[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 112-13]
ARE WE READY? AN INDEPENDENT LOOK AT THE REQUIRED READINESS POSTURE OF
U.S. FORCES
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
MARCH 3, 2011
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia, Chairman
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
JOE HECK, Nevada SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey DAVE LOEBSACK, Iowa
CHRIS GIBSON, New York GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona
VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri LARRY KISSELL, North Carolina
BOBBY SCHILLING, Illinois BILL OWENS, New York
JON RUNYAN, New Jersey TIM RYAN, Ohio
TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
STEVEN PALAZZO, Mississippi
MARTHA ROBY, Alabama
Lynn Williams, Professional Staff Member
Vickie Plunkett, Professional Staff Member
Christine Wagner, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2011
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, March 3, 2011, Are We Ready? An Independent Look at the
Required Readiness Posture of U.S. Forces...................... 1
Appendix:
Thursday, March 3, 2011.......................................... 37
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 2011
ARE WE READY? AN INDEPENDENT LOOK AT THE REQUIRED READINESS POSTURE OF
U.S. FORCES
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Bordallo, Hon. Madeleine Z., a Representative from Guam, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Readiness.............................. 3
Forbes, Hon. J. Randy, a Representative from Virginia, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Readiness...................................... 1
WITNESSES
deLeon, Rudy, Senior Vice President for National Security and
International Policy, Center for American Progress............. 5
Donnelly, Thomas, Resident Fellow and Director, Center for
Defense Studies, American Enterprise Institute for Public
Policy Research................................................ 7
Eaglen, Mackenzie, Research Fellow for National Security Studies,
The Heritage Foundation........................................ 11
Mahnken, Dr. Thomas G., Professor of Strategy, U.S. Naval War
College........................................................ 13
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
deLeon, Rudy................................................. 42
Donnelly, Thomas............................................. 50
Eaglen, Mackenzie............................................ 65
Forbes, Hon. J. Randy........................................ 41
Mahnken, Dr. Thomas G........................................ 82
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:
Ms. Bordallo................................................. 95
Mrs. Hanabusa................................................ 99
ARE WE READY? AN INDEPENDENT LOOK AT THE REQUIRED READINESS POSTURE OF
U.S. FORCES
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Readiness,
Washington, DC, Thursday, March 3, 2011.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in
room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. J. Randy Forbes
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. J. RANDY FORBES, A REPRESENTATIVE
FROM VIRGINIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
Mr. Forbes. Well, I want to start by welcoming this
exceptional panel of witnesses that we have before the
subcommittee and to thank you all for joining us today for what
I believe is going to be an incredibly important hearing.
Hopefully, our Members will be streaming in, because I
think this is going to be a very important hearing to lay the
foundation for what we are going to be doing for the rest of
the next several months anyway.
One of the things that we recognize is, nearly 12 years
ago, this subcommittee met to hold a hearing on readiness
regarding the Army AH-64 helicopter fleet. The spring and
summer of 1999, we were involved in combat operations with NATO
[North Atlantic Treaty Organization] allies in Kosovo. And you
can see the helicopter up on the screen.
Chairman Bateman and Ranking Member Ortiz held a hearing on
the readiness of the Apache fleet, because an internal Army
memo had been leaked to the press. That memo was written by
then-Brigadier General Richard Cody, and it showed
shortcomings, training failures, and readiness issues
associated with the Apache fleet and specifically related to
the deployment of the 24 AH-64s as part of the Task Force Hawk.
In the reviews that followed, the GAO [Government
Accountability Office] found 146 lessons learned, which ranged
from insufficient training to the need for additional
capabilities such as night-vision devices and improved command-
and-control capabilities.
However, interestingly, Congress had been told previously
that the unit that was deployed was C-1, or fully combat-
mission-capable.
Today, we are here to talk about the readiness of the
force, not just the readiness of today's force, but the force
we will need to deal with global challenges the next decade and
beyond.
If you flip from the Apache helicopter we talked about
there and look to today's concern in the Pacific, something
that I know is near and dear to the ranking member's heart, it
is clear that we can't afford another Task Force Hawk
situation, where we are told we are ready and we wake up to
have hearings after that where we find out that we were very
insufficient in our preparations and our preparedness.
We have a constitutional responsibility that none of us
take lightly, but we must be informed if we are to successfully
provide for the defense of this Nation. We learn all too often
about critical shortfalls not from the military, not from the
DOD [Department of Defense], but from leaked press reports,
whistleblowers, and generals after they have retired.
Today we have a wonderful panel of witnesses to help us not
only frame the challenges for the future but to also help this
subcommittee ask the right questions and to get the answers we
need to make critical resourcing decisions in extraordinarily
challenging times.
Joining us today are some individuals who served on a
panel. And I want to commend to everybody's reading, if you
haven't, the Quadrennial Defense Review [QDR] Independent
Panel, the report that was published. This was an incredibly
bipartisan effort.
I want to commend all of you for your work on creating,
one, a consensus that I know is very difficult in today's world
to reach, but, secondly, the thorough analysis in the job that
you have done; and commend to each of our committee members, if
you haven't read this, I think it is good reading. And we have
provided you with executive summaries that I think you will
find useful.
Today we have joining us Mr. Rudy deLeon, the senior vice
president for national security and international policy at the
Center for American Progress; Mr. Thomas Donnelly, the resident
fellow and director of the Center for Defense Studies at the
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research; Ms.
Makenzie Eaglen, the research fellow for national security
studies at The Heritage Foundation; and Dr. Thomas G. Mahnken,
professor of strategy, U.S. Naval War College.
I just gave you what they are now. You each have in your
memos their biographies, which I suggest you look at because
they are very telling on the expertise that we bring to this
panel today.
I also wanted to suggest that this is one of the most
bipartisan panels--I am sorry--one of the most bipartisan
subcommittees, probably, that we find in Congress. We hope to
do some things this year that are out-of-the-box. We want to
get to answers, and we don't want to go through the formats.
Historically, on our hearings, what we normally do is we
bring in three generals and an admiral, and we spend the first
few minutes telling them what a wonderful job they have done in
serving the country. They next spend the next 10 minutes
telling us what a great job we have done in supporting the men
and women in uniform across the globe. Then everybody has a 5-
minute window. Our witnesses oftentimes feel like they are in
depositions where their goal is just to get out without saying
anything. And we ask our questions in staccato.
We want to change that. It is my hope that we will have the
support of the ranking member, at some point in time, so that,
rather than be in those boxes, that we are bringing witnesses
in here where we are not asking them for formal statements, we
are not having just prepared statements, but we can really get
at the answers that we need to make sure we have answered one
crucial question: ``Are we ready?'' And we have to make sure
that we are doing that.
I want our Members to feel as free as possible, if you have
follow-up questions, if you want to explore an issue, that we
can do that, so that you don't feel you are in those confines
of normal structure.
So, with that, I would like to now turn to my dear friend
and colleague and somebody that I know that is very concerned
about the readiness of this Nation, especially in the Pacific,
and that is Madeleine Bordallo from Guam.
Ms. Bordallo.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Forbes can be found in the
Appendix on page 41.]
STATEMENT OF HON. MADELEINE BORDALLO, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
GUAM, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
Ms. Bordallo. Mr. Chairman, thank you. And thank you for
your leadership of this very important subcommittee.
To all our witnesses, thank you for appearing before our
subcommittee today.
As the United States continues to be engaged in two wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, our military continues to experience
significant readiness strains across the spectrum of
capabilities. Further, larger fiscal matters in our Federal
Government continue to squeeze the Department of Defense
budget. Pentagon leadership is looking for places to find
efficiencies, and, historically, the operation and the
maintenance budget is a favorite target, given its size and
availability.
The QDR and the Global Defense Posture Report have outlined
an ambitious, yet realistic, defense posture that will be
needed over the coming years. So it is important that we find
balance in equipping, training, and positioning our force to
deal with emerging threats abroad, such as Al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula or the extremist disturbances in Indonesia or
the southern Philippines, which is right next-door to Guam.
However, as a nation, we must not lose focus of more
traditional threats that face us, such as Iran's and North
Korea's nuclear programs or China's nontransparent military
buildup.
Being a global power is not easy, nor can it be done
cheaply. The QDR and the Global Defense Posture Review provided
this Congress with a guideline for allocating resources over
the coming years to deal with a multitude of threats.
Every defense budget since the beginning of budgets has
assumed a certain amount of risk. The Department has been
cautious over the past few years in the amount of risk it has
accepted, while trying to balance the needs of the ongoing wars
with the other threats that exist to our country.
At the outset of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I
believe we took too much risk, and the consequence was an
under-equipped and ill-trained force for the type of wars that
we are now conducting.
Even as we depended upon them more and more to provide
critical, enabling capabilities, National Guard units across
this country were left with paltry equipment levels. It took
congressional action and oversight to provide them with the
equipment they needed to train for the missions they would be
performing in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
I recognize that we are not always at 100 percent fill for
equipment, but we have done our best to apply resources to
address the levels of risk that exist in the budget. I think
the key is providing enough flexibility so that as threats
emerge, the military can adapt and respond quickly and posture
itself to protect our interests.
The military buildup on Guam is a perfect example of how
defense and posture reviews can lead to net positive benefits
for our strategic posture across the globe. Making our military
capabilities on Guam more robust allows us to defend against
North Korean aggression, as well as counter the secretive
buildup of Chinese forces. The strategic location of forces on
Guam sends a very clear signal to our allies in the Asia-
Pacific region that we remain their partner and a power in the
Asia region.
Similarly, a buildup of forces on Guam also allows us to
address threats that may arise in Indonesia or the southern
Philippines, not to mention humanitarian assistance missions to
our Pacific island partners and other hotspots in the region.
The military buildup on Guam is not without its challenges,
but it is the right thing for our Nation and the right thing
for Guam. We just need to get it done right.
And to that end, I do have some concerns about the
reduction in operation and maintenance funding across all the
services in fiscal year 2012, as compared to 2011 levels. We
need to examine these funding levels through the lens of
strategic documents like the QDR and the Global Defense Posture
Report and not lose sight of our emerging capability needs
across the globe.
I would be interested to learn more from our witnesses
today on what they think can be done to strengthen the QDR and
the global posture review process. In some cases, these
documents have been seen merely as budget drills. So what can
Congress do to strengthen the process even further? I
appreciate the work of the committee in creating a QDR review
panel, but what other ideas should we consider in the future?
Again, I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and look forward to the
testimony from our witnesses.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Ms. Bordallo.
And now we are going to hear from our witnesses. And we are
going to go in alphabetical order, if that is okay with the
witnesses. And we are going to start with Mr. deLeon.
And thank you so much for being here today.
STATEMENT OF RUDY DELEON, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR NATIONAL
SECURITY AND INTERNATIONAL POLICY, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS
Mr. deLeon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
subcommittee. I appreciate this chance to come and testify
before the House Armed Services Committee [HASC] today.
And, certainly, as many know, I have a long-time
relationship with the committee, but I was staff director of
the committee so long ago that Mr. Reyes is probably the only
Member that remembers me from that tenure. But it was a
remarkable time, the tenure of President Reagan and many other
things. So I certainly welcome this opportunity to testify
today.
The four panelists, we are used to working with each other
in a bipartisan way. We have different perspectives, and we
will bring different views that I pledge will be interesting
and, I think, informative to the committee. But I think what
also--even where we disagree, we have a track record of finding
the consensus, which I know is at the heart of what the Armed
Services Committee does.
I would just like to take a few minutes--we each have
formal written statements, if we can just submit them--and I
will just make a few opening comments, because, ultimately, we
want the engagement back and forth.
One, I think we all acknowledge Secretary Gates has really
appropriately focused the Department on the ongoing combat in
Afghanistan and in Iraq. That was a key decision made. His
tenure began in late 2006. We have seen the impact of his
leadership in the combat AOR [Area of Responsibility]. But, at
the same time, when we look at these budgets, these budgets are
driven by ongoing combat.
And when the QDR independent review looked at the budget,
it was our job to, sort of, look beyond Iraq and Afghanistan to
that period that will follow on. And so, that was the bulk of
our work. Also, the QDR tasking coming from the Congress was
not to be constrained by budget issues but to look at the big
policy questions there.
So, very briefly, what I would like to just cover are four
key points in my testimony.
One, we all agree the Asia-Pacific is critical. That is the
new avenue of global commerce. And so we need new emphasis and
new resources for the Asia-Pacific. The transparency of China
is a key issue, the PLA [People's Liberation Army], and an
element of our mil-to-mil dialogue. But Asia-Pacific is at the
top of our list in terms of needing to focus strategically on
that region, because the role of the United States in that
region since the end of World War II has been absolutely
critical.
The rise of China, the balancing of historic tensions in
Asia, the growth of their economies have all been made possible
by the protection that the U.S. military, our diplomats, but
particularly the men and women of our Armed Forces have given
the region of Asia. It has been a unique period. And Asia,
because of the American presence, has been divorced from many
of the regional tensions which created conflict in the past.
The second are what I will call new security concerns. That
is cyber. That is homeland security; whole-of-government
reforms to assist our troops in the field with capabilities
coming from other executive branch organizations. And then the
importance of prolonged mil-to-mil relationships. The
challenges in Egypt right now--the U.S.'s military ability to
talk to the Egyptian military has proven to be just a crucial--
a crucial set of skills.
When the Soviet Union disbanded, it was the mil-to-mil
relationship with some of the emerging democracies of the
former Warsaw Pact--Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary--that
allowed for a solid democratic transition of those militaries
that are now very capable NATO members. And the Prime Minister
of Poland, who is now one of the leading spokespersons for
NATO, was here in town to be acknowledged by the Atlantic
Council this week. But, you know, this is a dramatic change
from 1980 and the end of the Solidarity movement to the end of
communism. But the mil-to-mil relationships are extremely
important.
The third issue that I have covered in detail in my opening
statement is energy.
Right now, you know, 50 percent of our energy exports come
from this hemisphere, from Canada and Mexico at the top. As we
go further south, some of the suppliers become more
problematic--Venezuela. But 50 percent of our energy imports
come from the Western Hemisphere, and that is a good thing.
Slightly less than 20 percent come from the Persian Gulf
region, a higher percentage coming from Africa.
But, from a military perspective, the supply line of fuel
is pivotal to the mobility of our forces. I know that there are
initiatives that this committee created in the last several
years to focus on the energy requirement. That is a key
component of logistics. It is what makes the United States
military unique.
We are in a tense period, in terms of the price of energy,
but we still control our destiny. But figuring out our energy
strategy, particularly for our troops that are deployed, is
going to be a critical challenge for us.
Last piece, the U.S. economy as a component of national
security. Meeting the readiness challenges of the next 20 years
is dependent upon our country, the Department of Defense,
working with Congress to really get our economic house back in
order.
Now, during my tenure at Armed Services and then later my
tenure at the Department of Defense, I lived continuously under
balanced-budget rules. The challenge to go from high deficits
to a balanced budget really started in 1987 with the Gramm-
Rudman legislation that came from Senator Phil Gramm, Senator
Warren Rudman. It was followed by an agreement in 1980 between
President George Bush and negotiated largely with Congressman
Gephardt here.
But when you look at these in their conclusion, that 1990
agreement really started a foundation moving toward a balanced
budget. We have the Clinton initiatives in 1993 and then the
negotiations in 1995 and 1996, which really lock us into a
trajectory of a balanced budget that we realize in 1999. It was
a lot of work to get there.
The challenge was to keep military readiness high. The
Armed Services Committee, throughout that period of the 1990s,
did a number of reports. Mr. Spence's report to Secretary Perry
in the early 1990s on readiness--I think Mr. Donnelly may have
actually been one of the authors on that--was an important
piece of the debate and the discussion.
But my key point is that we really do have to get our
budgets and our economy in order; that throughout the late
1980s, throughout the 1990s, there were a series of very clear
rules that applied government-wide that had a big impact in
terms of focusing on spending.
Just a last point on that, and I don't want to speak much
longer here. Clearly, coming out of the--we have had very high
defense budgets the last 10 years, but those budgets have been
fundamentally different than the high defense budgets of the
1980s. The 1980s defense budgets were largely investment
budgets, and the budgets of the last decade have really been
budgets to support military forces in the field and combat. And
so they have been high on consumables.
So you have been consuming a lot of personnel dollars, you
have been consuming a lot of readiness dollars. The procurement
numbers are coming up. But coming out of this period of
significant defense spending, we need to acknowledge that these
really have been budgets that have supported combat operations
in the field and not the investment budgets of the 1980s.
And then, finally, moving forward on the American economic
challenge, you know, U.S. national security has long rested on
the strength of our economy. If you go and read the NSC-68,
which was the strategy early in the Truman presidency that
really looked at the future, they had two big assumptions: an
extremely capable military and a highly viable economy.
And so the challenge, I think, in the readiness area, in
addition to the line items of the budget, will be to move
forward on the economic challenge of creating jobs, promoting
competitiveness and innovation, while reducing the long-term
budget deficits.
That is a message that the rest of the world needs to know.
This is a country that is capable of great things, that we are
not in economic decline. And we need to send that message,
because American national security leadership has been premised
on our strength of global leadership, economically as well as
from the national security perspective.
So, Mr. Chairman, we appreciate--I do--this opportunity to
testify.
[The prepared statement of Mr. deLeon can be found in the
Appendix on page 42.]
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Mr. deLeon.
Now Mr. Donnelly.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS DONNELLY, RESIDENT FELLOW AND DIRECTOR,
CENTER FOR DEFENSE STUDIES, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR
PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH
Mr. Donnelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to the ranking
member.
I would echo what Rudy said about what a pleasure it is to
return to our former place of employment. One may leave the
committee staff, but emotionally and mentally it is hard to
escape.
I am also going to end up agreeing a lot with Rudy. I think
one of the most disturbing elements of the QDR panel for Rudy
was that he found himself too often in agreement with me. I
have always known Rudy to be a closet neoconservative or at
least a Truman Democrat, but I think Rudy hadn't faced that
reality yet.
But to turn to serious matters, I was impressed by both the
opening statements because they went--both the question of Task
Force Hawk and the question of the invasion of Iraq go directly
to the questions that I hope you guys will consider when you
are considering readiness.
The most important question, and where we have fallen short
so frequently in the post-cold war years, is when we ask the
question, not are we ready by the metrics and the yardsticks
that the Department produces, but are those yardsticks the
right assessment of what our forces need to be able to do? The
question is, what should we be ready for? And if we don't
answer that question adequately, the other metrics are
interesting but not really the right ones that we should be
using.
Also, interestingly enough, the QDR panel found itself very
much in similar circumstances as we did our work. After we got
the initial briefings on the QDR itself, there was widespread
dissatisfaction among the members--a very distinguished panel,
as Rudy said, bipartisan, even nonpartisan in its direction
from Secretary Perry--about what the QDR process had produced.
We recognized that we did not have the time nor the staff
capability to replay the entire QDR process, so we were looking
around for a set of measurements to understand what the
requirements for U.S. forces were.
And, actually, there was very spirited debate but pretty
quick agreement that U.S. security interests remain constant
over time, that the issues, the capabilities, and the interests
of the United States don't change. Adversaries and enemies and
allies and friends may change. Technological circumstances may
change. But, certainly, in the post-World War II period, there
is a remarkable consistency about what United States purposes
have been.
And we felt that was a pretty reasonable set of
measurements for us to use about what our forces should be
prepared to do. And my prepared testimony goes through that in
some detail.
I would also like to save--I have a good idea of what my
colleagues are going to say, so I would like to just cherry-
pick a few of the things, if I may, in my brief remarks here.
We found four, sort of enduring U.S. interests: the defense
of our homeland, which includes, as Rudy suggested, our
neighborhood--think of the Monroe Doctrine, for example--but
larger North America, if you will; the ability to freely
access, both for commercial purposes and when necessary in
wartime, what are lumped together as the ``international
commons.''
Secretary John Lehman loathed that word and excised it from
the panel report--basically, the freedom of the seas, the
skies, of space, and now of cyberspace. That is where the life
of the commercial trading system occurs, and those are the
domains, if you will, that are essential not only for
protection of the United States itself, but the means through
which we project power abroad. If we can't deploy our forces by
sea, by air, watch them and talk to them and provide them with
intelligence and reconnaissance from space or communicate with
them through the use of the Internet, then our ability to do
what we have to do around the world is going to be severely
constrained.
And it was very much the conclusion of the panel that those
commons, which have been the distinct American way of war, are
now contested commons. And the more modern--as you, sort of, go
through the progression from maritime to cyberspace, the more
you go through that batting order, the more contested the
domains are.
We have also always worried about the balance of power in
the vital regions of the world--in Europe, where we spent a
century, two world wars, an immense amount of blood and
treasure to produce what looks to be a durable peace and has
allowed to us to draw down forces in recent years; and,
obviously, in east Asia, as Rudy suggested and as others will
comment; but also--and this is where I like to focus my
remarks--on the greater Middle East, particularly now that we
see the region actually--the peoples of the region, themselves,
taking up the cause of individual freedom and liberty that so
many Americans have sacrificed, including sacrificed their
lives, for over the past generation, not just in the past 10
years.
The fact is, this has always been a volatile region. It is
becoming more volatile now. Who knows how it is going to come
out? But it will still be of critical interest to the United
States and to the world.
Rudy mentioned energy supplies. We are lucky in that a
relatively small percentage of our oil actually physically
comes from the Persian Gulf. But, of course, oil is a fungible
commodity, it is a global market. And our most reliable allies,
particularly in east Asia but also in Europe, depend on those
energy supplies. And it is also critical to the developing
economies of China and India.
The entire world, and certainly the commercial world, the
economic world, benefits from having a stable oil pipeline writ
large, or energy pipeline, to which the Middle East contributes
the largest amount, globally speaking, and which is critical
for the world's economic progress and prosperity. We are
obviously at a moment of fragile recovery, ourselves, here at
home. We have seen gas prices spike in the last couple weeks.
We can only imagine what an extended rise in gas prices and in
energy prices would do.
The notion that Iraq and Afghanistan are the final chapters
of America's involvement in the region seems unbelievable to
me. There were many chapters before 9/11. We put up with Saddam
Hussein for 15 years and he made our lives miserable long
before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The same is true of Iran, which, as Rudy suggested, is on
the verge, who can say exactly when, of acquiring a nuclear
capability that would plunge the Gulf into even greater
turmoil. And we see in places like Egypt, where luckily we have
contacts, levers to ensure that the transition that comes is
something that we can shape.
But that is almost an exception that proves the rule. There
is very little that we could do in Libya that wouldn't involve,
again, a use of military force. And, again, whether that is
wise or the right thing to do is not my point. The question is,
we can see that it is already a question for our President.
So, again, as we look forward and try to say what should we
be ready for, the idea that we are not going to be somehow,
someplace, in some way involved in the Middle East seems to me
to be just a faulty planning assumption.
And the one thing that we have seen since 9/11 is that we
have not had that traditional two-war capacity to do many
things at the same time. We had to essentially get to a point
of culmination in Iraq before we could again focus adequate
resources in Afghanistan. And let's hope those turn out to be
durable successes in both cases. But, to go back to Rudy's
tenure in the Pentagon and before, it is an expression of the
win-hold-win force-sizing strategy.
Just to go back and to conclude by referring to your
opening remarks, Mr. Chairman, Task Force Hawk is a perfect
example of what I am trying to get at. Those Apaches were
probably perfectly ready to destroy the Soviet tanks in the
Second Echelon that they had spent their entire lives in
Germany preparing to do. But when they were asked to pick up
and deploy in support of the Kosovo war or in support of
Bosnia, they didn't have the logistics or the transportation or
all the other support structures that they needed to survive in
the muck and mire or to get there.
Likewise, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was as classic an
example of mobile armored warfare as we will see in our
lifetimes. Three weeks from crossing the line of departure to
knocking down the Saddam statues in Baghdad is a remarkable
accomplishment, probably moving faster than George Patton ever
moved across France. But that wasn't the end of the story
because it wasn't, obviously, the end of the war.
So the problem in assessing readiness, really, in a
strategic sense, is much less, are we meeting the benchmarks,
the formal, narrowly defined benchmarks, that are currently
being employed, but have we captured in our assessments and in
our readiness metrics those things that really, truly reflect
the tasks that we are almost certain to ask our forces to do,
that flow directly from this assessment of our interests and
add up in sum to a global set of challenges?
And we have learned, again, much to our sorrow and pain,
that what happens in the Middle East, although strategically
connected to what happens in east Asia, may require an entirely
different kind of force and will have to be things the U.S.
military does simultaneously rather than sequentially.
So, as you guys look at the question of the readiness of
our forces, I urge you to take that one step back and ask, are
the benchmarks, themselves, the right ones?
Thank you for your time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Donnelly can be found in the
Appendix on page 50.]
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Mr. Donnelly.
Ms. Eaglen.
STATEMENT OF MACKENZIE EAGLEN, RESEARCH FELLOW FOR NATIONAL
SECURITY STUDIES, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION
Ms. Eaglen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and to the ranking
member, for your unconventional approach to your first hearing
of the year. I think it is just an outstanding way to take a
step back, take a look at the big picture outside of the, you
know, defense witness ``hearing in a box'' and really talk
about things to think about for the future.
I want to again thank Rudy for his leadership last summer
on the QDR Independent Panel as our esteemed chairman on the
Force Structure and Personnel Subcommittee, where we gained a
lot of knowledge and experience into helping you answer these
questions.
I think Task Force Hawk is a powerful way to open this
hearing, because the two primary findings from GAO, which is
insufficient training and the need for additional capabilities,
is exactly where we are in almost every, sort of, major area
across the services today. And I am very concerned, like you,
that the likelihood of this happening again is high and is
getting higher.
So Rudy and Tom very sufficiently laid out a snapshot of
the world as it is, and I want to provide an overview of the
state of our hard power capabilities, in particular our
military to carry out a lot of things that might be asked of
them.
I was told by a senior Special Forces official recently
that if you look at a view of the world from space and America
assesses the 50 most important nation-states on the planet
Earth relative to the war on terror, whatever term you want to
use there, they all have their lights out, for the most part.
And we are talking countries very much like Afghanistan, which
has, you know, very little infrastructure to begin with, but it
goes much further beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. And it is
something that, again, as Tom just said, you know, our efforts
and interests around the world are not going to go away as we
wind down in Iraq and we, hopefully, eventually wind down in
Afghanistan.
What have we been seeing across the force lately? As most
of you know, we have a pretty old and geriatric and rusting
force structure on the equipment side. And we have a grand
experiment occurring on the personnel side, employing an All-
Volunteer Force for over 10 years in continuous operations,
which has never been done since we stood it up in the early
1970s.
On the equipment side, not accounting for new systems like,
for example, some helicopter rotary-wing platforms and some
drones in particular, and leaving out some ISR [intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissance] and coms [communications]
capabilities, just looking at the major systems that we use to
facilitate operations everywhere else around the world, our Air
Force, Navy, and Marine Corps tactical aircraft are averaging
50 to 25 years old, depending on which service we are talking
about.
The Army's armored personnel carriers are almost 30 years
old. Bradley Fighting Vehicles are approaching 20 years old.
Our cargo helicopters that we use heavily in Afghanistan are
almost 20 years old; some have been upgraded, of course. Our
helis are 35. Our cruisers are 20 years old. Our ORION long-
range aircraft that we use for ISR capabilities are 25 years
old. Our bombers--our newest ones are 20, but our oldest ones
are almost 50 years old.
I actually heard a story just yesterday that some of the
bomber pilots in the Dakotas--actually, their grandfather
literally flew same plane.
Our transport aircraft, our wide-body cargo aircraft are
over 40 years old. And, as you well know, the tankers are
almost 50 years old.
What we are seeing across the services is the cross-
leveling of not just equipment, which is also known as the
cannibalization, but of people, as well, to reorient for
various missions and needs and to really scramble to match
requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan. And this has a direct
impact on the Reserve Component and on the National Guard and
Reserves in each of your States and districts.
As the ranking member noted in her opening statement, over
the past 5 years, on average, most States in the country have
had less than 40 percent of their Guard equipment on hand,
available to respond to everything else that the military does,
including hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and more. And there is
a direct effect on the health of the Active Force and, of
course, the Reserve Component.
When you are cross-leveling people and equipment,
everything from, you know, weapons systems like machine guns
and handguns, to vehicles, tracked and wheeled, to helicopters,
what that basically means is everything is upended in the
readiness cycle as a result of this. And then you are having
the units that are about to deploy, they are not able to
actually train on their actual weapons systems in live-fire
exercises as often as they need to be.
In the last 4 years, we have seen less than half of all Air
Force units that were fully mission-capable. The Navy, a couple
years ago, discovered that two surface combatant ships were
unfit for combat and had to hold what they called a ``strategic
pause,'' where we basically halted the entire worldwide fleet
of all of our surface combatants to assess their readiness
levels, in the case that they were going to prove unready in a
very embarrassing incident.
We are also seeing the effects on training. You know,
obviously our forces have been very heavily emphasized in
counterinsurgency capabilities, and it is coming at the expense
of most others, as well, including combined arms and jungle
warfare and amphibious capabilities and operations, as well.
The former chief of staff of the Air Force actually used
the term ``ancillary training creep'' and I think that is
actually effective for services like the Navy and the Air
Force, in particular, that have to do things beyond supporting
counterinsurgency operations. Their ability to prepare for
other conflicts has been significantly degraded.
Quickly, I will just close out by talking--using the
Special Forces again, going back to them as a snapshot. I
referenced the Air Force in my testimony as a case study in
readiness and how unready we actually really are for, again,
things much beyond Afghanistan, including, for example, a no-
fly zone over Libya, which would greatly challenge the military
to undertake.
Currently, we have more than 80 percent of our Special
Forces deployed in one region, in Central Command. And they
have been deployed at unsustainable rates since 2001. And what
that means is it is coming at the expense of their jobs, for
example, in Latin America and elsewhere around the world. Post-
9/11, our Special Operations Forces are twice the size, they
have three times the budget that they had before 9/11, but they
have more than quadruple the demand that was on them
previously.
Take, for example, the 7 Special Forces Group in Latin
America, where they are supposed to be working right now. They
have been carrying almost half the load in Afghanistan for 7
years. So we are leaving behind all of these other areas of the
world, which are not becoming any more safe and the areas of
risks and challenges are not growing any less steep over time.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Eaglen can be found in the
Appendix on page 65.]
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Ms. Eaglen.
Dr. Mahnken.
STATEMENT OF DR. THOMAS G. MAHNKEN, PROFESSOR OF STRATEGY, U.S.
NAVAL WAR COLLEGE
Dr. Mahnken. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking
Member, members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me
here to testify this morning.
Mr. Chairman, in line with your intent, I would like to
keep my opening remarks brief and to submit my written
statement to the record.
In the brief time I have, I would like to cover four
topics: just a few words about maybe how we should think about
readiness from a strategic perspective; then to zoom in and
focus on one particular contingency, the need to deal with
China's military modernization and development of anti-access
capabilities; third, to talk about our readiness to counter
China's anti-access capabilities; and then, hopefully, to end
on somewhat of a note of opportunity for us.
So, on readiness, as someone who has spent a career
studying, teaching, and practicing strategy, I am certainly
sympathetic to those who face the challenging task of trying to
ensure that U.S. Armed Forces are ready to face the full
spectrum of challenges that we do face.
And I certainly applaud Secretary of Defense Gates' call to
achieve a balanced defense capability, even as I acknowledge
that achieving balance is extremely challenging. It requires us
to balance the certainty that American soldiers, sailors,
airmen, and marines are in combat today and will be in combat
tomorrow against the possibility of other contingencies,
including great-power conflict, contingencies that may be of
lower probability than the certainty of today's combat but
would have extremely high consequence.
And, finally, I think we need to acknowledge that readiness
involves not only preparing for and fighting today's wars but
also reassuring our allies and deterring aggressors in order to
prevent war. And back to Tom Donnelly's comments, I think, you
know, these are some of the criteria we should use to assess
our readiness.
Certainly, the strategic environment that we face today
further complicates the task. We face challenges all the way
from nonstate terrorist organizations, such as Al Qaeda and its
associated movements, up to regional rogues, such as Iran and
North Korea, up to China's military modernization.
Let me focus on one of those challenges, I think a
particularly stressing challenge: that posed by China's
development of anti-access capabilities. As Rudy mentioned, the
QDR Independent Panel identified a number of challenges that we
face; it also identified a number of shortfalls in U.S. force
structure. I want to focus on Chinese anti-access capabilities.
This is a matter of some urgency since China is, for the
first time, close to achieving a military capability to deny
the U.S. and allied forces access to much of the Western
Pacific Rim. China's military modernization calls into question
a number of assumptions upon which the United States has based
its defense planning since World War II.
Specifically, the assumption that the United States will
enjoy an operational sanctuary in space is now in question due
to China's development of anti-satellite and other
capabilities--capabilities that are adequately documented in a
series of DOD reports to Congress on Chinese military power
over the years.
Second, the assumption that U.S. bases in Guam and Japan
and elsewhere will be secure from attack is also increasingly
open to question, due to China's development of ballistic and
cruise missile systems and other capabilities.
Third, the assumption that U.S. naval surface vessels can
operate with impunity in all parts of the western Pacific--also
open to question, due to the development of a range of
capabilities on the part of China.
And then, finally, the assumption that in a crisis U.S.
information networks will remain secure--also open to question,
given China's cyber capabilities.
These developments have profound implications for U.S.
national security. We have, since the end of World War II,
based our defense strategy on the combination of forward-based
forces to deter adversaries and reassure our friends and the
projection of power from those bases and the continental United
States to defeat foes in wartime. The spread of anti-access
capabilities calls that formula into question.
Well, in response to these developments, the QDR
Independent Panel argued that the U.S. force structure needs to
be increased in a number of areas to counter anti-access
challenges. Specifically, the panel called for an expansion of
the U.S. surface fleet, the acquisition of additional attack
submarines, replacement for the Ohio class cruise missile
submarines, an increase in our bomber force, and an expansion
of our long-range precision-strike capabilities. Those were
among the recommendations of the panel.
With the time I have left, let me just outline very briefly
some opportunities in addition to the panel's recommendations.
Because I think the United States has opportunities to work
with our all allies and our friends to ensure security in the
Asia-Pacific region.
First, are opportunities that would come from developing a
coalition intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
network in the western Pacific to help reassure our allies and
friends and generate collective responses to crisis and
aggression.
The second is the need to harden and diversify our network
of bases in the Pacific. I believe we need to harden our
facilities on Guam, we need to harden our facilities at Kadena
in Japan. And we also need to be looking at a much broader and
more diverse set of bases in the region.
Third and finally, I think we need to look for ways to
bolster our submarine force and to work to link together our
submarine force with those of our allies and our friends in the
region. Undersea warfare is a comparative advantage for the
United States and for many of our allies and one that is likely
to be of increasing relevance in the future. And we need to
think about creative ways that we can work with our allies to
bolster our undersea capabilities.
In closing, I would like to go back to something that Mr.
deLeon said about the deficit and about spending. None of the
moves that I have outlined in my remarks would be free, but
some of them could be undertaken with modest cost. And I
believe that we need to think about the cost of recapitalizing
our military, but, in doing so, we also need to consider the
price for not recapitalizing. And, in the long run, that cost
is likely to be much greater.
Thank you very much, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Mahnken can be found in the
Appendix on page 82.]
Mr. Forbes. Thank you all.
And I am going to defer most of my questions until the end,
so we can let other Members ask questions.
But I just wanted to get started with--we have the QDR,
which is our major defense lay-down and strategy. And, of
course, Congress, I think very wisely, set up the independent,
bipartisan panel to look at the QDR and say, are we on the
right track or the wrong track? There are three statements that
came out of that panel that I would like to just read for you
and ask your comments on.
I want to start at the end, where you said this statement.
You said, ``The panel's assessment is that the budget process
and current operational requirements, driven by the staff
process and service priorities, most likely shape the QDR far
more than the QDR will now shape processes and drive future
budgets and program agendas.''
I want to overlay that on one that got my attention right
off the bat, when you said, ``The aging of the inventories and
equipment used by the services, the decline in the size of the
Navy, escalating personnel entitlements, overhead and
procurement costs, and the growing stress on the force means
that a train wreck is coming in the areas of personnel,
acquisition, and force structure.''
I would like your comments on those two statements, if you
would. And compare that with--yesterday, the Secretary of the
Navy was here, and I asked him about that statement. And he
said that the only difference between the numbers the Navy has
for ships and the number the panel had for ships was the way
they counted the ships, and there really wasn't any difference.
Can you just give me your thoughts on those statements?
Mr. deLeon. Well, yes. One, on the QDR process itself, I
think the members of the commission felt that there were times
where there had been dramatic strategic reviews--Reagan
Administration in 1981, the base force of Secretary of Defense
Cheney and General Powell in 1991, the Bottom-Up Review in
1993. And then, in the other times, the QDR process had been
process-driven more than strategically driven.
So I think one of the points was that the QDR may come too
early in a new Administration. When we go through a transition
from one Administration to the next, the legal requirement is
for the QDR to come in year one. The challenge of staffing up a
new Administration in the key Pentagon jobs and the speed with
which the other body occasionally acts on the confirmation
process means too many things just happen in that first year.
So validating when the QDR needs to occur, it needs to be
strategic. So that is point one.
I think point two, we were concerned that, in terms of the
number of ships--we chose our words very carefully. Steve
Hadley, the former national security advisor, and I wrote that
section, ``access to all of the international areas of the
Pacific.'' And so that is a presence issue. It is probably
maritime, because those are highly effective mobile platforms.
And so, you know, I think what we were emphasizing was you
need to make sure you have the force structure for the Pacific,
and you need to make sure that you have the strategy for the
Pacific.
We did not get into a bean-counting on the number of ships.
Our concern was that, again, not that the cost of the ships may
be as much a constraint as the budget that is available for the
ships, but that, clearly, if we were trying to prioritize, we
would say the Pacific is the area where you have to prioritize.
Mr. Forbes. Mr. Donnelly.
Mr. Donnelly. To take the questions in reverse order, I
would stand by the panel's ship number, which was thoroughly
scrubbed by John Lehman, who knows how to count ships. That is
one thing he knows extraordinarily well. I think that this has
been a Pentagon talking point and critique of the panel report
since it was released. And I think, as a matter of analysis, we
were right and they weren't. But to walk through all the
details would be mind-numbing.
I want to just also totally agree with Rudy in terms of the
panel's analysis of the QDR process. I was on the committee
staff when the QDR legislation was written, and, in many ways,
our model was the Les Aspin Bottom-Up Review that Rudy knows
inside and out. And the, kind of, anomalous point of that was
that Mr. Aspin uniquely, when he became Secretary of Defense,
had been thinking about these issues, preparing for them and
holding hearings when he was chairman of the full Armed
Services Committee. So he came into office with that strategic
set of viewpoints that Rudy references.
There is a recommendation in the panel report, if I recall
rightly, for setting up sort of a senior advisory group that
would be available to a new Administration to sort of help them
get their strategic sea legs as they came into office and
prepared to do an appropriate defense review.
But I think it was, as Rudy says, kind of a consensus view
that the current process was not working, and the absence of a
genuine strategic understanding and guidance had reduced the
process to a budget drill.
Mr. deLeon. Just two quick points. One is that the review
process has not been working for a while, throughout the last
decade. And I think counting ships, I think your description
may have been a bit simplistic, Tom. So I think there is an
area for discussion that the committee needs to probe in terms
of how many of the ships in the pipeline are combatants, how
many are support ships?
But in terms of the critical presence issue, again it is a
reorientation. It is a focus that across the Pacific, that is
the new lines of commerce globally. That is where the critical
issues are. And so you have got to look where are the resources
going. We have also got to ask where are the resources going
when our allies in Europe are significantly ratcheting their
budgets down? So how much of our responsibility for their
security do we continue to maintain? We have got this growing
issue of access to the international areas of the Pacific at a
time when we still have considerable resources aimed toward
Europe, and our European allies are reducing their
expenditures.
Mr. Forbes. Ms. Eaglen.
Ms. Eaglen. Yes, I agree, of course, with the findings.
What we have seen in the last 10 years largely is a shift in
funding and priorities within the Department to focus on
prevailing and current operations, which is commendable, and
clearly common sense. The problem is that it is coming at the
expense of preparing for the future. And I would argue that in
many ways the future is now. It always seems like it is so far
out, and a lot of the challenges that we are seeing come on
line from the capabilities around the world that friends and
foes alike are building presents it now.
But I do want to talk about just again the snapshot of the
armed services. We have the smallest Navy that we have ever had
since 1916, and we are asking it to do about 400 percent more
than it has ever done in the past. We have the oldest Air Force
in the history of the country since its inception in 1947, all
of its fighters, cargoes, bombers, tankers, trainers. The Army
has skipped three generations of modernization, and the last
one which was canceled, the FCS [Future Combat Systems], even
though there is a potential replacement hopefully coming online
soon, was the only ground vehicle improvement that the Army has
had in 60 years.
So I don't want to overstate the challenges, but that is
the reality. We can't talk about the world as it is and what is
required unless we actually talk about also the state of the
military.
Now, the QDR Independent Panel--if I can speak for them,
Rudy might jump in--used the rough metric of the Bottom-Up
Review as a good assessment of a starting point specifically
because that was what we thought, what they--leaders,
policymakers thought was needed at a time when we expected the
world to be a much more peaceful place. How could we need
anything less than that today is really what the message that
we are trying to send.
And to the CNO's [Chief of Naval Operations'] point, which
actually the 2012 budget came in pretty strong for
shipbuilding. I am thrilled about that. I think there is an
understanding that there is a true bipartisan consensus to grow
shipbuilding and a genuine need to do that.
But analysis across the board from the CBO [Congressional
Budget Office] to CRS [Congressional Research Service] and the
Center for Naval Analysis will find that while our battle force
fleet is about high 270s, low 280s in terms of ship numbers, we
are really on a glide path to building a 220-ship Navy when you
add it up and you project it forward. So I would not even focus
on the 346. I would focus on what we are buying today, and if
you carry out linearly, just where does that get you? We are in
danger of a 220-ship Navy.
And I would close with just some thoughts on the process,
on the QDR process. The HASC took real leadership in standing
up the independent panel. The National Defense Panel was sort
of a model for this, which you had done one time in the 1997
QDR process. And I think it is wise to consider making a
standing national defense panel a permanent entity. It can
shift in terms of its membership and all of that sort of thing,
but one that actually informs the QDR process before the
Department gets under way so that you can get out of some of
that group think.
Mr. Forbes. Dr. Mahnken.
Dr. Mahnken. I would echo what my colleagues have said
about the panel's recommendation of 346 ships versus the
programmed or the planned 313. I think, as Mackenzie said, we
did look back to the Bottom-Up Review as a blank-sheet look at
U.S. requirements for a more peaceful era than we see today. I
think there was a general sense that the current force
structure is likely to be insufficient given the challenges
that we face.
As to the QDR process, I am in the unique position of
having played a minor role in the 2006 QDR, run the office that
did a lot of the preparation for the 2010 QDR, and then being
on the QDR Independent Panel. My general observations are two.
First, Quadrennial Defense Reviews, their success is directly
proportional to the amount of time and effort the most senior
leadership of the Department is willing to commit. And I think
that goes back to Mr. deLeon's point that there have been
dramatic changes in our defense strategy, but those have really
occurred when the President and the Secretary of Defense are
directly, directly involved. At other times, things go less
well.
As to the timing, I am one of those people that believes
that the current timing is probably the least bad option. The
QDR used to be submitted earlier, and I think the experience
was that a new Administration didn't have all of its folks in
place and could not really put its stamp on the review. If you
wait later, which I think sort of sound analysis would say you
want to take longer and so forth--if you wait later, you are
really into the Administration's second or third budget going
up before Congress, and there is very limited ability for the
Administration to shape things.
So I am not a fan of the process, having been a part of it
multiple times, definitely not a fan of the process, but I
would say that the current timing at least is the least bad
option out there.
Mr. Forbes. Ms. Bordallo.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And again, thank you
to all the witnesses. Each of your statements were very
insightful, and some presented some daunting issues.
So I would like to start with Mr. deLeon first. As you
know, U.S. Pacific Command, as well as other commands, has
extensive programs in the military to foster military-to-
military and military-to-civilian relationships in their
respective AORs. You mentioned the Pacific region being a
strategic area, and, of course, I have to agree with you on
that.
My question for you is this: With what other countries
should the U.S. be expanding our relationships to enhance our
partnerships? Also can you comment on the effectiveness, both
geopolitical and budget-wise, of the National Guard State
Partnership Program? How do you see this program playing a part
in the mixture of tools available to a combatant command?
Mr. deLeon. Thank you.
You know, when we look at Asia, our military-to-military
relationship with Japan is crucial, and it has become all the
more crucial given some of the challenges going on in the South
China Sea.
Interestingly, we have a unique relationship developing
with Vietnam. They are a critical country in the region, and
that is one where we will do it step by step, but that is
clearly an area, given their geographic position in Asia.
India, the relationship is still developing, but they are a
risen power economically. They have their own issues in terms
of their relationships with both China and Pakistan. But that
is another area of opportunity. And then at a core minimum, the
United States needs to continue to press the PLA for some kind
of dialogue. It is much different than the U.S.-Japan military-
to-military exchange. But there has got to be enough of an
exchange so that both sides have the capacity to talk to each
other when there is a crisis.
We had one on the Korean Peninsula. The Americans like to
talk when things are at the crisis level because it creates
stability, it creates understanding. The Chinese don't. And so
this is a problem as China continues its economic development
and as it continues to develop military capabilities.
But we start with those countries where we are in strategic
alliance, and that begins with Japan, opening up with India. We
have the model to follow. And I think our Army led right after
the fall of--the breakup of the Soviet Union and those
relationships that they had had informally that they were able
to solidify with those Warsaw Pact countries that made for
their rapid admission into NATO. But having those
relationships--and you have to start them early. Young officers
who become the leaders need to have those relationships when
they are young.
Finally, there are great roles that the Guard can play,
particularly on the humanitarian missions to support the Active
Duty Forces, as well as the fact that the National Guard units
are now a key strategic reserve. In our tenures we have seen
the Guard go from being sort of a backup contingency for a big
war in Europe to being operationally able to deploy quickly.
The committee has had a clear voice on this in the last 30
years in terms of Mr. Montgomery and the Guard and the critical
role that they play and the contingencies that they bring on
the nontraditional areas.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you very much.
Dr. Mahnken, I have a question for you. In your testimony
you mentioned China's fast-growing anti-access capability--
which I certainly agree in your statement--and the correlating
recommendations from the QDR which call on countering this
threat by expanding the U.S. Navy surface and subsurface
fleets, increasing the bomber force, and expanding our long-
range precision strike capability. These types of military
weapons systems are often used in strategic environments, which
are very different from those we have our men and women
pursuing today in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere around the
world.
How would you recommend that we continue to use our
military forces to defeat nonstate actors and other threats,
while training them and equipping them for the future strategic
threats that you mentioned? And what do you consider the single
most important shift in readiness priorities from the
Department that this committee should consider during this
year's cycle?
Dr. Mahnken. Thank you for that question.
On dealing with nonstate actors and dealing with terrorist
organizations, I think the most important role that the U.S.
Defense Department will be playing and the services we will be
playing as we move forward is in training and advising foreign
militaries. I think in many ways as we look back, Iraq and
Afghanistan will not be the typical way that we will go about
it. I think the typical way we will go about it is the typical
way we have gone about it in the past, which is to help
governments that are under threat from insurgencies and
terrorist groups to build up their capacity to defeat those
threats.
And certainly as we have seen in the Philippines, working
with the Armed Forces of the Philippines strengthening their
capacity, I think that is going to be a key role. And while in
my remarks I focused a lot on naval and air capabilities for
dealing with anti-access challenges, I think for the Army and
for the Marine Corps, building the capacity to advise foreign
militaries really is going to be key. It is not going to
necessarily be the--you know, the majority of troops involved,
but a very key part of the force structure.
As Ms. Eaglen mentioned earlier, our Army Special Forces
are the only part of the U.S. military that are recruited and
trained with an expertise and selected based on their aptitude
for dealing with foreign militaries, and I think strengthening
that capacity is key.
Now, you say single most important thing that the
subcommittee can do, I would go back to dealing with China's
anti-access capabilities. And again, there are a cluster of
capabilities associated with that that you outlined, but then
also improving our infrastructure and our basing
infrastructure, and making sure that our bases in the Asia-
Pacific region are hardened and survivable I think is
important. I think it is important for deterrence. I think it
is important for reassuring our allies, and should there be a
conflict, and I certainly hope there won't be, it will be
important then, too. But the greatest value for these types of
investments is in averting conflict.
Thank you.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you very much, Doctor.
I do have other questions, Mr. Chairman, if we are going to
have a second round. Thank you.
Mr. Forbes. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from
Georgia, Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would like to
just make a general statement, and then I would like the
committee members to respond as fast as possible.
And I believe, and I think most believe, that well-trained,
well-equipped soldiers with proper dwell time should be our
priority, and they are the key to victory for us in any
conflict that we go into. The Department of Defense and the
generals in most cases say the same thing. Yet when we look at
DOD proposals, the DOD has proposed to eliminate the number of
soldiers or reduce the number of soldiers by 43,000 and to hire
30,000 additional bureaucrats or procurement officers.
DOD proposes to eliminate the C-17 buy, which is arguably
the most important plane in our fleet with everything that we
do with it. I can understand reducing the purchase if we have
enough, but to totally eliminate it when you have already got
the line up and running to me seems not a very wise thing to
do.
And they want a new bomber that they tell us they can't get
to us before 2025. And if they follow their current track
record, it will be somewhere closer to 2035 or maybe 2045
before we get the new bomber.
And my question is: There's an obvious disconnect here;
what is wrong at DOD, and how do we fix it?
Mr. Donnelly. I do not mean this as a flip answer, but DOD
is an institution that is suffering from lack of guidance and
not enough money to do all the things that it is being asked to
do. I mean, it is a big bureaucracy, you know. They get a lot
of money. But their tasks are larger than the force can handle.
Mr. Scott. Can I stop you right there, because I want to
hear other people. Okay. But they are proposing to eliminate
approximately 45,000 soldiers and hire 30,000 bureaucrats. If
we talk about their budget, they are going to spend a whole lot
more and pay those 30,000 bureaucrats a whole lot more than
they are going to pay the soldiers. So from a budget standpoint
they don't seem to care what they spend.
Mr. Donnelly. Actually I believe Secretary Gates has put at
least a halt on expanding the civilian workforce. I am not
quite sure that the original plan to hire additional
procurement officers is going to proceed as originally
announced by the Administration.
I share a concern about Army and Marine Corps end strength
cuts. We have seen this movie before. We always believe there
will never be another land war, and then there is. So that is
something that is deeply worrying to me.
Mr. Scott. Would one of the others speak specifically to
the decision to absolutely eliminate the C-17 buy and the value
of that plane to our fleet, while at the same time pursuing
another plane that they can't have to us before 2025?
Ms. Eaglen. Absolutely. First let us start with the
practical implication to permanently shutting down a line,
which you have alluded to here, and the great costs of doing
so, not just in the termination fees, but losing America's only
wide-bodied cargo production line in existence.
Mr. Scott. Absolutely.
Ms. Eaglen. So it is not just the C-17, but you want the
capability for more C-5s or C-130s or any one of these types of
platforms that are incredibly--I mean, current operations grind
to a halt without the ability to move people and equipment
around the globe.
We saw when the U.S. military responded to humanitarian
operations in Haiti, C-17s along with the other wide-body cargo
aircraft were diverted from missions in Afghanistan because
there just simply aren't enough to do everything, as Tom has
said.
The benefits of this sort of strategic lift go beyond
warfighting operations, of course, to every other type of
mission, to building partner capacity, to the humanitarian
assistance and more. The most interesting part about actually
closing this line and then restarting it, if we choose to do
so, which we usually find out after the fact that these are
mistakes--the cost of closing down the line is about $6 billion
if you want to restart it later.
To answer your question, what we are seeing in the
Department are budget-driven strategies, and so you have a
short-term cost savings that appears as a cost savings, but it
is really going to cost you more money in the long term;
whereas if you have sort of stable, predictable Defense
budgets, and you are building enough of everything, you are
able to save money. But what they are saying is, we need this
dollar to go here as opposed to here. And it is a shortsighted
investment decision that ends up again costing you more,
because what is not noted publicly by DOD are two things: the
cost of termination of any major program. It is very expensive
to pay the contractors when you say you are going to build
this, and then you build fewer than that number; but also the
cost of restarting, as I mentioned, and then what you have are
the long-term--nobody talks about the fact that you are going
to have to rebuild something again in the future.
So, for example, take the Marine Corps Expeditionary
Fighting Vehicle [EFV]. Yes, it saves money if you cancel it
this year, but the Marine Corps still needs an amphibious
combat vehicle. So we are not saving any money by not building
it this year; we are just pushing that bill to next year or the
year after.
Mr. deLeon. May I, sir?
Mr. Scott. That is up to the chairman. My time has expired.
Mr. Forbes. Go ahead.
Mr. deLeon. I think you are asking a good question, and you
ought to ask that of the witnesses as they come. Maybe I will
follow up and come and visit.
On the civilian side as we deployed to combat, we were
short the people in the field who can do contracting. This is
logistics contracting. We ended up taking a lot of people out
of the Corps of Engineers who would manage $50 million or $100
million water projects, putting them into Iraq where they were
supervising a billion dollars a week in logistics contracting.
So it turns out that the people who can write contracts are
fairly, fairly important to the effort.
Mackenzie talked about the slow rate of modernizing,
particularly Army procurement equipment. One of the things the
Army needs to do a little bit better is to frame their
requirements so that the government knows exactly what it is
buying. I am not sure that they still have some of the
technical expertise to specify what the exact composition of
the vehicles are to look like, things like that.
And so that is translating requirements to contracts, and
it is hugely important to the warfighter who needs the
equipment, and it is hugely important to the taxpayers because
they need to pay a fair price for the equipment. So figuring
out how to do that better, Mackenzie is right, we are living
off of the M1s and the Bradleys and the legacy of those who put
those in the pipelines as long as 30 years ago.
Dr. Mahnken. Mr. Chairman, if I could just briefly, and it
is on this issue of shutting down production lines. I think we
need to have a strategic view of these types of decisions. And
we should be looking not only at U.S. acquisition, but also
foreign acquisition as well. That is just to take the C-17
example. I could talk about other examples as well. We have
sold a number of C-17s, and there are opportunities to sell
more of them.
I think in our planning we should be taking those export
opportunities into account to hopefully try to keep these
production lines, as Mackenzie said, the expertise in place to
bridge the gap until the next time we use them. And I think
that there are all sorts of opportunities to do that in other
parts of our production capability as well, to include, you
know, UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles], for example, and even
maybe our submarine capabilities.
I think we need to have that strategic view of our
production capacity, because we have drawn it down. I think we
have drawn it down to a point where you have maybe one or two
providers of any particular capability. We are sort of at the
ragged edge of where you want to be if you want to be
competitive.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you.
I now recognize the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Reyes.
Mr. Reyes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding
this hearing. I think we are just starting to scratch the
surface of the many different issues that affect our readiness.
For instance, I am always, I guess, perplexed that 40 years ago
when I was in Vietnam, I was dodging the AK-47 and RPGs
[Rocket-Propelled Grenades]. Today those are still a basic
staple weapon that our troops are very much concerned about not
just in Iraq, but today in Afghanistan and in different parts
of the world.
I got to Vietnam when the M-16 was an issue because it was
jamming. It wasn't designed to be in the mud and the muck and
all of that other stuff. I was in the 11 Bravo. I wasn't a
grunt, I was a helicopter crew chief, but we carried them into
battle, and so we heard all of those concerns, and some were
openly saying we have got to kill the enemy and get their AK-
47s so we can defend ourselves.
Now, why I mention that is because sometimes in our effort
to modernize, to continue to modernize, we fail to see that
sometimes the basic staple--now, the AK-47 doesn't work for our
Special Ops troops. They carry weapons that have to be silenced
and all of those other things. But a staple of the regular
weapons has to be different.
Which I guess the frustration I feel is that we shouldn't
modernize for modernization's sake and to keep these things
kind of self-perpetuating themselves. And one of the things
that I have learned over the course of being on the
Intelligence Committee and chairing that committee is the
remarkable relationship today between intelligence and the
military, you know, our soldiers and marines, because of the
asymmetrical threats that exist against us.
So earlier this week I asked General Casey, I said--you
know, he is retiring, so General Dempsey, if the Senate
confirms him, is coming in--what kind of guidance have you
received to prepare our Army for future challenges? I am very
concerned about reducing the end strength of the Army and the
Marines, because the ones that pay the price are troops and
their families. That is how we got into that--I can remember
when I first got to Congress that the philosophy was the two-
war strategy--and I think you mentioned that, Mr. Donnelly, in
your wrap-up, in your conclusion--which is no longer in vogue.
But I would submit we may have to do not just two
operational commitments, but multiple operational commitments.
And, yes, maybe it is not in the traditional sense in terms of
committing thousands of troops, but still for the troops that
you commit for the Special Ops that are supported by intel and
vice versa, you still have to have a supply chain. You still
have to take care to make sure that you don't send people out
there and leave them hanging, because that is not the strategy
that we follow. God knows we have got all of these challenges
with not just the Horn of Africa, the Iranians and others, but
the Chinese. The Chinese have been very active.
When you mentioned the Special Ops whose main duty is Latin
America, I couldn't agree with you more. I found it the most
ironic to be speaking Spanish on the border between Pakistan
and Afghanistan with our Special Ops people who were telling
me, you know, we need to do a better job of paying attention to
Latin America. That is our hemisphere. That is where Chavez and
all of those other actors are busily trying to undermine places
like Mexico.
A scenario that in the next election, which is next year--
remember we just dodged a major bullet with Obregon. We would
have had Chavez's military advisors on our southern border,
because that is what he had offered Obregon.
This is not something that we do a hearing and move on, and
I applaud you for thinking in these terms. But we need to do
more. Maybe in a roundtable would be better because I get
frustrated--and I was a chairman, so I always tried to do what
the chairman does and say, I will ask my questions at the end,
because 5 minutes is not enough when you are dealing with the
kinds of complex issues that this case represents.
Mr. Forbes. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. Reyes. Absolutely.
Mr. Forbes. I absolutely agree with you, and one of the
things that we proposed was just what you said, sitting in that
type of roundtable. The ranking member did not want to do that
at this point in time. But I hope that we will continue to do
that because I agree with you 100 percent. These issues are
vitally important for us to get at instead of trying to put our
questioning in staccato mode where we really can't reach them.
So I hope we can do that.
Mr. Reyes. Thank you so much.
Can I just make one more observation? There is one thing we
learned in the two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. We learned that
we shouldn't ignore the first one so we can carry out the
second one, number one. Number two, is we learned that
contracting out is not a way to do that.
I mean, I don't know, Mr. Chairman, how you have had input
from our troops, but they are very frustrated that some of
their former colleagues leave the service and go into
contracting and earn two or three times more than they are
earning because they go with the contractors. We have so many
things like that that we have got to get our arms around. So I
again thank you for doing this, and these are very--people with
a lot of great insight, and we owe this system for the future
more dialogue in terms of--like I said, a roundtable for me
would work much better.
Mr. Forbes. If the gentleman would agree, and the
committee, the gentleman raises an excellent point. One of the
things that we know that we have found is that we had
difficulty fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan at the same
time. We moved out of Afghanistan into Iraq. It left us with
some vulnerabilities in Afghanistan.
And Congressman Reyes raises a good point about South
America. What kind of vulnerabilities do you think that we are
leaving exposed in South America because of our focus on other
parts of the world? And maybe you could take just a quick
moment to address those before we move to our next question.
Mr. deLeon. So Mexico is the key. We owe the government in
Mexico our attention as a national security issue. It is much
broader than the immigration question. Secretary Clinton was
right. We have a drug consumption problem on this side of the
border that fuels a lot of lawlessness on the other side of the
border because it is a pipeline.
On the other hand, South America, you have got some very
vibrant, energetic economies. Brazil is now a G-20 member
trying to play a global role. That is another area where we
have not really focused all that much on our mil-to-mil, but as
Brazil, Chile, Argentina become global players in the economy.
And then demographically in Central America we have got the
issue of 18- to 22-year-olds and are there jobs for them, and
do they become members of an economy, or do they get into the
drug trade? The drug trade has been an attention point of this
committee for 25 years, and it institutionalizes a series of
very corrupting behaviors.
Some of this is homeland security, but some of it--and the
mil-to-mil relationship between the U.S. and Mexico has always
been one of a struggle because of the history of the two
militaries--but figuring out how to engage that dialogue
looking south.
Now, as we had an interdiction program in Colombia that had
some successes, that had an impact on pushing more of the
business into Mexico. Now as we focus on Mexico, some of the
drug trade business gets moved to West Africa, and it creates
different plans. But I think working with the government in
Mexico as a partner, and then realizing that we have got
problems on this side of the border that we have got to deal
with, that is a start.
Mr. Forbes. Now the chair recognizes the gentlewoman from
Missouri, Mrs. Hartzler.
Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Yesterday, General Casey said that the Army's rotational
force model allowed them to hedge against unexpected
contingencies. Is this a reasonable assessment of the state of
the force?
Mr. deLeon. General Casey has worked hard to build in a
rotation force. Since the end of the cold war, there has been a
fundamental impact on our ground forces. Their optempo
[operations tempo] has gone up much higher. During the cold war
we would put our forces forward-deployed, in Korea, in Germany,
and they would live there with their families, the schools were
there, and you would go to a rotation, and it would be for 2
years, 3 years.
When the wall came down and we started to bring our troops
home to garrison, we were deploying troops from the continental
United States, and so they went from being forward-deployed to
contingency-based, and so that started a lot of wear and tear
on the ground forces in particular. And so it has developed
over the years a different rotational philosophy. When you put
someone forward-deployed in Korea, they are there for 2 years,
but in a contingency operation we are deploying the forces
regularly. We are sending them for a year, bringing them home,
sending someone else. So it means you have got to have troops
in the pipeline that replace the troops in the field, and when
the troops in the field come home, we need to restore their
quality of life with their families. We need, as Mackenzie
said, to restore their training opportunities.
So General Casey, as one of his marks of his tenure as
Chief, has really been focused on a larger rotational base. It
gets to the earlier question on the size of your ground forces,
because not only do you have to have troops for the mission,
you have to have the ability to rotate those troops once they
deploy.
Mr. Donnelly. Can I add a quick footnote to that. I think
Rudy is quite correct; however, the effect has been essentially
to transform the National Guard from a strategic reserve to an
operational reserve, as General Chiarelli said earlier this
week. The rotational model may be the least bad choice that we
have, but the rotation base inside the Army, the brigade combat
team system was designed to get people out to make units
smaller and lighter. The result is that every time they deploy,
they have to be plussed up by as much as 40 percent with
enablers, and National Guard units have to step up onto that
rotational conveyer belt at rates that were not anticipated
when these force structure decisions were made.
Mrs. Hartzler. Do you think that we can rapidly respond to
an unplanned event should several of them occur simultaneously?
Mr. deLeon. Well, one, you know, Mackenzie has raised the
fundamental issue for us, and that is we have an All-Volunteer
Force, and appropriately we compensate that All-Volunteer Force
much differently than we did when we had a draft. We have now
stretched an All-Volunteer Force through 10 years of combat. It
has been a challenge to maintain the quality. It is more
expensive, but no one would want to shortchange the people who
are sacrificing so much for our country by serving.
But the ground mission is a unique one because it is
manpower-intensive. And so I think we as a country need to ask
the fundamental question: If more and more ground contingencies
are going to be the norm--I think we hope not, but the troops
always need to be prepared--then we need to have a long-term
debate about how we raise--you know, the constitutional mandate
is to support a Navy and to raise an Army. So we should
probably have a debate on how we raise an Army at some point.
Dr. Mahnken. If I could, I would broaden this out, and I
would say that the Joint Force, all of our capabilities give us
all sorts of opportunities to hedge. And so my direct answer to
your question would be it depends. It depends on the type of
contingency that we would face. In some types of contingencies,
you know, our naval and air capabilities, which are relatively
less stressed than our ground capabilities, would be able to
take the fore. Depending on the contingency, our allies would
have an important role. If we were talking about a contingency
on the Korean Peninsula, for example, South Korea and the
Republic of Korea's Armed Forces, particularly their ground
forces, would play a major role.
This is a topic that OSD [Office of the Secretary of
Defense] and the Joint Staff have to deal with constantly as
they are looking at global force management and how to balance
these risks on a day-to-day basis.
Mrs. Hartzler. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Forbes. The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Kissell.
Mr. Kissell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and panel, for being
here.
I am going to do something I don't normally do. I am going
to talk more than I am going to ask questions. I generally
like, when we have expertise here, to go straight to questions.
And I think it is the nature, Mr. Chairman, of what you have
got set up here today, and I have been writing notes, writing
notes, writing notes, and I finally quit writing notes. I think
it is more of an indication of what we are doing here. And the
direction that I have decided I really would like to ask in
goes back a little bit to what Mr. Scott was talking about,
what Mr. Reyes was talking about.
It doesn't bother me as much that we are going to be hiring
some people in the Pentagon if they are going to do the job,
because we went through two major bills of procurement
reforming when the bottom line was we keep coming up with these
acquisition plans that don't come in on time, don't come in on
budget, don't do what they are supposed to. We don't have
oversight of what we want them to do, so we keep adding all the
bells and whistles, and all of a sudden we wonder why the
combat littoral ship, the expeditionary force for the Marines,
the Army's experiment with the reforming to the combat
futuristic models, whatever they were, on and on. And the F-35
is how many years behind? The engine is 4 years behind. On and
on and on, and we wonder why we have old equipment. Because the
new equipment is not coming in. And as Mr. Reyes said, we have
contractors who seem sometimes their intent is to maintain
their position and not deliver the bang for the buck that the
American taxpayers need.
So I don't mind if we bring some of that expertise in. I
also recognize that a lot of the expertise is retiring. If the
people won't do the job, save the money, and predict what we
need, and get it done. And that is where a lot of the our
legislation went. And I think, Mr. Chairman, that is kind of
the gist.
And I think, Mr. Chairman, you may be the one that has
pointed out that we go out and spend billions of dollars buying
equipment, and we don't even own the intellectual rights to
that equipment. We don't even get blueprints of that equipment.
You know, we tell somebody to go spend billions of dollars and
build it, then you get to keep it, and anytime we want
something done, we got to come back to you as if you were the
original possessor of that idea.
So all of that said, I have some concerns in how we go
about doing this. But the end result is we have got old
equipment, we have lines not coming in on time, and we are
shutting down lines. And I guess I have got finally a question.
I believe one of the concerns that I have is that
manufacturing has become kind of--something a lot of people
don't think we need anymore in America. So if we have to ramp
up, if we have the need to start rebuilding, where do we stand?
What is our base industrial core strength in America in terms
of if we had a higher than a normal response, how can we
respond?
Dr. Mahnken. Just two brief responses. First is I think you
raise a number of excellent points on acquisition, and I would
just commend to your attention the acquisition chapter of the
QDR Independent Panel's report. The task force was chaired by
retired Air Force General Larry Welch, who I think has a lot of
wisdom in those pages as to how to improve the acquisition
process.
On the manufacturing base, I agree. I share that concern.
If you look at the way America has traditionally fought its
wars, we have been able to mobilize our industrial base, and we
have been able to produce the materiel that we need in wartime.
That base in a number of areas, whether it is shipbuilding,
aircraft, even logistics and a lot of munitions and
expendables, I think is not where it was. And I do think we
need to think strategically about that, about that industrial
base.
I mean, there was a time not too many years ago where we
had a shortage of small-arms ammunitions because of some
problems with a couple of the manufacturers' manufacturing
facilities. That is relatively simple stuff. We could find
ourselves in a situation where we need to replenish more
complex items in the inventory. So I think that is an excellent
observation.
Mr. Kissell. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think you have set a
good tone for what this subcommittee can be looking at. And one
last specific question. That red light just went on. Do we need
the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle? If anybody wants to join? I
am on Air, Land and this subcommittee, and I am hearing so much
back and forth. Is that something that we need?
Mr. Donnelly. My view would be yes. Mackenzie earlier said
we need a capability that is something like this. The marines
have to get from their amphibious ships ashore somehow. They
can't all fly in a V-22. They can't all ride in an LCAC
[Landing Craft Air Cushion hovercraft] or walk ashore. And once
they get ashore, they need mobility and firepower. And the way
to get from ship to shore is either you plow through the water
like an AAAV [Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle] currently
does, or you get on top of the water like a speedboat, the way
the EFV was supposed to do.
The idea that we won't need forcible entry capabilities in
the future, particularly in a Pacific contingency, again
strikes me as nonsensical. When you are talking about the anti-
access question, what is vulnerable really are the ships
themselves. So, you know, you can put all of these requirements
in a blender, and some version is going to come out. And if it
is going to do what you want it to do, it is going to look like
an EFV; or you are going to have to sacrifice the speed, the
ground mobility, the firepower, the ability to carry a full
squad; or you are going to have to come in close to shore to
disembark the marines. Anybody who has been in an AAAV, the
first briefing you get is: Puke into your helmet so it doesn't
clog the bilge that way. So you can pay us now, or you can pay
us later.
Ms. Eaglen. If I may, quickly. That is correct. So it is
not about the EFV. You can call it the ACV, the Amphibious
Combat Vehicle, but they need something. So the question I
would argue for Congress and for the taxpayers since they
funded this is when you look at how you build a major system
like this, it is roughly broken down into design, development,
and then production where you are actually turning them out.
Congress has to ask, and all of you in this room in particular,
do we finish that last marginal production at this point
because it has been under development for over a decade, and we
have spent--I don't know the exact number--I think over $10
billion so far, or do you make that a sunk cost and you restart
the ACV?
The government should be leveraging the taxpayer investment
in the development up to this point, I would argue. So even if
you don't need the EFV, and you want to call it ACVX, the point
is to keep all the investment in hand so you don't throw
overboard the taxpayer money spent to date.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you.
Now Mr. Gibson from New York.
Mr. Gibson. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I thank the panelists here today. I appreciate your
experience and your scholarship. I also note Ms. Eaglen's
previous experience for the good people of New York 20 I now
represent, and I appreciate your service there.
I would like to pick up on a point Mr. Donnelly mentioned
earlier about lacking guidance and the mismatch between
requirements and resources. I concur with that assessment. And,
of course, just the central question for today's hearing, are
we ready, begs the question: Ready for what?
Now, you know, from an a priori statement, I don't believe
that we can afford to start a war that we don't finish and we
don't win. We have to do that. I supported the surges; I fought
in the surge in Iraq. And clearly I think it is a consensus, we
are going to protect this cherished way of life, and we are
going to make sure that we resource us to do just that.
There are a variety of opinions as to exactly what that
means. And looking towards 2015 and beyond and the kind of
force posture, the structure, and how we are going to lay down
forces and command and control, I really come at this from the
standpoint that we are asking too much of our military. And I
want to go to the point earlier made as far as the potential
groupthink, of the QDR, and the role the independent panel can
play, and I am curious to know are there divergent viewpoints
in any arguments that resonated that we should take a look at
how we array our Armed Forces both in terms of posture, command
and control, the requirements thereof, discussions that came in
the QDR and independent panel, and your assessment as to
whether or not you think we have a system that allows for
alternative viewpoints?
Mr. deLeon. Well, Mr. Gibson, I think first the alternative
viewpoint in our process comes from the Congress, and so that
is the institutional role. The President is the Commander in
Chief. Most of us have taught courses on this. The President is
the Commander in Chief, and the Congress provides for the
common defense in terms of the raising of the Army and
supporting a Navy, and the rules and regulations thereof. So
this is the unique relationship that every Administration and
every chairman of the committee and chair of the subcommittee
have to deal with and come to grips.
And so it is we have spent a morning talking about the
requirements. We are sitting on this side of the table, and we
are no longer responsible for the resource generation. When we
served in our various offices, we had to have that balance. And
that is where I think the challenge and the debate comes.
Looking at each of these situations, the Pacific, the
troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, I have always felt
that when you have fighting troops in the field, they become
the number one priority.
I think Secretary Gates told the QDR panel one of his
issues in the Pentagon was that the Pentagon was too quick to
get into the next budget instead of focusing on the troops in
the field and what are their requirements. And you are correct;
once we start, your moral obligation is to the troops in the
field.
We probably need a better, more detailed process at the
front end when we decide to deploy the troops. With an All-
Volunteer Force and supplemental appropriations, it is very
easy to do. If you look back at FDR on the Lend-Lease, these
were votes that went one way or the other. On Desert Storm it
was a very close vote not in the House, but in the Senate, and
lots of questions back in 1991 about the first ground combat
the country was considering. And so it was good in terms of
what were we asking the force to do, what would we think
victory looked like, things like that.
So we probably owe a front-end process, because Iraq and
Afghanistan have been a bit unique because we really have
funded those through emergency supplementals. That has been a
departure in our history in terms of how we have provided for
the common defense. And then with the Volunteer Force, these
are folks that are well-trained, ready to go, highly
professional, and, whether intended or not, the Guard has
stepped in and really made an enormous contribution to the
country.
So I think it is easier to define the requirements and look
to the future than it is to engage in that discussion on how
many resources are we now prepared to provide. In terms of
actual dollars spent, we have gone through a decade where we
have spent more than we spent during the Reagan 1980s. Now, in
terms of the economic measure of that, it was 7 percent GDP in
the 1980s; it is 4.5 percent in this decade. So the economy has
historically grown and is larger.
But I think deciding on the resources, deciding on what the
priorities are and how you balance, one of the points that Tom
Mahnken in our staff on force structure wrote is that we
constantly add to the missions of the force, but we really
don't increase the size of the force. We increase the budget,
but we have wrapped around a lot more contracting around the
Active-Duty men and women than we had, for example, during as
recently as Desert Storm.
So that is, I think, that issue of the balance between
requirements and resources. Your subcommittee is at the heart
of that in deciding what is right and what is appropriate.
Mr. Donnelly. I will try to be brief.
There was certainly a lot of spirited discussion amongst
the panelists. At the same time, I am struck about how at the
end of the day most of those got worked out. So people from a
wide variety of backgrounds very much came together on a core
set of conclusions.
And there was a lot of discussion about what is an
appropriate military mission and what should be the job of
other agencies. I am not sure that we have fully answered that,
but we certainly did talk about it a lot.
I would just conclude by saying it has been more than 20
years since the Berlin Wall fell, and we haven't gotten to
those questions that Rudy described. They have been out there,
but we have been looking through the wrong end of the
telescope, if you would, and having arguments about how many
tanks and how many ships, without really thoroughly addressing
this question of what is it that we really need to be doing.
Again, I think the panel felt that was more than we could
really--had the time or the resources to address. And I would
really commend this idea of, you know, a panel of wise men or
whatever that could be both a resource for the executive and
the legislative branch. It would just be a focus for discussion
of these issues, because, you know, it is a garbage-in,
garbage-out process. If you can't define what the yardstick
would be, any measurement of readiness is as good as the other.
Mr. Gibson. Mr. Chairman, if I could have 30 seconds to
wrap that up.
Mr. Forbes. Go ahead.
Mr. Gibson. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate the commentary here, the testimony. And, you
know, to me, I think these a priori questions, now is the time
to be asking--it is really overtime to be asking it. But as we
look towards the backside of Iraq and Afghanistan, we should
ask some fundamental questions: Who are we as a people? I think
we would agree we are a Republic, but when you look at the
facts, we look like an empire. We are laid down all over the
world. We have command and control that reaches all over the
world. I am not convinced we are any safer by doing it that
way.
Something that strikes me as wrong, that when there is an
event overseas, the number one seat in protocol goes to the
combatant commander rather than the ambassador. I think we
should take a look about the way that we array our forces and
how we look at a whole government approach. We are talking
about protecting our cherished way of life here, but I think
there are alternative visions and approaches that I am not
convinced have been fully developed and at least compared and
contrast.
So thank you very much for your testimony, and I look
forward to working with you as we go forward.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Chris.
We just have a couple of questions left. Thank you so much
for your patience.
Ms. Bordallo.
Ms. Bordallo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have a couple
of questions, but I will enter them into the record, and
hopefully the witnesses will be able to answer them.
And also on the subject of the roundtable discussions, I
have thought about that, and I think it is a good idea. So I
look forward to that. And Mr. Reyes also mentioned to me that
he thought off-site visits would be very valuable. Thank you.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you so much, Madeleine.
If I could just close with two questions, and I know some
of our Members may need to leave, but I deferred these.
We are constantly trying to get the balance between whether
or not the budget is driving our defense strategy or our
defense strategy is driving our budget. We have yet to have
anyone from the Department of Defense to acknowledge that the
budget is driving the strategy, as we might appreciate.
There seems to me to be three components that we are always
talking about, but we blend them quite a bit. One of them is
something that Mr. Gibson was raising: What is our strategy?
Are we asking the right questions for the strategies that we
need?
The second one is what we saw with the helicopters we had
up at the beginning of this hearing, which is: Are we making
the right assessment of our ability to meet that strategy?
But the third one is the assessment of what part of the
strategy can we afford to implement?
We are always concerned here that we are not getting those
three in balance. How do we ferret out and make sure we are
really hearing the strategy and not somebody's filtering of the
strategy through the budget? Do you have any suggestions, any
wisdom for us as we move down that road of how we make sure
that we are dividing those three so that we are getting this
right?
Mr. Donnelly. Well, I would just go back to the readiness
reports that the committee did back that Rudy referred to
earlier. Obviously the point of departure is the information
that you get from the Department, but it is important to sort
of go beyond that and ask, well, are these the right
measurements? And I think one of the things we found was that,
particularly looking outside of the spotlight in terms of
looking at units that were not immediately deployed, if you
look at units that are in the trough of unreadiness, that is
where you kind of get a better assessment of the problems that
beset the force in terms of manpower filler or equipment
readiness or in the National Guard, for example.
But to go to the question of affordability, I keep using
Rudy as a point of reference, but I think he was quite right.
In the absolute, or as a slice of our national wealth, our
military commitments are at pretty historic low, at least a
post-World War II low, but the nature of the government, and
what the government spends its money on, and the nature of our
society has changed. So probably the largest contributor to our
long-term strategic readiness is whether we can get the
government's fiscal house in order, I would say.
Mr. Forbes. Mr. deLeon.
Mr. deLeon. In the mid-1980s, this committee was
instrumental in passing the Goldwater-Nichols Act. Back to that
setting of priorities and how to match the budget with the
strategy and, most importantly, the strategy with the budget,
you now have two very independent sources of information. You
have the commanders from the field. You have General Mattis and
Admiral Olson this afternoon upstairs in the full committee. So
they are in the field, and they are at the front of the spear.
And so their mission is are we ready to execute the missions
that the command authority has asked them to do today.
You have another group, the Joint Chiefs, and under
Goldwater-Nichols and the Title X, their job is to organize,
train and equip, and not only today, but to be thinking about
where we will be in 2015, in 2020, and 2025.
And then you have got the committee, which I think needs to
ask the questions of where do we see the country--because we
are still operating, in terms of the sizing of the military,
under many of the assumptions that are still derivative of the
cold war, and yet we are in an economic period where the
economic power is much less concentrated.
My colleague and I, who is with me today, we were in a
conference, and we were in Beijing a year ago. And the thing
about the economists on the Chinese side is that they not only
have been trained in the United States, but they are tenured
professors of economy at Stanford and Princeton and Johns
Hopkins, so they know what they are talking about. But their
point was during the cold war, we wanted to be on your side.
There were only two choices, and your side was the side that
the whole world wanted to be on.
And now the economic drivers are much more diffuse. You
have got a Middle East that is dominated by 18- to 22-year-old
young men who don't have jobs. You have got an Asia which is
focused on manufacturing excellence and how you continue to
grow economic capability and economic influence; a Europe which
is sort of status quo; and then America which has been the
great leader of the global coalition.
But the broader issues that I think--it has changed much
since Presidents Truman and Eisenhower through President Reagan
dealt with a set of issues. The Presidents since then are
dealing with a much different kind of threat, a much different
kind of world, but yet still people look to the United States
on the national security side for the leadership. So I think
that is your challenge.
Ms. Eaglen. Verbally, you are right. The Department isn't
going to acknowledge or admit the reality that most of their
decisions are budget-driven, but practically we all know that
that is true. How do we know that? They told you indirectly. So
if you go back through the hearing transcripts from just the
last 3 years, because the 2010 budget was really the pivotal
year where we restructured the investment portfolio--the
Secretary did--for the armed services and proposed killing over
50 major programs that have been on the books some for two
decades, and when you go back in the posture hearings and
everything from combat search-and-rescue helicopters for the
Air Force, to the F-22, also for the Air Force, to even just
recently the EFV, all of them said, I need this, and I want
this. We can't afford it. What they are telling you is it is
just a budget--exactly what they are saying, it is purely
budget-driven.
Now, practically, the tools that you have available to you
are not, you know, archaic. They are still very valuable. And I
would just take you back. I'd applaud you for your conversation
with the three stars, as we are calling it, bringing over those
less than sort of the same old faces. The dialogue on that sort
of upper middle management is important to get outside of this
groupthink. Field hearings, I found, are very instrumental in
the work that you do to get outside of Washington; of course,
CODELs [congressional delegations] as well.
Senator Dole's former MLA [military legislative assistant]
just recently put an op-ed out in the Washington Times, and
basically it said--she had asked the current Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs, how are you going to do everything--to Mr.
Gibson's question--with the money that you are getting and what
we are asking you to do, and it is too short? And he said in
this one-on-one: How do I give you an honest answer without
losing my job? Now, of course, it is in the public domain. But
my point is that they will tell you perhaps in just various
venues.
And then lastly I would applaud the full committee chairman
Mr. McKeon for continuing the tradition for asking for the
military's unfunded requirements list. The challenge is that
the Secretary has upended that process by requiring OSD vet
those lists. And I would encourage you to push back, because
obviously they are night and day in terms of what they look
like now. Yes, nobody is going to ever say, you have the whole
world at your feet and you can buy anything you want, but they
were an instructive benchmark of what the service thought they
needed in order to accomplish everything. It doesn't mean that
you were going to give them that. But those were very valuable
tools before 2010 until the Secretary took them over in
highlighting to Congress some of the things they need to buy
and are unable to do so.
Dr. Mahnken. Mr. Chairman, I think this committee offers an
important independent venue for assessing risk, and I think
really what we have been talking about throughout this session
really in different ways is risk and ways that you balance
risk. I mean, in the old days we used to be able to throw money
at it and buy down risk. We can do that to some extent, but I
think we are much more in a situation where we need to accept
some forms of risk, but we need to be cognizant that we are
doing so.
I think what my colleagues have been saying is it can be
difficult to get a straight answer as to what the real risks
are. And so I think groups like the QDR Independent Panel and
things like this hearing are a great venue to get other voices
and other assessments of risk that can then help you make the
decisions as to how we deal with that risk.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you.
Ms. Bordallo has, I think, a follow-up question.
Ms. Bordallo. No.
Mr. Forbes. You are done?
If not, then I just want to thank all of you for the
service you have done to your country in so many different
venues, coming in here, the great work that you did on that
panel. And thank you for spending this morning with us and help
bring us up to speed, and we look forward to picking your
brains down the road as we go. So thank you all very much, and
we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:02 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
=======================================================================
A P P E N D I X
March 3, 2011
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
March 3, 2011
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[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
=======================================================================
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
March 3, 2011
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. BORDALLO
Ms. Bordallo. The military services have adopted a rotational
readiness construct which enables deployed and deploying forces to
obtain the highest level of readiness, while non-deployed forces are
left without critical personnel and equipment and are, in most cases,
unable to train due to the shortages of resources. While I understand
that this model is ensuring we have ready forces for Afghanistan and
Iraq, what are the strategic implications to the force?
Mr. deLeon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. We have become heavily reliant on the Navy and Air
Force to provide individual augmentees to meet ground force
requirements in CENTCOM. When this practice started several years ago
it was supposed to be a ``temporary fix'' to the imbalance in the
force. How has the long-term use of sailors and airmen to meet ground
force requirements impacted the readiness of the Navy and Air Force? In
your view, why has the DOD not been able to right-size its force
structure to ensure that taskings for CENTCOM are filled with the best
qualified individual for the task and not a surrogate from a different
service with different core competencies?
Mr. deLeon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. The fiscal year 2012 budget request reflects
shortfalls in depot maintenance requirements across the Department. How
much risk is this to the readiness of our force? What is the impact of
the delay in the FY11 appropriation and the depot maintenance
activities of the services?
Mr. deLeon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. The QDR report identified force structure
requirements and capabilities to deal with challenges and threat to
U.S. interests. What force readiness levels did the QDR team assume in
its calculations? Did they assume all of our forces were fully ready or
did they project an anticipated level of readiness over the next few
years and use that in their model? Did the QDR presume all of our
prepositioned stocks were fully reset, in place and ready for issue?
Mr. deLeon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. In your opinion, are we ready? Will we be ready? If
not, what should we be doing?
Mr. deLeon. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. Your statements also focus on the strategic use of
the military and I agree with you--it is indeed difficult to measure
military readiness without knowing what the measure of effectiveness
may be to declare ``strategic readiness.'' We as a nation have been
challenged for the past decade. We have been fighting tactically and
developing a military force that is more battle-hardened than perhaps
they ever have been at any other time in American history. Indeed every
branch of service has been involved in combat operations abroad and has
developed skills they did not necessarily posses before September 11,
2001. The military has expanded their foreign language capacity,
broadened their general cultural awareness, refined their hand-to-hand
and urban combat skills, refined their civil-military relationship
building, and a bevy of other skill sets. So my question for you is, do
you believe the past ten years of military experience (both in
personnel and in weapons systems), technological ingenuity and design,
and our ability to realize massive military mobilization in the Middle
East be parlayed into a ready force that is able to meet the future
strategic threats? Will we be able to protect our interests in space,
ensure in unimpeded access to the high seas, and protect our homeland?
How would you recommend we begin preparing our military to position
them for success in 2030 and beyond?
Mr. Donnelly. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. The military services have adopted a rotational
readiness construct which enables deployed and deploying forces to
obtain the highest level of readiness, while non-deployed forces are
left without critical personnel and equipment and are, in most cases,
unable to train due to the shortages of resources. While I understand
that this model is ensuring we have ready forces for Afghanistan and
Iraq, what are the strategic implications to the force?
Mr. Donnelly. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. We have become heavily reliant on the Navy and Air
Force to provide individual augmentees to meet ground force
requirements in CENTCOM. When this practice started several years ago
it was supposed to be a ``temporary fix'' to the imbalance in the
force. How has the long-term use of sailors and airmen to meet ground
force requirements impacted the readiness of the Navy and Air Force? In
your view, why has the DOD not been able to right-size its force
structure to ensure that taskings for CENTCOM are filled with the best
qualified individual for the task and not a surrogate from a different
service with different core competencies?
Mr. Donnelly. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. The fiscal year 2012 budget request reflects
shortfalls in depot maintenance requirements across the Department. How
much risk is this to the readiness of our force? What is the impact of
the delay in the FY11 appropriation and the depot maintenance
activities of the services?
Mr. Donnelly. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. The QDR report identified force structure
requirements and capabilities to deal with challenges and threat to
U.S. interests. What force readiness levels did the QDR team assume in
its calculations? Did they assume all of our forces were fully ready or
did they project an anticipated level of readiness over the next few
years and use that in their model? Did the QDR presume all of our
prepositioned stocks were fully reset, in place and ready for issue?
Mr. Donnelly. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. In your opinion, are we ready? Will we be ready? If
not, what should we be doing?
Mr. Donnelly. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. Expanding, indeed even maintaining a large industrial
military base is of course very important but also very costly. The
military has to continue to invest in people while also developing new
and improved weapons. What changes do you think we can make in the cost
of military readiness that would encourage retention of our best and
brightest while sustaining the long term growth of the military
industry?
Ms. Eaglen. You are correct that the defense spending priorities
must carefully maintain a balance between strengthening the all-
volunteer force and providing those in uniform with modern weapons
systems.
Congress should be concerned about the general loss of innovation
in defense-related research and development. Policymakers must take
care to ensure the Department of Defense is not giving away critical
skill-sets in the shrinking defense industrial base that will be needed
to imagine and build the next generation of platforms and capabilities
the U.S. Navy will require in relatively short order relative to
acquisition timelines and traditional build cycles. The critical
workforce ingredients in sustaining an industrial base capable of
building next-generation systems are specialized design, engineering,
and manufacturing skills. Already at a turning point, the potential
closure of major defense manufacturing lines in the next five years
with no additional scheduled production could shrink this national
asset even further.
As the cost of training has grown the past decade, many of the
services are increasingly relying upon simulations in lieu of live-fire
exercises when both are required. Defense leaders should more regularly
sponsor regular and realistic training in degraded environments. Forces
must be capable of operating in live-fire exercises without access to
the U.S. overhead architecture of space and satellite assets. The U.S.
military should know how it will operate without access to U.S. forward
bases, as well as allied and foreign permissive airspace.
Congress should not exclude itself from the need to engage in the
participation in wargaming exercises. These exercises would not be for
Congress to join military members simulating combat but rather to react
to proposed scenarios of varying depth and scope and determine the
policy implications of those decisions and lessons learned.
Ms. Bordallo. The military services have adopted a rotational
readiness construct which enables deployed and deploying forces to
obtain the highest level of readiness, while non-deployed forces are
left without critical personnel and equipment and are, in most cases,
unable to train due to the shortages of resources. While I understand
that this model is ensuring we have ready forces for Afghanistan and
Iraq, what are the strategic implications to the force?
Ms. Eaglen. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Ms. Bordallo. We have become heavily reliant on the Navy and Air
Force to provide individual augmentees to meet ground force
requirements in CENTCOM. When this practice started several years ago
it was supposed to be a ``temporary fix'' to the imbalance in the
force. How has the long-term use of sailors and airmen to meet ground
force requirements impacted the readiness of the Navy and Air Force? In
your view, why has the DOD not been able to right-size its force
structure to ensure that taskings for CENTCOM are filled with the best
qualified individual for the task and not a surrogate from a different
service with different core competencies?
Ms. Eaglen. Since 2003, the Navy and Air Force have taken on new
responsibilities on the ground in both Afghanistan and Iraq, in many
cases serving in lieu of soldiers to relieve the strain on the U.S.
Army. All the services are under stress, wearing out equipment much
more quickly, and experiencing reduced readiness levels across the
board. The Air Force and the Navy, however, have had to live with flat
or declining budgets for the past several years. As a result,
modernization is the primary budget casualty.
According to the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, the service is
slowly coming back into balance and achieving healthier deployment-to-
dwell time ratios. However, the reliance upon sailors and airmen is
unlikely to decline significantly in this area of operations before
2014. This may prove to be unhealthy for the Navy and Air Force given
the potential long-term damage to individual sailor and airman
promotion rates and military career specialties. Supplementing ground
forces indefinitely threatens to overstress non-ground forces and their
equipment and harm training and specialization. Congress should
exercise stringent oversight of this practice to ensure that no good
deeds are being inadvertently punished.
Ms. Bordallo. The fiscal year 2012 budget request reflects
shortfalls in depot maintenance requirements across the Department. How
much risk is this to the readiness of our force? What is the impact of
the delay in the FY11 appropriation and the depot maintenance
activities of the services?
Ms. Eaglen. The negative impact on defense spending plans,
programs, and maintenance has been tremendous due to the lack of a
defense appropriations bill for fiscal year (FY) 2011 and the
Department of Defense receiving significantly less funding that was
requested as part of the President's defense budget request for FY11.
The result will be that defense programs will end up costing more money
as schedules slip and procurement rates are reduced.
A sample list of planned maintenance, upgrades, and depot work
affected by the defense budget uncertainty for the current fiscal year
includes:
Army officials are currently lacking funds to purchase 4
new transport helicopters that are employed extensively in overseas
operations in Afghanistan.
The Army currently lacks funds to refurbish HMMWVs.
Temporary furloughs and possible shut down of production
lines at Texas' Red River Army depot and Pennsylvania's Letterkenny
Army depot.
Shipyard repairs and maintenance are being canceled.
Navy and Army leadership have are scaling back training
for sailors and soldiers.
The Army has imposed a temporary hiring freeze for its
entire civilian workforce and Navy leaders have said that 10,000 jobs
are at risk.
The defense spending levels proposed in recent spending bills
(continuing resolutions) would eliminate the DoD's proposed purchasing
power growth of just 1.8 percent for 2011. This is essentially a double
hit on defense spending because the secondary impact means that the
military would be able to buy even less defense for the out years than
it plans on the books today.
Congress should ask all the services to report back on the impact
of the FY 2011 defense budget delays and what plans and programs will
be upended, altered, or affected by the reduced funding provided to DoD
for the remainder of the fiscal year.
Ms. Bordallo. The QDR report identified force structure
requirements and capabilities to deal with challenges and threat to
U.S. interests. What force readiness levels did the QDR team assume in
its calculations? Did they assume all of our forces were fully ready or
did they project an anticipated level of readiness over the next few
years and use that in their model? Did the QDR presume all of our
prepositioned stocks were fully reset, in place and ready for issue?
Ms. Eaglen. Policymakers should understand that the number and
variety of threats challenging U.S. interests are growing. The
Congressionally-commissioned Quadrennial Defense Review Independent
Panel report identifies key global trends that will affect America,
including:
Islamist extremism and the threat of terrorism,
The rise of new global powers in Asia,
The continued struggle for power in the Persian Gulf and
the greater Middle East,
An accelerating global competition for resources, and
Persistent problems from failed and failing states.
Yet the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) does not
adequately identify the panoply of risks confronting the United States.
Still beyond the challenges that defense planners and policymakers can
predict are the unforeseen challenges. History indicates that as states
destabilize and as rising powers see weakness among Western-allied
democracies, international crime, terrorist safe havens, piracy,
oppression, and lawlessness will increase. Such drastic scenarios may
seem unrelated, but as the QDR Independent Panel report notes, ``the
risk we don't anticipate is precisely the one most likely to be
realized.''
Ms. Bordallo. In your opinion, are we ready? Will we be ready? If
not, what should we be doing?
Ms. Eaglen. It has been said that America waits for wars to become
prepared for them. Such a pattern, as evidenced by repeated procurement
holidays in the twentieth century, leads to repeated surges in spending
that are more expensive than continued, sustained outlays. The best and
most cost effective way to preserve the military's core capabilities,
high readiness levels, our domestic production, and a sound defense
budget is to keep the military in a constant state of health, ever
ready to defend this country from both known and unknown threats.
Over the past two years, policymakers have cut plans and programs
which are critical to recapitalizing the legacy fleets of all the
military services. These recent defense cuts come on top of the
military's dramatic reduction that began in the early 1990's. The size
of the U.S. Navy has been cut by half since then, and today it is the
smallest it has been since 1916.
The U.S. military is already too small and its equipment too old to
fully answer the nation's call today, much less tomorrow. The U.S. has
largely failed to recapitalize its military in a generation, leading to
an ever-growing gap between what the U.S. military is asked to do and
the tools it has to accomplish their missions.
High readiness levels require robust National Guard and Reserve
forces that can provide national surge capacity when needed, and it
entails investment in a wide range of dual-use, multi-mission
platforms. Further, the U.S. should not only prepare for the full
spectrum of risks, but also maintain substantial safety and
technological superiority margins. Seeking to have ``just enough'' of
any important capability would be foolish.
To keep its global edge and to develop the abilities to defeat
shifting threats ranging from IEDs to ICBMs, the U.S. military must
maintain, modernize, and ultimately replace old weapons while
simultaneously researching, designing, testing, and fielding next-
generation systems. The average ages of most major weapons systems in
use are startling, and many next-generation programs are being
eliminated. Congress has acceded to most of the Administration's
defense budget requests and voted to terminate or truncate more than
one dozen major defense programs in the 2010 defense bills--
predominantly for budgetary rather than strategic reasons. As a result,
the military will lose vital capabilities along with the potential to
develop them later as defense industries shut down production lines and
hemorrhage skilled workers.
Ms. Bordallo. The military services have adopted a rotational
readiness construct which enables deployed and deploying forces to
obtain the highest level of readiness, while non-deployed forces are
left without critical personnel and equipment and are, in most cases,
unable to train due to the shortages of resources. While I understand
that this model is ensuring we have ready forces for Afghanistan and
Iraq, what are the strategic implications to the force?
Dr. Mahnken. The rotational readiness construct has allowed the
U.S. armed forces to wage successfully two protracted conflicts in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Of course, optimizing the armed forces on winning the
wars we are in creates trade-offs. Because of the current focus on
counterinsurgency, some parts of the U.S. armed forces are less ready
to respond to other contingencies. Moreover, proficiency in areas not
related to counterinsurgency has declined. As the United States reduces
its presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Defense Department will both
need to preserve its expertise in irregular warfare and rebuild its
competency in conventional warfare.
Ms. Bordallo. We have become heavily reliant on the Navy and Air
Force to provide individual augmentees to meet ground force
requirements in CENTCOM. When this practice started several years ago
it was supposed to be a ``temporary fix'' to the imbalance in the
force. How has the long-term use of sailors and airmen to meet ground
force requirements impacted the readiness of the Navy and Air Force? In
your view, why has the DOD not been able to right-size its force
structure to ensure that taskings for CENTCOM are filled with the best
qualified individual for the task and not a surrogate from a different
service with different core competencies?
Dr. Mahnken. The long-term use of sailors and airmen to meet ground
force requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan has augmented our ground
strength and improved our effectiveness in those conflicts. The
practice has also reduced the readiness of the Navy and Air Force. Such
a reduction in Navy and Air Force readiness would appear to be
acceptable in the short term. However, it does raise the level of risk
should another contingency occur.
The availability of Individual Augmentees from the Navy and Air
Force--to man Provincial Reconstruction Teams, for example--has allowed
the Army in particular to avoid making some difficult but vital
personnel, training, and education changes to optimize itself to carry
out such important irregular warfare missions. In my view, the Defense
Department has yet to fully embrace the need to organize, train, and
equip for irregular warfare missions, despite the persistent and
sincere efforts of civilian and military leaders over the past five
years. This is because changing the culture, values and training of the
U.S. armed services is very difficult, a project that is likely to last
years or decades rather than months.
Ms. Bordallo. The fiscal year 2012 budget request reflects
shortfalls in depot maintenance requirements across the Department. How
much risk is this to the readiness of our force? What is the impact of
the delay in the FY11 appropriation and the depot maintenance
activities of the services?
Dr. Mahnken. I am not qualified to provide an informed answer to
this question.
Ms. Bordallo. The QDR report identified force structure
requirements and capabilities to deal with challenges and threat to
U.S. interests. What force readiness levels did the QDR team assume in
its calculations? Did they assume all of our forces were fully ready or
did they project an anticipated level of readiness over the next few
years and use that in their model? Did the QDR presume all of our
prepositioned stocks were fully reset, in place and ready for issue?
Dr. Mahnken. The Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel
assumed that the United States would continue to a rotational readiness
construct and that U.S. forces would remain in both Iraq and
Afghanistan in large numbers through at least 2015, and in smaller
numbers thereafter.
The Panel did not assume that our prepositioned stocks were fully
reset. Rather, in our deliberations we identified the need to reset
those stocks as a priority.
Ms. Bordallo. In your opinion, are we ready? Will we be ready? If
not, what should we be doing?
Dr. Mahnken. The United States is ready to wage and win the wars
that we are in. Because of our experience in waging counterinsurgency
campaigns, we will also remain ready to do so for some time in the
future. I am concerned, however, that our readiness to respond to
higher-end contingencies, such as those that could involve China, has
been declining for some time. The United States is not fully ready to
respond to a catastrophic event in the homeland or cyber attacks. The
Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel contains a number of
recommendations for increasing U.S. readiness to respond to such
contingencies.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MRS. HANABUSA
Mrs. Hanabusa. My question is about the timeline of the Futenma and
the Guam relocation. Are you concerned that the agreed timeline of 2014
will be expanded thereby adversely affecting our readiness in the
region?
What is PACOM's plan B or default plan should the U.S. and Japan
fail to reach an agreement on a relocation plan in time for a 2014
relocation?
Mr. Donnelly. [The information was not available at the time of
printing.]
Mrs. Hanabusa. Are you aware if the long term planning of rotations
includes Army Chief of Staff Gen. George G. Casey Jr.'s plan to
increase Army dwell time to one year deployed to three years dwell time
for active duty and one year deployed to five years dwell time for
reservists (as he stated last year)? How do you anticipate this will
impact readiness?
Ms. Eaglen. U.S. Army leadership is currently implementing its plan
to restore the force to better health and balance by increasing the
dwell times for active duty personnel and members of the Reserve
Component. By authorizing and funding additional end strength for the
Army during the past decade, Congress has helped increase the dwell
time for soldiers. The dwell time for soldiers will continue to grow
over the next several years. Compared to a few years ago, soldiers are
now spending an average 18 months at home in between deployments, up
from 15 months. General Casey has said recently that those who deploy
after October 2011 can then expect two years of dwell time at home
after their combat deployment. Indicators show the Army is on track to
achieve its dwell time goals by 2013.
This is important to help the Army maintain healthy retention
levels as the economy begins to rebound. It is also very important to
help military families have more notification time and predictability.
As General Casey told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March
2011, Army families are the most brittle part of the force today.
Keeping healthy recruiting and retention levels will require support
for Army leader efforts to continue increasing dwell time for
servicemembers.
Congress will need to carefully weigh budget proposals by Secretary
of Defense Robert Gates to cut ground forces' end strength in 2015. It
is unclear if this will save any money and could negatively impact
force readiness and morale.
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