
active duty period occurred across fiscal years. But the
Department somehow has implemented this, that if it is across
the fiscal years, that it doesn't count at all.
What is DOD going to do to fix this or what should we do to
clarify? But there is no question that we certainly meant to
disregard fiscal year.
Secretary McCarthy. Congressman Wilson, I am well aware of
that anomaly. I think everybody understands that it is not what
the Congress intended, and it is not what is--it is not the
right thing to do. So it is going to take a fix. I am not sure
whether it will be a legislative or a directive fix. I suspect
it will be the latter--I am sorry--I suspect it will be the
former, and that we will have to come to Congress on that. But
I know that it is on the agenda to be resolved.
Mr. Wilson. And then I hope it will be resolved as quickly
as possible.
Additionally, we have a circumstance where we have
mobilized Reserve Component members who can earn retirement as
reservists or Guard members wounded or injured. If they are
placed in a Wounded Warrior unit under the orders of the
Wounded Warrior, again, they don't receive credit for
recovering--for the period of time recovering from the wounds.
And again, I just know my colleagues and I did not mean for
that to be. So I hope that is corrected--or please give us
advice how we can correct it.
Secretary McCarthy. The change of a Wounded Warrior status
when they are mobilized, wounded, and then have their status
changed is purely a directive issue. It is something that was
done a couple of years ago, and I think that the result that
you have described was an unintended consequence, but it has
got to be fixed. And I know that the people in personnel, in
readiness, have that for action.
Mr. Wilson. And I appreciate the effort, because we know
that these troops are so dedicated they want to be operational,
they want to serve. But it is also very important for their
families that there be proper protection.
General Kelly, I am of course very grateful to represent
Parris Island Marine Corps Air Station. So whatever I can do to
promote the Marines. The Marine Inspector and Instructor
Program historically has been a key to the success of the
readiness of the Marine Corps Reserve. Given all the demands on
the active duty Marine Corps who are assigned to the Inspector
and Instructor Program, what is your assessment of the health
and effectiveness of the Inspector and Instructor Program?
General Kelly. It is very healthy. And in fact in this very
hearing room, about 15 years ago, hearings about why the Marine
Corps Reserve was very, very strong, the body that sat here at
that time talked in terms of one of the great strengths of the
Marine Corps Reserve was in fact our commitment of active duty
individuals to INI, Inspector and Instructor, type staffs. It
is a command billet. They are all combat veterans, they are
handpicked, they do well in future promotions, selection for
attendance at various service schools and whatnot. So my
overall assessment is that it is hugely healthy, and really is
probably the basic foundation of the great strength of the
Marine Corps Reserve.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you all very much.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. Dr. Snyder.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Madam Chair. Gentlemen, it is great
to have you all here. I have probably known you, General Kelly,
the longest. And I think you have had about as many promotions
in the time I have been here as I have had babies, so I think
it is time for me to move on. We have four little boys under
the age of four at home.
I also did note, General Kelly, that your obviously very
proud daughter was watching you testify. We appreciate her
service here, although she was watching the TV screen rather
than you live. I don't know what that means.
I have two questions that I want to ask and then let you--
we will just start with Secretary McCarthy and go down, and I
am sure my time will long pass.
The first one is our subcommittee has just completed a
study that is about to go to the printer, I think tomorrow, on
professional military education (PME). There are, I think, some
special considerations for the Reserve Component, and I would
like to get each of you to make any comments about where you
think PME ought to be improved with regard to the Reserve
Component.
And then the second question is, if you have any comments.
We have given the highest ranks of civilian and military
leadership an opportunity to make any comments they wanted to
personally on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The Reserve Component also
has some particular special dynamic there in which people
really can separate their lives. They may have a private life
200 or 300 or 400 miles away and keep their lives pretty
separate. On the other hand, if they get mobilized, their
partner really doesn't get any of the support from the
community because of the fear of coming forward. So if any of
you have any comments about that.
Secretary McCarthy, we will begin with you.
Secretary McCarthy. Congressman, I think the thing I would
say about PME, Professional Military Education, is that we have
made great strides over the past ten or more years in distance
education, and we need to continue to do that because that is
what makes a lot of our PME courses more available to Reserve
Component members if they can do them on a distance education
basis. So I think we need to continue along that same path.
With regard to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, I think that the
course that the Secretary has set out to do a very thorough and
very comprehensive review, not to delay it but to move forward
and do that, it is the right course, and it is going to help us
to understand the different impacts of a change of law, if
there is one, on various parts of the force.
I know that General McKinley is a member of the group that
is being led by General Counsel Jay Johnson and General Hamm.
So the equities of the Reserve Component, and especially those
of the National Guard, will be considered when that study is
being done. So I think we are moving in the right direction
there.
General Stultz. Yes, sir. With regard to the professional
military education, I think, echoing the remarks that Secretary
McCarthy said, the distance education has given us the
capability to accomplish a lot of the professional military
education that we need in the Reserve Components. As much as we
can, where we can level the playing field so that the education
that is being provided is the same education across the active
and Reserve, because as we have operationalized the force,
those individuals now are working side by side. And so we need
the same quality and the same instruction. And so within the
distance education, we have got to make sure the curriculum
matches across the force.
I think the other thing we have to take into consideration
is the tendency is with our force generation cycle, the
cyclical deployment of forces, when the units come back from
deployment, that is when you would--in that year of reset is
when you would get your education done. In the Reserves we have
to recognize that that soldier has to reset in their civilian
job also. And so we can't be too hasty to say, now that you are
back, now you have got to get your education, military
education done.
We have got to give them time, because every time I came
back from a deployment and went back to Procter and Gamble, my
civilian employer, I reset at Procter and Gamble. I got into a
new position, new training, new learning that I had to do.
And so I am being very cautious to say we can't rush the
professional military education too soon for a returning
soldier. But I think the quality of the education is what I am
focused on. It has got to be at the same level across the
force.
With regard to the Don't Ask, Don't Tell, I just echo the
same remarks that Secretary McCarthy did. I think the process
that has been set forth by the Secretary of Defense is the
right thing: to take a long, hard look at all the factors
involved before we make any decisions.
Admiral Debbink. Congressman Snyder, with regard to the
professional military education, for the Navy we have an
account we call ADT, Active Duty Training schools account, a
very important line item for us and one that we prioritize very
carefully every year, as we are driving toward something we
call Fit as well as Fill of our force. So we are not just
trying to put any sailor in a spot, we are trying to make sure
that sailor has the right training. So that is a very important
line to us.
The other element of professional military education that
is very important is the joint professional military education
(JPME). And at this point we are very pleased with the changes
that were made in the last year or so that allow our sailors to
pursue both the level I and level II. And level II is primarily
through a distance learning--we call it advanced JPME--and also
very important for their promotion as they go through their
careers.
General Kelly. Sir, all Marines regardless of component,
have a requirement in all ranks to participate in PME.
Obviously for the Reserve Component, time and distance is the
issue you deal with most. All of the distance learning is
exactly the same as what is available to an active duty Marine.
Not all of our active duty Marines get to go to a resident PME,
so they take the very same courses.
For the Reserve Component courses, virtually all of them
have a one- or a two-week on-site. We bring them to Quantico as
an example. We pay for that, of course. Where I would like to
see a little bit more flexibility is at the Lieutenant Colonel
level. There are distance learning courses; the Army War
College and Navy War College, all of them very, very good. I
would like to see that expand a little bit just because it is--
I would like to see some more seminar time added; that is to
say, weekends or something like that. Again, we would pay for
them to come to a location and participate in the PME.
And on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell question, again it is
being studied. Again, I would only say that we don't make a
distinction in the Marine Corps between active and Reserve
Marines; they are Marines all the time. Whatever the rules are,
if in fact they are changed, whatever the law changes are,
whatever comes out of that, that will apply to the Marines that
are in the Reserve Component just like they will the Marines in
the active component.
Dr. Snyder. General, that seminar time is something you all
can do. There is no legislative prohibition.
General Kelly. Internally we can expand some of our
schools, but we got it, sir.
General Stenner. Congressman Snyder, we, like my
compatriots, all have opportunities, whether they be distance
learning, whether they be seminar, whether they be in
residence. We covet the in-residence courses for not only the
book learning that you get, but for the relationships that you
build, especially in the joint arena where you see people you
will see again in the senior leadership roles over the years.
Those relationships that are built in an in-residence PME
setting are huge. So the more we can get some of those
opportunities funded and built and created, the better we will
be, in my mind, for the future senior leadership, whether that
be officer or enlisted.
And the enlisted force is just as busy, if you will, taking
care of the in-residence pieces and the distance learning
pieces that they need to do.
On the margins of PME, there are some things in line with
some of the fellowships and the other kinds of things that come
up here that have different nuances as to how you incur a
commitment and then how you would accomplish that commitment,
which doesn't happen in some of the bigger PME schools. So if
they are looking for just some little on-the-margin kind of
things, special considerations, I would take a hard look at the
fellowships and how we pay back the time on the commitment we
incur.
As far as Don't Ask, Don't Tell, I do agree it is part of
how we do business today. It is in accordance with what we have
been handed as far as the policy and the law, and it needs to
be studied in depth, as we are doing, before we make any
substantive changes.
General Wyatt. Congressman Snyder, regarding PME, there is
a theory in the Air Force, because we fight as a total force,
that there should be more shared common experiences in
professional military education.
As a result of that, just recently the Air National Guard
has worked with the area Education and Training Command,
General Moran is the commander, to move the commissioning
program of the Air National Guard from McGhee Tyson to Maxwell
Air Force Base, where now we have all three components in the
same location with a commissioning program. We retain different
course links to accommodate the different needs of the
components, but we are sharing curricula now and we are
learning more about the active component and the Reserve
Component and vice versa. So that is at the very basic level.
But as we get to some of the advanced officer and enlisted
experiences, I think there is a need for more seats in the
residence programs. Chief Muncy working behind, or sitting
behind me, has some initiatives that he is working with Command
Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Roy, seeking additional
residence seats. We are seeing very good reception from the
active duty component, and I think we are making progress.
In regard to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, I share the comments of
most of my committee members. I would suggest that you know,
from my perspective, my experiences and where I work and where
I live are considerably different from first-term airmen who
may be serving in Balad or Baghdad. And I am not sure I am
educated to the point that I need to be to make sure to render
any sort of professional opinion at this point in time.
We have the Commission that the Secretary has mentioned
that is collecting data, and we have the opportunity to hear
from our enlisted corps, 90,000-plus in the Air National Guard,
and our officer corps as we go forward on this important issue.
General Carpenter. Congressman Snyder, I share all the
views of my colleagues. I would point out one additional area
and expand on the joint qualification piece that Admiral
Debbink talked about. And that is that we need to make sure
that we provide the opportunities for our young officers to get
the joint qualification through the PME process, so that later
on when they compete for some of the jobs, specifically like
the job that I am acting in, the Director of the Army National
Guard, and build a bench for the new four-star general that we
have got inside of the Army National Guard, that we do have a
bench that can compete for it and does have the qualifications.
And so that is pretty important as you get to the senior levels
of our organization.
The DL, distance learning, piece of PME is incredibly
important when we have soldiers out there who are trying to
balance their family requirements as well as their employers'
needs as they get back from deployments, and yet try to make
sure that they are competitive in the ranks in terms of
promotions.
And then finally, we are participating in the study group
for Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and we are awaiting the end of that
study group, which I believe is a year down the road.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. Ms. Tsongas.
Ms. Tsongas. Good afternoon. And thank you all for your
testimony. As this hearing is about the operational role of our
Reserves, I am particularly interested in an issue that
concerns our Guard and reservists and their readiness for
deployment.
General McCarthy, you mentioned the, quote, trained
mobilized, deployed model for an Operational Reserve. What do
you all know about the issues of Rapid Fielding Initiative
(RFI) equipment fielding for Guard and Reserve units during
pre-mobilization training?
And I bring this up because in 2009, the Massachusetts Army
National Guard trained and mobilized over 1,000 soldiers for
deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan. In order to limit the total
mobilization time to 12 months, the predominance of
mobilization training took place at the unit's home station in
Massachusetts, not at the deployment mobilization site.
The RFI, the Rapid fielding initiative, was designed to
streamline the process in distributing equipment to deployed
units and ensure that all soldiers, regular Army Guard and
Reserves are outfitted with the most advanced individual and
unit equipment available, providing significant improvements to
soldier combat effectiveness, survivability, and operational
quality of life.
The program is commendable. However, there appears to be a
disconnect. Instead of being issued during pre-mobilization
training in Massachusetts where soldiers have time to properly
train with the equipment, they are going to fight with RFI.
Items are being issued to soldiers after they have reached
their mobilization phase. Soldiers stay at their mobilization
station for a short time before going to Iran and Afghanistan.
Because of other demands, they sometimes have as little as 15
days to train with this new equipment.
This is unacceptable. Lives are at stake. And in fact, in
conversations with a National Guard officer in my district, he
really felt he lost a soldier because he simply had not had
adequate time to train.
So despite the recommendations of the Commission, it
appears that our National Guard and Reserve soldiers are being
given insufficient time to train with the equipment they are
going to fight with, often to their peril.
Please tell me what you all are doing to solve this
problem. What are the obstacles, and are there things that we
can do to help alleviate this issue?
General Carpenter. Congresswoman Tsongas, thank you for the
question. As you have eloquently outlined, RFI has been a
problem inside the Army National Guard and the mobilization
process. RFI came into our organization about four years ago
and it was a rapid fielding initiative to ensure that we got
the best, most modern equipment to our soldiers in advance of
the mobilization, so that when they deployed they had the best
equipment available for the mission at hand.
RFI is a changing kind of equipment list, and we want to
ensure that our soldiers have the most modern equipment. We
have seen two versions of helmets come through the process here
in the last five years. We have seen various other equipment
changes.
The Army's view of this is that rather than issue one set
of equipment and then have to go back and reissue another set
of equipment, the idea was to issue the most modern equipment a
single time. And because of the limited amount of production of
these specific pieces of equipment, the effort was to do that
in mobilization station.
We have found that we want to maximize boots-on-the-ground
time, that being the time that this soldier spends on mission
in theater, because that reduces the time that--what we call
the turn, and extends the dwell.
We have worked with the Army to do the fielding of RFI to
the extent possible in pre-mobilization to reduce the time at
the mobilization station, and we are looking at a year down the
road when we think that we will have RFI. It won't be called
RFI, but it will be equipment that will be issued in pre-
mobilization, and we will solve the problem that you have just
described.
Beyond that, soldiers that deploy into theater are
validated, and they meet a standard in training before they can
deploy. And so regardless of whether it is issued in pre-mob or
whether it is issued in post-mob, the training that takes place
for those soldiers to be able to use that equipment and to be
successful in its use is validated by the First Army Commander.
So the deployment piece, everybody meets the same standard.
There isn't anybody that goes down range that doesn't get
trained.
Ms. Tsongas. Do others want to comment?
Secretary McCarthy. I would like to add, and I think
General Carpenter has really hit the specifics, so I will
address it from a little broader standpoint, and that is that
this transition to an Operational Reserve--that is, to a pre-
trained, a Reserve that is trained, then it mobilizes and then
deploys--is a process, and we are not going to throw the switch
and become a totally Operational Reserve overnight.
And the equipping issues are a significant part of that.
The training issues are a significant part of that. And so we
are going to be constantly progressing, and I hope improving in
this becoming a pre-trained force, a pre-equipped force, with
things like the Rapid Fielding Initiative and other ways to get
modern frontline equipment out to units. But it is not going to
happen overnight.
But I think the concluding comment, if I understood Ray's
comment in conclusion, I don't think any commander is going to
stand forces forward who have not had sufficient training time
with the equipment that they are going to use in combat. And if
that means less time with boots on the ground, I think that is
a price we are all willing to pay, because we are not going to
send people forward who are not both adequately equipped and
adequately trained. So I know that is the policy of the
Department, and everything I have seen is that it is being
carried out.
Ms. Tsongas. Thank you for your testimony. And I think if
you find it is harder to do than you like to think, that you be
forthcoming with us as to ways that we can be more helpful.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Loebsack.
Mr. Loebsack. Thank you, Madam Chair. First I do want to
thank all of you for being here today, all the witnesses. And I
would like to thank especially the chairwoman and ranking
member for holding this hearing, because I really do believe
this is an absolutely critical topic.
General Carpenter, I am glad to see you again. I think the
last time we chatted it was about the trainees, transients,
holdees, and students (TTHS) account, and I am glad to see you
mentioned its creation in your testimony today as well. The
President's budget request includes an increase of 920 non-dual
status technicians.
General Carpenter, you spent quite a bit of space in your
testimony discussing the role and importance of non-dual status
technicians and why this increase in their authorization level
is necessary.
Can you please explain to us why these particular
individuals are particularly important to supporting the Army
National Guard as an Operational Reserve?
General Carpenter. Sir, just as one example, one of the
things that these non-dual status technicians do for us in the
National Guard is they work inside of our pay sections. And one
of the most irritating things that you find that soldiers deal
with and one of the things that we want to avoid the most are
pay problems. Those non-dual status technicians are the experts
in that area and they spend a lot of time doing that. If we
have a soldier who works in that pay section, who is also in
the National Guard, and we mobilize and deploy them, we lose
that expertise. And if we have a non-dual status technician
that stays there while the unit deployed, because they are not
in the National Guard, it reduces the pay problems, in this
particular example, incredibly and it is the right thing to do.
Mr. Loebsack. I do appreciate that very much. I hear about
this all the time, obviously, from the National Guard folks I
represent in Iowa, so I really appreciate you putting that
effort into that program. I think it is critical that we look
at the force structure requirements associated with the
Operational Reserve and I do appreciate that response.
My second question, of course, is about dwell time. And the
President's budget request cites a planning objective of
establishing a 5-to-1 ratio for Reserve Components.
General Carpenter, if you want to speak to that issue too,
that would be great. Could you tell me if you believe that
current end strength is, in fact, sufficient to achieve this
goal, and what impact in particular this cross-leveling has on
dwell time?
General Carpenter. The effect that cross-leveling has on
dwell time inside the Army National Guard is evidenced by the
statistic that on a unit scale inside the Army National Guard,
we are deploying units that have a dwell time of 3.3 years. For
the soldiers, mostly first-termers, who come into our
organization, because we have to cross level them between units
that are deploying and the ones that are home, the dwell time
on average for deploying soldiers is 2.2 years. That is pretty
quick. And so our effort here is to reduce the amount of cross-
leveling and extend the dwell time.
The Surgeon General of the Army says that it takes
somewhere around two years after a one year deployment for
soldiers to get back to something that looks normal in terms of
their emotional status and behavioral and all those kinds of
things that deployment impacts. And so to the extent that you
increase the dwell time, you increase the readiness of the
soldier, you increase the support of the employers and families
out there for what we are doing with an Operational Reserve.
Mr. Loebsack. I am glad you mentioned the employers and
families, too, because this subcommittee under the current
leadership, and in the past as well, has looked quite a lot at
the family. And I think it is really, really critical that we
never forget about the family, these folks, not just spouses
but the rest of the family as well. So I really appreciate all
of you being here today.
Mr. Secretary, did you want to speak at all to the dwell
time issue before my time is up?
Secretary McCarthy. I would only add that the Secretary has
established this 1-in-5 ratio. It is a goal. We are clearly not
there yet. The application is somewhat different across the
services. But coming out of the Quadrennial Defense Review, we
are directed to conduct a study on the future roles of the
Reserve Component, and I think that may lead us to some further
understanding and perhaps even some refinement of some of the
things we think now about dwell time and other related issues.
So I suspect that that study will be completed early in 2011. I
think there will be some additional learning, some knowledge
available to the Congress on that and a number of other issues.
Mr. Loebsack. I just want to finish by saying as someone
who represents a district in Iowa where we don't have, as I
always say, large bases as such, but we have a heck of a lot of
wonderful National Guard and Reserve Components, I appreciate
everything that the National Guard and Reserve Components are
doing. And we do have a number of our folks heading to
Afghanistan later in the year to stand up an agriculture
development team and to train security forces in Afghanistan.
And General Orr is doing a great job as our adjutant general,
so I am going to do everything I can as long as I am on this
committee and in Congress to support folks like you and those
who are under your command. Thank you very much.
Secretary McCarthy. Thank you sir.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Jones.
Mr. Jones. Madam Chairman, thank you very much. And General
Kelly, it is good to see you again. You took me back 15 years.
I didn't know you would be here today. When I saw you, I went
back 15 years just in a matter of seconds. But it is good to
see you.
General Carpenter, I guess you and Mr. McCarthy, this has
been kind of an ongoing issue with a father of a National
Guardsman in east North Carolina who was deployed on active
duty, fought in Iraq, and this father has met me two or three
times wanting to know why a Guardsman who has fought for this
country, active duty, called upon, that they do not qualify as
an active duty soldier or Marine with the GI bill for
educational benefits.
Is this an issue that you hear quite a bit about? I think
that Senator Webb at one time was thinking about trying to put
legislation in on the Senate side that would deal with this.
And does this ring a bell with you?
General Carpenter. I am not aware of the specific case that
you cite, but I do know that one of the things we hear from
National Guardsmen and from states out there is the GI bill,
what we call the new GI bill, applies to soldiers who deploy,
but does not necessarily apply to soldiers who are in a Active
Duty for Training (ADT) status or a Title 32 status, and a lot
of the soldiers that I talk to see that as an inequity, and so
they raise that issue with us.
I am not sure about the specific instance you talk about
where somebody who was mobilized and deployed to the theater
was not eligible for the GI bill, but if you will give me the
details I will certainly look into it.
Mr. Jones. That would be extremely helpful.
Again, I think I am pretty much correct and your
explanation makes a lot of sense. I might have been a little
bit mistaken in my speech. But one of my biggest concerns to
all of you is that when we continue--let's say that I know the
President said we are out of Afghanistan in a year and a half,
let's say something changes that year and a half, and we cannot
confirm that we are out in a year and a half, and maybe then we
decide, well, we need another year and a half or two years.
What I am hearing from those in the Guard--and this is
probably true in the Reserves as well--that they are beginning
to feel the unbelievable stress that families feel of not being
able to plan. If by chance--and I know this is a hypothetical--
but if by chance that in a year and a half that President Obama
decides, well, the conditions are not right to have significant
reduction so therefore I am going to continue to call on the
Guard and Reserves, can you foresee this as a problem to meet
and maintain the manpower that you need to do the job back home
if called upon?
General Carpenter. Sir, I would look to the example of
North Carolina, sir. The 30th Heavy Brigade just had their
welcome-home ceremony last weekend, and we had people there--I
wasn't there personally, but typically it is one of those
joyous events and people are just taken by the moment and they
support the patriotism. That is the second rotation for the
30th Heavy Brigade into Iraq, and they had a dwell of around
three and a half years between those two rotations.
One of the things that the Secretary of Defense did for us
in the Reserve Component in January 19 of 2007, he limited the
mobilization for Reserve Components to one year. And that
really has allowed us now to access the Reserve Component and
to sustain over a longer period of time the 30th Brigade, 30th
Brigades we have out there, those kinds of scenarios.
So right now, as I mentioned in my opening statement,
although we are stressed, we are far from broken. And the
soldiers that we have inside of our formations look forward to
those deployments, maybe not at that frequency, but certainly
we are able to sustain.
Mr. Jones. General, thank you. I want to apologize. I
missed everybody's opening statement. I didn't get a chance to
read it, quite frankly, so if I am being repetitive again I
apologize for that.
But Madam Chairman, I will yield back at this time.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. I appreciate your question.
I wanted to have a chance to talk a little bit about the
continuum of service and the fact that the authorization bill
did allow, and particularly in the Navy, for people to serve
and then go into the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). And I am
just wondering--and they did that for up to three years for
personal and professional reasons--Admiral, how do you see that
working? How is it being implemented?
And I think for others, are there other kind of continuum
of service plans that we have? What problems have arisen, and
is there anything legislatively that would give you more
flexibility that you see is needed, and some thoughts about how
that might be done differently if that is something that you
would recommend? Admiral?
Admiral Debbink. Thank you. The program you refer to we
call Career Intermission Pilot Program (CIPP) or the--I can't
say the exact acronym--allows people to transition from active
deployment all the way to the IRR, retaining medical benefits,
which is really important, and then to pay that time back when
they come back, and it gives them a guaranteed return. It is
one program out of many that we are developing in the Navy for
pursuing our goal of being a top 50 employer of choice.
And as we continue to pursue these different initiatives,
one of the things we are focusing on is--the vision of where we
are going is lane changes. So you have a Navy highway, if you
will, and the active duty maybe is in the left-hand lane and
you have a Selected Reserve (SelRes) in the middle lane, you
have the IRR, and you want to be able to seamlessly change
lanes back and forth.
The one thing that is perhaps our biggest barrier right now
in making all that happen is the pay system that we have
currently and the need for a single integrated pay and
personnel system that we feel that as a Department now, we are
on a path to head in that direction with some of the
authorities we have been receiving recently. And we hope that
within the next couple of years we will get there. And that is
what we need most perhaps, and we will continue working towards
that direction.
Mrs. Davis. I noticed in the comments that basically spoke
about progress in moving toward the total force future pay
plan. And I guess my question would be: What does progress
represent? What would it take to speed up that process?
Admiral Debbink. As I think you might be aware, we were all
held back basically for a number of years, over a decade, as
the Department pursued a program called DIMHRS, Defense
Integrated Manpower and Human Resource System. We have, since
February now, been authorized to pursue service-specific
solutions. And I know the Navy is going after that very
aggressively, and in fact there are some meetings again this
week to allow us to continue pursuing down that path.
It will be important as we go down that path to continue
looking towards, we believe, a common database that we will all
share, because the combatant commanders will want to have that
kind of data and we are in full support of that as well. So at
this point I believe it is just a matter of executing on a new
software program and pursuing that, but also doing it carefully
so we get it right this time because it is a very, very
important issue for us.
Mrs. Davis. Anybody else want to comment on that? What are
the lessons learned from that as well? Sometimes we do try and
do things that are going to be applicable and yet, as you are
saying, that didn't work. Where are we, Mr. Secretary?
Secretary McCarthy. One of the things--I have been watching
this stuff for a long, long, long time. And one of the things
that we have chased for years is trying to find a way to
simplify a very complex structure of different kinds of duty
statuses, different pay accounts and so forth. And it has
defied successful resolution so far, but----
Mrs. Davis. Sometimes I wonder whether we are looking in
the wrong place for that kind of thing.
Secretary McCarthy. You are absolutely right. I think
sometimes we are our own worst enemies, but, frankly, since you
asked what can the Congress do, some, not all, but some of the
duty statuses that are engrafted onto our pay and personnel
system are the result of various laws. And so we may at some
point--I hope we will come to the Congress and say we have
eliminated a number of the duty statuses that we imposed on our
self through direction, and we would like the Congress to
eliminate some of them that are imposed in law, because that
will make the integration of a pay and personnel system that
much easier and that much more achievable. And that will be a
big step forward.
That is a Commission on National Guard and Reserve
recommendation. They said we should go down to two: either on
active duty or not active duty. Frankly, that may be
oversimplifying it, but it certainly can be reduced from the
28, or whatever the number is, that we have now. And we may
very well need the Congress's help in making that reduction.
Mrs. Davis. Anybody else want to comment on the continuum
of service issue?
General Kelly. Yes, ma'am. Like anything, the devil is in
the details. And I am not the expert in the Marine Corps,
certainly. I don't think probably most of us up here are real
experts in it in terms of the level of complications that we
get into as we started this, down this road of continuum of
service. So I would just, in my mind at least, hope that as we
do that, we don't do a cookie cutter that will apply to each
one of the services and the Guard in exactly the same way,
because I don't think it is going to apply to the services in
the same way.
We have, as an example, very little interest, certainly in
the reservists I talked to, about going into and out of various
statuses in terms of getting off active duty for a few years.
Certainly the active duty people, for the most part, don't
express any desire. So a little caution about how we try to
hammer this. I hope for flexibility.
In terms of the admin and pay system, for the most part,
the Marine Corps does have a single system. In fact, I can
remember hearings in this room 15 years ago when we were being
chastised about not going the DIMHRS road, and we resisted it
and we resisted it and, lo and behold, we were right.
So we have this system and it works pretty well for us. We
have very, very few differences between the way the active duty
and the Reserve people handle it administratively, so the ease
of moving in and out of various duty status is not a real
problem for us.
General Stenner. Madam Chairwoman, a continuum of service,
as articulated between, as the Navy put it, the active, Reserve
and then the IRR, is one way to look at it. And in the Air
Force we are looking at how you go between the Reserve
Components, the Guard, the Reserve, the active force; because
some of that is very helpful also in just what kind of
participation can you do, whether it is IRR or SelRes.
But as far as continuum of service and duty status, some of
the kind of things that until we get that golden nugget that
takes us to where the Navy or the Marines are right now, in a
macro perspective, if there was a way to articulate some small
changes in the law that would allow us to take the different
statuses in and out of positions in headquarters staffs, the
kinds of things that by law right now are limiting--you can
only go in a certain status, you have to be assigned to a
unit--we need to perhaps look as an interim fix on some of
those kinds of things so our force development, especially at
the senior levels, can happen much more easily. Take them into
and out of the positions they need to be within their status or
allow an ease of status or some head space for active duty
status that doesn't count against our active duty force, and
that would help tremendously in some of the interim fixes we
could do right there.
Mrs. Davis. General Wyatt.
General Wyatt. Madam Chairwoman, as far as the Air and Army
National Guard are concerned, there is another complicating
factor, and that is we are not always on federal status.
Sometimes we are placed on duty by the Governors under a
completely different pay system. And so as we try to streamline
the pay systems on the different statuses at the federal level,
I think it is important to recognize that the adjutants general
in the 54 jurisdictions have the additional problem of a system
that sometimes has a soldier or an airman who might be on a
state pay status for a couple of days as we transition into a
Presidentially declared disaster or an emergency or a federal
status.
And to make those pay systems link up I think is worth an
effort to consider not only the service inside the service,
federal systems, but also a way to link those two, the myriad
of pay systems out there in our states. It is just an
additional problem we need to consider.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. Dr. Snyder, any questions.
Dr. Snyder. No, thank you.
Mrs. Davis. Okay. And Mr. Wilson?
I have a few more, then.
One of the issues, I know, that I think General Stultz, in
your comments, in talking about the shortages in the midgrade
noncommissioned and commissioned officer ranks, how do we
address that? Where are we? And I know that goes across the
board in terms of medical, a whole host of different
professions. Is that true for everyone? Or is that more or less
more true for you in the Army?
General Stultz. Right now, one of the major campaigns that
I have got one of my deputies developing is to reshape the
Reserve, the Army Reserve, and the reason for that is to your
point. We have had phenomenal success in recruiting the last
several years, and grown our end strength way above what we are
authorized now. But we are over strength in the lower skills,
the lower grades. We are over strength in the senior grades. We
are short in the middle, both in the captains and majors for
the commissioned officers, and both for the E6s and E7s for the
noncommissioned officers.
Part of the reason for that is the Army Reserve
traditionally has relied on soldiers leaving active service,
coming into the Army Reserve as a supply of manpower. And so we
were getting those soldiers coming off active duty with four,
five years of active service, and by that time had acceded to
the grade of captain or to their rank of sergeant.
With the stop loss that the active Army has had in the last
several years, which they are coming off of now, but as well as
the incentives to keep people on active duty, we have seen that
slow down over recent years. So it is a phenomenon of the
supply chain got broken for a while.
We are now seeing that turn around. And we are now seeing
our AC to RC, as we call it, active to Reserve, starting to
increase, and we are starting to pick up now in those grades.
It is going to take us a while to get healthy again.
We are actively going out and looking across the Individual
Ready Reserve and other databases for soldiers who have left
active duty, and, in our terms, have taken a knee--three or
four years--and we are going back to them now and saying, What
about coming back into Reserves? We are getting a good take
rate on that.
And I think it plays exactly to your point before, that
continuum of service is the key to success for all of us. That
continuum of service that allows an individual with their
lifestyle to say, I have been on active duty for four or five
years, I need a break. Or, I want to try something different,
let me move into the Reserve Component or even move into the
IRR and take a knee, but with the confidence that if I want to,
I can come back the other direction.
That is what we have got to, I think, get within the Army.
And we are not there yet. We are still, we have some
bureaucracy involved, we have some gray determination--if you
leave and stay out for a certain amount of time, you are going
to have to come back on active service at a lower rank. We have
to get beyond those and level the playing field. But we are
working feverishly with a campaign plan to reshape the Reserve,
but it is going to take us a couple of years to get healthy.
Admiral Debbink. Ma'am, we have the same issues. It will
take us a while to get healthy. But a couple of things that we
are working on, we are having success in trying to attract that
lieutenant commander or senior lieutenant as they are thinking
about departing the active duty. We stood up an office called
the Career Transition Office, CTO, in Millington, which is our
personnel headquarters. And that office contacts individually
each active duty officer who has expressed a desire to leave
active duty personally. And we have seen by that personal
contact, our transitions have gone from 26 percent up to 54
percent. So, quite successful. We will continue that effort.
Mrs. Davis. One of the questions that I was asking, not
relevant to that discussion, gets back to the health component,
the mental health components, whether or not you were aware
of--and I am just trying to understand the statistics, the
differences between active duty, and Reserve, and Guard in our
suicide rates--whether there was anything that we are looking
at. And it looks as if the numbers are quite different,
actually, and I don't know whether you have anything that you
would like to add or suggest regarding that.
General Stultz. I know for both the Army Reserve and the
Army Guard--Ray can follow along with their experiences--the
major difference we are seeing within the Army Reserve--and we
do what we call a psychological autopsy on every case. We go in
depth to try and figure out what was going on. The majority of
our suicides are not related to deployments. The majority of
our suicides are actually soldiers who have never deployed.
Some of our suicides are soldiers who have just joined the
Reserves.
And so we are trying to find out what is it that is going
on in their life that makes them make this tragic decision. We
know that almost in every case there is something, a broken
relationship, or something that happens that kind of pushes
them over the edge.
My concern is, in some cases as we did the psychological
autopsy, the soldier indicated, or his family or friends, that
his proudest thing was being a member of the military; that
that was the only thing he had going for him in his life. The
problem is, for the typical Reserve soldier, we only see them
two days out of the month. They are back home with their family
or friends the other 28. So this idea of a battle buddy doesn't
work as well as it does with the active component.
The key to us is we are trying to develop a program that is
not only targeted at the soldiers and the battle buddy system--
look out for your battle buddy--it is targeted at the family.
We have to educate the family. We have to educate the family as
to the warning signs; but we also have to educate them that
there is no stigma. It is okay to ask for help. If you see
something happening with your son or your husband or wife or
whatever, it is okay to ask for help. And here is where you can
go.
We have had that happen on a couple of occasions already
with our suicide training, where family members have come
forward saying, hey, my son needs some help and he is not
willing to ask for it.
That is the challenge. We had one soldier, just as an
anecdotal case, that after we did the suicide training, came
forward and said, I need help. We found out he was living in
his car in a Walmart parking lot. But my first reaction is I am
going to go relieve the commander and the first sergeant. But
when I talked to the commander they said, sir, we never knew.
He showed up at drill in uniform, did his duty, left on Sunday
afternoon, and no one ever really knew the situation he was in
until he came forward.
For us that is the challenge. It is, how do we reach that
soldier and his family the other 28 days of the month that we
are not with him. But it is not really a deployment-related
issue for us.
Mrs. Davis. One of the concerns around compensation and
bonuses as well, and help and support, really has to do with
the extension of TRICARE Reserve Select. Now is there some--as
you are speaking of this particular soldier and others, one of
the issues I understand is, especially with the Guard and
Reserve, is helping people to actually access TRICARE Select.
Is that a problem, and do we need to approach it differently?
Secretary McCarthy. When you talk about TRICARE Reserve
Select, you are talking about a tiny or a relatively small, I
guess is a better way to put it, a very small percentage of the
force. Right now, of the eligible members of the Guard and
Reserve, only about 10 percent of them are enrolled in TRICARE
Reserve select. So one of the things we want to do is to
increase, broaden the enrollment.
For those who are enrolled in TRICARE Reserve Select or
those who are getting TRICARE benefits because they are either
on active duty or coming or going from active duty, it is clear
that the network of providers is not as broad as we would like.
It is not only a number, but in distribution, so there are
pockets of the country where there simply aren't enough TRICARE
providers. And that, too, is an object of great interest and
something that we know we need to continue to work on.
Mrs. Davis. Is there anything that you see the role the
Congress needs to play here? This is more or less an outreach
job in a number of communities that needs to be more
aggressive, and, as you said, you need to provide--find the
providers as well.
Secretary McCarthy. Well, one of the things that I think we
are seeing is that we have got three big TRICARE regions, three
big TRICARE providers. And in one of the regions, the number
and the distribution of providers is much better than it is in
the other two. And I think it is because they have harnessed
state agencies, state authorities, adjutant generals,
Governors, to help spread the word and get more health-care
providers signed up.
Whether there is a role, a national role, whether there is
a role for the Congress nationally or not, I am not sure yet.
But I know that both the TRICARE Management Agency and the
Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs are working hard on
that.
Mrs. Davis. Right. Okay, thank you. Does anybody else want
to comment? Yes.
Admiral Debbink. Yes, ma'am. Continuity of care is very
important as you work through this continuous service
construct. And TRICARE is an amazing benefit for our reservists
and guardsmen and, in my case, the sailors. And the Congress
helped us out greatly last year by putting into the National
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) the ability for reservists and
guardsmen to have TRICARE continue into what we call the
``gray'' area. After you retire after 20 years or 30 years of
service, say, in their late thirties to 50, it would take them
to age 60.
That was important because I believe the reason we have a
very low take-up rate with TRICARE is a reservist knows that at
some point that care, that insurance, is not going to be
available to them once they retire.
And so that took care of that problem. And we can get out
now and start marking this with one more exception, and you
mentioned the IRR before. We do find, in my case at least,
people being, if you will, forced into the IRR occasionally. So
let's say they come back from a mobilization and their billet
is not available to them for another six months or a year, and
they fall into this gap, if you will. And so I believe that is
the last gap that we had.
And then I think we all as chiefs here can get out and
really push for our members to join TRICARE. That will be good
for the member. It will also be very good for us as a force,
because it ensures our members keep a higher level of medical
readiness, which is, of course, very important for their
deployability.
Mrs. Davis. And we are making some speculation, of course,
which may or may not be true, that having that available,
particularly in areas where people do need some support, may in
fact make families and Reserve or Guard officer more likely to
get the kind of help that they need, if it is available and it
is right there for them.
Dr. Snyder.
Dr. Snyder. Madam Chair, I meant to make a comment, very
briefly. We have an Army Reserve Master Sergeant in town from
Arkansas. Master Sergeant Verlean Brown, from Sherwood,
Arkansas, spent 34 years in Army Reserve, including a 400-day
tour in 2008-2009 in Iraq, where she worked as an advocate for
victims of sexual assault. And she is in town because she is
one of the ten national award winners of the Attorney General's
Office. But that all grew out of her work in the Army Reserve.
So thank you, Madam Chair.
Mrs. Davis. We are going to just wind down and we have some
votes. But just to end this, because I believe--and you have
all stated how important families are to your efforts. And a
number of all the services have begun and are sustaining
programs that are of great help to families.
Is there anything else in this regard, whether it is Purple
Camps or programs for young children? We are learning as we
study the military family and children today, about what is
difficult with deployments. We have had some reports that have
come back.
Have you, in your capacity, learned anything recently,
about the families that you are serving, that would be helpful
to us to know about? And is there anything that you see and
that you think is a particular model, a particular program that
we should do more with?
One of the things that surprises me, I almost learn every
day about another organization out there that is supporting our
families, or children, which I think is a very good thing. We
know that families would still suggest, at least they did last
year, that they think that Americans generally do not
understand or appreciate the sacrifices that they make. And yet
we see that there are many, many very committed individuals
that are working hard to be supportive of our families, maybe a
relative drop in the bucket in terms of public perception, but
nevertheless it is there.
Is there anything else that you think we ought to be doing
in this regard? Because there is nothing more heartbreaking--
and I am always remembering Mr. Jones's comment about the
little boy and his concern that his daddy is not dead yet. Our
kids are suffering. Our families are suffering, despite the
tremendous, tremendous resilience that we see in them. And I
think we need to applaud them and applaud their leadership for
that.
But what else do you see that we really need to have a much
more aggressive role to play in this regard? General Kelly.
General Kelly. I think active or Reserve Component, I think
if you give them, the families, predictability, if you give
them sufficient dwell. You have got to watch out, I think in my
community, our community, you have got to watch out for people
that volunteer too much to go. They just want to go overseas
and do their part over and over again. You have to watch out
because there is a balance there.
What has worked very well for us--and this is no comment on
how other services do it--but the shorter deployments, the
seven month deployments for most of the marines that go over
has worked very, very well for us in terms of families. Of
course, the families love it. So I think those things,
predictability and sufficient dwell and tour length is pretty
important.
General Stultz. I will give you one initiative we are
doing--and I have to give credit to my wife, not me, because
she has lived through this as I have put her through these
multiple deployments that I have been through. But she said we
have got to take the installation to the families in the
Reserve because we don't live on the installations; we live in
the communities.
And we are doing a couple of pilot tests right now in the
Army Reserve which we call the Army Strong Community Center--
but it can morph into anything--but just within the community,
putting a facility with a couple of people full-time in there,
and putting a banner out, and say this is where you come if you
need help.
We opened up our first one last year in Rochester, New
York, in one of my Reserve centers. But we want to get outside
the Reserve center and get in the community. We have had over
3,000 requests for support come through that Rochester center.
Surprisingly, over 500 of those were active duty. A number of
them were Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force.
What we are finding that we really hadn't thought about is
in those communities across America, when that husband leaves
Fort Campbell for a 1-year or 15-month deployment, the wife and
kids go back to Rochester. We have had a number of Gold Star
families come in and say, We are here in Rochester. One young
father said, My son was at Fort Hood, Texas, 4th Infantry
Division. He was killed in action.
I have never been to Fort Hood. I don't know anybody in
Fort Hood. I need somebody here, so we will pilot test. In
fact, we are looking at California as one of the locations to
see how can we get out into the community and then hand it to
Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) to make it Purple, not
an Army Reserve.
Mrs. Davis. Anyone else?
General Carpenter. I think from the Army National Guard
perspective, I tell you that the Yellow Ribbon Program has been
a God-send in this business in terms of reaching out and
touching the families, especially while the service member is
deployed, because the anxiety level for those family members
while the service member is deployed is through the roof.
And we are looking at some of the statistics now in terms
of impacts on families of deployments, suicide rates for family
members, in conjunction with those kinds of deployments. And
Yellow Ribbon has been key to us in terms of establishing that
relationship and making sure that we know what is going on out
there with the family, truly a big deal. And we thank the
Congress for their support of that particular program.
Secretary McCarthy. One of the things, if I could, on the
Yellow Ribbon Program and what can Congress do, there is an
element or item in this year's Defense Omnibus that would
enable us to expand the definition of family member who can
attend the Yellow Ribbon events beyond simply spouse or parent.
And we know that that is an important change that needs to be
made in the joint travel reg, but we need congressional support
to do that. If we get that changed, we will be able to bring
more supportive, more--some people, you know, don't have a
spouse, but they have somebody else who is a very supportive
person, who ought to be a part of the Yellow Ribbon process. So
I ask your consideration for that.
Mrs. Davis. Why would anybody object to that? Is it just
dollars? Why would anyone object? Why haven't we done that
already?
Secretary McCarthy. I am not sure why we haven't done it
already. But when we looked at the joint travel reg, which is
the restrictive document, the answer came back, Well, we need
to get the law changed so we can change the Joint Travel
Regulation (JTR), so that is what we need to do. It is in the
omnibus this year.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. We are going to have to go vote. Any
last-minute comment from anyone that you are going to walk out
of here and say, Oh darn, I didn't say that? Anything?
Thank you so much to all of you for your tremendous
service. We appreciate it greatly. We know it has been a long
career and we appreciate the leadership that you provide. Thank
you very much.
[Whereupon, at 4:45 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
=======================================================================
A P P E N D I X
April 15, 2010
=======================================================================
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
April 15, 2010
=======================================================================
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
=======================================================================
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
April 15, 2010
=======================================================================
QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MS. TSONGAS
Ms. Tsongas. General McCarthy, SEC. 702. National Defense
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, (P.L. 111-84) extended the
early eligibility for TRICARE from 90 days to 180 days before
activation for members of the selective Reserve. What is the status of
the implementation of this statute?
Secretary McCarthy. At the National Guard Bureau, the
implementation of the expansion of Early TRICARE to 180 days is delayed
until revision of applicable Department of Defense Instruction(s) and
system changes are implemented at the Defense Manpower Data Center.
______
QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. HARE
Mr. Hare. General Wyatt, since the loss of aircraft due to BRAC
2005, several states have received new flying missions (Nashville, TN
Lost C-130, gained WC-130: Bradley, CT Lost A-10, gained C-27:
Meridian, MS Lost KC-135, gained C-27: Fargo, ND Lost F-16, gained C-27
and Predator UAV: Mansfield, OH Lost C-130, gained C-27: Battle Creek,
MI Lost A-10, gained C-21 and C-27) however, the 183rd FW, Springfield,
IL which lost F-16's is still without a replacement flying mission. The
morale of the personnel on the base has become increasingly low because
the base is sitting there with no air-related mission. While the unit
has made great strides in recruiting, an operational flying mission
would greatly assist in recruiting and retaining highly skilled and
trained members and ``home grow'' personnel to fill some positions.
What are the Air Force/Air National Guard's plans in locating a new
flying mission at the 183d Fighter Wing, Springfield, IL? When will the
unit receive a replacement flying mission, and what will that mission
be?
General Wyatt. The National Guard Bureau worked aggressively with
the Air Force and the Adjutants General to identify and bed down
enduring missions for units affected by the 2005 Base Closure and
Realignment decisions. In some cases we were successful in identifying
viable flying missions; however, there were several instances where our
options were limited. The 183rd FW at Springfield, IL is one of those
locations. While we were able to place enduring missions to meet the
needs of our Air Force and Combatant Commanders, we have been
unsuccessful in identifying a flying mission. We will continue to work
with the Air Force to identify new missions for all of our ANG units
who have lost flying missions, but recapitalization issues will make it
likely some of our ANG units will not receive replacement flying
missions. The Adjutants General recognized this constrained environment
and have requested, through an Adjutants General of the United States
resolution, that we prioritize mission bed down based on retaining a
flying mission in every state. Illinois is one of the fortunate states,
as it still retains two other flying units - KC-135s at Scott AFB and
C-130s at Peoria, IL. My staff will continue to evaluate potential
missions, which will provide a meaningful and enduring mission for the
men and women at Springfield, IL.
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