[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-177]
THE FINAL REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT PANEL'S ASSESSMENT OF THE
QUADRENNIAL DEFENSE REVIEW
__________
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
JULY 29, 2010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TONGRESS.#13
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Eleventh Congress
IKE SKELTON, Missouri, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' McKEON,
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas California
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
ADAM SMITH, Washington W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina JEFF MILLER, Florida
ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania JOE WILSON, South Carolina
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California ROB BISHOP, Utah
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio
RICK LARSEN, Washington JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
JIM COOPER, Tennessee MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa ROB WITTMAN, Virginia
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona DUNCAN HUNTER, California
NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts JOHN C. FLEMING, Louisiana
GLENN NYE, Virginia MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida
LARRY KISSELL, North Carolina TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico CHARLES K. DJOU, Hawaii
FRANK M. KRATOVIL, Jr., Maryland
BOBBY BRIGHT, Alabama
SCOTT MURPHY, New York
WILLIAM L. OWENS, New York
JOHN GARAMENDI, California
MARK CRITZ, Pennsylvania
LEONARD BOSWELL, Iowa
DAN BOREN, Oklahoma
HANK JOHNSON, Georgia
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
----------
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2010
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, July 29, 2010, The Final Report of The Independent
Panel's Assessment of the Quadrennial Defense Review........... 1
Appendix:
Thursday, July 29, 2010.......................................... 35
----------
THURSDAY, JULY 29, 2010
THE FINAL REPORT OF THE 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........... 5
Perry, Hon. William J., Co-Chairman, Quadrennial Defense Review
Independent Panel, United States Institute for Peace........... 6
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck''.............................. 42
Perry, Hon. William J., joint with Hon. Stephen J. Hadley.... 45
Skelton, Hon. Ike............................................ 39
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
THE FINAL REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT PANEL'S ASSESSMENT OF THE
QUADRENNIAL DEFENSE REVIEW
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Thursday, July 29, 2010.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:11 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. Welcome to the Armed Services Committee.
Today we meet to receive testimony from the co-chairmen of the
Independent Panel reviewing the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review
[QDR]. Joining us today are the Honorable William J. Perry and
the Honorable Stephen J. Hadley. We certainly welcome you and
thank you for another one of your great contributions to our
country. We appreciate it.
Today we receive the final report from the panel as
required by last year's defense bill. This is the fourth QDR
oversight-related event this committee has held, and I think
that reflects how important we consider the QDR to be.
I would like to tell you right at the outset how impressed
I am with this report. It will take several close readings to
fully digest it, but I have to tell you, it has clearly met
Congress' intent. And furthermore this bipartisan panel of
experts has unanimously endorsed the entire report and that, of
course, is a testimony to the co-chairs' wisdom and leadership.
As I mentioned at our last hearing, the report of the QDR
is an important input into how Congress conducts its oversight.
Conducting that review is an enormous task, and I will take a
moment to once again commend the secretary, Secretary Gates on
his leadership. He, rightly in my opinion, focused his effort
on winning the wars we are in today.
But we cannot do that at the expense of preparing for the
future, and there I am concerned that the QDR came up a bit
short. I see that the independent panel has come to about the
same conclusion.
I hope to use our time today to explore those findings and
hear your recommendations so that Congress can get on with our
critical task of providing appropriate resources on national
security.
I see, for example, that you recommend an increase in our
force structure in the Asia-Pacific area, and specifically
highlight the need for a larger Navy. Of course, I have been
making the very same point for years.
On the other hand, I was very surprised to see the report
indicate that you thought the current end-strength of our
active duty ground forces, Army and Marines, is sufficient. I
respect your opinion, but I find that difficult to understand.
Watching the toll these wars have placed on our forces, I
have been an advocate for increasing force strength for quite a
while now, actually beginning back in 1995. I would caution
against being too optimistic about the demand for these forces
in the future and would like to hear the reasoning behind your
panel's position.
I know we will get into specifics of that recommendation
and many others, but first I would like to say that as a
longtime supporter of the professional military education [PME]
system and the Goldwater-Nichols personnel reforms in the
Department of Defense [DOD], I was encouraged to see how
thoroughly the review panel treated those topics.
You make a lot of very interesting recommendations.
Establishing an interagency assignment exchange program,
incentives to encourage civilian national security
professionals to participate in such a program, and the
creation of a consortium of schools and universities to develop
and teach a common national security education curriculum.
I believe such steps are the only way to create effective,
long-lasting cultural change in our stovepiped national
security system. We must focus on people.
The review panel has charged Congress to act on these
important recommendations. I encourage my colleagues to
strongly consider their recommendations. As the panel's report
says, our national security system was designed for a world
that has long since disappeared.
We must find a new approach to meet the dynamic and quite
complex threats of today. These interagency national security
personnel reforms recommended by the panel are, frankly, a good
place to start.
Now, let me turn to my ranking member and a good friend,
the gentleman from California, Mr. McKeon.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Skelton can be found in the
Appendix on page 39.]
STATEMENT OF HON. HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' MCKEON, A REPRESENTATIVE
FROM CALIFORNIA, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. McKeon. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Welcome back
to our witnesses, our co-chairs Secretary Perry, Ambassador
Hadley, thank you for being here this morning. I really want to
commend you for agreeing to serve as panel co-chairs and
congratulate you on delivering a nonpartisan consensus report.
You know, in this time of so much partisanship you are
really to be commended, you and the members of your panel for
how you have pulled together and when I say not bipartisan,
nonpartisan report I think you have done an outstanding job.
Let me also take a moment to thank the other panel members,
those who are here and those who are not able to be here. I
would particularly like to thank my appointees to the panel,
Ambassador Edelman and Senator Talent for their hard work and
dedication to the panel.
Let me start by praising this report. It is a substantive,
provocative, and responsible product. I anticipate the panel's
findings and recommendations will be studied on both sides of
the river and will impact the work of this committee.
Most importantly this report provides to Congress what the
2010 QDR failed to do. It took a look at the challenges our
military will face beyond the next five years and made
recommendations free of budgetary constraints about the type of
force and capabilities our military will need for tomorrow.
The report rightly states that our Nation cannot afford
business as usual, and warns of a potential train wreck coming
in the areas of personnel, acquisition, and force structure.
Significantly, the report offers a realistic view of the
global security environment: that maintaining and growing our
alliances will place an increased demand on American hard power
and require an increase in our military's force structure.
The release of your panel report cannot come at a better
time. Despite the many challenges our military faces,
Washington is abuzz with talk of cutting the Defense budget to
solve the enormous federal debt.
Just last week, the New York Times ran a front page story
saying that, ``The Pentagon is facing intensifying political
and economic pressures to restrain its budget, setting up the
first serious debate since the terrorist attacks of 2001 about
the size and costs of the armed services.''
What it appears to be a serious debate on Defense spending
as the New York Times suggests, then I think this panel's views
need to be front and center.
As we consider and discuss the panel's findings and
recommendations, we must keep in mind that this report reflects
the consensus views of a bipartisan group of 20 national
security experts.
This panel truly transcends partisan divide. In my opinion,
the panel's report repudiates those seeking a peace dividend
and reaffirms the need to prioritize investment in our national
defense.
While the report covers a lot of ground on issues ranging
from acquisition and contracting to whole-of-government reform,
I want to focus on the core issues of global threats, force
structure, and modernization.
This panel has a number of strong statements on the
military's role in securing America's interests in the world.
While it has become in vogue to bemoan the militarization of
foreign policy, I think the report gets the balance correct.
You rightly state that the last 20 years have shown that
America does not have the option of abandoning a leadership
role in support of its national interests. Military decline is
not an option.
With respect to force structure, the panel echoes many of
the views expressed by members of this committee. We share the
panel's concern that there is a growing gap between our
interests and our military capability to protect those
interests in the face of a complex and challenging security
environment.
And while the Secretary of Defense may think the total
tonnage of the U.S. Navy compared to the tonnage of other
navies is the metric for assessing our ship requirement, many
on this committee will agree with the panel's finding that
military power is a function of quantity as well as quality.
If we are going to abandon the current decline and malaise
and reassert America's global leadership role, the United
States must have sufficient naval forces to patrol all the
world's oceans. Numbers do matter.
Thus, I welcome and am interested in learning more about
the panel's recommendation to increase the size of the Navy and
Air Force. Moreover, I hope our witnesses will discuss why the
panel concluded that the QDR force structure may not be
sufficient to assure others that the U.S. can meet its treaty
commitments in the face of China's military capabilities.
I also welcome the panel's recognition that part and parcel
of force structure is addressing modernization. Our committee's
many hearings seem to validate the report's finding that
modernization has suffered for a long time because of the need
to sustain readiness and the cost of current operations. I
share your view that modernization is now coming due.
Finally, this report makes significant contributions to
challenges the department faces in acquisition and contracting.
However, I think the report rightly puts those challenges in
perspective.
I agree with the finding that we cannot reverse the decline
of shipbuilding, buy enough naval aircraft, recapitalize Army
equipment, buy the F-35 requirement, purchase a new aerial
tanker, increase deep strike capability, and recapitalize the
bomber fleet just by saving $10 billion to $15 billion that the
Department of Defense hopes to save through acquisition reform.
This report highlights many challenges this committee must
address. I look forward to beginning that work today. Once
again, thank you for being here this morning, for your service,
for your report. I look forward to your testimony, and I yield
back, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McKeon can be found in the
Appendix on page 42.]
The Chairman. I certainly thank the gentleman from
California. Dr. Perry, we understand that you have a drop-dead
time at 12:30. We will do our very, very best. We will stand by
the five-minute rule the very, very best we can.
I also notice members of your panel, General Robert Scales,
Professor Richard Kohn, and John Nagl are with us. He is right
behind you. And staff director Paul Hughes, who helped glue all
this together. We thank you for your service, and we are much
appreciative.
With that, Dr. Perry we will start with you then go on to
Mr. Hadley. You will have to----
Dr. Perry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have divided the
report between Mr. Hadley and myself and actually he is going
to start first. Thank you.
The Chairman. Mr. Hadley, please.
STATEMENT OF HON. STEPHEN J. HADLEY, CO-CHAIRMAN, QUADRENNIAL
DEFENSE REVIEW INDEPENDENT PANEL, UNITED STATES INSTITUTE FOR
PEACE
Mr. Hadley. We saved the heavy lifting for the secretary.
Chairman Skelton, Ranking Member McKeon, we want to thank you
for the opportunity to appear before you and members of this
distinguished committee to discuss the final report of the
Quadrennial Defense Review independent panel.
The Congress and Secretary Gates gave us a remarkable set
of panel members, who devoted an enormous amount of time and
effort to this project. It was a model of decorum and
bipartisan legislative-executive branch cooperation.
Paul Hughes as executive director of the panel ably led a
talented expert staff and the result is the unanimous report
you have before you entitled ``The QDR in Perspective, Meeting
America's National Security Needs in the 21st Century.''
Our report is divided into five parts. The first part
conducts a brief survey of American foreign policy with special
emphasis on the missions that America's military has been
called upon to perform since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
From the strategic habits and actual decisions of American
presidents since 1945, habits and decisions that have shown a
remarkable degree of bipartisan consistency, we deduce four
enduring national interests which will continue to transcend
political differences and animate American policy in the
future.
Those enduring national interests include the defense of
the American homeland, assured access to the sea, air, space
and cyberspace, the preservation of a favorable balance of
power across Eurasia that prevents authoritarian domination of
that region and providing for the global common good through
such actions as humanitarian aid, development assistance, and
disaster relief.
We also discussed the five greatest potential threats to
those interests that are likely to arise over the next
generation. Those threats include but are not limited to
radical Islamist extremism and the threat of terrorism, the
rise of new global great powers in Asia, continued struggle for
power in the Persian Gulf, and the greater Middle East and
accelerating global competition for resources and persistent
problems of failed and failing states.
These five global trends have framed a range of choices for
the United States. We talk about this in the introduction to
our report. We note the various tools of smart power,
diplomacy, engagement, trade, other things that will
increasingly be needed to protect our Nation and its interests.
We talk about the opportunity of using international
institutions, adapting them to the new requirements of the 21st
century, and creating new institutions as appropriate.
But we emphasize that the current trends are likely to
place an increased demand on American hard power to preserve
regional balances. That while diplomacy and development have
important roles to play, the world's first order concerns will
continue to be security concerns.
In the next few chapters we turn to the capabilities that
our government must develop and sustain in order to protect our
enduring interests. We first discuss the civilian element of
national power, what Secretary Gates has called ``the tools of
soft power.''
We make a number of recommendations for the structural and
cultural changes in both the executive branch and the
legislative branch that will be necessary if these elements of
national power are to play their role in protecting America's
enduring interests.
The panel notes with extreme concern that our current
federal government structure, both executive and legislative,
and in particular those related to security, were fashioned in
the 1940s and they work at best imperfectly today. A new
approach is needed, and we tried to describe that approach in
our report.
Let me turn to my colleague, Bill Perry, to summarize the
balance of our report.
[The joint prepared statement of Mr. Hadley and Dr. Perry
can be found in the Appendix on page 45.]
STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM J. PERRY, CO-CHAIRMAN, QUADRENNIAL
DEFENSE REVIEW INDEPENDENT PANEL, UNITED STATES INSTITUTE FOR
PEACE
Dr. Perry. Thank you, Steve. And thank you very much, Mr.
Chairman and Mr. McKeon.
For many decades during the Cold War, the primary mission
of the Defense Department was to build a force capable of
containing and deterring the Soviet Union.
The Defense Department recognized that we might be faced
with other missions, but we considered them to be lesser
included cases. That is whatever force we had capable of doing
the primary mission would automatically be capable of doing the
other missions.
In 1993, when I became the deputy secretary, the Cold War
was over. We needed a new force structure, and we concluded
then--we created something called the Bottom-Up Review that
identified the primary mission of preparing for two major
regional conflicts. And we considered there would be other
missions, but they would be lesser included cases.
Today, the assumptions of the Cold War in the 1990s are no
longer valid. A major portion of the U.S. military today is
involved in two insurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Therefore, not surprisingly this QDR focused on success in Iraq
and Afghanistan. I must say if I were the Secretary of Defense
today I would have done the same thing.
On the other hand, we do need to consider missions that go
on 20 years into the future. We do need to be building today
the forces capable of dealing with these future contingencies.
Indeed, we believed, the whole panel unanimously believed,
that a force planning construct to deal with these futures
would be a powerful lever to shape the Defense Department. And
because of the absence of this in the QDR, we decided we would
offer our own judgment as to what those missions should be and
how they might be met.
We concluded that the recent additions made to the ground
forces will need to be sustained for the foreseeable future. We
concluded that the Air Force has about the right structure
except for the need to add long-range strike, more long-range
strike.
We considered, however, a need, a definite need to increase
the maritime force to sustain the ability to transit freely in
the western Pacific. That need is at least as strong as it was
during the Bottom-Up Review, and therefore we suggested that
the force, the naval forces postulated in the Bottom-Up Review
might be a baseline to consider.
We also noted the Defense Department needs to be prepared
to assist civil departments in the event of an attack on the
homeland and the cyber field. And we concluded that a portion
of the National Guard should be dedicated to homeland security,
in fact, generally that we needed to rethink the contract with
the Guard and Reserve forces.
We observed that a major recapitalization will be required,
particularly when we consider the wear and tear of our
equipment during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, the
directive of Secretary Gates for efficiencies in the
acquisition field is a good start, but we unanimously concluded
it was not sufficient.
That is additional topline will be required to meet the
needs we have laid out. This will be expensive, but deferring
recapitalization will entail even greater expenses in the
future.
We looked specifically at the field of personnel. We all
believe that the all-volunteer force has been a great success,
but the dramatic increases in cost in the last few years simply
cannot be sustained.
We must seriously address this issue, and the failure to do
so will lead either to a reduction in force, a reduction in
benefits, or a compromised all-volunteer force, none of which
are desirable outcomes.
To do this we must reconsider longstanding personnel
practices, considering an extended length of expected service.
It is in revising the benefits to emphasize cash instead of
future benefits, to consider a vision in the longstanding up-
and-out policy in the military and to consider a revision of
TRICARE benefits. These are big issues, and I don't need to
tell this panel that they are politically sensitive issues.
We recommended the establishment of a new national
commission on military personnel, comparable to the Gates
Commission back in 1970. The charter of this commission would
be how to implement the changes that we have laid out that need
to be made in personnel policies.
We looked specifically at the question of professional
military education. I must say that I believe that the training
and education programs in the U.S. military have played a key
role in making our military the best in the world. It is
expensive, but it is worth it.
With that in mind, we recommended a full college program
for reserves with summer training and a five-year service
commitment. We recommended expanding the graduate program to
include military affairs, foreign culture, and language. We
recommended a program to provide officers with a sabbatical
year in industry.
As people read this report some, indeed many, may think
that we have made a disproportionate emphasis on professional
military education. And to which I would answer that while our
military does an excellent job in training for doing the
current mission, professional military education prepares our
force for future contingencies.
We did also look at acquisition. We recommended that we
clarify the accountability in the acquisition force. Indeed, we
devote several pages of our report to describing how to go
about doing that.
We made a very specific recommendation that the DOD set a
limit, a limit of five to seven years for delivery of all of
the new defined and desired programs. Five to seven years is
not characteristic of what has been the history in the last
decade.
We have seen too many programs that have gone on for 10,
12, 14 years. I have simply observed that a program that has
gone 10, 12, 14 years is guaranteed to cost too much. It is
guaranteed to overrun. The programs that we have looked back
historically that have been successful, the F-15, the F-16, the
F-117 were all done in a four or five- or six-year timeframe,
and that is no accident.
We argued that we should require dual-source competition
for production programs in all cases where it will provide real
competition. We observed that there is under way right now an
acquisition program to provide for the urgent needs in
Afghanistan.
We commend that program and suggest that we look to
institutionalize how that is done because we need a regular
program for dealing with urgent needs onto the future.
In the field of planning, we recommend the establishment of
an independent strategic review panel, that the legislative and
executive branch would establish in the fall of a presidential
election such a panel, much as in the same way that you
established this panel.
But we would recommend it be done in the fall of a
presidential election year. That panel would convene in January
as the new administration took office and would report six
months later.
Its focus would be on strategic security issues. With that
input, the new national security advisor would then prepare a
National Security Strategy [NSS] involved under the
directorship of the national security advisor with the
involvement of the key departments, certainly including the
Defense Department. This new National Security Strategy plus
the planning program and budgeting system would replace the QDR
in our judgment.
Finally, I would like to thank the Congress and the Defense
Department for giving the panel such a competent and collegial
group of people to work with.
And also I would like to say personally it has been a
privilege and a pleasure to work with Steve Hadley, my co-
chairman. To the extent our report has reached a consensus and
has reached significant and important conclusions, I would give
Steve the primary credit for that. Thank you very much, Mr.
Chairman.
[The joint prepared statement of Dr. Perry and Mr. Hadley
can be found in the Appendix on page 45.]
Mr. Ortiz. [Presiding.] Thank you so much, and we know that
we have two very capable outstanding Americans with us today
testifying before our committee. And I just have maybe a couple
of questions for Dr. Perry and Mr. Hadley. Thank you for
returning back to our committee today.
With the increased activity that we see out of China and
North Korea in the Asian-Pacific affairs, how did you factor in
these potential threats into your overall assessment of future
force structure? And on another note, how do you see the
services balancing the cost of training and equipment with the
increasing cost of manpower?
Dr. Perry. I will take a shot at that then give Steve a
shot as well. The first and I think most important point I
would make is that I consider the U.S. military forces today
capable of handling successfully any military contingency I can
contemplate in the western Pacific theater.
Our recommendations for an increase in maritime forces were
looking primarily to future contingencies, but I do not want to
leave the suggestion that we are inadequate to deal with the
present contingencies because I believe the forces are totally
capable of doing that.
Steve.
Mr. Hadley. I would only add that that we obviously need
to, in this time, use our resources very effectively, to give
effective capability to our military in a way that is as
efficiently done in terms of using the taxpayers' money. And we
propose a number of things. Secretary Gates has proposed a
number of things to save money in the department.
Acquisition reform we think will reduce costs. We think the
overhead initiative Secretary Gates is an important one. We
think it is important to get on to the increasing cost of the
all-volunteer force if we are going to preserve that force.
There are a number of things which we think we can do to
free funds to go into force structure modernization and
preserving and sustaining the all-volunteer force.
It may be that we cannot find enough money within the
defense budget to do what needs to be done, at which point the
view of our commission is increases to the top line may be
required, and I think our guess is probably will be required in
order to do what we need to do now to be ready for the
challenges over the next 20 years.
Dr. Perry. Mr. Chairman, I would like to add one other
comment to that.
Mr. Ortiz. Sure, go right ahead.
Dr. Perry. I was in Korea a week or two after the sinking
of the South Korean ship, and I discussed in some detail with
the Korean officials and our military officials there what I
believe the proper response to that should be.
I recommended then that the South Koreans take major
program to increase their anti-submarine warfare capability and
that U.S. Navy should work cooperatively with them in that.
And I also strongly recommended that there be a very prompt
anti-submarine warfare exercise conducted in that part of the
South Korean naval waters in conjunction with the U.S. Navy.
Those exercises, indeed, are now under way and I am very happy
to see that outcome.
Mr. Ortiz. And I just have another question, short one, and
then I am going to yield to my good friend from California. In
the last years, we have had--I can remember when you joined the
Navy, you stayed in the Navy. When you joined the Air Force,
you stayed in the Air Force. But now we are beginning to see a
lot of boots on the ground from the Navy, from the Air Force.
Was that given a consideration by your commission as to how
we address that? Because we have problems to where sometimes we
feel that some of these Navy ships are not manned well, and we
have to cut corners on maintenance because we have got to put
some of these Navy personnel on the ground. Was that ever
considered? Or should it be considered?
Mr. Hadley. I think it should and I will try on that. I
think our panel did not discuss what I am about to say
explicitly. I believe they would agree with it that we think it
is a good thing that the Navy and the Air Force contributed to
winning the wars we have in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But you are quite right. It has taken a toll on the Air
Force and the Navy and particularly we think prospectively
looking out 20 years. That is why we think we need to make the
force structure adjustment in the Navy that we have
recommended. And that is one of the reasons why we think we
need a fully modernized force, to recognize that that was the
right thing to do, but it did exact a toll.
And so what we have laid out is a strategy to take that
into account and ensure that the Navy and the Air Force will be
able to play over the next 20 years the wide spectrum of roles
we need them to play in order to meet the challenges of the
21st century.
Bill.
Dr. Perry. I think that is well said.
Mr. Ortiz. The gentleman from California, Mr. McKeon.
Mr. McKeon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, the panel
recommends that the 1993 Bottom-Up Review should be the
baseline for our force structure. Please explain why you
recommend we adopt force structure that was recommended 17
years ago?
Dr. Perry. In the focus, particularly on the naval forces,
we observed that the needs for naval forces in 1993 and that
the needs today are at least as great as the needs in 1993 and
the Bottom-Up Review recommended a naval force for that.
We said the force should be no less than that. And so we
used that as a baseline. We were not representing that as being
the last word on what should be considered.
That for us is the baseline in our consideration. We see
the needs of a naval presence, a maritime presence,
particularly in the western Pacific at least as great now as it
was during the Bottom-Up Review.
Steve.
Mr. Hadley. I have nothing really to add to that. I think
it was a combination of the respect for the process that was
done then, and as Dr. Perry said, a notion that if that force
was what we thought was required in what we projected to be a
fairly benign environment and if that environment has been much
more active than we anticipated and probably will continue to
be active over the next 20 years, in some sense we need to at
least have that force. And that is kind of how we backed into
it.
We were not in a position to do the kind of force planning
the Department of Defense would do, but we thought that we
could establish that as a threshold and that is how we
presented it in the report. It least needs to be that force. In
the case of the Army, the Marine Corps, we endorsed the fact
that it is actually a larger, slightly larger force. And we
think that is appropriate.
Mr. McKeon. So that in 17 years, the world hasn't gotten
safer and the 346 ships recommended in the Bottom-Up Review
would be a bottom line, at least needing that many. And I think
we are looking at now we have, what, 278 and the plan was to go
to 313, so we are way behind.
The panel found that the QDR force structure may not be
sufficient to assure others that the U.S. can meet its treaty
commitments in the face of China's military capabilities. Can
you develop this point? Which treaty commitments do you have in
mind and which Chinese capabilities present the greatest
challenge to our force structure, and how does this impact our
allies?
Dr. Perry. The primary treaty responsibilities of course
would be in Japan and Korea. And all of our contingency plans
for dealing with any conflicts involving Korea, for example,
involve a rapid reinforcement of the forces we have there,
primarily naval and air buildup.
Beyond that, we had to be concerned with possible
contingencies that could arise south of there in Taiwan, the
Philippines, South China Sea. All of those argue for a strong
maritime presence in the region.
Steve.
Mr. Hadley. I think it is fair to say that our allies in
the region are nervous about the rise of China. They want us to
engage China positively, to work with China to the extent we
can and we are. But they want us to be there, diplomatically,
economically, and militarily as a hedge, if you will, and also
because they think that contributes to the strength of our
diplomacy, which I think our panel would agree with. And there
has been a lot of press coverage the last day or two of
Secretary of State Clinton's comments in the region, and I
thought that was a good approach.
Dr. Perry. I must say, Mr. McKeon, I do not anticipate any
military conflict with China, and I think indeed if one were to
happen it would be a huge failure on diplomacy on the part of
both countries.
But I also understand that our allies look to the United
States for support in that region, and that if we were not to
provide that support that they would feel obliged to build up
military forces themselves, which would in turn lead to more
military forces in China and would lead to an arms race in that
region which would not only be economically disastrous for
everybody, but would be from a security point of view,
lessening our security, not increasing.
So maintaining a consistently strong military force,
particularly maritime force in the western Pacific, I think is
the best way of avoiding conflict and avoiding that kind of an
arms race.
Mr. McKeon. Peace through strength. The panel concludes
that modernization has suffered for a long time because of the
need to sustain readiness and the cost of current operations.
However, the modernization is now coming due. What steps should
the Defense Department take to address the modernization
problem, and what should be our modernization priorities?
Dr. Perry. I think Secretary Gates has recognized that the
top line budget he has, given the expenses in Afghanistan and
Iraq, are not adequate for sustaining the modernization of the
force. And that is why he has called for a decrease in
acquisition costs through efficiencies.
In my opening statement, I commended him for that move, but
I also observed I do not believe those efficiencies are likely
to provide enough funds to deal with all of the modernization
recapitalization that is required.
Steve.
Mr. Hadley. Our report tries to make a number of additional
suggestions. Secretary Perry talked about the capability you
can reasonably get in five to seven years. The report mentions
two other things I would just underscore.
One is the need in some cases to trade off performance to
maintain cost and schedule. This is not giving our troops less
than what they need in terms of performance, but it is to say,
let us not give our troops more than they need for performance
at the cost of delivering systems too late and over cost.
Now, we need to find a way to make technology work, not
only to ensure our men and women in uniform have the equipment
they need, but also to use technology to drive down costs. You
know, we see it in the IT [information technology] industry all
the time.
We have got to find a way to make technology not only
deliver the performance our troops need, but at increasingly
lower costs so we can do the more than one-for-one replacement
we are going to need to have a fully modernized, adequate force
structure.
Dr. Perry. Mr. McKeon, I would say that of all of the
recommendations we make in this area, the one that would be
most substantial in keeping costs down is the recommendation to
hold procurement time to five to seven years. There is a long
history of just how much the Defense Department overpays for
programs that go on 10 to 12 years.
And the discipline that is needed to keep that from
happening is to start out from the beginning with the program
by holding them to this lesser time scale. That forces them to
make the front-end decisions to keep these costs from blooming.
Mr. McKeon. And that problem accelerates as technology
further accelerates. As you are moving down the line, you keep
wanting to add the latest, latest, latest----
Dr. Perry. Yes.
Mr. McKeon [continuing]. And seeking the perfect and never
quite reach, as you say, the delivery of something that could
help right now.
Dr. Perry. Well, I am a strong advocate for the importance
of technology and giving our military a leverage, a competitive
advantage over other systems. The question is not whether to
use technology, it is how to introduce it.
And if you limit it to five to seven years, that means the
new technology is introduced in the additional mods. For
example, the F-16A is followed by a B, a C, a D, an E, instead
of trying to do all that at the first stage. That is the way we
think it should be done.
Mr. McKeon. And never get A delivered.
Dr. Perry. Yes.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Hadley. And the other thing, if I just might add that
is in the report, that I know the subpanel who worked on this
feels very strongly, we need to clarify roles and have clear
authority and accountability within the OSD [Office of the
Secretary of Defense] but also the service chain, as who is
responsible for delivering the increment of technology on time
and at cost.
It is a muddy picture with lots of layering and lots of
review without clear lines of authority and accountability, and
I think that is also at the heart of our recommendations.
Mr. McKeon. Thank you, and my final question, on page 94 of
the report, the panel states, ``The budget process and current
operational requirements are driven by the staff process and
service priorities most likely shaped by the QDR far more than
the QDR will now shape processes and drive future budgets and
program agendas.''
Is it then fair to say that the panel believes that the
2010 QDR was budget-driven rather than needs-driven?
Dr. Perry. I would say rather that it was driven by the
overriding focus on achieving success in Afghanistan and Iraq.
That was what was driving the QDR.
Mr. McKeon. That is what took it out just to the five years
instead of the----
Dr. Perry. Yes, and then let me repeat also that had I been
the Secretary of Defense, I believe I would have done the same
thing.
Mr. McKeon. This whole process, we are not trying to
criticize the Secretary of Defense.
Dr. Perry. Right.
Mr. McKeon. We are just trying to get to what our needs and
how we----
Dr. Perry. Absolutely.
Mr. McKeon [continuing]. Get there. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. [Presiding.] Dr. Snyder, please.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I see Mr. Coffman
sitting down there and Mr. Boswell over here, and I am reminded
there are some of our most extensive military experience is on
the bottom row, and I am going to yield to Mr. Boswell who has
had more bullet holes and helicopters in Vietnam than most of
us have had rides on helicopters.
I yield my five minutes to Mr. Boswell.
Mr. Boswell. Well, thank you, Mr. Snyder. I appreciate
that. You may have overstated a little bit. I appreciate the
panel and what you bring to us today, and thank you very much
for your work and looking at the force behind you, I appreciate
it as well. I see General Scales I have known for some time. We
have a little history together as well.
I appreciate your comments about the western Pacific. I
think you are right on. I appreciate that. I am concerned
about--it is certainly a changing world after--my goodness, you
have said that very well on your panel. The Iraq-Afghanistan
situation, what is next? I wonder if your panel gave any
consideration to the African continent and what might evolve
there, which I feel a little gut concern about and everything.
And the reason I am piling it all together for just one
setting, I have got an amendment I have got to offer down the
hall in transportation infrastructure momentarily, but the
reduction in force. It happens.
It has happened before and what happens in our preparation
and continuity and experience in the officer ranks and
particularly the noncommissioned officers, concerns me a little
bit how we keep that interest there, very important.
And lastly it would be to do with the--we currently, it
seems to me like we rely and use reserve components, our Guard
and reservists as part of the standing force, just a little
thinking in the deployments and so on.
And I have got about 3,400 to 3,800 going out of my state
as we speak. And so, you know, how they are part and parcel--
how do they fit in to this as we look ahead?
I agree. I questioned at first back when we went all
voluntary, but I think it works. But it is pretty costly. And I
am sure you have had some discussions on that, so with those
things, I would like to hear your comments, and I will have to
depart, and I hope I can get back. Please.
Dr. Perry. And I will offer two comments on those very
important points. And the first is that I believe, and I think
our whole panel are strong supporters of the all-volunteer
force. I, like you, was skeptical of it when it was started.
But I would conclude now it has been a great success. It
has led us to the best military in the world and that we should
do everything we can to sustain it, and the report was done in
that spirit.
Mr. Boswell. I agree.
Dr. Perry. Secondly on the very important strategic
planning issue you raised at the beginning, we apparently had
neither the time nor the resources for doing a full stage
strategic review. And indeed, one of the casualties of that is
not sufficient attention paid to Africa.
But that is one of the reasons we made a strong
recommendation that the next time this is done, it be preceded
by a strategic review panel and that is a very important
recommendation we made in that regard. And I think it is
responsive to the point that you were making.
Steve.
Mr. Hadley. I would add just two points. Our panel thinks
we really need to rethink the relationship between the active
force, the Guard and Reserve, and whether we even need some
mobilization capability beyond the Guard and Reserve. You know,
we had a mobilization strategy, and we now really have a force-
in-being strategy. And the question is which role for the Guard
and Reserve? How much of it is an operational reserve? How much
is it a strategic reserve? How much should it have an enhanced
role for the homeland issues?
All of these need to be rethought because if there are
missions that can be adequately or better done in the Guard and
Reserve it is cheaper. And that would take some of the pressure
off the active force. So this is one of the major agenda items
for the national commission on military----
Mr. Boswell. On that point, I appreciate what you have just
said because, you know, we rely on the Guard as you know and we
have floods and everything else that takes place, and I think
this needs to be really carefully looked at and I think that is
good. Appreciate that.
Mr. Hadley. Second thing I just want to underscore
something that Secretary Perry said about the national security
strategic planning process--sorry.
The Chairman. Go ahead and finish.
Mr. Hadley. We think that what the committee tried to
achieve in the QDR Independent Review Panel can't really get
done adequately that way, and that the committee's objectives
can be better met with this national security strategic
planning process that we describe. Thank you.
Mr. Boswell. Thank you and yield back.
The Chairman. Before I call on the gentleman from Virginia,
Mr. Forbes, Mr. Boswell raises the issue, the history of our
country has been to increase the size of our military and
drastically reduce the size of our military, and this has
happened over centuries.
And Les Aspin, I remember when he was chairman once upon a
time ago commented it would be good for the country should
there be a specific percentage of the Gross Domestic Product
[GDP] to be assigned to the military to the national security.
That is not going to happen. But how are we to carry, Mr.
Boswell's thought a step further, how do we ensure against the
dips and the peaks of interest in and size of and funding of
things for national security? Major, major problem facing us.
Dr. Perry. That is a very important and very fundamental
question. I would not presume to try to answer it fully, but I
want to make two points about it. The first is the investment
we make in professional military education is a huge investment
for preparing us for the future.
It is a small cost that allows us when the new contingency
arises and we need to increase the force, we need be in a new
mission, it means we are doing it from a stronger educational
and analytical base at least.
A second is that we make a more effective use of our Guard
and Reserve forces. We talked about that in the report but I
really believe there is some very deep thought of bottoms up
thinking is needed about the proper contract between our Guard
and Reserves. They are absolutely a key, I believe, to dealing
with the issue that you are describing.
Steve.
Mr. Hadley. I have nothing to add. I think that is a good
answer.
The Chairman. If history serves me correct, and I am sure
the gentleman behind me may correct me on that, General Scales
and Dr. Kohn, the golden era of professional military education
was between the wars, between the First World War and the
Second World War.
It was not by design. It was by happenstance, the shrinking
of the military and those outstanding officers that chose to
stay. So many of them not only attended war colleges, but they
taught at war colleges. Thirty-one of the thirty-four Army
corps commanders in the Second World War taught at one time or
another in the war college system.
How do we--what is bound to happen? The ups and downs in
funding, which I don't like, you don't like, our committee
doesn't like, but it might come to pass. How do we ensure what
you just talked about in having another era of the golden age
of military, professional military education? So that when
trouble does come, you will have those potential leaders,
whether they be platoon leaders or corps leaders ready, willing
and able. How do you do that? How do we recreate what happened
between the wars by happenstance? How do we do that on purpose?
Dr. Perry. I believe the answer to that lies in an
increased emphasis on professional military education. I also
agree with the point you were making that the officers who have
actually taught in the war colleges or taught in the academies
bring a unique background and a unique capability so all of
those points are important.
They are all, by the way, discussed in our report where I
think we pay pretty careful attention to those issues.
Steve.
Mr. Hadley. I think we have one, I think this committee
needs to, as you have for the last ten years, helped show the
way on professional military education to the department.
Second, there is a terrific opportunity.
We have got people coming back from service in Iraq and
Afghanistan who are tactically superb, but they have learned
the wide range of skills they need to do the jobs we ask them
to do in those settings.
I think they will have a demand for the right kind of
professional military education, and if we afford it to them,
it will help keep them in the force and so we don't lose this
capability.
And lastly I think this rebalancing between active, Guard,
Reserve, mobilization beyond Reserve is a way of helping manage
cost but keeping that capability and talent available to the
country. And that is what the national commission on military
personnel needs to address.
Dr. Perry. Mr. Chairman, besides our splendid academies and
military universities, we need to make greater use, I think, of
our regular universities. At Stanford where I teach, we had
each year seven or eight senior officers come and spend a year
at Stanford taking courses, meeting with the policy people
there, teaching courses.
And I have felt this was so successful that in the last
year or two I have worked to expand that program and I worked
at each of the services to send more officers to them. And each
of services have been very forthcoming in that regard. So in a
small way we are working at one university to try to increase
that interaction.
The Chairman. I noticed that there are two recommendations.
One is that there be an entrance exam for war colleges. As I
recall, the history of the German General Staff required an
extensive examination before they were appointed to that
position. Am I correct?
General Scales. Yes, sir. It is true.
Dr. Perry. General Scales said the answer to that is yes,
and I am sure he knows.
The Chairman. And also there is a recommendation that an
officer must serve as a professor before he or she reached the
flag rank. Is that correct?
General Scales. Yes, sir, it is true.
Dr. Perry. Absolutely.
The Chairman. That is great. Okay, thank you.
Mr. Forbes.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to echo what everyone has said about just the
marvel of the great work that you have been able to accomplish.
I wish we could bottle that up in so many different categories
throughout Congress. And so I want to take your words and not
add to them because I know they were well thought out, well-
designed.
And one of the words that you mention in here is a train
wreck. To us denotes something that is not just a matter of
tweaking, but something we better be concerned about. And then
Mr. Secretary, you made a comment that you said that you do not
anticipate any military conflict with China.
And in your report, you guys basically say that--or you
exactly say, ``The risk we don't anticipate is precisely the
one most likely to be realized.'' So taking those words and
focusing just on China and us with the number of ships that we
have, if you are recommending a Bottom-Up Review number that
would be about 346 ships as I understand it in our Navy.
We know the Navy has always talked about a 313 ship number.
Currently we are at about 283, 285 depending on the day. And
for the first time we have had admirals sit where you are
sitting telling us the Chinese have more ships in their Navy
than we have in our Navy. Their curve is going up; ours is not.
I would like for you talk about those numbers, am I off on
those numbers? Am I off on your intent? But secondly, the
Chairman mentioned these spikes and peaks and valleys we have
in funding. One of the things we know is that we have to set
priorities.
We are looking at the Navy needing more ships, more
personnel. There is a $28 billion in budget reduction we are
looking for the Pentagon, $3 billion in shipyard
infrastructure. They are talking about a billion dollar move of
a carrier to Mayport, Florida.
And when I look at that, here is our frustration, we have
put in statute a requirement that we get a shipbuilding plan
for Congress to look at. The Department of Defense just refused
to give us that last year despite the fact we even had a
congressional inquiry unanimously supported by this committee
to get it. We had a requirement in statute for an aviation plan
so we can set those priorities; couldn't get it. We are due a
China military power report that was due May 1; still haven't
gotten it.
When we have admirals or individuals from the Pentagon sit
where you sit and we ask them to prioritize, they refuse to do
it. Talk to me about the numbers that I just mentioned, but
also do you have suggestions of a mechanism that we can use to
better partner with DOD in trying to get the information we
need so we can help set these priorities?
Dr. Perry. I will comment on a few of those points, but I
will start off my comments by saying in my opinion, the United
States Navy today is the most powerful Navy in the world, and
whoever is second is pretty far behind. Having said that, there
is no reason for complacency.
First of all, the U.S. Navy as compared to the Chinese Navy
has a worldwide responsibility. They have the responsibility
well beyond the western Pacific. And in the Pacific alone, we
do have to recognize the fact that we are declining in our
force and the Chinese Navy is increasing in its force.
So all of those things together lead me to recommend to
join with the panel in recommending that we work to increase
the size of our Navy. And the reason for that in my mind has to
be primarily with the importance of maintaining a strong naval
force in the western Pacific.
I would emphasize again that I would not suggest that the
number we used in the Bottom-Up Review Force is the last word
on the problem. We wanted to call attention to the problem.
We wanted to say that the Bottom-Up Review is certainly the
baseline for us for considering this, but we are calling for a
new strategic planning review at the time of the next
presidential election.
So roughly two years from now there would be another
strategic planning review and would look in great detail at
this problem and come up with a force construct appropriate for
the missions that are described.
Steve.
Mr. Hadley. I don't have anything to say. It is a good
answer.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Mr. Taylor, please.
Mr. Taylor. Again Secretary Perry and Admiral, thank you
for being with us.
Mr. Secretary, I have concerns that, going back to the
fleet, that one of our biggest vulnerabilities is fuel.
Carriers can go for approximately 15 years without refueling,
the submarines, some of the newer ones, the life of the
submarine without refueling.
But the ships that defend the carriers, DDGs and the
frigates, the cruisers, they have to refuel every three to five
days, and particularly in the Far East, the farther you get
away, the burden cost of fuel, the vulnerability of the oilers.
I was curious if in your review you looked at that?
Obviously one solution would be to the greatest extent possible
going to nuclear-powered surface combatants. I was curious if
in your calls for a 346-ship Navy if you also took a look at
what I consider to be that vulnerability?
Mr. Hadley. We opened the door within our committee to a
discussion of this issue. We thought about whether in the
acquisition process, for example, the fuel consumption issue
should play in some way for all the reasons you suggest. And I
think a number of our panel members felt very strongly about
it. We could not come up with a mechanism as to how to take
into account in terms of the planning.
And it is, you know, our philosophy was to do what we could
and where issues remain to try to recommend commissions to
follow it up. That is an issue I think this committee should
pursue with the Department. So I would say good question. We
framed the issue. We could not come up with a recommendation on
how to deal with it.
Dr. Perry. I would add to that it is not just an important
question. It has to do, of course, with more than just the
vulnerability of our ships to fuel.
If we think today of gasoline at $3 a gallon at the tank in
Washington, D.C., when you get that same gas delivered to a
forward operating base [FOB] in Afghanistan or Iraq, it is $30
or $300, not counting the lives lost getting the fuel there.
This is a very, very important issue, and I do not believe
our panel gave enough depth and attention to it.
Mr. Taylor. Going back to the mix of the vessels, as you
know the LCS [littoral combat ship] program has run in late.
The committee has recently followed Secretary Roughead's lead
to truncate the DDG-1000 program at three, restart the 51 line.
A later decision was made to put our Nation's missile defense
on the DDG-51.
Did the panel--and I have been in favor of both of those
moves--I am curious if the panel gave much thought as to those
moves and whether or not they think how likely we are going in
the right direction?
Mr. Hadley. We did not try to review those specific
decisions that you have described in terms of the DDG and all
the rest. Clearly one of the concerns that the panel had is
making sure that we deal with asymmetric threats, missile
defense, weapons of mass destruction, cyber attacks and all the
rest. But we did not try to sort of look at specific
procurement decisions. We tried to set a broader framework.
Mr. Taylor. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you.
The Chairman. Mr. Kline, please.
Mr. Kline. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you,
gentlemen, for being here, and for a really terrific report. I
think the common thread here in this committee that I have
heard both in this open hearing, in many conversations is a
deep disappointment in the QDR, which we feel very strongly and
I think you touch on that that it was in many ways budget-
driven and not the product that we needed.
And this is the converse or the flip-side that this is an
excellent document, and so I want to add my voice to those of
all my colleagues here in saying well done. You touch on so
many things, but I wanted to go to two related issues. And it
is sort of getting at the difference between the QDR and your
QDR in perspective.
You recommend, the panel recommended that the Congress and
the executive create an independent strategic review panel,
which based on what I am just saying sounds like a fine idea.
And I would be interested in any comments you have on is it
a same sort of makeup as your panel? And would it be a
permanent standing panel or ad hoc? Or just some--you probably
have addressed it, but I would like to hear what you have to
say about it.
And then an extremely important issue that gets to the
point that General Schoomaker used to call I think the tyranny
of personnel cost or something like that. When you talk about
the rising military personnel cost and you call for a new
national commission on military personnel, which I take it to
be a sort of one-time, you know, the 1970 Gates Commission
thing.
Dr. Perry. Yes.
Mr. Kline. If you could just address those, too, because
both of them are getting to some outside expertise that is out
from under the Department and the Administration.
Mr. Hadley. We think the QDR did a number of good things,
and I don't want to be too hard on it.
Mr. Kline. That is okay, Mr. Hadley, I will be hard enough.
I just want to get your solution to it.
Mr. Hadley. But I want to reiterate something, what I said
before. We thought that what this committee was calling for we
couldn't really get out of the QDR and the QDR Independent
Panel process. And that is why really we recommend shutting
down that QDR process because the strategic out-of-the-box
look, we don't think you can get there from here.
And that is why we said let us have a national security
strategic planning process, whole-of-government, top-down and
start it with what we have called the Independent Strategic
Review Panel, which would get started and be formed in the fall
of an election year, would be able to start the January after a
presidential election and take six months.
It would be a group of outsiders appointed by the Congress
and the President to think out-of-the-box, review the strategic
situation, suggest what changes need to be made in our National
Security Strategy and in some sense be the front end to the
national security strategic planning process we then describe.
And it would be taken over by the National Security Advisor
on behalf of the President for the new Presidential
Administration in its first year.
We think that is the way to get the unconstrained out-of-
the-box strategic look. Because the challenges we face heavily
rely on the Defense Department but not just only the Defense
Department, and that way it will give you this whole-of-
government look that we think.
So our recommendation is what the committee wants is
exactly right. We just think that the way we have gone about to
get doesn't work, and this is a better way to get what the
committee is looking for.
Bill.
Dr. Perry. Several comments, first of all, it is critical
that this panel be appointed both by the executive and
legislative branch as was this panel and that it be bipartisan.
In fact that it be nonpartisan, be created in a bipartisan way.
We tried to run our panel as a nonpartisan panel, not as a
bipartisan panel.
That the timing is critical; it has to be started sooner
than our panel was started to do the job and that is why we
suggested the fall of election year.
This could be a continuous body or it could be appointed
every four years but I think there is a certain merit to having
it as an ongoing body. And I think that should be--if the
Congress decides to move in that direction, I think you should
consider it as maybe a standing panel.
Mr. Kline. Okay, thank you, gentlemen. And I guess I am out
of time, but I hope somebody will explore that idea of the
personnel commission and in your vision how that would
function. So I am sorry, I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Perry. And that would be a one-shot committee modeled
after the Gates Commission dealing with the specific issues
which we outlined in the report.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman.
The gentlelady from California, Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I am going to go ahead and go into some of those issues
and ask you for some responses. I certainly want to thank you
all, all the panelists for this extraordinary effort. We
appreciate it.
You obviously made a recommendation to reform the military
personnel system, and one of the focuses of that was to provide
for longer officer careers, which would allow for more
education as you mention and career broadening assignments and
the establishment of a more elite career force where high
quality officers could serve in leadership positions for longer
periods of time.
And the report does acknowledge that there are some
cultural barriers to doing that and those cultural barriers
would not lend themselves in your, I think, analysis to a kind
of incremental approach.
And I wondered if the panel had a chance to look at one of
the elements in the Defense Authorization Bill in fiscal year
2011 was to establish a pilot program to test an alternative
career track for officers. And it would set guidelines for an
incremental approach to achieve many of the objectives that you
cite in your report.
And I just wondered whether--you seem to feel that using
this incremental approach would not be the easier way to go,
and that you felt that you needed to kind of do all of this in
a more dramatic way perhaps.
We wondered whether in the authorization there was really a
knowledge that perhaps service members would need to buy into a
new strategy over time.
Dr. Perry. Yes, we believe that the present system when an
officer might be serving or a noncommissioned officer might be
serving 20, 25 years is a terrible waste of talent. The reason
our military is so good is because of the great investments we
make in training and education.
Mrs. Davis. Yes.
Dr. Perry. So once we have trained and educated these
people, in 20, 25 years they leave, and in fact we push them
out. That system just has to be wrong.
People are living longer now. They are living active lives
longer. They have another 10 or 15, 20 years of good potential
service available. And many of them, and indeed most of them,
would like to do that if the system will permit them. So I
think it is crucial that that part of the system be
dramatically overhauled.
And I do not suggest it is going to be easy to do that, but
I think it is important to do that. Our military today is much
greater involved with technical and specialties and with
specialized knowledge where education and training is very
important.
And so we need to have a way not only of continuing the
education and training of our officers, but then keeping them
long enough to get the benefit of it.
Steve.
Mr. Hadley. And we thought incrementalism is fine, but the
need is so urgent, we thought the way to get visibility was the
commission, and it would hopefully supplement and empower all
the things you talked about.
Mrs. Davis. Okay, I appreciate that. I think Mr. Kline had
raised the issue and of course that one of personnel,
increasing costs for personnel per service member is obviously
a very important one here.
And part of the difficulty is, I think, that we see that
there are a number of reasons why that has occurred. Certainly
benefits, other incentive programs have increased over time due
to inflation, a need to compete with the private sector. There
are a lot of reasons why those changes have occurred.
But it is also true that the Defense budget when we look at
that suggests that as a percentage of the total Defense
obligation authority that the military personnel accounts have
actually been steadily decreasing since 1992 and have been
under 25 percent of the total Defense obligation for the last 5
years.
And so I am wondering do you think that that was something
that everybody had looked at on the panel? And does it, you
know, change the calculus in terms of feeling that this is a
problem because we have more expensive people in the services?
Or is it something that you felt really needed to be dealt
with quite as you said, you know, sort of just attack it, the
problem.
Mr. Hadley. We included in our report the numbers, which
suggest it has gotten bigger and if you go forward, it would
get bigger. And there is also concern that what we need to do
to maintain the all-volunteer force when the economy starts
coming back will go up as well. So it was when we say ``train
wreck is coming,'' it is the projections that really have us
concerned.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank the gentlelady.
Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also want to thank
the co-chairs of the panel, appreciate all the hard work that
you put into this. It is obviously a great document, and I
appreciate all the thought that has gone into it.
If you look in perspective, I think you bring up some very
interesting points. If you look at where the future leads us,
and I like your point about saying that our QDR needs to
reflect the long term needs of our military and not just that
shorter-term element.
And I think that what you point out especially in chapter
three when you talk about force structure and personnel, and
you are saying the QDR force structure will not provide
sufficient capacity to respond to a catastrophe, I think that
is very, very telling.
Because as we know, it is as important for us to plan for
the routine as it is for us to plan for the unexpected. And we
all know that after the unexpected it is hard to go back and
say, well, ``We should of, could of, would have.''
I like that you are looking out and saying listen the QDR's
function really is to make sure that we are properly planning
for those future issues that we may have to deal with.
And I also wanted to get you to elaborate a little bit on
how you believe we can best do that in planning for a future
force structure? And you point out that we ought to be using
the 1993 Bottom-Up Review as a good baseline. And then from
there looking at what current elements of our current force
structure should be increased. And I am very interested in
hearing your thoughts about your efforts to put forth the
alternative force structure, which I think is very telling when
you speak about where our Navy needs to be. And we had
discussions just yesterday about what the force structure needs
to be with our Navy and your alternative force structure points
to 346 ships. And we currently have an inventory of 288.
I was wondering if you could give us a little more context
to that 1993 baseline and your thoughts about that 346 number
and what we can do and what we need to do to get there and the
importance of that effort to get there?
Dr. Perry. Thank you, Mr. Wittman. I want to emphasize that
we do not believe we had the time or the resources to do a
detailed force planning exercise.
Mr. Wittman. Sure.
Dr. Perry. And so our recommendations need to be considered
in two related parts. The first was the recommendation for the
planning process that should be set up to do this----
Mr. Wittman. Right.
Dr. Perry [continuing]. Which would begin two years from
now, and do it with the right way. In the meantime, we felt
that our judgment was the ground forces with the recent
increases were at adequate levels that we ought to go up in the
naval force we go back up to the Bottom-Up Review. That is a
planning baseline to start from----
Mr. Wittman. Right.
Dr. Perry [continuing]. But we need to reconsider that
carefully in this two years from now.
Steve.
Mr. Hadley. That national security strategic planning
process our panel felt needs to provide better guidance, not
only to the Department of Defense but to other agencies
involved in national security as to threats and priorities so
that the departments can take those and actually come up with a
force sizing construct that can drive their internal planning
process. That has been lacking.
I want to mention also that that would also drive the
civilian side. We mention the need for greater civilian
capability to go overseas with our military to help build civil
structures in post-conflict and stabilization settings.
Indeed, we propose a national commission on the building of
the civil force of the future to find a way to get civilian
agencies able to deploy with our forces overseas. If we do
that, then this planning process can also give guidance to how
to size and prioritize that force as well.
Mr. Wittman. And I appreciate that. I think those are great
points, making sure that we understand where the needed
capabilities must be in the future. And then from our
standpoint as decision makers here on the Armed Services
Committee, to make sure that then we know in context how to
properly make resourcing decisions.
And I think your point there about and the report states,
``We cannot reverse the decline of shipbuilding, buy enough
naval aircraft, recapitalize Army equipment, buy the F-35
requirement, purchase a new aerial tanker, increase deep strike
capability and recapitalize the bomber fleet by just saving the
$10 billion to $15 billion that the Department of Defense hopes
to save through acquisition reform.''
And we all agree acquisition reform needs to be there, but
that proper planning, that strategic planning is really where
the context of resource decisions need to be made here.
And I really appreciate you all pointing it out because I
think that is so critical to this process is knowing that in
context there if we don't have good planning it makes it almost
impossible for us as decision makers to do that. So again, I
thank you so much for that and appreciate your pointing that
out.
The Chairman. Gentlelady from Guam, Ms. Bordallo.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and
Secretary Perry and Mr. Hadley. Thank you for coming and
briefing us today on your evaluation of the QDR.
My questions today revolve around training and readiness in
the Pacific theater. Although the QDR discusses the forging of
relationships to include China in order to have stable Pacific
theater, it does not discuss any of the hurdles our military
will face with regards to training and readiness.
Currently 8,600 Marines and their families are coming to
Guam due to the 2006 United States-Japan Roadmap for
Realignment Implementation Plan. However, one of the biggest
reasons for the move is due to runway encroachment and the
inability to conduct training in the existing areas.
Yesterday I received a copy of the final environmental
impact study, ``On the Move,'' and a major issue still not
resolved is the proposed Marine firing ranges at Pagat on Guam.
This is a culturally important area and it needs to be
approached with cooperation between the island community, the
local government of Guam and DOD.
More importantly, this highlights issues that surround all
areas where we have forces stationed in the Pacific theater.
And with that said, I would like to know if you agree with the
assessment concerning training and acquisitions of training
ranges.
And secondly should this not be more thoroughly addressed
in the QDR? Finally, can either of you comment on how we should
approach the training issue to ensure that our forces in the
Pacific are properly trained?
Dr. Perry. I have said before and I repeat again, I believe
that training is a key to the effectiveness of the U.S.
military today. I must say that the point you are describing I
am confident is an important point, but it is not a point which
our commission reviewed in any detail at all.
Steve, are you aware of anything we did to shed light on
that?
Mr. Hadley. No, it is good question, and we looked at the
Asia-Pacific in force structure terms. We really did not look
at it in readiness and training terms, and it is an omission
and you are right about that.
And again it is the kind of thing I think the committee
needs to pursue with the Department. It is something we
probably should have looked at. We had to pick and choose given
our time constraints. It is a terribly important issue.
Ms. Bordallo. I understand it is an issue, you know, that
is really with Guam and ``On the Move,'' but I just wondered
how we should we approach acquiring land? You know, it has been
with imminent domain, which is something that our people of
Guam do not approve of. And also in the ranges this comes to
the point where I just brought it up, how do we acquire
properties for firing ranges?
Mr. Hadley. Well, you know, from the high-level, look, in
terms of the process has gone over the last five, six years to
adjust our force structure in Korea and Japan and the like, I
think the watch word is to try to do it in a way that is
acceptable with national governments, with local governments,
and local populations because we want our troops and our
training presence to be welcomed, not a source of contention.
So I think the only way to do that is in this broad, consensual
way.
Ms. Bordallo. Well, it is a contentious issue in Guam, and
I certainly hope we will be able to resolve it.
Dr. Perry. And I regret we can't give you more detailed
answers because I fully agree on the emerging importance of
Guam in our whole strategy in the Pacific, so that is a very
important question. Thank you.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you very much, and I yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank the gentlelady.
Mr. Bartlett.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you very much. I would like to read
briefly from the introduction to your report. ``The natural
tendency of bureaucracies to plan short-term, operate from the
top-down, think from existing parameters, and affirm the
correctness of existing plans and programs of record.'' That is
exactly what happened to the QDR process.
``Instead of unconstrained long-term analysis by planners,
who were encouraged to challenge preexisting thinking, the QDRs
became explanations and justifications, often with marginal
changes of established decisions and plans,'' kind of the
tedious repetition of the obvious.
The latest QDR continues the trend of the last 15 years. I
have three concerns of strategic importance, and I wonder how
they were reflected in the QDR.
The first of these is the new Chinese anti-ship missile.
Some of its capabilities are classified, but I think in the
public domain it is known that it is a real game changer. You
can't get within 1,200 miles of it.
And we have essentially no assured defense against it. If
it were on a ship, then we couldn't get within 1,200 miles of
any ship. This is a real game changer. Is this reflected in the
QDR?
The second concern I have of strategic importance is
electromagnetic pulse [EMP]. This is the most asymmetric of all
warfare potentials, a non-state actor, who had a tramp steamer,
a Scud missile, and any nuclear weapon detonated above the
atmosphere could be devastating to our military or to our
country. How is this reflected in the QDR?
And the third is our deep strike heavy bombers, I notice
that the Chinese took out a satellite, and we can take out a
missile with a missile. This new bomber will fly lower than a
satellite and slower than a missile.
And I know it will be stealthy and its cross-sectional area
will be very small, but radar is also becoming very much more
capable as are the missiles that might take out the plane.
These three concerns, I wonder how they are reflected in the
QDR?
Dr. Perry. I will comment on two of them. On the deep
strike heavy bomber, we do recommend an increase, that the Air
Force move forward with another deep strike and has deep strike
capability.
In my opinion, we have such capability already in the B-2,
and that the diagram should be a follow on to the B-2 and have
the kind of stealth capabilities that the B-2 has. That is the
unique capability that the United States has today and one
which will be very important to be incorporated in any new deep
strike bomber.
On the Chinese anti-ship capability, of course the U.S.
Navy is very much aware of that emerging capability and is--
think I would say in simple and unclassified terms has a
serious program to try to deal with it.
I am not suggesting complacency in that area, but I would
suggest that it is not going to--it need not be a game changer
if we have appropriate countermeasures.
Steve, do you want to comment on any of those?
Mr. Hadley. Just two points, I think this is a priority in
the QDR. It is one of the six mission sets: deter, defeat
aggression in anti-access environments. It is the second of our
four enduring interests: a shared access to sea, airspace and
cyberspace. It is a function partly of hardware, but partly of
tactics.
And one of the things we pointed out in our report is the
Navy and the Air Force are working on an AirSea Battle concept
on how they would deal with the challenges presented by exactly
the kinds of systems you describe in anti-access environments,
and we applaud this. It requires a hardware solution, but also
a strategy and tactics solution.
EMP, we did not address. I don't recall it being
particularly addressed in the QDR. It is an important area. I
think it is something we paid attention to in the days of the
Cold War and have stopped paying attention to now, and it is a
shortfall and something that needs to be addressed.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you, but even more important now than
it was during the Cold War, and thank you for your recognition
of that. I yield back, thank you.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman.
Mr. Kissell, the gentleman from North Carolina.
Mr. Kissell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you to the
co-chairmen of this study and to all the panelists that help
put this together. Looking at a different kind of structure for
a couple minutes, government structure, you talk about that we
are still basically operating under the government structure
from the 1930s and 1940s and how that hampers our ability to
perhaps define and move forward in better ways.
For someone who was not in Congress at the time--my first
term--it would seem like with the government reorganizations
that took place after 9/11 that we might have accomplished some
of that.
So what in particular are we looking at in terms of the
panel's recommendations that the government structure is not
good and how perhaps did we not make the changes we should have
after 9/11?
Mr. Hadley. I would say two things. One we made a start
after 9/11, but the environment now--9/11 now it is hard to
believe is nine years ago and the world has changed, and there
is more that needs to be done and that is what we try to assess
here.
Secondly, there are things the executive branch needs to
do, and we outline them in some detail in our report. There are
also things Congress needs to do in terms of looking at its own
committee structure.
We say that the executive branch needs to overcome the
stovepipes, and we need to have the government work in an
integrated way to achieve national security's challenges. That
has implications for how Congress is organized as well, in our
view.
And therefore one of our recommendations was to reconvene
the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, which was
established by statute in 1945, resulted in legislation in 1946
that changed how Congress committee structure organize.
We think Congress needs to reconvene that committee and
look at its own organization to support recommendations that we
make for reorganization in executive branch.
Mr. Kissell. How would you assess in terms of what you talk
about civilian structure, jointly with military structure as we
go into different conflicts? How would you assess or did you
assess the efforts that are being made in Afghanistan now as a
model for perhaps doing this in the future or not?
Dr. Perry. And I approach this problem with some personal
experience of having been Secretary of Defense in Bosnia, where
we had I thought and absolutely successful first-rate military
operation, but the civilian function that needed to be
performed had great difficulty because the civilian team doing
them did not have the right training or background or
experience for doing it.
And that problem manifests itself in spades in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and so we called special attention to the
importance of considering a civilian expeditionary force, a
force that could along with the military, perform the missions.
And we are very far behind in the training and resourcing
to do that. We made some specific recommendations in the report
about how to do it, but mostly what we did was call attention
to the importance of doing that, and much more detailed
thinking needs to be done about how to actually accomplish
that. But it certainly requires more resources in civilian
departments now and it requires, in my judgment, that pulling
together a force capable of doing that expeditionary work and
training that force with the military.
Steve.
Mr. Hadley. We learned some things in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I think overwhelming we have learned that it is really hard,
and we still don't do it well, and it requires a change of
culture in our civilian agencies. It requires a change in the
personnel system, probably change in legislation.
It was not designed to be deployable in the way our
military is, and that is one of the reasons we are relying so
much on contractors because they are more deployable than our
civilian agencies and departments.
We don't know how to do it well. We are not organized for
it, and that is why we think our recommendation for a national
commission on building the civil force of the future is so
important. We have got a lot of work to do on this area.
Mr. Kissell. Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much. Mr. Coffman, please.
Mr. Coffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all
gentlemen, I want to thank you for some extraordinary work here
and members of the panel.
And in particular I think the reforming the personnel
system I think is absolutely important and extending the career
out to 40 years, as you mention, and allowing people to spend
more time in specific billets, more time in grade. It may
result in an operating savings as well.
But one question I have is that I was in the Army before
the Marine Corps and I was in the Army at the time where they
had conscription, and in my view it didn't work, and we had
folks that didn't want to be there and didn't want to serve and
yet they were forced to be there.
And it seems that we have evolved to where the level of
professionalism at all levels of our military is much higher
than it used to be. And the notion that we can bring people in
overnight and train them in short order to meet the needs of
our national security objectives, I think is unrealistic.
Yet in the Carter Administration, I think in 1979 or so,
with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan reinstituted the
selective service system that we have now at least in place.
And I have to ask you, is that necessary to have the selective
service system today up and running. Is that realistic?
Dr. Perry. In my judgment, no.
Mr. Coffman. Yes.
Dr. Perry. What is necessary though is a restructuring and
a rethinking of the contract with the Reserve and the Guard
forces. We need a serious approach on how to make the best use
of the Reserve and Guard force, but I do not believe a
selective service system would meet any need which I can
anticipate.
Mr. Coffman. Okay.
Mr. Hadley. I would just add one thing, clearly balance
between the active Guard and Reserve exactly right. The
question we asked ourselves is are there some capabilities that
are in the civilian sector that in a time of crisis the United
States would want to be able to call on?
For example, in terms of cyber, we thought about a model
that you have had some capability in the active force, some
capability in Guard and Reserve, and maybe in a place like
Silicon Valley, you would try to have some kind of contract, if
you will, that could bring people to the fore in the event of a
national crisis.
On the civilian side, clearly policemen and other people in
law enforcement could and were called upon to have a role in
places like Afghanistan.
So we have talked about a civilian response corps, people
who would be contracted with in the private sector that in a
time of national emergency where we needed skills could come
forward, have some training and deploy overseas in support of
our military.
So it is not the traditional conscription service. It is
not the traditional Selected Reserve. But there may be a role
for a mobilization of element beyond the Guard and Reserve. And
that is one of the things that we think the national commission
on military personnel needs to address.
Mr. Coffman. Thank you, gentlemen, but let me be clear that
right now we have a requirement in statute when the Carter
Administration reauthorized or reinstituted the Selective
Service System at least to have all the apparatus up and
running.
And we are expending dollars to do that today. And we
require young men in this country that are age 18 to register.
In your view, is that necessary at this point in time?
Dr. Perry. My personal view is no. The question is
complicated enough that I think that it is a issue which the
commission, which you talked about, a specific issue that
should be put forward on the plate of this commission on
military personnel.
Mr. Coffman. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
The Chairman. Mr. Critz.
Mr. Critz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
gentlemen, for appearing here today. In the report it talks
about personnel costs and the rise of personnel entitlements.
And I am just curious as to your view or the panel's view.
Is this a snapshot in time that because of the accelerated
or the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have really driven a
higher than expected amount of health care and needs of our
military personnel coming back that this snapshot really is an
aberration?
Dr. Perry. I think that has certainly been a contributing
factor. But I think more generally health care costs are rising
and have been rising every year, and not just in the military
of course but in the civilian area as well.
So I think that is a real problem. But I think the problem
is more general than that.
Steve.
Mr. Hadley. I agree with that.
Mr. Critz. And then in the report the panel writes that in
evaluating the QDR force structure that you were hampered by
the lack of a clearly articulated force planning construct. Can
you explain your assessment of the construct and why you
concluded that the construct didn't allow you to measure the
adequacy of the force structure?
Mr. Hadley. We thought the QDR was useful in that they did
a lot of scenario work about contingencies that would arise in
which our military would have to be engaged. And that is useful
because it is a different world and there are broad theories of
threats.
But it did not then try to make some judgments and give
clear guidance in a construct that would both drive the sizing
of the force and permit the Department to explain it to the
Congress in an effective way.
And that is why our report says that it was a missed
opportunity. They did the good spade work, if you will, but
didn't really draw the consequence into sort of a clear sizing
force requirement that could give clear guidance to the
services and explanation to Congress. That is what we think
they failed to do.
Mr. Critz. Well, I appreciate that. And of course as the
newest member of the panel, I saw your recommendation for
reconvening and looking at the structure of Congress and
committees.
And I am just curious what your thoughts are on--obviously
you think there needs to be a reclassification of who has
jurisdiction over what. And I would just be curious as a quick
snapshot on why you came to that conclusion?
Mr. Hadley. Again, we think the problem in this new world
is stovepiping. And the need is for all the various agencies of
the government to work together to help solve national security
problems that are now bigger than just the military. And that
the real problem in the government is integration and common
effort.
Well, if you are going to have that integration in the
executive, it raises the question of whether there is enough
integration in the appropriations and authorization process in
the Congress.
And we have suggested the Joint Committee on the
Organization of Congress. We make it with some trepidation
because Congress obviously is going to have to address these
itself. But we suggested that commission look at two things.
One, establishing a single national security appropriations
subcommittee for Defense, State, USAID [United States Agency
for International Development], and the intelligence community.
And then in parallel just considering whether there is a way to
get enhanced coordination among and across the Congressional
authorization committees so as to give more integrated guidance
to the national security departments and agencies.
Those are two specific things we thought ought to be looked
at by this commission.
Mr. Critz. Thank you. I have no further questions. I yield
back.
The Chairman. Gentleman from California, Mr. Hunter.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thanks for
being here. Just a quick question that is pretty specific. I am
going to read really quick from your panel's report, ``During
the dramatic post-Cold War defense cuts, most dual-sources were
dropped in favor of sole source contracting, but as defense
funding has returned and it exceeded levels of supported dual
sourcing, the contracting strategy has remained sole source.''
``Recommendation, OSD should return to a strategy requiring
dual-source competition for production programs in
circumstances where this will produce real competition.''
Probably that last little phrase is the most important out of
that whole thing.
But specifically then, leaving aside the implications for
fighter force readiness, dependent on a sole source for 95
percent of U.S. fighter engines for our next fleet of fighters,
do you think that the F-35 engine is a candidate for that dual-
source procurement requirement that you mention here in your
recommendations?
Dr. Perry. Do we think--what is the----
Mr. Hunter. The F-35 engine, having two competitive engines
for the F-35. Do we make them? Because this committee for the
most part supported that. The whole House supported that. And I
am curious if that goes in line with your recommendations.
Dr. Perry. I would defer what Steve was saying--from in my
assessment is that our committee did not specifically look at
any particular system and try to make that judgment. We made a
more general judgment.
The general judgment we were quite unanimous on the
importance of competition and keeping costs down and in
particular dual-source is a way of competition. We did not come
to a specific judgment about any particular system.
Mr. Hunter. What do you think?
Mr. Hadley. I think what the committee--we did not address
that specific issue. I think the issue is is this real
competition that is going to get prices down? Or is this simply
a situation of directed procurement?
Mr. Hunter. Right. I understand. What I am asking for--I
understand you didn't come to conclusions.
Mr. Hadley [continuing]. For political and other reasons.
Mr. Hunter. What are----
Mr. Hadley. And our view is dual-sourcing ought to be to
enhance competition and to drive prices down, and the experts
need to have those criteria and then look at the case by case.
That would be our answer.
Mr. Hunter. What do you think about the F-35 dual engine?
Dr. Perry. When I were the secretary of defense and was
faced with an issue like that, I would put considerable study
on it and have a lot of people advising me on it. I have not
had either that study or people advising me on that issue, so I
would not--I would hesitate to make a judgment.
Mr. Hunter. Okay. That kind of follows though. Let me ask
then because in order for us to make good decisions, in order
for you to make good decisions, you have to have people telling
you the truth in an objective way.
And if the people testifying before us, military leaders
who live and breathe in the Pentagon, live and breathe in the
OSD, whose future is dependent on basically whatever
Administration they are in, do you think that it is it even
possible for us to get objective recommendations?
I can cite a specific experience in this committee when a
gentleman answered a question from the chairman, gave his
personal opinion about the F-35 engine, and it wasn't about
acquisition even. It was operational availability.
I remember when I was in the Marine Corps we had to ground
every F-18 in the world because one cracked a wing or something
in 2007. So they all got grounded, every one of them because
the wings were all made by the same guys. So his answer was--
and he basically got fired. I am not going to mention this
gentleman's name, but he got fired because that wasn't the
right answer.
So if the people we are asking questions of here or
testifying to us live and breathe in this world and their QDR
comes out of that world and every other recommendation comes
out of that world, how can we make sure that we are getting the
right kind of information that is basically the truth and not
something that their future career depends on them answering
the correct way?
Dr. Perry. I think you have to have a certain amount of
confidence in the competence and the integrity of the people
who are working in the issue. I and my staff have a lot of
confidence, a lot of respect for the secretary and the
undersecretary who are making those decisions, so I would be
hesitant to second guess them without looking at the issue
very, very carefully.
Mr. Hunter. Do you think that there is any--it is hard for
someone to be objective to us in testifying when they come out
of that world?
Dr. Perry. Having been in that position, I can assure you
it is a very hard decision to make, and it involves----
Mr. Hunter. And the reason I am asking is because----
Dr. Perry [continuing]. Personnel issues.
Mr. Hunter [continuing]. Your QDR differs greatly with the
one that----
Dr. Perry. Yes.
Mr. Hunter [continuing]. We were given, right?
Dr. Perry. Right.
Mr. Hunter. And there are obviously some reasons for that.
I am just trying to get to those reasons. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Dr. Perry. Yes.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman.
Mr. Nye, gentleman from Virginia.
Mr. Nye. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to note a couple
of things in your report with which I agree strongly. I just
want to read quickly one sentence from your introduction that
says, ``Instead of unconstrained long-term analysis by planners
who were encouraged to challenge pre-existing thinking, the
QDRs became explanations and justifications often with marginal
changes of established decisions and plans. This QDR continues
that trend.''
I want to talk about a particular decision in the QDR, but
ask your general thoughts on a larger topic about risk
assessment. In agreeing with that sentence in the introduction,
I quite honestly found that the QDR included a very oddly-
placed, one-off sentence that suggested that the Navy ought to
move a carrier from Norfolk to Mayport, Florida.
I want to read a couple things that you said about risk
assessments in your report with which I agree including, ``With
such large demands, the department needs guidance to prioritize
risk. A more specific measurable strategic guidance is also
required to make the force structure and budgetary decisions
required of the QDR.''
I continue with your quote, ``Both Congress and the
Department of Defense must base their respective prioritization
investment decisions on appropriate risk guidance.''
And you go further to say in the report, ``Because a
national security strategy with both proactive and risk
acceptance guidance does not exist, one cannot clearly assess
the balance of the Department's programs.''
We have a difficult job here in trying to assess the
importance of various projects that we would like to invest
defense dollars in. And what it comes down to at the end of the
day is making some trade-offs.
In fact, just last week when I questioned Under Secretary
of the Navy, Mr. Work, about the proposal to move a carrier to
Mayport, Florida, he agreed with me that such a decision which
carries a price tag in the region of a billion dollars requires
some serious trade-offs.
In a time when we are trying to get to 313 ships or perhaps
more appropriately 346 to meet that risk that is out there, 150
strike fighters shortfall in investments and shipyards, we have
got to make some tough decisions about where we invest our
defense dollars. And the QDR ought to be a guide to help us
make those types of decisions.
Given what you said about risk assessment, though, and the
fact that a GAO [Government Accountability Office] study that I
asked for and this committee ordered last year which reported
that the Navy is home porting decision-making approach was
flawed essentially because it was not based sufficiently enough
on a specific risk analysis that would help us make a decision
about whether that billion dollars is better spent on that
project versus something else.
Secretary Perry, can you comment on whether you agree that
a decision of that magnitude in the billion dollar range ought
to be subject to some kind of specific risk assessment that
would help us make a decision about how we balance that in the
trade-off against those other things I mentioned?
Dr. Perry. Yes.
Mr. Nye. Okay.
Mr. Hadley, do you want to add to that?
Mr. Hadley. Yes, but this panel is really not a good
vehicle for offering guidance on the kinds of specific issues
you are talking about in terms of moving the carrier decision
or the F-35.
Mr. Nye. Sure.
Mr. Hadley. So it is just we are at 10,000 feet, and you
are on a very particular issue. And we just didn't have the
capacity to get into those detailed issues, as important as
that issue is.
Mr. Nye. I understand that. I appreciate you saying that.
And my question is not designed to ask you to make a judgment
about that particular project. We have a process for those
kinds of judgments.
But my question--what I was trying to get at the heart of,
and I think Secretary Perry, thank you for your very forthright
answer on that, is the process with which we make these
decisions, how difficult it is.
And how much more helpful it would be to us to have
specific risk assessments done on projects, especially ones
that carry that kind of dollar price tag to help us decide
whether the billion dollars ought to be spent there or perhaps
on something else.
And that I think is the nature of the challenge of the QDR
is trying to establish whether or not this QDR tool is the
appropriate tool or has been constructed appropriately to
provide us the advice that we need and guidance we need to make
those tough decisions about those trade-offs. And so I
appreciate your answer.
I just want to note again for the record, we understand it
is a tough process. These decisions are difficult. This
committee has actually ordered for the coming year additional
studies on that particular decision to shed more light on the
risk assessment that we ought to be looking into to help us
make a decision about whether that billion dollars is better
spent on this than something else.
I have made a strong case that I think we have other
priorities that are higher. But I think a risk assessment is
something that is absolutely essential before that type of
decision can be made.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank the gentleman from Virginia. There
being no further questions, we certainly thank those co-
chairmen today, Dr. Perry and Dr. Hadley, and their fantastic
panel, some of whom are seated behind them, as well as the
staff director that has been very, very helpful.
And as we move from this day toward the conference with the
Senate, it will also be very helpful, and of course next year
as we consider anew the challenges of national security. This
is serious business, and you have done serious work. And we are
very grateful for what you have done. Thank you again.
[Whereupon, at 12:07 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
July 29, 2010
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July 29, 2010
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