[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-152]
INDEPENDENT PANEL'S ASSESSMENT OF THE QUADRENNIAL DEFENSE REVIEW
__________
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
APRIL 15, 2010
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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
Paul Arcangeli, Staff Director
Mark Lewis, Professional Staff Member
Roger Zakheim, Professional Staff Member
Caterina Dutto, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2010
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, April 15, 2010, Independent Panel's Assessment of the
Quadrennial Defense Review..................................... 1
Appendix:
Thursday, April 15, 2010......................................... 31
----------
THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 2010
INDEPENDENT PANEL'S ASSESSMENT OF THE QUADRENNIAL DEFENSE REVIEW
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
Hadley, Hon. Stephen J., Co-Chairman, Quadrennial Defense Review
Independent Panel, United States Institute for Peace........... 6
Perry, Hon. William J., Co-Chairman, Quadrennial Defense Review
Independent Panel, United States Institute for Peace........... 4
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck''.............................. 35
Perry, Hon. William J., joint with Hon. Stephen J. Hadley.... 42
Documents Submitted for the Record:
Joint Statement for the Record of Jim Talent and Eric
Edelman, Members, Quadrennial Defense Review Independent
Panel...................................................... 51
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mr. Franks................................................... 57
Mr. Lamborn.................................................. 58
Mr. Ortiz.................................................... 57
INDEPENDENT PANEL'S ASSESSMENT OF THE QUADRENNIAL DEFENSE REVIEW
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Thursday, April 15, 2010.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 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. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the House
Armed Services Committee. We today receive testimony from co-
chairmen of the Independent Panel reviewing the 2010
Quadrennial Defense Review [QDR].
Joining us today as witnesses are the Honorable William J.
Perry, Honorable Stephen J. Hadley. And, gentlemen, we welcome
you.
And I see other members of the panel seated behind you, and
thank you all for your efforts. And we welcome you.
This is the third QDR oversight-related event our committee
has held. The first event was a full committee hearing on the
QDR on February the 4th. A second was a classified briefing
held on March 24th.
When Congress created the independent panel in the Fiscal
Year 2007 National Defense Authorization Act, it was charged
with conducting an assessment of the QDR, presenting its
findings to Congress.
Last year, we expanded the panel by adding eight additional
members appointed by the chairman and ranking members of the
House and Senate Armed Services Committee. We also expanded the
report requirement to our--to the panel.
I see the members appointed by the House are in the
audience today. Let me take a moment to recognize them, if I
may. Retired Army General Major General Bob Scales, Dr. Richard
Kohn, Senator James Talent, and Ambassador Eric Edelman, thank
you, gentlemen, for your service.
Reporting the QDR is important. We use it to help us
understand how the Department [of Defense] sees future security
challenges. We use it to understand how the Department thinks
it will meet those challenges. Then we consider whether we
agree or disagree.
When we disagree and decide to exercise our constitutional
prerogative in the authorization process, we want to be sure
that we understand the impact of our decision.
The QDR is a monumental task, and Secretary Gates did a
good job in leading it. As I have said before, and I will say
it again, that the report is a solid product and superior to
the last several iterations, but I have also voiced some
concern about it. An independent bipartisan review is an
important process of this assessment. It builds confidence in
the objectivity and comprehensiveness of the Department's
proceedings and findings for our recommendations. It helps
illustrate the potential flaws. For example, it is not clear to
me that this report, like the ones before it, fully answers
questions that Congress has asked. I am not sure if some of the
answers are complete. That is where your panel comes in.
We need another set of experts to take a look at it, offer
us their best judgment. That is why we were so specific about
what input we need from you.
I understand the Department has experienced considerable
delay in getting your panel put together. Not your fault, but
unfortunately, you are not going as far along in the process as
we would like you to be. Nevertheless, we hope that you are
ready to give us some of your initial thoughts. I am
particularly interested in your assessment of the basis upon
which the Secretary of Defense built the effort. Were the
assumptions reasonable? Did the guidance in terms of reference
form? But most important, we need your assessment of the QDR's
force sizing construct and the force structure. We need
alternates, as well. And an important part of our role is
understanding the difference in risk and cost present in each
option.
I was a bit surprised to see the QDR's force structure
recommendation remain largely unchanged from its present form,
so I am particularly interested in hearing your thoughts. We
welcome you. We appreciate you being with us. Now I turn to the
ranking member, my friend, the gentleman from California, Mr.
McKeon.
STATEMENT OF HON. HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' MCKEON, A REPRESENTATIVE
FROM CALIFORNIA, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. McKeon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to our witnesses, co-chairs Perry and Hadley. And
thank you for being here this morning.
While I know that the independent panel has only recently
begun its work in earnest, I understand that the panel is
familiar enough with the document and underlying analysis to
make initial findings. We look forward to your testimony today,
and thank you for agreeing to serve as panel co-chairs. You
have given a lot to your country, and we appreciate that and
appreciate your willingness to serve in this position.
Let me also take a moment to thank the other panel members
in attendance. In particular, I would like to thank my
appointees to the panel, Ambassador Edelman and Senator Talent,
for agreeing to sit on the panel and for being here today.
This committee understands the strategic significance of
the Quadrennial Defense Review, or QDR. After all, this is the
third committee event addressing the 2010 QDR in 3 months. Yet
it seems to me this QDR failed to deliver on arguably the three
most important functions of a QDR.
First, this QDR appears to be a budget-constrained, rather
than a budget-neutral analysis into the capabilities the
Department needs for the future. Second, this QDR failed to
outline a defense program that looks out 20 years as required
by the statute. Third, the QDR report recommends that the
United States essentially maintain our present force structure
for the Future Years Defense Plan [FYDP] and does not recommend
a force structure beyond the FYDP.
In our March 29th letter to today's witnesses, Chairman
Skelton and I asked the panel co-chairs to address these three
concerns in today's hearing. Your prepared statement addressed
these issues in part, and I hope that we can discuss your
perspective in detail over the course of the hearing.
This QDR did not emerge out of a vacuum. For some time now,
Secretary Gates has been pushing for balance in the Defense
Department in an effort to focus the Pentagon on prevailing in
the conflicts of today.
In the Secretary's introduction to the QDR--the 2010 QDR--
he writes that his efforts to rebalance the Department in 2010
continued in the fiscal year 2011 budget and were
institutionalized in this QDR and our out-year budget plan.
While the balance initiative may have been appropriate for
the 2010 or 2011 defense budget, efforts to make balance a
fixture in the QDR is short-sighted and puts the Department on
the wrong path for the next 20 years.
Choosing to win in Iraq and Afghanistan should not mean our
country must also choose to assume additional risk in the
national defense challenges of today and tomorrow. In my view,
the QDR understates the requirements to deter and defeat
challenges from state actors, and it overestimates the
capabilities of the force the Department would build.
This QDR does an excellent job of delineating the threat
posed by those anti-access capabilities, notably China, but
does little to address the risk resulting from the gaps in
funding, capability, and force structure. As a result, we find
a QDR that basically reinforced the status quo, despite serious
threats to our current capability.
Thus, this QDR provides a force structure that is built for
the wars we are in today when the purpose of the review is
exactly the opposite, to prepare for the likely conflicts of
tomorrow. I encourage the panel to ask, what is new here?
If this is really a vision for the defense program for the
next 20 years, as the statute requires, then why does the QDR
lay out a force structure for the next 5 years, not to mention
that looks a lot like today's force? The QDR is supposed to
shape the Department for 2029, not describe the Pentagon in
2009.
I suspect part of the problem is that the 2010 QDR lacks
strategic guidance. This report was delivered before the
administration issued its national security strategy and had to
rely on a 2-year-old national defense strategy from the
previous administration.
The QDR raises many more questions raising--ranging from
strengthening the industrial base to how we balance risk. I
hope we can cover these issues in this hearing and future
sessions. I look forward to the QDR's independent panel
reviewing the assumptions underlying the QDR's decisions and
providing the Congress with an alternative view on how the
Department should posture itself for the next 20 years.
Once again, I thank you all for being here today, and I
look forward to your testimony. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McKeon can be found in the
Appendix on page 35.]
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman very much.
To our witnesses, I understand that you are presenting one
joint witness statement for the record, but each of you will
have some remarks to make. Am I correct?
Dr. Perry. Correct.
The Chairman. Dr. Perry, you are recognized.
STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM J. PERRY, CO-CHAIRMAN, QUADRENNIAL
DEFENSE REVIEW INDEPENDENT PANEL, UNITED STATES INSTITUTE FOR
PEACE
Dr. Perry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
So we are submitting this written statement for the record.
I do not plan to read the statement to you.
The Chairman. Well, without objection, it will be spread
upon the record.
Dr. Perry. I would like to call your attention to how we,
in fact, organized the panel, as presented to you in that
statement. We created five subpanels, which reflect our view of
the five important issues. The first one was the nature of 21st
century conflict. The second was whole-of-government
capabilities. Third one has to do with force structure and
personnel, the fourth with acquisition and contracting. And the
last one looks at the QDR as a process.
I want to start my comments with a caveat, namely that the
commission has only been in operation for 2 months. In fact,
many of our members were sworn in only a month ago, and two
members will be sworn in only tomorrow.
So our written testimony is quite incomplete. It should be
thought of as a status report and no more.
I would like to add, however, to the written statement by
sharing with you some of my personal observations. This goes
farther than the commission is prepared to go at this time, so
I am speaking only for myself.
And I am drawing on my experience as a Secretary of
Defense. And I must say, that experience did not include
preparing a QDR. We had something which we called a bottom-up
review, which we prepared in 1993. And I had extensive
experience in preparing that bottom-up review. It was prepared
in the first 6 months in the Clinton administration.
It took the existing defense strategy, which was the
Defense Department should be able to simultaneously conduct two
major regional contingencies. It took the budget guidance from
the President and then examined whether that strategy could be
met with the existing force structure and the existing budget
guidance.
Our answer, by the way, was, no, it could not be met by
that. We concluded what could be done was what we called one-
and-a-half major regional conflicts. That is, we could win the
first one, hold on the second one, and then go back finally and
win on the second one.
That study was very useful, because it gave us a dose of
reality, and it also provided a very important basis for
planning improvements in the force structure. In particular, it
led immediately to a set of programs to increase our capability
in both airlift and sealift.
Now, fast-forward to 2009. Congress is now calling for a
much more ambitious study than we did in the bottom-up review.
You want a full-blown strategy looking ahead 20 years informed
by, but not constrained by, budget planning. And then you ask
whether the force structure needs changed to comply with that
strategy.
So a reasonable question to ask is, does the QDR do that?
In my judgment, the QDR is a very useful document, but it does
not do that. In fact, it is probably not possible--or not
possible for the--for the administration to do that under the
real constraints under which they were operating.
And what are some of those constraints and how do they
affect what you would like to have out of a QDR? First of all,
as already has been pointed out, and as you all are very much
aware, we are fighting two wars now, and the Secretary of
Defense, in my judgment rightly, has put the top priority on
determining what adjustments are needed to ensure success in
those two wars.
Steve Hadley will say more about that in his testimony, why
that is a necessary thing to do.
And, secondly, the Office of the Secretary of Defense was
not fully staffed during the course of the QDR. Many important
senior positions were not filled, in fact, until 6 to 9 months
after the beginning of the administration.
One important input to the QDR--namely the Nuclear Posture
Review--was only completed last week, so obviously was not a
useful input to the QDR.
Another important input, which is the work underway to
reduce--for reducing costs and schedule acquisition
contracting--is still a work in process. And in the QDR, there
was no significant consideration of how to control health care
costs. And as you are well aware, health care is a very
important part of the budget, and it is a component of the
budget which is growing inexorably, it seems, 6 percent a year.
Considering these facts of life limitations, I think I
believe that the QDR was very well executed and will be very
useful, but it does not answer the question which we just--
which I just described to you. It does provide a reality force
check on the force structure for doing two ongoing wars and it
provides important insights and budget adjustments as to what
an additional force structure might be needed for other
contingencies. In fact, it conducted a very extensive set of
scenario planning to look at excursions beyond the wars we are
now fighting.
It should not, in my judgment, be regarded as the final
word. I think you should look at it as a living document and as
part of an ongoing--part of ongoing studies. The important
ongoing studies, some of which are ongoing now and some of
which should be underway, is, first of all, determining the
imputed cost of the equipment wear and tear of the wars now
going on--two wars now going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We are wearing out and, in some cases, destroying our
equipment at a very fast rate, and that is building up a due
bill, which is going to affect future budgets in a very
important way. We need to have a good assessment of how that is
going to be--how that is going to affect future planning and
future budgets.
Secondly, we do really need options for how to control the
spiraling health care costs, as they are assuming a greater and
greater portion of the budget. We need options for how to
decrease the cost and the time involved in acquisition
programs. We need adjustments in the budget process from moving
to this all-government approach to dealing with contingencies
like Afghanistan and Iraq. The QDR clearly spells out the need
for doing that, but it does not spell out the details of what
that actually involves.
And, finally, I believe we need a long-term 20-year study
directed to the kind of issues which the Congress asked for in
the QDR. I see this as a separate study or a follow-on study to
the QDR, which would be taken on in the year after the QDR is
submitted.
Mr. Chairman, those are my personal comments on my
reflections on reading the QDR. And I offer them to you for
whatever they may be worth. Thank you.
[The joint prepared statement of Dr. Perry and Mr. Hadley
can be found in the Appendix on page 42.]
The Chairman. Thank you so much, Dr. Perry. Good to see
you, sir.
Mr. Hadley, welcome.
STATEMENT OF HON. STEPHEN J. HADLEY, CO-CHAIRMAN, QUADRENNIAL
DEFENSE REVIEW INDEPENDENT PANEL, UNITED STATES INSTITUTE FOR
PEACE
Mr. Hadley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I endorse very much
what Secretary Perry has said. I will add a few comments of my
own to address--include addressing some of the preliminary
concerns we have heard come from this committee. These views
are my own, but I do believe that they are shared by many
members of the QDR independent panel.
Let me say that we are very much in the preliminary stages
of our work. I think if you look at our submitted joint
statement pages 3 and 4, as we outlined the scope of the five
subpanels, hopefully you will find in that outline the
questions that need to be addressed and that are specified in
statute and that we have heard from this committee.
And to the extent there are things that are missing, we
will want to add those so that the subpanel work is going to
address what you believe needs to be addressed.
Let me say, secondly, that we have had excellent
cooperation from the Department of Defense [DOD] in our initial
efforts to understand the QDR process and what the review
produced. Secretary Gates has personally been very supportive
of our effort. And a lot of effort went in to the QDR review,
and it produced some very good work and some very sound
recommendations. And those involved should feel good about what
they have produced.
In particular, the QDR makes taking care of our men and
women in uniform and their families a top priority. This is
very welcome to the panel, and I am sure will be very
appreciated by everyone in uniform.
As Secretary Perry noted, the QDR makes prevailing in
today's wars the first of its four priority objectives. I
believe that is the right thing to do. Prevailing in today's
wars will also contribute to two of the other priority
objectives of the QDR. It will help to prevent and deter
conflict, just as surely as losing those wars is likely to
invite conflict.
And prevailing in today's wars will also help our military
prepare to defeat adversaries and succeed in a wide range of
contingencies, the third of the priority objectives, since many
of those contingencies will require the very skills that our
military is learning in these current conflicts.
Indeed, one area of focus of our panel's work will be
whether the Department and our military are doing enough to
institutionalize in our conventional forces the lessons we have
learned from those wars. Prevailing in today's wars must not be
at the expense of a military that is prepared for the full
spectrum of potential military operations.
But our Nation cannot afford to have to relearn again at
some future time the skills that our military has and will
acquire in prevailing in our current conflicts.
Secretary Perry noted in his comments, it is clear from our
work so far that the DOD acquisition and contracting systems
are not geared adequately to ensuring that our Nation's
military forces both prevail in today's wars and succeed in the
range of contingencies that they are facing or could face. And
that is one of the reasons why it will be an area of focus for
our work.
We had some witnesses who said the acquisition system does
not work for those folks involved in counterinsurgency
operations. We had some other people say the acquisition system
doesn't work for those people worried about high-end
activities, anti-access and the like, and we came away
wondering, for who does the acquisition process actually work?
And that is something we have to get to the bottom of.
Secretary Perry mentioned about the need to preserve and
strengthen the all-volunteer force. It is a--it is a wonderful
national asset. But we have got to control costs if we will be
able to both preserve and strengthen that force and still have
the money we need for procurement and operational spending.
Again, this will be another focus for our work.
We will also assess efforts to create an effective civilian
expeditionary capability that can serve as a partner of our
military in meeting the stabilization and institution-building
challenges of post-conflict states, countries like Iraq and
Afghanistan and also failed and failing states.
Over the last 40 years, our Nation has invested enormous
effort and trillions of dollars in recruiting, training,
exercise, deploying, fighting, and improving our Nation's
military. It is simply the finest in the world.
But we have made nothing like that effort to recruit,
train, exercise, deploy, and improve a civilian capability to
partner with our military in meeting the challenges our Nation
faces overseas. This has got to change. We will also be
addressing that issue.
Finally, let me--to respond in a preliminary way to two
concerns that we have heard from this committee. First, was the
QDR a budget-constrained exercise? My tentative assessment is
yes, in the sense that the QDR was developed in parallel with
the fiscal year 2011 defense budget, so that the QDR would not
be a pipe dream unsupported by real financial resources.
While fiscally responsible, this approach may have limited
more ambitious questioning of assumptions and out-of-the-box
thinking because basic budget and end-strength assumptions were
not challenged.
Second, does this mean that the QDR is too constrained by
current budget realities, existing force structure, and near-
term thinking? I think there is a risk here, and the panel will
be intent to pursuing this question.
I want to note on the positive side, however, that the
Defense Department does seem, as Secretary Perry suggested, to
view the QDR as only a step in a broader process of adapting to
the challenges of the next 20 years. Secretary Gates is
reported to have given directional guidance to the Department
out past the future year defense plan and to have tasked
follow-on work to address longer-term issues identified in the
QDR process, including application of the force sizing
construct to the 2028 timeframe.
These are important things, if true, and the QDR panel
plans to assess the QDR in this broader context and also to
consider recommendations on how to enhance the process, as
Secretary Perry suggested.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, if I may, I would like to ask that
the statement offered by former Senator Talent and former Under
Secretary of Defense Edelman be included in the record of this
hearing. And I have a copy of it here.
The Chairman. Without objection, thank you.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 51.]
Mr. Hadley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The joint prepared statement of Mr. Hadley and Dr. Perry
can be found in the Appendix on page 42.]
The Chairman. Thank you.
Dr. Perry. Mr. Chairman, could I add one more comment?
The Chairman. You bet, Doctor.
Dr. Perry. I just wanted to say that I am fully supportive
of all of the points Mr. Hadley just made. And then more
generally, Mr. Hadley and I are intended to co-chair this
committee not just as a bipartisan committee, which you
established it as, but as a nonpartisan committee, which I
think is appropriate for the gravity of the issues we are now
looking at. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you. As has been noted by other members
of this committee, we feel we are extremely bipartisan and
often nonpartisan in the efforts that we do. And a great deal
of credit goes to my ranking member, as well as all people on
all sides of the aisle in this committee.
Let me start with one question, if I may. And thank you
both, and appreciate the members behind you, who are members of
the panel.
I had an interesting conversation with the Army chief of
staff a good number of months ago about the preparation and
training of our soldiers. And he used the phrase a ``full
spectrum of operations.'' And my immediate remark was,
``General, you have two problems. Number one is time, and the
other is money.''
Is this attempt to have soldiers trained for a full
spectrum--in other words, being successful in defending the
Fulda Gap with tanks and all of the heavy fighting that could
go on there, and on the other hand, the very individual-
oriented anti-insurgency type of warfare?
What do you make of this? I have trouble getting my arms
around it, because the types of conflict that I just described
are so varied that I wonder if this is truly a reality.
Doctor.
Dr. Perry. My own view on that, Mr. Chairman, is that
soldiers, sailors, and Marines ought to be generally trained
for full-spectrum combat, but on any particular combat they are
assigned to, they need specialized training for that purpose.
When we sent the 1st Armored Division into Bosnia, for
example, in 1996, this is a--as the name implies, it was
prepared for a full-scale war in Germany, which is where they
were based. That was the--that was their fundamental training.
Therefore, we had to take 2 or 3 weeks of specialized
training to prepare them for the particular kind of combat they
would face in Bosnia, which was very different from that.
When they finished that exercise and returned to Germany, I
asked General Nash, who was the commander, how long will it
take before we can get your division back to performing its
mission in Germany? And its answer was ``3 or 4 weeks of
specialized training.''
So what I would suggest is that our troops are broadly
trained, very capable troops, but they need specific training
for the specific missions they are going--they are going to
face. And some--and at least the experience we have had in the
past is that specific training can be made in a matter of
weeks, not in the matter of months.
The Chairman. It seems to me, though, there would be some
emergencies where you wouldn't have but maybe a day or two. Mr.
Hadley, what are your thoughts, full-spectrum training?
Mr. Hadley. I think one of the things we have to ask full-
spectrum training, in light of the challenges that they are
likely to face over the next 20 years, which I do think is why
it is important to make sure that we have that assessment of
what the world looks like 20 years out and what we are likely
to use our military for.
And that ought to, in some sense, define the definition of
full-spectrum. But I think Secretary Perry has it right, and I
think there is also an acquisition piece of this, which is, we
have got to have hardware. The days of single-purpose hardware
ought to be very limited, and we need hardware and capabilities
that are flexible and can help our troops respond to a variety
of challenges.
The Chairman. Now, the purpose of the QDR is to determine
and express the defense strategy in our country and
establishing the defense program for the next 20 years. What
are your initial reactions as to how well the QDR has met that
task, Dr. Perry?
Dr. Perry. I think they have done an excellent job in
preparing it for the near term, in particular preparing it for
the two wars we are now fighting. As I indicated in my earlier
testimony, I do not believe that they have taken full
consideration of the strategies and the threats they might face
over a 20-year time period. And I think that should be a basis
of a future study sometime done perhaps during the next year.
The Chairman. Mr. Hadley.
Mr. Hadley. I agree with that. I do think it is very
distressing to look--with any confidence--we are going to be
building hardware that is going to be out there 30 and 40
years. I think it is an exercise we have to do, but I think it
is an exercise we have to undertake with a lot of humility,
because 20 years is a long time to look out with any certainty
in a very uncertain and changing and volatile world.
The Chairman. The committee has heard me mention on several
occasions that, since 1977, we have had--we have been involved
with 12 conflicts involving our military. Some were of major
approach, and others not so. But I suppose when you are being
shot at, it is a big war, regardless of whether you are being
shot at by one person or a whole battalion.
The question I put to you about being able to do the full-
spectrum really bothers me, and I know you think that a soldier
can be trained to do something other than his main occupation
in the military in 3 weeks or so. We should explore that a
little bit more in your final determination. It really does
worry me that we have found ourselves in the horns of a dilemma
with fantastically trained troops to do one thing, and they be
thrown into another situation where they would be very, very
unfamiliar.
Mr. McKeon.
Mr. McKeon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for your
comments about our bipartisanship and our nonpartisanship. And
that is, again, I think, because of the tone that you set with
the committee.
And I appreciate your remarks, Secretary Perry, about your
efforts being nonpartisan. I think this is way too important to
get caught up in partisanship, and I really appreciate your
opening comments there.
And it--and it was interesting of your experience with the
bottom-up review that you outlined and the experience you had
there, that we should prepare for two wars and we were prepared
for one-and-a-half. I think that was an important undertaking.
I think you faced it realistically.
That is one of the concerns I have with this QDR. As I read
the law that we passed in the 1997 reauthorization act--and I
am going to quote from it--``The QDR should be done every 4
years, a comprehensive examination of the national defense
strategy, force structure, force modernization plans,
infrastructure, budget plan, and other elements of the defense
program and policies of the United States with a view toward
determining and expressing the defense strategy of the United
States and establishing a defense program for the next 20
years.''
I think, as you outlined in your opening comments, maybe we
have asked something that is a step too far, given a new
administration, a new budgeting, and maybe we need to step back
a little bit and look at this and come at it more
realistically, and--but that is the law that we are dealing
with right now.
And I think, as you--as you stated, maybe that we should do
another more comprehensive study for the 2 years out. And as
Mr. Hadley just stated, we should do that, I think, with grave
humility.
If we look back 20 years and see what we were thinking
about for where we would be right now, we would probably find
ourselves inadequately prepared. And when we look out the next
20 years, I can see where we could be very nervous about what--
about how firmly we make those commitments.
But at the same time, we have to, as you said, buy hardware
that we are going to be using in 20 years. In fact, if you look
back at the B-52, we may be using it for 40, 50, 60, 70 years.
This is a very serious undertaking. As you comment on these
things, I would also hope that you would, if they so desire,
other members of the panel sitting behind you, you might be
able to let them give some comments of how they feel, too. I
appreciate how you have--how you are really dealing with this
nonpartisanly and bringing the whole committee to bear on--your
whole committee to bear on this.
I take it that you are probably in agreement that we
should--that the QDR is lacking in the--in the 20-year outlook,
that--and they agree on that, I think. They said that they are
looking out 5 years. In fact, Secretary Gates said anything
past 5 years is a fantasy, anyway.
But you do agree that we should do a thorough, as
comprehensive as we can plan for the next 20 years. Is that
correct?
Mr. Hadley. Yes. That is my judgment. You know, you may not
get it absolutely right 20 years from now, looking back, but
the process of looking out and doing that planning is important
to do and to be institutionalized. And I think, as Secretary
Perry said and as a number of members of our panel have said,
we need to--and it is really what that fifth subpanel is going
to look at. Is there another way to do that of which the QDR
could be a piece of a broader whole?
And if I might mention one other thing, a number of members
of our panel made the point that some of the issues like
acquisition reform and health care and retirement costs are
recurring themes of QDRs. They get surfaced up every 4 years,
and then, you know, they recur 4 years later.
And I think one of the ideas our committee is--our panel is
thinking about is making what recommendations we can on some of
these tough recurring issues, but then coming back and
suggesting perhaps there needs to be a dedicated structure
where the legislature and the--and the executive branch will
get together in some panel or forum or blue-ribbon commission
and see if we can actually make some progress solving these
things, so 4 years from now, when the next QDR comes out, it
doesn't come up and we are saying the same things about the
problem we said in this QDR.
So we are going to look at some creative ways to try and
address some of these issues to supplement the QDR process.
Again, I just put this as something a number of members of the
panel think we ought to look at, and that will be one of the
subjects addressed by that fifth subpanel.
Dr. Perry. Mr. McKeon, I must say, I certainly favor a
serious look ahead, 20 years ahead, and try and see what the
threats might be. I do understand, though, that we cannot
forecast with confidence what the threats will be like 20 years
from now. And it is going to depend to a very great extent on
the adaptability, being able to adapt into a situation as they
arise.
I want to give you one example of that, which I think is
quite telling. Thirty years ago, I was the under secretary of
defense for research and engineering. At that time, we were in
the middle of the height of the Cold War, faced that threat
very seriously, and we designed a system called the B-2. It was
designed to deal with our strategic nuclear deterrence
capability.
Well, the B-2 is still with us. And we----
Mr. McKeon. With 20, instead of 130.
Dr. Perry. Yes. And we are doing quite--we are doing quite
different things with it today. We have adapted it so that it
could be--carry several dozen JDAMs [Joint Direct Attack
Munition] and to be used in a conventional applications. It
turns out that, with the ingenuity of the people using it, have
turned a weapon designed for strategic nuclear capability, one
set of threats, into the kind of situation we are dealing with
today. So we do also depend on the adaptability of our best
policy people and engineers in the Defense Department to adapt
to new threats as they arise.
Mr. McKeon. I wish we had the 130. You also mentioned the
problem that a new administration has using the--building the
QDR on previous administration's defense strategy. And so it
probably puts--and then doing that without having your full
complement of people onboard, so there are lots of stresses.
One of the--one of the things that has been frustrating for
me, though, is looking at the QDR, my feeling--my simple
feeling was, we would get the QDR and then we would get the
budget and see if we would be able to do the things that are
necessary to meet the QDR. And I think it kind of happened
backwards, so I think the budget drove the QDR, and we are left
kind of without guidance on what kind of weapons we should be
looking at to buy for the future.
And should we be seeking more money for the budget, more
top-line? Because I am concerned with the ongoing budget
concerns that we have. So I think we--probably, the QDR has
opened up more questions than it has answered, and I am really
looking to this panel to really help us, give us more guidance
as we do move forward.
So thank you very much for your work.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
I hope that in your final report you will take into
consideration--and I know it will take extra work on your
behalf--I hope you will take into consideration the thinking
part, which means professional military education. And I hope
you will take advantage of the great deal of work that has
already been done by the Committee on Oversight and
Investigation, headed by Dr. Snyder.
I know the transcripts are available to you, and I know a
report from the series of hearings would be available to you. I
would appreciate your doing that, because you have the finest
military in the world. And if you do not have a strategic
thinking or operational thinking or tactical thinking,
depending upon the type of conflict that you have, it is all
for naught. And this is a serious business. And if you do that,
I would certainly appreciate it.
We announced previously that we would start with those of
lesser seniority and work backwards. And this is, of course,
with the concurrence of Mr. McKeon that we will do just that.
The first gentleman is Mr. Marshall, according to the
attendance records that I have. You are on.
Mr. Marshall. Well, I appreciate the opportunity to be on,
Mr. Chairman, but since I just got here physically--I have been
in the anteroom meeting with people on F-35--I think I need--I
think we need to move to the number-two person.
The Chairman. Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you all for the efforts that you are putting forth,
as well as the rest of the panel.
I wanted to just commend you briefly, there were two things
that you mentioned that I think are really important and trying
to get a handle on it is tough, I know. The first one is, the
way that we look at our families and the support system for our
military and how important that is. I think it represents a
kind of sea change in a way from when we always felt that, you
know, perhaps it was an afterthought.
And the second one, really, is a civilian component and how
that--how that interfaces and how we need to develop that and
think about that in a totally different way than we have in the
past.
Beyond that, I just wanted to ask you a little bit about
how you plan to address and assess an important issue that we
all are very well aware, the personnel issues, health care,
retirement benefits, all those concerns that need to be
maintained with an all-volunteer force. Clearly, we can't have
the ships and the tanks and et cetera to buy when those costs
are escalating at the rate that we are talking about. How are
you going to get at that?
Mr. Hadley. Well, I think we have got a subpanel to do
that. We have asked initially for a considerable amount of data
on what the trends have been. Then we are going to have to look
at what is driving those trends and ask some very hard
questions.
And, you know, there--I was thinking about this last night.
There are huge dilemmas, because, you know, in a normal
situation, you could look at co-pays and things of this sort,
but these are for men and women in uniform who we are paying
their salaries, so you get a little bit of sort of taking out
of one pocket and having to put it back in another.
I think they are very challenging, very difficult. There
are some ideas that members of our panels already have that
they are looking at, and I think what we need to do is take a
look at it and see if we can come forward with a set of
recommendations that we think the Department and the Congress
should think about.
I think we are advantaged by one thing in that the QDR
makes clear that there are some ongoing studies looking about
the total force, active, Reserve, civilian, contractors, but
also looking at some of these personnel cost-related issues.
So we may actually have a vehicle within the Department
itself that we can contribute some ideas to, because everybody
recognizes this is the train wreck that is coming in a world of
deficits and constrained budgets.
I wish I had a silver bullet for you here. I don't. I think
it is going to be very tough. If it were easy, it would have
been solved before. And we are----
Mrs. Davis [continuing]. Try and tell the witnesses that we
have who come to us on a variety of those issues that that is
true, and sometimes when you pose options that we have, people
do acknowledge it, but it is tough. And we are under a lot of
pressure, but I am thinking ahead, too. I mean, we are not just
thinking 5 years, as you say. We are looking really down the
road, and that is the kind of fiscal commission that we are
even talking about, when we look at a number of entitlement
programs.
I mean, that is really the concern here. And so I
appreciate that there is no silver bullet, but we want work
with you to try and understand better how you are going to go
about that, so that we challenge basic assumptions that you are
being asked to do all the time.
Mr. Hadley. And one of the questions people are asking, are
we encouraging people to leave the service too soon and to get
in the retirement, when, in fact, there is more work that a
more flexible system would allow them to contribute either on
active-duty, Reserve, Guard and Reserve? I mean, we are trying
to open the aperture and look at a sort of creative approach to
this thing, rather than just a narrow sort of cost, a green
eyeshade.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. And you mentioned the Guard and
Reserve. We are having a hearing today, and certainly the
mission sets that they have to deal with, even in the testimony
we talked about equipment and the different ways of thinking
about that than we have in the past. But I think there is a
reality there that, you know, you just run into a wall when you
are trying to balance all those needs at one time.
Dr. Perry. Years ago when I was testifying to the Congress,
I was asked, what are the three factors which contribute most
to the quality of our forces? And I said training, training,
and training.
And to be clear, though, in order to get the benefit of
that training in an all-volunteer force, you need people to be
re-enlisting. And the re-enlistments are determined not so much
by the soldiers themselves as by their families.
And, therefore, I concluded that the quality of life that
we provide for the soldiers and their families is an important
factor in their re-enlistments. And, therefore, ultimately,
quality of life leads to quality of force. So those two factors
are very intimately tied to each other.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. As you look forward, as well,
thinking about math and science professionals is another key
factor. I know that, as I speak to people in the community,
because it is national defense, because we have constraints in
terms of hires, we need to be able to grow our own in this
area, and we are not doing a very good job.
And so I would hope that you could also weigh in on this
issue particularly because we know the long-term needs haven't
been addressed as well as they should be.
Thank you very much.
The Chairman. I thank the gentlelady.
Mr. Coffman, please.
Mr. Coffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I, first of all, want to express the concern that the
administration has not risen up to the statutory obligations of
the Quadrennial Defense Review. And I think, Mr. Hadley, you
had mentioned that it seemed to focus on near-term threats,
where certainly the intention of the statute is to project out
irrespective of resources, and whether or not we can--and to
send a message to the Congress, certainly, on what needs to be
done.
And so it seems like that this Quadrennial Defense Review
was clearly compromised by the immediate constraints fiscally,
and I am concerned with that, and I think that--Mr. Perry, I
think you reflected some of those same concerns, too, in terms
of the 20-year window.
I know it is difficult to project out, but how would you
see--how do you see--the United States has no peer competitors
today, but China is a rising power, certainly increasing its
industrial base fairly rapidly, which is enabling it to
increase its military.
And so how do you project out to see whether or not this
QDR counters or is able to counter the rising power of China?
Mr. Perry, why don't we start with you.
Dr. Perry. Let me say, first of all, relative to the QDR,
that had I been the Secretary of Defense, I would have probably
made the same decisions as Secretary Gates made about what to
do in this QDR, namely focusing on the 5-year issue, but I
would also like to follow it on with a longer-term study, which
could include some of the issues which you were raising the
question about.
My own view is that the force structure we have today and
the force structure we are building, have committed to build
for the future already, is quite capable of dealing with any
future military threats which I can envision right now. And I
would project that out in my own thinking, maybe 10 years or
so. I just don't think--my thinking isn't good enough to
forecast what it is going to be like 20 years from now.
But as I look ahead to the next 10 years or so, I think the
U.S. forces will be quite capable of dealing with any challenge
which I can envision in the next 10 years.
Mr. Coffman. Mr. Hadley.
Mr. Hadley. I would say two things. One, I think--think of
it maybe a little bit this way. The questions that you have all
set out here today and that are in the statute need to be
addressed.
The question is, is the QDR the vehicle for addressing all
of them? Or does the QDR have to be part of a broader system
and effort whereby these things get addressed? And that is what
we are trying to look at.
Secretary Perry talked about maybe before the next QDR, you
need a sort of 20-year lookout exercise that then informs the
next QDR. I think we need to look at it almost system-wide.
Secondly, you know, I think the China issue is this broader
anti-access area denial kind of issue, and it is not just
concerns people have about China in the South China Sea. It is
a question about Iran in terms of gulf, and there are other
places, as well.
My sense is that the QDR made a down payment on additional
capabilities that our military forces need to deal with these
threats. I think they did really not ask themselves, what is
the capacity? What is sort of the volume of these capabilities
you would need in 2028 if you had a serious threat, recognizing
that threat will mature between now and then?
I think that is one of the unfinished items as part of the
QDR. And I would hope it is on Secretary Gates' list of things
to be looking at as you look out 10, 15 years, and that is one
of the things we will be talking to him about.
Mr. Coffman. Thank you both. Just to commend you to look at
our personnel structure, and this is archaic system that was
developed, I think, in World War II that doesn't reflect, I
think, the needs of today and this notion of a 20-year window
and this up-and-out program. I am glad that you are taking a--
willing to take a look at that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I
yield back.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman. Dr. Snyder, please. It
is your turn. We have been playing the rules backwards.
Dr. Snyder. Backwards.
The Chairman. And since you were here on time, why, you are
up next.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I
appreciate the limitations of our discussion today, given that
you already haven't done the kind of study that you want. I
appreciate your public service.
This issue of--what you all want to do is, is to come out
with a report that is helpful. And so if it is pie in the sky--
like if you were the republic of Iceland, you said, we need to
raise a 1.2 million member military, Iceland is not going to do
that. On the other hand, if you don't push things a little bit,
then we will say, well, it is not helpful because it doesn't--
you know, we knew that already. So you are kind of--you are
kind of caught.
On the other hand, I think there are some--I think this
kind of discussion is helpful to try to explore, what are those
boundaries that the American people and the Congress would find
helpful? I think Mr. McKeon in his opening statement--and I
don't have it, so I may be quoting it incorrectly, because we
have talked about this before.
I think, the discussion was, if you go to war, should you--
you have to go to war, should you incur any additional risk
elsewhere? Well, I think any military strategist would say,
``Of course you would.'' If you took a third of your military
to go to a major conflict, would that result in additional risk
elsewhere? Of course it would. I mean, if it didn't, it would
be peculiar. I mean, I just don't see how you can do that.
So the idea that we would have to have the size of our
military such that if we wanted any major operation, we would
incur no additional risk, I think that is pie in the sky. I
just don't think that life works like that.
This issue of constrained by the budget, that somehow we
would not want you to be constrained by the budget, we don't
operate like that in any other area of human experience,
certainly not in government.
I think about the incredible carnage on the highways that
we as Americans have put up for decades. We lose tens of
thousands of Americans every year dying on the highway and
hundreds of thousands of serious injuries. We could
dramatically, dramatically decrease those number of deaths if
we all were to put an additional $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 into
each American automobile, I would think.
But why don't we do that? Because we recognize the
realities of the constraints of budget. And so I don't even
know if I have a question, other than to say you are kind of
caught in this ongoing discussion that we have every time we do
this process, which is, we want you to think outside the lines.
On the other hand, if you get too far outside the lines, we
will say you're constrained by the realities of any nation's
budget, resources, geography.
You take the locations of our bases. There are
inefficiencies now. These bases were located 40, 50, 60, some
of them longer years ago than that. If you were starting over,
we would not place these bases in the United States where they
are now, but we are not starting over. We are constrained by
the past, and that is just the way it is.
So I appreciate your work. I look forward to your final
report. You are certainly welcome to comment on anything I
said, but I haven't really formally asked a question, but----
Mr. McKeon. Would the gentleman yield?
Dr. Snyder. Sure, yes.
Mr. McKeon. What I said in my opening statement was,
``Choosing to win in Iraq and Afghanistan should not mean our
country must also choose to assume additional risk in the
national defense challenges of today and tomorrow.''
What I was getting at was so much balance and focus on the
next 5 years, I think it is a given that we decide to win in
Iraq and Afghanistan. I think we are all in agreement on that.
But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't also be planning out
for the 20 years. And I think we have agreement on that, that
this QDR does not address that.
And I think we need to come back to some way getting a
study for the 20 years, even though we are also in agreement
that nobody knows what is going to happen exactly in 10 years.
Nobody knows exactly what is going to happen tomorrow.
But the further we get out, the less likely we are to be
totally correct, but that doesn't mean we don't think about it
and plan for it and do our best to be prepared for it.
Dr. Snyder. Any comments you all want to make is fine.
Mr. Hadley. I would have just a brief one on that. And I
will see if Dr. Perry agrees with this. I think you can be
informed by the budget, but not constrained by it, in the sense
that what you can do is surface trades between capability and
risk and cost, so that the administration and then the Congress
can make some decisions about where they want to make the
trade.
So I think it is--you can't be, you know, pie in the sky.
It can't be a straightjacket. I think it can be informed so you
can identify these kinds of trades, and that is where decisions
get made.
Dr. Snyder. And I think that is probably as good a
description of where we ought to think about what your final
product is, yes. Thank you.
Mr. Hadley. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Hunter, please.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you. Starting off, I think that this
discussion that Mr. Snyder just brought up is a really good
one. And it has to do with the role of the DOD and the role of
this Congress.
I think the biggest problem that we see with having the
budget constraint put on this lookout for the next two decades
is that I think it is fine if we have that discussion in this
committee, because that is what we are here for. We are here to
have that discussion.
We don't need the DOD telling us what we ought to spend.
They are there to give us their projection for what we ought to
spend, what we ought to buy, but it is within this room, I
think, that we should discuss something when it comes to terms
of how much we should spend, we should be given what the DOD
thinks that we need, even if it is pie in the sky, that they
might say we need a 3 million person active-duty military in 15
years.
And we then say, well, that is impossible, so how do we
mitigate that and what do we spend on that? What should it be?
And we kind of go on from there. We didn't do that this time.
That is why I don't think that this budget constraint
should be--like you said, Mr. Hadley, it should be informed,
but it should not be--and my main question is, is that even
possible? Can the DOD, which is an aspect of the
administration, whatever one it is serving at that time, is it
possible for them to be objective on themselves and maybe even
make themselves look bad because the DOD and the OSD [Office of
the Secretary of Defense] comes out and says, ``We need all of
this, but the President is only putting in enough money for
this much, and that will make us less safe in 20 years''?
That is my first question. Is it even possible for the DOD
to be objective on itself?
Two, we talk about this 20-year plan being impossible
because of all the different things that are able to pop up,
different unconventional threats, conventional threats. I think
that we can really classify it, though. We do know that China
is going to have more ships. We know North Korea is going to
have more nuclear weapons. We know Iran--if we stay on the same
course we are on now--they are going to have nuclear weapons.
We know all of these things.
Russia is going to have more airplanes. China is going to
have more airplanes. China is going to have more cruise
missiles. We know that those things were going to increase at a
certain production rate based on what we know of those
countries now.
So why can't we say, 20 years from now, here is what we
see--here is the 60 percent of stuff that we know, and here is
what we need for that, and here is the 40 percent of stuff that
we don't know? You know, who knows what crazy country comes up,
gets a nuke or dirty bomb or something? And that is obviously
an off-the-shelf scenario. And it is going to be really hard
for us to adjust to that.
But we can adjust to 60 percent of things or 40 percent
or--what is that percentage? What do you think--because there
are certain things that we know--we have to have a Navy that is
this big in the next 20 years to counter these other navies
that will be this big? Because we do know that. And I think
that this administration and that this QDR has been short on
telling us those things, things that we can quantify very
easily, and say, ``Here is what we need, and we are not going
to let the budget constrain those things.''
Dr. Perry. Mr. Hunter, I must say, as Secretary, I always
felt constrained by the budget that Congress had appropriated
for me and my best estimate of what they might appropriate in
future years. That certainly influenced my actions and
planning.
But I also felt a responsibility to inform the Congress if
I saw some threat looming in the future for which their budget
did not adequately prepare me. And let me give you one example.
If I believe, for example, that a new kind of a threat, a
cyber threat was emerging a few years in the future, and that
we will not--in our present budget, did not actively prepare
for that, I would feel obliged to inform the Congress that this
was a threat that was coming up and that the present budget did
not adequately deal with that and propose additional funds be
coming from them.
That is just one example of a--it gets--it becomes much
more difficult to do that when you are looking at potential
threats 15, 20 years into the future. And using Steve Hadley's
phrase there, I think in that case you might at least call out
the nature of the threat and ask for a down payment, some
initial thinking, some initial planning on what you might do to
deal with that future threat.
I can't give you much more concrete answer than that, I am
sorry.
Steve, do you want to add anything?
Mr. Hadley. No, I think you have said it right. You look
out 20 years. You know what you know. And you make decisions on
that. There is going to be an area of uncertainty. You do the
best you can. I think that is right.
And I think you have asked the Department to do that, and I
think we will have an opportunity to talk to the Department
about that and to encourage them to have, if they have not done
that in the QDR, encourage them to have a way where that can be
done as an input to their own planning. And my experience is,
if you ask them that, they will do it.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Taylor.
Before I call on Mr. Taylor, how far along are you at this
point regarding the Department of the Navy and the force
structure of the ships? Have you addressed that at all?
Mr. Hadley. We have not--we have not tried to generate
alternative force structures. We are just not there.
We understand that is clearly one of the things that is in
the statutory language. There are some members of our panel who
think that is going to be very hard, you know, for our group
with a staff to do that.
The Chairman. It is.
Mr. Hadley. But that doesn't mean that we can't--I think--
--
The Chairman. It is very important. And I hope you will
take a look at that.
Mr. Taylor.
Mr. Taylor. Gentlemen, I thank both of you for being here
today and for your prior service to the Nation. Now that you
have had an opportunity to step back and not be quite so close
to the problem, I am wondering if you--particularly when it
comes to acquisition, if either one of you ever find yourself
saying, ``Gee, I wish we could have done whatever''?
If along those lines, what do you think we ought to be
doing different? Because obviously what we are doing now, with
almost every program being way over-budget and almost every
program being late, obviously, what we are doing isn't right.
So what would you do different, now that you have had the time
to look back on it, and what would you recommend that we do
different?
Dr. Perry. Mr. Taylor, before I was--some years before I
was Secretary of Defense, I was the under secretary for what is
now called acquisition and technology and logistics. And I must
say, during that time, I made no specific effort to try to
reform the acquisition system. I just worked with it as best as
I could. And in retrospect, looking back on that, I regretted
not having put more time and effort on trying to reform the
system.
In between that time and the time I became Secretary, I
actually worked on--with an independent commission, which was
looking at acquisition, the so-called Packard Commission, and
made a set of recommendations then--and then, when I became
Secretary, tried to implement some of those recommendations.
The principal one which--would make some difference on in
the 1993-1994 time period was removing from the--from the
project officers the absolute requirement to use military
specifications, which I saw as increasing the cost and
lengthening the time of the acquisition. And we made some
modest improvement in that regard, but not enough.
So--a man that I worked with in my independent studies on
this, who is a young promising scientist named Ashton Carter,
who by coincidence is now the Under Secretary of Defense for
Acquisition and Technology and Logistics. So I think he is
going into that job with the idea of making significant
improvements in how we buy equipment. And I really look forward
to seeing some substantial improvements coming from his tenure,
some of which will be based on the studies both of us did
together while we were out of government.
Mr. Taylor. Secretary Perry, to that point, going back to
your time in acquisition, I am amazed that we as a nation have
consistently failed--when we pay for the development of a
program, we have consistently failed to demand the technical
data package that the taxpayers paid for, whether it is on the
engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, whether it is the Littoral
Combat Ship, fill in the blank, whatever the program is.
It just amazes me that we don't own that after we paid to
develop it. Did either of you give much thought during your
tenure that that ought to be the case? And if there is a reason
why we don't own these things, please tell me, because I think
it ought to be our Nation--Nation's best interest to own those
things and be able to take that package from a failing vendor
to a better vendor, if the case may be.
But if you have a downside to that, I would welcome your
thoughts on it.
Dr. Perry. When the item has been developed under
government funds and procured under government funds, then I
think we should have the data package that goes with it. But I
want to qualify that by saying that I think we should be doing
more acquisition of things not developed under government
funds.
More of our acquisitions should involve commercially
developed components for our systems. And that is one way of
reducing costs and improving schedule and systems.
That will not always be possible until when it is not
possible, and when it is a fully government-developed system,
then I think we ought to have the data rights for it.
Mr. Taylor. Mr. Hadley, I didn't mean to ignore you, but I
am curious, particularly on the technical data packages, during
your time in the DOD, did that discussion ever come up? And do
you think that we--that is a mistake that we ought to be
correcting now?
Mr. Hadley. I am not a specialist in this. I think we need
to look at it, and we will have our panel look at this. I
reported to the Pentagon in September of 1972, working in an
analysis group for the comptroller, and the first thing I was
put on was to help look at acquisition reform.
Acquisition reform seems to be the cause that we are always
pursuing and never happens. And I think your big question is,
how come, after 35 years, we don't do it better? And I don't
have a good answer to that.
Mr. Taylor. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Forbes.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, gentlemen, first of all, thank both of you and all the
members of the panel. You are brilliant men who serve the
country well, and we just thank you and appreciate your
service.
I have a concern that I would like to state more perhaps
for you to be examining as you move through this process, but I
would welcome any of your response down the road.
The chairman mentioned earlier three things. He said, one,
we are applying the rules backward. But he also said we are the
most bipartisan committee and the most nonpartisan committee in
Congress.
And the reason that we can be bipartisan and nonpartisan is
because, even if we are applying the rules backward, we knew
what the rules were. The chairman let us know well before we
came in here what those rules were going to be.
We know it is a fair process. We know also who is going to
ultimately vote on a piece of legislation that comes out of
here. And we know, for every number of our staff on either
side, we know who hires them, we know who they serve and who
they represent.
Process can sometimes matter. If you control the process,
you can control the results. If it is a flawed process, it is a
flawed result.
I was particularly interested in Mr. Talent and Mr.
Edelman's supplemental comments where it says, first of all, we
have heard mentioned that it seems clear that the QDR was
heavily informed by the current budget, rather than operating
with an unconstrained look at the Nation's defense needs in the
coming 20 years.
But I was more intrigued by the statement that says this,
``Based on what we have learned so far, it appears that force
structure recommendations, scenarios and assumptions employed,
risk levels and budgetary recommendations were generally
predetermined for this QDR.'' If that is, in fact, the case,
the assumptions, the war gaming, the strategies all were
predetermined before we looked at the QDR, one of the areas
that really bothers me is what we have just seen kind of
exposed in the last week or so with the mentoring program and
how that could have had an impact on the QDR. We don't know the
answers to that because the Department of Defense won't give us
all of those answers.
But here is my big concern. When we have individuals
working in the war gaming, the strategies, sitting some of the
assumptions that may ultimately be worked into that QDR, who
are, one, getting full retirement from their service as they
should--up to $175,000 or so per year--but then we find out
that they are also being hired by the Department of Defense,
some of them being paid up to $281,000--at least that is the
only thing we have seen disclosed for 6 months work--but then
also that they are being paid millions of dollars by
individuals who have a direct concern in the outcome of the
QDR.
And then we find out that, one, there is no conflict of
interest statement that had to be filed; two, that they had no
prohibition of divulging information they got out to the
entities that they represented; and, three, that they could
serve giving their input and their advice when they were being
paid these huge sums of money for consulting purposes outside
to private individuals.
That is a major concern to me, especially when we find that
there are at least some provisions in the QDR with such a
dramatic change from what the previous QDR has stated.
Now, the reason I state that for you is, I don't know what
impact some of that has on the QDR, but it would frighten me to
think that some of the staff people here were being paid three,
four, five, six, seven, eight times more by some outside source
to come in here and then give me advice on decisions that I was
making.
So I would ask you--now, I know Department of Defense has
come out and changed this policy, I think just last week, but
that doesn't mean it was changed with some of these assumptions
that could have been worked into the QDR.
So I would just ask you, if you could, as you are looking
at this process, if you could, one, find out if any of that
could have had an impact, but, secondly, how we can have more
credibility in the process by at least getting answers to,
where could that have had impacts in that process? Right now,
there is a lot of unknowns in those areas.
So with that, I leave it for any comments that you have
and--from me down the road on that.
And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time on
it.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Kissell.
Mr. Kissell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, gentlemen, for being with us today. Today
seems to be a day of thoughtful discussion, as we as members
express some of our concerns to you and directions that we hope
you follow as you go back to your task and recognize--and you
haven't been about the task long, but we certainly appreciate
this. And, of course, the tone of the discussions already have
shown how important your work is going to be.
I would like to follow just a little bit of what the
chairman said earlier, in terms of the strategy that we have
within the knowledge base of our leadership and our troops, so
that we can have the flexibility and be able to respond.
Yesterday, we had a hearing about our nuclear posture
report, and we talked about that, in certain cases, we have the
ability to respond not with a nuclear strike, but with other
military means, if we are so attacked. If you have troops in
Iraq and Afghanistan, all of a sudden you have to come back
with a full-spectrum, as the chairman said, conventional
attack. We may not have those 3 to 4 weeks to prepare our
troops, but, also, to make sure that we have the leadership
that is trained so that they can at least have the strategies
in place of how to use full-spectrum conventional response.
Because if we are consistently going back to Iraq,
Afghanistan, as much as we have been, has there been proper
training for these other scenarios that could play out? That is
the concern I have.
And I want to carry it one step further is to--especially
to our National Guard and Reserves. Are they getting the full
training when they are mostly being used right now, obviously,
in the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan--are they being
prepared for conventional warfare, as we might know it? And
will they have the equipment to prepare for this?
At a separate hearing, we talked about lift capacity. When
we had all of the planes being used for the Haiti operation, I
asked the question, do we have sufficient lift capacity? And I
was told that we do, only to 2 weeks ago get a call from the
commanding general, North Carolina National Guard, saying the
Air Force was going to be taking two of its C-130s.
And I think it is like 10 C-130s from Air National Guard
all over. They needed that for their lift capacity, where not
too long ago, I was told we had plenty of lift capacity.
So I do have concerns, and this is not really a question,
and just a statement I have concern to make sure we have the
people that have the strategies that can do the training, but
also to make sure that we carry that down to our Guard and
Reserves, that they have the strategies and the equipment for
the training.
Thank you, sir, and I yield back, unless you all have
comments on that.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Any comment on that?
Dr. Perry. Only that I share the view that the National
Guard and the Reserves are very important components of our
all-volunteer force and that we will specifically in our force
structure and personnel subpanel look at that question.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman.
Mr. Jones.
Mr. Jones. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
And, gentlemen, thank you so much and all the members of
the panel. It is a very impressive group of people. And I would
like to make a few comments, and then I am going to close.
I don't think there has ever been a time that this country
has needed a panel such as yours to be very honest with the
American people. I look at you, Dr. Perry, when you were with
the administration--I can't remember what the debt and the
deficit was at that time. I know when Mr. Hadley came with the
first Bush administration, Mr. Bush inherited a surplus.
And here we are today, and that is why your charge is so
critical. Here we are today with information out in the public
that possibly by 2020, which is really less than 10 years now,
that 90 cents out of every dollar will have to go to Social
Security, Medicare, and veterans benefits. So that will leave
10 cents out of a dollar to go to other programs, including the
military.
This is not a criticism. I have been here 15 years. It is
more of an observation. This is one of the best committees I
have ever been, whether it was Duncan Hunter chairman, now Ike
Skelton. But I see the politics that is played within the
Congress, not this committee--I want to make that clear--but
once you start getting into the budget process, and somebody
wants an airship here, somebody wants a boat here, and all of a
sudden, here we are trying to deal with a country that is
crumbling.
We owe the Chinese over $800 billion. Dr. Perry, you
mentioned the high cost of health care. There is a book that I
would recommend people to read if they had time to read it. It
is ``The Three Trillion Dollar War'' by Joe Stiglitz, well-
known economist.
Are we going to be in a position to take care of our needs
militarily and take care of our veterans? I know you are not
going to be speaking primarily to the veterans, but it all is
correlated. If you are spending $3 trillion to take care of our
wounded from Afghanistan and Iraq and you didn't factor that
in, you don't factor in the 10 years down the road when we are
only going to have 10 cents out of a dollar to pay for federal
programs, including the military.
We need your honest work to this committee, in my humble
opinion. I won't be here 10 years from now. I might not even be
here 2 years from now. But the point is that we don't have the
luxury of playing games anymore in this country, and
particularly as it relates to our military, because we do need
to have a strong military.
But I don't think we can any longer take care of the world.
I don't think we can build empires. I really don't. If they
come after us, let's go after them and bomb them and get them
out. Let's do whatever we have to do.
But, please, really, I have heard this from other
colleagues--and I am going to stop in just a moment--please
realize that what you are going to do this year probably has
more meaning than ever before because of the shape of our
country.
I was over at Walter Reed Bethesda [Medical Center] with
the family from Mississippi who brought their dog up to visit.
We saw three Marines in Bethesda, three Marines, and both legs
are shot off. I held the mother of a 19-year-old Marine who
lost both legs, and all I can say is, this country better be--
excuse me--better be sure of what we are going to be doing in
the future.
Your work is so critical to the success of our military,
but the success of this Nation. If you have any comments,
please. If you don't, I just thank you for listening to me.
Dr. Perry. I thank you for your comments.
The Chairman. Mr. Larsen.
Mr. Larsen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Perry, in your testimony, in your joint testimony, you
discussed some of the work that you will be doing, and the
first--one of the first points the panel makes is that you will
look at the nature of 21st century conflict. So a question for
you, Dr. Perry, on this point.
Now, JFCOM [Joint Forces Command] recently completed their
report on a joint operating environment, looking out 25 years,
looking at a variety of trends in the world, and what does that
mean for the use of our military. And what I see you all will
do is essentially take a look at some of the same issues and
then review trends, symmetries, concept of operations that
characterize our military balance with potential adversaries.
It seems to me, is there a space in between that you might
need to be looking at, as well? You look at the environment,
but you look at these trends. I know you look at resource
requirements, as well. You will say you will look at resource
requirements.
Are you going to look at trends in the capabilities,
though, that we will need in order to address those trends?
Because it seems that resources would be--kinds of things that
we need to do versus looking at trends in the world and then
jumping to, ``Here are the things we need to build.''
So is there--are you considering that? Or am I missing
something? Am I reading too much into the testimony? Am I
reading too little into the testimony?
Mr. Hadley. I think one of the things that the Department
has done and we will do is look at, are there trends in our
capabilities that put us in a better position to deal with
these threats 20 years out?
Mr. Larsen. Right.
Mr. Hadley. And are we making sufficient investment in
those capabilities to bring them online? The investment this
country has made in ballistic missile defense, for example, has
put us in a much better position than we were 20 years ago, so
I think we will clearly be looking at those things as part of
our work.
Mr. Larsen. I guess what I am just getting at is that we
tend to--we tend to look at things we ought to be building
instead of the things we ought to be doing and then let that
drive what we ought to build. But we would like to--
unfortunately, I think to our detriment, look at--we like to
count up things as opposed to count things we ought to do and
then decide what things we ought to build to do that.
Mr. Hadley. Right. And I thought, actually, one of the
things I liked about the QDR is they talked about
capabilities--i.e., things we ought to have and do, in terms of
military capabilities--and then capacity, which gets into the
number issue.
Mr. Larsen. Right.
Mr. Hadley. I think breaking those out is useful. They
focused on capabilities and made some down payments on the
capabilities we need 20 years out.
Mr. Larsen. Right.
Mr. Hadley. We need to assess whether that is coming along
fast enough. But then they also need to look at the capacity
issue, because there is a numbers issue----
Mr. Larsen. Right, there is.
Mr. Hadley [continuing]. That needs to be addressed. I
think we will look at both.
Mr. Larsen. Second point, on the whole-of-government
capabilities--and this--I am not sure--I am not sure how far
the Clinton administration got into this and the NSC [National
Security Council], but certainly when you were at the NSC in
the Bush administration, we were all kind of forced to look at
whole-of-government capabilities with Iraq and then--well,
Afghanistan, Iraq, and then back to Afghanistan again.
It is something we are trying to--we are grappling with
here on the Armed Services Committee when we look at 1206 and
1207 and 1208 sections of the defense authorization bill and
then looking at this concept of pooled resources that has been
floating around for the last several months.
Are you at all considering what that might look like, how
you--I don't know--look at whole-of-government capabilities?
And can you come up with a different term, as well, that is
more accurate--accurate with what we are trying to do? Is this
a trend in capability that you will be looking at more in
depth? And can we expect to see some feedback on that?
Dr. Perry. Yes, we have a whole--a panel dedicated to
looking at that issue. We think it is very important. And it is
not just the question of how you organize it. It is a question
of how you fund to do it.
Mr. Larsen. Right.
Dr. Perry. And some of the funding is not going to be
Defense Department funding. And so how do we integrate that?
Mr. Larsen. That is--yes, right.
Dr. Perry. And how does the Congress integrate--it is
various committees working that--it is a very difficult issue.
Mr. Larsen. Right. I would suggest to you it won't even be
just Defense and the State Department, which is how we tend to
think about it around here, as well. In a lot of ways, it
really goes beyond those two departments.
Mr. Hadley. It does, but I would hope that we would--and
the Congress in general, and perhaps this committee in
particular, would take the opportunity of the QDDR process, the
Quadrennial--I guess they call it--Diplomacy and Development
Review the State Department is doing, which, as I understand
it, is going to address some of these issues.
Mr. Larsen. Yes, thanks a lot.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Bartlett, please.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you both for your service and your
testimony.
You know, when we fight today, we are accustomed to having
a carrier task force just offshore. We are accustomed to having
unchallenged airways and sea lanes to deliver the supplies we
need. We are accustomed to having total air superiority.
The reality is that, if we were to go to war with a peer--
and there will be a peer in the future--we will be in a very
different world. For instance, the Chinese anti-ship missile
means that our carrier task force can't come within 1,200 miles
of where it is sited. If it is sited on a ship, that means we
can't come within 1,200 miles of anywhere in the whole world.
The new surface-to-air missiles pretty much deny access--
the best of those deny access to our cargo planes. And the
Russians will sell you--and they are now--will sell you a 100-
knot torpedo. They are now developing a 200-knot torpedo. That
means the sea lanes would be very iffy, if you were against a
peer and if the peer had that capability.
The Russians have just launched a new plane, the PAK FA
[Perspektivny aviatsionny kompleks frontovoy aviatsii,
literally ``Future Frontline Aircraft System''], I think they
call it. They developed it to best our 22 [F-22]. We are now
not building the 22. Secretary Rove sat in my office not very
long ago and told me that the best combination of fighter
aircraft and pilot in the world was not an American plane and
an American pilot. It was the--it was the Russian plane at that
time and a pilot from another country, which I won't--which I
won't mention.
I see this review as business as usual. I don't see any
reflections that fighting a peer in the future, that we need to
have a very different approach than this. And it is also very
clear to me that we cannot continue to fight the kind of wars
we are fighting today the way we are fighting. They are hugely
asymmetric wars. It cost them very little to put these IEDs
out, and we spent $40 billion on one asset alone. That is MRAPs
[Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle].
We cannot continue to fight these wars. Our enemy has the
capability of an endless succession of these wars, which will
eventually bleed us dry if we choose to engage ourselves in
these wars this way.
Am I wrong to have these concerns about a potential peer in
the future? And these are not to-be-developed capabilities.
This anti-ship missile is real today. It is a real game-
changer. The best surface-to-air missiles would deny access to
almost all of our cargo planes. And the 200-knot torpedo--the
100-knot torpedo is enough, thank you--means that the sea lanes
would be really, really challenged. And we will not have air
superiority if the--if our enemy has the equivalent of the
Russian PAK FA plane.
And can we really continue to fight these hugely asymmetric
wars? It must be at, what, at least 1,000 to 1 in dollar cost
for these wars? If we are going to continue fighting them,
don't we have to fight them another way? Am I wrong to have
these concerns?
Dr. Perry. Two comments, Mr. Bartlett. First of all, I
believe that the actions--the capability we now have in air
superiority and the actions we have taken to try to sustain
that will be successful. But on your issue of asymmetric
warfare, I do not think we have an adequate answer at this
point to the asymmetric threats that we are faced with.
And that, in my judgment, is an area in which we should be
paying much more attention to, and it certainly will be part of
our consideration in our review.
Mr. Bartlett. Steve.
Mr. Hadley. I agree with that. It is an area of concern. It
needs to be addressed as part of our review. And I think it
needs to be addressed more intensively by the Department.
Mr. Bartlett. We are following Osama bin Laden's playbook.
This is exactly what he wanted us to do, was to engage in this
kind of asymmetric war, and he made the statement that, if they
would continue this, they would ultimately bleed us dry. Why do
we choose to follow his playbook in the way we fight these
wars?
Mr. Hadley. I guess the one thing I would say, that I think
that in the experience we have had in Iraq in the last couple
years and in--as those are being applied in Afghanistan, we
have made progress in dealing with these asymmetric threats.
Mr. Bartlett. Well, we have, indeed, but at huge, huge
cost. We are doing exactly what he said we would do, and that
is spend huge amounts of money. They would eventually bleed us
dry, which is what they are doing, aren't they?
Mr. Hadley. Well, you know, there is an enormous advantage
in the asymmetric threat. It is cheaper. It is more
distributed. And the cost to protect our people from it can be
very high.
But I think the truth is, we have made considerable success
in the war on terror generally and in Afghanistan and Iraq,
notwithstanding the challenge.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman from Maryland.
Mr. Akin.
Mr. Akin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Had a couple of questions and probably not enough time to
ask them all. The first is an overarching concern that I have
particularly sensed in the last couple of years on this
committee, and I think it relates to the Quadrennial Defense
Review, and that is a lack of--or complete no transparency
between the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense, and Congress, and
particularly this committee.
My concern is this. We are all people that work in the
political world. We know there is a certain amount of money we
are going to spend on defense. It seems to me that the Pentagon
should say to us, okay, you guys are the ones who are giving us
the money. And for this much money, we can buy you this much
security.
But if you reduce the money to this percent of GDP [gross
domestic product] or however you want to say it with this size
budget, there are areas where we are taking risks. And these
are the danger points and where they occur time-wise, and you
have to assess Congress whether or not those risks are worth
taking, given the amount of money that we have to spend. That
is the way I think the thing should work.
In fact, what it seems like we are being told everything is
always okay, no problem, and we continue to reduce the amount
of money that we are spending. And I don't think that we are
doing that with an adequate assessment of, really, what are the
dangers and where are the places where we have made some
assumptions that we need to be aware of?
And, of course, part of that is, is--you know, when you do
the Quadrennial Defense Review, the theory is, is that you just
basically do that based on what the need is, not on what the
finances will carry. And yet our continuous concern is, is that
those things are written for a certain size budget.
And so I am concerned--and sometimes that occurs in this
committee--I am asking questions that are very obvious,
straightforward questions, and I just don't get answers. I can
take it to a top-secret security, and I still--we are just
getting blown off. We are not getting straight answers to very
obvious, straightforward kinds of questions.
And so that is my concern. And I hope that you will help
us, and that is part of the reason why we have tried to
commission you to take a look at this and to say independently,
what are our risks?
I think the previous questioner, Roscoe, has the same kind
of concern, because he is on Airpower now, and I am on
Seapower, and we see the Sunburn missile and we see ballistic
missiles that we can't stop, and we see increasing stealth and
increasing distance on the Chinese diesel boats, the denied
access and all.
And we are saying to ourselves, wait a minute, we don't
have a product that stops this kind of threat. What is our
level of vulnerability? If you could respond to that. I know it
is a very general question, but if you could respond to that.
Dr. Perry. Only to say that that is the nature of this, the
study we are doing, trying to answer the kind of questions that
you are asking. I don't believe we will be fully successful,
but that is what we are trying--that is what we will be trying
to do.
Steve, do you want to add to that?
Mr. Akin. I think, also, if you answer in terms of what is
your risk at one time period in history, too, you know, because
the President said, well, we are going to cancel missile
defense in Poland and the Czech Republic, and we are going to
replace it with the missile defense that comes off a destroyer,
so we are going to replace a 20-ton missile--anti-missile
missile with a two-ton.
Well, the trouble is, we can't really stop a ballistic
missile using what we have now on our Aegis missile system.
Maybe we are going to build that missile in a few years, but we
don't have it right now.
And so there is a window of vulnerability, and that is our
question is, where are those? And time-wise, where are they,
relative to what our planning is?
The other question I had was--and that is a national
security strategy, we are supposed to--the administration is
supposed to produce a national security strategy. And then the
QDR is supposed to connect in with that. Well, of course, they
haven't done it.
So our question is, is that a big problem, as well?
Mr. Hadley. Obviously, you would have liked to have started
with a national security strategy. I think the QDR did as best
as they could taking the guidance they had from the President
and what was from the last administration, but it is not
perfect. It is not perfect. And I think they acknowledge that.
Mr. Akin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman from Missouri.
We have no more questioners. Mr. McKeon?
With that, gentlemen, we thank you very much for your
testimony and for the work you have done. I think by now you
have a better understanding or better thought about our
concerns and some of the areas in which you should delve in
your investigation and your studies.
It is a monumental task that you have. And we look forward
to your thoughts. And in the meantime, we just want you to know
we appreciate it.
[Whereupon, at 11:48 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
April 15, 2010
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
April 15, 2010
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DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
April 15, 2010
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[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
April 15, 2010
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. ORTIZ
Mr. Ortiz. With the increase in violence along our Southern border,
do you feel the QDR did enough to address the issue, and was it forward
looking enough in terms of potential resources and personnel costs?
Dr. Perry and Mr. Hadley. While this QDR gives priority to winning
the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, it states that:
The United States will continue to work toward a secure and
democratic Western Hemisphere by developing regional defense
partnerships that address domestic and transnational threats
such as narcoterrorist organizations, illicit trafficking, and
social unrest. We will continue to work closely with Mexico to
improve our cooperative approach to border security, enhance
defense capacity for coordinated operations, and address other
issues. (page 61)
The QDR Independent Panel understands your concerns regarding the
increase in violence along the Southern border of the United States and
the implications for the Department of Defense. The QDR is quite clear
about the Department of Defense's intention to work closely with
Mexican authorities to improve cooperation on issues such as border
security and enhancing capacities for combined operations. While the
report does mention this matter, it is one among many that comprise the
many national security responsibilities of the Department. The Panel
will review the totality of these responsibilities as part of its
analysis.
Mr. Ortiz. Looking into the part NORTHCOM will play in addressing
this violence, do you feel that the QDR adequately dealt with the role
of NORTHCOM in response to current and future border violence?
Dr. Perry and Mr. Hadley. As you know, the ``United States Northern
Command conducts operations to deter, prevent, and defeat threats and
aggression aimed at the United States, its territories and interests
within assigned areas of responsibility; as directed by the President
or Secretary of Defense, [it] provides military assistance to civil
authorities, including consequence management operations.''
In accordance with Section 202 of Title 6, U.S. Code, the
Department of Homeland Security is responsible for ``securing the
borders, territorial waters, ports, terminals, waterways, and air,
land, and sea transportation systems of the United States'' and
``preventing the entry of terrorists and the instruments of terrorism
into the United States.'' DoD's role in the execution of this
responsibility, as noted earlier, is to provide support to DHS, when
requested, appropriate, lawful, and approved by the President or the
Secretary of Defense.
The QDR Independent Panel's work is ongoing and to the fullest
extent possible, the ``Whole of Government'' Capabilities Sub-panel
will attempt to examine the role of NORTHCOM in response to current and
future border violence.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. FRANKS
Mr. Franks. Is it your understanding that the QDR staff conducted
the 2010 review with the understanding that the Review's
recommendations must remain under fixed top line and that no increase
in personnel end strength were allowed? If that was the case, do you
consider it possible to conduct an objective assessment of the needs of
our armed forces with such limits in place?
Dr. Perry and Mr. Hadley. As Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates,
has noted in the Preface of the QDR: the QDR ``places the current
conflicts at the top of our budgeting, policy, and program priorities,
thus ensuring that those fighting America's wars and their families--on
the battlefield, in the hospital, or on the home front--receive the
support they need and deserve.''
Furthermore, Secretary Gates states:
The FY 2010 defense budget represented a down payment on re-
balancing the department's priorities in keeping with the
lessons learned and capabilities gained from the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Those shifts are continued in the FY 2011
budget and institutionalized in this QDR and out-year budget
plan. (page i)
The Independent Panel intends to closely examine the issue of
whether the QDR is an adequate vehicle for a strategic document that
looks ahead 20 years, and is informed by, but not constrained by the
budget.
Mr. Franks. A quick review of a number of the major acquisition
programs across the services indicates that we are not now, and haven't
for many years, been funding modernization at an adequate level. Do you
have any preliminary views on this subject at this point?
Dr. Perry and Mr. Hadley. The QDR Independent Panel does not have
preliminary views on the adequate level for modernization funding; an
assessment of modernization rests on assessments of requirements and
necessary forces structures to meet our future security needs. We have
established the Future of 21st Century Conflict and the Acquisition and
Contracting Sub-panels which, along with the Force Structure and
Personnel Sub-Panel, will examine this issue to fullest the extent
possible.
Mr. Franks. Do you intend to request a meeting with the Joint
Chiefs to learn their views directly on the adequacy or inadequacy of
the top line funding profile in the Obama administration's Future Years
Defense Plan?
Dr. Perry and Mr. Hadley. The QDR Independent Panel intends to meet
with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to receive their input on a wide variety
of issues, including the Obama administration's Future Years Defense
Plan.
Mr. Franks. We have been told by the QDR staff that they conducted
the Review with the understanding that the defense top line was fixed
and that there could be no increase in service end strength. Is it
possible to undertake such a strategic, long-term assessment with those
variables fixed?
Dr. Perry and Mr. Hadley. As Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates,
has noted in the Preface of the QDR: the QDR ``places the current
conflicts at the top of our budgeting, policy, and program priorities,
thus ensuring that those fighting America's wars and their families--on
the battlefield, in the hospital, or on the home front--receive the
support they need and deserve.''
Furthermore, Secretary Gates states:
The FY 2010 defense budget represented a down payment on re-
balancing the department's priorities in keeping with the
lessons learned and capabilities gained from the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Those shifts are continued in the FY 2011
budget and institutionalized in this QDR and out-year budget
plan. (page i)
The Independent Panel intends to closely examine the issue of
whether the QDR is an adequate vehicle for a strategic document that
looks ahead 20 years, and is informed by, but not constrained by the
budget.
Mr. Franks. The 2010 QDR is nearly silent on the rapid expansion
and modernization of China's naval power. Is it possible to conduct a
strategic review of American military requirements and not address, in
a sober manner, the growth of China's military power? What are your
views?
Dr. Perry and Mr. Hadley. The QDR states that:
China's growing presence and influence in regional and global
economic security affairs is one of the most consequential
aspects of the evolving strategic landscape in the Asia-Pacific
region and globally. In particular, China's military has begun
to develop new roles, missions, and capabilities in support of
its growing regional and global interests, which could enable
it to play a more substantial and constructive role in
international affairs. (page 60)
However, the QDR continues:
Lack of transparency and the nature of China's military
development and decision-making process raise legitimate
questions about its future conduct and intentions within Asia
and beyond. Our relationship with China must therefore be
multidimensional and undergirded by a process of enhancing
confidence and reducing mistrust in a manner that reinforces
mutual interests. (page 60)
The QDR Independent Panel's work is ongoing, but it intends to
closely examine the future of the relationship between the United
States and China and the implications for the Department of Defense.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LAMBORN
Mr. Lamborn. In the absence of National Security Strategy, what
will the Independent Panel use for policy guidance and direction for
its assessment of the QDR? Does the fact that the QDR was completed
without an updated National Security Strategy raise any concerns for
the Independent panel?
Dr. Perry and Mr. Hadley. The Independent Panel recognizes that,
ideally, the National Security Strategy would come before the QDR.
Given the constraints the Administration was under; however, the
Department of Defense has produced a well-researched and meaningful
QDR.
The Independent Panel has established a ``QDR and Beyond'' Sub-
panel to examine the QDR process. Since the QDR is now in its fourth
iteration, the Panel plans to assess the entire QDR process. The Panel
will evaluate Congressional direction and Department implementation,
the realistic timelines for developing future QDRs, and appropriate
integration with other related studies including the National Security
Strategy (NSS), Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR),
Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), the Nuclear
Posture Review (NPR) and the Ballistic Missile Defense Review. We also
note that the QDR states that it was instructed to use as a strategic
underpinning the 2008 National Defense Strategy, which laid out
strategic objectives for the Department.
Mr. Lamborn. In your testimony you indicate the panel will address
``Whole of Government'' Capabilities, to include the increasing role of
the civilian DoD workforce and the use of contractors in conflict
zones. The Administration has expressed significant goals for
insourcing inherently governmental and closely associated inherently
governmental functions, yet no clear definitions or criteria for the
functions have been published. Does the panel plan to make
recommendations regarding the criteria, definitional guidance and/or
specific functions for insourcing as part of its efforts?
Dr. Perry and Mr. Hadley. The work of the ``Whole of Government''
Capabilities Sub-panel is ongoing, however, the goal of the Sub-panel
will be to examine, in addition to other issues.
Mr. Lamborn. There are several significant force structure concerns
within the QDR, including fighter gaps in the Air Force and Navy. Has
your Panel identified the capability gaps within the force structure
concept outlined in the QDR? What force structure risk areas is your
panel looking at and do you have any preliminary findings?
Dr. Perry and Mr. Hadley. The Independent panel does not have any
preliminary findings regarding capability gaps as this question assumes
within the force structure concept outlined in the QDR. The Force
Structure and Personnel Sub-panel is currently examining capability
gaps to the fullest extent possible.
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