[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-141]
HEARING
ON
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2011
AND
OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
FULL COMMITTEE HEARING
ON
BUDGET REQUESTS FROM THE U.S. SOUTHERN COMMAND AND U.S. NORTHERN
COMMAND
__________
HEARING HELD
MARCH 18, 2010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TONGRESS.#13
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Eleventh Congress
IKE SKELTON, Missouri, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' McKEON,
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas California
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
ADAM SMITH, Washington W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina JEFF MILLER, Florida
ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania JOE WILSON, South Carolina
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California ROB BISHOP, Utah
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio
RICK LARSEN, Washington JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
JIM COOPER, Tennessee MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
PATRICK J. MURPHY, Pennsylvania K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
HANK JOHNSON, Georgia DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire ROB WITTMAN, Virginia
JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa DUNCAN HUNTER, California
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania JOHN C. FLEMING, Louisiana
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado
NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida
GLENN NYE, Virginia TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
LARRY KISSELL, North Carolina
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
FRANK M. KRATOVIL, Jr., Maryland
BOBBY BRIGHT, Alabama
SCOTT MURPHY, New York
WILLIAM L. OWENS, New York
DAN BOREN, Oklahoma
Erin C. Conaton, Staff Director
Eryn Robinson, Professional Staff Member
Aileen Alexander, Professional Staff Member
Caterina Dutto, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
----------
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2010
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, March 18, 2010, Fiscal Year 2011 National Defense
Authorization Act--Budget Requests from the U.S. Southern
Command and U.S. Northern Command.............................. 1
Appendix:
Thursday, March 18, 2010......................................... 35
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 2010
FISCAL YEAR 2011 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT--BUDGET REQUESTS
FROM THE U.S. SOUTHERN COMMAND AND U.S. NORTHERN COMMAND
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck,'' a Representative from
California, Ranking Member, Committee on Armed Services........ 2
Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Chairman,
Committee on Armed Services.................................... 1
WITNESSES
Fraser, Gen. Douglas, USAF, Commander, U.S. Southern Command..... 6
Renuart, Gen. Victor E., Jr., USAF, Commander, North American
Aerospace Defense Command, U.S. Northern Command............... 4
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Fraser, Gen. Douglas M....................................... 82
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck''.............................. 40
Renuart, Gen. Victor E., Jr.................................. 43
Skelton, Hon. Ike............................................ 39
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
Mrs. Davis................................................... 127
Mr. McKeon................................................... 127
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mr. Lamborn.................................................. 132
Mrs. McMorris Rodgers........................................ 131
Mr. Ortiz.................................................... 131
FISCAL YEAR 2011 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT--BUDGET REQUESTS
FROM THE U.S. SOUTHERN COMMAND AND U.S. NORTHERN COMMAND
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Thursday, March 18, 2010.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:02 a.m., in room
2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ike Skelton (chairman
of the committee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
MISSOURI, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
The Chairman. Morning. Committee will come to order. And
today's hearing is part of our annual series of posture
hearings with combatant commanders. I am pleased to welcome
General Renuart of the Northern Command [NORTHCOM] and the
North American Aerospace Defense Command [NORAD]. And General
Doug Fraser of the U.S. Southern Command [SOUTHCOM].
We welcome you both. Let me express my gratitude and
appreciation to all the service men and women whom you each
command. They provide an invaluable service to our country, and
we are certainly in their debt. We are fortunate to have the
Northern Command and the Southern Command represented here
today. In many respects these two commands share more than a
common boundary.
They take on many similar types of intractable challenges
and work closely with our partners to provide our regions'
security and stability. Recent events including the earthquake
that devastated parts of Haiti, and drug cartel-related
violence near our border in Mexico remind us of the many
important varied missions of these commands.
At today's hearing we will look forward to our witnesses'
testimony on these missions, and issues that they face.
Starting in the Northern Command area of responsibility we
would like to hear from the general about what progress we are
making in helping our Mexican neighbors combat narcosyndicates
and border violence.
I also look forward to hearing about how NORTHCOM is
continuing to work to improve coordination with local, state,
and federal authorities. We would also like to hear about how
the recent quadrennial defense review recommendations will
impact NORTHCOM. In particular please address recommendations
for faster and more flexible consequent management forces and
improved awareness in the Arctic region.
Turning to the Southern Command, we would like to commend
General Fraser and all those men and women in SOUTHCOM for
their tremendous effort in Haiti in conjunction with Operation
Unified Response. Under the command of SOUTHCOM, American
military forces quickly responded to the urgent needs of the
Haitian people and allowed them to immediately start the relief
and recovery process after the devastating earthquake that
struck their capital city at Port-au-Prince.
SOUTHCOM played a critical role in the inter-agency effort
in Haiti. I am very proud of all those involved. I am also
interested to hear the General's thoughts on the future of
Haiti and what SOUTHCOM's role and the requirements will be
there.
I continue to be very concerned about the flow of illegal
narcotics from the South and Central America into our country
as well as reports of increase in trafficking to Europe and the
Middle East. We welcome any comments the General might have on
those issues.
In addition we would like to hear a frank assessment of the
status of our relationship with militaries and governments in
the SOUTHCOM region. That is important that we know that.
Please address how the current state of our relationship
impacts our ability to conduct counternarcotics and other
operations in that area.
More broadly speaking we would like to hear from both our
witnesses today on ideas that you may have for improving your
commands' ability to execute its missions. Once again we thank
our witnesses for being here. We are proud of what you do. We
look forward to hearing your comments today on answering our
questions.
Now I turn to my good friend, the Ranking Member, gentleman
from California, Buck McKeon.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Skelton can be found in the
Appendix on page 39.]
STATEMENT OF HON. HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' MCKEON, A REPRESENTATIVE
FROM CALIFORNIA, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. McKeon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Today we conclude our series of posture hearings with the
commanders from U.S. Northern Command--NORTHCOM, and U.S.
Southern Command--SOUTHCOM. I would like to welcome General
Renuart and General Fraser. Gentlemen, you represent the best
America has to offer and I thank you indeed for your service.
And all of those behind you in uniform that are here with you.
General Renuart, you have the dual responsibility of
overseeing two commands, NORTHCOM and the North American Space
Defense Command--NORAD. There are several issues within your
AOR I hope that will be addressed today. But I would like to
take this opportunity to focus on one of the most eminent
national security challenges on our nation's doorstep--the
narcocriminal enterprise operating in Mexico.
As both the ranking member of this committee as well as a
representative of Southern California, I am deeply concerned
with the scourge of violence fueled by the ongoing battles
among powerful cartels. The recent killings in Ciudad Juarez
illustrate the danger and reach of the escalating drug war.
Soon after he took office, President Obama honed in on this
issue endorsing the Merida Initiative which was passed by
Congress in 2008. But that interest seems to be flagging even
though the violence is not.
Mexico cannot win this war without America's help, and we
cannot afford for Mexico to lose. From your perspective where
and how should we build upon the momentum initiated by Merida
and translate that effort into a lasting partnership? What role
do you see NORTHCOM playing in terms of building the capacity
of the Mexican military to counter the threats it faces?
Turning to SOUTHCOM, General Fraser, first I must commend
SOUTHCOM for its efforts to assist Haiti in its time of need.
The success of Operation Unified Response speaks to the
professionalism of your forces and to the command's efforts to
enhance its inter-agency relationships. Your forces brought
comfort and hope to a devastated people, and have helped to put
Haiti back on a road to recovery.
While our engagement in Latin America is often focused on
disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, we must not forget
that the region faces many pressures that make it vulnerable.
Narcotrafficking continues to undermine regional stability and
bring violence to the countries it touches. Authoritarian
regimes seek to reduce U.S. influence and engagement in the
region while other outside influences from terrorist financing
groups to Iran seek to make further inroads.
Given our commitments in other areas of the world, most
notably the CENTCOM [United States Central Command] AOR [area
of responsibility], I am concerned that we may not have the
resources needed or the focus to appropriately engage our Latin
American partners on a military level. And that security and
stability in the region will suffer. How is SOUTHCOM addressing
the region's many challenges, and where do you need our
assistance?
In closing let me take a moment to comment on the detention
facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. One issue related to the work
of the joint task force that concerns me is how it manages the
interaction between Gitmo detainees and their habeas lawyers.
My understanding is that lawyers are prohibited from giving
detainees information relating to military operations,
intelligence, arrests, political news, and the names of U.S.
government personnel. There have been reports in the press
recently that some habeas lawyers have violated and continue to
violate DOD procedures and possibly the law. I think these
issues merit serious attention.
Mr. Chairman, I ask that my entire statement be included
for the record where I address other issues facing the
combatant commands testifying here today. Once again I thank
you for being here this morning, and I will look forward to
your testimony.
Yield back, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McKeon can be found in the
Appendix on page 40.]
The Chairman. Thank you. And without objection your
prepared testimony will be placed in the record.
We thank you gentlemen for being with us. General Renuart,
you are on.
STATEMENT OF GEN. VICTOR E. RENUART, JR., USAF, COMMANDER,
NORTH AMERICAN AEROSPACE DEFENSE COMMAND, U.S. NORTHERN COMMAND
General Renuart. Well thank you, Chairman Skelton,
Congressman McKeon, members of the committee. Great to be with
you this morning. I say that with a true smile on my face in
that I am approaching 39 years of service to our nation, and my
wife has said, ``It is time to do something different.''
And so we will be retiring after I change command in this
office here later this spring--early summer. And I must say I
want to express my thanks while I may not have the opportunity
to come before you again. I want to express my thanks to the
committee for all the support you have provided to our two
commands over the previous three years of my command. And
certainly as we have grown and developed over the last few
years.
The safety of the nation is our paramount concern. And you
share that with us every day. And we appreciate that quite a
bit. It is good to have the opportunity to talk about the
successes that our two commands have achieved over the past few
years, and to talk about some of the challenges you mentioned
today. Certainly the difficulty in Mexico. The integration with
our state and federal partners as we look at events that may
occur in the homeland. Discussing the QDR [Quadrennial Defense
Review] and ballistic missile defense [BMD] and other issues.
The Arctic and clearly how we and SOUTHCOM collaborate in
combating narcocriminalism in this hemisphere.
So these are all topics that I look forward to having a
good discussion with you today. As I start it is important for
me also to extend my thanks to the men and women who wear the
cloth of our nation each day. They defend our homeland
certainly in the battlefields far away from the United States.
But they also defend our homeland every day here as a combined
team of active Guard and Reserve military members ensuring that
our families and our communities are safe and secure.
In particular I would like to recognize the service of our
enlisted personnel of each of our services, and recognize them
through our senior enlisted leader at U.S. Northern Command and
NORAD today.
I am pleased to have Chief Master Sergeant Allen Usury here
with me today. He is my senior enlisted leader. And of note,
Chief Usury is the first National Guard senior enlisted leader
selected for duty at U.S. Northern Command. And I looked at all
of the competitors, and Allen clearly was head and shoulders
above active Guard and Reservists who competed. So I am pleased
to have him with me.
Also great to share the table with my friend Doug Fraser.
Over the past months our commands have partnered substantially
across a broad spectrum of interest areas to our nation.
First, in the fight against narcoterrorism and the drug
trafficking organizations in our hemisphere. We have partnered
substantially in a broad variety of areas. And whether that is
sharing of intelligence information, combined operations in the
Caribbean and in the Pacific, or collaborating with Mexico in
order to make them more capable of countering the challenges
that they have in their nation, SOUTHCOM and NORTHCOM truly
have stood as partners. And so, it is a treat to be able to sit
here and have the discussion today with Doug.
We have also partnered to ensure that the U.S. efforts to
support the victims in Haiti have been successful. And I am
pleased to have been able to assist and partner with Doug's
team in terms of planners and air operators and a number of
other skill sets that we have provided in order to assist in
that effort.
Chairman, as you mentioned, our missions are twofold. One,
the NORAD mission, a bi-command mission to ensure the air and
space sovereignty and security, and the maritime sovereignty
and security of our two nations is maintained.
In our NORTHCOM role, to provide for U.S. forces to defend
the homeland from a variety of external threats, as well as to
support law enforcement as we defend ourselves against security
concerns inside the borders of our country.
We are careful to keep a line between both. We understand
the Constitutional limitations of use of the military in the
homeland. We also understand how the military can support our
law enforcement and other federal partners in the homeland.
Across a broad spectrum of missions, from air sovereignty,
to maritime domain awareness, to homeland defense, to ballistic
missile defense, to support to law enforcement, our team--and
that is a team of over 60 agencies with this government--works
every day hand in hand to ensure we can be successful.
From warning to consequence management, that broad spectrum
is in our job jar every day. And I will be pleased to answer
the questions--those questions--with you as we get further into
today's session.
We work hard with each of those teammates. We have worked
hard to develop and integrate planning system that does in fact
incorporate state and local and federal agencies in a coherent
process.
And I think the examples of Hurricane Gustav and Ike, last
year's floods in North Dakota, all give good examples of ways
that we have been helpful and successful with, and at the same
time, understanding the unique nature of each of the federal
partners that we participate in any operation with.
We have two great partners in our international portfolio
and we are growing a third. Canada has the best and most
capable partnership with the U.S. Navy of any nation in the
world. They stand shoulder to shoulder with us in the
battlefields of Afghanistan.
But they also sail with us, fly with us, and stand with us
in disaster response here in the northern hemisphere. The
success of the Winter Olympics is a testament to certainly the
Canadian approach to a great world event, but also underline
that support of NORAD and support of NORTHCOM to our Canadian
partners was a real model of bi-national cooperation.
With Mexico, we continue to help grow their capacity. We
will talk about that in some more detail, but I would tell you
that our relationship with the government of Mexico and the
military of Mexico is as good as it has ever been in history.
We still have work to do, as do they, and we are continuing to
work on that aggressively each day.
Finally, as we grow our newest partners in the Bahamas, we
are assisting in operations in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos
that have focused primarily on criminalism and countering drug
trafficking. We work closely with NORTHCOM in that area as
well, in addition to the team at JIATF-South [Joint Interagency
Task Force South] and our Coast Guard.
So across our area of focus we are engaged, we are
continuing to improve, and we look forward to telling you that
story today.
Finally, I would like to close as I opened a little bit
with 39 years-plus of service, I want to say thank you on the--
for the record--to my wife Jill and our sons Brian and Andrew,
who have quietly, mostly, supported our career, the many moves.
We will move out of our 28th household here at the end of
this tenure. And I will tell you that truly I would not have
been able to succeed without her great support. And so, I would
like to publicly say thanks to her and to the military families
of all of our servicemen around the world. They pay a price
that is often untold, and we do appreciate that.
Mr. Chairman, I look forward to answering your questions
here this morning. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of General Renuart can be found in
the Appendix on page 43.]
The Chairman. We thank you. And as your career draws to an
end, we can say in a good old-fashioned Missouri, ya done good,
General. So thank you.
General Renuart. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. But we know you will run hard to the finish
line.
General Fraser, please.
STATEMENT OF GEN. DOUGLAS FRASER, USAF, COMMANDER, U.S.
SOUTHERN COMMAND
General Fraser. Chairman Skelton, Congressman McKeon, and
the distinguished members of the committee, I am honored to
have this opportunity to appear before you today and provide my
assessment of the United States Southern Command.
It is also my great privilege to share this table with my
good friend and mentor, General Gene Renuart. Our appearance
together, as Gene mentioned, represents the close coordination,
alignment, and relationship between our two commands. And I
also want to congratulate him on almost 39 years of
distinguished service to our Air Force and to our nation.
Finally, I want to thank the members of this committee for
your continued strong support of United States Southern
Command, and of your outstanding soldiers, sailors, airmen,
Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and civilian personnel it has been my
privilege to lead and represent.
I have personally seen these outstanding men and women in
action during the United States response to the earthquake in
Haiti. The devastation was tremendous. The U.S. response was
swift, coordinated, and aggressive. Within 24 hours, elements
of United States Southern Command, the United States Air Force,
the United States Navy, the United States Army, as well as the
United States Coast Guard were supporting relief efforts.
Air Force and Army elements began surveying the
international airport. A Navy P-3 aircraft conducted aerial
reconnaissance, and an aircraft carrier and an amphibious group
were ordered to make best possible speed to Haiti.
Over the next 3 weeks, the military response to the relief
effort grew to a peak of just over 22,000 personnel, supported
by all of the combatant commands, including U.S. Transportation
Command, U.S. Joint Forces Command, and every branch of our
armed forces.
Our forces dramatically expanded the Air Force capacity and
opened the seaport to enable the vital flow of supplies. They
distributed water, food, medical supplies, and provided
critical medical care. They worked diligently to meet the
immediate needs of the Haitian people.
As relief capabilities of the government of Haiti, USAID
[U.S. Agency for International Development], the United
Nations, and NGOs [non-governmental organizations] have
increased, and as relief needs of the people of Haiti have been
met, we are transitioning many of our functions to these
capable partners, and are conducting a deliberate conditions-
based drawdown of our forces.
I think it is important though, Mr. Chairman, to state that
we will stay very involved with Haiti in supporting U.S.
government efforts, international efforts, to support for a
long time. So this is a transition of forces to those forces
that will be needed in the future as we continue to support the
effort in Haiti.
Less than 2 months after the catastrophe in Haiti, tragedy
struck once again in the region, when an 8.8 magnitude
earthquake shook Chile. Within a day of the earthquake we
distributed imagery of the affected areas to the Chileans, and
sent satellite phone. Additionally, we supplied Chile with
transport aircraft, a field hospital, and a port survey team.
We stand ready to provide further assistance if additional
support is required.
Beyond these two disasters, Southern Command continues to
address other challenges in our area of responsibility. Illicit
trafficking, narcoterrorism, gangs, and the potential for the
spread of WMD [weapons of mass destruction] are the principle
security threats within the region. The region remains very
dynamic.
Brazil continues its rapid emergence as a regional leader
with global influence. Competing ideologies within the region
are stressing democratic and human rights advances, and the
increasing engagement of external players, such as China, Iran,
and Russia, continue to broaden regional outlooks and
positions.
Addressing the challenges of our region requires a truly
whole-of-government approach in which United States Southern
Command plays a supporting role. To that end, we work not only
to strengthen partner military capacity, but also to build
important relationships throughout the region, foreign and
domestic, military and civilian, public and private.
One of the institutions providing critical support to our
mission is the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation. I want to thank this committee for your continued
strong support of WHINSEC [Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation]. I also want to acknowledge my fellow
board members, or board visitor members, some who sit on this
committee, for your active involvement in overseeing WHINSEC's
activities.
As a customer of WHINSEC, I can attest that it is critical
role to our security cooperation efforts, especially its focus
on human rights, is essential. It is one more reason why our
military-to-military relations throughout the region remain
strong.
Let me close by saying the tragedy in Haiti reminds us of
the challenges we face in this region. The cooperation we have
developed with our partners over the years, relationships built
through enduring and consistent engagement, have paid big
dividends in Haiti during Operation United Response.
Thank you for your continued interest and your continued
support in Southern Command.
Mr. Chairman, I look forward to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Fraser can be found in
the Appendix on page 82.]
The Chairman. General Fraser, thank you very much.
General Renuart, Mexico. Has the violence increased in the
last year? What is the answer to the horrific violence and
murders in Mexico, General?
General Renuart. Mr. Chairman, the short answer is yes, the
violence has increased. We see increased competition among drug
trafficking organizations for--in my terms--market share,
distribution network, and profit margin.
And they have used violent means to attempt to achieve
that. At the same time they use those same types of measures to
intimidate local law enforcement and government officials.
The government of Mexico is keenly aware of that increase,
and in fact, has taken a series of steps to attempt to stop and
then reduce that violence. Sadly, we saw here in just the last
week three individuals killed in Mexico, in Juarez, three U.S.
citizens associated with the American consulate there. And I
think it continues to remind us that the drug trafficking
organizations will be violent and we need to continue to do all
that we can for Mexico to assist them.
To your second question about is there a way forward, and I
would mention a number of issues where the U.S. government is
continuing to assist Mexico to grow capacity, as you may know,
Secretary Clinton and Secretary Gates will lead a large
delegation to Mexico next week. This will be the central point
of discussions for them.
But in the near term and over the last six months, U.S.
Northern Command has been working very aggressively with the
Mexican military and with the Mexican Federal Police to help
them vet new candidates and to increase capacity by providing
focused training to Mexican special forces units, who, in fact,
are given the mission of going out and conducting some of the
operations against drug trafficking organizations. A lot of
work to do. There is not a fast solution in this process
because in many ways Mexico has to rebuild the law enforcement
and justice infrastructure in order to take on these
organizations.
And I think the important element here is persistent
partnership. We need to continue to show the Mexicans that we
are part of their team, that we support their efforts and that
we will continue to assist them whether it is in equipment or
training or in many cases teaching, allowing them to learn the
lessons of our integrated operations in other parts of the
world.
The Chairman. Thank you. General Fraser, first, we
compliment you and your team on your efforts in Haiti. It was
very apparent from watching the news and also from briefings we
have had. So thank you and be sure to thank all the----
General, in your area of responsibility, are we gaining or
losing influence as a country?
General Fraser. Mr. Chairman, I think we are gaining and it
is a relationship that I think we need to continue to pay a lot
of attention to. And because I focus on that region, I
obviously have a very specific interest in it. My concern is we
look to it as--with the era of globalization, there are a lot
of other factors that are now starting to come in and
influence.
And so the way that we have approached the region in the
past I think needs to change as we look out into the future.
And we need to continue to engage very robustly within the
region to continue to build those partnerships. There was a
Latino barometer survey done. It is a Chilean organization that
shows the regard for the United States leadership. The United
States has grown from 58 percent to 71 percent. That to me is a
very good indicator of the engagement and the continued
engagement and the representation that we have within our
region.
The Chairman. How are our relations with the country of
Colombia progressing?
General Fraser. Mr. Chairman, our relations with Colombia
are very good and they continue to grow on a continual basis.
There has been over the last 8 years since 2002 roughly $5.0
billion of United States money invested in the fight to help
and support Colombia in their fight against the FARC
[Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] as well as illicit
trafficking. That continues to grow.
The Colombians have a very successful effort continuing.
They have been able to kill or detain 12 mid-level to senior
FARC members this year. They have a very comprehensive
consolidation plan to go out and continue to take over and
solidify control within various regions and remove the illicit
trafficking capability from their country. And more than that,
they are starting to reach out. And working with the United
States Northern Command, they have agreed to train some Mexican
helicopter pilots in their facilities within Colombia.
Within Haiti, we had great relations with the supplies that
they have sent, with a field of medical capability that they
sent and integrated very easily within our operation there. So
overall, I see our relations with Colombia strong and I see
them continuing to grow.
The Chairman. Buck McKeon.
Mr. McKeon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Renuart,
congratulations on your 39 years. As we visited the other day,
we got a chance to talk about some of this and--very
interesting, but when you mentioned this morning that you had
had 28 residences, I started counting up the number we have had
in our 47 years of marriage and we came to exactly half of
that. And I know what the strain that put on my wife and I
commend Jill for putting up with it, for being such a great
support to you.
As I stated earlier, I am deeply concerned with the levels
and reach of the violence generated by the narcocriminals. I
think the threat on our border requires a plan of strategic
cooperation of finding areas where we can help Mexico fight
back. Being from Southern California, we see some of the
spillover. We have had it in my community. And so it is
something that we are really concerned about.
Last weekend, as it has been mentioned, two American
citizens, an employee and an employee of the U.S. Consulate in
Mexico were murdered. How do you see the threat of the
narcocriminals in Mexico changing? And in addition to Merida,
how does the NORTHCOM use 1206 to train and equip and 1000 for
counternarcotics funding to build the capacity of our Mexican
military partners?
Congressman McKeon, we share that concern and as you know,
that violence, while it may sporadically spill directly across
the border, it certainly permeates our country in a number of
cities as we see the increase in drug-related gang violence in
cities across our country. So that distribution network is
really the focus of these drug trafficking organizations. And
they will be violent to try to expand their market share, if
you will.
Having said that, along the border, you are exactly
correct. We do need to have an integrated process among all the
partners and players. And as you know in Southern California,
the Customs and Border Patrol host the Air and Maritime
Operations Command and Control Center. We participate in that
through our Joint Task Force North. We share a common air
picture with them to continue to expand the information sharing
that we have with the Mexicans and we are looking to continue
to grow that.
On the ground, in fact, in a week, I will host a meeting at
our headquarters with the leaders of Customs and Border Patrol
with the drug enforcement agencies, with the FBI [Federal
Bureau of Investigation] and many others to talk about a more
integrated strategy along our southwest border to both
support--in other words, for DOD to provide support to law
enforcement on the north side and coordinate that with the DOD
support we provide to the Mexican military on the southern
side.
You may be aware we have twice yearly border commanders
conference and in that conference, the Mexican district
military commanders and our U.S. military commanders get
together to help share common tactics, techniques and
procedures and increasingly, now, to share intelligence. That
effort will continue and continue aggressively.
With respect to direct support to military in Mexico via a
variety of different funding streams, certainly Merida and
1206, the counternarcotics money, all provide us valuable
resources. One of my concerns is, as you know, Merida was a
term limited, if you will, set of money. We need to continue
that effort beyond the terms of Merida. Both Secretary Gates
and Secretary Clinton are very supportive of that. We would
request the help of Congress obviously as we move forward, but
these things provide invaluable tools to Mexico.
Their challenge is the fusion of intelligence and the
agility to move highly qualified teams from one target, if you
will, to another to be able to exploit the vulnerabilities that
they may find with good fused intelligence. And so we have
expanded our efforts in terms of training their special
military teams, in terms of training on the integration of law
enforcement and military in an operation much like we have done
in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Those avenues that provide funding that allow us to do that
are critically important to us. And so is 1206, the CN money,
sort of whatever the son of Merida may be in the coming years,
because this really is an eight to ten year problem. It is not
a one year solution that we can come up with. And while we
regret the casualties, we have to continue to stay persistent
in our partnership with Mexico.
Mr. McKeon. Thank you very much. General Fraser, is the
increased narcotrafficking violence in Mexico a direct result
of positive gains in counterterror--counternarcotics efforts in
Central and South America? What can SOUTHCOM do to assist
Mexico and NORTHCOM's efforts especially given that many
countries in your AOR are restricted from different types of
assistance?
General Fraser. Congressman McKeon, I think there is a
result of the drug trafficking and that has influenced the
concerns within Mexico. I see it as a much larger regional
issue and I see it as a regional what we are terming an illicit
trafficking enterprise. An illicit trafficking enterprise to
include not only drugs, but trafficking and weapons and fund
both cash as well as humans and other articles.
And that network extends throughout Latin America and
Central America. In through Mexico, the primary avenue right
now of especially cocaine entering the United States is through
the isthmus of Central America into Mexico and then into the
United States. So there is a direct relationship out of there
and we see some of the drug trafficking organizations,
especially the Mexican drug trafficking organizations, now
moving into the northern part of Central America. So that
causes me concern also.
You asked what we can do about it. We continue to engage
with Colombia. We continue to support the efforts in Mexico
with General Renuart. Our Joint Interagency Task Force South
responsible for coordinating the detection and monitoring and
the maritime domain is supporting that effort. It supports not
only Southern Command, but Northern Command to Mexico on both
coasts, the Caribbean and the Pacific. So that is a very
integrated effort and works very well with all the nations in
the region, if you will.
We continue to support along with 1206 funding as General
Renuart talked about to support capabilities in the maritime
environments and continue to work with them on counternarcotics
[CN]. And that is with each nation along the way. We are
looking at how we build a broader strategy if you can that
doesn't just look at it just nation by nation, but looks at us
and how we can integrate our collective efforts to address the
illicit trafficking issue.
Mr. McKeon. Thank you. General Fraser, can you describe the
procedures that JTF GITMO [Joint Task Force Guantanamo] has in
place to manage the interaction between the habeas counsel and
the GITMO detainees? Are you aware of instances where lawyers
have given detainees information relating to military
operations, intelligence, arrests, political news, and the
names of U.S. government personnel? Is this still happening?
And of yet what steps has the JTF GITMO taken to prevent this
from happening?
General Fraser. Thank you, congressman. The process for
directing and the engagement between habeas counsel and
detainees was prescribed under a protective order that was
issued by the United States court--federal court here in the
District of Columbia. They are the ones who have jurisdiction.
And so it prescribes very specifically how we do that. We have
a very specific procedure that I would like to put into the
record to--to give you that more specifically on how that
works. But let me describe briefly how that works.
There was a protective--or a privilege team set up that is
U.S.--or contractors who work for the federal court here in
District of Columbia. They provide, and they monitor both the
incoming and outgoing mail associated with habeas counselors,
and their interaction with detainees.
If a counselor wants to visit a detainee in Guantanamo,
there is a very specific location where they meet. They are
able to meet there. We monitor it visually either with someone
watching, or someone watching on a videotape. But no audio
associated with that. And that is primarily for security that
we continue to watch visually. And so that is controlled under
that means.
Any messages that are--or letters, or correspondence that
is left with a detainee is reviewed by that privilege team
before it is sent to Haiti. And so that remains there. If a
counselor wants to talk with a detainee, but not visit, then
that is conducted first over a secure means if we can do that
so that they can connect directly. If there is an insecure
means there, then someone from that privilege team monitors
that conversation.
No one at JTF Guantanamo monitors any of the conversations
between counsel and the detainees. And so briefly that is the
way the process works.
Mr. McKeon. When was that put into place?
General Fraser. Congressman, I will have to get back to you
with a specific date.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
beginning on page 127.]
Mr. McKeon. Okay. Thank you.
General Fraser. But I have heard of a couple of instances
of--where information was passed primarily on potential
movement of detainees in the future. But that is the only--
between habeas counsel and--and the detainees, that is the only
instances of concern that I am aware of. Any instance that the
people at Guantanamo may be concerned about, they raise that up
to DOD [Department of Defense], and we, in turn, turn that over
to the Department of Justice [DOJ].
Mr. McKeon. Thank you very much.
Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. McKeon. That is the first time we have had two fighter
pilots sitting here together.
The Chairman. And they do well.
Mr. McKeon. They sure work together well. Thank you. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. McKeon.
Mr. Taylor yields to the gentleman from Georgia, Mr.
Johnson.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
And I want to say good morning to you, gentlemen.
General Renuart, or Renuart, you have served admirably
for--may as well just go on and say 40 years. And you are to be
congratulated for the achievements, and--the personal
achievements as well as the job that you have done for America
and its citizens.
General Renuart. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Johnson. And we appreciate it. And you are leaving us
with General Fraser who you have mentored throughout the time
that you all have been together. I think that is such a special
relationship to have. And I know that General Fraser will make
sure that you do not forget him. He will be calling upon you
from time to time perhaps.
But I do want to ask this question, General Renuart. As far
as the Arctic region, if there was a let's say a military
vehicle that got stuck and the ice shifted, and it got stuck,
and this happened tonight, how would we go about extracting our
people and the equipment from the Arctic region?
General Renuart. Congressman, that is actually a very good
example of the kind of activity that we need to continue our
momentum on within the Arctic region. All the scientific
evidence tells us that there is increasing navigable water in
the Arctic. But that can change literally overnight. We saw
just in the last few months over 100 vessels stuck in the
Baltic Sea where they were caught by a very rapid freeze.
So this is a real concern in the Arctic region. Today if
that had--if that occurred, I--the answer is we and the Coast
Guard would partner with a rescue force. But today that rescue
force would be primarily the ability to go in and extract the
crew from that vessel, because we do not have the capabilities
necessary for major ice breaking operations in the Arctic, nor
do we have the vessels positioned in the Arctic that could
provide a rescue vehicle for--with ice hardened hulls.
And in fact, at the time Admiral Keating and I--he was the
Pacific Command Commander--have written both to the secretary
supporting the Coast Guard's desire to grow additional ice
breaking equipment. And since then, other combatant commanders
have added their support to that. That is a capability that is
vitally important to the nation. So that you can in fact have
the capacity to go in with a large vessel and in fact rescue or
break free a ship that is caught in the ice.
Last year there were a number of cruise ships that actually
took advantage of the navigable portion of the year to transit
in the Arctic. And clearly at some point one of those will
encounter a difficulty whether it is stuck in ice, or a
maintenance problem, or the like. And we have got to grow a
capacity to conduct rescue of those kinds of forces in that
very harsh region.
So the Arctic is an area that has great promise, but it
also is an area with great--that has great difficulty in day-
to-day operations. We partner both with our NORAD and our
NORTHCOM teams with Canada on collective search and rescue. The
other point I would make is that Canadians also have an ability
to help in a rescue like that as well. And they will always
come to our assistance should that be required.
But the bottom line, sir, is we have got to grow capacity
in the Arctic whether it is navigation, communication, or in
fact rescue.
Mr. Johnson. All right. Thank you, sir.
And General Fraser, you mentioned Colombia--you mentioned
FARC, a left-wing group, a terrorist group. There is also proof
that there are right-wing terrorist groups that--the death
squads. What kind of progress has been made in reigning in
those organizations?
General Fraser. Congressman, Colombia has actually made
quite a bit of strides in reducing that. They have had an
ability to--I can't think of the right word, but to bring those
folks in and bring them--make them part of the society. And so
they have actually been able to repatriate about 30,000 of
those types of individuals as they have worked over many years
to do that. And those efforts continue.
Mr. Johnson. Including the right-wing militias?
General Fraser. Yes, sir. That is where the focus has been.
In militias. It also has been on the FARC. And so that is an
effort that continues. One of the negative sides of what is
happening is some of those individuals have chosen to take on
criminal activity if you will and become parts of criminal
gangs focused on illicit trafficking. So there is one area
where they are transferring, and they haven't been successful
in that effort.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you both. And enjoy your retirement,
General.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman. Before I call on Mr.
Bartlett, let me ask. To your knowledge is help, aid, and
assistance from Venezuela coming to the FARC in Colombia?
General Fraser. Chairman, I am not sure I understood your
question.
The Chairman. There is a group known as FARC in----
General Fraser. Yes, sir.
The Chairman [continuing]. Colombia. Are they receiving
help, aid, and assistance from anyone in or out of government
in Venezuela?
General Fraser. Congressman, we do see a--or Chairman, we
do see a long-term relationship that exists between the
Government of Venezuela, and the FARC. That has been evidenced
if we go back and look at the computer records that came out of
the Rafael Reyes detention--or capture of that computer. That
continues on. There is safe haven. There is financial logistic
support. There is safe haven for the FARC provided.
And that--all the evidence I have says that continues. The
evidence I have doesn't say that it--that I can explicitly say
it is continuing. But I can't say it is explicitly not
continuing. So based on the evidence up to date, I would say
that that support still continues.
The Chairman. Is the FARC getting smaller or larger?
General Fraser. Over the time that plan Colombia has been
in existence, the FARC has been reduced. They are about half
the level that they were when Colombia relief focused their
effort. Right now we estimate about 8,500 FARC members. So the
fight is still very much there. The FARC has been pushed to a
defensive role. They are changing their tactics, but they are
still very active.
Colombia had to take on a very active role in making sure
they were not able to disrupt the recent congressional
elections held. And the armed forces and the national police
did a very good job of doing that.
The Chairman. Mr. Bartlett.
Mr. Bartlett. General Renuart, before Rumsfeld was the
Secretary of Defense he chaired a commission study of the
emerging ballistic missile threat. That study concluded the
threat was real, was growing, and was far more imminent than we
had anticipated. Our response to that has been a very
aggressive development and deployment of anti-ballistic
missiles. A major focus of that has been in the Arctic.
I hope that that will never be used, because I think the
only country that will ever launch over the pole today may be
China tomorrow. But the only country ever to launch over the
pole today will be Russia. And our meager defenses there would
be almost immediately swamped by the shear numbers of the
weapons that they could release.
Other adversary--potential adversaries like Iran and North
Korea may be evil. They are not idiots. And I think that there
is a very small probability that they would ever launch from
their homeland, because that launch would be detected. And they
know that they would be almost immediately vaporized. And so if
they attack us, sir, it is not going to be from their homeland.
So we don't need to wait until they have a missile which will
reach us.
If they attack us, it is going to be from the sea. And so I
have two questions. One is what is our capability of defending
our coast from ship launched missiles? And by the way, with any
trans steamer and a scud launcher which they can buy for about
$100,000 and a crude nuclear weapon, they can attack us. That
attack will almost certainly be where we are most vulnerable,
which would be an EMP [electromagnetic pulse] attack. And if
they miss their target by 100 miles, it is as good as hitting
it dead on.
Iran had a missile test which we said failed, because the
thing was detonated in space. That is exactly how you would
produce an EMP attack. So my second question is how much of
your fighting capability would remain after the EMP attack, and
what would be the situation in our country?
General Renuart. Congressman Bartlett, let me take the
second question first. You and I have had a discussion about
two years ago actually as--with respect to Cheyenne Mountain on
EMP issues. And I promised you at the time that we would
continue to work this very aggressively. And I am pleased that
we have been able to continue a very aggressive funding line to
ensure not just the systems in Cheyenne Mountain, but the
systems in our headquarters every day have the appropriate EMP
protection against just this kind of event.
Mr. Bartlett. Can you tell us, sir, at what level you are
protecting? Is it 30, 50, or 100 kilovolts per meter?
General Renuart. Congressman, I think I expressed ignorance
back then of the specific number. And I am afraid if I gave you
one I might not be telling you the truth. So let me--but I will
get you the number back----
[The information referred to is classified and retained in
the committee files.]
Mr. Bartlett. Appreciate that. Thank you.
General Renuart [continuing]. If I could after the hearing
for the record. But your point is very well taken. The threat
is not the traditional threat that we saw during certainly
those cold war days. And even today certainly the Russians and
the Chinese maintain a substantial intercontinental range
system that our missile defense system was not designed to
protect us against. But rather those rogue nations.
And I would say that that system is working very well
against that very limited threat. But enemies that we have
today don't necessarily follow the normal rule book. And so as
you mentioned, one of my very real concerns is the ability of a
nation state, or non-nation state actor to gain access to a
lower tech missile that could be launched from somewhere off
our shore.
We have been working a number of programs to give us better
situational awareness that that may occur. Not--in the areas of
maritime domain awareness we partner with the Navy and the
Coast Guard as well as our science and technology laboratories
to create a better maritime domain awareness picture. So that
today we have fielded a system that allows us to monitor the
commercial shipping traffic as well as the military shipping
around the world as it approaches our shores. And we could be
made aware of a vessel well off our coast--hundreds of miles if
not 1,000 miles off our coast.
The next piece is what do you do about it? And there I have
a concern in that our ability to detect what I will call cruise
missiles or crude cruise missiles is limited to the existing
radar systems that we have today.
We are investing in numbers of follow-on technologies
through a program called, ``Command and Control Gap Filler,''
which would combine certainly some fixed sites as well as over
the horizon technologies which have proven relatively effective
in certain areas against a cruise missile-sized target. To give
us the sufficient warning that we could then take advantage of
existing alert sites or others to try to provide us some
defense.
But this is an area we have concern, and we are continuing
to work within the department to expand.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman.
Gentleman from Texas, Mr. Reyes.
Mr. Reyes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And generals, thank you for your service and your
leadership at a very pivotal time in our nation's history.
General Renuart, the governor of Texas recently stated that
he is concerned about imminent border violence spillover into
the U.S. border. Yesterday, the two senators from Texas urged
President Obama to act on spillover border violence. From your
perspective as NORTHCOM commander, do you believe that there is
an imminent threat of military--militarily significant violence
spilling into the United States homeland?
General Renuart. Congressman, I think we need to ensure
that we are prepared if something like that were to occur. As
the governor mentioned, there has been evidence of spillover
violence, and that does occur, and I would say episodically. It
is not a consistent series of events across all of the border.
But it has happened some in California. Certainly some in
Arizona, and as we have seen most recently in Juarez. But also
along the south Texas border as well.
Mr. Reyes. But, General, one of the things that concerns
me, and I represent El Paso, which is the second safest city in
the nation, right across from Juarez. I think we have to be
very careful what we characterize as spillover violence. For
instance, when you mentioned Arizona, some months ago they were
reporting the kidnappings as a direct result of the ongoing
violence in Mexico.
It turned out to be that these were alien smuggling
organizations--human----
General Renuart. Yes.
Mr. Reyes [continuing]. Smuggling organizations.
General Renuart. Yes, sir.
Mr. Reyes. Nothing to do with the cartels or the Mexican
government's efforts. Part of the problem that we are seeing
today is that perception becomes reality. When in effect what
happened in Juarez this past weekend, which now is--we are
being told may be a case of mistaken identity that those acts
were taken in Juarez.
But when the governor talks about his concern for imminent
spillover, and he talks about activating some secret plan that
he has to bring additional resources, that naturally raises the
angst in people that live along the border that are very
concerned. Even in the second safest city in the country people
are calling my office wanting to know what is the governor's
plan? Why is he activating it? And what is it that he knows
that they don't know. And that I think is a disservice to
border communities, because it tends to affect not just the
people, but also the business community, the commerce, and the
trade.
So we need to be careful. And that is why I ask you that
question. And secondly you--are you aware of the secret plan
that Governor Perry has? And have you been briefed, because we
haven't?
General Renuart. Yes. Congressman, and you said it in much
more eloquent terms than I would have. But the point I did want
to make is we do have to be extremely careful about how we
characterize actions south of the border, which in many cases
are cartel on cartel violence, or intimidation tactics. And
obviously to emphasize, and El Paso is a great example the very
safe environment that we have in most of our cities.
So I too am very careful in how we characterize anything
that is described as spillover violence. Because I think the
preponderance of evidence is that the violence is certainly
there south of the border. But that actually our border
security folks are doing a very good job of keeping that--and
our law enforcement on the north side are working that as well,
I think. And secondly, I am not aware of a secret plan. And so
I have no idea what that may be referring to. Certainly the
governor can use law enforcement National Guard to be involved
in counternarcotics operations. But I know of no plan that
would be sort of kept in a drawer that he might use.
Mr. Reyes. But on the flip side Customs and Border
Protection--the Northern Command--we all have contingency plans
in case something happens, correct?
General Renuart. Absolutely, sir. And in fact, most of
those plans center around growing capacity with the Mexicans to
help them deal with the problems on the south side of the
border. And in fact we have a senior leader meeting on this
topic in about two weeks' time at my headquarters.
Mr. Reyes. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman.
Gentleman from California, Mr. Hunter.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen,
for your service, and for being here. I want to touch on
WHINSEC for a minute. It is the Western Hemisphere Institution
for Security Cooperation. As you all know, they use WHINSEC to
train folks from other countries, and go back to those
countries, and then help those countries deal with whether it
is narcotics or narcoterrorism or other things.
During the past couple of years an amendment has been
offered to the House Defense Bill which would authorize
publication of personal information of WHINSEC students. From
your perspective, what would be the impact of releasing that
information of those students that we have trained here to the
international public?
General Fraser. Congressman Hunter, let me take the first
try at that. As you know, the Senate Armed Services Committee
asked the Department of Defense to do an assessment of the
release of names. That assessment is still working its way
through the system.
That said, while we are waiting for that, and I don't know
the specifics of the response yet, but I don't support the
release of names. We have a great relationship with WHINSEC
with the partners there. It is not only partners with the U.S.
and our partner nations, but with one another. And so, they
return and they continue to engage with one another throughout
the region.
So my concerns are that we continue to have this capability
available. That we continue to not only respect the rights and
desires of the nations who provide those people, men and women,
to those facilities, but we also look to make sure from a
privacy standpoint we protect the U.S. citizens also, who are
the instructors and the people who man that at WHINSEC.
General Renuart. Congressman, if I could just add a couple
points? First, we too are avid users of the WHINSEC
capabilities and are very supportive, and I echo General
Fraser's comments about the importance of maintaining the
security of the individuals attending, as well as the faculty.
And let me give you an example of what can happen when
information is in fact released. You may recall recently the
Mexican military, the navy in particular, was successful in the
raid on Arturo Beltran Leyva.
One of the naval individuals that was part of that raid was
killed. And you might recall later that as his identity was
made public--and this was not WHINSEC-related--just made that
information public, his mother and wife and children were
killed.
We cannot afford to have the information that is held in
WHINSEC released because it will have that kind of effect
potentially for the individuals who are extremely valuable to
us.
And so, I echo Doug's comments that we need to be very
careful about the release of that information, and we would
oppose that.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, gentlemen. I concur with both of
you.
Lastly, just in the last minute and 30 seconds here, is
there anything that we can do to enhance the DEA [Drug
Enforcement Agency], the Coast Guard, you all, DOD, CBP
[Customs and Border Protections], everybody working together,
because I know in San Diego, for instance, we have the border
fence there.
It pushes stuff west, whether it is smugglers, criminals,
gang members, terrorists, coming across the border. The ocean
is now being used more than anything--excuse me--the Coast
Guard talks about wanting more UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles].
And you know, being DOD, you are the experts on it, they
aren't.
So, is there anything that we can do here to make
everything work more seamlessly together between all the
different agencies?
General Fraser. I think, Congressman, that the Joint
Interagency Task Force South provides us with a good model for
how to do that. They are operating today with all the agencies
that you mentioned, from DEA to CBP, as well as our partner
nations. They have liaisons from 17 different partner nations
who are also working this.
So it is a great collaborative effort, who everyone
understands their capabilities and their authorities and they
work seamlessly to make sure they focus and continue on the
mission.
As we look more broadly than that, through the interdiction
committee, and I think there is an opportunity that we expand
that capability on a broadly, more national basis, if you will,
to further integrate that capacity, not only at a tactical
level, but at an operational level.
General Renuart. And just very quickly, I know we are out
of that time. I think supporting the existing budgets is
certainly critical to that. And then finally, this concept of
this national task force focused on integrating all of those
efforts is an area with great merit, and we are working at both
our commands, as well as each of the agencies you have
described, through the interdiction committee. And I think that
will be more ready for prime time in the coming months.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, gentlemen, for your service. Really
appreciate it. Congratulations on your retirement.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
The gentlelady from California, Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you both for being here and for your
extraordinary service. We appreciate it.
General Renuart, I know that there has been discussion
about Mexico and the violence spilling over. I wonder if in
your work with the Mexican government that there has been any
concern as well that some of the civilian--you know,--that
there is--will be a counterreaction I guess to overreach on the
behalf of the Mexican Army?
Is there any concern that human rights abuses or other
abuses might impact the ability of the services? And how are we
working on what is a very sensitive issue?
General Renuart. This is actually a very real concern that
the Mexican government has. They understand that the challenge
that they placed their military in by using them in effect to
replace law enforcement in the cities.
General Galvan, their secretary of defense for the Army and
Air Force, and I have had a specific discussion. He has asked
us for our assistance in providing unique training on the
integration of real operations and law enforcement and justice
and human rights.
And in fact, to Mr. Hunter's question a moment ago, WHINSEC
is helping us create this team that we will then take to Mexico
and provide very unique training to not just the schools, but
to the units in the field on how they best integrate their
operations with the rule of law and human rights.
So I am very pleased at that progress. We will begin
working that in earnest in the coming months. Having said that,
it is very difficult for the Mexican military to be put in that
law enforcement role for an extended period.
And General Galvan has been working aggressively as the
federal police has been essentially all removed and now rehired
and vetted and trained. He is working aggressively to help them
build capacity so that they can take on the appropriate roles
in the cities.
And in fact, in Juarez that transition has recently
occurred and the federal police is taking more of a leadership
role. So I think they are very sensitive to this issue. I think
President Calderon clearly knows he has a limited type
capability to affect things and he is using all the best way he
can.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
General Fraser, and I am going to ask you a question we had
an opportunity to speak about this briefly the other day, but
on the dwell time for our men and women in uniform we know that
they performed tremendously in Haiti and yet for some of them,
that did take away some of their dwell time.
So I am just wondering what we can do to really ensure
those men and women have enough time at home before they go
back on deployment. Is there anything that we should be doing
or looking at in terms of helping them out, I guess not unlike
we have done in other cases?
General Fraser. Congresswoman, thank you for that question.
And our men and women did a marvelous job and they responded
very, very quickly. A lot of them who were not scheduled to
sail, not scheduled to participate, to include the comfort
that, and they sortied in very quick fashion to go help the
people of Haiti.
It has made it so that there are some of those individuals
who will probably not get the full dwell time between, because
they are--some of them more in prep for future transition or
movement to ongoing efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of
them had just come back.
So the Department of Defense throughout the operation in
Haiti has put a considerable focus on making sure we understand
the limitations of that. And in all reality, there has been
some impact to it, but it has been fairly minor impact,
relatively minor, in all of that.
What can we do to help? I think it is your continued focus
on helping our men and women and supporting them. We will go
back and look at specifically what you are looking at, because
it could impact on us in other parts and other operations
within Department of Defense. So let me take that back and we
will get back to you.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
beginning on page 127.]
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. I appreciate that. What you are
saying is that in fact there may be relatively few people
affected, but that there may be other programs in which we are
not able to open up some of these issues for them as well? Is
that basically the concern that if you do it for this group,
you might--you would run into a problem in other ways?
General Fraser. No, ma'am. I think it is an issue that we
are talking on worldwide. And there is a very concerted effort
whenever this happens to make sure that we focus on the
families of our deployed men and women.
Mrs. Davis. Okay. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Thank the gentlelady.
Mr. Coffman.
Mr. Coffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you both for your service.
And General Renuart, I trust that you will retire in the
state of Colorado and remain there as a good citizen of our
state. Can I get your commitment on that? Okay, very good.
My first question is, General Renuart, you said--talked
about sharing intelligence with officials from the Mexican
government. Is there a concern, and I have heard it expressed
before, that some of that intelligence is being leaked to some
of the cartels, and that is compromising our capability?
General Renuart. Congressman, I think I am not so concerned
that direct information is being leaked to the cartels. I think
that one of the challenges of any kind of an operation that
would target a high value individual or an organization, has
the potential for some of that information to be leaked in the
execution.
In other words, operational security of that information,
once you begin to act on it, becomes a challenge. And this is
one of the areas that we are working very closely with our
Mexican partners to share with them the lessons we have learned
about operation security once you actually begin to find and
fix a target to be able to take action.
We have worked very hard in the broader intelligence-
sharing arena with both the Mexican Navy and the Army and Air
Force to secure information in a way that it can be protected.
So is there a risk? Absolutely. Have we seen instances? Yes,
sir, we have. We have also seen the trend where the Mexican
military understands the importance of operation security and
has continued to work on that.
Mr. Coffman. Thank you, General. And a follow-up question,
the Merida Program, are you--is there a concern that some of
the weapons--military weapons that we are giving to the Mexican
military, Mexican security forces in general, that some of
those soldiers or some of the police officers are walking with
those weapons and join in the cartels?
General Renuart. Sir, I would say no.
Mr. Coffman. Okay.
General Renuart. I have no concern with that.
Mr. Coffman. Okay. Very well. To both of you, is there any
evidence in--of some in the past to say Hezbollah has been
engaged in the drug trafficking business to raise money for
some of its operations in the Middle East? Are any of you--
either of you aware of that or any reports to that effect?
General Fraser. Congressman, there have been within the
Southern Command region. There had been some reports of
Hezbollah is starting to get engaged within the illegal
trafficking area. So I have that indication. We are looking for
beyond that, but it is primarily right now a focus on logistics
support, financial support to their apparent organizations in
the Mideast.
Mr. Coffman. Okay. And, General Fraser, to you as well,
there have been media reports about Iran being involved in
Nicaragua, I think, building a mosque or something, but
sponsored by the Iranian government. Are you aware of that and
to what extent is that a concern to you, if it is true?
General Fraser. Congressman, Iran has been engaging on a
political and a commercial level throughout much of Latin
America. Over the last 3 to 4 years, they have increased the
number of their embassies from seven to 11 going to another one
this year. They have engaged very directly with Venezuela. They
are also engaging consistently with Bolivia, Ecuador,
Nicaragua, as you mentioned. Also with Brazil. So they are
actually working across the region to engage in both a
political and a commercial endeavor.
Our concerns aren't just watching to understand what
those--the relationships are and I don't see any evidence that
they are beyond that right now, but we are very skeptical and
watching very closely.
Mr. Coffman. Very well. I think both of you to some
degree--General Fraser mentioned the issue of Venezuela. How
would you assess Venezuela right now as a destabilizing force
in the region?
General Fraser. Congressman, they continue to have a very
anti-U.S. stance and look to try and restrict U.S. activity
wherever they have the opportunity to do that. They are
continuing to engage with the region, if you will, and
continuing to pursue their socialism agenda. So that continues
to be a concern. They remain a destabilizing force in the
region.
Mr. Coffman. Okay. General Renuart, in looking at our
southern border with Mexico, is there any evidence that those
other than seeking the status of being a laborer in this
country, i.e., any Al Qaeda elements, any terrorist elements,
is there any evidence that any of those folks are crossing our
border?
General Renuart. Congressman, right now, there is no
evidence that they are crossing the border. In fact, it is
something we work very closely with the Mexicans about to try
to keep track of that. And so far, I would say not seeing any
successful attempts.
Mr. Coffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Mr. Larsen of Washington.
Mr. Larsen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen,
for coming today. I will start with General Renuart regarding
page 16 of your testimony on the Olympics.
I actually got to go to the hockey game that we won. A
great time up there. But that week I was home, I also visited
the Olympics Coordination Center in Bellingham, Washington,
where for the--possibly for the first time brought together
most, if not all, of federal, state and local and international
agencies necessary to sort of take care of security on our side
of the border. And you referenced that in your testimony with
regards to some of the work you do with Canada.
Can you though--can you give us perhaps maybe the top three
lessons or the top three takeaways from that experience for
NORTHCOM that are perhaps different than what you had going
into this experience?
General Renuart. Congressman, I would be happy to. And the
biggest failure was the final game.
Mr. Larsen. Absolutely. Absolutely.
General Renuart. I predicted it terribly wrong and we came
up on the other side.
Mr. Larsen. I know. And there is nothing we could have done
at NORTHCOM to fix that. And so----
General Renuart. We tried.
Mr. Larsen. I know.
General Renuart. Congressman, I think--and very quickly,
first, it was a success story beyond, I think, even what the
planners had hoped. You mentioned the great interagency
cooperation at the operation center there in Bellingham and
that really did go from local all the way to federal and
everybody that had a part to play.
The same was true in Vancouver with the Vancouver Olympic
Committee and the Integrated Security Unit, our partnership,
NORAD and NORTHCOM, with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the
Organizing Committee and the others were extraordinary. I think
there were--there was a very positive result in that we found a
way to integrate air and maritime operating pictures in a
better fashion than we had been using thus far. And so we are
going to adapt that model or adopt that model in our current
operations for NORAD and NORTHCOM. And the key with that is it
got the picture down to the local authorities at the same time
we saw at the federal. So that was a very positive element.
Second, the collaboration between the Navy and the Coast Guard
in the Straits and the approaching areas was also a real model
for success for the future. In terms of things we would like to
do better, I believe the final piece would be we clearly were
in a position to provide support to Canada should it have been
required in a crisis.
I think the procedural process of that, for example, moving
quickly across the border, we have got to still work closer
with our friends on both sides to ensure access in a crisis.
And we are working a couple of projects with Canada Command,
our NORTHCOM equivalent, to rapidly integrate the militaries of
either country to support in a civil event or a disaster event
is really the right way to describe it that occurred, but those
are--frankly, that is in the noise level. That really was a
successful event.
Mr. Larsen. Yes. Yes. In my visits to the Coordination
Center, I spoke with some of our Washington State National
Guard folks and asked them what experience they were having.
They actually ended up--it is kind of funny when you think
about it because they actually ended up finding the phone
number of the people at NSA or NGA to get the maps that they
believed existed, but didn't know existed and it took this
Coordination Center for them to connect with folks to find the
people to call to get that stuff.
I mean, as simple as that which now our National Guard will
start utilizing that tool much more aggressively in the future
for any number of things that they are doing. Also in your
testimony--in your written testimony, you talk about seeing the
counternarcotics side of things as well in reference to
northern border. And I appreciate that. I appreciate the
increase of attention.
There is a lot of tension in the southwest border for
obvious reasons, but Interstate 5 is not only a great pipeline
for travel, for tourism, for trade, economic growth, it is also
the number one pipeline for drugs that come out of Canada,
sometimes originated in Canada, sometimes originated elsewhere
and coming through Canada. And that partnership that we need
with our Canadian partners is extremely important and I think
there are lessons from the--on the CN side of things.
Can you talk about that, the counternarcotics side of
things on the border, northern border?
General Renuart. Congressman, let me provide you some very
specifics, but we have conducted two good exercises in
Washington State, collaboration with both our U.S. law
enforcement and Canadian law enforcement to help identify
transit points and allow information so they can be
interdicted.
There is a great deal more to that. We are going to conduct
that exercise again this year. In the interest of time, let me
pass that to you and I will put that in the record as well, but
I will get that back to you specifically for some opportunities
that we had this year.
[The information referred to is classified and retained in
the committee files.]
Mr. Larsen. I appreciate that. And Mr. Chairman, just
quickly, these drugs wouldn't be coming into the U.S. from
Canada if there was not a demand in the U.S. So I don't want to
put this on our Canadian friends. There is a demand in the U.S.
that we also need to take care of.
General Renuart. Well, important to say that the flows are
coming in from the sea into Canada as well. So this is not just
a north to south issue.
The Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen.
Mr. Franks.
Mr. Franks. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank--and
thank both of you for being here. Thank you for your service.
General Renuart, I will especially thank you for your lifetime
of service on behalf of my children, you know? People like you
have held the line and you have given your whole life to the
cause and thank you very, very much.
General Renuart. Thank you very much, sir.
Mr. Franks. General Renuart, I want to take off on a
question that Mr. Bartlett posed earlier related to the
potential homeland attack, EMP attack, I think that all of
these challenges, of course, point to a very critical need to
have the most robust layered missile defense capability that we
can have. And NORTHCOM, I understand--you understand better
than anyone--is trying to develop the global force management
plan to address the Phased, Adaptive Approach.
And, you know, we are certainly very hopeful that that will
be successful. I guess my question is one of timing. I know
that our offensive capabilities has not dissuaded people like
North Korea or Iran from moving forward with their program, but
I am hoping that that indicates to us that they value these
programs so greatly that they are willing to take a great deal
of risks in order to obtain them.
And if our defensive capability were such that it would
nullify or devalue their system that it might play into their
calculus. That is the idea. So I guess my concern here about
the approach is the timing. And so I guess my question to you
is what is the timeline for the development of the global force
management plan that addresses the Phased, Adaptive Approach
not only to protect us against things that Mr. Bartlett
mentioned, but I guess the host of other threats?
General Renuart. Mr. Franks, I know you had General Chilton
and Mr. Miller in front of the committee just in the last day
or two. I saw their comments, and I guess I would say in terms
of time line the unknown here is the speed at which a country
like Iran for example may be accelerating its efforts.
Certainly what we know is through the entirety of the Phased,
Adaptive Approach we would expect to have that fully capable
in--potentially in the year 2018.
In the meantime, the existing ground basement course
systems that we have I think provide us reasonable capability
against any developing threat that may occur between now and
then. I think importantly in all of this is that we continue to
focus on an integrated air and missile defense capability for
the nation. And that is an integration of sensors, many of
which General Chilton owns, and shooters, many of which I own.
And we are working aggressively to pull all of that.
So we don't just think about homeland defense in terms of a
missile, or an airplane, or a UAV, or a cruise missile, but
rather we create the architecture that allows us to address all
of that. And we are making good progress on that. And that is
the area where the Congress always helps. Is that we continue
the support for those programs and the funding lines that we
see through the secretary's budget so that we can remain on
track.
Mr. Franks. Well, I guess that--you know, that makes a lot
of sense. But it brings me to the question as far as the
upgraded sensors, and the real time discrimination capability
that I think is essentially included in your answer. What do
you think the timing is on being able to implement those kinds
of improvements that will----
General Renuart. Sir, I think the sensor situational
awareness is actually moving faster than some of the elements
of the shooters. In the Phased, Adaptive Approach, the SM-3,
Blocks 2-A/2-B are out in a few years showing great capability
and potential. But still in development. Our sensor network is
actually growing.
As you may know, we will launch our first geosynchronous
SBIRS vehicle this year. It had been delayed, but now the
program is going on track. That will continue the investment in
a very robust sensor package. C-2 BMC, which is the command and
control system that allows us to integrate those sensors into
coherent decision quality information is also now moving along
nicely.
So I am actually comfortable that the sensor piece is
working. I am still focused on the cruise missile part of that
sensor. And we are continuing to work with the department. And
I think we have a way ahead, and I am not uncomfortable with
the direction.
Mr. Franks. Well, thank you. I guess I will leave this last
question up to either one of you. I know that, you know, being
a general it is going to be in your mind about the potentiality
of a nuclear Iran. What if there is one thing that you could
suggest would be critical to this country from your point of
view--from the warfighter's point of view of preventing Iran
from gaining that nuclear capability, what are we doing right?
What are we doing wrong?
General Renuart. Could I say we have three seconds left,
and I will have to talk fast. Sir, I think the key is the
aggregate pressure that we are putting on Iran through
diplomatic, through military strength, through the partner
nations that we have in the region, has to be continued. And
that will hopefully dissuade Iran. Because I think they have
got to change their strategic intentions. And I think that
effort is really the focal point for us.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman.
Ms. Bordallo, the gentlelady from Guam.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I realize
this is a little bit out of my jurisdiction. But I am assisting
my colleague from Puerto Rico in asking this question.
I have hopefully a simple and quick question for either
General Renuart or General Fraser. As you know, a fiscal year
2006 budget action by the Air Force programmed for the
retirement of all 8 C-130s that are currently stationed at San
Juan--Luis Munoz International Airport with the Puerto Rico Air
National Guard.
Now I understand that Puerto Rico is technically in
Northern Command area of responsibility, but in many cases
military units stationed in Puerto Rico assist with missions,
humanitarian and otherwise, in Southern Command's area of
responsibility. So I think we need to hear from both of you.
First I would like to understand what type of operational
impact the retirement of the C-130s in Puerto Rico will have to
respond to humanitarian, natural disaster, or other matters in
the Caribbean, Central and South American region?
General Fraser. Ma'am, thank you for that question. We have
along with the Puerto Rican National Guard--the C-130s. There
is a set of four other C-130s--we call them ``Coronet Oak,''
that are provided as a ready capability to respond for an
immediate need within the Southern Command region. And so those
are the aircraft that we have on immediate recall basis if you
will to respond to those issues.
So those are being supplied broadly from the Air Force
capability. So right now that is where we have. And so Puerto
Rico's ability to contribute to that I think is really what
will make a difference for Southern Command.
Ms. Bordallo. And General.
General Renuart. Congresswoman, I would like to just first
say that the Puerto Rican Air National Guard did certainly
provide great support during Haiti and flew a number of
missions within the overall transportation system of--that is
operated by U.S. TRANSCOM [Transportation Command].
In terms of the specific Puerto Rican Air National Guard
units, I think the chief of staff of the Air Force has made
some necessary decisions as we recapitalize our units. And I
think that for me and my AOR, and as you say Puerto Rico is in
my area of responsibility, it is important that we maintain a
capacity to move material around the region.
But I have to defer to the Air Force to make decisions on
specifically which units do that. I continue to maintain a
requirement to provide some of that lift for a variety of
reasons. So we will work closely both with the territory as
well as the Air Force----
Ms. Bordallo. Right.
General Renuart [continuing]. On the in state there.
Ms. Bordallo. I have a further part of that question. Now I
have seen the proposed bed down of C-130s across the U.S. for
fiscal year 2012. And without C-130s or some sort of air lift
out of Puerto Rico I fear we have a dangerous capability gap in
the Caribbean region. So I fear this will send the wrong signal
to our partners in the Caribbean and Central and South American
nations.
Could you address the strategic importance of Puerto Rico
in terms of our operational plans and capabilities for that
region? And how important is Puerto Rico to your commands, and
having the right assets to conduct missions?
General Renuart. Ma'am, I would say Puerto Rico is actually
a very strategic location for us. In fact if you look at the
flow of illicit trafficking from south to north. As we put
pressure in one particular area, the traffickers move to
another. And certainly that area in the eastern Caribbean has
been a flow route in varying volumes for quite some time. So in
terms of its strategic importance, Puerto Rico offers a unique
location. And in fact we have taken advantage of that to put
surveillance radars and some other things that assist law
enforcement in conducting those operations in that region.
So for me it is a very important area.
Ms. Bordallo. General Fraser.
General Fraser. Ma'am, I agree. It is a very important
area. Especially also because it is a partner within the
Caribbean----
Ms. Bordallo. All right.
General Fraser [continuing]. Confines. And so it makes a
big difference in our ability to interact with the Caribbean
neighbors as well as our Latin American neighbors.
Ms. Bordallo. Well I will pass this message over to the
representative from Puerto Rico, Mr. Pierluisi.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much. I have--Mr. Wilson, Mr.
Wilson, Mr. Taylor, Mr. Lamborn have not asked questions yet.
And I believe the scheduled votes for 11:30 have been
rescheduled for 12:30. So I think we are in pretty good shape
to finish. Before I call Mr. Wilson, let me ask General Renuart
concerning the wind turbines that are being erected in various
places--and I think there is a field in the state of Missouri
on that is being considered as well. Do you have a concern
about the impact of wind turbines on radar in your AOR?
General Renuart. Mr. Chairman, thank you for that question.
Absolutely. I have real concerns. Having said that, I also
recognize the real importance and value of alternate energy
sources to our nation. And so we have begun a collaborative
effort with the FAA, certainly the Department of Defense,
Department of Transportation, Department of Interior, to
provide assessment tools that developers may use to determine
if their particular radar siting may have an affect.
The science in this is that the turbines themselves have a
very real effect on the radars. They distort the radars. In
many cases block the picture, and put at risk the air safety--
the traffic safety of our--in our national airspace system, as
well as create risk for the defense of our U.S.
There are a number of sites around the country that have
repositioned the physical siting in order to minimize the
affect on our radars. There are some sites today that we have
concern over. And we are working with those developers to try
to mitigate the effects of these radars. But this is a very
real concern.
The Chairman. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And Generals, thank you very much for your service. And I
want to thank both of you and your troops for what a
difference--what was made for the people of Haiti. It was
extraordinary. The American military was so successful in
helping the people there. And I know I have a lot of
constituents who have done volunteer work over the years in
that country. And they just were so proud of the American
military coming immediately to the rescue of the people of
Haiti.
So thank you so much. Additionally, General Fraser, I have
a keen interest in the country of Colombia. I serve as the
Honorary Chairman of the Partners of the Americas program. We
are associated with the country of Colombia. And we have hosted
students from Colombia at our home in high school. And then two
of my sons have gone to high school in Colombia. A great ally
and friend of the United States.
Can you review further the current state of FARC in
Colombia. And also is there current evidence between FARC and
the government of Venezuela?
General Fraser. Thank you, Congressman Wilson. Having grown
up in Colombia, I also have an interest there as well. That
said, Colombia and the support and their efforts to fight the
FARC are continuing to be successful. This year, they have been
able to kill or capture 12 mid-level, high-level, leaders
within the FARC.
They have a continuing effort to reduce the illicit
trafficking and their consolidation plan is continuing to grow
and foster. And that consolidation plan enables them to have
the military go in, secure an area, then bring in other parts
of the government to change the capacity there so the illicit
trafficking and the FARC cannot reside there.
I think the FARC is on the defensive. We are starting to
see a change in the tactics, but they are still at about half
the size and the level that they were previously. And so, the
fight continues so I ask for your continued support of our
efforts to support the Colombians as they continue that fight.
It is an important fight.
Mr. Wilson. And that is part of the success story of Plan
Colombia. Can you bring us up to date further in regard to the
counternarcotics efforts in addressing the production and
transport of illegal narcotics in your AOR? And your plans for
addressing illegal narcotics in the future?
General Renuart. Yes, sir. Thank you, Congressman Wilson.
Colombia has been successful in reducing the numbers.
Especially in 2008, there was a 14 percent reduction in the
amount of cocaine produced within Colombia. Those efforts
continue. They have done and worked on manual eradication. They
are also--and those efforts, although smaller this last year
just because of budgets and capability, they have still
remained successful, also.
So that has--if you want to look at it on a regional
basis--starting to have an impact more broadly. The
traffickers, because there is resistance to the growing of
cocaine within Colombia, are starting to look for other places.
And they are starting to look at other places in Colombia,
headed toward the northwest part of Colombia, but also into
Peru and Bolivia.
So we see the traffickers adjusting to successes that we
are seeing within Colombia. I think we will that same as Mexico
continues to pursue their efforts, and so the traffickers will
adjust. We are working to build awareness across the region of
that illicit trafficking enterprise, so that we can understand
it better, and understand how to coordinate our efforts,
government-to-government, military-to-military, law
enforcement-to-law enforcement, to really put a pressure across
the board on the illicit trafficking enterprise.
Mr. Wilson. General Renuart, in 2008 your area of
responsibility now includes some extraordinarily beautiful
areas of the Caribbean. But as General Fraser was mentioning,
narcoterrorism, trafficking, now is a threat in that area, too.
So what is being done in your area?
General Renuart. Congressman Wilson, this is a growth
industry for us. As you mentioned, the Bahamas, Turks and
Caicos, became part of our area of focus as well in that 2008
timeframe.
And candidly, I am also considering moving my headquarters
there, because----
Mr. Wilson. I would. BVI comes to mind.
General Renuart. I am sorry, Congressman Lamborn, I am not
going to do that, but we may have an alternate headquarters.
I think that area is also a key transit area and we are
continuing the efforts that NORTHCOM had been involved in, and
expanding to include some modernization of facilities,
expansion of the Royal Bahamian Defense Force capabilities, to
allow them to address this in their region as well. They are a
valued partner and we are growing that relationship.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Taylor.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank both of you
gentlemen.
General Fraser, I guess three questions. Number one, when
Morales was elected the president of Bolivia, it is my
understanding that his political party was actually called the
Cocaleros, that a significant part of his platform would be
reduced emphasis of coca in Bolivia. So I guess the follow-up
to Mr. Wilson's question is, is it safe to assume that as
cocaine production went down in Colombia, it increased
dramatically in Bolivia? As it went down in Colombia?
General Fraser. Congressman, I can't make a direct linkage.
I do know that cocaine production has grown within Bolivia. It
is now the third largest cocaine producer within Latin America,
within South America.
And that President Morales has expanded the legal amount of
land available for the legal amount of growth of cocaine within
Bolivia for indigenous use and their own internal use. So it
has grown within Bolivia.
Mr. Taylor. At some point could you have someone give me a
follow-up on that? I know I am catching you cold on this. I
should have given you some warning.
General Fraser. Yes, sir, Congressman. I would be happy to
do that.
Mr. Taylor. Are there any missions, surface combatant
missions, off in your AOR that the frigates in the fleet we
have today cannot perform?
General Fraser. Congressman, they are performing all those
missions. In fact, we rely very heavily on not only the U.S.
Navy, but the U.S. Coast Guard to provide us with that
capacity. And so, it varies on a routine basis on what we are
doing. We are working with the Navy to expand some of the
capabilities to help us further that.
The other thing that we are working with the Navy on is one
of the things that will help us get more station time for the
ships is to have oilers available. So it is not a capacity on
the ships itself, it is the capacity of keeping those ships on
station.
Mr. Taylor. Well, my follow-up is I was looking at a study
yesterday that because of the delay in the LCS [littoral combat
ship] program, and because of the scheduled retirement of the
frigates, that we are looking by 2015 at having something in
the neighborhood of over a dozen fewer small service combatants
than we have today.
What does that do to your mission? And presumably most of
the small service combatants are in your AOR, so what does that
do? What gets done now that won't get done then?
General Fraser. Congressman, our demand for surface
capability runs at about 14 ships at a time. And that is to
reach the goal of denying 40 percent of the traffic, if you
will, cocaine, in the maritime domain. On a normal basis, we
get eight of those ships. So it is a 14 to 8.
So it will depend, as other demands on the Navy equate, how
they resource us with those ships. Actually, the LCS ship, as
you know, the USS Freedom, is in the SOUTHCOM region right now,
and it has been doing very well. It has already had two
successful interdictions of trafficking.
Mr. Taylor. Again, the question was just looking at the
numbers, if we don't extend the life of the frigates, then they
go away, the LCS is way behind schedule, there is always the
possibility that the loser in this competition protested, so we
end up with a tanker-type situation, where years from now the
LCS's are finally getting delivered.
So again, given that scenario, the lack of those surface
combatants, what do you lose in your AOR if they are not there?
General Fraser. Congressman, I will lose some presence, as
we have talked about. The number of ships that are available to
conduct the mission. But depending on the need, that can be
adjusted based on the needs of the Navy. And I use not only
frigates, but there are Coast Guard ships who provide that
capability, as well as destroyers. So it is a mix of capacity
that we use to provide the mission assets.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman from Mississippi.
I have Mr. Lamborn and Mr. Johnson, and then we can wrap it
up.
Mr. Lamborn.
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank both of you for your years of service, and
Mr. Renuart, to you in particular I want to say I agree with
Mike Coffman. I hope that you stay in Colorado after you
retire. You will be missed.
And most of all, I hope that you will continue to somehow
lend your experience and your expertise to some kind of
assistance as we go forward with our nation's defense. I am
hoping those opportunities are available to you and I look
forward to that as well.
General Renuart. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Lamborn. Let me bring up a topic, before I talk about
missile defense, to something that we have had this
conversation on before, and that is building two in Peterson.
And as you know, there is strong local concern, and even some
on this committee, about making sure that building two is
sufficiently fortified and strengthened and hardened against
any kind of incident or threat.
Can you update us on where we stand with building two, and
what has been done, and what may still need to be done?
General Renuart. Yes, sir. Thanks. As you know, we have had
a series of projects put in place over the last three years to
grow that security capacity as we have transitioned some of the
routine operations from Cheyenne Mountain into building two.
That funding is all in place. The projects are ongoing. We
have continued to grow additional physical, additional
electronic barriers. We are in the process of completing a
physical security modification to our building that will
provide for biometrics as well as for physical security by
armed security forces.
Standoff to the building exceeds the standards that we
would have for any high priority building, and I am very
comfortable that as we complete these projects--in the next
year and a half is about the timeline--that we will have a
world-class facility that does have all of the security issues
addressed that we have talked about in a variety of formats.
I will just make one other point. And that is that in
addition to making that particular building more secure, we are
also discovering that--our mission growth and other things
has--is allowing us the opportunity to reassess additional
facilities.
And so, we are in the process of a long-term study and
investment study that will look at expanding the headquarters
campus in a way that will allow us to absorb all of the
missions that we have in a single area.
And that is a more long-term issue, but I think that too
will incorporate certainly all the security issues that we have
discussed in previous meetings.
Mr. Lamborn. Well, thank you very much. I look forward to
continuing to work with you, and I know the committee does as
well, and your successor, on these important issues.
On missile defense, last year the administration made a
decision to reduce the number of ground-based interceptors in
Alaska and California from 44 projected to 30 because it
concluded that the long-range threat was not materializing as
rapidly as was once thought. However, since then we have seen
an acceleration in developments and threats from North Korea
and Iran that were not evident at the time.
At what point, General, do you think that the department
needs to reevaluate its previous reductions specifically from
44 to 30 ground-based interceptors in light of changing
threats?
General Renuart. Congressman, you are correct. The day-to-
day operational deployed number of missiles was reduced down to
30. I concurred with that based on the intelligence that we saw
and the progress of some nations to develop a threat to the
U.S. But I also asked the Secretary to hedge a bit if we saw
increased growth or more rapid growth and he has done that in
that we have an additional small number, but additional number
of missiles, 10 that will be designed for tests and four that
will be, what I will call operational reserve, that we could
bring into the operational capabilities.
And as you know, we are, in fact, continuing with the
construction of Missile Field 2 up at Greely that will allow us
to house those missiles should we need to do that. And I think
that provides us a good hedge with potential acceleration in a
particular threat and, of course, we also see the Phased,
Adaptive Approach developing and hopefully the two will
continue to show the progress and potential that they seem to
have.
Mr. Lamborn. Well, General, on testing, do you think that
we have scheduled enough testing? Because I think that we were
only planning two intercept tests of the two staged GBI over
the next couple of years. Do we have enough tests scheduled and
resources for testing including missiles?
General Renuart. Yes, sir. I think the test program is
rigorous and a good one. I think we do need to maintain
flexibility to adjust the tests so that if we see an emerging
threat we can accelerate some of those should that be required.
We work very closely with the Missile Defense Agency on that
particular issue.
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, General. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen. We have Mr. Johnson,
Mr. Coffman with additional questions. Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Johnson. Yes. Under the radar obstruction--well, with
respect to that issue, radar systems are interfered with by
wind turbines, General Renuart, as noted in the written
materials. Private wind farm development could interfere with
Department of Defense or NORAD surveillance networks or the
network, if you will, and there is not anyway currently to know
about a private development of wind turbine farms. And I know
that some measures are being taken to kind of get out on--in
front on that issue.
Are there any federal--is there a federal permitting
process that has to be followed by these wind farm developers
or state or local regulations?
General Renuart. Congressman Johnson, I think there is a
federal program to cite these kinds of activities and there is
a planning tool that is made available actually through the FAA
where a developer can go onto that--into that planning tool, it
is a Web-based tool, and essentially put their proposal into
the tool and it will tell them whether there is risk or not of
their citing affecting either the FAA or defense-related
facilities.
The challenge has been that the--it is not widely known by
some that they need to go into that tool and start this
process.
Mr. Johnson. So it is not a mandatory rule?
General Renuart. In fact, it is a recommendation from the
National Wind Generation Association. That is not the correct
term, but their industry association--to advise them that they
should go into these. In some cases, developers have and, in
fact, we have worked closely with some to reposition those
sites, but I would hasten to say also that it is not just wind
farms. In fact, we have had a couple of instances where the
construction of a new resort hotel has impacted the field of
view of one of our radars.
And so this is an area that Secretary Lynn was asked in
some testimony in front of the Senate a few days ago and he has
directed the formation of an executive group within the Defense
Department to partner with the FAA and the industry so that we
can ensure that anyone who might be undertaking one of these
projects knows how to go to get this information before they
enter into contracts or expend money that might be put at risk.
Mr. Johnson. Should it be mandatory that they do certain
things, developers in general?
General Renuart. Congressman, it makes sense to me to do
that, but not being a legal expert on this, I am not sure what
is in place for certain today and what might need to be
amended. So I think I would have to defer an expert answer on
that.
Mr. Johnson. All right. Thank you, sir.
The Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen. Mr. Coffman.
Mr. Coffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Mr. Johnson asked
the questions that I was going to ask. I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen. If there is no further
questioning, we wish to thank each of you for your excellent
testimony, for your wonderful service. And General Renuart, we
wish you well to the finish line. And General Fraser, we shall
meet again.
General Renuart. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. We are now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:55 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
March 18, 2010
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March 18, 2010
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=======================================================================
WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING
THE HEARING
March 18, 2010
=======================================================================
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. MCKEON
General Fraser. The interaction between ``habeas counsel'' and GTMO
detainees is governed by a series of protective orders issued by the
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which has
jurisdiction. The first such order was issued by Judge Joyce Hens Green
on November 5, 2004. The order has been modified somewhat over the
following years but remains essentially unchanged regarding habeas
attorneys and GTMO. [See page 12.]
______
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MRS. DAVIS
General Fraser. Congresswoman Davis, on January 19, 2007, the
Secretary of Defense directed that a program be established to
recognize members who are required to mobilize or deploy with a
frequency beyond established rotation policy goals. In response to that
direction, the Under Secretary of Defense provided policy direction on
April 18, 2007, to establish a new category of administrative absence
entitled ``Post-Deployment/Mobilization Respite Absence.'' This
category of administrative absence was incorporated into the next
scheduled DOD Instruction 1327.6, ``Leave and Liberty Procedures.''
This new program compensates or incentivizes individuals in both the
active and Reserve components who are required to mobilize or deploy
early or often, or to extend beyond the established rotation policy
goals. [See page 21.]
?
=======================================================================
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
March 18, 2010
=======================================================================
QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. ORTIZ
Mr. Ortiz. In response to Chairman Skelton's question about the
impact of wind turbines on radar systems, you mentioned that there are
a number of sites in the United States that have raised concern for
NORTHCOM. Would you please elaborate on these specific sites and what
you are doing to mitigate these concerns? As far as collaboration
between the various federal departments, are there any steps you feel
that Congress can take to aid the interagency coordination?
General Renuart. The specific sites are along the U.S. Southwest
border and consist of both ground-based radars and Tethered Aerostat
Radar Systems. NORAD's Air Defense and Air Sovereignty missions along
with USNORTHCOM's Defense Support to Civil Authorities mission all have
been impacted by both the nature of the environment along that border
and man-made interference such as wind turbines.
These affects are becoming more prevalent across the nation and in
this case have created several areas where our ability to see air
traffic along the border is degraded. Specifically, our radar at
Oilton, TX has several wind energy projects that currently exist and
others have been proposed within the radar's line-of-sight. This radar
provides my command and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
invaluable situational awareness, but should the development of wind
energy continue in that area, the Oilton radar's capability will become
less and less useful. DHS has partnered with NORAD and USNORTHCOM to
find mitigation strategies in hopes that radars and wind turbines can
coexist in the same areas.
Currently, the Department of Defense (DOD) is a small part of a
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) process that was originally
designed to review obstructions in and around airports. While NORAD and
USNORTHCOM have a review responsibility as part of the FAA Part 77,
Obstruction Evaluation Review/Airport and Airspace Analysis process,
neither the Commands nor the FAA have sufficient authority to stop or
prevent degradation to existing radars or other DOD resources as result
of commercial ventures across the United States. Additionally, the
current process lacks the ability to categorize the risks posed by
commercial development along training routes, airport corridors, sea
corridors, and in line-of-sight of existing surveillance radars.
A possible solution may be legislation creating an interagency
regulatory process to assess and mitigate the impact of wind turbine
ventures on air navigation safety and national security. The governing
body needs to include both interagency and business partners to help
promote alternative solutions while limiting the impact of development
on training routes, airports arrival and departure routes, ranges, sea
lanes and surveillance radars.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MRS. MCMORRIS RODGERS
Mrs. McMorris Rodgers. General Fraser, what do you consider to be
the greatest challenge within the USSOUTHCOM Area of Focus and does the
Command have the necessary resources and personnel to accomplish its
mission? Relatedly, I am concerned with Iran's intentions in the
region. With Iran strengthening its ties to Latin America, including
opening nearly a dozen new embassies in the region and expanding trade
relationships with countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and
other left-wing governments, what is USSOUTHCOM's response with regards
to Iran's spreading influence, and what would be the Command's role, if
any, in this emerging security challenge? Thank you for your time,
General Fraser.
General Fraser. The confluence of money, power and the ability to
breach the integrity of national borders makes the illicit trafficking
problem a significant security challenge for nations throughout the
Americas. Border insecurity, increased violence, public fear,
corruption, weakening support for democratic institutions, and heavily
burdened local, county and state agencies are the by-products of this
illegitimate and criminal activity, which is estimated to cost
legitimate economies more than $245 billion annually.
Yes. Our funding is sufficient to enable us to both execute our
Theater Campaign Plan and maintain us on the path to meet the strategic
objectives outlined in our Command Strategy. With the current force
level provided, USSOUTHCOM must prioritize deployments of personnel and
equipment, but is able to meet goals for stated interdiction rates for
counterdrug operations and build Partner Nation capabilities to respond
to security challenges.
In regards to Iran, we are closely monitoring the increased
diplomatic and economic efforts in the region.
Mrs. McMorris Rodgers. General Renuart, I have attached a letter
dated March 2, 2010, from Ambassador Charles Ray to Lieutenant General
P.K. Keen, Deputy Commander of United States Southern Command. In the
letter, Ambassador Ray describes the creation and use of the first ever
personnel recovery center authorized under the Chief of Mission during
Ambassador Ray's post as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/
Missing Personnel Affairs. It is my understanding that this program has
helped in aiding United States Southern Command in preventing and
responding to search and rescue and humanitarian type of operations in
South America. Given the extremely volatile situation in Mexico, what
do you think about replicating this program within the United States
Northern Command, including a center in Mexico City? Do you mind
looking at Ambassador Ray's letter and letting me know if you believe
this is a viable model to implement under USNORTHCOM in light of the
increased violence targeting United States citizens in Mexico? Thank
you for your time, General Renuart.
General Renuart. I have reviewed Ambassador Ray's letter and concur
that the principles that make the Colombia model so successful are
applicable to the security challenges we have with Mexico. My staff
assessed the utility of the USSOUTHCOM approach to Personnel Recovery;
specifically, the Rescue Coordination Center in Colombia, and in light
of the increased violence, we are confident that those tenets will
apply to Mexico.
We recognize that the key to success in developing a coordinated
interagency Personnel Recovery Program in Mexico is the ability to
understand how the variables in Personnel Recovery differ from Colombia
to Mexico. Some of these variables include: in-country U.S. Government
resources; level of host nation support and cooperation; and host
nation recovery capability and capacity. Based on this understanding,
we can then apply those principles to the unique circumstances of the
situation in Mexico.
Of course, this effort must be coordinated with all U.S. Government
stakeholders, and to the greatest degree practicable, with Mexico as we
develop an effective program with reciprocal benefit to both of our
governments. Key to this effort will be coordination between USNORTHCOM
and the Department of State personnel recovery office. Our initial
challenge will be to construct a framework which effectively combines
Title 10 and Title 22 authorities (as articulated in the Lugar Report
to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations) for the development and
management of a Personnel Recovery Program under the authority of the
Chief of Mission.
We constantly strive to improve our relations with Mexico, and
implementing a Personnel Recovery and Disaster Response Center would
pay dividends to our relationship.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LAMBORN
Mr. Lamborn. General Renuart, the Ground-based Midcourse Defense
(GMD) system is expected to have a lifetime of 20 years. How many
flight tests do you believe are necessary per year to ensure the long-
term reliability of the GMD system over its 20-year lifetime?
General Renuart. At this time, it's unclear to me how many GBI
flight tests are needed to ensure the long-term reliability of the GMD
system. There are a variety of factors that need to be evaluated in
determining the number of required missiles to flight test each year in
order to assess the reliability rate of the fielded missiles. For
example: the total number of missiles in the inventory, expected life
of the missiles, differences between missile types (for instance, there
are three basic types of Tomahawk missiles and each has a different
number of test requirements per year), subcomponent testing for the
rocket/motor, guidance system, attitude control system, warhead, fusing
system, etc., and any possible problem areas identified through dud
missiles or other failures not previously detected or anticipated.
Additionally, cost is a major factor when determining the
feasibility to execute the required number of tests. The Missile
Defense Agency's (MDA) assistance is required to identify the
applicable factors for the GBIs and the engineering analysis to
determine the required number to test each year.
Typically, the Services conduct reliability testing of operational
missile systems. There are lessons we can learn from other missile
systems that are already well into production like the Air Force and
Navy fleet of ballistic missiles, the Patriot and Standard Missiles
(SM) used for air threats, or Tomahawk missiles used in Strike Warfare.
The Navy tests on average 35 Standard Missile 2 variants per year and
11 Tomahawks of all types per year. These tests are done to assess the
ability of these missiles to meet reliability numbers as defined in
their Operational Requirements Documents (ORD). Although our missile
requirements are not defined in an ORD, we can use the same type of
considerations the Services used to define the right number to test
each year.
To attain a comprehensive evaluation of the (actual) operational
reliability of our fleet of GBIs, we require a testing program that
includes the random selection and firing of GBIs without any additional
refurbishment [``as-is''], except for the addition of a telemetry
package to assist with post-test analysis. There are numerous lessons
that can be learned from this approach as the full effect of integrated
flight dynamics would be assessed.
In preparation for spiral development flight tests, there is
certainly value in fully inspecting the test missiles and replacing
worn or suspect parts before test firing them, with a full evaluation
of the suspect components in a bench-top environment. Combining the
approaches of as-is and repaired missile testing provides the
warfighter with a better assessment of the true potential of the
remaining GBIs in their silos to perform as required.
Mr. Lamborn. General Renuart, with the Administration's policy
shift to a new Phased, Adaptive Approach for Europe, there is an
outstanding question as to the future of the 2-stage ground-based
interceptor (GBI) that was planned for Poland. The 2-stage GBI is more
mature than the SM-3 Block 2A and Block 2B interceptors that don't yet
exist. A) General, do you believe we should continue to develop and
test the 2-stage ground-based interceptor (for example, as a hedge
against a possible Iranian break-out)? B) Has NORTHCOM studied options
for deploying a 2-stage GBI in the United States to give another layer
of defense to our homeland? C) Do you believe there should be a
competition or clear criteria established for a down-select between the
2-stage GBI and the SM-3 Block 2A and Block 2B interceptors which are
planned to provide defense of Europe and the U.S. in the new Phased,
Adaptive Approach? Right now, it would appear that the Department has
put all its proverbial ``eggs'' in the SM-3 Block 2A and Block 2B
``basket.''
General Renuart.
A. Yes, if the Iranian long-range missile threat develops more
quickly than the current National Intelligence Estimate projections,
then the deployment of 2-stage GBI missiles would provide a flexible
approach in responding to this increased threat, a hedge as you stated.
Under the auspices of the Ballistic Missile Defense Review (BMDR),
USNORTHCOM has developed hedge plans within the phases of the Phased,
Adaptive Approach to enable us to respond in time to counter an
emerging threat, should the SM-3 development not meet our capability
requirements or if the threat develops more quickly than we currently
understand. The BMDR clearly states that further enhancements to our
BMDS capabilities must be based on proven technology. A mix of 2- and
3-stage interceptors falls in line with this guidance and provides
proven technology to protect the homeland in the near and far term.
B. Yes, our previous analysis identified that a 2-stage/3-stage mix
of interceptor capabilities enhances our ability to defend the
homeland. Under the guidance in the BMDR, we are continuing to evaluate
and determine the right mixture(s) in order to enhance our ability to
defend the homeland. The emerging capabilities discussed in the BMDR
for the European Phased, Adaptive Approach (EPAA) certainly apply to
defense of the homeland, and we are continuing to analyze all of those
capabilities through our own efforts.
C. It is our understanding that an Analysis of Alternatives (AoA)
was conducted by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) that included the 2-
stage GBI and the SM3 missile and the down select process indicated the
SM3 was best suited for the EPAA. We would have to defer this issue to
MDA to provide the analysis and details that went into both the AoA and
down select decision.
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